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For Immediate Release
February, 23 2017, 12:30pm EDT
Contact:
Erin Jensen,Email:,EJensen@foe.org
FOE Action Supports Sen. Sanders' Environmental Leadership
Today the League of Conservation Voters released their 2016 Scorecard. The annual LCV Scorecard is one of the most important tools for rating members of Congress' record on the environment. Despite a time-tested methodology there are rare instances when the scorecard doesn't accurately reflect a member's true leadership. This happened this year when Senator Bernie Sanders received a six percent score because of votes that he missed while running for president.
WASHINGTON
Today the League of Conservation Voters released their 2016 Scorecard. The annual LCV Scorecard is one of the most important tools for rating members of Congress' record on the environment. Despite a time-tested methodology there are rare instances when the scorecard doesn't accurately reflect a member's true leadership. This happened this year when Senator Bernie Sanders received a six percent score because of votes that he missed while running for president.
Friends of the Earth Action President Erich Pica released the following statement on Senator Sanders' environmental record:
With the climate crisis looming, the American people need our biggest champion pushing for action on the biggest stage -- that's Bernie Sanders. That's why Friends of the Earth Action endorsed him for president in 2016.
Though Senator Sanders didn't win the nomination, he empowered millions of Americans and built a movement. For years Senator Sanders championed the environment on the Senate floor and with activists in the trenches by tackling the toughest fights like the Dakota Access Pipeline and GMO labeling. He is the bold leader we need demanding that climate justice becomes a reality. Vermonters, and the nation, are lucky to have a friend of the earth like Bernie Sanders.
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
Insurance CEO Testimony ‘Made Case for Medicare for All Better Than Almost Anyone'
"Under Medicare for All, these insurance vultures who profit from the suffering of everyday Americans would all be out of a job—bringing down costs across the health system—which should be reason enough to support it," said one advocate.
Jan 23, 2026
If you want a compelling case for Medicare for All, just listen to the ultra-rich CEOs of the insurance companies profiting off the United States' disastrous for-profit status quo.
That was Public Citizen healthcare policy advocate Eagan Kemp's takeaway from congressional testimony delivered Thursday by the top executives of UnitedHealth Group, Cigna, Aetna owner CVS Health, Elevance, and Ascendiun, some of the largest beneficiaries of a system under which millions of Americans face massive costs, care denials, and labyrinthine administrative hurdles.
"In both of today’s House hearings, health insurance executives’ devil-may-care attitude towards Americans’ health made the case for Medicare for All better than almost anyone I have ever seen," Kemp said in a statement following the hearings held by the House Ways and Means Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee's healthcare panel.
"Rarely has there been a more feckless, uncaring, and unsympathetic group of paper pushers," said Kemp. "Under Medicare for All, these insurance vultures who profit from the suffering of everyday Americans would all be out of a job—bringing down costs across the health system—which should be reason enough to support it. We need Medicare for All to finally put us on par with every other comparably wealthy country by guaranteeing everyone in the U.S. can get the health care they need, throughout their lives."
The executives faced angry grilling from both Democrats and Republicans during Thursday's hearings, which came as health insurance premiums are skyrocketing due to the GOP's refusal to extend Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies that lapsed at the end of 2025.
"Do you understand why the American people are not a fan of UnitedHealthcare and big healthcare companies?" Rep. Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.) asked UnitedHealth Group CEO Stephen Hemsley, telling the story of a 3-year-old girl whose family was forced to take on more than $1 million in medical debt and declare bankruptcy because the insurance giant would not cover doctors' recommended treatment for a tumor in her bladder.
Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC), who recently underwent brain surgery, told the insurance executives that he faced eight care denials for necessary medication.
"You have put profits above patients, and you have put profits above those who care for patients," said Murphy, a physician. "If it were up to me, I would throw out all for-profit systems in this country and turn everybody into nonprofit. It has gotten that bad."
"If I had my way, I'd turn all of you guys into dust," he added. "We'd start back from scratch."
The @WaysandMeansGOP held a hearing on the impact of rising health care costs on patients and families.
We have to have serious reform of health insurers, pharmacy benefit managers, and their subsidiaries to reduce the cost of healthcare. pic.twitter.com/pQEE4WgQtk
— Congressman Greg Murphy, M.D. (@RepGregMurphy) January 22, 2026
The insurance executives attempted to shift the blame for high costs and other systemic issues onto hospitals, doctors, and pharmaceutical companies, while offering Band-Aid solutions.
UnitedHealth Group's CEO pledged during his testimony to return its 2026 Affordable Care Act profits to consumers in the form of rebates.
"If you’re feeling a little misty-eyed about this sudden burst of corporate altruism, let me save you the trouble. This isn’t a moral awakening. It’s a PR maneuver and narrative control being implemented in real-time," said Wendell Potter, a former health insurance executive who now supports Medicare for All, which would virtually eliminate private insurance and provide comprehensive health coverage for everyone in the US for free at the point of service, for a lower overall cost than the for-profit status quo.
"UnitedHealth’s pledge is just a long, desperate PR pass into the end zone, praying lawmakers and reporters will focus on the gesture instead of the business model that allows them to gobble up those dollars in the first place," Potter added. "This isn’t a gift. It’s a distraction."
Kemp of Public Citizen said Thursday that “in the short term, the Senate must pass a clean three-year extension of the enhanced ACA premium tax credits to address runaway premium increases for millions of Americans."
"In the long run," he added, "we must continue building the movement that will pass Medicare for All and make it the law of the land."
