US

March 1, 2017 – Effective February 27, 2017, new changes to the asylum screening process could lead to an increased number of deportations of asylum-seekers who fear persecution upon return to their home country. On February 13, 2017, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) revised its Asylum Division Officer Training Course (ADOTC) lesson plans on […]

Feb. 28, 2017 – Astrid Silva, immigration activist and DREAMer, today delivered the Democratic Spanish language response to President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress. Below is a full transcript of her remarks: “Good evening, my name is Astrid Silva and I’m a DREAMer and activist from the great state of Nevada. My family came […]

March 1, 2017 – A United States federal court has blocked President Donald Trump’s January 27 executive order barring citizens from seven majority Muslim countries from entering the US, but the impacts of the travel ban are already being felt at the nation’s borders. The suspended order halts general refugee admissions for 120 days and […]

WASHINGTON, Feb. 28, 2017 — The American Civil Liberties Union pushed back today against a little-noticed policy change in last month’s immigration executive order that stripped away decades-old privacy safeguards for foreigners and immigrants in the United States. The January 25 executive order excluded all noncitizens — except green card holders — from receiving the […]

Feb. 28, 2017 – Today, youth plaintiffs in Juliana v. United States released a copy of their request for documents sent to American Petroleum Institute (API), an intervenor-defendant in their constitutional climate case. The request seeks to establish a factual record of the role that the oil and gas industry played in government decisions over the past 50 […]

Feb. 28, 2017 – In a new report, Stanford professor and EPI research associate Martin Carnoy finds that voucher programs that promote private schooling have not delivered on promised improvements in educational outcomes. Rather, they tend to divert effort away from investments in public education that have been shown to improve educational attainments. Carnoy reviews […]

February 28, 2017 –  In its opening volley in the federal budget process, the Trump administration has called for a nearly 10 percent boost in military spending, to be funded by cuts to domestic spending and foreign aid. Domestic and foreign aid spending already account for less than half of the federal discretionary budget. “If this […]

WASHINGTON, Feb. 27, 2017 – Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) joined Senators Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.) today to write to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson  regarding the decision by the People’s Republic of China to grant a construction trademark to the Trump Organization after years of delay. The ranking members of the Senate Committees […]

Feb. 27, 2017 – White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer recently praised the DHS immigration enforcement memos — which provide a detailed blueprint for mass deportation — for taking “the shackles off” ICE and Border Patrol agents. Below are just a few examples of what has happened since the “unshackling” began: A New York Times […]

NEW YORK, February 24, 2017—The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by the decision today to bar nine news outlets from an informal briefing known as “a gaggle” by President Donald Trump’s White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer. Separately, at the Conservative Party Action Conference in Maryland today, Trump said that journalists should not be […]

WASHINGTON, Feb. 24, 2017 — The American Civil Liberties Union is launching PeoplePower.org, a major new grassroots mobilization platform, to help organize the mass resistance to President Trump’s threats to civil rights and civil liberties. The program comes as unprecedented public support of the ACLU continues in the weeks following Trump’s inauguration and his unconstitutional […]

WASHINGTON, DC, Feb. 24, 2017 – President Trump yesterday claimed that his administration’s Deportation Force was focusing on criminals, stating: “We’re getting gang members out, we’re getting drug lords out, we’re getting really bad dudes out of this country — and at a rate that nobody’s ever seen before…it’s a military operation.” Even by the standards […]

WASHINGTON, Feb. 24, 2017 – The US government should credibly investigate the raid on Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in central Yemen in late January 2017, that killed at least 14 civilians, including nine children, and make its findings public, Human Rights Watch said today. The high number of civilian casualties raises concerns that […]

NEW YORK, Feb. 24, 2017 – Amnesty International USA is launching a campaign today urging Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to release a 26-year-old woman on parole so she can obtain urgent medical treatment and be with her family. AIUSA is mobilizing its over 1.2 million U.S. members and supporters to call ICE and the […]

Feb. 23, 2017 – The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP), which is made up of over 50 lesbian, gay, bisexual transgender and queer (LGBTQ) advocacy groups across the country, denounces the Trump administration’s recent announcement to rescind protections put in place by the Obama administration for transgender students that had allowed them to use […]

Feb. 23, 2017 – The Center for Media and Democracy joined 24 other reform organizations and bipartisan ethics experts in a February 17 letter calling on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from any Department of Justice investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 elections, Russian interactions with the Trump campaign and former National […]

Feb. 23, 2017 – AAAS, the world’s largest general scientific organization, announced Thursday that it will partner with the March for Science, a nonpartisan set of activities that aim to promote science education and the use of scientific evidence to inform policy. The March for Science has released a list of more than 25 initial […]