Tuesday, October 24, 2023. Annette’s News Roundup.
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Joe is always busy.
Biden Administration Moves to Ban a Solvent Linked to Cancer.
The Biden administration has proposed to ban all uses of trichloroethylene, an industrial solvent used in glues, other adhesives, spot removers and metal cleaners, saying exposure to even small amounts can cause cancer, damage to the central nervous system and other health effects.
The proposed ban is the latest twist in a yearslong debate over whether to regulate trichloroethylene, commonly referred to as TCE. In its final weeks, the Obama administration tried to ban some uses of the chemical, only to have the Trump administration place it on an Environmental Protection Agency list for long-term consideration, a move that essentially suspended any action.
Monday’s proposal goes further than the Obama-era plan by prohibiting all uses of TCE.
“This is extremely important,” said Maria Doa, senior director for chemicals policy at the Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit advocacy organization. She said TCE “causes so many different harms at such low levels” that banning it would have widespread impacts. “It’s a long time coming,” she said. (New York Times).
Under the E.P.A. proposal, most uses of TCE, including those in processing commercial and consumer products, would be prohibited within one year. For other uses the agency categorized as “limited,” such as use in electric vehicle batteries and the manufacturing of certain refrigerants, there would be a longer transition period and more stringent worker protections.
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2 More Hostages released.
From the Wall Street Journal.
Hamas set free two more civilian hostages on Monday, but negotiations over a possible release of a group of 50 captives stumbled over the militant group’s demand that Israel allow fuel deliveries into Gaza, according to officials familiar with the talks.
Hamas said it was releasing the two hostages on humanitarian grounds. Egyptian officials confirmed that the two hostages were released at Gaza’s Rafah border crossing. Israeli officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Hamas, Qatar, Egypt, and Israel have been in talks in recent days over a proposal to release a larger group in return for a steady flow of humanitarian aid, including fuel, three officials familiar with the talks said.
Israeli officials have said they want all hostages released before permitting the delivery of fuel. Israeli officials have also told negotiators they believe Hamas and other militant groups could divert fuel for military purposes.
The negotiations have reached an advanced stage, but Israel hasn’t given approval for fuel to be delivered to Gaza via Egypt, according to the three officials.
Hamas, a group designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization, killed more than 1,400 Israelis in its Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. Israel’s military said Monday that 222 people abducted that day by Palestinian militants are still being held hostage in Gaza. Israel’s campaign of airstrikes on the Gaza Strip in response to the attack has killed more than 5,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, a number that couldn’t be independently verified.
From the New York Times.
The International Committee of the Red Cross facilitated the transfer of the hostages out of Gaza, the group said.
Nurit Cooper, 79 (left) and Yocheved Lifshitz, 85. Their husbands are still being held by Hamas.
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The Trump-Pratt Tapes.
Special Counsel for the United States Department of Justice Jack Smith has these goods.
Reports: Trump told Mar-a-Lago member about calls with foreign leaders.
Washington— CNN.
Mar-a-Lago member and Australian billionaire Anthony Pratt said then-President Donald Trump told him about his private calls with the leaders of Ukraine and Iraq, according to reports published Sunday about private recordings of Pratt, a key prosecution witness in Trump’s classified documents case.
The reports from The New York Times and “60 Minutes Australia” revealed previously unknown recordings of Pratt candidly recalling his conversations with Trump – and build on existing allegations that Trump overshared sensitive government material.
In the tapes, Pratt says Trump shared insider details about his phone calls with world leaders during his presidency. Pratt also offers searing critiques of Trump’s personal ethics.
CNN previously reported that Pratt gave an interview to special counsel Jack Smith, who charged Trump with mishandling national security materials by hoarding dozens of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. (Trump pleaded not guilty.) Pratt is also on Smith’s witness list for the trial, which is scheduled for May.
Concerns about Trump’s freewheeling approach to state secrets are at the center of that case. Past reports from ABC News said Trump discussed potentially sensitive information with Pratt about US nuclear submarines. The new reports Sunday expand what is known about Pratt’s recounting of their conversations to include foreign policy matters.
“It hadn’t even been on the news yet, and he said, ‘I just bombed Iraq today,’” Pratt said in one recording that was made public Sunday, recalling a conversation with Trump.
Pratt then recalled Trump’s description of his December 2019 call with Iraqi President Barham Salih. According to Pratt, Trump said, “The president of Iraq called me up and said, ‘You just leveled my city. … I said to him, ‘OK, what are you going to do about it?’”
The recordings also indicate that Trump spoke with Pratt about his now-infamous September 2019 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump pressured Zelensky to help him win the 2020 election by publicly launching unfounded corruption probes into Joe Biden. That phone call formed the basis of Trump’s first impeachment.
“That was nothing compared to what I usually do,” Trump told Pratt about the Zelensky call, according to the tape. “That’s nothing compared to what we usually talk about.”
In statements to The New York Times, Trump pointed out that Pratt is “from a friendly country in Australia, one of our great allies,” though he didn’t deny the conversations described in the tapes. A Trump spokesperson said the tapes “lack proper context.”
CNN has reached out to the Trump campaign and Pratt’s company, Visy, for comment.
These latest disclosures could be used by Smith’s prosecutors as evidence that Trump had a pattern of sharing sensitive government information with unauthorized people, including political donors and well-connected businessmen in his orbit. It’s unclear whether prosecutors already had possession of the tapes that were made public on Sunday.
The new recordings also shed light on Pratt’s candid, private thoughts about Trump’s behavior. It’s unclear who Pratt was speaking to, but Pratt said in one tape that Trump “says outrageous things nonstop,” and compared his business practices to “the mafia.”
“He knows exactly what to say — and what not to say — so that he avoids jail. But gets so close to it that it looks to everyone like he’s breaking the law,” Pratt said in one tape. (CNN).
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Comments from Liz Cheney. From Jake Tapper interview, October 22.
TAPPER.
So, as you know, Gaza City is very densely populated, and Hamas embeds itself within the population. Do you think it's wise for Israel to stage a ground incursion, strategically? And do you think Israel's been doing enough to prevent the loss of innocent life? We know Hamas embeds itself within the population. That's one of the
things they do. They're a terrorist organization. But is this smart for Israel?
CHENEY: Look, I think that, number one, people need to recognize that what's happening in terms of the conditions in Gaza is the responsibility of Hamas.
The reason that people in Gaza are facing the situation they're facing, Hamas has been in charge in Gaza since 2006 at least. So, Israel -- we have moved so quickly beyond the focus on the devastation of the terrorist attack, the absolutely barbaric slaughter of men, women and children, the stories that we continue to see come out of babies tied up with wire and murdered brutally, of people tortured in front of their children.
I mean, the fact that people have moved on from that is really wrong.
What we have seen, though, around the world...
TAPPER: Yes.
CHENEY: ... is even, frankly, before Israel began any kind of a response in Gaza, we saw this massive expansion and explosion of demonstrations around the world, antisemitic, anti-Israel, here in the United States on our university campuses.
It's outrageous. It's dangerous. It needs to stop. Israel must take whatever action they need to take to defend themselves. And the United States should not be in the business of telling them to stop, to slow down. They have got to defend themselves. And that means they have got to defeat Hamas.
TAPPER: The attack was on October 7, a Saturday. I think it was Wednesday that Donald Trump gave a speech in which he insulted Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, said the attacks wouldn't have happened if he had been president, said that Netanyahu let him down.
He said it was -- had something to do with the strike against Soleimani, but a lot of people interpreted it as because Netanyahu congratulated Biden after Biden won the presidency. He insulted the defense minister of Israel, called him a jerk. He praised Hezbollah as smart.
What was your reaction to that? And did it surprise you that Trump could say all of that about the prime minister while they were still burying the dead after the October 7 terrorist attack, and it didn't have any impact on Republican voters or what Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill said about Donald Trump?
CHENEY: They were appalling comments.
And you're absolutely right that there should have been a response. I think that every Republican member of Congress ought to be asked about those comments. Every Republican candidate for the presidency ought to be asked about those comments.
