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'Slap in the Face to Working-Class Families': Senate Sends Biden $895 Billion Military Bill
"We do not need to spend almost a trillion dollars on the military, while half a million Americans are homeless and children go hungry," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Dec 18, 2024
The United States Senate overwhelmingly passed an $895 billion military funding bill on Wednesday as critics blasted what many called misplaced spending priorities and highly controversial provisions that ban gender-affirming health coverage for children of active-duty service members and prohibit the Pentagon from citing casualty figures issued by the Gaza Ministry of Health.
Senators voted 85-14 for the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2025. The following senators voted against the legislation: Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), Andy Kim (D-N.J.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), the vice president-elect, did not vote on the bill.
"We do not need to spend almost a trillion dollars on the military, while half a million Americans are homeless and children go hungry," Sanders explained earlier this month.
The peace group CodePink said it was "disappointed" by the Senate's passage of the NDAA, "which allocates nearly $1 trillion in taxpayer dollars to weapons and warfare while essential services like healthcare, education, food, and housing remain underfunded."
"Half of the budget will go directly to the pockets of private military companies in the form of contracts and weapons deals," the group continued. "On top of the massive topline and the large allocation to private companies, the Pentagon has never been able to pass an audit. Much like every Pentagon budget before, this money will be largely unaccounted for, with very little transparency."
"This budget is a huge slap in the face to working-class families who are struggling to make ends meet," CodePink added.
An amendment introduced on Monday by Baldwin and co-sponsored by two dozen of her Democratic colleagues "to remove language that would strip away service members' parental rights to access medically necessary healthcare for their transgender children" failed to pass.
Speaking on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Baldwin said that Congress has "broken" its commitment to the troops "because some Republicans decided that gutting the rights of our service members to score cheap political points was more worthy."
"We're talking about parents who are serving our country in uniform, having the right to consult their family's doctor and get the healthcare they want and need for their transgender children," she added. "Some folks poisoned this bill and turned their backs on those in service and the people that we represent."
Olivia Hunt, director of federal policy at Advocates for Trans Equality, said in a statement Wednesday that "every military family deserves respect and access to essential healthcare—free from the interference of political agendas."
Hunt continued:
Denying lifesaving, medically necessary care to trans members of military families creates profound hardships, forcing service members to make impossible choices between their duty and the health and well-being of their loved ones. Politicizing access to evidence-based healthcare undermines the principles of fairness, dignity, and respect that our nation aspires to. No one should have to choose between their duty and protecting their family.
By passing this harmful legislation, the Senate has failed our service members and their families. This decision prioritizes political gamesmanship over the dignity, rights, and well-being of those who serve our nation and sets a dangerous precedent of governmental overreach into decisions that should remain between doctors and families.
Some advocates including Hunt want President Joe Biden to veto the bill.
"If signed by the president, the passage of the NDAA will mark the first piece of federal legislation to restrict access to medically necessary healthcare for transgender adolescents," Hunt added. "It would be heartbreaking for an administration that has sought to advance the rights of LGBTQI+ Americans more than any other to date, to enact a law that would endanger countless trans youth. We urge President Biden to take a strong stance for trans youth and their families and veto this bill."
Congress has passed the NDAA, which contained a provision banning the coverage of gender affirming care for the children of active duty military. This is the first anti-LGBTQ bill to pass congress in almost 3 decades but certainly won't be the last. This will be Biden's legacy.
— Alejandra Caraballo ( @esqueer.net) December 18, 2024 at 10:02 AM
Human Rights Campaign president Kelley Robinson said that "President Biden has the power to put a stop to this cruelty."
"He should make good on his promises to protect LGBTQ+ Americans, defend military service members and their families, and ensure this country's politics reflect the best of who we are," Robinson added. "President Biden must veto this bill."
The NDAA also contains a provision prohibiting the Department of Defense from officially citing "fatality figures that are derived by United States-designated terrorist organizations" or governmental entities or organizations that rely upon such data. Critics say the measure is meant to censor the truth about Israel's 14-month assault on Gaza, which has left more than 162,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing. Various United Nations agencies, international charities and rights groups, and even the Israeli military and U.S. State Department have cited Gaza Health Ministry casualty figures, which have been deemed accurate—and likely an undercount—by experts around the world, including Israeli military intelligence and U.S. officials.
"In other words," Security Policy Reform Institute co-founder Stephen Semler said of the provision, "it's effectively a ban on talking about deaths in Gaza."
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US Bombs Over 75 Targets in Syria After Assad Falls
"The Western press are waxing lyrical about the new Syria being born—but not a word on the U.S. and Israeli bombs falling from the sky," said Yanis Varoufakis.
Dec 09, 2024
U.S. military forces launched dozens of airstrikes on more than 75 Islamic State targets in Syria on Sunday after the fall of longtime Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and amid ongoing Israeli and Turkish attacks on the war-torn Middle Eastern nation.
According to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), warplanes including B-52 bombers, F-15 fighters, and A-10 ground attack aircraft "conducted dozens of precision airstrikes targeting known ISIS camps and operatives in central Syria."
CENTCOM called the strikes "part of the ongoing mission to disrupt, degrade, and defeat ISIS in order to prevent the terrorist group from conducting external operations and to ensure that ISIS does not seek to take advantage of the current situation to reconstitute in central Syria."
The U.S., "together with allies and partners in the region, will continue to carry out operations to degrade ISIS operational capabilities even during this dynamic period in Syria," CENTCOM added.
"The Biden administration ordering ongoing airstrikes is a disappointing sign that they have no intent on reversing their deadly policy of interventionism."
Responding Monday to the latest attacks on Syria by U.S. forces, Danaka Katovich, national co-director of the peace group CodePink, told Common Dreams: "We condemn the U.S. airstrikes in Syria. The U.S. has sowed chaos in Syria and the entire region for years and the Biden administration ordering ongoing airstrikes is a disappointing sign that they have no intent on reversing their deadly policy of interventionism."
U.S. and coalition forces have killed and maimed at least tens of thousands of Syrians and Iraqis during the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations as part of the anti-ISIS campaign and wider so-called War on Terror.
Commenting on the dearth of coverage of the strikes by the corporate media, prominent Greek leftist Yanis Varoufakis said on social media that "the Western press are waxing lyrical about the new Syria being born—but not a word on the U.S. and Israeli bombs falling from the sky."
"Is there no bottom to the moral void of the Western press?" he added.
Sunday's U.S. strikes came as al-Assad and relatives fled to Russia—where they have been granted asylum—amid the fall of the capital, Damascus, to rebel forces.
Also on Sunday, Israeli forces seized more territory in Syria's Golan Heights and ordered residents of five villages to "stay home and not go out until further notice" if they want to remain safe. Israel conquered the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights in 1967 and has unlawfully occupied it ever since. In 1981, Israel illegally annexed the occupied lands.
"We will not allow any hostile force to establish itself on our border," right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza—said in a video posted on social media.
Numerous Israelis celebrated the seizure on social media, while others cautioned against boasting about what is almost certainly an illegal conquest.
Meanwhile in northern Syria, Turkish airstrikes in support of Syrian National Army rebels—who are battling U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters in and around the Kurdish-controlled city of Manbij—reportedly killed numerous civilians along with dozens of militants.
In what it called a "horrific massacre," the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Monday that 11 civilians from the same family, including women and six children, were killed in a Turkish drone strike on the SDF-controlled village of Al-Mustariha in northern Raqqa Governate.
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Microsoft Fires 2 Employees Over Gaza Vigil
"Microsoft are facilitating a genocide, and punishing those who stand for humanity," one anti-war group said.
Oct 26, 2024
This piece was updated on Sunday, October 27 to include a statement from Council on American-Islamic Relations and its Washington state chapter.
