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Biden administration

Biden Tells Supreme Court Publicly Documented Torture Is A State Secret

When Abu Zubaydah was apprehended in Pakistan in 2002, the George W. Bush administration falsely characterized him as chief of operations for al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden’s number three man. For the next four years, the CIA sent Zubaydah to its “black sites” in Thailand and Poland where he was viciously tortured. In 2006, Zubaydah was taken to Guantánamo, where he remains to this day. He has never been charged with a crime. The torture of Abu Zubaydah is thoroughly documented in the 2014 report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. In fact, several of the justices at the October 6 Supreme Court oral argument in United States v. Zubaydah referred to his treatment as “torture.” Zubaydah’s lawyers detailed the torture he suffered in their brief (which referenced the Senate torture report) as follows...

Month After Unemployment Program Ended Was Worst For Job Growth

The federal unemployment benefit wasn’t the only pandemic aid program the Democrats let end, either. Federal bans on foreclosure and eviction were also allowed to lapse without renewal as well, along with a moratorium on student loan payments. An end to unemployment benefits, with such a large percentage of recipients being long-term unemployed, means that millions more are now exposed to the danger of eviction. Already, 1.4 million Americans said they expect to be evicted in the next two months, with another 2.3 million saying it was "somewhat likely" they would soon lose their homes. Nationwide, an estimated 7.7 million households are behind on rent, meaning as many as 15 million could become unhoused.

Appeals Court Blocks Judge Order, Allows Deportation Of Families

In a setback to migrant rights advocates in the United States, a federal appeal court has allowed the forcible expulsion of apprehended undocumented migrant families to continue. The ruling was passed by the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit on Thursday, September 30. It was a last minute ruling which blocked a prior ruling by a federal judge against the expulsions before it went into effect. Thursday’s ruling was in response to the appeals filed by the administration of president Joe Biden against the order by district judge Emmet Sullivan of the US District Court for DC (District of Columbia) on September 16. The district judge’s order was stayed as a case against the current immigration policy is ongoing.

The Legacy Of Corporate Democrats

"The election of Donald Trump to the presidency can be directly tied to the policies implemented by Barack Obama and Joe Biden during their eight years in office. Rather than confront Wall Street and the bankers who were responsible for the global financial crash of 2007 and 2008, they bailed them out. Rather than halt the military adventurism that led to the debacles in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya, they backed and expanded the wars, including the use of military drones."

‘Fire DeJoy’ Demand Intensifies As 10-Year Plan To Sabotage Postal Service Takes Effect

Defenders of the U.S. Postal Service are urgently renewing their calls for the ouster of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy as his 10-year plan to overhaul the cherished government institution is set to take effect Friday, ushering in permanently slower mail delivery while hiking prices for consumers.

IEN On Bipartisan Infrastructure Package And Build Back Better Act

Let us be frank. As communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis and fossil fuel extraction, our situation is dire. While we experience unparalleled disaster in the form of floods, fires, droughts, Missing & Murdered Indigenous Peoples and state-sanctioned violence against Indigenous and Black communities, the crisis at the so-called border, and other results of climate chaos, we know U.S. elected leadership is in the position to redirect course on behalf of Mother Earth and future generations. The truth is, Congress promised our communities they would work to solve the climate crisis and environmental justice once we elected them into office, but instead, we see them fighting to fund fossil fuels and false promises masquerading as climate solutions to the tune of billions of dollars.

Top Cuban Diplomat Speaks To The Grayzone About Renewed US Assault

Anya Parampil: Director General Carlos de Cossio, thank you so much for speaking with me this afternoon. President Miguel Díaz-Canel just gave an address before the UN General Assembly, in which he denounced what he described as US attempts to reinstate a Monroe Doctrine policy. This was a policy explicitly articulated by Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton, when he famously declared the Monroe Doctrine is back. Yet is Biden actually continuing this policy? Carlos De Cossio: The Biden administration has not said a word that we know about it. But in practical terms, what we see of the Biden government is a continuation of the Trump policy towards Cuba specifically, and to Latin America and the Caribbean in general, we don’t see a major change, even though the rhetoric is not the same.

Universal Housing Vouchers: A Promise Or A Pipe Dream?

Once again, the clock is ticking as states scramble to distribute billions in federal emergency rent relief to stress-weary, increasingly panicked tenants and landlords before the national eviction moratorium expires. If the money doesn’t get out in time, a rush of evictions and foreclosures could be in store this fall. Would the nation be in such a precarious predicament if everyone who qualified for a housing voucher got one? Over the last year and a half, tenants who receive income-dependent rental assistance—like housing vouchers—had their rent responsibility reduced when their incomes fell, and their landlords were still paid. But housing vouchers’ eviction-preventing effects were limited to households lucky enough to get a voucher, since the underfunded Housing Choice Voucher program reaches just one in five households that qualify.

Environmentalists Slam White House For Brushing Off IPCC Report

President Joe Biden has been touring climate-ravaged areas of America, warning that climate change is a “code red” emergency for the planet. And yet, his administration has continued to boost fossil fuel projects and is now preparing to vastly expand offshore drilling. The White House argues that a court order it opposes and is appealing requires federal officials to lease more than 78 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico for fossil fuel exploration. Environmental groups, however, assert that federal law gives the administration broad discretion over whether or not to hold such sales. In fact, Biden’s officials have instead used that power to officially declare that the warnings in the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report “does not present sufficient cause" to reevaluate the drilling plan.

It’s Not Enough To Restore Eviction Protections

With a new wave of COVID-19 cases rapidly increasing in the US, this victory, while for the moment averting disaster for millions of poor Americans, is ephemeral at best. If we are to truly protect Americans from a tsunami of evictions caused by pandemic-related lockdowns, US President Joe Biden must also cancel the rents. The White House initially waffled on the issue of extending the moratorium, having been told by Associate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in a late June ruling that he would oppose any further extension of the ban if done by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), providing a crucial fifth vote to strike down the order. However, with Congress heading into a seven-week summer recess having never attempted to pass such a law, activists and local residents joined Rep. Cori Bush’s (D-MO) occupation-style protest outside the Capitol building to demand the ban be extended past July 31.

Memo To Biden Administration: Less Talk, More Action

The climate change crisis and missing and murdered Indigenous epidemic are inextricably linked, with added negative impact from extractive industries. On top of that, the federal government has much work to do to uphold its trust and treaty obligations to tribal nations to help bring an end to these crises, according to a memo from NDN Collective.

Democrats Let US Eviction Moratorium Expire

The Biden administration announced Thursday that it would allow the nationwide ban on evictions to expire on Saturday declaring that it was up to Congress, with just two days to go, to extend the measure. The White House claimed that the President’s hands are tied, and there was nothing Biden could do for the more than six million families that have fallen behind on rent, citing the Supreme Court’s decision last month to only allow a moratorium extension until the end of July.

Six Months Of The Biden Administration

Six months ago, Joseph Biden was inaugurated president of the United States, under conditions of unprecedented crisis of US capitalism and the entire social and political order. His predecessor, Donald Trump, did not attend the ceremony, signaling his refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 election. Only two weeks before, on January 6, Trump’s supporters had stormed the Capitol and temporarily halted the congressional certification of state electoral votes. The aim of the attempted coup was to stop the transfer of power and establish a personalist dictatorship. In the words of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, it was Trump’s “Reichstag moment.” When Biden took office, 400,000 people were dead from the COVID-19 pandemic, while millions were unemployed.

US Blacklists More Foreign Firms

The Biden administration has added 14 Chinese companies along with 20 other entities – including some from Iran and Russia – to its economic blacklist over claims of “human rights violations.” The US Commerce Department claimed on Friday that the companies had been "implicated in human rights violations and abuses in the implementation of China’s campaign of repression, mass detention, and high technology surveillance against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region." “The Department of Commerce remains firmly committed to taking strong, decisive action to target entities that are enabling human rights abuses in Xinjiang or that use US technology to fuel China’s destabilizing military modernization efforts," Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo further claimed in a statement.

There Are No Mass Migrations Without US Meddling And Militarism

When Vice President Kamala Harris visited the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas, on June 25, she repeated the claim she made during her trip to Guatemala and Mexico earlier that month: The Biden administration is serious about addressing the root causes of Central American migration. “This issue cannot be reduced to a political issue,” Harris said. “We’re talking about children, we’re talking about families, we’re talking about suffering, and our approach has to be thoughtful and effective.” Toward this end, the administration has set forth a four-year, $4 billion proposal to increase assistance to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, “conditioned on their ability to reduce the endemic corruption, violence, and poverty that causes people to flee their home countries.”