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Trump supporters rally in California after he was arraigned on fraud charges
Further

A Guy Named Me: The More You See It, The More Incredible It Is

So the sick kingpin of "Red America's fever dreams" is still here - jabbering, menacing, whining, unraveling, what Biden calls "weak and desperate" and hazardous to our health. Lately, he's been busy going to court, misspelling "Biden," likening himself to Jesus, paying Nazi tribute to "the J6 hostages," shrieking "WITCH HUNT!", claiming migrants aren't people, and, in his newest ungodly grift - "Happy Holy Week!" - hawking God-Bless-the-USA Bibles to "make America pray again." By all means pray. But advice from the wreckage: "Don't look away."

As if the staggering transgressions now coming due - rape, lies, defamation, theft, decades of fraud, a deadly insurrection to overthrow the democracy he was ostensibly leading - aren't enough to showcase his overweening shamelessness, even at feckin' golf, new revelations still churn up from the ugly past. The first public testimony about the tattered final days of his so-called presidency reveal a White House that had "let down all guardrails," grasping at frenzied, bonkers conspiracy theories - “smart thermostats" manipulated voting machines! - as he struggled to cling to power. And his campaign's baffling decision to go with the apocalyptic strategy of asking, "ARE YOU BETTER OFF THAN YOU WERE FOUR YEARS AGO?" - thus recalling a once-in-a-century pandemic that cost a million American lives, many unnecessarily - has given Biden the chance to attack his "predecessor's" grievous crimes against science, reason and competence. "Remember when he said, 'inject bleach’?” Biden said at a recent fundraiser. "Think I’m making this up?”

The tottering party he's wrangled into submission, meanwhile, has "stepped on rake after rake" in the effort by James Comer and House Republicans to impeach Biden, or find any trace of his supposed corruption. After many thousands of pages of (fruitless) records and testimony, the hearings have become so renowned for their "cosmic ineptitude" the White House responded to the latest with a succinct "LOL," face-palm emoji and, "Call it a day, pal"; one Democrat suggested it dug up more evidence to impeach Trump a third time than anything on Biden. Some sordid witnesses spoke from prison; the most astounding testimony came from former Giuliani crony Lev Parnas, of Zelensky-phone-call-fame, who asserted, "I have never wavered from saying there was no evidence of the Bidens’ corruption in Ukraine - because there truly was none." He added everyone who said there was knew there wasn't, and that the bogus info was "spread by the Kremlin." In nearly a year of traveling the globe in search of evidence, "I found precisely zero proof of the Bidens’ criminality."

A do-nothing, right-tilting GOP has floundered in most other endeavors. Running short on funds being rapidly shoveled into her father-in-law's legal messes, the party led by personal trainer and Nepotism Chair Lara Trump just ditched its already paltry efforts to recruit minority, largely Latino voters, evidently sticking with the persuasive tagline," Make the RNC White and Rich Again." Its new entrants are high-end, Jewish Space-Laser freaks like Hitler-quoting, Christian nationalist Mark Robinson, North Carolina's GOP nominee for governor, and to run that state's schools, or nascent "socialism centers," QAnon's anti-Satan Michele Morrow, who once urged "Death to all traitors" with an image of Obama in the electric chair. And as their 91-felony-laden leader implausibly preps to return to power, his former cranks, crooks and "best people" - Stone, Miller, Manafort, Lewandowski - are scurrying out from their caves and cells to join him. Two hold-outs: Pence and Dick Cheney, who says "there has never been (a) greater threat to our republic," except maybe him.

