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Workers picket outside of John Deere Harvester Works facility on October 14, 2021 in East Moline, Illinois. More than 10,000 Deere employees represented by the UAW walked off the job at midnight after failing to agree to term of a new contract. About 1,400 workers walked off the job at the Harvester Works plant where the company builds combines. (Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)
This year, 2021, began with a huge sense of relief as Trump left office. We hoped to emerge from the ravages of COVID, pass a hefty Build Back Better (BBB) bill, and make significant cuts to the Pentagon budget. But, alas, we faced a January 6 white nationalist insurrection, two new COVID mutations, a sliced-and-diced BBB bill that didn't pass, and a Pentagon budget that actually INCREASED!
It was, indeed, a disastrous year, but we do have some reasons to cheer:
1. The U.S. survived its first major coup plot on January 6 and key right-wing groups are on the wane. With participants in the insurrection being charged and some facing significant jail time, new efforts to mobilize-including September's "Justice for J6" rally-fizzled. As for Trump, let's remember that in early 2021, he was impeached again, he lost his main mouthpiece, Twitter, and his attempt to build a rival social media service seems to have stalled. QAnon is in decline--its major hashtags have evaporated and Twitter shut down some 70,000 Q accounts. We may still see a resurgence (including another Trump attempt to take the White House), but so far the insurrection seems to have peaked and is being rolled back.
2. Latin America is undergoing a massive shift toward progressive governments. Gabriel Boric, a young Chilean progressive who campaigned for broad reforms, including universal healthcare and a higher minimum wage, won a landslide victory in December. His victory follows the victories of Xiomara Castro in Honduras in November, Pedro Castillo in Peru in June, and Luis Arce in Bolivia in October 2020. In Brazil, former president Lula da Silva may soon return to the presidency via next year's elections. All of this bodes well for policies that benefit the people of Latin America and for greater solidarity with Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and other nations in the U.S. crosshairs.
3. The struggle for racial justice and accountability saw some major wins in 2021. Former police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all 3 charges related to the murder of George Floyd and has pled guilty in the federal civil rights version of the case. The three Georgia men who killed Ahmaud Arbery for the crime of going out for a jog were also convicted. Progressive District Attorneys in cities and counties across this country are fighting to end cash bail and no-knock warrants, mass incarceration, and mandatory sentencing minimums. We see a backlash against these DAs, such as in Los Angeles and San Francisco, but they have strong community support.
4. U.S. troops left Afghanistan, winding down a deadly 20-year intervention. Some of us were against this U.S. invasion to begin with, and pushed for 20 years for our troops to leave. The exit was carried out in the same shameful, chaotic way as the 20 years of war, and the U.S. is once again targeting the Afghan people by freezing the billions of dollars of Afghan money held in overseas banks. That's why we have joined the effort to #UnfreezeAfghanistan. But we do recognize that the U.S. troop withdrawal was necessary to give Afghans the chance to shape their own future, to stop spending $300 million a day on a failed war, and to roll back U.S. militarism.
5. COVID has returned with a vengeance, but we have been winning battles against other deadly diseases. Malaria, which kills half a million people a year, mostly in Africa, might be vanquished thanks to a groundbreaking vaccine, the first ever for a parasitic disease. On the HIV front, a new vaccine has shown a 97% response rate in Phase I clinical trials. Almost 40 million people were living with HIV in 2020, and hundreds of thousands of people die from AIDS-related illnesses each year. While the vaccine is still in Phase I trials, it is an extremely hopeful sign for 2022.
6. The U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted in 2017, went into effect this year after fulfilling the requirement that it be ratified by at least 50 countries. The U.S. and the world's other nuclear powers have not signed the treaty and it has no enforcement mechanism but, for the first time in history, nuclear weapons are illegal under international law. With 86 signatories so far, the treaty helps to delegitimize nuclear weapons and reinforce global norms against their use. At a time when the outcome of the nuclear talks with Iran are uncertain, and when conflicts with Russia and China regarding Ukraine and Taiwan are intensifying, such a reminder is critical.
7. In the U.S., workers are actually gaining power amidst the ravages of COVID. Wages are going up and unions are starting to re-emerge. With millions of workers quitting their jobs from burnout or re-evaluation of life goals (dubbed the "Great Resignation"), the resulting labor shortage has given workers more space to push for better wages, benefits and working conditions. There were over 300 strikes from hospitals to coal plants to universities--many of them successful. Starbucks workers in Buffalo, New York, succeeded in forming the first union at a Starbucks store in the US. Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, lost their attempt to form the first Amazon union, but the National Labor Relations Board has ordered a new election due to management's improper conduct. So 2022 may well be a banner year for worker's rights and unions.
8. While not nearly enough, there were some key environmental gains, with Biden starting his term by re-entering the Paris Climate Accords. The COP26 meeting put a spotlight on the urgent need for revved up environmental action, with environmental activists worldwide pressuring their own governments to step up. Some 44 nations are now committed to ending the use of coal, and the G7 countries vowed not to fund coal plants any more. Here in the U.S., thanks to sustained environmental activism, the Keystone XL and PennEast pipelines were officially canceled and the Biden administration nixed oil and gas drilling on federal land. Renewable energy installations are at an all-time high and wind farms are planned along the entire U.S. coastline. Another major polluter, China, is building the largest energy installation in history, a whopping 100 gigawatts of wind and solar power (the entire capacity, as of 2021, of U.S. solar energy), and plans to plant a Belgium-sized area of forest every year going forward.
9. Yes, there have actually been some advances for women's choice this year. When we look beyond the outrageous anti-abortion law in Texas that empowers private citizens to sue abortion providers, we see that many countries in the rest of the world are moving in the opposite direction. In 2021, abortion was legalized in South Korea, Thailand, and Argentina, while safe access increased in New Zealand, Ecuador, and Uruguay. A major victory in a very Catholic country came in September, when Mexico's Supreme Court decriminalized it. Isn't it ironic that, prior to Roe v. Wade, thousands of women from U.S. states along the Mexican border would cross into Mexico to get (illegal) abortions? Now, they might again be going, and this time for legal abortions.
10. Another reason to celebrate: 2021 is over. And 2022 may actually be the year we conquer COVID and move forward on a full agenda of pressing issues, including pushing Congress to pass a version of the Build Back Better bill; pressing for passage of the voting rights legislation that will stop the outrageous statewide voter suppression; mobilizing against the far right--and a return of Trump or Trump-lite; stopping the Cold War with China; preventing a military conflict with Russia in Ukraine; and cutting the outrageous Pentagon budget to invest in the health of our people and planet.
If we could make gains in a year as bad as 2021, just think what we can accomplish in 2022.
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This year, 2021, began with a huge sense of relief as Trump left office. We hoped to emerge from the ravages of COVID, pass a hefty Build Back Better (BBB) bill, and make significant cuts to the Pentagon budget. But, alas, we faced a January 6 white nationalist insurrection, two new COVID mutations, a sliced-and-diced BBB bill that didn't pass, and a Pentagon budget that actually INCREASED!
It was, indeed, a disastrous year, but we do have some reasons to cheer:
1. The U.S. survived its first major coup plot on January 6 and key right-wing groups are on the wane. With participants in the insurrection being charged and some facing significant jail time, new efforts to mobilize-including September's "Justice for J6" rally-fizzled. As for Trump, let's remember that in early 2021, he was impeached again, he lost his main mouthpiece, Twitter, and his attempt to build a rival social media service seems to have stalled. QAnon is in decline--its major hashtags have evaporated and Twitter shut down some 70,000 Q accounts. We may still see a resurgence (including another Trump attempt to take the White House), but so far the insurrection seems to have peaked and is being rolled back.
2. Latin America is undergoing a massive shift toward progressive governments. Gabriel Boric, a young Chilean progressive who campaigned for broad reforms, including universal healthcare and a higher minimum wage, won a landslide victory in December. His victory follows the victories of Xiomara Castro in Honduras in November, Pedro Castillo in Peru in June, and Luis Arce in Bolivia in October 2020. In Brazil, former president Lula da Silva may soon return to the presidency via next year's elections. All of this bodes well for policies that benefit the people of Latin America and for greater solidarity with Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and other nations in the U.S. crosshairs.
3. The struggle for racial justice and accountability saw some major wins in 2021. Former police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all 3 charges related to the murder of George Floyd and has pled guilty in the federal civil rights version of the case. The three Georgia men who killed Ahmaud Arbery for the crime of going out for a jog were also convicted. Progressive District Attorneys in cities and counties across this country are fighting to end cash bail and no-knock warrants, mass incarceration, and mandatory sentencing minimums. We see a backlash against these DAs, such as in Los Angeles and San Francisco, but they have strong community support.
4. U.S. troops left Afghanistan, winding down a deadly 20-year intervention. Some of us were against this U.S. invasion to begin with, and pushed for 20 years for our troops to leave. The exit was carried out in the same shameful, chaotic way as the 20 years of war, and the U.S. is once again targeting the Afghan people by freezing the billions of dollars of Afghan money held in overseas banks. That's why we have joined the effort to #UnfreezeAfghanistan. But we do recognize that the U.S. troop withdrawal was necessary to give Afghans the chance to shape their own future, to stop spending $300 million a day on a failed war, and to roll back U.S. militarism.
5. COVID has returned with a vengeance, but we have been winning battles against other deadly diseases. Malaria, which kills half a million people a year, mostly in Africa, might be vanquished thanks to a groundbreaking vaccine, the first ever for a parasitic disease. On the HIV front, a new vaccine has shown a 97% response rate in Phase I clinical trials. Almost 40 million people were living with HIV in 2020, and hundreds of thousands of people die from AIDS-related illnesses each year. While the vaccine is still in Phase I trials, it is an extremely hopeful sign for 2022.
6. The U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted in 2017, went into effect this year after fulfilling the requirement that it be ratified by at least 50 countries. The U.S. and the world's other nuclear powers have not signed the treaty and it has no enforcement mechanism but, for the first time in history, nuclear weapons are illegal under international law. With 86 signatories so far, the treaty helps to delegitimize nuclear weapons and reinforce global norms against their use. At a time when the outcome of the nuclear talks with Iran are uncertain, and when conflicts with Russia and China regarding Ukraine and Taiwan are intensifying, such a reminder is critical.
7. In the U.S., workers are actually gaining power amidst the ravages of COVID. Wages are going up and unions are starting to re-emerge. With millions of workers quitting their jobs from burnout or re-evaluation of life goals (dubbed the "Great Resignation"), the resulting labor shortage has given workers more space to push for better wages, benefits and working conditions. There were over 300 strikes from hospitals to coal plants to universities--many of them successful. Starbucks workers in Buffalo, New York, succeeded in forming the first union at a Starbucks store in the US. Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, lost their attempt to form the first Amazon union, but the National Labor Relations Board has ordered a new election due to management's improper conduct. So 2022 may well be a banner year for worker's rights and unions.
8. While not nearly enough, there were some key environmental gains, with Biden starting his term by re-entering the Paris Climate Accords. The COP26 meeting put a spotlight on the urgent need for revved up environmental action, with environmental activists worldwide pressuring their own governments to step up. Some 44 nations are now committed to ending the use of coal, and the G7 countries vowed not to fund coal plants any more. Here in the U.S., thanks to sustained environmental activism, the Keystone XL and PennEast pipelines were officially canceled and the Biden administration nixed oil and gas drilling on federal land. Renewable energy installations are at an all-time high and wind farms are planned along the entire U.S. coastline. Another major polluter, China, is building the largest energy installation in history, a whopping 100 gigawatts of wind and solar power (the entire capacity, as of 2021, of U.S. solar energy), and plans to plant a Belgium-sized area of forest every year going forward.
9. Yes, there have actually been some advances for women's choice this year. When we look beyond the outrageous anti-abortion law in Texas that empowers private citizens to sue abortion providers, we see that many countries in the rest of the world are moving in the opposite direction. In 2021, abortion was legalized in South Korea, Thailand, and Argentina, while safe access increased in New Zealand, Ecuador, and Uruguay. A major victory in a very Catholic country came in September, when Mexico's Supreme Court decriminalized it. Isn't it ironic that, prior to Roe v. Wade, thousands of women from U.S. states along the Mexican border would cross into Mexico to get (illegal) abortions? Now, they might again be going, and this time for legal abortions.
10. Another reason to celebrate: 2021 is over. And 2022 may actually be the year we conquer COVID and move forward on a full agenda of pressing issues, including pushing Congress to pass a version of the Build Back Better bill; pressing for passage of the voting rights legislation that will stop the outrageous statewide voter suppression; mobilizing against the far right--and a return of Trump or Trump-lite; stopping the Cold War with China; preventing a military conflict with Russia in Ukraine; and cutting the outrageous Pentagon budget to invest in the health of our people and planet.
If we could make gains in a year as bad as 2021, just think what we can accomplish in 2022.
This year, 2021, began with a huge sense of relief as Trump left office. We hoped to emerge from the ravages of COVID, pass a hefty Build Back Better (BBB) bill, and make significant cuts to the Pentagon budget. But, alas, we faced a January 6 white nationalist insurrection, two new COVID mutations, a sliced-and-diced BBB bill that didn't pass, and a Pentagon budget that actually INCREASED!
It was, indeed, a disastrous year, but we do have some reasons to cheer:
1. The U.S. survived its first major coup plot on January 6 and key right-wing groups are on the wane. With participants in the insurrection being charged and some facing significant jail time, new efforts to mobilize-including September's "Justice for J6" rally-fizzled. As for Trump, let's remember that in early 2021, he was impeached again, he lost his main mouthpiece, Twitter, and his attempt to build a rival social media service seems to have stalled. QAnon is in decline--its major hashtags have evaporated and Twitter shut down some 70,000 Q accounts. We may still see a resurgence (including another Trump attempt to take the White House), but so far the insurrection seems to have peaked and is being rolled back.
2. Latin America is undergoing a massive shift toward progressive governments. Gabriel Boric, a young Chilean progressive who campaigned for broad reforms, including universal healthcare and a higher minimum wage, won a landslide victory in December. His victory follows the victories of Xiomara Castro in Honduras in November, Pedro Castillo in Peru in June, and Luis Arce in Bolivia in October 2020. In Brazil, former president Lula da Silva may soon return to the presidency via next year's elections. All of this bodes well for policies that benefit the people of Latin America and for greater solidarity with Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and other nations in the U.S. crosshairs.
3. The struggle for racial justice and accountability saw some major wins in 2021. Former police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all 3 charges related to the murder of George Floyd and has pled guilty in the federal civil rights version of the case. The three Georgia men who killed Ahmaud Arbery for the crime of going out for a jog were also convicted. Progressive District Attorneys in cities and counties across this country are fighting to end cash bail and no-knock warrants, mass incarceration, and mandatory sentencing minimums. We see a backlash against these DAs, such as in Los Angeles and San Francisco, but they have strong community support.
4. U.S. troops left Afghanistan, winding down a deadly 20-year intervention. Some of us were against this U.S. invasion to begin with, and pushed for 20 years for our troops to leave. The exit was carried out in the same shameful, chaotic way as the 20 years of war, and the U.S. is once again targeting the Afghan people by freezing the billions of dollars of Afghan money held in overseas banks. That's why we have joined the effort to #UnfreezeAfghanistan. But we do recognize that the U.S. troop withdrawal was necessary to give Afghans the chance to shape their own future, to stop spending $300 million a day on a failed war, and to roll back U.S. militarism.
5. COVID has returned with a vengeance, but we have been winning battles against other deadly diseases. Malaria, which kills half a million people a year, mostly in Africa, might be vanquished thanks to a groundbreaking vaccine, the first ever for a parasitic disease. On the HIV front, a new vaccine has shown a 97% response rate in Phase I clinical trials. Almost 40 million people were living with HIV in 2020, and hundreds of thousands of people die from AIDS-related illnesses each year. While the vaccine is still in Phase I trials, it is an extremely hopeful sign for 2022.
6. The U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted in 2017, went into effect this year after fulfilling the requirement that it be ratified by at least 50 countries. The U.S. and the world's other nuclear powers have not signed the treaty and it has no enforcement mechanism but, for the first time in history, nuclear weapons are illegal under international law. With 86 signatories so far, the treaty helps to delegitimize nuclear weapons and reinforce global norms against their use. At a time when the outcome of the nuclear talks with Iran are uncertain, and when conflicts with Russia and China regarding Ukraine and Taiwan are intensifying, such a reminder is critical.
7. In the U.S., workers are actually gaining power amidst the ravages of COVID. Wages are going up and unions are starting to re-emerge. With millions of workers quitting their jobs from burnout or re-evaluation of life goals (dubbed the "Great Resignation"), the resulting labor shortage has given workers more space to push for better wages, benefits and working conditions. There were over 300 strikes from hospitals to coal plants to universities--many of them successful. Starbucks workers in Buffalo, New York, succeeded in forming the first union at a Starbucks store in the US. Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, lost their attempt to form the first Amazon union, but the National Labor Relations Board has ordered a new election due to management's improper conduct. So 2022 may well be a banner year for worker's rights and unions.
8. While not nearly enough, there were some key environmental gains, with Biden starting his term by re-entering the Paris Climate Accords. The COP26 meeting put a spotlight on the urgent need for revved up environmental action, with environmental activists worldwide pressuring their own governments to step up. Some 44 nations are now committed to ending the use of coal, and the G7 countries vowed not to fund coal plants any more. Here in the U.S., thanks to sustained environmental activism, the Keystone XL and PennEast pipelines were officially canceled and the Biden administration nixed oil and gas drilling on federal land. Renewable energy installations are at an all-time high and wind farms are planned along the entire U.S. coastline. Another major polluter, China, is building the largest energy installation in history, a whopping 100 gigawatts of wind and solar power (the entire capacity, as of 2021, of U.S. solar energy), and plans to plant a Belgium-sized area of forest every year going forward.
9. Yes, there have actually been some advances for women's choice this year. When we look beyond the outrageous anti-abortion law in Texas that empowers private citizens to sue abortion providers, we see that many countries in the rest of the world are moving in the opposite direction. In 2021, abortion was legalized in South Korea, Thailand, and Argentina, while safe access increased in New Zealand, Ecuador, and Uruguay. A major victory in a very Catholic country came in September, when Mexico's Supreme Court decriminalized it. Isn't it ironic that, prior to Roe v. Wade, thousands of women from U.S. states along the Mexican border would cross into Mexico to get (illegal) abortions? Now, they might again be going, and this time for legal abortions.
10. Another reason to celebrate: 2021 is over. And 2022 may actually be the year we conquer COVID and move forward on a full agenda of pressing issues, including pushing Congress to pass a version of the Build Back Better bill; pressing for passage of the voting rights legislation that will stop the outrageous statewide voter suppression; mobilizing against the far right--and a return of Trump or Trump-lite; stopping the Cold War with China; preventing a military conflict with Russia in Ukraine; and cutting the outrageous Pentagon budget to invest in the health of our people and planet.
If we could make gains in a year as bad as 2021, just think what we can accomplish in 2022.
"This sends a chilling message that the U.S. is willing to overlook some abuses, signaling that people experiencing human rights violations may be left to fend for themselves," said one Amnesty campaigner.
After leaked drafts exposed the Trump administration's plans to downplay human rights abuses in some allied countries, including Israel, the U.S. Department of State released the final edition of an annual report on Tuesday, sparking fresh condemnation.
"Breaking with precedent, Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not provide a written introduction to the report nor did he make remarks about it," CNN reported. Still, Amanda Klasing, Amnesty International USA's national director of government relations and advocacy, called him out by name in a Tuesday statement.
"With the release of the U.S. State Department's human rights report, it is clear that the Trump administration has engaged in a very selective documentation of human rights abuses in certain countries," Klasing said. "In addition to eliminating entire sections for certain countries—for example discrimination against LGBTQ+ people—there are also arbitrary omissions within existing sections of the report based on the country."
Klasing explained that "we have criticized past reports when warranted, but have never seen reports quite like this. Never before have the reports gone this far in prioritizing an administration's political agenda over a consistent and truthful accounting of human rights violations around the world—softening criticism in some countries while ignoring violations in others. The State Department has said in relation to the reports less is more. However, for the victims and human rights defenders who rely on these reports to shine light on abuses and violations, less is just less."
"Secretary Rubio knows full well from his time in the Senate how vital these reports are in informing policy decisions and shaping diplomatic conversations, yet he has made the dangerous and short-sighted decision to put out a truncated version that doesn't tell the whole story of human rights violations," she continued. "This sends a chilling message that the U.S. is willing to overlook some abuses, signaling that people experiencing human rights violations may be left to fend for themselves."
"Failing to adequately report on human rights violations further damages the credibility of the U.S. on human rights issues," she added. "It's shameful that the Trump administration and Secretary Rubio are putting politics above human lives."
The overarching report—which includes over 100 individual country reports—covers 2024, the last full calendar year of the Biden administration. The appendix says that in March, the report was "streamlined for better utility and accessibility in the field and by partners, and to be more responsive to the underlying legislative mandate and aligned to the administration's executive orders."
As CNN detailed:
The latest report was stripped of many of the specific sections included in past reports, including reporting on alleged abuses based on sexual orientation, violence toward women, corruption in government, systemic racial or ethnic violence, or denial of a fair public trial. Some country reports, including for Afghanistan, do address human rights abuses against women.
"We were asked to edit down the human rights reports to the bare minimum of what was statutorily required," said Michael Honigstein, the former director of African Affairs at the State Department's Bureau of Human Rights, Democracy, and Labor. He and his office helped compile the initial reports.
Over the past week, since the draft country reports leaked to the press, the Trump administration has come under fire for its portrayals of El Salvador, Israel, and Russia.
The report on Israel—and the illegally occupied Palestinian territories, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank—is just nine pages. The brevity even drew the attention of Israeli media. The Times of Israel highlighted that it "is much shorter than last year's edition compiled under the Biden administration and contained no mention of the severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza."
Since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Israeli forces have slaughtered over 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to local officials—though experts warn the true toll is likely far higher. As Israel has restricted humanitarian aid in recent months, over 200 people have starved to death, including 103 children.
The U.S. report on Israel does not mention the genocide case that Israel faces at the International Court of Justice over the assault on Gaza, or the International Criminal Court arrest warrants issued for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The section on war crimes and genocide only says that "terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah continue to engage in the
indiscriminate targeting of Israeli civilians in violation of the law of armed conflict."
As the world mourns the killing of six more Palestinian media professionals in Gaza this week—which prompted calls for the United Nations Security Council to convene an emergency meeting—the report's section on press freedom is also short and makes no mention of the hundreds of journalists killed in Israel's annihilation of the strip:
The law generally provided for freedom of expression, including for members of the press and other media, and the government generally respected this right for most Israelis. NGOs and journalists reported authorities restricted press coverage and limited certain forms of expression, especially in the context of criticism against the war or sympathy for Palestinians in Gaza.
Noting that "the human rights reports have been among the U.S. government's most-read documents," DAWN senior adviser and 32-year State Department official Charles Blaha said the "significant omissions" in this year's report on Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank render it "functionally useless for Congress and the public as nothing more than a pro-Israel document."
Like Klasing at Amnesty, Sarah Leah Whitson, DAWN's executive director, specifically called out the U.S. secretary of state.
"Secretary Rubio has revamped the State Department reports for one principal purpose: to whitewash Israeli crimes, including its horrific genocide and starvation in Gaza. The report shockingly includes not a word about the overwhelming evidence of genocide, mass starvation, and the deliberate bombardment of civilians in Gaza," she said. "Rubio has defied the letter and intent of U.S. laws requiring the State Department to report truthfully and comprehensively about every country's human rights abuses, instead offering up anodyne cover for his murderous friends in Tel Aviv."
The Tuesday release came after a coalition of LGBTQ+ and human rights organizations on Monday filed a lawsuit against the U.S. State Department over its refusal to release the congressionally mandated report.
This article has been updated with comment from DAWN.
"We will not sit idly by while political leaders manipulate voting maps to entrench their power and subvert our democracy," said the head of Common Cause.
As Republicans try to rig congressional maps in several states and Democrats threaten retaliatory measures, a pro-democracy watchdog on Tuesday unveiled new fairness standards underscoring that "independent redistricting commissions remain the gold standard for ending partisan gerrymandering."
Common Cause will hold an online media briefing Wednesday at noon Eastern time "to walk reporters though the six pieces of criteria the organization will use to evaluate any proposed maps."
The Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group said that "it will closely evaluate, but not automatically condemn, countermeasures" to Republican gerrymandering efforts—especially mid-decade redistricting not based on decennial censuses.
Amid the gerrymandering wars, we just launched 6 fairness criteria to hold all actors to the same principled standard: people first—not parties. Read our criteria here: www.commoncause.org/resources/po...
[image or embed]
— Common Cause (@commoncause.org) August 12, 2025 at 12:01 PM
Common Cause's six fairness criteria for mid-decade redistricting are:
"We will not sit idly by while political leaders manipulate voting maps to entrench their power and subvert our democracy," Common Cause president and CEO Virginia Kase Solomón said in a statement. "But neither will we call for unilateral political disarmament in the face of authoritarian tactics that undermine fair representation."
"We have established a fairness criteria that we will use to evaluate all countermeasures so we can respond to the most urgent threats to fair representation while holding all actors to the same principled standard: people—not parties—first," she added.
Common Cause's fairness criteria come amid the ongoing standoff between Republicans trying to gerrymander Texas' congressional map and Democratic lawmakers who fled the state in a bid to stymie a vote on the measure. Texas state senators on Tuesday approved the proposed map despite a walkout by most of their Democratic colleagues.
Leaders of several Democrat-controlled states, most notably California, have threatened retaliatory redistricting.
"This moment is about more than responding to a single threat—it's about building the movement for lasting reform," Kase Solomón asserted. "This is not an isolated political tactic; it is part of a broader march toward authoritarianism, dismantling people-powered democracy, and stripping away the people's ability to have a political voice and say in how they are governed."
"Texas law is clear: A pregnant person cannot be arrested and prosecuted for getting an abortion. No one is above the law, including officials entrusted with enforcing it," said an ACLU attorney.
When officials in Starr County, Texas arrested Lizelle Gonzalez in 2022 and charged her with murder for having a medication abortion—despite state law clearly prohibiting the prosecution of women for abortion care—she spent three days in jail, away from her children, and the highly publicized arrest was "deeply traumatizing."
Now, said her lawyers at the ACLU in court filings on Tuesday, officials in the county sheriff's and district attorney's offices must be held accountable for knowingly subjecting Gonzalez to wrongful prosecution.
Starr County District Attorney Gocha Ramirez ultimately dismissed the charge against Gonzalez, said the ACLU, but the Texas bar's investigation into Ramirez—which found multiple instances of misconduct related to Gonzalez's homicide charge—resulted in only minor punishment. Ramirez had to pay a small fine of $1,250 and was given one year of probated suspension.
"Without real accountability, Starr County's district attorney—and any other law enforcement actor—will not be deterred from abusing their power to unlawfully target people because of their personal beliefs, rather than the law," said the ACLU.
The state bar found that Ramirez allowed Gonzalez's indictment to go forward despite the fact that her homicide charge was "known not to be supported by probable cause."
Ramirez had denied that he was briefed on the facts of the case before it was prosecuted by his office, but the state bar "determined he was consulted by a prosecutor in his office beforehand and permitted it to go forward."
"Without real accountability, Starr County's district attorney—and any other law enforcement actor—will not be deterred from abusing their power to unlawfully target people because of their personal beliefs, rather than the law."
Sarah Corning, an attorney at the ACLU of Texas, said the prosecutors and law enforcement officers "ignored Texas law when they wrongfully arrested Lizelle Gonzalez for ending her pregnancy."
"They shattered her life in South Texas, violated her rights, and abused the power they swore to uphold," said Corning. "Texas law is clear: A pregnant person cannot be arrested and prosecuted for getting an abortion. No one is above the law, including officials entrusted with enforcing it."
The district attorney's office sought to have the ACLU's case dismissed in July 2024, raising claims of legal immunity.
A court denied Ramirez's motion, and the ACLU's discovery process that followed revealed "a coordinated effort between the Starr County sheriff's office and district attorney's office to violate Ms. Gonzalez's rights."
The officials' "wanton disregard for the rule of law and erroneous belief of their own invincibility is a frightening deviation from the offices' purposes: to seek justice," said Cecilia Garza, a partner at the law firm Garza Martinez, who is joining the ACLU in representing Gonzalez. "I am proud to represent Ms. Gonzalez in her fight for justice and redemption, and our team will not allow these abuses to continue in Starr County or any other county in the state of Texas."
Gonzalez's fight for justice comes as a wrongful death case in Texas—filed by an "anti-abortion legal terrorist" on behalf of a man whose girlfriend use medication from another state to end her pregnancy—moves forward, potentially jeopardizing access to abortion pills across the country.