Tag Archives: Arkansas

Florida Abortion Rights Defenders Surpass Target for Ballot Measure

Supporters of the Florida measure—similar to other initiatives across the country—say they are “confident that voters will approve our amendment.”

By Jessica Corbett. Published 1-5-2024 by Common Dreams

As of Friday, Florida residents and groups fighting for a state constitutional amendment to limit government interference with abortion care have collected enough signatures to get the measure on the ballot this November.

The proposed amendment to the Florida Constitution states that “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.”

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‘Deplorable’: Iowa’s GOP Governor Opts Out of Summer Food Program for Kids

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“Announcing three days before Christmas that we’ve deliberately chosen not to feed hungry kids? The Dickensian parallels write themselves,” said the board chair of the Iowa Hunger Coalition.

By Jake Johnson. Published 12-25-2023 by Common Dreams

*Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds speaking with attendees at Governor Reynolds’s Fair-Side Chats at JR’s South Pork Ranch at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa. 2023. Photo: Gage Skidmore/flickr/CC*

Iowa’s Republican-led government sparked outrage late last week by declining to participate in a federal program that would have provided low-income residents with $40 a month in additional food assistance during the coming summer.

Created by the U.S. Congress late last year, the Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) for Children program aims to boost nutrition benefits for families with school-aged children who typically receive free or reduced-price meals during the school year. Starting in summer 2024, eligible families will receive a prepaid debit card with $40 per child for three months.

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Post-Dobbs Bans Leave 14 States With No Abortion Clinics

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A new analnysis shows how “abortion bans, extremist harassment, and the financial realities of operating community-based clinics make it increasingly difficult for independent clinics to stay open.”

By Brett Wilkins Published 12-5-2023 by Common Dreams

*Stop Abortion Bans Rally in St Paul, Minnesota May 2019. Photo: Lorie Shaull/flickr/CC*

Scores of independent reproductive health centers have been forced to close or stop offering abortion care, with 14 states now having no abortion clinics, a report published Tuesday revealed.

Abortion Care Network (ACN) released its annual Communities Need Clinics report, which details how “abortion bans, extremist harassment, and the financial realities of operating community-based clinics make it increasingly difficult for independent clinics to stay open” after the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court canceled half a century of federal abortion rights in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization a year-and-a-half ago.

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McDonald’s Fined 0.0002% of 2022 Profits for Child Labor Violations

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“Less than $1,000 per child,” said one critic. “For one of the biggest franchises on Earth.”

By Julia Conley. Published 11-28-2023 by Common Dreams

McDonald’s, one of the largest employers in the world, was fined just $26,000—a tiny fraction of its profits—on Monday for violating child labor laws in Pennsylvania, with two franchisees found to be violating numerous rules in five stores.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Wage and Hour Division found that Paul and Meghan Sweeney, owners of a company called Endor, which runs five McDonald’s locations, employed 34 children who were 14 and 15 years old.

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‘Bad News for the South’: State Supreme Court Upholds 6-Week Abortion Ban in South Carolina

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“The result will essentially force an untold number of affected women to give birth without their consent,” wrote Justice Donald Beatty in his dissent. “I am hard-pressed to think of a greater governmental intrusion by a political body.”

By Julia Conley. Published 8-23-2023 by Common Dreams

Abortion rights activists wait for state lawmakers to arrive before a Senate vote on a ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy at the South Carolina Statehouse on May 23, 2023 in Columbia, South Carolina. Screenshot: ABC News

Despite a recent poll showing that just 37% of South Carolinians backed a six-week abortion ban, the state Supreme Court on Wednesday reinstated the previously blocked law, gutting what remained of abortion access for millions of people across the South.

The ruling was handed down by the all-male high court following the mandatory retirement of former Justice Kaye Hearn, who wrote the majority opinion in another ruling in January which struck down a nearly identical six-week ban that had been passed in 2021.

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Arkansas Schools Will Teach AP African American Studies, Defying GOP Law

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Educators will teach the course despite the fact that the law also weakens rules protecting them against unjust dismissals.

By Julia Conley. Published 8-17-2023 by Common Dreams

Sarah Huckabee Sanders speaking with attendees at the 2019 Student Action Summit hosted by Turning Point USA. Photo: Gage Skidmore/flickr/CC

Despite a threat this week by the Arkansas Department of Education that it would not allow students to receive credit for Advanced Placement African American Studies, every public high school in Arkansas that previously offered the course announced that it will remain on their schedules for the coming school year.

The Arkansas Education Association, which represents unionized teachers across the state, applauded the Little Rock School District’s decision on Wednesday to continue offering the AP course in defiance of Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ signature law banning so-called “indoctrination” in public schools.

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Federal Judge Blocks Arkansas Law Criminalizing Librarians

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“Do Arkansans still legally have access to reading materials? Luckily, the judicial system has once again defended our highly valued liberties,” said the head of the state ACLU.

By Brett Wilkins. Published 7-30-2023 by Common Dreams

Photo: Fayetteville Public Library/Facebook

A federal judge on Saturday temporarily blocked the implementation of an Arkansas law criminalizing librarians and booksellers who provide access to materials deemed “harmful to minors.”

U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks—an appointee of former President Barack Obama—issued a preliminary injunction against two sections of Act 372 (also known as S.B. 81), a censorship bill introduced by Arkansas state Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-20), passed by the Republican-controlled state Legislature, and signed into law by GOP Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders in March.

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‘Enormous Policy Failure’: States Throw Hundreds of Thousands—Including Many Children—Off Medicaid

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“We knew this was coming,” wrote one policy expert. “But we still treat these burdens like they’re unavoidable natural disasters.”

By Jake Johnson. Published 5-27-2023 by Common Dreams

With a green light from the federal government, states across the U.S. have thrown hundreds of thousands of low-income people off Medicaid in recent weeks—and many have lost coverage because they failed to navigate bureaucratic mazes, not because they were no longer eligible.

More than a dozen states, including Florida and other Republican-led states that have refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, have begun removing people from Medicaid as part of the “unwinding” of a pandemic-era federal policy that temporarily barred governments from kicking people off the program.

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‘Can’t Win, So They Cheat’: GOP Tries to Keep Abortion Rights Off Ballot After Big Losses

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“Republican lawmakers pushing these efforts want 41% of voters to block ballot initiatives that 59% of voters support. This is not democracy.”

By Jake Johnson. Published 4-24-2023 by Common Dreams

Stop Abortion Bans Rally in St. Paul, Minnesota on May 21, 2019. Photo: Fibonacci Blue/flickr/CC

Last year, after the U.S. Supreme Court ended the federal right to abortion, voters in Kansas, California, Michigan, Vermont, Kentucky, and Montana used the ballot initiative process to show their support for reproductive freedom, both by defeating GOP-backed anti-abortion measures and approving constitutional amendments aimed at preserving abortion access.

Those losses for anti-abortion Republicans and their wealthy backers have led the party to ramp up its attacks on the ballot initiative process itself in several states.

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15 Million People Could Lose Coverage as Nightmarish Medicaid ‘Purge’ Begins

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“I feel sick,” said one physician. “Medicaid is not enough: we need seamless, lifelong universal care now.”

By Jake Johnson. Published 4-1-2023 by Common Dreams

Beginning on Saturday, states across the U.S. will start the process of stripping Medicaid coverage from millions of people as pandemic-related protections lapse, part of a broader unraveling of the safety net that was built to help families withstand the public health crisis and resulting economic turmoil.

Medicaid’s continuous coverage requirements were enacted early in the Covid-19 pandemic to help vulnerable people maintain insurance amid the health emergency, resulting in record-high Medicaid enrollment.

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Tag Archives: Arkansas

‘Bad News for the South’: State Supreme Court Upholds 6-Week Abortion Ban in South Carolina

“The result will essentially force an untold number of affected women to give birth without their consent,” wrote Justice Donald Beatty in his dissent. “I am hard-pressed to think of a greater governmental intrusion by a political body.”