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220+ Organizations Call on Biden Administration to Regulate Rent to Curb Inflation
Demands for Federal Action to Regulate Rent Released in Memo and Letter to the Administration
WASHINGTON
The Homes Guarantee campaign, based at People's Action, today led a coalition of over 220 tenant unions, community organizations, and legal partners to call on President Biden to regulate rents in a new memo and letter. The demands come just a day before July's inflation numbers are set to be released.
Rent has become a major driver of core inflation. June 2022 saw the biggest one-month increase in rents since 1986. Nationally, median rent is over
$2000 for the first time ever.
"The president must act immediately to regulate rents, as part of the administration's efforts to curb inflation, and as a critical foundation for long term protections to correct the imbalance of power between tenants and their landlords," the signers wrote.
The demands for federal action to combat rent inflation include:
- Declaring a state of emergency on housing;
- Imposing rent regulations on all borrowers of federally-backed mortgages;
- Defining excessive rent increases as an unfair practice and enforcing it;
- Investigating corporate landlords using unfair tenant screening and debt collection practices;
- Obtaining and investigating rent increases at publicly traded companies that own and manage rental residential properties;
- Conditioning new Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) funds with rent control measures; and
- Attaching good cause eviction protections to the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit.
The full text of the demands, letter, and signers may be found here.
People's Action builds the power of poor and working people, in rural, suburban, and urban areas to win change through issue campaigns and elections.
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'A Disastrous Mistake': Trump Taps Fracking CEO Chris Wright for Energy Secretary
"This is going to be the oiliest administration since George W. Bush," lamented one environmental campaigner.
Nov 16, 2024
In a move that alarmed green groups, Republican President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday tapped Chris Wright—the CEO of a fracking company who denies the climate emergency—as his energy secretary.
Wright, who leads the Denver-based oil services company Liberty Energy, is a Republican donor whose nomination to head the Department of Energy is backed by powerful fossil fuel boosters including oil and gas tycoon and Trump adviser Harold Hamm.
"Chris has been a leading technologist and entrepreneur in Energy. He has worked in Nuclear, Solar, Geothermal, and Oil and Gas," Trump said in a statement announcing his choice. "Most significantly, Chris was one of the pioneers who helped launch the American Shale Revolution that fueled American Energy Independence, and transformed the Global Energy Markets and Geopolitics."
"Not surprising but still appalling that Trump's pick for Energy Secretary is a Big Oil CEO."
Trump—who has promised to increase fossil fuel production beyond the record-setting levels of the Biden administration—also said Wright would serve on a new Council of National Energy led by Doug Burgum, his pick to run the Interior Department.
In a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, Wright said that he is "honored and grateful for the opportunity" to be nominated by Trump.
"My dedication to bettering human lives remains steadfast, with a focus on making American energy more affordable, reliable, and secure," he added. "Energy is the lifeblood that makes everything in life possible. Energy matters. I am looking forward to getting to work."
Wright calls himself "a lifelong environmentalist" and said last year that "climate change is a real problem." However, he also said in 2023 that "there is no such thing as clean energy or dirty energy" and that "there is no climate crisis and we're not in the midst of an energy transition either."
While fossil fuel proponents cheered Wright's nomination, climate and environmental defenders voiced alarm over the pick.
"Not surprising but still appalling that Trump's pick for Energy Secretary is a Big Oil CEO," League of Conservation Voters senior vice president for government affairs Tiernan Sittenfeld wrote on X.
Natural Resources Defense Council senior vice president for climate and energy Jackie Wong blasted Wright as "a champion of fossil fuels" whose nomination was "a disastrous mistake."
"The Energy Department should be doing all it can to develop and expand the energy sources of the 21st century, not trying to promote the dirty fuels of the last century," Wong said in a statement reported by The Associated Press. "Given the devastating impacts of climate-fueled disasters, DOE's core mission of researching and promoting cleaner energy solutions is more important now than ever."
Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director at the Center for Biological Diversity, lamented that "this is going to be the oiliest administration since George W. Bush."
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A pair of Democratic U.S. senators pledged Saturday at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan to keep fighting for climate action during Republican President-elect Donald Trump's second term, while urging President Joe Biden to act decisively against liquefied natural gas exports before the end of his presidency.
Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Ed Markey of Massachusetts spoke at a press conference Saturday following a Friday joint panel discussion at COP29, where they both sounded the alarm over the dangers of Trump 2.0 and offered hope for climate action.
