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Author: Sharon Zhang

  • The 2020 Census Undercounted Native Americans, Black and Latinx People

    A census employee holds a sign reading I count at the unveiling of the U.S. Census Bureau's campaign for the 2020 United States Census at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., on January 14, 2020.

    According to new estimates that the Census Bureau released on Thursday, the 2020 census undercounted Black people, Latinx people and Native Americans, which advocates have warned could potentially lead to voter disenfranchisement.

    All three groups were undercounted at higher rates than they were a decade ago. Latinx people were undercounted by about 5 percent, or over three times the rate from 2010. Black people were undercounted by about 3.3 percent, while Native Americans on reservations were undercounted by over 5.6 percent.

    Meanwhile, non-Hispanic white people were overcounted by 1.64 percent, the bureau found. The miscounts, which have already been used for redistricting, could give disproportionate power to white populations while further disenfranchising populations that already face voter suppression. The more accurate population counts from Thursday’s report won’t affect redistricting, according to the New York Times.

    Experts say that the high miscounts may be the result of difficulties due to COVID and attempts to suppress the census by former President Donald Trump. Meddling from the Trump administration “wreaked havoc” at the Census Bureau, NPR reported earlier this year, and pressured the agency to exclude undocumented immigrants from the count.

    Trump ultimately succeeded in getting the count cut short by a month. Experts say that his efforts were a transparent campaign to expand GOP power while also potentially sabotaging local governments, who receive funding based on census counts.

    Population counts from the census can be used by redistricting officials to determine the number of districts in a state that should be majority non-white. The government also uses census data to guide decisions on where to direct about $1.5 trillion a year to state and local governments for things like health care. The bureau has long undercounted marginalized populations and overcounted white people.

    Groups representing Black, Indigenous and Latinx people were outraged over Thursday’s report.

    “A year ago when the first results of the 2020 Census were released, we said we smelled smoke. The [Census Bureau’s] estimates released today confirm that this census was a five-alarm fire,” Arturo Vargas, the CEO of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund, said in a statement. Vargas said in a press call that he had never seen such a large undercount of Latinx people in over three decades of following the census.

    “These results confirm our worst fears,” Fawn Sharp, president of the National Congress of American Indians, said in a statement. “Every undercounted household and individual in our communities means lost funding and resources that are desperately needed to address the significant disparities we face.”

    Groups like the National Urban League say they may file litigation over the results, but there may be limited legal options to remedy the issue. “We’ve talked about voter suppression. Now we see population suppression,” National Urban League president Marc Morial said.

    Advocates have previously sued over Trump’s obstruction of the count, alleging that the bureau violated its duty, as set by the Constitution, to accurately count the population.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Democrats Unveil Bill to Tax Big Oil’s Profits and Send Checks to the Public

    Rep. Ro Khanna is interviewed in his Cannon Building office on April 10, 2019.

    Democrats introduced a bicameral bill on Thursday that would levy a tax on oil and gas companies and redistribute the money back to the public, who are currently facing the highest gas prices ever seen in the U.S., according to AAA.

    The Big Oil Windfall Profits Act, introduced by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), would levy a tax on each barrel produced or imported by large oil companies.

    Barrels would be subject to a 50 percent tax on the difference between the current price and the average price of a barrel between 2015 and 2019. Only large companies like Exxon Mobil and Chevron would be subject to the tax, disincentivizing large oil companies from keeping prices high without the threat of losing market share.

    Under the bill, consumers would receive a quarterly rebate from the revenue raised by the tax, with checks phasing out for individuals who make more than $75,000 annually and couples who make over $150,000. Single filers would get about $240 a year, while joint filers would get about $360 a year, the lawmakers estimate, with the tax raising a total of about $45 billion per year.

    “We’ve seen this script before, and we cannot allow the fossil fuel industry to once again collect a massive windfall by taking advantage of an international crisis,” Whitehouse said in a statement. “Over the longer term, speeding up the transition to renewables will lower energy costs, insulate consumers from price spikes, and reduce Western nations’ dependence on foreign despots and greedy fossil fuel companies.”

    The bill is cosponsored by 11 senators, including Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts). The proposal comes as oil companies face increasing scrutiny for taking advantage of inflation and instability caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine to raise prices at the pump and rake in record prices.

    Climate advocates praised the bill, saying that it’s a step toward hampering the greed of oil and gas companies. While this bill may not have a direct effect on gas prices, which are largely decided by the intergovernmental oil organization OPEC, it could disincentivize the oil industry from investing in stock buybacks and dividends, which they’ve done in spades as their profits have risen.

    The proposal could push companies to invest in moves that would stabilize the energy supply while providing much-needed aid to the public, explained Fossil Free Media Director Jamie Henn. Shareholders have been pressuring companies to drive up share prices at the public’s expense.

    “If you’re looking to drive a share price up, you want to drive up the price of oil, basically,” Henn told Truthout. Instead of increasing production in response to pandemic-related inflation and the Russian invasion, oil companies decided, “let’s use this money to reward our shareholders and try to inflate our stock price,” Henn said.

    Indeed, oil and gas companies are currently raking in profits and rewarding their shareholders and CEOs handsomely. A report by Accountable.US in December found that the top 24 oil and gas companies made $174 billion in profits in the first nine months of 2021, and spent over $44 billion in stock buybacks and shareholder payouts. Meanwhile, the 18 largest oil and gas CEOs are collectively worth $8 billion more than they were in January 2021, according to BailoutWatch and Friends of the Earth.

    From a climate perspective, this bill is “one piece of the puzzle,” Henn said. Next steps could include taking away oil and gas subsidies and working toward a managed decline of the fossil fuel industry; a modified version of this bill could also direct funding to energy retrofit programs or low income energy assistance.

    Managing Big Oil’s decline would not only be beneficial for the climate, it would also prevent oil and gas companies from fleecing customers like they are now. “We’re not going to be able to make this transition [away from fossil fuels] if we fool ourselves into thinking that oil and gas companies are gonna come along and witness – they’re gonna fight this tooth and nail all the way, just as they fought it for decades,” Henn said.

    “The leadership of these companies is committed to a business plan which is going to destroy life as we know it and continue to fuel dictators like [Vladimir] Putin along the way,” Henn continued. “And so I think the question is, ‘what are the smart common sense regulations we can put into place that rein this industry in?’”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Leaked Video Shows Madison Cawthorn Calling Ukraine’s Zelenskyy a “Thug”

    Rep Madison Cawthorn speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held at the Hilton Anatole on July 9, 2021, in Dallas, Texas.

    A newly leaked video shows far right Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-North Carolina) calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “thug” and deriding the Ukrainian government as “evil” and “woke.”

    In a short video obtained by WRAL, Cawthorn says, “Remember that Zelenskyy is a thug. Remember that the Ukrainian government is incredibly corrupt and is incredibly evil and has been pushing woke ideologies, and really there’s a new woke ruling.” The video was likely taken at a town hall in Asheville, North Carolina, over the weekend.

    It’s unclear what Cawthorn is referring to when he says that the Ukrainian government is pushing “woke ideologies,” but the actual meaning is likely inconsequential, as the right often lies and bends the truth to propagandize.

    However, Cawthorn’s rhetoric seems to tie the invasion to the American political right’s battle against “woke” agendas, a concerning statement as conservatives openly embrace fascism while scapegoating “woke” progressives and Democrats – or essentially, anyone who opposes them – for any and all problems that the right claims are plaguing the country.

    About an hour after the video was leaked, Cawthorn appeared to double down on his comments on Twitter. He denounced Vladimir Putin, but said that Ukrainian “[p]ropaganda is being used to entice America into another war,” and that “leaders, including Zelensky, should NOT push misinformation on America.”

    Cawthorn linked an article about “Ukrainian misinformation” that is supposedly goading the U.S. into entering into war with Russia. The linked article relied on multiple stories about the Russian invasion that have since been debunked.

    The article was written by Pedro L. Gonzalez, who is listed as an editor at the Charlemagne Institute on LinkedIn. The mission of the Charlemagne Institute, which has ties to the Koch family network, is to “defend and advance Western civilization,” a white supremacist dogwhistle. Its logo bears a resemblance to that of far right nationalists.

    In response to the video, Republican state Sen. Chuck Edwards wrote on Twitter that the real “thug is Vladimir Putin” and that anything other than support for Zelenskyy and Ukraine is “counter to everything we stand for in America.” Former George W. Bush deputy chief of staff Karl Rove wrote in the Wall Street Journal, where Cawthorn’s speech was first reported, that Cawthorn’s words “[don’t] reflect Republican opinion.”

    It’s unclear why Cawthorn made these claims. It’s true that Zelenskyy has asked the U.S. for aid, specifically requesting that the U.S impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which would be an act of war with likely devastating consequences. There’s no evidence that Zelenskyy is pushing disinformation in his pleas as Cawthorn claims, however.

    While it has been popular amongst Republicans in recent weeks to denounce war with Russia, this stance is an odd flip for the party that typically jumps at the chance to enter war or otherwise lift up militarism. It’s possible that Republicans are hedging their bets that President Joe Biden will enter war with Russia, in which case they can claim that they were right all along, similarly to how they flipped on exiting Afghanistan when Biden did it instead of Donald Trump.

    In recent social media posts, Cawthorn appears to be saying that he thinks that Biden is somehow at fault for injuries in Ukraine. Meanwhile, supporters of QAnon, which Cawthorn has denounced but spouted conspiracy theories from, have begun repeating Russian conspiracy theories that the U.S. is developing bioweapons in Ukraine.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • In Blatantly Fascist Move, Florida GOP Passes Bill to Form Election Police Force

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis arrives for a press conference at the Miami Dade College’s North Campus on January 26, 2022, in Miami, Florida.

    The Republican-controlled Florida legislature passed a bill on Wednesday that would create a special elections police force meant to monitor elections at the behest of far right Gov. Ron DeSantis, who says that he will sign it into law.

    The bill would establish an Office of Election Crimes and Security within the Department of State, which is overseen by DeSantis. The 25-person office would allow DeSantis to appoint 10 police officers to investigate supposed election crimes — despite the fact that experts have repeatedly proven that election fraud doesn’t exist at a scale that would even begin to approach affecting election results.

    Appointing police officers to monitor elections to probe for non-existent voter fraud is nakedly fascist. This move is indicative of the fact that the U.S. is in fascism’s “legal phase,” as fascism scholar Jason Stanley noted in The Guardian late last year.

    The bill is the most extreme yet in Republicans’ push to suppress voters en masse, and voting rights advocates say that it will disproportionately affect Black voters.

    “The governor’s personal goon force will exist to do only one thing: intimidate Black voters,” Walter Shaub, senior ethics fellow for the Project on Government Oversight, said on Twitter.

    “It’s also gonna be a felony to take your sick grandma’s ballot to a drop box for her, unless you strap her in a cart and wheel her down there with you,” Shaub continued, referencing the fact that the bill makes it a felony for a voter to bring other people’s ballots to a dropoff location, which would disproportionately affect disabled or elderly people. The punishment for that is a hefty fine of up to $50,000 and five years in prison.

    Even before Republicans began passing exceedingly punitive voter suppression laws, Black voters were already punished harshly and disproportionately for supposed election fraud, often in cases where they had just made a simple mistake. Black people are also disproportionately the target of police violence and surveillance.

    Republicans claim — as they have for over a year as they pass dozens of voter suppression bills across the country — that the new bill is about election integrity. But the laws are actually an extreme reaction to former President Donald Trump’s loss in 2020, and an attempt to give Republican lawmakers more control over election results in the future.

    Republicans haven’t provided any evidence that widespread voter fraud is a legitimate issue. Though increased voter suppression laws from Republicans have already alarmed voting rights advocates, the current bill is one of the starkest signs yet that the GOP is openly embracing authoritarianism.

    “Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis is taking Orwell’s 1984 and running with it into a despotic dystopia of his own feverish imagining with his hoped-for, first-in-the-nation creation of an Office of Election Crimes and Security to ensure ‘elections are conducted in accordance with the rule of law,’ though, in fact, they already are,” wrote Abby Zimet for Common Dreams.

    The blatant voter suppression is just one example of the right’s increasing embrace of facism; as Henry Giroux noted for Truthout in November, DeSantis and the GOP’s attacks on education, and their efforts to punish educators for teaching about race, LGBTQ issues, and diversity, are also a sign of rising fascism on the right.

    Republicans’ attacks on public and higher education are “closely aligned to a fascist politics that despises anyone who holds power accountable and sees as an enemy anyone who fosters liberating forms of social change or attempts to resist the right wing’s politics of falsehoods and erasure,” Giroux wrote.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Three More Starbucks Stores in Buffalo Area Vote to Form Union

    A logo is seen on the glass storefront door of a Starbucks coffee shop in San Francisco, California.

    Starbucks workers have voted to form a union in three more stores in the Buffalo region, marking a major triumph for the union, which is facing fierce pushback from the company.

    Workers at the Sheridan & Bailey, French & Transit and Walden & Anderson stores are now unionized, voting 15 to 12, 15 to 12 and 8 to 7 in favor of the union, respectively. Six stores have now voted to unionize, with five stores total in Buffalo and one in Mesa, Arizona. Only one location that has had a union election so far has voted against unionization.

    “Our mission is to aid in making Starbucks the company that we all want it to be,” Rachel Cohen, a shift supervisor at Sheridan & Bailey, said. “We are ready to bring partners to the table, fill the empty set, and help one another. We cannot do what we strive for without each other. Moving forward together is our best chance at success.”

    The vote count was conducted on Wednesday, after the workers’ votes were impounded by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in late February due to a legal challenge from Starbucks. The challenge – alleging that union elections should be held region-wide, rather than store-by-store — was ultimately rejected by the NLRB, but still succeeded in delaying the vote count.

    “Starbucks will imply they had nothing to do with this further delay in the voting process by vaguely gesturing towards the legal process. That is a farce,” Workers United attorney Ian Hayes said at the time. “This would not have happened without their strategic decision. This is exactly the result the Starbucks wanted, and the NLRB handed it to them today.”

    Starbucks Workers United said that the workers won their union despite “unfair elections.” The three stores had filed their current petitions to unionize over four months ago, and Walden & Anderson had originally filed its petition in September of last year, but withdrew to prevent legal delays for the now-unionized Elmwood location.

    The vote for Walden & Anderson was close, partially because Starbucks had closed the store and other Buffalo-area stores that workers were organizing at the time, workers say. The store was turned into a training location, and the workers were sent to separate locations.

    “Starbucks closed our store for two months in the middle of our organizing campaign. They added 20 new partners to our store, so that more than half our staff wasn’t there to experience what conditions were like before we unionized,” said Walden & Anderson barista Colin Cochran.

    Workers said that the company only added the workers in order to dilute support for the union at the store. That union-busting tactic backfired on the company, however, as pro-union workers convinced new workers to support the union.

    “They upended our store in every way, scared and divided partners, and demonized those of us who believe we deserve better,” Cochran continued. “And we still won.”

    As the union drive has escalated, so has the company’s anti-union campaign. Workers have filed for union elections in 130 stores in just the past few months, and there are 21 more elections scheduled for the coming weeks. With such a huge number of unionizing stores, the company is likely no longer able to send its executives to every organizing store to intimidate workers as it did when only a handful of stores were unionizing.

    Instead, the company is taking bold moves like firing union organizers and coercing workers into anti-union meetings — moves that the union has alleged are illegal. Last week, the union filed 20 complaints with the NLRB saying that the company has violated labor laws in its union-busting campaign.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • House Lawmakers Say Amazon May Have Illegally Impeded Antitrust Investigation

    A sign at the Amazon.com, Inc. BHM1 fulfillment center is seen before sunrise on March 29, 2021, in Bessemer, Alabama.

    On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House Judiciary Committee asked the Justice Department to probe whether or not Amazon illegally impeded the committee’s antitrust investigation into the company.

    During the committee’s 16-month long probe that ended in 2020, the company engaged in “potentially criminal conduct,” the representatives said in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland. That top Amazon executives lied to the committee suggests that the company was attempting to “influence, obstruct, or impede” the investigation, the committee continued.

    Throughout the investigation, “Amazon repeatedly endeavored to thwart the Committee’s efforts to uncover the truth about Amazon’s business practices,” the lawmakers wrote. “For this, it must be held accountable.”

    Impeding on a congressional inquiry or investigation amounts to an obstruction of Congress, which is a federal crime. Amazon has denied that it lied during the investigation.

    Lawmakers, including committee chair Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-New York) and antitrust subcommittee vice chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington), say that executives have painted a rosy picture of its internal practices regarding data collection. The company’s testimony describing its internal policies was “ever shifting,” the lawmakers said.

    While Amazon executives denied that the company was using data from third-party sellers to compete with them, testimony from Amazon employees and reporting has revealed that the company has in fact done exactly that, in order to create products that would compete with other sellers.

    Amazon employees regularly violated the company’s supposed “Seller Data Protection Policy,” making a distinction between individual data on sellers versus aggregated data for the company to use. Lawmakers said that company officials were aware that employees were violating the policy.

    Reporters have found that Amazon prioritized its own products in customer search queries, the committee said, despite the company claiming that it didn’t do so.

    Lawmakers gave the company the opportunity to correct its previous misleading statements, but the company doubled down. “After Amazon was caught in a lie and repeated misrepresentations, it stonewalled the Committee’s efforts to uncover the truth,” the letter says.

    “The Committee gave Amazon a final opportunity to provide evidence either correcting the record or corroborating the representations it had made to the Committee under oath and in written statements,” the lawmakers said. “Instead of taking advantage of this opportunity to provide clarity, however, Amazon offered conclusory denials of adverse facts.”

    As a result of the committee’s investigation, the lawmakers called for stricter regulation of Amazon and other large companies like Facebook and Google. Their 449-page report said that tech behemoths have turned into “the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons” that abuse their power to create anti-competitive conditions. Wednesday’s referral is an escalation of actions against Amazon as it faces scrutiny from members of both major political parties.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Warren Says Democrats Are Working on a Bill to Tax Big Oil’s Windfall Profits

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks during a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on March 3, 2022, in Washington, D.C.

    Gas prices are soaring to record highs, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) wants to tax fossil fuel companies’ profits to prevent them from fleecing customers at the gas pump.

    In a MSNBC appearance on Tuesday, Warren said that she is cosponsoring a bill with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) and other Senate Democrats that would tax windfall profits, or sudden and unusually large profits, for oil companies as the Russian invasion has escalated.

    “Look, we get it, supply and demand, that prices go up. But profit margins should not go up,” Warren said. “That’s just oil companies gouging when they do that.”

    As of Wednesday, the average price in the U.S. for a gallon of regular gas is $4.25, which is the highest it’s ever been, according to AAA. Gas prices are rapidly rising; even just a week ago, the same gallon of gas cost $3.65, which was also a huge increase from pre-pandemic prices.

    Prices — which were already on the rise as oil and gas companies took advantage of high inflation to make gas more expensive — have soared over the past couple of weeks due to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. And while the public is pummeled by high gas prices, fossil fuel companies are making billions in profits.

    President Joe Biden has been advising fossil fuel companies not to increase prices in order to pad profits, but without concrete action, companies have no reason not to continue on their current path.

    Lawmakers have floated the idea of a windfall profits tax for oil companies in order to combat profiteering at the pump, but have not yet formally announced a bill. Last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) suggested the proposal in a tweet, saying that corporations are using the crisis in Ukraine and the pandemic “as an excuse to price gouge customers.”

    On Wednesday, Whitehouse also gestured toward the idea in a series of tweets. “This is Putin’s gas price increase. There can be no ‘energy independence’ as long as we power our economy with commodities whose value is determined by global events beyond our control,” Whitehouse wrote.

    “Furthermore, the fossil fuel industry should not be allowed to take advantage of a crisis by hiking prices and collecting a massive windfall,” he continued, saying that the U.S. would do better to switch to renewable energies.

    Republicans have jumped on high gas prices, saying that the Biden administration isn’t doing anything to mitigate the problem. Earlier this week, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) pointed out that gas prices were about $2.17 in 2020 — ignoring the fact that the pandemic and mass quarantining had made prices plunge.

    Instead of examining whether corporations are taking advantage of crises to price gouge – and data suggests that they are — the GOP is teaming up with Big Oil to spout dangerous rhetoric and advocate for more drilling. Not only would this be disastrous for the climate, it would also likely not help with current gas prices at all.

    Experts say that it would be nearly impossible for the U.S. to ramp up production in time to address current prices, and U.S. production doesn’t have as large of an impact on prices as Republicans are claiming it does.

    In reality, “There is essentially no action the Biden administration could take that would really move the needle on oil prices, or at least policies that would have to do with oil and gas production in the U.S.,” Daniel Raimi, an economist who studies the oil industry for Resources for the Future, told E&E News.

    As for the GOP’s argument that ramping up production is necessary for energy independence, that’s a farce too, Raimi said. “As long as we use oil, we are dependent on every other country in the world.”

    Another problem that Republicans may not want to own up to is Wall Street. Amos Hochstein, the State Department’s senior advisor for energy security, told the Financial Times that Wall Street investors who are “insisting on dividends and fiscal discipline” in the midst of the crisis are the ones who are truly responsible for the current sky-high gas prices.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Ocasio-Cortez Digs Into Private Equity for Buying Houses and Jacking Up Rents

    Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asks a question during a hearing in the Rayburn House Office Building on August 24, 2020, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

    On Tuesday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) called out real estate companies, some backed by huge private equity firms, for “gobbling up” homes across the country, especially in non-white and low-income neighborhoods.

    In a hearing on inflation in the House Financial Services Committee, Ocasio-Cortez named real estate companies like Invitation Homes, which is backed by BlackRock, for buying a huge share of single family homes in the U.S. These corporations are seeking only to make a profit at the expense of families and individuals looking for a place to call home, she said.

    “We have these major, often private equity-backed companies, that are gobbling up homes in our housing market, which is already creating excess scarcity on top of the housing scarcity that already exists,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

    “And then, by constricting that supply, we’re also seeing a lot of these major, huge multi-million dollar companies then either flip those properties and resell them at a higher rate due to that artificially inflated price, or they hold on and hoard this housing stock and rent out at exorbitant prices,” she continued.

    Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, said that individual investors and institutional investors made up a quarter of home sales at the end of 2021. Indeed, investors have been buying homes in record numbers.

    According to Redfin, low- and mid-priced homes make up a large portion of investments, with low-priced homes being the most popular purchase. In the fourth quarter of 2021, single-family homes made up three-quarters of investors’ purchases.

    These purchases are rapidly accelerating. In 2021, BlackRock-owned Invitation Homes spent nearly $2 billion buying 4,802 homes, while their revenue increased by 9.5 percent over the last year to nearly $2 billion total.

    Large corporations have a huge advantage in the market, as they have the ability to buy homes before they’re even listed for public view, to use algorithms to determine what homes would be a good investment, and to buy homes with cash. Real estate firms also get lower interest rates than regular homebuyers.

    Meanwhile, regular families and individuals looking to buy a home are left in the lurch as the housing market explodes. In the late 2010s, housing prices were plateauing, but in 2021, the average price of a home shot up; while the average new home cost about $392,000 in 2020, it cost $453,700 in 2021.

