September, 20 2023, 08:50am EDT
Sierra Club Statement on Launch of American Climate Corps
Today, the Biden-Harris Administration launched the American Climate Corps, prioritizing environmental justice projects that meet the Administration’s Justice40 Initiative goals.
The Climate Corps will:
- Create a workforce training and service program to train over 20,000 young people in clean energy, conservation, and climate resilience, such as restoring coastal wetlands and deploying clean energy technologies;
- Offer paid jobs that provide pathways to high-quality careers;
- Coordinate across six federal agencies, including the Department of Interior, the Department of Energy, the Department of Labor, the Department of Agriculture, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and AmeriCorps, through a memorandum of understanding;
- Include five states (Arizona, Maryland, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Utah) launching their own Climate Corps, which will work as implementing partners of the American Climate Corps.
In response, Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous released the following statement:
“We need an all hands on deck approach to address the climate crisis, and the Biden-Harris Administration establishing an American Climate Corps – with specific opportunities for youth to work in climate resilience careers – is a historic effort to meet this moment. The Climate Corps will mobilize young people, workers, and federal resources in a way never seen before. The Sierra Club celebrates the Biden-Harris Administration for scaling up clean energy, increasing well-paid union jobs, and fostering environmental stewardship — exactly the path we must take to protect people and the planet.”
The Sierra Club is the most enduring and influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. We amplify the power of our 3.8 million members and supporters to defend everyone's right to a healthy world.
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Sanders, Khanna Lead Push to Tackle Medical Debt Crushing US Workers
"The time has come to cancel all medical debt and guarantee healthcare to all as a human right, not a privilege," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
May 08, 2024
A quartet of progressive U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday introduced bicameral legislation "to eliminate all $220 billion in medical debt held by millions of Americans, wipe it from credit reports, and drastically limit the accrual of future medical debt."
The Medical Debt Cancellation Act—introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Sen. Jeff Merkely (D-Ore.), and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)—is a four-point plan for ending the medical debt that's crushing so many working-class Americans.
"Our current healthcare system is bankrupting Americans."
"The medical debt crisis has exploded in recent years, decimating Americans' bank accounts and deterring them from seeking healthcare," Sanders' office said in a statement. "Among all working-age adults in the United States, an estimated 27% are currently carrying medical debt of more than $500, and 15% have medical debt loads of $2,000 or more."
If passed, the Medical Debt Cancellation Act would:
- Amend the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, making it illegal to collect medical debt incurred prior to the bill's enactment and creating a private right of action for patients;
- Amend the Fair Consumer Credit Reporting Act, effectively wiping medical debt from credit reports by preventing credit reporting agencies from reporting information related to debt that arose from medical expenses;
- Create a grant program within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to cancel medical debt, prioritizing low-resource providers and vulnerable populations; and
- Amend the Public Health Service Act, updating billing and debt collection requirements to limit the potential for future debt to be incurred.
"This is the United States of America, the richest country in the history of the world," said Sanders. "People in our country should not be going bankrupt because they got cancer and could not afford to pay their medical bills. No one in America should face financial ruin because of the outrageous cost of an unexpected medical emergency or a hospital stay."
But many do. In 2018 alone, 8 million people in the U.S. were driven into poverty due to medical debt. According to Sanders' office, nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults say they are worried about unexpected medical bills and nearly 1 in 4 people report having foregone medical treatment over cost concerns—including almost 20% of adults covered by health insurance.
"The time has come to cancel all medical debt and guarantee healthcare to all as a human right, not a privilege," said Sanders, a longtime proponent for Medicare for All in the only industrialized nation without universal coverage.
Khanna lamented that "our current healthcare system is bankrupting Americans."
"I've heard heartbreaking stories from constituents who have skipped doctor's appointments due to cost, who have lost loved ones because they couldn't afford their medication, and who aren't able to buy a house or get a job because of crippling medical debt," the congressman said.
"I'm so proud to join Sen. Sanders to cancel medical debt, wipe it from credit reports, and reform our system going forward," he added. "This bill would transform the lives of millions of Americans and I couldn't ask for a better partner in the fight."
This isn't Congress' first attempt to address the issue of medical debt. Last year, Tlaib
introduced the Restoring Unfairly Impaired Credit and Protecting Consumers Act, which would reduce the amount of time that negative information remains on a credit report from seven years to four and compel reporting agencies to erase adverse data stemming from "predatory loans and fraudulent activity."
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Study Links Abortion Restrictions and Intimate Partner Homicide
"In thinking about pregnancy itself as a risk factor for homicide, it follows that the ability to prevent or end a pregnancy" could have "immediate implications" for the safety of pregnant people, said one researcher.
May 08, 2024
A new study links abortion restrictions to an increased risk that pregnant people will be murdered by their intimate partners—and since researchers examined laws that were in place before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and cleared the way for statewide abortion bans, the authors warn that the threat may be even greater than the analysis shows.
In the study released Monday, researchers at Tulane University looked at five separate abortion restrictions and compared them to the intimate partner homicide rates reported by the National Violent Death Reporting System at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For each of the abortion restrictions, all of which were in place from 2014-22, the rate of intimate partner homicide among women and girls of reproductive age rose 3.4%.
The researchers found that extrapolated across the United States, an additional 24 women were killed by their intimate partners over the time period.
The study controlled for domestic violence risk factors including income inequality and gun ownership.
Intimate partner homicide is "consistently among the leading causes of death in pregnant and postpartum people," lead author Maeve Wallace, an associate professor at Tulane, toldThe Guardian.
Because it is still relatively rare, however, the research team used girls and women of reproductive age as a proxy for victims of violence who were likely pregnant or postpartum.
"In thinking about pregnancy itself as a risk factor for homicide, it follows that the ability to prevent or end a pregnancy" could have "immediate implications" for the safety of pregnant people in states with severe abortion restrictions and bans, Wallace told The Guardian.
The newspaper reported that the research "is almost certainly an underestimate of the potential risk to pregnant and postpartum women, because intimate partner violence is generally underreported."
The study is the latest research illustrating "the horrific reality for women in America," said U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).
Another study published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons in February found a 75% higher rate of peripartum homicide—the murder of a pregnant person or within a year of their giving birth—in states that restricted abortion access from 2018-20.
Reproductive justice advocates have pointed out that at least four states with abortion bans in place also ban divorce for married people who are pregnant.
"An abusive partner oftentimes views pregnancy as a loss of control, that their victim will now not be solely dedicated to them but will have somebody else that diverts their attention away from the abusive partner," Crystal Justice, chief external affairs officer at the National Domestic Violence Hotline, told The 19th last month after the Arizona Supreme Court reinstated an 1864 abortion ban, which has since been repealed by state lawmakers but still could be in effect for part of this year.
"Not only is the state now saying with this harmful and antiquated law that you must stay pregnant against your will," Justice said, but "during that pregnancy, the state is not going to let you legally divorce your abusive partner. I can't think of anything more outrageous or cruel."
The U.S. National Domestic Violence Hotline can be reached at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), by texting "START" to 88788, or through chat at thehotline.org. It offers 24/7, free, and confidential support. DomesticShelters.org has a list of global and national resources.
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White House Needs a Strategy for Combating Islamophobia, Say Rights Groups
"Any genuine attempt to combat Islamophobia must start with the government acknowledging the harm it continues to inflict both domestically and internationally, and offering adequate redress to affected communities at home and globally."
May 08, 2024
Nearly 100 organizations joined Muslims for Just Futures on Tuesday in calling on U.S. President Joe Biden to introduce a White House Islamophobia Strategy that centers government accountability and solidarity with Muslim and Arab American communities, demanding that the Biden administration honor the "lived experiences" of people who have faced Islamophobic attacks that have ramped up since Hamas attacked southern Israel last October.
The coalition's 26-page community memorandum, dated April 2024, was publicly released on Tuesday, the same day Biden spoke about fighting antisemitism in a speech marking the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Days of Remembrance.
Biden's conflation of antisemitism with protesters' and voters' demands to end U.S. support for Israel in order to save the lives of Palestinians in Gaza, said the community memorandum, has had "profound negative effects" on Muslim and Arab Americans.
The coalition said that organizations involved in drafting the memorandum—including Afghans for a Better Tomorrow, American Muslim Bar Association, and the Center for Constitutional Rights—"emphasized the direct role of the White House in perpetuating Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian racism, and anti-Arab racism through its ongoing support for the genocide and occupation in Palestine," among other military campaigns.
"Any genuine attempt to combat Islamophobia must start with the government acknowledging the harm it continues to inflict both domestically and internationally, and offering adequate redress to affected communities at home and globally," reads the memorandum.
The document includes a number of recommendations for agencies across the federal government, including a call for all agencies to vet potential employees "for affiliation with white nationalist or white supremacist" groups.
In the first weeks of Israel's bombardment of Gaza last fall, one high-profile alleged Islamophobic attack was perpetrated by a former State Department official who had served in the Obama administration and was filmed harassing a food cart vendor in New York.
The document makes other recommendations including:
- Biden to call for an immediate and permanent cease-fire in Gaza and end U.S. support for Israel's bombardment of the enclave;
- The closure of the Guantánamo Bay detention center;
- The U.S. intelligence community to "stop weaponizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act against Black, Arab, Muslim, Middle Eastern, and South Asian (BAMEMSA) communities by surveilling citizens and non-citizens and collecting communications without a warrant;
- The Department of Justice Civil Rights Division to consult with Black, Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, and South Asian communities about their needs and concerns, amid a surge in Islamophobic attacks that was recorded by the Council on American-Islamic Relations last year;
- The Federal Bureau of Investigation to end its use of "secret and discriminatory watchlists," which includes 1.5 million people in 2019—95% of whom had Muslim names; and
- The government to ensure that universities and schools end the targeting of "Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, and allied students supporting Palestine," who have been "discriminated against by their universities, and physically attacked, doxxed, and intimidated in efforts to silence their advocacy for Palestinian rights and opposition to Israel's genocide."
The memorandum was released as a research scholar at Arizona State University, Jonathan Yudelman, was reported to be on leave after cellphone video last weekend captured him intimidating and yelling at a women wearing a hijab.
Other Islamophobic attacks in recent months have included the stabbing of a young Palestinian American man in Austin, Texas and the shooting of three Palestinian students in Burlington, Vermont.
"By embracing a framework that honors lived experiences and acknowledges the diverse impacts within Muslim and related communities, we can begin the urgent task of dismantling systemic barriers that harm Muslim communities and those racially perceived as such," said Muslims for Just Futures. "Additionally, the government must take decisive action to dismantle policies that perpetuate Islamophobia while actively involving affected communities in decision-making processes."
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