"With Trump and the Republicans taking their turn at the political reins, oil and gas companies will soon have their pick of lackeys to enable their destructive, polluting LNG wish list," said Markey, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Climate, Clean Air, and Nuclear Safety.
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"But our climate-focused, people-powered, renewable plan is better, and we're joining forces worldwide to fight for it and reject Big Oil's attempt to put private profits over the public interest—no matter who's president and no matter which cronies are at the controls," Markey added.
As the senator noted during a Friday press call, "Just like climate change won't be solved by any one president, climate action won't be stopped by any one president."
Earlier this week, Markey and Congresswoman Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) introduced the Targeting Environmental and Climate Recklessness Act (TECRA), legislation to "restrict access to the U.S. financial system for those individuals and companies most responsible for exacerbating climate change and deforestation."
Whitehouse said in a statement that "dark days are ahead in Washington as Donald Trump, Republicans, and their fossil fuel handlers abdicate America's leadership on climate just as the scientific and economic warnings of climate chaos grow more clear and grim."
"The world must be clear-eyed about the threat Trump's Republican Party poses to climate safety," the senator added. "At COP, I hope to reassure our foreign counterparts that Democrats will pursue climate progress at every level of government while fighting tooth and nail to expose the Big Oil-fueled corruption descending on D.C."
Markey stressed that "climate change and Donald Trump are both existential threats to our health and to our livable future—but we're not giving up on either front."
"Even if Donald Trump is ready to enact his day-one doomsday agenda and pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement yet again, we will rise up in support of ambitious climate action and climate finance targets—targets that will show that COP stands for Climate Outlasts Presidents," Markey argued.
"We must work together, both at home and in solidarity with lawmakers around the world, in order to delay and derail Trump and the fossil fuel industry's dirty agenda," he added.
The senators and green groups said one way to get a head start on fighting that agenda is for Biden to halt LNG export expansion. Although climate campaigners praised Biden's January pause on approvals for all LNG exports to non-Fair Trade Agreement countries, a Trump-appointed federal judge lifted the pause in July. In September, the Department of Energy granted LNG export approval to the company New Fortress Energy.
Under Biden's watch, the United States became the world's leading LNG exporter.
"While Trump stacks his cabinet with a carnival of corporate cronies, President Biden has just weeks to halt some of the biggest carbon bombs on Earth," Center for Biological Diversity senior climate campaigner Ben Goloff said at Saturday's press conference."
"From the Gulf Coast to Europe and Asia, U.S. LNG expansion is neither needed nor wanted. The Biden administration should urgently complete its review of LNG exports' many harms," Goloff added. "It should reject authorizations for monster polluter [Calcasieu Pass 2] LNG export terminal and other pending projects that fail to meet the public interest test required by law, science, and justice."
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Organizers said more than 60 groups—including Extinction Rebellion, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Amnesty International U.K., Palestine Solidarity Campaign, War on Want, and Just Stop Oil—took part in the March for Global Climate Justice. The demonstration took place amid yet another shambolic United Nations Climate Change Conference and as Israeli forces continue a war on Gaza that U.N. experts this week called "consistent with the characteristics of genocide."
More than two dozen associated protests were held in cities and towns across Britain and Ireland, including Dublin, Edinburgh, Manchester, and Sheffield. Over 150 actions around the world are planned for what organizers are calling a Global Day of Action for Climate Justice on Saturday.
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"The issues we face are global, and so is our response," O'Brien added. "We won't stop until political leaders divest from war and destruction—and invest in a just, ecological, and equitable transition."
Lauren MacDonald, the lead campaigner at Stop Rosebank, said: "Every day we are witnessing the worsening effects of climate change as they creep closer and closer to home. All this while governments insist on pandering to the demands of mega-polluters in an endless cycle of ignorance that endangers us all."
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Earlier this week, green groups including Oil Change International, Friends of the Earth Palestine/PENGON, and Tipping Point U.K. highlighted how fossil fuel companies including Britain's BP "enable and profit from Israel's genocide in Gaza" and perpetuate "a long history of the industry's complicity in mass atrocities worldwide."
Joanna Warrington, a campaigner at Fossil Free London—a group known for its bold direct action protests—said Saturday that "in gleaming London offices, fossil fuel giants like BP line their pockets while our planet burns and millions suffer."
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