    “[Regular people are] competing against the largest private equity firm in the world to purchase a home,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “In fact, companies like Blackstone, Zillow and Bedrock are buying up to 15 percent of available homes – but what I find interesting here is that they’re purchasing them in minority and low-income neighborhoods specifically.”

    Indeed, companies like Invitation Homes are buying up a large share of affordable homes and homes in Black neighborhoods; in 2021, 30 percent of home sales in majority Black neighborhoods went to investors, compared with 12 percent in other areas, according to The Washington Post.

    Meanwhile, people with no choice but to rent are facing landlords who are squeezing tenants for more money. In New York City, for instance, landlords are raising rents by up to 70 percent, forcing tenants to move and seek cheaper housing.

    “This is the market that we have created for housing in America. Right now, 6 million renter households are currently behind on rent,” which is twice the amount of people who were behind rent pre-pandemic, Demond Drummer, managing director at PolicyLink, said in the hearing. The majority of people behind on rent are people of color, Drummer pointed out.

    “In 2021 alone, rents increased by 10 percent in 149 metropolitan areas. What we’re seeing around the country is a failure of policy and law to address the acute shortage of housing,” Drummer said. “My view is that our current housing prices constitute a serious, significant series of market failures that require a robust policy response.”

  • GOP’s Tax Plan Would Raise Taxes by Over $1,000 Annually for Poorest Americans

    Sen. Rick Scott does a TV news interview in the Hart Senate Office Building on March 8, 2022.

    Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-Florida) plan to force every American to owe income tax in his recently released platform for the Republican Party would raise taxes by over $1,000 for the bottom 40 percent of income earners, a new analysis found.

    In a report released on Monday, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) estimated that the poorest Americans would be the most affected by Scott’s plan — meaning that the GOP’s tax plan would essentially be to tax the poor.

    The poorest 20 percent of Americans, who make $12,300 a year on average, would owe about $1,050 more in federal taxes, or about 9 percent of their income. The next 20 percent, who make $34,700 on average, would owe $1,390 more, or 4 percent of their income, ITEP found. The middle 20 percent of Americans would owe about $500 more on average. The top 5 percent would essentially owe $0 more.

    Scott’s outline says that he wants to make sure all Americans pay some income tax in order “to have skin in the game.”

    “Currently over half of Americans pay no income tax,” Scott wrote. Indeed, a large portion of Americans don’t owe federal income taxes. Many don’t owe taxes because they simply don’t make enough income to qualify. People with disabilities, retirees and other Social Security beneficiaries don’t owe taxes because much of the program is tax-exempt.

    Some people don’t owe federal income taxes because they receive tax credits; because of programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, many Americans have a negative tax burden.

    ITEP calculated these estimates by assuming that Scott’s plan would make it so that all Americans owed at least $1 in taxes, taking credits into account. So, if a household had an income tax liability of $1,000, and would normally have received a credit of $1,500 from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), they would not receive their expected $500 tax refund under Scott’s plan, ITEP wrote.

    The poorest states would be most affected by this plan, the report found. Over 50 percent of Mississippi residents would see a tax increase, with other Southern states like West Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana and Alabama trailing closely behind.

    If Scott’s plan were passed, and carried out in the way that ITEP interpreted, it would have a devastating impact on the people in the country who are most in need.

    According to the Federal Reserve, about 36 percent of Americans said in 2020 that they would have difficulty paying for an emergency expense of $400, with 12 percent saying that they wouldn’t be able to. This statistic is similar to that of previous years, despite the fact that COVID relief packages, extra unemployment insurance and expanded child tax credits helped lower financial worries for the public, even if they were laid off during the pandemic.

    A recent survey showed that a large portion of Americans would have difficulty paying an emergency $1,000 bill. About 56 percent of survey respondents said that they would have to take steps like charging a credit card and paying it over time, cutting other expenses or borrowing the money in order to pay the bill.

    Scott’s tax plan reflects Republicans’ stubborn opposition to raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations. Some of the world’s richest people, like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, regularly owe $0 or an otherwise miniscule amount in taxes. But GOP lawmakers have worked to maintain low tax rates for the richest Americans and slash funding for the IRS so that they can keep dodging taxes.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Ocasio-Cortez Slams GOP Senator for Saying Gas Prices Were Lower Under Trump

    Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claps in the U.S. Capitol’s House Chamber on March 1, 2022, in Washington, D.C.

    On Monday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shot back at Republicans who were complaining about high gas prices, pointing out the flawed logic of comparing current prices to prices under the Trump administration during the early days of the pandemic.

    Over the weekend, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, wrote, “Under President Trump, gas was about $2.17 in 2020.” While gas prices were indeed low in 2020 compared to previous years, they had taken a plunge after a national emergency was declared in March, and stayed relatively low for the rest of the year as people drove significantly less during the beginning of the pandemic.

    Ocasio-Cortez pointed to this vital context in her reply to Blackburn on Twitter. “Maybe that has something to do with the fact that everyone in the country was quarantining while 350,000 people died and COVID vaccines weren’t out yet,” the New York lawmaker said.

    She then called out Republicans who have been complaining about gas prices over the past months. “Unemployment also hit 14.8 percent in 2020, the highest rate ever seen in the US since data collection began,” she said. “Does the Senator want to jump to claim that as Trump’s legacy too? Or would we rather examine context and data like adults?”

    Circumstances in 2020 were so extreme, in fact, that oil trading prices briefly fell into the negatives weeks after the pandemic hit the U.S.

    Other Democrats also criticized Blackburn for blatantly ignoring context in her tweet. “Yes! Low gas prices was a nice upside consequence of the cataclysmic 2020 economic meltdown,” wrote Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut).

    Nearly immediately after President Joe Biden took office, Republicans began blaming him for rising gas prices, citing climate policies and low oil and gas production. But the vast majority of Biden’s proposed climate policies have been blocked by conservatives in the Senate, and the administration is — unfortunately for the climate — producing oil and natural gas at near-record levels. There is also little evidence that upping production would lower gas prices.

    Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) have also blamed Biden for high gas prices because of his revocation of the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. But the pipeline wouldn’t even have been built by now, and studies have found that it actually would have increased gas prices in the Midwest and not affected prices nationwide.

    Although retail prices have been reaching highs recently, experts say that there’s little Biden can do about it. On Tuesday, Biden announced that his administration is banning Russian oil imports, one of the few actions he can take that could potentially impact gas prices — but still, the vast majority of U.S. crude oil imports come from other countries.

    Though the ban could raise gas prices, Republicans have been calling for this ban and bans on imports from other countries. These bans would serve a dual purpose for the GOP; Republicans could continue to call for more drilling in the U.S. and prop up the oil industry in response to the invasion, while also blaming Biden for high gas prices that may result from the bans.

    As Biden has pointed out, however, some of the blame for high gas prices falls on oil companies themselves. Late last year, Biden asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether or not oil and gas companies are driving up gas prices at the pump in order to pad their profits.

    Indeed, in the month that Biden made his request, the price of unfinished gasoline was down 5 percent — but gas prices rose 3 percent. Around the same time, natural gas exporters were purposefully sending gas abroad in order to limit supply and raise prices. All the while, fossil fuel companies’ profits soared.

    In response to Vladimir Putin’s invasion, Biden warned oil and gas companies not to use the crisis as an excuse to raise prices. Meanwhile, lawmakers like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and climate activists have called for a windfall tax on oil company profits during the crisis to discourage them from artificially inflating prices.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Starbucks Loses Bid to Delay Union Election Count Again as It Cuts Worker Hours

    A Starbucks sign is seen in Washington on May 29, 2018.

    The labor board has denied another Starbucks bid to delay union ballot counts as workers say that the company has started slashing hours without prior warning, endangering employees’ finances.

    The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that the company’s argument that union elections should be held region-wide rather than store-by-store was invalid, meaning that ballots for three stores in Buffalo, New York, will soon be counted. In February, the NLRB formally rejected Starbucks’s argument, which the company has used in every location’s election so far, setting a precedent against its validity.

    Workers have filed to unionize at over 110 locations so far, and three stores have voted to form a union. As the campaign gains momentum, however, Starbucks appears to be getting ever bolder in its union-busting efforts. On Monday, Starbucks Workers United wrote that the company is cutting hours across the board in order to disrupt workers’ lives.

    “Starbucks is slashing our hours nationally for no good reason. As our union campaign has spread, so has Starbucks’ manipulation of our schedules,” the union wrote in a Twitter thread. “This underscores more than ever the need for a union, to ensure that we can have a voice in these decisions.”

    Starbucks is cutting hours despite the fact that it has been reporting record profits. Its 2021 fourth quarter net revenues were up 31 percent over the previous year, while sales were up 20 percent over the entire year.

    The union highlighted that workers, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck, rely on steady hours to pay for essentials and to qualify for the company’s health insurance program. To maintain health insurance, employees must work at least 520 hours per six-month period, or about 20 hours a week. Cutting hours knowing that employees rely on the job to survive is “immoral,” the union said.

    “Instead of cutting our hours, we suggest Starbucks cut their relationship with their union busting law firm, Littler Mendelson,” Starbucks Workers United wrote. The union concluded its Twitter thread by asking employees to use the hashtag #WhyWeOrganize to share their experiences with union busting and other hardships caused by the company. It has also asked workers to email the union if they’ve had their hours cut.

    Employees flooded the hashtag with stories, detailing how they aren’t averaging enough hours for health insurance qualification and how they have recently had their hours cut. Others shared stories of management acting callously toward workers who have faced abuse at work, unsafe working conditions or personal tragedies.

    Meanwhile, the company has been firing organizing workers. Recently, Starbucks fired employee and Buffalo organizer Danny Rojas, supposedly for being late to a 5:30 am shift. In a leaked video, Rojas told their manager, “respectfully, this wouldn’t be happening if I wasn’t part of the organizing committee.”

    When other employees are late or don’t follow dress code, Rojas pointed out, they are not necessarily disciplined for it. Rojas said they were late to their shift because they regularly work a closing shift at Trader Joe’s and had no time to go home and sleep before their shift at a Starbucks store 30 minutes from their home. The company previously denied Rojas’s request to transfer to a more convenient location.

    Rojas is one of many pro-union employees who have been punished or terminated by the company. Workers are saying that the company is retaliating against pro-union employees by telling them that they may have to quit or be fired if they aren’t able to increase their available hours for work. The company recently fired another Buffalo organizer, Cassie Fleischer, and even lied that Fleischer quit. Unbeknownst to the company, however, Fleischer recorded her firing.

    The company also recently terminated seven union organizers in Memphis, Tennessee; according to the union, the workers who were fired made up the entirety of the organizing committee at that location. The company claims that the organizers were violating company policies, but workers said that some of the policies cited for their termination didn’t exist or had never been enforced.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Greene Bought Oil, Defense Stocks While Complaining About War Profiteers

    Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, joined by members of the Freedom Caucus, speaks at a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on September 22, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    New financial filings reveal that far right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) bought up to $15,000 in stock in defense manufacturers and energy companies two days before Russian forces invaded Ukraine.

    On February 22, Greene bought stocks in defense industry giant Lockheed Martin and military supplier Caterpillar. She also bought between $1,000 and $15,000 worth of stock in Chevron and NextEra Energy, a utility and energy company.

    All of these companies’ stocks have grown in the weeks since Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, with Lockheed Martin up by about 20 percent since then.

    The purchases came the day before Greene complained on Twitter about war profiteering. “War and rumors of war is [sic] incredibly profitable and convenient,” she wrote. “And just like that, the media has a lie to use as the reason for our shattered economy and out of control inflation.” The next day, after Russian troops launched attacks across Ukraine, Greene said that the invasion was “no surprise” – contrary to what experts on the situation were saying.

