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Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) led a letter calling on President Joe Biden to take four specific steps to aid Afghan evacuees on October 20, 2021. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Tlaib Leads Call for Biden to Take 'Commonsense Steps' to Aid Afghan Evacuees
"Our country has long offered shelter to those seeking refuge from catastrophe. Now is the time to continue that tradition and stand beside Afghan evacuees in need."
Oct 20, 2021
Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib led two dozen other Democrats in sending a letter pressuring U.S. President Joe Biden to take several "concrete, commonsense steps" to aid Afghan evacuees with "their transition into life in the United States."
About 53,000 Afghans--roughly half of them children--were brought to the United States during an evacuation of American troops earlier this year. In the letter, Taib and the other lawmakers called on the president to:
- Waive fees associated with humanitarian parole applications for Afghans;
- Provide funds for legal assistance for Afghan evacuees;
- Designate Afghans for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to ensure that all Afghans living in the U.S. are protected against deportation; and
- Create an alternative mechanism to allow vulnerable Afghans to apply for humanitarian parole without visiting a U.S. embassy while we lack diplomatic representation in Kabul.
"Historically, humanitarian parole applications are sent to U.S. embassies in the country of the parolee," but given the situation in Kabul, "Afghan parolees will be forced to take dangerous routes to third countries" to have their applications processed, the lawmakers explain.
\u201cOur country has long offered shelter to those seeking refuge from catastrophe. Now is the time to continue that tradition and stand beside Afghan evacuees in need. \n\nThat's why I led 24 of my colleagues in sending this letter to @POTUS urging him to take action on their behalf:\u201d— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib) 1634765254
The letter also highlights that "Congress recently authorized significant funding for the resettlement of Afghan parolees" and outlines some relevant portions of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
"The United States has long offered shelter to those seeking refuge from catastrophe," the letter says. "Now is the time to continue this tradition and stand beside the Afghan people in their time of need."
Democrats' demands follow Biden ordering all American troops out of Afghanistan by the end of August after nearly 20 years of war. The messy withdrawal--during which the Taliban seized control of the country--included a U.S. airstrike that killed 10 Afghan civilians, which the Pentagon later admitted was a "horrible mistake," provoking calls for an end to drone attacks.
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Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib led two dozen other Democrats in sending a letter pressuring U.S. President Joe Biden to take several "concrete, commonsense steps" to aid Afghan evacuees with "their transition into life in the United States."
About 53,000 Afghans--roughly half of them children--were brought to the United States during an evacuation of American troops earlier this year. In the letter, Taib and the other lawmakers called on the president to:
- Waive fees associated with humanitarian parole applications for Afghans;
- Provide funds for legal assistance for Afghan evacuees;
- Designate Afghans for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to ensure that all Afghans living in the U.S. are protected against deportation; and
- Create an alternative mechanism to allow vulnerable Afghans to apply for humanitarian parole without visiting a U.S. embassy while we lack diplomatic representation in Kabul.
"Historically, humanitarian parole applications are sent to U.S. embassies in the country of the parolee," but given the situation in Kabul, "Afghan parolees will be forced to take dangerous routes to third countries" to have their applications processed, the lawmakers explain.
\u201cOur country has long offered shelter to those seeking refuge from catastrophe. Now is the time to continue that tradition and stand beside Afghan evacuees in need. \n\nThat's why I led 24 of my colleagues in sending this letter to @POTUS urging him to take action on their behalf:\u201d— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib) 1634765254
The letter also highlights that "Congress recently authorized significant funding for the resettlement of Afghan parolees" and outlines some relevant portions of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
"The United States has long offered shelter to those seeking refuge from catastrophe," the letter says. "Now is the time to continue this tradition and stand beside the Afghan people in their time of need."
Democrats' demands follow Biden ordering all American troops out of Afghanistan by the end of August after nearly 20 years of war. The messy withdrawal--during which the Taliban seized control of the country--included a U.S. airstrike that killed 10 Afghan civilians, which the Pentagon later admitted was a "horrible mistake," provoking calls for an end to drone attacks.
Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib led two dozen other Democrats in sending a letter pressuring U.S. President Joe Biden to take several "concrete, commonsense steps" to aid Afghan evacuees with "their transition into life in the United States."
About 53,000 Afghans--roughly half of them children--were brought to the United States during an evacuation of American troops earlier this year. In the letter, Taib and the other lawmakers called on the president to:
- Waive fees associated with humanitarian parole applications for Afghans;
- Provide funds for legal assistance for Afghan evacuees;
- Designate Afghans for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to ensure that all Afghans living in the U.S. are protected against deportation; and
- Create an alternative mechanism to allow vulnerable Afghans to apply for humanitarian parole without visiting a U.S. embassy while we lack diplomatic representation in Kabul.
"Historically, humanitarian parole applications are sent to U.S. embassies in the country of the parolee," but given the situation in Kabul, "Afghan parolees will be forced to take dangerous routes to third countries" to have their applications processed, the lawmakers explain.
\u201cOur country has long offered shelter to those seeking refuge from catastrophe. Now is the time to continue that tradition and stand beside Afghan evacuees in need. \n\nThat's why I led 24 of my colleagues in sending this letter to @POTUS urging him to take action on their behalf:\u201d— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib) 1634765254
The letter also highlights that "Congress recently authorized significant funding for the resettlement of Afghan parolees" and outlines some relevant portions of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
"The United States has long offered shelter to those seeking refuge from catastrophe," the letter says. "Now is the time to continue this tradition and stand beside the Afghan people in their time of need."
Democrats' demands follow Biden ordering all American troops out of Afghanistan by the end of August after nearly 20 years of war. The messy withdrawal--during which the Taliban seized control of the country--included a U.S. airstrike that killed 10 Afghan civilians, which the Pentagon later admitted was a "horrible mistake," provoking calls for an end to drone attacks.
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LATEST NEWS
New Projected Cost of Trump-GOP Tax Cuts for the Rich: 'Staggering' $7 Trillion
"What Republicans are trying to jam through Congress right now is a level of economic recklessness we’ve never seen before," said a group of Democratic lawmakers.
Apr 04, 2025
A new analysis indicates Republicans' plan to extend soon-to-expire provisions of their party's 2017 tax law, as well as their push to tack on additional tax breaks largely benefitting the rich and big corporations, would cost $7 trillion over the next decade, a figure that a group of congressional Democrats called "staggering."
The analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), published on Thursday, updates previous estimates that suggested the GOP effort to extend expiring provisions of the 2017 law would cost $4.6 trillion over a 10-year period. The new assessment shows that extending the law's temporary provisions—which disproportionately favored the wealthy—would cost $5.5 trillion over the next decade.
The projected cost of the GOP agenda balloons to $7 trillion after adding Senate Republicans' call for $1.5 trillion in additional tax cuts in the budget resolution they advanced in a party-line vote on Thursday. The GOP has come under fire for using an accounting trick to claim their proposed tax cuts would have no budgetary impact.
"The Republican handouts to billionaires and corporations will come at a staggering cost, and it's unconscionable that their plan to pay for those handouts includes kicking millions of Americans off their health insurance, hiking the cost of living with tariffs, and driving up child hunger," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), and Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) said in a joint statement issued in response to the CBO figures.
"Even after making painful cuts that will inflict hardship on typical American families, Republicans will still risk sending us into a catastrophic debt spiral that does permanent harm to our economy," the Democrats added. "What Republicans are trying to jam through Congress right now is a level of economic recklessness we've never seen before."
The CBO's updated cost analysis came as President Donald Trump plowed ahead with what's been characterized as the biggest tax hike in U.S. history, one that will hit working-class Americans in the form of price increases on household staples and other goods.
Trump administration officials, not known for providing reliable numbers, have claimed the president's sweeping new tariffs could produce roughly $6 trillion in federal revenue over the next decade. The Trump tariffs have sent financial markets into a tailspin, heightened recession fears, and prompted swift retaliation from targeted nations, including China.
