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57 Groups To Senate: No More Weapons For Israel’s War

Washington, DC — On Monday, Demand Progress and a coalition of 56 other progressive, faith-based, humanitarian, and foreign policy advocacy groups launched the No More Weapons for Israel’s War campaign. This month, for the first time ever, the U.S. Senate will hold yes-or-no votes on arms sales to Israel. The grassroots campaign will drive their millions of supporters to call on senators to support Joint Resolutions of Disapproval (JRDs) that could block transfers of certain offensive weapons like tank and artillery shells and Joint Direct Attack Munitions to the Israeli military. 

Christian Preachers, Senators, Show Hypocrisy Of Their Religious Beliefs

The February 12, 2024 U.S. Senate vote on $14 billion to Israel shows the depravity of most of the members of the U.S. Senate. In particular it showed the hypocrisy of the two Senators who are pastors of Christian denominations as well as the shallowness of the few Senators who called for a ceasefire and then voted for money to kill more Palestinians.  Only three Senators voted against the funding—Senators Saunders, Welch and Merkley. Senator Raphael Warnock voted for $14 billion for Israel. He is a Baptist preacher from Georgia.  For 19 years Warnock was the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, Martin Luther King Jr.’s former congregation.

US Anti-War Activists Confront Senators Over Support For Israel

On February 7, activists with feminist anti-war group CODEPINK confronted several US Senators who have been doubling down on their support for Israel throughout the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip. “Killing Hamas makes Israel safe,” said Florida Senator Ted Cruz to an activist who told him that “the war does not make Jews safer.” Cruz has received over one million dollars from the pro-Israel lobby since 1990, receiving USD 489,419 from 2019 to 2024. Cruz’s top pro-Israel Political Action Committee (PAC) donors are the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Republican Jewish Coalition. “Killing 30,000 civilians doesn’t make anyone safe,” the activist responds.

Senate Passes Massive $886 Billion National Defense Authorization Act

On Wednesday, the Senate passed the mammoth $886 billion 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which funds the Pentagon and military spending in other government agencies. The bill passed in a vote of 87-13, with six Democrats, six Republicans, and one Independent voting against it. This NDAA now heads to the House, where it’s expected to pass in a vote on Thursday as the bill is the version that the two chambers negotiated. The NDAA includes an amendment to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which gives the FBI the power to conduct warrantless spying of foreign targets and Americans they interact with.

US Troops Are Occupying Syria’s Oil Fields; Congress Rejects Withdrawl

The US military has occupied Syrian sovereign territory since 2014, preventing Damascus from accessing its own oil and wheat fields. A top Pentagon official has acknowledged that Washington’s strategy is to starve Syria’s central government of revenue it needs to rebuild, after a decade of war fueled by foreign powers devastated the country. Former US President Donald Trump boasted in 2020: “They say, ‘He left troops in Syria’. You know what I did? I left troops to take the oil. I took the oil. The only troops I have are taking the oil. They’re protecting the oil. I took over the oil”.

Black People Won’t Be Silenced About Israel

It is a bad sign when the leader of the United States Senate sounds something like an actress with bizarre feelings of entitlement. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer pulled off this dubious feat with his statements about U.S. policy towards Israel, what he perceives to be anti-semitism, and public opinion about Israel’s attack on Gaza. His remarks resembled those of actress Julianna Margulies, whose infamous rant differed only in its lack of politesse. Of course, a senator has better political sense and more awareness than an entertainer, but aside from the manner of delivery, their thought processes don’t differ very much.

Senate Urged To Block Biden’s Pro-Privatization Nominee For Social Security Board

Defenders of Social Security on Tuesday urged the U.S. Senate to block President Joe Biden's little-noticed nomination of Andrew Biggs—an American Enterprise Institute senior fellow with a history of supporting Social Security privatization—to serve on the independent and bipartisan Social Security Advisory Board. Social Security Works, a progressive advocacy group, is leading the charge against Biggs, highlighting his role in the George W. Bush administration's failed attempt to privatize the New Deal program in 2005.

Exxon’s Senate Puppets

Montana is a very long ways from the Senate chambers in Washington, D.C. Yet, like every other state, we send two senators to represent us in what used to be called “the greatest deliberative body on earth.” We are continually flooded with self-congratulatory press releases promising they’re “fighting for Montana.” But a sad reality was revealed in last week’s bombshell news that Montana’s Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester and Republican U.S. Steve Daines were named by Keith McCoy, Exxon’s senior director of federal relations in Washington, as two of 11 senators who he says are “crucial” to ExxonMobil. In truth, it appears our senators are actually “fighting” for the oil and gas industry, not the 1 million Montanans counting on them for Senate representation.

Protest At Mitch McConnell’s House Over Supreme Court Vacancy

A crowd of protesters swarmed outside Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky home after the Republican leader said he would move to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death. About 100 protesters gathered outside McConnell’s Louisville home on Saturday after he said he would push for a Senate vote on filling the seat with the presidential election is less than seven weeks away, the Louisville Courier Journal reported. The demonstrators called out “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Mitch McConnell has got to go,” “vote him out” and ditch Mitch.”

Divided Senate Approves Huge Two-Year Military Budget

Passed last week in a 284-149 vote in the House, split heavily along party lines, the two-year compromise budget deal reached between President Trump and Democratic leadership has passed the Senate Thursday, 67-28. The $2.78 trillion ($1.48 trillion military spending) measure lifts the cap on the size of the US debt. This is an increase over the already-passed NDAA for 2020, and military spending will now outpace the entire rest of discretionary spending. Since the expansion of the debt amounts to spending more money that the government flat out doesn’t have, this legislation also authorizes the Treasury Department to issue more debt in the form of bonds to raise money to cover the difference.

US Senate Fails To Restore Food Assistance For Puerto Rico

Since a factional battle broke out between Democratic and Republican parties last weekend, the US Senate has failed to pass a disaster relief bill that allocates federal money to recovery projects in all areas of the country recently affected by fires, floods, tropical storms and other natural disasters. The failure to approve this funding has left more than a million Puerto Ricans with drastically-reduced food stamp payments, one year and seven months after Hurricanes Maria and Irma struck the US territory.

Importance Of Aligning House And Senate Single-Payer Bills The Right Way

Single-payer reform is in the news — and in the U.S. House and Senate. One hundred twenty-three Congresspeople have signed on as co-sponsors of H.R. 676, the single-payer legislation in House of Representatives, and 16 Senators have formally endorsed S.1804, the Senate version. (Disclosure: H.R. 676 was closely modeled on the Physicians for a National Health Program reform proposal published in JAMA, for which we served as lead authors). While both bills would cover all Americans under a single, tax-funded insurance program, they prescribe different provider payment strategies. The Senate version largely adopts Medicare’s current payment mechanisms...

Collins’s Office Received 3,000 Coat Hangers Protesting Kavanaugh

Activists have sent Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) 3,000 coat hangers, referencing back-alley abortions, in their efforts to persuade her to vote against the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. The mail-ins accompany TV ads aimed at swaying the senator’s vote and pledges to fund her Senate opponent in 2020 if she votes to confirm Kavanaugh, The Associated Press reports.  The centrist Collins is seen as a critical swing vote in Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing and has said she wouldn’t vote to confirm a nominee who was hostile to Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that legalized abortions. 

WikiLeaks Says The Senate Intel Committee Wants Assange To Testify On Russia Interference

The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to testify privately about Russian interference in the 2016 election. We know this because WikiLeaks, well, leaked the letter. The intelligence panel won’t verify whether the request is real. But if it is, and Assange officially agrees to be interviewed about possible collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, it would be a big deal. Here’s why: After members of Russia’s military intelligence unit hacked and stole emails belonging to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta, they handed them over to WikiLeaks. Assange’s organization then slowly disseminated them to the public, keeping the emails constantly in the news cycle during the 2016 presidential election.

Why 55 U.S. Senators Voted For Genocide In Yemen

Tuesday’s debate and vote in the U.S. Senate on whether to end (technically whether or not to vote on whether to end) U.S. participation in the war on Yemen can certainly be presented as a step forward. While 55 U.S. Senators voted to keep the war rolling along, 44 voted not to table the resolution to end it. Of those 44, some, including “leaders” like Senator Chuck Schumer, said not a word in the debate and only voted the right way once the wrong way had won. And conceivably some could say they were voting in favor of having a vote, upon which they would have voted for more war. But it’s safe to say that at least most of the 44 were voting to end a war — and many of them explicitly said so.

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Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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