July, 05 2022, 01:54pm EDT
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Federal court restores critical Endangered Species Act protections
Administration planned to keep harmful Trump era regulations in place for indeterminate period
WASHINGTON
Today, in a win for wildlife protection and conservation, a federal district court restored comprehensive Endangered Species Act regulatory protections to hundreds of species and the places they call home. The Services filed a voluntary remand motion in December 2021 in response to a lawsuit filed by Earthjustice on behalf of the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, Sierra Club, NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), National Parks Conservation Association, Wild Earth Guardians, and the Humane Society of the United States challenging harmful rules put in place by the Trump administration in 2019. The Services asked to partially rewrite flawed Endangered Species Act (ESA) regulations while keeping them in place during a rulemaking process that could take years to complete. The Court disagreed and vacated the 2019 ESA regulations instead.
Conservation groups challenged the Trump administration rules for undermining protections for imperiled species and habitat necessary for their survival, and their lawsuit was joined by a group of states, led by California, and an animal welfare group .
The Trump rules threatened to upend decades of clarity and protections for hundreds of species that have benefited from the established policy.
"The Court spoke for species desperately in need of comprehensive federal protections without compromise," said Kristen Boyles, attorney at Earthjustice. "Threatened and endangered species do not have the luxury of waiting under rules that do not protect them."
"Trump's gutting of endangered species protections should have been rescinded on day one of the Biden presidency," said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "With today's court ruling, the Services can finally get on with the business of protecting and recovering imperiled species."
"The 2019 rollbacks to the ESA regulations were an unlawful and irrational mess that undermined critical protections for wildlife," said Karimah Schoenhut, attorney for the Sierra Club. "In the midst of a global extinction crisis, the court's decision to vacate the rules will help ensure that imperiled species receive the protections they desperately need."
"The Trump Administration's assault on the nation's most important wildlife protection law made no sense at the time--and even less now as we see a biodiversity crisis unfolding globally with more clarity each day," said Rebecca Riley, Managing Director of the Nature Program at NRDC. "The court's decision ensures that the previous Administration's 'extinction package' will be rolled back so that the ESA can do its job: preventing the extinction of vulnerable species."
"Today brought a key piece of Trump's attack on imperiled species and the Endangered Species Act to an end," said Mike Senatore, vice president of conservation law for Defenders of Wildlife. "Instead of being bound by unscientific and illegal Trump rules, we are thrilled that the Biden Administration will have a clean slate to safeguard hundreds of species amidst the ongoing extinction crisis. We are all impacted by biodiversity loss and combating it must be a priority."
"This decision is a win for America's most at-risk wildlife, including species in national park ecosystems," said Bart Melton, Wildlife Program Director for the National Parks Conservation Association. "We are grateful for the court's restoration of protections that were removed by the previous administration. The climate crisis continues and it's critical that the Biden administration as well as conservationists, Tribes, states and communities work together to conserve America's most imperiled species."
"The Trump Administration's weakened rules were misguided and dangerous for wildlife," said Joe Bushyhead, endangered species attorney with WildEarth Guardians. "We're relieved that threatened and endangered species and their habitat once again have full protection under the Endangered Species Act."
"Today's decision puts these dangerous and shortsighted rollbacks in the bin where they belong," said Nicholas Arrivo, an attorney for the Humane Society of the United States. "The ESA is overwhelmingly popular because it works at preventing extinction of our most vulnerable species, and now the Administration can ensure that it continues to do so."
Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth, and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. We bring about far-reaching change by enforcing and strengthening environmental laws on behalf of hundreds of organizations, coalitions and communities.
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'Cowardice': Homeless Advocates Condemn Newsom Order to Remove Encampments
"The only way to end homeless encampments in California is to end the need for homeless encampments," an expert said.
Jul 25, 2024
Civil rights advocates and progressive commentators on Thursday condemned California Gov. Gavin Newsom after the Democrat issued an executive order to shut down homeless encampments on state property and to incentivize local authorities to do the same.
The order marks the first notable state policy shift to result from a momentous U.S. Supreme Court ruling on June 28, decided 6-3 on ideological lines, that the liberal dissenting justices argued criminalized homelessness.
Eric Tars, a policy director at the National Homelessness Law Center, toldThe New York Times that the executive order effectively blamed the victims of a systemic problem.
"The only way to end homeless encampments in California is to end the need for homeless encampments," he said. "California has an affordable housing crisis, and unless Newsom's executive order is coming with sufficient resources to address that, this new push isn't going to work."
In a direct response to Newsom on social media, Diane Yentel, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said that the governor hadn't provided the fundamental ingredient needed to solve the homelessness problem.
"You didn't provide the needed affordable housing," she wrote. "You're choosing political expediency over real solutions. That's not leadership, it's cowardice. This will only worsen homelessness."
Echoing the need for more housing, Nina Turner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy, called the Newsom decision "shameful," while Jordan Chariton, a journalist at Status Coup, a progressive media outlet, called it "disgusting," saying Newsom's solution was to "sweep them all up like it's taking out the trash."
Mel Buer, a reporter for The Real News Network, indicated on social media that the decision was in keeping with the political approach of the governor, who is widely believed to have presidential ambitions.
"Saw this one coming from a mile off," Buer wrote of Thursday's executive order. "Newsom's a fucking heartless dipshit who would rather court billionaire donors to his 2028 presidential run than be a real human being."
You didn’t provide the needed affordable housing.
You’re choosing political expediency over real solutions. That’s not leadership, it’s cowardice.
This will only worsen homelessness. https://t.co/2tHk5awTo8
— Diane Yentel (@dianeyentel) July 25, 2024
Critics of last month's Supreme Court ruling in City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson argued that it would lead to a crackdown on homelessness throughout the country. The conservative justices ruled that the Oregon city could ban sleeping in public places—sidewalks, streets, parks—overturning a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that the local law was unconstitutional.
The San Francisco-based 9th Circuit is one of the most liberal courts in the country and had issued a number of rulings in favor of the rights of homeless people in recent years, frustrating Republicans and some Democrats including Newsom.
California is home to roughly one-third of the nation's homeless population and the reasons for the problem are the subject of fierce ideological debate, as are the solutions. This was evident in the response to the Supreme Court ruling, which led one Republican mayor in California to declare that he was "warming up the bulldozer."
Newsom welcomed the ruling but other Democrats, such as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, expressed dismay and concern.
"This ruling must not be used as an excuse for cities across the country to attempt to arrest their way out of this problem or hide the homelessness crisis in neighboring cities or in jail," Bass said a statement at the time.
Newsom doesn't have the power to force local authorities such as Bass to remove homeless encampments but could wield influence at the municipal level because of his control over billions in funding to address homelessness, The New York Timesreported.
Newsom's administration has spent $24 billion in responding to the homelessness crisis since he took office in 2019, including $1 billion to help municipalities remove encampments and $3.3 billion to expand housing for homeless people, the executive order says.
Homeless people still have civil rights, advocacy groups say, warning that they will sue local governments that mistreat the unsheltered. They also point to research showing that sweeping encampments is ineffective, as it doesn't address the root problems of homelessness. A Rand Corporation survey last year showed that sweeps affect homeless populations in an area only temporarily.
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Israeli Snipers Firing at 'Anyone Who Is Moving' in Khan Younis
The southern Gaza city is the latest region where Israeli forces have issued an evacuation order, displacing hundreds of thousands of people.
Jul 25, 2024
At least 129 people have been killed in the last five days of Israeli shelling and artillery fire in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, where the Israel Defense Forces earlier this week gave people "a couple of minutes only" to evacuate earlier this week, according to Al Jazeera reporter Hind Khoudary, before the bombardment began.
Al Jazeera reported on Thursday that "the vast majority of dead and injured are women and children," as Israeli snipers have also been deployed in the city and are firing at Palestinians indiscriminately.
The snipers "are shooting anyone who is moving," wrote Tareq Abu Azzoum in a dispatch, reporting that the eastern part of Khan Younis is the main target of Israel's current assault.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) noted that the latest evacuation order reduced the area that Israel has claimed is a "humanitarian zone," as the order covered about 15% of al-Mawasi, where people from cities including Rafah and Gaza City have fled in recent months as the IDF has launched assaults in those cities.
The group told Al Jazeera that "there is no more space, even for a single tent, in the so-called 'humanitarian area' of al-Mawasi because of the overwhelming number of people displaced there."
Israel's reported indiscriminate assault on the city has included medical workers, said PRCS, which posted a video on social media Thursday of an ambulance that had been hit by live bullets fired by the IDF while medics were transporting an injured person.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor noted on Monday that the true death toll in Khan Younis—as with the rest of Gaza—may not be known for months, "with many victims remaining trapped under the rubble and in the streets, where rescue workers have not been able to retrieve their bodies."
The group also said the IDF had perpetrated "a kind of deception of the residents" of Khan Younis and villages in the area, including Bali Suhaila, where soldiers entered "amid very violent bombardment, even though the Israeli army had said in its orders that the displacement was going to be temporary."
The forced evacuation, false information about the order, and shrinking of the humanitarian zone were "all part of Israel's media disinformation campaign and psychological warfare tactics, since military assaults on forcibly displaced people and their tents have occurred continually in this area for several weeks now, resulting in hundreds of deaths and injuries," the Euro-Med Monitor.
The reports of indiscriminate shooting by snipers also bolster an account given by Dr. Mark Perlmutter, who volunteered at European Hospital in Khan Younis in April, to CBS News earlier this week.
"I had sniper bullets," said Perlmutter. "I have children that were shot twice... I have two children that I have photographs of, that were shot so perfectly in the chest... and directly on the side of the head on the same child. No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by the world's best sniper. And they're dead-center shots."
Perlmutter is among nearly four dozen doctors and nurses who wrote to President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and First Lady Jill Biden on Thursday, describing what they saw while volunteering at hospitals across Gaza since Israel began bombarding the enclave and blocking nearly all humanitarian aid, including medications and medical supplies, nearly 10 months ago.
"Children are universally considered innocents in armed conflict," wrote the medical workers. "However, every single signatory to this letter treated children in Gaza who suffered violence that must have been deliberately directed at them. Specifically, every one of us on a daily basis treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head and chest."
"We wish you could hear the cries and screams our consciences will not let us forget," they added. "We cannot believe that anyone would continue arming the country that is deliberately killing these children after seeing what we have seen."
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Billionaire Megadonor Draws Backlash for Urging Kamala Harris to Fire Lina Khan
"He's pushing her to go soft on corporate power, which is certainly not where voters are."
Jul 25, 2024
A billionaire megadonor's call for Vice President Kamala Harris to fire Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan if the presumptive Democratic nominee wins in November drew swift backlash from progressives on Thursday, with Sen. Bernie Sanders citing the demand as yet another example of "why we have to overturn Citizens United and end big money in politics."
Reid Hoffman, the billionaire founder of LinkedIn and a major Democratic benefactor, told CNN that he believes Khan is "waging war on American business" and expressed hope that a President Harris would replace the FTC chair, who has used her position to aggressively fight corporate concentration that harms consumers and small businesses.
Watch Hoffman's interview:
Billionaire LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman gave $7 million to the Harris campaign.
Then he went on TV demanding she fire FTC Chair Lina Khan, who leads the Biden admin in suing companies like Amazon, stopping megamergers, and protecting workers.
Harris must reject his demand. pic.twitter.com/gcw8bMA9us
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) July 25, 2024
Faiz Shakir, an adviser to Sanders (I-Vt.) and founder of the progressive media outlet More Perfect Union, accused Hoffman of "purposefully trying to fracture and divide the Kamala Harris coalition that's needed to win."
"He's pushing her to go soft on corporate power, which is certainly not where voters are," Shakir wrote on social media. "But it is where the billionaire class is."
Nidhi Hegde of the American Economic Liberties Project added that Hoffman "clearly does not understand how Khan's work has been pro-worker and pro-business."
"The Biden-Harris record on competition speaks for itself," Hegde wrote. "Also, that's real arrogant to go on national TV and just tell a presidential nominee what to do. That's not how democracy works."
Hoffman had already given more than $8.6 million to organizations supporting President Joe Biden before he dropped out of the race over the weekend and endorsed Harris, who has swiftly taken over the campaign apparatus and consolidated support among Democratic lawmakers and donors as she prepares for a matchup against Republican nominee Donald Trump.
Trump is also backed by tech billionaires, including the richest man in the world.
Hoffman told CNN that he intends to continue injecting money into the presidential race in support of Harris, who is reportedly planning a "Silicon Valley fundraising swing" with the LinkedIn founder.
According toThe Information, Hoffman convinced Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings to donate $7 million to a super PAC supporting Harris. CNBCreported Wednesday that efforts by Hoffman and other Silicon Valley moguls "are on track to raise over $100 million from major tech industry donors."
Progressives have raised concern about Harris' ties to and views about Big Tech. As The Financial Timesnoted Wednesday: "Harris has not yet articulated her antitrust policy. But in 2010, when Big Tech was not facing as fierce a pushback from Washington and the public over its alleged market abuses, she said: 'We cannot be shortsighted... We have to allow these [tech] businesses to develop and grow because that's where the models will be created."
Citing an unnamed "donor who has spoken privately" with Harris, The New York Timesreported Wednesday that the vice president has "expressed skepticism of Ms. Khan's expansive view of antitrust powers."
Harris counts among her advisers attorney Karen Dunn, who helped defend Google earlier this year against an antitrust lawsuit brought by the U.S. Justice Department and a number of states—including Harris' home state of California.
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