Over 1,300 climate, justice and community groups are calling for Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens to resign over the police killing of anti-“Cop City” activist Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán on January 18, issuing a strong rebuke to Dickens for his refusal to even condemn the killing. In their letter, the groups said that Dickens has stood firmly on the side of law enforcement as Georgia Republican Gov.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-California) plot to appease the most extremist lawmakers in his caucus by removing Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) from her committee assignment is teetering on the edge of failure as more Republicans voice their reluctance to go along with the plan. On Friday, Republican Rep. Ken Buck (Colorado) said that he is opposed to removing Omar…
In one of its first moves after a contentious leadership election, the Republican National Committee (RNC) voted on Monday to pass a resolution directing Republicans nationwide to “go on offense” in order to pass the most restrictive abortion bans possible. The resolution directs Republicans in Congress and in state-level positions to pursue the “strongest” anti-abortion bills “possible,”…
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This story originally appeared in Truthout on Jan. 30, 2023. It is shared here with permission.
In his new role as the chair of the powerful Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) is calling for the minimum wage to be raised for the first time in nearly 14 years, saying that the old benchmark of $15 an hour is no longer enough.
On MSNBC on Sunday, Sanders said that it is time for the federal minimum wage to be raised to at least $17 an hour, if not more. This would be nearly 2.5 times the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, which was set in 2009.
“A couple of years ago, we fought to raise the minimum wage to $15. As a result of inflation, in real dollars, that should be at least $17 right now,” Sanders told MSNBC’s Ali Velshi.
“Here’s the bottom line: you’ve got over 60 percent of the people in this country living paycheck to paycheck, tens of millions are working at starvation wages,” he continued. “It is not too much to ask the wealthiest country on Earth where we have massive income and wealth inequality, people on top doing phenomenally well, to say that in America, if you’re working 40 hours a week, you’re not living in poverty.”
In 2021, Sanders and progressive lawmakers fought to have a provision increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour included in the Democrats’ budget reconciliation bill. But the provision was dropped from the package due to uniform opposition from Republicans and figures like Senators Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Arizona), and unwillingness from Democrats to overrule the Senate parliamentarian who ruled that the minimum wage wasn’t sufficiently related to the federal budget.
Because of extremely high inflation rates over the past year, $15 is about equivalent to $17 now. In fact, $15 an hour was already insufficient in 2021, many activists said; workers have been waging the “Fight for $15” since 2012, and research done in 2021 by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) found that a worker making $15 an hour working 40 hours a week wouldn’t be able to afford to rent an average two bedroom apartment in any state in the U.S.
If the minimum wage had risen with productivity in past decades, perhaps better reflecting workers’ contributions to the economy, the minimum wage would be over $23 now, economists say. If it had risen at the same rate that Wall Street employee bonuses have risen since the 1980s, meanwhile, it would be $61.75 per hour.
“The price of housing has soared in recent years. If you’re an average worker, my god, you’re paying $1,500 a month to put a roof over your head and your child’s head,” Sanders said. “The bottom line is — this is not complicated — you’ve got an economy right now that is doing great, fantastic, for the 1 percent. How about creating an economy that works for ordinary Americans? That means you raise the minimum wage to a living wage.”
With Congress dragging its feet on raising the minimum wage, the current value of the minimum wage is extremely low. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found last July that the value of the federal minimum wage has declined by 27 percent since it was established in 2009, reaching its lowest point since 1956. This has an effect not only on workers who are paid minimum wage, but also across the economy, as the value of the minimum wage has ripple effects across workers whose wages aren’t directly dependent on the federal threshold.
It’s unlikely that Republicans will pass legislation to raise the minimum wage any time soon, as the party is currently working on plans to put even less money in the hands of the working class. In this moment, however, Sanders said that it is important for Democrats to introduce legislation that puts on display the cruelties of the Republican agenda.
Though House Republicans are discussing cutting Social Security, Sanders told Velshi that he plans to introduce legislation this week that would increase Social Security payments by ensuring that the wealthiest Americans pay a share of their incomes that is equivalent to what the rest of the country pays into the program.
“I think our job in the Senate is to put concrete ideas on the table that the American people will say, ‘yeah, we should raise minimum wage. Yes, we should raise the benefits for low income seniors and improve the solvency of Social Security,’” Sanders said. “I think if we do our job, people will see the contrast between serious legislating and what goes on in the House.”
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
As Americans were struggling to afford to survive due to skyrocketing gas prices and facing horrific environmental disasters worsened by the climate crisis, fossil fuel giant Chevron was having its most profitable year in history, the company’s latest revenue report reveals. In its quarterly report published on Friday, Chevron announced that it collected a profit of $36.5 billion in 2022.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Democratic Representatives Ilhan Omar (Minnesota), Adam Schiff (California) and Eric Swalwell (California) have put House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) on blast in a new op-ed, condemning McCarthy for his “partisan political stunt” this week to block the Democrats from their committee spots. This week, McCarthy blocked the appointment of Schiff and Swalwell from their spots on the House…
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A new report unveils that a significant number of Republicans on the House Natural Resources Committee — which oversees key issues like fossil fuel usage and land conservation — employ former fossil fuel lobbyists in top staff positions that could influence policy in coming years. Watchdog Accountable.US released a report showing that seven Republicans in the House have oil lobbyists in top…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Dozens of lawmakers in the House and the Senate are urging the Biden administration to reverse its expansion of Title 42 — a cruel anti-immigration policy originally invoked by former President Donald Trump — and reconsider its planned proposal of an “illegal and inhumane” travel ban. In a letter signed by 77 Democrats sent to President Joe Biden this week, the lawmakers said that…
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The campaign by Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona) to unseat Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is touting its over $1 million fundraising haul, achieved in just the 24 hours after Gallego announced his campaign on Monday, perhaps portending an uphill battle for Sinema to keep her seat after provoking the ire of progressives and Democrats over the past years. In a press release, the Gallego campaign announced that…
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This story originally appeared in Truthout on Jan. 25, 2023. It is shared here with permission.
Progressive lawmakers are calling for an independent investigation into the death of climate justice activist Manuel Terán, who also went by the name Tortuguita, who was killed by police last week as law enforcement officers were carrying out a violent raid of a protest camp in a wooded area in Atlanta, Georgia.
Activists say that the police raid of the camp was only law enforcement’s most recent attempt to clear the camp, where activists have been protesting a proposed $90 million police training facility that activists have nicknamed “Cop City.” The construction of “Cop City,” as proposed by the City of Atlanta and the Atlanta Police Department,” would involve razing nearly 100 acres of forest to build “a domestic version of a military base in the heart of a working-class Black community,” as Atlanta forest defender Kamau Franklin wrote for Truthout.
Representatives Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) and Cori Bush (D-Missouri) called for an independent investigation into the police killing of Tortuguita this week, echoing activists’ calls.
“Last week, police killed Tortuguita, a climate justice protester in Atlanta who was defending a forest set to be destroyed for Cop City, a police training center,” Bush wrote on Twitter on Monday. “I am calling for an independent investigation into their death. There must be accountability.”
Tlaib repeated Bush’s call in a tweet on Wednesday, saying: “I echo Rep. Bush’s call for an independent investigation. We demand justice for Tortuguita. I stand with the forest protectors righteously fighting Cop City.”
Activists have also been calling for an investigation, one that doesn’t involve federal agencies or law enforcement agencies tied to the killing. Police have claimed that they only shot and killed a protester because the protester shot first — a narrative that has been dominating corporate media outlets. But activists say that this account of events seems unlikely, and at the very least is missing basic information, like how many times the victim was shot.
“To our knowledge so far, we find it less than likely that the police version of events is what really happened…. As the little intel that we have, residents said that they heard a blast of gunshots all at once, and not one blast and then a return of fire,” Franklin said in an interview last week with Democracy Now!.
“And that’s why we’re calling for an independent investigation, not one that’s done by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, not one that’s done by any federal authority, but a complete independent investigation, because that’s the only way we’re going to know what really happened,” Franklin continued. “But right now, based on what we do know, we cannot say anything except that this is probably a political assassination.”
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) says that it’s launched an independent investigation into the matter. But according to the agency’s own statement about the probe, the “joint task force” conducting the investigation includes the Atlanta Police Department itself; it’s common for police departments to investigate themselves in “independent” investigations after a police killing and find no wrongdoing.
Perhaps knowing that communities questioning the police narrative surrounding Tortuguita’s death communicate online, the GBI’s official Twitter has repeatedly rebuffed people speaking in defense of Tortuguita and the protesters. On Monday, the GBI was quick to tweet a response to climate activist Steven Donziger, who shared a photo that appeared to show that members of the Atlanta SWAT team who were allegedly present at the shooting were wearing body cameras. The GBI wrote, “this tweet is FALSE” — a notably conclusive claim to make in public about an ongoing investigation.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) is doubling down on his backing of Republican Rep. George Santos (New York), even as other Republican officials call for Santos’s resignation and legal and political problems pile up for the freshman representative and seemingly inveterate liar. McCarthy, who has stood by Santos for weeks, even as Santos has admitted to fabricating huge swaths of his…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Progressive lawmakers are calling for an independent investigation into the death of climate justice activist Manuel Terán, who also went by the name Tortuguita, who was killed by police last week as law enforcement officers were carrying out a violent raid of a protest camp in a wooded area in Atlanta, Georgia. Activists say that the police raid of the camp was only law enforcement’s most recent…
Caught in between several complaints over potential financial improprieties, Republican Rep. George Santos (New York) has changed course on the $705,000 that he previously claimed to have loaned to his campaign, now saying that the money wasn’t actually entirely from personal funds. On Tuesday afternoon, Santos’s campaign filed 10 amended campaign finance reports with the Federal Election…
This story originally appeared in Truthout on Jan. 24, 2023. It is shared here with permission.
In a time when life expectancy in the U.S. is declining for the first time in decades and Americans can expect on average to enjoy even fewer years of retirement, Republicans are considering a radical plan to shrink the retirement window.
House Republicans have been working out the details of their deeply unpopular plan to cut Social Security and Medicare in order to deepen poverty and shackle people to the labor force further into old age.
The party is considering a proposal to raise the retirement age for Social Security to 70, per The Washington Post, which means that workers and retirees would have to work an additional 3 to 4 years to receive full benefit. This proposal would mostly affect younger workers who have not yet started to receive benefits from the program.
Under this proposal, Americans could expect to be able to enjoy retirement for only about six years, if the most recent life expectancy estimates hold: In 2021, the average life expectancy in the U.S. dropped to 76 years and one month.
This is two years and nine months less than the pre-pandemic average, which is a larger drop than other wealthy countries had experienced in the same period of time. It is also already harder to retire in the U.S. than in other countries, as older Americans have a higher poverty rate than those in other wealthy countries; by contrast, over a million people in France are striking to protest the government’s proposal to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 to qualify for a full government pension.
The GOP is also considering a proposal for panels that would recommend changes to Social Security and Medicare, which are at risk of facing solvency issues in coming decades thanks in part to Republicans’ efforts to chip away at the program for years. This supposed solution would likely be crafted to ensure that the panel would suggest cuts to the program — but could be done in a way that makes it seem as though the GOP isn’t directly responsible for the cuts.
Cutting Social Security and Medicare could have disastrous consequences for middle- and lower-class Americans, who are already having trouble affording basic expenses like medical care. Social Security is the single most effective anti-poverty program by far in the U.S., even with payouts that are still too low to prevent poverty for many. Medicare is similarly an extremely effective anti-poverty program, and, importantly, helps millions of Americans afford medical care that would otherwise be out of reach.
“We have no choice but to make hard decisions,” said Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Oklahoma), who leads the Republican Study Committee, the largest House GOP caucus which endorsed the retirement benefit age last year. “Everybody has to look at everything.”
Democratic lawmakers have said that Republicans are focusing on Social Security solvency because they think cutting the program under President Joe Biden could hurt Democrats.
If they were truly worried about the funding of the program and maintaining its anti-poverty effects, Republicans could support efforts to make it so that the rich pay an equal share of their income into Social Security as the working class does, for instance; a proposal introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) last year to “scrap the cap” at which people’s incomes are taxed for the program would fully fund the program until 2096, while also upping payments by $2,400 a year.
Democrats in the House, meanwhile, have advocated for decreasing the Medicare eligibility age to 60 or even 55, which would provide tens of millions of people with easier access to health care.
Implementing a change like this would be popular among voters. Polling last year by Data for Progress found that a bipartisan majority of Americans support raising taxes on those making over $400,000 in order to fund Social Security expansion. Meanwhile, more recent polling by Data for Progress found that a majority of voters — Democrat, independent or Republican — say that Republicans should allow the debt limit to be raised without cuts to Social Security or Medicare.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
This story originally appeared in Truthout on Jan. 24, 2023. It is shared here with permission.
Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, the chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC) reiterated that the RNC won’t let the GOP nominee participate in events organized by a nonpartisan organization that has held presidential debates since 1988.
“Don’t waste your time,” RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel told networks that are applying to become 2024 debate hosts. She reminded them that the RNC has already decided that its candidates won’t participate in the debates, and that Republicans will only participate in debates that have been vetted and approved by the GOP.
Last year, the RNC unanimously voted to withdraw from the Commission on Presidential Debates, following years of grievances from Republicans like Donald Trump who say, contrary to the evidence, that the debates are biased against the GOP.
This recalcitrance represents another move demonstrating the party’s unwillingness to participate in the typical political process. The current electoral system already strongly favors the right, and the presidential debates are no exception: Commentators have noted that televised presidential debates in particular give the right an opportunity to platform rampant lies, which the right is currently thriving on.
Republican claims that the debates are biased against them likely suggests that they are seeking to overhaul the debate format to favor themselves.
Indeed, Republicans are currently reaching out to networks on their own to propose their own GOP-approved version of debates. One issue that they take particular issue with is the presence of debate moderators, and the RNC is in talks to propose getting rid of moderators altogether.
While moderators have faced criticism from all sides of the political spectrum, the right dislikes moderators who have tried to correct Republican candidates or rein them in; during the first general debate in the 2020 election, Trump even took issue with moderator Chris Wallace, who was a Fox News host at the time.
After Wallace had failed to stop Trump from interrupting Joe Biden multiple times, Trump threw a tantrum, lashing out on Twitter against Wallace and fueling the RNC’s current hangups with debate moderators.
Refusing to participate in debates may backfire on the right, as the commission and the Democrats may decide to hold debates as usual, which could essentially give the Democratic nominee a platform to answer questions freely in the hours-long debate slot. However, if the commission and the Democratic Party give in to the Republicans’ demands, it could bring an the end to the debate format that’s been used since the 1980s, paving the way for debates created by and for the right.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, the chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC) reiterated that the RNC won’t let the GOP nominee participate in events organized by a nonpartisan organization that has held presidential debates since 1988. “Don’t waste your time,” RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel told networks that are applying to become 2024 debate hosts. She reminded them that the RNC has…
A group of House Democrats has introduced legislation that would overturn Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC), a 13-year old Supreme Court precedent that unleashed a deluge of money into the American political system — a bill that comes directly after the most expensive midterm election in history. The Democracy For All Amendment would create a constitutional amendment that would…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Democratic and progressive lawmakers are criticizing the GOP for an extremist tax plan that Republicans are planning to soon put to a vote in the House that would completely overhaul the tax system to blatantly favor the rich. In what seems to be a concession to the most far right members of the Republican caucus, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) has teed up a vote on the so-called Fair…
Despite the remarkable successes of the resurging labor movement in recent years, newly released data shows that union membership hit an all-time low in 2022 — demonstrating the dire need for pro-worker reforms in labor laws, advocates say. According to a report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) published on Thursday, union membership decreased to a mere 10.1 percent of the workforce last…
This story originally appeared in Truthout on Jan. 18, 2023. It is shared here with permission.
Analyses show that a majority of the House Republicans’ newly chosen committee chairs – people who will have a huge hand in setting the priorities for the House over the next two years – have participated in the extremely dangerous and anti-democratic GOP practice of election denial.
As first pointed out by HuffPost, 11 of the 17 new committee chairs were among the 147 Republicans who voted against certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election. Further, 12 of the new chairs had signed onto an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court in 2020 seeking to overturn the will of the voters in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where a majority of voters voted for President Joe Biden.
These lawmakers will be in charge of committees that will help write and pass legislation and hold hearings concerning the climate crisis, immigration rights, social and budgetary priorities, and the future of U.S. democracy itself – a future that they wanted to undermine in 2020 and on January 6, 2021, in trying to carry through Donald Trump’s coup attempt.
The election denying chairs in question are Agriculture Chair Glenn Thompson (Pennsylvania); Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers (Alabama); Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (Texas); Education and Workforce Chair Virginia Foxx (North Carolina); Energy and Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Washington); Homeland Security Chair Mark Green (Tennessee); Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (Ohio); Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman (Arkansas); Science, Space and Technology Chair Frank Lucas (Oklahoma); Small Business Chair Roger Williams (Texas); Transportation and Infrastructure Chair Sam Graves (Missouri); Veterans’ Affairs Chair Mike Bost (Illinois); and Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (Missouri).
It is alarming that Republicans would give people who have shown themselves to be vehemently anti-democratic and willing to ignore the will of millions of voters such power in the House. Rather than condemning the anti-democratic sentiment among their caucus, Republican Party leaders are giving it even more power and a louder voice in the House.
Though every chairmanship from an election denier is concerning from a democratic standpoint, some figures have especially raised alarm.
Jim Jordan’s chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee, for instance, is particularly insidious, commentators have pointed out. Jordan appeared to have played a key role in supporting the January 6 attack on the Capitol and ended up being one of the four House Republicans who were referred to the House Ethics Committee for their refusal to comply with the January 6 committee’s subpoenas.
“The GOP House leadership – via the GOP Steering Committee that chooses committee chairs – not only didn’t punish Jordan, it elevated him to chairman of the Judiciary Committee,” wrote CNN columnist Dean Obeidallah this week. Jordan has “no place as a House committee chairman,” Obeidallah wrote.
Obeidallah also raised concerns about Homeland Security’s Mark Green, who was once nominated by Trump as Army Secretary. Green has a history of spewing noxious anti-LGBTQ and Islamophobic speech – speech that was so hateful that even fellow Republicans denounced it, which led Green to withdraw his nomination.
The fact that committee chairs were given to not just election deniers, but some of the Republican caucus’s more hateful and extremist members, could further indicate the Republican Party’s hard turn to the right in recent years.
Political commentators have observed other absurd and concerning aspects of the Republican picks for committee chairs and their committee assignments at large.
There seems to be an unsurprisingly sexist bent to the committee leadership assignments and the caucus at large, which is chosen in part by support from Republican leaders on the campaign trail. As Insider pointed out, the number of men named “Mike” or “Michael” who will be chairing committees far outnumber the number of women appointed to serve as committee chairs in the GOP-controlled House.
Meanwhile, Republican leaders have voted unanimously to allow fascist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to serve on the Committee on Homeland Security, which was created to protect the U.S. against terrorist attacks – not unlike the January 6 attack on the seat of the U.S. government, which Greene has boasted she would have “won” if she were in charge of it.
Greene was also chosen to serve on the House Oversight Committee, one of the most powerful committees in the House, which oversees federal agencies and officials that Greene has spread debunked conspiracy theories about. Other far right Republicans like Representatives Paul Gosar (Arizona), Scott Perry (Pennsylvania) and Lauren Boebert (Colorado) were also picked to serve on the oversight committee.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
Across seven states on Thursday, lawmakers will be introducing bills aimed at taxing the wealth of the richest Americans as Congress has repeatedly failed to raise taxes on the rich or target wealthy tax-dodgers. The bills will be introduced in states with a higher concentration of wealthy people, like California and New York. While the bills vary in their language — several of them are inspired…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
A new report reveals that the vast majority of the rainforest carbon offsets offered by the world’s biggest provider are functionally worthless – allowing major companies like Disney and Shell to tout their supposed commitment to combating the climate crisis while not having a real impact in reducing carbon emissions. An analysis published Wednesday by The Guardian, in which a team of…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Analyses show that a majority of the House Republicans’ newly chosen committee chairs – people who will have a huge hand in setting the priorities for the House over the next two years – have participated in the extremely dangerous and anti-democratic GOP practice of election denial. As first pointed out by HuffPost, 11 of the 17 new committee chairs were among the 147 Republicans who voted…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
New polling finds that the proportion of Americans who have delayed medical treatment due to costs has hit a record high as the pandemic rages on and it becomes harder for the working class to afford regular and emergency costs. According to Gallup, 38 percent of Americans had either put off seeking medical treatment themselves or a member of their families did so in 2022. This is a 12 percent…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
While the vast majority of people were struggling to stay alive and weather economic instability during the first two years of the pandemic, the world’s richest 1 percent were thriving as the proportion of new global wealth they were capturing soared to new heights, a report reveals. Over the past decade, the global top 1 percent has taken about half of all new wealth — an already extremely high…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Democrats are warning Republicans that they will not negotiate over raising the debt ceiling to avoid economic catastrophe after Republicans spent the last months warning that they may pursue cuts to key social programs by holding debt limit legislation hostage. On Friday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that Congress must pass legislation raising the debt ceiling “without…