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For Immediate Release
December, 02 2016, 01:45pm EDT
Contact:
press@nationalnursesunited.org
Nurses Donate $50,000 to Aid Veterans Stand with Standing Rock
As Third Delegation of RN Volunteers Heads to North DakotaRNs Call to President Obama, Attorney Gen Lynch to Intervene
National Nurses United today announced that it is donating $50,000 to support U.S. service veterans who are assembling this weekend as peaceful, unarmed defenders for the water protectors at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota who are enduring military style police assaults for opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) project.
U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, herself a decorated veteran, will be joining with the Veterans Stand for Standing Rock mobilization to support the protectors and help raise public attention to the growing human rights emergency that has emerged at the protest site in the face of increased attacks.
The NNU donation will assist a delegation of Navajo veterans from Arizona and New Mexico who will join the veterans gathering this weekend. Through NNU's Registered Nurse Response Network, RN volunteers have worked with Navajo First Nation members before, providing first aid in September at the Navajo Nation Fair in Window Rock, AZ.
Veterans Stand for Standing Rock plan a deployment December 4 to 7 of 2,000 veterans of the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard who intend to "defend the water protectors from assault and intimidation of the militarized police force and DAPL security."
Concurrently, NNU is dispatching its third delegation of RN volunteers Saturday to stand in solidarity with the water protectors and their supporters.
"We salute the brave veterans who are standing up for the rights of the water protectors, and all of us who support this critical defense of the First Amendment right to assemble and protest without facing brutal and unwarranted attacks," said NNU Co-President Jean Ross, RN.
In a letter last week to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, NNU urged the Department of Justice "to promptly end the militarized response to Standing Rock water protesters and immediately stop the law enforcement use of military grade weapons and equipment that comes from the federal government."
Nurses also support the call by tribal leaders on President Obama to deny the easement for the pipeline and "to protect the water for Standing Rock citizens and the 17 million people downstream" as well as the call on North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple to "stop the constitutional and human rights violations that are happening at Standing Rock."
A combination of police agencies in apparent collaboration with DAPL private security contractors have reportedly used rubber/plastic bullets, tear gas grenades, pepper spray, sound cannons, and water cannons in sub-freezing temperature against those who oppose construction of a pipeline that the Standing Rock Sioux and allies say threatens water resources and ancestral sacred sites.
One protester, 21-year-old Sophia Wilansky, has faced the loss of an arm after being hit with a police concussion grenade, according to the Standing Rock Medic and Healer Council.
NNU volunteers will also be on hand this coming weekend. One RN headed to the site this weekend, Amy Bowen, said she is "committed to exhausting every effort to help save our environment and take a stand for our most basic human necessity: clean, oil-free water.
"I, along with other nurse volunteers with RNRN, will stand in solidarity to support the water protectors," Bowen said.
National Nurses United, with close to 185,000 members in every state, is the largest union and professional association of registered nurses in US history.
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Trump Deportation Push Continues With TSA-ICE Partnership and Move to Strip Legal Status
"We will continue to fight alongside all immigrants and their families who are unjustly targeted by this callous administration," vowed the legal director at Justice Action Center.
Dec 13, 2025
As a "chilling" report in the New York Times revealed that the Transportation Security Administration is providing the names of all airline passengers to immigration officials, President Donald Trump's administration on Friday also openly continued its war on immigrants by announcing an end to allowing relatives of citizens or lawful permanent residents to enter the United States while awaiting green cards.
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement that it is terminating all categorical family reunification parole programs for immigrants from Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, and Honduras, and "returning parole to a case-by-case basis." An official notice has been prepared for publication in the Federal Register on Monday, and the policy is set to take effect on January 14.
Responding in a statement late Friday, Anwen Hughes, senior director of legal strategy for the refugee programs at Human Rights First, said that "this outrageous decision to pull the rug out from under the thousands of people who came to the US lawfully to reunite with their families is shocking."
"Yet again, this administration is taking extraordinary measures to delegalize as many people as possible, even when they have done everything the US government has asked of them," she continued. "The government did this in March when they announced their intent to take away lawful status from hundreds of thousands of humanitarian parole beneficiaries; they are doing it now with more than 10,000 people who came lawfully to reunite with their families; they are taking their attacks on birthright citizenship to the Supreme Court; and they are escalating their threats to delegalize untold numbers of others without notice."
"This outrageous decision to pull the rug out from under the thousands of people who came to the US lawfully to reunite with their families is shocking."
Lawyers behind a class action lawsuit against DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and other key administration leaders over the March policy—Svitlana Doe v. Noem—plan to also challenge the new move.
"Those who entered under the family reunification program should contact their immigration attorney immediately to better understand their options, as those options may change on December 15," warned Esther Sung, legal director at Justice Action Center, which represented plaintiffs in the earlier case.
"The legal team in Svitlana Doe v. Noem will also alert the court as soon as possible to ensure that our clients and class members are not unlawfully harmed by this move," Sung said. "Today's news is devastating for families across the country, but we will continue to fight alongside all immigrants and their families who are unjustly targeted by this callous administration."
Ending family reunification parole won't make us safer, it will only tear families apart. Our immigration policies should be fair and humane. This is just cruel.www.uscis.gov/newsroom/ale...
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— Rep. Linda Sánchez (@replindasanchez.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 2:36 PM
Meanwhile, as the Times reported Friday, in March, TSA began sending the names of all air travelers to another DHS agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which "can then match the list against its own database of people subject to deportation and send agents to the airport to detain those people."
"It's unclear how many arrests have been made as a result of the collaboration," the newspaper detailed. "But documents obtained by the New York Times show that it led to the arrest of Any Lucía López Belloza, the college student picked up at Boston Logan Airport on November 20 and deported to Honduras two days later. A former ICE official said 75% of instances in that official's region where names were flagged by the program yielded arrests."
In López Belloza's case, she tried to board her plane, but her ticket didn't work. The 19-year-old—who said she didn't know about a previous deportation order—was sent to customer service, where she was met by agents with Customs and Border Protection (CBP), another DHS agency playing a key role in Trump's sweeping and violent crackdown on immigrants.
Like the new attack on family reunification, the Times reporting sparked a wave of condemnation. David Kaye, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, said on social media, "Make sure people you know who need this information have this information."
Jonathan Cohn, political director for the group Progressive Mass, declared that "the Trump administration wants to make flying unsafe: unsafe because of surveillance, unsafe because of understaffed air traffic controllers, and unsafe because of gutted consumer protections."
Eva Galperin, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's director of cybersecurity, pointed to the constitutional protection from unreasonable searches and seizures, saying, "I'm not a lawyer, but I feel like the Fourth Amendment has something to say about this."
Immigration Agents Are Using Air Passenger Data for Deportation EffortThe Transportation Security Administration is providing passenger lists to ICE to identify and detain travelers subject to deportation orders.www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/u... obvi lawlessly…Prosecute all of them…
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— Sarah Szalavitz💡 (@dearsarah.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 4:14 PM
Amid protests over Trump's broader deportation push and the president's plunging approval rating on immigration, unnamed DHS sources confirmed Friday that CBP teams "under Commander Gregory Bovino will change tactics," according to NewsNation. "Instead of sweeping raids like those that have taken place at locations including Home Depot, agents will now be narrowing their focus to specific targets, such as illegal immigrants convicted of heinous crimes."
NewNation's reporting came just days after DHS published a database on ICE arrestees that led Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, to conclude that the department "is implicitly admitting that less than 5% of the people it arrests are people they believe are 'the worst of the worst.'"
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Does Swarm of Lobbyists at Governors Summit Help Explain Democrats' Silence on Trump AI Order?
"Regulating AI is winning issue for Democrats, but their own party leaders are too complicit with Silicon Valley to use it," said one observer.
Dec 12, 2025
Polls show that a majority of US voters—and especially Democrats—want more robust guardrails on artificial intelligence, but Democratic governors' silence on President Donald Trump's directive banning states from regulating AI has some observers asking if lobbying by the powerful industry is to blame.
Sludge's David Moore and Donald Shaw reported Friday that tech titans including OpenAI and Meta last week sent a small army of lobbyists to meet with attendees of the Democratic Governors Association’s annual meeting, held this year at the swanky Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix.
According to the report, lobbyists and governors—some of whom "are teasing White House bids in 2028 or rumored to be in the mix"—gathered for a closed-door meeting. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore were among those who reportedly met with the lobbyists.
Trump signed an executive order trying to prevent states from regulating AI and following through on the safety laws they enacted, but there was little public pushback from Democratic governors.AI lobbyists descended on the DGA winter meeting last weekend in Phoenix, per a list we obtained:
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— David Moore (@davidrussellmoore.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 11:15 AM
The meeting preceded Trump's Thursday signing of an executive order aimed at limiting states' ability to regulate rapidly evolving AI technology. The order directs the US Department of Justice to establish an AI Litigation Task Force empowered to sue states that enact “onerous and excessive" AI regulation. The edict also threatens to withhold federal funding from states that implement AI regulations that the Trump administration finds objectionable.
Democratic governors have been relatively muted on the order, especially given the overwhelming support for regulation of AI—which many experts say poses threats to humanity that may equal or outweigh its benefits—across the political spectrum.
As Moore and Shaw wrote:
While Democratic governors were silent, their Republican counterparts have been loudly arguing for months against the federal government preempting state AI policies. In June, 17 Republican governors sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune [R-SD] and House Speaker Mike Johnson [R-La.] warning them against preempting their states’ protections on AI use. Over the past couple months, a trio of Republican governors—Spencer Cox (Utah), Ron DeSantis (Fla.), and Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Ark.)—continued to make known their opposition to the Trump administration’s executive order.
Newsom, who many observers believe is eyeing a 2028 White House run, especially disappointed proponents of AI safeguards last year when he vetoed what would have been the nation's strongest AI safety regulations.
It's not just Democratic governors—congressional Democrats have increasingly partnered with an industry expected to soon be worth trillions of dollars. Some Democrats, like Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, are personally invested in AI stocks. The AI industry also made record contributions to political campaigns during the 2024 cycle.
Other Democrats, including some who may have their sights set on higher office—notably Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York—advocate stronger guardrails on AI development.
The public is worried about AI. Regulating AI is winning issue for Democrats but their own party leaders are too complicit with Silicon Valley to use it. www.thenation.com/article/poli...
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— Jeet Heer (@jeetheer.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 7:24 AM
"Voters want the party to get tough on the industry. But Democratic leaders are following the money instead," Jeet Heer, national affairs correspondent for The Nation, wrote Friday.
Citing voters' desire for stronger regulation, Heer argued that "Democrats have a tremendous opportunity to use the AI backlash for wedge politics," adding that "it's a way to win back working-class voters who are already disillusioned with the GOP and Trump."
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'People Are Going to Die' If Republicans Let ACA Subsidies End, Warns AOC
The progressive congresswoman also warned that "an extension with abortion restrictions kills women."
Dec 12, 2025
The US House of Representatives is set to vote on extending Affordable Care Act subsidies next week, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned Friday that if Republicans let the ACA tax credits expire at the end of the year, "people are going to die."
The New York Democrat spoke to reporters in Washington, DC a day after only four Republicans voted with Democratic senators in an unsuccessful effort to pass legislation extending ACA subsidies, as over 20 million Americans face a surge in health insurance premiums. A GOP bill to replace the subsidies with annual payments to tax-advantaged health savings accounts also failed.
"We have to remember who's in charge of the House, the Senate, and the White House. Republicans have a House majority, they have a Senate majority, and Donald Trump is president of the United States, and JD Vance is vice president of the United States," Ocasio-Cortez said in remarks shared by her and multiple news sources on social media.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) "refused to engage" in a debate on the looming healthcare crisis and "kept Republicans home for over a month so that they would not negotiate," she said. Trump and Vance "did the same thing—they stuck their heads in the sand for the entirety of a... government shutdown where we were urging them to come to a solution on extensions of ACA premium subsidies," she continued, calling for a "clean" extension while the GOP sorts out its supposed healthcare plan.
Rep. @AOC on healthcare subsidy proposals: "An extension with abortion restrictions kills women." pic.twitter.com/HOCqHMGemp
— Forbes Breaking News (@ForbesTVNews) December 12, 2025
"People are gonna be kicked off of their insurance. Open enrollment is happening right now, and there are going to be millions of Americans that are affected—that aren't gonna be able to go to a doctor, aren't gonna be able to afford their prescription drugs, because of some petty fight in Washington," the congresswoman said, noting Democratic efforts to force votes on an extension.
As NBC News reported Thursday, early enrollment data from several states shows that "more people appear to be walking away from Affordable Care Act coverage or switching to cheaper plans for 2026 compared to this time last year," which "could reflect signs of financial strain for people who can't afford to pay hundreds of dollars more in monthly premiums once enhanced federal subsidies expire at the end of the year."
Demanding that her colleagues in DC recognize the urgency of the issue, Ocasio-Cortez—who supports Medicare for All—said Friday that "I don't understand why they can't just extend these subsidies so that we can save people's lives while they figure out whatever their political food fight is."
AOC also pushed back against GOP efforts to restrict reproductive healthcare in an ACA subsidy bill, saying "an extension with abortion restrictions kills women—so no, I'm going to allow this Republican majority to kill women in this country so that they can try to do whatever their victory lap is. I will not accept women, and the lives of women, as some political cost for them being able to extend these things. Reproductive care is healthcare. Period."
Since the right-wing US Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade and GOP-led states further restricted reproductive rights, multiple stories have emerged from places including Georgia and Texas exemplifying how "Republican abortion bans kill women."
After Johnson met with the House GOP's "Five Families" on Friday, he is expected to allow a floor vote to extend the subsidies next week and, according to Punchbowl News, is considering giving moderates an option without abortion funding restrictions.
As Politico reported Friday evening:
[GOP] leaders ultimately expect the extension vote to fail, resulting in skyrocketing premiums for millions of Americans when the subsidies expire at the end of the year.
Instead, according to House Republican leadership aides, Republicans are preparing to roll out a healthcare framework that would allow businesses that fund their own health plans to purchase "stop-loss" policies—which would protect businesses from going bankrupt from just a few unexpectedly expensive insurance claims.
It also would appropriate funds to pay for "cost-sharing reductions" in Obamacare and include some elements of a separate legislative proposal designed to crack down on pharmacy benefit managers—companies that negotiate drug prices on behalf of insurers and large employers.
Like Ocasio-Cortez—who has faced mounting calls to launch a 2028 primary challenge to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) over his handling of the March funding fight and recent shutdown—the upper chamber's top Democrat put the blame squarely on Republicans after both bills failed to advance on Thursday.
"Republicans must answer for why people will lose coverage. Republicans must answer why families see premiums double and triple over the next year," Schumer said. "Democrats' focus does not change. We fought like hell to stop these hikes, and we're going to continue to fight like hell to bring costs down for the American people on healthcare, on housing, on electric rates, on groceries."
"But Republicans are fighting like hell to send those costs right through the roof," he added. "They're fighting like hell to kick people off insurance. They're fighting like hell to cut taxes and give sweet giveaways to billionaires and the ultrarich. January 1st is coming. Republicans are responsible for what happens next. This is their crisis now, and they're going to have to answer for it."
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