August, 19 2020, 12:00am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Ryan Schleeter, Senior Communications Specialist, Greenpeace USA: ryan.schleeter@greenpeace.org
Greenpeace Gives Democratic Party Climate Platform a 'C+' on Climate
"This platform is a step backwards, and we deserve better."
WASHINGTON
This week at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), party delegates will adopt the final 2020 Democratic platform. Greenpeace has reviewed the full platform and given it a grade of C+ (52.5/100), with decent marks for advancing renewable energy and environmental justice, but critical policy gaps in addressing the power of the fossil fuel industry and no mention of the Green New Deal.
Greenpeace USA Climate Campaigner Charlie Jiang said:
"The Democrats have an opportunity to galvanize millions of young voters with an ambitious, visionary climate platform, but they're making a mess of it. We thought the party that claims it wants to lead our country into the future had moved beyond a middle of the road approach to the climate crisis. This platform is a step backwards, and we deserve better. If we use this moment to divest from systems of exploitation and extraction -- like police and fossil fuels -- and invest in a Green New Deal for workers, families, and communities, we have the chance to navigate out of multiple crises at once.
"We know the Republicans have no plan. Even worse, Trump, Mitch McConnell, and the rest of them continue to traffic in denial and misinformation while they orchestrate a bailout for oil and gas CEOs. But that doesn't mean the Democrats can take their feet off the gas. We expect action at the scale that science and justice demand."
The C+ grade is significantly lower than Greenpeace's scores for both Joe Biden (B+, 75.5/100) and running mate Kamala Harris (B+, 77/100), both of whom have room to improve themselves. Biden and Harris have taken much more aggressive stances towards the fossil fuel industry, including strong support for ending fossil fuel subsidies, a common-sense policy that was curiously stricken from the Democratic Party Platform Committee report at the eleventh hour.
Methodology
To evaluate the platform, Greenpeace used the same methodology applied to presidential candidates' climate plans for the climate 2020 scorecard. This methodology is based on two broad criteria. First, lawmakers must end the fossil fuel era by enacting policies to halt oil, gas, and coal expansion, phase out existing production, and center fossil fuel workers and climate-impacted communities in the transition to a renewable energy economy. Second, our elected officials must advance a Green New Deal, including mobilizing towards 100 percent renewable energy for all, creating millions of family-sustaining, union jobs, and securing a better future for communities that have borne the brunt of fossil fuel industry exploitation.
The 2020 Democratic Party platform earned 21/50 in the fossil fuel phase-out category and 31.5/50 in the 100 percent renewable energy category.
Greenpeace is a global, independent campaigning organization that uses peaceful protest and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future.
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'Growth Has Simply Vanished': Under Trump, US Economy Shrinks for First Time Since 2022
"Our economy is crumbling under President Trump's mismanagement," said the head of one progressive group.
Apr 30, 2025
The United States economy decelerated during the first quarter of 2025, as businesses braced for sweeping tariffs from U.S. President Donald Trump, according to a Wednesday "advance estimate" from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis—marking the first contraction of the country's real gross domestic product since 2022.
Real GDP declined at an annual rate of 0.3% in January, February, and March of 2025, according to the report. That headline figure is a dramatic turn around from the final quarter of 2024, when real GDP increased 2.4%.
According to the report, "the decrease in real GDP in the first quarter primarily reflected an increase in imports... and a decrease in government spending." When calculating GDP, imports are subtracted, meaning more imports will yield a lower number.
A number of outlets have cautioned that the 0.3% contraction figure is somewhat misleading. Axiospointed to solid business investment and consumer spending data in the report as evidence "signaling at least some underlying momentum in the economy—at least once volatile measures like trade are stripped out." The New York Timesoffered similar analysis.
But even with this caveat, the economic picture is less than rosy. "Maybe some of this negativity is due to a rush to bring in imports before the tariffs go up, but there is simply no way for policy advisors to sugar-coat this. Growth has simply vanished," said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at Fwdbonds.
Several observers were quick to point the finger at the Trump administration.
"Our economy is crumbling under President Trump's mismanagement, and today's falling GDP data confirms our slide toward a recession," said Lindsay Owens, the executive director of the progressive group Groundwork Collaborative. "Trump is creating the conditions for a particularly brutal recession."
"It turns out that when you launch a trade war with blanket tariffs, layoff federal workers en masse, cancel federal contracts, and reduce skilled immigration, you will have negative GDP growth," wrote Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) on X.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said that "Trump's chaos is clearly and significantly raising the risk of a recession, and the economic warning lights are all flashing red."
In response to the release, markets slipped on Wednesday.
Trump, for his part, took to his social media site Truth Social on Wednesday to say that "This is Biden's Stock Market, not Trump's." He added that "tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers … This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other."
Economists say they think Wednesday's numbers are related to tariffs. According to reporting from the Times, the main takeaway from the report is that consumers and businesses started to modify their behavior even prior to Trumps "Liberation Day" tariffs on April 2, which rattled markets.
A surge in the trade deficit edged GDP into negative territory, said Dean Baker, senior economist for the left-leaning economic think tank the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in a statement on Wednesday. "This was due to massive stockpiling of inventories and purchases of durable goods in anticipation of tariffs."
"The negative GDP number could also mean the end of the big upswing in productivity growth under Biden. This is bad news for both real wage growth and inflation," continued Baker.
"No surprise that GDP took a hit in the first quarter, mainly because the balance of trade blew up as companies imported goods like crazy to front-run tariffs. The more telling number for the future of the expansion was consumer spending, and it grew, but at a relatively weak pace," said Robert Frick, corporate economist with Navy Federal Credit Union, according to CNBC.
Wednesday's report also registered increased inflation. The personal consumption expenditures price index, the Federal Reserve's favored inflation gauge, registered a 3.6% gain for Q1, up from 2.4% in the final quarter of last year.
The numbers from the Bureau of Economic Analysis come a day after reports of consumer confidence in April dipping to lows not seen since early in the COVID-19 pandemic.
There is still major economic data set to be released this week. On Friday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its jobs report for the month of April.
This article was updated with a comment from Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.).
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'Democratic Freedoms' Under Threat as Migrants Charged for Entering Trump Militarized Border Zone
"As presidential overreaches pile up, they underscore the urgent need for Congress and the courts to reassert their roles as checks on executive authority," said two experts at the Brennan Center for Justice.
Apr 30, 2025
At least 28 migrants who crossed into the U.S. over the southern border could face up to a year in detention and $100,000 in fines after being charged Monday not only with "illegal entry" but also with violating "security regulations"—the result of U.S. President Donald Trump's transformation of the border into a 170-mile-long "National Defense Area."
As Common Dreamsreported last month, the White House has pushed to create a "buffer zone" patrolled by U.S. troops along a stretch of the southern border in New Mexico, with soldiers empowered to immediately detain anyone who "trespasses" in the 60-foot-wide area before handing them over to Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
The Washington Postreported that the migrants were apprehended on a route that has been used for years by people entering the U.S., and were accused in court filings of violating "the order issued on April 18, 2025, by the U.S. Army Garrison Fort Huachuca military commander designating the New Mexico National Defense Areas, also known as the Roosevelt Reservation, as both a restricted area and a controlled area under Army Regulation 190-13."
Carlos Ibarra, a court-appointed attorney for the migrants facing charges, told the Post that the government was "piling on" by adding the security violation charge, and said that "if these folks had $100,000, they wouldn't be coming over here."
The arrests came after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made an appearance at the border last week, saying in a video posted on the Pentagon's social media accounts, "This may as well be a military base."
"Any illegal attempting to enter that zone is entering a military base," he said. "You add up the charges of what you can be charged with, misdemeanors and felonies, you could be looking up to 10 years in prison when prosecuted."
Ordinarily people who are charged for crossing the border without authorization have faced a potential six-month jail term and up to $5,000 in fines.
The area was turned into a de facto military base when Trump signed an executive order earlier this month giving the Pentagon jurisdiction over the Roosevelt Reservation, saying in a memo that the southern border "is under attack from a variety of threats" and requires a more direct security role for the U.S. military.
According to the Migration Policy Institute, apprehensions of migrants by U.S. Border Patrol sank to just 7,000 in March, the fewest in at least 25 years.
The memo creating a military installation at the border was designed to give federal troops a "legitimate military reason" to apprehend, search, and detain troops without violating the Posse Comitatus Act and without Trump having to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807, the Brennan Center for Justice explained in a blog post on Monday.
The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits federal armed forces from engaging in civilian law enforcement without the approval of Congress. The Insurrection Act provides an exception to that law, as does a loophole in the Posse Comitatus Act called the "military purpose doctrine." Trump's advisers have so far recommended against invoking the Insurrection Act, which authorizes the president to deploy military forces inside the United States to enforce the law in certain situations.
Trump's memo allowing the military to "act as a de facto border police force," wrote Elizabeth Goitein and Joseph Nunn at the Brennan Center, "could have alarming implications for democratic freedoms."
