December, 06 2020, 11:00pm EDT
WASHINGTON
The following is a statement from Alex Lawson, Executive Director of Social Security Works, on Joe Biden's selection of California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to lead the Department of Health and Human Services:
"We have been proud to work with Attorney General Becerra for many years. As a member of Congress, Becerra was a leader in the fight to protect our earned Social Security benefits from cuts and a supporter of Medicare for All. At HHS, he will be perfectly positioned to strengthen Medicare and undo the Trump Administration's attacks on the program.
As Attorney General of California, Becerra has fearlessly taken on Big Pharma monopolies. He co-led a bipartisan letter from 31 state attorneys general calling on HHS to allow generic competition of remdesivir, a COVID treatment. Doing so would increase supplies of the medication and lower its price. Now, Becerra will be in a position to make that happen for all prescription drugs.
Becerra's selection is terrible news for greedy Big Pharma CEOs, but it is great news for seniors."
Social Security Works' mission is to: Protect and improve the economic security of disadvantaged and at-risk populations; Safeguard the economic security of those dependent, now or in the future, on Social Security; and Maintain Social Security as a vehicle of social justice.
LATEST NEWS
IDF Gaza Bombing 'By Far the Most Intense, Destructive, and Fatal' Airwars Has Analyzed
"Save this for the next time you hear that the Israeli military does everything possible to avoid harming civilians, and that the level of civilian harm in Gaza is less than other comparable conflicts," said one advocate.
Dec 13, 2024
The world's foremost monitor of civilian harm caused by aerial bombardment published a report Thursday calling the first 25 days of Israel's ongoing U.S.-backed annihilation of Gaza the worst assault on noncombatants it has ever seen.
U.K.-based Airwars—which over its decadelong existence has meticulously and painstakingly documented civilian casualties in various campaigns of the U.S.-led so-called War on Terror, Russia's bombing of Ukraine and Syria, Turkish attacks on Syria and Iraq, and other conflicts—published a "patterns of harm analysis" examining the first few weeks of Israel's retaliatory assault on Gaza following the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023.
"By almost every metric, the harm to civilians from the first month of the Israeli campaign in Gaza is incomparable with any 21st century air campaign," Airwars said in a summary of the report. "It is by far the most intense, destructive, and fatal conflict for civilians that Airwars has ever documented."
Key findings include:
- At least 5,139 civilians were killed in Gaza in 25 days in October 2023, nearly four times more civilians reported killed in a single month than in any conflict Airwars has documented since it was established in 2014;
- In October 2023 alone, Airwars documented at least 65 incidents in which a minimum of 20 civilians were killed in a particular incident, nearly triple the number of such high-fatality incidents that Airwars has documented within any comparable timeframe;
- Over the course of 25 days, Airwars recorded a minimum of 1,900 children killed by Israeli military action in Gaza, nearly seven times higher than even the most deadly month for children previously recorded by Airwars;
- Families were killed together in unprecedented numbers, and in their homes, with more than 9 out of 10 women and children killed in residential buildings; and
- On average, when civilians were killed alongside family members, at least 15 family members were killed—higher than any other conflict documented by Airwars.
"The international community has raised grave concern about Israeli military practice and the unprecedented scale of civilian harm," the report notes. "The United Nations has repeatedly warned that Israel is breaching international law and even United States President Joe Biden, a staunch ally of Israel, eventually labeled the military response 'over the top.' In January 2024, South Africa brought a claim of genocide against Israel at the International Court of Justice."
As of Friday, Gaza officials say that at least 44,875 Palestinians have been killed and 106,464 have been wounded in Gaza. At least 11,000 others are missing and believed to be dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out buildings.
Throughout the new report, Airwars compares Israel's bombardment of Gaza to two other campaigns it has extensively analyzed, the battles for Mosul, Iraq and Raqqa, Syria during the U.S.-led coalition war against the so-called Islamic State. Airwars concluded that more Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli forces during the first 25 days of the Gaza campaign than were slain in Raqqa during the entire four-month period studied and the deadliest month in Mosul—combined.
The report also pushes back on claims that Israel "does everything possible to avoid harming civilians," and that "the level of civilian harm in Gaza is broadly consistent with, and even favorable to, other comparable conflicts in recent decades."
Save this for the next time you hear that the Israeli military does everything possible to avoid harming civilians, and that the level of civilian harm in Gaza is less that other comparable conflicts… gaza-patterns-harm.airwars.org
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— Huwaida Arraf (@huwaida.bsky.social) December 13, 2024 at 9:27 AM
"The manner in which Israel has conducted the war in Gaza may signal the development of a concerning new norm: a way of conducting air campaigns with a greater frequency of strikes, a greater intensity of damage, and a higher threshold of acceptance for civilian harm than ever seen before," the authors wrote.
Airwars leaves readers with the ominous prospect that, while it is "expecting the overall trends to remain, magnitudes of difference—where measures of civilian harm in Gaza outpace those from previously documented conflicts—are expected to grow."
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Tech Billionaires Get in Line to Support Trump Inauguration Fund
"President Trump will lead our country into the age of AI, and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead," said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Dec 13, 2024
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman became the latest tech titan to make an explicit overture to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump when he confirmed Friday that he intends to make a $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund.
The news comes after Meta confirmed Wednesday that it has donated $1 million to the fund, and it was reported Thursday that Amazon intends to make a $1 million donation. The Washington Postcharacterized Altman's move as "the latest attempt to gain favor from a leading technology executive in an industry that has long been a target of Trump's vitriol."
Altman said in a statement that was sent to multiple outlets that "President Trump will lead our country into the age of AI, and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead."
The donation from Meta follows a trip by Meta CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg down to Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club to meet with the president-elect last month. Jeff Bezos, Amazon's executive chairman, is slated to head to Florida to meet with Trump at Mar-a-Lago next week, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Zuckerberg and Trump have not always been on the best of terms—Meta temporarily booted Trump from Instagram and Facebook following his comments regarding the January 6 insurrection, and Trump threatened Zuckerberg with lifetime incarceration if Trump perceived that Zuckerberg was interfering in the 2024 election—but Zuckerberg made entreaties to the then-candidate this past summer when he described Trump's response to his assassination attempt as "badass."
Zuckerberg and Meta refrained from donating to Trump's inauguration fund in 2017, and to President Joe Biden's inauguration fund in 2021, according to The Wall Street Journal.
In response to the news that Meta donated to Trump's inauguration fund this time, the watchdog group Public Citizen wrote: "Shocker! Another tech bro billionaire trying to buy his way into Trump's good graces. Zuckerberg donated $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund. $1 million to the man who threatened Zuckerberg with life in prison. Grow a spine."
Journalists Mehdi Hasan described the move as "bending both knees to Trump."
Bezos also chafed against Trump during his first presidency. Trump has repeatedly criticized The Washington Post, which is owned by Bezos, for its coverage of him. In legal proceedings, Amazon also accused Trump of swaying the bidding process when the Pentagon chose Microsoft over Amazon for a lucrative contract because of Trump's disdain for Bezos. However, in a move that was viewed as a signal to Trump, Bezos blocked the Post from endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris just before last month's election.
Margaret O'Mara, a history professor at the University of Washington who focuses on the high-tech economy, said during an interview with NPR the fact that support for Trump isn't happening quietly "is something new."
"It's just a recognition that there's not much to be gained in outspoken opposition, but perhaps there is something to be gained by being very clear about your support and hope that Trump does well," she said.
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Texas Lawsuit Against New York Doctor Tests Abortion Provider Shield Laws
"It is important to remember that Dr. Carpenter did nothing wrong," said one legal expert. "Texas is trying to apply its laws extraterritorially."
Dec 13, 2024
"Time for shield laws to hold strong," said one reproductive rights expert on Friday as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against an abortion provider in New York.
Paxton is suing Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter, co-founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine (ACT), for providing mifepristone and misoprostol to a 20-year-old resident of Collin County, Texas earlier this year.
ACT was established after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, with the intent of helping providers in "shielded states"—those with laws that provide legal protection to doctors who send abortion pills to patients in states that ban abortion, as Carpenter did.
New York passed a law in 2023 stipulating that state courts and officials will not cooperate if a state with an abortion ban like Texas' tries to prosecute a doctor who provides abortion care via telemedicine in that state, as long as the provider complies with New York law.
Legal experts have been divided over whether shield laws or state-level abortion bans should prevail in a case like the one filed by Paxton.
"What will it mean to say for the GOP to say abortion should be left to the states now?"
"It is important to remember that Dr. Carpenter did nothing wrong," said Greer Donley, a legal expert and University of Pittsburgh law professor who specializes in reproductive rights. "She followed her home state's laws."
The Food and Drug Administration also allows telehealth abortion care, "finding it safe and effective," Donley added. "Texas is trying to apply its laws extraterritorially."
In the Texas case, the patient was prescribed the pills at nine weeks pregnant. Mifepristone and misoprostol are approved for use through the 10th week of pregnancy and are more than 95% effective.
The patient experienced heavy bleeding after taking the pills and asked the man who had impregnated her to take her to the hospital. The lawsuit suggests that the man notified the authorities:
The biological father of the unborn child was told that the mother of the unborn child was experiencing a hemorrhage or severe bleeding as she "had been" nine weeks pregnant before losing the child. The biological father of the unborn child, upon learning this information, concluded that the biological mother of the unborn child had intentionally withheld information from him regarding her pregnancy, and he further suspected that the biological mother had in fact done something to contribute to the miscarriage or abortion of the unborn child. The biological father, upon returning to the residence in Collin County, discovered the two above-referenced medications from Carpenter.
In the lawsuit, Paxton is asking a Collin County court to block Carpenter from violating Texas law and order her to pay $100,000 for each violation of Texas' near-total abortion ban.
Carpenter and ACT did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the case.
Caroline Kitchener, who has covered abortion rights for The Washington Post, noted that lawsuits challenging abortion provider shield laws were "widely expected after the 2024 election."
President-elect Donald Trump has said abortion rights should be left up to the states, but advocates have warned that the Republican Party, with control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, is likely to push a national abortion ban.
"The truce over interstate abortion fights is over," said legal scholar Mary Ziegler, an expert on the history of abortion in the U.S. "Texas has sued a New York doctor for mailing pills into the state; New York has a shield law that allows physicians to sue anyone who sues them in this way. What will it mean for the GOP to say abortion should be left to the states now?"
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