SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
For Immediate Release
August, 06 2021, 10:29am EDT
Contact:
Dana Johnson, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, dana@weact.org
Jean Su, Center for Biological Diversity, jsu@biologicaldiversity.org
Brittany Miller, Friends of the Earth, bmiller@foe.org
Ted Glick, Beyond Extreme Energy, indpol@igc.org
Seth Gladstone, Food & Water Watch, sgladstone@fwwatch.org
Dorothy Slater, Revolving Door Project, slater@
Tom Goldtooth, Indigenous Environmental Network, tomg@ienearth.org
466 Groups Urge Biden to Fill FERC Seat With Environmental, Energy Justice Champion
WASHINGTON
More than 460 environmental and energy justice, racial justice, faith and youth organizations from across the United States sent a letter today urging President Joe Biden to appoint a nominee to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission who will champion environmental and energy justice.
The letter names three candidates to replace Republican commissioner Neil Chatterjee, whose term has expired. One is Daniel Blackman, a previous contender for the Georgia Service Commission and critic of the fossil fuel-focused utility giant Georgia Power. Another is Marquita Bradshaw, the first Black woman to win the Democrat nomination for a Tennessee Senate seat and a victorious opponent of the Byhalia Pipeline. The third pick is Nidhi Thakar, a long-time renewable energy lawyer and national co-chair of Clean Energy for Biden.
The Biden White House's climate and environmental justice legacy will hinge on this nomination, the groups say. As the federal agency that oversees interstate gas infrastructure and wholesale electricity markets, FERC has immense power to curtail the growth of fossil fuels and integration of just renewable energies.
"The Biden administration will not achieve its goal of rooting out systemic racism in energy and environmental decision-making with a status quo appointment to FERC," said Dana Johnson, federal policy director with WE ACT for Environmental Justice."We urge President Biden to nominate a commissioner that is concerned about FERC's legacy of prioritizing projects over people, has the courage to apply an equity and justice lens to their work, and will be accountable to the people and communities that are disproportionately harmed by the energy industry."
"We must seize this consequential opportunity to appoint a visionary commissioner who can enact federal change to our racist and ecocidal energy system," said Jean Su, energy justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "With people dying from coast to coast of extreme heat waves and hurricanes, the climate emergency is undeniably here. FERC has a critical role to play in making sure we prioritize renewable and just energy before it's too late."
"The Biden administration must uplift a FERC candidate that will uphold justice for Indigenous and frontline communities. The impacts of the fossil fuel industries, pipeline infrastructure, including at Enbridge Line 3, are putting our people in prison. A Justice-based FERC candidate could be a first step in showing good faith on meeting the unmet promises of the Biden Administration," said Tom Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network.
"If the world is going to prevent escalating climate and social disruption, the U.S.'s FERC agency must play a key role," said Ted Glick, organizer with Beyond Extreme Energy. "It needs to stop being a rubber-stamp agency for gas industry expansion, and it needs to upgrade the electrical grid to rapidly advance renewables and battery storage. This FERC nomination, if a strong one, can make that a reality."
"We don't need little changes at FERC: we need a whole new agency and new leadership," said Drew Hudson, senior national organizer at Friends of the Earth. "If President Biden is serious about achieving 100% carbon-free electricity by 2035, he must look beyond the industry insiders and utility sympathizers who got us into the climate crisis."
"It's past time for President Biden to name a new FERC commissioner. Every day he waits on this appointment -- and others at crucial independent agencies -- is a missed opportunity for climate action," said Jeff Hauser, executive director at the Revolving Door Project. "We look forward to Biden choosing a commissioner who aligns with his stated campaign goals of securing environmental justice and accountability to the people, not to polluters and corporations."
"After six months in office, President Biden's climate and environmental platform hangs in the balance. If he doesn't act decisively now, he could doom us to a future of unlivable climate chaos. Choosing a FERC nominee that will reject new fossil fuel development would be a strong sign that Biden intends to take our climate crisis seriously," said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch.
"For too long FERC has been a rubber stamp for pipeline companies, helping to accelerate the destruction of communities throughout the Gulf South. If President Biden is serious about his commitments to environmental justice, he must nominate a commissioner who will put people first," said Kendall Dix, policy lead at Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy.
The letter notes that this coalition of groups was able to identify the three individuals who center justice in their work with far fewer resources and less time than the White House. It encourages the Biden administration to consider these candidates as part of widening their own search for a candidate.
At the Center for Biological Diversity, we believe that the welfare of human beings is deeply linked to nature — to the existence in our world of a vast diversity of wild animals and plants. Because diversity has intrinsic value, and because its loss impoverishes society, we work to secure a future for all species, great and small, hovering on the brink of extinction. We do so through science, law and creative media, with a focus on protecting the lands, waters and climate that species need to survive.
(520) 623-5252LATEST NEWS
'Americans Are Rightfully Furious': Social Security Defenders Not Falling for Partial Trump Walk-Back
"This partial victory shows that when the American people fight for our Social Security, we can win," said one advocate. "We are only going to get louder!"
Mar 27, 2025
Defenders of the Social Security Administration this week welcomed the delay and rollback of some policy changes at the federal agency while also reiterating the threat posed by U.S. President Donald Trump and the billionaire leader of his Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk.
As part of what critics condemn as "DOGE-manufactured chaos," SSA intended to require anyone who couldn't verify their identity online through "my Social Security" to do so in-person, beginning next week, while planning to shutter offices across the country. The agency announced Wednesday that the start date has been pushed to April 14, and people applying for Medicare, Social Security Disability Insurance, or Supplemental Security Income are now exempt from the rule and can complete their claim over the telephone.
Acting SSA Commissioner Leland Dudek claimed Wednesday that "we have listened to our customers, Congress, advocates, and others, and we are updating our policy to provide better customer service to the country's most vulnerable populations."
Meanwhile, opponents of Trump and Musk's attacks on the agency—widely seen as a push toward privatization—framed the development as a "good first step" but "not enough," as AARP chief advocacy and engagement officer Nancy LeaMond said in a statement to CBS MoneyWatch.
"Our members nationwide have told us this change would require hundreds of miles and hours of travel merely to fill out paperwork," LeaMond said. "SSA should be prioritizing customer service effectiveness and efficiency, and as older Americans tell us, the announcement requiring visits caused confusion and distress."
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said on the Musk-owned social media platform X: "Delaying a bad plan—which effectively denies people their Social Security—is insufficient. Elon Musk's DOGE must take their hands off Social Security."
Warren also acknowledged the positive impact of people calling out the assault on the SSA, adding: "Keep the pressure on Republicans in Congress and Donald Trump to reverse these cuts. YOUR voice makes a difference."
Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, similarly said that "while it is good that a bad policy is being postponed—and that some of the least mobile, most vulnerable groups are now exempted—it is still bad policy. There was no reason to end the validation of identity by phone, and limiting it in any way creates an unnecessary hurdle for seniors and families claiming their earned benefits."
Richtman also took aim at those in charge, declaring that "the circus at the Social Security Administration continues under the 'leadership' of acting Commissioner Leland Dudek," who is at the helm of the agency while the Senate considers Trump's nominee, financial services executive Frank Bisignano.
"It very much appears that the decision-makers at SSA—under the influence of Elon Musk and DOGE—are making up policy as they go along, and then are surprised when there is understandable public blowback, forcing them to make ad hoc adjustments like this one," he added. "This is the opposite of the competent, responsible stewardship of Social Security that the public deserves. Dudek, Musk, and DOGE are creating nothing but distress and confusion for the millions of people who depend on these benefits to get by, while risking irreparable damage to the Social Security system."
The Trump administration's attempt to dismantle the SSA—including with cuts to personnel and phone services—is already having an effect, with the agency website crashing four times over 10 days in the past month, and callers waiting 4-5 hours on hold.
Trump & Musk are: -Lying about Social Security fraud -Making destructive cuts to SSA staffing and phone-based services -Threatening the security of people's personal information by giving DOGE access to sensitive SSA data Social Security is in crisis entirely due to them.
— Robert Reich (@rbreich.bsky.social) March 26, 2025 at 4:00 PM
"Americans are rightfully furious about the Trump administration making it harder for them to access their earned Social Security benefits," Nancy Altman, president of the group Social Security Works, said Thursday. "They are making their voices heard at town halls and rallies across the country, and calling their members of Congress. Now, they've forced the White House to partly walk back a needless burden."
