#nokings in #dc

Covering sessions daily at the Commission on the Status of Women this week, one question keeps coming up for me: How can responsible media better amplify the institutions trying to address global crises? Too often we are not meeting the moment — we are being entertained by it. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus & @DrTed...• 6h Global military expenditure just hit $2.7 trillion - in a single year. According to @UN estimates, ending world hunger by 2030 would require $93 billion annually. That means we spend almost 30 times more every year on killing each other than on making sure everyone eats.

This is Director of WHO. And that’s exactly the point I’m trying to make all day every day this week.

This Lender Said Its Loans Would Help Tennesseans. It Has Sued More Than 110,000 of Them. The Flex Loan, a type of payday loan pioneered by Advance Financial, has burdened low-income borrowers while generating huge profits for lenders. Tennessee lawmakers declined to rein in the lending bu...

The Flex Loan, a new type of payday loan pioneered by Advance Financial in Tennessee, allows residents to borrow up to $4,000 at a 279.5% interest rate.

It has burdened low-income borrowers while generating huge profits for lenders.

(Published May 2025 w/ @tennesseelookout.com)

The reason we're here is that tens of millions of people will punch a hole in a wall if they hear someone used food stamps to buy soda but they're fine if the right-wing podcaster turned fbi director uses his taxpayer funded private jet to go party whenever he feels like it bsky.app/profile/thed...

Looting hospitals and nursing homes is basically a feature of private equity’s playbook. We must get private equity out of health care.

I have a bill that will create real legal consequences when corporate executives put patients and communities at risk.

Exit polls show socialist Antonio Jose Seguro has crushed the Far Right candidate Andre Ventura in Portugal’s presidential runoff.

Louisiana Paroles Its Lowest Number of Prisoners in 20 Years Under Gov. Jeff Landry The state parole board freed 185 prisoners during Landry’s tenure, compared with 858 in the two years before he took office. Hundreds who would have been released under previous governors remain incar...

Five of Louisiana’s seven parole board members were appointed by Gov. Jeff Landry, including ex-Sheriff Steve Prator, who once said prior criminal justice reforms would release “good” inmates whom prisons depended on “to wash cars” and “cook in the kitchen.”

With @veritenews.org

One of the stories that makes me the saddest out of this ICE invasion is one out of the Minnesota Star Tribune today about ICE agents eating at a little Mexican restaurant in the small town of Willmar, Minn, —and then, when they were done, arresting some of the workers.

A reminder that the US killed 80 people in Venezuela, and it would be nice if the US media cared enough to think that the life of a grandmother in Caracas whose building is destroyed by a US bomb matters as much as the life of a person in the US.

Joint Statement- Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay and Spain on the Events in Venezuela Jan 4, 2026

1. We express our profound concern and firmly reject the military actions undertaken unilaterally in Venezuelan territory. These actions contravene fundamental principles of international law

Sick in a Hospital Town, Part 1: The Business of Care Welcome to Albany, Georgia, where one hospital dominates the political and economic landscape. The story of Phoebe Putney Memorial is the story of American health care.

The U.S. is blessed with one of the most scientifically and technologically advanced health care systems in the world.

And yet, when it comes to health outcomes among the world’s wealthiest countries, the U.S. ranks last.

Time person of the year cover for 2025

I guess it's fitting that it's a reimagined, worse version of someone else's artwork

These Health Centers Are Supposed to Make Care Affordable. One Has Sued Patients for as Little as $59 in Unpaid Bills. Federally funded community health centers receive grants in exchange for serving patients regardless of their ability to pay. But ProPublica found at least five across the country garnishing patients’...

Community health centers were created to be medical safety nets for people who struggle to afford primary care.

But we found that several are suing patients and garnishing their paychecks – which experts say contradicts their mission.

www.propublica.org/article/fede...

Medicare’s new AI experiment sparks alarm among doctors, lawmakers • Stateline A Medicare pilot program will allow private companies to use artificial intelligence to review older Americans’ requests for certain medical care — and will reward the companies when they deny it.

"A Medicare pilot program will allow private companies to use artificial intelligence to review older Americans’ requests for certain medical care — and will reward the companies when they deny it." stateline.org/2025/12/04/m...

Calvin Duncan wins Orleans clerk of court race - Verite News New Orleans Duncan, a political newcomer and former prisoner, defeated incumbent Darren Lombard by a wide margin in Saturday's runoff.

a big runoff last night, in New Orleans:

Calvin Duncan was exonerated after spending *28 years* in prison; he tried to get his own case records from the New Orleans city clerk—but the office dragged its feet.

So Duncan ran to become city clerk himself, and yesterday ousted the incumbent.

For I was hungry and you argued all the way up to the Supreme Court that poor people don’t deserve to eat.

More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days. The government does not track how often immigration agents grab citizens. So ProPublica did. Our tally — almost certainly incomplete — includes people who were held for days without a lawyer. And near...

NEW: The government does not track how often immigration agents grab citizens. So ProPublica did.

We found more than 170 such incidents since the start of the second Trump administration. Our tally — almost certainly incomplete — includes nearly 20 children, two of whom have cancer.

Starving children screaming for food as US aid cuts unleash devastation and death across Myanmar U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly said “no one has died" because of his government’s decision to gut its foreign aid program.

Horrific reporting from the AP on the Myanmar families watching their kids starve to death from Trump and Musk’s aid cuts apnews.com/article/myan...

No one would be confused about what is happening here if they saw it in another country.

The We Are All DC march to protest against Trump admin’s takeover of DC is currently heading toward the White House:

Via @benjalvarez1.bsky.social

We can end the scandal of child poverty if we want to Too often the very young are made to carry the consequences of decisions they haven’t made

We can end the scandal of child poverty if we want to on.ft.com/4mtLcqZ | opinion

After more than 5 months of darkness, tonight's win is a major victory for people powered candidates, democracy, and a new vision for the Democratic Party led by a new generation.

There is one place, however, where Musk, with the help of his minions, achieved his goals. He did indeed shred U.S.A.I.D. Though a rump operation is now operating inside the State Department, the administration says that it has terminated more than 80 percent of U.S.A.I.D. grants. Brooke Nichols, an associate professor of global health at Boston University, has estimated that these cuts have already resulted in about 300,000 deaths, most of them of children, and will most likely lead to significantly more by the end of the year. That is what Musk’s foray into politics accomplished.

Musk should be asked about this in every interview he does now and forever. To ignore it is a dereliction of duty.

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/o...

It is, as we have noted, all too possible to see in this case an incipient crisis, but it may present an opportunity as well. We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos. This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time. In sum, and for the reasons foregoing, we deny the motion for the stay pending appeal and the writ of mandamus in this case. It is so ordered. For the Court /s/ Nwamaka Anowi, Clerk

Whew, this conclusion from the Fourth Circuit:

"We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos."

Dean Chemerinsky and other #lawschool deans "speak as legal educators, responsible for training the next generation of lawyers, in condemning any government efforts to punish lawyers or their firms based on the identity of their clients or for their zealous lawful and ethical advocacy."

Residents suffer as county hospitals divert $2.6 billion from poorly staffed nursing homes New data obtained by IndyStar through a public records lawsuit reveals the fullest picture yet of Indiana's secretive nursing home Medicaid scheme

Indiana has worst ranked nursing homes, diverts billions from nursing home care
"Hatcher, a law professor at Univ. of Baltimore.. 'it shows a diversion of Medicaid funds'.. away from.. nursing home residents who desperately need it. "They are being used, not served."
www.indystar.com/story/news/i...

Republicans say Medicaid is safe. But budget math says otherwise : Consider This from NPR House Republicans have to get their spending bill passed by Friday to avoid a government shutdown. They can likely afford to lose just one vote. And that's the easy part. Then they'll have to get work...

If you have 13 minutes, well worth listening to @edwincpark.bsky.social explain how it's impossible to cut $880 billion in federal spending without cutting Medicaid and walk through how any proposals to make these federal cuts would strip millions of people of coverage. www.npr.org/transcripts/...