In the News
Two dozen House lawmakers on Wednesday officially introduced a War Powers resolution to end U.S. military involvement in Yemen's civil war.
"One year later, the bloodshed continues with widespread destruction and disease contributing to the world's worst humanitarian crisis. U.S.-fueled planes continue to drop U.S.-made bombs on innocent victims," the resolution's lead sponsor, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), said in a statement Wednesday.
IN CONGRESS, FRUSTRATION with the U.S. role in Yemen is nearing a breaking point. Sen. Bob Menendez — the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — is holding up a $2 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates over concerns that the two countries routinely bomb civilian targets. Meanwhile, in the House, U.S. assistance to the Saudi- and UAE-led coalition is about to face another major hurdle.
Low-income workers haven't received anything close to their fair economic share over the last few decades. The American economy has almost tripled in size since 1980, yet the average inflation-adjusted wage for low-income workers has risen only about 10 percent.
Remnants of U.S.-made bombs have been found at the scene of multiple airstrikes in Yemen in the past several years that have killed dozens of civilians, CNN reports.
The Yemen-based independent human rights group Mwatana released documents to the network that show U.S.-made fragments at multiple locations since Yemen's civil war began in 2015. At least 63 civilians were killed in the strikes, CNN reports, with dozens more injured or put at risk.
In May, I had the privilege of introducing U.S. Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), to 160 emergency nurses who gathered in Washington, D.C., to advocate for legislation promoting a safe workplace for health care employees.
Because Rep. Khanna sponsored a bill — The Healthcare Workplace Violence Prevention Act — designed to better protect workers in the health care settings, it seemed appropriate for me to show him the extent of the problem.
TUCKER CARLSON, a Fox News host, and Bernie Sanders, a democratic-socialist senator, seldom agree. Yet on the matter of billionaires supposedly sponging off taxpayer largesse, they are completely simpatico. On September 5th Mr Sanders introduced a bill which would force large firms to pay taxes exactly equal to the amount of safety-net benefits consumed by their employees, including food stamps, housing vouchers and Medicaid. The target of Mr Sanders's legislation, titled the "Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies" or "Stop BEZOS" Act, was clear.
The Trump administration certified to Congress on Wednesday that the Saudi-backed coalition fighting in Yemen's civil war was doing everything it could to prevent civilian casualties—a move that allows the U.S. military to continue supporting the coalition.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made the certification in a memo to Congress, acknowledging that civilian casualties were "far too high" but saying Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were taking steps to bring the numbers down. Foreign Policy obtained declassified portions of the memo.
Members of both parties in Congress have had it with Aung San Suu Kyi, a woman once honored as a hero on Capitol Hill.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner has been silent as military rulers of her native Myanmar ravaged the Rohingya, an ethnic minority group on the country's western border, in a brutal campaign the United Nations recently deemed genocide.
Congressman Ro Khanna wants to inspire companies to do better by their workers.
"It's absurd that you have multi-billion dollar companies, trillion-dollar companies that aren't able to pay their workers $15," Rep. Khanna said Friday in an interview on Cheddar.