"As the Biden administration considers its next steps, it should build on these foundations, end fossil fuel leasing on public lands and waters, and embrace a clean energy future."
A federal appeals court on Tuesday dealt the final blow to former President Donald Trump’s attempt to open nearly 130 million acres of territory in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans to oil and gas drilling. Continue reading →
"Veolia's plan to dominate public water services all across the globe is becoming a terrifying reality."
France-based transnational corporation Veolia agreed in principle to acquire Suez, its main rival, for $15.5 billion on Monday, setting the stage for the creation of a water and waste management juggernaut that critics warn would be a “dangerous corporate monopoly” destined to “hurt consumers and enrich shareholders.” Continue reading →
Azerbaijan deployed thousands of mercenaries in last year’s 44-day war that it and Turkey waged against Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabagh and Armenia. Continue reading →
"Now we're one step closer to net neutrality being the law of the land."
Defenders of the open internet celebrated a major victory late Tuesday after a federal judge ruled that a California law establishing strong net neutrality protections can take effect, a severe blow to the telecom giants that spent big money trying to kill the measure through aggressive lobbying and litigation. Continue reading →
A new space technology exploration program announced by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency is riling up international opposition as the race to mine space heats up
On the same day that Joe Biden obtained the Electoral College majority needed to become president of the United States, a metallic asteroid roughly half the size of New York City made its closest approach to earth. Far from indulging in apocalyptic visions of cosmic destruction, mining company executives like Bob Goldstein of US Nuclear Corp. were seeing dollar signs. Somewhere in the ballpark of $10,000 quadrillion of them in fact. Continue reading →
"This decisive defeat once again shows that no one—including Donald Trump—is above the law."
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday delivered another blow to Donald Trump’s efforts to block the enforcement of a subpoena for his accounting firm to turn over eight years of the ex-president’s tax returns and other financial documents to a grand jury convened by Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. while Trump was still in office. Continue reading →
"Abbott has failed and passed off blame to somebody else. Texas is in dire straits. Texans are dying. Homes are being destroyed, people are cold and hungry, and we have no idea when things will begin to return to normal."
Texans who have been without power for days in the aftermath of Winter Storm Uri are now also facing food and water crises as frigid temperatures and ongoing blackouts disrupt supply chains and wreak havoc on the state’s infrastructure—compounding emergencies that have spurred intensifying backlash against GOP leaders. Continue reading →
"If Democrats don't deliver in this moment, future Presidents Days will recognize Trump's second term."
In the wake of the GOP’s acquittal of former President Donald Trump, the Sunrise Movement on Monday joined the progressive lawmakers and activists arguing that the failure of Democrats to secure bipartisan cooperation—even during an impeachment trial meant to hold Trump accountable for provoking a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol—exemplifies why the majority party must eliminate the legislative filibuster if it hopes to pursue a transformative agenda capable of improving social and environmental well-being. Continue reading →
'Fire DeJoy before he burns down USPS': Postmaster general pushes plan for slower mail, higher prices
Undeterred by the backlash and widespread delays that followed his disruptive operational changes at the U.S. Postal Service last year, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is reportedly planning to roll out another slate of policies that would significantly hike postage rates and further slow the delivery of certain kinds of mail. Continue reading →
On February 9, the US Justice Department announced that US President Joe Biden, as in so many other areas, intends to serve Donald Trump’s second term when it comes to persecuting heroes guilty of exposing US war crimes and embarrassing American politicians. Continue reading →
"The Assange case represents the gravest threat to press freedom in a generation."
The Biden Justice Department on Friday formally appealed a British judge’s rejection of the U.S. request to extradite Julian Assange, confirming the new administration’s intention to run with its predecessor’s espionage charges against the WikiLeaks publisher despite warnings that the case endangers press freedoms around the world. Continue reading →
"Trump's disastrous actions compounded longstanding failures in health policy in the USA. We know what it will take to create a healthy society. We just need the political will to do it."
A panel of policy experts and medical professionals convened to examine the healthcare legacy of Donald Trump concluded in a detailed report released Thursday morning that the former president’s sweeping regulatory rollbacks and full-scale assault on America’s already decimated public health infrastructure severely undermined the nation’s fight against Covid-19 and caused tens of thousands of preventable deaths. Continue reading →
"My solution starts at the top: firing the whole board who presided over Trump and DeJoy's wrecking of USPS," said Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr.
With Postmaster General Louis DeJoy reportedly preparing to unveil plans for another round of service cuts and operational changes as soon as this week, President Joe Biden is facing growing calls from lawmakers, mail carriers, and others to take urgent steps to protect the U.S. Postal Service from further damage, pave the way for DeJoy’s removal, and shore up the agency’s finances for the near and distant future. Continue reading →
"This is what happens when you let the food and chemical companies, not the FDA, decide whether our food is safe to eat."
Leading baby food manufacturers are selling—knowingly and without warning—unsafe products contaminated with dangerous levels of toxic heavy metals that can cause serious and often irreversible damage to infant brain development, according to a new congressional investigation that is generating renewed calls for greater regulation of the industry. Continue reading →
Even in the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic, there’s no stopping this year’s Super Bowl LV showdown between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Continue reading →
A levy of just 1 percent on wealth over $1 billion would raise more than $2 billion per year to meet the state's urgent social needs.
Legislators in Washington state are taking bold steps towards instituting a state-level wealth tax. The proposed tax is a 1 percent levy on wealth over $1 billion, applying to fewer than 100 households in the state. Continue reading →
In the new political landscape, poultry workers have already managed to scuttle a Trump administration reform that would’ve made their jobs even more dangerous.
Over Super Bowl weekend, Americans are expected to devour 1.42 billion chicken wings—enough to “circle the circumference of the Earth three times,” the National Chicken Council crowed. Continue reading →
Pre-trial brief says the former U.S. president bears "singular responsibility" for inciting January 6 insurrection.
House impeachment managers on Tuesday filed a trial memorandum laying out their case for convicting Donald Trump for “incitement of insurrection against the republic he swore to protect” ahead of the former president’s historic second impeachment trial slated to begin next week. Continue reading →
"It's time we reevaluate the standards for approving these mergers. It's time we pass legislation to lower drug prices. And it's time we rethink the structure of leadership at big pharmaceutical companies."
Rep. Katie Porter on Friday published a damning report revealing the devastating effects of Big Pharma mergers and acquisitions on U.S. healthcare, and recommending steps Congress should take to enact “comprehensive, urgent reform” of an integral part of a broken healthcare system. The report, entitled Killer Profits: How Big Pharma Takeovers Destroy Innovation and Harm Patients, begins by noting that “in just 10 years, the number of large, international pharmaceutical companies decreased six-fold, from 60 to only 10.” Continue reading →
"Wall Street and stock market are metaphors for a society rotting from self-indulgence, greed, widening inequality, and financial entrepreneurship that builds nothing, improves nothing, creates nothing, and solves nothing."
“Anyway, tax the rich,” concluded Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in her brief Twitter assessment of the ongoing saga. Continue reading →
Mainly as the result of the Trump administration’s U.S.-centric view of the COVID-19 pandemic, the American media has largely ignored the dire effects the disease has had in other countries, particularly developing nations in Africa and Asia. WMR has received a first-hand report of the virus taking the lives of a number of political leaders in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and other countries. South Africa’s dynamic Minister of the Presidency, Jackson Mthembu was the latest to fall victim to the virus. Mthembu was a stalwart of the governing African National Congress (ANC) who began fighting against the apartheid regime in the 1970s. Mthembu became ill from the virus on January 11 and he died on January 21, ten days later. A more dangerous mutation of COVID-19 has been discovered in South Africa. However, it is not known if that was what took Mthembu’s life. Continue reading →
"Section 230 is one of the most important laws protecting freedom of expression and human rights in the digital age."
A coalition of internet defenders on Wednesday cautioned lawmakers against responding to this month’s attack on the U.S. Capitol by making “uncareful changes” to section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that could “profoundly alter the state of digital free speech and human rights.” Continue reading →
Unable to secure a profit in immunizing poorer nations, Western multinationals, including Oxford’s private partner AstraZeneca, have prioritized those who can pay the most.
Europe is reeling from the shock news that biotech giant AstraZeneca will not be delivering anything like the number of vaccines it promised. The company informed European Union officials that they will only be supplying 31 million doses to 27 E.U. countries, rather than the 80 million they had promised would arrive by the end of March. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conti predicted that the news would reap “enormous damage” on the continent that has already sustained over 32 million confirmed cases and 703,000 deaths due to COVID-19. Continue reading →
"Trump confessed he was wrecking USPS to rig the election. His toady Postmaster General DeJoy carried out that arson. It's time to clean house."
Democratic Congressman Bill Pascrell, Jr. of New Jersey on Monday urged President Joe Biden to terminate all six sitting members of the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors for their “silence and complicity” in the face of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and former President Donald Trump’s full-scale assault on the beloved government mail agency. Continue reading →
Running decrepit power plants way beyond their design capability is setting the U.S. up for a disaster on the scale of Chernobyl or Fukushima.
Professor Karl Grossman is a renowned expert critic of the United States’ nuclear power industry. In the following interview with Strategic Culture Foundation, he highlights concern over the move currently being proposed by the regulatory authorities to extend the operating licenses of already aging nuclear reactors across the U.S. Power stations that were originally designed to have a 40-year operating lifespan are now being slated to run for up to 100 years. The move, says Grossman, is being pushed by the nuclear industry lobby as a way to salvage the increasingly unviable economics of nuclear power. There is also, he notes, a “revolving door” relationship between private nuclear energy companies and the government authorities who are supposed to regulate the industry. That means questions of public safety are being ignored in the furtherance of profits. Running decrepit power plants way beyond their design capability is setting the United States up for a disaster on the scale of Chernobyl or Fukushima, warns Grossman. Continue reading →
"The only thing that is acceptable at the Social Security Administration is a new commissioner and a new deputy commissioner who believe in the system, the movement won't accept anything less."
After President Joe Biden kicked off his White House tenure Wednesday by sacking several corrupt and incompetent holdovers from the Trump administration—including labor board attorney Peter Robb and CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger—progressives are urging the newly inaugurated president to keep the firing spree going by terminating his predecessor’s right-wing appointees at the Social Security Administration. Continue reading →
These proposed laws are "aimed at police brutality protests, not right-wing insurrection."
Progressives are sounding the alarm that a handful of Republican lawmakers are exploiting the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6 by an insurrectionist pro-Trump mob to push for anti-protest bills that critics say do not aim to stem the tide of right-wing extremism but instead criminalize dissent by those seeking social change and justice. Continue reading →
On January 11, in his final days before leaving office, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo added one parting blow to the series of bludgeons his administration has inflicted on Cuba for four years: putting the island on the list of “state sponsors of terror” that includes only Iran, North Korea and Syria. The designation drew swift condemnation from policymakers and humanitarian groups as a decision widely characterized as “politically motivated.” It comes six years after the Obama administration had removed Cuba from the same list as part of his policy of rapprochement. Continue reading →
As the US ruling elites have fully succumbed to Israel’s political discourse on Palestine, the Israeli government of right-wing Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may feel that it, alone, is capable of determining the future of the Palestinian people. Continue reading →
"Their complicity endangers America, erodes our democracy, and it must end."
A Republican congressman from West Virginia on Monday blocked a resolution calling on Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove President Donald Trump from office, a move that came as Democratic lawmakers unveiled articles of impeachment against the president that are expected to receive a vote later this week. Continue reading →
"If another head of state came in and ordered an attack on the United States Congress, would we say that that should not be prosecuted?" the New York Democrat said Sunday.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday stressed a need for President Donald Trump’s removal from office, saying that failing to hold him accountable for Wednesday’s violent attack on the Capitol could ensure “it will happen again.” Continue reading →
"He shouldn't just be impeached or removed from office. He should be in jail."
Demands that President Donald Trump be fully held to account for inciting the fascist mob that rampaged through the U.S. Capitol building proliferated Wednesday as all hell broke loose in Washington, D.C., with members of Congress and journalists forced to seek shelter as the lame-duck incumbent’s supporters shattered windows and clashed with law enforcement. Continue reading →
