SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
For Immediate Release
July, 19 2017, 04:00pm EDT
Contact:
Email:,press@lawyerscommittee.org
Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law Comments On the Election Integrity Commission
Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, issued the following statement Wednesday at the conclusion of the first meeting of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, a commission established by President Trump and co-led by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach that threatens the rights of minority voters.
WASHINGTON
Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, issued the following statement Wednesday at the conclusion of the first meeting of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, a commission established by President Trump and co-led by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach that threatens the rights of minority voters.
"In today's meeting, members promoted false and unsubstantiated claims of vote fraud while failing to provide meaningful focus on real problems that threaten our democracy such as ongoing voting discrimination, voter suppression and Russia's interference with our elections. The discussion among Commission members makes clear that they are laying the groundwork to promote dangerous policies and laws that will make it more difficult for Americans to register and to vote. This Commission represents a dark moment in American democracy and makes clear this administration's hostility to advancing voting rights.
"As the nation prepares to celebrate the 52nd anniversary of the enactment of the bipartisan Voting Rights Act, we urge Democrats and Republicans to condemn the so-called Election Integrity Commission and work together to protect the voting rights of all Americans. We intend to challenge this Commission at every turn as it continues to violate federal laws that require transparency and remains a vehicle to promote voter suppression on a national scale."
The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law has undertaken a series of comprehensive actions to challenge the Pence-Kobach Commission. This includes: the launch of a hotline for the public to report instances of voter suppression (866-OUR-VOTE); letters sent to Secretaries of State demanding they not comply with Mr. Kobach's request for voter roll data; filing a Hatch Act complaint against Mr. Kobach regarding his repeated exploitation of his Commission role to solicit campaign contributions and promote his candidacy for Governor of Kansas; requesting documents regarding the Commission made pursuant to the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA); and urging Secretaries of State to adopt a bipartisan resolution condemning the so-called Election Integrity Commission.
The Lawyers' Committee is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, formed in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy to enlist the private bar's leadership and resources in combating racial discrimination and the resulting inequality of opportunity - work that continues to be vital today.
(202) 662-8600LATEST NEWS
Israeli Forces Reportedly Kill US Human Rights Activist With 'Deliberate Shot to the Head'
"A soldier fired directly at the protestors, hitting the American activist in the head from behind," said one eyewitness.
Sep 06, 2024
One journalist said that "devastating levels of impunity" were on display in the West Bank on Friday as Israeli forces reportedly shot a 26-year-old American human rights advocate, Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, in the head, killing her as she protested the expansion of illegal settlements.
AJ+, Al Jazeera's digitial platform, reported that according to eyewitness accounts, Eygi was killed by a "deliberate shot to the head."
Eygi, who had dual citizenship in the U.S. and Turkey, was taking part in a campaign to protect Palestinian farmers from violence by Israeli settlers, 700,000 of whom live in illegal settlements erected over the last five decades in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
Israel rejects the position of the United Nations' highest court that the settlements violate international law, and the U.S. has continued to be the largest funder of the Israeli military despite thousands of deadly attacks by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and settlers on Palestinians—and activists trying to protect them—in the West Bank.
The protest where Eygi was killed was in the town of Beita, near the settlement of Evyatar, which was authorized by Israel last year.
"Just as the prayers were finishing, the Israeli military started firing tear gas and stun grenades towards the protestors," Hisham Dweikat, a resident of Beita, toldCNN. "As people were running away, live fire was shot and a soldier fired directly at the protestors, hitting the American activist in the head from behind and falling to the ground."
Suhauna Hussain, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, said on X that Eygi lived in the Seattle area and had recently graduated from the University of Washington.
Israel has intensified attacks on the West Bank in recent months, despite the government's claim that it is targeting Hamas, which operates in Gaza, in the current conflict that began last October.
On Friday, Israeli forces withdrew from the city of Jenin and its refugee camp after a 10-day operation that killed at least 36 Palestinians, including children. The U.N. warned Israel was using "lethal war-like tactics" this week as the IDF destroyed civilian infrastructure and carried out drone strikes in Jenin.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the Biden administration was "aware of the tragic death of an American citizen" in the West Bank and that officials were "urgently gathering more information."
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian American member of Congress, demanded that the State Department clarify how eyewitnesses and Palestinian media have characterized Eygi's death.
"How's they die, Matt?" said Tlaib. "Was it magic? Who or what killed Aysenur? Asking on behalf of Americans who want to know."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Time for Urgent Action Is Right Now': Summer 2024 Was Hottest on Record
"If you keep doing the same thing, you cannot expect to get any different result," said the director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service. "Unless we limit greenhouse gases, we will only see an exacerbation of these temperatures."
Sep 06, 2024
Scientists with the European Union's climate service said Friday that Earth experienced its hottest summer on record for the second consecutive year in 2024 as unprecedented and deadly heatwaves scorched large swaths of the planet, intensifying the urgency of large-scale policy changes to phase out the fossil fuels that are driving temperatures to alarming new heights.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said the three-month period between June and August saw global-average temperatures that were 0.69°C, or 33.24°F, higher than the average summer temperatures seen from 1991 to 2020.
"During the past three months of 2024, the globe has experienced the hottest June and August, the hottest day on record, and the hottest boreal summer on record," said C3S deputy director Samantha Burgess. "This string of record temperatures is increasing the likelihood of 2024 being the hottest year on record."
"The temperature-related extreme events witnessed this summer will only become more intense, with more devastating consequences for people and the planet, unless we take urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," Burgess added.
Temperatures in Europe were 1.54°C, or 34.77°F, above the 1991-2020 average, a record temperature surge that had deadly consequences in Greece, Italy, and other nations.
But The Washington Post's Sarah Kaplan noted that the consequences of the record-shattering summer heat "were felt by people on every continent, from world-class athletes competing in the Paris Olympics to refugees fleeing from wars."
She continued:
Wildfires fueled by heat and drought raged through the Brazilian Pantanal, a vital wetland known to store vast amounts of carbon. A turbocharged monsoon triggered landslides that killed hundreds of people in India's Kerala state. The Atlantic Ocean saw its earliest Category 5 hurricane on record, while deadly floods have wreaked havoc from Italy to Pakistan to Nigeria to China."
It was a summer of unrelenting humidity and heat too extreme for the human body to withstand. In June, at least 1,300 pilgrims visiting the Muslim holy city of Mecca died amid temperatures of 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit). Another 125 people were reported dead in Mexico during a July streak of exceedingly hot nights that researchers say was made 200 times as likely because of climate change. And in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, one of the world's northernmost inhabited areas, August temperatures soared more than 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) above the previous record.
Carlo Buontempo, the director of C3S, told the Post that "if you keep doing the same thing, you cannot expect to get any different result."
"Unless we limit greenhouse gases," Buontempo added, "we will only see an exacerbation of these temperatures."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Walz Rips Vance as 'Pathetic' for Asking Nation to Accept Mass Shootings as 'Fact of Life'
"Vice President Harris and Governor Walz know we can take action to keep our kids safe and keep guns out of the hands of criminals," said the Harris campaign.
Sep 06, 2024
Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz said children across the United States "deserve better" than his Republican opponent JD Vance's response to the latest school shooting, after the GOP senator from Ohio said at a rally that Americans must simply accept that gun violence is a threat present in the country's schools.
Speaking in Phoenix, Arizona on Thursday evening, Vance suggested there is nothing the U.S. government can do to stop "psychos" from attacking schools with AR-style rifles and other firearms.
"We don't have to like the reality that we live in, but it is the reality we live in. We've got to deal with it," said Vance. "I don't like that this is a fact of life, but if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets."
Vance's comments were the latest Republican pitch to voters about bolstering security at schools instead of passing broadly popular gun control reforms, such as universal background checks—backed by 86% of Americans in McCourtney Institute for Democracy survey last year—and banning the sale of semi-automatic and automatic weapons, the guns of choice for mass shooters due to their ability to rapidly fire multiple rounds of ammunition without reloading. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. voters support that kind of ban, according to the same poll.
Walz, the governor of Minnesota, called Vance's comments—made one day after two 14-year-old students and two teachers were fatally shot at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia—"pathetic."
In a statement, Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign linked Vance's remarks to advice Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump gave to a grieving community in Iowa earlier this year, days after a shooting shooting that killed a sixth-grader: "We have to get over it."
"Vice President Harris and Governor Walz know we can take action to keep our kids safe and keep guns out of the hands of criminals," said the campaign. "Donald Trump and JD Vance will always choose the [National Rifle Association] and gun lobby over our children. That is the choice in this election."
Walz's state has recently passed several gun control reforms including universal background checks and laws blocking gun purchases for domestic abusers under restraining orders.
Prior to telling parents across the country that gun violence in schools is something they must accept, Vance has made headlines for numerous comments he's made about Americans' decision-making over whether or not to have children—criticizing so-called "childless cat ladies" and teachers who don't have kids.
Based on the Republican senator's remarks on Thursday, author Amber Sparks suggested Vance's vision for the country is that "all women should have children but also serenely accept that they might be shot at school."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular