Vaccine Equity Activists Denounce Pfizer's 'Obscene' Pandemic Windfall

"Companies like Pfizer will always put high profit before lives," said one campaigner after the pharma giant announced record second-quarter revenue.


A coalition of healthcare advocacy organizations gathered for a vaccine equity protest outside Pfizer's headquarters in New York City on March 11, 2020. 

Photo: Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Image


BRETT WILKINS

July 28, 2022

Health equity campaigners on Thursday called for a fairer system of developing and distributing Covid-19 medications after pharmaceutical company Pfizer announced record second-quarter revenue, more than half of which is attributable to sales of coronavirus vaccines and treatments that remain out of reach for much of the Global South.

"Millions of people in low- and middle-income countries faced death and devastation without access to vaccines while Pfizer sold doses to the highest bidders."

New York-based Pfizer announced Thursday its adjusted earnings for the second quarter were $2.04 per share, a 92% increase from the same period last year and well ahead of a consensus forecast of $1.79 per share. The company's revenue grew by 47% to $27.7 billion compared to the second quarter last year, while its net income soared 78% to $9.9 billion. Around $8.85 billion of Pfizer's total revenue came from sales of its Comirnaty coronavirus vaccine, while Paxlovid, its oral antiviral treatment, earned the company $8.1 billion. Pfizer also said that Covid-related sales should bring in about $54 billion in total revenues this year.

Additionally, during the first half of 2022, Pfizer has returned $6.5 billion to shareholders through stock buybacks and dividends, compared to $5.1 billion invested in research and development, belying Big Pharma claims that massive profits are imperative for the creation of new medicines.

"Pfizer is set for an obscene $100 billion pandemic windfall in 2022, even as the world remains billions of doses away from vaccinating everyone," Tim Bierley, pharma campaigner at the U.K.-based advocacy group Global Justice Now, said in a statement. "After 18 months of refusing to share its lifesaving vaccine technology with countries in the Global South, now we face a situation where huge parts of the world can't access Pfizer's lifesaving Covid-19 treatment. This is all because of a business model that puts shareholder greed before people's lives."

"Two years of terrible vaccine inequality have led to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths, yet the only lesson Pfizer has learned is that billions can be made from a publicly funded medicine," Bierley added. "As leaders consider how we prepare for future pandemics, the priority must be to replace this pharmaceutical model, which illogically rewards the hoarding of scientific knowledge. It's time for a more cooperative, less profit-centered system, which puts global public health first."

While nearly 70% of the world's people have received at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine, massive inequities in inoculation remain the rule, not the exception. According to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, there are 36 countries in which less than 25% of the population is fully vaccinated, the vast majority of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Ten nations have full vaccination rates below 10%, with war-torn Yemen (1.5%), Haiti (1.4%), and Burundi (0.1%) currently having the world's lowest inoculation rates.

"Millions of people in low- and middle-income countries faced death and devastation without access to vaccines while Pfizer sold doses to the highest bidders," Mohga Kamal-Yanni, policy co-lead for the People's Vaccine Alliance, said in response to Pfizer's Q2 earnings. "Now we're seeing the same inequality in access to lifesaving Covid-19 treatments like Paxlovid. Pfizer's CEO can make all the half-hearted equity pledges he wants, but he will never wash that stain from his company's reputation."

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Kamal-Yanni asserted that "world leaders have repeatedly said that we must learn the lessons of this pandemic to better respond to future health crises. The one key lesson is that leaders cannot leave decisions on supply, allocation, and price to pharmaceutical companies."

"Companies like Pfizer will always put high profit before lives," he added. "The world needs to build a fairer system of creating and distributing medical technologies before the next pandemic, or risk repeating the mistakes of Covid-19."

Some activists have pointed to the fact that Africa still does not have any doses of vaccine against monkeypox—now a World Health Organization-designated global emergency—despite being the only continent where people have died from the virus, as evidence that little has been learned from the Covid-19 pandemic.

News of Pfizer's record revenue came a week after the company, along with U.K.-based Flynn Pharma, were fined the equivalent of $85 million by British regulators for overcharging the country's National Health Service for a lifesaving epilepsy drug.

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Could tolerant and peaceful bonobos be the model for human peacemaking?

