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For Immediate Release
February, 25 2020, 11:00pm EDT
Contact:
Mark Morgenstein, Director of Media Relations, markm@publicinterestnetwork.org, (w) 303-573-5556, (c) 678-427-1671
Environment America, Dozens More Groups Sign Climate Strong Islands Declaration
Declaration calls for more sustainable, resilient island communities.
SAN JUAN, P.R.
Representing Americans from Guam to St. Croix, more than 60 U.S. island communities, foundations, environmental organizations, companies, and academic institutions came together Wednesday to sign the Climate Strong Islands Declaration. This first-of-its kind effort is designed to encourage philanthropy, government, business, and academia to recognize how the deepening climate crisis is affecting island communities and how current policies, programs and approaches fall short in meeting their needs.
The Climate Strong Islands Declaration sets forth a set of principles, challenges, and opportunities faced by islands in the United States and its territories and serves as a call to help these communities respond to the climate crisis in an effective way.
With the right support, island communities are well positioned to create, pilot, and perfect innovative solutions that address climate mitigation, resilience, and sustainability. They can pioneer nature-based solutions to prevent coastal erosion in the face of rising sea levels and intensifying storms. With sustained and focused investments, they are poised to transform their energy, transportation, food, and water systems and model the low-carbon, resilient economy we need to build in the 21st century.
Wendy Wendlandt, acting president of Environment America, participated in the announcement of the Declaration and released the following statement:
Environment America has affiliates in more than two dozen states, including many with vibrant island communities. Our people on the ground see firsthand how island residents bravely face down climate impacts, from hurricanes to sea-level rise, and the devastating flooding and storm surges that they can bring. The destruction wrought by Hurricane Maria here in Puerto Rico and throughout the Caribbean made it clear to those who don't live it each day: To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, we need to act--and act NOW. For everyone's sake, it's imperative that we stop burning fossil fuels and switch to increasingly abundant renewable energy to electrify everything in our society, from buildings to transportation and more.
Transportation has become climate enemy number one in the United States. The U.S. transportation sector is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire economies of France and the United Kingdom combined. We just released a report yesterday providing a roadmap to a destination of zero-carbon transportation to ensure that our children live in safer, healthier communities. We know how to do it -- with clean, electric cars and buses, and pedestrian-friendly and bicycle-friendly streets. We just need to convince our elected officials that we have the will to make these changes to our outdated, car-centric culture. And as we power our society more and more with clean, renewable energy, we can also power our transportation system with energy we harness from the sun and the wind.
We owe it to our friends here in Puerto Rico and on all endangered islands to step up to the climate challenge and take bold action.
The full list of signatories includes:
350.org
Abruna & Musgrave Architects
America's WETLAND Foundation
Atlantic Marine Conservation Society
Boricuas Unidos en la Diaspora
Brigadas Salubristas
Cambio, Puerto Rico
Citizen's Campaign for the Environment
Clean Energy Group
Comite Dialogo Ambiental
Coral Vita
Defend H2O
El Puente
El Puente: Enlace Latino de Accion Climatica
Emerge Puerto Rico
Enterprise
Environment America
Environmental Defense Fund
Estuario
Friends of the Bay
Friends of the Earth United States
Fundacion Amigos de El Yunque
Fundacion Comunitaria de Puerto Rico
Futures Forum
Galveston Bay Foundation
Global Island Partnership
Governor of Guam
Green Cross
Guam Legislature
Hawai'i Youth Climate Coalition
Hawai'i Green Growth
Hispanic Federation
Institute of Caribbean Studies
Island Impact
Island Institute
Kua'aina Ulu 'Auamo
Long Island Community Foundation
The Miami Foundation
Micronesia Climate Change Alliance
Mujeres de Islas
Natural Area Reserves System
The Nature Conservancy
The New York Community Trust
North Shore Land Alliance
The Ocean Foundation
Open Space Council
Pacific RISA
Para la Naturaleza
Puerto Rico Bar Association
Queremos Sol
Rocky Mountain Institute
Sea Grant Puerto Rico
Sierra Club
Sisters of St. Joseph, Brentwood NY
Solar Responders
SWEEP Standard
Sylvester Manor Educational Farm
Trust for Public Land's Hawaiian Islands Program
United Nations Association of the United States of America - Puerto Rico Chapter
University of Guam
University of Guam Center for Island Sustainability
University of Guam Green Army
University of Puerto Rico Center for Public Health Preparedness
University of Puerto Rico Department of Environmental Health
Vieques Conservation and Historical Trust
ViequesLove
Wise Laboratory of Environmental and Genetic Toxicology
With Environment America, you protect the places that all of us love and promote core environmental values, such as clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and clean energy to power our lives. We're a national network of 29 state environmental groups with members and supporters in every state. Together, we focus on timely, targeted action that wins tangible improvements in the quality of our environment and our lives.
(303) 801-0581LATEST NEWS
Lying Trump Says His Approval Is High and Oil Prices Dropping—It’s the Exact Opposite
Trump claimed to have "59% approval" while not a single pollster even has him above water. Meanwhile, oil prices are shooting back up after he restarted the war in Iran.
Jul 13, 2026
It is once again Opposite Day for President Donald Trump, who claimed in a late-night social media post that his approval rating is high and oil prices are dropping, neither of which is actually true.
"59 percent Approval Rating. Prices coming down along with the lowering of oil and gas. Thank you! President DJT," Trump wrote Sunday night on Truth Social.
Trump did not specify what poll had him at 59% approval, presumably because it does not exist. Not a single one of the polls tracked by The New York Times or RealClearPolling's aggregators shows Trump even breaking even with the public.
The Times average as of Monday morning has his approval rating at 39%, with 58% disapproval—on par with the worst metrics of his second term. RCP’s average is only slightly more merciful, showing the president’s approval at just under 40% and his disapproval at 57%.
Even the GOP-friendly pollster Rasmussen shows him with just 44% approval and 54% disapproval—generous outlier numbers for the president.
It is, of course, possible that Trump was referring to some heavily massaged poll that only he has seen, though he has a long history of inflating his popularity while claiming that polls showing otherwise are "fake news."
The price of oil, on the other hand, is something that can't be faked, though it didn't stop Trump from trying.
This weekend, Trump launched a new series of attacks against Iran, after declaring earlier in the week that the peace framework signed last month was “over” and saying negotiations were a “waste of time.”
Iran responded by announcing late Saturday night that it would seal off the Strait of Hormuz to most traffic, once again choking off a main route for global oil and gas transport.
Asked about the closure on Sunday, Trump told reporters, "I don't want to talk about it."
His post seems to reveal a further commitment to denying reality. Contrary to his claim about the "lowering of oil and gas," US gas prices on Monday averaged $3.87 per gallon, up from $3.80 a week earlier.
Meanwhile, the price of Brent crude has shot up by more than 9% over the past week, from $72 per barrel last Monday to nearly $79 as of this writing. At the time of Trump’s tweet, oil prices had already climbed by about 4% and continued to increase into Monday morning.
Prices are down from the war's height in the springtime, when gas surpassed $4.50 per gallon and a barrel of oil cost more than $110. But crude prices are still 9% higher than prewar, while gas is up about 31%, with companies capitalizing on the war to pad their profit margins at the expense of consumers and businesses.
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"This is what happens when you go against corporate America and their allies," said the United Auto Workers president.
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United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain issued a fiery statement on Sunday vowing to "fight back hard" as President Donald Trump's Justice Department launched a probe into allegations that the union leader abused his authority to seek benefits for his fiancée and her sister.
Fain rejected the claims as "false" and accused UAW vice president Rich Boyer, who is vying for the union presidency, of "trying to weaponize these bogus allegations to steal the upcoming UAW election." Fain also hit out at court-appointed federal monitor Neil Barofsky, whom the union president accused of harboring "a political grudge against me because the UAW took an anti-war stance about what was happening in Gaza."
"Rich Boyer has fed the monitor false allegations about me," said Fain. "We're going to fight back hard."
In 2023, Fain emerged as one of the most prominent union leaders in the nation during the UAW's weeks-long "Stand Up Strike" against the Big Three automakers, which yielded historic contracts for UAW members. On Sunday, Fain suggested that the union's successes under his leadership are fueling his opponents' attacks.
"This is what happens when you go against corporate America and their allies," said Fain, "and I'm not going to be intimidated or harassed out of serving our membership."
Bloomberg reported Sunday that the US Justice Department has launched a grand jury probe into allegations that Fain "sought a financial bonus for his fiancée and pushed for a worker’s compensation claim for her sister."
"He allegedly retaliated against Boyer for refusing to approve the benefits by stripping the official of his duties as chief negotiator with Stellantis NV, the maker of Jeep and Ram vehicles," Bloomberg noted. "The allegations became public last month in a report by the court-appointed monitor."
Fain on Sunday denied retaliating against Boyer. "The truth when it comes to Boyer," Fain said, "is that I didn't want him running the Stellantis Department because he wasn't doing a good job for our members."
The UAW president went on to accuse Boyer of trying to "hire family members into UAW positions" and failing to enforce the union's contract with Stellantis.
"Boyer is bad for our union and I'm not going to let him use the monitor's bogus investigation so he can try to fail upwards into a bigger title," said Fain. "Our election is in six weeks. Neil Barofsky will not run our union, no matter how hard he tries. And no company sellout like Boyer is going to dictate our elections."
Barofsky was appointed as UAW monitor in 2021—around two years before Fain was sworn in as union president—as part of a consent decree with the Justice Department in the wake of a corruption investigation.
Relations between Fain and Barofsky have reportedly been strained since late 2023, when the UAW became the largest union in the US to call for a ceasefire in Gaza as the Palestinian enclave faced a massive Israeli assault.
Shortly after the UAW's demand, according to The Detroit News, Barofsky "called Fain for a personal conversation related to the ceasefire statement and other issues around the war—a call Fain would later indicate made him uncomfortable, and that a union lawyer told Barofsky was out of line."
In February 2024, weeks after the UAW's ceasefire call, Fain and Barofsky had an "expletive-laden discussion" that Fain says "led to the monitor launching an investigation into him," The Detroit News reported last week. Fain reportedly said at one point during the February phone meeting that Barofsky accused the union leader of being antisemitic, which Fain furiously denied.
"For anybody to ever f------ say I'm antisemitic, brother, I'll fight your ass in front of this building in a heartbeat," Fain said, according to The Detroit News. "I do not f------ like that, and I don't appreciate it."
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The shooting in the coastal town of Biddeford comes less than a week after Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was killed by federal immigration agents in Houston, Texas.
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This is a developing story. Please check back for possible updates.
The speaker of Maine's state House of Representatives said the FBI was expected to investigate Monday morning after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were reportedly "involved" in a fatal shooting in Biddeford—the second shooting involving ICE on the streets of an American city in less than a week.
"This morning a shooting occurred in Biddeford," said Speaker Ryan Doughty Fecteau, a Democrat. "A person was killed. ICE was involved. State Police and the Department of Public Safety are now on scene to gather details and would expect the FBI to investigate as well."
Few details were known about the shooting initially. Some streets in the town, located about 18 miles south of Portland, were closed due to an "active crime scene," according to News Center Maine.
Former state Senate President Troy Jackson, a progressive who is running to be the state's Democratic candidate for US Senate, expressed solidarity with the town "and with all Mainers"—who include about 56,000 immigrants, many of whom have lived in fear of President Donald Trump's mass deportation and detention operation in recent months.
A Biddeford resident named Daniel Boucher told The Portland Press Herald he had heard a loud sound outside "like fireworks going off" while he was getting ready for work, and rushed to the window where he saw "an SUV trying to ram a small white car in the intersection" near his house.
Agents in vests stopped the car and pulled a man out of the vehicle.
“He was bleeding profusely from the head,” Boucher told the Press Herald. “He was talking. He said, ‘I tried to stop.'”
Another resident identified as Em said she thought she had heard several gunshots around 7:15 am:
Em, who asked to be identified only by first name because of her fear of ICE, watched from her window as the small white car circle in the intersection as if the driver had no control.The Press Herald posted a video showing a white car circling in an intersection before an officer appeared to try to stop it.
“Two plain clothes ICE agents with vests on pressed up against the driver’s side door trying to guide it to not hit anything,” she said. “All of a sudden it seemed like six people with vests on were running down the street. I didn’t know where they were coming from.”
Em said agents appeared to crash a vehicle into the smaller car to get it to stop, then the driver was pulled out.
“No one went to him and no one did anything,” she said, her voice choking with tears.
(Video: Portland Press Herald)
Another eyewitness, identified as 18-year-old Lucas Scott, described a car "trying to hit the ICE officer." Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said he had "some doubts as to intent" and noted that "trying to flee in panic is far more common than trying to hit anyone."
Trump's deployment of ICE in Maine briefly received national attention in January. Federal agents have continued to arrest members of immigrant communities in the state after Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) claimed she had received assurances from the Department of Homeland Security that the "surge" in ICE agents had ended.
Residents of Biddeford told the Press Herald they had noticed increased ICE activity in the historic working-class town in recent weeks.
Jordan Wood, an organizer who is also running for US Senate following former Democratic candidate Graham Platner's withdrawal from the race to unseat Collins, said Monday that "ICE is dangerously out of control and an embarrassment to our country."
"We are waiting for more details, and Mainers deserve the full truth," said Wood, adding a call to abolish ICE "and replace it with an agency that answers to the people."
The shooting came days after Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old construction worker in Houston, Texas, was killed by an ICE agent.
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, another US Senate candidate, noted that at least 11 people have now been killed by ICE or Border Patrol agents this year.
The local group Biddeford Saco for Racial Justice said a protest would be held at nearby Mechanics Park at noon local time.
Jackson said he would be attending.
"We all need answers," he said in a video he posted on social media, "and we deserve to know what happened here."
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