Thank you to anyone who followed the first week of these. This is a brief update for the morning of Friday, March 20th.
1. Thursday, Progressive International said an international convoy had successfully delivered desperately-needed medical supplies to hospitals in Havana, as Cubans continue to face a humanitarian crisis caused by ongoing American economic warfare.
2. Thursday, the Trump administration did not deny reports that it is seeking $200 billion in additional taxpayer money to continue its devastating, unprovoked war against Iran
3. On Monday, a 19-year-old detained at the abusive Glades County Detention Center in Florida became the 13th person reported to have died in ICE custody this year – and the youngest of the dozens who have died in ICE custody since the start of the second Trump administration.
4. On March 4th, a Georgia woman became the first person in the state charged with attempted murder for allegedly taking pills to induce an abortion.
5. Thursday, a U.S. district judge in Oregon blocked an attempt by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to restrict access to gender affirming care for minors – ordering the administration to stop threatening to cut off providers from Medicaid and Medicare programs.
6. In a federal civil rights lawsuit filed Monday, a Black Tyson Foods plant worker in Virginia details the extensive racist abuse he says he suffered at the hands of his White co-workers and managers – including threats of violence so extreme that he started staying in hotels, so that he would not be followed home and killed.
7. Thursday, a federal court in New York greenlighted a lawsuit by Mahmoud Khalil and other Columbia University students against both the school and the Trump administration, meaning plaintiffs can now gather evidence to support their arguments that crackdowns on protests against the genocide in Gaza were a violation of their First Amendment rights.
8. Federal regulators on Thursday proposed reversing Biden-era rules and loosening Wall Street banks’ capital requirements – which had been designed as a buffer to help avoid another 2008-style crash.
9. As the Western U.S. faces record-breaking, climate change-driven heat this week, a report out Wednesday by Clean Creatives details how the fossil fuel industry’s propaganda strategy has shifted in recent years – ditching greenwashing for “increasingly manipulative and strategic” tactics aimed at “convincing people that we can’t live without fossil fuels.”
10. The Trump administration’s FCC on Thursday approved the merger of broadcast rivals Nextar and Tegna, which could create the nation’s largest operator of local TV stations – though lawsuits have been filed to block the deal.
The News Focus 