James Elder, UNICEF’s Global Spokesperson - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan:
It is my opinion that the Biden administration has committed a grievous error, or more accurately continued an American practice that over the last half-century has resulted in the murder of millions of people, to our great and everlasting shame. To understand Gaza I think one has to see it in the context of the Vietnam War, and the Iraq War. In all three of which our shameful and erroneous geopolitical policies resulted in mass death. We haven’t put soldiers on the ground in Gaza, but it is our weapons supplied to a blatantly corrupt fascist that have killed thousands of innocent women and children. I think Yaḥyá al-Sanwār leader of Hamas, and his cohort, carried out a war crime against humanity for which he and they should be held accountable. But it was followed by the Israeli leadership under Benjamin Netanyahu also carrying out inexcusable war crimes for which they should likewise be held accountable. And I think Biden should apologize to the world for the role the United States has played in this carnage.
Children near a camp housing displaced Palestinians in Rafah on Tuesday. Credit: AFP / Getty
The war against Gaza’s children is forcing many to close their eyes. Nine-year-old Mohamed’s eyes were forced shut, first by the bandages that covered a gaping hole in the back of his head, and second by the coma caused by the blast that hit his family home. He is nine. Sorry, he was nine. Mohamed is now dead.
Over three visits to the European hospital’s ICU in Rafah, Gaza, I saw multiple children occupy the same bed. Each one arriving after a bomb had ripped through their home. Each one dying despite doctors’ immense efforts.
Only a few weeks ago the world was decrying the senseless killing of seven aid workers in a convoy for the World Central Kitchen. It was another grim milestone for Gaza. A week later, a Unicef vehicle was hit, again when trying to reach those in the most desperate need. This week further airstrikes in Rafah have […]
David Badash, Senior Editor - New Civil Rights Movement
Stephan:
If you are on Social Security. Medicare, Medicaid, or a fertile woman and you vote for Republicans this is what they tell us they are going to do to degrade your wellbeing. There is no secret plan, it is all very explicit, and yet I know millions of Americans are going to vote for this, and then whine about what is happening to them. You can click through https://hern.house.gov/uploadedfiles/final_budget_including_letter_web_version.pdf to read the Republican plan itself.
TCP Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson
The Republican Study Committee has released its proposed 2025 budget which would take an ax to major elements of the social safety net, healthcare system, and civil rights, while affecting nearly every American, either now or in the future.
Calling it “Fiscal Sanity to Save America,” the budget proposal from the far-right MAGA-affiliated group of about 170 House Republicans would effectively create a national abortion ban and ban on in-vitro fertilization procedures (IVF) by creating legal protections for human embryos starting at “the moment of fertilization.” It mentions the word “abortion” 77 times.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is a member and former chairman of the Republican Study Committee.
“The House GOP Study Committee (largest House GOP bloc) released a budget endorsing the Life at Conception Act, which would provide 14th amendment legal protections at every stage of life,” explained Joseph Zeballos-Roig, Semafor’s domestic policy and politics reporter. “Amounts to near-total ban on abortions with no IVF exceptions.”
Here is some potentially good, but complicated news about what is going on in Arizona about women having the right to control their own bodies. I bring this to your attention because I think it is a precursor to what is going to happen at the state level across the country.
Pro-abortion rights demonstrators rally in Scottsdale, Arizona on April 15, 2024. Credit: Frederic J. Brown / AFP / Getty
Arizona lawmakers on Wednesday voted to repeal the state’s Civil War-era abortion ban.
The legislation, which is expected to be soon signed into law by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, will preserve access to the procedure for millions of women. But there’s a potential political downside for Democrats, who had been using the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision last month upholding the law to foment outrage and boost turnout heading into the November election.
“Would it be easier if Republicans just stuck to their guns and didn’t repeal this thing and went down with their ship? Sure,” said Matt Grodsky, a Democratic strategist in Arizona.
President Joe Biden and Democrats down the ballot have spent the last several weeks highlighting the law, which prohibits abortion starting at conception except to save the life of the mother, as the latest example of the chaos and uncertainty that the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade nearly two years ago has caused. […]
The people of the 3rd District of Colorado should be ashamed of themselves for electing an ignorant slattern like Lauren Boebert, and it is a measure of the nasty incompetence of the Republican Representatives in the House that they followed her lead.
A quarter of a million wolves once roamed from coast to coast before European colonizers embarked on campaigns of eradication that persisted into the 20th century all but wiped them out in the lower-48 states Credit: Kena Betancur
The Republican-majority US House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a bill that would remove endangered species protections for the gray wolf across much of the country, sparking outrage among conservationists.
Sponsored by Representative Lauren Boebert, a right-wing firebrand from Colorado, the bill passed narrowly along party lines (209-205) and now heads to the Senate.
The White House on Monday announced its strong opposition to the measure, indicating a likely veto from President Joe Biden if it reaches his desk.
In October 2020, former president Donald Trump removed gray wolves from their protected species status, which was put in place in the 1970s after their near extinction in the continental United States.
These protections were restored by a federal judge in February 2022, but not before the lapse in safeguards led to devastating losses: more than 200 were killed […]
America’s grotesque wealth inequality is one of the major trends destroying our social wellbeing, and threatening our democracy. This is one of the reasons low income people are thinking about voting for Trump, or not voting at all. This trend has been coming in since the Reagan administration when the Republican Party rigged the entire tax system to favor the rich. Every Republican administration since then has just made it worse. Yet American voters don’t seem to understand this.
The number of households that live above the poverty line but are barely scrapping by is ticking higher.
Currently, nearly 40 million families are defined as ALICE, which stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed.
High inflation and higher interest rates have taken a hefty toll, and there is little relief in sight.
Over time, higher costs and sluggish wage growth have left more Americans financially vulnerable, with many known as “ALICEs.”
Nearly 40 million families, or 29% of the population, fall in the category of ALICE — Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed — according to United Way’s United for ALICE program, which first coined the term to refer to households earning above the poverty line but less than what’s needed to get by.
That figure doesn’t include the 37.9 million Americans who live in poverty, comprising 11.5% of the total population, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
