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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'The American People Deserve Answers': Subpoenas Issued for Crow and Leo
"Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a strong message that the rich and powerful cannot evade scrutiny or accountability," said one advocate.
Nov 30, 2023
Democratic lawmakers on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday said Republican members' conduct spoke volumes as the GOP used "every permutation" of obstruction to try to prevent the panel from subpoenaing billionaire megadonor Harlan Crow and Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard Leo over their gifts to right-wing U.S. Supreme Court justices—a ploy that ultimately failed.
A committee meeting was marked by a tumultuous back-and-forth between Republicans and Democrats, with lawmakers including Texas GOP Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz accusing the Democrats of enacting a vendetta against conservative justices on the high court with their vote in favor of ordering Crow and Leo to testify.
Both men have refused to provide the committee with information regarding reports that they funded luxury trips and other gifts for right-wing Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
As a leader of the Federalist Society, Leo has also played a key role in securing seats on the Supreme Court for some of its most conservative members, paving the way for the court to overturnRoe v. Wade and significantly weaken states' abilities to regulate gun ownership, among other rulings.
Stand Up America applauded committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and the other Democrats for voting to subpoena Crow and Leo, saying the move—in the face of Republican obstruction and claims that the subpoenas would "destroy" the committee—helped to reassert Congress' role as a co-equal branch of government.
"Billionaires like Harlan Crow believe they can buy loyalty on the Supreme Court, turning our nation's highest court into a political plaything for the ultrawealthy and well-connected," said Brett Edkins, managing director of policy and political affairs for Stand Up America. "Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a strong message that the rich and powerful cannot evade scrutiny or accountability."
"The American people deserve answers," Edkins continued. "Today's vote brings us one step closer to understanding the full scope of Justice Thomas' and Alito's wrongdoing and restoring honesty and integrity to the Supreme Court."
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court announced for the first time the establishment of an ethics code, but advocates said that without any enforcement mechanisms in place, the code would not go far in ensuring an end to lavish gifts like those paid for by Crow and Leo.
"We need a Supreme Court that works for all of us, and we need assurance that it is," said Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. "Following the court's recent adoption of its own code of conduct, which is insufficient and lacks any mechanism for enforcement, this urgent work must continue."
"As the committee exercises its crucial oversight authority to ensure abuses of power don't go unchecked in our federal judiciary, Congress must continue to act," Wiley said. "It is unacceptable that abuses of power could become more frequent and severe—further corroding the public's faith in our judicial system and undermining our democracy."
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) outlined on social media the efforts Republicans went to on Thursday to stop Democrats from subpoenaing Leo and Crow—invoking the "two-hour rule" which required the meeting to end by 12:00 pm, interrupting the vote repeatedly, and staging a walkout.
"They're also saying we have no business doing this," Whitehouse said. "Wait a second—the judicial conference is a body Congress established, the disclosure laws are laws passed by Congress. The idea that Congress can't oversee how an agency that it created is implementing laws it passed, is frankly nonsense."
Crow told Forbes after the vote that the subpoena was "invalid" and demonstrated "the unlawful and partisan nature of this investigation."
Leo echoed Republican members when he issued his own statement, saying Democrats "have been destroying the Supreme Court; now they are destroying the Senate.
"I will not cooperate with this unlawful campaign of political retribution," said Leo.
The right-wing activist's response did not come as a surprise to progressive critics.
"For wealthy fascists like Leonard Leo, the law is something to exploit, not obey," said veteran journalist Mark Jacob.
The committee could seek to enforce the subpoenas in court or refer the matter to the U.S. Justice Department if Leo and Crow follow through on their threat to not comply with the orders.
As the committee determines how to get to the bottom of the allegations against the right-wing activists, said Wiley, progressives must continue their "ongoing push to confirm highly qualified federal judges who are professionally and demographically diverse and committed to civil and human rights."
"That is how we build an equal justice judiciary that works for everyone," she said. "Communities across the nation depend on federal jurists to fairly administer justice for all people, and we must do whatever it takes to ensure that they do."
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US Lawmakers Tell Biden to 'Lead by Example' on Climate as COP28 Begins
Progressive members of Congress, including Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, urged the president to support a complete phaseout of fossil fuels.
Nov 30, 2023
Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Thursday led a group of more than 30 U.S. lawmakers in calling on President Joe Biden to embrace a complete phaseout of fossil fuels and an immediate end to public financing of new overseas oil and gas projects as world leaders gathered for the first day of the COP28 summit in Dubai.
In a letter to the president, who decided to skip the talks, Markey (D-Mass.), Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and 32 other members of Congress wrote that the U.S. has a "duty" to pursue more ambitious climate goals and "support other countries in adopting the principles of environmental justice that we should also prioritize here at home."
"In order to remain on target for a livable future, we urge the administration to support the move toward an extensive, expedient, and equitable phaseout of fossil fuel production and consumption," the lawmakers wrote. "A full phaseout should be inclusive of coal, oil, and fossil gas, and led by the wealthiest and highest-emitting countries, including short-term phase-down goals and climate financing to assist developing countries in executing a clean energy transition."
The letter, spearheaded by the leaders of the congressional Green New Deal Resolution, was released after the COP28 talks opened with a deal to operationalize a loss and damage fund geared toward helping low-income nations recover from the increasingly devastating climate impacts they've faced in recent years, despite doing the least to cause the planetary crisis.
The Biden administration, representing the country that is the largest historical emitter of planet-warming carbon dioxide, pledged just $17.5 million to the loss and damage fund, a sum that one campaigner called "embarrassing."
As Common Dreams reported, the administration also drew outrage by launching an oil and gas drilling auction just days before the start of the United Nations climate summit.
In a social media post Thursday, Markey called on the Biden administration to "lead by example and take bold action to end this climate emergency."
The Biden administration has thus far rejected calls to support a full phaseout of fossil fuels, allowing U.S. oil and gas extraction to surge to record levels despite increasingly dire warnings from the scientific community.
The administration has also repeatedly broken its commitment to end direct public financing for international fossil fuel projects.
In a briefing on the eve of COP28, Special Presidential Climate Envoy John Kerry told reporters that the administration supports "requiring the phaseout of unabated fossil fuel."
As Bloomberg's Lara Williams recently warned, the ambiguity of "unabated"—expected to be a hot-button term during the COP28 talks—"leaves an enormous loophole for the continued expansion of fossil fuel production under the vague promise that all will be abated in the future."
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Facebook Parent Company Launches 'Absurd and Dangerous' Attack on FTC
"It seems there's no legal theory, however far-fetched, that Meta won't deploy to avoid a full accounting of its harmful data practices," said one digital rights defender.
Nov 30, 2023
Meta Platforms—which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp—on Wednesday sued the U.S. Federal Trade Commission six months after the agency proposed an order that would prohibit the tech giant from monetizing minors' data.
The lawsuit, which also names FTC Chair Lina Khan and Democratic Commissioners Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya as defendants, challenges what Meta claims is the agency's "structurally unconstitutional authority."
The legal action comes after the FTC in May proposed banning Meta from monetizing children's data, a practice regulators said violates the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The FTC proposal aims to strengthen a 2019 consent decree prohibiting Meta—then called Facebook—from profiting off data collected from minors. As part of the settlement, the company agreed to pay a $5 billion fine for previous privacy violations.
Earlier this week, a federal judge denied a motion filed by Meta seeking the court's intervention in the company's dispute with the FTC.
"This is a blatant example of the company's ruthless profit-over-safety strategy," the Real Facebook Oversight Board, a watchdog group, said of the new lawsuit. "They claim they want regulation but when they realize their business model is threatened, they attack the regulator."
Emily Peterson-Cassin, digital rights advocate for the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said that "Facebook made an agreement with the FTC, and now it doesn't want to face the consequences of possible violations of that agreement."
"It's beyond cynical for Facebook to launch a legal attack on the FTC's authority to enforce an agreement the company voluntarily entered into," she added. "Facebook is accused of hurting and exploiting kids; the public needs the FTC to get to the bottom of those accusations and hold Facebook liable for any and all violations, without delay."
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Meta suing the FTC is "like Big Tobacco trying to gut the [Food and Drug Administration] because they didn't want to be held accountable for hooking kids onto nicotine."
"The FTC has been around for over a century now," Warren added. "This agency is constitutional and using its powers to apply the law as written."
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass) also weighed in on Meta's lawsuit, saying that "Meta's baseless lawsuit is a weak attempt to avoid accountability for its repeated failures to protect kids' privacy online."
"When a Big Tech company wants to take the federal cop off the beat, it's probably because it doesn't want to be caught," the senator added. "For years, Meta has been willfully ignoring the problems it has created—including a privacy crisis, a teen mental health crisis, and an algorithmic injustice crisis—and this lawsuit is just the latest craven distraction."
According to the children's advocacy group Fairplay:
Meta has posed a threat to the privacy and welfare of young people in the U.S. for many years, as it targeted them to further its data-driven commercial surveillance advertising system. Scandal after scandal has exposed the company's blatant disregard for children and youth, with nearly daily headlines about its irresponsible actions coming from former-employees-turned-whistleblowers and major multistate and bipartisan investigations of state attorneys general. Despite multiple attempts by regulators to contain Meta's ongoing undermining of its user privacy, including through multiple FTC consent decrees, it is evident that a substantive remedy is required to safeguard U.S. youth.
"While many have noted social media's role in fueling the mental health crisis, the Federal Trade Commission has taken actual meaningful action to protect young people online by its order prohibiting serial privacy offender Meta from monetizing minors' data," Fairplay executive director Josh Golin said in a statement. "So it's not surprising that Meta is launching this brazen attack on the commission."
"Anyone who cares about the well-being of children—and the safety of American consumers—should rally to the defense of the commission and be deeply concerned about the lengths Meta will go to preserve its ability to profit at the expense of young people," Golin added.
Katharina Kopp, director of policy at the Center for Digital Democracy, said that "for decades Meta has put the maximization of profits from so-called behavioral advertising above the best interests of children and teens."
"Meta's failure to comply repeatedly with its 2012 and 2020 settlements with the FTC, including its noncompliance with the federal children's privacy law (COPPA), and the unique developmental vulnerability of minors, justifies the FTC to propose the modifications of Meta's consent decree and to require it to stop profiting from the data it gathers on children and teens," Kopp stated.
"It should not surprise anybody then that Meta is now going after the FTC with its lawsuit," she added. "But this attack on the FTC is essentially an attack on commonsense regulation to curtail out-of-control commercial power and an attack on our children, teenagers, and every one of us."
John Davisson, the litigation director at the nonprofit research group Electronic Privacy Information Center, asserted that "it seems there's no legal theory, however far-fetched, that Meta won't deploy to avoid a full accounting of its harmful data practices."
"The reason is clear," Davisson said. "A hearing before the FTC will confirm that Meta continues to mishandle personal data and put the privacy and safety of minors at risk, despite multiple orders not to do so."
"The changes FTC is proposing to Meta's exploitative business model can't come soon enough," he added. "We hope the court will reject Meta's latest attempt to run out the clock, as another federal court did just this week."
The FTC and Meta were already locked in a separate antitrust fight stemming from the agency's request for a federal court to force the company to sell Instagram and WhatsApp. That case has yet to go to trial.
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