SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Eliminating EPA Office of Research and Development Would Harm Public Health and the Environment
Statement by Chitra Kumar, Climate and Energy Program managing director
The potential elimination of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Research and Development, reported by news outlets, would take a huge toll on public health and be a massive giveaway to polluting industries, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). These destructive actions are reportedly part of the Trump administration’s mass layoff strategy.
Below is a statement by Chitra Kumar, the managing director of the Climate and Energy Program at UCS.
“It would be extremely difficult to set protective health standards without the EPA’s Office of Research and Development, and I think that’s exactly what this administration is aiming for. I am not sure how the EPA could fulfill its legal mandate of public health protection if this plan goes forward.
“The scientists and experts in this office conduct and review the best available science to set limits on pollution and regulate hazardous chemicals to keep the public safe. We’re talking about soot that worsens asthma and heart disease, carcinogenic ‘forever chemicals’ in drinking water, and heat-trapping emissions driving climate change. The administration knows, and history shows, that industry will not regulate itself.
“The EPA is claiming that this is not a done deal yet, so it’s paramount that the administration hear: This is not acceptable. Everyone, including President Trump and his cabinet’s children and grandchildren, would feel the consequences of this move, not to mention the most polluted communities, predominantly Black, Brown and low income, who would bear the brunt. Is the administration’s ideology and pledge to industries that strong that they are willing to put their own loved ones at risk?”
The Union of Concerned Scientists is the leading science-based nonprofit working for a healthy environment and a safer world. UCS combines independent scientific research and citizen action to develop innovative, practical solutions and to secure responsible changes in government policy, corporate practices, and consumer choices.
LATEST NEWS
Entire Families Wiped Out as Israel Resumes Genocidal Assault on Gaza
"All of this is made possible by the U.S. government, which has funded and fueled these atrocities," said Jewish Voice for Peace.
Mar 18, 2025
Once again, entire families are being wiped out by Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip after U.S. President Donald Trumpreportedly gave the green light for the key American ally to resume its assault on the Palestinian enclave.
Israel unilaterally abrogated the crumbling eight-week cease-fire early Tuesday, unleashing a wave of ferocious strikes on the already flattened Gaza Strip, killing at least 404 people—including 174 children, 89 women, and 32 elders—and wounding at least 562 others, with the death toll expected to rise, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
"We were shocked late at night to see strikes and attacks on Gaza like in the early days of the war," Momen Qoreiqeh, who lost more than two dozen relatives in an Israeli airstrike on their Gaza City home, toldAl Jazeera. "I was with my family and suddenly there was a huge attack on our residential block. The attack killed so many people from my family, some of them we still haven't recovered from under the rubble."
"So far we've managed to recover about 26 bodies from my family and 20 other people who were with us," he added.
Ramy Abdu, founder and chair of the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor—which has published numerous reports on alleged Israeli war crimes and acts of genocide in Gaza—said his sister's family was killed in an Israeli strike on their home in Gaza City.
"This morning, Israel killed my sister, my heart, Nesreen, and her beloved sons and daughters: Ubaida, Omar, and Lian, along with Ubaida's wife, Malak, and their children, Siwar and Mohammed," Abdu said on social media.
According to Al Jazeera, the family had survived many Israeli airstrikes over the years.
"Israel may kill us at will, burn us alive, and tear us apart, but it will never succeed in uprooting us from our land," Abdu
wrote in a separate post. "Justice and accountability await—no matter how long it takes."
Al Jazeera also reported that Dr. Majda Abu Aker, an OB-GYN at a Rafah clinic run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, and more than a dozen other people were killed in a strike on her house in Rafah's al-Jenaina neighborhood. At least 10 of the dead were from the same family; the youngest victim was a girl who was just three days old.
Fifteen people, most of them members of the Barhoum family, were reportedly killed when Israeli forces bombed al-Mawasi.
Six members of the same family were also reportedly killed while trying to flee in a car in Abasan, east of Khan Younis.
Ahmed Abu Rizq, a teacher who survived Tuesday's airstrikes, described to Al Jazeera the horror and chaos he witnessed at a local hospital, where he saw "blood everywhere" and arriving families carrying the "remains of their children."
