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CODEPINK Condemns Israel's Invasion of Lebanon
CODEPINK condemns Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and the ongoing U.S. support for Israel’s military actions. This escalation will lead to more death and devastation. Despite knowing the potential for humanitarian disaster, the Biden-Harris administration and Congress continue funding Israel’s war crimes in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Yemen, and now Lebanon. In attacks where most of the victims are civilians, we are witnessing state-sponsored terrorism carried out by one of the most advanced militaries in the world.
Israel claims its operation in Lebanon is "targeted," but like in Gaza, civilians are the real victims. Make no mistake: the Biden Administration is providing cover for Israel as it invades a neighboring, sovereign nation. U.S. taxpayers fund Israel’s military, providing billions annually and supplying weapons used to kill innocent people.
“While the US sends billions in “aid” to a genocide and a larger regional war, people in North Carolina are dying without adequate aid from their own government,” stated CODEPINK National Co-Director Danaka Katovich. “The official U.S. policy is one of death and destruction everywhere. The people of the world deserve better,” she continued.
The Biden administration and Congress could halt this escalation by cutting military aid, demanding a ceasefire, and holding Israel accountable, but instead, they allow continued aggression across the Middle East.
Our demand is the same as always: divest from war and genocide and invest in the needs of the people.
We encourage everyone in the United States to ask your senator to block the newest $20 billion weapons shipment to Israel. Israel.
CODEPINK is a women-led grassroots organization working to end U.S. wars and militarism, support peace and human rights initiatives, and redirect our tax dollars into healthcare, education, green jobs and other life-affirming programs.
(818) 275-7232LATEST NEWS
Trump Admin Condemned for Pushing Big Oil Leases in Arctic Refuge
The Bureau of Land Management is seeking nominations for which parts of ANWR's Coastal Plane should be offered up to fossil fuel companies for potential drilling.
Feb 02, 2026
The Trump administration on Monday took the first step toward holding controversial oil and gas lease sales in the Coastal Plane of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The Bureau of Land Management announced on Monday that it was seeking nominations for which parts of ANWR's Coastal Plane should be offered up to fossil fuel companies for potential drilling, fulfilling a mandate passed by the US Senate in late 2025. However, the move goes against the wishes of Indigenous people who consider the plane sacred as well as conservationists, scientists, and many members of the American public who value US public lands for their beauty and wildlife.
“People have worked together for decades to defend the Arctic Refuge, because this unique landscape is too special to be sacrificed to the oil industry for profit," Earthjustice managing attorney Erik Grafe said in a statement. "Tripling down on oil development in the Arctic takes us in exactly the wrong direction in our existential fight to curb climate change and protect these critically important public lands."
The sales would continue US President Donald Trump's push to increase oil and gas production, including in Alaska, ramping up an agenda that has dominated both of his terms. The Senate's action in 2025 followed an October decision by the Department of the Interior (DOI) to open the Coastal Plane to drilling, overriding Biden-era protections. The DOI, led by pro-fossil fuel Doug Burgum, also reversed Biden administration protections for Alaska's Western Arctic.
"The Arctic Refuge is no place for drilling."
"The Trump administration spent 2025 waging an all-out assault on public lands in Alaska’s Arctic, while ignoring the voices of Indigenous communities that hold these lands sacred and jeopardizing the survival of Arctic wildlife," Grafe said. "We’ve already taken steps to challenge Interior’s overall leasing plan for the Arctic Refuge in court, and we’re prepared to continue the fight as this lease sale process grinds on.”
The Trump administration's plan for the Arctic faces wide opposition—public comments on nominations for portions of the Western Arctic to lease featured tens of thousands of calls for protection rather than exploitation.
However, opponents of the plan also noted it may not be as popular with the industry as Trump hopes. Lease sales in ANWR in 2021 and 2024 received little interest from oil and gas companies, with the latter not receiving a single bid.
“The Trump administration is hung up on oil and gas leasing in the Arctic Refuge because they cannot admit that the original Trump leasing plan—established following the 2017 Tax Act—was a complete and utter failure,” said Kristen Moreland, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, in a statement.
The Alaska Wilderness League appealed to the industry itself, noting that the area has some of the highest production costs on the continent while being an increasingly difficult place to work due to extreme weather and other changes caused by the climate crisis, an uncertain regulatory environment, competition from cheaper forms of renewable energy, and the fact that many Americans do not support drilling in the Arctic.
“Serious companies don’t gamble their future on the most remote, expensive, and controversial oil on Earth from one of the most unparalleled ecosystems left on this planet,” said league executive director Kristen Miller. “If companies are still looking to drill the Arctic Refuge in 2026, it’s a sign that they can’t read the writing on the wall: Smart money has already walked away.”
But whatever the decision of the oil and gas industry, Indigenous communities and their allies are determined to fight for the land that is home to polar bears, millions of birds, and the Porcupine caribou herd.
“We condemn these actions, and encourage officials in the Trump administration—and our representatives in the Alaska delegation—to acknowledge and accept what we as Gwich’in know, and what the majority of the American people agree on: The Arctic Refuge is no place for drilling," Moreland continued. "It deserves to be protected and preserved for the wildlife that depend on it, and for all our futures.”
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Judge Rules Against Kristi Noem Order Seeking to Block Lawmakers From Immigrant Detention Facilities
"The Court’s decision today... against ICE’s unlawful effort to obstruct congressional oversight is a victory for the American people," said Rep. Joe Neguse.
Feb 02, 2026
Doubling down on a ruling from late last year, a federal judge on Monday once again rejected an effort by the Trump administration to block congressional lawmakers from accessing federal immigration detention facilities.
In the ruling, US District Judge Jia Cobb granted a temporary restraining order sought by Democratic members of the House of Representatives to overturn the US Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) policy of requiring lawmakers to give a week's notice before being granted access to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities.
Cobb had already overturned this DHS policy in a December ruling, arguing that it "was likely contrary to the terms of a limitations rider attached to" the department's annual appropriated funds.
However, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in January reimplemented the one-week notice policy and argued that it was now being implemented with separate funds provided to DHS through the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which did not contain the language used in the earlier limitations rider.
Cobb rejected this argument and found that "at least some of these resources that either have been or will be used to promulgate and enforce the notice policy have already been funded and paid for with... restricted annual appropriations funds," including "contracts or agreements that predate" the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
According to legal journalist Chris Geidner, the effect of Cobb's ruling will be that congressional oversight visits to ICE facilities will now be "allowed on request."
Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.), the lead plaintiff in the case, hailed Cobb's ruling and vowed to keep putting pressure on the Trump administration to comply with the law.
"The Court’s decision today to grant a temporary restraining order against ICE’s unlawful effort to obstruct congressional oversight is a victory for the American people," said Neguse. "We will keep fighting to ensure the rule of law prevails."
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Measles Outbreak at ICE Center Holding 400 Kids Called 'Predictable Outcome' of Trump Policies
One doctor warned that the outbreak "will become an epidemic if we don't act immediately."
Feb 02, 2026
Public health experts and immigrant advocates sounded the alarm Sunday over a measles outbreak at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement internment center in Texas where roughly 1,200 people, including over 400 children, are being held.
Texas officials confirmed Saturday that two detainees at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, located about 75 miles (120 km) southwest of San Antonio, are infected with measles.
"Medical staff is continuing to monitor the detainees' conditions and will take appropriate and active steps to prevent further infection," the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement. "All detainees are being provided with proper medical care."
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said Sunday that ICE "immediately took steps to quarantine and control further spread and infection, ceasing all movement within the facility and quarantining all individuals suspected of making contact with the infected."
Responding to the development, Dr. Lee Rogers of UT Health San Antonio wrote in a letter to Texas state health officials that the Dilley outbreak "will become an epidemic if we don't act immediately" by establishing "a single public health incident command center."
"Viruses are not political," Rogers stressed. "They do not care about one's immigration status. Measles will spread if we allow uncertainty and delay to substitute for reasoned public health action."
Dr. Benjamin Mateus took aim at the Trump administration's wider policy of "criminalizing immigrant families and confining children in camps," which he called a form of "colonial policy" from which disease is the "predictable outcome."
Measles is a highly contagious viral disease that can kill or cause serious complications, particularly among unvaccinated people. The United States declared measles eliminated in 2000, but declining vaccination fueled by misinformation has driven a resurgence in the disease, and public health experts warn that the US is close to following Canada, which lost its elimination status late last year.
Many experts blame this deadly and preventable setback on the vaccine-averse policies and practices of the Trump administration, particularly at the Department of Health and Human Services, led by vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
US measles cases this year already exceed the total for the whole of 2023 and 2024 combined, and it is only January. Yikes.
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— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran.com) January 29, 2026 at 12:29 PM
Critics also slammed ICE's recent halt on payments to third-party providers of detainee healthcare services.
Immigrant advocates had previously warned of a potential measles outbreak at the Dilley lockup. Neha Desai, an attorney at the Oakland, California-based National Center of Youth Law, told CBS News that authorities could use the outbreak as a pretext for preventing lawyers and lawmakers from inspecting the facility.
"We are deeply concerned for the physical and the mental health of every family detained at Dilley," Desai said. "It is important to remember that no family needs to be detained—this is a choice that the administration is making."
Run by ICE and private prison profiteer CoreCivic, the Dilley Immigration Processing Center has been plagued by reports of poor health and hygiene conditions. The facility is accused of providing inadequate medical care for children.
Detainees—who include people legally seeking asylum in the US—report prison-like conditions and say they've been served moldy food infested with worms and forced to drink putrid water. Some have described the facility as "truly a living hell."
The internment center has made headlines not only for its harsh conditions, but also for its high-profile detainees, including Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old abducted by ICE agents in Minneapolis last month and held along with his father at the facility before a judge ordered their release last week. The child's health deteriorated while he was at Dilley.
On Sunday, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)—the nation's oldest Latino civil rights organization—held a protest outside the Dilley lockup, demanding its closure.
"Migrant detention centers in America are a moral failure,” LULAC national president Roman Palomares said in a statement. "When a nation that calls itself a beacon of freedom detains children behind razor wire, separates families from their communities, and holds them in isolated conditions, we have crossed a dangerous line."
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