SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
For Immediate Release
June, 19 2020, 12:00am EDT
Friday June, 19 2020, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Phone: 202-225-3965
Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez Releases Statement on Juneteenth
On Friday, June 19, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) released the following statement on Juneteenth. The Congresswoman's federal offices are closed today in recognition of the holiday.
"Juneteenth marks the date that news of the Emancipation Proclamation finally reached enslaved people in Texas, over two and half years after President Lincoln first issued it. Sadly, deferred justice for Black Americans has been a common theme throughout our country's history, and continues into present day.
WASHINGTON
WASHINGTON - On Friday, June 19, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) released the following statement on Juneteenth. The Congresswoman's federal offices are closed today in recognition of the holiday.
"Juneteenth marks the date that news of the Emancipation Proclamation finally reached enslaved people in Texas, over two and half years after President Lincoln first issued it. Sadly, deferred justice for Black Americans has been a common theme throughout our country's history, and continues into present day.
I am proud to support legislation that would make Juneteenth a federal holiday and that would establish a commission to study reparations. But, we cannot stop there. Our Black siblings will not be free until they are free from all forms of economic and social oppression. They will not have justice until we root out the structural racism that persists in all systems - housing, health care, policing and education.
Across the country, the movement of advocates and demonstrators is showing us the way forward. Rather than critique their language, we need to listen to their voices. We need to be brave, and we need to act. We cannot ask Black Americans to wait another 155 years to be free from injustice."
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an American politician serving as the U.S. Representative for New York's 14th congressional district.
(718) 662-5970LATEST NEWS
US Supreme Court's Right-Wing Majority Sides With Trump on Fired Federal Workers
"Today's order by the U.S. Supreme Court is deeply disappointing but is only a momentary pause in our efforts to... hold the federal government accountable," said a group of nonprofits and unions.
Apr 08, 2025
A coalition of nonprofits and unions representing federal workers said Tuesday that it would remain "unwavering" in fighting to protect thousands of civil servants who were fired by the Trump administration, after the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the White House in a case regarding the mass dismissal of 16,000 people from various agencies.
In the 7-2 ruling, the court did not rule on whether the employees were unlawfully fired, as the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and other plaintiffs argued they were.
Instead, the unsigned opinion—approved by every member of the high court except Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson—held that the nonprofit groups that sued President Donald Trump's administration had not demonstrated they suffered "injury" due to the firing of 16,000 probationary employees, and that the plaintiffs did not have legal standing to sue and try to pause the firings.
The majority on the court sided with Trump's administration, which had argued that a lower court judge—Senior Judge William Alsup in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California—had overreached by ordering the reinstatement of people who had been fired from six federal agencies including the Pentagon, the Department of Energy, and the Department of the Treasury.
AFGE and other plaintiffs—including the Main Street Alliance and the American Public Health Association—suggested that the technical ruling, which will stand while the case regarding the probationary employees moves forward, does not change the fact that "thousands of public service employees were unlawfully fired in an effort to cripple federal agencies and their crucial programs that serve millions of Americans every day."
"Today's order by the U.S. Supreme Court is deeply disappointing but is only a momentary pause in our efforts to enforce the trial court's orders and hold the federal government accountable," said the coalition. "Despite this setback, our coalition remains unwavering in fighting for these workers who were wronged by the administration, and in protecting the freedoms of the American people. This battle is far from over."
The plaintiffs argued that the Trump administration not only acted outside its authority by dismissing 16,000 federal workers, but based the firings on a false claim by Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
They said Ezell ordered the termination of the probationary employees in a template letter that falsely claimed they were being fired for poor performance; federal employees are protected from at-will firings, and their supervisors must have a complaint about performance or misconduct to immediately dismiss them.
Many of the workers who learned they had been fired last month had not been at their jobs long enough to receive any performance reviews, or had only received positive feedback about their work.
In his earlier ruling last month, Alsup wrote that while "each federal agency has the statutory authority to hire and fire its employees, even at scale, subject to certain safeguards," OPM does not have that authority.
"Yet that is what happened here—en masse," said Alsup.
"The conservative Supreme Court stepped in and used a technical excuse to let Trump have his way."
The plaintiffs said in their lawsuit that other recent court rulings ordering the administration to reinstate fired employees bolstered their view that the dismissals were illegal. Last week, another federal judge in Maryland ordered the reinstatement of federal workers in 19 states and the District of Columbia.
The coaliton also denounced the government's claim that calling the workers back after terminating their employment would be onerous.
"The scale of the task is simply a reflection of the scale of the government's own unlawful action and its 'move fast and break things' ethos," the plaintiffs wrote. "Accepting the government's argument would mean that it can act lawlessly as long as it acts quickly and destructively enough that restoring the status quo would be an 'enormous' task. That is not and cannot be the law."
The administration's argument was reminiscent of its claim in another case that the Supreme Court ruled on Monday—that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was expelled from the country by immigration officials and sent to El Salvador's prison system, despite having no criminal record and having proven to a judge earlier that he could face persecution and torture in El Salvador.
White House officials have claimed in recent days they have no way of bringing Abrego Garcia back to the U.S., as a lower coirt judge demanded. On Monday, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily blocked District Judge Paula Xinis' order demanding that he be returned.
On Tuesday, Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.) said that regarding the fired workers, "the conservative Supreme Court stepped in and used a technical excuse to let Trump have his way."
'What Corruption Looks Like': Trump DOJ Disbands Crypto Enforcement Unit
President Donald Trump and his family have a direct financial stake in the cryptocurrency industry, which pumped tens of millions of dollars into the 2024 election.
Apr 08, 2025
The Trump administration on Monday delivered another gift to cryptocurrency giants by directing federal prosecutors to curtail their focus on the industry and disbanding a U.S. Justice Department unit tasked with investigating and pursuing cases against criminal actors in the digital asset space.
The decision to dismantle the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, which the Biden administration established in 2021, was laid out in a memo authored by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who previously served as President Donald Trump's personal defense attorney.
Fortune first reported the existence of Blanche's memo on Tuesday and noted that other agencies—including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission—have received similar directives from leadership.
The new memo declares that the Justice Department "is not a digital assets regulator" and that the agency, now under the leadership of Attorney General Pam Bondi, will narrow its focus to prosecuting individuals who victimize digital asset investors, or those who use digital assets in furtherance of criminal offenses such as terrorism, narcotics and human trafficking, organized crime, hacking, and cartel and gang financing."
CNBCreported that the memo "explicitly states" that the Justice Department "will not pursue enforcement against crypto exchanges, mixing and tumbling services, or offline wallets for the actions of their users or 'unwitting violations of regulations'—marking a major departure from prior policy."
"Prosecutors are instructed not to charge violations of financial laws, such as unlicensed money transmission and unregistered securities offerings unless they can prove the defendant knew of the rules and willfully broke them," the outlet added.
"There's never been a better time to be a white-collar crook."
Cryptocurrency giants and industry-allied super PACs pumped tens of millions of dollars into the 2024 election—largely on the side of Republicans—and donated to Trump's inaugural committee, spending viewed as an attempt to influence the administration's regulatory posture.
Additionally, Trump and his family have a financial stake in the industry: Reutersnoted Tuesday that on top of the president and first lady's meme coins, "the Trump family has a claim on 75% of net revenues from token sales by World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture."
Trump’s family owns and invests in crypto businesses. Trump launched his own meme coins. The crypto industry gave his campaign at least $119M. Crypto CEOs chipped in $30M more. Now, his DOJ shut down the team investigating crypto fraud. This is what corruption looks like.
[image or embed]
— Melanie D’Arrigo (@darrigomelanie.bsky.social) April 8, 2025 at 12:31 PM
Blanche's memo comes weeks after Trump's SEC agreed to drop a lawsuit against the crypto exchange giant Coinbase, a move that one watchdog described as a "massive gift" to the cryptocurrency industry.
The Associated Presscharacterized the new memo as "part of a larger move by the Justice Department to step back from certain white-collar enforcement."
A tracker run by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen shows that the Trump administration has "halted, dropped, or withdrawn enforcement actions against more than 100 corporations" so far.
The list includes several cryptocurrency companies, including Crypto.com, which was facing an SEC probe.
"There's never been a better time to be a white-collar crook," Axios' Dan Primack wrote last month after Trump pardoned the three co-founders of the cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX.
Trump Orders Nearly 1 Million Migrants Who Entered US Legally to Leave Now
"It was never about 'legal' immigration, but always about upholding white supremacy," said one human rights lawyer.
Apr 08, 2025
In yet another Trump administration attack on migrants, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Monday announced that nearly 1 million migrants who entered the country legally using a Customs and Border Protection mobile application must leave "immediately" or face consequences including potential criminal prosecution.
DHS notified migrants who were granted temporary parole protection after entering the country using the CBP One app—which was launched by the Biden administration in 2020 and upgraded in 2023—that "it is time for you to leave the United States."
The department "mis now exercising its discretion to terminate your parole," the agency said in an email to affected—and more than 200,000 unaffected—migrants. "Unless it expires sooner, your parole will terminate seven days from the date of this notice."
"If you do not deport from the United States immediately you will be subject to potential law enforcement actions that will result in your removal," the notice continues. "You will be subject to potential criminal prosecution, civil fines, and penalties, and any other lawful options available to the federal government."
"DHS encourages you to leave immediately on your own," the notice stresses, providing a link to a new app—called CBP Home—containing "a self-deportation reporting feature for aliens illegally in the country."
"Do not attempt to remain in the United States. The federal government will find you," DHS ominously added.
Approximately 985,000 migrants used the problem-plagued CBP One app to schedule appointments with U.S. immigration officials when arriving at ports of entry and were generally permitted to remain in the country for two years with work authorization.
However, DHS claimed Monday that "the Biden administration abused the parole authority to allow millions of illegal aliens into the U.S. which further fueled the worst border crisis in U.S. history."
"Canceling these paroles is a promise kept to the American people to secure our borders and protect national security," the agency added.
President Donald Trumpended new CBP One entries on January 20, his first day in office, via executive order, a move that left thousands of vulnerable migrants stranded in Mexico after their immigration appointments were canceled.
Monday's announcement does not affect people who entered the U.S. under Operation Allies Welcome for Afghans or the Uniting for Ukraine program—although more than 200,000 Ukrainian beneficiaries last week received a separate jarring email mistakenly informing them that their status had been revoked.
The new policy also "should not immediately affect migrants who entered via CBP One and applied for asylum and have pending cases in immigration court," according toCBS News immigration and politics reporter Camilo Montoya-Galvez, who noted that "the government generally has to wait for those cases to be adjudicated or terminated before moving to deport."
More than 500,000 Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan migrants who entered the country via the CBP One app with U.S.-based financial sponsors are also bracing for the loss of their protected status on April 24. Additionally, the Trump administration announced the revocation of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for over 1 million Haitian and Venezuelan migrants.
However, on March 31 a federal judge in San Francisco blocked the administration's effort to expel 350,000 Venezuelan TPS recipients, finding that the deportations were "motivated by unconstitutional animus" and would "inflict irreparable harm" upon affected migrants.
Critics have accused the Trump administration and its supporters of reveling in the cruelty inherent in forcibly removing migrants.
Proponents, meanwhile, say Trump is keeping his promise to carry out the largest mass deportation campaign in U.S. history—even as statistics show that the Biden administration deported people at a faster rate last year.
Migrants and other immigrants, including those who legally sought asylum in the United States—at least one of whom was wrongfully expelled—are being sent by the Trump administration to destinations including a camp in the Panamanian jungle and an ultra-high security prison in El Salvador.
Advocacy groups argue that such deportations are unlawful and violate deportees' rights. Human Rights Watch has documented cases of "torture, ill-treatment, incommunicado detention, severe violations of due process, and inhumane conditions, such as lack of access to adequate healthcare and food" in Salvadoran prisons.
Responding to Monday's DHS announcement, U.S. human rights attorney Qasim Rashid noted on social media that "985K migrants entered [the] USA through legal means during the previous administration."
"Trump just unilaterally revoked their legal status," Rashid added. "It was never about 'legal' immigration, but always about upholding white supremacy. This man is a fascist."
Allen Orr Jr., a Washington, D.C.-based immigration lawyer, lamented Tuesday that "migrants who followed the rules and entered legally through CBP One are now being punished."
"Not because they broke the law, but because of who granted them the benefit," he added. "This isn't about security; it's about revenge."
Most Popular
We cover the issues the corporate media never will.
Please support our journalism.