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New York State's Pension Fund Divests from 22 Coal Companies
Advocates thank Comptroller DiNapoli, urge faster action on remaining billions of fossil fuel investment.
WASHINGTON
This week, New York State Comptroller announced that the New York State Common Retirement Fund, with assets totaling more than $200 billion, has divested from nearly two dozen thermal coal companies, valued at nearly $90 million. The divestment comes after a review was initiated by the Comptroller's office in January. Now, with strong momentum behind the Fossil Fuel Divestment Act (S.2126/A.1536), advocates believe this completed review and divestment action represents a big step forward for the pension fund.
"This is a tangible and positive move by the Comptroller and represents a shift in his approach," said Dominique Thomas with 350.org. "There's obviously no future in thermal coal and the Comptroller has recognized this and moved the pension fund for over 1 million New Yorkers out of this financially risky and destructive industry."
The demand to #DivestNY's pension funds launched the day after Superstorm Sandy devastated New York nearly eight years ago. Members of the intergenerational #DivestNY coalition have garnered significant support for the Fossil Fuel Divestment Act, which currently has nearly 100 sponsors across the state senate and assembly, gaining dozens of new sponsors in recent months. The Act, which is the most advanced divestment legislation in the US, directs the Comptroller, in line with his fiduciary responsibility, to divest the pension fund from all fossil fuels.
"Comptroller DiNapoli's decision to divest NYS Pension Funds from 22 coal companies is a great first step on New York's road to protect the assets of the fund and the environment. In order to build on the progress and ensure a bright future for New Yorkers, full divestment from all fossil fuel companies is obviously the next step. The time has come to pass the Fossil Fuel Divestment Act," said Assistant Speaker Felix W. Ortiz and lead Assembly sponsor of the Act.
As of the fund's latest public disclosure, the pension had more than $12 billion invested in fossil-fuel-related companies. In recent years, these investments have severely underperformed the rest of the stock market and dragged down overall performance of the fund. The fund has more than $4 billion invested in shale and fracking companies, many of which are facing imminent bankruptcy due to heavy debt loads and unfunded environmental liabilities.
"The need for full fossil fuel divestment continues, as the fund remains very exposed to tar sands, fracking and other oil and gas companies and the clock is ticking. We see the Comptroller's leadership move on thermal coal companies as a great stepping stone to addressing the larger problem of risky fossil fuel investments. There's no doubt that momentum is increasing to fully DivestNY and we hope to work with the Comptroller to do so," added Jordan Dale with 350 NJ Rockland.
To date, more than 1240 institutions globally with assets over $14 trillion have committed to divest from fossil fuels. In recent weeks, Cornell, Vermont and George Washington Universities have announced divestment, following on the University of California completing divestment of its $85 billion pension and endowment funds. In 2018, New York City announced its commitment to divest its massive pension funds from fossil fuels, and is on track to complete this by 2023.
Going forward, the #DivestNY coalition will continue to push for full divestment of the New York State Common Retirement Fund, particularly tar sands, fracking, oil service and pipeline companies and Arctic oil drillers, as laid out in the Fossil Fuel Divestment Act which mandates this within five years of passage into law.
QUOTE SHEET
"We applaud Comptroller DiNapoli's action on divesting from coal and look forward to similar action to reduce the risk from climate change from the rest of the pension fund," - Mark Dunlea of PAUSE (People of Albany United for Safe Energy).
"As a beneficiary of the Common Retirement Fund, I support the Fossil Fuel Divestment Act and I am very happy to see Comptroller DiNapoli taking steps toward divestment of the fund from all fossil fuel investments. I look to Comptroller DiNapoli to be a leader in protecting pension recipients and our climate future." - Mona Perrotti Indivisible Mohawk Valley, Co-Chair, Climate Crisis Working Group.
"Although we commend Comptroller DiNapoli's decision to divest from over 20 coal companies, we urge him to fully divest the Common Retirement Fund away from all fossil fuels. With the world now on track to hit 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming by 2024, my generation and future generations to come simply cannot afford any further delay." - Hridesh Singh, Executive Director for the New York Youth Climate Leaders.
