Not nasty enough..

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AMERICANS FOR PROSPERITY, the pro-corporate pressure group founded and funded by billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, wants employees to return to work despite desperate pleas from public health officials that people should stay home as much as possible to help contain the spread of the coronavirus...

AFP’s position, which directly contradicts the advice of medical experts who say that social isolation is essential to curbing the spread of the coronavirus, comes after the group lobbied the Trump administration in 2018 to rescind $1 billion from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Much of AFP’s recommended cuts to government programs, which included CDC money for infectious disease control and global health, became part of the official White House budget request, though most were not adopted by Congress. The cuts, AFP argued, would “relieve the burden overspending is placing on all taxpayers.” 

Charles Koch Network Attacks Shelter-in-Place Policies

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As a registered nurse treating coronavirus patients in a northern New Jersey ICU, Daniel spends his days working with some of the sickest patients in a coronavirus hot spot. His hospital, like many, doesn’t have enough masks, gloves, and gowns for all of its employees, and his colleagues are getting sick. He’s terrified of infecting his parents, who live with him in a small apartment.

There’s also another constant worry: Depending on how the Supreme Court rules in an immigration case in the coming months, he could lose his ability to work in the United States and become vulnerable to deportation. Originally from Korea, Daniel, 32, is one of more than 700,000 DREAMers — immigrants who came to the US without authorization as children. The only reason he can contribute to the coronavirus response at all is because of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has protected him from deportation and allowed him to study and work in the US since it was created in 2012.

President Donald Trump, who has claimed that many DACA recipients are “far from angels,” is fighting to dismantle the program before the Supreme Court, which will issue its decision before the term ends in June. If the justices rule in Trump’s favor, the administration has been clear that not only will it end the program, but DACA recipients, once their protections expire, will be eligible for deportation, just like any other unauthorized immigrant. Immigrant rights advocates have consequently pleaded with the justices to at least delay their decision amid the coronavirus crisis.

DREAMer health care workers face a terrible situation during coronavirus - Vox

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From his guidance rolling back paid leave benefits to his attempt to limit who qualifies for beefed up unemployment insurance, Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia’s implementation of the multi-trillion-dollar coronavirus stimulus package is coming under fire from Democratic lawmakers and advocacy groups who say the former corporate lawyer’s handling of the new law favors businesses over people in desperate need of assistance.

Scalia, son of the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, “has used his department’s authority over new laws enacted by Congress to limit who qualifies for joblessness assistance and to make it easier for small businesses not to pay family leave benefits,” the Washington Post reported Friday..

Trump labor secretary Eugene Scalia slammed for ‘despicable’ efforts to roll back unemployment benefits and paid leave in coronavirus stimulus – Alternet.org

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Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ) has a plan to bolster the American economy: Direct thousands of dollars in subsidies for families to go on vacation, but only if they’re reasonably affluent.

Martha McSally’s TRIP Act is very regressive - Vox

• Travel stimulus, but only for the affluent (as it comes in the form of a tax rebate) and in the midst of a pandemic.. You can't make this up.
  

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Documents obtained by Politico reveal that the Trump White House is weighing millions of dollars in federal funding cuts to Covid-19 relief, newborn screenings, and other crucial healthcare programs in Democrat-led cities, a move critics decried as politically motivated "retribution" that could have a devastating impact on poor and sick Americans amid the ongoing pandemic.

Politico reported late Tuesday that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has "identified federal grants covering... nearly 200 health programs that could be in line for cuts as part of a sweeping government-wide directive the administration is advancing during the final weeks of the presidential campaign and amid an intensifying pandemic Trump has downplayed.""

Trump officials weighing deep funding cuts to essential healthcare services in Dem-led cities: HHS documents - Alternet.org

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Fred Piccolo, a communications director for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ®, found himself at the center of controversy for his gross disregard of the lives lost to COVID-19. In a late-night Twitter post on Wednesday evening, Piccolo shared a tweet that appeared to belittle the fact that people have died from the pandemic. He tweeted, "I'm wondering since 99% [of] Covid patients survive shouldn't you have 99 photos of survivors for every one fatality? Otherwise, you're just trying to create a narrative that is not reality."

DeSantis aide flees Twitter after backlash over shocking remarks about COVID-19 victims - Alternet.org

• And this is supposed to be the "pro-life" party, right?
  

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A small group of far right GOP members of Congress were getting some initial praise after announcing they would not be joining Republicans contesting the presidential election – until they released a statement explaining why. Essentially, the seven lawmakers are explicitly warning their Republican colleagues to not challenge or disrupt the Electoral College, because that is likely the only way America will see another Republican president. "Republican presidential candidates have won the national popular vote only once in the last 32 years," they freely admit. "They have therefore depended on the electoral college for nearly all presidential victories in the last generation." "If we perpetuate the notion that Congress may disregard certified electoral votes—based solely on its own assessment that one or more states mishandled the presidential election—we will be delegitimizing the very system that led Donald Trump to victory in 2016, and that could provide the only path to victory in 2024." 

The seven lawmakers are Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY), Kelly Armstrong (R-ND), Ken Buck (R-CO), Mike Gallagher (R-WI) Nancy Mace (R-SC), Tom McClintock (R-CA), and Chip Roy (R-TX). Congressman Roy (photo) may be best known as being the Congressman who in 2019 blocked a 5-month overdue disaster aid relief bill, saying it was "fine" that migrant children were dying at the border. That same year he also broke down, appeared to cry, and yelled during a House hearing, during which he supported the exorbitant and growing prices pharmaceutical companies are charging Americans..

The Republicans refusing to join Trump's coup attempt are making a stunning admission - Alternet.org

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evangelical pastor Robert Henderson. This week, Henderson angrily claimed that Biden couldn't have won the 2020 election legitimately because God wouldn't have allowed it to happen. During an unhinged rant, Henderson told his followers, "You're going to tell me that a man that has been the best friend that Christianity and the kingdom of God has had is going to be removed by God and replaced by a baby-killing socialist?

Far-right pastor says God wouldn't let Trump be 'replaced' by 'baby-killing socialist' Biden - Alternet.org

• Below the reality:
  

The Justice Department Office of Inspector General (DHS OIG) has released the final version of a draft report obtained by NBC News in October that points to top Department of Justice (DOJ) officials, including former Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III and his deputy Rod Rosenstein, as "a driving force" in the Trump administration's decision to carry out the state-sanctioned kidnapping of thousands of children at the southern border. The final report, which The New York Times reports is "largely the same as a draft," confirms Sessions, Rosenstein, and DOJ officials carried out the inhumane "zero tolerance" policy with no mercy.

"Our review found that the Department's single-minded focus on increasing prosecutions came at the expense of careful and appropriate consideration of the impact that prosecution of family unit adults and family separations would have on children traveling with them and the government's ability to later reunite the children with their parents," DHS OIG said. The final report confirms Sessions in particular as an evil, grinning participant in carrying out this human and children's rights atrocity. As detailed in the draft version, when U.S. attorneys expressed concern about the ages of children being taken from parents and that some parents were not being immediately reunited with their kids after being prosecuted and receiving time-served sentences, Sessions instead encouraged continued separations.

Devastating new DOJ report confirms Jeff Sessions refused to be interviewed on family separations - Alternet.org

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Alvaro Hernandes saw his wife and recently born twin daughters for the last time through a video call on 5 January before he was deported from immigration detention in Kansas to Guatemala, after living in the US for 12 years. Shortly after Hernandes and his wife brought their two newborn daughters from the hospital in June 2020, he was detained for being undocumented and handed over to immigration customs enforcement by a local sheriff after he called 911 when he was unable to get in contact with his wife for a brief period of time and wasn’t aware there was a non-emergency number for the police.

Despite testimonials from family members, friends, his longtime boss and landlord, an immigration court in Kansas City, Missouri, ordered the deportation to proceed, citing a 2008 DUI conviction. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Hernandes’s family has only been able to speak with him through expensive video calls and collect phone calls. While imprisoned, Hernandes also contracted coronavirus. “I don’t know if I will ever see him again. He just cries and cries during our visits on camera,” said his wife, Sierra Schauvilegee. “He has been tormented by being separated from us.”

The couple met in 2017 through a mutual friend. She described Alvaro as hardworking, an employee in the agriculture industry working on a cattle ranch for the past eight years for $10 an hour, often working 12-hour days, six to seven days a week. “He prays one day he will be reunited with his babies,” added Schauvilegee.

Thousands of immigrants with US-born children are deported every year, creating economic instability for the families left behind and disrupting children’s health and development. But children also face deportation orders themselves. Johanna Torres, an immigration lawyer based in Laredo, California, is currently appealing against the deportation order for a three-year-old boy.

‘He just cries and cries': families grapple with US deportations amid pandemic | US immigration | The Guardian

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One of the provisions of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act of 2021 was the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which offers economic relief to self-employed Americans who don't qualify for traditional unemployment relief. And in 20 states with Republican governors, CBS News reports, PUA relief is being cut off two months before the federal funding is due to expire. CBS News reporter Aimee Picchi explains, "Without PUA, self-employed workers in those states will be stripped of all jobless aid. The temporary program was designed by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act, to provide support for a growing group of nontraditional workers in America's gig economy, who don't otherwise qualify for regular unemployment aid. To be sure, the governors of those states ending the PUA program also are cutting the extra $300 in weekly benefits directed at millions of other jobless workers who lost their positions with employers. However, many of those workers will continue to qualify for traditional state jobless aid. Not so with self-employed workers."

'Cruelty, plain and simple': 20 GOP governors are sending a million self-employed workers 'hurtling toward a benefits cliff' - Alternet.org