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For Immediate Release
November, 01 2019, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Lia Weintraub, lweintraub@populardemocracy.org, 202-618-2482
CPD Action Reacts to Warren Medicare for All Payment Plan
"Greedy corporate actors have polluted our health care system—and it's time they pay the price."
WASHINGTON
Today, Senator Elizabeth Warren released her campaign plan for how she would pay for Medicare for All. Jennifer Epps-Addison, network president and co-executive director of CPD Action, released the following statement in response:
"Everyday in America, far too many people are forced to make the impossible choice between seeing a doctor when sick and keeping their lights on, between filling their prescriptions and putting food on the table. Until we abolish the profit motive, our families will never have the health care we deserve. Thankfully, Senator Warren has a plan for that. Her Medicare for All payment plan is proof that we can provide quality health care for everyone while building an economic system that truly works for us all. Rather than raising middle-class taxes, Senator Warren's plan ensures that the corporations responsible for indiscriminately increasing drug prices, monopolizing hospitals, closing care facilities in rural areas, and jacking up insurance prices for the sickest people are the ones who pay up for our single-payer system. Greedy corporate actors have polluted our health care system -- and it's time they pay the price. We celebrate Senator Warren's inclusion of a financial transaction tax in her plan to ensure that the financial sector -- and those most responsible for thrusting the bulk of the cost of care onto the sickest people in this country -- are the ones who pay for it."
Center for Popular Democracy Action promotes equity, opportunity, and a dynamic democracy in partnership with innovative base-building organizations, organizing networks and alliances, and progressive unions across the country. CPD Action builds the strength and capacity of democratic organizations to envision and advance a pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial justice agenda.
LATEST NEWS
'Sellout of the Century': Canada PM Carney Ripped Over Tar Sands Pipeline Deal
“We will use every tool in our toolbox to ensure that this pipeline does not go ahead,” said one First Nations leader after the deal struck between PM Mark Carney and the Conservative premier of Alberta.
Nov 28, 2025
First Nations groups backed by environmental and conservationist allies in Canada are denouncing a pipeline and tanker infrastructure agreement announced Thursday between Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney and Conservative Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, calling the deal a betrayal and promising to fight against its implementation tooth and nail.
“We will use every tool in our toolbox to ensure that this pipeline does not go ahead,” said Heiltsuk Nation Chief Marilyn Slett in response to the Carney-Smith deal that would bring tens of millions of barrels of tar sands oil from Alberta to the coast of British Columbia for export by building new pipeline and lifting a moratorium against oil tankers operating in fragile British Columbia coastal water .
While Carney, who argues that the pipeline is in Canada's economic interest, had vowed to secure the support of First Nations before finalizing any agreement with the Alberta, furious reactions to the deal made it clear that promise was not met.
Xhaaidlagha Gwaayaai, the president of the Haida nation, was emphatic: "This project is not going to happen."
The agreement, according to the New York Times, is part of Carney’s "plan to curb Canada’s trade dependence on the United States, swings Canadian policy away from measures meant to fight climate change to focus instead on growing the oil and gas industry."
In a statement, the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) "loudly" voiced its opposition to the memorandum of understanding signed by Carney and Smith.
"This MOU is nothing less than a high risk and deeply irresponsible agreement that sacrifices Indigenous peoples, coastal communities, and the environment for political convenience," said Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the UBCIC. "By explicitly endorsing a new bitumen pipeline to BC's coast and promising to rewrite the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, the federal government is resurrecting one of the most deeply flawed and divisive ideas in Canadian energy politics."
Slett, who serves as secretary-treasurer of the UBCIC, said the agreement "was negotiated without the involvement of the very Nations who would shoulder those risks, and to suggest ‘Indigenous co-ownership’ of a pipeline while ignoring the clear opposition of Coastal First Nations is unacceptable."
Avi Lewis, running for the leadership of the progressive New Democratic Party (NDP) in upcoming elections, decried the agreement as a failure of historic proportions.
"Carney’s deal with Danielle Smith is the sellout of the century: scrapping climate legislation for a pipeline that will never be built," said Lewis, a veteran journalist and climate activist. "We need power lines, not pipelines. Our path is through climate leadership and building good jobs in the clean economy."
Carney’s deal with Danielle Smith is the sellout of the century: scrapping climate legislation for a pipeline that will never be built.We need powerlines, not pipelines. Our path is through climate leadership & building good jobs in the clean economy.
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— Avi Lewis (@avilewis.ca) November 28, 2025 at 12:05 AM
In response to the deal, the minister of Canadian culture, Steven Guilbeault, who formerly served as environment minister under the previous Liberal administration, resigned in protest.
“Despite this difficult economic context, I remain one of those for whom environmental issues must remain front and center,” Guilbeault said in a statement.
"Over the past few months, several elements of the climate action plan I worked on as Minister of the Environment have been, or are about to be, dismantled,” he said. “In my view, these measures remain essential to our climate action plan.”
David Eby, the premier of British Columbia who opposes the new pipeline into his province and was not included in the discussions between Carney and Smith, echoed those who said the project is more dead than alive, despite the MOU, calling it a potential "energy vampire" that would distracts from better energy solutions that don't carry all the baggage of this proposed project.
“With all of the variables that have yet to be fulfilled—no proponent, no route, no money, no First Nations support—that it cannot draw limited federal resources, limited Indigenous governance resources, limited provincial resources away from the real projects that will employ people,” Eby added.
Jessica Green, a professor at the University of Toronto with a focus on environmental politics, equated the "reckless" deal to a "climate dumpster fire" and called the push for more tar sands pipelines in Canada "the energy equivalent [of] investing in VHS tapes in 2025."
At least the United States under President Donald Trump, she added, "has the cojones to say it doesn’t give a shit about climate" while Carney, despite the contents of the deal with Alberta, "is still pretending that Canada does."
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'Middle Finger to the LGBTQ Community': Trump Halts US Commemoration of World AIDS Day
The move came on the heels of a report detailing how the Trump administration's foreign aid cuts set off a crisis in global AIDS response efforts.
Nov 28, 2025
The Trump administration drew outrage this week for ending formal US commemoration of World AIDS Day, directing US State Department officials to "refrain from publicly promoting" it through social media or other communication channels.
The decision was reported after the Joint United Nations Program on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) released an analysis detailing the harms done by the Trump administration's sweeping foreign assistance cuts.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration temporarily halted HIV-related funding, sending global response efforts into "crisis mode," USAID said. Though President Donald Trump ultimately dropped a proposal to slash hundreds of millions of dollars from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the administration's throttling of funds forced clinics to shut down and disrupted key community programs, the report states.
"The funding crisis has exposed the fragility of the progress we fought so hard to achieve,” said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS. “Behind every data point in this report are people—babies and children missed for HIV screening or early HIV diagnosis, young women cut off from prevention support, and communities suddenly left without services and care. We cannot abandon them. We must overcome this disruption and transform the AIDS response."
In its reporting on the Trump administration's decision to halt official commemoration of World AIDS Day, which is on December 1, the New York Times pointed to studies suggesting that "cuts by the United States and other countries could result in 10 million additional HIV infections, including one million among children, and three million additional deaths over the next five years."
Today, @realDonaldTrump gave a middle finger to the LGBTQ community. His deplorable cancellation of World AIDS Day commemoration was unconscionable and unforgivable. This action was fueled by raw bigotry and fealty to his Project 2025 masters.
FIGHT.https://t.co/PcyduBcbkI
— Truth Wins Out (@truthwinsout) November 26, 2025
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), head of the Congressional HIV/AIDS Caucus, said in a statement that "silence is not neutrality; it is harm."
"I'm calling on the administration to immediately reverse this decision and recommit our fight against HIV/AIDS," he added.
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UN Condemns 'Brazen' Israeli Killing of Surrendering Palestinians in West Bank
A UN official decried the incident as "yet another apparent summary execution" by Israeli forces.
Nov 28, 2025
The United Nations on Friday accused Israeli security forces of carrying out a "brazen" killing of two Palestinian men who were seen surrendering in video footage.
The footage, which was first aired by the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation and reposted on X by Drop Site, shows two Palestinian men exiting with their hands raised from a building in the West Bank city of Jenin that had been surrounded by Israeli forces.
The two men then crawled out of the building entrance and knelt down with their hands still raised before apparently being instructed by Israeli forces to go back toward the entrance of the building. The two men did so, and were then shot dead by at least one Israeli officer.
🚨 Watch: Footage from Palestine National TV shows Israeli soldiers executing two detained Palestinians in cold blood during a raid in Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank today.
Their hands were raised, they posed no threat, and Israeli soldiers murdered them anyway. https://t.co/9JA9eisaK4 pic.twitter.com/8v0sv1kdBF
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) November 27, 2025
According to France 24, United Nations rights office spokesman Jeremy Laurence told reporters on Friday that the incident was "yet another apparent summary execution" by Israeli forces.
"We are appalled at the brazen killing by Israeli border police yesterday of two Palestinian men in Jenin," he emphasized.
Laurence added that UN rights chief Volker Turk was demanding "independent, prompt, and effective investigations into the killings of Palestinians," and for those involved in the killings to "be held fully to account."
The Palestinian Authority, which identified the two men killed by Israeli officers as 37-year-old Yussef Ali Asa'sa and 26-year-old Al-Muntasir Billah Mahmud Abdullah, accused Israeli forces of carrying out "brutal" executions that amounted to a "war crime."
In a joint statement, Israeli police and the military said that the "incident is under review by the commanders on the ground, and will be transferred to the relevant professional bodies," and they claimed that the two men killed were "wanted individuals who had carried out terror activities, including hurling explosives and firing at security forces."
Despite pledges for a review of the incident, BBC reports that Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has already given a thumbs-up to officers' actions and he responded to footage of the incident by saying, "Terrorists must die."
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