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For Immediate Release
January, 13 2019, 11:00pm EDT
Contact:
Derrick Robinson, Lawyers’ Committee, DRobinson@LawyersCommittee.org, 202-662-8317
Barr Must Restore the Integrity of the DOJ & Reactivate Civil Rights Enforcement
The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law Issues Statement Ahead of Barr’s Confirmation Hearing for AG
WASHINGTON
Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, issued the following statement ahead of William Barr's Tuesday Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing for U.S. Attorney General.
"During his earlier tenure at the Justice Department, William Barr was one of the staunchest proponents for mass incarceration, promoting policies that ignited the War on Drugs in our country. From encouraging prison construction, promoting harsh sentencing, and opposing policing reform, Barr has espoused views that run contrary to our best thinking today about criminal justice. During his confirmation hearing, it is critical that Barr make clear that he has abandoned his earlier positions on criminal justice and is prepared to implement a 21st century approach on issues ranging from policing, prisons, sentencing and more. Barr must also acknowledge the devastating impact that his policies have had on African Americans and other communities of color.
"Barr's nomination comes following a period that has proven to be devastating when it comes to civil rights enforcement in our country. At every turn, this Justice Department has abandoned enforcement of civil rights laws and reversed course in pending cases. Barr must provide evidence that makes clear that he will restore the integrity of the Justice Department and reactivate civil rights enforcement across the board."
The Lawyers' Committee is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, formed in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy to enlist the private bar's leadership and resources in combating racial discrimination and the resulting inequality of opportunity - work that continues to be vital today.
(202) 662-8600LATEST NEWS
'This Is Not Self-Defense': UN Experts Condemn Israel's Criminal Assault on Lebanon
"We are witnessing the continuing utmost contempt for the international legal order," said a group of two dozen United Nations special rapporteurs.
Apr 16, 2026
A group of two dozen United Nations experts issued a scathing joint statement on Wednesday condemning Israel's ongoing assault on Lebanon as "a blatant violation of the UN Charter, a deliberate destruction of prospects for peace, and an affront to multilateralism and the UN-based international order."
"We are witnessing the continuing utmost contempt for the international legal order, for diplomacy, and above all for the lives of civilians and the environment in Lebanon," the experts said. "Israel has chosen the very moment a ceasefire was announced—one that its Pakistani mediator stated included Lebanon—to unleash the largest coordinated wave of strikes on the country since 1980."
Despite signals in recent days that the Israeli and Lebanese governments are engaged in their highest level of diplomatic talks in decade, Israel's military continues to ferociously bomb southern Lebanon, devastating entire towns—including homes and schools—and killing civilians. On Wednesday, according to Lebanese officials, Israeli forces killed three paramedics in a "triple-tap" airstrike on the town of Mayfadoun.
“This is not self-defense," said the UN experts, including special rapporteur on the right to education Farida Shaheed, special rapporteur on the right to food Ben Saul, and special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese.
“The issuance of blanket evacuation orders, combined with the destruction of urban and village housing that displaced persons would have returned to, is consistent with the pattern of domicide that was initiated during the genocide in Gaza,” the experts continued. "Forced displacement of a civilian population constitutes crimes against humanity and is a war crime under international law."
More than a million people, over a fifth of Lebanon's population, have been displaced since Israel ramped up its assault on the country in early March, claiming to target the political and militant group Hezbollah.
UNICEF USA said Thursday that at least 600 children have been killed or wounded by Israeli attacks on Lebanon since March 2, and more than 390,000 have been forced from their homes. Overall, Israel's assault on Lebanon has killed more than 2,000 people since early march.
"Nowhere is safe for children in Lebanon," the organization said.
In their statement on Wednesday, the UN experts demanded that Israel "immediately cease all military operations in Lebanon" and urged the United States—Israel's leading ally and arms supplier—to "use its influence" to ensure Israel stops the bombing.
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West Bank settler attacks on Palestinians are "rather sophisticated, organized, and funded systematic actions," with the goal of "cleansing" the entire region, said journalist Ron Ben-Yishai.
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An Israeli war correspondent who has been described as having deep ties to the Israel Defense Forces said that intensifying settler violence in the occupied West Bank appears to be "ethnic cleansing."
In an column published by Ynet titled "This looks like blue and white ethnic cleansing," journalist Ron Ben-Yishai wrote that, during a recent tour of the West Bank, he observed "a disturbing reality" of Israeli teenagers "who go on 'intimidation tours'" in Palestinian villages, attacking Palestinians while members of the Israeli military frequently either stand by or actively join in the attacks.
"In some cases, these are reservists who also identify ideologically with the rioters, and therefore stand by and do not prevent them from going wild—and sometimes even help them," explained Ben-Yishai. "Even in the regular IDF units stationed in the territories, there have been quite a few cases in which commanders and fighters have deviated from the norms and the IDF's code of ethics for religious-nationalist reasons."
In conversations with Israeli settlers, Ben-Yishai often found that they believed they were entitled by God to take all land where Palestinians reside.
"The confident reliance on God's command as the answer to all moral and practical questions and concerns," he wrote, "gave me a disturbing feeling that this was a type of Jewish terrorism motivated by religious and nationalist motives."
Ben-Yishai also described ways in which Israeli settlers surround Palestinian communities "in order to prevent them from moving freely and strangle them economically."
Taken as a whole, Ben-Yishai concluded that the Israel settler attacks on Palestinians are a "rather sophisticated, organized, and funded systematic actions—with the long-term strategic goal being to 'cleanse' most of" the West Bank and Gaza of Palestinian presence.
In a social media post, geopolitical analyst Shaiel Ben-Ephraim explained how significant it was for someone like Ben-Yishai, whom he said has "the deepest ties to the IDF of any reporter," to describe West Bank settlers' actions as ethnic cleansing.
"Observers have been saying for years that what is happening in the West Bank is ethnic cleansing," he wrote. "But now voices from the heart of the Israeli consensus are admitting it as well."
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Customs and Border Protection data offers little evidence that the killing of at least 177 people in recent months has stopped drugs from reaching the US.
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As Republicans and several Democrats in the US Senate gave the go-ahead for the US to send more bombs and military equipment to Israel for its attacks on Gaza and Lebanon on Wednesday, the Trump administration was continuing what it claims is an effort to rid Latin American countries of drug traffickers—killing three people aboard a vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean in the US military's third boat bombing in three days.
The US Southern Command posted a video on social media of the bombing, which it said targeted a boat that was "transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations."
As with the 50 previous attacks on boats in the Pacific and the Caribbean Sea, the military did not publicize any evidence that the boat was carrying drugs or that its passengers were "narco-terrorists."
A small number of the at least 177 victims of the Trump administration's boat bombings have been identified. The Associated Press reported in November that Robert Sánchez, who was killed in the Caribbean, was a 42-year-old fisherman who made $100 per month and had started helping cocaine traffickers navigate the sea due to economic pressures. Juan Carlos Fuentes was an out-of-work bus driver who also worked as a "drug runner" to make ends meet.
The families of at least two victims have filed legal complaints over the killings of their family members, saying they were fishermen.
Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America has compared the boat bombings, assuming they have targeted people involved in the drug trade at all, to "straight-up massacring 16-year-old drug dealers on US street corners.”
On Wednesday, Isacson noted that while Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have defended the boat bombings as attacks that will protect Americans from the flow of drugs like cocaine and fentanyl into the US—with the president informing Congress that the White House views the country as being in an "armed conflict" with drug cartels—data from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) shows little evidence that the strikes are stopping drugs from reaching the US.
"CBP's seizures of fentanyl at the US-Mexico border had been declining, often sharply, since mid-2023. But since early 2025, the declines stopped," said Isacson. "Halfway into fiscal 2026, seizures are almost exactly half of 2025's full-year total: a flat trendline."
Following Wednesday's bombing, at least 14 people have been killed in boat strikes in five days.
Brian Finucane of the International Crisis Group emphasized Wednesday night that "despite the administration’s rhetoric and bogus legal theories, the supposed armed conflict with 'narco-terrorists' appears to be entirely make-believe."
Under international law, drug trafficking is treated as a crime, with US law enforcement agencies in the past intercepting boats suspected of smuggling drugs and arresting those on board. A coalition of rights organizations sued the Trump administration in December, demanding documentation of the White House's legal justification for the boat bombings and arguing that for any organization to be considered part of "armed conflict" with the US, it must be an "organized armed group" that is engaged in "protracted armed violence" with the country.
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