Lately he's mostly in court or playing golf or seething online, but he has held two recent "rallies," in Ohio then Georgia. They were not pretty. As he sputtered and gabbled and lied through increasingly brutish, unintelligible speeches - "We have becrumb a nation," "our president Barack Hussein Obama," "Joe Biden's dissss...ervice speech" - the awful spectacle makes it "almost impossible to believe he exists," writes Anthony Citrano. "It's as if we took everything that was bad about America, scraped it up off the floor, wrapped it up in an old hot dog skin, and taught it to make noises with its face." Nancy Pelosi is more succinct: "You wouldn’t allow him in your house, much less the White House." It's not even word salad; it's word mush. He can't pronounce "bite" or "largest." He says, "They released Hillary Clinton who used bleach bit and Bill took it out in his socks." If he's not elected "it's gonna be a bloodbath." Migrants are "animals...saying 'I'm going to use your kitchen'...They're not people." On his call with Zelensky, Dems "were taped and they got caught." Nope. A complete fabrication.

Because "the next bottomless pit is always just around the corner," he's now also channeling Goebbels et al, opening rallies by honoring "the horribly and unfairly treated Jan. 6 hostages" with a booming rendition of "Justice For All," a mutilated national anthem that celebrates the thugs who committed violence in his name. In this, writes Will Bunch, Trump alarmingly replicates "The Horst Wessel Song," the tribute to a young brownshirt and martyr killed in 1923's Munich beer hall putsch that became a Nazi Party anthem saluting those who "offer (themselves) up as a sacrifice" for the greater fascist good. Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, which glorifies Hitler's massive Nuremberg rally, opens with the Wessel song as a swastika-adorned plane swoops in carrying the beloved Führer. The propaganda value of that not-so-long-ago song and rally, enshrining and ritualizing victimhood, makes a through, scary line to the Jan. 6 Chorus and Trump's grotesque embrace of it. The message of both: Violent insurrection is patriotism, so stand by.

In Georgia, more of the same: J6 Chous, frenzied lies, much slurring, goat milk ads, America a drug-infested, crime-ridden abyss where "they're weaponizing law enforcement (against) Joe Biden's top and only political appointment (sic) - a guy named me." The wind blew down the teleprompters, so it was mostly gibberish: "Our great member of center of stage, and then I got angry because I said, no, I want to be in the center, those guys don't come close, so we had to have a different number, it didn't have to be 10, it had to be 9 or 11, it had to be something...Pundits say the attacks on me will be violent, they say, uhhh, they say...Biden said it, he said, you know what their whole plan is? It was just released the other day, their whole plan is to go after Trump in every way possible...And another 6 million dollars that they got for hostages from us...and 10 billion dollars for electricity to Iraq...and all comploymants (sic) of... an incompetent...Cognitively impaired? Heh, you'll know when I'm cognitively impaired....You'll be the first ones to know....."

The New Yorker's Susan Glasser wrote a piece titled, "I Listened to Trump's Rambling, Unhinged, Vituperative Georgia Rally, and So Should You." She argues too many of us ignore the "insane oration" and "flamboyant new set of untruths" from a candidate "whose greatest political success has been to acclimate a large swath of the population to his ever more dangerous alternate reality." Contrasting Biden's SOTU critiques of Trump's "offenses to American democracy," she noted Trump's nearly 5 dozen Biden references were epithets - stupid, weak, stutter - of "a puerile bully" with too many grievances and enemies to count attacking a guy alternately portrayed as "a drooling incompetent (and) a corrupt criminal mastermind" whose hellish reign has given us "rampaging migrants" and an economy “collapsing into a cesspool of ruin." Our "simple, apocalyptic choice": Doomsday with Biden, or "liberation from these tyrants and villains" with him. Bonkers bullshit, all. See it for yourself, however queasily, she advises: "Watch his speeches. Share it widely. Don’t look away."

This week, he was in court, still ranting and whining - "I HAVE DONE NOTHING WRONG! HOAX! WITCH HUNT!" - even as he got an undeserved break when his $464 million bond for fraud got trimmed to $175 million. He babbled briefly to the press: "You can't have an election in the middle of a political season...We just had Super Tuesday, and we had a Tuesday after Tuesday already... We''ll bring crime back to law and order." Online comment: "The cheese is sliding off his cracker at an ever-increasing rate." It was so bad Biden responded to the wheezy gobbledegook:"Trump is weak and desperate, both as a man and a candidate." Facing off against the shell of an already crazed and loathsome con man, Biden has reportedly long been "preparing for every insane scenario that anyone could think of" in the upcoming election - crafting a legal and political "superstructure," partnering with a vast network of attorneys to conduct "doomsday-style" war games," drafting emergency pleadings and legal motions for swing states and otherwise exploring "a range of authoritarian possibilities."

For now, Trump keeps grifting. In "some truly bizarre stock market shenanigans," he managed to merge his "dorky little fake Twitter clone" Truth Social with a "gloriously sketchy" Digital World Acquisition Corp and list a new-born DJT stock on Nasdaq - telling a "mind-bogglingly nonsensical" story about why it's not on the New York Stock Exchange - for over $6 billion, though Truth Social had "microscopic" revenue of $3.5 million while losing $49 million to do it. The Wall Street Journal reported the price has soared not thanks to institutions trading it - they're not - but to MAGA cultists who argue "This is a Truth Movement" and "are absolutely hellbent on handing Donald Trump all their money." Just as logically do they liken to Jesus a thrice-married, multi-philandering crook, rapist and slum landlord in court for decades of fraud, per the fan who wrote, "It's ironic that Christ walked through His greatest persecution the very week they are trying to steal your property from you...We love you." Maybe that's what sent him scurrying, also this very week, to hawk an obscene God Bless the USA Bible to "make America pray again."

Which he does, of course, so often and so devoutly. Who can forget the time in June 2020, after the police murder of George Floyd, when Trump boldly marched out of the White House, across a LaFayette Square beset by more godly police beating the crap out of peaceful protesters for racial justice, and posed for the cameras outside historic St John’s Church, lifting into the righteous air a sacred Bible, upside down. A reporter asked, "Is that your Bible?” He responded, "It's a Bible." Lordy and hallelujah. Never mind that, in Trump's teeny hands, the Bible is a PR tool to help him lie and cheat. That hateful, racist cult members with no use for Jesus' woke "welcoming the stranger" rubbish welcome, instead, his mocking of poor, brown, homeless or stuttering people. That self-described evangelicals rarely go to church but go on TV, like MAGA preacher Lance Wallnau, to compare "leftists" to the Nazis on trial at Nuremberg: "I don't think it's people anymore - you're dealing with demons. So just remember this, Christian: You're gonna listen to demons talking through people."

Happily, it's just plain, God-fearing, migrant-hating, money-grubbing people like Trump and his "very good friend" Lee Greenwood who have now recycled a 9/11 commemorative Bible from 2021 into a cheesy, profane, nationalist screed, dubbed the God Bless the USA Bible, for a quick 60 bucks a shot. "Happy Holy Week!" Trump wrote Tuesday while urging people to buy his latest hustle "for your heart, for your soul." Citing yet another "very sad thing going on in our country," he claimed "Christians are under siege (but) we're gonna get it turned around" by peddling these crappy Bibles with a wildly inappropriate American flag on its cover and, inside, the equally jingoist "Founding Father (sic) documents" - the U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Pledge of Allegiance and chorus to Greenwood's tinny, mawkish "patriotic anthem," God Bless The USA. "Easy-to-read, large print and (suspiciously) slim design, this Bible invites you to explore God’s Word anywhere, any time (in) an easy reading experience," says the website. "The perfect gift! Order now!"

For any skeptics - cynics, really - among you, the website also clarifies that money from purchases of God's and Lee Greenwood's word will not go to Trump's presidential campaign, or presumably his current, 91-count, very expensive legal issues, though it "uses Donald J. Trump's name, likeness and image under paid license from CIC Ventures LLC," which was established by a former Trump aide and a Trump-linked lawyer in Palm Beach, and its address is Trump International Golf Club, and it also made Trump digital training cards and those preposterous fake gold sneakers, but otherwise, nope, no money will go to Trump. The website's FAQs also generously addresses another sticky issue: "What if my Bible has sticky pages?" "No worries," it says. "This is very common with new Bibles that have gold gilding around the edges of the paper. For your convenience, we have provided links to a Youtube video that does a wonderful job of explaining how to break your new Bible in." And don't forget: It's "the perfect gift for family members, friends, special occassions (sic) and much more!"

Sadly, the new Bible has been criticized in some misanthropic liberal circles as "utterly craven and debased." This response is confounding, given what is clearly Trump's long, deep, devout engagement with and knowledge of scriptural teachings as seen in multiple videos and speeches. To wit: "There are so many things, so many things you can learn from the Bible," he has said. "Actually, it's an incredible book. There are so many things you can learn from it." While he says "the Bible is the most special thing," he remains understandably reluctant to name favorite verses: "I wouldn't want to get into it, because that's very personal, the Bible means a lot to me." However, he will name a favorite author - Tom Wolfe - though there's some confusion whether he has or hasn't read Bonfire of the Vanities. Still, he definitely knows "an eye for an eye," and having to choose between the Old or New Testament he'd pick, "Probably...equal." "I just think the whole Bible is an incredible..." he says. "The Bible, the more you see it, the more incredible it is." Can we get an Amen?

"But the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the Lord, like the splendor of the meadows, shall vanish. Into smoke they shall vanish away." - Psalm 37:20, New King James Version

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Fracking in Wyoming
Climate

Federal Court Rules Major Wyoming Oil and Gas Lease Sale Illegal for Ignoring Climate Impacts

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management will have to reevaluate the wildlife and public health impacts of a major 2022 oil and gas lease sale in Wyoming after a federal judge ruled Friday that the agency had overlooked "what is widely regarded as the most pressing environmental threat facing the world today" when it moved forward with leasing 120,000 of federal land.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled in Washington, D.C. that the BLM did not halt the lease sale even after it acknowledged that oil and gas drilling on the federal lands could result in the same negative environmental and social impacts as the addition of hundreds of thousands of cars to U.S. roads each year.

Moving forward with one of the Biden administration's largest lease sales despite its likely environmental harm, said Cooper, was illegal under the National Environmental Policy Act and other laws.

Representing The Wilderness Society and Friends of the Earth (FOE), environmental legal group Earthjustice sued BLM over its leasing plans' potential impact on the greater sage grouse, an endangered bird species, and other wildlife, as well as groundwater impacts.

The judge found BLM did not complete a sufficiently detailed review of drilling impacts on the greater sage grouse, and relied too heavily on outdated and overly broad analyses of oil and gas drilling in Wyoming.

While the agency has been attempting to "stop the bleeding" of the greater sage grouse, whose population has declined nearly 40% since 2002, the BLM still refused to postpone leasing in a critical habitat for the bird.

The Biden administration also did not adequately explain its analysis of potential groundwater harms, said the ruling.

Despite some conservation strides by the Biden administration, The Wilderness Society's Ben Tettlebaum said the court's decision "affirms that much work remains" to be done. The BLM, he added, "must fully account for the serious impacts of its oil and gas program on groundwater, wildlife, and the climate."

Tettlebaum said the ruling also proves the agency is required to "factor into its leasing decisions the enormous costs that greenhouse gas emissions stemming from its oil and gas program impose on public land resources and on the communities that depend on them for clean air and water."

Hallie Templeton, legal director for FOE, added that the federal government "simply cannot ignore climate, wildlife, and water impacts when analyzing the myriad risks of oil and gas leasing, whether in Wyoming or across the country," as the ruling makes clear.

"We are beyond pleased with this outcome," said Templeton.

The ruling "should be another wake up call for the Bureau of Land Management to at long last address the damage caused from federal oil and gas development," said Alexandra Schluntz, senior associate attorney for Earthjustice. "It is time to make fossil fuel leasing on our public lands a thing of the past."

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren
News

To Unrig Economy, Dems Propose Raising Taxes on Wealth Over $50 Million

Weeks after U.S. President Joe Biden won applause from progressives for using his State of the Union address to go on the offense against the Republican Party's tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, Democrats in Congress introduced legislation aimed at raising revenue by ensuring multimillionaires and billionaires pay their fair share.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was originally joined by Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) in 2021 to introduce the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act, and the three lawmakers on Monday announced measures to strengthen the proposal.

The new legislation includes stronger anti-tax evasion rules regarding trusts, where "ultrawealthy" families frequently stash money to avoid paying taxes—costing the federal government $5 billion to $7 billion per year.

"As President Biden says: No one thinks it's fair that Jeff Bezos gets enough tax loopholes that he pays at a lower rate than a public school teacher," said Warren. "All my bill is asking is that when you make it big, bigger than $50 million dollars, then on that next dollar, you pitch in two cents, so everyone else can have a chance."

The lawmakers said the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act would bring in at least $3 trillion over 10 years by requiring a 2 cent tax for every dollar of wealth over $50 million—affecting just the top 0.05% of households in the United States.

The bill includes a 3% tax on the wealthiest households overall, with a 1% annual surtax on the net worth of households and trusts over $1 billion.

Susan Harley, managing director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch division, said the three Democrats have zeroed in on "the only way to truly tackle the injustice of income inequality in this country... to address wealth hoarding."

"The Ultra-Millionaire Tax is a critically needed policy that would ensure that the super-rich who have benefited from a rigged system will begin to pay their fair share in taxes," said Harley.

Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, economists at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that the richest 0.1% of Americans saw their share of the country's wealth triple from 7% to 20% from the late 1970s and 2019, while the bottom 90% saw their share "plummet from about 35% to 25%."

"For too long, the ultrawealthy in America have been able to dodge taxes on a large scale," said Saez and Zucman in response to the updated proposal. "As a result they often pay much less, relative to their ability to pay, than the rest of the population. The ultra-millionaire tax would address this fundamental unfairness, and raise critical revenues for much needed investments that would make the country—and us all—richer."

Boyle noted that he witnessed firsthand the loss of economic power among working Americans as the rich got richer in recent decades.

"As the son of a union household, I witnessed every day how incredibly hard my parents worked to build a middle-class life for our family. It is simply wrong that millions of hardworking families pay a higher tax rate than billionaires," said Boyle. "This legislation will fight back against Republicans' decadeslong scheme to rig our tax code against middle-class families and in favor of multimillionaires and billionaires."

The lawmakers introduced the proposal as economic justice advocates have recently cataloged price gouging and "shrinkflation" that's aimed at boosting shareholders' and CEOs' pay while working people struggle to afford necessities like diapers and groceries.

"The system is not working when the richest 1% of Americans own more than 30% of our nation's wealth but pay just 3.2% of their wealth in taxes while others pay twice as much," said Jayapal. "Our country's tax system needs urgent reform, and the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act is a major step toward making sure the wealthy finally pay their fair share. With this legislation, we can narrow the racial wealth gap and invest trillions of dollars in schools, clean energy, housing, healthcare, and more to improve lives in communities across America."

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Congressman Don Beyer
News

House Democrat Calls GOP Budget a 'Blueprint for a Dystopian Hellscape'

As Republicans on Wednesday set their sights on a key seat opening up in the U.S. House of Representatives, the chamber's senior Democrat on the congressional Joint Economic Committee put out a blistering takedown of a top GOP budget proposal for the next fiscal year.

Congressman Don Beyer (D-Va.) took aim at the 180-page "Fiscal Sanity to Save America" plan released last week by the Republican Study Committee (RSC)—which includes about 80% of GOP House members—following proposals from Democratic President Joe Biden and House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas).

