The 2024 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Funds, released today, shows that our Social Security system remains fully affordable. This year’s report announces that, thanks to a strong and growing economy, Social Security can pay all benefits and associated administrative costs in full until 2035, one year later than projected in last year’s report. After that, it can pay 83 percent percent of benefits, also an improvement over last year — even if Congress were to do the unimaginable, and take no action ..read more

Pesticide-maker Bayer has asked the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to re-approve the dangerous pesticide dicamba for use on genetically engineered (GE) cotton and soybeans. The request comes after two different federal courts vacated the registrations of the drift-prone weedkiller — one in 2020 and the other in February 2024. Dicamba drift has damaged millions of acres, including croplands, home gardens, forests, and even wildlife refuges. Notably, neither EPA nor dicamba registrants appealed the 2024 court decision, which is now final. In an "existing stocks" order, EPA prohibited any ..read more

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today called on President Biden to respond to the start of the Israeli government's ethnic cleansing of Rafah by enforcing his "red line," suspending military aid, and demanding an end to the genocide. Yesterday, the Israeli government dropped leaflets threatening refugees and residents in eastern Rafah, demanding that they evacuate the city or face death. Over the past six months, the Israeli government has ethnically cleansed and indiscriminately bombed numerous other cities in Gaza ..read more

Amidst the ongoing, unfathomable slaughter, hunger, maiming, razing in Gaza at the hands of Israel's "voracious death machine," its leaders now openly vow "total and utter destruction" by what they still grotesquely call "one of the most moral militaries in the world," murdered newborns and all. But the hypocrisies and protests mount. "One of this genocide’s aims is to drown us in our own sorrow," says one of Balfour's "savages." Part of their resistance, in turn, "is to talk about tomorrow in Gaza." The litany from Israel's mass killing, "monstrous and largely indiscriminate," to date: Almo ..read more

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday night spoke on the floor of the U.S. Senate about the student protests taking place on college campuses across the country, and the ongoing, horrific humanitarian disaster in Gaza. Sanders’ remarks, as prepared for delivery, are below and can be watched live here: LIVE: A reminder to my colleagues about a document called the U.S. Constitution and, specifically, the First Amendment. https://t.co/yBa9pj9APm — Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) May 1, 2024 President, some of us have been out of school for awhile and we may have forgotten our American histor ..read more

After months of delay, House Republicans and Senate Democrats unveiled dueling Farm Bill priorities today. The House’s bill slashes nutrition programs and climate-focused conservation funding in order to boost commodity crop production. It also includes the EATS Act, which is opposed by 200 Members of Congress and more than 150 organizations. The EATS Act could wipe out many existing states’ environmental, health and safety laws related to agriculture, effectively overturning a Supreme Court ruling to uphold California’s Proposition 12, which bans extreme forms of animal confinement. In contra ..read more

Today, the Associated Press reported that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is proposing rescheduling marijuana from a Schedule I drug, the most restrictive class, to a Schedule III drug, a less restrictive class. Under this proposed shift, marijuana criminalization would continue at the federal level and most penalties, including those for simple possession, would continue as long as marijuana remains anywhere on the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). On the 2020 campaign trail, then-candidate Biden repeatedly pledged to decriminalize marijuana and expunge related criminal records – ide ..read more

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, today released the following statement after Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan announced that the FTC is taking action against the bogus patents Novo Nordisk filed to keep the outrageous price of Ozempic artificially high: Let me commend the Federal Trade Commission, under the leadership of Chair Lina Khan, for taking bold action today against the bogus patents Novo Nordisk has filed to prevent Americans struggling with diabetes from receiving a generic version of Ozempic a ..read more

Today, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sent warning letters to 10 drug manufacturers challenging the “junk listings” of more than 300 patents in the FDA Orange Book for medicines treating diabetes, weight loss, asthma, and COPD. These letters follow FTC challenges to improper Orange Book patent listings last November, which were followed by companies delisting several of the challenged patents. Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines program advocate, Steve Knievel, issued the following statement: “It’s becoming harder for drug corporations to use patent shenanigans to thwart competition, than ..read more

Responding to an agreement reached by G7 member states today to phase out all unabated coal-fired electricity generation in the first half of the 2030s, Candy Ofime, Amnesty International’s Climate Justice Researcher, said: “This is not the goal for coal we need and it will not deliver climate justice. Commitments put forward by G7 members – which have burnt coal for power for more than a century – to stop using this pollutant by 2035 are simply too late and weakened by unacceptable caveats. “The end of coal power generation cannot come soon enough for those experiencing the worst effects of t ..read more