By: Tony Aguilar, Organizing Intern In constructing his cabinet, President Biden appointed Deb Haaland, a Native American woman and former U.S. representative from New Mexico to be the Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior. The Department of the Interior manages America’s natural resources and Native American relations in Bureaus such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as well as the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Since Haaland’s confirmation, she has put together a diverse team in the DOI, including other Native American additions like Lawrence Roberts and Heidi

By: Kristen Millstein, Communications Intern After several months of working on the Make Polluters Pay campaign with CHEJ, hearing that President Biden’s infrastructure bill included a Polluters Pay Tax felt like a breath of fresh air. The Polluters Pay Tax, which expired in 1995, funded the Superfund program and was used to clean up toxic waste sites when the responsible party could not be identified or was unable to pay. Since then, money to clean up toxic sites has come from general tax revenue. These funds are not sufficient, and

By: Leia Ku Cheng Yee, Communications and Development Intern Since I have been living in California for 5 years, and have only been drinking tap water, I have always wondered if the water is safe for every Californian. Although I am a tap water advocate, and a firm believer that plastic bottled water is negatively impacting the environment, it is also significant to point out that not all individuals have the privilege to enjoy clean water.  After listening to Andrea Amico’s story about the PFAS contamination at the Pease International

By: Julia Weil, Community Organizing Intern Climate change alters essentially everything in our environment, and it further widens existing environmental disparities through the impacts of more extreme weather events. While climate change means that heat waves, dust storms, and wildfires will increase in some parts of the country, it also means that severe flooding events and precipitation will increase in others. Additionally, as a product of climate warming, hurricanes are increasing in severity and are slowing down, meaning that they have more capacity to cause greater destruction – the longer