"It continues a pattern of the president stretching his emergency powers past their limits to usurp the role of Congress and bypass legal rights," they wrote. "He has misused a law meant to address economic emergencies to set tariffs on every country in the world. He declared a fake 'energy emergency' to promote fossil fuel production. And he dusted off a centuries-old wartime authority to deport Venezuelan immigrants, without due process, to a Salvadoran prison notorious for human rights violations."
"As presidential overreaches pile up, they underscore the urgent need for Congress and the courts to reassert their roles as checks on executive authority," wrote Goitein and Nunn.
Along with concerns about the legality of Trump's move, Goitein and Nunn noted that troops "are trained to fight and destroy an enemy; they're generally not trained for domestic law enforcement." Empowering them to engage with civilians now could make it easier for the administration to "justify uses of the military in the U.S. interior in the future."
"Asking them to do law enforcement's job creates risks to migrants, U.S. citizens who may inadvertently trespass on federal lands at the border, and the soldiers themselves," they wrote.
Rebecca Sheff, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of New Mexico, wrote last week that Trump's creation of a military installation on public border land "represents a dangerous erosion of the constitutional principle that the military should not be policing civilians."
"By authorizing service members to detain, search, and conduct 'crowd control,' these new authorities undermine our state's values of dignity, respect, and community," said Sheff. "We don't want militarized zones where border residents—including U.S. citizens—face potential prosecution simply for being in the wrong place. This isn't how we want to be in relation with our neighbors. This dangerous expansion of military authorities threatens both our civil liberties and the cultural fabric that makes our borderlands unique."
Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU National Security Project, also described potential impacts on U.S. citizens who live in border areas.
In addition to endangering migrants who cross the border, Shamsi wrote, Trump's actions "are worsening the conditions under which civilian border communities live."
"Our southern border is home to approximately 19 million people, in addition to the regular business and trade commuters who come across the border every day," wrote Shamsi. "The new policy has serious implications for border residents living under this expanded militarized zone, which includes cities like San Diego, California; Nogales, Arizona; El Paso, Texas and other heavily populated, thriving communities. People in these areas could now face federal prosecution for trespassing if they unintentionally walk or drive onto a designated 'national defense area.'"
Shamsi warned that while Trump has not yet invoked the Insurrection Act, "his administration continues to invest in the theater of war," and called on Congress "to insist on oversight for these expanded actions... and to call for safeguards and transparency to protect border residents from escalating military control over their daily lives."
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Judge Releases Mohsen Mahdawi, Columbia Student Trump Targeted for Deportation
"I am saying it clear and loud," declared Mahdawi. "To President Trump and his Cabinet: I am not afraid of you."
Apr 30, 2025
This is a breaking story… Please check back for possible updates...
Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student targeted for deportation by the Trump administration because he participated in anti-genocide protests at Columbia University, was released on bail Wednesday following an order from Vermont-based U.S. District Judge Geoffrey Crawford.
Politicoreported that upon his release, Mahdawi shared a message for President Donald Trump outside the courthouse.
"I am saying it clear and loud," Mahdawi declared. "To President Trump and his Cabinet: I am not afraid of you."
When Mahdawi, a green-card holder, arrived at a Colchester, Vermont immigration office to complete the process of becoming a U.S. citizen earlier this month, he was arrested by masked, hooded federal agents and put in an unmarked vehicle.
Mahdawi has been held at the Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans since U.S. District Judge William Sessions III blocked the Trump administration's attempt to send him to a detention facility in Louisiana, like other student organizers.
His legal team—including attorneys with the ACLU and Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR)—is arguing in court that Mahdawi's detention violates his constitutional rights, including free speech and due process.
"Nobody should fear detention for exercising their rights under the First Amendment. We are delighted that the court recognized that Mohsen is not a flight risk and that he should be released while his case proceeds," said Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, in a Wednesday statement.
CLEAR staff attorney Shezza Abboushi Dallal also welcomed the development: "The court's order to free Mohsen today is a victory for Mohsen, in his just pursuit of continued advocacy for Palestinian lives, and it is a victory for all people in this country invested in their ability to dissent and speak and protest for causes they are morally drawn to. We will continue our legal battle for Mohsen until his constitutional rights are fully vindicated."
After confirming Mahdawi's release, Congresswoman Becca Balint (D-Vt.) said on social media that she was "so relieved," adding: "This is a huge win but the fight is far from over. It's going to take all of us to demand due process for everyone."
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