Author: Kenny Stancil

  • “We need action, and we need it now.”

    So wrote Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Tina Smith (D-Minn.) in a New York Times opinion piece published Saturday, one day after the U.S. Supreme Court’s reactionary majority struck down Roe v. Wade, imperiling reproductive freedom and other civil rights for millions of people nationwide.

    “The Supreme Court doesn’t get the final say on abortion,” the lawmakers argued. “The American people will have the last word through their representatives in Congress and the White House.”

    Although President Joe Biden denounced the high court’s deeply unpopular 6-3 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on Friday, he offered no concrete plans for protecting abortion access beyond urging voters to elect more Democrats in November’s pivotal midterms.

    Warren and Smith agree with the president’s contention that protections once guaranteed by Roe are “on the ballot,” but they also insisted that numerous steps can and must be taken immediately to secure people’s ability to control their own bodies.

    “Each of us can and should act — both elected officials and everyday Americans,” wrote Warren and Smith, the only senator to have ever worked at Planned Parenthood. “We can start by helping those who need access to an abortion.”

    The pair continued:

    Support Planned Parenthood and other organizations that are expanding their services in states where abortion is available. Contribute to abortion funds. Encourage state legislators to protect reproductive rights in states like New Mexico and Minnesota that border places where abortion services will most likely be severely restricted and even criminalized. Encourage employers in states with abortion bans to give their employees adequate time off and money for travel to find the abortion care they need. Do all you can—and demand the same all-you-can approach from all of our elected leaders.

    While the Senate’s passage of the House-approved Women’s Health Protection Act, which would enshrine reproductive rights into federal law, depends on convincing Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and other right-wing holdouts to repeal the chamber’s anti-democratic 60-vote filibuster rule, Warren and Smith argued that the White House has the power to swiftly protect access to abortion care.

    Earlier this month, the duo joined Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and half the Senate Democratic Caucus in sending a letter to Biden outlining executive actions his administration can take to defend reproductive freedom in the face of the GOP’s onslaught.

    Suggested actions, which Warren and Smith reiterated in their new essay, include “increasing access to abortion medication, providing federal resources for individuals seeking abortion care in other states, and using federal property and resources to protect people seeking abortion services locally.”

    Attorney General Merrick Garland, for his part, did suggest Friday that the Justice Department will crack down on states that attempt to ban Mifepristone, abortion medication that has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

    But while Biden is reportedly considering a number of executive orders, it remains unclear if his administration is planning to subsidize individuals’ increasingly long trips to out-of-state abortion clinics or utilize federal lands to expand access to the procedure.

    During a press conference outside the Massachusetts State House on Friday, Warren told reporters that Biden and congressional Democrats should “explore just how much we can start using federal lands as a way to protect people who need access to abortions in all the states that either have banned abortions or are clearly on the threshold of doing so.”

    At least 11 states banned or severely restricted abortion within the first 24 hours of the Supreme Court’s decision. Fifteen more are expected to eliminate or drastically reduce legal access to abortion in the coming weeks, endangering the health and economic well-being of women across the U.S.

    Addressing a crowd of protestors gathered in New York’s Union Square, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) echoed the idea of using federal property to circumvent state-level abortion bans.

    There are “actions at President Biden’s disposal that he can mobilize,” Ocasio-Cortez told the crowd. “I’ll start with the babiest of the babiest of the baby steps: Open abortion clinics on federal lands in red states right now. Right now.”

    Pleas for action come as the GOP is laying the groundwork for a federal abortion ban if they retake Congress and the White House, an idea that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is open to.

    “We need to treat this like the national emergency that it is,” Warren said Friday.

    In their opinion piece, Warren and Smith urged the president “to declare a public health emergency to protect abortion access for all Americans, unlocking critical resources and authority that states and the federal government can use to meet the surge in demand for reproductive health services.”

    A coalition of Black congresswomen led by Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), and Cori Bush (D-Mo.) made a similar push just before the high court issued its judgment on Friday morning.

    The current predicament is the outcome of a 50-year campaign waged by “right-wing extremists [who] rejected the beliefs held by an overwhelming majority of Americans,” Warren and Smith argued. They explained:

    We’re in this dark moment because right-wing politicians and their allies have spent decades scheming to overrule a right many Americans considered sacrosanct. Passing state laws to restrict access to abortion care. Giving personhood rights to fertilized eggs. Threatening to criminalize in vitro fertilization. Offering bounties for reporting doctors who provide abortion services. Abusing the filibuster and turning Congress into a broken institution. Advancing judicial nominees who claimed to be committed to protecting “settled law” while they winked at their Republican sponsors in the Senate. Stealing two seats on the Supreme Court.

    “We can’t undo in five months the damage it took Republicans five decades to accomplish, but we can immediately start repairing our democracy,” Warren and Smith noted.

    “We need broad democracy reform,” they emphasized. That means “changing the composition of the courts, reforming Senate rules like the filibuster, and even fixing the outdated Electoral College that allowed presidential candidates who lost the popular vote to take office and nominate five of the justices who agreed to end the right to an abortion.”

    “Simply put,” Warren and Smith continued, “we must restore our democracy so that a radical minority can no longer drown out the will of the people.”

    “This will be a long, hard fight, and the path to victory is not yet certain,” the pair added. “But it’s a righteous fight that we must win—no matter how long it takes. The two of us lived in an America without Roe, and we are not going back. Not now. Not ever.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • “What does Biden ‘agree’ with doing?” Mehdi Hasan asked. “What does the leader of this country want to do to stop the increasingly fascistic assault on our democratic institutions and basic rights?”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

  • “The Supreme Court doesn’t get the final say on abortion,” Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Tina Smith wrote in a new op-ed.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

  • A 42-year-old gunman was arrested and charged with murder, attempted murder, and terrorist acts on Saturday after he killed two people and injured 21 during an overnight shooting rampage in and around an Oslo gay bar — just hours before the city was supposed to hold its annual Pride parade.

    “There is reason to think that this may be a hate crime,” Norwegian police said. “We are investigating whether… Pride was a target in itself or whether there are other motives.”

    In the wake of what Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere called a “terrible and deeply shocking attack on innocent people,” Oslo’s annual Pride celebration was canceled based on police advice.

    “We will soon be proud and visible again, but today, we will share our Pride celebrations from home,” Inger Kristin Haugsevje, leader of Oslo Pride, and Inge Alexander Gjestvang, leader of the Norwegian Organization for Sexual and Gender Diversity, said in a statement.

    As Reuters reported, “The attack took place in the early hours of Saturday, with victims shot inside and outside the London Pub, a longstanding hub of Oslo’s LGBTQ scene, as well as in the surrounding streets and at one other bar in the center of the Norwegian capital.”

    Bili Blum-Jansen, who was inside the London Pub at the time, sought refuge in the basement, hiding there alongside 80 to 100 other people.

    “Many called their partners and family, it felt almost as if they were saying goodbye,” he told Norway’s TV2. “Others helped calm down those who were extremely terrified.”

    “I had a bit of panic and thought that if the shooter or shooters were to arrive, we’d all be dead,” he added. “There was no way out.”

    Marcus Nybakken, who had left the London Pub shortly before gunfire erupted and returned later to help, recounted the horrific shooting and its aftermath.

    “Many people were crying and screaming, the injured were screaming, people were distressed and scared — very, very scared,” Nybakken said. “My first thought was that Pride was the target, so that’s frightening.”

    Although the city’s Pride parade was canceled as a result of the attack, Reuters reported that “several thousand people began what appeared to be a spontaneous march in central Oslo, waving rainbow flags and chanting in English: ‘We’re here, we’re queer, we won’t disappear.’”

    The suspect was detained minutes after the shooting began, according to police who said they believe he acted alone. Two weapons, one of them a fully automatic gun, were retrieved from the crime scene, they added.

    National security authorities raised Norway’s terrorism threat assessment to its highest level following the attack.

    Norway’s law enforcement officials, who are not usually armed, will carry guns until further notice, national police chief Benedicte Bjoernland announced.

    Norway has lower crime rates than many of its high-income peers. However, this is not the first hate-motivated mass shooting in the Scandinavian nation of 5.4 million. The deadliest occurred in 2011, when far-right extremist Anders Behring Breivik murdered 77 people.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Although one witness said the driver went “out of his way” to hit pro-choice protestors in the street, Cedar Rapids police declined to make an arrest.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

  • A 42-year-old gunman has been charged with terrorism following what Norway’s prime minister called a “terrible and deeply shocking attack on innocent people.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

  • “Criminalizing and prosecuting individuals who seek or provide abortion care makes a mockery of justice,” says a joint statement signed by 84 elected attorneys. “Prosecutors should not be part of that.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

  • Some people scheduled to receive abortions were turned away within minutes of the right-wing Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v. Wade.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

  • The United Nations is urging Haiti to address the food, water, and medicine shortages imperiling its incarcerated population.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

  • Spain is the first nation to publicly call for abandoning the Energy Charter Treaty.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

  • “This is a major win for communities demanding an end to fossil fuels,” said the Sunrise Movement. “But we need to do more.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

  • The proposed increase costs 10 times more than preserving the free school lunch program that Congress is allowing to expire “because it’s ‘too expensive,’” Public Citizen noted.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

  • One critic called the legislation “nothing more than a trojan horse” that would do more to harm than help the iconic trees.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

  • “A windfall tax would get more relief to more people by penalizing the Big Oil profiteering that’s driving up prices,” said one campaigner.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

  • “With up to one million species currently at risk of extinction worldwide, the world cannot afford to wait any longer for global action on nature protection.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

  • “It just can’t be that the fossil fuel industry is still more protected than our human rights,” said a 17-year-old German whose family was displaced during last summer’s deadly floods.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

  • “The atomic bomb is a weapon of inhumanity and of absolute evil, with which human beings cannot exist,” said 82-year-old Sueichi Kido.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

  • The president of far-right National Rally, meanwhile, celebrated a “historic breakthrough” as Le Pen’s xenophobic party won a record 89 seats.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

  • Progressives responded with disgust after the Senate Armed Services Committee voted Thursday to tack an additional $45 billion on top of President Joe Biden’s already massive military spending request, bringing the total proposed budget for the coming fiscal year to a staggering $857.6 billion.

    The Biden administration’s March request for $813 billion in military spending for Fiscal Year 2023 represented a $31 billion increase over the current level of $782 billion, which is already unprecedented.

    During its closed-door markup of the National Defense Authorization Act this week, the Senate Armed Services Committee approved a bill with a topline budget of $847 billion — $817 billion of which is earmarked for the Pentagon. An additional $10.6 billion in national military spending falls outside the Senate panel’s jurisdiction. The House is expected to make its own push to further boost military spending for the next fiscal year.

    William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, called the Senate panel’s decision “misguided.”

    “The administration’s proposal is already higher than spending at the peaks of the Korean and Vietnam Wars and over $100 billion more than at the height of the Cold War,” Hartung said in a statement. “Throwing more money at the Pentagon will not make us safer — it will just divert funds from addressing other urgent challenges like pandemics and climate change that put millions of Americans at risk.”

    Monica Montgomery, a research analyst at the Council for a Livable World, pointed out that the Senate committee’s proposed $45 billion increase in military spending is equivalent to Biden’s entire budget request for climate programs, demonstrating how “Congress will value militarism and defense contractors over a livable future.”

    “If Congress truly wants to keep people safe, they must start by rejecting this increase and investing taxpayer dollars in human wellbeing, instead,” Tori Bateman, policy advocacy coordinator at the American Friends Service Committee, said in a statement.

    Earlier this week, Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) — co-chairs of the Defense Spending Reduction Caucus — introduced the People Over Pentagon Act of 2022, which proposes cutting Pentagon spending for the next fiscal year by $100 billion and reallocating those funds toward threats facing the nation that “are not military in nature,” such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the climate emergency, and worsening inequality.

