Month: October 2023

More than 75,000 workers at the nation’s largest healthcare nonprofit organization, Kaiser Permanente, went on strike Wednesday at hospitals and medical offices across five states, after negotiations failed to resolve a dispute over staffing. The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions says the work stoppage is the largest strike of healthcare workers in U.S. history.  The union coalition said that the three-day strike is a protest against Kaiser executives’ “bad faith bargaining.”

Kaiser serves nearly 13 million patients and operates 39 hospitals and more than 600 medical offices across eight states and the District of Columbia. Hospitals and medical offices in California, Colorado, Oregon, Virginia, the District of Columbia and Washington are affected by the striking workers, which include vocational nurses, emergency department technicians, radiology technicians, X-ray technicians, respiratory therapists, medical assistants, pharmacists and hundreds of other positions. Kaiser said it has contingency plans to ensure patients continue to receive care during a strike, and all hospitals and emergency departments will remain open.

Negotiations between Kaiser executives and workers are ongoing, with the unions representing Kaiser workers say they are demanding a resolution to the extreme staffing shortage, in addition to better pay and benefits. Caroline Lucas, executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, said the staffing crisis has led to unsafe working conditions and deteriorating care for patients: “We continue to have front-line health-care workers who are burnt out and stretched to the max and leaving the industry. We have folks getting injured on the job because they’re trying to do too much and see too many people and work too quickly. It’s not a sustainable situation.”

Kaiser Permanente acknowledged the staffing shortages, saying in a statement on Monday that more than 5 million people have left their healthcare jobs due to burnout. Hospitals struggle to retain staff because workers tend to leave the low pay and the high stress of the health-care field when unemployment is low, and the toll from the Covid-19 pandemic has compounded the staffing shortage, with many workers leaving the field because they felt not enough was done to protect them from both the virus and antagonism from some members of the community.

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The Biden administration announced a new round of student loan forgiveness, approving $9 billion in debt relief for 125,000 borrowers benefiting from three existing federal relief programs. The President said on Wednesday he pledges to continue to look for ways to deliver debt relief to borrowers despite opposition from Republican conservatives.

The new relief targets segments of the population, including $2.8 billion that will go to 51,000 borrowers who have made loan payments for at least 20 years. Said Biden during a briefing at the White House: “My administration will continue to use every tool at our disposal to help ease the burden of student debt so more Americans can be free to achieve their dreams. It’s good for our economy, it’s good for our country, and it’s going to change their lives.”

The debt cancellation announced Wednesday comes as millions of people with federal student loans are resuming payments on their debt this month after a three-year pause because of the coronavirus pandemic. Another $5.2 billion is being provided to 53,000 people under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program and $1.2 billion in debt will be discharged for 22,000 borrowers with permanent disabilities.

The White House said in a statement: “President Biden has long believed that college should be a ticket to the middle class, not a burden that weighs on families. Today’s announcement builds on all that the Biden-Harris Administration has done to make college more affordable and ensure that student loans aren’t a barrier to opportunity for students and families.”

The latest move comes following a Supreme Court decision in June that took tens of thousands of dollars in debt relief off the table. That plan would have forgiven up to $20,000 in individual loan debt for every borrower, but it was rejected after Republican states sued in the nation’s highest court, claiming the move would leave taxpayers responsible to come up with the money. After the high court rejected Biden’s original loan forgiveness program, he vowed to pursue an alternative path to debt relief through the Higher Education Act.

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The judge in former-President Donald Trump’s business fraud trial in New York City issued a partial gag order on Tuesday, after Trump blasted the judge, his top law clerk and New York Attorney General Letitia James in a post on social media. James has accused Trump, his two adult sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, of fraud, claiming that the Trump organization inflated the values of his real estate properties by more than $2 billion to gain tax benefits and secure favorable loan and insurance terms. James is seeking $250 million in damages, as well as a ban that would keep Trump and his family from doing business in New York.

New York State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron issued the order on the second day of the civil trial, after Trump posted a photo of court clerk Allison Greenfield with Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on his Truth Social site on Tuesday morning with the caption “Schumer’s girlfriend.” Trump, who argued that his case should be dismissed because she is “running this case against me,” removed the post several hours later.

Judge Engoron announced Tuesday afternoon: “Consider this a gag order on all parties with respect to posting or publicly speaking about any member on my staff. This morning one of the defendants posted on a social media account a disparaging, untrue and personally identifying post about a member of my staff. Although I have since ordered the post deleted and apparently it was, it was also emailed out to millions of other recipients. Personal attacks on my members of my court staff are unacceptable, inappropriate and I will not tolerate them under any circumstances,” threatening nonspecific “serious sanctions.” The limited gag order bans any emails, posts or public remarks about the judge’s staff.

The former president has criticized Engoron as a “far-left Democrat” and has accused him of political bias, also claiming Engoron is trying to hurt him politically. Trump told reporters Tuesday that the judge is a “Trump-hater” and trying to “interfere with an election and it’s a disgrace.” Trump has also blasted New York Attorney General Letitia James, calling her a “fraud” and saying “she should probably be dismissed also… she used this to run for governor. She failed in her attempt to run for governor. She had virtually no following. She came back and she said, ‘Well, now I will go back to get Trump again.’ And this is what we have. It is a scam and a sham.”

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The House of Representatives voted on Tuesday afternoon to remove Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., from his leadership position. The House voted 216-210 to oust McCarthy, with eight Republicans joining Democrats to remove him, and seven members absent. It is the first time in U.S. history that a House speaker has been removed in a no-confidence vote.

Republican Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas, who was presiding over the chamber, said: “The office of Speaker of the House of the United House of Representatives is hereby declared vacant.”  The House is now in recess while members meet to decide how to proceed forward. Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, Financial Services Chair and a top McCarthy ally, was then appointed speaker pro tempore. The rules of the 118th Congress state that “in the case of a vacancy in the office of speaker, the next member” named on a list submitted by McCarthy to the clerk of the House in January will become speaker pro tempore in the event of a vacancy. After House Republicans met Tuesday night as a conference to discuss their next steps. McCarthy told his colleagues he would not run for speaker again.

McCarthy can be renominated and reelected as speaker, but that path seems unlikely. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who led the effort to remove McCarthy, told reporters after the vote: “Kevin McCarthy has made multiple contradictory promises, and when they all came due, he lost votes of people who maybe don’t even ideologically agree with me on everything. This represents the ripping off of the Band-Aid and that’s what we need to do to get back on track.” Seven Republican in addition to Gaetz voted to oust McCarthy — Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ken Buck of Colorado, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Eli Crane of Arizona, Bob Good of Virginia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Matt Rosendale of Montana. For weeks, Gaetz had threatened to call a vote to expel McCarthy if he passed a short-term government funding bill relying on Democratic votes. When McCarthy did just that last weekend to avert a shutdown, Gaetz moved to oust him. Gaetz has consistently opposed McCarthy’s speakership, and was among those who helped draw out the process of electing him speaker to a record 15 rounds of voting. In order to win over far-right Republicans, McCarthy agreed to a condition making it possible for a single member to motion to oust the speaker.

The speaker of the House is also second in line for the presidency, and ousting a sitting speaker by vote in the middle of a congressional term is unprecedented in American history. Democratic leadership members had urged their caucus to vote “yes” on the motion to vacate.

Up until the vote, McCarthy had expressed confidence to reporters that he would prevail: “I’m an optimist because I think there’s no point in being anything else,” McCarthy said.

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