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Carolyn Bobb (202) 637-5018
WASHINGTON - This morning, the AFL-CIO filed a petition for a writ of mandamus in the U.S. Court of Appeals to compel the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to issue an emergency temporary standard (ETS) protecting U.S. workers against the coronavirus.
The petition demonstrates that thousands of workers have been infected on the job through exposure to infected patients, co-workers and unscreened members of the public. As the economy reopens and people return to work, person-to-person contact will increase and health experts predict the already shocking number of infections and deaths among workers will rise.
"It's truly a sad day in America when working people must sue the organization tasked with protecting our health and safety," said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. "But we've been left no choice. Millions are infected and nearly 90,000 have died, so it's beyond urgent that action is taken to protect workers who risk our lives daily to respond to this public health emergency. If the Trump administration refuses to act, we must compel them to."
Even with overwhelming evidence that additional protection is needed, Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia has been unwilling to fulfill the duties Congress entrusted him with. In response to a letter from Trumka demanding OSHA action, Scalia stated on April 30 that a mandatory standard specifically addressing the grave risk posed by the virus was not necessary.
"OSHA was intended to be that vehicle to protect workers, yet it is not. The dozens of OSHA complaints across the country we have filed have been met by silence as the Trump administration refuses to do its job to enforce a safe workplace standard," said American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. "And this has had a huge effect: Our members are getting sick and dying--we have lost more than 160 members including public employees, health care workers and educators to COVID-19, many of which could have been prevented if they had been provided the proper protections. Health care and other essential workers can't simply rely on their union buying them PPE, as we have done, or the gratitude of strangers. This action is needed to get the Trump administration to do its job."
The AFL-CIO and several of its affiliated unions have pursued worker protections for years, petitioning OSHA to adopt a general infectious disease standard as early as 2009 in the wake of SARS and other threatened pandemics, and the agency initiated rule-making procedures but never issued a standard. The Trump administration abandoned the standard-making process once taking office in January 2017. OSHA has a duty to issue an ETS when it finds there is a grave danger to working people and that a standard is necessary to protect them. It is clear that now is the time for the agency tasked with protecting workers to do its job.
The AFL-CIO, together with 23 national unions, petitioned OSHA to issue an ETS on March 6, and National Nurses United did so on March 4, and to date OSHA has taken no action on the petitions.
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) works tirelessly to improve the lives of working people. We are the democratic, voluntary federation of 56 national and international labor unions that represent 12.5 million working men and women.
As mass starvation in Gaza reaches horrific new levels, European governments are attempting to pressure Israel to stop blocking humanitarian aid.
As Israel's starvation campaign in Gaza accelerates, the Netherlands has banned two far-right Israeli ministers from entering the country after they "repeatedly incited violence against the Palestinian population," and "called for ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip."
The officials—National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—are both members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's governing coalition, and they have called for Palestinians to be forced out of Gaza in order to make room for Israeli settlers.
In a letter sent to Dutch lawmakers Monday evening, Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp declared the two ministers "persona non grata," adding that "the war in Gaza must stop."
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reports that one in three people in Gaza is going multiple days at a time without eating. Meanwhile, acute malnutrition rates have quadrupled over the past month to the point where nearly 1 in 5 children is at risk of death from hunger.
"People are starving not because food is unavailable, but because access is blocked, local agrifood systems have collapsed, and families can no longer sustain even the most basic livelihoods," said Qu Dongyu, the director-general of the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Israel said it allowed 120 aid trucks to enter the strip on Sunday. But according to U.N. aid chief Tom Fletcher, that is "a drop in the ocean" compared to what the population needs to survive.
As starvation in Gaza approached what a U.N.-backed report described Monday as the "worst case scenario," Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have doubled down on calls for maximum torment.
After Netanyahu announced that Israel would allow a meager trickle of aid into the strip following international outcry, Ben-Gvir described Netanyahu as "morally bankrupt" for allowing any food into the strip.
"I think at this stage, the only thing you should be sending to Gaza is shells," Ben-Gvir said. "To bomb, conquer, encourage emigration, and win the war."
Last week, at a conference in the Israeli parliament with far-right Jewish settlers, Smotrich discussed plans "to relocate Gazans to other countries," which he said "will serve as a means of facilitating the settlement of the strip" by Jewish Israelis.
In May, Smotrich said, "Within a few months, we will be able to declare that we have won. Gaza will be totally destroyed," and spoke of "concentrating" its civilians in preparation for their mass exodus from the strip.
"They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places," he added.
The Netherlands is not the first country to attempt to punish the far-right ministers.
Earlier this month, Slovenia became the first nation to ban Smotrich and Ben-Gvir from entry, citing their incitement of "extreme violence and serious violations of the human rights of Palestinians" with "their genocidal statements."
The United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Norway have also imposed financial sanctions on the two men.
On Tuesday, the European Commission proposed partially suspending Israel from the $100 million Horizon research program, citing the Gaza famine.
Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof said that unless Israel complies with agreements to allow humanitarian aid access, he would support banning Israel from the prestigious research program and potentially take other "national measures to increase the pressure."
"The government's goal is crystal clear," Schoof said. "The people of Gaza must be given immediate, unfettered, safe access to humanitarian aid."
"If the Constitution doesn't apply to somebody who's lived in this country for 35 years and is a green-card holder... the Constitution doesn't apply to anybody who's been in this country for less time than him," said an attorney representing the scientist.
A permanent U.S. resident has been held in detention for the last week without apparent explanation and without access to legal representation, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
According to the Post, 40-year-old Tae Heung "Will" Kim was detained by immigration officials at the San Francisco International Airport on July 21 after returning from attending his brother's wedding in Korea. In the week since his detention, he has still not been released despite being a green-card holder who has lived in the United States since the age of five.
Eric Lee, an attorney representing Kim, said he has been unable to contact his client and that Kim's only past brush with the law came back in 2011 when he was ordered to perform community service over a minor marijuana possession charge in Texas.
A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) seemed to suggest in a statement to the Post that this past instance of marijuana possession was enough justification to detain and deport Kim.
"If a green-card holder is convicted of a drug offense, violating their status, that person is issued a Notice to Appear and CBP coordinates detention space with ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] ERO [Enforcement and Removal Operations]," they said. "This alien is in ICE custody pending removal proceedings."
Lee told the Post that he reached out to CBP to ask whether his client had protections under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments of the United States Constitution that guarantee rights such as the right to an attorney. In response, the CBP official simply told Lee, "No."
"If the Constitution doesn't apply to somebody who's lived in this country for 35 years and is a green-card holder—and only left the country for a two-week vacation—that means [the government] is basically arguing that the Constitution doesn't apply to anybody who's been in this country for less time than him," Lee said.
Lee added that it would be particularly uncommon for immigration officials to deport his client based solely on a 2011 marijuana possession charge given that Kim had successfully petitioned to seal the offense from his public record after fulfilling his community service requirements. Because of this, Lee said that Kim's case should easily clear the waiver process that allows officials to overlook past minor offenses that could otherwise be used to justify stripping people of their permanent legal resident status.
Prior to his detention, Kim was pursuing a PhD at Texas A&M University, where he was doing research to help develop a vaccine against Lyme disease.
Immigration enforcement officials under the second Trump administration have been particularly aggressive in trying to deport students who are legally in the United States.
Turkish-born Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk was detained for months earlier this year after she was apparently targeted for writing an editorial in her student newspaper critical of the school's refusal to divest from Israel. Russian-born Harvard University scientist Kseniia Petrova, meanwhile, is currently facing deportation after she was charged with allegedly smuggling frog embryos into the United States.
Judge James Boasberg reportedly raised concerns that the Trump administration "would disregard rulings of federal courts," something the White House has done repeatedly.
The Trump Justice Department on Monday filed a misconduct complaint against a federal judge for warning in early March that the president could spark a "constitutional crisis" by defying court orders—a concern that was swiftly validated.
The complaint against James Boasberg, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, was announced by Attorney General Pam Bondi, who alleged on social media that Boasberg made "improper public comments" about President Donald Trump and his administration.
During a March gathering of the Judicial Conference—the federal judiciary's policymaking body—Boasberg reportedly raised colleagues' fears that "the administration would disregard rulings of federal courts leading to a constitutional crisis."
John Roberts, the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, "expressed hope that would not happen and in turn no constitutional crisis would materialize," according to a memo obtained by The Federalist, a right-wing publication.
Days after the Judicial Conference gathering, the Trump administration ignored Boasberg's order to turn around deportation flights, prompting an ACLU attorney to warn, "I think we're getting very close" to a constitutional crisis.
Boasberg, an Obama appointee, later said there was probable cause to hold the Trump administration in contempt of court, concluding that the evidence demonstrated "a willful disregard" for the judge's order.
Boasberg's rulings against the Trump administration in the high-profile deportation case stemming from the president's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act have made the judge a target of the White House and its allies. Trump and some congressional Republicans have demanded that Boasberg be impeached.
Politico reported Monday that the Justice Department's complaint against Boasberg was signed by Chad Mizelle, Bondi's chief of staff.
"Mizelle argued that Boasberg's views expressed at the conference violated the 'presumption of regularity' that courts typically afford to the executive branch," Politico noted. "And the Bondi aide said that the administration has followed all court orders, though several lower courts have found that the administration defied their commands."
A Washington Post analysis published last week estimated that Trump officials have been accused of violating court orders in "a third of the more than 160 lawsuits against the administration."