Public Citizen is working hard to make sure that failure is never repeated, and is making important progress.

In early April, Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines team hosted a meeting with global health experts, including Petro Terblanche, CEO of Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines, and Esteban Burrone, head of policy and strategy at the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP). The event highlighted Public Citizen’s crucial support for these organizations and its ongoing impact in the global fight for treatment and vaccine equity.

As the discussions got underway, Terblanche couldn’t contain her excitement at the previous night’s events at the World Vaccine Congress. Afrigen and the WHO-backed mRNA Technology Transfer Program that it hosts were honored with the Best Vaccine Technology Platform Award, outshining major pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline. Praised for its potential to revolutionize vaccine manufacturing and broaden global access, the end-to-end mRNA platform located at Afrigen in South Africa was recognized as offering “the greatest promise to develop novel vaccines and provide transformative technology that can revolutionize vaccine manufacturing and address diseases like cancer and other chronic conditions.” 

Afrigen and MPP, headquartered in Switzerland, are central to WHO’s groundbreaking program. This initiative is empowering scientists and vaccine producers from 15 low- and middle-income countries, including six in Africa, with the knowledge and skills to produce their own mRNA vaccines. It’s a decisive response to the stark disparities in vaccine access highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which disproportionately affected the Global South and contributed to over a million needless deaths. Public Citizen has been a cornerstone in advocating for and amplifying the program from its inception, inspiring governmental and civil society support, strategic advocacy, and high-profile media engagement. 

Terblanche shared how she began working with Public Citizen’s access to medicines director, Peter Maybarduk, in 2021 due to his role on the Medicines Patent Pool governance board. During a time when skepticism from governments and academia threatened to derail the program, she recounted the overwhelming support from civil society. “On one of the calls, we had 102 civil society organizations,” she described, reflecting on a crucial video conference organized by Maybarduk that highlighted the barriers pharmaceutical companies were erecting to the mRNA Tech Transfer initiative. 

Esteban Burrone outlined MPP’s integral role in collaborating with Afrigen and a range of other partners to build an ecosystem to meet public health needs in Africa and beyond. It includes assessing the technological capacities of the 15 manufacturers and what further support they need in terms of equipment, facilities, and other resources. This detailed oversight ensures that the technology transfer not only happens but is also sustainable and tailored to the unique needs of each partner country. 

The Medicines Patent Pool was founded in 2010 to facilitate affordable access to new health technologies, and has become the global leader in negotiating voluntary licensing agreements for pharmaceutical patents. Through these agreements, MPP has enabled over 21 million people worldwide to access affordable, effective HIV treatment regimens for less than $45 per patient per year, significantly expanding the availability of essential HIV medications, particularly in the Global South, and extending countless lives.

Public Citizen’s advocacy and campaigning for countries to speed generic competition and work around patent barriers complements MPP’s voluntary licensing efforts. Colombia’s recent announcement of its first-ever compulsory license to enhance access to generic versions of the key HIV medicine dolutegravir – a government-granted license without permission from the patent owner ViiV Healthcare – marks a significant victory for Public Citizen, which strongly supported the licensing push, and sets a promising example for countries worldwide.

Another priority for Public Citizen’s access to medicines team has been influencing the text of the pandemic accord that UN member states are racing to finalize ahead of the World Health Assembly in May.  After a two-year effort to secure an agreement to ensure the world is better prepared for future pandemics, Public Citizen continues to push for provisions to prevent the extreme inequity in access to pandemic-related medical tools (including vaccines, tests and treatments), that contributed to 15 million estimated deaths and $14 trillion in global economic loss as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Through written and oral comments, Public Citizen lobbied the Biden administration to support more robust measures for equity and access in the accord, including global access to medical tools developed with public funds. It organized a sign-on letter from over 100 religious leaders globally urging leaders of the WHO to secure equity commitments that protect all populations everywhere from future pandemics, as well as countless calls with key stakeholders—journalists, activists, government representatives, and more—to share information and strategize on how to influence the most contentious elements of the draft text. The main disputes revolve around access and equity: access to pathogens detected within countries; access to pandemic-fighting products such as vaccines produced from that knowledge; and equitable distribution of not only pandemic tests, treatments, and vaccines but the means to produce them. 

Public Citizen has been committed to addressing both the moral and practical imperatives of increasing vaccine production in Africa through its support for WHO’s mRNA Technology Transfer Program and related work with Afrigen and MPP and through its role as vice chair of the civil society steering committee for Gavi, the vaccine alliance. Gavi currently purchases about half of the vaccine doses used in Africa. In December, Gavi’s board approved establishing the African Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator (AVMA), a new financing instrument that will make up to US$1 billion available to support vaccine manufacturing on the continent. Through her leadership role on Gavi’s civil society steering committee, Public Citizen’s campaign director for global vaccines access, Liza Barrie, led extensive civil society consultations with Gavi during the AVMA design phase throughout 2023 that Gavi leaders say significantly influenced the final plan that will be formally launched in Paris in June. Barrie mobilized top experts from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and the University of Cape Town, Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, and other groups to review Gavi’s proposals, challenge assumptions, and offer alternative approaches to many of the proposal’s key elements.

The post Public Citizen Partners with Global Health Experts in the Fight for Vaccine Justice appeared first on Public Citizen.

The industry in and around the Houston Ship Channel presents constant challenges to neighboring communities. With the next phase of a major channel expansion soon to be underway, the coalition’s member organizations have mobilized to keep the community engaged and informed about decisions made by Port Houston Authority.  

The HPCC Town Hall

Port community residents are the people best positioned to speak about the  challenges they face in their homes and workplaces. In February of this year, HPCC gathered hundreds of community members for a town hall to harness that local knowledge and identify projects that address community needs.

“Events like this are indispensable to the coalition’s work,” said Adrian Shelley, director of Public Citizen’s Texas office, which is  leading efforts to secure grant funding. “Town halls give residents a chance to speak face-to-face with decision-makers who oversee the Port Houston Authority.”

A New Port Commissioner

Also in February, coalition members received word that a member of the Port Commission, which oversees the Port Authority and its operations, declined to be reappointed by the City of Houston when her term expired. HPCC learned the Houston City Council would vote on her replacement in about 48 hours.

Coalition members sprang into action.

By the time the city council gathered, representatives of HPCC member organizations and community members were ready to advocate for a say in the selection process for the next commissioner. Public Citizen’s Texas office requested that city officials slow down a rushed process to allow the community to meet with commissioner nominees or submit nominations. 

Unfortunately, the city council declined HPCC’s request, voting instead to appoint Thomas Jones. However, this organizing opportunity allowed HPCC to communicate its goals to the council, including the city’s new mayor.

“Commissioner Jones, like his colleagues on the commission, is now in a position to help Port communities thrive,” said Erandi Treviño, an organizer with Public Citizen’s Houston-based organizing team. “The advocates in HPCC look forward to collaborating with the commission to finally bring the community’s voice into the decision-making process at Port Houston.”

Under state law, Houston appoints two members to the seven-member commission that oversees one of the largest ports in the country. It jointly appoints a third seat, the chair, with Harris County. The HPCC expects it will have another chance to advocate for a commissioner who will  serve the public interest in February 2025, when the next appointment comes due.

Earth Day on the East End

For the first time, HPCC this year held its own Earth Day celebration.

Gathering at Hidalgo Park on Houston’s East Side, the HPCC’s inaugural celebration included presentations, based on this year’s Earth Day theme of “Planet vs. Plastics,” that emphasized the dangers that plastics pose to the planet and people. Live music and performances, door prizes, free seeds, and a tree giveaway rounded out the day’s events.

Hidalgo Park is located just a few yards from the ship channel in a historic neighborhood near many communities that guide HPCC’s work.

“This was a fun event with a message,” reflected Shelley. “Staging the event in the shadow of the ship channel makes a statement that Earth Day matters everywhere, but front-line communities are the first to face the consequences of environmental harm. This is as true in our community as on the other side of the world.”

The post Healthy Port Communities Coalition appeared first on Public Citizen.

Camarillo earned her law degree from the Duke University School of Law, where she specialized in international and comparative law. She also received a master of laws degree from Georgetown University Law Center in international business and economic law and a certificate in World Trade Organization and international trade studies. While at Georgetown Law, she was selected as a Lloyd N. Cutler Fellow for the 2021 Salzburg Seminar for her research on sustainable development in international trade, focused on supply chain transparency and corporate responsibility of consumer protection.

“My advocacy efforts on behalf of Latin American governments exiting ISDS and the reports I’ve drafted to educate American lawmakers on the harms caused to local communities by ISDS have been my favorite aspects of the work I have done at Global Trade Watch,” reflects Camarillo. Her work has made a tangible difference: earlier this year, Honduras exited from the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes Convention, Ecuador repealed a referendum to reinstate its ICSID membership, and ISDS even became a trending topic in Congress. 

Q: You previously practiced law in Mexico before and during the re-negotiation of NAFTA. What was that like?

I worked as an international trade lawyer in Monterrey, Mexico, before and during the renegotiation of NAFTA. Monterrey is very close to the Texas border, and I worked with many of the region’s manufacturing plants, assessing their compliance with international standards in cross-border supply chains. Later, I joined international law firms in D.C., working on international trade issues and representing Latin American governments in Investor-State Dispute Settlement arbitration. 

Q: What do you enjoy doing in your free time?

I like hanging out with my dog, Mozzy, reading mystery novels, and painting. 

Q: Can you walk us through a typical work day?

Research, research, and more research! Partly kidding…a typical day for me involves talking to partners around the world about egregious ISDS cases and keeping an eye on diverse trade topics as they come up.

Q: How did you become involved with Public Citizen?

I was a fan of Public Citizen for years, but Global Trade Watch’s stance against the World Trade Organization and strong advocacy efforts during the pandemic regarding global access to vaccines solidified my resolve to join the team. 

Q: What advice would you give to someone starting out? 

Don’t be discouraged if no one in the room looks like you or walked the same path as you. Those are the rooms you most need to take up space in. 

Q: What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about international arbitration?

That it’s a good thing! ISDS is often touted as a neutral and stable way to settle disagreements between corporations and governments. In reality, it is a form of institutionalized colonialism that permits corporations (typically from the Global North) to exert dominance over governments’ sovereignty and meddle with their right to regulate policies for the public good. Global South countries are disproportionately targeted by ISDS cases, and the only beneficiaries are the corporations lining their pockets with taxpayer dollars and the legal professionals who are paid millions to participate.

The post Get to Know Iza Camarillo appeared first on Public Citizen.

Realizing that she wanted to work on projects and issues that more closely aligned with her values, particularly given her fervent opposition to the harmful policies and rhetoric being advanced by the Trump administration, she moved to Washington, D.C., to work in communications at the Center for American Progress on their youth political engagement team. Since then, Emily has led communications strategy on a variety of issues including economic inequity, democracy protection, and voter engagement. Outside of her professional life, Emily can be found exploring Eastern Market in D.C., reading for her book club, and hanging out with friends in Lincoln Park or a D.C. beer garden. 

Q: What brought you to D.C.?

A: The main reason I wanted to come to D.C. was the city’s connection to the work that I wanted to do. I knew after a few years of doing PR and comms in San Francisco that I wanted to do something that aligned more with my values and what I care about. Every time that I thought about what that might look like or what jobs I would be interested in doing, all roads led to D.C. So many decisions get made here that impact people all over the country, and the world. I love getting to play a small part in shaping those decisions and working alongside people who also want to make the country a better place. I think I was surprised when I got here to realize how much I like D.C. as a city even outside of politics. I love the cool neighborhoods, how walkable much of the city is, and how accessible public transit is. 

Q: Walk us through your work day. 

A: My day typically starts with going through emails; between newsletters, interview requests from reporters, responses from coalition partners or PC advocates, and progress updates on key issues, there are always a lot! I try to work my way through as many of the newsletters I’m subscribed to as possible to get a sense of what the day and week will look like on our issues. Right now, I pay closest attention to Punchbowl, Politico’s Huddle, and Politico Morning Tech. 

Once I’m at my desk, my top priority is checking in with reporters and making sure they have all of the information and connections to PC experts that they might need. I’m also pitching reporters on story ideas that we’ve come up with tied to news of the day, PC reports or campaigns, or other interesting narratives we think deserve more attention.

Another main function of comms is communicating with folks internally, so every day I’ll have different meetings to check in with other teams, policy experts, advocates, and other comms team members to discuss what they’re working on and how we can help get more eyes on it, whether that’s in the press or on our digital channels.

Q: What advice would you give to someone just starting in communications?

A: I would tell them to push themselves to try new things. The best comms people I know are people that are adaptable, quick-thinking, and able to think outside the box — which are all skills that come with challenging your brain to learn new things and think differently. Whether that’s working on a new issue area, organizing a different type of event, or pitching a newer form of media, comms is something I firmly believe you learn by doing.  The more that you can find ways to change things up, develop new skills, or push yourself in a different direction, the more well-rounded, creative, and flexible strategist you’ll become.

The post Get to Know Emily Leach appeared first on Public Citizen.

Q: You have an extensive background working in the digital and political spheres. What drew you to it?

My university had a program for new and emerging media journalism and that appealed to me. When I left school, I moved to Dallas, assuming that I would build a career in digital marketing, but I was pulled towards politics after the election of the 45th president, someone who I thought could not be worse for our country. I was very fortunate at the time to be working with an organization in Dallas called Black Tie Dinner, which hosts fundraising events for LGBTQ nonprofit organizations in North Texas. Through one of those events, I met now-representative Colin Allred, who was running for Congress in my district. My original intention was to just do my part for my local congressional race, but because of my extensive background in digital comms, the campaign asked me to join as digital director. There, I found that niche for myself of applying the expertise I have in digital to the space of creating positive change.

Q: What’s a highlight of your time at Public Citizen so far?

One of the most exciting core developments we’ve made is focusing a lot of attention on our TikTok, which has seen the fastest growth I’ve ever witnessed in a social media platform. It’s been exciting assisting Shauna Burton, our social media associate, in building that out. But on the other side of that coin, I’m equally excited about starting to introduce the organization to other paid marketing platforms. We are rerunning a campaign that we developed late last year called ToyotaYawn, a little play on words of Toyotathon, the company’s largest year-end sales event. We took that from zero to an incredibly successful ad campaign that garnered millions of impressions. I really feel that was a bright spot in building the digital advertising foundation for Public Citizen’s future.

Q: Do you have any tips for young professionals just starting out?

There’s a quote by a writer: “Writing is a lot like driving a car in the fog at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you will make the entire journey that way.” If I stuck to exactly what I thought I was going to be doing with my career when I graduated, it would not be as impactful, or frankly, as fun. My best advice is just focus on what’s in the headlights. It’s wonderful to have goals further down the road, but when it comes to making decisions, don’t try to look too far ahead.

Q: I noticed that you’re a yoga instructor – how do you balance your personal and work life?

While I was living in Dallas, I went through an entry-level yoga teaching certification. Someone whom I viewed as a yoga mentor approached me as a teaching candidate, and it was very touching to be seen in that way. After spending a year doing my own practice, I decided that it was time, and since then, I’ve loved it. We’re doing something with an in-your-own-body element to it, and the other part of that is just knowing how valuable it was to have teachers who consistently were able to monitor my practice and getting the chance to pay that forward.

The post Get to Know Nick Totin appeared first on Public Citizen.

Despite, or because of, those challenges, residents in Pleasantville and neighboring port communities stand firm against the risk of additional threats.

And now they are facing a big challenge: the Port Houston Authority and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) are planning an expansion of the Houston Ship Channel. The expansion, named Project 11, will widen and deepen the channel. But as with previous expansions, there is a risk that port communities will be left to sacrifice their health for the sake of the bigger ships that will be able to come to port.

As a Healthy Port Communities Coalition (HPCC) member, Public Citizen is working with Port communities to push back against the plan and demand, at minimum, that construction plans address identifiable risks to the people living near the port.

Houston’s port is one of the largest in the world and the largest in the country by foreign tonnage, and its shores are lined with refineries and petrochemical facilities that have spewed oil and chemicals into the channel for decades.

With any number of unknown substances settling on the ship channel floor, it is understandable that nearby residents worry that the dredged spoils will migrate to their neighborhood with insufficient safeguards to protect people and property.

Impacts on neighboring communities from the expansion plans also include air pollution from dredging equipment such as barges and support vessels. Additionally, the placement of the dredged materials, also known as spoils, raises issues of toxicity and flooding.

It’s this multitude of threats that convinced advocates that the Port Authority and the Army Corps of Engineers needed to tour some of the communities that face the most potential harm during and after the expansion project. In June, Public Citizen arranged just such a tour.

The tour provided an opportunity for significant dialogue that followed years of strained communication between
the agencies on one side and advocates and, most importantly, community members on the other.

While essential in advancing the community’s concerns with the project, the tour came with its frustrations. As community members shared their experiences, we felt that our voices were not heard. Agency representatives mostly disagreed with our presentation of the facts. We couldn’t agree, for example, on whether material dredged from the bottom of the ship channel was likely to be toxic and threaten communities. It was evident that both sides must understand the facts to move forward with a meaningful conversation and accomplish priorities.

By the end of the tour, the Port and the Army Corps of Engineers committed to a technical meeting facilitated by the EPA, and the Port agreed to host community meetings to offer the clarity required with a risk of this magnitude.

September and October will be critical for these ongoing efforts because they will allow the community’s technical experts to meet with the Army Corps and Port engineers. We hope to agree on the facts before the Port Authority hosts community meetings to share the risks and how to address them.

The leadership of the Army Corps of Engineers and EPA know the port is an economic engine for the Houston region. This tour was a chance for advocates and residents to show them firsthand the human cost that comes with that economic activity.

Following the 2016 Panama Canal expansion, Houston, like many other Ports, faced pressure to expand to accommodate the larger ships now crossing the canal. The Port of Houston, as the owner and operator of the Ship Channel’s eight public facilities and two of the busiest container terminals in the nation, plans to do just that. As the local sponsor of this major federal waterway in Houston, the Port Authority has partnered with the USACE for Project 11, the Ship Channel’s eleventh major expansion.

The project is divided into six sections. The first three are to be handled by the Port, while the Army Corps of Engineers will be in charge of managing the other three sections of the project. When complete, the channel will be 170 feet wider along its Galveston Bay and deepen the channel to as much as 46.5 feet

The post Communities Forge Ahead Against the Relentless Growth of the Houston Ship Channel appeared first on Public Citizen.

When I got to the Senate in 2007, climate change was a bipartisan issue.  There were serious bipartisan climate bills in the Senate.  Republican John McCain was running for President on a significant climate platform.  All that progress and bipartisanship was also noticed by fossil fuel companies.  Industry groups then prevailed on the Supreme Court to overthrow decades of precedent and allow unlimited corporate political spending.  The 5-4 Citizens United decision, in January of 2010, gave the industry the weaponry to kill climate bipartisanship.  Republicans quickly caved on climate — and were rewarded with massive, secret money from oil and gas behemoths.

Citizens United’s upheaval of politics and elections remains profound.  501(c)(4) organizations became fountains of dark political money.  Armadas of dark-money front groups were created or co-opted to obscure the hand of the fossil fuel industry.  New political creatures like Super PACs proliferated. A Public Citizen study found that “just 25 ultra wealthy donors made up nearly half (47%) of all individual contributions to Super PACs between 2010 and 2018.”  Negative advertising surged — a “tsunami of slime.”  And behind the billions in secret political spending came the hidden threats and promises that big special interests can make when they have the power to secretly spend billions.  Their reward: from January of 2010 to now, no Senate Republican has supported a serious climate bill.

The fossil fuel industry climate blockade operation ran in parallel with a longstanding dark-money plan to capture the Supreme Court.  The waypoints of this Court-capture effort were the infamous Lewis Powell memo laying out the Court-capture strategy (written for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce immediately before Powell’s appointment to the Court); the bipartisan Senate rejection of nominee Robert Bork (engendering burning far-right fury); the subsequent revenge of the right, blocking Bush nominee Harriet Miers to open the door for billionaire-friendly Justice Sam Alito; Mitch McConnell’s Senate stiff-arm to Obama nominee Judge Merrick Garland; and then whatever deal Trump cut with the Koch political organization around his so-called “Federalist Society list” of proposed Court appointees.  Citizens United was the crowning achievement of this Court-capture effort: fossil fuel billionaires could now protect in Congress fossil fuel’s $660 billion annual U.S. subsidy.

With that big a prize at stake, there was no restraint.  Existing far-right front groups were repurposed and repowered.  Stables of fossil-fuel stooges were funded to parrot phony science.  Pop-up front groups appeared in election after election to give a fake local “feel” to the fossil fuel campaign.  The U.S. Chamber of Commerce took undisclosed masses of dark money and became a “worst climate obstructor.”  The climate denial campaign is the biggest and best-hidden in American history, and it has been fiendishly effective.  I could make a case that its malice has added 70 parts per million to our atmospheric CO2 count, dramatically accelerating climate catastrophe, just to enlarge massive industry profits.

The climate denial schemers continue their dirty work.  Like a retreating army, they abandoned the most indefensible falsehoods (“climate is a hoax”) for less flagrant ones (“climate is real but it will break the economy to fix it”).  But the game is the same.  They still oppose serious climate legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act climate measures.  They still oppose climate control regulations, filing hostile comments and lawsuits.  And they still use commanding influence over the Supreme Court to degrade the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act and to weaken regulatory oversight.  Justice Alito has even asserted that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.

