Public Citizen Global Vaccines Access Campaign Director Liza Barrie issued the following statement:

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s reported decision to cut off support for Gavi is reckless and deadly. The Trump administration is turning its back on a program that has helped vaccinate more than a billion children and save over 17 million lives—while Kennedy spreads lies about science, safety and one of the world’s most effective public health efforts.The facts are clear. Gavi exists to get vaccines to children who need them most. It works with governments in lower-income countries, health workers and communities to stop deadly diseases. Because of Gavi, millions of children who would have died are alive today.

Kennedy claims that Gavi ignored science are entirely false. Gavi’s recommendations—are grounded in global evidence and reviewed by independent experts. His suggestion otherwise fuels the same disinformation that has already led to deadly measles outbreaks and the resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases, including polio.

Gavi has publicly refuted Kennedy’s claims, reaffirming its commitment to vaccine safety and evidence-based decisions.

“This isn’t about protecting children. It’s about abandoning them. Choosing to walk away from a program that saves lives—knowing full well what the consequences will be—isn’t just reckless. It’s cruel.

“Public Citizen urges Congress to act—starting with protecting the Gavi funding already allocated in the FY25 budget, which the Trump administration is now trying to claw back through its rescissions proposal. Lawmakers must also protect Gavi funding in the FY26 budget. The United States must not walk away from global vaccine access. Not now, not ever. Turning away would be a choice to let disease spread and let children die.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

When a homeless man questioned the Phoenix police’s authority to stop him in February 2020, an officer grabbed him and knelt on his neck while another officer shocked him with a Taser. Another unhoused man said officers threw away his belongings, telling him, “You guys are trash and this is trash.” Other people experiencing homelessness were regularly cited and arrested by the city’s officers during early morning hours for “conduct that is plainly not a crime.”

Those were among the abuses alleged by the Department of Justice last June, following a nearly three-year investigation into the city of Phoenix and its police department. The investigation marked the first time the DOJ had found a pattern of violations against homeless people, including that officers and other city employees illegally threw away their belongings.

In addition, DOJ investigators found that officers disproportionately cited and arrested people experiencing homelessness. They comprised 37% of all Phoenix Police Department arrests from 2016 to 2022, though homeless people account for less than 1% of the population. Investigators said many of those stops, citations and arrests were unconstitutional.

The wide-ranging probe also found officers used excessive force, discriminated against people of color, retaliated against protesters and violated the rights of people with behavioral health disabilities — similar issues to those the DOJ has documented in troubled law enforcement agencies in other cities.

But federal officials announced Wednesday that they had abandoned efforts to compel the city and police to address those issues. The DOJ closed its investigations and retracted findings of constitutional violations in Phoenix and five other jurisdictions, including Trenton, New Jersey. Beyond that, the Department of Justice said it was dismissing Biden-era lawsuits against several other police departments, including in Louisville, Kentucky, and Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed by police five years ago.

The DOJ said requiring the cities to enter consent decrees, which are intended to ensure reforms are enacted, would have “imposed years of micromanagement of local police departments by federal courts and expensive independent monitors, and potentially hundreds of millions of dollars of compliance costs, without a legally or factually adequate basis for doing so.”

The city of Phoenix said in a statement that it has “tirelessly focused on enhancing policy, training and accountability measures to ensure the best public safety for everyone who lives, works and plays in Phoenix.” In recent years, the city has enacted policy changes including employee training and the implementation of body-worn cameras.

Legal experts told ProPublica the wrongdoing the DOJ uncovered in Phoenix should be corrected — even though city officials will be under less pressure to act.

“It is a very real shame and a disservice to the residents of these communities to end the work, to stand down and unwind the investigations and to purport to retract the findings,” said Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University and former deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.

The report’s retraction, along with last year’s Supreme Court decision allowing cities to arrest and cite people for sleeping outside even when they have nowhere else to go, could further embolden cities and police departments to marginalize homeless people, said Brook Hill, senior counsel with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a legal advocacy group that focuses on racial justice issues. “They will feel like they have a license to do the sweeps and to otherwise make life in public view uncomfortable for unhoused people,” he said.

Indeed, just last week California Gov. Gavin Newsom urged all local governments in that state to “use their authority affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court” to address encampments.

After the DOJ began the Phoenix investigation in August 2021, Fund for Empowerment, an Arizona advocacy group for homeless people, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona sued the city and police department to stop what attorneys called “unconstitutional raids” on unsheltered people. Its lawsuit accused the city of failing to provide housing and instead turning to encampment removals to clear sidewalks and other areas. “The City has made its message to unhoused individuals clear: engaging in sleep and other essential life activities on the city’s public grounds will lead to detention, arrest, displacement, and the loss of the individual’s personal effects,” the Fund for Empowerment alleged in court documents.

Nearly a month later, a judge issued an injunction preventing the city from enforcing its camping ban against people who can’t find shelter, as well as from seizing and throwing away people’s belongings. The lawsuit is ongoing.

The DOJ’s June 2024 report stated that even after the injunction and new city policies were in place, city officials continued to arrest people for camping and to destroy people’s belongings without notice or the opportunity to reclaim them.

ProPublica, as part of its investigation into cities’ handling of homeless people’s possessions, found that Phoenix rarely stored property seized from encampments. From May 2023 to 2024, the city responded to 4,900 reports from the public involving encampments, according to its records. The city said workers, trained to assess which items are property and which are trash, found items that could be stored at only 405 of the locations it visited. Not all of those belongings required storage because people may have removed them between a report of an encampment and the city’s arrival. The city stored belongings 69 times.

In January 2024, the city issued its own report in anticipation of the DOJ’s allegations. The city said it found nothing to support accusations that police “interfered with the possessions of people experiencing homelessness.” Phoenix officials also said in the report that although the city and police department “welcome additional insights” from the DOJ, they were unwilling to be subjected to a consent decree, a binding plan in which an appointed monitor oversees implementation of reforms.

Attorneys and advocates said that the DOJ’s decision has no bearing on lawsuits filed by private attorneys alleging civil rights violations, including against people who are homeless. The ACLU this week also launched a seven-state effort to file records requests to hold police departments accountable, it said.

Elizabeth Venable, lead community organizer with the Fund for Empowerment, who also helped the DOJ connect with the unhoused community in Phoenix, said she viewed the federal findings as a victory for unhoused people. Despite the retraction by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, Venable said, the report still has weight.

“No matter what Pam Bondi says, people are not going to forget it, especially people who learned about something that they were horrified by,” she said.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Nicole Santa Cruz.

On March 14, the Trump administration signed an executive order gutting the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the parent organization of MBN and RFA. Under U.S. law, the editorial operations of USAGM entities are protected from political interference to ensure editorial independence. 

USAGM entities operate under an editorial firewall, separating journalists from any elected official in the U.S. The amicus briefs outline how intervention from the Trump administration would destroy RFA and MBN’s editorial independence. 

“The dismantling of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks and Radio Free Asia, whose news outlets report on the reality of highly censored environments in the Middle East and Asia, is a betrayal of the U.S.’s historical commitment to press freedom,” said CPJ Chief Global Affairs Officer Gypsy Guillén Kaiser. “Attacks on the credibility of both outlets leave millions of people without reliable news sources, while endangering the intrepid reporters who report the facts.”

CPJ research shows at least four journalists and media workers with MBN outlets have been killed in connection with their work, including Abdul-Hussein Khazal, a correspondent for the U.S.-funded television station Al-Hurra who was shot dead in 2005 together with his 3-year-old son in the Iraqi city of Basra, and Tahrir Kadhim Jawad, a camera operator for Al-Hurra who died instantly when a bomb attached to his car exploded while he was on assignment. Bashar Fahmi Kadumi, another journalist for Al-Hurra, has been missing since 2012. 

CPJ has documented at least 13 journalists and media workers who worked for or contributed to RFA or its regional outlets have been imprisoned in connection with their work since 2008. Five of those remain in prison today, including Shin Daewe in Myanmar and Nguyen Tuong Thuy in Vietnam, both held on anti-state charges.

In recent weeks, CPJ and RCFP filed amicus briefs about the White House barring AP from covering White House events and legal efforts to protect Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America after Trump’s executive order. 

###

About the Committee to Protect Journalists

The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide. We defend the right of journalists to report the news safely and without fear of reprisal.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Image by Morgan Housel.

The ability of the wealthy to accumulate more wealth has its ups and downs. However, as shown by the Federal Reserve Board’s (the Fed) Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S. since 1989, the overall trend has been one in which the wealthiest .1% have succeeded at growing their share of the nation’s wealth. According to the Fed figures, by the end of the Biden presidency, the .1%’s share of the nation’s wealth reached 13.8%, increasing by over 60% from 8.6% in the third quarter of 1989 when daddy Bush was in power which is when the Fed figures cited start.

In fact, under each president since 1989, at some point during their term, the share of the nation’s wealth held by the wealthiest .1% reached new heights. Setbacks would follow, but in later years, a new all-time high would be reached. For example, during Junior Bush’s presidency, the Great Recession resulted in a large drop in the .1%’s share of the nation’s wealth. Despite the drop, at the end of Bush’s regime, their share was higher than it was at the end of Clinton’s time in office. During Obama’s and Trump’s presidencies, the share of the .1% became even larger. Biden’s tenure ended with their share reaching its highest point yet.

Many have difficulties protecting the current value of their assets and preventing them from being eroded by inflation. What is “impressive” is that not only have the wealthy .1% been successful at increasing their share of the nation’s wealth, but its total has far outstripped inflation, increasing in nominal dollars more than 121/2 times from 1989 to the end of 2024 from $1.75 trillion to $22.14 trillion while the total nominal wealth of the nation as a whole grew less than 8 times from $20.43 trillion to $160.35 trillion. During this same period, the poorest 50% of the population, almost exclusively members of the working class, saw their nominal wealth increase from $.71 trillion to $4.01 trillion, less than a sixfold increase. Unlike the super wealthy, much of their wealth is tied up in basic necessities such as a place to live.

Below is a table based on the Fed figures showing the high point during one’s presidency and the level of the wealth of the .1% at the end of the fourth quarter of the year right before each new president was sworn in (which may be the same as the high point), and the amount in trillions of dollars.

Many have longed for the days of bipartisanship, lamenting the polarization in our political system. However, what is striking about the Fed’s numbers, whether intentional or not, is the degree of bipartisanship around the .1% capturing a bigger share of the nation’s wealth. People often see Republicans as championing the interests of the wealthy, but the greatest recent increases in the share of the .1%’s wealth occurred during Democratic administrations.

From right before the start of the Clinton administration to its high point, the share of the wealth of the .1% during his time in office increased by 2.6% before declining to a gain of 1.4%. For Obama, it went up 2% after the decline from the Great Recession, and for Biden by .8%. By contrast, in the period covered starting in the third quarter of 1989, under daddy Bush, the increase was .6%. Under the second Bush, it increased 1.6% before tumbling during the Great Recession but still ending higher by .3% than it was at the end of the Clinton administration. The increase in the share of the .1% at the end of Trump’s first regime was .5% despite the pandemic.

Certainly, the increase in the wealth of the .1% during any administration may have much to do with changes in the capitalist economy beyond their control and the policies put in place by their predecessor (that are not reversed) and whose full impact is often realized in the subsequent administration. Bush 2 and Trump oversaw major tax cuts for the wealthy. However, Republican policies have not been alone in helping the .1% better their conditions. Under Clinton, there were tax cuts, much deregulation, and the repeal of sections of the Glass-Steagall Act, and Obama instituted the bailout of the financial industry.

Inequality Among the .1% and the 2025 Losses of U.S. Centibillionaires

Assuming the U.S. population was 340 million at the end of 2024, then the average holding of the wealthiest .1% or 340,000 people came to over $65 million. That is a large amount of money, but $65 million is less than .065% of $100 billion, an amount of wealth, according to the April 4, 2025 Bloomberg Billionaires Index, exceeded by 12 U.S. citizens. In other words, it could be viewed as minute when compared to the wealth of our multicentibillionaires, that as of April 3, according to the Bloomberg Index, included Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg, but as of April 4 had one lone member, Elon Musk, as can be seen in the table below.

As a group, these 12 U.S. centibillionaires are experiencing another one of those downturn periods. Using Bloomberg figures, since the beginning of the year, of the wealthiest 12, only Buffet has experienced an increase in the size of his fortune. The remaining 11 have, together for the year as of April 4, lost $359 billion led by Musk, who remains the world’s wealthiest individual despite experiencing a decline in his wealth of $130 billion so far this year, (or $147 billion since January 17, the day Trump was sworn in).[1] Has he been willing to tolerate this huge “sacrifice” because he sees his actions of “disrupting” many peoples’ lives as paving the way for greater gains to make up for his “suffering” from these great losses? Does he deserve to be “admired?” How many people have had the experience, while working in the government, of seeing the value of their wealth drop $130 billion in a short period of time and still remain the world’s wealthiest guy?

Below is a table based on Bloomberg Billionaires Index figures showing what has been happening to the wealth of U.S. centibillionaires.

Don’t shed any tears for the losses these poor folks have suffered. From 2021 to the end of 2024, their nominal wealth increased 82% or by $981.6 billion, far outstripping the rate of gain of the entire .1% during this period that grew 38%, less than half as much. As of April 4, the centibillionares are still up $626 billion from where their nominal wealth stood at the beginning of 2021.

With his fight for tax cuts for the wealthy and other favorable policies for them, despite the recent setbacks, Trump is likely to try to continue the trend of his recent predecessors of providing the .1% with a larger share of the nation’s wealth as he makes America great again while also accelerating the destruction of the environment, enhancing militarism and the threat of a nuclear catastrophe, and fomenting greater alienation and racism along with numerous other social ills.

Notes

1. Since the day Trump was sworn in, as of April 4, despite donating $1 million for Trump’s inauguration, Bezos wealth is down $52 billion, and Zuckerberg’s is down $38 billion. Could Trump be ushering in a revolt by the wealthy against his policies?

The post Has There Been a Bipartisan Effort to Increase the Wealth of the .1%? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Rick Baum.

In an alarming retaliation against the free press in the United States, on February 12, 2025, the Trump administration barred AP from covering White House events and accessing the Oval Office and Air Force One after its decision to continue referring to the Gulf of Mexico by its internationally known name. 

RCFP filed the amicus brief on February 24, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, asserting that the exclusion of the AP from accessing White House events on the basis of its editorial viewpoint violates the First Amendment. CPJ and News/Media Alliance joined as co-amici on March 24, 2025.

“The Trump administration’s arbitrary ban of AP’s access to media events stifles freedom of speech and violates the First Amendment at a time when independent journalism is most needed,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “AP’s essential reporting ensures news outlets around the world can keep their audiences informed. The Trump administration must adhere to its stated commitment to freedom of expression and refrain from retaliating against news organizations for their independent editorial decisions.”

National and international newspapers, radio stations, and television broadcasters rely heavily on the AP’s reporting to deliver the news to an audience of four billion viewers each day. The White House’s decision effectively blocks media outlets’ from delivering the news to this audience.

This decision is part of a concerning pattern of retaliation against the media in the first weeks of President Trump’s administration. 

###

About the Committee to Protect Journalists

The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide. We defend the right of journalists to report the news safely and without fear of reprisal.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The rejected complaint, filed directly to the Supreme Court by a coalition of 19 red-state attorneys general, had argued that the climate lawsuits in California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Rhode Island represented an illegal attempt to regulate the national energy system, something only the federal government can do. 

Forcing companies like Exxon Mobil and Chevron to pay for damages from wildfires, flooding, hurricanes, and other climate-fueled disasters would affect people outside the blue states’ borders, the 19 attorneys general maintained. They said it would raise energy prices and “threaten not only our system of federalism and equal sovereignty among states, but our basic way of life.”

Legal experts said they were unsurprised that the Supreme Court did not take up the case. “It was a political stunt,” said Pat Parenteau, an emeritus law professor at the Vermont Law and Graduate School. “There was never any legal basis for the court to grant this petition.”

Although the Supreme Court is the only court with jurisdiction to hear lawsuits between states, it typically hears only one or two such cases each year — and the ones it takes up usually relate to instances of interstate pollution or shared resources, such as water from rivers. This case was “brought on the legal theory that somehow anything that might adversely affect the fossil fuel industry harms red states,” as Robert Percival, director of the environmental law program at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, put it. 

When the complaint was announced last fall, law professors described it as a “Hail Mary pass,” an effort to take advantage of the Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative supermajority and its willingness to take on cases that Percival described to E&E News as “wackier and wackier.” 

Percival compared it to an unsuccessful attempt led by Texas after the 2020 presidential election to stop blue states from certifying Joe Biden’s victory. In that case and in the more recent climate one, the Republican-led states lacked standing, meaning they couldn’t prove they’d been harmed by the policies in question. “It was clear they didn’t have a leg to stand on,” Percival told Grist. 

Seven of the court’s nine justices agreed not to hear the case. Clarence Thomas, one of the court’s most conservative justices and the subject of multiple corruption scandals, wrote a dissent arguing that the red states’ lawsuit “alleges serious constitutional violations.” Justice Samuel Alito, whose recent financial disclosures show that he or his wife own stock in the oil and gas companies ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66 — both named in the Democrat-led states’ climate lawsuits — joined Thomas in the dissent.

The Supreme Court decision means the blue state lawsuits can proceed in their own courts — a narrow victory for climate advocates in what has become a divisive jurisdictional battle. Fossil fuel companies have repeatedly argued that state-level climate lawsuits should be preempted by federal law and therefore transferred to federal courts, which are considered less likely to rule against the industry. The companies’ efforts have stymied lawsuits in Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York; they have been unsuccessful in California, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Rhode Island.

“This is a dynamic area of the law right now with lots of unpredictability,” Parenteau said. 

For now, the Supreme Court seems unwilling to make a general determination on the issue. In addition to the complaint from the 19 attorneys general, it also has previously declined to review pending climate litigation in a number of states including Colorado, Maryland, California, Hawaiʻi, and Rhode Island. This week’s news suggests that the Supreme Court “doesn’t want to take any of these lawsuits against the fossil fuel companies, at least until one of them has a trial and goes through the state appellate process,” said Michael Gerrard, faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School. 

Parenteau said the case that’s closest to trial is one in Massachusetts claiming that fossil fuel companies violated consumer protection laws by lying to the public about their products’ contribution to climate change. Next is a lawsuit brought by Honolulu against fossil fuel companies, which in January survived a request from 15 energy companies to be removed from the jurisdiction of the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court.

Most of these lawsuits cite evidence, including internal industry documents, showing that fossil fuel companies have known for decades that their products would cause climate change and its attendant harms to society. Concealing this information from the public, the suits argue, violated state-level consumer protection and public nuisance laws. Fossil fuel companies have maintained their innocence.

A ruling against the fossil fuel industry would almost certainly be appealed to the Supreme Court, Parenteau said, at which point “we’re in uncharted territory.” He said the court’s three liberal justices would likely side with the states, while Alito, Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh would probably side with the oil companies. The three others — John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett, and Neil Gorsuch — could go either way.

The blue state attorneys general who are leading the lawsuits against fossil fuel companies said they were pleased with the Supreme Court’s dismissal of the complaint. William Tong, Connecticut’s attorney general, said the complaint had been “a total loser from the start.” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said in a statement that the complaint was “never anything more than an attempt to run interference, help the defendants in our cases avoid accountability, and play politics with the Constitution.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Supreme Court declines to hear Republicans’ ‘Hail Mary’ effort to block climate lawsuits on Mar 12, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joseph Winters.

Congress passed the law at a time when Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River was on fire and yellow smog blanketed American cities. In an attempt to prevent such calamities, NEPA requires that any big infrastructure project funded or authorized by the federal government must account for its environmental impacts before it’s permitted to go forward. Now, when cities and states build federally funded roads, a developer erects an offshore wind farm, or an oil company builds a new refining unit on the Gulf Coast, NEPA applies.

This sweeping requirement created a need for coordination within the government. Given the number of federal agencies involved and the potential for larger projects to require authorization from multiple departments — a pipeline, for example, might require sign-off from the Department of Transportation, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the Environmental Protection Agency — Congress created the Council on Environmental Quality, or CEQ, and housed it within the White House in part to oversee NEPA implementation across the federal government. Since then, CEQ has been a central clearinghouse for interpreting the landmark law. In the years after its creation, the council issued rules that set forth requirements for public comment, defined key terminology, and laid out when projects required extensive analysis. The rules ensured uniformity in how agencies applied the law, and they were left largely untouched for roughly five decades. 

Last month, the Trump administration unraveled those rules, and with them the council’s central role in implementing NEPA. By issuing a new interim rule, the White House is proposing to rescind CEQ’s guidance and instruct federal agencies to develop their own individual guidelines. The White House’s rule is expected to be finalized in the coming months, at which point every agency, from the Bureau of Land Management to the U.S. Forest Service, will be expected to develop its own standards and processes for determining whether a project complies with NEPA requirements, a process that could take years. Their interpretations could also be challenged in court, creating further uncertainty about what standards now apply for getting nearly any infrastructure project approved by the feds.

In an echo of the Trump administration’s refrain that extraordinary measures are required to curb government inefficiency, the unraveling of CEQ is intended to “expedite and simplify the permitting process” for important projects, according to Trump’s executive order. But experts who spoke to Grist anticipate that it will have the opposite effect. 

“It’s chaos,” said Deborah Sivas, director of the environmental law clinic at Stanford University. “No business would run this way. If you’re a developer, you’re like, ‘What the heck? What even applies? How do I go about doing this right?’”

Complying with NEPA involves preparing lengthy environmental assessments, a process that is time-consuming and resource-intensive. The average time to complete the NEPA process is three years, and the average Environmental Impact Statement, one type of assessment reserved for larger projects, is more than 1,200 pages long. As a result, reforming NEPA has become a priority for prominent lawmakers in both parties. (Many Democrats in particular worry that the process hampers efforts to build renewable energy infrastructure.)

But simply throwing out a longstanding, centralized playbook for agencies to follow will create uncertainty and slow the process down, at least in the short term, according to Justin Pidot, a law professor at the University of Arizona who was the general counsel at CEQ during the Biden administration. 

“It’s a huge mistake,” said Pidot. “It’s going to be very resource-intensive for them to do all these new procedures, and there’s going to be more uncertainty, and the permitting process is going to be harder and more complex. And all that is going to be happening at a time when there are fewer federal employees with less expertise.”

CEQ’s authority was largely unquestioned over its 50-year lifespan, but two court cases in the last year seemed to indicate a change in opinion among some legal scholars. In November, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a case deciding whether federal agencies had adequately considered environmental impacts when developing plans to regulate tourist flights over national parks. In their ruling, the judges suggested that CEQ did not have the authority to issue binding regulations in its implementation of NEPA. Then, in February, a district court in North Dakota came to a similar conclusion. Since CEQ is an office within the White House and not an agency created by Congress, the court ruled that CEQ did not have the authority to issue binding regulations. 

“The two cases definitely started going down that pathway of questioning or calling out what authority CEQ actually had,” said Jennifer Jeffers, senior counsel at the law firm Allen Matkins. “I don’t think that many people had foreseen this because it had been a longstanding practice and had not been a source of contention until quite recently.”

Still, the most significant blow to the office’s authority came only with Trump’s executive order. While it’s unclear how quickly agencies will produce their own NEPA-related rules and what it will mean for project developers, Jeffers said she expects the current requirements will continue to apply for projects in the pipeline as long as they are not inconsistent with the executive order.

The irony is that even Trump’s favored constituencies, like the fossil fuel developers he says will restore U.S. “energy dominance,” are left to wonder what new rules they’ll be forced to navigate when seeking federal permits in the future.

“It is not a good way for this administration to accomplish what this administration wants to accomplish,” said Pidot.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How a Trump effort to cut environmental red tape could backfire on Mar 7, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Naveena Sadasivam.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

The last time Missouri took control of St. Louis’ police force was just before the start of the Civil War, when the state’s secessionist-leaning leaders were trying to prevent police officers from taking up arms against the Confederacy.

The law that put the police department under state control was in effect for the next 152 years. In November 2012, nearly two-thirds of voters approved a statewide ballot measure, pushed by police reform activists and elected officials, that restored local authority and placed the department under the mayor’s jurisdiction.

Now, the state’s Republican governor and GOP-led legislature are again pushing to take over the St. Louis Police Department. They argue that the Democratic-run city government is responsible for a drop in officer morale and that statistics that show a decline in crime are inaccurate.

The Missouri House voted 106-47 last week to transfer control from the city to a state-appointed board this summer. The five-member board would be made up of the mayor and four commissioners appointed by the governor, essentially leaving the governor with the votes to control the police department.

The state Senate is debating the measure, but a vote has not yet been scheduled.

The attempt to reverse a measure overwhelmingly approved by state voters, albeit more than a decade ago, is part of a broader pattern of Missouri’s conservative-led government trying to override the will of the electorate, from repealing voter-approved redistricting reform to trying to reinstate an abortion ban even though voters approved a constitutional amendment last year legalizing the procedure.

State takeovers of metropolitan police departments are rare; Kansas City, Missouri, remains the only major U.S. city with its police force under state control. Its arrangement dates to Reconstruction, when Missouri lawmakers, aiming to limit Black political influence, stripped the city of its oversight role.

After a brief return to local control in the 1930s, the state reasserted authority over Kansas City police to weaken political boss Tom Pendergast, who had used the department for patronage and election fraud.

Baltimore recently regained control of its police department after 160 years of state control.

Republican-led states have taken away control of other aspects of government from local leaders in other cities with majority-Black populations. In Mississippi, officials have expanded the jurisdiction of the state-run Capitol Police beyond government buildings into residential and commercial areas in Jackson, the state capital. They’ve also created a state-run court with appointed judges and increased police funding while the Black-led Jackson Police Department struggles to respond to calls.

Texas and Missouri have intervened in local schools and city governments, leading to disputes about local control — though these takeovers have generally been temporary, with a path to restoring local authority. In Tennessee, the state comptroller backed down from taking over the majority-Black city of Mason after local officials agreed that a certified public accounting or law firm would help the town complete audits, balance its budget and train officials on proper use of tax revenue. It happens in states led by Democrats, too, but less frequently.

“It really is removing this political power from residents, allowing them to have less authority, oversight and voice in how their system of public safety and policing operates,” said Sandhya Kajeepeta, a senior researcher at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Thurgood Marshall Institute.

Some St. Louis leaders see the current effort there as echoing 19th-century efforts to limit Black political power. They argue that a majority-white, conservative government is again moving to strip authority from local officials and diminish Black influence over policing.

State Sen. Karla May, a Black Democrat from St. Louis who has testified against the push for state control, said it’s no coincidence that the plan became an urgent matter for legislators, and is advancing, during the tenure of Mayor Tishaura Jones, who also is Black.

May said the St. Louis Police Officers Association, the collective bargaining unit for city police officers, “does not want to be controlled by an African American mayor.” Representatives from the union did not respond to a request for comment.

A spokesperson for Jones did not make her available for an interview. But the mayor said in an emailed statement that “I don’t think Republican legislators want to give a Black woman who is also a Democrat credit for dramatically reducing crime, increasing officer pay and building out successful public safety programs.” She said advocates for state control have never explained how it would improve public safety.

The push to take control of the St. Louis police is a top priority for Gov. Mike Kehoe, a newly elected Republican whose State of the State address framed the issue in economic terms. He said what mattered was whether businesses felt “safe enough to invest in our cities.” Kehoe, who is white, frequently invokes his upbringing in St. Louis to push for state control.

The House sponsor of the measure, Rep. Brad Christ, a white Republican from the southwestern suburbs of St. Louis, argues that calling his proposal “state control” is misleading because the governor’s appointees would be required to have lived in the city for at least three years.

He noted that the effort to return the police to the state predates Jones’ term as mayor. A Black Democrat from St. Louis filed a similar bill that stalled in the House in 2019 during the tenure of Mayor Lyda Krewson, who is white. Christ said in a text that this was “clear evidence that the wild assertion that this effort has been race motivated is completely false.”

The Ethical Society of Police, a group that represents Black police officers in St. Louis, also supports a state takeover. Its president, Donnell Walters, wrote an opinion piece in 2023 with then-Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, a Republican, calling for state control and alleging mismanagement and low morale under city control.

Walters did not return messages seeking comment.

Heather Taylor, a retired sergeant who led ESOP from 2015 to 2020 — and who later worked in the Jones administration before resigning in 2023 after criticizing the mayor and the department on social media — said she worries the department will suffer under state control. But, she said, ESOP members believe that the city lacks urgency in providing basic support for officers and that the state might do a better job addressing those needs.

Jones has repeatedly pointed to city crime data showing a decline since she hired Robert Tracy as police chief two years ago. Notably, the city’s murder totals have plummeted.

But many argue that the city’s statistics on other types of crimes don’t reflect the sense of lawlessness in St. Louis. Ness Sandoval, a professor of sociology and demography at Saint Louis University who studies crime trends, said he believes the city underreports crime and lacks transparency. “Most people who rely on the data believe there probably should be an asterisk,” he said. Jones has stood behind the crime numbers, saying they are accurate.

Still, the mayor and her police chief maintain that state control does not necessarily reduce crime. In 2012, while the police were still under state oversight, Forbes magazine ranked St. Louis as the second-most-dangerous city in the nation.

Kansas City, which is still under state control, continues to struggle with violent crime. Efforts to restore local oversight have never gained much traction there. Despite past studies and proposals — including a 1968 report listing local control as the top recommendation after police killed six Black residents during riots, and a 2013 mayoral committee vote for local control that failed by a single vote — no serious push has materialized.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Jeremy Kohler.

The program, a collaboration between the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center, NASA and the now shuttered U.S. aid agency, used satellite technology and geospatial data to help countries respond to cross-border environmental hazards such as agricultural land burning and forest fires. It also monitored and forecast air pollution.

The annual deterioration in Southeast Asia’s air quality began with a vengeance last month as toxic pollution shrouded cities such as Bangkok and Hanoi for a week.

UNICEF, the U.N.’s agency for children, this week released data that showed that poor air quality remains the largest cause of child deaths after malnutrition in East Asian and Pacific countries.

“The suspension of the project during the regional haze season is unfortunate and presents challenges,” the disaster center’s air pollution and geospatial imaging expert, Aekkapol Aekakkararungroj, told Radio Free Asia.

“The immediate consequence is that some of the planned activities, such as data integration and capacity-building efforts with local stakeholders, have been delayed,” he said. “This could potentially slow down the development and dissemination of tools that support timely decision-making and response strategies.”

The State Department said Jan. 26 it had paused all U.S. foreign assistance overseen by the department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, during a review to ensure projects are consistent with Trump’s foreign policy agenda.

The decision froze humanitarian programs worldwide — from landmine removal to HIV prevention — that are crucial to developing nations. Most of USAID’s thousands of employees have been put on leave from Friday, according to a notice that is now the only information on USAID’s website.

The U.S. also has announced its withdrawal from the World Health Organization, or WHO, and the Paris Agreement to limit the increase in average global temperature to less than two degrees Celsius.

Aekkapol said the disaster center is seeking funding from other international donors and if successful could resume its air pollution work within a few months.

“I am optimistic that our efforts to secure alternative funding and partnerships will help us regain momentum by April,” he said.

Collaboration with NASA would continue, he said.

Child deaths

Poor air quality is a health and economic burden worldwide that weighs particularly heavily on lower-income regions such as Southeast Asia.

Although deaths in Asia linked to air pollution have declined substantially over the past two decades due to better healthcare and reduced indoor use of fuels such as coal for cooking and heating, they remain at alarmingly high levels, UNICEF officials said at a press conference in Bangkok on Thursday.

Toxic air is linked to about 100 deaths a day among children under five in East Asia and the Pacific, UNICEF said, based on data compiled by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Use of dirty fuels for cooking and heating at home accounts for more than half of the deaths.

Fine particles in the atmosphere — the basis of Southeast Asia’s annual haze — from land burning and fossil fuel sources such as vehicle exhausts also are a culprit. Its accumulation over cities or the countryside can depend on weather conditions.

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About two thirds of children in the region live in countries where particulate matter levels in the air exceed WHO guidelines by more than five times.

Progress over the past two decades in reducing child deaths from air pollution “represents truly what is possible if we can keep this trajectory going,” said Nicholas Rees, an environment and climate expert at UNICEF.

Maintaining the progress depends on factors such as political will, the strength of efforts to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and the capacity of health systems, he told RFA.

“Without that, I fear progress will not only be slower in the years ahead, but we may even reverse some of the gains we have made,” he said.

Edited by Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Stephen Wright for RFA.

According to the report, over the last three electoral cycles, Toyota has emerged as the top auto industry financier of climate deniers, financing 207 of their congressional campaigns.

“The world’s largest automaker has quietly spent the past several years building a powerful U.S. influence operation in an effort to delay the transition to electric vehicles,” said Adam Zuckerman, senior clean vehicles campaigner with Public Citizen’s Climate Program, and author of the report. “Funding a small army of climate denying lawmakers, while lobbying aggressively against stronger emissions and fuel economy standards, is a volatile combination intended to roll back policies that protect our communities and planet.”

In the three congressional election cycles between 2020 and 2024, Toyota’s political action committee donated $808,500 to the campaigns of Congressional candidates that deny or question the existence of climate change.

Days after Donald Trump won his reelection bid, Toyota Motor North America COO Jack Hollis slammed clean air rules adopted by California and other states, effectively painting a target on the policies intended to clean up air and water. After the press conference, Hollis penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled “Trump Can Get EVs Back on Track,” calling on the new administration to dismantle the Biden-era policies that encourage automakers to reduce emissions, complaining that “unrealistic regulations favor one carbon-reducing option over, and at the expense of, all others.”

“Toyota wants to continue to make dirty, polluting vehicles and align itself with climate deniers in a futile effort to hold onto internal combustion and fossil fuels,” said Zuckerman. “But EVs are the future of the automotive industry, and if it fails to evolve, Toyota risks becoming the next Kodak or Blockbuster, corporate giants that fought innovation and paid the price for it. It is a risky strategy that has left Toyota vulnerable to an influx of competitors who have leapfrogged the auto giant to build the next generation of vehicles.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

• Firefighting in the LA wildfires becomes international effort, as death toll rises to 24; Governor lifts some environmental rules to speed rebuilding
• Biden touts foreign policy improvements in final State Department speech
• Gaza journalists decry genocide, deaths of 222 journalists and media workers
• Nationwide protests planned on Trump’s inauguration
• Supreme Court considers how broadly to apply federal “First Step Act” sentencing reforms
• Democratic lawmakers agree on $50 million plan to “Trump-proof” California
• UNICEF warns of a new era of crisis for children, 1 in 6 live in combat-affected areas

The post LA firefighting becomes international effort; Gaza journalists decry genocide, killings of media workers – January 13, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

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The Department of Justice on Tuesday sued six of the nation’s largest landlords, accusing them of using a pricing algorithm to improperly work together to raise rents across the country.

The lawsuit expands an antitrust complaint the department filed in August that accused property management software-maker RealPage of engaging in illegal price-fixing to reduce competition among landlords so prices — and profits — would soar. Officials conducted a two-year investigation into the scheme following a 2022 ProPublica story that showed how RealPage was helping landlords set rents across the country in a way that legal experts said could result in cartel-like behavior.

Together, the six landlords manage more than 1.3 million apartments in 43 states and the District of Columbia. Prosecutors have already negotiated a settlement with one of them.

“While Americans across the country struggled to afford housing, the landlords named in today’s lawsuit shared sensitive information about rental prices and used algorithms to coordinate to keep the price of rent high,” said acting Assistant Attorney General Doha Mekki of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. The suit seeks to end “their practice of putting profits over people” and to make housing more affordable.

The legal action is the latest development to follow ProPublica’s initial investigation. Since 2022, senators have introduced legislation seeking to ban the use of rent algorithms similar to RealPage’s, and tenants have filed dozens of ongoing federal lawsuits. Cities around the country, including San Francisco, Philadelphia and Minneapolis, have also moved to bar landlords from using similar algorithms to set rents.

RealPage’s popular software was collecting nonpublic pricing information from multiple property managers and feeding it through a common algorithm, which then recommended an optimal rent level to those who used it — in violation of rules that prohibit such coordination, federal prosecutors alleged. They also accused the landlords of improperly communicating directly about their pricing through calls, emails and participation in “user group” forums hosted by RealPage.

The company pushes landlords to use an “auto-accept” feature on its software, authorities said, and makes it onerous for property managers to reject its suggestions.

RealPage Senior Vice President Jennifer Bowcock called the federal case “flawed” and said the company is “committed to vigorously defending ourselves and our customers against the DOJ’s accusations.” RealPage has already changed its software to remove nonpublic data, despite its view that its technology was legal and “pro-competitive,” she said.

“It’s past time to stop scapegoating RealPage — and now our customers — for housing affordability problems when the root cause of high housing costs is the undersupply of housing, which we have been saying from the beginning,” she said.

Three of the landlords sued in this week’s action appeared in ProPublica’s 2022 story, including the nation’s biggest landlord, Greystar, and Camden Property Trust.

Camden CEO Ric Campo told the news organization at the time that the apartment market in Houston, where the company is headquartered, was so big and diverse that “it would be hard to argue there was some kind of price fixing.”

But when Camden adopted the nascent rent-setting technology in 2006, the company found that its profits grew even though more tenants were moving out.

“The net effect of driving revenue and pushing people out was $10 million in income,” Campo told a trade publication then. (He later said that quote doesn’t reflect how he or Camden views renters today.)

Neither Campo nor Camden responded to a request for comment.

Greystar, the biggest manager and owner of rentals in the U.S., said in a statement that it was “disappointed” that the Justice Department added the company to the suit.

“At no time did Greystar engage in any anti-competitive practices,” the statement from the South Carolina-based company said. “We will vigorously defend ourselves in this lawsuit.”

ProPublica’s 2022 data analysis also found Willow Bridge Property Company (formerly Lincoln Residential) managed dozens of buildings in markets that had seen fast growth in rent. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the Justice Department lawsuit.

One property owner and manager, Cortland, has already agreed to stop using competitors’ nonpublic data to train or run pricing models under a settlement with federal prosecutors. The proposed agreement has been submitted to the court for consideration.

Atlanta-based Cortland manages over 80,000 rentals in 13 states. A related federal criminal investigation that led to a May 2024 search of its headquarters has been closed, a spokesperson said.

The spokesperson said the company is “pleased” to announce the settlement.

“We believe we were only able to achieve this result because Cortland has invested years and significant internal resources into developing a proprietary revenue management software tool that does not rely on data from external, nonpublic sources,” the spokesperson said.

Revenue management software can help landlords manage rents “efficiently” and avoid discrimination, said a spokesperson for defendant Cushman & Wakefield, which also owns defendant Pinnacle. The spokesperson said that as a manager only, the company does not “set strategy, pricing, or occupancy targets,” decide which software to use, or whether to accept any software’s recommendations.

The lawsuit also named as a defendant Blackstone’s LivCor. Blackstone did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In addition to naming landlords as defendants in the claim, it also added the attorneys general of Illinois and Massachusetts as co-plaintiffs, bringing the total number of participating states to 10. The states include the country’s most populous — California, which has 17 million renters.

RealPage said that “fewer than 10% of all rental housing units in the U.S. use RealPage software to suggest rental prices, and our software recommendations are accepted less than half the time.”

But a White House report in December said that number could be higher. It said RealPage and census data suggest that as many as 1 in 4 rentals nationwide use a RealPage pricing algorithm. And the company’s penetration is higher in some markets, it said.

Using models of what competitive markets would look like, researchers found that algorithmic pricing costs renters in units where it is used $70 more a month, or 4% of rent, on average. In six major metro areas, the cost exceeds $100 a month, the report found.

The report estimated the total added cost to renters from the use of such algorithms in 2023 to be roughly $3.8 billion.

RealPage said that the analysis is “riddled with flawed assumptions,” and that the White House never contacted the company about the report.

The fate of the Justice Department’s lawsuit under the incoming administration is unclear. President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Gail Slater, a veteran antitrust attorney and economic advisor to JD Vance, to lead the department’s antitrust division.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Heather Vogell.

In response, Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman issued the following statement:

“Elon Musk should do his research (or ask his AI to do it). The CFPB has been a model of government efficiency, returning almost $20 billion to consumers cheated by bank and financial corporation wrongdoing.

“If Musk looks at the facts, he’ll discover: 1) Massive deregulation led to the 2008 financial crisis, which cost American’s trillions, necessitating stronger rules and agencies like the CFPB; and 2) the CFPB was created specifically because none of the overlapping financial regulatory agencies prioritized consumer protection.

“But there’s no reason to think facts or evidence have anything to do with Musk’s views.

“Asking the world’s richest person, with a direct interest in a wide range of business lines, to run a project to review the federal government’s overall operations is absurd and fundamentally corrupt – and this issue highlights exactly why.

“Musk has reportedly obtained money transmitter licenses for X in more than three dozen states and still appears determined to turn X into an “everything app” based around a payment service.

“Such an operation would be subject to regulation by the CFPB – and in fact the CFPB has just finalized a rule to supervise large tech companies offering digital funds transfer and payment wallet apps. This effort comes after CFPB investigations into Big Tech’s role in the banking and financial system and potential adverse impacts on consumers.

“In short, Musk is calling for elimination of the consumer protection regulator over a business line he seems poised to enter.

“If he were just a regular-old rich person, this could perhaps be dismissed as self-interested whining.

“But Musk is not just a regular rich person. Not only is he the richest person in the history of the world, he is joined at the side with the president-elect of the United States – and empowered by the president-elect to make recommendations to slash government agencies and public protections.

“This is systemic corruption at a grand and intolerable scale. It puts the lie to claims that Donald Trump aims to serve the people rather than powerful corporate interests. And it makes a mockery of Musk’s claims to advance efficiency.

“The good news is, the CFPB is too entrenched in law, and too popular, to be eliminated by Musk or Trump.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

They had marched peacefully for nine days, in what Māori peoples call hīkoi, in an effort to stop the country’s new right-wing government from forcing through a bill that would dilute Indigenous influence on the government by reinterpreting one of its founding documents. 

“Māori have been here, we are going to be here forever. You’re never going to assimilate us,” said Catherine Murupaenga-Ikenn, one of the Māori activists who participated in the hīkoi. “This is a great time for revolution.” 

Proponents describe the Treaty Principles bill as a push for equal rights for all citizens of Aotearoa, which is how Māori refer to New Zealand: an effort to define principles underlying the Treaty of Waitangi, an English-language agreement signed by some of the country’s colonizing founders and Indigenous Māori that gave the Crown the right to govern the nation in exchange for enshrining Māori rights.

“Did the treaty give different rights to different groups, or does every citizen have equal rights? I believe all New Zealanders deserve to have a say on that question,” said David Seymour, a member of Parliament who leads ACT New Zealand, the country’s right-wing party. (Seymour has Māori ancestry, but leaders of his tribe do not claim him.) 

But Māori opponents say the measure would weaken Indigenous rights that not only help address long-standing social and economic inequities but are critical to protecting the country’s lands and waters. 

“That redefinition could diminish Māori participation and environmental governance, as the treaty currently ensures that Māori involvement in managing national natural resources,” said Mike Smith, a Māori climate activist who has two climate lawsuits pending before the country’s high court. “So by limiting these rights, the bill may weaken the environmental stewardship practices that are rooted in Māori morals and values and thereby impact the country’s ability to address all the environmental challenges, and more particularly combat climate change effectively.”  

Seymour pushed back on that characterization. “If it’s true no country can do conservation without something like the Treaty of Waitangi, the world is in trouble,” he said. “In any event, New Zealand has had its current conception of the treaty for over 30 years, and we are a solid, but not the best, environmental regulator, so others clearly do better without something like the treaty.”

The Treaty Principles bill isn’t expected to pass in the current Parliament, although it could eventually head to a referendum. But it’s just one part of a broader right-wing backlash against the significant gains that Māori have made in recent decades to win back stolen land and secure better representation and co-governance of government agencies. 

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“This is not just about Māori interests and rights. This is about the protection of all that we hold dear,” said Māori activist Tina Ngata, who has been hosting online education sessions about the bill. “Indigenous rights have been one of the strongest roadblocks to corporate exploitation.” 

Ngata was part of a successful push in 2018 to get Aotearoa New Zealand to ban oil and gas exploration in its waters. The country’s right-wing government, which vaulted into power last year, is now pushing to reverse that ban.

The government wants to double its mineral mining exports to $2 billion over the next decade, and has delayed a planned tax on agricultural emissions. It also repealed the Māori Health Authority — which addresses Indigenous health disparities, many of which are expected to worsen with climate change — and is in the processes of deleting references to the Treaty of Waitangi from existing laws. 

Smith said that even though his climate litigation isn’t specifically based on the treaty, it lends critical weight to his arguments regarding the government’s obligation to protect the environment. 

A website promoting the Treaty Principles bill says it wouldn’t have an effect on co-governance of Aotearoa New Zealand’s rivers and mountains, such as the Tūpuna Maunga Authority that gives Māori tribes of Auckland a say in how the city’s volcanic mountains are managed. It would, however, remove Māori co-governance of the country’s water services, which has been controversial since the prior government announced plans to nationalize water management.

Smith sees the measure as an effort to play upon the fears of the non-Māori population and make it easier for private interests to profit. “It’s an indicator that they want to stomp on Māori rights and philosophies and worldviews. It’s an indicator that they just are refusing to fight the challenge that climate change and the global biodiversity crisis demands of us,” he said.

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But he has been heartened by the huge amount of support for the Māori cause. A video of a Māori legislator leading the haka in Parliament went viral on social media, underscoring the force of the opposition, which expands beyond Māori peoples and includes a former prime minister and prominent lawyers, health care professionals, translators, church leaders, and the Waitangi Tribunal, a federal commission dedicated to reviewing Māori claims regarding the treaty.

That commission is expected to hold a hearing next week to consider the question of whether the Aotearoa New Zealand government has violated Māori rights in its response to climate change. The hearing has been overshadowed by the Treaty Principles controversy, but Smith is watching it closely. The tribunal only has the power to make recommendations, and can’t force the government to do anything, but its findings could help strengthen Smith’s climate cases before the high court.  

The debate over the treaty is complicated by the fact that the English- and Māori-language versions of the treaty have different meanings. Murupaenga-Ikenn emphasized that the vast majority of Māori chiefs signed the Māori-language version that never relinquished sovereignty. 

Murupaenga-Ikenn said she’s been excited by how the Treaty Principles bill has spurred her people into action. She was part of a massive hīkoi 20 years ago to rally in favor of Indigenous ownership of the seabed, but last week’s gathering was far larger, with as many as 55,000 people, and activists hope it’ll bleed into more local protests and stronger voter participation. 

If she saw Seymour, the ACT politician behind the bill, Murupaenga-Ikenn said she would thank him. “Thank you very much for putting a reenergized fire under my people to just shake us up and wake us up,” Murupaenga-Ikenn said. “The time is now for a revolution. Thank you, David Seymour.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Mass protests against New Zealand’s effort to weaken Māori rights — and hurt the planet on Nov 22, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Anita Hofschneider.

The front group, Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future, has conducted a series of in-person events with policymakers and key Democratic-leaning groups this year aimed at building support for its policy goals. Those agenda items include a set of dirty energy industry giveaways by Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.V.) and Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) that will eviscerate public interest review requirements for liquified natural gas (LNG) exports and encourage the construction of massive export terminals in largely Black, Brown, and low-income communities.

Natural Allies is led by three former Democratic members of Congress, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Tim Ryan of Ohio, and Kendrick Meek of Florida, as well as former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter. The group’s corporate funders include gas industry players Williams Companies, EQT, Kinder Morgan, TC Energy, Enbridge, and Venture Global.

Key takeaways from the report include:

• Since it was launched in 2020, the group has spent $10.4 million over three years, with over $8.9 million directed to the advertising and public relations giant Omnicom, the parent company of Mercury Public Affairs—the firm that initially launched Natural Allies.
• Since its inception, Natural Allies has seen substantial growth in revenue, skyrocketing from $1.75 million in 2020 to $9.1 million in 2022, totaling $15.6 million over its first three years. The group has spent more than $1 million on Facebook ads alone, generating tens of millions of impressions.
• While using former Democratic officials to peddle their interests in Democratic circles, Natural Allies’ corporate funders overwhelmingly back Republicans. Political action committees and super PACs tied to Natural Allies’ corporate funders have spent $3.5 million on federal political races since 2020, with 79 percent going to Republicans, including EQT Corp’s $250,000 contribution to a Super PAC backing Republican Senate candidates.
• While the group deceptively pushes natural gas as a “partner” to renewables, its real goal is to promote continued use of methane, saying in an internal strategy document that “success for the natural gas industry will be rooted in whether we can message to the left and the Democratic base of black and Latino and age 18 to 34 voters as effectively as we have messaged to the right.”

Throughout 2024, the group has stepped up its visibility in Democratic Party circles, inaccurately promoting natural gas as a “clean” energy source in public meetings. The group has also been criticizing Biden administration policies that aim to consider the impacts of gas exports on communities, consumers, and the climate.

“The methane gas industry is laundering its dirty agenda by employing former Democratic politicians, using their connections from their time in public service to advocate for fossil fuel industry priorities,” said Alan Zibel, a research director at Public Citizen and an author of the report. “From voicing support for harmful gas drilling to promoting gas exports as a false climate solution, these unnatural alliances are the latest iteration of greenwashing tactics used by the fossil fuel industry.”

“The natural gas industry is leveraging the pernicious power of the ‘revolving door’ phenomenon to turbocharge their efforts to confuse Democratic politicians and voters alike about the impact of methane gas on the climate, their health, and their pocketbooks,” said Hannah Story Brown, senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project. “When former politicians lobby their ex-colleagues or hobnob with insiders at high-profile events, they have an outsized reach, with their past public service lending credibility to ideas they’re being paid to peddle. Natural Allies’ internal strategy documents reveal how they’ve capitalized on this phenomenon, hiring former politicians Mary Landrieu, Tim Ryan, Michael Nutter, and Kendrick Meek to their Leadership Council to provide ‘third-party validation’ of industry talking points.”

“The ongoing boom in fossil gas production and exports is condemning frontline communities to deadly pollution, saddling consumers with higher energy prices, and locking in catastrophic warming. Rather than telling the truth about the destructive nature of fracked gas, some former Democratic officials on the payroll of Big Oil are downplaying the harms of methane emissions while sowing doubt about the reliability and affordability of genuinely clean power,” said Revolving Door Project senior researcher Kenny Stancil. “Natural Allies’ attempt to launder the reputation of gas—a fossil fuel that worsens environmental injustice—is shameful.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

In the skies, unmanned drones hovered like black, stationary ravens of menace.  But these were not deemed sufficient by Victoria Police.  Helicopters kept them company.  Surveillance cameras also stood prominently to the north end of the bridge.

Before this assortment of marshalled force was an eclectic gathering of individuals from keffiyeh-swaddled pro-Palestinian activists to drummers kitted out in the Palestinian colours, and any number of theatrical types dressed in the shades and costumery of death.  At one point, a chilling Joker figure made an appearance, his outfit and suitcase covered in mock blood.  The share stock of chants was readily deployed: “No justice, no peace, no racist police”; “We, the people, will not be silenced.  Stop the bombing now, now, now”.  Innumerable placards condemning the arms industry and Israel’s war on Gaza also make their appearance.

The purpose of this vast, costly exercise proved elementary and brutal: to defend Land Forces 2024, one of the largest arms fairs in the southern hemisphere, from Disrupt Land Forces, a collective demonised by the Victorian state government as the great unwashed, polluted rebel rousers and anarchists.  Much had been made of the potential size of the gathering, with uncritical journalists consuming gobbets of information from police sources keen to justify an operation deemed the largest since the 2000 World Economic Forum. Police officers from regional centres in the state had been called up, and while Chief Commissioner Shane Patton proved tight-lipped on the exact number, an estimate exceeding 1,000 was not refuted.  The total cost of the effort: somewhere between A$10 to A$15 million.

It all began as a healthy gathering at the dawn of day, with protestors moving to the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre to picket entry points for those attending Land Forces.

Over time, there was movement between the various entrances to prevent these modern merchants of death from spruiking their merchandise and touting for offers.  As Green Left Online noted, “The Victorian Police barricaded the entrance of the Melbourne Convention Centre so protestors marched to the back entrance to disrupt Land Forces whilst attendees are going through security checks.”

In keeping with a variant of Anton Chekhov’s principle, if a loaded gun is placed upon the stage, it is bound to be used.  Otherwise, leave it out of the script.  A large police presence would hardly be worthwhile without a few cracked skulls, flesh wounds or arrests.  Scuffles accordingly broke out with banal predictability.  The mounted personnel were also brought out to add a snap of hostility and intimidation to the protestors as they sought to hamper access to the Convention.  For all of this, it was the police who left complaining, worried about their safety.

Then came the broader push from the officers to create a zone of exclusion around the building, resulting in the closure of Clarendon Street to the south, up to Batman Park. Efforts were made to push the protests from the convention centre across the bridge towards the park.  This was in keeping with the promise by the Chief Commissioner that the MCEC site and its surrounds would be deemed a designated area over the duration of the arms fair from September 11 to 13.

Such designated areas, enabled by the passage of a 2009 law, vests the police with powers to stop and search a person within the zone without a warrant.  Anything perceived to be a weapon can be seized, with officers having powers to request that civilians reveal their identity.

Despite such exercisable powers, the relevant legislation imposes a time limit of 12 hours for such areas, something most conspicuously breached by the Commissioner.  But as Melbourne Activist Legal Support (MALS) group remarks, the broader criteria outlined in the legislative regime are often not met and constitute a “method of protest control” that impairs “the rights to assembly, association, and political expression” protected by the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities.

The Victorian government had little time for the language of protest.  In a stunningly grotesque twist, the Victorian Premier, Jacinta Allan, defended those at the Land Forces conference as legitimate representatives of business engaging in a peaceful enterprise.  “Any industry deserves the right to have these sorts of events in a peaceful and respectful way.”  If the manufacture, sale and distribution of weapons constitutes a “peaceful and respectful” pursuit, we have disappeared down the rabbit hole with Alice at great speed.

That theme continued with efforts by both Allan and the opposition leader, John Pesutto, to tarnish the efforts by fellow politicians to attend the protest.  Both fumed indignantly at the efforts of Greens MP Gabrielle de Vietri to participate, with the premier calling the measure one designed for “divisive political purposes.”  The Green MP had a pertinent response: “The community has spoken loud and clear, they don’t want weapons and war profiting to come to our doorstep, and the Victorian Labor government is sponsoring this.”

The absurd, morally inverted spectacle was duly affirmed: a taxpayer funded arms exposition, defended by the taxpayer funded police, used to repel the tax paying protestors keen to promote peace in the face of an industry that thrives on death, mutilation and misery.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The projects would be aimed at developing four provinces in northeastern Cambodia that are part of the Cambodia-Laos-Vietnam Triangle Development Area, or CLV.

Prime Minister Hun Manet’s Cabinet announced the creation of a Foundation for Border Infrastructure Development on Monday in a statement that included the names of six banks where people could send money.

It was unclear what infrastructure projects would be funded by the foundation. The provinces – Kratie, Stung Treng, Ratanakiri and Mondulkiri – are thinly populated.

Money raised under the initiative would help the government “in the spirit of national unity, peace, sovereignty and territorial integrity, [to] promote stronger and more sustainable border development,” Hun Manet said.

“Cambodians of all backgrounds, both inside and outside the country” are encouraged to contribute, the prime minister said.

Several high-profile Cambodian businessmen have already posted messages on social media that showed their donation to the foundation.

The 1999 CLV agreement between the three countries was aimed at encouraging economic development and trade between the four northeastern provinces and neighboring provinces across the border.

But some activists recently began expressing concerns that the CLV could cause Cambodia to lose territory or control of its natural resources to Vietnam. 

Overseas Cambodians held protests in South Korea, Japan, France, Canada and Australia on Aug. 11. Planned demonstrations in Cambodia on Aug. 18 were never held after the government deployed security forces and arrested more than 30 people.

The fundraising effort appears to be aimed at harnessing some of the nationalistic sentiment sparked by CLV critics, according to Oum Sam An, a former lawmaker for the former main opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party.

“This is demagogic politics to deceive the people,” he told Radio Free Asia. “He is trying to show that his family is patriotic and didn’t cede any land to Vietnam.”

RFA was unable to reach a government spokesperson for comment on the new foundation.

Translated by Sum Sok Ry. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Khmer.

• The United Nations Security Council gathered to discuss an Israeli airstrike over the weekend that hit a U.N. school-turned-shelter in Gaza, which Palestinian health authorities said killed nearly 100 people and wounded roughly 50 others.
• The Russian Defense Ministry says its forces have halted an effort by Kyiv’s troops to expand a weeklong incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.
• Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz made his first solo campaign appearance Tuesday, just a week after being selected as Kamala Harris’ vice-presidential running mate on the Democratic presidential ticket.
• As students return to schools across the state this month, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond are urging public school districts to follow the lead of the Los Angeles Unified School District in restricting cell phone use in classrooms.
• Santa Clara County residents, medical workers, and healthcare advocates continue to protest changes being made to the county’s regional medical center this week, saying the changes are putting the community’s health at risk.
• The San Francisco Public Defender’s Office said this week that the city’s district attorney should drop charges against 26 protesters who took over the Golden Gate Bridge in April to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

The post The Russian Defense Ministry says its forces have halted an effort by Kyiv’s troops to expand a weeklong incursion into Russia’s Kursk region – August 13, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

• Trump holds press conference in effort to wrest back national spotlight from Harris campaign.
• Tropical Storm Debby brings heavy rain, high winds and tornadoes to mid-Atlantic region.
• Austrian officials make two arrests in Taylor Swift concert terrorist threat that canceled three planned shows.
• Delta pursues legal claims against Crowdstrike over losses incurred during worldwide software glitch.
• Coast Guard whistleblowers testify to Senate panel about sexual abuse in the service.
• Bay Area non-profit employees seek union recognition at International Rescue Committee.

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – August 8, 2024 Trump holds press conference in effort to wrest back national spotlight from Harris campaign.  appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

• Harris campaigns in Georgia as part of a concentrated effort to win the state in November.
• Israel launches targeted strike on Hezbollah commander in Beirut believed responsible for weekend rocket attack that killed 12 children.
• Senate approves bill that would hold tech companies responsible for online content harmful to children.
• Firefighters gain some ground on the Park Fire as suspected arsonist enters not guilty plea.
• San Francisco activists mark 59th anniversary of the passage of Medicare and Medicaid.
• Anti-war activists protest jet fuel shipment headed to Israel.
• Sierra fires continue to burn mostly uncontained.
• Anti-war activists protest jet fuel shipment headed to Israel.

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – July 30, 2024 Harris campaigns in Georgia as part of focused effort to win the state in November. appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

The Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument was established in 2009 and currently preserves nearly half a million square miles of ocean surrounding seven islands in the central and western Pacific. The Biden administration is seeking to strengthen environmental protections by overlaying and expanding the area of protection up to 770,000 square miles and designating it as a national marine sanctuary. The monument already bans commercial resource extraction like deep-sea mining, but the proposed sanctuary would both expand the protected waters and give the whole area an additional layer of federal protection.

The expansion would also make a dent in the Biden administration’s goal to conserve 30 percent of the country’s land and waters by 2030. 

However, according to Angelo Villagomez and Steven Manaʻoakamai Johnson, authors of the peer-reviewed article in Environmental Justice, the Biden administration has privileged Native Hawaiian perspectives (who are supportive of the expansion, which does not extend to the archipelago) over those of other Indigenous Pacific Islanders, namely Micronesians and Samoans, who have less political power in the U.S. system and have voiced more concerns about the proposal. 

“Anti-Micronesian bias and colonialism are harming efforts to protect and manage waters surrounding U.S. overseas territories in the Pacific Islands,” the authors wrote. “The proposal is problematic because it has failed to meaningfully include the Indigenous people who live closest to the region and who have the strongest historical and cultural ties to the islands — Micronesians and Samoans.” 

Villagomez, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who is Chamorro and grew up on the Mariana Islands, has been advocating for ocean-protected areas for more than 15 years. When he began this work, back in 2007, Villagomez sought to organize support in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands for the Marianas Trench National Marine Monument, which conserves nearly 100,000 square miles of water in the Marianas archipelago. Although the proposal faced pushback from locals who were concerned that the move infringed on Indigenous sovereignty, Villagomez thought the monument would not only help the planet but also bring federal jobs to the territory. He was in the room celebrating when then-President George W. Bush signed the monument into existence in 2009, hailed as a major environmental achievement.

For years afterward, Villagomez watched as government jobs for the monument were concentrated in Hawaiʻi. The office was located in Honolulu, thousands of miles away from the monument. Research vessels were being outfitted out of Honolulu and staffed with people who were from Hawaiʻi and other states. It was disappointing to see that these benefits weren’t helping the people of the Northern Marianas, which has a much more fragile economy. After all, he had seen how the 2006 Papahānaumokuākea National Marine Monument in the northern Hawaiian islands had given Hawaiʻi a boost of prestige and research funding.

“We were working under the assumption that [the Marianas monument] would operate like [the one in] Hawaiʻi,” Villagomez said. “But the difference is Hawaiʻi has two senators, and they have representation in the House of Representatives, and they can vote for president. And we just don’t have the political power to bring the dollars to our islands the way that Hawaiʻi does.”

Only recently has an office for the Marianas Trench monument opened in the Commonwealth. And just last month — 15 years after monument designation — the Interior Department released a proposed management plan for the Marianas Trench monument. Villagomez thinks the delays reflect a broader disregard for the territories that he’s seeing unfold again in the Pacific Remote Islands sanctuary designation effort.

“The process of colonization doesn’t only play out with the colonizer and the colonized, but it also plays out in relationships between colonized people,” said Steven Manaʻoakamai Johnson, Villagomez’s co-author who is an assistant professor of natural resources and the environment at Cornell University. “In this case, what we’re trying to highlight is that the Hawaiian perspective and the Hawaiian voice is being privileged, above that of the Micronesian and Samoan voice.”

For instance, the official community group advising government agencies about the monument includes a designated Native Hawaiian representative but not an equivalent role for other Indigenous peoples, Villagomez and Johnson wrote. 

Similarly, in documents describing the cultural importance of the islands, advocates for the marine sanctuary often describe the sacrifices of Native Hawaiians who lived on Howland, Baker, and Jarvis Islands during World War II, and ignore the comparable sacrifices of Indigenous Chamorros killed on Wake Island and the fact that most of the islands within the monument’s coverage are part of the Micronesian region, Villagomez and Johnson wrote. 

Sarah Marquis at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the agency plans to release a draft plan for the sanctuary designation later this year and will accept further public input on the proposal then. “We cannot comment on specific papers or articles at this stage of designation,” she said. 

Naiʻa Lewis, a member of the Pacific Remote Islands Coalition that has been advocating for the sanctuary designation, said the group has long advocated for inclusivity through avenues like co-management and renaming. 

“It’s really important when we are critiquing frameworks that we feel like do not support our communities and our perspectives that we also highlight people, organizations, and communities that are working in that space to make those changes,” Lewis said.

Villagomez said a major impetus for releasing the paper is the importance of Pacific territories to the U.S.’s ocean conservation goals: 29 percent of the country’s ocean territory surrounds Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and 99 percent of the country’s protected ocean areas are in the Pacific region. Villagomez said he would like to see the territories accrue benefits from those protected areas, such as jobs and funding, but said sometimes they can’t even get their own people on the boats that explore those waters. 

In American Samoa, political leaders have long opposed monuments that restrict commercial fishing. Even though conservation supporters point to a recent study that shows relatively few ships that dock in Pago Pago, its primary port, actually fish in the proposed Pacific Remote Islands sanctuary area, fears about economic harm persist. These concerns are particularly resonant when the islands’ struggling economies continue to fuel major outmigration and make it difficult for territories to provide essential medical care for their residents. 

In the Northern Mariana Islands, commercial fishing is not a major industry, but critics of the marine monuments have argued that closing off large portions of the ocean to potential economic activity violates their right to Indigenous economic self-determination and is especially egregious when those same areas remain open to U.S. military undersea sonar training and explosive testing. 

“Our already disadvantaged and marginalized communities carry a disproportionate burden for meeting national conservation goals,” the governors of American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands, and Guam wrote in a joint letter to Biden last year.

Villagomez and Johnson both support ocean conservation but argue that any marine sanctuary designation should include dedicated funding for the affected territories and peoples, and urge NOAA to create such a fund. 

“It’s the territories who are living with the decisions,” Villagomez said. “But it’s people in Washington D.C. and Honolulu who are forcing the territories to carry these burdens for the rest of the country.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A Biden effort to conserve oceans is leaving out Indigenous peoples, report finds on Jul 3, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Anita Hofschneider.

Janine Jackson interviewed The Lever‘s Katherine Li about corporations’ First Amendment dodge for the May 31, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

Extra! (3–4/95)

Janine Jackson: CounterSpin listeners will likely know about what’s been called the “right-wing media machine.” It started, you could say, with ideologues and politicians with ideas, generally ideas about how to hurdle us back to at least the 19th century, legally and culturally. They then created think tanks and funded academics to polish up and promulgate those ideas. And they created and funded media outlets to push those ideas out.

It’s not, in other words, a reflection of a fortuitous coming together of like-minded individuals, but an echo chamber forged with the explicit purpose of maximizing a narrow viewpoint into a false consensus. The news article you read, after all, cites a professor and a pundit and a think tank and a guy on the street who read a thing, so it looks like multiple disparate sources who happen to agree.

Something analogous is happening now with corporations claiming the First Amendment says they don’t have to comply with regulations they don’t want to comply with, because those regulations reflect ideas that are “controversial,” and they can’t be compelled to take a public position on a controversial idea, like, for example, that climate disruption is real. It’s a weird, important maneuver, at once complicated and pretty simple, and it’s usefully unpacked in a recent piece by our guest.

Katherine Li is an editorial fellow at the Lever, where the piece, “Corporations Are Weaponizing Free Speech to Wreck the World,” appears. She joins us now by phone from Oakland, California. Welcome to CounterSpin, Katherine Li.

Katherine Li: Hi, Janine, very happy to be here. And let’s unpack this complicated piece.

JJ: Well, before we get to its current—you could say artful—employment, what is the “compelled speech” doctrine under the First Amendment? What do we think was the point of it when it was adopted?

KL: Well, as with the First Amendment, the compelled speech in the First Amendment—the original purpose is to say that the government cannot force people to say something they disagree with. That is perhaps illustrated in a very early compelled speech case that basically says that students do not have to stand up in school and salute the flag or the national anthem if they don’t want to.

Basically, it is to protect people from things that the government is forcing them to do, and it’s kind of to insulate people from government policies that impose things on them. The original intention, I do not believe, and experts I have interviewed for this story do not believe that the intention is for corporates to use such an argument in lawsuits.

Lever (5/23/24)

JJ: All right, well then, let me just move on to asking you to please lay out for us what you call, in the lead to this informative piece for TheLever.com, “the novel legal strategy” that some corporations are now “pioneering,” you say, which sounds very different than “relying on”; they’re kind of trying to make something new here. Explain what you’re seeing.

KL: So traditionally, like I have just mentioned it, is to protect people from the government imposing things on them. But what is considered as speech has really exploded when it comes to the corporate landscape: Are tax returns and contracts considered speech? What does that mean for our government’s power to look into financial wrongdoing, and prevent tax fraud and prevent money laundering, if all of those things are considered as speech, and the government cannot force anybody to “say” and disclose such information?

So the corporates have definitely spotted that, and they have been trying to argue that these financial documents are considered as speech. So it started with drug pricing, it starts with the Corporate Transparency Act, that once there’s a precedent in the court system that says these things are considered speech, more cases are being invited and more cases are coming in this specific landscape. So basically they are saying that these things are considered speech, and therefore the government cannot compel them to disclose this information.

At first it starts with financial information. And right now we’re seeing that in Medicare drug negotiations, it is also happening. These commercial speeches are, according to the lawyers and experts I have spoken to, they don’t believe that these things should be considered; they don’t believe that this so-called commercial speech should be afforded the same amount of protection as traditional political expression, for example, like protesting or writing something in the media, or being censored or being prevented or being forced to make a certain political expression in the non-commercial sense.

So that is why in the article, and according to my experts, they believe this is a new strategy, that corporates are basically exploiting this argument in order to bring more and more cases, and expand the definition of what speech is.

Verge (9/12/23)

JJ: Right. So then they seem as though they are complying with a law, or relying on a law, rather than sort of forging this new way.

Well, I think the examples really bring it home for people, what’s happening here, and there are a number of those examples in the piece, and each one is more disturbing and illuminating than the last. But one key one is, California has a new emissions disclosure law, that major companies doing business in California have to make public how much pollution they’re emitting throughout their supply chain. And we can understand why that’s important, because a company can say, “Well, our home office is zero emissions,” and that’s great, but what about your factories? What’s happening there?

So the public needs this information, this is information that the public is looking for, to get through the PR that these companies—fossil fuel companies in this case—might be putting out. And they’re saying, “No, we don’t need to comply with an emissions disclosure law, because that’s speech”?

KL: That is precisely what is happening. And the thing is, these emissions laws, they target companies with annual revenue above $1 billion. That is not asking our local coffee shop or the marketplace around the corner to figure out how much emissions are in their supply chain. It only really applies to large companies, especially oil companies, very large agricultural factory-farming companies.

So what initially caught my eye in the story is actually the arguments they have in the complaints that they filed against the emission disclosures law. The complaint, if you read it very closely, to anybody with common sense, it almost sounds ridiculous. Some of the arguments are saying that they fear that disclosing their emissions would allow activists, nonprofits and lawmakers to single out companies for investigation, which to me is just another word for accountability. I mean, that’s what our nonprofits and lawmaking agencies, it’s what they’re supposed to do, investigate and help create policy that can improve lives. So to me, it sounds like their effort to avoid accountability is very thinly veiled.

If you look at their complaint very closely, they also complain that this law would be compelling them to change their behavior. They complain that this law is changing and shaping their behavior, when, in reality, isn’t that what any laws and regulations are supposed to do? I mean, in any daily-life law, such as, like, hey, you cannot jaywalk, that is aiming to shape our behaviors, it’s aiming to change our behaviors.

So if you read the complaint closely, their efforts to avoid accountability, it’s honestly very thinly veiled. And it is, in a way, further expanding what is considered as speech, and also the whole circular argument that climate change is somehow “controversial.”

I also looked into the threshold of what could be considered as controversial when I first read their complaint. So then the lawyers I was talking to, the question I brought to them was, how low is the threshold to prove that something is scientifically controversial? And it turned out my instincts were correct, that the threshold of that is extremely low. They just have to prove that there’s a dissenting opinion. They don’t really have to prove that it is scientifically sound, and there’s no one to really check that.

JJ: So it’s just laid in a lap of particular courts, or particular decision makers. And it sounds as though they’re saying, particularly with that low threshold—or that very vague, undetermined threshold—that any regulation, because any regulation is about shaping behavior, it sounds like any regulation, they can dispute, because it’s aimed at asking them to do something different. I mean, am I misreading that, or is it really anti- any regulation whatsoever, in some way?

KL: In some way, that’s what it sounds like. Because if the complaint is about changing and shaping behavior, any regulations, that’s the point of it, changing behavior. And what is so wrong, what could be so wrong about forcing someone to lower their emissions at this point? It sounds like they’re saying that they shouldn’t lower their emissions, because either climate change doesn’t matter enough, or that climate change is not real. Like they said, they think it’s controversial.

JJ: Right. Well, just in case folks don’t understand, and of course we’ll send them to TheLever.com to read the piece, but you also have a food distribution and a restaurant supplies company, Cisco, that’s saying that you can’t force companies to read out notices of labor violations to workers, because they don’t want to. They don’t want to make that information available. And if they talk about labor violations in the workplace, well, that’s a “confession of sins,” and they shouldn’t be forced to do that. So this can reach into pretty much any area of our life, yeah?

KL: Yeah, definitely. Companies argue that if there has been a labor dispute, whatever the result is of that dispute, the company would post a sign somewhere in the facility, basically detailing the labor violation. But it doesn’t really achieve the same effect as reading it out in front of everybody, because it’s the difference between passively posting a sign somewhere and actively informing people what happened. And obviously, if a company has labor violations, they likely don’t want their workers to know. And if workers have also suffered the same violation, if the company reads it out, they might become more aware of it.

JJ: Well, it’s funny—if by funny, we mean perverse—because the narrative of capitalism that we often hear is that it relies on everyone being an informed economic actor, an individual actor who is making economic choices based on knowledge. And here we have corporations actively trying to reduce the available amount of information that a person could have to make decisions about what to buy or where to work or anything like that. It’s weird. This is how corporate capitalism subverts this notion that we hear about Capitalism 101, and building a better mousetrap, and all of that sort of thing.

Katherine Li: “They’re actually afraid that this information is going to get out and impact their profits, so that a lot of times their greenwashing or disinformation isn’t going to work anymore.”

KL: Definitely. Well, about the emissions case, part of their complaint is also that they might be more susceptible to boycott. I do believe that in this day and age, especially people of the younger generations, they’re much more aware of climate change, and a lot of times they would choose companies and products based on their perception of whether that company is being socially responsible enough.

So it’s obvious that a lot of corporates have caught up on that, and they’re now afraid that if they disclose how much they’re actually emitting, people are going to stop buying from them. They’re actually afraid that this information is going to get out and impact their profits, so that a lot of times their greenwashing or disinformation isn’t going to work anymore, because there will be a real concrete number for people to go on, and a number they cannot fake.

They could put on their website all they want, that we have this commitment in 10 years, we have this kind of green commitment; we’re going to become zero emissions by 2030. They could say what they want to say on their website, but once there’s a concrete number out there, none of that is going to work anymore. And they’re really afraid of that, clearly.

JJ: Afraid of an informed public.

Well, this only works with a certain kind of judicial landscape. I mean, you have to count on not getting laughed out of court with what looks to many people like a fairly transparent shenanigan, but obviously they believe that, for some reason, courts are going to be open to this particular kind of argument.

KL: Yes, unfortunately, multiple times courts have been open to this particular argument. And in terms of science, in California, the well-known case would be the Monsanto case.

Food & Water Watch (4/5/17)

For everyone who doesn’t know, Monsanto is a herbicide company. They make this herbicide called Roundup, and there is a certain chemical in it, where a lot of international scientists have said that it could potentially cause cancer in humans. So because science is never 100%, and that knowledge is constantly evolving, there is a loophole for them to say that there is contradicting science. And as we have later found out, Monsanto, the company, has also commissioned scientific studies to say that their product is safe.

And in California, that stood up in court. Because the court doesn’t really look at whether or not Monsanto has engineered this controversy that they’re claiming, this argument was allowed to pass California Proposition 65, which requires a warning label for a whole host of chemicals that could be cancerous and cause birth defects–Monsanto would not have to put that label on their specific herbicide product, because this whole “scientific controversy” thing was allowed to stand up in court.

So the consequences of that is now this argument was expanded. It’s not just one chemical anymore. It’s the entire mechanism of climate change that is being brought into question.

BioSpace (5/8/24)

But the good news here is that sometimes courts are also beginning to hold the line, and recently there have been some positive developments. If you look at the most recent case of the Medicare drug negotiations under the Inflation Reduction Act, I believe it is the US Chamber of Commerce and different pharmaceutical companies, they were arguing that the Medicare drug negotiations, that the Inflation Reduction Act, is trying to “compel” them to agree with a government-determined price, and that they’re saying that is compelled speech.

So they have brought that point to multiple federal courts, including, most recently I believe, a federal court in Ohio. And these courts have fortunately rejected this argument, basically blocked the case on multiple occasions. So I do believe that courts are becoming aware of that, and that they’re beginning to curb these arguments, because in the past, when they have allowed these arguments to pass, sometimes, likely in the next case, the argument becomes expanded.

JJ: Right. Well, I was going to push you further on that, in terms of, it sounds like courts are cottoning on and pushing back. Are there other policy or legislative responses that seem appropriate here, or is it mainly a matter for the courts? And then, do you have thoughts about—because I have not seen this in other reporting—what media might do in terms of disclosing this, putting some sunlight on this, as part of a pushback against what seems clearly like an anti-regulatory, anti–public information effort?

KL: Well, to answer the first question, I do believe this matter is mainly up to the courts, even though, in terms of lawmaking, there can be laws that make up for what the courts are not doing. At the end of the story that I wrote about this, I mentioned a doctrine called the major questions doctrine. A lot of times what the states are allowed to do and what the states are allowed to regulate, what the federal agencies are allowed to regulate in states, is significantly limited. So a lot of times, these things become left up to courts in a major case, to basically make a decision on whether what the individual states are doing is lawful or not.

I believe that if the federal regulatory agencies oftentimes could have more power to pass more sweeping regulations on these things, and that federal regulatory agencies could have more power to fight these law cases if they are sued on a particular point, for example, like the Inflation Reduction Act…. I believe that federal agencies should be given more power to decide, instead of leaving it up to the courts, because the court doesn’t always hold the line.

They’re beginning to, but, for example, the California emissions disclosure case, it’s still very much up in the air, and it’s an entirely new regulation. No other states have implemented it yet; it’s just California, and there are no federal regulations on how companies could be more accountable for the emissions they’re putting out.

And in terms of how media could report on this, I would say, a lot of times, this type of story, it’s very, very helpful to talk to lawyers, because a lot of the cases that I have found, and also trying to figure out how low the scientific threshold is to basically prove that something is controversial: the lawyers know. They are a treasure trove of past cases, because that is their job. And a lot of times, they really enjoy talking to journalists, laying out their cases, and basically walking you through the steps and loopholes that are in our law, because that is their profession.

I would also say, I can understand that sometimes it’s hard to write about something that doesn’t have a main human character in it. Sometimes it’s hard to make it interesting, and it could be easy to overlook these stories. But personally, I think that even a seemingly boring document could contain very interesting information.

For example, the initial complaint that’s filed against the California Emissions Disclosure Law, if you look at the information closely, it might look like a boring document, but the more you read, you’re like, “Wow, this doesn’t make sense. Am I hallucinating this, or is this real?” So then you go to a lawyer, and verify that information. Is this a trend I’m spotting? Is this a problem? Do you think it’s a problem? And these kind of stories could end up being very interesting.

And I would say that, also, it’s important to look into lobbying data, and frame the story looking at who is responsible, and not only looking at what the problem is. I feel like stories could become much more powerful when you look at the how, the mechanism, the larger mechanism that’s at work, instead of only focusing on one specific event or one isolated event that’s happening. Sometimes the more people, the more professionals, you talk to, you start to see a network and a storyline, and how there’s a loophole, and the mechanism of how things work behind the scenes.

JJ: Absolutely. Well, that’s excellent. We’ll end it there for now.

We’ve been speaking with Katherine Li. She’s editorial fellow at the Lever, online at TheLever.com, where you can find this informative article, “Corporations Are Weaponizing Free Speech to Wreck the World,” that we’ve been talking about. Thank you so much, Katherine Li, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

KL: Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

The fishing boat Minlongyu 61222 capsized early Thursday morning in the waters near Dongding, an islet within Kinmen islands under Taiwan’s control, according to the Taiwanese coast guard. Six crew of the boat went missing.

The coast guard dispatched four patrol boats to the area to join a rescue mission with Chinese mainland patrol vessels and helicopters.

The rescuers found four fishermen, two dead and two alive, and are still looking for two others. 

“This joint operation demonstrates the necessity of cross-strait cooperation,” said Shen Ming-Shih, an acting deputy chief executive officer at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research.“It may also help reduce the political impact of the incident last month.”

Cross-Strait tensions rose when a Chinese boat capsized on Feb. 14, also in the waters near Kinmen islands after being confronted by the Taiwanese coast guard. Two Chinese fishermen died in the incident that was condemned by Beijing. 

A Chinese spokesperson at the time said the sinking of the fishing boat “sparked widespread outrage on the mainland, and severely hurt the feelings of compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.”

Taipei has maintained that the Chinese fishing boat was operating illegally in Taiwan’s territorial waters, just 1.1 nautical miles (2 kilometers) east of Kinmen.  

Both sides said they will “enforce the law” in the waters between Kinmen island and China’s mainland. 

Humanitarian effort

“The case this time is totally different,” said Shen from the Institute for National Defense and Security Research.  

“The location of the accident is not inside Taiwan’s restricted waters, and the boat was fishing legally.”

Taiwan and China have conducted joint rescue drills in the area in the past, according to the analyst who said that such operations are based on humanitarian considerations and should be maintained.

“China now needs to step down and not let the cross-Strait conflict escalate,” he added.

Taiwan authorities are still conducting an in-depth investigation into the February incident and will decide on concrete juridical measures after its completion.   

Kinmen is less than 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from China’s Fujian province but more than 180 kilometers (112 miles) from Taiwan’s mainland.

In another development, 26 Chinese aircraft and ten naval vessels were tracked around Taiwan today, according to the defense ministry in Taipei. 18 of the aircraft entered the island’s de-facto air defense identification zone, or ADIZ.

An ADIZ is an area where foreign aircraft are tracked and identified before they reach a country’s airspace. 

This is the largest single-day total of ADIZ violations since last November.

Edited by Taejun Kang and Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.

The party of jailed former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, which according to still incomplete results has won most mandates in the February 8 elections, said it was ready to form a government amid warnings by the nuclear-armed country's powerful military that politicians should put the people's interests above their own.

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has so far announced the winners of 253 of the 265 contested parliamentary seats amid a slow counting process hampered by the interruption of mobile service.

According to those results, independents backed by Khan’s Pakistan Tehrik-e Insaf (PTI) won 92 seats, while former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) garnered 71, and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) obtained 54 mandates. The remainder are spread among other small parties and candidates.

Both Khan and Sharif declared victory.

As results appeared to point to a hung parliament, PTI's acting Chairman Gohar Ali Khan on February 10 told a news conference in Islamabad that the party aimed at forming a government as candidates backed by it had won the most seats.

Khan also announced that if complete results were not released by February 10 in the evening, the PTI intended to stage a peaceful protest on February 11.

Third-placed PPP, led by Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, a former foreign minister who is the son of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, could play kingmaker in case of talks to form a coalition government.

Sharif said on February 9 that he was sending his younger brother and former Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif as an envoy to approach the PPP and other political parties for coalition talks.

The elections were held in a highly polarized environment as Khan, a former cricket superstar, and his party were kept out of the election. Khan is currently in prison after he was convicted of graft and leaking state secrets. He also saw his marriage annulled by a court.

Earlier on February 10, the chief of Pakistan's powerful military urged the country's political class to set aside rivalries and work for the good of the people.

"The nation needs stable hands and a healing touch to move on from the politics of anarchy and polarization, which does not suit a progressive country of 250 million people," General Syed Asim Munir said in a statement.

"Political leadership and their workers should rise above self-interests and synergize efforts in governing and serving the people, which is perhaps the only way to make democracy functional and purposeful," Munir said.

The military has run Pakistan for nearly half its history since partition from India in 1947 and it still wields huge power and influence.

The February 8 vote took place amid rising political tensions and an upsurge of violence that prompted authorities to deploy more than 650,000 army, paramilitary, and police personnel across the country.

Despite the beefed-up security presence, violence continued even after the election. On February 10, Pashtun candidate Mohsen Dawar
was shot and wounded in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal district.

Crisis-hit Pakistan has been struggling with runaway inflation while Islamabad scrambles to repay more than $130 billion in foreign debt.

Reported irregularities during the February 8 poll prompted the United States, Britain, and the European Union to voice concerns about the way the vote was conducted and to urge an investigation.

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry on February 10 rejected the criticism.

PTI was banned from participating in the vote because the ECP said it had failed to properly register as a party. Its candidates then decided to run as independents after the Supreme Court and the ECP said they couldn’t use the party symbol -- a cricket bat. Parties in the country use symbols to help illiterate voters find them on the ballots.

Yet the PTI-backed independents have emerged as the largest block in the new parliament. Under Pakistani law, they must join a political party within 72 hours after their election victory is officially confirmed. They can join the PTI if it takes the required administrative steps to be cleared and approved as a party by the ECP.

Khan, 71, was prime minister from 2018 to 2022. He still enjoys huge popularity, but his political future and return to the political limelight is unclear.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, and AP

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Ryan Grim.

"We have a deal.... This locks in steadfast, long-term, predictable funding for Ukraine. The EU is taking leadership & responsibility in support for Ukraine; we know what is at stake," European Council President Charles Michel wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter, after the deal was reached rapidly after the start of a special summit in Brussels on February 1.

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Ukraine is in desperate need of financial and military assistance amid signs of political fatigue in the West as the war kicked off by Russia's unprovoked full-scale invasion nears the two-year mark.

In a video address to EU leaders after the deal was agreed, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hailed the move as "a clear signal that Ukraine will withstand and that Europe will withstand."

"It is also really important that the decision was made by all of you, all 27 member states, which is another clear sign of your strong unity," Zelenskiy told the EU leaders.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the only EU leader who maintains warm relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, had been repeatedly at odds with the other leaders of the bloc over measures to help Ukraine since Russia's invasion.

Orban, a right-wing populist who has been in power since 2010, has faced criticism that his opposition to EU aid for Ukraine amounts to an attempt to blackmail the bloc into disbursing billions of euros in EU funds for Hungary frozen by Brussels over rule-of-law and democracy concerns.

In December he vetoed the package, and ahead of the February 1 summit in the Belgian capital he appeared on track to try and do the same again.

But a deal was swiftly announced on February 1 after Orban held talks with the leaders of Germany, France, Italy, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

"He gave some ground," one European diplomat told AFP. "He saw that people were growing irritated, that there was a line not to cross," said the diplomat, who spoke under the condition of anonymity.

All of the bloc's 27 members must unanimously vote in favor of the aid package from Ukraine that would come from the EU's common budget.

"A good day for Europe," von der Leyen wrote on X, formerly Twitter after the deal.

"Once again, Europe has delivered," European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said on X.

In a video on Facebook, Orban put on a brave face, presenting the move as a victory for Hungary, saying that a review mechanism accompanying the aid package would “guarantee the rational use of the funds.”

"Hungarians’ money cannot be given to Ukrainians," Orban said. "We will not take part in the war, we will not send weapons, we continue to stand on the party of peace!"

An unnamed EU source said the leaders agreed that the European Commission would propose a review of the Ukraine aid package in two years, if needed, but such a move wouldn't include a veto right for Budapest.

Following the agreement, Ukraine said it expected to receive the first tranche of 4.5 billion euros ($4.9 billion) from Brussels next month.

Ukrainian leaders have been warning for months that they are desperately in need of fresh supplies of weapons and ammunition as Kyiv's counteroffensive stalls.

In his video address to the summit, Zelenskiy also warned that Ukrainian forces were in a race against the clock with the Russian invaders as intelligence reports confirmed that Russia was receiving 1 million artillery shells and missiles from North Korea.

"Meanwhile, the implementation of the European plan to supply 1 million artillery shells to Ukraine is being delayed," Zelenskiy said, adding that this was "a competition Europe cannot afford to lose."

Adding to the urgency, a supplementary spending bill that includes $61 billion in aid to Ukraine has been stalled in the U.S. Congress amid opposition from Republican lawmakers who want any spending package to also include sweeping changes to border protection policy in the United States.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

They made their way across the field, over patches of bare earth, around sections of rusty pipe meant for burial beneath the mountain. Eventually the metal tubes  will form yet another section of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which will soon carry 2 billion cubic feet of fracked methane from the shalefields of West Virginia to North Carolina each day. Their breath billowed in the crisp air. Beyond them stretched a bright blue sky, and mountains tinged with yellow. The past night’s rain pooled on the muddy and compacted soil beneath their feet.

Workers in highlighter-yellow vests and hard hats milled around, some looking amused, others frustrated. One or two engaged with the protesters, only to be told off by an irate site manager. A few miles away at the West Virginia state line, another three dozen or so activists did much the same atop Peters Mountain. One even managed to crawl under an excavator and lock herself in place, despite the cold. The others rallied around, enclosing her in a tight, protective circle.

Some might wonder why they bothered. After all, the project is, by the Mountain Valley Pipeline company’s estimate, 94 percent complete and will be wrapped up before summer. It  stalled for several years amid legal fights over various permits, but Senator Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat from West VIrginia, almost single-handedly revived it in 2022 in exchange for his support of key Democratic priorities. Since then, the Biden administration and the Supreme Court have all but assured its completion. With the approximately 303-mile pipeline approaching the final stretch after almost a decade’s work, it might seem hardly worth fighting at this point.

A large contingent of steadfast opposition begs to differ, and will enthusiastically explain why. The pipeline is six years behind schedule, about half a billion dollars over budget, and, despite promises that it would be done by the end of last year, delayed once again. The remaining construction is over rugged terrain, with hundreds of water crossings left to bridge. The company recently postponed, shortened, and rerouted its planned extension into North Carolina, a proposal long stymied by permitting problems with the main line. And, just last month, Equitrans, which owns the pipeline and many others across the country, was said to be considering selling itself. The road to the pipeline’s completion remains rocky, its opponents argue, with many opportunities to make finishing it as difficult as possible.

“We cannot let them destroy our land and water,” said a young woman named Ericka. Like many interviewed for this story, she gave only her first name out of fear of reprisal from Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC, which has begun suing protesters in a bid to silence them. She had brought her three children to occupy the land that day. “What are we going to drink? Where are we going to live? People have to come here and stop this.”

Killing the project is their ideal outcome. Barring that, those who have for almost a decade packed public hearings, spent weeks at sit-ins and even lived high in trees for 932 days want to make building pipelines so time consuming, so expensive, so plain annoying, that fossil fuel companies and the politicians who support them think twice about greenlighting any more.

Even as pipeline crews continue steadily boring under rivers and felling trees, activists say each day they can delay construction is another day humanity delays the worst impacts of climate change. The increasingly grave personal and legal risks they face are, they say, worth it, if only for that.

“For  five f****** years, we’ve fought you without fear,” sang the masked figures on Peters Mountain, and “we’ll fight you for five f****** more.”

Morning ripened over the ridge, and the fog rolled in, then out. The pipeline workers retreated, mostly without complaint — followed by the protestors’ calls of “Paid time off! Paid time off!” Some of those gathered began to sing: John Prine songs about beautiful landscapes stripped for coal, union songs, and striking miners’ ballads that reverberated through the same ridges long ago. When their voices grew weary, someone blared dance music through a loudspeaker as police cars rumbled up the gravel access road. They tried not to be afraid as the sirens grew louder, knowing the risk they had taken in coming here and knowing, as many said, that the time of act is now. 

As the nation’s fracking boom reached coal country about a decade ago, pipelines carrying methane began to snake across the landscape. The Mountain Valley Pipeline, or MVP, met instant fury when Mountain Valley LLC proposed it in 2014. Opposition to the project drew a wide range of people, from farmers in West Virginia to Indigenous tribes in North Carolina, together in a united front. Some were alarmed by what it would mean for their land: Razed trees, disturbed landscapes, water running brown from the tap, and, in the end, a frightening risk of leaks and explosions. A pipeline in Pennsylvania run by one of the companies involved in MVP blew up late last year; a couple and their child suffered severe burns and barely escaped with their lives. Then there’s the longer term, irreversible danger of the 90 million metric tons of carbon dioxide that will come from producing, transporting, and burning all that methane over the 40 to 50 years the pipeline is expected to operate.

Residents along the project’s path joined academics, local organizations, and environmental nonprofits in filing lawsuits, seeking injunctions, and packing hearings. As they worked the legal system, other activists staged equipment lockdowns, organized rallies, and took to the trees for months-long sit-ins. The efforts led to some wins. Opponents repeatedly delayed construction, got various permits thrown out, and leveled allegations of water quality violations and illegal work on national forest land. In late 2018, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a series of rulings annulling the pipeline’s access to federal land and striking down a key permit. The next year, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ordered an end to almost all construction. 

The project languished until the summer of 2022, when Manchin, a key Democratic senate vote who often challenges his party, made his support of Biden’s climate agenda contingent upon the pipeline’s completion. Last summer, he included a provision in the debt ceiling deal that effectively cleared away any remaining hurdles. A short time later, the Supreme Court lifted a stay on construction through a 3.5-mile stretch through Jefferson National Forest. Crews returned to work with renewed vigor.

So too did the protestors. Morning after morning, week after week, pipeline workers clocked in only to find their work impeded. Grannies locked to rocking chairs in the pipeline path, teenagers glued to construction equipment, worksites crowded by 20 to 30 people intent on stopping the day’s progress, more often than not, successfully. The campaign drew college students from nearby Roanoke, neighbors from across the mountains, seasoned organizers and newer activists with little experience, all part of a near decade-long coalition, all activated by the pipeline’s anticipated completion, and many ready to face legal consequences for opposing it.

Jammie Hale is a bespectacled and bearded 51-year-old from Giles County, Virginia. Before he joined the campaign to stop the pipeline five and a half years ago, he was depressed and struggling with addiction. It didn’t help that the ruckus of construction invaded his waking and sleeping hours as it got closer and closer to his home, which lies within the 500-foot blast zone that could level his house in an explosion. “After a while, you hear all that, it kind of gets under your skin,” he said with a gentle intensity. “You build these angers up inside you, and how do you release these angers? Through self harm?” He became sleepless, consumed with visions of his family, and the land he plans to deed to his children, going up in flames.

When people began to organize, he and others in the community joined in. He found a will to live in the work. “I’m five years sober because of this project,”  Hale said. “Because, you know, I wanted to be useful.”

Hale attended permit hearings, tested water, and, when people started sitting in trees, hiked up the mountain to support them. He brought home-cooked meals, blankets, and supplies, and rallied on the forest floor to boost their morale. “I instantly fell in love with these people because they were just so badass,” Hale said. He and his neighbors began to take more concerted action, filming and peacefully confronting pipeline company surveyors who came unannounced to survey their land for construction. Eventually, he found himself engaging in civil disobedience, fully aware of the risks he faces.

Hale is among a growing number of protesters the Mountain Valley Pipeline company has targeted with injunctions, a potentially costly legal hassle that could lead to jail time for anyone found on a construction site. Local authorities are taking an increasingly dim view of folks like Hale and show little hesitation in pursuing them for even minor infractions as the company continues to seize their land through eminent domain. These days, Hale supports protestors from afar by making signs and sharing food, among other things. There’s still some risk, he says, but if he lands in a cell or a courtroom, so be it.

“I’m not scared,” he said. “It’s kind of strange that they’re trying to get people for trespassing when they are the ones that have been trespassing.” 

Another longtime pipeline fighter who goes by Larkin is no stranger to arrests, or to supporting people whose civil disobedience has landed them in court time and again. A soft-spoken health care worker from nearby Blacksburg, Virginia, Larkin, who is in her late 30s, has been fighting resource extraction in Appalachia since she was a teenager. She spent the better part of a decade marching onto dusty strip mines, locking herself to equipment, and demanding a federal ban on mountaintop removal coal mining. Ten years ago, that energy shifted toward the region’s multiplying pipelines. The Atlantic Coast Pipeline was proposed alongside the MVP; it met with similarly vehement opposition, and eventually died amid mounting legal costs and project delays. In short, protest worked, Larkin said. 

With the  Supreme Court greenlighting the MVP, it seems to Larkin and others that there’s only one thing left to do. That is, throw their bodies upon the gears, in hopes of at least slowing things down for one more day, every day, for as long as possible, by force if nothing else.

“We knew from the get-go that a chapter of the fight requiring an escalated level of resistance is going to come if folks have any hope in pushing back,” Larkin said. 

Despite the risks, Larkin, and many others, feel they are taking ownership of their future and their dignity. When we fight, they say, we win, and it’s better that fossil fuel companies know their encroachments won’t go unchallenged. Larkin also feels it will deter future projects like the MVP. Without organized opposition, she feels the whole regulatory system will continue to rubber-stamp permits until the ocean overtakes Washington. 

“Old men with no thought to the future are ruining things for all of us,” Larkin said. “It really is down to us to just be mad. And do it with our bodies and be in the way.”

She  knows she’s never far from becoming a target of the Mountain Valley Pipeline company’s ire. Over the years, she’s seen friends locked up and beaten down at various protests, and sometimes it makes her feel old. After so long in the fight, her knees and back ache, and she can’t spend hours sitting on the floor painting banners like she used to. When she began this work, she burned herself out quickly, believing that the world would end if she didn’t give everything she had.  

 “When it’s so obvious that the world is on fire, it does feel like you have to put it out on the table all at once,” she said. “Just like, why think about the future, we have no future, kind of thing. And here we are, eight years later in this fight.”  

Yet there are moments, even now, when the pipeline seems inevitable, when she feels the joy of having taken a stand, of having made lifelong friends, of having done the right thing.

“I freaking love to have daybreak on a new blockade that has gone up in the night,” Larkin said, smiling. “And I think the other thing that I love is that I have really met and built real relationships of trust and solidarity with neighbors, people in my community who I wouldn’t have otherwise known.”  

The pace is fast and the emotions run hot right now, but the stakes have felt high for a long time, Larkin said. She’s watched friends get sick, both from burnout and from the environmental risks of living near extraction, and watched some die of environmental illnesses and illnesses of stress and poverty. When trying to pinpoint exactly how the fight has lasted so long, Larkin points to the constant influx of new activists, particularly energized young people from nearby towns and colleges, and from other, similar campaigns.  

One activist who goes by Gator had only just turned 18 and drifted north after a working-class childhood on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana. He felt disconnected and adrift at a military high school, beset by a gnawing sense of climate apocalypse and a bleak future. “My home is disappearing,” he said bluntly. 

Gator found his way to the Weelaunee “Stop Cop City” occupation in Atlanta last summer. The connections he made there led him to the woods of Virginia and West Virginia, where he camped in the pipeline’s path and met people who shared his feelings of desperation and urgency.  

He felt himself cross a Rubicon of sorts during a stint in jail after his arrest at another demonstration. He spent several days locked up, not knowing how much time had passed and listening to guards mock the people around him. As he sat there on the cold concrete bed, he knew there was no return to regular life, to regular expectations for himself.

“It used to be that you’d be like, ‘I want to keep my nose clean, because I have a chance of having a career and  having, at least for me, and the people I love, a comfortable life,’” Gator said. “But even that is disappearing.” 

The atmosphere in Elliston was, like the movement itself, at once nervous and defiant. Like environmental justice advocates most everywhere, those standing up to the Mountain Valley Pipeline are facing ever greater restrictions on their protests and increasingly harsh punishment for their actions.

In September, Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC filed a lawsuit against more than 40 individuals and two organizations — Appalachians Against Pipelines and Rising Tide North America. The suit  seeks more than $4 million in damages and a ruling prohibiting the defendants from accessing construction sites, planning demonstrations, or raising funds for protest activities. The company said it decided to sue because protestors endanger themselves and workers, and because they’re breaking the law. 

“If opponents were truly interested in environmental protection,” said MVP spokeswoman Natalie Cox, “they would have engaged with us to address their concerns through honest, open dialogue, which we respectfully offered on numerous occasions, rather than wasting agency resources and burdening the courts to support their myopic agendas.” Cox also blamed protesters for disrupting landowners and limiting the region’s economic opportunities.

Such lawsuits — which activists and their attorneys often call a strategic action against public participation — are usually filed by corporate or government entities against people who speak out on a matter of public concern. Those fighting the pipeline say the suit is intended to chill protest and intimidate them. Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC has been regularly adding defendants to the suit, often after identifying them near protests or reading their names in the news. Many protesters have been charged with felonies in recent months, all for blocking construction.

Despite a relative lack of trouble at the Peters Mountain lockdown – authorities arrested two people and quickly released them – the arraignment later that week proved more contentious. The two young activists were unexpectedly re-arrested and prosecutors slapped each of them with a felony kidnapping charge – presumably, protesters say, for asking construction workers to leave their vehicles – and held without bond. 

According to Appalachians Against Pipelines, another protester, who goes by Pine, turned themself in on a felony warrant; they were charged with kidnapping and theft for holding up a work vehicle. A judge set bail at $25,000. Another protester was sentenced to six months, with three of them suspended, for similar charges. They are free pending an appeal. 

“This system is seeking to doom us to a future that will not even exist,” Pine said in a statement. “However, there is solidarity everywhere … these ridiculous charges that I received do not make me afraid, since I know I do not stand alone.”

Fear of arrest and imprisonment remains a restless undercurrent for many activists, said a young organizer who gave only her first name, Coral. She stepped away from fighting pipelines on tribal land to answer a call for support in central Appalachia..

“I’ve been grappling with the repression piece a lot because it is working,” said Coral, who identifies as Indigenous but would not state her affiliation for fear that it might help identify her. For her, and many of those fighting alongside her, the effort to stop the pipeline is a commitment to protecting unceded Indigenous land, and to building a world free from old, colonial, and extractive social structures. That obligation weighs heavily on her, though. The killing of an environmental activist at an ongoing forest blockade in Atlanta and the ceaseless violence against Native land defenders worldwide is never far from her mind. “Our people were persecuted and killed for fighting for our land,” she said. 

And yet, despite it all, the pace of protest has increased since construction resumed. Few weeks go by without people locking themselves to equipment, blocking the pipeline route, or picketing banks that support the project and the company building it. Despite several frightening incidents, including one in which crews reportedly felled trees dangerously close to an activist, the blockades and lockdowns continue. The hope, many activists said, is to draw a critical mass of supporters to the region. The fight, they said, is far from over, and they hope to bring the same kind of energy sparked by the massive Dakota Access Pipeline protests.

In Elliston, as the crisp October day warmed, the crowd was as energized and raucous as ever, echoing demands that have evolved over decades of environmental organizing in central Appalachia. Many hands unfurled colorful banners connecting the fight against climate change to movements opposing war, genocide, incarceration, and the theft of Indigenous land. Before long, though, several police cars slowly rolled up the road from the main highway, blocking the group’s exit. As officers stepped from their cars and made their way up the hill, some protesters with children in tow began to worry about their safety but remained for the moment. 

As the police amassed, a young person of about 20, bundled in warm clothing and locked to an excavator, called down to the crowd. Their face couldn’t be seen, but their voice sounded small and very young. “I’m here because…these mountains are beautiful,” they called, laughing. “Appalachia is beautiful. This planet is beautiful!” Some in the crowd, though anxious, smiled at the voice speaking for them. The crowd held one another and swayed in the breeze as the drums started up again.

“The judge has had it up to here with y’all,” one exasperated police officer remarked as some in the group talked him down from arresting everyone in sight, mothers and children and all. Other officers took photos of license plates and threatened to increase their retaliation if they saw any of the cars at another protest.

When the group moved on to a neighboring plot owned by someone sympathetic to their cause, the police followed them, threatening to cite anyone who stuck around. Everyone knew that probably meant being added to MVP’s lawsuit. They decided to move along, but vowed to return another day.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Inside the last-ditch effort to stop the Mountain Valley Pipeline on Jan 16, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Katie Myers.

Few U.S. colleges have generated more controversy for their response to Israel’s war on Gaza than the University of Pennsylvania. Penn’s president Liz Magill faced criticism for her answers about hypothetical scenarios of antisemitism posed during a congressional hearing by Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., who has herself faced criticism for embracing antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Stefanik’s line of questioning last month was part of a wider campaign in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel: demonizing pro-Palestine activism. Stefanik conflated calls for “intifada” — an Arabic word for “uprising” — with antisemitic attacks and asked Magill, along with other university presidents, if these purported calls for the genocide of Jews constituted harassment. Magill, by all accounts, stumbled through a non-answer.

Under pressure from billionaire donors and pro-Israel lobby groups, Magill and Penn board chair Scott Bok resigned four days after the hearing.

News of the resignations was framed as part of the university’s failure to handle antisemitism on campus in the wake of October 7. But the effort to oust Magill began months before the Hamas attack, according to public letters and people familiar with the fight over Israel and Palestine at Penn. As early as August, Magill had drawn the ire of pro-Israel lobbying groups, nonprofits, and university donors after rebuffing their efforts to cancel a literary festival on campus called Palestine Writes.

The story of what happened at Penn was distorted to obscure the earlier round of anti-Palestinian attacks against the literary festival, said Radhika Sainath, a senior staff attorney at Palestine Legal who works on speech and academic freedom. Palestine Legal advised the festival and urged Magill to resist censoring the event.

Sainath, who attended the festival to conduct research for a novel, said that media reports ran with unverified claims that Palestine Writes had stoked antisemitism, even suggesting that the festival was linked to the Hamas attack.

“You could really see how pretty much every newspaper was just adopting the framework of these Israel lobby groups as a given, as if the festival was antisemitic,” she said. “People were just really upset in part about a large number of Palestinians potentially coming to campus to talk about Palestinian literature.”

That coverage amplified the attacks that led to the congressional hearings, eventually precipitating Magill’s resignation. University officials squandered an opportunity to correct false claims that students had called for the genocide of Jewish people, Sainath said: “They kind of went along with it and fell into this trap.”

A banner for the University of Pennsylvania on campus in Philadelphia on Dec. 8, 2023.

Over the summer, wealthy donors, along with local and national Jewish groups, lined up to take issue with the university’s plans to host a festival in September celebrating Palestinian authors.

One of the leaders of the informal network of critics was Marc Rowan, CEO of the investment firm Apollo Global Management. Rowan serves as advisory board chair of the university’s Wharton School, which he attended, and was previously a member of Penn’s board of trustees. He also chairs the board of the UJA-Federation of New York, an influential Jewish group involved in pro-Israel advocacy.

Another major force against the festival was billionaire Republican donor Ronald Lauder, also a Wharton alum, who pushed Magill to cancel Palestine Writes in a meeting in Philadelphia and two subsequent phone calls.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia and the Anti-Defamation League of Philadelphia sent two letters to Magill in August complaining of “a high likelihood” that the festival would “promote inflammatory and antisemitic narratives about Israel.” They alleged that some of the speakers, including Marc Lamont Hill; Noura Erakat; Maysoon Zayid; Huwaida Arraf; Roger Waters; and the festival’s executive director, Susan Abulhawa, had a “history of antisemitism,” citing criticisms of Zionism and Israel’s human rights abuses. The groups said the university should issue a statement “questioning the judgment” of the departments working with the festival, which included Penn’s English, near Eastern languages and civilizations, and cinema and media studies departments.

Festival organizers pushed back. In a September 2 letter to Magill and other university leaders, Abulhawa described the complaints as part of “a campaign to discredit and denigrate” the literature festival. “We categorically reject this cynical, sinister, and ahistorical conflation of bigotry with the moral repudiation of a foreign state’s criminality, particularly as most of us are victims of that state,” she wrote. “Every instance of the examples listed in the original letter refers to Zionism, Zionists, or Israel. Situating those individual Palestinians and our allies in league with actual antisemites is wholly irresponsible and dangerous.”

Ten days later, Magill and other university leaders issued a statement distancing Penn from the festival, citing concerns raised about certain speakers “who have a documented and troubling history of engaging in antisemitism by speaking and acting in ways that denigrate Jewish people.” The university condemned antisemitism, the officials wrote, but supported the free exchange of ideas. “This includes the expression of views that are controversial and even those that are incompatible with our institutional values.”

When it became clear that Palestine Writes would go forward as planned, Rowan, Lauder, and other trustees organized an open letter to Magill reiterating concerns about the festival. The letter eventually gained more than 4,000 signatories, including prominent alumni.

The festival began on September 22 and went off mostly without a hitch, despite threats against organizers and at least two high-profile attendees who were kept from attending in person. Gary Younge, a sociology professor at the University of Manchester; Waters of Pink Floyd; and author Viet Thanh Nguyen were scheduled as plenary speakers. Nguyen was the only one of the three who could attend in person. Younge said his visa was inexplicably revoked prior to his trip to the U.S., and Waters said the university prohibited him from stepping on campus; he spoke to the festival online from the Philadelphia Airport. The university countered that Waters was originally set to attend virtually and a last-minute change would have required additional security. Festival organizers disputed the university’s account.

Attendees and festival board members who spoke to The Intercept described Palestine Writes as a multigenerational, multicultural event that welcomed everyone and fostered an important cultural space on campus, particularly for Palestinian students.

But in the weeks following October 7, media outlets and critics linked the festival to the Hamas attack and said it had fomented an unsafe campus environment for Jewish students. In a letter to the university newspaper published October 12, Rowan and other donors called on Magill and Bok to resign and urged alumni to “close the checkbooks” and halt donations. “It took less than two weeks to go from the Palestine Writes Literary Festival on UPenn’s campus to the barbaric slaughter and kidnapping of Israelis,” Rowan wrote.

Appearing on CNBC, Rowan said his appeal to alumni was a “difficult call for a place that I love for the last 40 years.” He insisted the issue wasn’t about free speech, which he supported — it was about university leaders saying they condemned antisemitism but allowing the literature festival to happen.

“There has been a gathering storm around these issues,” Rowan said. “Microaggressions are condemned with extreme moral outrage, and yet violence — particularly violence against Jews, antisemitism — seems to have found a place of tolerance on the campus, protected by free speech.” Magill was “not capable of exercising moral leadership,” he said, “because she feels academic pressure and peer pressure.”

Lauder threatened to cut additional funding in a letter to Magill on October 17, saying that she was forcing him to reexamine his financial support “absent unsatisfactory measures to address antisemitism at the university.” The letter brought him great sorrow, Lauder wrote. “I am so sorry you did not cancel the event.”

That university administrators, media outlets, and politicians accepted that narrative uncritically underscored the hysteria of the moment, said Bill Mullen, a board member of Palestine Writes. “It’s amazing to me that people can get away with this without being fact-checked,” he said. “You just have to say antisemitism and you terrify people into not asking questions.”

“The attack on Palestine Writes was a very targeted attack on Palestinian writers and intellectuals. And since October 7, we have literally seen Israel murdering Palestinian poets and writers and journalists,” Mullen added. “They wanted to silence these voices.”

After Magill and Bok resigned, Julie Platt, vice chair of the university board, was named interim board chair. Platt also serves as board chair of the Jewish Federations of North America. Penn named J. Larry Jameson, the dean of its medical school, as interim president.

Since the resignations, the university has further aligned itself with pro-Israel lobbying groups and donors. Last week, a delegation of faculty took a three-day “solidarity tour” of Israel that included meetings with Israeli government officials and a visit to the Gaza envelope.

Rowan, meanwhile, has sought to guide a transformation at Penn. Days after Magill’s resignation, he sent a letter to trustees raising concerns about the university’s culture and “political orientation,” warning that it had “allowed for preferred versus free speech” and asking how the university considered “viewpoint diversity” in hiring.

An anonymous petition circulated that called on the university to fire three faculty members who had protested in support of Gaza on campus, including festival organizer Huda Fakhreddine, an associate professor of Arabic literature; her husband, a poet and professor of creative writing; and another professor of Persian literature. Fakhreddine, one of several Penn faculty named in the congressional hearing, said that she has since been doxxed and received death threats.

At its annual convention last week in Philadelphia, the Modern Language Association’s Delegate Assembly passed an emergency motion defending speech on Palestine and supporting Fakhreddine and others at Penn facing retaliation for criticizing Israel’s war on Gaza.

University faculty have pushed back against interference by donors and trustees. The executive committee of Penn’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors called on the university to address harassment, intimidation, and threats against faculty and warned of “the chilling effects of statements by trustees, donors, and university administrators on teaching, learning, and scholarship.”

Palestine Writes is now battling a court order that it remove from its website a logo for the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, which had awarded a grant to the organization. After the dustup over the festival reached the mainstream, the council sent a cease-and-desist letter, which was immediately published by the Anti-Defamation League with unredacted contact information for Abulhawa. In November, a judge on the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas ordered the logo removed, saying she understood why the council would not want to be affiliated with the festival in the current political climate.

The issue reached the office of Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who publicly denounced Magill and the university after the congressional hearing. The governor’s office represented the arts council in court proceedings against the festival.

“It was just so eye-opening to me that something as simple as a literature festival could be so threatening to pro-Israel supporters,” said Marie Kelly, a board member for Palestine Writes. The festival was a historic celebration and affirmation of Palestinian culture, Kelly said. “That’s not anything that any pro-Israel academic, millionaire, or politician can take away.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Akela Lacy.

The legal action comes after the FTC in May proposed banning Meta from monetizing children's data, a practice regulators said violates the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The FTC proposal aims to strengthen a 2019 consent decree prohibiting Meta—then called Facebook—from profiting off data collected from minors. As part of the settlement, the company agreed to pay a $5 billion fine for previous privacy violations.

Earlier this week, a federal judge denied a motion filed by Meta seeking the court's intervention in the company's dispute with the FTC.

"This is a blatant example of the company's ruthless profit-over-safety strategy," the Real Facebook Oversight Board, a watchdog group, said of the new lawsuit. "They claim they want regulation but when they realize their business model is threatened, they attack the regulator."

Emily Peterson-Cassin, digital rights advocate for the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said that "Facebook made an agreement with the FTC, and now it doesn't want to face the consequences of possible violations of that agreement."

"It's beyond cynical for Facebook to launch a legal attack on the FTC's authority to enforce an agreement the company voluntarily entered into," she added. "Facebook is accused of hurting and exploiting kids; the public needs the FTC to get to the bottom of those accusations and hold Facebook liable for any and all violations, without delay."

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Meta suing the FTC is "like Big Tobacco trying to gut the [Food and Drug Administration] because they didn't want to be held accountable for hooking kids onto nicotine."

"The FTC has been around for over a century now," Warren added. "This agency is constitutional and using its powers to apply the law as written."

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass) also weighed in on Meta's lawsuit, saying that "Meta's baseless lawsuit is a weak attempt to avoid accountability for its repeated failures to protect kids' privacy online."

"When a Big Tech company wants to take the federal cop off the beat, it's probably because it doesn't want to be caught," the senator added. "For years, Meta has been willfully ignoring the problems it has created—including a privacy crisis, a teen mental health crisis, and an algorithmic injustice crisis—and this lawsuit is just the latest craven distraction."

According to the children's advocacy group Fairplay:

Meta has posed a threat to the privacy and welfare of young people in the U.S. for many years, as it targeted them to further its data-driven commercial surveillance advertising system. Scandal after scandal has exposed the company's blatant disregard for children and youth, with nearly daily headlines about its irresponsible actions coming from former-employees-turned-whistleblowers and major multistate and bipartisan investigations of state attorneys general. Despite multiple attempts by regulators to contain Meta's ongoing undermining of its user privacy, including through multiple FTC consent decrees, it is evident that a substantive remedy is required to safeguard U.S. youth.

"While many have noted social media's role in fueling the mental health crisis, the Federal Trade Commission has taken actual meaningful action to protect young people online by its order prohibiting serial privacy offender Meta from monetizing minors' data," Fairplay executive director Josh Golin said in a statement. "So it's not surprising that Meta is launching this brazen attack on the commission."

"Anyone who cares about the well-being of children—and the safety of American consumers—should rally to the defense of the commission and be deeply concerned about the lengths Meta will go to preserve its ability to profit at the expense of young people," Golin added.

Katharina Kopp, director of policy at the Center for Digital Democracy, said that "for decades Meta has put the maximization of profits from so-called behavioral advertising above the best interests of children and teens."

"Meta's failure to comply repeatedly with its 2012 and 2020 settlements with the FTC, including its noncompliance with the federal children's privacy law (COPPA), and the unique developmental vulnerability of minors, justifies the FTC to propose the modifications of Meta's consent decree and to require it to stop profiting from the data it gathers on children and teens," Kopp stated.

"It should not surprise anybody then that Meta is now going after the FTC with its lawsuit," she added. "But this attack on the FTC is essentially an attack on commonsense regulation to curtail out-of-control commercial power and an attack on our children, teenagers, and every one of us."

John Davisson, the litigation director at the nonprofit research group Electronic Privacy Information Center, asserted that "it seems there's no legal theory, however far-fetched, that Meta won't deploy to avoid a full accounting of its harmful data practices."

"The reason is clear," Davisson said. "A hearing before the FTC will confirm that Meta continues to mishandle personal data and put the privacy and safety of minors at risk, despite multiple orders not to do so."

"The changes FTC is proposing to Meta's exploitative business model can't come soon enough," he added. "We hope the court will reject Meta's latest attempt to run out the clock, as another federal court did just this week."

The FTC and Meta were already locked in a separate antitrust fight stemming from the agency's request for a federal court to force the company to sell Instagram and WhatsApp. That case has yet to go to trial.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Interest quickly shifted to Al-Shifa Hospital, where the carnage has been horrific.  This was said to be the wicked heart of operations, one depicted with exaggerated relish in a video titled “Home to Hamas’ Headquarters, This is an IDF 3D Diagram of the Shifa Hospital”.  In an explanatory note, the Israeli Defence Forces state in the crude production that the hospital “is not only the largest hospital in Gaza but it also acts as the main headquarters for Hamas’ terrorist activity.”  It goes on to note that, “Terrorism does not belong in a hospital and the IDF will operate to uncover any terrorist infrastructure.”

This bit of amateurish theatrics suitably complemented another effort that made its debut on November 11.  In its official Arabic account affiliated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Israel posted a selfie video (now deleted) starring a Palestinian nurse indignant at Hamas’ commandeering of the Al-Shifa hospital.  A close inspection of the production could only engender doubt: a well-laundered lab coat, appropriate positioning of implicating logos, crude simulations of background bombing, the unconvincing accent.  “The only thing missing was a degree hanging in the background saying Tel Aviv Upstairs Medical College,” a scornful Marc Owen Jones of The Daily Beast wrote.

Despite these stumbling efforts, support followed from Israel’s staunch backers, the United States.  In a press briefing held on November 14, NSC Coordinator for Strategic Communications, John Kirby, asserted that “we have information that  Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad use some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including Al-Shifa, and tunnels underneath them to conceal and to support their military operations and to hold hostages.”

The language used by Kirby, however, did not exactly suggest a thriving command and control center at work, though he would go so far as to claim that the hospital served as a “command-and-control node”.  “They have stored weapons there, and they’re prepared to respond to an Israeli operation against that facility.”

When the IDF eventually made its way into the hospital, the initial evidence was not promising.  In videos and photos posted by the Israeli forces, none revealed tunnels and evidence of a vast command centre.  As Aric Toler of the New York Times reported, a mere 10 guns were found at the first count.  “The IDF has claimed that the ‘beating heart’ of Hamas’ operations is beneath Shifa.  Presumably, they’ll release more photos/videos?”  In another post, Toler identifies various “grab bags” with “guns and the body armor scattered around, and a laptop next to CD-Rs.”

In another round of public relations tripping, two new videos released by both the IDF and the Shin Bet security agency purported to document, as the Times of Israel describes it, a tunnel shaft with “a winding staircase from around three meters deep, continuing down for another seven meters until it reaches part of the tunnel network.  The tunnel continues for five meters, before turning to the right and continuing for another 50 meters.”  At the end of the tunnel lies an obstructing blast door, equipped with a hole for shooters.  “The findings,” an IDF statement claimed with weak conviction, “prove beyond all doubt that buildings in the hospital complex are used as infrastructure for the Hamas terror organization, for terror activity.  This is further proof of the cynical use that the Hamas terror organization makes of the residents of the Gaza Strip as a human shield for its murderous terror activities.”

Despite some strained satisfaction in the statement, the picture Israel offers is gnarled and tattered.  The IDF production teams continue to struggle to revive a cadaverous narrative, using their own soldiers as props (because that’s convincing) to describe their first impressions on seeing “a terrorist tunnel”.  Just as its cream-of-the-crop elite failed to get wind of the October 7 attack, suggesting an expertise drugged by hubris, Israel’s information strategy seems increasingly suspect, slippery and ever subject to qualification.  Rifles, a truck, and a hostage or two, do not a central military command center make.

It is also worth noting that physicians and doctors working at the hospital – the authentic ones, in any case – have also been perplexed by the allegations that Al-Shifa serves as a throbbing command and control hub for Hamas and its combat operations.  Norwegian physician Mads Gilbert, who has worked at the facility for 16 years, told Democracy Now! that there was “no evidence at all” that such claims were true.  “If it was a military command center, I would not work there.”  At least we can be sure that Gilbert is not a stage extra.

In this bleak mess, it is worth stressing that even if the hospital proved to be a military facility, humanitarian protections would not mysteriously cease for those patients and staff within it.  “Anything that the attacking force can do to allow the humanitarian functions of that hospital to continue,” reasons Adil Haq of Rutgers Law School, “they’re obligated to do, even if there’s some office somewhere in the building where there is a fighter holed up.”  But the strategy against Al-Shifa was never humanitarian to begin with, starting with depriving Gaza access to fuel, food and water.  The rest is Pallywood.

The post Pallywood Tactics: Al-Shifa Hospital and Israel’s Propaganda Effort appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Interest quickly shifted to Al-Shifa Hospital, where the carnage has been horrific. This was said to be the wicked heart of operations, one depicted with exaggerated relish in a video titled “Home to Hamas’ Headquarters, This is an IDF 3D Diagram of the Shifa Hospital”. In an explanatory note, the Israeli Defence Forces state in the crude production that the hospital “is not only the largest hospital in Gaza but it also acts as the main headquarters for Hamas’ terrorist activity.” It goes on to note that, “Terrorism does not belong in a hospital and the IDF will operate to uncover any terrorist infrastructure.”

This bit of amateurish theatrics suitably complemented another effort which made its debut on November 11. In its official Arabic account affiliated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Israel posted a selfie video (now deleted) starring a Palestinian nurse indignant at Hamas’ commandeering of the Al-Shifa hospital. A close inspection of the production could only engender doubt: a well laundered lab coat, appropriate positioning of implicating logos, crude simulations of background bombing, the unconvincing accent. “The only thing missing was a degree hanging in the background saying Tel Aviv Upstairs Medical College,” a scornful Marc Owen Jones of The Daily Beast wrote.

Despite these stumbling efforts, support followed from Israel’s staunch backers, the United States. In a press briefing held on November 14, NSC Coordinator for Strategic Communications, John Kirby, asserted that “we have information that Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad use some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including Al-Shifa, and tunnels underneath them to conceal and to support their military operations and to hold hostages.”

The language used by Kirby, however, did not exactly suggest a thriving command and control centre at work, though he would go so far as to claim that the hospital served as a “command-and-control node”. “They have stored weapons there, and they’re prepared to respond to an Israeli operation against that facility.”

When the IDF eventually made its way into the hospital, the initial evidence was not promising. In videos and photos posted by the Israeli forces none revealed tunnels and evidence of a vast command centre. As Aric Toler of the New York Times reported, a mere 10 guns were found at the first count. “The IDF has claimed that the ‘beating heart’ of Hamas’ operations is beneath Shifa. Presumably they’ll release more photos/videos?” In another post, Toler identifies various “grab bags” with “guns and the body armor scattered around, and a laptop next to CD-Rs.”

In another round of public relations tripping, two new videos released by both the IDF and the Shin Bet security agency purported to document, as the Times of Israel describes it, a tunnel shaft with “a winding staircase from around three meters deep, continuing down for another seven meters until it reaches part of the tunnel network. The tunnel continues for five meters, before turning to the right and continuing for another 50 meters.” At the end of the tunnel lies an obstructing blast door, equipped with a hole for shooters. “The findings,” an IDF statement claimed with weak conviction, “prove beyond all doubt that buildings in the hospital complex are used as infrastructure for the Hamas terror organization, for terror activity. This is further proof of the cynical use that the Hamas terror organization makes of the residents of the Gaza Strip as a human shield for its murderous terror activities.”

Despite some strained satisfaction in the statement, the picture Israel offers is gnarled and tattered. The IDF production teams continue to struggle in reviving a cadaverous narrative, using their own soldiers as props (because that’s convincing) to describe their first impressions on seeing “a terrorist tunnel”. Just as its cream-of-the-crop elite failed to get wind of the October 7 attack, suggesting an expertise drugged by hubris, Israel’s information strategy seems increasingly suspect, slippery and ever subject to qualification. Rifles, a truck, and a hostage or two, do not a central military command centre make.

It is also worth noting that physicians and doctors working at the hospital – the authentic ones, in any case – have also been perplexed by the allegations that Al-Shifa serves as a throbbing command and control hub for Hamas and its combat operations. Norwegian physician Mads Gilbert, who has worked at the facility for 16 years, told Democracy Now! that there was “no evidence at all” that such claims were true. “If it was a military command centre, I would not work there.” At least we can be sure that Gilbert is not a stage extra.

In this bleak mess, it is worth stressing that even if the hospital proved to be a military facility, humanitarian protections would not mysteriously cease for those patients and staff within it. “Anything that the attacking force can do to allow the humanitarian functions of that hospital to continue,” reasons Adil Haq of Rutgers Law School, “they’re obligated to do, even if there’s some office somewhere in the building where there is a fighter holed up.” But the strategy against Al-Shifa was never humanitarian to begin with, starting with depriving Gaza access to fuel, food and water. The rest is Pallywood.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

On Thursday, the Department of Energy took aim at both of those issues, announcing the Biden administration’s goal of cutting the cost of home decarbonization in half and slashing household energy costs at least 20 percent by the end of the decade.   

“Every American deserves to live in a home with affordable, clean, reliable power,” said energy secretary Jennifer Granholm in remarks prepared for the announcement. Energy savings, she said, “means real money back into the pockets of hard-working Americans.”

The effort will focus on spurring cheaper ways of retrofitting households that make below 80 percent of their area’s median income. Granholm highlighted low-cost approaches such as installing simple, compact heat pumps and insulated panels for exterior walls.

The new targets are part of the Biden administration’s broader Justice40 initiative, which aims to funnel 40 percent of the benefits of federal climate action to low-income and minority communities. But the hope is that any solutions will be applicable elsewhere as well. 

“We want to look at technologies that can start in affordable housing and go to the larger built environment,” said Ram Narayanamurthy, deputy director of the Energy Department’s building technologies office. ”We know that we have to drive down the costs, and make energy more affordable.”

The push announced today, called the Affordable Home Energy Shot, is the eighth and final pillar in the agency’s “Energy Earthshot” initiative, the objective of which is to accelerate the Biden administration’s attempt to roughly halve the nation’s emissions by 2030. The first of these initiatives, the “Hydrogen Shot” announced in the summer of 2021, set the goal of reducing the price of clean hydrogen fuel by 80 percent by 2030. Other “shots” include driving down the cost of floating offshore wind technology, geothermal energy, and technology to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. 

 “The Affordable Home Energy Earth Shot is a great example of the federal government stepping in to fill a real gap in the market,” said Sara Baldwin, senior director of electrification at Energy Innovation Policy & Technology, a nonprofit energy and climate think tank. She pointed to the success of the Department of Energy’s 2011 SunShot initiative to cut the cost of utility-scale solar to $1 per watt within a decade. Prices hit that mark in 2017, roughly three years early.

Funding for the latest efforts flows from the bipartisan infrastructure law enacted in 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. The two sweeping laws provided $13.5 billion for the Department of Energy’s housing programs.  

On Thursday, the Biden administration also announced $30 million in clean energy funding from the infrastructure bill for 27 states, counties, and cities, as well as the MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians in Alabama. The grants, awarded to help primarily low-income and minority communities, will be disbursed by states and local governments to fund rural electrification projects, build electric vehicle charging stations, and power hospitals, among other local initiatives. 

The Department of Energy admits that ensuring Justice40 communities will get their share of the research and development benefits from the latest energy shot will be harder than simply tracking grant dollars. Many of those same communities have already criticized the administration for failing to define exactly what such a “benefit” is and keeping what amounts to a very loose score of where the funds are going. 

“Not every project is going to be something that directly serves a community,” said Michael Reiner, a policy analyst in the Energy Department office of economic impact and diversity. ”But you want to know that what you’re investing in is making progress toward something that will.” 

The department is also still in the process of establishing the benchmarks and processes for assessing progress on achieving the latest Earthshot’s overall reduction goals. But, officials say, the first step is ensuring that everyone is working toward the same end. 
“It’s really about pushing the innovation forward with new materials [and] new technology in a way that can bring down the cost of what’s currently needed to decarbonize homes,” said Jennifer Arrigo, the department’s director for science and energy crosscuts. “Energy Shots are meant to provide that Northstar.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Biden administration launches ‘Earthshot’ effort to slash energy bills on Oct 12, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Tik Root.

This content originally appeared on UN News - Global perspective Human stories and was authored by UN News/Reem Abaza.

This content originally appeared on UN News - Global perspective Human stories and was authored by UN News/Reem Abaza.

The post Unsmoking the World: The Philip Morris Rebranding Effort appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

God really must love Philip Morris.

— John Safran, Haaretz, November 29, 2021

John Safran is a scamp, but in the finest tradition of investigative ones.  With the enthusiasm of a bloodhound, he gets wind of a scent and goes for it.  Of recent interest to his gonzo style of comedic yet lethal line of inquiry was the tobacco giant, Philip Morris International (PMI), and the generally sinister behaviour of big tobacco.  The result of his findings: Puff Piece: How Philip Morris set vaping alight (and burned down the English language).

While Puff Piece was published in 2021, it continues to be frighteningly relevant to efforts by big tobacco to clean, ostensibly, their Augean stables, even as they continue dirtying the bodies of those who persist in puffing.  Safran identifies an absurdist language at play, a vulgar negation of meaning.  Philip Morris, for instance, envisages a future without cigarettes and intends to “unsmoke” the world.

The company also gave the world its IQOS products, notably the HeatStick, which purportedly heats the tobacco instead of burning it, leading the user to engage in an act of non-smoking.  “Because they don’t burn the tobacco,” states the company website, “these products are smoke-free producing a nicotine-containing aerosol that is fundamentally different from cigarette smoke.”  A gentle warning accompanies the observation: such products are not free of risks; they “provide nicotine, which is addictive, but our science shows they are a better choice for adults than continuing to smoke cigarettes.”

To give his work deep lashings of authenticity, Safran took up smoking and vaping.  He found himself short of breath.  He began having chest pains.  To secure more intimate access to the company, Safran purchased shares.  Acting as a concerned shareholder, he gave PMI’s International Investor Relations a call, expressing worries that a migration of smokers to IQOS would not see them remain users, and certainly not dedicated ones.  Not so, came the brisk reply; they tended to be a “one-to-one” replacement between cigarettes and the company’s HeatSticks.  A smoker’s daily complement, in other words, would be replaced by one using IQOS.  Addiction would not so much be ended as substituted.

Over the last few years, the company has gone tar deep into the cesspool of public relations and advertising, coming up with a dastardly rebrand campaign. No longer is it the purveyor of addictive, killer products.  This is the happy company, a keen proponent of wellness, a word that seems to have found its way into everything from the pronouncements of mat bound yogis to suited CEOs in the corporate boardroom.

In February 2021, the company announced its Beyond Nicotine strategy, which, in the words of CEO Jacek Olczak, “articulates a clear ambition to leverage our expertise in inhalation and aerosolization into adjacent areas – including respiratory drug delivery and selfcare wellness – with a goal to reach at least USD1 billion in net revenues by 2025.”

Banish smoking from the lexicon, along with its poisonous implications (cigarettes take the lives of half of its users, killing eight million per annum or, as Safran likes to call it, “a Holocaust and a quarter per annum”).  In its place come those innocuous clumsy terms: inhalation and aerosolization.  It makes it so much easier to then refocus the aim of production away from the idea of smoke as wicked to products supposedly devoid of it.  Indeed, by 2025, PMI hopes to net over 50 percent of total net revenue from smoke free products.

In line with this strategy of rebranding in the name of benevolence, PMI acquired the British inhaler company Vectura some months later.  In July, Olczak promised that acquiring Vectura “following the recently announced agreement to acquire Fertin Pharma, will position us to accelerate this journey by expanding our capabilities in innovative inhaled and oral product formulations in order to deliver long-term growth and returns.”

Spinning and weaving meanings distant from their consequences, PMI’s dissembling CEO insists that such products are “inhaled therapeutics”, with his company committed “to science and the financial resources to empower Vectura’s skilled team to execute on an ambitious long-term vision.”

The company continues the fable of healing by explaining what inhaled therapeutics are: “a sub-area of respiratory drug delivery that refers to treatments that are breathed in orally, which can provide a faster bioavailability/delivery of care, faster onset of effect and/or superior safety profile compared to standard of care.”  It also throws in one for “selfcare wellness”, which “includes botanical and other products, supplements, and over-the-counter solutions that enable consumers to take care of their physical, mental, and emotional well-being.”  Take PMI’s products, the healthy choice; join the well-being revolution and get fit whilst you are at it!

In 2023, Olczak seemed to go even further in telling the Financial Times that PMI could satisfy the ESG (environmental, social, and governance) requirements modern investors are taking note of.  The passport through the pearly gates and into an ESG designation is intended to come from such products as e-cigarettes which, while marketed as less toxic than the usual body polluters, nonetheless feeds the body with toxic chemicals.

Students of history will notice a pattern here: the use of cigarettes previously marketed as a sexy statement of choice and freedom; the doctor, equipped with cooked results and a smile of sweet approval at the next convert to nicotine’s church.

Little wonder that a number of those in the medical fraternity felt a sense of dread at PMI’s efforts.  Here was history repeating itself with hidden menace.  “We are deeply concerned that Philip Morris International will use the inhalation services technologies developed by Vectura to make their tobacco products more addictive,” declared the presidents of both the American Lung Association and the American Thoracic Society in a joint statement.

There are very good reasons to doubt the whole enterprise. When the head of one of the world’s tobacco behemoths actually encourages smoking bans and claims that “cigarettes belong in museums”, something rotten and rather smelly is afoot.  It might even be the smell of language burning.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

This week, Israel has launched several attacks on Palestinians with weapons used in the conflict for the first time in nearly 20 years, including deploying U.S.-made Apache helicopter gunships inside the West Bank and firing a targeted assassination aerial strike. Jewish settlers have also raided Palestinian villages in the West Bank, attacking residents and setting fire to homes and vehicles. Mariam Barghouti, senior Palestine correspondent for Mondoweiss, calls the attacks “an intensification to completely take over Palestine.” She adds that the growing violence is reflective of the leadership of Israel’s minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who recently called for the renewing of Defensive Shield, a military operation which used similar weaponry in 2002 that has been condemned for “crimes against humanity.” This all comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government has agreed to accelerate the process for approving new settlements in the West Bank despite criticism from the United Nations, European Union and United States.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

At a training conducted by the U.N.’s Office on Drugs and Crime, Vientiane municipal workers learned how to recognize money laundering, audit the finances of state enterprises and inspect government concession projects.

Berlin-based Transparency International’s 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index ranked Laos 126 of 180 countries it evaluated in fighting corruption.

“Cooperation included officials from the state inspector general’s office and others from related outside sectors,” an official from the Office of Inspector General told Radio Free Asia. “This time we did the training in Vientiane. Later, we’ll have one for government officials in Savannakhet province.”

The government has promised in the past to address corrupt practices that have put off potential foreign investors from pumping money into much-needed infrastructure and development.

However, despite the enactment of an anti-corruption law that criminalizes the abuse of power, public sector fraud, embezzlement and bribery, Laos’ judiciary is weak and inefficient, and officials are rarely prosecuted.

One official who said he worked as an inspector in Vientiane for a decade told RFA last year that he and his colleagues review the finances of government offices and departments but not those of individual officials who are powerful members of the party and the government.

“Nobody would dare inspect them,” he said.

‘They do it in a group’

It could be very difficult to solve Laos’ corruption problem, even with stricter laws, a Laotian who asked to remain anonymous said to RFA this week. So far, no government officials have been sent to prison for corruption, he said.

“Laws are strict but enforcement is weak, and that’s not strong enough to solve the problem,” he said.

Over the last two or three years, some officials have been fired or moved to other positions – but that’s been the extent of the government crackdown, a former state employee told RFA. 

“There are many state employees who are corrupt,” he said. “Police, tax collectors, even employees of mineral companies. They do it in a group, with the involvement of high-ranking officials.”

A report last year from the country’s State Inspection Authority said the Lao government had lost US$767 million to corruption since 2016, with government development and investment projects – such as road and bridge construction – the leading source of the widespread graft.

At the time, nearly 3,700 members of the communist Lao People’s Revolutionary Party had been disciplined, with 2,019 expelled and 154 people charged, the report said.

Another report from the Asian Development Bank found that almost 70 percent of businesses that applied for registrations, licenses and permits in Laos paid bribes to government officials to get approval.

Translated by Sidney Khotpanya. Edited by Matt Reed.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Lao.

On the heels of similar decisions last month, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday delivered "another win for climate accountability," rejecting fossil fuel corporations' attempt to quash lawsuits filed by the city of Hoboken, New Jersey, and the state of Delaware.

Both filed in September 2020, the suits from Hoboken and Delaware—like those filed by dozens of other municipalities and states—take aim at companies including BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell for fueling the climate emergency. The fossil fuel industry has repeatedly tried to evade accountability by shifting such cases from state to federal court.

"We appreciate and agree with the court's order denying the fossil fuel companies' petition, which aligns with dozens of decisions in federal courts here in Delaware and across the country," said Democratic Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings in response to Monday's decision.

The Supreme Court's decision means that both of these cases will now move forward in state court.

Jennings on Monday cited an opinion piece she wrote for Delaware Online with Shawn Garvin, secretary of the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, back when they launched the legal effort in 2020:

As we stated at the time of filing this case almost three years ago: "It didn't have to be this way. The fossil fuel industry knew for decades that their products would lead to climate change with potentially 'severe' and even 'catastrophic' consequences—their words, not ours. But they didn't clean up their practices or warn anyone to minimize the peril they were creating. Instead, they spent decades deliberately and systematically deceiving the nation about what they knew would happen if they carried on with business as usual."

Building on revelations from the past decade that have bolstered climate liability lawsuits, peer-reviewed research published in January shows that ExxonMobil accurately predicted global heating decades ago, while documents released in early April make clear that Shell knew about the impact of fossil fuels even earlier than previously thought.

"Imagine how far along we might be in the transition to a low-carbon economy today if not for their deception," Jennings said. "That's why we filed our lawsuit, and today's order moves Delawareans one step closer to the justice and economic relief that we deserve."

For Hoboken and Delaware, the high court denied fossil fuel companies' challenge to decision last year from a panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, which wrote in part that "our federal system trusts state courts to hear most cases—even big, important ones that raise federal defenses. Plaintiffs choose which claims to file, in which court, and under which law. Defendants may prefer federal court, but they may not remove their cases to federal court unless federal laws let them. Here, they do not."

Center for Climate Integrity president Richard Wiles noted Monday that "Big Oil companies keep fighting to avoid trials in state courts, where they will be forced to defend their record of climate lies and destruction in front of juries, but federal courts at every level keep rejecting their efforts."

"The Supreme Court's decision brings the people of Delaware and Hoboken one step closer to putting these polluters on trial and making them pay for their climate deception," Wiles added. "Fossil fuel companies must be held accountable for the damages they knowingly caused."

After the high court's April decisions—which involved cases brought by the state of Rhode Island as well as municipalities across California, Colorado, Hawaii, and Maryland—Jamie Henn of Fossil Free Media said, "This should open the floodgates for more lawsuits that could make polluters pay!"

There were no noted dissensions on Monday. However, like last month, Justice Samuel Alito, who owns stock in some fossil fuel companies, did not participate in the decision about these two cases—but Justice Amy Coney Barrett, whose father spent nearly three decades as an attorney for Shell, did.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

Under regulations put in place by the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco, and Explosives (ATF) and the Gun Control Act of 1968, federally licensed sellers have been prohibited from selling guns to 18-to-20-year-olds, who have had to make such purchases in private sales.

Payne ruled that "the statutes and regulations in question are not consistent with our nation's history and tradition," and that "therefore, they cannot stand."

The judge made clear in his decision that the ruling was underpinned by Bruen, in which Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the majority opinion that "constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them."

According to Payne, the fact that 18-year-olds were permitted to join militias at the time of the nation's founding suggests that buyers should not have to reach age 21 before purchasing handguns from licensed sellers.

"The Second Amendment's protections apply to 18-to-20-year-olds. By adopting the Second Amendment, the people constrained both the hands of Congress and the courts to infringe upon this right by denying ordinary law-abiding citizens of this age the full enjoyment of the right to keep and bear arms unless the restriction is supported by the nation's history," said Payne. "That is what Bruen tells us."

Princeton University professor Eddie S. Glaude Jr. denounced the ruling as "madness," while New York University law professor Chris Sprigman said the decision is the latest result of "America's extremist form of constitutionalism."

Janet Carter, senior director of issues and appeals at gun control advocacy group Everytown Law, pointed to research that shows that "18- to 20-year-olds commit gun homicides at triple the rate of adults 21 years and older."

"The federal law prohibiting federally licensed firearms dealers from selling handguns to individuals under the age of 21 is not just an essential tool for preventing gun violence, it is also entirely constitutional," Carter told The Washington Post. "The court's ruling will undoubtedly put lives at risk. It must be reversed."

Attorneys on both sides of the case said they expected the Biden administration to appeal the ruling.

Numerous polls have shown that the majority of Americans favor stricter gun control measures, and a survey of gun owners taken last year by NPR/Ipsos found that 67% of respondents favored raising the age for any gun purchase from 18 to 21.

"At a moment when Americans are growing more unified and in favor of gun control," said historian Brian Rosenwald, "Clarence Thomas' grotesque, inane opinion in Bruen is going to make all of them illegal."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Kevin McCarthy is playing with fire, and he’s on very shaky constitutional grounds.

He believes that he can hold hostage payments for goods bought and services already provided to the federal government — debts of the United States — in exchange for forcing the Biden administration to go along with draconian cuts to veterans benefits, food stamps (SNAP benefits), Medicaid, the Inflation Reduction Act (particularly its subsidies for green energy), and the permanent establishment of Trump’s massive tax cuts for billionaires.

Republicans started using the so-called “debt ceiling” — based on a law passed back in 1917 — as a cudgel to beat up Democratic presidents in 1995 during the Clinton administration. It was one of Newt’s “bright ideas.”

Clinton and Obama went along with the GOP, but now their demands have become so extreme that President Biden is threatening a veto (if the bill even gets through the Senate, which it probably won’t).

They’re doing this based on the 1917 Second Liberty Bond Act which established a ceiling for US government debt, a ceiling that’s been breached through amendment over 90 times in the past century.

The act gave the government the authority to issue Liberty Bonds to the public to help finance World War I, but put a cap on how much debt could be incurred through that issuance and other government functions. Today we call that the “debt ceiling.”

Just from 1962 to 2011 it was raised 74 times, including 18 times under Reagan, 8 during Clinton, 7 during Bush, 5 times during Obama’s presidency, and 4 times during Trump’s four years in office.

In the years since Gingrich, when Republicans are in the White House the debt ceiling is routinely raised. When Democrats are in the White House and Republicans control one or more houses of Congress, they hold it hostage — really, holding the full faith and credit of the United States hostage — in exchange for cuts in social programs and lower taxes for billionaires.

The last time House Republicans seriously threatened the full faith and credit of the United States this way was during Obama’s presidency in 2011 (they almost never do this when a Republican is in the White House, per Jude Wanniski’s “Two Santas” theory of politics).

That single 2011 stunt — just having House Republicans walk us up to the edge of default, resulting in a downgrade of our nation’s credit rating — cost working people trillions and caused widespread and long-lasting pain.

As the Treasury Department noted in 2013, looking back on that 2011 experience when Republicans held out until the last minute:

“In 2011, U.S. debt was downgraded, the stock market fell, measures of volatility jumped, and credit risk spreads widened noticeably; these financial market effects persisted for months. …
“The S&P 500 index of equity prices fell about 17 percent in the period surrounding the 2011 debt limit debate and did not recover to its average over the first half of the year until into 2012.
“Between the second and third quarter of 2011, household wealth fell by $2.4 trillion…”

The US government has never, in our country’s entire history, defaulted on its debt. Neither, in recent history, have most other advanced democracies. Debt default is very much a Third World kind of thing.

That’s why the US dollar and US government treasuries are at the core of the international financial system: we have always been considered the most reliable debtor, with the most stable currency and structurally sound economic system, in the world.

If the GOP takes us into default — even for a matter of hours — the consequences will be dire.

CBS News reports that Moody’s Analytics’ Chief Economist Mark Zandi says it would wipe out as many as 6 million jobs and destroy $15 trillion in household wealth. Unemployment would rapidly spike, he notes, to at least 9 percent, and the stock market would fall by a third.

We’ve known how bad it could become for a while. The Treasury Department, back in 2013, noted that:

“In the event that a debt limit impasse were to lead to a default, it could have a catastrophic effect on not just financial markets but also on job creation, consumer spending and economic growth—with many private-sector analysts believing that it would lead to events of the magnitude of late 2008 or worse, and the result then was a recession more severe than any seen since the Great Depression.
“Considering the experience of countries around that world that have defaulted on their debt, not only might the economic consequences of default be profound, those consequences, including high interest rates, reduced investment, higher debt payments, and slow economic growth, could last for more than a generation.”

Most Americans are not at all enthusiastic about Republicans in Congress causing economic damage that “could last for more than a generation,” although McCarthy yesterday seemed almost giddy waving about that threat.

But there may be a way out.

The Second Liberty Bond Act and the subsequent acts that followed or amended it have only been narrowly tested for constitutionality before the Supreme Court. And it failed that test. In the opinion of many constitutional scholars, it’s patently unconstitutional and unenforceable.

The 14^th Amendment to our Consitution, written and ratified after the Civil War, has a section that deals with the federal government paying its debts. It’s there, in part, because the Civil War had threatened the confidence of both the nation and the world around America’s ability to pay its bills.

Section 4 of the 14^th Amendment says:

“The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”

It was first tested in a dispute about payment of government debt, a $10,000 Liberty Bond that the holder, Mr. Perry, wanted redeemed with an additional $7,000 to cover changes in the value of gold.

This led to the 1935 Supreme Court ruling in Perry v United States, explicitly stating that the federal government must pay its debts as incurred.

The syllabus of the case states:

“11. Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment, declaring that, ‘The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, ...shall not be questioned,’ is confirmatory of a fundamental principle, applying as well to bonds issued after, as to those issued before, the adoption of the Amendment; and the expression ‘validity of the public debt’ embraces whatever concerns the integrity of the public obligations.
“The Joint Resolution of June 5, 1933, is a direct violation of §4 of the Fourteenth Amendment, expressly limiting the delegated powers of Congress, and making the public debt of the United States inviolable at the hands of Congress.”

The body of the decision itself goes even deeper into asserting that our government must pay its debts:

“When the United States, with constitutional authority, makes contracts, it has rights and incurs responsibilities similar to those of individuals who are parties to such instruments. …
“In Lynch v. United States, 292 U. S.571, 580, with respect to an attempted abrogation by the Act of March 20, 1933 (48 Stat. 8, 11) of certain outstanding war risk insurance policies, which were contracts of the United States, the Court quoted with approval the statement in the Sinking-Fund Cases, supra, and said:
“’Punctilious fulfillment of contractual obligations is essential to the maintenance of the credit of public as well as private debtors. No doubt there was in March, 1933, great need of economy. In the administration of all government business economy had become urgent because of lessened revenues and the heavy obligations to be issued in the hope of relieving widespread distress.
“‘Congress was free to reduce gratuities deemed excessive. But Congress was without power to reduce expenditures by abrogating contractual obligations of the United States. To abrogate contracts, in the attempt to lessen government expenditure, would be not the practice of economy, but an act of repudiation.’” (emphasis mine)

The simple fact is that the Trump and Biden administrations have made obligations to pay for goods and services ranging from military hardware to Social Security, and McCarthy and his buddies in the Republican Party are trying to force a default on those debts.

Such a default, according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and numerous finance experts, would be disastrous, perhaps even shaking the worldwide economy. America has never defaulted on her debts, and such a default could take decades to recover from.

It could throw America and the world into a depression as bad or worse than the Republican Great Depression of the 1930s.

President Biden is demanding that Congress pass a “clean” debt ceiling increase “without conditions.” It’s extremely unlikely McCarthy — weak as he is, with multiple members of the Sedition (“Freedom”) Caucus actually arguing that default would be a good thing because it would teach Democrats a lesson — will be able to get such a clean bill through the House.

As Tennessee’s Congressman Tim Burchett said:

“We just tell the world we’ve reached a limit. The consequences, of course, are shutting the government down.”

So far, because we’ve already hit the debt ceiling, Treasury Secretary Yellen has been “moving money around” to pay the most urgent bills, but the end of that road is just weeks away. Without congressional action, the next step would be default.

But what if the president were to call a press conference and say:

“The Constitution requires America to pay her bills. I fully intend to do that.”

If President Biden were to call McCarthy’s bluff and simply restart fully paying America’s bills, ignoring the Liberty Bond Act and the debt ceiling, Republicans will almost certainly sue him before the Supreme Court, which has original jurisdiction in disputes between the Executive and Legislative branches.

And under normal and rational circumstances, the Court would do what it did in 1935 and order the bills paid, citing the 14^th Amendment’s fourth section as the basis for the decision.

These are not, however, normal and rational times, and this is not a normal and rational court. Clarence Thomas and Brett “Beerbong” Kavanaugh have both publicly declared a desire for revenge against Democrats, and Alito and Gorsuch are both visibly pissed off about their integrity being questioned.

Still, I believe it’s unlikely the Court would side with Congressional Republicans and force America into default (a similar lawsuit was tossed out in 2016, but for lack of standing).

This has the potential to get wild. Get some popcorn, but also buckle up tight…

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Thom Hartmann.

The post Total Energies Displaces Local Congolese Farmers in Effort to Combat Carbon Emissions appeared first on Project Censored.

This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Vins.

Lawmakers from 35 states on Thursday signed a letter condemning the Tennessee Republican Party as it prepared to expel three Democratic representatives who joined a protest demanding gun control legislation in the State Capitol, with the letter accusing the state GOP of racist and "anti-democratic" conduct.

Tennessee Reps. Gloria Johnson (D-13), Justin Jones (D-52), and Justin Pearson (D-86) joined Nashville students and their supporters on Monday as they poured into the Capitol building, demanding that lawmakers ban weapons like the ones used in a mass shooting at a Christian school in the city last week, which killed three children and three adults, and pass other broadly popular gun control legislation.

Republicans have accused the three Democrats of bringing "disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives" by speaking without recognition during a protest on the chamber's floor last week, a technical violation of the House rules, and of taking part in an "insurrection."

"There is nothing 'disorderly' about courageously standing in solidarity with the people we are elected to serve, in opposition to the gun lobby that continues to profiteer off of an epidemic they have fueled," reads the letter. "The Tennessee State Capitol is the people's house, and Representatives Justin Jones, Justin Pearson, and Gloria Johnson exemplified leadership on the House floor this week by standing up for what's right. Any attempts to silence these elected leaders for exercising their constitutional right to protest are anti-democratic."

The Republicans passed three resolutions to hold votes on expelling the lawmakers on Monday, with each passing 72-23 on a party line vote. The vote on expulsion is expected to take place Thursday.

The letter, organized by the State Innovation Exchange (SiX), accused the GOP of exemplifying the "robust and racist connection between fighting against gun safety and dismantling our democracy." Pearson and Jones are Black, and the lawmakers pointed out that people of color are disproportionately impacted by gun violence in the United States.

"Let's be clear, the vote to expel Reps. Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones, and Justin Pearson is just another anti-democratic effort to silence the American people for speaking out against the devastating consequences of gun violence," said Neha Patel, co-executive director of SiX. "Calling for gun safety within the people's house is an example of our democracy in action, expelling lawmakers for standing for what they believe in is not."

"Gun violence impacts all of us, especially the Black and brown communities many legislators in Tennessee represent," she added. "Ultimately, these kinds of actions present clear and present danger to our country and our democracy, and we must not allow it."

March for Our Lives, the national group that was formed in 2018 by survivors of the Parkland, Florida school shooting, announced it would hold a rally outside the State Capitol on Thursday in support of the Johnson, Jones, and Pearson.

"We will not be silenced or intimidated," said advocacy group Gen Z for Change, addressing state Republicans. "As elected officials, your power is derived from the people and we will make it painfully obvious when you decide to work against us."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Julia Conley.

It would be wrong to view the restoration of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran as something that happened suddenly.

Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, ties between the two important Muslim neighbours have been strained. For the Saudi elite the Revolution was not only anti-monarchical but also a boost to the Shia sect within Islam.  For the Iranian revolutionaries, Saudi opposition was motivated largely by its intimate relationship to American and other Western elites and their interests. This strained relationship sank to its nadir in 2016 when a respected Shia cleric, Nimr al-Nimr, was executed by the Sunni Saudi authorities. Shia communities all over West Asia and even in Central Asia were deeply upset by this callous deed.

The execution reinforced the negative image of the Saudi government. The image was further tarnished by the dastardly murder of Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi  by killers allegedly linked to the apex of Saudi society. Western elites and human rights activists were aghast at the cruel barbarity of the assassination. A chasm of mistrust was now developing between the West and Saudi Arabia. In the midst of all this, the US, mainly for commercial reasons, sought to increase its own oil output through fracking of shale rock and therefore indirectly, reduced the significance of Saudi oil in the global market. As a result of all these and other developments, the Saudi elite in the last two or three years was beginning to feel that it is being pushed into a corner.

Ironically, the Iranian leadership was also beginning to feel isolated.  When the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)  was agreed upon by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany, on the one hand, and the Iranian government, on the other, in April 2015, the Iranian people were hopeful that with financial and economic sanctions lifted, investments will flow into the land and the country would emerge as a vibrant actor in the regional and global arena. However, that hope was short-lived as a new US president, Donald Trump, torpedoed the JCPOA in 2018 mainly because of pressure from Israel. Iran’s economic woes became even more severe and undermined its political stability and weakened its social cohesiveness. Iran’s internal crisis was further compounded by an incompetent leadership that lacked rapport with the ordinary masses.

Given the colossal challenges facing the Saudi and Iranian governments, they were impelled to reach out to one another so that their mutual antagonism would not further emasculate their waning strength. China’s readiness to bring the two countries together was, given the circumstances, a bonanza. Only a nation with the gravitas of China could have played the role   of mediator. The US’s decades old antagonism towards Iran precluded any such role for her. Russia with ties to both the adversaries could have stepped in except that its war in Ukraine was consuming all its energies.

China not only has good relations with both countries but also imports huge quantities of oil from Iran and Saudi Arabia. More importantly, China appreciates the fact that neither country joined the US orchestrated bandwagon to condemn China for its alleged persecution of the Uighur Muslim minority in Sinkiang province. Trying to reconcile the two Muslim adversaries was perhaps China’s way of saying ‘thank you’ to them.

However, China’s role, significant as it is, does not hold the key to genuine restoration of ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran. It is the two countries themselves that will determine the success or failure of the Chinese effort. For a start, if they can help to end a number of conflicts in the region purportedly linked to the two protagonists, it would be a good sign. It is said that current conflicts in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain and Yemen, some of which are violent, are      fomented by either Saudi Arabia or Iran. Of course, other actors from inside and outside the region are also involved.

A conflict which has drawn both sides is the one in Yemen. The formal government is supported by the Saudi elite while rebels opposed to it, the Houthis, are reportedly sustained by the Iranian authorities. According to the United Nations (UN), a hundred and fifty thousand Yemenis have lost their lives in the 9 year  conflict.  Thousands of others have also perished as a result of famine and disease. If the Saudi-Iran thaw, engineered by China, can lead to the resolution of the Yemen conflict in the immediate future, a lot of peace-loving people all over the world will rejoice.

Though a variety of forces and factors are intertwined in the Yemen conflict, as in each and every one of the other conflicts, there is an underlying cause to all of them which is related to the one most perennial and persistent dichotomy within the Muslim world. This is the Sunni-Shia dichotomy   which we have alluded to.  It  arose from a disagreement over who should  lead the Muslim community ( Ummah) when the Prophet Muhammad ( Peace be Upon Him)  died in 632. Though one of the contenders, Abu Bakr, the Prophet’s father-in-law was chosen as the Caliph, supporters of the other contender, Ali  ibn-Talib, the Prophet’s son-in-law,  continued to hold on to the belief that he was the rightful leader and felt marginalised.  Their sense of marginalisation became even more severe when they witnessed what they alleged were serious transgressions of the faith and the Islamic struggle for justice occurring during the rule of successors of the Caliph Abu Bakr, particularly Caliph Yazid. Their legitimate frustrations set against the determined arrogance of the ruling Caliph and his followers reached its zenith in a famous confrontation at the battle of Karbala in 680 .    In that battle, the better equipped and numerically stronger Caliph Yazid and his supporters prevailed. The dissenters led by Ali’s son, Hussein ,and many other members of the Prophet’s family were mercilessly massacred. That episode known as Ashura is observed by Muslims till today, especially Shias, as a shining instance of human beings defending fundamental principles of justice and truth against great odds embodied in power and position. Ashura became the spiritual and moral foundation of Shia opposition to the majority Sunnis. Over the centuries the Shia minority sect acquired doctrinal and ritualistic features that distinguished Shias from the Sunnis. It must be emphasised nonetheless that the central characteristics of Islam…. belief in the Oneness of God; recognition of Muhammad as the last of God’s Prophets; adherence to the Quranic message as guidance in this transient life; and the acceptance of divine judgement in the hereafter ……. continued to bind Sunnis and Shias within the same religious community.

But the bond emanating from these characteristics sometimes succumbed to the pulls and pressures of politics and power and  of personalities and vested interests who chose to give greater significance to the differences that separated Sunnis from Shias than their similarities. This is why right through the centuries it has been difficult to bridge the Sunni-Shia chasm. Be that as it may, there have been numerous attempts to bring Sunnis and Shias together. And there have been moments when they have forged strong bonds  in facing common challenges or in pursuing shared goals.

I initiated a modest move in 2013 through my NGO, JUST, to get the two groups to adopt a common position on a matter  of grave concern to both. The former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohammad, and the former President of Iran, Muhammad Khatami, were persuaded to issue a joint appeal to Sunnis and Shias to stop killing one another as inter-sectarian violence was rife at that time in some parts of the Muslim world. There was very little media coverage on the Mahathir-Khatami appeal. Hardly any Muslim leader of stature responded. Even Muslim civil society groups gave scant attention to the plea from the two leaders. In other words, a noble call to end fighting fell on deaf ears.

The China initiative on Saudi-Iran ties is different in its approach. It focuses on inter-state relations. It hopes that state actors will be prepared to use state power to reduce and even eliminate inter-state animosities. At some point down the road, the three states, Saudi Arabia, Iran and China and other states will have to deal with the ramifications of the Sunni-Shia dichotomy.

For the time being let us turn to some of the opposition to the Saudi-Iran peace plan. The loudest denunciation of the plan has come from the Israeli government. Israel fears that the plan will work against Israel’s machinations in the region. Israel is hell-bent on isolating Iran and mobilising all the Arab  states in the region against Iran. Towards this end, it has not only exploited the Sunni-Shia dichotomy but also the Arab-Persian division since Iran is the only Persian state in the Arab world.

Israel sees Iran as a threat to not only its existence, but also to the whole of West Asia since it, (Iran) according to Israel, is determined to build and use a nuclear bomb. Incidentally, Israel  is the only state in the region that possesses nuclear bombs. Besides, Iran has repeatedly emphasised that it will not manufacture or deploy a nuclear bomb because it is against Islamic teachings.

If the Iran-Saudi accord makes it difficult to isolate Iran, it is inimical to Israel’s ambitions for yet another reason. As a way of strengthening its position in its Arab neighbourhood and within the Muslim world, Israel has always wanted to establish formal diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia. That has become more problematic now that Saudi Arabia and Iran have come together. It is significant that Saudi Arabia has also made it clear that it will not recognise Israel as long as it does not recognise Palestine’s right to nationhood and acknowledges the right of Palestinians to return to their homeland. It is another way of saying that Saudi Arabia will not do what other Arab states such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain have done in recent times in the name of implementing the so-called Abraham Accords.

If any other nation is even more apprehensive of the Saudi-Iran bid to reconcile through China’s initiative, it would be the United States of America. It is only too apparent that China has become a major actor in West Asia. It is amazing that it has succeeded to bring the US’s closest friend in the region next to Israel and its  furthest foe  in West Asia together through an accord  and in the process enhanced its role as a peace mediator. Indeed, a peace mediator is a role that befits the only nation in human history that has emerged as a global power through relatively peaceful means, without engaging in wars and committing wanton violence.

Perhaps it is in this role as a peacemaker that China may be able to end the protracted conflict between Israel, on the one hand, and Palestine and other  Arab states, on the other. Perhaps this is how Palestinians will be able to exercise their right of self-determination and regain their dignity as a nation—- something which was never possible as long as the region was under US hegemony.

This is why China’s role in restoring Saudi- Iran ties may well be the harbinger of a new dawn in West Asia and a new era in international relations.

An earlier version of this article appeared in China Focus on 30th March 2023.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Chandra Muzaffar.

Conflict and armed violence are among the root causes of these complex emergencies, while climate shocks are compounding vulnerabilities, especially in the Horn of Africa, which has had four years of consecutive drought with no end in sight.

UN Famine Prevention and Response Coordinator, Reena Ghelani, has been talking to UN News’s Dominika Tomaszewska-Mortimer about what she’s been seeing in the affected regions.

This content originally appeared on UN News - Global perspective Human stories and was authored by Dominika Tomaszewska-Mortimer.

Conflict and armed violence are among the root causes of these complex emergencies, while climate shocks are compounding vulnerabilities, especially in the Horn of Africa, which has had four years of consecutive drought with no end in sight.

UN Famine Prevention and Response Coordinator, Reena Ghelani, has been talking to UN News’s Dominika Tomaszewska-Mortimer about what she’s been seeing in the affected regions.

This content originally appeared on UN News - Global perspective Human stories and was authored by Dominika Tomaszewska-Mortimer.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Citing ProPublica’s reporting, lawmakers on Thursday reintroduced a bill that would ban the use of asbestos in the United States, bringing it in line with dozens of countries that have outlawed the carcinogenic substance.

Even though asbestos is known to cause deadly diseases, the U.S. still allows companies to import hundreds of tons of the raw mineral. It is primarily used by two chemical manufacturers, OxyChem and Olin Corp., in the production of chlorine. The legislation, called the Alan Reinstein Ban Asbestos Now Act of 2023, would ban the import and use of all six types of asbestos fibers. It would give OxyChem and Olin two years to transition its asbestos-dependent chlorine plants to newer, asbestos-free technology.

The chemical industry has long argued against a ban in the U.S. by saying employees are protected by strict safety protocols. Last year, however, ProPublica found that workers were repeatedly exposed to asbestos in some of the plants. In one OxyChem plant in Niagara Falls, New York, former workers said asbestos floated in the air and accumulated in corners and on top of machines. At an Olin plant in Alabama, a longtime janitor said she was tasked with scraping up dry asbestos but wasn’t given protective gear, even while pregnant. (OxyChem said the workers’ accounts in Niagara Falls were inaccurate but would not specify which details were incorrect. Olin did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

“ProPublica’s recent reporting on the devastating damage of this deadly substance has underscored the need for urgent action,” said Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, a Democrat from Oregon who is sponsoring the bill in the House. “There is no safe level of exposure to asbestos, and we have seen that we cannot rely on industry to put the safety of workers first.”

In a press release, Sen. Jeff Merkley, another Democrat from Oregon and the bill’s sponsor in the Senate, also cited ProPublica’s reporting as a reason the ban is necessary.

“Any expert will tell you there simply is no level of exposure to asbestos that is safe for the human body,” Merkley said in the release. “We’ve known for generations that asbestos is lethal, yet the U.S. has continued to allow some industries to value profits over people.”

The bill is named after Alan Reinstein, a man who died in 2006 from mesothelioma, a cancer caused by asbestos. His wife, Linda Reinstein, has long advocated for an asbestos ban in the U.S. and co-founded the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, a nonprofit that works to protect the public from the dangers of the substance.

“This long overdue legislation will protect all Americans — especially vulnerable workers, disadvantaged communities, consumers, first responders, and children — who are most at-risk from being exposed to this deadly carcinogen,” Reinstein said in a statement on Thursday.

Merkley and Bonamici have tried to pass similar legislation before, but they have not been successful. The bill they proposed last year had a hearing in a Senate subcommittee and five co-sponsors in the House, but it ultimately stalled.

At the Senate hearing, industry representatives pushed back on efforts to outlaw asbestos, saying an all-out ban would be too onerous for the chemical companies. They cautioned that a prohibition could threaten the supply of chlorine in the U.S., some of which is used to clean drinking water.

OxyChem and Olin did not respond to requests from ProPublica for comment on the latest bill. The American Chemistry Council, an industry trade group, did not respond to ProPublica, either.

The Environmental Protection Agency, meanwhile, is working on its own asbestos ban. The agency proposed a rule last year that would ban only chrysotile asbestos, the most commonly used type and the one that is used in chlorine plants. The EPA has missed some legislative deadlines to enact the ban but says it will finalize the regulation by October.

Two weeks ago, the EPA invited the public to weigh in on new information the agency received about the proposed asbestos ban, including ProPublica’s reports about workplace safety.

Some advocates worry the EPA’s ban will be further delayed or be overturned in court. They point to the EPA’s failed attempt to enact an asbestos ban in 1989, which was overturned by a federal judge after companies sued the agency.

“We can’t afford to wait any longer,” said Reinstein, who believes legislation will be the most effective way to stop asbestos use. “The cost of inaction and the lives we know will be lost is far too great of a price to pay.”

Merkley and Bonamici’s bill is also endorsed by several other public health groups, including the International Association of Fire Fighters and the American Public Health Association.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Neil Bedi and Kathleen McGrory.

“In the future, the New York Times or Washington Post could be prosecuted when they publish important stories based on classified information.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Ryan Grim.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. This story is part of an ongoing series investigating the return of Native American ancestral remains. Sign up for ProPublica’s “Repatriation Project” newsletter to get updates as they publish and learn more about our reporting.

Until this year, the University of Kentucky’s William S. Webb Museum of Anthropology had never returned any of the more than 4,500 Native American human remains in its collections.

That is about to change.

Weeks after ProPublica published the “Repatriation Project,” the university told federal officials that 138 ancestral remains in its collection could be repatriated to three Shawnee tribes in Oklahoma and Missouri. The university also announced it will commit nearly $900,000 over the next three years and hire three more staff members to work on repatriations.

“This significant investment in staff and resources is a testament to the university’s steadfast commitment to Native nations and completing the sensitive process of repatriation with transparency, dignity and respect,” Kristi Willet, a university spokesperson, said in an email to ProPublica.

The University of Kentucky is among more than a dozen U.S. schools and museums that have pledged to redouble their efforts to return the human remains and belongings — in some cases numbering in the thousands — that were taken from Native American gravesites. Institutions have also publicly acknowledged the harm inflicted on tribal communities by continuing to keep ancestral remains and cultural items, including after the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act called for them to be returned to tribes.

The wave of responses follow the launch of ProPublica’s series investigating the failures of the federal law.

In the three decades since the law’s passage, museums and universities repatriated fewer than half of the 210,000 human remains they initially reported holding, according to a ProPublica analysis of federal data from December. Ten institutions and federal agencies — including old and prestigious museums, state-funded universities and the U.S. Interior Department — hold about half of those remains, the analysis found.

Nearly 50 local and regional newsrooms have used the data analyzed by ProPublica to report on the progress of repatriation by institutions in their area.

“We want to get this done quickly. We recognize that tribal nations actually feel harm the entire time we’re holding their ancestors,” Catherine Smith, who was recently hired to coordinate University of Florida’s repatriation efforts, told WUFT, a public radio station in Gainesville.

Many institutions have for years told tribes that they will improve their work under NAGPRA and apologized for holding onto remains, said Shannon O’Loughlin, chief executive of the Association on American Indian Affairs, a nonprofit that has long advocated for tribes on repatriation. Meanwhile, museums and universities often continued to interpret the law in ways that allowed for them to resist repatriation and escape scrutiny, she said.

Now, with increased attention from the news media, institutions are facing more pressure to answer for vast collections of Native American remains. The public apologies and commitments to allocate more resources, including hiring staff, mark a shift for many institutions, she said.

“We’ve been told the same stuff, so I’m not sure that we should believe them now,” said O’Loughlin, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. “But, hey, they’re saying it in the public, so we’re gonna hold them to it.”

Tribes could be left with empty promises again, as only a fraction of those institutions stated they will devote more money and other resources to repatriation.

Among those promising to put resources behind their commitment to repatriate is the Tennessee Valley Authority, which told ProPublica that it also has drafted a federal notice that will enable tribal nations to repatriate the remains of nearly 5,000 Native Americans. Federal records show that the utility has at least 3,500 remains in its collections; ProPublica learned that the TVA recently found roughly an additional 1,500 ancestors in its repositories at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, the University of Kentucky and the University of Alabama. Those ancestors hadn’t previously been reported under NAGPRA, as required by the law.

Most of the ancestral remains in TVA’s collections are stored at those three universities, which, along with the TVA, are among the 10 institutions that ProPublica identified as holding the largest number of remains of Native Americans in the country.

Nine of those 10 institutions have stated to ProPublica that they are committed to returning remains and cultural items to tribal nations. Indiana University has not responded to ProPublica’s requests for comment.

The speed and scale of the TVA’s effort to repatriate everything in its collections concerns some tribal historic preservation officers and cultural directors.

“We’ve never had a collection of this magnitude be left to have the tribes decide,” said Miranda Panther, NAGPRA officer for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. “Usually we make decisions before transfer of legal control has occurred. So I’m not sure how this process is going to work.”

Archaeologist Megan Cook, who recently became a NAGPRA specialist for TVA, said that consultations will continue with tribes and that the TVA is committed to repatriation “for the long haul.”

Reporting from two Washington state outlets, The Inlander in Spokane and The Bellingham Herald, as well as Axios prompted the president of Western Washington University to issue a statement in response to ProPublica’s investigation.

Last year, the university made the remains of three Native Americans available for return to the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, according to federal data analyzed by ProPublica. It is the institution’s only repatriation since the law’s passage. The university said in an email that it still holds the remains of at least 63 Native Americans.

“We recognize that we have more work to do to ensure that the ancestral remains we currently house are returned home,” Sabah Randhawa, the president of WWU, said in the statement. “We recognize the need for securing additional expertise and resources.”

A school spokesperson told ProPublica that university leaders are still discussing how much funding, and what expertise, is needed.

ProPublica’s investigation also led to a report by South Florida public radio station WLRN that revealed one museum’s intention to return all of the human remains and funerary objects in its collection to the Seminole Tribe of Florida. ProPublica found that HistoryMiami Museum is one of about 200 institutions across the country that have repatriated no human remains.

HistoryMiami CEO Natalia Crujeiras told WLRN that the museum didn’t know which tribe to repatriate to and that no tribe had claimed them. That began to change in 2019, after the museum learned the Seminole Tribe of Florida planned to claim more than 100 ancestral remains in the museum’s collection.

The museum identified some as belonging to Calusa and Tequesta cultures, though it listed all of the remains as “culturally unidentifiable” in an inventory submitted to the national NAGPRA office in the 1990s. Until 2010, the federal law only mandated the repatriation of remains and items that institutions deemed “culturally affiliated” with a modern tribe.

“It’s really upsetting that they still disassociate the Seminole Tribe of Florida from our ancestors,” Tina Osceola, the tribal historic preservation office director for the Seminole Tribe of Florida, told WLRN. “I don’t think HistoryMiami or anyone else should have the power to tell the Seminole Tribe of Florida who their ancestors are. They have our ancestors. End of story.”

ProPublica’s reporting and database also spurred an investigation by Hearst Connecticut Media Group that found 90% of still-unreturned remains in that state are held by the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. According to the news outlet, the museum said it will hire two more full-time staff members to work on repatriation “to meet its own goals and the anticipated federal rule changes.”

A museum spokesperson told ProPublica that it has also secured additional funding for tribal consultations but declined to specify the amount. “We are completely committed to these efforts,” museum Director David Skelly said in a statement.

Student journalists have also used ProPublica’s data to hold their own universities accountable.

At Brown University, student reporting found that in 2018, the campus’ Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology made the remains of 10 ancestors available to the Narragansett Indian Tribe to repatriate. But the tribe’s historic preservation director, John Brown, told The Brown Daily Herald that he wasn’t aware of the notice, and that the museum hadn’t adequately consulted with the tribe before publishing it in the federal register.

The reporting prompted an apology from the museum’s director, Robert Preucel, to the Narragansett Indian Tribe’s historic preservation office. Preucel told the Brown Daily Herald that the museum is “doing everything we can to repatriate all of the human remains” it holds.

At the University of Montana, a spokesperson shared similar comments with the Montana Kaimin, saying that repatriation is a “top priority” for the school, even though completing the work will “take time.”

ProPublica's reporting sparked an investigation by the campus newspaper in February that found the university has no one on staff who is entirely focused on repatriation efforts, despite having been awarded a federal grant last year to hire an employee for such a position. Dave Kuntz, the university’s spokesperson, told ProPublica last week that the school has not been able to fill the position.

Here’s what other institutions have said in response to recent reporting on repatriation. The figures reported below are from a ProPublica analysis of federal repatriation data from December:

Texas State University’s anthropology department Chairperson Christina Conlee to the University Star: “Our goal here is to repatriate these remains and we’re working towards that. We remain in compliance with the law and we hope that we will make good progress going forward.” The university reported still having the remains of at least 100 Native Americans.

Milwaukee Public Museum President and Chief Executive Ellen Censky in a statement to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “While it is a long and complex process, our goal is to repatriate all ancestral remains and associated cultural objects identified under NAGPRA.” However, the museum is preparing to move to a new building in 2026, making a timeline to repatriate tough to “pin down.” The museum reported still having the remains of at least 1,600 Native Americans.

University of Texas San Antonio spokesperson Joe Izbrand to Axios and the Paisano, a student publication, regarding remains held by the university’s Center for Archaeological Research: “It is our intention to repatriate all of the remains and objects to the rightful parties, and we are working methodically to facilitate their return, enabled in part by a grant from the National Park Service.” The university reported still having the remains of at least 200 Native Americans.

Penn Museum at the University of Pennsylvania Director Christopher Woods to The Philadelphia Inquirer: “This is incredibly sensitive, time-consuming work. Each case is unique and deserves its own consideration. It is essential to proceed with the utmost care and diligence, as we confront our own history of racism and colonialism. That work is ongoing.” The university’s museum reported still having the remains of at least 400 Native Americans.

Temple University Anthropology Laboratory and Museum in a statement to the Inquirer: “We want to make clear that 100% of the ancestors at Temple University are available for repatriation, and we are actively working to accomplish this.” The university reported still having the remains of at least 100 Native Americans.

A New York University statement to Washington Square News, an independent student newspaper, in a report about remains held by the NYU College of Dentistry: “We did not get started on the efforts to audit and repatriate the remains as early as we should have.” The College of Dentistry reported still having the remains of at least 100 Native Americans.

You can reach us using this form or by contacting repatriation@propublica.org or 206-419-7338 (calls or Signal messages). If you would prefer to use an encrypted app, see our advice at propublica.org/tips. We won’t publish anything you write without getting your permission first.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Logan Jaffe, Mary Hudetz and Ash Ngu.

Dominion Voting Systems has provided a public service for the American people.

As a result of its pending defamation lawsuit against Fox News, Dominion has laid bare the extraordinary con game that Fox carried out in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election and that continues today.

Fox elevated and affirmed for their millions of viewers former President Donald Trump’s Big Lie that the election was stolen from him by giving airtime to Trump’s team. But even as they put them on the air, Fox hosts and executives admitted privately that they knew they were airing lies and “insane” conspiracy theories.

The big three Fox propagandists, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham privately complained about their lying guests. But they never bothered to tell this to their viewers. Their texts, obtained by Dominion as part of the lawsuit, also reveal that some worried they would lose viewers if they actually told the truth.

Today, Trump continues to peddle his Big Lie — and so does Fox News.

Carlson, gifted with exclusive access to more than 40,000 hours of internal Capitol footage from the January 6 riot by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, is attempting to persuade people they should not believe what they saw with their own eyes. He has been airing cherry-picked portions of the January 6 videos to absurdly argue that the insurrectionist mob attack that led to the death and injury of Capitol police officers was little more than a “peaceful” protest of “sightseers.”

According to The New York Times, more than 150 officers from the Capitol Police, the Washington, DC Police Department, and other agencies suffered injuries as a result of the violence. A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people, including three police officers, lost their lives in connection with the attack.

A number of Senate Republicans have called Carlson out this week. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell criticized the way Carlson portrayed the insurrection, Minority Whip John Thune described January 6 as “an attack on the Capitol,” and Sen. Thom Tillis called Carlson’s claims “bulls — -.”

Hypocrisy abounds at Fox News. And, they are joined by Speaker McCarthy.

Many House Republicans, however, are supporting Carlson’s revisionist history. They include the Republican leaders: House Speaker McCarthy, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, and Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik.

In his Dominion deposition, Fox head Rupert Murdoch said he believed the 2020 presidential election was free, fair, and not stolen. Yet, Murdoch never pulled Fox back from promoting the Trump Big Lie. And, he currently silently sits by as Carlson tries to sell the lie that January 6 was a peaceful protest.

Hypocrisy abounds at Fox News. And, they are joined by Speaker McCarthy.

Shortly after January 6, McCarthy called the attackers “un-American,” and said that anyone who participated in the mob attack should go to jail. “You don’t understand what was transpiring at that moment and that time,” McCarthy told reporters shortly after the Capitol attack. “People brought ropes. When I got back into my building, I found the straps that they had. I don’t know if they’d come [to] try to kidnap somebody or whatever. But they were well planned for it.”

McCarthy knew perfectly well that Carlson would use his show to present an untrue version of what happened on January 6.

Carlson had earlier called January 6 a “footnote” in history and “forgettably minor.” Yet, that didn’t stop McCarthy from knowingly giving Carlson the opportunity to further a false narrative that is the complete opposite of what McCarthy described in 2021.

Meanwhile, the effort to rewrite history goes on.

McCarthy ally Rep. Barry Loudermilk is preparing to investigate the Jan. 6 investigators as part of a new House subcommittee, and House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene are planning to visit some of the January 6 rioters in jail.

House Republicans will fail.

Fox News and Carlson’s efforts to whitewash the January 6 insurrection will also fail and will go down in history as a national disgrace.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Fred Wertheimer.

More than 170 House Republicans and 150 Democrats teamed up Wednesday to defeat a resolution aimed at withdrawing all remaining U.S. troops from Syria, a proposal led by right-wing Rep. Matt Gaetz and supported by members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

The measure, just the latest House push to bring the nation's yearslong military presence in Syria to an end, failed by a vote of 103 to 321, with Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York and Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California among the no votes.

The resolution would have required the president to remove 900-plus U.S. troops from Syria within 180 days of passage, barring congressional action to authorize their continued presence.

Opponents of the resolution who support prolonging the occupation echoed the Pentagon claim that U.S. forces are needed in Syria to prevent a resurgence of ISIS and to ensure "stability" in the region.

"Either we fight 'em in Syria, or we'll fight 'em here," said Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana.

While lamenting the proposal's defeat, peace advocates noted that it garnered more Republican support than any previous war powers resolution, with 47 GOP yes votes. Fifty-six House Democrats—including Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ro Khanna of California, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and Cori Bush of Missouri—voted for the resolution.

“There is a new generation of thinking on two central issues," Khanna toldThe Intercept following Wednesday's vote. "A concern about wars and entanglements over the last 20 years that have not made us safer, and a concern over the offshoring of our domestic production over bad trade deals that have left the working class and middle class poorer."

"I believe that this new generation of political leaders can help fix those two mistakes that the country has made, and that there is an emerging consensus that we should not have our troops fighting overseas without congressional authorization," Khanna added. "If the president wants to make the case for a certain presence that is required for America to protect the Kurds, then he should come to Congress and work with us to make that case."

As The Intercept's Ryan Grim and Daniel Boguslaw noted, "the legal rationale for U.S. occupation" of Syria is "dubious at best."

Opponents of the Syria war powers resolution, including Zinke, pointed to the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF)—a law that U.S. presidents have cited to give legal cover for airstrikes and ground operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere.

"With ISIS suppressed," Grim and Boguslaw wrote, the Biden administration "has suggested the purpose of the occupation is to act as a bulwark against Iran."

Pointing to U.S. officials' claim that the presence of American troops prevents Iranian forces from establishing a "land bridge" to shuttle weapons to allies in Lebanon, Grim and Boguslaw observed that Iran "already has a direct 'land bridge' through eastern Syria to Lebanon; the U.S. occupation merely adds some time to the Iranian truckers' journey."

Critics of the U.S. troop presence in Syria have stressed that Congress did not specifically authorize a military operation to confront "Iran-backed militias" in Syria.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

Progressives expressed anger Thursday after U.S. President Joe Biden said that he would sign a Republican-authored resolution repealing criminal justice reforms recently approved by the elected leaders of the District of Columbia.

The GOP-controlled House claimed that the Revised Criminal Code Act (RCCA), enacted in January by city council members representing D.C. residents, would make it easier for people convicted of crimes to avoid punishment and contribute to higher crime rates. Last month, 31 Democrats joined 219 Republicans in passing H.J.Res. 26, which would nullify the changes to Washington's criminal laws that are set to take effect in 2025.

Biden informed Democratic senators during a private meeting on Thursday that he will not veto the resolution if it reaches his desk, The Associated Pressreported. The measure is expected to pass the Senate on a bipartisan basis as early as next week.

"In the name of democracy and common sense, the Senate must respect the District of Columbia's decision to pass the Revised Criminal Code Act."

Later on Thursday, Biden tweeted: "I support D.C. statehood and home rule—but I don't support some of the changes D.C. Council put forward over the mayor's objections—such as lowering penalties for carjackings. If the Senate votes to overturn what D.C. Council did—I'll sign it."

Local lawmakers voted to decrease the district's maximum sentence for carjacking from the current 40 years—equivalent to the penalty for second-degree murder and over twice as long as the penalty for second-degree sexual assault—to 24 years, which is still nine years longer than the harshest carjacking sentences actually handed down in D.C.

Democratic D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser had opposed the RCCA but supported a Biden veto of H.J.Res. 26 due to the implications for home rule.

Journalist Austin Ahlman called Biden's decision "disgusting." Defending "evidence-based tweaks to the D.C. criminal code" through a veto, Ahlman added, would have had little to no impact on the president during the 2024 election cycle.

Markus Batchelor, national political director at People for the American Way, also condemned Biden, juxtaposing his purported support for democracy abroad with his unwillingness to defend it "for those Americans closest to him."

Democratic U.S. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who represents D.C. in Congress, told reporters that Biden's position was "news to me, and I'm very disappointed in it."

Earlier this week, Holmes Norton thanked 100-plus organizations for signing a letter to Senate leadership that expresses opposition to congressional resolutions aimed at overturning legislation passed by democratically elected D.C. lawmakers.

"D.C. residents elect their own local officials to govern local affairs, like every other jurisdiction in the country," Holmes Norton said in a statement. "Congressional interference in local affairs is paternalistic, undemocratic, and violates the principle of self-governance."

Prior to Biden's announcement, the ACLU's D.C. chapter wrote on social media, "The 700,000 people who live in D.C. know our community better than anyone else and deserve self-determination."

The group linked to a recent piece written by policy director Damon King, who argued that "in the name of democracy and common sense, the Senate must respect the District of Columbia's decision to pass the Revised Criminal Code Act."

"In order to overturn our democratic will," King observed, "opponents of the RCCA have spread misinformation about the bill."

Shortly after the D.C. Council unanimously passed the RCCA and then overrode Bowser's veto of the bill by a margin of 12-1, Slate legal reporter Mark Joseph Stern wrote, "If you only read conservative and centrist pundits, you'd think the District of Columbia is about to embark upon a frightening experiment to weaken or abolish criminal penalties for violent crime."

As he explained:

Fox News has devotedfrenzied coverageto the claim that D.C. is "softening" its criminal laws. Republican politicians like Sen. Tom Cotton [R-Ark.] have seized on the story, as have conservative commentators like Erick Erickson, who cited it as evidence that Congress should abolish self-governance in the district. The Washington Post editorial board opined that a new "crime bill could make the city more dangerous," claiming it would "tie the hands of police and prosecutors while overwhelming courts."

"This coverage all repeats the same two claims: that D.C. is poised to slash prison sentences for violent offenses, and that these reforms will lead to more crime," wrote Stern. "Neither of these claims is true."

He continued:

The legislation that D.C. passed in January is not a traditional reform bill, but the result of a 16-year process to overhaul a badly outdated, confusing, and often arbitrary criminal code. The revision's goal was to modernize the law by defining elements of each crime, eliminating overlap between offenses, establishing proportionate penalties, and removing archaic or unconstitutional provisions. Every single change is justified in meticulous reports that span thousands of pages. Each one was crafted with extensive public input and support from both D.C. and federal prosecutors. Eleventh-hour criticisms of the bill rest on misunderstandings, willful or otherwise, about its purpose and effect. They malign complex, technocratic updates as radical concessions to criminals. In many cases, criticisms rest on sheer legal illiteracy about how criminal sentencing actually works.

The D.C. bill is not a liberal wish list of soft-on-crime policies. It is an exhaustive and entirely mainstream blueprint for a more coherent and consistent legal system.

The RCCA is not the only piece of D.C. legislation the House voted to rescind last month. In addition, 42 Democrats joined 218 Republicans in passing H.J.Res. 24, which would nullify the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act.

That measure, enacted last year by the D.C. Council, would allow noncitizens who meet residency and other requirements to vote in local races.

The bill's fate in the Senate, and whether Biden would veto a resolution seeking to overturn it, remains unclear.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

Norfolk Southern—the railroad giant whose train derailed and caused a toxic chemical fire in a small Ohio town earlier this month—has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out a 2017 lawsuit filed by a cancer-afflicted former rail worker, and the Biden administration is siding with the corporation, fresh reporting from The Lever revealed Thursday.

If the high court, dominated by six right-wing justices, rules in favor of Norfolk Southern, it could be easier for the profitable rail carrier to block pending and future lawsuits, including from victims of the ongoing disaster in East Palestine. Moreover, it "could create a national precedent limiting where workers and consumers can bring cases against corporations," wrote two of the investigative outlet's reporters, Rebecca Burns and Julia Rock.

Former Norfolk Southern worker Robert Mallory was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2016. The following year, he filed a lawsuit alleging that his illness stemmed from workplace exposure to asbestos and other hazardous materials and that the rail carrier failed to provide safety equipment and other resources to ensure he was adequately protected on the job.

Although he had never worked in Pennsylvania, Mallory filed his lawsuit in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas because his attorneys were from the state and "he thought he would get the fairest access to justice there," Ashley Keller, the lawyer representing him before the Supreme Court, told The Lever.

As Burns and Rock explained:

Pennsylvania has what's known as a "consent-by-registration" statute—something states have had on the books since the early 19th century—which stipulates that when corporations register to do business in the state, they are also consenting to be governed by that state's courts. Norfolk Southern asserts that being forced to defend the case in Pennsylvania would pose an undue burden, thereby violating its constitutional right to due process.

Even though Norfolk Southern owns thousands of miles of track in the Keystone State, the Philadelphia county court sided with the railroad and dismissed the case. Mallory appealed, and the case wound its way through state and federal courts before landing at the U.S. Supreme Court last year.

The rail carrier is asking the high court "to uphold the lower court ruling, overturn Pennsylvania's law, and restrict where corporations can be sued, upending centuries of precedent," the journalists noted. "If the court rules in favor of Norfolk Southern, it could overturn plaintiff-friendly laws on the books in states including Pennsylvania, New York, and Georgia that give workers and consumers more leeway to choose where they take corporations to court—an advantage national corporations already enjoy, as they often require customers and employees to agree to file litigation in specific locales whose laws make it harder to hold companies accountable."

Unsurprisingly, the American Association of Railroads (AAR) and other powerful corporate lobbying groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the American Trucking Association want to undercut the ability of workers and consumers to file lawsuits in the venue of their choosing. AAR, the rail industry's biggest lobby, filed a brief last September on behalf of Norfolk Southern.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) also filed a brief siding with the railroad giant. The Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision in the coming months.

"This is totally insane," The Lever's editor, David Sirota, wrote on social media.

"Wow. Just wow," Pennsylvania Sen. Katie Muth (D-44) tweeted in response to the report. "Sadly, this isn’t that surprising, but WTAF."

"Should Norfolk Southern prevail, the company could use the ruling to challenge other lawsuits on the grounds that they're filed in the wrong venue," The Lever reported, citing Scott Nelson, an attorney with the Public Citizen Litigation Group, which filed a brief backing Mallory. "Such a decision could affect lawsuits filed by residents exposed to hazardous chemicals as the result of accidents in other states," including victims of air or water pollution caused by the recent derailment in East Palestine, five miles west of the Pennsylvania state border.

“[Norfolk Southern] might say, 'You can only sue us in Ohio or Virginia [where Norfolk Southern is headquartered],' even if you were injured at your home in Pennsylvania from an accident that took place five miles away in Ohio," Nelson told the outlet.

In its brief, AAR argued that if the high court rules in favor of Mallory, he and other plaintiffs suing railroads under the Federal Employers' Liability Act (FELA)—a law protecting rail workers injured on the job—"could have a wide range of jurisdictions to choose from."

However, Burns and Rock reported, "groups weighing in on Mallory's side pointed out that 'forum shopping' is the norm for corporations," including when companies with no physical presence in Delaware register in that state to dodge taxes or when firms file bankruptcy cases in states more likely to hand down favorable opinions.

Notably, "Norfolk Southern freely utilizes the Pennsylvania courts to enforce its rights," the Academy of Rail Labor Attorneys, a group of lawyers who represent rail workers, pointed out in a brief. "The railroad certainly is not prejudiced in any way by defending lawsuits in the state. For purposes of jurisdiction, there is no valid reason that a corporation such as Norfolk Southern should be treated differently than an individual within the state."

During oral arguments in the case last fall, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, a liberal appointed by former President Barack Obama, asked Deputy Solicitor General Curtis Gannon why the Biden administration decided to involve itself in this case.

In response, Gannon said, "We pointed out not just that… the excessive availability of general jurisdiction could cause international concerns for trade with the United States and our commercial interests, but also the petitioner had called into question the constitutionality of a federal statute, and so we thought that it was important to make sure that the court's decision here wouldn't implicate the constitutionality of federal statutes."

The Biden administration's contention that Pennsylvania's law amounts to an overreach of state authority and calls into question the constitutionality of a federal statute is nonsensical, Keller, the plaintiff's lawyer, told The Lever.

“The United States relies on consent-by-registration statutes [like the Pennsylvania law] to obtain personal jurisdiction over various foreign entities," said Keller. "If it's unconstitutionally coercive when Pennsylvania does it, why isn't it unconstitutionally coercive when the United States does it?"

Burns and Rock warned that the high court's decision could have implications for future lawsuits as well as pending ones.

At least five class-action negligence lawsuits have been filed in Ohio against Norfolk Southern since the company's February 3 freight train crash in East Palestine.

While progressive advocacy groups and lawmakers have demanded that U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg move immediately to improve rail safety rules in response to that unfolding environmental and public health catastrophe, The Leverreported last week that Buttigieg is actively considering an industry-backed proposal to further weaken the regulation of train braking systems.

Another Norfolk Southern train carrying hazardous materials careened off the tracks on Thursday near Detroit, Michigan. Union leaders and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have described the recent derailments as the predictable result of Wall Street-backed policies that prioritize profits over safety.

As Sirota, Burns, Rock, and Matthew Cunningham-Cook of The Lever pointed out in a Friday op-ed in The New York Times, the U.S. is home to more than 1,000 train derailments per year and has seen a 36% increase in hazardous materials violations committed by rail carriers in the past five years.

The rail industry "tolerates too many preventable derailments and fights too many safety regulations," the journalists wrote. "The federal government must move quickly to improve rail safety overall."

"It shouldn't take a chemical cloud over a community in the American heartland to compel the government to protect its people," they added. "If we want to get train derailments much closer to zero, the rail industry must evolve."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

State broadcaster CCTV, state news agency Xinhua and the People's Daily newspaper have all sent reporters embedded with Chinese teams searching for survivors, with live broadcasts from the scene of the disaster.

Meanwhile, democratic Taiwan sent out its own 130-strong urban rescue team and medical workers to aid the relief effort, although they were assigned to different sectors of the vast disaster zone, and so were unlikely to meet in the field.

Dutch-born sinologist Manya Koetse, who tracks Chinese social media platforms on her English-language website, What's on Weibo, said official Chinese media had ramped up its reporting soon after the Turkey-Syria quake on Feb. 6, trying to portray China as a responsible major world power.

The first shipment of relief supplies from mainland China including blankets and tents urgently needed in the quake-hit areas arrived in Istanbul on Feb. 11, with electrocardiogram and ultrasound machines, medical transport vehicles and hospital beds arriving later in the same week, the Global Times newspaper reported.

"After the earthquakes, the Chinese government sent an 82-member rescue team ... and the Hong Kong government also sent a 59-member rescue team to assist in local rescue efforts," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a regular news briefing in Beijing on Feb. 15. They were joined by 441 rescuers from 17 private Chinese emergency response teams."

He said that the teams are continuing to look for survivors despite the fact that the "golden window" for finding anyone alive in rubble has now passed.

Irrelevant bridge

China's consul general in Belfast, Zhang Meifang, tweeted a photo of the Chinese-built Canakkale suspension bridge on Feb. 13, boasting that it had "withstood the earthquake."

The tweet was deleted after people pointed out that the bridge is more than 1,000 kilometers from the epicenter of the quake, and that it was built by a multinational team including Korean, Turkish and Danish companies.

China's Sichuan Road and Bridge Co. only installed the steel box girders in December 2020.

Çağdaş Üngör, an academic who studies Sino-Turkish relations and the Chinese Communist Party's influence operations in Istanbul, said the tweet was "outrageous."

"I feel that this kind of political propaganda is really too much right now," she said. "It goes far beyond the scope of public relations or advertising. What's even more outrageous is that [that bridge] is nowhere near the quake zone."

Turkish news anchor Nevsin Mengu also hit out at Beijing's boasting.

"China is busy with political propaganda," he said of a video clip of the Canakkale bridge also posted by Zhang Meifang. "Authoritarian countries like China and Turkey seem to have similarly bad taste in music," he quipped about the music used as a soundtrack to the video.

Zhang eventually deleted her post some 10 hours after posting, but with no explanation, and not before it had been viewed more than 200,000 times and retweeted by the Chinese Embassy in Paris.

Taiwan sends team

Taiwan's mobilization to assist in rescue efforts was the largest in the history of the island’s international humanitarian aid program, search and rescue team inspector Hsu Yu-wen told Radio Free Asia from southern Turkey. 

"We sent a total of 130 search and rescue personnel in two groups, including doctors, nurses and veterinarians, as well as five search and rescue dogs and 13 tons of rescue equipment," Hsu said. A second group consisted of a special plane to fly 90 search and rescue personnel directly to Turkey.

Hwang Pei-tsun, who led the Taiwanese team, said many of his doctors had been helping amputate the limbs of people found alive in the rubble, with photos of them saving people fed to the media by the country's fire department.

"[In one case], the person's hand and foot had already turned black, so they focused on saving the hand, then amputated the leg up to the knee and brought them out," Hwang said. "[At first] there were no vital signs, but they brought her out and kept doing CPR and shocking them, then followed the ambulance to the hospital."

While that victim was dead on arrival, the rescue teams turned around and went back to find more.

"The ambulance sirens have been going non-stop for 24 hours," Hwang said, against a constant background of emergency sirens.

Both teams were listed on a United Nations web page detailing international teams working in Turkey, in an unusual instance of international recognition for Taiwan, which has been frozen out of participation in international organizations by Beijing's insistent territorial claims, which it calls the "one China" principle.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Hwang Chun-mei and Jane Tang for RFA Mandarin.

A disaster response expert has implored the United States to lift its economic sanctions against Syria, warning that the restrictions are hampering rescue and relief operations in the earthquake-ravaged country.

"We need heavy equipment, ambulances, and firefighting vehicles to continue to rescue and remove the rubble, and this entails lifting sanctions on Syria as soon as possible," Khaled Hboubati, president of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, said Tuesday at a press conference.

"The number of victims is likely to rise, and a number of buildings are still at risk of collapsing. The results of the earthquake are disastrous, and our volunteers are ready, but we lack equipment," said Hboubati. "We call on donor countries to cooperate to lift the blockade."

A 7.8 magnitude earthquake and at least 54 powerful aftershocks, including a 7.5 magnitude earthquake, struck southeastern Turkey and northern Syria on Monday, causing massive damage to both countries. At least 9,057 people in Turkey and 2,530 people in Syria have died so far and tens of thousands are injured. The United Nations emphasizes that the full scale of the disaster is still coming into view as thousands remain trapped under rubble.

An estimated 10.9 million people, many of whom are refugees already displaced by armed conflicts, have been affected by the earthquake catastrophe in the northern Syrian provinces of Hama, Latakia, Idlib, Aleppo, and Tartus. Roughly 100,000 people are now believed to be homeless in Aleppo alone, according to the U.N., which says that just 30,000 have found shelter in schools and mosques, leaving 70,000 vulnerable to newly arrived snow.

"Lift the economic sanctions imposed on Syria and the Syrian people. Open the way for us. We are ready to provide assistance."

While "several countries including the U.S. and its allies have extended their support to Turkey in its relief and rescue work, they have refused to extend similar assistance to Syria," Peoples Dispatchreported Tuesday. "The U.S. State Department made it clear on Monday that it was only willing to support some work carried out in Syria by NGOs, but that it would have no dealings with the Bashar al-Assad government."

As Al Jazeerareported, State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters on Monday that "it would be quite ironic—if not even counterproductive—for us to reach out to a government that has brutalized its people over the course of a dozen years now."

"Instead, we have humanitarian partners on the ground who can provide the type of assistance in the aftermath of these tragic earthquakes," said Price.

But experts have pointed out that leaving sanctions intact impedes the ability of NGOs to swiftly deliver aid to devastated populations in Syria.

As the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) explained Monday: "Currently any U.S.-based aid and relief efforts are required to ensure that they follow the Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) guidance, or risk prosecution. This adds unnecessary and inhumane delays to organizations and individuals looking to support those in immediate need."

"We commend and are thankful to existing organizations on the ground providing immediate humanitarian aid and relief to those in Syria, Turkey, and across the region," said ADC director Abed Ayoub director. "The reality is more aid and relief is needed, and time is of the essence. Lifting of the sanctions will open the doors for additional and supplemental aid that will provide immediate relief to those in need."

Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad toldAl-Mayadeen on Monday that the government is willing "to provide all the required facilities to international organizations so they can give Syrians humanitarian aid."

Price, however, indicated that Washington has no plans to soften its stance toward the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which it deems illegitimate due to accusations of war crimes and human rights violations committed during an ongoing civil war that erupted after Assad brutally repressed pro-democracy protests in 2011.

“This is a regime that has never shown any inclination to put the welfare, the well-being, the interests of its people first," the U.S. diplomat said Monday. "Now that its people are suffering even more, we're going to continue doing what has proven effective over the course of the past dozen years or so—providing significant amounts of humanitarian assistance to partners on the ground."

Meanwhile, humanitarian groups on the ground continue to question the effectiveness of Washington's approach.

"Lift the economic sanctions imposed on Syria and the Syrian people," Hboubati said Tuesday. "Open the way for us. We are ready to provide assistance. We are ready to provide aid through the crossline and to send aid convoys to Idlib."

Hboubati stressed that the Syrian Arab Red Crescent does "not differentiate between any of the Syrian people" and called on the U.N., the European Union, and the U.S. Agency for International Development to support its mission.

Since the Caesar Act, passed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by former President Donald Trump, went into effect in 2020, "any group or company doing business with the Syrian government faces sanctions," Peoples Dispatch reported. "The act extends the scope of the previously existing sanctions on Syria, imposed by the U.S. and its European allies since the beginning of the war in the country in 2011."

"The impact of sanctions on Syria's health and other social sectors and its overall economic recovery has been criticized by the U.N. on several occasions in the past," the outlet noted. "The U.N. has also demanded that all unilateral punitive measures against Syria be lifted."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

A disaster response expert has implored the United States to lift its economic sanctions against Syria, warning that the restrictions are hampering rescue and relief operations in the earthquake-ravaged country.

"We need heavy equipment, ambulances, and firefighting vehicles to continue to rescue and remove the rubble, and this entails lifting sanctions on Syria as soon as possible," Khaled Hboubati, president of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, said Tuesday at a press conference.

"The number of victims is likely to rise, and a number of buildings are still at risk of collapsing. The results of the earthquake are disastrous, and our volunteers are ready, but we lack equipment," said Hboubati. "We call on donor countries to cooperate to lift the blockade."

A 7.8 magnitude earthquake and at least 54 powerful aftershocks, including a 7.5 magnitude earthquake, struck southeastern Turkey and northern Syria on Monday, causing massive damage to both countries. At least 9,057 people in Turkey and 2,530 people in Syria have died so far and tens of thousands are injured. The United Nations emphasizes that the full scale of the disaster is still coming into view as thousands remain trapped under rubble.

An estimated 10.9 million people, many of whom are refugees already displaced by armed conflicts, have been affected by the earthquake catastrophe in the northern Syrian provinces of Hama, Latakia, Idlib, Aleppo, and Tartus. Roughly 100,000 people are now believed to be homeless in Aleppo alone, according to the U.N., which says that just 30,000 have found shelter in schools and mosques, leaving 70,000 vulnerable to newly arrived snow.

"Lift the economic sanctions imposed on Syria and the Syrian people. Open the way for us. We are ready to provide assistance."

While "several countries including the U.S. and its allies have extended their support to Turkey in its relief and rescue work, they have refused to extend similar assistance to Syria," Peoples Dispatchreported Tuesday. "The U.S. State Department made it clear on Monday that it was only willing to support some work carried out in Syria by NGOs, but that it would have no dealings with the Bashar al-Assad government."

As Al Jazeerareported, State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters on Monday that "it would be quite ironic—if not even counterproductive—for us to reach out to a government that has brutalized its people over the course of a dozen years now."

"Instead, we have humanitarian partners on the ground who can provide the type of assistance in the aftermath of these tragic earthquakes," said Price.

But experts have pointed out that leaving sanctions intact impedes the ability of NGOs to swiftly deliver aid to devastated populations in Syria.

As the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) explained Monday: "Currently any U.S.-based aid and relief efforts are required to ensure that they follow the Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) guidance, or risk prosecution. This adds unnecessary and inhumane delays to organizations and individuals looking to support those in immediate need."

"We commend and are thankful to existing organizations on the ground providing immediate humanitarian aid and relief to those in Syria, Turkey, and across the region," said ADC director Abed Ayoub director. "The reality is more aid and relief is needed, and time is of the essence. Lifting of the sanctions will open the doors for additional and supplemental aid that will provide immediate relief to those in need."

Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad toldAl-Mayadeen on Monday that the government is willing "to provide all the required facilities to international organizations so they can give Syrians humanitarian aid."

Price, however, indicated that Washington has no plans to soften its stance toward the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which it deems illegitimate due to accusations of war crimes and human rights violations committed during an ongoing civil war that erupted after Assad brutally repressed pro-democracy protests in 2011.

“This is a regime that has never shown any inclination to put the welfare, the well-being, the interests of its people first," the U.S. diplomat said Monday. "Now that its people are suffering even more, we're going to continue doing what has proven effective over the course of the past dozen years or so—providing significant amounts of humanitarian assistance to partners on the ground."

Meanwhile, humanitarian groups on the ground continue to question the effectiveness of Washington's approach.

"Lift the economic sanctions imposed on Syria and the Syrian people," Hboubati said Tuesday. "Open the way for us. We are ready to provide assistance. We are ready to provide aid through the crossline and to send aid convoys to Idlib."

Hboubati stressed that the Syrian Arab Red Crescent does "not differentiate between any of the Syrian people" and called on the U.N., the European Union, and the U.S. Agency for International Development to support its mission.

Since the Caesar Act, passed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by former President Donald Trump, went into effect in 2020, "any group or company doing business with the Syrian government faces sanctions," Peoples Dispatch reported. "The act extends the scope of the previously existing sanctions on Syria, imposed by the U.S. and its European allies since the beginning of the war in the country in 2011."

"The impact of sanctions on Syria's health and other social sectors and its overall economic recovery has been criticized by the U.N. on several occasions in the past," the outlet noted. "The U.N. has also demanded that all unilateral punitive measures against Syria be lifted."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

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In May 2021, a nurse at UnitedHealthcare called a colleague to share some welcome news about a problem the two had been grappling with for weeks.

United provided the health insurance plan for students at Penn State University. It was a large and potentially lucrative account: lots of young, healthy students paying premiums in, not too many huge medical reimbursements going out.

But one student was costing United a lot of money. Christopher McNaughton suffered from a crippling case of ulcerative colitis — an ailment that caused him to develop severe arthritis, debilitating diarrhea, numbing fatigue and life-threatening blood clots. His medical bills were running nearly $2 million a year.

United had flagged McNaughton’s case as a “high dollar account,” and the company was reviewing whether it needed to keep paying for the expensive cocktail of drugs crafted by a Mayo Clinic specialist that had brought McNaughton’s disease under control after he’d been through years of misery.

On the 2021 phone call, which was recorded by the company, nurse Victoria Kavanaugh told her colleague that a doctor contracted by United to review the case had concluded that McNaughton’s treatment was “not medically necessary.” Her colleague, Dave Opperman, reacted to the news with a long laugh.

“I knew that was coming,” said Opperman, who heads up a United subsidiary that brokered the health insurance contract between United and Penn State. “I did too,” Kavanaugh replied.

David Opperman is an insurance broker who works for UnitedHealthcare. Victoria Kavanaugh is a nurse for United. In this recorded phone call from 2021, the two express relief that a doctor has turned down Penn State student Chris McNaughton’s claim as “not medically necessary.”

Opperman then complained about McNaughton’s mother, whom he referred to as “this woman,” for “screaming and yelling” and “throwing tantrums” during calls with United.

The pair agreed that any appeal of the United doctor’s denial of the treatment would be a waste of the family’s time and money.

“We’re still gonna say no,” Opperman said.

More than 200 million Americans are covered by private health insurance. But data from state and federal regulators shows that insurers reject about 1 in 7 claims for treatment. Many people, faced with fighting insurance companies, simply give up: One study found that Americans file formal appeals on only 0.1% of claims denied by insurers under the Affordable Care Act.

Insurers have wide discretion in crafting what is covered by their policies, beyond some basic services mandated by federal and state law. They often deny claims for services that they deem not “medically necessary.”

When United refused to pay for McNaughton's treatment for that reason, his family did something unusual. They fought back with a lawsuit, which uncovered a trove of materials, including internal emails and tape-recorded exchanges among company employees. Those records offer an extraordinary behind-the-scenes look at how one of America's leading health care insurers relentlessly fought to reduce spending on care, even as its profits rose to record levels.

As United reviewed McNaughton’s treatment, he and his family were often in the dark about what was happening or their rights. Meanwhile, United employees misrepresented critical findings and ignored warnings from doctors about the risks of altering McNaughton’s drug plan.

At one point, court records show, United inaccurately reported to Penn State and the family that McNaughton’s doctor had agreed to lower the doses of his medication. Another time, a doctor paid by United concluded that denying payments for McNaughton’s treatment could put his health at risk, but the company buried his report and did not consider its findings. The insurer did, however, consider a report submitted by a company doctor who rubber-stamped the recommendation of a United nurse to reject paying for the treatment.

United declined to answer specific questions about the case, even after McNaughton signed a release provided by the insurer to allow it to discuss details of his interactions with the company. United noted that it ultimately paid for all of McNaughton’s treatments. In a written response, United spokesperson Maria Gordon Shydlo wrote that the company’s guiding concern was McNaughton’s well-being.

“Mr. McNaughton’s treatment involves medication dosages that far exceed FDA guidelines,” the statement said. “In cases like this, we review treatment plans based on current clinical guidelines to help ensure patient safety.”

But the records reviewed by ProPublica show that United had another, equally urgent goal in dealing with McNaughton. In emails, officials calculated what McNaughton was costing them to keep his crippling disease at bay and how much they would save if they forced him to undergo a cheaper treatment that had already failed him. As the family pressed the company to back down, first through Penn State and then through a lawsuit, the United officials handling the case bristled.

“This is just unbelievable,” Kavanaugh said of McNaughton’s family in one call to discuss his case. ”They’re just really pushing the envelope, and I’m surprised, like I don’t even know what to say.”

Now 31, McNaughton grew up in State College, Pennsylvania, just blocks from the Penn State campus. Both of his parents are faculty members at the university.

In the winter of 2014, McNaughton was halfway through his junior year at Bard College in New York. At 6 feet, 4 inches tall, he was a guard on the basketball team and had started most of the team’s games since the start of his sophomore year. He was majoring in psychology.

When McNaughton returned to school after the winter holiday break, he started to experience frequent bouts of bloody diarrhea. After just a few days on campus, he went home to State College, where doctors diagnosed him with a severe case of ulcerative colitis.

A chronic inflammatory bowel disease that causes swelling and ulcers in the digestive tract, ulcerative colitis has no cure, and ongoing treatment is needed to alleviate symptoms and prevent serious health complications. The majority of cases produce mild to moderate symptoms. McNaughton’s case was severe.

Treatments for ulcerative colitis include steroids and special drugs known as biologics that work to reduce inflammation in the large intestine.

McNaughton, however, failed to get meaningful relief from the drugs his doctors initially prescribed. He was experiencing bloody diarrhea up to 20 times a day, with such severe stomach pain that he spent much of his day curled up on a couch. He had little appetite and lost 50 pounds. Severe anemia left him fatigued. He suffered from other conditions related to his colitis, including crippling arthritis. He was hospitalized several times to treat dangerous blood clots.

For two years, in an effort to help alleviate his symptoms, he ate the same meals every day: Rice Chex cereal and scrambled eggs for breakfast, a cup of white rice with plain chicken breast for lunch and a similar meal for dinner, occasionally swapping in tilapia.

His hometown doctors referred him to a specialist at the University of Pittsburgh, who tried unsuccessfully to bring his disease under control. That doctor ended up referring McNaughton to Dr. Edward Loftus Jr. at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, which has been ranked as the best gastroenterology hospital in the country every year since 1990 by U.S. News & World Report.

For his first visit with Loftus in May 2015, McNaughton and his mother, Janice Light, charted hospitals along the 900-mile drive from Pennsylvania to Minnesota in case they needed medical help along the way.

Mornings were the hardest. McNaughton often spent several hours in the bathroom at the start of the day. To prepare for his meeting with Loftus, he set his alarm for 3:30 a.m. so he could be ready for the 7:30 a.m. appointment. Even with that preparation, he had to stop twice to use a bathroom on the five-minute walk from the hotel to the clinic. When they met, Loftus looked at McNaughton and told him that he appeared incapacitated. It was, he told the student, as if McNaughton were chained to the bathroom, with no outside life. He had not been able to return to school and spent most days indoors, managing his symptoms as best he could.

McNaughton had tried a number of medications by this point, none of which worked. This pattern would repeat itself during the first couple of years that Loftus treated him.

In addition to trying to find a treatment that would bring McNaughton’s colitis into remission, Loftus wanted to wean him off the steroid prednisone, which he had been taking since his initial diagnosis in 2014. The drug is commonly prescribed to colitis patients to control inflammation, but prolonged use can lead to severe side effects including cataracts, osteoporosis, increased risk of infection and fatigue. McNaughton also experienced “moon face,” a side effect caused by the shifting of fat deposits that results in the face becoming puffy and rounder.

In 2018, Loftus and McNaughton decided to try an unusual regimen. Many patients with inflammatory bowel diseases like colitis take a single biologic drug as treatment. Whereas traditional drugs are chemically synthesized, biologics are manufactured in living systems, such as plant or animal cells. A year’s supply of an individual biologic drug can cost up to $500,000. They are often given through infusions in a medical facility, which adds to the cost.

McNaughton had tried individual biologics, and then two in combination, without much success. He and Loftus then agreed to try two biologic drugs together at doses well above those recommended by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Prescribing drugs for purposes other than what they are approved for or at higher doses than those approved by the FDA is a common practice in medicine referred to as off-label prescribing. The federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality estimates 1 in 5 prescriptions written today are for off-label uses.

There are drawbacks to the practice. Since some uses and doses of particular drugs have not been extensively studied, the risks and efficacy of using them off-label are not well known. Also, some drug manufacturers have improperly pushed off-label usage of their products to boost sales despite little or no evidence to support their use in those situations. Like many leading experts and researchers in his field, Loftus has been paid to do consulting related to the biologic drugs taken by McNaughton. The payments related to those drugs have ranged from a total of $1,440 in 2020 to $51,235 in 2018. Loftus said much of his work with pharmaceutical companies was related to conducting clinical trials on new drugs.

In cases of off-label prescribing, patients are depending upon their doctor’s expertise and experience with the drug.“In this case, I was comfortable that the potential benefits to Chris outweighed the risks,” Loftus said.

There was evidence that the treatment plan for McNaughton might work, including studies that had found dual biologic therapy to be efficacious and safe. The two drugs he takes, Entyvio and Remicade, have the same purpose — to reduce inflammation in the large intestine — but each works differently in the body. Remicade, marketed by Janssen Biotech, targets a protein that causes inflammation. Entyvio, made by Takeda Pharmaceuticals, works by preventing an excess of white blood cells from entering into the gastrointestinal tract.

As for any suggestion by United doctors that his treatment plan for McNaughton was out of bounds or dangerous, Loftus said “my treatment of Chris was not clinically inappropriate — as was shown by Chris’ positive outcome.”

The unusual high-dose combination of two biologic drugs produced a remarkable change in McNaughton. He no longer had blood in his stool, and his trips to the bathroom were cut from 20 times a day to three or four. He was able to eat different foods and put on weight. He had more energy. He tapered off prednisone.

“If you told me in 2015 that I would be living like this, I would have asked where do I sign up,” McNaughton said of the change he experienced with the new drug regimen.

When he first started the new treatment, McNaughton was covered under his family’s plan, and all his bills were paid. McNaughton enrolled at the university in 2020. Before switching to United’s plan for students, McNaughton and his parents consulted with a health advocacy service offered to faculty members. A benefits specialist assured them the drugs taken by McNaughton would be covered by United.

McNaughton joined the student plan in July 2020, and his infusions that month and the following month were paid for by United. In September, the insurer indicated payment on his claims was “pending,” something it did for his other claims that came in during the rest of the year.

McNaughton and his family were worried. They called United to make sure there wasn’t a problem; the insurer told them, they said, that it only needed to check his medical records. When the family called again, United told them it had the documentation needed, they said. United, in a court filing last year, said it received two calls from the family and each time indicated that all of the necessary medical records had not yet been received.

In January 2021, McNaughton received a new explanation of benefits for the prior months. All of the claims for his care, beginning in September, were no longer “pending.” They were stamped “DENIED.” The total outstanding bill for his treatment was $807,086.

When McNaughton’s mother reached a United customer service representative the next day to ask why bills that had been paid in the summer were being denied for the fall, the representative told her the account was being reviewed because of “a high dollar amount on the claims,” according to a recording of the call.

With United refusing to pay, the family was terrified of being stuck with medical bills that would bankrupt them and deprive McNaugton of treatment that they considered miraculous.

They turned to Penn State for help. Light and McNaughton’s father, David, hoped their position as faculty members would make the school more willing to intervene on their behalf.

“After more than 30 years on faculty, my husband and I know that this is not how Penn State would want its students to be treated,” Light wrote to a school official in February 2021.

In response to questions from ProPublica, Penn State spokesperson Lisa Powers wrote that “supporting the health and well-being of our students is always of primary importance” and that “our hearts go out to any student and family impacted by a serious medical condition.” The university, she wrote, does “not comment on students’ individual circumstances or disclose information from their records.” McNaughton offered to grant Penn State whatever permissions it needed to speak about his case with ProPublica. The school, however, wrote that it would not comment “even if confidentiality has been waived.”

The family appealed to school administrators. Because the effectiveness of biologics wanes in some patients if doses are skipped, McNaughton and his parents were worried about even a delay in treatment. His doctor wrote that if he missed scheduled infusions of the drugs, there was “a high likelihood they would no longer be effective.”

During a conference call arranged by Penn State officials on March 5, 2021, United agreed to pay for McNaughton’s care through the end of the plan year that August. Penn State immediately notified the family of the “wonderful news” while also apologizing for “the stress this has caused Chris and your family.”

Behind the scenes, McNaughton’s review had “gone all the way to the top” at United’s student health plan division, Kavanaugh, the nurse, said in a recorded conversation.

McNaughton had been on the treatment for three years and it had put his disease in remission with no side effects.

The family’s relief was short-lived. A month later, United started another review of McNaughton’s care, overseen by Kavanaugh, to determine if it would pay for the treatment in the upcoming plan year.

The nurse sent the McNaughton case to a company called Medical Review Institute of America. Insurers often turn to companies like MRIoA to review coverage decisions involving expensive treatments or specialized care.

Kavanaugh, who was assigned to a special investigations unit at United, let her feelings about the matter be known in a recorded telephone call with a representative of MRIoA.

“This school apparently is a big client of ours,” she said. She then shared her opinion of McNaughton’s treatment. “Really this is a case of a kid who’s getting a drug way too much, like too much of a dose,” Kavanaugh said. She said it was “insane that they would even think that this is reasonable” and “to be honest with you, they’re awfully pushy considering that we are paying through the end of this school year.”

On a call with an outside contractor, the United nurse claimed McNaughton was on a higher dose of medication than the FDA approved, which is a common practice known as “off-label prescribing.”

MRIoA sent the case to Dr. Vikas Pabby, a gastroenterologist at UCLA Health and a professor at the university’s medical school. His May 2021 review of McNaughton’s case was just one of more than 300 Pabby did for MRIoA that month, for which he was paid $23,000 in total, according to a log of his work produced in the lawsuit.

In a May 4, 2021 report, Pabby concluded McNaughton’s treatment was not medically necessary, because United’s policies for the two drugs taken by McNaughton did not support using them in combination.

Insurers spell out what services they cover in plan policies, lengthy documents that can be confusing and difficult to understand. Many policies, such as McNaughton’s, contain a provision that treatments and procedures must be “medically necessary” in order to be covered. The definition of medically necessary differs by plan. Some don’t even define the term. McNaughton’s policy contains a five-part definition, including that the treatment must be “in accordance with the standards of good medical policy” and “the most appropriate supply or level of service which can be safely provided.”

Behind the scenes at United, Opperman and Kavanaugh agreed that if McNaughton were to appeal Pabby’s decision, the insurer would simply rule against him. “I just think it’s a waste of money and time to appeal and send it to another one when we know we’re gonna get the same answer,” Opperman said, according to a recording in court files. At Opperman’s urging, United decided to skip the usual appeals process and arrange for Pabby to have a so-called “peer-to-peer” discussion with Loftus, the Mayo physician treating McNaughton. Such a conversation, in which a patient’s doctor talks with an insurance company’s doctor to advocate for the prescribed treatment, usually only occurs after a customer has appealed a denial and the appeal has been rejected.

When Kavanaugh called Loftus’ office to set up a conversation with Pabby, she explained it was an urgent matter and had been requested by McNaughton. “You know I’ve just gotten to know Christopher,” she explained, although she had never spoken with him. “We’re trying to advocate and help and get this peer-to-peer set up.”

McNaughton, meanwhile, had no idea at the time that a United doctor had decided his treatment was unnecessary and that the insurer was trying to set up a phone call with his physician.

In the peer-to-peer conversation, Loftus told Pabby that McNaughton had “a very complicated case” and that lower doses had not worked for him, according to an internal MRIoA memo.

Following his conversation with Loftus, Pabby created a second report for United. He recommended the insurer pay for both drugs, but at reduced doses. He added new language saying that the safety of using both drugs at the higher levels “is not established.”

When Kavanaugh shared the May 12 decision from Pabby with others at United, her boss responded with an email calling it “great news.”

Then Opperman sent an email that puzzled the McNaughtons.

In it, Opperman claimed that Loftus and Pabby had agreed that McNaughton should be on significantly lower doses of both drugs. He said Loftus “will work with the patient to start titrating them down” — or reducing the dosage — “to a normal dose range.” Opperman wrote that United would cover McNaughton’s treatment in the coming year, but only at the reduced doses. Opperman did not respond to emails and phone messages seeking comment.

McNaughton didn’t believe a word of it. He had already tried and failed treatment with those drugs at lower doses, and it was Loftus who had upped the doses, leading to his remission from severe colitis.

The only thing that made sense to McNaughton was that the treatment United said it would now pay for was dramatically cheaper — saving the company at least hundreds of thousands of dollars a year — than his prescribed treatment because it sliced the size of the doses by more than half.

When the family contacted Loftus for an explanation, they were outraged by what they heard. Loftus told them that he had never recommended lowering the dosage. In a letter, Loftus wrote that changing McNaughton’s treatment “would have serious detrimental effects on both his short term and long term health and could potentially involve life threatening complications. This would ultimately incur far greater medical costs. Chris was on the doses suggested by United Healthcare before, and they were not at all effective.”

It would not be until the lawsuit that it would become clear how Loftus’ conversations had been so seriously misrepresented.

Under questioning by McNaughton’s lawyers, Kavanaugh acknowledged that she was the source of the incorrect claim that McNaughton’s doctor had agreed to a change in treatment.

“I incorrectly made an assumption that they had come to some sort of agreement,” she said in a deposition last August. “It was my first peer-to-peer. I did not realize that that simply does not occur.”

Kavanaugh did not respond to emails and telephone messages seeking comment.

When the McNaughtons first learned of Opperman’s inaccurate report of the phone call with Loftus, it unnerved them. They started to question if their case would be fairly reviewed.

“When we got the denial and they lied about what Dr. Loftus said, it just hit me that none of this matters,” McNaughton said. “They will just say or do anything to get rid of me. It delegitimized the entire review process. When I got that denial, I was crushed.”

While the family tried to sort out the inaccurate report, United continued putting the McNaughton case in front of more company doctors.

On May 21, 2021, United sent the case to one of its own doctors, Dr. Nady Cates, for an additional review. The review was marked “escalated issue.” Cates is a United medical director, a title used by many insurers for physicians who review cases. It is work he has been doing as an employee of health insurers since 1989 and at United since 2010. He has not practiced medicine since the early 1990s.

Cates, in a deposition, said he stopped seeing patients because of the long hours involved and because “AIDS was coming around then. I was seeing a lot of military folks who had venereal diseases, and I guess I was concerned about being exposed.” He transitioned to reviewing paperwork for the insurance industry, he said, because “I guess I was a chicken.”

When he had practiced, Cates said, he hadn’t treated patients with ulcerative colitis and had referred those cases to a gastroenterologist.

He said his review of McNaughton’s case primarily involved reading a United nurse’s recommendation to deny his care and making sure “that there wasn't a decimal place that was out of line.” He said he copied and pasted the nurse’s recommendation and typed “agree” on his review of McNaughton’s case.

In the deposition, Cates tells McNaughton’s lawyer that he copied the recommendation of Pamela Banister, a nurse for United, rather than writing his own decision.

Watch video ➜

Cates said that he does about a hundred reviews a week. He said that in his reviews he typically checks to see if any medications are prescribed in accordance with the insurer’s guidelines, and if not, he denies it. United’s policies, he said, prevented him from considering that McNaughton had failed other treatments or that Loftus was a leading expert in his field.

“You are giving zero weight to the treating doctor’s opinion on the necessity of the treatment regimen?” a lawyer asked Cates in his deposition. He responded, “Yeah.”

Attempts to contact Cates for comment were unsuccessful.

At the same time Cates was looking at McNaughton’s case, yet another review was underway at MRIoA. United said it sent the case back to MRIoA after the insurer received the letter from Loftus warning of the life-threatening complications that might occur if the dosages were reduced.

On May 24, 2021, the new report requested by MRIoA arrived. It came to a completely different conclusion than all of the previous reviews.

Dr. Nitin Kumar, a gastroenterologist in Illinois, concluded that McNaughton’s established treatment plan was not only medically necessary and appropriate but that lowering his doses “can result in a lack of effective therapy of Ulcerative Colitis, with complications of uncontrolled disease (including dysplasia leading to colorectal cancer), flare, hospitalization, need for surgery, and toxic megacolon.”

Unlike other doctors who produced reports for United, Kumar discussed the harm that McNaughton might suffer if United required him to change his treatment. “His disease is significantly severe, with diagnosis at a young age,” Kumar wrote. “He has failed every biologic medication class recommended by guidelines. Therefore, guidelines can no longer be applied in this case.” He cited six studies of patients using two biologic drugs together and wrote that they revealed no significant safety issues and found the therapy to be “broadly successful.”

When Kavanaugh learned of Kumar’s report, she quickly moved to quash it and get the case returned to Pabby, according to her deposition.

In a recorded telephone call, Kavanaugh told an MRIoA representative that “I had asked that this go back through Dr. Pabby, and it went through a different doctor and they had a much different result.” After further discussion, the MRIoA representative agreed to send the case back to Pabby. “I appreciate that,” Kavanaugh replied. “I just want to make sure, because, I mean, it’s obviously a very different result than what we’ve been getting on this case.”

MRIoA case notes show that at 7:04 a.m. on May 25, 2021, Pabby was assigned to take a look at the case for the third time. At 7:27 a.m., the notes indicate, Pabby again rejected McNaughton’s treatment plan. While noting it was “difficult to control” McNaughton’s ulcerative colitis, Pabby added that his doses “far exceed what is approved by literature” and that the “safety of the requested doses is not supported by literature.”

In a deposition, Kavanaugh said that after she opened the Kumar report and read that he was supporting McNaughton’s current treatment plan, she immediately spoke to her supervisor, who told her to call MRIoA and have the case sent back to Pabby for review.

Kavanaugh said she didn’t save a copy of the Kumar report, nor did she forward it to anyone at United or to officials at Penn State who had been inquiring about the McNaughton case. “I didn’t because it shouldn’t have existed,” she said. “It should have gone back to Dr. Pabby.”

When asked if the Kumar report caused her any concerns given his warning that McNaughton risked cancer or hospitalization if his regimen were changed, Kavanaugh said she didn’t read his full report. “I saw that it was not the correct doctor, I saw the initial outcome and I was asked to send it back,” she said. Kavanaugh added, “I have a lot of empathy for this member, but it needed to go back to the peer-to-peer reviewer.”

In a court filing, United said Kavanaugh was correct in insisting that Pabby conduct the review and that MRIoA confirmed that Pabby should have been the one doing the review.

The Kumar report was not provided to McNaughton when his lawyer, Jonathan Gesk, first asked United and MRIoA for any reviews of the case. Gesk discovered it by accident when he was listening to a recorded telephone call produced by United in which Kavanaugh mentioned a report number Gesk had not heard before. He then called MRIoA, which confirmed the report existed and eventually provided it to him.

Pabby asked ProPublica to direct any questions about his involvement in the matter to MRIoA. The company did not respond to questions from ProPublica about the case.

When McNaughton enrolled at Penn State in 2020, it brought a sense of normalcy that he had lost when he was first diagnosed with colitis. He still needed monthly hours-long infusions and suffered occasional flare-ups and symptoms, but he was attending classes in person and living a life similar to the one he had before his diagnosis.

It was a striking contrast to the previous six years, which he had spent largely confined to his parents’ house in State College. The frequent bouts of diarrhea made it difficult to go out. He didn’t talk much to friends and spent as much time as he could studying potential treatments and reviewing ongoing clinical trials. He tried to keep up with the occasional online course, but his disease made it difficult to make any real progress toward a degree.

United, in correspondence with McNaughton, noted that its review of his care was “not a treatment decision. Treatment decisions are made between you and your physician.” But by threatening not to pay for his medications, or only to pay for a different regimen, McNaughton said, United was in fact attempting to dictate his treatment. From his perspective, the insurer was playing doctor, making decisions without ever examining him or even speaking to him.

The idea of changing his treatment or stopping it altogether caused constant worry for McNaughton, exacerbating his colitis and triggering physical symptoms, according to his doctors. Those included a large ulcer on his leg and welts under his skin on his thighs and shin that made his leg muscles stiff and painful to the point where he couldn’t bend his leg or walk properly. There were daily migraines and severe stomach pain. “I was consumed with this situation,” McNaughton said. “My path was unconventional, but I was proud of myself for fighting back and finishing school and getting my life back on track. I thought they were singling me out. My biggest fear was going back to the hell.”

McNaughton said he contemplated suicide on several occasions, dreading a return to a life where he was housebound or hospitalized.

If you or someone you know needs help, here are a few resources:

• Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988
• Text the Crisis Text Line from anywhere in the U.S. to reach a crisis counselor: 741741

McNaughton and his parents talked about him possibly moving to Canada where his grandmother lived and seeking treatment there under the nation’s government health plan.

Loftus connected McNaughton with a psychologist who specializes in helping patients with chronic digestive diseases.

The psychologist, Tiffany Taft, said McNaughton was not an unusual case. About 1 in 3 patients with diseases like colitis suffer from medical trauma or PTSD related to it, she said, often the result of issues related to getting appropriate treatment approved by insurers.

“You get into hopelessness,” she said of the depression that accompanies fighting with insurance companies over care. “They feel like ‘I can’t fix that. I am screwed.’ When you can’t control things with what an insurance company is doing, anxiety, PTSD and depression get mixed together.”

In the case of McNaughton, Taft said, he was being treated by one of the best gastroenterologists in the world, was doing well with his treatment and then was suddenly notified he might be on the hook for nearly a million dollars in medical charges without access to his medications. “It sends you immediately into panic about all these horrific things that could happen,” Taft said. The physical and mental symptoms McNaughton suffered after his care was threatened were “triggered” by the stress he experienced, she said.

In early June 2021, United informed McNaughton in a letter that it would not cover the cost of his treatment regimen in the next academic year, starting in August. The insurer said it would only pay for a treatment plan that called for a significant reduction in the doses of the drugs he took.

United wrote that the decision came after his “records have been reviewed three times and the medical reviewers have concluded that the medication as prescribed does not meet the Medical Necessity requirement of the plan.”

In August 2021, McNaughton filed a federal lawsuit accusing United of acting in bad faith and unreasonably making treatment decisions based on financial concerns and not what was the best and most effective treatment. It claims United had a duty to find information that supported McNaughton’s claim for treatment rather than looking for ways to deny coverage.

United, in a court filing, said it did not breach any duty it owed to McNaughton and acted in good faith. On Sept. 20, 2021, a month after filing the lawsuit, and with United again balking at paying for his treatment, McNaughton asked a judge to grant a temporary restraining order requiring United to pay for his care. With the looming threat of a court hearing on the motion, United quickly agreed to cover the cost of McNaughton’s treatment through the end of the 2021-2022 academic year. It also dropped a demand requiring McNaughton to settle the matter as a condition of the insurer paying for his treatment as prescribed by Loftus, according to an email sent by United’s lawyer.

It is not surprising that insurers are carefully scrutinizing the care of patients treated with biologics, which are among the most expensive medications on the market. Biologics are considered specialty drugs, a class that includes the best-selling Humira, used to treat arthritis. Specialty drug spending in the U.S. is expected to reach $505 billion in 2023, according to an estimate from Optum, United’s health services division. The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, a nonprofit that analyzes the value of drugs, found in 2020 that the biologic drugs used to treat patients like McNaughton are often effective but overpriced for their therapeutic benefit. To be judged cost-effective by ICER, the biologics should sell at a steep discount to their current market price, the panel found.

A panel convened by ICER to review its analysis cautioned that insurance coverage “should be structured to prevent situations in which patients are forced to choose a treatment approach on the basis of cost.” ICER also found examples where insurance company policies failed to keep pace with updates to clinical practice guidelines based on emerging research.

United officials did not make the cost of treatment an issue when discussing McNaughton’s care with Penn State administrators or the family.

Bill Truxal, the president of UnitedHealthcare StudentResources, the company’s student health plan division, told a Penn State official that the insurer wanted the “best for the student” and it had “nothing to do with cost,” according to notes the official took of the conversation.

Behind the scenes, however, the price of McNaughton’s care was front and center at United.

In one email, Opperman asked about the cost difference if the insurer insisted on only paying for greatly reduced doses of the biologic drugs. Kavanaugh responded that the insurer had paid $1.1 million in claims for McNaughton’s care as of the middle of May 2021. If the reduced doses had been in place, the amount would have been cut to $260,218, she wrote.

United was keeping close tabs on McNaughton at the highest levels of the company. On Aug. 2, 2021, Opperman notified Truxal and a United lawyer that McNaughton “has just purchased the plan again for the 21-22 school year.”

A month later, Kavanaugh shared another calculation with United executives showing that the insurer spent over $1.7 million on McNaughton in the prior plan year.

United officials strategized about how to best explain why it was reviewing McNaughton’s drug regimen, according to an internal email. They pointed to a justification often used by health insurers when denying claims. “As the cost of healthcare continues to climb to soaring heights, it has been determined that a judicious review of these drugs should be included” in order to “make healthcare more affordable for our members,” Kavanaugh offered as a potential talking point in an April 23, 2021, email.

Three days later, UnitedHealth Group filed an annual statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission disclosing its pay for top executives in the prior year. Then-CEO David Wichmann was paid $17.9 million in salary and other compensation in 2020. Wichmann retired early the following year, and his total compensation that year exceeded $140 million, according to calculations in a compensation database maintained by the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. The newspaper said the amount was the most paid to an executive in the state since it started tracking pay more than two decades ago. About $110 million of that total came from Wichmann exercising stock options accumulated during his stewardship.

The McNaughtons were well aware of the financial situation at United. They looked at publicly available financial results and annual reports. Last year, United reported a profit of $20.1 billion on revenues of $324.2 billion.

When discussing the case with Penn State, Light said, she told university administrators that United could pay for a year of her son’s treatment using just minutes’ worth of profit.

McNaughton has been able to continue receiving his infusions for now, anyway. In October, United notified him it was once again reviewing his care, although the insurer quickly reversed course when his lawyer intervened. United, in a court filing, said the review was a mistake and that it had erred in putting McNaughton’s claims into pending status.

McNaughton said he is fortunate his parents were employed at the same school he was attending, which was critical in getting the attention of administrators there. But that help had its limits.

In June 2021, just a week after United told McNaughton it would not cover his treatment plan in the upcoming plan year, Penn State essentially walked away from the matter.

In an email to the McNaughtons and United, Penn State Associate Vice President for Student Affairs Andrea Dowhower wrote that administrators “have observed an unfortunate breakdown in communication” between McNaughton and his family and the university health insurance plan, “which appears from our perspective to have resulted in a standstill between the two parties.” While she proposed some potential steps to help settle the matter, she wrote that “Penn State’s role in this process is as a resource for students like Chris who, for whatever reason, have experienced difficulty navigating the complex world of health insurance.” The university’s role “is limited,” she wrote, and the school “simply must leave” the issue of the best treatment for McNaughton to “the appropriate health care professionals.”

In a statement, a Penn State spokesperson wrote that “as a third party in this arrangement, the University’s role is limited and Penn State officials can only help a student manage an issue based on information that a student/family, medical personnel, and/or insurance provider give — with the hope that all information is accurate and that the lines of communication remain open between the insured and the insurer.”

Penn State declined to provide financial information about the plan. However, the university and United share at least one tie that they have not publicly disclosed.

When the McNaughtons first reached out to the university for help, they were referred to the school’s student health insurance coordinator. The official, Heather Klinger, wrote in an email to the family in February 2021 that “I appreciate your trusting me to resolve this for you.”

In April 2022, United began paying Klinger’s salary, an arrangement which is not noted on the university website. Klinger appears in the online staff directory on the Penn State University Health Services webpage, and has a university phone number, a university address and a Penn State email listed as her contact. The school said she has maintained a part-time status with the university to allow her to access relevant data systems at both the university and United.

The university said students “benefit” from having a United employee to handle questions about insurance coverage and that the arrangement is “not uncommon” for student health plans.

The family was dismayed to learn that Klinger was now a full-time employee of United.

“We did feel betrayed,” Light said. Klinger did not respond to an email seeking comment.

McNaughton’s fight to maintain his treatment regimen has come at a cost of time, debilitating stress and depression. “My biggest fear is realizing I might have to do this every year of my life,” he said.

McNaughton said one motivation for his lawsuit was to expose how insurers like United make decisions about what care they will pay for and what they will not. The case remains pending, a court docket shows.

He has been accepted to Penn State’s law school. He hopes to become a health care lawyer working for patients who find themselves in situations similar to his.

He plans to reenroll in the United health care plan when he starts school next fall.

Do You Have Insights Into Health Insurance Denials? Help Us Report on the System.

Doris Burke and Lexi Churchill contributed research.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by David Armstrong, Patrick Rucker and Maya Miller.

First came the devastating flash floods in Auckland on Friday night. Then came the huge effort to help families evacuate to community shelters. And finally the ongoing clean-up operation.

We’re saddened by this unprecedented extreme weather that has impacted on some of our communities in Aotearoa. It was great to see the community come out to support and help evacuate flooded-out people to the community shelters. We were going door-to-door to help families as the flood waters were rising.

Special thanks to the volunteers who came out yesterday to help clean up at the NZ Ethnic Women’s Trust in Mt Roskill which was impacted by the flooding. Volunteers at the Wesley Primary School helped families with food, clothes and hot meals.

• READ MORE: Other Auckland flood reports

Thanks to the school leaders who opened the space to give shelter to families.

A massive thanks to the volunteers that worked alongside me to distribute food today in Albert-Eden and Puketāpapa. We distributed food and needed information door to door on O’Donnell Avenue in Mt Roskill to families and the church affected by the flood.

We also reached out to affected families in Fowlds Avenue, Kitchener Street and Lambeth Avenue.

About 80 meals delivered to 30 families — thanks to Humanity First International for the meals and to the Whānau Community Centre and Hub’s Nik Naidu.

All over Auckland, volunteers were doing a great job.

• Need help, please contact these numbers:
  Accommodation support: 0800 222 200
  Clothes, bed, and blankets etc: 0800 400 100

Auckland's flash floods

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This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The Democratic Party's conservative Blue Dog Coalition has been slashed in half due partially to a disagreement within its ranks over efforts to attract more members, Politico reported on Tuesday, with a number of corporate lawmakers insisting on preserving the Blue Dogs' "longstanding legacy" and name despite its reputation as a "Southern 'boys' club'."

U.S. Reps. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), Ed Case (D-Hawaii), David Scott (D-Ga.), Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), Lou Correa (D-Calif.), and Mike Sherrill (D-N.J.) all left the coalition earlier this month after the 15 members held a secret-ballot vote on changing the group's name to the Common Sense Coalition.

The name change, the departing members argued, would help the group to recruit more lawmakers as it has reached an all-time low, 16 years after the Blue Dog alliance was forced to impose a cap on its membership to keep it at 20% of the Democratic caucus.

Despite the group's large roster during the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, a spokesperson for the Blue Dogs claimed Tuesday that they "have never prioritized having a large coalition" and are focused on what they refer to as "fiscally-responsible policies [and] ensuring a strong national defense."

"With a narrow majority governing the House, even a smaller group of members focused on getting things done for the American people on these issues can and will play a vital role," Andy LaVigne, the group's executive director, told Politico.

A desire to remain insular instead of appealing to a broader group of Democrats is "exactly the charge you'd expect centrists to lob at progressives," said Nick Field of Decision Desk HQ.

While the Blue Dog Coalition has long claimed to represent "mainstream American values" and the "commonsense, moderate voice of the Democratic Party," the group's contraction in recent years has coincided with the steady growth of the progressive "Squad" in the U.S. House and a wealth of evidence that the majority of Democratic voters are not aligned with the Blue Dogs' longtime push of austerity policies.

The Blue Dogs—both those who are staying in the coalition and those who are leaving—have attacked progressive policies as unrealistic and divisive.

Meanwhile, the informal Squad, whose members do not accept corporate PAC donations and are proponents of a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and other bold policy proposals, has grown to include lawmakers from states including Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Missouri since the group's first four members were elected in 2018. Around 10 lawmakers are now part of the Squad, which started with Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), and their influence has been made clear across the party as more than 70 Democrats in the 118th Congress have sworn off corporate PAC contributions.

While policies pushed by the Squad are broadly popular, the dwindling Blue Dog Coalition includes the last remaining Democrats who oppose abortion rights and marriage equality. The members who stayed after this month's vote include Reps. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.), Mike Thompson (D-Calif.), Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), Jared Golden (D-Maine), Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), Jim Costa (D-Calif.), and Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas). Rep. Wiley Nickel (D-N.C.) has not confirmed whether he'll stay or go.

The departure of nearly half of the coalition suggests that the Blue Dogs "are on their last leg," tweeted Lindsay Owens, executive director of the economic justice group Groundwork Collaborative.

With the splintering of the conservative group, said Sam Shirazi, a civil rights attorney and commentator on politics in Spanberger's state of Virginia, "the long decline of the Blue Dog coalition continues."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Julia Conley.

An assessment released Monday by leading science agencies highlights the effectiveness of an international treaty intended to protect the stratospheric ozone layer as well as the power of taking action now to limit global heating driven by human activity.

The Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer was signed in 1987 and entered into force in 1989. The landmark treaty regulates nearly 100 synthetic chemicals known as ozone-depleting substances (ODSs)—including chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used in air conditioners and refrigerators.

"The impact the Montreal Protocol has had on climate change mitigation cannot be overstressed."

The new analysis of the Montreal Protocol was conducted by experts from the European Commission, United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), and World Meteorological Organization (WMO) as well as the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The assessment's executive summary states that "actions taken under the Montreal Protocol continue to contribute to ozone recovery" and total column ozone (TCO) "is expected to return to 1980 values around 2066 in the Antarctic, around 2045 in the Arctic, and around 2040 for the near-global average."

The publication also points out how efforts to protect and restore the ozone layer contribute to the 2015 Paris climate agreement's goal of keeping global heating this century "well below" 2°C, relative to preindustrial levels, with an ultimate target of 1.5°C.

"Compliance with the 2016 Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, which requires phasedown of production and consumption of some hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), is estimated to avoid 0.3-0.5°C of warming by 2100," the document notes.

"New studies support previous assessments in that the decline in ODS emissions due to compliance with the Montreal Protocol avoids global warming of approximately 0.5-1°C by mid-century compared to an extreme scenario with an uncontrolled increase in ODSs of 3-3.5% per year," the executive summary adds.

Meg Seki, executive secretary of the UNEP's Ozone Secretariat, said in a statement: "That ozone recovery is on track according to the latest quadrennial report is fantastic news. The impact the Montreal Protocol has had on climate change mitigation cannot be overstressed."

"Over the last 35 years, the protocol has become a true champion for the environment," Seki continued. "The assessments and reviews undertaken by the scientific assessment panel remain a vital component of the work of the protocol that helps inform policy- and decision-makers."

This is the panel's first assessment to examine a proposed geoengineering method to reduce global heating known as stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), which would involve planes releasing sulfur to reflect solar radiation.

The analysis warns that "an unintended consequence of SAI is that it could also affect stratospheric temperatures, circulation, and ozone production and destruction rates and transport."

NOAA's David Fahey, a lead author of the assessment, toldThe Guardian that "these sort of climate interventions are touchy subjects because they are a tangled ball of ethics and governance, rather than just science... There would indeed, though, be consequences for ozone if you put enough sulfur into the atmosphere. It would be unavoidable."

Released in the wake of COP27—a November U.N. summit that critics called "another terrible failure" because Paris agreement parties failed to collectively call for an end to all planet-heating fossil fuels—the new assessment prompted experts to urge the world to learn from the Montreal Protocol and apply those lessons tackling the climate emergency.

Fahey said that the global response to CFCs means that the Montreal Protocol should be seen as "the most successful environmental treaty in history and offers encouragement that countries of the world can come together and decide an outcome and act on it."

According to The Guardian:

Fahey said that even with swift global action on CFCs, the chemicals still linger in the atmosphere for about a century. "It's a bit like waiting for paint to dry, you just have to wait for nature to do its thing and flush out these chemicals," he said.

The challenge when it comes to greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide is even greater, he said, as they stay in the atmosphere far longer and, unlike CFCs which were produced by just a handful of companies, the emissions coming from fossil fuels are far more widespread and embedded in almost every activity in societies.

"CO2 is another order of magnitude when it comes to its longevity, which is sobering," he said. "Getting every person on the planet to stop burning fossil fuels is a vastly different challenge."

Still, WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas declared that "ozone action sets a precedent for climate action."

"Our success in phasing out ozone-eating chemicals," he said, "shows us what can and must be done—as a matter of urgency—to transition away from fossil fuels, reduce greenhouse gases, and so limit temperature increase."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

An assessment released Monday by leading science agencies highlights the effectiveness of an international treaty intended to protect the stratospheric ozone layer as well as the power of taking action now to limit global heating driven by human activity.

The Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer was signed in 1987 and entered into force in 1989. The landmark treaty regulates nearly 100 synthetic chemicals known as ozone-depleting substances (ODSs)—including chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used in air conditioners and refrigerators.

"The impact the Montreal Protocol has had on climate change mitigation cannot be overstressed."

The new analysis of the Montreal Protocol was conducted by experts from the European Commission, United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), and World Meteorological Organization (WMO) as well as the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The assessment's executive summary states that "actions taken under the Montreal Protocol continue to contribute to ozone recovery" and total column ozone (TCO) "is expected to return to 1980 values around 2066 in the Antarctic, around 2045 in the Arctic, and around 2040 for the near-global average."

The publication also points out how efforts to protect and restore the ozone layer contribute to the 2015 Paris climate agreement's goal of keeping global heating this century "well below" 2°C, relative to preindustrial levels, with an ultimate target of 1.5°C.

"Compliance with the 2016 Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, which requires phasedown of production and consumption of some hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), is estimated to avoid 0.3-0.5°C of warming by 2100," the document notes.

"New studies support previous assessments in that the decline in ODS emissions due to compliance with the Montreal Protocol avoids global warming of approximately 0.5-1°C by mid-century compared to an extreme scenario with an uncontrolled increase in ODSs of 3-3.5% per year," the executive summary adds.

Meg Seki, executive secretary of the UNEP's Ozone Secretariat, said in a statement: "That ozone recovery is on track according to the latest quadrennial report is fantastic news. The impact the Montreal Protocol has had on climate change mitigation cannot be overstressed."

"Over the last 35 years, the protocol has become a true champion for the environment," Seki continued. "The assessments and reviews undertaken by the scientific assessment panel remain a vital component of the work of the protocol that helps inform policy- and decision-makers."

This is the panel's first assessment to examine a proposed geoengineering method to reduce global heating known as stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), which would involve planes releasing sulfur to reflect solar radiation.

The analysis warns that "an unintended consequence of SAI is that it could also affect stratospheric temperatures, circulation, and ozone production and destruction rates and transport."

NOAA's David Fahey, a lead author of the assessment, toldThe Guardian that "these sort of climate interventions are touchy subjects because they are a tangled ball of ethics and governance, rather than just science... There would indeed, though, be consequences for ozone if you put enough sulfur into the atmosphere. It would be unavoidable."

Released in the wake of COP27—a November U.N. summit that critics called "another terrible failure" because Paris agreement parties failed to collectively call for an end to all planet-heating fossil fuels—the new assessment prompted experts to urge the world to learn from the Montreal Protocol and apply those lessons tackling the climate emergency.

Fahey said that the global response to CFCs means that the Montreal Protocol should be seen as "the most successful environmental treaty in history and offers encouragement that countries of the world can come together and decide an outcome and act on it."

According to The Guardian:

Fahey said that even with swift global action on CFCs, the chemicals still linger in the atmosphere for about a century. "It's a bit like waiting for paint to dry, you just have to wait for nature to do its thing and flush out these chemicals," he said.

The challenge when it comes to greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide is even greater, he said, as they stay in the atmosphere far longer and, unlike CFCs which were produced by just a handful of companies, the emissions coming from fossil fuels are far more widespread and embedded in almost every activity in societies.

"CO2 is another order of magnitude when it comes to its longevity, which is sobering," he said. "Getting every person on the planet to stop burning fossil fuels is a vastly different challenge."

Still, WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas declared that "ozone action sets a precedent for climate action."

"Our success in phasing out ozone-eating chemicals," he said, "shows us what can and must be done—as a matter of urgency—to transition away from fossil fuels, reduce greenhouse gases, and so limit temperature increase."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

Republicans’ inability to agree on a new Speaker of the House of Representatives is dangerous for a variety of reasons and an embarrassment to the country. But no one should shed any tears over the delay this creates for the House Republicans in passing their first legislative priority, a bill to facilitate tax crimes by the wealthy.

The “Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act” would rescind 90 percent of the new funding for the Internal Revenue Service included in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act. This would eliminate the new law’s $45.6 billion to enforce the tax code for people making more than $400,000 and repeal an additional $26 billion in IRS funding that would include, among other things, a pilot for a free e-file program to make it easier for people with relatively simple tax returns to file. The slash-and-burn bill comes just weeks after Republicans forced a 2 percent cut in annual IRS funding as part of the omnibus spending plan.

The funding for tax enforcement is critical to allowing the IRS to do one of its most important jobs: crack down on tax evasion by the extremely wealthy and by big corporations. The IRS has had a hard time doing this lately – as evidenced by its failure to properly audit Donald Trump’s tax returns – because its enforcement budget was cut by about a fourth between 2010 and 2021, after adjusting for inflation. This led to a 40 percent drop in revenue agents – the auditors uniquely qualified to examine the returns of high-income individuals and corporations – over the same time. The number of revenue agents is the lowest it’s been since 1953.

As a result, the gap between taxes owed and paid keeps growing, driven largely by sophisticated accounting tricks used by higher-income households and large corporations. The most recent estimated gross tax gap, for 2014 through 2016, was $496 billion – an increase of $58 billion from the previous estimate.

At the same time, the funding cuts Republicans seek would make it more difficult and expensive for non-wealthy people to file their taxes. Filing taxes should be a quick and painless process for people with straightforward income, so lawmakers included instructions in the IRA for the IRS to form a pilot for a free e-file program. Now, the GOP House majority wants to kill this program, inevitably pushing filers toward predatory private services like the TurboTax “Free Edition” that charged filers hundreds of dollars despite the clear implication of its advertising.

The funding cuts would also hit essential taxpayer services, meaning many people might end up waiting longer to receive refunds or get answers to questions. The bill includes more than $25 billion in cuts to “Operations Support” – things like communications and information technology that help the agency work better.

Republicans’ inability to agree on a new speaker is dangerous and makes the United States look bad. But we’re glad to see it delay their also-dangerous attempts to defund the IRS and to let wealthy tax criminals evade law enforcement.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jon Whiten.

"Taken together, during the first ten months of 2022, renewable energy sources comfortably out-produced both coal and nuclear power by 16.62% and 27.39% respectively," the SUN DAY Campaign noted Tuesday. "However, natural gas continues to dominate with a 39.4% share of total generation."

The new EIA figures show that electricity output from solar alone jumped by more than 26% in the first 10 months of last year. In just October, the SUN DAY Campaign observed, "solar's output was 31.68% greater than a year earlier, a rate of growth that strongly eclipsed that of every other energy source."

Ken Bossong, the campaign's executive director, said that "as we begin 2023, it seems very likely that renewables will provide nearly a quarter—if not more—of the nation's electricity during the coming year."

"And it is entirely possible that the combination of just wind and solar will outpace nuclear power and maybe even that of coal during the next twelve months," Bossong added.

"It is entirely possible that the combination of just wind and solar will outpace nuclear power and maybe even that of coal during the next twelve months."

The encouraging data comes amid the broader context of U.S. failures to sufficiently accelerate renewable energy production and phase out fossil fuel use, which is helping push greenhouse gas emissions to record-shattering levels globally.

Gas production, a major contributor to highly potent methane pollution, likely broke an annual record in the U.S. last year, according to the latest federal data. One recent analysis found that the U.S. is currently pursuing more new oil pipeline capacity by length than any other country.

The Climate Action Tracker (CAT), a site created by a group of scientists to analyze nations' emissions targets and progress, rates the U.S. as "insufficient" overall, arguing the country's "climate policies and action in 2030 need substantial improvements to be consistent with the 1.5°C temperature limit."

On the positive side, CAT welcomes the recent passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a law that's set to boost the U.S. build-out of renewable energy infrastructure.

"However, while the largest share of the IRA is directed to clean technologies, it also includes several concessions for the fossil fuel industry such as requiring minimum acreages of public lands for drilling leases," CAT notes. "These concessions contradict President Biden's promise on his first day in office to ban new oil and gas drilling on federal lands."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres announced Monday that he will convene a "no-nonsense" Climate Ambition Summit next year amid mounting frustration with world leaders' refusal to phase out fossil fuels and take other necessary steps to combat runaway planetary warming.

"I call on every leader to step up—from governments, business, cities and regions, civil society, and finance," Guterres said during his end-of-year press conference at U.N. headquarters in New York City. "They must come with new, tangible, and credible climate action to accelerate the pace of change. The invitation is open."

"I am more determined than ever to make 2023 a year for peace, a year for action."

"But," the U.N. chief added, "there is a price of entry and the price of entry is non-negotiable—credible, serious, and new climate action and nature-based solutions that will move the needle forward and respond to the urgency of the climate crisis must be presented. It will be a no-nonsense summit. No exceptions. No compromises. There will be no room for back-sliders, greenwashers, blame-shifters, or repackaging of announcements of previous years."

News of the special conference, set to take place in September 2023, comes after two recently concluded U.N. climate summits—the lobbyist-riddled COP27 climate event in Egypt and the COP15 biodiversity gathering in Montreal—left advocates dismayed by world leaders' failure to take concrete action to tackle the planet's most pressing emergencies.

At COP27—a summit so disappointing that some climate advocates are demanding a boycott of COP28—policymakers did nothing to end what Guterres has deemed nations' "fossil fuel addiction."

"The Climate Ambition Summit will be convened alongside a crucial gathering of world leaders to accelerate action at the mid-way point of the Sustainable Development Goals," Guterres said Monday. "I am more determined than ever to make 2023 a year for peace, a year for action. We can't accept things as they are."

Guterres' Climate Ambition Summit is scheduled to begin two months before COP28 in the United Arab Emirates, one of the world's largest oil producers.

According to new research from the United Kingdom's Met Office, next year is expected to be one of the hottest on record and "the tenth year in succession that temperatures have reached at least 1°C above pre-industrial levels."

Alex Rafalowicz, director of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, said in a statement that Guterres' summit "can differentiate itself from forums past by putting real solutions on the table that tackle the biggest driver of the climate crisis: fossil fuels."

"Fossil fuels did not find their way into the climate COP but they must if the [secretary-general's] summit is to succeed," said Rafalowicz. "This means phasing out all fossil fuels in a way that is fast, fair, and sufficiently financed."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

A new UNICEF report finds that over 11,000 children have been killed or injured in the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led war in Yemen since 2015. A six-month ceasefire between warring parties expired in October. Meanwhile, Senator Bernie Sanders withdrew a Senate resolution Tuesday that would have ended U.S. support for the war, following pressure from the White House. Sanders said he would bring the resolution back if they could not reach an agreement. Shireen Al-Adeimi, a Yemeni American assistant professor at Michigan State University and a nonresident fellow at the Quincy Institute, says many Democrats who decried U.S. support for the Saudi coalition when it was seen as “Trump’s war” have now fallen silent despite the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe. “The situation on the ground is so volatile that this War Powers Resolution is absolutely essential,” says Al-Adeimi.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

President Joe Biden has directed the Democratic National Committee to reduce the danger that progressives might effectively challenge him in the 2024 presidential primaries. That’s a key goal of his instructions to the DNC last week, when Biden insisted on dislodging New Hampshire—the longtime first-in-the-nation primary state where he received just 8 percent of the vote and finished fifth in the 2020 Democratic primary. No wonder Biden wants to replace New Hampshire with South Carolina, where he was the big primary winner.

The White House and mainstream journalists have echoed each other to assert that Biden would face no serious challenge to renomination if he runs again. But his blatant intrusion into the DNC’s process for setting the primary calendar is a sign of anxiety about potential obstacles to winning renomination.

Unlike all other states under consideration for early primaries, South Carolina is not a battleground state. Everyone knows that the Democratic ticket won’t come close to winning in deep-red South Carolina in 2024. But that state—which Biden obviously sees as vital to his renomination—has a party apparatus dominated by Biden’s powerful corporatist ally, Congressman James Clyburn.

A president is not a party's king...

The Biden plan to reorder the 2024 schedule “includes a subtle but effective ploy to minimize the chances that he’d face a left-wing challenger in the primaries if the 80-year-old president, as expected, seeks a second term,” centrist Walter Shapiro wrote approvingly in The New Republic. “More than that, Biden has created a template beyond 2024 to lessen the odds that future versions of Bernie Sanders will get liftoff in the early Democratic primaries.”

But serious public discussion from candidates with a range of outlooks is badly needed in the process of selecting the presidential nominee. From health care, extreme economic inequality, labor rights and racial justice to military spending, foreign policy and the climate emergency, voters in Democratic primaries need to hear crucial issues debated.

The current prevailing attitudes are retrograde. While Democratic politicians and pundits weigh in on whether Biden should run for president again, his party’s voters are presumed to be little more than spectators. But the decision on whether Biden will be the nominee in 2024 shouldn’t be his alone. A party that has been emphasizing the importance of democracy should not be so eager to short-circuit it in the presidential nominating process.

Very few congressional Democrats have been willing to publicly depart from the party line that Biden would be a fine standard-bearer. The few dissenting voices among them are usually furtive. The New York Times reported after the midterm election that a House Democrat—speaking “on the condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing the White House"—said that "Biden’s numbers were ‘a huge drag' on Democratic candidates, who won in spite of the president not thanks to him."

Fears of antagonizing the White House have sealed Democratic officeholders inside a bubble that carries them away from the party's grassroots base. This fall began with most Democratic voters not wanting Biden to be the party's nominee next time. Even amid post-midterms euphoria among Democrats, they are now evenly split on the question. But Democrats on Capitol Hill and other party leaders remain frozen in place, rarely casting any doubt on the wisdom of renominating this president.

The disconnect from the party's base is in sync with a refusal to acknowledge the facts indicating that Biden at the top of the ticket would be an albatross around the necks of Democratic candidates in 2024. While voters are evenly divided between the two major parties, Biden's public-approval deficit has exceeded 10 percent almost all of this year. Nine out of 10 young adults—a key cohort for Democratic prospects—don't want him to run for re-election. In midterm exit polling, two-thirds of voters said they didn't want Biden to run. Yet, when asked about those survey results, the president fell back on "watch me" bravado.

We're told that smoke-filled rooms are a thing of the past in national politics. But when a president wants to run for re-election, the anticipated mode is not much better. Looking ahead, the only way to inject participatory democracy into the Democrats' nominating process for 2024 is to insist that the nomination should be earned with the party's voters, not bestowed from on high.

If President Biden decides to seek the Democratic nomination, as now seems likely, credible primary challengers could enliven an otherwise stultifying process, making it robust instead of a bust. The corrosive effects of stagnated assumptions should be held up to disinfecting sunlight. New ideas should be discussed rather than suppressed.

Conventional wisdom insists that a president has the divine political right to be the party's nominee for a second term. But a president is not a party's king, and he has no automatic right to renomination.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Norman Solomon.

Now, after one failed attempt to pass the followup bill, leading Democrats in Congress are maneuvering to pass Manchin’s energy permitting legislation in the coming weeks by attaching it to a critical annual defense spending bill, sources told E&E News and the Washington Post.

The maneuver represents a last-ditch effort by Democratic leaders to force through the West Virginia senator’s controversial energy legislation before they lose unified control of Congress next month. If this effort fails, any future permitting bill will have to clear a Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Such a bill would likely look a lot different than what Manchin and his fellow Democrats intended, focusing more on supporting fossil fuels less on hastening the transition to clean energy.

Manchin’s bill in its current form would speed up federal environmental reviews for many large infrastructure projects, making it easier to ramp up production of fossil fuels as well as green energy. The permitting process for these projects often takes years to complete, leaving projects stuck in regulatory limbo. 

The bill would also streamline the process for approving new electrical transmission wires, which are essential for moving renewable wind and solar energy from the rural areas where they’re often produced to population centers that need power. New transmission lines, however, are often derailed by disputes between states. The legislation also contains a provision that would order the completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a natural gas pipeline that runs through Manchin’s state and has long been one of the senator’s top priorities.

The legislation has been divisive among climate advocates. Many policy experts and renewable-energy boosters have praised the language around transmission lines, arguing that more transmission infrastructure is necessary to decarbonize the power sector. One estimate from the research firm Rhodium Group found that failing to build new transmission lines could jeopardize up to a quarter of the emissions reductions promised by the landmark Inflation Reduction Act that passed in August. Representative Sean Casten, a Democrat representing Illinois, told Grist last month that “the good outweighs the bad.” (Prior to running for office, Casten occasionally wrote blog posts for Grist between 2007 and 2014.)

But progressives and environmental justice advocates have said the attempt to hasten environmental reviews will harm ecosystems and vulnerable communities who must contend with major projects near their homes. John Beard, an activist in Port Arthur, Texas, called it a “climate catastrophe.” 

Earlier efforts to pass Manchin’s permitting reform stalled out earlier this year. After Manchin and Senate Majority Chuck Schumer struggled to consolidate support for the bill, they attached it to a stopgap government funding package in September, only to remove it again after dozens of progressives in the House and Senate opposed that maneuver.

Now the party has one more chance to move the bill forward, again by stitching it to a must-pass funding package. The National Defense Authorization Act is an annual spending bill that allocates funding to the military, and it typically reaches the president’s desk with bipartisan support. If this year’s version doesn’t pass by December 16, the federal government will be forced to shut down many of its normal operations. 

Democrats are betting that Republicans who oppose Manchin’s permitting reform effort will vote for the legislation because they don’t want to vote against defense spending. Indeed, since many progressives will likely oppose the defense bill, Manchin and the other Democratic leaders will need to pick up Republicans in the House and the Senate in order to get it to President Biden’s desk.

Manchin has spent the month since the midterm elections holding a series of sideline talks with his Republican colleagues in an attempt to reach a bipartisan permitting reform deal, but the talks have yet to bear any fruit. His fellow senator from West Virginia, Republican Shelley Moore Capito, called it a “heavy lift” last week.

If the Democrats can’t pass permitting before a new Congress takes office next month, they will have to work with Republicans to craft a bipartisan version of the legislation. Kevin McCarthy, the top House Republican who will likely serve as the next Speaker of the House, has said that boosting what he calls “energy independence” will be one of the top agenda items for his new majority.

But McCarthy’s ideas about how to boost energy production are different from Manchin’s. A competitor permitting bill drafted by Capito and her Republican colleagues omitted the renewable-friendly transmission text and included other provisions that would weaken safeguards for federal lands and waters. The official Republican energy platform, meanwhile, proposes to auction off more federal land for oil drilling, speed up mining for critical minerals, and restore the Keystone XL Pipeline, which Biden canceled shortly after taking office last year.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Democrats make last-ditch effort to pass Joe Manchin’s energy permitting bill on Dec 6, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Jake Bittle.

Update:

The Georgia Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously rejected the Republican Party's attempt to block early voting this Saturday in the U.S. Senate runoff election between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and GOP candidate Herschel Walker.

Earlier:

Republican groups filed an appeal with the Georgia Supreme Court on Tuesday in a last-ditch effort to block early voting this Saturday in the U.S. Senate runoff election between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and GOP candidate Herschel Walker.

The Georgia Republican Party, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and the Republican National Committee asked Georgia's high court to overturn a lower court's ruling that said state law permits early voting this Saturday, 10 days before the December 6 runoff.

As The Associated Press reported, "The time-sensitive legal battle began after Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger issued guidance to county election officials that said early voting could not be held on November 26 because state law says it is illegal on a Saturday if there is a holiday on the Thursday or Friday preceding it."

Thursday is Thanksgiving and Friday is a state holiday that was originally created to honor Robert E. Lee, the general of the Confederate army that fought to preserve slavery. Lee's name wasn't removed from the holiday until 2015.

The Democratic Party of Georgia, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and the Warnock campaign sued last week to challenge Raffensperger's guidance, arguing that the prohibition on Saturday early voting after a holiday applies only to primary or general elections, not runoffs.

A Fulton County judge agreed, issuing an order on Friday that sided with the Warnock campaign and the Democratic groups.

Lawyers for the state challenged the lower court's decision, but the Georgia Court of Appeals issued a single-sentence ruling late Monday that rejected their request for an immediate reversal.

Raffensperger accepted that ruling and said the state would not launch additional appeals.

"The court has worked its will," Mike Hassinger, a spokesperson for the secretary of state's office, said in a statement. "We believe this is something the General Assembly should consider clarifying to avoid confusion in the future."

The Republican groups, however, appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court on Tuesday.

According to AP:

They argue that the interpretation of Georgia law put forth by the plaintiffs and accepted by [Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox] was incorrect. The runoff election set for December 6 is clearly a continuation of the November 8 general election and is subject to the prohibition on Saturday voting immediately after a holiday, they argue.

Counties had been relying on the guidance provided by Raffensperger as they prepared for the runoff election, under the assumption that voting would not be allowed November 26, the Republican groups argue. Only 10 counties—"all of them Democrat-leaning"—plan to hold early voting on Saturday, they note.

That "sows confusion and inequity into the voting process, preventing the clarity and uniformity that Georgia's citizens deserve," they argue.

The Warnock campaign and the Democratic groups expressed their opposition to the GOP's petition in a filing submitted to the state supreme court on Wednesday morning.

Georgia compressed the time frame for runoff campaigns as part of a 2021 voter suppression law condemned by Democrats and voting rights advocates.

"The shortened calendar, less than a month from the general election, makes the early-voting period coincide with Thanksgiving," HuffPost noted. "Georgia law requires that counties hold five days of early voting from Monday, November 28, through Friday, December 2. But counties are also allowed to hold three additional days of early voting, and some counties want to offer early voting on Saturday, when many voters are off work."

Warnock and Walker, a former football star backed by ex-President Donald Trump, are set to face off in the December 6 runoff after neither candidate won more than 50% of the vote in the November 8 midterms.

Democrats have already secured 50 seats in the Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris' tie-breaking vote giving them the slimmest possible majority. But the Georgia runoff is still consequential for several reasons.

Among other things, a victory by Warnock would ensure that Democrats have a majority on all Senate committees—allowing them to expedite the pace of judicial confirmations and other work. It could also reduce the obstructionist influence of right-wing Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.).

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

This is a breaking news story... Please check back for updates.

In a blow to Donald Trump, the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a bid by the former president to prevent a congressional committee from obtaining his federal income tax returns.

The high court's brief order came less than a month after Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily stopped the Internal Revenue Service from handing over Trump's tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee, which is set to receive six years of federal filings from the former president and his companies.

"We've been waiting 1,329 days for Trump's tax returns, almost as long as the American Civil War," tweeted Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.). "At long last the Supreme Court has moved to end this farce. Now let our committee get these documents. Let the sunlight in. Amen."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

America's oceans are in serious decline due to decades of mismanagement, overexploitation, climate change, acidification, habitat damage, and pollution. Many marine species are threatened or endangered, and entire marine ecosystems (Arctic sea ice, coral reefs, mangroves, etc.), are severely threatened. Ocean ecosystems will have increasing difficulty retaining functional integrity through the climate crisis this century, and these ecosystems urgently need the strongest protections we can provide.

We cannot afford to miss perhaps our last best chance to permanently protect our nation's most critical ocean ecosystems in time to save them for the future.

Although President Biden's laudable Jan. 27, 2021 Executive Order "Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad" calls for conserving 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030 ("30x30"), so far little has come from this pledge. 

To date, the administration has designated only one new National Marine Sanctuary (NMS) - Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast NMS in the Great Lakes (a freshwater archaeological site nominated in 2014), while other nominated marine sanctuaries await an uncertain, multi-year process of further consideration.  Protections for one small (5,000 mi2) Marine National Monument (Northeast Canyons and Seamounts off New England) were restored, but the administration has yet to propose or designate any new Marine National Monuments.  And although the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) conducted a public comment period last year on the 30x30 ocean effort, the agency is now proposing to establish an advisory council on the issue, a process that would only further delay substantive action.

On an issue as urgent and critical to our nation's future as ocean health, the Biden administration's bureaucratic slow-rolling is unacceptable. We can hope for the election of an administration in 2024 that supports ocean protection, but it would be foolish and dangerous to plan on such.  Thus, it is imperative that the administration expands and accelerates its ocean protection effort immediately.

There is no reason to wait until 2030 to secure the protections urgently needed for U.S. waters—the administration can, and should, act in the next two years to make this happen—a "30x24" goal.  And many feel the administration should expand the 2030 target from 30% to 50%—a "50x30" goal. 

Internationally, although the administration just announced at the U.N. COP27 climate conference its new "Ocean Conservation Challenge," this initiative asks countries to commit to a 30x30 goal only in domestic waters within their Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), ignoring international waters ("Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction"). On protecting international waters, which cover almost 60% of the global ocean, the Biden administration remains either non-committal, or strategically ambiguous.

The administration can and must, at long last, join the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and submit both UNCLOS and the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (which the U.S. signed, but did not ratify), for Senate ratification. This would give the U.S. a long-awaited full voice in international negotiations regarding ocean conservation.  While it is unclear that enough Senate Republicans would embrace U.S. accession to these international conventions, it is time to try again.

For waters within the U.S. EEZ, a group of U.S. marine scientists sent a letter to President Biden last year urging him to "go big" on ocean protection by designating new Marine National Monuments via executive authority. The letter is signed by over ninety university deans, department chairs, distinguished marine professors, agency and independent scientists (including the legendary Dr. Jane Goodall).

A recent assessment by the Marine Conservation Institute found that virtually all of the "strongly protected" marine areas in the U.S. are in the Western Pacific—(Papahanaumokuakea, Rose Atoll, Marianas Trench, and Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monuments, covering a total of approximately 1.2 million mi2), but less than 1% of marine waters in the rest of U.S. are similarly strongly protected.  This stunning imbalance must be corrected.

In addition to the Western Pacific protections, the administration must now strongly protect at least 30% of the productive and threatened waters within each of the other seven U.S. marine management areas—North Pacific (Alaska), Pacific, Gulf of Mexico, South Atlantic, Mid-Atlantic, New England, and Caribbean.

Marine National Monuments are the quickest, most durable, and strongest policy instrument available to achieve this protection target for the oceans.  These should legally withstand any effort by an unsympathetic future administration to weaken or eliminate them.  Accordingly, marine scientists are urging the Biden administration to designate large-scale Marine National Monuments in the Arctic Ocean, Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands, Gulf of Alaska, Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of Maine, the Caribbean, and Pacific and Atlantic coasts. 

These new marine monuments must, at a minimum, permanently prohibit all extractive activities (oil, gas, seabed mining), destructive fishing practices (bottom trawling, etc.), significantly reduce marine pollution (plastic debris, oil, hazardous chemicals, undersea noise, etc.), and manage other environmental risks. They should support low-impact sustainable recreation, tourism, subsistence and scientific research.  Most importantly, the marine monuments must protect populations of marine mammals, seabirds, fish, and all pelagic and seabed ecological functions as much as possible. 

Who knows what sort of administration we will have after the 2024 election.  If it is another administration like the last one, we will lose another four years in this urgent effort. The Biden administration cannot afford to delay any longer, and must act now to secure these ocean protections by 2024. 

Speaking about the "fierce urgency of now," Martin Luther King Jr. warned that "there is such a thing as being too late." On ocean protection, we are almost at that point. 

We cannot afford to miss perhaps our last best chance to permanently protect our nation's most critical ocean ecosystems in time to save them for the future.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Rick Steiner.

While Republican fearmongering about Democrats "defunding the police" didn't exactly lead to a "red wave" last week, conservatives were successful at defunding something else.

They know that to achieve their vision of America, they have to destabilize, weaken, and even destroy the institutions that give a voice to people who don't agree with their vision.

Voters in a small Western Michigan town rejected the renewal of a property tax that funds the town's only public library. Patmos Library, in Jamestown Township, is now expected to run out of money by early 2024.

The reason? "[The library is] trying to groom our children to believe that it's okay to have these sinful desires," a member of the group Jamestown Conservatives told Bridge Michigan.

Echoing conservative parent groups across the country—many of them funded by corporate executives and wealthy Republican donors—stoking opposition to "Critical Race Theory," the group has been organizing to force the library to remove LGBTQ children's books. They have handed out fliers claiming that the books are "pornographic sexually graphic material" intended for "very young and impressionable kids" and even harassed library staff into resigning.

This might be about one library in one small town, but it highlights a key fact about our political moment.

Conservatives might be confused about what to do about Trump and the 2024 election, but they have a plan.

They know that to achieve their vision of America, they have to destabilize, weaken, and even destroy the institutions that give a voice to people who don't agree with their vision. They know that they have to contend for power over public institutions.

That's why they attack public schools and libraries over made-up (and racist and sexist) propaganda. That's why they privatize schools, water systems, public transit, and more. That's why they cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy—to starve the government. That's why they want to shred Social Security and Medicare.

And it's also why those of us who have a different vision—a more democratic, accepting, compassionate vision, where all of us can thrive and be free—need to protect and expand our public intsitutions.

We need to stop charter schools from siphoning money from public school systems. We need to close private, for-profit prisons. We need to protect public jobs that pay livable wages. We need to keep water in public hands. We need to make sure public investments don't contribute to climate change through privatization. And so much more.

Our plan needs to be this: contend for power over public institutions and use them to create the future the majority of people want—where all of us, no matter our sexuality, color, or where we come from can thrive.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Donald Cohen.

Freedom requires that people are able to influence decisions about policies that affect their lives. In many states, ballot initiatives offer a way for residents to make certain policy choices directly, from the voting booth. In one of those states, Arizona, voters this November will consider a constitutional amendment that joins a growing, worrisome trend of state efforts to simultaneously erode state tax systems and weaken democratic norms. If approved, the measure would both hamstring the state's ability to raise adequate revenues for vital services and empower a minority to thwart policies that a majority of Arizonans support.

The people of Arizona deserve a real voice in their government—a voice that legislators should honor and respect, rather than weaken or reverse.

The ballot question, Proposition 132, asks voters whether they want to permanently increase the threshold to approve initiatives or referenda that impose a tax from a majority of votes cast in an election to 60 percent (a supermajority) of votes cast. This move would override voters' democratic rights by making it harder to amend or repeal harmful or inequitable laws and by tilting power away from voters and toward state legislators—weakening the balance of power enshrined in that state's constitution. Only nine states require some form of supermajority threshold at the ballot, and Arizona's could prove among the strictest.

The ballot process has been critical to meeting Arizona's needs. Voters have used it to raise revenue for key priorities and to respond to crises. For example, in 2010, they voted for a measure to balance the state budget after the Great Recession led to a revenue shortfall. And in 2020, they approved an initiative to raise taxes on the highest-income Arizonans to fund a nearly $1 billion boost to the state's underfunded education system. Notwithstanding a clear mandate by voters, the legislature negated the approved referendum and instead gave a $2 billion tax cut particularly beneficial to the wealthiest households.

A measure on the ballot this November would increase the state sales tax by 0.1 percent to generate $190 million for rural firefighters and paramedics.

Over the years, several ballot measures with important benefits for Arizona communities passed with less than 60 percent of the vote, including measures that boosted funding for early childhood education, K-12 schools, and health care programs such as the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System. Had Proposition 132 been in place at the time of these referenda, they all would have failed. That's especially problematic in Arizona because the state constitution already requires a two-thirds vote of the legislature to raise taxes (including reforming or eliminating tax breaks). That makes it tough to raise adequate funds for good schools, health care, and transportation systems without going to the ballot. The ballot process is a backstop to ensuring that important measures with majority support among Arizonans have a pathway to enactment.

Proposition 132 would also undermine voters' ability to repeal or reform possible instances of legislative overreach, including this year's dangerous tax cuts that stand to drain billions in revenue from schools, health care systems, and public infrastructure projects over coming years and that disproportionately benefit rich households.

Proposition 132 has emerged at a time when Arizona's legislature and courts have taken several other steps that erode democracy and restrict individual freedoms. For example:

Supermajority requirements have a sordid history. The earliest supermajority taxation requirement still on the books was enacted in Mississippi in 1890 and enshrined in the same constitution that stripped Black people's voting rights. It mandated a three-fifths supermajority for any tax increase and came in direct response to efforts by Reconstruction-era, biracial governments to raise significant revenues for schools, infrastructure, and other needs. That barrier to raising adequate revenue has protected white wealth in Mississippi for generations and prevented needed investments in low-income people and communities of color.

The people of Arizona deserve a real voice in their government—a voice that legislators should honor and respect, rather than weaken or reverse. But Proposition 132 would do the opposite: shift power from voters to the legislature, weaken people's ability to advance proactive reforms or reverse legislative overreach, and diminish a constitutional right designed to protect that state's voters and communities. It would make smart investments in education, infrastructure, and other needed supports far less likely, and regressive measures like tax cuts for the wealthy and affronts on social justice far more. Such a step would weaken democracy and undermine Arizonans' ability to shape their futures—their freedom—a value we all share and should protect.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Bernie Gallagher.

On Nov. 1, Vietnamese rights lawyer Ngo Anh Tuan attended a meeting between representatives from the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, the U.S. Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City and family members of several jailed political dissidents at the eve of the 26th U.S.-Vietnam Human Rights Dialogue held on Nov. 2. Radio Free Asia spoke to him about the meeting on Nov. 3. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. 

RFA: What were your recommendations for the U.S. government at the meeting regarding human rights in Vietnam?

Ngo Anh Tuan:  The meeting was held on the eve of the annual U.S.-Vietnam Human Rights Dialogue. I came to the meeting at their [the U.S. government’s] invitation and was the only lawyer there. I can’t repeat what I said verbatim but here are the key things that I raised:

Firstly, Vietnam should hold dialogues with political dissidents and utilize their knowledge and talents for the country’s development. President Ho Chi Minh did this after establishing the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, which had been seen as an appropriate policy. Unfortunately, they [the current Vietnamese government] don’t do it now.

Secondly, [Vietnam] has to amend or remove the harsh provisions relating to freedom of speech in its current Penal Code as they contradict Vietnam’s 2013 Constitution and human rights treaties to which Vietnam is a signatory.

Thirdly, [Vietnam] must immediately stop using its Departments of Information and Communications (DOICs) to assess people’s thoughts and ideologies and accuse them [instead of] investigation and procuracy agencies and judges. As long as these practices aren’t eliminated, DOIC assessors should be summoned to trials to clarify what they have assessed and respond to defense lawyers. Currently, DOIC assessors avoid attending hearings. While the current law stipulates that all the evidence to accuse a defendant must be clarified at the trial, I’ve never seen any judiciary assessors at any trials that I have attended.

RFA: Were there any lawyers giving similar recommendations? What are your expectations for the implementation of these recommendations?

Ngo Anh Tuan:  I did not ask how many lawyers they had invited but I was the only lawyer at the meeting.