The other thing to remember about Donald Trump is that he reportedly shared Israeli intelligence with the Russians very early in his term. He also, as we know now from the indictments that we have seen from Jack Smith, shared highly classified military documents apparently relating to military action potentially against Iran. He shared that with Mark Meadows' ghostwriters and political consultants, it seems, according to the indictments.
So, if you think about not only is he out there advocating for complimenting America's adversaries and, in fact, terrorist organizations that slaughter innocents; he also seems to have shared very highly classified intelligence information, both ours and the Israelis, in fact, with adversaries.
So I think it's simply the latest example of why Donald Trump is not fit to be president of the United States.
TAPPER: Who do you think is providing better leadership on the international stage right now, Biden or Trump?
CHENEY: Oh, certainly Biden. (CNN).
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Important appointment by the President.
Top Elizabeth Warren aide to join Biden’s economic team.
A longtime top aide to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is joining President Biden’s National Economic Council (NEC) as a deputy director, the White House confirmed Monday.
Jon Donenberg will replace former deputy director Bharat Ramamurti, who left the NEC last month. Donenberg will focus on issues including student debt relief, competition, junk fees, financial regulation and technology policy, a White House official said.
He will start at the NEC in early November, CNN first reported, a year out from the 2024 election when Biden’s economic plan will be a major selling point for the president on the campaign trail.
Donenberg is Warren’s chief of staff and previously worked as policy director and senior adviser for the Massachusetts senator’s 2020 presidential run. He is a “key architect” of Warren’s policies on student debt, financial regulation, corporate taxation, competition and technology policy, the White House official said.
Warren was one of the top progressive voices in Congress pushing Biden to forgive student debt after making loan forgiveness a part of her presidential platform. She hailed Biden’s move to cancel up to $10,000 in debt for people making less than $125,000 annually when it was first announced in August 2022. The program has since been struck down by the Supreme Court.
“Jon is a superstar — and one of the nation’s foremost experts on the fight for an economy that works not just for some of our families, but for all of them. His unique combination of technical, legal, and economic skills and judgment will make him an invaluable asset to the President,” Warren said in a statement on Monday.
Donenberg was named chief of staff for Warren in March 2020. He earlier served as her chief counsel and legislative director for more than five years and worked for Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and former Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.). (The Hill).
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Big win.
Let’s hope it sticks on appeal.
Nasdaq diversity rule upheld by federal appellate judges.
The Nasdaq exchange requires its listed companies to have at least two “diverse” board members or explain why they do not.
A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit on Wednesday denied a pair of legal challenges to Nasdaq efforts to bolster corporate boards’ diversity, dealing a blow to conservatives seeking to tamp down diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the private sector.
In August 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission approved Nasdaq rules that require companies listed on the exchange to disclose the race, gender and sexual orientation of their board members, and have — or explain why they don’t have — at least two “diverse” board members, including at least one female board member and one member who is from an underrepresented minority or identifies as LGBTQ+.
Days after the SEC approval, the Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment — a group led by affirmative-action opponent Edward Blum — petitioned the 5th Circuit to review the rules’ legality, arguing that they were unconstitutional and that they violated the Exchange Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. The National Center for Public Policy Research, a right-wing think tank, also challenged the rules.
“We are pleased that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has upheld the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) approval of Nasdaq’s rule to enhance board diversity disclosures through a market-led solution,” Nasdaq said in a statement Wednesday. “We look forward to working with our companies in continuing to implement this listing standard for corporate governance.”
Blum, whose lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina culminated in the Supreme Court in June overturning race-conscious college admissions, signaled that his group’s efforts to challenge the stock exchange’s board diversity rules are not over. “This organization is disappointed by the Court’s decision in this case, and we will continue the fight to eliminate race discrimination in corporate America,” he said in a statement to The Washington Post. “An appeal to a higher court will be filed shortly.
” Scott Shepard, a National Center for Public Policy Research fellow, said his organization is disappointed by the ruling but thinks there’s a chance it would be reversed by a full panel of judges on the 5th Circuit, which leans conservative. The center probably will make that appeal, said Peggy Little, a lawyer for the organization.
The three-judge panel that rendered Wednesday’s ruling — Stephen A. Higginson, Carl E. Stewart and James L. Dennis — were all nominated by Democratic presidents. The Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment and the National Center for Public Policy Research “have given us no reason to conclude that the SEC’s Approval Order violates the Exchange Act or the APA,” the panel wrote.
The challenges to the Nasdaq rules had come amid a broader backlash to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the private sector. In May, a federal judge sided with the Blum-led Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment and ruled unconstitutional a California law requiring corporate boards of companies based in the state to include at least one to three members of underrepresented groups.
Such legal challenges have only picked up momentum since the Supreme Court’s June decision on race-conscious college admissions. Through a different organization — the American Alliance for Equal Rights — Blum in August sued corporate law firms Perkins Coie and Morrison Foerster, alleging their diversity fellowships illegally discriminated on the basis of race. Both law firms subsequently opened those fellowships to students of all racial backgrounds, instead of only those from underrepresented groups.
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All hail the women of Iceland!
Iceland’s first full-day women’s strike in 48 years aims to close pay gap.
The Prime Minister will take part in stoppage by women and non-binary people calling for pay equality and action on gender-based violence.
Iceland's prime minister, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, will take part in the women’s strike.
Despite being considered a global leader on gender equality, topping the 2023 World Economic Forum’s global gender gap rankings for the 14th consecutive year, in some professions Icelandic women still earn 21% less than men, and more than 40% of women have experienced gender-based or sexual violence.
Strike organisers also say jobs traditionally associated with women, such as cleaning and caregiving, continue to be undervalued and underpaid.
“We’re talked about, Iceland is talked about, like it’s an equality paradise,” said Freyja Steingrímsdóttir, one of the strike organisers and communications director for BSRB, the Icelandic Federation for Public Workers. “But an equality paradise should not have a 21% wage gap and 40% of women experiencing gender-based or sexual violence in their lifetime. That’s not what women around the world are striving for.”
Having the global reputation that it does, Iceland has a responsibility to “make sure we live up to those expectations”, said Steingrímsdóttir.
While there have been other women’s strikes since the first in 1975, Tuesday’s marks the first full-day event. Operating under the slogan “Kallarðu þetta jafnrétti?” (You call this equality?), it is the outcome of a grassroots movement and is being planned by about 40 different organisations.
Women and non-binary people across the country are urged not to do any paid or unpaid work on Tuesday, including domestic tasks at home, “to demonstrate the importance of their contribution to society”. But some have already started preparing ahead of time to make life easier for men during their absence.
“The third shift is real, women are going on strike but ‘let’s make sure that everything will work smoothly’ is the mentality we’re stuck in and we need to get out of,” said Steingrímsdóttir. “For one day it’s not our problem, so let’s not try to make it easier for them.”
At least 25,000 people are expected to attend an event in Reykjavík city centre and many more will take part in 10 other events around the country – making it likely to be Iceland’s biggest ever women’s strike.
Announcing her participation, Jakobsdóttir said she expected the prime minister’s office to stop working. “First and foremost, I am showing solidarity with Icelandic women with this,” she told mbl.is
Unlike the 1975 strike, Tuesday’s event is for women and non-binary people. “We do this because we are all fighting the same system, we are all under the influence of the patriarchy, so we thought we should combine our fight,” said Steingrímsdóttir.
The strike is calling for the gender pay gap to be closed by publishing the wages of workers in female-dominant professions, and for action against gender-based and sexual violence, with more focus on the perpetrators.
Drífa Snædal, who is on the executive committee of the women’s strike and is a spokesperson for Stígamót, a counselling and education centre for sexual violence, said increased access to pornography among children had contributed to violence against women.
Women’s status in society and their monetary value in the workplace was also linked to sexual violence, she said.
“We are now trying to connect the dots, saying that violence against women and undervalued work of women in the labour market are two sides of the same coin and have an effect on each other,” she said.
Despite the #MeToo movement and various others demanding equality in Iceland over recent years, she said women could not count on the justice system when it came to sexually violent crimes. “The patience of women has run out,” she said. (The Guardian).
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