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For Immediate Release
October, 09 2018, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Seth Gladstone, sgladstone@fwwatch.org, 917.363.6615
Carbon Tax Schemes Will Not Save Us from Climate Chaos
“Market-based carbon pricing schemes are a false solution, and a dangerous distraction from the urgent transition society must undertake.”
WASHINGTON
Today, ExxonMobil announced a $1 million donation to an effort backing carbon taxes. The announcement follows a devastating IPCC report revealing society has a mere 12 years to start rapidly phasing out fossil fuels to limit the worst of the climate chaos ahead.
In response, Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter released the following statement:
"The alarming findings of the latest IPCC report validate an aggressive approach to deepening climate chaos that scientists, advocates and elected officials across the country are steadily endorsing: a rapid transition off fossil fuels that would make our society almost entirely reliant on clean, renewable energy in the next ten years.
"It comes as no surprise that ExxonMobil and other oil companies are calling for anything and everything short of moving off fossil fuels entirely--most notably, the unwieldy and unproven concept of carbon taxes. The IPCC report acknowledges that carbon taxes would have to be incredibly high to make even a dent in the crisis. Market-based carbon pricing schemes are a false solution to climate change, and a dangerous distraction from the urgent transition to a truly clean, renewable energy future we must undertake now.
"While individual actions are laudable, no amount of lifestyle changes are enough to solve this planetary crisis without strong policies that will transform our society. This not only means how we provide energy, but also, how we provide food. We must tackle industrial animal agriculture, a huge piece of the puzzle, by implementing policies that promote sustainable livestock operations, not factory farms.
"As Hurricane Michael bears down on Florida this week, we can't forget that climate chaos doesn't just unfold in number-filled charts in a report--it has real world consequences and costs lives. The IPCC report reinforces what we already know: we have to move Off Fossil Fuels if we want to solve climate chaos. Congress must pass the Off Fossil Fuels for a Better Future Act, the most ambitious climate legislation ever introduced, which provides a just and equitable roadmap for how to proceed."
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
'Get the Flock Out': Nationwide Backlash Grows Against AI-Powered Surveillance Tech
Since 2021, 82 Flock contracts have been canceled across 28 US states—39 of them during the first five months of this year alone.
Jul 03, 2026
Resistance is mounting across the United States against the increasing use of surveillance tech company Flock Safety's cameras, with a growing number of cities canceling contracts as the artificial intelligence-powered license plate readers are quietly being installed in thousands of locations nationwide.
State and local police departments first used the Atlanta-based company's automated license plate reader (ALPR) systems for standard law enforcement purposes, but they are now being employed for a much broader range of uses, including immigration-related searches and other actions supporting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during the Trump administration's deadly anti-immigrant crackdown.
“We have cameras that are used for everything from illegal dumping to drug houses to hotels that are just big problems,” Flock Safety engineer Kevin Cox told prospective customers during a demonstration of the company's Condor Camera, according to a Thursday report in The Washington Times.
“There are endless, endless uses for what we can do with these things," Cox added.
Those uses include spying on constitutionally protected protest activity and enforcing abortion bans by tracking pregnant people's travel across states—even ones in which the medical procedure is legal.
The ACLU—which recently launched a "Get the Flock Out" campaign to "fight creepy ALPR cameras"—says there are currently between 80,000 and 100,000 Flock devices installed nationwide that conduct more than 20 billion scans per month. More than 5,000 law enforcement agencies use the cameras, and some of them keep their locations a secret.
Automatic license plate readers track our every move and funnel our personal information into enormous databases that police can access to spy on us without a warrant.Surveillance company Flock Safety is the largest provider of these cameras — it's time we get all of them out of our communities.
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— ACLU (@aclu.org) June 28, 2026 at 11:15 AM
"Flock's ALPR cameras aren't like your normal traffic cameras," the ACLU explained. "This surveillance technology records and tracks every car that comes into view, and then an AI algorithm catalogs the make, model, color, license plate number, bumper stickers, and even scratches. This personal information is then uploaded into a nationwide database that any law enforcement agency with a Flock contract can search—with few regulations or oversight on how they use what they find."
The backlash against creeping state surveillance has even transcended the partisan divide.
“I think our country is in a kind of uniquely anti-surveillance environment right now, which is to say that, in a time where it seems there is nothing that is not partisan, opposition to government surveillance is nonpartisan," ACLU privacy and surveillance attorney Chad Marlow told The Washington Times on Thursday.
There is growing action—both legal and otherwise—to end the use of ALPRs across the country.
According to the public information project Ban Flock Cameras, 82 Flock contracts were terminated across 28 states between August 2021 and May 2026, with 39 of those cancellations occurring in the first five months of 2026 alone.
Even Amazon-owned Ring announced earlier this year that it would stop doing business with Flock Safety.
Susie O'Hara, a member of Santa Cruz, California's nominally nonpartisan City Council, told WBUR earlier this year that she grew increasingly concerned about local use of eight Flock cameras last year after learning that police were sharing data gleaned from the cameras with the company's national network without city officials' knowledge, a violation of state laws banning the practice.
O'Hara became increasingly convinced that Santa Cruz should cancel its Flock contract after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good, a US citizen, in Minneapolis in January.
"I have goose hbumps on my arms thinking about the absolute chaos that was happening in Minneapolis," she said. "And just the absolute insanity of what we were seeing... It was totally clear to me that we should in no way consciously be in this system at all—just no way."
Less than a week after Good's killing, the Santa Cruz City Council voted to terminate the city's Flock contract, becoming the first municipality in California to do so.
“For us, the threat to our civil liberties was greater than any benefit we could get from the flawed product,” Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley told KQED at the time.
Chad Kemp, who represents District 32 on the nonpartisan Dane County Board of Supervisors in Wisconsin—which in April voted to stop funding two dozen cameras leased from Flock—told The Washington Times that “there’s a public safety issue here, but there is also a privacy issue."
"There are serious concerns about individuals who can be monitored without their knowledge, or if it is even constitutional or ethical to track people without a warrant," he added.
At the national level, US Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) last year launched an investigation into the use of Flock cameras to track pregnant people across state lines for abortion care and to conduct unauthorized immigration enforcement operations.
Krishnamoorthi and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) have also urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Flock Safety "for failing to implement cybersecurity protections, allowing Americans’ personal data to be exposed to hackers, criminals, and spies to steal."
Their demand came after the cybersecurity firm Hudson Rock revealed that hackers stole passwords and data from at least 35 Flock customer accounts.
In May, US Reps. Jesús "Chuy" Garcia (D-Ill.) and Scott Perry (R-Pa.) introduced a bipartisan amendment to a bill that would prohibit state and local governments receiving federal highway funds from using ALPRs for purposes other than electronic toll collection.
It's not just Flock. Axon, Vigilant Solutions—a subsidiary of Motorola Solutions—Genetec, PlateSmart, Innova Systems, Rekor, ELSAG, Perceptics, Jenoptik, and other firms market ALPRs to law enforcement agencies, private companies, and others.
"It doesn't matter which company has its creepy cameras in your neighborhood," the ACLU said, "they all have the same problems: a lack of transparency, oversight, and regulation into how they collect, store, and use our data, and how to hold public and private actors accountable if they abuse it."
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‘Fitting Metaphor’: Giant Falling Panel Nearly Crushes Dancers on Trump’s 250th Anniversary Stage
One journalist called it "the kind of thing somebody can genuinely be prosecuted for if someone dies, which is not uncommon if you slap it together like this."
Jul 03, 2026
In what some described as a "fitting metaphor" for the state of the US, a large panel fell from the stage at President Donald Trump's 250th anniversary extravaganza, nearly crushing a group of young dancers during a rehearsal.
A video of the falling piece of debris was posted to social media Thursday by the independent journalist Aaron Parnas, who wrote, "The stage is falling apart at the rehearsal for Freedom 250's July 4th celebration."
The giant panel interrupted a patriotic dance number, making a loud crash and sending bits of dust and shrapnel flying just feet behind the troupe of what appeared to be about two-dozen performers on the event's Salute to America stage, where many of the festival's biggest acts are taking place.
“We’re grateful to report that everyone is safe,” a Freedom 250 representative said. “We take the safety of our performers, crew, volunteers, and guests extremely seriously.”
He added that "additional safeguards and senior technical oversight are now in place as preparations continue.”
HuffPost deputy editor Philip Lewis said it was "literally a miracle no one was hurt."
From a scourge of algae in the reflecting pool, to the rash of headline acts bailing from their performances, to the persistent low attendance, and empty booths, the festivities—commandeered by the Trump-aligned Freedom 250 operation—has been seemingly marred by one indignity after another.
Power outages have led the supply of ice cream to become liquefied by the heat, and a faulty generator has led the giant Ferris wheel to run only intermittently.
A model of the president's planned "Arc de Trump" has been mocked as "a sad, peeling mess" by Margaret Hartmann of New York Magazine, who noted the creasing vinyl, cracking wood, and caulk oozing out the sides. The mid-festival addition of a series of improvised columns did little to stop it from being referred to as a "Temu arch."
Other buildings were haphazardly overlaid with vinyl covers designed to look like three-dimensional pieces of classical architecture.
An interim report published Thursday by Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee emphasized the festival's dual role—in addition to being a monument to Trump's ego—as yet another opportunity for his donors and allies to profit.
Through the newly created Freedom 250 group, the report alleges, Trump has used the event to sell sponsorship packages promising VIP access, speaking roles, private receptions, and photo opportunities with the president.
It also points to federal contracts for Trump-connected event vendors, official merchandise sales through a Trump campaign vendor, and event-registration data routed through a firm founded by former Trump digital strategist Brad Parscale.
The company in charge of the State Fair's production is Event Strategies, Inc.—a firm run by a group of longtime Trump aides. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, it has received taxpayer funds through the National Park Foundation, though it remains unclear how much the company has made.
It's also unclear what, if any, oversights may have led to the dangerous stage mishap. However, the use of an opaque private charity to fund the festival appears to have enabled corner-cutting elsewhere.
According to the Democratic report, the UFC arena on the White House South Lawn “bypassed layers of [National Park Service]-mandated environmental review,” allowing the commercial fighting organization headed by Trump pal Dana White to save time and money, which led to a lawsuit last month seeking to stop the event.
Journalist Ryan Grim said that if there have indeed been safety rules flouted, the falling panel is "the kind of thing somebody can genuinely be prosecuted for if someone dies, which is not uncommon if you slap it together like this."
Many found the short video deeply resonant—a microcosm of the unprecedented elite enrichment that has taken place during the second Trump administration, subsidized by bone-deep cuts to social safety net programs that have made life more precarious for millions of people, including many children.
Political commentator J Aubrey said that it was "hard to imagine a more fitting metaphor for our rapidly decaying society."
There is, unnervingly, still plenty of time for a deadly incident to occur at the fair.
The president's Independence Day celebration is slated to culminate in the launching of 850,000 firework shells from near the reflecting pool and several other sites along the Potomac River.
The National Park Service has projected the display would cause “very unhealthy” conditions around central DC, including particulate pollution that can harm those with asthma, according to documents uncovered by The Washington Post.
Soaring temperatures have also put Washington under severe drought, turning the surrounding area into a potential tinderbox. DC Water has said it was coordinating with federal officials in the case that a forest fire breaks out.
"It only takes one small spark landing in dry vegetation under the right conditions to start a fast-moving wildfire," April Newman, a public information officer at Cal Fire, told Axios.
Trump himself, who recently turned 80 years old and is rumored to be in poor health, is also not immune to the dangers.
The president declared that on Independence Day, "when it's going to be approximately 107 degrees out... I'm going to make a really long speech."
That speech, scheduled for 9:45 pm ET, will take place on the Salute to America stage.
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GOP Showered Big Corporations With Tax Breaks. They Returned the Favor With Campaign Cash
"Republicans in Congress sold out many of their own constituents to help corporations get even richer," said the campaign director of Unrig Our Economy.
Jul 03, 2026
Major American corporations that benefited from tax cuts enacted last year by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are donating to the campaigns of GOP lawmakers who made the windfall possible.
A report published Friday by Unrig Our Economy spotlights seven House Republicans who voted for the sprawling and unpopular GOP budget package, which extended tax breaks for corporations and wealthy Americans while inflicting unprecedented cuts on Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance—with disastrous consequences for millions of low-income families across the country.
Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), one of the lawmakers featured in the new report, has received campaign donations from corporate PACs representing 3M, Amazon, Walmart, AT&T, and other companies that collectively received billions of dollars in tax breaks from the Republican law, which restored a provision allowing businesses to immediately write off new investments.
Amazon saw its US income taxes fall by more than half last year due to the GOP law, even as the company's profits grew. Unrig Our Economy noted that Amazon, whose PAC donated thousands to the Republicans spotlighted in the new report, has an effective federal tax rate of 1.37% following enactment of the budget law.
Miller-Meeks, who has received at least $57,000 in donations from the PACs of companies that benefited from the 2025 law, issued a statement Thursday bragging about supporting "the largest tax cuts in American history," not mentioning that the benefits will disproportionately flow to profitable corporations and the richest people in the country.
"Thanks to the Republican tax law, corporations are receiving tax breaks, House Republicans are getting campaign cash, and working families are getting stuck with the bill," the report states.
Another Republican lawmaker featured in the report, Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania, received $2,500 in campaign donations from the PAC of FirstEnergy, which reaped $500 million in depreciation deductions thanks to the GOP tax law.
"Bresnahan voted to give FirstEnergy hundreds of millions in tax breaks even after the company raised utility prices for his constituents," Unrig Our Economy's report observes.
The report also points out that Bresnahan "owned stock in every single one" of the companies who contributed PAC money to his campaign following passage of the Republican budget package last summer.
"This comes after Bresnahan has already faced scrutiny for dumping stock in Medicaid providers and selling off bonds in Pennsylvania hospitals before voting to slash Medicaid and put rural hospitals at risk," the report notes.
Leor Tal, Unrig Our Economy's campaign director, said in a statement that "one year ago, House Republicans ripped away healthcare and food assistance from millions of Americans, so that corporations could get massive tax breaks."
"Now, many of those companies are dishing out PAC money to the Republicans listed in this report," said Tal. "Republicans in Congress sold out many of their own constituents to help corporations get even richer. It’s time that House Republicans step up, do the right thing, and start fighting for working Americans—not giant corporations."
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