I don’t expect all of my recommendations will be implemented right away as it would be too ambitious for a dialogue like this. It would also be challenging to realize the easiest thing in my first recommendation. Some minor issues can be done at the moment.

RFA: Suppose they could only implement one of the three recommendations, which one would you like to prioritize?

Ngo Anh Tuan: We want all of them to be implemented. However, what I think they can do now is the third one, i.e., the assessment of people’s thoughts and ideologies. I believe people from investigative agencies, the procuracy and the courts realize this legal flaw. If assessors are allowed to [freely] make accusations, they will be able to easily charge people for so many things. It is unacceptable that they [the assessors] examine the ideological side and then conclude the objective side of a crime. By doing so, they have made accusations before [the judicial system]. This goes against all legal principles of both Vietnam and the world.

Lawyers have raised this issue many times with them and I think they also want a change. However, they won’t be able to do so if the current regulations are not amended.

RFA: Lawyers often encounter unpleasant or even illegal acts from authorities. Why didn’t you raise this issue in your recommendations?

Ngo Anh Tuan:  I think the oppression against lawyers is not that serious but the disrespect for lawyers is a matter of fact. However, we [lawyers] put clients’ interests before ours. If we face difficulties, we still can fight against them while our clients are in much more disadvantaged situations. Our clients and ordinary people out there are much more vulnerable and disadvantaged than us. It is more appropriate for the Vietnam Bar Federation or provincial bar associations to speak up for lawyers' rights. I choose to speak up for people's rights as people's interests should outweigh lawyers'.

RFA:  You have said that freedom and democracy won’t come without effort and we have to create them and create opportunities for people around us instead of waiting for others to bring freedom and democracy to us. Could you elaborate on this?

Ngo Anh Tuan:  I believe most intellectuals are knowledgeable enough to realize this but they may think this is someone else’s job, not theirs. They also understand that we need to join hands to make the country a better place but they also think it’s OK if that does not include their hands. A Vietnamese saying goes: “Lead the charge if it’s a party. Follow others if it’s a march across waters.” They would think: As the pioneers have raised their hand, we can stand behind them and will raise our hand when success is almost there.

Politics is not something super. It affects everyone, including us and our family members. For example, an inappropriate administrative decision creates difficulties for ordinary people, including us. Familiar things like land and salary issues are also politics. Society will be better if everyone speaks up against injustice and wrongdoings. Everyone can make contributions but many chose to forgo their rights. If everyone thinks we don’t need to speak up since the person next to us will do it, society, of course, will be at a standstill.

RFA:  Do you hope that human rights in Vietnam will be improved after each human rights dialogue between the U.S. and Vietnam?

Ngo Anh Tuan: In this meeting, an officer asked me if they [the U.S. government] could help in any way. I bluntly asked back: Why did you ask that question? Can you really help?

I also attended a similar meeting with the EU’s representatives before their human rights dialogue with Vietnam which seems to not have borne many fruits. Meanwhile, Ms. Erin Barclay, a senior official from the U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, was very enthusiastic. She said that the U.S. government shared my thoughts and that she would make every effort regardless of whether the issue is small or big. She said she hoped that Vietnam would make progress and that positive changes would come.

RFA: Thank you very much.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden said Wednesday that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security should be shut down after reporting shined light on the agency's sweeping campaign to police what it deems disinformation online, an effort that raised alarm among civil liberties groups.

"It's time to talk about shutting down the Department of Homeland Security," Snowden, a former NSA contractor who exposed the agency's illegal mass spying program in 2013, wrote on Twitter.

"The First Amendment bars the government from deciding for us what is true or false, online or anywhere."

DHS, formed in 2002 in the wake of the September 11 attacks, "was always a mistake, a costly artifact of the hysteric post-9/11 authoritarianism that left us no more safe, but much less free," Snowden continued. "Its plan to become the Speech Police is the final straw."

Snowden was responding to an in-depth story by The Intercept on Monday detailing secretive DHS attempts to "curb speech it considers dangerous" by trying to pressure and "influence tech platforms" such as Twitter and Facebook. The department's "stepped up counter-disinformation effort" began under former President Donald Trump and has continued under President Joe Biden, the outlet noted.

"According to a draft copy of DHS' Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, DHS' capstone report outlining the department's strategy and priorities in the coming years, the department plans to target 'inaccurate information' on a wide range of topics, including 'the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic and the efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine," The Intercept's Ken Klippenstein and Lee Fang reported.

"How disinformation is defined by the government has not been clearly articulated, and the inherently subjective nature of what constitutes disinformation provides a broad opening for DHS officials to make politically motivated determinations about what constitutes dangerous speech," Klippenstein and Fang stressed.

"DHS justifies these goals—which have expanded far beyond its original purview on foreign threats to encompass disinformation originating domestically—by claiming that terrorist threats can be 'exacerbated by misinformation and disinformation spread online," they added. "But the laudable goal of protecting Americans from danger has often been used to conceal political maneuvering."

The ACLU, which has previously called for the dismantling of DHS over its myriad abuses, expressed concerns in response to the The Intercept's story, which noted that the agency's efforts to police disinformation online have only expanded in the wake of the agency's decision to scrap its widely derided Disinformation Governance Board earlier this year.

"The First Amendment bars the government from deciding for us what is true or false, online or anywhere," the ACLU tweeted earlier this week. "Our government can't use private pressure to get around our constitutional rights."

Adam Goldstein, the vice president of research at FIRE—a free speech organization that is fighting right-wing censorship campaigns across the U.S.—told The Intercept that "no matter your political allegiances, all of us have good reason to be concerned about government efforts to pressure private social media platforms into reaching the government's preferred decisions about what content we can see online."

"Any governmental requests to social media platforms to review or remove certain content should be made with extreme transparency," Goldstein added.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

Nearly 400 school districts across the United States, including in several Indigenous tribal lands, as well as in Puerto Rico and American Samoa, will receive around $1 billion to purchase new, mostly electric school buses as part of a Biden Administration grant program.

The program aims to reduce children’s exposure to harmful exhaust from diesel buses that serve their schools and communities. It is also part of a broader effort by the Biden Administration to address climate change and environmental justice by making it easier for vulnerable communities to have access to zero-emission vehicles.  

The grant program’s funds come from $5 billion that the EPA received as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. With the grant money, recipient school districts will be able to purchase nearly 2,300 electric buses, quadrupling the nation’s current number. While these lower-polluting buses would make up a small portion of school bus fleets, environmental and public health advocates argue that the positive impacts on children’s health would be profound.

In a press release, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, a Harlem-based organization, praised Wednesday’s announcement and the program’s reach, saying that it would improve air quality and “reduce children’s exposure to asthma-causing pollutants while also protecting the health of drivers and the communities these buses drive through.”

The Biden Administration expects many of the new electric buses to be available to the winning school districts by the start of the next school year, with the remainder available by the end of 2023.  

Air pollution remains a major contributor to poor respiratory and cardiovascular health, with vehicles a main culprit. Greenhouse gas emissions from transportation make up the highest portion of total greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., at 27 percent. The World Health Organization estimates that 93 percent of the world’s population breathes air that exceeds its public health guidelines. 

Children are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of poor air quality. A 2021 study found that even brief exposure to air pollution, including wildfire smoke and car exhaust, can alter a child’s DNA and increase their risk of heart and lung problems as adults. 

Seventy percent of students from low-income families take a bus to school, increasing their exposure to diesel exhaust. Children of color, in particular, are more likely to live near heavy transit routes, industrial facilities, and other sources of vehicular and industrial pollution. This is in large part due to historic housing, zoning, and transit policies that left Black and Brown communities with few other options. As a result, children of color have higher rates of asthma and other respiratory illnesses than white children. 

Air pollution also poses other unexpected health risks to children of color. A 2017 study on Latino children in low-income neighborhoods in Los Angeles found that exposure to air pollution during childhood may cause damage to the pancreas — the organ that produces insulin, increasing their likelihood of becoming obese and developing Type 2 diabetes.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline US unveils $1 billion effort to electrify school buses on Oct 31, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Brett Marsh.

The children were running around the yard playing games next to the family car, when Ashwaq Abdel Kareem heard the roar of a jet plane that foretold an airstrike.

It was near midnight on June 1, 2015. Ashwaq, her husband, and five children were in the backyard of their half-built house in the northern Iraqi town of Hawija. The night sweltered with an oven-like dry heat during an Iraqi summer in which temperatures could soar to 120 degrees in the daytime. Hawija was under ISIS occupation, which meant the entire town had been cut off from electricity, in addition to the general brutality of political rule by the radical group. There was no escape from the temperature except to go outside where a breeze might cool the air.

Far above Ashwaq and her family, a Dutch F-16 fighter jet released a bomb that whistled down to hit a car-bomb factory in the center of Hawija’s industrial district. The F-16’s mission was coordinated by the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS and was planned by the U.S. military. From 2014 to the present day, between 8,000 and 13,000 civilians have died as a result of bombing by the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, according to the monitoring organization Airwars; the coalition only acknowledges the deaths of 1,417 civilians. At the height of the bombing in 2017, as the coalition bombed tightly packed urban areas like Mosul, at least 9,000 civilians died, according to The Associated Press. Yet only one civilian received compensation, although the U.S. military did distribute a limited number of condolence or “ex gratia” payments — which are voluntary payments and not an admission of legal liability — reportedly to the families of around 14 victims.

ISIS had stored an estimated 18,000 kilograms of explosives in the factory, which stood in the midst of a crowded neighborhood. Even though the strike targeted a bomb-making factory, Pentagon planners did not factor in the casualties that could be caused by the secondary detonations. When the bomb hit the factory, night turned into day. Residents of Hawija likened it to a nuclear explosion. The earth rippled and waves of shrapnel flew through the air, tearing into people’s flesh. Buildings collapsed into rubble. The air turned yellow from the fire and chemicals, and the midnight sky lit up as though it were the middle of the afternoon. Fifty kilometers away, in the city of Kirkuk, people said they felt the ground shake, according to a report on the bombing by the Dutch monitoring organization PAX.

Ashwaq’s home shuddered, the windows shattered, and bricks and masonry crashed to the ground. The pressure and the heat caused the gasoline in the family car to catch fire, and the vehicle exploded just as Ashwaq’s children ran past. The flaming gas from the car struck her 4-year-old son Omar across the face and lit his head on fire like the tip of a match. Omar’s father, Ahmed Abdallah al-Jamili, says he has the image of his son running, his head aflame, engraved in his mind. He and Ashwaq both thought that Omar would die. The couple rushed the child to the nearest hospital in a neighbor’s car. They could barely see as they drove streets fogged with acrid chemical smoke from still-raging fires.

The explosion killed at least 85 people, but the actual number is likely much higher, though impossible to verify. ISIS controlled the hospital and often refused to treat people who were not ISIS sympathizers, let alone issue death certificates. Additionally, Hawija was a way station for people who had been displaced by the war took as they fled ISIS territory to Kurdistan. Many internally displaced families had gathered in the industrial area, and uncounted people were killed when the factory was hit. Their deaths were not recorded because there was no one to identify them. PAX — which has done extensive research into the bombing — recently uncovered the existence of two mass graves, but they were unable to visit the sites and verify the number of bodies.

Even as it slowly became clear that the U.S. coalition was responsible for what happened, the needs of the victims and survivors were placed last because, for the countries responsible for the carnage, the most important priority was avoiding accountability. Families were forced to hear vague mentions of aid without ever being consulted about what they actually wanted and needed. Now, seven years later, a visit to Hawija shows how the crumbs of help that were eventually promised have apparently not been delivered to any useful extent for the victims.

Local workers rebuild the shops that got destroyed after the 2015 Dutch airstrikes in Hawija, Iraq, on Aug. 28, 2022.

Photo: Hawre Khalid for The Intercept

“The international organizations are like a big box. Money goes to guards, hotels, and a very small part goes to the people affected.”

The salaries paid by IOM are not going to the families who were bombed.

A young man passes by the spot where a Dutch airstrike hit in 2015 in Hawija, Iraq, on Aug. 8, 2022.

Photo: Hawre Khalid for The Intercept

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Omer Ahmed, now 11 years old, sits on the couch at his family’s home on Aug. 28, 2022, in Hawija, Iraq.

Photo: Hawre Khalid for The Intercept

Yusra Khalaf, 20, was only 12 when a Dutch bomb struck her family’s home, permanently damaging her right arm.

Photo: Hawre Khalid for The Intercept

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Pesha Magid.

Pennsylvania's Democratic U.S. Senate nominee John Fetterman on Monday implored his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, to condemn former President Donald Trump's threat to challenge midterm election results in the Keystone State and beyond.

"It's clear that Donald Trump, Dr. Oz, and the GOP will do whatever it takes to try and steal this race on election night," Fetterman campaign spokesperson Joe Calvello said in a statement.

"Trump has already said he 'needs' people like Oz in office to challenge the 2024 election," said Calvello. "Trump is trying to steal the 2022 election for Oz so that Trump can steal the 2024 election for himself."

Calvello's statement came in response to a new Rolling Stone report detailing Trump's efforts to sow doubts about electoral outcomes on November 8 and plans to try to suppress vote-counting in Democratic bulwarks through a right-wing onslaught in the courts and media.

Trump is particularly interested in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, including the pivotal contest between his preferred far-right candidate Oz, an ultra-wealthy celebrity television doctor bankrolled by multimillionaires, and Fetterman, a proponent of Medicare for All and reproductive freedom whose campaign has been funded by hundreds of thousands of small donors.

According to Rolling Stone, if Oz "does not win by a wide enough margin to trigger a speedy concession from Fetterman—or if the vote tally is close on or after election night in November—Trump and other Republicans are already preparing to wage a legal and activist crusade against the 'election integrity' of Democratic strongholds such as the Philly area."

Trump's "Big Lie" that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him through fraudulent mail-in voting in Philadelphia and other large cities has, despite being thoroughly debunked, wreaked havoc on U.S. democracy—fueling a deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and equipping GOP lawmakers with a pretext to restrict ballot access and interfere with election administration in dozens of states.

The contest between Oz and Fetterman is one of several close races that will determine which party controls the Senate. According to Rolling Stone, "if there's any hint of doubt about the winners" on November 8, Trump and his allies plan to follow the blueprint he established on election night in 2020, when—with millions of ballots yet to be counted—Trump preemptively and falsely declared, "Frankly, we did win this election."

When Pennsylvania's Republican primary between Oz and ex-hedge fund manager David McCormick was too close to call in May, Trump encouraged Oz to "declare victory," saying that doing so prematurely "makes it much harder for them to cheat with the ballots that they 'just happened to find'"—repeating his lie that President Joe Biden's decisive win was the result of widespread voter fraud.

As Rolling Stone noted:

Trump is gripped by the belief that he got cheated in Philadelphia in 2020, and this time around, he has privately demanded his allies concentrate additional firepower and legal resources in the commonwealth's largest and most racially diverse metro area. In recent weeks, according to two people with knowledge of the situation, the ex-president has asked several advisers and at least one of his attorneys what national and Pennsylvania Republicans are doing to prevent Democrats from—in his words—"steal[ing] it in Philadelphia [like] they did last time."

Although Trump and his allies are preparing to launch "scorched-earth" lawsuits and media blitzes in other swing states with crucial match-ups, such as Georgia, Rolling Stone reported that the ex-president's fixation on Pennsylvania, a critical and competitive state that may well determine the winner of 2024 presidential election, reflects his attempt to lay the groundwork for another White House run.

An unnamed source told the magazine that Trump views challenging the results of Pennsylvania's Senate race in just over two weeks as a "dress rehearsal for Trump 2024."

In response, Calvello said that "Dr. Oz needs to immediately disavow these efforts, respect the will of the voters in 2022, and pledge to vote to certify the results of the 2024 election—not challenge the results on behalf of Donald Trump."

Fetterman is currently leading Oz in the polls by 2.2 percentage points, down from 10.2 percentage points last month.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

In total, NPR found that "more than $1.6 billion has been spent or booked on TV ads in a dozen Senate races, with $3 out of every $4 being spent in six states—Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Ohio."

"Most of that money is coming from dark money outside groups with little-to-no donor transparency—and Republicans are getting a huge boost from them," the outlet reported.

Nearly 90% of the money spent on pro-Republican television ads this midterm cycle has been from dark money groups, according to NPR's analysis of ad data. By comparison, 55% of spending on ads boosting Democrats has come from dark money organizations, which have exploded in number and influence since the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision.

Predictably, key battleground states such as Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Arizona have drawn massive ad spending from outside groups in recent months as Senate races there tighten with just over two weeks until the November midterms.

Outside organizations have poured more money into Pennsylvania—where Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman is locked in a competitive Senate contest with Republican nominee Dr. Oz—than any other state this cycle.

"Outside groups have spent nearly $64.9 million to back Fetterman or sway voters away from the celebrity doctor, while conservative outside spenders have poured $66 million into the race," OpenSecrets noted Friday. "One of the top outside spenders is the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.). The super PAC has made Fetterman their top target, spending almost $37.2 million to oppose the Democrat."

NPR's analysis came a month after Senate Republicans unanimously voted down legislation that would have required dark money organizations to disclose their large donors and funding sources, a step that would shine light on the forces attempting to sway critical races.

OpenSecrets discovered last month that a newly created dark money group that has spent big on ads mocking and attacking progressive candidates in battleground states is "connected to officials in former President Donald Trump's administration who now work with the America First Legal Foundation."

"The group, Citizens for Sanity, has paid for billboards emblazoned with messages like 'Protect Pregnant Men from Climate Discrimination' and 'Real progressives support violent criminals in their hour of need' in states across the country—including Massachusetts, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, California, Michigan, Texas, Illinois, and Georgia," the watchdog noted. "The ads have been described as racist and transphobic."

"Federal Communications Commission records reviewed by OpenSecrets reveal that the group's board includes three former Trump administration officials involved in the America First Legal Foundation, a group founded by former Trump White House official Stephen Miller," OpenSecrets added.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with The Press of Atlantic City. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

A New Jersey judge this week threw out an eviction complaint filed against an Atlantic City woman who told journalists that her landlord had failed to address unsafe conditions in the home. The property owner, Michael Scanlon Sr., began eviction proceedings against the woman shortly after a reporter for The Press of Atlantic City and ProPublica visited the property in August.

The news organizations were looking at Scanlon’s properties as part of an investigation into a New Jersey agency that paid him more than $1.1 million for three Atlantic City rooming houses, forcing out the residents who lived in them.

Tenants said they had just six weeks’ notice to vacate the rooming houses, including 108 Albion Place. With few affordable options, two residents at that address took the landlord up on an offer to relocate to another of his rental properties, a Westside rowhome, in June 2021.

But the women, Nada Gilbert and Nikki Knight, said conditions in their new home were bad: A persistent leak caused Knight’s bedroom ceiling to bulge overhead and damaged her mattress, and a sagging porch roof was being held up by makeshift pillars. The women, in response, began withholding rent earlier this year, leading the landlord to try to remove them.

Atlantic City Superior Court Judge James P. McGee on Wednesday dismissed the case against Gilbert, citing the landlord’s failure to appear at the hearing that morning.

The women had ended up living there after being forced to move from Albion Place as part of the Vacant Rooming House Conversion Project, which the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority launched in winter 2020. Officials said the initiative would “protect Atlantic City residents by providing improved housing conditions and revitalize numerous properties.” Its leaders variously said the project, which involved CRDA acquiring empty rooming houses, would reduce blight, improve the city’s housing stock and expand affordable housing.

But the news organizations’ investigation found CRDA has fallen well short of those goals while displacing dozens of low-income residents in the process, including Gilbert and Knight.

Scanlon Sr. did not respond to requests for comment about his legal conflict with the two women, but his son Michael Scanlon Jr. said a “miscommunication” preceded the eviction filing. “It was more my fault,” Scanlon Jr. said. He had previously told the news organizations that the tenants had had more than six weeks’ notice to move but did not provide documentation to support that.

He blames the leak on the neighboring vacant home but said he and his father have come to an agreement with the tenants. The women’s outstanding rent balance will be forgiven, and the remaining repairs and additional cosmetic updates will be made, according to Scanlon Jr., who also said he expects to take full ownership of the rental property in the next few weeks. Gilbert confirmed the details but said she has not yet signed any documents outlining the terms.

Meanwhile, the three properties that Scanlon Sr. sold to CRDA are boarded up with no signs of construction. After owning the three properties, which were all within about a block of the beach, for roughly a year, CRDA last month sold them for $150,000 to a hotel developer, who now has until September 2023 to start building.

Asked whether CRDA discussed relocation efforts with landlords in the program, agency leaders said no. “That was solely on the owners to deal with that,” said Lance Landgraf, CRDA director of planning and development, in an interview last month. “Our direction to them was: ‘We will not buy this with anybody in it.’ That’s as far as I went with it.”

CRDA was set up almost 40 years ago to use casino tax revenue to address “the pressing social and economic needs” of Atlantic City residents. But Landgraf said the agency has limited funds to service a variety of goals, which, under the law, also include redevelopment. And he stood by the rooming house project as a critical component of economic development. “We needed to get those properties cleaned up and changed into a better, more viable use in the community that would promote development, not restrict it,” Landgraf said.

However, critics say the state agency had other options besides closing the rooming house down and question how CRDA is using its power. In response to the investigation’s findings, one of the authors of the original legislation establishing CRDA, David Sciarra, said the rooming house outcomes “should be a wake-up call to legislators in Trenton.”

“They need to do some serious oversight to make sure that CRDA is operating in the best interests of all residents of Atlantic City and not just an investment arm of the casino industry,” he said.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Alison Burdo, The Press of Atlantic City.

Issuing a subpoena to former President Donald Trump on Friday, the House committee that is investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol demanded Trump provide testimony and documents in response to the panel's findings that he "personally orchestrated and oversaw a multi-part effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election."

The committee called on the former Republican leader to provide records of any phone calls, text messages, and other messages he sent and received on the day of the attack; records of his communications between November 3, 2020 and January 6, 2021 in which the election and the certification of the results were discussed; any communications regarding extremist groups including the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, who have been linked to the attack, and more than a dozen other types of related documentation.

The panel ordered Trump to turn over the documents by November 4 and to testify on November 14.

The bipartisan committee issued the subpoena days after its members unanimously voted to compel the former president's testimony and on the same day that his former strategist, Steve Bannon, was sentenced to four months in federal prison and ordered to pay a $6,500 fine for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the panel.

Trump did not appear before federal lawmakers during his two impeachment trials, but he has reportedly told his aides that he would testify before the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol if he was permitted to do so live.

Since its first public hearing in June, the committee has presented evidence showing that Trump's close advisers sought to stop him from continuing to spread the "Big Lie" that he had won the 2020 election; that he subscribed to an erroneous legal theory that former Vice President Mike Pence was legally permitted to certify him as the election winner; that Trump attempted to join the mob of thousands of his supporters who breached the U.S. Capitol as lawmakers were certifying the results; and that he ignored his advisers' pleas to condemn and stop the attack.

"You took all these actions," wrote Cheney and Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the committee chair, in their letter to Trump, "despite the rulings of more than 60 courts rejecting your election fraud claims and other challenges to the legality of the 2020 election... and despite your obligation as president to ensure that the laws of our nation are faithfully executed."

"In short," they added, "you were at the center of the first and only effort by any U.S. president to overturn an election and obstruct the peaceful transition of power, ultimately culminating in a bloody attack on our own Capitol and on the Congress itself."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Julia Conley.

Issuing a subpoena to former President Donald Trump on Friday, the House committee that is investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol demanded Trump provide testimony and documents in response to the panel's findings that he "personally orchestrated and oversaw a multi-part effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election."

The committee called on the former Republican leader to provide records of any phone calls, text messages, and other messages he sent and received on the day of the attack; records of his communications between November 3, 2020 and January 6, 2021 in which the election and the certification of the results were discussed; any communications regarding extremist groups including the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, who have been linked to the attack, and more than a dozen other types of related documentation.

The panel ordered Trump to turn over the documents by November 4 and to testify on November 14.

The bipartisan committee issued the subpoena days after its members unanimously voted to compel the former president's testimony and on the same day that his former strategist, Steve Bannon, was sentenced to four months in federal prison and ordered to pay a $6,500 fine for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the panel.

Trump did not appear before federal lawmakers during his two impeachment trials, but he has reportedly told his aides that he would testify before the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol if he was permitted to do so live.

Since its first public hearing in June, the committee has presented evidence showing that Trump's close advisers sought to stop him from continuing to spread the "Big Lie" that he had won the 2020 election; that he subscribed to an erroneous legal theory that former Vice President Mike Pence was legally permitted to certify him as the election winner; that Trump attempted to join the mob of thousands of his supporters who breached the U.S. Capitol as lawmakers were certifying the results; and that he ignored his advisers' pleas to condemn and stop the attack.

"You took all these actions," wrote Cheney and Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the committee chair, in their letter to Trump, "despite the rulings of more than 60 courts rejecting your election fraud claims and other challenges to the legality of the 2020 election... and despite your obligation as president to ensure that the laws of our nation are faithfully executed."

"In short," they added, "you were at the center of the first and only effort by any U.S. president to overturn an election and obstruct the peaceful transition of power, ultimately culminating in a bloody attack on our own Capitol and on the Congress itself."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Julia Conley.

The post Philly DA Target of Vile GOP Ouster Effort appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Linn Washington Jr..

History often unfolds through the collision of structural forces that operate independently of any specific decision or decision maker. But once in a while, a real moment of contingency arises in which a single person, choosing between several genuinely viable options within their reach, can set history on a different course.

One such moment arose on the night of January 6, 2021. According to the new book “Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump,” leading Democrats pushed hard to impeach then-President Donald Trump the day of the insurrection. But they were beaten back by a reluctant House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who instead decided to gavel the chamber out of session once it had finished the business at hand — certifying the election — in the early hours of January 7.

As Politico’s Rachael Bade and the Washington Post’s Karoun Demirjian document through reviews of text-message chains and extensive interviews with lawmakers directly involved, Republican tempers were running so hot against Trump that forcing them to choose sides in the Senate that week could easily have resulted in his impeachment, conviction, and disqualification from any future run for the White House.

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This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Ryan Grim.

Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

• Russian President Putin orders partial mobilization of reservists — hundreds protest in the streets
• President Biden denounces Russia’s war in Ukraine in tough speech to United Nations
• House Democrats approve changes to Electoral Count Act to make it harder to overturn the results of a presidential election
• Colombia’s new leftist president faces pushback over bid to tax the wealthy

Image: TapTheForwardAssist, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

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This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

Get ready. If you're a Democratic voter, there's a chance you'll show up to vote this November and discover you can't because you're no longer registered. Millions will be blindsided this way, and it could turn elections toward Republicans across the nation.

Republicans are coming for your vote with a ferocity not seen since Southern efforts during Reconstruction.

America hates GOP policies of banning abortion, gifting the morbidly rich with trillions in tax cuts, denying climate change and blocking any remedies to it, and filling our cities with guns. So, Republicans know, the only way they can win in many places is to simply prevent people from voting.

As Heritage Foundation co-founder Paul Weyrich said back in 1980, "Quite frankly, our leverage in the elections goes up as the voting populace goes down."

Thus, Republicans are coming for your vote with a ferocity not seen since Southern efforts during Reconstruction. In addition to their hundreds of new laws and rules having to do with voter ID, moving or closing polling places, and gutting people's ability to get absentee ballots, they've adopted poll-scrubbing tactics that have already shown they can cut Democratic votes and hand elections to Republicans.

They're doing it with a new sophistication, going way beyond simply requiring voters to count jellybeans or recite the Constitution verbatim. Now, with a big boost from five Republicans on the Supreme Court, they're using the scientific method to prevent Democratic-leaning citizens from voting.

Here's how newest scam works, in a nutshell.

People who lose pay when they take time off work—largely working-class and working-poor people—are less likely to vote every cycle, particularly in elections that don't seem crucial like midterm elections.  After all, it costs them money to take time off work to vote and over a century of white people imposing poll taxes on Black people proved that making voting expensive reduces voter turnout among working-class people.

Forcing people to pay to vote is called a poll tax. It should be illegal, but Sam Alito and four other corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court recently gave a new way of preventing working people from voting their seal of approval. It is, arguably, a new type of poll tax because it almost exclusively hits working-class and poor people.

Poll taxes became a big thing in the wake of the collapse of Reconstruction in the 1880s, with most states that used them offering an "exception" to the tax for anybody who "declared" that their ancestors had voted before the Civil War. Because prior to the Civil War the voting populace was 100% white in the South, the effect of that exception was that the poll tax fell entirely on the newly-enfranchised Black voters.

If only we could bring back the poll tax, Republicans thought, things would be good! After all, it was only abolished with the passage of the 24th Amendment in 1964 and 5 southern states continued to use poll taxes against Black voters until the new amendment was tested before the Supreme Court in 1966.

If they could only figure out a way to use the "cost of voting" borne by working-class people to keep them from voting or—even better!—kick them off the voting rolls altogether, Republicans could more easily win elections.

One of their previous strategies to suppress the vote of poor and working-class people had been to put so few voting machines and polling places in Black and predominately-Democratic voting precincts that lines to vote could run two, three, or even ten hours long. It was successful for years in cutting back poor and working-class voting participation.

But over the last decade or two there's been a lot of push-back against this widespread practice as those long lines were getting publicity; there had to be a way to pull it off that was less visible, less likely to be called out, less likely to arouse outrage in the media.

But what would that be, and how to pull it off?

The answer, it turns out, was simple and elegant.

Ohio Republican Secretary of State John Husted figured out the magic formula and took it all the way to the Supreme Court in 2018, where 5 corrupt Republicans gave it their seal of approval (in defiance of federal law—the National Voter Registration Act of 1993—and the 24th Amendment).

Husted knew that people paid by the hour were both more likely to be Democratic voters and, because voting cost them money, were less likely to vote in every election.

So, he reasoned, if he could simply use the failure to vote in previous elections as the trigger to purge those working-class citizens from the voting rolls, everything would work out better for Republicans because it would mostly trap working-class and poor people.

After all, people who are paid salaries—and, thus, don't lose pay when they take time off to vote—tend to vote in every election; it's a habit in part because it's cost-free. And those salaried people are more likely to be upper-middle class white people, who make up the voting base of the Republican Party.

As noted at Debt.org:

"Republican candidates gain a significantly higher percentage of votes from individuals with incomes over $50,000 per year, and the advantage increases along with the income level, to a height of 63 percent of individuals earning $200,000 or more a year supporting Republicans.

"This level is the direct inverse of individuals earning less than $15,000 a year, who support Democrats at 63 percent and Republicans at only 36 percent."

It's a safe bet that most all of those people earning less than $15,000 a year—and a good-sized chunk of people earning under $50,000 a year—are paid hourly, so it costs them money to take time off work to vote.

It's also a safe bet that the vast majority of those earning more than $200,000 a year—and a good-sized chunk of people earning over $50,000 a year—are paid salaries, so it costs them nothing to take time off work to vote.

So, Husted proposed, let's just target and purge from the voting rolls all those people who are intermittent voters; after all, they're more likely to be Democrats.  Leave the salaried people who vote in every election alone; they're reliable Republican voters.

To give a patina of legitimacy to this naked attempt to purge Ohio's voting rolls of Democratic voters, he added a second touch, borrowed from the old GOP strategy of "caging."

This strategy goes back 40+ years. In the first year of the Reagan administration, the RNC began an aggressive "caging" program to remove Black people from the voter rolls nationwide. 

They did it by sending junk-mail-looking letters into Black neighborhoods asking for address verification, and when the letters weren't returned they'd strip those people from the rolls.

This process of isolating "undesirable" voters is called "voter caging."

As The Washington Post noted on October 29, 2004 a week before the Bush/Kerry election:

"In 1981, the Republican National Committee sent letters to predominantly black neighborhoods in New Jersey, and when 45,000 letters were returned as undeliverable, the committee compiled a challenge list to remove those voters from the rolls. …

"In 1986, the RNC tried to have 31,000 voters, most of them Black, removed from the rolls in Louisiana when a party mailer was returned. …

"Undeliverable mail is the basis for this year's challenges in Ohio. Republicans also sent mail to about 130,000 voters in Philadelphia, another heavily Black and Democratic stronghold."

This is called caging, a term that comes out of the junk-mail business where address-unknown mail returned by the Post Office was put in a separate physical "cage" in the mailing warehouse so those names could be removed from the mailing lists to avoid paying postage to them in the future.  

Applied to voting, it simply involves purging or removing people from the voting rolls when they fail to return the above-mentioned letters or postcards or they're returned as undeliverable.

Karl Rove and his protégé, Timothy Griffin, were apparently heavily involved in caging efforts in Ohio in 2004, although when Congress tried to look into it President Bush invoked Executive Privilege and shut down the investigation, as noted by the William Mitchell Law Review in 2008.

Because of all the noise around the 2004 election and Rove's alleged caging efforts, Husted reinvented it in a new and highly selective fashion that he thought would gain approval from the 5 Republicans on the Supreme Court:

Start with the addresses of those voters who'd failed to vote in previous (typically midterm) elections, and send the caging letters only to them, using the excuse that Ohio was "just trying to verify that they hadn't moved."

Using this strategy and others, as the Brennan Center for Justice noted, Republicans purged over 17 million Americans from voting rolls nationwide just between 2016 and 2018.

The last time Brian Kemp faced Stacey Abrams for governor of Georgia, for example, he purged 107,000 people off the voting rolls just prior to the election, all of them registered voters who failed to return a caging card.

He "won" by 50,000 votes, and is repeating his efforts again this year through his Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger (whose name, ironically, is correctly pronounced "Raff–ens–purger").

Raffensperger recently sent caging letters to 185,666 Georgians while Stacey Abrams is frantically trying to get 100,000 voters registered to make up for the purges.

When Democrats sued Husted in the 2018 case Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute, Supreme Court Associate Justice Sam Alito opened his decision approving of the new GOP voter purge strategy, quoting statistics that are meaningless as his rationale for endorsing Husted's strategy:

"It has been estimated that 24 million voter registrations in the United States—about one in eight—are either invalid or significantly inaccurate. And about 2.75 million people are said to be registered to vote in more than one State."

It's a completely empty argument because those numbers, while accurate, don't mean that any of those inaccurate, invalid, or duplicate voter registrations are ever used.

It's rare that people who move from state to state bother to notify the Secretary of State of the state they left that they no longer live there, so of course there are many Americans registered to vote in multiple states or at wrong addresses.

In the past 45 years, I've moved from Michigan to New Hampshire to Germany to Georgia to Vermont to Oregon to Washington DC and back to Oregon. I've never notified anybody that I'd left the state I moved from. And there's nothing wrong with that: it's normal.

Most people do the same as me, and that doesn't mean any of them are fraudulently voting: this is a "problem" that does not need a solution. States generally remove people from voting rolls when drivers' licenses expire and are not renewed, or people stop paying state income taxes. It's slightly slower, but works just fine.

Nonetheless, Alito thought it was a fine excuse to give the legal endorsement to Republican voter purging on an industrial scale.

In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor wrote:

"It is unsurprising in light of the history of such purge programs that numerous amici report that the Supplemental Process has disproportionately affected minority, low-income, disabled, and veteran voters.

"As one example, amici point to an investigation that revealed that in Hamilton County, 'African-American-majority neighborhoods in downtown Cincinnati had 10% of their voters removed due to inactivity' since 2012, as compared to only 4% of voters in a suburban, majority-white neighborhood."

But the five Republicans on the Court prevailed, and Ohio's purger-in-chief John Husted hailed his victory and this new way of purging Democratic-leaning voters as a "model for other [Republican] states" to follow.

Purging Democratic voters from the rolls has now gone nationwide, at least in states where voting is controlled by Republicans.

Greg Palast estimates there will be at least 4 million fully legal and appropriately registered voters purged just this year, although the history Pew documented from 2016-1018 suggests the number may be over ten million.

Thus, it's critical this year to check your voter registration to make sure you haven't already become a victim of this vicious new scheme that five Republicans on the Supreme Court have recently legalized.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Thom Hartmann.

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This story was co-published with Gray TV.

For nearly 10 hours on Georgia’s primary day, Olivia Coley-Pearson tracked down every potential voter she could find, working two cellphones as she paced the parking lot outside the polls, repeating the same message: “You need to tell all your cousins, your brothers, your sisters, your aunts, your uncles — everybody you know — to come on down here to vote.”

A third of her neighbors in Coffee County struggle to read at a basic level, and she wanted to make sure they had help navigating their ballots. In the late afternoon, she slid behind the sparkly pink steering wheel of her SUV for her final push of the day, heading down a long stretch of road where buildings gave way to fields and thickets of pine. She turned in to the Kinwood Estates mobile home park and stopped at the edge of a familiar dirt driveway just as Shondriana Jones, 30, bounded down the steps of a trailer.

“I can’t find my ID and Mama, she’s still at work,” Jones said.

Coley-Pearson has helped the family vote for years — she’s known them since she and Jones’ mother, Sabrina Fillmore, were young. Now 60, Coley-Pearson serves as a city commissioner in Douglas, the majority-Black county seat. Fillmore, 54, works at the local poultry plant cutting chickens. Neither Fillmore nor her daughter can read beyond a first-grade level, but they rarely miss an election, believing their votes can influence everything from their electricity costs to the way police treat them.

Coley-Pearson urged Jones to track down a utility bill to prove her identity at the election office just as Fillmore returned from a 10-hour shift, exhausted. With the women aboard, Coley-Pearson started the car, anxiety brewing in her mind.

Even though federal law guaranteed the two women the right to have someone help them vote, Coley-Pearson knew too well that this right was under attack. For all of the recent uproar over voting rights, little attention has been paid to one of the most sustained and brazen suppression campaigns in America: the effort to block help at the voting booth for people who struggle to read — a group that amounts to about 48 million Americans, or more than a fifth of the adult population. ProPublica analyzed the voter turnout in 3,000 counties and found that those with lower estimated literacy rates, on average, had lower turnout.

“How the system is set up, it disenfranchises people,” said Coley-Pearson, who blames Southern political leaders for throwing up hurdles. “It’s by design, I believe, because they want to maintain that power and that control.”

Conservative politicians have long used harsh tactics against voters who can’t read — poor, often Black and Latino Americans who have been failed by the U.S. education system and who conservatives feared would vote for liberal candidates. Some states have required voters who needed help to sign an affidavit explaining why they need assistance; some have prevented voters who couldn’t read from bringing sample ballots to the polls and limited the number of voters that a volunteer could help read a ballot. Time and again, federal courts have struck down such restrictions as illegal and unconstitutional. Inevitably, states just create more.

Over the last two years, the myth of election fraud, supercharged by former President Donald Trump in the wake of his 2020 loss, has fueled a barrage of new restrictions. While they do not all target voters who struggle to read, they make it especially challenging for voters with low literacy skills to get help casting ballots.

Last year, Georgia passed a law limiting who can return or even touch a completed absentee ballot. Florida expanded the radius around election locations in which volunteers are prohibited from asking people if they need help. Texas passed a law prohibiting voters’ assistants from answering questions or paraphrasing complicated language on the ballot; a federal judge struck down several sections of the law in June. But the court left other provisions in place, including ones that increase penalties for helping voters who don’t qualify and require people who assist voters to fill out more paperwork. Texas did not appeal the decision.

To appreciate the impact of voter suppression, consider that recent elections have been determined by a narrow sliver of the electorate:

Despite losing the popular vote, Trump secured the presidency in 2016 by winning Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan by a margin of just under 80,000 total votes.

President Joe Biden prevailed in 2020 by winning Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin by just over 40,000 votes combined.

Coley-Pearson recognizes the importance of this moment for Georgia, which is no stranger to close elections. Republican Gov. Brian Kemp faces another challenge from Democrat Stacey Abrams, and Sen. Raphael Warnock is attempting to hold on to his seat in a race that could tip the Senate back to Republican control. But to Coley-Pearson, helping people vote isn’t only about politics or even just about their rights as individuals. It is about the future of democracy at a time when it seems like the views of the majority are being marginalized by the actions of the few.

As a child in the 1970s, she’d watched as her mother, Gladys Coley — who stood just above 5 feet and had only an eighth grade education — rose to the helm of the local NAACP and challenged the discriminatory school system and police department. Her mother begged her not to return from college in Atlanta, but Coley-Pearson wanted to fight for the people of Coffee County, too. As she headed to the polls on primary day this past May, though, she couldn’t subdue her fear that by helping Jones and Fillmore, she was putting a target on her own back.

Over the course of several years, she’d become tangled in an investigation of supposed voter fraud, which took aim at her attempts to assist voters who requested help. She had pleaded her case to television cameras and at a hearing before the state’s highest election official. She had even wound up in jail.

“Intimidation is real,” Coley-Pearson said. “If we don’t continue to vote, they’re going to have us right back where it used to be.”

Watch video ➜

Coley-Pearson was born in an era when Southern states forced convoluted literacy tests on voters to keep Black people out of the polls. In those days, local voting officials often made exceptions for white people who couldn’t read. In 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act prohibiting racial discrimination at the polls. That didn’t stop white conservatives, especially in the South, from continuing to discriminate against voters with low literacy skills, who, due to centuries of oppression, were disproportionately Black.

Conservatives argued that removing barriers for voters who couldn’t read would allow the federal government to overrule states’ decisions on how to run local elections and would hand more votes to liberal candidates. Clearly, they said, voters with low reading skills would be easily swayed by anyone assisting them, leading to rampant fraud.

“Today the bureaucrats are issuing certificates to vote to people who cannot read the ballot nor even the instructions on a ballot or on a voting machine,” segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace declared in late 1965. “The left wing liberals need as many illiterates as they can get to vote in order to keep them in power.”

By 1981, voters of color, including those with low literacy levels, still faced “white resistance and hostility,” according to a U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report. “For many minority voters, the kind of assistance that they receive at the polls determines whether they will vote,” the report stated. “If minority voters who do not speak English or who are illiterate receive inadequate assistance, they may become too frustrated and discouraged to vote or they may mark their ballots in such a way that they will not be counted.”

Congress amended the Voting Rights Act in 1982 to affirm that voters who need help due to an “inability to read” could bring someone, other than their employer or union representative, to assist them in the voting booth. A string of subsequent lawsuits shows this federal action again failed to eradicate the discrimination.

In a 2001 case, the federal justice department claimed that white poll managers in Charleston County, South Carolina, were intimidating Black voters who requested assistance. According to testimony given in the case, the poll workers launched a barrage of questions at these voters, such as, “Can’t you read and write? And didn’t you just sign in? And you know how to spell your name, why can’t you just vote by yourself? And do you really need voter assistance?”

A federal judge found that there was “significant evidence of intimidation and harassment,” but said evidence of the mistreatment was too “anecdotal” to take direct action.

In 2012, the chairman of Coffee County’s board of elections filed a complaint against Coley-Pearson and three other residents, alleging that they’d assisted voters who didn’t legally qualify for help. Georgia law only allows voters to receive assistance if they are disabled or cannot read English. The secretary of state’s office, then under Kemp’s leadership, initiated an investigation.

The following summer, a 52-year-old line cook named Alvin Williams answered his phone to find a state investigator on the other end. The man had questions about the 2012 election. “It looks like you were assisted by Olivia Pearson,” said state investigator Glenn Archie, in a recording obtained by ProPublica. (Archie did not respond to a request for comment.) “It’s not marked why she assisted you and I was wondering why you needed assistance.”

The tone of the man’s voice made Williams nervous. “Because I can’t read. I’m illiterate,” Williams told Archie. He’d dropped out of school at 16 to work full time catching chickens and selling them to the local poultry plant, a job he’d skipped classes for since he was 11 to help support his family.

“I’m sure she read the candidates to you,” Archie said. “Did you get to pick the people you wanted to vote for?”

“Yes, sir,” Williams said. “I can’t read. That’s why she was helping me.”

“That’s no problem,” the investigator assured him. “She can assist you if you have problems reading.”

But the call left Williams humiliated and fearful of how his vote could be used against him or Coley-Pearson. “I don’t fool with the law,” he said in a recent interview. “And I don’t do nothing for them to fool with me.”

Some other voters told investigators that they had requested and received help even though they could read. The investigation found that Coley-Pearson and the other volunteers neglected to verify whether some voters qualified for help and incorrectly filled out forms indicating why voters needed assistance. It also found that election workers failed to include required information on many forms and turned them in without making sure they were accurate.

Testifying at a 2016 hearing chaired by Kemp, Coley-Pearson maintained that she hadn’t broken any laws. In response to a poll worker’s claim that she’d touched the voting machine, Coley-Pearson said she’d merely accompanied voters who had requested her assistance and stood by to answer questions about the process or read names on the ballot. She said she followed the instructions of the poll workers, signing forms when directed.

“If someone asks me for help, I felt an obligation to try to assist if I could,” she testified at the hearing, stressing that she never told anyone who to vote for. Coley-Pearson suspected there was a deeper significance to the investigation and told the board, “Sometimes things are done to try to maybe dis-encourage, or whatever, other people from voting, and I don’t feel like that is fair.”

The state election board chose not to recommend her case for criminal prosecution, but a local district attorney’s office prosecuted her anyway, which made national headlines in BuzzFeed. It charged her with two felonies for improperly assisting a voter and for signing a form that gave a false reason for why a voter needed assistance. The trial ended with a hung jury. One of two Black people on the jury told a local reporter that she was the only holdout; everyone else voted to find Coley-Pearson guilty. She was tried again in a nearby county and, after about 20 minutes of deliberations, the new jury acquitted her of all charges. The district attorney’s office did not respond to ProPublica’s emailed questions.

Three other volunteers took plea deals in which they admitted to making false statements on forms indicating the reason that a voter needed assistance; in exchange, they got probation, after which any fines would be waived. One of them, James Curtis Hicks, said that if he had fought his case and lost, he could have faced jail time or a mountain of fines. He didn’t want to take any risks. “Around here, to me, they target the leaders, the people that are standing up for the rights of the minority,” he said in a recent interview. “To shut me and Ms. Pearson down, it would stop a whole lot of people going to the polls.”

For years, the 59-year-old truck driver had kept tabs on Coffee County voters to see if they needed help reading the ballot. But after the settlement, he stopped. “I didn’t want a focus on me to suppress anyone else,” he said. “I really felt intimidated.”

But the charges didn’t deter Coley-Pearson.

Watch video ➜

Before Jones could vote that May afternoon, she needed to get temporary identification. Dodging the pouring rain, she and Coley-Pearson scuttled into the elections office shortly before it closed. At nearly 6 feet tall, Coley-Pearson towered over the woman sitting behind a plexiglass barrier.

“She needs a voter ID, sweetie,” Coley-Pearson said, leaning in. The woman handed Jones an application.

“You need me to do it, baby?” Coley-Pearson asked softly.

Jones nodded, “Yes, ma’am.”

The woman at the counter emphasized that Jones had to complete it on her own.

“She has trouble reading and writing,” Coley-Pearson said.

After a tense moment, the woman agreed that Coley-Pearson could fill out the form. She read the questions out loud and filled in Jones’ answers, pointing out which lines to sign and date.

Jones is in the third generation of her family that is not able to read. Her grandmother never learned how, and her mother, Fillmore, left high school in her sophomore year, after frequently being disciplined for fighting. As an adult, Fillmore briefly attended an education program to help her learn how to read, but she felt discouraged and left.

Jones graduated from high school in Coffee County but says she reads at the same first-grade level as her mother. She remembers attending special education classes with more field trips than written assignments and says teachers never diagnosed her with a learning disability or gave her one-on-one assistance. School administrators also frequently suspended her for fighting, she said. “They were trying to get rid of me.”

Coffee County has long failed to provide an equal education for students of color. In 1969, federal officials sued its school board for refusing to integrate white and Black schools. Even after the school system was integrated, Black students continued to receive fewer academic resources and harsher punishments than their white peers. A decade ago, the district acknowledged its shortcomings in reading instruction and the need to rectify its problems with literacy, which were more pronounced for Black students.

The county’s lower literacy rate is related to its high poverty rate, and since integration, the district has worked to increase opportunities for students of color, Coffee County School District Superintendent Morris Leis said in an email; he added that the district does not use discipline to “push out” children who have academic challenges, and it has reduced racial disparities in discipline after it initiated a new program in 2014. By that time, Jones had graduated.

She aspires to learn how to read through an adult education program and to eventually work at a child care center, but she cannot do so without steady transportation. She has not applied for a driver’s license; though she could take the written test orally like her mother did, she hasn’t been able to find someone who has time to help her study the examination booklet.

Ordinary tasks are often insurmountable for her. She owns a smartphone, but mining the web for information is daunting. After she fell several months behind on her electric payments, she could not read the notice that warned her lights would be cut off. She likely qualifies for low-cost internet, but she cannot navigate the instructions for accessing it. When she takes her son to the doctor’s office, she prints his first and last name on the forms but asks the staff for help with the rest. Unable to decipher her most valuable documents, like her birth certificate, she entrusts them to her aunt, who can read and helps determine what she needs for appointments and applications.

Jones worries most about keeping up with her 4-year-old son as he grows. She can read beginner books to him, but she knows his knowledge will soon surpass her own.

For Jones, the voting process itself is like a literacy test. If she changes her address, she cannot easily update her registration. If she enters the polling booth alone, she may recognize a few names on the ballot, but any unfamiliar words could confound her, particularly when it comes to the often-confusing constitutional amendments. She prefers voting by mail, which allows her more time to process her choices, but Georgia’s new election law is making that more difficult. The law has banned outside groups from mailing out absentee ballot applications that have the resident’s information already filled in, and it has limited who can submit the applications on voters’ behalf. The law does include exceptions for people helping “illiterate” voters, but experts say its limit on assistance could still discourage those voters from requesting help.

“Any law that limits assistance is going to have an impact on voters with limited literacy,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, acting director of voting rights at the Brennan Center for Justice. “Whether or not that’s the intention of the lawmakers, that’s always a difficult thing to say. But I do think sometimes it may very well be the intention.”

It is impossible to say precisely what role literacy plays in voter turnout. There are many other factors that contribute to lower participation, including some closely intertwined with literacy, such as income and education level. But to put the importance of reading ability in perspective, ProPublica analyzed data on turnout from the three most recent national elections and compared it to average estimated literacy levels for over 3,000 counties. (Read more about our analysis, and the data used, in our methodology.) Our analysis found that if low-literacy counties had turnout similar to high-literacy counties, they could have added up to about 7 million votes to the national total for each of those three elections.

Across the country, people like Jones are stumbling through inscrutable election processes fraught with poor ballot design and rigid registration rules. Some are choosing not to vote at all. (Read more about how some states are trying to make voting more accessible.) “We know in general that the more barriers we put in front of people, the lower the participation rate,” said Donald Moynihan, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University. “Even if someone with lower literacy has the same desire to vote as someone reading this article, they have to overcome more barriers.”

In 2014, for example, Ohio legislators began requiring voters to fill out more complicated versions of absentee and provisional ballot forms while at the same time limiting the assistance they could get from poll workers. Minor errors in the paperwork could lead to people’s votes not being counted. In a lawsuit, the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless claimed that the laws disproportionately harmed poor, nonwhite and low-literacy voters who would be more likely to have their ballots rejected for minor errors.

Data submitted as evidence shows that thousands of forms were tossed in the 2014 and 2015 general elections for simple problems such as incomplete addresses and birthdays. Poll workers refused one form because the street name “Cuthbert” was misspelled as “Cuthberth.” Several others were rejected because birth dates were listed as the current date, an indicator that voters may not have understood the instructions.

In 2016, a federal judge struck down the measures, concluding they disproportionately harmed Black voters. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that state rules requiring perfect completion of absentee ballot forms posed an undue burden to voters. But the panel said the other measures were minimally disruptive and left in place regulations that limited the assistance voters could get from poll workers and the amount of time voters were given to correct errors on absentee and provisional ballots.

“What the case demonstrates is the indifference of officials from one political party, and of unfortunately many federal judges, to voting rights and to the need to make voting not only secure, but relatively unburdensome,” said Subodh Chandra, an attorney for the plaintiffs.

A similar law in Georgia suspended voter registration applications when the information on the form didn’t exactly match a driver’s license or social security record. (If voters didn’t correct the information within 26 months, Georgia could cancel their registrations.) When then-Secretary of State Kemp ran for governor against Stacey Abrams in 2018, his office suspended the applications of an estimated 53,000 voters, most of them Black, due to these discrepancies. Kemp won the election by about 55,000 votes.

A federal judge ordered Georgia to ease the restrictive program, calling it a “severe burden” on some voters. Politicians, academics and advocates have accused Kemp of voter suppression not only for suspending registration applications over minor discrepancies, but also for purging tens of thousands of infrequent voters from the rolls — a more aggressive effort than is made in other states.

Kemp press secretary Katie Bryd disputed the allegations and noted that Kemp had implemented automatic voter registration through the state’s department of motor vehicles in 2016, which added hundreds of thousands of eligible voters to the rolls. “Politically driven, irresponsible accusations of voter suppression alleged at Governor Kemp have been repeatedly found void of basic facts and validity,” Byrd said in an email.

Today, voters flagged for minor discrepancies in their registration paperwork can no longer be removed from the rolls, but they do have to show a photo identification before they vote.

Watch video ➜

As Coley-Pearson parked at the polling station, her thoughts flew back to a similar day not long ago when she wound up handcuffed in the back of a police cruiser.

In October 2020 — more than two years after she was cleared of the felony charges — she was standing in a voting booth helping a young woman with low literacy skills read a ballot, as is allowed by law, when the county’s election supervisor, Misty Martin, confronted her. Martin yelled at Coley-Pearson to not touch the machines and told her she was barred from returning to the polls. Coley-Pearson said she wasn’t touching any machines. “We’re done,” she told the young woman after she finished voting. “Let’s go.”

Martin, who also has used the last names Hampton and Hayes, called the police to report that Coley-Pearson was disruptive, and the department issued a trespass warning barring her from the polls indefinitely. Later that morning, when Coley-Pearson returned to drop off another voter, she was arrested in the parking lot and charged with criminal trespassing. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is looking into election interference claims in Coffee County, including an incident in which Martin allowed several computer experts connected with Trump’s efforts to challenge the 2020 results into her offices, where they may have had access to election systems; Martin resigned from her county post under pressure last year. She did not respond to ProPublica’s questions related to either incident.

The charge hung over Coley-Pearson for nearly two years; this past June, a state judge agreed to drop the case if she signed a consent order agreeing to follow election law. “There was no evidence of any crime here,” Coley-Pearson said. “It feels like you’re fighting a losing battle.”

Her daughters see how the last several years have worn her down. AiyEsha Coley said she would sometimes wake up at 4 a.m. to feed her newborn and would find her mother on Facebook, reading through disparaging comments. Her daughters have long campaigned for her to retire from city commission, scared that the stress might eventually kill her. She’s starting to come around, and she plans to leave her post next year.

Now peering into her back seat, Coley-Pearson worried her presence could interfere with Jones and Fillmore’s ability to vote. “I did not want any type of confrontation, I did not want any kind of accusations, I just didn’t want any hassle,” she said.

She told them she would not be going in with them and instructed two close friends to help them instead. “When you get through, you all come down there to the tent,” she said, motioning to where her volunteers were sitting out of reach of the rain.

Coley-Pearson watched the women shuffle into the building and fretted as she waited, leaning on her mobile walker at the edge of the parking lot with a group of volunteer canvassers. She had reminded her friends of the rules, but she knew that sometimes, following them was not enough. “They might try to look for anything they could use against them,” she said.

After nearly an hour, Jones and her mother emerged, beaming.

Coley-Pearson’s nerves settled, at least for the moment.

One in Five Americans Struggles to Read. We Want to Understand Why.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Aliyya Swaby and Annie Waldman.

Ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping's call for "all-out relief efforts ... prioritizing saving lives and minimizing casualties" featured prominently on the front pages of state-controlled media outlets on Tuesday.

A resident of Moxi township, not far from the epicenter that was measured at 200 kilometers (124 miles) from the provincial capital Chengdu, said the epicenter was in the Hailuogou scenic tourist region just a few kilometers outside the town.

"Basically, a lot people were crushed under [collapsed] houses in their own homes; most of the deaths and casualties were crushed under houses," the resident, who gave only the surname Li, told RFA on Tuesday.

"The official announcement is that 29 people died in Kardze prefecture, with the total number of 46 deaths including deaths in Shimian county and villages around the Hailuogou area," Li said. "For example, some people were trapped under landslides when they were walking along the road."

Li said the rescue efforts had been "very fast" to appear in the region.

Many of the buildings around Hailuogou were built to rent out to tourists using apps, Li said.

"A lot of people around Hailuogou borrowed money, or their relatives gave them money, and they built these houses with loans," Li said, adding that the government had insisted that local people develop the tourist industry rather than living off the proceeds of illegal logging.

"Many had lost their land, and had no income, so they thought they'd invest in these guesthouses and restaurants, all on the back of borrowing, but the government doesn't make long-term plans," he said, adding that there was poor safety supervision of the new buildings springing up in an earthquake-prone area.

Meanwhile, authorities in Chengdu continued to enforce a citywide COVID-19 lockdown despite buildings splitting and shaking in the city, according to video clips uploaded to social media.

Resident Wang Yan said she felt the quake very strongly in her apartment.

"I was at home, and started to feel dizzy — the stool I was sitting on swayed around," Wang said. "I wanted to get up and go to the toilet, but I couldn't stand up."

"It was like trying to walk on cotton cloth, and it kept swaying for a long time," she said.

A resident of Mianyang, which was worst-hit during the May 12, 2008, quake that left 89,000 dead, said they saw strange animal behaviors shortly before the quake hit.

"There were bats and birds grouped together, flying around, and fish in the fish-ponds round here started jumping out of the water," the resident said. "People said it meant there was going to be an earthquake."

"Sure enough, it had happened within eight hours," the person said.

Emergency response level raised

Late on Monday night, Kardze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, where Luding county is located, raised its prefectural emergency response for earthquakes to level-I, the highest in the four-tier emergency response system, the Global Times reported.

It cited "media reports" and Sichuan officials as saying that more than 6,500 rescue workers, including firefighters and armed police, had been dispatched to the area, along with four helicopters and two drones, while more than 50,000 residents had been evacuated.

The Xi'an Satellite Control Center has deployed satellite Gaofen-3 to enable satellite users to receive remote sensing images of the earthquake-hit regions in a timely manner, enabling experts to assess ongoing risks in the disaster zone.

A Twin-Tailed Scorpion drone was dispatched to assist in inspections and communication coverage at 5.00 p.m. local time, to restore cell phone signals for local residents and rescue teams, the paper said.

A large number of residential communities had warned local residents of the quake in advance through loudspeakers across Sichuan, while tens of millions of residents saw the warnings on TV or through mobile phones, as did epidemic prevention and control staffers.

"They were able to take emergency shelter in a timely manner," it quoted a government statement as saying, adding that some 150 million yuan in funding was being channeled into the relief effort.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Gu Ting for RFA Mandarin.

As the 2022 election season heats up, Maine's highest spending political committee doesn't belong to the fundraising division of any political party. Instead, the dubious honor belongs to a ballot question committee called Maine Affordable Energy.

The proposal would create a new nonprofit consumer-owned utility company, covering the vast majority of the state's residential power load.

According to publicly available campaign finance data, Maine Affordable Energy has been entirely funded by just one corporate donor: Avangrid, the parent company of Central Maine Power (CMP).

Avangrid has already spent millions on a campaign opposing a potential 2023 ballot measure, which would propose a buyout of the state's two investor-owned utility companies, CMP and Versant (the state already has nine small-scale cooperatives and municipal-owned utilities). In their place, the proposal would create a new nonprofit consumer-owned utility company, covering the vast majority of the state's residential power load.

Along with a group called Maine Energy Progress, a similar organization entirely funded by ENMAX (Versant's parent company), the utility-sponsored opposition has outspent the ballot's proponents nearly 30 times over.

"We're seeing CMP spending about a million dollars a month in opposition money against us, and we haven't even qualified for the ballot yet," said Andrew Blunt, the Executive Director of Our Power, the organization collecting signatures for this ballot measure. "We're not handing in our signatures to be on the 2023 ballot until later this October. So to see that kind of spending in preparation to oppose a ballot question, that is pretty unprecedented."

Avangrid, which itself is owned by Iberdrola, a large Spanish utility company, has poured $8,378,000 into Maine Affordable Energy since the beginning of 2021 – money which has been largely used for advertising against the public utility proposal. ENMAX has similarly contributed $910,000 as the sole funder of Maine Energy Progress.

In addition, Avangrid has spent over a million dollars pushing a separate ballot question to handicap a potential consumer-owned utility company by limiting their ability to take on debt without explicit voter approval. Willy Ritch, the Principal Officer of Maine Affordable Energy, is also listed as the principal officer of this campaign, titled No Blank Checks. 

Ritch sent me a statement in response to written questions for this story, and he told me that he expects this referendum to make the 2023 ballot.

"We report every penny we receive in contributions and every penny we spend to the Maine Ethics Commission and those reports are public the moment we file them," Ritch wrote. "We follow all the rules and requirements for reporting and disclosure—not just on paid ads but also on every single thing we spend money on."

In comparison, Our Power's ballot question committee has raised $351,971, mostly from individual contributors. The organization is partnering with a coalition of environmental organizations, community advocacy groups, businesses, municipal governments, and ratepayer organizations. 

The websites and advertisements of the investor-owned utilities' campaigns don't disclose the connection between these organizations and their sole funders. Instead, they claim that the takeover would delay the transition to clean energy and increase electricity costs. In his statement, Ritch warned of potential effects of a consumer takeover on the clean energy transition.

"If the referendum passes, it would kick off a protracted bureaucratic and legal process that would take a decade or more to resolve—during which time it's unlikely that the investments we need to make in our electrical system will be made at the rate necessary to meet our carbon reduction goals," Ritch wrote.

But many of the state's major environmental groups have been strong supporters of this proposal, including 350 Maine, Maine Climate Action Now, Maine Youth for Climate Justice, Sierra Club Maine, and hubs of the Sunrise Movement. Publicly owned utility companies are central to many progressive visions of a Green New Deal, as articulated in the 2019 book A Planet to Win.

"The idea of moving our climate goals forward, that would be written into the charge of this new power authority," said Matt Cannon, the State Conservation and Energy Director for Sierra Club Maine. "A private corporation monopoly does not have that as their charge – maximizing profit is still their charge."

Other public power advocates pointed to CMP and Versant as major roadblocks to climate action, and said that their campaigns are attempting to use the climate crisis as a wedge issue.

"We have a lot of evidence in Maine of specifically Central Maine Power lobbying actively and publicly against clean energy solutions," said state Sen. Nicole Grohoski. CMP successfully lobbied against a 2017 bill promoting rooftop solar, and the Avangrid Maine PAC has been a major donor to Maine Republican committees. 

Because any questions regarding a takeover of Maine's utilities wouldn't reach voters until November 2023, the state's corporate utilities will have plenty of time to bombard voters with their messaging. While CMP and Versant contribute a relatively small fraction of their parent companies' overall profits, the companies may be worried that a successful consumer takeover could serve as an example for other regions across the country.

"One of our goals is to serve as an inspiration for other communities that are being saddled with poor service and high costs," said Grohoski. "So it's not just about these two utilities in Maine, it's about what's happening in America."

According to Joshua Basseches, an assistant professor of public policy and environmental studies at Tulane University, a statewide campaign like Our Power is largely unprecedented in US history. Basseches' research investigates the political influence of utility companies throughout the country.

According to Basseches, "Investor-owned utilities have, in the past, fought off efforts at municipalization because it undermines their traditional business model, but never, to my knowledge, has there been such a concerted effort to establish a statewide consumer-owned utility to literally replace them as is happening right now in the state of Maine. We can expect the incumbent utility companies and their parent companies to do everything possible to derail the ballot measure and, if that fails and the outcome is not to their liking, to fight its implementation in the courts."

For some indication on how the opposition might progress, Avangrid and its subsidiaries have spent a whopping $42 million on Clean Energy Matters, a political action committee advocating for the company's proposed transmission corridor connecting Canadian hydropower to utilities in Massachusetts, which was voted down by voters in a 2021 referendum. While voters overwhelmingly opposed the corridor, the legal battle over the project continues. 

"They'll definitely spend more on opposing us than they did on the power line," said Blunt. He noted that while the company stood to make large profits from the transmission corridor, "what we're talking about with this policy is actually an existential threat to these investor-owned utilities."

But despite this daunting imbalance in campaign funds, Blunt is hopeful that the coalition can overcome utility spending through grassroots organizing.

"Right now, what we're seeing is astroturfing. This is big corporate spending, it's detached, no one really knows who's behind it," said Blunt. "There is no replacement for connecting with voters on a personal level, and that is going to be huge in terms of winning this campaign."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jon Lamson.

As the 2022 election season heats up, Maine's highest spending political committee doesn't belong to the fundraising division of any political party. Instead, the dubious honor belongs to a ballot question committee called Maine Affordable Energy.

The proposal would create a new nonprofit consumer-owned utility company, covering the vast majority of the state's residential power load.

According to publicly available campaign finance data, Maine Affordable Energy has been entirely funded by just one corporate donor: Avangrid, the parent company of Central Maine Power (CMP).

Avangrid has already spent millions on a campaign opposing a potential 2023 ballot measure, which would propose a buyout of the state's two investor-owned utility companies, CMP and Versant (the state already has nine small-scale cooperatives and municipal-owned utilities). In their place, the proposal would create a new nonprofit consumer-owned utility company, covering the vast majority of the state's residential power load.

Along with a group called Maine Energy Progress, a similar organization entirely funded by ENMAX (Versant's parent company), the utility-sponsored opposition has outspent the ballot's proponents nearly 30 times over.

"We're seeing CMP spending about a million dollars a month in opposition money against us, and we haven't even qualified for the ballot yet," said Andrew Blunt, the Executive Director of Our Power, the organization collecting signatures for this ballot measure. "We're not handing in our signatures to be on the 2023 ballot until later this October. So to see that kind of spending in preparation to oppose a ballot question, that is pretty unprecedented."

Avangrid, which itself is owned by Iberdrola, a large Spanish utility company, has poured $8,378,000 into Maine Affordable Energy since the beginning of 2021 – money which has been largely used for advertising against the public utility proposal. ENMAX has similarly contributed $910,000 as the sole funder of Maine Energy Progress.

In addition, Avangrid has spent over a million dollars pushing a separate ballot question to handicap a potential consumer-owned utility company by limiting their ability to take on debt without explicit voter approval. Willy Ritch, the Principal Officer of Maine Affordable Energy, is also listed as the principal officer of this campaign, titled No Blank Checks. 

Ritch sent me a statement in response to written questions for this story, and he told me that he expects this referendum to make the 2023 ballot.

"We report every penny we receive in contributions and every penny we spend to the Maine Ethics Commission and those reports are public the moment we file them," Ritch wrote. "We follow all the rules and requirements for reporting and disclosure—not just on paid ads but also on every single thing we spend money on."

In comparison, Our Power's ballot question committee has raised $351,971, mostly from individual contributors. The organization is partnering with a coalition of environmental organizations, community advocacy groups, businesses, municipal governments, and ratepayer organizations. 

The websites and advertisements of the investor-owned utilities' campaigns don't disclose the connection between these organizations and their sole funders. Instead, they claim that the takeover would delay the transition to clean energy and increase electricity costs. In his statement, Ritch warned of potential effects of a consumer takeover on the clean energy transition.

"If the referendum passes, it would kick off a protracted bureaucratic and legal process that would take a decade or more to resolve—during which time it's unlikely that the investments we need to make in our electrical system will be made at the rate necessary to meet our carbon reduction goals," Ritch wrote.

But many of the state's major environmental groups have been strong supporters of this proposal, including 350 Maine, Maine Climate Action Now, Maine Youth for Climate Justice, Sierra Club Maine, and hubs of the Sunrise Movement. Publicly owned utility companies are central to many progressive visions of a Green New Deal, as articulated in the 2019 book A Planet to Win.

"The idea of moving our climate goals forward, that would be written into the charge of this new power authority," said Matt Cannon, the State Conservation and Energy Director for Sierra Club Maine. "A private corporation monopoly does not have that as their charge – maximizing profit is still their charge."

Other public power advocates pointed to CMP and Versant as major roadblocks to climate action, and said that their campaigns are attempting to use the climate crisis as a wedge issue.

"We have a lot of evidence in Maine of specifically Central Maine Power lobbying actively and publicly against clean energy solutions," said state Sen. Nicole Grohoski. CMP successfully lobbied against a 2017 bill promoting rooftop solar, and the Avangrid Maine PAC has been a major donor to Maine Republican committees. 

Because any questions regarding a takeover of Maine's utilities wouldn't reach voters until November 2023, the state's corporate utilities will have plenty of time to bombard voters with their messaging. While CMP and Versant contribute a relatively small fraction of their parent companies' overall profits, the companies may be worried that a successful consumer takeover could serve as an example for other regions across the country.

"One of our goals is to serve as an inspiration for other communities that are being saddled with poor service and high costs," said Grohoski. "So it's not just about these two utilities in Maine, it's about what's happening in America."

According to Joshua Basseches, an assistant professor of public policy and environmental studies at Tulane University, a statewide campaign like Our Power is largely unprecedented in US history. Basseches' research investigates the political influence of utility companies throughout the country.

According to Basseches, "Investor-owned utilities have, in the past, fought off efforts at municipalization because it undermines their traditional business model, but never, to my knowledge, has there been such a concerted effort to establish a statewide consumer-owned utility to literally replace them as is happening right now in the state of Maine. We can expect the incumbent utility companies and their parent companies to do everything possible to derail the ballot measure and, if that fails and the outcome is not to their liking, to fight its implementation in the courts."

For some indication on how the opposition might progress, Avangrid and its subsidiaries have spent a whopping $42 million on Clean Energy Matters, a political action committee advocating for the company's proposed transmission corridor connecting Canadian hydropower to utilities in Massachusetts, which was voted down by voters in a 2021 referendum. While voters overwhelmingly opposed the corridor, the legal battle over the project continues. 

"They'll definitely spend more on opposing us than they did on the power line," said Blunt. He noted that while the company stood to make large profits from the transmission corridor, "what we're talking about with this policy is actually an existential threat to these investor-owned utilities."

But despite this daunting imbalance in campaign funds, Blunt is hopeful that the coalition can overcome utility spending through grassroots organizing.

"Right now, what we're seeing is astroturfing. This is big corporate spending, it's detached, no one really knows who's behind it," said Blunt. "There is no replacement for connecting with voters on a personal level, and that is going to be huge in terms of winning this campaign."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jon Lamson.

Nurses at Maine Medical Center have voted by an overwhelming margin to keep the union that they opted to join last year, fending off a decertification effort backed by a right-wing legal group dedicated to rolling back workers' ability to organize and bargain collectively.

The vote, held in person on August 17 and 18, favored the union even more heavily than the initial 1,001 to 750 vote in 2021.

A tally released late Thursday showed that the Maine Med nurses voted 1,108 to 387 in support of retaining the Maine State Nurses Association/National Nurses United as their collective bargaining representative, a nearly 75% vote in favor of the union.

Jonica Frank, a registered nurse at Maine Med and a member of the union's bargaining team, said that "we have already negotiated historic improvements in pay, in working conditions, and on patient safety issues" since voting to join the union last year.

"A 'no' vote in this election would have meant that all these things could be taken away from us," said Frank. "Once again in this election, we have spoken. And we are not going back!"

This week's vote was spurred by a petition that Maine Med nurse Davin Brooks submitted to the National Labor Relations Board in June with the signatures of more than 500 fellow nurses. The petition called for a vote to decertify the union.

The decertification push was openly backed by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, an anti-union organization that said it provided "free legal assistance" to Brooks and other petition supporters.

"The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a right-wing, out-of-state organization that goes around trying to get workers to decertify their unions,” Mary Kate O'Sullivan, an RN in the medical-surgical unit of Maine Med, told the Portland Press Herald. "They thought because we were a new union, they could manipulate Maine Med nurses and overturn our 2021 election. But we just showed them the door."

"The so-called 'Right to Work Foundation' is not welcome at Maine Med," O'Sullivan added, "and it's not welcome in Maine."

According to the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), the foundation has "supplied the lawyers for most of the anti-union cases before the U.S. Supreme Court," including the infamous Janus v. AFSCME case in which the high court ruled that public-sector unions can't require non-members to pay fair-share fees to help cover collective bargaining costs.

CMD notes that the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation has ties to the Koch network.

In a statement last month, the foundation criticized the Maine State Nurses Association for failing to "produce a contract in over a year," not mentioning that employer obstruction and hostility often delay contract progress for years.

One analysis estimates that, on average, it takes 409 days for newly unionized workers to secure a contract.

The Maine State Nurses Association said Thursday that it intends to complete the bargaining process with Maine Med within the next several weeks.

"We have now won two elections," said Lucy Dawson, an emergency department RN. "Our historic first contract is next. We are going to keep building our union and its power to benefit our patients, our community, nurses at Maine Med, and across the state of Maine.” 

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

On Aug. 5 China’s Maritime Safety Administration announced a series of live-fire training exercises would be conducted on Aug. 6-15 in the Bohai Sea and in the southern waters of the Yellow Sea, which separates China from the Korean Peninsula.

The exercises can be seen as a “multipurpose strategic move” to expand China’s influence in the Yellow Sea, said Park Byung-kwang, director of the Center for International Cooperation at the Institute for National Security Strategy, a South Korean government-​funded public research institute that focuses on security studies.

“It can be seen that it has the meaning of checking the strengthening of the South Korea-U.S. alliance and furthermore, security cooperation between South Korea, the U.S. and Japan,” he said.

China’s intention is to limit the access of U.S. naval forces, including aircraft carriers, to the Yellow Sea, which Koreans refer to as the West Sea, he said.

Chung Jae-hung, a research fellow at the independent South Korean think tank the Sejong Institute, said the exercises show China is thinking about how to protect its forces moving through the Taiwan Strait from U.S. and South Korean forces.

China’s military fleet is conducting exercises in the Yellow Sea to respond to the U.S. forces stationed in South Korea and Japan in a situation where the Chinese fleet moves to the Taiwan Strait, he said.

It means they are considering protection in the process of moving major forces, including the Chinese fleet, he said.

Bruce W. Bennett, an adjunct international/defense researcher at the RAND Corporation, said China’s moves indicate that it is playing a long game, “something that they’re thinking about for 2030 or 2040.”

“The Chinese play the long game,” he said. “They try to prepare themselves and position themselves so that over a period of many years, they have more capability to pose the kinds of threats that will give them an ability to influence both the United States and South Korea.

“So, this is a longer term effort that they’re carrying on trying to create conditions for dominance in the region,” he said.

Bruce Bechtol Jr., a professor in the Department of Security Studies and Criminal Justice at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas, said China is trying to intimidate the South Korean government.

“If Chinese forces are in international waters they are certainly violating no international laws by training in these areas,” he said. “But given the timing, it appears that this training may be taking place in the areas that it is in order to intimidate the ROK [Republic of Korea] government because of its strong support for the ROK-U.S. alliance as well as several ROK policy moves that the Chinese government does not find to be in Beijing's best interests.”

As of Wednesday, neither South Korean nor U.S. military officials had replied to questions from RFA about China’s exercises in the Yellow Sea.

The exercises in the Bohai and Yellow seas follow People’s Liberation Army anti-submarine and sea assault drills in the waters around Taiwan last week after a visit to the island by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

China regards the democratically-ruled island as a renegade province and seeks to unite it with the mainland, by force if necessary. Beijing frowns on official visits to Taiwan.

Translated by Leejin J. Chung for RFA Korean. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Seung Wook Hong and Jaehoon Shim for RFA Korean.

Democracy defenders on Monday welcomed reports that Dana Nessel, Michigan's attorney general, is calling for a special prosecutor to probe allegations of a Republican-led attempt to feloniously break into voting machines after the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

"We believe the alleged actions of Mr. DePerno highlight a well-known truth: Our democracy is in danger—both in Michigan and across the country."

The New York Times reports Nessel, a Democrat, is seeking to appoint a special prosecutor to review potential crimes committed by Matthew DePerno—a supporter of former President Donald Trump's "Big Lie" that the 2020 contest was stolen and a presumptive GOP candidate for attorney general. He stands accused of conspiring with more than half a dozen other Republicans to gain illicit access to the voting tabulators used in the 2020 election.

"These revelations hammer home the need for AG Nessel to promptly name a special prosecutor to avoid a conflict of interest and investigate these very serious allegations," Quentin Turner, Michigan program director at the advocacy group Common Cause, said in a statement.

"We believe the alleged actions of Mr. DePerno highlight a well-known truth: Our democracy is in danger—both in Michigan and across the country. Mr. DePerno and his team's alleged behavior do not align with the values of Michiganders who believe in fair, safe, and accessible elections."

As the Times details:

According to the office of Ms. Nessel... Mr. DePerno and others persuaded local clerks in three counties to hand over election equipment and then took the machines to hotels and Airbnb rentals to perform "tests" on them. They returned the equipment, now damaged or improperly tampered with, in parking lots and shopping malls, the documents say...

Mr. DePerno's candidacy for attorney general has worried election experts, Democrats, and even many Republicans, who fear that he could use his powers to carry out investigations based on fraudulent claims or other forms of meddling in elections. He has also pledged to carry out inquiries of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Ms. Nessel, and [Secretary of State Jocelyn] Benson, all Democrats.

In a statement, DePerno accused Nessel of targeting him "for the 'crime' of investigating voter fraud in 2020." There is no evidence of any such fraud.

"Matthew DePerno represents a continued movement of partisan candidates who have aided the former president in uplifting the Big Lie—a destructive scheme to try and overturn our votes in the 2020 election," Turner said. "This rhetoric DePerno supports led to the January 6 insurrection, a bloody and violent attempt to block the peaceful transfer of power."

"We have seen several audits since the 2020 election results, and the fact remains that [President] Joe Biden fairly won the 2020 presidential election and Michigan's 16 electors," he continued. "We must denounce the Big Lie and those who refuse to uphold the will of the people in our elections."

"These allegations must be taken seriously," Turner added. "Matthew DePerno's alleged behavior is a direct attack on our democracy, and we must do everything we can to protect it and voting rights. A special prosecutor will allow a full investigation of these serious alleged infractions."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Photo by Markus Spiske

They really do want to kill him.  Perhaps it is high time that his detractors and sceptics, proven wrong essentially from the outset, admit that the US imperium, along with its client states, is willing to see Julian Assange perish in prison.  The locality and venue, for the purposes of this exercise, are not relevant.  Like the Inquisition, the Catholic Church was never keen on soiling its hands, preferring the employ of non-church figures to torture their victims.

In the context of Assange, Britain has been a willing jailor from the start, guided by the good offices of Washington and none too keen in seeing this spiller of secrets released into the world.  Bail has been repeatedly, and inexcusably, refused, despite the threats posed by COVID-19, the publisher’s own deteriorating health, and restrictions upon access, at regular intervals, to legal advice from his team.  Just as some banks are deemed too large to fail, Assange is considered too large a target to escape.  Let loose again, he might do what he does best: reveal government venalities in war and peace and prove the social contract a gross deception and mockery of our sensibilities.

The UK legal system has been the ideal forum to execute the wishes of Washington.  Each legal branch that has examined the extradition case has assiduously avoided the bigger picture: the attack on press freedom, exposing war crimes, illegal surveillance of a political asylee in an embassy compound, the breaches of privacy and legal confidentiality, the encroachments upon family life, the evidence on proposed abduction and assassination, the questionable conflicts of interest by some judicial members, the collusion of State authorities.

Instead, the courts, from the outside, have taken a blade to cut away the meatiest, most solid of arguments, focusing on a sliver that would be, in due course, defeated.  The sole decision that favoured Assange only did so by essentially regarding him as an individual whose mental fragility would compromise him in a US prison facility.  In such a case, suicide would be virtually impossible to prevent.  District Judge Vanessa Baraitser, who made the ruling, thought little of the publisher’s credentials, heartily agreeing with the prosecution that no journalist would have ever exposed the names of informants.  (This farcical interpretation was rebutted convincingly in the Old Bailey trial proceedings.)

The rest has been a grotesque show of gargantuan proportions, with the High Court and the Supreme Court showing themselves to be political dunces or, which is not much better, dupes.  Believing a number of diplomatic assurances by US prosecutors on Assange’s post-extradition fate, made after the original trial, seemed awfully close to a form of legal match-fixing.  We all know that court cases and the law can be analogised as betting and having a punt, the outcome never clear till it arrives, but this was positively ludicrous.

To anyone following the trial and knowing the feeble nature of reassurances made by a State power, especially one with the heft of the United States, promises about more commodious accommodation, not being subject to brutal special administrative measures, and also being allowed to apply for a return to Australia to serve the balance of the term, was pure, stenchy balderdash.

Amnesty International is unequivocal on this point: diplomatic assurances are used by governments to “circumvent” various human rights conventions, and the very fact that they are sought to begin with creates its own dangers.  “The mere fact that States need to seek diplomatic assurances against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (other ill-treatment) is indicative of a risk of torture.”

The US prosecuting authorities have even gone so far as to weaken their own position, making their undertakings conditional.  Typically, they shift the focus back on Assange, suggesting that he might influence matters by his own mischievous conduct.  All in all, nothing said was binding, and the glue holding the promises together might, at any given moment, dissolve.

Admirably, Assange continues to have some fiercely dedicated followers who wish him well and wish him out.  Independent Australian MP Andrew Wilkie has the sort of certitude that can pulverise the attitudes of bleak sceptics, though even he must nurse a few doubts.  In his address to supporters of Assange in Canberra, delivered on the lawns of the Australian Parliament, he was confident that keeping “the pressure up” would eventually lead to justice for the publisher.

In a crisp summation, Wilkie distilled the case.  “The US wants to get even and for so long the UK and Australia have been happy to go along for the ride because they’ve put bilateral relationships with Washington ahead of the rights of a decent man.”  Keep maintaining the rage, he urged his audience.

The matter is considered so urgent that Australian Doctors For Assange have warned that death may be peeking around the corner.  “Medical examinations of Julian Assange in Belmarsh prison in the UK,” stated spokesman Robert Marr, “have revealed that he is suffering from severe life-threatening cardiovascular and stress-related medical conditions, including having a mini-stroke as a result of his imprisonment and psychological torture.”

The organisation has written to US Ambassador Carolyn Kenney “requesting she urgently ask President Biden to stop the US persecution of Australian citizen Julian Assange for merely publishing information provided to him and stop the US attempt to extradite him from the UK.”

From the Australian perspective, we can already see that there is a go-slow, cautious approach to Assange’s fate, which also serves the lethal agenda being pursued by the US prosecutors.  Despite a change of the guard in Canberra, the status quo on power relations between the two countries remains unaltered.  Everyone, bar Assange, seems to have time to wait.  But in terms of life and health, the time in question is almost done.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

In the context of Assange, Britain has been a willing jailor from the start, guided by the good offices of Washington and none too keen in seeing this spiller of secrets released into the world.  Bail has been repeatedly, and inexcusably, refused, despite the threats posed by COVID-19, the publisher’s own deteriorating health, and restrictions upon access, at regular intervals, to legal advice from his team.  Just as some banks are deemed too large to fail, Assange is considered too large a target to escape.  Let loose again, he might do what he does best: reveal government venalities in war and peace and prove the social contract a gross deception and mockery of our sensibilities.

The UK legal system has been the ideal forum to execute the wishes of Washington.  Each legal branch that has examined the extradition case has assiduously avoided the bigger picture: the attack on press freedom, exposing war crimes, illegal surveillance of a political asylee in an embassy compound, the breaches of privacy and legal confidentiality, the encroachments upon family life, the evidence on proposed abduction and assassination, the questionable conflicts of interest by some judicial members, the collusion of State authorities.

Instead, the courts, from the outside, have taken a blade to cut away the meatiest, most solid of arguments, focusing on a sliver that would be, in due course, defeated.  The sole decision that favoured Assange only did so by essentially regarding him as an individual whose mental fragility would compromise him in a US prison facility.  In such a case, suicide would be virtually impossible to prevent.  District Judge Vanessa Baraitser, who made the ruling, thought little of the publisher’s credentials, heartily agreeing with the prosecution that no journalist would have ever exposed the names of informants.  (This farcical interpretation was rebutted convincingly in the Old Bailey trial proceedings.)

The rest has been a grotesque show of gargantuan proportions, with the High Court and the Supreme Court showing themselves to be political dunces or, which is not much better, dupes.  Believing a number of diplomatic assurances by US prosecutors on Assange’s post-extradition fate, made after the original trial, seemed awfully close to a form of legal match-fixing.  We all know that court cases and the law can be analogised as betting and having a punt, the outcome never clear till it arrives, but this was positively ludicrous.

To anyone following the trial and knowing the feeble nature of reassurances made by a State power, especially one with the heft of the United States, promises about more commodious accommodation, not being subject to brutal special administrative measures, and also being allowed to apply for a return to Australia to serve the balance of the term, was pure, stenchy balderdash.

Amnesty International is unequivocal on this point: diplomatic assurances are used by governments to “circumvent” various human rights conventions, and the very fact that they are sought to begin with creates its own dangers.  “The mere fact that States need to seek diplomatic assurances against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (other ill-treatment) is indicative of a risk of torture.”

The US prosecuting authorities have even gone so far as to weaken their own position, making their undertakings conditional.  Typically, they shift the focus back on Assange, suggesting that he might influence matters by his own mischievous conduct.  All in all, nothing said was binding, and the glue holding the promises together might, at any given moment, dissolve.

Admirably, Assange continues to have some fiercely dedicated followers who wish him well and wish him out.  Independent Australian MP Andrew Wilkie has the sort of certitude that can pulverise the attitudes of bleak sceptics, though even he must nurse a few doubts.  In his address to supporters of Assange in Canberra, delivered on the lawns of the Australian Parliament, he was confident that keeping “the pressure up” would eventually lead to justice for the publisher.

In a crisp summation, Wilkie distilled the case.  “The US wants to get even and for so long the UK and Australia have been happy to go along for the ride because they’ve put bilateral relationships with Washington ahead of the rights of a decent man.”  Keep maintaining the rage, he urged his audience.

The matter is considered so urgent that Australian Doctors For Assange have warned that death may be peeking around the corner.  “Medical examinations of Julian Assange in Belmarsh prison in the UK,” stated spokesman Robert Marr, “have revealed that he is suffering from severe life-threatening cardiovascular and stress-related medical conditions, including having a mini-stroke as a result of his imprisonment and psychological torture.”

The organisation has written to US Ambassador Carolyn Kenney “requesting she urgently ask President Biden to stop the US persecution of Australian citizen Julian Assange for merely publishing information provided to him and stop the US attempt to extradite him from the UK.”

From the Australian perspective, we can already see that there is a go-slow, cautious approach to Assange’s fate, which also serves the lethal agenda being pursued by the US prosecutors.  Despite a change of the guard in Canberra, the status quo on power relations between the two countries remains unaltered.  Everyone, bar Assange, seems to have time to wait.  But in terms of life and health, the time in question is almost done.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

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This article is a partnership between ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine.

Late on May 31, 2018, five days after she was sworn in as prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley and her top advisers gathered in the windowless anteroom of her administrative office in Bridgetown, the capital, for a call that could determine the fate of her island nation. The group settled into uncomfortable straight-backed chairs around a small mahogany table, staring at framed posters of Barbados’ windmills and sugar cane fields. Mottley, who was then 52, can appear mischievous in the moments before her bluntest declarations, but on this evening her steely side showed. She placed her personal cellphone on speaker and dialed a number in Washington for the International Monetary Fund. As arranged, Christine Lagarde, the managing director, answered.

Mottley got to the point: Barbados was out of money. It was so broke that it was taking out new loans just to pay the interest on the old ones, even as its infrastructure was coming undone. Soon the nation would have no choice but to declare itself insolvent, instigating a battle with the dozens of banks and creditors that held its $8 billion in debt and triggering austerity measures that would spiral the island into further poverty. There was another way, Mottley said, but she needed Lagarde’s help.

Mottley, the first woman to lead Barbados, had been working toward this conversation for nearly two years, consulting expert financial and legal advisers to develop a plan that would restructure the country’s soaring debts in a way that would free up money to invest in Barbados’ economy. Then, nine months before voting day, that plan took on new urgency as two powerful hurricanes ripped through the Caribbean 12 days apart; they missed Barbados, but one of them obliterated nearby Dominica.

In Mottley’s view, that obliteration was “like a nuclear event.” It was increasingly clear that climate change would make all the projects that Barbados already could not afford more necessary — and more expensive. The storms revealed that even the most heroic economic planning could be laid to waste in a moment. It was already obvious that every climate crisis was an economic crisis; but going forward, she realized, every economic crisis would effectively be a climate crisis. For Mottley, this meant the money she needed the IMF to help her recoup wasn’t just for her people’s prosperity but for their survival.

Mottley’s insistence on speaking directly with Lagarde — she had been pushing for the meeting for nearly a week while Lagarde’s office demurred — was an unorthodox way to approach the leader of one of the world’s dominant economic institutions. Having descended from two generations of elite politicians, Mottley had learned, though, that important decisions at large organizations are made at the top. Her grandfather was the mayor of Bridgetown; her father served as the country’s consul general to the United States. She was groomed at the island’s elite girls’ academy, Queen’s College, and at the private United Nations International School in New York. Beside her in the anteroom was her adviser Avinash Persaud, a close friend since the days when they each studied at the London School of Economics, where she received her law degree in 1986. Persaud, who went on to lead research departments at J.P. Morgan and State Street Bank, was deeply knowledgeable about development finance. The two friends were joined by the principals of a little-known but influential London financial firm called White Oak Advisory — Sebastian Espinosa and David Nagoski — debt experts who had developed a novel contractual clause to protect countries from at least some of the economic consequences of climate-driven catastrophes.

With Lagarde on the phone, Mottley made her pitch. Barbados, she said, was going to default on the debt it owed to private banks and investors. She wanted Lagarde’s support in persuading them to renegotiate its terms. The IMF is both the assessor and the enforcer of global economic policy, the de facto gatekeeper to the world’s capital markets. Mottley knew that banks and investors would work with her only if Barbados were participating in a formal IMF program for economic reform — and it had to start immediately.

Mottley told Lagarde that Barbados was prepared to do voluntarily what most countries have to be coerced to do: cut its budget and raise taxes. But she needed something in return. With the effects of climate change bearing down on the region, the kind of austerity the IMF demanded from developing nations — slashing the size of government agencies and firing thousands of public employees while auctioning off real estate and other national assets — would no longer work. Mottley wanted Lagarde to endorse an economic program that would still allow her to raise salaries of civil servants, build schools and improve piping and wiring for water and power. “Before you carry people on a long journey,” she told Lagarde, “you have to give them a little breakfast.”

Barbados, while considered relatively wealthy by World Bank standards, hadn’t been able to borrow on the international market since 2013, and it had no capacity to pay for essential programs and projects. The concern was immediate, Mottley explained: Hurricane season was about to begin. The room fell quiet. No one was sure how Lagarde would respond. Would she trust Mottley to spend on Barbados first? Or demand — as the IMF usually did — deference to debtors? Then, as Mottley’s advisers recall, came the director’s surprising reply: She was extremely supportive of what Mottley was proposing.

The next day, Mottley declared that Barbados would stop making its payments on the nation’s debts. “Today, my friends, we pry off the hands that have been strangling us,” she said. Some of the business leaders she had gathered to stand behind her at the lectern winced. The value of Barbados’ bonds on the global markets crashed. S&P Global downgraded the island’s credit. The country teetered on the edge of financial chaos. With that, Mottley’s adventure onto the global stage of financial and climate activism began.

What Mottley sought would not be easy. She would have to untangle the relationships connecting the IMF with the financial institutions that invest in countries like Barbados — a global financial system that simultaneously helps and preys upon countries at their moments of greatest need. She would have to challenge the rules of that system and its powerful figures, who often struggle to recognize how climate change is altering the traditional dynamics of debt and development. Mottley would come to see the traps of that system as fundamentally unjust, born from generations of colonial rule. Just as outsiders once pillaged the Caribbean for wealth created by the hands of slaves, investors in those former imperial powers now squeezed former territories for their assets, for access to markets, for interest on loans. And she would have to contend with all of that waiting for the next storm, knowing she governed a dot of land isolated in one of the most vulnerable places on Earth.

Few parts of the planet are as imperiled by the changing climate as the Caribbean’s crescent-shaped string of islands. Every summer, the warm waters off the northwest coast of Africa spin off cyclonic systems that hurtle across the Atlantic, reaching the easternmost stretch of these islands — where Barbados stands sentinel. Quick successions like that of Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria, the two storms that narrowly missed the island, were supposed to be rare. Now, though, experts believe that global warming could drive a fivefold increase in strong hurricanes, suggesting that hits from Category 4 and 5 storms will become an annual near-certainty.

Droughts, meanwhile, are growing longer and drier, threatening drinking-water supplies and making it difficult to grow food. Barbados, a teardrop-shaped island of 290,000 people, is among the half of Caribbean islands the United Nations already describes as water-scarce, with seawater seeping into its aquifers and rainfall that might drop by as much as 40% by the end of the century. The droughts will lead to wildfires, killing more vegetation and crops. When it does rain, it is projected to rain heavily and all at once, causing precipitous landslides, which will wipe out roads, rip up electrical grids and cut off energy supplies. At the same time, rising and warming seas are eroding shorelines and killing off reefs and fisheries. According to the IMF, roughly two-thirds of the 511 disasters to hit small countries since 1950 have occurred in the Caribbean, taking more than 250,000 lives.

These islands have another dubious distinction: They carry more debt, relative to the size of their economies, than almost anywhere else on the planet, a fiscal burden that makes it virtually impossible for them to pay for the infrastructure necessary to protect them from the climate disruptions to come. Barbados, which in 2017 had the third-highest debt per capita of any country in the world, was spending 55% of its gross domestic product each year just to pay back debts, much of it to foreign banks and investors, while spending less than 5% on environmental programs and health care.

This is true beyond the Caribbean too. In poor nations around the world — from the deserts of North Africa to the low-lying islands of the Pacific and the Caribbean — rising sovereign debt is becoming a hidden but decisive aspect of the climate crisis. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, external debt for what are called Small Island Developing States, or SIDS, more than doubled between 2008 and 2021. The IMF projected that three-quarters of emerging-market economies would pay a third or more of their tax revenue just on debt service in 2021. In the zero-sum game of budgets, that means less money for shoring up infrastructure that is already in shambles. A recent analysis by Eurodad, the European debt-and-finance advocacy organization, found that over the last six years, Latin American and Caribbean countries have slashed what they pay on anything non-debt-related by 22%. As Mottley explained to me, “We always have to put aside debt money first.”

The warming planet has turned this into a self-perpetuating cycle: Were it not for the disasters worsened by climate change, much of the region’s debt might not exist in the first place. Jamaica’s debt, for example, can be tied to the response to Hurricane Gilbert more than three decades ago. Grenada’s is in part because of Hurricane Ivan in 2004. Dominica’s 2017 loss, relative to its GDP, was the equivalent of a $44 trillion hit to the U.S. economy.

According to the World Bank, these climate-driven damages have made it difficult for the Caribbean economies to achieve anything resembling healthy growth. Since 1980, the cumulative cost of disasters has amounted to more than half of a year’s worth of total economic product for 14 Caribbean nations. The costs have eclipsed average annual GDP growth in five of them. There are poor countries with more debt, and there are island countries in the Pacific facing more imminent climate threats, but nowhere in the world do the debt and climate vulnerabilities overlap to the extent they do in the Caribbean. Fixing the debt crisis, as Persaud told me, “isn’t about countries mopping up their fiscal discipline. It is that countries on the front line face a different kind of risk. They face wipeout risk.”

The IMF could buffer this crisis. Indeed, doing so is arguably its mission. The IMF was formed in 1944 when the soon-to-be victors of World War II met at a hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to build a new economic system for a world devastated by years of war and depression. Its mandate: to stabilize global markets and keep currencies — and debts — predictable. Today 190 member countries pay dues into a pool from which they can borrow in a crisis.

On balance, the IMF and the World Bank have served their primary function well, steadying economies and offering the reassurance of economic leadership to global markets over many decades. But the fund also became a conduit by which global capital, and the mixed blessings that come with it, flow to the world’s poorer nations. Its advisers are the people who dictate the often-painful recalibrations a troubled country must take to crawl back toward economic recovery and regain market trust. It has become one of the most influential, if underappreciated, determiners of climate policy in the world.

The IMF doesn’t lend much money directly — that’s the job of the World Bank and other development banks — and it doesn’t negotiate between a country and its creditors. But it does draw the boundaries of possibility and policy, and its stamp of approval is an essential prerequisite for other investors, banks and ratings agencies to encourage new projects or lend more money. Should those private contracts fail, the bankers and other buyers know that to some degree, the great international finance institutions stand by ready to help make them whole. An indebted developing country is paralyzed and ostracized without the IMF’s stamp of approval, which gains it access to the world’s capital markets. And that approval is conditioned on fiscal changes that can carve deeply into the bone of civil society.

For her entire life, Mottley had watched Barbados painstakingly build itself up as a postcolonial democracy. Now climate change was prying away the nation’s — and the whole region’s — grip on its destiny. The big institutions capable of aiding Caribbean countries, Mottley could see, leaned too heavily on outdated assumptions and equations. The IMF requires countries to perform within its framework but has been slow to allow that global warming might require the framework to change, only recently beginning to fold some nominal climate risk into its calculations. It continues to hold countries to metrics for success — primarily the ability to keep the ratio of total debt to annual GDP quite low — that many economists say are unrealistic and arbitrary. The IMF has held steadfastly to its doctrine for years, based on its studies of how larger economies, not small ones, function. But a doctrine that demands austerity often only increases a country’s vulnerability to climate threats. “There’s an orthodoxy as to what is acceptable, and what can be sustained,” Mottley said.

By declaring nations like Barbados too rich to qualify for development aid, the World Bank — which effectively puts IMF policy into practice — has relegated them to economic purgatory. The bank has folded climate risk into a range of climate-related aid and disaster-finance programs, but it still does not formally consider a country’s specific climate risk when it evaluates eligibility for its discounted development loans.

Then, by failing to fully account for how the exceptional costs of climate change affect national wealth, the IMF and the World Bank have wound up driving countries in need toward profit-reaping hedge funds and banks, to borrow billions of dollars, often at credit-card-like interest rates.

Throughout, the debts have been collected. They were collected as the shadow of the 2008 financial crisis lingered and as a pandemic decimated tenuous health care systems and tourist-reliant economies. They continue to be collected despite a climate crisis that is caused almost entirely by the copious fossil fuels that those same powerful creditor nations burned to industrialize and achieve their own wealth, the very wealth that undergirds the IMF. Caribbean nations are being asked, in a sense, to pay not only their own debts but the rest of the world’s debts, too, for all the progress it made while leaving the Caribbean behind.

Mottley’s ascent seemed inevitable to some Barbadians — one childhood friend said that at 12, she promised she would be prime minister — but not to all. Even after she earned her law degree at 21, her father urged her toward private practice. Why would Mia, the oldest of four siblings, a girl who loved music and for a while even managed a reggae band, want to wade into the island’s internecine politics? “Horses for courses,” Mottley told me recently, using the British phrase suggesting that everyone has a purpose in life. Her mother was the real politician. “Mommy would tell us all along that you all and your father are lawyers, but I am the law,” she said. It was her mother who “sees people, she hears people, she feels people.” That became Mottley’s creed. As prime minister, she is often seen at food trucks and is known as Mia to cabdrivers and reporters.

Mottley was first elected to Barbados’ Parliament in 1994. She was the youngest Barbadian ever appointed to a ministerial position and has served as both the country’s attorney general and its minister of economic affairs. Since 2008, she has twice headed the Barbados Labour Party. Her 2018 election was a landslide, with the party taking all 30 seats in the country’s lower Parliament.

She told me once that one of her great regrets was not being around to fight for Barbados’ independence in 1966. The country’s first prime minister, Errol Barrow, was a family friend, and Mottley grew up steeped in his belief that it was the responsibility of the island’s government to use its resources to lift up, educate and house its citizens. She also shared Barrow’s indignation about Barbados’ past. The island, first claimed by King James I of England, was importing slaves from Africa as early as 1625, receiving thousands of people from Guyana and the Gold Coast and using them up — their life expectancy once on Barbados was less than 10 years — to produce sugar. When the British Parliament passed the act that abolished slavery in its territories in 1833, it paid white slave owners 20 million pounds to compensate them for the loss of their property, even as it required the kidnapped Africans to provide four additional years of free labor as “apprentices.”

“It goes further,” Mottley told me. The British rulers then told its freed slaves that if they didn’t continue to work, they couldn’t live on the plantations that made up most of the 166-square-mile island, “the master and servant land.” That arrangement continued for many decades, extending the system of sugar and exploitation that powered the modernization of Britain and its boom in banking, shipping and insurance. Along the way some 250,000 Black Barbadians died.

As it turns out, Mottley says, she didn’t miss the rebellion after all. “My belly full but me hungry,” she intoned one afternoon, recalling Bob Marley. “A hungry mob is an angry mob.” Her point was that the stakes for Barbados and the Caribbean are still high and the dynamics the same: The region’s 45 million people still have little voice and are easy to forget, and as the Caribbean becomes increasingly unlivable, it could become a source of potential destabilization — and mass migration — right at America’s door.

For at least a decade before Mottley was elected, a mixture of poor management and corruption had eroded the country’s economy. As Barbados’ former central bank governor DeLisle Worrell described it to me, the country had developed a “dysfunctional” fiscal culture in which government agencies and departments took loans and negotiated deals without consulting the central bank, accumulating sprawling debt and a backlog of need. On the touristed southern end of the island, sewage erupted from neglected pipes as funding to fix them lagged. The country’s response was to print more money and borrow more from abroad, to stanch the economic bleeding. In 2013, during Worrell’s term, Barbados took one of the largest commercial loans in its history — $150 million — from Credit Suisse at 7% interest; within a year, it had grown to $225 million, and by 2018, the interest on the balance was 12%. The money didn’t last, and the sewer lines weren’t fixed. It would be the last commercial loan Barbados could get. Running a consistent deficit, the country began drawing down its foreign reserves to service the loans. By the time of the 2018 election, the government was nearly broke, its reserves having dwindled to enough for just 28 days.

The people of Barbados did not choose Mottley — or her Barbados Labour Party — over its rival by a margin of 3-to-1 because their political philosophies were substantively different. They were not; both are center left. Nor was the vote driven by people thinking Mottley would challenge the global finance system or solve climate change. The vote was for fiscal competence.

Climate change was only a small part of the fiscal morass, but it was a big part of what could keep Barbados from ever clawing out. As Mottley plotted how to escape the fiscal spiral, she met repeatedly with European climate scientists who helped bring into focus how everything from the island’s housing stock to its coral reefs would determine how habitable Barbados would be in the future. Along with restructuring the country’s debt, Mottley laid out a plan, called Roofs to Reefs, to restore the island’s physical and ecological infrastructure. But it was going to take money — a lot of it. Mottley thought she could work her way to the heights of global finance to gather that money. She wasn’t the first to try it, and she didn’t know how hard a climb that would soon prove to be.

The IMF’s education in the economic threat of climate change began with Hurricane Ivan in 2004. It was heading straight for Barbados but veered south and instead hit Grenada, another former British colony, as a Category 3 storm; it damaged most of the structures on the island, including 73 of the country’s 75 schools. Four-fifths of Grenada’s power grid was knocked out, along with most of its nutmeg trees, virtually eliminating a key export for years. The total damages topped $800 million. Aid did come; the World Bank disbursed $20 million almost immediately. Grenada, already heavily indebted before the storm, still plunged into a deep recession. In December 2004, it missed its first payment, entering what Standard & Poor’s termed “selective default.” Then, seven months later, another hurricane struck.

In the IMF’s view, Grenada could not sustain its debts, and that judgment gave cover for the country to renegotiate with the banks and foreign governments that it owed. The IMF’s assessment came at the usual price, though. Grenada agreed to slash its federal payroll — the government was the largest employer on the island — as well as sell off assets and privatize agencies, all toward the goal of reducing its debt.

As the IMF sees it, reducing debt is the recipe for financial stability. But in the climate era, stability also requires enormous spending. Grenada needed sea walls to protect its towns against ocean surges and retaining walls to keep its mountainous roads from collapsing. It needed to harden the country for worse storms and droughts to come. And immediately after Ivan, it needed a place to send its children and its sick. So the government spent a part of its budget on new schools and hospitals and roads. But when Grenada missed its fiscal targets, the IMF instead blamed the country’s “capital expenditure overruns” for its “fiscal slippages.” From then on, according to a 2007 staff report, the IMF wanted Grenada to pay off its debts to outside investors first.

“The IMF always blames the countries,” says Timothy Antoine, director of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank and Grenada’s permanent secretary in the Ministry of Finance during the hurricanes. Focusing on debt alone was “absolutely ludicrous,” a sign that the fund was still unprepared to acknowledge the extreme effect that a catastrophic event had on a country’s finances. Grenada had cut its budget and increased its revenues but watched its economy crumble and its poverty explode anyway. Lack of fiscal discipline alone could not account for the country’s troubles, and it wanted the support of the most powerful global institutions in finding a solution.

Over time, the IMF did begin to recognize the importance of preparing for the economic shock that climatic changes could bring — by 2014, several of its Grenada reports mentioned it. Still, connecting the risk to the consequence of default appears to have been too great a leap. Climate change was not even identified as a cause or risk factor when the IMF released its post-mortem on Grenada’s restructuring in 2017, suggesting that it had few methods for quantifying how environmental pressures might affect debt or the pace of its repayment. What was discussed was political instability and rising interest rates, not faltering agricultural exports or rising heat. “They only have a hammer,” says Daniel Munevar, a former senior analyst for Eurodad now with the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development.

In June 2014, as Grenada again approached insolvency, Antoine gathered civic and religious leaders in the second-story meeting room of a Catholic church overlooking Grand Anse Beach to plot a different approach. Grenada’s leaders wanted a mechanism that could protect them against repeating the same fate when another climate catastrophe hit. But the IMF staff weren’t sure how to put a value on the chance of a catastrophe and how to measure something that hadn’t even happened yet. A breakthrough came from White Oak Advisory — the consultants Grenada had hired.

Espinosa, the firm’s co-founder, had long seen how wealthy countries pushed exotic insurance products as the fix to protect against high risk. But it occurred to him that insurance, which is designed to protect against unlikely calamities, was a poor match for the grim certainties of the climate crisis. He thought instead about how debt and equity contracts often have triggers that change the terms when parties aren’t confident about their risk. What if debt relief were to be triggered by a storm? It could guarantee that Grenada would be protected when the next climate catastrophe arrived.

White Oak constructed a contract clause that would automatically grant Grenada a reprieve from payments on much of its commercial debt if another hurricane hit the island, introducing a new tool for managing sovereign debt crises in a climate-plagued region.

As Mottley began to shepherd Barbados through its own insolvency, Grenada’s experience taught her that success would depend on her ability to use the IMF to her advantage. If she failed, Barbados risked being recolonized, this time financially. Moreover, when it came to facing off against the country’s creditors, Mottley didn’t just want a discount on her debts. She wanted the one thing she’d learned would begin to make her public debt resilient to the shocks of climate change — Barbados’ own hurricane clause.

After Mottley announced that Barbados would default on its debts, the IMF wasn’t the main obstacle to restructuring them; instead, it was the financial institutions that held the debts. It might stand as a mystery how anyone thinks he or she can make money off the tribulations of a group of tiny countries. But impoverished Caribbean islands have delivered wealth to larger powers for centuries, and today is no exception. Before, it was risky commodity ventures that made great fortunes. Now it is increasingly the risk itself. Traffickers in debt offer money that is desperately needed. By taking on the risk that these tiny nations will default, they profit handsomely — and if the risk gets to be too high, they can pass the debt on at a discount to more adventurous investors. That’s the nature of finance. But the climate crisis is raising the risks considerably, and in so doing, it is once again binding the destiny of these fragile nations to the speculative will of faraway powers. Postcolonialism barely had a chance to take hold before it gave way to climate colonialism.

When in 2018 Mottley told Barbados’ creditors that she did not intend to pay them, she and her team had a plan. The country owed approximately $8 billion, much of it to Barbadian banks owned by Canadian institutions like Scotiabank and CIBC, but nearly $1 billion of the total was owed to global financial firms, including Credit Suisse, the investment-management firm Pimco and a Morgan Stanley subsidiary called Eaton Vance. Her goal — drawn up in collaboration with the IMF — was to reduce Barbados’ total debt load by a third within 15 years. She needed to persuade her creditors to take what’s known as “a haircut,” reducing what they were owed, in this case by roughly a third. The old bonds would be exchanged for new ones at a lower interest rate. It was essential that a hurricane clause be included, too.

On the other side of the negotiations was a young, ambitious investment manager out of Boston named Federico Sequeda. A portfolio manager in emerging markets for Eaton Vance, Sequeda was accustomed to buying sovereign-debt stakes in places like Vietnam and Brazil. The mutual funds he oversaw held large positions in Barbados’ bonds. Sequeda, for one, would take umbrage at the suggestion that emerging-markets investors are predatory. Clearly, these developing countries need capital to function, he points out. Nobody is willing to donate that capital, and so accessing it — just like every other service purchased in the world — comes at a price. Ideally, there is sufficient transparency of motive and transaction so that the exchange can be a win for both sides.

In the run-up to Mottley’s election, Sequeda had flown down to the island to meet with Worrell, the former central bank chief, to get a pulse on the changes foreign investors could expect should she be elected. Still, he was caught off guard by both the sweep of Mottley’s plan and her determination to execute it. The creditors thought that Barbados could pay more and that the country was using the IMF’s cooperation to leverage lower payments. They were neither versed in nor particularly concerned with climate change as a unique risk to their investments. The notion that a hurricane clause might be imposed on funds that firms sold to their clients as less volatile than other investments was untenable. Sequeda didn’t think climate change — or the invention of a debt instrument to address it — was his business or responsibility. “We’re not really set up to analyze the probability of a climate-type risk taking place, and we don’t really think we’re actually the investors who want to be taking on that risk,” he told me.

The problem was that Sequeda and others already had huge exposure to climate risk. Commercial banks and private investors now hold approximately $54 trillion, or more than half, of the total global sovereign debt in emerging markets, linking themselves to the fate of the world’s poorest countries in what the Institute of International Finance warns is “a vicious circle of interdependency.”

Complicating matters is that only part of that total debt is publicly known. Bloomberg records, for example, show that before Mottley’s default, Barbados had at least 30 outstanding bonds and loans worth more than $1 billion, at interest rates as high as 12%. Eurodad examined another financial trading database for The New York Times, looking at bonds in Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Belize and Suriname — four countries with bonds issued in U.S. or European currencies — and found foreign commercial debt worth nearly $10 billion. The records show that almost every major bank and investment house has a stake in these countries. BlackRock, for example, held $840 million in Dominican bonds as of January 2021. Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and Citigroup have all held bonds in the countries, some at exorbitant interest rates. Jamaica, for one, recently owed some $208 million to J.P. Morgan Chase at 11.6%.

Almost certainly this is only a glimpse of a bigger and murkier picture. Eurodad researchers estimate that a vast majority of holdings — about 75% — is private debt that cannot be identified. It is obscured by the contracts that funds and equity groups make with governments, which are not required to be disclosed. Sometimes, Persaud said, even governments aren’t sure to whom they are beholden. Or, as one sovereign-debt lawyer once joked, the only reliable way for a country to identify the holders of its bonds is to stop paying.

The lack of transparency raises fundamental questions about the fairness of default negotiations and the inability of the people most endangered by the debt-climate collision to hold their governments — and their creditors — accountable. In many cases, creditors can sue countries, but countries have difficulty suing back, leaving citizens even more exposed. Over the past two decades, according to Eurodad, half of sovereign debt restructurings have led to litigation, often forcing higher payments than a country can afford.

The most aggressive litigators are found within an ecosystem of hedge-fund investors, sometimes called vulture funds, that wait for the most vulnerable moment to buy distressed debt cheaply and then flip it for a profit, often by resisting any sort of restructuring or renegotiation. In 2008, NML Capital, a subsidiary of Elliott Management, a hedge fund, bought a discounted stake in Argentina’s pre-default debt and then pursued a relentless legal strategy for repayment — at one point having an Argentine Navy ship seized off the coast of Ghana. It earned its money back and then some when Argentina issued a new bond deal. A fund called Aurelius Capital Management similarly bought up Puerto Rico’s debt, then argued in court that the island had to repay the fund before it could finance other projects, including hurricane preparedness. That case was dismissed.

In late 2018, Persaud received an email stating that a Connecticut hedge fund called Greylock Capital had bought an undisclosed portion of Barbados’ debt, and with it, a seat at the table among its creditors. The email, as Persaud recalled, warned that “they could take us to court.” But Greylock’s interest offered an opportunity. A distressed-debt fund also doesn’t need to recoup the same value that Sequeda did to make its profit, because it bought the bonds for a lower cost. Greylock might be able to drive down Sequeda’s price, helping Mottley get the terms she wanted.

From almost the start, the disaster clause Mottley sought was a sticking point. Her team would write up a lengthy proposal, always with a natural-disaster clause among Barbados’ demands. The creditors’ committee routinely would remove it. Mottley, patient, held out.

The clause White Oak designed wouldn’t reduce Barbados’ debt directly. But by suspending payments, it provided immediate access to funds in the aftermath of a calamity and shifted payment to the back end of the term. It would avoid disorderly default and keep Barbados, in the event of a catastrophe, at the table. The investors, though, didn’t buy it. Some of them, Persaud says, sharpened their tactics, telling reporters that Barbados was slow-walking its economic repair. The Financial Times reported that some creditors found White Oak’s $27 million fee to be “absurd.” Then, Sequeda and the creditors’ committee went to Washington and lobbied the IMF, demanding that it require Barbados to set aside a larger annual surplus — in essence, to free more cash to repay its debt faster.

The IMF maintains it kept the creditors at arm’s length. But sometime soon after, according to Persaud, its mission chief on the Barbados deal, Bert van Selm, grew impatient for the government to settle — even if it meant the hurricane clause would be lost. “I said, ‘Bert, are you trying to pressure us into a debt restructuring?’” Persaud told me. He says van Selm replied that the IMF needed the restructuring to be finished. Alejandro Werner, though, the IMF’s former director for the Western Hemisphere, is more direct about what occurred. For months, he says, he struggled to keep the IMF’s internal departments aligned so that Barbados’ program could succeed. But the more Mottley delayed, the more the pieces threatened to come apart. Some of the IMF staff thought Barbados was “being very obnoxious in asking for the natural-disaster clause,” he told me. “Everybody was kind of like: ‘OK, we’re so close. Let’s just close.’”

One day in early 2019, with the negotiations at an impasse, Persaud flew to New York for a private meeting with Sequeda. For nearly a year, the two sides had been in a stalemate. In person it was different. They sat for coffee at the luxurious Mandarin Oriental hotel, with views over Central Park and Midtown Manhattan. Sequeda, who was unyielding in previous meetings, softened. His father-in-law and Persaud’s father were both from Guyana. Persaud, once a Wall Street executive himself, could talk Sequeda’s talk. Sequeda wanted to make sure the new bonds would be large enough for him to easily sell his stake later on — something made more likely if the bond met the $500 million threshold to be listed on the J.P. Morgan emerging-market index. Persaud, of course, wanted the disaster clause. “He kept saying liquidity,” Persaud said. “I kept saying disaster clause.”

A few months later, the agreement was signed. There would be a fund of roughly $530 million. Barbados received a 26% reduction in its debt, enough to — at least temporarily — drop its interest payments from 7% of its economy to 3% and free up more than $500 million a year. And it received its disaster protection, making Barbados the largest issuer of bonds with hurricane clauses in the world.

It was a tremendous victory for Mottley and Persaud, but soon afterward, two things happened to remind them just how precarious life on an island can be: The COVID-19 pandemic struck, and a relatively modest storm rolled over the country.

The July 2, 2021, forecast was for blustery rains, but not extreme by Caribbean standards. As the winds picked up in Bridgetown around 7:15 a.m., Sandra Clarke made up some peanut butter on biscuits for breakfast. Clarke had worked as a stenographer for the Health Ministry. She liked Mottley — “She’s down to earth.” When the IMF terms spurred the Barbados government to cut roughly 1,000 jobs, Clarke was among those let go. It hurt her finances, but she still felt that Mottley was acting in Barbadians’ best interests. That morning, the howling grew louder, and the rain came harder. A tearing sound made Clarke look up — there was a gap where a wall and the ceiling met. “Run!” her son shouted. “I can see the sky.”

Months later, I met Clarke where she was staying, a government-run emergency shelter in an 18th-century stone seminary overlooking the eastern shore of the island. The good news, she told me, was that the government planned to rebuild her home. The bad news was that progress had been slow, and the house remained a series of dilapidated courtyards, with a yellow dumpster in the front yard filled with soggy mattresses and splintered wood.

Three years after Mottley identified climate change as Barbados’ preeminent threat, and three years into her effort to restructure its economy to better prepare for that threat, the country still hadn’t been able to address one of its highest priorities: shoring up vulnerable, poorly built housing. The storm, called Elsa, which barely ranked as a Category 1 hurricane, happened to fall just short of the catastrophe level that would trigger the country’s hurricane debt relief. It was, however, the kind of routine challenge the government should be able to withstand. Indeed, Clarke had gone to the government a year earlier to apply for a program that would have fixed up her house, but the waiting list was long and the funding short.

The dollars that might have saved Clarke’s home were instead used to amass a surplus that the government had promised the IMF. Mottley had reduced the public work force and raised all sorts of taxes to ballast the government’s balance sheet. All of this was done for the sake of two metrics by which the IMF still judged a country’s success: How much savings could the government set aside, and how quickly could it reduce the ratio of its debt to its GDP? To critics like Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, these metrics weren’t fit to the task, and meeting them was proving to be more than Barbados could bear.

As a key condition of its IMF program, Barbados agreed to produce a surplus of 6% of its GDP each year. Because government revenues — from taxes and fees — were dependent on how well the nation’s economy performed, this assumed that it would grow at a rate it had not in years, if ever, an expectation that several economists described as unrealistic, even cruel. Van Selm, the IMF’s mission chief for Barbados at the time, defends the number. “It can be done,” he told me. The IMF, meanwhile, held Barbados to its second critical measure: It would have to use much of that surplus to slash its debt levels until the debt made up just 60% of the nation’s GDP.

These are metrics that looked great in the textbooks of global economics schools in the 1960s, but they are not the measure by which the ruling economies of the world are judged today. Japan’s economy is doing fine with a debt ratio of 258%, and the United States has a ratio of 150% — both countries, Mottley said, that “did everything that they tell us traditionally not to do.” The 60% ratio, in particular, requires extreme austerity. “It’s a little bit of a matter of theology rather than economics,” Persaud told me. He and many others believe that it’s not the total amount of debt that matters, but to whom it is owed and how much it costs to carry. Development aid, for example, is often delivered as extremely low-interest loans. Should that count the same as high-interest debts to hedge funds? “It’s become a fetish,” Persaud said.

As small nations accumulate substantial debt because of climate change, which they neither caused nor benefited from causing, it raises even larger questions. Should those countries be penalized again for carrying that debt on their balance sheets, even as investors — in the purest distillation of climate colonialism — profit from that debt? Should there not at least be an allowance in IMF policy that distinguishes between climate-caused expenses and other, normal governing expenses?

When she was elected, Mottley thought she could work within the IMF’s system — that it could be flexible enough to let her whittle away at the drastic needs her country faced. A year after the negotiations were complete, though, she was beginning to see this was an illusion. That was when the COVID pandemic kneecapped Barbados’ tourism industry. Government revenues plummeted, the country’s surplus flipped into a 2% deficit and its debt started to rise again. The IMF cut Barbados a break when the pandemic hit, lowering its surplus target, but only temporarily. As the free-fall continued into 2021, the IMF announced that it would soon push Barbados toward its 6% target surplus once again, with van Selm saying that he was “pretty sure that tourism in Barbados will bounce back.” If the IMF’s goal was to support Mottley in building resilience to shock — climate as well as economic — its policies seemed to be having the opposite effect. The fund’s insistence on building a surplus was instead putting Barbados in a holding pattern, effectively sidetracking climate priorities.

Why? One reason, according to current and former staff members I spoke to, was that some groups within the IMF still didn’t think that accounting for climate change was essential to their work. Lagarde, who declined to be interviewed for this article, was sympathetic to Mottley’s climate fears, says Mark Plant, a 24-year veteran of policymaking at the IMF who now runs a finance division at the Center for Global Development, but during her tenure the fund made few strides on the issue. Then, in 2019, Kristalina Georgieva, a Bulgarian environmental economist, came from the World Bank to direct the IMF. Climate issues were trending politically, “and so she has pushed it quite hard,” Plant said. The same year, Alejandro Werner and Krishna Srinivasan, then the IMF’s deputy director for the Western Hemisphere, wrote a policy paper that for the first time laid out a broad philosophy for incorporating climate risk into the fund’s analytical framework. It suggested that in the future the IMF should lead countries into considering climate costs and make its support conditioned on it. Implementing those intentions has proved complicated, though. “The fund,” Plant says, is still “struggling to fund the right levers.”

One problem, according to Aldo Caliari, who heads policy and strategy at Jubilee USA, an interfaith group active in development finance, is that the organization is still trying to build the staff and expertise it needs to grasp the fiscal impact of the climate threat. Sometimes, its efforts have appeared borderline disingenuous. A few years back, for example, the IMF began advising countries to build a climate reserve fund made up of roughly 1% of their GDP to help pay for disaster recovery. But that, say analysts of IMF policy like the U.N.’s Munevar, basically is asking struggling countries to not use money that they could spend to prevent a disaster — so that they can use it to mop up afterward instead.

The IMF, through the official statements it offered for this article, says that climate change is “now in the DNA” of the institution and that it is acting aggressively on the issue. “The IMF is a learning institution,” a fund spokesman said. “We recognized the need for change in recent years and are moving fast on that journey.”

The fund points to the paper Srinivasan and Werner wrote in 2019, which called for new mechanisms, like the hurricane clauses Grenada and Barbados enacted, to create fiscal breathing room for countries to pay for climate impacts. It presented a vision for the future in which climate issues rise to such prominence within the organization that climate planning becomes a central criterion for IMF approval.

By 2022, the fund had made some headway. Among other efforts, it and the World Bank have both begun to help countries either self-insure against disaster or secure discounted institutional financing before a catastrophe happens. The two organizations are running a pilot program in six vulnerable countries to assess their climate-change policies. For low-income countries, the IMF now requires the economic shock of a disaster — though not the gradual and corrosive trends of climate change — to be considered in its analysis of debt. Most recently, in April, the IMF announced the creation of a new, $45 billion resilience trust, some of which is likely to head to Barbados. Mottley, for her part, says she has found the IMF increasingly attuned to her country’s needs.

Still, when in late 2020 Eurodad looked for evidence that the climate-change policies were rising to prominence within the IMF, it found little. Researchers examined 80 IMF programs around the world and found that climate was central to the fund’s assessment in only one country — Samoa. Critics and insiders both observe that a sense of urgency is still missing. “Eventually” the IMF will have to figure out how to better incorporate climate vulnerability, Werner told me. “I mean, we’re still advancing on that.”

One evening in January, I visited Persaud at his home atop a neighborhood called Beacon Hill. Winding up his short, steep drive, I parked in front of a set of broad concrete steps with views over Bridgetown. Persaud came to the porch dressed casually, in a light blue button-down and slacks. We headed toward his backyard, where two friends, Barbadians visiting from the United States, sat among trees on a short-cropped lawn.

Much had happened in the previous few months. In November, Mottley announced that Barbados would cast off Queen Elizabeth as the country’s titular head of state and declare itself the world’s newest republic, then called for a snap election, which she won handily. The mood was light; the next day, a new government would swear allegiance to its own country for the first time. Persaud poured a glass of California cabernet while his guests told stories about Mottley from high school.

Then Persaud got serious, returning to Barbados’ precarious future. “We cannot do this just through debt, even if there were no limits,” he said. Nor could any country in the Caribbean — or, for that matter, any vulnerable country in the world — survive the climate crisis by borrowing more money. No amount of economic growth would ever be enough, either. The deeper he and Mottley got into their economic reeducation, he said, the clearer it became that a just future for people in small, front-line countries would require a radical shift in how the IMF and the World Bank applied their resources.

For years, Persaud has been at Mottley’s side, answering midnight text messages, tuning her fiscal options, looking five chess moves ahead, innovating ways to fix the region’s fiscal crisis even as her star rose through international speeches and she worked to raise the issue of sovereign debt from an obscure cause to a global climate concern. When Mottley talks about economics, it’s partly her thinking — she is indisputably the boss and has a striking fluency in policy minutiae — but almost always partly his, too. He writes many of those speeches. If Mottley is the decisive leader, Persaud is the fount of possible solutions, churning out or delving into economic innovations he thinks might save the world.

There are the hurricane clauses, catastrophe bonds, “blue bonds” — which designate money just for ocean conservation — and a trendy new category called debt-for-climate swaps. The list goes on, Persaud said. The problem isn’t lack of ideas. It’s how to scale them so they can have measurable effects.

Lately, he had been focused on a new plan that would draw on two pools of money. The IMF directly controls nearly $1 trillion worth of member reserves, which it can distribute to members using what it calls “special drawing rights” and mostly holds for some larger emergency. Surely the climate crisis counted as an emergency. The IMF could use its internal drawing rights and expand the availability of 0% loans to help fund the kinds of adaptation efforts that the United Nations estimates will soon cost as much as $500 billion annually. Doing so would require changing a lot of rules, particularly about who qualifies for that funding and how it is earmarked. The IMF’s new Resiliency and Sustainability Trust — a catchall for everything from climate mitigation to pandemic costs — is a start, but only just that. “It’s about 10 times too small,” Persaud said.

Persaud’s plan has an even more costly and ambitious element: addressing mitigation, which Morgan Stanley estimates will cost $50 trillion globally over the next 27 years. IMF members hold $13 trillion in national reserves. Persaud proposes using 1% of that larger pool to seed an enormous new climate trust that would attract outside investment for emissions-slashing projects. The trust could make seed loans at a nominal interest rate and target those loans to specific development projects, keeping the debt off governments’ balance sheets — and excluded from debt-ratio calculations. Persaud thinks that funding could attract perhaps another $2.5 trillion in annual investments from banks and equity funds. That, finally, would be big money.

As expensive as these plans may sound, they are likely to save money and ultimately pay for themselves. According to Colin Young, executive director of the regional Caribbean Community Climate Change Center, for every dollar spent on climate resilience, six dollars are saved in recovery efforts. Not doing anything, researchers at Tufts University found, will allow costs to mount so much that they will subsume today’s Caribbean economies even without the shock of devastating storms. By 2050, the researchers wrote, the costs of inaction will amount to 10% of the region’s total economic activity — a fiscal death sentence.

It is possible that none of the approaches that Persaud argues for will ever be enough. But the IMF is increasingly aware that the scale of the problem requires solutions that are antithetical to the old way of thinking. One person close to the IMF’s highest levels of policymaking told me that some of the countries facing the most intense climate peril will never be able to pay back what they owe. “They’re going to require complete debt forgiveness, and some bit of austerity around the edges is not going to change that,” he said. “The order of magnitude of the problem is just too big.”

Persaud, like virtually everyone I spoke to, is hesitant to talk about erasing sovereign debt. After all that Barbados has been through, he would still prefer to work within the global finance system. “I know we don’t want to create the moral hazard of giving away money for free,” he says. Besides, global institutions can forgive only their own loans. Because most of the debt is now held by commercial investors, it stands to reason that to receive relief from them, the development banks or other large economies would have to be willing to pay those investors back.

There is an argument to be made, though, that the loss of the money owed is a minimal price in the context of the profit that has been made, and that there is justice to this form of mercy. BlackRock, for example, is now among the largest holders of Barbados’ publicly traded debt, having purchased large blocks of it once Sequeda and the creditors settled. Consider what BlackRock, which is also the largest global financier of the oil-and-gas industry, has earned directly from the processes that have caused climate warming.

In a capitalist society, it is fair to ask why anyone should get anything free. But Barbados and the countries of the Caribbean are paying a tangible price now in lives and in dollars because of the emissions of wealthier nations. Perhaps the suggestion that lenders forgive debt isn’t about kindness but about obligation — about seeing it as a kind of back tax that they owe to society and to front-line societies, in particular.

Throughout the winter, the pressure mounted on Mottley. The IMF’s three-year program was drawing to a close, and the fund was still insisting that Barbados would have to swing back toward 6% budget surpluses by 2024 — or else it would lose access to promised funding, as well as the credibility that would allow it to borrow from markets in the future. The IMF announced this while Barbados’ economy continued to struggle and while COVID still raged, and so Mottley, perhaps approaching the end of her patience, raged too.

I reached Mottley one afternoon at her house on the beach, a home where she had spent time since she was a little girl. She arrived for our video call late, delayed by a stop she made across the island at a water-pumping station, where she had gone to assure locals that the government would fix its 70-year-old cast-iron foundation. It was the sort of thing, the most basic thing, that her government was managing to address in these difficult budgetary times — but only barely.

She sat on an outdoor sofa, her laptop on her knees, the camera close to her face in the way we have all grown accustomed to in the era of Zoom. It was the second of our three interviews over the course of the past year, and she began by telling me about the beach in front of her house. It used to teem with spiny sea urchins. “As a child, I stepped on more cobblers than I would like to recall,” she said. “Now you can walk, you don’t see anything.” The beach itself was eroding, her house edging into the rising sea.

In four years, Mottley had become a leader not just for Barbados but effectively for dozens of Caribbean countries, many with populations smaller than a midsize American city, all of which had to face these global institutional juggernauts by themselves. In 2018, she excoriated the United Nations General Assembly — “For us, it is about saving lives. For others, it is about saving profits” — in a speech about the forgotten countries on the climate front lines. She spoke, in 2021, at the opening of the 26th annual U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, in which she pointedly accused the developed world of hypocrisy, asking, “When will our leaders lead?” Since 2008, she pointed out, the G20 nations had spent $25 trillion printing new money to juice their own stalling economies, money they could have used to prevent the worst of the climate crisis instead. That failure “will allow the path of greed and selfishness to sow the seeds of our common destruction,” she said. She left the conference holding hands with President Joe Biden.

All that access to leaders like Lagarde, Georgieva and Biden gave Barbados an advantage over other Caribbean countries — an advantage Mottley was happy to leverage but which meant that even Barbados’ modest successes might be unrealistic for its regional peers. “We are unequally yoked,” she said. If there was any consolation, it was that the IMF itself finally appeared to be attaching action on climate to its reputation. Thanks to Mottley’s efforts, Barbados had become a showcase for the IMF, a way to prove it could be agile on climate issues, too.

Barbados, though, was still being measured against the antiquated convention of its ratio of debt to GDP, which happened to be growing as the pandemic and war unsettled markets. How could the IMF still want the budget to swing back into surplus? Mottley found it infuriating. “I can’t do these things if I have to spend money on augmenting water supply because of the climate crisis,” she said.

Suddenly it seemed as if all of it had become a treadmill exercise. The efforts to win a disaster clause — a clause that the Inter-American Development Bank has now made standard for its loans in the Caribbean. The deep thinking and brainstorming of bigger solutions. The climate swaps to exchange debt-service fees for ecological upgrades. And so on. Maybe her goal hadn’t been big enough. Maybe it wasn’t about finding more money in the current system but about changing the system altogether. “I’m saying the same things over and over, over and over,” Mottley told me. “You begin to feel as though you’re going crazy.”

In March, Mottley was scheduled to give a speech at the World Trade Organization. She has two rules for capitalizing on her high-profile public appearances: Always make a big ask, and never leave the podium without offering a solution. Persaud set to writing the speech, but this time felt different. Neither he nor Mottley was confident that trade helped solve the big problems of the world. It seemed to make them worse.

For Mottley, the fact that Britain was swimming in vaccine doses for months while Barbados had to beg China for a few thousand vials was a prime example. The politics of the pandemic had erased Mottley’s inhibitions about dealing more straightforwardly with the climate crisis, too. The World Trade Organization couldn’t protect against pandemics. It couldn’t preserve peace in Europe. It couldn’t fix climate change. Mottley would now disavow the current global financial system in its entirety, because it was still, at its heart, a colonial system, a system of oppression.

Lately, she told me, she had been thinking a lot about the idea of reparations, and about how Barbadians have struggled, and how far they had come. The horrific paradox, of course, was that after the British banned slavery, they did pay reparations — just not to the victims of the crime. At every step, Mottley reflected, freedom had come incrementally for Barbadians. Or rather, the oppression had found new, seemingly more benign forms. First, it was the decadeslong work-for-land scheme. Later, it was their beaches and banks — almost all of which are foreign-owned. And after that, it was their cash, in the form of interest. What more was there to give?

Elsewhere, the world has confronted its past abuses. Mottley recalled a trip to Europe 20 years ago, during which she observed a ceremony for Germany’s reparations paid to survivors of the Holocaust. While she was there, South Asians were rioting in Britain over their former colonial oppression. She was struck that no such thought was given to the Caribbean. The Caribbean was unseen then, and it remains unseen now. To fight the climate crisis, to fight the pandemic or meet development goals, Mottley said, countries are still fighting for a platform. “You will realize that in almost every instance, we’re fighting our old struggles on the same basis,” she said. “What is its underlying cause? The inequity in the world in which we live, and the inequity is preserved fundamentally because we’ve not changed the power structure.”

There were no misgivings or hesitations about what she was preparing to deliver to the WTO. She and Persaud had decided to be blunt. The rest was a delicate balance. “She does not want to be put into a box,” Persaud said. “She does not want to be put in a female box, I don’t want her in a SIDS box, and we don’t want to be anti-West, because that’s not who we are.” Mottley read the speech the day before and read it again, absorbing it.

“My friends,” she began, with a nod across the floor to Director General Ngozi Okonjo-​Iweala, “the global order is not working.” It does not deliver on peace or on prosperity or on stability, she said. The words of global partnerships were hollow, the partnerships themselves glib, corrupted by greed and selfishness — and they remained fundamentally imbalanced. Debt is written off in Ukraine, as it was for Germany after World War II. Other countries, though, the ones subjugated throughout history, have seen their humanitarian crises ignored. The world, she said, “is segregated regrettably between those who came first and in whose image the global order is now set” and a global order that is itself “simply the embalming of the old colonial order that existed at the time of the establishment of these institutions.”

Gone was the patient case-building, the appeals to logic and empathy, that characterized so many of her recent speeches. Her hair, always in a neat Afro, was grayer and frazzled; her fatigue seeped through her expression. “We have therefore to ask ourselves whether we can live in this global order.”

It was time to reset. The war in Ukraine was forcing that reset anyway. She could work with the global economic system to raise capital. She could probably find a strategy to bolster her island’s standing in the face of cataclysmic climate change, at least for a while. But combining both? It had proved impossible. It was time to use the IMF’s drawing rights, the hurricane clauses, all of it. And then Mottley laid out Persaud’s plan to establish a new climate trust based on the IMF’s reserves, her big ask.

But to make these changes, she warned, the world had to get to a new place in spirit. It had to fill some gaping moral cavity. “That we are more concerned with generating profits than saving people,” she said, “is perhaps the greatest condemnation that can be made of our generation.”

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Doris Burke contributed research.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Abrahm Lustgarten.

A U.S. House of Representatives panel probing the Trump administration's attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census on Wednesday released a memorandum underscoring that the failed effort was politically motivated.

"The documents ultimately obtained by the committee... shed additional light on the depth of partisan manipulation in the 2020 census."

The memo focuses on documents that were finally shared with the panel in January after former President Donald Trump's commerce secretary and attorney general, Wilbur Ross and William Barr, were held in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over requested materials.

"The documents ultimately obtained by the committee—including the legal memorandum prepared for Secretary Ross and secret communications between Trump administration lawyers and political appointees—shed additional light on the depth of partisan manipulation in the 2020 census, including senior officials' focus on using a citizenship question to alter apportionment counts and their illegal attempt to develop a pretext," the memo states.

"These documents exposed the vulnerability of our national statistical system to partisan manipulation and highlighted the need for Congress to protect the constitutionally mandated census from abuses of power and political interference," the memo continues.

As the panel's report lays out, the documents from the departments of Commerce and Justice (DOJ) show that:

• Contrary to Secretary Ross' testimony to Congress, congressional apportionment was central to his efforts to add a citizenship question;
• The initial draft of the legal memo warned that using a citizenship question for apportionment would likely violate the Constitution;
• Commerce officials downplayed legal concerns and altered the memo to suggest the citizenship question could be used for apportionment;
• Even as they developed a pretext, Trump administration officials privately admitted their "hook" was that the president or Congress could decide to use citizenship data for apportionment; and
• Secretary Ross secretly steered DOJ towards the pretextual rationale.

"Lest anyone doubted that what the Trump administration was up to was wrong, these documents show that even the Trump administration itself knew that what it was doing was illegal," Thomas Wolf, deputy director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, told The Washington Post on Wednesday.

Civil rights groups have long slammed the Trump administration's push for inserting a citizenship question into the census—which informs the allocation of federal funding and the drawing of political voting maps—as a bid to benefit Republican candidates for office.

John C. Yang, president and executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice - AAJC, one of the groups that challenged the Trump effort, nodded to that critique on Wednesday.

"The documents released today demonstrate the depths to which political actors sought to corrupt a basic function enumerated in the Constitution: the counting of all people in America every 10 years," Yang told The New York Times. "Secretary Ross chose to pursue his political goals through whatever means available."

Both the committee's memo and chair, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), pointed to the findings as further evidence of the need for reforms—specifically those included in the Ensuring a Fair and Accurate Census Act that she introduced last week.

"For years, the Trump administration delayed and obstructed the oversight committee's investigation into the true reason for adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census, even after the Supreme Court ruled the administration's efforts were illegal," Maloney said in a statement Wednesday.

Though the high court's 2019 decision effectively blocked the inclusion of the citizenship question and a federal court ruled against a July 2020 Trump memorandum intended to exclude undocumented immigrants from the census, a government analysis confirmed this year that minorities were significantly undercounted.

Maloney said that the committee's new memo "pulls back the curtain on this shameful conduct and shows clearly how the Trump administration secretly tried to manipulate the census for political gain while lying to the public and Congress about their goals."

The congresswoman added that "it is clear that legislative reforms are needed to prevent any future illegal or unconstitutional efforts to interfere with the census and chip away at our democracy."

"My bill, the Ensuring a Fair and Accurate Census Act, is commonsense legislation that will help prevent a similar crisis from occurring again and will protect one of our nation's most vital democratic institutions from partisan exploitation," she continued, calling on the Democrat-controlled House to swiftly pass the legislation "to safeguard the integrity and independence of the U.S. Census Bureau."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

The aid group Oxfam International estimated Monday that a mere two weeks of wealth gains recently secured by global food billionaires would be enough to fully fund the United Nations' multibillion-dollar effort to combat hunger in East Africa, where soaring commodity prices are intensifying food insecurity and pushing poverty to new extremes.

"A monstrous amount of wealth is being captured at the top of our global food supply chains."

"Food inflation in East African countries where tens of millions of people are caught in an alarming hunger crisis has increased sharply, reaching a staggering 44% in Ethiopia—nearly five times the global average," Oxfam said in a new analysis published amid a worsening global hunger emergency.

"It is estimated that one person is dying every 48 seconds in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia alone, where the worst drought in decades is being exacerbated by the war in Ukraine and is pushing food prices to skyrocketing levels," the organization said. "Against this backdrop, food billionaires have increased their collective wealth by $382 billionaire since 2020."

"Less than two weeks' worth of their wealth gains," the group calculated, "would be more than enough to fund the entirety of the U.N.'s $6.2 billion humanitarian appeal for East Africa. The appeal is currently woefully funded at merely 16%."

In late May, Oxfam issued a report showing that "corporations and the billionaire dynasties who control so much of our food system are seeing their profits soar" in the midst of surging prices and hunger worldwide. The crisis has hit particularly hard in East Africa, a region heavily reliant on imports.

"There have been 62 food billionaires created in the last two years," Oxfam found, pointing to the global food corporation Cargill—one of a handful of businesses that collectively control more than 70% of the worldwide market for agricultural commodities—as a striking case in point.

Cargill is "87% owned by the 11th richest family in the world," Oxfam observed. "The combined wealth of family members listed on the Forbes billionaire list is $42.9 billion—and their wealth has increased by $14.4 billion (65%) since 2020, growing by almost $20 million per day during the pandemic. This has been driven by rising food prices, especially for grains. Four more members of the extended Cargill family have recently joined the list of the richest 500 people in the world."

Hanna Saarinen, Oxfam's food policy lead, said Monday that "a monstrous amount of wealth is being captured at the top of our global food supply chains, meanwhile rising food prices contribute to a growing catastrophe which is leaving millions of people unable to feed themselves and their families."

"World leaders are sleepwalking into a humanitarian disaster," Saarinen warned. "This fundamentally broken global food system—one that is exploitative, extractive, poorly regulated, and largely in the hands of big agribusinesses—is becoming unsustainable for people and the planet and is pushing millions in East Africa and worldwide to starvation."

Oxfam argued there are a number of steps rich countries can take to help East African nations avert disaster, including canceling their surging debt burdens and taxing the rich to adequately fund humanitarian relief efforts.

"We need to reimagine a new global food system to really end hunger; one that works for everyone," said Saarinen. "Governments can and must mobilize enough resources to prevent human suffering. One good option would be to tax the mega-rich who have seen their wealth soar to record levels during the past two years."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

In the decades since the 1970s oil-price shocks sent inflation soaring and shackled economic growth, price stability was maintained even when growth was robust. Many policymakers and economists took a bow, proudly claiming that they had found the magic formula. Underpinning the so-called Great Moderation were independent central banks that could anchor inflationary expectations by credibly committing to raise interest rates whenever inflation reared its ugly head – or even act preemptively when necessary. Independence meant that central banks need not – and typically did not – worry about balancing the costs (generally lost output and jobs) against any putative benefits.

But this conventional wisdom has always been challenged. Because interest-rate hikes achieve their intended outcome by curtailing demand, they don’t “solve” inflation arising from supply shocks – such as sharply rising oil prices (as in the 1970s and again today) or the kinds of supply-chain blockages seen during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the wake of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Higher interest rates will not lead to more cars, more oil, more grain, more fertilizer, or more baby formula. On the contrary, by making investment more expensive, they may even impede an effective response to supply-side problems.

The 1970s experience offers some important lessons for the current moment. One is that large increases in interest rates can be very disruptive. Consider the Latin American debt crisis in the 1980s, which had lingering effects lasting almost two decades. Another lesson is that “soft landings” piloted by central banks are especially difficult to orchestrate.

Today, much of the public debate is focused on assigning blame for the increase in inflation. Pundits are arguing over whether the US Federal Reserve should have acted sooner, and whether the government should have spent less in response to COVID-19. But such questions are not particularly on point. Given the scale of the recent supply disruptions stemming from China’s stringent lockdown, the semiconductor shortage, production problems in baby formula and hygiene products, and the war’s effects on grain, oil, and fertilizer supplies, inflation was inevitable.

Moreover, the sharp growth in corporate profits suggests that increased market concentration may be an important factor in the current inflation. Though the precise causes of higher corporate profits are not entirely clear, there is no dispute that they have indeed risen during the pandemic. And when serious supply constraints arise in markets, as has been the case in many sectors over the last two years, companies with considerable market power will be better positioned to take advantage of the situation.

It is easy for those who are out of office to blame those who are in office – that is the nature of politics. But President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats are no more to blame for inflation in the United States than is European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in the European Union or Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the United Kingdom. Does anyone outside of Donald Trump’s cult of followers really believe that the US would have been spared from today’s inflation if only Trump had been re-elected?

The Wrong Side of the Equation

The relevant question, now that inflation is here, is what to do about it. Interest rates that rise high enough will indeed dampen price growth, but they will do so by killing the economy. Yes, some advocates of higher interest rates claim that aggressively fighting inflation will help the poor, because wages are lagging prices (which implies, of course, that wages are not driving but rather dampening inflation). But nothing is harder on workers than having no income and reduced bargaining power, which is what will happen if the central bank engineers a recession. And this is especially true in the US, which has the weakest social-protection system among advanced economies.

To be sure, some normalization of interest rates would be a good thing. Interest rates are supposed to reflect the scarcity of capital, and the “correct” price of capital obviously is not zero or negative – as near-zero interest rates and very negative real (inflation-adjusted) interest rates would seem to imply. But there are substantial dangers in pushing rates too high, too fast.

For example, it is important to recognize that US wage growth has slowed sharply, from an annualized rate of over 6% in the fall of 2021 to just 4.4% in the most recent period. (Annualized rates compare three-month averages. The most recent period compares hourly wages in March, April, and May, with December, January, and February.) So much for the “wage-price spiral” that previously had everyone scared and fueled demands for rapid monetary-policy tightening.

It is also important to recognize that this development runs completely counter to the standard Phillips curve models, which assume an inverse relationship between inflation and unemployment over the short term. The slowing of wage growth has occurred at a time when the unemployment rate is under 4% – a level below anyone’s estimates of the “non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment.” This phenomenon may owe something to the much lower level of unionization and worker power in today’s economy; but whatever the reason, the sharp slowdown in wage growth indicates that policymakers should think twice before generating further increases in unemployment to tame inflation.

The Fed’s rate increases have already had a large impact on the US economy. Mortgage rates jumped from around 3% last year to around 6% following the latest hike, and this sudden increase in borrowing costs has massively altered the shape of the housing market. Purchase mortgages have fallen by over 15% year on year, and the refinancing market has virtually shut down, cutting off an important source of credit for millions of households and auguring a wave of layoffs in the mortgage finance industry. According to the most recently reported figures, housing starts (new-home construction) in May were down 7% from the previous month.

Contrary to claims by many analysts, households still are not spending down their savings to any substantial extent. The widely reported drop in the saving rate in recent months reflects neither additional consumption nor a decline in income, but rather an increase in the amount of capital-gains taxes people are paying. Tax collections reported for the month of May were more than 40% above their 2019 level. If we combine savings and tax collections, the 19.1% rate for May is actually above the 18.6% average for 2018 and 2019.

With real consumption running at a normal level, there is little reason to believe that the US economy has a serious problem of excess demand. Making matters worse, higher interest rates and their effects on housing markets are likely to prove counterproductive. After all, rents are an important component of the consumer price index, and they have been rising sharply, owing partly to a shortage of supply. Now that the housing supply is taking a new hit from higher mortgage rates, any near-term benefit in the form of reduced demand will be partially offset by higher housing costs.

This example points to a larger issue, because many of the key dimensions of today’s inflation, such as food, housing, energy, and car prices, are likely to respond only to moderately higher interest rates. For example, purchase mortgage applications have already fallen by more than 20% from their levels a year ago, and reductions in house-listing prices have become widespread. Nonetheless, there is a temptation to increase interest rates too much and too fast, which is why there is now widespread fear of a looming recession.

Yet for all the din and roar over inflation and the monetary-policy response, there is less disagreement than one might think. Most commentators on both the left and the right believe that interest rates should be increased. The controversy stems from questions such as when we should worry that rates are increasing too much and too fast, and how preemptive we should be.

Inflation hawks want to raise interest rates until either inflation becomes muted or the pain of increased unemployment and lower growth becomes too great to bear (and even then, they will complain about a lack of nerve). By contrast, those more concerned with the real economy and ordinary workers argue for a gradualist approach, whereby significant tightening would be withheld until there is evidence of a significant acceleration of inflation.

In navigating this divide, we should remember that today’s economy is very different from the economy of the 1970s. It would be the height of foolishness to graft 1970s solutions onto the problems facing us in 2022. The economy is very different: globalization is more far-reaching and unions are significantly weaker. Accordingly, the debate should be turning to what else the government can do both to tame inflation and manage its most adverse effects, and to which political and economic ideas are most likely to guide us to the objectives we seek.

Even most of those who have complained about excess demand recognize that today’s inflation is driven largely by supply-side disruptions, and that while none of the shocks could have been predicted with much precision, the private sector has failed badly. Short-sighted behavior (of the kind we saw in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis) has again imposed enormous costs on society. In a turbulent world beset by multiplying risks, our economies are utterly lacking in resilience. Worse, many of these risks were foreseeable – and, indeed, foreseen. Consider Europe’s excessive reliance on Russian gas. Many economists had warned about the dangers of a lack of diversification – especially as market concentration in the energy sector continued apace. Russia is now brutally vindicating thjose warnings.

While some recent shocks would have happened no matter what, their effects have been exacerbated by a political and economic philosophy that puts corporate interests and “market-based” solutions first. Many of today’s biggest problems – and their consequences for ordinary citizens – can be addressed only by concerted collective action. They call for government policies aimed at circumscribing concentrations of market power and encouraging greater diversification and more long-term thinking (through tax structures and corporate-governance laws), and for industrial strategies that recognize the importance of borders and the real risks we face. Eyes on Supplies

Supply-side constraints call for supply-side solutions, many of which have yet to receive proper attention. Such measures would do as much to tame inflation as limited increases in interest rates would, and they would not come at the expense of workers and the broader economy.

To address labor-supply issues, policymakers should be considering immigration reform, investments in childcare, a higher minimum wage, and legislation to make the workplace more attractive, especially to women and the elderly. To fix the housing sector, we need to encourage conversions of vacant office space into residential units. To tackle the energy crisis (and future ones), we need much greater public investments in green energy and government price guarantees on oil – a policy mix that would encourage production when there are shortages while still phasing out fossil fuels over the longer term. We also need stronger competition laws, so that firms don’t have an incentive to curtail production as a way to juice their profits.

Most importantly, we need to help those at the bottom and middle cope with the consequences of inflation. Because the US is close to being energy independent, the country as a whole is relatively unaffected by changing energy prices (gains to exporters are simply offset by importers’ losses). But there is a huge distribution problem. Oil and gas companies are raking in windfall gains while ordinary citizens struggle to make ends meet. An “inflation rebate,” financed by a windfall-profits tax on fossil-fuel corporations, would efficiently address these inequities.

Today’s inflation has produced big winners and big losers, with the winners being concentrated at the top of the income and wealth distribution, and the losers at the bottom. It doesn’t have to be this way, nor should it be any longer.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Joseph Stiglitz, Dean Baker.

Congresswoman Liz Cheney on Tuesday revealed some attempts to intimidate witnesses cooperating with the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection and signaled that the panel plans to share additional details at future hearings.

"You don't tamper with witnesses like this if you have nothing to hide."

The Wyoming Republican provided examples during her closing remarks at a surprise hearing that focused on bombshell testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, who served as a special assistant to Mark Meadows, former President Donald Trump's chief of staff.

"While our committee has seen many witnesses, including many Republicans, testify fully and forthrightly, this has not been true of every witness—and we have received evidence of one particular practice that raises significant concern," explained Cheney, vice chair of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.

"Our committee commonly asks witnesses connected to Mr. Trump's administration or campaign whether they've been contacted by any of their former colleagues or anyone else who attempted to influence or impact their testimony," Cheney continued.

The congresswoman then shared two samples of answers the panel received to that question, without identifying any of the involved parties.

In response to the examples—which were also shared in full on the committee's Twitter account—Congresswoman Marie Newman (D-Ill.), who is not on the panel, said: "Witness intimidation. Clear as day."

That was a widely shared sentiment, and some viewers of the hearing called for action by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)—specifically, Attorney General Merrick Garland.

"Your move, Merrick," tweeted Salon politics writer Amanda Marcotte.

Aki Peritz, a former counterterrorism analyst for the U.S. government, said that "this is mob boss/clear witness intimidation behavior. DOJ, I hope you're taking notes."

Journalist Aaron Rupar similarly asserted that the messages featured "big mob boss energy."

University of Michigan law professor Leah Litman agreed that this is "how mobsters do witness intimidation."

Sean Eldridge, founder and president of the progressive advocacy group Stand Up America, pointed out that "you don't tamper with witnesses like this if you have nothing to hide," and called the revelations "one more layer of Trump's criminal conspiracy."

Cheney said that "I think most Americans know that attempting to influence witnesses to testify untruthfully presents very serious concerns. We will be discussing these issues as a committee, carefully considering our next steps."

Some legal experts observing the hearing highlighted 18 U.S. Code § 1512, which addresses tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant.

"Make no mistake, those texts we just saw will certainly lead to criminal investigation and perhaps prosecution under 18 USC 1512, which punishes witness intimidation with fines, imprisonment for not more than 20 years, or both," said Brookings Institution senior fellow Norm Eisen.

Even some former Trump allies acknowledged the significance of the development. Mick Mulvaney—who held multiple posts in the administration, including acting White House chief of staff—said that "Cheney's closing is stunning: They think they have evidence of witness tampering and obstruction of justice."

"There is an old maxim: It's never the crime, it's always the cover-up," Mulvaney added. "Things went very badly for the former president today. My guess is that it will get worse from here."

The panel's last-minute hearing was announced Monday. As Punchbowl News reported early Tuesday:

Most importantly, we're told Hutchinson's firsthand account—her direct testimony and evidence—meaningfully informs the hearings the panel has planned for July. There have also been "sincere concerns" about Hutchinson's physical security because of what she knows and has revealed to the committee, we're told.

Due to these reasons, select committee members felt they had to hold the hearing today and couldn't wait until the House returns from recess in mid-July.

For nearly two hours Tuesday afternoon, Hutchinson testified about various events related to January 6 and efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, from Meadows and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani seeking pardons to alleged actions by the former president—including throwing his lunch against a White House wall in a fit of rage, demanding that armed supporters be allowed into a designated rally area, and assaulting a member of his security team who wouldn't take him to the Capitol.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

Amazon's lawyers filed a motion on Tuesday urging the National Labor Relations Board to bar the public—and potentially members of the press—from tuning in to a hearing next week at which the company is set to lay out its case for why the historic union victory at the JFK8 warehouse in New York should be overturned.

According to the Washington Post, which is owned by Amazon executive chairman and former CEO Jeff Bezos, the company argues in its motion that "because the hearing is being held on Zoom, it makes it difficult to know if witnesses who aren't supposed to be able to observe the proceedings are in attendance, or if the hearing is being recorded and shared with those witnesses."

"This motion won't pass and hundreds of JFK8 workers are dying to see this trial."

"Amazon declined to comment and did not immediately respond to questions about whether members of the media would be permitted to attend the hearing if the company's motion is granted," the Post noted. "The motion, which requests that the general public be barred from attending, specifies the parties that Amazon says should be allowed to attend the full proceeding, including witnesses and legal teams, does not explicitly mention members of the media."

The Amazon Labor Union (ALU), the worker-led group that spearheaded the successful organizing drive at JFK8, characterized the company's motion as a cynical attempt to advance its slew of unfounded election objections behind closed doors. NLRB hearings are usually in person and open to the public.

"Maybe they're seeing that worker testimony is more credible than they thought," ALU tweeted late Tuesday. "This motion won't pass and hundreds of JFK8 workers are dying to see this trial."

ALU attorney Seth Goldstein said of Amazon's motion that he has "never heard of this happening before."

"This is fantasy," Goldstein told the Post. "It again shows that Amazon is out of touch with the importance of transparency so that everybody understands what is happening."

Amazon's motion came after the company succeeded in transferring the JFK8 case from the NLRB's Brooklyn office—which oversaw the election—to its Phoenix office.

Cornele Overstreet, the NLRB's regional director in Phoenix, said in a filing last month that Amazon's objections "could be grounds for overturning the election."

Amazon, which waged an aggressive union-busting campaign that has drawn legal action from the NLRB, has accused the union of "electioneering in the polling area" and distributing marijuana to workers in exchange for their support, among other objections.

The union has denied Amazon's allegations and voiced confidence that the NLRB will ultimately reject Amazon's case.

"We're disappointed that Amazon is attempting to overturn the democratic voice of over 2,600 of its own workers," Cassio Mendoza, a worker at the Staten Island warehouse and an ALU organizer, said after Amazon first outlined its objections in April.

"The entire world knows that the workers won our election,"  Mendoza added, "and we look forward to sitting down with Amazon... to negotiate a fair contract for the workers at JFK8."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

South Dakotans on Tuesday resoundingly defeated a Republican-authored constitutional amendment that would have raised the threshold for passage of most ballot initiatives from a simple majority to 60%, an effort motivated by GOP lawmakers' desire to head off a Medicaid expansion vote set for November.

Voters rejected the proposal, known as Amendment C, by a margin of 67.4% to 32.6%, dealing a decisive blow to state-level Republicans' latest attempt to weaken the ballot initiative process.

"Amendment C is a political ploy that would empower special interests, lobbyists, and politicians at the expense of South Dakota voters."

"The people of South Dakota have preserved their right to use direct democracy," said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, a national group that worked to defeat the South Dakota amendment. "This victory will benefit tens of thousands of South Dakotans who will choose to use the ballot measure process to increase access to healthcare for their families and neighbors, raise wages, and more policies that improve lives."

"We look forward to what's next in South Dakota: an aggressive campaign to expand Medicaid in the state," Hall added.

If passed, Amendment C would have required a 60% supermajority to approve any voter-initiated referendum that would "increase taxes or fees or that would require the state to appropriate $10 million or more in the first five fiscal years." The proposal was endorsed by South Dakota's Republican Gov. Kristi Noem and the powerful Koch network, which spent big on pro-Amendment C ads and mailers.

"Amendment C is a political ploy that would empower special interests, lobbyists, and politicians at the expense of South Dakota voters," South Dakotans for Fair Elections said ahead of Tuesday's vote. "If you care about secure and fair elections, vote no on C."

Republican sponsors and supporters of the amendment readily admitted that their expedited campaign to get Amendment C on the primary election ballot was fueled at least in part by opposition to the Medicaid referendum, which would make South Dakota the seventh state since 2017 to approve an expansion of the healthcare program through the voter initiative process.

Only Idaho's 2018 Medicaid expansion initiative received more than 60% of the vote, an indication that Amendment C would likely have spelled doom for the South Dakota referendum.

As Daniel Nichanian of Bolts noted late Tuesday, "GOP lawmakers in South Dakota were not able to increase the threshold of passage for initiatives on their own, without consulting voters, since the change would have affected the state constitution."

"And South Dakotans' refusal to go along with this stands out as reaffirming the state's historical legacy," Nichanian observed. "South Dakota was the first in the nation to adopt a process for citizens to initiate ballot measures. In 1898, voters approved a constitutional amendment to that effect that was pushed by local populist leaders—a legacy that voters reaffirmed on Tuesday."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

More than seven years have passed since Yemen’s Houthi rebels leveraged popular frustration over fuel prices to oust the government of President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi. That was a troubling development for Saudi Arabia, which had allied with the overthrown leadership to secure access to a key oil shipping lane off Yemen’s coast. The prospect that a movement purportedly backed by regional foe Iran would control this waterway was unconscionable, so the oil kingdom convened an international coalition, under the leadership of then-Saudi Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman, now the crown prince, that could suffocate the insurgents. With the support of the United States, Saudi Arabia established a devastating port blockade that slashed the flow of commercial and humanitarian goods into Yemen and littered the country with bombs that have killed countless civilians.

During the Trump administration, some Democrats, joined by a handful of Republicans, fought to end the U.S. bomb sales, intelligence support, and warplane refueling that made the Saudi intervention possible. But with a Riyadh-friendly president in the White House, their efforts never had a plausible chance of actually forcing the kingdom to withdraw. Democrats at the time didn’t bear responsibility for managing relations with a major weapons customer and oil producer that helped keep gas prices low at home. In early 2019, when majorities in both the House of Representatives and Senate for the first time in history invoked the 1973 War Powers Resolution to end U.S. involvement, Saudi Arabia could rely on former President Donald Trump’s veto.

A man stands amidst the rubble of a building, destroyed during years of fighting, in Yemen’s rebel-besieged third city of Taez, on May 20, 2022.

Photo: Ahmad Al-Basha/AFP via Getty Images

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Sara Sirota.

Nearly seven decades after the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, the court’s declared goal of integrated education is still not yet achieved.

American society continues to grow more racially and ethnically diverse. But many of the nation’s public K-12 schools are not well integrated and are instead predominantly attended by students of one race or another.

As an educational sociologist, I fear that the nation has effectively decided that it’s simply not worth continuing to pursue the goals of Brown. I also fear that accepting failure could portend a return to the days of the case that Brown overturned, the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision. That case set “separate but equal” facilities for different races, including schools and universities, as the national priority.

The Brown decision was based upon a repudiation of that idea and the recognition that “separate but equal” was never achieved. I remain convinced it never will be.

A historic push

In many ways, it would be startling to declare the ideal of integrated schooling a lost cause. Integration was so important in 1957 that Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to ensure that nine Black students were safe when they enrolled in the city’s Central High School.

Despite the federal government’s intervention, in the 1960s and 1970s, many communities across the U.S. experienced considerable conflict and even bloodshed. Many white citizens actively and violently opposed school integration, which often came in the form of court-mandated busing of Black students to schools in predominantly white neighborhoods.

Despite the opposition, many Americans worked incredibly hardto make integration happen, and its benefits are clear: Many American children have experienced enhanced educational opportunities and improved academic success as a result of these efforts.

Separated, if not segregated

However, in 2018-2019, the most recent school year for which data is available, 42% of Black students attended majority-Black schools, and 56% of Hispanic students attended majority-Hispanic schools. Even more striking, 79% of white students in America went to majority-white schools during the same period.

Those statistics signal the existence of what is, in fact, a racially separate educational system. But these statistics about race don’t show how common separation by socioeconomic status is in most urban schools throughout the U.S. Low-income Black and Hispanic students are most likely to attend schools where the majority of children are poor and the resources available to serve them are inadequate.

Since 2001, education policymakers have made bold promises to close what has been called the “racial achievement gap.” Yet they have largely ignored the fact that throughout the nation, poor children of color are most likely to attend schools where they are not only separated by race and class, but where the quality of the education they receive is below that of their white peers.

Housing and school choices

Several factors help to explain the degree of race and class separation and educational inequality that is now pervasive in America. To begin with, many communities throughout the United States continue to be characterized by a high degree of racial and socioeconomic separation. However, while residential patterns pose an obstacle, a 2018 study by the Urban Institute found that neighborhood segregation does not in itself explaincurrent patterns of school segregation. The study identified several cities and suburban communities where schools are significantly more segregated than the neighborhoods in which they are located.

Policies that allow parents to choose which of their district’s public schools their children attend have done little to alter these trends and, in fact, may contribute to the problem. Several studies have shown that public charter schools are more likely to be intensely racially divided than traditional public schools.

Furthermore, in most major American cities, affluent residents are more likely to enroll their children in private schools than public schools. This includes many affluent parents of color, who often choose to enroll their children in predominantly white independent schools in search of a better education, even when their children experience race-related microaggressions and alienation.

In the past 20 years, cities such as Boston, New York, Denver, Washington, D.C., and Seattle have seen affluent white populations increase – but the overwhelming majority of students in those cities’ public schools are from low-income Black and Hispanic households. Those sorts of racial imbalances have increasingly become the norm.

Integration can succeed

When the poorest and most vulnerable children are concentrated into particular schools, it is even more difficult to achieve racial equality in educational opportunity, either through integration as called for by Brown or by pursuing “separate but equal” as called for by Plessy.

There is good reason to be concerned. For decades there has been consistent evidence that when schools serve a disproportionate number of children in poverty, they are less likely to improve students’ academic success.

The evidence also shows that when Black and Hispanic children attend racially integrated schools, they tend to outperform their peers who do not. For example, students who have participated in the Metco program, a voluntary desegregation effort that makes it possible for children of color from Boston to be bused to affluent schools in the suburbs, have fared better academicallythan their counterparts who remained in Boston’s racially isolated schools. The research doesn’t show whether that is because of the superior resources available in predominantly white suburban schools or the fact that they have parents who are active enough to get them into suburban schools. It may be that both factors play a role.

A 2018 study from UCLA found that all the schools that produce significant numbers of Black students who are eligible for admission to the University of California are racially integrated. Unfortunately, the study also found that most Black students in Los Angeles don’t attend integrated schools.

However, the study also found one notable exception: the King/Drew Health Sciences Magnet High School of Medicine and Science in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. That school, which serves almost exclusively Black and Hispanic students, sends more Black students to the University of California than any other high school in the state of California.

At King/Drew, students have a rigorous, enriched education that includes many honors and Advanced Placement courses. Those opportunities are the norm at many affluent suburban schools, but they are rare at public schools in urban areas.

The scarcity of schools like King/Drew – well-resourced and serving a low-income or majority-minority student body – should serve as a reminder that racially separate schools are rarely equal. When Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP took the Brown case, they knew that funding for education generally followed white students.

That was true in 1954, and it is largely true today. A recent study found that nonwhite school districts in the U.S. receive US$23 billion less in funding than predominantly white schools, though they serve the same number of students.

For this reason, on the occasion of the 68th anniversary of the Brown decision, I believe it is important to remember why and how civil rights and educational opportunity remain so deeply intertwined. Despite its flaws and limitations, the effort to racially integrate the nation’s schools has been and continues to be important given the type of pluralistic and diverse nation the U.S. is becoming. It also plays a central role in the ongoing pursuit of racial equality.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Pedro A. Noguera.

Amazon's union-busting tactics appeared successful on Monday after a tally by the National Labor Relations Board revealed workers failed to unionize a second Amazon warehouse in New York City on Staten Island.

"The organizing will continue at this facility and beyond."

The final tally of workers at the LDJ5 warehouse was 380 in favor of the union to 618 against out of 1,633 eligible voters.

The loss came a month after workers at the JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island made history by voting in favor of Amazon's first-ever union in the United States—a result Amazon is trying to overturn.

The Amazon Labor Union (ALU), the worker-led organization started by former JFK8 employee Christian Smalls—fired after his organizing efforts—lamented that workers at a second Amazon facility weren't able to secure victory.

"The organizing will continue at this facility and beyond," ALU tweeted. "The fight has just begun."

Attorney Seth Goldstein, who represents ALU, told VICE they would contest the election and accused the retail giant of violating "laboratory conditions in this election with mandatory anti-union meetings and we've already got a whole series of charges against them."

Labor Notes reported last month that Amazon was "trying every trick in the playbook to throttle worker organizing at its Staten Island warehouses in New York City," with such efforts including mandatory anti-union meetings.

Ahead of the final tabulation, ALU pointed to a swelling labor movement.

"No matter the outcome of the election," the group tweeted, "workers are uniting for change at LDJ5, JFK8, and around the world. Mega-corporations continue to spend millions in union-busting + fear tactics and we continue to organize for a society not based on exploitation and greed."

Maurice Mitchell, national director of Working Families Party, had a similar takeaway.

"Every movement will meet roadblocks," Mitchell said in a statement, "but today's outcome doesn't change the simple fact that working people are taking on the billionaires and big corporations—and they're winning."

"This year has seen an incredible resurgence of worker power," he continued, "as warehouse workers, baristas, and grocery store clerks demand good pay, basic benefits, and respect on the job."

"Each victory is all the more impressive because workers are fighting within a rigged system that gives corporations the power to union-bust with impunity. That has to change," he added. Mitchell urged Congress to take up the Protect the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would strengthen worker protections on the job.

But whether or not lawmakers take up that proposal, Mitchell said that "workers will keep fighting, shop by shop and election by election, until they win.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Andrea Germanos.