November, 05 2024, 11:18am EDT
Oil Change Statement on Election Day
As the election comes to a close, Oil Change U.S. Campaign Manager Collin Rees made the following statement:
“Our country is at a crossroads. One path leads to an opportunity for a livable planet and the other to accelerated climate chaos and a breakdown of our democracy.
“Another Trump term would spell disaster, especially for Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, working-class people, and our climate. The climate crisis is here and already harming millions of Americans each year, as the devastation of Hurricanes Helene and Milton make clear.
“Trump has promised to sell out our future for campaign donations from Big Oil. He intends to torpedo the fragile progress made on the climate crisis so far by withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and shredding environmental safeguards.
“Kamala Harris’s election, on the other hand, would leave open the possibility of a more just and sustainable future. If she wins office, the broad coalition of people concerned about the climate crisis – from Gulf Coast fishermen to Los Angeles public school teachers to Gen Z and many more – will continue to pressure her to stand firm against the fossil fuel industry and prioritize clean air, clean water, and a liveable climate for all of us.
“Harris will have immediate opportunities to move the country towards a clean energy future, including shutting down the disastrous Dakota Access Pipeline and the proposed Gulf Link crude oil export terminal and making the Biden administration’s pause on new LNG exports permanent.
"This election also represents a crucial moment for US foreign policy and our role on the global stage, as the ongoing genocide in Palestine continues to deny human rights and defy international law. This has been a defining issue for voters this election cycle and Harris has vowed to do everything she can to end the war in Gaza, but real action means supporting an immediate arms embargo and ceasefire.
“Harris can become the climate president and global leader we desperately need by taking urgent, uncompromising action. She must end fossil fuel expansion, invest in clean energy, and safeguard Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities from the fossil fuel industry’s pollution and the worst impacts of the climate crisis."
Oil Change U.S. is dedicated to supporting real climate leadership, exposing the true costs of fossil fuels, and building a just, equitable, and renewable energy future in the United States.
LATEST NEWS
Palestinian Envoy to ICJ: Israel Using Starvation as 'Weapon of War' in 'Genocidal Campaign'
"Israel is starving, killing and displacing Palestinians while also targeting and blocking humanitarian organizations trying to save their lives," said Palestinian envoy Ammar Hijazi.
Apr 28, 2025
With Israel's "total and complete blockade" leaving people across Gaza "slowly dying" if they aren't being "killed with bombs and bullets," according to one United Nations official, Palestinian envoy Ammar Hijazi was among those who described the reality on the ground to the U.N.'s top court on Monday as the body considered Israel's legal obligations in Palestine.
Ammar Hijazi, Palestinian ambassador to the Netherlands, warned the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that since October 2023, Israel's blockade on humanitarian aid "has progressively turned into a total siege."
"Israel is starving, killing, and displacing Palestinians, while also targeting and blocking humanitarian organizations trying to save their lives," he said, accusing the Israeli military of waging a "genocidal campaign" in Gaza.
On March 2, for the second time since the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) began bombarding Gaza in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack in October 2023, Israel halted all humanitarian aid into the enclave. The total blockade was followed by Israel's decision to end a cease-fire that has begun in January, conducting a bombing campaign that killed hundreds of Palestinians in its first day.
For nearly two months, food supplies have dwindled in Gaza, and the World Food Program announced last week that it had delivered its last remaining stocks of hot meals to food kitchens.
The siege has created conditions that are "incompatible with sustaining life or the continued existence of Palestinians in Gaza," Hijazi said.
The ambassador noted that the ICJ hearing was taking place to consider whether Israel is violating international law.
"It is not about the number of aid trucks Israel is or is not allowing into the Occupied Palestinian Territories, especially Gaza," said Hijazi. "It is about Israel destroying the fundamentals of life in Palestine while it blocks U.N. and other humanitarians from providing lifesaving aid to the population. It is about Israel unraveling fundamental principles of international law, including their obligations under the U.N. Charter."
"Starvation is here," Hijazi added. "Humanitarian aid is being used as a weapon of war."
The hearing on Monday was the first of several that will take place at the ICJ over the next five days, following a resolution passed by the U.N. General Assembly last year calling on the court to consider Israel's legal responsibilities after the government blocked the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) from operating in the Palestinian territories—cutting Palestinians off from the agency that has for years provided crucial food aid, cash assistance, and health services, among other necessities.
Elinor Hammarskjold, U.N. undersecretary-general for legal affairs, argued during the hearing that Israel's ban on UNRWA is "inconsistent with Israel's obligation under international law" and warned that Israel has an "overarching obligation to administer the territory for the benefit of the local population" and must "agree to and facilitate relief schemes."
As the hearing was underway, medical sources in Gaza toldAl Jazeera that at least 36 people had been killed in Israeli attacks since dawn while eight out of 12 ambulances in southern Gaza were no longer operating due to a lack of fuel.
The Palestinian Civil Defense said its capacity to respond to residents in need will be increasingly reduced by the blockade, "threatening the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens and displaced persons in shelters."
"We hold the Israeli occupation responsible for the worsening suffering of our people in the Gaza Strip due to the ongoing war and the continued imposition of the blockade," said the civil defense.
In addition to describing to the court the impact of Israel's blockade, Hijazi spoke about the IDF's attacks that have killed hundreds of aid workers, including nearly 300 UNRWA staff members and dozens of paramedics.
"These killings are deliberate, not accidental," he said of the killing earlier this month of 15 paramedics who were found with bullet wounds in a mass grave, and whose vehicles were shown to be clearly marked in cellphone footage that was later released—despite Israeli claims that they had provoked suspicion by driving in the dark without headlights on.
One of the attorneys representing Palestine at the ICJ, Paul Reichler, said that "the inhumanity of this Israeli policy is compounded by its unlawful objective: to forever extinguish the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination."
"In these circumstances, there can be no doubt that Israel is violating its obligations under international humanitarian law, including obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention and customary international law," said Reichler.
Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh, another of the international human rights lawyers who represented Palestine at the ICJ on Monday, cataloged just some of Israel's recent displays of hostility to the rule of law, noting that Defense Minister Israel Katz said earlier this month that "Israel's policy is clear: No humanitarian aid will enter Gaza," and that the Israeli government is planning to annex 75 square kilometers of the southern Gaza city of Rafah as part of a so-called "buffer zone."
Ní Ghrálaigh emphasized that "despite the extraordinary efforts of Palestinian journalists, who are themselves repeatedly targeted and killed, so much remains undocumented."
"As stated by UNRWA's commissioner-general, I quote, 'I shudder to think of what will still be revealed about the horrors that have taken place in this narrow strip of land,'" she said.
Forty states and four international groups are scheduled to present in the upcoming ICJ hearings, which are separate from the genocide case filed at the court by South Africa. The ICJ said in January 2024 that Israel was required to take steps to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the risk of genocide and to provide humanitarian aid.
A ruling in the case that began Monday is expected to take several months to be announced.
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Bondi Shreds Biden-Era Protections for Journalists as Trump White House Hunts Leakers
One critic warned that President Donald Trump "almost certainly will abuse the legal system to investigate and prosecute his critics and the journalists they talk to."
Apr 28, 2025
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has scrapped a Biden-era policy that sharply restricted the Justice Department's ability to seize journalists' records and force them to testify in leak investigations, an alarming move that press freedom advocates said carries dire implications for reporters and whistleblowers.
In an internal memo first reported Friday by CBS News, Bondi wrote that the Justice Department "will not tolerate unauthorized disclosures that undermine President [Donald] Trump's policies, victimize government agencies, and cause harm to the American people."
"The perpetrators of these leaks aid our foreign adversaries by spilling sensitive and sometimes classified information onto the Internet. The damage is significant and irreversible," Bondi continued. "Accountability, including criminal prosecutions, is necessary to set a new course."
As part of a renewed crackdown on leaks, Bondi said she is issuing revised Justice Department regulations stating that media outlets "must answer subpoenas" related to efforts to uncover sources of unauthorized disclosures within the federal government.
"The policy contemplates the use of subpoenas, court orders, and search warrants to compel production of information and testimony by and relating to members of the news media, subject to the Privacy Protection Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2000aa, and the approval of the department's leadership in some instances," the memo states. "The attorney general must also approve efforts to question or arrest members of the news media."
"Some of the most consequential reporting in U.S. history—from Watergate to warrantless wiretapping after 9/11—was and continues to be made possible because reporters have been able to protect the identities of confidential sources."
The Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF)—a group co-founded by the late Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked classified documents that came to be known as the Pentagon Papers—noted in a statement that Bondi's memo followed "news that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard asked the Department of Justice to investigate recent leaks to reporters."
Seth Stern, FPF's advocacy director, said Bondi's move was made possible by lawmakers' failure to pass the PRESS Act, bipartisan legislation would have codified into law rules prohibiting the federal government from forcing journalists or telecom companies from disclosing information about their sources.
"Every Democrat who put the PRESS Act on the back burner when they had the opportunity to pass a bipartisan bill codifying journalist-source confidentiality should be ashamed," said Stern. "Everyone predicted this would happen in a second Trump administration, yet politicians in a position to prevent it prioritized empty rhetoric over putting up a meaningful fight."
"Because of them," Stern added, "a president who threatens journalists with prison rape for protecting their sources and says reporting critically on his administration should be illegal can and almost certainly will abuse the legal system to investigate and prosecute his critics and the journalists they talk to."
After his victory in the 2024 presidential election, Trump instructed Republicans to block the PRESS Act, writing on his social media platform, "REPUBLICANS MUST KILL THIS BILL!"
Since the start of his second term, Trump has launched what Reporters Without Borders (RSF) characterized as "a monumental assault on press freedom," including by engaging in "legal intimidation" against media outlets.
"When you step back and look at the whole picture, the pattern of blows to press freedom is quite clear," Clayton Weimers, executive director of RSF North America, said late last week. "RSF refuses to accept this massive attack on press freedom as the new normal. We will continue to call out these assaults against the press and use every means at our disposal to fight back against them. We urge every American who values press freedom to do the same."
Earlier this month, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a safety advisory to journalists planning to visit the United States, warning "journalists who are at high risk of being detained at the border" to "consider leaving their personal and/or work devices at home and instead carry separate devices and a new SIM card."
Bruce Brown, president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said in a statement following Bondi's memo that "strong protections for journalists serve the American public by safeguarding the free flow of information."
"Some of the most consequential reporting in U.S. history—from Watergate to warrantless wiretapping after 9/11—was and continues to be made possible because reporters have been able to protect the identities of confidential sources and uncover and report stories that matter to people across the political spectrum," Brown said.
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GOP Unveils Plan to Give $150 Billion More to Pentagon
"Any additional money pumped into this system is likely to be wasted," said one analyst. "The only beneficiaries will be weapons contractors."
Apr 28, 2025
Congressional Republicans on Sunday released legislation that would pump an additional $150 billion into the Pentagon—a morass of waste and profiteering—over the next decade as part of a sweeping reconciliation package that's also expected to include deep cuts to Medicaid and tax breaks for the wealthy.
The House Armed Services Committee, a major target of weapons industry lobbying, unveiled the plan for what it called "a historic investment of $150 billion to restore America's military capabilities and strengthen our national defense." The panel said the legislation was developed "in close conjunction" with Senate Republicans and President Donald Trump, who is separately pursuing a $1 trillion U.S. military budget for the next fiscal year.
The legislation would direct the new Pentagon funding toward a number of initiatives backed by the president, including a "Golden Dome" missile defense system that experts have called a massive boondoggle that could benefit Elon Musk.
The bill, which is scheduled for a committee markup on Tuesday, also includes $4.5 billion to speed production of the B-21 stealth bomber, a Northrop Grumman-made aircraft capable of delivering nuclear weapons.
William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said Sunday that the GOP's proposed Pentagon spending increase is "a glaring example of misplaced priorities."
"This is no time to throw more money at a weapons manufacturing base that is already maxed out," said Hartung. "Any additional money pumped into this system is likely to be wasted. The only beneficiaries will be weapons contractors, who will be glad to accept the new funds whether they can use them effectively or not."
"Given that the Pentagon and its contractor network are having a hard time spending existing funds well," Hartung added, "Congress should think twice before sending more taxpayer money their way."
The Republican push for additional Pentagon funding comes as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is facing calls to resign for sharing plans for a U.S. military attack on Yemen in at least two private group chats.
Earlier this month, as Common Dreamsreported, Hegseth endorsed Trump's push for a $1 trillion U.S. military budget, which would mark the highest level of spending since the Second World War.
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