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Joe Biden Can Do Better on Climate: 350 Action Launches Biden 2020 Petition
Brooklyn, NY
350 Action has launched an effort to push former Vice President Joe Biden on his climate justice platform. Although he has adopted some aspects of the Green New Deal in his climate plan, Biden has supported demonstrably false solutions like "carbon capture," while his rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline has been tepid at best -- earning him two "unknowns" on the 350.org Climate Test. Currently, Mr. Biden is one of the Democratic frontrunners in the 2020 Presidential Race.
The following is a statement from Tamara Toles O'Laughlin, 350 Action's North America Director:
"The 2020 Presidential election is an unparalleled opportunity for public officials to demonstrate leadership in a political landscape that has courted climate denial and enabled fossil fuel profiteers. We are in dire need of action that is bold and directly addresses ongoing climate injustice.
"Vice President Joe Biden has dragged his feet in responding to the urgency of the climate and environmental crises across the country. Stunningly, we've watched a strident Biden attend fundraisers hosted by fossil fuel power brokers and rub shoulders with dirty fuel magnates.
"The other 2020 frontrunners, Senators Sanders and Warren, have plans for the people. They have pursued the gold standard of climate leadership with real commitment to make polluters pay for a just transition and the Green New Deal. We deserve better than Joe Biden's silence in the face of crisis. With this petition, we are organizing our communities to show him the kind of leader he must be for this moment."
The petition urges Joe Biden to:
- Oppose all new federal permits and leases for fossil fuel infrastructure and extraction, from pipelines to LNG export terminals and coal mining leases.
- Commit to investigating the fossil fuel industry's role in causing the climate crisis and misleading the public about it.
- Support a national end to fracking for oil and gas.
- Respect his commitment to the spirit of the No Fossil Fuel Money pledge by rejecting campaign funds and campaign advice from fossil fuel executives and lobbyists and their corporate PACs.
350 Action is the independent political action arm of the non-profit, non-partisan climate justice group 350.org.
LATEST NEWS
'I Refuse to Be Complicit': Man Scales 168-Foot Bridge in DC Demanding End to Iran War
"I'm at the top of this bridge," says Guido Reichstadter, "because the government of the United States is engaged in acts of mass murder in my name."
May 02, 2026
Forty-five year old social justice activist named Guido Reichstadter on Saturday morning was still perched atop the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge in Washington, DC after first scaling the structure Friday afternoon in protest against President Donald Trump's disastrous war against Iran, now in its third month, and the rapid and unregulated spread of artificial intelligence technology.
As Reichstadter, who described himself as the father of two children with masters degrees in both math and physics, said in a video posted to social media on Friday: “Hi my name is Guido Reichstadter and I’m currently occupying the top of the Frederick Douglass memorial bridge in Washington, DC.”
"I'm calling on the people of the United States," he continued, "to bring an immediate end to the Trump regime's illegal war on Iran and the removal of the regime power through mass nonviolent direct action and non-cooperation."
"I woke up on February 28th and I found that hundreds of schools children had been blown apart. I think there are many millions of Americans who reject the war in principle, but whose actions have not yet been sufficient to bring it to an end."
In a separate video, he explained he was at the top of the bridge, which rises approximately 168 feet above the Anacostia River at its highest point, "because the government of the United States is engaged in acts of mass murder in my name. And I refuse to be complicit in that."
While bridge traffic in both directions was closed at times on Friday and overnight, the bridge is reportedly open to traffic Saturday morning, though with some lane restrictions, as law enforcement said a "barricade situation" with the protester continued.
Reichstadter, who has staged high-profile protests in the past, spoke to Al-Jazeera via video stream on Friday to explain his actions and call for an end to the war that he says—and tens of millions of other Americans agree, according to polling—is a colossal failure by the Trump administration.
A 45-year old man is occupying the top of Washington’s Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge to protest the war on Iran.
Guido Reichstadter spoke to Al Jazeera from atop the structure - here's what he had to say. pic.twitter.com/YzHghEoS8m
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) May 2, 2026
"I mean, it's an atrocity, right?" he said, when asked what motivated him. "I woke up on February 28th and I found that hundreds of schools children had been blown apart. I think there are many millions of Americans who reject the war in principle, but whose actions have not yet been sufficient to bring it to an end."
Democratic members of Congress, both in the US House and Senate, have now brought several War Powers Resolutions to the floor in an effort to end the US attack on Iran, which now includes a naval blockade of the country, but Republican majorities in both chambers backing Trump, those efforts have failed.
Poll after poll, meanwhile, shows that Reichstadter is completely correct in stating that millions of people "reject the war," but still the war continues even after a 60-day deadline, according to the War Powers Act of 1973, which says the president must either end military operations or get the explicit approval of Congress, came and went on Friday.
On Friday, video showed Reichstadter wearing a t-shirt that read "NO WAR" and he unfurled a large black banner down the side of the bridge's central arch as part of the protest.
Before scaling the bridge, Reichstadter also spoke with journalist Ford Fisher to explain his motivations and what he hoped to accomplish with his one-person direct action:
Guido Reichstadter reached out to me prior to doing this demonstration (where he is still on the bridge arch now).
He expressed his opposition to the Trump administration’s war in Iran.
He did the same for abortion access in 2022.https://t.co/b7iM0eZlHL pic.twitter.com/AzlFgjRysX
— Ford Fischer (@FordFischer) May 1, 2026
Reichstatder stayed on the bring overnight, even as fireworks exploded overhead from a nearby Major League Baseball game.
In his statement concerning AI, Reichstadter said he wanted to "urgently warn the people of the US and the world of the imminent danger we are in of crossing a point of no return towards the development of artificial intelligence which poses the risk of catastrophic harm to humanity, including human extinction."
"I call on the governments of the world to take immediate action to end this danger by permanently banning the development of artificial general intelligence and machine super intelligence," he said. "I also call on the people of the world to exert all possible influence through nonviolent action to compel their governments to end this danger with all possible speed."
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Citing Bogus 'Threats' to US, Trump Expands Already Devastating Sanctions on Cuba
The president's latest aggression toward Cuba comes amid his repeated threats to "take" the island.
May 01, 2026
Citing Cuba's ties with its ally Iran, President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order expanding the already crippling US sanctions regime against Cuban officials, as the US administration has the island in its crosshairs after ousting Venezuela's socialist leader.
Trump's executive order cites highly dubious "national security threats posed by the communist Cuban regime," including Havana's alignment "with countries and malign actors hostile to the United States."
The directive "imposes new sanctions on entities, persons, or affiliates that support the Cuban regime’s security apparatus, are complicit in government corruption or serious human rights violations, or are agents, officials, or material supporters of the Cuban government," without identifying any of the affected groups or individuals.
For 65 years, the US has imposed an economic embargo on Cuba that has adversely affected all sectors of the socialist island’s economy and severely limited Cubans’ access to basic necessities including food, fuel, healthcare, and medicines—with disastrous results. The Cuban government claims the blockade cost the country’s economy nearly $5 billion in just one 11-month period in 2022-23 alone. United Nations member states have perennially—and overwhelmingly—condemned the embargo.
The Trump administration also imposed a fuel blockade and reinstated Cuba on the US State Sponsors of Terrorism list, from which former President Joe Biden removed the country before leaving office in 2021. Cuba was initially added to the list during the Reagan administration amid a decadeslong campaign of US-backed Cuban exile terrorism, failed assassination attempts, economic warfare, and covert operations large and small in a futile effort to overthrow the revolutionary government of longtime leader Fidel Castro.
Cuba says US-backed terrorism has killed or wounded more than 5,000 Cubans and cost its economy billions of dollars.
The Cuban government—which was celebrating International Workers' Day on Friday—did not immediately respond to the expanded sanctions.
Experts warned that the new sanctions are worryingly broad, with Georgetown Law visiting scholar Peter Harrell writing on X that "basically any non-US person or company doing any business in/with Cuba could be sanctioned."
Harrell noted that the edict "gives the Trump administration a fair amount of easy-to-deploy firepower to drive remaining international businesses out of Cuba."
"The questions will be in implementation," he added. "For example, will Trump sanction a Chinese firm installing renewable energy in Cuba?"
Trump's edict comes months after the president ordered the invasion of Venezuela and abduction of socialist President Nicolás Maduro and amid the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran, the 10th country bombed during the course of Trump's two terms in office.
Trump last month declared that “we may stop by Cuba after we’re finished with this,” referring to war on Iran that’s left thousands of people dead or wounded, including hundreds of children. The president has also said that he believes he’ll “be having the honor of taking Cuba,” language echoing the 19th century US imperialists who conquered the island along with Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines from Spain in another war waged on dubious pretense.
“Whether I free it, take it—I think I can do anything I want,” Trump said of the island and its 11 million inhabitants.
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'Sweeping and Dangerous': US Appeals Court Blocks Mailing of Abortion Pills
The "politically driven" ruling, warned one campaigner, "overrides medical expertise and years of research, and threatens to upend how abortion care is delivered nationwide."
May 01, 2026
Rights advocates swiftly sounded the alarm on Friday after the infamously far-right US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit temporarily blocked a federal rule allowing mifepristone to be dispensed by mail, dramatically curtailing access to the medication—commonly used for abortion and early miscarriage care—nationwide, particularly in states with policies hostile to reproductive freedom.
Just months after the US Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority reversed Roe v. Wade, the Food and Drug Administration permanently lifted mifepristone's in-person dispensing requirement in early 2023, under then-President Joe Biden. Louisiana—which has among the nation's most restrictive abortion policies—challenged the FDA's move.
A federal judge in Louisiana paused that lawsuit last month while President Donald Trump's administration conducts an FDA review that seems "designed to manufacture an excuse for further restricting medication abortion across the country," as Julia Kaye, senior staff attorney for the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project, warned at the time.
After a panel from the appellate court overturned that decision and revived the in-person dispensing rule on Friday, Kaye declared that "anti-abortion politicians have just made it much harder for people everywhere in the country to get a medication that abortion and miscarriage patients have been safely using for more than 25 years."
"Louisiana's legal attack on mifepristone shamelessly packaged lies and propaganda as an excuse to restrict abortion—and the 5th Circuit rubber-stamped it," she continued. "This decision defies clear science and settled law and advances an anti-abortion agenda that is deeply unpopular with the American people. For countless people, especially those who live in rural areas, face intimate partner violence, or live with disabilities, losing a telemedicine option will mean losing access to this vital medication altogether."
Brittany Fonteno, president and CEO of the National Abortion Federation (NAF), similarly stressed that "this ruling is a sweeping and dangerous rollback that disregards the well-established safety and efficacy of the use of mifepristone via telehealth, and will create immediate, medically unnecessary barriers to care for patients across the country."
"Make no mistake: This ruling is not grounded in science or patient safety," she said. "It is a politically driven decision that overrides medical expertise and years of research, and threatens to upend how abortion care is delivered nationwide. Through this litigation, Louisiana seeks to impose its cruel abortion ban across the nation—including in states with legal protections for abortion—and today the court has taken an extreme step toward that end."
While pledging that "NAF and our allies will continue to advocate to restore full access to medication abortion," Fonteno reminded patients that mifepristone "remains available in doctors' offices, clinics, and hospitals."
Terrific thread. I’ll just add:1. I think there’s a good chance the Supreme Court will stay this decision, allowing providers to keep mailing mifepristone for the time being.2. The Trump administration didn’t want this! Its plan was to wait until after the midterms to crack down on mifepristone.
[image or embed]
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) May 1, 2026 at 6:52 PM
After Roe's reversal, the anti-choice movement and its allies in elected offices ramped up efforts to impose state-level restrictions on reproductive healthcare. A significant majority of abortions in the United States involve a two-drug regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol, and a quarter of those patients receive care via telemedicine.
"Telehealth has been the last bridge to care for many seeking abortion, which is precisely why Louisiana officials want it banned," said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which joined over 100 other reproductive health, justice, and rights groups, including the ACLU and NAF, that filed an amicus brief in this case.
"This isn't about science—it's about making abortion as difficult, expensive, and unreachable as possible," Northup added. "Telehealth has transformed healthcare. Selectively stripping that away from abortion patients is a political blockade."
The drug companies Danco Laboratories, which makes the brand-name version of mifepristone, Mifeprex, and GenBioPro, which makes the generic, have intervened in Louisiana v. FDA. GenBioPro is represented by the law firm Arnold & Porter and Democracy Forward, whose president and CEO, Skye Perryman, declared Friday that "this is the anti-abortion extremists' playbook in action once again: Weaponize the courts to serve their political interests, ignore decades of scientific evidence proving mifepristone’s safety, and put women directly in harm's way."
"Even as this assault defies the will of the overwhelming majority of the American public, these ideologically extreme politicians and organizations are determined to impose a narrow, autocratic agenda—no matter the cost," she continued, emphasizing that "our fight is not over."
This is a ruling purporting to halt telehealth prescriptions of mifepristone NATIONWIDE. Louisiana asked the Fifth Circuit for a decision by Monday, May 11. That they dropped it on a Friday afternoon feels intentional to keep it in effect for longer. Expect emergency appeal to SCOTUS shadow docket
[image or embed]
— Susan Rinkunas (@susanrinkunas.com) May 1, 2026 at 5:35 PM
The effects of the 5th Circuit's decision are expected to be immediate absent a quick intervention from the Supreme Court, and Nourbese Flint, president of All* Above All, warned that "as always, the people most impacted will be Black and brown communities and those already navigating systemic barriers to care."
Serra Sippel, executive director of the Brigid Alliance, a national abortion support group that helps coordinate and fund travel, said that "we expect to see an immediate increase in patients forced to travel hundreds or even thousands of miles for care. That includes many who are later in pregnancy—when care is more complex and more expensive."
"Over the past several years, we've seen a dramatic rise in abortion travel and a growing reliance on practical support networks like ours, particularly in states where patients already travel long distances for care," Sippel noted. "We will continue to monitor the impact of this ruling and are committed to ensuring abortion patients who need to travel can safely get to the care they need, regardless of where they live."
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