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We hear that Tibetans suffer "demographic aggression" and "cultural genocide". But we do not hear those terms applied to Spanish and French policies toward the Basque minority. We do not hear those terms applied to the US annexation of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1898. And Diego Garcia? In 1973, not so long ago, the UK forcibly deported the entire native Chagossian population from the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. People were allowed one suitcase of clothing. Nothing else. Family pets were gassed, then cremated. Complete ethnic cleansing. Complete cultural destruction. Why? In order to build a big US air base. It has been used to bomb Afghanistan and Iraq, and soon maybe to bomb Iran and Pakistan. Diego Garcia, with nobody there but Brits and Americans, is also a perfect place for rendition, torture and other illegal actions.
When the Olympics come to London in 2012, the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu will certainly lead the demonstrators protesting the "demographic aggression" and "cultural genocide" in Diego Garcia. The UN Secretary General, the President of France, the Chancellor of Germany, the new US President and the entire US Congress will certainly boycott the opening ceremonies.
The height of hypocrisy is this moral posturing about 100 dead in race riots in Lhasa, while the USA, UK and more than 40 nations in the Coalition of the Willing wage a war of aggression against Iraq. This is not "demographic aggression" but raw shock-and-awe aggression. A war crime. A war on civilians, including the intentional destruction of the water and sewage systems, and the electrical grid. More than one million Iraqis are now dead; five million made into refugees. The Western invaders may not be doing "cultural genocide" but they are doing cultural destruction on an immense scale, in the very cradle of Western Civilization. Why is the news filled with demonstrators about Tibet but not about Iraq?
And as everyone knows but few dare say, "demographic aggression" and "cultural genocide" can be applied most accurately to Israel's settlement policies and systematic destruction of Palestinian communities. On this, the Dalai Lama seems silent. Demonstrators don't wave flags for bulldozed homes, destroyed orchards, or dead Palestinian children.
The Chinese Context
The Chinese government is responsible for the well-being and security of one-fourth of humanity. Race riots and rebellion cannot be tolerated, not even when done by Buddhist monks.
Chinese Civilization was already old when the Egyptians began building pyramids. But the last 200 years have not gone well, what with two Opium Wars forcing China to import drugs, and Europeans seizing coastal ports as a step to complete colonial control, then the Boxer Rebellion, the collapse of the Manchu Dynasty, civil war, a brutal invasion and occupation by Japan, more civil war, then Communist consolidation and transformation of society, then Mao's Cultural Revolution. Such events caused tens of millions of people to die. Thus, China's recent history has good reasons why social order is a higher priority than individual rights. Race riots and rebellion cannot be tolerated.
Considering this context, China's treatment of its minorities has been exemplary compared to what the Western world has done to its minorities. After thousands of years of Chinese dominance, there still are more than 50 minorities in China. After a few hundred years of European dominance in North and South America, the original minority cultures have been exterminated, damaged, or diminished.
Chinese currency carries five languages: Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan, Uigur, and Zhuang. In comparison, Canadian currency carries English and French, but no Cree or Inuktitut. If the USA were as considerate of ethnic minorities as is China, then the greenback would be written in English, Spanish, Cherokee and Hawaiian.
In China, ethnic minorities begin their primary schooling in their own language, in a school administered by one of their own community. Chinese language instruction is not introduced until age 10 or later. This is in sharp contrast to a history of coerced linguistic assimilation in most Western nations. The Australian government recently apologized to the Aboriginal minority for taking children from their families, forcing them to speak English, beating them if they spoke their mother tongue. China has no need to make such apology to Tibetans or to other minorities.
China's one-child-policy seems oppressive to Westerners, but it has not applied to minorities, only to the Han Chinese. Tibetans can have as many children as they choose. If Han people have more than one child, they are punished.
There is a similar preference given to minorities when it comes to admission to universities. For example, Tibetan students enter China's elite Peking University with lower exam scores than Han Chinese students.
China is not a perfect nation, but on matters of minority rights, it has been better than most Western nations. And China achieved this in the historical context of restoring itself and recovering from 200 years of continual crisis and foreign invasion.
Historical Claims
National boundaries are not natural. They all arise from history, and all history is disputable. Arguments and evidence can always be found to challenge a boundary. China has long claimed Tibet as part of its territory, though that has been hard to enforce during the past 200 years. The Dalai Lama does not dispute China's claim to Tibet. The recent race riots in Tibet and the anti-Olympics demonstrations will not cause China to shrink itself and abandon part of its territory. Rioters and demonstrators know that.
Foreign governments promoting Tibet separatism and demonstrators demanding Tibet independence should look closer to home. Canadians can campaign for QuAf(c)bec libre. Americans can support separatists in Puerto Rico, Vermont, Texas, California, Hawaii, Guam, and Alaska. Brits can work for a free Wales, and Scotland for the Scots. French can help free Tahitians, New Caledonians, Corsicans, and the Basques. Spaniards can also back the Basques, or the Catalonians. Italians can help Sicilian separatists or the Northern League. Danes can free the Faeroe Islands. Poles can back Cashubians. Japanese can help Okinawan separatists, and Filipinos can help the Moros. Thai can promote Patanni independence; Indonesians can promote Acehnese independence. New Zealanders can leave the islands to the Maori; Australians can vacate Papua. Sri Lankans can help Tamil separatists; Indians can help Sikh separatists.
Nearly every nation has a separatist movement of some kind. There is no need to go to Tibet, to the top of the world, to promote ethnic separatism. China is not promoting separatism in other nations and does not appreciate other nations promoting separatism in China. The people most oppressed, most needing a nation of their own, are the Palestinians. There is a worthy project to promote and to demonstrate about.
Danger of Demonstrations
These demonstrations do not serve Tibetans, but rather use Tibetans for ulterior motives. Many Tibetans, therefore, oppose these demonstrations. Many Chinese remember their history and see the riots in Lhasa and subsequent demonstrations as another attempt by foreign powers to dismember and weaken China. There is grave danger that Chinese might come to fear Tibetans as traitors, resulting in wide spread anti-Tibetan feelings in China.
Fear that an ethnic minority serves foreign forces caused Canada, during World War 1, to imprison its Ukranian minority in concentration camps. For similar reasons, the Ottomans deported their Armenian minority and killed more than a million in death marches. The German Nazis saw the Jewish minority as traitors who caused defeat in World War 1; hence deportations in the 1930s and death camps in the 1940s. During World War 2, both Canada and the USA feared that their Japanese immigrant minorities were traitorous and deported them to concentration camps. Indonesians fearing their Chinese minority, deported 100,000 in 1959 and killed thousands more in 1965. Israel similarly fears its Arab minority, resulting in deportations and oppression.
Hopefully, the Chinese government and the Chinese people will see Tibetans as victims of foreign powers rather than agents of foreign powers. However, if China reacts like other nations have in history and starts systematic severe repression of Tibetans, then today's demonstrators should remember their role in causing that to happen.
Conclusion
The demonstrators now disparaging China serve only to distract themselves and others from seeing and correcting the current failings of their own governments. If the demonstrators will take a moment to listen, they will hear the silence of their own hypocrisy.
The consequences of these demonstrations are 1) China will stiffen its resolve to find foreign influences inciting Tibetans to riot, and 2) the governments of the USA, UK, France and other Western nations will have less domestic criticism for a few weeks. That is all. These demonstrations can come to no good end.
Floyd Rudmin can be contacted by email.
Trump and Musk are on an unconstitutional rampage, aiming for virtually every corner of the federal government. These two right-wing billionaires are targeting nurses, scientists, teachers, daycare providers, judges, veterans, air traffic controllers, and nuclear safety inspectors. No one is safe. The food stamps program, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are next. It’s an unprecedented disaster and a five-alarm fire, but there will be a reckoning. The people did not vote for this. The American people do not want this dystopian hellscape that hides behind claims of “efficiency.” Still, in reality, it is all a giveaway to corporate interests and the libertarian dreams of far-right oligarchs like Musk. Common Dreams is playing a vital role by reporting day and night on this orgy of corruption and greed, as well as what everyday people can do to organize and fight back. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support. |
We hear that Tibetans suffer "demographic aggression" and "cultural genocide". But we do not hear those terms applied to Spanish and French policies toward the Basque minority. We do not hear those terms applied to the US annexation of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1898. And Diego Garcia? In 1973, not so long ago, the UK forcibly deported the entire native Chagossian population from the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. People were allowed one suitcase of clothing. Nothing else. Family pets were gassed, then cremated. Complete ethnic cleansing. Complete cultural destruction. Why? In order to build a big US air base. It has been used to bomb Afghanistan and Iraq, and soon maybe to bomb Iran and Pakistan. Diego Garcia, with nobody there but Brits and Americans, is also a perfect place for rendition, torture and other illegal actions.
When the Olympics come to London in 2012, the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu will certainly lead the demonstrators protesting the "demographic aggression" and "cultural genocide" in Diego Garcia. The UN Secretary General, the President of France, the Chancellor of Germany, the new US President and the entire US Congress will certainly boycott the opening ceremonies.
The height of hypocrisy is this moral posturing about 100 dead in race riots in Lhasa, while the USA, UK and more than 40 nations in the Coalition of the Willing wage a war of aggression against Iraq. This is not "demographic aggression" but raw shock-and-awe aggression. A war crime. A war on civilians, including the intentional destruction of the water and sewage systems, and the electrical grid. More than one million Iraqis are now dead; five million made into refugees. The Western invaders may not be doing "cultural genocide" but they are doing cultural destruction on an immense scale, in the very cradle of Western Civilization. Why is the news filled with demonstrators about Tibet but not about Iraq?
And as everyone knows but few dare say, "demographic aggression" and "cultural genocide" can be applied most accurately to Israel's settlement policies and systematic destruction of Palestinian communities. On this, the Dalai Lama seems silent. Demonstrators don't wave flags for bulldozed homes, destroyed orchards, or dead Palestinian children.
The Chinese Context
The Chinese government is responsible for the well-being and security of one-fourth of humanity. Race riots and rebellion cannot be tolerated, not even when done by Buddhist monks.
Chinese Civilization was already old when the Egyptians began building pyramids. But the last 200 years have not gone well, what with two Opium Wars forcing China to import drugs, and Europeans seizing coastal ports as a step to complete colonial control, then the Boxer Rebellion, the collapse of the Manchu Dynasty, civil war, a brutal invasion and occupation by Japan, more civil war, then Communist consolidation and transformation of society, then Mao's Cultural Revolution. Such events caused tens of millions of people to die. Thus, China's recent history has good reasons why social order is a higher priority than individual rights. Race riots and rebellion cannot be tolerated.
Considering this context, China's treatment of its minorities has been exemplary compared to what the Western world has done to its minorities. After thousands of years of Chinese dominance, there still are more than 50 minorities in China. After a few hundred years of European dominance in North and South America, the original minority cultures have been exterminated, damaged, or diminished.
Chinese currency carries five languages: Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan, Uigur, and Zhuang. In comparison, Canadian currency carries English and French, but no Cree or Inuktitut. If the USA were as considerate of ethnic minorities as is China, then the greenback would be written in English, Spanish, Cherokee and Hawaiian.
In China, ethnic minorities begin their primary schooling in their own language, in a school administered by one of their own community. Chinese language instruction is not introduced until age 10 or later. This is in sharp contrast to a history of coerced linguistic assimilation in most Western nations. The Australian government recently apologized to the Aboriginal minority for taking children from their families, forcing them to speak English, beating them if they spoke their mother tongue. China has no need to make such apology to Tibetans or to other minorities.
China's one-child-policy seems oppressive to Westerners, but it has not applied to minorities, only to the Han Chinese. Tibetans can have as many children as they choose. If Han people have more than one child, they are punished.
There is a similar preference given to minorities when it comes to admission to universities. For example, Tibetan students enter China's elite Peking University with lower exam scores than Han Chinese students.
China is not a perfect nation, but on matters of minority rights, it has been better than most Western nations. And China achieved this in the historical context of restoring itself and recovering from 200 years of continual crisis and foreign invasion.
Historical Claims
National boundaries are not natural. They all arise from history, and all history is disputable. Arguments and evidence can always be found to challenge a boundary. China has long claimed Tibet as part of its territory, though that has been hard to enforce during the past 200 years. The Dalai Lama does not dispute China's claim to Tibet. The recent race riots in Tibet and the anti-Olympics demonstrations will not cause China to shrink itself and abandon part of its territory. Rioters and demonstrators know that.
Foreign governments promoting Tibet separatism and demonstrators demanding Tibet independence should look closer to home. Canadians can campaign for QuAf(c)bec libre. Americans can support separatists in Puerto Rico, Vermont, Texas, California, Hawaii, Guam, and Alaska. Brits can work for a free Wales, and Scotland for the Scots. French can help free Tahitians, New Caledonians, Corsicans, and the Basques. Spaniards can also back the Basques, or the Catalonians. Italians can help Sicilian separatists or the Northern League. Danes can free the Faeroe Islands. Poles can back Cashubians. Japanese can help Okinawan separatists, and Filipinos can help the Moros. Thai can promote Patanni independence; Indonesians can promote Acehnese independence. New Zealanders can leave the islands to the Maori; Australians can vacate Papua. Sri Lankans can help Tamil separatists; Indians can help Sikh separatists.
Nearly every nation has a separatist movement of some kind. There is no need to go to Tibet, to the top of the world, to promote ethnic separatism. China is not promoting separatism in other nations and does not appreciate other nations promoting separatism in China. The people most oppressed, most needing a nation of their own, are the Palestinians. There is a worthy project to promote and to demonstrate about.
Danger of Demonstrations
These demonstrations do not serve Tibetans, but rather use Tibetans for ulterior motives. Many Tibetans, therefore, oppose these demonstrations. Many Chinese remember their history and see the riots in Lhasa and subsequent demonstrations as another attempt by foreign powers to dismember and weaken China. There is grave danger that Chinese might come to fear Tibetans as traitors, resulting in wide spread anti-Tibetan feelings in China.
Fear that an ethnic minority serves foreign forces caused Canada, during World War 1, to imprison its Ukranian minority in concentration camps. For similar reasons, the Ottomans deported their Armenian minority and killed more than a million in death marches. The German Nazis saw the Jewish minority as traitors who caused defeat in World War 1; hence deportations in the 1930s and death camps in the 1940s. During World War 2, both Canada and the USA feared that their Japanese immigrant minorities were traitorous and deported them to concentration camps. Indonesians fearing their Chinese minority, deported 100,000 in 1959 and killed thousands more in 1965. Israel similarly fears its Arab minority, resulting in deportations and oppression.
Hopefully, the Chinese government and the Chinese people will see Tibetans as victims of foreign powers rather than agents of foreign powers. However, if China reacts like other nations have in history and starts systematic severe repression of Tibetans, then today's demonstrators should remember their role in causing that to happen.
Conclusion
The demonstrators now disparaging China serve only to distract themselves and others from seeing and correcting the current failings of their own governments. If the demonstrators will take a moment to listen, they will hear the silence of their own hypocrisy.
The consequences of these demonstrations are 1) China will stiffen its resolve to find foreign influences inciting Tibetans to riot, and 2) the governments of the USA, UK, France and other Western nations will have less domestic criticism for a few weeks. That is all. These demonstrations can come to no good end.
Floyd Rudmin can be contacted by email.
We hear that Tibetans suffer "demographic aggression" and "cultural genocide". But we do not hear those terms applied to Spanish and French policies toward the Basque minority. We do not hear those terms applied to the US annexation of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1898. And Diego Garcia? In 1973, not so long ago, the UK forcibly deported the entire native Chagossian population from the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. People were allowed one suitcase of clothing. Nothing else. Family pets were gassed, then cremated. Complete ethnic cleansing. Complete cultural destruction. Why? In order to build a big US air base. It has been used to bomb Afghanistan and Iraq, and soon maybe to bomb Iran and Pakistan. Diego Garcia, with nobody there but Brits and Americans, is also a perfect place for rendition, torture and other illegal actions.
When the Olympics come to London in 2012, the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu will certainly lead the demonstrators protesting the "demographic aggression" and "cultural genocide" in Diego Garcia. The UN Secretary General, the President of France, the Chancellor of Germany, the new US President and the entire US Congress will certainly boycott the opening ceremonies.
The height of hypocrisy is this moral posturing about 100 dead in race riots in Lhasa, while the USA, UK and more than 40 nations in the Coalition of the Willing wage a war of aggression against Iraq. This is not "demographic aggression" but raw shock-and-awe aggression. A war crime. A war on civilians, including the intentional destruction of the water and sewage systems, and the electrical grid. More than one million Iraqis are now dead; five million made into refugees. The Western invaders may not be doing "cultural genocide" but they are doing cultural destruction on an immense scale, in the very cradle of Western Civilization. Why is the news filled with demonstrators about Tibet but not about Iraq?
And as everyone knows but few dare say, "demographic aggression" and "cultural genocide" can be applied most accurately to Israel's settlement policies and systematic destruction of Palestinian communities. On this, the Dalai Lama seems silent. Demonstrators don't wave flags for bulldozed homes, destroyed orchards, or dead Palestinian children.
The Chinese Context
The Chinese government is responsible for the well-being and security of one-fourth of humanity. Race riots and rebellion cannot be tolerated, not even when done by Buddhist monks.
Chinese Civilization was already old when the Egyptians began building pyramids. But the last 200 years have not gone well, what with two Opium Wars forcing China to import drugs, and Europeans seizing coastal ports as a step to complete colonial control, then the Boxer Rebellion, the collapse of the Manchu Dynasty, civil war, a brutal invasion and occupation by Japan, more civil war, then Communist consolidation and transformation of society, then Mao's Cultural Revolution. Such events caused tens of millions of people to die. Thus, China's recent history has good reasons why social order is a higher priority than individual rights. Race riots and rebellion cannot be tolerated.
Considering this context, China's treatment of its minorities has been exemplary compared to what the Western world has done to its minorities. After thousands of years of Chinese dominance, there still are more than 50 minorities in China. After a few hundred years of European dominance in North and South America, the original minority cultures have been exterminated, damaged, or diminished.
Chinese currency carries five languages: Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan, Uigur, and Zhuang. In comparison, Canadian currency carries English and French, but no Cree or Inuktitut. If the USA were as considerate of ethnic minorities as is China, then the greenback would be written in English, Spanish, Cherokee and Hawaiian.
In China, ethnic minorities begin their primary schooling in their own language, in a school administered by one of their own community. Chinese language instruction is not introduced until age 10 or later. This is in sharp contrast to a history of coerced linguistic assimilation in most Western nations. The Australian government recently apologized to the Aboriginal minority for taking children from their families, forcing them to speak English, beating them if they spoke their mother tongue. China has no need to make such apology to Tibetans or to other minorities.
China's one-child-policy seems oppressive to Westerners, but it has not applied to minorities, only to the Han Chinese. Tibetans can have as many children as they choose. If Han people have more than one child, they are punished.
There is a similar preference given to minorities when it comes to admission to universities. For example, Tibetan students enter China's elite Peking University with lower exam scores than Han Chinese students.
China is not a perfect nation, but on matters of minority rights, it has been better than most Western nations. And China achieved this in the historical context of restoring itself and recovering from 200 years of continual crisis and foreign invasion.
Historical Claims
National boundaries are not natural. They all arise from history, and all history is disputable. Arguments and evidence can always be found to challenge a boundary. China has long claimed Tibet as part of its territory, though that has been hard to enforce during the past 200 years. The Dalai Lama does not dispute China's claim to Tibet. The recent race riots in Tibet and the anti-Olympics demonstrations will not cause China to shrink itself and abandon part of its territory. Rioters and demonstrators know that.
Foreign governments promoting Tibet separatism and demonstrators demanding Tibet independence should look closer to home. Canadians can campaign for QuAf(c)bec libre. Americans can support separatists in Puerto Rico, Vermont, Texas, California, Hawaii, Guam, and Alaska. Brits can work for a free Wales, and Scotland for the Scots. French can help free Tahitians, New Caledonians, Corsicans, and the Basques. Spaniards can also back the Basques, or the Catalonians. Italians can help Sicilian separatists or the Northern League. Danes can free the Faeroe Islands. Poles can back Cashubians. Japanese can help Okinawan separatists, and Filipinos can help the Moros. Thai can promote Patanni independence; Indonesians can promote Acehnese independence. New Zealanders can leave the islands to the Maori; Australians can vacate Papua. Sri Lankans can help Tamil separatists; Indians can help Sikh separatists.
Nearly every nation has a separatist movement of some kind. There is no need to go to Tibet, to the top of the world, to promote ethnic separatism. China is not promoting separatism in other nations and does not appreciate other nations promoting separatism in China. The people most oppressed, most needing a nation of their own, are the Palestinians. There is a worthy project to promote and to demonstrate about.
Danger of Demonstrations
These demonstrations do not serve Tibetans, but rather use Tibetans for ulterior motives. Many Tibetans, therefore, oppose these demonstrations. Many Chinese remember their history and see the riots in Lhasa and subsequent demonstrations as another attempt by foreign powers to dismember and weaken China. There is grave danger that Chinese might come to fear Tibetans as traitors, resulting in wide spread anti-Tibetan feelings in China.
Fear that an ethnic minority serves foreign forces caused Canada, during World War 1, to imprison its Ukranian minority in concentration camps. For similar reasons, the Ottomans deported their Armenian minority and killed more than a million in death marches. The German Nazis saw the Jewish minority as traitors who caused defeat in World War 1; hence deportations in the 1930s and death camps in the 1940s. During World War 2, both Canada and the USA feared that their Japanese immigrant minorities were traitorous and deported them to concentration camps. Indonesians fearing their Chinese minority, deported 100,000 in 1959 and killed thousands more in 1965. Israel similarly fears its Arab minority, resulting in deportations and oppression.
Hopefully, the Chinese government and the Chinese people will see Tibetans as victims of foreign powers rather than agents of foreign powers. However, if China reacts like other nations have in history and starts systematic severe repression of Tibetans, then today's demonstrators should remember their role in causing that to happen.
Conclusion
The demonstrators now disparaging China serve only to distract themselves and others from seeing and correcting the current failings of their own governments. If the demonstrators will take a moment to listen, they will hear the silence of their own hypocrisy.
The consequences of these demonstrations are 1) China will stiffen its resolve to find foreign influences inciting Tibetans to riot, and 2) the governments of the USA, UK, France and other Western nations will have less domestic criticism for a few weeks. That is all. These demonstrations can come to no good end.
Floyd Rudmin can be contacted by email.
"So many people will needlessly die because of this," said one critic.
In the Trump administration's latest move to obliterate three decades of work to address the systemic injustices faced by low-income and minority communities across the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday announced plans to shutter all ten of the agency's environmental justice regional offices as well as its central hub addressing the issue in Washington, D.C.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin sent an internal memo to agency officials saying that "reorganizing" and eliminating the offices would help fulfill President Donald Trump's "mandate" to end "forced discrimination programs.
The EPA's Office of Environmental Justice was opened during the Clinton administration and expanded by former Democratic President Joe Biden, who emphasized the office's mission of ensuring "the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income" with respect to environmental policies.
But Zeldin likened the office's goal of addressing pollution in regions like "Cancer Alley," an 85-mile stretch of land in Louisiana where the high number of petrochemical plants has been linked to higher-than-average cancer rates in predominantly Black and poor communities, to "discrimination"—apparently against wealthy households and white Americans.
"Wait a second, so trying to address environmental pollution and high cancer rates in poor, rural, or minority areas is racist, but the actual fact that polluting is happening is not bad?" asked one critic on social media.
Zeldin's memo came days after the EPA and the Department of Justice dropped a lawsuit filed by the Biden administration against Denka Performance Elastomer plant in Louisiana, where regulators found the company's chloroprene emissions were fueling health problems across nearby communities.
"If anybody needed a clearer sign that this administration gives not a single damn for the people of the United States, this is it," Matthew Tejada, who led EPA environmental justice work for a decade until 2023, told The New York Times after Zeldin sent the memo Tuesday.
Zeldin also announced on Monday that he was cancelling 400 grants for environmental justice and diversity initiatives—despite numerous court orders against Trump's attempt to freeze federal funding that has already been appropriated, including one in which the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland prohibited federal agencies from terminating "equity-related" grants.
The administrator claimed Monday that the EPA is "working hand-in-hand with [the Department of Government Efficiency] to rein in wasteful federal spending," but Margie Alt, director of the Climate Action Campaign, said that "cleaning up pollution is only 'wasteful' if you don't believe everyone in America has the equal right to breathe clean air."
"Lee Zeldin's idea of 'accountability' is apparently to create a world of hurt for the most vulnerable while spitting in the face of the law and giving wealthy corporate interests the ability to pollute at will," said Alt. "All the while Elon Musk lines his pockets with billions of taxpayer dollars as his so-called efficiency agents take a hatchet to programs designed to help people at risk survive. Congress must put a stop to Trump's brazen refusal to follow the law and demand these illegally canceled funds already promised to disadvantaged communities are released."
The coming closure of all EPA environmental justice offices suggested that "the GOP way" includes letting "the kids drink sewage water and breathe polluted air to make the 1% richer," said columnist Wajahat Ali.
Former New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Kathy Sullivan said that for the Trump administration, it is "not enough to ban talking about discrimination," a reference to words and phrases like "inclusiveness" and "inequality" that agencies have flagged in government documents.
"Trump's policies bring back discrimination," said Sullivan.
"Khalil's abduction, in its cruelty and unlawfulness, has horrified people around the country. Let us be clear: This is what fascism looks like, and it is part of a much broader campaign," said the director of Palestine Legal.
When legal resident and Palestinian student activist Mahmoud Khalil was arrested by U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents on Saturday, his 8-months pregnant wife was with him. In a statement released Tuesday, Khalil's wife recounted the couple's encounter with DHS and begged for her husband's release.
"I demand the U.S. government release him, reinstate his green card, and bring him home," said Khalil's wife, who is not named in the statement.
Khalil, who completed his graduate coursework at Columbia University in December in December and played a prominent role in pro-Palestine protests at the campus last year, was confronted by immigration agents on March 8 who said they were acting on State Department orders to revoke his student visa. Khalil's lawyer told the agents that Khalil has a green card, and the agents said that that had been revoked, too, according to Khalil's attorney.
"This last week has been a nightmare," said Khalil's wife, who said that Mahmoud had emailed Columbia University the day before his arrest and asked the university for legal support because he had been the target of an "intense and targeted doxxing campaign." That email went unanswered, she said.
"Anti-Palestinian organizations were spreading false claims about my husband that were simply not based in reality," she said.
The couple was confronted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents after coming home from an Iftar dinner in the later evening on Saturday. An officer told Khalil's wife to go upstairs, but she refused, according to the statement.
"The officers later barricaded Mahmoud from me," she said. "We were not shown any warrant and the ICE officers hung up the phone on our lawyer. When my husband attempted to give me his phone so I could speak with our lawyer, the officers got increasingly aggressive, despite Mahmoud being fully cooperative."
She said that the officers handcuffed Khalil and forced him into an unmarked vehicle. "Watching this play out in front of me was traumatizing: It felt like a scene from a movie I never signed up to watch," she said. "I am pleading with the world to continue to speak up against his unjust and horrific detention by the Trump administration."
After Khalil was arrested on Saturday he was transferred multiple states away to an ICE processing center in Jena, Louisiana.
A federal judge on Monday temporarily halted the Trump administration's effort to deport Khalil, and on Wednesday Khalil's legal defense is set to appear in court for a hearing before that same judge.
"Khalil's abduction, in its cruelty and unlawfulness, has horrified people around the country. Let us be clear: This is what fascism looks like, and it is part of a much broader campaign," said Dima Khalidi, the founder and director of Palestine Legal, in an article for The Nation published Tuesday.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who has pledged to crack down on pro-Palestine protesters on university campuses, said Khalil's arrest is "the first arrest of many to come."
The administration accuses Khalil of supporting Hamas, but neither White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, DHS, nor ICE have provided evidence to support their accusations against Khalil, according to CNN.
Reuters reported that the judge could order Khalil's release, but deportation proceedings could still continue in a separate immigration court, teeing up a test of "where immigration courts draw the line between protected free speech and alleged support for groups the United States calls terrorists."
Opposing the Republican president's lawless rampage against the federal government, a massive giveaway to billionaires, and vicious attacks on the working class "should be an open-and-shut case," said one commentator.
House Republicans on Tuesday pushed through a six-month government funding package with the help of just one Democrat—Rep. Jared Golden of Maine.
But Republicans in the Senate are going to need much more assistance from the minority party to pass the legislation, which would give the Trump administration and unelected billionaire Elon Musk free rein to continue their assault on the nation's working class.
With Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) expected to break ranks and oppose the stopgap funding measure, the GOP will need the support of at least eight Democratic senators to get the bill to President Donald Trump's desk before the government shuts down on Friday at midnight.
Senate Democrats are publicly agonizing over their options, torn between effectively greenlighting the Trump administration's lawless rampage through federal agencies and allowing a painful government shutdown. The House skipped town following Tuesday's vote, meaning a shutdown is virtually guaranteed if the GOP funding bill goes down in the Senate.
The American Prospect's David Dayen argued Wednesday that opposing the bill "should be an open-and-shut case" for Democratic senators given the damage the measure itself would inflict—including $13 billion in cuts to non-military spending, from affordable housing to public health programs to IRS enforcement—as well as the green light it would give Trump and Musk to "continue to ignore Congress and toss out disfavored spending."
"In fact, the House Republican bill gives the president more leeway to move money around," Dayen observed. "It appropriates money for things that Musk has eliminated, meaning that money can operate as a floating slush fund for Trump's priorities, as long as the courts don't roll back the illegal impoundments."
"If you're a member of Congress, you're being told that your work product doesn't matter, that the constitutional power of the purse doesn't matter, and that there's no guarantee that anything you pass will actually reach the people you serve," he added. "Yet Senate Democrats, really the last line of defense against a unilateral government where all spending runs through Donald Trump, haven't committed to the simple proposition that any budgetary requirement they pass must actually be spent. If they can't stand for that, what can they stand for?"
"Who would that hurt the most? Working people. Billionaires win, families lose. Republicans' values are clear."
At least one Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), has pledged to support the Republican package, and other members of the caucus are on the fence.
"It's a very tough choice," said Sen. Angus King (D-Maine).
Politico reported Wednesday that most of the 20 Democrats it surveyed shortly after the House vote "were noncommital" on the GOP bill, which would fund the government through September.
Some Democratic senators have unequivocally denounced the Republican funding stopgap, which comes in lieu of full-year, bipartisan appropriations bills that typically impose constraints on the executive branch.
"After months of bipartisan talks, they're walking away from the negotiating table and offering a non-starter House bill that forces us to the brink of a full government shutdown," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said of GOP lawmakers in a scathing floor speech on Tuesday. "And who would that hurt the most? Working people. Billionaires win, families lose. Republicans' values are clear."
"In addition to giving co-presidents Trump and Musk the power to spend taxpayer money wherever they want, the House Republicans also propose general cuts," said Warren. "Cuts from programs that help families put food on the table, afford child care, and keep our communities safe. Cuts from local communities for projects like improving hospitals, teaching facilities, and childcare centers—millions of funding that the House and Senate had already agreed to."
Kobie Christian, a spokesperson for the advocacy coalition Unrig Our Economy, echoed Warren, calling the House GOP bill "a fundamental betrayal of veterans, seniors, and working-class Americans nationwide."
"Why are Republicans pushing these drastic cuts and enabling Trump's costly tariffs that will make things worse for millions of Americans, including their own constituents? The answer is simple," said Christian. "This is just another step in congressional Republicans' plot to give billionaires a massive payday, while everyday Americans pay the price. Next week, Congress will head home for House recess and hear from their constituents who want their representatives to stand up against corporate interests, stop their pro-billionaire agenda, and fight for working people instead."
As an alternative to the Republican bill, the top Democratic appropriators in the House and Senate have put forth a short-term continuing resolution that would fund the government through April 11 and give lawmakers time to complete full-year spending negotiations.
There's no indication Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress, would be willing to support the alternative offered by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.).
"Speaker Johnson's slush fund continuing resolution empowers President Trump and Elon Musk to pick winners and losers with taxpayer dollars, and make no mistake: it shortchanges families and includes painful funding cuts for bipartisan domestic priorities like cancer research, Army Corps projects, and much more," Murray and DeLauro warned.