Kansans voted by a decisive margin on Tuesday to reject a proposed amendment that would have removed the right to abortion from the state’s constitution and empowered the Republican legislature to advance a total ban. Continue reading
Reproductive freedom advocates across Kentucky and beyond vowed to keep fighting after a judge on Monday night allowed the GOP state attorney general to enforce a trigger law and six-week abortion ban. Continue reading
U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito took it upon himself to mock the leaders of U.S. allies in a keynote speech delivered on July 21 in Rome, Italy. Acting like a mobbed-up comedian performing a churlish stand-up routine on the Las Vegas Strip, Alito lambasted foreign leaders for publicly criticizing the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn abortion rights previously guaranteed by the 1973 Roe v. Wade case. Continue reading
The Atacama salt flat in northern Chile, which stretches 1,200 square miles, is the largest source of lithium in the world. We are standing on a bluff, looking over la gran fosa, the great pit that sits at the southern end of the flat, which is shielded from public view. It is where the major Chilean corporations have set up shop to extract lithium and export it—largely unprocessed—into the global market. “Do you know whose son-in-law is the lithium king of Chile?” asks Loreto, who took us to the salt flat to view these white sands from a vantage point. His response is not so shocking; it is Julio Ponce Lerou, who is the largest stakeholder in the lithium mining company Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile (SQM) and the former son-in-law of the late military dictator Augusto Pinochet (who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990). Continue reading
Democratic U.S. lawmakers and reproductive freedom advocates on Wednesday denounced Senate Republicans for blocking proposed legislation that would safeguard access to contraception as GOP-led states enact total abortion bans in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s reversal. Continue reading
The U.S. Senate on Wednesday passed sweeping bipartisan legislation that Sen. Bernie Sanders and progressive advocacy groups decried as a massive giveaway to corporations such as Intel, whose CEO has been lobbying aggressively in support of the bill’s subsidies for the profitable microchip industry. Continue reading
Reproductive healthcare advocates on Tuesday recoiled at a harrowing report describing how one Texas woman’s wanted pregnancy became a “dystopian nightmare” after she suffered potentially deadly complications but was still initially denied lifesaving care under the state’s extreme abortion ban. Continue reading
Government watchdogs on Friday warned that a plan by former President Donald Trump to drastically remake the federal workforce should he win the presidency in 2024 would “utterly destroy” public service in the United States. Continue reading
With many lawmakers expressing disbelief that a law codifying the right to use birth control is needed in the U.S. in 2022, House Democrats passed the Right to Contraception Act on Thursday—joined by just eight Republicans as the party denied access to contraception is under attack. Continue reading
Rep. Cori Bush and Sen. Tina Smith introduced bicameral legislation Monday aimed at bolstering access to medication abortion as Republican-led states across the U.S. attempt to restrict distribution of the pills in their drive to ban abortion entirely. Continue reading
As he begins to campaign for the White House, Gov. Gavin Newsom is toying with extending operations at two of the world’s most dangerous atomic reactors, sited at the aptly named Diablo Canyon, nine miles west of San Luis Obispo. Continue reading
While reproductive rights advocates and many Democrats on Friday welcomed the U.S. House of Representatives’ passage of a bill protecting the right to travel for abortion care, Congressman Bill Pascrell Jr. called out GOP lawmakers who opposed the legislation. Continue reading
WASHINGTON—Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind-Vt., and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., have finally had it with West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s “sabotage”—Sanders’ word—of the party’s progressive agenda on Capitol Hill. Continue reading
As yet another example of the American political system falling under the influence of foreign actors it appears that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has borrowed a page from his friend Vladimir Putin’s playbook. Western intelligence agencies have identified a network of “non-governmental organizations” (NGOs) tied to Erdogan’s government that are establishing pro-Turkish political parties fielding candidates for local and national legislative seats in Europe and the United States. In the case of the U.S., Erdogan’s scheme also involves the U.S. Senate candidacy in Pennsylvania of Dr. Mehmet Oz, a dual Turkish-U.S. citizen who actually lives in New Jersey. Continue reading
A new analysis released Wednesday argues the right-wing majority now controlling the U.S. Supreme Court has dragged the institution to its lowest point in history by overtly and repeatedly attacking the bedrock foundation upon which the nation was built: representative democracy itself. Continue reading
