SINCERETALK

A police raid on anti-abortion activist Lauren Handy’s home in Washington, D.C. led to the discovery of five dead fetuses. Handy was “indicted along with nine others Wednesday by a federal grand jury. Handy is accused of felony conspiracy against rights for a blockade inside a D.C. abortion clinic in October 2020 ,” WUSA reports (video below). “When I asked anti-abortion activist Lauren Handy what homicide detectives pulled out of her house Wednesday, she only said, ‘people will freak out when they hear,'” reported WUSA’s Nathan Baca. Buzzfeed’s Ellie Hall adds that a press release from Handy’s anti-abortion group claims she has had the fetuses since 2020. Going to delete this tweet as it's been pointed out that the "direct action" was the storming of a DC abortion clinic in 2020 and the fetuses have not been confirmed to be linked with that specific event. https://twitter.com/ellievhall/status/1509589833504677900\u00a0\u2026 — Ellie Hall (@Ellie Hall) 164875...

On March 13, 2022, two days after Gabriel Boric was sworn in as the president of Chile, Minister General Secretariat of Government Camila Vallejo told 24 Horas during an interview that her duty is “to accompany and support the constitutional process,” when asked about the government’s priorities during 2022. These two processes—the formation of Boric’s government and the writing of a new constitution—run parallel to one another and are important to the shaping of a “new Chile.” This article was produced by Globetrotter . Both these processes have emerged out of a long period of mobilization by the Chilean people, who first put an end to the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, which lasted from 1973 to 1990, through the 1989 plebiscite and then fought in a cycle of protests—particularly during the student mobilization movements of 2006 , 2011 and 2015 and the “ social outburst ” of 2019—to throw out the 1980 constitution introduced by Pinochet and end the status quo supported by...

With COVID-19 coverage ending for the uninsured, we look at how uninsured people and communities of color will bear the impact of the end to free COVID-19 testing, treatment and vaccines, and how the pandemic has led to a renewed push for Medicare for All. We are joined by Dr. Oni Blackstock, primary care and HIV physician and founder and executive director of Health Justice, and Dr. Adam Gaffney, critical care physician, professor at Harvard Medical School and immediate past president of Physicians for a National Health Program. Transcript This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! , The War and Peace Report . I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh. As cities across the United States lift mask mandates and researchers track an uptick, the Omicron subvariant BA.2, we spend the rest of the hour looking at who will bear the impact of cuts to funding for COVID-19 relief, as the pandemic leads to a renewed push for Medicare for Al...

The Digital Edition is an exclusive product available to our subscribers The post 01 April 2022 appeared first on The Mail & Guardian .

MSNBC opinion columnist Glenn Kirschner penned a blistering editorial on Wednesday demanding that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg tell the public why he is refusing to indict former President Donald Trump for crimes related to his attempted theft of the 2020 election. Kirschner, himself an ex-federal prosecutor, opined that Bragg has quite a bit of explaining to do. "When we look at how Alvin Bragg has performed in his short time as Manhattan district attorney, he seems to be coming up short on all three fronts," he wrote. The drama inside Bragg's office came to a head last month when Mark Pomerantz, a veteran federal prosecutor who was assisting Bragg's investigation into Trump, abruptly quit. In his resignation letter, which was published in The New York Times on March 23rd, Pomerantz stated that Cy Vance – Bragg's predecessor – concluded that there was enough evidence for a jury to convict Trump beyond a reasonable doubt and that he had urged Br...

Senator Mazie Hirono asks every judicial nominee two questions . One: “Since you became a legal adult, have you ever made unwanted requests for sexual favors or committed any verbal or physical harassment or assault of a sexual nature?” Two: “Have you ever faced discipline or entered into a settlement related to this kind of conduct?” These questions reflect concerns historically undervalued in the law, namely: whether violence against women is worth taking seriously and whether judges are beyond reproach. The Congress and the Supreme Court owe the public a satisfactory answer to both. The Constitution prescribes that Supreme Court justices and other federal judges are appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate, and hold their offices during “good behavior.” “Advice and consent” is now nearly synonymous with confirmation hearings — a practice developed in the early 1900s in part because of an antisemitic effort to keep Louis Brandeis off the Supreme Cour...

