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For Immediate Release
August, 21 2018, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Seth Gladstone - sgladstone@fwwatch, 917.363.6615
Our Health and Environment Can't Afford Trump's Affordable Energy Plan
Statement of Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director, Food & Water Watch
WASHINGTON
"The EPA's new Affordable Clean Energy Plan comes with a steep cost to our public health and environment that this country can ill afford. In light of this complete abdication of duty from the federal government, it is now critical that state leaders step up immediately with aggressive, actionable plans to move America rapidly to a complete clean energy future. The latest science shows that to avoid the worst effects of deepening climate chaos we need to achieve 100 percent clean, renewable energy by 2035. This means state leaders must act immediately to begin shutting down fossil fuel power and ramping up clean energy production now."
Food & Water Watch mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold and uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people's health, communities, and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests.
(202) 683-2500LATEST NEWS
Mamdani Signs Executive Order Requiring ICE Agents to Get Judicial Warrants in NYC
"ICE is more than a rogue agency—it is a manifestation of the abuse of power," the mayor said.
Feb 06, 2026
As the Trump administration claims federal agents have the authority to raid Americans' homes and carry out arrests without a warrant, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed an executive order on Friday barring Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other agencies from entering properties without getting a warrant from a judge.
It was part of a suite of policies Mamdani announced at an interfaith breakfast to reaffirm New York's status as a sanctuary city amid President Donald Trump's surges of immigration agents to other US cities, which have resulted in extrajudicial killings and rampant civil rights violations by agents.
"Across this country, day after day, we bear witness to cruelty that staggers the conscience. Masked agents, paid by our own tax dollars, violate the Constitution and visit terror upon our neighbors," Mamdani said. "That is why this morning, I am signing an executive order that will strengthen our city's protection of our fellow New Yorkers from abusive immigration enforcement."
As part of what the mayor called "a sweeping reaffirmation of our commitment to our immigrant neighbors," federal agents will not be allowed to enter city property—including parking garages, parking lots, schools, shelters, hospitals, and other public spaces—without a judicial warrant.
The order comes after the publication last week of a leaked memo from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) telling agents they had the authority to indiscriminately round up people suspected of being undocumented immigrants without obtaining a warrant from a judge, instead using "administrative warrants" signed by agents themselves.
A previous memo issued in May to all ICE personnel by acting ICE Director Todd Lyons asserted that agents had the authority to forcibly enter private residences without a judicial warrant, a claim that legal experts roundly condemned as a violation of the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.
In Minneapolis, where more than 2,000 agents have been deployed as part of President Donald Trump's "Operation Metro Surge," reports abound of agents harassing, detaining, and brutalizing mostly nonwhite residents, many of them US citizens, often using explicit racial profiling.
Mamdani emphasized that "this cruelty is no faraway concept."
"ICE operates here in New York. In our courthouses. Our workplaces. They skulk at 26 Federal Plaza—the same building where I waited in fear as my father had his citizenship interview," he said. "ICE is more than a rogue agency—it is a manifestation of the abuse of power. And it is also new. It was founded only in 2002. Four mayors ago, it did not exist. Its wrongs need not be treated as inevitable or inherited. In fact, there is no reforming something so rotten and base."
During the speech, Mamdani asked faith leaders to pass out tens of thousands of "Know Your Rights" flyers and booklets written in 10 different languages, informing readers of their right to remain silent, to ask for a judicial warrant, to speak with an attorney, and to request an interpreter.
"I urge you to share these with your congregants—even those who are citizens, even those whom you think ICE may not target," he said. "These materials apply to us all: those who have been here for five generations, those who arrived last year. They apply to us all because the obligation is upon us all. To love thy neighbor, to look out for the stranger."
In addition to the warrant requirement, Mamdani's order requires city agencies to develop training for employees on how to interact with immigration authorities when they show up.
It also states that data collected by city agencies must not be shared with federal immigration officials, as the Trump administration has sought to weaponize data from programs like Medicaid and Social Security to target people.
It requires city agencies to complete an audit within the next two weeks to demonstrate compliance with the city's sanctuary policies.
Murad Awawdeh, the president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, applauded the mayor "for taking decisive action to fight for our immigrant neighbors."
"New York is a city built and maintained by immigrants—from its culture to its skyscrapers—and today's executive order will bring us closer to a city where every New Yorker can live in safety and dignity," he said. "Mayor Mamdani's announcement recognizes his responsibility to defend all residents from abusive immigration enforcement, and our moral obligation to protect our immigrant neighbors from these attacks."
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Warren Leads Charge to Undo $500 Billion Secret Deal Between UAE 'Spy Sheikh' and Trump's Crypto Company
"We cannot allow American national security simply to be sold to the highest bidder."
Feb 06, 2026
The unprecedented money that President Donald Trump is raking in from foreign investors during his second term has prompted Sen. Elizabeth Warren to take the lead in pushing back.
Speaking on the US Senate floor on Thursday, Warren (D-Mass.) called on her fellow senators to support a resolution in favor of condemning and reversing an agreement struck by the Trump administration to sell advanced artificial intelligence technology to the United Arab Emirates.
The resolution was also backed by Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Andy Kim (D-NJ), and Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.).
Warren's call came days after the Wall Street Journal revealed that a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family secretly backed a massive $500 million investment into the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture just months before the deal for the advanced AI chips was announced.
During her speech, Warren scoffed at the notion that Trump was unaware that lieutenants of Abu Dhabi royal Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan signed a deal in early 2025 to buy a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial, the startup founded by members of the Trump family and the family of Trump Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.
"President Trump’s own son signed the deal for half a billion dollars," remarked Warren. "An initial payment of $187 million dollars was reportedly directed to flow to Trump family companies. Another initial payment of $31 million dollars was reportedly directed to flow into entities connected to the family of Steve Witkoff, Trump’s golf buddy who had been named the US Special Envoy to the Middle East."
In addition to citing national security concerns about selling sensitive AI technology to the UAE, Warren said that Congress should step in to reverse the deal simply to stop Trump from using the presidency to enrich his personal finances.
"Here we are, one year into Donald Trump’s second term, and Trump has amassed more than $1.5 billion from his crypto ventures like World Liberty Financial," she noted. "Trump is profiting off the Presidency while American families are worrying about their jobs, the rising cost of groceries, and how they're going to pay their bills."
Warren ended her speech by demanding that her fellow lawmakers in Congress act.
"Trump is profiting from decisions that make it easier for countries like China to get their hands on some of our most sensitive and advanced technologies," she said. "Congress needs to grow a spine. We cannot allow American national security simply to be sold to the highest bidder. The Senate must pass this resolution to condemn this corruption and call on Donald Trump to reverse his decision to allow the export of advanced AI chips to the UAE."
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Columbia Students and Faculty Arrested at 'ICE Off Campus' Protest in NYC
Protest organizer Sunrise Movement said “Columbia’s original collaboration with ICE and the Trump administration set the stage for the ICE raids and extrajudicial murders that are now terrorizing communities nationwide."
Feb 06, 2026
A dozen people were arrested Thursday after Columbia University students and professors blocked a major intersection in Upper Manhattan to demand that the Ivy League school declare itself a sanctuary from federal immigration enforcers.
The Columbia chapter of Sunrise Movement—the youth-led climate campaign—organized the protest, which drew more than 150 people on a subfreezing afternoon to condemn US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and what they say is the university's cooperation with the Trump administration.
“Columbia’s original collaboration with ICE and the Trump administration set the stage for the ICE raids and extrajudicial murders that are now terrorizing communities nationwide,” Sunrise Columbia said in a statement following the protest.
A smaller group of protesters blocked the intersection of Broadway and 116th Street, site of the main entrance to the Columbia campus in Morningside Heights, at around 3:00 pm Thursday, according to the Columbia Spectator. Activists sat in a crosswalk wearing matching shirts reading "Sanctuary Campus Now" as chants of "No ICE, no KKK, no fascist USA!" and "When immigrants are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!" echoed through the air.
