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For Immediate Release
August, 30 2023, 08:50am EDT
Contact:
Email:,press@lawyerscommittee.org
Lawyers' Committee Demands Action in Wake of Jacksonville Racially Motivated Mass Shooting
In response to Saturday’s tragic, racially motivated mass shooting in Jacksonville, FL Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, issued the following statement:
“The horrific mass shooting in Jacksonville on Saturday was a hate crime—one in which a perpetrator motivated by white supremacist beliefs specifically sought to harm Black people. It is a tragedy, both for the families directly affected and for Black people throughout this country who have been forced to live with the knowledge that violent white supremacists can strike anywhere, anytime. As we reflect on this past weekend against the backdrop of the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, the echoes of those who fought before us reverberate in today’s demands for justice. We have been forced to mourn people lost to racialized terrorism with escalating frequency in recent years.
As we mourn this latest loss, the Jacksonville community deserves a response that matches the depth of its pain. We urge President Biden, Attorney General Garland, Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas, and all our public leaders to stand alongside and support the affected families and communities. We seek swift and substantial federal support for the Jacksonville community, who will bear the weight of this hate-fueled attack for years, if not decades, to come. And even with the cowardly shooter having taken his own life, we support the federal civil rights investigation into how he came to commit such a heinous act. Congress must allocate more funding and resources to investigate and prosecute hate crimes on a national scale, and to provide more training for state and local law enforcement to effectively police hate crimes–which must include stronger regulations on the ability to obtain firearms.
We also cannot ignore the broader context. Elected officials like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and other state legislators are intent on implementing racist policies and passing anti-Black legislation designed to stoke racial animus, which inevitably leads to violence. Their policies and their rhetoric are like salt and the wound of racialized terror. We must confront the growing danger for Black people and all communities of color head-on, demanding accountability at every turn. Most importantly, we must not allow ourselves to become desensitized to the poison of hate and violence.”
The Lawyers' Committee is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, formed in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy to enlist the private bar's leadership and resources in combating racial discrimination and the resulting inequality of opportunity - work that continues to be vital today.
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As Planet Heads Toward 2.7°C Rise, Tracker Warns Global Climate Action Has 'Flatlined'
"As the world edges closer to these dangerous climate thresholds, the need for immediate, stronger action to reverse this trend becomes ever more urgent," one report author said.
Nov 14, 2024
Existing policies and actions taken by world governments put the world on track for a median estimate of 2.7°C of warming by the end of the century, Climate Action Tracker revealed on Thursday at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.
If global leaders make no further effort to reduce emissions, temperatures have a 33% chance of spiking past 3°C of warming by 2100 and a 10% chance of overtaking 3.6°C, which report lead author Sofia Gonzales-Zuniga called "an absolutely catastrophic level of warming."
"The combined global effect of government action on climate change has flatlined over the last three years, underscoring a critical disconnect between the reality of climate change and the lack of urgency on policies to cut emissions," Climate Action Tracker (CAT) announced during its annual update at COP29.
The report attributes the lack of progress to the fact that few governments announced new climate targets in 2024 while they continued to facilitate the increased burning of fossil fuels, despite the pledge made at last year's COP28 to transition away from oil, gas, and coal.
It comes on the heels of a series of reports released ahead of or during COP29 that paint a consistent picture of escalating greenhouse gas emissions and climate extremes paired with government inaction. The U.N. Emissions Gap Report, published in late October, projected that the world was on track for 3.1°C of warming based on current policies. The World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, also published last month, found that all three main greenhouse gases reached record atmospheric levels in 2023.
"The impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly dramatic, yet we still see no sign that burning of fossil fuels has peaked."
2023 was also the hottest year on record, but the WMO's State of the Climate 2024 update for COP29 warned that 2024 was likely to surpass it. Further, global temperatures from January to September averaged 1.54°C above preindustrial levels, temporarily surpassing the 1.5°C warming limit enshrined in the Paris agreement.
"The record-breaking rainfall and flooding, rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones, deadly heat, relentless drought, and raging wildfires that we have seen in different parts of the world this year are unfortunately our new reality and a foretaste of our future," WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said in a statement. "We urgently need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen our monitoring and understanding of our changing climate."
Yet this is precisely what is not happening: Another study from the Global Carbon Budget released on Wednesday projected that carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels would increase by 0.8% from 2023 to reach 37.4 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent, a record high.
"The impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly dramatic, yet we still see no sign that burning of fossil fuels has peaked," study leader Pierre Friedlingstein, a professor at Exeter's Global Systems Institute, said in a statement. "Time is running out to meet the Paris agreement goals—and world leaders meeting at COP29 must bring about rapid and deep cuts to fossil fuel emissions to give us a chance of staying well below 2°C warming above preindustrial levels."
The Climate Action Tracker report adds to these findings, concluding that while renewables have surged in recent years, continued reliance on fossil fuels have undermined that progress. While clean energy like wind and solar and clean transit like electric vehicles now receive double the investments of oil, gas, and coal, funding for the latter still ballooned by a factor of four between 2021 and 2022 while fossil fuel subsidies are at a record high.
"We are clearly failing to bend the curve," Gonzales-Zuniga said. "As the world edges closer to these dangerous climate thresholds, the need for immediate, stronger action to reverse this trend becomes ever more urgent."
CAT called on the world's largest emitters to lead the way. It recommended 1.5°C-aligned 2035 targets for the world's seven biggest climate polluters—China, the U.S., India, the E.U., Indonesia, Japan, and Australia—as well as the "troika" countries of Brazil, UAE, and Azerbaijan. To bring its policies in line with the 1.5°C goal, the U.S. would have to cut its total emissions (including from land-use and forests) by 65% of 2005 levels by 2030 and 80% by 2035.
This is unlikely to happen under the administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to "drill, baby, drill" as soon as he retakes the White House in January. CAT concluded that Trump's promised energy policies would raise its projection for 2100 temperatures based on current actions by 0.04°C. However, if the U.S. permanently axes its net-zero goals, and if other countries decide to follow Trump's lead, that temperature increase could be higher.
"Clearly, we won't know the full impact of the U.S. elections until President-elect Trump takes office, but there is a clean energy momentum in the U.S. now that will be difficult to stop," Bill Hare, the CEO of Climate Analytics, said in a statement. "While the Trump administration will undoubtedly do its best to throw a wrecking ball into climate action, the clean energy momentum created by President [Joe] Biden, being actioned across the country, is likely to continue at significant scale."
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More than two dozen international relief groups operating in Gaza warned Thursday that humanitarian assistance entering the embattled Palestinian enclave "has fallen to an all-time low" as Israel continues to block lifesaving aid, fueling nascent famine in the north.
"An average of only 37 humanitarian trucks per day entered Gaza in October, and an average of 69 per day during the first week of November. This is still well below the average of 500 per day which entered Gaza... before October 7, 2023, and was insufficient to meet the needs of the population," the seventh Gaza Humanitarian Aid Snapshot notes.
"For almost a month, Israel has blocked attempts by aid organizations to deliver aid in areas of northern Gaza, effectively severing the population from access to vital lifelines, including food, medical supplies, and all other humanitarian aid," the report continues, adding that "there is a strong likelihood that famine is already occurring in northern Gaza, and that immediate action is required within days, not weeks, to address the crisis."
"Tragically, Israeli airstrikes killed at least 20 aid workers from both Palestinian and international organizations," the analysis laments. "Staff were killed in their homes, in displacement camps, and while delivering lifesaving aid. Many aid workers lost close family members and relatives."
One forcibly displaced resident of northern Gaza told the report's authors:
Everyone has received this call before: One of your friends or colleagues or relatives or cousins is under the siege or bombs. And they ask for help. And you can't do anything. You can't do anything for them. And they die. They die while they are asking us to help them. This is the worst thing.
The report also notes widespread looting by desperate Gaza residents—a consequence not only of the bombing, invasion, and siege but also of Israel's targeted killing of Palestinian police officers—and criminal gangs extorting aid groups for "protection" money.
The new analysis came on the same day that a United Nations committee published a report concluding that Israel's policies and practices in Gaza "are consistent with the characteristics of genocide" and two days after the Biden administration—which backs Israel with arms and diplomatic support—sparked worldwide anger by asserting that Israel is not violating humanitarian law during the war.
A scorecard published earlier this week by some of the same groups that compiled the Humanitarian Aid Snapshot detailed how Israel has failed to fully comply with any of the Biden administration's 19 demands indicating compliance with humanitarian law.
As children in Gaza began starving to death earlier this year, the International Court of Justice—which is weighing a genocide case against Israel—ordered the Israeli government to stop blocking aid from entering the enclave. Israel has been accused of ignoring the order.
As the Humanitarian Aid Snapshot notes, Israeli forces have killed more than 43,000 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded over 103,000 others as of November 12. Approximately 80% of Gazans are under forced displacement orders—a policy denounced by many as ethnic cleansing—and around 90% of Gaza residents have been forcibly displaced, most of them multiple times.
"The population in northern Gaza faces starvation, severe shortages of clean water, critical supply scarcity, and ever-increasing desperation," Mercy Corps, one of the groups that contributed to the analysis, said in a statement. "We call on all those with influence and power to take urgent action to de-escalate and halt the unrelenting violence in Gaza, to protect civilians and aid workers, and to do everything possible to achieve an immediate and lasting cease-fire."
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"If there are a lot of details still to be filled in," wrote one analyst, "the theme of the GOP's healthcare agenda is clear: cuts."
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Having secured control of both chambers of the U.S. Congress and the White House starting in January, Republicans are making no secret of their intention to pursue sweeping healthcare cuts that would raise costs and imperil insurance coverage for millions of people across the country.
Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), chairman of the House Budget Committee, told reporters earlier this week that the GOP is looking to use the filibuster-evading reconciliation process to pursue cuts to "mandatory programs"—a category that includes Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, noted in response to Arrington's comments that Republicans attempted to cut both Medicaid and Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits that help enrollees afford health insurance.
The Republican Study Committee, of which Arrington is a member, proposed eliminating the ACA tax credits in its 2025 budget proposal—a move that could result in around 4 million people losing insurance.
The tax credits are set to expire next year, meaning Republicans could just do nothing and allow them to lapse.
Last time Republicans had a federal trifecta, they tried and failed to fully repeal the ACA—an effort that sparked a
wave of civil disobedience on Capitol Hill.
Both President-elect Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said on the campaign trail that they're looking to try again.
"We're going to replace it," Trump said during his lone debate with Vice President Kamala Harris in September—while admitting that he did not have a fully formed alternative plan.
Johnson, for his part, said during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania last month that "healthcare reform's going to be a big part of the agenda." When a voter posed the question, "No Obamacare?" Johnson replied in the affirmative, "No Obamacare."
"The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work," he added, "and we've got a lot of ideas on how to do that."
Sarah Lueck and Allison Orris of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
wrote Wednesday that Trump's return to the White House and the GOP's capture of both chambers of Congress poses "big risks to people's ability to access and afford health coverage in Medicaid and the marketplaces."
"While Republicans have moved away from talking about their plans for changing health coverage in the U.S. as 'repeal,'" Lueck and Orris added, "Trump's first term and Republicans' recently released policy agendas suggest they may pursue policies that would have much the same result: higher costs for people, reduced access to care for vulnerable groups, and more people who are uninsured."
"Just as a grassroots movement of Americans around the country succeeded in saving the Affordable Care Act during Trump's first term, we can save Social Security and Medicare."
Even if Republicans don't succeed at enacting major legislative changes to the nation's healthcare system, Trump will still have the power to do significant damage unilaterally. Lueck and Orris noted that the first Trump administration "took numerous administrative steps that made it harder for eligible people to get coverage" and weakened consumer protections, from adding new paperwork requirements to the Medicaid enrollment process to expanding so-called "junk" insurance plans.
Vice President-elect JD Vance also suggested during the 2024 campaign that a second Trump administration could seek to roll back protections for people with preexisting conditions.
"If there are a lot of details still to be filled in, the theme of the GOP's healthcare agenda is clear: cuts," Vox's Dylan Scott wrote days before the November 5 election. "Cutting regulations. Cutting spending."
Stephanie Armour of KFF Health Newswrote following Trump's victory that his second term "will likely bring changes that scale back the nation's public health insurance programs—increasing the uninsured rate, while imposing new barriers to abortion and other reproductive care."
Medicaid is particularly vulnerable, Armour noted, with Trump and the Republican Party potentially set to pursue "the imposition of work requirements on beneficiaries in some states" and changes to how the program is funded.
"Now, the federal government pays states a variable percentage of program costs," Armour explained. "Conservatives have long sought to cap the federal allotments to states, which critics say would lead to draconian cuts."
As for Medicare, the Project 2025 agenda authored by many former members of Trump's first administration calls for making privatized Medicare Advantage plans the default enrollment option for the nation's seniors—a change that advocates say would pose an existential threat to traditional Medicare.
"Trump and Republicans will try to cut our earned benefits," Alex Lawson, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Social Security Works, warned in an op-ed for Common Dreams on Wednesday. "But just as a grassroots movement of Americans around the country succeeded in saving the Affordable Care Act during Trump's first term, we can save Social Security and Medicare."
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