Microsoft fired two of its employees hours after they held a vigil outside the tech giant's Redmond, Washington campus in honor of the Palestinians who have been killed in Israel's year-long assault on Gaza.
The vigil was "unauthorized," according to reporting from The Associated Press, but the employees said that their event—held during lunch on Thursday—was similar to other events Microsoft had approved to raise money for charity.
"We have so many community members within Microsoft who have lost family, lost friends or loved ones," one of the workers who was fired, Abdo Mohamed, told the AP. "But Microsoft really failed to have the space for us where we can come together and share our grief and honor the memories of people who can no longer speak for themselves."
"Our work is currently being used by the Israeli state to wreak unfathomable destruction on Palestinian life."
The Israeli assault on Gaza, which many experts consider to be a genocide, has claimed nearly 43,000 lives according to official figures, though the real number may be much higher.
Mohamed, who was born in Egypt, had a work visa for his job at Microsoft as a researcher and data scientist. He said he would need to find a new job within two months in order to maintain his visa and stay in the United States.
The other employee, Hossam Nasr, who grew up in Egypt, also helps to organize Harvard Alumni for Palestine.
Nasr said he had previously been investigated and punished by Microsoft for pro-Palestinian posts he had made on the company's internal social media platform.
Microsoft confirmed to the AP on Friday that it "ended the employment of some individuals in accordance with internal policy."
Both Mohamed and Nasr are members of a group called No Azure for Apartheid, which grew out of the wider No Tech for Apartheid campaign and opposes the use of Microsoft technologies such as its cloud computing program Azure to aid Israel's war on Gaza and the maintenance of its occupation in the West Bank.
Microsoft has a longstanding relationship with Israel, as No Azure for Apartheid detailed in May. While Amazon and Google won the bid to provide exclusive cloud computing to the Israeli government and military through Project Nimbus, departments continue to use Azure in the transition. In addition, Azure provides support for Israeli military company Elbit systems' new military simulation software. Microsoft also offers consulting services to the Israeli Prison Service.
"Our work is currently being used by the Israeli state to wreak unfathomable destruction on Palestinian life," No Azure for Apartheid wrote. "As producers of powerful technologies that are frequently misused to serve the interests of unethical government entities, we bear the unique responsibility of ensuring that our code is used for good."
Anti-war and Palestinian solidarity organizations and activists spoke out against the firings.
"Microsoft are facilitating a genocide, and punishing those who stand for humanity," CODEPINK wrote on social media on Saturday.
International Solidarity Movement co-founder Huwaida Arraf said: "Not only does Microsoft provide technology to enable genocide and apartheid, but it also fires employees for holding vigils to honor murdered family members."
University of Chicago professor and In These Times columnist Eman Abdelhadi linked the firings to several instances of retaliation for Palestinian solidarity activism at universities and companies.
"Harvard Library suspending faculty for a silent study-in. Microsoft firing workers for a Gaza vigil. U Chicago evicting a student for protesting. Universal canceling a TV show production because the author is anti-genocide... all within the last week," Abdelhadi pointed out on social media.
Microsoft's actions also come six months after Google fired 28 employees for staging protests against Project Nimbus.
On Sunday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its Washington state chapter called on Microsoft to reinstate the employees.
"This is yet another illustration of how employees of conscience, who are standing up for the human rights issue of our time, are being silenced in the corporate world," said CAIR-WA executive director Imraan Siddiqi in a statement.
CAIR National executive director Nihad Awad agreed: "Time after time, we see the 'except for Palestine' rule applied whenever anyone dares to defend the human rights, humanity, and dignity of the Palestinian people. In any other context, a corporation would celebrate its employees standing up for human rights and against genocide–'except for Palestine.'"
"This hypocritical double standard must end," Awad urged. "Microsoft must rehire these principled employees and apologize for its biased actions that appear to support Israel's genocide and to deny Palestinian humanity."
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