RIGHT NOW, Columbia University students & faculty demand a sanctuary campus. ICE OUT OF NYC. ❤️🔥 pic.twitter.com/zaLbor8EJf
— Columbia Palestine Solidarity Coalition (CPSC) (@Columbia_psc) February 5, 2026
“It’s very meaningful for faculty and students to take action alongside each other and even get arrested alongside each other,” Columbia student Adeline Sauberli told the Spectator. “I think it’s a message of hope, almost, that you know the core of the Columbia community, the students and faculty who are in classrooms together and talking about ways that the world can be better are also willing to take to the streets and say that we shouldn’t have ICE here.”
Columbia Teachers College adjunct professor E.Y. Zipris told the Spectator that “if I was to really continue to respect the university, then I have to join in with those who are fighting to remind Columbia of how it’s supposed to be."
“For faculty to put themselves in this position where they will be handcuffed and led into an awaiting van and then driven downtown is a tremendous statement of calling out the institution, the board of trustees, and everybody involved, saying, ‘Our students are more important to us than caring for, in this moment, our own actual well being,’" Zipris added.
New York Police Department (NYPD) officers began arresting the protesters blocking the intersection after issuing warnings to disperse. The New York Times reported that the arrests were "calm and deliberate," a "marked contrast from the overwhelming show of force and rows of riot police that often met protesters outside Columbia during the past two years" of protests against the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza and Columbia's complicity in the slaughter.
US police arrested 12 anti-ICE protesters at Columbia University in New York. The demonstrators accuse the university of cooperating with immigration enforcement agents and are demanding the campus be declared a sanctuary.
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— Al Jazeera English (@aljazeera.com) February 6, 2026 at 2:07 AM
Organizers of Thursday's action accused Columbia's board of trustees of complicity with the Trump administration's deadly immigration crackdown, pointing to ICE's arrest of former Columbia graduate student and Gaza protest organizer Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent US resident who was abducted last March by ICE agents in front of his pregnant wife and jailed without charge or trial in Louisiana before being released in late June.
Other Columbia students who took part in Gaza protests, including green-card holders Mohsen Mahdawi and Yunseo Chung and Palestinian Leqaa Kordia, were also arrested last year.
According to the Spectator:
Protesters called on the university to stop sharing student, faculty, and staff information with the Department of Homeland Security and other law enforcement agencies; remove members of the board of trustees who have “enabled the Trump administration’s repression of noncitizens"; end the surveillance and discipline of students for political activity; and clarify how the university has implemented its $221 million agreement with the Trump administration.
“Over the past two years, we’ve seen Columbia violently suppress student speech exposing Columbia’s complicity in ongoing genocide in Palestine,” student organizer Cameron Jones told the New York Daily News. “By suspending, brutalizing, and facilitating the kidnapping of their students, the university has made clear that there is no line it will not cross in service of genocidal regimes.”
BREAKING: Columbia students and faculty are blocking the road to demand Columbia become sanctuary campus.That means ending collaboration with ICE's kidnapping of students and workers.
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— Sunrise Movement (@sunrisemvmt.bsky.social) February 5, 2026 at 1:33 PM
Columbia University denies that it worked with ICE to arrest students, saying in a statement that it "supports the right of individuals to peacefully protest. However, claims made against the university during today’s protest activity, which took place outside of our gates, are factually incorrect."
Arrestee Jennifer Hirsch, a professor at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health, told the New York Times that “Columbia was the test case for this government strategy of kidnapping people first and then asking questions later."
In a separate interview with the Spectator, Hirsch said that “it says in the Torah, be kind to the stranger for you are a stranger in a strange land and that was actually in my bat mitzvah Torah portion, and so I’m just responding to what to this moment asks of all of us."
“I think history will judge us for what we do at this moment,” Hirsch said. “It’s scary and dangerous but it’s more scary and dangerous to have masked agents come to your door, break down your door, and kidnap you.”
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