The worst actors, obviously, are fossil fuel companies and their front groups.  But virtually all of corporate America is useless or lined up against climate protection legislation.  Corporate political clout works through political intermediaries like industry trade associations.  Corporate CEOs issue frothy climate statements and pledges; chief sustainability officers work on lowering carbon footprints; green programs get featured in glossy shareholder brochures; and then the trade associations come to Congress with the real message.  The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers are the two “worst climate obstructors” in America; others at best offer deafening silence.  The effect is lethal.

To fix this, we need to peel back the secrecy.  This will not be easy, because a Supreme Court built by dark money is busily constructing a constitutional right to dark money, so any effort at disclosure would be tangled in years of litigation.  But voluntary gatherings like the United Nations Conference of the Parties, or the elite corporate gathering at Davos, can require disclosure by corporations seeking to participate.  So could environmental groups and universities that work with corporations.  So could the White House, for high-level meetings sought by corporate interests.

Audited corporate climate political disclosure statements should be required.  Here’s what they should have to report:  one, campaign contributions, which are already disclosed, so you’d weight them to a ranking of the recipient on climate issues; two, lobbying, also already disclosed by topic, so you’d assess whether climate-related lobbying is pro or con; three, all funding of trade associations, ranked by climate opposition (hint: Chamber = toxic); and most important, dark-money “outside” spending into 501(c)(4)s, Super PACs and other political weaponry — all the way through, piercing shell corporations, Cypriot bank accounts, Cayman Islands law firms, or Dakota trusts.

No trickery, honest full reporting, signed by the CEO and CSO.  These revelations will cause massive embarrassment in C-suites and boardrooms across the country as shareholders and customers learn about companies’ real climate posture.  But we’d get the climate disaster solved far more quickly as a result.

Is it un-American to require this?  Precisely the opposite.  We are a democracy.  The essential foundation of a democracy is a well-informed citizenry.  Providing citizens the basic understanding of who’s doing what in the political arena may be bad for the bad actors, but it’s good for citizens and good for democracy, and that’s good for America.

Senator Whitehouse serves as Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Senate Finance Committee, and the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.  A graduate of Yale University and the University of Virginia School of Law, Whitehouse served as Rhode Island’s U.S. Attorney and state attorney general before being elected to the Senate.  His most recent book, The Scheme, explores the secretive right-wing operation to capture the United States Supreme Court.

The post Shining Light on Dark Money is Good for Democracy appeared first on Public Citizen.

Free and fair elections are the foundation of a healthy democracy, but across the United States, the systems and the people responsible for facilitating elections are under threat.

Public Citizen is working across the country to put safeguards in place to protect elections and election officials.

Thanks in large part to the rise of Trump authoritarianism, the once-staid work of election administration has now become a zone of threats and intimidation. An April 2023 study by the Brennan Center found that nearly one in three election officials have been abused, threatened, or harassed because of their jobs. One in three election officials surveyed in 2022 knew someone who left their job running elections because they didn’t feel safe. One in five election officials surveyed last year planned to leave their jobs before 2024.

Election deniers and bad actors with access to election equipment, software, and data endanger the integrity and security of elections and jeopardize voter confidence. Three quarters report needing additional funding to address staffing shortages and implement security upgrades. Ongoing attacks against local election officials and insider threats from actors who seek to compromise American elections have hindered already underfunded election offices and jeopardized their ability to administer future elections. Our elections – and our democracy – must be protected.

Public Citizen is working with allies in cities, counties and states to win  legislation to protect election workers and shield their personal information from becoming public. Tenstates – California, Colorado, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Washington – have passed new laws since January 2022 to protect election workers’ personal information or create or toughen penalties for harassing them, according to Voting Rights Lab, as have many counties and cities

Meanwhile, election threats are also coming from inside the house: from election deniers who are serving as election officials.

In Mesa County, Colo., for example, the county elections clerk and deputy snuck someone into the county elections offices to copy the hard drives of Dominion Voting Systems machines. The clerk was found guilty of tampering with voting equipment, violating election rules, illegally copying data and sharing it with unauthorized individuals in an attempt to prove a conspiracy theory about the 2020 presidential election. She was sentenced to four months of home detention, incurred a $750 fine and 120 hours of community service and was removed from overseeing the 2022 election. Colorado responded by passing new legislation to prevent election sabotage.

To address these multiple threats to election security and integrity, Public Citizen  has drafted  and is promoting model legislative language to:

1) Prevent harassment and intimidation of election workers;

2) Prevent or limit the impact of doxing (publishing home addresses and similar information about election workers);

3) Address increasing insider threats to elections; and

4) Encourage robust funding of elections offices in general

Public Citizen has had movement calls with celebrities, partners, and activists speaking to the importance of protecting elections, as well as many smaller calls to support state and local leaders and activists. We are working with activists to pass legislation in many states and municipalities, including Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin.

“It is almost unfathomable that in today’s America, we have to defend the integrity of the election process itself,” said Public Citizen President Robert Weissman. “But that’s the reality in which we live. Public Citizen is doing everything in our power to protect this most foundational requirement for a working democracy: a system that truly and accurately counts every vote.”

The post Protecting Elected Officials from Threats appeared first on Public Citizen.

Nopetro Energy, the company behind a controversial liquified natural gas export facility in Port St. Joe, Fla., announced in July it would “no longer pursue the opportunity due to market conditions.” This announcement marked a major victory for the citizens of Port St. Joe who worked tirelessly to stop this project, and for Public Citizen, which lobbied federal regulators, pursued legal action, and supported the efforts of local community activists to stop it.

Nopetro’s decision to end the project comes in the wake of grassroots activism in Port St. Joe and a lawsuit filed by Public Citizen against the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), alleging that the commission had fallen short of its duty to regulate fossil fuel export facilities by failing to require Nopetro to undergo an environmental impact assessment ahead of construction.

The lawsuit is set for oral argument in early October in front of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

“I was relieved to hear Nopetro decided not to pursue the construction of a liquified natural gas storage and export facility in Port St. Joe, Florida,” said Dannie Bolden, one of the leaders of Port St. Joe’s opposition to the LNG project. “The coalition took action and spoke loudly and with one voice, ‘Just Say No to Nopetro.’ We were successful, but we must remain steadfast to ensure there are no LNG facilities constructed along Florida’s Panhandle.”

Nopetro’s LNG plant would have taken gas from a pipeline and cooled the fossil fuel to minus-260 degrees Fahrenheit, turning it into a liquid. Then the liquified gas would be piped into large tanks in shipping containers and brought by truck 1,300 feet, or a quarter of a mile, to a crane that would place it on ships bound for the Caribbean and Latin America. Nopetro and FERC argued that because the containers of liquified gas were going to be taken a short distance by truck, rather than loaded directly onto ships, it should not be required to conduct an environmental review.

In the first six months of 2022, the U.S. exported 29% of the natural gas extracted across the country, according to a report by Public Citizen released in October 2022.

“They don’t want to deal with that comprehensive environmental review because it costs money and I would say to a community that if a company isn’t willing to commit the financial resources to conduct a comprehensive assessment to show that its facility is safe, then you don’t want that company operating in your community,” Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program told News 13, a local TV station.

As the lawsuit challenging FERC’s decision was filed, Slocum repeatedly traveled to Florida to build a community coalition to fight the project. Since 2022, Port St. Joe residents and Public Citizen have hosted three community meetings challenging the proposed project.

“Nopetro wanted to cut corners and rush the project past the community with little to no notice,” said Slocum. “Public Citizen has been privileged to work with so many dozens of incredible Port St. Joe residents who courageously took a stand for their community.”

Public Citizen’s work on Nopetro’s facility began in May 2021, when Slocum urged the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to reject the company’s request to escape FERC oversight over the project and avoid comprehensive federal environmental impact review.

Prior to Slocum’s early trips to Port St. Joe, community members had not been widely informed of the massive energy project being planned in their backyards.

The proposed site of the LNG export facility once was home to a paper mill which closed down in 1999, and was also once the economic engine of the city. The mill, which was adjacent to a historically African American community, has been subject to several community-driven redevelopment plans, the most recent of which looked toward tourism to bring in profits.

As members of the community planned for the future, Nopetro silently eyed the site for a LNG export facility, and in March 2021, petitioned FERC to exempt it from the commission’s oversight.

While Nopetro’s project has been stopped, projects like the one planned for Port St. Joe could continue to escape oversite unless FERC’s decision to avoid oversite is reversed. As Public Citizen’s lawsuit challenging that decision moves forward, major questions remain about how fossilized natural gas is liquified and exported.

“We need FERC to take jurisdiction over these types of facilities into the future for the sake of communities like Port St. Joe,” said Slocum. “By avoiding asserting their jurisdiction over this type of LNG export facility, a loophole has been created that will hurt communities, consumers, and the environment. We need more comprehensive oversite to protect us all.”

The post After Local Activism and Public Citizen Lawsuit, Nopetro Energy Cancels LNG Export Facility appeared first on Public Citizen.

In a remarkable stride towards fostering health justice, the mRNA Technology Transfer Program, established by the World Health Organization (WHO), has defied expectations by successfully establishing a robust pathway for equitable access to vital health technologies. This groundbreaking initiative is propelling low- and middle-income countries towards self-sufficiency in mRNA vaccine development. Backed from the outset by Public Citizen, the program is charting a course towards a more just and secure future for vulnerable populations worldwide. 

The program aims to establish sustainable mRNA manufacturing capabilities in regions with limited or no capacity, thereby promoting health security and autonomy in the sphere of mRNA vaccine development, production, and distribution. Inventors, developers, researchers, and experts are working together to facilitate the transfer of mRNA-based knowledge and technology to vaccine manufacturers across Africa, Asia, and the Americas on an industrial scale. The unique partnership model focuses on fostering global collaborations, while empowering local workforces.  

This mRNA program emerged in 2021 as a direct response to the extreme vaccine inequity that defined the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. WHO and its consortium partners hope to correct a fundamental imbalance that has kept the global south dependent on the north. Just as with the HIV epidemic in the early 2000s, when perhaps millions died needlessly in developing countries due to limited access to life-saving treatment widely available in the United States and Europe, these nations found themselves at the end of the line for receiving mRNA vaccines to safeguard against COVID-19.  

“The lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic and preceding HIV crisis have left a lasting impact,” said Peter Maybarduk, Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines director, who joined 200 international participants working with the program for its official launch in Cape Town in April. “Uniting from Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America, researchers pledged to never again be vulnerable to wealthy nations during a lethal virus outbreak in their regions. These countries recognize the importance of crafting their own solutions and are actively doing so,” he added.  

A growing number of stakeholders are engaged in the partnership, including the African Union, Africa CDC, biomanufacturing companies in 15 middle-income countries in the global south, as well as leading international scientists, government donors and the Medicines Patent Pool, a Geneva-based international organization devoted to improving access to affordable and appropriate drugs in developing countries.

Though initially focused on creating a COVID-19 vaccine, the initiative has identified more than 30 possible priority targets for mRNA vaccines for prevalent diseases in developing countries for which inadequate or no vaccines exist, including malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, yellow fever, rotavirus, and Dengue virus.  

Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines, based in Cape Town, has been designated as the program’s center of excellence and training. In February 2022, Afrigen announced it had successfully developed Africa’s first mRNA vaccine candidate using the publicly available sequence of the NIH-Moderna vaccine after Moderna declined a WHO request to share its technology and expertise.  The Afrivac212 vaccine candidate is now in clinical trials. It is the first vaccine ever to be made based on a widely used vaccine without the assistance and approval of the developer. 

The distinctive feature of the WHO-led program lies in its commitment to technology and knowledge sharing. This is a departure from the traditional competitive approach seen in drug development, where companies often guard their discoveries in secrecy. The strategy aims to ensure that the capacity is viable and ready to tackle future pandemics effectively. Equity, knowledge sharing, and sustainability serve as guiding principles. 

Renowned U.S. immunologist Barney Graham, a leading figure in mRNA vaccine creation at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is advising the program. In August, a team of seven Afrigen experts spent two weeks training alongside scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ (NIAID) Vaccine Research Center in Frederick, Maryland.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus presided at the mRNA Technology Transfer program’s inaugural Cape Town meeting. According to Maybarduk, participants focused on the challenges that lie ahead for the program. He said that national health systems and procurement and supply chains need to be strengthened. The program needs reliable financing mechanisms, and the problems of corporate control of vaccine recipes and vaccine hesitancy must be overcome, or at least mitigated.

Maybarduk said he is optimistic. “South African and Brazilian teams are making mRNA vaccines. Scientists across the global south are contributing toward vaccines against HIV and tuberculosis. Researchers worldwide are sharing technology and knowledge. It’s an amazing and heartening program already, and the only question is just how far it can go.” 

The post mRNA Technology Transfer Program Exceeds Expectations in Establishing Viable Pathways for Health Equity appeared first on Public Citizen.