SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
AFSCME's Saunders on Student Debt Relief: 'Working People Are Finally Catching a Break'
WASHINGTON
AFSCME President Lee Saunders issued the following statement after President Joe Biden unveiled his plan to extend the moratorium on student loan payments and forgive up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients and up to $10,000 for non-Pell Grant recipients:
"For far too long, our national leaders prioritized rich people and corporate interests. Now, working people are finally catching a break."Today's historic action puts money back into working people's pockets and frees thousands of families from crippling debt. It builds on relief already delivered through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which has already lifted a burden for more than 160,000 public service workers across the country. And it joins lowering prescription drug costs, falling gas prices, and the lowest unemployment in 50 years as yet another way working Americans can benefit when leaders put their needs first."For far too long, too many people have barely kept their heads above water, struggling to pay the bills each month. With political extremists hellbent on reversing the progress of the last two years and taking away our rights and freedoms, the choices we must make in the 2022 midterm elections could not be clearer."
AFSCME members provide the vital services that make America happen. With members in hundreds of different occupations, AFSCME advocates for fairness in the workplace, excellence in public services and prosperity and opportunity for all working families.
(202) 429-1000LATEST NEWS
Landmine Victims Demand 'Mine-Free World' at Global Summit
"Every landmine planted is a child, a civilian, a woman, who is just waiting for their legs to be blown off, for his life to be taken," said one survivor who lost a leg to a landmine in 2005.
Nov 26, 2024
"Look what anti-personnel landmines will do to your people," read a sign displayed by two of the protesters who gathered in Siem Reap, Cambodia this week to confront delegates at a conference on the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty.
The people holding the sign were among those who took part in the demonstration while using wheelchairs or crutches due to the amputations and serious injuries they have suffered from landmine attacks.
More than 100 people lined a walkway leading to the conference venue on Sunday as the Siem Reap-Angkor Summit on a Mine-Free World opened.
The conference began days after the Biden administration announced a reversal of its own policy and approved a plan to provide anti-personnel landmines to Ukraine—a decision that was condemned by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and other human rights groups.
As Amnesty International USA advocacy direct Ben Linden said last week, the weapons are "inherently indiscriminate" because they cause explosives to scatter across a wide region, putting people at risk long after conflicts end. The majority of landmine victims are children.
In 2023, at least 5,757 people were killed or maimed by landmines, 84% of whom were civilians. Over one-third were children.
Alex Munyambabazi, who lost a leg to a landmine in 2005 in Uganda, was among those who assembled at the landmines summit.
"We don't want to see any more victims like me, we don't want to see any more suffering," he toldAgence France-Presse (AFP). "Every landmine planted is a child, a civilian, a woman, who is just waiting for their legs to be blown off, for his life to be taken. I am here to say we don't want any more victims. No excuses, no exceptions."
The U.S. and Russia are not signatories to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production, and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction, but Ukraine is. According to U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Ukraine "asked" for anti-personnel landmines.
Tamar Gabelnick, director of ICBL, told AFP that Ukraine's use of U.S.-supplied landmines would signify a "blatant disregard for their obligations under the mine ban treaty."
Ukrainian delegates were present at the Siem Reap conference this week.
In a message delivered to delegates in Siem Reap, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres acknowledged the "important progress" made by the treaty, "with over 55 million anti-personnel devices destroyed across 13,000 square kilometers in over 60 countries, and thousands of people receiving lifesaving awareness education and victim assistance services."
"I call on states parties to meet their obligations and ensure compliance to the convention, while addressing humanitarian and developmental impacts through financial and technical support," he said. " I also encourage all states that have not yet acceded to the convention to join the 164 that have done so."
"A world without anti-personnel mines is not just possible," Guterres said. "It is within reach."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Third Death Tied to Texas Abortion Ban as 'Stigma and Fear' Disrupt Miscarriage Care
"The only reason she is not with us is because of Donald Trump, Greg Abbott, and every single Republican politician who helped put Texas' abortion ban in place," said one advocacy group.
Nov 26, 2024
Friends and family of Porsha Ngumezi, a 35-year-old mother of two in Houston, were stunned last year to learn that she had died in a hospital after suffering a miscarriage when she was 11 weeks pregnant—and medical experts who spoke to the investigative outlet ProPublicaon Monday had the same reaction.
"All she needed was a [dilation and curettage]," one friend told Ngumezi's grieving husband, Hope Ngumezi, referring to a standard procedure which is often given to pregnant patients who have first-trimester miscarriages. Commonly called a D&C, it is also diagnose or treat other health conditions and provide abortion care.
Dr. Daniel Grossman, an obstetrics and gynecology professor at University of California, San Francisco, toldProPublica that "at every point" of Ngumezi's visit to Houston Methodist Sugar Land, a hospital outside Houston, medical providers' response to her case was "kind of shocking."
"She is having significant blood loss and the physician didn't move toward aspiration," Grossman told ProPublica.
Like at least two other Texas women—Nevaeh Crain and Josseli Barnica—Ngumezi's death in June 2023 was the result of the abortion ban that went into effect in Texas in 2022, according to medical experts who reviewed her case.
Ngumezi arrived at the hospital on June 11, 2023 after experiencing heavy bleeding 11 weeks into her pregnancy with her third child. Doctors noted that Ngumezi had a blood-clotting disorder and that she was experiencing "significant bleeding" with large clots.
"Doctors assume that a D&C is not standard in Texas anymore, even in cases where it should be recommended. People are afraid: They see D&C as abortion and abortion as illegal."
An ultrasound showed a "sac-like structure," but no fetus or cardiac activity were detected, indicating that she was having a miscarriage.
But instead of providing a D&C, in which a small tube is inserted into the uterus to gently remove any remaining fetal tissue, doctors took a "wait-and-see approach [that] has become more common under abortion bans," according to the medical experts who spoke to ProPublica.
Dr. Gabrielle Taper, who has worked as an OB-GYN in Austin, told ProPublica that since Texas' abortion ban went into effect in 2022—two months after the right-wing majority on the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade—there has been "much more hesitation [among doctors] about: When can we intervene, do we have enough evidence to say this is a miscarriage, how long are we going to wait, what will we use to feel definitive?"
For Ngumezi, that hesitation meant that Dr. Andrew Ryan Davis, the obstetrician on duty, prescribed misoprostol to help Ngumezi pass the fetal tissue without a D&C.
Dr. Alison Goulding, another OB-GYN in Houston, told ProPublica that because misoprostol can also be used for women in labor or to treat postpartum bleeding, under Texas' abortion ban, "stigma and fear are there for D&Cs in a way that they are not for misoprostol."
"Doctors assume that a D&C is not standard in Texas anymore, even in cases where it should be recommended," Goulding said. "People are afraid: They see D&C as abortion and abortion as illegal."
But more than a dozen doctors told ProPublica that considering Ngumezi's blood-clotting disorder, doctors should have provided a D&C.
"Misoprostol," reported ProPublica, "is an effective method to complete low-risk miscarriages but is not recommended when a patient is unstable."
Some critics who support abortion bans have dismissed Ngumezi's case—and that of other women who have died because of the laws—as the result of medical malpractice that had nothing to do with recently passed state laws. They claim Texas' law protects women who have miscarriages.
But ProPublica noted that Ngumezi had a similar case to one described on social media by podcast host Ryan Hamilton earlier this year. Hamilton's wife experienced bleeding while miscarrying at 13 weeks, and was prescribed misoprostol and sent home after an ultrasound at Surepoint Emergency Center Stephenville showed no fetal cardiac activity. The bleeding got worse, but an emergency doctor told the couple they couldn't provide a D&C because of "the current stance" in Texas.
Greer Donley, a law professor at University of Pittsburgh, said that "the antiabortion movement wants us to blame the doctors and sometimes that is warranted. But abortion bans are the ultimate cause of this harm."
"When life in prison is the penalty for violating a ban, doctors will understandably be risk averse. And that chill in care will cause death," said Donley.
ProPublica reported that "performing a D&C attracts more attention from colleagues, creating a higher barrier in a state where abortion is illegal."
Doctors, added Goulding, "have to convince everyone that it is legal and won't put them at risk [of prosecution]."
In Ngumezi's case, the bleeding continued after she took misoprostol, and her heart stopped three hours later—a "preventable" death, according to the experts.
"The only reason" Ngumezi died, said Reproductive Justice for All, is that Republican politicians including President-elect Donald Trump helped put Texas' abortion ban in place.
"We are heartbroken and enraged by the tragic, preventable death of Porsha Ngumezi," said Planned Parenthood Texas Votes. "This nightmare reality, where political agendas outweigh patients' lives, has left another family shattered."
Keep ReadingShow Less
IDF Pummels Beirut as Israeli Cabinet Weighs Cease-Fire Proposal
The Israeli military said one round of strikes hit 20 targets in Beirut's southern suburbs within two minutes.
Nov 26, 2024
Israeli strikes rained down on Beirut Tuesday, despite the possibility that the Israeli government and Hezbollah may achieve a diplomatic breakthrough imminently. The wave of strikes came just before the Israeli security cabinet began a meeting to debate a cease-fire deal that would temporarily end fighting.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has indicated openness to a cease-fire deal with Hezbollah, according to New York Timesreporting from Monday.
Multiple media reports detail that the latest Israeli barrage in Lebanon included strikes on Beirut's southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold. Reuters and The Times of Israel report that the Israeli military said one round of strikes hit 20 targets in the densely populated city within two minutes.
Israel issued multiple evacuation orders for different parts of Lebanon Tuesday, perThe New York Times' live updates.
"Residents of Lebanon, in the coming hours, we will inform the residents of buildings used by Hezbollah of the need to evacuate them for your safety according to the maps that will be published," Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee said on X roughly an hour ago, according to Al Jazeera.
Heavy airstrikes have also been reported in southern Lebanon, including in the town of Naqoura where the U.N. peacekeeping mission UNIFIL, is based.
Citing an unnamed senior U.S. official, Axiosreported Monday that "Israel and Lebanon have agreed to the terms of a cease-fire agreement to end the Israel-Hezbollah conflict."
Yesterday, the Financial Timesreported that the deal on the table would call for an initial two-month cease-fire—citing two Lebanese officials—"during which the Israeli military would withdraw from Lebanon and Hezbollah would move its weapons north of the Litani river, which runs 30km from the U.N.-drawn border."
Israel's large-scale bombardment of Lebanon—which began some two months ago and was soon followed by a ground invasion—has killed more than 3,000 people. Hezbollah rocket fire has killed more than 40 civilians in Israel, according toThe Associated Press yesterday, and dozens of Israeli soldiers have been killed on the ground in Lebanon.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular