June, 15 2022, 12:09pm EDT
WASHINGTON
Today the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced new drinking water health advisories for four specific PFAS "forever chemical" substances, in an effort to address the rampant contamination of drinking water sources from the highly toxic class of chemicals commonly found in proximity to military bases and industrial sites. The announcement includes updated advisories for PFOA and PFOS at near-zero levels and new advisories for two additional compounds, including GenX. These are just four of the thousands of known PFAS compounds known to exist in communities across the country.
In response, Mary Grant, Director of Food & Water Watch's Public Water for All Campaign issued the following statement:
"This modest action by the EPA to warn communities of the harm caused by these four specific chemicals is good, but it only represents the tip of the iceberg in terms of adequately acknowledging and mitigating the hazards posed by the thousands of highly toxic variants existing in the PFAS 'forever chemical' family. The EPA needs to go much further by implementing strong, enforceable regulations on the entire class of PFAS chemicals that are sickening communities around the country as we speak.
"Funding in the bipartisan infrastructure law provided a down payment on what needs to be a continuing stream of adequate funding to properly address the drinking water crisis facing our country. The WATER Act, which now has more than 100 cosponsors in Congress, would provide the adequate long-term solution we need to provide clean water for everyone for years to come."
Food & Water Watch mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold and uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people's health, communities, and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests.
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DNC Chair Takes Aim at Vice Chair David Hogg's Push for Primary Challengers
"There are some effective people in our party; there are certainly some who are failing to meet the moment and know it's time for them not to seek reelection," Hogg told The Washington Post's daily podcast.
Apr 24, 2025
Democratic National Committee Vice Chair David Hogg rankled some in the party when he announced last week that he intends to support primary challenges to "asleep-at-the-wheel" Democrats in safe-blue seats—and now DNC Chair Ken Martin has rebuked Hogg and is poised to offer him what amounts to an ultimatum.
According to Martin, Hogg's effort could threaten the perceived neutrality of the DNC.
"You can't be both the player and the referee. Our job is clear cut: let voters vote, and once they've made their choice, to fight like hell to get that Democrat elected to office," wrote Martin in a column forTime published on Thursday.
Martin also invoked an episode from DNC history, when revelations like leaked emails cast doubt on the DNC's neutrality in the 2016 primary race between then-presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, in favor of Clinton.
"The controversy alienated even our party's most loyal supporters who felt that party bosses, not Democratic primary voters, were deciding which candidate would emerge in the general election as the Democratic nominee," Martin wrote of that moment.
Martin also said that in the coming days, he plans to introduce reforms that will codify "principles of neutrality and fairness in our official party rules," including requiring party officers to stay neutral in Democratic primaries.
The outlet NOTUS was first to report Wednesday that Martin was planning to unveil this requirement, citing an unnamed senior official. Currently officers must remain neutral in presidential races.
Politico framed the move as an ultimatum, and wrote that "if passed by DNC members at their August meeting, [it] would effectively force Hogg to choose between remaining a party vice chair or stepping back from the group he co-founded, Leaders We Deserve."
Hogg, a gun reform activist and survivor of the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, intends to support primary bids through Leaders We Deserve. The political action committee has pledged to spend $20 million to support challengers.
According to The Washington Post, Hogg has already identified some of the incumbents he would like to see gone and is recruiting people to mount bids against them.
"There are some effective people in our party; there are certainly some who are failing to meet the moment and know it's time for them not to seek reelection. Whether that's because they're too old, for example, or if that's just because they aren’t able to meet it," Hogg told Colby Itkowitz on "Post Reports," the newspaper's podcast. "Because frankly, unfortunately, sucking is something that is not limited to age."
Hogg said he would not support challenges to Reps. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), James Clyburn (D-S.C.), and Steny Hoyer (D-M.D.)—but did not name the incumbents he had in mind to challenge.
On Wednesday, the progressive group Our Revolution announced results from a survey which showed that there's support among progressive and Democratic-leaning voters for primarying establishment Democrats who "lack grassroots energy or urgency."
"Our Revolution polling shows Hogg's sentiment is shared by a large majority of engaged progressive voters," the group said.
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Number of Jailed Writers Increases Worldwide for Sixth Consecutive Year
"We are seeing that free expression, and therefore writers, are increasingly in the crosshairs of repression in a much wider range of countries," said PEN America.
Apr 24, 2025
A report released Thursday by the free expression group PEN America detailed how authoritarian regimes around the world, recognizing "the role that writers play in promoting critical inquiry and cultivating visions of a better, more just world," jailed more journalists and writers last year than ever before.
The number of imprisoned writers has ticked up each year since the group began its yearly Freedom to Write Index six years ago. In 2024, the index recorded 375 writers in prison across 40 countries—up from 339 writers who were detained in 33 countries the previous year.
The group observed startling trends in governments' crackdown on freedom of expression last year. The number of women imprisoned for their writing rose, with women making up 16% of those incarcerated last year, compared with 15% in 2023 and 14% in 2022.
Writers classified as "online commentators" accounted for 203 imprisoned authors last year, while 127 journalists were jailed for their work. Other professions represented in the index include literary writers, poets, songwriters, and creative artists.
"The high numbers of writers in the online commentator and journalist categories suggest that a significant proportion of the cases included jailing or other threats because of their writing commentary on politics or official policies, economic or social themes, or advocacy for a range of human rights," reads the report.
China and Iran are the biggest jailers of writers, with the two countries accounting for 43% of imprisoned writers worldwide.
Other top offenders include Saudi Arabia with 23 writers, Israel with 21, Russia with 18, and Belarus with 15.
"Authoritarian regimes are desperate to control the narrative of history and repress the truth about what they are doing. That is why writers are so important, and why we see these regimes attempting to silence them," said Karin Deutsch Karlekar, PEN America's director of writers at risk. "Jailing one writer for their words is a miscarriage of justice, but the systematic suppression of writers around the world represents an erosion of free expression—which is often the precursor to the destruction of other fundamental human rights."
The index includes all cases in which writers are detained for at least 48 hours in its accounting of jailed writers. The report notes that as in previous years, PEN America observed an increase in the number of writers held without charge or in pre-trial detention, with 80 such cases last year—up from 76 in 2023.
The majority of writers held in administrative and pre-trial detention—"tools of repression," the report says—were detained by officials in China, Egypt, and Israel.
The index highlighted a number of cases of jailed writers, including:
- Ilham Tohti, a Uyghur economist and blogger who "has been detained incommunicado since 2017" after being sentenced to life in prison by a court in Umruqi, China in 2014;
- Nobel Peace Prize laureate and women's rights campaigner Narges Mohammadi, who was among several women attacked by Iranian military forces and prison guards at Iran's Evin prison in August 2024; and
- Mahmoud Fatafta, a Palestinian columnist who was arrested in May 2024 by Israeli security forces in the West Bank while traveling with his 10-year-old son, with authorities citing his Facebook post in which he quoted Egyptian scholar Abdul Wahab al-Mesiri: "The more brutal the colonizer becomes, the nearer his end is."
Fatafta's arrest came amid Israel's U.S.-backed assault on Gaza and the West Bank, which has provoked outcry by international human rights groups, including in Israel and the United States.
The U.S. was not named as a country of concern in the index, but PEN America pointed to "recent developments in the United States," with the Trump administration revoking visas of foreign students who have protested the government's support for Israel and detaining several student organizers, as evidence of "the precarious nature of freedom of expression."
"The suppression of free expression has taken on an especially troubling dimension on college campuses where Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices are being silenced, including via attempts to deport student activists, limiting discourse on issues of the war in Gaza and human rights," reads the report.
PEN America noted that Columbia student organizers Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi and Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk were apparently detained "purely on the grounds of speech protected by the U.S. Constitution," with Ozturk targeted specifically because she co-authored an opinion piece for a student newspaper.
Their detention, said the group, "not only undermines academic freedom but also stifles the critical exchange of ideas."
"As geopolitics continue to shift and authoritarian tendencies spread to countries that were once considered safely anchored in openness," said PEN America, "we are seeing that free expression, and therefore writers, are increasingly in the crosshairs of repression in a much wider range of countries."
Karlekar said that writers like those who have been detained in the last year "represent a threat to disinformation and encourage people to think critically about what is going on around them."
"War, conflict, and attacks against the free exchange of information and ideas go hand in hand with lies and propaganda," said Karlekar. "With the index, we want to alert the world to the jailing and mistreatment of these 375 writers. Each and every one of them should be released, and we insist that the world's jailers of writers end this repression and abuse."
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'Flagrantly Enabling Insider Trading': Trump White House Reportedly Tips Off Wall St on Trade Talks
"Wall Street execs are getting a direct heads-up from the White House about news that could earn them billions on the stock market."
Apr 24, 2025
Officials inside U.S. President Donald Trump's White House have reportedly tipped off Wall Street executives about a potentially imminent trade agreement with India, a move that one watchdog group described as further evidence that the administration is "flagrantly enabling insider trading."
Fox Business correspondent Charles Gasparino reported Thursday that unnamed "people inside the Trump White House are alerting Wall Street execs they are nearing an agreement in principle on trade with India." Gasparino cited "senior Wall Street execs" with ties to the Trump White House.
It's not clear what kind of information Trump administration officials provided Wall Street executives or how the information differs from publicly available reporting and White House comments on the U.S.-India trade talks, which have thus far been scant on specific details about the timing or provisions of a potential deal.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a former hedge fund manager, told reporters Wednesday that the Trump administration was "very close" to a bilateral trade agreement with India, one of the United States' largest trading partners.
The report of behind-the-scenes communications between the Trump White House and Wall Street executives on a matter that could substantially move financial markets drew immediate alarm.
Emily Peterson-Cassin, corporate power director at the Demand Progress Education Fund, said Thursday that "while we all look at our retirement accounts with alternating relief and horror, Wall Street execs are getting a direct heads-up from the White House about news that could earn them billions on the stock market."
"The White House is flagrantly enabling insider trading and is continuing their long history of embracing Wall Street while throwing everyday Americans to the wolves," said Peterson-Cassin. "These tip-offs also serve as a corrupt shakedown scheme to lure powerful CEOs into Trump's orbit to beg for their own special carve-outs. It is crystal clear that the president doesn't care about fighting for Main Street and just wears economic populism like one of his ill-fitting suits."
Earlier this month, Trump himself sparked insider trading concerns by writing on his social media platform that it was a "great time to buy" stocks shortly before announcing a partial 90-day tariff pause, which sent equities surging.
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