September, 06 2018, 12:00am EDT
NARAL Adds $500k to Maine TV and Digital Ad Buy
Expanded buy comes after new Kavanaugh emails say Roe can be overruled
WASHINGTON
Today, NARAL Pro-Choice America announced it is putting an additional $500,000 behind a TV and digital ad running in Maine that features a two-time Susan Collins voter urging the senator to oppose Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court. This additional buy follows the explosive news about Brett Kavanaugh's email saying the Supreme Court can "always overrule its precedent" and questioning Roe as "settled law."
The buy brings the ad total to approximately $760k. It has been running in Maine on TV and online since Friday, August 31st, and will continue through the week of the entire Senate vote on Kavanaugh's confirmation.
The ad features Michelle Fish, a Topsham, Maine, resident sharing her story and warning Senator Collins that her key vote for Kavanaugh is a vote to to gut Roe, criminalize abortion and punish women. Thirty years ago, at the age of 18, Michelle was in a violent, abusive relationship when she found out she was pregnant. As she tells the story, Michelle made the decision to have an abortion rather than raise a child in a violent household.
Now a married mother of two daughters and an independent voter, Michelle says that she doesn't think she can vote for Collins again if Collins votes to confirm anti-choice Kavanaugh.
You can see the ad here.
"The release of the committee confidential documents proves what women have already known, Brett Kavanaugh does not think American women can determine what is best for our lives, our bodies and our health. Senator Collins has promised not just Mainers, but all American women, she will stand with us on this crucial question of our freedom and equality. Unless she stands with her constituents and votes no, Senator Collins will be turning back the clock for generations." said NARAL President Ilyse Hogue. "The question we have to ask ourselves is, what are we willing to do to win this fight? Michelle is willing to bravely tell her story. Senator Collins should listen."
For over 50 years, Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America) has fought to protect and advance reproductive freedom at the federal and state levels—including access to abortion care, birth control, pregnancy and post-partum care, and paid family leave—for everybody. Reproductive Freedom for All is powered by its more than 4 million members from every state and congressional district in the country, representing the 8 in 10 Americans who support legal abortion.
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Gaza Journalists Killed by Israel Honored on World Press Freedom Day
"To claim these deaths are accidental is not only incredulous, it is insulting to the memory of professionals who lived their lives in service of truth and accuracy," said one expert.
May 03, 2024
As the international community marked World Press Freedom Day on Friday, journalists and advocates across the globe mourned and celebrated those killed in Israel's ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip.
The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has publicly identified at least 97 media workers killed since Israel launched its retaliatory war on October 7: 92 Palestinian, three Lebanese, and two Israeli reporters.
"Since the Israel-Gaza war began, journalists have been paying the highest price—their lives—to defend our right to the truth. Each time a journalist dies or is injured, we lose a fragment of that truth," said CPJ program director Carlos Martínez de la Serna in a Friday statement. "Journalists are civilians who are protected by international humanitarian law in times of conflict. Those responsible for their deaths face dual trials: one under international law and another before history's unforgiving gaze."
Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF)—or Reporters Without Borders—puts the journalist death toll in Gaza above 100. Middle East Monitorreports at least 144 members of the press are among the 34,622 Palestinians that Israeli forces have killed in less than seven months in what the International Court of Justice has called a plausibly genocidal campaign.
RSF on Friday released its annual Press Freedom Index. In its section on the Middle East, the group states:
Palestine (157th), the most dangerous country for reporters, is paying a high price. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have so far killed more than 100 journalists in Gaza, including at least 22 in the course of their work. Since the start of the war, Israel (101st) has been trying to suppress the reporting coming out of the besieged enclave while disinformation infiltrates its own media ecosystem.
At the war's six-month mark in April, Jonathan Dagher, head of RSF's Middle East desk, declared that "this massacre must stop. Gaza's reporters must be protected, those who wish must be evacuated, and Gaza's gates must be opened to international media."
"The few reporters who have been able to leave bear witness to the same terrifying reality of journalists being attacked, injured, and killed," he continued, ripping the IDF for "silencing those who are driven by a duty to report the facts."
"RSF calls on the international community, its leaders, and its governments, to do everything to step up pressure on the Israeli authorities to end this disaster," Dagher added. "Palestinian journalism must be protected as a matter of urgency."
The Paris-based group nominated Palestinian journalists covering Gaza for an annual award from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)—an honor they received during a ceremony on Thursday.
"Each year, the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano Prize pays tribute to the courage of journalists facing difficult and dangerous circumstances," said Audrey Azoulay, the U.N. organization's director-general. "Once again this year, the prize reminds us of the importance of collective action to ensure that journalists around the world can continue to carry out their essential work to inform and investigate."
Palestinian journalists covering Israel’s war on Gaza have been awarded UNESCO’s World Press Freedom prize. More than 100 journalists, mostly Palestinians, have been killed in the war. pic.twitter.com/uSfIKsqTyQ
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) May 3, 2024
Nasser Abu Baker, president of the Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate and vice-president of the International Federation of Journalists, accepted the prize on behalf of his colleagues in the besieged enclave.
"Journalists in Gaza have endured a sustained attack by the Israeli army of unprecedented ferocity—but have continued to do their jobs, as witnesses to the carnage around them," he said. "It is justified that they should be honored on World Press Freedom Day. What we have seen in Gaza is surely the most sustained and deadly attack on press freedom in history. This award shows that the world has not forgotten and salutes their sacrifice for information."
Mariam Abu Dagga, a 31-year-old photojournalist for the Independent Arabic displaced in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, toldCNN: "We are covering the war on Gaza because this is our journalistic duty. It is entrusted upon us... We challenged the Israeli occupation. We challenged the difficult circumstances and the reality of this war, a genocidal war."
"Whenever a journalist is targeted, we ask ourselves who among us will get their turn of being targeted tomorrow," said Abu Dagga, who also noted the emotional toll of tasks such as photographing children beneath the rubble.
“Palestinian journalists have seen what no journalist has.”
For #WorldPressFreedomDay, we spoke to Palestinian journalist Hani Aburezeq, who's been showing the world Israel’s war on Gaza. pic.twitter.com/YikPzX12a7
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) May 3, 2024
While Israel has repeatedly claimed—as it did to CNN on Friday—that "the IDF has never, and will never, deliberately target journalists," members of the press and others have cast doubt on such comments.
“For far too long Israel has been able to operate with impunity in the occupied Palestinian territory, and this has included occasionally killing reporters, like the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, in 2022," Simon Adams, president of the Center for Victims of Torture, told the Inter Press Service.
Given the number of journalists killed in Gaza since October, he said, "to claim these deaths are accidental is not only incredulous, it is insulting to the memory of professionals who lived their lives in service of truth and accuracy."
Simon called for all journalist deaths in Gaza to be reported to the International Criminal Court and asserted that "World Press Freedom Day should be celebrated with a black armband this year."
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After Rebuking Netanyahu on Senate Floor, Schumer to Invite Israeli PM to Address Congress
Schumer called for new elections in Israel in March, saying Netanyahu and other extremists in the government were "major obstacles" to peace.
May 03, 2024
Weeks after supporters of Palestinian rights demanded that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer follow his sharp rebuke of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with "action" to change U.S. policy toward Israel, the New York Democrat's office confirmed Thursday that he is instead planning to invite the right-wing leader to speak before Congress.
"Unbelievable," said Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft executive vice president Trita Parsi, an outspoken critic of the Biden administration's support for Israel's mass killing of civilians in Gaza since October, in response to the news.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) first proposed inviting Netanyahu to give a congressional address in March, and told The Hill that he had sent a draft of the letter inviting the prime minister to Schumer to cosign. At the time, Schumer said he would "always welcome the opportunity for the prime minister of Israel to speak to Congress in a bipartisan way," but he has not signed on to the invitation yet.
"He intends to join the invitation, the timing is being worked out," a spokesperson for Schumer told The Hill on Thursday.
Schumer angered Netanyahu in March by saying on the Senate floor that he has "has lost his way" and is being pushed to "tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza" by far-right extremists in his Cabinet, putting Israel at risk of becoming a "pariah" state.
He said that along with Hamas, Netanyahu and his Cabinet are "major obstacles" to peace in the Middle East and called for new elections in Israel.
Palestinian rights supporters welcomed Schumer's rebuke but called on him to push President Joe Biden to cut off military funding for Israel, which has killed at least 34,622 Palestinians since October and has caused dozens of people to starve to death by blocking humanitarian aid.
Progressive advocate and former congressional candidate Lindsey Boylan said she was "deeply, irretrievably disappointed" in Schumer for planning to invite Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress.
"Netanyahu has stolen more from his own people than can ever be verbalized," said Boylan. "He is a criminal."
The news of the imminent bipartisan invitation comes as Israel is reportedly preparing to begin a full-scale ground assault on Rafah, where 1.2 million Palestinians have been displaced following the Israel Defense Forces' decimation of cities across Gaza, and as thousands of Americans have been arrested on college campuses in recent weeks for protesting U.S. support for the war.
Hundreds of people were arrested outside Schumer's home in Brooklyn last week for holding a Jewish-led Passover Seder protest in solidarity with Gaza.
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'Betrayal of Labor': Biden Nominates Ex-Trump Official to Amtrak Board
"This appointment reads less like an oversight and more like a slap in the face to those who championed worker safety and stronger regulations," said Railroad Workers United.
May 03, 2024
Rail workers voiced outrage Thursday after U.S. President Joe Biden quietly nominated a former Trump administration official with a history of supporting deregulation to Amtrak's board of directors, a move that one alliance of unions called a "slap in the face."
Ronald Batory, who has ties to the rail industry, served as head of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) under former President Donald Trump, who aggressively slashed transport and rail safety regulations during his four years in office—laying the groundwork for disasters such as the East Palestine, Ohio crash.
The Associated Pressnotes that before serving at the FRA, Batory was president and chief operating officer of Conrail, "a service provider for the CSX and Norfolk Southern freight railroads." Norfolk Southern operated the train that derailed in East Palestine last year, spilling toxic chemicals and sparking a public health crisis.
In 2019, Batory faced backlash from rail unions for withdrawing a proposed rule aimed at establishing mandatory crew sizes on freight and passenger trains.
"President Donald Trump, [Department of Transportation] Secretary Elaine Chao, and FRA Administrator Ron Batory have taken sides, and it's with the railroads that want to eliminate operating crew members to the detriment of rail safety and to the detriment of the communities through which our members operate trains," SMART Transportation Division said at the time.
"Clearly, the railroad CEOs have their folks in power with President Trump and his administration," the union added. "This action should put an end to any thoughts that this president and this administration is supportive of railroad workers."
Earlier this month, Biden's FRA finalized a rule requiring two-person crews on trains with limited exceptions. The reform received praise from railway workers and their allies.
But an organization representing rail workers across the U.S. said Biden's decision to nominate Batory to the board of Amtrak—the nation's passenger railroad company—calls into question the president's commitment to worker and rail safety.
"Batory, renowned for his role in loosening rail safety regulations during a tenure that critics link to subsequent rail disasters like East Palestine, is now poised to shape Amtrak's future," Railroad Workers United (RWU) wrote on social media late Thursday. "Remember the 2022 rail workers' debacle? When labor unions hoped for Biden's support, and instead got a presidential shove to accept a contract that many felt skirted around their key demands? It's almost poetic then, how Biden's nomination of Batory seems to echo that same disregard."
"The message to labor seems clear: Loyalty and votes might get you a seat at the table, but don't count on staying there if bigger political machinations are at play," RWU added. "With Batory's track record, this appointment reads less like an oversight and more like a slap in the face to those who championed worker safety and stronger regulations. It's as if the administration is keen on maintaining a tradition—disappointing the very base that arguably played a pivotal role in securing their position. Let's brace ourselves for more 'strategic' decisions that may just reroute us back to the past, disregarding those who handle the daily grind on our railroads."
Well, it seems @POTUS has truly outdone himself this time, nominating Ronald L. Batory—yes, the deregulation aficionado from the Trump era—to the @Amtrak Board of Directors. https://t.co/dVMWEApL5D
— Railroad Workers United ✊ (@railroadworkers) May 3, 2024
Biden also nominated Elaine Marie Clegg, the CEO of Valley Regional Transit, to an Amtrak board position.
Clegg and Batory must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Railway Age contributing editor Frank Wilner wrote Thursday that Batory could face a Democratic "hold" on his nomination in the Senate "given that many in rail labor are unhappy" with his withdrawal of the train crew rule during his tenure as FRA administrator.
Ross Grooters, a Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen member and co-chair of RWU, said Thursday that Biden's nomination of Batory "is a betrayal of labor, arguably bigger than the 2022 contract dispute."
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