Monthly Archives: August 2020

Exposing Trump’s Payroll Tax Deferral as ‘Wage Theft,’ Treasury Signals Millions of Workers Will Earn Less in 2021 Under Plan

“Like Donald Trump’s other economic executive orders, this will not provide actual relief to workers.”

By Julia Conley, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 8-29-2020

Photo: skeeze from Pixabay

Days after the payroll processor for the federal government—one of the nation’s largest employers—announced it would implement President Donald Trump’s plan to defer payroll taxes for the rest of 2020, the U.S. Treasury Department indicated that employers will be responsible for paying the deferred taxes next year.

The plan is scheduled to go into effect September 1, and companies that take part will be required to collect the taxes their employees owe from the last four months of this year at the beginning of 2021—after the general election, which Trump hopes to win with claims that he’s strengthened the economy and helped workers. Continue reading

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Federal agents sent to Kenosha, but history shows militarized policing in cities can escalate violence and trigger conflict

Sending in the feds to quell unrest often increases conflict on the ground, as it did this summer in Portland, Ore. Nathan Howard/Getty Images

Angélica Durán-Martínez, University of Massachusetts Lowell

The U.S. Justice Department has dispatched federal agents and U.S. marshals to Kenosha, Wisconsin, where a police shooting left an unarmed Black man, Jacob Blake, paralyzed. The Aug. 23 shooting triggered fury, protest and nights of deadly conflict.

Kenosha is the latest city to see federal intervention in demonstrations against police violence. Citing its responsibility to stop “violent anarchists rioting in the streets,” the Trump administration sent armed Justice Department agents to Portland and Seattle in July. In May, after the police killing of George Floyd, it deployed National Guard troops to Washington, D.C. Continue reading

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23 AGs Sue Trump Council Over ‘Reckless and Unprecedented’ Gutting of Bedrock US Environmental Law

“This administration’s insidious attack on one of our most important environmental laws is an attack on the democratic process itself.”

By Jessica Corbett, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 8-28-2020

Photo: NRDC

A coalition of 27 U.S. states, commonwealths, territories, counties, and cities filed a federal lawsuit on Friday challenging the Trump administration’s “unlawful, unjustified, and sweeping revisions” to a 50-year-old law that the president claimed would “streamline” infrastructure projects by limiting environmental reviews.

After revealing plans to alter the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in January, President Donald Trump announced what critics called “reckless and unprecedented” changes during a July campaign stop. The revisions, detailed in a final rule released by the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), swiftly provoked legal threats from advocacy organizations. Continue reading

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‘Wild and Timely’ Report Details Infiltration of Far-Right Militias and White Supremacist Groups in US Police Departments

The study comes amid unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, following the latest high-profile police shooting of a Black man and the shooting deaths of two protesters by an alleged far-right militia member.

By Julia Conley, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 8-27-2020

Kyle Rittenhouse walks past police in Kenosha after allegedly shooting three people, killing two of them. Photo: Rod Breslau/Twitter

As law enforcement agencies and lawmakers respond to nationwide outrage over countless police shootings of Black Americans with pledges to address racial profiling and “implicit bias,” the Brennan Center for Justice released a report Thursday on what it called “an especially harmful form of bias, which remains entrenched within law enforcement: explicit racism.”

The presence of virulent racism within police ranks across the country has grown over the past two decades, Brennan Center fellow and former FBI special agent Michael German wrote in the report, as white supremacist and far-right militant groups have infiltrated law enforcement agencies. Continue reading

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Amid Pandemic, Trump Petitions Supreme Court to Make Potential Covid-19 Exposure ‘the Price of Abortion Care’

“We’ve already blocked this policy in two federal courts—and we plan to do so again,” said the ACLU.

By Julia Conley, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 8-26-2020

President Donld Trump petitioned the Supreme Court to reinstate an FDA rule mandating a doctor’s office visit for patients to obtain mifepristone, which is used to terminate an early pregnancy. (Photo: Robin Marty/Flickr)

Potentially subjecting patients to Covid-19 risks in the interest of violating the constitutional right to seek an abortion, President Donald Trump on Wednesday petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate a rule requiring patients to see a doctor in person before obtaining a medication used to provide abortion care.

The ACLU filed a lawsuit last month to suspend the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) restriction on behalf of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), New York State Academy of Family Physicians, and other reproductive healthcare providers and rights groups. Continue reading

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Confirming Progressive Warnings, Social Security Actuary Says Trump Payroll Tax Cut Would Effectively Destroy Program by 2023

“Trump’s disastrous plan to defund Social Security would eliminate retirement and disability benefits by 2023,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders. “That may make sense to the billionaires at Trump’s country club, but it makes zero sense to me.”

By Jake Johnson, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 8-25-2020

Hundreds of union activists rally at the Minneapolis Social Security Field Office on Wednesday, August 27, 2014. (Photo: AFGE/Flickr/cc)

The Social Security Administration’s chief actuary estimated late Monday that eliminating the payroll tax would fully deplete Social Security’s disability and old-age trust funds by 2023, confirming the disastrous consequences progressive advocacy groups and lawmakers have been warning of since President Donald Trump threatened earlier this month to “terminate” the levy if reelected in November.

In a letter (pdf) to Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and Senate Minority Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), SSA chief actuary Stephen Goss wrote that scrapping the payroll tax would “permanently” deplete the Disability Insurance trust fund by mid-2021 and the Old Age and Survivors Insurance trust fund by mid-2023 “with no ability to pay” the benefits afterward. Continue reading

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The labor-busting law firms and consultants that keep Google, Amazon and other workplaces union-free

Rite Aid hired anti-union consultants to try to prevent workers from successfully organizing. Amy Niehouse/Flickr, CC BY-SA

John Logan, San Francisco State University

American companies have been very successful at preventing their workers from organizing into unions in recent decades, one of the reasons unionization in the private sector is at a record low.

What you may not realize is that a handful of little-known law and consulting firms do much of the dirty work that keeps companies and other organizations union-free. Continue reading

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Mail-in voting does not cause fraud, but judges are buying the GOP’s argument that it does

Protesters against passage of a bill to expand mail-in voting during a Nevada Republican Party demonstration, August 4, 2020, in Las Vegas. Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Penny Venetis, Rutgers University Newark

The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee filed lawsuits recently against New Jersey and Nevada to prevent expansive vote-by-mail efforts in those states.

These high-profile lawsuits make the same argument that Republicans have made in many lesser-known lawsuits that were filed around the country during the primary season. In all of these lawsuits, Republicans argue that voting by mail perpetuates fraud – an argument President Donald Trump makes daily, on various media platforms. Continue reading

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‘This is the Opposite of What Americans Fought a Revolution For’: Tennessee to Strip Right to Vote from Protesters

‘If our votes didn’t matter they wouldn’t work so hard to silence us.’

By Common Dreams. Published 8-22-2020

Gov. Bill Lee says a measure that stiffens penalties for some protests, including overnight sit-ins like the one that took place this summer near the Tennessee State Capitol. Photo: Office of Gov. Bill Lee via Facebook.

Tennessee protesters will face harsh penalties, including losing the right to vote, as punishment for participating in protests under a law enacted by the Tennessee  GOP-dominant General Assembly.  Right-wing Governor Bill Lee quietly signed off on the bill Thursday, AP reports.

Under the new law, demonstrators who camp on state property can now be charged with a Class E felony, punishable by up to six years in prison, rather than a misdemeanor it was previously. Continue reading

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After Spending Months Denying Need for Testing, Trump Moves to Gut FDA’s Oversight Process for Coronavirus Tests

A former FDA official compared the move to “letting the Wild West be the Wild West.”

By Julia Conley, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 8-21-2020

Screenshot: ABC

Public health experts on Friday raised alarm over a new policy unveiled by the Health and Human Services Department blocking the Food and Drug Administration from regulating a number of laboratory tests including those that test for Covid-19.

The administration announced on the HHS website that it wants many tests for the coronavirus and other diseases to reach the market without the regulatory process which ensures the tests are accurate and not fraudulent. Continue reading

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