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For Immediate Release
January, 08 2020, 11:00pm EDT
Contact:
Alec Connon, (206) 258-9176
Elana Sulakshana, (703) 589-0040
Activists to Shut Down Chase Branches Across Seattle With Song
Demonstration in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en Nation’s struggle for sovereignty.
Seattle, WA
350 Seattle is organizing a protest on Friday, January 10 at Chase branches across Seattle and the Consulate General of Canada, in solidarity with the Wet'suwet'en Nation. This week marks a critical juncture in the Wet'suwet'en struggle against Coastal GasLink, the multibillion-dollar fossil fuel corporation trying to ram a massive fracked gas pipeline through unceded Wet'suwet'en territory without consent.
On New Year's Eve, the British Columbia Supreme Court granted an injunction against members of the Wet'suwet'en nation who have been stewarding and protecting their traditional territories, located 18 hours north of Seattle in northern British Columbia. Following the court ruling, Wet'suwet'en Hereditary Chiefs, representing the five clans of the Wet'suwet'en Nation, served an eviction notice to Coastal GasLink and ordered the fossil fuel corporation off of their lands immediately.
"Coastal GasLink has violated the Wet'suwet'en law of trespass, and has bulldozed through our territories, destroyed our archaeological sites, and occupied our land with industrial man-camps," wrote members of the Wet'suwet'en in a press release.
The Wet'suwet'en struggle has been in the spotlight this past month, following an explosive Guardian investigation revealing that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were making preparations to to shoot Wet'suwet'en land defenders that stood in the way of Coastal GasLink one year ago.
In response to the imminent threat of yet another militarized raid, the Wet'suwent'en Nation have called for people across the globe to stand with them and organize actions in their communities this week. Heeding the call, 350 Seattle will be disrupting business at several branches of one Coastal GasLink's largest funders: JPMorgan Chase, as well as at the Consulate General of Canada on Friday.
WHAT: Let Justice Echo at Chase: Wet'suwet'en Solidarity Action
WHEN: Friday, Jan 10th, 10am - 1pm
WHERE: The action will begin at the Statue of Lenin in Fremont at 10am
MEDIA AVAILABILITY: Protesters will be available for interviews before and after the event.
PHOTOS: Contact Alec (alec@350seattle.org) for high-resolution photos after the event.
This protest is occurring on the same day as a coalition of over nearly two dozen national organizations--including the Sierra Club, 350.org, Rainforest Action Network, The YEARS Project, and Union of Concerned Scientists--is launching a major new campaign, Stop the Money Pipeline, targeting the financial sector's funding of climate chaos.
350 is building a future that's just, prosperous, equitable and safe from the effects of the climate crisis. We're an international movement of ordinary people working to end the age of fossil fuels and build a world of community-led renewable energy for all.
LATEST NEWS
Consumer Burden of Trump Iran War Exceeds $100 Billion as Oil Prices Pass $100 a Barrel
High gasoline and diesel fuel prices caused by the illegal US war on Iran have cost the average American household roughly $776 in extra spending, according to a real-time tracker.
Sep 09, 2026
The global price of oil jumped above $100 per barrel on Wednesday for the first time since July as US President Donald Trump's illegal and deeply unpopular war on Iran continued with no end in sight, imposing an increasingly painful burden on American consumers.
A running tracker maintained by the Watson School of International and Public Affairs at Brown University estimates that US consumers have collectively spent more than $101 billion—roughly $776 per household—extra on gasoline and diesel fuel since the start of the Iran war in late February.
Trump administration officials and the president himself have publicly downplayed high gas prices, suggesting Americans should be grateful they aren't even higher and that the Iran war is worth paying a bit more at the pump. Labor Day weekend saw the highest gas prices ever recorded for this time of the year, according to the American Automobile Association.
The Iran War Energy Cost tracker has surpassed $100 billion. That's $100 billion dollars in extra fuel costs for U.S. households since the start of the war with Iran on February 28, 2026. https://t.co/VsJ1YSSqea pic.twitter.com/s5RARUNNOs
— The Costs of War Project (@CostsOfWar) September 8, 2026
Trump, a billionaire whose fossil fuel stock holdings have grown substantially during the war, predicted earlier this week that oil prices would "drop precipitously" once "we WIN the war with Iran," contradicting his previous statements in which he claimed the US was already victorious.
