Top News | Trump Proves Medicare 'At Risk'

 

Monday, November 25, 2024 ■ Today's Top News  Jack Smith Throws in the Towel on Prosecution of Trump The president-elect's "ability to escape prosecution does not retroactively validate his illegal, unconstitutional and democracy-destroying activities," said one critic. By Julia Conley Israeli Siege Leaves 130,000 Kids Trapped and at Risk of Starvation in Northern Gaza "With no food, no clean water, and constant fear, both my children have developed rashes, and my daughter is passing blood, but there is no medicine, no help, and absolutely nothing I can do," said one mother trapped in the area. By Eloise Goldsmith Former Sen. Fred Harris, Champion of Economic Populism, Dies at 94 "The fundamental problem is that too few people have all the money and power, and everybody else has too little of either," said Harris in 1975. By Julia Conley With Cease-Fire Deal in Sight, Israeli Bombings Kill at Least 12 in Lebanon The Israeli military carried out airstrikes across Lebanon as negotiators worked to finalize the details of a cease-fire agreement that would end fighting for at least 60 days. By Jake Johnson Wall Street Cheers Trump's Treasury Pick, Corporate Tax Cut Proponent Scott Bessent "For all his talk of looking out for working class Americans, President-elect Trump's choice of a billionaire hedge fund manager to lead the Treasury Department shows he just wants to keep a rigged system," said one critic. By Julia Conley Trump's Nomination of Project 2025 Architect Means Social Security, Medicare 'Are At Risk' "Vought's nomination makes it crystal clear that Trump lied to the American people," said Rep. Rosa DeLauro. "Trump's agenda is the Project 2025 manifesto." By Jake Johnson President-elect Donald Trump's choice of Russell Vought, a Project 2025 architect, to lead the White House budget office was seen as further evidence of the threat the incoming administration poses to Social Security, Medicare, and other critical government programs. Vought, who currently heads the far-right think tank Center for Renewing America think tank, served as director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) during Trump's first term, and he's set to return to the post after playing a central role in crafting the Project 2025 agenda that the Republican president-elect attempted to disavow on the campaign trail. In remarks to an undercover journalist earlier this year, Vought dismissed the notion that Trump opposed the aims of Project 2025, saying the Republican leader was "very supportive of what we do." Vought is expected to aggressively pursue federal spending cuts in concert with other actors within and around the incoming Trump administration, including the "government efficiency" commission led by billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. "With the architect of Project 2025 nominated to lead Trump's Office of Management and Budget, there can be no distinction between the two." During his tenure at OMB and as an outside adviser to Republican lawmakers, Vought advocated massive cuts to Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance, programs that the GOP is targeting as it looks to offset the costs of its proposed tax cuts. Vought also spearheaded budget proposals from the Trump White House that recommended cuts to Social Security and Medicare, both of which the president-elect vowed to protect during his 2024 campaign. "Vought oversaw every budget in the first Trump administration that cut Social Security and Medicare," said Tony Carrk, executive director of the watchdog group Accountable.US. "This much is clear: Social Security and Medicare are at risk in the second Trump presidency." According to Accountable, Vought is one of at least six individuals associated with Project 2025 whom Trump has picked for a spot in the incoming administration. "With the architect of Project 2025 nominated to lead Trump's Office of Management and Budget," said Carrk, "there can be no distinction between the two." While Project 2025's sweeping policy document includes little discussion of Social Security, the far-right program's authors have endorsed changes such as raising the retirement age—which would result in across-the-board benefit cuts. As for Medicare, Project 2025 proposes making privatized Medicare Advantage plans the default enrollment option for U.S. seniors, a change that would be massively profitable for insurance giants and potentially disastrous for patients. Vought's nomination to lead OMB is expected to bolster Trump administration efforts to slash spending across the federal government. As Punchbowl reported Monday, Vought "is among those Trump allies looking to challenge Congress' authority over spending via impoundment," a strategy that Democratic lawmakers have condemned as unlawful. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, told Punchbowl in a statement that Vought "is deeply confused about this and many other points about the Constitution and the Impoundment Control Act of 1974." "While Trump distanced himself from Project 2025, Vought's nomination makes it crystal clear that Trump lied to the American people," said DeLauro. "Trump's agenda is the Project 2025 manifesto."

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■ Opinion History Will Not Be Kind to Biden's Complicity in Gaza It appears the U.S. president will end his term without a change of heart or policy. By James Zogby How to Survive Trump—America’s Nero Lives and livelihoods will be saved, if at all, from below, rather than on high. By Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis,Shailly Gupta Barnes From Genocide Joe to Omnicide Joe Whether heralded or reviled, Biden’s supposed restraint during the Ukraine war has steadily faded, with more and more dangerous escalation in its place. By Norman Solomon

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UN Officials Urgently Call for Lebanon Cease-Fire as Middle East on ‘Brink of Catastrophe’

in Palestine

by Brett Wilkins

22/09/2024

As Israel followed up its remote bombings of communications devices in Lebanon with airstrikes on Beirut, the United Nations Security Council held an emergency session Friday during which officials urgently called for an immediate cease-fire and warned that the Middle East is on “the brink of catastrophe.”

“We risk seeing a conflagration that could dwarf even the devastation and suffering witnessed so far,” U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo told representatives of the 15-member Security Council (UNSC) during the session.

“It is not too late to avoid such folly. There is still room for diplomacy,” DiCarlo stressed. “I also strongly urge member states with influence over the parties to leverage it now.”

Officials voiced alarm over this week’s remote bombings of pagers, walkie-talkies, and other devices Israel said belonged to members of Hezbollah, the Lebanese political and paramilitary group, which killed at least 37 people including two children and wounded thousands more. While Israel has not claimed responsibility for the attacks, U.S. officials have attributed the attacks to their key ally.

“These attacks represent a new development in warfare, where communication tools become weapons,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk told the council.

“This has unleashed widespread fear, panic, and horror among people in Lebanon, already suffering in an increasingly volatile situation since October 2023 and crumbling under a severe and longstanding economic crisis,” Türk added. “This cannot be the new normal.”

Speaking during the meeting, Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said the “unfathomable” Israeli electronic attacks “represent a serious unprecedented event in the history of wars” and warned that “no one in this world is safe anymore.”

Habib demanded the council condemn Israel’s “terrorist attack” and asserted that “accepting what happened amounts to opening a Pandora’s box,” with countries and militant groups carrying out similar bombings around the world.

“This is the moment of truth,” he added.

French U.N. Ambassador Nicolas de Rivière told the Security Council that “the risk of an open war with potentially tragic consequences is growing every day.”

“Such a prospect must be avoided at all costs,” he added. “It is urgent that all parties work towards de-escalation.”

Deputy U.S. U.N. Ambassador Robert Wood defended Israel, asserting that “no member of this council facing a terrorist organization on its border would tolerate daily rocket attacks on its territory.”

However, some experts said that the Israeli device bombings were acts of terrorism under international law.

There was no hint of de-escalation as Israeli warplanes bombed a residential area of Beirut on Friday, killing at least 31 people, including multiple Hezbollah commanders, and wounding at least dozens of others. Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said that the dead include three women and seven children.

During a Saturday television interview, Israeli Minister of Education Yoav Kisch falsely proclaimed that “there is no difference between Hezbollah and Lebanon.”

“The way things are progressing at the moment, Lebanon will be annihilated,” he vowed. Pressed on the genocidal implications of the word “annihilated,” Kisch said, “Lebanon as we know it will not exist.”

Hezbollah and Israeli forces have traded limited—yet deadly and destructive—cross-border fire since October 7, when Israel retaliated for Hamas-led attacks by launching a war for which it is currently on trial for genocide at the U.N. International Court of Justice in The Hague.

According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, Israel’s bombs, bullets, and blockade have killed and maimed more than 147,000 Palestinians in Gaza over the past 351 days. Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced by Israel’s bombardment and invasion, which, along with the ” complete siege” on the coastal enclave, has fueled widespread and sometimes deadly starvation and disease.

Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Originally published in CommonDreams.org

A Lebanese soldier stands guard at the scene of an Israeli airstrike on Beirut as search and rescue operations continue on September 21, 2024.

 (Photo: AFP via Getty Images)

COUNTER CURRENTS

IT'S TIME FOR PEACE! 

IT'S TIME TO STOP KILLING! 

IT'S TIME TO STOP PROVOKING AN EXPANSION OF WAR! 

IT'S TIME TO NEGOTIATE A CEASEFIRE, RECOGNITION OF A PALESTINIAN 

STATE, END ISRAELI OCCUPATION, END ILLEGAL SETTLEMENTS IN THE 

WEST BANK!  THAT'S WHAT OTHER NATIONS ARE CALLING FOR! 

Displaced Palestinians return to Bani Suhayla and neighboring towns east of Khan Younis following reports of Israeli forces withdrawing from the area in the southern Gaza Strip on July 30, 2024. 

(Photo: Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images)

Report From Gaza Aid Agencies Shows 'Catastrophe on an Entirely New Level'

"In Gaza, we are not witnessing a 'shrinking' humanitarian space; there is barely any space left to operate at all," the report authors said.

Israeli attacks on relief workers and designated "humanitarian zones" in Gaza, as well its tight control over borders and repeated evacuation orders, have devastated the ability to deliver much-needed aid to residents of the beleaguered strip, 20 non-governmental organizations warned in a report released Tuesday.

Israel has now issued "evacuation orders" that cover 86% of the Gaza Strip's land area, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). This means that Gaza's 2.1 million people are now expected to squeeze into only 14% of Gaza's 141 square miles.

"We are doing everything we can to save children's lives in Gaza, but our job becomes more and more challenging by the day," said Jeremy Stoner, the Middle East regional director of Save the Children, one of the organizations behind the report. "Forcibly displacing civilians into areas that cannot accommodate them is causing a humanitarian catastrophe on an entirely new level."

"What is the international community doing about this humanitarian crisis?"

Between July 22 and 27 alone, Israeli "evacuation orders" forced around 200,000 people from central and eastern Khan Younis, and 12,600 from camps in Deir al Balah.

"There is no space left," Stoner continued, "and barely enough life-saving supplies to keep children alive. Without access to critical assistance, lives will continue to be lost."

Palestinians in Gaza face severe shortages of basic necessities, with half a million subjected to "catastrophic levels" of food insecurity, the report authors said. The amount of water available to Gaza's residents has shrunk by 94% since before Israel's onslaught began in October, and on July 26, Israel bombed the "Tal Sultan Water Reservoir," the leading source of drinking water in Rafah.

"We are talking about at least 34 children who have starved to death," Oxfam policy lead Bushra Khalidi said in the report. "If this estimate doesn't move the world, consider that most U.N. and other reports state that Gaza is on the verge of famine. What is the international community doing about this humanitarian crisis?"

Ola, a 42-year-old from northern Gaza who has been displaced more than fives times since the war began, told aid workers that "things are starting to take a toll and our bodies feel weak and flimsy."

"We can't really walk anymore but have to walk long distances to get water or buy anything," Ola said. "So at the moment, we stopped leaving the place we're in (...) and yesterday we picked and cooked mulberry leaves to block the children's hunger."

"It pains me as an aid worker that I can't do much for others."

At the same time, strict rules and violence at the border—both from direct Israeli attacks and the breakdown of law and order in their wake—make it increasingly difficult to get aid into Gaza, with deliveries dropping by 56% since April, according to U.N. figures. Save the Children reported that it had to wait almost a month at the Kerem Shalom border crossing to get four trucks filled with much-needed medical supplies to the other side. At the same time, Gaza's health facilities, which report authors say have "already collapsed," continue to attempt and treat people with a dwindling supply of U.N. medicines.

Another obstacle to delivering medicine is that Israel's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories will only permit flatbed trucks to enter Gaza, yet temperature-controlled medications can only be transported in closed trucks. Because of this rule, 17 pallets of Save the Children's temperature-controlled medication are currently stranded in Al-Areesh, Egypt.

Oxfam said it had deliveries of water tanks, desalination units, tap stands, generators, and latrines stalled on the other side of the border, while the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) had 864 tents it has so far been unable to bring through.

"This is the first time I find myself unable to offer help to others. It pains me as an aid worker that I can't do much for others. In all past escalations, I would still go out and serve those who needed help," Salma Altaweel, an NRC support manager in Gaza City, said in the report.

When aid workers in Gaza attempt to deliver supplies, they put themselves at risk. On July 13, a drone strike killed two members of a War Child partner organization, while an Israeli airstrike killed four of a War Child and Action Aid partner worker's children and critically injured his wife when it struck his shelter in Nuseirat. Israel fired on a clearly marked U.N. convoy on July 21, and two well-labeled UNICEF convoys were fired upon just two days later. Since October, around 278 aid workers have been killed in Gaza.

Stoner of Save the Children said: "Aid workers are not spared from the violence. One of our staff members was killed alongside his wife and four children by an Israeli airstrike back in December, since then aid workers have continued to be targeted. Humanitarian staff should never be a target and humanitarian operations, including convoys and warehouses, must be protected. We've said it again and again: an immediate and definitive cease-fire is the only way to save lives in Gaza."

The report authors issued a reminder that Israel, as an occupying power in Gaza, is obligated under the Geneva Convention to safeguard the humanitarian needs of Gaza's people by allowing aid to enter and be administered safely.

"Our continued presence should not be mistaken for an indication of unimpeded access," the aid groups wrote. "We operate at great risk, despite significant impediments to our access. The risks our colleagues are exposed to each moment are unacceptable and contrary to their protections under international law. In Gaza, we are not witnessing a 'shrinking' humanitarian space; there is barely any space left to operate at all."

