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Earthjustice Statement on Closure of EPA Environmental Justice and Civil Rights Office
"Notwithstanding the overt cruelty of this decision, no one wants an unhealthier and more polluted America, coopted by industry."
This week, the Trump administration announced plans to close the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights (OEJECR), placing 168 civil servants on administrative leave. The OEJECR seeks to understand where and why deeply harmful, unjust and discriminatory environmental conditions exist and identify ways to ensure that the hardest hit communities are adequately protected and given real opportunities to participate and take action to improve their own wellbeing. After the announcement, Earthjustice Vice President of Litigation for Healthy Communities Patrice Simms issued the following statement:
“Up until three weeks ago, there was long-held consensus that the EPA’s role was to protect us from harmful pollution and toxic exposures. Eliminating the OEJECR office means more asthma deaths, higher cancer rates, increased heart attacks, loss of school and work days, and reduced economic opportunities for the most vulnerable communities across this country. Notwithstanding the overt cruelty of this decision, no one wants an unhealthier and more polluted America, coopted by industry.”
Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth, and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. We bring about far-reaching change by enforcing and strengthening environmental laws on behalf of hundreds of organizations, coalitions and communities.
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Consumer Advocates Decry Musk 'Minions' as DOGE Targets CFPB
"It sounds like the plot of a bad Bond movie but it's real and the American people are the real victims."
Feb 07, 2025
Consumer advocates on Friday called on allies to defend the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency after reports indicated DOGE personnel had entered the agency's office and possibly obtained access to its online databases.
Members of the CFPB Union NTEU 335, part of the National Treasury Employees Union, published a press release, later deleted from their website, noting that the names of three staffers of DOGE appeared in the consumer protection agency's internal staff directory Thursday evening—signaling that the CFPB is the latest target of Musk's illegal plunder of numerous federal offices.
Numerous outlets—includingWired and Punchbowl News—confirmed that the DOGE personnel had been granted access to CFPB offices and databases. Politico, citing people familiar with the developments, also reported the three individuals had been added as "senior advisers" to the agency.
The CFPB Union, in the now-deleted statement, identified the DOGE staffers as former Big Pharma lobbyist Chris Young; former Tesla and X employee Nikhil Rajpal; and Gavin Kliger, an "Elon fanboy" who graduated from University of California, Berkeley in 2020.
"When he's not stealing Americans' private information with DOGE, Kliger enjoys writing lengthy essays defending rapists and retweeting white supremacists," said the union's statement, citing the staffer's Substack where he has written positively about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), both accused of sexual abuse. "Kliger's lawyer daddy works at Experian, which is the same company CFPB sued in January for covering up errors on credit reports with sham investigations."
"CFPB Union members welcome our newest colleagues and look forward to the smell of Axe Body Spray in our elevators."
The union further mocked Kliger's "alleged" coding career and said that in contrast to the "zero to three git commits" he made in the last year, "workers at the CFPB returned $1.3 billion to scammed Americans in that time."
"CFPB Union members welcome our newest colleagues and look forward to the smell of Axe Body Spray in our elevators," said the workers.
"While acting Director [Scott] Bessent allows Musk's operatives to bypass cybersecurity policies and wreak havoc with their amateur code skills inside CFPB's once-secure systems, CFPB Union members fight to protect our jobs so we can continue protecting Americans from scammers with conflicts of interest like Musk," they said.
According to Wired's reporting:
In an email early Friday morning, CFPB staff were told that several people from DOGE—including [Rajpal, Kliger, and Young]—entered the agency building Thursday evening. The email stated that they would require access to CFPB data, systems, and equipment, following a message sent Thursday by CFPB chief operating officer Adam Martinez confirming that the DOGE employees were to receive "read-only access."
"DOGE arrived tonight and will be back tomorrow. They are going to need read-only access to our HR (HR Connect/NFC), procurement (PRISM), and finance (Discoverer) system," said Martinez. "I let them know that we utilize BFS/ARC so if they already have access, then they should be able to pull our data. Otherwise, if they do not have access to BFS/ARC, then we will need to work with them to fill out the necessary forms to gain access." BFS/ARC is the Bureau of the Fiscal Service's Administrative Resource Center, which provides administrative services, like timekeeping travel days or benefits, for a number of government agencies.
