If Refaat Were Alive: In Gaza, Amal, 7, Is Already Four Wars Old
On Monday, revered Palestinian poet, teacher and mentor Refaat Alareer - so stubborn that a friend believed "people like him never die" - would have turned 45. Killed in an Israeli air strike, he left behind his wife and six children, and hundreds of Gazans who vow to emulate him - to speak truth, lift up others, "hold their heads high and endure like he did in his lifetime." "If I must die," he wrote, "Let it be a tale." And so it is.
A much-loved professor of comparative literature at the Islamic University of Gaza, with a masters from University College London, Alareer was known for chronicling Gazan experiences and nurturing young Palestinian writers to help them tell their stories. As "a reckless stone-thrower in the first Intifada," he said in an interview years ago, the stories of his mother and grandparents were "our solace, our escort in a blind world controlled by soldiers and guns and death." Those stories, he said, "make us who we are...they are one of the ingredients of Palestinian steadfastness, a creative act of resistance to oppression." A longtime believer that the pen is mightier than the sword, he urged young Palestinians to empower themselves by taking control of their own narratives. "For Palestinians, to tell a story is to remember, and to help others remember," he said. "Telling the story itself becomes an act of life."
After October 7, along with many thousands of Gazans, he and his family struggling with whether to stay in their home in Gaza City and risk death in an air strike, or to flee south with no guarantee of safety. After deciding to stay - they had "nowhere else to go" - he described "an archetypal Palestinian debate: Should we stay in one room, so if we die, we die together, or should we stay in separate rooms, so somebody can live?” (The answer is always to sleep in the living room together: "If we die, we die together.") On December 6, after Israel destroyed their home, he was moving between a school shelter and other people's homes when he was killed by an Israeli strike on a building in Shajaiya, in northern Gaza, where he was staying with his brother, sister and her four children; they were all also killed. His wife Nusayba, and six children aged 7 to 21, were sheltering in another building and survived.
A few hours before his death, he was walking along a road with his friend Asem Alnabih, telling him he was "tired of this war." "If he were alive today, I would not be writing this," notes a grieving Alnabih on Monday. Instead, they would be celebrating his birthday at al-Qalaq, a simple eatery known for having on its menu only crab - or "qalaq," which also translates to "worry" - while Refaat simultaneously worked. "If Refaat were alive right now, he would be taking care of us," writes Alnabih, who says three days before Refaat had came to his house after Alnabih's grandmother died to say, "I am always here for you. I am by your side." "He was (our) guide and mentor, and maybe that’s what frightened them - that he never hesitated to amplify the voices of those who spoke the truth," writes Alnabih. "I am still living and need to try telling his story. Dear Refaat, I miss you so much, my brother."
When he was killed, moving tributes poured in from his students, mentees, colleagues, friends. "Nothing I write could do him justice," one wrote of a scholar and activist so strong he transcends death and "comes back to us as a source of hope, strength, and belief...He was targeted because of his words and his message, and it is our duty (to) amplify it." Alareer's work itself does the same, especially Gaza Writes Back, an anthology of often harrowing short stories by 15 young Palestinian writers that Alareer spent over a year editing. "I started inviting students to write about what they had endured, to bear witness to the anguish," he recalled. "Writing is a testimony, a memory that outlives any human experience, and an obligation to communicate with (the)world. We lived for a reason, to tell the tales of loss, of survival, and of hope. They just came out. Stories in Palestine just come out."
In 2014, Alareer toured the U.S. for a month with some of the book's writers, meeting with writers and activists, both Palestinian and Jewish. The experience confirmed his belief that art is universal, that "literature breaks barriers, and returns us all to our humanity." The same year, he described how he came to the Writes Back project during Israel's 2008/2009 war against Gaza: As the bombs fell, "I had to find a way to distract my kids, by telling them stories from my childhood." He recalled his then-five-year-old daughter Shymaa asking him, "Dad, who created the Jews?", meaning Israelis. "I could not answer her question," he wrote. "But I realized the war mad her think there is a loving and merciful God, and another cruel God who created these Israeli soldiers, these killing machines (who) turn our lives into a living hell...The children pay the heaviest price, a price of fear and non-stop trauma."
