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Amnesty International USA Responds to Shooting at Santa Fe High School
The following statement can be attributed to Victoria Coy, end gun violence campaign manager at Amnesty International USA:
"Once again, we are devastated to hear of another school shooting. Our thoughts are with the victims and families of this attack. When teenagers cannot live their lives without fear of being shot to death, this constitutes a human rights crisis. Quite simply, kids should be able to feel safe at school.
WASHINGTON
The following statement can be attributed to Victoria Coy, end gun violence campaign manager at Amnesty International USA:
"Once again, we are devastated to hear of another school shooting. Our thoughts are with the victims and families of this attack. When teenagers cannot live their lives without fear of being shot to death, this constitutes a human rights crisis. Quite simply, kids should be able to feel safe at school.
"Policymakers must take action to make sure school shootings don't happen before even more students are forced to run for their lives. We demand reform of federal, state and local laws to ensure everyone's safety and security. We cannot wait any longer."
This statement can be found online at https://www.amnestyusa.org/press-releases/amnesty-international-usa-responds-to-shooting-at-santa-fe-high-school/
Follow Amnesty International USA and Amnesty International USA Media on Twitter.
Amnesty International is a global movement of millions of people demanding human rights for all people - no matter who they are or where they are. We are the world's largest grassroots human rights organization.
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Washington Homeowners Sue Big Oil Over Soaring Insurance Costs
"Big Oil took its playbook directly from the minds of Big Tobacco and think they can get away with the same deliberate disinformation campaign, coercing the public to pay for the very harms they suffer."
Nov 26, 2025
Efforts to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for the climate emergency continued in Washington state this week as homeowners sued oil giants and a trade association over their decades of lies and rising insurance premium rates.
"As natural disasters become more costly, homeowners foot the bill," explains the complaint, filed on Tuesday in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington against the American Petroleum Institute, BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell and its subsidiary Equilon Enterprises.
"In 2023, a significant number of natural catastrophes... impacted the United States, at an estimated cost of $114 billion, of which approximately $80 billion was insured," the filing notes. "In the state of Washington alone, homeowners' rates have increased by a total of 51% over the past six years. But climate change has driven insurance premium increases throughout the country because insurance generally operates by pooling risks."
There are two named plaintiffs in the proposed class action suit. Margaret Hazard lives in Carson, an "area that is very dry and prone to forest fires." Since she began paying for home insurance in 2017, her premiums have doubled, and she recently had to switch to a policy with less coverage. Richard Kennedy of Normandy Park has also paid for homeowner's insurance since then; his premiums have gone from $1,012.10 to $2,149.18, an increase of nearly 113%.
"This case is about holding the fossil fuel defendants accountable for the increased homeowners' insurance premiums that their coordinated and deliberate scheme to hide the truth about climate change and the effects of burning fossil fuels has brought about and for their conduct contributing to climate change; a cost the highly profitable trillion-dollar industry can easily afford, and one that it should not be permitted to simply pass along to the everyday people who are presently bearing the burden of these increased premiums," the complaint states.
The document highlights that "defendants have known since at least the 1960s, based on their own internal scientific research, that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas pollution caused by the unchecked sales of its highly profitable petroleum products would inevitably lead to 'catastrophic' weather-related consequences with 'considerable significance to civilization' and that only a narrow window of time existed in which to act before severe consequences would result."
Big Oil "took this internal calculus seriously," the filing details, but "rather than inform the public, or... undertake meaningful remedial steps, defendants chose instead to protect their profits by engaging in a massive, deliberate, decadeslong misinformation campaign intended to sow doubt in the minds of the media [and] business leaders, and deceive the public and consumers about the conclusions they themselves had reached about the substantial consequences that the sale of their products would have."
As journalists and academic researchers have revealed what fossil fuel companies knew, and when, over the past decade—while extreme weather, from rapidly intensifying hurricanes to historic wildfires, ravaged US communities—various climate liability lawsuits have been filed across the country by states, municipalities, tribes, and individuals.
According to the Center for Climate Integrity's national tracker, in Washington state alone, there are at least three other cases: two brought by tribes in December 2023 and a wrongful death suit filed in May by the daughter of Juliana Leon, who died during the extreme heatwave that plagued the Pacific Northwest in 2021.
The cases have often drawn comparisons to the tobacco industry's deception, and the one filed this week is no exception. In fact, the plaintiffs for the new federal suit in Washington are represented by the law firm Hagens Berman, whose managing partner and cofounder, Steve Berman, served as special assistant attorney general for 13 states against Big Tobacco.
"Big Oil took its playbook directly from the minds of Big Tobacco and think they can get away with the same deliberate disinformation campaign, coercing the public to pay for the very harms they suffer," Berman said in a statement. "We see a direct correlation between Big Oil's lies and the alarming increase of homeowners insurance due to the rising threat of natural disasters."
