An Axios analysis released Wednesday found that spending on healthcare advertisements has exceeded $65 million in 2019 as dark money organizations, the insurance industry, and Big Pharma ramp up their campaigns against Medicare for All and other proposed reforms.
"More than half of all issue advertising this year has been on healthcare," according to Axios, "and that spending will only increase as the 2020 campaign gets closer."
Doctor Patient Unity, a dark money group that purports to represent doctors but doesn't publicly disclose its members, has been the biggest spender on healthcare ads this year, Axios found. The group has spent $26 million to date in 2019 into an effort to defeat bipartisan legislation aimed at curbing surprise medical bills.

One of the most important tasks of any community’s elders is to protect children — all children. One obligation of rabbis is to love Torah, live Torah and draw on the experience of Jewish history as continuing Torah. For us, both elders and rabbis, these two imperatives came together in our protest of the treatment of children at the U.S.-Mexico border — and explain why we were arrested last week outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Philadelphia.....

We are not alone in our demonstrations against the outrages against children. For the first time in American Jewish history, large cohorts of the Jewish community have come together to resist a major policy priority of the U.S. government.
Truah, the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights and Never Again Action, the latter a swiftly gathered new network of mostly younger Jews, have inspired or carried out dozens of actions and hundreds of arrests around the country.

I spend a lot of time in interfaith, multicultural and racial justice spaces because I think that bridging divides is a critical issue of our time...

It’s not uncommon to hear people in these spaces make the case for this work by simply saying, “We’re all the same.”
I realize people mean well with this truism, and I understand what they’re trying to say. But I don’t think it accomplishes what they want it to.....

In the spirit of sharing, I want to offer a window into the unique logic of Sikh wisdom, which I believe offers us a model for thinking about diversity in a way that is substantive and powerful.

Sikhi teaches that people can achieve enlightenment from different religious paths, so long as the approach is grounded in love and oneness.....

In a liturgical prayer that Sikhs have been reciting nightly for centuries, Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhi, writes: “There are countless seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months. There is one sun, yet many seasons. O Nanak, the Creator has many forms!”

This Labor Day, presidential candidates will no doubt be talking about the plight of American workers and fairness in the U.S. economy. Few, if any, are likely to mention the Catholic Church’s significant contributions to the fight for worker justice. But as extreme inequality continues to grow, there’s value in reflecting on how Catholic social teaching has offered a check on the excesses of unfettered capitalism over the past century.
A hundred years ago, America’s Catholic bishops issued what then amounted to a radical set of proposals that in the following decades would influence President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal reforms. The bishops’ “Program for Social Reconstruction” called for a minimum wage and labor participation in management decisions, along with insurance for the elderly, disabled and unemployed funded by a tax on industry.....

Outside Washington, Catholics were leading progressive movements for economic dignity. In New York, Boston and other major cities, “labor priests” organized parish schools where workers were instructed in Catholic teaching about workers’ rights and concretely applied those principles to the practical details of collective bargaining.

Massachusetts senator and 2020 Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren is demanding the State Department hand over any documents related to Vice President Mike Pence’s controversial trip to Ireland.
Trump, of course, essentially ordered Pence to stay at his Ireland resort during the trip – yet another example of the president using is his office for personal enrichment – and Warren wants answers.
In a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Warren said, “This transaction – another example of what appears to be open corruption in this administration – deepens my concerns about the ongoing ethics issues related to the President’s continued financial relationship with the Trump Organization and the abuse of taxpayer funds to enrich the President and his family through their business interests.”

Biden slammed Trump for looking weak during the recent G7 summit in France, particularly when it came to dealing with the environmental crisis facing the world.
“There is no leadership,” the former VP said during a CNN town hall on climate change. “I know almost every one of these world leaders. If I had been president today, I would have at the G7 made sure this became the topic. There would be no empty chair.”

Moving beyond his 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si’,” Francis called for “prophetic actions” to spur governments to undertake “drastic measures” to achieve zero net greenhouse gas emissions and keep average global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. He points to the United Nations Climate Action Summit on Sept. 23 as a place to show political will and signals that next month’s Amazon Synod of Bishops will itself address climate.