In April, Israel murdered Shymaa, her husband Mohammed, and their two-month-old son Abd al-Rahman, Refaat's first grandchild, who he never had a chance to meet. They died in an airstrike on a building in Gaza City where they'd had been sheltering; it housed the international relief charity Global Communities, and was thought to be safe. Shymaa had posted a heartbreaking message to her martyred father shortly after her son's birth. "I have beautiful news for you, and I wish I could tell you while you were in front of me," she wrote. "Did you know that you have become a grandfather?” Amidst so much death, Gazans still mourning the much-loved Refaat were further devastated by the double tragedy. “I am out of words, tears and ways to comprehend this endless loss, this pain, this criminal annihilation of our people,” one wrote. "Shaymaa has joined her father Refaat after less than 5 months."
In August, The Electronic Intifada published some of Alareer's "Genocide Diaries," which OR Books will soon release in If I Must Die: Poetry and Prose, an anthology of his work compiled by Yousef Aljamal. In searing entries, Alareer documents the stages of coping with war in Gaza, his and his wife's loss of over 50 family members to Israeli terror - "We are an average Palestinian family" - and their growing numbness to the ongoing carnage. "My grandmother would tell me to put on a heavy sweater because it would rain. And it would rain! She, like all Palestinian elders, had a unique sense, an understanding of the earth, wind, trees and rain. (They) knew when to pick olives for pickling or oil. Sorry, Grandma. We have instead become attuned to the vagaries of war. 'Is it war again?' asks my youngest child, Amal, 7, previous Israeli assaults still fresh in her mind. In Gaza, Amal is already four wars old."
As a parent, he feels "desperate and helpless." Unable to offer protection, he is focused on rationing food and water: "Instead of telling my kids 'I love you,' I have been repeating...'Kids, eat less, drink less'...I imagine this being the last thing I say to them, and it is devastating." When Israel bombs the building where they're hosting four other families, "We ran and ran," carrying the little ones, grabbing the small bags with cash and documents "Gazans keep at the door," and somehow survive. They walk to a UN shelter "in an inhuman condition," cram into classrooms. They lose their water, their food, "our last sense of safety." "In Gaza, no one is safe," he writes. "Israel could kill all 2.3 million of us, and the world would not bat an eye." Before Israel killed him, a hero and symbol of hope to so many, he wrote “If I Must Die,” urging, "You have to live/To tell my story." Heartrendingly, he wrote it to Shymaa.
If I must die
If I must die, you have to live
To tell my story, to sell my things
To buy a piece of cloth and some strings,
(Make it white with a long tail)
So that a child, somewhere in Gaza
While looking heaven in the eye,
Making it blush under his gaze,
Awaiting his Dad who left in a blaze–
And bid no one farewell
Not even to his flesh, not even to himself—
Sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above
And thinks for a moment an angel is there
Bringing back love.
If I must die, let it bring hope.
Let it be a tale.
California Sues Exxon Over Decades of Plastics Deception in First-of-Its-Kind Lawsuit
In a first-of-its-kind lawsuit, California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Monday sued oil giant ExxonMobil for allegedly deceiving the public about the recyclability of plastics so as to continue increasing production.
The 147-page lawsuit, filed in San Francisco County Superior Court, came following a yearslong investigation that environmental groups were hoping would lead to legal action. They widely celebrated Bonta's move.
"This is the single most consequential lawsuit filed against the plastics industry for its persistent and continued lying about plastics recycling," Judith Enck, founder of the advocacy group Beyond Plastics and a former senior Environmental Protection Agency official, said in a statement.
"Attorney General Bonta is leading the way to corporate accountability and a cleaner and healthier world. This lawsuit will set an invaluable precedent for others to follow," she added.
Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), echoed Enck's take.
"Big Oil and the plastic industry's lies are the beating heart of the plastic waste crisis, which makes California's groundbreaking lawsuit against ExxonMobil the most important legal action to date in the global fight against plastic pollution," Wiles said in a statement.
#BREAKING: We’re suing ExxonMobil for a decades-long campaign of deception that perpetuated the plastic waste and pollution crisis.
ExxonMobil peddled #RecyclingLies to further its recording-breaking profits at the expense of our planet.
We’re holding ExxonMobil accountable. pic.twitter.com/ekhMGY3AOE
— Rob Bonta (@AGRobBonta) September 23, 2024
Plastics are made from fossil fuels, and ExxonMobil, the largest U.S.-based oil and gas producer, makes polymers that are turned into single-use plastics. Virgin plastic production has skyrocketed globally in recent decades, even as research has shown the damaging environmental and health impacts it has across its life cycle.
