Justice

As the highly contagious Delta variant continues to spread, many hospitals are reporting record numbers of children being hospitalized, especially in areas with low vaccination rates, including Arkansas, Florida, Missouri and Texas. Dr. Christina Propst, a pediatrician in Houston, says children under 12 who are still ineligible for COVID-19 vaccines are at risk. “They are currently our most vulnerable population, just as this highly transmissible variant is surging across the country,” Propst says. She says Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s order banning mask mandates in schools is a purely political decision that ignores science. ​​“What he is doing is a direct threat to the health and well-being of the children of Texas,” says Propst.

Even after years of dedicated judo training, both Mohamed Abdalarasool from Sudan and Fethi Nourine from Algeria refused to compete in the Tokyo Olympics when they were slated to perform against an Israeli athlete. In an official statement, Nourine said to an Algerian TV station, “We worked a lot to reach the Olympics… but the Palestinian cause is bigger than all of this.” This gesture of sacrifice and solidarity with Palestinians oppressed by Israel earned Abdalarasool and Nourine hero status in the Arab world and beyond.

The select committee in the House of Representatives examining the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol building is contemplating whether to pursue White House call logs from that day. The call logs could reveal who communicated with former President Donald Trump on the day that a mob of his loyalists attacked the U.S. Capitol following an incendiary speech delivered by Trump.

Senate Democrats have unveiled their $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill with provisions like paid leave, expanding Medicare coverage and proposals to tackle the climate crisis in the U.S. The Democrats plan on passing the bill alongside the bipartisan infrastructure package that’s currently being debated in the Senate. The reconciliation bill, spearheaded largely by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), contains many of the provisions that were carved out of the infrastructure package that President Joe Biden had originally proposed in the spring. That includes traditional infrastructure provisions, such as funding for affordable housing upgrades and transportation.

Democratic socialist India Walton’s groundbreaking victory in the mayoral primary of Buffalo, New York, was destined to earn the ire of the local powers that be. Longtime Democratic fixture and top ally of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Mayor Byron Brown, was caught off guard and ousted in a startling upheaval, and Walton will now run unopposed by any Republican candidate in November.

Despite a new two-month moratorium on evictions issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, millions of people in the U.S. are still at risk of losing their homes as landlords in some states fight back against the measure. The new CDC moratorium is “a band-aid over a bullet wound,” says Tara Raghuveer, director of KC Tenants, a tenants’ rights organization in Kansas City. “This is a very small step. It’s the bare minimum. And for many tenants … this will actually not offer the protections that are needed to keep them in their homes.”

Like a carousel of bad news coming from all four corners of the globe, the year thus far has borne witness to a litany of extreme weather events and stark research findings with one grim overarching message: The world is still failing miserably to adequately respond to the already devastating impacts of the climate crisis.

This article was produced by Sludge, an independent, ad-free investigative news site covering money in politics. Click here to support Sludge. In the late 1980s, Joe Manchin was a West Virginia state senator with a part-time salary from the legislature and a failing carpet business. According to a 2014 lawsuit filed by Joe’s brother, Dr. John Manchin II, the Manchin Carpet Center, which Joe had started years before with their brother Roch, required funding and a loan guarantor to avoid bankruptcy.

Late last year, with the pandemic in full, brutal swing, Boris Johnson’s Conservative government in the U.K. announced a nearly 17 billion pound (what was then $21.9 billion) increase in military spending. The increase, spread over four years, represented the largest hike in “defense” investments since the end of the Cold War, and, while it was a tiny fraction of what the U.S. spends annually on defense, made clear Britain’s ambition to be seen as a global military superpower once more. In an era of escalating tensions between a U.S.-led NATO and Russia, and during a period in which economic competition between China and the West is increasingly morphing into a high-stakes arms race, Britain’s move to ramp up military spending made clear that the U.K. won’t be sitting out these new global struggles.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement got a powerful boost when Ben & Jerry’s announced its boycott in the illegally Occupied Palestinian Territory. On July 19, the iconic ice cream company said in a statement, “We believe it is inconsistent with our values for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to be sold in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT),” which includes the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. The statement quoted an op-ed penned by co-founders Bennett Cohen and Jerry Greenfield in The New York Times, calling the boycott “a rejection of Israeli policy, which perpetuates an illegal occupation that is a barrier to peace and violates the basic human rights of the Palestinian people who live under the occupation.” Israel lashed back, threatening “severe consequences” for the boycott and urging U.S. states to employ anti-boycott laws. In every case but one, however, courts have struck down such legislation as unconstitutional. Boycotts are protected by the First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of speech, association and assembly.