More than 77 million poultry birds have been killed in Europe, Asia, Africa and North America to contain the spread of bird flu, a pandemic that few are even aware of thanks to light news coverage. There are few photos of dumpsters and landfills brimming with dead birds nor is there mention of how the mass killing is often done. It is accomplished with “ventilation shutdown” (VSD) and “ventilation shutdown plus heat” (VSD+) in which steam heat and CO2 are added to the oxygen deprivation/suffocation to facilitate heatstroke. Continue reading
A federal judge on Monday barred enforcement of a so-called “personhood” law in Arizona that advocacy groups warned would be used to criminalize abortion across the state. Continue reading
NDN Collective, inspired by the Standing Rock Sioux movement, releases a report on Dakota Access Pipeline. Continue reading
Progressive policy analyst Matt Bruenig on Thursday pointed to a little-noticed detail in Sen. Marco Rubio’s so-called “pro-family framework,” which the Florida Republican released late last month to expand on the GOP’s vision for the country as millions of people are forced to continue unwanted pregnancies following the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Continue reading
Reproductive freedom advocates are condemning a 50-year prison sentence given to a woman in El Salvador this week, after she was convicted of homicide following what rights groups say was a stillbirth. Continue reading
With Republicans clamoring to impose a federal abortion ban if they gain control of Congress in November, Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington stressed Monday that more lawmakers committed to protecting reproductive freedom must be elected in the upcoming midterms to prevent such a deadly outcome. Continue reading
Palpite, Cuba, is just a few miles away from Playa Girón, along the Bay of Pigs, where the United States attempted to overthrow the Cuban Revolution in 1961. Down a modest street in a small building with a Cuban flag and a large picture of Fidel Castro near the front door, Dr. Dayamis Gómez La Rosa sees patients from 8 AM to 5 PM. In fact, that is an inaccurate sentence. Dr. Dayamis, like most primary care doctors in Cuba, lives above the clinic that she runs. “I became a doctor,” she told us as we sat in the clinic’s waiting room, “because I wanted to make the world a better place.” Her father was a bartender, and her mother was a housecleaner, but “thanks to the Revolution,” she says, she is a primary care doctor, and her brother is a dentist. Patients come when they need care, even in the middle of the night. Continue reading
Defenders of Social Security on Tuesday urged the U.S. Senate to block President Joe Biden’s little-noticed nomination of Andrew Biggs—an American Enterprise Institute senior fellow with a history of supporting Social Security privatization—to serve on the independent and bipartisan Social Security Advisory Board. Continue reading
Abortion rights activists, journalists, and legal observers in recent days have been attacked and detained by police at demonstrations against the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade. Continue reading
WASHINGTON—Pressure is growing for a criminal indictment of former Republican Oval Office occupant Donald Trump for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021 coup d’état attempt, invasion of and insurrection by Trumpites at the U.S. Capitol, among other offenses. Continue reading
This is, according to the Italian socialist Antonio Gramsci, the ‘interregnum,’ the rare and seismic moment in history when great transitions occur, when empires collapse and others rise, and when new conflicts and struggles ensue. Continue reading
A petition calling on the Democratic-controlled House to launch impeachment proceedings against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is on the verge of reaching one million signatures, an indication of growing public outrage over the right-wing judge’s proximity to efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his role in the ongoing attack on constitutional freedoms. Continue reading
Progressive powerhouse Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned Thursday that the United States is “witnessing a judicial coup in progress,” a reaction by the Democratic congresswoman to a raft of highly consequential Supreme Court rulings and the justices’ scheduled hearing of a critical voting rights case. Continue reading
Appalled by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v. Wade and concerned about the dark money-fueled global assault on abortion rights, advocacy groups from 28 European countries demanded Tuesday that their leaders take immediate steps to shield and strengthen access to reproductive care throughout the continent. Continue reading
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall has urged a federal court to stop preventing the state from enforcing its ban on gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth, citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v. Wade. Continue reading
Bill Boone eats very little meat and avoids expensive gourmet foods altogether. Continue reading
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said Sunday that right-wing U.S. Supreme Court justices who “misled” senators during their respective confirmation hearings about whether they supported overturning Roe v. Wade should be impeached for lying under oath. Continue reading
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