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New Research Shows True Death Toll From Israeli Genocide in Gaza Could Be 126,000 or Even Higher
"All those responsible for this mass slaughter must face accountability," said one campaigner in response to the new figures, "starting with Netanyahu and other members of his openly racist, genocidal, and warmongering regime.”
Nov 26, 2025
Israel's two-year assault on Gaza has left a catastrophic death toll that is even worse than most official estimates, according to research from European researchers.
A study released on Tuesday by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany and the Center for Demographic Studies in Spain found that "the current violent death toll" in Gaza "likely exceeds 100,000" since the start of the war in October 2023.
In fact, the researchers estimate that the total death toll from the war among Palestinians in Gaza is between 99,997 and 125,915, with a median estimate of over 112,000 killed. Even the lowest death toll estimate in the study is significantly higher than the death toll estimates in most media reports, which as of this week totaled roughly 70,000 Palestinians killed.
The researchers said that the wide range of death toll estimates is a reflection of "distorted and incomplete data from conflict zones" that make precise estimates difficult.
Researcher Irena Chen, who co-led the project, told Turkish publication AA that "we will never know the exact number of dead" and added that "we are only trying to estimate as accurately as possible what a realistic order of magnitude might be."
The study also found that the two-year Israeli assault led to a precipitous plunge in life expectancy. According to researcher Ana Gómez-Ugarte, life expectancy in Gaza "fell by 44% in 2023 and by 47% in 2024 compared with what it would have been without the war—equivalent to losses of 34.4 and 36.4 years, respectively."
The study's final estimates were based on data from multiple public sources, including including the Gaza Ministry of Health (GMoH), the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B'Tselem), the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the United Nations Inter-Agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN-IGME), and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said that the new study was "further evidence of genocide" being carried out by the Israeli government.
Edward Ahmed Mitchell, deputy executive director for CAIR, called the study "only the latest reason why our government must stop sending American taxpayer dollars to Israel and why international courts must hold Israel accountable for its crimes." Mitchell added that "all those responsible for this mass slaughter must face accountability, starting with Netanyahu and other members of his openly racist, genocidal, and warmongering regime."
A report released by UN Conference on Trade and Development earlier this week found that Israel's genocidal assault has had a devastating impact on Gaza's economy, finding that its entire population is now living below the poverty line, with per-capita gross domestic product falling to just $161, one of the lowest figures in the world.
Additionally, the report found that the unemployment rate in Gaza was as high as 80%, while inflation in the exclave surged to nearly 240%, as the Israeli military blockade caused a widespread famine by preventing basic necessities from reaching Gaza residents.
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Trump-GOP War on Poor Children Will 'Leave Lasting Scars on Millions'
"Donald Trump and Republicans have left children and their families poorer and worse off in ways that will be felt for generations."
Nov 26, 2025
A report released Tuesday by Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee details how US President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress are waging a multifront war on children by targeting healthcare programs, education, and nutrition assistance as part of their scorched-earth assault on the nation's safety net and redistribution of wealth to the very top.
"In just months, the Trump administration has gutted access to healthcare for millions of children, slashed funding for school meals and nutrition assistance, fired thousands of workers dedicated to advancing child welfare and protecting children, and unleashed policies that traumatize and harm immigrant families and LGBTQ+ youth," reads the report. "These actions are not isolated—they reflect a coordinated agenda that will leave a generation of children sicker, hungrier, and less safe."
As part of the sprawling budget reconciliation package that Trump signed into law over the summer, Republicans enacted the largest-ever cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), slashing more than $1 trillion combined from the two programs.
Roughly half of all kids in the US are covered by either Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program, and around 40% of SNAP beneficiaries are children, meaning cuts to those programs will have far-reaching impacts on the nation's youth in the coming years.
"By making the largest cuts to healthcare and food assistance in the nation’s history, Donald Trump and Republicans have left children and their families poorer and worse off in ways that will be felt for generations," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement on Tuesday.
"By dismantling the very systems that safeguard children’s health and future, Trump and Republicans are condemning a generation to poorer health, deeper poverty, and diminished opportunity."
In addition to denouncing cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, the new report outlines how the Trump administration is imperiling mental health programs by canceling grants and other funding, harming children's education by throttling Head Start funds, and inflicting deadly cuts to programs that aid kids overseas—all while delivering massive tax cuts to the richest Americans and largest corporations.
"Trump’s cuts to healthcare access, food assistance, and education have stripped millions of kids of the care, nutrition, and protection they need to thrive," the report states. "By dismantling the very systems that safeguard children’s health and future, Trump and Republicans are condemning a generation to poorer health, deeper poverty, and diminished opportunity."
"Unless stopped," the report concludes, "Trump’s war on kids will leave lasting scars on millions of children and weaken the nation for decades to come."
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