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Biden Administration Continues to Fail Asylum-Seekers as Title 42 is Extended
WASHINGTON
Citing concerns over the new Omicron variant, today officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced an extension to Title 42, a clause in public health law that the Biden and Trump administrations have misused to expel hundreds of thousands of individuals and families arriving at U.S. borders.
Responding to this news, Amy Fischer, Americas Advocacy Director at Amnesty International USA, said:
"Public health advocates, including former officials from the CDC, have long contended that Title 42 has no public health rationale. Instead, it serves as a politically-motivated tool, using racist, xenophobic tropes about immigrants to weaponize COVID-19 against migrants and asylum-seekers.
"The extension of this egregious policy, in conjunction with the decision to re-implement and expand the heinous Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program, creates a reality where migrants are virtually cut off to all avenues to asylum. Black migrants are particularly vulnerable to expulsion under these policies and, combined with the decision to expand MPP to newly include Haiti and other Caribbean countries, these policies underscore the anti-Black racism that is endemic within our immigration system.
"President Biden promised that in his first 100 days as president, he would end the Trump Administration's detrimental asylum policies and 'ensure that the U.S. remains open and welcoming to people from every part of the world.' Now, over 300 days since President Biden's inauguration, asylum-seekers are endangered by the very policies he pledged to end on the campaign trail.
"People in search of safety need access to asylum without delay. The Biden administration must stop failing asylum-seekers and restore access to asylum by ending Title 42 and MPP now."
Amnesty International is a global movement of millions of people demanding human rights for all people - no matter who they are or where they are. We are the world's largest grassroots human rights organization.
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'Corporate Greed Is Out of Control': Tlaib-Sanders Bill Would Tax Companies for Excessive CEO Pay
"At a time of record-breaking income and wealth inequality, we must demand that the wealthiest people and most profitable corporations in America finally pay their fair share of taxes," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Sep 16, 2025
With the world's richest person, Tesla CEO and Republican megadonor Elon Musk, on the cusp of becoming the first trillionaire on the planet, two leading progressive lawmakers are calling on Congress to pass a bill to "rein in the obscene salaries of America's top executives."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) on Monday introduced the Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act with the aim of raising taxes on companies that pay their executives more than 50 times their workers' wages.
The legislation would impose penalties starting at 0.5 percentage points for companies with CEO-to-worker pay ratios between 50-to-1 and 100-to-1. Firms where executives make more than 500 times their workers' pay would be forced to pay the highest rate.
The bill would also require the US Treasury Department to crack down on tax avoidance, including schemes that disguise pay disparities by outsourcing jobs to contractors.
Sanders said that exorbitant CEO pay and massive pay gaps at corporations are intolerable "while 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and millions work longer hours for lower wages."
"It is unacceptable that the CEOs of the largest low-wage corporations make more than 630 times what their average workers make," said the senator, who has been criss-crossing the country this year with his Fighting Oligarchy Tour, galvanizing people in red and blue districts against wealth inequality, political corruption, and corporate power.
"This is not only morally obscene, but also insane economic policy," said Sanders. "At a time of record-breaking income and wealth inequality, we must demand that the wealthiest people and most profitable corporations in America finally pay their fair share of taxes and treat all employees with the respect and dignity they deserve. That’s precisely what this legislation begins to do."
The proposal would raise an estimated $150 billion over a decade if tech giants, Wall Street firms, and other large corporations continue their current compensation patterns, and Sanders and Tlaib noted that the largest companies in the US would have paid billions of dollars more in taxes last year had the legislation been in effect.
JPMorgan Chase would have paid $2.38 billion in taxes, while Google would have paid $2.16 billion and Walmart would have paid $929 million.
With 62% of Republican voters and 75% of Democrats supporting a cap on CEO pay relative to worker salaries, the legislation would likely be well received by Americans across the political spectrum—but Republican lawmakers have shown little to no interest in confronting the pay gap, ensuring fair wages for workers, or reining in excessive executive compensation.
With the current CEO-employee pay gap, CEOs at the 350 largest publicly owned firms make 290 times more than the average pay of a typical worker at their companies, with the gap much larger at some corporations.
The median Walmart worker made $29,469 in 2024, while CEO Doug McMillon took home $27.4 million—a 930-to-1 gap.
The median Starbucks worker would have to work for more than 6,000 years to earn the pay CEO Brian Niccol took home in 2024.
"Working people are sick and tired of corporate greed," said Tlaib. “It’s disgraceful that corporations continue to rake in record profits by exploiting the labor of their workers. Every worker deserves a living wage and human dignity on the job."
"It’s time," she added, "to make the rich pay their fair share.”
Tlaib and Sanders introduced the legislation as Pope Leo spoke out against exorbitant CEO pay in his first interview since taking the helm of the Catholic Church, reserving particular condemnation for Musk, for whom the Tesla board proposed a $1 trillion pay package if he grows the company by eightfold over the next decade.
“CEOs that 60 years ago might have been making four to six times more than what the workers are receiving... it’s [now] 600 times more than the average workers are receiving,” the pope told the Catholic outlet Crux.
“Yesterday, the news that Elon Musk is going to be the first trillionaire in the world: What does that mean and what’s that about?" he added. "If that is the only thing that has value anymore, then we’re in big trouble.”
Sanders said Monday that the pope "is exactly right."
"No society can survive when one man becomes a trillionaire while the vast majority struggle to just survive—trying to put food on the table, pay rent, and afford healthcare," said Sanders. "We can and must do better."
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Trump's 'Psychotic' NYT Defamation Lawsuit Elicits Ridicule From Legal Experts
One critic said the lawsuit was "a full frontal attack on free speech" that also "almost reads like a parody."
Sep 16, 2025
US President Donald Trump on Monday evening filed a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times that was quickly ridiculed by legal experts for entirely lacking merit.
In the lawsuit, Trump accused the Times of conspiring to prevent his victory in the 2024 election through a campaign of "election interference" that included, among other things, its editorial board's decision to endorse former Vice President Kamala Harris.
"It came as no surprise when, shortly before the election, the newspaper published, on the front page, highlighted in a location never seen before, its deranged endorsement of Kamala Harris with the hyperbolic opening line '[i]t is hard to imagine a candidate more unworthy to serve as president of the United States than Donald Trump,'" the lawsuit states.
Pointing to what it claimed was defamatory material published by the Times, the lawsuit singled out "a malicious, defamatory, and disparaging book written by two of its reporters and three false, malicious, defamatory, and disparaging articles, all carefully crafted by Defendants, with actual malice, calculated to inflict maximum damage upon President Trump."
The book in question is "Lucky Loser," written by Pulitzer Prize-winning Times reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig, which did a deep examination of the president's finances and contrasted it with what it described as his false claims of unprecedented success in business.
The three articles cited by the lawsuit include one that quotes Trump's own former chief of staff, John Kelly, warning that he would rule "like a dictator" in his second term; a news analysis piece that described Trump as facing a well documented "lifetime of scandals"; and an article by Buettner and Craig that is an adapted excerpt from their book.
"The book and articles are part of a decades-long pattern by The New York Times of intentional and malicious defamation against President Trump," the complaint stated. "Defendants maliciously published the book and the articles knowing that these publications were filled with repugnant distortions and fabrications about President Trump."
The lawsuit then demanded the Times pay $15 billion in compensatory damages.
The Times issued a brief response to the lawsuit in which it defended its reporting and labeled Trump's defamation allegations as baseless.
"This lawsuit has no merit," said the paper. "It lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting. The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics. We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favor and stand up for journalists' First Amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people."
Some experts who examined the lawsuit were quick to side with the Times in this dispute, and many of them flat-out ridiculed Trump for filing the suit in the first place.
Holger Hestermeyer, chair of international and EU law at the Vienna School of International Studies, wrote on Bluesky that the lawsuit was "a full frontal attack on free speech" that also "almost reads like a parody."
In addition to lampooning the suit's specific defamation claims, Hestermeyer also mocked the suit for being loaded with hyperbolic statements, including one that said "The Apprentice" reality TV series "represented the cultural magnitude of President Trump's singular brilliance, which captured the zeitgeist of our time."
Attorney George Conway delivered an even pithier dismissal of the suit.
"Is it possible for a legal pleading to be psychotic?" he asked rhetorically. "I think we have an answer."
Chris Geidner, a journalist who publishes the "Law Dork" newsletter, similarly expressed astonishment at the contents of Trump's lawsuit.
"I honestly thought there was a chance that I'd fallen asleep and was dreaming the most absurd, childlike, ego-maniac lawsuit when I tried to read this Trump defamation complaint against the Times, Penguin Random House, and individual journalists," he wrote. "Like, seriously. What are we even doing here, folks?"
Bloomberg columnist Tim O'Brien, who was unsuccessfully sued by Trump for defamation over his 2005 book "TrumpNation," predicted that Trump's lawsuit against the Times would similarly end poorly for him.
"Trump says he plans to sue the Times for $15 billion," O'Brien wrote on Bluesky. "Been there, done that. He sued me for less—$5 billion. Discovery will be invasive and grueling—and involve Trump’s finances, family history and political machinations. And that’s just for starters."
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NY State Judge Throws Out Terrorism Charges Against Luigi Mangione
"While the defendant was clearly expressing an animus toward UHC, and the health care industry generally," said the judge, "it does not follow that his goal was to ‘intimidate and coerce a civilian population.'"
Sep 16, 2025
A judge in New York City on Tuesday threw out a pair of charges against Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December of last year while he walked down a street in Manhattan.
Judge Gregory Carro did not throw out the entirety of the murder charges against Mangione, but said two of the most serious charges—murder in the first degree as a crime of terrorism and a second-degree charge related to terrorism—were not proven by the prosecution's case presented to a grand jury.
The judge indicated that just because Mangione may have been motivated by ideological opposition to the for-profit industry, that does not de facto make it terrorism under New York statute.
"While the defendant was clearly expressing an animus toward UHC, and the health care industry generally, it does not follow that his goal was to ‘intimidate and coerce a civilian population,’ and indeed, there was no evidence presented of such a goal,” Carro wrote in his decision.
In addition to state charges in New York, Mangione is also facing a federal murder case over the killing of Thompson, with the federal prosecutors seeking the death penalty. The accused has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
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