NATIONALLY, AN ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN IS THE PLACE TO BEGIN, BUT GEORGIA'S GUN REGULATIONS ARE SERIOUSLY LACKING. 

THEY HAVE NO RED FLAG LAW, NO MANDATORY BACKGROUND CHECKS. 

CONCEALED CARRY WITH NO PERMIT 

THOSE GUNS FLOOD ACROSS STATE LINES & JEOPARDIZE THE SAFETY OF ALL!

IT'S TIME FOR GEORGIA REPUBLICANS TO STEP UP & IMPROVE THEIR GUN LAWS!

Gretchen Gierlach, a member of the community, came to Apalachee High School to demonstrates after a shooting there on September 4, 2024 in Winder, Georgia. 

(Photo: Megan Varner/Getty Images)

To Save Children’s Lives, Harris Should Campaign on an Assault Weapons Ban

The shooter in Apalachee High School had an “AR-platform-style weapon,” the popular semi-automatic gun all-too-widely available in the U.S., with hundreds of variations flooding the multi-billion dollar gun market.

School shootings are recurring markers of a societal sickness, an unshakeable acceptance of violence and senseless death. The murder of two 14-year-old students and two teachers on Wednesday, and the wounding of nine others, at a mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, is the latest in this seemingly permanent contagion.

Ninth-grader Colt Gray, 14, had an “AR-platform-style weapon,” the popular semi-automatic gun all-too-widely available in the U.S., with hundreds of variations and modular accessories flooding the multi-billion dollar gun market.

We know that the accused lived in a home with guns, thanks to a statement from the FBI issued on Wednesday, that read in part:

In May 2023, the FBI… received several anonymous tips about online threats to commit a school shooting at an unidentified location and time. The online threats contained photographs of guns.

Within 24 hours, the FBI determined the online post originated in Georgia and the FBI’s Atlanta Field Office referred the information to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office for action. The Jackson County Sheriff’s Office located a possible subject, a 13-year-old male, and interviewed him and his father. The father stated he had hunting guns in the house, but the subject did not have unsupervised access to them. The subject denied making the threats online. Jackson County alerted local schools for continued monitoring of the subject… there was no probable cause to take any additional law enforcement action.

Authorities had advance warning over a year earlier. Apalachee High School then reportedly received a telephoned threat on the morning of the shooting, warning five schools would be targeted, starting with Apalachee.

The so-called “AR platform” has become the weapon of choice for mass shooters. At the Uvalde mass school shooting in Texas on May 24, 2022, the teenaged shooter killed 21 people, injured 21 more, and held 400 law enforcement personnel at bay, while he killed children one by one for over an hour. It was the lethality of the AR rifle that kept those hundreds of heavily armed agents too frightened to intervene.

As a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 2019, Kamala Harris, then a U.S. senator from California, made a renewal of the assault weapons ban a central part of her campaign. She called for the same as recently as December, 2023, while still just the running mate for President Joe Biden.

But now, amid a tight general election race against former President Donald Trump, Harris is being more measured. As news broke of the Apalachee shooting, Harris was taking the stage at a rally in New Hampshire.

“Our hearts are with all the students, the teachers and their families, of course, and we are grateful to the first responders and the law enforcement that were on the scene. But this is just a senseless tragedy on top of so many senseless tragedies,” she said. “We have to end this epidemic of gun violence in our country, once and for all… it doesn’t have to be this way.”

Kris Brown is the president of Brady, a gun violence prevention organization named after James Brady, the former press secretary for former President Ronald Reagan. Brady was shot in the head during the attempted assassination of Reagan. Brady survived, and went on with his wife Sarah to campaign for gun control.

“Jim and Sarah Brady are responsible for the Federal Assault Weapons Ban that was put into effect the year after the Brady Law passed in 1993. During the 10-year time period that that assault weapons ban was in effect, you saw a marked decrease in the kinds of mass shootings involving those firearms than in the previous period,” Kris Brown said on the Democracy Now! news hour, the day after the Apalachee shooting.

Brown is optimistic that positive change is possible, despite the entrenched power of the gun lobby.

“There is a growing desire for an assault weapons ban in this country,” she said, “including among Republicans and including among gun owners. So we will certainly push the Harris administration, if we have one, to make that a priority.”

