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For Immediate Release
April, 10 2025, 12:02pm EDT
Contact:
Phone: (202) 463-2940,Email:,washingtonbureau@naacpnet.org
NAACP Condemns Reintroduction of SAVE Act
Statement from NAACP President Derrick Johnson on the reintroduction of the SAVE Act:
"Instead of lowering costs as he promised, Donald Trump and his MAGA flank are focused on gutting our democracy. Voting is the foundation of our democracy. Our families and communities thrive when every voter — regardless of race, income, or zip code — has the freedom to participate in elections and have a say in the decisions that shape their lives. "The SAVE Act is nothing more than voter suppression disguised as voter protection. The burdensome requirements disproportionately target voters in historically marginalized communities, amplify systemic inequalities, and aim to silence millions. "If Congress is truly dedicated to protecting the right to vote, it will pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Instead of undermining the freedom to vote, we should be investing in policies that expand access to voting, modernize election systems, and ensure that every vote is counted."
Founded Feb. 12. 1909, the NAACP is the nation's oldest, largest and most widely recognized grassroots-based civil rights organization. Its more than half-million members and supporters throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities, conducting voter mobilization and monitoring equal opportunity in the public and private sectors.
LATEST NEWS
Trump Official Lies That 'No One Was Kicked Off' SNAP as Millions Lose Food Aid—Including Kids
"Did 700,000 children simply not apply?" asked one advocate in response to USDA chief Brooke Rollins' Senate testimony.
Jun 10, 2026
The head of the US Department of Agriculture on Wednesday falsely told senators that "no one was kicked off" the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, claiming that the millions of people—including many children—who have lost federal nutrition assistance in recent months were no longer eligible for aid or decided not to apply for it.
USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins declared that "no one in Washington or in America wants to see a family go hungry," but insisted that anyone who is no longer receiving SNAP benefits has "chosen not to reapply or they're an able-bodied adult that can either work for 20 hours a week or volunteer."
Rollins' testimony conflicts with a growing number of anecdotal reports and expert analyses showing that families across the United States are losing SNAP benefits at the fastest rate in decades. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) estimates that at least 700,000 children have lost SNAP since President Donald Trump signed into law a Republican budget package last summer, enacting the largest-ever cuts to the federal nutrition program.
Rollins: No one was kicked off of SNAP. If they are not on SNAP, they have chosen not to reapply or they are an able bodied adult that can work. pic.twitter.com/eaiVO9XRwb
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 10, 2026
"Did 700,000 children simply not apply?" Rachel Sabella, director of the No Kid Hungry New York campaign, asked in response to Rollins' remarks.
Katie Bergh, a CBPP policy analyst, pointed to recent reporting by NBC News, which spoke to a mother of two in Arizona who said her "benefits stopped without warning three months ago" after the state began implementing new eligibility requirements included in the Republican budget law.
"It's been really hard," the mother said. "We've been going to food banks every week... We're eating less, we're eating more frozen stuff."
Rollins, a multimillionaire, has openly celebrated the massive and rapid decline in SNAP participation during Trump's second White House term, claiming that the roughly 4 million people who have been "moved" off the program are closer to realizing "the American dream"—even as hunger grows to levels not seen since the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"This is a celebration of work and the dignity of work," Rollins told senators on Wednesday.
But CBPP concluded in an analysis released in late April that the "dramatic" loss of SNAP benefits across the country "cannot be explained by a rapid improvement in people’s economic well-being or reduced need for help affording food."
"Labor force data show that the unemployment rate was flat between July 2025 and March 2026, the most recent data available," the think tank observed. "A more likely explanation for why people are losing access to food assistance is that states are now facing new challenges as they respond to the cuts in [the Republican budget law]—the largest in the program’s history."
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International Lawyers Decry US Aggression Against Cuba, Urge Solidarity With Its People
“Those who remain silent in the face of this growing unlawfulness and aggressiveness assume a grave responsibility," said the head of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers.
Jun 10, 2026
An international group of leftist lawyers on Tuesday condemned the US blockade, sanctions, and war threats against Cuba, and the mounting repression of solidarity with the long-suffering Cuban people.
The International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) held a virtual press conference "to condemn escalating United States measures against Cuba and to call for renewed international action in defense of international law, Cuban sovereignty, and the rights of the Cuban people."
"The United States continues to threaten Cuba while imposing unilateral coercive economic measures designed to destabilize the country and facilitate regime change," IADL noted. "In recent months, restrictions on fuel shipments have further intensified the hardships faced by the Cuban people, with severe consequences for daily life."
"For more than three decades, the United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly called for an end to the US blockade of Cuba, with the United States and Israel consistently standing alone in opposition to the international consensus," the group added. "While these annual resolutions represent a powerful condemnation of the blockade, symbolic measures alone are insufficient. International law imposes obligations on states to act in the face of ongoing violations."
Speakers at the press conference warned that the Trump administration's recent actions—including war threats and a deadly fuel blockade—are serious violations of international law that threaten the rights and well-being of millions of Cubans.
"The illegality of the blockade is not in doubt. What is at stake today is the impunity that allows it to continue," IADL general secretary Micòl Savia said. "What is at stake is the complete disregard of the United States for international law and collective institutions and their contempt for the common values of humankind."
"The actions of successive US administrations against Cuba make it very clear that they do not consider themselves bound by the principles of sovereign equality, peaceful coexistence, and self-determination that form the foundation of the international legal order," she continued.
“Another dimension of the blockade and sanctions against Cuba is the pressure imposed on third countries," Savia said. "The threat of punishment against institutions, banks, companies, and individuals that seek to establish commercial, financial, or diplomatic relations with Cuba is an intervention not only against Cuba, but also into the sovereign sphere of other countries."
"This shows how broad and arbitrary the sanctions policy has become as a tool of coercion," she added. "The threat of sanctions against companies from third countries that trade with Cuba violates their sovereignty.”
Speakers at the event excoriated the Trump administration's escalating war threats and politically motivated indictment of former Cuban President Raúl Castro, a hero of his country's successful revolution against a US-backed dictatorship.
"Cuba is now under the direct threat of [a] US imperialist war of aggression after a long period of economic and financial blockade," said Filipino jurist Edwin De La Cruz of the Amistad Philippines-Cuba Friendship Association and National Union of People's Lawyers.
"Serious transgressions on Cuba’s sovereignty, from failed efforts to foment unrest among the population, to the personal assault on the integrity of Comrade Raúl Castro by [President] Donald Trump intensified, with a threat of armed invasion tweeted by Donald Trump himself," he continued.
"Cuba and the Philippines share a common history of US imperialist domination. We share a common enemy and a common struggle," De La Cruz noted, pointing to the so-called Spanish-American War, in which the United States conquered both countries, along with Puerto Rico and Guam, from Spain under the false pretense of a Spanish attack on the battleship USS Maine. The US colonized the Philippines from 1898-1946, except for a brief period of Japanese occupation during World War II.
Deborah Jackson, president of the US group National Conference of Black Lawyers, called the Castro indictment "a transparently political prosecution that serves no legitimate law enforcement purpose."
Castro—who served as Cuba's president for a decade after his older brother, Fidel Castro, stepped down in 2008—was indicted by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) last month for his alleged role in the 1996 shoot-down of planes operated by Brothers to the Rescue, a counter-revolutionary group founded by a CIA-trained operative and Bay of Pigs veteran, after repeated warnings that they had violated Cuban airspace.
Critics noted Trump's ongoing campaign of illegal boat bombings in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, as well as the long history of US state terrorism against Cuba and support for the perpetrators of attacks carried out by right-wing Cuban exiles, including the 1976 bombing of a commercial flight with 73 people aboard.
Jackson said the charges against Castro "are clearly invalid... attempts to criminalize legitimate acts of self-defense by a sovereign nation" that "have been brought nearly three decades after the incident in question against a 94-year-old former head of state who will never be extradited to the United States."
Kerry McLean, an international human rights attorney with the National Lawyers' Guild in the United States, warned that “the indictment of Castro, a foreign leader and former head of state, threatens a repeat of the illegal abduction on January 3, 2026 of Venezuela’s president and his wife."
Trump ordered the invasion and arrest of President Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores on dubious drug trafficking, illegal weapons possession, and narco-terrorism charges. The DOJ has since admitted that the cartel which Trump claimed was led by Maduro does not, in fact, exist.
McLean added that the US invasion of Venezuela—during which more than 75 people, including 32 Cuban members of Maduro's security team, were killed—violated the UN Charter, a treaty that, under the US Constitution, is "the supreme law of the land."
Speakers at the IADL event also decried US efforts to intimidate, investigate, and criminalize solidarity organizations.
“Like the designation of Cuba as a 'state supporter of terror' and the designations of many of the leading organizations and figures of the Cuba solidarity movement, these organizations and individuals are designated and targeted to impose state terror on the Palestine and Cuba solidarity movements, divide people from their homelands, and blunt the effectiveness of any opposition to US imperialism," IADL deputy general secretary Charlotte Kates said.
"The aim of such designations is not only to prohibit financial transactions, but to isolate those organizations and individuals that the US views as key networks of solidarity against imperialism and to prevent meaningful action to bring its crimes to an end," she contended.
Savia said, “Those who remain silent in the face of this growing unlawfulness and aggressiveness assume a grave responsibility, particularly when such conduct is carried out by one of the most powerful and heavily armed states in the world."
"By letting these policies continue unabated," she added, "and by applying double standards and selectivity while granting widespread impunity to rich and powerful states, they contribute to the erosion of the international legal order and pave the way for a world without the rule of law."
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With Straight Face, Trump Says Platner 'Worse Than Any Human Being That's Ever Run for Office, Probably'
The president has been convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying documents as well as being found guilty of fraud, sexual abuse, and defamation. While in office he's given massive tax giveaways to billionaires, opened the gates for corporate polluters, and made enriching himself and his family a top priority.
Jun 10, 2026
Four months after President Donald Trump's name reportedly appeared over a million times in long-hidden files related to his former friend, convicted sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, and weeks after one analysis warned that his foreign aid cuts will likely kill 9 million people by the end of the decade, the president announced Wednesday that he'd identified the politician who is "probably" the worst person to ever run for public office.
In the Oval Office, Trump declared Democratic US Senate candidate Graham Platner, whom Maine primary voters chose to run in the general election by more than a 52% margin, a "thug" and a "cheap, no-good person," adding that he is "worse than any human being that's ever run for office, probably."
"Nobody's ever had a record like that... This guy's got a rap sheet, I've never seen anything like it," said the president as he lied about Platner, who has no criminal record.
Trump, meanwhile, was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in 2024. A New York judge also ordered Trump to pay a $450 million civil penalty over financial fraud that year, and in 2023, a jury found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming columnist E. Jean Carroll. More than two dozen women have accused the president of sexual misconduct.
Trump on Platner: "I watched that thug that's up in Maine. He's a thug. And they're trying to make excuses for him. I mean, he's worse than any human being that's ever run for office probably…And you'll have Schumer, he'll go crazy over this or that or Epstein…He's a thug." pic.twitter.com/I9k1MXZOUD
— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) June 10, 2026
Trump, who has openly bragged about sexually assaulting women and reportedly committed adultery numerous times during his three marriages, was likely referring to controversies that made headlines after Platner, a combat veteran and oyster farmer, launched his campaign last year with a focus on taxing billionaires, expanding Medicare to the entire population, and ending US wars.
During his two terms in office, Trump has been rebuked for his allegiance to corporate interests, giving massive tax breaks to billionaires and powerful industries, undermining labor protections, launching wars of choice overseas, attacking public education, and gutting public health and environmental protection efforts.
Recently, a former campaign staffer told news outlets that Platner's wife had confided in her about messages Platner sent to other women early in their marriage. The candidate's former girlfriend, a right-wing operative, also accused him of being physically aggressive during their relationship. Earlier controversies centered on a tattoo that critics said resembled a Nazi symbol and posts he wrote on Reddit in the years after his military service.
Despite the months of criticism and news stories regarding Platner's past, with 91% of votes reported as of Wednesday afternoon, he won the support of more than 71% of Democratic primary voters, with many saying they connected with his strong focus on issues affecting working people and that he had taken accountability for his previous actions.
While attacking Platner on Wednesday, Trump brought up the Epstein scandal, saying Democratic lawmakers "go crazy" over his association with the financier, who died in prison while awaiting a trial on sex-trafficking minors and who was convicted in 2008 of soliciting prostitution with a minor.
As Trump hurled insults at Platner, also calling him "an outright pig," the Democratic candidate released an ad taking aim at "the Epstein class," saying that "the only thing the DC establishment can agree on is a love of Jeffrey Epstein—and a hatred of me."
Earlier, the Democratic candidate and so-called "thug" posted a video on social media of a volunteer activity he was taking part in on the morning after the election in Bar Harbor.
"This morning, I'm doing very important things, which is riding on the bike bus," said Platner, evidently taking time off from being what Trump has also referred to as a "major sleaze bag."
"The community gets together and helps ride with all of the kids who want to ride their bikes to school, and so it's safe and fun," he explained.
Good morning, Maine!
Hitting the trail. pic.twitter.com/y2xcbe1Hxi
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) June 10, 2026
"Honestly, it's exactly the thing that we need a lot more of in this country," said Platner, "which is people coming together and realizing that their neighbors are good people, and everybody just wants to help each other out. It's the message we need to take into our politics, which is why we won last night."
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