June, 08 2021, 09:14am EDT
We Cannot Accept Infrastructure Without Climate at the Core
Amid discourse on the role of climate in the infrastructure package and Biden's final meetings with Senator Capito, Varshini Prakash, Executive Director for Sunrise Movement, released the following statement:
"Biden will either pass a historic infrastructure package with climate at its core, or he will have to look us in the eyes and tell us why he failed to do everything possible to stop the climate crisis while he had the power to do so. Anything less than a robust jobs and climate package is a death sentence for our generation.
WASHINGTON
Amid discourse on the role of climate in the infrastructure package and Biden's final meetings with Senator Capito, Varshini Prakash, Executive Director for Sunrise Movement, released the following statement:
"Biden will either pass a historic infrastructure package with climate at its core, or he will have to look us in the eyes and tell us why he failed to do everything possible to stop the climate crisis while he had the power to do so. Anything less than a robust jobs and climate package is a death sentence for our generation.
"On Friday, Sunrise came to DC and blockaded the White House to demand Biden stop compromising with the GOP. That night, he rejected their offer. But Biden is still on the cusp of selling out our generation to the Republican Party. Whether it's Capito or Romney, it should come as no surprise that the GOP wants to strip climate from the infrastructure package because he is literally working with a party of climate deniers. We can't wait for them to come around to the science on this and we will continue to fight until he delivers on the climate mandate he promised us.
"This moment demands an infrastructure package that will stop climate change and create millions of good jobs in the process. And the truth is Biden's proposed infrastructure package is already a compromise to that end. Our demands must be met. We will continue to put our bodies on the line. We will bring thousands of people to his doorstep. And whether Biden heeds our demands and meets with us in the White House or sees us on the streets of Pennsylvania Avenue, we will hold him accountable."
This comes as NOAA reports global carbon dioxide emissions have reached a devastating and irreversible record high, and just days after Sunrise Movement staged the first escalated action on Biden at the White House since he entered the presidency. Sunrise is currently planning a much larger protest on June 28th in DC.
The demands delivered to Biden on Friday include:
No Compromise, No Excuses. Democrats must take their power seriously and stop negotiating with a GOP who is not serious about climate action or delivering jobs for the American people.
Meet with the people who elected you. We demand that Biden sets up a meeting with Varshini Prakash and other youth organizers to hear our demands on infrastructure and climate action. Negotiate with us, not the GOP.
Pass the boldest jobs and climate package with a fully funded Civilian Climate Corps. Coming out of a global pandemic where we are facing massive unemployment and the constant threat of the climate crisis, we need an infrastructure package that includes a CCC that would put over 1.5 million Americans to work in good paying jobs while combating climate change and building a sustainable future for our generation.
Sunrise Movement is a movement to stop climate change and create millions of good jobs in the process.
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Blinken Hasn't Ended Aid for Israeli Military Units Tied to Killings, Rapes
"Blinken continues a very long American tradition of very selective enforcement of human rights laws," said one critic.
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Amid global condemnation of Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip and the Biden administration's complicity, ProPublicarevealed Wednesday that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has for months ignored staff recommendations to cut off American aid to Israeli military and police units accused of human rights violations including killings and rapes.
"The incidents under review mostly took place in the West Bank and occurred before Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel," which was the catalyst for the current Israeli escalation in Gaza, reported ProPublica's Brett Murphy. "They include reports of extrajudicial killings by the Israeli Border Police; an incident in which a battalion gagged, handcuffed, and left an elderly Palestinian American man for dead; and an allegation that interrogators tortured and raped a teenager who had been accused of throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails."
Murphy obtained government documents and emails and spoke with current and former U.S. State Department officials, who said the recommendations from the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum—named for former Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who authored laws restricting aid to human rights abuses—were sent to Blinken in December and "they've been sitting in his briefcase since then."
While U.S. President Joe Biden has gradually increased his criticism of Israeli forces killing civilians in Gaza, "multiple State Department officials who have worked on Israeli relations said that Blinken's inaction has undermined Biden's public criticism, sending a message to the Israelis that the administration was not willing to take serious steps," Murphy wrote.
The Israeli government did not respond to the reporter's request for comment, but a U.S. State Department spokesperson did. "This process is one that demands a careful and full review," the American representative said, "and the department undergoes a fact-specific investigation applying the same standards and procedures regardless of the country in question."
