October, 15 2021, 09:26am EDT
Biden's SCOTUS Advisory Group Must Call for Supreme Court Expansion
White House SCOTUS Commission to Hold Meeting Today, Deliver Full Report to President Biden Next Month
WASHINGTON
Today, the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States will convene. The group, composed of the nation's top constitutional experts, released a preliminary draft yesterday that included broad analysis of proposed Supreme Court reforms. Notably, however, the commission failed to make any clear recommendations in the preliminary draft related to expanding the Supreme Court.
Stand Up America's Managing Director of Policy & Political Affairs, Brett Edkins, commented on the Commission's report:
"Biden's commission is waffling in the muddy middle of nowhere. The commission wrote 200 hundred pages on legal history and competing proposals to improve the Supreme Court, but failed to make the one recommendation they actually needed to make: Expand the court.
"Americans witnessed the dangerous impact of the right-wing takeover of the Supreme Court during the Trump administration, and now the Supreme Court's approval rating is the lowest it has been in modern history. The Supreme Court is no longer a fair and balanced body of constitutional review--instead, it has become a politicized extension of the Republican party's anti-democratic agenda.
"Regardless of what the White House commission concludes in its final report to President Biden next month, Democrats must move swiftly to pass the Judiciary Act to add four seats to the court before it's too late. In the next year, this radical Supreme Court could gut Roe v. Wade, eradicate common sense gun control measures, and further erode our fundamental freedom to vote. Restoring balance to our nation's highest court is needed now."
Stand Up America's grassroots community began mobilizing earlier this year in support of the Judiciary Act of 2021. To date, Stand Up America's members have sent nearly 24,000 emails to their representatives in the House urging them to co-sponsor this legislation. Stand Up America's Managing Director of Policy & Political Affairs, Brett Edkins, recently submitted testimony to the Presidential Commission of the Supreme Court of the United States in support of expanding the court and enacting other reforms to restore balance and integrity. Mr. Edkins's testimony can be found here.
Stand Up America is a progressive advocacy organization with over two million community members across the country. Focused on grassroots advocacy to strengthen our democracy and oppose Trump's corrupt agenda, Stand Up America has driven over 600,000 phone calls to Congress and mobilized tens of thousands of protestors across the country.
LATEST NEWS
'Staggering' Rise in Reports of Islamophobia During Gaza War
"People and institutions have spent the past two months weaponizing Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias to both justify the ongoing violence against Palestinians in Gaza and silence supporters of Palestinian human rights."
Dec 07, 2023
Three university students were shot and wounded in Burlington, Vermont. A New York City food cart vendor was repeatedly harassed by a former U.S. State Department official. A six-year-old boy was stabbed to death in Plainfield Township, Illinois.
Those are just three high-profile examples of what the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States said Thursday is a dramatic surge in Islamophobia across the country since U.S.-backed Israeli forces launched a devastating war on the Gaza Strip two months ago in response to a Hamas-led attack on Israel.
From October 7 to December 2, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) national headquarters and chapters received a total of 2,171 requests for help and reports of bias—a 172% increase over a similar two-month period the previous year.
"It's staggering to see this kind of spike in anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian hate in less than two months," said CAIR research and advocacy director Corey Saylor. "Far too many people and institutions have spent the past two months weaponizing Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias to both justify the ongoing violence against Palestinians in Gaza and silence supporters of Palestinian human rights here in America."
The incredible bloodshed and destruction in Gaza—with over 17,000 Palestinians dead, about 80% of the 2.3 million residents displaced, and many homes, hospitals, mosques, and schools destroyed—have led to large-scale protests across the United States demanding that the U.S. government stop giving Israel billions of dollars in military aid.
Throughout the war, there has also been a dramatic increase in reports of antisemitism across the United States. There have also been efforts to conflate discrimination against Jews and legitimate criticism of the Israeli government—including congressional legislation. Critics of what many experts around the world are calling Israel's "genocidal" violence in Gaza have faced consequences, from job losses to the suspension of university campus groups promoting Palestinian rights.
As Common Dreamsreported Thursday afternoon, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) announced "an official congressional investigation with the full force of subpoena power" into the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and other schools regarding antisemitism on campus and administrators' responses.
CAIR revealed that at its national headquarters, First Amendment issues, or violations of the right to free speech and expression, are the most common cases at nearly 34%, a 63% increase from the first month of the war to the last four weeks. Those reports are followed by problems with employment (22%), hate crimes and hate speech (17%), and education and bullying (14%).
The cases include that of Jana Alwan, a Muslim woman who was riding a train in Washington, D.C. on October 18. According to a letter CAIR sent last month to the Metro Transit Police Department, an unidentified white man flashed a gun and threatened to behead Alwan, who "was wearing a keffiyeh, an identifiable scarf traditionally worn by Palestinian and Arab people."
Earlier this month, the Idara Jaferia Islamic Center in Burtonsville, Maryland, was evacuated because of a bomb threat. CAIR is calling on state and local law enforcement to bring hate crime charges against the perpetrator.
"From Burlington to Chicago to D.C. and elsewhere, innocent Americans are suffering the consequences of this wave of bigotry," CAIR national executive director Nihad Awad said Thursday. "Until our nation stops the violence IN Gaza and rejects bigotry here in America, we fear that both Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism will continue to spin out of control."
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'Huge Loss' as Gaza Luminary Refaat Alareer 'Assassinated' by Israel
"Refaat Alareer embraced everything good and pure about Gaza and Palestine," said one friend. "He will not be forgotten and his legacy will live on for many generations to come."
Dec 07, 2023
Human rights defenders around the world expressed anguish and outrage Thursday after Refaat Alareer, a Palestinian professor who was one of Gaza's most prominent writers and activists, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Shejaiya that also killed his brother, sister, and her four children.
Alareer, 44, was "a beloved professor of world literature, comparative literature, Shakespeare, and creative writing at the Islamic University of Gaza, where he taught since 2007," notedLiterary Hub.
According to the publication:
He was the co-editor of Gaza Unsilenced (2015) and the editor of Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine (2014). Dr. Alareer was also one of the founders of We Are Not Numbers, a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating "a new generation of Palestinian writers and thinkers who can bring together a profound change to the Palestinian cause."
Through his popular Twitter account, "Refaat in Gaza," Dr. Alareer documented, and forcefully condemned, the ongoing atrocities committed against his people by Israeli forces, as well as the U.S. administrations that have enabled them.
Alareer's friend and We Are Not Numbers co-founder Ahmed Alnaouqwrote on social media: "[Refaat] authored many books and wrote tens of stories about Gaza. Refaat's assassination is tragic, painful, and outrageous. It is a huge loss."
A groundswell of tributes to Alareer flooded social media following the news of his killing.
Gazan poet Mosab Abu Toha said, "Breaking, my heart is broken, my friend and colleague Refaat Alareer was killed with his family minutes ago."
"I don't want to believe this," he added. "We both loved to pick strawberries together. I took this photo of him this summer."
Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein said she is "absolutely sickened by this loss."
"I was just now on his site reading his beautiful poetry," she added. "I feel such shame."
Journalist and filmmaker Dan Cohen wrote that "I'm in tears and sick to my stomach as I write this."
"Refaat was a guiding light as I documented life and death for my documentary, Killing Gaza," he continued. "He helped me gain access to elders in his neighborhood who provided testimony of shocking Israeli war crimes."
"Refaat Alareer embraced everything good and pure about Gaza and Palestine," Cohen added. "He will not be forgotten and his legacy will live on for many generations to come."
Last month, Alareer posted one of his poems, "If I must die," on social media.
If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale.
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Critics Say Biden Plan to Cut Drug Costs Too Friendly to Big Pharma
"Federal agencies have shown themselves reluctant to act against unreasonable prices, and this new proposal may give them permission to continue to do nothing," said one expert.
Dec 07, 2023
While welcoming the White House's willingness to tackle pharmaceutical companies' patent abuse and high prescription drug prices, progressive critics argued Thursday that U.S. President Joe Biden must do more to challenge Big Pharma's monopoly power.
The White House on Thursday announced "new actions to promote competition in healthcare and support lowering prescription drug costs for American families, including the release of a proposed framework for agencies on the exercise of march-in rights on taxpayer-funded drugs and other inventions."
Under the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980—legislation meant to promote the commercialization and public availability of government-funded inventions—federal agencies reserve the right to "march in" and authorize price-lowering generic alternatives to patented medications developed with public funding.
The federal government has never invoked march-in rights, which are staunchly opposed by the pharmaceutical and other industries and interests.
"American taxpayers pay more for research than any country in the world: Hundreds of billions of dollars on research relevant to developing new drugs through the [National Institutes of Health] and other agencies," White House domestic policy adviser Neera Tanden said at a Thursday press briefing, according toThe Hill.
"But at the same time, pharmaceutical companies charge Americans two to three times—and sometimes even more than that—for the same drugs than what they can charge in other countries," she added.
The White House said Thursday that the Department of Commerce and Department of Health and Human Services "released a proposed framework for agencies on the exercise of march-in rights that specifies for the first time that price can be a factor in determining that a drug or other taxpayer-funded invention is not accessible to the public."
The issue of greedy pharmaceutical companies charging exorbitant prices for publicly funded drugs took center stage during the Covid-19 pandemic, when corporations reaped record profits selling vaccines and other treatments developed fully or partly with taxpayer money.
U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—a leading congressional critic of Big Pharma greed—called Thursday's announcement "a step forward in the right direction."
Sanders continued:
But, in my view, much more must be done. The American people are sick and tired of seeing hundreds of billions of their tax dollars going to the research and development of new treatments and cures only to end up paying, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. In my view, the administration should reinstate and expand the reasonable pricing clause to require the pharmaceutical industry to charge affordable prices for new prescription drugs developed with taxpayer support. It should also move to substantially lower the price of the prostate cancer drug Xtandi by allowing companies to manufacture generic versions of this treatment. This is a drug that was invented with taxpayer dollars by scientists at UCLA and can be purchased in Canada for one-fifth [of] the U.S. price.
In March, patient advocates blasted the Biden administration's refusal to compel Pfizer to lower Xtandi's price, even though the lifesaving prostate cancer drug—which has a nearly $190,000 annual price tag—was developed completely with public funds.
Peter Maybarduk, director of the Access to Medicines program at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said: "March-in can be, should be, a powerful tool to support fair pricing and access to publicly funded medicines, as President Biden importantly suggests. Unfortunately, the administration's march-in policy is far more limited than the statute allows."
"It should be quickly revised to recommend use of march-in wherever publicly funded medicines are unreasonably priced," he continued. "Where most drug prices already are egregious and force rationing, few drugs will seem 'extremely' priced by comparison. Federal agencies have shown themselves reluctant to act against unreasonable prices, and this new proposal may give them permission to continue to do nothing."
"Unfortunately, the administration's march-in policy is far more limited than the statute allows."
"The examples the announcement offers evade the main and important use case: Where drug corporations abuse their monopoly power to charge exorbitant prices, ignore the government contribution to [research and development], and charge Americans more than people in other countries," Maybarduk asserted.
"The final guidelines must be adjusted so they explicitly cover these scenarios and establish commonsense criteria for what constitutes an unreasonable price," he added. "Falling short risks doing nothing to lower the prices of taxpayer-funded medicines for patients, and instead perpetuating an unacceptable status quo. Americans have a right to expect not to be price gouged for medicines they paid for in the first place."
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