The petrochemical industry has long promoted recycling as a solution to plastics pollution. ExxonMobil, for example, placed a 12-page "advertorial" in Time in 1989 titled "The Urgent Need to Recycle," Bonta's office said in a statement. ExxonMobil and other companies also helped push the use of the "chasing arrows" symbol, which gives the often false impression that a product is recyclable when it's not, or unlikely to be in most areas.
Plastics recycling comes with enormous technical and economic constraints that the industry has understood—and hid—for decades, critics say. A 68-page CCI report released in February laid out the evidence against the industry, including, for example, a 1986 trade group report stating that "recycling cannot be considered a permanent solid waste solution [to plastics], as it merely prolongs the time until an item is disposed of."
Estimates indicate that plastics recycling rates are far lower than the public realizes, at just 6% in the U.S. and 9% worldwide. A recent poll by CCI and Data for Progress found that U.S. voters, on average, thought the rate was 45%.
The same poll found that most U.S. voters, when prompted with information about the industry's history, supported their state taking legal action for recycling deception, as California has now done.
The lawsuit from Bonta, a Democrat who's held office since 2021, represents a "new front in the legal battles against oil and gas companies over climate and environmental issues," according to The New York Times.
Dozens of U.S. cities and states, including California, have already filed lawsuits against Big Oil companies for their role in the perpetuating climate breakdown, but this is the most significant plastics lawsuit, observers say. New York did sue PepsiCo last year for its role in polluting the Hudson River with plastics.
Wiles of CCI drew a parallel between the newly announced suit and the dozens of climate suits that had preceded it, saying they both target the same types of lies.
"From climate to plastics, Exxon's entire business model is based on lying to the public about the harms its products cause," he said.
In recent years, the petrochemical industry has touted "advanced recycling," sometimes called "chemical recycling," in which plastic waste is broken down into virgin-like new material. However, the statement from Bonta's office argues that there are severe limitations to the technology and says that ExxonMobil's advanced recycling program is "nothing more than a public relations stunt meant to encourage the public to keep purchasing single-use plastics that are fueling the plastics pollution crisis."
CEO Pay Has Risen 1,085% Since 1978, But for Workers? Just 24%
Chief executive officers at the largest companies in the United States saw their compensation surge by 1,085% from 1978 to 2023, compared with only a 24% increase for typical worker pay, according to an annual report published Thursday.
The Economic Policy Insitute (EPI) analysis focuses on the 350 largest publicly owned U.S. firms by revenue.
"Since CEO pay is mostly stock-based—and the value of stocks changes frequently—calculating it is not entirely straightforward," the report explains, so EPI uses "a backward-looking measure—realized compensation—and a forward-looking measure—granted compensation."
CEOs' annual realized compensation in 1978 was $1,874,000 in 1978, but rose to $22,207,000 last year—the 1,085% increase. Meanwhile, private-sector workers were making $57,000 a year nearly half a century ago, and have only seen that rise to $71,000. The figures were adjusted for inflation.
"The realized CEO-to-worker compensation ratio was 290-to-1 in 2023, in stark contrast to the 21-to-1 ratio in 1965," the report says. "Over the last two decades, the ratio has been far higher than at any point from the 1960s to the early 1990s."
The report notes some limited progress. Last year's analysis—released amid the United Auto Workers strike at the "Big Three"—found that CEOs made 344 times as much as typical workers. There was a 19% decrease in CEOs' realized compensation from 2022 to 2023. The report also points out positive trends regarding how they are compensated.
"The composition of CEO compensation is shifting away from the use of stock options and toward stock awards—a promising move to align CEO pay to longer-term incentives," the report details. "In 2006, stock options accounted for just over 70% of stock-related pay in realized CEO compensation. But in 2023, stock options made up only 22%, with vested stock awards accounting for the rest. Stock-related pay (exercised stock options and vested stock awards) averaged $16.7 million in 2023 and accounted for 77.6% of average realized CEO compensation."
However, economic justice advocates argue that far more must be done to improve U.S. worker pay and job conditions.
The report highlights "how distorted CEO pay is, even compared with the most privileged workers in the U.S. economy."
EPI researchers found that "CEOs made over 9 times as much in salary as even the most privileged 0.1% of workers in the economy. This 9.4 ratio in 2022 was 6.8 points higher than the historical average of 2.6 over the 1965–1978 period."
"This is a large change, meaning that the relative pay of CEOs increased by an amount equal to the total annual wages of nearly seven of these very high-wage earners," the report states.
As EPI chief economist and report co-author Josh Bivens emphasized, "CEOs are paid so much more because of their extraordinary leverage over corporate boards, not because of an extraordinary skill or contribution they make to their firms."
"Exorbitant CEO pay has contributed to rising inequality in recent decades—concentrating earnings at the top and leaving fewer gains for ordinary workers," he said. "The silver lining in this otherwise unfortunate trend is that CEO pay can be curtailed without damaging economywide growth."
EPI's policy recommendations include implementing higher marginal income tax rates at the very top and hiking corporate tax rates for firms that have higher ratios of CEO-to-worker compensation.
Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies earlier this year identified 35 major U.S. corporations—including Ford, Netflix, and Tesla—that paid their top executives more than they paid in federal taxes between 2018 and 2022.
The new EPI report stresses that "ideally, tax reforms would be paired with changes in corporate governance."
EPI senior economist and report co-author Elise Gould said that "policies that limit CEOs' ability to collude with corporate boards to extract excessive compensation are needed to prevent the U.S. from becoming a winner-take-all society."
This post has been updated to note that annual compensation figures were adjusted for inflation.
Haitian Group Files Criminal Charges Against Trump, Vance Over Springfield Lies
Accusing Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate, U.S. Sen. JD Vance, of wreaking "havoc" on Springfield, Ohio by spreading lies about the Haitian community there, a national immigrant rights group on Tuesday filed criminal charges against the right-wing politicians.
Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, sought Trump and Vance's arrest under Ohio Revised Code Sections 2935.09 and 2935.10(A), which allow private citizens to "file an affidavit charging the offense committed" and direct a court to issue arrest warrants or refer the matter for investigation.
In recent weeks, buildings in Springfield, including schools, have been the targets of at least 33 bomb threats, which authorities said stemmed from derogatory remarks made by Trump, Vance, and other Republican lawmakers about Haitians there.
Vance and Trump amplified a conspiracy theory—since disavowed by one of the earliest people to spread the story online—that Haitian immigrants in Springfield have been stealing and eating neighbors' pets. Their repeated references to the false stories have been denounced as "blood libel" by critics, and Vance has said more than once in recent days that he's fully aware the rumors are untrue, but has no regrets about spreading them.
"Trump and Vance must be held accountable to the rule of law. Anyone else who wreaked havoc the way they did would have been arrested by now."
"The Haitian community is suffering in fear because of Trump and Vance's relentless, irresponsible, false alarms, and public services have been disrupted," said Subodh Chandra, the lead counsel representing Jozef. "Trump and Vance must be held accountable to the rule of law. Anyone else who wreaked havoc the way they did would have been arrested by now."
The criminal charges in the affidavit include disrupting public services "by causing widespread bomb and other threats," making false alarms "by continuing to repeat lies that state and local officials have said were false," and committing telecommunications harassment "by spreading claims they know to be false during the presidential debate, campaign rallies, nationally televised interviews, and social media."
Continuing a trend of previous Trump campaigns, he and Vance have made fear-mongering about immigration a top priority. Chandra, an experienced First Amendment litigator, compared Trump and Vance's actions to "those who shout 'fire!' in a crowded theater."
"There's nothing special about Trump and Vance that entitles them to get away with what they've done and are doing," Chandra said. "They think they're above the law. They're not."
Thanks to Trump, Criminal Charges Related to Pregnancy Hit All-Time High
Reproductive justice experts have long warned that the erosion of abortion rights in the U.S. would harm people in a wide range of ways, and a report released Tuesday quantifies some of that harm—namely, the criminalization of pregnancy.
In the report, Pregnancy as a Crime: A Preliminary Report on the First Year After Dobbs, the rights group Pregnancy Justice found that from June 24, 2022—the day the Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade—to June 23, 2022, the number of people who faced criminal charges related to their pregnancies rose to its highest level in U.S. history.
At least 210 people were charged with crimes related to pregnancy in the first year after Roe was overturned, with prosecutors accusing them of child endangerment, substance abuse, attempting to end a pregnancy—or even researching abortion—and abuse of a corpse, among other charges.
Along with clearing the way for right-wing lawmakers in 22 states to ban or severely restrict access to abortion, said Pregnancy Justice president Lourdes A. Rivera, "the Dobbs decision emboldened prosecutors to develop ever more aggressive strategies to prosecute pregnancy, leading to the most pregnancy-related criminal cases on record" in a single year.
The rise in pregnancy criminalization "is directly tied to the radical legal doctrine of 'fetal personhood,' which grants full legal rights to an embryo or fetus, turning them into victims of crimes perpetrated by pregnant women," added Rivera.
Roughly half of the cases detailed in Pregnancy as a Crime—104 of them—were reported in Alabama, one of several Republican-controlled states that have so-called "fetal personhood laws."
"Without fetal personhood, pregnancy criminalization could not exist," reads the report.
Prosecutors in Oklahoma filed 68 of the cases, and South Carolina had the third-most charges with 10 pregnant people criminalized.
All three states with the highest numbers of cases have near-total abortion bans and some of the worst maternal and infant mortality rates in the U.S., according to Pregnancy Justice.
"To turn the tide on criminalization, we need to separate healthcare from the criminal legal system and to change policy and practices to ensure that pregnant people can safely access the healthcare they need, without fear of criminalization."
In nearly all of the cases brought against pregnant people, actual harm to a fetus or baby did not have to be proven—prosecutors focused only on the perceived risk that the defendants allegedly exposed their pregnancies to.
For example, all 68 defendants in Oklahoma were charged with child neglect, delinquency, or abuse for testing positive for a substance while pregnant or giving birth.
"Defendants can be found guilty even if the pregnancy results in a healthy child and even when the science does not support the
assumption that a positive drug test proves the fetus was harmed," reads the report.
Such "no harm" prosecutions can result in severe punishment for defendants, said Pregnancy Justice; the Oklahoma residents who were charged face sentences up to life in prison if found guilty, and 93 Alabama defendants who were charged with chemical endangerment of a minor could face up to 10 years in prison.
"These findings strongly suggest that, rather than focusing on fetal harm, these prosecutions seek to control and punish pregnant people," said Pregnancy Justice.
Substance abuse charges—for both legal and illegal substances—were involved in a majority of cases studied by the group, while five cases included allegations regarding abortion care, including an attempt to end a pregnancy or to research the possibility of an abortion.
Twenty-two people were criminalized for experiencing a pregnancy loss, said Pregnancy Justice.
Charging documents included 15 allegations of "lack of prenatal care" and 10 cases in which the defendant failed "to seek help during or after birth." Three people were accused of breastfeeding and placing their infant at risk of drug exposure.
"The allegations in these cases are particularly notable for the way that they criminalize precarious pregnancy and birth and meet healthcare needs with punishment rather than care," reads the report. "It is also noteworthy that several women who appear to have faced serious health conditions, devastating pregnancy losses, and enormous trauma, were met not with offers of care but threatened with punishment for finding themselves in allegedly dangerous situations or allegedly not seeking help quickly enough in traumatic moments. Striking, too, in the midst of a wide-ranging crisis in maternal healthcare, is the condemnation of pregnant people for not accessing prenatal care."
In one case, police charged a woman with abusing her "unborn child" just after they administered Narcan to save her from a drug overdose.
Criminalization of pregnancy, said Pregnancy Justice, "only worsens" the crisis of opioid-related deaths among pregnant people.
Rivera said that "to turn the tide on criminalization, we need to separate healthcare from the criminal legal system and to change policy and practices to ensure that pregnant people can safely access the healthcare they need, without fear of criminalization."
The report was released a day after KFF Health News reported on the story of Amari Marsh, a South Carolina resident who was charged in May of 2023 with "murder/homicide by child abuse," two months after she went into preterm labor and gave birth in her bathroom. Marsh spent 22 days in prison—and faced a potential sentence of 20 years to life—but her charges were ultimately dismissed by a grand jury.
Marsh's case, and other instances of pregnancy criminalization, represent Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's "plan for America," said Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) on Tuesday. Trump has boasted about his hand in ensuring Roe v. Wade was overturned and spread misinformation about abortion rights, including the demonstrably false claim that Democrats support "an execution of a baby after birth."