Global critics have long accused the U.S. government of giving Israel special treatment while Israeli officials and troops subject Palestinians to apartheid, ethnic cleansing, occupation, settler colonization, and now "plausibly" genocide, according to the International Court of Justice. Since October, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have killed at least 33,970 people in Gaza.
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Democracy for the Arab World Now "submitted Leahy sanctions requests for two of the Israeli units that Antony Blinken has putzed and punted on, in breach of U.S. law, despite clear evidence of despicable abuses—[including] torture, executions, and even murder of an American," according to executive director Sarah Leah Whitson. "But Antony Blinken insists on special privileges and exemptions for Israel, refusing to hold it accountable, U.S. law be damned."
@StateDept In 2023, we documented Israel counter-terrorism YAMAM unit\u2019s abuses, including two extrajudicial killings & two indiscriminate and reckless killings, including of a child in Jenin in March 2023, constituting gross violations of human rights under Leahy Law & war crimes under Rome\u2026— (@)
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Human rights attorney Qasim Rashid pointed out that in contrast with how the Biden administration has treated Israel, the U.S. government pulled funding from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East—as Palestinians in Gaza starve to death—over the "mere allegation" that a small number of staff were involved with Hamas.
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Another State Department official, Annelle Sheline, stepped down late last month as a foreign affairs officer at the Office of Near Eastern Affairs in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. She said that with the U.S. government continuing to arm Israel as it devastates Gaza, "trying to advocate for human rights just became impossible."
Sheline's resignation came just days after the Biden administration accepted Israeli government assurances that its use of U.S.-supplied weapons complies with international law—which human rights advocates and officials worldwide, including some congressional Democrats, have challenged over the past few weeks.
Over two dozen Democrats wrote Wednesday to Blinken and two other top officials that "we remain concerned by the stark differences and gaps in the statements being made by the State Department and White House on how Israel has not been found to be in violation of international humanitarian law, either when it comes to the conduct of the war or when it comes to the provision of humanitarian assistance, which are contradictory to those made by prominent experts and global institutions."
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Trump promised to make the payroll tax cut permanent, and as Reutersreported late Wednesday, the former president is discussing the proposal with economic advisers including Fox News host and former National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow and right-wing commentator Stephen Moore.
The former president is weighing cuts to Social Security's revenue stream even as Republicans complain that the popular program is unaffordable and push to raise the retirement age to delay Americans' use of the funds.
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Take Back the Court, Revolving Door Project, and True North Research published the database at SupremeTransparency.org, which "shines a spotlight on the complex web connecting justices to powerbrokers and the organizations that those powerbrokers fund, lead, and are otherwise linked to."
The watchdogs found that nearly 1 in 7 amicus briefs filed during the 2023-24 Supreme Court term were lodged by at least one powerbroker-affiliated organization. This affects 32 different cases before the court.
"The current U.S. Supreme Court has gone rogue."
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In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, groups funded by billionaire industrialist Charles Koch want to scupper the Chevron deference, a 40-year precedent under which judges defer to the legal interpretations of federal agencies if Congress has not passed any laws on an issue. Powerbroker-affiliated organizations have filed more than one-third of the amicus briefs seeking to overturn the Chevron doctrine.
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According to SupremeTransparency.org:
The current U.S. Supreme Court has gone rogue. The right-wing justices that make up the court's supermajority frequently toy with precedent and the rule of law to issue opinions that not only defy the will of a majority of Americans, but also rewrite constitutional principles, overturn widely respected legal precedents, and gut longstanding rules that protect the public interest.
In just the 2021 and 2022 Supreme Court terms alone, the court overturned Roe v. Wadeafter 49 years; gutted both the decades-old Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act; overturned a 100+ year old gun safety law; eroded the National Labor Relations Act (adopted as part of New Deal reforms to protect workers); broke with their own procedures regarding standing to sue in order to block student debt relief; and reversed decades of precedent to end the decadeslong practice of race-conscious college admissions policies that promoted diversity and redressed discrimination. But this radically reactionary court and its radically reactionary justices aren't acting alone.
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Last year, the Supreme Court adopted a Code of Conduct that contained few new rules, no enforcement mechanism, and was widely panned as a toothless public relations stunt. Bolder proposals for reforming the high court include term limits and increasing the number of justices.
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