During the Super Bowl on Sunday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) criticized advertisements by a Christian organization with deep conservative ties, saying that the ads normalize fascism. As part of a $100 million media campaign, a group called He Gets Us ran two ads during the Super Bowl on Sunday. As Lever News revealed earlier this month, He Gets Us is a subsidiary of the Servant…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) has condemned the incessant GOP heckling during President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night, saying that Republicans’ behavior is indicative of the party’s current extremism. Republicans continually shouted and jeered during Biden’s speech as he addressed issues like taxing the rich or the GOP’s plans to go after Medicare and Social…
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Republican Rep. George Santos (New York) is officially under investigation by House officials, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) confirmed on Tuesday. McCarthy told reporters that Santos is currently being probed by the House Ethics Committee. It’s unclear what the focus of the investigation is, but it could be related to his questionable campaign finance practices — which Democrats and…
A neo-Nazi couple, including the founder of extremist terror group Atomwaffen Division, has been arrested and charged by federal officials for an alleged plot to take down the power grid of Baltimore to “completely destroy” the majority Black city. Atomwaffen Division (AWD) founder Brandon Russell and Sarah Clendaniel have been charged by the Justice Department with conspiracy to destroy an energy…
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Employers are being charged with breaking the law in a huge portion of union elections, a new analysis shows, as union membership hits a record low across the U.S. According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), employers were charged with breaking the law in 39 percent of union elections filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) between 2019 and 2022. These charges cover a variety of…
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Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri) is inviting Michael Brown Sr., the father of Michael Brown, whose murder at the hands of a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked mass protests in 2014, to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address this week. As first reported by Politico, Bush is bringing Brown Sr. as her guest to the address, which is scheduled for Tuesday night. “The police killing of…
Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) issued strong rebukes of the GOP after the House voted along party lines on Thursday to remove Muslim Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) from her spot on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, a move that Democrats and progressives have decried as racist and Islamophobic. “It is an outrage that every Republican voted to remove…
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A government watchdog group filed a complaint against the Department of Justice (DOJ) this week in an attempt to obtain records regarding far right politicians blocking federal election monitors in certain polling places during the 2022 election. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is suing over the DOJ’s failure to turn over records of communications between federal…
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In his new role as head of the committee overseeing education policy in the Senate, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) says a top priority will be fixing what he says are “pathetically low” starting salaries for teachers across the U.S., potentially starting with legislation to set a nationwide base salary to ensure that educators are paid properly. Sanders told Education Week this week that…
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The House voted along party lines to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) from her assignment on the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday in the party’s latest escalation of tactics to stifle Democrats and silence dissent. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) has seemingly made removing Omar a top priority in recent days after reports emerged over the past weekend that a few…
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) is urging leadership of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to vote on and pass a resolution that would ban Super PAC money in Democratic primaries as the influence of billionaires and dark money groups grows ever stronger in elections. This week, Sanders sent a letter to DNC Chair Jaime Harrison saying that dark money spending in elections is growing out of…
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Black taxpayers are much more likely to face an audit by federal authorities than non-Black Americans — and the underfunding of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) could be playing a significant role in driving that disparity, new research reveals. A new study of IRS data published by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research finds that Black taxpayers are audited at a rate three to five…
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As the only wealthy country without universal health care, the U.S. is a global outlier, with both the highest health care spending and the worst health outcomes across several metrics, a new report by the Commonwealth Fund confirms. A report released on Tuesday found that, in 2021, the latest year for which data is available, the U.S. spent 17.8 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on…
This story originally appeared in Truthout on Jan. 31, 2023. It is shared here with permission.
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. Brian Kemp has sent in the National Guard to crack down on protests in a continued escalation of the violence and threats of violence against protesters.
“Mayor Dickens has stood by as police violence and rhetoric towards protestors has steadily ratcheted up, including the use of chemical agents and militarized raids on small groups of protestors engaged in civil disobedience,” the letter reads. “Less than a month ago, Atlanta City Council members and activists rang the alarm about the dangers of escalated police violence after an aggressive raid on peaceful protestors on December 13th. Rather than use this as an opportunity to listen or reverse course, Dickens ignored the concerns of council members and his own constituents.”
“Mayor Dickens’ lack of intervention in protecting Atlanta protestors and residents led directly to the fatal raid,” the groups continued.
The letter was signed by groups like climate justice coalition People Vs. Fossil Fuels as well as local, Indigenous and abolitionist groups.
The groups wrote that Dickens has not only parroted Kemp’s and law enforcement’s talking points and narratives on the killing, which activists have questioned, but has also refused to display basic respect to the protesters. Though it has been nearly two weeks since Tortuguita’s killing, Dickens has not offered condolences to their family, the letter points out — but just hours after the killing, he tweeted in support of the police officer who was allegedly injured during the raid of the activists’ camp.
Dickens, a Democrat, has continually supported and championed “Cop City,” a proposal to raze nearly 100 acres of forest in Southeast Atlanta to build an intensely militarized police training facility, despite the vast amount of community opposition and the threat that the project is already posing to the public.
He was one of 10 city councilors who voted in favor of leasing land to build “Cop City” before he became mayor and has not come out against the domestic terrorism charges lobbed against protesters over what appears to be nothing more than alleged trespassing charges — charges that experts say are baseless. Further, Dickens has disparaged people protesting in Atlanta after Tortuguita’s killing and said that protests like these and those of the Movement for Black Lives in 2020 are evidence that policing must increase.
“Mayor Dickens can somehow find $90 million dollars for cop city, one third of which will come from tax payer money. Still, he can’t find money to keep our already overwhelmed hospitals open or to finance much-needed affordable housing,” the groups wrote. “The evidence is clear: we no longer have confidence in Dicken’s ability to govern the City of Atlanta.”
The letter also calls for Dickens to terminate the forest lease, and for an independent investigation into Tortuguita’s killing, separate from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s probe, which has ties to the Atlanta Police Department — the same department involved in the killing.
“Climate justice and police brutality are interconnected, which is why we are joining the Stop Cop City calls to action with the frontline communities in Atlanta,” ikiyA collective, a member of People Vs. Fossil Fuels’s steering committee, said in a statement. “It is imperative that we demand an independent investigation into the police murder of Manuel ‘Tortuguita’ Paez Terán.”
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
Riding on the wave of sky-high gas prices and industry-wide price hikes, oil giant Exxon was handed the highest profits ever reported by a western oil company in 2022, its latest financial report reveals. The company reported on Tuesday that it made a net profit of $55.7 billion in 2022, roughly 2.5 times its 2021 profits of $23.6 billion. This represents $6.3 million in profits per hour on…
New polling on embattled Rep. George Santos, who represents the 3rd Congressional District of New York, finds that the vast majority of his constituents now want him to resign, as the Republican tells party leaders that he is temporarily stepping back from his committee assignments. According to polling by Newsday/Siena College released on Tuesday, a whopping 78 percent of Santos’s constituents…
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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.
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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…
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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…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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…