"We acknowledge Comptroller DiNapoli's divestment from several coal companies and thank him for taking this first step in decarbonizing the CRF and protecting the retirement funds of State workers. We remain hopeful that the Comptroller has recognized the need to divest from these risky and harmful investments and will soon follow suit with the oil and gas sector of the portfolio. " - Dorian Fulvio, 350NYC Steering Committee member.
To view this press release online, visit: https://350.org/press-release/nys-coal-divestment-win/
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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40+ Groups Urge Wikipedia to Oppose Co-Founders' 'Censorship on Gaza Genocide'
"Wales and Sanger must be stopped from trying to censor the Wikipedia ‘Gaza genocide’ entry that clearly documents Israel’s horrifying crime against humanity.”
Dec 15, 2025
More than 40 advocacy groups on Monday called on Wikipedia editors and the Wikimedia board of trustees to reject efforts by the web-based encyclopedia's co-founders to censor the site's entry on the Gaza genocide.
After months of internal debate, editors of the Wikipedia article titled “Allegations of genocide in the 2023 Israeli attack on Gaza” renamed the entry "Gaza genocide" in July 2024, reflecting experts' growing acknowledgement that Israel's annihilation and siege of the Palestinian exclave met the legal definition of the ultimate crime. The entry also notes that the Gaza genocide is not settled legal fact—an International Court of Justice case on the matter is ongoing—and that numerous experts refute the claim that Israel's war is genocidal.
The move, and the subsequent addition of Gaza to Wikipedia's article listing cases of genocide, sparked heated "edit wars" on the community-edited site—which has long been a target of pro-Israeli public relations efforts. In the United States, a pair of House Republicans launched an investigation to reveal the identities of the anonymous Wikipedia editors who posted negative facts about Israel.
"Israeli officials and pro-Israel organizations are attempting to hide the horrifying reality... by putting pressure on institutions like Wikipedia to engage in genocide denial."
Wikipedia co-founders Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger have intervened in the dispute, with Wales—a self-described "strong supporter of Israel"—publicly stating that the Gaza genocide entry lacked neutrality, failed to meet Wikipedia's "high standards," and required "immediate attention" after an editor blocked changes to the article.
"Wales and Sanger are using their roles as Wikipedia founders to bypass the normal editing and review process and introduce their
own ideological biases into an entry that has already undergone exhaustive vetting and review by Wikipedia editors, including thousands of edits and comments," the 42 advocacy groups said in a letter to Wikimedia's board and site editors.
"Their efforts deny the documented reality of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and contradict the broad consensus among genocide scholars, international human rights organizations, UN experts, and both Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations," the groups continue. "In doing so, Wales and Sanger are engaging in attempted censorship and genocide denial."
The letters' signers include the American Friends Service Committee, Artists Against Apartheid, Brave New Films, CodePink, Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), Doctors Against Genocide, MPower Change Action Fund, Peace Action, and United Methodists for Kairos Response.
Since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack, Israel's retaliatory obliteration and siege on Gaza—for which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes—have left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing. Around 2 million other Palestinians have been forcibly displaced, sickened, or starved in what hunger experts say is an entirely human-caused famine.
"The simple reality is that Israeli officials and pro-Israel organizations are attempting to hide the horrifying reality of Israel’s genocide in Gaza by pretending that there is a substantive debate and by putting pressure on institutions like Wikipedia to engage in genocide denial," the groups' letter asserts.
"Wales’ 'both sides' framework for denying the Gaza genocide," the groups warned, "could also be used to legitimize Holocaust denial, denial of the Armenian genocide, or to platform 'flat-earthers' who deny the Earth’s spherical shape."
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Graham Platner, a veteran and oyster farmer who was a political novice when he launched his campaign in August and has polled well ahead of Gov. Janet Mills in several recent surveys, and a poll that asked Mainers about healthcare on Saturday showed he is in lockstep with many people in the state.
As the advocacy group Maine AllCare reported, the Pan Atlantic 67th Omnibus poll found that 63% of Mainers support Medicare for All, the proposal to transition the US to a system like that of other wealthy countries, with the government expanding the existing Medicare program and guaranteeing health coverage to all.
Those results bolster the findings of More Perfect Union in October, which found 72% of Mainers backing Medicare for All, and of Data for Progress, which found last month that 65% of all Americans—including 78% of Democratic voters—support a "national health insurance program... that would cover all Americans and replace most private health insurance plans.”
Even more recently, a Pew Research survey released last week found that 66% of respondents nationwide said the government should guarantee health coverage.
Platner has spoken out forcefully in support of Medicare for All, saying unequivocally last month that the proposal "is the answer" to numerous healthcare crises including the loss of primary care providers in many parts of the country and skyrocketing healthcare costs.
He made the comments soon after Mills said at a healthcare roundtable that "it is time" for a universal healthcare system, but did not explicitly endorse Medicare for All.
Maine AllCare noted that the latest polling on Medicare for All in the state comes as Maine "is on the verge of a multi-pronged healthcare crisis" due to Republican federal lawmakers' refusal to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies—which is projected to significantly raise monthly premiums for many Maine families as well as millions of people across the country. People in Maine and other states are also bracing for changes to Medicaid, including eligibility requirements.
Those changes "alongside long-standing affordability and access gaps, are projected to cost Maine billions and trigger deep operating losses in already strained hospitals," said Maine AllCare.
The group emphasized that that the Republican budget reconciliation law that President Donald Trump signed in July is projected to have a range of economic impacts on Maine, including a $450 million decline in statewide economic output, the loss of 4,300 state jobs, and the loss of $700 million in revenue at the state's hospitals due to Medicaid cuts.
“Maine needs a sustainable and universal healthcare system now. Poll after poll show people want Medicare for All. Our leaders can let the current health system continue collapsing—harming families, communities, and the economy of our state—or they can meet the moment and fight like hell to enact change that protects both the people and the future of the state," said David Jolly, a Maine AllCare board member. "That is the work Mainers elected them to do and that is what they must do now.”
Despite the broad popularity of the proposal to expand the Medicare program to everyone in the US—a system that would cost less than the current for-profit health insurance system does, according to numerous studies—supporters, including the 17 cosponsors of the Medicare for All bill in the US Senate and the 110 cosponsors in the US House, continue to face attacks from establishment politicians regarding the cost and feasibility of the proposal.
On Monday, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) explained to Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo how the Affordable Care Act that was passed by the Democratic Party is "not the solution" to the country's healthcare crisis, because it keeps in place the for-profit health insurance industry.
"The solution, as everyone knows, in my view, who has studied this, is Medicare for All," said Khanna. "People should have national health insurance. Healthcare is a human right. You should not be subject to these private insurance companies that have 18% admin costs, that are making billions of dollars in profits."
I made the case for Medicare for All on @MorningsMaria with @MariaBartiromo with facts and basic economics. https://t.co/ExZpCNQT7B pic.twitter.com/F226Kutv16
— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) December 15, 2025
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) also spoke out in favor of the proposal, pointing to the recent Data for Progress poll that showed 65% of Americans and 78% of Democrats backing Medicare for All.
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'A Chilling Assertion': Trump Officials Falsely Claim Citizens Must Carry Immigration Docs to Prove Their Status
“There is no legal requirement that US citizens carry papers or have proof of their citizenship on them," said an attorney at the ACLU of Northern California.
Dec 15, 2025
Federal law enforcement agencies are detaining US citizens who do not carry proof of their citizenship in what civil rights advocates describe as a flagrant violation of constitutional rights—and a top Trump administration official is claiming the government has the authority to do so.
A Somali-born Minnesota man was alarmed by the practice last Tuesday when immigration agents tackled him, handcuffed him, and arrested him, refusing to accept his REAL ID as proof of his legal residence in a video that was widely circulated on social media.
The man, who identified only as Mubashir, was placed into a chokehold and forced to his knees in the snow on his way to get food in Minneapolis' Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, which has a large Somali population.
As the Sahan Journal describes:
Mubashir said he told officers multiple times that he is a US citizen and asked if he could show them his ID. Officers ignored him, dragged him in the snow, and pushed him into a car as witnesses yelled and blew whistles, according to the video of his arrest.
The arrest occurred as federal agents walked into nearby businesses in the Somali-heavy neighborhood, questioning people and asking them to show their passports. Mubashir said he was in the car with officers for about 20 minutes, asking them repeatedly if he could show them his ID. They refused, he said.
According to the report, officers asked if they could photograph Mubashir to check whether he's a US citizen—likely to run his information through a facial recognition application that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has acknowledged it uses during immigration stops, including on US citizens without their consent.
Mubashir declined to have his photo taken, asking: "How would a picture prove I’m a US citizen?”
He was later taken to a federal building that houses an immigration court and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices. Only after having his fingerprint taken was Mubashir allowed to present his ID and given permission to leave.
Officers refused to drop him back off at Cedar-Riverside, instead telling him to walk home more than seven miles in the midst of a snowstorm, which had led authorities to issue a weather advisory.
“I deserve to be here like anyone else—I’m a US citizen,” Mubashir said. “I can’t even step outside without being tackled—no question—because I’m Somali.”
"I apologize that this happened to you in my city, with people wearing vests that say 'police.' That's embarrassing," Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara said to Mubashir during a press conference on Wednesday.
According to legal experts, there is no requirement under US law that American citizens must be prepared to prove their citizenship at a moment's notice.
In comments to KQED, a public radio station in San Francisco, earlier this month, Richard Boswell, a law professor at the University of California Law School, called it “most troubling” that US citizens have felt the need to carry their ID to avoid harassment.
“There is no reason why government officers can or should be questioning people about their citizenship without any reason to suspect that they are noncitizens who are here unlawfully,” he explained.
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), noncitizens must carry proof of their legal status, such as a green card or a foreign passport with stamps indicating a lawful visa.
About two dozen states require residents to identify themselves if stopped by law enforcement. But none require citizens to carry a physical ID at all times, except in specific cases, such as operating a motorized vehicle.
And, as Bree Bernwanger, a senior attorney at the ACLU of Northern California, explained, “there is no legal requirement that US citizens carry papers or have proof of their citizenship on them." Unless police have reasonable suspicion that a person is in the US unlawfully, she said, "there shouldn’t be a reason to have to carry your papers, because immigration agents aren’t supposed to stop people or detain them."
But as backlash rolled in from the video of Mubashir's arrest, the man leading Trump's mass deportation crusade, US Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino, seemed to falsely suggest via social media that citizens are required to carry proof of their citizenship.
"One must carry immigration documents as per the INA. A REAL ID is not an immigration document," he wrote in response to a post about Mubashir's arrest, which noted his citizenship.
Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International, responded that "in no way does the INA require citizens to carry immigration documents" and that Bovino is "just letting his jackboot thugs presumptively detain whomever they like."
Add to this that HSI just filed a declaration in our case challenging these policies saying they can’t trust REAL IDs as proof of status.So showing your papers isn’t even enough to end the stop.
[image or embed]
— Jared (@jaredmcclain.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 1:54 PM
Immigration lawyer Jared McClain later noted on social media that, in response to a class-action suit arguing against indiscriminate workplace raids, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) argued that an Alabama construction worker, who was kept in handcuffs even after presenting multiple REAL IDs to agents, had still not done enough to prove his citizenship, according to the federal officers.
"This is the official policy—not a one-off," McClain said.
Aaron Reichlin Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said the filing was "official confirmation that ICE HSI believes that it can, in fact, detain US citizens for immigration checks, and keep them handcuffed while they have their biometrics run."
"That is a chilling assertion," he said.
ProPublica found in October that at least 170 Americans have been detained by immigration agents, sometimes for days, with some having been "dragged, tackled, beaten, tased, and shot."
But months after the report was published, top administration officials—including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem—continue to emphatically deny that any US citizens have been detained during the second Trump administration.
At a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Thursday, Noem abruptly left before Democrats could grill her on reports that citizens had been arrested, claiming she had to speak at a different committee hearing. Reports later found that the hearing had already been cancelled, leading to accusations that Noem misled Congress.
In response to Bovino's assertion that REAL IDs are not immigration documents, Nicole Foy, a reporter at ProPublica, told the Border Patrol commander: "We've been trying to request an interview with you for months now about the enforcement operations you're leading and the detention of US citizens."
"Why does a US citizen need to carry immigration documents?" she asked. At press time, Bovino had not publicly responded to Foy's question.
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