Who is the real Ginni Thomas seems to be the question being bantered about up and down K Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., in recent days. When it was revealed that the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was in regular communication with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, urging him to do everything he could to overturn the 2020 presidential election results and keep former President Donald Trump in power, the nation's capital shuddered. Conservative activist and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon says Thomas is “one of the most powerful forces in the MAGA movement — a force of nature.” But others in the know in D.C. think she's more of a gadfly, name-dropping unserious person who uses her last name and marriage to the Supreme Court justice to garner attention. According to Politico , she was known by Trump officials for sharing the names of people she wanted hired and fired by the president. Among them were friends of the couple, members ...

Two of America's most prominent good-government legal scholars explained how officials investigating former President Donald Trump now have a "road map" to follow. Ambassador Norman Eisen, who served as Obama's "ethics czar" and counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during Trump's first impeachment, wrote a powerful new analysis with Fred Wertheimer, the founder of the pro-voting group Democracy 21. "The resignation of two Manhattan prosecutors for their boss’s failure to charge former President Donald Trump over potential financial crimes last month has reignited debate over whether he will ever be held accountable for his alleged misdeeds," the two wrote for CNN. "Thankfully, Judge David Carter’s decision on Monday, finding Trump 'more likely than not' committed crimes, sets out a road map for finally imposing consequences for the big lie. It does so by tackling the thorniest legal issues regarding Trump, his enablers an...

In remarks scheduled the day before the one-year anniversary of the Capitol insurrection, Attorney General Merrick Garland swore that his agency would not let power and privilege shield those responsible for the assault on our democracy. "The Justice Department," he promised, "remains committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law." Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers, he said, would "follow the facts wherever they lead." It's now been nearly three months since those remarks, and unfortunately, it's starting to look very much like the elite Republicans who were part of a conspiracy to overthrow democracy are, in fact, too swaddled by status and wealth to be held accountable under the law. Every day, the extent of the conspiracy and the number of high-level GOP officials and activists involved with Donald Trump's attempted coup becomes more clear. Yet the DOJ appears to be doing little, if anything, t...

Mariano Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, issued a stark warning on Tuesday that nuclear power plants throughout Ukraine are in "unprecedented danger" as Russian forces continue their freewheeling assaults on civilian targets and infrastructure. “The military conflict is putting Ukraine’s nuclear power plants and other facilities with radioactive material in unprecedented danger. We must take urgent action to make sure that they can continue to operate safely and securely and reduce the risk of a nuclear accident that could have a severe health and environmental impact both in Ukraine and beyond,” Grossi, who will visit one such facility during his trip to Ukraine this week, said in a statement . “Ukraine has requested our assistance for safety and security. We will now start delivering it. Ukraine has one of Europe’s largest nuclear power programs. The IAEA’s presence, where needed to ensure safety and security, is of paramount impor...

"In this moment of climate emergency," five scientists began a new open letter to U.S. President Joe Biden, "we write with utmost urgency to advise you and your administration to halt recent moves towards increasing fossil fuel production and instead take bold action to rapidly reduce fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure." Biologist Sandra Steingraber—who is leading the effort with Peter Kalmus, Robert Howarth, Michael Mann, and Mark Jacobson in conjunction with Food & Water Watch— shared a link to the letter on Twitter Wednesday and urged fellow scientists to add their signatures. "We say the White House call for more drilling and fracking is a climate calamity," Steingraber said. "Sign with us!" The letter—which its initiators plan to present to the president next month after collecting "a critical mass" of signatures—follows a similar message from October and comes as Biden works to ramp up U.S. gas shipments to Eur...

