SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
For Immediate Release
January, 30 2023, 12:32pm EDT
Contact:
Email:,info(at)fwwatch(dot)org,Seth Gladstone -,sgladstone@fwwatch.org
24 Groups To Sec. Vilsack: Strengthen Packers & Stockyards Act
Rulemakings offer critical opportunity to protect farmers and ranchers from industry monopolies.
Twenty four groups signed a letter to USDA Secretary Vilsack today urging that the USDA seize upon an open rulemaking process to strengthen protections for farmers and ranchers under the Packers & Stockyards Act. The agency is revisiting inadequate farmer and rancher protections from industry monopolies in a series of long-overdue rulemakings. The letter was written and circulated by national advocacy organization Food & Water Watch.
Ineffective and outdated Packers & Stockyards Act rules have created an unfair market that preferences corporate power over fairness and competition. Passed over 100 years ago to limit monopolistic practices in the meatpacking sector, the act’s legacy has been tarnished by decades of corporate abuse. Lax antitrust oversight, vertical integration that concentrates corporate power, and tournament systems that pit contract poultry growers against one another have contributed to a highly consolidated food and farm system that crushes the competition the act was designed to protect.
“Today’s meat and poultry industries are more consolidated than ever. Years of ineffective, opaque rules and lax enforcement have gutted federal authority to maintain fair, competitive market practices, and farmers and ranchers are paying the price,” said Krissy Kasserman, Food & Water Watch factory farm organizing director. “Secretary Vilsack and the Biden administration must seize this opportunity to restore competitive, just and equitable market practices that level the playing field for hardworking family farmers and ranchers.”
A Food & Water Watch report found that just four corporations slaughter 83% of the nation’s cattle. The top four corporations in hog and poultry processing also dominate the market with 66 and 51 percent market share respectively. Meanwhile, a staggering 99.5% of all domestic broiler chickens are grown by contract growers. Letter signatories outlined three demands to rebuild competitive markets:
- Require transparency and structural reforms to the poultry tournament system.
- Strengthen prohibitions on unfair and deceptive practices, undue preferences, and unjust prejudices.
- Clarify that parties do not need to demonstrate market-wide harm to competition in order to bring an action under section 202(a) and 202(b) of the Packers & Stockyards Act.
Food & Water Watch mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold and uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people's health, communities, and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests.
(202) 683-2500LATEST NEWS
In Gift to Big Oil Donors, Trump Stops EPA From Combating 'Most Terrible Environmental Threat in Human History'
Repealing the EPA's endangerment finding "isn’t about saving taxpayers’ money, it’s about saving an industry that has already been exposed as a permanent danger to American families," said the head of 350.org.
Feb 12, 2026
In what the Sierra Club described as an act to "formalize climate denialism as official government policy," the Trump administration announced Thursday that it has revoked the long-standing "endangerment finding" that allowed the Environmental Protection Agency to pass regulations fighting the climate crisis.
The 2009 endangerment finding determined that the emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases posed a hazard to public health and welfare by causing the planet to warm dramatically, citing overwhelming scientific evidence, which has only grown more indisputable in the nearly two decades since.
With the US Supreme Court having ruled in 2007 that the EPA could make regulations on climate change if it were deemed a health risk, this finding served as the basis for virtually every climate-related EPA regulation under the 1970 Clean Air Act, including those limiting emissions from motor vehicles, power plants, oil and gas facilities, and other sources of pollution.
The finding has been a target of the fossil fuel industry since it was reached. Under President Donald Trump, who has boasted openly of serving the fossil fuel industry in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars of financial support during his last election, they have found their hero.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, who has enthusiastically backed Trump's initiatives to expand oil drilling and coal mining, called the repeal of the finding "the largest deregulatory action in the history of America."
Indeed, it is expected to immediately eviscerate fuel-efficiency standards and electric vehicle requirements for cars and trucks, which are already the largest single source of carbon dioxide emissions in the US, contributing about 1.8 billion metric tons in 2022.
While the White House has said the reduced efficiency standards will “save the American people $1.3 trillion in crushing regulations,” this is a drop in the ocean compared to the $87 trillion in economic disruption that a study by researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania estimated will come over the next 25 years as a result of increased natural disasters and sea-level rise caused by American corporations' fossil fuel outputs.
In the United States, weather disasters—exacerbated by global warming—caused $115 billion in total damages last year, the third most since tracking began in 1980, behind only 2023 and 2024. Last year had more billion-dollar disasters than any other year on record.
Anne Jellema, the executive director of the environmental group 350.org, said repealing the endangerment finding "isn’t about saving taxpayers’ money, it’s about saving an industry that has already been exposed as a permanent danger to American families."
"While the Trump administration can manipulate scientific agencies, it can never suppress the truth that ordinary people in the US and around the world are paying the real price for Big Oil’s profits: Lives are being lost, homes are being destroyed, and costs are soaring," she said.
The Trump administration does not have the last word on the endangerment finding. Climate groups, including Earthjustice, have already stated their intention to challenge the legality of the decision.
"The courts have repeatedly affirmed EPA’s obligation to clean up climate pollution," said Earthjustice president Abigail Dillen. "There is no way to reconcile EPA’s decision with the law, the science, and the reality of disasters that are hitting us harder every year."
Dillen said, "Earthjustice and our partners will see the Trump administration in court.” But it may face an uphill battle.
Though the Supreme Court laid the groundwork for the finding's creation, the current right-wing majority has rolled back its authority in recent years, most notably in 2022, when the justices limited the EPA's authority to impose emissions standards on power plants.
David Arkush, the director of Public Citizen’s climate program, said that "if left to stand," the rollback of the endangerment finding "will hamstring the government’s ability to combat the most terrible environmental threat in human history, harming Americans and the world for decades to come."
“Abundant scientific evidence supports the EPA’s prior conclusion that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare," he added. "Americans feel the effects of climate change constantly, as we experience more dangerous hurricanes, furnace-like heat domes, walls of water slamming into our children’s summer camps, raging wildfires, and other extreme weather driven by greenhouse gases.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
‘What a Surprise’: Sanders Undeterred by Bezos-Owned Washington Post's Dismissal of AI Data Center Pause
“Jeff Bezos is spending $200 billion on AI and robotics. Jeff Bezos is replacing hundreds of thousands of his workers at Amazon with robots. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post.”
Feb 12, 2026
The Washington Post editorial board went to the trouble of marking what it called "Bernie Sanders' worst idea yet" on Wednesday, but the progressive US senator shrugged at the label and didn't appear likely to end his push for a moratorium on the construction of new artificial intelligence data centers.
The conservative-leaning editors wrote glowingly of the "mind-blowing amounts of information" that AI data centers can process and dismissively said that businesses that have invested billions of dollars in AI have erroneously been cast as the "villain in the socialist imagination."
They decried "AI doomerism" by politicians and accused lawmakers like Sanders (I-Vt.) of "fearmongering" about the data centers' water consumption and environmental harms—but neglected to mention that the rapid expansion of the massive centers has sparked grassroots outrage, with communities in states including Michigan and Wisconsin demanding that tech giants stay out of their towns, fearing skyrocketing electricity bills among other impacts.
Sanders emphasized that the Post and its owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, have a vested interest in dismissing efforts to stop the AI build-out that President Donald Trump has demanded with his executive order aimed at stopping states from regulating the industry.
Bezos, one of the richest people on the planet, created an AI startup last year with $6.2 billion in funding, some of it from his personal fortune, and Amazon—where Bezos is still the primary shareholder—has announced plans to invest $200 billion in AI and robotics.
"What a surprise," said Sanders sardonically. "The Washington Post doesn't want a moratorium on AI data centers."
Ben Inskeep, a program director for Citizens Action Coalition in Indiana, suggested the editorial board couldn't express its opposition to Sanders' proposal for a moratorium without including "an admission that it is a paid attack dog for Jeff Bezos," pointing to its required disclosure that Bezos' company is in fact investing billions of dollars in AI.
On social media, Sanders followed his response to the Post's attack with a video in which he doubled down on his objections to AI, despite the editorial board's accusation that he and others "grandstand" on the issue and its insistence that he should "be ecstatic about how much AI can help workers."
Sanders said in the video that "AI and robotics are a huge threat to the working class of this country."
"We have got to be prepared to say as loud and clear as we can that this technology is not just going to benefit the billionaires who own it," he said, "but it's going to work for the working families of our country."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Judge Blasts Hegseth Over Effort to 'Shrink the First Amendment Liberties' of Sen. Mark Kelly
"This court has all it needs to conclude that defendants have trampled on Senator Kelly's First Amendment freedoms."
Feb 12, 2026
A federal judge delivered a scathing ruling against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's effort to punish a Democratic US senator for warning members of the military against following unlawful orders.
US District Judge Richard Leon on Thursday granted a preliminary injunction that at least temporarily blocked Hegseth from punishing Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a retired US Navy captain who was one of several Democratic lawmakers to take part in a video that advised military service members that they had a duty to disobey President Donald Trump if he gave them unlawful orders.
In his ruling, Leon eviscerated Hegseth's efforts to reduce Kelly's retirement rank and pay simply for exercising his First Amendment rights.
While Leon acknowledged that active US service members do have certain restrictions on their freedom of speech, he said that these restrictions have never been applied to retired members of the US armed services.
"This court has all it needs to conclude that defendants have trampled on Senator Kelly's First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees," wrote Leon. "To say the least, our retired veterans deserve more respect from their government, and our constitution demands they receive it!"
The judge said he would be granting Kelly's request for an injunction because claims that his First Amendment rights were being violated were "likely to succeed on the merits," further noting that the senator has shown "irreparable harm" being done by Hegseth's efforts to censure him.
Leon concluded his ruling by imploring Hegseth to stop "trying to shrink the First Amendment liberties of retired service members," and instead "reflect and be grateful for the wisdom and expertise that retired service members have brought to public discussions and debate on military matters in our nation over the past 250 years."
Shortly after Leon's ruling, Kelly posted a video on social media in which he highlighted the threats posed by the Trump administration's efforts to silence dissent.
"Today, a federal court made clear that Pete Hegseth violated the Constitution when he tried to punish me for something I said," Kelly remarked. "But this case was never just about me. This administration was sending a message to millions of retired veterans that they too can be censured or demoted just for speaking out. That's why I couldn't let this stand."
Kelly went on to accuse the Trump administration of "cracking down on our rights and trying to make examples out of everyone they can."
Today a federal court made clear Pete Hegseth violated the Constitution when he tried to punish me for something I said.
This is a critical moment to show this administration they can't keep undermining Americans' rights.
I also know this might not be over yet, because Trump… pic.twitter.com/9dRe9pmeCd
— Senator Mark Kelly (@SenMarkKelly) February 12, 2026
Leon's ruling came less than two days after it was reported that Jeanine Pirro, a former Fox News host who is now serving as US attorney for the District of Columbia, tried to get Kelly and five other Democratic lawmakers criminally indicted on undisclosed charges before getting rejected by a DC grand jury.
According to a Wednesday report from NBC News, none of the grand jurors who heard evidence against the Democrats believed prosecutors had done enough to establish probable cause that the Democrats had committed a crime, leading to a rare unanimous rejection of an attempted federal prosecution.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular