June, 29 2020, 12:00am EDT
GW Commits to Fossil Fuel Divestment
On Monday morning, the George Washington University Board of Trustees announced GW's commitment to fully divest the university endowment from the fossil fuel industry by 2025, achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, and further sustainability measures on campus.
WASHINGTON
On Monday morning, the George Washington University Board of Trustees announced GW's commitment to fully divest the university endowment from the fossil fuel industry by 2025, achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, and further sustainability measures on campus.
The Sunrise GW leadership team released the following statement in response to the announcement:
"The decision today is a profound victory for the GW community. Eight years ago, GW students launched a campaign to force our university to reckon with the climate crisis and divest from the fossil fuel industry. The climate crisis is an existential threat to humanity, and has been caused not by everyday people, but by a handful of fossil fuel executives who have put their profits over our future. Continued investment in fossil fuel corporations is complicity in their crimes. We commend GW for taking this action, but we want to make clear that this would not have happened without years of student organizing. For too long, the Board of Trustees has ignored and dismissed student voices. We hope that the Board continues to act on issues brought forth by students. Today, we celebrate our victory, and tomorrow we go back to our fight for a livable and just future for all."
Sunrise GW led the successful fossil fuel divestment campaign at George Washington University, is fighting for action on the fossil fuel industry-backed GW Regulatory Studies Center, and is building support for the Green New Deal, the only solution that meets the climate crisis at the scale that science and justice demand.
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.
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Wealth of Global 1% Has Skyrocketed by Over $33 Trillion Since 2015: Report
"Governments should heed widespread demands to tax the rich—and match it with a vision to build public goods from healthcare to energy," said the executive director of Oxfam International.
Jun 26, 2025
An Oxfam report published Wednesday estimates that the richest 1% globally have seen their wealth surge by more than $33.9 trillion over the past decade, with just 3,000 billionaires accounting for $6.5 trillion of that increase.
The report, released ahead of June 30 development financing talks in Seville, Spain, argues that the international community's plan to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals agreed upon in 2015 has failed utterly as global inequality has continued to expand, efforts to end poverty have stagnated, and the climate crisis has spiraled further out of control.
"There is glaring evidence that global development is desperately failing because—as the last decade shows—the interests of a very wealthy few are put over those of everyone else," said Amitabh Behar, executive director of Oxfam International. "Rich countries have put Wall Street in the driver's seat of global development. It's a global private finance takeover which has overrun the evidence-backed ways to tackle poverty through public investments and fair taxation."
"It is no wonder governments are abysmally off track, be it on fostering decent jobs, gender equality, or ending hunger," Behar added. "This much wealth concentration is choking efforts to end poverty."
According to Oxfam's analysis, the roughly $34 trillion wealth increase enjoyed by the global 1% since 2015 would be enough to eliminate annual poverty "22 times over."
"It's time we rejected the Wall Street Consensus and instead put the public in the driving seat."
The report argues that "a new agenda is needed" to break free from the private profit-centered global development model that has allowed international crises to run rampant while letting the ultra-wealthy continue growing their massive fortunes unabated.
The upcoming conference in Seville, the report states, represents a key opportunity for countries that are willing to "work together to tackle extreme inequality" and "reject the 'Wall Street Consensus' around financing development."
"They can start by taxing the very wealthiest—a new global survey finds 9 out of 10 people support taxing the super-rich to raise the revenue needed to invest in public services and climate action," the report notes. "Reforms to the international financial architecture and restoring aid are also key."
The report comes as the world's wealthiest countries, including the United States under President Donald Trump, are making unprecedented cuts to development aid spending, a surefire way to reverse any recent progress toward reducing global hunger, poverty, and disease.
Behar said Wednesday that "trillions of dollars exist" to tackle such emergencies, "but they're locked away in private accounts of the ultra-wealthy."
"It's time we rejected the Wall Street Consensus and instead put the public in the driving seat," said Behar. "Governments should heed widespread demands to tax the rich—and match it with a vision to build public goods from healthcare to energy. It's a hopeful sign that some governments are banding together to fight inequality—more should follow their lead, starting in Seville."
