July, 11 2019, 12:00am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Paul Kawika Martin, Peace Action, pmartin@peace-action.org
Gabe Murphy, Peace Action, gmurphy@peaceaction.org
Peace Action Endorses 'The Squad' -- Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Pressley and Tlaib for Congress
Peace Action, the nation's largest grassroots peace organization, has endorsed four progressive champions for the House of Representatives in the 2020 election, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for New York's 14th district, Rep. Ilhan Omar for Minnesota's 5th district, Rep. Ayanna Pressley for Massachusetts' 7th district, and Rep. Rashida Tlaib for Michigan's 13th district.
WASHINGTON
Peace Action, the nation's largest grassroots peace organization, has endorsed four progressive champions for the House of Representatives in the 2020 election, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for New York's 14th district, Rep. Ilhan Omar for Minnesota's 5th district, Rep. Ayanna Pressley for Massachusetts' 7th district, and Rep. Rashida Tlaib for Michigan's 13th district.
"Peace Action is proud to endorse this incredible group of women for Congress in the 2020 election," said Paul Kawika Martin, Senior Director for Policy and Political Affairs at Peace Action, and Peace Action's PAC Director. "Collectively, these progressive champions have already changed the face of American politics for the better. They have foregrounded a national conversation on Palestinian rights and the U.S.-Israel relationship. They have worked to end endless war and promote government spending that reflects the priorities of the people instead of corporate interests. They have each dedicated themselves to the causes of peace, justice, equality, and environmental sustainability, and they each show up to work every day to continue advancing these causes in the face of real threats to their communities, their careers and their own lives. Our country is safer, stronger and more just when we put women like them in charge."
Peace Action is the United States' largest peace and disarmament organization with over 100,000 members and nearly 100 chapters in 34 states, works to achieve the abolition of nuclear weapons, promote government spending priorities that support human needs and encourage real security through international cooperation and human rights.
LATEST NEWS
'Dark Times': Israeli Historian Ilan Pappé Detained, Interrogated by FBI
"The good news is—actions like this by the USA or European countries taken under pressure from the pro-Israeli lobby or Israel itself smell of sheer panic and desperation," the renowned author said.
May 16, 2024
In what one observer called "a whole new level of insanity and paranoia," renowned Israeli historian and professor Ilan Pappé—a staunch critic of Zionism—was detained and interrogated this week by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents as he entered the United States at Detroit's airport.
In a Wednesday Facebook post, Pappé said that he was questioned by FBI agents for two hours after arriving at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport on Monday.
He wrote:
The two-men team were not abusive or rude, I should say, but their questions were really out of the world! Am I a Hamas supporter? Do I regard the Israeli actions in Gaza a genocide? What is the solution to the "conflict" (seriously this what they asked!) Who are my Arab and Muslim friends in America... What kind of relationship [do] I have with them?
"They had [a] long phone conversation with someone, the Israelis?" he added, "and after copying everything on my phone allowed me to enter."
"I know many of you have fared far worse," Pappé wrote, referring to Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a British Palestinian plastic surgeon and rector of Glasgow University in Scotland who last month was denied entry to Germany—and by extension all 29 Schengen Area nations—before the ban was overturned earlier this week.
"The good news is—actions like this by the USA or European countries taken under pressure from the pro-Israeli lobby or Israel itself smell of sheer panic and desperation in reaction to Israel's becoming very soon a pariah state, with all the implications of such a status," he added.
Pappé's treatment sparked outrage among Palestine defenders.
"The detention and interrogation of internationally renowned Israeli anti-Zionist historian Ilan Pappé at Detroit airport by the FBI is latest in the long list of episodes of intimidation and bullying across the West to defend the indefensible—the Israeli genocide of Palestinians," University of California, Berkeley history professor Ussama Makdisi said on social media Wednesday.
Entrepreneur and geopolitical commentator Arnaud Bertrand said, "We've reached a whole new level of insanity and paranoia."
Pappé, 69, is a scholar of Palestinian history at the University of Exeter in England. He's published over 20 books including The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, an examination of the Nakba expulsion of more than 750,000 Arabs from Palestine by Zionist militants—who sometimes massacred Palestinians to sow terror among them—during the establishment of the modern state of Israel in the late 1940s.
He has also been a leading Israeli critic of Israel's ongoing assault on Gaza, which according to Palestinian officials has killed, maimed, or left missing more than 125,000 people since the October 7 attacks. During a Wednesday interview with Al Jazeera marking the 76th anniversary of the Nakba, Pappé asserted that Israel's current onslaught is "even worse" than the 1948-49 ethnic cleansing in many ways.
"What we see now are massacres which are part of the genocidal impulse, namely to kill people in order to downsize the number of people living in Gaza," he said. "Ethnic cleansing is a terrible crime against humanity but genocide is even worse."
Pappé's latest title, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic, details "how pro-Israel lobbying groups influence the Middle East policies of Britain, the U.S., and others."
Reacting to the author's detention, ACLU human rights lawyer and New York University professor Jamil Dakwar said, "One wonders if this 'VIP welcome' related to his anti-genocide activism and his new book."
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Don't Say 'Climate': DeSantis Signs Bill Removing References From State Law
"This purposeful act of cognitive dissonance is proof that the governor and state Legislature are not acting in the best interests of Floridians, but rather to protect profits for the fossil fuel industry," one climate advocate said.
May 16, 2024
Forida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday signed a bill that erases most references to climate change in state law, deprioritizes it in policy decisions, and eases regulations for natural gas pipelines while banning offshore wind installations in state waters.
DeSantis signed the bill despite the fact that Florida is one of the most vulnerable regions in the world to the climate crisis—both from sea-level rise and extreme weather such as heatwaves and hurricanes. Indeed, on the day of the signing, Key West tied for its highest heat index on record at 115°C, heat that was made at least five times more likely because of the burning of fossil fuels.
"This purposeful act of cognitive dissonance is proof that the governor and state Legislature are not acting in the best interests of Floridians, but rather to protect profits for the fossil fuel industry," Yoca Arditi-Rocha, executive director of climate education nonprofit the Cleo Institute, toldThe Associated Press.
The bill's opponents told AP that it exes out nine references to climate currently on the books. It also takes steps to promote fossil gas—which already provides nearly three-quarters of Florida's electricity—and makes it harder to ban gas stoves and other appliances.
Further, AP reported:
The legislation also eliminates requirements that government agencies hold conferences and meetings in hotels certified by the state's environmental agency as "green lodging" and that government agencies make fuel efficiency the top priority in buying new vehicles. It also ends a requirement that Florida state agencies look at a list of "climate-friendly" products before making purchases.
The law, which goes into effect July 1, "is very much out of line with public opinion," Greg Knecht, director of the Nature Conservancy in Florida, toldThe Washington Post. A full 90% of Floridians believe climate change is occurring, 69% of them want the state government to act on it, a Florida Atlantic University survey found.
Florida is already seeing the impacts of the climate crisis from Wednesday's high heat and humidity in the Keys to last year's Hurricane Idalia. Moving forward, Florida was ranked 10th in a list of states or provinces with the most physical infrastructure at risk from climate impacts by 2050.
"This feels like Act 1 of a Greek tragedy," the Environmental Voter Project wrote on social media in response to the signing.
Knecht told the Post that DeSantis and Florida's Republican-controlled Legislature were willing to address the effects of the climate crisis—the governor earmarked more than $28 million to study flooding vulnerability in each county last year—but would not acknowledge the cause of the problem or discuss solutions that involved reducing emissions.
"On one hand, we recognize that we're seeing flooding and we're seeing property damage and we're seeing hurricanes, and we're conveying to the public that we can build our way out of these problems," Knecht said. "And then on the other hand, we're turning around and saying, 'Yeah, but climate change isn't really real, and we don't need to do anything about it.'"
This may partly be because, as green advocates told Post, the climate crisis has become a culture war issue that DeSantis can use to attract media attention and right-wing voters, as he has done with high-profile attacks on abortion rights and LGBTQ+ rights.
Others blamed the influence of the fossil fuel industry.
"Fossil fuel companies don't like competing with clean energy," Democratic Florida Senate candidate Carlos Guillermo Smith wrote on social media. "So they donated to Ron DeSantis who signed a law that bans offshore wind, eliminates energy efficiency grant programs, and deletes any reference to 'climate change' from state statute."
"GOP = Profits over people always," Smith said.
Progress Florida wrote: "While Gov. Ron DeSantis does the dirty work of corporate polluters, Floridians are left to suffer as the state becomes more unaffordable and the natural treasures of the people who have farmed, hunted, and worshipped here for generations are destroyed."
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'Consumers Win' as Supreme Court Rejects 'Radical' Attack on CFPB
Amid celebrations over the ruling, one legal expert warned, "Don't confuse 'SCOTUS slaps down a wackadoodle 5th Circuit decision' with 'SCOTUS is more moderate than its critics claim.'"
May 16, 2024
Legal experts and progressive advocates on Thursday applauded the U.S. Supreme Court's 7-2 decision to uphold the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's funding mechanism but also cautioned against praising the far-right justices.
While Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented, fellow right-winger Clarence Thomas penned the opinion in CFPB v. Consumer Financial Services Association of America, joined by the other three conservatives and three liberals—two of whom wrote concurring opinions.
In the majority opinion, the court held that "Congress' statutory authorization allowing the bureau to draw money from the earnings of the Federal Reserve System to carry out the bureau's duties satisfies the appropriations clause" of the U.S. Constitution.
In a statement welcoming the ruling, the CFPB said that "for years, lawbreaking companies and Wall Street lobbyists have been scheming to defund essential consumer protection enforcement. The Supreme Court has rejected their radical theory that would have devastated the American financial markets. The court repudiated the arguments of the payday loan lobby and made it clear that the CFPB is here to stay."
The bureau continued:
Congress created the CFPB to be the primary federal watchdog protecting consumers from predatory and abusive practices in the financial sector. Since the CFPB opened its doors in 2011, it has delivered more than $20 billion in consumer relief to hundreds of millions of consumers and has handled more than 4 million consumer complaints.
Today's decision is a resounding victory for American families and honest businesses alike, ensuring that consumers are protected from predatory corporations and that markets are fair, transparent, and competitive.
This ruling upholds the fact that the CFPB's funding structure is not novel or unusual, but in fact an essential part of the nation's financial regulatory system, providing stability and continuity for the agencies and the system as a whole. As we have done since our inception, the CFPB will continue carrying out the vital consumer protection work Congress charged us to perform for the American people.
The CFPB was far from alone in cheering the court's decision in the case, which Demand Progress corporate power director Emily Peterson-Cassin said "was nothing more than a cynical attempt by payday lenders to sabotage the CFPB, so they could continue to prey on American consumers."
"This case was simple: the Constitution requires Congress to pass a law authorizing funds for the CFPB, and Congress did that," she explained. "Today's decision will preserve stability in the financial markets and ensure the CFPB can continue its important work protecting the American people."
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a key architect of the agency, agreed that "this is a big win for working people."
Devon Ombres, senior director for courts and legal policy at the Center for American Progress, also celebrated a ruling he said would allow the agency "to continue fighting to protect the American people from corporate bad actors, fraudsters, and scammers."
While praising the decision, Ombres pointed out that "the justices reversed yet another extreme opinion from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that could have placed the entire financial regulatory system at risk and roiled financial markets."
Accountable.US similarly declared that in this case, "consumers win," and blasted the far-right appellate court.
"The reason the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is so effective at making wronged consumers whole is because of its independence, which is why shady industry CEOs and lawmakers in their pocket wanted to jam up the agency's funding with politics and lobbyist money," said Accountable.US president Caroline Ciccone.
"Among the biggest losers in this decision is the conservative 5th Circuit that gleefully advanced this lawsuit from predatory lenders and has sided with industry over consumers in a number of cases citing the same baseless arguments," Ciccone added. "The 5th Circuit's credibility continues to suffer as it willingly plays along with industry judge and venue shopping schemes that corrupt our judicial system."
Legal experts took aim at not only the appellate court but also right-wingers on the country's top court. Slate's Mark Joseph Stern said that "today's decision is a HUGE victory for the CFPB and a major defeat not only for the corporate lobby, but for the 5th Circuit, which embraced a theory so radically anti-historical and atextual that JUSTICE THOMAS wrote the opinion emphatically reversing it."
"Today's CFPB decision has a lot in common with the last Obamacare case: The 5th Circuit went so far off the tracks that it got a spanking in the form [of] a vehement 7-2 reversal by SCOTUS, with even Justice Thomas concluding that the 5th Circuit's nihilistic arsonists lost the plot," he added. "That said, no one should interpret today's CFPB decision as proof that the Supreme Court is 'moderating' or 'compromising' or 'shifting to the center.' Not at all. The decision is evidence of how totally lawless the 5th Circuit has become—because this case shouldn't even exist!"
CNN Supreme Court analyst and University of Texas School of Law professor Steve Vladeck warned: "Don't confuse 'SCOTUS slaps down a wackadoodle 5th Circuit decision' with 'SCOTUS is more moderate than its critics claim.' 'Not as radical as the 5th Circuit' is not the same as 'moderate.'"
Supporters of Thursday's decision also warned that the fight isn't over. Groundwork Collaborative chief economist Rakeen Mabud said that "today's Supreme Court decision was decisively in favor of federal oversight on consumer protection, but we know that big business and their lobbyists won't stop trying to dismantle an agency dedicated to protecting everyday Americans."
"This makes it all the more important that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau continues its critical work," Mabud added of an agency that has recently cracked down on credit card and overdraft fees.
U.S. PIRG consumer campaign director Mike Litt suggested that "all Americans should still breathe a sigh of relief now that the constitutionality of the CFPB's funding is a settled matter. The CFPB extending its nearly 13-year run of protecting consumers no longer hangs in the balance."
"That said, we know those who oppose the CFPB and its work will keep attacking this crucial agency," he added. "Congress must reject efforts to change the CFPB's reliable and constitutional source of funding, which has enabled it to return $19 billion to consumers."
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