January, 26 2023, 11:23am EDT
Irresponsible Greed Drives Facebook to Restore Trump’s Account
Statement of Yosef Getachew, Common Cause Media and Democracy Program Director
Facebook has once again missed the opportunity to be the adult in the room when it comes to checking the clear and present danger that Donald Trump poses to the nation on social media. Instead, the company and its founder Mark Zuckerberg decided to try to plunge headlong into a race to the bottom with Elon Musk and Twitter, irrespective of the threat to public safety and national security.
Donald Trump continues to pose a very real threat to public safety and to our democracy, but Facebook has once again chosen corporate profit over its responsibility to the very people that enrich the platform and its founder. Trump’s lies and provocations on social media have already inspired an insurrection that threatened to topple our system of government and one that left dead and scores of seriously injured in its wake. The former president’s baseless lies, and refusal to admit he lost a free and fair 2020 presidential election, have continued to divide our nation and provoke acts of violence.
The company has been publicly wringing its hands and promising to do better ever since it was first revealed that Russia intelligence services had utilized the platform to help elect Donald Trump in 2016. But since then Facebook has taken half-measures at best, failing to consistently enforce its existing civic integrity policies and allowing bad actors to exploit loopholes to spread disinformation unchecked. The guardrails Facebook proposes to place on the former president’s reinstated account continue this trend of half-hearted enforcement.
Facebook’s cowardly and profit-driven decision to allow Donald Trump’s return to the platform shows again that social media platforms are far from ready to be entrusted to enact meaningful content moderation policies, protect its users against harmful content, and safeguard against broader threats to our democracy and public safety.
Now is the time for lawmakers and regulators to enact substantive policies to regulate social media business models, which today do little more than incentivize and proliferate the spread of harmful content online. Our nation deserves nothing less.
Common Cause is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization dedicated to upholding the core values of American democracy. We work to create open, honest, and accountable government that serves the public interest; promote equal rights, opportunity, and representation for all; and empower all people to make their voices heard in the political process.
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To Push for Bold Treaty, Greenpeace Unveils Biden's Plastic Legacy Monument
"He can be the president who put an end to the plastic pollution crisis, or he can be the one who let it spiral out of control."
Mar 28, 2024
Inspired by Atlas, who in Greek mythology carried the heavens on his shoulders, Greenpeace installed a 15-foot monument outside the U.S. Capitol on Thursday to pressure the Biden administration to support an ambitious global plastics treaty.
President Joe Biden "has the chance to cement a lasting legacy: He can be the president who put an end to the plastic pollution crisis, or he can be the one who let it spiral out of control," Greenpeace oceans director John Hocevar said in a statement. "We're calling on him to stand up to plastic polluters like Exxon and Dow and put us on a greener and healthier path."
The third round of treaty talks ended in Kenya late last year with little progress—largely thanks to fossil fuel and chemical lobbyists along with allied governments. The next round of negotiations is set to be held in Canada next month.
The "Biden's Plastic Legacy" monument features the president kneeling and holding up an Earth full of plastic. The base has a written message: "Biden, the world's in your hands. Is this your plastic legacy?"
"Plastic pollution is everywhere, impacting every aspect of our lives. It affects our health, harms our communities, and fuels the climate crisis."
The statue's unveiling ceremony included remarks from Dr. Leo Trasande, a world-renowned environmental health researcher at New York University, and Jo Banner, who lives in Louisiana's Cancer Alley and co-directs the Descendants Project, an environmental justice group.
"The communities of color that live among the plastic manufacturers are first in line for the toxic mix of pollution they produce," said Banner. "Our health, bodies, and communities matter. We refuse to be treated as a mere checkmark on a list of concerns, and we cannot continue to be sacrificial zones."
"We need President Biden to truly listen to our needs and help create a strong global plastics treaty that protects communities like ours," she added. "We must ensure that Cancer Alley is confined to the past, not a part of the future we gift our children."
Trasande noted that in addition to the public health argument for cleaning up the plastic industry, there's an economic one.
"The chemicals found in plastics cost our economy hundreds of billions of dollars because of increases in disease and disability," the doctor said. "The easiest way to stop these diseases is to address plastic production, and a strong global treaty is essential, for people here in the U.S. and around the world."
Research has repeatedly shown the pervasiveness of plastic pollution. A January study found that there are 240,000 plastic particles in the average liter of bottled water. Last September, researchers discovered microplastics in clouds, potentially "contaminating nearly everything we eat and drink via 'plastic rainfall.'"
A 2022 Greenpeace report revealed that U.S. households "generated an estimated 51 million tons of plastic waste" the previous year, and the vast majority ended up in landfills or as pollution.
"Plastic pollution is everywhere, impacting every aspect of our lives. It affects our health, harms our communities, and fuels the climate crisis," Greenpeace campaigner Kate Melges said Thursday.
"The global plastics treaty is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create a cleaner, safer planet," Melges argued. "President Biden must rise to this moment by supporting a strong plastics treaty that prioritizes human health, cuts production, and ensures a just transition for workers and communities."
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"I'm disappointed it appears 30,000 people lost their political voice and nobody seems to care," said one Democratic congressional candidate from the affected district.
Mar 28, 2024
Voting rights defenders on Thursday decried a federal panel's
decision to let South Carolina use a congressional map the three judges found to be racially gerrymandered in this year's primary and general elections due to the U.S. Supreme Court's delayed resolution of the case.
The three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for South Carolina in Columbia ruled last August that "race was the predominant motivating factor" in the Republican-controlled state Legislature's design of the 1st Congressional District "and that traditional districting principles subordinated to race."
Their ruling, which ordered the redrawing of the map, noted that "Charleston County was racially gerrymandered and over 30,000 African Americans were removed from their home district."
"Make no mistake—these discriminatory maps are a direct attempt to suppress Black voices ahead of a consequential election."
In their new decision, the judges acknowledged the awkward predicament of ordering the use of an unconstitutional map.
"But with the primary election procedures rapidly approaching, the appeal before the Supreme Court still pending, and no remedial plan in place, the ideal must bend to the practical," they asserted.
Brenda Murphy, president of the South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, said: "Make no mistake—these discriminatory maps are a direct attempt to suppress Black voices ahead of a consequential election. We will not stand idly by as the rights of thousands of South Carolinians continue to be overlooked."
"The court's ruling today, further delaying these proceedings, continues to tip the scale of justice during a crucial moment in our democracy in an undemocratic attempt to sway the outcome of the upcoming election," Murphy added. "We must strive for a system where every voice is heard and every vote counts, free from the stain of discrimination."
Last October, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case, which was filed in 2021 by the South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP and voter Taiwan Scott. They are represented by the ACLU, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the ACLU of South Carolina, Boroughs Bryant LLC, Arnold & Porter, and the General Counsel's Office of the NAACP.
As Democracy Docket noted Thursday: "The parties asked the Supreme Court for a decision by January 1, 2024. Nearly three months later, the court still hasn't ruled on the case, creating a dire situation for congressional candidates as the candidate filing period started on March 16 and will end on Monday."
Joshua Douglas, a professor at the University of Kentucky Rosenberg College of Law, said on social media that "someone should write an article about the number of times jurisdictions have been allowed to use an illegal map because there's 'not enough time' to create a fair, legal one."
Douglas noted states where this has occurred, including Alabama, Louisiana, Ohio, North Carolina, "and now South Carolina."
South Carolina primary voters will head to the polls on June 11.
The 1st Congressional District is represented by Congresswoman Nancy Mace, a Republican. On Thursday, she toldThe Post and Courier that the judges' ruling "makes sense."
"It's only fair candidates know what the lines are," Mace said. "For us, I just want to know what constituents I'm serving."
Michael B. Moore, a Democrat running for the seat, called the decision "regrettable."
"I'm disappointed it appears 30,000 people lost their political voice," he said, "and nobody seems to care."
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Weak Biden Endangered Species Rules a 'Massive Missed Opportunity'
"Imperiled plants and animals do not have the time for half-measures, since extinction is forever," one expert warned.
Mar 28, 2024
While welcoming efforts by President Joe Biden's administration to undo Trump-era damage to endangered species protections, conservationists warned Thursday that three new federal rules are inadequate, given the world's worsening biodiversity crisis.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries, which proposed the rules last June, said that they will "restore important protections for species and their habitats; strengthen the processes for listing species, designating of critical habitat, and consultation with other federal agencies; and ensure a science-based approach that will improve both agencies' ability to fulfill their responsibilities under the Endangered Species Act (ESA)."
The Center for Biological Diversity—which had blasted the Trump administration for taking a "wrecking ball" to the decades-old law—praised the agencies for removing barriers to designating unoccupied areas as critical habitat as well as for restoring the "blanket rule" for threatened species and the ban on considering economic impacts of listing decisions.
However, the center also pointed out that "of the 31 harmful changes made in 2019 to the act's regulations, only seven are fully addressed and corrected in today's final rules," despite years of work on the new rules and nearly half a million public comments.
"We're mostly still stuck with the disastrous anti-wildlife changes made by the previous administration."
"This was a massive missed opportunity to address the worsening extinction crisis," said Stephanie Kurose, a senior policy specialist at the center. "We needed bold solutions to guide conservation as the climate crisis drives more and more animals and plants to extinction. Instead we're mostly still stuck with the disastrous anti-wildlife changes made by the previous administration."
Jamie Rappaport Clark, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife, similarly said that "while the regulations restore some essential wildlife protections, we were hopeful for far more than the marginal win the Biden administration delivered today."
"Our nation's threatened and endangered species are under constant attack and the Endangered Species Act is the only thing standing between them and extinction," she stressed. "We appreciate the administration's work on this matter, but at the end of the day much work remains to be done to ensure the Endangered Species Act can fulfill its critical lifesaving mission."
Experts at the environmental law organization Earthjustice also expressed disappointment that—as Drew Caputo, vice president of litigation for lands, wildlife, and oceans put it—the Biden administration didn't fully seize "the opportunity to fully reverse the damage inflicted upon the Endangered Species Act and the imperiled species it protects."
Writing about former Republican President Donald Trump's gutting of the ESA—which Biden helped pass shortly after joining the U.S. Senate in 1973—Earthjustice president Abigail Dillen explained at The Progressive on Wednesday:
The dismantling of the ESA could not have come at a worse time. Scientists around the world are telling us that we are on track to lose a million or more species in this century. We have already witnessed a staggering drop of more than two-thirds of all plant and animal life on Earth since 1970. In the United States, nearly half of our ecosystems are now at risk of collapse. It is a staggering pace of loss that climate change is only accelerating.
It would have been far worse without the ESA. The law has saved 99% of listed species from extinction, including the bald eagle, Florida manatee, and the gray wolf, one of my first "clients" when I began my career as an environmental lawyer more than two decades ago.
Earthjustice attorney Kristen Boyles declared Thursday that "we are in the midst of an extinction crisis; it is time for bold action."
"Imperiled plants and animals do not have the time for half-measures," she noted, "since extinction is forever."
The new rules—expected to provoke lawsuits from farmers, ranchers, and right-wing groups—come as Biden and Trump prepare for a rematch in November.
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"President Biden has made generational investments in climate action with the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, but we need him to do more to protect imperiled wildlife," he added. "The Biden administration needs to protect more habitat, not less. We need the administration to increase protections for biodiversity, not abandon them. The president has the power, and we need him to use it."
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