22 May 21
Where Have Our Larger Donors Gone?
We’re trying to do this with five and ten dollar donations, and it’s not working very well. The smaller donations are great when we get a few larger ones as well. We have the small donations, but very few larger ones.
Anything in triple digits would really help right now.
Thank you in advance.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
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21 May 21
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Reader Supported News
Is Roe v. Wade Now Doomed?
Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine
Kilgore writes: "After months of mysterious uncertainty, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade presented by a ban on abortions prior to 15 weeks of pregnancy by the State of Mississippi."
fter months of mysterious uncertainty, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade presented by a ban on abortions prior to 15 weeks of pregnancy by the State of Mississippi. And the Court left no ambiguity about its willingness to get back to the basics of the constitutional law governing abortion by limiting its review to the question of “whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.” That’s the question that was answered affirmatively in 1973 in Roe and again in 1992 in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the two Supreme Court precedents that have restrained eager Republican-controlled state legislatures and an increasingly conservative federal judiciary from eroding or abolishing reproductive rights.
Oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization will occur in the next Court term this fall, which means a decision is likely in the spring or early summer of 2022. There will be endless speculation between now and then as to the nature and scope of the ultimate outcome. But the early betting is that the six justices placed on the Court by the strongly anti-abortion presidents George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump will finally take the leap to seriously revise, if not reverse, a woman’s right to choose abortion prior to fetal viability. The chronically pessimistic progressive legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern may be right this time around:
This action suggests that the conservative majority is no longer interested in gradually eroding abortion rights until they are, in reality, nonexistent. This strategy has guided the anti-abortion movement for decades. It has resulted in laws that shutter abortion clinics under a bogus pretext, compel doctors to read anti-abortion propaganda, force women to undergo ultrasounds and waiting periods, and forbid abortions for specific reasons, like fetal disability. After the confirmations of Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, the conventional wisdom dictated that the Supreme Court would begin to uphold these laws, chipping away at Roe until it became a hollow promise. But the new conservative majority is not waiting for these half-measures to reach the court; with Dobbs, it has gone for the jugular. Roe itself is on the table.
Under this reading, the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett flipped a Court that, as recently as 2020, was willing to invalidate a Louisiana law restricting access to abortion clinics on the grounds that it violated Casey’s standard prohibiting laws that placed an “undue burden” on women choosing pre-viability abortions. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch are almost certain votes to abandon Roe and Casey, while Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh have appeared to be more cautious about defying so long-standing a set of precedents.
But with only three justices (Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan) being firmly committed to reproductive rights, and with virtually the entire Republican Party (not to mention its Federalist Society legal wing) opposing them, the time for a showdown may have now arrived. Indeed, among conservatives, the main difference of opinion is between those who favor a return to the pre-1973 status quo ante, in which the states (or, in theory, Congress) will determine abortion law, and those embracing the more radical doctrine of fetal “personhood” (which would have the effect of requiring a constitutional amendment to legalize abortion anywhere).
But before conceding defeat on the Court, reproductive-rights advocates should recall that we’ve been here before. In 1992, when SCOTUS accepted the Pennsylvania case that became Casey, it was widely expected that Roe was about to fall, in no small part because Thomas had just joined the Court. Indeed, we now know then–Chief Justice William Rehnquist circulated a draft opinion overturning Roe that was tentatively supported by five justices. But Justice Anthony Kennedy changed his mind and joined fellow Republican appointees Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter in affirming Roe’s viability standard, while replacing its trimester scheme with the “undue burden” test for pre-viability restrictions that is still in place.
Could that (i.e., a reframing rather than a reversal of the right to choose) happen again? It seems unlikely, but there is one straw in the wind that suggests it’s not necessarily a done deal. Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan did not choose to publish dissents to the order to hear Dobbs, which one might have expected if a conservative majority to reverse Roe is in place, given the unquestioned unconstitutionality of the Mississippi law under the existing precedents. It remains possible that Roberts and Kavanaugh, fearing an anti-Court outcry among women everywhere, could be persuaded to reaffirm the viability standard yet again, perhaps alongside some new leeway for less fundamental state restrictions. In other words, the 1992 saga could be replayed with a similar result. Short of a change of Court membership during the next year, that may be the abiding hope of reproductive-rights advocates. But they’d best focus most of their efforts on formulating a strategy for restoring the right to choose via intense political warfare in the states.
CNN correspondent Barbara Starr. (photo: CNN)
Trump DOJ Secretly Collected CNN Reporter's Phone, Email Records
Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY
Johnson writes: "The Trump Justice Department secretly obtained 2017 telephone and email records for a CNN reporter in yet another example of the administration's attempt to use journalists' communications to pursue government leak investigations."
CNN disclosed Thursday that Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr was informed in a May 13 letter that prosecutors had obtained two months of phone and email records between June 1, 2017 and July 31, 2017.
The Justice notification, according to the network, included the reporter's Pentagon extension, her home and cell phones and her personal email accounts.
Earlier this month, the Washington Post reported that Justice obtained 2017 phone records involving three of its reporters who covered the investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election.
In the CNN case, a Justice spokesman Thursday confirmed the records involved 2017 communications and that the "process to seek these records was approved in 2020."
"Department leadership will soon meet with reporters to hear their concerns about recent notices and further convey Attorney General (Merrick) Garland’s staunch support of and commitment to a free and independent press," Justice spokesman Anthony Coley said.
In its report, CNN President Jeff Zucker condemned the Justice action.
"We are asking for an immediate meeting with the Justice Department for an explanation," Zucker said.
Citing the Justice notification, CNN reported that the government had obtained phone "toll records," which would include calls made to and from the targeted phones and the length of the calls.
"The letter said that the Justice Department had received 'non-content information' from Starr's email accounts, meaning the recipient, sender, date and time would be included, but not the content of the emails," the network said..
CNN said Justice did not disclose why it sought Starr's communications, though the network said the Pentagon correspondent was involved in reporting on "U.S. military options in North Korea that were ready to be presented to Trump, as well as stories on Syria and Afghanistan."
“This is a big story that just got bigger," said Bruce Brown, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "That a journalist from another news organization had communications records seized by the Trump Justice Department suggests that the last administration’s efforts to intrude into reporter-source relationships and chill newsgathering is more sweeping than we originally thought.
"The Justice Department’s current leadership should provide a detailed explanation about what exactly happened and why, and how it plans to strengthen protections for the free flow of information to the public.”
IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig speaks during a Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee on Capitol Hill. (photo: Sarah Silbiger/AP)
Biden Proposes Doubling IRS Workforce as Part of Plan to Snag Tax Cheats
Brian Faler, POLITICO
Faler writes: "President Joe Biden is proposing to double the size of the IRS, by hiring nearly 87,000 new workers over the next decade, as part of a sweeping plan to chase down tax cheats."
The department’s total budget would increase by about 10 percent annually.
The hiring spree, part of a bid to increase IRS funding by $80 billion, would be phased in to give the department time to adjust, the Treasury Department said in a report Thursday.
The agency’s workforce would never grow by more than a “manageable” 15 percent each year. And its total budget would increase by about 10 percent annually.
At the same time, the administration wants to require financial institutions and other businesses to report a lot more information about the money coursing through their customers’ accounts — a proposal designed to put the fear of the IRS in the hearts of tax scofflaws.
It’s part of a concerted effort by the administration to go after uncollected taxes owed by large corporations, partnerships and wealthy individuals — money Democrats want to use to finance their big-ticket spending plans.
“The president’s compliance proposals are designed to ameliorate existing inequities by focusing on high-end evasion,” the report says.
“These unpaid taxes come at a cost to American households and compliant taxpayers as policymakers choose rising deficits, lower spending on necessary priorities, or further tax increases to compensate for the lost revenue.”
The agency said uncollected taxes in 2019 amounted to about $554 billion, though IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig said recently the figure could be as high as $1 trillion per year.
About 80 percent of that tax gap is attributable to people underreporting their incomes or taking too many deductions. The rest is people either not filing returns at all, or doing their taxes correctly and failing to pay what they owe.
Altogether, the administration says its proposal would generate $700 billion over a decade.
While the administration intends to boost scrutiny of high earners, it says audit rates for those making less than $400,000 would not increase under the proposal.
The push comes after years of tight IRS budgets under Republicans that caused agency audit rates to plunge. The idea of going after tax cheats is now drawing bipartisan support, with a growing number of Republicans saying they support boosting the department’s enforcement capabilities, although some are critical of the new income reporting requirement proposals.
The two sides are now exploring whether they might be able to strike a bipartisan deal to increase infrastructure spending.
One of the questions hovering over the administration’s plan is how the IRS could efficiently absorb such a huge increase in funding — which the Treasury report is designed to answer.
Most of the administration’s $80 billion budget hike would come in the form of so-called mandatory spending that would not have to be approved each year by Congress. That’s intended to provide the agency, which has sometimes seen wild budget swings, with a more reliable stream of funding.
The money would be used not just to increase audits but also to modernize the agency’s computer systems and improve other taxpayer services.
Beefing up enforcement would generate $240 billion in savings over a decade, Treasury says.
The administration projects it could generate another $460 billion over the next decade through the increased income reporting requirements.
Financial institutions would have to report the gross inflows and outflows on all business and personal accounts. So-called payment settlement entities, like PayPal, foreign financial institutions and cryptocurrency exchanges would also be subject to additional reporting requirements. Businesses would have to alert the IRS to cryptocurrency transactions worth more than $10,000.
“Despite constituting a relatively small portion of business income today, cryptocurrency transactions are likely to rise in importance in the next decade,” the report said.
In a briefing with reporters, Treasury officials acknowledged the reporting requirements would produce a mountain of information that would take some time for the IRS to parse.
The main benefit of the proposal, they said, would be deterrence. Because tax cheats would know the government can peer into previously opaque streams of money, they’d be less likely to cheat on their taxes, officials said.
They also acknowledged that arcane budget rules in Congress could prevent Democrats from counting much of the proposed savings against the cost of their infrastructure plan — and said they hoped lawmakers could figure out a way to make it work.
Aetna will be investigated by the state Department of Managed Health Care and the California Department of Insurance. (photo: Jessica Hill/AP)
Health Care Lobbyists Are Trying to Block the Public Option at the State Level
Julia Rock, Jacobin
Rock writes: "Joe Biden said on the campaign trail he would fight for a public option for health care. He hasn't - leaving health insurance companies, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies to work overtime to block states from passing their own public options."
hen President Joe Biden outlined his legislative priorities during his first address to Congress last month, notably absent was a major campaign promise: a public health insurance option. Instead, his current health reform proposal will funnel $200 billion more to private insurance companies to subsidize premiums, without any requirement that they cap out-of-pocket costs or eliminate them altogether.
As a result of Biden’s approach, states have been left to introduce public option legislation themselves, in the process taking on some of the nation’s largest and most politically organized businesses. From coast to coast, health insurance companies, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies are using every tactic at their disposal to block states from passing public option legislation.
Such efforts show how determined the industry is to block any sort of reform that threatens its massive profits.
In particular, the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future Action (PAHCF Action), the state arm of the dark money group that has opposed Medicare for All and a public option at the federal level, has spent millions of dollars on TV ads and mailers in Colorado, Connecticut, and other states where public option bills are being considered. The group has spent more on lobbying in Colorado in 2021 than any other organization since 2011, and possibly ever.
As a result, the actual public option component of the Colorado legislation was removed in an agreement made with the hospital industry. What’s left of the bill is a requirement that private insurers offer so-called “standardized” health insurance plans and cut premiums on those plans by 18 percent over three years. Despite the overhaul, the industry has continued to oppose the plan.
“It’s a little intriguing to me that this is becoming such a big deal, because the bill is actually very narrow,” Rep. Dylan Roberts, the lead sponsor of the Colorado legislation, told the Daily Poster/Newsweek, before the bill was watered down. He added, “It’s not a total overhaul of the health care system in Colorado or in the United States by any means. So the opposition to me is a little intriguing on that front.”
Lobbyists Gut Colorado Option
In Colorado, PAHCF Action is smashing state lobbying records by spending millions of dollars to kill its public option proposal. The organization is running a full-scale advocacy campaign, blanketing the television airwaves and filling people’s mailboxes with propaganda.
While PAHCF Action’s donors are not public, its board includes top executives from lobbying groups for investor-owned hospital chains and health insurers.
The organization’s president is Chip Kahn, who leads the Federation of American Hospitals. His group lobbies for hospital chains like HCA Healthcare and Tenet Healthcare.
HCA reported $3.5 billion in profit last year, and its CEO made $83.6 million, according to Axios. The hospital chain owns seven hospitals in Colorado, including one that drew national headlines in 2019 for billing an emergency room patient more than $12,000 to treat a hangover after his bachelor party.
While HCA does not disclose its political contributions, Tenet has reported donating nearly $2.9 million to PAHCF between 2018 and 2020, according to company political spending disclosures. Tenet has a dozen surgery centers in Colorado, according to its website.
PAHCF Action’s secretary is David Merritt, a senior executive at America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), which lobbies for big health insurers like Aetna.
CVS Health, which owns Aetna, donated $5 million last year to the national Partnership for America’s Health Care Future (PAHCF), according to reporting by the Intercept.
The dark money group isn’t alone: 149 individual lobbyists in the state are registered as opposing the legislation. These lobbyists represent AHIP, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Cigna, UnitedHealth Group, and Kaiser Permanente, among other corporate interests. Americans for Prosperity, the Koch network’s political advocacy arm, has sixteen lobbyists alone registered in opposition of the bill.
These influence peddlers have already had significant success. Last year, lobbyists helped kill a public option proposal in the state. This year, legislators proposed a scaled-down version of the public option plan, one that would allow the state to set up a public option in two years if private insurers failed to set up standardized plans that meet certain cost criteria.
But even this legislation was derailed by special interest groups. In late April, lawmakers removed the public option component from the bill following negotiations with insurance industry lobbying groups and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) of Colorado, which opposed the bill. The SEIU Local 105 argued that the premium-cutting measures in the legislation would lead to layoffs of health care workers at hospitals.
“Even as the bill has changed, they’ve had the same generic talking points about a government takeover of health care that doesn’t reflect what’s actually in the bill,” Roberts said.
The health care industry still opposes the bill, even in its weakened state.
On May 12, two days after the modified bill passed the Colorado House, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA), a Koch-affiliated political advocacy group, announced an “ad blitz” to oppose the legislation as it moves forward. Their so-called “No Big Handouts for Big Insurance” campaign will involve a statewide ad campaign targeting the rate-setting element of the legislation, according to a TPA press release.
The idea that big insurers would benefit from the legislation is more than a little dubious, given that health insurance lobbyists are helping lead the campaign to kill it.
Standoff in the Insurance Capital
Connecticut has long been a flash point in the battle over a public option. Hartford, the state capital, is known as the “Insurance Capital of the World,” because a number of the world’s largest insurance companies — Cigna, The Hartford, Chubb, and until recently Aetna — are headquartered there, and are also major employers.
The industry has used its presence in the state as leverage to kill public option efforts. In 2019, Cigna reportedly threatened to leave if the state passed public option legislation. Between that threat and a massive lobbying effort by the insurance industry against the legislation, the bill never passed.
Now the industry is doing it again. Last month, the CEOs of Anthem, Cigna, CVSHealth, Tufts Health Plan, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, and UnitedHealth Group wrote a letter to Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, thanking him for opposing the legislature’s public option legislation and implicitly threatening to leave the state if it passes.
“The pandemic has demonstrated that employees can work virtually, making it easier for companies to choose where they are domiciled and grow,” the letter said. “As a result, it has never been more critical for the State to create a climate that retains and attracts businesses that will help stabilize the economy. All of us will have to decide where it will be best to deploy our resources long term. Private employers and taxpayers should not fund unsustainable public policy pursuits.” (When CVS acquired Aetna in 2018, it promised to keep Aetna headquartered in Hartford for at least a decade, and retain its staffing levels at least until 2022.)
UnitedHealth Group, whose CEO signed the letter to Lamont, held a webinar in February to train its employees to lobby against the legislation, the Daily Poster previously reported. According to the PAHCF Action’s first quarter lobbying report in Connecticut, the group has spent roughly $126,000 on lobbying so far this year, including about $95,000 on compensation and $31,000 on solicitations.
Beyond PAHCF Action, health insurance companies and businesses are also engaged in lobbying through other front groups or direct lobbying on the public option legislation.
The Connecticut Hospital Association, whose members include dozens of hospitals as well as insurance companies such as Anthem Blue Cross & Blue Shield and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, has spent $296,000 on lobbying during the first quarter of this year, according to state filings.
Meanwhile, the Connecticut Association of Health Plans has spent $133,000 on lobbying and $1,200 on paid media during the first quarter of this year, according to state filings. The group’s president is Tim Meyers of Aetna, the insurance giant owned by CVS, and its treasurer and secretary work in government relations for ConnectiCare and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, respectively.
The opposition’s talking points don’t reflect what the bill would actually do, says Tom Swan, the executive director of the Connecticut Citizen Action Group, a group advocating for the public option legislation. “A lot of their campaign is just railing against a bill that doesn’t exist,” Swan said.
“They’re saying, ‘don’t let them do a one-size-fits-all health insurance option,'” said Swan, who added that in truth, the bill includes multiple different public option plans and does not interfere with the private insurance industry’s capacity to operate.
Without action on health care at the federal level, more states may try to take on the health care industry and its national advocacy groups themselves.
Nevada, a state with one of the highest uninsured rates in the nation, recently introduced its own public option bill — and PAHCF Action immediately launched an operation to kill it.
The firing squad execution chamber at the Utah State Prison in Draper, Utah, in 2010. South Carolina recently passed a law to use a firing squad or the electric chair for executions. (photo: Trent Nelson/AP)
Death Row Inmates Sue After They're Asked to Pick Firing Squad or Electric Chair
Victoria Hansen, NPR
Hansen writes: "Two death row inmates in South Carolina, now required by law to choose between a yet-to-be-formed firing squad and a 109-year-old electric chair, have decided to sue instead."
They call the state's recently signed legislation unconstitutional because lethal injection was the main method of execution when they were sentenced.
It's an argument Democratic state Rep. Justin Bamberg vehemently made as he fought against the new law that is intended to restart executions that have involuntarily stalled in the state for a decade.
"We're going to force people to get electrocuted and give them the choice of getting shot instead when that wasn't even the law when they were convicted of their crime," says Bamberg.
The law does say lethal injection is still possible if it's available. But that's a big if.
Many pharmaceutical companies have stopped selling the chemicals needed to put inmates to death with a needle and in South Carolina, unlike other states, there is no shield law to protect local drug makers' identities.
Before the new law was signed, the decision for the condemned was execution by lethal injection or the electric chair. Those who chose not to be electrocuted could not be put to death because the drugs were not available. That frustrated some lawmakers.
"To have the death penalty and then not be allowed to carry it out is committing fraud upon the citizens we represent," says Republican state Sen. Greg Hembree, a former prosecutor of 25 years.
Hembree says the families of victims deserve the justice they were promised in court. He sponsored the legislation and proposed making the electric chair the default method of execution instead of lethal injection.
But not everyone agreed.
"That was unacceptable to me because I think the electric chair is torture," says Democratic state Sen. Dick Harpootlian. "I don't think it's an execution."
Harpootlian, a former district attorney who prosecuted several death penalty cases, began researching firing squads now used in three states — Utah, Oklahoma and Mississippi. He says he found the method more humane.
"It's instantaneous. No death is pretty, but it's not torture."
The South Carolina Department of Corrections is now trying to do something it's never done before, create a firing squad based on those other states. There's no word on how much it could cost or how long it will take.
But the agency's director, Bryan Stirling, says it's possible the state won't have to wait. It could, he says, start carrying out executions again without a firing squad, even though inmates are supposed to have a choice.
"They do have that right, however, the law states if an option is not available, then it would default to the electric chair," says Stirling.
Lindsey Vann says she is appalled but not surprised. She's the executive director of the non-profit group Justice 360, which assists death row inmates.
Vann represents a third inmate on death row, Richard Moore, who is in his 50s. He was sentenced to death nearly 20 years ago for the murder of James Mahoney, who was working as a clerk at a convenience store at the time.
"We have researched all cases in South Carolina ending in the death penalty and none of them are like this," says Vann.
She says Moore, who is Black, was unarmed when he walked into the store and scuffled with Mahoney, who was white and armed. Vann says Moore shot Mahoney to death, but it wasn't planned.
"Richard Moore is also the last person on South Carolina's death row who was tried by a jury without anyone of his own race," says Vann.
The state Supreme Court began reviewing Moore's case again this month, even as lawmakers began crafting legislation that could hasten his death.
Moore was supposed to be executed last December but refused to choose the electric chair or lethal injection. The latter was the default then, so he could not be put to death.
Vann says she doesn't know why the new law was so quickly passed at the end of the legislative session.
Republican Gov. Henry McMaster says it's because it was long overdue.
"It's been an issue for years. There have been efforts to see that the law is carried out for years."
But some Democrats believe that carrying out causes like this one has become a popular way for Republicans to try to appeal to former President Trump's faithful base.
Palestinian children fill up plastic containers with water in Gaza City on Thursday. (photo: AFP)
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Years to Rebuild: Gaza's Shattered Infrastructure Severely Damaged, Warn UN and NGOs
Bel Trew, The Independent
Trew writes: "Gaza's hospitals, schools, power and sewage plants have all been hit in the fighting."
aza could take “years” to rebuild, United Nations officials have warned, as rights groups say intense Israeli bombing of the strip has severely damaged health, education, water and energy facilities.
Hospitals, schools, desalination plants, power and sewage plants have been impacted, international NGOs and Gaza officials have said.
It has meant that swathes of the strip already have no water or electricity, while untreated sewage from some plants is pouring into the sea. Aid organisations have begun trying to raise tens of millions of dollars to help. Israeli officials have meanwhile accused Hamas of rocketing vital electricity power lines.
Speaking to The Independent, Tamara al-Rifai, spokesperson for Unrwa, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, warned it could take years to repair the damage. She said that this was the fourth conflict in just 13 years on the tiny enclave that has been under a long blockade and hit by the pandemic.
“Every time there is a conflict in Gaza, intense air bombardment pulverises basic infrastructure, homes, hospitals and factories,” she said.
“It then takes Unrwa and aid agencies several years to rehabilitate their premises, and many homes and livelihoods of Gazans are never rebuilt.”
Israel maintains it does everything in its power to avoid civilian casualties or destruction to civilian infrastructure.
Ferocious cross-border fighting is now in its second week, although hopes have been raised that a potential ceasefire could be announced within the next few days.
So far, 230 Palestinians have been killed, including 65 children, according to the Gaza health ministry. Medics in Israel say the death toll has risen to 12, two of them children. Hundreds on both sides have been injured.
Israel said that Hamas, the militant group running Gaza, had fired over 4,000 rockets since last Monday, more than the total number of rockets fired at Israel during the entire seven-week war in 2014.
The rocket fire has hit homes, schools and a synagogue and sent families constantly running for bomb shelters. The militants have also fired anti-tank missiles into Israel, injuring an Israeli soldier.
In Gaza the UN says that more than 72,000 people have been displaced because of the fighting, with 2,500 made permanently homeless as some of the air raids hit populated areas, levelling multi-storey buildings Israel said contained Hamas military infrastructure.
On Wednesday, Unrwa launched a $38m appeal for Gaza and the West Bank to provide immediate food, non-food, and health and psychosocial support to Palestinians. The British Red Cross also launched a crisis appeal for both Israel and Palestine on the same day, saying hospitals in Gaza, already overwhelmed by Covid-19 patients, were at “at risk of further collapse”.
International aid groups sounded the alarm about the long-term problems now faced in Gaza, a tiny, congested enclave home to two million people
International medical charity Medecins Sans Frontières called Israel’s bombardment of Gaza “inexcusable and intolerable”, saying that indirect fire had damaged several clinics in the Strip including destroying their own sterilisation room that provided treatment for hundreds of trauma and burn patients.
It said access to healthcare for casualties with life-threatening injuries is being “severely restricted” as Israeli airstrikes have damaged many roads leading to hospitals.
In addition, many medical staff are concerned for their safety while on their journeys to work and some medical supplies are running low.
Gaza’s health ministry has meanwhile appealed for nearly $50m in financial assistance, saying that in total 22 health facilities had suffered partial or complete damage in the bombardment. They added that there was now a high risk of rapid spread of Covid-19 in the shelters housing thousands of displaced people.
This week health officials reported that the only laboratory in Gaza which processes Covid-19 test results had become temporarily inoperable after an Israeli airstrike nearby.
It is not just health facilities that have been hit.
Water officials in Gaza said that half of the strip has no regular water supply because of a lack of fuel for the water pumps and damage to facilities.
Some cities were also almost completely cut off from water like Rafah, along the border with Egypt where water authorities were having to bring water in from outside.
Monther Shoblaq, director general of the Coastal Municipalities Water Utility, said the bombing had been so intense they were unable to repair and operate three waste water plants on the eastern side of the Gaza Strip, meaning they were pouring untreated sewage into the sea.
Three new offshore desalination plants, providing a third of the good quality water the authorities are able to make in Gaza, are also inaccessible and so not operational, he added.
“Some areas haven’t had water for four days,” Shoblaq told The Independent.
“This time, because of the severe airstrikes it has been impossible to move around and repair the damage,” he added.
Gaza is also on the brink of running out of fuel to power its only power station, and is currently relying on poorer quality fuel from private generators to power its turbines.
Hundreds of thousands of people across the Strip only have access to four hours of power already. Once the fuel runs out it will plunge homes and hospitals into darkness as well as massive water shortages as the pumps will stop.
Mohammed Thabeth, a spokesperson for the Electricity Distribution Company of Gaza, said the main crossing into Israel for fuel was still closed. Israeli officials told The Independent that Hamas mortars had been bombarding it, preventing the delivery of vital aid.
“We managed to secure enough fuel from the private market to keep us going for two more days. But this fuel could cause technical problems for the plant,” Thabeth said.
Several power lines to Israel have also been cut, reducing electrical supply even further. Israeli security officials told local media that Hamas rockets falling short of the border were responsible for the damage, a point Gaza officials reject.
Schools were also hit.
According to Save the Children 50 schools in Gaza – or one in 15 schools – have been damaged by Israeli airstrikes over the past week, impacting over 41,000 children. Three further schools have reportedly been damaged in Israel by rockets from Gaza.
“Attacking schools or hospitals is a grave violation against children,” Save the Children said, urging all parties to adhere to international humanitarian law and to protect them.
“The brutal truth is that no child is left unscathed, and time and time again we see that children’s lives are the hardest hit by conflict,” Jason Lee from the group added.
Myrtle Felton, Sharon Lavigne, Gail LeBoeuf and Rita Cooper, members of Rise St. James, on property owned by Formosa in St. James parish. (photo: Gerald Herbert/AP)
'This Is Environmental Racism': Activists Call on Biden to Stop New Plastics Plants in 'Cancer Alley'
Rachel Ramirez, Guardian UK
Ramirez writes: "On Monday, groups of climate activists protested against a proposed petrochemical complex an hour away from New Orleans, Louisiana, calling on the Biden administration to revoke the plastics company's federal permit to start construction."
Protest over proposed petrochemical complex in Louisiana is part of 400-mile march led by youth climate group Sunrise Movement
The demonstration is part of a 400-mile march led by the youth climate group Sunrise Movement, which began last week and traces the path of environmental disasters in the Gulf coast from New Orleans to Houston. Roughly 20 participants are on the trek as part of the group’s “Generation on Fire” campaign.
“It’s one plant one day, and another plant another day,” said Kidus Girma, 25, an organizer with Sunrise’s Gulf south trek team and the Dallas chapter.
A crucial stop along the way is the site of a $9.4bn petrochemical complex slated to set up shop in St James parish, a community that sits on an 85-mile industrial corridor of the Mississippi River known as “Cancer Alley” – home to more than 150 chemical plants and oil refineries.
Last January, the Louisiana department of environmental quality (LDEQ) approved permits for the Taiwanese plastics-giant Formosa to build 14 separate plastics plants in St James parish. The decision proved controversial; for years, the parish’s predominantly Black community has witnessed their neighbors suffer from pollution-linked conditions such as cancer, asthma and other respiratory illnesses.
Rise St James, a grassroots environmental justice group that has been leading the fight to block Formosa from building the mammoth facility, organized Monday’s protest in conjunction with the Sunrise Movement. In 2019, Rise St James found that Formosa’s chosen location sits on two former sugarcane plantations and the burial grounds of enslaved people.
In November, the project’s federal permit was suspended, and is currently under re-evaluation. The activists protesting on Monday argue that, just as Biden revoked a necessary permit for the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day as president, he should do the same for the proposed Formosa facility.
“This is the epitome of environmental racism,” said Varshini Prakash, the co-founder and executive director of Sunrise Movement. “Biden was elected on a climate mandate rooted in racial and environmental justice, and we demand he fulfill his campaign promise by directing the army corps to revoke the federal permits on this plant.”
At the rally, activists held a visioning session with community members where they reimagined what the land could look like whether it would become a memorial ground, a historical museum, or homes for the descendants of the formerly enslaved people – anything, but another polluting facility.
“If we had the money, we would purchase the land from Formosa,” Sharon Lavigne, the founder of Rise St James,said. “We would build a subdivision and preserve our ancestral graves.”
Throughout the pandemic, Black residents living along Cancer Alley with underlying conditions faced disproportionately high Covid-19 infection and mortality rates. Still, Formosa strengthened its control over the 2,500-acre complex.
If built, researchers found that the Formosa complex would diminish nearby wetlands, which protect the communities from extreme flooding and heavy rain. Even Formosa’s own models show that the gargantuan complex could emit more of the carcinogenic compound ethylene oxide than just about any other facility in the country.
“While some groups continue to spread fear and confusion about [the project], [Formosa] continues to work alongside citizens and leaders in St James parish to invite cooperation and truth, and to address real concerns,” Janile Parks, a spokesperson for Formosa, wrote in an email to the Guardian.
Activists say revoking federal permits for the Formosa plant is an opportunity for the Biden administration to prove its commitment to racial and environmental justice, which the president has made a cornerstone of his climate plan.
“I want the Biden administration to come down and see the filth we’re living in,” Lavigne said. “We are hoping and praying that he would come to us and listen to the people of St James so that we can tell him what we envision our community to be.”
The goal of the Sunrise Movement’s 400-mile march is to pressure the Biden administration into expanding its infrastructure package to include a much-anticipated Civilian Climate Corps, which would create good-paying jobs for Americans fighting the climate crisis – much like what members of Rise St James and Sunrise have been doing in the last few years.
“It’s really about how do we get beyond just stopping a new plant to how do we get to a place of creating,” Girma said. “St James deserves to stop fighting plants and to start building what they really want in their community.”
