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News & Views | 4/22/20

Feature...


A resident wearing a face mask stands next to a mural featuring Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and her quote "You're never too young to save the world" on March 30, 2020 in the Trullo district of Rome during Italy's lockdown in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

by Jessica Corbett, staff writer
The 50th annual global Earth Day coming amid the coronavirus pandemic sparked fresh demands from Fridays for Future founder Greta Thunberg, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, and others for the international community to simultaneously tackle the COVID-19 and climate crises.

News...



by Jake Johnson, staff writer
"If you leave it to Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell we will have a Great Depression. If we had the right policy structure in place we could avoid it easily."



by Julia Conley, staff writer
Sen. Elizabeth Warren led nine of her Democratic colleagues in the Senate Wednesday in demanding a federal investigation into President Donald Trump's response to the coronavirus pandemic.


Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) talks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol Oct. 6, 2018 in Washington, D.C.

by Eoin Higgins, staff writer
"We are in a national health and economic emergency and we need Congress to start acting like it."

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Money signs on bombs

by Andrea Germanos, staff writer
"We cannot continue spending billions of dollars on weapons of war while people across the country struggle to buy food, pay rent, and survive a pandemic."


Education Secretary Betsy DeVos unveiled new guidance Tuesday which excludes undocumented students from receiving emergncy assistance through a new $6 billion program for college students amid the coronavirus pandemic. (Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

by Julia Conley, staff writer
Immigrant rights groups on Wednesday condemned the Trump administration's decision to exclude undocumented students from a $6 billion aid program that the Education Department unveiled earlier this month, calling the exclusion needlessly "cruel."


Demonstrators at an Earth Day 2017 event carry signs promoting science and challenging President Donald Trump's agenda.

by Jessica Corbett, staff writer
An organization launched in 2017 by former staffers of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency marked the 50th annual Earth Day Wednesday by releasing a report about the efforts of President Donald Trump's administration to gut regulations enacted under his predecessors to preserve public health and the planet.


Rep. Donna Shalala (D-Fla.) speaks during a House Rules Committee hearing on the impeachment against President Donald Trump on December 17, 2019.

by Eoin Higgins, staff writer
"Not understanding disclosure is a pretty bad look for the member of Congress chosen to force disclosure out of the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve on its lending programs."


Iranian soldiers take part in the "National Persian Gulf day" in the Strait of Hormuz, on April 30, 2019. The date coincides with the anniversary of a successful military campaign by Shah Abbas the Great of Persia in the 17th century, which drove the Portuguese navy out of the Hormuz Island, after which is named the waterway which separates the Gulf from the Sea of Oman. (Photo: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images)

by Jake Johnson, staff writer
"If the xenophobia isn't doing the trick and providing a good enough distraction, there's always the classic authoritarian move: gin up a war."



by Jake Johnson, staff writer
"It's simply bizarre and unconscionable that the Trump administration would have United manage billions in relief to hospitals."



by Julia Conley, staff writer
Voting rights advocates demanded state and federal lawmakers expand voting-by-mail immediately on Wednesday as Wisconsin health officials announced that nearly 20 people in the state who recently tested positive for the new coronavirus had voted in person on Election Day two weeks ago.

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Views...


Cooperation Humboldt is a model for ecological, economic and human sustainability. (Photo: Cooperation Humboldt)

by Margaret Kimberley
Founded in 2017, Cooperation Humboldt was already incubating worker cooperatives, administering food sovereignty programs, advocating for public banking and participatory budgeting, and exploring housing cooperatives, an arts hub, and eco-villages—all before the pandemic arrived in the U.S.


The five biggest U.S. airlines spent 96 percent of their free cash flow over the last decade buying back shares of their own stock to boost executive bonuses and please wealthy investors. (Photo: Getty Images)

by Robert Reich
Here’s the bottom line: no mega-corporation deserves a cent of bailout money.


Earth Day, the first one and all of its 50 anniversaries remain days of hope. (Photo: Sanmonku)

by Jon Hinck
We still need to demonstrate that we can rebuild the economy in a way that preserves life on this blue planet. Earth Day+50 is the time to do that.


Earth Day’s laws have systematically failed to guard against mass species die-offs, the climate crisis, deadly air pollution, the corporatization of freshwater, and the largest loss of biodiversity in human history. (Photo: Bird’s eye view of wide-spread contamination in Lake Erie)

by Markie Miller, Crystal Jankowski
For 50 years, environmentalists have celebrated the illusion that the law is on their side.


Dumb, disgraceful Donald still sneers at the oncoming climate catastrophe, calling it a hoax. (Photo: Oil Change International/Twitter)

by Ralph Nader
The omnicidal Republicans controlling the Senate support Trump’s reckless agenda regardless of the environmental harm done to their own families.


In CorporateWorld, the more things change, the more they stay the same. That's why the corporate greed system will only be fixed when we outsiders impose real change on these incurably greed-headed insiders.

by Jim Hightower
The severity and gross disparity of our country's present economic collapse is not simply caused by a sudden viral outbreak but by a severe, decadeslong plutocratic policy of intentionally maximizing profits for the rich and minimizing everyone else's well-being.

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