House Dems, GOP Team Up to Expand Warrantless Spying on Americans

“The House has voted to allow the intelligence agencies to violate the civil rights and liberties of Americans for years to come,” said the ACLU’s senior policy counsel.

By Jake Johnson. Published 4-12-2024 by Common Dreams

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson speaking with attendees at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s 2023 Annual Leadership Summit at the Venetian Convention & Expo Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.. Photo: Gage Skidmore/flickr/CC

The U.S. House on Friday passed legislation to expand a major mass spying authority after voting down a bipartisan push to attach a search warrant requirement to the heavily abused surveillance law.

The bill to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for two years passed by a vote of 273-147, with 59 Democrats and 88 Republicans voting no. More Democrats voted for the bill than Republicans.

Continue reading →

Advocates ‘Elated’ as Biden DOJ Closes Gun Show Loophole

Leave a reply

“To be clear, that ‘gun show loophole’ has been a death sentence for countless Americans, and that will change with this action,” said one gun violence prevention advocacy leader.

By Julia Conley. Published 4-11-2024 by Common Dreams

*Advocates rally in favor of gun control measure. (Photo: Peter Cedric Rock Smith//flickr/cc)*

The White House on Thursday honored “the will of the vast majority of the American people,” one Democratic lawmaker said, as President Joe Biden announced a final rule closing a loophole that has left tens of thousands of firearms dealers able to sell guns without running background checks on purchasers.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) will require anyone “engaged in the business” of selling firearms for a profit to register as a federally licensed firearms dealer, which will require them to conduct background criminal and mental health checks on their customers.

Continue reading →

‘Absolutely Absurd’: Tennessee GOP Advances Concealed Guns for Teachers

Leave a reply

“We should not be afraid to send our kids to school, but extremist lawmakers are hellbent on expanding the gun lobby’s guns everywhere agenda and putting our kids at risk,” said one state campaigner.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 4-10-2024 by Common Dreams

*Moms Demand Action members protest a Tennessee bill to arm teachers on April 9, 2024. (Photo: Moms Demand Action Tennessee/Facebook)*

Gun control advocates, including families of mass shooting survivors, condemned Tennessee Senate Republicans for a 26-5 vote along party lines on Tuesday to advance legislation allowing teachers and staff to carry concealed firearms in public schools.

“Since the devastating shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville last year, the [Tennessee] Legislature has had the opportunity to take meaningful action on gun safety,” said Moms Demand Action executive director Angela Ferrell-Zabala. “Instead, they have chosen to ‘debate the safety of their communities’ behind closed doors in a process that has often excluded their constituents and their own colleagues.”

Continue reading →

Arizona Supreme Court Upholds 1864 Abortion Ban—But Voters Will Get ‘Ultimate Say’ in November

Leave a reply

“Arizona is what happens when abortion policy is, as Donald Trump claims he wishes, left up to the states,” said one columnist.

By Julia Conley. Published 4-9-2024 by Common Dreams.

*Pro-choice rally at the Supreme Court, 2019. Photo: jordanuhl7/Wikimedia Commons/CC*

Reproductive justice campaigners in Arizona on Tuesday vowed to make sure voters “have the ultimate say” on abortion rights after the state Supreme Court upheld an 1864 ban that includes no exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.

“This is a horrifying ruling that puts the lives and futures of countless Arizonans at risk,” said Leah Greenberg, co-founder of progressive advocacy group Indivisible. “It’s devastating and cruel—and we’re fighting back.”

Continue reading →

US Government Sued Over ‘Unethical Destruction’ of Wolf Population

Leave a reply

“The Fish and Wildlife Service is thumbing its nose at the Endangered Species Act and letting wolf-hating states sabotage decades of recovery efforts,” said one conservation leader.

By Jessica Corbett Published 4-8-2024 by Common Dreams

*Gray wolf. Photo: USFWS Midwest Region/flickr*

A pair of conservation coalitions on Monday made good on their threats to sue the U.S. government over its denial of federal protections for gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains, where state killing regimes “put wolves at obvious risk of extinction in the foreseeable future.”

The organizations filed notices of their plans for the lawsuits in early February, after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) determined that Endangered Species Act protections for the region’s wolves were “not warranted.” The Interior Department agency could have prevented the suits in the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana by reversing its decision within 60 days but refused to do so.

Continue reading →

Rwandan genocide, 30 years on: Omitting women’s memories encourages incomplete understanding of violence

Leave a reply

*A father is searching for his missing child using ICRC assistance during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. Photo: British Red Cross/flickr/CC*

By Anneliese M. Schenk-Day, Ohio State University. Published 4-5-2024 by The Conversation

The eruption of violence that Rwanda experienced beginning on the evening of April 6, 1994, continues to haunt the central African nation 30 years on – it has also changed the country’s gender dynamics.

The genocide resulted in hundreds of thousands of men being killed, with many more fleeing the country or being incarcerated. It left a previously male-centered society with hundreds of thousands of female-headed households. Of course, women were also subjected to the violence itself, with many killed and between 250,000 and 500,000 raped in the three months of genocide.

Continue reading →

Mexico Cuts Diplomatic Ties With Ecuador After ‘Intolerable’ Quito Embassy Raid

Leave a reply

“This is a flagrant violation of international law and the sovereignty of Mexico,” said Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

By Brett Wilkins. Published 4-6-2024 by Common Dreams

Mexico on Friday night announced the suspension of diplomatic relations with Ecuador after police stormed the Mexican Embassy in Quito and kidnapped former Ecuadorian Vice President Jorge Glas, who was granted asylum after being convicted of what he claims are politically motivated corruption charges.

“Alicia Bárcena, our secretary of foreign affairs, has just informed me that police from Ecuador forcibly entered our embassy and detained the former vice president of that country who was a refugee and processing asylum due to the persecution and harassment he faces,” Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said on social media following the raid.

Continue reading →

US Court Orders Transfer of Migrant Children From ‘Profoundly Inhumane’ Open-Air Sites

Leave a reply

“But it remains a tragedy that a court had to direct the government to do what basic human decency and the law clearly require,” said one advocate.

By Brett Wilkins. Published 4-5-2024 by Common Dreams

*An open-air detention site in California. Photo: Al Otro Lado/X*

Migrant rights defenders on Thursday cheered a federal court ruling ordering U.S. Customs and Border Protection to stop holding undocumented minors in squalid open-air detention sites in Southern California and to transfer all children held in such locations to “safe and sanitary” spaces.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) contended that people held in the open-air detention sites (OADS) are not yet in U.S. custody. However, Judge Dolly Gee of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles issued a 12-page ruling that found migrant children are entitled to protection under the Flores Settlement Agreement, which established national minimum standards for the treatment of detained minors.

Continue reading →

Dark Money-Backed ‘No Labels’ Drops Third-Party Presidential Bid

Leave a reply

One observer quipped that No Labels was calling it quits “to spend more time with their lobbyists.”

By Brett Wilkins. Published 4-4-2024 by Common Dreams

Less than a month after No Labels announced it would nominate a “unity ticket” for the 2024 presidential election, the group said Thursday that it is abandoning its longshot third-party White House bid.

“No Labels has always said we would only offer our ballot line to a ticket if we could identify candidates with a credible path to winning the White House,” the group said in a statement. “No such candidates emerged, so the responsible course of action is for us to stand down.”

Continue reading →

Alabama Republicans Try to ‘Criminalize Librarians Simply for Doing Their Jobs’

Leave a reply

“Not only is this wrong, it’s also unconstitutional. You are not protecting children; you are protecting extremists who are trying to dismantle the very foundations of my country.”

By Jessica Corbett. Published 4-3-2024 by Common Dreams.

*Banned Books Week installation on the second floor of Kennedy Library at Cal Poly on Monday, September 24, 2018. Photo: Kennedy Library/flickr/CC*

The Alabama Library Association and other critics on Wednesday called out the state’s Republican policymakers for pushing a new bill that opponents warn will unfairly jail librarians and have a chilling impact on collections.

House Bill 385, introduced Tuesday by state Rep. Arnold Mooney (R-43) and 30 other legislators, says that “under existing law, certain obscenity laws do not apply to public libraries, public school libraries, college libraries, or university libraries, or the employees or agents of any such libraries.”

Continue reading →

Occupy World Writes

The Movement Continues – Globally