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The leaders of dozens of grassroots progressive advocacy groups joined their congressional allies late Tuesday in calling on Democrats to reject "false choices" posed by right-wing lawmakers and ensure that all of the party's key prioritiesfrom child care to Medicare expansion to climate actionremain in the final budget reconciliation package.

"What we are talking about is not simply a laundry list, a wish list. It is the needs of the American people."

"It is beyond absurd that we are talking about choosing between child care and elder care or tax cuts to families and free community college,"Rahna Epting, executive director of MoveOn, said during Tuesday night's #TimeToDeliver town hall, a virtual event that brought together activists and top progressives in Congress, including Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

"We have more than enough resources to do all of it. We're the richest country on earth," Epting continued. "This is not a time for politics as usual or tired and outdated austerity policies. The ultra-rich and huge corporations have made massive profits in the middle of this pandemic. Simply making them pay their fair share will be more than enough money to cover these essential policies. This is a once-in-a-generation moment for Congress to act and to act boldly to meet this moment."

The town hall came as Democratic leaders continued their efforts to secure the votes of a smallbut, given the slim margins in Congress, powerfulnumber of corporate-friendly lawmakers who are refusing to support a popular $3.5 trillion reconciliation package. While the right-wing Democratic holdouts have repeatedly declined to publicly specify the programs they want to cut, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) signaled Monday that some of the party's priorities may have to be axed to lower the bill's top-line price tag.

Politico reported last week that the Biden White House is "seriously entertaining the idea of across-the-board haircuts to most items" in the reconciliation package as well as the removal of entire programs.

But progressives are pushing back against that approach, warning it would be morally and politically disastrous to impose artificial constraints on spending in the midst of a deadly pandemic, economic recession, and worsening climate crisis. According to a recent analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, Sen. Joe Manchin's (D-W.Va.) proposal to cut the reconciliation bill's price tag by $2 trillion over a decade would support two million fewer jobs each year than the full Build Back Better plan.

"Slashing investments that will create millions of good-paying jobs and make child care, healthcare, and housing more affordable is a recipe for a weak recovery and inequitable future," said Claire Guzdar, a spokesperson for the ProsperUS coalition. "Congress should pass the full Build Back Better agenda without delay. We can't afford not to."

Jayapal, the chair of the 96-member Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), said during Tuesday's event that progressives in the House and Senate are "united in our insistence that these prioritiesclimate action, the care economy, housing, roadmap to citizenship, expanded healthcare, and tax fairnessare included and funded in the final bill."

"We have to insist that the will of the 96% of Democrats in the House and the Senate, the leadership of the president, and the majority of the American people is not ignored for the misplaced priorities of 4% of our colleagues who aren't yet on board," she added.

Sanders, chair of the powerful Senate Budget Committee, echoed Jayapal on Tuesday, declaring that "now is the time for us to stand up for the working class of this country and tell the billionaires that they're going to have to start paying their fair share of taxes."

"What we are talking about is not simply a laundry list, a wish list," Sanders said. "It is the needs of the American people. We will no longer continue to have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on Earth... We are going to make sure that no family in America pays more than 7% of their incomes for child care. We're going to make pre-K universal and free. We're going to deal with the affordable housing crisis because we are tired of seeing half a million people in this country homeless, sleeping out on the streets."

"We're going to deal with climate," Sanders continued, "because we know we have the moral responsibility to address that so that the planet we leave for our kids and grandchildren is healthy and habitable."

Earlier Tuesday, as Common Dreams reported, Jayapal and Sanders both indicated that a proposal to expand Medicare benefits to cover dental, hearing, and vision is "not negotiable"a position they staked out amid reports that the plan is on the chopping block due to opposition from right-wing Democrats.

"As part of the reconciliation bill, Americans want to lower prescription drug costs (88%) and expand Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing (84%)," Sanders tweeted Tuesday, pointing to recent polling. "Both proposals are strongly opposed by drug companies and private insurance. The Dems must stand with the people, not fold."

Late last month, members of the CPC acted as a bloc to ensure that the reconciliation package and a Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill remained linked, a strategy progressives believe is necessary to get the Build Back Better Act to President Joe Biden's desk intact.

"Progressives in Congress held the line, but we're not done yet," Jayapal stressed Tuesday as Democrats rush to complete the reconciliation bill by the end of the month, a tall task given ongoing disputes over the bill's top-line cost as well as its specific provisions.

