November, 18 2015, 03:45pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Jamie Henn, Strategy & Communications Director, jamie@350.org, +1-4156019337
Nicolas Haeringer, Campaigner for 350.org in France, nicolas@350.org, +33-650861259
Eros Sana, France Communications Coordinator, eros@350.org, +33-672668220
350.org Response to French Government Prohibition of Climate March and December 12th Mobilization
PARIS
The Prefecture of Police of Paris informed the Coalition Climat 21 this afternoon that due to the heightened security situation, the government will not allow the Global Climate March planned in Paris for 29 November and the mobilizations planned for 12 December.
350.org French Campaigner Nicolas Haeringer issued the following response:
"The government can prohibit these demonstrations, but our voices will not be silenced. While this makes it difficult to go forward with our original plans, we will still find a way for people in Paris to make the call for climate justice heard, and we encourage everyone around the world to join a Global Climate March and raise their voices louder than ever. There's never been a greater need.
While our plans in Paris must change, the movement for climate justice will not slow down. Around the world, marches, demonstrations, and civil disobedience are all planned for the weeks and months ahead. Together, we will continue to stand against violence and hatred with our peace and resolve.
For people around the world, join the Global Climate March in your community to show your support for climate justice. For those who were planning to travel to Paris, still come and join us, and together we'll find a way to take action together."
Over 2,173 events, including over 50 major marches, are planned worldwide as part of the Global Climate March on 28 and 29th of November. Many of the events already planned in Paris for the two weeks of COP21 are also going forward, including the Pathway to Paris concert with Thom Yorke, Patti Smith, Flea and others. Organizers are also encouraging activists to still plan on coming to Paris for the final days of the conference to make sure people, not the polluters or politicians, have the final word.
350 is building a future that's just, prosperous, equitable and safe from the effects of the climate crisis. We're an international movement of ordinary people working to end the age of fossil fuels and build a world of community-led renewable energy for all.
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Trump Admin Threatens Blue State SNAP Funds Unless They Turn Over Recipient Data
"Why is the Trump administration so hellbent on people going hungry?” asked New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, whose state has nearly 3 million food stamp recipients.
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The Trump administration is threatening to strip away funds used to provide food assistance to poor Americans in Democrat-led states beginning next week, unless they provide information identifying who receives benefits.
At a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said states would be denied the ability to access billions of dollars that Congress has appropriated to administer the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), unless they provide the federal government with personal information—including names, Social Security numbers, addresses, birth dates, and immigration status—of aid recipients.
SNAP provides Americans with incomes below 130% of the federal poverty line with roughly $6 per day on average to pay for food. Roughly 1 in 8 Americans—over 42 million—rely on the program. Rollins originally ordered states to provide this information to the government in May in what she said was an effort to verify the eligibility of those receiving benefits.
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As of Tuesday, 29 states had provided the information, but many Democratic ones, including New York and California, had not. Rollins claimed that those states were choosing to "protect illegals, criminals, and bad actors over the American taxpayer.”
While the benefits paid to individuals would not be cut, states that don't comply stand to lose millions of dollars that they use to administer the program, which could delay benefits and force them to push some recipients off the program.
In its efforts to enact sweeping cuts to social safety net programs like SNAP, Medicaid, and Affordable Care Act insurance subsidies, the Trump administration has often fallen back on false claims that the services are being abused by ineligible people, including undocumented immigrants.
"Undocumented immigrants are not eligible to receive federal benefits under [SNAP]," explained Melissa Cruz of the American Immigration Council in November. "However, SNAP benefits are provided to households rather than individuals. If, for example, the head of a household is undocumented, they may still apply for SNAP benefits for their U.S. citizen children. But benefits are calculated based on the number of eligible people in the household, so the assistance would only cover the US citizen children—not the entire household.”
Rollins has elsewhere claimed that 186,000 deceased individuals receive benefits, while 500,000 individuals receive duplicate benefits, citing it as evidence of fraud. But as the current US Department of Agriculture website explains, these are the result of administrative efforts—such as states being slow to update eligibility rolls when recipients die or move to a new state. The USDA says that over the past 15 years, it has reduced the prevalence of illegal benefit trafficking in SNAP from 4% to 1%.
The USDA's order comes on the heels of the largest cut to SNAP in the program's history. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by Trump in July, cut funding to the program by roughly 20%.
Like with other programs, Rollins suggested on Tuesday that the goal of USDA's order was not simply to root out "fraud," but to further slash Americans' benefits: “As [former President] Joe Biden was working to buy an election a year ago, he increased food stamp program funding by 40%, so now... we continue to roll that back,” she said.
Rollins' 40% claim is also an exaggeration; according to an estimate by the Cato Institute last month, the spending increase was actually about 21%.
Like President Donald Trump's previous efforts to deny SNAP benefits to states during this fall's government shutdown, the USDA's order has run into legal hurdles.
After 22 states sued, a federal judge in San Francisco, Maxine Chesney, issued a preliminary injunction in October blocking the administration from demanding the data.
Chesney found that these actions likely violated the SNAP Act, which says that states are only allowed to release data related to administering the program. She also found that states would likely succeed in their argument that the administration might illegally share the data with other agencies, like the Department of Homeland Security, to aid mass deportation efforts.
Gina Plata-Nino, the SNAP director at the nonprofit Food Research and Action Center, told the Washington Post that the USDA's demands for this data were likely illegal.
“The federal law restricts USDA access to this,” Plata-Nino said. “The agency has always relied on anonymized data or small samples to perform oversight… Them saying, ‘We’re going to go ahead and remove this funding,’ it’s just so unprecedented.”
The Democrats on the House Agriculture Committee accused Trump and Rollins of "illegally threatening to withhold federal dollars."
"SNAP has one of the lowest fraud rates of any government program, but Trump continues to weaponize hunger," they said.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), whose state had nearly 3 million food stamp recipients as of 2024, asked why Trump was again threatening to strip the state of SNAP funding after his previous attack on the program during the shutdown.
"Genuine question: Why is the Trump administration so hellbent on people going hungry?” Hochul asked.
Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst who focuses on SNAP and other antipoverty programs at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, noted that while cutting funds, Trump has also scrapped the nation's most comprehensive food insecurity survey, the Household Food Security Report, which would measure the effects of those cuts on Americans.
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President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced that he was pardoning Democratic US Rep. Henry Cuellar, who was indicted by the Department of Justice in 2024 on charges of bribery, conspiracy, and money laundering.
In justifying the pardon, Trump baselessly claimed that the Texas lawmaker was the victim of vindictive prosecution by former President Joe Biden in supposed retaliation for Cuellar's criticisms of Biden's immigration policies.
"Henry, I don't know you, but you can sleep well tonight," Trump wrote at the end of his pardon announcement. "Your nightmare is finally over!"
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