The president has also repeatedly declined to call the onslaught a "war," even as it has killed thousands of Iranians and at least 18 US servicemembers, and wreaked havoc on the global economy. Last week, Trump called the war "small potatoes."
"Everyday Americans are grappling with gas prices that just keep getting more expensive. Instead of providing any relief to working families, or fixing the mess they created, Republicans are focused on inflating Trump’s ego," Kendall Witmer, the Democratic National Committee's rapid response director, said in a statement on Wednesday, referring to the GOP's "Trumpapalooza" midterm convention.
"Voters will remember who is fighting to lower costs come November," said Witmer.
The latest jump in global oil prices came after the US military said it "forces destroyed five Iranian crude oil carriers" connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The IRGC said it responded by targeting "two US vessels, eight oil tankers, and 10 other ships attempting to pass through the prohibited zone of the Strait of Hormuz."
“The heroic IRGC Navy, in response to the aggression and hostility of the terrorist US military in its attack on five Iranian oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, targeted two US vessels and eight oil tankers in the area, inflicting heavy damage on them,” the IRGC said in a statement.
The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) noted in a blog post on Tuesday that "disrupted shipping through Hormuz" is one contributor to record-high US fuel prices, whose impacts go far beyond the costs paid by consumers at the gas pump.
"Diesel costs have implications beyond motorists because trucking and freight networks pass higher fuel expenses through the wider economy," NIAC observed. "The effects of constrained energy flows extend well beyond the immediate combat zone."
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Trump's Top Oil Stocks Have Made Him Up to $4.4 Million Richer During Iran War: Analysis
Trump growing richer off his own war leaves many Americans "wondering where national policy ends and private financial interest begins," said one critic.
Sep 09, 2026
An analysis published by CNBC on Wednesday estimates that President Donald Trump has grown millions of dollars richer thanks to the illegal war with Iran he launched more than six months ago.
CNBC calculated its estimate by examining the nine largest fossil fuel company holdings listed in the president's annual financial disclosure, and found that their value increased by between $1.5 million and $4.4 million since the start of the war.
"Trump’s accounts reported purchases and at least 23 sales involving the nine companies through June 29, which is the most recent date Trump has disclosed any trades," reported CNBC. "Because the filings do not disclose exact share counts, execution prices, or which shares were sold, the estimates do not represent realized profits or Trump’s precise current holdings."
CNBC also found no evidence that Trump was making trades based on advanced knowledge of his own decisions.
Even so, the findings show that Trump has benefited financially from a war he started without any authorization from the US Congress.
Donald Sherman, president and CEO of government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told CNBC that Trump growing richer off his own war leaves many Americans "wondering where national policy ends and private financial interest begins."
Scott Greytak, deputy executive director of Transparency International US, told CNBC that shouldn't be let off the hook even if he is not personally executing fossil fuel stock trades.
"[Trump] knows he is heavily invested in energy,” Greytak said. "Trump likely knows where his money is parked and would still see the upside when his administration’s actions send those [energy] stocks climbing."
CNBC's analysis of Trump's gains due to the war might be overly conservative.
A report released last month by Democrats on the US Congressional Joint Economic Committee estimated the president's wealth has increased by as much as $15.5 million since January thanks to his investments in oil and gas stocks.
While the war has driven up the values of fossil fuel companies, it has also hit US consumers directly in their wallets by raising the price of oil, diesel fuel, and gasoline.
The price of Brent crude surged back over $100 per barrel for the first time in weeks during Wednesday trading. Data published by the American Automobile Association on Wednesday shows that the average price of diesel fuel in the US hit another record high of $5.94 per gallon, while the price of gas increased to $4.22 per gallon.
According to the most recent estimate from Brown University's Watson School for International Public Affairs, the Iran War has now cost Americans more than $101 billion in additional fuel expenses, averaging more than $776 per US household.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump vowed that he would "cut the price of energy and electricity in half" over the span of just a year.
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Anthropic Researcher Quits, Citing Internal Fears That AI 'Could Kill Us All' This Decade
"Most tech geeks don’t resign from their roles because…the tech they’re building could end humanity," said Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, running for US Senate in Michigan.
Sep 09, 2026
An artificial intelligence researcher at Anthropic publicly quit his position on Tuesday, warning that major AI companies care too much about winning the technological race and not enough about guarding against out-of-control "superhuman systems" that workers in the industry legitimately fear "could kill us all by the end of the decade."
Jacob Coxon, who previously worked at industry giant OpenAI before moving to Anthropic earlier this year, told the Wall Street Journal in an exclusive interview that he was leaving the company, as the newspaper reported, because "he doesn’t want to participate in an industrywide rush to build AI systems that can improve themselves, worried such systems could spiral out of control and destroy humanity."
According to the WSJ:
Coxon said he left OpenAI earlier this year to join Anthropic because it is known for its model-safety efforts. But even though he found Anthropic’s safety efforts to be earnest, he now believes no company can responsibly develop AI that can outperform humans in a range of tasks, sometimes called artificial general intelligence, absent government intervention or a coordinated industry slowdown.
Recent hacks by models from OpenAI and Anthropic, some operating in collaborative swarms of agents, have illustrated how AI systems can adopt nefarious goals and try to conceal them from humans. Once the systems begin to improve on their own, Coxon said, he fears they could advance enough to refuse commands.
"I resigned from Anthropic today," Coxon announced on social media Tuesday night. "I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives."
In a 6-point thread that followed, Coxon elaborated on his reasoning in detail:
- Do not underestimate the power of this technology. These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources. We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains, and progress is not slowing.
- The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers couch their press statements to sound sensible—but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger.
- A common response is “if they truly believe this, why are they still building it?” At OpenAI, many have not deeply internalized the civilizational stakes. At Anthropic, the stakes are well-understood, but they are locked in a race to get there first—they believe no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves, despite the risk.
- Accepting this race and entering the “endgame” is a hubristic gamble that should not be launched from a private company’s Slack. Attempting to speedrun alignment should require extraordinary confidence that no better trajectories exist.
- I am optimistic about the potential for coordination. Warning shots like the Hugging Face attack have made pacing agreements between US labs more viable. I don’t feel like we’re on track to prevent a global race, which may require costly actions such as a temporary ban on improving model capabilities.
- If you are a lab researcher, I urge you to consider what the next few years will actually feel like. Do you want to kick off a superintelligent RL [Reinforcement Learning] run without a rigorous understanding of its mind? Should you put your head down because “it’s happening anyway”—or take this moment to call for different conditions?
Coxon's reference to the Hugging Face incident pertains to recent revelations about a so-called breakout event at OpenAI, which operates the ChatGPT protocol. In June, the company acknowledged that a "significant security incident" took place when AI agents within the company autonomously breached internal systems, using subterfuge to hide their actions from human operators. Since then, the incident's scope has shocked AI experts, and similar events have also been exposed.
While US President Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have taken a hands-off approach to AI regulations, the industry has been pouring huge amounts of money into lobbying efforts and campaign spending to keep lawmakers from enacting stronger restrictions and oversight of the technology.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) have been leading a relatively lonely fight in Washington, DC for more aggressive federal guardrails, including the introduction of joint legislation last week that would ban artificial superintelligence and temporarily pause advanced AI development until a federal regulatory structure was put in place by Congress.
Coxon's public resignation was met with applause from many, while other industry insiders backed his concerns.
"The caution is simple," said one commenter with the handle Jabbar Digital, described as a tester of AI tools and a software developer, in a lengthy post on Coxon's warning. "Capability is compounding. Coordination is not. If the people closest to the work are increasingly uneasy about the speed and the lack of external constraints, dismissing them as doomers is no longer a serious response. Neither is treating every capability jump as automatically good. The useful middle path is to take the technical progress seriously and take the internal dissent seriously. Both can be true at the same time."
Evan Hubinger, the alignment science lead at Anthropic, chimed in on his personal social media account to say: "Jacob is correct here—we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade. I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to."
While bolstering Coxon's worries, Hubinger said, "To be clear, as we say in [Anthropic's] latest Risk Report, I think the risk from present models is low. What I am worried about is superintelligence arising from recursive self-improvement, as we have said is happening faster than we thought."
Running for US Senate in Michigan, Democratic nominee Dr. Abdul El-Sayed also weighed in on Coxon's decision to quit so loudly and publicly.
