In Gaza, Aljazeera reports displaced Palestinians are dealing with the aftermath of heavy rains that flooded their tents in makeshift encampments in Gaza City, as the United Nations warns that Israeli restrictions on the flow of aid have left hundreds of thousands of families without adequate shelter as winter sets in.
Despite the cease fire, Israeli forces killed at least three people in Gaza over the weekend with two Palestinians shot dead in the occupied West Bank including a 15-year-old boy.
In a significant policy reversal, after Democrats' electoral wins, President Trump is backing off tariffs on beef, coffee and tropical fruit, after his administration faced blowback over spikes in food prices paid by consumers.
Trump is also now calling for the House of Representatives to vote in favor of the DOJ releasing the Epstein files after spending months dismissing the scandal as a “Democratic hoax.”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration will require millions of low-income Americans to reapply for their food stamps in what is being described as an anti-fraud initiative. Politico reports that anti-hunger groups counter that the Trump administration is greatly exaggerating the fraud claim for the nutritional program that on average provides about $6 a day in benefits to the average participant.
During the recently ended federal government shutdown the lifeline program, upon which 42 million Americans rely, including tens of millions of children and working Americans rely, was suspended. The Trump administration refused to use billions in a contingency fund and threatened to sanction any state that attempted to fill the gap in humanitarian aid.
We talk with New York State Tom DiNapoli about the major fiscal fallout from the GOP’s ending subsidies for the Affordable Care Act and the deepening healthcare access and affordability crisis. DiNapoli is asked about funding the New York Health Act, that would provide universal healthcare, by ending the practice of rebating back the New York State Stock Transfer Tax to Wall Street.
In our A Block we will hear from Yale Global Justice Fellow James Henry and labor historian and union consultant Dr. Joe Wilson. In our B Block we will learn why a coalition of 60 groups in New Jersey are urging the lame duck state legislature in Trenton to pass the New Jersey Voting Rights Act.
We finish up with a conversation with former New York Assemblyman Dick Gottfried, who was the visionary author of the New York Health Act, that guarantees high quality healthcare to every New Yorker regardless of their ability to pay. He was joined by Kelly Smith, who was one of the founders of the Non-Violent Medicaid Army that organizes active or former Medicaid recipients who suffered from our precarious healthcare system that always puts profits ahead of people.
The US healthcare system is the mostly expensive in the world with the poorest health outcomes. As a consequence the US global life expectancy, ranking now 49th, is expected to drop to 66th by 2050.
Life expectancy in the US varies by as much as 20 years hinging on one’s race, income and zip code.
Before the COVID pandemic, poverty was the fourth leading cause of death in the US, ahead of homicide causing an average 800 premature deaths a day, according to a study by the University of California at Berkeley School of Public Health.
