By Miriam Raftery

Photo:  bird coated in petroleum from an oil spill; there have been hundreds of pipeline leaks and spills across the U.S in recent years

January 24, 2017 (Washington D.C.) – Environmentalists and Native American activists are voicing dismay and pledging to fight back against executive orders signed by President Donald Trump to advance construction of the controversial Dakota Access and Keystone XL oil pipelines.

East County News Service

January 22, 2017 (Washington D.C.) -- Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is bringing a federal lawsuit to stop President Trump from violating the Constitution by receiving payments from foreign governments that CREW contends are illegal.

By Miriam Raftery

January 22, 2017 (San Diego) – Representatives for the California Association of Realtors, National Association of Realtors, and National Association of Homebuilders have all voiced opposition to an executive order issued by President Trump that could add as much as $1,500 to costs for some first-time homebuyers.

By Miriam Raftery, East County Magazine

“In stark terms, hundreds of millions of people will die - and countless species become extinct - because of eight more years of US inaction.” – Jeffrey Severinghaus, PhD

January 22, 2017 (San Diego) – One of the world’s top climate scientists is speaking out to denounce President Donald Trump’s energy plan and warn of its dire consequences for humanity.   Jeffrey Severinghaus, PhD  from Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego actually measures the ice cores in Antaractica and Greenland.

“This is sad, and tragic,” Jeffrey Severinghaus, PhD, told East County Magazine after we sent him a copy of the energy plan posted at Whitehouse.gov by the Trump administration and informed him that climate change has been removed from the issues page at the White House website, along with all data on climate science previously posted there. 

Severinghaus warns bluntly, “We as a species cannot afford four more years—or eight, of delay on climate action. The stakes are simply too high.”

By Miriam Raftery

Photo, right:  Cathy and Kayla Lechien at La Mesa trolley stop

Photo, left:  Women's marchers at the embarcadero in San Diego 

January 21, 2017 (San  Diego) – At the Spring Street trolley station in La Mesa, hundreds of East County residents converged to ride downtown and join this morning’s  Women’s March.

Major media outlets estimate some 40,000 marchers in San Diego joined millions more across the U.S. in what CBS reports was the largest protest in U.S. history.  Some participants estimate there were over 100,000 marching in San Diego; another 10,000 marched in North County. Other cities around the globe also drew huge crowds.

 Women and men,  young and old, straight and gay, white, black and Latino –and all shared one common goal:  forging a resistance coalition opposed to policies of President Donald Trump that would weaken rights and freedoms for  women, minorities, and many other American.

East County News Service

January 17, 2017 (San Diego) - A women’s march, in solidarity with a national women’s march on Washington to protest Donald Trump’s inauguration and denigrating statements toward women, will be held in downtown San Diego on Saturday, January 21.

By Miriam Raftery

Photo credit: Photos for Class, Creative Commons image

January 19, 2017 (Washington D.C.) -- On Friday, January 20^th, Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 45^th president of the United States.  Trump enters office with the lowest approval rating of any President –Elect in history, according to polls done Tuesday by CNN and the Washington Post, which found only 40% approve of the job Trump has done during his transition time.

By Mike Allen

January 17, 2017 (Santee) -- Santee Mayor John Minto says he’s big on creating deals to share the costs his city must bear for essential services such as police and fire, as well as community meeting places.

By Miriam Raftery

January 17, 2017 (Washington D.C.) – In a confirmation hearing today before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Representative Ryan Zinke, Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of the Interior testified, “I want to be clear about this:  I am absolutely against the transfer or sale of public lands.”

By Miriam Raftery

Photo:  Senator Dianne Feinstein on Meet the Press, courtesy NBC News/William Plowman

January 16, 2017 (Washington D.C.) -- Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program yesterday, said that after reviewing classified intelligence briefings as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, she believes Russia definitely interviewed in the U.S. presidential election—and that Russian meddling “altered the outcome” of the race.

By Miriam Raftery

January 15, 2017 (Washington D.C.) – On the eve of the weekend when our nation honors Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., President-Elect Donald Trump attacked one of the nation’s most respected civil rights leaders, Congressman John Lewis (D-Georgia).  His actions have drawn criticism even from prominent Republicans.

By Jonathan Goetz

Photo: El Cajon Police Chief Jeff Davis and El Cajon’s liaisons from County Mental Health

January 12, 2017 (El Cajon) -- Formerly operating in lock-step unison, the El Cajon City Council picked up two businessmen in the 2016 elections, one supported by neither political party and one supported by the party previously shut-out.

East County News Service

January 11, 2017 (San Diego) – State Senator Toni G. Atkins (D-San Diego) has issued a statement criticizing Governor Jerry Brown’s newly released 2017-18 California budget for cuts to affordable housing and scholarships.

East County News Service

January 11, 2017 (San Diego’s East County) – East County’s Supervisor Dianne Jacob has been named Chair of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, after being sworn in for her seventh term of office.  Former Chair Ron Roberts passed the gavel to his successor during Supervisors’ meeting at the County Administration Center on Tuesday.

On the eve of confirmation hearings, an article by investigative reporter Antonia Juhasz finds that the former Exxon Mobil CEO is personally named in a current case alleging that security forces employed by the company engaged in serious human rights abuses, including murder, in Aceh, Indonesia.

Juhasz also reveals the company’s long record, under Tillerson’s leadership, of alleged human rights violations; unsafe working conditions; investor and public fraud; destruction of the environment, climate and public health; support of dictators; contributions to global instability and inequality; and being party to wars and conflict.

East County News Service

January 9, 2016 (Chicago) -- Rex Tillerson is scheduled to appear Wednesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to be considered for U.S. secretary of state.

A new In These Times cover story by Antonia Juhasz—“Rex Tillerson Could Be America’s Most Dangerous Secretary of State”—reveals for the first time that Tillerson himself is named in a suit alleging “murder, torture, sexual violence, kidnapping, battery, assault, burning, arbitrary arrest, detention and false imprisonment” by security forces employed by Exxon Mobil in Aceh, Indonesia from 2000 through 2004, including while Tillerson served as senior vice president and then president of Exxon Mobil.