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For Immediate Release
September, 10 2018, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
202-628-8669
Les Moonves Must Be Arrested--Not Paid Off
Statement by NOW President Toni Van Pelt
WASHINGTON
New revelations about CBS Chief Les Moonves' long history of sexual harassment and abuse has finally led to his downfall--but he and CBS are still trying to hold on to his golden parachute. The network has announced it is still exploring a severance payment to the accused sexual predator, who committed the most heinous criminal acts against women he supervised, and then systematically destroyed their careers.
Jessica Pallington, who revealed Moonves' history of sexual assault, including forced oral sex, told The New Yorker, "He should take all that money and give it to an organization that helps survivors of sexual abuse."
We agree. CBS has said it will give $20 million to organizations that "support equality for women in the workplace," but that's just more tone-deaf avoidance of the real problem. This is not about pay equity--it's about criminal conduct. This is not about workplace culture--it's about enabling sexual predation.
Les Moonves should face justice for his crimes, not receive a payout to go away.
CBS should acknowledge its perfidy and responsibility, not be allowed to get away with a coverup.
We still haven't heard what the network will do about 60 Minutes producer Jeff Fager, who has also been accused of sexual misconduct. CBS has betrayed the public trust, and the network can no longer be given the benefit of the doubt. The network is rife with men protecting men and their own pocketbook instead of ensuring women's safety.
There is no doubt. There is no excuse for the network's culture of misogyny. Sexual assault cannot be regarded as the price of doing business with high-profile, powerful executives. Sexual violence is a crime, and criminals must face accountability. Corporations that cover-up criminal behavior, or make excuses for sexual predators, do not deserve public support. CBS is part of every American household, and yet they've allowed a vile predator to sit at the head of their table.
We call on CBS to do the right thing. Les Moonves must face justice and CBS must fire Jeff Fager--and take serious steps to make survivors of sexual assault whole and protect women from further predation and abuse.
Support survivors. Believe women. The time is now! Enough is enough.
The National Organization for Women (NOW) is the largest organization of feminist activists in the United States. NOW has 500,000 contributing members and 550 chapters in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
LATEST NEWS
Iranian American Lawmaker Announces Effort to Impeach Hegseth for 'Repeated War Crimes'
Democratic Rep. Yassamin Ansari called the Pentagon secretary "a chief enabler of this illegal war" and accused him of repeatedly violating his oath of office.
Apr 07, 2026
US Rep. Yassamin Ansari, the lone Iranian American Democrat in Congress, said on Monday that she will soon introduce articles of impeachment against Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth, the most prominent cheerleader of President Donald Trump's illegal war on Iran.
In a statement, Ansari (Ariz.) said that Hegseth has "repeatedly" violated his oath of office and his duty to the Constitution. The Democratic lawmaker, who said she would formally introduce the impeachment articles next week, pointed to Hegseth's "reckless endangerment of US servicemembers and repeated war crimes, including bombing a girls’ school in Minab, Iran."
Ansari, who was born in Seattle to parents who fled Iran following the 1979 revolution, warned that Trump's "deranged statements" and "apocalyptic" threats to obliterate Iranian bridges and power plants as soon as Tuesday night "are further entrenching our country and our world in another devastating, never-ending war."
"He’s threatening war crimes that violate US law and the Geneva Convention, on top of illegal actions and atrocities already committed at his direction–including violence that has destroyed schools, hospitals, and critical civilian infrastructure," said Ansari. "Republicans must join us in calling on the president to end this suicidal war before it is too late. So much is at stake, and those who continue to follow him blindly will have blood on their hands as well."
"As the daughter of Iranian immigrants who fled this regime, and as an American congresswoman who swore an oath to the United States Constitution, I know that this cannot go on," Ansari continued. "The 25th Amendment exists for a reason; his Cabinet should use it. The fate of US troops, the Iranian people, and the very foundation of our global system are at stake."
In a video posted to social media, Ansari said that "as a chief enabler of this illegal war, Pete Hegseth is responsible for directing this insane military action against Iran."
I’m introducing Articles of Impeachment against Pete Hegseth. Here’s why. pic.twitter.com/mMblG7tA7s
— Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari (@RepYassAnsari) April 7, 2026
Hegseth has been the foremost public advocate of Trump's war, praising the "lethality" of the American military and the "death and destruction" it is raining down on Iran, where US-Israeli attacks have killed around 2,000 people—including hundreds of children—and destroyed tens of thousands of civilian structures, from residential buildings to universities to medical facilities.
The Pentagon secretary has also derided what he's called "stupid rules of engagement" that constrain US servicemembers, gutted offices tasked with working to limit civilian casualties in war, and fired uniformed lawyers he's dismissed as "roadblocks" in the way of "maximum lethality."
Experts say those moves have made atrocities such as the one the US military committed on the first day of the war—the bombing of an elementary school in southern Iran—more likely. Human rights organizations and international legal scholars have said the attack should be investigated as a war crime.
Hegseth also said last month that "no quarter" would be given to "our enemies" in Iran, a statement indicating that surrendering combatants would be executed rather than taken prisoner. The declaration itself was seen as a clear violation of international law.
"Hegseth is making people less safe—and it’s time for him to go," the advocacy group Win Without War said last month in its own call for the Pentagon secretary's impeachment and removal.
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'A Chilling Alarm': Trump Admin Kills Civil Rights Settlements Supporting Trans Students
"There is absolutely no basis for what the Department of Education is doing, and it is unimaginably cruel," said a leader at the National Women's Law Center.
Apr 06, 2026
Continuing the assault on transgender people that President Donald Trump launched as soon as he returned to power last year, the US Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights rescinded portions of settlements intended to protect trans students at five school districts and one college.
The department framed the move as "freeing schools" from the Biden and Obama administrations' "illegal and burdensome enforcement of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972," a landmark civil rights law that bars sex-based discrimination in schools that receive federal funding.
According to The Associated Press, "One of the school systems, Delaware Valley School District in rural eastern Pennsylvania, received notice of the change from the Trump administration in February and has since voted to roll back its antidiscrimination protections for transgender students."
The administration also rescinded provisions of resolution agreements with Cape Henlopen School District in Delaware and Fife School District in Washington, as well as California's La Mesa-Spring Valley School District, Sacramento City Unified, and Taft College.
This is a cruel step by the Trump administration that will make our schools less safe and welcoming for all.Trans kids deserve what every student deserves — a school that supports their freedom to thrive.
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— ACLU (@aclu.org) April 6, 2026 at 6:05 PM
"The Trump administration has opened at least 40 civil rights investigations into educational institutions that provide protections for transgender students," and filed lawsuits in California and Minnesota, The New York Times reported. However, "Education Department officials said there was no precedent for the federal government terminating previously negotiated civil rights settlements with schools. Civil rights lawyers who worked under Democratic and Republican administrations said they were unaware of previous examples of such a move."
Advocates for trans people sharply condemned the rollback, which came on the heels of last week's International Transgender Day of Visibility.
"This sends a chilling alarm that trans students really are a target of this administration," Shelby Chestnut, executive director of the California-based Transgender Law Center, told the Times. "It's extremely concerning. Students should be safe to go to school and get an education."
Shiwali Patel, senior director of education justice at the National Women's Law Center, said in a statement that "there is absolutely no basis for what the Department of Education is doing, and it is unimaginably cruel. Title IX exists to ensure that students are protected from discrimination and treated with dignity so that they can learn and thrive in our schools. It's always been about that. It's what students, families, lawmakers, and advocates fought for when Title IX was passed decades ago. But the Trump administration's Department of Education has spent its limited resources to strip Title IX of that very purpose."
"Real complaints of discrimination and sexual assault are going unanswered by the Department of Education while conservative lawmakers continue to escalate their attacks on a small minority of students," Patel noted. "Parents, teachers, and students need the department to focus on addressing real harms on campuses instead of rolling back policies that keep all students safe."
"We should all be alarmed at the Trump administration's cruel escalation of their anti-trans agenda," she added. "When they push laws that explicitly target trans people or attempt to use scientifically inaccurate language to define sex, they are also inevitably targeting all women and girls. They want to control what we do, how we look, and how we act until we are pushed out of public life. But we are not going anywhere."
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“We only accept an end of the war with guarantees that we won’t be attacked again," said one senior Iranian official.
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As President Donald Trump escalated his threats to commit war crimes in Iran if its government does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian officials on Monday rejected what they called an inadequate ceasefire proposal and insisted on a guarantee that the US and Israel will not only stop their attacks, but also refrain from future aggression.
“We only accept an end of the war with guarantees that we won’t be attacked again," Mojtaba Ferdousi Pour, head of Iran’s diplomatic mission in Cairo, told The Associated Press, affirming his government's rejection of a 45-day truce proposed by regional mediators led by Pakistan and including Egypt and Turkey.
Trump said Monday that he said he might order attacks on all Iranian power plants and bridges if the country's government does not open the Strait of Hormuz—through which around 20 million daily barrels of oil and a large share of the world's liquefied natural gas passed before the war—by 8:00 pm Eastern time Tuesday.
“The entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night,” Trump said.
This, after the president on Sunday told Iran to “open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell."
Trump—who recently threatened to bomb Iran "back to the Stone Ages"—said Sunday that he is unconcerned about committing war crimes in Iran, absurdly telling reporters that “the time the Iranian people are most unhappy... is when those bombs stop.”
Pour stressed that Iran can't trust Trump, who Iranian officials and others have accused of using nuclear negotiations as a cover to impose demands and buy time to prepare for more war.
Just hours before Trump announced his decision to bomb Iran in February, Omani Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, the mediator of talks between the US and Iranian governments, said that a "peace deal is within our reach."
Iran's government was willing to make unprecedented concessions regarding its nuclear program up until the US and Israel began bombing the country on February 28. Every US administration since that of former President George W. Bush—including Trump's—has concluded that Iran is not seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
The US and Israel also launched attacks on Iran in the summer of 2025 amid ongoing negotiations with Tehran.
A senior Iranian official speaking to Drop Site News Monday on condition of anonymity said that “it is our assessment that the Trump administration, owing to legal constraints within the United States concerning the prosecution of the war as well as the need to maintain control over financial markets, requires a short-term pause in the conflict."
“Our assessment indicates that this proposal has been drafted solely on the basis of the mediators’ perception of the minimum demands of the parties for halting the war,” the official continued.
“Tehran does not consider a temporary ceasefire to be a logical course of action, inasmuch as the window for the United States’ exit from the conflict has already been delineated," they added. "Should the requisite political will exist, the parties are in a position to establish a permanent ceasefire and thereafter concentrate their efforts on diplomacy.”
The standoff comes as Iranian officials said US and Israeli strikes killed at least 34 people, including 6 children, since Monday morning. Recent US-Israeli targets have included Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, a major petrochemical plant in Asaluyeh, and the B1 bridge in Karaj.
Around 2,000 Iranians have been killed over 37 days of intense US-Israeli bombardment, according to Iranian officials and humanitarian groups. This figure includes over 200 children, more than 100 of whom were killed in the February 28 US cruise missile attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab.
At least 13 US service members have been killed and hundreds more wounded by Iranian counterattacks, which have also killed at least 14 Israelis and more than two dozen people in Gulf Arab nations.
More than 1,400 people have also been killed by Israeli attacks on Lebanon, where over 1 million others have been displaced. Eleven Israeli soldiers have been killed in Lebanon.
All this is happening amid the backdrop of Israel's ongoing war on Gaza, which has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead or wounded since the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack. Israel is facing a genocide case currently before the International Court of Justice, while the International Criminal Court is seeking the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza.
Eight Palestinians were reportedly killed and a number of others wounded on Monday in an Israeli airstrike east of the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza.
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