The megadrought which has gripped western U.S. states including California and Arizona over the past two decades has been made substantially worse by the human-caused climate crisis, new research shows, resulting in the region’s driest period in about 1,200 years. Continue reading
While much of the world struggles to find a way out of the Ukraine crisis, influential fascist groups inside and outside the government there are vowing to stop any peace deal with Russia that they don’t like. Even more worrisome is that the Ukrainian government, led by President Volodymyr Zelensky is trying to use its ties to the far right as leverage against peace efforts underway by urging the fascists and nationalist groups to arm themselves more heavily. Continue reading
Opponents of bigotry and censorship are raising their voices in protest after Florida’s GOP-controlled Senate Education Committee on Tuesday advanced legislation that would effectively prohibit teachers from discussing sexual orientation and gender identity in primary grades or at any level “in a manner that is not age-appropriate.” Continue reading
Did the U.S. Postal Service purposely calculate the weight of its new delivery vehicles at 8,501 pounds so as to skirt anti-pollution regulations by a single pound? Continue reading
Under the pervasive stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, waxing and waning ad infinitum, with no end in sight, finding time to be creative for creativity’s sake can provide a booster to mental health, according to a study conducted in March 2021. Members of the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) community already coping with the degrading effects of systemic racism on their mental health are in even greater need of time devoted to arts and crafts. However, renting a studio space, affording equipment and supplies, or having any free time at all for creative pursuits may only seem like a pipe dream to poor Black creatives living paycheck to paycheck—ubiquitously oppressed by institutional racism. Continue reading
Workers at a Memphis Starbucks who were fired Tuesday after launching a unionization effort vowed to carry on their fight, with one employee invoking the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.—who was assassinated in the Tennessee city while campaigning for workers’ rights. Continue reading
The fight for justice and accountability continues for six Amazon employees who were killed when a warehouse roof collapsed during a tornado in December. Continue reading
Over the weekend, on Saturday, Americans heard on corporate news media reports that anonymous U.S. government officials confirmed the Russians are “70 percent ready” for an immediate invasion of Ukraine. Only a day later, they heard that the invasion, which had been described as almost a certainty, would come instead in late February when the ground in Ukraine is frozen enough so that Russian tanks won’t sink in the mud. Continue reading
After Democrats in both chambers of Congress added their voices to the growing chorus of opposition to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service’s plan to require the use of a private company’s facial recognition software to access various information online, Sen. Ron Wyden revealed Monday that the IRS intends to change course. Continue reading
Exiled U.S. whistleblower and former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden on Tuesday called out years of impunity for the NSA violating Americans’ civil liberties and privacy rights. Continue reading
It became increasingly clear on Monday and on Tuesday morning that the aim of well-organized war hawks in NATO and the U.S., including Republican and some Democratic lawmakers in Washington, is to weaken Russia economically rather than prevent any invasion of Ukraine. Continue reading
A new analysis released Tuesday ahead of a congressional hearing on pandemic-era price gouging shows that U.S. corporations in the food and energy sectors—from Tyson to Exxon Mobil—are pushing higher costs onto consumers while raking in ever-increasing revenues and handing executives massive pay packages. Continue reading
Despite warnings that a dangerous war with Russia could soon be unleashed if diplomatic efforts fail, House Democrats are reportedly looking to bypass typical procedures and fast-track a vote on legislation that would send $500 million in military aid to Ukraine—a move that critics say only adds fuel to the fire. Continue reading
You would think as COVID-19 has now killed 5.54 million, there would be greater vigilance about other brewing zoonotic epidemics. Yet even as 41 countries now have outbreaks of avian influenza, called HPAI or H5N1, including the US, there is little to no reporting on the threat in the US press. The attitude still seems to be “wait and see” as it was with COVID-19 though cases surfaced six months before any action was taken; have we learned nothing? Continue reading
It is ironic that even former right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had rejected a Knesset (Israeli Parliament) bill which proposed to give the government greater power to control and suppress online content. This was in 2016, and the bill was introduced by Netanyahu’s Likud party rival, Gideon Sa’ar. Continue reading
U.S Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued an outraged dissent Thursday as the high court permitted a right-wing three-judge panel to delay proceedings regarding Texas’ extreme abortion ban—a tactic the conservative court has openly admitted may allow the law to stay in place indefinitely. Continue reading
Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch’s refusal to wear a mask at in-person proceedings—forcing his colleague and liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor to take part remotely due to health concerns—sparked backlash Tuesday, especially given the court’s current attack on women’s reproductive health. Continue reading
Facing a wave of grassroots pressure, one of the largest television providers in the U.S. reportedly plans to drop the far-right, rabidly pro-Trump One America News Network, an outlet that has come under fire for disseminating falsehoods about the 2020 election results, the coronavirus pandemic, and other major issues. Continue reading
