April, 25 2022, 11:02am EDT
White House Sued for Lack of Transparency Around Its Leasing Program
The Council on Environmental Quality repeatedly ignored a FOIA request about its failure to address climate in its oil and gas leasing report.
WASHINGTON
Today, Friends of the Earth filed litigation compelling the Biden administration to respond to its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for documents related to the role that the White House played in watering down the Department of Interior's leasing program report.
The request targets the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ)'s role in the administration's long-delayed report, issued last November, which failed to consider the disastrous climate change impacts of selling more public lands and waters to the oil and gas industry. The report fails to live up to the mandate in President Biden's January 2021 executive order to "tackle the climate crisis at home and abroad."
Friends of the Earth submitted its FOIA request to CEQ on January 11, 2022. The agency failed to respond to repeated requests for confirmation of receipt and status updates in clear violation of the legally mandated deadline of 20 days. Friends of the Earth, which is represented by the public interest law firm Eubanks & Associates, PLLC, intends to force the administration to fulfill its obligations toward open government and transparency.
Nicole Ghio, Senior Fossil Fuels Program Manager at Friends of the Earth, issued the following statement:
Candidate Biden promised to be a climate leader and halt new oil and gas lease sales on public lands and waters, but President Biden broke that promise. We demand to know why his administration's final fossil fuel leasing report failed to include climate impacts and bore little resemblance to the comprehensive review mandated by his own executive order.
Hallie Templeton, Legal Director at Friends of the Earth, issued the following statement:
Open government is a central hallmark on which our democracy was built, and the very reason why laws like the Freedom of Information Act exist. It should not take a lawsuit for the White House to meet its legally mandated transparency obligations to disclose how and why climate change was stripped from Interior's report on the leasing program.
Friends of the Earth fights for a more healthy and just world. Together we speak truth to power and expose those who endanger the health of people and the planet for corporate profit. We organize to build long-term political power and campaign to change the rules of our economic and political systems that create injustice and destroy nature.
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‘Scarier Than Halloween Costumes’: Trump Policies Blamed for Jacking Up Candy Prices
"From the grocery aisles to the doctor’s office, Trump’s economic circus keeps jacking up costs and squeezing household budgets."
Oct 31, 2025
President Donald Trump's economic policies have put a damper on this year's Halloween festivities, as his tariffs on imported chocolate in particular have helped jack up the price of candy.
CNBC reported on Friday that data from research firm Circana and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics show that chocolate prices in the US have jumped by 30% over the last year since Trump began slapping hefty tariffs on foreign goods, including staple products such as cocoa, coffee, and bananas that cannot be grown at sufficient scale in the US.
The increased cost of chocolate has now been passed on to consumers in the form of higher candy prices, according to a joint study released this week by The Century Foundation and Groundwork Collaborative.
According to the organizations' analysis, candy prices as a whole have gone up by just under 11% over the last year, which is more than triple the current overall rate of inflation.
Unsurprisingly, the analysis showed that these increases were particularly severe in candies that had significant chocolate inputs, as it found that "variety packs from Hershey’s (maker of KitKats, Twizzlers, Reeses, and Heath bars) are up 22%, while variety packs from Mars (maker of Milky Way, M&Ms, Three Musketeers, and Skittles) are up 12%."
The analysis also cited recent quotes from the CEOs of retail giants Target and Walmart indicating the president's tariffs were having a major impact on US consumers. Target CEO Brian Cornell, for instance, said on a recent earnings call that the tariffs had created a "challenging and highly uncertain" environment, while Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said that "costs increase each week" thanks to Trump's trade wars.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) used the organizations' study to rip the president for raising the price of Halloween candy in a video posted on social media.
"Do you remember when Donald Trump told American families to cut back on buying kids' dolls?" she asked, in reference to Trump earlier this year suggesting parents buy fewer toys for their children after his tariffs on imports raised their costs. "Well now he's making candy more expensive too, just in time for Halloween."
Donald Trump's jacked up candy prices — just in time for Halloween. pic.twitter.com/f3glomQbUK
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) October 31, 2025
The American Federation of Teachers, whose members have likely experienced the increased cost candy first hand, also took a shot at Trump's economic policies while posting a graph illustrating The Century Foundation and Groundwork Collaborative's study.
"The only thing scarier than Halloween costumes? The rising price of candy from Trump's tariffs," the union wrote on X.
Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at Groundwork Collaborative, said that the increase in Halloween candy prices was just one source of pressure facing US families as a result of Trump's economic policies.
In particular, Jacquez pointed to the cuts to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid in the Republican Party's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, as well as the GOP's inaction on extending tax credits for buying health insurance, as major pain points.
"While inflation eats through paychecks and House Republicans hide in plain sight, working families are slammed by soaring healthcare premiums, frozen food assistance, and rising bills," he said. "From the grocery aisles to the doctor’s office, Trump’s economic circus keeps jacking up costs and squeezing household budgets."
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The long backlog and a reporting protocol developed especially for Israel are likely to keep Israeli forces from being held accountable, said officials.
Oct 31, 2025
Progressive lawmakers and rights groups have long warned that by arming the Israel Defense Forces and providing the IDF with more than $21 billion, the US has violated its own laws barring the government from sending military aid to countries accused of human rights abuses and of blocking humanitarian relief.
On Thursday, a classified report by the US State Department detailed for the first time the federal government's own acknowledgment of the scale of alleged human rights abuses that the IDF has committed in Gaza since it began bombarding the exclave in October 2023.
The Office of the Inspector General's document, reported on by the Washington Post, which spoke to US officials about it, also detailed how allegations of human rights abuses against the Israeli military are made harder to prove by a vetting process that is only afforded to Israel—not other countries accused of violations.
The US officials said the long backlog of "many hundreds" of possible violations of the Leahy Laws, which bar US military assistance from going to units credibly accused of human rights abuses, would likely take years to review—calling into question whether the IDF will ever be held accountable for them.
"The lesson here is that if you commit genocide and war crimes, do as much as possible because then it becomes difficult to investigate everything," said journalist and Northwestern University professor Marc Owen Jones grimly in response to the Post's report.
The government report was described by the Post days after the State Department dismantled a website used to report human rights violations by foreign militaries that receive US aid, which was established in 2022 to ensure the US was in compliance with the Leahy Laws.
The Biden administration flagged at least two 2024 attacks by Israeli forces—one that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers and one known as the "flour massacre," in which more than 100 Palestinians were killed and nearly 800 were injured as they tried to get flour from aid trucks—as ones that may have used US weapons, signaling that continuing US aid to Israel would break the Leahy Laws.
“To date, the US has not withheld any assistance to any Israeli unit despite clear evidence."
A report by Amnesty International last year focused on several IDF attacks on civilian infrastructure—which killed nearly 100 people including 42 children—in which Israel used bombs and other weapons made by US companies such as Boeing.But just a week after the Amnesty analysis, the Biden administration told Congress in a mandated report that it was "not able to reach definitive conclusions" on whether Israel had used US-supplied weapons in attacks such as the one on the World Central Kitchen workers.
After the report of the new analysis, said University of Maryland professor Shibley Telhami, former President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Antony Blinken "cannot hide from responsibility" after they persistently defended and funded Israel's attacks on Gaza.
But along with the long backlog of potential human rights abuses, the so-called Israel Leahy Vetting Forum, which dates back to 2020, is likely to prevent the State Department from reviewing the allegations against the IDF.
The government's protocol for reviewing allegations against Israel differs from that of other countries; a US working group is required to “come to a consensus on whether a gross violation of human rights has occurred," with representatives of the US Embassy in Jerusalem among those who participate in the working group.
“To date, the US has not withheld any assistance to any Israeli unit despite clear evidence,” Josh Paul, a former State Department official who resigned in the early weeks of Israel's war on Gaza over the Biden administration's military support, told the Post.
Shahed Ghoreishi, a former State Department communications official who was fired earlier this year after pushing for the agency to condemn ethnic cleansing and other abuses in Gaza, said it was "predictable" that the State Department declined to answer questions from the Post about the inspector general's report.
"There may be nothing that can excuse the brushing of crimes under the rug," said Ghoreishi, "but ducking questions and hoping it goes away (including no more State Department press briefings) is an abdication of responsibility to the American people."
The inspector general's report was compiled days before Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire agreement earlier this month; the deal is still formally in place, but Israel has continued carrying out strikes, killing more than 800 Palestinians since it was signed.
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'There Is No Ceasefire' Say Gazans as Israeli Strikes Kill, Wound Hundreds
"The occupation targets whoever it wants, stopping and resuming the genocide every few days as if playing with our lives," said one young woman from Gaza.
Oct 31, 2025
More than 800 Palestinians have been killed or wounded since the October 10 truce between Israel and Hamas, leaving many residents of the still-embattled, still-starved strip to question whether there is actually any "ceasefire" at all.
“There is no ceasefire,” Hala, a 20-year-old woman who was awakened from her sleep Tuesday when an Israeli missile struck her neighbor's home, told The Intercept on Thursday. "The occupation targets whoever it wants, stopping and resuming the genocide every few days as if playing with our lives.”
Hala was looking forward to her upcoming wedding. But the Israeli attack killed her fiancé's cousin, his wife, and all but one of their children. The wedding has now been postponed.
The slain relatives were among the at least 104 Palestinians killed by Israeli strikes on Tuesday, according to the Gaza Health Ministry—whose casualty figures have been deemed accurate by Israeli military officials and a likely undercount by multiple peer-reviewed studies.
The Israel Defense Forces claimed Tuesday's attacks targeted "dozens of key terrorists," however IDF officials provided details on just 26 suspected militants. The Gaza Health Ministry said 46 children and 20 women were among those killed by the Israeli strikes.
“There is no doubt this is an attack on civilians,” Dr. Morten Rostrup, a physician with Doctors Without Borders working at al-Aqsa Hospital in Gaza City, told The Intercept. “Do we really call this a ceasefire?”
The Gaza Health Ministry says at least 211 people have been killed and 597 others wounded since the truce went into effect on October 10.
Since the Gaza genocide began in response to the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023, Israeli forces have killed at least 68,519 Palestinians and wounded over 170,300 others. Around 9,500 Palestinians remain missing and feared dead and buried beneath rubble. Leaked classified IDF documents suggest that over 80% of slain Palestinians were civilians.
Gaza officials say Israeli forces have violated the ceasefire at least 125 times. Meanwhile, Israel has cited relatively minor violations of the truce by Hamas, which have resulted in only a handful of Israeli casualties, as justification for the resumption of strikes that have left hundreds dead and wounded.
Still, US President Donald Trump—whose administration played a key role in brokering the truce—insists that the ceasefire is holding.
“I think none of us should be surprised that Israel has continued breaking the ceasefire,” Tariq Kenney-Shawa, a US policy fellow at New York-based Al-Shabaka, The Palestinian Policy Network, told The Intercept.
"It very much still fits into the Trump administration’s bigger picture, because as long as they can kind of say that there is a quote-unquote ‘ceasefire’ in effect, as long as they can say, ‘At least it’s better than before,’ that enables the US and the rest of the international community to let up on the pressure on Israel and to return to business as usual," added Kenney-Shawa, who is Palestinian and whose family is from Gaza.
Khaled Elgindy, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, said, "For Trump and for the Israelis, what matters is the appearance of a ceasefire."
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