The Dobbs decision, made possible by Trump's appointment of right-wing Supreme Court justices, paved the way for "increased suspicion and surveillance of pregnant people," said Wendy Bach, principal investigator of the report and a professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law. "With this report, we hope to see both more attention on pregnancy-related prosecutions and more advocacy to reverse course on the criminalization of pregnant people."
Hezbollah Says Israel Dropping Leaflets With 'Very Dangerous' Barcodes in Lebanon
As the death toll from the Israeli bombing of Lebanon topped 550 on Tuesday, Hezbollah warned that Israel is dropping leaflets with barcodes allegedly designed to extract information from electronic devices in the Bekaa Valley.
"The Zionist enemy is dropping leaflets with a barcode on them in the Bekaa region, and may drop them in other places," Hezbollah's media office said in a statement. "Please do not open or circulate the barcode."
The Lebanese political party and paramilitary group urged anyone in Lebanon who comes across a leaflet to "destroy it immediately because it is very dangerous and withdraws all the information you have."
Just before launching this bombing campaign, Israel detonated thousands of pagers and other electronic devices across Lebanon, an operation that rights experts characterized as terrorism.
Reuters noted Tuesday that "Hezbollah's media office did not say if anything else was written on the flyers" and "there was no immediate comment from the Israeli military."
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a Tuesday social media post directed at Lebanese citizens that "our war is not with you, our war is with Hezbollah," according to a translation from the Independent.
Hezbollah is "leading you to the brink of the abyss... Rid yourself from Nasrallah's grip, for your own good," he added, referring to Hassan Nasrallah, the group's leader. "Anyone who has a missile in their living room and a rocket in their garage will not have a home."
In a similar message posted later in English, Netanyahu said, "Get out of harm's way, now."
Drop Site News reported Monday that residents of southern Lebanon "began receiving text messages and calls with audio recordings warning them to leave their homes and villages," and the Israel Defense Forces "Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee also posted several ominous messages" on social media.
Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abiad said Tuesday that at least 50 children and 95 women are among the 558 people who have been killed in Israeli attacks since Monday morning, according to Middle East Monitor. Another 1,835 have been injured.
"The majority of the victims in the Israeli attacks since Monday morning are defenseless civilians in their homes," the minister said, refuting Israel's claims that it is targeting Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said on social media Monday that "the escalating crisis in Lebanon is frightening... The toll on civilians is unacceptable. Political leaders must bring solutions. An end to the hostilities is urgently needed."
Grandi added Tuesday that "Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon are now relentlessly claiming hundreds of civilian lives," including at least two of his colleagues.
Speaking at the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, U.S. President Joe Biden said that "full-scale war is not in anyone's interest" and despite the recent escalation in Lebanon, "a diplomatic solution is still possible—in fact, it remains the only path to lasting security."
The United States is Israel's most significant ally, and Biden has faced global criticism—and even charges of complicity in genocide in the Gaza Strip—for continuing to send weapons to the Israeli forces over the past year. As Common Dreams reported Monday, the bombing campaign in Lebanon has elevated calls for the U.S. to impose an arms embargo.
Large Majority of Americans Want to End Electoral College
The polling follow a Republican push to change Nebraska rules to boost GOP nominee Donald Trump's chances of winning in November.
Polling results released Wednesday, less than six weeks away from November's Election Day, show that a majority of Americans want to ditch the Electoral College and "would instead prefer to see the winner of the presidential election be the person who wins the most votes nationally."
Pew Research Center surveyed 9,720 adults across the United States in late August and early September, and found that 63% want to abolish the process outlined in the U.S. Constitution and replace it with a popular vote approach, compared with just 35% who favor keeping the current system.
The Electoral College is made up of electors who are supposed to act on behalf of their state's voters. Each state gets the same number of electors as its members of Congress, and Washington, D.C. gets three electors, bringing the current total to 538. The candidate who secures 270 electoral votes becomes the next president.
D.C. and most states allocate all of their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote in their state, though Maine and Nebraska give two votes to the statewide winner, and the remaining votes to the most popular candidate in each congressional district.
Pew noted Wednesday that "some Republicans have been pressing to change Nebraska's rules so that the statewide winner gets all five of its electoral votes. This would likely work to former President Donald Trump's advantage, given Nebraska's consistent support of GOP presidential candidates."
Republican Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen confirmed Tuesday that he has no plans to call a special legislative session to restore a winner-takes-all approach before the November election, in which Trump is set to face Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
There have been just five presidential contests in which the Electoral College winner did not also win the nationwide popular vote—1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and most recently in 2016, when Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton by securing key "swing states."
Continuing a trend that's lasted over two decades, 8 in 10 Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independents told Pew that they prefer a popular vote system for the presidential contest, while Republicans and Independents who lean toward the GOP were more divided: 53% want to retain the Electoral College and 46% would like to replace it.
"Reference sources indicate that over the past 200 years more than 700 proposals have been introduced in Congress to reform or eliminate the Electoral College," according to the National Archives. "There have been more proposals for Constitutional amendments on changing the Electoral College than on any other subject."
Among them is a joint resolution that Congressman Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) introduced just days after Trump incited a violent mob to disrupt the certification of his 2020 loss by storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021—for which the Republican nominee faces ongoing legal trouble.
"Americans expect and deserve the winner of the popular vote for any office to win and assume that office," Cohen said at the time. "More than a century ago, we amended our Constitution to provide for the direct election of U.S. senators. It is past time to directly elect our president and vice president. The Electoral College is a vestige of the 18th Century when voters didn't know the candidates who now appear daily on their phones and television screens."
"Last week's mayhem at the Capitol shows that attempts to manipulate the Electoral College vote by politicians employing falsehoods are a real danger," he added. "The president should always be elected by the people, not by politicians. Currently, the system allows politicians to make the ultimate decision. It is well past time to do away with this anachronistic institution and guarantee a fair and accurate vote for president."
'A Disgrace': Italy Issues New Detention Order for Ship Saving Lives in Mediterranean
"This is unacceptable for a country under the rule of law," said a representative for Doctors Without Borders.
International aid group Doctors Without Borders said Wednesday that it plans to appeal the latest detention orders placed by Italian authorities on its search and rescue vessel, Geo Barents, arguing the directives were aimed at preventing it from saving the lives of refugees in the Mediterranean Sea.
"This is unacceptable for a country under the rule of law," said Juan Matias Gil, a representative for the organization, which is also known by the French name Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
The latest orders against the group and its ship were issued on Monday, days after MSF helped 206 refugees disembark in Genoa, Italy on September 19.
After that rescue, the group received a distress alert from a plane that monitors the passage of asylum-seekers across the Mediterranean, where thousands of people have drowned in the past decade while attempting to reach Europe after fleeing violent conflicts, political unrest, and poverty.
The Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Center gave the Geo Barents crew approval to proceed to the overcrowded wooden boat detected by the plane, which was holding around 110 people from Syria, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Egypt.
But as MSF was about to complete the rescue, with just 20 people left in the boat, a Libyan Coast Guard patrol boat that had been donated by Italy arrived at the scene.
"They arrived, threatened to shoot, and carried out unsafe and intimidating maneuvers around the people in distress and the MSF rescue team," said Fulvia Conte, search and rescue team leader for MSF.
The group said the order, which requires the Geo Barents to be detained at a port for 60 days, is based on "twisted logic" and MSF's "alleged failure to comply with instructions from unreliable and often dangerous Libyan coast guards," said Judith Sunderland, associate director of the Europe and Central Asia Division of Human Rights Watch, who was aboard the Geo Barents as it completed the rescue.
"It is a disgrace that the Italian authorities still consider the Libyan Coast Guard to be a reliable actor and source of information."
"People fleeing Libya often tell us about violent interceptions at sea carried out by the E.U.-backed Libyan Coast Guard," said Gil. "It has been documented by the United Nations and independent investigative journalists that the Libyan Coast Guard is complicit in serious human rights violations amounting to crimes against humanity, and collusion with smugglers and traffickers. It is a disgrace that the Italian authorities still consider the Libyan Coast Guard to be a reliable actor and source of information."
Sunderland noted that earlier this month, a judge lifted a previous 60-day detention order against the ship, with Italian authorities claiming MSF had caused "a dangerous situation by rescuing dozens of people from the water at night."
"The judge concluded the rescue had been 'urgent and unavoidable' and the detention jeopardized the organization's humanitarian objectives," wrote Sunderland.
