SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
European farmers protest in Brussels on February 1, 2024.
(Photo: Friends of the Earth)
Why Friends of the Earth Marched with EU Farmers
The next European Commission needs to steer the transition of our agricultural and food systems in a fair, just, and climate-friendly way.
Feb 07, 2024
As social justice and environmental activists, we joined the farmers’ protest in Brussels.
We hear the frustrations of farmers who grapple with low incomes, a lack of future prospects, and the consequences of decades of unsustainable policies.
We share their fight for a fairer agriculture system and their call to end the E.U.-Mercosur free-trade deal.
Many farmers’ anger is legitimate. But after years of it being ignored by political leaders, it is now dangerously being exploited by some conservative and far-right parties and agro-industrial lobbies, like COPA-COGECA, trying to shatter green objectives and commitments.
Many farmers are ready for change, but this is incompatible with producing at the lowest prices in a globalised and deregulated market.
Environmental legislation is not the enemy; denying the realities of the climate and biodiversity crises will only intensify the challenges farmers face, from heatwaves to floods and droughts.
The next European Commission needs to steer the transition of our agricultural and food systems in a fair, just, and climate-friendly way.
What we absolutely do not need are more quick fixes and false corporate promises which have already led us to this dead-end.
The Protest Should Not Be Instrumentalised for Backtracking
For over 60 years, European farming policies and subsidies have fuelled the industrialisation of our agriculture, relying heavily on fossil fuels, fertilizers, and pesticides.
More than 80% of subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) are still going to 20% of European farms, promoting large-scale industrial production and land concentration.
This model, in addition to its devastating environmental and health toll, traps farmers in a vicious cycle of ever-increasing spending and no guarantee of proper income.
It does however largely benefit big agribusiness and food corporations.
No wonder they have been the ones to orchestrate an intense lobbying campaign against a meaningful reform of the CAP and the European Green Deal’s farming objectives in the last few years.
To now be using farmers’ protests to further backtrack on environmental measures—such as the derogation on fallow land at the E.U. level and the pause on the plan to cut pesticide use in France—is deeply cynical, to say the least.
Agreements Favouring Corporate Giants Are at the Root of the Issue
In several European countries, such as France, Spain, and Belgium, farmers are demanding to stop the E.U.-Mercosur deal and other free-trade agreements currently under negotiation by the European Union.
These agreements also favour corporate giants like BASF, Bayer, and Cargil, and undermine the viability of small-scale, family farmers and hinder the transition to sustainable food and farming systems.
An E.U.-Mercosur deal would further expose European farmers to compete with imported food that is produced with pesticides actually forbidden in the E.U.
Pesticides that the E.U itself is producing and exporting, with disastrous impacts on local populations and the environment. Free-trade agreements weaken local economies, food sovereignty, and peasants’ rights.
That is among the reasons why environmentalists have long been fighting alongside peasant movements against these unjust trade deals.
We Are in Dire Need of a Genuine Transformation
Governments need to address the real issues faced by farmers: fair incomes, workers’ rights, and the shift towards local and agroecological food systems.
Many farmers are ready for change, but this is incompatible with producing at the lowest prices in a globalised and deregulated market.
A genuine transformation of agricultural policies, placing farmers—and especially small and medium-scale farmers—at the forefront of decision-making processes, is essential for this transition to become a reality.
We joined farmers, among which our allies from La Via Campesina, on the streets of Brussels to demand an immediate end to negotiations on the E.U.-Mercosur trade agreement and public support for a real transition to more sustainable agricultural models that benefit people and farmers.
This piece was first published in Euronews.
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, The U.S. is on a fast track to authoritarianism like nothing I’ve ever seen. Meanwhile, corporate news outlets are utterly capitulating to Trump, twisting their coverage to avoid drawing his ire while lining up to stuff cash in his pockets. That’s why I believe that Common Dreams is doing the best and most consequential reporting that we’ve ever done. Our small but mighty team is a progressive reporting powerhouse, covering the news every day that the corporate media never will. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. And to ignite change for the common good. Now here’s the key piece that I want all our readers to understand: None of this would be possible without your financial support. That’s not just some fundraising cliche. It’s the absolute and literal truth. We don’t accept corporate advertising and never will. We don’t have a paywall because we don’t think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. Will you donate now to help power the nonprofit, independent reporting of Common Dreams? Thank you for being a vital member of our community. Together, we can keep independent journalism alive when it’s needed most. - Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Clara Bourgin
Clara Bourgin is the food, agriculture, and nature campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe.
agricultureagroecologyclimate emergencyenvironmental justiceeuropean unionfree tradefriends of the earthpesticidesfarmers
As social justice and environmental activists, we joined the farmers’ protest in Brussels.
We hear the frustrations of farmers who grapple with low incomes, a lack of future prospects, and the consequences of decades of unsustainable policies.
We share their fight for a fairer agriculture system and their call to end the E.U.-Mercosur free-trade deal.
Many farmers’ anger is legitimate. But after years of it being ignored by political leaders, it is now dangerously being exploited by some conservative and far-right parties and agro-industrial lobbies, like COPA-COGECA, trying to shatter green objectives and commitments.
Many farmers are ready for change, but this is incompatible with producing at the lowest prices in a globalised and deregulated market.
Environmental legislation is not the enemy; denying the realities of the climate and biodiversity crises will only intensify the challenges farmers face, from heatwaves to floods and droughts.
The next European Commission needs to steer the transition of our agricultural and food systems in a fair, just, and climate-friendly way.
What we absolutely do not need are more quick fixes and false corporate promises which have already led us to this dead-end.
The Protest Should Not Be Instrumentalised for Backtracking
For over 60 years, European farming policies and subsidies have fuelled the industrialisation of our agriculture, relying heavily on fossil fuels, fertilizers, and pesticides.
More than 80% of subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) are still going to 20% of European farms, promoting large-scale industrial production and land concentration.
This model, in addition to its devastating environmental and health toll, traps farmers in a vicious cycle of ever-increasing spending and no guarantee of proper income.
It does however largely benefit big agribusiness and food corporations.
No wonder they have been the ones to orchestrate an intense lobbying campaign against a meaningful reform of the CAP and the European Green Deal’s farming objectives in the last few years.
To now be using farmers’ protests to further backtrack on environmental measures—such as the derogation on fallow land at the E.U. level and the pause on the plan to cut pesticide use in France—is deeply cynical, to say the least.
Agreements Favouring Corporate Giants Are at the Root of the Issue
In several European countries, such as France, Spain, and Belgium, farmers are demanding to stop the E.U.-Mercosur deal and other free-trade agreements currently under negotiation by the European Union.
These agreements also favour corporate giants like BASF, Bayer, and Cargil, and undermine the viability of small-scale, family farmers and hinder the transition to sustainable food and farming systems.
An E.U.-Mercosur deal would further expose European farmers to compete with imported food that is produced with pesticides actually forbidden in the E.U.
Pesticides that the E.U itself is producing and exporting, with disastrous impacts on local populations and the environment. Free-trade agreements weaken local economies, food sovereignty, and peasants’ rights.
That is among the reasons why environmentalists have long been fighting alongside peasant movements against these unjust trade deals.
We Are in Dire Need of a Genuine Transformation
Governments need to address the real issues faced by farmers: fair incomes, workers’ rights, and the shift towards local and agroecological food systems.
Many farmers are ready for change, but this is incompatible with producing at the lowest prices in a globalised and deregulated market.
A genuine transformation of agricultural policies, placing farmers—and especially small and medium-scale farmers—at the forefront of decision-making processes, is essential for this transition to become a reality.
We joined farmers, among which our allies from La Via Campesina, on the streets of Brussels to demand an immediate end to negotiations on the E.U.-Mercosur trade agreement and public support for a real transition to more sustainable agricultural models that benefit people and farmers.
This piece was first published in Euronews.
From Your Site Articles
- Groups Applaud EU Nature Restoration Deal, But Say More Work Is Needed to Counter Concessions to Far Right ›
- Banks Worldwide Must End Funding of Factory Farms to Halt Climate Damage ›
- ‘Shameful’: UK Approves ‘Emergency’ Use of Banned Bee-Killing Pesticide ›
- Animal Agriculture Emits Nearly 60% of Greenhouse Gases From Food Production: Study ›
- Fridays for Future Europe Calls for Transforming Agricultural Policy to Tackle the Climate Crisis ›
- Meat and Dairy Industry ‘Fanning the Flames’ of Climate and Biodiversity Crises: Report ›
Clara Bourgin
Clara Bourgin is the food, agriculture, and nature campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe.
As social justice and environmental activists, we joined the farmers’ protest in Brussels.
We hear the frustrations of farmers who grapple with low incomes, a lack of future prospects, and the consequences of decades of unsustainable policies.
We share their fight for a fairer agriculture system and their call to end the E.U.-Mercosur free-trade deal.
Many farmers’ anger is legitimate. But after years of it being ignored by political leaders, it is now dangerously being exploited by some conservative and far-right parties and agro-industrial lobbies, like COPA-COGECA, trying to shatter green objectives and commitments.
Many farmers are ready for change, but this is incompatible with producing at the lowest prices in a globalised and deregulated market.
Environmental legislation is not the enemy; denying the realities of the climate and biodiversity crises will only intensify the challenges farmers face, from heatwaves to floods and droughts.
The next European Commission needs to steer the transition of our agricultural and food systems in a fair, just, and climate-friendly way.
What we absolutely do not need are more quick fixes and false corporate promises which have already led us to this dead-end.
The Protest Should Not Be Instrumentalised for Backtracking
For over 60 years, European farming policies and subsidies have fuelled the industrialisation of our agriculture, relying heavily on fossil fuels, fertilizers, and pesticides.
More than 80% of subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) are still going to 20% of European farms, promoting large-scale industrial production and land concentration.
This model, in addition to its devastating environmental and health toll, traps farmers in a vicious cycle of ever-increasing spending and no guarantee of proper income.
It does however largely benefit big agribusiness and food corporations.
No wonder they have been the ones to orchestrate an intense lobbying campaign against a meaningful reform of the CAP and the European Green Deal’s farming objectives in the last few years.
To now be using farmers’ protests to further backtrack on environmental measures—such as the derogation on fallow land at the E.U. level and the pause on the plan to cut pesticide use in France—is deeply cynical, to say the least.
Agreements Favouring Corporate Giants Are at the Root of the Issue
In several European countries, such as France, Spain, and Belgium, farmers are demanding to stop the E.U.-Mercosur deal and other free-trade agreements currently under negotiation by the European Union.
These agreements also favour corporate giants like BASF, Bayer, and Cargil, and undermine the viability of small-scale, family farmers and hinder the transition to sustainable food and farming systems.
An E.U.-Mercosur deal would further expose European farmers to compete with imported food that is produced with pesticides actually forbidden in the E.U.
Pesticides that the E.U itself is producing and exporting, with disastrous impacts on local populations and the environment. Free-trade agreements weaken local economies, food sovereignty, and peasants’ rights.
That is among the reasons why environmentalists have long been fighting alongside peasant movements against these unjust trade deals.
We Are in Dire Need of a Genuine Transformation
Governments need to address the real issues faced by farmers: fair incomes, workers’ rights, and the shift towards local and agroecological food systems.
Many farmers are ready for change, but this is incompatible with producing at the lowest prices in a globalised and deregulated market.
A genuine transformation of agricultural policies, placing farmers—and especially small and medium-scale farmers—at the forefront of decision-making processes, is essential for this transition to become a reality.
We joined farmers, among which our allies from La Via Campesina, on the streets of Brussels to demand an immediate end to negotiations on the E.U.-Mercosur trade agreement and public support for a real transition to more sustainable agricultural models that benefit people and farmers.
This piece was first published in Euronews.
From Your Site Articles
- Groups Applaud EU Nature Restoration Deal, But Say More Work Is Needed to Counter Concessions to Far Right ›
- Banks Worldwide Must End Funding of Factory Farms to Halt Climate Damage ›
- ‘Shameful’: UK Approves ‘Emergency’ Use of Banned Bee-Killing Pesticide ›
- Animal Agriculture Emits Nearly 60% of Greenhouse Gases From Food Production: Study ›
- Fridays for Future Europe Calls for Transforming Agricultural Policy to Tackle the Climate Crisis ›
- Meat and Dairy Industry ‘Fanning the Flames’ of Climate and Biodiversity Crises: Report ›
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.
LATEST NEWS
Italy’s Unions Lead General Strike for Gaza
“Meloni should take a stand with the facts against those who have slaughtered 20,000 children, rather than limiting herself to saying ‘I do not agree,’” said one critic of Italy’s right-wing prime minister.
Sep 22, 2025
Italian labor unions led a massive 24-hour general strike on Monday to protest Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza, with estimates of hundreds of thousands of demonstrators rallying in dozens of cities across Italy.
Protesters took to squares, streets, transport hubs, ports, university campuses, and other spaces in more than 75 cities and towns, rallying under the call to "Block Everything." Places including schools, train stations, and retail stores were shut for the day.
"The strike is called in response to the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, the blockade of humanitarian aid by the Israeli army, and the threats directed against the... Global Sumud Flotilla, which has on board Italian workers and trade unionists committed to bringing food and basic necessities to the Palestinian population," explained Unione Sindacale di Base (USB), a grassroots union confederation known for its militant stance on labor and political issues.
In Rome, tens of thousands of Palestine defenders rallied at the Termini rail station, Italy's largest, with many of the demonstrators occupying the building.
While protest activities snarled traffic in some parts of the Italian capital, many Roman motorists showed solidarity with the demonstrators by honking their horns and raising their fists into the air.
Watch: Pro-Gaza protesters who blocked a highway near Rome were met with visible solidarity from drivers. Regional news coverage of the paralyzed Central Station showed only people expressing support for the protest.Source: Paolo Mossetti on X (@paolomossetti)
[image or embed]
— Drop Site (@dropsitenews.com) September 22, 2025 at 11:35 AM
Milan saw an estimated 50,000 people turn out to locations including the central rail station, where some protesters damaged property and clashed with police, who said 10 people were arrested and 60 officers were injured.
“If we don’t block what Israel is doing, if we don’t block trade, the distribution of weapons and everything else with Israel, we will not ever achieve anything,” protester Walter Montagnoli, who is the Base Unitary Confederation's (CUB) national secretary, told The Associated Press at a march in Milan.
In Bologna—home to the world's oldest continuously operating university—students occupied lecture halls and thousands of demonstrators took to the streets, including the Tangenziale, the ring highway around the city, where police attacked them with water cannons and tear gas.
Dockworkers and other demonstrators marched and blocked ports in cities including Genoa, Trieste, and Livorno.
Thousands of protesters also blocked the main train station in Naples.
Source: Potere al Popolo via X (@potere_alpopolo)
[image or embed]
— Drop Site (@dropsitenews.com) September 22, 2025 at 11:06 AM
In the Adriatic seaside resort of Termoli, hundreds of student-led Palestine defenders rallied in St. Anthony's Square and, with Mayor Nicola Balice's permission, draped a Palestinian flag from the façade of City Hall.
"Faced with such an important subject, the genocide in Palestine, we students... said this would be a nonpartisan demonstration because in the face of what is happening in the Gaza Strip—hospitals bombed, children killed every day—there can be no political ideology," said one Termoli protester. "We must all be united.”
Some participants in Monday's general strike pointed the finger at their own government.
"In the face of what is happening in Gaza you have to decide where you are," Italian General Confederation of Labor leader Maurizio Landini told La Stampa. "If you don’t tell the Israeli government that you have to stop and don't send them more weapons, but instead you keep sending them... you actually become complicit in what’s happening.”
While European nations including Ireland, Norway, Spain, Slovenia, the United Kingdom, Portugal, France, Luxembourg, and Denmark have formally recognized Palestine or announced their intent to do so since October 2023, Italy has given no indication that it will follow suit. More than 150 of 193 United Nations member states have recognized Palestine.
Although increasingly critical of Israel's 718-day genocidal assault—which has left at least 241,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing in Gaza—right-wing Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has been accused of complicity in genocide for actions including presiding over arms sales to the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Meloni has rejected the ICC warrants and said Netanyahu would not be arrested if he enters Italy.
"Meloni should listen to the voice of those who are peacefully protesting and asking her to act, rather than curling up to Washington to protect her friend, the war criminal Netanyahu," Giuseppe Conte, who leads the independent progressive Five Star Movement, said Monday on social media. "Meloni should take a stand with the facts against those who have slaughtered 20,000 children, rather than limiting herself to saying, 'I do not agree.' And she should stop running away from the debate in Parliament."
Supreme Court to Weigh 90-Year-Old Precedent and Let Trump Fire FTC Commissioner
“Rest in peace to the presidency, and long live the king,” quipped one attorney.
Sep 22, 2025
As US President Donald Trump faces mounting accusations of authoritarian conduct, the Supreme Court's right-wing majority on Monday empowered him to proceed with firing a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission and agreed to review a 90-year-old precedent that restricts executive power over independent agencies such as the FTC.
Trump in March fired the FTC's two Democratic commissioners, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, without cause. Slaughter fought back, and US District Judge Loren AliKhan allowed her to return to work while the case continued. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld that decision, but it was halted Monday by the nation's top court.
Monday's decision was unsigned, though the three liberals collectively dissented, led by Justice Elena Kagan. In addition to letting Trump move forward with ousting Slaughter, the majority agreed to reconsider the precedent established with Humphrey's Executor v. United States, a 1935 case that centered on whether the Federal Trade Commission Act unconstitutionally interfered with the executive power of the president.
In Humphrey's Executor, the high court found that Congress' removal protections for FTC members did not violate the separation of powers. Along with revisiting the precedent established by that landmark decision in December, the justices plan to weigh whether a federal court may prevent a person's removal from public office.
The court's stay allowing Trump to fire Slaughter was granted as part of the court's emergency process, or shadow docket. In a short but scathing dissent, Kagan noted that it is part of a recent trend: "Earlier this year, the same majority, by the same mechanism, permitted the president to fire without cause members of the National Labor Relations Board, the Merits Systems Protection Board, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission."
"I dissented from the majority's prior stay orders, and today do so again. Under existing law, what Congress said goes—as this court unanimously decided nearly a century ago," she wrote. In Humphrey's Executor, Kagan continued, "Congress, we held, may restrict the president's power to remove members of the FTC, as well as other agencies performing 'quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial' functions, without violating the Constitution."
"So the president cannot, as he concededly did here, fire an FTC commissioner without any reason. To reach a different result requires reversing the rule stated in Humphrey's: It entails overriding rather than accepting Congress' judgment about agency design," she argued. "The majority may be raring to take that action, as its grant of certiorari before judgment suggests. But until the deed is done, Humphrey's controls, and prevents the majority from giving the president the unlimited removal power Congress denied him."
More broadly, Kagan declared that "our emergency docket should never be used, as it has been this year, to permit what our own precedent bars. Still more, it should not be used, as it also has been, to transfer government authority from Congress to the president, and thus to reshape the nation's separation of powers."
Kagan, of course, is correct that the Supreme Court will soon overturn Humphrey's Executor and allow the president to fire leaders of any independent agency (other than the Fed—maybe?!). She's also right to bemoan the fact that SCOTUS effectively overruled Humphrey's on the shadow docket already.
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) September 22, 2025 at 3:20 PM
Sandeep Vaheesan, legal director at the anti-monopoly think tank Open Markets Institute, slammed the court in a Monday statement.
"Today, in a one-paragraph order, the Supreme Court authorized President Trump's illegal firing of Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and his ongoing destruction of the independent, bipartisan Federal Trade Commission," Vaheesan said.
"As Justice Kagan wrote in her dissent, Commissioner Slaughter was fired without cause and is clearly entitled to her position under the FTC Act and controlling Supreme Court precedent," he added. "The court could override Congress' decision to create an independent FTC on specious constitutional grounds but until it takes that step Commissioner Slaughter has a right to her job.”
While the justices agreed to take Slaughter's case, they turned away petitions from two ousted Democratic appointees referenced by Kagan: Cathy Harris of the Merit Systems Protection Board and Gwynne Wilcox of the National Labor Relations Board. According to SCOTUSblog: "The court did not provide any explanation for its decision not to take up Harris' and Wilcox's cases at this time. They will continue to move forward in the lower courts."
The New York Times noted that "the justices are separately considering the Trump administration’s request to remove Lisa Cook as a Federal Reserve governor. The Supreme Court has yet to act, but has suggested that the central bank may be insulated from presidential meddling under the law."
However, as Law Dork's Chris Geidner highlighted on social media, the second question the justices will consider in the Slaughter case, regarding courts preventing removals from public office, "would have implications even for the 'Fed carveout' exception that the court suggested exists."
Warren Calls for Probe as Whistleblowers Accuse Trump Appointees of ‘Systematically Destroying’ Fair Housing Act
Warren says new whistleblower reports “show the extent of the Trump administration’s attack on civil rights and show how the administration appears to be ignoring the law.”
Sep 22, 2025
US Sen. Elizabeth Warren is calling for an investigation into the Department of Housing and Urban Development after several whistleblowers reported that Trump appointees have gutted enforcement of the decades-old law banning housing discrimination.
A New York Times report published Monday, quotes "half a dozen current and former employees of HUD’s fair housing office" who "said that the Trump political appointees had made it nearly impossible for them to do their jobs" enforcing the 1968 Fair Housing Act "which involve investigating and prosecuting landlords, real estate agents, lenders and others who discriminate based on race, religion, gender, family status or disability."
In a video posted to social media, Warren (D-Mass.) explained that “if you’re a mom protecting her kids from living with an abusive father or if you’re getting denied a mortgage because of the color of your skin, you have civil rights protection under US law. But the Trump administration has been systematically destroying these federal protections for renters and homeowners.”
According to the Times, when President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, formerly led by billionaire Elon Musk, launched its crusade to dismantle large parts of the federal government at the start of Trump's second term earlier this year, the Office of Fair Housing (OFH) had its staff cut by 65% through layoffs and reassignments, with the number of employees dropping from 31 to 11. Just six of the remaining staff now work on fair housing cases.
The number of discrimination charges pursued by the office has plummeted since Trump took office. In most years, it has 35. During Trump's second term, the office has pursued just four. Meanwhile, it's obtained just $200,000 total in legal settlements after previously obtaining anywhere from $4 million to $8 million per year.
Emails and memos obtained by the Times show a pattern of Trump appointees obstructing investigations:
In one email, a Trump appointee... described decades of housing discrimination cases as “artificial, arbitrary, and unnecessary.”
In another, a career supervisor in the department’s [OFH] objected to lawyers being reassigned to other offices; the supervisor was fired six days later for insubordination.
In a third, the office’s director of enforcement warned that Trump appointees were using gag orders and intimidation to block discrimination cases from moving forward. The urgent message was sent to a US senator, who is referring it to the department’s acting inspector general for investigation.
Several lawyers said they have been restricted from using past cases in enforcement and communicating with certain clients without approval from Trump's appointees.
A memo also reportedly went out to employees informing them that documents “contrary to administration policy” would be thrown out, and that “tenuous theories of discrimination” would no longer be pursued.
Among those supposedly "tenuous" cases have been ones involving appraisal bias—the practice of undervaluing homes owned by Black families—zoning restrictions blocking housing for Black and Latino families, and cases related to discrimination against people over gender or gender expression.
The administration has also abandoned cases related to the racist practice of "redlining"—the decades-old practice of denying mortgages to minorities and others in minority neighborhoods—with memos from Trump appointees calling the concept "legally unsound."
The changes follow a sweeping set of executive orders from Trump during his first week in office, targeting "diversity equity, and inclusion" (DEI) programs. Employees at the Office of Fair Housing told the Times that Trump appointees had begun to describe much of the department's work as "an offshoot of DEI."
A HUD spokesperson, Kasey Lovett, told the Times that it was "patently false" to suggest that the administration was trying to weaken the Fair Housing Act. She pointed out that HUD was still handling approximately 4,100 cases this year, on par with the previous year. As the Times notes, "Lovett did not address, however, how many of the cases had been investigated or had resulted in legal action."
According to the Times:
Hundreds of pending fair housing cases were frozen, and some settlements revoked, even when accusations of discrimination had been substantiated, according to the interviews and the internal communications.
In one instance, a large homeowner’s association in Texas was found to have banned the use of housing vouchers by Black residents. That case had been referred to the Justice Department, but the referral was abruptly withdrawn by the new Trump appointees.
Four current staff members have provided the trove of documents to Warren, who announced Monday that she'd sent a request to Brian Harrison, HUD’s acting inspector general, to open an investigation into its handling of discrimination cases.
Warren said that the documents "show the extent of the Trump administration's attack on civil rights and show how the administration appears to be ignoring the law."
In a press release from the Democrats on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, Warren, the ranking member, highlighted the particularly devastating impact staffing cuts have had on the enforcement of complaints under the Violence Against Women Act, which the Times says only two of the six lawyers remaining at HUD have experience with.
According to Warren, whistleblowers said the cuts were "placing survivors in greater danger of suffering additional trauma, physical violence, and even death."
Warren said that as a result of the hundreds of dropped cases, "Now people are asking, 'well, why would I file a case at all if nothing's going to happen?'"
Calling for an independent investigation, Warren said, "We wrote these laws to make this a fairer America, and now it's time to enforce those laws."
Most Popular
We cover the issues the corporate media never will.
Please support our journalism.