November, 30 2020, 11:00pm EDT
New Bills Offer Critical Relief, But More is Needed
On the multiple new Covid relief bills from the Senate today, Executive Director of the Main Street Alliance Amanda Ballantyne had this to say:
WASHINGTON
On the multiple new Covid relief bills from the Senate today, Executive Director of the Main Street Alliance Amanda Ballantyne had this to say:
"Small businesses need Covid relief urgently and have been saying so for months. At the absolute deadline and on the edge of a winter surge and crisis, a bipartisan group of Senators has put together an offer that is both desperately needed and nowhere near enough. In this moment, small businesses and their customers, the American people, need this urgent relief. But we must acknowledge that this is only a desperate stepping stone to more robust support.
Another bill offered by Senate Democrats to extend unemployment is also important to the economy overall, and the two bills need to come together. Small businesses need direct support, and their customers need robust unemployment assistance to revive the economy.
The additional funds that double down on the Paycheck Protection Program will continue to double down on the lending disparities and relief seen in the first rounds. And the inclusion of corporate immunity, will only make fighting the virus even more difficult as it incentivizes bad business practices, harming small businesses in the long run. This inclusion of the Republican line in the sand is even more frustrating when small businesses have chosen paid leave supports over immunity by 2 to 1, and yet there has been no extension or expansion of these critical public health tools.
The urgent need is so great that we must encourage Congress to bring these bills together, and make very clear that after this stopgap we must push for a comprehensive plan that supports addressing the racial and economic disparities of the current programs, including grant programs to fill the gaps the PPP has created, and expands the paid leave and paid sick days provisions, provides robust support for States to get the virus under control and distribute vaccines."
The Main Street Alliance (MSA) is a national network of small business coalitions working to build a new voice for small businesses on important public policy issues. Main Street Alliance members are working throughout the country to build policies that work for business owners, their employees, and the communities they serve.
LATEST NEWS
Israeli Analysis Affirms Gaza Health Ministry’s Official Palestinian Death Count
One Israeli expert placed discrepancies in the list at "around 1%." Another said the error rate appears even lower.
Feb 24, 2026
An Israeli analysis published Tuesday examining the Gaza Health Ministry's list of Palestinians killed during Israel's US-backed annihilation of the Gaza Strip largely affirmed the official death count, while noting some imperfections in the 2,000-page document.
Haaretz, Israel's oldest daily newspaper, dissected the Gaza Health Ministry's (GHM) database of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, which at the time contained nearly 70,000 names—it's now over 72,000—in part by using artificial intelligence to analyze the massive file.
"A consensus has taken shape: Even if the list has weaknesses, including the fact that it does not differentiate between combatants and civilians, it reflects the scale of the disaster inflicted on Gaza and its people," article author Nir Hasson wrote. "It also forms the basis for allegations that Israel committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and even genocide."
Lee Mordechai, a historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who says Israeli is committing genocide in Gaza, told Hasson, "It's clear that the list isn't 100% accurate and that it has errors, but I think they're around 1%."
Gabriel Epstein, an associate at the US-based Israel Policy Forum who was formerly skeptical of the GHM list, "now believes it is largely accurate and may even slightly undercount the dead," according to Hasson.
"Epstein reviewed the list obtained by Haaretz," the article states. "He found 24 duplicates and 38 entries with problems in the ID numbers. That means 99.91% of the entries were complete, with verified ID numbers. He also found that 64 deaths that had appeared on earlier lists were later removed, while 158 names removed by March of last year were added back."
The GHM list notably only contains the names of people who died from combat-related violence, not from "hunger, disease, accidents, or the collapse of the health system."
It also does not include the thousands of people who are missing and likely dead and buried beneath the rubble of the 80% of Gaza's buildings that have been destroyed or damaged during the war.
Other research, including multiple peer-reviewed studies in the prestigious British medical journal the Lancet, have also concluded that the ministry was undercounting the number of people killed by Israel's war on Gaza.
As for the issue of Hamas not differentiating between combatants and civilians on the ministry's death list, an investigation last year by Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham and Guardian senior international affairs correspondent Emma Graham-Harrison analyzed classified Israel Defense Forces intelligence data showing that 5 in 6 Palestinians killed by Israeli troops through the first 19 months of the war were civilians. The probe obliterated IDF claims of a historically low civilian-to-combatant kill ratio.