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich noted that DOGE's targeting of the CFPB comes days after Trump dismissed former Director Rohit Chopra.
"American's financial privacy and safety [is] at risk as DOGE arrives at CFPB," said the Center for Digital Democracy, in response to various reporting. "The CFPB has saved American taxpapers and consumers billions... Undermining American financial security must be stopped."
In recent days, DOGE employees have arrived at the Departments of Labor, Education, and the Treasury, among other federal agencies, seizing access to data about millions of Americans, setting up illegal servers, and placing employees on administrative leave.
The White House and Musk have claimed the effort is aimed at reducing "waste" and improving "efficiency" within government, but comments from U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) this week signaled the administration is searching for ways to slash spending for numerous public services in the interest of extending the 2017 tax cuts for the wealthiest earners.
The union suggested Musk wants to take over the CFPB, which he called to "delete" late last year, to clear the way for a partnership between his social media platform, X, and Visa. The credit card company wants to offer payments on the platform, and "notably, the CFPB recently obtained the authority to supervise major payment apps," said the NTEU.
Earlier this week, DOGE staffers arrived at the Department of Labor, which has filed multiple complaints against Musk's companies.
"The world's richest man just dispatched his minions to root around the systems of a government watchdog responsible for policing payment schemes like the one just announced for his own company," Emily Peterson-Cassin, corporate power director of the Demand Progress Education Fund, said in response to the union's account. "It sounds like the plot of a bad Bond movie but it's real and the American people are the real victims."
"Musk’s dreams of an 'everything app' that reaches into people's bank accounts paired with his sweeping, unchecked access to the levers of government opens up the potential for breathtaking corruption," said Peterson-Cassin. "His intrusion into CFPB systems also sends a clear message that he has no interest whatsoever in policing his own conflicts of interest. Musk must be stopped from dismantling the very mechanisms of the federal government that can prevent him from looting the American people."
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Medicaid Work Requirements Could Boot 36 Million People Off Their Health Coverage: Report
"Work requirements are simply another way to cut Medicaid," wrote the authors of an analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Feb 07, 2025
As right-wing lawmakers pursue imposing conditions on Americans' ability to access Medicaid and other social services, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities this week published analysis warning that work requirements for Medicaid recipients could put 36 million Americans, or 44% of all Medicaid enrollees, at risk of losing their health insurance.
"Research shows that work requirements do not increase employment," according to the authors of the CBPP report, which was published on Wednesday. The authors argue that these types of requirements are based on the premise that Medicaid enrollees do not work, when data shows that they do.
"Nearly 2 in 3 adult Medicaid enrollees aged 19-64 already work, and most of the rest would likely not be explicitly subject to the requirement based on having a disability, caring for family members, or attending school," the report states.
The group estimates that of those 36 million people who could be impacted, 20 million are enrolled through the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion.
While almost all Medicaid enrollees either work or would qualify for an exemption under most Medicaid work requirement proposals, according to CBPP, the report points to multiple past examples that indicate many enrollees still lose coverage with the imposition of work requirements due to "administrative burden and red tape."
For example, when Arkansas in 2018 temporarily implemented a policy that placed work requirements on Medicaid recipients, about 25% of enrollees subject to the requirements, some 18,000 people, lost coverage before a federal court paused the program seven months later.
As another example, New Hampshire implemented a short-lived Medicaid work requirement program in 2019 with more flexibility in reporting requirements and "more robust outreach efforts" in order to avoid Arkansas' mistakes, according to CBPP, but 2 in 3 enrollees who had to comply with the requirements "were likely to be disenrolled after just two months, amid reports of widespread confusion among enrollees about how to comply with the requirements."
The analysis—which the authors say is not an estimate of the number of people who will be impacted by a specific policy proposal—defines the population at risk of losing their coverage as adults between ages 19 and 64 who are not enrolled in Medicaid through disability pathways, i.e. a wider net of people than are specifically targeted in some recent GOP proposals.
The 36 million number is a larger group of enrollees compared to a previous CBPP estimate that was in response to a specific proposal whose work requirements would have targeted fewer people.
Multiple recent GOP proposals regarding Medicaid work requirements target "able-bodied" workers, though they vary in other specifics.