    Although a majority of U.S. voters are opposed to military spending in excess of $800 billion, earlier efforts to slash the Pentagon’s budget have failed to gain enough support to pass the House or Senate thanks in part to lawmakers who receive significant amounts of campaign cash from the weapons industry, which benefits from constantly ballooning expenditures.

    Roughly 55% of all Pentagon spending went to private sector military contractors from FY 2002 to FY 2021, according to Stephen Semler of the Security Policy Reform Institute. “If this privatization of funds rate over the last 20 years holds,” Semler wrote in December, arms dealers will gobble up an estimated $407 billion in public money in FY 2022.

    In the words of Win Without War president Stephen Miles, “The Pentagon’s ever-growing budget is quite simply a theft from American people enriching some of the wealthiest corporations in this country.”

    Julia Gledhill, an analyst at the Project on Government Oversight’s Center for Defense Information, concurred.

    “Increasing the Pentagon budget beyond President Biden’s request isn’t just irresponsible — it’s a slap in the face to American taxpayers,” said Gledhill. “Year after year the Department of Defense demonstrates its lack of fiscal discipline, failing financial audits and sinking money into weapon programs that do little more than enrich defense contractors.”

    “This $45 billion increase isn’t about national security or the American people,” she added. “It’s about funneling money into the military-industrial complex.”

    Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters Thursday that inflation was “the first consideration” in increasing the topline. He also cited the need to support Ukraine, replenish weapons sent to aid the country’s fight against Russia, and fund military priorities not included in Biden’s Pentagon request, Politico reported.

    The committee’s ranking Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma hailed the proposed spending hike as “everything I hoped for.”

    Experts, meanwhile, have documented how military spending has never moved in tandem with inflation. They have also warned that the nearly $60 billion worth of weaponry that Ukraine has already received from the U.S. is more likely to intensify the war than to advance peace, with arms manufacturers among the only beneficiaries of such prolonged suffering.

    The Senate Armed Services Committee’s move to increase U.S. military spending comes despite the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan following 20 years of war.

    Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen — a progressive advocacy group that is pushing the U.S. to ramp up vaccine manufacturing and inoculate the world against Covid-19 with an investment of just $25 billion, or roughly 3% of the nation’s annual military budget — said that “the Senate Armed Services Committee’s choice to defy both the president and public opinion and flood the Pentagon with more money is outrageous.”

    “Time and again, Congress funnels billions in additional funds to costly weapons programs, war, and defense contractors, while claiming that human needs would ‘cost too much,’” said Weissman. “Most Americans oppose efforts to rocket-launch military spending towards a trillion dollars per year. Lawmakers should reject this and champion human-centered spending instead.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • With the world “marching towards starvation,” said David Beasley, “the best thing we can do right now is end that damn war in Russia and Ukraine and get the port open” in Odesa.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

  • “The Pentagon’s ever-growing budget is quite simply a theft from American people enriching some of the wealthiest corporations in this country,” said one critic. “It’s disgraceful.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

  • “NSO Group should not be rewarded for its facilitation of human rights violations and dangerous business practices with a lucrative offer from a U.S. defense contractor,” said one campaigner.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

  • “Healthcare reform is long overdue in the U.S.,” said the lead author of a new study. “Americans are needlessly losing lives and money.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

  • “What has happened to our humanity?” asked progressive British lawmaker Jeremy Corbyn.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

  • Billionaire Howard Schultz’s vow to never negotiate in good faith with Starbucks Workers United may violate federal labor law.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

  • “The United States has lost its moral authority,” said one critic, “to convene a summit about the promotion of democracy and freedom.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

  • How will the White House ensure that powerful interests do not turn the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity “into another corporate-dominated, wildly unpopular trade exercise?” asked one expert.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

  • The warning from a leading scientist came as more than 30 million people in Arizona, California, and Nevada brace for life-threatening temperatures.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

  • “If all these plans materialize, they will either end up as massive stranded assets or they’ll lock the world into irreversible warming.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

  • “Everyone who cares about the future of U.S. domestic policy should pay attention to this effort in California to build a public option for prescription drug manufacturing,” said one expert. “Potentially game-changing.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams – Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.