May, 20 2021, 12:00am EDT
Stop The Money Pipeline Coalition Issues Statement Ahead of Biden's Executive Order on Climate-Related Financial Risk
Coalition representing more than 160 groups expects Executive Order to ensure all U.S. financial institutions are firmly on a path to real zero greenhouse gas emissions before COP26 in November.
WASHINGTON
President Biden is expected to issue a new broad-ranging Executive Order (EO) on Thursday titled "Climate-Related Financial Risk," that among other items, directs top administration officials to develop a government-wide strategy to mitigate climate-related financial risks to public and private financial assets.
According to a previous report of the draft, officials would have 180 days to deliver the report to the President. Notably, the most important international climate talks since the Paris Agreement will begin at the United Nations climate change conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland on November 1, 2021. If this timeline remains in the final EO, the Administration's report would likely be released after the COP26 Glasgow climate talks.
The outcomes of COP26--including public and private sector commitments--will go a long way to determining our ability to combat the climate crisis. U.S. banks, insurance companies, and asset managers are the world's largest financiers of the corporations driving climate chaos. In the 5 years since the Paris Agreement, the four largest U.S. banks were the world's top four funders of fossil fuels, collectively financing $976 billion, which comprised more than 25% of the total fossil fuel funding from the world's 60 biggest banks.
The Stop the Money Pipeline coalition has maintained that President Biden must ensure that all U.S. financial institutions are firmly on a path to real zero greenhouse gas emissions before COP26. On Tuesday, the International Energy Association published a roadmap for the world to keep global warming below 1.5degC. One of the more striking findings of the report affirmed, "There is no need for investment in new fossil fuel supply in our net zero pathway."
President Biden won the 2020 presidential election with the strongest climate mandate in history. Fulfilling that mandate requires urgent action from his administration to stop supporting new fossil fuel projects and to phase-out public and private financing of fossil fuels. For that that reason, Stop the Money Pipeline Coalition will be looking for the Executive Order to confirm that:
- Addressing climate change is a central part of financial regulators' missions. This includes ensuring that the Financial Stability Oversight Council and its member agencies begin work right away on climate plans, and that they are implementing the plans by COP 26;
- Financial regulators should immediately start collecting the data and doing the analysis necessary to integrate the climate crisis fully into financial regulation, and empower investors to invest their values;
- Financial regulators should restrict and phase out finance for fossil fuels and deforestation; and
- The Treasury (and the Federal Reserve) should stop using emergency rescue and recovery programs to subsidize fossil fuels and deforestation. Instead, they should invest in a productive, just, clean recovery.
Details of these demands can be found at stopthemoneypipeline.com/federal-policy. The coalition has also issued the following set of general demands for the Biden Administration in advance of the Glasgow climate talks in November.
Moira Birss, Climate and Finance Director, Amazon Watch
"It's great that the Biden administration is catching up with frontline communities, climate advocates and even the IEA in recognizing that investments in the industries causing climate change are a major loss for pocketbooks and the planet. But plans to make plans in no way matches the urgency of the climate crisis; we need action from regulators now to stop the money pipeline to climate chaos."
Osprey Orielle Lake, Executive Director, Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN): "The Biden Administration has a responsibility to ensure financial institutions align with the Paris Agreement, respect human rights, and invest in a just and sustainable future for our communities and our planet. Financial institutions must be held accountable for their role in financing the destruction of the climate, the violation of human and Indigenous rights, deadly pollution especially in communities of color, and increased rates of violence toward Indigenous women associated with fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure. With the escalation of the climate crisis, business as usual must not and cannot continue, we need bold regulation now. "
Erika Thi Patterson, Climate and Environmental Justice Campaign Director, Action Center on Race and the Economy
"The fossil fuel industry and Wall Street have been extracting from Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities for decades and driving our climate crisis off a cliff. From Day 1, President Biden should have used his full executive authority to avert further climate devastation and minimize harm to frontline communities. Yet, over 100 days into his presidency and we're still hearing about plans to release plans. This pace fails to match the urgency of our crisis -- we need immediate, bold executive action to stop Wall Street from financing climate catastrophe."
