Friday, December 27, 2024
■ Today's Top News
"Banning this social media platform would trample on the constitutional rights of over 170 million Americans."
By Julia Conley
Ahead of the U.S. Supreme Court's scheduled hearing on social media company TikTok's appeal regarding a ban on the popular platform, three bipartisan lawmakers were among the First Amendment advocates who filed amicus briefs in support of the app on Friday.
Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) were joined by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) in asking the court to grant TikTok an emergency injunction to block the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act from banning the app on January 19 unless the platform's Chinese parent company sells its stake by then.
The law and its ban on TikTok would "deprive millions of Americans of their First Amendment rights," said the lawmakers.
"The TikTok ban does not survive First Amendment scrutiny," Markey, Paul, and Khanna added. "Its principal justification—preventing covert content manipulation by the Chinese government—reflects a desire to control the content on the TikTok platform and in any event could be achieved through a less restrictive alternative."
The law was signed by President Joe Biden in April over the objections of First Amendment advocates, and a federal appeals court upheld the ban earlier this month. The Supreme Court then agreed to hear TikTok's challenge.
The ACLU, the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), and the Freedom of the Press Foundation were among several civil liberties groups that also filed a amicus brief on Friday, arguing that the government has not presented sufficient evidence that the app, which is used by 170 million Americans, causes "ongoing or imminent harm."
Patrick Toomey, deputy director of the ACLU's National Security Project, said the government's attempt to ban Americans from using TikTok, which some creators use to share commentary on geopolitical events as well as weighing in on pop culture and creating humorous videos, is "extraordinary and unprecedented."
"This social media platform has allowed people around the world to tell their own stories in key moments of social upheaval, war, and natural disaster while reaching immense global audiences," Toomey said.
TikTok, he said, is "a unique forum for expression online—and the connections and community that so many have built there cannot be easily replaced. TikTok creators can't simply transfer their audiences and followers to another app, and TikTok users can't simply reassemble the many voices they've discovered on the platform."
At CDT, Free Expression Project director Kate Ruane said the groups' amicus brief "makes clear that national security interests do not diminish protections afforded by the First Amendment and that courts must impose the same rigorous standards to laws that restrict speech."
"It further argues that the D.C. Circuit misapplied strict scrutiny when it failed to significantly examine the government's vague and nonspecific national security justifications for enacting the statute," said Ruane. "In light of the law's sweeping ban on free expression, the coalition's brief argues that the court should block implementation of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act."
"It's not just the billionaire ownership and control over the economy and the media that should concern us. The uber-rich are also buying our government and undermining American democracy," wrote Sanders.
By Eloise Goldsmith
Senator Bernie Sanders has a message for Fox News readers: The United States is increasingly a country of have and have nots, and it will "move rapidly down the path of oligarchy and the rule of the super-rich" unless the people and political leaders fight for a government and economy that works for everyone.
The Vermont Independent who caucuses with Democrats framed the two Americas as "the people vs. the billionaires" in an op-ed published Friday by Fox News.
In his article, Sanders specifically calls out three billionaires—Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, each of whom has signaled support U.S. President-elect Donald Trump—for their staggering wealth.
"In this America, the three wealthiest men (Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg) own more wealth than the bottom half of our society—over 165 million people. And their wealth is skyrocketing" he wrote.
After favoring President Joe Biden in 2020, Elon Musk became a major backer of Trump on the campaign trail this year, donating more than quarter of a billion dollars via political action committees to Trump and other GOP candidates ahead of Election Day. He's since been tapped to play a role in the incoming administration's efforts to cut government spending and regulation, and already made a demonstration of his political influence by helping to tank a proposed spending deal that had bipartisan support.
Meta and Amazon, the respective companies of Zuckerberg and Bezos, have already given or said they would give a million dollars each to Trump's inaugural fund. A number of other large and powerful U.S. firms have donated to the inaugural committee.
Sanders' piece doesn't address these specific connections to Trump, but he does denounce the political spending by economic elites more generally unleashed by the "disastrous" Citizens United Supreme Court ruling.
"During the 2024 election cycle, just 150 billionaires spent nearly $2 billion to buy politicians who support their agenda and to defeat candidates who oppose their special interests. Billionaires who represent just .0005% of our population accounted for 18% of total campaign spending," according to Sanders.
"That is not democracy. That is not one person, one vote," he wrote.
Sanders has penned opinion pieces for Fox in the past, including about topics like the moral imperative to combat climate change—an issue that runs counter to Fox's usual editorial slant.
His latest piece decries inequality in America, a common talking point for Sanders, but also goes after billionaire ownership of large swaths of the media.
"Never before in American history have so few media conglomerates, all owned by the billionaire class, had so much influence over the public. It is estimated that six huge media corporations now own 90% of what the American people see, hear, and read," Sanders wrote. "This handful of corporations determines what is 'important' and what we discuss, and what is 'unimportant' and what we ignore."
He also lambasted concentration of ownership in the economy: "In sector after sector—healthcare, agriculture, financial services, energy, transportation—a handful of giant corporations control what is produced and how much we, as consumers, pay for their products."
"Increased homelessness is the tragic, yet predictable, consequence of underinvesting in the resources and protections that help people find and maintain safe, affordable housing," said one advocate.
By Jessica Corbett
The controversial federal system for tracking homelessness in the United States recorded an 18% increase from 2023, breaking the record previously set last year, according to a report released Friday.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) process—which advocates and experts have long argued is flawed and results in inaccurate data that understates the homelessness crisis—provides a snapshot of how many people are unhoused for a single night each January.
This year, the HUD report states, "a total of 771,480 people—or about 23 of every 10,000 people in the United States—experienced homelessness in an emergency shelter, safe haven, transitional housing program, or in unsheltered locations across the country."
"Homelessness among people in families with children, individuals, individuals with chronic patterns of homelessness, people staying in unsheltered locations, people staying in sheltered locations, and unaccompanied youth all reached the highest recorded numbers in 2024," the report notes. "Veterans were the only population to report continued declines in homelessness."
The publication for the agency's 2024 Point-in-Time (PIT) Count adds that "people who identify as Black, African American, or African continue to be overrepresented among the population experiencing homelessness."
In a HUD statement about the document, the outgoing Biden administration highlighted that "this report reflects data collected a year ago and likely does not represent current circumstances, given changed policies and conditions."
Alongside the report, the Biden administration on Friday announced measures to address the crisis, which include "updating regulations that streamline the repurposing of surplus federal properties for affordable housing and homelessness services, making resources available to a select number of states under the second cohort of the Housing and Services Partnership Accelerator with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and awarding approximately $39.8 million to support veterans through the HUD-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) program."
The data came just weeks away from President-elect Donald Trump's return to the White House—and, as Peggy Bailey, an executive vice president at the progressive think tank Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, warned on social media Friday, the incoming Republican administration "is poised to make matters worse."
"Trump's record and Republican proposals raise SERIOUS concerns that the incoming [administration] and Congress will abandon evidence-based approaches and pursue funding cuts and policies that further increase homelessness and deepen inequities," she said, pointing to the president-elect picking former Texas state Rep. Scott Turner (R-33)—who has a history of opposing efforts to help the poor—to run HUD.
While sounding the alarm about the potential impact of Republicans controlling the White House and both chambers of Congress next year, Bailey also called out current policymakers for not doing enough to reduce homelessness, saying: "This is a policy choice. Housing is a basic human need. In the wealthiest nation in the world, solutions are in reach."
"The research is clear: Rental assistance promotes housing stability and is key to solving homelessness. Reducing homelessness will require *expanding* rental assistance, not cutting it or taking it away from people who need it to make ends meet," she explained. "Under the status quo, deep racial and other inequities in homelessness and housing insecurity persist, due to income and wealth inequities stemming from generations of discrimination in housing, education, and employment."
"Policymakers' choices left many communities [without] the resources to respond as need increased, like after natural disasters, surges in market rents, or when some people who recently came to the U.S. seeking asylum or work opportunities had nowhere to live," Bailey added. "Homelessness is unacceptable—and solvable—regardless of who experiences it."
According to HUD's statement:
Migration had a particularly notable impact on family homelessness, which rose 39% from 2023-24. In the 13 communities that reported being affected by migration, family homelessness more than doubled. Whereas in the remaining 373 communities, the rise in families experiencing homelessness was less than 8%. Rents have also stabilized significantly since January 2024. Since then, HUD has added 435,000 new rental units in the first three quarters of 2024; that's more than 120,000 new units each quarter. The PIT Count was conducted at the tail of significant increases in rental costs, as a result of the pandemic and nearly decades of under-building of housing. Rents are flat or even down in many cities since January.
The Maui fire, in addition to other natural disasters, had an impact on the increase in homelessness. In Hawaii, more than 5,200 people were sleeping in disaster emergency shelters on the night of the PIT count due to the Maui fire. HUD continues to work diligently with the state of Hawaii and Maui County through funding and technical assistance to support long-term recovery from the fire. Over the last year, since the PIT Count was conducted, rental costs have stabilized, with rents down in some cities.
Like Bailey, leaders at advocacy groups called on policymakers—at all levels—to do far more to help unhoused people.
"The answer to ending homelessness is ensuring everyone has access to safe, stable, and affordable housing," Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said in a Friday statement responding to the new data.
"Our leaders must immediately expand the resources to rehouse people without homes and assist the rapidly growing number of people who cannot afford skyrocketing rents," Oliva continued. "This record-setting increase in homelessness should sound the alarm for federal, state, and local lawmakers to advance evidence-based solutions to this crisis."
Renee Willis, incoming interim CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, similarly stressed that "increased homelessness is the tragic, yet predictable, consequence of underinvesting in the resources and protections that help people find and maintain safe, affordable housing."
"As advocates, researchers, and people with lived experience have warned, the number of people experiencing homelessness continues to increase as more people struggle to afford sky-high housing costs," she said.
"These data confirm what we already know: that too many of our friends, neighbors, and family members are experiencing the crisis of not having a place to call home," Willis added. "Without significant and sustained federal investments to make housing affordable for people with the lowest incomes, the affordable housing and homelessness crisis in this country will only continue to worsen."
Some progressive U.S. lawmakers weighed in on social media Friday. Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.) emphasized that "as housing prices increase, homelessness increases. Homelessness is a housing problem."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said that "this is the richest country on Earth. 770,000 Americans should not be homeless, and 20 million more should not be spending over half their incomes on rent or a mortgage."
"We need to invest in affordable housing," Sanders added, "not Trump's massive tax breaks for billionaires."
This post has been updated with comment from U.S. Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
"It sure looks like USAID is allowing political considerations—the Biden administration's worry about funding Israel's starvation strategy—to interfere," said one human rights expert.
By Julia Conley
Veteran human rights expert Kenneth Roth said Thursday that the withdrawal of a report on imminent famine in northern Gaza negates "the whole point" of the office that produced the analysis: "to have a group of experts make assessments about imminent famine that are untainted by political considerations."
The decision by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) to retract its December 23 alert on the rapidly spiraling starvation crisis in the northern part of the besieged enclave came after the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, publicly criticized the report.
FEWS NET, which is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), said in its report that Israel's "near-total blockade of humanitarian and commercial food supplies" for nearly 80 days has made it "highly likely that the food consumption and acute malnutrition thresholds for famine... have now been surpassed in North Gaza Governorate."
The report referenced the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the United Nations-backed assessment that classifies famine as "phase 5" and declares famine in a region once more than 30% of children under age five are acutely malnourished, more than two people per 10,000 die each day from starvation, or once 20% of households face an extreme lack of food.
On Thursday, a note on the group's website said the "December 23 Alert is under further review and is expected to be re-released with updated data and analysis in January."
FEWS NET is hardly the first group to warn of impending famine in northern Gaza, where Israeli troops have been carrying out a ground offensive since early October and where nearly all humanitarian aid has been cut off for thousands of Palestinians who are trapped in the region.
Cindy McCain, executive director of the World Food Program, said the area was facing a "full-blown famine" in May, and independent United Nations experts made a similar assessment in July.
But the FEWS NET report drew criticism from Lew, who said the analysis relied on "outdated and inaccurate" data pertaining to how many people are currently in northern Gaza.
The report was based on a population of 65,000-75,000 people in northern Gaza, said Lew, but Israel's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) "estimates the population in this area is between 5,000 and 9,000," said Lew, while the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) "estimates the population is between 10,000 and 15,000."
"At a time when inaccurate information is causing confusion and accusations, it is irresponsible to issue a report like this," said Lew.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations was among those who said Lew appeared to reject the report by boasting "about the fact that [northern Gaza] has been successfully ethnically cleansed of its native population."
Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said Lew's "quibbling over the number of people desperate for food seems a politicized diversion from the fact that the Israeli government is blocking virtually all food from getting in."
"The Biden administration seems to be closing its eyes to that reality, but putting its head in the sand won't feed anyone," he told the Associated Press.
The Biden White House has been a vehement supporter of Israel's bombardment of Gaza since October 2023, insisting that the country is only defending itself following a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel—even as the death toll has passed 45,000 and as numerous reports have shown that Israel is waging attacks that officials know will kill hundreds of civilians.
In October the administration said it was giving Israel a month to ensure sufficient humanitarian aid was getting to Palestinians and threatened to cut off military aid, but when the deadline passed, no changes to U.S. political and military support were made.
The U.S. is prohibited from supplying weapons to countries that are blocking U.S. humanitarian aid under its own laws, including Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act."
Roth suggested that by pushing for the retraction of the FEWS NET report, USAID was acting on its vested interest in denying that Israel is starving Palestinians.
"It sure looks like USAID is allowing political considerations—the Biden administration's worry about funding Israel's starvation strategy—to interfere" with the report, Roth told the AP.
Scott Paul, a senior manager at Oxfam America, told the outlet that Lew "leveraged his political power to undermine the work of this expert agency."
"This exceptional year of extreme weather shows how dangerous life has already become... and highlights the urgency of moving away from planet-heating fossil fuels as quickly as possible."
By Jake Johnson
Just over two dozen climate-fueled extreme weather events killed at least 3,700 people worldwide and displaced millions in 2024, according to a report published Friday as the hottest year on record drew to a close.
The new analysis from World Weather Attribution (WWA) and Climate Central states that extreme weather "reached dangerous new heights in 2024" as "record-breaking temperatures fueled unrelenting heatwaves, drought, wildfire, storms, and floods that killed thousands of people and forced millions from their homes."
"This exceptional year of extreme weather shows how dangerous life has already become with 1.3°C of human-induced warming, and highlights the urgency of moving away from planet-heating fossil fuels as quickly as possible," said the two organizations, which examined 26 destructive weather events that occurred in 2024—a fraction of the hundreds that took place globally this year.
Those 26 events—from Hurricane Helene in the United States to the typhoon that hammered the Philippines, China, and Taiwan— caused close to 4,000 deaths, according to WWA and Climate Central.
"It's likely the total number of people killed in extreme weather events intensified by climate change this year is in the tens, or hundreds of thousands," the analysis states.
"Extremes will continue to worsen with every fraction of a degree of fossil fuel warming."
Around the world, the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency added, on average, 41 additional days of dangerous heat this year, Climate Central found.
"The countries that experienced the highest number of dangerous heat days are overwhelmingly small island and developing states, who are highly vulnerable and considered to be on the frontlines of climate change," the analysis says.
WWA and Climate Central said their findings should spur global action to shift away from fossil fuel, the burning of which is "the primary reason extreme weather is becoming more severe," they said.
"Extremes will continue to worsen with every fraction of a degree of fossil fuel warming," WWA and Climate Central added. "A rapid move to renewable energy will help make the world a safer, healthier, wealthier, and more stable place."
The comments from emergency physician Mimi Syed came as the Israeli military forcibly evacuated Kamal Adwan Hospital, endangering patients and medical workers.
By Jake Johnson
An American emergency and trauma physician currently working in Gaza warned Friday that the Israeli military's evacuation order at a barely functioning hospital in the northern part of the enclave means "the end of humanity" there, as the dozens of patients receiving treatment at the besieged facility have nowhere safe to go and the healthcare system in the region has collapsed.
Mimi Syed, who is based in Olympia, Washington and is on her second stint in Gaza since Israel's latest assault began last year, told Al Jazeera that she "can totally imagine deaths taking place as a result" of Israel's evacuation order at Kamal Adwan Hospital, given that patients who are reliant on electrical appliances cannot easily be transported.
Syed's comments came as the head of Gaza's health ministry said he has lost contact with Kamal Adwan, one of several northern Gaza hospitals that Israeli forces have encircled and attacked in recent weeks.
Citing a nurse and a journalist inside Kamal Adwan, CNN reported Friday that everyone inside the facility has "been ordered to leave the hospital and go to the yard of the compound."
"Earlier on Friday, a video shared by nurse Walid Al Budi, who is also inside the hospital, showed a fire burning in the archive department of the hospital," the outlet added. "Heavy gunfire can be heard in the background."
Video footage posted to social media by Quds News shows patients and medical personnel walking south following the evacuation order at Kamal Adwan:
The forced evacuation came hours after an Israeli airstrike near Kamal Adwan killed dozens of people, including medical workers.
Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan, wrote in a social media post early Friday that Israeli forces are "burning all the operating departments in the hospital while we are still here."
"The army evacuated the entire medical staff and the displaced people and arrested a number of the medical staff," he added. "There are a large number of injuries among the medical staff."
In an interview released earlier this week, Syed issued an "urgent plea for help," saying Israel's assault on Gaza's overwhelmed and under resourced hospitals and other civilian infrastructure "needs to stop."
"I'm seeing civilian casualties on a regular basis," said Syed. "Camps and tents are being struck with airstrikes routinely. We're seeing children with traumatic amputations shrapnel injuries, open skull wounds with brain matter out."
"We're seeing so many children with kidney failure and gastritis that it's leading to significant dehydration," Syed added. "All of this is unnecessary."