Last September, Former IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi—who was in command for much of the war—said that “over 10%” of Gaza’s approximately 2.2 million people “were killed or injured” since October 2023. Halevi’s acknowledgment tracked with GHM figures showing at least 228,815 people killed or wounded at the time.
In January, Israeli media outlets including Haaretz, the Jerusalem Post, and the Times of Israel reported that the IDF accepted the accuracy of GHM's death count, which at the time stood at over 71,000.
Israeli officials and media, along with their supportive US counterparts during both the Biden and Trump administrations, once cast doubt upon or outright denied GHM figures because the ministry is under Hamas' control. These aspersions came in addition to widespread Israeli and US denials of Israel’s forced famine and starvation deaths and IDF war crimes in Gaza.
"As the months have passed, claims of fabrication and exaggeration have largely remained confined to Israeli television panels," Hasson wrote in the new analysis. "At the end of January, an apparent dispute over the number of dead seemed to end in Israel when a senior army source confirmed that the IDF recognizes that 70,000 people died, precisely the figure cited by Gazan authorities."
"Even if the argument over the total number of dead is, for now, largely settled, disagreement in Israel continues over who the dead were," he continued. "How many were gunmen, how many were affiliated with Hamas, how many were killed under circumstances that meet the conditions of international law?"
"None of this alters the stark figures in the table," Hasson added. "Of the recorded deaths, 20,876, about 30%, are young girls, teenage girls, and women. Another 3,220 were aged 65 and over, including the final name on the list, Tamam al-Batsh, who was 110 when she died."
While Israel officials continue to insist that GHM figures are "misleading and unreliable"—or even "fake"—Hasson noted the general consistency between Israeli and Palestinian tallies across past Israeli attacks on Gaza. During Operation Cast Lead (2008-09), the Palestinian count was 23% higher than Israel's. For Operation Pillar of Success (2012), Israel's tally of Gazan deaths was 11% higher than the Palestinian figure. In Operation Protective Edge (2014), the Palestinian count was 8% higher. And during 2021's Operation Guardian of the Walls, Palestinian officials counted 10% more Gaza deaths than Israel.
The United Nations and US administrations of both major political parties have long acknowledged the GHM's accounting of Palestinian casualties in Israeli attacks, including the assault that began in October 2023.
Hasson noted that "it has been increasingly harder to find Israeli officials commenting on the subject" of the GHM death count in the ongoing war as evidence of its accuracy mounts.
"Since the war began," he said, "Israel has made no serious effort to demonstrate that the list is false or to present an alternative. It has not proven even once that a person listed as deceased is in fact alive."
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50+ Groups Condemn Trump Admin for Trying to Sabotage Independent Probe of Alex Pretti Killing
"The Trump administration is sending a clear message: federal law enforcement can kill with absolute impunity."
Feb 24, 2026
A broad coalition of organizations on Tuesday accused the Trump administration of trying to sabotage a genuine investigation into the killing of Alex Pretti, the intensive care nurse who was fatally shot by federal immigration enforcement agents last month.
In a statement released by the Not Above the Law Coalition, the groups pointed to recent reporting about the FBI denying Minnesota law enforcement officials access to evidence gathered in relation to the Pretti shooting as proof that the administration has no intention of conducting an independent investigation into his death, which has been ruled a homicide by the Hennepin County medical examiner.
"By blocking Minnesota's investigation and attempting to shield agents from accountability," said the groups, "the Trump administration is sending a clear message: federal law enforcement can kill with absolute impunity. This move attempts to place federal agents above the law and beyond the reach of justice."
The groups noted that the administration was breaking with decades of standard practices by not cooperating with local police and prosecutors to investigate Pretti's death, and they warned it could set a dangerous precedent for future shootings carried out by federal officers.
"We demand immediate action," they concluded. "Mandatory independent investigations for all federal use of deadly force, recognition of state authority to investigate federal misconduct, federal cooperation with local investigators, and real consequences for constitutional violations. Without accountability, we allow federal forces to operate with impunity and face no consequences for taking American lives."
Included among the statement's signatories were the ACLU, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Common Cause, Indivisible, Public Citizen, and the Revolving Door Project.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) said last week that it was continuing its probe into Pretti's killing, even without the assistance of federal investigators.
“The BCA will present its findings without recommendation to the appropriate prosecutorial authorities for review," the agency vowed.
In addition to investigating the Pretti killing, the BCA is also conducting probes into the fatal shooting of Minneapolis mother Renee Good and the shooting of Venezuelan immigrant Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty last week similarly said that her office was not getting any help from the federal government in its investigation into the Pretti shooting, though she said her team was continuing to gather evidence and interview witnesses.
Moriarty emphasized that her office, which is currently working with the Minnesota BCA in its investigation, can bring criminal charges against federal immigration officers if it has enough evidence to do so, even without the cooperation of the Trump administration.
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Praising Denver and Other Cities for Leading the Way, Sanders Renews Call for National Data Center Moratorium
"We need serious public debate and democratic oversight over this enormously consequential issue," said the senator. "The time for action is now."
Feb 24, 2026
Although Denver Mayor Mike Johnston is a vocal supporter of artificial intelligence and has pushed to adopt AI-driven products to power the city's infrastructure, he joined City Council members on Monday in announcing a moratorium on the construction of massive AI data centers—the latest sign, said US Sen. Bernie Sanders, that the push to stop corporations from building the energy-guzzling, pollution-causing facilities is not "radical, fringe, and Luddite" as some claim.
Johnston, a Democrat, and other local officials across the country who are pushing to block the construction of data centers "are right," said Sanders (I-Vt.). "Data centers will have a profound impact on land and water use, and will drive up electricity costs."
As grassroots community groups and experts have warned, AI will also "likely have a catastrophic impact on the lives of working-class Americans, eliminating tens of millions of blue- and white-collar jobs in every sector of our economy," said the senator, who proposed a nationwide moratorium on AI data centers in December.
He renewed that call after Johnston and the Denver City Council announced the city would halt any plans for new data centers for at least several months and would require projects that are already permitted or under construction to follow new guidelines once they're finalized by local officials.
"We need a federal moratorium on AI data centers," said Sanders.
Johnston said in a statement that he believes "data centers power the technology we depend upon and strengthen our economy," but stressed that "as this industry evolves, so must our policies."
"This pause allows us to put clear and consistent guardrails in place while protecting our most precious resources and preserving our quality of life," said the mayor.
The city plans to review regulations for data centers that would target “responsible land, energy, and water use as well as zoning and affordability for ratepayers.”
Soaring electricity bills across the country have been linked to the build-out of data centers, which have cropped up as President Donald Trump has pushed to preempt state and local regulations on AI. As CNBC reported last year, residential utility bills rose 6% in August nationwide, but much higher price hikes were reported in states with high concentrations of data centers, like Virginia (13%) and Illinois (16%).
Sanders' office issued a report last October showing that AI, automation, and robotics could replace nearly 100 million jobs over the next decade, including 40% of registered nurses, 47% of truck drivers, 64% of accountants, and 89% of fast food workers.
And a study published in Nature Sustainability last year found that data centers could consume as much water as 10 million Americans and emit as much carbon dioxide as 10 million cars.
At a forum last week at Stanford University, Sanders joined Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) in warning that the expansion of AI data centers is meant to increase the wealth of billionaire tech moguls with no regard for how working Americans are affected.
“The question that we should be asking day after day… is who is pushing this revolution, who benefits from it, and who gets hurt?” Sanderss said.
In Denver, the moratorium was announced ahead of a planned community meeting scheduled for Tuesday evening at Geotech Environmental, where neighbors are planning to speak out against the 170,000-square foot DE3 data center being built in the Globeville-Elyria-Swansea (GES) area by the Denver-based company CoreSite.
The burden that will be placed on locals if the project is completed "is not accidental," reads a petition by the local grassroots community organization GES Coalition. “It is the outcome of colonial dispossession and extraction, then decades of zoning, redlining, highway construction, and industrial siting that concentrated pollution next to working-class homes alongside the legacy of the Vasquez Boulevard/I-70 Superfund site, a 4.5-square-mile smelting contamination footprint affecting multiple neighborhoods."
Meanwhile, state legislators have introduced at least two bills regarding AI data center development. One, House Bill 1030, would offer sales and use tax exemptions for data center builders—and would slash state general fund revenue while also triggering a $106 million reduction in tax credits for low-income households.
Another, Senate Bill 102, would require data centers to use renewable energy sources and ensure their energy use does not raise rates for consumers.
Grassroots efforts to block the construction of data centers have taken off in places including Saline, Michigan; Port Washington, Wisconsin; and Tucson, Arizona, where community members successfully blocked plans for a new center owned by Amazon.
State lawmakers in Maine, South Dakota, and Oklahoma are also considering moratoriums or limits on new data centers.
"We need serious public debate and democratic oversight over this enormously consequential issue," said Sanders. "The time for action is now."
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