As the U.S. Covid-19 death toll passed 200,000 on Monday, the Government Accountability Office published a report arguing that “timely and concerted federal leadership will be required” to respond to the challenges posed by the combination of an already-strained public health system, the current hurricane season, and the upcoming flu season—an urgent wake-up call coming hours after President Donald Trump gave his pandemic response a “perfect grade.”

The GAO acknowledged the significance of federal assistance allocated by Congress and the White House and made several recommendations for “improving the ongoing federal response” in light of the reality that “the nation faces continued public health risks and economic difficulties for the foreseeable future.”

Because a medical supply chai...

The American Civil Liberties Union joined Florida Democrats on Monday in condemning a proposed bill by Gov. Ron DeSantis that would newly classify certain forms of protest as felonies and impose harsh penalties on some protesters. 

Flanked by Republican lawmakers and law enforcement officials at an afternoon press conference in Winter Haven, DeSantis referred to Black Lives Matter protests in Portland, Oregon as he announced the proposed legislation.

“I look at what goes on in Portland. They’ll have people, they’ll arrest them,” DeSantis said. “They’re all scraggly-looking Antifa-types. They get their mugshot taken, then they get released. It’s like a carousel; on and on it goes.”

“That’s not going to happen in here in Florida,” the governor vowed.

The “Combatting Violence, Disorder, an...

Mourning Ginsburg. Reuters photo

As the America with a brain, heart and moral compass mourn the devastating loss of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her ideals, the thugs running this dumpster fire of a government are feverishly betraying everything she long stood and fought for. Having spent the last four years “strenuously making the case that, excepting a few dictators here and there, he’s the worst person on earth,” Trump is now ensuring “voters know that he’s truly an invasive tumor” by insisting before her body was cold that he’ll try to fill Ginsburg’s Supreme Court seat despite Moscow Mitch and the GOP’s utterly shameless hypocrisy on the subject and the honorable RBG’s own dying, fervent wish, “I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.” It’s all good, he told Fox ...

WASHINGTON – Today, Morgan Stanley announced a new climate commitment to reach net-zero financed emissions by 2050. It is the first major American bank to set such a target, though the announcement did not include details on the bank’s plan to get there.

As a member of the Stop the Money Pipeline Coalition, 350.org North America Director Tamara Toles O’Laughlin issued the following statement:

“Morgan Stanley’s announcement is a step in the right direction — for a decade ago. As a major in finance and securities and a driver of funds toward environmental devastation, we expected action beyond rhetoric. This is not it. As the West burns and storms line up in the Atlantic, today’s actions are late and little...

WASHINGTON – ICE confirmed the 20th person to die in its detention in Fiscal Year 2020 today. The death of Cipriano Chavez-Alvarez at Stewart Detention Facility in Georgia makes this year the deadliest for people in ICE detention since FY 2005, when 21 people died. FY 2020 is the third deadliest year in ICE’s 17-year history — 28 people died in FY 2004. The fiscal year ends on September 30. Chavez-Alvarez is the third person to die from COVID-19 at Stewart Detention Facility this year.

Since the pandemic began, the ACLU has filed more than 50 lawsuits against ICE detention facilities in states around the country. More than 525 people have been released due to these lawsuits.

Andrea Flores, deputy director of immigration policy at the ACLU, issued the following statement:

“For six m...

WASHINGTON – September 21, 2020]  With the window for public comment closing tomorrow, September 22, individuals and groups opposing Holtec’s “Consolidated ‘Interim’ Storage Facility [CISF] for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High Level Waste” have filed thousands of comments and an organizational sign-on letter urging the NRC to reject Holtec’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement (Docket ID NRC-2018-0052) and deny licensing for the project. 

Holtec is seeking federal approval to take highly radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel, also known as “spent” fuel, shipped from nuclear power plants around the country to New Mexico, where it proposes to store it indefinitely in shallowly buried casks...

Today I wrote to Dr. Robert Redfield calling on him to resign as the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It was not a letter I wrote lightly. But with the events of the past few months, the decision – and the need – to write it could not have been clearer.

Millions of people come to EWG every year for our science-based advice and guides to healthier living, from our Dirty Dozen™ guide to pesticides in produce to our Skin Deep® database of cosmetic product ratings and EWG VERIFIED™ product certification; from our Tap Water Database to our Healthy Living: Home Guide. We develop this information to help people protect themselves and their families for two reasons.

First, because it is in people’s power to take practical, affordable steps to reduce toxic expos...

WASHINGTON – While Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette tours a Shell petrochemical plant under construction in Pennsylvania today, a new analysis shows that the high-profile project will employ far less workers than promised, and that a similar investment in wind and solar manufacturing would be far more beneficial.

The new Food & Water Watch research, “Cracked: The Case For Green Jobs Over Petrochemicals In Pennsylvania,” focuses on the massive Shell petrochemical ‘cracker’ plant outside Pittsburgh.

While early backers of the $6 billion project predicted it would create between 10,000 and 20,000 jobs, the facility will only employ 600 workers. Factoring in the massive $1...

Bank of America’s customers may have noticed that recently the bank has been standing out from the rest of its peers. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been in a good way. Right now, Bank of America is the only major American bank that has not yet ruled out funding for destructive drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Over the last year, every other major American bank—Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Chase, Citi, and Morgan Stanley—have joined more than two dozen financial institutions worldwide in updating their lending policies to exclude funding for new drilling in the Arctic, including the Arctic Refuge. Indigenous human rights are being upheld in these new policies and pave the way towards a just transition into a sustainable economy.

As a growing number of major banks are m...

WASHINGTON – A new investigation published Sunday by a global network of news outlets reveals major flaws in U.S. anti-money laundering safeguards.  Dubbed the “FinCEN Files,” the latest exposé from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and Buzzfeed News spotlights trillions of dollars in dirty money flowing freely through major U.S. and international banks, with few repercussions for bad actors but serious ramifications for national security and public safety.

Clark Gascoigne, interim executive director of the FACT Coalition, issued the following statement:

“Nearly every national security and public safety threat that we face — from terror financing and sanctions evasion to the opioid crisis and human trafficking — is either motivated or facilitated by ...