March, 13 2020, 12:00am EDT
Trump Is a Clear and Present Danger to the Country. He Must Resign.
Statement of Robert Weissman, President, Public Citizen
WASHINGTON
President Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to the nation's public health, and he should resign immediately.
In a time when protecting the nation's public health demands clear, truthful and compassionate leadership, Trump has offered exactly the opposite.
He has dissembled about the seriousness of the coronavirus epidemic, either because he refuses to accept the truth or fears the impact on his political fortunes, or both.
He has refused to make science-based recommendations (e.g., older people should avoid cruise ships and plane travel) or to declare a public health emergency out of fear about the impact on the stock market.
He has misstated his administration's own policies.
He has presided over an administration that has inexplicably failed to deliver vitally needed coronavirus tests to health care providers around the country and then repeatedly lied to or misled the American public about remedying the problem. Instead of taking responsibility for the problem and fixing it, Trump has bizarrely blamed it on his predecessor, Barack Obama.
He has attacked his political rivals rather than seek to bring the country together.
These failings have nothing to do with political ideology or legitimate areas of policy disagreement. They are intolerable failures of leadership in a time of national crisis that have endangered the lives of all Americans. Trump should step down immediately.
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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Texas Approves Abortion Only After Woman Sues to Prove Medical Emergency
"Texans deserve to exercise reproductive freedom without fighting legal battles and without legislative interference in their lives," said the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Action.
Dec 07, 2023
Reproductive rights groups expressed relief Thursday that one woman in Texas was permitted to get abortion care after a Travis County judge granted a temporary restraining order to circumvent the state's pro-forced pregnancy laws, but said it was "unforgivable that she was forced to go to court" to request urgent medical care.
The Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) filed a lawsuit against the state last week on behalf of Kate Cox, a Dallas resident, who had just learned at 20 weeks pregnant that her fetus had the fatal diagnosis of trisomy 18, as well as a spinal abnormality and other health issues.
Cox's case is the first in which a pregnant plaintiff has asked a court for an emergency abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.
In court this week, Cox's lawyer, CRR senior staff attorney Molly Duane, told Judge Maya Guerra Gamble that Cox had had to go to the emergency room with cramping and fluid loss in the two days since she filed the lawsuit.
Since learning of the fetal diagnosis last week, Cox has sought emergency medical care four times due to her symptoms but doctors have been unable to provide her with legal abortion care due to the ban that took effect two months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Before Thursday, Cox's only options under Texas law were to have a Caesarean section after carrying the pregnancy to term—even as her health grew worse—or to have labor induced in the case of the fetal heartbeat stopping.
"Due to Kate's medical history," said CRR, "her OB-GYNs warned her that continuing to carry the pregnancy could jeopardize her health and future fertility."
Advocates including Duane and author Jessica Valenti expressed outrage at the arguments presented by the state—which, notedSlate journalist Mark Joseph Stern, "will likely appeal to try to block Cox's abortion."
Jonathan Stone, the lawyer representing Texas, told Gamble that "the only party that's going to suffer an immediate and irreparable harm in this case if the court enters a TRO [temporary restraining order] is the state," because the government would not be able to make its case in a regular hearing.
"The abortion once performed is permanent and cannot be undone," Stone said. "The plaintiffs are going to obtain permanent relief in this case through this TRO application without any evidence being considered by this court and in full-blown evidentiary hearing."
The state also claimed that Cox was not at a particular risk for life-threatening complications, despite her doctors' advice.
"These arguments are frankly stunning," said Duane. "The state goes as far to characterize her claims as 'a frivolous assertion of harm.'"
Cox's lawyers added that "the harm to Ms. Cox's life, health, and fertility are very much also permanent and cannot be undone."
Cox "should never have had to fight in court for her life, her health, and her future," said U.S. Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.). "This is the result of the GOP war on reproductive freedom. And it must be stopped."
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said after Gamble's ruling was announced that while the TRO "purports" to allow an abortion to proceed, it "will not insulate hospitals, doctors, or anyone else from civil and criminal liability for violating Texas' abortion laws."
"Most women are not able to do what Kate has done—many Texans have been forced to continue pregnancies that put their lives at risk," said Duane. "That is happening every day across Texas. As long as abortion is banned, pregnant people will suffer."
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Chattanooga Volkswagen Workers Announce Push to Join UAW
"People are standing up like never before," said one organizer. "They know that standing up to join the union is how you win fair treatment, fair pay, and a better life."
Dec 07, 2023
Workers at Volkswagen's only U.S. plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee announced Thursday that they're launching a public organizing committee with the goal of joining the United Auto Workers, which is aiming to expand its membership to include employees at more than a dozen nonunion car companies after winning historic contracts at the Big Three.
In less than a week, more than 1,000 workers at the Volkswagen plant signed union authorization cards, giving the nascent union drive more than 30% support so far at the Chattanooga location.
The UAW narrowly failed to organize the plant in 2014 and 2019. But leaders of the new unionization push expressed confidence that the outcome would be different this time around as the newly emboldened UAW puts special emphasis on the South, where the unionization rate is significantly lower than in the rest of the country.
"People are standing up like never before," said Steve Cochran, a lead organizer of the Chattanooga union drive. "There are a lot of young workers in the plant now and this generation wants respect. They're not okay with mistreatment by management. They see what's happening at Starbucks and Amazon. They know that standing up to join the union is how you win fair treatment, fair pay, and a better life."
Organizers pointed to the $184 billion in profits that Volkswagen Group has brought in over the past decade while workers' wages have stagnated or declined.
"In the last three years, we've seen VW make nearly a trillion dollars in revenue and $78 billion in profit, but we haven't seen our fair share in Chattanooga," reads the union campaign's website. "Now we're ready to fight for a better job, a better life, and a better future."
Josh Epperson, a member of the organizing committee who has worked at the Chattanooga plant for more than a decade, said the facility has high turnover because newer employees aren't given "the tools and support they need to thrive."
"With the union, we can improve working conditions," said Epperson. "If there's an issue in our work area, we'll have a way to address it. We'll find common ground so we can make it a good job and people will want to stay."
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Groups Demand Probe of 'Apparently Deliberate' IDF Attack on Journalists
Amnesty International said that the October 13 Israeli tank strike that killed Issam Abdallah and blew the legs off Christina Assi was "likely a direct attack on civilians that must be investigated as a war crime."
Dec 07, 2023
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International on Thursday called for an official investigation of a deadly Israeli attack on a group of journalists, which HRW called "apparently deliberate" and a likely "war crime."
HRW, Amnesty, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse on Thursday all published their own separate investigations into the October 13 Israel Defense Forces (IDF) attack that killed 37-year-old Lebanese Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and wounded half a dozen other journalists who were covering cross-border clashes between Israeli and Hezbollah troops near the village of Alma al-Shaab in southern Lebanon.
"This is not the first time that Israeli forces have apparently deliberately attacked journalists, with deadly and devastating results."
Reutersdetermined that an Israeli tank crew "fired two shells in quick succession" at the journalists, who HRW said were "clearly identifiable as members of the media, and had been stationary for at least 75 minutes." HRW "found no evidence of a military target near the journalists' location."
"This is not the first time that Israeli forces have apparently deliberately attacked journalists, with deadly and devastating results," HRW Lebanon researcher Ramzi Kaiss said in a statement. "Those responsible need to be held to account, and it needs to be made clear that journalists and other civilians are not lawful targets."
Amnesty International, meanwhile, asserted that the IDF strike was "likely a direct attack on civilians that must be investigated as a war crime."
The organization said it "verified over 100 videos and photographs, analyzed weapons fragments from the site, and interviewed nine witnesses. The findings indicate that the group was visibly identifiable as journalists and that the Israeli military knew or should have known that they were civilians yet attacked them anyway in two separate strikes 37 seconds apart."
Aya Majzoub, Amnesty's deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, noted that "direct attacks on civilians and indiscriminate attacks are absolutely prohibited by international humanitarian law and can amount to war crimes."
"Those responsible for Issam Abdallah's unlawful killing and the injuring of six other journalists must be held accountable," Majzoub added. "No journalist should ever be targeted or killed simply for carrying out their work. Israel must not be allowed to kill and attack journalists with impunity. There must be an independent and impartial investigation into this deadly attack."
According to HRW:
The journalists interviewed said that the first munition struck Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah and a short concrete wall, killing him instantly and badly injuring an Agence France-Presse photojournalist, Christina Assi. Thirty-seven seconds later, another attack destroyed the car belonging to Al Jazeera, igniting it in flames, and injuring six journalists, including Carmen Joukhadar and Elie Brakhya from Al Jazeera, Dylan Collins and Christina Assi from AFP, and Thaer al-Sudani and Maher Nazeh from Reuters.
Brakhya, an Al Jazeera cameraman, told Amnesty: "I was looking at Issam when we heard the [first] explosion. I saw Issam's body fly, with the glow and the heat behind his back… [I] ran up the hill, heard Christina shouting 'I can't feel my legs,' ran back to where she was, saw Dylan searching for the tourniquet."
Collins, an American deputy editor at Al Jazeera English, said that "as soon as I turned around, I heard Christina's voice saying, 'Oh my God!' I say, 'You're okay.' I ran to her directly and I see that her legs are blown off at the kneecap."
The second Israeli shell exploded as Collins tried to tie a tourniquet around Assi's legs.
"When the second blast hit, I was stunned and dizzy, but in my blurry memory, I remember Issam's leg falling in front of me, I remember looking up and seeing Carmen by the car, her face is black and she is walking like a zombie," he recalled. "Her entire back is covered in shrapnel."
The day after the attacks, IDF spokesperson Richard Hecht said that the Israeli military was "very sorry for the journalist's death."
Presented with Reuters' findings, Hecht later said that "we don't target journalists."
However, Kaiss argued that "the evidence strongly suggests that Israeli forces knew or should have known that the group that they were attacking were journalists."
"This was an unlawful and apparently deliberate attack on a very visible group of journalists," he added.
"They don't want us to see the truth. That's why they're taking out the journalists."
Numerous international observers accused Israeli forces of intentionally targeting journalists in an effort to prevent them from reporting the truth about what many critics call a genocidal war against Palestinians.
"I believe that it is in the military strategy of Israel to kill journalists so that they kill the truth," Lebanese Information Minister Ziad Makary told Reuters.
U.S. journalist Abby Martin toldMiddle East Eye Wednesday that Israel is "killing the truth."
"They don't want us to see the truth," she said. "That's why they're taking out the journalists."
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) responded to the rights groups' and media probes into the October 13 attacks by demanding an "immediate, independent, and transparent investigation that holds the perpetrators to account."
CPJ cited its May 2023 report, "which showed a pattern of lethal force by the Israel Defense Forces that left 20 journalists dead over the last 22 years. No one was ever held accountable."
According to the report, "The majority of the 20 journalists killed—at least 13—were clearly identified as members of the media or were inside vehicles with press insignia at the time of their deaths."
Since the IDF launched its war on Gaza following the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel, CPJ has documented the killing of at least 63 media professionals, including 56 Palestinians, three Lebanese, and four Israelis.
"CPJ emphasizes that journalists are civilians doing important work during times of crisis and must not be targeted by warring parties," said Sherif Mansour, the group's Middle East and North Africa program coordinator.
Last month, after also concluding that the group in Lebanon was "deliberately targeted," the international press freedom group Reporters Without Borders called on the International Criminal Court to formally investigate the deaths of all journalists killed by Israeli troops and Hamas militants during the war.
"Journalists across the region are making great sacrifices to cover this heartbreaking conflict. Those in Gaza, in particular, have paid, and continue to pay, an unprecedented toll and face exponential threats," Mansour said. "Many have lost colleagues, families, and media facilities, and have fled seeking safety when there is no safe haven or exit."
Nazeh, a Reuters camera operator who survived the October 13 attack, demanded justice for his slain colleague Abdallah.
"We can't bring Issam back. Issam is gone," he said. "But he hears us, he sees us, and he's waiting for us to do something for him... to expose who hit him, who killed him, to the world."
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