Catch-up on Good News to Help People

The first cargo ship has used the newly-opened deep-water channel since the collapse of Francis Scott Key Bridge four weeks ago.

For seven years, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) tried to pass legislation sanctioning the entire fentanyl supply chain from Chinese chemical suppliers to the Mexican cartels trafficking the drugs into the U.S. He finally succeeded: his bill was included in the $95 billion package largely for federal aid that became law last week. The law declares fentanyl trafficking a national emergency. Brown’s opponent in November, Bernie Moreno, would have voted to provide aid to Israel but not the rest of the package.

An Arizona judge preserved the state’s signature matching and drop box procedures from right-wing challengers who falsely claimed that county recorders were not properly verifying signatures on early mail-in ballot envelopes and not monitoring drop boxes. Almost 90 percent of ballots were cast through the mail and drop boxes in 2020. Arizona has eight anti-voting lawsuits, seven of them challenging the state’s elections procedures manual.

Almost 18 months ago, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis flew 49 undocumented immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard without any warning. Some of those migrants are now available for visas for victims of crimes, able to legally work in the U.S. with temporary protections from deportation until their visas become available.

Three months after a New York jury ruled NRA executives guilty of illegally taking money for their own personal use, Washington, D.C. settled with its NRA for violating nonprofit law in taking money from its charitable foundation for its shrinking finances. Since 2013, NRA’s membership dues dropped by over half, 20 percent going to outside lawyers. The organization has only the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act to give its legal protection, buy the DOJ finalized rules closing loopholes permitting people sell firearms online, at gun shows, and at other information venues without background checks on purchasers.

The far-right blog Gateway Pundit, purveyor of conspiracy theories, filed for bankruptcy after being sued for its coverage of the 2020 election. One of the lawsuits comes from two George election workers who won a defamation case against Rudy Giuliani who accused them of election fraud.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted 3-2 to reinstate “net neutrality” regulations for the internet which former Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) removed. Service providers will no longer be able to  throttle or block some websites. The FCC needs a definition for the current internet. Unable to speed up or slow down content on the consumer internet, broadband providers may run “fast lanes” for unspecified specialized services. Industry groups will find a loophole to sell premium tiers of service. Social media platforms such as X throttle traffic to rivals’ websites, a violation for internet service providers but outside the FCC purview.

The Building Trades Union (NABTU) representing over 3 million workers in the U.S. and Canada endorsed Biden for president, calling DDT a lackey for “his billionaire buddies.” The union president said the union believed DDT in 2016 “that he would have a worker-centered agenda and deliver on long-stalled issues such as infrastructure investment.” In advertising, the union condemns DDT as a dangerous egomaniac.

For weeks, Biden has methodically been implementing policies to benefit people in the U.S., tackling the following issues. He is working to complete these regulations because the 1996 Congressional Review Act allows Congress to overturn federal agency rules finalized after late May in a streamlined process if DDT were elected. CRA resolutions can pass with a simple majority in the Senate instead of being subject to the filibuster, prohibits added amendments, and caps debate at ten hours. The law covers only rules submitted to Congress within 60 legislative days of a congressional adjournment, days when Congress is in session, a date expected to be May 22. After that date, rules must wait for a year before being submitted.

The CRA was used only once until DDT used it to overturned 16 Obama administration rules, blocking accurate records of workplace injuries, expansion of heathcare for low-income women, deterrence of corruption among resource extraction companies, etc. Biden overturned only three DDT regulations, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) overturned protection of waterways in the Appalachian Mountains from harmful mining practices, receiving $335,000 from the mining industry between 2013 and 2018. New rules disapproved under CRA not only can’t take effect but also “may not be reissued in substantially the same form” unless granted permission from Congress, known as “salt the earth.”

Climate:

Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon refused to apply for any Climate Pollution Reduction Grants (CPRG) to reduce pollution and greenhouse gases., leaving most communities without assistance to upgrade infrastructure, reduce pollution, and reduce costs for local governments. Applying for almost $5 billion, however, two cities including Cheyenne and the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes can qualify on their own for these grants under the Inflation Reduction Act.

