May, 25 2022, 02:18pm EDT
President Biden's Executive Order on Police Reform Is a Baseline to Address Toxic Policing
Rashad Robinson, president of Color Of Change, the nation's largest online racial justice organization, issued the following statement in response to the news that President Biden will issue an executive order to increase police accountability on the anniversary of George Floyd's murder:
WASHINGTON
Rashad Robinson, president of Color Of Change, the nation's largest online racial justice organization, issued the following statement in response to the news that President Biden will issue an executive order to increase police accountability on the anniversary of George Floyd's murder:
"For far too long, the lack of accountability, transparency and consequences from law enforcement has created a dangerous environment for Black people and our communities. From Rodney King to George Floyd, Eric Garner to Tamir Rice, we have borne witness to these senseless killings, all because police departments have been allowed to surveil our communities, violate laws, and cause grave harm without any system of accountability. This violent institution has been used as a tool of political oppression to silence Black people and maintain the status quo of white supremacy for hundreds of years. President Biden's executive order -- issued on the two-year anniversary of George Floyd's murder and the 26th birthday of Kalief Browder -- is a welcome first step towards establishing a baseline for addressing the country's toxic culture of policing and lack of accountability for officers and police departments.
This executive order is the legacy of the tireless activism of racial justice and civil leaders. It's a clear product of the largest protest movement in American history: the 2020 racial justice uprisings that demanded police accountability following the police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. While the order sets necessary baseline standards of record-keeping, accountability and acceptable police behavior for federal law enforcement agencies, we can and must do so much more. It's important that the federal government create a robust plan of implementation that includes community stakeholders and civil rights leaders. It is critical that state and local police agencies and policymakers advance more robust accountability measures that extend far beyond the floor set by this executive order. This is the only way to ensure that Black and brown communities that are most harmed by state-sanctioned violence are protected.
We acknowledge this important and historic action by President Biden, and look forward to working with the administration on the implementation of the executive order, but are disappointed that this is the only leadership we are seeing in Washington on this issue. Congress has categorically failed on tackling problems in policing and shaping the future of public safety. We can no longer accept this lack of action and direction. We can also no longer tolerate the outsize impact corporate-funded police foundations and racist police unions have on our public safety system.
Our lives remain at stake, which is why we must build on today's announcement to pressure lawmakers at the federal, state, and local levels for change. It is imperative that we enact community-centered policies that move us away from the old model of policing and work to build a new paradigm, one that remakes public safety to ensure Black people feel protected and centers community-led investments and alternatives to policing. Our communities know what makes them safe -- it's time that lawmakers listen to us."
Color Of Change is the nation's largest online racial justice organization. We help people respond effectively to injustice in the world around us. As a national online force driven by over one million members, we move decision-makers in corporations and government to create a more human and less hostile world for Black people in America.
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Khanna Hits Back as Silicon Valley Oligarchs Threaten Primary Challenge Over California Billionaires Tax
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US Rep. Ro Khanna defended California's proposed tax on extreme wealth Saturday after a pair of prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalists threatened to launch a primary bid for his California House seat.
The proposal, which advocates are gathering signatures to place on the ballot in 2026, would impose a one-time 5% tax on those with net worths over $1 billion to recoup about $90 billion in Medicaid funds stripped from the state by this year’s Republican budget law. The roughly 200 billionaires affected would have five years to pay the tax.
While higher taxes on the superrich are overwhelmingly popular with Americans, the proposal has rankled many of California’s wealthiest residents, as well as California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who said earlier this month that he’s “adamantly” against the measure.
On Friday, the New York Times reported that two of the valley's biggest powerbrokers—venture capitalist and top Trump administration ally Peter Thiel and Google co-founder Larry Page—were threatening to reduce their ties to California in response to the tax proposal.
This has been a common refrain from elites faced with proposed tax increases, though data suggests they rarely follow through on their threats to bail on cities and states, even when those hikes are implemented. Meanwhile, the American Prospect has pointed out that the one-time tax would still apply to those who moved out of the Golden State.
Khanna (D-Calif.), who is both a member of the House's progressive faction and a longtime darling of the tech sector, has increasingly sparred with industry leaders in recent years over their reactionary stances on labor rights, regulation, and taxation.
In a post on X, the congressman reacted with derision at the threats of billionaire flight: "Peter Thiel is leaving California if we pass a 1% tax on billionaires for five years to pay for healthcare for the working class facing steep Medicaid cuts. I echo what [former President Franklin D. Roosevelt] said with sarcasm of economic royalists when they threatened to leave, 'I will miss them very much.'"
Casado, who donated to Khanna’s 2024 reelection campaign according to OpenSecrets, complained that “Ro has done a speed run, alienating every moderate I know who has supported him, including myself.”
"Beyond being totally out of touch with [the moderate] faction of his base, he’s devolved into an obnoxious jerk," Casado continued. "At least that makes voting him the fuck out all the more gratifying."
Casado's post received a reply from another former Khanna donor, Garry Tan, the CEO of the tech startup accelerator Y Combinator.
"Time to primary him," Tan said of Khanna.
Tan, a self-described centrist Democrat, has never run for office before. But he is notorious for his social media tirades against local progressives in San Francisco and was one of the top financial backers of the corporate-led push to oust the city's liberal former district attorney, Chesa Boudin, in 2022.
Casado replied: "Count me in. Happy to be involved at any level."
Progressive commentator Krystal Ball marveled that “Tech oligarchs are now openly conspiring against Ro Khanna because he dared to back a modest wealth tax.”
So far, neither Casado nor Tan has hinted at any concrete plans to challenge Khanna in 2026. If they did, defeating him would likely be a tall order—since his sophomore election in 2018, a primary challenger has never come within 30 points of unseating him.
But Khanna still felt the need to respond to the brooding tech royals. He noted that he has "supported a modest wealth tax since the day I ran in 2016," which prompted another angry retort from Casado, who accused the congressman of "antagonizing the people who made your district the amazing place it is" with a tax on billionaires.
Khanna hit back at his critics with a lengthy defense of not just the wealth tax, but his conception of what he calls "pro-innovation progressivism."
"My district is $18 trillion, nearly one-third of the US stock market in a 50-mile radius. We have five companies with a market cap over $1 trillion," Khanna said. "If I can stand up for a billionaire tax, this is not a hard position for 434 other [House] members or 100 senators."
"The seminal innovation in tech is done by thousands, often with public funds," Khanna continued. "Yes, we need entrepreneurs to commercialize disruptive innovation... But the idea that they would not start companies to make billions, or take advantage of an innovation cluster, if there is a 1-2% tax on their staggering wealth defies common sense and economic theory."
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When President Donald Trump launched a series of airstrikes in Nigeria on Christmas, he described it as an attack against "ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians."
But locals in a town that was hit during the strike say terrorism has never been a problem for them. On Friday, CNN published a report based on interviews with several residents of Jabo, which was hit by a US missile during Thursday's attack, which landed just feet away from the town's only hospital.
The rural town of Jabo is part of the Sokoto state in northwestern Nigeria, which the Trump administration and the Nigerian government said was hit during the strike.
Both sides have said militants were killed during the attack, but have not specified their identities or the number of casualties.
Kabir Adamu, a security analyst from Beacon Security and Intelligence in Abuja, told Al Jazeera that the likely targets are members of “Lakurawa,” a recently formed offshoot of ISIS.
But the Trump administration's explanation that their home is at the center of a "Christian genocide" left many residents of Jabo confused. As CNN reported:
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Bashar Isah Jabo, a lawmaker who represents the town and surrounding areas in Nigeria's parliament, described the village to CNN as “a peaceful community” that has “no known history of ISIS, Lakurawa, or any other terrorist groups operating in the area.”
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The senator recently claimed, without citing a source for the figures, that "since 2009, over 50,000 Christians in Nigeria have been massacred, and over 18,000 churches and 2,000 Christian schools have been destroyed" by the Islamist group Boko Haram.
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"This theme of persecution of Christians is a very politically charged, and actually religiously charged, theme for evangelicals across the world. And when you say that Christians are being persecuted, that’s a thing," she told Democracy Now! in November. "It fits this sort of savior narrative of this American sort of ethos right now that is seeing itself going into countries for a moral war, a moral suasion, as it were, to do something to help other people."
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Zelenskyy is seeking to maintain Ukraine's territorial sovereignty without having to surrender territory—namely, the eastern Donbass region that is largely occupied by Russian forces. He also hopes that any agreement to end the war will come with a long-term security guarantee reminiscent of NATO.
On Friday, Zelenskyy told reporters that the peace deal was 90% complete. But Trump retorted that Zelenskyy "doesn't have anything until I approve it."
Trump has expressed hostility toward Zelenskyy throughout his presidency. In February, before berating him in a now-infamous Oval Office meeting, Trump insisted falsely that Ukraine, not Russia, was responsible for starting the war in 2022.
Zelenskyy's latest peace proposal was issued in response to Trump's proposal last month, which was heavily weighted in Russia's favor.
It called for Ukraine to recognize Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea and cede the entirety of the Donbass, about 2,500 square miles of territory, to Russia, including territory not yet captured. Trump's plan puts a cap of 600,000 personnel on Ukraine's military and calls for Ukraine to add a measure in its constitution banning it from ever joining NATO.
Earlier this year, Trump demanded that Ukraine give up $500 billion worth of its mineral wealth in what he said was "repayment" for US military support during the war (even though that support has only totalled about $175 billion).
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While those terms appear less exploitative, the reconstruction program is expected to be financed by US loans from firms like BlackRock, which have been heavily involved in the diplomatic process.
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