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For Immediate Release
April, 20 2020, 12:00am EDT
Monday April, 20 2020, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Gabby Brown, gabby.brown@sierraclub.org, 914-261-4626
Citigroup is Latest Major US Bank to Rule Out Funding for Arctic Refuge Drilling
Today, multinational investment bank Citigroup
WASHINGTON
WASHINGTON - Today, multinational investment bank Citigroup released an updated energy policy that rules out financing for oil and gas exploration, development and production projects in the Arctic, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The policy also rules out direct funding for new thermal coal mines or coal-fired power plants worldwide, or expansions of existing mines or plants, and sets a timeline for ending financing of coal mining companies. However, the policy fails to rule out funding for fracking or tar sands.
The release of this change to the bank’s policy comes in the wake of similar announcements by Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo, as well as more than a dozen global banks. Over the last two years, leaders from the Gwich’in Steering Committee and the Sierra Club have met with representatives from major banks to discuss the threats fossil fuel operations pose to the Arctic Refuge and why action by the financial industry is necessary.
Citigroup was set to face pressure at its annual shareholder meeting tomorrow over Arctic drilling. Tens of thousands of Sierra Club members and supporters have sent messages to Citigroup, and the bank faced a digital ad campaign this week calling for a change to its policy on the Arctic. Activists and shareholders plan to continue to turn up the heat on Bank of America and Morgan Stanley, the two major American banks that have yet to rule out funding for Arctic drilling.
“The dominoes continue to fall, and now four of the top six American banks have recognized that Arctic drilling is a toxic investment to be avoided,” said Sierra Club campaign representative Ben Cushing. “Drilling in the Arctic Refuge would be a disaster for wildlife, the climate, and the human rights of the Gwich’in Nation, and any company associated with this destruction will suffer a massive public backlash and long-lasting damage to their reputation. Banks like Morgan Stanley and Bank of America should act immediately to follow along with their peers or risk getting left behind.”
“For years, we have been speaking out about the need to keep drill rigs out of our sacred lands in the Arctic Refuge, and it’s amazing that a growing number of major banks are listening,” said Gwich’in Steering Committee Executive Director Bernadette Demientieff. “The Arctic Refuge is critical to our people’s food security and way of life. Our human rights will not be dismissed. The fight to protect this place is far from over, and we will continue to hold accountable any bank, oil company, or politician that seeks to benefit from its destruction.”
The Sierra Club is the most enduring and influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. We amplify the power of our 3.8 million members and supporters to defend everyone's right to a healthy world.
(415) 977-5500LATEST NEWS
Warren Calls for Probe as Whistleblowers Accuse Trump Appointees of ‘Systematically Destroying’ Fair Housing Act
Warren says new whistleblower reports “show the extent of the Trump administration’s attack on civil rights and show how the administration appears to be ignoring the law.”
Sep 22, 2025
US Sen. Elizabeth Warren is calling for an investigation into the Department of Housing and Urban Development after several whistleblowers reported that Trump appointees have gutted enforcement of the decades-old law banning housing discrimination.
A New York Times report published Monday, quotes “half a dozen current and former employees of HUD’s fair housing office” who “said that the Trump political appointees had made it nearly impossible for them to do their jobs” enforcing the 1968 Fair Housing Act “which involve investigating and prosecuting landlords, real estate agents, lenders and others who discriminate based on race, religion, gender, family status or disability.”
In a video posted to social media, Warren (D-Mass.) explained that “if you’re a mom protecting her kids from living with an abusive father or if you’re getting denied a mortgage because of the color of your skin, you have civil rights protection under US law. But the Trump administration has been systematically destroying these federal protections for renters and homeowners.”
According to the Times, when President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, formerly led by billionaire Elon Musk, launched its crusade to dismantle large parts of the federal government at the start of Trump's second term earlier this year, the Office of Fair Housing (OFH) had its staff cut by 65% through layoffs and reassignments, with the number of employees dropping from 31 to 11. Just six of the remaining staff now work on fair housing cases.
The number of discrimination charges pursued by the office has plummeted since Trump took office. In most years, it has 35. During Trump's second term, the office has pursued just four. Meanwhile, it's obtained just $200,000 total in legal settlements after previously obtaining anywhere from $4 million to $8 million per year.
Emails and memos obtained by the Times show a pattern of Trump appointees obstructing investigations:
In one email, a Trump appointee... described decades of housing discrimination cases as “artificial, arbitrary, and unnecessary.”
In another, a career supervisor in the department’s [OFH] objected to lawyers being reassigned to other offices; the supervisor was fired six days later for insubordination.
In a third, the office’s director of enforcement warned that Trump appointees were using gag orders and intimidation to block discrimination cases from moving forward. The urgent message was sent to a US senator, who is referring it to the department’s acting inspector general for investigation.
Several lawyers said they have been restricted from using past cases in enforcement and communicating with certain clients without approval from Trump's appointees.
A memo also reportedly went out to employees informing them that documents “contrary to administration policy” would be thrown out, and that “tenuous theories of discrimination” would no longer be pursued.
Among those supposedly "tenuous" cases have been ones involving appraisal bias—the practice of undervaluing homes owned by Black families—zoning restrictions blocking housing for Black and Latino families, and cases related to discrimination against people over gender or gender expression.
The administration has also abandoned cases related to the racist practice of "redlining"—the decades-old practice of denying mortgages to minorities and others in minority neighborhoods—with memos from Trump appointees calling the concept "legally unsound."
The changes follow a sweeping set of executive orders from Trump during his first week in office, targeting "diversity equity, and inclusion" (DEI) programs. Employees at the Office of Fair Housing told the Times that Trump appointees had begun to describe much of the department's work as "an offshoot of DEI."
A HUD spokesperson, Kasey Lovett, told the Times that it was "patently false" to suggest that the administration was trying to weaken the Fair Housing Act. She pointed out that HUD was still handling approximately 4,100 cases this year, on par with the previous year. As the Times notes, "Lovett did not address, however, how many of the cases had been investigated or had resulted in legal action."
According to the Times:
Hundreds of pending fair housing cases were frozen, and some settlements revoked, even when accusations of discrimination had been substantiated, according to the interviews and the internal communications.
In one instance, a large homeowner’s association in Texas was found to have banned the use of housing vouchers by Black residents. That case had been referred to the Justice Department, but the referral was abruptly withdrawn by the new Trump appointees.
Four current staff members have provided the trove of documents to Warren, who announced Monday that she'd sent a request to Brian Harrison, HUD’s acting inspector general, to open an investigation into its handling of discrimination cases.
Warren said that the documents "show the extent of the Trump administration's attack on civil rights and show how the administration appears to be ignoring the law."
In a press release from the Democrats on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, Warren, the ranking member, highlighted the particularly devastating impact staffing cuts have had on the enforcement of complaints under the Violence Against Women Act, which the Times says only two of the six lawyers remaining at HUD have experience with.
According to Warren, whistleblowers said the cuts were "placing survivors in greater danger of suffering additional trauma, physical violence, and even death."
Warren said that as a result of the hundreds of dropped cases, "Now people are asking, 'well, why would I file a case at all if nothing's going to happen?'"
Calling for an independent investigation, Warren said, "We wrote these laws to make this a fairer America, and now it's time to enforce those laws."
Jimmy Kimmel Returning to ABC After Grassroots Campaign Decrying His Suspension
“We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday,” said Disney.
Sep 22, 2025
Late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel will be back on the air this week after his suspension last week raised alarms about the Trump administration using the power of the federal government to silence critics.
ABC parent company Disney announced in a Monday statement that Kimmel, a little more than a week after he was suspended following a pressure campaign from Trump-appointed Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr.
"Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country," Disney explained. "It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday."
Kimmel was suspended last Wednesday over remarks he'd made two days earlier about slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. In his opening monologue, Kimmel accused US President Donald Trump and his allies of trying “to score political points," while also suggesting that Kirk's alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, could belong to the far right.
