September, 26 2018, 12:00am EDT
CREDO Statement on Third Set of Kavanaugh Allegations
WASHINGTON
CREDO released the statement below in response to a third woman coming forward with sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh:
"We believe Julie Swetnick, Deborah Ramirez and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford," said CREDO Action Co-Director Heidi Hess. "How many women need to come forward with credible allegations before Senate Republicans and Donald Trump will acknowledge that Brett Kavanaugh is a sexual predator and a liar?" Hess asked. "Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee have shown through both their behavior and comments that they have zero interest in confronting the disturbing reality of Brett Kavanaugh's past," she said.
"This entire confirmation process has been a case study in Republicans' misogyny and disregard for the truth," Hess continued. "Once Brett Kavanaugh's nomination has finally been withdrawn or defeated, he should be impeached from the D.C. Circuit."
A few details on CREDO's work in opposition to Kavanaugh's confirmation can be found below:
80,000+ SIGN PETITION TO SENATE: TREAT SURVIVORS WITH RESPECT: The petition, which can be found here, reads: "Survivors who make public their stories of sexual assault or harassment are taking huge risks to hold abusers accountable, especially when a Supreme Court seat is at stake. Respect Christine Blasey Ford for her courage and refuse to undermine, discredit or defame her."
CREDO POLL SHOWS KAVANAUGH'S UNPOPULARITY IN MAINE: A poll conducted Sept. 14-17 for CREDO Victory Fund by Civiqs found that 56 percent of registered voters in Maine oppose the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. The poll also found that 54 percent of registered voters in Maine say they would be less likely to support Senator Susan Collins' reelection if she votes to confirm Kavanaugh.
MORE THAN A DOZEN PROGRESSIVE GROUPS TO SEN. SCHUMER: THE SUPREME COURT IS ON THE LINE AND YOU ARE FAILING US: CREDO drafted and spearheaded a September 7 letter urging Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer to immediately unite all Senate Democrats in opposition to Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court. More information can be found here and the letter can be viewed here.
CREDO BILLBOARD TRUCK CIRCULATED ON CAPITOL HILL DURING KAVANAUGH'S CONFIRMATION HEARING: From September 4-6, CREDO's mobile billboard circulated on Capitol Hill to make clear that it is Sen. Chuck Schumer's job to unite all Senate Democrats in opposition to Kavanaugh. The billboard read: "49 democrats, 49 no votes on Kavanaugh. Do your job, Sen. Schumer." Video footage of the mobile billboard can be viewed here. High-resolution photos are available upon request.
265,000+ SIGN PETITIONS URGING SENATE TO REJECT KAVANAUGH: More than 265,000 CREDO members have signed petitions in opposition to Kavanaugh's confirmation. The petitions focus on Kavanaugh's hostility to women's rights, his anti-environment agenda, Trump's role as a criminal co-conspirator and the unprecedented lack of transparency regarding Kavanaugh's record.
CREDO POLL SHOWS NEW YORK DEMOCRATS THINK IT IS SEN. SCHUMER'S RESPONSIBILITY TO UNITE DEMOCRATS AGAINST KAVANAUGH: A new poll conducted for CREDO Victory Fund by Public Policy Polling on Sept 14 and 15 shows that a strong majority of Democrats in New York think it is Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer's responsibility to make sure all Senate Democrats oppose Brett Kavanaugh. The results showed that 61 percent of Democratic voters in New York said it is Sen. Schumer's responsibility, 26 percent said it is not and 14 percent were not sure.
13,000+ PHONE CALLS TO SENATE OFFICES: CREDO members have made more than 13,000 phone calls to senate offices in opposition to Kavanaugh, including thousands of calls to the offices of Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Jeff Flake, and more than 5,000 calls urging Sen. Schumer to unite all Democrats against Kavanaugh.
CREDO EXECUTIVES ARRESTED DISRUPTING DAY ONE OF CONFIRMATION HEARING: CREDO vice presidents Trish Tobin and Josh Nelson were arrested disrupting Brett Kavanaugh's Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on September 4. Before being dragged from the room, Josh Nelson shouted, "this hearing is an attack on women's rights. It is an attack on democracy. Shut this hearing down." Video footage of the arrests can be viewed here.
CREDO Action, part of CREDO Mobile, is a social change network of over five million activists, sending tens of millions of petition signatures and hundreds of thousands of phone calls to decision-makers each year. CREDO Action members also participate in meetings, protests and other direct action for progressive change.
LATEST NEWS
Critics Warn Manchin-Barrasso Permitting Bill 'Is Taken Straight From Project 2025'
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Jul 26, 2024
Climate and environmental defenders on this week implored U.S. senators to block a permitting reform bill introduced this week by Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso that one campaigner linked to Project 2025, a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right overhaul of the federal government.
Common Dreamsreported Monday that Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Barrasso (R-Wyo.)—respectively the chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee—introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) noted that although the proposal "includes several positive reforms for the accelerated development of transmission projects," it also advocates "limiting opportunities for communities to challenge projects, loosening oversight for drilling and mining projects, extending drilling permits and fast-tracking [liquified natural gas] permits, and several other provisions friendly to fossil fuel giants."
"This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
These are nearly identical policies to what's proposed in Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. The plan, which was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, calls for "unleashing all of America's energy resources," including by ending federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands; limiting investments in renewable energy; and rolling back environmental permitting restrictions for new oil, gas, and coal projects, including power plants.
While Manchin has been trying—and failing—to pass fossil fuel-friendly permitting reform legislation for years, Brett Hartl, director of public affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that his "Frankenstein legislation is taken straight from Project 2025, and it's the biggest giveaway in decades to the fossil fuel industry."
Hartl said the bill "deprives communities of the power to defend themselves and gives that power to Big Oil by making it harder for communities to challenge polluting projects in court," and "prioritizes the profits of coal barons over public health."
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Hartl added that "to preserve a livable planet," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "must squash this legislation now."
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NRDC managing director of government affairs Alexandra Adams said Wednesday that "this bill is a giveaway for the oil and gas industry that will ramp up drilling and environmental destruction at a time when we need to be putting a hard stop to fossil fuels."
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Sudan's military is blocking United Nations aid trucks from entering at a key border crossing, causing severe disruptions in aid in a country that experts fear may be on the brink of one of the worst famines the world has seen in decades, The New York Timesreported Friday.
The border city of Adré in eastern Chad is the main international crossing into the Darfur region of Sudan, but the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the state's official military, which is engaged in a civil war with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has refused to issue permits for U.N. trucks to enter there, as it's an RSF-controlled area.
U.S. and international officials have issued increasingly alarmed calls for steady aid access to help feed the millions of severely malnourished people in Darfur and other areas of Sudan.
Last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the U.N., said that the SAF's obstruction of the border was "completely unacceptable."
Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
The Sudanese who've made it out of the country and into Adré reported dire and unsafe conditions in their home country.
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Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
Now the mothers and their families are refugees in Adré, where 200,000 Sudanese are living in an overcrowded, under-resourced transit camp.
In addition to those that have made it out of the country, there are 11 million people internally displaced within Sudan, most of whom have become displaced since the civil war began in April 2023.
An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
In April, Reutersreported that people in Sudan were eating soil and leaves to survive, and The Washington Postcalled it a nation in "chaos," reporting that World Food Program trucks had been "blocked, hijacked, attacked, looted, and detained."
In late June, a coalition of U.N. agencies, aid groups, and governments warned that 755,000 people in Sudan faced famine in the coming months.
The U.S. last week announced $203 million in additional aid to Sudan—part of a $2.1 billion pledge that world leaders made in April, which some countries have not yet delivered on.
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The International Service for Human Rights on Friday warned that both the SAF and RSF were engaged in wrongful killings and arrests, especially targeted at lawyers, doctors, and activists. The group called for an immediate cease-fire.
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After days of condemnation from critics including actress Jennifer Aniston and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, U.S. Sen. JD Vance was given the opportunity on Thursday to clarify his remarks from 2021 in which he said the Democratic Party was run by "childless cat ladies."
Instead, the Ohio Republican and running mate of former President Donald Trump assured SiriusXM host Megyn Kelly on "The Megyn Kelly Show" that while he has "nothing against cats," he meant what he said in terms of "the substance" of his argument.
Vance made it clear, said Aaron Fritschner, deputy chief of staff for Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), "that he meant no disrespect to cats, but he did mean to demean women and still holds the view in 2024 that they should be punished for not having children."
The comments in question were made by Vance to then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson when Vance was running for the Senate.
Calling out Buttigieg—who, the secretary disclosed this week, was struggling at the time to adopt a child with his husband—and Vice President Kamala Harris, a stepmother of two and the Democratic Party's presumptive presidential nominee, Vance said people without biological children "don't really have a direct stake in" the future of the country and therefore shouldn't hold higher office.
In separate remarks that same year, Vance said parents should "have more power" at the voting booth and that "if you don't have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn't get nearly the same voice."
He also specifically categorized people who don't have children as "bad" in an interview in 2021, saying the government should "reward the things that we think are good" and "punish the things that we think are bad," with people taxed at a lower rate if they have children.
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In his interview with Kelly on Thursday, Vance attempted to pivot away from his own comments, saying his point was to criticize "the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child" and claiming without evidence that the Harris campaign had "come out against the child tax credit"—a signature policy of the Biden-Harris administration.
"I'm proud to stand for parents and I hope that parents out there recognize that I'm a guy who wants to fight for you," said Vance. "The Democrats, in the past five, 10 years, Megyn, they have become anti-family. It's built into their policy, it's built into the way they talk about parents and children. I don't think we should back down from it, I think we should be honest about the problem."
Vance and Kelly went on to lament the anxiety "hardcore environmentalists" and progressive lawmakers such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have expressed about the damage fossil fuel extraction is doing the planet, accusing them of pushing people to forgo having families—but said nothing about Republican policies that have made child-rearing less accessible.
In recent years, the entire Republican caucus in Congress was joined by conservative then-Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia in blocking the extension of the enhanced child tax credit, which had been credited with cutting the national child poverty rate in half. Republicans also allowed a pandemic-era universal school meal program to expire, while several Democratic-led states have passed state-level programs to ensure all children can have meals at school, regardless of their family's income.
Under Republican abortion bans, numerous stories have cropped up of pregnant people who have been forced to carry pregnancies to term despite finding out that their fetuses had fatal abnormalities and would die soon after birth—as have stories of children who were forced to give birth or had to cross state lines in order to get abortion care.
As with his position that nonparents should be "punished" for not having children, "who else does 'pro-child/family' Vance think should 'face consequences and reality' by way of curtailing choices, rights, and freedoms?" asked writer Alheli Picazo. "Women and girls who become pregnant through rape/incest."
University of North Carolina law professor Carissa Byrne Hessick said that one could test "empirically" Vance's claim that Democratic policies are anti-family.
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