Al-Shifa Hospital director Muhammad Abu Salmiya said that "every minute, a wounded person dies due to a lack of resources," as Israel has imposed a " complete siege" on Gaza since October 2023 that has been blamed for widespread starvation and sickness. The South Africa-led genocide case against Israel currently before the International Court of Justice cites the siege, which has been called a "genocidal act" by an independent United Nations commission and human rights groups.
Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, said later in the day that Tuesday's strikes are "only the beginning" and will continue until Hamas frees all the remaining hostages it took on October 7, 2023 and is destroyed.
During a meeting with the U.S. Zionist lobby group American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Jerusalem, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar affirmed that Tuesday's bombings were not a "one-day attack."
Palestine defenders around the world took to the streets to protest the renewed Israeli onslaught. In London, thousands of demonstrators turned out for an emergency protest organized by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Protests also took place in cities including Ramallah, Dublin, Berlin, Jerusalem, Manchester, and Belfast, and are planned for Washington, D.C., Chicago, New York, and elsewhere.
United Nations officials condemned Tuesday's strikes, with U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres writing: "I am outraged by the Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. I strongly appeal for the cease-fire to be respected, for unimpeded humanitarian assistance to be reestablished, and for the remaining hostages to be released unconditionally."
Human rights groups also condemned Israel's renewed aggression, with Amnesty International secretary general Agnès Callamard calling Tuesday "a desperately dark day for humanity."
"Israel brazenly resumed its devastating bombing campaign in Gaza... again wiping out entire families in a matter of hours," she said. "Palestinians in Gaza—who have barely had a chance to start piecing together their lives and continue to grapple with the trauma of Israel's past attacks—have woken up once more to the hellish nightmare of intense bombardment."
"Today, we are back to square one," Callamard lamented. "Since March 2, Israel has reimposed a total siege on Gaza blocking the entry of all humanitarian aid, medicine, and commercial supplies, including fuel and food, in flagrant violation of international law. Israel has also cut off electricity to Gaza's main operational desalination plant. And today the Israeli military has once again started issuing mass 'evacuation' orders displacing Palestinians."
Omar Shakir, Human Rights Watch's Israel and Palestine director, said: "The reported killings of hundreds of Palestinians amid Israel's renewed assault on Gaza is alarming. The Israeli authorities have committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, including forced displacement and extermination, and acts of genocide during the assault on Gaza."
"Other countries should urgently act to prevent further mass atrocities, including by suspending arms transfers to Israel, supporting the International Criminal Court and executing its arrest warrants, and imposing targeted sanctions on officials responsible for laws-of-war violations," Shakir added.
The American Human Rights Council (AHRC) condemned "the restart of the Israeli genocidal policy of starving and bombing the Palestinians in Gaza" and noted that "the victims of the Israeli genocidal acts are primarily infants, children, women, and the elderly."
"AHRC urges the Trump administration to uphold its peace promise," the group added. "The current Israeli escalation of war crimes and the ongoing Israeli weaponization of food, water, and medicine are resulting in avoidable deaths and suffering. The U.S. can put a permanent end to this war but for political expediency is choosing not to."
Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the largest U.S. Muslim civil rights group, said that "President Trump must stop the madness after the government of indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu renewed its genocide and slaughtered hundreds of Palestinians, including women and children, during the holy month of Ramadan."
"Without strong actions to push back against this renewed orgy of slaughter, mass destruction, forced starvation, and ethnic cleansing, the Israeli government will continue to act with impunity and our government will remain as complicit with genocide as it was under the Biden administration," Awad added.
The U.S. group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)—which has organized numerous protests against the assault on Gaza—said: "This is a campaign of extermination. This is genocide."
"All of this is made possible by the U.S. government, which has funded and fueled these atrocities," JVP noted. "Over the last 17 months, the U.S. has spent over $17 billion in military funding to the Israeli government's campaign of extermination and apartheid against the Palestinian people, and continues to sell the Israeli military more weapons."
