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NAACP Releases Legislative Report Card for 2017 Congress
Fifty-One Senators and 233 House Members Flunk on Civil Rights.
BALTIMORE
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), America's premier civil rights organization, has released its Civil Rights Federal Legislative Report Card for the first session of the 115th Congress (January 3, 2017 - December 22, 2017). Since 1914, the NAACP has published a report card assessing the voting patterns of each member of Congress on critical civil rights legislation.
The 2017 Legislative Report Card assigns each member of Congress a letter grade (on a scale of A to F) for his or her voting record on "bread and butter" civil rights legislation during each session of Congress. Forty-four Senators received an "A" grade, four received a "B," and 51 received an "F." Alabama Senators Jeff Sessions and Luther Strange both received an "I" as neither served a complete term. Twenty-two members of the House of Representatives received middling grades of "B," "C," and "D," and 14 received an "I" for incomplete. In the House of Representatives, 233 members received a failing grade of F.
"The 2017 report card underscores a growing divide in Congress of those who are committed to protecting people's rights and those more interested in protecting the rights of the rich and powerful," said Derrick Johnson, NAACP President and CEO. "The abundance of 'As' and 'Fs' is a powerful reminder that without continued vigilance, the freedoms that we've fought so hard to attain, can and will become a thing of the past. We will not let that happen."
The NAACP evaluated members of the Senate on 18 key civil rights votes and members of the House of Representatives on 20, comparing their "yea" or "nay" with the NAACP's key legislative priorities.
The subjects of these votes included: the confirmations of Senator Jeff Sessions as U.S. Attorney General; Betsy DeVos as U.S. Secretary of Education; Scott Pruitt at Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; and Neil Gorsuch as an Associate Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court. It also includes the move to "Repeal and Replace" the Affordable Care Act; the tax overhaul; restrictions on gun purchases by "mentally incompetent" veterans; death penalty sentence expansion; sanctuary cities; mandatory minimums for aliens; and equal pay data.
"Our Legislative Report Cards are essential resources for NAACP members and the public to understand how their US House members and Senators vote on issues of high-importance to our community," said Hilary O. Shelton, Director of the Washington Bureau and Senior Vice President for Advocacy and Policy. "Ours is a practiced, nonpartisan, and quantitative assessment meant to educate the public and urge politicians to do better when it comes to advancing civil rights."
For a full copy of the report card click here
Founded Feb. 12. 1909, the NAACP is the nation's oldest, largest and most widely recognized grassroots-based civil rights organization. Its more than half-million members and supporters throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities, conducting voter mobilization and monitoring equal opportunity in the public and private sectors.
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"We are joining Make Amazon Pay to demand the most basic rights: safety, dignity, and the chance to go home alive," said one Amazon worker from India.
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Amazon workers and their allies worldwide took to the streets on Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year, to protest the e-commerce behemoth's exploitation of workers, relentless union-busting, contributions to the worsening climate emergency, and plans to replace employees en masse with robots.
“Amazon, Jeff Bezos, and their political allies are betting on a techno-authoritarian future, but this Make Amazon Pay Day, workers everywhere are saying: enough,” said Christy Hoffman, general secretary of UNI Global Union. “For years, Amazon has squashed workers’ right to democracy on the job through a union and the backing of authoritarian political figures. Its model is deepening inequality and undermining the fundamental rights of workers to organize, bargain collectively, and demand safe, fair workplaces.”
From Germany to Bangladesh, thousands of workers walked off the job on Friday and marched against Amazon's labor practices to push for better wages, working conditions, and union protections. Last month, Amazon reported over $21 billion in profits for the third quarter of 2025—a 38% increase compared to the same time last year.
“During the heatwaves, the warehouse feels like a furnace—people faint, but the targets never stop,” said Neha Singh, an Amazon worker in Manesar, India, referring to the company's productivity quotas. "Even if we fainted, we couldn’t take a day off and go home. If we took that day off, our pay would be cut, and if we took three days off, they would fire us. Amazon treats us as expendable."
"We are joining Make Amazon Pay," said Singh, "to demand the most basic rights: safety, dignity, and the chance to go home alive.”
HAPPENING NOW 🌎 Amazon workers and their allies in 38 countries around the world are striking and protesting to #MakeAmazonPay. pic.twitter.com/srMRsymCh7
— Progressive International (@ProgIntl) November 28, 2025
Make Amazon Pay is an alliance of labor unions and advocacy groups organizing to stop Amazon from "squeezing workers, communities and the planet."
The 2025 strikes and protests, which organizers described as the largest mobilization against Amazon to date, mark the sixth consecutive year of global actions organized by the coalition.
The strike in Germany was characterized as the largest in Amazon's history, with around 3,000 workers expected to join picket lines across the country. The union representing Amazon workers in the United States voiced solidarity with striking German workers in a social media post on Friday, crediting them with "inspiring the global Amazon worker movement for over a decade."
Amazon Teamsters stand in solidarity with our German Amazon colleagues today as you engage in courageous strike action. To the long-time strikers - you’ve been inspiring the global Amazon worker movement for over a decade. To those who are joining the growing movement for the… pic.twitter.com/42ul1bbFb5
— Amazon Teamsters (@amazonteamsters) November 28, 2025
"Across the world, Amazon workers are walking off the job, marching through their cities, and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with communities to demand what every worker deserves: fair wages, safe conditions, the right to organize—and a future not dictated by algorithms and billionaires," Progressive International, a member of the alliance, said Friday.
"But the target is not only a company. It is the emerging system that Amazon now anchors: a techno-authoritarian order that fuses the power of Big Tech with the prerogatives of the far right—from Trump’s ICE raids to Israel’s genocide in Gaza," the group added. "This week's actions point toward another horizon. One in which supply chains become sites of struggle, not submission; where warehouse workers link arms with tech workers, garment workers, Indigenous communities, and migrants; where a global labor movement is capable of confronting a global system of power."
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“We will use every tool in our toolbox to ensure that this pipeline does not go ahead,” said one First Nations leader after the deal struck between PM Mark Carney and the Conservative premier of Alberta.
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First Nations groups backed by environmental and conservationist allies in Canada are denouncing a pipeline and tanker infrastructure agreement announced Thursday between Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney and Conservative Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, calling the deal a betrayal and promising to fight against its implementation tooth and nail.
“We will use every tool in our toolbox to ensure that this pipeline does not go ahead,” said Heiltsuk Nation Chief Marilyn Slett in response to the Carney-Smith deal that would bring tens of millions of barrels of tar sands oil from Alberta to the coast of British Columbia for export by building new pipeline and lifting a moratorium against oil tankers operating in fragile British Columbia coastal water .
While Carney, who argues that the pipeline is in Canada's economic interest, had vowed to secure the support of First Nations before finalizing any agreement with the Alberta, furious reactions to the deal made it clear that promise was not met.
Xhaaidlagha Gwaayaai, the president of the Haida nation, was emphatic: "This project is not going to happen."
The agreement, according to the New York Times, is part of Carney’s "plan to curb Canada’s trade dependence on the United States, swings Canadian policy away from measures meant to fight climate change to focus instead on growing the oil and gas industry."
In a statement, the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) "loudly" voiced its opposition to the memorandum of understanding signed by Carney and Smith.
"This MOU is nothing less than a high risk and deeply irresponsible agreement that sacrifices Indigenous peoples, coastal communities, and the environment for political convenience," said Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the UBCIC. "By explicitly endorsing a new bitumen pipeline to BC's coast and promising to rewrite the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, the federal government is resurrecting one of the most deeply flawed and divisive ideas in Canadian energy politics."
Slett, who serves as secretary-treasurer of the UBCIC, said the agreement "was negotiated without the involvement of the very Nations who would shoulder those risks, and to suggest ‘Indigenous co-ownership’ of a pipeline while ignoring the clear opposition of Coastal First Nations is unacceptable."
Avi Lewis, running for the leadership of the progressive New Democratic Party (NDP) in upcoming elections, decried the agreement as a failure of historic proportions.
"Carney’s deal with Danielle Smith is the sellout of the century: scrapping climate legislation for a pipeline that will never be built," said Lewis, a veteran journalist and climate activist. "We need power lines, not pipelines. Our path is through climate leadership and building good jobs in the clean economy."
Carney’s deal with Danielle Smith is the sellout of the century: scrapping climate legislation for a pipeline that will never be built.We need powerlines, not pipelines. Our path is through climate leadership & building good jobs in the clean economy.
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— Avi Lewis (@avilewis.ca) November 28, 2025 at 12:05 AM
In response to the deal, the minister of Canadian culture, Steven Guilbeault, who formerly served as environment minister under the previous Liberal administration, resigned in protest.
“Despite this difficult economic context, I remain one of those for whom environmental issues must remain front and center,” Guilbeault said in a statement.
"Over the past few months, several elements of the climate action plan I worked on as Minister of the Environment have been, or are about to be, dismantled,” he said. “In my view, these measures remain essential to our climate action plan.”
David Eby, the premier of British Columbia who opposes the new pipeline into his province and was not included in the discussions between Carney and Smith, echoed those who said the project is more dead than alive, despite the MOU, calling it a potential "energy vampire" that would distracts from better energy solutions that don't carry all the baggage of this proposed project.
“With all of the variables that have yet to be fulfilled—no proponent, no route, no money, no First Nations support—that it cannot draw limited federal resources, limited Indigenous governance resources, limited provincial resources away from the real projects that will employ people,” Eby added.
Keith Brooks, the programs director at Environmental Defence, decried the deal as "worse than we had anticipated" and "a gift to the oil industry and Alberta Premier Smith, at the expense of practically everyone else."
"Filling this pipeline and expansion would require more oil sands mining, leading to more carbon pollution, more tailings, and worse impacts for communities near the tar sands," warned Brooks. "The pipeline to BC would have to cross some of the most challenging terrain in Canada. The impacts of construction would be severe, and the impacts of a spill, devastating."
Jessica Green, a professor at the University of Toronto with a focus on environmental politics, equated the "reckless" deal to a "climate dumpster fire" and called the push for more tar sands pipelines in Canada "the energy equivalent [of] investing in VHS tapes in 2025."
At least the United States under President Donald Trump, she added, "has the cojones to say it doesn’t give a shit about climate" while Carney, despite the contents of the deal with Alberta, "is still pretending that Canada does."
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The move came on the heels of a report detailing how the Trump administration's foreign aid cuts set off a crisis in global AIDS response efforts.
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The Trump administration drew outrage this week for ending formal US commemoration of World AIDS Day, directing US State Department officials to "refrain from publicly promoting" it through social media or other communication channels.
The decision was reported after the Joint United Nations Program on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) released an analysis detailing the harms done by the Trump administration's sweeping foreign assistance cuts.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration temporarily halted HIV-related funding, sending global response efforts into "crisis mode," USAID said. Though President Donald Trump ultimately dropped a proposal to slash hundreds of millions of dollars from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the administration's throttling of funds forced clinics to shut down and disrupted key community programs, the report states.
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In its reporting on the Trump administration's decision to halt official commemoration of World AIDS Day, which is on December 1, the New York Times pointed to studies suggesting that "cuts by the United States and other countries could result in 10 million additional HIV infections, including one million among children, and three million additional deaths over the next five years."
Today, @realDonaldTrump gave a middle finger to the LGBTQ community. His deplorable cancellation of World AIDS Day commemoration was unconscionable and unforgivable. This action was fueled by raw bigotry and fealty to his Project 2025 masters.
FIGHT.https://t.co/PcyduBcbkI
— Truth Wins Out (@truthwinsout) November 26, 2025
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), head of the Congressional HIV/AIDS Caucus, said in a statement that "silence is not neutrality; it is harm."
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