July, 16 2024, 01:25pm EDT
Tenant Organizing Delivers Big Step Forward with Rent Cap Plan from Biden/Harris
Unprecedented Action from President Biden Contrasts Sharply With Trump’s Project 2025 Agenda, Which Will Harm Renters
People’s Action today applauded President Biden’s announcement of a plan to cap rents for tenants living in corporate-owned properties and to invest in public housing as part of a package of reforms aimed at getting housing costs under control for poor and working-class families. The announcement comes after years of tenant organizing by People’s Action’s Homes Guarantee campaign and allies, which have focused on federal action to address ever-increasing housing costs and regulate the rent.
“Biden’s rent cap plan is a big step toward our vision of a country where everyone has a safe, accessible, sustainable, and permanently affordable home–a Homes Guarantee,” People’s Action Campaigns Director Sondra Youdelman said. “Greedy corporate landlords are driving up costs for working class people of every race, gender, and background–and when we organize together, we can win.”
Organizing Gets the Goods
Over the past three years, People’s Action’s Homes Guarantee campaign, the organization’s state-based member groups, and grassroots leaders have pushed for federal action to regulate the rent and condition federal backing of mortgages for rental properties on price hike restrictions and otherwise protect tenants. Key moments include:
- A “Tenant Takeover” in Washington, D.C., in Nov. 2023 with more than 100 tenant leaders, which included meetings with public officials and a press conference with congressional leaders, calling for rent regulations and presenting President Biden with a draft executive order. Tenants also took direct nonviolent action to fight back against corporate landlord Starwood Capital. View photos from the Tenant Takeover here and live-streams here.
- A massive tenant response organized by the campaign to an FHFA Request for Input on tenant protections including: the submission of over 2,400 comments by tenants and allies; a canvass in which tenants knocked 5,165 doors, the formation of five new tenant unions, and the submission of a comment and letter signed by 317 housing justice organizations.
- Site visits organized by the campaign between FHFA Director Sandra Thompson and tenants in federally-backed mortgages, along with a memo making the case for rent regulations to address the rental supply gap.
- A protest outside the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the lobbyists of the biggest corporate landlords in the country, the National Multifamily Housing Council, in July 2024, demanding an end to excessive rent hikes and for the FHFA to regulate the rent and protect tenants.
- A memo shared by the campaign with the White House in 2022 from 200+ legal partners and housing justice and tenant-led organizations, urging actions to curb rent inflation.
- Historic organizing since 2021 to bring delegations of tenants to engage with the FHFA, FTC, CFPB, Treasury, Congress, White House, and corporate landlords. The campaign organized a groundswell of support for the FHFA to regulate rent including Sen. Majority Leader Schumer, 17 U.S. Senators on the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, Ranking Member Maxine Waters and other U.S. Representatives on the Financial Services Committee; 32 leading economists; 143 academics; 73 climate researchers; and more than 70 local elected officials.
The Stakes in 2024
“Organizing is how we make big change in this country, and voting sets the table,” People’s Action Executive Director Sulma Arias said. “We have a set of additional protections for which we are organizing under the Biden/Harris administration in our People’s Platform, and we will get there by organizing renters, unhoused people, and low-income home owners. By contrast, under Project 2025, Trump wants to be our greedy landlord-in-chief and raise costs for renters so his corporate donors can make more profit.”
Project 2025 calls for gutting government programs designed to get costs down for working-class people, including the $35 billion Biden/Harris Housing Supply Fund, which supports construction of affordable housing.
Biden’s full list of reforms includes rent caps, calling on state and local governments to build affordable housing, repurposing federal land for affordable housing unit construction, and to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to rehabilitate distressed housing, build more affordable housing, and revitalize neighborhoods across the country. The plan also calls on state and local governments to invest in public housing. President Biden also recently announced new protections requiring notice for tenants when leases end and a grace period before imposing late fees.
People's Action builds the power of poor and working people, in rural, suburban, and urban areas to win change through issue campaigns and elections.
LATEST NEWS
'Tragic Day for the Freedom to Vote': Supreme Court Guts Remnants of Voting Rights Act
“Make no mistake: This ruling isn’t about the law, it’s about power, and giving Republicans more US House seats they couldn’t otherwise win at the ballot box," said one critic.
Apr 29, 2026
This is a developing story... Please check back for possible updates.
The US Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that Louisiana must redraw its 2024 congressional map—which created a second majority-Black district to mitigate persistent barriers to equal representation—in a decision that further guts the already tattered Voting Rights Act.
The justices ruled 6-3 along ideological lines in Louisiana v. Callais that the state's map is "an unconstitutional racial gerrymander," effectively voiding the last remaining provision of Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA), which allows voters of color to challenge racially discriminatory electoral maps in court.
The case centers on the redrawing of Louisiana's six congressional districts to better reflect the population of a state in which one-third of the people are Black, as Section 2 states that minority voters should have the same chance as others to elect candidates of their choice.
However, a group of non-Black voters argued in a lawsuit that the consideration of race in creating a second minority-majority district violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause and the 15th Amendment’s ban on federal and state governments denying citizens the right to vote based on “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
The Trump administration supported the challengers, arguing that Black voters had no right to a second majority-minority district. The Supreme Court's right-wing justices—three of whom were nominated by Trump—agreed.
“Allowing race to play any part in government decision-making represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in almost every other context,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the right-wing majority. “Compliance with Section 2 thus could not justify the state’s use of race-based redistricting here."
Dissenting, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the ruling represents the "latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.”
Kagan said the majority "straight-facedly holds that the Voting Rights Act must be brought low to make the world safe for partisan gerrymanders."
Signed into law in 1965 by then-President Lyndon B. Johnson amid a groundswell of civil rights activism, the VRA was meant to ensure that state and local governments could not “deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.”
However, the law has been eroded in recent decades by Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country, including through racially rigged and other gerrymandered congressional maps, restrictions on voter registration, reduction in early voting options, and voter identification laws. These measures disproportionately disenfranchise minority voters, and some GOP officials have admitted that they are intended to give Republican candidates an electoral edge.
In 2013, the Supreme Court dealt a major blow to the VRA in Shelby County v. Holder, which eviscerated a key section of the law that required jurisdictions with a history of racist disenfranchisement to obtain federal approval prior to altering voting rules. In 2021, the nation’s high court voted 5-4 in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee to uphold Arizona’s voting restrictions—even as Chief Justice John Roberts acknowledged that they disproportionately affect minorities.
Voting rights defenders decried Wednesday's ruling.
“Today the Supreme Court gutted the remaining protections of the Voting Rights Act and handed [President] Donald Trump even more unchecked political power as he wields the presidency like a power-mad authoritarian," Demand Justice president Josh Orton said in a statement.
“Make no mistake: This ruling isn’t about the law, it’s about power, and giving Republicans more US House seats they couldn’t otherwise win at the ballot box, all while trampling the voting rights of communities of color," Orton added. “Today’s decision is another example of why the Supreme Court has lost both its legitimacy and the trust of the American people. It must face fundamental reform if it is to once again serve our democracy.”
Nourbese Flint, president of the reproductive justice group All* Above All, lamented that "the Supreme Court yet again denies communities of color a voice in their own destiny."
"This is part of a coordinated assault on self-determination, and we have to name it as such," Flint added. "The same court that gutted the Voting Rights Act came for Roe. If we are serious about defending reproductive justice that means we have to defend democracy and reform this extremist court.”
Stand Up America managing director of policy and political affairs Brett Edkins called Wednesday "a tragic day for the freedom to vote and representative democracy."
"The Supreme Court just eviscerated the last remnants of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and opened the door to even more extreme gerrymandering that will try to drown out the voices of Black and brown voters, particularly in the South," Edkins said.
"The court’s decision will escalate the arms race of partisan gerrymanders across the country and could lead to Republican-controlled states redrawing election maps to add an additional 19 GOP House seats," he continued. "This partisan court has handed a major election-year gift to Donald Trump and congressional Republicans who are trying to cling to power despite their growing unpopularity with voters."
“It’s time for Congress to act as a check on this rogue court through major reforms," Edkins added, "including term limits, an enforceable code of ethics, and adding more justices who will defend our fundamental freedoms once Trump leaves office.”
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'Why Wouldn't You Just Release It?': DNC Chair Confronted Over Buried 2024 Election Autopsy
As grassroots Democrats push national committee chair Ken Martin to release the suppressed report, a longtime party booster asked, “What’s in the report that you wouldn’t want to publicize?”
Apr 29, 2026
Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin was confronted on a podcast on Tuesday about his continued refusal to release an "autopsy" report dissecting the party's defeat in the 2024 election.
Grassroots groups have not let up on calls to release the report, which Martin said in December would not be released publicly, claiming it would "prove counterproductive" to the party's efforts going forward.
While the full report remains under lock and key, it was reported in February that the officials who crafted it believed that the Biden administration’s unwavering support of Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza cost then-Vice President Kamala Harris votes on Election Day and contributed to her loss to President Donald Trump.
When Martin appeared on Tuesday on the Pod Save America podcast, host Jon Favreau—a former speechwriter for President Barack Obama and a longtime booster of Democrats—refused to let the chairman off the hook for his excuses for not releasing what he has referred to as the “after-action review” of the election.
Favreau pointed to the fact that when Martin ran for the position after the party's gutting loss in 2024, he'd specifically criticized the party for refusing to release a similar report on Hillary Clinton's loss in 2016 and promised that "of course" a review of the party's 2024 loss "will be released" to the public.
"Why did you change your mind on that?" Favreau asked.
"What I said all along, even when I ran for this position, is that we were going to focus on the things that will help us win the upcoming election, right?" Martin said. "Making sure that we learn the right lessons that could help inform our victories. And that's what we've done."
Martin said it was more important to "keep our focus on those lessons" rather than "navel gazing and looking backwards, trying to relitigate 2024."
Favreau pointed to comments Martin made on Pod Save America in August, saying that the party was hard at work on the report “to give people who invested so much time, energy, and money a sense of what happened and why we lost.”
"What changed between August and December?" Favreau asked. "I understand there are lessons, but those are not the full report. Why not release the full report? What's in the report that you wouldn't want to publicize?"
Martin responded: "There's no smoking gun in the report, and I know that's what everyone's so eager to learn, the smoking gun... Guess what, Jon? There's no surprise in there."
Clearly unconvinced, Favreau interjected, "But if there's no smoking gun, why wouldn't you just release it then?"
Martin reiterated his previous point, that releasing the full report would be "looking backwards," and accused activist groups of being "obsessed" with the idea that there was a "smoking gun" buried within.
"Why did you spend the money going to 50 states, doing all these interviews, doing all this stuff, and doing this report in the first place if you weren't going to release the full results of it?" Favreau asked. "I don't get why just you and some of the senior [Democratic National Committee] people get to see it but not most of the DNC members who are state party chairs."
Favreau pointed to a call last week by more than a dozen DNC members to release the report, including Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) and North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton. He quoted Clayton, who asked, “Genuinely, what did you all find that we did not?”
Martin said the DNC had shared all of the "lessons" of the report with these members, but that they should stop focusing on the idea that it will contain "the one single reason that Kamala Harris lost the election or one single thing that we should have done differently that's going to help us win in the future."
The Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) Policy Project has reported that behind closed doors, DNC officials who worked on the autopsy report have described Biden's policy toward Gaza as a "net-negative" in 2024, according to data the committee collected. DNC officials independently corroborated these findings to Axios in February.
While the results of any election are multifaceted, a poll commissioned by the IMEU Policy Project and conducted by YouGov in January found that when Biden 2020 voters cast their votes in 2024, 29% of them said the "most important issue" in deciding their vote was "ending Israel's violence in Gaza," a higher percentage than any other issue, including the economy.
Among Biden 2020 voters in battleground states who decided not to vote for Harris, 38% of them in Arizona said ending Israel's violence in Gaza was their top issue, while 32% said the same in Michigan and Wisconsin, and 19% did in Pennsylvania—all crucial states Harris lost by thin margins.
Polls of Democratic voters find that they overwhelmingly view Israel's military campaign in Gaza, which has killed at least 75,000 Palestinians, destroyed most of the territory's essential infrastructure, and left most of the population displaced, as a "genocide" and want the US to halt military support for Israel.
Most also say they want Democratic candidates to end their associations with pro-Israel lobbying groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which poured more than $100 million into the 2024 elections, including to influence Democratic primaries. The DNC also recently killed a resolution directly condemning AIPAC's influence, even as it continues to spend big against progressive candidates in this year's congressional primaries.
Journalist Adam Johnson remarked that while defending his decision not to release the autopsy on Tuesday, Martin appeared to find about "seven different ways of saying 'pro-Israel groups and donors don’t want us to release it because it’ll make obvious what a liability Israel is to the party' without saying it."
He criticized Martin's excuse that "looking backward" at past failures would be a pointless exercise.
"By definition, lessons and history and accountability require looking backward," he said. "This is how humans assess future actions as entropy moves the arrow of time in only one direction."
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Colombian President Warns ‘Suicidal’ Fossil-Fueled Capitalism Is Leading World to ‘Barbarism’
“There is inertia in the power and the economy of this archaic form of energy—fossil fuels—that lead to death."
Apr 29, 2026
Colombian President Gustavo Petro warned on Tuesday that the current model of fossil fuel-driven capitalism was leading the world into "barbarism" and "fascism."
According to a Wednesday report from The Guardian, Petro told attendees of the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels being held in Santa Marta, Colombia that capitalism's insistence on continued fossil fuel dependence was "suicidal" and driving the world toward more conflict.
"There is inertia in the power and the economy of this archaic form of energy—fossil fuels—that lead to death," said Petro. "Undoubtedly, that form of capital can commit suicide, taking with it humanity and [other] life... The question that needs to be asked is whether capitalism can truly adapt to a non-fossil energy model.”
Petro also warned that the consequences of sticking with a model of capitalism that centers fossil fuel energy won't be merely economic but also political.
"We are heading towards barbarism," he said. "And barbarism is the prelude to, or the very essence of, fascism."
As reported by Common Dreams last week, the conference in Colombia, which wraps up Wednesday, has featured more than 50 nations discussing strategies to phase out energy based on coal, oil, and gas.
Ralph Regenvanu, minister for climate change of the island nation of Vanuatu, told NPR on Wednesday that his country has been seeing the impacts of the climate crisis up close in the form of rising sea levels and spiraling energy costs.
Because of this, Regenvanu said his government has accelerated plans to begin solar energy and electric vehicle projects, telling NPR that "the decision on EVs was directly stimulated by the crisis."
France was also a major presence at the conference, reported The Guardian, as French climate envoy Benoit Faraco outlined an ambitious plan to make his country a major renewable energy producer.
"This process has made us realize we want to be an electro-superpower," said Faraco. "We want to be the electricity Saudi Arabia of Europe, selling green electrons to the UK, Ireland, Germany, and other countries."
But Tzeporah Berman, founder and chair of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, told The Guardian that the ability to transition away from fossil fuels will be much harder for many developing nations, even though these nations are the ones most adversely impacted by the climate emergency.
"There are many fossil-fuel producing countries in the Global South that are being pushed into expanding fossil fuel production just to feed their debt," Berman explained. "There is an expanding debt crisis in the Global South. It is impossible for countries to even imagine a fossil fuel transition with such limited fiscal space."
Advocates warned that the conference did not appear set to produce new commitments to fund climate action in the Global South, but discussions were taking place about tackling massive subsidies that have been granted annually to fossil fuel giants.
"It is a space where conversations can take place about, for instance, subsidy reform," Leo Roberts of the think tank E3G told The Guardian, "to take the $1.5 trillion in [annual] fossil fuel subsidies and repurpose them to somewhere else.”
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