January, 13 2020, 11:00pm EDT

For Immediate Release
Contact:
Adam Mason, adam@iowacci.org, 515-282-0484
Jackie Filson, jfilson@fwwatch.org, 202-683-2538
Aidan O’Shea, aoshea@publicjustice.net, 202-861-5240
Iowa CCI, FWW Submit Brief to Supreme Court in Clean Water Lawsuit
State seeks to “close off” judiciary to citizen groups on behalf of “Big Ag.”
DES MOINES, IA.
Yesterday, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI) and Food & Water Watch (FWW) filed a brief before the Iowa Supreme Court, defending a Polk County District Court ruling that the organizations' lawsuit against the State of Iowa to restore the Raccoon River could proceed to trial. The Supreme Court granted the State's application for an "interlocutory appeal" of Judge Hanson's denial of its motion to dismiss in November.
In the appeal to the Iowa Supreme Court, the State argues that citizens may not hold the State accountable in the courts regarding the protection of our water from industrial agricultural pollution. The State claims that the oversight and regulations of our water quality are "political questions" that are purely for the legislature to decide without judicial input.
"The State's obligation to protect the Raccoon River is not a 'political question' just because the General Assembly has allowed Big Ag to play politics with Iowans' right to clean water," said Emma Schmit, an organizer for Food & Water Action. "The courts have the power to act where Iowa's legislators have failed, particularly where, as here, constitutional rights are at stake."
The groups outlined that obligation in their original petition filed last March. They allege that the state has violated its duty under the Public Trust Doctrine to protect the Raccoon River for the use and benefit of all Iowans. Despite well-documented water pollution that has harmed the public's ability to use the Raccoon River for recreation and as a source of drinking water, the state has adopted only voluntary agricultural pollution controls.
"Iowans are tired of being told that our interests - our water, our health, our enjoyment of public waters, our drinking water, our pocketbooks - must be compromised or balanced with those of corporate ag and other industries willing to destroy our lives for profit," said Adam Mason, State Policy Director at Iowa CCI. "Our lawsuit, based in the Public Trust Doctrine, is holding the state to a higher standard - for us, for our kids, and our grandkids."
Three of the plaintiffs' primary requests for relief are:
- An order enjoining construction and operation of certain new and expanding animal feeding operations in the Raccoon River watershed; and
- An order requiring the state to adopt a mandatory clean-up plan to reduce agricultural water pollution
- A judicial decree that declares the failed voluntary strategy unconstitutional
The groups are represented by Brent Newell of the Public Justice Food Project, Tarah Heinzen of Food & Water Watch, Roxanne Conlin and Devin Kelly of Roxanne Conlin & Associates, and Channing Dutton of Lawyer, Lawyer, Dutton & Drake LLP.
The need for bold legal action has never been more clear. Iowa's most recent Clean Water Act 303(d) impaired waterways report, just released in November, reveals that Iowa's list of impaired waterways grew 6% since the previous report. In addition, according to a survey by Johns Hopkins Center for a Liveable Future, 63% of Iowans think the state legislature should pass a proposal banning the construction of new CAFOs and the expansion of existing CAFOs.
Today's filing sets the stage for the start of the new legislative session in Iowa. During the 2019 session, Representative Dean Fisher blocked the only bill to improve Iowa's water quality in committee.
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
Ben-Gvir Says GOP Leaders Agree Gaza 'Food and Aid Depots Should Be Bombed'
The remarks by the Israeli national security minister, who is visiting the United States, came ahead of Israel's bombing of a food distribution center in central Gaza that killed three people, including at least one child.
Apr 24, 2025
An Israeli drone strike on a food distribution center in central Gaza that killed three Palestinians on Thursday underscored remarks earlier in the week by Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel's national security minister, who said that Republican leaders told him during a meeting at U.S. President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort that they agree with his policy of bombing humanitarian aid depots in the embattled enclave.
Eyewitnesses said that an Israeli drone bombed a food distribution point in the town of al-Zawayda, killing three people, including at least one child, and wounding others. The bombing came amid a crippling Israeli blockade of Gaza that has fueled widespread starvation and sickness, with the United Nations relief coordination office warning earlier this week that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has reached "unprecedented levels."
The Palestinian news outlet Wafareported that Israeli airstrikes killed 52 civilians across the Gaza Strip since dawn Thursday, bringing the death toll from 566 days of Israel's U.S.-backed genocidal assault to at least 51,355, with more than 117,000 others injured, over 14,000 people missing and feared dead and buried beneath rubble, and millions more forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened.