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It Would Be a ‘Mistake’ for Dems to Assume Trump Won't Try to Subvert 2026 Elections: Experts
"What are the remaining checks? Every check is gone."
Jan 23, 2026
While polling currently indicates that Democrats are well positioned to retake the US House of Representatives in the 2026 midterms, experts are warning that this year's elections may be neither free nor fair.
In a column published by the Guardian on Friday, Amherst College political scientist Austin Sarat pointed to a recent New York Times interview in which President Donald Trump said he regretted not ordering the US military to seize voting machines after losing the 2020 presidential election.
Sarat said Trump's musings about having the military interfere in the electoral process should be taken "seriously," but so far he's seen little evidence that Democrats are preparing for such a possibility.
The political scientist also flagged reporting from the Washington Post two weeks ago revealing that Trump "is using every tool he can find to try to influence the 2026 midterm elections and, if his party loses, sow doubt in their validity."
Furthermore, Sarat argued that these plans are not a hidden secret but have been sketched out as part of Project 2025, the far-right policy blueprint drawn up by the Heritage Foundation in 2022.
Among other things, wrote Sarat, Project 2025 featured proposals "to transfer the responsibility for investigating and prosecuting election crimes to the Department of Justice’s criminal division" and "to withdraw from arrangements that in the past have helped election officials do their jobs."
Sarat concluded that "Democrats are making a mistake by underestimating the likelihood that, for all the artful campaigning and the many unpopular things they can pin on Republicans, none of that will matter."
"They, and all the rest of us, must mobilize to avoid that result," he added. "We have no time to waste."
Dmitri Mehlhorn, a former Democratic strategist, said in an interview with the Atlantic published Thursday that he similarly feels Democrats are completely unprepared for what is to come in both the 2026 and 2028 elections, especially since Trump has already shown himself willing to go to extreme lengths to maintain power.
"If the president has proven in his first term that he will ignore subpoenas and ignore congressional budget authorizations and pardon anybody who also does, then suddenly, there’s no power," Mehlhorn explained. "What are the remaining checks? Every check is gone."
According to the Atlantic, Mehlhorn believes that federal law enforcement officials are going to follow Trump's orders, no matter how flagrantly illegal, and that Democratic-run states are going to have to consider radical deterrence strategies, including "threats of federal-tax boycotts, an expansive embrace of states’ rights," and "a new understanding of the importance of gun ownership."
Another potential risk to US election integrity not mentioned by Sarat or Mehlhorn is the danger of targeted propaganda being pumped out at an unprecedented pace using artificial intelligence (AI).
As reported by Wired on Thursday, new research has found that a single person can now use AI tools to deploy "'swarms' of thousands of social media accounts, capable not only of crafting unique posts indistinguishable from human content, but of evolving independently and in real time—all without constant human oversight."
Lukasz Olejnik, a visiting senior research fellow at King’s College London's Department of War Studies, told Wired that targeting "chosen individuals or communities is going to be much easier and powerful" thanks to AI.
"This is an extremely challenging environment for a democratic society," Olejnik added. "We're in big trouble.”
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Despite Authoritarian Warnings, 149 House Democrats Vote to Hand Trump $840 Billion for Military
"If an opposition party votes like this, it's not in opposition. It may not even be a party."
Jan 23, 2026
Despite months of warnings from party members up and down the caucus that President Donald Trump has been "lawless," "destructive, and "authoritarian" in his wielding of power both domestically and abroad, 149 Democratic members of the US House of Representatives on Thursday night joined with 192 Republicans to pass a sweeping military spending bill—a vote that progressive critics say exposes the fecklessness and hypocrisy of what claims to be an opposition party.
The 341-88 passage of the $828.7 billion fiscal 2026 military spending bill came over the objections of progressives who warned that the bill—now headed to the US Senate for final passage as soon as next week—is a tacit endorsement of the president's policies, even as he has ordered federal agents to terrorize US cities, deployed US soldiers on domestic soil in the face of lawful protests, threatened to annex Greenland and other nations by force, and conducted overseas military operations—including overt acts of war over the last year against both Iran and Venezuela—without congressional notification, authorization, or oversight.
"If an opposition party votes like this, it's not in opposition. It may not even be a party," said Stephen Semler, a senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy, a foreign policy think tank in Washington, DC.
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), ranking member of the House Rules Committee who voted naye on the appropriations bill, said ahead of the vote that he looked "at the defense appropriations bill as maybe the last opportunity to prevent this administration from doing something crazy in Greenland or attacking NATO or doing something that we all know is a bad thing to do."
Earlier on Thursday, the Republican-controlled committee blocked an attempt by Democrats to secure a vote on an amendment to the military spending bill that would have explicitly prohibited the invasion of a NATO ally.
Passage of the military spending bill followed an early House vote on funding for the Department of Homeland Security, in which seven Democrats joined Republicans to get it over the line.
While 149 Democrats voted for the $840 military spending bill, 64 Democrats voted against it.
"Republicans want money for unchecked, unaccountable, unconstitutional military action around the world," said Rep. Delia C. Ramirez (D-Il), explaining her vote against the bill. "And over half of the Pentagon budget goes to corporations that profit from pain, war, and genocide."
"You know how they get this done?" Ramirez continued. "By using working families' needs as a bargaining chip, tying the minimum funding working families need to survive to the maximum funding they can give their billionaire friends."
"As long as we are funding imperialism and authoritarianism while working people can't afford the high cost of living," she said, "I will stand opposed."
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