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Mounting evidence that a daily walk helps prevent a host of serious diseases is beginning to influence debates about health care, community vitality, poverty, race and opportunity.
"The health benefits of walking are so overwhelming that to deny access to that is a violation of fundamental human rights," declared Robert A. Bullard, dean of the School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University, in a keynote at the 2nd National Walking Summit held this fall in Washington, D.C.
"The pursuit of health is also about justice," emphasized US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. It's about making sure "everyone in America has a good shot at being healthy."
The Surgeon General's recent Call to Action on Walking and Walkable Communities highlights the fact that, "an average of 22 minutes a day of physical activity - such as brisk walking - can significantly reduce the risk of heart disease and diabetes" as well as other debilitating chronic diseases.
"Tell me your zip code and I can tell you how healthy you are," Bullard said. "That should not be... All communities should have a right to a safe, sustainable, healthy, just, walkable community."
Jaw-dropping silence seized the room as Bullard showed a succession of maps illustrating how historic segregation and current poverty strongly correlate with low levels of walking and childhood opportunity as well as with high levels of obesity, diabetes, hypertension and heart disease.
"Health disparities don't just happen by accident," he explained. They are the tragic legacy of racism and unequal economic opportunity.
Ron Sims, who sponsored some of the first research identifying zip codes as a key determinant of health while chief executive of King County, Washington, noted. "If you have parks, playgrounds, community gardens, and wide sidewalks, you have good health outcomes. If you have walkable communities kids will do better in school...seniors will be healthier."
Drawing on his experience as an activist in African-American neighborhoods of Seattle as well as a former Deputy US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, he mapped out a blueprint for healthy communities: new or improved sidewalks, better lighting, access to water and greenspace, a place for kids to play around, a place for aging adults and senior citizens to feel they belong.
"You have no idea how powerful you are," Sims said to the hundreds of walking activists in the room. "I can't overstate that you are a movement that can ensure this country achieves its great dreams."
Equal access to good health was a call resounding throughout the 3-day Walking Summit , hosted by America Walks and the Every Body Walk! Collaborative and presented by Kaiser Permanente, an integrated health care delivery system, along with two dozen co-sponsors spanning the health care, philanthropy, business, non-profit and transportation fields.
More than 520 people from 44 states participated in the Summit, a crowd that was more racially and regionally diverse and 30 percent larger than the first National Walking Summit in 2013. Over 220 received scholarships to make the event more accessible to people with limited resources.
"All of us with divergent missions---from health care to social justice to land trusts to neighborhood revitalization---have a convergent strategy to get more people out walking and create safe places to walk everywhere," noted Kaiser Permanente vice-president Tyler Norris.
More than 70 workshops and panel discussions addressed the overarching goal of how to make sure everyone has access to a safe, comfortable, convenient place to walk. This includes disabled people, who may "walk" by rolling.
Speaker after speaker pointed to the stark inequality still exists on the streets and sidewalks of America.. The young, the old, the poor, people of color and people with disabilities are injured or killed more often while walking.
+People walking in the poorest one-third of urban census tracts are twice as likely to be killed by cars.
+African-Americans are 60 percent more likely to be killed by cars while walking, and Latinos 43 percent.
+The pedestrian fatality rate rises significantly for people 45 and over, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
+Roughly half of all US kids walked or biked to school in 1970, compared to 16 percent today (up from 13 percent in 2007), according to Safe Routes to Schools National Partnership.
Professor Bullard noted a study showing that motorists wait longer to yield to a person of color walking on the street than to a white person, a situation he termed "racial bias in the crosswalk." Meanwhile racial profiling by both police and the public pose another obstacle to walking for people of color, as witnesses by the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida.
Being able to walk safely, Bullard pointed out, is literally a matter of life and death. "Research shows that walking can give you seven more years of life," he said.
Discussions throughout the summit-- in sessions, in hallways, over lunch--brought forth new ideas for dealing with complicated issues: How to ensure that no Americans are denied the health benefits of walking and other physical activity. How to overcome the barriers--from crime in the streets to people's long working hours--that make walking difficult for low-income Americans. How to make sure that gentrification doesn't force people out of neighborhoods that are becoming more walkable.
In the San Joaquin Valley of California, where one in three children are overweight, Latina women started walking groups to improve their families' health. When local officials said it would cost too much to build walking trails, they enlisted their construction-worker husbands to do it. The next step is for the community is to understand how to make walking safer and more comfortable, says Genoveva Islas of the grassroots group Cultiva La Salud ("Cultivating Health"). They are now studying how traffic calming, bike lanes and sidewalk networks can improve their lives.
In nearby Ceres, California, where two-thirds of all people are overweight, sixth-graders did an assessment of walking conditions near local schools. Their recommendations were incorporated into a Safe Routes to Schools masterplan for the community. Five local schools have established Walking School Buses, in which parents go from door to door picking up kids and walking them safely to school.
In Clarksdale, Mississippi, older African-Americans who felt scared to walk because of crime, organized 14 neighborhood watch groups to make their community safer. "Folks barricaded themselves in their homes," explained Ivory Craig, associate state AARP director, but came out on a special Meet Your Neighbor Night, where they decided to do something to make their neighborhoods more walkable.
In Raleigh, North Carolina, graduate student Matt Tomasulo created signs informing people how easy it is to walk to local attractions, which were later adopted by the city government. "It was a way to build a lot of excitement about walkability very quickly," he says.
"Does walkability and safe communities automatically mean gentrification?" inquired Jill Chamberlain of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota. Investments in parks and trails almost always mean higher real estate prices, she noted. "But if you want to stop gentrification, one idea is [public] contracts with developers to include permanent affordable housing."
"The Summit shows the movement is expanding from walking as a way to improve public health to walking as a human and civil right, a moral imperative," said Kate Kraft, National Coalition Director for America Walks and the Every Body Walk! Collaborative. "A community that is walkable for everyone means less disenfranchisement and more connection."
"We are a nation of walkers," said Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. "Going back to King's March on Washington and the 1913 march for women's suffrage."
Ron Sims closed the Summit on a powerful note, telling the audience. "You are fighting for seniors. You are fighting for kids. You are fighting crime. I want you to walk down the street and look cocky-- you've earned it."
Sims' optimism is grounded in firm evidence that Americans are getting back on their feet. The number of Americans walking has increased 6 percent since 2005, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That adds up to 20 million more people on sidewalks and trails.
Americans are walking not just for health, but also for relaxation, community connection, neighborhood revitalization, some time in nature, and the sheer fun of it. The co-chairs of the Every Body Walk! Collaborative---Joan Dorn of the City University of New York School of Medicine and Kevin Mills of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy---outlined some of the reasons for this good news:
+ The Surgeon General's Call to Action on Walking and Walkable communities generated huge public discussion, including more than six billion media impressions
+The US Department of Transportation is improving life for people who walk or bike with Secretary Anthony Foxx's Safer People, Safer Streets initiative, which more than 200 cities have joined.
+In recent years, $1.5 billion dollars have gone toward walking and biking improvements, although that's still less than one percent of overall transportation spending, as Sims noted.
+Vision Zero campaigns---redesigning traffic policies with the goal of no fatalities for walkers, bikers and motorists ---have been launched in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, San Jose, Boston and other cities.
+ More than 700 towns, counties and states have enacted Complete Streets policies, which consider the needs of all users--not just vehicles--in building and maintaining roads.
+Safe Routes to School programs are ensuring kids can walk or bike to school in every corner of the country.
+On the first day of the Summit, Capitol Hill was swarming with more than 150 walking advocates, who met with 147 Congress members from 33 states, almost evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats.
+And the Summit itself made waves around the world, "trending" on Twitter as one of the top 20 themes globally during the opening session.
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Mounting evidence that a daily walk helps prevent a host of serious diseases is beginning to influence debates about health care, community vitality, poverty, race and opportunity.
"The health benefits of walking are so overwhelming that to deny access to that is a violation of fundamental human rights," declared Robert A. Bullard, dean of the School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University, in a keynote at the 2nd National Walking Summit held this fall in Washington, D.C.
"The pursuit of health is also about justice," emphasized US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. It's about making sure "everyone in America has a good shot at being healthy."
The Surgeon General's recent Call to Action on Walking and Walkable Communities highlights the fact that, "an average of 22 minutes a day of physical activity - such as brisk walking - can significantly reduce the risk of heart disease and diabetes" as well as other debilitating chronic diseases.
"Tell me your zip code and I can tell you how healthy you are," Bullard said. "That should not be... All communities should have a right to a safe, sustainable, healthy, just, walkable community."
Jaw-dropping silence seized the room as Bullard showed a succession of maps illustrating how historic segregation and current poverty strongly correlate with low levels of walking and childhood opportunity as well as with high levels of obesity, diabetes, hypertension and heart disease.
"Health disparities don't just happen by accident," he explained. They are the tragic legacy of racism and unequal economic opportunity.
Ron Sims, who sponsored some of the first research identifying zip codes as a key determinant of health while chief executive of King County, Washington, noted. "If you have parks, playgrounds, community gardens, and wide sidewalks, you have good health outcomes. If you have walkable communities kids will do better in school...seniors will be healthier."
Drawing on his experience as an activist in African-American neighborhoods of Seattle as well as a former Deputy US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, he mapped out a blueprint for healthy communities: new or improved sidewalks, better lighting, access to water and greenspace, a place for kids to play around, a place for aging adults and senior citizens to feel they belong.
"You have no idea how powerful you are," Sims said to the hundreds of walking activists in the room. "I can't overstate that you are a movement that can ensure this country achieves its great dreams."
Equal access to good health was a call resounding throughout the 3-day Walking Summit , hosted by America Walks and the Every Body Walk! Collaborative and presented by Kaiser Permanente, an integrated health care delivery system, along with two dozen co-sponsors spanning the health care, philanthropy, business, non-profit and transportation fields.
More than 520 people from 44 states participated in the Summit, a crowd that was more racially and regionally diverse and 30 percent larger than the first National Walking Summit in 2013. Over 220 received scholarships to make the event more accessible to people with limited resources.
"All of us with divergent missions---from health care to social justice to land trusts to neighborhood revitalization---have a convergent strategy to get more people out walking and create safe places to walk everywhere," noted Kaiser Permanente vice-president Tyler Norris.
More than 70 workshops and panel discussions addressed the overarching goal of how to make sure everyone has access to a safe, comfortable, convenient place to walk. This includes disabled people, who may "walk" by rolling.
Speaker after speaker pointed to the stark inequality still exists on the streets and sidewalks of America.. The young, the old, the poor, people of color and people with disabilities are injured or killed more often while walking.
+People walking in the poorest one-third of urban census tracts are twice as likely to be killed by cars.
+African-Americans are 60 percent more likely to be killed by cars while walking, and Latinos 43 percent.
+The pedestrian fatality rate rises significantly for people 45 and over, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
+Roughly half of all US kids walked or biked to school in 1970, compared to 16 percent today (up from 13 percent in 2007), according to Safe Routes to Schools National Partnership.
Professor Bullard noted a study showing that motorists wait longer to yield to a person of color walking on the street than to a white person, a situation he termed "racial bias in the crosswalk." Meanwhile racial profiling by both police and the public pose another obstacle to walking for people of color, as witnesses by the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida.
Being able to walk safely, Bullard pointed out, is literally a matter of life and death. "Research shows that walking can give you seven more years of life," he said.
Discussions throughout the summit-- in sessions, in hallways, over lunch--brought forth new ideas for dealing with complicated issues: How to ensure that no Americans are denied the health benefits of walking and other physical activity. How to overcome the barriers--from crime in the streets to people's long working hours--that make walking difficult for low-income Americans. How to make sure that gentrification doesn't force people out of neighborhoods that are becoming more walkable.
In the San Joaquin Valley of California, where one in three children are overweight, Latina women started walking groups to improve their families' health. When local officials said it would cost too much to build walking trails, they enlisted their construction-worker husbands to do it. The next step is for the community is to understand how to make walking safer and more comfortable, says Genoveva Islas of the grassroots group Cultiva La Salud ("Cultivating Health"). They are now studying how traffic calming, bike lanes and sidewalk networks can improve their lives.
In nearby Ceres, California, where two-thirds of all people are overweight, sixth-graders did an assessment of walking conditions near local schools. Their recommendations were incorporated into a Safe Routes to Schools masterplan for the community. Five local schools have established Walking School Buses, in which parents go from door to door picking up kids and walking them safely to school.
In Clarksdale, Mississippi, older African-Americans who felt scared to walk because of crime, organized 14 neighborhood watch groups to make their community safer. "Folks barricaded themselves in their homes," explained Ivory Craig, associate state AARP director, but came out on a special Meet Your Neighbor Night, where they decided to do something to make their neighborhoods more walkable.
In Raleigh, North Carolina, graduate student Matt Tomasulo created signs informing people how easy it is to walk to local attractions, which were later adopted by the city government. "It was a way to build a lot of excitement about walkability very quickly," he says.
"Does walkability and safe communities automatically mean gentrification?" inquired Jill Chamberlain of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota. Investments in parks and trails almost always mean higher real estate prices, she noted. "But if you want to stop gentrification, one idea is [public] contracts with developers to include permanent affordable housing."
"The Summit shows the movement is expanding from walking as a way to improve public health to walking as a human and civil right, a moral imperative," said Kate Kraft, National Coalition Director for America Walks and the Every Body Walk! Collaborative. "A community that is walkable for everyone means less disenfranchisement and more connection."
"We are a nation of walkers," said Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. "Going back to King's March on Washington and the 1913 march for women's suffrage."
Ron Sims closed the Summit on a powerful note, telling the audience. "You are fighting for seniors. You are fighting for kids. You are fighting crime. I want you to walk down the street and look cocky-- you've earned it."
Sims' optimism is grounded in firm evidence that Americans are getting back on their feet. The number of Americans walking has increased 6 percent since 2005, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That adds up to 20 million more people on sidewalks and trails.
Americans are walking not just for health, but also for relaxation, community connection, neighborhood revitalization, some time in nature, and the sheer fun of it. The co-chairs of the Every Body Walk! Collaborative---Joan Dorn of the City University of New York School of Medicine and Kevin Mills of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy---outlined some of the reasons for this good news:
+ The Surgeon General's Call to Action on Walking and Walkable communities generated huge public discussion, including more than six billion media impressions
+The US Department of Transportation is improving life for people who walk or bike with Secretary Anthony Foxx's Safer People, Safer Streets initiative, which more than 200 cities have joined.
+In recent years, $1.5 billion dollars have gone toward walking and biking improvements, although that's still less than one percent of overall transportation spending, as Sims noted.
+Vision Zero campaigns---redesigning traffic policies with the goal of no fatalities for walkers, bikers and motorists ---have been launched in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, San Jose, Boston and other cities.
+ More than 700 towns, counties and states have enacted Complete Streets policies, which consider the needs of all users--not just vehicles--in building and maintaining roads.
+Safe Routes to School programs are ensuring kids can walk or bike to school in every corner of the country.
+On the first day of the Summit, Capitol Hill was swarming with more than 150 walking advocates, who met with 147 Congress members from 33 states, almost evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats.
+And the Summit itself made waves around the world, "trending" on Twitter as one of the top 20 themes globally during the opening session.
Mounting evidence that a daily walk helps prevent a host of serious diseases is beginning to influence debates about health care, community vitality, poverty, race and opportunity.
"The health benefits of walking are so overwhelming that to deny access to that is a violation of fundamental human rights," declared Robert A. Bullard, dean of the School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University, in a keynote at the 2nd National Walking Summit held this fall in Washington, D.C.
"The pursuit of health is also about justice," emphasized US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. It's about making sure "everyone in America has a good shot at being healthy."
The Surgeon General's recent Call to Action on Walking and Walkable Communities highlights the fact that, "an average of 22 minutes a day of physical activity - such as brisk walking - can significantly reduce the risk of heart disease and diabetes" as well as other debilitating chronic diseases.
"Tell me your zip code and I can tell you how healthy you are," Bullard said. "That should not be... All communities should have a right to a safe, sustainable, healthy, just, walkable community."
Jaw-dropping silence seized the room as Bullard showed a succession of maps illustrating how historic segregation and current poverty strongly correlate with low levels of walking and childhood opportunity as well as with high levels of obesity, diabetes, hypertension and heart disease.
"Health disparities don't just happen by accident," he explained. They are the tragic legacy of racism and unequal economic opportunity.
Ron Sims, who sponsored some of the first research identifying zip codes as a key determinant of health while chief executive of King County, Washington, noted. "If you have parks, playgrounds, community gardens, and wide sidewalks, you have good health outcomes. If you have walkable communities kids will do better in school...seniors will be healthier."
Drawing on his experience as an activist in African-American neighborhoods of Seattle as well as a former Deputy US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, he mapped out a blueprint for healthy communities: new or improved sidewalks, better lighting, access to water and greenspace, a place for kids to play around, a place for aging adults and senior citizens to feel they belong.
"You have no idea how powerful you are," Sims said to the hundreds of walking activists in the room. "I can't overstate that you are a movement that can ensure this country achieves its great dreams."
Equal access to good health was a call resounding throughout the 3-day Walking Summit , hosted by America Walks and the Every Body Walk! Collaborative and presented by Kaiser Permanente, an integrated health care delivery system, along with two dozen co-sponsors spanning the health care, philanthropy, business, non-profit and transportation fields.
More than 520 people from 44 states participated in the Summit, a crowd that was more racially and regionally diverse and 30 percent larger than the first National Walking Summit in 2013. Over 220 received scholarships to make the event more accessible to people with limited resources.
"All of us with divergent missions---from health care to social justice to land trusts to neighborhood revitalization---have a convergent strategy to get more people out walking and create safe places to walk everywhere," noted Kaiser Permanente vice-president Tyler Norris.
More than 70 workshops and panel discussions addressed the overarching goal of how to make sure everyone has access to a safe, comfortable, convenient place to walk. This includes disabled people, who may "walk" by rolling.
Speaker after speaker pointed to the stark inequality still exists on the streets and sidewalks of America.. The young, the old, the poor, people of color and people with disabilities are injured or killed more often while walking.
+People walking in the poorest one-third of urban census tracts are twice as likely to be killed by cars.
+African-Americans are 60 percent more likely to be killed by cars while walking, and Latinos 43 percent.
+The pedestrian fatality rate rises significantly for people 45 and over, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
+Roughly half of all US kids walked or biked to school in 1970, compared to 16 percent today (up from 13 percent in 2007), according to Safe Routes to Schools National Partnership.
Professor Bullard noted a study showing that motorists wait longer to yield to a person of color walking on the street than to a white person, a situation he termed "racial bias in the crosswalk." Meanwhile racial profiling by both police and the public pose another obstacle to walking for people of color, as witnesses by the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida.
Being able to walk safely, Bullard pointed out, is literally a matter of life and death. "Research shows that walking can give you seven more years of life," he said.
Discussions throughout the summit-- in sessions, in hallways, over lunch--brought forth new ideas for dealing with complicated issues: How to ensure that no Americans are denied the health benefits of walking and other physical activity. How to overcome the barriers--from crime in the streets to people's long working hours--that make walking difficult for low-income Americans. How to make sure that gentrification doesn't force people out of neighborhoods that are becoming more walkable.
In the San Joaquin Valley of California, where one in three children are overweight, Latina women started walking groups to improve their families' health. When local officials said it would cost too much to build walking trails, they enlisted their construction-worker husbands to do it. The next step is for the community is to understand how to make walking safer and more comfortable, says Genoveva Islas of the grassroots group Cultiva La Salud ("Cultivating Health"). They are now studying how traffic calming, bike lanes and sidewalk networks can improve their lives.
In nearby Ceres, California, where two-thirds of all people are overweight, sixth-graders did an assessment of walking conditions near local schools. Their recommendations were incorporated into a Safe Routes to Schools masterplan for the community. Five local schools have established Walking School Buses, in which parents go from door to door picking up kids and walking them safely to school.
In Clarksdale, Mississippi, older African-Americans who felt scared to walk because of crime, organized 14 neighborhood watch groups to make their community safer. "Folks barricaded themselves in their homes," explained Ivory Craig, associate state AARP director, but came out on a special Meet Your Neighbor Night, where they decided to do something to make their neighborhoods more walkable.
In Raleigh, North Carolina, graduate student Matt Tomasulo created signs informing people how easy it is to walk to local attractions, which were later adopted by the city government. "It was a way to build a lot of excitement about walkability very quickly," he says.
"Does walkability and safe communities automatically mean gentrification?" inquired Jill Chamberlain of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota. Investments in parks and trails almost always mean higher real estate prices, she noted. "But if you want to stop gentrification, one idea is [public] contracts with developers to include permanent affordable housing."
"The Summit shows the movement is expanding from walking as a way to improve public health to walking as a human and civil right, a moral imperative," said Kate Kraft, National Coalition Director for America Walks and the Every Body Walk! Collaborative. "A community that is walkable for everyone means less disenfranchisement and more connection."
"We are a nation of walkers," said Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. "Going back to King's March on Washington and the 1913 march for women's suffrage."
Ron Sims closed the Summit on a powerful note, telling the audience. "You are fighting for seniors. You are fighting for kids. You are fighting crime. I want you to walk down the street and look cocky-- you've earned it."
Sims' optimism is grounded in firm evidence that Americans are getting back on their feet. The number of Americans walking has increased 6 percent since 2005, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That adds up to 20 million more people on sidewalks and trails.
Americans are walking not just for health, but also for relaxation, community connection, neighborhood revitalization, some time in nature, and the sheer fun of it. The co-chairs of the Every Body Walk! Collaborative---Joan Dorn of the City University of New York School of Medicine and Kevin Mills of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy---outlined some of the reasons for this good news:
+ The Surgeon General's Call to Action on Walking and Walkable communities generated huge public discussion, including more than six billion media impressions
+The US Department of Transportation is improving life for people who walk or bike with Secretary Anthony Foxx's Safer People, Safer Streets initiative, which more than 200 cities have joined.
+In recent years, $1.5 billion dollars have gone toward walking and biking improvements, although that's still less than one percent of overall transportation spending, as Sims noted.
+Vision Zero campaigns---redesigning traffic policies with the goal of no fatalities for walkers, bikers and motorists ---have been launched in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, San Jose, Boston and other cities.
+ More than 700 towns, counties and states have enacted Complete Streets policies, which consider the needs of all users--not just vehicles--in building and maintaining roads.
+Safe Routes to School programs are ensuring kids can walk or bike to school in every corner of the country.
+On the first day of the Summit, Capitol Hill was swarming with more than 150 walking advocates, who met with 147 Congress members from 33 states, almost evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats.
+And the Summit itself made waves around the world, "trending" on Twitter as one of the top 20 themes globally during the opening session.
"President Trump's deal to take a $400 million luxury jet from a foreign government deserves full public scrutiny—not a stiff-arm from the Department of Justice," said the head of one watchdog group.
With preparations to refit a Qatari jet to be used as Air Force One "underway," a press freedom group sued the U.S. Department of Justice in federal court on Monday for failing to release the DOJ memorandum about the legality of President Donald Trump accepting the $400 million "flying palace."
The Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), represented by nonpartisan watchdog American Oversight, filed the lawsuit seeking the memo, which was reportedly approved by the Office of Legal Counsel and signed by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who previously lobbied on behalf of the Qatari government.
FPF had submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the memo on May 15, and the DOJ told the group that fulfilling it would take over 600 days.
"How many flights could Trump have taken on his new plane in the same amount of time it would have taken the DOJ to release this one document?"
"It shouldn't take 620 days to release a single, time-sensitive document," said Lauren Harper, FPF's Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy, in a Monday statement. "How many flights could Trump have taken on his new plane in the same amount of time it would have taken the DOJ to release this one document?"
The complaint—filed in the District of Columbia—notes that the airplane is set to be donated to Trump's private presidential library foundation after his second term. Harper said that "the government's inability to administer FOIA makes it too easy for agencies to keep secrets, and nonexistent disclosure rules around donations to presidential libraries provide easy cover for bad actors and potential corruption."
It's not just FPF sounding the alarm about the aircraft. The complaint points out that "a number of stakeholders, including ethics experts and several GOP lawmakers, have questioned the propriety and legality of the move, including whether acceptance of the plane would violate the U.S. Constitution's foreign emoluments clause... which prohibits a president from receiving gifts or benefits from foreign governments without the consent of Congress."
Some opponents of the "comically corrupt" so-called gift stressed that it came after the Trump Organization, the Saudi partner DarGlobal, and a company owned by the Qatari government reached a deal to build a luxury golf resort in Qatar.
Despite some initial GOP criticism of the president taking the aircraft, just hours after the Trump administration formally accepted the jet in May, U.S. Senate Republicans thwarted an attempt by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to pass by unanimous consent legislation intended to prevent a foreign plane from serving as Air Force One.
"Although President Trump characterized the deal as a smart business decision, remarking that it would be 'stupid' not to accept 'a free, very expensive airplane,' experts have noted that it will be costly to retrofit the jet for use as Air Force One, with estimatesranging from less than $400 million to more than $1 billion," the complaint states.
As The New York Times reported Sunday:
Officially, and conveniently, the price tag has been classified. But even by Washington standards, where "black budgets" are often used as an excuse to avoid revealing the cost of outdated spy satellites and lavish end-of-year parties, the techniques being used to hide the cost of Mr. Trump's pet project are inventive.
Which may explain why no one wants to discuss a mysterious, $934 million transfer of funds from one of the Pentagon's most over-budget, out-of-control projects—the modernization of America's aging, ground-based nuclear missiles...
Air Force officials privately concede that they are paying for renovations of the Qatari Air Force One with the transfer from another the massively-over-budget, behind-schedule program, called the Sentinel.
Preparations to refit the plane "are underway, and floor plans or schematics have been seen by senior U.S. officials," according to Monday reporting by CBS News. One unnamed budget official who spoke to the outlet also "believes the money to pay for upgrades will come from the Sentinel program."
Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American Oversight, said Monday that "President Trump's deal to take a $400 million luxury jet from a foreign government deserves full public scrutiny—not a stiff-arm from the Department of Justice."
"This is precisely the kind of corrupt arrangement that public records laws are designed to expose," Chukwu added. "The DOJ cannot sit on its hands and expect the American people to wait years for the truth while serious questions about corruption, self-dealing, and foreign influence go unanswered."
The complaint highlights that "Bondi's decision not to recuse herself from this matter, despite her links to the Qatari government, adds to a growing body of questionable ethical practices that have arisen during her short tenure as attorney general."
It also emphasizes that "the Qatari jet is just one in a list of current and prospective extravagant donations to President Trump's presidential library foundation that has raised significant questions about the use of private foundation donations to improperly influence government policy."
"Notably, ABC News and Paramount each agreed to resolve cases President Trump filed against the media entities by paying multimillion-dollar settlements to the Trump presidential library foundation, with Paramount's $16 million agreed payout coming at the same time it sought government approval for a planned merger with Skydance," the filing details. "On July 24, the Federal Communications Commission announced its approval of the $8 billion merger."
"The Trump regime just handed Christian nationalists a loaded weapon: your federal workplace," said one critic.
The Trump administration issued a memo Monday allowing federal employees to proselytize in the workplace, a move welcomed by many conservatives but denounced by proponents of the separation of church and state.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) memo "provides clear guidance to ensure federal employees may express their religious beliefs through prayer, personal items, group gatherings, and conversations without fear of discrimination or retaliation."
"Employees must be allowed to engage in private religious expression in work areas to the same extent that they may engage in nonreligious private expression," the memo states.
Federal workers "should be permitted to display and use items used for religious purposes or icons of a religiously significant nature, including but not limited to bibles, artwork, jewelry, posters displaying religious messages, and other indicia of religion (such as crosses, crucifixes, and mezuzahs) on their desks, on their person, and in their assigned workspaces," the document continues.
"Employees may engage in conversations regarding religious topics with fellow employees, including attempting to persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views, provided that such efforts are not harassing in nature," OPM said—without elaborating on what constitutes harassment.
"These shocking changes essentially permit workplace evangelizing."
"Employees may also encourage their coworkers to participate in religious expressions of faith, such as prayer, to the same extent that they would be permitted to encourage coworkers participate in other personal activities," the memo adds.
OPM Director Scott Kupor said in a statement that "federal employees should never have to choose between their faith and their career."
"This guidance ensures the federal workplace is not just compliant with the law but welcoming to Americans of all faiths," Kupor added. "Under President [Donald] Trump's leadership, we are restoring constitutional freedoms and making government a place where people of faith are respected, not sidelined."
The OPM memo was widely applauded by conservative social media users—although some were dismayed that the new rules also apply to Muslims.
Critics, however, blasted what the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) called "a gift to evangelicals and the myth of 'anti-Christian bias.'"
FFRF co-president Laurie Gaylor said that "these shocking changes essentially permit workplace evangelizing, but worse still, allow supervisors to evangelize underlings and federal workers to proselytize the public they serve."
"This is the implementation of Christian nationalism in our federal government," Gaylor added.
The Secular Coalition for America denounced the memo as "another effort to grant privileges to certain religions while ignoring nonreligious people's rights."
Monday's memo follows another issued by Kupor on July 16 that encouraged federal agencies to take a "generous approach" to evaluating government employees who request telework and other flexibilities due to their religious beliefs.
The OPM directives follow the U.S. Supreme Court's 2023 Groff v. DeJoy ruling, in which the court's right-wing majority declared that Article VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 "requires an employer that denies a religious accommodation to show that the burden of granting an accommodation would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business."
The new memo also comes on the heels of three religion-based executive orders issued by Trump during his second term. One order established a White House Faith Office tasked with ensuring religious organizations have a voice in the federal government. Another seeks to "eradicate" what Trump claims is the "anti-Christian weaponization of government." Yet another created a Religious Liberty Commission meant to promote and protect religious freedom.
Awda Hathaleen was described as "a teacher and an activist who struggled courageously for his people."
A Palestinian peace activist has been fatally shot by a notorious Israeli settler who was once the subject of sanctions that were lifted this year by U.S. President Donald Trump.
In June, Awda Hathaleen—an English teacher, activist, and former soccer player from the occupied West Bank—was detained alongside his cousin Eid at the airport in San Francisco, where they were about to embark on an interfaith speaking tour organized by the California-based Kehilla Community Synagogue.
Ben Linder, co-chair of the Silicon Valley chapter of J Street and the organizer of Eid and Awda's first scheduled speaking engagement told Middle East Eye that he'd known the two cousins for 10 years, describing them as "true nonviolent peace activists" who "came here on an interfaith peace-promoting mission."
Without explanation from U.S. authorities, they were deported and returned to their village of Umm al-Khair in the South Hebron Hills.
On Monday afternoon, the activist group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) reported on social media that Awda Hathaleen had been killed after Israeli settlers attacked his village and that a relative of his was also severely injured:
Activists working with Awda report that Israeli settlers invaded Umm al-Kheir with a bulldozer to destroy what little remains of the Palestinian village. As Awda and his family tried to defend their homes and land, a settler opened fire—both aiming directly and shooting indiscriminately. Awda was shot in the chest and later died from his injuries after being taken by an Israeli ambulance. His death was the result of brutal settler violence.
Later, when Awda's relative Ahmad al-Hathaleen tried to block the bulldozer, the settler driving it ran him over. Ahmad is now being treated in a nearby hospital.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz later confirmed these events, adding:
An eyewitness reported that the entry of Israeli settlers into Palestinian private lands, riding an excavator, caused a commotion, and the vehicle subsequently struck a resident named Ahmad Hathaleen. "People lost their minds, and the children threw stones," he said.
A friend and fellow activist, Mohammad Hureini, posted the video of the attack online. The settler who fired the gun has been identified by Haaretz as Yinon Levi, who has previously been hit—along with other settlers—with sanctions by former U.S. President Joe Biden's administration and other governments over his past harassment of Palestinians in the West Bank.
As the Biden State Department wrote at the time:
Levi consistently leads a group of settlers who attack Palestinians, set fire to their fields, destroy their property, and threaten them with further harm if they do not leave their homes.
The sanctions were later lifted by U.S. President Donald Trump. However, they'd already been rendered virtually ineffective after the intervention of far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has expressed a desire to ethnically cleanse Gaza and the West Bank of Palestinians to make way for Jewish settlements.
Brooklyn-based journalist Jasper Nathaniel, who has covered other cases of settler violence for Zeteo described Levi as "a known terrorist who's been protected by the Israeli government for years," adding that, "One of the only good things Biden did for Palestine was sanction him."
Violence by Israeli settlers in the illegally-occupied West Bank has risen sharply since the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas and the subsequent 21-month military campaign by Israel in Gaza.
Nearly 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by settlers during that time. More than 6,400 have been forcibly displaced following the demolition of their homes by Israel, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
The killing of Awda Hathaleen—who had a wife and three young children—has been met with outpourings of grief and anger from his fellow peace activists in the United States, Israel, and Palestine.
Issa Amro, the Hebron-based co-founder of the grassroots group Youth Against Settlements, described Awda as a "beloved hero."
"Awda stood with dignity and courage against oppression," Amro said. "His loss is a deep wound to our hearts and our struggle for justice."
Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham, who last year directed the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, described Awda Hathaleen as "a remarkable activist," and thanked him for helping his team shoot the film in Masafer Yatta.
"To know Awda Hathaleen is to love him," said the post from JVP announcing his death. "Awda has always been a pillar amongst his family, his village and the wider international community of activists who had the pleasure to meet Awda."
Israeli-American peace activist Mattan Berner-Kadish wrote: "May his memory be a revolution. I will remember him smiling, laughing, dreaming of a better future for his children. We must make it so."