"Most tech geeks don’t resign from their roles because…the tech they’re building could end humanity," said El-Sayed. "How we change the incentives leading AI labs down this path and protect against these existential risks are defining political questions of our time."
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'Missourians Deserve Better Than This Republican Chaos': Legal Battle Over GOP Map Erupts
"Over 305,000 Missouri voters, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, took action to block this political power grab last fall."
Sep 09, 2026
A high-stakes legal fight over Missouri's congressional map was engulfed in chaos late Tuesday after the US Supreme Court and a lower federal court issued conflicting decisions on whether the state can use aggressively gerrymandered district lines that Republicans drew last year at the behest of President Donald Trump.
US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump nominee, issued an order rejecting Missouri's emergency effort to uphold the GOP-drawn map, which was used during the state's primary but has faced challenges from advocacy organizations and voters who say it is an "unconstitutional power grab." But in a parallel case, Trump-appointed District Judge Stephen Clark ruled that Missouri cannot revert to its old maps for the November midterms, a win for state Republicans who sued to keep the gerrymandered districts in place.
"Missourians deserve better than this Republican chaos. Plain and simple," the Missouri Democratic Party said in response to the court rulings. Clark's decision has been appealed to the 8th Circuit.
Late last year, more than 300,000 Missouri voters signed a petition aimed at forcing a November ballot referendum on the new gerrymandered map, which carved up the Kansas City district of Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. Missouri's Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins refused to add the referendum to the ballot, but the Missouri Supreme Court ruled last week that the referendum push was legal, retroactively freezing the new maps until voters get a say in November.
"Here's what we know right now: The referendum where voters get to decide the fate of this map IS on your ballot," said local reporter Mark Maxwell. "What we still don't know for sure: which district you vote in. Watch the appeals court tonight/tomorrow."
Richard von Glahn, executive director of People Not Politicians Missouri, said in a statement late Tuesday that "the Missouri constitution is clear, as was the Missouri Supreme Court."
"Over 305,000 Missouri voters, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, took action to block this political power grab last fall," he added.
People Not Politicians, which sponsored the referendum petition, "filed a request Tuesday night with the state Supreme Court to hold Hoskins in contempt for attempting to use the new map," The Associated Press reported.
"An individual federal judge cannot overrule the Missouri Supreme Court,” attorney Chuck Hatfield, who represents People Not Politicians, told AP.
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'America Belongs to the People': No Kings Coalition Plans Oct. 17 Early Voting Action
"The cost of our groceries, our utility bills, our healthcare—all of it is shaped by the people we elect and the decisions they make, which is why our participation matters," said two coalition members.
Sep 08, 2026
"On October 17th, No Kings: Vote Early will show the billionaire elites attempting to destroy our country that We the People have the power by mobilizing turnout to make our elections too big for the evils of fascism and oligarchy to rig," according to Sarah Parker, a spokesperson for the 50501 movement.
The movement is part of the No Kings Coalition that has held a trio of protests across the United States since President Donald Trump returned to power last year.
Now, with the midterm elections less than two months away, the coalition is planning a fourth day of action. Parker, who's also executive director of Voices of Florida Fund, declared Tuesday that "the people, united, will never be defeated."
The first round of protests was held in June 2025, on Trump's birthday. The ACLU's chief political and advocacy officer, Deirdre Schifeling, said at the time that "No Kings is really about standing up for democracy, standing up for people's rights and liberties in this country, and against the gross abuse of power that we've seen consistently from the Trump administration."
As with those first demonstrations, millions of people took to US streets again last October. Then, Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, told Common Dreams that "what we're seeing from this administration is authoritarian slip. We are seeing them attack judges, attack nonprofits, trying to attack the media, stifle First Amendment protected speech, and arrest sitting members of Congress for doing their oversight" of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The third action, in March, followed ICE's deadly invasion of Minnesota's Twin Cities, and Trump launching his illegal war on Iran. The three themes of those demonstrations, said Indivisible co-executive director Leah Greenberg, were "no kings, no ICE, no war."
Her co-executive director, Ezra Levin, said Tuesday that "since the first No Kings in June of last year, millions of people have demonstrated they are not afraid and they will not bow to any would-be American king. We've sent that message loud and clear—but we're not just sending a message with this next No Kings."
