May, 11 2022, 04:57pm EDT
NARAL Pro-Choice America Condemns Senate Republicans for Blocking Advancement of the Women's Health Protection Act
Today, once again, Republicans in the U.S. Senate blocked the advancement of the Women's Health Protection Act (WHPA). This critical bill would safeguard the legal right to abortion throughout the United States, which is more important than ever after a leaked draft majority opinion revealed that the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to soon overturn Roe v. Wade. Every Republican in the Senate voted against advancing WHPA and protecting our fundamental rights.
WASHINGTON
Today, once again, Republicans in the U.S. Senate blocked the advancement of the Women's Health Protection Act (WHPA). This critical bill would safeguard the legal right to abortion throughout the United States, which is more important than ever after a leaked draft majority opinion revealed that the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to soon overturn Roe v. Wade. Every Republican in the Senate voted against advancing WHPA and protecting our fundamental rights.
NARAL Pro-Choice America President Mini Timmaraju released the following statement in response:
"Today, Republicans in the Senate once again failed the American people. The recently leaked draft decision made clear that the Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade and underscored how urgent our fight to protect reproductive freedom is--but these out-of-touch lawmakers simply do not care. Instead of safeguarding our fundamental rights, Republican senators have once again abdicated their responsibility.
We are grateful to Leader Schumer and Democratic leadership for bringing this vote to the floor and to every senator who voted in support of this critical bill. Thank you for recognizing the importance of this moment and for stepping up to protect our freedom to make our own decisions about our lives, families, and futures. We know that these cruel bans and restrictions on abortion most harm those who already face barriers to accessing the care they need--including women; Black, Indigenous, and people of color; those working to make ends meet; LGBTQ+ people; immigrants; young people; those living in rural communities; and people with disabilities. We must take action to fight back.
We have a message for the lawmakers who blocked this bill and refused to fight for our freedoms and our families: Voters will remember who showed up for them at this moment of crisis and who chose to walk away. We'll see you at the ballot box."
The Women's Health Protection Act (WHPA) would safeguard the federal right to abortion across the country, even if Roe v. Wade falls. This legislation would create a right for healthcare providers to provide abortion care and a corresponding right for people to receive that care, free from bans and medically unnecessary restrictions that single out abortion and block access. In September, the U.S. House of Representatives passed WHPA in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal to block Texas' vigilante-enforced abortion ban (SB 8). Shortly before the House vote, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy in support of this critical legislation. Republicans in the U.S. Senate first blocked the advancement of the Women's Health Protection Act in February.
The fate of Roe v. Wade is in the hands of the anti-choice supermajority on the Supreme Court--and the recently leaked draft Court opinion confirmed that the Court is poised to overturn the landmark abortion rights case when it rules in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization in the coming weeks. The case concerns Mississippi's 15-week abortion ban and directly challenges Roe. If the Court upholds Mississippi's ban, it will end the constitutional right to abortion recognized by Roe, and states will take swift action to ban abortion. Should Roe fall, 28 states would likely take action to prohibit abortion outright. Of those, 13 states already have "trigger bans" in place, which would ban abortion automatically if Roe is overturned.
As abortion rights and access face threats from state legislatures to the Supreme Court, NARAL Pro-Choice America is ramping up its work to elect candidates across the country during a critical moment in the fight for reproductive freedom. Recently, NARAL Pro-Choice America, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and EMILY's List, announced a plan to collectively spend a historic $150 million on the 2022 midterms to ensure the election of reproductive freedom champions up and down the ballot. While each will run its own electoral programs with their own advocacy and political organizations, the announcement represents a united effort to aggressively respond to the unprecedented attacks on reproductive freedom across the country and raise voters' awareness of the lawmakers who are to blame.
For over 50 years, Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America) has fought to protect and advance reproductive freedom at the federal and state levels—including access to abortion care, birth control, pregnancy and post-partum care, and paid family leave—for everybody. Reproductive Freedom for All is powered by its more than 4 million members from every state and congressional district in the country, representing the 8 in 10 Americans who support legal abortion.
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Justice Jackson Warns New Ruling Could 'Devastate' Federal Regulators
The liberal justice said Congress can remedy the "profoundly destabilizing" decision by passing legislation to strengthen the federal regulatory regime.
Jul 01, 2024
As the U.S. Supreme Court dealt yet another blow to the federal government's regulatory authority, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Monday stressed that "the ball is in Congress' court" to enact legislation to "forestall the coming chaos" wrought by the right-wing supermajority's decision.
The justices ruled 6-3 in Corner Post Inc. v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System that the Administrative Procedures Act's (APA) statute of limitations period does not begin until a plaintiff is adversely affected by a regulation. The ruling reverses a lower court's dismissal of a lawsuit filed by Corner Post—a North Dakota truck stop that challenged a U.S. Federal Reserve rule capping debit card swipe fees—because the six-year statute of limitations on such challenges had passed.
Monday's ruling makes it much easier to sue government agencies. As Sydney Bryant and Devon Ombres at the Center for American Progress explained, the decision "is intended to allow a swarm of legal challenges to rules that have protected the American people from bad actors and corporate malfeasance for decades."
"Corner Post is not the story of David versus Goliath but rather the Trojan Horse, where moneyed interests attempt to sneak in their anti-regulation politics under the guise of altruism."
In a dissent joined by fellow liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, Jackson wrote that "today, the majority throws... caution to the wind and engages in the same kind of misguided reasoning about statutory limitations periods that we have previously admonished."
"The court's baseless conclusion means that there is effectively no longer any limitations period for lawsuits that challenge agency regulations on their face," she continued. "Allowing every new commercial entity to bring fresh facial challenges to long-existing regulations is profoundly destabilizing for both government and businesses. It also allows well-heeled litigants to game the system by creating new entities or finding new plaintiffs whenever they blow past the statutory deadline."
"At the end of a momentous term, this much is clear: The tsunami of lawsuits against agencies that the court's holdings in this case and Loper Bright have authorized has the potential to devastate the functioning of the federal government," Jackson added, referring to last week's 6-3 overturning of the so-called Chevron doctrine, the legal principle under which courts deferred to federal agencies' interpretations of ambiguous laws passed by Congress.
While numerous business advocates welcomed Monday's ruling, a broad range of consumer, labor, and other groups echoed the alarm in Jackson's dissent.
"Americans expect that safeguards will protect us and our families from unsafe food, products, polluted air and water, and dangerous and unfair working conditions. This decision provides special interests, opposed to the safeguards that people rely upon, with more opportunities to challenge and seek to overturn these important protections," said Rachel Weintraub, executive director of the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards.
Weintraub added that the ruling "undermines federal agencies' ability to use administrative courts to impose civil penalties for violating regulatory protections" and "starkly impedes agencies' ability to protect the public."
Bryant and Ombres wrote that "Corner Post is not the story of David versus Goliath but rather the Trojan Horse, where moneyed interests attempt to sneak in their anti-regulation politics under the guise of altruism."
Jackson's dissent states that "Congress still has a chance to address this absurdity and forestall the coming chaos" by "clarifying that the statutes it enacts are designed to facilitate the functioning of agencies, not to hobble them."
"In particular, Congress can amend §2401(a)," Jackson offered, referring to the default six-year statute of limitations, "or enact a specific review provision for APA claims, to state explicitly what any such rule must mean if it is to operate as a limitations period in this context: Regulated entities have six years from the date of the agency action to bring a lawsuit seeking to have it changed or invalidated; after that, facial challenges must end."
"By doing this," she added, "Congress can make clear that lawsuits bringing facial claims against agencies are not personal attack vehicles for new entities created just for that purpose."
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Newly Released Gaza Hospital Director Alleges 'Almost Daily Torture' in Israeli Detention
The hospital director, who'd been held without trial since Israeli forces detained him in November, said that he and others were subjected to torture, psychological humiliation, and severe undernourishment.
Jul 01, 2024
The director of Gaza's main hospital said at a press conference on Monday that he was tortured while being held without charges for the last seven months at an Israeli detention center.
Muhammad Abu Salmiya, director of the Al-Shifa hospital, once Gaza's main medical center, made the claims after he and 54 other Palestinian detainees were released and arrived back to the Gaza Strip.
Israeli forces had raided the hospital in November and alleged that Abu Salmiya was involved in making it a Hamas command center. They later destroyed the hospital.
Abu Salmiya said detention guards broke his finger and beat him to the point that his head bled—and that he wasn't the only one.
"Our detainees have been subjected to all kinds of torture behind bars," Abu Salmiya said. "There was almost daily torture."
There was "daily physical and psychological humiliation," he added.
He also said that they were severely underfed, surviving on nothing more than a loaf of bread per day. He said that all of the detainees had lost at least 30 kilograms (66 pounds).
"Our detainees have been subjected to all kinds of torture behind bars. There was almost daily torture."
Israeli forces seized Abu Salmiya from a United Nations convoy on November 22. They took him to court three times while in detainment but brought no charges and allowed him no lawyer, Abu Salmiya said.
His detention in November followed an Israeli siege of Al-Shifa hospital, which Israeli officials said had become a Hamas control center. Though weapons were found at the hospital, an investigation by The Washington Post in December showed that the evidence fell short of revealing a command center, and that key claims the Israelis had made to justify the siege turned out to be incorrect.
Israeli forces attacked the hospital again in late March, killing hundreds and leaving the facility mostly destroyed. Several mass graves were discovered near the hospital site in the weeks that followed.
Israel has detained thousands of Palestinians since the war started, leading to "intolerable overcrowding" of its facilities, as Haaretzreported in February. Many detainees are held without charges in what is called "administrative detention."
At least 40 Palestinians have died in Israeli detention during the war, according to Addameer, a Palestinian watchdog group. Salmiya said Monday that some had been killed in interrogation cells, Al Jazeerareported.
At least one other doctor was among those released on Monday: Bassam Miqdad, head of the orthopedic unit at Gaza European hospital in Khan Younis.
In April, Adnan Ahmad Albursh, a 50-year-old Palestinian surgeon, died in Israeli detention, according to Palestinian officials and rights groups. He had been the head of orthopedics at Al-Shifa hospital. Overall, hundreds of healthcare workers have been killed during the war.
Israeli officials and political figures from various parties denounced the release of the 55 detainees, which was reportedly done to make space in the overcrowded detention centers.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right minister in charge of Israel's police and prison service, called the release of the detainees a case of "security negligence" and blamed another ministry. Benny Gantz, an opposition figure who recently resigned from the war cabinet, said whoever released the detainees should be fired and that government offices should be made available to "free up space and budget for prisoners," according to Al Jazeera.
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Outrage as Reports Suggest DOJ to Offer Boeing 'Sweetheart Deal' Over Fatal Crashes
"There is no accountability, no admission that Boeing's admitted crime caused the 346 deaths, and the families will most certainly object," said one lawyer for victims' relatives.
Jul 01, 2024
The families of 346 people who were killed on two Boeing 737 MAX airplanes in 2018 and 2019 were expected to "strenuously object" to a plea deal reportedly proposed by the U.S. Department of Justice a week after federal prosecutors recommended criminal charges for the company.
The penalties proposed by the DOJ "are totally inadequate," said Javier de Luis, whose sister was killed when the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX plane she was on crashed in 2019.
Family members take issue with the proposal "both from the perspective of accountability for the crimes committed, and from the perspective of acting in the public interest by ensuring a change in Boeing's behavior," said de Luis, who served on a panel assembled by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to review Boeing's safety culture.
The agreement, which has been denounced as a "sweetheart deal" by family members and their attorneys, reportedly includes a requirement that Boeing plead guilty to conspiring to defraud the FAA in connection with the crashes, as well as a $487.2 million financial penalty. The company board would be required to meet with the victims' families and appoint an independent monitor to oversee Boeing's safety practices.
Boeing would be required to pay only half of the fine because prosecutors would give the company credit for a settlement payment officials already made in relation to the crashes.
Boeing paid $2.5 billion as part of another deal that granted it immunity from criminal prosecution over its planes' safety flaws, with the agreement mandating that it abide by the terms for a three-year period that ended in January. Two days before that period ended, the company came under new scrutiny after a door plug that was missing several bolts blew off a Boeing 737 MAX 9 flown by Alaska Airlines while the plane was at an elevation of 16,000 feet.
Erin Applebaum, a lawyer representing victims' relatives, said Sunday as the new plea deal proposal was reported that "when there is inevitably another Boeing crash and DOJ seeks to assign blame, they will have nowhere else to look but in the mirror."
Boeing has until the end of the week to accept or reject the agreement; if it agrees, U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor will decide whether the deal is in the public interest.
Attorneys for the families said the relatives plan to call on the judge to reject the deal.
"The families are very unhappy and angered with DOJ's decisions and proposal," said Robert Clifford, lead counsel for the families who have filed civil litigation. "There is no accountability, no admission that Boeing's admitted crime caused the 346 deaths, and the families will most certainly object before Judge Reed O'Connor and ask that he reject the plea if Boeing accepts."
The memory of victims of the crashes in 2018 and 2019, said Paul Cassell, who represents the families of 15 people who were killed on the Ethiopian Airlines and Lion Airlines planes, "demands more justice than this."
David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, noted that some reporting on the deal suggests the DOJ will make a criminal charge, but said, "That's probably just trying to get Boeing to admit wrongdoing."
The reported deal comes a week after an employee of a contractor for one of Boeing's partner companies, Spirit Aerosystems, became the latest of more than a dozen whistleblowers to come forward about safety issues with the company's aircrafts. The worker notified Boeing of problems with 787 Dreamliner planes that posed "catastrophic" danger to people on board.
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