Leah Greenberg, co-executive director of Indivisible, said during the town hall that "it is well past time for Congress to deliver and pass an inclusive reconciliation bill through both the House and Senate."

"Progressives made clear they will not allow conservative Democrats to gamble away the policies that will expand healthcare coverage and lower prescription drug prices, [create] tax fairness, build a pathway to citizenship and include immigrants in recovery provisions, invest in clean energy and climate action, and meet needs like child care, paid leave, and affordable housing," saidGreenberg. "It is time to deliver for our families, our communities, and the planet."

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Progressives Push Democrats to Reject 'Outdated Austerity Policies' and Pass Bold Agenda - Common Dreams

The nationwide state congresses of the ruling party, All Progressives Congress, which was held on Saturday, experienced a huge setback as a result of divisions within the party.

SaharaReporters learnt that in Lagos State, the ruling party APC had three parallel congresses with one of the factions led by a former governor, Akinwunmi Ambode.

SaharaReporters gathered that the national leadership of the party under Yobe State Governor, Mala Buni, recognised Ambodes faction and his list of executives which is part of a coup and ongoing efforts to weaken the influence of the National Leader of the party, Bola Tinubu.

Top sources revealed that Ambode's faction was sponsored by Buni, who is the Chairman, Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee so as to weaken Tinubu in his perceived stronghold.

Lagos APC had three separate congresses; the people elected in Ambodes faction and congress are backed by Buni. It is a coup against Tinubu, a top source revealed.

SaharaReporters obtained the list of the state executives elected by Ambode's faction; they are; Beatrice Omotayo Tugbobo, Chairman; Alhaji Dauda, Vice-chairman; Hon. Prince Adedeji Osho, Secretary; Hon. Akewushola Onoyemi, treasurer; Balogun Adekunle Hameed, Publicity Secretary; Youth Leader, Buhari Babajide Jimoh and Woman Leader, Ashafa Salawat.

Others are: Financial Sec, Prince Moruf.A. Anibire; Organizing Sec., Olamiji Alilu; Auditor, Adeosun Iyiola Abiodun; Legal Adviser, Wasiu Adeyemi Sulaimon; Youth Leader, Adelaja Moruf; Welfare Officer, Olusegun Moruf Bello; Ex-officer 1, Ibrahim Misbau Omoniyi; Ex-officer 2, Babatunde Collins Davies.

SaharaReporters had last weekend reported how ailing Tinubu quietly returned to the country after months of extensive medical treatments in the United Kingdom and the United States.

It had also been reported that the APC in Lagos State had sent out a circular to its leaders across the state informing them that the Sunday welcome party being organised for Tinubu would not be held as earlier scheduled.

SaharaReporters had learnt that the APC sent the circular, signed by Alhaji Tunde Balogun (APC State Chairman), and Alhaji Maroun Are (GAC Secretary) to the party leaders believably at the ward and local government levels, without giving a specific reason for the change of plan.

SaharaReporters, however, gathered that the cancellation was due to the exclusive report published by this medium, which forced them to abort it abruptly.

In the circular obtained by SaharaReporters, the APC leaders were told that a new arrangement for welcoming Tinubu would be announced later.

Dear leader/GAC member, you are hereby informed of change in plans/arrival of our National Leader billed for Sunday. Due to unforeseen circumstances, the plans/arrival have been put on hold. A new plan/arrival will be unfolded soon. Sorry for any inconvenience this hold may have caused. Thank you, the notice had said.

SaharaReporters had reported that Tinubu confirmed that he went through a challenging health crisis, saying his physiotherapy was gruesome.

Tinubu said this while addressing members of the House of Representatives northern caucus who visited him in London last Friday.

The former governor, who had been in the United Kingdom for the last three months since undergoing knee surgery, told the gathering, Because of God and people like you, I am well. It is just the physio (physiotherapy) that is gruesome.

Since his departure, Tinubus London home has become a mecca of sorts as he has been visited by President Muhammadu Buhari, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila; Governors Abdullahi Ganduje (Kano),

Dapo Abiodun (Ogun), Babajide Sanwo-Olu (Lagos), Rotimi Akeredolu (Ondo), and Kayode Fayemi (Ekiti).

SaharaReporters had reported that Tinubu underwent knee surgery at the John Hopkins University Hospital in Maryland, US.

The APC chieftain, it was learnt, left the US for the United Kingdom on crutches, a few days after the surgery.

Sources close to Tinubu told SaharaReporters that he wanted the surgery in Paris, France but changed his plan after rumours of his death spread in Nigeria.

