In a win for multinational corporations and the global one percent, the U.S. Senate on Tuesday narrowly advanced Fast Track, or Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) —ensuring for all practical purposes the continued rubber-stamping of clandestine trade agreements like the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

The cloture motion to end debate needed 60 votes and it got just that, passing the chamber 60-37. The full roll call is here. A final vote will come on Wednesday. Having overcome the biggest hurdle, the legislation is expected to pass, and will then be sent to President Barack Obama’s desk to become law.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who campaigned vigorously against Fast Track, said the vote represented a win for corporate America. “The vote today—pushed by multi-national corporations, pharmaceutical companies and Wall Street—will mean a continuation of  disastrous trade policies which have cost our country millions of decent-paying jobs,” the presidential candidate said in a statement.

And Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), another of the most vocal opponents of Fast Track, railed against TPA moments before the vote, accusing Congress of turning on its “moral” obligation to assist the working class.

“How shameful,” Brown said. “We’re making this decision knowing that people will lose their jobs because of our action.”

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According to The Hill:

Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, pointed out that the vote only came about via “elaborate legislative contortions and gimmicks designed to hand multinational corporations their top priority.”

Such contortions were necessary, she added, “because the American people overwhelmingly oppose these deals, notwithstanding an endless barrage of propaganda.”

Indeed, response from the progressive grassroots was fast—and furious.

“We’re outraged that Congress today voted to fast track pollution, rather than the job-creating clean energy we need to address climate change,” said May Boeve, executive director of 350.org. “It’s clear this deal would extend the world’s dependence on fracked gas, forbid our negotiators from ever using trade agreements in the fight against global warming, and make it easier for big polluters to burn carbon while suing anyone who gets in the way. That’s why we’re so disappointed President Obama has taken up the banner for ramming this legislative pollution through the halls of Congress, in a way he never pushed for a climate bill.”

Groups threatened political fall-out for those Democrats who voted in favor of Fast Track.

“Senate Democrats who just voted to proceed on Fast Track for the job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership openly betrayed the grassroots Democratic activists who helped elect them and have been exceedingly clear in their opposition to any legislation that allows more NAFTA-style trade deals to be jammed through Congress,” said Jim Dean, chair of Democracy for America. “The Senate Democrats who allowed Fast Track should know that this vote will be remembered, it will not be erased, and we will hold you accountable.”

Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, echoed that warning as she declared, “The senators who provided the margin of Fast Track victory will face angry voters in their next elections. Constituents will hold them accountable for putting the interests of transnational corporations ahead of the public.”

In addition to calling out Senate Democrats who “betrayed people and the planet” by voting for cloture on Tuesday, National People’s Action Campaign executive director George Goehl lambasted “the virtual silence of the leading Democratic candidate for president,” which he said “shows the stranglehold corporations have over both political parties.”

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And Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy program at the Institute for Policy Studies, said it was clear who will benefit most if the pending deals are given final passage. Today is a “great day for the big money interests,” she said following the Senate vote.

“No new oil sands or related infrastructure projects should proceed unless consistent with an implemented plan to rapidly reduce carbon pollution, safeguard biodiversity, protect human health, and respect treaty rights.”

So begins a letter (pdf) published Wednesday by more than 100 leading scientists from the U.S. and Canada, two days after G7 countries pledged to be free of their reliance on fossil fuels by the end of the century.

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Extraction of tar sands is incompatible with the U.S. and Canada’s vow to fight climate change, the letter states, outlining 10 reasons that a moratorium on any such projects is crucial to preventing irreversible damage to the world’s climate and significant negative impacts on the global economy, among other things.

Those reasons include:

1. Continued expansion of oil sands and similar unconventional fuels in Canada and beyond is incompatible with limiting climate warming to a level that society can handle without widespread harm;
2. Oil sands should be one of the first fuel sources we avoid using as society moves to non-polluting forms of energy, not the next carbon-intensive source we exploit;
3. Current oil sands environmental protections and baseline data are largely lacking, and protections that exist are too seldom enforced;
4. Contaminants from oil sands  development permeate the land, water and air of the Canadian boreal landscape, and many of these impacts are difficult to mitigate;
   “Working together, we can solve the energy problems before us. It is not too late, but the time to act is now.”
5. Less than 0.2% of the area affected by Canadian oil sands mining has been reclaimed, and none restored to its original state;
6. Development and transport of oil sands is inconsistent with the title and rights of many Aboriginal Peoples of North America;
7. What happens in North America will set a precedent for efforts to reduce carbon pollution and address climate warming elsewhere;
8. Controlling carbon pollution will not derail the economy;
9. Debates about individual pipeline proposals underestimate the full social costs of the oil sands, and existing policies ignore cumulative impacts;
10. A majority of North Americans want their leaders to address climate change, and they are willing to pay more for energy to help make that happen.

A former judge for the International Court of Justice and renowned expert on human rights law told a reporter this week that former vice president Dick Cheney should be prosecuted for war crimes and torture.

Eighty-one-year-old Thomas Buergenthal told Newsweek journalist Robert Chalmers that “some of us have long thought that Cheney, and a number of CIA agents who did what they did in those so-called black holes [overseas torture centers] should appear before the ICC [International Criminal Court].”

“We [in the USA] could have tried them ourselves,” added Buergenthal. “I voted for Obama but I think he made a great mistake when he decided not to instigate legal proceedings against some of these people.”

The former judge added that, despite the inaction so far, he believes eventual charges are inevitable: “I think—yes—that it will happen.”

In what is being reported as the biggest legal blow thus far against the contentious Washington D.C. football enterprise, a federal court on Wednesday ruled that the name “Redskins” is disparaging to Native Americans and thus its trademark registration must be revoked.

In the decision (pdf), Judge Gerald Bruce Lee of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Alexandria, Virginia ordered the federal Patent and Trademark Office to cancel the registration. Though it does not forbid use of the name, the ruling threatens the team’s ability to protect its brand or prevent others from selling items with the team’s logo.

The ruling upholds a previous court decision in a case brought by five Native American plaintiffs, led by Navajo activist Amanda Blackhorse, who argued that the team name is offensive and violates the federal Lanham Act, which prohibits trademarks that denigrate people or bring them into “contempt or disrepute.” Last August, Blackhorse and the others were sued by the team before the Department of Justice intervened.

In a statement (pdf), the Change the Mascot campaign celebrated the ruling as victory for Blackhorse and others “at a moment when the country is clearly demanding an end to the bigotry of yore.”

Press freedom groups are sounding the alarm after news reports revealed that the U.S. government is poised to greenlight a massive telecommunications merger between industry giants AT&T and DirecTV. 

On Tuesday, after the Wall Street Journal first broke the news, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler issued a statement (pdf) indicating his approval of AT&T’s $49 billion acquisition of DirecTV. And though it is unclear when the Commission will formally vote on the merger, as CNN reports, “Wheeler’s recommendation makes government approval of the deal all but certain.”

Under the terms of the buyout, the third- and fifth-largest pay-TV providers in the country will now be combined. Further, as the nation’s second-largest home Internet access provider, AT&T will now have “new power and incentives to thwart online video competition,” media advocacy group Free Press warns.

Responding to the news, Free Press policy director Matt Wood charged that the merger will only thwart competition and hasten the consolidation of the telecommunications industry.

A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that Texas’s controversial voter ID law, the most severe in the country, has a “discriminatory effect” against minority voters, in what civil rights campaigners say is an important step towards justice for African-American, Latino, and low-income people suppressed under the rule.

The three judge panel determined that the law, passed by the state in 2011, violates what’s left of the Voting Rights Act after it was gutted by the Supreme Court in 2013. The ruling itself comes just one day before the 50th anniversary of the Act, which was the product of the mass organizing and protests of the civil rights and black freedom movements.

“We recognize the charged nature of accusations of racism, particularly against a legislative body, but we also recognize the sad truth that racism continues to exist in our modern American society despite years of laws designed to eradicate it,” wrote the three-judge panel for the New Orleans court, which is known for being conservative.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision, however, fell short of issuing a broad injunction against the 2011 law, instead determining that it must be sent to a lower district court to find an appropriate remedy. It was not immediately clear whether the state will continue to enforce the rule in the meantime.

This is not the first time a judge has ruled against the law. In 2014, U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzoles Ramos overturned the rule on the grounds that it has “an impermissible discriminatory effect against Hispanics and African-Americans” and compared it to a poll tax. She noted that voter suppression under the law was vast, with over 600,000 registered voters in Texas lacking the required documentation.

However, Texas successfully appealed this ruling, and the law was in effect during the November 2014 election, thereby disenfranchising large numbers of voters. Wednesday’s decision is a blow against the 2011 rule but falls short of the Ramos ruling.