"The Republican Study Committee budget is a blueprint for a dystopian hellscape," he warned. "The vision offered by this group, which counts 4 in 5 House Republicans as members, would see unbridled benefits flowing to a wealthy and well-connected few while tens of millions of Americans lose healthcare, housing, retirement security, and food security."

RSC proposals to "dramatically weaken healthcare," Beyer noted, include turning Medicare into a voucher plan and rolling back Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provisions that cut costs for seniors; repealing tax subsidies for the Affordable Care Act and the law's protections for people with preexisting conditions; and transforming Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program into block grants to states.

As Common Dreams has reported, in addition to seeking cuts to Medicare and Social Security—while claiming to do nothing of the sort—the RSC has also launched a full-fledged assault on reproductive healthcare and rights, promoting 42 bills that would ban abortions after 15 weeks or even earlier, require unnecessary ultrasounds and 24-hour waiting periods, prohibit the use of fetal stem cells for research, and threaten access to in vitro fertilization, among other restrictions.

In addition to attacking reproductive freedom and key programs for seniors and low-income families, Beyer highlighted, the RSC wants to "weaken public health, public safety, and environmental protections," while "cutting taxes for the wealthy, by a lot."

The RSC advocates ending green tax credits from the IRA and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act as well as slashing money for Community Oriented Policing Services and the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. The committee also calls for permanently lowering taxes for the ultrarich, indexing capital gains taxes to inflation, repealing the estate tax, rolling back the IRA's corporate alternative minimum tax, and eliminating funding intended to help the Internal Revenue Service catch wealthy tax cheats.

"Democrats believe there is a better way to get our fiscal house in order without betraying our values," said Beyer. "That starts with making smart investments in our people and our future while demanding that the rich and large corporations pay their fair share in taxes. The contrast between the Democratic approach and this Republican budget could not possibly be clearer."

Biden's budget blueprint—released as he prepares for an electoral rematch against former Republican President Donald Trump, who infamously cut taxes for rich people and corporations—proposes a 25% minimum tax for individuals with wealth of more than $100 million, along with ending capital income tax breaks and closing other loopholes.

Polling results released Tuesday by Morning Consult show that a majority of voters across party lines in key swing states support raising taxes on people who make more than $400,000 per year.

Biden and the divided Congress this past weekend narrowly avoided a government shutdown by passing a long-delayed spending package. Fiscal year 2025 is set to begin in October, setting up another election-year fight over funding.

In what's been dubbed the "Great Resignation," a growing number of House Republicans have announced that they are not seeking reelection or even exited their seats early—shrinking the party's already slim majority in the lower chamber.

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An employee uses a robotic arm to help lift internal parts
News

Alabama Mercedes-Benz Workers Accuse Company of Union-Busting in NLRB Complaint

A month after the United Auto Workers announced that a majority of workers at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, Alabama had signed union cards, employees struck a defiant tone Tuesday as they filed official complaints of union-busting by the company with the National Labor Relations Board.

Workers detailed the illegal disciplinary measures management has taken against them for taking leave and objecting to anti-union materials that have been shown in captive-audience meetings since most of the plant's 6,000 workers indicated they want to join the UAW.

"Since we started organizing, I put in my [Family and Medical Leave Act] leave with management multiple times and every time they said they lost the paperwork," Lakeisha Carter, who works in the company's battery plant, told the UAW. "It's just plain retaliation from Mercedes, but I'm not going to be intimidated."

The U.S. Department of Labor last month recovered $438,625 in back pay, unpaid bonuses, and damages for two people who had formerly worked at the plant in Vance, finding that management had illegally fired the workers when they requested FMLA-protected leave to care for a family member and recover from a serious health condition.

After winning new contracts for workers at the Big 3 automakers last fall following an historic "stand-up strike," the UAW has launched campaigns at non-unionized plants owned by Mercedes, Volkswagen, Hyundai, and Toyota, convincing more than 10,000 autoworkers so far to sign union cards.

Another battery plant worker, Taylor Snipes, told the UAW that managers at the company were forcing him and his coworkers "to attend meetings and watch anti-union videos that are full of lies."

After he objected, Snipes was called into a meeting and "immediately fired for having his phone on the factory floor," even though he had been given permission to have his phone with him so he could be in touch with his child's daycare center.

"I told management that it was suspicious that I was being called into the office on the same day that I spoke up in anti-union meeting," said Snipes. "My manager said the two had nothing to do with one another, but then proceeded to aggressively interrogate me about why I support having a union."

UAW President Shawn Fain met with Mercedes workers in Alabama on Sunday.

"Unlike previous drives, the workers are in command," said Luis Feliz Leon of Labor Notes. "They are the collective force that will either press on to a union victory or a defeat."

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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken (L) and U.S. President Joe Biden
News

Another State Department Official Resigns Over Biden Gaza Policy

Saying her job at a State Department office that advocates for human rights in the Middle East has become "impossible" as the Biden administration continues to back Israel's assault on civilians in Gaza, foreign affairs officer Annelle Sheline resigned from her position on Wednesday in protest of President Joe Biden's policy in the region.

Sheline noted in an interview with The Washington Post that quitting her job in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor was not something she took lightly, with "a daughter and a mortgage"—but said her day-to-day work on human rights had become ineffectual "as long as the U.S. continues to send a steady stream of weapons to Israel."

Despite the fact that U.S. law prohibits the government from arming countries that violate human rights—as Israel has long been accused by the United Nations of doing in its policy toward the occupied Palestinian territories—the Biden administration has approved the transfer of bombs and other weapons to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) since the military began its relentless bombardment of Gaza and blockade on nearly all humanitarian aid.

Sheline told the Post that as the news out of Gaza has grown more dire since October—with at least 32,490 Palestinians killed, at least 74,889 wounded, and parts of northern Gaza now facing famine conditions due to Israel's blocking of aid—some of her bureau's partners in the Middle East have stopped engaging with the State Department.

"If they are willing to engage, they mostly want to talk about Gaza rather than the fact that they are also dealing with extreme repression or threats of imprisonment," Sheline told the Post of the activists and civil society groups her office routinely worked with to further human rights in the region before Israel's assault began. "The first point they bring up is: How is this happening?"

"I wasn't able to really do my job anymore," Sheline added. "Trying to advocate for human rights just became impossible."

Sheline is just the latest official to resign in protest of Biden's approach to Israel and Gaza.

In October Josh Paul resigned from his position as director of congressional and public affairs for the State Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, where he oversaw weapons transfers to U.S. allies.

Paul told the Post that Sheline's decision "speaks volumes about the Biden administration's disregard for the laws, policies and basic humanity of American foreign policy that the bureau exists to advance."

A policy adviser in the Education Department, Tariq Habash, also stepped down from his role in January, saying he could no longer be "quietly complicit" in the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.

The State Department's internal dissent channel has also been used by numerous officials to voice outrage over the Biden administration's continued defense of Israel's actions.

Stephen Walt, professor of international affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, called Sheline's resignation "courageous."

Feds United for Peace, a group of government workers across nearly two dozen federal agencies which organized a daylong fast in January to protest the U.S.-backed slaughter of Palestinians, expressed solidarity with Sheline.

"That decision comes at a personal and real cost to her, and is a loss of a patriotic and deeply qualified employee for the Department of State," said the group in a statement. "Every arms shipment to Israel by the Biden administration and every one of the three vetoes of U.N. cease-fire resolutions has enabled Israeli impunity in its rampage across Gaza... Thousands of innocent lives are in President Biden's hands; the time has come to translate gentle requests for the protection of civilians into concrete action to stop the killing."

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