The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)—a Quaker organization that has worked in Palestine for decades—said that "there are no words adequate to express the devastation of watching bombs rain down again on people who have already endured more than 17 months of a U.S.-backed genocide."
"Our hearts are with AFSC staff, families, partners, friends, and all Palestinians in Gaza—we are holding you in the Light and we will continue the relentless struggle to end these atrocities," the group added.
Progressive U.S. lawmakers also denounced the renewed Israeli assault and demanded an end to American armed aid, with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian American member of Congress, writing on social media that "the Israeli apartheid regime has resumed its genocide, carrying out airstrikes all across Gaza and killing hundreds of Palestinians."
"This comes after a complete blockade of food, electricity, and aid," Tlaib added. "They will never stop until there are sanctions and an arms embargo."
Netanyahu has not allowed any food, water, or fuel into Gaza in two weeks. Now he has resumed bombing, killing hundreds of people and breaking the ceasefire that had given Gaza a chance to live again. NO MORE MILITARY AID TO ISRAEL.
— Senator Bernie Sanders ( @sanders.senate.gov) March 18, 2025 at 7:57 AM
The Gaza Health Ministry says that at least 48,964 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces over the past 529 days. At least 112,481 others have been wounded, and an estimated 14,000 more are missing and believed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed buildings.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Time to Step Up or Step Down': Our Rev Finds 9 of 10 Progressives Want Schumer Out
"These survey results point to an undeniable crisis of confidence in Chuck Schumer and Democratic leadership," said the head of Our Revolution.
Mar 18, 2025
Since Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer joined a handful of Democrats in voting for a GOP-backed continuing resolution that cuts nondefense spending by $13 billion and keeps the government open through September, the lawmaker from New York has taken heat from members of his own caucus and liberal groups—and survey data from the group Our Revolution shows that progressive voters are unhappy with him, too.
Our Revolution, the progressive political organizing group launched as a continuation of Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) 2016 presidential campaign, announced Tuesday that it surveyed 9,024 of its members between March 17-18 and found that nearly 90% of respondents believe Schumer should step aside as Senate minority leader and 86% would support a primary challenger against Schumer for his Senate seat, should he refuse to step aside.
The respondents are a subset of Our Revolution's grassroots network, according to the group, and they "include rank-in-file Democratic Party activists and base voters, many of whom supported Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in the 2020 presidential primary."
When given the opportunity to submit open-ended responses, survey respondents expressed things like: "Wildly frustrated and defeated" and "We need an opposition party, the Democrats are anything but!"
"These survey results point to an undeniable crisis of confidence in Chuck Schumer and Democratic leadership at a time of unprecedented executive overreach and corporate takeover of the American federal government," said Joseph Geevarghese, the executive director of Our Revolution.
"It is an utter disgrace that Schumer and other top Democrats cannot muster up the courage to actively resist. It's time to step up or step down," said Geevarghese.
On Thursday, Schumer announced his intention to support the bill, which was a pivot from his position earlier that week when he advocated for an extension in order to negotiated a compromise. The pivot drew sharp backlash, including from House Democrats, who had largely been united in opposing the measure when it cleared that chamber on March 11.
On Friday, the Senate voted 62-38, with 10 members of the Democratic caucus in favor, to advance the funding bill and avoid a government shutdown.
Our Revolution found that 83% of respondents would support primary challengers against those 10 senators.
In addition to steeps cuts to items such as the Department of Housing and Urban Development's community development, rental assistance, and homelessness services programs, the bill also lacks the specific congressional instructions to allocate funds for programs that are generally included in spending bills, according to The New York Times. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the party's top appropriator, warned that because of this, the bill turns "turns many of our accounts into slush funds."
There were other signs that this was not a typical shutdown fight.
Everett Kelley, president of the nation's largest federal workers union—the American Federation of Government Employees—wrote in a letter to senators last week that AFGE's position "until this year has been that although continuing resolutions are far from ideal, they are better than an outright government shutdown."
"This year is different," Kelley wrote. "The Trump administration has repeatedly demonstrated over the last seven weeks that it will not spend appropriated funds as the law dictates."
After Schumer's pivot, a number of progressives loudly condemned the move. The grassroots group Indivisible released a statement calling for him to step aside as Senate minority leader and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) told reporters that there is a "deep sense of outrage and betrayal" from House Democrats following Schumer's about-face.
The episode also sparked murmurs among some Democrats that Ocasio-Cortez should consider a primary bid against Schumer in 2028.
Schumer has defended his decision to stave off a government shutdown, casting it as the less bad option of the two bad options that Senate Democrats were faced with, according to The New York Times.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Judge Rules Musk's DOGE Acted Unconstitutionally by Dismantling USAID
"This case is a milestone in pushing back on Musk and DOGE's illegality," said Norm Eisen of the State Democracy Defenders Fund.
Mar 18, 2025
A U.S. judge on Tuesday barred the Trump administration-created Department of Government Efficiency from taking "any actions relating" to the federal international aid agency it began pushing to dismantle in February, and said "special government employee" Elon Musk likely acted unconstitutionally "in multiple ways" by moving to shut down the agency.
In Maryland, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang ruled in favor of 26 current and former employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), one of the earliest targets of Musk's push to slash government spending and fire tens of thousands of civil servants. Chuang ordered DOGE to restore email, payment, and system access to all current USAID employees.
The workers are being represented by the State Democracy Defenders Fund, and have accused Musk of acting unconstitutionally.
"Today's decision is an important victory against Elon Musk and his DOGE attack on USAID, the United States government, and the Constitution," said Norm Eisen, executive chair of the group. "They are performing surgery with a chainsaw instead of a scalpel, harming not just the people USAID serves but also the majority of Americans who count on the stability of our government. This case is a milestone in pushing back on Musk and DOGE's illegality."
Chuang is one of several federal judges who have blocked President Donald Trump and Musk's actions ostensibly aimed at improving "efficiency" and eliminating waste in the federal government; other judges have blocked the president's freezing of federal grants and loans, his invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, and his order attacking diversity, equity, and inclusiveness programs.
But Chuang's ruling reportedly marks the first time a judge has ruled that Musk should likely be required to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate under the Constitution's appointments clause.
"The record of his activities to date establishes that his role has been and will continue to be as the leader of DOGE, with the same duties and degree of continuity as if he was formally in that position,'" wrote Chuang.
The State Democracy Defenders Fund noted Tuesday that "the Constitution's appointments clause only gives those powers to people nominated by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, neither of which applies to Musk. Since Musk's role as the de facto DOGE administrator constitutes the performance of significant governmental duties that should only be handled by duly appointed officers of the United States, the plaintiffs ultimately seek a permanent injunction preventing Musk and his team from continuing their roles."
The Trump administration has claimed Musk is only an adviser to the president and is not the administrator of DOGE, which has spearheaded efforts to shut down agencies including the Department of Education and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and to fire federal employees across agencies.
"If a president could escape appointments clause scrutiny by having advisers go beyond the traditional role of White House advisers who communicate the president's priorities to agency heads and instead exercise significant authority throughout the federal government so as to bypass duly appointed officers, the appointments clause would be reduced to nothing more than a technical formality," the judge said.
Chuang rejected the claim that DOGE's actions are not being directed by Musk, saying the Tesla CEO and Trump megadonor appeared to have been involved in closing the CFPB and to "have taken other unilateral actions without any apparent authorization from agency officials."
"The evidence presently favors the conclusion that contrary to defendants' sweeping claim that Musk acted only as an adviser, Musk made the decisions to shut down USAID's headquarters and website even though he 'lacked the authority to make that decision,'" Chuang said, quoting an argument from the Trump administration.
Mimi Marziani of Marziani, Stevens & Gonzalez PLLC, which helped defend the USAID workers in court, said the plaintiffs "are regular Americans who have faithfully served our country and the public good but have had their lives turned upside down because Musk wants to play master of the universe."
"We are proud to stand up for the plaintiffs and the Constitution," said Marziani, "which is designed to guard against these very sorts of abuses because our nation depends upon a government for all, not for a few."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular