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Biden unveils executive order to protect abortion access

President Biden signed an executive order Friday aimed at preserving some access to abortion services, but again acknowledged Congress has ultimate control over the issue right now.

“If you want to change the circumstance for women, and even little girls in this country, please go out and vote,” Biden said.

The executive order builds off some of the administration’s previously announced efforts, and is limited in scope. It provides some incremental measures to protect access to emergency medical care for women who will seek abortions in states that ban it.

Facing mounting pressure from Democrats and abortion rights advocates to be more forceful, Biden said voting in the mid-term elections is the fastest way to ensure abortion rights are enshrined into law.    

“Let me be clear. While I wish it had not come to this, this is the fastest route available,” Biden said. “The fastest way to restore Roe is to pass a national law codifying Roe, which I will sign immediately upon its passage on my desk.”

Biden predicted women will turn out to vote in record numbers. 

“I don’t think the Court — or for that matter the Republicans who for decades have pushed their extreme agenda — have a clue about the power of American women. But they’re about to find out,” Biden said.

Source: TEST FEED1

West Virginia vs. EPA: A political tragedy disguised as a legal farce

In a political act poorly disguised as a legal opinion, the ultra-conservatives on the Supreme Court recently rules that government agencies like Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have grown too big and place too many restrictions on business. And they are just getting started exercising their usurped political power to tame the administrative state. Today, there are taking away one strategy EPA previously proposed to regulate climate; tomorrow they could restrict EPA’s ability to ensure clean water and clean air.

Meanwhile, the demand for strong climate governance is coming from the majority of U.S. citizens who are already suffering from extreme weather events — including floods, fires, droughts and heat waves — that would not be possible absent climate change. The demand for climate governance is not going away. It will continue to grow, and it will find other avenues to flow through, including at the state and local level.

Those of us dedicated to protecting the climate will continue to fight the climate fight. We will continue to gain ground. But we have to accept that the ultra-conservative majority on the Supreme Court are not going to help.

While conservatives think they’ve got a victory from this court, they should beware. Because when respect for law is lost and the rule of law eroded, all of civilization suffers. Law is the architecture for our society, and our civilization: losing it will come back to bite the conservatives, too. It also will hurt the business community, where more and more leaders and their employees, from large retailers to sustainability technology companies, know that their survival depends on fast, aggressive action this decade to protect the climate.

Those fighting to protect the climate will find other ways to succeed. As the great songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen put it, “There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

Durwood Zaelke is president of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD) in Washington, D.C. and Paris, as well as adjunct professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is co-author of “Cut Super Climate Pollutants Now!: The Ozone Treaty’s Urgent Lessons for Speeding Up Climate Action” (2021) and co-author of “International Environmental Law & Policy” (6th ed., with Hunter & Salzman). He has taught at various law schools, including Yale, Duke and American University, as well as in graduate programs at Johns Hopkins and University of California, Santa Barbara.

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Biden: Supreme Court Roe decision 'an exercise in raw political power'

President Biden on Friday took aim at the Supreme Court for its decision to strike down Roe v. Wade two weeks ago as he signed an executive order to strengthen abortion access, criticizing the court as “out of control” and taking away the rights of women.

“This was not a decision driven by the Constitution. This was not a decision driven by history,” Biden said in remarks at the White House. “What we’re witnessing wasn’t a constitutional judgment. It was an exercise in raw political power.”

“The court now practically dares the women of America to go to the ballot box and restore the very rights they’ve just taken away,” Biden added.

Biden described the Supreme Court as “out of control” and working with “extremist elements of the Republican Party” as he derided the decision two weeks ago to eliminate the nearly 50-year-old constitutional right to abortion and hand states authority to drastically limit or ban the procedure.

The president argued the Supreme Court had essentially issued a challenge to the American public to go vote in November’s election for lawmakers who would support codifying the protections of Roe v. Wade into national law.