A Chicago police officer with a history of violent interactions with the public is facing renewed calls for his firing in light of newly released video imagery showing him punching a social justice activist and knocking out one of her front teeth in 2020. Miracle Boyd says she was using her mobile phone to record video of police officers arresting Black Lives Matter protestors in the city's Grant Park when Officer Nicholas Jovanovich, a 17-year veteran of the force, suddenly rushed toward her. Police reports and body-cam images obtained by the Chicago Reader and South Side Weekly - although highly redacted - show Jovanovich rushing toward Boyd and punching her in the face with a balled-up fist as she attempts to back away from him. As the Reader reports, "When the blow lands, her cell phone flies to the pavement and she stumbles away, bent double." She was reportedly bleeding heavily from her mouth. Boyd, who was 18 at the time of the protest and assault, is an act...

Former United States Secretary of Labor Robert Reich released a new video on Tuesday in which he broke down the mind-bending reality of just how much $100,000,000,000 dollars actually is. "The word 'billionaire' didn’t even exist until 1844 . Fifty years later, we got ' multibillionaire .' And for the next 127 years, that was enough. But in 2020, while the working class faced near-record unemployment during the pandemic, the wealthiest Americans faced a different problem. Some of them had gotten so rich, there was no longer a word to describe just how rich they were," Reich began. "That’s why today I want to bring you one of the newest additions to the English language: 'centibillionaires,' people with $100 billion or more." For scale, Reich compared the ultra-exclusive 12-digit-wealth club to that of their less-fortunate 10 and 11-digit counterparts. The math is truly staggering: What’s it like being one of history’s first centibilliona...

A new analysis released Tuesday estimates that U.S. oil and gas corporations are poised to rake in windfall profits of up to $126 billion this year as they exploit Russia's deadly assault on Ukraine to raise prices at the pump. Conducted by Oil Change International, Greenpeace USA, and Global Witness, the analysis uses a database that tracks the fossil fuel industry's production economics to assess how much money the industry is set to make as a result of high global oil prices. "Under conservative estimates, we find the U.S. upstream oil and gas industry will collect a windfall of $37 to $126 billion in 2022 alone," the groups' report states. The higher-end profit estimate is dependent on oil prices spiking to $120 per barrel this summer and remaining elevated as the West moves to restrict Russian oil imports—a major opportunity for U.S. fossil fuel companies, particularly as the Biden administration looks to ramp up gas exports to Europe. If oil price...

New York Attorney General Letitia James on Tuesday offered new details about how the Trump Organization for years allegedly falsified the value of various New York City properties to secure favorable loan terms and reduce tax obligations. CNBC reports that in a filing in a New York state court, James says her office has “uncovered significant evidence” suggesting that the Trump Organization’s financial statements for more than a decade relied on misleading valuations of its real estate assets. The filing asserts that potentially misleading valuations “and other misrepresentations” were used by the company owned by former President Donald Trump “to secure economic benefits — including loans, insurance coverage, and tax deductions — on terms more favorable than the true facts warranted." The filing by James was made in response to the Trump Organization and Donald Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan state court judge’s order last month that Trump and two of his adult children, Donald...

Partisan propaganda about the untrustworthiness of elections was worse in 2021 than during the 2020 presidential election, when Donald Trump claimed that he won and incited a riot at the U.S. Capitol to block ratification of Joe Biden’s victory, according to state election directors who fear that 2022’s elections will see deepening disinformation from losing GOP candidates. This article was produced by Voting Booth , a project of the Independent Media Institute. “2021 was far worse than 2020,” said Minnesota Elections Director David Maeda , speaking at an election security webinar at the Hubert Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. “The temperature from 2020 had carried over and gotten worse… [and] just keeps escalating because of all of the mistrust from this misinformation, and questions about the security and fairness of our voting systems.” Those worries were echoed by current and former top officials from Colorado , Virginia , and the U.S. Cybe...