February, 07 2020, 11:00pm EDT
350 Action Responds to Presidential Debate in New Hampshire
At last night's Presidential Debate, the first since the chaos of the Iowa Caucuses, the seven Democratic candidates sparred on issues of health care, race, trade, and very briefly on climate. During Friday's debate, climate made a limited appearance in discussions on military spending and trade.
Manchester, N.H.
At last night's Presidential Debate, the first since the chaos of the Iowa Caucuses, the seven Democratic candidates sparred on issues of health care, race, trade, and very briefly on climate. During Friday's debate, climate made a limited appearance in discussions on military spending and trade. Steyer abruptly pivoted a conversation around the assassination of Iranian Major General Suleimani into climate policy, saying climate change, "cannot be solved with guns and tanks and planes." Sanders took the issue further criticizing excessive military spending as money that could be used to fight climate change.
The limited questioning on climate change from the moderators was directed to Sanders about Trump's trade deal with Mexico and Canada. The question was insufficient to reach any conclusion about the implications of the deal or an in-depth relationship to the candidates' climate action plans.
Outside of the debate venue in Manchester, 350 New Hampshire anticipated the gap and projected the people's climate demands onto the debate buildings as a part of a rally.
350.org's North America Director Tamara Toles O'Laughlin made the following statement:
"Polls during the Iowa caucus showed clearly that climate was a primary concern for voters after health care, two issues deeply intertwined and demonstrating the very need to center people and planet. At this crucial juncture of the primaries, the establishment showed its lack of connection to the generation it depends on as the climate crisis got so little attention on the debate stage. We are not impressed by the moderators missed opportunity to explicitly connect issues of race, endless war and the future of our democracy to the one thing that will set the stage for everything else--climate.
"While we were glad to see candidates like Sanders and Steyer smartly connecting climate to issues like military spending, the debate overall was disjointed. We demand that the remaining Democratic nominees and the news media stop siloing the climate crisis and give it the intersectional platform it deserves. We will continue to demand that the moderators of the Presidential debates ask tough questions on climate that dig into solutions and bold ambition. We the American people deserve nothing less in the climate decade."
350 Action is the independent political action arm of the non-profit, non-partisan climate justice group 350.org.
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"Democrats are delivering for working people!" declared Rep. Pramila Jayapal as the AFL-CIO noted that GOP ex-President Donald Trump "gutted the rules that required overtime pay for millions of workers."
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Roughly 4.3 million U.S. workers will now be eligible for overtime pay under a new rule finalized Tuesday by President Joe Biden's Labor Department—in stark contrast to his Republican predecessor's rules that severely limited the number of workers who were eligible for required compensation when they worked more than 40 hours per week.
Under the new rule, employers will be required to pay overtime premiums to salaried workers who work more than standard full-time hours if they earn less than $1,128 per week, or about $58,600 per year.
Former President Donald Trump, now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, may now have to defend his 2020 rule that set the overtime pay threshold at just $35,500 per year, leaving out millions of workers.
U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) noted that the updated rule was "a major piece" of the Executive Action Agenda released by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which she chairs.
"This is a HUGE pro-worker initiative by President Biden," said Jayapal. "Democrats are delivering for working people!"
Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su, who Biden has nominated to fill the role permanently, said it is "unacceptable" that lower-paid workers "are spending more time away from their families for no additional pay," while hourly workers are eligible for overtime pay.
"This rule will restore the promise to workers that if you work more than 40 hours in a week, you should be paid more for that time," said Su. "The Biden-Harris administration is following through on our promise to raise the bar for workers who help lay the foundation for our economic prosperity."
The Labor Department posted a chart on social media showing how under Trump's policy, only workers who earn less than $688 per week are eligible for required overtime pay. The full rule is set to go into effect in January 2025.
The chart offers a "good split screen with the GOP," saidSlate reporter Mark Joseph Stern.
"It isn't just that Trump's Department of Labor fought overtime pay—it's also that Trump appointed anti-labor judges who are about to block Biden's new rule," he said.
The former Republican president's appointed judges could also block a new Federal Trade Commission rule introduced on Tuesday, which blocks companies from including noncompete clauses in workers' contracts.
"Both reforms happened because of Biden and in spite of Republicans," said HuffPost labor reporter Dave Jamieson.
Along with the overtime rule, the Labor Department announced a new policy aimed at safeguarding people's retirement savings from their financial advisers' conflicts of interest.
The finalized retirement security rule requires "trusted investment advice providers to give prudent, loyal, honest advice free from overcharges," said the department. "These fiduciaries must adhere to high standards of care and loyalty when they recommend investments and avoid recommendations that favor the investment advice providers' interests—financial or otherwise—at the retirement savers' expense."
"Under the final rule and amended exemptions, financial institutions overseeing investment advice providers must have policies and procedures to manage conflicts of interest and ensure providers follow these guidelines," the agency said.
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More than four dozen labor unions across numerous industries on Tuesday signed a letter expressing solidarity with students who have been suspended and arrested in recent days for protesting at Columbia University, including members of the on-campus labor group Student Workers of Columbia.
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Campus groups at the University of Minnesota and the University of Pittsburgh both announced early Tuesday that they were setting up their own encampments in solidarity with Columbia students and victims of the Israel Defense Forces' relentless attacks on Gaza, which the International Court of Justice said in January was "plausibly" a genocide.
After police arrested students at the University of Minnesota Tuesday afternoon and broke up the encampment, thousands of members of the school community rallied to demand that the university divest from all arms manufacturers.
Encampments were also erected Monday at University of California, Berkeley and University of Michigan.
Jessica Christian, a photojournalist for the San Francisco Chronicle, reported that students were stopping to "ask what supplies the campers need as they walk by to class" at Berkeley, where roughly 50 tents were set up on Tuesday.
On Monday night, dozens of students at Yale University and New York University were arrested for protesting, setting up encampments, and "disorderly conduct."
The arrests at Columbia last week have not stopped students and educators from speaking out against the administration. A new encampment was set up last Friday and hundreds of faculty members staged a walkout Monday in support of the students.
In their letter, the unions on Tuesday warned that "the repression and criminalization of activists, students, professors, and academic workers across the country are violations of our elementary rights to free speech and protest."
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(Photo: Ben Powless/Survival Media Agency)
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The protesters also highlighted that more than 180,000 Ekō members have signed a petition urging action on plastic pollution. The petition specifically calls for banning all plastic waste exports from the European Union and fully implementing the Basel Convention within the bloc, while the summit has a global focus and the plan is to have a treaty by the end of this year.
After countries agreed to draft a treaty two years ago, the latest talks in Kenya last year were flooded by fossil fuel and chemical lobbyists and ended with little progress, increasing attention on the Canadian meeting that began Tuesday and is scheduled to run through Monday.
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Sam Cossar-Gilbert of Friends of the Earth International emphasized the need to resist corporate pressure in a statement Tuesday.
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