"We're taking back power for the people using our constitutional right to organize and our constitutional right to vote," Levin stressed. "While corrupt politicians and elected officials line their pockets, families across America are struggling to put food on the table and gas in the car. No Kings: Vote Early is about making sure every eligible voter has a plan to vote, knows their options, and is ready to make their voice heard."
Schifeling, from the ACLU, noted that "this year, voters are facing coordinated efforts from their own government to make it harder for eligible voters to vote and have their vote counted. That's why this next chapter of No Kings is focused on encouraging all voters to make a plan to vote as early as possible."
"In a democracy, elected officials are supposed to be accountable to their constituents; voting is one of the best ways to ensure they are," she continued. "No Kings will be on the ground in communities across the country making sure that all eligible voters can and do vote."
Public Citizen's Gilbert said that "the importance of as many people as possible voting early cannot be overstated."
"Early voting can make the difference between voting and not voting for people who are traveling, who are working on Election Day, who need options for childcare while voting, and more," she highlighted. "Voting is democracy in action at a time when authoritarianism and oligarchy are looming large, and standing together to cast our vote is one of the most patriotic things we can do right now."
In addition to Trump's authoritarian policies, US voters are contending with high prices tied to the president's policies, from the Iran War to his legally dubious tariffs. Cliff Albright and LaTosha Brown, co-founders of Black Voters Matter Fund, noted that "the cost of our groceries, our utility bills, our healthcare—all of it is shaped by the people we elect and the decisions they make, which is why our participation matters."
"America belongs to the people—not to kings, billionaires, or politicians," Albright and Brown emphasized.
Other coalition members include the American Federation of Teachers, MoveOn, State Voices, and Voto Latino, whose executive director, Beatriz Lopez, vowed that "on October 17th, we will show up, vote early, and vote like our future depends on it because American democracy has no kings."
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South Park Skewers Trump, Big Tech Enablers With Name Change to 'South America'
The creators of the long-running animated show quipped that the move was "inspired by the bravery and patriotism of Apple and Google," which complied with the president's renaming requests.
Sep 08, 2026
For 28 seasons, viewers of one of history's most iconic animated television shows were greeted with the twangy, dissonant strains of a Primus-penned theme song with lyrics beginning, "Going down to South Park, gonna have myself a time." But that might be about to change.
That's because "South Park" creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker announced Tuesday that, for the Comedy Central series' 29th season, the show will be renamed "South America" in a dig at US President Donald Trump's unauthorized rechristening spree—in which the Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of America and Lake Ontario is Lake America—as well as the complicity of tech titans like Google and Apple that comply with the changes.
“Inspired by the bravery and patriotism of Apple and Google, we are changing the name of South Park to SOUTH AMERICA,” Parker and Stone said in a statement. "We especially want to thank our parent company Paramount—a Skydance Capitulation.”
In addition to renaming the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario, Trump has floated changing the name of New Mexico to New America, a curious proposal given that both old and New Mexico—as well as everywhere from Greenland to Tierra del Fuego—are part of the Americas. He has also proposed rechristening the Strait of Hormuz the Trump Strait, even as Iran continues to control the vital waterway amid an increasingly protracted US-Israeli war of choice.
Apple and Google have adopted Trump's preferred geographic terminology on their mapping platforms, giving Parker and Stone an irresistible opportunity to lampoon both the president and the companies' obsequiousness.
It's far from the first time that "South Park" has turned Trump into a punch line. Recent episodes have reportedly incensed the president and some of his senior officials, including the Emmy-winning “Sermon on the Mount,” in which a comically under-endowed Trump has a romantic affair with Satan.
Last year, "South Park" went after both Trump and its own corporate parent after Paramount agreed to a $1.5 billion streaming deal with Parker and Stone. The season premiere depicted Trump suing South Park residents over protests, while the episode also mocked media organizations and corporations cowering in fear of presidential retaliation.
Paramount Skydance—whose CEO David Ellison is a Trump ally—could become an even larger media conglomerate if its Federal Communications Commission-approved $111 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery moves forward. A trial is scheduled for March.
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250+ Current, Former Lawmakers Urge Supreme Court to Block Trump Attack on Mail Voting
"In utter defiance of the Constitution, President Trump is attempting to use the Postal Service to decide who can and cannot receive a ballot just days before mail-in voting begins in some of the states," said Rep. Jamie Raskin.
