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
Amnesty International USA Reaction to Supreme Court Decision on Muslim Ban
The following can be attributed to Ryan Mace, Grassroots Advocacy & Refugee Specialist at Amnesty International USA:
WASHINGTON
The following can be attributed to Ryan Mace, Grassroots Advocacy & Refugee Specialist at Amnesty International USA:
"This hateful policy is a catastrophe all around - not only for those who simply want to travel, work, or study here in the States, but for those seeking safety from violence as well. While this decision doesn't address the separate and equally harmful ban on refugees, it cruelly traps people in conflict-afflicted countries and prevents them from seeking safety in the U.S. or being reunited with family. Some of the people banned from this policy are fleeing conflicts that the United States has had a direct hand in creating or perpetuating, as is the case in Yemen and Syria. In those cases especially we are essentially lighting a house on fire and locking the escape door shut. This ban, and the anti-Muslim sentiment in which it originated, has no place in a country that claims to value human rights."
This statement can be found at: https://www.amnestyusa.org/press-releases/amnesty-international-usa-reaction-to-supreme-court-ruling-on-muslim-ban/
Follow Amnesty International USA 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.
(212) 807-8400LATEST NEWS
'A Terrible Time': Food Banks Brace for Demand Surge Fueled by Devastating Trump SNAP Cuts
"All of this is happening so that billionaires will receive new tax breaks, a cruel juxtaposition as millions of our nation's children will lose access to basic nutrition," said one anti-hunger advocate.
Jul 09, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump's enactment of the largest cuts to federal nutrition assistance in the nation's history has severely underresourced charities across the country bracing for a surge in hunger at a time when food insecurity is already at crisis levels.
The Republican budget measure that Trump signed into law last week contains $186 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) over the next decade and shifts benefit costs onto states, prompting concerns that some states could decide to withdraw from the critical program altogether.
Analysts estimate that under expanded SNAP work requirements that are set to take effect as soon as this year, more than 5 million people—including at least 800,000 children—would be at risk of losing food aid. The Republican law broadens existing SNAP work requirements to include adults between the ages of 55 and 64 and parents whose children are at least 14 years old.
"It's a terrible time," Catherine D'Amato, president and CEO of the Greater Boston Food Bank, told the nonprofit outlet Food Bank News. "These cuts are going to force more food-insecure individuals to turn to already overextended and underfunded hunger relief organizations across the country. We anticipate that there will be a very large impact and a very large cascade."
Feeding America, a nationwide network of food banks, warned after Republicans pushed the unpopular budget measure through Congress that "at a time when food insecurity is rising nationwide, this legislation threatens to worsen the crisis, taking away access to food and healthcare from millions of people, including children, seniors, veterans and people with disabilities."
The organization estimated that the SNAP cuts contained in the Trump-GOP law "could eliminate the equivalent of nearly 6 to 9 billion meals annually," which is roughly equal to the number of meals that the entire Feeding America network distributed last year.
Thomas Mantz, president of Feeding Tampa Bay, told a local media outlet on Tuesday that his organization lacks "the capacity to make up for these cuts."
"For every one meal Feeding Tampa Bay can provide," said Mantz, "SNAP provides nine."
Feeding Texas CEO Celia Cole issued a similar warning.
"We're doing everything we can to fundraise and dig deep," Cole told Politico, "but there's no amount of philanthropy that can make up for the size of the SNAP cuts."
"The damage of this bill will be staggering. Decades of progress in addressing America's hunger crisis will be reversed."
The latest edition of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Household Food Insecurity report found that more than 47 million people in the U.S. lived in households experiencing food insecurity in 2023, up 13.5 million from 2021.
Advocates say the GOP budget law is set to make the situation far worse.
"The damage of this bill will be staggering," said Crystal FitzSimons, president of the Food Research & Action Center. "Decades of progress in addressing America's hunger crisis will be reversed."
"All of this is happening so that billionaires will receive new tax breaks, a cruel juxtaposition as millions of our nation's children will lose access to basic nutrition," FitzSimons added. "Many will lose access to the free school meals that fuel their health and learning, and to the Summer EBT Program, which helps close the summer child hunger gap."
Around 40 million people across the U.S. currently receive benefits from SNAP, a critical anti-hunger tool that also boosts farmers and local economies. State leaders and advocates have vocally warned that cost-sharing provisions of the Republican law could force them to enact deep cuts to SNAP benefits or other programs to cope with the budget hit.
"These proposed SNAP cuts would be nothing short of devastating for communities across Colorado, especially in rural areas," said Joël McClurg, executive director of systems for the Colorado Blueprint to End Hunger. "Shifting benefit costs and further increasing administrative shares would saddle our state with new obligations that rural and poorer counties simply cannot meet."
"Already operating on shoestring budgets," McClurg said, "many of our counties would be forced to choose between absorbing new crushing costs or slashing critical services—and either path disproportionately punishes the very people who need support the most."
Feeding Texas estimates that the budgetary consequences of the SNAP cost-sharing requirements "will be severe" for the state, forcing it to "absorb an estimated $806 million annually in new SNAP obligations."
"Families already struggling to afford groceries, rent, and healthcare will face even greater hardship," said the group's CEO. "Seniors, veterans, working parents, and children will be pushed further into poverty—not because they've done anything wrong, but because the burden of balancing the budget was placed disproportionately on those already facing the greatest challenges."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Fair Trade Campaigners Call for World to Stand Up to Trump 'Economic Warfare' and Tariff 'Bullying'
"We don't want an emperor, we are sovereign countries," said Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Jul 09, 2025
Campaigners are urging the international community to stand firm against U.S. President Donald Trump as he ramps up trade tensions across the globe, both with traditional American geopolitical rivals and allies.
"Short-term, governments need to stand together to challenge this aggression," said Nick Dearden, director of the U.K.-based advocacy group Global Justice Now. "Long-term, they need to start working towards a fairer trade model, which stops prioritizing the interests of big corporations, and starts putting ordinary people, here and across the world, first."
Dearden's call came after The Independent reported on Tuesday that China is reacting angrily to Trump's threats to level additional tariffs against nations that align with the "BRICS" bloc of nations consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
The Chinese government, through its People's Daily state-run newspaper, accused Trump of "bullying" and threatened retaliation against nations that entered into agreements with the U.S. at China's expense. China also insisted that "dialogue and cooperation are the only correct path" to resolving trade disputes.
On the other side of the ledger, Politico reports that U.S. allies Japan and South Korea feel deep frustration at Trump's latest tariff threats despite the fact that they have been engaging in what they say are good-faith efforts to secure new trade deals.
"To give adjectives to the reaction or response, it would be, number one, shock," a former Japanese official told Politico. "Number two, frustration. And number three, anger."
Another official of a foreign government that has been targeted by Trump similarly expressed exasperation with the president and told Politico, "We have no idea what the hell he's sending, who he's sending it to, or how he's sending it."
However, Trump's latest tariff maneuvers have also produced a sense of defiance both among some political leaders and among fair trade advocacy groups. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva this week made the case that Trump's erratic and capricious trade demands are a good reason for other nations to develop trade partnerships independent of the United States.
"We don't want an emperor, we are sovereign countries," Lula said this week during a BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro, as reported by NPR. "It's not right for a president of a country the size of the United States to threaten the world online."
Consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen issued a statement this week that made similar points to those made by Lula and cautioned nations against making concessions to Trump in trade talks, especially since many of his demands align with the interests of corporate America.
"During his April 2 'reciprocal tariffs' announcement, Trump waved around the annual National Trade Estimates report, which details the hit list of other countries' policies that large U.S. corporations don’t like," argued Public Citizen. "The Trump team has made clear that this is a blueprint for the 'non-tariff barriers' they seek to eliminate, even though many are public interest laws. The Trump team will continue to bully countries, like he did with Canada on its digital services tax. As the deadline approaches, additional countries may feel pressured to cave to these demands for corporate tax cuts, deregulation of Big Tech, and expanded monopolies for Big Pharma—either explicitly or in under-the-table agreements."
Public Citizen further warned that Trump has shown himself open to pure corruption in his dealings with other nations.
"Trump may continue to punt the deadlines for some countries, claiming progress toward deals—allowing him to continue to extract sweetheart deals for himself and his cronies," the organization wrote. "Potentially endless extensions give Trump more time to push his corporate deregulatory agenda, as well as to accept personal 'gifts' from countries looking to avoid tariffs, like luxury jets, rubber-stamped development projects, and purchases of his meme coin."
Global Justice Now's Dearden also warned nations against letting themselves getting taken advantage of by Trump.
"It's another week of bullying and bluster from Donald Trump, with the U.S. president threatening further economic warfare against a wide range of governments," he said. "Countries such as Bangladesh and Cambodia would be devastated by these tariffs. We simply don't know whether these newly-threatened tariffs will come to pass, but we do know that they are being used to bully governments into handing even more of their sovereignty to some of the biggest corporations in the world."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump FTC Lets Corporate Lobbyists Kill 'Massively Popular' Click-to-Cancel Rule in Court
Republicans on the Federal Trade Commission have "ensured that hardworking people will keep getting stuck with subscriptions they don't want or can't afford," said one consumer advocate.
Jul 09, 2025
Consumer advocates said Tuesday that the Trump administration is to blame for an appeals court decision that effectively killed the Federal Trade Commission's click-to-cancel rule, a Biden-era effort to stop companies from trapping consumers in subscriptions with onerous cancellation terms.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit vacated the rule entirely on procedural grounds on Tuesday, siding with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other corporate interests that claimed the FTC's process in crafting and finalizing the rule did not give industry sufficient "opportunity to assess" the agency's "cost-benefit analysis of alternatives."
After the rule was finalized last October, the FTC—then led by Lina Khan—said it had received more than 16,000 public comments on the proposal, which would have required companies to make it just as easy for consumers to cancel subscriptions as it was to enroll. The agency said the number of subscription-related public complaints rose to nearly 70 per day in 2024, indicating growing anger at companies' predatory tactics.
Khan wrote on social media Tuesday that public comments on the rule were "overwhelmingly" supportive and criticized the Trump FTC for giving industry groups time to block the effort. The rule was originally set to take effect on May 14, but the Trump FTC—now led by Republican Andrew Ferguson and two GOP commissioners—voted on May 9 to delay implementation, citing industry concerns that "it would take a substantial amount of time to come into compliance."
"The rule was set to go into effect in May but this FTC slow-walked it—and now a court has tossed it out, claiming industry didn't get enough of a say," Khan lamented.
Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project, said Tuesday that "the byzantine rulemaking process provides courts with infinite discretion to torpedo rules in service of deep-pocketed corporations and in spite of overwhelming public support."
"The commission received 16,000 public comments on its rule, yet the 8th Circuit has the temerity to suggest the commission failed to provide enough process to the Chamber of Commerce," Hepner added. "Congress gave the FTC the power to stop unfair and deceptive practices."
"If the FTC is serious about affordability for everyday Americans, it must reissue the rule immediately."
Mark Meador, one of just three commissioners left at the FTC following President Donald Trump's firing of the agency's two Democratic members earlier this year, declared following the appeals court decision that the click-to-cancel rule "isn't going into effect for one reason: The Biden FTC cut corners and didn't follow the law."
The American Prospect's David Dayen wrote in response that Meador, a commissioner "who has the ability to reissue the rule," is "more interested in cheering on judicial obstruction than simply saying he will reissue the rule."
Given that Ferguson and Republican FTC Commissioner Melissa Holyoak voted against finalizing the click-to-cancel rule last year, it is unlikely that they will support reviving the rule in the wake of the appeals court decision. Meador was not an FTC commissioner when the rule was finalized.
Nidhi Hegde, executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project, slammed the Trump FTC for delaying the rule's enforcement "long enough for big corporate lobbyists to win in court."
"It's bad enough that the Trump FTC has done nothing to bring down costs for the American people," Hegde said in a statement Tuesday. "Now, by slow-walking a simple, massively popular protection, they've ensured that hardworking people will keep getting stuck with subscriptions they don't want or can't afford from cable companies, gyms, and online services. If the FTC is serious about affordability for everyday Americans, it must reissue the rule immediately."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular