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Author: Jake Johnson

  • Asa Hutchinson, Enemy of Abortion Rights Who Kicked Thousands Off Medicaid, Announces White House Bid



    Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced Sunday that he will run for the White House in 2024, casting himself as a “different” kind of Republican than Donald Trump and his most fervent GOP allies.

    But Hutchinson’s record as governor of Arkansas—a post he held from 2015 to 2023—indicates that his policy positions on abortion rights, immigration, federal spending, healthcare, and other key issues closely align with those of extremist Republicans.

    “I am going to be running,” Hutchinson said in an appearance on ABC‘s “This Week” with Jonathan Karl. “And the reason is, I’ve traveled the country for six months, I hear people talk about the leadership of our country. I’m convinced that people want leaders that appeal to the best of America, and not simply appeal to our worst instincts.”

    Hutchinson said following news of Trump’s indictment at the hands of a Manhattan grand jury that the former president should drop out of the 2024 race, a position he reiterated in his ABC interview.

    “For the sake of the office of the presidency, I do think that’s too much of a sideshow and distraction,” said Hutchinson, who in 2016 described Trump as “exactly the kind of transparent, straight-talking leader America needs.”

    As governor of Arkansas, Hutchinson signed into law a near-total abortion ban and—with permission from the Trump administration—made his state the first to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients, a move that kicked more than 18,000 people off the program.

    A federal judge struck down the work requirements in 2019.

    “Asa Hutchinson now wants to rewrite history—but his support for Trump and the MAGA agenda speaks for itself,” Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison said in a statement Sunday. “As governor, Hutchinson signed one of the strictest abortion bans in the country, ripped healthcare away from thousands of Arkansans, and advocated for taking away the ACA’s protections for those with preexisting conditions. He’s just another extremist joining the ever-expanding race for the MAGA base.”

    While Hutchinson did not outline in any detail the policy platform he intends to run on, he told ABC: “I think that we need to have border security. I think we need to have a strong America. We need to spend less at the federal level.”

    Hutchinson joins a GOP presidential field that includes Trump, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and far-right activist Vivek Ramaswamy. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is also expected to run.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • 15 Million People May Lose Health Coverage as Medicaid “Purge” Begins

    Beginning on Saturday, states across the U.S. will start the process of stripping Medicaid coverage from millions of people as pandemic-related protections lapse, part of a broader unraveling of the safety net that was built to help families withstand the public health crisis and resulting economic turmoil. Medicaid’s continuous coverage requirements were enacted early in the COVID-19 pandemic to…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • ‘Bending the Knee’ to Insurance Lobby, Biden Admin Delays Medicare Advantage Reforms



    The Biden administration announced Friday that it will allow Medicare Advantage plans to continue overbilling the federal government in the short term after the insurance industry lobbied aggressively against proposed rule changes aimed at cracking down on fraud in the privately run program.

    The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said it is still moving ahead with the changes despite industry pressure to drop or completely overhaul them.

    But instead of implementing the reforms all at once, CMS outlined a plan to phase in the changes over a three-year period, a concession to large insurers that dominate the Medicare Advantage market—which is funded by the federal government.

    “How Washington really works: Medicare Advantage providers whined for months that they simply couldn’t survive without being able to rip off the government, so the government said ‘you can rip us off for just a little longer,’” The American Prospect‘s David Dayen tweeted in response to the CMS announcement.

    The changes involve tweaks to the Medicare Advantage risk-adjustment model, which determines how much the federal government pays insurers to cover patient care.

    Medicare Advantage plans are notorious for piling on diagnoses to make patients appear sicker than they are to reap larger payments from the federal government. CMS estimates that overpayments to Medicare Advantage totaled $11.4 billion in fiscal year 2022, a sizeable drain on the Medicare trust fund.

    “Nearly every large insurer in the program has settled or is facing a federal fraud lawsuit for such conduct,” The New York Times noted Friday. “Evidence of the overpayments has been documented by academic studies, government watchdog reports, and plan audits.”

    Mark Miller, the executive vice president of healthcare for the philanthropy Arnold Ventures, expressed concern that the Biden administration’s decision to phase the Medicare Advantage changes in over three years will “continue to reward those insurers with the most abusive practices over the next two years.”

    “We are disappointed to hear that reasonable changes targeting abuse and waste in Medicare Advantage will be phased in over three years rather than fully implemented immediately,” said Miller. “The coding abuses by insurers in Medicare Advantage have led the independent Medicare commission (MedPAC), which was created to advise Congress, to call for a ‘major overhaul‘ of Medicare Advantage policies.”

    Medicare Advantage insurers have been fighting the Biden administration’s proposed changes for months, running ads warning that the reforms would result in higher premiums and worse care for patients—claims that federal health officials adamantly rejected.

    Axios reported that the Better Medicare Alliance, a Medicare Advantage lobbying group, “has spent $13.5 million on advertising since the beginning of the year, targeting markets with competitive 2024 Senate races. Their ads painted the CMS proposal as a cut to Medicare that will eat into consumer benefits.”

    But Stacy Sanders, an adviser to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, told the Times last month that “we will not be deterred by industry hacks and deep-pocketed disinformation campaigns.”

    Becerra himself pushed back on social media, writing, “Leave it to deep-pocketed insurance companies and industry front groups to characterize this year’s proposed increase in Medicare Advantage payments as a pay cut.”

    Biden administration officials sounded a different note on Friday. “We were really comfortable in our policies, but we always want to hear what stakeholders have to say,” CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure told the Times, admitting that industry lobbying impacted the agency’s decision to drag out its implementation of the changes.

    CMS projected Friday that under the finalized rules, Medicare Advantage plans will see a payment increase of 3.32%—nearly $14 billion—in 2024 compared to this year.

    The payment boost will come as Medicare Advantage insurers are facing growing scrutiny from progressive lawmakers over their business practices, including widespread overbilling, the use of artificial intelligence to cut off patient care, and denials of necessary care.

    “Federal audits have found that taxpayers have been overpaying bad actors running Medicare Advantage plans by billions of dollars every year, threatening the stability of both Medicare Advantage and traditional Medicare,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said earlier this week. “This fraud has to end.”

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who joined Merkley last week in criticizing the massive profits of Medicare Advantage insurers, tweeted Saturday that CMS is “making progress, but these delays are a step backward.”

    “For years, private Medicare insurers have been gouging taxpayers and denying care for seniors and people with disabilities,” Warren wrote. “There is a lot more work to do to curb these abusive practices.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • 15 Million People Could Lose Coverage as Nightmarish Medicaid ‘Purge’ Begins



    Beginning on Saturday, states across the U.S. will start the process of stripping Medicaid coverage from millions of people as pandemic-related protections lapse, part of a broader unraveling of the safety net that was built to help families withstand the public health crisis and resulting economic turmoil.

    Medicaid’s continuous coverage requirements were enacted early in the Covid-19 pandemic to help vulnerable people maintain insurance amid the health emergency, resulting in record-high Medicaid enrollment.

    But at the end of last year, congressional negotiators agreed on a bipartisan basis to set April 1 as the beginning of the “unwinding” process for the continuous coverage mandates, which prevented states from conducting regular eligibility screenings for Medicaid recipients.

    The bipartisan deal gave states 12 months to determine who is still eligible for Medicaid, but some states—including Arkansas and South Dakota—are jumping at the opportunity to quickly remove people from the program. (State timelines for kicking off the unwinding process can be seen here.)

    “Tonight at midnight some people in AZ, AR, ID, NH, and SD will lose their Medicaid coverage,” Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown Center for Children and Families, tweeted Friday. “South Dakota is especially vexing as expansion kicks in July 1st. The state could structure their renewals to ensure that parents move seamlessly into expansion. But they are erroneously claiming federal rules mean they can’t. Not true.”

    Residents of the 10 states that have refused lifesaving Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are likely to be hit hardest by the end of continuous coverage requirements, which the Biden administration estimates could result in 15 million people losing health insurance nationwide—including millions of children.

    “Because those states tend to make only the extremely poor eligible for Medicaid, they will have many people who make too much to qualify for the government health insurance but not enough to reach the income needed to get federal subsidies to afford health plans sold on ACA marketplaces—the coverage the administration is counting on as the main fallback,” The Washington Post‘s Amy Goldstein reported earlier this week.

    “The toll will be large, too, in 13 states that have not chosen to extend Medicaid benefits to women for a full year after they give birth,” Goldstein added. “Texas falls on both lists.”

    Because of the administrative barriers associated with income verification and other eligibility tests, many people are likely to lose Medicaid coverage even though they’re still eligible for the program.

    The Health and Human Services (HHS) Department has estimated that nearly 7 million people could be removed from Medicaid despite still being eligible due to “administrative churning.”

    The consequences of what one commentator has dubbed “The Great Medicaid Purge” could be disastrous, given the health impacts associated with insurance loss.

    As HHS summarized in a recent report:

    People who experience churning or coverage disruptions are more likely to delay care, receive less preventive care, refill prescriptions less often, and have more emergency department visits. One study found that unstable Medicaid coverage increased emergency department use, office visits, and hospitalizations between 10% and 36% and decreased use of prescription medications by 19%, compared to individuals with consistent Medicaid coverage. Children with interruptions in coverage also are more likely to have delayed care, unmet medical needs, and unfilled prescriptions.

    “I feel sick,” said Adam Gaffney, an ICU doctor at the Cambridge Health Alliance. “Some 15 million people will be purged from Medicaid, including 7 million who actually remain eligible for the program but fail to jump through the bureaucratic hoops! Medicaid is not enough: we need seamless, lifelong universal care now.”

    The Medicaid continuous coverage requirements are the latest pandemic-era protections to fall in recent months.

    Starting on March 1, enhanced Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits were cut off in dozens of states, slashing food aid for tens of millions.

    Additionally, the boosted Child Tax Credit (CTC) expired in late 2021 due to opposition from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and congressional Republicans, resulting in a rapid surge in child poverty. Shortly before the expanded CTC lapsed, boosted unemployment benefits that helped millions weather economic chaos ended.

    As the pandemic-era safety net crumbles, congressional Republicans are looking to roll back Medicaid, SNAP, and other key programs even further with spending cuts and punitive work requirements.

    “Republican calls to cut government funding put everything from child care to opioid treatment and mental health services to nutrition assistance at risk for millions,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, warned earlier this week.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Trustees Report Shows Social Security Expansion a ‘Question of Values, Not Affordability’



    The board of trustees for Medicare and Social Security released a report Friday showing the programs’ trust funds will be able to cover all benefits and expenses until 2031 and 2034 respectively, findings welcomed by advocates as further confirmation that the key lifelines are strong and can be expanded.

    Nancy Altman, president of the progressive advocacy group Social Security Works, argued in a statement that “the takeaway from this report is that whether to expand or cut Social Security’s modest but vital benefits is a question of values, not affordability.”

    The board of trustees, which consists of top government officials including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su, estimated that even if Congress doesn’t act, Medicare’s trust fund would be able to pay 89% of total scheduled benefits after 2031.

    The Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund, meanwhile, would be able to pay 77% of scheduled benefits after 2033 in the absence of congressional action. The OASI Trust Fund had roughly $2.7 trillion in reserves at the end of 2022, according to the trustees report, while the Disability Insurance (DI) Trust Fund had $118 billion in asset reserves.

    If the OASI and DI trust funds are combined, the report notes, the resulting fund would be able to pay 100% of total scheduled Social Security benefits until 2034.

    “Contrary to conservative claims, Social Security is not ‘going bankrupt’; the program will always be able to pay benefits because of ongoing contributions from workers and employers,” said Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. “This is yet another trustees report showing that Social Security remains strong in the face of turmoil in the rest of the economy. Its projected insolvency date has stayed roughly the same even after a global pandemic and recent economic upheavals.”

    Richard Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, echoed that message, saying the trustees report proves the Social Security trust fund is “strong and solvent, with enough money to cover full benefits and expenses until 2033, one year earlier than reported last year.”

    “Further, the Medicare Part A Trust Fund for hospital care has sufficient funds to cover its obligations until 2031, three years later than reported last year,” Fiesta added. “The trust funds are strong because most Americans contribute to them with every paycheck. They could be even stronger if the wealthiest Americans paid their fair share.”

    Richtman, Fiesta, and other advocates urged Congress to expand Social Security benefits by lifting the cap on income subject to payroll taxes.

    The cap, which is $160,200 this year, allowed millionaires to stop paying into Social Security in late February, not even two full months into the year.

    Skyrocketing inequality over the past several decades has meant that a larger share of earnings at the very top has been exempt from the payroll tax, costing the Social Security trust fund an estimated $1.4 trillion since 1983.

    Last month, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) introduced legislation that would subject all income above $250,000 a year to the 6.2% payroll tax, a move the lawmakers said could fund a $200-per-month benefit expansion for all Social Security recipients.

    Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) said Friday that he will soon reintroduce separate Social Security expansion legislation.

    “Now is the time to not merely protect but to also expand benefits that have not been addressed in over 50 years,” Larson said in a statement.

    Despite pressure from Sanders and other progressives, Biden did not include a Social Security expansion plan in his latest budget request, which did contain a proposal to shore up Medicare’s trust fund by raising taxes on the rich.

    Congressional Republicans, for their part, have floated unpopular proposals to slash Social Security benefits across the board by raising the retirement age and partially privatizing the program.

    “Unfortunately, Republican politicians are not listening to their voters,” Altman said Friday. “The most recent budget of the Republican Study Committee, which consists of about three-quarters of the House Republicans, includes deep cuts to both Social Security and Medicare. Other Republicans are trying to create fast-track commissions that operate behind closed doors, aimed at forcing cuts that would not be supported in the sunshine.”

    “To see the results of cutting earned retirement benefits through an undemocratic process, one only needs to look across the Atlantic Ocean, where the French people are rising up in anger,” said Altman. “Congress should take action to expand Social Security and close the system’s modest shortfall. Democrats have put their ideas on the table. Now, Republicans should do the same, so that Congress can debate Social Security’s future in the light of day.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • ‘The Grift Continues’: Trump Campaign, GOP Allies Beg for Money After Indictment



    The Trump campaign and the former president’s Republican allies wasted no time attempting to turn Thursday’s indictment news into a lucrative fundraising opportunity, appealing to their right-wing supporters for cash on live television and in a flurry of late-night emails.

    “We are living through the darkest chapter of American history,” blared one email that the Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee fired off after a Manhattan grand jury voted to indict the former president on criminal charges related to an alleged hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.

    “With your support, we will write the next great chapter of American history—and 2024 will forever go down as the year we saved our Republic,” the email, which was attributed to Trump himself, continued. “Please make a contribution—of truly any amount—to defend our movement from the never-ending witch hunts and WIN the WHITE HOUSE in 2024.”

    A subsequent email with the subject line “Holding a shirt just for YOU” called Alvin Bragg “George Soros’ bought-and-paid-for Manhattan D.A.” and said Trump was indicted for “committing NO CRIME.”

    The email then transitioned to a sales pitch for Trump campaign shirts, which supporters were informed they could receive for “free”—in exchange for a $47 donation.

    “What better way to show your support for President Trump and our incredible movement during this dark chapter in our nation’s history than to proudly wear the brand-new ‘I Stand with President Trump’ T-shirt,” the appeal declared.

    Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), meanwhile, used his appearance on Sean Hannity’s live-audience Fox News show Thursday night to plead with Trump supporters to “give the president some money to fight this bullshit.”

    “He’s spent more money on lawyers than most people spent on campaigns. They’re trying to bleed him dry,” said Graham, one of many Republican lawmakers who rushed to Trump’s defense following Thursday’s news.

    Republican members of Congress also sent out urgent fundraising emails Thursday night in an attempt to capitalize on news of Trump’s indictment.

    “Contribute to our OFFICIAL TRUMP DEFENSE FUND to STAND WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP against this SCAM INDICTMENT,” read an email sent by the campaign of Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the chair of the House Republican Conference.

    The Trump campaign said it raked in at least $2 million in donations in the week after the former president predicted on his social media platform earlier this month that his arrest was imminent.

    Trump is expected to turn himself in to New York authorities early next week. The former president is reportedly facing more than 30 criminal counts of document fraud, though the indictment and exact charges remain under seal.

    MSNBC‘s Steve Benen wrote Friday that “in theory, it might seem impossible for a scandal-plagued politician to turn a criminal indictment into a grift.”

    “In practice, the relationship between Donald Trump and his followers is not normal,” Benen added, noting that the Trump campaign has successfully raised money off impeachment proceedings, efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, and supposed post-election campaigns to “secure” future contests.

    The latter fundraising ploy yielded millions of dollars for Trump’s PAC—but that money was reportedly funneled toward the former president’s travel costs and other expenses, not the election battles donors were promised.

    “Common sense might suggest that the public would see these developments, learn about the former president’s underhanded tactics, and his fundraising would dry up—especially in the wake of a criminal indictment,” Benen wrote Friday. “His schemes have been exposed. His willingness to exploit his supporters has been well documented. All of this should start closing wallets. But Trump’s hold on his followers is strong—so the grift continues.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • ‘They Have a Lot of Money… We Have the People’: Sanders Rallies for Brandon Johnson in Chicago



    U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders stumped for progressive Chicago mayoral candidate Brandon Johnson late Thursday, imploring the city’s voters to turn out in record numbers to overcome what he described as the powerful establishment forces backing conservative Democrat Paul Vallas.

    “Our job on Tuesday is to make sure we have the largest voter turnout this city has ever seen,” Sanders (I-Vt.) told the crowd gathered at the University of Illinois Chicago days ahead of the April 4 runoff. “This is going to be a close election, and the deciding factor will be voter turnout.”

    A Northwestern University poll released earlier this week showed the race is in a dead heat, with Johnson and Vallas each receiving 44% support and 12% of voters still undecided.

    “Brandon’s opponent and the other side—they have a lot of money,” the Vermont senator said Thursday. “That’s what always happens when you take on the establishment. They have the money. They’ve got a lot of power. But you know what we have? We have the people.”

    The rally came after new financial disclosures showed that a super PAC with close connections to former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos recently spent nearly $60,000 on digital media supporting Vallas, the former CEO of Chicago Public Schools who has worked to privatize education in his home city as well as New Orleans and Philadelphia.

    “The fundamental issue, the deep down issue, is: Which side are you on?” Sanders said Thursday night. “Are you on the side of working people, or are you on the side of the speculators and billionaires? And I know which side Brandon is on.”

    While Sanders didn’t explicitly mention the DeVos-tied super PAC’s support for Vallas’ campaign during Thursday’s rally, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten did, saying it “tells you everything you need to know about” Vallas.

    In a statement earlier Thursday, Weingarten said that “Paul Vallas’ goal of defunding public schools and dividing parents against teachers makes him precisely the kind of candidate who would appeal to a fellow wrecker like Betsy DeVos—a person who’s devoted her life to ending public education as we know it.”

    “From Chicago to Philadelphia to New Orleans,” Weingarten added, “Vallas waged a craven campaign to voucherize and pauperize, just like DeVos tried—and failed—to do when she served as Donald Trump’s education secretary.”

    Watch Thursday’s rally:

    Johnson, a longtime educator and organizer, also called attention to the Illinois Federation for Children PAC’s spending on the race during a candidate forum late Thursday.

    “Betsy DeVos has inserted herself and her resources into my opponent’s coffers,” Johnson said.

    Vallas countered that he has “never had any conversations or contacts with Betsy DeVos.”

    “Our campaign has not received any money from her,” Vallas said, citing the often vanishingly thin barrier separating so-called “independent expenditures” by super PACs and direct donations to political campaigns.

    In addition to the DeVos-connected spending, Vallas has also received financial support from “conservative contributors and prominent Republicans,” the Chicago Tribune reported earlier this month.

    “Vallas’ largest contributor was golf course developer Michael Keiser, who has given him $700,000,” the Tribune noted. “Keiser previously contributed $11,200 to former President Donald Trump, a Republican. Vallas has taken money from John Canning, a Chicago private equity executive who has given to many politicians locally but also national Republicans, and Noel Moore, who has given to Trump and Texas Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.”

    Johnson’s biggest contributors, by contrast, have been unions representing teachers and service workers.

    “When you take dollars from Trump supporters and try to cast yourself as a part of the progressive movement, man—sit down,” Johnson said at Thursday night’s rally.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • US Minimum Wage Would Be $42 Today If It Rose as Much as Wall St. Bonuses: Analysis



    The federal minimum wage in the United States would be more than $42 an hour today if it rose at the same rate as the average Wall Street bonus over the past four decades, according to an analysis released Thursday by the Institute for Policy Studies.

    Citing newly released data from the New York State Comptroller, IPS noted that the average Wall Street bonus has increased by 1,165% since 1985, not adjusted for inflation.

    Last year, the average cash bonus paid to Wall Street employees was $176,700—75% higher than in 2008 but slightly lower than the 2021 level of $240,400.

    The federal minimum wage, meanwhile, has been completely stagnant since 2009, when it was bumped up to $7.25 from $5.15. While many states and localities have approved substantial pay increases in recent years, 20 states have kept their hourly wage floors at the federal minimum.

    Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy Project at IPS and the author of the new analysis, wrote Thursday that “average weekly earnings for all U.S. private sector workers increased by only 54.4%” between 2008 and 2022—a significantly slower pace than inequality-fueling Wall Street bonuses.

    “The total bonus pool for 190,800 New York City-based Wall Street employees in 2022 was $33.7 billion—enough to pay for 771,520 jobs that pay $15 per hour with benefits for a year,” Anderson observed. “Wall Street bonuses come on top of base salaries, which averaged $516,560 for New York securities industry employees in 2021.”

    Institute for Policy Studies analysis

    Anderson argued that there are a number of straightforward steps lawmakers and regulators can take to curb exorbitant Wall Street compensation and bonuses.

    In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Congress passed several provisions aimed at reining in bankers’ compensation as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

    But as The American Prospect‘s David Dayen pointed out last week, “bank regulators hip-pocketed one of those rules that Congress mandated in 2010—the one that would prohibit banker compensation that is specifically tied to taking inappropriate risks.”

    “The last time there was even a proposed rule on this was nearly seven years ago,” Dayen continued. “And in 2018, when Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell was asked whether he would abide by Congress’ wishes and finish the rule, he blandly replied, ‘We tried for many years’ and ‘we were not able to achieve consensus’—just thumbing his nose at a congressional mandate.”

    Anderson urged the Biden administration’s financial regulators to stop deferring to Wall Street lobbyists and “swiftly—and rigorously—enact the Dodd-Frank Wall Street pay restrictions that were supposed to have been enacted by May 2011.”

    Any new regulation, Anderson wrote, can and should include “a ban on stock options at Wall Street banks” and mandates requiring Wall Street executives to “set aside significant compensation for 10 years to pay potential misconduct fines.”

    “If such a regulation had been in place before the [Silicon Valley Bank] collapse,” Anderson noted, “top executives would’ve automatically forfeited this deferred pay to help cover the cost of their recklessness.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Fiery Derailment of Train Carrying Ethanol Forces Evacuations in Minnesota

    A BNSF train carrying ethanol derailed and caught fire early Thursday morning in Raymond, Minnesota, forcing residents living near the crash site to evacuate. U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has faced backlash for responding inadequately to the disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, said the Federal Railroad Administration is “on the ground’ in Raymond following the derailment.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Credit Suisse Helped Ultra Rich Americans Hide Over $700 Million From IRS

    The Senate Finance Committee on Thursday published the results of a two-year investigation showing that the scandal-plagued Swiss bank Credit Suisse has been complicit in a “massive, ongoing conspiracy” to help wealthy U.S. citizens dodge taxes. Spearheaded by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the chair of the Senate panel, the probe found that Credit Suisse violated the terms of a 2014 plea agreement with…

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  • Sanders-Led Committee Releases Damning Report on Starbucks’s Anti-Union Activity

    A Senate committee headed by Bernie Sanders of Vermont released a report late Sunday aimed at debunking Starbucks’ narrative that it supports workers’ rights and has not committed large-scale violations of U.S. labor law — claims that former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz will likely repeat when he testifies before the panel later this week. Since late 2021, when Buffalo workers voted to form the…

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  • Mayhem Engulfs Israel as Netanyahu Weighs Next Steps for ‘Judicial Coup’



    Chaos continued to spread across Israel on Monday as flights were grounded, cargo shipments were halted, schools were closed, and mass protests and strikes erupted over far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to overhaul the nation’s judicial system, an effort that opponents have decried as a brazen coup attempt.

    Netanyahu, who is currently on trial for corruption charges, was reportedly considering whether to delay the legislative push on Monday as opposition intensified, but such a move would risk fracturing his far-right governing coalition—which the judicial overhaul would give more power to choose new judges and override Supreme Court decisions.

    National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right extremist who has called for counterprotests to support the judicial overhaul, said Monday that he will resign if the proposal is put on hold.

    As the prime minister weighs his next steps, protests against his plan in the streets and among Israeli officials are expanding.

    By Monday afternoon and early evening in Israel, tens of thousands of demonstrators had gathered outside the Knesset to protest the judicial overhaul.

    Histadrut, Israel’s largest trade union federation, called a historic general strike earlier Monday to build pressure on the Netanyahu government to withdraw the judicial overhaul. As a result, many businesses shut their doors and El Al, Israel’s largest airline, announced a halt to all flights departing from Ben Gurion Airport.

    “We are all joining hands to shut down the State of Israel,” Histadrut chief Arnon Bar-David said during a press conference on Monday. “The malls and the factories will close.”

    The Financial Times reported Monday that “Israeli diplomatic staff at overseas embassies have joined strikes to protest against the far-right government’s judicial reforms.”

    In a joint statement on Monday, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten and Stuart Appelbaum—head of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union and president of the Jewish Labor Committee—said that they “strongly back the general strike called by the Israeli trade union federation Histadrut.”

    “All trade unionists know that it is nothing but an illusion that unions can cooperate with an autocratic government while retaining their independent power,” the U.S. union leaders said.

    The protests have been building for months, but they erupted with fresh urgency late Sunday after Netanyahu fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant following his comments in support of pausing attempts to ram through the proposed changes.

    But the demonstrations, frequently cast as part of a fight to preserve Israeli “democracy,” are rife with underlying tensions and contradictions. As American-Israeli journalist Mairav Zonszein wrote for The Daily Beast last week:

    The occupation is inseparable from Israel. The same government that operates Israel’s liberal democratic mechanisms presides over millions of stateless Palestinians, who are effectively barred from protesting their condition. The same Supreme Court that struck down a law legalizing Jewish settlement on private Palestinian land has given the green light to Israel’s continued transfer of citizens to occupied territory and to the siege on Gaza. That is why the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem defines Israel as an apartheid regime, and why Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have accused Israel of committing the crime of apartheid.

    MSNBC‘s Mehdi Hasan expressed a similar sentiment in a tweet on Sunday, writing: “On the one hand, I’m glad to see so many Israelis protesting their far-right government’s attempt to turn Israel into a dictatorship. On the other hand, I wonder where all their protests were over West Bank Palestinians living under an Israeli dictatorship for over 50 years.”

    During a demonstration in Jerusalem on Monday, police were seen confiscating a protester’s lonely Palestinian flag amid a sea of Israeli flags and banners:

    The growing demonstrations against Netanyahu’s right-wing government have raised concerns about potentially violent attacks from supporters of the judicial overhaul.

    Haaretz reported Monday that “right-wing WhatsApp groups and social media are buzzing with calls from activists to demonstrate across Israel in defense of the Netanyahu government’s judicial coup, with some activists calling on supporters to take up arms— ‘tractors, guns, knives’—and attack anti-government protesters.”

    “While Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has yet to publicly state whether he intends to halt his government’s judicial coup, Likud channels on social media have been calling to demonstrate in support of the judicial overhaul,” the Israeli newspaper reported. “The pro-government demonstrations, warning of an attempt to ‘steal our elections,’ are set to take place in parallel to the anti-coup protests that are already taking place outside the Knesset.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Sanders Unveils Report Debunking Starbucks’ Claim to Be a ‘Progressive’ Company



    A Senate committee headed by Bernie Sanders of Vermont released a report late Sunday aimed at debunking Starbucks’ narrative that it supports workers’ rights and has not committed large-scale violations of U.S. labor law—claims that former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz will likely repeat when he testifies before the panel later this week.

    Since late 2021, when Buffalo workers voted to form the company’s first union in the U.S. and set off a movement that quickly swept the country, “Starbucks has adopted an aggressively anti-union stance that is reflected in Schultz’s public statements, the company’s communications to workers, and its scorched-earth approach to blocking unionization activity,” the new report states.

    “Though the coffee giant claims they are a ‘progressive’ company, there is mounting evidence that the $113 billion-dollar company’s anti-union efforts include a pattern of flagrant violations of federal labor law,” the report continues. “The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has filed over 80 complaints against Starbucks for violating federal labor law and there have been over 500 unfair labor practice charges lodged against this company. These violations include the illegal firing of more than a dozen Starbucks workers for ‘the crime’ of exercising their right to form a union and collectively bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions.”

    The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee’s majority staff report was published ahead of Schultz’s planned testimony on Wednesday, an appearance that the billionaire—who has led Starbucks’ aggressive union-busting campaign—resisted for weeks before finally relenting earlier this month under threat of subpoena.

    The report also comes days after Starbucks workers across the country went on strike and outlined their demands—including a starting hourly wage of $20, guaranteed hours for full-time workers, and 100% employer-covered healthcare—ahead of the company’s Thursday shareholder meeting, the first under new CEO Laxman Narasimhan.

    While Starbucks says it “respects employees’ right to organize,” the HELP Committee report notes, the company in practice has “taken a firmly anti-union position” and has shown it is “willing to do whatever it takes to stop workers from organizing” by firing dozens of union leaders, surveilling and punishing pro-union employees, and promising better benefits for non-union locations.

    “NLRB judges have found that Starbucks broke the law 130 times across six states since workers began organizing in fall 2021,” the HELP report states. “The NLRB is also currently taking Starbucks to trial in 70 additional cases.”

    The report goes on to challenge Starbucks’ claim that it is bargaining in good faith with workers who have voted to join Workers United. None of the nearly 300 locations that have made the choice to unionize since December 2021 have secured a first contract.

    “It has been over 450 days since the first Starbucks stores voted to form a union. Starbucks has not taken any meaningful steps to make progress toward actually negotiating a contract in that time period,” the report observes. “On November 30, 2022, the NLRB found that Starbucks has unlawfully refused to recognize and bargain with the union at its Reserve Roastery Store in Seattle following an election in May 2022. Starbucks has appealed the NLRB’s decision to the Ninth Circuit.”

    The committee’s analysis—which also takes on the company’s claim that it is a “model employer” and that the unionization push does not reflect the desires of the majority of its workforce—concludes that “Starbucks has engaged in the most significant union-busting campaign in modern history.”

    “Just because Starbucks is a $113 billion company and Howard Schultz is a billionaire with a net worth of $3.7 billion does not mean that they are above the law,” the report says. “They must be held accountable for creating a culture that allows widespread violations of federal labor law in an effort to stop workers from exercising their constitutional right to organize.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • US Bombs Syria 2 Weeks After House Voted Against Withdrawing Troops

    The U.S. launched airstrikes in Syria on Thursday after one American contractor was killed and five service members were injured in an attack by a drone that the Pentagon claims was of “Iranian origin.” The drone attack on a maintenance facility in northeast Syria and the U.S. response came two weeks after the House of Representatives voted down a bipartisan resolution that would have required…

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  • Minnesota Nuclear Plant Shuts Down After New Leak Near Mississippi River



    The operator of a Minnesota nuclear power plant said the facility would be taken offline Friday to repair a new leak near the Mississippi River, an announcement that came a week after the company and state officials belatedly acknowledged a separate leak that occurred in November.

    Xcel Energy insisted in a statement Thursday that the leak at its Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant poses “no risk to the public or the environment,” but a team of federal regulators is monitoring the groundwater in the area amid concerns that radioactive materials—specifically tritium—could wind up in drinking water.

    Valerie Myers, a senior health physicist with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told a local CBS affiliate that “there are wells between the ones that are showing elevated tritium and the Mississippi that are not showing any elevated levels.”

    “We are watching that because the ground flow is toward the Mississippi,” added Myers.

    The Associated Press reported Friday, that “after the first leak was found in November, Xcel Energy made a short-term fix to capture water from a leaking pipe and reroute it back into the plant for re-use.”

    “However, monitoring equipment indicated Wednesday that a small amount of new water from the original leak had reached the groundwater,” the outlet noted. “Operators discovered that, over the past two days, the temporary solution was no longer capturing all of the leaking water, Xcel Energy said.”

    The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and the Minnesota Department of Health said in a statement that they “have no evidence at this point to indicate a current or imminent risk to the public and will continue to monitor groundwater samples.”

    “Should an imminent risk arise, we will inform the public promptly,” the agencies said. “We encourage the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has regulatory oversight of the plant’s operations, to share ongoing public communications on the leak and on mitigation efforts to help residents best understand the situation.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Senate Banking Committee Member Dismisses Calls for Regulations, Bankers Applaud

    Republican Sen. Steve Daines of Montana garnered applause from a room full of bankers on Tuesday after he dismissed calls for tougher regulations following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. “There are a lot of talking heads out there who are saying that the solution is more regulation, and I strongly disagree,” Daines said in remarks to the American Bankers Association’s…

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  • New Assessments From Federal Agencies Underscore Harm of GOP Budget Cuts

    The top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee on Monday released letters from federal agencies that together provide a detailed look at the implications of the House GOP’s proposed budget cuts, which would take an axe to programs that help millions of people make rent, feed their families, and afford childcare. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) asked the leaders of major government departments…

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  • ‘An Act of Climate Denial’: Biden Faces Anti-Willow Protests After IPCC Report



    Further emboldened by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fresh call for rapid emission cuts, campaigners are planning to rally outside the U.S. Interior Department on Tuesday morning to protest the Biden administration’s approval of a massive oil drilling project that—if completed—would spew millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year.

    In a press release announcing the demonstration, which is set to begin at 9:00 am ET, Fossil Free Media said those voicing outrage over the administration’s decision to greenlight the project will include climate activists, social media influencers, students, and others.

    The protest will coincide with President Joe Biden’s planned remarks at the White House Conservation in Action Summit at the Interior Department, which signed off on a version of ConocoPhillips’ Willow Project last week despite widespread opposition and warnings that it would undermine the global climate fight.

    The Interior Department has estimated that the Alaska drilling project—the largest of its kind on U.S. public land—could produce nearly 580 million barrels of oil over three decades and unleash more than 270 million metric tons of planet-warming CO2. Green groups are suing the administration in an effort to stop the project, which is not expected to begin producing oil for another six years.

    Jamie Henn, the director of Fossil Free Media, wrote Monday that the IPCC’s report “makes it all the more clear that Biden’s approval of the Willow Project was an act of climate denial and destruction.”

    The report, the product of years of work by hundreds of leading scientists from around the world, says greenhouse gas emissions must be cut by 60% over roughly the next decade to keep the Paris climate accord’s critical warming target alive.

    The Biden administration’s approval of the Willow Project and other drilling—during his first two years in office, Biden outpaced former President Donald Trump in permit approvals—called into further doubt the White House’s commitment to treating the climate crisis as an “existential threat.”

    “Reading the U.N.’s latest dire climate warnings just days after Biden approved massive new Arctic oil drilling is utterly infuriating,” Shaye Wolf, climate science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said Monday. “The fossil-fueled path to more climate disasters, mass displacements, and wildlife extinctions is bleak, but it’s not inevitable.”

    “Chief among world leaders, Biden has the tools to not only ratchet up renewables but move us decisively off fossil fuels,” Wolf added. “Scientists have mapped the way to a livable planet, but we need the political will to get us there.”

    On Monday, shortly following the release of the IPCC report, climate activists disrupted a Washington, D.C. event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi appeared to deliver an address on the “future of U.S. climate and energy leadership.”

    Reuters reported that “a dozen protesters holding a sign saying ‘End Fossil Fuels’ chanted ‘Keep your promise, no new drilling’ for several minutes, preventing Zaidi from starting his remarks.” Zaidi responded by pointing to the climate investments approved under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

    “At the end of the day, nobody in a position of power seems to be accepting the reality and the urgency of this moment,” Reilly Haught, a 23-year-old protestor from West Virginia, told Reuters. “And that’s what we wanted to share with him. We just can’t go on with business as usual with only the people in suits having these important conversations.”

    Collin Rees of Oil Change International tweeted Monday that “‘climate leaders’ don’t approve huge fossil fuel projects like the Willow Project, which would negate most emissions reductions from the IRA even under rosy estimates.”

    “The IPCC is clear—no new oil + gas,” Rees added. “Biden will keep being haunted until he changes course.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Analysis Warns ‘Punitive’ Republican Attacks on SNAP Could Take Food Aid From 10 Million+



    An analysis released Monday estimates that more than 10 million people across the United States—including 4 million children—would be at risk of losing food benefits if the GOP’s proposed attacks on federal nutrition assistance become law.

    The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) analysis focuses specifically on legislation introduced last week by Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), who wants certain recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to face even more strict work requirements than they do under current law.

    “Adults aged 18 through 49 without children in their homes can receive benefits for only three months out of every three years, unless they can document they are working or participate in a qualifying work program at least 20 hours a week or prove they are unable to work,” note CBPP’s Katie Bergh and Dottie Rosenbaum.

    If passed, Johnson’s bill would raise the age ceiling for the strict work requirements from 49 to 65, a move that Bergh and Rosenbaum argue would endanger food benefits for both the adults specifically targeted by the law and those in their households.

    Adults between the ages of 18 and 65 and without disabilities would be subject to the work requirements and benefit time limits “unless they have a child under age 7 in their home,” CBPP points out.

    Research has demonstrated repeatedly that work requirements do virtually nothing to boost employment, undercutting the GOP’s stated rationale for attempting to expand them year after year.

    Johnson’s legislation would also limit states’ ability to temporarily waive SNAP benefit time limits for able-bodied adults, a freedom that has been used to ensure people have consistent access to benefits during economic downturns.

    “A total of more than 10 million people, about 1 in 4 SNAP participants, including about 4 million children, live in households that would be at risk of losing food assistance under the Johnson bill, based on our preliminary estimates,” Bergh and Rosenbaum write.

    People who would face the loss of benefits, according to CBPP, include “some 3 million adults up to age 65, primarily parents or grandparents, who live in households with school-age children.” Those millions of children “would see their household’s food assistance fall if their parents or other adults in the family aren’t able to meet” the Johnson measure’s work requirements, the analysis notes.

    Additionally, the Johnson bill—which currently has 24 Republican co-sponsors—would potentially strip food benefits from “about 2 million older adults aged 50 to 64 who do not have children in their homes” as well as adults who happen to live in areas with higher levels of unemployment, making it more difficult to find and hold a job.

    “A total of more than 10 million people, about 1 in 4 SNAP participants, including about 4 million children, live in households that would be at risk of losing food assistance under the Johnson bill.”

    While Bergh and Rosenbaum stress that “not everyone newly subject to these requirements would lose benefits,” a “very significant number are likely to be impacted because they are out of work, the state failed to screen them for an exemption they should have qualified for, or they were unable to navigate the verification system to prove they are working.”

    “This is a punitive and ineffective approach,” Bergh and Rosenbaum argue. “SNAP is successful at reducing poverty and food insecurity and should be both protected this year from cuts and be strengthened in some areas so that it does more to combat food insecurity and hunger.”

    Johnson’s bill was introduced after pandemic-related SNAP enhancements were allowed to expire earlier this month, hitting millions of people with steep benefit cuts—in some cases hundreds of dollars per month—as food prices remain elevated nationwide.

    “I’m just going to have to go back to not eating very much, about a meal a day,” Teresa Calderez, a 63-year-old SNAP recipient who saw her benefits drop from $280 a month to $23, told NPR in a recent interview. “Unfortunately, I have known hunger. And it’s not a good feeling.”

    The South Dakota Republican’s proposal isn’t the only one the House GOP is considering ahead of upcoming negotiations over the farm bill and the debt ceiling.

    As CBPP notes:

    Budget plans put forward by the Republican Study Committee and by Trump-era Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought would also take food assistance away through harmful work requirements while, respectively, instituting a strict block grant (often used to promote large, unspecified cuts) and radically restructuring SNAP by capping program spending.

    In addition, the extensive cuts that House Republicans passed in their 2018 farm bill and similar measures the Trump Administration pursued by regulation could offer clues to what may be ahead in the farm bill debate. In 2018, we detailed how such provisions would hurt older people, workers, children, women, people with disabilities, and veterans. The House-passed bill would have caused more than 1 million households with more than 2 million people to lose benefits altogether or have them reduced. Those provisions were soundly rejected on a bipartisan basis in the Senate.

    Facing criticism for failing to keep pandemic-related SNAP expansions alive, Democrats in the House and Senate have pledged to oppose any food assistance cuts going forward.

    Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said during a hearing last week that Congress “must ensure that the farm bill continues to support the nutrition programs that serve as a lifeline to millions of people and families across this country.”

    “The SNAP program provides food assistance for more than 41 million Americans, including children, seniors, veterans, and people with disabilities,” said Stabenow. “Spending on nutrition programs does not rob resources from other farm bill programs, just as crop insurance doesn’t rob resources from other programs when disaster strikes and spending goes up.”

    “But threats we are hearing from some in the House in favor of reckless and indiscriminate mandatory budget cuts will result in cuts to all farm bill programs,” the senator added. “We cannot go backward at a time when our farmers and families need us most.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • UN IPCC Climate Report to Sound Most Dire Warning Yet

    A United Nations panel composed of the world’s top scientists is set to release its latest climate assessment on Monday as governments fail to heed repeated, increasingly urgent warnings that the window for action to prevent catastrophic global heating is nearly shut. The landmark report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will come after a year in which planet-warming CO2…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • ‘We Have a Choice Here to Act’: IPCC Climate Report to Sound Most Dire Warning Yet

    A United Nations panel composed of the world’s top scientists is set to release its latest climate assessment on Monday as governments fail to heed repeated, increasingly urgent warnings that the window for action to prevent catastrophic global heating is nearly shut.

    The landmark report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will come after a year in which planet-warming CO2 emissions shattered records once again as the impacts of such pollution—from “apocalyptic” flooding in Pakistan to deadly drought in East Africa—continued to mount.

    After repeated delays, government delegations signed off on the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report on Sunday, clearing the way for the formal release of a sprawling synthesis of years of climate research.

    The Associated Press reported that the final decision came after “officials from big nations such as China, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and the European Union haggled through the weekend over the wording of key phrases in the text.”

    Lesley Hughes, a former IPCC author and a director of the Australia-based Climate Council, said ahead of the report’s release that “while this is a summary report of work we’d already seen in development, there is no doubt the findings of this report will be dire.”

    “Since the previous IPCC report was released, we’ve had even more unnatural disasters,” Hughes added. “We must focus on the fact that predictions are now becoming observations. We’ve also had a period since the previous IPCC report came out where global emissions are rising once again, so the gap between where we are and where we need to go is increasing rather than decreasing.”

    “If we haven’t seriously turned things around by the time the next such assessment report is due, then we’ll be in very deep trouble.”

    The IPCC’s 2021 report was deemed a “code red for humanity,” a glaring signal that accelerated global action to phase out fossil fuel extraction and use was needed to avert disaster.

    But in the years since, governments—specifically the rich nations most responsible for the climate crisis—have refused to act with the speed and ambition that scientists say is necessary.

    At the end of 2022, the U.N. climate conference—an event teeming with fossil fuel lobbyists—ended with no concrete action to rein in oil and gas production.

    As a result, hugely profitable global fossil fuel giants are planning to expand their operations in the coming years, potentially locking in additional emissions and further imperiling efforts to meet critical warming targets.

    Governments, including those that claim to view the climate crisis as an existential threat, are actively aiding the continued extraction of fossil fuels. Just last week, the Biden administration approved the largest proposed oil drilling project on U.S. public land despite widespread opposition.

    “This is the kind of thing that we simply can’t afford to do anymore,” Kristina Dahl of the Union of Concerned Scientists wrote late last week. “The fossil fuel industry has, for decades, opposed and obstructed any meaningful action on climate change. And despite ardent claims otherwise, the industry has refused to commit to align its business model with what the IPCC says is required to minimize climate harms. The industry remains a barrier to the future the world’s children deserve.”

    Simon Bradshaw, the Climate Council’s director of research, said Monday that the IPCC’s new report will represent “a final warning.”

    “The central message from climate scientists is unmistakable: governments must rally to drastically cut emissions and cease the extraction and burning of fossil fuels this decade,” said Bradshaw. “That message has been delivered repeatedly, and consistently, for many decades.”

    “We are seeing progress when it comes to renewable energy uptake, and cleaner transport, but things just aren’t moving fast enough. If we haven’t seriously turned things around by the time the next such assessment report is due, then we’ll be in very deep trouble,” Bradshaw added. “We have a choice here to act swiftly this decade. If we start giving it our all right now, we can avert the worst of it. So many solutions are readily available, like solar and wind power, storage, electric appliances, and clean transport options. We need to get our skates on.”

  • ‘An Abomination’: Powell Cut Mention of Regulatory Failures From Bank Bailout Statement



    The Federal Reserve was the primary regulator of both Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, whose back-to-back collapses sparked panic in financial markets and concerns about cascading impacts on the U.S. economy.

    But despite immediate questions about the possible supervisory failures that allowed the banks’ crises to fester, Fed Chair Jerome Powell personally intervened over the weekend to block any mention of regulatory slipups in a joint statement on the federal government’s response to the situation.

    The New York Times reported late Thursday that some Biden administration officials “wanted to include that lapses in bank regulation and supervision had contributed to the problems that helped fell” Silicon Valley Bank, whose collapse marked the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history.

    But Powell, an ex-investment banker originally nominated by former President Donald Trump, “pushed to take the line on regulation out of the statement because he wanted to focus on the actions being taken to shore up the financial system,” according to the Times, which cited an unnamed person familiar with the matter.

    The resulting statement issued Sunday by the Fed, the Treasury Department, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) appeared to conform to Powell’s demand, not mentioning what Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and watchdogs have described as glaring failures in supervision by the central bank.

    The joint statement vaguely highlights “reforms that were made after the financial crisis that ensured better safeguards for the banking industry”—but neglects to mention that the Fed and Congress rolled back some of those rules in subsequent years, decisions that experts say set the stage for SVB and Signature Bank’s collapse.

    “That sounds a lot like putting the institutional interests of Fed and personal interests of the chair above financial stability,” Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) said in response to news of Powell’s intervention, which—according to The American Prospect‘s David Dayen—ended up delaying the release of the statement for “an indeterminate period of time.”

    Dayen also reported Friday that the Fed “tried to influence” President Joe Biden’s statement on the bank failures and bailout that followed.

    Jeff Hauser, director of the Revolving Door Project, wrote on Twitter that “Biden should have never renominated Powell,” calling the Fed chair “an abomination.”

    While Biden’s Sunday statement doesn’t specifically mention regulatory failures, the president—who renominated Powell in late 2021—said in prepared remarks the following day that “there are important questions of how these banks got into these circumstances in the first place.”

    “During the Obama-Biden administration, we put in place tough requirements on banks like Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, including the Dodd-Frank Law, to make sure the crisis we saw in 2008 would not happen again,” Biden said. “Unfortunately, the last administration rolled back some of these requirements. I’m going to ask Congress and the banking regulators to strengthen the rules for banks to make it less likely that this kind of bank failure will happen again and to protect American jobs and small businesses.”

    Biden was referring to a 2018 measure passed by the then-Republican-controlled Congress with the support of dozens of Democrats—and with a public endorsement from Powell.

    Emboldened by the Republican-authored law—which weakened regulations for banks with between $50 billion and $250 billion in assets—the Fed under Powell’s leadership proceeded to go well beyond the measure’s mandates “by relaxing regulatory requirements for domestic banking institutions that have assets in the $250 to $700 billion range,” then-central bank governor Lael Brainard noted in October 2018.

    Brainard went on to caution, presciently, that the Fed’s deregulatory actions would “weaken the buffers that are core to the resilience of our system” and result in “increased risk to financial stability and the taxpayer.”

    “Make no mistake: your decisions aided and abetted this bank failure, and you bear your share of responsibility for it.”

    As Dayen wrote Friday, “Silicon Valley Bank had billions in unrealized losses on its balance sheet that it hoped to avoid having to surface.”

    “It also had a tightly correlated, mostly uninsured depositor base, all largely from one industry and connected to each other, that represented significant flight risk if there were any signs of trouble,” he added. “The rapid growth at the bank and its significant mismatch for liquidity purposes should have had the system flashing red.”

    Dennis Kelleher, the president of Better Markets, expressed a similar sentiment earlier this week, noting that “the Fed has much more and superior knowledge, information, expertise, and access to banks than short sellers, rating agencies, and the media, yet they all appear to have done a much better job at identifying the very serious risks at SVB than the Fed.”

    In a letter to Powell on Thursday, Warren—one of the Fed chair’s most outspoken critics in Congress—laid out in detail what she characterized as the central bank’s “astonishing list of failures” that contributed to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.

    “As chair of the Fed, you have led and vigorously supported efforts to weaken the regulations that would have subjected banks like SVB and Signature to stronger liquidity requirements, more robust stress testing, and routine resolution planning obligations,” the Massachusetts Democrat wrote. “Make no mistake: your decisions aided and abetted this bank failure, and you bear your share of responsibility for it.”

    In response to the Times‘ reporting, Warren tweeted Friday that “the Fed chair’s outrageous attempt to muzzle the rest of the government about his role in contributing to this current crisis is completely inappropriate—and it won’t work.”

    “Congress needs to step in to fix these mistakes before things get even worse,” added Warren, who introduced legislation earlier this week that would repeal a key section of the 2018 bank deregulation law.

    This story has been updated to include Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s reaction to the reporting on Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s intervention.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Two Trains Derail in Arizona and Washington as Congress Sits on Safety Bill

    Two trains operated by BNSF derailed in Washington state and Arizona on Thursday as the rail industry and its Republican allies in Congress fight bipartisan safety legislation introduced in the wake of the toxic crash in East Palestine, Ohio. The Associated Press reported that the Washington derailment spilled 5,000 gallons of diesel fuel on tribal lands along Padilla Bay.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • East Palestine Soil Contains Dioxin Levels Hundreds of Times Over Cancer Risk Threshold



    East Palestine, Ohio residents’ concerns about the enduring impact of last month’s fiery train derailment are likely to intensify following the release of data showing that levels of dioxin in the soil near the wreck site are far higher than the cancer risk threshold recommended by federal scientists.

    Dioxin is a toxic and carcinogenic byproduct of burning vinyl chloride, a hazardous chemical that at least five Norfolk Southern train cars were carrying when they derailed in early February, sparking a full-blown environmental and public health disaster.

    Citing a report that Pace Analytical prepared for Ohio’s neighbor Indiana, The Guardian reported Friday that “East Palestine soil showed levels of ‘2,3,7,8 TCDD toxicity equivalence’ of 700 parts per trillion (ppt),” potentially stemming from the controlled burn of vinyl chloride in the wake of the crash.

    “The level at which the EPA will initiate cleanup action in residential areas is 1,000 ppt,” the newspaper explained. “However, the cleanup triggers are much lower in many states—90 ppt in Michigan, and 50 ppt in California… Moreover, EPA scientists in 2010 put the cancer risk threshold for dioxins in residential soil at 3.7 ppt, and the agency recommended lowering the cleanup trigger to 72 ppt.”

    The Obama administration tanked the EPA scientists’ effort to formally lower the federal cleanup threshold, The Guardian noted.

    Chemical experts and former EPA officials expressed alarm over the data while acknowledging it was limited to just two soil samples and more testing is needed.

    “The levels are not screaming high, but we have confirmed that dioxins are in East Palestine’s soil,” Linda Birnbaum, former head of the U.S. National Toxicology Program, told The Guardian. “The EPA must test the soil in the area more broadly.”

    Carsten Prasse, an organic chemist at Johns Hopkins University, added that the dioxin concentrations in the soil samples examined are “actually concerning.”

    “My main concern is: is this reflective of the level in the area in East Palestine… and of the levels individuals who live near the rail are exposed to?” Prasse asked. “I certainly wouldn’t be comfortable living there.”

    Despite outside experts’ fears, EPA regional administrator Debra Shore insisted that the dioxin levels detected in the Indiana report are “very low.”

    The Guardian‘s reporting came days after Ohio’s Republican attorney general filed suit against Norfolk Southern, accusing the rail giant of “recklessly endangering” East Palestine residents.

    “Ohio shouldn’t have to bear the tremendous financial burden of Norfolk Southern’s glaring negligence,” said AG Dave Yost said. “The fallout from this highly preventable incident may continue for years to come, and there’s still so much we don’t know about the long-term effects on our air, water, and soil.”

    In Congress, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is working to build support for legislation that would impose more strict regulations on trains carrying hazardous materials such as vinyl chloride.

    During Senate testimony last week, Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw refused to endorse the bill.

    “If Norfolk Southern had paid a little more attention to safety and a little less attention to its profits—had cared a little more about the Ohioans along its tracks, and a little less about its executives and shareholders—these accidents would not have been as bad, or might not have happened at all,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), the lead Democratic sponsor of the Railway Safety Act, said during the hearing.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • As Rail Industry Lobbies Against Safety Bill, Two Trains Derail in Arizona and Washington



    Two trains operated by BNSF derailed in Washington state and Arizona on Thursday as the rail industry and its Republican allies in Congress fight bipartisan safety legislation introduced in the wake of the toxic crash in East Palestine, Ohio.

    The Associated Press reported that the Washington derailment spilled 5,000 gallons of diesel fuel on tribal lands along Padilla Bay. State authorities said the fuel spill does not appear to have flowed toward the water—though such an assurance is cold comfort amid the disaster in eastern Ohio, where residents’ concerns about the long-term impacts of the wreck on local water, soil, and air quality remain high more than a month after the crash.

    In Arizona, eight BNSF train cars derailed Thursday near the state’s border with California and Nevada, though it’s unclear whether any spills occurred. The crash reportedly involved a train carrying corn syrup.

    More than 1,000 trains derail in the United States each year, but the Norfolk Southern disaster in East Palestine has brought greater scrutiny to the industry’s dangerous cost-cutting and lax safety practices—turning wrecks that would typically be consigned to local news coverage into national headlines.

    With each derailment since early February, calls for substantive action in Congress to rein in the powerful industry have grown louder.

    Under pressure from rail workers and others, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced legislation earlier this month that would impose stronger regulations on trains carrying hazardous materials—an effort that rail industry lobbying has defeated in the past.

    While rail unions welcomed some provisions of the bill as decent starting points, they warned the measure has major loopholes and exceptions that rail giants wouldn’t hesitate to exploit.

    “If the language is not precise, the Class 1 railroads will avoid the scope of the law without violating the law, yet again putting the safety of our members and American communities into harm’s way,” said Eddie Hall, national president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen. “You can run a freight train through the loopholes.”

    Predictably, the rail industry is working to further water down the legislation or kill it entirely, pumping donations to Republican allies and running ads in major media outlets touting its supposedly ironclad commitment to safety.

    Sludge’s David Moore reported earlier this week that the PAC for Union Pacific—one of the largest Class 1 railroads in the U.S.—”made $15,000 in contributions last month, all to Republicans in the House and Senate, given less than two weeks after the Ohio derailment.”

    “Several House Republicans on committees that oversee transportation have sought to delay the bipartisan legislation to boost rail safety rules,” Moore noted, “saying more information is needed after a potentially-lengthy study.”

    Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas), chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials, parroted industry talking points earlier this month when making the case against regulatory action, saying U.S. railroads have a “very high success rate of moving hazardous material—to the point of 99-percent-plus.”

    Days before Nehls’ comment, the Association of American Railroads (AAR) declared in an ad appearing in a Politico newsletter that “while 99.9 percent of all hazmat shipments that move by rail reach their destination safely, we know a single incident can have significant impacts.”

    The AAR has dismissed demands for comprehensive rail safety reforms as “political.”

    In the Senate, meanwhile, John Thune (R-S.D.)—a former registered rail lobbyist—has emerged as a potentially key opponent of rail safety legislation, telling The Hill earlier this month that “we’ll take a look at what’s being proposed, but an immediate quick response heavy on regulation needs to be thoughtful and targeted.”

    During congressional testimony last week, Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw refused to endorse the bipartisan Railway Safety Act, another indication that rail giants will continue their longstanding opposition to popular regulatory changes.

    Over the past two decades, according to a recent OpenSecrets analysis, the rail industry has spent more than $650 million on federal lobbying.

    “The longer we wait to act on rail safety, the deeper the railroad industry can dig in their claws and lobby against progress,” Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.), a lead sponsor of separate rail safety legislation, warned Thursday.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Dems Push Biden DOJ to Probe Possible ‘Criminal’ Violations by SVB Execs



    Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal demanded Tuesday that the Biden Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission investigate whether Silicon Valley Bank executives “violated civil or criminal law” in the lead-up to the firm’s collapse, which sent shockwaves through the entire U.S. financial system.

    “This was a colossal failure in asset liability risk management,” the Democratic senators in a letter to SEC Chairman Gary Gensler and Attorney General Merrick Garland. The letter was first reported by CNBC on Wednesday morning.

    The lawmakers pointed to recent reporting detailing how “SVB officials showed a pattern of risky and questionable decision making that may have contributed to the bank’s instability and collapse and the ripple effects being felt throughout the economy.”

    Warren and Blumenthal asked the Biden administration to launch a probe to determine “whether senior bank executives and other key officials involved in the collapse met their statutory and regulatory responsibilities or violated civil or criminal law.”

    “One of the enduring failures in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis was the inability or unwillingness of DOJ and bank regulators to hold bank executives accountable for behavior that destroyed millions of lives and cost trillions of dollars of wealth,” they wrote. “The nation’s bank regulators cannot make the same mistake twice.”

    The fallout from SVB’s collapse has brought intense scrutiny to the venture capital lender’s ill-considered investment moves as well as the conduct of its top executives, who sold tens of millions of dollars worth of stock in the two years leading up to the bank’s failure last week—raising questions about possible insider trading.

    Greg Becker, SVB’s former CEO, sold millions of dollars of shares as recently as late last month.

    The bank’s leadership has also come under fire for dishing out bonuses hours before federal regulators took over on Friday.

    “You have nobody to blame for the failure at your bank but yourself and your fellow executives.”

    In a letter to Becker earlier this week, Warren—a member of the Senate Banking Committee—slammed SVB for lobbying against bank regulations in recent years and argued that “you have nobody to blame for the failure at your bank but yourself and your fellow executives.”

    “SVB failed—while its chief risk officer position sat vacant for eight months as its financial standing deteriorated—because it failed to address two key risks: concentration in your client base, and rising interest rates,” the Massachusetts Democrat wrote. “This is a failure of ‘Banking 101’—what one analyst called ‘sheer incompetence.’ Had SVB been subject to Dodd-Frank rules undone by [a 2018 GOP law], the bank would have been required to maintain stronger liquidity and capital requirements and conduct regular stress tests that would have required SVB to shore up its business to weather the type of stress it experienced last week.”

    “You lobbied for weaker rules, got what you wanted, and used this opportunity to abdicate your basic responsibilities to your clients and the public—facilitating a near-economic disaster,” Warren added.

    The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the DOJ and SEC have both opened investigations into the SVB failure, which was the second-largest bank collapse in U.S. history.

    “The separate probes are in their preliminary phases and may not lead to charges or allegations of wrongdoing,” the Journal noted. “The investigations are… examining stock sales that SVB Financial’s officers made days before the bank failed.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Warren and Porter Lead SVB Act to Repeal Trump-Era Bank Deregulation Law



    Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Katie Porter unveiled legislation Tuesday to repeal the section of a Trump-era law that weakened regulations for banks with between $50 billion to $250 billion in assets, a move that experts and lawmakers have blamed for the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the resulting turmoil.

    “In 2018, I rang the alarm bell about what would happen if Congress rolled back critical Dodd-Frank protections: banks would load up on risk to boost their profits and collapse, threatening our entire economy—and that is precisely what happened,” Warren (D-Mass.) said in a statement. “President Biden called on Congress to strengthen the rules for banks, and I’m proposing legislation to do just that by repealing the core of Trump’s bank law.”

    That law, authored by Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and backed by dozens of Democrats, raised the asset threshold for more stringent regulations to $250 billion or higher, exempting firms such as Silicon Valley Bank (SVB)—a major venture capital lender that controlled around $212 billion—from enhanced liquidity requirements and more frequent federal stress tests imposed on banks considered “systemically important.”

    SVB’s leadership specifically lobbied for the higher threshold, insisting the tougher regulations were unnecessary even as experts and lawmakers raised concerns that gutting them would increase the risk of bank failures and cascading effects on the financial system.

    “Americans deserve to know their money is safe when they deposit it in the bank,” Porter (D-Calif.) said Tuesday. “In 2018, politicians rolled back critical regulations protecting Americans’ deposits—ignoring warnings from financial experts in favor of Wall Street special interests. I’m calling on Congress to restore commonsense guardrails that keep corporate greed in check and restore confidence in our financial system.”

    Titled the Secure Viable Banking (SVB) Act, Warren and Porter’s legislation would place more stringent regulations on institutions like Silicon Valley Bank by reviving safeguards for firms with between $50 billion and $250 billion in assets.

    Facing backlash from Warren and others for glaring oversight failures, the Federal Reserve is considering stronger regulations for banks with between $100 billion and $250 billion in assets, Reuters reported late Tuesday.

    Warren and Porter introduced their bill with the support of 31 Democrats in the House and 17 members of the Senate Democratic caucus, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.).

    “Taxpayers should not have to pay for the mistakes and mismanagement of big bank executives,” Markey said in a statement. “The American people should have confidence in their financial institutions, and that starts with undoing Trump-era deregulation so that we can ensure a collapse like we saw last week never happens again.”

    Notably absent from the list of co-sponsors were the Democrats who helped Republicans usher the bill through Congress in 2018, often misleadingly arguing that the measure was chiefly about providing relief for “community banks.”

    In the Senate, 16 Democrats and Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) supported the bill, giving Republicans the votes they needed to overcome the chamber’s legislative filibuster.

    One of the Democratic supporters, Mark Warner of Virginia, defended the 2018 law over the weekend, telling ABC News that he believes it “put in place an appropriate level of regulation on mid-sized banks” and that “these mid-sized banks needed some regulatory relief.”

    The Lever reported last week that SVB chief Greg Becker held a fundraiser for Warner in 2016.

    “The bank’s political action committee also donated a total of $10,000 to Warner’s campaigns in the 2016 and 2018 election cycles,” the outlet noted.

    Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), another major backer of the 2018 law, held a fundraiser in Silicon Valley earlier this week, just days after SVB collapsed.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • House GOP Pushes Bill Targeting Food Assistance for the Poor

    More than a dozen House Republicans are expected to release legislation Tuesday that would impose more harsh work requirements on certain recipients of federal food aid, a clear signal that the GOP intends to target nutrition assistance in critical debt ceiling, budget, and farm bill talks. Led by Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), the measure would “expand the age bracket for able-bodied [Supplemental…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • ‘They’re Such Cowards’: GOP Pushes Bill Targeting Food Aid for the Poor



    More than a dozen House Republicans are expected to release legislation Tuesday that would impose more harsh work requirements on certain recipients of federal food aid, a clear signal that the GOP intends to target nutrition assistance in critical debt ceiling, budget, and farm bill talks.

    Led by Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), the measure would “expand the age bracket for able-bodied [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] recipients without dependents, who have to meet complicated work requirements,” according to Politico, which obtained a copy of the bill ahead of its official introduction.

    Johnson’s legislation, which currently has 14 Republican co-sponsors, would broaden the SNAP work requirement age bracket for able-bodied adults without dependents to 18 to 65, adding 16 years to the current age ceiling of 49, Politico reported. Former President Donald Trump previously proposed raising the age ceiling to 62.

    Under SNAP rules, people categorized as able-bodied adults without dependents are only allowed to receive federal food benefits for three months during any three-year period when they aren’t employed or taking part in work training, a restriction that experts and advocates have long decried as cruel and punitive.

    “Essentially, this is a time limit—which disproportionately affects people of color—that takes SNAP away when people aren’t working, withholding food as a punishment for not having a stable job,” the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes.

    Most adult SNAP recipients already work, though they are often precarious, low-wage jobs with poor benefits.

    While Johnson and other Republicans claim their support for more stringent SNAP work requirements stems from a desire to boost employment, research has repeatedly shown that they are ineffective at doing so. Work requirements do, however, succeed at booting many people off the program.

    States are currently allowed to request waivers for the SNAP benefit time limits, but Johnson’s bill would constrain the federal government’s ability to grant such requests, Politico reported.

    “These guys talk about states’ rights all the time, except when it comes to poor people,” Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said in response to the GOP bill.

    Johnson’s legislation comes as food insecurity is mounting across the U.S. after emergency SNAP benefit expansions lapsed earlier this month, slashing benefits for tens of millions of people amid high food prices. The cuts—the result of an end-of-year deal in Congress—have been dramatic for many, costing families hundreds of dollars per month in food aid.

    “These enhanced benefits were a lifeline for millions—many of whom will now go hungry,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “And Republicans want to cut these programs even further.”

    Politico reported that while Democratic lawmakers are publicly voicing opposition to the Republican Party’s latest attack on food benefits, “some House Democrats are quietly raising alarms about their lack of plans to push back on the GOP proposals.”

    “We need to be prepared for a showdown on food security—and right now, we’re not ready,” one unnamed House Democrat told the outlet.

    Anti-hunger campaigners are pushing Democrats to protect food benefits and fight for a permanent SNAP expansion during upcoming farm bill negotiations.

    But as Slate’s Alexander Sammon wrote last week, “the lack of willingness to fight for SNAP when it was already expanded is not a heartening sign.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • ‘Shocking’: Saudi Aramco Posts Largest-Ever Annual Profit for a Fossil Fuel Company

    Saudi Aramco, an oil giant almost entirely owned by the government of Saudi Arabia, announced Sunday that it brought in a staggering $161.1 billion in profits last year as it joined other fossil fuel companies in capitalizing on energy market turmoil sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    The company’s profit figure for 2022 is the largest ever recorded by an oil corporation. Amin Nasser, Aramco’s CEO, declared on an earnings call that “this is probably the highest net income ever recorded in the corporate world.”

    For comparison, ExxonMobil—the second-largest oil company in the world behind Aramco—reported $56 billion in net income last year, a record for the U.S. firm but nowhere close to the Saudi corporation’s haul.

    “It is shocking for a company to make a profit of more than $161.1 billion in a single year through the sale of fossil fuel—the single largest driver of the climate crisis,” Agnès Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty International, said in a statement. “It is all the more shocking because this surplus was amassed during a global cost-of-living crisis and aided by the increase in energy prices resulting from Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.”

    Aramco said its banner profits—driven by “stronger crude oil prices, higher volumes sold, and improved margins for refined products”—were up nearly 47% compared to 2021, a windfall the company has used to reward investors.

    “Aramco declared a dividend of $19.5 billion for the fourth quarter, to be paid in Q1 2023,” the oil firm said in a press release. “This represents a 4.0% increase compared to the previous quarter, aligned with the company’s dividend policy aiming to deliver a sustainable and progressive dividend. Additionally, the Board of Directors also recommended the distribution of bonus shares to eligible shareholders in the amount of one share for every 10 shares held.”

    While Aramco said it intends to devote resources to “lower-carbon technologies” and carbon-capture initiatives that climate campaigners have dismissed as false solutions, the company made clear that it has no intention of shifting aggressively away from fossil fuel production—a transition scientists say is necessary to avert climate catastrophe.

    In its earnings announcement, Aramco said it is committed to “expanding oil, gas, and chemicals production.”

    Saudi Arabia is the second-largest oil producer in the world behind the United States. Late last year, the Saudi-led Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) agreed to slash oil production by 2 million barrels a day in a bid to keep prices high—benefiting companies like Aramco, Exxon, and other fossil fuel majors that have posted record-shattering 2022 profits as households struggle to heat their homes.

    “It is past time that Saudi Arabia acted in humanity’s interest and supported the phasing out of the fossil fuel industry, which is essential for preventing further climate harm,” Callamard said Sunday. “These extraordinary profits, and any future income derived from Aramco, should not be deployed to finance human rights abuses, cover them up, or try and gloss over them.”