Sep 08, 2026
With the midterm elections less than two months away, more than 250 current and former Members of Congress came together on Tuesday to pressure the US Supreme Court to block Republican President Donald Trump's March executive order on voting and its resulting United States Postal Service rule.
All 47 members of the Senate Democratic Caucus, over 90% of the party's members in the House of Representatives, and 15 former GOP lawmakers submitted an amicus brief to the nation's top court—whose right-wing supermajority includes three Trump appointees—just two days after the administration asked the justices to pause a judge's ruling that blocks parts of the USPS rule.
The 261 Americans behind the brief "took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States—including its guarantee of the separation of powers," and they "have a particular interest in defending the institutional role of the legislative branch under Article I of the Constitution and in vindicating the long-settled principle that the Constitution commits ultimate regulatory authority over federal elections to Congress," the filing states.
"The Constitution does not contemplate the executive branch acting unilaterally to assert power over federal elections," the document continues. "Yet that is what the order and final rule do. The district court correctly concluded that respondents are likely to succeed on the merits of their claims that USPS lacked authority to issue the final rule, that the final rule unconstitutionally imposes mail-ballot requirements on the states, and that the final rule unconstitutionally bars noncompliant state and local election officials from using USPS to mail ballots at all."
"The order and final rule unconstitutionally infringe on Congress' authority under the elections clause and the postal clause and unlawfully direct federal agencies to act beyond—and in conflict with—what Congress has clearly authorized by law," the filing asserts, urging the high court to deny Trump's request to allow the new USPS policy for the midterms.
The Supreme Court last month cleared the way for Trump's order by concluding that the Democratic state attorneys general—just one of the coalitions challenging the order—had sued too early. However, the justices did not weigh in on the legality of the order or the rule, and in the wake of USPS publishing its policy, the legal battles have continued.
The lawmakers' brief came a day before Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's deadline for new filings and as the Department of Justice—which is fighting District Judge Indira Talwani's preliminary injunction that blocks USPS from enforcing the rule—argued to the US Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit that the policy is "modest" and lawful.
In a statement announcing the brief, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) pointed to the drawn-out legal battles over the order and related rule, saying that "Donald Trump is once again asking the highest court in the land to silence voters and destroy the precious integrity of the American electoral process."
"Mail-in voting is proven safe and secure, and Trump's continued efforts to obstruct America's free and fair elections are blatant, unconstitutional attempts at interfering with the November midterms," he declared. "Trump's message to the American people is clear: He isn't worried about voter fraud, he's afraid of voter accountability. I urge the court to uphold the Constitution and reject Trump's baseless attempt at poisoning our democracy."
On the Senate side, in addition to Schumer, the brief is led by the ranking members of three key panels: Sens. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) of the Committee on Rules and Administration, Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) of the Judiciary Committee, and Gary Peters (D-Mich.) of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
“The law is clear: States and Congress have authority over our elections—not the president and certainly not the Postal Service. Protecting the right to vote-by-mail is critical to ensure every eligible voter can make their voices heard in the November midterm elections and in future elections," said Padilla.
"Despite the Trump administration's attempts to eliminate vote-by-mail and suppress voter participation, voting by mail remains one of the safest and most secure ways to vote, especially for service members, rural voters, and Americans living abroad," he noted. In fact, despite trying to strip millions of Americans of the right to mail their ballots, even Trump has repeatedly voted this way, including in Florida's August Republican primary.
In the lower chamber, the brief was spearheaded by Committee on House Administration Ranking Member Joe Morelle (D-NY) along with the co-chairs of Democrats' Litigation Task Force: Assistant Leader Joe Neguse (D-Colo.), Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), and Oversight Committee Ranking Member Robert Garcia (D-Calif.).
Like his colleagues, Raskin—a constitutional scholar who led Trump's historic second impeachment after the president's supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021—stressed that "the Constitution is clear that the states and Congress make the rules for federal elections, not the president."
"Yet, in utter defiance of the Constitution, President Trump is attempting to use the Postal Service to decide who can and cannot receive a ballot just days before mail-in voting begins in some of the states," he said. "This is a naked power grab by a historically unpopular president—who himself regularly votes by mail—to inject confusion and chaos into our elections in a last-ditch effort to keep his party in power."
