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jared huffman
The Fix Our Forests Act and the Politics of Wildfire
Logging interests and the U.S. Forest Service have a history of using the wildfire threat to create “emergency” authority to bypass environmental reviews and curtail judicial oversight.
Mar 18, 2025
When on January 23 of this year, California Senator Jarred Huffman stood on the House floor to voice his opposition to the Fix Our Forests Act, or FOFA,, he bitterly noted how the bill had been rushed to a vote without normal consultation.
The reason for the rush was obvious. Fires were raging in the suburbs of Los Angeles and FOFA’s proponents wanted to capitalize on the tragedy to pitch their bill, which in the name of wildfire prevention exempts vast acreage of backcountry logging from ordinary scientific and judicial oversight. The irony is that the LA fires had no connection with forests whatsoever. They began as grass and brush fires near populated areas, which, fanned by ferocious Santa Ana winds, quickly spread building to building, with disastrous results.
The irony widens when you consider that in 2024, Huffman, along with California Republican Jay Obernolte, introduced a bill that actually would help communities deal with fire. Called the Community Protection and Wildfire Resilience Act, it proposed $1 billion per year to help communities harden homes and critical infrastructure while also creating defensive space around their perimeters. The bill was introduced this year yet again, six days after FOFA was rushed to a vote, but it hasn’t even been given a hearing by the House Natural Resources Committee. That committee is chaired by Oklahoma Republican Bruce Westerman, who, it turns out, is the chief sponsor of the Fix Our Forests Act.
Once again, it’s the same old formula: slash citizen oversight in the name of wildfire reduction.
Do you see the political convolutions at work here? A very real fire danger facing communities is used to promote a bill focused primarily on back country “fuels reduction,” far from such communities, while the Huffman-Obernolte bill, that focuses on the communities themselves, gets nowhere. The process not only puts millions of acres of mature and old-growth forests at risk of massive “mechanical treatments,” it leaves the immediate fire dangers faced by communities largely unaddressed.
This political formula is nothing new. Twenty two years ago, then-President George W. Bush signed into law the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003, which also sought environmental restrictions for expanded logging under the pretext of preventing wildfires like those in California. The concern for conservationists was the same then as it is now—logging interests and the U.S. Forest Service using the wildfire threat to create “emergency” authority to bypass environmental reviews and curtail judicial oversight, providing easier access to mature and old-growth forests, while doing little in the way of home hardening and community protection.
Proponents of the Fix our Forests Act would counter that there are provisions within the bill that help coordinate grant applications for communities. That’s well and good, but falls far short of what the Huffman-Obernolte bill provides, which not only includes major funding to harden homes and critical infrastructure, but helps with early detection and evacuation planning and initiates Community Protection and Wildfire Resilience plans for insurance certification.
Further, there is a plethora of research that contradicts the notion that fuels reduction and forest thinning protects communities from wildfire. In fact, intensive forest management is shown to often increase fire severity. Meanwhile, the industry position that forest protection increases fire risk doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Indeed, years of mechanical treatments have done little to solve the problem, while doing tremendous ecological damage.
Now we have President Donald Trump’s all-caps Executive Order: “IMMEDIATE EXPANSION OF AMERICAN TIMBER PRODUCTION.” Once again, it’s the same old formula: slash citizen oversight in the name of wildfire reduction. The order calls for action to “reduce unnecessarily lengthy processes and associated costs related to administrative approvals for timber production, forest management, and wildfire risk reduction treatments,” while putting community safety up as the justification. From the first paragraph: “Furthermore, as recent disasters demonstrate, forest management and wildfire risk reduction projects can save American lives and communities.” Only they don’t. The only things shown to save lives and communities are the types of actions put forth by the Community Protections and Wildfire Resilience act.
The Democratic Party has a history of protecting public lands and a constituency that expects such protection. A similar thing can be said of certain moderate Republicans, where a courageous spirit prevails when it comes to environmental protection. If there ever was a time to remember that tradition and that spirit, it would be now.
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US Reps. Thompson, Huffman Served in Class Action Suit Over Gaza Genocide
California residents' lawsuit accuses the Democrats of violating their constitutional rights by voting to use their taxes "for the unlawful purpose of being complicit in genocide."
Jan 02, 2025
Two Democratic congressmen from Northern California were served this week with legal documents in a class action lawsuit filed by hundreds of their constituents who argue that the lawmakers illegally forced them into complicity with Israel's genocidal annihilation of Gaza.
Taxpayers Against Genocide (TAG), a group of more than 600 constituents of Reps. Mike Thompson and Jared Huffman represented by the firm Szeto-Wong Law, said it delivered a complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief to the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, where it was received by Deputy General Counsel for the House of Representatives Todd Tatelman.
As Common Dreamsreported, the lawsuit was filed last month in San Francisco.
TAG said in a statement Wednesday that Thompson and Huffman "illegally abused their tax and spend authority when they voted to allocate $26.38 billion in military aid to Israel on April 20, 2024," and that by doing so, they violated the U.S. Constitution, the Genocide Convention, and federal laws.
According to the lawsuit:
Mike Thompson and Jared Huffman exceeded the constitutional limitations on their tax and spend authority by voting to authorize the funding of the Israeli military when they were aware, or should have been aware, that the Israeli military was committing genocide in Gaza, which made their votes a violation of customary international and federal law that prohibits complicity in genocide. Furthermore, defendants' votes violated multiple other laws and policies, including the Leahy Law, which prohibits aid to foreign security forces that have committed a gross violation of human rights; the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and Arms Export Control Act, which prohibit assistance to any country in which the government engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights and require the advancement of U.S. foreign policy interests consistent with internationally recognized human rights; and the Conventional Arms Transfer policy, which prohibits U.S. weapons transfers that risk facilitating or otherwise contributing to violations of human rights or international law. Plaintiffs' constitutional rights to have their taxes collected for only lawful purposes have been and continue to be violated by defendants' votes to use plaintiffs' taxes for the unlawful purpose of being complicit in genocide.
"The moral injuries that I and countless other constituents of Rep. Huffman have suffered resulting from his vote to arm the genocide in Gaza are immeasurable," plaintiff Carol Bloom said on Wednesday.
Judy Talaugon—a plaintiff and an Indigenous elder and activist in Sonoma County—said: "Palestinian children are all our children, deserving of our advocacy and support. And their liberation is the catalyst for systemic change for the betterment of us all."
In an interview with CounterPunchpublished Wednesday, plaintiff Ellen P. said that although Huffman did hold a November 2023 meeting with members of the group Humboldt for Palestine, activists in attendance left disappointed.
"I was aghast at Huffman's response to this thoughtful and heartfelt plea from his constituents," she said. "He repeatedly interrupted speakers, admonished their use of language—even debating with us about the definition of 'genocide' and 'apartheid'—and tried to lecture us rather than listen to us."
"He made it very clear he was not at all interested in anything we had to say and that he is a committed Zionist," she added.
Huffman has not responded publicly to the lawsuit.
Thompson's office responded last month to the suit in a statement asserting that the congressman "understands that it has been the civilian population that has paid the cost of Hamas' terrorist attack on Israel and he remains gravely concerned about the scale of civilian loss in this war."
However, the statement added that "achieving peace and securing the safety of civilians won't be accomplished by filing a lawsuit."
United Nations experts, human rights groups, jurists, academics, activists, and others argue that Israel's policies and actions during its 454-day assault on Gaza fit the definition of genocide as described in Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, more commonly called the Genocide Convention.
Backed by over two dozen mostly Global South nations and regional blocs, South Africa is leading a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The U.S., which provides Israel with tens of billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover including United Nations Security Council cease-fire resolution vetoes, is one of around 10 countries—most of them in the Global North—opposing the case.
The year 2025 began with more Israeli killing of Palestinians, including a New Year's Day airstrike massacre at the Jabalia refugee camp that left at least 15 people, including four children and a woman, dead, and a Thursday attack on an Israeli-designated "safe zone" in southern Gaza that reportedly killed at least 11 people, including three children.
According to Gaza officials, at least 45,581 Palestinians have been killed and more than 108,000 others wounded by Israeli attacks, with at least 11,000 people missing and believed dead and buried beneath rubble. The overwhelming majority of Gazans have been forcibly displaced, and hundreds of thousands are suffering starvation and sickness exacerbated by Israel's "complete siege" of the embattled enclave.
TAG plaintiff Norman Solomon wrote in a Thursday opinion piece forCommon Dreams that he whilethat he certainly does not "expect the courts to halt the U.S. policies that have been enabling the horrors in Gaza to go on," the unprecedented lawsuit "makes a clear case for the moral revulsion that so many Americans feel about the culpability of the U.S. government."
As Maria Barakat, a Palestinian-Lebanese American plaintiff in the case said on Thursday, "This class action is only the beginning of the people's exercise of power against the violence of the American government and our refusal to be complicit."
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What Do We Hope to Achieve by Filing Suit Against US Lawmakers Over Gaza Genocide?
Organizing together under the name Taxpayers Against Genocide, constituents served notice that no amount of rhetoric could make funding of genocide anything other than repugnant.
Jan 02, 2025
On the last day of 2024, the deputy general counsel for the House of Representatives formally accepted delivery of a civil summons for two congressmembers from Northern California. More than 600 constituents of Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson have signed on as plaintiffs in a class action accusing them of helping to arm the Israeli military in violation of “international and federal law that prohibits complicity in genocide.”
Whatever the outcome of the lawsuit, it conveys widespread anger and anguish about the ongoing civilian carnage in Gaza that taxpayers have continued to bankroll.
By a wide margin, most Americans favor an arms embargo on Israel while the Gaza war persists. But Huffman and Thompson voted to approve $26.38 billion in military aid for Israel last April, long after the nonstop horrors for civilians in Gaza were evident.
Back in February -- two months before passage of the enormous military aid package -- both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International found that, in the words of the lawsuit, “the Israeli government was systematically starving the people of Gaza through cutting off aid, water, and electricity, by bombing and military occupation, all underwritten by the provision of U.S. military aid and weapons.”
When the known death toll passed 40,000 last summer, the UN’s high commissioner for human rights said: “Most of the dead are women and children. This unimaginable situation is overwhelmingly due to recurring failures by the Israeli Defense Forces to comply with the rules of war.” He described as “deeply shocking” the “scale of the Israeli military’s destruction of homes, hospitals, schools and places of worship.”
No one should put any trust in the court system to stop the U.S. government from using tax dollars for war. But suing congressmembers who are complicit in genocide is a good step.
On Dec. 4, Amnesty International released a 296-page report concluding that Israel has been committing genocide “brazenly, continuously and with total impunity” -- with the “specific intent to destroy Palestinians,” engaging in “prohibited acts under the Genocide Convention.”
Two weeks later, on the same day the lawsuit was filed in federal district court in San Francisco, Human Rights Watch released new findings that “Israeli authorities are responsible for the crime against humanity of extermination and for acts of genocide.”
Responding to the lawsuit, a spokesperson for Thompson said that “achieving peace and securing the safety of civilians won’t be accomplished by filing a lawsuit.” But for well over a year, to no avail, the plaintiffs and many other constituents have been urging him and Huffman to help protect civilians by ending their support for the U.S. pipeline of weapons and ammunition to Israel.
Enabled by that pipeline, the slaughter has continued in Gaza while the appropriators on Capitol Hill work in a kind of bubble. Letters, emails, phone calls, office visits, protests and more have not pierced that bubble. The lawsuit is an effort to break through the routine of indifference.
Like many other congressional Democrats, Huffman and Thompson have prided themselves on standing up against the contempt for facts that Donald Trump and his cohorts flaunt. Yet refusal to acknowledge the facts of civilian decimation in Gaza, with a direct U.S. role, is an extreme form of denial.
“Over the last 14 months I have watched elected officials remain completely unresponsive despite the public’s demands to end the genocide,” said Laurel Krause, a Mendocino County resident who is one of the lawsuit plaintiffs.
Another plaintiff, Leslie Angeline, a Marin County resident who ended a 31-day hunger strike when the lawsuit was filed, said: “I wake each morning worrying about the genocide that is happening in Gaza, knowing that if it wasn’t for my government’s partnership with the Israeli government, this couldn’t continue.”
Such passionate outlooks are a far cry from the words offered by members of Congress who routinely appear to take pride in seeming calm as they discuss government policies. But if their own children’s lives were at stake rather than the lives of Palestinian children in Gaza, they would hardly be so calm. A huge empathy gap is glaring.
In the words of plaintiff Judy Talaugon, a Native American activist in Sonoma County, “Palestinian children are all our children, deserving of our advocacy and support. And their liberation is the catalyst for systemic change for the betterment of us all.”
As a plaintiff, I certainly don’t expect the courts to halt the U.S. policies that have been enabling the horrors in Gaza to go on. But our lawsuit makes a clear case for the moral revulsion that so many Americans feel about the culpability of the U.S. government.
To hardboiled political pros, the heartfelt goal of putting a stop to the arming of the Israeli military for genocide is apt to seem quixotic and dreamy. But it’s easy for politicians to underestimate feelings of moral outrage. As James Baldwin wrote, “Though we do not wholly believe it yet, the interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world.”
Organizing together under the name Taxpayers Against Genocide, constituents served notice that no amount of rhetoric could make funding of genocide anything other than repugnant. Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson are the first members of Congress to face such a lawsuit. They won’t be the last.
In recent days, people from many parts of the United States have contacted Taxpayers Against Genocide (via classactionagainstgenocide@proton.me) to see the full lawsuit and learn about how they can file one against their own member of Congress.
No one should put any trust in the court system to stop the U.S. government from using tax dollars for war. But suing congressmembers who are complicit in genocide is a good step for exposing -- and organizing against -- the power of the warfare state.
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