October, 25 2023, 01:45pm EDT
Speaker Mike Johnson is a Clear and Present Danger to America’s Environment and Public Health
Senate Must Stand Firm Against This Radical House Majority
Ultra-conservative Republican Mike Johnson is about to be elected Speaker of the House of Representatives. In response, Food & Water Action Deputy Director Mitch Jones issued the following statement:
“Speaker Johnson, an egregious climate skeptic and proud election denier, has had his career bought and paid for by the oil and gas industry. Johnson’s shameful anti-truth, anti-science views are a clear and present danger to America’s public health and environment.
“In lining up behind Mike Johnson, House Republicans have uniformly embraced his dystopian vision and made it clear they are only interested in tearing things down – things like our fundamental clean air, clean water and public health safeguards. Now more than ever it is imperative that Senate Democrats stand firm and disregard the foolish extremism almost certain to begin streaming out of the House.
“Decent people across the country must begin mobilizing quickly to ensure that Democrats reclaim the House majority in 2024. A failure in this effort would be dire for the health and safety of all Americans and a livable climate for this planet.”
Food & Water Watch mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold and uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people's health, communities, and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests.
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Wyden Decries 'New Low' as GOP Senators Shield Trump's Massive Tax on Working Class
"In any sane world, it would be a scandal that the vast majority of one political party would vote for a pointless tax on the American people, one that is hiking prices and destroying jobs, all to please one man."
May 01, 2025
Nearly every Senate Republican on Wednesday voted against a resolution aimed at terminating the national emergency that U.S. President Donald Trumpdeclared last month to impose his sweeping tariffs, which are wreaking economic havoc across the globe.
Just three Republicans—Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Rand Paul (R-Ky.)—joined every voting Democrat in supporting the resolution led by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). The measure deadlocked at 49 in favor and 49 against, and U.S. Vice President JD Vance subsequently cast a tie-breaking vote to table the resolution—which Trump had threatened to veto.
"In any sane world, it would be a scandal that the vast majority of one political party would vote for a pointless tax on the American people, one that is hiking prices and destroying jobs, all to please one man," Wyden said in a statement following the votes. "The only winner from Donald Trump's trade chaos is China, which is scooping up markets and trading partners that Trump has driven away. This vote represents a new low for the Republican Party."
Wyden said in a floor speech Wednesday that Trump's "senseless global tariffs" are "a major culprit" in the first U.S. economic contraction since 2022, as shown in a Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) report published earlier in the day.
"If this continues to be our tariff policy," the Oregon senator warned, "every major economist and forecaster is unfortunately predicting recession, job losses, and the misery that was all over our news feeds this morning."
Trump's tariffs currently stand at 10% on imports from most U.S. trading partners, and 145% on Chinese imports, as the White House negotiates bilateral deals behind closed doors.
Melinda St. Louis, Global Trade Watch director at Public Citizen, said Wednesday that "while strategic tariffs can be an important tool to support domestic manufacturing, Trump's inappropriate use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to push through sweeping and reckless tariffs actually has nothing to do with protecting U.S. workers."
"He's rolling back investments and support for domestic businesses and undermining workers' rights at home and likely pushing the agenda of Big Tech, Big Pharma, and other billionaire buddies in his secretive trade talks," St. Louis added.
The progressive advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) said Wednesday that Trump's tariffs have already hit U.S. households with a "$14 billion price hike," pointing to BEA data showing that "taxes on foreign imports spiked to $96.3 billion just in the first quarter of 2025, up $14 billion, or 17%, from the same period in 2024." Corporations often pass import tax costs to consumers in the form of price increases.
"Lower and middle-income households will bear a disproportionate share of the Trump Tariff Tax," ATF said. "While the bottom 60% of households take home roughly one-fifth of national income, they will pay nearly one-third of the price of Trump's tariff regime. Meanwhile, the top 1% highest-income households—those that take in over $940,000 a year—will pay only one-tenth of the Trump Tariff Tax, even though they get well over one-fifth of national income."
"This is all part of Trump and congressional Republicans' radical agenda to rig the tax code further in favor of the wealthy while sticking low- and middle-income families with the bill," the group added.
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Doctors Against Genocide Hold DC Rally for 'Bread Not Bombs' in Gaza
"Hope is running out to save tens of thousands of children," warned one Colorado pediatrician. "When children die of starvation, they don't even cry. Their little hearts just slow down until they stop."
Apr 30, 2025
Members of the international advocacy group Doctors Against Genocide rallied outside U.S. Congress in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday to demand that lawmakers push for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and an end to Israel's use of starvation as a weapon of war in the besieged Palestinian enclave.
Around 20 DAG members in white lab coats held up pieces of pita and chanted, "Bread not bombs, let the children eat" during the Capitol Hill rally.
"The Israeli government's deliberate malnutrition, starvation, and attack on healthcare in Gaza has worsened and potentially portends extermination of masses of the Gaza population, particularly tens of thousands of children," said Dr. Karameh Kuemmerle, a Boston-based pediatric neurologist.
🪧 'Let the children eat!'
Doctors Against Genocide visited the US Capitol Hill to advocate for immediate action to end the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip https://t.co/aUJ9X6s4sh pic.twitter.com/RVpm2TX2Co
— Anadolu English (@anadoluagency) April 30, 2025
Last week, the United Nations World Food Program distributed the last of its remaining food aid in Gaza, where embattled residents now have no outside food source amid the Israeli blockade. DAG said Wednesday that "gastroenteritis and diarrheal diseases now run rampant due to Gazans attempting to survive on spoiled food, while others starve to death."
Palestinian officials, U.N. experts, and international human rights groups accuse Israel of perpetrating genocidal weaponized starvation in Gaza by imposing a "complete siege" that has fueled deadly malnutrition and disease among the coastal enclave's more than 2 million people, especially its children.
"When I treated Gaza children two months ago, children were already starving," Colorado pediatrician and DAG member Dr. Mohamed Kuziez said ahead of Wednesday's rally. "After 60 days of total blockade from essential nutrition and medical aid, uncounted more are dying slow, unnecessary deaths."
U.N. officials say there are nearly 3,000 truckloads of lifesaving aid, including more than 116,000 metric tons of food—enough to feed a million people for as long as four months—sitting at the Gaza border awaiting Israeli permission to enter.
"Hope is running out to save tens of thousands of children," Kuziez warned. "When children die of starvation, they don't even cry. Their little hearts just slow down until they stop."
Some of the speakers at the Capitol Hill rally hailed the resilience of Gaza's medical workers, who have suffered not only Israel's bombing and siege of hospitals and other healthcare infrastructure, but also kidnapping, torture, and apparent execution by Israeli troops.
"My Palestinian healthcare worker colleagues demonstrated something for which I have no word, because it goes beyond compassion, beyond skillful dedication, beyond courage," said Dr. Brennan Bollman, a professor of emergency medicine at Columbia University who just returned from Gaza. "They lost their family members and returned to work the following day."
"They need food, for their patients and for themselves; they need this illegal and unconscionable blockade to end," she added.
In addition to calling for an immediate cease-fire and lifting of Israel's blockade on Gaza, DAG is also demanding protection of children facing starvation, an end to U.S. bombing of Yemen, and safeguarding the U.S. Constitution and freedom of speech amid attacks on medical professionals' livelihoods.
Wednesday's rally came as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) held a third day of hearings on Israel's legal obligation to "ensure and facilitate the unhindered provision of urgently needed supplies essential to the survival of the Palestinian civilian population."
The ICJ is currently weighing a genocide case brought against Israel by South Africa and supported by dozens of countries, either individually or as members of regional blocs.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are also fugitives from the International Criminal Court, which has ordered their arrest for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during a U.S.-backed war that has left more than 184,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and nearly all Gazans forcibly displaced, often multiple times.
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Analysis Shows How GOP Attack on SNAP Could Cut Food Assistance 'From Millions' in Low-Income Households
"With economic uncertainty and the risk of recession rising, now is a particularly bad time for Congress to pursue these harmful changes," according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Apr 30, 2025
As congressional Republicans mull potentially imposing stricter work requirements for adults who rely on federal nutrition aid as part of a push to pass a GOP-backed reconciliation bill, an analysis from the progressive think tank the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released Wednesday states that such a move could take away food "from millions of people in low-income households" who are having a hard time finding steady employment or face hurdles to finding work.
The analysis is based on a proposal regarding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) from House Agriculture Committee member Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), which, if enacted, the group estimates would translate into an estimated 6 million people being at risk of losing their food assistance.
"In total, nearly 11 million people—about 1 in 4 SNAP participants, including more than 4 million children and more than half a million adults aged 65 or older and adults with disabilities—live in households that would be at risk of losing at least some of their food assistance" under Johnson's proposed rules, according to the analysis.
Per CBPP, current SNAP rules mandate that most adults ages 18-54 without children may receive food benefits for only three months in a three-year period unless they prove they are participating in a 20-hour-per-week work program or prove they have a qualifying exemption.
Under Johnson's proposal, work requirements would apply to adults ages 18-65, and they would also be expanded to adults who have children over the age of seven. Per CBPP, Johnson's proposal would also "virtually eliminate" the ability of states to waive the three-month time limit in response to local labor market conditions, like in cases where there are insufficient jobs
According to CBPP, its report is based on analysis of "the number of participants meeting the age and other characteristics of the populations that would be newly subject to the work requirement under U.S. Department of Agriculture 2022 SNAP Household Characteristics data," as well as the number of participants potentially subject to work requirements in areas that are typically subject to the waivers mentioned above.
The House Agriculture Committee, which oversees SNAP—formerly known as food stamps—has been tasked with finding $230 billion in cuts as part of a House budget reconciliation plan. To come up with that amount, the committee would need to enact steep cuts to SNAP.
According to CBPP, most SNAP recipients who can work are already working, or are temporarily in between jobs. Per the report, U.S. Department of Agriculture data undercount the SNAP households who are working because the numbers come from SNAP's "Quality Control" sample, which gives point-in-time data about a household in a given month.
This snapshot does "not indicate whether a household had earnings before or after the sample month, nor do they show how long a household participates in SNAP."
What's more, "with economic uncertainty and the risk of recession rising, now is a particularly bad time for Congress to pursue these harmful changes," according to the authors of the analysis.
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