"It will not work," Raskin added. "I'm proud to stand with a strong bipartisan, bicameral group of current and former colleagues in urging the court to continue rejecting this lawless election interference."
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Progressives Say 'Affordability' and Trump's Corruption Are Key, Symbiotic Issues for Democrats in 2026
"Trump and his regime have made corruption impossible to ignore, so Democrats should connect the administration’s self-dealing and abuses of power to the economic pressures voters are feeling."
Sep 08, 2026
Two leading progressive organizers on Tuesday argued that Democratic candidates don't need to choose between campaigning on affordability issues or against President Donald Trump's unprecedented corruption.
Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg, co-executive directors of Indivisible, wrote in an op-ed published by The Guardian that a recent survey conducted with Lake Research Partners finds that the issues of affordability and government corruption are deeply intertwined.
"Affordability is essential," wrote Levin and Greenberg, "but our polling shows that the case for lowering costs becomes more compelling when paired with a clear commitment to take on corruption and special interests."
The reason for this, the organizers said, is that majorities of Americans are concerned about politicians rigging the political system to benefit themselves and about corruption costing taxpayers money.
Additionally, wrote Levin and Greenberg, vows to lower costs are more credible with voters when they come with concrete plans to take on corrupt corporate interests that are blamed for gouging consumers.
On top of that, they argued, "Trump and his regime have made corruption impossible to ignore, so Democrats should connect the administration’s self-dealing and abuses of power to the economic pressures voters are feeling."
In sum, the organizers emphasized that combining messages about affordability and corruption is "more persuasive than either message alone."
The Indivisible leaders' arguments echo those made by Dustin Guastella, director of operations for Teamsters Local 623 in Philadelphia, and Erica Etelson, president of the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative, who advocated for what they described as "kitchen-table populism" in an op-ed published in The Guardian last month.
Like Indivisible, Guastella and Etelson's organizations commissioned a poll conducted by Verasight testing progressive messages for the 2026 midterms, and came away with similar conclusions.
"The top-performing messages we tested have a simple formula," they wrote. "They promise to bring costs down, make the biggest corporations pay their fair share, and crack down on the people who game the system. Ultimately, they tell a simple story: Hard work should pay off."
With midterm elections less than two months away, there are signs of wide dissatisfaction with the state of the US economy.
Elections analyst Charlie Cook told The New Republic in an interview published Tuesday that he's seeing data indicating that worries about the economy are giving Democrats openings in places that would have once been solidly Republican.
The biggest driver of this economic anxiety, said Cook, appears to be Trump's illegal war with Iran, both because it broke a key 2024 campaign promise about no new wars in the Middle East, and because it has raised the price of countless consumer goods, including diesel fuel and fertilizer, which are both vitally important for US farmers.
“I mean, you take Iran—after promising no more wars and all that—but fuel, fertilizer, no more wars, you take tariffs,” Cook said, “and all this goes to the heart of his base, of, you know, small-town, rural, farm, all of that.”
“To have the people that are generally the most enthusiastic for you uniquely hurt,” Cook added, “now, that’s new territory.”
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Critics Decry Trump HUD's Proposed Rollback of Flood Protections for Low-Income Homes
One group said that the proposal "puts poor and working families that rely on HUD assistance at greater risk of danger, displacement, and homelessness."
Sep 08, 2026
Housing and environmental advocates on Tuesday condemned the Trump administration’s planned rollback of flood protections for federally funded housing, warning that the move will leave low-income households exposed to increasingly severe climate-driven flooding while shifting more costs to taxpayers.
In July, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) proposed rescinding key portions of the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard (FFRMS), a Biden-era policy that required federally financed projects in areas prone to flooding to account for current and future inundation risks.
Proponents of the move, which would strip a layer of federal flood requirements, argue that local governments know their flood conditions better than Washington bureaucrats.
However, the National Housing Law Project (NHLP), a San Francisco-based advocacy group, warned Tuesday that the proposal "puts poor and working families that rely on HUD assistance at greater risk of danger, displacement, and homelessness by reducing notification and mitigation requirements for homes that are vulnerable to flooding."
NHLP called the move "part of the Trump administration’s attempt to dismantle the government programs that keep people housed, safe, and healthy."
