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bernie sanders
Sanders Says Trump Is Prioritizing Profits for 'Fossil Fuel Executive Friends' by Gutting Climate Office
"He just fired the last remaining State Department employees who work on climate change, which is undoubtedly one of the greatest threats to our national security," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Jul 14, 2025
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday condemned President Donald Trump's decision to terminate all remaining federal employees at the State Department office that works on international climate policy, a move that came as the administration hired prominent climate denialists and continued to boost the industry primarily responsible for the planetary crisis.
In a statement, Sanders (I-Vt.) accused Trump of "putting the planet and future generations at risk for the short-term profits of his fossil fuel executive friends." The president has repeatedly described climate change as a "hoax" and a "scam" and has moved aggressively to silence researchers and suppress data that contradict his false position.
Grist's Kate Yoder wrote Monday that "this isn't climate denial in the traditional sense."
"The days of loudly debating the science have mostly given way to something quieter and more insidious: a campaign to withhold the raw information itself," Yoder added.
Sanders' statement came days after the U.S. State Department fired all employees still at the Office of Global Change, which Secretary of State Marco Rubio is moving to eliminate at Trump's behest. Most of the office's staffers, who were tasked with engaging in international climate negotiations, had already departed voluntarily amid Trump's sweeping withdrawal from global climate initiatives and talks.
From May 2024 to May 2025, 4 billion people (half of the world’s population) experienced at least one extra month of extreme heat due to climate change.
And what is Trump’s response? He just fired the last remaining State Department employees who work on climate change. pic.twitter.com/IOlH9MImHU
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) July 13, 2025
Sanders highlighted the context of Trump's assault on climate science and diplomacy, pointing to "flooding in Texas this past week and in Vermont and Brazil last summer, recent wildfires in Canada and Los Angeles, and heatwaves in the United States, Europe, India, and Pakistan"—extreme weather made more intense by fossil fuel-driven climate change.
"The past 10 years have been the warmest 10 years on record," the senator noted. "2024 was the warmest year in recorded history. January 2025 was the hottest January on record. Western Europe just had its hottest June on record. The recent heatwave in the United States put nearly 190 million Americans under heat advisories and broke heat records in more than 280 locations. Over the past 60 years, the frequency of heatwaves in the United States has tripled. According to a new study from Yale University, 64% of Americans think global warming is affecting the weather in the U.S. and almost half say they have personally experienced its effects."
"And what is President Trump's response? He just fired the last remaining State Department employees who work on climate change, which is undoubtedly one of the greatest threats to our national security," said Sanders.
While removing federal climate staffers and experts en masse, Trump's administration has hired prominent climate denialists and moved to expand planet-warming oil and gas drilling—a gift to the fossil fuel giants that poured nearly $20 million into the president's inaugural fund and helped bankroll his White House campaign.
"Every month that Donald Trump has been in power, we've seen a raft of anti-climate measures come out which are music to the fossil fuel industry's ears," said Nicu Calcea, senior data investigator at Global Witness. "From plans to steamroll through dirty new coal plants, to the attempted quashing of 'polluter pays' laws that would hold oil giants accountable, it's clear where his political priorities lie."
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Sanders Says Billionaire Effort to Crush Mamdani Rooted in Fears of Nationwide Progressive Wave
"They are worried that his campaign is an example of what can happen all over the country."
Jul 11, 2025
Independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday reaffirmed his support for Democratic New York City mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, a fellow democratic socialist facing fierce opposition from deep-pocketed establishment figures who fear the broad nationwide appeal of his people-over-profit agenda.
Faced with the growing possibility that Mamdani would win the June 24 primary, Wall Street bankers, corporate executives, real estate developers, mega-landlords, and others rushed to dump money into disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo's campaign coffers. Now that Mamdani is the Democratic nominee, they're pouring tens of millions of dollars into an anti-Mamdani war chest, despite not even agreeing on which candidate to back in November's mayoral election.
In a Thursday interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour—who noted that Sanders' Fighting Oligarchy tour "has been drawing record crowds"—the Vermont senator said that policies like "giving massive tax breaks to billionaires and cutting healthcare and education and nutrition from working-class families [are] not popular."
While acknowledging that "mainstream Democrats" have been unable to galvanize opposition to Republicans' pro-billionaire, anti-working class agenda, Amanpour pressed Sanders about what he would tell New Yorkers who say that Mamdani "has never run anything, and he says, free buses, and... is he antisemitic or not?'"
Watch Sanders' response:
"First of all, understand, he's going to have the entire establishment, the oligarchy, the billionaires coming down on his head, not only because he's demanding that the wealthy and large corporations in New York City start paying their fair share of taxes, they are worried that his campaign is an example of what can happen all over the country when you bring people together to demand the government that works for all of us and not just a few," the senator said. "So, they really want to crush this guy."
"You have billionaires saying quite openly, 'We are going to spend as much as it takes to defeat this guy.' You have Democratic leadership not refusing to jump on board a campaign where this guy is the Democratic nominee," Sanders added. "So, most importantly, I'm going to do everything I can to see that Zohran becomes the next mayor of New York."
Some Democrats have done more than refuse to support their own party's nominee. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) falsely claimed last month that Mamdani had made references to "global jihad" and speciously argued that "globalize the intifada"—a call for Palestinian liberation and battling injustice—is a call to "kill all the Jews."
Freshman Congresswoman Laura Gillen (D-N.Y.) also falsely accused Mamdani of "a deeply disturbing pattern of unacceptable antisemitic comments."
Congressional progressives including Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), André Carson (D-Ind.), and Lateefah Simon (D-Calif.)—the four practicing Muslims in the House of Representatives—last month condemned what they called the "vile, anti-Muslim, and racist smears from our colleagues on both sides of the aisle."
Despite the attacks against him, Mamdani is leading Cuomo—who is now running as an Independent—by 10 points in a Slingshot Strategies poll of more than 1,000 registered voters published earlier this week. Mamdani also leads Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa by 21 points and scandal-ridden incumbent Mayor Eric Adams by 24 points.
Observers note that establishment Democrats' reservations about backing Mamdani seem to be fading amid the strength of his campaign. As Democrats including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) hold out on endorsing their own party's nominee, critics argue it's time to follow other lawmakers like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jerrold Nadler, Adriano Espaillat, and Nydia Velázquez—all New York Democrats—and endorse Mamdani.
"Mamdani won a record-setting primary victory, and unions, grassroots Democratic groups, and savvy elected officials are rushing to back him," The Nation's national affairs correspondent, John Nichols, wrote Friday. "Now it's the establishment's turn."
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Sanders Slams 'War Criminal' Netanyahu Ahead of New Meeting With Trump to Plan Gaza Ethnic Cleansing
The progressive senator underscored that the Israeli leader has been indicted by the International Criminal Court "for overseeing the systematic killing and starvation of civilians in Gaza."
Jul 08, 2025
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders sharply criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday as the fugitive from the International Criminal Court met with lawmakers ahead of a second White House meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump to advance plans for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the embattled Gaza Strip.
"As President Trump and members of Congress roll out the red carpet for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, let's remember that Netanyahu has been indicted as a war criminal by the International Criminal Court for overseeing the systematic killing and starvation of civilians in Gaza," Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement.
"This is the man Trump and Congress are welcoming this week: a war criminal who will be remembered as one of modern history's monsters," the senator continued. "His extremist government has killed more than 57,000 Palestinians and wounded almost 135,000, 60% of whom are women, children, or elderly people. The United Nations reports that at least 17,000 children have been killed and more than 25,000 wounded. More than 3,000 children in Gaza have had one or more limbs amputated."
"At this moment, hundreds of thousands of people are starving after Israel prevented any aid from entering Gaza for nearly three months," Sanders noted. "In the last six weeks, Israel has allowed a trickle of aid to get in, but has tried to replace the established United Nations distribution system with a private foundation backed by security contractors. This has been a catastrophe, with near-daily massacres at the new aid distribution sites. In its first five weeks in operation, 640 people have been killed and at least 4,488 injured while trying to access food through this mechanism."
Trump and Netanyahu—who said Monday that he nominated the U.S. president for the Nobel Peace Prize—are expected to discuss ongoing efforts to reach a new deal to secure the release of the 22 remaining Israeli and other hostages held by Hamas since the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, as well as plans for giving Gazans what the prime minister described as a "better future" by finding third countries willing to accept forcibly displaced Palestinians.
Critics said such euphemistic language is an attempt to give cover to Israel's plan to ethnically cleanse and indefinitely occupy Gaza. Observers expressed alarm over Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz' Tuesday affirmation of a plan to force all Palestinians in Gaza into a camp at the southern tip of the strip.
"There is no such thing as voluntary displacement amongst a population that has been under constant bombardment for nearly two years and has been cut off from essential aid," Jeremy Konyndyk, president of the advocacy group Refugees International and a former senior official at the U.S. Agency for International Development, told Reuters.
Most Palestinians are vehemently opposed to what they say would amount to a second Nakba, the forced displacement of more than 750,000 people from Palestine during and after the 1948 establishment of the modern state of Israel.
"This is our land," one Palestinian man, Mansour Abu Al-Khaier, told The Times of Israel on Tuesday. "Who would we leave it to, where would we go?"
Another Gazan, Abu Samir el-Fakaawi, told the newspaper: "I will not leave Gaza. This is my country. Our children who were martyred in the war are buried here. Our families. Our friends. Our cousins. We are all buried here. Whether Trump or Netanyahu or anyone else likes it or not, we are staying on this land."
Officials at the United Nations—whose judicial body, the International Court of Justice, is weighing a genocide case against Israel brought by South Africa and supported by around two dozen countries—condemned any forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza.
"This raises concerns with regards to forcible transfer—the concept of voluntary transfers in the context that we are seeing in Gaza right now [is] very questionable," Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said Tuesday.
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