On what would have been Martin Luther King Jr.’s 93rd birthday, voting rights advocates and progressive lawmakers rallied in Arizona on Saturday to target the first-term Democratic senator blocking legislation aimed at strengthening ballot access amid growing GOP-led suppression efforts. Continue reading
WASHINGTON—Recalling the 1930s, when the “Nine Old Men” scrapped key New Deal legislation, the GOP-named U.S. Supreme Court majority may again show its implementation of the right-wing pro-corporate agenda, this time by nullifying OSHA’s anti-coronavirus Emergency Temporary Standard. Continue reading
As conservative U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin on Thursday joined his right-wing Democratic colleague Kyrsten Sinema in announcing his opposition to abolishing the Senate filibuster, progressive observers excoriated the pair—who recently supported a filibuster carve-out to raise the debt ceiling—for obstructing their party’s landmark voting rights legislation. Continue reading
WASHINGTON—One year after the deadly Trump coup attempt, President Joe Biden stood at the U.S. Capitol last Thursday morning and indicted the former White House occupant and his supporters in the Republican Party as part of an ongoing conspiracy against democracy. Continue reading
A bizarre event took place in northern India between December 17 and December 19, 2021. It was a “religious parliament” (Dharma Sansad) with the theme, “The Future of the Sanatan Dharma in Islamic India: Problem and Solutions.” The event took place in Haridwar, a city in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. The speakers—each of them dressed in saffron robes, which are usually worn by Hindu monks—took to the stage during the Dharma Sansad and spoke in a startlingly dangerous and provocative fashion. Sadhvi Annapurna, the general secretary of the Hindu Mahasabha, a right-wing Hindu nationalist outfit in India, was the most forthright in spelling out the agenda of hatred against the Muslim community that marked the tone for this event. “Nothing is possible without weapons,” she said. “If you want to eliminate their [the Muslim] population, then we are ready to kill them.” Continue reading
As the head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced Monday that he was ordering a review of a planned 15% hike in the Medicare Part B premium for 2022, healthcare reform advocates stressed the need for Congress to pass a Build Back Better bill with a provision allowing the federal government to negotiate the price of prescription drugs. Continue reading
As 36 million families across the U.S. appeared unlikely to receive any further child tax credit payments after the New Year following Sen. Joe Manchin’s refusal to support the Build Back Better Act, progressives on Monday were outraged over reports that the threat to the payments stems from the right-wing senator’s belief that parents might use the money for drugs or other uses he deems unnecessary. Continue reading
WASHINGTON—Documents and e-mails which Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, provided to the House panel probing the January 6th insurrection and invasion of the U.S. Capitol—an invasion to produce a pro-Trump coup—show Trump’s involvement in planning the strategy to try to overturn his 2020 defeat and keep himself in the Oval Office, if not planning the insurrection itself. Continue reading
The iconic American coffee chain, Starbucks, employs hundreds of thousands of people in nearly 9,000 cafés nationwide. And yet, the news that a handful of Starbucks employees at one café in Buffalo, New York, recently voted to join Workers United—an affiliate of SEIU—made headlines nationally. The New York Times called it a “big symbolic win for labor,” while the Washington Post hailed it as a “watershed union vote.” Social media feeds were replete with joyous posts celebrating the vote. The café, located on Elmwood Avenue, was the only one out of three union-voting Starbucks locations in Buffalo that successfully chose to unionize. Continue reading
Progressives are spelling out for the Democratic Party the disastrous implications that are likely to come with the government’s possible failure to extend the enhanced child tax credit right as the White House plans to require tens of millions of people to restart their federal student loan payments—warning that the 2022 midterms could be “brutal” if the party imposes new financial burdens on working families. Continue reading
After waiting nearly five years for the Environmental Protection Agency to respond to a petition calling for the closing of a regulatory loophole which has proven deadly for honey bee colonies—spelling disaster for farmers’ crops, food security, and biodiversity—two advocacy groups are suing the agency and demanding officials take immediate action to end the use of harmful pesticides known as neonics. Continue reading
The U.S. military is famous for being the single largest consumer of petroleum products in the world and the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Its carbon emissions exceed those released by “more than 100 countries combined.” Continue reading
Multiple employees of the Mayfield, Kentucky, candle factory that was leveled by a devastating tornado late Friday said that supervisors threatened firings if workers left their shifts early amid warnings of the impending storm, according to new reporting by NBC News. Continue reading
The paradox of combating climate change is that the extent of the emergency extends far beyond the actions taken by individuals to mitigate the climate crisis, yet collective action is what is most required to address this issue. There are so many examples of this dilemma—from recycling to how power is being generated, to what people should consume. In each case, broad-based action is required to shift the dial, and while it might seem insurmountable, every little bit counts. A great example of this sentiment in action can be found in the growing field of eco-friendly web design. Continue reading
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