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For Immediate Release
December, 12 2018, 11:00pm EDT
Contact:
Sam Quigley, [email protected], 202-446-0489
Johnson Amendment Repeal Would "Drag Churches and Charities Down Into the Muck of Politics"
"With public confidence in our government and institutions failing, the last thing we need is to turn our churches into vessels to insert even more dirty money into American politics."
WASHINGTON
Today, in response to House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady inserting repeal of the Johnson Amendment, which prevents churches and charities from engaging in political activity, into his tax bill which the House will soon vote on, the Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires Morris Pearl released the following statement:
"Rep. Brady keeps trying to repeal the Johnson Amendment by sneaking it into larger legislation, and it keeps being a terrible idea. With public confidence in our government and institutions failing, the last thing we need is to turn our churches into vessels to insert even more dirty money into American politics. The public isn't better off when big donors can give more money to political candidates, and it certainly isn't better off when those donors are able to manipulate charities and churches for political purposes, as repealing the Johnson Amendment would allow. It's repeal wouldn't increase religious freedom, it would just drag churches and charities down into the muck of politics, soiling their reputation and moral standing in the eyes of the American people."
For further comments or questions, please contact Sam Quigley at [email protected].
The Patriotic Millionaires is a group of high-net worth Americans who share a profound concern about the destabilizing level of inequality in America. Our work centers on the two things that matter most in a capitalist democracy: power and money. Our goal is to ensure that the country's political economy is structured to meet the needs of regular Americans, rather than just millionaires. We focus on three "first" principles: a highly progressive tax system, a livable minimum wage, and equal political representation for all citizens.
(202) 446-0489LATEST NEWS
'Horrifying Moment in Our Nation's History': Fellow Senators Denounce 'Assault' on Padilla
"Senator Padilla is a respected leader of great dignity and he has every right to ask a question of Secretary Noem without being slammed down and handcuffed," said one Democratic senator.
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Fellow U.S. senators reacted with fury and condemnation to footage of Democratic California Sen. Alex Padilla being handcuffed on the ground after being forcibly removed from a news conference that was held by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in Los Angeles on Thursday.
In a video of the episode, Padilla can be heard saying "I'm Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary," as federal agents push him out of the room. Outside the room, agents forced Padilla to the ground and then handcuffed him.
"I'm on my way to the Senate floor to talk about the assault on my colleague, Senator Alex Padilla," wrote Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) X on Thursday. "This is a horrifying moment in our nation's history."
"What's next, brown shirts?" wrote Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I), who was likely referring to the "brownshirts," a name for the paramilitary group that aided the rise of Adolf Hitler. Whitehouse added: "What do Republican colleagues have to say? At long last, colleagues, have you no sense of decency?"
"This is insane. A United States Senator was just violently thrown to the ground and handcuffed while trying to question the administration. We need a countrywide response to this all out authoritarianism. This cannot stand," Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) wrote on X.
"Sickening," said Sen. Mazi Hirono (D-Hawaii). "This is what authoritarians do. None of us is safe from this regime.
Speaking to press later on Thursday, Padilla said he was not arrested or detained. Padilla said he was waiting to be briefed by federal officials when he learned that Noem was giving a press conference in the same building.
"Over the course of recent weeks, I [and] several of my colleagues have been asking the Department of Homeland Security for more information and more answers on their increasingly extreme immigration enforcement actions, and we've gotten little to no information in response to our inquiries. And so I came to the press conference to hear what she had to say, to see if I could learn any new additional information," he said.
"I will say this," Padilla added. "If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, if this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they're doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country."
The Department of Homeland Security released a statement along with a video of the episode accusing Padilla of "disrespectful political theatre."
Outside watchdogs like the Not Above the Law Coalition, which consists of over 150 organizers, think tanks, and nonprofit advocacy groups, also condemned the incident and called on every U.S. lawmaker, regardless of party affiliation, to do the same.
"The images of federal agents tackling and handcuffing Senator Alex Padilla should send chills down every American’s spine," the coalition said in a statement. "It is shocking enough to see someone manhandled for exercising their First Amendment right to free speech. That it happened to a sitting U.S. Senator attending a public DHS press briefing in his home state is outrageous and un-American."
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As Israeli occupation forces continued to massacre desperate aid-seekers in Gaza this week, human rights defenders accused the U.S.-backed organization Israel is allowing to distribute limited aid in the embattled strip of being a "death trap" and giving cover to Israel's program of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians.
Local and international media reported Thursday that at least 13 Palestinians were killed and upward of 200 others were wounded when Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops opened fire on civilians waiting for humanitarian aid near the Netzarim corridor in central Gaza.
Medical sources also said Israeli shelling killed 12 Palestinians and injured dozens more gathered at an aid distribution center near the southern city of Rafah, while IDF troops shot dead five other people waiting for aid northwest of Gaza City.
Thursday's massacres followed similar IDF attacks on civilians seeking aid that have killed or wounded hundreds of Palestinians since the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began allowing a trickle of humanitarian relief to enter Gaza amid a "complete siege" that has fueled mass starvation among the strip's more than 2 million people, almost all of whom have been forcibly displaced, often multiple times.
Many hundreds of Palestinians, mostly children and elders, have recently died from malnutrition and lack of medical care in Gaza.
This, as Israeli forces continued Operation Gideon's Chariots, which aims to conquer and indefinitely occupy all of Gaza and ethnically cleanse much of its population, possibly to make way for Israeli resettlement as advocated by many right-wing Israelis.
As the death toll among Palestinian aid-seekers mounts, critics have taken aim at the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the Delaware-based nonprofit tasked with distributing aid in the coastal enclave. Opponents have called GHF a "death trap" and a "ruse to weaponize aid."
This week, the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) notified GHF "of its potential legal liability for complicity in Israel's war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide against Palestinians."
CCR—which unsuccessfully sued U.S. President Joe Biden and two of his top officials for alleged genocide complicity in Gaza—said in a letter to GHF executive chairman Johnnie Moore that "there is a reasonable basis to believe that your operations, planned and undertaken in close coordination with Israel, are directly contributing to or otherwise furthering Israel's commission of forcible transfer and other atrocity crimes in the occupied Gaza Strip."
"This militarized system of food distribution funneled through three distribution hubs in Rafah and one near Deir el-Balah requires malnourished Palestinians to travel great distances and often relocate within Gaza to access food aid under a regime overseen by Israeli forces and U.S. private military contractors," the letter continues.
"In the 10 days since GHF began its stop-and-go operations, reports range from at least 95 to as many as 130 Palestinians having
been killed and hundreds wounded while seeking food at GHF sites," CCR added. "We urge you to immediately cease and desist such operations and actions in Gaza. Failing to do so could result in the initiation of civil litigation or criminal prosecution in domestic courts in different countries, including under the principle of universal jurisdiction, or could subject you to the jurisdiction of international bodies."
Those bodies include the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands—which is currently weighing a genocide case against Israel—and the International Criminal Court, also based in the Dutch city, which last year issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder and forced starvation.
On Thursday, Zeteopublished an interview with an anonymous former private U.S. security contractor who was hired to facilitate GHF aid distribution who said: "I thought I was signing up for an aid mission. But what I've witnessed in Gaza is horrific."
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According to the former contractor:
One episode sticks with me. We were monitoring an empty site all day; sometime after dark, dozens of flatbed trucks finally brought aid. The Israeli military soon radioed in that 200 to 300 civilians a couple of kilometers (less than two miles) north were approaching. We then observed an Israeli drone go out there.
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Last month, Jake Wood, a former U.S. marine and co-founder of the disaster relief group Team Rubicon, resigned as executive director of GHF. Wood cited "the lack of independence from Israel and the likelihood that the plan would result in forced displacement," according to CCR.
Earlier this month, Christoph Schweizer, CEO of Boston Consulting Group—which played a key role in creating GHF—apologized for and ended BCG's participation in the endeavor.
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U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed multiple Congressional Review Act resolutions that target California's efforts to adopt electric vehicles statewide and phase out gas-powered cars, in a move that one climate campaigner called "Trump's latest betrayal of democracy."
Trump reversed a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency waiver granted to California during the waning days of the Biden administration that allowed the state to enforce tougher vehicle pollution standards. That decision allowed California to require that gasoline-powered cars be phased out, and implement a ban on the sale of new gasoline-powered cars completely in 2035.
The other resolutions signed by Trump revoked waivers for a policy that required half of all new trucks sold in California be electric by 2035, and overturned a policy that placed limits on "allowable emissions of nitrogen oxide from cars and trucks," according to The New York Times.
Congress, which is Republican-controlled, passed a measure in May that paved the way for Thursday's signing. At the time, the Senate parliamentarian, the unelected arbiter of the chamber's procedures, said that the EPA waivers did not qualify as federal rules for the purpose of the Congressional Review Act (CRA). The Government Accountability Office has also said they aren't subject to the law.
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Green groups sharply condemned Trump's signing of the resolutions.
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Simon Mui, managing director for transportation at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Thursday that "California's vehicle standards reduce costs for drivers, increase customer choice, boost domestic manufacturing, improve air quality, and help address the climate crisis."
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Shortly after Trump signed the resolutions, California officials announced they had filed a lawsuit over the move. A statement from Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom's office called the resolutions "illegal."
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California also recently filed a legal challenge over Trump's decision to order the deployment of National Guard members and Marine troops to Los Angeles in response to protests that sprang up in response to federal immigration raids.
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