February, 10 2016, 07:15am EDT
350.org Reacts to Supreme Court Decision on Clean Power Plan
350.org Communications Director Jamie Henn issued the following response to the news that the Supreme Court would temporarily block the Clean Power Plan, the Obama administration's attempt to limit greenhouse gas emissions from coal fired power plant:
WASHINGTON
350.org Communications Director Jamie Henn issued the following response to the news that the Supreme Court would temporarily block the Clean Power Plan, the Obama administration's attempt to limit greenhouse gas emissions from coal fired power plant:
"If there was ever a Supreme Court decision that looked backwards instead of towards the future, this was it," said Henn. "If left to conservatives on the court, we'll be stuck addressing climate change with 'all deliberate speed.' Make no mistake, this case was brought forward on behalf of the fossil fuel industry and companies like ExxonMobil who will hold back change by any means necessary, but their days are numbered. The American people overwhelmingly support efforts to fight climate change and momentum is on our side."
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.
LATEST NEWS
Add $24 Million Worth of Pro-Trump Tweets to Elon Musk's Campaign Giving Total
"Given the sheer frequency of Elon Musk's posting of disinformation and partisan rhetoric, it is almost inevitable that he will be one of the top spreaders of election-related disinformation in this cycle," one expert said.
Nov 04, 2024
Since richest-man-alive and X-owner Elon Musk endorsed former Donald Trump for president in July, he has emerged as the No. 1. financial backer of Republican candidate's campaign. But his support hasn't only come in outright donations. His tweets in support of the former president, according to a new analysis ,are worth a total of $24 million.
In a report published Monday, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) found that Musk's political posts between July 13 and October 25 received over twice as many views as U.S. "political campaigning ads" run on X during that time. If any of those advertisers had wanted to reach the same number of people as Musk, they would have had to pay $24 million.
"X has long dropped its pretense to be anything but a loudspeaker for its owner's opinions, personal vendettas, and conspiracies," CCDH wrote on the platform as it shared the report.
Since he endorsed Trump, Musk made a total of 746 posts that mentioned key terms such as "Donald Trump," "Kamala Harris," "voting," or "ballots." These posts were viewed a total of 17.1 billion times compared with 7.7 billion times for all paid political ads.
What's more, at least 87 of Musk's election-themed posts between January 1 and October 23 contained "false or misleading about the presidential election."
These were seen 2 billion times, and none of them was appended by a "community note," a mechanism by which X users can fact-check or provide context to inaccurate posts.
CCDH pointed to two main genres of misleading tweet shared by Musk: those claiming that the Democratic Party was importing immigrant voters and those claiming that U.S. voting systems are not reliable.
For example, on September 18, Musk wrote: "The Dem administrative state is flying millions of future voters directly into swing states. They are being sent to cities and towns throughout Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Arizona. Given that this is a sure path to permanent one-party rule, it is a very smart strategy."
Musk made more than 66 posts along these lines that were seen nearly 1.3 billion times.
Fact-checkers say these claims are false because it takes years for an immigrant to become a U.S. citizen and to be able to vote, and there would be no guarantee that such a person would vote for the Democrats. Existing laws already penalize noncitizens who vote with either deportation or incarceration.
In an example of the second category of lie, Musk wrote on September 4 that "not requiring ID, combined with mail in voting, makes it completely impossible to prove fraud (obviously)."
Musk has made 19 of these types of posts targeting either mail-in or electronic voting, which were viewed almost 532 million times. However, research has shown that voter fraud related to either mail-in voting or drop boxes is exceedingly rare. A full 36 states mandate that voters show an ID before voting, while 14 others have other ways of confirming identity, such as checking a signature against one on file. In all states, voter fraud is against the law.
"Given the sheer frequency of Elon Musk's posting of disinformation and partisan rhetoric, it is almost inevitable that he will be one of the top spreaders of election-related disinformation in this cycle," CCDH founder Imran Ahmed toldCNN.
"He is using the platform to persuade people that elections are rigged," Ahmed continued, adding "it is such a tragic waste of a phenomenally powerful tool."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Ignore the Cosplay. Trump's Record Shows He 'Does Not Give a Damn About Working-Class People'
"Donald Trump left workers behind when he was president," said United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain.
Nov 04, 2024
The final stretch of the 2024 U.S. presidential race has seen Donald Trump, the billionaire Republican nominee, perform a staged shift at a Pennsylvania McDonald's and dress as a garbage truck driver in a clear effort to appeal to working-class voters who are set to play a decisive role in Tuesday's election.
But a detailed examination of Trump's first four-year term in the White House shows that despite his recent cosplaying, the GOP nominee was no ally of the working class when he was in a position to influence and enact policy.
"When Donald Trump was president, he repeatedly tried to raise the rent on at least 4 million of the poorest people in this country, many of them elderly or disabled," the investigative outlet ProPublicareported over the weekend. "He proposed to cut the federal disability benefits of a quarter-million low-income children, on the grounds that someone else in their family was already receiving benefits. He attempted to put in place a requirement that poor parents cooperate with child support enforcement, including by having single mothers disclose their sexual histories, before they and their children could receive food assistance."
Additionally, the outlet noted, Trump "tried to enact a rule allowing employers to pocket workers' tips" and succeeded in enacting "a rule denying overtime pay to millions of low-wage workers if they made more than $35,568 a year"—all of which casts serious doubt on the Republican candidate's pledge to prioritize the economic interests of U.S. workers in a second term.
ProPublica also analyzed Trump's proposed federal budgets from 2018 to 2021 and found that the former president "advanced an agenda across his administration that was designed to cut healthcare, food, and housing programs and labor protections for poor and working-class Americans."
Meanwhile, Trump worked with his Republican allies in Congress to ram through a massive tax cut for the rich and large corporations—a measure he wants to double down on if he defeats Democratic nominee Kamala Harris on Tuesday.
Trump's 2024 campaign has featured some policy proposals aimed at boosting the working class, such as eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay.
But economists and progressive organizers have argued that the benefits of such policy changes would be marginal compared to broader proposals that Trump has not backed, such as raising the federal minimum wage and eliminating subminimum wages for tipped workers. A recent Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy analysis found that Trump's economic plans overall would cut taxes for the richest 5% of U.S. households while raising them for the bottom 95%.
During his McDonald's stunt last month, Trump ignored a question about whether he supports raising the federal minimum wage, which has been stuck at $7.25 an hour for over 15 years. Harris, by contrast, has expressed support for lifting the federal wage floor to at least $15 an hour.
"He does not give a damn about working-class people," United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain said of Trump during an appearance on MSNBC alongside Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) late last week. "Donald Trump left workers behind when he was president. He did nothing to stop manufacturing plants leaving this country."
"With the Harris and Biden administration, we have seen a bigger investment in this country and manufacturing than I have ever seen in my lifetime. They walk the walk," Fain added. "Trump is all talk."
In a video message to the country ahead of Election Day, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) similarly criticized Trump as an opponent of union rights and argued Harris is the "clear" choice for those who want to improve the lives of working-class Americans.
"While some of us may have differences of opinion and disagree with Kamala Harris on this or that issue, I hope very much we will not sit out this election. We cannot sit it out," said Sanders. "So let's get involved. Let's do everything we can. Let's come out and vote on Election Day, and let's make sure that Donald Trump is defeated and that Kamala Harris is our next president."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'The Big Lie Is Back' as Trump's GOP Reboots Felony-Facing Fake Electors
"The election deniers are back at it, laying the groundwork to run the Big Lie playbook once again," warned one swing-state campaigner.
Nov 04, 2024
At least 1 in 5 potential battleground state electors for former U.S. President Donald Trump are linked to the Republican nominee's attempt to subvert the 2020 election, according to an analysis published Monday.
Politico reported that "of the 93 Republicans designated as prospective presidential electors for Trump from the seven battleground states, eight are facing felony charges for signing false Electoral College certificates in 2020."
Five additional possible electors signed similar documents in 2020 but were not criminally charged, according to the reporting, while at least half a dozen others "played notable roles in challenging the results of the 2020 election or promoting election conspiracy theories."
"These people continued to peddle and push not misinformation, which is accidental, but disinformation, which is intentional."
With numerous Trump aides and GOP officials facing criminal charges for their alleged roles in the former president's bogus "Stop the Steal" scheme, experts say it is somewhat less likely that the Republican nominee or his allies would attempt another such plot. However, Trump and his boosters have recycled similar claims of election fraud in what critics say is a bid to spread misinformation and sow doubt about the outcome of Tuesday's contest if the 2020 loser is defeated by Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
"It does show a lack of regard for the criminal and ethical problems with doing this," Mary McCord, a Georgetown law professor and executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, told Politico.
As Politico notes:
Six of the returning fake electors hail from Michigan. John Haggard, Hank Choate, Timothy King, Meshawn Maddock, Amy Facchinello, and Marian Sheridan were among the group of Michiganders who signed a document in 2020 purporting to be official electoral certificates claiming the state’s electoral votes went to Donald Trump, despite Biden winning Michigan by more than 150,000 votes. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, brought felony charges against them, including forgery-related crimes punishable by up to 14 years. Those cases are ongoing and all have pleaded not guilty.
In the battleground state of Wisconsin—where President Joe Biden defeated Trump by less than 21,000 votes, or 0.63%, in 2020—"election deniers are back at it, laying the groundwork to run the Big Lie playbook once again through actions designed to attack the electoral process, sow seeds of chaos set to bloom post-election, and further undermine confidence in our democracy," warned Wisconsin Democracy Campaign executive director Nick Ramos in a Sunday opinion piece in the Cap Times.
"That is exactly what their antics wrought after the 2020 election—chaos resulting in the January 6 insurrection and years of baseless conspiracy theories that did not, and will not, succeed in changing a single election result but did succeed in undermining the confidence of millions of Americans in our democracy," he continued.
"The bullies are back again, continuing their strategy to interfere in Wisconsin's elections," Ramos added.
While some observers claim that would-be election subversives are likely to tread gingerly in light of the potential criminal consequences for alleged Big Lie conspirators, McCord said that "it would appear that the party leadership in the states where there are fraudulent electors serving as electors again are not taking seriously things like the criminal charges that have been brought against these fraudulent electors."
Amy Tarkanian, a former chair of the Nevada Republican Party, told Politico that "these people continued to peddle and push not misinformation, which is accidental, but disinformation, which is intentional."
"It's definitely disappointing," she lamented.
In Arizona—where former state GOP chief Kelli Ward and 11 other Republican officials have been criminally charged in connection with the alleged fake electors scheme—current Republican Party Chair Gina Swoboda has been pushing spurious election fraud claims. This, even as Loraine Pellegrino, a past president of a right-wing women's group who falsely attested that Trump won Arizona in 2020, earlier this year became the first person convicted in the state's fake electors case.
Democracy defenders have sounded the alarm on the potential for violence fueled by baseless claims of election fraud.
The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism said last week that it is "seeing the same warning signs of political violence based on election denialism combined with violent language across fringe platforms that we saw in the weeks before the 2020 election and before the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol."
According to a YouGov poll published Saturday, just over two-thirds of respondents—including more than 80% of surveyed Democrats and 55% of Republicans— believe it is either "somewhat" or "very likely" that Trump will refuse to concede if he loses to Harris.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular