When Universal Pictures studios trimmed several trees lining a writers’ picket line to bare bones this week amid a sweltering heat wave, they did so without obtaining a permit from the city, making the move potentially illegal, Los Angeles officials have found. On Monday, comedian and TV writer Chris Stephens noted on Twitter that, over the weekend, NBCUniversal corporation appeared to have…
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The House overwhelmingly passed a resolution vowing perpetual allyship with Israel and denying the country’s apartheid against Palestinians on Tuesday night, just days after Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) criticized Israel’s violent oppression and far right regime over the weekend. The legislation, which states that “Israel is not a racist or apartheid state” despite mountains of evidence and…
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With labor activity making headlines across the U.S. and wealth inequality at all-time highs, new polling finds overwhelming support among the public for a slate of pro-worker bills advanced by Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vermont) Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee last month. According to polling by Data for Progress released Tuesday, all three bills passed by the committee last…
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The House is set to vote on a resolution today pledging the U.S.’s allegiance to Israel in perpetuity and outright denying Israel’s human rights violations, seemingly in order to isolate and punish Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) over a comment criticizing the state over the weekend. The one-page resolution, introduced by Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas), states that “Israel is not a racist or…
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State-level abortion bans are wreaking havoc across the country, criminalizing abortion seekers, putting people’s lives at risk, and eroding access to reproductive care at large. But Republicans won’t be satisfied to just stop at the state-level, one Democrat is warning: They want to ban abortion nationwide. On Monday, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) warned of the dire consequences for abortion…
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A group of House Democrats is pushing to censure Rep. George Santos (New York) following a remarkable series of scandals regarding the Republican’s fabrications about his professional life and potential financial violations. The effort is being led by Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-New York), who is set to introduce a resolution Monday to censure Representative Santos for “defrauding the people of the…
As 340,000 United Parcel Service workers prepare to wage a historic strike, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) on Saturday joined Teamsters union members and leaders at a rally in New York condemning the company for refusing to pay workers a fair wage. “What we are about to step into requires solidarity from everybody,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Your fight right here is about being the tip of…
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On Friday, the House passed yet another record high Department of Defense funding bill — but, unlike previous years, the bill didn’t pass with the usual bipartisan support, due in large part to an anti-abortion rider that Republicans approved late Thursday. This year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed Friday morning, authorizing a sky-high $886 billion for defense for 2024.
On Friday, the Education Department announced that it is going to cancel student debt for over 800,000 borrowers who previously qualified for forgiveness but were still saddled with loans, in one of the first major student debt moves since the Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden’s plan for broad forgiveness late last month. The administration is labeling its latest move as a “fix” to…
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House Republicans have made it a top priority this year to secure cuts to nearly every federal government program, spending months taking aim at welfare programs in order to allow millions of Americans to starve and languish. But in the latest draft of their 2024 spending bill that is moving through the chamber, Republicans are seeking to raise spending for one key group: themselves.
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A union representing 160,000 actors is slated to go on strike on Thursday, setting up a historic strike involving both actors and screenwriters that would effectively shut down the film and TV industry for the first time in 63 years. The bargaining agreement between the actors’ union, Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), and major studios and…
As the past few months’ continuous stream of new revelations has uncovered a litany of financial favors and close relationships between Supreme Court justices and wealthy conservatives, Senate Democrats are shining the spotlight on one of the most influential figures behind the whole scheme: conservative judicial kingmaker and master of dark money Leonard Leo. On Wednesday, Sen.
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One of the lawyers who successfully convinced the Supreme Court to strike down affirmative action in college admissions two weeks ago once made a payment over the mobile app Venmo to an aide to far right Justice Clarence Thomas, a new report finds. The Guardian reported on Wednesday that in November and December of 2019, former Thomas aide Rajan Vasisht received several payments from lawyers who…
A coalition of 40 advocacy groups is urging Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) to adopt a strong set of provisions to lower insulin prices and “put an end to insulin profiteering” in an upcoming health package. The groups, led by watchdog Public Citizen and diabetes advocacy group T1International, sent a letter to Schumer on Monday saying that, while some progress has been made over…
On Monday, House Republicans introduced a sweeping voter suppression bill that the party is touting as the “most conservative election bill” considered in the House in decades. Republicans traveled to Georgia, a major front of the party’s voter suppression campaign, to unveil the American Confidence in Elections (ACE) Act — a combination of almost 50 standalone bills that would urge states to…
Democrats in the Senate Judiciary Committee are taking steps to address corruption on the Supreme Court at a time when the Court is eroding the public’s rights at an unprecedented rate. On Monday, Judiciary Committee Chair Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) and Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights Chair Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) announced in a…
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For decades, an elite group of ultrawealthy and influential Americans has boasted the membership of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and both the justice and the wealthy members of that network have benefited, a new investigation reveals. Over the past months, Thomas’s financial relationship with conservative billionaire Harlan Crow has made headlines. But, as a new report by The New York…
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The majority of voters disagree with the outcome of the Supreme Court’s latest anti-LGBTQ ruling allowing businesses to discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation, new polling finds. According to a survey from Data for Progress released this week, 65 percent of likely voters say that businesses should not be allowed to deny services to people based on their race, religion…
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) has warned that the Supreme Court is rapidly expanding its own power and approaching the realm of authoritarianism after justices released another devastating slate of decisions last week that threaten to majorly disrupt higher education and LGBTQ rights across the country. In an interview on CNN on Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez said that Supreme Court justices…
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Over the past decades, the fossil fuel industry has worked around the clock to exercise its influence over every level of politics — with moves including, as a new report reveals, injecting its lobbyists into the very groups that are purportedly working at the front lines to combat the climate crisis. According to a new database published by divestment advocacy group F Minus on Wednesday…
Monday, July 3, was the hottest day in recorded history, beating out all-time highs since at least 1979 and beating the previous record set in 2016, data shows. But it only held that record for a day as it was swiftly beaten by July 4, which eclipsed Monday’s record in a reminder of how swiftly the global climate is warming — and how this record will only continue to be topped.
After the far right Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden’s student debt relief plan on Friday, activists almost immediately gathered behind two rallying calls: one, that Biden can and must still cancel student debt, and two, that the Supreme Court is illegitimate. The conservative justices’ decision, which rested on a fringe far right legal theory, yanks $430 billion in relief away from…
The Supreme Court ruled on Friday to strike down President Joe Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan, yanking away a chance at respite for tens of millions of borrowers across the country based on what advocates and experts have said are faulty, policy-driven viewpoints adopted by the far right Court. Justices ruled 6 to 3 on Biden v. Nebraska, a case brought by Republican state lawmakers…
On Friday, the Supreme Court is slated to rule on what could be a devastating case for LGBTQ rights based on what appear to be completely illegitimate claims for standing — including evidence filed by anti-LGBTQ petitioners who appear to have used a real man’s identity to make up a fake gay couple whole cloth. The case, 303 Creative v. Elenis, involves Lorie Smith, a self-proclaimed wedding…
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Far right Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has unveiled a list of four federal agencies he would completely eliminate if he were elected president, putting on display his wish to deeply destabilize the country’s social welfare system in an interview on Fox News on Wednesday. When asked if he would shutter any federal agencies, DeSantis said that “we would do Education, we would do Commerce…
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The U.S. Supreme Court struck down race-based affirmative action in college admissions on Thursday, overturning nearly half a century of legal precedent in a decision that will almost certainly have devastating impacts on racial equity in higher education and society at large. The majority of justices ruled in two closely related cases regarding Harvard University and the University of North…
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Ending the student loan payment freeze may push millions of people into economic precarity, as almost 7 in 10 student debtors either won’t be able to make student debt payments or will have to cut back spending in other areas when payments resume this year, a new survey found. The survey results were included in Morgan Stanley’s latest consumer pulse survey of roughly 2,000 people, per Insider.
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A group of Democrats is urging Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to open investigations into Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas following a series of allegations about the justices’ ties to Republican billionaires and their repeated violations of finance laws. Eighteen House Democrats sent a letter to Roberts on Tuesday, urging him to open an investigatory arm within the Court and…
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