January, 11 2024, 02:32pm EDT
Over 175 State and Local Elected Officials Urge President Biden to Immediately Call for a Permanent Ceasefire
“We must demand a ceasefire now and then work to build a future without Israeli military occupation and siege. A future in which all Palestinians and Israelis can live in freedom and dignity.”
Over 175 elected officials from state and local offices across the United States signed an open letter to President Joe Biden urging him to immediately call for and work to facilitate a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. The letter was led by Illinois State Representative Lilian Jiménez and Delaware State Representative Madinah Wilson-Anton, and continues collecting signatures from more elected officials.
The letter comes as the Israeli government’s deadly airstrikes and suffocating siege on Gaza have killed over 23,000 Palestinians, including over 9,600 children and as the Biden administration continues thwarting efforts at the United Nations to call for a ceasefire and sending more weapons to the Israeli government.
The lawmakers close the letter by saying: “We cannot bomb our way to peace. We must demand a ceasefire now and then work to build a future without Israeli military occupation and siege. A future in which all Palestinians and Israelis can live in freedom and dignity.”
Illinois State Representative Lilian Jiménez: “As the mother of a small child, witnessing the death and suffering of so many children in Gaza has shaken me to my core. I will never forget their faces and I will not stand by as the continued bombardment and lack of access to food and basic healthcare leads to more suffering. As an elected State Representative, I call on President Biden to stop sending weapons to the Israeli government and instead center human rights and work to ensure a lasting ceasefire.”
Delaware State Representative Madina Wilson-Anton: “As elected officials, it’s important for us to use our voices to push for a lasting peace. I’m proud to stand together with other people of conscience to urge the Biden administration to demand a ceasefire and stop arming Israel’s war crimes. I can only hope that as more and more Americans speak up that the Biden administration will listen and stop funding these atrocities.”
Illinois State Representative Abdelnasser Rashid: “I’m heartened to see so many state and local elected leaders join the call for ceasefire and human rights. These individuals will be remembered for their moral clarity. Israel’s leaders have made it clear, over and over, that they are intent on destruction. It’s time for President Biden and Secretary Blinken to push for an immediate ceasefire and ensure that our taxpayer dollars are not funding the indiscriminate killing of Palestinian civilians.”
Beth Miller, Political Director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action: “Americans are horrified by the mass atrocities being carried out by the Israeli military against Palestinians in Gaza. With every passing day, more of us are demanding an end to U.S. complicity in these war crimes. The state and local officials joining this letter are speaking out on behalf of their constituents across the country to demand that the Biden administration call for an immediate and lasting ceasefire now.”
The letter continues to collect signatures from elected state and local officials. Full text of the letter is available here.
Lilian Jiménez, Madinah Wilson-Anton, and Beth Miller are available for media requests.
Jewish Voice for Peace Action (JVP Action) is a multiracial, intergenerational movement of Jews and allies working towards justice and equality for Palestinians and Israelis by transforming U.S. policy.
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Israeli Cabinet Approves 19 New Apartheid Colonies in Occupied West Bank
"The ONLY reason Israel gets away with this naked thievery is US military and political support," said one observer.
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Israel's Cabinet on Sunday finalized approval of 19 new Jewish-only settler colonies in the illegally occupied West Bank, a move the apartheid state's far-right finance minister said was aimed at thwarting Palestinian statehood.
Cabinet ministers approved the legalization of the previously unauthorized settler outposts throughout the occupied Palestinian territory, bringing the total number of new settlements in recent years to 69.
The move will bring the overall total number of exclusively or overwhelmingly Jewish settlements—which are illegal under international law—to more than 200, up from around 140 just three years ago.
Included in the new approval are two former settlements—Kadim and Ganim—that were evacuated in compliance with the now effectively repealed 2005 Disengagement Law, under which Israel dismantled all of its colonies in the Gaza Strip and four in the West Bank.
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Following an earlier round of approval for the new settlements last week, Palestinian presidential spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh said, “All Israeli settlement activity is illegal and constitutes a violation of international law and international legitimacy resolutions."
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres earlier this month denounced Israel's "relentless" settlement expansion.
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Since 1967, Israel has steadily seized more and more Palestinian land in the West Bank while building and expanding colonies there. Settlement population has increased exponentially from around 1,500 colonists in 1970 to roughly 140,000 at the time of the Oslo Accords in 1993—under which Israel agreed to halt new settlement activity—to around 770,000 today.
Settlers often attack Palestinians and their property, including in deadly pogroms, in order to terrorize them into leaving so their land can be stolen. Israeli colonists have also attacked Israel Defense Forces soldiers they view as standing in the way of their expansion.
In July 2024, the International Court of Justice—where Israel is currently facing a genocide case related to the Gaza war—found the occupation of Palestine to be an illegal form of apartheid that must be ended as soon as possible. The ICJ also ruled that Israeli settler colonization of the West Bank amounts to annexation, also a crime under international law. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that an “occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
As the world's attention focused on Gaza during the past two years, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 1,039 Palestinians—at least 225 of them children—in the West Bank. This year, at least 233 Palestinians, including at least 52 children, have been killed so far, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East.
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US Coast Guard troops led Saturday's seizure of the Centuries, a Panamanian-flagged, Chinese-owned oil tanker in the Caribbean Sea, after it left Venezuela.
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On Sunday, an unnamed US official told Reuters that the Coast Guard "is in active pursuit" of a third tanker near Venezuela, "a sanctioned dark fleet vessel" that "is flying a false flag and under a judicial seizure order.”
The Venezuelan government condemned Saturday's seizure as "a serious act of international piracy."
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Earlier this week, President Donald Trump declared a blockade of all oil tankers under US sanctions that are traveling to or from Venezuela.
Saturday's action followed the US seizure of the Panamanian-flagged Skipper—which is under sanctions—off the Venezuelan coast on December 10.
The Centuries seizure also comes amid the Trump administration's bombing of at least 28 boats allegedly transporting drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, attacks that have killed more than 100 people and have been condemned as acts of extrajudicial murder.
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Numerous world leaders have denounced the US aggression toward Venezuela. On Saturday, leftist Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva said during a summit of the South American Mercosur bloc in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil that an "armed intervention in Venezuela would be a humanitarian catastrophe."
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"What else is being covered up?"
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Congressional Democrats on Saturday pressed US Attorney General Pam Bondi for answers regarding the apparent removal of a photo showing President Donald Trump surrounded by young female models from Friday's Department of Justice release of files related to the late convicted child sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.
Amid the heavily redacted documents in Friday's DOJ release was a photo of a desk with an open drawer containing multiple photos of Trump, including one of him with Epstein and convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell and another of him with the models.
However, the photo—labeled EFTA00000468 in the DOJ's Epstein Library—was no longer on the site as of Saturday morning.
"This photo, file 468, from the Epstein files that includes Donald Trump, has apparently now been removed from the DOJ release," Democrats on the House Oversight Committee noted in a Bluesky post. "AG Bondi, is this true? What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public."
This photo, file 468, from the Epstein files that includes Donald Trump has apparently now been removed from the DOJ release.AG Bondi, is this true? What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.
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— Oversight Dems (@oversightdemocrats.house.gov) December 20, 2025 at 9:30 AM
Numerous critics have accused the Trump administration of a cover-up due to the DOJ's failure to meet a Friday deadline to release all Epstein-related documents and heavy redactions—including documents of 100 pages or more that are completely blacked out—to many of the files.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche responded to the criticism by claiming that "the only redactions being applied to the documents are those required by law—full stop."
"Consistent with the statute and applicable laws, we are not redacting the names of individuals or politicians unless they are a victim," he added.
Earlier this year, officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation reportedly redacted Trump's name from its file on Epstein, who was the president's longtime former friend and who died in 2019 in a New York City jail cell under mysterious circumstances officially called suicide while facing federal child sex trafficking and conspiracy charges.
Trump has not been accused of any crimes in connection with Epstein.
House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) said during a Friday CNN interview that the DOJ only released about 10% of the full Epstein files.
The DOJ is breaking the law by not releasing the full Epstein files. This is not transparency. This is just more coverup by Donald Trump and Pam Bondi. They need to release all the files, NOW.
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— Congressman Robert Garcia (@robertgarcia.house.gov) December 19, 2025 at 5:06 PM
"The DOJ has had months and hundreds of agents to put these files together, and yet entire documents are redacted—from the first word to the last," Garcia said on X. "What are they hiding? The American public deserves transparency. Release all the files now!"
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