“Both chimpanzees and bonobos are our closest living relatives and therefore studying their social systems and behavior can allow us to trace the evolutionary trajectories of certain phenomenons.”

AMERIKANS ARE MORE AGGRESSIVE LIKE CHIMPS

By

 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes

 -

July 29, 2022

SOURCEEcowatch

Humans share 98.7 percent of their DNA with two species of endangered great apes: bonobos (Pan paniscus) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Bonobos — which can only be found in forested regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), south of the Congo River — differ from chimpanzees in appearance and behavior. They are usually smaller, and their societal groups are led by females and are generally more peaceful.

It is the bonobos’ peaceful nature and how it relates to the rare ability of humans to show tolerance and cooperate with one another that is the subject of a new study by Harvard primatologists. Bonobos have been dubbed “hippie apes” by researchers due to their harmonious disposition and active sex lives, the Harvard Gazette reported.

Anup Shah/ Stone / Getty Images

Not as much is known about the social relationships of bonobos in comparison with those of chimpanzees due to the remoteness of the bonobos’ habitat, their uneven distribution and prolonged civil unrest in the DRC, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

However, the new Harvard study hopes to flesh out some of the details of bonobos’ social structure.

The study, “Characterization of Pan social systems reveals in-group/out-group distinction and out-group tolerance in bonobos,” was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“The most striking difference between chimpanzees and bonobos is in their intergroup relations. While in chimpanzees intergroup interactions are almost always hostile by nature, and intergroup conflict can escalate into lethal aggression, in bonobos intergroup interactions are typically tolerant and individuals of different groups even groom one another and share food,” postdoctoral fellow in Harvard’s Pan Lab Liran Samuni, who was the study’s lead author, told EcoWatch in an email. “Bonobo intergroup interactions can be aggressive, and even lead to small injuries, but there isn’t yet a single observation of lethal aggression in bonoobs.”

Samuni added that, in bonobo social groups, females most often dominate.

“Another difference between the two species is in the dominance structures – with chimpanzees males dominating all females and bonobo females usually dominating males. One of the ideas is that female dominance in bonobos affords them greater social leverage and that by forming female-female alliances they are able to suppress male aggression,” Samuni said.

Samuni went on to say that the territories of chimpanzee groups don’t often overlap, but, as is the case with other animals, they compete for land, mates and resources.

“Larger groups are usually able to maintain larger territories and benefit from increased access to valuable resources. So winning conflict over neighbours can be highly beneficial for the group and even increase the reproductive output of its members,” Samuni told EcoWatch.

So why are bonobos so much more peaceful in their interactions than chimpanzees?

“Why bonobos have evolved to be this way is a question that is difficult to answer,” Samuni said. “The main theory is that bonobos evolved in a lusher/more stable environment where feeding competition was reduced, thereby allowing females to form closer relationships with one another which enable them to hold high social status within their group. However, there is conflicting evidence as to whether this holds true and more data and studies are needed before we can answer this question.”https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.522.0_en.html#goog_773325449

From 2017 to 2019, the scientists studied 59 bonobos in four neighboring groups living at the DRC’s Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve and found that, while the individual groups maintained spatial and social borders that indicated their independence from each other, they shared regular peaceful interactions, reported the Harvard Gazette.

“It was a very necessary first step. Now that we know that despite the fact that they spend so much time together, [neighboring] bonobo populations still have these distinct groups, we can really examine the bonobo model as something that is potentially the building block or the state upon which us humans evolved our way of more complex, multilevel societies and cooperation that extends beyond borders,” said Samuni, as the Harvard Gazette reported.

Prior research had shown that the bonobo groups had regularly come together to socialize, share meals and groom each other, but the researchers hadn’t been sure how similar the bonobos’ behavior was to subgroups of chimpanzees — referred to by primatologists as “neighborhoods” — within a single bigger community.

“There aren’t really behavioral indications that allow us to distinguish this is group A, this is group B when they meet,” said Samuni, as reported by the Harvard Gazette. “They behave the same way they behave with their own group members. People are basically asking us, how do we know these are two different groups? Maybe instead of those being two different groups, these groups are just one very large group made up of individuals that just don’t spend all their time together [as we see with chimpanzee neighborhoods].”

Anup Shah/ Stone / Getty Images

Each day, from dawn to dusk, a minimum of two people from the bonobo reserve observed each group of bonobos — named the Ekalakala, the Kokoalongo, the Fekako, and the Bekako by the researchers — and recorded data on their location and behaviors, including how long and with whom individuals spent time, as well as what they did.

The researchers then used a method called “cluster analysis” — where data points from each group are clustered closely together on a plot separate from the others — to process the information.

The researchers looked at which of the bonobos shared notable bonds, who ate meals together more often, which ones stuck with each other when given a choice and which individual bonobos interacted with each other in their shared “home range.”

Through these determinations, the researchers were able to distinguish the bonobos who shared the same group and when they were associating peacefully with their neighbors across established borders.

The data from the Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve was then compared to data taken from the observations of 104 chimpanzees in the Ngogo community of Kibale National Park in Uganda from 2011 to 2013.

Overall, the scientists found the bonobo groups to be more stable and consistent than the chimpanzee subgroups, which indicated stronger social ties.

Due to their strong ties, the researchers were able to predict the individual bonobos who were most likely to stay with one another when the bonobo clusters came together and separated again.

Samuni and assistant professor in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University Martin Surbeck, who is the founder and director of the Kokolopori Bonobo Research Project and the paper’s senior author, said the study’s results demonstrate that bonobos have a capacity to develop and maintain complex relationships separate from their primary associations that is similar to humans.

“Like human groups there are many different social relationships that bonobos (and chimpanzees) maintain within their groups: some individuals are family and are usually very close, some are close friends and spend a lot of time grooming and supporting one another, others interact mostly in an aggressive manner or do not interact much,” Samuni told EcoWatch. “The different relationships that individuals maintain offer them support systems, allow them to achieve dominance rank, provide safety from danger, etc.”

The researchers want to expand on their findings that bonobos have distinctive groups, and delve more deeply into the details of trade and cooperation between them in order to see if they could constitute similar behaviors in their shared ancestor with humans, reported the Harvard Gazette.

“Both chimpanzees and bonobos are our closest living relatives and therefore studying their social systems and behavior can allow us to trace the evolutionary trajectories of certain phenomenons,” Samuni told EcoWatch. “For example, if humans & chimpanzees share a certain trait, then it is more simple (parsimonious) to assume that our common ancestor also shared these traits. Tool-use is a good example, until the 60s it was believed that what separated us from other animals was our ability to make tools (‘man the tool maker’) but observations of chimpanzees and other animals have repeatedly demonstrated that tool-use is more widespread than what was originally thought, starting with the first documentation of tool use in chimpanzees in Gombe by Dr. Jane Goodall.”

Bonobos are listed as endangered by The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and are faced with the same dangers as many threatened species.

“The main threats to bonobos are habitat loss (due to logging, mining) and poaching (e.g., for bushmeat, as part of the pet trade, or due to human-wildlife conflict),” Samuni told EcoWatch. “Because bonobos only exist in the DRC, a country who has known its share of political instability, the bonobo populations suffered from these internal conflicts. Due to the challenges of working in DRC, we know very little about bonobos and estimations of the number of bonobos left in the wild are outdated. And even in places where bonobos are not the direct target of poaching or drastically suffer from habitat loss, they routinely get caught in traps and snares set by poachers which can leave them handicapped and impact their ability to survive and reproduce.”

Samuni recommended measures that can be taken to help protect bonobos.

“Maintaining protected areas where the animals are safe from poaching or other anthropogenic disturbances is one of the best ways to conserve species. Animal corridors between protected areas can facilitate gene flow that is also very important for the viability of populations. There’s also the need to fight against the bushmeat and pet trade and pass laws that prohibit keeping chimpanzees, bonobos, and other wild animals as pets. Because chimpanzees and bonobos live in large social groups where individuals support and care for one another, when an infant chimpanzee/bonobo is taken from the wild to be sold as a pet it often means that their mother and other group members were killed in the process,” Samuni said.

Samuni added that social media can hinder the protection of species when it is used to distort or glamorize the attempted domestication of wild animals.

“It has also been shown that our use of social media can have a negative impact on the conservation of these species. When people see a video on social media of a young chimpanzee/bonobo (or any other wild species) as a pet they may think that this is OK and that the animal is having a good life (everything looks prettier on social media). It can lead to an increase in demand for these animals. Not giving these videos the platform and likes can be something easy that each and everyone of us can do, which will guarantee a greater protection of these animals,” Samuni told EcoWatch.

According to The IUCN Red List, population numbers of bonobos are decreasing, and Surbeck offered a warning for the survival of this peaceful species of great apes. 

“There are very few left,” said Surbeck, as the Harvard Gazette reported. “We gather here information that potentially will not be available anymore in 50 years if things continue the way they do.”

House Hearing Exposes Gun Industry's Profiting 'Off the Blood of Innocent Americans'

"These companies are selling the weapon of choice for mass murderers who terrorize young children at school, hunt down worshippers at churches and synagogues, and slaughter families on the Fourth of July."

BRETT WILKINS

July 27, 2022

Firearm companies have raked in over $1 billion from selling AR-15-style rifles over the past decade, a U.S. congressional committee revealed in a report ahead of a Wednesday hearing, prompting calls from Democratic lawmakers and gun control advocates for a renewed assault weapons ban.

"The business practices of these gun manufacturers are deeply disturbing, exploitative, and reckless."

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform held the hearing on gunmakers' responsibility for a national crisis that costs tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

In the wake of recent massacres in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York, the House panel queried five leading gun manufacturers—Bushmaster, Daniel Defense, Ruger, Sig Sauer, and Smith & Wesson—about their sales and marketing of AR-15-like and other assault-style semi-automatic rifles. Such weaponry is used in around three-quarters of mass shootings, attacks that are far deadlier when they involve assault weapons, according to the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety.

"How much are the lives of America's children, teachers, parents, and families worth to gun manufacturers? My committee's investigation has revealed that the country's major gun manufacturers have collected more than $1 billion in revenue from selling military-style assault weapons to civilians," House Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) said in a statement ahead of the hearing.

"These companies are selling the weapon of choice for mass murderers who terrorize young children at school, hunt down worshippers at churches and synagogues, and slaughter families on the Fourth of July," she continued. "In short, the gun industry is profiting off the blood of innocent Americans."

"My committee has found that the business practices of these gun manufacturers are deeply disturbing, exploitative, and reckless," Maloney said. "These companies use aggressive marketing tactics to target young people—especially young men—and some even evoke symbols of white supremacy. Yet we found that none of these companies bothers to keep track of the death and destruction caused by their products."

Among the panel's findings:Sales of assault-style weapons are increasing as gun deaths and mass shootings rise;

Gun companies utilize a variety of financing tactics and manipulative marketing campaigns to sell assault weapons to customers, including teens;

Firearm manufacturers fail to track or monitor deaths, injuries, or crimes that occur using their products, or when their products have been illegally modified.

"Congress must act to rein in the irresponsible business practices of the gun industry, prohibit the sale of dangerous weapons of war to civilians, and reassess the liability protections that prevent the American people from accessing the courts to hold gun manufacturers accountable for the deadly effects of their business decisions," the committee concluded.

The panel added:

Congress and federal agencies should also consider requiring death and crime reporting requirements for the gun industry, similar to those imposed on other industries, which will force manufacturers to develop compliance systems and take reasonable precautious to ensure their products are not misused. Additionally, Congress should consider imposing reasonable regulations on how the gun industry advertises its products, such as age limitations, content warnings, and further enabling agencies like the Federal Trade Commission to regulate misleading advertisements.

Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.), who is not a member of the committee, was even blunter, tweeting, "ban assault weapons NOW."

"These companies made a BILLION dollars selling weapons of war. Assault rifles are designed to kill as many people as possible, as quickly as possible," she added. "They irreparably shatter families and communities. They have no place in our country."

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'Beyond Unacceptable': Progressives Rip Senate Republicans for Blocking Birth Control Bill

"Today, Republicans showed the American people where they stand: No abortions, and no birth control to prevent the need for one," said Sen. Ed Markey.


BRETT WILKINS

July 27, 2022

Democratic U.S. lawmakers and reproductive freedom advocates on Wednesday denounced Senate Republicans for blocking proposed legislation that would safeguard access to contraception as GOP-led states enact total abortion bans in the wake of Roe v. Wade's reversal.

"These extremists are pulling back the curtain to reveal just how out of touch they are with Americans. Voters won't forget it come November."

Arguing that the bill "purposefully goes far beyond the scope of contraception," Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) objected to a request from Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) to pass the Right to Contraception Act by unanimous consent.

The House of Representatives passed the measure—which would codify the right to obtain and use contraceptives and protect physicians who provide them—last week. Just eight Republican House lawmakers joined all 220 of their Democratic colleagues in voting for the bill.

"It has been nearly 60 years since the Supreme Court decided Griswold v. Connecticut—and affirmed Americans' right to privacy and with it: their right to contraception," Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said in a statement. "So you'd think this would be a settled issue. And for the vast majority of Americans—it is. Yet, as we just saw, somehow—in the year 2022—this isn't a settled issue for Republican politicians."

Markey asserted that "today, Republicans showed the American people where they stand: No abortions, and no birth control to prevent the need for one. The right-wing extremists in the United States Senate and on the Supreme Court are way out of touch with the vast majority of the American people, and yet they still want to tell them what to do with their bodies and their lives.

"While Republicans refuse to protect our fundamental rights as the Supreme Court and right-wing state legislatures take them away," Markey added, "my Democratic colleagues and I will continue our efforts to keep in place the fundamental, privacy-based rights that Americans have had for decades, and codify into federal law the right to contraception."

Progressive activists have been warning that access to contraceptives could be imperiled by the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority. In his concurring opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the 6-3 May ruling that voided half a century of constitutional abortion rights, Justice Clarence Thomas explicitly took aim at Griswold—as well as landmark cases legalizing same-sex intimate relations and marriage—as previous high court decisions that should be revisited.

Reproductive rights groups echoed the Democratic senators' frustration and resolve.

"Senate Republicans' refusal to protect contraception access is beyond unacceptable," NARAL Pro-Choice America president Mini Timmaraju said in a statement. "As our country grapples with the ripple effects of the Supreme Court ending the right to abortion, MAGA Republicans continue to find every excuse to exert power and control over us all."

"Contraception is a key way people can decide if, when, and how to start or grow a family," she added, "and these extremists are pulling back the curtain to reveal just how out of touch they are with Americans. Voters won't forget it come November."

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Nearly every House Republican votes against codifying right to contraception

"If they had the chance they would ban it," said Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).

By

 Julia Conley

 -

July 22, 2022

SOURCECommon Dreams

With many lawmakers expressing disbelief that a law codifying the right to use birth control is needed in the U.S. in 2022, House Democrats passed the Right to Contraception Act on Thursday—joined by just eight Republicans as the party denied access to contraception is under attack.

All 220 Democrats voted in favor of the bill.

“One hundred ninety-five House Republicans just voted against protecting your right to access contraception,” said Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.).

“Birth control is a basic form of healthcare we ALL deserve to access.”

The legislation defines contraception as “any drug, device, or biological product intended for use in the prevention of pregnancy, whether specifically intended to prevent pregnancy or for other health needs, that is legally marketed under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, such as oral contraceptives, long-acting reversible contraceptives, emergency contraceptives, internal and external condoms, injectables, vaginal barrier methods, transdermal patches, and vaginal rings, or other contraceptives.”

Rep. Kathy Manning (D-N.C.) introduced the bill weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court’s right-wing majority overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the right to abortion care for millions of women and likely reducing access to abortions even in states where the right is still protected.

In an opinion concurring with the ruling, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that “in future cases, we should reconsider all of the Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” naming cases that affirmed Americans have the right to contraception, same-sex relationships, and marriage equality.

Thursday’s vote showed that opposition to contraceptive rights “is not just an opinion of one man,” said Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.). “This is their plan.”

“If they had the chance they would ban” contraception, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) added.

Earlier this week, the House passed a bill codifying the right of same-sex couples to marry, with the vast majority of Republicans voting against it.

After the ruling overturning Roe was handed down, a health system in Missouri—where abortion is now banned—temporarily stopped providing emergency contraception, better known as Plan B, saying the state needed to “better define” its abortion ban.

Republicans in Missouri have also tried to stop Medicaid funding from being used for contraception.

GOP legislators on Thursday, however, claimed the right to access contraception is not being threatened, with Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) accusing the Democrats of “spreading fear and misinformation” and calling the bill “a Trojan horse for more abortions.”

After the House bill passed, advocates called on the Senate to promptly pass the Right to Contraception Act, which was introduced by Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) this week.

Republicans in the Senate have also denied people are at risk of losing their right to use contraception, with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) calling the Democrats’ efforts “pure hysteria.”

“Birth control is a basic form of healthcare we ALL deserve to access,” said the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights after the House bill was passed. “Senate must follow.”

Some US Lawmakers Want to Bar Using Espionage Act to Target Journalists"When one journalist is prosecuted for doing his or her job, that's a threat to all journalists," said Rep. Ro Khanna.
Supporters of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange protest outside London's Old Bailey court as his fight against extradition to the U.S. resumed on September 7, 2020.                         (Photo: Richard Baker/In Pictures/Getty Images

 KENNY STANCIL

July 27, 2022

A trio of congressional lawmakers reintroduced the Espionage Reform Act on Wednesday to prevent reporters from being prosecuted for publishing classified information—a common journalistic practice used to expose government wrongdoing.

"Journalists should never be prosecuted by the government for what they publish. Especially when politicians abuse the law to keep the public in the dark."

Unveiled by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), the measure aims to narrow the scope of the 105-year-old Espionage Act and similar laws enacted during the First World War—ostensibly to protect the United States from spies but, according to critics, to criminalize anti-war dissent, resulting in the imprisonment of nearly a thousand people, including leading socialist Eugene Debs.

The Espionage Act and related secrecy statutes "go far beyond their stated purpose... to prevent government employees and other individuals entrusted with the government's secrets from selling or revealing that information to our enemies," the three lawmakers argue in a summary of the bill, "and have been repeatedly abused by the executive branch to chill investigative journalism and to prevent oversight of illegal government surveillance programs by Congress and the Federal Communications Commission."

The bicameral bill, which is identical to legislation introduced in 2020 but now has bipartisan support, would reaffirm First Amendment protections for journalists who share secret documents and expand avenues for whistleblowers to report government malpractice to members of Congress.

"When one journalist is prosecuted for doing his or her job, that's a threat to all journalists," Khanna said in a statement. "Our nation's strength rests on the freedom of the press and reporters must be allowed to work without fear of persecution."

Wyden echoed Khanna's message, saying: "Journalists should never be prosecuted by the government for what they publish. Especially when politicians abuse the law to keep the public in the dark."

"The Espionage Act currently provides the executive branch with sweeping powers that are ripe for abuse to target journalists and whistleblowers who reveal information some officials would rather keep secret," Wyden continued. "This bill ensures only personnel with security clearances can be prosecuted for improperly revealing classified information and that whistleblowers can reveal classified abuses directly to Congress, federal regulators, and oversight bodies."

According to Khanna, Wyden, and Massie, the bill would:Protect journalists who solicit, obtain, or publish government secrets from prosecution.
Ensure that each member of Congress is equally able to receive classified information, including from whistleblowers. Currently, the law criminalizes the disclosure of classified information related to signals intelligence to any member of Congress, unless it is in response to a "lawful demand" from a committee. This puts members in the minority party and those not chairing any committee at a significant disadvantage.
Ensure that federal courts, inspector generals, the FCC, Federal Trade Commission, and Privacy & Civil Liberties Oversight Board can conduct oversight into privacy abuses.
Ensure that cybersecurity experts who discover classified government backdoors in encryption algorithms and communications apps used by the public can publish their research without the risk of criminal penalties. It is up to governments to hide their surveillance backdoors; academic researchers and other experts should not face legal risks for discovering them.

However, a summary of the bill adds, "every single person convicted, to date, under the Espionage Act could still have been convicted had this bill been the law at the time they were prosecuted."

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This means that Daniel Hale—the whistleblower who one year ago to the day was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for sharing classified materials about the U.S. military's drone assassination program with a journalist—could still have been charged with espionage.

The same is true of Edward Snowden—the former National Security Agency contractor who gave reporters access to a cache of files to sound the alarm on top-secret mass surveillance programs in 2013—along with Reality Winner, John Kiriakou, Chelsea Manning, Jeffrey Sterling, and others.

When it comes to Snowden, "this bill would have no impact," the lawmakers acknowledge. "The bill leaves in place criminal penalties for current and former government employees and contractors who reveal classified information they obtained through a trusted relationship with the government."



In addition, "the government would still be able to prosecute Julian Assange," the lawmakers note, neglecting to explain why the Wikileaks founder who published classified information that revealed U.S. war crimes should not be considered a journalist protected by the bill.

Presumably, Assange would fit under the provision that "keeps in place criminal penalties for foreign spies, individuals who are working for foreign governments, or those violating another federal law, who conspire, aid, or abet a violation" of the Espionage Act and related secrecy laws.

Last month, the United Kingdom approved the extradition of Assange to the U.S., where he has been charged with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act as well as breaking the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a minimally defined anti-hacking statute. Charges were originally brought by the Trump administration, which also reportedly considered kidnapping or killing the journalist.

Earlier this month, lawyers for Assange made a final appeal to the U.K's High Court in a last-ditch effort to block his transfer to the U.S. At a demonstration in support of Assange, 79-year-old Gloria Wildman, told Agence France-Presse that the Wikileaks founder has "been in prison for telling the truth."

"If Julian Assange is not free, neither are we; none of us is free," she added.

Only Massie mentions the incarcerated Wikileaks publisher in his statement, saying that "ongoing attempts to prosecute journalists like Julian Assange under the Espionage Act threaten our First Amendment rights, and should be opposed by all who wish to safeguard our constitutional rights now and in the years to come."

Consecutive U.S. presidents have gone to great lengths to prevent leaks and punish government officials for divulging information to reporters. Before Donald Trump launched a "war on whistleblowers," the Department of Justice under Barack Obama prosecuted nine leak cases, more than all previous administrations combined.

Last year, the Washington Post's publisher accused Joe Biden of exacerbating the Trump-era assault on press freedom.

In response, the DOJ prohibited prosecutors from using secret orders and subpoenas to obtain journalists' phone and email records, but the Biden administration continued to prosecute Hale and is also still pursuing the case against Assange despite ongoing opposition from human rights and free press advocates.

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Sanders Warns That 'Like Trump, Bolsonaro Is Attempting to Undermine Democracy in Brazil'

"The enemies of democracy are working together across borders," said the Vermont senator, "and supporters of democracy must do the same."


Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro speaks during the formal launch of his reelection campaign on July 24, 2022 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 

(Photo: Buda Mendes/Getty Images)

JAKE JOHNSON

July 27, 2022

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders warned after meeting with Brazilian civil society leaders on Tuesday that the Latin American country's far-right leader, President Jair Bolsonaro, appears poised to replicate Donald Trump's attempt to subvert the democratic process in a bid to stay in power as he trails in the polls to leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

"Like Trump, Bolsonaro is attempting to undermine democracy in Brazil, the largest country in Latin America," Sanders (I-Vt.) told the Washington Post's Ishaan Tharoor. "It is important that the Biden administration and the U.S. Congress stand for democracy and support the results of the upcoming election. The enemies of democracy are working together across borders, and supporters of democracy must do the same."

"We hope very much that the results of the election will be recognized and respected and that democracy will in fact prevail in Brazil."

Following a playbook that Trump drew from in his 2020 presidential campaign, Bolsonaro has been preemptively casting doubt on the legitimacy of Brazil's October 2 presidential election—including by questioning the integrity of the country's electronic voting machines—before a single ballot has been submitted.

Alarmingly, the leaders of Brazil's armed forces have joined Bolsonaro in questioning the electoral system, heightening fears of an attempted military coup should voters opt to unseat the incumbent leader in favor of Lula, who served as the country's president from 2003 to 2010 and left office massively popular among the Brazilian public.

During an event formally launching his reelection campaign on Sunday, Bolsonaro—who has presided over a disastrous Covid-19 response and accelerated deforestation in the Amazon—declared to cheers from his supporters that "the army is on our side."

"It's an army that doesn't accept corruption, doesn't accept fraud," Bolsonaro said. "This is an army that wants transparency."

This week, as Tharoor reported Wednesday, a "delegation of Brazilian civil society leaders, coordinated by the Washington Brazil Office, a human rights organization, is touring the American capital city and pressing U.S. officials to back Brazil's democratic institutions."

"On Tuesday, they had meetings at the State Department and called on Sen. Bernie Sanders," Tharoor noted. "They will also meet with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the House panel investigating the Capitol riot."

The U.S., which supported the 1964 military coup in Brazil that Bolsonaro has praised, has in recent weeks spoken out in defense of the Latin American country's elections, with the State Department calling them a "model for nations in the hemisphere and the world."

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Sanders said that Bolsonaro's attempts to sow doubt and suspicion about the integrity of Brazil's upcoming presidential election "sounds all too familiar to me because of the efforts of Trump and his friends to undermine American democracy."

"So I'm not surprised that Bolsonaro would try to do the same in Brazil," the Vermont senator added. "We hope very much that the results of the election will be recognized and respected and that democracy will in fact prevail in Brazil."



In a column for The New Republic on Wednesday, historian Andre Pagliarini noted with trepidation that "Bolsonaro is right, to a point, that the army is on his side: He has stuffed his administration with men in uniform who have so far proved willing to back his authoritarian designs."

"Crucially, however, the active-duty heads of every military branch insist they will not support anything other than the proper constitutional order," Pagliarini continued. "Bolsonaro retains a strong core of support among the law-and-order crowd, a segment of the population more likely than most to be armed in a country where, compared to the U.S., it is still relatively difficult to purchase guns."

"One can only hope," he added, "that the military and the police stay out of the election and that Bolsonaro's fate is the same as Trump's: to crawl unceremoniously out of the presidential palace and await possible criminal indictments."

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CPAC Welcoming Orbán at Dallas Summit Days After 'Pure Nazi' Speech

"Orbán didn't speak into being a new project, he articulated one that's already unfolding," said one critic.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stands in front of a U.S. flag after addressing a keynote speech during a session of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Budapest, Hungary on May 19, 2022. (Photo by Attila Kisbenedek/AFP via Getty Images)

JULIA CONLEY

July 27, 2022

With right-wing officials suggesting there is not yet enough evidence of Hungarian authoritarian Viktor Orbán's racist views despite his recent speech which has drawn comparisons to Nazi propaganda, the largest annual gathering of conservatives in the U.S. is moving forward with plans to host the prime minister next week.

"Let's listen to the man speak," Matt Schlapp, chair of the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC), said Tuesday, ahead of the group's summit scheduled to take place in Dallas next week. "We'll see what he says."

"I don't know how you didn't notice that the speech you delivered is a purely Nazi diatribe worthy of Joseph Goebbels."

CPAC's welcoming of Orbán shows that his "racist speech [is] welcomed there," said MSNBC columnist Ruth Ben-Ghiat.

Speaking to supporters in Romania last weekend, Orbán said Hungarians "do not want to become a mixed race" and that countries where Europeans and non-Europeans live amongst each other are no longer nations. He added that a "flood" of migrants and asylum-seekers is being "forced" on Hungarians.

Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu called Orbán's comments "unacceptable" and the prime minister's long-time adviser, Zsuzsa Hegedus, announced her resignation from his government over what she called the "pure Nazi" speech.

"I don't know how you didn't notice that the speech you delivered is a purely Nazi diatribe worthy of Joseph Goebbels," Hegedus wrote in an op-ed directed at Orbán.

Right-wing leaders drew condemnation earlier this month when they invited Orbán to speak at CPAC in Dallas and in May when they held an auxiliary meeting of CPAC in Hungary. At that gathering, the Hungarian leader advised the Americans present to take control of the media in order to hold onto power.

Writer Zack Hunt said conservatives are still welcoming Orbán to CPAC "because" of his speech in Romania, not "despite" his comments.



With his recent speech, wrote Emily Tamkin at The New Statesman on Tuesday, Orbán described "the world European and American conservatives are trying to create":

The language of preserving the purity of white America, of protecting it from other, non-white people, permeates policy... Orbán’s speech isn't about the threat to any one law, or case, or policy. That his vision is wholeheartedly embraced by the American right isn't about that either. It's a threat to many. Or, rather, it’s not only a threat to policy, but to all those, everywhere, who do not wish to live in a society where full membership is dependent on race, or religion, or sexuality. Orbán didn't speak into being a new project, he articulated one that's already unfolding.

Orbán gave his speech in Romania "with apparently zero fear that his words would impact his participation at CPAC," said business consultant Jeff Kemp. "It's very possible that he said what he did because he reckoned that it might heighten audience anticipation for his CPAC appearance."
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