Thursday's attacks came after Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Jewish Power party, said that "senior Republican Party officials" whom he met Tuesday at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida "expressed support for my very clear position" that Gaza "food and aid depots should be bombed in order to create military and political pressure to bring our hostages home safely."
More than 250 Israeli and other hostages were taken during the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. It is believed that 24 hostages are still alive in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a fugitive from the International Criminal Court, has been widely accused of trying to scupper cease-fire and hostage release efforts in order to prolong the war and delay his criminal corruption trial.
On Wednesday, Ben-Gvir was invited by Shabtai, a secretive society co-founded in 1996 by Yale University graduate students including Cory Booker—who is now a Democratic U.S. senator—to speak at the elite Connecticut school. After his speech, Ben-Gvir waved and flashed the "victory" sign to pro-Palestinian protesters gathered outside the event, prompting some to throw water bottles at him.
Following a Tuesday night protest which it did not organize, the Yale chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine was stripped of its official club status by university officials, who cited concerns over "disturbing antisemitic conduct at the gathering"—without providing any evidence to support their claim.
Ben-Gvir continued his U.S. tour on Thursday, with planned visits to Jewish neighborhoods in New York City's Brooklyn borough.
Tuesday's remarks were not the first time Ben-Gvir—who was convicted in 2007 by an Israeli court of incitement to racism and supporting the Kahanist militant group Kach—has endorsed war crimes against Palestinians.
"Let's bomb the food reserves in Gaza, let's bomb all the power lines in Gaza. Why are there lights in Gaza? There must not be a single light. Stop the electricity," he said last month.
In January, Ben-Gvir resigned from Netanyahu's government in protest of its cease-fire and hostage release agreement with Hamas. He rejoined the government after it renewed its genocidal assault on Gaza last month.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump-Appointed Judge: Administration Must Return Another Man Deported to El Salvador
Citing other courts' decisions in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Judge Stephanie Gallagher stressed that "standing by and taking no action is not facilitation."
Apr 24, 2025
A federal judge appointed by U.S. President Donald Trump during his first term directed his second administration on Wednesday to facilitate the return of a 20-year-old Venezuelan deported to El Salvador in breach of a settlement agreement—as the government continues to defy a similar order to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia home to Maryland.
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native who was supposed to be protected from deportation by an immigration judge's order, and this man, identified in court filings with the pseudonym Cristian, are among hundreds of migrants whom the Trump administration sent to El Salvador last month to be imprisoned in a notorious gang prison called the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).
As Maryland-based U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher explained in her Wednesday opinion, Cristian was deported while waiting on his asylum case to be decided by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) following a legal fight that resulted in a settlement agreement approved last November.
In class action litigation launched in 2019, Gallagher detailed, a group of people who entered the U.S. as unaccompanied minors, including Cristian, "sought to enforce its members' rights to have their asylum applications adjudicated on the merits by USCIS while they remained physically present in the United States."
Trump has used the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to fast-track the expulsion of alleged gang members—and, as Gallagher noted, his administration argued "that removal of Cristian did not violate the settlement agreement because 'his designation as an alien enemy pursuant to the AEA results in him ceasing to be a member' of the class."
However, the judge concluded that "allegations that class members, like Cristian, are subject to the AEA do not exclude those individuals from the class under the plain terms of the settlement agreement."
Gallagher further found that "under the plain terms of the settlement agreement and fundamental tenets of contract law, removal from the United States of a class member, including but not limited to Cristian, without a final determination on the merits by USCIS on the class member's pending asylum application violates the settlement agreement."
Thus, she wrote, "Cristian, and any other class member who has been removed in violation of the settlement agreement, must be returned to the United States to await adjudication of his asylum application on the merits by USCIS."
According to ABC News, which first reported on Gallagher's decision:
Counsel for the class of migrants also alleged in court filings that another Venezuelan man, identified as an 18-year-old named Javier in the court records, was in imminent danger of being deported earlier this month.
Judge Gallagher determined that Javier was covered by the settlement agreement and entered a temporary restraining order prohibiting the government from removing him from the United States.
Citing Abrego Garcia's legal battle—which is being handled by Maryland-based U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, an appointee of former President Barack Obama—Gallagher acknowledged that her Wednesday decision regarding Cristain "puts this case squarely into the procedural morass that has been playing out very publicly, across many levels of the federal judiciary."
"Discovery is underway regarding the government's efforts to comply with court orders (including from the United States Supreme Court) to 'facilitate' Mr. Abrego Garcia's return to the United States," the judge continued. "This court is mindful of the Supreme Court's reminder to afford the 'deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.'"
"However, this court is also guided by, and fully agrees with, the definition of 'facilitate' espoused by Judge Xinis and the United States Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Abrego Garcia," she stressed. "Standing by and taking no action is not facilitation."
Xinis on Wednesday postponed discovery in the Abrego Garcia case for a week, with the agreement of both his legal team and the government, following a sealed filing from the Trump administration earlier in the day.
Meanwhile, Abrego Garcia's wife and her three children—all U.S. citizens—have
moved to a safe house after multiple Trump administration social media accounts posted paperwork with their home address on X.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'How Authoritarians Reshape Society': Critics Denounce Trump Order Targeting College Accreditation
"Threats to remove accreditors from their roles are transparent attempts to consolidate more power in the hands of the Trump administration in order to stifle teaching and research," said the American Association of University Professors.
Apr 24, 2025
Critics and education voices were quick to criticize several executive orders signed by U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday which target college accreditation, endeavor to foster artificial intelligence "competency" in K-12 schools, and more—the latest move in the president's quest to reshape American education.
With his order focused on the accreditation procedure, Trump is aiming to shake up the process that determines whether colleges and universities provide a quality education. For higher education institutions to access federal grants, loans, and other federal funds, they must be accredited, and for students to access federal loans and grants, they must attend an accredited school.
Accreditors "have remained improperly focused on compelling adoption of discriminatory ideology," according to the executive order. Per an accompanying White House fact sheet, the order directs Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to suspend or terminate an accreditor's federal recognition in order to hold it accountable if it violates federal civil rights law.
The order itself states that "requiring institutions seeking accreditation to engage in unlawful discrimination in accreditation-related activity under the guise of 'diversity, equity, and inclusion' initiatives" would constitute a violation of federal civil rights law.
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), a nonprofit membership association, said Wednesday that the order focused on accreditation is yet "another attempt to dictate what is taught, learned, said, and done by college students and instructors."
"Threats to remove accreditors from their roles are transparent attempts to consolidate more power in the hands of the Trump administration in order to stifle teaching and research. These attacks are aimed at removing educational decision-making from educators and reshaping higher education to fit an authoritarian political agenda," AAUP continued.
Max Flugrath, the communications director for the free and fair elections group Fair Fight Action, echoed this sentiment on Wednesday, writing on X: "This is how authoritarians reshape society: control what we're allowed to learn."
In the past, Trump has called reshaping college accreditation his "secret weapon."
"Revoking accreditation is an existential threat for these universities," Andrew Gillen, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, toldThe Wall Street Journal, evoking how changes to the accreditation process could be broadly felt. "If you lose Pell grants and lose student loans, for most colleges that means you're done."
Prior to Wednesday's actions, higher education was already a key focus for the Trump administration.
The Trump administration has announced investigations into several colleges over their handling of alleged anti-semitism, detained multiple noncitizens who have participated in the pro-Palestine student movement, and targeted funding at multiple universities.
President of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, highlighted that Trump's executive orders focused on K-12 run counter to its own professed goal of ceding federal control over education. David Axelrod, who was once a senior adviser to former President Barack Obama, made this same point.
"The Trump administration really does want to be in the business of education after all. It just wants to pick and choose who it helps and who it hurts, rather than build on six decades of bipartisan efforts to improve public education," Weingarten said.
One order is aimed at bringing AI technology into schools to prepare students to be "responsible participants in the workforce of the future" and rolls back guidance issued under Obama and former President Joe Biden that compelled schools to take racial equity into account when disciplining students.
On the discipline order, "we need a commonsense approach and to give teachers authority, but this fails to create a safe and welcoming environment," said Weingarten. "It simply ignores a history where Black and brown students were disproportionately suspended or expelled from school rather than provided the opportunity to thrive."
On the artificial intelligence order, Wingarten said that it's "a transparent attempt to open up schools to unaccountable tech companies, with wholly inadequate safeguards to protect our kids."
Among the other executive actions issued on Wednesday, Trump signed an order to enhance the capacity of Historically Black Colleges and Universities to deliver "high-quality education," and an order aimed at modernizing workforce programs to prepare workers for desirable trade jobs, like through bolstering apprenticeship programs.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular