December, 15 2019, 11:00pm EDT
Nationwide Mobilization for Impeachment in More Than 500 Communities in All 50 States and D.C.
Pro-Impeachment Actions to Take Place Tuesday; 150,000 RSVPed for ‘Nobody Is Above the Law’ Events on Eve of Expected House Impeachment Vote
WASHINGTON
More than 500 "Nobody Is Above the Law" mobilizations in all 50 states and the District of Columbia are being organized by more than 100 organizations on Dec. 17 the night before the U.S. House of Representatives votes whether to impeach President Donald Trump, with more than 150,000 grassroots activists signed up via impeach.org to rally in support of impeachment.
Over the past three weeks, members of the U.S. House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees have built a case against Trump from the testimony and public comments of national security officials and diplomats. These nonpartisan career officials have observed the president attempting to extract personal political concessions from Ukraine in exchange for approved taxpayer military aid and an Oval Office meeting.
On Dec. 17, the eve of the House vote, protesters will gather in front of the district offices of House members as lawmakers finalize their positions. They also will gather at U.S. Senate offices and other locations, as senators prepare for a likely trial. Activists will call on lawmakers to uphold the U.S. Constitution and their oaths of office by supporting Trump's impeachment.
The evidence is overwhelming that Trump pressured Ukraine to interfere in our 2020 elections, using U.S. military aid and a White House meeting to extort Ukrainian officials into manufacturing fake dirt on Trump's political opponent. He then engaged in a criminal cover-up, obstructing Congress, defying lawful subpoenas, blocking witnesses from testifying and concealing evidence.
While Congress continues its work on health care, the economy and other important issues, it also needs to continue these impeachment proceedings. Nobody - including the president - is above the law, and Trump's corruption and abuse of power represent an ongoing and imminent threat to the integrity of the 2020 elections.
Americans from Beckley, W.Va., to Yuma, Ariz., from Juneau, Alaska, to Fargo, N.D. to Cape Coral, Fla., are ready to amplify the need to impeach, hold their representatives accountable and declare that not even the president is above the law.
Activists who want to get involved can RSVP for an #impeachmenteve "Nobody Is Above the Law" event via impeach.org or participate in a town hall or rally in their district.
The Nobody Is Above the Law actions are organized by more than 100 organizations: ACRONYM, act.tv, Action Group Network, Action Indivisible, Avaaz Bend the Arc, Jewish Action, Blue Future, BlueWaveNJ, By The People, Center for American Progress, Center for Popular Democracy, Central Texas MoveOn, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Coalition to Preserve, Protect & Defend, Common Defense, Concord Indivisible, CREDO Action, CREW, Daily Kos, Defend American Democracy, Demand Justice, DemCast, DemCastUSA, Democracy 21, Democracy for America, Demos, Dinuba Democratic Club. Equal Justice Society, Florida LGBTQ+ Democratic Caucus, Free Speech For People, Georgia Alliance for Social Justice, Greenpeace, Herd on the Hill, Impeachment March - Worldwide, Indivisible, Indivisible Chicago Alliance, Indivisible Georgia Coalition, Indivisible St Johns, FL, Indivisible Topeka, Kansas, Indivisible York, Indivisible NWIL Crystal Lake, Institute for More Positive Energy And Compassionate Healthcare, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Lewis-Clark 4 Democracy, Lower Cape Indivisible: United in Hope, Mainers for Accountable Leadership, March For Truth, MAYDAY America, Mijente, MomsRising.org, Mountain Dems of Colorado, Move to Remove, MoveOn.org, NAACP, National Action Network, National Action Network - LGBTQ & Veteran's Committee, National Domestic Workers Alliance, National Organization of Women, National Partnership for Women & Families, Need To Impeach, NextGen America, OWS Special Projects Affinity Group, PDA-CA, People For the American Way, People's Action, The People's Consortium, Poder Latinx, Progressive Democrats Of America, Progressive Turnout Project, Public Citizen, RepresentUs WNY, Resistbot, SEIU, Sierra Club, SOSAmerica2019, South Beach District 6 Democratic Club of San Francisco, STAND Central New Jersey, Stand Up America, Strong Economy For All Coalition, Torah Trumps Hate, UltraViolet, United We Dream, Vigil for Democracy, Voto Latino, United for Democracy Now, Western Washington Fellowship of Reconciliation, Women's March.
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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'Epic Ocean Victory': Biden Permanently Bans Offshore Drilling Across 625 Million Acres
The authority President Joe Biden used could make it difficult for the incoming Trump administration to reverse the sweeping drilling ban.
Jan 06, 2025
Outgoing President Joe Biden on Monday moved to permanently ban offshore oil and gas drilling across more than 625 million acres of U.S. coastal territory, protecting swaths of the East Coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific, and Alaska's Northern Bering Sea from fossil fuel exploitation just before President-elect Donald Trump is set to retake power.
Biden said in a statement that his decision "reflects what coastal communities, businesses, and beachgoers have known for a long time: that drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation's energy needs."
Invoking the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill—the largest in U.S. history—Biden said future drilling off the coasts he's seeking to protect "is not worth the risks." Recent polling indicates that a majority of the American public agrees: 64% support action to shield U.S. coastlines from new offshore drilling, according to a 2024 survey conducted by Ipsos on behalf of the advocacy group Oceana.
"As the climate crisis continues to threaten communities across the country and we are transitioning to a clean energy economy," the president said Monday, "now is the time to protect these coasts for our children and grandchildren."
Biden's move comes just two weeks before Trump, a fervent champion of fossil fuel drilling, is set to be sworn in as the nation's 47th president. During his first term in office, Trump moved to expand offshore drilling to nearly all U.S. coastal waters before temporarily banning drilling off the coasts of Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina in 2020.
The far-right Project 2025 agenda crafted by members of Trump's first administration calls for a major increase in offshore fossil fuel drilling.
"Our treasured coastal communities are now safeguarded for future generations."
While Trump and his proposed Cabinet—which is stacked with allies of the oil and gas industry—is expected to aggressively roll back climate protections put in place by the Biden administration, the outgoing president's new executive action could have staying power.
In a fact sheet, the White House said Biden is using his authority under Section 12(a) of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to "protect all U.S. Outer Continental Shelf areas off the East and West coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and additional portions of the Northern Bering Sea in Alaska from future oil and natural gas leasing." The withdrawals, according to the White House, "have no expiration date, and prohibit all future oil and natural gas leasing in the areas withdrawn."
As The Washington Postobserved, "a federal judge ruled in 2019 that such withdrawals cannot be undone without an act of Congress.
"Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), the new chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, suggested that he would seek to overturn the decision using the Congressional Review Act, which allows lawmakers to nullify an executive action within 60 days of enactment with a simple majority vote," the Post added.
A spokesperson for Trump's transition team called Biden's action "disgraceful," adding, "Rest assured, Joe Biden will fail, and we will drill, baby, drill."
Predictably, the fossil fuel lobby also denounced Biden's executive action and implored lawmakers to "use every tool at their disposal to reverse this politically motivated decision."
While Biden has faced criticism from environmentalists throughout his four-year term for approving drilling permits in the face of intensifying climate chaos in the U.S. and around the world, advocates celebrated the president's latest executive action as a critical win.
"This is an epic ocean victory!" said Joseph Gordon, campaign director at Oceana. "Thank you, President Biden, for listening to the voices from coastal communities and contributing to the bipartisan tradition of protecting our coasts."
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The US Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute - representing the biggest fossil fuel companies in the world - are suing the State of Vermont over its new law requiring fossil fuel companies to pay a share of the state's damage caused by climate change.
The lawsuit, filed last Monday in the US District Court for the District of Vermont, asks a state court to prevent Vermont from enforcing the law passed last year. Vermont became the first state in the country to enact the law after it suffered over $1 billion in damages from catastrophic summer flooding and other extreme weather.
Vermont’s Attorney General’s Office said as of Friday, Jan. 3, they had not been served with the lawsuit.
The lawsuit argues that the U.S. Constitution precludes the act and that the federal Clean Air Act preempts state law. It also claims that the law violates domestic and foreign commerce clauses by discriminating “against the important interest of other states by targeting large energy companies located outside of Vermont.”
The Chamber and the American Petroleum Institute argue that the federal government is already addressing climate change. Because greenhouse gases come from billions of individual sources, they claim it has been impossible to measure “accurately and fairly” the impact of emissions from a particular entity in a specific location over decades.
“For too long, giant fossil fuel companies have knowingly lit the match of climate disruption without being required to do a thing to put out the fire,” Paul Burns, executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, said in a statement. “Finally, maybe for the first time anywhere, Vermont is going to hold the companies most responsible for climate-driven floods, fires and heat waves financially accountable for a fair share of the damages they’ve caused.”
The complaint is an essential legal test as more states consider holding fossil fuels liable for expensive global warming-intensified events like floods, fires, and more. Maryland and Massachusetts are among the states expected to pursue similar legislation, modeled after the federal law known as Superfund, in 2025.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) signed a similar climate bill into law - the Climate Change Superfund Act- on Dec. 26, pointing to the need to fund climate adaptation projects.
Downtown Montpelier, Vermont was under water on Monday, July 10, 2023 caused by the flooding of the Winooski River. (Photo: John Tully for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Heavy Rains Cause Catastrophic Flooding In Southern Vermont (Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images)
Flooding is seen in downtown Montpelier, Vermont (Photo: John Tully for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
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Renowned Washington Post Cartoonist Quits After Refusal to Publish Critique of Jeff Bezos
Jan 04, 2025
Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes has resigned from the Washington Post, where she has worked since 2008, due to what she claims was editorial interference.
Telnaes claimed an editor at the paper killed her draft cartoon depicting Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and other billionaire tech and media chief executives groveling on their knees at the feet of President-elect Donald Trump.
Along with Bezos, Telnaes depicted Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman bringing Trump sacks of cash. Los Angeles Times owner and billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong was shown with a tube of lipstick.
In a post to her Substack, Telnaes wrote:
“I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations – and some differences – about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time, I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now.”
"As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning because, as they say, “Democracy dies in darkness.”
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