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For Immediate Release
August, 11 2020, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Dani Heffernan:,dani@350action.org
350 Action Responds to Biden's Choice for Vice President, Kamala Harris
Today, former Vice President Joe Biden announced his pick for Vice President, Kamala Harris. Harris is a former rival turned supporter of Biden, as well as the co-author of recent racial and environmental justice legislation called the Climate Equity Plan alongside Rep. Ocasio-Cortez. Harris is the first Black woman and first person of Indian descent to be nominated for Vice President of the United States.
WASHINGTON
Today, former Vice President Joe Biden announced his pick for Vice President, Kamala Harris. Harris is a former rival turned supporter of Biden, as well as the co-author of recent racial and environmental justice legislation called the Climate Equity Plan alongside Rep. Ocasio-Cortez. Harris is the first Black woman and first person of Indian descent to be nominated for Vice President of the United States.
350 Action North America Director Tamara Toles O'Laughlin gave the following response:
"Today's announcement is historic and we honor the first Black woman to be nominated for the Vice Presidency. Harris has demonstrated a solid understanding of the scale of the climate crisis through the plans she released last year in her bid for the Presidency. We need strong voices for fossil fuel accountability at all levels, and Harris has made commitments we will hold her to. Her stance on polluter accountability and stopping handouts to the fossil fuel industry are at the top of the list for the climate voter Harris' recent Climate Equity Bill demonstrates her willingness to tackle environmental and racial injustice head on and we applaud her prioritization of communities most impacted by the climate crisis.
"We're confident that Harris' stated commitments to climate action means that she will work with Biden to implement a Green New Deal that prioritizes Black, Indigenous and communities of color and builds in a just transition that phases out fossil fuels by 2021 for our health and safety.
"As the contest unfolds, Harris has work to do to prove her support for the movement for Black lives, considering her record on police and prosecutorial misconduct. We need leaders who are ready to address the compound crisis of climate, racial injustice, economic inequity, and human health. We will be looking to Harris to fully engage on behalf of communities supporting her and lead a much needed social and economic transformation."
350 Action is the independent political action arm of the non-profit, non-partisan climate justice group 350.org.
LATEST NEWS
EU Imposes New Sanctions on Israeli Settlers After Hungary Drops Opposition
"As a community founded on international law, the EU cannot be bystanders in the face of escalating violence and persistent breaches of international law," said one foreign minister.
May 11, 2026
Weeks after far-right Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was voted out of office following 16 years of increasingly Christian nationalist rule, foreign ministers across the European Union agreed to impose new sanctions against Israeli settlers accused of violence against Palestinians—a move Orbán's government had been vehemently against.
"It was high time we move from deadlock to delivery. Extremism and violence carry consequences," said Kaja Kallas, high representative of the EU for foreign affairs.
Haaretz reported that the sanctions approved by the EU Council of Foreign Ministers will impact the Nachala movement and its leader, Daniela Weiss, who has made numerous statements advocating for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank; the Amana and Regavim organizations and their leaders; and the Shomer Yesha group and its former director, Avichai Svisah.
The groups and individuals will reportedly be banned from entering EU countries. They will also face asset freezes and be prohibited from engaging in financial activity in the EU.
Hungary's new prime minister, the socially conservative Peter Magyar, was sworn in to office over the weekend. He has said his government will not block sanctions that a number of other EU countries have been pushing to approve.
The sanctions announced Monday were first proposed in 2024, a year after Israel began its assault on Gaza in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack as it also ramped up attacks in the West Bank.
The far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed for further annexation of the West Bank, with the prime minister signing an agreement to develop the E1 settlement last year, clearing the way to link thousands of illegal settlements together and cut off the West Bank from East Jerusalem—making a Palestinian state with the city as its capital impossible.
While the government has taken administrative steps to seize control of the territory, the Israel Defense Forces have increasingly aided settler groups in violent attacks on Palestinian communities. Last year, according to a report by the Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now, settlers and the IDF razed more than 1,500 Palestinian structures in the West Bank, double the annual average prior to 2023. More than 4,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from their homes in the territory.
One Israeli journalist last month called settler violence in the West Bank "ethnic cleansing" and spoke out against "intimidation tours" in which teenage settlers attack people in Palestinian villages while IDF soldiers either stand by or join in the attacks.
Tom Berendsen, foreign minister of the Netherlands, told reporters after meeting with the other EU officials that the sanctions targeted individuals "for whom a file has been compiled showing they have committed such violence."
Irish Foreign Minister Helen McEntee said in a post on social media that "extremist violence and persistent breaches of international law cannot go unanswered," and noted that Ireland has long pushed for the approval of the new package of sanctions.
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir lobbed the familiar accusation of "antisemitism" at the EU foreign ministers and claimed the bloc had ignored attacks against Israel. Ten Hamas leaders were also named as targets of Monday's sanctions.
"The reflexive response that 'the world is against Israel' grows less credible every time allies impose consequences, like this move by the EU to sanction violent settler groups and extremists," said the US-based lobby group J Street, which calls itself "pro-Israel" and "pro-peace."
"This is not about delegitimizing Israel. It’s about what the Netanyahu government is enabling in the West Bank," said J Street, calling on Congress to pass a law to codify similar sanctions, which were canceled by President Donald Trump last year.
Officials in France and Sweden are calling for the EU go further than sanctions on individuals and groups by imposing restrictions on trade with settlements, and human rights groups in recent weeks have demanded a suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement to hold Israel accountable for its attacks on Gaza and the West Bank and its passage of a law requiring the death penalty for Palestinians found guilty of violent attacks on Israelis.
"We had discussions on the trade issues, limiting trade with the illegal Israeli settlements," Kallas said after the meeting. "There was a call by many member states to take this forward, so we will continue to work with the commission on presenting proposals."
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Democratic Commissioner Anna Gomez Blasts Trump FCC Attack on Disney-ABC in Blistering Letter
"You cannot buy this administration's favor. For the right price, you can only borrow it. And the price always goes up."
May 11, 2026
Anna Gomez, the lone Democrat on the Federal Communications Commission, delivered a scathing attack on her own agency in a letter sent on Monday to Walt Disney Company CEO Josh D'Amaro.
At the start of her letter, Gomez told D'Amaro that his company "has once again been made a target by this FCC," as part of "a sustained, coordinated campaign of censorship and control, carried out through the weaponization of the FCC’s authority as a federal regulator."
Gomez said that while Disney, the parent company of television network ABC, is not the first media firm targeted by the administration's censorship campaign, its case is "the most documented," and thus "worth laying... out plainly."
The FCC commissioner said that the campaign against Disney started shortly after it agreed to pay $15 million to settle a lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump, which signaled to the president and allies that "pressure works," while also telling other major media companies that "capitulation was an option."
And instead of getting the Trump administration to back off, Gomez explained, Disney's decision to cave only emboldened it to crack down further.
"You cannot buy this administration's favor," she wrote. "For the right price, you can only borrow it. And the price always goes up."
Since the settlement, Gomez continued, the administration has opened up investigations into Disney's diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, pressured the company to pull late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel off the air, and opened up an investigation into the daytime talk show "The View" after it hosted Democratic US Senate candidate James Talarico of Texas.
On top of all that, Gomez said, the FCC has demanded that eight ABC-owned local TV stations file early for renewal of their broadcast licenses, which she described as "the most egregious assault on the First Amendment" the agency has taken so far.
Gomez concluded her "blistering" letter by urging Disney to fight against administration efforts to censor it, and she said that both the law and the American public would be behind the company if it decides to take a stand.
"Your journalists do work that matters to millions of Americans across the country, and the viewers who rose up to defend Jimmy Kimmel are the same viewers who will stand up again if this FCC follows through with its threat," she wrote. "I am encouraged to see that Disney is choosing courage over capitulation. The fight ahead may not be easy, but the law, the facts, and the public are on your side. This is a fight worth having, and one that I am confident you will win."
Disney last week came out swinging against the Trump FCC over the agency's investigation into "The View," accusing the administration of trying to "upend decades of settled law and practice and chill critical protected speech, both with respect to ‘The View’ and more broadly.”
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Trump Says He's 'Seriously Considering Making Venezuela the 51st US State' as He Brags of Stealing Its Oil Wealth
"Trump's true priority, ahead of absolutely everything else, is to go down in history in big letters," said one journalist. "Remaking everything, no matter in which direction or with what consequences."
May 11, 2026
President Donald Trump said on Monday that he is considering trying to annex Venezuela and make it a US state in an imperialist effort to seize more of its oil wealth.
It's one of nearly half a dozen nations or territories Trump has threatened to use US military might to illegally conquer and add to the US during his term, including Greenland, Canada, Cuba, and Panama.
According to Fox News correspondent John Roberts, Trump said in a phone call that he was “seriously considering making Venezuela the 51st US state,” citing the Latin American nation's possession of tens of trillions of dollars worth of oil.
“They were miserable. Now they’re happy. It’s being well run,” Trump recently told Full Measure's Sharyl Attkisson. “The oil that’s coming out is enormous, the biggest in many years. And the Big Oil companies are going in with the biggest, most beautiful rigs you’ve ever seen.”
One poll from the Venezuelan firm Meganálisis in March found that while the public was initially happy to be rid of their autocratic president, Nicolás Maduro—who was abducted by US forces in January—the majority now feel that Trump's action had little to do with democracy or the well-being of the Venezuelan people and more to do with handing control of the country's nationalized oil reserves to American companies, which Trump stated as his primary objective after ousting Maduro.
Trump left Maduro's vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, in place as Venezuela's interim leader with the promise that she'd act as a pliant collaborator with the US, whom she allowed to declare control over Venezuela's oil resources "indefinitely" amid market transitions.
The environmental activist group Global Witness has estimated that over the next 10 years, as much as $150 billion in oil revenue that was expected to go to the Venezuelan treasury, which could have funded projects to develop the impoverished country, instead may flow into the coffers of foreign companies.
Trump has spoken about the idea of Venezuela becoming the 51st state before, including after the country defeated Italy in the World Baseball Classic in March, when he posted on Truth Social: “STATEHOOD, #51, ANYONE?”
Last month, during a discussion about his desire to "take" Iran's oil, Trump described his takeover of Venezuela as something akin to the resource-hungry imperial conquests of centuries past.
"I'm a businessman first," he told reporters during a press briefing. "We've taken hundreds of millions of barrels [of oil], hundreds of millions... and paid for that war many, many times over. You know the old days, 'to the winner belong the spoils.' And I said, 'Why don't we use that?' We haven't had that in this country probably in 100 years." He then went on to lament the US-led efforts to "rebuild" Germany after World War II.
While the US has lifted personal sanctions on Rodríguez and some sanctions on the Venezuelan oil and banking sectors, most of the sanctions that have contributed to the country's economic collapse remain in place. "Full unrestricted access to global capital markets has not been restored," explained Roger D. Harris from the Task Force on the Americas and the US Peace Council in Common Dreams last week.
Actually adding Venezuela as a US state would require approval from both Congress and Venezuela itself—and Trump does not appear to have the latter.
Issuing a rare rebuke of the US on Monday, Rodríguez responded that becoming the 51st state "would never have been considered" by Venezuela.
"If there is one thing we Venezuelan men and women have, it is that we love our independence process, we love our heroes and heroines of independence," the interim leader said.
Though wars of conquest are expressly forbidden under international law, it's not clear what leverage Rodríguez would have to resist if Trump attempted to make good on his goal of expanding US territory.
Argemino Barro, a Spanish political journalist and author, said the possibility that he's serious can't be dismissed.
"Yes, of course, we can dismiss it as provocation or delusion, say that it's impracticable for XYZ reasons, etc. But this kind of comment is a window into the mindset of a man who fabricates his own reality, and not only that, but imposes it on others," Barro said. "Trump wants to build the world's largest triumphal arch right in the middle of Washington, overshadowing the Lincoln Memorial; he wants his face on coins and passports; his name appears on institutions, one airport. Annexing Venezuela, in his mind, fits 100%."
"I think Trump's true priority, ahead of absolutely everything else, is to go down in history in big letters. To enter the league of Alexander the Great, Jesus Christ, and Genghis Khan," he added. "Remaking everything, no matter in which direction or with what consequences."
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