May, 15 2020, 12:00am EDT
Six Essential Questions for Trump's 'Warp Speed' Vaccine Program
Statement of Peter Maybarduk, Director, Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines Program
WASHINGTON
Note: President Donald Trump today announced "Operation Warp Speed," intended to accelerate the development of a vaccine for the novel coronavirus.
There's a lot we don't know about President Donald Trump's Operation Warp Speed. Here are a few essential questions:
- Taxpayers already have invested billions in the search for effective vaccines and will invest billions more. Will vaccines developed with contributions from Warp Speed and federal government efforts be reasonably priced to insurers or free to the public?
- Will the federal government publish its coronavirus vaccine-related contracts, so that the public can assess how our interests in access, safety and fair pricing will be protected?
- Will the government require corporations and research entities to publish their vaccine-related research data, so that independent experts can analyze the safety and efficacy profiles of candidate vaccines?
- No single corporation has vaccine manufacturing capacity to supply the world. Will the U.S. government require that corporations transfer technology and disclose know-how so that manufacturing can be brought to scale more quickly?
- What is the Trump administration's plan to prevent hoarding and to allocate vaccines according to health need?
- What is the Trump administration's plan to meet global need and, in turn, ensure that people in the U.S. have access to any successful vaccines developed in other countries?
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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'Completely Un-American': Progressives Slam Trump Plan to End Birthright Citizenship
"Emboldened by a Supreme Court that would use its power to uphold white supremacy rather than the constitution of our nation, Trump is on a mission to weaken the very soul of our nation," said Rep. Delia Ramirez.
Dec 09, 2024
Progressives in Congress and other migrant rights advocates sharply criticized U.S. President-elect Donald Trump for his comments on immigration during a Sunday interview, including on his hopes to end birthright citizenship.
During a 76-minute interview with NBC News' Kristen Welker, Trump said he "absolutely" intends to end birthright citizenship, potentially through executive order, despite the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Among many lies the Republican told, he also falsely claimed that the United States is the only country to offer citizenship by birth; in fact, there are dozens.
In response,
outgoing Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said on social media Monday: "This is completely un-American. The 14th Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship. Trump cannot unilaterally end it, and any attempt to do so would be both unconstitutional and immoral."
Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) similarly stressed that "birthright citizenship is enshrined in the Constitution as a cornerstone of American ideals. It reflects our belief that America is the land of opportunity. Sadly, this is just another in the long line of Trump's assault on the U.S. Constitution."
Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants, said in a statement: "'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.' It is important to remember who we are, where many of us came from, and why many of our families traveled here to be greeted by the Mother of Exiles, the Statue of Liberty."
Ramirez argued that "the story of our nation wouldn't be complete without the sweat, tears, joy, dreams, and hopes of so many children of immigrants who are citizens by birthright and pride themselves on being AMERICANS. It is the story of so many IL-03 communities, strengthened by the immigration of people from Poland, Ukraine, Italy, Mexico, and Guatemala, among others. It is the story of many members of Congress who can point to the citizenship of their forebears and ancestors because of immigration and birthright."
"Let's be clear: Trump is posing the question of who gets to be an American to our nation. And given that today's migrants are from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin and Central America, it is clear he is questioning who are the 'right' people to benefit from birthright citizenship," she continued. "Questioning birthright citizenship is anti-American, and eliminating it through executive action is unconstitutional. Donald Trump knows that."
"But emboldened by a Supreme Court that would use its power to uphold white supremacy rather than the Constitution of our nation, Trump is on a mission to weaken the very soul of our nation," she warned. "I—like many sons and daughters of immigrants and first-generation Americans—believe in and fight for a land of freedom, opportunities, and equality. To live into that promise, we must stand against white nationalism—especially when it is espoused at the highest levels of government."
Although Republicans are set to control both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives next year, amending the Constitution requires support from two-thirds of both chambers of Congress and three-fourths of the state legislatures, meaning that process is unlikely to be attempted for this policy.
Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) highlighted the difficulties of passing constitutional amendments while discussing Trump in a Monday appearance on CNN. The incoming chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus was born in the Dominican Republic and is the first formerly undocumented immigrant elected to Congress.
As Mother Jones reporter Isabela Dias detailed Monday:
Critics of ending birthright citizenship for the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants argue it would not only constitute bad policy, but also a betrayal of American values and, as one scholar put it to me, a "prelude" to mass deportation.
"It's really 100 years of accepted interpretation," Hiroshi Motomura, a scholar of immigration and citizenship at UCLA's law school, told me of birthright citizenship. Ending birthright citizenship would cut at the core of the hard-fought assurance of equal treatment under the law, he said, "basically drawing a line between two kinds of American citizens."
Trump's NBC interview also addressed his long-promised mass deportations. The president-elect—whose first administration was globally condemned for separating migrant families at the southern border and second administration is already filling up with hard-liners—suggested Sunday that he would deport children who are U.S. citizens with undocumented parents.
"I don't want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don't break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back," Trump told Welker.
Responding in a Monday statement, America's Voice executive director Vanessa Cárdenas said, "There's a growing consensus that the Trump mass deportation agenda will hit American consumers and industries hard, but the scope of what Trump and his team are proposing goes well beyond the economic impact."
"Trump and allies are making clear their mass deportation agenda will include deporting U.S. citizens, including children, while aiming to gut a century and a half of legal and moral precedent on birthright citizenship," she added. "In total, their attacks go well beyond the narrow lens of immigration to the fundamental question of who gets to be an American."
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Green, Indigenous Groups Warns Arctic Still at Grave Drilling Risk When Trump Returns
"Drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is all risk with no reward," said one advocate.
Dec 09, 2024
Wildlife protection groups and Indigenous leaders in Alaska said Monday that they would push to discourage bidding in an oil and gas lease sale just announced by the U.S. Interior Department for part of the Arctc National Wildlife Refuge.
Under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which opened the refuge for oil and gas drilling, the Biden administration announced the second of two lease sales, set to be held on January 9, 2025.
The first Trump administration held the initial lease sale in 2021, but with banks and insurance companies increasingly reticent to back drilling projects in the area, it generated little interest and led to less than 1% of the projected sale revenue.
Releasing its final record of decision, the Interior Department said Monday that 400,000 acres of wilderness in the refuge's 1.6-million-acre northwest Coastal Plain would be put up for bidding at a minimum price of $30 per acre—despite vocal opposition from the Gwich'in Nation and the Iñupiat Alaska Natives.
The land supports local communities as well as porcupine caribou herds and polar bears.
"Our way of life, our food security, and our spiritual well-being is directly tied to the health of the caribou and the health of this irreplaceable landscape," Kristen Moreland, executive director of Gwich'in Steering Committee, toldBloomberg News. "Every oil company stayed away from the first lease sale, and we expect them to do the same during the second."
The record of decision concludes the Bureau of Land Management's process for developing a supplemental environmental impact statement, which was required after President-elect Donald Trump's first administration completed an analysis with "fundamental flaws and legal errors," as the Sierra Club said Monday.
Selling the drilling rights just before Trump takes office could complicate the GOP's plans to hold a more expansive sale later on, but Dan Ritzman, director of Sierra Club's Conservation Campaign, emphasized that regardless of who is in office when the sale takes place, "oil and gas development in the Arctic Refuge is a direct threat to some of the last untouched landscapes on Alaska's North Slope and to the caribou herds that the Gwich'in people rely on."
"The 2017 tax act, forced through Congress by Donald Trump and his Big Oil CEO allies, opened up the Coastal Plain to oil and gas leasing," said Ritzman. "Letting him oversee a lease sale over these pristine lands would be beyond irresponsible. In the meantime, President [Joe] Biden should listen to the Gwich'in and do all that he can to preserve these lands and waters. His legacy is on the line."
Erik Grafe, an attorney at environmental law firm Earthjustice, said the group is "committed to going to court as often as necessary to defend the Arctic Refuge from oil drilling and will work toward a more sustainable future that does not depend on ever-expanding oil extraction."
"Drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is all risk with no reward," said Grafe. "Oil drilling would destroy this beautiful land, held sacred by Gwich'in people, and would further destabilize the global climate, but it offers zero benefit to taxpayers or consumers."
Defenders of Wildlife called on Congress to repeal the 2017 tax law's mandate for leasing sales in the "iconic American landscape" of the Arctic Refuge.
"Turning the coastal plain into an oilfield will obliterate the pristine wilderness of the Arctic Refuge," said Nicole Whittington-Evans, Alaska senior program director for the group, "directly threatening the future of the Porcupine caribou herd and the physical, cultural, and spiritual existence of the Gwich'in people who depend on them."
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To Thwart Trump Killing Spree, Biden Urged to Commute Death Penalty Cases
The former president, warned a broad rights coalition, "executed more people than the previous ten administrations combined."
Dec 09, 2024
A large and diverse coalition of broad coalition of rights organizations on Monday sent a letter to U.S. President Biden Monday, urging him to commute the sentences of all 40 individuals who are on federal death row.
The letter adds to a chorus of voices—including prosecutors and law enforcement officials—advocating for Biden to use his clemency powers to issue such commutations before he departs office.
The calls for Biden to issue pardons and commutations have only grown since the president issued a pardon for his son, clearing Hunter Biden of wrongdoing in any federal crimes he committed or may have committed in the last 11 years.
The joint letter to Biden was backed by over 130 organizations, including the ACLU, Brennan Center for Justice, and The Sentencing Project, commends his administration's "actions to repudiate capital punishment, including imposing a moratorium on executions for those sentenced to death, and for publicly calling for an end to the use of the death penalty during your 2020 campaign. In the face of a second Trump administration, more is necessary."
"President Trump executed more people than the previous ten administrations combined. Of those he executed, over half were people of color: six Black men and one Native American. The only irreversible action you can take to prevent President-elect Trump from renewing his execution spree, as he has vowed to do, is commuting the death sentences of those on federal death row now," the letter states.
The letter cites additional reasons that Biden ought to commute the sentences, including that the death penalty "has been rooted in slavery, lynchings, and white vigilantism."
A separate letter to Biden—sent in November by group of attorneys general, law enforcement officials, and others—argues that "condemning people to death by the state does not advance public safety. The death penalty fails as an effective deterrent and does not reduce crime. As an outdated, error-riddled, and racially-biased practice, its continued use—and the potential for its abuse—erodes public trust in the criminal legal system and undermines the legitimacy of the entire criminal legal system."
Matt Bruenig, president of the People's Policy Project think tank, directly tied Biden's inaction on this issue to the pardon he issued for his son in a blog post last week, writing that "if Biden does not act, there is little doubt that Trump will aggressively schedule executions in his next term. Their blood will primarily be on Trump's hands, but, if Biden does not act to prevent it, his hands will be bloody too."
The call for commutations for death row prisoners aligns with a wider push for the President to use his clemency powers before he leaves office.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who has been particularly vocal on this issue, said Sunday on social media that President Biden "must use his clemency power to change lives for the better. And we have some ideas on who he can target: Folks in custody with unjustified sentencing disparities, the elderly and chronically ill, people on death row, women punished for crimes of their abusers, and more."
Pressley was one of over 60 members of Congress who sent a letter to Biden last month, encouraging Biden to intervene to help these groups.
Several lawmakers have specific pardons or commutations in mind, according to Axios. For example, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has urged Biden to pardon Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has called for a pardon of Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, per Axios.
So far, Biden has granted far fewer clemency petitions (161 total) than former President Barrack Obama, according to the Department of Justice's Office of the Pardon Attorney, and a few dozen less than President-elect Trump did during his entire first presidency. However, in 2022, Biden did grant full and unconditional pardons to all U.S. citizens convicted of simple federal marijuana possession—a move that was cheered by advocates.
According to The New York Times, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said last week that Biden was expected to make more clemency announcements "at the end of his term."
"He's thinking through that process very thoroughly," she said.
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