A little over a week ago, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson publicly called on the United Nations Human Rights Council to send independent experts to Chicago to investigate the ongoing abuses at the hands of federal immigration officials. Thirteen months ago, we would not have believed that our Mayor would be calling on the United Nations to investigate the federal government waging war on our home city. Given the bloody history of this country, it would not be correct to say this is shocking. More so, the swift descent to where we are now, barely ten months into this administration’s reign of power, is profoundly unsettling. Whatever rule of law the United States could ever claim to have—even if it only benefitted the privileged—is gone. Despite district courts’ restraining orders, federal agents continue to use chemical weapons, projectiles, and violence against their own people. Our own government appears to be wantonly trampling on our rights; and we are barely ten months in. 

That the Fanjuls would donate to President Trump’s construction project did not come as a surprise to those of us at CAL who have been following the saga of sugar from the Dominican Republic that is tainted by labor abuses. The Fanjul family operates a vast sugar conglomerate comprising the likes of Domino Sugar, Florida Crystals, and Central Romana Corporation, a massive sugar producer in the Dominican Republic that exports to the United States and that workers and human rights advocates have denounced for decades for its use of forced labor. Central Romana has already benefited from the “first family of corporate welfare’s” close relationship to President Trump. 

Following decades of failed regulatory action in Ghana that has allowed chocolate companies to continuously undercut cocoa farmers, in October 2024, a group of 30 farmers brought four demands before the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD). On October 31, 2024, Corporate Accountability Lab (CAL), the University of Ghana School of Law, and Civic Response (Ghana) submitted a grievance to COCOBOD’s grievance and redress mechanism on behalf of 30 cocoa farmers. Yet in the year since filing, COCOBOD has done little to respond to the documented violations – or to improve conditions for cocoa farmers or protect the environment in Ghana.