WASHINGTON – The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled today that the European Commission was right to ban the use of three bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides – imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam. The court rejected Bayer’s final attempt to overturn the ban and undermine the EU’s ‘precautionary principle’ for the protection of the environment and human health, said Greenpeace.

The Court confirmed the ruling of the EU General Court of 17 May 2018, once again highlighting the importance of the precautionary principle. Greenpeace presented arguments to the court in defence of the ban, along with Pesticides Action Network Europe, Beelife and Buglife.

Greenpeace EU legal strategist Andrea Carta said: “The Court of Justice has reaffirmed that protecting nature and people’s health takes precedence over the narrow economic interests of powerful multinationals and that the precautionary principle is a cornerstone of EU law. This means the EU has a responsibility and the power to ensure the safety of all pesticides, chemicals, GM crops and other dangerous products and substances.”

However, this landmark decision does not mean an end to threats to bees and other pollinators in the EU. Several governments have circumvented the 2013 neonicotinoid ban by repeatedly granting temporary exemptions that allow the use of these banned pesticides. Research also indicates that several other pesticides currently used in the EU are a threat to bees and other pollinating insects, including four more neonicotinoids not covered by the 2013 ban.

Governments have also failed to reach an agreement on new testing guidelines for pesticides, in order to ensure that they do not harm bees, as required by EU laws on pesticides.

Andrea Carta added:“EU courts have again ruled that bees and other essential insects should be protected from dangerous pesticides, but governments continue to dish out exemptions and hold up attempts to put in place effective safety testing. This ruling shows they must adopt rigorous testing rules without further delay.

The Court also ruled that Bayer should pay legal costs incurred by environmental groups and the European Commission.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

There’s an iconic photo that shows Ronald Reagan and a bunch of his Republican cronies buckled over, laughing uproariously. Who knows what they found so funny—maybe President Reagan just burped or George H.W. Bush did an armpit fart. Whatever.

But some wag turned the photo into a legend with the caption: “And then we told them the wealth would trickle down!”

Could it be that this knee-slapper is finally wearing thin, that the public is sick and tired of the trickle-down scam?

To the surprise of many, the mild-mannered U.S. President Joe Biden is making a daring bid to overturn much of the mean-spirited conservative economic agenda that’s dominated America—and the world—since Reagan’s presidency in the 1980s.

In a potentially game-changing move, Biden is trying to enlist major nations (through the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) to support a global minimum tax, which corporations would be required to pay on their worldwide income, regardless of whether it was reported in a tax haven.

“Trickle down has never worked,” declared Biden in his address to Congress last week, as he rolled out a massive agenda that would drive a hole through the heart of Reaganomics and its small government fetish (at least when it comes to government helping ordinary people).

Biden wants to spend $6 trillion on things that would significantly improve the lives of regular Americans—family benefits, paid medical leave, free preschool and community college, infrastructure and green new jobs, enhanced rights for workers.

And he wants to pay for it by raising taxes on corporations and other high-fliers last seen buckled over laughing at how massively they’ve swindled the American people.

Of course, Biden faces huge obstacles getting his plans through both houses of Congress; it’s quite possible he won’t succeed. Still, his willingness to directly challenge long-held dogma is invigorating—and likely to change the debate.

That could help Canada also break free of the suffocating effects of Reaganomics (or neo-liberalism) with its agenda of austerity for the masses and tax breaks for those at the top.

Certainly, Biden’s endorsement of bigger government makes it easier for Justin Trudeau to proceed with his recently announced national child care plan. Canada’s deficit hawks won’t have their usual clout now that our largest trading partner has stopped preaching austerity and small government.

Trudeau has shown some spine against the deficit hawks, but he has been timid about joining Biden’s campaign to tax the wealthy. (Trudeau’s new luxury tax is a nothing-burger compared to Biden’s proposed tax hike on capital gains held by the super-rich.)

Too bad. We could sure use the money to pay for needed programs. Besides, when nations co-operate, corporations have a hard time playing us off against each other in pushing for ever-lower taxes.

That’s why Canada should be backing Biden’s effort to clamp down on corporate tax havens, which deprive governments around the world of USD $245 billion a year in desperately-needed revenue, according to Tax Justice Network.

In a potentially game-changing move, Biden is trying to enlist major nations (through the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) to support a global minimum tax, which corporations would be required to pay on their worldwide income, regardless of whether it was reported in a tax haven.

Washington is proposing a minimum rate of 21 per cent. So if a U.S. corporation reports income in a country where the corporate tax rate is 5 per cent, Washington would impose an additional tax to bring that corporation’s tax rate up to 21 per cent. This would mean much higher taxes for corporate giants—Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc.—that make extensive use of tax havens.

International tax expert Gabriel Zucman says that if other countries follow the U.S. in policing their corporations this way “it’s the end of tax havens.”

Germany and France have pledged support for Biden’s corporate minimum tax—but not Canada.

Trudeau said he’s open to the idea, but declined to commit to it, insisting instead that Canada will always ensure its taxes are competitive with other nations. This kind of tax competition is exactly what Biden’s global minimum corporate tax is designed to avoid.

Over the years, Canada has far too often bowed to Washington, which typically lines up behind corporate interests.

How maddening that we’re showing a rare streak of independence when Washington is finally cracking down on corporate misconduct and actively pushing to rid the world of the scourge of tax havens.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

The political leadership of Canada, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and other rich nations faced growing pressure Thursday to immediately throw their support behind a patent waiver for coronavirus vaccines after the Biden administration endorsed the proposal as a key step toward distributing life-saving vaccines to people across the globe.

“The U.K., E.U., and all remaining blockers need to get out of the way and let the whole world work to contain this awful virus as quickly as possible.”
—Nick Dearden, Global Justice Now

The U.S. backing of the patent waiver on Wednesday—after helping to block it for months—was hailed as a potentially transformative move, but opposition from Canada, much of Europe, and other wealthy countries remains a key obstacle in the way of achieving the World Trade Organization consensus needed for final approval.

“This seismic decision from the Biden administration is a watershed moment,” said Nick Dearden, director of the London-based advocacy group Global Justice Now. “It could be the beginning of the end of vaccine apartheid, if other leaders like Boris Johnson stop standing in the way. The prime minister has no more excuses.”

“This is not the end of the process, and negotiations will now begin at the WTO in earnest—these negotiations must be conducted openly and with transparency. We urge all world leaders to see the writing on the wall and put peoples’ lives ahead of corporate profit,” Dearden continued. “The U.K., E.U., and all remaining blockers need to get out of the way and let the whole world work to contain this awful virus as quickly as possible.”

Doctors Without Borders, a global humanitarian organization that has been campaigning for the patent waiver, published an updated map showing which nations are for and against the proposal:

“We have the necessary momentum and mechanisms to now deliver a people’s vaccine for the world,” said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS. “The rest of the G7 and the European Union must urgently follow President Biden—and join over 100 countries around the world in supporting a suspension of intellectual property protections for Covid-19 vaccines at the World Trade Organization.”

Hours after U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai issued a statement announcing the Biden administration’s support for the patent waiver—which is led by India and South Africa—the president of the European Commission said in a non-committal speech Thursday morning that the E.U. is “ready to discuss any proposals that address the crisis in an effective and pragmatic manner.”

We have the necessary momentum and mechanisms to now deliver a people’s vaccine for the world. The rest of the G7 and the European Union must urgently follow President Biden.”
—Winnie Byanyima, UNAIDS

But French President Emmanuel Macron bucked his fellow E.U. leaders Thursday by voicing support for the temporary patent waiver, telling reporters that he is “very much in favor of opening up intellectual property.”

“We must obviously make this vaccine a global public good,” Macron said. “The priority, today, is certainly to give doses. In the short term, this is what will allow us to vaccinate people. And the second thing is to produce, in partnership with the poorest countries.”

Canada’s foreign minister, meanwhile, echoed the vague remarks of the European Commission president in an interview late Wednesday, saying the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is “very active” in the patent waiver talks but has yet to reach a decision on the measure.

In a statement following the Biden White House’s endorsement of the waiver, Jagmeet Singh, the leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party, said that “Trudeau must follow the U.S. administration in supporting the suspension of drug patents for Covid-19 vaccines for the time of the pandemic.”

“Instead of protecting, big pharmaceutical companies’ profits, Justin Trudeau should be protecting human lives,” said Singh. “These companies should not determine who should live or die. The Liberals need to stop putting the profits of big pharmaceuticals ahead of the health and well-being of people.”

The British government is another prominent opponent of the patent waiver, which would enable generic manufacturers to copy vaccine formulas and build upon the world’s artificially scarce supply. Johnson—who infamously attributed the U.K.’s early vaccination successes to “greed”—has yet to indicate a change of position in the wake of the Biden administration’s announcement.

“This would help save many lives by allowing poorer countries to produce their own vaccines,” tweeted Labour MP Richard Burgon. “Immorally, Boris Johnson has far refused to back this. He must now do so at the WTO talks.”

Campaigners hope U.S. support for the intellectual property waiver will jumpstart WTO patent talks that have been stagnant for months amid soaring coronavirus case counts and deaths across the globe, with much of the increase driven by horrific waves in India and other developing countries that have struggled to vaccinate their populations.

Amitabh Behar, executive director of Oxfam India, said in a statement Thursday that “India is the pharmacy of the world but it has been gasping for breath—choked by big pharmaceutical corporations monopolies.”

“Pre-qualified manufacturers are ready to swing into production mode and start making hundreds of millions doses, available to all for free,” said Behar. “But for that to be possible we need the European Union and every rich country still blocking a waiver on intellectual property rules to join President Biden and over 100 countries and offer hope for India and many other countries that we are indeed not being left behind.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

Stocks of major pharmaceutical corporations plummeted Wednesday after the Biden administration announced its support for a coronavirus vaccine patent waiver, a measure that would free vaccine recipes from Big Pharma’s stranglehold and help enable generic manufacturers to ramp up global production.

As CNBC reported, shares in Pfizer, BioNTech, Novavax, and Moderna fell to “session lows” after the Biden White House endorsed the waiver—a potentially seismic move that came after weeks of tireless campaigning by progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups.

Canada, European Union member nations, the United Kingdom, and other wealthy countries remain opposed to the waiver, leaving the chances of consensus approval at the World Trade Organization highly uncertain.

Nevertheless, the Biden administration’s support for the waiver spooked investors and infuriated the pharmaceutical industry, which has been lobbying hard against the proposal in an effort to preserve its immensely profitable monopoly control over vaccine production.

“Cry no tears for these death profiteers,” environmentalist and author Naomi Klein tweeted in response to a CNBC graphic showing the major sell-off of pharma shares on Wednesday.

“It’s almost as if the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry are diametrically opposed to the health and well-being of the planet,” added consumer watchdog Public Citizen, part of a broad coalition of global civil society groups that has been pushing U.S. President Joe Biden and other world leaders to back the patent waiver for months.

The Financial Times reported Thursday morning that the Biden administration’s decision to back the temporary intellectual property waiver—which South Africa and India first introduced at the WTO in October—”prompted instant outrage in the pharmaceutical sector.”

“Shares in the big makers of Covid-19 vaccines were hit by the announcement,” FT noted. “Frankfurt-listed shares in BioNTech lost 14 percent on Thursday. Moderna and Novavax closed down by between 3 percent and 6 percent in New York the day before.”

Warren Gunnels, staff director for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), said Wednesday that “after taxpayers paid Pfizer, BioNTech, Novavax, and Moderna $13.5 billion for Covid-19 vaccines, seven executives at these firms became billionaires and are now worth $17.2 billion.”

“No one should have gotten wealthy off of these vaccines,” Gunnels added. “They belong to the people, not billionaires.”

Allowing a handful of pharmaceutical companies to dictate global supply of life-saving coronavirus vaccines has been disastrous for much of the developing world, which has struggled to obtain and administer doses after profit-seeking drugmakers sold most of their early production to wealthy countries.

Now, as cities in rich nations accelerate their reopenings amid stagnant or falling case counts, skyrocketing infections in developing countries such as India, Brazil, and Thailand are pushing global case counts to a new peak, intensifying calls for sweeping action to boost vaccine production and distribution.

While insufficient to solve global production shortages on its own, India and South Africa’s patent waiver would lift a key legal barrier that’s preventing manufacturers around the world from copying existing vaccine recipes and mass-producing generic versions.

“In the many months since this waiver was first proposed, we could have produced many hundreds of millions more vaccines,” Nick Dearden, director of the London-based advocacy group Global Justice Now, said in a statement Wednesday. “Let’s get moving.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

As President Joe Biden’s administration on Wednesday bowed to international grassroots pressure and declared its support for temporarily waiving intellectual property protections for Covid-19 vaccines, Sen. Bernie Sanders—who was one of the earliest, and most vocal, advocates of the policy—praised the move.

“Our vaccination efforts here at home will only be successful if vaccination efforts in the developing world happen simultaneously.”
—Sen. Bernie Sanders

“I applaud President Biden and his administration for taking this bold step in response to the world’s most urgent crisis,” Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement. “Our vaccination efforts here at home will only be successful if vaccination efforts in the developing world happen simultaneously.”

“Supporting this waiver, and putting people over profits, will help us to do that by speeding up the production and availability of vaccines,” he continued. “This is exactly the kind of leadership the world needs right now.”

“I also recognize the dedicated work done by activists in communities around the world to put this issue on the global agenda,” Sanders added. “We are all in this together.”

Sanders had led U.S. lawmakers in pushing Biden to support a Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) waiver at the World Trade Organization, an effort spearheaded by India and South Africa. Proponents say such a waiver would accelerate global production and distribution of the life-saving shots. Nearly 70% of U.S. adults and more than 100 nations worldwide support the move. 

“It is unconscionable that amid a global health crisis, huge multibillion dollar pharmaceutical companies continue to prioritize profits by protecting their monopolies and driving up prices rather than prioritizing the lives of people everywhere, including in the Global South,” Sanders said in a video last month. 

Wednesday’s decision was announced by U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai.

“This is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures,” Tai said in a statement. “The administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for Covid-19 vaccines.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – Today, the Biden administration announced it would support a temporary waiver of intellectual property (IP) barriers to facilitate more production of COVID-19 vaccines and would enter into textual negotiations on a World Trade Organization (WTO) waiver proposal initiated by South Africa and India. The announcement comes after intensive U.S. and global campaigning. Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, issued the following statement:
 
“Thank you, President Biden and USTR Katherine Tai, for prioritizing saving human lives and livelihoods and cutting through Big Pharma’s lies and threats to fight for the speediest possible end to the unprecedented threats posed to all Americans and people worldwide by the COVID-19 pandemic. It will be critical that U.S. engagement in WTO negotiations leads to the fastest possible agreement on a waiver text that encompasses COVID-19 vaccines and diagnostic tests to prevent virus spread and treatments to save the lives of those engulfed in raging outbreaks around the world.
 
“By fighting for the rest of the world to have access to vaccines as we have in the U.S., the Biden administration is recognizing that ‘no one is safe until we are all vaccinated’ is more than a slogan, given COVID-19 outbreaks anyplace could hatch vaccine-resistant variants that sweep the world.  
 
“As a candidate, Biden’s compassion and his understanding that Americans would not be safe unless the whole world was vaccinated was spotlighted when he pledged to ALS-diagnosed health activist Ady Barkin that he would ensure vaccines were shared worldwide to end the pandemic as quickly as possible and not allow IP barriers to thwart people’s right to access and today’s announcement is a critical step towards that goal. The fastest possible negotiations of a TRIPS waiver must also be accompanied by significant increases in funding and technology transfer to boost domestic and international vaccine production capacity so we can end this pandemic and prepare for the next.
 
“The optics of the U.S. and the few other wealthy countries with vaccines blocking 100 poorer countries without vaccines from even starting WTO negotiations on a temporary emergency waiver that is critical to boosting vaccine production was only made worse by China and Russia widely sharing their vaccines and technology worldwide. With an mRNA vaccine developed in China now in final trials, a Chinese firm already licensed to make the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccines, and Latin American countries gearing up to make the Russian Sputnik-V vaccine, today’s announcement is a gamechanger.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – Justice is Global Director Tobita Chow today released the following statement in response to Ambassador Katherine Tai’s announcement of U.S. support for the TRIPS waiver, which would suspend patent rights for COVID-19 vaccines so countries like India and South Africa can access live-saving medication:

“The White House’s decision today has the potential to help save countless lives and end this crisis on a global scale. We’re grateful that President Biden has made good on his campaign promise, and we applaud his leadership to protect people instead of the profits of Big Pharma. We hope to see the TRIPS waiver move forward effectively and efficiently. We look forward to further action to scale up vaccine production and distribution as quickly as possible to ensure that countries around the world, and especially those in the Global South, have equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines.

“We thank the tireless effort of grassroots organizers here in the U.S. and across the globe who rallied at the homes and offices of elected officials, held people’s shareholder meetings in front of pharmaceutical companies, and took to the streets in support of global vaccine justice.

“This result is a testament to the power of global solidarity. When people in the U.S. recognize our shared destiny with people across borders and oceans, we can work together to take on some of the most powerful corporate lobbies in the world and win.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday issued the following statement after the Biden Administration announced it supports efforts to waive intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines: 

“I applaud President Biden and his administration for taking this bold step in response to the world’s most urgent crisis. Our vaccination efforts here at home will only be successful if vaccination efforts in the developing world happen simultaneously. Supporting this waiver, and putting people over profits, will help us to do that by speeding up the production and availability of vaccines. This is exactly the kind of leadership the world needs right now.

“I also recognize the dedicated work done by activists in communities around the world to put this issue on the global agenda. We are all in this together.”

Sen. Sanders last month led a letter to President Biden calling for the administration to back the waiver effort.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – In response to today’s announcement that the US Trade Representative is supporting waiving intellectual property rights on COVID-19 vaccines, Abby Maxman, Oxfam America’s President and CEO, made the following statement:

“President Biden and US Trade Representative Katherine Tai have recognized that Pharma’s ‘business as usual’ is killing us. In this moment of crisis, we applaud their willingness to pursue a new path that prioritizes public health over private profits.

“Today, we celebrate the momentous decision by President Biden and his administration to engage with the rest of the world to pull down all barriers standing in the way of everyone everywhere getting access to COVID vaccines.

“This is a testament to the widespread public movement calling for an end to vaccine monopolies. It is also a testament to an administration that listens and is willing to do whatever it takes to defeat COVID-19.

“Over the past year, nurses, doctors, Nobel Laureates, former heads of state, artists, economists, public health activists and more than two million people from around the world have rallied together to call on President Biden to reassert the US’s moral and public leadership on the world stage.  Today President Biden answered that call.

“We are at a crucial inflexion point in the fight against the coronavirus, yet we have remained essentially at the mercy of a handful of giant pharmaceutical corporations that have monopoly control over the life-saving technologies we all need. This may now begin to change.

“Loosening the monopoly grip that pharmaceutical companies have on these life-saving vaccines is an essential step toward increased manufacturing that would lead to worldwide immunization, helping the US and everyone else. We will now look to the White House for leadership in a strong WTO outcome, in urgently insisting on the transfer of technologies through the World Health Organization Covid-19 Technology Access pool, and in investing strategically to build up regional vaccine hubs to defeat this and future pandemics.

“The horrific situation in India is a warning to all of us that if we don’t move urgently to share the vaccine technology and scale up manufacturing so everyone, everywhere can have access to these lifesaving vaccines, we will never get the upper hand on COVID anywhere.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

The Biden administration is being urged Wednesday not to court “disaster” after new reporting revealed the White House is pushing for taxpayer subsidies to keep nuclear power plants afloat in its sweeping infrastructure plan.

According to Bloomberg and Reuters, the taxpayer prop-up would come in the form of “production tax credits,” which already apply to renewables like wind and solar.

The PTC effort “would likely be swept into” Biden’s American Jobs Plan, Reuters reported, stating that the White House “has signaled privately to lawmakers and stakeholders in recent weeks” its support for the action.

The American Jobs Plan already points broadly to support for nuclear power, stating the plan will invest in “advanced nuclear.”

Writing last month at The American Prospect, Gabrielle Gurley outlined the administration’s efforts at a clean energy standard (CES):

The White House has realized that finding a niche for nuclear energy is another way to bring Republicans along. (Its American Jobs Plan notes that the CES will “continue to leverage the carbon pollution-free energy provided by existing sources like nuclear and hydropower.”) That said, nuclear energy is anathema in some quarters. The 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster took the luster off the sector in Japan and Germany, but in the U.S., a new nuclear plant is planned for Georgia, and new, smaller nuclear plants are in the research and development stages even though they pose many of the same risks as conventional plants and cannot be brought online fast enough to make a difference. Proponents of nuclear argue that such plants can serve as a bridge fuel in the transition to renewables, at least until the solar and wind energy sectors can surmount the storage challenges posed by current levels of technology.

Among nuclear’s proponents in Congress is Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va), chair of the Senate Energy Committee.

Manchin—who continues to declare his support for continued burning of fossil fuels— asserted at a March committee hearing that “if we are serious about meeting our climate goals without sacrificing reliability, we must protect our existing [nuclear] fleet.”

Such thinking, according to progressive advocacy groups, is deeply flawed because it ignores problems with nuclear such as environmentally destructive uranium mining and disasters caused by flooding or other threats. Experts also warn that any commitment to nuclear stands in the way of the advancement of truly climate-friendly energy policies and infrastructure.

In a Facebook post corresponding to Reuters‘ reporting, Paul Gunter, director of Beyond Nuclear’s Reactor Oversight Project, called the PTC proposal “an example of nuclear power as a ‘diversion’ of resources from the climate crisis.”

“President Biden needs to open his eyes to see the bottomless bucket he’s considering pouring production tax credits into [are] economically failing and deteriorating nuclear power plants. Incentivizing and ramping up renewables, efficiency, and conservation is far more carbon reduction [and] cost effective per dollar, brings more sustainable job creation, and builds local economies,” rather than “hazardous centralized atomic financial sink holes,” wrote Gunter.

Lukas Ross, program manager at Friends of the Earth, concurred.

“A nuclear bailout is wrong for taxpayers, wrong for ratepayers, and wrong for the climate,” Ross said in a statement.

“Paying to keep aging reactors online is courting disaster and guaranteed to slow the deployment of truly clean renewables. Congress and President Biden should not throw good money after bad,” he said.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – Responding to President Biden’s announcement that the U.S. will support a TRIPS waiver, Paul O’Brien, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, stated:

“Amnesty International USA commends the Biden administration for supporting the emergency COVID-19 intellectual property waiver under consideration at the World Trade Organization. Adoption of this waiver is critical to disseminate vaccine technology to middle-income and low-income nations, so that all people around the world can get access to vaccines and treatment, as quickly as possible. By reversing the prior administration’s position, President Biden has made clear that the U.S. prioritizes people’s lives over pharmaceutical company profits.

“This is a critical step in the right direction to ensure affordable and equitable vaccine access globally. But more remains to be done. The administration should also promote multilateral efforts to scale up the production of COVID-19 health products through the WHO’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) to lead the global fight to eradicate the pandemic and to ensure that all people, regardless of where they live, are given their fair shot at access to the vaccine.”

Read more:

AIUSA statement for Mar 2021 House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee hearing on COVID and international development

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

Progressives and labor leaders on Wednesday welcomed news that the U.S. Department of Labor is rescinding a rule proposed by the Trump administration which aimed to make it harder for gig workers to sue companies like Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash. 

Announcing that the independent contractor rule is being withdrawn, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said the Biden administration is committed to preserving “essential working rights” and stopping “the erosion of worker protections that would have occurred had the rule gone into effect.”

“Legitimate business owners play an important role in our economy but, too often, workers lose important wage and related protections when employers misclassify them as independent contractors,” said Walsh. “We remain committed to ensuring that employees are recognized clearly and correctly when they are, in fact, employees so that they receive the protections the Fair Labor Standards Act provides.”

The rule would have limited workers’ ability to argue that they were misclassified as independent contractors rather than employees, and potentially put a minimum wage and overtime pay out of reach for millions of Americans who work in the gig economy. 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called the proposed measure an “awful rule” and applauded Walsh for rescinding it.

Companies like Uber and Lyft have aggressively lobbied in recent years for the right to classify the workers who keep their app-based businesses running as independent contractors, claiming the classification is beneficial for their workers because it allows for flexibility. 

The two rideshare companies supported Proposition 22 in California last year and spent millions of dollars helping the measure to pass, guaranteeing the companies savings on payroll taxes, unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, and other costs associated with granting employees basic protections.

Thanks to worker misclassification and the efforts of companies like Uber and Lyft, said the Economic Policy Institute in a 2015 report, “there are millions of Americans wrongly left uninsured, without benefits, and without job security.” Workers are also left paying for gas, car repairs, and other costs associated with working in the gig economy.

“All workers deserve basic rights like minimum wage and overtime pay,” Mary Kay Henry, international president of the SEIU, said Wednesday after Walsh announced the withdrawal of the rule.

Walsh won praise from workers’ rights advocates last week after he told Reuters, “In a lot of cases gig workers should be classified as employees.”

The labor secretary added that he wants to ensure the success of companies like Uber and DoorDash “trickles down to the worker.”

A coalition of companies including Uber and Postmates sued the Biden administration in March, after officials said they intended to block the independent contractor rule.

“When it comes to digital workers and app-based workers—they’re workers,” Jessica Looman of the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division, told reporters on Wednesday.  “And so we want to make sure we continue to look at their needs, and how they are interacting with their individual employer and whether they have protection.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

The staff and leadership exodus at the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) continues to grow in the wake of the group’s decision to promote Peter Bisbee, who was responsible for generating robocalls to turn people out for the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, to be the group’s new executive director. 

In an Apr. 25 email obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), RAGA‘s director of operations, Jason Heath, writes, “After 8 years of service, I am writing to inform you that I have made the difficult decision to resign as RAGA’s Director of Operations. I respect your votes, but the direction is not one I can honestly stand behind.”

Heath had been working for RAGA since it broke off from the Republic State Leadership Committee in 2014.

Heath’s departure comes on the heels of the sudden resignation of Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr as RAGA’s chair over Bisbee’s selection, citing “a significant difference of opinion…as to the direction this organization should take going forward” and “vastly opposite views of the significance of the events of January 6.”

Bisbee was formerly the head of RAGA’s sister organization, the Rule of Law Defense Fund (RLDF), and was responsible for sending out robocalls encouraging supporters to “march to the Capitol and call on Congress to stop the steal” days prior to the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol invasion. 

Other RAGA staff have quit over Bisbee’s selection as well. On April 22, the Alabama Political Reporter published a resignation letter sent to Republican attorneys general from Ashley Trenzeluk, RAGA’s finance director stating that,

As RLDF Executive Director, Pete Bisbee approved the robocall expenditure, and was the only other person accountable for RLDF involvement in the January 6 events. Over the last few months, I have fielded, reassured and assuaged concerns from our core donor base on the future direction of our organization. The result of the executive committee vote to nominate Pete as RAGA’s Executive Director is a decision I cannot defend.

Bisbee replaced Adam Piper, who resigned a week after the violent events unfolded at the Capitol and the story broke about RAGA’s involvement. Before his resignation, Piper was adamant that RAGA and RLDF had no role in the insurrection.

At least one other GOP attorney general has signaled discomfort with RAGA’s direction following the insurrection. in a Jan. 11 email obtained by CMD, Idaho’s Chief Deputy Attorney General Brian Kane writes that “Idaho will not be participating in any RLDF activities until further notice,” and any participation in RAGA will be “subject to the approval of Attorney General Wasden.”

Carr has been replaced as RAGA’s chair by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a strong Trump supporter. Schmitt received an invitation for an RLDF conference call with Bisbee on Jan. 5, but has not confirmed if he was on the call.

“Attorney General Schmitt absolutely had no knowledge of or involvement in the robocall, and condemns the violence that took place on [Jan. 6] in the strongest possible terms, period,” Schmitt spokesman Chris Nuelle said in a statement.

Schmitt undeniably worked hard for Trump in trying to prove that voter fraud led to Biden’s victory in November. On Nov. 9, nine Republican AGs joined Schmitt in filing an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in a case challenging Pennsylvania’s vote-by-mail ballots.

Schmitt also joined Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s controversial suit against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in the U.S. Supreme Court, challenging those states’ election law changes as unconstitutional. That case was dismissed.

Paxton, also a co-chair of Lawyers for Trump, was a speaker at the Jan. 6 rally preceding the violent events at the Capitol, where he told the crowd, “We will not quit fighting.”

Schmitt’s Solicitor General John Sauer registered for a “Senior Staff Summit” organized by RLDF on Sept. 23 and 24, where it held “war games” to map out post-election strategies if Trump lost. 

Piper emailed on Sept. 24, “WAR GAMES – 32 AG Staff Members are huddled in Atlanta for a series of conversations planning for what could come if we lose the White House.”

Piper also huddled the night of Jan. 5 at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. in Trump’s “private residence” with Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Peter Navarro, Corey Lewandowski, Michael Flynn, and others.

RAGA, RLDF, its members, and donors will be forever tied to the Jan. 6 insurrection, especially now that they have apparently doubled down on fanning the flames of Trump’s Big Lie.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – The following statement is attributable to Jeff Hauser, Executive Director of the Revolving Door Project:

“The Biden administration’s decision to support waiving intellectual property restrictions on COVID-19 vaccines is a genuinely transformative event, one which reinforces that there is real reason to hope for a better future when the right people are in place in the federal government. The Revolving Door Project praises and congratulates the Biden administration for this excellent decision. This one choice may save millions of lives.”

“In particular, we want to praise U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai for handling the first big political conflict of her tenure with grace and professionalism, as the administration ultimately worked toward the right call. We may not know exactly how the administration came to this decision for quite some time, but Tai’s ability to face down the well-funded and powerful pharmaceutical interests fighting against this waiver without fear shows that she was a perfect choice for this crucial job. Again, appointments matter. Personnel is policy.”

“We will closely watch the inevitable conflicts during the text-based negotiations at the World Trade Organization. But this initial decision is one which Americans and onlookers around the world should celebrate.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

Germany faces a major crisis.

The German birth rate is considerably below what’s needed to replace the population. German seniors, meanwhile, are living longer and drawing more on state resources for their pensions and health care.

There are basically two ways out of this demographic crisis. First of all, Germany could boost its birth rate.

The German state provides generous family leave and child-care policies—not to mention the famous Kindergelt, the direct monthly payments of child benefits—and the fertility rate has indeed edged up over the years from 1.24 children per woman in 1994 to 1.57 today. But the trend in industrialized countries suggests that it will be difficult to push the rate much higher. The closest to the replacement rate of 2.1 children that any EU country gets is France at 1.88.

The second way out of Germany’s crisis would be through immigration. The country could throw open its doors to people from all over the world to take unwanted and unfilled jobs, pay taxes, and support the increasingly aging population.

That is exactly what Germany did. The government of Angela Merkel, in 2015 and 2016, accepted over a million refugees from the Middle East and North Africa. Germany now has the fifth largest population of refugees in the world (after Turkey, Colombia, Pakistan, and Uganda).

This headline-grabbing decision, five years later, has been a remarkable success. The million refugees have prospered, reports the Center for Global Development.

Today, about half have found a job, paid training, or internship. On arrival, only about one percent declared having good or very good German language skills. By 2018, that figure had increased to 44 percent…Such successful integration also has impacted the local German population. For example, between 2008 and 2015, the number of employees in companies founded by migrants grew by 50 percent (to 1.5 million). It has also mobilized civil society. A survey by the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research suggests that 55 percent of Germans have contributed to the integration of refugees since 2015.

In 2015, nearly everyone in the media—German, European, international—referred to the millions of desperate people trying to get into Europe as an “immigration crisis.” They should have given it a different label: the immigration solution to the continent’s demographic crisis. Germany wisely chose to take advantage of this opportunity, while the countries of Eastern Europe by and large have embraced demographic suicide.

The naysayers had a field day back in 2015 with their predictions of political failure for Merkel and social chaos for Germany. Today, Germany continues to be the strongest European economy. It struggled during the pandemic, but is now rapidly scaling up its vaccinations. And the anti-immigrant backlash, represented by the far-right Alternative fur Deutschland, has ebbed, with the popularity of the party falling to 11 percent in recent polls. Meanwhile, with its liberal platform on immigration, the Green Party has surged to 25 percent and may well win the September 2021 elections.

It’s useful to bear the German experience in mind as the United States once again tackles its own “immigration crisis.”

Immigrants Are a Gift

The United States has been the exception to the demographic rule for industrialized countries. The U.S. fertility rate, at 1.73, is also well below replacement. But because of a constant stream of immigrants, America has managed to grow at a healthy clip.

America has always depended on immigrants and undocumented workers.

That began to change in the 2010s. According to the latest Census numbers, the United States grew at the second slowest rate over the last decade since the founding of the country. The culprits were a declining fertility rate—the birthrate has declined 19 percent since peaking in 2007—and a reduction in the number of immigrants. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic—in terms of mortality, long-term disability, and anxiety over economic insecurity—will only make matters worse.

America has always depended on immigrants and undocumented workers. That dependency has only grown more acute over the years. Let’s take a look at four critical sectors.

Between half and three-quarters of the farmworkers who ensure a supply of food to the American population are undocumented workers, and many of the rest are recent immigrants. The pandemic hit farmworkers and food manufacturing workers hard, and even the Trump administration had to acknowledge them as essential workers in reducing their risk of deportation (though not providing them additional protection against infection).

Even before the pandemic hit, the food sector faced a shortage of workers. “In a 2017 survey of farmers by the California Farm Bureau, 55 percent reported labor shortages, and the figure was nearly 70 percent for those who depend on seasonal workers,” according to The New York Times. Meanwhile, Congress (read: Republicans in the Senate) has failed to provide a legal framework for what remains an essential workforce, pandemic or no pandemic, though the recent Farm Workforce Modernization Act has a shot of passing with bipartisan support to provide a million undocumented farmworkers with legal status.

The health-care sector similarly depends on immigrants. Of the nearly 15 million people working in the health sector, about 18 percent are immigrants. COVID-19 is going to exact a heavy toll on this sector, though. According to a recent Washington Post poll, one in three health-care workers are thinking about exiting the profession: “Many talked about the betrayal and hypocrisy they feel from the public they have sacrificed so much to save—their clapping and hero-worship one day, then refusal to wear masks and take basic precautions the next, even if it would spare health workers the trauma of losing yet another patient.”

Even without pandemic-related job changes, the United States has been looking at a major upcoming nursing shortage: over a million new RNs are needed by 2022. Nursing schools are just not keeping up with the demand created by retirement.

Manufacturing, challenged by foreign competition and outsourcing, has infamously declined in the United States. Despite the spread of automation, this sector too needs more workers. There are currently 500,000 job openings, and one recent report estimates 2.1 million unfilled manufacturing jobs by 2030.

Then there’s domestic work, one of the fastest growing sectors of the U.S economy. Home health aides, child-care providers, housecleaners: the vast majority are women and more than one-third are foreign-born. “By 2026, care jobs will constitute one of the fastest growing professions in the country, and we will need more caregivers and nannies than we have ever needed before,” writes the National Domestic Workers Alliance. “Home-based elder care is already the single fastest growing occupation in our entire economy due to the rapidly growing aging population.”

Home health aides directly take care of aging Americans. But the United States needs younger workers across all professions to keep alive federal programs like Social Security that support aging Americans. The cohort of people aged 55 to 64 grew by 70 percent between 2000 and 2016 while the working-age population expanded by only 15 percent. That’s bad news for people looking to retire in the future on their Social Security benefits.

Fortunately, immigrants have come to the rescue. They are overwhelmingly working age and have a higher participation rate in the labor force than the native born. Their contributions to Social Security help keep the system afloat. The undocumented have been even more generous, providing an estimated $12 billion to the Social Security system through payroll taxes in 2010 alone (without much hope of ever drawing from the system themselves).

Even with these contributions, however, Social Security is still expected to face a major funding shortfall by 2035 under current projections. One answer: more immigrants!

If this story were a fairy tale, the immigrant would be the goose that lays the golden egg. Immigrants didn’t just build America. They are essential to the health and prosperity of the country today. Immigrants are the gift that keeps on giving.

Whenever a goose starts laying golden eggs, however, someone invariably starts talking about wringing the poor animal’s neck and impoverishing everyone involved.

The Politics of Immigration

The Republican Party remade itself into an anti-immigrant force before Donald Trump entered the political scene. Tea Party insurgents called for closing the border with Mexico. David Brat, an unknown economist, ousted House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a 2014 Virginia race by hammering at the immigration issue. Trump, however, took immigration and ran with it, promising to build a new wall along the southern border, shut down travel from predominantly Muslim countries, and make it nearly impossible for refugees and asylum-seekers to find haven in the United States.

Because of Trump’s success in turning his extreme positions into federal policy, immigration largely disappeared as an electoral issue in 2020. The Republican Party focused instead on economic attacks (Biden as a “socialist”) and cultural broadsides (the perennial racist and misogynist dog whistles).

But with the Democrats back in the White House and in control of Congress, immigration will likely become again a major campaign issue in the mid-term elections. The economy is on an upswing, the pandemic is waning, and the Biden administration has been competent and relatively scandal-free. Without an actual platform of their own since they decided to turn their party into a personality cult, the Republicans will inevitably characterize the influx of people over the border as a “crisis” and the president’s “biggest failure.”

The numbers at the border have indeed increased, with the influx for April near a 20-year high. Despite the Republican Party criticisms, these numbers are not the result of Biden administration policies. The number of people apprehended at the border, for instance, spiked in 2018, under Trump, at more than 850,000, which obviously had nothing to do with Biden.

The surge so far this year is largely seasonal, a result of pent-up demand from the COVID-19 border closures, and a function of all the applicants stranded south of the border by Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy. The numbers already appear to be plateauing. And the number of unaccompanied minors being held in Border Patrol facilities dropped dramatically in the last week.

The Biden administration has reversed many of Trump’s policies, canceling funding for the border wall, reversing the “Muslim travel ban,” and dismantling the “Remain in Mexico” program. Without any fanfare, the president also allowed the ban on guest worker visas to expire at the end of March. Pictures of joyful family reunifications at the border are now replacing Trump-era images of children separated from the parents.

The administration has also pledged to address the root causes of migration by funding initiatives in Central America that will reduce violence and corruption, stabilize economies, and address humanitarian crises. That, of course, is easier said than done given the authoritarian leadership in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Tasked with tackling this issue, Vice President Kamala Harris is well aware of the folly of funneling aid into corrupt governments, and she is reportedly lining up civil society representatives to meet on upcoming visits to the region. A long-term strategy of fostering political and economic transformation in the region, however, won’t win any points with Republicans or most voters in the United States in the short term.

The recent kerfuffle around refugee policy illustrates the political stakes.

As a candidate, Biden promised to bring U.S. policies on refugees and asylum in line with international standards and raise the annual ceiling to more or less the level of the Obama years. Because of a failure to file the necessary paperwork, however, the number of refugees admitted into the United States in the first months of the Biden administration remained extremely low. Because refugees are often conflated in the public mind with immigrants—and the administration’s immigration policy was getting poor marks in the polls—the president tried to get away with suppressing the number of incoming refugees. Challenged by members of his own party, Biden again reversed himself, returning to the previous promise of a cap for the remainder of this year of 62,500 and an annual ceiling of 125,000 for 2022.

The back-and-forth on refugee policy is an unusual deviation from an otherwise consistent set of policies coming from the administration. It’s a sign that immigration will continue to be subject to finger-in-the-wind calculations rather than rational debate. It’s a shame that it will require enormous political courage to embrace policies that are in the best interest of the United States, whether from the point of view of the labor force, the sustainability of the social welfare system, or the livelihoods of the newest residents of the country.

Republicans, with their steadfast commitment to political divisiveness and firearms, love to shoot themselves in the foot. There’s no reason for the rest of the country to follow suit. Maybe a delegation of Syrian-Germans can come to America on a speaking tour to explain how a “crisis” is really an opportunity.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – “Today’s decision by D.C. District Judge Dabney Friedrich to vacate the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) temporary federal eviction moratorium will cause irreparable harm to millions of families across the country who have been devastated by the economic and global health crisis. Right now, nearly one in seven renters are behind on rent and the eviction moratorium provided temporary relief for families who were on the brink of losing their homes. This ruling has stripped critical housing relief from millions of families and will force them and their children into homelessness or unsafe housing. This decision will remove the precarious safety net that has kept families in their homes and will have long-term consequences for them and their children.

“The Biden administration and Congress must take immediate action to reinstate and expand the eviction moratorium and protect the nearly 10 million people who are behind on rent. The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the inequalities in our housing system and the Biden administration must act now to provide long term protections for tenants for the duration of this crisis.

“Our families voted for support and guidance through this pandemic and it is the Biden administration’s responsibility to ensure they continue receiving it.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – The number of U.S. residents who didn’t have enough to eat in one week dropped slightly between March and April 2021, but, by the last full week of April, 16.8 million Americans still suffered from food scarcity, according to just-released data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.

Anti-hunger advocates credited recent federal increases in cash assistance and food aid for reducing food hardship nationwide but indicated that food scarcity was still at a modern high.

In the week of April 14-26, 13 million Americans “sometimes” didn’t have enough to eat and an additional 3.8 million “often did not have enough to eat,” meaning a total of 16.8 million people did not always have enough to eat. This is a decrease compared to 18.4 million in the last full week in March. In contrast, during the week of January 6, before President Biden took office, 23.7 million Americans did not have enough to eat. The number of people in U.S. households with children who did not have enough to eat also decreased slightly, from 12.5 million in January to 9 million in March to 8.4 million in April.

Said Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America, a nationwide nonpartisan direct service and advocacy organization, “This new federal data demonstrates significant, measurable progress, proving that government programs do indeed work. The polices of the Biden Administration and the Democratic majorities in Congress have, in fact, reduced U.S. hunger. But we must also be clear that the nation is still suffering from a massive, long-term hunger crisis, and that more than 16 million of our neighbors struggled against hunger in just one week. Concerned Americans should pressure their elected officials to continue to expand the public polices that are working and donate as generously as they can to effective nonprofit groups like Hunger Free America.”

In both March and April, more than 40 million additional Americans couldn’t always obtain the types of food they wanted, for a variety of reasons, including lack of funds, food retailers not have the food they wanted in stock, and food retailers not being able to deliver to their homes.

Continued Berg, “This additional data proves that the federal government must do more to enable low-income people to order food online for home delivery using SNAP benefits (formerly known as food stamps).”

Detailed data on food scarcity from the U.S. Census Bureau can be found below. Hunger Free America’s comprehensive plan to end hunger through government policies and programs, including an increased federal minimum wage, additional funding for school meals, and an expansion of SNAP benefits, can be found on their website.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – In response to news that the United States is reversing its opposition rof a waiver of intellectual property rules at the World Trade Organization so that COVID vaccines and treatments can be produced in as many places as possible as quickly as possible, Citizens Trade Campaign, which helped organize a 431-group letter in support of the waiver earlier this year, released the following statement by its executive director, Arthur Stamoulis:

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – Last night, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill, S.830, that restores voting rights to people upon release from prison. With the Governor’s signature, New York joins 18 other states that have laws automatically restoring voting rights to everyone upon release from prison.

Sean Morales-Doyle, deputy director of the Voting Rights and Elections Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, had the following comment:

“This is a good day for New York State’s democracy and our communities. People on parole live and work in our cities and towns, and by automatically restoring their right to vote, New York is finally welcoming them as full participants in society. That’s a crucial change, one that will ameliorate one of the vestiges of Jim Crow. Due to the racial disparities in New York’s criminal justice system, nearly three-quarters of those disenfranchised by the ban on voting for people on parole were Black or Latino. Now the law makes clear that they have a say in the elections that impact them and their families.”

As a practical matter, most New Yorkers on parole have had the right to vote since April 2018, when Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that he would begin using his pardon power to restore those rights individually.

The new law codifies the restoration of voting rights so that no one has to rely on a discretionary pardon to vote and reduce the administrative burden on the executive branch. And by providing a process for voter registration upon release, it ensures that the legal restoration of voting rights actually leads to registration and voting by impacted New Yorkers.

More information on rights restoration efforts in New York is here.

More information on rights restoration nationwide is here.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) today announced a recall of the Peloton Tread+ treadmills. The CPSC issued a safety warning on April 17, urging consumers to stop using the treadmill after receiving complaints of multiple injuries – including injuries to small children and pets – and one death. Peloton was initially defiant. Nearly a month later, Peloton is reversing course. Remington A. Gregg, counsel for civil justice and consumer rights for Public Citizen, released the following statement:

“Announcement of Peloton’s Tread+ recall is huge. It shows what the CPSC can do as a regulatory agency when it flexes its muscle on behalf of consumer safety. We urge the CPSC to continue taking bold enforcement actions when necessary to protect our families. That said, a recall is only a first, though important, step. The CPSC must monitor the Tread+ recall to ensure that individuals are removing them from their homes and that they aren’t being sold on the secondary market. In many ways, the CPSC’s work to protect families from unsafe treadmills is just beginning.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

A new study published Wednesday in the journal Nature warns that if the world’s governments fail to meet warming targets set by the Paris climate accord, sea level rise from the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet will accelerate at a “rapid and unstoppable” rate in the coming decades.

Authored by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the new paper finds that if planetary warming continues at its current rate—which is headed toward 3° Celsius above pre-industrial levels—Antarctic melting will reach a tipping point by 2060, beyond which the consequences would be “irreversible on multi-century timescales.”

“If we did nothing at all to reduce emissions we could get five meters of sea level rise just from Antarctica by 2200, at which point you’d have to remap the world from space. It would be unimaginable.”
—Robert DeConto, University of Massachusetts Amherst“If the world warms up at a rate dictated by current policies we will see the Antarctic system start to get away from us around 2060,” Robert DeConto, the lead author of the study, told The Guardian. “Once you put enough heat into the climate system, you are going to lose those ice shelves, and once that is set in motion you can’t reverse it.”

“It’s really the next few decades that will determine the sea level rise from Antarctica,” DeConto added. “These ice shelves won’t be able to just grow back.”

The researchers find that if the most optimistic Paris goal of no more than 1.5° Celsius of warming by the end of the century is met, the Antarctic ice sheet would contribute around six centimeters of sea level rise by 2100.

“But if the current course toward 3 degrees is maintained, the model points to a major jump in melting,” the study warns. “Unless ambitious action to rein in warming begins by 2060, no human intervention, including geoengineering, would be able to stop 17 to 21 centimeters of sea-level rise from Antarctic ice melt alone by 2100.”

Under a scenario in which no further action is taken to limit planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, the research paper finds, Antarctic melting would contribute a “globally catastrophic” 10 meters or more to sea level rise by 2300.

“If we did nothing at all to reduce emissions we could get five meters of sea level rise just from Antarctica by 2200, at which point you’d have to remap the world from space,” said DeConto. “It would be unimaginable.”

The study comes days after U.S. President Joe Biden hosted a climate summit with 40 world leaders to discuss ways to bring the world into line with Paris warming targets. Biden, for his part, pledged to cut U.S. emissions at least 50% below 2005 levels by the end of the decade—a goal climate activists slammed as nowhere near sufficient.

“Science and justice demand that we reduce emissions by 70% from 2005 levels by 2030 on the road to zero emissions by mid-century,” Janet Redman of Greenpeace USA said last month. “The White House can get this done by removing government subsidies to fossil fuel companies, investing in an equitable and sustainable economic recovery, and stopping fishy carbon offset deals.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – This morning, two dozen organizations sent Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis a letter urging him to veto the anti-voter bill, SB 90.

The letter said the legislation “will create barriers for eligible Floridians to exercise their freedom to vote  by making mail ballots less accessible and more difficult to cast, severely limiting voter assistance, and making it more difficult for community voter registration drives to do their critical outreach. We ask you to do the right thing by Florida voters, stand by your pride in Florida’s 2020 election administration, and veto this harmful bill.”

“We are particularly concerned that SB 90, by design, seeks to silence voters’ voices based on what they look like or where they come from,” the organizations said. “We are particularly concerned that SB 90, by design, seeks to silence voters’ voices based on what they look like or where they come from.”

Organizations that signed the letter include:

Fair Elections Center
All Voting Is Local Action
ACLU of Florida
Advancement Project
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Florida Region
Common Cause Florida
Emgage Action Florida
Equal Ground Action Fund
Faith in Florida
Faith in Public Life
Florida Rights Restoration Coalition
Florida Rising
The League of Women Voters of Florida
NAACP Florida State Conference
National Haitian American Elected Officials Network
People Over Profits
Progress Florida
1199 SEIU
Sierra Club Florida
Southern Poverty Law Center Action
State Voices Florida
Voter Participation Center
Voting Rights Lab
Women Talk Black

Read the full letter here.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – General Dynamics (GD) held its annual general meeting in Reston, Virginia. CODEPINK cofounder Medea Benjamin confronted the CEO and the board with questions about the company’s weapon sales to Saudi Arabia and other repressive regimes, such as the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt. While video recording was not allowed at the meeting, an audio of the discussion is available here. 

“I asked CEO Phebe Novakovic how she feels about personally making $21 million a year through a business model that thrives on conflict, death and destruction,” said Benjamin. “I mentioned a 2000-pound General Dynamics bomb that hit a Yemeni marketplace, killing 97 civilians—including 25 children. I asked what is the moral justification for flooding the Middle East with more weapons when the region is desperate to end the conflicts that General Dynamics profits from.”

Benjamin brought up the unethical revolving door between the company and the government and pointed to General James Mattis as the perfect example. Mattis, who was at the meeting, was on the board before becoming Trump’s Secretary of Defense, and at the May 5 shareholder meeting he was voted back on the board.

Benjamin also brought up the company’s involvement in Trump’s detention of children at the U.S.-Mexico border, accusing the company of profiting from children locked in cages. CEO Novakovic said that was not true and suggested a meeting between herself and Benjamin to clarify the company’s positions and actions on this and other issues. Benjamin has followed up with a meeting request.

General Dynamics is one of the world’s largest arms manufacturers, with a long-lasting contract with Saudi Arabia estimated at $1.3 billion dollars-providing weapons to a country waging war on Yemen that has already killed an estimated thousands of innocent civilians. The company’s arms sales to despotic regimes in the Middle East only contribute to the ongoing conflict and humanitarian crisis in the region, which creates strong resentment towards our country and contributes to the rise of violent extremism.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – Working-class mothers experienced the largest decline in employment and the largest labor force exodus between 2019 and 2020. The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) published today an illustration of what that looks like.

 This illustration helps to put in context CEPR’s recent analysis of the uneven distribution of the pandemic-induced “shecession.” The overall decline of women in the labor force shows a class-based dividing line, with working-class mothers disproportionately pushed out.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

Delivering another blow to people across the United States still struggling financially during the coronavirus pandemic and related economic crisis, a Trump-appointed federal judge on Wednesday vacated the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s temporary federal eviction moratorium, which was set to expire at the end of next month.

First enacted under former President Donald Trump last year, the CDC moratorium has been repeatedly extended—including twice under President Joe Biden.

“The Covid-19 pandemic has presented a historic threat to the nation’s public health. Keeping people in their homes and out of crowded or congregate settings—like homeless shelters—by preventing evictions is a key step in helping to stop the spread of Covid-19,” CDC Director Rochelle P. Walensky said in March, when the agency extended the moratorium until June 30, amid estimates that 12 million U.S. tenants were behind on rent.

In a 20-page ruling (pdf) expected by legal experts, Judge Dabney Friedrich of the U.S. District Court for D.C. wrote: “The court recognizes that the Covid-19 pandemic is a serious public health crisis that has presented unprecedented challenges for public health officials and the nation as a whole. The pandemic has triggered difficult policy decisions that have had enormous real-world consequences. The nationwide eviction moratorium is one such decision.”

“It is the role of the political branches, and not the courts, to assess the merits of policy measures designed to combat the spread of disease, even during a global pandemic. The question for the court is a narrow one: Does the Public Health Service Act grant the CDC the legal authority to impose a nationwide eviction moratorium? It does not,” concluded the Trump appointee, confirmed in 2017 by a 97-3 vote in the U.S. Senate.

Friedrich’s ruling comes in response to one of multiple legal challenges to the moratorium, including another in which an Ohio-based federal judge determined that the CDC overstepped its authority. The U.S. Department of Justice, which represents the CDC in such disputes, is appealing a similar ruling by a federal judge in Texas.

During a Wednesday press briefing, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the Deparment of Justice is now reviewing the latest ruling.

In a series of tweets about the development, Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said it is “infuriating” that landlords are continuing to push for evictions during the pandemic just as $46 billion in rental assistance slowly reaches renters in need.

“Several district courts have attempted to strike down moratorium, but all had limited application,” Yentel noted. “There are now numerous conflicting court rulings at the district court level, with several judges ruling in favor of the moratorium and several ruling against.”

Like Yentel, Emily A. Benfer, a law professor and expert in health and housing justice, urged the Justice Department to appeal Friedrich’s decision:

Other advocates and reporters also took issue with the judge’s reasoning and warned of the impact that the ruling could have on renters:

The Hill noted that the ruling comes as landlords are trying to throw out tens of thousands of tenants for nonpayment, citing a study from the Private Equity Stakeholder Project that found across just seven states, corporate landlords filed more than 56,000 eviction actions since the moratorium first took effect last September.

Renters and housing advocates, meanwhile, have argued that the CDC’s moratorium is far from enough and called on Congress to also cancel rent and enact housing debt forgiveness during the public health crisis. In March, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and other progressives reintroduced the Rent and Mortgage Cancellation Act.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – The Facebook Oversight Board announced Wednesday that it has upheld former President Trump’s temporary suspension, but has pushed the decision for a permanent ban back to Facebook to be reconsidered within six months. The Board rendered its decision without accounting for Trump’s full history of making racist, violent, and untrue statements on Facebook. The following is a statement from David Brody, who leads the Digital Justice Initiative at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law:

“For the good of the nation, Facebook must immediately and permanently ban former President Trump. He used Facebook to endanger our democracy, empower hateful violence, and promote racial division. Continuing to drag this decision out only causes more harm.”

“In their decision today, the Facebook Oversight Board made many of the same errors that Facebook makes in its own enforcement decisions. It did not evaluate the full context of the case and it used legal technicalities to avoid answering hard questions. For example, it failed to address Trump’s repeated use of Facebook to inflame hate and racism, or his long history of spreading divisive lies and disinformation prior to the 2020 election. Over-reliance on formalist schools of legal analysis entrenches dominant power structures by turning a blind eye to the big picture.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – Responding to the Facebook Oversight Board voting today to uphold Donald Trump’s ban from the platform after his account was suspended four months ago for inciting violence and stating that Facebook must reassess the penalty because it imposed it “indefinitely”, Michael Kleinman, the Director of the Silicon Valley Initiative at Amnesty International USA said:

“Donald Trump repeatedly encouraged hatred, discrimination, and violence by his supporters affecting journalists, activists, faith communities and others using his social media platform. While the Oversight Board upheld Facebook’s January 7 decision to restrict Trump’s access to Facebook and Instagram, it criticized the ‘standardless’ and open-ended nature of the suspension.

“Crucially, the decision doesn’t solve any of the fundamental problems with Facebook’s disastrous handling of hateful and violent speech on their platform. The Oversight Board’s decisions only apply to specific cases – and while it can offer recommendations, it lacks the power to change Facebook’s overall approach to such content, particularly its inconsistent application of its Terms of Service globally.

“Facebook and other social media companies have enormous power when deciding what can and cannot be said on their platforms. They have a responsibility to protect people from content on their platforms that incites violence or hatred. Yet Facebook’s surveillance-based business model can incentivize the spread of hateful and violent speech, which drives user engagement. The Board does not have a say about how Facebook’s recommendation algorithms work to demote or privilege certain content or ads, and today’s decision does not change that fact.

“We are long past the point when we can rely on Facebook or any other social media platform to police itself. Urgent government regulation is needed to tackle unaccountable algorithms and a core business model based on invasive surveillance and profiling.”

Background

After the storming of the Capitol, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, announced that Donald Trump would be blocked from using both Facebook and Instagram “indefinitely” for violating its policy by using the platform “to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government.” The case was then handed to the board for review.

The Facebook Oversight Board hears appeals from users on Facebook’s content moderation decisions.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

Cariol Horne is my newest social justice hero.  A Black Buffalo, New York police officer in 2006, she forcibly intervened when her fellow officer Gregory Kwiatkowski was viciously beating Neal Mack, a Black man.

Cariol Horne reaffirms my conviction that no matter the obstacles, if we hold fast to a vision of justice and keep moving toward it, we will indeed overcome.She heard Mack gasp, “I can’t breathe” after Kwiatkowski put him in a chokehold, with a knee to the neck.

“Let him go!” she screamed.

But Kwiatkowski didn’t move.

“Neal Mack looked like he was about to die,” Horne reported. Desperate, she jumped on Kwiatkowski’s back, trying to move him. He punched her face, damaging teeth, but she kept fighting until she was able to wrench him off. And Mack survived.

Yet instead of commendation, she got fired for “obstructing” a fellow officer who, far from being punished, was soon promoted to lieutenant. Because Horne had been vocal in her complaint, he sued her for defamation and won, with an award of $65,000.

She, a mother of five now without income, lived in her car.

Horne sued the Buffalo Police Department, determined to get her job back. She lost, but kept on appealing for thirteen years until finally, just last month (April, 2021), Judge Dennis Ward of New York Superior Court ruled in her favor. “While the Eric Garners and the George Floyds of the world never had a chance for a ‘do over,’ at least here the correction can be done,” he said, reinstating all her back benefits.

Courage triumphed, and also showed us what true police protection could look like. Her intervention led to the Buffalo Common Council passing “Cariol’s Law,” imposing a legal duty on police to intervene. “Officers will no longer be able to stand by and watch or participate in police brutality,” Horne said.

Simply “put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels … upon the levers,” Mario Savio famously said during Berkeley’s 1964 Free Speech Movement, urging listeners to act whenever they saw injustice. That ethic, learned from my parents, was the core of our family values. A white woman who’s often taken unpopular stands, I married a Black man when it was still illegal in half the states, worked full-time for racial justice, then married the woman I’ve now been with forty years.

But Cariol Horne inspires me to do more. I love how she jumped on her fellow officer, in one stride leaping over the blue wall as if it were nonexistent. And then her equity vision expanded so broadly she wrote a landmark law to benefit others as well as herself, and spent four years lobbying Buffalo to pass it. “Cariol’s Law” is now a model to every city grappling with police complicity in murder.

Her persistence reminds me of the impact one determined person can make. She never gave up her fight, even when it looked hopeless, and saw her faith ultimately rewarded. Cariol Horne reaffirms my conviction that no matter the obstacles, if we hold fast to a vision of justice and keep moving toward it, we will indeed overcome.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – Today, the Facebook Oversight Board announced its decision to uphold Facebook’s suspension of former U.S. President Donald Trump. Facebook’s decision to indefinitely suspend Trump’s account followed the former president’s actions, utilizing the platform to incite the violent and deadly January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

However, the Facebook Oversight Board found it was inappropriate for Facebook to indefinitely suspend Trump’s account without establishing criteria for when or whether accounts will be restored after an indefinite suspension. Within six months, the Oversight Board directed Facebook to reexamine the indefinite suspension of Trump’s account and decide the appropriate penalty.  

Common Cause members submitted over 23,000 comments to the Oversight Board expressing outrage over Facebook’s failure to consistently enforce its civic integrity policies, which allowed Trump to spread massive amounts of disinformation and use the platform to incite violence. 

Statement of Yosef Getachew, Common Cause Media and Democracy Program Director 

“The Facebook Oversight Board’s decision exposes many of the flaws in the platform’s existing content moderation policies and practices. While the ruling upholds the temporary suspension of Trump’s account, it effectively punts the decision back to Facebook to apply one of its existing policies to determine the future of the former president’s account. In the next six months, the platform could decide to permanently ban or restore Trump’s account. Whatever decision Facebook decides is potentially reviewable by the Oversight Board, creating an endless cycle of uncertainty.  

“But we did not have to get to this point had Facebook invested in strong enforcement mechanisms and consistently enforced its civic integrity policies. The former president is a known perpetrator of disinformation and hate speech, but the platform repeatedly refused to hold him to any standard.  Before, during, and after the 2020 presidential election, Facebook allowed Trump to spread disinformation, amplify hate speech and incite violence with impunity. Former President Trump continues to use other social media platforms to spread the rhetoric and disinformation that led to the violence and tragedy of the January 6 insurrection. The former president’s continued use of social media to spread the rhetoric and disinformation that led to the violence and tragedy of the January 6 insurrection shows he should not be allowed to return to a platform that has previously been unwilling to hold him accountable. 

“Moving forward, Facebook must strengthen its civic integrity policies and close loopholes that allow bad actors to spread harmful content. For years, disinformation agents have exploited loopholes in Facebook’s policies that have allowed them to post content that breaks the platform’s rules without any penalties. Facebook must remove exemptions for politicians that allow them to spread disinformation. Instead, Facebook must apply all of its policies globally. 

“In addition to closing loopholes, Facebook must consistently enforce new policies along with its existing civic integrity policies.  Despite its existing civic integrity policies, Facebook failed to consistently apply misinformation labels to inaccurate posts or reduce the distribution of misleading content during the election. In fact, a recent report from Avaaz found that Facebook failed to prevent billions of views from misinformation-sharing pages related to the election. Post-election, Facebook failed to prevent the spread of groups that glorified violence and amplified conspiracy theories — many of which are still reportedly active.  

“Facebook’s Oversight Board itself has proven to be a wholly inadequate tool to review the platform’s content moderation decisions. While the Oversight Board solicits public comments prior to making a decision, the process is limited to a short submission window, and comments are not accepted in non-English languages. This undermines the ability for marginalized communities impacted by a particular decision from Facebook to meaningfully participate. The Oversight Board’s decisions are also not binding, meaning Facebook can ignore them if it chooses. Given the lack of transparency around the Oversight Board’s decision-making process and its inability to enforce decisions or implement policy, it serves as nothing more than cover for Facebook’s own inaction. Facebook should not hide behind an Oversight Board to make content moderation decisions. 

“Disinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms has led to voter suppression, real-world violence, and weakened trust in our civic institutions. Social media platforms have yet to show they are up to the task of consistently enforcing their existing policies and appropriately expanding them to limit the spread of harmful content that has already posed significant consequences to our democracy. Lawmakers and regulators must enact policies that hold platforms accountable for perpetuating business models that have led to the proliferation of harmful and false content.” 

To view this statement online, click here. 

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

The Biden Administration has taken numerous steps to shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy. On his first day in office, he canceled the Keystone XL pipeline. A federal court has declared the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is operating without the necessary permits. Tribes and environmentalists are calling for him to shut down DAPL.

“Line 3’s most serious immediate impacts will be on Indigenous peoples and their lands and waters along the line.”

Meanwhile, opposition to the Enbridge Line 3 continues in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Currently, the 1,097-mile-long Enbridge Line 3 pipeline carries tar sands crude oil from Edmonton, Alberta, through Minnesota, to the town of Superior in northern Wisconsin.

On Friday, May 7, a coalition of organizations across the United States will “organize actions and protests at the branches, offices, and headquarters of the banks funding Line 3.” In order from highest to lowest, the top five financers in the United States include: Citibank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, J.P. Morgan, and Truist.

In 2014, Enbridge, a Canadian-based oil company, announced plans to replace the existing 282 miles of the pipeline with 330 miles of a new pipeline. The original line had been operating since 1968 and, according to the Minnesota Department of Commerce’s Final Environmental Impact Statement, is “corroded and cracked.” The new pipeline runs along a different route.

While Enbridge frames the pipeline simply as a replacement, its new route has led many to call it an entirely new pipeline.

The proposed new route cuts across several tribal territories, including those of the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe, Chippewa). It would also run across 200 bodies of water and 800 wetlands. These waters and the nearby lands are vital for fishing and the gathering of wild rice.

In December 2020, the Red Lake Nation and the White Earth Nation filed a federal lawsuit to stop the pipeline. It was denied in February 2021.

The Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, the Red Lake Nation, and the White Earth Nation, along with Honor the Earth and the Sierra Club, have also sued Minnesota for its Public Utilities Commission’s approval of the permits.

In a 1837 treaty, the Ojibwe ceded the lands to the United States, so long as “the privilege of hunting, fishing, and gathering the wild rice, upon the lands, the rivers, and the lakes included in the territory ceded, is guaranteed to the Indians.”

The Great Lakes constitute one-fifth of the world’s fresh water. On its website, Honor the Earth states not only that “our wild rice beds, lakes, and rivers are precious” but also that “our regional fisheries generate $7.2 billion annually and supports 49,000 jobs.”

Winona LaDuke (Ojibwe), executive director and co-founder of Honor the Earth, tells The Progressive, “Honor the Earth opposes the Line 3 tar sands oil project because, like Minnesota’s own Department of Commerce, it believes that the line is unnecessary and is not economically or environmentally viable, especially now as the tar sands industry collapses. Line 3’s most serious immediate impacts will be on Indigenous peoples and their lands and waters along the line.”

On June 3, 2019, the Minnesota Court of Appeals stated that it “found the revised Final Environmental Impact Statement inadequate because it did not address the potential impact of an oil spill into the Lake Superior watershed.”

The Enbridge terminal in Superior, Wisconsin, is a crucial node. From here, according to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, the crude oil would head to refineries in the Gulf Coast, the Midwest, and Eastern Canada.

Line 3 is not the only Enbridge pipeline facing pressure.

Enbridge Line 5, built in 1953, carries oil 645 miles from Superior,  on through northern Michigan and across the Straits of Mackinac through Michigan to Sarnia, Ontario. From Sarnia, it continues across Canada to Montreal, Quebec. A recent article on Enbridge Line 5 in The Washington Post calls the pipeline “a key conduit for refineries in those regions, which make gas, propane, and home-heating oils, as well as jet fuels for airports in Toronto and Detroit.”

In Michigan last fall, The Washington Post article continues, Governor Gretchen Whitmer revoked “the 1953 easement that allows the pipeline to cross the straits, citing the ‘unreasonable risk’ that they pose to the Great Lakes and what she said were Enbridge’s ‘persistent’ breaches of the easement’s terms.”

So Enbridge is currently feeling the heat at various points along its pipelines.

According to the recent article in The Washington Post, when former Michigan governor and current United States Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm was asked about Enbridge Line 3, she said: “If we’re going to do pipes, let’s do pipes that build the infrastructure of America in a way that is future-looking” and continued “and not rely upon fuels or transport fuels—even though our neighbors to the North want it—that are not going to contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

Added to the protests is the reduced cost of renewable energy and the Biden administration’s support for it. Last week, Bill McKibben reported that “renewable energy is suddenly startlingly cheap.”

Just today, E&E reported how the “gas industry secretly fights electrification.” The article cited specifically the Energy Solutions Center, a trade group based in Washington D.C., and its presentation to “combat electrification.” One slide in the presentation showed that Enbridge forms part of the trade group.

In Minnesota, protests organized by Indigenous people have continued unabated. On March 8, more than 350 cosigners representing local, state, national, and international organizations sent a letter to President Joe Biden, “urging him to stop construction of the pipeline in Minnesota by suspending or revoking its federal permits.” The signatories included, among many others, the Giniw Collective and Honor the Earth.

On April 1, a day after Biden unveiled his new infrastructure plan and on the day Enbridge began a two-month break in construction, Indigenous youth rallied in Washington, D.C., demanding the Enbridge Lines 3 and 5, the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Mountain Valley Pipeline all be stopped. During Earth Week, on April 24, 2021, a solidarity protest organized by Madison Area Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) took place in Madison, Wisconsin.

Winona LaDuke tells The Progressive, “the increasing climate threats to Minnesota—and the planet—will be exponentially exacerbated by this pipeline. In short, Line 3 is a climate time bomb. Tar sands is the dirtiest and most expensive oil on the planet to extract, and the equivalent of fifty coal-fired power plants. It also flies in the face of everything Governor Walz and his agencies have said about improving relations with tribal communities and protecting against climate change. Stop Line 3.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.