Common Dreams
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Common Dreams is a reader-supported independent news outlet created in 1997 as a new media model. Our nonprofit newsroom covers the most important news stories of the moment. We share our readers' progressive values of social justice, human rights, equality, and peace. Common Dreams is committed to not only being your trusted news source but to encouraging critical thinking and civic..
Common Dreams
4h ago
The Department of the Interior and Department of Commerce today finalized their proposed revisions to three sets of regulations that implement the Endangered Species Act’s listing and consultation procedures.
Of the 31 harmful changes made in 2019 to the Act’s regulations, only seven are fully addressed and corrected in today’s final rules. Those include restoring the precautionary “blanket-rule” for threatened species. Today’s finalized rules restored the long-standing prohibition on consideration of economic impacts when deciding whether to list species as threatened or endangered. The rules ..read more
Common Dreams
4h ago
The Biden administration today released final Endangered Species Act regulations that restore several core components of the bedrock conservation law that the previous administration sought to undercut. Defenders of Wildlife, which pursued legal challenges to the 2019 regulations, expressed both appreciation and concern with the newly released regulations.
“While the regulations restore some essential wildlife protections, we were hopeful for far more than the marginal win the Biden administration delivered today. Our nation’s threatened and endangered species are under constant attack and the ..read more
Common Dreams
4h ago
Today, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released new data showing that domestic nonfinancial corporate profits increased $136.5 billion in Q4, compared with an increase of $90.8 billion in Q3. Groundwork’s Executive Director Lindsay Owens reacted with the following statement:
“Even as supply chains have normalized and input costs have fallen, corporations are still padding their profits on the backs of families. Falling inflation has been a welcome sight, but it has more room to fall if corporations stop their excessive profiteering.”
Email press@groundworkcollaborative.org to speak with ..read more
Common Dreams
2d ago
Well that was blessedly quick. Less than a week after NBC said it would pay fascist bootlicker and election liar Ronna McDaniel to bootlick and lie on air - and a day after its employees loudly protested the move - NBC, citing their "legitimate concerns," said oops never mind and dropped McDaniel. Along with her colleagues, Rachel Maddow had cogently argued against giving a platform to a low-life hack who is "part of an ongoing project to get rid of our system of government."
The righteous revolt by journalists at NBC and MSNBC was swift after the network announced McDaniel's $300,000 hire F ..read more
Common Dreams
2d ago
Forty-five community, environmental, and animal welfare organizations—together representing tens of millions of people across the United States—filed public comments yesterday with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, pressing for strong protections against water pollution from slaughterhouses and animal rendering facilities. The EPA published a proposal to strengthen existing protections in January 2024, following lawsuits from several of the commenting organizations. Yesterday’s comments emphasized that the EPA must improve its proposal to address environmental injustice and reduce harm ..read more
Common Dreams
2d ago
The U.S. military should clarify that it will not develop or deploy lethal weapons powered by artificial intelligence (AI), 14 groups said in a letter sent today to U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks. The letter was co-signed by Public Citizen, the Future of Life Institute, Demand Progress, and Win Without War, among others.
The groups’ letter focuses on the Pentagon’s Replicator program, which proposes to rely heavily on drones to combat Chinese missile strength in a theoretical conflict over Taiwan or at China’s eastern coast. The just-passed appr ..read more
Common Dreams
2d ago
Amnesty International welcomes the new report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, which concludes there are “reasonable grounds to believe the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met”. As the UN Human Rights Council holds a meeting today to discuss the report’s findings, Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard said:
“This is a crucial body of work that must serve as a vital call to action to states. They must uphold their obligations under the Genocide Convention and take concrete ..read more
Common Dreams
3d ago
Friends of the Earth U.S. submitted a brief describing significant new science on health risks of genetically engineered corn, which the U.S. failed to consider as part of its trade dispute with Mexico. These comments were invited by the tribunal and submitted on March 13, and support Mexico’s extensive presentation of the science and rejection of the U.S.’ grossly inadequate safety assessments.
The brief was submitted to the dispute resolution tribunal set up under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Free Trade Agreement (USMCA), charged with determining whether actions taken by Mexico to keep genetically ..read more
Common Dreams
3d ago
A federal court ruled on Friday that the Bureau of Land Management’s decision to lease nearly 120,000 acres of Wyoming federal land for oil and gas development in June 2022 violated the law. The court found that BLM moved forward with the lease sale – one of the largest held by the Biden administration on public lands – despite the known risks to drinking water, wildlife, and the climate. BLM will now be required to reevaluate the environmental impacts of the sale.
“While BLM is making considerable strides to safeguard critical conservation values, this decision affirms that much work remains ..read more
Common Dreams
3d ago
U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) efforts to ramp up corporate crime enforcement remain insufficient, as the DOJ prosecuted only 113 corporate offenders in 2023, an uptick from the previous year’s 99 prosecutions, according to a new report from Public Citizen.
Federal corporate prosecutions have been trending downward since 2000, when the DOJ prosecuted triple the number of corporations that it does today (304). The number of corporate prosecutions has remained far below the agency’s 25-year average (172) since the end of the Obama administration.
The report shows that large corporations that b ..read more