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The order temporarily halts a federal judge's call to release several hundred people arrested during the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in Illinois.
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As we broadcast from the COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, calls are growing for stronger protections for refugees and migrants forcibly displaced by climate disasters. The United Nations estimates about 250 million people have been forced from their homes in the last decade due to deadly drought, storms, floods and extreme heat — mainly in the Global South, where many populations have also faced repeated displacement due to war and extreme poverty. Meanwhile, wealthier Global North nations disproportionately responsible for greenhouse emissions that fuel global warming are intensifying their crackdowns on migrants and climate refugees fleeing compounding humanitarian crises.
"The main issue is always poverty, lack of opportunity, and climate change is basically exacerbating this problem," Guatemala's vice minister of natural resources and climate change, Edwin Josué Castellanos López, told Democracy Now!
"This is not abstract," Nikki Reisch, director of climate and energy at the Center for International Environmental Law, says of climate-induced migration. "This is about real lives. It's about survival. It's about human rights and dignity, and, ultimately, about justice."
Reisch also gives an update on the state of the COP30 negotiations, noting the "big-ticket items" on the agenda are providing financing for transition and adaptation, phasing out fossil fuels and preserving forests. "The big polluters need to phase out and pay up," says Reisch.
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The central fight in the U.S. federal government shutdown has been over healthcare costs, with Democrats demanding that Republicans agree to extend subsidies for the Affordable Care Act set to expire this Saturday. Without an extension of those subsidies, health premiums could more than double for millions of people across the country. The enhanced subsidies were first put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"The purpose of healthcare has increasingly become profit-making rather than a public service," says Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, professor of public health at Hunter College and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program. She says that while extending the Obamacare subsidies is vital, the United States should move toward universal public healthcare like every other major Western economy "and away from our private, profit-oriented healthcare system."
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The Domestic Abuse Helpline took more than 40,000 calls during the first three months of lockdown, we explore the reality of domestic abuse when confined to your home.
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