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All But 3 State Attorneys General Call for Peaceful Transfer of Power, Condemn Political Violence
The three Republicans who didn't join the statement "presumably want violence," said one critic.
Nov 05, 2024
A bipartisan group of attorneys general on Monday led the vast majority of the United States' top state-level legal officials in releasing a statement calling for a peaceful transfer of power regardless of the presidential election results—but three Republican attorneys general were conspicuously absent from the list of signatories.
Ken Paxton of Texas, Todd Rokita of Indiana, and Austin Knudsen of Montana did not add their names to the statement, which condemned "any acts of violence related to the results."
"A peaceful transfer of power is the highest testament to the rule of law, a tradition that stands at the heart of our nation's stability," said the officials. "As attorneys general, we affirm our commitment to protect our communities and uphold the democratic principles we serve."
The statement was released a day after Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said at a rally that he wouldn't mind journalists getting shot and that he "shouldn't have left" the White House after he was voted out of office in 2020.
Trump urged thousands of his supporters to descend on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 to try to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden's electoral victory, and has continued to claim he was the true winner of the 2020 election.
Election experts have said in recent weeks that Trump has been setting the stage for the same baseless claims of election fraud and vote-stealing that he and his allies spread in 2020—telling supporters that Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris will only win the election if Democrats cheat and saying, along with his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), that he will only accept the election results if he views them as "fair and legal."
The attorneys general—representing 48 states, the District of Colombia, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands—called on Americans "to vote, participate in civil discourse, and, above all, respect the integrity of the democratic process."
"Let us come together after this election not divided by outcomes but united in our shared commitment to the rule of law and safety of all Americans," they said. "Violence has no place in the democratic process; we will exercise our authority to enforce the law against any illegal acts that threaten it."
The statement was spearheaded by two Democrats—Ellen Rosenblum of Oregon and William Tong of Connecticut—and two Republicans, Dave Yost of Ohio and Kris Kobach of Kansas. Kobach notably led a so-called Election Integrity Commission during Trump's term in the White House, searching unsuccessfully for evidence that the Republican was the true winner of the national popular vote in 2016.
Of the attorneys general who did not join the statement, Rokita and Knudsen are up for reelection on Tuesday.
Indiana-based author Steve Tally said Rokita, Knudsen, and Paxton "presumably want violence" and urged voters to oppose the state attorneys general.
"Where is the Indiana secretary of state and attorney general on this one?" said Destiny Wells, the Democratic candidate challenging Rokita. "Oh that's right, it's their team."
In Texas, Paxton has been a vehement supporter of Trump, announcing Monday he would deploy an "Election Day Rapid Response Legal Team" to polling places and suing the Biden-Harris administration over plans to send federal election monitors to Texas.
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'Congress, Do Your Job': Gun Control Demands Grow After Dozens Shot in Florida, Illinois, and Indiana
"How many more times do we have to wipe the blood off our streets before action is taken?" asked the Florida Democratic Party chair.
Oct 29, 2023
On the heels of Maine officials confirming that the shooter who killed 18 people in Lewiston earlier this week was found dead, shootings in Florida, Illinois, and Indianapolis early Sunday fueled further calls for action by U.S. lawmakers to reduce gun violence.
Around midnight, one person was killed and at least nine others were wounded at a Halloween party in Indianapolis, Indiana, local police said. The victims are ages 16-22 and it's not yet known who or how many people were shooting.
The Chicago Sun-Timesreported that police said a suspected gunman is in custody after 15 people ages 26-53 were wounded near 1:00 am CT during a Halloween party in the North Lawndale neighborhood of Illinois' largest city.
Just before 3:00 am ET, "a fight between two groups turned deadly in Florida when a shooting in a Tampa street during Halloween festivities resulted in two deaths and 18 people hospitalized," according toThe Associated Press.
As the AP detailed:
Police have not released the names of those killed, but Emmitt Wilson said his 14-year-old son, Elijah, was one of the fatalities. Wilson came to the scene Sunday after getting a call that his son was a victim.
"It's madness to me. I don't even feel like I'm here right now," Wilson said. "I hope the investigators do their job and find out who killed my son."
