Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Detroit soul singer Mitch Ryder. Enjoy!

“I definitely do not like the Law," said Simple, using the word with a capital letter to mean police and courts combined.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because the Law beats my head. Also because the Law will give a white man One Year and give me Ten."

"But if it wasn't for the Law," I said, "you would not have any protection."

"Protection?" yelled Simple. "The Law always protects a white man. But if I holler for the Law, the Law says, 'What do you want, Negro?' Only most white polices do not say 'Negro.' "

"Oh, I see. You are talking about the police, not the Law in general."

"Yes, I am talking about the polices."

"You have a bad opinion of the Law," I said.

"The Law has a bad opinion of me," said Simple. "The Law thinks all Negroes are in the criminal class. The Law'll stop me on the streets and shake me down—me, a workingman—as quick as they will any old weed-headed hustler or two-bit rounder. I do not like polices."

"You must be talking about the way-down-home-in-Dixie Law," I said, "not up North."

"I am talking about the Law all over America," said Simple, "North or South. Insofar as I am concerned, a police is no good. It was the Law that started the Harlem riots by shooting that soldier-boy. Take a cracker down South or an ofay up North—as soon as he puts on a badge he wants to try out his billy club on some Negro's head. I tell you police are no good! If they was, they wouldn't be polices.”

-- Langston Hughes

News and Opinion

Police killings of Black Americans amount to crimes against humanity, international inquiry finds

The systematic killing and maiming of unarmed African Americans by police amount to crimes against humanity that should be investigated and prosecuted under international law, an inquiry into US police brutality by leading human rights lawyers from around the globe has found.

A week after the former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder in George Floyd’s death, the unabated epidemic of police killings of Black men and women in the US has now attracted scorching international attention. In a devastating report running to 188 pages, human rights experts from 11 countries hold the US accountable for what they say is a long history of violations of international law that rise in some cases to the level of crimes against humanity.

They point to what they call “police murders” as well as “severe deprivation of physical liberty, torture, persecution and other inhuman acts” as systematic attacks on the Black community that meet the definition of such crimes. They also call on the prosecutor of the international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague to open an immediate investigation with a view to prosecutions.

Among its other findings, the commission accuses the US of:

• violating its international human rights obligations, both in terms of laws governing policing and in the practices of law enforcement officers, including traffic stops targeting Black people and race-based stop and frisk;

• tolerating an “alarming national pattern of disproportionate use of deadly force not only by firearms but also by Tasers” against Black people;

• operating a “culture of impunity” in which police officers are rarely held accountable while their homicidal actions are dismissed as those of just “a few bad apples”.

Glenn Greenwald - this is worth the time to read in full, lots of detail:

CNN's New "Reporter," Natasha Bertrand, is a Deranged Conspiracy Theorist and Scandal-Plagued CIA Propagandist

The most important axiom for understanding how the U.S. corporate media functions is that there is never accountability for those who serve as propagandists for the U.S. security state. The opposite is true: the more aggressively and recklessly you spread CIA narratives or pro-war manipulation, the more rewarded you will be in that world. The classic case is Jeffrey Goldberg, who wrote one of the most deceitful and destructive articles of his generation: a lengthy New Yorker article in May, 2002 — right as the propagandistic groundwork for the invasion of Iraq was being laid — that claimed Saddam Hussein had formed an alliance with Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. In February, 2003, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, NPR host Robert Siegel devoted a long segment to this claim. When he asked Goldberg about “a man named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,” Goldberg replied: “He is one of several men who might personify a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda.”

Needless to say, nothing could generate hatred for someone among the American population — just nine months away from the 9/11 attack — more than associating them with bin Laden. Five months after Goldberg's New Yorker article, the U.S. Congress authorized the use of military force to impose regime change on Iraq; ten months later, the U.S. invaded Iraq; and by September, 2003, close to 70% of Americans believed the lie that Saddam had personally participated in the 9/11 attack. Goldberg's fabrication-driven article generated ample celebratory media attention and even prestigious journalism awards. It also led to great financial reward and career advancement. In 2007, The Atlantic's publisher David Bradley lured Goldberg away from The New Yorker by lavishing him with a huge signing bonus and even sent exotic horses to entertain Goldberg's children. Goldberg is now the editor-in-chief of that magazine and thus one of the most influential figures in media. ...

On Monday, CNN made clear that this dynamic still drives the corporate media world. The network proudly announced that it had hired Natasha Bertrand away from Politico. In doing so, they added to their stable of former CIA operatives, NSA spies, Pentagon Generals and FBI agents a reporter who has done as much as anyone, if not more so, to advance the scripts of those agencies. Bertrand's career began taking off when, while at Business Insider, she abandoned her obsession with Russia's role in Syria in 2016 in order to monomaniacally fixate on every last conspiracy theory and gossip item that drove the Russiagate fraud during the 2016 campaign and then into the Trump presidency. Each month, Bertrand produced dozens of Russiagate articles for the site that were so unhinged that they made Rachel Maddow look sober, cautious and reliable.

In 2018, it was Jeffrey Goldberg himself — knowing a star CIA propagandist when he sees one — who gave Bertrand her first big break by hiring her away from Business Insider to cover Russiagate for The Atlantic. Shortly thereafter, she joined the Queen of Russiagate conspiracies herself by becoming a national security analyst for MSNBC and NBC News. From there, it was onto Politico and now CNN: the ideal, rapid career climb that is the dream of every liberal security state servant calling themselves a journalist. Her final conspiratorial article for The Atlantic before moving to Politico is the perfect illustration of who and what she is. ...

Once again we see the two key truths of modern corporate journalism in the U.S. First, we have the Jeffrey Goldberg Principle: you can never go wrong, but only right, by disseminating lies and propaganda from the CIA. Second, the organs that spread the most disinformation and crave disinformation agents as their employees are the very same ones who demand censorship of the internet in the name of stopping disinformation.

Jeremy Scahill on Biden’s “War Against Whistleblowers,” from Daniel Ellsberg to Edward Snowden

Craig Murray, lots more at the link including update on latest machinations of Assange's legal turmoil.

ASSANGE EXTRADITION: The CIA’s Chinese Walls

It is not in dispute that the CIA is in possession of Julian Assange’s legal and medical files seized from the Ecuadorean embassy in London, including correspondence and drafting by his lawyers on his defense against extradition to the U.S. on espionage charges. The defense submitted evidence of this in court. After Julian was arrested in the Ecuadorean embassy and removed, all of his personal possessions were illegally seized by the Ecuadorean authorities, including his files and his IT equipment. These were then shipped back to Ecuador by diplomatic bag. There, they were handed over to the CIA.

These facts were agreed in court in Assange’s extradition hearing by the U.S. authorities. However, they claimed that the proceedings were not tainted by the fact that the prosecuting state had seized all the defendant’s legal papers, because “Chinese walls” within the U.S. government meant that the CIA would not pass any of the information on to the Justice Department. Frankly, if anybody believes that, then I have a bridge to sell you. In any court in any Western jurisdiction against any other defendant but Assange, the seizure of the defense’s legal files by the state seeking extradition would in itself be sufficient for the case immediately to be thrown out as hopelessly tainted. That is without adding the fact that the CIA was also secretly video recording Assange — through the UC Global security firm — and was specifically recording his meetings with his lawyers.

As it happens, UC Global also recorded for the CIA several of my own meetings with Julian, and I shall next month be travelling to Madrid to give evidence in the criminal trial of David Morales, CEO of UC Global, for illegal spying (UC Global is a Spanish company). At least, I shall be if I am not in prison myself as a result of the suppression of my own reporting of the defense in the Alex Salmond case.

I ask one simple question. The CIA put substantial effort into recording Assange’s meetings with his legal team, and UC Global employees also gave evidence they were instructed physically to follow his lawyers, who in addition suffered burglaries and other intrusions. The CIA put effort into collecting specifically his legal papers from Quito. If there are effective “Chinese walls” preventing the stolen and eavesdropped material on his legal defense being given or explained to the American government prosecutors, then who is the market for these legal papers? Who is the CIA providing them to? What other purpose are the CIA supposed to be seizing his legal papers for?

There is no legitimate answer to these questions.

“Empire Politician”: Joe Biden’s Half-Century Record on Foreign Policy, War, Militarism & the CIA

World police: Washington seeks to imprison foreign businesspeople for violating illegal US sanctions

The United States uses economic sanctions as a weapon against states which choose a development path independent of US global domination. Sanctions can take the form of blocking a nation’s financial and trade transactions, not allowing financial institutions to process them. The US can also freeze the assets of another country. Washington uses sanctions as a tool to destabilize governments that refuse to kow-tow to it. Sanctions are a weapon of war on civilians. ... According to the United Nations, US sanctions are unilateral coercive measures that violate international laws. The UN General Assembly has repeatedly called on all states not to recognize or apply unilateral coercive measures, such as those employed by the US. ...

Yet the US government continues to freely snub the UN and its Security Council by imposing unilateral sanctions on a variety of countries, most severely against Iran, Syria, Cuba, North Korea, Sudan, and Venezuela. US sanctions contributed to 40,000 deaths in Venezuela just between 2017 and 2018, as well as to the deaths of 4,000 North Koreans in 2018, most of them children and pregnant women. In the 1990s, sanctions against Iraq led to the deaths of as many as 880,000 children under five due to malnutrition and disease. ...

In 2020 and 2021, the US government has taken its unilateral coercive measures to an even more ominous level by charging and attempting to extradite foreign businesspeople who have been abiding by international law, rather than the economic dictates of Washington. Alex Saab, a Venezuelan national; Mun Chol Myong, a North Korean businessman; and Meng Wanzhou, from China’s Huawei tech giant, have each been charged with violating Washington’s unlawful sanctions –– even though all are non-US citizens living and conducting business outside of the United States. The three are being politically persecuted for acting in the interests of their own countries, and not the US. ...

It is also highly unusual for Washington to pursue criminal charges for sanctions violations against an individual rather than an institution. Where an executive is carrying out corporate policy, one would expect individuals not to be charged, rather, the corporation would be fined. As economist Jeffrey Sachs noted:

In 2011, for example, JP Morgan Chase paid $88.3 million in fines in 2011 for violating US sanctions against Cuba, Iran, and Sudan. Yet Jamie Dimon wasn’t grabbed off a plane and whisked into custody.

And JP Morgan Chase was hardly alone in violating US sanctions. Since 2010, the following major financial institutions paid fines for violating US sanctions: Banco do Brasil, Bank of America, Bank of Guam, Bank of Moscow, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Clearstream Banking, Commerzbank, Compass, Crédit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, ING, Intesa Sanpaolo, JP Morgan Chase, National Bank of Abu Dhabi, National Bank of Pakistan, PayPal, RBS (ABN Amro), Société Générale, Toronto-Dominion Bank, Trans-Pacific National Bank (now known as Beacon Business Bank), Standard Chartered, and Wells Fargo.

None of the CEOs or CFOs of these sanction-busting banks was arrested and taken into custody for these violations. In all of these cases, the corporation –– rather than an individual manager –– was held accountable.

These are political cases, disguised as criminal cases. The “crime” is the violation of US sanctions –– illegal according to the United Nations –– by non-US citizens living outside the United States. ... All three represent the interests of governments that Washington seeks to crush, and the detentions of all three is the equivalent of hostage taking. ... These cases open the door for the United States to charge and extradite any person in the world on baseless allegations of “organized crime, money laundering, or financing of terrorism,” if they engage in perfectly legal international trade which the US government declares to violate its unilateral sanctions.

Despite Afghan withdrawal pledge, US may find new ways to extend the war

Biden plans to beef up IRS to claim up to $700bn in tax from richest Americans

Joe Biden plans to give tax collectors an extra $80bn to seek as much as $700bn in new revenue from high earners and large corporations, as part of the “American Families Plan” set to be unveiled this week. ...

Enhanced tax enforcement by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), coupled with new disclosure rules, could raise $700bn over the next decade from wealthy people and privately-owned businesses, according to unidentified administration officials speaking to the New York Times.

The additional funding represents an increase of two-thirds over the agency’s entire funding levels for the past decade.

'No sign of relief': Delhi crematoriums burn bodies in carparks amid Covid crisis

Hollywood Lobbyists Intervene Against Proposal to Share Vaccine Technology

While the drug industry is the most visible special interest group fighting a World Trade Organization proposal to temporarily suspend certain intellectual property rights, it isn’t the only one.

Many industries across the U.S. have expressed alarm over the proposed waiver, which was put forth by a coalition of over 100 countries, led by India and South Africa, and would waive intellectual property rules in order to boost production of vaccines, medical products, and research toward ending the Covid-19 pandemic. This might seem irrelevant to Hollywood, major publishing companies, and the music industry, but recently released disclosures show that these sectors have mobilized lobbyists to raise concerns with the waiver proposal.

The Motion Picture Association, which represents major movie and television studios, deployed five lobbyists to influence Congress and the White House over the waiver. The Association of American Publishers as well as Universal Music have similarly revealed that they are actively lobbying against it.

Neil Turkewitz, a former Recording Industry Association of America official, blasted the proposal on Twitter, claiming it will harm musicians, performers, and other cultural workers who are already struggling. 

Industry sources say the lobbyists are concerned that the waiver will be too broad in scope and could open the door for increased piracy. But the copyright industry push relates to a provision of the proposal that would waive copyright enforcement for the “prevention, containment and treatment of COVID-19.”

Krystal Ball: Bill Gates Is LYING TO YOU On Vaccine Patent Protection

Joe Biden raises minimum wage to $15 an hour for federal contractors

Joe Biden has signed an executive order that will raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour for federal contractors, providing a pay bump to hundreds of thousands of workers.

Biden administration officials said that the higher wages would lead to greater worker productivity, offsetting any additional costs to taxpayers.

“This executive order will promote economy and efficiency in federal contracting, providing value for taxpayers by enhancing worker productivity and generating higher-quality work by boosting workers’ health, morale and effort,” the White House said in a statement.

Biden has pushed to establish a $15 hourly minimum wage nationwide for all workers, making it a part of his coronavirus relief package. But the Senate parliamentarian said the wage hike did not follow the budgetary rules that allowed the $1.9tn plan to pass with a simple majority, so it was not included in the bill that became law in March.

The liberal Economic Policy Institute estimates that as many as 390,000 low-wage federal contractors would receive a raise, with roughly half of the beneficiaries being Black or Hispanic workers. There are an estimated 5 million contract workers in the federal government, according to a posting last year for the Brookings Institution by Paul Light, a public policy professor at New York University.

Lots more at the link:

Congress Looks to Judicial Overrides to Strengthen Consumer Protections

In a unanimous decision last Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that would limit the ability of the Federal Trade Commission to seek monetary relief for borrowers who have been defrauded by corporate lenders. Under the new ruling, the FTC would only be allowed to pursue restitution in the form of injunctions, not cash payments, for customers who have fallen victim to deceptive practices like short-term or payday loans.

“An uncertain impending Supreme Court decision on the FTC’s 13(b) authorities has given scammers new opportunities to take advantage of people, including those who are isolated at home due to the pandemic,” said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Frank Pallone Jr. and Consumer Protection and Commerce Subcommittee Chair Jan Schakowsky in a joint statement two days earlier. Lawmakers announced that they planned to amend the FTC’s founding legislation, which would preserve its ability to seek financial redress under section 13(b), regardless of what the court decided.

By clarifying its intent in the FTC statute through the proposed amendment, called the Consumer Protection and Recovery Act, Congress would effectively override the Supreme Court’s more limited interpretation. With a simple tweak to the legislative text — which can pass on an individual basis or as part of an omnibus package — a so-called judicial override can address or eliminate whatever ambiguity the Supreme Court found within the law, thereby nullifying the court’s decision. As The Intercept and The American Prospect wrote last year, this congressional option has the potential to counteract a conservative-leaning court and toss out dozens of harmful rulings.

And the proposed FTC legislative fix is not the only judicial override Democratic lawmakers are pursuing.

Biden to push trillions in investment, plead for police reform in Congress speech

Police video shows officers joking about violent arrest of Colorado woman, 73

New footage has been released that shows the disturbing aftermath of the violent arrest of a 73-year-old woman, believed to suffer from dementia, after she left a Walmart store in Colorado last June. In police station surveillance video released on Monday by an attorney for Karen Garner’s family, three Loveland police officers can be seen reviewing body-cam film of the arrest – footage which was released two weeks ago.

Austin Hopp, the arresting officer who bent Garner’s arm behind her back as she bent over a patrol car, can be heard to tell fellow officers: “Ready for the pop?” Two officers are seen to exchange a fist bump. As another joins them, they are heard to say the arrest “went great”. Earlier in the video, Hopp says Garner was “flexible”.

“We crushed it,” one of the officers says, in the nearly hour-long footage.

Near the end of the footage, Hopp says Garner is the first person on whom he has used a hobble restraint. “I was super excited,” he says. “I was like, ‘All right, let’s wrestle, girl. Let’s wreck it!’ I got her on the ground and all that stuff. I got her cuffed up … threw her on the ground a couple of times.” He adds: “I can’t believe I threw a 73-year-old on the ground.”

According to a family lawsuit, police were called after Garner left the Walmart store without paying for items worth $13.88 and allegedly attempted to pull off an employee’s mask. The slight and frail woman, whom family members say suffers from dementia and sensory aphasia, was arrested as she was picking wildflowers. In the arrest film, Garner can be heard telling officers she is “going home”, as she walks along a grass verge by a highway. Officers respond by throwing her to the ground, allegedly fracturing her arm and dislocating a shoulder.

Texas officials seek posthumous pardon for George Floyd over drug conviction

Nearly a year after his death, and a week after the police officer who killed him in Minneapolis was found guilty of murder, the search for justice for George Floyd continues. On Monday, the public defender’s office in Houston, Texas, submitted a posthumous pardon request that seeks to clear Floyd for a 2004 drug conviction for which he served 10 months in jail.

The application, made public by the Marshall Project, is revealing about Floyd’s backstory, about the repeated police harassment he endured, and about the allegedly rampant corruption in a narcotics unit that held him in its thrall.

In February 2004, 16 years before Floyd was murdered by the white police officer Derek Chauvin, he was arrested in the streets of Houston. The crime for which he was taken into custody was paltry: possession of .03g of crack cocaine worth $10, a strikingly similar amount to the counterfeit $20 bill for which he was arrested and then killed in May last year. Floyd’s 2004 arrest was made on the word of one officer, Gerald Goines, who wrote in police records that the Black man tried to sell him the cocaine in an undercover sting. A second suspect was not arrested, Goines wrote, “in a attempt to further the narcotic trafficking in this area” – he meant in order to turn the other man into an informant, but as the clemency petition notes, “his phrasing on the offense report was inartful”.

Now Goines himself stands charged with furthering narcotic trafficking in Houston – and of murder. A year before Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, in early 2019, Goines led a “no-knock” drug raid in which a couple living in a Houston house, Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, were killed. Prosecutors allege Goines, 56, lied to obtain the warrant to search the couple’s home by claiming a confidential informant bought heroin there. Goines later said there was no informant and he bought the drugs himself, they allege.

As prosecutors delved into the Goines case, a vast number of convictions in which he was involved began unravelling. More than 160 convictions have been dismissed, and more than 10 current and former officers from the city’s narcotics unit, including Goines, have been indicted. More cases are pending. The Houston public defender’s office argues in its clemency petition that Floyd’s 2004 arrest falls into the same pattern as many of those dismissed convictions. Goines, the allegation goes, made up the confidential informant in order to nail him.

Andrew Brown autopsy shows he was shot five times by police, attorneys say

Attorneys for the family of Andrew Brown, a Black man killed by deputies last week, said on Tuesday an independent autopsy showed he was shot five times, including in the back of the head.

“It was a kill shot to the back of the head,” one attorney, Ben Crump, told reporters. “It went into the base of the neck, bottom of the skull and got lost in his brain. That was the cause of death.”

Another lawyer, Wayne Kendall, said Brent Hall, a former medical examiner in Boone, North Carolina, hired by the Brown family, had examined Andrew Brown’s body. The doctor noted four wounds to the right arm and one to the head.

The family’s lawyers also released a copy of the death certificate, which lists the cause of death as a “penetrating gunshot wound of the head.” The certificate, signed by a paramedic services instructor who serves as a local medical examiner, describes the death as a homicide.

Brown was shot last Wednesday by deputies serving drug-related search and arrest warrants in Elizabeth City, a town in north-east North Carolina with a population of about 18,000, of which about half is Black. ... Another lawyer, Chantel Cherry-Lassiter, said: “This is painful, for his family and this community. This was an execution – an assassination of this unarmed Black man.”

“Why Are You Shooting Me?” The Family of Anthony Alvarez Is Waiting for Answers

Today, after an anguished month of seeking answers in vain, the family of Anthony Alvarez is learning details about what happened on March 31 when a Chicago police officer fatally shot the 22-year-old. They are meeting with representatives of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability to view footage of the incident. Soon after, perhaps as early as Wednesday morning, COPA will publicly release the video. The Alvarez case has been largely eclipsed by the police killing two days earlier of 13-year-old Adam Toledo, an incident that commanded national attention. That may change after COPA releases video from their investigation into Alvarez’s death. There is strong reason to believe it will be every bit as troubling as the footage of Toledo’s killing.

According to Roxana Figueroa, Anthony’s cousin, the family has no more information today than the day Alvarez was killed. “‘Until this day, CPD has not shown up at any of our families’ houses or done anything to provide any explanation, any information,” she said. “Until this day, CPD hasn’t confirmed what happened here on Eddy and Laramie in Portage Park. They’ve done nothing but be disrespectful to Anthony and our family.” ... When Anthony’s mother arrived at the crime scene on April 1 looking for answers, police turned her away, Figueroa said at a press conference on April 3. “I’m supposed to feel protected by you guys,” she recounted his mother saying. “I’m supposed to get answers from you guys.” According to Figueroa, an officer responded, “We’re here to kick out people like you.”

The Chicago Police Department has released little information about the shooting. What information they have provided is in the form of a press release posted to Twitter by Tom Ahern, CPD’s deputy director of news affairs and communications. The night of Anthony’s death, the CPD press release states, officers engaged in a foot pursuit during which “the offender produced a handgun which led to confrontation with police.” An officer then discharged his weapon, fatally shooting Anthony just two blocks from where he lived.

It remains unclear why the officers stopped Alvarez in the first place. The CPD press release says nothing about what prompted the stop. What is clear is that when the officers sought to engage him, Alvarez ran away. ... According to multiple sources close to the investigation, the relevant videos show two officers pursuing Alvarez on Laramie Avenue. As he runs, the young man has his cellphone in his left hand and what appears to be a gun in his right. At the intersection of Laramie and Eddy, he turns the corner. When officers round the corner, one of them fires multiple shots in quick succession at the young man’s back. Alvarez collapses in front of a house on the 5200 block of West Eddy.

“Why are you shooting me?” he asks the officer.

“Because you had a gun,” the officer replies.

'A Phenomenal, Bold, Progressive Candidate': Pramila Jayapal Endorses Nina Turner for Congress

Nina Turner on Tuesday scored another high-profile endorsement in her bid to represent Ohio's 11th congressional district, with Rep. Pramila Jayapal backing the progressive firebrand's campaign and hailing her platform as precisely what's needed to tackle the nation's myriad crises.

Speaking to HuffPost, Jayapal (D-Wash.)—the chair of the nearly 100-member Congressional Progressive Caucus—said Turner is "a phenomenal, bold, progressive candidate who has been doing the work for a very long time."

"In many ways, she has had a not dissimilar path to mine. She's been an activist on the outside," added Jayapal, who worked as a civil rights organizer prior to her career in electoral politics. "She's served in an elected office to really try to bring about change, and she's campaigning and has been tirelessly campaigning, first for [Sen.] Bernie Sanders and now for her own race on the exact progressive platform that we believe is necessary."

In a statement, Jayapal pointed specifically to Turner's "relentless commitment to centering working families, communities of color, and immigrants by supporting Medicare for All, College for All, a $15 minimum wage, and the Green New Deal."

"I've seen Nina's work up close," Jayapal said, "and I am proud to endorse her."

Turner, who is running to fill the seat vacated by now-Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge, welcomed Jayapal's endorsement on Twitter, writing that the Washington Democrat's "leadership and bold vision are a testament to the strength of the progressive movement in Congress."

Since launching her campaign in December, Turner has won the endorsements of a number of prominent progressive advocacy groups and lawmakers, including Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and Justice Democrats.

Earlier this month, as Common Dreams reported, Turner's campaign announced that it had brought in nearly $2.2 million in donations since December, far outraising her Democratic competitors. The campaign said donations have averaged $28 and have come from more than 77,000 individuals from all 50 states and Washington, D.C.

"When I think about the money invested in this campaign, I know that every $3, $11, or even $27 is money that folks could have been spending on other things they need, whether that's a tank of gas or a meal," Turner said during a media call announcing the figures. "Our campaign does not take lightly these donations, and the sacrifices that people are making to turbo-boost this campaign."

AOC Gaslights Progressives Defending Biden

AOC: 'Biden Has Exceeded Expectations That Progressives Had'

'Letting the Terrorists Win'? Manchin Suggests Pro-Democracy Reform Would Spark Another Insurrection

Sen. Joe Manchin won praise from the Daily Caller and Fox News contributors while infuriating voting rights advocates on Tuesday with his suggestion that scrapping the filibuster and passing sweeping, popular pro-democracy reforms would spark a second insurrection just months after a right-wing mob stormed the U.S. Capitol.

The West Virginia Democrat's comments came in a wide-ranging interview with Vox. With an evenly split upper chamber in which Vice President Kamala Harris breaks tie votes, the party's most conservative senator plays a key role in advancing or thwarting the legislative efforts of President Joe Biden and Democratic congressional leaders. In contrast to his discussions with Republicans about Biden's infrastructure proposal, Manchin publicly insists he is "not a roadblock" to the president's agenda.

The For the People Act, which passed the Democrat-controlled House in March and is backed by Biden, aims to modernize voting registration, restore the Voting Rights Act, end gerrymandering, increase election security and campaign transparency, empower small donors, and implement various ethics reforms. A wave of voter suppression bills introduced this year by GOP state lawmakers has bolstered demands for enacting it.

As Vox senior politics correspondent Andrew Prokop reported Tuesday:

Some filibuster reformers hope that, as the year goes on, the reality of Republican obstruction will become clear to Manchin and he'll be driven to change his mind—that Senate rules will in the end be just as negotiable to him as the details of Biden's stimulus bill. For instance, reformers hoped a GOP filibuster of Democrats' big voting rights bill, the For the People Act, could spur holdout senators to change the rules to pass it, because it's so important.

Manchin recoils at the very idea. "How in the world could you, with the tension we have right now, allow a voting bill to restructure the voting of America on a partisan line?" he asked. He says that 20 to 25% of the public already doesn't trust the system and that a party-line overhaul would "guarantee" that number would increase, leading to more "anarchy" like that at the Capitol on January 6. He added: "I just believe with all my heart and soul that's what would happen, and I'm not going to be part of it."

Manchin, who has repeatedly made clear that he is opposed to abolishing the 60-vote legislative filibuster, insisted to Prokop that he will not be "that one vote that would basically destroy it." The senator also reportedly believes his strategy to force bipartisanship is working, saying that because fellow Democrats know he is "adamant" about it, "there have been more talks of compromise now."

While the right-wing media embraced Manchin's remarks on the For the People Act—which polling has shown is popular among Democratic, Independent, and Republican voters—and the filibuster, progressive critics didn't hold back in their responses to his warning about possibly triggering a repeat of the January attack by supporters of former President Donald Trump and his "Big Lie" about the 2020 election.

"I believe this is called 'letting the terrorists win,'" tweeted Justice Democrats spokesperson Waleed Shahid, responding to a Twitter thread in which Prokop highlighted key takeaways from the Manchin interview.

Others quickly piled on. Among them was Evan Weber, co-founder and political director of the Sunrise Movement, who said that it appears Manchin "only cares about the 'distrust in the system' from predominantly white supporters of Donald Trump, not from the Black, Brown, and young Americans being locked out of representation by restrictive voting laws and gerrymandering."

Briahna Joy Gray: Will Biden's Bipartisan Fetish KILL Infrastructure?

Drought-hit California moves to halt Nestlé from taking millions of gallons of water

California water officials have moved to stop Nestlé from siphoning millions of gallons of water out of California’s San Bernardino forest, which it bottles and sells as Arrowhead brand water, as drought conditions worsen across the state.

The draft cease-and-desist order, which still requires approval from the California Water Resources Control Board, is the latest development in a protracted battle between the bottled water company and local environmentalists, who for years have accused Nestlé of draining water supplies at the expense of local communities and ecosystems.

Nestlé has maintained that its rights to California spring water dates back to 1865. But a 2017 investigation found that Nestlé was taking far more than its share. Last year the company drew out about 58m gallons, far surpassing the 2.3m gallons per year it could validly claim.

Nestlé has sucked up, on average, 25 times as much water as it may have a right to, according to the Story of Stuff Project, an environmental group that has been fighting to stop the bottled water company’s pumping in California for years. State officials sent the company a letter notifying it of the order on Friday.

Thousands of barrels of suspected toxic DDT found dumped in California ocean

Marine scientists say they have found what they believe to be as many as 25,000 barrels possibly containing DDT dumped off the southern California coast near Catalina Island, where a massive underwater toxic waste site dating back to the second world war has long been suspected.

The 27,345 “barrel-like’” images were captured by researchers at the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. They mapped more than 36,000 acres of seafloor between Santa Catalina Island and the Los Angeles coast in a region previously found to contain high levels of the toxic chemical in sediments and in the ecosystem.

Historical shipping logs show that industrial companies in southern California used the basin as a dumping ground until 1972, when the Marine Protection, Research and Sanctuaries Act, also known as the Ocean Dumping Act, was enacted.

Resting deep in the ocean, the exact location and extent of the dumping was not known until now. The territory covered was “staggering”, said Eric Terrill, chief scientist of the expedition and director of the Marine Physical Laboratory at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Underwater drones using sonar technology captured high-resolution images of barrels resting 900 metres (3,000ft) below the surface all along the steep seafloor that was surveyed. They also were seen beyond the dumpsite limits. ... The long-term impact on marine life and humans was still unknown, said Scripps chemical oceanographer and professor of geosciences Lihini Aluwihare, who in 2015 co-authored a study that found high amounts of DDT and other man-made chemicals in the blubber of bottlenose dolphins that died of natural causes.

Idaho bill seeks to kill more than 1,000 wolves

Lawmakers in Idaho are pushing to drastically reduce wolf numbers in the state, perhaps by as much as over 90%, complementing other US efforts to shrink their population.

Idaho’s gray wolf population was recently estimated at 1,556, but sponsors of a bill approved in the state senate last week say that the preferred number of wolf packs in the state is 15. Because a wolf pack in the region averages 10 wolves, this means the bill could lead to hunters killing well over 1,000 wolves.

The bill will see a vote in the state house of representatives today, where Republicans, who generally support the measure, hold a 58-12 majority. If successful, the bill will land on the desk of the governor for his signature soon after.

Recent months have seen a dramatic reversal of fortunes for US gray wolves. Since the Trump administration removed Endangered Species Act protections from gray wolves on 4 January, interest groups and states moved quickly to weaken protections and open up hunting of the wild canine. Conservation groups quickly sued the federal government to relist the species. Until that lawsuit is resolved, or the Biden administration intervenes, management of wolves is up to the states.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

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