In an appearance on MSNBC on Thursday, Boyle—the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee—said Trump's tariffs represent "the single largest tax increase in American history."
"It's a tax that everyone will pay in this country, based on the goods that they buy," said Boyle. "However, it's also a tax that is highly regressive—the poorest amongst us will end up paying a higher percentage of their income."
Senate GOP Fuels Privatization Fears by Confirming 'Quack Grifter' Dr. Oz
The new Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator joins "a team of snake oil salesmen and anti-science flunkies that have already shown disdain for the American people and their health," said one critic.
Apr 03, 2025
Echoing a party-line vote by the U.S. Senate Finance Committee last week, the chamber's Republicans on Thursday confirmed President Donald Trump's nominee to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, former televison host Dr. Mehmet Oz.
Since Trump nominated Oz—who previously ran as a Republican for a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania—a wide range of critics have argued that the celebrity cardiothoracic surgeon "is profoundly unqualified to lead any part of our healthcare system, let alone an agency as important as CMS," in the words of Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.
After Thursday's 53-45 vote to confirm Oz, Weissman declared that "Republicans in the Senate continued to just be a rubber stamp for a dangerous agenda that threatens to turn back the clock on healthcare in America."
Weissman warned that "in addition to having significant conflicts of interest, Oz is now poised to help enact the Trump administration's dangerous agenda, which seeks to strip crucial healthcare services through Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act from hundreds of millions of Americans and to use that money to give tax breaks to billionaires."
"As he showed in his confirmation hearing, Oz will also seek to further privatize Medicare, increasing the risk that seniors will receive inferior care and further threatening the long-term health of the Medicare program. We already know that privatized Medicare costs taxpayers nearly $100 billion annually in excess costs," he continued, referring to Medicare Advantage plans.
CMS is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, now led by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—who, like Oz, came under fire for his record of dubious claims during the confirmation process. Weissman said that "Dr. Oz is joining a team of snake oil salesmen and anti-science flunkies that have already shown disdain for the American people and their health. This is yet another dark day for healthcare in America under Trump."
In the middle of Trump's tariff disaster, the Senate is voting to confirm quack grifter Dr. Oz to lead the Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services.
[image or embed]
— Jen Bendery (@jbendery.bsky.social) April 3, 2025 at 12:29 PM
Oz's confirmation came a day after Trump announced globally disruptive tariffs and Senate Republicans unveiled a budget plan that would give the wealthy trillions of dollars in tax cuts at the expense of federal food assistance and healthcare programs.
"While Dr. Oz would rather play coy, this is no hypothetical. Harmful cuts to Medicaid or Medicare are unavoidable in the Trump-Republican budget plan that prioritizes another giant tax break for the president's billionaire and corporate donors," Tony Carrk, executive director of the watchdog group Accountable.US, said ahead of the vote.
"None of Dr. Oz's 'miracle' cures that he's peddled over the years will help seniors when their fundamental health security is ripped away to make the rich richer," Carrk continued. "And while privatizing Medicare may enrich Dr. Oz's family and big insurance friends, it will cost taxpayers far more and leave millions of patients vulnerable to denials of care and higher out-of-pocket costs."
Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), was similarly critical, saying after the vote that "at a time when our population is growing older and the need for access to home care, nursing homes, affordable prescription drugs, and quality medical care has never been greater, Americans deserve better than a snake oil salesman leading the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services."
"Dr. Mehmet Oz has been shilling pseudoscience to line his own pockets. He can't be trusted to defend Medicare and Medicaid from billionaires who want to dismantle and privatize the foundation of affordable healthcare in this country," the union leader added. "AFSCME members—including nurses, home care and childcare providers, social workers and more—will be watching and fighting back against any effort to weaken Medicare and Medicaid. The 147 million seniors, children, Americans with disabilities, and low-income workers who rely on these programs for affordable access to healthcare deserve nothing less."
Israel Bombs More Gaza Schools, Killing Dozens, Including Many Women and Children
"While your kids are getting ready for school, kids in Gaza were once against just massacred in one," said one observer.
Apr 03, 2025
Israeli airstrikes targeted at least three more school shelters in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing dozens of Palestinians and wounding scores of others on a day when local officials said that more than 100 people were slain by occupation forces.
Gaza's Government Media Office said that at least 29 people—including 14 children and five women—were killed and over 100 others were wounded when at least four missiles struck the Dar al-Arqam school complex in the Tuffah neighborhood of eastern Gaza City, where hundreds of Palestinians were sheltering after being forcibly displaced from other parts of the embattled coastal enclave by Israel's 535-day assault.
Al Jazeera reported that "when terrified men, women, and children fled from one school building to another, the bombs followed them," and "when bystanders rushed to help, they too became victims."
A first responder from the Palestine Red Crescent Society—which is reeling from this week's discovery of a mass grave containing the bodies of eight of its members, some of whom had allegedly been bound and executed by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops—told Al Jazeera that "we were absolutely shocked by the scale of this massacre," whose victims were "mostly women and children."
Warning: Video contains graphic images of death.
Horrifying scenes following the Dar Al-Arqam School Massacre!#Gaza pic.twitter.com/xOvuq3Zztx
— Dr. Zain Al-Abbadi (@ZainAbbadi11) April 3, 2025
An official from Gaza's Civil Defense, five of whose members were also found in the mass grave on Sunday, said: "What's going on here is a wake-up call to the entire world. This war and these massacres against women and children must stop immediately. The children are being killed in cold blood here in Gaza. Our teams cannot perform their duties properly.
Gaza Health Ministry spokesperson Zaher al-Wahidi said that the death toll was likely to rise, as some survivors were critically injured.
Dozens of victims were reportedly trapped beneath rubble of Thursday's airstrikes, but they could not be rescued due to a lack of equipment.
The IDF claimed that "key Hamas terrorists" were targeted in a strike on what it called a "command center." Israeli officials routinely claim—often with little or no evidence—that Palestinian civilians it kills are members of Hamas or other militant resistance groups.
Israel also bombed the nearby al-Sabah school, killing four people, as well as the Fahd School in Gaza City, with three reported fatalities.
Some of the deadliest bombings in the war have been carried out against refugees sheltering in schools, many of them run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)—at least 280 of whose staff members have been killed by Israeli forces during the war.
The United Nations Children's Fund has called Gaza "the world's most dangerous place to be a child." Last year, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres for the first time added Israel to his so-called "List of Shame" of countries that kill and injure children during wars and other armed conflicts. More than 17,500 Palestinian children have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Thursday's school bombings sparked worldwide outrage and calls to hold Israel accountable.
"While your kids are getting ready for school, kids in Gaza were once against just massacred in one," Australian journalist, activist, and progressive politician Sophie McNeill wrote on social media. "We must sanction Israel now!"
There were other IDF massacres on Thursday, with local officials reporting that more than 100 people were killed in Israeli attacks since dawn. Al-Wahidi said more than 30 people were killed in strikes on homes in Gaza City's Shejaya neighborhood, citing records at al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital in Gaza.
Al Jazeera reported that al-Ahli's emergency room "is overwhelmed with casualties and, as is so often the case over the past 18 months, the victims are Gaza's youngest."
Thursday's intensified airstrikes came as Israeli forces pushed into the ruins of the southern city of Rafah. Local and international media reported that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian families fled from the area, which Israel said it will seize as part of a new "security zone."
Human rights defenders around the world condemned U.S.-backed killing and mass displacement, with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—whose bid to block some sAmerican arms sales to Israel was rejected by the Senate on Thursday—saying: "There is a name and a term for forcibly expelling people from where they live. It is called ethnic cleansing. It is illegal. It is a war crime."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, are fugitives from the International Criminal Court, which last year issued arrest warrants for the pair over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Israel is also facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice.
According to Gaza officials, Israeli forces have killed or wounded at least 175,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including upward of 14,000 people who are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. Almost everyone in Gaza has been forcibly displaced at least once, and the "complete siege" imposed by Israel has fueled widespread and sometimes deadly starvation and disease.
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