In the news today: As the Senate’s Republicans stonewall each basic task of government, Democrats once again scramble to keep government open despite near-unanimous Republican opposition to doing so. A Senate leader is insisting that the Senate will act to make such stonewalling more onerous—but we’ve been hearing that all year.
On June 11, 2020, AT&T noted to customers that Bluetooth devices are not considered secure, and they shouldn’t be used for transmission of any secure data as there are four known Bluetooth security problems that right now aren’t easily addressed because they are “baked in” to the protocol. AT&T’s advice: If you’re doing anything secure, like talking to your bank, don’t use Bluetooth.
“And so this is Christmas, and where is your gun?” John Lennon’s 1971 hit “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” was a call for peace, not for packing heat, but apparently the lyrics need to be updated to fit the 21st century. Fifty years later, the NRA and Republicans have made sure that far too many Americans can easily answer that (updated) question.
As hate crimes against people of color continue across the country, members of faith centers and organizations are bearing the brunt of it. Faith institutions across the country are facing hate crimes at alarming rates, and an Islamic center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, reported the latest incident.
Multiple fires were set near the prayer hall of the Islamic Center of New Mexico by a woman captured on surveillance video, local news outlet KOB 4 reported.
The Republican also complained that white defendants charged in the Capitol riot are being discriminated against “because of the color of their skin.
A Black couple in Northern California is rightfully suing the shit out of an appraisal company after getting a low-ball price for their property.
Since buying their four-bedroom, two-bath house in Marin City, a neighborhood in the San Francisco Bay area, in 2016 for $550,000, Paul Austin, 45, and his wife Tenisha Tate-Austin, 42, have made nearly $400,000 worth of renovations—which the obviously biased appraiser noted when visiting the house.
The ruling came in response to a lawsuit from several contractors and seven states.
At a White House press briefing yesterday, NPR’s national political correspondent Mara Liasson asked Press Secretary Jen Psaki a question that’s been on many people’s minds: “There are still a lot of countries, like Germany and the U.K. and South Korea, that basically have massive testing, free of charge or for a nominal fee,” she said.
Democrats believe it will be difficult for Republicans to oppose popular elements of Build Back Better, like new child care funding. But the GOP isn’t playing along.
The committee has publicized 45 subpoenas to date, but has also quietly issued an unknown number of subpoenas and conducted nearly 300 interviews so far.
The former Trump official declined to cooperate “despite his apparent willingness to provide details … in the book he is now promoting and selling,” the panel said.
The financial regulation lawyer withdrew after coming under fire from Democrats aligned with the banking sector and Republicans smearing her as a communist.
“A pandemic is not the time to be cutting access to doctors for patients on Medicare,” Kim Schrier, (D-Wash.) who introduced the bill along with Steven Horsford (D-Nev.), said in a statement.
When you have a miscarriage, one thing that gets drilled into you fast is that miscarriage is common. According to the American Pregnancy Association, 10 to 25 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Those are just the ones we know about; many others happen too early to ever be detected. And the risk gets higher as you get older. Your friends, if you tell them about your miscarriage, will confirm how ordinary it is: “I had one,” someone will say.
“The Constitution is neither pro-choice nor pro-life.” So said Justice Brett Kavanaugh, not once, not twice, but three times during last week’s oral argument in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. It’s the judicial equivalent of a poll-tested line, an attempt to message the overturning of Roe v. Wade as fundamentally pro-democratic, something for voters to decide.
At least fifteen lives have been saved, so far, after the nation’s first supervised illegal drug injection sites opened in New York City about a week ago. The facilities provide clean needles and the opioid reversal medication Naloxone, as well as medical care and drug dependency treatment options. This comes as U.S. overdose deaths topped 100,000 during the first year of the pandemic.
In a controversial move, the Biden administration has resumed and expanded the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy that forces non-Mexican asylum-seekers who arrive at the southern U.S. border to wait in Mexico while their cases are resolved in U.S. courts — a process that can take months or even years.
As the Biden administration faces increased pressure to address global vaccine inequity, USAID administrator Samantha Power announced a plan Monday for the United States to spend an additional $400 million to help increase vaccine access internationally. The move came days after Vanity Fair revealed a $2.5 billion plan to thwart Omicron-like variants has been stalled inside the Biden administration.
The eight top Pfizer and Moderna shareholders made over $10 billion last week when their stock holdings skyrocketed after the discovery of the new Omicron variant. This comes as global public health advocates warn the world will keep seeing more coronavirus variants unless wealthy nations and vaccine manufacturers do more to address vaccine inequity.
Today marks the 93rd birthday of world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author Noam Chomsky, who spoke with Democracy Now! from his home in Tucson, Arizona, and said he finds hope in the activism of young people “to create a much better world than the one we have.”
Chomsky is among the special guests for Democracy Now’s 25th anniversary event airing Tuesday evening, alongside Angela Davis, Arundhati Roy and many more. The virtual celebration begins at 8 p.m.
As Aung San Suu Kyi climbed the steps of the gargantuan parliamentary building into her first session as an elected lawmaker, I watched along with my colleagues in the offices of The Myanmar Times, where we crowded around and turned our heads upward to the boxy televisions that hung precariously above the newsroom.This was July 2012. Suu Kyi’s arrival had been delayed by a whirlwind 17-day lap around Europe.
Justices are expected to decide whether to scrap the half-century-old decision underpinning abortion rights and let states chose if they want to ban the procedure early in pregnancy.
“When the ban was put on, it was put to give us time to figure out just what is going on,” Biden’s chief medical adviser told CNN.
The effort to paint pharmacy benefit managers as villains has sparked a multimillion-dollar campaign to influence Democrats.
Independent advisers to the FDA endorsed the pill, molnupiravir, in an unusually tight 13-10 vote this week after airing concerns about its low efficacy rate and potential safety risks to pregnant people.
“We should not think for a minute that this is some sort of magic bullet that is going to get us to universally free and accessible testing,” said a Georgetown health policy expert.
Powell’s comment came after the Fed already announced earlier this month that it would slow the pace at which it buys U.S. government debt and mortgage-backed securities.
In the end, President Joe Biden did what many close to him expected: He took a longer-than-anticipated amount of time to arrive at a reasonable, moderate decision that thrilled few but carried limited risk.
The Commerce secretary said in an interview that the Biden administration sees trading partners in Asia as part of the solution.
Aggressive action to deliver pandemic relief was the right call — and withdrawing support now would only hurt American workers.