Stop the GOP's attack on the Department of Education!

Sunday Dose of Democracy:

VIDEO OF THE DAY: Top Republican gets what he deserves in viral smackdown
Kevin McCarthy tried to rewrite history to cover up his own role in Trump's resurgence — and got called out in humiliating fashion.

Take Action: Tell President Biden to use his pardon power for justice before he leaves office!

A mass movement can beat health CEO greed
Sen. Bernie Sanders, Jacobin: "What you’re seeing, the outpouring of anger at the insurance companies, is a reflection of how people feel about the current health care system. It is broken. It is cruel. I mentioned to you: sixty thousand people a year die because they don’t get to a doctor when they should. Sixty thousand people! And here’s another statistic that I’ll throw out, which is never talked about: it’s not only that our life expectancy is lower than virtually every other wealthy country, it’s that if you are working-class, you’re going to live five to ten years shorter than people who are wealthy. So if you’re a working-class person in this country, the stress that you live under, the economic duress that you live under, the lack of health care that you’re receiving — five to ten years shorter life than people who are rich. All of that is unacceptable. It’s an outrage, and the fact that we don’t even talk about that stuff is even more of an outrage. Killing people is not the way we’re going to reform our health care system. That is abhorrent and immoral. The way we’re going to reform our health care system is having people come together and understanding that it is the right of every American to be able to walk into a doctor’s office when they need to and not have to take out their wallet. Not a radical idea! It exists fifty miles away from me in Canada and exists in one form or another all over the world. I remember talking to Europeans: “Do you know what a deductible is?” They don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about. The system is so complicated and inhumane. So my answer to that question is yes, we need a political movement. Health care is an integral part of any progressive political movement."

Take Action: Tell your attorney general to investigate Amazon for discrimination against Black neighborhoods!

American abortion patients put in extreme danger by Trump and his cronies
National Network of Abortion Funds: Abortion rights are under attack by right-wing extremists across the country, and it's about to get a hundred times worse under President Trump and Republican control of the government. That's why Dose of Democracy is working overtime to help raise money for the National Network of Abortion Funds and make sure they have the resources they need to provide care to as many patients as possible before it's too late. Will you make a donation to help those on the front lines of the war for reproductive rights?

Death feels imminent for 96% of children in Gaza, study finds
Julian Borgor, The Guardian: A new study of children living through the war in Gaza has found that 96% of them feel that their death is imminent and almost half want to die as a result of the trauma they have been through. A needs assessment, carried out by a Gaza-based NGO sponsored by the War Child Alliance charity, also found that 92% of the children in the survey were 'not accepting of reality', 79% suffer from nightmares and 73% exhibit symptoms of aggression.'This report lays bare that Gaza is one of the most horrifying places in the world to be a child,” Helen Pattinson, chief executive of War Child UK, said. 'Alongside the levelling of hospitals, schools and homes, a trail of psychological destruction has caused wounds unseen but no less destructive on children who hold no responsibility for this war.' The sense of being doomed has become pervasive. Almost all the children (96%) felt their death was imminent, and 49% actually wished to die, a feeling that was much more prevalent among boys (72%) than girls (26%). The estimated death toll in Gaza is more than 44,000 and a recent assessment by the UN Human Rights Office found that 44% of the fatalities it was able to verify were children.

Take Action: End Elon Musk's lucrative defense contracts!

Health insurers gave $120 billion to shareholders while denying your claim
Veronica Riccobene, The Lever: "As rising health care costs and inadequate insurance coverage leave one in three Americans saddled with medical debt, the nation’s top health insurers have dumped billions into enriching their executives and top shareholders through lucrative stock buybacks. All in all, the country’s largest health insurers have invested over $120 billion into repurchasing their own shares since the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. These include UnitedHealth Group; Cigna; Elevance Health, the parent company of Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield; and CVS Health, which acquired Aetna in 2018. Forty-four percent of buyback expenditures came from UnitedHealth Group, which covers more Americans than any other private health insurer. UnitedHealth has increased its annual share repurchasing program by 217 percent since 2010, dumping a whopping $54 billion into buybacks during that time.These companies, along with Kaiser Permanente, a nonprofit health care organization, control over half of the commercial market share of the U.S. health insurance industry. Since 2010, they’ve raked in a combined $9 trillion in revenue, netting more than $371 billion in profits. Meanwhile, one in four Americans say they’ve avoided seeking health care in the past year because of the cost. Half of all U.S. adults say they’d be unable to afford an unexpected $500 medical expense, and medical bills account for 40 percent of U.S. bankruptcies. Major insurers have abandoned patients for shareholder enrichment, according to former health insurance executive-turned-whistleblower Wendell Potter. '[Health insurers] corrupted the concept of managed care and turned it into something that has been really more of managing cost, but also depriving people of the care that they need,' said Potter. Insurers 'have figured out how to extract so much money out of what we spend as a nation on health care to reward their shareholders. There’s no other country in the world that has a system like this that enables middlemen to siphon off so much money from middle-class and working-class folks that need health care,' he added."

Take Action: End the electoral college!

Hospitals gave patients meds during childbirth, then reported them for positive drug tests
Shoshana Walter, The Marshall Project: Amairani Salinas was 32 weeks pregnant with her fourth child in 2023 when doctors at a Texas hospital discovered that her baby no longer had a heartbeat. As they prepped her for an emergency cesarean section, they gave her midazolam, a benzodiazepine commonly prescribed to keep patients calm. A day later, the grieving mother was cradling her stillborn daughter when a social worker stopped by her room to deliver another devastating blow: Salinas was being reported to child welfare authorities. A drug test had turned up traces of benzodiazepine — the very medication that staff had administered before wheeling her into surgery.For Victoria Villanueva, pregnant with her first child, the drug detected in her baby’s system was morphine. Villanueva had arrived at an Indiana hospital at 41 weeks to have her labor induced. To ease the pain of her contractions, doctors gave her narcotics. A day later, a social worker told the new mother: The baby’s meconium — or first bowel movement — had tested positive for opiates. Now, instead of bonding with her baby, Villanueva shook with fear that her newborn could be taken away. 'I didn’t even know how to function,' she recalled. What happened to Salinas and Villanueva are far from isolated incidents. Across the country, hospitals are dispensing medications to patients in labor, only to report them to child welfare authorities when they or their newborns test positive for those very same substances on subsequent drug tests, an investigation by The Marshall Project and Reveal has found. 'How much harm to birthing people are we willing to allow? Our patients are being harmed until we can get our act together,' said Dr. Davida Schiff."

Trump plots disastrous Day 1 attack on Biden legacy
350.org: A new POLITICO report shows that Donald Trump is planning to revive the destructive Keystone XL pipeline project as soon as he gets back into office — even though no companies are trying to build it anymore! This kind of short-sighted nihilism is exactly what we can expect from a Trump administration intent on extracting every last drop of profit out of the land, no matter how many people get hurt or how much permanent damage is done — which is why we need to start fighting back ASAP! Will you add your name to let him Trump know we won’t stand for the revival of the Keystone XL pipeline or the rest of his destructive, regressive fossil fuel agenda?