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Indigenous, climate justice, and racial justice advocates are planning to sit-in at the entrances to the White House on Wednesday to demand that President Biden stop fossil fuel projects like the Line 3 pipeline and put climate justice at the heart of his infrastructure plans.
Visuals will include a 100-ft black "pipeline" snake, giant models of oil derricks and wind turbines, large banners, and more.
Joining the protest will be representatives from across the country who are being harmed every day by the President's inaction on fossil fuels.
Over a hundred people are expected to join the protest and risk arrest. The protest is the second major climate demonstration at the White House this week.
Who: The demonstration is being led by the Indigenous Environmental Network and Arm-in-Arm, a national movement for climate justice. Participants will include leaders of frontline fossil fuel fights from across the country, including the controversial Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota, the Mountain Valley Pipeline in Virginia, oil drilling in Alaska, and more. More information is available at j30.earth.
What: Sit-ins at each of the White House entrances to protest President Biden's lack of action on fossil fuels, Indigenous rights, and climate justice.
Where: Participants will be gathering at Freedom Plaza near the White House. Teams will then deploy to each of the White House entrances to sit-in.
When: Participants will gather and be available for interviews starting at 7:00am at Freedom Plaza. The action is expected to begin at 7:30am.
Why: Organizers say, "While fires rage out west and storms threaten the Gulf, President Biden is busy meeting with Republicans and failing us all on climate. If he wants to be a climate champion, time is running out, just as it is running out for our communities. There is no room for compromise when it comes to the very survival of our planet. Please join us on June 30th to be a part of the movement that changes the trajectory of this administration so that the White House stands up for the rights of our communities instead of doing the bidding of corporate polluters."
They're demanding:
PROTECT PEOPLE, NOT POLLUTERS!
Use your executive authority to stop approving fossil fuel projects and declare a climate emergency. Fossil fuel pipelines, infrastructure, exports, and leases fuel the climate emergency, pollute in Black & Brown communities, and violate treaty rights. Act now to end the era of fossil fuel production, protect our communities, and Build Back Fossil Free.
PASS A CLIMATE JUSTICE INFRASTRUCTURE BILL!
Use your bully pulpit to make sure Congress includes strong climate, Indigenous rights, housing justice, racial justice, and transit justice commitments in an infrastructure bill. Build on the Thrive Agenda, end fossil fuel subsidies and enact a renewable energy standard with no gas or other false solutions.
Established in 1990 within the United States, IEN was formed by grassroots Indigenous peoples and individuals to address environmental and economic justice issues (EJ). IEN's activities include building the capacity of Indigenous communities and tribal governments to develop mechanisms to protect our sacred sites, land, water, air, natural resources, health of both our people and all living things, and to build economically sustainable communities.
"The only beneficiaries will be polluting industries, many of which are among President Trump’s largest donors,” the lawmakers wrote.
A group of 31 Democratic senators has launched an investigation into a new Trump administration policy that they say allows the Environmental Protection Agency to "disregard" the health impacts of air pollution when passing regulations.
Plans for the policy were first reported on last month by the New York Times, which revealed that the EPA was planning to stop tallying the financial value of health benefits caused by limiting fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone when regulating polluting industries and instead focus exclusively on the costs these regulations pose to industry.
On December 11, the Times reported that the policy change was being justified based on the claim that the exact benefits of curbing these emissions were “uncertain."
"Historically, the EPA’s analytical practices often provided the public with false precision and confidence regarding the monetized impacts of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone," said an email written by an EPA supervisor to his employees on December 11. “To rectify this error, the EPA is no longer monetizing benefits from PM2.5 and ozone.”
The group of senators, led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), rebuked this idea in a letter sent Thursday to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin.
"EPA’s new policy is irrational. Even where health benefits are 'uncertain,' what is certain is that they are not zero," they said. "It will lead to perverse outcomes in which EPA will reject actions that would impose relatively minor costs on polluting industries while resulting in massive benefits to public health—including in saved lives."
"It is contrary to Congress’s intent and directive as spelled out in the Clean Air Act. It is legally flawed," they continued. "The only beneficiaries will be polluting industries, many of which are among President [Donald] Trump’s largest donors."
Research published in 2023 in the journal Science found that between 1999 and 2020, PM2.5 pollution from coal-fired power plants killed roughly 460,000 people in the United States, making it more than twice as deadly as other kinds of fine particulate emissions.
While this is a staggering loss of life, the senators pointed out that the EPA has also been able to put a dollar value on the loss by noting quantifiable results of increased illness and death—heightened healthcare costs, missed school days, and lost labor productivity, among others.
Pointing to EPA estimates from 2024, they said that by disregarding human health effects, the agency risks costing Americans “between $22 and $46 billion in avoided morbidities and premature deaths in the year 2032."
Comparatively, they said, “the total compliance cost to industry, meanwhile, [would] be $590 million—between one and two one-hundredths of the estimated health benefit value."
They said the plan ran counter to the Clean Air Act's directive to “protect and enhance the quality of the Nation’s air resources so as to promote the public health and welfare,” and to statements made by Zeldin during his confirmation hearing, where he said "the end state of all the conversations that we might have, any regulations that might get passed, any laws that might get passed by Congress” is to “have the cleanest, healthiest air, [and] drinking water.”
The senators requested all documents related to the decision, including any information about cost-benefit modeling and communications with industry representatives.
"That EPA may no longer monetize health benefits when setting new clean air standards does not mean that those health benefits don’t exist," the senators said. "It just means that [EPA] will ignore them and reject safer standards, in favor of protecting corporate interests."
"An unmistakable majority wants a party that will fight harder against the corporations and rich people they see as responsible for keeping them down," wrote the New Republic's editorial director.
Democratic voters overwhelmingly want a leader who will fight the superrich and corporate America, and they believe Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the person to do it, according to a poll released this week.
While Democrats are often portrayed as squabbling and directionless, the poll conducted last month by the New Republic with Embold Research demonstrated a remarkable unity among the more than 2,400 Democratic voters it surveyed.
This was true with respect to policy: More than 9 in 10 want to raise taxes on corporations and on the wealthiest Americans, while more than three-quarters want to break up tech monopolies and believe the government should conduct stronger oversight of business.
But it was also reflected in sentiments that a more confrontational governing philosophy should prevail and general agreement that the party in its current form is not doing enough to take on its enemies.
Three-quarters said they wanted Democrats to "be more aggressive in calling out Republicans," while nearly 7 in 10 said it was appropriate to describe their party as "weak."
This appears to have translated to support for a more muscular view of government. Where the label once helped to sink Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) two runs for president, nearly three-quarters of Democrats now say they are either unconcerned with the label of "socialist" or view it as an asset.
Meanwhile, 46% said they want to see a "progressive" at the top of the Democratic ticket in 2028, higher than the number who said they wanted a "liberal" or a "moderate."
It's an environment that appears to be fertile ground for Ocasio-Cortez, who pitched her vision for a "working-class-centered politics" at this week's Munich summit in what many suspected was a soft-launch of her presidential candidacy in 2028.
With 85% favorability, Bronx congresswoman had the highest approval rating of any Democratic figure in the country among the voters surveyed.
It's a higher mark than either of the figures who head-to-head polls have shown to be presumptive favorites for the nomination: Former Vice President Kamala Harris and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Early polls show AOC lagging considerably behind these top two. However, there are signs in the New Republic's poll that may give her supporters cause for hope.
While Harris is also well-liked, 66% of Democrats surveyed said they believe she's "had her shot" at the presidency and should not run again after losing to President Donald Trump in 2024.
Newsom does not have a similar electoral history holding him back and is riding high from the passage of Proposition 50, which will allow Democrats to add potentially five more US House seats this November.
But his policy approach may prove an ill fit at a time when Democrats overwhelmingly say their party is "too timid" about taxing the rich and corporations and taking on tech oligarchs.
As labor unions in California have pushed for a popular proposal to introduce a billionaire's tax, Newsom has made himself the chiseled face of the resistance to this idea, joining with right-wing Silicon Valley barons in an aggressive campaign to kill it.
While polls can tell us little two years out about what voters will do in 2028, New Republic editorial director Emily Cooke said her magazine's survey shows an unmistakable pattern.
"It’s impossible to come away from these results without concluding that economic populism is a winning message for loyal Democrats," she wrote. "This was true across those who identify as liberals, moderates, or progressives: An unmistakable majority wants a party that will fight harder against the corporations and rich people they see as responsible for keeping them down."
In some cases, the administration has kept immigrants locked up even after a judge has ordered their release, according to an investigation by Reuters.
Judges across the country have ruled more than 4,400 times since the start of October that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has illegally detained immigrants, according to a Reuters investigation published Saturday.
As President Donald Trump carries out his unprecedented "mass deportation" crusade, the number of people in ICE custody ballooned to 68,000 this month, up 75% from when he took office.
Midway through 2025, the administration had begun pushing for a daily quota of 3,000 arrests per day, with the goal of reaching 1 million per year. This has led to the targeting of mostly people with no criminal records rather than the "worst of the worst," as the administration often claims.
Reuters' reporting suggests chasing this number has also resulted in a staggering number of arrests that judges have later found to be illegal.
Since the beginning of Trump's term, immigrants have filed more than 20,200 habeas corpus petitions, claiming they were held indefinitely without trial in violation of the Constitution.
In at least 4,421 cases, more than 400 federal judges have ruled that their detentions were illegal.
Last month, more than 6,000 habeas petitions were filed. Prior to the second Trump administration, no other month dating back to 2010 had seen even 500.

In part due to the sheer volume of legal challenges, the Trump administration has often failed to comply with court rulings, leaving people locked up even after judges ordered them to be released.
Reuters' new report is the most comprehensive examination to date of the administration's routine violation of the law with respect to immigration enforcement. But the extent to which federal immigration agencies have violated the law under Trump is hardly new information.
In a ruling last month, Chief Judge Patrick J. Schiltz of the US District Court in Minnesota—a conservative jurist appointed by former President George W. Bush—provided a list of nearly 100 court orders ICE had violated just that month while deployed as part of Trump's Operation Metro Surge.
The report of ICE's systemic violation of the law comes as the agency faces heightened scrutiny on Capitol Hill, with leaders of the agency called to testify and Democrats attempting to hold up funding in order to force reforms to ICE's conduct, which resulted in a partial shutdown beginning Saturday.
Following the release of Reuters' report, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) directed a pointed question over social media to Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE.
"Why do your out-of-control agents keep violating federal law?" he said. "I look forward to seeing you testify under oath at the House Judiciary Committee in early March."