January, 08 2016, 08:00am EDT

For Immediate Release
Contact:
Ken Zinn, 240-235-2008 or Charles Idelson, 510-273-2246
Nurses to Join Protest Monday Outside the Supreme Court
Don’t Impede Our Ability to Advocate Collectively for Our Patients'
WASHINGTON
Nurses from Washington to California will gather on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court Monday morning to warn that a controversial case targeting worker and union rights poses a significant threat to public health, safety and quality of life, warned National Nurses United, the largest U.S. organization of nurses.
What: Nurses join in protest at Supreme Court
When: Monday, January 11, 9 a.m.
Where: U.S. Supreme Court, steps, 1st and Maryland Ave., Washington, DC
Friedrichs v. CTA involves a challenge supported by far right, anti-union groups to the right of public unions to require all employees who receive the benefits of representation, including higher wages, safer working conditions and better benefits, to pay their fair share of the cost of representation.
Long established law already permits employees who object to a union's political expenditures to withhold payment for certain union political activity. But the challenge by non-member teachers represented by the California Teachers Association goes far beyond the settled law of permitting union members to opt out of dues for politics, going directly to the heart of everything the union does in the realm of collective bargaining.
"For nurses, who depend on the protection of their union to be able to advocate, without fear of employer retaliation, for their patients at a time when massive healthcare corporations are placing profits over public and patient safety, the threat is particularly dire," NNU co-president Jean Ross, RN.
"As nurses our ability to have a collective voice for our patients is critical. Without the support of our union, nurses have little protection to speak out and challenge unsafe staffing or other eroding patient care conditions that happen all too often in our hospitals," said Martese Chism, RN who works in a major Chicago public hospital.
"Through our union, every day we advocate for patient safety, we advocate in the community for funding of our community hospitals," said Rebecca Well, a San Diego area public hospital RN. "The Justices have a decision to make here as to whether they are on the side of nurses and patients or the corporate interests that are funding Friedrichs."
The challenge to public unions parallels a growing corporate attack on private sector unions, represented by the push for anti-union laws in so-called "right to work" states. Statistics show a serious and dangerous erosion of public health standards in current "right to work" states, Chism noted.
"We know that in states that allow for the scheme Friedrichs is attempting to impose on all public sector nurses, that infant mortality rates are 17.7 percent higher and life expectancy is lower," said Martese Chism. "For nurses, these appalling numbers are unacceptable."
In 20 of 24 key measures affecting public health and safety, "right to work" states rank lower on average in poverty rates for children, infant morality, cardiovascular deaths, access to primary care physicians and mental health services, infectious disease control, occupational fatalities, and many other factors compiled by America's Health Rankings.
Those same "right to work" states have seen significant declines in stagnant wages for most workers, declining relative living standards, and a massive gap in health and income inequality, notes NNU.
Workers in right-to-work states earn on average 12 percent less than workers in non-right-to-work states. Median household income is also 12 percent less.
Weaker unions - the goal of anti-union groups from the Koch Brothers to corporate-linked management law firms and consultants - also reduces the ability of workers through collective action to protect the public and their own health and safety. For example, the rate of workplace deaths is 54 percent higher in right-to-work states, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data surveyed by the AFL-CIO.
"We've found right-to-work means lower pay, higher child poverty rates, and much greater income disparity," said Well. "That's the same reason why groups like supporters of Friedrichs v. CTA have targeted states like California that have avoided such anti-worker laws."
"The clear goal behind Friedrichs has nothing to do with individual rights, and everything to do with the larger far right and corporate goals of defunding and crippling all unions and their ability to represent their members and the public interest," said Ross.
If the Supreme Court overturns the decision of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, public sector unions could be barred from requiring any fair share payments from any represented employees even while still being mandated, at considerable cost, to represent all employees in bargaining for wages, health benefits, staffing levels and other conditions of employment - in effect subsidizing free riders, says NNU.
"The architects of this move are the management-linked groups, funded by some of the wealthiest corporate interests in the U.S. whose goal is to eliminate the ability of all workers to have a voice in the workplace or limit the ability of corporations to put profits ahead of worker rights, workplace rights, and in the case of nurses, patient health and safety," Ross 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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Anti-Poverty Campaigners Cheer Spain-Brazil-South Africa Plan to Tax the Grotesquely Rich
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A new plan backed by the governments of Spain, Brazil, and South Africa to tax the fortunes of the uber-rich drew hearty cheers from anti-poverty campaigners, environmental activists, and unions when it was announced on Tuesday.
As described in an announcement by the Spanish government, the initiative aims to create coordination between governments on the taxation of high-net-worth individuals to ensure they are not shuffling money abroad to avoid proper taxation.
"The proposal aims to incentivize and guide different countries to join the initiative and address policy, administrative, and data deficiencies, ensuring that high-net-worth individuals are taxed more efficiently in line with their wealth," the Spanish government explained. "To achieve this, it is necessary to foster international cooperation in multilateral forums to promote and facilitate the implementation of evidence-based reforms and ongoing experiences regarding the taxation of large fortunes in different countries."
The plan—crafted by the governments of Spain and Brazil and presented at the United Nations' Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development being held in the Spanish city of Seville—was quickly praised by an assortment of international nonprofit organizations as an essential tool for tackling global wealth inequality.
Kate Blagojevic, associate director for Europe campaigns for environmental the advocacy group 350.org, described it as "a bold move by Spain and Brazil" that she said could provide funding for clean energy investments around the world, including in countries that lack the resources to make such investments.
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Susana Ruiz, the tax justice policy lead at the anti-poverty organization Oxfam, emphasized that international coordination on taxation of high-worth individuals was a serious proposal to address a crisis in global democracy, which she said was being undermined by the corrupting influence of vast sums of money being held by a tiny number of people.
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Fred Njehu, the global political lead for Greenpeace’s Fair Share campaign, deemed the tax plan essential at a time when nations are behind their renewable energy goals and when wealthy elites such as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos can go all-out for a lavish three-day wedding in Venice.
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And Leo Hyde, the campaigns and media coordinator at the Public Services International union, praised the plan and said that was the result of years' worth of advocacy by unions and other organizations.
"The initiative aims to ensure a progressive and efficient global tax system with the aim of reducing social inequality," he said. "This builds directly on years of union-led tax justice campaigning that has already yielded significant victories, including the OECD global minimum corporate tax, Australia's public country-by-country reporting initiatives, and the ongoing UN tax treaty negotiations."
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As the Trump administration has begun the push to strip citizenship from foreign-born Americans, legal scholars and advocates are calling it a dangerous step toward using citizenship as a political weapon.
On June 11, the U.S. Department of Justice issued an internal memo written by Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate calling on DOJ attorneys to pursue "civil denaturalization" of foreign-born U.S. citizens.
"The Civil Division shall prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings in all cases permitted by law and supported by the evidence," the memo said, adding that it should be among the division's top five priorities.
It suggested a wide variety of citizens who could be targeted for denaturalization. This includes perpetrators of violent offenses like "torture, war crimes, or other human rights violations." But it also targets much broader groups of people such as those "who pose a potential danger to national security" or those who "acquired naturalization through government corruption, fraud, or material misrepresentations."
It also calls for "any other cases referred to the Civil Division that the division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue."
Naureen Shah, director of government affairs for the ACLU's Equality Division, told Common Dreams that "it's another devastating attack by the Trump administration on people who they want to cast as not belonging here."
The memo's vague language has Shah and other legal scholars warning that denaturalization could become a tool to deport political opponents, an effort that would be harder for courts to stop following Friday's ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, which hamstrung the ability of lower courts to stop illegal actions by the Trump administration using injunctions.
Joyce Vance, a former United States Attorney, who is now a law professor and a legal analyst for MSNBC and NBC, warned Tuesday about the possible implications on her blog Civil Discourse:
"It could be exercising First Amendment rights or encouraging diversity in hiring, now recast as fraud against the United States. Troublesome journalists who are naturalized citizens? Students? University professors? Infectious disease doctors who try to reveal the truth about epidemics? Lawyers?" Vance wrote. "All are now vulnerable to the vagaries of an administration that has shown a preference for deporting people without due process and dealing with questions that come up after the fact and with a dismissive tone."
"Anyone could be prioritized," Shah said. "It's really chilling."
Cassandra Robertson, a law professor at Case Western University, told NPR that it was "especially concerning" that the administration would plan to pursue denaturalization through civil court.
"Civil denaturalization cases provide no right to an attorney, meaning defendants without resources often face the government without representation," she wrote in a 2019 study on the history of denaturalization along with her colleague Irina Manta. "There are no jury trials, with judges making citizenship determinations alone. The burden of proof is 'clear and convincing evidence' rather than the criminal standard of 'beyond a reasonable doubt.' Additionally, there is no statute of limitations, allowing the government to build cases on decades-old evidence that may be incomplete or unreliable."
Robertson said Trump's approach mirrors that undertaken during the McCarthy era, when those deemed "un-American" were stripped of citizenship due to their political views.
"At the height of denaturalization, there were about 22,000 cases a year of denaturalization filed, and this was on a smaller population. It was huge," she said.
The Supreme Court stepped in to reel back denaturalization in 1967, determining that, in Robertson's words, it was "inconsistent with the American form of democracy, because it creates two levels of citizenship." After that, the number of denaturalization cases plummeted to the single digits each year. The Trump administration seems to be hoping to reverse that trend.
Republican politicians have not been shy about calling for their political opponents to be stripped of citizenship. Last week, following Zohran Mamdani's shocking victory in New York City's Democratic mayoral primary, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) called for the Ugandan-born state assemblyman to be stripped of his U.S. citizenship and "deported," referring to him as an "antisemitic, socialist, communist."
Ogles accused Mamdani of failing to disclose his political "affiliations or sympathies" during the process that led him to become a citizen in 2018. He singled out Mamdani's support for the Holy Land Foundation, whose leaders were convicted in a widely criticized "terrorism financing" case in 2008. Notably, the leaders of the group were never accused of directly funding terrorist groups or terrorist acts.
On Monday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about Ogles' call to deport Mamdani, and she did not shoot down the idea.
"I have not seen those claims, but surely if they are true, it's something that should be investigated," Leavitt said.
It was not the first time Republicans have called to deport leaders in the other party explicitly for their political views.
In June, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier called for the Trump administration to "deport and denaturalize" Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who came to the U.S. as a refugee from Somalia, after she criticized President Donald Trump's deployment of the military to quash protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Los Angeles.
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"The way the memo is written, there is no guarantee DOJ will pursue cases against violent criminals," Vance said. "They could just do easy cases to ratchet up numbers, like we're seeing with deportation. Or they could target people who, they view as troublemakers."
There are more than 25 million people in the United States who are naturalized citizens.
"They should not have to live in fear that they'll lose their rights," Shah said.
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With a 99-1 vote early Tuesday, the Republican-controlled Senate decided to remove a controversial provision that would have prevented state-level regulation on artificial intelligence for 10 years from U.S. President Donald Trump's massive tax and spending bill that is currently being debated in Congress.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) was the lone lawmaker who voted to keep the moratorium in the bill.
While far from the only controversial part of the reconciliation package, the provision drew opposition from an ideologically diverse group that included Democratic and Republican state attorneys general; over 140 groups working to support children's online safety, consumer protections, and responsible innovation; and faith leaders.
Senators struck Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-Texas) AI measure from the megabill by adopting an amendment introduced by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.). They voted on Blackburn's amendment during a session known as a vote-a-rama. Blackburn introduced the amendment after considering an agreement that would have watered down the provision.
According to The Verge, the measure that was rejected on Tuesday required states to avoid regulation AI and "automated decision systems" if they wanted to get funding for their broadband programs.
The provision would have been a major win for Big Tech, which has made the case that state laws around AI are obstructing their ability to do business.
Advocates and Democratic lawmakers cheered the decision to strip the provision.
"From the start, this provision had Big Tech's money and lobbyists all over it. This is a major victory for the American people over the AI industry. It shows that Americans are aware of the proliferation of AI harms in real time," said J.B. Branch, Big Tech accountability advocate at the watchdog group Public Citizen.
Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) said Tuesday that "early this morning, the Senate overwhelmingly voted to reject a dangerous provision to block states from regulating artificial intelligence, including protecting kids online. This 99-1 vote sent a clear message that Congress will not sell out our kids and local communities in order to pad the pockets of Big Tech billionaires."
In addition to concerns focused on Big Tech, experts recently told The Guardian that in the absence of state-level AI regulation, untrammeled growth of AI would take a toll on the world's "dangerously overheating climate."
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