Monthly Archives: July 2023

Union Warns GOP Proposal Would ‘Devastate’ the Social Security Administration

“More cuts to SSA will result in a rapid increase of wait times, force SSA offices to close in many communities, and reduce service hours to the public.”

By Jake Johnson Published 7-20-2023 by Common Dreams

social security office in Worcester Massachusetts. Photo: LEONARDO DASILVA/Wikimedia Commons/CC

A union representing more than 750,000 federal employees warned Wednesday that the House GOP’s proposed cuts to the Social Security Administration for the coming fiscal year would deeply harm the already strained and understaffed agency, potentially forcing it to close offices and slash service hours.

Such impacts would “devastate the agency’s ability to serve the American public,” Julie Tippens, legislative director of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), wrote in a letter to the top members of the House Appropriations Committee.

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US Bill to Protect Reporters From Exploitative State Spying Heads to House Floor

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“Journalists must be able to freely report on government actions without fear the government will compel them to reveal their sources,” said one campaigner.

By Julia Conley. Published 7-19-2023 by Common Dreams

Privacy and First Amendment advocates on Wednesday urged the U.S. House to pass legislation that would protect the United States’ bedrock freedoms and a core tenet of journalism: the right of reporters to guard the identities of their sources.

The House Judiciary Committee advanced the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying (PRESS) Act with bipartisan support, despite claims in recent months by Republican lawmakers such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) that the legislation would “immunize journalists and leakers alike from scrutiny and consequences for their actions.”

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State Spying Poses ‘Roadblock’ for Interstate Seekers of Abortion, Transgender Care: Report

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“Digital surveillance data makes profiling easy and suggests that travel data will be weaponized to identify new targets for healthcare prosecutions and investigations.”

By Brett Wilkins. Published 7-18-2023 by Common Dreams

Automated license plate reader (ALPR/LPR) cameras scan license plates of cars crossing into Pensacola Beach, Florida. Photo: Tony Webster/flickr/CC

A report published Tuesday details how digital surveillance can be used by police and prosecutors to criminalize patients seeking abortion and gender-affirming healthcare outside their home states.

The report—entitled Roadblock to Care: Barriers to Out-of-State Travel for Abortion and Gender-Affirming Care—was authored by the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), a New York-based privacy and civil rights group. The publication comes as Republican-controlled state legislatures pass a wave of abortion and gender-affirming healthcare bans, forcing people seeking such care to travel out of state.

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Military alliances like NATO won’t solve our greatest security threat

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Things may look rosy for NATO today, but climate breakdown, not wars, are the biggest threat to global security

By Paul Rogers. Published 7-14-2023 by openDemocracy

Finland accession to NATO ceremony. Photo: Estonian Foreign Ministry/flickr/CC

NATO really is on a roll thanks to Vladimir Putin, but even as its immediate prospects look good, the whole future of the alliance should be open to question.

For now, as Finland and Sweden join, Putin finds an enlarged alliance ranged against him. NATO’s reputation is so bound up with the fate of Ukraine that, in the unlikely event that Russia makes substantial military gains in the conflict, Kyiv cannot be allowed to lose. From Putin’s perspective, his warning early last year of the threat posed to Russia from NATO has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. This does at least mean he can claim ‘I told you so’ – which is helping maintain some domestic support.

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‘Ancient Heat Records Will Be Broken’: Southern Europe Braces for Unprecedented Temperatures

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“If the disasters we’re seeing this month aren’t enough to shake us out of that torpor, then the chances of our persevering for another hundred and twenty-five thousand years seem remote.”

By Jake Johnson. Published 7-16-2023 by Common Dreams

People cool off in a water fountain during a heatwave, at Trafalgar Square in London. Photo: Vatican News

Southern Europe faced dangerously high temperatures on Sunday amid a continent-wide heatwave that’s expected to get worse in the coming days, potentially shattering longstanding records as the climate crisis rages.

Reuters reported that a “new anticyclone dubbed Charon, who in Greek mythology was the ferryman of the dead, pushed into the region from north Africa on Sunday and could lift temperatures above 45°C (113°F) in parts of Italy early this week,” prompting Italian officials to issue heat advisories for more than a dozen cities on Sunday.

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‘Disgraceful’: GOP Advances Bill That Could Remove 220,000 Teachers From Classrooms

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“If left to their own devices, Republicans would gleefully take public education to the graveyard,” said Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro.

By Jake Johnson. Published 7-15-2023 by Common Dreams

Day 2, UTLA Strike, Teachers rally in Little Tokyo. Photo credit: Mike Chickey

House Democrats warned that hundreds of thousands of teachers could lose their jobs if legislation advanced Friday by a Republican-controlled appropriations subcommittee becomes law.

The panel’s draft Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies funding bill for the coming fiscal year calls for nearly $64 billion in total cuts, a proposal that Democrats said “decimates support for children in K-12 elementary schools and early childhood education” and “abandons college students and low-income workers trying to improve their lives through higher education or job training.”

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‘Get Back to the Negotiating Table,’ Says Teamsters as UPS Trains Scabs for Strike

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“UPS is making clear it doesn’t view its workforce as a priority,” the union said. “UPS should stop wasting time and money on training strikebreakers.”

By Jessica Corbett. Published 7-14-2023 by Common Dreams

Sean O’Brien, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters general president, joined United Parcel Service workers for a practice picketing in Brooklyn, New York on July 14, 2023. (Photo: Teamsters/Twitter)

After negotiations between the United Parcel Service and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters broke down last week, UPS on Friday announced “business continuity training” to prepare for a potential strike by 340,000 union members next month.

“We remain focused on reaching an agreement with the Teamsters that is a win for UPS employees, our customers, our union, and our company,” the shipping giant said. “While we have made great progress and are close to reaching an agreement, we have a responsibility as an essential service provider to take steps to help ensure we can deliver our customers’ packages if the Teamsters choose to strike.”

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In ‘Transformative Victory’ for Reproductive Justice, FDA Approves Over-the-Counter Birth Control

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If the pill is made affordable and covered by insurance, said one advocate, the approval has the potential to be “a game-changer for communities impacted by systemic health inequities.”

By Julia Conley. Published 7-13-2023 by Common Dreams

The Food and Drug Administration approved the United States’ first over-the-counter birth control pill on July 13, 2023. (Photo: UC Irvine/flickr/cc)

“Groundbreaking,” “monumental,” and “transformative” were just a few of the words rights advocates used on Thursday to describe the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s long-awaited approval of over-the-counter use of Opill, a birth control pill that was approved for prescription use five decades ago.

The approval could revolutionize access to contraception for young people, low-income people, and others in a country where nearly half of all pregnancies are unintended, said Free the Pill, a coalition of more than 200 reproductive justice groups and advocates who have been campaigning for over-the-counter (OTC) access to birth control for nearly two decades.

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‘Shocking Breach’: Probe Shows Tax Prep Companies Shared Personal Data With Tech Giants

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One expert called the new revelations “a five-alarm fire” for taxpayer privacy.

By Jake Johnson. Published 7-12-2023 by Common Dreams

After a seven-month investigation, a group of congressional Democrats and Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders released a bombshell report Wednesday showing that private tax prep firms have been secretly sharing U.S. taxpayers’ sensitive personal information with tech giants for years, a practice that the lawmakers condemned as outrageous and possibly illegal.

The report, spearheaded by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in the Senate and Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) in the House, notes that TaxAct, H&R Block, and TaxSlayer “used computer code—known as pixels—to send data to Meta and Google.” The lawmakers’ investigation was sparked by recent reporting in The Markup.

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‘Day of Disruption’: Tens of Thousands of Israelis Protest Imminent ‘Judicial Coup’

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“We are going to show them that the power of the people is stronger than that of the people in power,” said one demonstrator.

By Brett Wilkins. Published 7-11-2023 by Common Dreams

At least tens of thousands of Israelis on Tuesday took to the streets, shutting down highways, and marching through the country’s main international airport in a “day of disruption” after the nation’s far-right governing coalition advanced a deeply controversial overhaul of the legal system critics condemn as a “judicial coup.”

Demonstrators thronged the highways leading to cities including Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa, pitching tents, blocking roadways, and hanging banners from overpasses.

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Occupy World Writes

The Movement Continues – Globally

Monthly Archives: July 2023

‘Ancient Heat Records Will Be Broken’: Southern Europe Braces for Unprecedented Temperatures

“If the disasters we’re seeing this month aren’t enough to shake us out of that torpor, then the chances of our persevering for another hundred and twenty-five thousand years seem remote.”