Following the monologue, Carr appeared on a right-wing podcast and said that ABC stations could have their licenses revoked unless they stopped showing Kimmel.
“There’s actions we can take on licensed broadcasters,” Carr said. “And frankly, I think that it’s sort of really past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney and say... we are not going to run Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out because we licensed broadcasters are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of these distortions.”
The decision to suspend Kimmel after threats from a Trump official sparked protests against Disney, and several prominent artists on Monday signed a letter organized by the ACLU that slammed the company for apparently caving to government demands for censorship.
"Jimmy Kimmel was taken off the air after our government threatened a private company with retaliation for Kimmel’s remarks. This is a dark moment for freedom of speech in our nation,” the letter stated. “This is unconstitutional and un-American. The government is threatening private companies and individuals that the president disagrees with. We can’t let this threat to our freedom of speech go unanswered.”
Texas Families Sue to Stop Display of Ten Commandments in Public Schools
“As multiple courts have reaffirmed, the First Amendment safeguards the rights of individuals to choose whether and how they engage with religion, and that protection extends to every classroom,” said one lawyer.
Sep 22, 2025
The battle over Texas’ Senate Bill 10 continued on Monday, with families in the state filing a federal lawsuit to block the display of a Protestant Christian version of the Ten Commandments in a “conspicuous place” in every public school classroom.
“This lawsuit, brought on behalf of a new group of Texas families, underscores a critical principle: Public schools across the state must uphold—not undermine—the constitutional protections afforded to every student,” said Jon Youngwood, global co-chair of the litigation department at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, which represents the plaintiffs.
"As multiple courts have reaffirmed, the First Amendment safeguards the rights of individuals to choose whether and how they engage with religion, and that protection extends to every classroom," Youngwood continued.
The new complaint, filed in the Western District of Texas, explains that "last month, this district court ruled that SB 10 is 'plainly unconstitutional' and likely violates the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment... And in June, the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit held the same regarding a Louisiana statute similar to SB 10."
"Despite these precedents, the defendant school districts have pressed forward with actually posting SB 10 displays in classrooms, or have confirmed they will do so shortly—even after receiving a letter from plaintiffs' counsel," the filing explains.
"All students—regardless of their race or religious background—should feel accepted and free to be themselves in Texas public schools."
After US District Judge Fred Biery, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, issued a preliminary injunction against SB 10 last month, Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is running for US Senate, said that only the school districts involved in that case are affected and all others must abide by the law. Paxton also appealed the previous decision to the 5th Circuit.
With the latest filing, the families are seeking a declaratory judgment that SB 10 is unconstitutional. In both Texas cases, the plaintiffs are represented by not only Simpson Thacher but also Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the state and national ACLU, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
"This lawsuit is a continuation of our work to defend the First Amendment and ensure that government officials stay out of personal family decisions," said Chloe Kempf, staff attorney at the ACLU of Texas. "All students—regardless of their race or religious background—should feel accepted and free to be themselves in Texas public schools."
The families behind this latest filing have various beliefs. Nichole Manning, for example, called SB 10 "a calculated step to erode the separation of church and state and the right for my family to exercise our nonreligious beliefs."
Another plaintiff, Lenee Bien-Willner, said that "forcing religion, any religion, on others violates my Jewish faith."
"It troubles me greatly to have Christian displays imposed on my children," she said. "Not only is the text not aligned with Judaism, but the commandments should be taught in the context of a person's faith tradition. State-sponsored religion, however, does not belong in the public classroom."
Even some Christians are opposed to the Texas law. Plaintiff Rev. Kristin Klade said that "as a devout Christian and a Lutheran pastor, the spiritual formation of my children is a privilege I take more seriously than anything else in my life."
"The mandated Ten Commandments displays in my children's public school impede my ability to 'train up my child in the way he should go' (Proverbs 22:6)," she said. "I address questions about God and faith with great care, and I emphatically reject the notion that the state would do this for me."
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