May, 16 2019, 12:00am EDT
Fourth Child Has Died After Being Held in U.S. Immigration Custody
Families Belong Together: "President Trump doesn’t care if innocent children die on his watch."
WASHINGTON
Reports late last night confirm a 2 1/2-year-old boy has died after being taken into U.S. immigration custody -- the fourth reported child death in the last six months. Jess Morales Rocketto, Chair of Families Belong Together, released the following response:
"The death of a single child in custody of our government is a horrific tragedy. Four in six months is a clear pattern of willful, callous disregard for children's lives. President Trump doesn't care if innocent children die on his watch, but this country will not stand by while his cruel immigration agenda kills children."
The tally includes, 16-year-old Juan de Leon Gutierrez, 7-year-old Jakelin Caal Maquin and 8-year-old Felipe Alonzo-Gomez. Another 20-month old girl, Mariee Juarez, died shortly after being held with her mother at a family detention center in Texas. Her mother is now suing the government for neglect.
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'Billionaire Bully' for Big Business Defeated in Record-Setting Maryland Primary Race
Prince George's County executive Angela Alsobrooks wins Democratic nomination for open U.S. Senate seat over retail wine magnet David Trone, who self-funded his campaign with over $60 million.
May 15, 2024
Despite spending over $61 million of his own money in the Democratic Primary, wealthy business owner and state Rep. David Trone came up short in Maryland's Democratic primary race for an open U.S. Senate seat on Tuesday, bested by Angela Alsobrooks, executive of Prince George's County.
Due to the self-funding of Trone, co-owner of the Total Wine & More retail chain, the primary became the most expensive in state history. Despite polls showing Trone as the clear favorite leading up Tuesday's vote, Alsobrooks won by a full 12 points. According to the Baltimore Sun, with 100% of precincts reporting, the final tally was 54% to 41.9%.
"For anyone who has ever felt counted out, overlooked and underestimated, I hope you know that the impossible is still possible," Alsobrooks, who had the support of most major players in the Maryland Democratic Party apparatus, told supporters during a victory speech on Tuesday night.
She vowed to defeat the Republican nominee for the seat, former two-term governor Larry Hogan, and said the Democratic Party was "united in our focus to keep the Senate blue."
Political observers took note of the unexpected margin of victory as well as the dynamic of Trone's outsized spending.
"So…. Not a single poll had Alsobrooks winning by anywhere close to double digits, elections absolutely can break late, and campaigns matter," said Colin Seeberger, senior communications director for the Center for American Progress. "Feels like there are some lessons to be learned here for, I don't know, future elections."
Fight Corporate Monopolies, a progressive advocacy group opposed to concentrations of corporate power, opposed Trone based on his fealty to monopoly interests during the primary and called him "just another billionaire bully who thinks he can buy himself a Senate seat."
The group ran one ad comparing Trone to former president Donald Trump and documenting his attacks on rival small businesses and workers:
“I will f*#%ing end you. I will execute you!” - David Trone to a delivery worker.
That’s a billionaire bully for you. pic.twitter.com/cjyuJ3GAVq
— Fight Corporate Monopolies (@fightmonopolies) May 13, 2024
Following Tuesday's defeat, Faiz Shakir with Fight Corporate Monopolies, said: "I believe [our] ad against Trone—both in timing and in message—played a key role in changing the trajectory of the Senate race."
John Nichols, veteran political reporter for The Nation, said: "Maryland Democratic voters rejected mega-rich corporate monopolist David Trone in their Senate primary and instead chose highly qualified Prince George's County Executive Angela Alsobrooks to take on Republican Larry Hogan. Good move."
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House Democrat Probes Trump's $1 Billion 'Quid Pro Quo' Deal With Big Oil
Rep. Jamie Raskin expressed concern that some firms, "which have a track record of using deceitful tactics to undermine effective climate policy, may have already accepted or facilitated Mr. Trump's explicit corrupt bargain."
May 14, 2024
A top U.S. House Democrat announced Tuesday that he is demanding answers from fossil fuel executives after Washington Post reporting revealed last week that former Republican President Donald Trump recently told industry leaders he would gut climate regulations if they raised $1 billion for his 2024 presidential campaign.
Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin, ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, on Monday wrote to the heads of the American Petroleum Institute (API) and eight companies: Cheniere Energy, Chesapeake Energy, Chevron, Continental Resources, EQT Corporation, ExxonMobil, Occidental Petroleum, and Venture Global LNG.
Raskin's letters note that the executives "appear to have attended" Trump's fundraising dinner at Mar-a-Lago in Florida last month and "media reports raise significant potential ethical, campaign finance, and legal issues that would flow from the effective sale of American energy and regulatory policy to commercial interests in return for large campaign contributions."
"Mr. Trump's unvarnished quid pro quo offer is especially troubling evidence in light of recent accounts that the 'U.S. oil industry is drawing up ready-to-sign executive orders for Donald Trump aimed at pushing natural gas exports, cutting drilling costs, and increasing offshore oil leases in case he wins a second term,'" he wrote, citing Politico. "These preparatory actions suggest that certain oil and gas companies, which have a track record of using deceitful tactics to undermine effective climate policy, may have already accepted or facilitated Mr. Trump's explicit corrupt bargain."
Raskin also highlighted findings from a January Oversight Committee Democrats staff report, which shows that "when Mr. Trump was in office, he accepted at least $7.8 million from kings, princes, and foreign states, including the People's Republic of China and Saudi Arabia, in blatant violation of the Constitution's foreign emoluments clause, and rendered a sequence of foreign policy favors to his patrons."
The congressman—and constitutional scholar—asked the executives to respond to questions and document requests by May 27. He is seeking the names of employees who attended the April 11 fundraiser, copies of materials distributed during the event, descriptions of all policy proposals and related campaign contributions discussed, and draft executive orders or policy paperwork prepared by members of the companies.
"The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is the principal oversight committee of the House of Representatives and has broad authority to investigate 'any matter' at 'any time,'" Raskin explained. "The requested information is needed to investigate and legislate on matters related to presidential and presidential-candidate ethics and to continue to address the major ethics crisis created by Donald Trump's efforts to profit off the presidency."
As Raskin released the letters on Tuesday, Media Matters for America's Allison Fisher pointed out that "unfortunately, over a four-day period, TV news broadcast and cable networks—with the exception of MSNBC—did not cover Trump's proposition to oil executives."
However, Trump has made his policy plans clear. Even before the fundraiser, he publicly pledged to "drill, baby, drill" if he beats Democratic President Joe Biden in November. One March analysis found that a second Trump term would lead to the release of 4 billion more tons of planet-heating carbon dioxide—the combined annual emissions of the European Union and Japan—by 2030 than if Biden were reelected.
The letters aren't the first time Raskin has taken aim at the fossil fuel industry this month. At the beginning of May, he testified before the U.S. Senate Budget Committee about a nearly three-year investigation into "Big Oil's campaign of deception and distraction," which he said "undermines the efforts we need to mobilize our people and government to save our climate, our habitat, and our species."
"Unless the deception ends, and until the industry is held accountable," the congressman warned, "we are unlikely ever to be able to muster the national political will to effectively tackle climate change."
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Record 76 Million Internally Displaced in 2023, Largely Due to Violence
"We have never, ever recorded so many people forced away from their homes and communities," one expert said. "It is a damning verdict on the failures of conflict prevention and peacemaking."
May 14, 2024
War, conflict, and environmental disasters displaced a record 75.9 million people from their homes at the end of 2023, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center reported Tuesday.
The vast majority of the displaced—68.3 million—were forced from their homes due to conflicts, the highest number since data became available 15 years ago.
"Millions of families are having their lives torn apart by conflict and violence," Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council—which houses IDMC—said in a statement. "We have never, ever recorded so many people forced away from their homes and communities. It is a damning verdict on the failures of conflict prevention and peacemaking."
"This report is a stark reminder of the urgent and coordinated need to expand disaster risk reduction, support peacebuilding, ensure the protection of human rights, and, whenever possible, prevent the displacement before it happens."
The IDMC publishes its Global Report on Internal Displacement every year, which is considered the definitive source for data on internal displacements worldwide. This year's report notes that the number of people displaced within their own countries increased by 51% in the last five years while the number displaced by conflict alone swelled by 49%, spiking in 2022 and 2023. The uptick was primarily due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine as well as renewed or ongoing conflicts in Congo, Ethiopia, and Sudan.
"Over the past two years, we've seen alarming new levels of people having to flee their homes due to conflict and violence, even in regions where the trend had been improving," said IDMC director Alexandra Bilak. "Conflict, and the devastation it leaves behind, is keeping millions from re-building their lives, often for years on end."
In addition to tracking the number of displaced people, the IDMC also looked at the total number of new displacements in 2023. It recorded 46.9 million new movements—20.5 million due to war and conflict and 26.4 million due to natural disasters.
"As the planet grapples with conflicts and disasters, the staggering numbers of 47 million new internal displacements tells a harrowing tale," International Organization for Migration Deputy Director General Ugochi Daniels said in a statement. "This report is a stark reminder of the urgent and coordinated need to expand disaster risk reduction, support peacebuilding, ensure the protection of human rights, and, whenever possible, prevent the displacement before it happens."
Of the 20.5 million conflict-driven displacements last year, nearly two-thirds were due to violence in Sudan, Congo, and Palestine.
In Sudan, renewed hostilities between government and paramilitary forces ignited in April of last year, forcing 6 million new movements and leaving 9.1 million displaced.
"This figure is the highest ever reported for a single country globally since 2008," the report authors wrote.
All told, conflict forced 13.5 million displacements in sub-Saharan Africa, the highest number for the region in 15 years.
Nearly 17% of total conflict displacements in 2023 were forced in Gaza, even though Israel only began its war on the enclave during the last quarter of the year. Although it was only home to around 2.3 million people at the start of the war, Gaza saw 3.4 million displacements, as many people were forced to move multiple times.
"This figure should be considered conservative, because many people were displaced within governorates before moving across them, but such movements were unaccounted for," the report authors explained.
By the end of 2023, around 1.7 million people in Gaza—or 83% of the population— were displaced, "all of them facing acute humanitarian needs," the authors wrote.
The report also says that 7.7 million people were living outside their homes by the end of 2023 due to disasters such as extreme weather and geological events such as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. The 26.4 million disaster-driven displacements were the third-highest amount in the last 10 years.
Displacing disasters in 2023 included climate change-fueled events like cyclone Freddy—which caused 1.4 million displacements in southeast Africa—and Canada's record wildfire season, which fueled 185,000 displacements, the highest number for Canada on record.
"No country is immune to disaster displacement," Bilak said. "But we can see a difference in how displacement affects people in countries that prepare and plan for its impacts and those that don't. Those that look at the data and make prevention, response, and long-term development plans that consider displacement fare far better."
Egeland called for more attention to the plight of displaced people after the initial trigger fades from the headlines.
"The suffering and the displacement last far beyond the news cycle," Egeland said. "Too often their fate ends up in silence and neglect. The lack of protection and assistance that millions endure cannot be allowed to continue."
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