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Attack Tests Movement Sanders Founded

The most ardent supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders have long been outspoken about their anger toward Republicans — and in some cases toward Democrats. Their idol, the senator from Vermont, has called President Trump a “demagogue” and said recently that he was “perhaps the worst and most dangerous president in the history of our country.”

Now, in Mr. Sanders’s world, his fans have something concrete to grapple with: James T. Hodgkinson, a former volunteer for Mr. Sanders’s presidential campaign, is suspected of opening fire on Republican lawmakers practicing baseball in Alexandria, Va.

That shooting on Wednesday, which wounded four people, may prove to be an unexpected test for a movement born out of Mr. Sanders’s left-wing, populist politics and a moment for liberals to figure out how to balance anger at Mr. Trump with inciting violence.

“Both sides need to look in the mirror,” said Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator who campaigned for Mr. Sanders and is working on a new think tank started by the senator’s wife. “We have to decide what kind of language we are going to use in our political discourse.”

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RoseAnn DeMoro, the executive director of National Nurses United, a union that campaigned heavily for Mr. Sanders and continues to work with him, said some were hoping to discredit Mr. Sanders to slow down the continuing success of his brand of politics. She called it a “boldface lie” to connect the shooting to Mr. Sanders’s push for opposing Mr. Trump’s proposals.

“He’s the most popular politician in America,” Ms. DeMoro said of Mr. Sanders. “That doesn’t sit well with establishment Democrats or Republicans. They are trying to delegitimize and discredit anyone who is speaking out for a better society. That’s what’s happening.”

Dakota Access pipeline: judge rules environmental survey was inadequate

A federal judge has handed a lifeline to efforts to block the Dakota Access pipeline, ruling Wednesday that the US Army Corps of Engineers did not adequately consider the possible impacts of an oil spill where the pipeline passes under the Missouri River.

US district judge James Boasberg said in a 91-page decision that the corps failed to take into account how a spill might affect “fishing rights, hunting rights, or environmental justice, or the degree to which the pipeline’s effects are likely to be highly controversial”.

The judge said the army must redo its environmental analysis in certain sections and he would consider later whether the pipeline must halt operations in the meantime. A status conference is scheduled for next week.

Dave Archambault II, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, which has led opposition to the pipeline, called it “a significant victory”.

Pipeline to the classroom: how big oil promotes fossil fuels to America’s children

Documents show how tightly woven group of pro-industry organizations target impressionable schoolchildren and teachers desperate for resources

Trump, DeVos ‘Betray’ Students With Gift to Predatory For-Profit Schools

The Trump administration on Wednesday announced that rules designed to protect students from predatory for-profit schools will be delayed and possibly scrapped entirely.

“The new rules stood to benefit students from failed for-profit colleges already seeking to have their loans forgiven, as well as others who might be eligible to do so,” the New York Times reported. “They also established tougher standards intended to check the flow of further federal funds to rogue for-profit operators.”

The move was denounced by critics who characterized it as part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to dismantle Obama-era regulations and give excessive leeway to institutions engaged in exploitative practices.

Trump Hearts Methane. Kids? Not So Much.

In a move environmental groups decried as a gift to fossil fuel polluters, President Donald Trump’s Interior Department announced Wednesday it was postponing key parts of an Obama-era rule regulating methane emissions from oil and gas developments on public lands.

The document, set to be published Thursday at the Federal Register, cites pending litigation and “significant expenditures” the industry faces to comply with the Bureau of Land management (BLM) rule to limit methane flaring.

Last month climate campaigners cautiously celebrated when the Senate failed to pass a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to kill the rule, calling it a win for common sense, taxpayers, and the environment. But as Lukas Ross, Friends of the Earth’s climate and energy campaigner, predicted could happen, the Trump administration took another avenue to derail it.

“Interior’s BLM methane waste rule delay flies in the face of overwhelming public support, Congress’ recent rejection of an attempt to repeal the rule, and a federal court’s determination that an injunction halting implementation of the rule was not warranted,” commented Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center. “Methane waste seriously and urgently threatens our climate, our pocketbook, and public health,” he said. According to Schlenker-Goodrich, the move also proves that (controversial) Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is not serving the interests of the American public.

Flint water crisis: five officials charged with involuntary manslaughter

Five Michigan officials, including the head of the state health department, have been charged with involuntary manslaughter in connection with the crisis over lead poisoning in drinking water in Flint.

The charges are related to the death of 85-year-old Robert Skidmore, one of a dozen Flint residents who contracted Legionnaires’ disease and died after the city’s water source was changed to save money.

“This is a case where there’s been a wilful disregard of just using ordinary due diligence,” said Todd Flood, special prosecutor for the office of the Michigan attorney general, which is leading the investigation. “I have come to see there are two types of people in this world – those that give a damn, and those that don’t.”

Attorney general Bill Schuette presented the charges as a turning point in the investigation into water contamination in Flint, which has continued for more than a year. He said investigators would now focus on trying 17 officials who face criminal charges.

The GOP Will Free You from Having Health Care by Jim Hightower

a majority of Dems in the U.S. House are responding to the rising public demand that decent health care be treated as a right for everyone, rather than being rationed by profiteering insurance conglomerates. Nearly 6 of 10 Dems in the House have now signed on to Rep. John Conyers’ “Medicare for All” bill, which is being carried in the Senate by Bernie Sanders.

So — Hallelujah, progress!

Yes, but many speed bumps remain on the Democratic Party’s entry ramps onto the moral high road of politics. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, for one. When the leader of House Democrats was asked if the party should make health care for all a major issue in Congress and in the 2018 elections, she replied with a flat “no.” Basically, Pelosi says “the American people” aren’t ready for it — by which she really means that the narrow slice of the public that inhabits her world — health industry executives, lobbyists and big campaign donors — aren’t ready. Meanwhile, a good 60 percent of regular Americans are damned sure ready, telling pollsters flat out that our government has a responsibility to ensure that everyone gets the care they need.

Let’s be blunt: When it comes to the fiery leadership that America’s grassroots people want and need, the Democratic Party establishment is weaker than Canadian hot sauce. When you’ve got 60 percent of your party’s rank-and-file congressional members ready to go on such a basic issue, and 60 percent of the public is also ready to go — it’s time to go! The national party’s “leadership” must get going on health care for all, or the leadership itself must go.

Naomi Klein: Any Efforts to Equate Hateful Violence with Trump Resistance ‘Are Lies’

Though it is not quite the kind of large-scale “shock” she explores in her new book, author and activist Naomi Klein says that people should stand firm against anyone who tries to exploit for political purposes the “horrific” violence that took place Wednesday morning when a lone gunman targeted Republican lawmakers and others during practice for a congressional baseball team.

“I have no doubt that this horrific event is going to be exploited for political ends,” Klein told Common Dreams by phone. “It already is.”
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Klein said nobody in the social justice movement that has converged to confront Trump and his agenda should be cowed into feeling responsible for the hateful violence of one disturbed man.

“This person,” she said, “has absolutely nothing to do with the values of the movement that I am a part of, and attempts to claim otherwise are lies. I think there will be cynical and dishonest attempts to associate this economic populist movement with this kind of hateful act. But there is no connection. And people just need to be very clear about that and not be bullied.”

Klein’s new book—entitled No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need—is out this week and she says those who identify as “economic populists” recognize at this point in history that there are actual powerful interests, in this case Trump and his neoliberal backers, that do need to be countered. “[Those forces] need to be confronted,” she told Common Dreams. “Not violently, but clearly.”

Naomi Klein: No Is Not Enough

Shocking. Abnormal. Unprecedented. And, in the end, horror. These are just some of the words used to describe the Trump presidency since he took office. And with each passing day in the Trump administration, each new statement, tweet or piece of legislation, many people feel that these Trump-ian antics are unlike anything seen before.

But author and award-winning journalist Naomi Klein disagrees: We have seen this before.

Speaking to a crowded hall on June 12 at the Cooper Union in New York City, Klein discussed the events contributing to Trump’s rise, the future of the progressive movement and the “shocks” that are lying in the wake of Trump’s policies.

Much of Klein’s talk centered around the theory she presents in her 2008 book The Shock Doctrine, but she also differentiated Trump’s policies as a different form of shock. And while most media coverage of the White House portrays his administration as a chaotic mess, Klein argued that the media ends up missing the more diabolical policy movements behind the curtain that are “shock-creation machines”—such as the removal of Dodd-Frank and the pulling out from the Paris climate agreement.

“This narrative has emerged that he’s this bumbling idiot, that it’s all chaos,” she said. “And meanwhile, behind the scenes, getting very little media attention is a methodical, very organized redistribution of wealth from lower and middle incomes to the one percent of the one percent.”

Trump Calls Mayor of Shrinking Island, Says Don’t Worry About Sea Level Rise