Biden’s comments marked some of his sharpest criticism of the Supreme Court in the two weeks since the decision from the conservative majority court. And it came as some members of the Democratic Party had been critical that Biden had not been fiery enough in his response to the rolling back of women’s rights.

The president on Friday signed an executive order aimed at strengthening access to contraceptives and abortion medication, as well as bolstering privacy protections around reproductive health care.

Source: TEST FEED1

South Asian countries are tying their fortunes to China’s infrastructure schemes — and failing

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has acknowledged that Sri Lanka is negotiating a bailout with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) “as a bankrupt country.”

Sri Lanka is not the only South Asian country facing an economic crisis that borrowed heavily from China for infrastructure projects, which the Chinese have described as part of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Nepal, Maldives and Pakistan are also going through economic convulsions.

Ironically, China, which over the years was quick to offer high-interest loans for infrastructure projects in Sri Lanka, has been quiet during its current crisis. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa – who along with his brother, former President and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, was responsible for  Sri Lanka’s heavy borrowing from China – recently lamented that South Asian countries in financial trouble are not getting the same attention from Beijing as before.

Rajapaksa was reported as saying that Sri Lanka was unable to tap a $1.5 billion credit line from Beijing and his request to Chinese President Xi Jinping for a $1 billion loan to buy essential goods had gone unanswered. Sri Lanka’s budget deficit is now 13 percent of its GDP and there is less than $2 billion in foreign exchange reserves.

For years, China has planned to encircle India and force the United States out of South Asia by bribing elites and offering their countries massive loans for grandiose infrastructure projects. China now faces the prospect of diminished influence in a region where a few years ago its footprint seemed to be growing.

Chinese officials are trying to ride out the political fallout of the economic debacle by stepping up anti-U.S. rhetoric. Sri Lanka’s crisis, and that of other countries around it, demonstrates that China’s lending policies are based less on economic viability and more on giving China strategic advantage. Sri Lanka – once the model for countries like Singapore – has defaulted on multi-million-dollar debt interest payments and faces fuel and food shortages. The Sri Lankan rupee is currently the worst performing currency globally.

The Chinese are, meanwhile, sitting in the Indian Ocean port of Hambantota, which they took over in 2017 on lease as part of repayment of their loan to Sri Lanka. With little trade flowing through Hambantota, China’s interest in the port can only be strategic, with future military use as a possibility.

This is a tragic fall for a country that has ranked the highest in its region in human development indices and, until recently, had a higher GDP per capita ($3,850) than India, Pakistan or Bangladesh. Even in 2019, Sri Lanka had $7.5 billion in foreign exchange reserves. But expensive and unproductive infrastructure projects have become a major factor in the country’s economic decline.

Other countries in South Asia have also been saddled with Chinese-funded white elephants — projects whose cost, particularly maintenance, is disproportionately higher than their economic return. Chinese lending caused a severe economic crisis two years ago in the Maldives. Nepal, which also borrowed from China for infrastructure projects, faces balance of payments challenges.

Pakistan, China’s closest friend in South Asia, is negotiating with the IMF to avert defaulting on its financial obligations. The China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a set of infrastructure projects linking the two countries, was once trumpeted as a game changer for Pakistan. It now seems nothing more than a Chinese effort to find a foothold on the coast of the Arabian Sea and close to the oil-producing Gulf states.

China is Pakistan’s single largest creditor. Pakistan’s external debt stands at $131 billion, of which $ 41 billion is owed to multilateral creditors, and almost $19 billion to China. Instead of bolstering Pakistan’s economy, the heavy borrowing from China and economic mismanagement have resulted in double digit inflation and erosion in the value of the Pakistani rupee. During the latest crisis, China has offered nuclear-armed Pakistan further loans, but that would only further draw the country into China’s “debt trap.”

The economic problems in both Sri Lanka and Pakistan are partly structural. Elites in both countries pay little in taxes, while supporting large military budgets. Endless war against the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka, and against India and Afghanistan in Pakistan’s case, is hardly conducive to investment.

The COVID-19 pandemic and higher oil prices have also taken a toll on all South Asian economies. But none of these factors should minimize the impact of some governments’ decision to tie their fortunes to China’s infrastructure schemes. Unlike western and multilateral donors, who are sometimes willing to convert loans into grants, China reluctantly agrees to defer, but never cancel a due payment.

Once Sri Lanka and Pakistan get through their current challenges, most likely with the IMF’s support, they would do well to scale back their reliance on China as a partner. Borrowing from China has proved a poor substitute for structural economic reforms recommended by western governments and institutions, which South Asian elites often tend to resent.

Husain Haqqani is director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute. He served as Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S. from 2008 to 2011. Aparna Pande is director of Washington based Hudson Institute’s Initiative on the Future of India and South Asia.

Source: TEST FEED1

More US children becoming obese at younger ages

Increasing obesity rates have been well-documented among U.S. adults. But new research published in Pediatrics details to what extent the epidemic is impacting American children. 

According to data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Studies, more American children are becoming obese and being diagnosed earlier, with more severe diagnoses recorded than in previous years. The United States also has the highest prevalence of childhood obesity in the world. 

Researchers assessed trends among kindergarteners starting school in 1998 compared to 2010. Obesity was defined as having a body mass index above the 95th percentile, and definitions were tailored to different age groups. Children were followed throughout fifth grade until 2004 and 2016, respectively. Because the data are nationally representative, findings can be generalized to the wider pediatric population. 

Despite numerous public health campaigns designed to improve healthy eating and address environmental issues, children in the later cohort experienced higher rates of obesity at younger ages, while non-Hispanic Black children had a 29 percent higher incidence of obesity by fifth grade compared with 12 years prior.

Analyses also showed that throughout this window, the risk of underserved and economically disadvantaged children developing obesity rose by 15 percent. 

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Currently, around 40 percent of high school students can be classified as having had obesity or being overweight in their primary school years. 

Severe obesity was defined as having a body mass index of greater than or equal to 120 percent of the 95th percentile. In 2010, 3.9 percent of children entered kindergarten with severe obesity compared with 2.9 percent seen in 1998. 

“These worrying data indicate that the childhood obesity epidemic in the United States continues to grow and get more serious. Our knowledge about effective interventions to fight this also seems limited,” said study author K.M. Venkat Narayan in a statement. 

“We urgently need an aggressive national strategy for interdisciplinary research and public health to stem the tide of childhood obesity and its consequences in the US and worldwide.”

Childhood obesity can lead to a host of mental and physical health problems, including diabetes and cardiovascular disease. 

Authors stress the data underscore the need for more comprehensive programs aimed at reducing obesity in children. 

“For decades, we have seen the number of children with obesity increasing, in spite of extensive efforts from many parents and policy makers to improve children’s nutrition, physical activity and living environments,” said co-author Solveig A. Cunningham.

“Have these efforts worked? Is obesity finally receding?” Cunningham added. “Our findings indicate that no, obesity must continue to be a public health priority.” 

Source: TEST FEED1

‘Peekaboo prosecution' turns 20

Imagine a dystopian world where Congress empowers a private corporation to secretly investigate and punish members of a particular profession — say, auditors. Think of a private version of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), but with evergreen funding that never requires an appropriation from Congress and with lavishly compensated personnel who are exempt from laws designed to keep governmental regulators in check.

Imagine further that this private regulator’s investigative, prosecutorial and adjudicative activity is secretly performed by staff employees with no meaningful supervision by any government official appointed by the president.

Finally, imagine being secretly prosecuted by these nongovernmental enforcers. Your case is then secretly decided by a “hearing officer” who is a fellow company employee of the prosecutors. There is no jury and not even – as self-regulators like the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) routinely provide – a multi-member hearing panel that includes one or two of your industry peers.

Although your accusers likely spent several years amassing their case against you, you get only six months to prepare your defense, and you can’t take depositions or obtain other kinds of pre-hearing discovery that are routinely available in court proceedings and even SEC administrative proceedings.

You’re also denied access to prior decisions where others successfully defended themselves (one of the most critical defense tools since time immemorial), although your prosecutors and the hearing officer have unrestricted access to those same secret precedents.

If you lose, your appeal is decided by the executive officers of the corporation — the same ones who hand-picked the prosecutors and hearing officer and who launched the charges against you in the first place based on secret communications with the prosecutors. And as best you can tell from public sources, no previous appeal has ever succeeded, although many provoked the officers to impose harsher penalties than the hearing officer did. 

Believe it or not, this modern version of the Star Chamber already exists in the form of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) — often derided as “peekaboo” due to its acronym and infamous secrecy. Congress created the PCAOB 20 years ago this month as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, and it has been controversial ever since. 

The board’s first chairman resigned within a month of his appointment after reports that the SEC was investigating a public company for which he had served as audit committee chairman. The Supreme Court ruled the entire board unconstitutional for unrelated reasons in 2010, but regrettably spared it from early demise by redlining Sarbanes-Oxley to allow the SEC to remove the board’s executive officers. The result? Nearly wholesale turnover of board leadership after each of the last two changes in political administrations. 

Scandal erupted again in 2018 when rogue PCAOB staffers leaked confidential board inspection plans to a former colleague then working for a prominent audit firm. More recently, liberal lawmakers have criticized the board as weak and ineffective, while conservative lawmakers have introduced legislation to fold it into the SEC to ensure tighter supervision and accountability. 

Originally intended to prevent market-rocking accounting scandals like Enron and WorldCom, the PCAOB has instead targeted most of its enforcement firepower at small audit firms with limited resources to fight back — often firms owned by foreigners or ethnic minorities. Many targeted firms audit only a few tiny public companies that typical retail investors have never even heard of, much less invested in. Few board investigations expose material accounting misstatements or fraud, and fewer still involve investor losses.

Yet these investigations can drag on for years in secrecy. Targeted auditors are compelled to search for and turn over reams of private documents under threat of debarment, monetary penalties and potential criminal prosecution for “noncooperation.” They are also routinely interrogated under oath for multiple days on end. The process is so burdensome and expensive for small auditors that most eventually settle or default rather than resist, and many simply close up shop altogether.

If all this weren’t bad enough, the PCAOB’s home-court adjudication system makes a mockery of due process for the few who have the resources and fortitude to defend themselves. Auditors who endure the board’s years-long gauntlet can eventually appeal to the SEC and later to a federal court, but very few can afford the odyssey. In the board’s first 20 years, fewer than 10 have made it to the SEC and only two all the way to federal court. Nearly all of the hundreds of other board enforcement targets have capitulated or defaulted at some point, never having their cases decided by even a hearing officer, much less the SEC or a court.

It’s no wonder that then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh, while serving on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, described the PCAOB as an “unprecedented extra-constitutional stew.” Congress should rewrite this unsavory recipe before the courts inevitably dump the entire crock.

Russell G. Ryan, a former SEC and FINRA enforcement attorney, is Senior Litigation Counsel with the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which is currently defending clients in nonpublic PCAOB enforcement proceedings.

Source: TEST FEED1

No more declarations — we need real action on road safety

Last week the United Nations convened its High-Level Meeting of the General Assembly on Global Road Safety — which has been called the largest political gathering of its kind on road safety. And yet, road traffic injuries (RTIs) are now the eighth leading cause of death worldwide, amounting to 1.35 million deaths and 50 million injuries each year.

While 90 percent of the fatalities on roads occur in low- and middle-income countries, nations like the United States are by no means immune. Once a leader in road safety, traffic-related deaths in the U.S. have recently reached a 16-year high. Between 2020 and 2021, traffic fatalities increased 11 percent overall — 13 percent for pedestrians and 15 percent for interstate travel. This trend has compelled Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to rightfully characterize the problem as a national crisis.

In the midst of this urgent global epidemic, the U.N. has nobly declared a second Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030 to reach its Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of a 50 percent reduction in road traffic injuries and deaths worldwide.

Yet, we’ve been down this road before.

As the name implies, there was a first Decade of Action from 2011-2020. That decade was unable to decrease the number of road traffic injuries globally, which is why we now find ourselves renewing efforts to solve this problem. But declaring action is not enough this time; taking action is what is needed now.

What’s important to understand about this crisis is that nearly all of these traffic-related injuries and deaths are preventable and predictable. But in order to prevent them, the nations of the world must prioritize road safety and implement evidence-based, systematic-level interventions able to save hundreds of thousands of lives.

The good news is we already know a great deal about what works. In a series of papers just published in The Lancet, together with colleagues, we examined four risk factors — lack of helmet use, lack of seatbelt use, speeding and drunk driving — that dramatically increase road fatalities. (There are several risk factors that increase fatalities, but our paper focused on four.) We found that if we implemented road safety interventions around these four key risks, up to 540,000 lives could be saved globally. We also showed that improving emergency response and trauma care in low- and middle-income countries could save approximately 200,000 lives each year.

Though we have a growing body of evidence, fatalities continue to rise in low-income countries while progress on road safety has slowed in higher-income countries like the U.S. Why? Many countries and cultures remain in thrall to the automobile. As public health practitioners, we study how industry activities harm public health, what we call commercial determinants of health. Similar to the role Big Tobacco and Big Sugar played in their respective health crises, the auto (and alcohol) industry play a role in this public health crisis.

A car-centric environment affects everything from our infrastructure choices and automobile design to how we perceive so-called road traffic “accidents.” (Yes, we must confront and rethink even the language we use to describe car crashes. Calling something an “accident” connotes a blameless world that fails to account for predictable risks and generations of car-centric policy decisions and design.)

Like the Vision Zero campaign, which seeks to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries, we need a safety-first mentality that prioritizes protecting people both inside and outside of cars. Pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists make up more than half of crash victims globally. In the U.S., Black Americans die at more than four times the rate of white Americans while cycling, and more than two times the rate while walking. Installing better street lighting, bike lanes, sidewalks and crosswalks in all communities, while truly enforcing lower speed limits and stiffer penalties for driving under the influence, would significantly improve road safety.

We must also rethink safety for people inside their automobiles. New and advanced safety technology features — from adaptive headlights and blind spot detection to cameras — should be required rather than optional. In fact, the Biden administration has made steps in the right direction on infrastructure and car safety in its National Roadway Safety Strategy but there is much work to be done.

Finally, continuous monitoring and evaluation of road safety measures are crucial to maintaining a safety-first approach. In this instance, what we don’t know truly can hurt us.

It is long past time to rethink how we’re trying to solve this problem and to learn from past failures. We believe that we can make the next 10 years safer. It will take meaningful political and financial commitments from each country to make that happen. But we have to act differently in this next decade.

Adnan A. Hyder is the director of the Center on Commercial Determinants of Health (CCDH) and a professor of global health at the George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health. Nino Paichadze is the associate director of the CCDH and an assistant research professor of global health at GW’s Milken Institute School of Public Health.

Source: TEST FEED1

Why Shinzo Abe was such a towering figure in Japan

Shinzo Abe was a towering figure in Japan who as the country’s longest-serving prime minister sought to reestablish this country’s power on the global economic and foreign policy stage.

Abe, who was assassinated on Friday while speaking at a political campaign event for the Liberal Democratic Party in the city of Nara in western Japan, served as Japan’s prime minister from 2012 to 2020.

Global leaders reacted to his killing in horror, with President Biden saying he was “stunned, outraged, and deeply saddened” by the news.

“This is a tragedy for Japan and for all who knew him,” Biden said. “He was a champion of the Alliance between our nations and the friendship between our people.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) also said he was horrified by the assassination, describing Abe as “a remarkable global leader and stalwart friend of the United States.”

Police are holding a 41-year-old man in custody in connection with the killing, according to Japanese broadcaster NHK. Police told NHK that the man was dissatisfied with the former prime minister and intended to kill him, though a specific motive for the killing remains unclear.

Abe was a controversial figure in Japan; during his career, he railed against Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, which enshrines pacifism into Japanese law and says the country has to forever renounce the use of force as a means to settle international disputes.

Abe “sought to shift the center of gravity in Japanese political culture away from the pacifism that characterized most of the early to mid post-war period to a place that was, in his view, more normal,” Richard Samuels, a political scientist and Japanologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in an interview, speaking from Berlin.

He was also a political blueblood in Japan whose grandfather also held the position of prime minister.

Samuels said shifting Japan away from pacifism was important to both Abe and his grandfather, who he noted was also the subject of an assassination attempt in July 1960.

In practice, Japan does have a strong military enabled by legal workarounds, but Article 9 was a sticking point for Abe, who believed it had been imposed upon Japan by the United States during the occupation of the country after World War II.

“He was very eager, determined to get a change in that, to achieve normalcy, so that Japan would indeed be able to say it has a military. That was important to him,” Samuels said.

Abe’s conservative political stances earned him a reputation as an economic reformer following the decline of the Japanese economy in the 1990s and 2000s and as a champion of Japan seeking to bolster its power on the world stage.

Abe’s namesake economic policy, known as “Abenomics,” also sought to restore Japanese power following two “lost decades” of recession after Japan rose to be an economic powerhouse in the 1980s.

The three-pronged approach involved monetary easing, liberal use of fiscal stimulus to combat deflation in the economy and structural reforms to businesses that opened up the labor market to women and immigrants in order to compensate for a rapidly aging workforce.

Analysts say Abenomics achieved mixed results.

Abe’s time as prime minister saw the rise of China both as a regional economic power in East Asia and as a global superpower with increased military ambitions.

“Abe understood the limitations of Japanese power and that Japan was not on its own going to be able to balance Chinese power. He understood that, and that’s why the alliance [with the United States] was so important to him,” Samuels said.

“Abe’s last major foray into security policy was a statement he made right after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which was that Japan should have a conversation about sharing nuclear weapons with the United States like Germany does,” Samuels added.

Source: TEST FEED1

DoorDash expands political footprint with new PAC

San Francisco-based food delivery company DoorDash formed a political action committee on Thursday, allowing it to directly donate to political campaigns and parties.

DoorDash’s new PAC, dubbed DashPAC, is the latest move by the company to grow its political footprint in Washington. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it began growing its team of lobbyists, according to Politico.

“We’re looking forward to supporting those who share our values and mission of growing and empowering local economies,” a DoorDash spokesperson wrote in an email to The Hill.

It’s competitors such as Uber and Grubhub have yet to make such an aggressive move into the national political arena. Uber established a California political committee last year.

The move comes amid a growing push to redefine gig contractors as employees, which could afford them benefits and other protections. In March, DoorDash formed a trade association with other companies to push back on Democrats’ efforts to redefine gig workers.

President Biden has pushed the PRO Act, a pro-labor bill in the House that would reclassify some contractors as employees and allow them to unionize. As recently as last month at the AFL-CIO Convention in Philadelphia, he doubled down on Congress to pass the stalled bill.

In 2020, the delivery company poured over $50 million into a campaign backing a ballot proposal in California to define app-based drivers as independent contractors in the face of a state law similar to the PRO Act, according to the Los Angeles Times. In August 2021, a California court struck parts of the proposition down as unconstitutional.

In another blow to food delivery companies, the Massachusetts Supreme Court struck down a similar ballot initiative in June. 

DoorDash also hired a prominent antitrust lobbyist in February, Politico reported.

Source: TEST FEED1