On Tuesday, NHLP submitted a comment to HUD noting that “flooding events have become more frequent and widespread, and put the health, safety, and livelihood of low-income families at risk."
"Tenants displaced from federally subsidized housing face an even more acute crisis, because they often endure temporary or permanent loss of their housing assistance,” the group added. “Due to the personal and societal harm of extreme flooding events, HUD should work toward increasing the resilience of HUD-assisted properties. This proposed rule does the opposite.”
The proposed FFRMS rescission is part of the broader regulatory rollback that began during President Donald Trump's first term. In 2017, Trump repealed Obama-era executive orders that had updated the federal flood standard for the first time since the Carter administration and established regulations meant to ensure that federally funded infrastructure projects were climate-resilient.
In March, Trump issued an executive order directing federal agencies to identify and eliminate regulations deemed unnecessarily costly or burdensome to housing construction.
Responding to HUD's proposed FFRMS rollback, Liz Zepeda, federal regulatory director at the Virginia-based legal advocacy group Southern Environmental Law Center, said in July that “it’s discouraging to see the federal government ignore climate science and put some of our most vulnerable communities at greater risk, especially as we head into hurricane season."
"Reckless deregulation like this is why we need Congress to step up and pass reasonable emergency management policies,” Zepeda added.
In 2021, an NPR investigation revealed that, dating back to at least the Obama administration, the federal government sold homes it had previously purchased after repeated flooding to new buyers—often without adequately informing them about the properties’ flood histories and risks.
Historical data compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show 45 billion-dollar flooding disasters between 1980-2024 that caused an estimated $215 billion in combined damages, adjusted for inflation. As the climate emergency worsens, the frequency and severity of such flooding have increased dramatically, from an average of 3.3 billion-dollar disasters in the 1980s, to 6.7 in the 2000s, to 23 in the 2020s.
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'I’ll Wear It as a Badge of Honor,' Says MP Sultana After Israel Bars Entry to 11 UK Lawmakers
"I will not be intimidated into silence," said MP Zarah Sultana. "If anything, this ban only strengthens my resolve to keep speaking out."
Sep 08, 2026
Zarah Sultana, a member of the UK Parliament, said she won't stop speaking about the rights of Palestinians after Israel banned her from entering the country on Tuesday.
"Given that this is a fascist government presiding over genocide, apartheid and an illegal occupation, I’ll wear it as a badge of honor," she said in a post to X. "I will not be intimidated into silence. I will continue to speak out against Israel’s genocide and against the UK’s complicity. If anything, this ban only strengthens my resolve to keep speaking out."
Sultana, who represents Coventry South and is a co-founder of the left-wing Your Party, was one of 11 members of Parliament whom Israel announced it was blocking from entry in retaliation after the UK joined Canada, France, and other nations to announce an import ban on goods from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law.
Following a year of record violence against Palestinians in the territory, UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said the import ban was in response to the "ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank—perpetrated by settler terrorists."
Israel has reacted with fury at the move, closing the British consulate in East Jerusalem, which handles relations with Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza.
Also banned from the country are UK Labour MPs Diane Abbott, Richard Burgon, John McDonnell, and Naz Shah; Green MPs Siân Berry, Ellie Chowns, Carla Denyer, Adrian Ramsay, and Hannah Spencer; as well as Jeremy Corbyn, who led the Labour Party from 2015-20 before co-founding Your Party with Sultana in 2025.
Remarking on his and his colleagues' ban from the country, Corbyn said Israel's treatment of Palestinians was "the real scandal."
"I have visited all parts of Palestine on several occasions, where I have witnessed the horrors of occupation, as well as the resilience and humanity of the Palestinian people," Corbyn wrote on X. "They are the ones who suffer from Israel's apartheid. It is their freedom which is egregiously curtailed, alongside thousands of Palestinian refugees who are denied the right of return."
He added: "As the world wakes up to the genocide in Gaza, it is shocking that Israel continues to deny entry to UN investigators and international journalists. Israel doesn't want the world to see what it is doing—but we can never give up in our attempts to expose the truth."
Israel also banned Fahad Ansari, a lawyer who has represented Hamas’ political wing in court in the UK and—like Sultana—said on X, “I am neither British nor an MP but do take this as a badge of honor (although pretty sure I’m already a persona non grata in the apartheid state).”
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