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This morning, seven activists began deploying a 70-foot by 35-foot banner of the word "Resist" above the White House. The activists from around the country are still in place, calling for those who want to resist Trump's attacks on environmental, social, economic, and educational justice to contribute to a better America.
LIVE UPDATES:
https://www.facebook.com/greenpeaceusa
https://twitter.com/greenpeaceusa
PHOTOS:
https://media.greenpeace.org/collection/27MZIFJJH0FTS
"People in this country are ready to resist and rise up in ways they have never done before," said activist and Greenpeace Inc. Board Chair Karen Topakian. "While Trump's disdain and disrespect for our democratic institutions scare me, I am so inspired by the multigenerational movement of progress that is growing in every state. Greenpeace has used nonviolence to resist tyrannical bullies since 1971, and we're not going to stop now."
The Greenpeace USA activists say they are prepared to stay in position throughout the morning to reach as many people as possible through live broadcasts on Greenpeace USA's Facebook page, tweets from the activists' twitter accounts, and media interviews.
"The sun has risen this morning on a new America, but it isn't Donald Trump's," said Pearl Robinson, one of the activists who unfurled the banner. "I fear not only the policies of the incoming administration, but also the people emboldened by this election to commit acts of violence and hate. Now is the time to resist. We won't stand rollbacks on all the progress the people have made on women's reproductive rights, LGBTQIA rights, the heightened awareness of state-sanctioned violence on black and brown folks, and the progress we have made on access to clean and renewable energy, an issue I have personally worked on my entire adult life."
The action this morning comes after days of sustained protests against Trump, including the four activists who disrupted Rex Tillerson's confirmation hearing with "Reject Rex" signs earlier this month, the veterans arrested in Senator John McCain's office last week, and the hundreds of thousands of participants in Women's Marches across the country over the weekend.
Since Trump has taken office, his administration has removed all mentions of climate change and LGBTQ rights from the White House website, taken steps to bring back the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines, and issued a press gag order on all employees of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Agriculture.
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For live updates, viewers can tune into the Facebook Live broadcast and follow tweets from the activists.
https://www.facebook.com/greenpeaceusa
https://twitter.com/greenpeaceusa
For interviews with the activists:
Cassady Craighill, 828-817-3328
For additional updates and visual requests:
Travis Nichols, tnichols@greenpeace.org, 206-802-8498
Jason Schwartz, jason.schwartz@greenpeace.org, 347-452-3752
Visual location: The Ellipse, White House South Lawn
Greenpeace is a global, independent campaigning organization that uses peaceful protest and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future.
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The House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a resolution to overturn President Donald Trump's tariffs on Canada, and Democratic lawmakers are vowing to keep the pressure on their Republican counterparts.
The House voted to roll back Trump's Canada tariffs by a margin of 219 in favor to 211 against, with six House Republicans crossing the aisle to back the measure. Among Democrats, only Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) voted in favor of keeping the tariffs in place.
According to Politico, the vote on ending Canadian tariffs was just the start of a number of votes House Democrats have planned aimed at rolling back the president's taxes on imported goods.
"Senior House Democrats plan to call up at least three more resolutions that will force many Republicans to choose between protecting their tariff-hit districts and pleasing their MAGA voter bases," Politico wrote, "not to mention their loyalties to a president who has, up until this week, not tolerated any House GOP dissent on the matter."
In an interview with Axios, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) said that he planned to push a resolution overturning Trump's tariffs on Mexican goods next.
Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) released a statement celebrating the vote to repeal the Trump tariffs, while warning her Republican colleagues that there will be "no more hiding" on the issue.
"This is the first vote to restore congressional authority and repeal Trump’s tariffs," she said. "We will keep holding Republicans accountable for raising prices on families and fighting to end Trump’s senseless trade war. The Senate must now take up this measure."
In a video posted on social media, Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) outlined the damage that Trump's tariffs have caused both to US consumers and international relations with longtime allies.
"Canada has been our close friend and ally for more than 200 years," Beyer explained. "Donald Trump promised to lower the cost of living, but his tariff regime is doing the exact opposite. These tariffs have done nothing but hurt the American people."
Trump's tariffs crushed our economy, raised prices, and alienated our allies.
Republicans passed rules preventing the House from voting to stop him.
We defeated that 'gag rule' last night, and now we're voting on ending Trump's tariffs on Canada.
Here's why I'm voting YES: pic.twitter.com/cwbOT2apKQ
— Rep. Don Beyer (@RepDonBeyer) February 11, 2026
Ontario Premiere Doug Ford hailed the vote to end the tariffs and expressed hope that it was the start of better relations between the US and Canada.
"Thank you to every member from both parties who stood up in support of free trade and economic growth between our two great countries," he wrote. "Let’s end the tariffs and together build a more prosperous and secure future."
Trump, however, has shown no signs of backing down and vowed to support primary challengers against any Republicans who joined with Democrats to roll back his tariffs.
"Any Republican, in the House or the Senate, that votes against TARIFFS will seriously suffer the consequences come Election time, and that includes Primaries!" Trump wrote in a Wednesday Truth Social post.
"Innocent civilians will pay with their lives to force regime change," warned US Rep. Ilhan Omar.
US Rep. Ilhan Omar on Wednesday condemned the Trump administration's oil blockade against Cuba as part of an "economic war designed to suffocate an island" and force regime change, a longtime goal of Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other right-wing American officials.
"The US oil blockade on Cuba is cruel and despotic," Omar (D-Minn.), the deputy chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, wrote in a social media post as fuel and food shortages and public health outcomes in Cuba continued to worsen due to the Trump administration's ramping up of the decades-long strangulation of the island nation's economy.
Omar, who visited Cuba along with other progressive lawmakers in 2024, warned that "innocent civilians will pay with their lives to force regime change," and called for the immediate lifting of the US blockade, which most of the international community views as illegal.
Omar's demand came after the Wall Street Journal reported that "children are being sent home from school early, people can barely afford basic food like milk and chicken, and long lines have sprung up at gas stations" as the Cuban people reel from the Trump administration's decision to deprive the country of oil from Venezuela—previously Cuba's largest supplier—and threaten economic retaliation against any nation that sends fuel to the Caribbean island.
"The last oil delivery to the country was a January 9 shipment from Mexico, which has since halted supplies under US pressure," the Journal noted. "President Trump’s executive order on January 29 called Cuba 'an unusual and extraordinary threat' and warned of new tariffs for any country that supplies oil to the island. The new measures go on top of a comprehensive set of US sanctions on Cuba that began in the early 1960s."
One Cuban, 36-year-old Raydén Decoro, told the Cuba-based Belly of the Beast that "the future is extremely uncertain, but something has to happen, somehow, because we’re the ones suffering the most."
"Electricity is impossible to get, food is getting more and more expensive," said Decoro. "Right now, fuel is only available in dollars, and inflation keeps rising."
Earlier this week, Omar joined other progressives in the US House in introducing a resolution calling for the annulment of the Monroe Doctrine, an assertion of US dominance of the Western Hemisphere that the Trump administration has openly embraced and expanded.
The resolution, led by Reps. Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) and Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), calls for "the termination of all unilateral economic sanctions imposed through executive orders, and working with Congress to terminate all unilateral sanctions, such as the Cuba embargo, mandated by law."
“This administration's aggressive stance toward Latin America makes this resolution critical," said Velázquez. "Their 'Donroe Doctrine' is simply a more grotesque version of the interventionist policies that have failed us for two centuries."
“Reality doesn’t lie: Coal is a rapidly dwindling relic of the past, not a solution for the future," said one climate action advocate.
“The 19th century called, and it wants its fuel source back," said the president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council on Wednesday as President Donald Trump announced his latest attempt to prop up the pollution-causing, expensive coal industry with taxpayer funds—this time by ordering the Pentagon to purchase electricity directly from coal-fired power plants.
"While Americans are demanding clean, affordable energy, the Trump administration is using our tax dollars to prop up the nation’s dirtiest, least efficient power plants," said Manish Bapna of the NRDC.
At an event at the White House, Trump directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to sign long-term, taxpayer-funded contracts with coal plants that would likely have otherwise been retired in the coming years, to purchase energy to power military installations.
"Hard to think of a dumber 21st Century energy and security policy than Trump's insistence that the Pentagon buy more coal power," said the Military Emissions Gap, a UK-based project that monitors military emissions data.
Trump also announced $175 million from the Energy Department to upgrade six coal plants in Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, and West Virginia, and was presented with a trophy naming him the “Undisputed Champion of Beautiful Clean Coal" by the Washington Coal Club.
The Trump administration's persistent efforts to cancel the planned closures of large coal plants have been challenged not only by more than a dozen state governments, but by the owners of at least one of the facilities and two utilities in Colorado.
The utilities, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association and Platte River Power Authority, accused the administration of violating the Takings Clause of the US Constitution's Fifth Amendment, which states that “private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
They argued in a regulatory filing last month that “the costs of compliance fall directly on their members and customers, who must now pay."
Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program, told the Washington Post that the administration's decision to compel coal plants to continue operating has raised household "energy bills while providing negligible benefits to consumers.”
“Each of the five plants were slated to retire because they are expensive to operate and there are cheaper sources of power available to meet consumers’ needs,” Peskoe told the Post. “Plant owners aren’t just flipping a switch to turn the plants back on—they are spending millions on maintenance, renewing expired coal contracts and rehiring workers.”
“It’s no wonder fossil fuel lobbyists are handing Trump an award today. Trump asked them for campaign cash and promised to return the favor—and now he is."
Bapna said Trump's latest actions on coal were the result of the president's campaign promise to fossil fuel executives, whom he asked for $1 billion in campaign donations and pledged to gut climate regulations in return.
“It’s no wonder fossil fuel lobbyists are handing Trump an award today. Trump asked them for campaign cash and promised to return the favor—and now he is," said Bapna. "The rest of us are left to pay the price: more heart disease and asthma attacks, higher utility bills, and more frequent unnatural disasters. This is a raw deal for our wallets, our health, and our future.”
Julie McNamara, associate policy director of the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, pointed out that Americans will face higher electricity bills and be forced to pay for the new Department of Defense contracts at a time when "people and businesses across the country are struggling with rapidly escalating electricity costs" while other countries around the world expand their use of far cheaper renewable energy sources.
"The country has real solutions at hand—yet instead of pushing ahead with investments in the fastest, cheapest, cleanest resources available, the Trump administration is actively doing everything it can to stop the deployment of new solar and wind projects, to stop investments in energy efficiency, and to stop the buildout of modern grid infrastructure," said McNamara.
“Reality doesn’t lie: Coal is a rapidly dwindling relic of the past, not a solution for the future," she added. "The Trump administration’s flailings come with real consequences. Forcing the use of increasingly unreliable and relentlessly uneconomic coal plants will risk outages and send high electricity costs higher. Recklessly slashing health, safety, and environmental standards will harm people’s health and the environment. And opting for hollow statements and short-term bailouts fails to meaningfully deliver for the coal-dependent communities requiring actual, durable transition solutions."
Margie Alt, director of the Climate Action Campaign, suggested that Trump's latest handouts to coal firms "ignores basic economics" while also proving that "coal can't compete without a taxpayer-funded bailout."
"Our military is one of the largest consumers of energy in the world," said Alt. "Instead of improving the efficiency of our military and the quality of life for those serving our country, this order saddles taxpayers with inflated energy costs while exposing millions of Americans to more toxic pollution from old, inefficient plants."