Tinubu had his second surgery at John Hopkins University in Maryland recently. He was accompanied by a popular Nigerian doctor in Chicago. He had wanted the surgery in Paris but when rumour was rife about his death, he hurriedlyleft for Nigeria and went to John Hopkins, one of the sources had said.

"He left the US for the UK on crutches," another source revealed.

SaharaReporters had on July 31 reported that Tinubu, who has had several medical trips this year alone, had surgery about two weeks earlier and could be billed for another one.

The APC National Leader has been off official and party functions in the country for a while, amidst talks that he is being positioned for the 2023 presidency to succeed the incumbent repressive regime of Buhari.

The APC state congress which held nationwide on Saturday did not hit a crisis only in Lagos but in most states of the South-West.

Earlier today, two persons were said to have sustained injuries from gunshots fired by some unidentified persons who invaded the venue of the state Congress organised by a faction of the All Progressives Congress in Osogbo, Osun State.

The incident happened around 12.50 pm after the congress organised by the Osun Progressives, a faction of APC backed by the Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, had commenced the process of electing new executives.

A car with about five occupants that were armed with guns was seen driving along Osogbo/Gbongan Road towards the entrance to the venue of the Congress.

The vehicle was eventually prevented from advancing to the entrance to the venue of the Congress held at Ladsol Bus Stop, Ogo Oluwa, Osogbo, by another group leading to an exchange of gunshots between the two groups.

Also, in Ogun state, the Ake palace in Abeokuta was cordoned off by police officers believed to be from the Ogun State Police Command and officers of the Department of the State Security Services.

The officers had allegedly been sent by the faction of the APC loyal to Governor Dapo Abiodun to lock up the venue of the parallel congress of those members loyal to former Governor Ibikunle Amosun, preventing party faithful from gaining access.

Many people believed to have been mobilised for the parallel congress were seen loitering around the palace, and unable to enter the venue.

Meanwhile, the national leadership of the ruling All Progressives Congress suspended the congress in Oyo over irregularities.

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REVEALED Crisis Hits All Progressives Congress As Chairman Buni Backs Ex-Governor Ambode's Faction In Lagos To Weaken Tinubu's Influence -...

Leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus on Wednesday reiterated their top-level priorities for the nascent reconciliation package and urged their fellow Democrats to pursue universal programs instead of "complicated methods of means-testing that the wealthy and powerful will use to divide us."

"The CPC agrees that President [Joe] Biden has made a compelling case to the American people that government can, and should, be a force for good in this country, and we agree that bold investments in good-paying union jobs, climate action, immigration reform, and caregiving are essential to uplifting families and building back better," reads a letter that the CPC's executive board sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif). "This is our moment to make the president's vision a reality."

The lettersigned by CPC chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and 26 other progressive lawmakersgoes on to outline the "five core priority areas" that the caucus has chosen to emphasize during ongoing negotiations over the reconciliation bill:

The CPC leaders also put forth the caucus' broad vision for how such programs should be crafted, pushing back against right-wing efforts to impose work requirements, income limits, and other restrictions that would limit the number of people who qualify for benefits.

"Much has been made in recent weeks about the compromises necessary to enact this transformative agenda," the CPC members write. "We have been told that we can either adequately fund a small number of investments or legislate broadly, but only make a shallow, short-term impact. We would argue that this is a false choice."

Instead of slashing the funding of key programs in order to extend their duration over 10 years and appease conservative lawmakers' demand for a lower price tag, the CPC executive board contends that Democrats should "make robust investments over a shorter window."

Speaking to reporters earlier this week, Pelosi indicated she is open to that approach.

"This will help make the case for our party's ability to govern, and establish a track record of success that will pave the way for a long-term extension of benefits," the CPC's letter reads. "We cannot pit childcare against housing, or paid leave against home- and community-based care."

The progressive Democrats also deliver a sharp warning against limiting benefits on the basis of income, a route some right-wing lawmakersincluding Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)have advocated during recent negotiations over the Build Back Better package.

"We strongly believe that this is the moment to demonstrate to the American people that regardless of geography, race, gender, or class, Democrats believe that everyone has a right to affordable child care, pre-K, clean water, and a community college education," the CPC letter states. "We can choose to strengthen the bond Americans have to one another by proposing universal social insurance benefits that broadly benefit all Americans."

"This bill," the letter concludes, "offers us a chance to fundamentally transform the relationship between the American people and their government."

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House Progressives to Pelosi: Reject Divisive Means-Testing in Favor of Universal Benefits - Common Dreams

A group of prominent global progressives on Wednesday announced a return of the Belmarsh Tribunal, where participants will put the United States government on informal trial for war crimes and demand freedom for jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

"At the Belmarsh Tribunal, we will turn the world the right way up, placing crimes of war, torture, kidnapping, and a litany of other gross human rights abuses on trial."

On October 22, Progressive International's Belmarsh Tribunal, named after the notorious London prison where Assange is imprisoned as he faces possible extradition to the United States, "will try the U.S. government for its crimes of the 21st centuryfrom atrocities in Iraq to torture at Guantnamo Bay to a surveillance program."

"We are convening parliamentarians, journalists, lawyers, and investigators to fight for truth and justice against Assange's extradition to the United States," said Progressive International, which held a similar tribunal last year. "In doing so, the Belmarsh Tribunal turns the tables in the extradition hearing against Julian Assange... a case that will shape the future of journalism for decades to come."

Britain's High Court has been considering the Biden administration's appeal in the extradition case against Assange, with a full appellate hearing scheduled for October 27 and 28.

"WikiLeaks exposed the reality of the War on Terror," said Progressive International. "It revealed war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, over 300 incidents of torture, and secret killings by the United States armed forces. For exposing the criminality of the War on Terror, the U.S. and its allies have persecuted, imprisoned, and plotted to assassinate Julian Assange."

Last month, Common Dreams reported that in 2017 the Central Intelligence Agency, under then-Director Mike Pompeo, plotted to kidnapand possibly murderAssange to avenge WikiLeaks' publication of the "Vault 7" documents exposing CIA cyber warfare and surveillance activities.

The Belmarsh Tribunal is inspired by the Russell Tribunal, a 1966 event organized by philosophers Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre to hold the U.S. accountable for its escalating war crimes in Vietnam.

British historian and activist Tariq Ali, one of the original Belmarsh Tribunal members, will participate in this year's event.

Some of the members of the 2021 Belmarsh Tribunal include German Left Party lawmaker Heike Hnsel; Solidarity Party of Afghanistan spokesperson Selay Ghaffar; Greek lawmaker Yanis Varoufakis; former Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa; Italian investigative journalist Stefania Maurizi; ACLU attorney Ben Wizner; and British Labour parliamentarians Apsana Begum, Richard Burgon, Jeremy Corbyn, and John McDonnell.

"At the Belmarsh Tribunal, we will turn the world the right way up," Corbyn tweeted Wednesday, "placing crimes of war, torture, kidnapping, and a litany of other gross human rights abuses on trial."

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Progressives to Put US War Crimes on Trial and Demand Freedom for Julian Assange - Common Dreams

The stench of defeat has clung to the Democrats failure to get either of their major infrastructure bills passed by Congress during the last week of September. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi had committed herself to 27 September as the date by which she would bring to a vote the smaller, bipartisan bill infrastructure package already passed by the Senate. This was going to happen, she said, even if no progress had been made on meeting the progressive Democrats key demand: passing the larger reconciliation infrastructure bill at the same time. But Pelosi held no vote that day or even that week, even as she vowed with increasing frequency (and seeming desperation) that one was imminent. The week ended not with a dramatic roll call but with plenty of Democratic handwringing and gleeful Republican predictions that the collapse of Democratic rule and, with it, of Bidens presidency, was at hand.

Treating that fateful week as the moment when the promise of the Biden presidency vanished may be too hasty a conclusion, however. The difficult challenge facing Pelosi was to unite Democrats behind a second infrastructure bill much larger and more ambitious than the first. It was never going to be easy to pass that second bill, and not just because the Democrats were holding a slim majority in the House and the thinnest of majorities in the Senate. It is also the case that a bill of this size and scope has no clear precedent. We hear a lot about FDRs remarkable accomplishment, passing 15 separate bills in the first 100 days of his New Deal administration in 1933. The Democrats second infrastructure bill, if passed, would have been equally remarkable. It is best understood as an attempt to compress the equivalent of Roosevelts fifteen separate initiatives into one giant piece of legislation.

Its exhausting simply to read through the list of the second infrastructural bills major provisions: universal preschool, subsidies for child and elder care, a program of school lunches, paid medical leave, expansion of Medicare (and Obamacare and Medicaid), massive investments in a green economy, additional investments in physical infrastructure, a Civilian Climate Corps (modelled on FDRs storied Civilian Conservation Corps), affordable housing, Native American infrastructure, support for historically black colleges and universities, and an expanded green card program for immigrant workers and their families. Weve heard a lot about the way in which the filibuster warps American democracy and about the arcane process of reconciliation that, in a few instances, allows for a filibuster workaround. Weve heard a lot less about how the Democrats, in difficult political circumstances, have come within two Senate votes of achieving a legislative breakthrough on a scale that rivals FDRs legendary 100 days.

And despite pundit declarations to the contrary, Democrats attempt at breakthrough is not yet dead. It is true that the reconciliation infrastructural bill no longer has a chance of reaching an expenditure level of $4tn. If such a bill passes, it is likely to be in the $1.5-2tn range. The many major initiatives currently contained within it may have to be shrunk by a third. That will disappoint Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and their supporters, who had originally set their eyes on a $6tn package. Yet, history offers a different perspective. The Biden administration might still deliver a package of programs across its first year totaling $5tn: an estimated $2tn for a downsized reconciliation infrastructural bill; $2tn for Americas Rescue Plan already approved; and the $1tn for the bipartisan infrastructure bill that is sure to pass the House at some point. This shrunken 2021 package as a whole would still rival (as a percentage of GDP) government expenditures during the most expensive years of the second world war. It would exceed by more than five times the size of Obamas 2009 economic recovery plan.

The ambition of Bidens spending package reveals the distance that US politics has travelled since the Great Recession, when Obama relied for economic guidance on a group of economic advisors drawn from the neoliberal world of Robert Rubin and Goldman Sachs, and of Wall Street more broadlyfigures such as Timothy Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Peter Orszag, and Michael Froman. Elizabeth Warren had not then launched her political career, and Sanders was a lonely voice in the Senate. They were certainly not regarded as Democratic Party heavyweights. They now are. That Biden ultimately sided with the progressives during the 27 September week is a sure sign of their influence.

The progressives influence is equally apparent in Bidens decision, in the days leading up to the expected vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill, to nominate Saule Omarova to be Comptroller of the Currency. Omarova, a law professor at Cornell University, is a radical who wants to democratize and nationalize finance in America in ways never done before. In her legal writings, she has argued that the Federal Reserve ought to be turned into a peoples bank where Americans would keep their deposit accounts (rather than in private banks, as is currently the case). This newly configured Fed, in her vision, would also establish a national investment authority charged with directing Federal Reserve capital to projects that serve the public interest. Omarova may not receive confirmation from the Senate; even if she does, she may simply be a pawn in Bidens campaign to get the mainstream Jerome Powell reappointed as Fed chairman. But by nominating Omarova, Biden has spurred a conversation already underway about how to restructure the Fed in ways that make it less of a cloistered institution serving elite interests and both more transparent and more responsive to the democratic will.

Omarova is hardly a singular figure in Biden circles. Stephanie Kelton, an economics professor at Binghamton University and a former chief economist for Democrats on the US Senate Budget Committee, has argued in a widely-read book (The Deficit Myth) that governments can sustain much larger deficits than conventional economic theory prescribes. High-volume government expenditures, properly targeted, she asserts, will not slow economic growth but enhance a peoples economy. Lina Khan, appointed by Biden to chair the Federal Trade Commission, believes that social media and e-commerce giants such as Amazon exercise the kind of monopoly power that damage both the economy and American democracy. She has authorized the FTC to scrutinize the practices of these corporate titans with a view toward either breaking them up or subjecting them to much stricter public regulation than they have yet known. More generally, she aims to restore a regime of public regulation of private corporate power that FDR and his New Dealers did so much to bring into beingand that the Reagan Revolution did so much to break up. The bipartisan fury directed at Facebook during congressional hearings last week suggest that Khans views may have broad popular appeal.

It is still too soon to know which of these progressive views and the governing proposals that issue from them will prevail. The Democrats are operating in a political environment far more hostile than what Roosevelt faced in 1933, when he enjoyed large majorities in the House and the Senate. If they fail to pass versions of both infrastructural bills this autumn, the Democrats will seriously damage their chances of maintaining their majorities in the House and Senate in 2022. But it is also true, as is the case with the populist mobilization that Trump has engendered on the right, that the new progressivism is not going away anytime soon. We have entered a new political era, one in which the principles and strategies that guided the party during the Clinton and Obama eras no longer suffice.

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Progressives are now heavyweights in the Democratic party - The Guardian