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Vice President Mike Pence will not be permitted to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem when he visits the Middle East next month, as a result of the Trump administration’s decision to recognize the city as Israel’s capitol, according to the man who holds the keys to the building.
“I absolutely refuse to officially welcome the American Vice President Mr. Mike Pence at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and I will not be physically in church during his visit,” wrote Adeep Joudeh, the custodian of the church—one of the world’s most sacred Christian sites—in a letter to Israel’s Channel 2 News on Wednesday. “This is an expression of my condemnation of President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”
Trump’s decision, announced last week, set off protests not just in Gaza and the West Bank, where Palestinians view East Jerusalem as their future capitol city, but throughout the Middle East. Demonstrators in Turkey declared that the Israeli occupation of land that Palestinians view as theirs is a fundamental issue for all Muslims.
Joudeh, a Muslim, is joined by Christians in the region who have denounced Trump’s move. Egypt’s Coptic Christian Church has also said it would not meet with Pence, citing the United States’ decisison “at an unsuitable time and without consideration for the feelings of millions of people.”
Prior to Trump’s announcement, several Christian churches in Jerusalem joined the international community in urging the president not to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to the city. Opponents warned him not to inflame tensions by appearing to side with Israel over the status of the city after decades of U.S. policy that urged peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians to resolve their conflict.
The action, the churches said, would “yield increased hatred, conflict, violence, and suffering in Jerusalem and the Holy Land…and cause irreparable harm.”
Since the announcement, several Trump administration officials have told the Washington Post that Trump didn’t have a full understanding of the implications of moving the embassy to Jerusalem.
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On social media, Trump critics reacted to the news of the key-holder at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and other religious groups in the region snubbing the evangelical Christian vice president, as well as the Trump administration’s general lack of understanding of the region.
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“Does Washington work for all of us or just for those at the top?”
“The Republican agenda on healthcare and taxes may be popular with wealthy campaign donors, but it is widely disliked by the American people.”
—Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren
That is the question posed, and answered, by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in a op-ed for the New York Times published Sunday night. With a tax bill written for the benefit of “wealthy campaign contributors” hurtling toward passage and with “welfare reform” targeting programs relied upon by low-income and middle class Americans waiting in the wings, the Republican-controlled Congress has been quite explicit about whose interests it serves.
“Over the past year, Republicans have made their priorities clear,” Sanders and Warren write. “Their effort to repeal Obamacare would have left tens of millions of people without health insurance. Now Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the Senate majority leader, wants to ram through an enormous tax giveaway to the wealthy before seating Doug Jones, Alabama’s newly elected Democratic senator. The Republican agenda on healthcare and taxes may be popular with wealthy campaign donors, but it is widely disliked by the American people.”
Sanders and Warren argue that these priorities are inverted. At a time of soaring inequality, Congress should be attempting to shrink the gap between the wealthiest and everyone else, not make it larger, the progressive senators suggest. With tens of millions of Americans lacking insurance, Congress should be working toward expanding healthcare—not adding millions more to the ranks of the uninsured.
With the Friday deadline to fund the government rapidly approaching, Congress has “a chance, right now, to take steps that will make life a bit better for millions of working people immediately and in the years to come,” Sanders and Warren write.
First and foremost, Congress “must take care of several urgent, overdue responsibilities that Republicans have ignored,” including taking action to protect 800,000 Dreamers whose legal immigration status is at risking to renewing “expired funding for community health centers and the Children’s Health Insurance Program so that tens of millions of families and nine million children don’t lose access to affordable healthcare.”
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In addition to meeting these “basic” obligations, Sanders and Warren argue that Congress must address a handful of budgetary “crises” if it is to demonstrate that it doesn’t merely serve “wealthy campaign donors.” (Unlike the tax bill that Republicans are expected to bring to a vote as early as Tuesday, the budget bill will require Democratic support to pass.)
The senators’ recommendations include:
- Doubling federal support for child care in the 2018 spending legislation;
- Acting to lessen the burden of student loan debt, which is at an all-time high of $1.4 trillion;
- “Shoring up” pensions and Social Security to protect them from the “Wall Street greed that made our economy crash in 2008”; and
- Doubling funding for key mental health programs, which are “critical to fighting the opioid epidemic, which is raging across the country without regard to politics—devastating workers and families in our home states of Massachusetts and Vermont, but also in Senator McConnell’s Kentucky.”
“With a government funding deadline looming, GOP leadership faces a choice,” Warren concluded on Twitter. “Will they spend the week trying to deliver tax breaks for the rich? Or work with Dems to pass a budget that supports working people?”
In a video, Sanders and Warren further outlined their proposals:
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In a fight that never matched up to the vitriol between both competitors, former UFC interim welterweight champion Colby Covington dominated former UFC welterweight champion Tyron Woodley Saturday at UFC on ESPN+ 36.
Covington defeated Woodley by fifth round TKO when Woodley yelled out that he injured his rib while Covington was on top of him on the ground. That was simply an exclamation point on a fight that Covington had control from nearly start to finish.
The outspoken Covington (16-2) held Woodley in check in all areas, taking him down when he wanted, holding up against the cage when he wanted, and landing enough punches to set everything else up. Woodley did land some blows, but took more of a measured approach.
The fight never broke down into a brawl, nor did it feature any moments of tension or high drama between the two.
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Afterward, Covington’s post-fight interview featured a promo about “the silent majority” who are ready to vote in President Donald Trump, how he sick of “woke athletes like LeBron James” and ended with a call out of current welterweight champion Kamaru Usman.
Usman defeated Covington last December by fifth round TKO and broke Covington’s jaw in the process. On the post-show, Covington was grasping at straws trying to tell Usman (who was on the ESPN desk) why he should get another shot at the title, saying Usman didn’t break his jaw, that he takes EPO, and that Usman winning was a controversial decision even though it was a finish.
On the post-show, Trump called Covington while he was on air to congratulate him.
This was Covington’s first fight since that loss while Woodley is now 0-3 since 2019. He was defeated by Gilbert Burns earlier this year.
In other notable results: Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone and Niko Price went to a majority draw in the co-main event while Khamzat Chimaev knocked out Gerald Meerschaert in 17 seconds, continuing his hype train as a future middleweight contender.
In a decision denounced as “dangerous” and “appalling,” President Donald Trump has enraged members of the public health and LGBTQ communities by reportedly firing the remaining 16 members of his HIV/AIDS council in letters delivered to them by FedEx on Thursday.
Six members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) had resigned in protest earlier this year, as Common Dreams reported, on the grounds that the Trump administration “has no strategy to address the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic, seeks zero input from experts to formulate HIV policy, and—most concerning—pushes legislation that will harm people living with HIV and halt or reverse important gains made in the fight against this disease.”
Scott Schoettes, a Lambda Legal senior attorney who resigned from PACHA in June, tweeted about Thursday’s firings, claiming Trump has “no respect for their service” and warning about what future HIV/AIDS policy may look like under this president:
Gabriel Maldonado, head of the LGBTQ and HIV/AIDS group Truevolution and a remaining member of PACHA, confirmed the firings to the Washington Blade, but added that the “explanation is still unclear” and “I can only speculate” as to why they were dismissed.
“Like any administration, they want their own people there,” Maldonado said, acknowledging “ideological and philosophical differences” and that many of the remaining members, including her, were appointed by former President Barack Obama.
“I was co-chair of the disparities committee,” Maldonado added, “so much of my advocacy and policy references surrounded vulnerable populations, addressing issuing of diverse communities, specifically looking at the impacts of the LGBT community, namely, the disproportionate impact of HIV and AIDS to people of color, gay men, transgender women…and a lot of those key vulnerable populations are not being prioritized in this administration.”
Sources close to the decision told Newsweek “they suspect the charter for PACHA will be re-written with renewed focus on abstinence and religious, non-evidence based public health approaches.” Newsweek noted that while the Obama administration also dismissed all panel members who were appointed by his predecessor, George W. Bush, the current administration has been particularly complacent on the issue, and “Trump has yet to appoint an HIV/AIDS chief, the first time since Bill Clinton created the position in 1993 that a president has failed to do so.”
Critics swiftly denounced the firings on social media, including one who noted that with this decision, the Trump “administration appears to be blatantly admitting it will do nothing about HIV/AIDS epidemic.”
Some accused the president of trying to appease his more religious supporters, while others noted Vice President Mike Pence’s influence over the administration and his track record on HIV/AIDS.
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In a series of tweets, journalist and activist George Johnson outlined how the move is just the latest in a series of decisions by the adminstration to dismantle federal efforts to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Johnson was not alone in making a reference to former President Ronald Reagan—who is often criticized for “his shameful abdication of leadership in the fight against AIDS”—or noting how this move is just one of many by the Trump administration that could have dire consequences for Americans battling HIV/AIDS.
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Immigrant rights advocates are denouncing an “appalling and disqualifying” proposal by the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to charge with federal crimes elected officials who lead sanctuary cities, which often refuse to turn over or identify undocumented residents to the government’s immigration agents.
The ACLU said Wednesday that acting director Thomas Homan’s “outrageous threat” to bring charges against local politicians who enact and carry out sanctuary city policies “should disqualify [him] from consideration for the permanent ICE director post.”
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After California made history earlier this week when it became the nation’s first-ever sanctuary state, Homan responded in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday by warning that “California better hold on tight” and vowing to “vastly increase our enforcement footprint” by upping the number of ICE officers in the state.
“There’s no sanctuary from federal law enforcement,” he said. “For these sanctuary cities that knowingly shield and harbor an illegal alien in their jail and don’t allow us access, that is, in my opinion, a violation of 8 U.S. Code § 1324.”
Homan revealed that he is currently working with the Department of Justice to look into whether the federal government can “charge some of these sanctuary cities with violating federal law” and “hold these politicians personally accountable.”
Watch:
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California’s newly enacted state-wide law “bars law enforcement officers in the state from arresting individuals based on civil immigration warrants, asking about a person’s immigration status, or participating in any joint task force with federal officials for the purpose of enforcing immigration laws,” according to SF Gate.
Although Homan—who has worked at ICE for three decades and is known for supporting anti-immigration policies—touted the Trump administration’s favored narrative that sanctuary city policies endanger the public as well as federal officers, the Los Angeles Times notes that “research has shown sanctuary cities have lower crime rates and that immigrants generally commit fewer crimes than U.S. citizens.”
President Donald Trump appointed Homan to serve as acting director shortly after entering office last January. Though Trump announced in November that the acting director was his official pick to permanently lead ICE, Homan is still awaiting final approval by the Senate.
Immigrant rights advocates denounced Homan’s comments as “illegal intimidation” and further evidence that he should not be allowed to stay on as ICE’s permanent director:
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Civil liberties advocates called on the House of Representatives to vote against reauthorizing the U.S. government to spy on citizens without a warrant, as lawmakers headed toward a vote on re-upping Section 702 of the FISA Amendments on Thursday.
“The House should soundly reject this bill, unless it is amended to provide real protections for Americans’ privacy,” said Elizabeth Goitein of the Brennan Center for Justice in a statement.
“By codifying a warrantless surveillance program into law, and giving the U.S. government access to millions of Americans’ private emails, text messages and phone calls, S. 139 further jeopardizes the privacy rights for those communities.”—Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Mich.)
The law is scheduled to expire in April, and privacy rights groups argue it’s allowed the NSA to monitor communications by Americans without obtaining a warrant, though its officially stated purpose is to target non-citizens living abroad.
Thursday’s vote on the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act (S. 139) would renew the law for six years and would grant the government the additional right to complete “about” collections—the surveillance of any citizen who is mentioned in a communication that the NSA has collected. The agency would only need a warrant to begin such monitoring if the person was thought to be involved in criminal activity not related to national security.
“These protections must include a warrant requirement any time the government seeks to read Americans’ e-mails or listen to their phone calls, as well as an end to so-called ‘about’ collection that sweeps in tens of thousands of wholly domestic communications,” said Goitein.
Several lawmakers have joined critics in speaking out against the new understanding of Section 702.
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Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Mich.) also expressed deep concerns on Wednesday regarding the impact mass domestic surveillance would have on minority communities.
“In the last several years, we’ve seen Americans’ civil rights and civil liberties rolled back, and religious minorities, immigrants and communities of color targeted most acutely,” Ellison said in a statement. “By codifying a warrantless surveillance program into law, and giving the U.S. government access to millions of Americans’ private emails, text messages and phone calls, S. 139 further jeopardizes the privacy rights for those communities.”
President Donald Trump posted an early-morning tweet slamming the legislation, arguing that it was used to investigate former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s communications with Russia.
After the president posted a follow-up tweet saying that the U.S. needs “foreign surveillance of foreign bad guys on foreign land,” Glenn Greenwald of the Intercept surmised that officials had informed him that his administration backs Section 702’s reauthorization.
A bipartisan group of legislators including Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and Justin Amash (R-Mich.) along with Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) held a press conference on Wednesday introducing the USA RIGHTS Act Amendment, which would require the NSA to obtain a warrant before surveilling Americans’ communications and would prohibit “about” collections.
“The American people deserve better from their own government than to have their Internet activity swept up in warrantless, unlimited searches that ignore the Fourth Amendment,” said Paul.
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A new report showing that renewable prices may soon out-compete fossil fuels offers just the latest evidence to bolster demands that oil, gas, and coal to be left “in the ground.”
“Turning to renewables for new power generation is not simply an environmentally conscious decision, it is now—overwhelmingly—a smart economic one.”
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The cost analysis from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) for delivering electricity was presented Saturday at the opening of the organization’s Eighth Assembly in Abu Dhabi.
Prices are already falling for renewable power generation, the publication notes, and says that wind and solar power will be on par with—or even cheaper than—the cost of fossil fuel-generated electricity by 2020.
Among the “remarkable” price reductions has been for utility-scale solar PV which have dropped 73 percent since 2010, the report says.
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By 2019, the study predicts onshore wind and solar PV projects will be able to deliver electricity for $0.03/kWh, and offshore wind will be able to meet the task for $ 0.06 to $0.10/kWh starting in 2020.
Fossil fuel generation, in contrast, was estimated to be between $0.05 and $0.17/kWh in 2017.
“These cost declines across technologies are unprecendented and representative of the degree to which renewable energy is disrupting the global energy system,” said Adnan Amin, IRENA’s director-general. “Turning to renewables for new power generation is not simply an environmentally conscious decision, it is now—overwhelmingly—a smart economic one.”
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Two government watchdog groups have pushed this week to make public details about two $130,000 payments that were reportedly made by President Donald Trump’s associates within weeks of the 2016 presidential election.
Common Cause demanded that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Election Commission (FEC) investigate reports that Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, created a private limited liability company to secretly sent a $130,000 payment to Stephanie Clifford—also known under her pseudonym as an adult film star, Stormy Daniels—in October 2016, weeks before Trump was elected.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the payment was made to keep Daniels from disclosing an alleged sexual encounter with Trump.
Regardless of the truth of the allegation and where exactly the money came from, Common Cause argues, the $130,000 should be considered a campaign expense—and therefore one that should have been reported to the FEC —”because the funds were paid for the purpose of influencing the 2016 presidential general election,” according to Paul S. Ryan, a campaign finance expert at Common Cause.
The payment amounts to “an unreported in-kind contribution,” the group wrote in its letters to the FEC and the DOJ.
Meanwhile, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) tweeted on Tuesday about a $130,000 payment that the Trump campaign made in December 2016 to Trump Tower.
While the campaign made many payments to the headquarters of Trump’s real estate empire between June 2015 when he announced his run, and January 2017 when he took office, only one payment of $130,000 was made—two months after the same sum was reportedly given to Daniels, suggesting that the campaign could have been paying Trump back for covering Daniels’s payment.
Common Cause and CREW did not comment on Daniels’s claims—made several times since 2011—that she had sexual relationship with the president, including the encounter she discussed in an interview with In Touch magazine last week, but were focused instead on Trump’s violation on campaign finance laws.
“The American people expect and deserve transparency when it comes to money spent to influence elections and those requirements are not optional no matter how embarrassing the reason behind the expense,” said Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, in a statement. “Candidates and their attorneys cannot choose how and when to comply with federal campaign finance laws. We strongly urge the Justice Department and the FEC to fully investigate these apparent illegal activities and if appropriate to take action to hold the President and his campaign accountable.”
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The head of highly respected non-governmental organization focused on relief work in Haiti walked out in protest on Friday during President Donald Trump’s speech to the World Economic in Davos, Switzerland.
Dr. Sasha Kramer, co-founder and executive director of the group SOIL, which works on improving sustainable household sanitation and ecological waste treatment in Haiti, said her protest was in direct opposition to the dangerous rhetoric and racist policies of the Trump administration towards the people of that country.
Watch:
In particular, Kramer’s action was a response to the administration’s recent decision to end protections afforded Haitian refugees living in the U.S. under the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program as well as eye-witness reports that Trump referred to Haiti, as well as other nations, as “shithole countries” during a White House meeting earlier this month.
“To me,” Dr. Kramer said, “Haiti is anything but that. Haiti has always been a global example. Haiti was the country that led the fight against slavery and colonialism, and I think Haiti will continue to be an example.”
In a statement by the group, SOIL said they would continue “to stand alongside the Haitian people calling for humanity over racism and hate, and we will not falter in our fight for justice in Haiti and throughout the world.”
“In SOIL’s 11-year history we have worked in Haiti alongside some of the strongest, bravest, and kindest people we have ever known,” the group stated. “It is our privilege to work in this beautiful, unique, revolutionary nation — not the other way around.”
Common Dreams reported Thursday that other Davos attendees planned to walk out in protest during Trump’s speech, but it was unclear as of this writing if others had, in fact, joined Kramer by following through with those plans.
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A weeks-long mobilization in Oklahoma resulted in teachers striking across the state on Monday, with tens of thousands of educators and supporters rallying at the State Capitol in Oklahoma City to demand more funding for schools and higher wages for teachers.
Organizers planned to speak with state lawmakers about how decades of funding cuts have affected their schools—and why a bill passed in the legislature last week that would raise taxes on oil and gas production to give teachers a $6,100 raise and allot $50 million for school funding was not enough to stop the protest.
An NBC News aerial video of the scene at the demonstration showed an estimated crowd of 30,000 people gathered outside the Capitol.
Oklahoma Education Association (OEA) president Alicia Priest told CNN the package was “a good starting point,” but said teachers see it as a last-ditch effort by lawmakers to keep the strike from happening and not a genuine attempt to improve schools.
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“Fifty million dollars will buy less than one textbook per student, so it’s not a real way to fund education,” Priest said. “We’ve been cut over 28 percent in the last 10 years in education funding, and our schools just can’t maintain all of the supplies, instructional materials, textbooks, even copy paper. Copies are limited in schools to maybe 30 a week.”
The OEA is demanding a $200 million funding bill for schools, and a $10,000 raise for teachers over the next three years.
As teachers across the state prepared to rally, four teachers shared in a CNN video the numerous side jobs they have had to take on to make ends meet while educating Oklahoma’s schoolchildren. One educator with 25 years of experience detailed his work as a bus driver, landscaper, and roof salesman. Another said she works 15 to 20 hours in retail to supplement her teaching salary.
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On social media, teachers and supporters also shared images showing the dire need for more education funding so schools can afford basic supplies like textbooks.
Teachers boarded buses across the state early on Monday morning, with an estimated 30,000 expected at the State Capitol.
As Common Dreams has reported, Oklahoma is just one state where teachers have railed against poor funding and chronically low pay in recent weeks. Also on Monday, a strike in Kentucky over changes to teachers’ pension plans continued, with educators traveling from across the state to the State Capitol in Frankfort. Most schools were closed for spring break, with teachers and supporters using their time off to protest—while 21 counties’s schools closed for the strike.
Teachers in Arizona held a demonstration in Phoenix last week—also hoping to draw attention to per-student funding, which was cut by more than 36 percent from 2008 to 2015.
The wave of protests follows the teachers’ strike in West Virginia last month, which shuttered every public school in the state for nine days and resulted in a five percent pay raise for teachers and an agreement to work towards funding for the state employee health insurance program.
In all the states where teachers have been voicing their dissatisfaction, lawmakers have spent decades handing out tax cuts to corporations while cutting funding for schools and leaving teachers with stagnant wages.
“After ten long years in a lot of these conservative states, the chicken is finally coming home to roost,” Lily Eskelsen Garcia, president of the National Education Association, told the Huffington Post. “They’ve given tax breaks to big corporations, defunded public schools, and said, ‘What could go wrong?'”
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