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For Immediate Release
July, 06 2023, 04:04pm EDT
Contact:
Melissa Garriga | melissa@codepink.org
Edward Erikson | Edward.Erikson@gmail.com
CODEPINK's Co-founder and Ben & Jerry's Co-founder Arrested for Blocking DOJ Entrance While Protesting US Government’s Prosecution of Wikileaks Publisher Julian Assange
Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, and Jodie Evans, co-founder of CODEPINK, have been arrested for blocking the entrance to the Department of Justice. Cohen and Evans arrived in Washington, D.C. to protest the US government’s prosecution of Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange, who has been indicted on 18 charges for the publication of the Afghan War Diary and the Iraq War Logs, which uncovered war crimes, torture, and civilian deaths perpetrated by the US government.
“It’s outrageous. Julian Assange is nonviolent. He is presumed innocent. And yet somehow or other, he has been imprisoned in solitary confinement for four years. That is torture….He revealed the truth, and for that he is suffering, and that’s we we need to do whatever we can to help him, and to help preserve democracy, which is based on freedom of the press,” Ben Cohen said during the demonstration. “It seems to me that, right now, unless things change, and unless we change them, freedom of the press is going up in smoke.”
"Why do we have freedom of press? Because there needs to be someone reporting the truth about the violence of power….When you don't have freedom of the press and no one's telling the truth, it weaponizes your capacity to feel, to have compassion and empathy. Because if you don't have the full story and if your heart is being manipulated with lies, then we're all lost. How can we have peace in the world if we're just drowning in lies?" Jodie Evans said.
Cohen and Evans asked to enter the Department of Justice to discuss their attack on the freedom of press. Security guards denied them access. They proceeded to sit peacefully in the entrance until DC Metropolitan Police arrested them.
View photographs of the action arrest here, here, here, and here.
Members of Congress, world leaders, as well as major publishers, have urged the Department of Justice to drop the charges against Julian Assange due to the threat it poses to the First Amendment and press freedom.
The Obama administration declined to indict Assange because it would risk criminalizing basic journalistic activities that every mainstream media outlet engages in on a regular basis.
This month, UK High Court Judge Jonathan Swift rejected Assange’s most recent appeal, pushing him ‘dangerously close’ to extradition. The Australian government, where Assange is a citizen, is currently working through diplomatic channels to end Assange’s incarceration, while his legal team continues the appeal process.
Julian Assange is currently confined in Belmarsh's maximum-security prison in London and has been since April 2019. If extradited, he will face up to 175 years in prison.
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.
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'Ceasefire in Name Only': Israel Bombs Beirut With Approval From Trump Administration
"The Israeli government continues to drop US-made bombs in Lebanon," said one Democratic lawmaker. "Congress can and must put an end to the violence in the region."
May 07, 2026
The Israeli military on Wednesday bombed the suburbs of the Lebanese capital for the first time since a ceasefire agreement was announced in mid-April by US President Donald Trump, whose administration reportedly coordinated with Israel on the latest strike.
"This is a ceasefire in name only," US Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) wrote in response to the bombing, which Israel said killed a top Hezbollah commander. "Israel needs to adhere to the ceasefire and work in good faith toward a permanent end to the larger war with Iran and Lebanon."
According to the United Nations, at least 380 people have been killed by Israeli strikes on Lebanon since the ceasefire agreement took effect. Trump announced a three-week extension of the ceasefire deal on April 23.
The target of Wednesday's strike on Beirut's southern suburbs "appeared to be a 10-story building in the Haret Hreik neighborhood next to a school," The Washington Post reported, citing satellite imagery and open-source material. "Photos of the aftermath showed half the building leveled and excavator machines digging beneath the rubble."
The Israeli military also bombed the southern Lebanese town of Zelaya on Wednesday, killing at least four people, including two women and an elderly man, Lebanon's Ministry of Health said.
Early Thursday, the Israeli military issued new displacement orders for southern Lebanon, instructing the residents of Deir al-Zahrani, Bafroa, and Habush to leave their homes.
The Wednesday attack on Beirut's suburbs, according to an unnamed Israeli official cited by the country's broadcasting authority, was "carried out in coordination with the US."
"This would be a clear violation of the War Powers Act 8(c)—further strengthening the case for Congress to urgently pass Rep. Rashida Tlaib's (D-Mich.) Lebanon War Powers Resolution," said Erik Sperling, executive director of the US-based advocacy group Just Foreign Policy.
Tlaib unveiled her legislation in late March, demanding the "removal of all US Armed Forces’ participation in unauthorized hostilities in Lebanon, including involvement in targeting assistance and intelligence sharing for the Israeli airstrikes and ground invasion."
"We must act now to stop this campaign of ethnic cleansing," Tlaib said at the time.
US Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), who co-led the Lebanon resolution with Tlaib, said Wednesday that "the unaccountable, unlawful, inhumane campaign of death and displacement continues."
"The Israeli government continues to drop US-made bombs in Lebanon. More than 2,600 people have died, and over 8,350 people are injured," said Ramirez. "Congress can and must put an end to the violence in the region. We must Block the Bombs and pass the Lebanon War Power Resolution."
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Trump Admin Slammed for Yet Another Move to 'Help Corporate Polluters' Exploit Alaska
One critic called the transfer of 1.4 million acres a "massive giveaway to out-of-state corporations that don't want to be burdened by the federal protections that safeguard our lands, waters, wildlife, and communities."
May 06, 2026
Defenders of the planet took aim at President Donald Trump's administration on Wednesday for transferring approximately 1.4 million acres of public lands along the Dalton Utility Corridor from the US Bureau of Land Management to the state of Alaska.
"This corridor encompasses some of Alaska’s most critical transportation and energy assets, including portions of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System corridor, the Dalton Highway, and proposed routes for the Ambler Road and Alaska Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) projects," the US Department of the Interior noted in a statement, framing the move as part of DOI's commitment to the Alaska Statehood Act, as well as orders issued by Trump and the agency's secretary, Doug Burgum.
As Burgum and Republican Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy cheered the development on Wednesday, Andrea Feniger, director of the state's Sierra Club chapter, declared that "this is less a transfer to Alaskans than a massive giveaway to out-of-state corporations that don't want to be burdened by the federal protections that safeguard our lands, waters, wildlife, and communities."
"Gov. Dunleavy has repeatedly shown he is more interested in helping the Trump administration and fossil fuel executives exploit Alaska than standing up for the people who actually live here," Feniger said. "These companies will not be satisfied until every corner of our state is opened to industrial development and short-term profit, regardless of the permanent damage done to the wild places, subsistence traditions, and communities that make Alaska unique. Alaskans deserve leaders who will protect these lands for future generations, not politicians willing to hand them over to corporate polluters."
Bloomberg reported that "Alaska's acquisition along the highway north of Fairbanks is part of 2.1 million acres" that Burgum offered earlier this year, after revoking a pair of decades-old orders. In March, a coalition of environmental groups, including Trustees for Alaska, filed a federal lawsuit over the secretary "unlawfully removing federal protections."
While Alaska filed a motion to dismiss the case on Wednesday, Bridget Psarianos, senior staff attorney at Trustees for Alaska, told Bloomberg that the land transfer is illegal. She also said that "the interior secretary broke the law when removing federal protections for over 2 million acres of public lands in February without hearings in local communities, without a public comment period, and without addressing that decision's impacts on land, water, and subsistence users."
Other groups supporting that suit include the Alaska Wilderness League, Center for Biological Diversity, National Parks Conservation Association, and Sierra Club, whose director of conservation, Dan Ritzman, condemned Wednesday's transfer.
"This action will only help corporate polluters transform Alaska into an industrial wasteland—destroying irreplaceable landscapes for the sake of expanding the portfolios of mining and oil and gas companies that will never have to live with the consequences of this destruction," Ritzman stressed. "This decision completely ignores the wishes of local communities and tribes that depend upon these untouched areas for their livelihoods, cultures, and regional identities."
"Alaska is home to some of the country's last true wild places, and projects like Alaska LNG and the Ambler Road threaten irreversible damage to these precious landscapes, the wildlife that depend on them, and the communities that have stewarded them for generations," he added. "These lands belong to all Americans, not corporate special interests looking to exploit them for short-term profit. We are fighting this in court and will continue opposing any other attempts to sacrifice Alaska's public lands for the benefit of polluters and extractive industries."
Rebecca Noblin, an Alaska senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, similarly told E&E News that "handing this incredible stretch of federal public lands over to the state puts the communities, fish, and wildlife who live there in danger."
"Alaska officials envision bulldozing the area for a private industrial mining road and the LNG pipeline boondoggle," Noblin said. "We're fighting this transfer of our federal public lands in court, and we'll keep standing up for Alaska's wild places."
Climate and conservation groups have also recently sounded the alarm about Interior's forthcoming fossil fuel lease sale for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's Coastal Plain, and warned—in the words of Kristen Monsell, the oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity—that that Trump's "ridiculously reckless" plan to dramatically expand offshore drilling, including near Alaska, "could cause thousands of new oil spills, threatening almost every US coast."
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Tennessee GOP Ripped for Rush to 'Shamelessly Capitalize' on Supreme Court Voting Rights Ruling
"You are deliberately trying to silence the voices of a community," said one Democratic Tennessee state senator. "You cannot call it anything but racism.”
May 06, 2026
Voting rights defenders in Tennessee on Wednesday condemned a racially rigged congressional map proposed by Republican state lawmakers in the wake of last week's US Supreme Court decision limiting challenges to discriminatory redistricting.
Tennessee Republicans unveiled a US House map that breaks Memphis—one of the nation's largest majority-Black cities—into three districts in a bid to make it likely for GOP candidates to flip the 9th Congressional District, which has been represented by Democrats for half a century.
"These maps have just been released that look like some coloring book from the Republican Party, without any clarity at a precinct level, of where these new districts are gonna be," state Rep. Justin Pearson (D-86) said Wednesday. Pearson—who is running to unseat incumbent Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen in the 9th District—drew national attention in 2023 when Republican legislators expelled him and Rep. Justin Jones (D-52) following their protest for tighter gun laws after the deadly Covenant School shooting in Nashville.
Tennessee Republicans just unveiled their post-VRA congressional gerrymander.It would eliminate the one majority-Black and solidly Democratic district by splitting Memphis 3 ways to install a 9-0 Republican majority.It also splits Nashville several ways to protect scandal-tarred Rep. Andy Ogles
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— Stephen Wolf (@stephenwolf.bsky.social) May 6, 2026 at 8:34 AM
"This whole process has been a sham," Pearson added. "It's been done in secrecy, behind closed doors, with backroom deals. This is just wrong. And everyone knows why this is happening. This is an attack on our Black majority district, this is an attack on our democracy."
US House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) weighed in Wednesday on the proposed gerrymander, writing on X, "MAGA Republicans are taking a blowtorch to Black representation in the American South."
Jeffries said that President Donald Trump "and Supreme Court extremists are responsible for this carnage," vowing to "crush them at the ballot box in November" during midterm elections.
John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), said in a statement, “This proposal takes an already egregious gerrymander to an even greater extreme by carving up Memphis into three districts, connecting it to rural areas hundreds of miles away, stretching as far as middle Tennessee—communities with needs far different from those of Memphians."
Bisognano added that the GOP proposal "robs Black voters of the ability to elect a congressional candidate of their choice—reversing a right that Black Memphians fought for with blood, sweat, and tears."
Democratic state lawmakers, civil rights leaders, and concerned citizens rallied outside the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville Tuesday to protest the proposal as a two-day special legislative session on the issue began.
HAPPENING NOW… marching on the Capitol…. #NewJimCrow @GovBillLee
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— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) May 5, 2026 at 12:33 PM
Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee called the special session just two days after the US Supreme Court's Louisiana v. Callais decision ordering the state to redraw its 2024 congressional map, which created a second majority-Black district to mitigate persistent barriers to equal representation.
Lee's move came a day after a phone call from Trump, who has urged him and other Republican governors to follow the lead of Texas, the first salvo fired in a redistricting war prompted by Republican fears of a midterm loss of one or both houses of Congress. Democrat-controlled California followed Texas' move, with other blue states including Virginia, Maryland, and Washington in various stages of enacting or considering redraws.
Republican Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry subsequently suspended his state’s scheduled May 16 US House primary election, a move that drew rebuke from liberal Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and legal challenges from Louisianans who already cast ballots in the contest.
The Louisiana v. Callais decision, which the court's 6-3 right-wing majority framed as limiting the role of race in redistricting, is now being used to defend maps where race still plays a decisive role, not only in Tennessee but also in other states that are moving to redraw their congressional maps to dilute Black voting power. Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last week signed a rigged congressional map into law.
“The ink was barely dry on the Supreme Court’s disastrous decision to gut the Voting Rights Act before Tennessee Republicans rushed to be the first to shamelessly capitalize on it by proposing a gerrymander that systematically targets Black voters in Memphis... and ensures all of the state’s congressional districts are majority-white," Bisognano said.
Bold, blatant f*cking racism. They're gleeful about it.
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— catnan.bsky.social (@catnan.bsky.social) May 5, 2026 at 7:58 PM
Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R-25) said in a statement that “the Supreme Court has opined that redistricting, like the judicial system, should be colorblind—the decision indicated states like Tennessee can redistrict based on partisan politics."
“Tennessee’s redistricting will reduce the risk of future legal challenges while promoting sound and strategic conservatism," Sexton added.
Black Memphians weren't having it. Protesters interrupted the second day of hearings Wednesday as a House committee discussed the proposal, chanting, "Memphis is Black, there's no denying that!" and "Hands off our vote!"
“Memphis is Black! There’s no denying that!”House committee disrupted after Speaker sexton presents the racist Republican maps and claims race has nothing to do with how they carved up the city to dilute black representation with white power 🤔(From @gabbysalinas)
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— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) May 6, 2026 at 3:06 PM
"Voters pick our leaders, not the other way around,” Memphis resident Amber Sherman told WREG. "Slicing up Memphis’ congressional districts across a state map will make it impossible for us to get fair representation in Congress because we know that adding a chunk of rural voters to urban cities will never give us fair representation.”
Nashville students confronted Sen. Joey Hensley (R-28) inside the Capitol on Wednesday about how the proposal will disenfranchise voters affected by the redistricting. Hensley's attempt to gaslight the students was caught on camera by The Tennessee Holler, which has provided extensive coverage of the gerrymandering effort.
HENSLEY: “Their vote will still count the same.”STUDENTS: “Then why not leave it the way it was before?”🤔🔥Sen. Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald) tries to gaslight NASHVILLE students about the Republican push to strip representation from MEMPHIS… and gets immediately owned.
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— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) May 6, 2026 at 7:09 AM
During Tuesday's session, numerous Democratic lawmakers objected to the proposal, with some invoking the deadly struggle of the Civil Rights era.
"I never thought in my lifetime as the youngest African American to ever serve in this body, in the history of this state, that I’d be standing in a body surrounded by my colleagues who are going to erase the vote of my city and Black people in Memphis,” state Sen. London Lamar (D-33) said, according to Democracy Docket.
“This will be one of the most racist actions taken in the modern history of this Legislature that you are participating in this week," she continued. "Intentionally breaking state law to take my community’s vote is downright disgusting and offensive.”
“This is an opportunity for you to have some courage, show some courage. Y’all know this is wrong,” Lamar added. “You don’t have to do it.”
State Sen. Raumesh Akbari (D-29) said: “There’s no way to sugarcoat eliminating a district that is 61% Black and breaking it up into three different districts. You are deliberately trying to silence the voices of a community. You cannot call it anything but racism.”
“History will not look back kindly on you when you had an opportunity to do what was right and you chose to do something else,” she added.
MEMPHIS SENATOR @raumeshakbari : “This is an act of hate. You cannot call it anything but racism. You cannot sugarcoat this.”Tennessee Republicans are diluting Black representation with white power, stripping their seat in Congress. #JimCrow @GovBillLee @MarshaBlackburn
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— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) May 5, 2026 at 4:31 PM
As Democracy Docket reported: "The debate repeatedly returned to personal history. Black lawmakers invoked ancestors who had fought in wars, lived through segregation, and struggled for the right to vote, placing the proposed map squarely in the lineage of those battles."
The fight for civil rights in Memphis spans centuries, from the Reconstruction-era Memphis Massacre to the Ida B. Wells-led anti-lynching campaign to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. to ongoing struggles over police violence, inequality, and economic justice.
Martin Luther King III warned in a letter to legislative leaders that the redistricting would "dismantle the only congressional district that provides Black voters in Memphis a fair opportunity to have a voice in our democracy."
“Do not take this nation back to the days of Jim Crow," he implored, adding that the “resulting disenfranchisement of Black voters would run contrary to everything that my father, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. fought for.”
Bisognano vowed to fight the GOP rigging attempt, saying that "Republicans are doing this because they think they can get away with it without consequence."
"But they are wrong," he added. "Tennesseans from across the state are already rising up against this un-American attempt to deny Black voters their voice at the ballot box, and, if enacted, this map will be challenged in court.”
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