The Tampa Bay Times noted that "police said they have detained at least one person who surrendered into custody" and some injuries "might have been a result of the stampeding crowd and not necessarily gunshots."
Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried said in a statement: "This morning, we are waking up to news of another deadly shooting. Our communities are exhausted... My heart breaks for the victims' families whose children did not make it home, for the people who were injured in the gunfire, and hundreds of others who ran for their lives in Ybor City last night."
"Guns turned this night out into a nightmare," she added. "How many more times do we have to wipe the blood off our streets before action is taken? Once again, we urge Congress to do their jobs and pass responsible gun laws to protect all Americans from gun violence."
Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts called the incident "the logical outcome of Florida's permitless carry law, which went into effect in July" and means that "civilians no longer have to have background checks or training to carry hidden, loaded handguns in public."
Kris Brown, president of the gun violence prevention group Brady, declared in response to the violence in Tampa that "this isn't normal and we don't have to live this way," highlighting that the U.S. gun homicide rate is 26 times that of peer nations.
Since the massacre in Maine Wednesday night, the Illinois chapter of Moms Demand Action has also stressed in multiple social media posts that "we don't have to live like this."
After the mass shooting on Chicago's West Side early Sunday, the advocacy group said that "our thoughts are with all of those impacted by yet another senseless act of gun violence."
Moms Demand Action is among the organizations, gun violence survivors, and others who have urged Congress to reinstate the federal assault weapons ban that was in effect 1994-2004.
"By design, assault weapons kill as many people as quickly as possible," Everytown for Gun Safety said Sunday. "They don't belong in our communities. Congress enacted a lifesaving federal assault weapons ban before and they can do it again."
While U.S. Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) this week endorsed an assault weapons ban and sought forgiveness for his past opposition to the policy following the shootings in his hometown of Lewiston, any gun violence prevention legislation is unlikely to pass either chamber of Congress during this session.
Just hours before the violence in Lewiston, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives elected Louisiana Congressman Mike Johnson as speaker. The next day, in his first post-election interview, Johnson toldFox News' Sean Hannity that "the problem is the human heart. It's not guns. It's not the weapons."
"At the end of the day, we have to protect the right of the citizens to protect themselves and that's the Second Amendment, and that's why our party stands so strongly for that," the GOP leader continued, as the manhunt for the shooter was underway. "This is not the time to be talking legislation."
Responding Friday on social media, Congressman Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) said: "America is not the only nation where evil exists. But we are the only nation on Earth that has more mass shootings than days on a calendar. It's the guns."
This post has been updated with reporting from the Tampa Bay Times.
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The EPA Must Strengthen the Coal Ash Draft Rule to Protect Community Health
The Coal Combustion Residuals Rule is a historic opportunity to ensure that corporations are held responsible for cleaning up their mess and ensuring my community and many others have access to clean drinking water.
Jul 18, 2023
Water is what binds us all. Lake Michigan gives us life but is increasingly being commodified and plundered for corporate greed.
Unfortunately, I know this reality all too well. I grew up in a community with poisoned water and air in Ottawa, Illinois, home to a radium superfund cluster and an epicenter of the frac sand mining industry. Now calling Michigan City, Indiana, my home, I treasure Lake Michigan, which supplies drinking water to myself and more than 10 million people across four states.
A new proposed legacy rule (the Coal Combustion Residuals Rule or CCR rule) by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) concluded its public comment period on Monday, July 17—an historic opportunity to ensure that corporations are held responsible for cleaning up their mess and ensuring my community and many others have access to clean drinking water.
With each passing day, I fear that another industrial disaster will be too much for our lake and community to bear, a community where half of our population struggles to meet their basic needs.
Hundreds of toxic sites containing coal ash, the harmful waste from burning coal, sit just feet from the Great Lakes, including in Michigan City. Coal ash includes a poisonous soup of substances harmful to human health: arsenic, chromium, lead, and mercury among them. For decades, Northern Indiana Public Service Company has been operating its Michigan City Generating Station coal-burning plant along the lakeshore and is due to shut down by 2028. Here, a deteriorating steel seawall, battered by rising lake levels and shoreline erosion brought on by the worsening climate crisis, is the only barrier between the onsite coal ash fill and imminent catastrophe.
The CCR rule (the original 2015 rule governing coal ash waste disposal) was enacted in response to a lawsuit following the 2008 Kingston, Tennessee, coal ash spill that left more than 50 workers dead, hundreds ailing, and caused mass contamination across Uniontown, Alabama, a predominantly Black community. National Geographicreported this spill as the “largest industrial spill in the nation’s history–nearly ten times the size of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill two years later in the Gulf of Mexico.”
Despite this tragedy, and the ever-present reminders of the dangers of coal ash, many loopholes remain today that exempt half of the country’s toxic coal ash from federal regulation. Of the estimated 566 noxious landfills and ponds at 242 coal plants in 40 states that were excluded from the original rule, the vast majority of them are contaminating our drinking water, rivers, streams, and Great Lakes and harming the health of residents, environment, and economy nationwide. You might live near one without knowing it.
These loopholes have direct implications for us here in Michigan City. With each passing day, I fear that another industrial disaster will be too much for our lake and community to bear, a community where half of our population struggles to meet their basic needs. We do not have to look far to know what happens when disaster strikes the Great Lakes. In 2011, a bluff collapsed at the We Energies Oak Creek Power Plant in Wisconsin, dumping a pickup truck, dredging equipment, soil, and 120 yards of coal ash debris into the lake.
The clock ticks as the pollution in Michigan City continually seeps through the aging seawall. Yet the EPA has continuously stood idly by, failing in its mission to protect both people and the environment. So we sued them.
In 2023, led by Earthjustice, the Hoosier Environmental Council on behalf of Just Transition Northwest Indiana, the NAACP, and numerous other groups, we reached a settlement and won a commitment from the EPA to revisit the federal coal ash rule to consider closing the loopholes. This is our collective moment to get a law that truly protects communities, not corporations.
The EPA must close the remaining loopholes, most notably addressing inactive landfills at old power plant sites and ensuring robust implementation, monitoring, and enforcement of the CCR Rule. Otherwise, it will be more of the same, a useless draft rule that is only words on paper.
On June 28 the EPA held its first in-person hearing on the new proposed legacy rule. We mobilized hundreds of impacted residents and leaders from across the country, including our fellow members from the Climate Justice Alliance, to EPA’s public comment hearing in Chicago. Together, we braved the world’s worst air quality that day to share our stories and the impact of regulatory inaction. For nearly 8 hours, individuals from marginalized communities to health professionals, academics, organizations, and working-class residents took to the mic to give testimony. One by one, we bore witness to heart-wrenching accounts of cancers, rampant infertility, spoiled quality of life, loss, and betrayal.
This week, as public comment draws to a close, we demand, along with countless environmental justice communities, to see the EPA enact the strongest possible ruling. The EPA must close the remaining loopholes, most notably addressing inactive landfills at old power plant sites and ensuring robust implementation, monitoring, and enforcement of the CCR Rule. Otherwise, it will be more of the same, a useless draft rule that is only words on paper.
To date, the Biden Administration has set up historical commitments and resources to address environmental injustices such as Justice40 (reshaping hundreds of federal programs to ensure that 40% of the overall benefits of certain federal investments flow to “disadvantaged communities”) and the first-ever White House Office of Environmental Justice. Yet, we have not seen more vigorous enforcement and accountability of polluters and corporations who continue to profit at the expense of community and environmental health.
In fact, we have seen more support for the ailing fossil fuel industry from the Biden Administration, like relying heavily on carbon capture and storage (CCS) strategies and tax handouts that extend the life and profits of the fossil fuel corporations. Just one week before we rallied support at the EPA hearing, our fellow Climate Justice Alliance members were in Phoenix, Arizona, calling on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council to stop the Biden Administration’s overreliance on CCS and hydrogen projects to reduce emissions. These commitments mean nothing if the Biden Administration does not listen to those they are sworn to protect.
As the CCR Rule public comment period ends, this is a critical opportunity for the Biden Administration and the EPA to LISTEN to the powerful messages of impacted communities, meaningfully demonstrate their commitment to environmental justice, close ALL the loopholes in the federal rule, hold polluters accountable, and clean up our nation’s coal ash crisis for good.
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