These weapons of war, marketed to U.S. consumers as benign “modern sporting rifles,” need to be banned.

Assault weapons bans can work. A 1996 mass shooting in Australia left 35 dead and 23 injured. Almost immediately, that nation of gun lovers passed an assault weapons ban and mandatory buyback law. There hasn’t been a shooting anywhere near that scale there since.

Success won’t be so swift here in the U.S., a nation awash with hundreds of millions of guns. Still, the Harris-Walz campaign should make an assault weapons ban a central demand and take it to the voters in November. The lives of our nation’s children depend on it.

COMMON DREAMS

Top News: London March Demands Israeli Arms Embargo

Sunday, September 8, 2024 ■ Today's Top News  Boeing Union Wins 25% Raise in Tentative Contract, But Possible Strike Still Looms Unionized machinists are set to vote on the contract on Thursday. By Julia Conley 100,000+ People Across France March to Decry Macron's 'Denial of Democracy' "Expressing one's vote will be useless as long as Macron is in power," said one demonstrator. By Julia Conley 'A Profound Injustice': Missouri Judge Rules Abortion Rights Amendment Invalid "Our fight to ensure that voters—not politicians—have the final say is far from over," said one organizer. By Julia Conley Massive London March Demands Israeli Arms Embargo After Police Drop Restrictions "We demand our government completely stop arming Israel and push for a cease-fire now," said the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. By Julia Conley GOP Unveils Stopgap Funding Plan Pushing 'Manufactured' Issue of Non-Citizen Voter Fraud “If Speaker Johnson drives House Republicans down this highly partisan path," said Democratic leaders, "the odds of a shutdown go way up." By Julia Conley Judge Delays Trump Sentencing in Hush Money Case Until After 2024 Election One analyst argued the decision was "wrong," writing that "if no one is above the law, then Trump shouldn't be either." By Jake Johnson JOIN THE MOVEMENT As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover the issues the corporate media never will. Your contribution supports this bold media model—free, independent, and dedicated to reporting the facts every day. Stand with us in the fight for economic equality, social justice, human rights, and a more sustainable future. JOIN WITH US TODAY ■ More News 'Unhinged and Undemocratic': Florida Cops Question Abortion Petition Signers Sanders Says Senate Hearing Will Put 'Greed on Display' With or Without Healthcare CEO 'Astonishing' Study Shows Infant Deaths Rise in US When Bat Populations Fall Brazilian Judge Orders Slaughterhouses and Ranchers to Pay for Harming Amazon VIEW ALL NEWS ■ Opinion Could It Soon Be a Crime to Cross State Lines for an Abortion? As law professors who teach about reproductive justice, we view attempts to restrict abortion travel as one of the frontiers in the anti-abortion rights movement, raising new legal questions for courts to unravel. By Naomi Cahn,Sonia Suter To Save Children’s Lives, Harris Should Campaign on an Assault Weapons Ban The shooter in Apalachee High School had an “AR-platform-style weapon,” the popular semi-automatic gun all-too-widely available in the U.S., with hundreds of variations flooding the multi-billion dollar gun market. By Amy Goodman,Denis Moynihan The US Should Follow Australia Into the Sun Here, in a country 13 times the size of Australia, only 4.5 million households have rooftop solar; to be at the same level as Australia, we’d need 47 million households with rooftop solar. By Juan Cole What Does It Really Mean to Say Israel Has the Right to Defend Itself? If Israel wants to be safe and secure, step one—Kamala, I’m certain you know this!—is to value Palestinians as fully human, talk to them, and listen. By Robert C. Koehler VIEW ALL OPINION Call 207.775.0488 to donate by phone or mail a check to: Common Dreams · PO Box 443 · Portland, ME 04112-0443 · USA Common Dreams is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Your contribution is tax-deductible. EIN: 20-3368194

 

Israeli soldiers on a tank are seen near the Israel-Gaza border. 

(Photo: Ilia Yefimovich/picture alliance via Getty Images)

What Does It Really Mean to Say Israel Has the Right to Defend Itself?

If Israel wants to be safe and secure, step one—Kamala, I’m certain you know this!—is to value Palestinians as fully human, talk to them, and listen.

“As I said then, I say today, Israel had a right—has a right to defend itself.”

This is militarism set in stone. The words are those of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, of course, in her extensive CNN interview last week—quick words that lead the charge and spew the glory, no matter how blatantly false they are.

Oh, and by the way: “Far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.”

She had to add some vague, paradoxical empathy, apparently, just because the nation she hopes to lead—USA! USA!—is kind of growing up, at least a little bit, and a certain (inconvenient) segment of its voters now maintain skepticism about the effectiveness, not to mention the moral sanity, of militarism. Harris, alas, had no intention of addressing the issue with intelligence, nor does the media push her to: What, in fact, does self-defense mean? Does it always, unquestionably, require violence?

The violence in Palestine—in Gaza and also the West Bank—goes on and on, to what end? Nothing I write here is new, but what I want to do is push the matter beyond the realm of glorious, media-certified abstraction. Israel has the right to defend itself. What does that actually look like? Here’s a brief, recent example from the Drop Site:

For nearly a week, the Israeli military has been laying siege to hospitals in Jenin and other cities in the northern part of the occupied West Bank, severely restricting access to medical care, targeting medical workers and ambulances, and cutting off water and electricity, as part of a massive military offensive in the occupied West Bank, the largest operation in the Palestinian territory in over two decades.

...The move mirrors tactics by the Israeli military in Gaza, where every hospital has been targeted and only a fraction are partially functioning, leaving the healthcare system in ruins.

And the Palestine Red Crescent noted that “Israeli troops have ‘directly targeted’ ambulances, injuring two medical workers and a volunteer doctor. ‘Our teams have been prevented from transporting various casualties, patients, and elderly suffering from chronic diseases, and women in labor. The further marginalization of already vulnerable communities renders the area uninhabitable.’”

But Israel has the right to defend itself! Just imagine if the mainstream media refused to report on war—on “self-defense”—as an abstraction, especially when hospitals are being targeted, ambulances are being targeted, refugee camps are being bombed. Even if there’s a justification of some sort for any particular action, this is what self-defense looks like. Real journalism will not quietly look away from it.

Nor will it take events out of context for the purpose of creating a “good guy/bad guy” narrative. Maybe creating such a narrative is part of the game of politics, but honest journalism refuses to submit to it. For instance, as per the website Decolonize Palestine:

Framing is important. Being able to dictate the narrative, to be given the freedom to explain events in a way sympathetic to your worldview, can be an incredibly powerful tool. As many studies have shown, there has been an empirically proven bias toward the Zionist and Israeli narrative in U.S. media. This means that Israelis have had enormous advantages in framing what is happening in Palestine.

In other words, the Hamas attack of October 7 stands all by itself: a shocking act of barbaric violence perpetrated (for no reason except hatred) on innocent Israelis. But in fact, horrific as the act was, it happened within a context: seven decades of Israeli occupation, Gaza turned into an open-air concentration camp, Palestinians living without freedom and dignity.

Ignoring this is the equivalent, let us say, of a Hollywood-constructed brutal Indian attack on a wagon train of American settlers. The white guys are the victims! They have a right to defend themselves.

But this is just the starting point. Journalism is supposed to speak truth to power. This is easy to say, but truth is not necessarily simple—let alone simplistic.

Israel has the right to defend itself. Let me take a moment here to agree with would-be President Harris. Yes, Israel has the right to defend itself. But what does that actually mean? Self-defense is far, far more than an us-vs.-them standoff. If Israel wants to be safe and secure, step one—Kamala, I’m certain you know this!—is to value Palestinians as fully human, talk to them, and listen. And of course, this truth goes in all directions.

Anyone who isn’t aware of this is... deeply ignorant? Or do I simply mean part of both parties’ voting base? I listen to Harris triumphantly declare that the United States has the most lethal military force on the planet, followed by a resonating cheer from the voters, and it all sounds as phony as the worst movie script I can imagine. But apparently we remain trapped in our military budget.

As I wrote a few months ago: “We will not enter the future with closed minds. We will not find security—we will not evolve—if we choose to remain subservient to linear, us-vs.-them thinking. We will not become our fullest selves or have access to our own collective human consciousness if we choose to stay caged in our own righteous certainty.”

And yes, Israel has a right to defend itself. So does Palestine. So do all of us—we have the right to defend ourselves from our own militarism.

COMMON DREAMS

THE REST OF THE WORLD IS MOVING ON AS THE U.S. CONTINUES TO GENUFLECT TO DIRTY ENERGY.... 

THE U.S. IS ONE OF THE LARGEST PER CAPITA ENERGY CONSUMERS IN THE WORLD.....

THE U.S. IS AN ENERGY GUZZLER. LOOK IT UP! 

DIRTY ENERGY KOCH HAS WORKED TO MAKE SOLAR MORE EXPENSIVE & PROBLEMATIC IN THOSE STATES WHERE IT MAKES THE MOST SENSE TO INSTALL SOLAR....THANK ALEC!

IT'S TIME TO REDUCE U.S. ENERGY CONSUMPTION & DO OUR PART! 

Solar panels are seen on the roof of the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney on August 14, 2019.

 (Photo: Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)

The US Should Follow Australia Into the Sun

Here, in a country 13 times the size of Australia, only 4.5 million households have rooftop solar; to be at the same level as Australia, we’d need 47 million households with rooftop solar.

Australia’s Climate Council has issued a new report on clean energy in the country’s states.

Winter is ending in Australia, but it is worrisome that their August was among the hottest on record this year, presaging a hot dry summer to come, and raising the real risk of further massive bush fires of the sort that scorched the countryside and killed billions of animals in 2019-2020. The continent-country is highly vulnerable to climate change, with its two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, right on the sea and facing coastal erosion from sea-level rise. It is unfortunate that so many Australian politicians and firms have found it so difficult to let go of coal and fossil gas. Although Australia is a relatively small country, the emissions of which are not all that consequential, it just sets a poor example for the rest of the world, especially for developing countries, if a very vulnerable country like Australia is a big coal user. How can it scold China and India for using so much coal, which really is consequential for the fate of the world, if Canberra is itself so irresponsible?

Although Australia has had a love affair with coal, the dirtiest and unhealthiest of the fossil fuels, even that addiction is beginning to subside. Less that 50% of the country’s electricity now comes from coal, an unprecedented development.

Given how sunny it is in the U.S. South and Southwest, it is crazy that we don’t have more [rooftop solar], but conservative state legislatures in the back pocket of Big Carbon have often legislated obstacles.

Obviously, not all the states are as environmentally conscious and ambitious as South Australia.

Western Australia and the Northern Territory are particularly bad actors, actually expanding their use of coal and fossil gas.

Some other states have made great strides and have ambitious goals. South Australia has gone in big on solar energy and has largely dumped coal, and is employing batteries to store and use the solar energy when it is needed at night and at usage peaks during the day. The state wants to have all its electricity come from renewables by 2027, in only three years. And it is a highly plausible plan. Already, 70% of the electricity in South Australia comes from renewables, the best record of any large state by far, though the small Australian Capital Territory in which the capital of Canberra nestles has reached 100% renewable electricity generation and in Tasmania it is 98.2%. South Australia is lightly populated, but some of the more populous states are beginning to make strides as well.

In the country as a whole, there is good news. Since 2018, Australia has doubled the share of renewables in its electricity grid, and much of this increase in clean electricity has been spearheaded by states and territories rather than the federal government.

With a population of 26 million (a little bigger than Florida, a little smaller than Texas), Australia has about 10 million households. A full 3.6 million of them, about 36%, have rooftop solar installations. Half of all households in Queensland now have panels on their roofs.

In the U.S., a country 13 times the size of Australia, only 4.5 million households have rooftop solar. To be at the same level as Australia, we’d need 47 million households with rooftop solar. Given how sunny it is in the U.S. South and Southwest, it is crazy that we don’t have more, but conservative state legislatures in the back pocket of Big Carbon have often legislated obstacles. Australia’s homeowners clearly have managed to outmaneuver the Coal Lobby there. (We have solar panels, and even in Michigan they much reduce our bill most of the year.)

The most populous Australia state, New South Wales, with over 8 million people, has made some strides in renewables. Some 35.6% of its electricity is from renewables, and 34% of its households have rooftop solar. 13% of its travel uses shared transportation, and there is an uptick in purchases of electric vehicles, though the absolute numbers remain small. NSW has banned offshore drilling and mining for fossil fuels.

South Australia, despite its thin population, is a technological leader in renewables. Not only do renewables supply 74.4% of electricity, but it has large battery projects that allow sunshine to be captured and used at night and at peak hours. The state hopes to phase out gas electricity plants in only a few years.

Batteries have also been key to California’s remarkable uptake of renewables.

Now Australia as a whole has six enormous battery projects in the pipeline.

At $1.7 trillion, Australia has the 13th largest GDP in the world. If the G20 states can get to carbon zero by 2050, that will solve the bulk of our climate worries, since all the carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution will be absorbed by the oceans over time. The temperature will immediately stop rising and will decline over time. If we go on spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere after 2050, however, we will outrun the capacity of the oceans to absorb them, and the world will get very hot, and the climate could go chaotic.

COMMON DREAMS

ACROSS THE NATION, REPUBLICANS HAVE FILED LEGISLATION, MADE FALSE CLAIMS ABOUT ELECTIONS & CREATED OBSTACLES FOR VOTERS. 

SEE DEMOCRACY DOCKET FOR THE LAWSUITS THAT HAVE BEEN FILED TO 

PROTECT VOTING RIGHTS.  

REPUBLICANS PRETEND THEIR ARE ISSUES WHEN THERE ARE NONE! 

THIS IS JUST ONE MORE FRIVOLOUS NONSENSICAL ISSUE FROM MAGA MORONS 

THAT THE MIDGET MIKE JOHNSON'S HANDLERS INSTRUCTED HIM TO PURSUE!

U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson makes a statement to the media in Washington, D.C., on July 24, 2024. 

(Photo: Chris Kleponis/AFP via Getty Images)

GOP Unveils Stopgap Funding Plan Pushing 'Manufactured' Issue of Non-Citizen Voter Fraud

“If Speaker Johnson drives House Republicans down this highly partisan path," said Democratic leaders, "the odds of a shutdown go way up."

Leading U.S. Senate Democrats on Friday accused House Republicans of "wasting precious time catering to the hard MAGA right" as House Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled a stopgap funding bill tied to a proposal that would require proof of citizenship in order to vote in federal elections.

The proposal—the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act—has been pushed by Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump and was passed by the House in July, with five Democrats joining the GOP in supporting the bill.

Non-citizens are already barred from voting in federal elections. With about 21.3 million eligible voters reporting in a recent survey that they would not be able to quickly access their birth certificate, passport, naturalization certificate, or certificate of citizenship in order to prove their status, critics say the proposal is a clear attempt to stop people of color and young Americans from taking part in elections.

Johnson proposed including the legislation in a stopgap bill, or a continuing resolution, that would keep the government running roughly at current spending levels through March 28—a move that would postpone major spending negotiations until after the next president takes office.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said that "avoiding a government shutdown requires bipartisanship, not a bill drawn up by one party," and alluded to former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's (R-Calif.) attempt last September to ram a spending bill through with immigration and border policy changes in order to avert a government shutdown.

"Speaker Johnson is making the same mistake as former Speaker McCarthy did a year ago," said Schumer and Murray in a statement. "The House Republican funding proposal is an ominous case of déjà vu."

“If Speaker Johnson drives House Republicans down this highly partisan path," they added, "the odds of a shutdown go way up, and Americans will know that the responsibility of a shutdown will be on the House Republicans' hands."

Johnson is expected to bring the bill to the House floor on Wednesday after lawmakers return from summer recess. Congress has a September 30 deadline to make changes to the spending bill in order to avoid a partial government shutdown on October 1.

The House speaker called the proposal "a critically important step" toward funding the government and ensuring "that only American citizens can decide American elections"—prompting one critic to accuse Johnson of pushing a "manufactured" issue.

"Anyone who reads the SAVE Act understands it is a bad bill," said attorney Heath Hixson, "a poorly worded unfunded mandate that'll lead to voter suppression and racist outcomes."

COMMON DREAMS

MASSACHUSETTS: "R" VOTERS ARE CONSPICUOUSLY UNINFORMED, GULLIBLE....AND IGNORE FACTS!