    According to Greene’s own logic, however, if the invasion was no surprise, then she would also be one of the war profiteers that she complained about in her tweet. Armed conflict is incredibly beneficial for the defense industry; stocks for major European and U.S. defense contractors are soaring due to the conflict.

    Oil companies have also been looking to exploit the invasion in order to expand oil and gas exploration in the U.S. Immediately surrounding the initial attacks, oil companies and conservative lawmakers, including Greene, began calling for expanding oil production.

    Like they appear to have done with inflation, oil companies may be jacking up prices for oil at the pump, in order to make a tidy profit as the conflict continues. Stocks in Exxon, Chevron and other oil giants have gone up in recent weeks.

    Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) criticized Greene’s fortuitous stock purchases on Monday, saying “Add this to the list of why members of Congress should never be allowed to trade stocks.” According to Insider, Greene is among the most active stock traders in Congress.

    It’s illegal for members of Congress to trade stock based on privileged information that isn’t available to the public, as that would constitute insider trading. It’s unclear if Greene could have been operating on insider information in this instance, although this seems unlikely given the circumstances.

    However, defense contractors including Lockheed Martin were boasting in January that escalating tensions between Ukraine and Russia could be good for business. Lockheed Martin spends tens of millions of dollars lobbying Congress each year.

    Members of both parties of Congress have been pushing to ban stock trading for members of Congress, either by forcing them to put their individual stocks in a blind trust or by requiring them to divest from stocks altogether. The Committee on House Administration has scheduled a hearing on the issue, taking a critical step toward passing such legislation, which anti-corruption organizations say is crucial.

    Though there are some Republicans who have voiced their support for such legislation, Greene does not appear to be one of them.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Biden Is Considering Extending Student Loan Pause as Activists Ramp Up Pressure

    President Joe Biden participates in a virtual meeting in the South Court Auditorium of the White House complex on February 22, 2022, in Washington, D.C.

    Last week, a top White House official said that the Biden administration is considering extending the student loan payment freeze, which is set to expire on May 1, for a second time — and suggested that the administration may cancel some portion of student debt before payments resume.

    In an interview on the podcast Pod Save America, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said, “the president is going to look at what we should do on student debt before the pause expires, or he’ll extend the pause.”

    Klain appeared to be proud of the current student loan payment pause, boasting that Joe Biden “is the only president in history where no one’s paid on [sic] their student loans for the entirety of his presidency.” He then suggested that the administration will be considering whether or not to cancel student debt before the payments resume.

    Activists have been ramping up pressure on Biden to take action on the student loan crisis. The Debt Collective is planning a day of action in April, and announced last week that it will be launching a campaign for a widespread debt strike if payments start again in May. The organization is encouraging people to pay $0 a month or as close to it as possible, which most debtors were already doing before the pandemic, the activists say.

    “If President Biden resumes illegitimate student debt payments in May, we will facilitate as many student debtors as possible to safely pay $0 a month to the Department of Education,” Debt Collective co-founder Astra Taylor said in a statement.

    “Whether it’s filing a borrower defense or enrolling in an income driven repayment plan, we are politicizing our refusal to pay as part of our escalation on President Biden,” Taylor continued. “He has the authority to cancel all federal student debt with the flick of a pen. He can end this manufactured crisis today.”

    Progressive and Democratic lawmakers have repeatedly asked Biden to take action on student debt. Last month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) sent a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona expressing concern over restarting student loan payments. She wrote that there may be widespread communication issues between borrowers and loan servicers about the end of the freeze.

    Restarting student loan payments will also be a huge financial burden for many borrowers. Polling has found that 37 percent of borrowers say that they’re “not at all confident” about their ability to make their payments when they restart in May. Nearly two thirds of borrowers said that they would have to make “major changes” to their finances when payments restart, which could be harmful to the economy and middle- and lower-income families.

    Meanwhile, the payment pause is vastly popular, with 82 percent support from student debt holders, the Student Borrower Protection Center and Data for Progress found.

    Biden promised to cancel up to $10,000 of student loans per borrower on the campaign trail, and lawmakers have been urging him to cancel up to $50,000 per person or wipe out student debt altogether. Last month, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) said that the issue should be a top priority for Biden and that inaction could cost Democrats dearly in the midterm elections.

    But Biden has so far been reluctant to take meaningful action; White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has even said that restarting student loans is a priority for the administration.

    Klain said in an interview last April that the administration would be releasing a memo on the legality of canceling student debt through executive action in the days after the interview. But that memo was never released, and the Debt Collective had to file a Freedom of Information Act request in order to confirm that the memo – which was completely redacted when it was sent to the activists – had existed for months but had been covered up by the administration.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • US Can’t Deport Families Under Title 42 If They Could Face Harm, Court Rules

    Central American migrants expelled from the U.S. under Title 42 are seen at the National Migration Institute station in Ciudad Juarez, State of Chihuahua, Mexico, on April 5, 2021.

    On Friday, a federal court decided that the U.S. can no longer use a restrictive immigration rule first invoked by the Trump administration to expel families to countries where they may face persecution or torture, but still allowed the rule to stay in place.

    The ruling, handed down from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, said that the supposed public health rule known as Title 42 “cannot expel [families] to places where they will be persecuted or tortured.” Families will now be given a chance to express their fears of being expelled to immigration officials, which most families couldn’t do before.

    However, the ruling still allows the Biden administration to expel families that judges or asylum officers determine aren’t facing persecution or torture, as well as single adults, who have made up the majority of deportations under Title 42.

    The Biden administration’s use of Title 42, which allows officials to deport asylum seekers under the guise of public health, have come under scrutiny from immigration advocates and even people within the administration. They say that President Joe Biden’s use of the policy, especially its use in deporting thousands of Haitian asylum seekers, is inhumane and potentially illegal.

    Despite outcry from progressives in his party, Biden has decided to keep the policy in place and has deported more people under the rule than Donald Trump did. Despite the fact that Haiti is already designated by the Department of Homeland Security as a country that is unsafe for people to return to, the Biden administration has sent asylum seekers back to the country en masse.

    Friday’s ruling upheld the restrictive policy, but questioned whether or not it should be revoked because it “looks in certain respects like a relic from an era with no vaccines, scarce testing, few therapeutics and little certainty.”

    Progressive and Democratic lawmakers have been urging Biden to end the use of Title 42. On Saturday, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts) wrote, “This is an important victory in our fight to #EndTitle42, which has been weaponized against Black & brown migrants for far too long. It’s time for [Biden] to center the dignity and humanity of *all* migrants and that starts with ending Title 42.”

    After Friday’s ruling, Biden administration officials gathered to discuss stopping the use of Title 42 altogether, according to the New York Times. It’s unclear if the administration has made a decision on the matter.

    In February, a group of over 100 House representatives sent a letter to Biden urging him to end the use of Title 42 and other inhumane immigration policies that are often disproportionately used against Black migrants.

    “Our country has a long history of inhumane treatment of Black migrants, which is particularly evident in the historic mistreatment of Haitians,” the lawmakers wrote. “It is time to undo the United States’ draconian immigration policies, particularly policies introduced under the Trump Administration, such as the use of Title 42, that circumvent our humanitarian obligations.”

    Indeed, while Haitian asylum seekers have been deported despite the fact that Haitians in the U.S. can qualify for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) because of political and infrastructural instability in their home country, the Biden administration recently halted deportations of undocumented immigrants from Ukraine. Immigration advocates have pointed out that this is a clear double standard as Haitians face cruelty from border agents and the government.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • New York Times Tech Workers Win Union Vote by a Landslide

    A general view of One Times Square, located at 42nd Street and Broadway on January 1, 2020, in New York City.

    Tech workers for the New York Times have voted overwhelmingly to form a union, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) determined on Thursday night.

    The union won 404 to 88, with 80 percent of voters in favor. Representing about 600 software engineers, data analysts, and other tech workers, the New York Times Tech Guild is the largest tech union that has been recognized by the NLRB in the U.S.

    “Now that our union is officially certified, we are ready to begin the work of building a better workplace alongside [New York Times Guild] and [Wirecutter Union],” the Times Tech Guild wrote on Twitter. “We look forward to realizing the full potential of our [Times Tech Guild] mission.”

    Workers faced a union-busting campaign from the New York Times Company, which refused to voluntarily acknowledge the union when workers asked the company to do so last year.

    Last month, leaked messages revealed that CEO Meredith Kopit Levien sent a memo to employees discouraging the workers from unionizing. She insisted that she’s not anti-union in general – just anti-union for the company’s tech unit, known as XFun. “This is an unproven experiment with permanent consequences,” Kopit Levien warned. Other managers sent workers messages on Slack encouraging them to vote “no.”

    The company has also shown hostility to other unionized workers within the company. Wirecutter workers waged a strike last year in part because the company had refused to guarantee raises that would keep up with inflation, which would essentially be a pay cut. Workers eventually reached a deal that would give workers a 3 percent raise each year.

    Management has illegally punished workers unionized with NewsGuild by excluding them from being able to take Indigenous People’s Day, Veterans Day and Juneteenth as paid holidays, the union alleged in a complaint filed with the NLRB in January. The Times Tech Guild also pointed out that, last year, the company announced a new policy allowing non-union parents 20 weeks of paid leave.

    Earlier this year, the NLRB alleged that New York Times managers violated federal labor laws by telling employees that they couldn’t publicly voice their support for their tech colleagues. The company has denied these allegations.

    Tech workers and labor leaders celebrated the victory. “We’re just elated and really soaking in what this means, not only for us as tech workers at The Times and for The New York Times but also for the tech industry as a whole,” Nozlee Samadzadeh, a senior software engineer, told The New York Times.

    “I think this is going to be the start of a wave of organizing in the tech industry,” Samadzadeh said. Workers at Google have formed a union, but have not filed for recognition from the NLRB, meaning that the company isn’t obligated to negotiate a contract with workers. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only about 3.7 percent of workers in computer and mathematical related jobs are unionized.

    Workers now look forward to bargaining for provisions “similar to what the newsroom unit has been fighting for — issues around pay, diversity and equity, a strong contract to make our workplace more fair,” Samadzadeh said.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Biden Offers Protected Status for Ukrainians, Shielding Them From Deportation

    Ukrainians and supporters gather around the Lafayette Park in front of the White House in Washington, D.C., to stage a protest against Russia's attacks on Ukraine, on February 27, 2022.

    The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is offering Ukrainians in the U.S. a form of humanitarian relief as Vladimir Putin’s invasion is ongoing.

    The agency is adding Ukraine to the list of countries from which people can benefit from Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 18 months, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced on Thursday. Ukrainians in the country, including undocumented immigrants and those on tourist, student or business visas could benefit. In order to benefit, people must have been residing in the U.S. since at least March 1, 2022.

    “Russia’s premeditated and unprovoked attack on Ukraine has resulted in an ongoing war, senseless violence, and Ukrainians forced to seek refuge in other countries,” said Mayorkas in a statement. “In these extraordinary times, we will continue to offer our support and protection to Ukrainian nationals in the United States.”

    DHS estimates that about 71,500 Ukrainians in the U.S. will benefit from the TPS designation, including the roughly 4,000 Ukrainians who are facing deportation hearings. The administration has also paused deportation flights to the region.

    TPS designation is given to people from countries that have been deemed unsafe for them to return to, whether for environmental, political, or other reasons. There are currently about 400,000 people living in the U.S. under TPS. However, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling last year, residents under TPS don’t currently have a pathway to permanent residence, even though some TPS holders have been living in the U.S. for decades.

    Other countries announced similar measures to grant protection to Ukrainian refugees on Thursday. The United Nations estimates that about 1 million Ukrainians have fled the country so far, and that the invasion could end up displacing 10 million Ukrainians in total.

    The announcement came after lawmakers sent a letter to President Joe Biden earlier this week asking him to grant TPS status to Ukrainians. “Ukraine clearly meets the standard for TPS,” the lawmakers wrote, citing the “ongoing armed conflict.”

    Both Democrats and Republicans praised the TPS designation. “The world has watched a humanitarian crisis grow as over a million Ukrainians flee their homes for safety. Thank you [Biden and Mayorkas] for heeding our call for TPS,” wrote Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-New York) on Thursday. “Let this be a model for our treatment of refugees in need of humanitarian support in all parts of the world.”

    Immigration advocates have pointed out that while Biden has been quick to move to protect Ukrainians, he hasn’t put countries like Cameroon on the list, despite the fact that advocates have been pleading with the administration to do so for months. People deported to Cameroon face violence and abuse as the West African country undergoes major political unrest.

    “It is evidence of anti-blackness and discrimination toward Black immigrants,” Daniel Tse, founder of the Cameroon Advocacy Network, told The New York Times.

    There has also been growing frustration among progressives and immigration advocates about the Biden administration’s abuse of Haitian asylum seekers, who the administration has been deporting en masse despite the fact that Haiti is designated as a TPS country.

    Many progressives say that while Ukrainians should be welcomed to the U.S. with open arms, refugees from other countries should be extended the same protection, regardless of race. “We must respond to the crisis in Ukraine with compassion,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts) wrote on Thursday. “That means designating Ukraine for TPS, opening our doors to refugees and providing these same protections to refugees from Africa, Middle East, Latin America, Asia, LGBTQ communities and more.”

  • Investigation Shows Police Are Still Secretly Surveilling Minnesota Activists

    Police form a line as demonstrators gather on April 11, 2021, in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota.

    A new investigation reveals that federal and local law enforcement agencies have been surveilling journalists and activists involved in the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd for over a year under a secretive program known as Operation Safety Net (OSN), despite claiming to have shut the operation down last April.

    Officials announced OSN in February 2021, a month before the trial for former Minneapolis police officer and murderer Derek Chauvin began. Law enforcement officials claimed that the goal of the program was to ensure that the public was able to exercise its right to free speech while making sure that things like business buildings weren’t harmed in the process.

    The program has gathered a vast amount of information on activists and journalists, including pictures and documentation of their locations during the protests — moves that are antithetical to the program’s supposed goal of protecting free speech. In April 2021, when Chauvin’s verdict was handed down, OSN stopped posting on social media and officials told the public that the program was stopping after it had received criticism from civil rights advocacy groups and lawmakers like Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota).

    But reporters have found that, at least as of February, officials were still surveilling and gathering data on activists and journalists — including people who are not suspected of committing a crime — under an operation deemed OSN 2.0.

    The program involved nine agencies in Minnesota, 120 officers from out of state and at least 3,000 National Guard soldiers, Tate Ryan-Mosley and Sam Richards detailed in the MIT Technology Review. Federal agencies took part, with at least six FBI agents having aided with the program and the Department of Homeland Security offering its support.

    Customs and Border Protection also helped surveil protesters and the media, lending helicopters to Minneapolis police to monitor the protests at their peak, flying high to avoid detection.

    At the time, police were detaining journalists and uploading information about their location, photographs of their bodies and faces, and press passes into a surveillance tool called Intrepid Reponse. The program provides law enforcement with the geolocations of targets and colleagues, and can act as a sort of database for officials looking to control protesters.

    That information was presumably entered into a watch list of protesters and journalists, which MIT Technology Review obtained. The list, compiled by the Criminal Intelligence Division of the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office, included photos and identifying information of people arrested by the Minnesota State Patrol.

    Ryan-Mosley and Richards reviewed thousands of documents and conducted dozens of interviews. “Taken together, they reveal how advanced surveillance techniques and technologies employed by the state, sometimes in an extra-legal fashion, have changed the nature of protest in the United States, effectively bringing an end to Americans’ ability to exercise their First Amendment rights anonymously in public spaces,” they wrote.

    Officials claim that the operation isn’t ongoing and that OSN 2.0 doesn’t exist. But the reporters found presentations, emails and intelligence that clearly referred to the operation as OSN 2.0.

    OSN was originally meant to have four phases. The first phase was for planning, the second for protests during jury selection for Chauvin’s trial, and the third for during the closing arguments and verdict. But law enforcement ended up starting phase three a week before closing arguments, and began using the planned “full deployment of law enforcement and the national guard” during this time. Officers used tear gas, rubber bullets, pepper spray, and more.

    Further, when officials announced that OSN was in phase four in April 2021, which was meant to wind the program down, the program seemed to be still ongoing. The investigation found that the program still appears to be surveilling protests in reaction to police killing 22-year-old Amir Locke after executing a no-knock warrant last month.

    “The events in Minnesota have ushered in a new era of protest policing,” Ryan-Mosley and Richards wrote. “Protests that were intended to call attention to the injustices committed by police effectively served as an opportunity for those police forces to consolidate power, bolster their inventories, solidify relationships with federal forces, and update their technology and training to achieve a far more powerful, interconnected surveillance apparatus.”

    While the findings of this investigation are chilling, it lines up with anecdotal and data-driven evidence that police and the government are averse to allowing left-wing protesters to demonstrate and exercise their First Amendment rights. For instance, research has shown that police are 3.5 times more likely to use force against left-wing protesters than against right-wing protesters. Meanwhile, lawmakers across the country have introduced and passed bills limiting protesters’ rights in reaction to 2020’s uprisings.

    In response to the investigation, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) criticized lawmakers who have been calling for increased funding for law enforcement. “Shout out to everyone working to explode funding for surveillance programs like these across the country under the guise of ‘fund the police’ when in fact police budgets are already at some of their highest levels in US history across the country,” she said on Thursday. “No facts, just vibes.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Trump’s “Impenetrable” Border Wall Has Been Broken Through Over 3,000 Times

    Former President Donald Trump pulls out his notes before speaking during a tour to an unfinished section of the border wall on June 30, 2021, in Pharr, Texas.

    The wall erected at the U.S.’s southern border under the direction of former President Donald Trump has been broken through thousands of times since it was put up, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

    According to unpublished U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, supposed “smuggling gangs” from Mexico, as the Post wrote, have sawed through the wall 3,272 times between 2019 and 2021.

    This means that the wall, which Trump has previously referred to as a “Rolls-Royce” that is “virtually impenetrable,” has been breached at a rate of about three times a day at a minimum for the past three years.

    The fact that the structure can be sawed through so easily indicates that the wall is extremely ineffective even in its racist, xenophobic goal of keeping Mexican people and asylum seekers out of the United States.

    The wall has cost the government $15 billion as of October 2020 and can be easily penetrated with simple power tools that are commonly found at retail hardware stores, like angle grinders or demolition saws. Over the past three years, the government has spent $2.6 million repairing these breaches.

    Contractors are supposed to fill the bottom parts of the wall’s bollards with concrete or steel rebar in order to prevent further breaches, but the Post found that several bollards were left hollow. In 2019, after reporters discovered that the wall was being broken through, Trump appeared to renege on his claims that the wall was impenetrable.

    In some places, people breaking through the wall will disguise the breach with putty. If border agents don’t notice the breach, people can return to the same place over and over in order to cross through the wall. In other places, bollards have been sawed and swung back into their original position, obscuring the fact that they’re broken.

    The fact that breaches can be obscured suggests that there could be even more than the thousands of breaches that CBP has recorded.

    About 458 miles of the wall has been built under Trump’s direction; he ultimately planned to continue constructing the wall for another 250 miles. President Joe Biden stopped construction of the wall, and his administration has called on Congress to cancel remaining border funding. Some observers who have traveled to the southern border say, however, that CBP is still constructing the wall there. The agency says that the construction is for flood control and to protect border agents.

    The wall can also be circumvented in other ways, HuffPost pointed out. Previous reporting has found that people are using $5 ladders to climb over the wall. “It’s made of cheap, rough wood, quickly nailed together because it is only going to be used once,” local artist and activist Scott Nicol told Texas Monthly last April. “Unlike the wall, these ladders are functional.”

    Another instance in 2020 demonstrated seemingly shoddy construction of the wall. A segment of the California side of the wall fell onto some trees on the Mexican side after the area experienced winds that were up to 37 miles an hour.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • New York REI Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form a Union

    REI's flagship New York store stands in Lower Manhattan on January 25, 2022, in New York City.

    Workers at a Manhattan REI location overwhelmingly voted to form a union on Wednesday, overcoming a fierce union-busting campaign waged by the company after workers filed for a union election in January.

    The results of the in-person vote to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) on Wednesday were 88 to 14 in favor of the union, or an 86 percent “yes” vote. The store, located in SoHo, is the first of the company’s 170 locations to unionize.

    “As members of the RWDSU, we know we will be able to harness our collective strength to advocate for a more equitable, safe, and enriching work environment,” Claire Chang, a member of the workers’ organizing committee, said in a statement.

    “We’re hopeful that REI meets us in good faith during negotiations for our first contract, while keeping our co-op values in mind and applying them to workers,” Chang continued.

    Despite purporting to be a progressive company, REI has taken a myriad of anti-union steps over the past months. On an anti-union website that the company set up, it released a 25-minute podcast in which CEO Eric Artz co-opted the language of social movements in trying to sway workers against unionizing.

    “These workers have vast expertise in their field and have worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic to serve the outdoor community. They have stuck together through a horrendous union-busting campaign and have come out the other side stronger,” said RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum. “With a seat at the table, workers can make working at REI safe and sustainable for years to come.”

    Workers have said that the company has posted anti-union flyers in the store and suspended promotion opportunities. The company has also sent executives to hold captive audience meetings with workers, and pulled workers into one-on-one meetings with managers to feed them anti-union messaging.

    In response, organizers have quoted the REI’s own purported values back to the company, saying that the company’s “co-op” structure with its customers should also extend to its workers.

    Employees have said that company culture has shifted over the past couple of years, and that management hasn’t been maintaining safe working conditions during the pandemic or paying a living wage. Workers also say that many employees aren’t classified as full-time and thus don’t receive benefits, despite working for 40 hours a week.

    “I never feel like anyone is actually listening,” Kate Denend, sales specialist at the now-unionized store, told Motherboard in January. “We hear about how REI is having record breaking profits this year. But a lot of people aren’t insured. A lot of people look elsewhere for healthcare.”

    The unionization may inspire other REI locations to unionize and adds momentum to the labor movement, which has been experiencing a resurgence over the past year or so. Though retail and service industries are overwhelmingly not unionized, workers at Starbucks are in the midst of a strong union drive that has seen over 100 union filings so far and three successfully unionized locations.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Starbucks Union Files 20 Complaints, Alleging Company Is Illegally Union Busting

    Logo of the Starbucks is seen in New York on May 29, 2018.

    Starbucks Workers United has filed 20 complaints with federal labor officials over the last week, alleging that the company has engaged in multiple illegal union-busting activities, Bloomberg reports.

    The union claims that the company threatened to shut down all of its stores in Buffalo, New York, where the union drive began. Starbucks Workers United also says that the company has been illegally coercing employees during “effectively mandatory” anti-union meetings — which Starbucks has been holding in unionizing stores across the country — and that it has barred pro-union employees from attending the meetings. The complaints were filed with the Buffalo regional office of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

    Other complaints say that the company illegally fired a union organizer and member of the bargaining committee, Cassie Fleischer. Fleischer had helped organize the Elmwood store in Buffalo, the first location to unionize. The company has been leveraging ongoing negotiations with Elmwood against employees who have filed to unionize, saying that workers should wait to hear the results of negotiations before they decide whether to form a union.

    The union further alleges that the company has been illegally restricting employees from speaking with reporters, and that it has been enforcing dress code and other rules on pro-union workers specifically. Last month, the company fired seven union organizers in Memphis, Tennessee, claiming that the organizers broke rules that workers said didn’t exist or had never been enforced before.

    The union has already filed an unfair labor practice claim over those terminations, saying that it was a clear and brash violation of labor laws that prohibit retaliation against workers for organizing a union. The terminations caught the attention of lawmakers, who called for the passage of the pro-union Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act.

    Meanwhile, the company has denied all allegations of union busting. “We’ve been clear from the beginning: Any claims of anti-union activity are categorically false,” spokesperson Reggie Borges told Bloomberg.

    Workers have filed for unionization in over 100 stores so far, with new filings coming in at a remarkably fast pace. Recent polling finds that the vast majority of Starbucks customers support workers’ union efforts.

    The union secured a major win on Friday, when workers in Mesa, Arizona, officially won their union election, forming the third-ever union for the company.

    “This is another historic moment for Starbucks partners and service industry workers across the country,” Michelle Hejduk, shift supervisor at the Power and Baseline store in Mesa, said in a statement. “For too long, Starbucks hasn’t lived up to their mission and values and we are holding them accountable.”

    The company has come under fire from employees and customers for anti-union activities. Workers have expressed frustration that the company, which purports to be progressive, has been taking such drastic measures to union bust.

    So far, the NLRB has shot down all of the company’s attempts to interfere with unionizing efforts. Last week, the labor board ruled that the company could no longer delay elections and vote counts by arguing that elections should be held region-wide, rather than store by store, setting a precedent against a common union-busting tactic.

    Even if the labor board finds that Starbucks has been illegally union busting, however, regulations don’t allow for strict punishments against companies caught violating labor laws. This means that the company could be knowingly violating labor laws because they have decided that it’s worth it to quash the union effort — a common strategy of union-busting companies.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • House Takes Step Toward Banning Stock Trading For Members of Congress

    Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi speaks during her weekly press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on February 9, 2022.

    The Committee on House Administration will soon hold a hearing on proposals to ban members of Congress from being able to trade individual stocks, taking a step toward eventually voting on such legislation.

    According to Insider, which spoke to two anonymous sources, the committee has requested testimony from government watchdog groups like the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). Lawmakers have also invited the Congressional Research Service to testify.

    The committee didn’t confirm the hearing with Insider, saying that hearings aren’t typically announced until a week before they’re held. A committee hearing would be a big step to move the proposal forward within the House. Republicans have not yet chosen a witness for the hearing.

    It’s unclear if a stock trading ban would pass if it came to a vote now. However, recent bills have had rare bipartisan support, and some Senate Republicans are in favor of such proposals. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) back the idea; an early draft of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address slated for Tuesday night included support for the effort, but may be taken out to include other priorities.

    Lawmakers in the House and the Senate have introduced several different stock trading bans. One of the strictest proposals was introduced in February by Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Steve Daines (R-Montana) and Representatives Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) and Matt Rosendale (R-Montana).

    The bipartisan, bicameral legislation would outright ban members of Congress and their spouses from owning stocks, requiring them to divest from all stocks other than widely held investment funds while in office. Violations would carry a $50,000 fine per infraction.

    This goes slightly further than other proposals, like one from Senators Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia) and Mark Kelly (D-Arizona). Ossoff and Kelly introduced a bill in January that would ban more family members from owning stocks; it would also ban spouses and dependent children from actively trading stocks.

    But the bill would only require that those stocks be put into a blind trust when members take office, meaning that lawmakers can still influence their stock portfolios in a blind trust with legislation that could affect companies that they had previously invested in.

    Government watchdogs say that a stock trading ban must be strict in order to be effective. In guidelines circulated to Congress, CREW says that stock trading bans must not allow members to put their portfolios in a blind trust, must ban spouses and dependent children from trading stock and must have a strict enforcement mechanism. Bans also shouldn’t allow for intent loopholes, CREW says – in other words, there shouldn’t be a carveout for the lawmakers who supposedly unknowingly violated the law.

    No one bill that has been introduced so far adopts all of those principles; of those requirements, Sen. Josh Hawley’s (R-Missouri) bill only has a clear enforcement mechanism, according to CREW, requiring members to give gains from banned stock trades to the Treasury Department.

    As lawmakers have shown, however, enforcement is key. Lawmakers and their aides regularly violate the STOCK Act, which places disclosure requirements on members’ stock trades. According to financial filings, members will often report multimillion dollar trades months late. But violators typically only face a small fine of around $200.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Poll Finds Most Voters Think Companies Are Exploiting Pandemic to Raise Prices

    A volunteer with Lakeview Pantry helps a person load grocery items into a car outside the pantry on January 24, 2022, in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood.

    As large corporations post record profits, nearly two-thirds of voters agree that corporations are taking advantage of the pandemic in order to raise prices, new polling has found.

    The poll of over 1,500 likely voters, conducted by Data for Progress in collaboration with Groundwork Collaborative this month, found that 63 percent of all respondents think that corporations are using the pandemic to pad profits. Only 29 percent said that the companies have no choice but to raise prices to cover operational costs.

    This belief is widely held regardless of political affiliation, according to the survey. Seventy-six percent of Democratic voters said that companies are taking advantage of the pandemic, along with 62 percent of independents and 51 percent of Republicans.

    A smaller number of voters believe that companies are using inflation in particular to unfairly raise prices, with 50 percent agreeing and 41 percent saying that price increases are due to the government. Still, that is a nine point margin in favor of believing that corporations are profiteering, with 72 percent of Democrats agreeing as such.

    “It’s no secret that corporations are taking advantage of this pandemic and patterns of consumption it has accelerated,” Ethan Winter, senior polling analyst for Data for Progress, told Truthout. “Executives openly admit to doing so on quarterly earnings calls. American consumers are stuck bearing higher prices for goods on shelves and in stores.”

    Evidence shows that corporations are indeed using inflation to jack up prices more than they would need to to cover rising costs of production. Though inflation is at record highs, corporations have raised or are planning to raise prices while simultaneously posting record profits.

    Starbucks recently announced that it’s planning to raise prices, even while its profits increased by 22 percent over a two-year span in the fourth quarter of 2021. Tyson’s first quarter profits for 2022 nearly doubled as meat prices soar, while Exxon marked its highest earnings in seven years in the fourth quarter of 2021 – and the list goes on.

    Corporate executives even admit to exploiting inflation since the start of the pandemic; in earnings calls, executives have outright said that rising inflation is an opportunity to profit. Kroger, Albertsons, Procter & Gamble, Chipotle and Kraft Heinz are just a few companies that have lauded inflation in the past few months.

    Fed Chair Jerome Powell said in a hearing last month that higher prices for goods could be due simply to corporate decisions to price gouge. Prices could be rising because “demand is incredibly strong and [corporations are] raising prices because they can,” he said in a Senate hearing.

    Though voters don’t necessarily know that corporations are doing this, likely voters surveyed by Data for Progress said that corporate pricing is making goods more expensive. Eighty-two percent of surveyed voters said that corporate price gouging is contributing to inflation.

    Although not all voters agreed on the root causes of rising prices, an overwhelming majority said that the government should crack down on corporate profiteering and enforce antitrust laws. A whopping 80 percent of likely voters responded as such, including 88 percent of Democrats.

    The polling demonstrates that cracking down on corporate price hikes could be a popular move for Joe Biden and Democrats to take ahead of crucial midterm elections this fall. Biden recently directed his administration to look into potential antitrust moves that corporations are making.

    However, his administration is stopping short of directly blaming corporations for increased prices, as some economists in the administration hesitate to back this messaging. Language pointing the finger at corporations was taken out of recent remarks from an administration official before Congress, The Washington Post found earlier this month.

    Meanwhile, progressive lawmakers have been sounding the alarm about how prices are hurting consumers. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), for instance, has prodded real estate firms, grocers, the car rental company Hertz, and more, asking that they explain their role in rising rents, grocery prices, and other goods, and pinning the likely cause on corporate greed.

    In a recent tweet about Chipotle’s shares rising, Warren said, “This CEO bragged about their ‘pricing power.’ Let me translate that from economist-speak: they can raise prices and extract profit from consumers without worrying about losing too much business. Big corporations are raising prices because they can.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sanders Urges Tax on Windfall Oil Profits as Companies Exploit Ukraine Crisis

    Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders speaks during a committee hearing in the Hart Senate Office building on February 17, 2022, in Washington, D.C.

    As oil companies seek to profit off of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) is calling for officials to place a tax on oil profits and implement price controls in order to lessen the effects of the crisis on the public.

    “We can no longer allow big oil companies, huge corporations and the billionaire class to use the murderous Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing pandemic as an excuse to price gouge consumers,” Sanders wrote over the weekend. “It is time to enact a windfall profits tax and reasonable price controls.”

    Crude oil prices have been jumping since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine last week, with corresponding soaring prices at the pump for consumers. According to surveys, the national average is now $3.61 per gallon, which is almost a dollar higher than the average this time last year.

    But even before the invasion, retail prices were steadily rising. As inflation has risen precipitously over the past few months, oil and gas companies have taken the opportunity to raise prices to compensate for rising production or other costs – and to make even greater profits.

    A windfall tax would levy a tax on profits made by fossil fuel companies in response to the invasion, and possibly also tax profits made as inflation has risen. This could potentially discourage fossil fuel companies from artificially inflating prices in response to the crisis.

    In 2020, Sanders introduced similar legislation, which sought to capture 60 percent of the skyrocketing wealth increases that billionaires have been raking in during the pandemic in order to fund universal health care. If such a tax had been implemented from then until now, it would have raised trillions of dollars with essentially no impact on billionaires’ lifestyles.

    A tax on Big Oil could be similarly fruitful for the government. Last year, a report found that top oil and gas companies made $174 billion in the first nine months of 2021, while raising dividends and paying CEOs tens of millions of dollars. Companies posted similarly high profits in the fourth quarter of 2021, with Exxon Mobil reporting profits of $8.9 billion, its highest earnings in seven years.

    Lawmakers like Sanders have noted that prices are rising in part because companies are trying to rake in profits at consumers’ expense; in November, President Joe Biden asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether oil and gas companies are engaging in antitrust behaviors in order to pad profits under the guise of inflation. Before winter set in last year, reporters found gas companies were sending large amounts of gas abroad in order to limit supply and raise prices for heating bills.

    For an oil company, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the potential impacts to fossil fuel supplies could be an opportunity to price gouge. In an attempt to preempt this last week, Biden warned companies against raising prices, saying they should “not exploit this moment to hike their prices to raise profits.” But so far, he hasn’t taken further action to discourage companies from doing so.

    Meanwhile, pro-fossil fuel groups wasted no time saying that oil production should increase now, even though the country is already producing close to its limit. Less than 24 hours after the invasion – and, in the American Petroleum Institute’s case, just as the invasion was being announced – extremist right-wing politicians, conservative pundits and influential oil groups jumped on the crisis. Oil cronies insisted that more drilling is the only way to achieve energy independence, even though climate advocates have pointed out that 100 percent energy independence could have been achieved years ago if the country relied on renewable sources instead.

    Increasing drilling is also a terrible, near-genocidal idea in terms of the climate. In a report released on Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that the effects of continuing on the current path of the climate crisis will lead to food and water shortages, mass migration and death, especially in poor nations. Even more traditionally conservative energy organizations have directed governments and oil companies to stop pursuing new fossil fuel projects immediately in order to avert disaster.

    Sanders’s suggestion to cut into oil and gas profits could not only help reduce costs for consumers, but also help to mitigate the climate crisis. The profitability and influence of fossil fuel companies, which receive trillions of dollars in subsidies from world governments, are part of what’s keeping them going – for now.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Irreversible Impacts on the Climate Are Getting Locked In, IPCC Warns

    A road stop sign near Agia Anna stands burnt by wildfires that raged in August on the island of Evia, Greece, on September 7, 2021. According to scientists the wildfires were caused by changing climate.

    Irreversible impacts of the climate crisis are getting locked in and the window to prevent even more dire changes is getting smaller, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned in a new report on Monday.

    The report, prepared by hundreds of researchers around the world, finds that the Earth’s temperature has already risen by 1.09 degrees Celsius and is on track to surpass the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting warming to under 1.5 degrees Celsius within the next few decades. Some impacts to ecosystems and vulnerable regions are already permanent, and warming of 1.5 degrees or 2 degrees will only bring more damage.

    Half of the world’s population is living with high vulnerability to the climate crisis, researchers found, while half of the species assessed by the IPCC have already shifted to different habitats in order to survive. Changes that are arising from greenhouse gasses are coming quicker than communities can adapt – and, in some cases, adaptation mechanisms are furthering the crisis.

    “I have seen many scientific reports in my time, but nothing like this,” said António Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, in a press conference. “Today’s IPCC report is an atlas of human suffering, and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership. With fact upon fact, this report reveals how people and the planet are getting clobbered by climate change.”

    Apathy from political leaders and the continued use of fossil fuels are to blame, Guterres emphasized. “Coal and other fossil fuels are choking humanity,” he said.

    Extreme weather events like wildfires, heatwaves and flooding are already affecting people; heatwaves in the Pacific Northwest killed hundreds last year. Meanwhile, millions of people in Asia and Africa are being displaced due to storms and floods, and increased wildfires, tree mortality and thawing permafrost are further increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

    Rising sea levels will rapidly increase displacement. Coastal populations, including those living in cities, are increasingly at risk of death or having to flee their homes. In the next decades, such resource loss could cause violent conflicts and mass migrations.

    Impacts to the water system are also dire for humans. Record heat and droughts are exposing millions to growing water and food scarcity issues across all continents, while food production challenges are resulting in increased malnutrition, especially for Indigenous people and low-income communities. About half of the world’s population already experiences severe water scarcity for some part of the year.

    These changes are having impacts on the global community’s mental and physical health. Climate-related illnesses have increased, along with the range of diseases. Storms and floods are causing more occurrences of gastrointestinal diseases like cholera, while wildfires and other air polluting events are causing more cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.

    “One of the most striking conclusions in our report is that we’re seeing adverse impacts being much more widespread and being much more negative than expected in prior reports,” said Camille Parmesan, University of Texas at Austin ecologist and coauthor of the report.

    Monday’s report is just one part of the IPCC’s overall package on the impact of the climate crisis; the first part of the report, detailing the physical elements of climate change, was released last summer. The most recent installment lays out how these impacts affect humans and society.

    The report’s authors warn that while some changes are locked in, further climate impacts – and climate-related deaths – aren’t unavoidable. It’s up to wealthy, powerful governments to make the change.

    But reporting has found that wealthy nations actively worked to weaken the portion of the report specifically tailored for policymakers; according to Climate Home News, nations like the U.S., Germany and France pushed for terms like “losses and damages” to be replaced with “adverse impacts.” Although the changes ultimately weren’t included, the effort is reflective of world leaders’ continued refusal to prevent climate disaster.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Warren Expresses Concern Over Transition to Restarting Student Loan Payments

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks during the Senate Banking Committee on February 15, 2022, in Washington, D.C.

    Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona this week, asking him to detail the agency’s plan to reduce hardship and confusion as student loan payments are soon scheduled to restart.

    The lawmakers, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusett), expressed concern that borrowers may not be informed about the end of the payment pause, and that borrowers could be hit with fees and other financial distress as a result.

    Restarting payments will be a huge financial burden for many borrowers, especially as the economy roils in response to the pandemic and global conflict. Recent polling has found that over a third of borrowers are “not at all confident” in their ability to make student loan payments when the pause ends on May 1. Among those with student debt, 65 percent said that they will have to make “major changes to saving or spending.”

    “While we appreciate the Biden Administration’s actions to extend the payment pause amid the COVID-19 pandemic, we are concerned that with less than 70 days until the scheduled expiration, borrowers may lack clarity about the timeline associated with the resumption of payments,” the lawmakers wrote. “Providing this detail is critical to ensure that borrowers are adequately informed about the restart and that borrower harm is minimized during the transition.”

    Democrats praised the Biden administration for implementing a 90-day grace period for borrowers who miss their first payments after they restart, so that they won’t experience any impact to their credit. But about half of all federal student loan holders are at an increased risk of delinquency as payments resume, according to the Government Accountability office.

    Many borrowers may not know that payments are resuming. The Education Department doesn’t have email addresses for about 5.5 million borrowers, and one servicer managing defaulted loans doesn’t have email addresses for about 25 percent of borrowers in default, the Democrats wrote.

    There are also issues with student loans bouncing around between servicers as the pause was ongoing. Three servicers managing loans for 12.2 million borrowers announced that they would no longer manage federal student loans last year, which may cause confusion.

    The lawmakers concluded their letter by demanding that the Education Department lay out its plan to restart payments. The agency should provide information about whether borrowers in default will still be in default when payments restart, and if or when borrowers can expect to experience things like wage garnishment if they’re unable to make payments, the lawmakers said.

    Student loans have become a flash point for Democrats and debt advocates, who have grown increasingly frustrated with President Joe Biden’s refusal to fulfill his campaign promise to cancel student loans. Progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) have warned that if Biden doesn’t take action on student loans soon, Democrats could be at serious risk of losing Congress in the midterm elections.

    For months, Warren and dozens of other Democratic lawmakers have rallied for Biden to cancel up to $50,000 of debt for each borrower; John B. King, the Education Secretary for former President Barack Obama, recently came out in favor of the proposal.

    Other advocates of student debt cancellation, like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and the Debt Collective, have urged Biden to cancel all student debt as borrowers drown in nearly $1.9 trillion in debt. Ahead of the end of the payment pause in April, activists are planning a day of action to urge Biden to “pick up the pen” and cancel debt.

    Barring cancellation from Biden, however, lawmakers have asked for the Education Department to take less radical but potentially hugely impactful measures to help borrowers when payments restart. In November, Warren, Sanders and other Democratic senators asked Cardona to move the roughly 8 million borrowers who are in default on their loans out of default before payments restart. This would allow borrowers to have a fresh start, the lawmakers wrote, and could be helpful for the economy.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Big Oil and Conservatives Are Using Russia’s Conflict to Call for More Drilling

    Oil pumps and equipment in the South Belridge oil field in Kern County pictured on March 4, 2014, about forty miles west of Bakersfield, California.

    Republicans, conservative pundits and Big Oil took less than 24 hours after Russia invaded Ukraine to begin advocating for more oil drilling and fracking in the name of supposed energy independence.

    As climate journalists Amy Westervelt and Kate Aronoff pointed out on Thursday, news outlets like Bloomberg and conservative commentators like The Atlantic’s David Frum are calling for expanding oil production and fracking in response to the conflict, even though the U.S. is currently already producing near its limit.

    “Fracking may be America’s most powerful weapon against Russian aggression,” read an op-ed from a Bloomberg columnist who formerly led a Standard Oil and Koch family funded think tank.

    The American Petroleum Institute (API) made a Twitter thread just as Vladimir Putin was announcing attacks on Ukraine. “As crisis looms in Ukraine, U.S. energy leadership is more important than ever,” API wrote, encouraging the White House to lease and permit even more drilling on and offshore.

    In an earnings call on Thursday by natural gas exporter Cheniere, CEO Jack Fusco said that the invasion is good for business, Aronoff reported. “It’s tragic what’s going on in Eastern Europe, and it saddens me to see the satellite images on the newscreen that we’ve all witnessed this morning,” Fusco said. “But if anything, these high prices, the volatility, drive even more energy security and long-term contracting.”

    Conservative lawmakers also hopped onto the Big Oil cronyism. Far right Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) posted a video saying that the federal government should immediately start producing oil at full capacity and exporting gas to Europe in order to combat inflation. Boebert has close ties to the fossil fuel industry; her husband has made hundreds of thousands of dollars consulting for Texas driller Terra Energy Partners.

    Meanwhile, Republicans are saying that Democrats’ “green agenda” and supposed “war on American oil and gas” is to blame for Putin’s invasion – nevermind the fact that Biden approved oil and gas drilling at a higher rate than Trump did in 2021.

    It’s extremely cynical to use this moment to encourage expanding fossil fuel production – and thus attempt to worsen the climate crisis – as thousands of people in Ukraine face instability, vicious attacks and uncertainty due to Russian forces. As conservatives and Big Oil attempt to exploit this moment for profit, antiwar activists in Russia and Ukraine are potentially putting their lives on the line to protest the Russian invasion.

    Experts say that there’s not much that President Joe Biden can do to control gas prices and that there’s little connection between oil production and gas prices.

    Rather, oil and gas companies have already been making record profits by taking advantage of inflation and economic uncertainty, causing President Joe Biden and other Democrats to probe whether or not companies are breaking antitrust laws in order to pad their pockets. Indeed, in remarks on Thursday, Biden urged oil and gas companies to “not exploit this moment to hike their prices to raise profits.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Manchin Reportedly Backing Corporate-Friendly Michelle Childs for Supreme Court

    Sen. Joe Manchin questions witnesses during a hearing in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on January 11, 2022, in Washington, D.C.

    As President Joe Biden considers several top Supreme Court picks, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) is reportedly telling colleagues in private that he prefers a GOP-backed candidate, who unions and pro-labor advocates have sounded the alarm about for her history of advocating for corporations against workers, Punchbowl News has reported.

    According to Punchbowl, multiple anonymous sources have said that Manchin wants J. Michelle Childs in the Supreme Court because she has bipartisan support, despite the fact that Supreme Court nominees only need 51 votes to pass. The lawmaker also cites her public school education as a plus.

    Childs does indeed have support from conservatives. Earlier this month, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) voiced his support for the District Court judge and predicted that she would get more than 10 Republican votes in the Senate. Manchin’s vote is crucial for Democrats if Biden picks a different nominee, however, as Democrats will need every senator in their caucus to vote “yes.”

    But labor groups have raised concerns about Childs, citing her history as a management-side lawyer who worked for corporations in cases of racial discrimination and union drives. Not every potential pick has done this, the groups pointed out.

    “She comes from an anti-union law firm where she spent time defending employers from claims of civil rights and labor law violations,” David Borer, general counsel of the American Federation of Government Employees, told The Washington Post earlier this month. “That’s not what we need.”

    Progressives also take issue with Childs’s history as a judge in the criminal legal system. As a judge, The American Prospect has reported, Childs has issued numerous harsh rulings against incarcerated people that were later overturned. In 2009, Childs sentenced a man to 12 years in prison for selling only about half a pound of marijuana.

    “Judge Childs’s repeated opposition to leniency in sentencing and alleged abuse cases brought by prisoners is notable in its own right,” wrote The American Prospect’s Alexander Sammon. “That she made those decisions on such dubious grounds that they were routinely overturned by higher courts indicates a commitment to tough-on-crime rulings beyond the letter of procedure.”

    This Supreme Court pick is crucial for Democrats, who progressives say should take full advantage of the seat being left by Democratic justice Stephen Breyer by filling it with a strong progressive pick. The very fact that Childs has the support of Republicans has led some progressives to believe that Childs may be backed by corporate donors.

