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‘Huge victory’: progressives vow to keep fighting GOP health bill after vote delay

Progressive activists hailed a “huge victory” and a “giant step toward single-payer healthcare” on Tuesday, after Senate Republicans were forced to postpone a vote on their proposed healthcare bill.

Many warned, however, that the battle was not over, promising continued attempts to pressure Republican senators over the Fourth of July recess and beyond.

Thousands of activists from groups including Our Revolution, Indivisible and Planned Parenthood had spent the past week mounting frantic efforts to derail the legislation, which the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said would leave 22 million more people without health coverage over the next 10 years.

“It’s beyond a victory,” said RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United, which encouraged members to pressure Republican senators to vote against the bill. “What people are saying is, ‘We want a society, we don’t want a market to protect our health.’”

The bill would have been a victory for insurance companies, DeMoro said, and senators’ apparent distaste for the legislation was a blow for both those companies and Republicans.

“I think this is a giant step toward single-payer healthcare – the fact that they defeated the Republicans – because ultimately, embedded in that is a defeat for free-market fundamentalism.”

Not sure this video will stay up (as CNN has not posted it on their official page but found time to put up the entire Clinton speech to the ALA) but if it comes down I’ll try and find another copy:

https://youtu.be/tEN4a5ndtL8

Greg Gianforte got over $116,000 in donations after assaulting Guardian reporter

The Republican congressman Greg Gianforte may have earned himself a head start on fundraising for his next campaign when he “body-slammed” a Guardian reporter on the eve of his victory in Montana’s special election, according to a recent filing.

The report from the Federal Election Committee shows that the day after the incident, Gianforte’s campaign brought more donation money than it had in the prior five days combined, including 25 donations of the maximum $2,700 allowed by law from an individual to a given candidate. For perspective, the day before the assault, Gianforte had received two such maximum donations. The day before that, he received none. In total, the campaign collected more than $116,000 after the attack.

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Gianforte filed for his 2018 re-election campaign on 2 June, before he had even been sworn into Congress. The post-assault windfall will presumably roll over into his re-election fund, unless the congressman uses it to settle outstanding debts from the special election.

Mayors of 7,400 cities vow to meet Obama’s climate commitments

Mayors of more than 7,400 cities across the world have vowed that Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris accord will spur greater local efforts to combat climate change.

At the first meeting of a “global covenant of mayors”, city leaders from across the US, Europe and elsewhere pledged to work together to keep to the commitments made by Barack Obama two years ago.

Cities will devise a standard measurement of emission reductions to help them monitor their progress. They will also share ideas for delivering carbon-free transport and housing.

Kassim Reed, the mayor of Atlanta, told reporters he had travelled to Europe to “send a signal” that US states and cities would execute the policies Obama committed to, whether the current White House occupants agreed or not.

Wag the Dog? Offering No Proof, Trump Threatens New Attacks Against Syria

In the wake of new reporting suggesting that the Trump administration’s decision to target the Syrian government with cruise missiles in early April was conducted without sufficient evidence and over the objections of some in the U.S. intelligence community, the White House on Monday night threatened President Bashar al-Assad’s government with further military action.

In a message that, according to the New York Times, “appeared designed to set the stage for another possible military strike,” the White House statement made a claim (though it offered no evidence to support it) that the Syrian military appeared to be planning a chemical attack similar to one that took place in the village of Khan Sheikhoun on April 4. If “another” such attack took place, said the tweeted statement, there would be a “heavy price” for Assad to pay.

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In the U.K. on Monday, the Stop the War Coalition issued a warning against any further moves by the Trump administration to escalate the war in Syria.

“There can be no justification for the use of chemical weapons, and we condemn any use of them,” the group said in a statement. “Trump’s claim that he knows of a proposed chemical weapons attack to be carried out by the Assad government, and that he will use military action to prevent this, should also worry everyone who wants peace in the Middle East. We do not know what evidence he has, and it is clear that at least some US military sources are skeptical of his claims. But we do know that Trump has built up U.S. support for Saudi Arabia in recent months, and at the same time increased his verbal attacks on Iran, one of Syria’s main allies.”

While condemning the bombing of civilian populations by all sides—the U.S., Russia, Syria, the U.K., and others—Stop the War said ending the war would not be “achieved through further intervention,” but only through ” genuine attempts to win a peace which benefits the people of the region who are suffering so much.”

Google Fine Shows EU ‘Way Ahead’ of US on Reining in Massive Corporations

Trump’s Chaos is Covering for Stealth Escalation Overseas by Katrina vanden Heuvel

While Washington is fixated on President Trump’s tweets, antics, lies and Russiagate, the administration is ramping up a stealth escalation of our military involvement across the Middle East. As Naomi Klein warns, Trump’s “rolling shock of the chaos and spectacle” distracts from radical actions both at home and abroad. Across the Middle East, the administration drives the United States ever further into wars without end, increasing the dangers of direct military confrontation with Russia and Iran, with little awareness and no mandate from the American people. This is a recipe for calamity.

The deepening military involvement has accelerated in recent weeks. The administration will dispatch 4,000 more troops to Afghanistan, plus 400 to Syria. The president fired 23 cruise missiles at a Syrian air base in retaliation for alleged Syrian use of chemical weapons against civilians. In recent weeks, U.S. forces have bombed Iranian-supported militia forces moving forward in southern Syria and shot down a Syrian jet flying over Syrian airspace. Russia has cut off coordination designed to avoid air collisions and announced that U.S. planes flying west of the Euphrates would be targeted. As the battle against the Islamic State reaches its final stage, the Pentagon seems intent on sustaining a presence in Syria, aimed at preventing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from regaining control of the country.

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the reality is that we are headed into more war without public support, without a sensible strategy or a clear purpose. Americans are tired of wars without end. The response is to fight wars on the quiet: substituting technology for troops to lower our casualties. What is needed now is not a blank check but public hearings that will expose the increasingly dangerous reality to the American people. We don’t need a rubber-stamp Congress. We need someone with a backbone to stand up as Sen. J. William Fulbright (D-Ark.) did in 1966, convening hearings that exposed the folly in Vietnam and explored ways to bring the conflict to an end. Where is the Republican Fulbright of today who will question our current course before it is too late?

Is the UK or the US more of a disaster at the moment? It’s a fair and serious question

or the past year or so the US and the UK appear to have been engaged in a race to the bottom: each trying to underperform the other with their electile dysfunction issues. The Brits are Brexiting? Well, we’re electing a toupee with a Twitter account as president. The US is still hung up about possible Russian involvement in its election? Quick, let’s hold an expensive and unnecessary general election in Britain and hang our parliament!

This week both sides of the Atlantic are, to use technical geopolitical jargon, even more of a hot mess than usual. In the low-budget reality show that is UK politics, Theresa May stands accused of basically bribing the DUP with £1bn, sourced from the mythical magic money tree, to prevent herself from being evicted from the Big Brexit House. Meanwhile, in the blockbuster dystopian drama that is the contemporary US, God-loving Republicans, flush with family values, are trying to take away health insurance from as many vulnerable people as possible by passing a new wealthcare bill.

All of this raises the question: which country is more of a disaster at the moment?

California to Officially List Key Ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup as Cancer-Causing

Glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s widely used herbicide Roundup, will be added July 7 to California’s list of chemicals known to the state to cause cancer, according to a Reuters report Tuesday. This news comes after the company’s unsuccessful attempt to block the listing in trial court and requests for stay were denied by a state appellate court and California’s Supreme Court.

California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) announced the designation on Monday under the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, or Proposition 65.

Teenagers See Renewables as Fuel of Their Generation

America’s kids don’t believe the president and his fossil fuel hype. To today’s young, the oil industry is yesterday’s fuel. And coal belongs to their grandparents.

Another top level survey by global accountants Ernst & Young, into U.S. attitudes towards the oil and gas industries, stated, “The perception that the oil and gas industry is good for society decreases with each new generation.”

The survey found that well over two thirds—71 percent—of teen respondents believe renewable fuels such as solar and wind are the fuels of their generation, while 56 percent said oil and gas are the fuels of their parents’ generation. Interestingly, over half of teens also see coal as the fuel of their grandparent’s generation.

So the oil industry is in deep trouble. Faced with rising global temperatures, a resurgent renewables industry, decreasing oil demand and fairly stagnant prices, it also faces an image problem amongst the young.

According to Ernst and Young, “Overall, the survey showed young people increasingly feel shunted by the industry and their environmental values, especially, are not matched by oil and gas companies.”

E.P.A. Official Pressured Scientist on Congressional Testimony, Emails Show

The Environmental Protection Agency’s chief of staff pressured the top scientist on the agency’s scientific review board to alter her congressional testimony and play down the dismissal of expert advisers, his emails show.

Deborah Swackhamer, an environmental chemist who leads the E.P.A.’s Board of Scientific Counselors, was to testify on May 23 before the House Science Committee on the role of states in environmental policy when Ryan Jackson, the E.P.A.’s chief of staff, asked her to stick to the agency’s “talking points” on the dismissals of several members of the scientific board.

“I was stunned that he was pushing me to ‘correct’ something in my testimony,” said Dr. Swackhamer, a retired University of Minnesota professor. “I was factual, and he was not. I felt bullied.”