Dudek tweaking the new verification rules, Altman said, "is just a starting point. The damage the Trump administration is doing to Social Security remains immense. The White House needs to roll back all of these senseless burdens, cancel plans to close dozens of field offices, and fully staff the Social Security Administration instead of pushing out thousands of employees."
"However, even this partial victory shows that when the American people fight for our Social Security, we can win," she added. "We are only going to get louder!"
Keep ReadingShow Less
A Reminder Amid Group Chat Outrage: US Strikes on Yemen Are Unconstitutional
"President Trump has not only launched us into a new military escapade in the Middle East, he's done so in breach of our Constitution," said one advocate.
Mar 27, 2025
The leaked messages among top Trump administration officials about U.S. strikes in Yemen earlier this month, which were held via a private sector messaging app in breach of national security protocol and inadvertently included a journalist, sparked considerable discussion among political commentators and social media users—but as the initial shock regarding the Signal conversation faded, advocates and policy experts said lawmakers' attention should turn to the illegality of the attacks on Yemen.
The advocacy groups Just Foreign Policy, DAWN, and Action Corps released a joint statement Thursday calling on Congress to take action to stop U.S. military action in Yemen by upholding "its sole authority to declare war under Article I of the Constitution and the 1973 War Powers Resolution (WPR)."
The chat messages sent between officials including Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and National Security Adviser Michael Waltz stunned the public and Washington insiders this week because they had accidentally also been sent to Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, but the three groups pointed out that they also included an admission from Vance that the strikes were not defensive—contrary to claims by President Donald Trump:
I think we are making a mistake… 3 percent of US trade runs through the suez. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn't understand this or why it's necessary. The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message…
Vance's comments bolster the three groups' position that "the strikes also violate Chapters I and VII of the United Nations Charter, which prohibit states from launching a war unless in self-defense or authorized by the U.N. Security Council."
Even before the chats were leaked, said the groups, it was clear that Trump had not sought congressional authorization for military strikes in Yemen, which have killed at least 53 people since the U.S. launched attacks on March 15.
The War Powers Resolution of 1973, which was introduced after former President Richard Nixon's secretive bombings of Cambodia, requires congressional authorization for "the introduction of the United States armed forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances," while Article I of the Constitution grants Congress the authority to declare war.
"Congress should demand an end to this reckless, unauthorized war that will both harm U.S. interests and continue to terrorize the Yemeni people who have already suffered years of U.S.-backed violence."
"President Trump has not only launched us into a new military escapade in the Middle East, he's done so in breach of our Constitution," said Isaac Evans-Frantz, director of Action Corps. "Congress should demand an end to this reckless, unauthorized war that will both harm U.S. interests and continue to terrorize the Yemeni people who have already suffered years of U.S.-backed violence."
The groups' comments echoed those of Michigan State University professor and Quincy Institute fellow Shireen Al-Adeimi, who is Yemeni-American.
"With all the noise about the Signal leak, is anyone in Congress or the media concerned that actually bombing Yemeni people and Yemen's infrastructure is unconstitutional?" she asked on Tuesday. "Anyone?"
The Trump administration claimed that the strikes in Yemen were made because the Houthis' blockade on Israeli ships—established in retaliation for Israel's breaking of a cease-fire in Gaza—was an attack on U.S. economic interests and economic security, but the three groups noted that "there is no evidence that Houthi forces attacked any U.S. ships or personnel from the beginning of the Gaza cease-fire in January 2025 through March 15."
The Houthis struck cargo ships they deemed to be tied to Israel starting in November 2023, in response to Israel's relentless assault on Gaza. They stopped the attacks for the duration of the cease-fire, which lasted nearly two months starting in mid-January.
"The cessation of Houthi attacks during the short-lived Gaza truce underscores their primary focus to defend Palestinians from genocide—a reality obscured by Trump's rhetoric to justify unauthorized military action and deepen U.S. aggression in a widening conflict," said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of DAWN. "The best way to protect global maritime navigation through the Red Sea is to ensure the Israeli government ends its genocidal violence in Gaza."
Along with Vance's apparent admission that the strikes were not in self-defense, the Signal discussion included what observers called a "confession" to alleged war crimes by Waltz, who said the residential building of the girlfriend of a Houthi leader had "collapsed" after a U.S. strike. As Common Dreams reported Wednesday, Waltz and Vance celebrated the strike.
Etan Mabourakh, a fellow at Action Corps, called on Congress to introduce a Yemen War Powers Resolution. The House and Senate both passed such a resolution in 2019 to bar the U.S. from participating in the Saudi war in Yemen.
"Congress should take the necessary step to stop these illegal, ineffective, and unauthorized airstrikes in Yemen," said Mabourakh. "Rather than debating the Trump administration's violation of security protocols in their Signal chats, they should do their job and challenge another unlawful new war in the region that is making everyone less safe."
Keep ReadingShow Less
GOP Estate Tax Plan Could Mean Over $100 Billion Giveaway for Musk and Trump Heirs
"We are seeing the rise of an oligarchy... And yet here we are talking about dismantling the estate tax, the one tax at the federal level that actually slows this concentration of wealth and power," said one expert.
Mar 27, 2025
Americans for Tax Fairness has crunched the numbers and found that a Republican push to do away with the federal estate tax—a measure that's been described as an "aristocracy prevention act"—could yield billions for the families of U.S. President Donald Trump and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk, according to a report from the advocacy group published Thursday.
Abolishing the estate tax, a tax on the wealth of the richest Americans when they die, could save Musk's family up to roughly $132 billion, and could save Trump's heirs up to around $2 billion, according to ATF, which made its calculation using recent estimates of each man's net worth. The top federal estate tax rate is 40%.
The group noted that "both the Trump and Musk families have undoubtedly set up elaborate estate-tax-avoidance schemes, as most superwealthy families do. Since we do not know what tax-avoidance schemes they have undertaken, we have calculated the maximum amount that would be due if the estate tax were fully repealed."
The estate tax has long been in Republicans' crosshairs.
According to Bloomberg, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D) on Wednesday endorsed the estate tax being repealed entirely, placing the repeal of the tax at the center of current negotiations over GOP efforts to approve a multitrillion-dollar tax bill that would extend provisions in Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) that primarily benefited the wealthy.
Thune was also among 45 senators who introduced a bill in February that would repeal the federal estate tax.
Trump already did wealthy Americans a favor with the passage of the TCJA, which in effect doubled the estate tax exemption amount, which as of 2025 is $14 million for individuals and twice that for married couples filing jointly. If this TCJA exemption were to expire, the exemption would drop down to $7 million per individual, meaning more millionaires would be forced to pay federal estate tax.
According to Daniel Willing, a senior wealth strategist with U.S. Bank Private Wealth Management, of all the aspects of the TCJA expiration, this drop in the estate tax exemption may have the largest impact on wealthy families.
According to ATF, "If the more generous exemption amount is retained instead of being allowed to expire, the Musk and Trump families could each save up to about $5.6 million in estate taxes."
Chuck Collins, a director at the progressive organization Institute for Policy Studies, highlighted the stakes of this kind of wealth accumulation in a video from More Perfect Union about the estate tax that was released in early March.
"We are in the second Gilded Age. You know, we are seeing the rise of an oligarchy... And yet here we are talking about dismantling the estate tax, the one tax at the federal level that actually slows this concentration of wealth and power," said Collins.
In addition to focusing on the estate tax, ATF's analysis also highlights that one of the TCJA's components that's set to expire is a set of lower tax rates on "ordinary income."
Musk had an average annual taxable income of roughly $179 million between 2013 and 2018—and 99% of it was "ordinary" income, according to the report, which cites data from ProPublica.
"Assuming he had the same average taxable income in each of the first 10 years of an extension of the Trump law's lower tax rates (and this may be a conservative assumption, since he's many times richer now), Musk could save a total of around $50 million in income taxes," per ATF.
Based on Trump's available tax returns, according to ATF, Trump received on average roughly $10 million a year in wages, taxable interest, ordinary dividends, and taxable pensions and annuities, which ATF deems his "predictable" sources of ordinary income.
"Just considering those four sources of ordinary income, over the first 10 years of an extension of his lower tax rates Trump could save a total of up to roughly $2.7 million in income taxes," according to the report.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular