Skip to content
Rep.-elect Lori Trahan (D-Mass.-03)
DATE OF BIRTH: Oct. 27, 1973
RESIDENCE: Westford, Mass.
OCCUPATION: Businesswoman
EDUCATION: B.S., Georgetown University
FAMILY: Husband, Dave; five children
ADVERTISEMENT
The halls of Capitol Hill will be a familiar sight to Lori Trahan, who is replacing Rep. Niki TsongasNicola (Niki) Sauvage TsongasMassachusetts New Members 2019 Dem House candidate says she’ll file Clarence Thomas impeachment resolution if elected Lawmakers demand action, hearing in response to VA improperly denying sexual trauma claims MORE in Massachusetts 3rd Congressional District.
Trahan is a former Hill staffer who spent much of her 10-year career at the Capitol working for former Rep. Marty Meehan (D-Mass.). Thanks to redistricting, Trahan will be representing many of the same areas Meehan did.
Trahan, who won her first run for office, survived a crowded field of 10 Democratic candidates and a recount to win the Democratic primary. She then went on to defeat Republican Rick Green in the general election for the solidly Democratic seat.
After working for Meehan, Trahan became an executive at ChoiceStream, a software company in Cambridge, Mass. She is currently CEO of the business-consulting firm Concire Leadership Institute, which she co-founded in 2012.
Trahan was born and raised in Lowell, Mass., and now lives just south of the city in the town of Westford, with her husband, Dave.
ADVERTISEMENT
Rep.-elect Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.-07)
DATE OF BIRTH: Feb. 3, 1974
RESIDENCE: Dorchester, Mass.
OCCUPATION: City councilor
EDUCATION: Attended Boston University
FAMILY: Husband, Conan Harris; one daughter
Ayanna Pressley is making history as the first African-American to represent Massachusetts in Congress.
Pressley gained national attention earlier this year when she shocked political watchers by defeating 10-term Rep. Michael CapuanoMichael (Mike) Everett CapuanoInside the progressive hunt for vulnerable House Democrats Progressive mayor launches primary challenge to top Ways and Means Democrat Ex-GOP Rep. Roskam joins lobbying firm MORE in the Democratic primary for the 7th District.
She drew comparisons to Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and touted her progressive credentials during the campaign, promising to be a disruptive force in Washington.
She did not face a Republican opponent in the general election.
Pressley has served in elected office before. She’s been on the Boston City Council since 2009, where she made history as the first woman of color elected to the council. She also boasts a number of strong connections to prominent Democrats from the state. Before elected office, she was an intern and later a staffer for former Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II (D-Mass.). She also worked as a senior aide to former Sen. John KerryJohn Forbes KerryThe Memo: Trump’s troubles deepen as voters see country on wrong path The continuous whipsawing of climate change policy Budowsky: United Democrats and Biden’s New Deal MORE (D-Mass.).
Click Here: Bape Kid 1st Camo Ape Head rompers
Human Rights Campaign (HRC) President Chad Griffin is set to leave his role at the organization next year.
Click Here: cheap Cowboys jersey
Chad Griffin told HRC’S Board of Directors on Thursday that he intends to step down in 2019 after seven years leading HRC, the nation’s largest LGBTQ rights advocacy organization.
ADVERTISEMENT
During his tenure, Griffin became one of the most visible LGBT rights activists in the country. His time heading up the organization spanned historic shifts in LGBT rights, including the Supreme Court’s landmark 2015 ruling in favor of gay marriage.
“I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to be a part of this incredible organization at such an important moment in the history of our movement — and our nation,” Griffin said in a statement released by HRC.
The announcement of his departure comes on the heels of a midterm election cycle that saw HRC step up its grassroots organizing power. HRC spent an estimated $26 million during the 2018 elections, deploying 150 staff members to campaign and mobilize voters in key races across the country.
Griffin campaigned for 50 candidates the organization deemed “pro-equality,” appearing at more than 70 events for candidates in the months before Election Day, HRC noted in the announcement.
“For decades, this organization has shown the world that love conquers hate,” Griffin said. “But this year, in this election, with the future of our democracy on the ballot and the equality of future generations on the line, we proved that votes conquer hate, too.”
Sen. Kamala HarrisKamala Devi HarrisRand Paul introduces bill to end no-knock warrants The Hill’s Campaign Report: Biden campaign goes on offensive against Facebook McEnany says Juneteenth is a very ‘meaningful’ day to Trump MORE (D-Calif.), a progressive who has championed LGBT causes, told the Associated Press that Griffin “was a leader in the moment he was needed to lead.”
Griffin has not announced what his next plans are, but Dan Pfeiffer, a White House adviser to former President Obama, told the Associated Press that “every person in the Democratic Party is going to call Chad.”
Alumni of Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersThe Hill’s 12:30 Report: Milley apologizes for church photo-op Harris grapples with defund the police movement amid veep talk Biden courts younger voters — who have been a weakness MORE’s (I-Vt.) 2016 presidential campaign are requesting a meeting with the senator and his advisers to discuss the issue of “sexual violence” on his 2016 campaign, according to a new Politico report.
“We the undersigned request a meeting with Senator Sanders and his leadership team to discuss the issue of sexual violence and harassment on the 2016 campaign, for the purpose of planning to mitigate the issue in the upcoming presidential cycle – in the primary and potential general election campaigns,” the group of more than two dozen people wrote, according to a letter obtained by Politico.
ADVERTISEMENT
They confirmed to the outlet that they sent the letter to Sanders on Sunday.
Sanders has said publicly multiple times that he is considering a bid for the presidency in 2020.
Click Here: Fjallraven Kanken Art Spring Landscape Backpacks
The letter does not specify instances of sexual violence and harassment from the previous presidential campaign.
Some of the signatories told Politico that they felt the issue was not the Sanders campaigns, but rather a culture of toxic masculinity on campaigns in general.
“This letter is just a start,” one of the organizers told Politico. “We are addressing what happened on the Bernie campaign but as people that work in this space we see that all campaigns are extremely dangerous to women and marginalized people and we are attempting to fix that.”
The letter says that there have been “ongoing conversation on social media, in texts, and in person, about the untenable and dangerous dynamic that developed during our campaign.”
They called for a meeting with Sanders in which they would set the agenda. They also requested that Sanders’ top advisers come up with a follow-up plan after the meeting outlining concrete sexual harassment and violence policies.
Sanders’s campaign committee, Friends of Bernie Sanders, in a statement emphasized the privacy of the signees and called the discussion “incredibly important.”
“We thank the signers of the letter for their willingness to engage in this incredibly important discussion,” the committee said in the statement. “We always welcome hearing the experiences and views of our former staff. We also value their right to come to us in a private way so their confidences and privacy are respected. And we will honor this principle with respect to this private letter.”
“Speaking generally, during 2016 there were a number of HR actions taken, and while it is not appropriate to discuss them individually, they ranged from employee counseling to immediate termination from the campaign,” the statement adds. “We share in the urgency for all of us to do better.”
Pledging to follow through on her promise to form a new kind of government focused on benefiting those often overlooked by lawmakers, the prime minister of New Zealand on Thursday unveiled her proposed spending plan for the coming year—the world’s first “wellbeing budget.”
The proposed 2019 budget includes billions of dollars for mental health services, support for indigenous people and victims of domestic violence, and funding to help pull children out of poverty.
“We said that we would be a government that did things differently, and for this budget we have done just that,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. “Today we have laid the foundation for not just one wellbeing budget, but a different approach for government decision-making altogether.”
Ardern and her finance minister, Grant Robertson, shared a video on social media ahead of their budget presentation before Parliament, explaining how their budget will be different than those in past years.
“We want to make sure that we’re growing the economy in a sustainable way,” said Robertson.
Ardern directed government agencies to ensure that their policies support working and lower-income families and designed her entire budget around prioritizing the well-being of people who have previously had little political power.
Doing so, Ardern’s finance minister said, is a greater key to New Zealand’s success than simply measuring the overall economic growth the country is expected to enjoy in the coming years.
“Success is making New Zealand both a great place to make a living, and a great place to make a life,” Grant Robertson told Parliament at the administration’s budget presentation.
“It could be a game-changer for New Zealand’s children.” —Andrew Becroft, children’s commissioner
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT
Included in the budget proposal is about $1.2 billion for mental health services, including support for people with mild to moderate mental health disorders which may affect quality of life while not requiring hospitalization.
“Almost all of us have lost friends or family members,” Ardern said. “Ensuring that New Zealanders can now just show up to their GP or health center and get expert mental health support is a critical first step.”
Children living in poverty—who make up about 27 percent of New Zealand’s child population according to UNICEF—will be supported by about $1 billion in funding under the new budget.
The wellbeing budget won praise from a number of social welfare groups in New Zealand.
“It could be a game-changer for New Zealand’s children,” children’s commissioner Andrew Becroft said. “That is the hope. If we can mean business about wellbeing, it’s got to start with our children and young people—and to see that front and center of this budget is really satisfying and it’s a great start.”
“Budget 2019 covers many bases in the mental health and addictions space,” said the New Zealand Drug Foundation in a statement.
The wellbeing budget represented a stark contrast to the spending priorities of other wealthy countries like the U.K.—where the past decade’s austerity policies prompted a recent rebuke from the U.N.’s human rights expert—and the U.S., where the Trump administration proposed hiking military spending by $34 billion in March while claiming $1.1 trillion in Medicaid cuts were necessary.
“Congratulations to New Zealand for prioritizing the well-being of all of its people in its latest budget,” tweeted the Center for Social Well-Being and Development at George Washington University. “Hopefully, other nations can follow suit and make similar contributions to enhanced living standards.”
Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.
In a move that was widely viewed as an attempt to exact revenge for last year’s mass walkouts, the West Virginia state Senate on Monday passed a sweeping education bill containing a Republican amendment that would ban teacher strikes.
Click Here: camiseta boca juniors
Fred Albert, president of the West Virginia chapter of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), called the GOP provision “pure retribution, retaliation.”
“This is how the GOP retaliates against the people who educate our children. Absolutely disgusting.”
—Winnie Wong
“Already, we don’t have collective bargaining. It’s a right-to-work state,” Albert told Politico ahead of the bill’s passage. “This is just I think another stab at trying to punish us, making the law perhaps a little more severe with such language.”
The legislation now heads to West Virginia’s House of Delegates, which is set to reconvene later this month.
Public employee strikes are technically already unlawful under West Virginia state law, but previous court decisions haven’t detailed “possible consequences for teachers” who go on strike, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported.
The GOP amendment, according to the Gazette-Mail, would “specify that public worker strikes are unlawful, that school workers can be fired if they strike, that school employees’ pay can be withheld on strike days, and that county superintendents can’t close schools in anticipation of a strike or to help a strike.”
Republican state Sen. Charles Trump, the sponsor of the amendment, described the provision as “a codification of what is the current law of West Virginia.”
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT
Winnie Wong, senior political adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), called the measure “absolutely disgusting” in a tweet on Monday.
In addition to walkouts over pay and benefits last year that shut down every school in the state, West Virginia teachers also went on strike earlier this year to protest Republican privatization efforts.
“This is how the GOP retaliates against the people who educate our children,” Wong wrote of the anti-strike provision.
Others echoed Wong’s outrage, noting that the state Republican Party’s efforts to stop strikes are evidence of their effectiveness.
“If strikes weren’t effective, they wouldn’t be doing this,” tweeted activist Jordan Uhl. “All workers need to recognize the power they have when they unify and stand together.”
Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.
In an act of defiance against Saudi Arabia’s brutal assault on Yemen—which is being carried out with the support of the United States and European nations—Italian union workers on Monday refused to load a Saudi vessel reportedly filled with weapons that could be used to fuel the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
“We will not be complicit in what is happening in Yemen,” union leaders said in a statement.
According to Reuters, dockworkers attempted to have the Saudi ship—officially called the the Bahri Yanbu—barred from entering the Port of Genoa.
When that effort failed, Reuters reported, “workers refused to load two generators aboard the boat, saying that although they were registered for civilian use, they could be instead directed to the Yemen war effort.”
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT
As Amnesty International noted in a statement last week, the Bahri Yanbu has been “bouncing off European ports like a pinball,” loading up with weapons that rights groups warn will be used to massacre civilians in Yemen.
Earlier this month, the Bahri Yanbu left a French port without its cargo amid protests from Christian Action for the Abolition of Torture (ACAT) and other human rights organizations. The vessel then proceeded to Spain, where it successfully “took on cargo contracted from private companies,” according to Al Jazeera.
“No EU state should be making the deadly decision to authorize the transfer or transit of arms to a conflict where there is a clear risk they will be used in war crimes and other serious violations of international law,” Ara Marcen Naval, deputy director for arms control and human rights at Amnesty International, said in a statement.
“The Bahri Yanbu’s voyage reminds us that states prefer to allow the lucrative global arms trade to continue to operate behind a veil of secrecy,” Naval concluded. “But this veil is not impenetrable, and Amnesty International and its partners will continue to closely monitor developments and denounce states for flouting their international legal obligations.”
Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.
After facing intense backlash from progressives for planning to star at a fundraiser for an anti-choice Democrat amid a wave of Republican attacks on abortion rights, DCCC chair Cheri Bustos announced late Wednesday that she has decided to back out of the high-dollar event.
“I’m proud to have a 100 percent pro-choice voting record and I’m deeply alarmed by the rapidly escalating attacks on women’s access to reproductive care in several states,” Bustos, a congresswoman from Illinois, said in a statement announcing her withdrawal from the fundraiser for Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.), who is facing a progressive primary challenge from Marie Newman.
“When we’re seeing a rash of abortion bans sweeping the country with the goal of challenging Roe v. Wade, the work of electing officials who support access to safe, legal abortion is more important than ever.”
—Kelley Robinson, Planned Parenthood Action Fund
“While Congressman Lipinski and I do not agree on women’s reproductive healthcare,” said Bustos, “this does not change how I will work as DCCC chair to protect our big tent Democratic caucus.”
Bustos’s decision to drop out of the planned $1,000-per-person fundraiser for Lipinski comes as Republicans are racing to overturn Roe v. Wade with state-level attacks on abortion rights in Georgia, Alabama, Missouri, and elsewhere.
Speaking to the New York Times, Lipinski said he doesn’t blame Bustos for backing out of the event and complained that “there are people in the party who are not tolerant” of his anti-choice views.
Newman, who narrowly lost to Lipinski in the 2018 midterms, tweeted late Wednesday that Lipinski “does not represent the priorities of our community.”
Planned Parenthood Action Fund (PPAF)—which joined other progressive organizations in endorsing Newman earlier this month despite the DCCC’s widely decried policy of blacklisting groups that support primary challengers—applauded Bustos for canceling her appearance at the Lipinski fundraiser and reiterated its support for his opponent.
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT
There’s no way around it. No ads. No billionaires. Just the people who believe in this mission and our work.
If you believe the survival of independent media is vital to do the kind of watchdog journalism that a healthy democracy requires,
“Now, when we’re seeing a rash of abortion bans sweeping the country with the goal of challenging Roe v. Wade, the work of electing officials who support access to safe, legal abortion is more important than ever,” Kelley Robinson, PPAF executive director, said in a statement. “Planned Parenthood Action Fund proudly endorsed reproductive health and rights champion Marie Newman earlier this month and looks forward to ensuring her victory next year.”
While progressives approved of Bustos’s decision to drop out of the Lipinski event, some wondered why she planned to attend the fundraiser in the first place.
“The head of the DCCC was really going to hold a fundraiser for an anti-choice candidate when women’s health is under attack in state after state,” tweeted progressive consultant Rebecca Katz. “The Dems put themselves here. They could be the party of the future, of big bold ideas. Instead, they’d rather side with their old and out-of-touch incumbents.”
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), the first member of Congress to publicly criticize Bustos over the Lipinski fundraiser, called the DCCC chair’s decision a “smart move.”
“I’m glad she is listening to progressive voices,” Khanna said in a statement. “I hope she’ll take the same approach on the vendor blacklist issue. I remain committed to sitting down with her and seeking a principled compromise.”
Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.
At least 571 plant species, from the Chile sandalwood to the St. Helena olive, have gone extinct in the wild over the past 250 years, according to a new study that has biodiversity experts worried about what the findings suggest for the future of life on Earth.
“It is frightening not just because of the 571 number but because I think that is a gross underestimate.”
—Maria Vorontsova, study co-author
“Plants underpin all life on Earth, they provide the oxygen we breathe and the food we eat, as well as making up the backbone of the world’s ecosystems—so plant extinction is bad news for all species,” study co-authur Eimear Nic Lughadha of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew said in a statement.
For the first-of-its-kind study, published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, researchers at Key Stockholm University compiled all known plant extinction records. That effort, Nature reported, stems from a database that Kew’s Rafaël Govaerts started in 1988 “to track the status of every known plant species.”
The researchers’ new findings, according to co-author Aelys M. Humphreys of Stockholm University, “provide an unprecedented window into plant extinction in modern times.”
“Most people can name a mammal or bird that has become extinct in recent centuries, but few can name an extinct plant,” Humphreys said. “This study is the first time we have an overview of what plants have already become extinct, where they have disappeared from, and how quickly this is happening.”
The Guardian noted how the figure compares with other analyses of species loss:
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT
Citing the study, Nature reported that “the world’s seed-bearing plants have been disappearing at a rate of nearly three species a year since 1900—which is up to 500 times higher than would be expected as a result of natural forces alone.”
While the study sparked alarm, researchers expressed hope that their work will be used to improve conservation efforts—particularly “on islands and in the tropics, where plant loss is common, and in areas where less is known about plant extinction such as Africa and South America.”
To prevent the loss of more plant species, “we need to record all the plants across the world,” Vorontsova said. “To do this we need to support herbaria and the production of plant identification guides, we need to teach our children to see and recognize their local plants, and most importantly we need botanists for years to come.”
Another positive takeaway from the study was rediscovery: the researchers found that 430 species previously believed extinct are actually still around. However, they noted, 90 percent of those species face a high risk of future extinction.
The Chilean crocus, for example, had seemed to disappear by 1950s—but a small population was discovered south of Santiago, Chile in 2001. That population is currently being protected from livestock, and the species is being cultivated in the U.K., but it is still listed as “critically endangered” on the red list.
The new survey follows an “ominous” analysis published last month by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services which found, as Common Dreams reported at the time, “that human exploitation of the natural world has pushed a million plant and animal species to the brink of extinction—with potentially devastating implications for the future of civilization.”
Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.
After 44 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit accusing some of America’s largest generic drug manufacturers of a sprawling “multi-year conspiracy” to hike prices on life-saving medicines—in some cases by over 1,000 percent—Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Elijah Cummings on Thursday demanded that the Justice Department launch an investigation into the companies’ price-fixing scheme and their alleged efforts to obstruct congressional probes.
“It is sick and disgraceful that generic pharmaceutical executives, who should be making medicines affordable for the American people, were instead busy coordinating a cover-up scheme to hide the truth about their price-fixing conspiracy when we asked about their skyrocketing prices,” Sanders said, referring to letters he and Cummings sent in 2014 to inquire about soaring drug costs.
“The Department of Justice must hold these bad actors accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”
—Sen. Bernie Sanders
The companies’ responses to these inquiries, Sanders said Thursday, amounted to “‘polite f-u’ letters designed to obstruct our investigation” and “were clearly illegal.”
“The Department of Justice must hold these bad actors accountable to the fullest extent of the law,” Sanders said.
In their letter (pdf) on Thursday, Sanders and Cummings called on the DOJ to “prioritize criminal enforcement of federal anti-trust laws against generic drug manufacturers.”
If the allegations made in the lawsuit by state attorneys general are true, Sanders and Cummings wrote, “civil enforcement will not be sufficient to protect consumers or businesses that compete fairly.”
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT
Sanders and Cummings also urged the Justice Department to launch a probe into whether companies “coordinated with each other to mislead our offices’ investigation in 2014 into suspicious price increases of generic drugs.”
“In response to our document and information requests, these companies gave excuses for raising prices—such as the costs of regulatory compliance, drug shortages, and user fees—that were at best, grossly misleading, and at worst, false statements to Congress,” Sanders and Cummings wrote. “For these reasons, we request that the Department of Justice open an investigation.”
As Common Dreams reported last month, the lawsuit by 44 state attorneys general—which described the pharma giants’ scheme as “one of the most egregious and damaging price-fixing conspiracies in the history of the United States”—named 20 generic drug manufacturers, including Pfizer, Mylan, and Novartis.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, whose state led the investigation, said in a statement after the lawsuit was filed that the probe uncovered “hard evidence that shows the generic drug industry perpetrated a multi-billion dollar fraud on the American people.”
“We have emails, text messages, telephone records, and former company insiders that we believe will prove a multi-year conspiracy to fix prices and divide market share for huge numbers of generic drugs,” said Tong.
Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.
Ahead of raids the Trump administration is reportedly set to begin on Sunday, rights groups on Friday urgently circulated information to immigrant communities and families nationwide to ensure their rights are known and protections are in place.
Three officials with knowledge of Trump’s directive to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told the Washington Post that up to 2,000 families facing deportation orders could be targeted in 10 major cities, including Houston, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, Denver, New York, New Orleans, Atlanta, Baltimore, San Francisco, Newark, and Washington, D.C.
The news of the planned raids comes days after the president threatened that he would soon begin deporting “millions” of undocumented immigrants.
To prepare communities, groups including United We Dream and Raices posted on social media information about immigrants’ rights.
If ICE agents come to an immigrant’s home, one infographic made by the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM) read, he or she should not open the door. Instead, families should demand to see a warrant for arrest and exercise their right to remain silent and speak with a lawyer.
“Don’t give personal information or your fingerprints, or answer any questions about your status,” wrote FIRM. “Don’t hand over your ID or papers to the ICE agents. Don’t sign any forms or documents (paper or digital) that the ICE agents give you without speaking with an attorney.”
FIRM also compiled a list of ways communities and organizers can help immigrants ahead of the raids.
“Create an emergency list of a large number of lawyers that will be ready to roll immediately” to provide legal aid, FIRM wrote. “Prepare a database of the names and numbers of individuals who can help with translation and transportation…Identify local people in the town where the raid happened that can be ready to brief lawyers when they come.”
Rights advocates called on community members to connect with social justice groups in their area and vow to help undocumented immigrants if they saw a raid taking place, by familiarizing themselves with immigrants’ rights during a raid.
Rights advocates and lawmakers condemned Trump’s reported plan, which acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan had warned ICE would likely separate children from their parents, according to the Post.
“ICE raiding our communities is domestic terrorism,” tweeted the immigration legal aid non-profit Raices. “ICE is doing this to not just rip apart hundreds of families apart but also to terrorize everyone else. This is the definition of terrorism.”
Trump is reportedly intent on carrying out the widespread raids despite the McAleenan’s warnings.
Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.