 

THE MOST RECENT AD FOR CRYPTO SCAMMER JOHN DEATON INCLUDED 

THAT SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN OPPOSED PRIVATE INSURANCE..... 

HOW BRAIN DEAD & ILL INFORMED IS THE PAC THAT CREATED THAT PROPAGANDA? 

STEWARD HAS CAUSED HEALTH CARE HAVOC ACROSS THE NATION 

WHILE IT GOBBLED UP PROFITS, FAILED TO PAY WORKERS, FAILED TO 

PAY FOR MEDICAL EQUIPMENT....

2 MASSACHUSETTS HOSPITALS WERE CLOSED BY STEWARD!

HAVE YOU HEARD CRYPTO SCAMMER JOHN DEATON OR ANY OTHER 

REPUBLICAN SPEAK OUT? 

SPINELESS MAGA GOP JUST WHINE & OBSTRUCT WITHOUT SOLUTIONS!

THAT'S WHAT MASS GOP HAS BECOME: WHINERS!

'Poster Child for...Corporate Greed': Sanders Slams Health Industry CEO's Subpoena Refusal

"It is time for Dr. de la Torre to get off of his $40 million yacht and explain to the American people how much he has gained financially while bankrupting the hospitals he manages."

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday blasted Dr. Ralph de la Torre—the CEO of a bankrupt health services company "who has made hundreds of millions of dollars ripping off patients and healthcare providers"—for refusing to comply with a bipartisan subpoena compelling him to testify about his company's insolvency.

"Perhaps more than anyone else in America, Dr. de la Torre is the poster child for the type of outrageous corporate greed that is permeating through our for-profit healthcare system," said Sanders (I-Vt.), who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP).

"Working with private equity vultures, he became obscenely wealthy by loading up hospitals across the country with billions in debt and selling the land underneath these hospitals to real estate executives who charge unsustainably high rent," the senator added. "As a result, Steward Health Care, and the more than 30 hospitals it owns in eight states, were forced to declare bankruptcy with some $9 billion in debt."

Steward is trying to sell all 31 of its hospitals in order to pay down its debt.

As Common Dreams reported on July 25, the HELP committee, which includes 10 Republicans, voted 20-1 to investigate Steward Health Care's bankruptcy, and 16-4 to subpoena de la Torre.

"I am now working with members of the HELP committee to determine the best path forward," Sanders said on Wednesday. "But let me be clear: We will not accept this postponement. Congress will hold Dr. de la Torre accountable for his greed and for the damage he has caused to hospitals and patients throughout America. This committee intends to move forward aggressively to compel Dr. de la Torre to testify to the gross mismanagement of Steward Health Care."

"It is time for Dr. de la Torre to get off of his $40 million yacht and explain to the American people how much he has gained financially while bankrupting the hospitals he manages," Sanders added, referring to the 190-foot megayacht the CEO purchased as Steward hospitals failed to pay their bills.

Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.)—a HELP committee member—and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also slammed de la Torre on Wednesday, calling his failure to appear before the panel "outrageous."

"De la Torre used hospitals as his personal piggy bank and lived in luxury while gutting Steward hospitals," the senators said. "De la Torre is as cowardly as he is cruel. He owes the public and Congress answers for his appalling greed—and de la Torre must be held in contempt if he fails to appear before the committee."

De la Torre's attorney, Alexander Merton, lashed out against the Senate subpoena Wednesday in a letter accusing HELP committee members of being "determined to turn the hearing into a pseudo-criminal proceeding in which they use the time, not to gather facts, but to convict Dr. de la Torre in the eyes of public opinion."

The same day the HELP Committee voted to probe Steward and subpoena de la Torre, Markey and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, introduced the Health Over Wealth Act, which would increase the powers of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to block private equity deals in the healthcare industry.

Last month, Markey and Warren expressed concerns over the proposed $245 million sale of Steward Health Care's nationwide physician network to a private equity firm.

"Two Massachusetts hospitals are closing and communities are suffering because of private equity's looting of Steward," said Warren. "Selling Massachusetts doctors to another private equity firm could be a disaster. We can't make the same mistake again. Regulators must scrutinize this deal."

COMMON DREAMS