    Picking someone who appeals to Republicans would be antithetical to the goal of balancing out the Supreme Court – especially since conservatives have spent years bending and changing the rules to pack the court with extremist right-wing justices, and as the Court is on the precipice of crucial decisions on issues like abortion.

    Earlier this month, a group of Black women in the House sent a letter to Biden, applauding him for pledging to pick a Black woman to fill the seat and urging him to pick a civil rights champion. Biden’s pick would be the first Black woman to ever sit on the High Court.

    “There is no shortage of incredible, qualified, leading Black female candidates to serve on the Supreme Court,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) said in an interview. “But the question is, what is going to be that nominee’s worldview?”

    While Ocasio-Cortez hasn’t specifically advocated against any candidates, she says that the candidate’s stances on issues like Citizens United are crucial.

    Progressive groups like Justice Democrats have said that someone like Ketanji Brown Jackson, who is in contention for the Supreme Court seat, would be an appropriate choice.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • USPS Defies Biden’s Plea to Electrify Fleet, Finalizing Gas-Powered Truck Plan

    A United States Postal Service tow truck prepares to haul away two broken down delivery vehicles on February 15, 2022, in Solvang, California.

    On Wednesday, the United States Postal Service announced that it has finalized its plan to replace its vehicles with a fleet comprised largely of gas-powered vehicles, a move that has enraged climate advocates and that defies President Joe Biden’s promise to electrify the agency’s fleet.

    Under the direction of Postmaster Louis DeJoy, the agency is purchasing up to 148,000 gas vehicles, despite requests from the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to do otherwise.

    The purchase would undermine climate plans from Biden, who had pledged to fully electrify the agency’s vehicles as the current fleet is long past its prime. USPS trucks make up about one-third of vehicles owned by the federal government.

    The agency argues that a largely gas-powered fleet would be cheaper than buying an all-electric fleet. But although this may be cheaper up front, gas vehicles would likely cost more in the long term; the EPA contends that the agency has been using completely inaccurate gas price estimates in their analysis. The USPS also had a chance in making the plan to buy lighter trucks that are more fuel efficient, but it opted to buy trucks that are nearly double the weight of the current vehicles. Of course, this decision will actively advance the climate crisis and the U.S.’s dependence on fossil fuels.

    Wednesday’s decision frustrated climate advocates. “DeJoy’s plans for the postal fleet will drag us back decades with a truck model that gets laughable fuel economy. We may as well deliver the mail with hummers,” Adrian Martinez, attorney for Earthjustice, said in a statement. “DeJoy’s environmental review is rickety, founded on suspect calculations, and fails to meet the standards of the law.”

    Martinez added that Earthjustice is prepared to fight the decision in courts, saying that electrifying the fleet entirely would avoid the burning of 110 million gallons of fuel annually. Other environmental groups are poised to do the same.

    Climate advocates say that the new fleet would needlessly lock in emissions for decades to come. Gas-powered mail trucks are especially inefficient energy-wise; according to the EPA, new gas trucks would get only 8.6 miles to the gallon, which is hardly an improvement over the current fleet’s average of 8.2 miles per gallon.

    Over the trucks’ 20-year life expectancy, the EPA wrote in a letter to the Postal Service, a 90 percent gas-powered fleet would emit as much carbon dioxide as 4.3 million passenger vehicles, or five coal power plants. They would end up costing climate damages of $900 million, according to social carbon cost analysis.

    Climate advocates say that electrifying the USPS fleet is “low-hanging fruit.”

    “It seems like a no-brainer to be using electric trucks for this sort of thing, like mail delivery,” Zeke Hausfather, climate scientist and director of climate and energy for the Breakthrough Institute, told Truthout. “And it’s a real shame that in a time when climate change is such an important issue, and our leaders like the Biden administration are stating that it’s such an important issue, we’re on the cusp of locking in two or more decades of gas guzzling vehicles, that, to be honest, are only marginally more efficient than the trucks that the Postal Service bought 20 years ago.”

    Electrifying the fleet is technically feasible for the agency – most mail routes are only 20 miles on average, which is well within the mileage that an electric mail truck could get with a smaller, cheaper battery. In 2009, when electric vehicle technology was less advanced than it is now, the Postal Service found that 96 percent of routes were compatible with electric trucks.

    The trucks wouldn’t create harmful emissions while they idle as postal workers make their deliveries, and their constant stopping and restarting is inefficient for gas vehicles. Further, the trucks park in the same hub every night, meaning that it would be easy to ensure that they’re all charged for the next day.

    While the U.S. is making progress toward Biden’s goal of cutting emissions in half by 2030, transportation is a crucial sector to decarbonize.

    “To have any chance of meeting the Biden administration’s goal of a 50 percent reduction by 2030, we really need to meaningfully cut emissions from transportation. And the Postal Service is a pretty big emitter,” said Hausfather. Buying an all-electric fleet would not only cause a direct emissions reduction, but could also make it easier for other companies like FedEx or UPS to make similar purchases.

    Wednesday’s announcement sparked calls, yet again, for DeJoy to be removed from his post. “Louis DeJoy is destroying the USPS. And now he’s tied the fleet to gas-powered trucks for 30 years, when we should be going electric,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon). “Louis DeJoy should be fired.”

    The embattled Donald Trump-era postmaster general has come under fire for his recently-implemented 10-year plan for the agency that is slated to slow delivery while raising prices. But DeJoy can only be removed by the Postal Board, which currently lacks the votes to replace him; Biden nominated enough Democrats to oust DeJoy last April, but his nominations are stuck in the Senate.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sanders Hails Starbucks Organizers for Their “Courage” Against Union Busting

    Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks during a rally at the Arthur Ashe Junior Athletic Center on February 27, 2020, in Richmond, Virginia.

    In a town hall with organizing Starbucks workers on Wednesday night, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) highlighted the corporation’s greed and praised the workers for their “courage” in standing up to the company’s union busting.

    “We live in a country today where a lot of people are hurting, they feel powerless. And what you are doing is addressing that by bringing people together to stand up for justice,” Sanders said. “And you, I want to say, are an inspiration to many of us.”

    Starbucks workers have been facing a fierce union-busting campaign by the company, which has been forcing employees to attend anti-union meetings, using legal delay tactics and firing organizing employees. Despite these tactics, over 100 stores in 26 states have filed for union representation over the past few months, and new filings are flooding in every week.

    Although the company refers to employees as ‘partners’, workers say that they have been treated as anything but. Low wages and unsafe working conditions due to COVID are common complaints, and workers say that the company refuses to address their concerns. In response to the organizing campaign, the company has hired over 30 union-busting lawyers from the notorious anti-union firm Littler Mendelson.

    Sanders pointed out that while the company refuses to listen to its employees’ concerns, it is raking in record profits and rewarding executives and shareholders handsomely. “You’re dealing with a very wealthy corporation spending millions trying to crush the union organizing effort that is taking place all over this country,” the senator said.

    During the pandemic, Starbucks founder Howard Schultz has become $1.2 billion richer, Sanders said. Last year, CEO Kevin Johnson got a 39 percent pay raise, bringing his total compensation to over $20 million. Meanwhile, the company’s revenues grew by 31 percent in the fourth quarter of 2021, and increased by 22 percent over the past two years.

    Organizers at the town hall shared their experiences working at Starbucks, highlighting the company’s union busting.

    “Instead of investing in their workers that make this company so successful, they’re investing millions in an anti-worker, anti-union campaign,” said Kylah Clay, a barista and organizer in Boston. “But this should come as no surprise given the company’s longstanding opposition to workers’ empowerment. Since the 1980s, Starbucks has deployed million dollar anti-union legal teams to pressure their so-called partners out of exercising their rights to unionize.”

    The company often touts benefits like retirement funds and discounted vacations as reasons that workers don’t need to form a union, but the benefits can be so expensive that workers can’t even use them.

    “Even for those of us who have the privilege to take advantage of some of the benefits, all of these dazzling benefits that Starbucks does offer can’t be taken advantage of due to the lack of wages,” said Len Harris, a Denver worker and organizer. Harris once tried to contribute to a 401(k) offered by the company, but couldn’t afford to pay rent with the contribution.

    Harris added that the company offers few forms of advancement for tenured employees. Employees with years of experience earn only 63 cents more than people who were just hired, Harris said.

    Part of the reason why the labor movement is currently surging is because young people are facing much more hardship in the job market than previous generations, Sanders pointed out.

    “Your generation has had it tough, to be honest with you. Everything being equal, you are earning less than your parents earned, despite the fact that, in general, you have more education. Many of you are struggling with student debt,” he said. “What you guys are doing is breaking new ground … having the courage to take on a very, very powerful corporation.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Labor Board Formally Rejects Starbucks’s Tactic to Delay Union Elections

    Starbucks coffee shop logo seen at one of their stores in Perrysburg, Ohio, on November 12, 2020.

    On Wednesday, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) rejected an argument that Starbucks has been employing in its union-busting campaign, setting a precedent against the use of the tactic in the future.

    The company has repeatedly argued that union elections should happen on a regional basis, rather than store-by-store. Voting this way would dilute the union elections for the company, making it so that employees at other stores that aren’t in the midst of unionizing would also cast a vote; this would make it harder for Starbucks Workers United to reach workers that are casting a ballot. The company argues that union elections at individual stores affect other stores in the region, which can encompass a dozen locations or more.

    Starbucks has made this argument in attempts to delay or stop elections during every election so far, and the NLRB has rejected it each time. However, this week’s decision will make it harder for the company to make the argument in the future, setting a binding precedent against its use.

    In this case, Starbucks had said that the vote count in Mesa, Arizona, which was scheduled for last week, should be delayed in order to accommodate more stores’ votes – an argument that was already denied last month when the company tried to stop the election that was ongoing at the time.

    The labor board said in its decision Wednesday that there are “no substantial issues warranting review” and that the board’s presumption that votes will be counted store-by-store is appropriate. The vote count for the Power and Baseline store has been scheduled for Friday afternoon, and the union is confident that it will be a “delayed victory” for the workers.

    Starbucks used the same argument in its attempt to delay a vote count for three stores in Buffalo that was scheduled for Wednesday. The ballots have been impounded and the count has been delayed while the NLRB rules on that challenge by the company.

    The union expressed frustration that the NLRB allowed the Buffalo vote to be postponed even though the labor board has continually ruled against the company’s voting argument.

    Ian Hayes, an attorney for Starbucks Workers United, said that the company deliberately filed its challenge at the end of the eligible period to do so in order to have the votes impounded. Indeed, the company had pushed its petition to delay the Buffalo vote count so far back last week that it ended up missing the deadline for the filing by eight minutes.

    “Starbucks will imply they had nothing to do with this further delay in the voting process by vaguely gesturing towards the legal process. That is a farce,” Hayes said in a statement. “This would not have happened without their strategic decision. This is exactly the result Starbucks wanted, and the NLRB handed it to them today.”

    While the union is confident that the Mesa, Arizona, vote will succeed, workers and organizers noted that delaying the vote count was a tactic by the company to kill momentum. As the union campaign has grown stronger, the company has gotten bolder and bolder in its union-busting tactics.

    Earlier this month, Starbucks fired seven union organizers in Memphis, Tennessee. Recently, it also fired a union organizer and member of the bargaining committee in Buffalo. While the union has said that the terminations in Memphis are illegal, however, labor laws only allow extremely light punishments for the company, meaning that the company could view it as worth the risk to break the law in order to union bust.

    Despite the company’s anti-union tactics, the union effort grows larger nearly every day. Over the weekend, Starbucks Workers United reached a milestone of over 100 stores filing for representation, as the two unionized stores in Buffalo are in the midst of contract negotiations.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.