I’m suing the U.S. government for causing the climate change crisis, and I'm 22.
My name is Kelsey Juliana and I’m suing the United States government for causing and accelerating the climate change crisis. I’m 22 years old and I’ve been a climate activist for more than half of my life.
I know that young people like me, and others who have yet to be born, have a right to a safe climate system. The constitution guarantees all Americans the right to life, liberty, and property. But how is anyone supposed to live a life of freedom amid a climate crisis? My own government is violating my constitutional rights by its ongoing and deliberate actions that cause climate change and it’s not right.
I, along with 20 other young people from around the country, filed a lawsuit against the federal government in 2015, called Juliana v. United States.
We’re not asking for money. Instead, we’re asking the court to order the government to develop and implement a National Climate Recovery Plan based on the best available science.
This plan should end the reign of fossil fuels and quickly decarbonize our atmosphere so that we can stabilize our climate system before it’s too late.
The longer we go without climate recovery, the more we risk allowing our climate to spiral completely out of control.
And the climate is spiraling out of control, no matter how many politicians claim we’re experiencing normal fluctuations or, worse, a “hoax.” All of the expert witnesses in our lawsuit say that we are currently—already—in the “danger zone” and an “emergency situation” with only 1°C of planetary heating. Allowing the planet to heat up any more is not safe for our species, as well as so many others. And according to the Trump administration’s most recent environmental impact statement, the planet could heat as much as 7°F before the end of this century. We cannot allow this to happen because we simply will not survive.
We originally filed our lawsuit against the Obama administration. That administration tried to have the case dismissed, but the judge ruled in our favor and found that we should be allowed to go to trial.
In 2017, the Trump administration inherited the lawsuit and it has done everything in its power, employing every conceivable tactic, to deny my fellow plaintiffs and me our right to present our case in court. This administration is so fiercely attempting to silence our voices.
At this point, every level of the federal judiciary—the U.S. District Court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court—has denied the Trump administration’s efforts to have the case thrown out. Yet it will not halt its efforts to avoid standard legal procedures and confront us, the nation’s youth, in court.
Our trial is officially scheduled to begin on October 29, 2018 in Eugene, Oregon.
What we’re asking for could change everything.
My fellow plaintiffs and I want you with us as we head into the courtroom to confront the United States government for knowingly violating our constitutional rights. Supporters will hold rallies in every state around the country, so if you can’t be with us in Eugene, find your local rally here.
Get regular updates by following @youthvgov on social media.
You can learn more about this case and get regular trial updates by tuning in to the No Ordinary Lawsuit podcast here.
Lastly, if you have the means, click here to make a donation to Our Children’s Trust, the nonprofit organization that supports our lawsuit and many others like it around the country.
President Trump has been repeatedly told by aides that his cellphone calls are not secure from foreign spies. But he has refused to heed the warnings to stop talking.
Matthew Rosenberg and Maggie Haberman at NYT:
WASHINGTON — When President Trump calls old friends on one of his iPhones to gossip, gripe or solicit their latest take on how he is doing, American intelligence reports indicate that Chinese spies are often listening — and putting to use invaluable insights into how to best work the president and affect administration policy, current and former American officials said.
Mr. Trump’s aides have repeatedly warned him that his cellphone calls are not secure, and they have told him that Russian spies are routinely eavesdropping on the calls, as well. But aides say the voluble president, who has been pressured into using his secure White House landline more often these days, has still refused to give up his iPhones. White House officials say they can only hope he refrains from discussing classified information when he is on them.
Mr. Trump’s use of his iPhones was detailed by several current and former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so they could discuss classified intelligence and sensitive security arrangements. The officials said they were doing so not to undermine Mr. Trump, but out of frustration with what they considered the president’s casual approach to electronic security.
American spy agencies, the officials said, had learned that China and Russia were eavesdropping on the president’s cellphone calls from human sources inside foreign governments and intercepting communications between foreign officials.
On Thursday morning, Mr. Trump said this article was “soooo wrong!” and asserted that he used only government phones and “only one seldom used government cell phone.” He did not claim there were other factual errors in The New York Times’ reporting.
The current and former officials said they have also determined that China is seeking to use what it is learning from the calls — how Mr. Trump thinks, what arguments tend to sway him and to whom he is inclined to listen — to keep a trade war with the United States from escalating further. In what amounts to a marriage of lobbying and espionage, the Chinese have pieced together a list of the people with whom Mr. Trump regularly speaks in hopes of using them to influence the president, the officials said.
Among those on the list are Stephen A. Schwarzman, the Blackstone Group chief executive who has endowed a master’s program at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and Steve Wynn, the former Las Vegas casino magnate who used to own a lucrative property in Macau.
The Chinese have identified friends of both men and others among the president’s regulars, and are now relying on Chinese businessmen and others with ties to Beijing to feed arguments to the friends of the Trump friends. The strategy is that those people will pass on what they are hearing, and that Beijing’s views will eventually be delivered to the president by trusted voices, the officials said. They added that the Trump friends were most likely unaware of any Chinese effort.
L. Lin Wood, a lawyer for Mr. Wynn, said his client was retired and had no comment. A spokeswoman for Blackstone, Christine Anderson, declined to comment on Chinese efforts to influence Mr. Schwarzman, but said that he “has been happy to serve as an intermediary on certain critical matters between the two countries at the request of both heads of state.”
Russia is not believed to be running as sophisticated an influence effort as China because of Mr. Trump’s apparent affinity for President Vladimir V. Putin, a former official said.
China’s effort is a 21st-century version of what officials there have been doing for many decades, which is trying to influence American leaders by cultivating an informal network of prominent businesspeople and academics who can be sold on ideas and policy prescriptions and then carry them to the White House. The difference now is that China, through its eavesdropping on Mr. Trump’s calls, has a far clearer idea of who carries the most influence with the president, and what arguments tend to work.
The Chinese and the Russians “would look for any little thing — how easily was he talked out of something, what was the argument that was used,” said John Sipher, a 28-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency who served in Moscow in the 1990s and later ran the agency’s Russia program.
Trump friends like Mr. Schwarzman, who figured prominently in the first meeting between President Xi Jinping of China and Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s Florida resort, already hold pro-China and pro-trade views, and thus are ideal targets in the eyes of the Chinese, the officials said. Targeting the friends of Mr. Schwarzman and Mr. Wynn can reinforce the views of the two, the officials said. The friends are also most likely to be more accessible.
One official said the Chinese were pushing for the friends to persuade Mr. Trump to sit down with Mr. Xi as often as possible. The Chinese, the official said, correctly perceive that Mr. Trump places tremendous value on personal relationships, and that one-on-one meetings yield breakthroughs far more often than regular contacts between Chinese and American officials.
Whether the friends can stop Mr. Trump from pursuing a trade war with China is another question.
Officials said the president has two official iPhones that have been altered by the National Security Agency to limit their abilities — and vulnerabilities — and a third personal phone that is no different from hundreds of millions of iPhones in use around the world. Mr. Trump keeps the personal phone, White House officials said, because unlike his other two phones, he can store his contacts in it.
Apple declined to comment on the president’s iPhones. None of them are completely secure and are vulnerable to hackers who could remotely break into the phones themselves.
But the calls made from the phones are intercepted as they travel through the cell towers, cables and switches that make up national and international cellphone networks. Calls made from any cellphone — iPhone, Android, an old-school Samsung flip phone — are vulnerable.
The issue of secure communications is fraught for Mr. Trump. As a presidential candidate, he regularly attacked his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, during the 2016 campaign for her use of an unsecured email server while she was secretary of state, and he basked in chants of “lock her up” at his rallies.
Intercepting calls is a relatively easy skill for governments. American intelligence agencies consider it an essential tool of spycraft, and they routinely try to tap the phones of important foreign leaders. In a diplomatic blowup during the Obama administration, documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden, a former contractor for the National Security Agency, showed that the American government had tapped the phone of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.
Foreign governments are well aware of the risk, and so leaders like Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin avoid using cellphones when possible.
[…]
Mr. Trump is supposed to swap out his two official phones every 30 days for new ones but rarely does, bristling at the inconvenience. White House staff members are supposed to set up the new phones exactly like the old ones, but the new iPhones cannot be restored from backups of his old phones because doing so would transfer over any malware.
New phone or old, though, the Chinese and the Russians are listening, and learning.
why are these kids just out here in their prom pics looking like the personified embodiment of capitalism and america that youd see in an old soviet propaganda poster
i can tell you right now that these are rich people. it’s not the hot tub in the background. it’s not even the money suit. it’s the fact that both girls are dressed and styled like women in their 40s. seriously, i have two cousins who are rich as hell and this is how they dress. ive seen pictures of groups of them flocked together, usually somewhere with a golf course in the background, every last one of them dressed exactly like their mothers. i dont know why. but i can tell you right now with absolute certainty these girls went to a debutante ball and have had their own horse since they were 10. they named it trudy or something. i know all this because those girls are about to leave the house looking like the desperate housewives and nobody sees anything wrong with that
Today’s Owl Love <3
This is a Melanistic Barn Owl, a rare mutatuion in which the melanin creates darker feathers than the standard white. They are sometimes called “dark phase” barn owls.
SOURCE
Debbie Wasserman Schultz has been sent a mail bomb
Nancy Pelosi was confronted by a mob
CNN has to evacuate due to bomb threats
Trump declares himself a nationalist
I have no words to describe the disgust and fear of what has been happening lately. The parallels between what is happening today and what has happened in the past when a country turns to fascism and dictatorship makes my blood run cold. If this continues, the US will collapse upon itself
This is why we NEED to rally behind Democrats and vote for them this midterms. This isn’t about if you disagree with some of Democrat party’s policies anymore; the Republicans have fully embraced fascism (and yes these are straight up acts of domestic terrorism) and, whether we like it or not, having Democrats take control of AT LEAST one of the branches of Congress is our ONLY chance at halting that, at putting at least a stopgap to this overreaching fascism.
Because I remember disinformation being spread around the last election and I’m sure Russia will bring it back:
YOU CAN’T VOTE ONLINE.
YOU CAN’T VOTE FROM YOUR PHONE.
IN MANY STATES THERE ARE LEGAL CONSEQUENCES FOR PHOTOGRAPHING YOUR BALLOT.
DO NOT WEAR CAMPAIGN GEAR TO THE POLLS.
DO NOT TRY TO PERSUADE PEOPLE TO VOTE FOR A CANDIDATE AT THE POLLS.
DO NOT ENGAGE IN ANY KIND OF POLITICAL DISCOURSE AT THE POLLS.
NO ELECTION IS EVER A SURE THING, EVEN IF YOU’RE IN THE BLUEST OR REDDEST OF STATES. IF SOMEONE TRIES TO TELL YOU THAT YOU CAN SIT THIS ONE OUT, THEY ARE EITHER IGNORANT OR MALICIOUS.
VOTE.
😂😐😜😢😁 @thehempirestrikesback - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
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