A suite of rules cuts or captures hazardous, planet-warming pollution generated by power plants by 90 percent by 2032 in new natural gas plants, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 75 percent compared to its peak in 2005. Other rules deal with neurotoxin mercury emitted from smokestacks and require safer disposal of toxic wastewater and coal ash, byproducts of making electricity. The West Virginia AG said he will fight the rules in court, less restrictive than Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. Plants could burn less-polluting fuels including hydrogen or retire fossil fuel plants, shifting to less expensive and cleaner sources of energy like wind and solar. Power plants are the second biggest source of planet-heating greenhouse gasses behind transportation.

(Map: Existing 148 and 382 retired coal plants. Grey – proposed/in progress/completed retirement; yellow – partially proposed/retired; red – no retirement plans. Size reflects megawatts.)  

An energy saving rule in new houses obtaining federal loans can save people $2 billion on utility bills in 140,000 new homes each year.

Healthcare:

New rules will require the hiring of thousands of nurses and aides in severely understaffed nursing homes and provide oversight for the approximately 15,000 homes in the U.S. Regulations will need additional payrolls for 4 in 5 homes. Despite a 27 percent increase in wages since 2020, homes still struggle to compete against better-paying work for nurses at hospitals. Rural facilities have the longest time, five years, to meet the staffing mandates.  

Another rule “protects consumers from junk health insurance” and avoids scams from low-quality coverage forcing them to pay thousands of dollars in medical bills or deny life-saving care.

Patients have a right to privacy for their medical information, even if they travel to another state for an abortion, IVF, birth control, or other reproductive healthcare, according to the new HIPAA Privacy Rule to Support Reproductive Health Care Privacy. It prohibits the disclosure of this health information and strengthens privacy for patients, their families, and their doctors if the healthcare is legal in the state where it is received.

The Campaign for Accountability has asked attorneys general in five states to investigate privacy practices of crisis pregnancy centers who could be misusing private health information for anti-abortion goals. The goal of these over 2,500 centers is to persuade women to not have abortions. Federal health data privacy laws do not apply to these centers because the service is free. The new rules don’t apply to these facilities.

Fees:

To rid people of junk fees, the Biden administration has a set of rules, one of them requiring airline to provide automatic cash refunds to passengers when owed and protect consumers from surprise airline fees.

Agencies such as the FTC and FCC are proposing rules against junk fees.

Employment/Retirement:

President Obama expanded overtime pay for millions, but DDT overturned that policy. Benefitting 4 million salaried workers, Biden’s administration now requires overtime for employees with a salary under $1,128 per week, about $58,600 a year, when they work over 40 hours in a week. Obama’s administration doubled the threshold for overtime pay from $23,660 to $47,476 and added cost-of-living increases. That rule didn’t go into effect because 21 GOP-controlled states sued the administration. Texas ruled against it, and DDT dropped the threshold to $35,000 and scrapped cost-of-living increases.

The Defense and State departments signed an agreement permitting spouses of military service members to work remotely while they are overseas.

The Federal Trade Commission’s new rule to ban most noncompete clauses, contracts restricting former employees ability to work for or start a competing business, is already attacked in court by the Chamber of Commerce. About 30 million U.S. workers are subject to these agreements keeping their wages low or forcing them to move elsewhere. The FTC estimates that these clauses block 8,500 new startups a year; loss of bans would increase average salaries by $524 a year and lower healthcare costs by almost $200 billion over a decade. The term “noncompete,” of course, means reducing competition. Most of the Chamber’s work supports big corporations. Also suing to overturn the rule is DDT’s tax adviser, dedicated to “liberating our clients from the burden of being overtaxed.” His lead counsel is Eugene Scalia, DDT’s former Labor secretary and son of the conservative Supreme Court justice who was hired gun for business interests. The case was filed in Texas with a DDT-appointed federal judge.

Another rule protects retirement savings from financial advisers’ conflicts of interest by requiring them “to give prudent, loyal, honest advice free from overcharges.” Institutions must have “policies and procedures to manage conflicts of interest and ensure providers follow these guidelines.”

Other rules protect LGBTQ+ students, provide relief for student loans, give grants for solar projects, strengthen protection of endangered species, protect government employees if DDT is elected, guide government in artificial intelligence—probably just the tip of the iceberg.

Now conservatives and big business will attack these rights in court.