Jason Opena Disterhoft, Climate and Energy Senior Campaigner, Rainforest Action Network:
"Wall Street includes the biggest set of fossil and deforestation bankers, insurers and investors in the world. It's a central part of the U.S. carbon footprint, and the Biden administration must put it firmly on the path to zeroing out its climate impact. We'll be judging President Biden's executive order against that benchmark."
Tracey Lewis, 350.org Senior Climate Finance Policy Analyst:
"This week's IEA report underlined the writing that's been on the wall: fossil fuels are an existential risk to our climate, communities, and economy. Today's executive order must mobilize the entire finance sector to build back fossil free and end fossil fuel finance. Instead of using public money to bail-out fossil fuel corporations, the Federal Reserve must act on its key role in tackling the climate crisis, including Biden appointing a real climate leader to reimagine the Fed in its role as the Peoples' Bank."
Matt Remle (Lakota) Co-Founder Mazaska Talks:
"I will believe that the Biden Administration is serious in their commitment to address the climate crisis when the flow of oil stops in the illegally built, illegally operating, and treaty rights violating Dakota Access pipeline. I will believe them when construction stops on the Line 3 and TransMountain pipeline. Until then words are just words."
The Stop the Money Pipeline coalition is over 160 organizations strong holding the financial backers of climate chaos accountable.
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In what Arizona's attorney general slammed as an "unacceptable and outrageous" act of "unchecked aggression," a federal immigration officer fired pepper spray toward recently sworn-in Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva during a Friday raid on a Tucson restaurant.
Grijalva (D-Ariz.) wrote on social media that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers "just conducted a raid by Taco Giro in Tucson—a small mom-and-pop restaurant that has served our community for years."
"When I presented myself as a member of Congress asking for more information, I was pushed aside and pepper sprayed," she added.
Grijalva said in a video uploaded to the post that she was "sprayed in the face by a very aggressive agent, pushed around by others, when I literally was not being aggressive, I was asking for clarification, which is my right as a member of Congress."
The video shows Grijalva among a group of protesters who verbally confronted federal agents over the raid. Following an order to "clear," an agent is seen firing what appears to be a pepper ball at the ground very near the congresswoman's feet. Video footage also shows agents deploying gas against the crowd.
"They're targeting small mom-and-pop businesses that don't have the financial resources to fight back," Grijalva told reporters after the incident. "They're targeting small businesses and people that are helping in our communities in order to try to fill the quota that [President Donald] Trump has given them."
Mocking the incident on social media, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin contended that Grijalva "wasn’t pepper sprayed."
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McLaughlin provided no further details regarding the nature of those injuries.
Democrats in Arizona and beyond condemned Friday's incident, with US Sen. Ruben Gallego writing on social media that Grijalva "was doing her job, standing up for her community."
"Pepper spraying a sitting member of Congress is disgraceful, unacceptable, and absolutely not what we voted for," he added. "Period."
Democratic Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said on social media: "This is unacceptable and outrageous. Enforcing the rule of law does not mean pepper spraying a member of Congress for simply asking questions. Effective law enforcement requires restraint and accountability, not unchecked aggression."
Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) also weighed in on social media, calling the incident "outrageous."
"Rep. Grijalva was completely within her rights to stand up for her constituents," she added. "ICE is completely lawless."
Friday's incident follows federal agents' violent removal of Sen. Alexa Padilla (D-Calif.) from a June press conference held by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Congresswoman LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) was federally indicted in June for allegedly “forcibly impeding and interfering with federal officers" during an oversight visit at a privately operated migrant detention center in Newark, New Jersey and subsequent confrontation with ICE agents outside of the lockup in which US Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman and Rob Menendez, both New Jersey Democrats, were also involved.
Violent assaults by federal agents on suspected undocumented immigrants—including US citizens—protesters, journalists, and others are a regular occurrence amid the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign.
"If federal agents are brazen enough to fire pellets directly at a member of Congress, imagine how they behave when encountering defenseless members of our community," Grijalva said late Friday on social media. "It’s time for Congress to rein in this rogue agency NOW."
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"A wealth tax is a big tent policy unless the only people you care about are billionaires," said one progressive organizer.
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom, considered by some to be the frontrunner to be the next Democratic presidential nominee, said during a panel on Wednesday that he wants his party to be a “big tent” that welcomes large numbers of people into the fold. But he’s “adamantly against” one of the most popular proposals Democrats have to offer: a wealth tax.
In October, progressive economists Emmanuel Saez and Robert Reich joined forces with one of California's most powerful unions, the Service Employees International Union's (SEIU) United Healthcare Workers West, to propose that California put the nation’s first-ever wealth tax on the ballot in November 2026.
They described the measure as an "emergency billionaires tax" aimed at recouping the tens of billions of dollars that will be stripped from California's 15 million Medicaid recipients over the next five years, after Republicans enacted historic cuts to the program in July with President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which dramatically reduced taxes for the wealthiest Americans.
Among those beneficiaries were the approximately 200 billionaires living in California, whose average annual income, Saez pointed out, has risen by 7.5% per year, compared with 1.5% for median-income residents.
Under the proposal, they would pay a one-time 5% tax on their total net worth, which is estimated to raise $100 billion. The vast majority of the funds, about 90%, would be used to restore Medicaid funding, while the rest would go towards funding K-12 education, which the GOP has also slashed.
The proposal in California has strong support from unions and healthcare groups. But Newsom has called it “bad policy” and “another attempt to grab money for special purposes.”
Meanwhile, several of his longtime consultants, including Dan Newman and Brian Brokaw, have launched a campaign alongside “business and tech leaders” to kill the measure, which they’ve dubbed “Stop the Squeeze." They've issued familiar warnings that pinching the wealthy too hard will drive them from the state, along with the critical tax base they provide.
At Wednesday's New York Times DealBook Summit, Andrew Ross Sorkin asked Newsom about his opposition to the wealth tax idea, comparing it to a proposal by recent New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who pledged to increase the income taxes of New Yorkers who earn more than $1 million per year by 2% in order to fund his city-wide free buses, universal childcare, and city-owned grocery store programs.
Mamdani's proposal was met with a litany of similar warnings from Big Apple bigwigs who threatened to flee the city and others around the country who said they'd never move in.
But as Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein explained in October for the American Prospect: "The evidence for this is thin: mostly memes shared by tech and finance people... Research shows that the truth of the matter is closer to the opposite. Wealthy individuals and their income move at lower rates than other income brackets, even in response to an increase of personal income tax." Many of those who sulked about Mamdani's victory have notably begun making amends with the incoming mayor.
Moreover, the comparison between Mamdani's plan and the one proposed in California is faulty to begin with. As Harold Meyerson explained, also for the Prospect: "It is a one-time-only tax, to be levied exclusively on billionaires’ current (i.e., 2025) net worth. Even if they move to Tasmania, they will still be liable for 5% of this year’s net worth."
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Nevertheless, Sorkin framed Newsom as being in an existential battle of ideas with Mamdani, asking how the two could both represent the Democratic Party when they are so "diametrically opposed."
"Well, I want to be a big-tent party," Newsom replied. "It's about addition, not subtraction."
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Polling is scarce so far on the likelihood of such a measure passing in California. But nationally, polls suggest that the vast majority of Democrats fall on the "re-distribution" side of Newsom's "dialectic." In fact, the majority of all Americans do, regardless of party affiliation.
Last year, Inequality.org examined 55 national and state polls about a number of different taxation policies and found:
A billionaire income tax garnered the most support across party identification. On average, two out of three (67%) of Americans supported the tax including 84% of Democrats, 64% of Independents, and 51% of Republicans.
In national polls, a wealth tax had similarly high levels of support. More than three out of five Americans supported the tax including 78% of Democrats, 62% of Independents, and 51% of Republicans.
That sentiment only seems to have grown since the return of President Donald Trump. An Economist/YouGov poll released in early November found that 72% of Americans said that taxes on billionaires should be raised—including 95% of Democrats, 75% of independents, and 48% of Republicans. Across the board, just 15% said they should not be raised.
Support remains high when the proposal is more specific as well. On the eve of Mamdani's election, despitre months of fearmongering, 64% of New Yorkers said they backed his proposal, including a slight plurality of self-identified conservatives, according to a Siena College poll.
Many observers were perplexed by how Newsom proposes to maintain a “big tent” while opposing policies supported by most of the people inside it.
"A wealth tax is a big tent policy unless the only people you care about are billionaires," wrote Jonathan Cohn, the political director for Progressive Mass, a grassroots organization in Massachusetts, on social media.
"Gavin Newsom—estimated net worth between $20 and $30 million—says he's opposed to a billionaire wealth tax. Color me shocked," wrote the Columbia University lecturer Anthony Zenkus. "Democrats holding him up as a potential savior for 2028 is a clear example of not reading the room."
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"That the Supreme Court is actually entertaining Trump’s unconstitutional attack on birthright citizenship is the clearest example yet that the Roberts Court is broken beyond repair," said one critic.
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The United States Supreme Court on Friday agreed to decide whether US President Donald Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship—as guaranteed under the 14th Amendment for more than 150 years—is constitutional.
Next spring, the justices will hear oral arguments in Trump's appeal of a lower court ruling that struck down parts of an executive order—titled Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship—signed on the first day of the president's second term. Under the directive, which has not taken effect due to legal challenges, people born in the United States would not be automatically entitled to US citizenship if their parents are in the country temporarily or without legal authorization.
Enacted in 1868, the 14th Amendment affirms that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."
While the Trump administration argues that the 14th Amendment was adopted to grant US citizenship to freed slaves, not travelers or undocumented immigrants, two key Supreme Court cases have affirmed birthright citizenship under the Constitution—United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) and Afroyim v. Rusk (1967).
Here is the question presented. It's a relatively clean vehicle for the Supreme Court to finally decide whether it is lawful for the president to deny birthright citizenship to the children of immigrants. www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25...
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— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) December 5, 2025 at 10:55 AM
Several district court judges have issued universal preliminary injunctions to block Trump's order. However, the Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority found in June that “universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts."
In July, a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit unanimously ruled that executive order is an unconstitutional violation of the plain language of the 14th Amendment. In total, four federal courts and two appellate courts have blocked Trump's order.
“No president can change the 14th Amendment’s fundamental promise of citizenship,” Cecillia Wang, national legal director at the ACLU—which is leading the nationwide class action challenge to Trump's order—said in a statement Friday. “We look forward to putting this issue to rest once and for all in the Supreme Court this term.”
Brett Edkins, managing director of policy and political affairs at the advocacy group Stand Up America, was among those who suggested that the high court justices should have refused to hear the case given the long-settled precedent regarding the 14th Amendment.
“This case is a right-wing fantasy, full stop. That the Supreme Court is actually entertaining Trump’s unconstitutional attack on birthright citizenship is the clearest example yet that the Roberts Court is broken beyond repair," Edkins continued, referring to Chief Justice John Roberts.
"Even if the court ultimately rules against Trump, in a laughable display of its supposed independence, the fact that fringe attacks on our most basic rights as citizens are being seriously considered is outrageous and alarming," he added.
Aarti Kohli, executive director of the Asian Law Caucus, said that “it’s deeply troubling that we must waste precious judicial resources relitigating what has been settled constitutional law for over a century," adding that "every federal judge who has considered this executive order has found it unconstitutional."
Tianna Mays, legal director for Democracy Defenders Fund, asserted, “The attack on the fundamental right of birthright citizenship is an attack on the 14th Amendment and our Constitution."
"We are confident the court will affirm this basic right, which has stood for over a century," Mays added. "Millions of families across the country deserve and require that clarity and stability.”
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