April, 05 2022, 09:05am EDT

Over 35,000 Customers of Wall Street Banks Demand an End to Fossil Fuel Financing
New “Customers for Climate Justice” campaign an escalation of consumer pressure on the major banks driving the climate crisis
NEW YORK
Over 35,000 customers of JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America have added their names to open letters, urging their banks to stop financing fossil fuel corporations. The letters are the launchpad of a major national campaign led by customers and supported by the 200+ member groups of the Stop the Money Pipeline coalition.
"Bank of America may not listen to me as a single customer," said Ashley Craig, who has been a Bank of America customer for the past 20 years. "But now that we're more than 10,000 Bank of America customers speaking with one voice, we hope that we'll get their attention."
Ms. Craig was part of a team of customers who sent the open letters to the CEOs of the four banks this morning. The customers have requested a meeting with the CEOs to discuss their concerns.
"I was appalled when I learned that my bank is complicit in the climate crisis, and I felt I had to do something about it," said Brian Forney, a Wells Fargo customer based in Mountain View, California. "I hope that now that over 7,000 Wells Fargo customers have made it clear that we don't want our bank funding fossil fuels, we'll begin to see some real changes."'
Mr. Forney is one of the dozens of customers who have met with their local branch managers to express their concerns directly. He is also one of over one hundred customers who have recently lodged a formal complaint about their bank's funding of fossil fuels, and one of the thousands who have sent an email or made a phone call to their bank articulating their concerns.
Last year, the International Energy Agency released a comprehensive study into what is required for the global economy to meet the Paris Agreement goal of keeping global warming below 1.5degC. One of the IEA's most important findings is that "there is no need for investment in new fossil fuel supply" if we are to curtail global warming to 1.5degC.
In spite of this, in 2021 alone, Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America provided $47.2 billion to the 100 corporations most aggressively expanding their fossil fuel operations. This doesn't look set to change any time soon.
Yesterday, Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon, used his annual letter to shareholders to urge the Biden Adminstration to immediately approve additional "oil leases and gas pipelines" as a response to Russia's war in Ukraine.
"People like Mr. Dimon are trying to use the war as an excuse to lock in fossil fuel expansion for decades to come," said Brian Wilder, a Chase customer of 15 years and one of over 12,000 Chase customers to join the campaign. "But it takes years to build new gas pipelines and deepening our reliance on fossil fuels will only cause more climate instability and make future wars even more likely. My bank should be supporting a massive buildout of renewable energy, not locking us into decades more dependence on fossil fuels."
JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America are the world's four largest funders of the fossil fuel industry. The four banks have provided $1.1 trillion in financing to the fossil fuel industry since the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015 -- close to 25% of all financing that the fossil fuel industry has received from commercial banks, globally.
"Banks are supposed to care about what their customers think," said Ted Conwell, who has banked with Bank of America for the past 26 years. "And it's clear that a vast majority of us think that our banks shouldn't be funding the corporations driving the climate crisis. We hope that they'll listen to our concerns."
In April and May, the investors at all four banks will vote on shareholder resolutions urging the banks to align their lending and underwriting business with the actions required to limit global warming to 1.5degC, including ending support for the corporations expanding their fossil fuel operations.
"Investors have a real opportunity to make a difference," said Doug Woodby, who has been a customer with Citigroup for the past 4 years. "We hope that they will hear our voice and understand: climate action is good for business."
The Stop the Money Pipeline coalition is over 160 organizations strong holding the financial backers of climate chaos accountable.
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Apr 26, 2025
Hundreds of people rallied in Wisconsin's largest city on Saturday to protest the Trump administration's arrest of Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan on what critics called "baseless" charges of felony obstruction after she allegedly helped an undocumented immigrant evade arrest during an appearance in her courtroom.
FBI agents arrested Dugan, 65, on Friday following an investigation, accusing her of escorting an undocumented man and his attorney through her courtroom's jury door after learning that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents showed up to arrest him.
Protesters chanted slogans including, "No ICE, No KKK, No Fascist USA!" and "No Hate, No Fear, Immigrants Are Welcome Here!" They held signs with messages like "Liberty and Justice for All" and "Resist Fascism!"
HAPPENING NOW: A HUGE crowd of protesters march through the streets outside an FBI office in Milwaukee in support of Judge Hannah Dugan (Video: @unraveledpress.com)
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— Marco Foster ( @marcofoster.bsky.social) April 26, 2025 at 3:05 PM
"I have never heard of a state court judge being arrested by the federal government because she chose to control her own courtroom. This is unprecedented," Sara Dady, an immigration attorney who traveled more than 90 miles from Rockford, Illinois to attend the demonstration outside the FBI field office in Milwaukee, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Wisconsin state Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-19) told the crowd: "The judiciary acts as a check to unchecked executive power. And functioning democracies do not lock up judges."
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Janan Najeeb, one of the leaders of the Wisconsin Coalition for Justice in Palestine, told rallygoers: "The courtroom is not a hunting ground for ICE. It is a sanctuary. When our government turns our courtrooms into traps, they are betraying the very laws that they claim to defend."
Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights director Angelica Salas said in a statement that "in an unprecedented move against members of the judicial branch, the Trump administration is exercising authoritarianism to degrees that should alarm us all."
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Critics have called Dugan's arrest part and parcel of President Donald Trump's attacks on immigrants, the nation's system of checks and balances, and the rule of law.
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According to the memo:
As much as practicable, officers should follow the proactive procedures above—and have an executed warrant of apprehension and removal—before contacting an alien enemy. However, that will not always be realistic or effective in swiftly identifying and removing alien enemies... An officer may encounter a suspected alien enemy in the natural course of the officer's enforcement activity, such as when apprehending other validated members of Tren de Aragua. Given the dynamic nature of enforcement operations, officers in the field are authorized to apprehend aliens upon a reasonable belief that the alien meets all four requirements to be validated as an alien enemy. This authority includes entering an alien enemy's residence to make an AEA apprehension where circumstances render it impracticable to first obtain a signed notice and warrant of apprehension and removal.
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On Friday, U.S. District Judge David Briones ordered ICE to free a Venezuelan couple detained in El Paso under the AEA, finding that the government "has not demonstrated they have any lawful basis to continue detaining" the pair. Briones also warned ICE to not deport anyone else it is holding as an alleged "alien enemy" in West Texas.
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As Georgetown University Law Center professor Steve Vladeck
said, "There's no Alien Enemies Act exception to the Fourth Amendment."
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Federal immigration authorities deported three U.S. citizen children on Friday—including one with cancer who was reportedly expelled without medication—in a move that critics and one judge appointed by President Donald Trump said was carried out without due process.
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Disappearing mothers and toddlers, denying them access to lawyers, deporting them without due process - this is not what a democracy does to its citizens and families and to their kids.
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— Vanessa Cardenas (@vcardenas.bsky.social) April 25, 2025 at 6:48 PM
According to court documents, the 2-year-old New Orleans native—identified as V.M.L.—was brought by her mother, Jenny Carolina Lopez Villela, to a routine immigration appointment in the Louisiana city on Tuesday when they were arrested.
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The ACLU argued that ICE's actions "represent a shocking—although increasingly common—abuse of power," adding that the agency "has inflicted harm and jeopardized the lives and health of vulnerable children and a pregnant woman. The cruelty and deliberate denial of legal and medical access are not only unlawful, but inhumane."
When historians reflect on this regime, cruelty will be the word most often used to define it. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/25/u...
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— Robert Reich (@rbreich.bsky.social) April 26, 2025 at 6:44 AM
Teresa Reyes-Flores of the Southeast Dignity not Detention Coalition said in a statement Friday: "ICE's actions show a blatant violation of due process and basic human rights. The families were disappeared, cut off from their lawyers and loved ones, and rushed to be deported, stripping their parents of the chance to protect their U.S. citizen children."
Immigration Services and Legal Advocacy legal director Homero López Jr. said that "these deplorable actions demonstrate ICE's increasing willingness to violate all protections for immigrants as well as those of their children."
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The Trump administration—whose first-term immigration policies and practices included separating children from their parents and imprisonment in concentration camps—is once again under fire for its anti-immigrant agenda.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently blocked the deportation of undocumented Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and has also ordered the administration to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego García, a Salvadoran man wrongfully deported to a notorious prison in his native country. On Wednesday, a Trump-appointed judge ordered the administration to take action to return another Salvadoran deported to the same prison.
In a scathing ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge David Briones ordered ICE to free a Venezuelan couple dubiously held in El Paso under the Alien Enemies Act, finding that the government "has not demonstrated they have any lawful basis to continue detaining" the pair. Briones also warned ICE to not deport anyone else it is holding as an alleged "alien enemy" in West Texas.
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ICE abducted a man with a learning disability leaving a hospital after a medical emergency asking for help. They didn’t care that he was a U.S. citizen. They just lied and said he wasn’t. This isn’t “border security.” It’s white supremacy. popular.info/p/us-citizen...
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— Melanie D’Arrigo (@darrigomelanie.bsky.social) April 23, 2025 at 4:38 AM
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