Even though MSF had approval to complete the rescue on September 19, the first detention order was issued under the Piantedosi Decree, a law introduced in 2023 which requires non-governmental rescue ships to sail to the assigned port after a rescue, without picking up people from other boats in distress.
The second order was issued Monday following an in-depth inspection of Geo Barents by the Port State Control, which said it found eight technical deficiencies on the vessel.
Conte said such inspections "are another layer of administrative and technical instrumentalization of laws and regulations that the authorities have been using for the past seven years to obstruct the work of humanitarian search and rescue vessels in the Mediterranean."
"This one seems to have the intention to ensure we don't operate anytime soon," she said. "We are moving to quickly address these deficiencies and to go back to prevent deaths at sea."
Kenneth Roth, former executive director of HRW, said the latest orders suggest the Italian government is doing everything in its power "to stop NGO rescue ships from operating in the Mediterranean because rescuing migrants gets in the way of Italy's (and the E.U.'s) preferred approach of using the risk of drowning as a deterrent to migration."
MSF has helped rescue more than 91,000 people in search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean, including 12,540 people who have been saved by the Geo Barents crew since 2021.
U.N. special rapporteur on human rights defenders Mary Lawlor said in 2023 that the punishment and criminalization of people working to save refugees from drowning was "a darkening stain on Italy and the E.U.'s commitment to human rights," after the Italian authorities brought criminal charges for "aiding and abetting unauthorized immigration" against nearly two dozen rescue crew members and rights advocates.
Hawaii ACLU Demands End to US Complicity in 'Israeli Government's Genocide in Gaza'
"Residents of Hawaii are witness to the historical consequences of land dispossession, colonization, and cultural erasure, and have not turned a blind eye to the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people on their land."
The ACLU of Hawaii's board of directors on Wednesday announced the passage of what's believed to be a first-of-its-kind resolution for the civil liberties group decrying U.S. complicity in "the Israeli government's genocide in Gaza, as well as Israel's crimes of apartheid and occupation in the West Bank" and demanding an immediate cease-fire.
"Residents of Hawaii are witness to the historical consequences of land dispossession, colonization, and cultural erasure, and have not turned a blind eye to the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people on their land," the ACLU of Hawaii said in a statement. "Activists in Hawaii have been steadfast in their advocacy against the United States' complicity in Israeli actions, and for this reason and many more, the Hawaii State Legislature was the first in the United States to call for a permanent and immediate cease-fire."
The ACLU of Hawaii board's resolution, which was passed earlier this month, compares the assault on Gaza—for which Israel is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice—and the illegal occupation of Palestine with past human rights crimes like South African apartheid and the Vietnam War.
The document also notes that "college students and professors on campus are being silenced and police have committed violence against such peaceful protesters," and that "federal legislation... provides the Israeli government with military aid while it is committing egregious human rights violations against Palestinian civilians, as well as American citizens residing in Palestine."
"Therefore, this action is in line with ACLU of Hawaii's mandate to protect civil liberties and civil rights," the publication adds. "Israel's war in Gaza cannot be divorced from civil rights in America."
The resolution states:
- We condemn the U.S. government's complicity in Israeli action.
- We resolve that critiquing the war on Gaza should not be an exception to constitutional protections.
- We oppose federal legislation that provides the Israeli government with military aid while it continues hostilities against the Palestinians.
- We support calling for a permanent cease-fire and the release of all hostages.
The vote on the resolution was unanimous.
"Why? Because we're the ACLU," board member Kenneth Lawson said in a video about the resolution. "We have to stand for something. And what is that? Justice. And we are opposed to violations of human rights."
Board member Monihsa Das Gupta said that "here in Hawaii, there is a long history of fighting occupation and militarization, so we have very strong allies and allyship with Kānaka Maoli," a reference to Indigenous Hawaiians.
Das Gupta highlighted the pilina, or connection, "between Palestinians who are struggling for their self-determination and the Kānaka Maoli and their allies here... raising our voices for deoccupation."
Lawson said: "What we're asking for is a cease-fire. This isn't about one side versus the other, this is about justice for human beings. Period."
"So, free the hostages, an immediate cease-fire right now to stop any military aid from the United States from going to Israel so we're not co-conspirators in this atrocity, so we're not co-conspirators in this genocide, and to stop any legislation that continues to support us being involved in the devastation of one group of people over another," he added.