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Fire Drill Fridays: Jane Fonda Is Back in DC Fighting for Climate Action!
Climate activists from DC and beyond, including Emmy, SAG, and Golden Globe-nominated actress Taylor Schilling, joined Jane Fonda at Freedom Plaza
WASHINGTON
Today, climate activists from around the country joined Jane Fonda's Fire Drill Fridays rally live and in person for the first time in almost three years. Climate activists filled Freedom Plaza to "sound the alarm" on the climate emergency, calling for President Joe Biden to take urgent action. The program, which opened with a performance by a New Orleans brass band, featured a moving moment of silence for frontline communities who are already impacted by the mounting climate crisis, followed by a symbolic "alarm" of ringing bells.
Photos and videos of the rally will be available here. Credit: c Greenpeace USA
Actor and activist Jane Fonda said: "Our time is running out. Scientists are telling us we are in our "last decade of action." What we do or fail to do in the next decade to cut our greenhouse gas pollution in half will determine much about the future livability of this planet. So this is the time for bold action - before it is too late. That is exactly why we are here once again demanding change."
Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) said: "This is Code Red. Climate chaos is the greatest threat that humankind has ever faced, and we need to respond quickly and boldly. President Biden should start by declaring a climate emergency. All of us, especially our elected leaders, have a duty to all those suffering from climate chaos today, and all the generations to come. We must do everything we possibly can to transition rapidly from fossil fuel energy to renewable energy. This moment demands our action - let's stand together and deliver!"
Speakers - including Jerome Foster II, the youngest member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, Roishetta Ozane, Organizing Director of Southwest Louisiana/Southeast TX for Healthy Gulf, Maria Lopez-Nunez, Deputy Director of Ironbound Community Corporation (ICC), and Emmy, SAG, and Golden Globe nominated actress Taylor Schilling, as well as elected officials Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Representative Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) - joined Jane in demanding that Congress reject Senator Joe Manchin's "Dirty Deal." The deal, which could expand oil and gas projects in the U.S. and open up communities to further destruction from fossil fuels, is set to be attached to must-pass legislation.
Maria Lopez-Nunez, Deputy Director of Ironbound Community Corporation (ICC), said: "This dirty deal further consolidates the power of the fossil fuel industry through a handout that deeply harms the very communities hit first and worst by the climate crisis and legacy pollution. Our communities deserve a Just Transition to a healthy and non-toxic, community led transition, not one that uses renewables as decoration for fossil fuel expansion. This newest attempt to pass the dirty side deal is just another attempt to further erode our communities' rights; we deserve more."
Representative Raul Grijalva (D-AZ Third District) said: "Dirty industries have been padding their profit margins by offloading their worst messes on poor communities, communities of color, and Indigenous communities for decades. It comes as no surprise that they want to shove the Dirty Deal through Congress to make it even easier for them to do. As we move toward a clean energy future, we need policy solutions, like the Environmental Justice For All Act, that hold dirty industry to a higher standard for acting responsibly and being accountable to communities, not a lower one. It's time to finally put people and our planet over polluters. Many thanks to Jane Fonda and Fire Drill Fridays for being leaders in this fight for our climate future."
In 2023, Fire Drill Fridays plans to host rallies in the Gulf Coast and California, areas of the United States already seeing the visceral changes brought on by climate destruction. To learn more about upcoming programming, please visit https://firedrillfridays.com/.
About the guests:
Jerome Foster II is a 20-year-old White House Climate Advisor, environmental justice activist, and emerging technology developer. He advises on President Biden's White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council as the youngest ever White House Advisor in history. He served as intern for the late Honorable John Lewis at 16-years old and served as Board Member for the DC State Board of Education at 15. He is Co-Founder at Waic Up which is an international communication to community impact charity which is an expansion of OneMillionOfUs, which mobilized 1 million young people to vote in the 2020 Elections.
Raul Grijalva began his career in public service as a community organizer in Tucson. Four decades later, he continues to be an advocate for those in need and underrepresented voices. He has served as US House Representative for Arizona's Seventh Congressional District for twenty years, and in 2018, became Chair of the House Natural Resources Committee. He also serves on the Committee on Education and the Workforce and is the Chairman Emeritus of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, as well as a long-standing member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. He authored a letter championing the opposition to Manchin's permitting reform deal, and introduced the landmark Environmental Justice for All Act to fund environmental justice priorities.
Maria Lopez-Nunez (she/her) grew up in Bushwick and remembers being displaced multiple times by racism and violence, which sparked her commitment to fight extractive industries and end sacrifice zones once and for all. The Ironbound district of Newark, New Jersey where she resides, is predominantly Black and Latinx, and is one of the most toxic neighborhoods in the country. In her role as Deputy Director of Advocacy and Organizing of Ironbound Community Corporation (ICC); she challenges the current political system, and holds power brokers and polluters accountable while fighting for environmental, housing, immigrant, and racial justice. She currently serves on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, on the board for Climate Justice Alliance, and is the Co-Chair of the Grassroots Caucus for Building Equity and Alignment for Environmental Justice. You can catch Maria and her team in action in the 2019 film, The Sacrifice Zone.
Jeff Merkley has been one of the Senate's foremost champions for protecting our environment and taking on climate change since 2009. He's won bipartisan support to boost the Green Climate Fund, has used his seat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to promote American climate leadership on the global stage, and has led the fight in the Senate against Arctic drilling. Senator Merkley introduced the Keep It in the Ground Act to completely end new fossil fuel leases on our federal lands and waters. Senator Merkley also recently championed Senate letters urging President Biden to declare a National Climate Emergency, and opposing Manchin's permitting reform bill.
Roishetta Ozane is the Organizing Director of Southwest Louisiana/Southeast TX for Healthy Gulf, and is currently organizing against the oil and gas buildout in Southwest Louisiana and Southeast Texas. She also founded and directs The Vessel Project of Louisiana, a mutual aid and disaster relief organization in Louisiana. Roishetta is a single mom of six and her children are the reason she is fighting so hard to save this planet.
Greenpeace is a global, independent campaigning organization that uses peaceful protest and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future.
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DHS ‘100 Million Deportations’ Claim Was No Joke. Bovino Had ‘Master Plan’ to Purge Nearly a Third of the Country
This month, a GOP senator accused an immigration researcher of “hyperbole” for saying the Department of Homeland Security was advocating “ethnic cleansing” with its calls to expel 100 million people.
Mar 26, 2026
When the official social media account for the US Department of Homeland Security made a post glorifying the idea of “100 million deportations," it was dismissed by many as a joke, while those who said it amounted to a call for ”ethnic cleansing“ were accused of ”hyperbole.“
But the man who once led President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign says he was always dead serious about purging nearly a third of the country’s population.
On Tuesday, The New York Times published an interview with Gregory Bovino, the former “commander-at-large” of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, who was unceremoniously demoted back to his old post in El Centro, California this January, after immigration agents’ rampage across Minnesota—which included the public executions of two American citizens—ignited nationwide backlash.
Bovino, who is retiring this week at the age of 55, told the Times he had few regrets about his tenure leading the efforts of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which were marked by rampant racial profiling, large indiscriminate roundups, violations of civil liberties, and violent attacks on peaceful protesters.
But he wishes he had gone much further. According to the Times:
Mr. Bovino said he had a master plan that was in motion before his exile back to El Centro. It would have neutralized protesters, he said, and made it possible to deport 100 million people.
That is a goal that the Department of Homeland Security has widely promoted. If it sounds extreme, that’s because it’s nearly 10 times the estimated number of undocumented people in the country. It is also more than a quarter of the entire US population.
As Common Dreams reported back in late December, when DHS posted a meme about "100 million deportations," that number bears striking significance, since it was close to the number of people living in the US who identified as non-white on the 2020 census—about 96 million.
According to the Migration Policy Institute, it's also approximately the number of foreign-born people and their children, which was about 97.2 million as of 2024.
There are about 47 million foreign-born people living in the US, meaning that such a policy would also entail the deportation of around 53 million US-born citizens.
While Bovino and former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have lost their jobs, it's unclear whether the new head of DHS, Secretary Markwayne Mullin, will join the push to expel 100 million people from the US.
The Times provided little exposition about how precisely Bovino planned to carry out what would be by far the largest campaign of forced displacement in American, if not world, history.
However, the article demonstrates that the idea was not simply a troll post by a social media intern, but a sincere objective for a man who answered directly to the Secretary of Homeland Security and was elevated to the position of America’s most powerful immigration enforcer.
Bovino's admission of this goal was of particular note to David J. Bier, an immigration researcher at the Cato Institute and a prominent critic of Trump's immigration policy. He discussed the "100 million deportations" goal earlier this month during a Senate Budget Committee hearing.
DHS's post came up after Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) attempted to discredit Bier by reading off supposedly "hyperbolic" posts he'd made on social media, including one accusing Republicans of thinking "they can troll their way into us accepting ethnic cleansing."
Bier responded that his post was "in regard to a Department of Homeland Security post about 100 million deportations. That is what DHS has tweeted from their account."
As Kennedy attempted to shout over Bier, the researcher said: "100 million deportations would be ethnic cleansing. You would be removing one-third of the country."
"And you don't think this is hyperbolic?" Kennedy interrupted, smirking. The senator brought up another of Bier's posts in which he claimed Trump was carrying out a "population purge agenda," adding sarcastically, "No hyperbole there!"
“When I talk about ‘population purge,’ I’m talking about the fact that they’re trying to deport US-born citizens, people born here,” Bier responded. “They are trying to deport them as well. So it’s not a ‘mass deportation' agenda. It’s also an agenda intended to reduce the population of the United States, including US-born citizens. So these are not ‘hyperbolic’ statements.”
Kennedy ignored Bier's argument, instead derisively asking "what planet" he was from and saying he triggered his "gag reflex." It is not clear if Kennedy was aware of Trump's frequent calls to "denaturalize" American citizens or his administration's efforts to eliminate the constitutional provision of birthright citizenship.
The Houston-based immigration attorney Steven Brown said that Bovino’s apparent “master plan” was “exactly what Bier testified about, since 100 million deportations would expel ”one-third of the US population and would necessitate citizens being deported to accomplish.“
Jessica Riedl, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, called the idea "just dangerously insane," and something out of "white supremacist fan fiction."
"These are the armed fanatics who were given police power in our cities," she added.
Noting that many of the commenters who replied to his posts expressed support for the idea, Bier warned that "DHS's 100 million deportations ethnic cleansing agenda is spreading throughout the right-wing echo chamber as it is intended. It is only a matter of time before this extremism becomes standard rhetoric for GOP candidates."
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Poll Shows Mills Attack Ad Left Platner With 2-to-1 Lead in Maine Senate Race
As the latest poll results were released, the Maine governor launched her second ad against her Senate primary opponent, again attacking him for comments he made online 13 years ago.
Mar 26, 2026
Days after Maine Gov. Janet Mills released her first attack ad against her rival in the Democratic Senate primary, Graham Platner, focusing on comments he made about sexual assault victims online 13 years ago, Emerson College Polling conducted the latest survey of likely primary voters regarding their support for the two candidates.
Between March 21-23, the polling group surveyed 1,075 Maine Democrats and found that 55% expressed support for Platner, while just 28% supported Mills—giving the first-time political candidate, oyster farmer, and combat veteran nearly a 2-to-1 advantage.
When asked about a hypothetical general election matchup with Republican Sen. Susan Collins, respondents gave both Democratic candidates an edge over her, but Platner had a more comfortable lead.
Forty-eight percent supported him over Collins, while 41% backed Collins and 12% said they were undecided or supported another candidate. Mills had the backing of 46% of voters compared to Collins' 43%, and 11% were undecided.
The poll was consistent with numerous other surveys that have been taken since Mills entered the race last October, at which point it came to light that Platner had written offensive messages on Reddit in the past and had gotten a tattoo while in the Marines that resembled a skull-and-crossbones that appeared on the uniforms of Nazi guards during World War II.
Platner said his views had evolved since he wrote the posts and said he had not been aware that the symbol was associated with Nazis; he then got the tattoo covered up and continued holding rallies in cities and towns across the state—often addressing overflow crowds—where he has been speaking out against oligarchy, pushing for Medicare for All, demanding a billionaire's minimum tax, and condemning the Trump administration's "authoritarian overreach" with its mass deportations agenda.
Polls taken in the weeks after the controversies broke suggested the negative stories about Platner's past weren't sticking. The University of New Hampshire (UNH) found in late October that 58% of voters backed Platner compared to 24% who supported the governor.
He was 20 points ahead of Mills in a poll by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee weeks later, and in February UNH found Platner had widened his already significant lead, with 64% of Maine Democrats supporting him and 26% backing Mills. He also had an 11-point lead over Collins compared to Mills 1-point lead.
Despite the evidence that the attacks on Platner's Reddit history were doing little to damage his chances of winning, Mills made his comments the focus of her first attack ad earlier this month—a move that was panned at a local Democrats meeting days later in Hancock County, with attendees telling the governor directly that the ad was "odious" and "underhanded" and demanding to know: “Do you believe in a Maine and a country where a person can be redeemed? Where they can change and become a better version of themself?”
At the meeting, several voters also expressed disapproval of Mills' record of vetoing drug pricing and labor rights legislation and her opposition to a red flag gun control law.
On Thursday, as the latest Emerson College poll results were released, Mills released a second ad that, like the first one, focused on Platner's 2013 comments about sexual assault.
"Since her last attack ad, he has only climbed in the polls against both Mills and Collins," said journalist Ryan Grim of Drop Site News. "All these ads do is tell voters that the Democratic establishment is still a closed-off world where you are not welcome if you previously held different views or said something offensive on the internet. Nobody wants that world."
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Trump's Illegal Iran War to Push US Inflation Sharply Higher, OECD Projects
"Every single one of this administration's policies is doing what it can to raise prices," said one critic.
Mar 26, 2026
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on Thursday released a report projecting that President Donald Trump's unconstitutional war with Iran will sharply increase inflation in the US this year.
According to OECD, the disruption in energy markets caused by the war means that "inflation pressures will persist for longer," with inflation in G20 nations "now expected to be higher in 2026 than previously projected."
OECD projects that inflation in the US, which was previously seen coming in at 2.6% in 2026, will instead rise to 4.2% this year thanks in large part to the war, which has spiked prices for oil, gasoline, diesel fuel, and fertilizer.
The report also warns that these numbers could get even worse if the Iran conflict drags on and the Strait of Hormuz remains shut for a prolonged period.
"Further disruptions to trade in the Persian Gulf could also have negative effects on a broader range of products in global supply chains," OECD writes. "For example, ongoing constraints to fertilizer supply could increase global food prices, with potentially serious impacts on household finances and inflation expectations. Furthermore, reduced supply of sulphur, helium or aluminium could impede production in a range of industries."
More ominously, the report finds that "prolonged disruptions to energy supply and growth, or lower-than-expected returns from net AI investment, or rising losses in private capital markets, could all trigger more widespread risk repricing in financial markets," with the result being a higher risk of default across "multiple credit products" and an evaporation of economic liquidity.
Asa Johansson, director of policy studies at OECD, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that the organization's forecast is "highly uncertain" at this point because "we don’t know the breadth and the duration of this energy shock" caused by the war.
Tahra Hoops, director of economic analysis at Chamber of Progress, expressed astonishment at the Trump administration's economic mismanagement in launching the Iran war, which came at a time when polling has consistently shown that affordability is the top concern for US voters.
"Every single one of this administration's policies is doing what it can to raise prices," wrote Hoops, "for a political goal that they have yet to coherently articulate, let alone have any chance at achieving."
Phillips O'Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews, argued that the OECD's inflation forecast was yet another nail in the Republican Party's chances of retaining control of Congress this year.
"It’s going to be so much fun watching the GOP run on 'affordability' in 2026," O'Brien wrote.
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