July, 14 2016, 02:45pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Marissa Knodel, Friends of the Earth, mknodel@foe.org, 202-222-0729
Tim Ream, WildEarth Guardians, tream@wildearthguardians.org, 541-531-8541
Taylor McKinnon, Center for Biological Diversity, tmckinnon@biologicaldiversity.org, (801) 300-2414
Ruth Breech, Rainforest Action Network, ruth@ran.org, 415-238-1766
Kaitlin Butler, Science and Environmental Health Network, kaitlinannbutler@gmail.com, 801-910-4820
Cherri Foytlin, Bold Louisiana, foytlinfam@cox.net, 334-462-4484
Jayeesha Dutta, Radical Arts and Healing Collective, jayeesha@gmail.com, 510-847-7990
Anne Rolfes, Louisiana Bucket Brigade, anne@labucketbrigade.org, 504-484-3433
Lawmakers Side with the Fossil Fuel Industry in Push for Online Lease Sales for Drilling on Public Lands and Oceans
President Obama has a clear choice: stand up for the climate or cater to fossil fuel interests
This week, the House Committee on Natural Resources passed a bill that would require lease sales for offshore oil and gas drilling to be held online rather than in person. Meanwhile, the Obama administration has already moved to shift an onshore public lands auction - originally planned to take place in Washington, DC in September - to be held online.
This shift is clearly a response to the mounting pressure from more than a thousand local citizens and activists, who have protested these auctions in communities across the country as part of the "Keep It in the Ground" movement calling on President Obama to define his climate legacy by stopping new fossil fuel leases on public lands and oceans.
Moving the auctions online serves one purpose: to make it easier for the fossil fuel industry to take control of our public lands, shielded from public scrutiny and input.
Facing the threat of catastrophic climate change, President Obama should be ending new drilling on public lands and oceans, not making it easier for the fossil fuel industry to lock us into decades of new extraction of dirty fuels.
Now the administration has a clear choice: take action in keeping with our international climate commitments or cater to the fossil fuel industry.
Marissa Knodel, Climate Change Campaigner, Friends of the Earth: "New fossil fuel leasing is wrong for people and the planet. Moving lease sales online will only make it easier for fossil fuel companies to get away with turning our public lands and waters into energy sacrifice zones. Across the nation, the movement to keep fossil fuels in the ground is gaining strength and momentum. Congress must listen to the voices of the people calling for a safe climate future and just transition to a renewable energy economy, not the fossil fuel industry."
Kaitlin Butler, Program Director, Science and Environmental Health Network: "There's a lot going on on public lands. Pipelines continue to leak, oil trains explode, thousands of abandoned mines have not been cleaned up. Bankrupt coal companies are discarding workers and slashing health benefits and pensions; the miners who have kept the lights on deserve better. This is your chance President Obama to leave a climate legacy and a public lands legacy for your children and your grandchildren. We do this for Sasha and Malia and all children. Join us."
Tim Ream, Climate and Energy Campaign Director, WildEarth Guardians: "The Obama Administration has leased 10 million acres of public lands to the oil and gas industry, the majority of which aren't even being drilled; there are thousands of public lands wells abandoned by bankrupt companies that have never been reclaimed; and climate change is breaking records every month. And the one change the Administration proposes is to make it easier to sell more land rights. That's just shameful."
Taylor McKinnon with the Center for Biological Diversity: "Moving fossil fuel auctions online still doesn't hide the dangerous disconnect between the administration's climate rhetoric and its fossil fuel leasing. The clock is ticking on the climate crisis, and each new lease makes a bad problem worse. It's time for the president to shut the federal carbon pollution spigot for good."
Anne Rolfes, Founding Director, Louisiana Bucket Brigade: "This bill is about circumventing public scrutiny. It says a lot when the public is so disgusted with Big Oil that they have to retreat and hide. They can change the rules but not the facts: they are destroying our health and our planet, and we are here to stop them."
Friends of the Earth fights for a more healthy and just world. Together we speak truth to power and expose those who endanger the health of people and the planet for corporate profit. We organize to build long-term political power and campaign to change the rules of our economic and political systems that create injustice and destroy nature.
(202) 783-7400LATEST NEWS
Doctors Against Genocide Hold DC Rally for 'Bread Not Bombs' in Gaza
"Hope is running out to save tens of thousands of children," warned one Colorado pediatrician. "When children die of starvation, they don't even cry. Their little hearts just slow down until they stop."
Apr 30, 2025
Members of the international advocacy group Doctors Against Genocide rallied outside U.S. Congress in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday to demand that lawmakers push for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and an end to Israel's use of starvation as a weapon of war in the besieged Palestinian enclave.
Around 20 DAG members in white lab coats held up pieces of pita and chanted, "Bread not bombs, let the children eat" during the Capitol Hill rally.
"The Israeli government's deliberate malnutrition, starvation, and attack on healthcare in Gaza has worsened and potentially portends extermination of masses of the Gaza population, particularly tens of thousands of children," said Dr. Karameh Kuemmerle, a Boston-based pediatric neurologist.
🪧 'Let the children eat!'
Doctors Against Genocide visited the US Capitol Hill to advocate for immediate action to end the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip https://t.co/aUJ9X6s4sh pic.twitter.com/RVpm2TX2Co
— Anadolu English (@anadoluagency) April 30, 2025
Last week, the United Nations World Food Program distributed the last of its remaining food aid in Gaza, where embattled residents now have no outside food source amid the Israeli blockade. DAG said Wednesday that "gastroenteritis and diarrheal diseases now run rampant due to Gazans attempting to survive on spoiled food, while others starve to death."
Palestinian officials, U.N. experts, and international human rights groups accuse Israel of perpetrating genocidal weaponized starvation in Gaza by imposing a "complete siege" that has fueled deadly malnutrition and disease among the coastal enclave's more than 2 million people, especially its children.
"When I treated Gaza children two months ago, children were already starving," Colorado pediatrician and DAG member Dr. Mohamed Kuziez said ahead of Wednesday's rally. "After 60 days of total blockade from essential nutrition and medical aid, uncounted more are dying slow, unnecessary deaths."
U.N. officials say there are nearly 3,000 truckloads of lifesaving aid, including more than 116,000 metric tons of food—enough to feed a million people for as long as four months—sitting at the Gaza border awaiting Israeli permission to enter.
"Hope is running out to save tens of thousands of children," Kuziez warned. "When children die of starvation, they don't even cry. Their little hearts just slow down until they stop."
Some of the speakers at the Capitol Hill rally hailed the resilience of Gaza's medical workers, who have suffered not only Israel's bombing and siege of hospitals and other healthcare infrastructure, but also kidnapping, torture, and apparent execution by Israeli troops.
"My Palestinian healthcare worker colleagues demonstrated something for which I have no word, because it goes beyond compassion, beyond skillful dedication, beyond courage," said Dr. Brennan Bollman, a professor of emergency medicine at Columbia University who just returned from Gaza. "They lost their family members and returned to work the following day."
"They need food, for their patients and for themselves; they need this illegal and unconscionable blockade to end," she added.
In addition to calling for an immediate cease-fire and lifting of Israel's blockade on Gaza, DAG is also demanding protection of children facing starvation, an end to U.S. bombing of Yemen, and safeguarding the U.S. Constitution and freedom of speech amid attacks on medical professionals' livelihoods.
Wednesday's rally came as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) held a third day of hearings on Israel's legal obligation to "ensure and facilitate the unhindered provision of urgently needed supplies essential to the survival of the Palestinian civilian population."
The ICJ is currently weighing a genocide case brought against Israel by South Africa and supported by dozens of countries, either individually or as members of regional blocs.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are also fugitives from the International Criminal Court, which has ordered their arrest for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during a U.S.-backed war that has left more than 184,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and nearly all Gazans forcibly displaced, often multiple times.
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Analysis Shows How GOP Attack on SNAP Could Cut Food Assistance 'From Millions' in Low-Income Households
"With economic uncertainty and the risk of recession rising, now is a particularly bad time for Congress to pursue these harmful changes," according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Apr 30, 2025
As congressional Republicans mull potentially imposing stricter work requirements for adults who rely on federal nutrition aid as part of a push to pass a GOP-backed reconciliation bill, an analysis from the progressive think tank the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released Wednesday states that such a move could take away food "from millions of people in low-income households" who are having a hard time finding steady employment or face hurdles to finding work.
The analysis is based on a proposal regarding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) from House Agriculture Committee member Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), which, if enacted, the group estimates would translate into an estimated 6 million people being at risk of losing their food assistance.
"In total, nearly 11 million people—about 1 in 4 SNAP participants, including more than 4 million children and more than half a million adults aged 65 or older and adults with disabilities—live in households that would be at risk of losing at least some of their food assistance" under Johnson's proposed rules, according to the analysis.
Per CBPP, current SNAP rules mandate that most adults ages 18-54 without children may receive food benefits for only three months in a three-year period unless they prove they are participating in a 20-hour-per-week work program or prove they have a qualifying exemption.
Under Johnson's proposal, work requirements would apply to adults ages 18-65, and they would also be expanded to adults who have children over the age of seven. Per CBPP, Johnson's proposal would also "virtually eliminate" the ability of states to waive the three-month time limit in response to local labor market conditions, like in cases where there are insufficient jobs
According to CBPP, its report is based on analysis of "the number of participants meeting the age and other characteristics of the populations that would be newly subject to the work requirement under U.S. Department of Agriculture 2022 SNAP Household Characteristics data," as well as the number of participants potentially subject to work requirements in areas that are typically subject to the waivers mentioned above.
The House Agriculture Committee, which oversees SNAP—formerly known as food stamps—has been tasked with finding $230 billion in cuts as part of a House budget reconciliation plan. To come up with that amount, the committee would need to enact steep cuts to SNAP.
According to CBPP, most SNAP recipients who can work are already working, or are temporarily in between jobs. Per the report, U.S. Department of Agriculture data undercount the SNAP households who are working because the numbers come from SNAP's "Quality Control" sample, which gives point-in-time data about a household in a given month.
This snapshot does "not indicate whether a household had earnings before or after the sample month, nor do they show how long a household participates in SNAP."
What's more, "with economic uncertainty and the risk of recession rising, now is a particularly bad time for Congress to pursue these harmful changes," according to the authors of the analysis.
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SOS: Migrants Awaiting Deportation Use Their Bodies to Cry for Help
The 31 men were nearly deported earlier this month before the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to return them to a detention facility in Texas.
Apr 30, 2025
Ten days after a U.S. Supreme Court order forced buses carrying dozens of Venezuelan migrants to an airport in Texas to immediately turn around and return them to Bluebonnet Detention Facility in the small city of Anson, 31 of the men formed the letters SOS by standing in the detention center's dirt yard.
As Reutersreported, the families of several of the men have denied that they are members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, contrary to the Trump administration's claims.
Immigration enforcement agents have detained and expelled numerous people with no criminal records, basing accusations that they're members of Tren de Aragua and MS-13 solely on the fact that they have tattoos in some cases.
After the reprieve from the Supreme Court earlier this month, with the justices ordering the government "not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court," the migrants still face potential deportation to El Salvador's notorious Terrorism Confinement Center under the Alien Enemies Act.
Reuters flew a drone over Bluebonnet in recent days to capture images of the migrants, after being denied access to the facility. One flight captured the men forming the letters—the internationally used distress signal.
Reuters spoke to one of the men, 19-year-old Jeferson Escalona, after identifying him with the drone images.
He was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in January and initially sent to the U.S. migrant detention center at Guantánamo Bay before being transferred to Bluebonnet. A Department of Homeland Security official said, without providing evidence, that he was a "self-admitted" member of Tren de Aragua, but Escalona vehemently denied the claim and told Reuters he had trained to be a police officer in Venezuela before coming to the United States.
"They're making false accusations about me. I don't belong to any gang," he told Reuters, adding that he has asked to return to his home country but has been denied.
"I fear for my life here," he told the outlet. "I want to go to Venezuela."
Earlier this month in a separate decision, the Supreme Court ruled that migrants being deported under the Alien Enemies Act must be provided with due process to challenge their removal.
"Remember," said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council, "the Trump administration refuses to give these men a chance to day in court, despite the Supreme Court telling them that they must give people a chance to take their case in front of a judge!"
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