They concluded, "We, the undersigned NGOs, continue to call for an immediate and lasting cease-fire and maintain it is the only way to provide humanitarian assistance and protect and save lives in Gaza."

• Global Aid Leaders to World: 'We Have Seen Nothing Like the Siege of Gaza' ›
• 20+ NGOs Condemn 'Reckless' Decision to Cut Off UNRWA Aid ›
• Starving Children in Gaza 'Cannot Wait' Weeks for US Port, Aid Groups Say ›
• Israeli Ambassador Slammed for Claiming 'There Is No Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza' ›
• Israeli Groups Slam Netanyahu Government for Flouting ICJ Ruling ›
• Aid Group Warns New UN Figures Show 'Hunger Catastrophe' for Gaza Children ›

COMMON DREAMS

 

Labor Unions Urge Biden to Halt Military Aid for Israel

The coalition said the move is needed "as part of the work to secure an immediate and permanent cease-fire in the war in Gaza."

A coalition of labor unions representing millions of U.S. workers on Tuesday urged the Biden administration to halt military aid to Israel—which is waging war on the Gaza Strip—as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington, D.C.

Since Israel launched its assault on Gaza in retaliation for the October 7 Hamas-led attack, U.S. labor leaders and unions have been among the individuals and groups pushing for an end to U.S. complicity—in the form of both weapons and diplomatic support on the world stage—in what is being investigated by the International Court of Justice as genocide.

The groups behind the letter are the American Postal Workers Union (APWU), Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT), National Education Association (NEA), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), United Auto Workers (UAW), and United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE).

"The Israeli government will continue to pursue its vicious response to the horrific attacks of October 7th until it is forced to stop."

Writing to Democratic President Joe Biden—who on Sunday dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris—the seven unions called for a pause on U.S. military aid to Israel "as part of the work to secure an immediate and permanent cease-fire in the war in Gaza."

After expressing disappointment that neither Israel nor Hamas, which governs Gaza, accepted a cease-fire proposal Biden outlined this spring, the coalition warned that "the Israeli government will continue to pursue its vicious response to the horrific attacks of October 7th until it is forced to stop."

As the letter details:

Recent reports only underscore the urgency of our demands. Large numbers of Palestinian civilians, many of them children, continue to be killed, reportedly often with U.S.-manufactured bombs. Rising tensions in the region threaten to ensnare even more innocent civilians in a wider war. And the humanitarian crisis deepens by the day, with famine, mass displacement, and destruction of basic infrastructure including schools and hospitals. We have spoken directly to leaders of Palestinian trade unions who told us heartwrenching stories of the conditions faced by working people in Gaza.

The Israeli assault and blockade have killed at least 39,090 Palestinians and injured another 90,147, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Most of the territory's 2.3 million have been displaced—many multiple times—and thousands are missing and presumed dead beneath damaged and destroyed buildings.

The letter argues that "Israel's refusal to minimize civilian harm and its demonstrated restriction of U.S. humanitarian aid call for a halt to U.S. military aid" under the Foreign Assistance Act and the Arms Export Control Act, challenging a U.S. State Department report from May which enabled the Biden administration and Congress to keep arming Israeli forces.

The coalition's call comes as Netanyahu prepares to address a joint meeting of Congress, a Wednesday event expected to be met with protests, including from lawmakers. Harris—who faces pressure to oppose more U.S. arms for Israel—has opted to attend a previously scheduled event instead of presiding over his speech. The Israeli leader is set to meet with Biden, who is recovering from Covid-19, at the White House on Thursday.

"Our unions are hearing the cries of humanity as this vicious war continues," APWU president Mark Dimondstein said in a statement Tuesday. "Working people and our unions are horrified that our tax dollars are financing this ongoing tragedy. We need a cease-fire now, and the best way to secure that is to shut off U.S. military aid to Israel."

Union members and other observers were quick to note the coalition letter's significance. Yasmine Taeb, a human rights lawyer and advocate, said: "Wow. This is huge."

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, encouraged "those who thought that fury over Biden's facilitation of the Palestinian genocide was limited to Arabs and Gen Z" to read the letter.

Workers who belong to groups in the coalition expressed pride in the letter to Biden while others urged their unions to follow suit.

The Democratic Socialists of America National Labor Commission declared: "Major unions are taking a stand against genocide! Stop military aid to Israel. Free Palestine!"

Demonstrators march through Boston, Massachusetts to protest Israel's assault and blockade of Gaza on July 20, 2024. 

(Photo: Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)


COMMON DREAMS