The far-right policy blueprint "Project 2025" calls for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to "clarify that states have the ability to adopt work incentives for able-bodied individuals" on Medicaid. And in late January congressional Republicans passed around a list of ideas for how to fund a bill full of GOP priorities that included imposing Medicaid work requirements for "able-bodied" adults without dependents, modeled after the Limit, Save, Grow Act, a bill passed by the House in 2023.
On Thursday, Sens. John Kennedy (R-La.) and Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) reintroduced the Jobs and Opportunities for Medicaid Act, a bill that would require "able-bodied adults without dependents who receive Medicaid benefits to work or volunteer for at least 20 hours per week."
Because the Kennedy and Schmitt bill includes an exemption for adults with dependents, it would impact a smaller number of people than the CBPP's Thursday analysis. But still, as a general matter, "work requirements are simply another way to cut Medicaid," according to the authors of the analysis. Republicans' January list of cost cut options estimated that adding Medicaid work requirements along the lines of what was specified in the Limit, Save, Grow Act would yield $100 billion in 10-year savings.
In a Friday letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), all 47 members of the Senate Democratic Caucus wrote: "We urge you to reject proposals that use Medicaid as a piggy bank for partisan priorities and continue to defend the importance of this vital program."Keep ReadingShow Less
7-Month Sentence for Israeli Reservist Who Beat Palestinians Called 'Woefully Inadequate'
"There were other people involved in the incident who were not brought to justice, and many other cases of abuse have not been investigated at all," lamented one Israeli anti-torture group.
Feb 07, 2025
While welcoming the conviction of an Israel Defense Forces reservist who brutalized Palestinian prisoners at the notorious Sde Teiman torture prison, an Israeli advocacy group on Thursday decried the perpetrator's seven-month sentence as an affront to justice.
The IDF said Thursday that the reservist—identified as 25-year-old Israel Hajabi—admitted "to having severely abused Palestinian detainees" while guarding detainee transport trucks at Sde Teiman, located in Israel's Negev Desert, while he was stationed there between January and June of last year. As part of a plea deal, Hajabi, who has already spent 80 days behind bars, was sentenced to seven additional months of imprisonment and a demotion from staff sergeant to private.
"All those who abused the detainees must be brought to justice, and the military detention facilities must be closed immediately."
"The defendant was convicted of several incidents in which he struck detainees with his fists and his weapon while they were bound and blindfolded," the IDF said. "These acts were carried out in the presence of other soldiers, some of whom called on him to stop, and were even recorded on the defendant's mobile phone. The military court determined that additional masked soldiers participated in the abuse, though their identities remain unknown."
Hajabi also forced victims to make animal noises, say "am Yisrael chai"—Hebrew for "the people of Israel live"—and other demeaning phrases.
This is the first time that an IDF member has been convicted for harming Palestinians during the war on Gaza, during which Israeli forces killed or wounded more than 170,000 men, women, and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Sde Teiman gained global infamy following reports of torture, rape, and murder of detainees. The IDF is investigating the deaths of at least 36 Palestinians at Sde Teiman, including one who died after allegedly being sodomized with an electric baton.
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), a Jerusalem-based nonprofit, called Hajabi's sentence "woefully inadequate."
"The conviction of the reservist and the sentence he received are indeed important developments, especially in light of the delay and weakness that the military justice system has demonstrated since the beginning of the war in handling and enforcing similar cases of abuse of detainees," PCATI said in a statement posted on social media.
"However, it is difficult to ignore the fact that the sentence does not constitute a significant deterrent," the group continued. "Physical harm and humiliation of a helpless detainee by someone who is trusted with his safety, when other soldiers have called on him to stop the act, constitutes serious abuse that requires a much more severe punishment, one that will ensure true deterrence and emphasize the seriousness of the offense."
"It is important to remember that there were other people involved in the incident who were not brought to justice, and many other cases of abuse have not been investigated at all to this day, and they may remain unpunished and without appropriate response," PCATI added. "All those who abused the detainees must be brought to justice, and the military detention facilities must be closed immediately."
Hassan Jabareen, the director of the Palestinian rights group Adalah, toldThe Guardian Thursday that Hajabi's case "including the punishment, indicates that Israel has a policy of impunity when it comes to their soldiers."
"Whatever they do, at most they will have a light sentence," he added, claiming that some Palestinian citizens of Israel have received longer prison sentences than Hajabi for social media posts expressing solidarity with Gaza.
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