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'Alligator Alcatraz' Denounced as Epitome of GOP Dehumanization and Cruelty Toward Migrants
"There's no clearer illustration of the brutality of the Trump administration than robbing funds from cities supporting asylum-seekers to build... a f*up Floridian replica of one of our most notorious prisons to disappear, isolate, and abuse immigrants."
Jun 25, 2025
Rights advocates and Democratic officials across the United States this week are condemning the Trump administration and Florida Republicans' effort to construct a migrant detention facility in the Everglades dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz."
Republican Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier laid out plans to transform the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport—previously called the Everglades Jetport—into a temporary detention facility for undocumented immigrants in a video posted on the social media site X last week.
The site "presents an efficient, low-cost opportunity to build a temporary detention facility because you don't need to invest that much in the perimeter. People get out, there's not much waiting for 'em other than alligators and pythons," he said in the video. "Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide."
"Detaining immigrants at a remote airfield in the Everglades, with no clear legal framework or due process, is about fear, not safety."
Citing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Reutersreported that "the Florida facility, estimated to cost $450 million annually, could eventually house up to 5,000 people."
According toThe New York Times, "A spokesperson for the attorney general said work on the new facility started on Monday morning." The effort is directly tied to President Donald Trump's push for mass deportations that critics denounce as devastating for families and the economy.
Trump's homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, toldUSA Today that the facility will be partly funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Shelter and Services Program. Her department said on X that "we are working on cost-effective and innovative ways to deliver on the American people's mandate for mass deportations. Alligator Alcatraz will expand facilities and bed space in just days, thanks to our partnership with Florida."
Responding to that post, Uthmeier wrote that "I'm proud to help support President Trump and Secretary Noem in their mission to fix our illegal immigration problem once and for all. Alligator Alcatraz and other Florida facilities will do just that. We in Florida will fight alongside this administration to keep Florida safe, strong, and free."
Florida turning airfield in the Everglades into "Alligator Alcatraz" to hold detained migrants
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— MSNBC (@msnbc.com) June 24, 2025 at 1:16 PM
The plan has been lambasted by some local environmentalists and Indigenous people, as well as Florida Democrats. José Javier Rodríguez, a Democrat running to be the state's attorney general, said in a Wednesday statement that Uthmeier's Alligator Alcatraz "isn't a serious plan, it's a reckless, rushed project that puts lives and resources at risk."
"Detaining immigrants at a remote airfield in the Everglades, with no clear legal framework or due process, is about fear, not safety," he continued. "The most obvious reason seems to be political theater, just trying to get attention in Washington, rather than looking out for the interests of our state and its people."
"Now they're funding it with FEMA dollars—money meant to help us prepare for hurricanes and natural disasters, especially in states like Florida," he added, also noting Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' use of emergency powers to seize the site.
Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.) also blasted the plan, saying in a Tuesday statement that "Donald Trump, his administration, and his enablers have made one thing brutally clear: They intend to use the power of government to kidnap, brutalize, starve, and harm every single immigrant they can—because they have a deep disdain for immigrants and are using them to scapegoat the serious issues facing working people."
"They would rather us point fingers at immigrants for the housing crisis, violence, lack of healthcare, and high costs that plague our nation rather than blame the inaction of politicians and greedy corporations," he argued. "This was never about public safety. It was never about putting America first."
Frost continued:
They target migrants, rip families apart, and subject people to conditions that amount to physical and psychological torture in facilities that can only be described as hell on Earth. Now, they want to erect tents in the blazing Everglades sun and call it immigration enforcement. They don't care if people live or die; they only care about cruelty and spectacle.
I've toured these facilities myself—real ones, not the makeshift tents they plan to put up—and even those detention centers contain conditions that are nothing short of human rights abuses. Places where people are forced to eat, sleep, shower, and defecate all in the same room. Places where medical attention is virtually nonexistent.
Anyone who supports this is a disgusting excuse for a human being, let alone a public servant.
Frost wasn't the only federal lawmaker who sounded the alarm this week. Congresswoman Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), a fierce critic of the president's anti-migrant agenda, said Tuesday that "there's no clearer illustration of the brutality of the Trump administration than robbing funds from cities supporting asylum-seekers to build 'Alligator Alcatraz.'"
"Nope, that's not an island for bad-behaving alligators your family could visit after Disney," she wrote on social media. "It's a f*up Floridian replica of one of our most notorious prisons to disappear, isolate, and abuse immigrants."
