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jen psaki
'Say It With Pride': Pushback After Psaki Walks Back Biden Amazon Union Remarks
Sen. Bernie Sanders and others applauded the president's statement of support for Amazon workers, but the White House quickly worked to temper Biden's comments.
Apr 06, 2022
Sen. Bernie Sanders and other progressives on Wednesday applauded President Joe Biden's words of support for Amazon workers--and rejected the White House's attempt to temper the president's statement, calling on the administration to proudly and unequivocally align itself with pro-worker efforts.
In a speech to the North America's Building Trades Unions (NABTU), Biden spoke about the creation of the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment, which is "dedicated to mobilizing the federal government's policies, programs, and practices to empower workers to organize and successfully bargain with their employers."
"Unions are about providing dignity and respect. That's why I created the White House task force to make sure the choice belongs to workers alone," Biden said before smiling and adding. "And by the way, Amazon, here we come. Watch. Watch."
The president went on to talk about his administration's push for Congress to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act.
Biden's comments came less than a week after Amazon employees at Staten Island, New York's JFK8 fulfillment center voted by a wide margin to form a labor union--without the support of an established union and after facing aggressive anti-labor tactics by the company.
The vote could make workers at the warehouse the first of Amazon's 1.1 million U.S. workers to secure a union contract; employees in Bessemer, Alabama are also attempting to form a collective bargaining unit for the second time, but that election is so far too close to call.
"President Biden is right," said Sanders (I-Vt.) after the president's speech. "Let's get every Amazon worker in a union."
The president's remarks were "exactly what working class people need to hear," said Faiz Shakir, a former campaign manager for Sanders and the founder of pro-labor media outlet More Perfect Union.
"It was a clear call of support to the multi-union campaign to unionize Amazon," he told The Washington Post.
The stunning victory in Staten Island last week, which was spearheaded by a worker who had been fired for the company after publicly complaining about safety practices, comes as employees at Starbucks stores across the country are also working to unionize and facing union-busting tactics, and as union membership has declined over the past year.
"This kind of rhetoric from Biden is a welcome change coming from the top of the Democratic Party," said Majority Report co-host Emma Vigeland.
Biden's comments led Post reporter Olivier Knox to muse that White House Chief of Staff Ronald Klain may soon be hearing from Amazon, where the president's former director of communications, Jay Carney, now oversees public relations.
The White House worked quickly to moderate any expectation progressives might have had that the president's words signaled plans to take action to help Amazon workers who want to unionize.
"What he was not doing is sending a message that he or the U.S. government would be directly involved in any of these efforts or take any direct action," said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki shortly after Biden's speech, when she was asked by a reporter if the president was "endorsing" the efforts of workers trying to organize.
"I do not understand the negative framing here," tweeted Mike Casca, communications director for Sanders.
The Vermont senator's staff director, Warren Gunnels, also expressed exasperation with Psaki.
The "correct answer" to the reporter's question, said Gunnels, should have been "an unambiguous yes."
"The U.S. government and the administration should be actively encouraging workers to form unions at Amazon and every corporation in America," he added. "Say it with pride, not shame."
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Calls for Senate to Act Grow as Idaho Governor Signs 'Heinous' Anti-Choice Law
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that President Joe Biden "again calls on Congress to act and send a bill to his desk to shut down these radical steps."
Mar 23, 2022
Advocates on Wednesday called on the U.S. Senate to codify reproductive rights nationwide after Idaho's Republican governor signed into law a six-week abortion ban that incentivizes citizens to collect bounties on healthcare providers.
"It's clear that anti-choice lawmakers across the country are more emboldened than ever in advancing their draconian attacks on abortion rights and access."
The Idaho Statesman reports Gov. Brad Little signed into law S.B. 1309, which in addition to banning most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy allows potential relatives of an aborted fetus to sue medical professionals who attempt or perform the procedure. Under the law, successful litigants are entitled to a reward of $20,000, plus legal fees.
S.B. 1309--which will go into effect in 30 days unless a court intervenes--is modeled after Texas S.B. 8, although unlike that legislation, the Idaho law allows exceptions in cases of rape or incest. However, it requires survivors to file a police report with a physician before undergoing an exception-based abortion.
Idaho state Rep. Lauren Necochea (D-19A) tweeted: "I am outraged that Gov. Little just signed our reproductive rights away in the cruelest way! Cash awards for rapists' relatives? That's the extremism that has gripped the Idaho Republican Party and it's taking our state over a cliff."
NARAL Pro-Choice America president Mini Timmaraju said in a statement that the U.S. Supreme Court's "refusal to block Texas' blatantly unconstitutional bounty-hunting scheme opened the door for anti-choice lawmakers in Idaho to adopt this cruel ban on abortion to enact in their own state."
"It's no surprise that anti-choice lawmakers are moving to take advantage of what they see as a loophole to bypass the constitutional right to abortion for as long as it stands," she continued.
"There's no doubt that this dystopian ban could shut off access to abortion care in Idaho, and its consequences will reverberate throughout the rest of the nation," Timmaraju--who called the law "heinous" on Twitter--added. "It's clear that anti-choice lawmakers across the country are more emboldened than ever in advancing their draconian attacks on abortion rights and access--no matter the costs to our freedoms and families."
NARAL Pro-Choice America warned that "the fight for reproductive freedom faces a pivotal moment as the anti-choice supermajority on the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hand down a decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization--a case regarding Mississippi's 15-week abortion ban that directly challenges Roe v. Wade."
"We cannot allow these unconstitutional and dangerous laws to stand. Abortion is healthcare, not a crime."
"If Roe fell tomorrow, 28 states are likely to take action to prohibit abortion outright," the group added. "Of those, 13 states--including Idaho--already have 'trigger bans' in place which would ban abortion automatically."
U.S. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) noted that "Republican state legislatures across the nation are criminalizing the constitutional right to abortion and now Idaho has signed the latest Texas-inspired bill into law. We cannot allow these unconstitutional and dangerous laws to stand. Abortion is healthcare, not a crime."
Reproductive rights advocates renewed calls for the U.S. Senate to pass the Women's Health Protection Act (WHPA), which would codify abortion rights nationwide. The House of Representatives approved the WHPA last September, but the measure failed to pass in the upper chamber after right-wing West Virgina Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin voted with Republicans to filibuster it.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement Wednesday that the Idaho law is "devastating for women," while noting that President Joe Biden "again calls on Congress to act and send a bill to his desk to shut down these radical steps."
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Psaki Says Biden Has No Intention of 'No-Fly Zone' for Ukraine
"A no-fly zone is not a magical umbrella that prevents planes flying in a given area," said one expert. "To put in a no-fly zone is to go to war."
Feb 28, 2022
Emphasizing U.S. President Joe Biden's desire to avoid a war with Russia, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki repeatedly made clear Monday that the administration does not plan to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
Following Russian President Vladimir Putin's long-awaited invasion of Ukraine last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged Biden and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to take such action.
Psaki told reporters during a Monday press briefing that "the president has been very clear that he is not intending to send U.S. troops to fight a war with Russia, and I think what's important to note here is that is essentially what this would be a step toward, because a no-fly zone would require implementation."
Implementation "would require deploying U.S. military to enforce" the no-fly zone (NFZ), she said. That could lead to a direct conflict and "potentially a war with Russia, which is something we are not planning to be a part of."
Psaki made similar remarks in an interview with MSNBC on Monday, highlighting that an NFZ "would essentially mean the U.S. military would be shooting down planes, Russian planes."
"That is definitely escalatory. That would potentially put us into a place where we're in a military conflict with Russia. That is not something the president wants to do," she said. "Those are all the reasons why that's not a good idea."
"We are not going to have a military war with Russia with U.S. troops," and Biden believes it is "vitally important" to be direct with the American public about that, the press secretary added.
Psaki's explanations Monday echoed recent statements from other members of the administration.
Asked about a potential NFZ on Sunday, Linda Thomas-Greenfield told CNN's Dana Bash that "the president has made clear that we're not going to put boots on the ground. We're not going to put American troops in danger. So that means we're not going to put American troops in the air as well."
Warning that "a Ukraine no-fly zone would put the world on the brink of nuclear war," Vox's Zack Beauchamp reported Sunday:
The U.S. and its allies have used no-fly zones three times in the recent past: Iraq after the Gulf War, Bosnia during the mid-90s conflict, and Libya during the 2011 intervention. In each of those cases, the U.S. and its partners were facing vastly inferior military forces. There was no real question about their ability to take control over the skies.
Russia is an entirely different story. Its air force dwarfs Ukraine's; it is second in size only to the U.S. Air Force. An attempt to impose an NFZ in Ukraine would be nothing like these previous engagements, and it's not even clear that it would be possible.
...[The] risks of a direct U.S.-Russia shooting war are apocalyptic. In his speech this week declaring war on Ukraine, Putin all but openly vowed that any international intervention in the conflict would trigger nuclear retaliation.
"To anyone who would consider interfering from the outside: If you do, you will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history," the Russian president said. "I hope you hear me."
Experts have issued similar warnings of the dangers of an NFZ in recent days.
"Don't know who all needs to hear this, but a no-fly zone is not a magical umbrella that prevents planes flying in a given area," tweeted Olga Oliker, the International Crisis Group's program director for Europe and Central Asia.
"It's a decision to shoot at planes that fly in a given area, including with one's own planes," Oliker added. "To put in a no-fly zone is to go to war."
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Manchin Joins Sinema in Destroying Democratic Hopes to Pass Voting Rights
"We're old enough to remember a whole month ago when both Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin voted to make an exception to the filibuster for the debt ceiling," Public Citizen sardonically noted.
Jan 13, 2022
As conservative U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin on Thursday joined his right-wing Democratic colleague Kyrsten Sinema in announcing his opposition to abolishing the Senate filibuster, progressive observers excoriated the pair--who recently supported a filibuster carve-out to raise the debt ceiling--for obstructing their party's landmark voting rights legislation.
"Sinema and Manchin voted last month to abolish the filibuster for the debt ceiling--but won't vote to abolish the filibuster for voting rights."
Manchin (W.Va.) followed his Arizona colleague in voicing support for protecting the filibuster, which racial justice campaigners call a "Jim Crow relic" because it has been used so many times to block voting and civil rights legislation.
Mother Jones senior reporter Ari Berman noted that Republican-led states "have passed new voter suppression laws, gerrymandered maps, and election subversion bills through simple majority, party-line votes, yet Sinema and Manchin demand [a] bipartisan supermajority to protect voting rights."
Berman said the pair "are like spineless Republican senators during end of Reconstruction who supported filibuster of voting rights bill that would've blocked poll taxes and literacy tests," actions that "ushered in 75 years of Jim Crow."
In a lengthy statement in which he declared that he "will not vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster," Manchin cited former Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va), an erstwhile Ku Klux Klan member and ardent segregationist who infamously filibustered the landmark 1964 Voting Rights Act for 14 hours. Byrd would renounce racism later in his congressional career.
"Senator Byrd's insight helped explain why at no time in the history of the United States has the Senate been able to end debate on legislation with a simple majority," Manchin falsely asserted, as the rules of the first U.S. Senate in 1789 allowed debate to end after a simple majority vote.
Some progressives also noted that just over a month ago, both Manchin and Sinema approved a carve-out to the filibuster in order to raise the federal debt limit.
"Sinema and Manchin voted last month to abolish the filibuster for the debt ceiling--but won't vote to abolish the filibuster for voting rights," tweeted human rights attorney Qasim Rashid, who said that's because "raising the debt ceiling keeps them employed--but expanding voting rights makes them irrelevant."
Manchin's statement came after President Joe Biden met with the Senate Democratic caucus and urged members to take the necessary steps--including abolishing or modifying the filibuster--to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
Related Content
Biden Demands End of Filibuster to Pass Voting Rights
Republican senators have blocked the bills by invoking the 60-vote filibuster rule.
Multiple outlets reported that Biden would meet with Manchin and Sinema Thursday evening in a last-ditch attempt to salvage the two voting rights bills.
When asked earlier in the day whether the president has accepted that he "cannot sway" the pair when it comes to the filibuster, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that "we're going to keep fighting until the votes are had."
Vox senior correspondent Jamil Smith tweeted that Sinema "thought it would be a good idea today to spit on John Lewis' legacy," and that she and Manchin know that their "own party is the only one trying to repair a Voting Rights Act that requires repair."
"They just do not care," he said.
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Border Patrol Accused of 'Unfathomable Cruelty' and 'Cracking' Whips on Haitians
"It doesn't matter if a Democrat or Republican is president, our immigration system is designed for cruelty towards and dehumanization of immigrants," said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Sep 20, 2021
Progressive leaders and activists on Monday reacted with shock, disgust, and condemnation of an immigration system "designed for cruelty" toward migrants following the publication of photos showing mounted U.S. Border Patrol agents using their horse reins like whips to round up Haitian asylum-seekers along the Texas-Mexico border.
The El Paso Times reports whip-swinging agents on horseback charged at migrants carrying food and water as they waded across the Rio Grande near Del Rio, in Val Verde County, on Sunday.
According to the paper:
As the Haitians tried to climb onto the U.S. side of the river Sunday afternoon, the agent shouted: "Let's go! Get out now! Back to Mexico!"
The agent swung his whip menacingly, charging his horse toward the men in the river who were trying to return to an encampment under the international bridge in Del Rio after buying food and water in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico. One migrant fell as he tried to dodge, others shielded their heads with their hands.
In video footage published by Al Jazeera, one Border Patrol agent disparages migrants, saying, "You use your women? This is why your country [censored], because you use your women for this."
As the agents retreated, the Haitians returned to the overcrowded camp where more than 10,000 migrants are waiting to exercise their legal right to claim asylum from political violence and natural disasters.
Haitian officials are asking the Biden administration to halt the internationally condemned expulsions of thousands of Haitians under Title 42, a section of the Public Health Safety Act which former President Donald Trump invoked early in the Covid-19 pandemic to swiftly remove asylum-seekers from the United States.
"Cracking a fucking whip on Haitians fleeing hardship shows you that this system simply can't be reformed."
--Rep. Rashida Tlaib
Even as the Biden administration announced Monday that it would seek to resettle 125,000 refugees in the next 12 months, Haitians in the border camp spoke of desperate needs today.
"Sanitary products, there aren't any. Food, there isn't any either. They don't give you anything," said a man who gave only his first name, Nicolas.
When informed of the Biden administration expulsions, Nicolas--who traveled from Haiti to South America, then across all of Central America and Mexico to reach the U.S. border, told Al Jazeera that "what kills me... is that everyone knows what we Haitians are going through. There's no president. Crime is high. Students can't go to school. There's no work. The economy's down. People cannot put up with that. Deportation is not good for us."
On Monday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki called the images of whip-wielding border guards "horrible to watch."
When pressed about whether the agents in the photos should be allowed to act in such a manner, Psaki added: "Of course they should never be able to do it again."
"I don't know what the circumstances would be, it's obviously horrific, the footage," she added. "I don't have any more information on it, so let me venture to do that and we'll see if there's more to convey."
Progressive lawmakers pulled no punches in their reaction to the photos. Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) decried the "unfathomable cruelty" depicted in the images," while Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) used more explicit language.
"It doesn't matter if a Democrat or Republican is president, our immigration system is designed for cruelty towards and dehumanization of immigrants," tweeted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). "Immigration should not be a crime, and its criminalization is a relatively recent invention. This is a stain on our country."
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) tweeted: "These are human rights abuses, plain and simple. Cruel, inhumane, and a violation of domestic and international law. This needs a course correction and the issuance of a clear directive on how to humanely process asylum-seekers at our border."
At a Monday afternoon press conference, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas praised "the heroic work of the United States Border Patrol" before responding to a reporter's question about the photos by accusing him of "assuming facts that have not yet been determined."
"To control the horse, long reins are used," Mayorkas said, "but we are going to investigate the facts."
United States Border Patrol Chief Raul L. Ortiz added that "operating in a riverine environment on horseback is a difficult situation, and trying to... control those horses so that we do not get in a position where we injure a migrant as they're trying to make that treacherous trek across that river is probably more important than anything, and I'm pretty sure and confident that that's what was happening."
Observers fluent in the history of anti-Black and anti-immigrant violence were confident something else was happening.
Guerline Jozef, co-founder and executive director of the California-based Haitian Bridge Alliance, told Democracy Now! that the photos show "the horrific reality that we are living right now."
Jozef continued:
The pictures you are seeing with this officer on his horse and literally whipping... the Haitian migrants, the Black bodies, that is not a new picture in America. That is the picture of the system, of the anti-Black racism that the system is based upon.
As a Black woman, as an American woman, as a Haitian woman, I am horrified by that picture. I am horrified that today, in 2021, we, as the United States of America, are behaving in such a way, where we literally do not even consider the humanity of a person, so that the world is watching, and that is the picture they are seeing. The picture they are seeing is of men on horseback whipping Black bodies. That is what the world is seeing in America right now.
As numerous conservative observers denied that the photos showed Border Patrol agents whipping asylum-seekers, Project on Government Oversight (POGO) senior ethics fellow tweeted, "How the hell would it even matter if someone is using an object that was marketed and sold as a whip or using some other object to whip a human being? It's whip if it's used as a whip!"
Aura Bogado, senior investigative reporter and producer at Reveal, asserted that "there is no context and there [are] no circumstances under which it's in any way acceptable to whip human beings."
Meanwhile, Haitians languishing in the border encampment expressed confusion and despair.
"We don't have money, we don't have anything. We spent two months getting here on foot," Charles Edirame, who was in the camp with his wife and daughter, told the El Paso Times. "In Haiti, we don't have a president. There was just an earthquake. How can I go back to Haiti? If I go back, I could die the next day."
Update: The El Paso Times reporting cited in the above news story was later clarified in an update in which the newspaper stated: "Our reporting team witnessed at least one agent on horseback swing his reins like a whip. We have updated the story to clarify that fact since it was not an actual whip."
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Ocasio-Cortez to Kellyanne Conway: 'Don't Let the Fascist Victim Complex Hit You on the Way Out'
Former President Donald Trump's senior adviser refused to resign from the U.S. Air Force Academy's advisory board.
Sep 08, 2021
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined left-leaning politicians and pundits Wednesday who took swipes at Kellyanne Conway after the former senior adviser to ex-President Donald Trump said she would not comply with a Biden administration request to resign from the U.S. Air Force Academy's advisory board.
"Clinging onto vestiges of power against the people's will is kind of your/Trump's/ the GOP's thing."
--Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
The White House Office of Presidential Personnel sent letters on Wednesday to Trump appointees on advisory boards at the U.S. Military Academy, U.S. Naval Academy, and U.S. Air Force Academy requesting their resignations. Such advisory board terms normally last three years.
According to Military Times, those asked to step down include Conway, former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, and former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster.
Current White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Wednesday that President Joe Biden's "objective is what any president's objective is... to ensure you have nominees and people serving on these boards who are qualified to serve on them and who are aligned with your values."
"I will let others evaluate whether they think Kellyanne Conway and Sean Spicer and others were qualified or not... to serve on these boards," Psaki added.
A defiant Conway took to Twitter to share a letter she wrote to Biden rejecting the administration's resignation request.
"I'm not resigning, but you should," she wrote, noting that the "request is a break from presidential norms."
Responding to Conway's intransigence, Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) called the actions of the former Trump aide--with whom she frequently sparred--"predictable."
"When you're fired, don't let the fascist victim complex hit you on the way out," she quipped.
Conway's objection to Biden's departure from "presidential norms" drew squalls of laughter from some left-leaning observers. In a Harry Potter reference, Rantt Media co-founder Ahmed Baba, who chronicled every day of the Trump administration, tweeted that "seeing Kellyanne Conway complain about a 'break from presidential norms' is like seeing Bellatrix Lestrange complain about people using dark magic."
"Bruh," added Baba, "you were working for Voldemort for years."
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Biden Clarifies 'Facebook Isn't Killing People' After Blaming Social Media Companies for Covid-19 Deaths
"It's bad information" about vaccines that is killing people, the president said.
Jul 19, 2021
U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday clarified his remarks from last week that social media companies like Facebook are "killing people" by allowing the spread of Covid-19 misinformation, explaining instead that users are posting deadly "bad information."
"By remaining the platform of choice for insurrectionists, extremists, and far right radicals, Facebook continues to wallow in filth--from Q-anon to January 6th to Covid disinformation."
--The Real Facebook Oversight Board
Last Friday, Biden responded to a reporter's question about Covid-19 misinformation on social media platforms by saying "they're killing people" and that "the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated."
Asked on Monday about his comment, Biden replied, "I meant precisely what I said."
"Facebook isn't killing people--these 12 people are out there giving misinformation," the president said, echoing comments by White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Friday that a dozen people are responsible for nearly two-thirds of all anti-vaccine posts on social media, and that "all of them remain active on Facebook."
Biden said that "anyone listening" to the misinformation "is getting hurt by it."
"It's killing people," he reiterated. "It's bad information."
"My hope is that Facebook, instead of taking it personally, that somehow I'm saying Facebook is killing people, that they would do something about the misinformation, the outrageous misinformation about the vaccine," said Biden. "That's what I meant."
The White House remarks on Friday followed U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy's issuance of an advisory entitled Confronting Health Misinformation (pdf), which calls on "all Americans to help slow the spread of health misinformation during the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond."
Appearing on CNN Sunday, Murthy backed up the White House's Friday comments by saying: "I've been very consistent in what I have said to the technology companies... health misinformation harms people's health. It costs them their lives."
The Real Facebook Oversight Board--a self-described "emergency response to the ongoing harms on Facebook's platforms from leading global scholars, experts, and advocates"--defended Biden's remarks from last week in a Sunday Medium post stating that "Facebook's lack of oversight and any coherent content moderation strategy is driving vaccinations down and Covid infections up."
The group noted that "11 out of the top 15 vaccine related-posts on Facebook last week were disinformation or anti-vaccine."
"Facebook has a Covid disinformation problem because Facebook has a right-wing extremism problem," the post asserted. "By remaining the platform of choice for insurrectionists, extremists, and far right radicals, Facebook continues to wallow in filth--from QAnon to January 6th to Covid disinformation."
In a Saturday blog post entitled "Moving Past the Finger Pointing," Facebook vice president of integrity Guy Rosen wrote that "the data shows that 85% of Facebook users in the U.S. have been or want to be vaccinated against Covid-19."
"President Biden's goal was for 70% of Americans to be vaccinated by July 4. Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed," Rosen added.
Biden's remarks about Facebook ignited a firestorm of right-wing backlash, including more misinformation. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) tweeted that "this is how communism starts."
"The White House is working with Facebook to censor your post which is violating your free speech because people want to discuss... a non-FDA approved vaccine that the Biden administration wants to force you to take," Greene lied. Her tweet was the top vaccine-related post in the U.S. on Friday, according to CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned social insights tool.
The Facebook fracas comes as the highly transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 is largely responsible for a 70% surge in new U.S. infections last week, with hospitalizations up by more than one-third. Less than half of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, with the nation's inoculation drive stalled amid hesitancy partially driven by misinformation.
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As Right-Wing Misinformation Spreads, CDC Laments 'Pandemic of the Unvaccinated'
Both the White House and the Surgeon General have targeted conservative news outlets and social media platforms for fueling resurgence of Covid-19
Jul 16, 2021
Amid rising U.S. Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations and flagging vaccination rates, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky on Friday warned that the highly transmissible Delta variant is spreading rapidly in the United States, while President Joe Biden and top administration officials took aim at coronavirus misinformation disseminated on social media platforms and on right-wing news networks.
"There is a message that is crystal clear: This is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated," Walensky said, noting that 97% of new Covid-19 hospitalizations are of people who have not had their shots. "We are seeing outbreaks of cases in parts of the country that have low vaccination coverage, because unvaccinated people are at risk."
"The good news is if you are fully vaccinated you are protected against severe Covid, hospitalization, and death, and are even protected against the known variants, including the delta variant, circulating in this country," she added. "If you are not vaccinated, you remain at risk."
Friday afternoon, Biden accused social media companies of "killing people" by allowing Covid-19 and vaccine misinformation to proliferate on their platforms, adding that "the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated."
Biden and Walensky's remarks followed a Thursday White House press briefing at which U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy called the Covid-19 and vaccine misinformation "an imminent and insidious threat to our nation's health."
Murthy implored social and traditional news media companies, as well as healthcare workers and the American public, to do more in the face of the "urgent" public health threat.
"We must confront misinformation as a nation," said Murthy. "Lives are depending on it."
While a Facebook spokesperson told Reuters that the company is taking "aggressive action against misinformation about Covid-19 and vaccines to protect public health," and that it has so far "removed more than 18 million pieces of Covid misinformation, removed accounts that repeatedly break these rules, and connected more than two billion people to reliable information about Covid-19 and Covid vaccines across our apps," critics say it and other companies must do more.
Speaking at the White House briefing, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki accused Facebook--which owns Instagram and WhatsApp--of taking insufficient action to combat misinformation. Psaki said that 12 people are responsible for nearly two-thirds of all anti-vaccine posts on social media.
"All of them remain active on Facebook," she said.
"Information travels quite quickly on social media platforms," said Psaki, "and Facebook needs to move more quickly to remove harmful, violative posts--posts that will be within their policies for removal often remain up for days. That's too long. The information spreads too quickly."
The administration's concerns come as U.S. coronavirus cases have doubled over the past three weeks and the nation's vaccination drive has stalled amid hesitancy partially driven by misinformation.
Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that states with lower vaccination rates had three times as many reported Covid-19 infections last week than states where more people are fully vaccinated, and nearly all new U.S. Covid-19 deaths are among people who have not received vaccines.
"Health misinformation is a serious threat to public health. Limiting the spread of health misinformation is a moral and civic imperative that will require a whole-of-society effort."
--U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy
New reported U.S. coronavirus cases have soared from around 8,000 per day in late June to over 30,000 daily cases in recent days. More than 605,000 people have died in the United States during the course of the pandemic.
Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor of medicine at the George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., warned earlier this week that he expects U.S. Covid-19 deaths to soon spike in places with relatively low vaccination rates.
"In places like Missouri where ICUs are packed, you're going to see a surprising amount of death," he predicted.
On Thursday, Murthy released a Surgeon General Advisory--which are typically issued in the face of physical health threats like tobacco or drugs--in response to what the World Health Organization has called an "infodemic" of "false or misleading information in digital and physical environments during a disease outbreak."
Entitled Confronting Health Misinformation (pdf), the advisory calls on "all Americans to help slow the spread of health misinformation during the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond."
"Health misinformation is a serious threat to public health," says Murthy. "It can cause confusion, sow mistrust, harm people's health, and undermine public health efforts. Limiting the spread of health misinformation is a moral and civic imperative that will require a whole-of-society effort."
The advisory asks social media companies to:
- Assess the benefits and harms of products and platforms and take responsibility for addressing the harms;
- Give researchers access to useful data to properly analyze the spread and impact of misinformation;
- Strengthen the monitoring of misinformation;
- Prioritize early detection of misinformation "superspreaders" and repeat offenders;
- Evaluate the effectiveness of internal policies and practices in addressing misinformation and be transparent with findings;
- Proactively address information deficits;
- Amplify communications from trusted messengers and subject matter experts; and
- Prioritize protecting health professionals, journalists, and others from online harassment.
As for traditional news media, Murthy's advisory calls for:
- Training journalists, editors, and others to recognize, correct, and avoid amplifying misinformation;
- Proactively addressing the public's questions;
- Providing the public with context to avoid skewing their perceptions about ongoing debates on health topics;
- Using a broader range of credible sources--particularly local sources; and
- Considering headlines and images that inform rather than shock or provoke.
Experts have been particularly alarmed by Covid-19 lies and misinformation disseminated by right-wing cable news and websites. Fox News has been a hotbed of anti-vaccine propaganda from both hosts and guests, but the network is not alone in spreading misinformation and sowing doubt. Earlier this week, Newsmax host Rob Schmitt argued that vaccines were "against nature."
"If there is some disease out there, maybe there's just an ebb and flow to life where something's supposed to wipe out a certain amount of people, and that's just kind of the way evolution goes," Schmitt said. "Vaccines kind of stand in the way of that."
This sort of reporting has incensed critics. On Friday, Chicago Tribune columnist Rex Huppke wrote:
Hospital beds in Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama, and a number of other states are again filling up with Covid-19 patients, a crisis that was entirely preventable. Virtually every American hospitalized right now with Covid-19 is unvaccinated. People are dying unnecessarily, and it's a crime, with a list of suspects that shouldn't surprise anyone: Fox News talking heads attacking medical experts, Republican lawmakers stirring doubt about vaccines, and social media companies allowing vaccine disinformation to overwhelm sound medical advice.
Indeed, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is sending fundraising emails with the message "Choose Freedom Over Faucism" that say, "I protected Floridians from getting Fauci-ed by keeping schools open, saving jobs, and preserving freedom," a reference to U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci.
"And now, yet again, corporate media are attacking me for having the backbone to call Fauci out for the damage he has caused," the email continued. "I refused to blindly follow Dr. Fauci, an unelected career government bureaucrat, and allow him to strip Floridians of their God-given freedoms. I chose to lift Florida up, not follow the lead of Dr. Fauci and lock Florida down."
In his advisory, Murthy said that "misinformation can sometimes be spread intentionally to serve a malicious purpose, such as to trick people into believing something for financial gain or political advantage."
"Misinformation hasn't just harmed our physical health--it has also divided our families, friends, and communities," he wrote, adding that "the only way to address health misinformation is to recognize that all of us, in every sector of society, have a responsibility to act."
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Biden Pushed to Permanently Scrap 'Trump's Xenophobic and Racist Wall'
"The wall doesn't even begin to address any of the injustices plaguing the borderlands. It's nothing but a political prop for the GOP. Biden must stop it for good."
Apr 07, 2021
Although President Joe Biden vowed on the campaign trail to stop the construction of the southern border wall promoted by his predecessor, the White House as of this week has not yet asked Congress to revoke the project's funding, and a Cabinet member reportedly admitted that the administration may still authorize additional work to fortify some unfinished sections of the barrier, including installing surveillance technologies in certain areas.
"It's shameful and unacceptable for [the president] to continue the construction of Trump's xenophobic and racist wall."
--Rep. Ilhan Omar
Biden on January 20 gave contractors seven days to halt construction on former President Donald Trump's border wall and gave Customs and Border Protection (CBP) 60 days to develop a plan to reallocate the Department of Defense (DOD) funding that has been set aside for the multibillion-dollar project, roughly 450 miles of which was completed under Trump.
"It shall be the policy of my administration that no more American taxpayer dollars be diverted to construct a border wall," Biden said on his first day in office. "I am also directing a careful review of all resources appropriated or redirected to construct a southern border wall."
CBP missed its two-month deadline to submit a proposal to the Biden administration for diverting the Pentagon's funds.
Meanwhile, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) employees last week that "there are different projects that the chief of the Border Patrol has presented and the acting commissioner of CBP presented to me," according to a Monday report by the Washington Times, which obtained notes of the meeting.
"The president has communicated quite clearly his decision that the emergency that triggered the devotion of DOD funds to the construction of the border wall is ended. But that leaves room to make decisions as the administration, as part of the administration, in particular areas of the wall that need renovation, particular projects that need to be finished," Mayorkas said, specifying "gaps," "gates," and places "where the wall has been completed but the technology has not been implemented."
The Independent reported Tuesday that "under the Impoundment Control Act, when Congress allocates money to a project, that project must be completed."
"The only exception to that law is if questions of efficiency arise or if a president submits a request to revoke the project," the newspaper added. "Biden has not submitted a revocation request."
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on Wednesday denounced Biden--who voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006 when he was a senator--for failing to take the steps necessary to permanently terminate the project, tweeting: "It's shameful and unacceptable for [the president] to continue the construction of Trump's xenophobic and racist wall."
Earlier this week, Maxie Adler and Laiken Jordahl, both with the Center for Biological Diversity, shared videos depicting the border wall--which Adler said "has been lawlessly rammed through the borderlands, destroying Indigenous sacred sites, critical habitat, and harming communities," only to be "cut through on a daily basis."
When pressed about the Washington Times report on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that "there is some limited construction that has been funded and allocated for, but it is otherwise paused."
"Wall construction remains paused, to the extent permitted by law," she added. "So some has already been funded through congressional authorization and funding allocation. But... it's paused while agencies are developing a plan for the president on the management of the federal funds."
In a video shared last week from east of Nogales, Arizona, Jordahl described the devastation wrought by the construction of the southern border wall and said: "It is painfully clear that we have to take action to repair all that Trump has destroyed."
"The Biden administration has put construction on pause, but they haven't canceled these contracts, and they haven't committed to restoring the land," he said. "We are urging the administration to cancel these contracts for good, reinstate... protections for people and wildlife, and use those remaining billions of dollars to start restoring the land."
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'We Need to Make Sure It's Done Right': Peace Advocates Welcome Biden Move to Limit War Powers
The president and Congress, said one leading anti-war campaigner, "must work together to actually end the decades long fighting, killing, dying, and spending that is on automatic pilot."
Mar 04, 2021
Longtime advocates for a more peaceful U.S. foreign policy expressed cautious optimism Friday following news that President Joe Biden intends to work with Congress to repeal some of the authorizations that have enabled decades of unending U.S. war and military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.
"Let's be clear, repealing the AUMFs only to replace them is not an end to forever wars."
--Stephen Miles,
Win Without War
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that Biden seeks to "ensure that the authorizations for the use of military force currently on the books are replaced with a narrow and specific framework that will ensure we can protect Americans from terrorist threats while ending the forever wars."
The statement was a remarkable departure from previous administrations. The United States has been continuously at war ever since every member of Congress except Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) voted for the post-9/11 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) that empowered then-president George W. Bush to invade Afghanistan in October 2001 and launch the worldwide so-called "War on Terror."
In addition to the September 2001 AUMF, Congress passed another (pdf) just over a year later to allow the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.
The Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations subsequently claimed and exercised expanded war powers. The results: Nearly 20 years of ceaseless war, 10 countries invaded or attacked by American forces, U.S. troops in scores of nations, hundreds of thousands of lives lost, tens of millions of people displaced, and trillions of dollars spent--with no end in sight.
The White House's announcement Friday came two days after Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Todd Young (R-Ind.) reintroduced a resolution to repeal the 1991 and 2002 AUMFs against Iraq--but not the 2001 War on Terror authorization.
Peace Action executive director Jon Rainwater told Common Dreams that while the announcement from the Biden White House comes as "welcome news"--a development that "will allow Congress to step up and take its rightful role as a body that decides whether or not the country engages in an endless war"--his group meets it with "very cautious optimism."
"Getting at the legal unpinning for endless war is critical," said Rainwater, "but it doesn't truly get at the heart of this life and death matter." He further stressed that Biden and Congress "must work together to actually end the decades long fighting, killing, dying, and spending that is on automatic pilot."
"That means bringing all U.S. troops home from far-flung war zones from Syria to Afghanistan," said Rainwater. "That means ending the U.S. airstrikes that tragically often kill civilians and only serve as a recruitment pretext for the very forces the U.S. is fighting."
Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the women-led peace group CodePink, said the organization supports repealing the AUMFs, "but this won't be enough to stop this or other administrations from undertaking unauthorized military attacks."
"The recent case in point is the February 25 airstrike in Syria," Benjamin told Common Dreams. "The Biden administration didn't use the AUMFs as justification. Instead it used an arguably more dangerous claim of self-defense as outlined in both Article II of the Constitution and Article 51 of the U.N. Charter."
"So yes, we should get rid of the AUMFs that date back from the 9/11 attacks," added Benjamin, "but we also need to rein in the executive's broad claim of self-defense when it is really carrying out offensive retaliatory attacks that can drag us into a full-scale conflict. Any such attacks should not be undertaken without congressional approval. Congress should push back on the administration by invoking the War Powers Act of 1973 to prohibit further unconstitutional airstrikes on Syria."
Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, noted the "serious limitations" in the Kaine-Young proposal, most notably its omission of the 2001 AUMF.
"That means it fails to challenge the congressional authority that has been used more than any other in justifying--however much of a stretch is required--far-flung military activities that have killed people across the world in the name of fighting terrorism," Bennis told Common Dreams.
"There is another danger, if repealing the existing AUMF is merely a cover for passage of a new authorization designed to give presidents permanent authority to go to war."
--Phyllis Bennis,
Institute for Policy Studies
"There is another danger," warned Bennis, "if repealing the existing AUMF is merely a cover for passage of a new authorization designed to give presidents permanent authority to go to war."
In a statement, Win Without War executive director Stephen Miles said "it is long past time to repeal the blank checks for endless war that are the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs" but that "we need to make sure it's done right." That means not only repealing the authorizations, said Miles, but also "democratically debating whether or not more war will make the United States or the world more secure."
"Let's be clear," added Miles, "repealing the AUMFs only to replace them is not an end to forever wars."
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