Notably, Trump last month advocated for reopening the island prison of Alcatraz in California's San Francisco Bay.
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"Great optics if you want to ignite a revolution," remarked one observer.
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Dozens of peaceful protesters including people in wheelchairs were arrested inside a U.S. Senate building in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday while protesting Republicans' proposed cuts to Medicaid spending in the budget reconciliation package facing votes on Capitol Hill in the coming days.
The group Popular Democracy in Action said that "today, over 60 people were arrested in the Russell Senate Building Rotunda in a powerful act of nonviolent civil disobedience" against "cuts to essential social programs like Medicaid" and the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP.
"If you're zip-tying grandmas protesting losing healthcare maybe you're not the good guys in the story?"
Protesters were zip-tied and dragged from the building by police after demonstrators unfurled three large banners inside the rotunda with messages calling on lawmakers to protect Medicaid and other essential social programs. One of the banners read, "Senate Republicans Don't Kill Us, Save Medicaid."
Reporting on the arrests, The Tennessee Hollercontented, "If you're zip-tying grandmas protesting losing healthcare maybe you're not the good guys in the story?"
The so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act being pushed by U.S. President Donald Trump would slash federal Medicaid spending by billions of dollars, introduce work requirements for recipients, and impose other conditions that critics say would result in millions of vulnerable people losing their coverage in order to pay for a massive tax cut that would disproportionately benefit wealthy households and corporations.
"Nearly 80% of Americans support preserving and expanding Medicaid, yet this bill would do the opposite—slashing $880 billion from care to fund $4.5 trillion in tax breaks for billionaires," Popular Democracy in Action said in a statement. "Over 16 million people could lose coverage over the next decade if the proposed spending bill passes, and new work requirements threaten to strip lifesaving care from those who need it most."
Popular Democracy in Action said Wednesday's press conference, which preceded the civil disobedience, "underscored the urgent need for Congress to divest from endless wars abroad and invest in our communities at home. Participants have one clear message for Senators currently debating the bill: 'We need to kill this bill, before it kills us all.'"
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In addition to Popular Democracy in Action, groups including the Service Employees International Union, Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), Debt Collective, Stand Up Alaska, Action NC, Arkansas Community Organizations, and American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today (ADAPT) took part in Wednesday's protest, which followed similar past actions in defense of Medicaid.
"Yesterday was the three-year anniversary of the deadly, disastrous Dobbsdecision that has literally put our lives on the line," PPFA president and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson said at the protest. "In this big, bad betrayal of a bill there is a provision to defund Planned Parenthood."
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Earlier in the day members of these groups were joined at a press conference by U.S. Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who condemned the GOP bill.
"I'm the point person for the Democrats in this fight—and it's the most important fight I've ever been in, because this battle this week is going to determine the future of American healthcare," said Wyden. "Are you for caviar or kids? Mar-a-Lago or the middle class? Hedge funds or healthcare? I know what side you're on—now we have got to make sure that a whole lot of Senate Republicans make the right choice too."
While it is uncertain how many—if any—upper chamber Republicans will oppose the bill, more than a dozen House GOP lawmakers claimed Tuesday that they would not back the Senate's version of the legislation due to Medicaid cuts.
Both chambers of Congress are scheduled to recess for the July 4th holiday next week. Trump is pushing lawmakers to vote on the package before the break. Under reconciliation rules, both chambers must pass identical versions of the legislation.
Most proponents of the bill are determined to pass it with the Medicaid cuts. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday that "failure is not an option."
"I know a lot of us are hearing from people back home about Medicaid," McConnell noted. "But they'll get over it."
#WeWontGetOverLosingMedicaidRepublicans don’t GAF about us…📌 Today, Capitol Police are threatening to arrest people in wheelchairs.📌 Yesterday, McConnell said “failure is not an option” and this…
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— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline.com) June 25, 2025 at 11:59 AM
Participants in Wednesday's protest vowed to keep battling to preserve Medicaid.
"The stuff we're fighting for, the kind of healthcare, long-term services, housing, well-paid work with paid days off and benefits—those are the things we've fought for for 50 years," said Mike Oxford of ADAPT. "We've been fighting for years... we're not backing down."
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