Governments must facilitate fundamental freedoms prior, during and after the elections by Gina Romero, Irene Khan UN Office for Human Rights (OHCHR)   Global 'Super Election' Cycle intensified civic space restrictions and undermined democratic participation says UN expert.   The rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association were heavily curtailed in many countries around the world during the 2023-2025 “super election” cycle, as part of a deliberate effort to restrict civic space and stifle democratic debate, a UN expert said today.   “These freedoms are essential for transparent, credible, and inclusive elections, representing people’s free will, and for sustaining democracy. Attacks or undue restrictions on them undermine public participation, electoral legitimacy and social peace,” said Gina Romero, Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly in her first report to the UN Human Rights Council.   “Given their crucial role during elections, the threshold for imposing legitimate restrictions should have been higher than usual, but in practice it was below the minimum,” the expert said.   She underlined that civil society plays a key role in safeguarding electoral integrity, enabling free and pluralistic public debate, monitoring elections, preventing violence and promoting inclusion.   “Yet, it was stigmatised, suppressed and criminalised, including through repressive legislation. Civil society activists faced harassment, arbitrary detention, torture and killings, with justice systems weaponised to repress opposition,” Romero said.   Election observers, recognised as human rights defenders, also faced legal and physical threats, she said.   According to Romero’s report, opposition parties and candidates faced undue restrictions and political persecution, including burdensome registration, funding restrictions, unlawful disqualification and detention of candidates and dissolutions.   The ‘super election’ cycle saw widespread protests, as people denounced electoral misconduct and sought political participation, but assemblies were heavily curtailed through restrictions, arbitrary arrests, and excessive – sometimes deadly – force, and the misuse of less lethal weapons, the expert said.   Romero also raised concern about the way digital technologies, lacking transparency and oversight, such as of biometric voter registration, facial recognition and spyware, were used to suppress, persecute and repress activists and political opponents, creating chilling impacts on participation.   “These repressive acts created fear, severely limiting public freedoms and political pluralism, and undermined democratic processes and the right to vote,” the Special Rapporteur said.   Newly-elected governments further restricted civic activism through funding restrictions and repression, stigmatisation and criminalisation.   “Governments must facilitate fundamental freedoms prior, during and after the elections, and foster inclusive political participation, and tolerate criticism,” Romero urged.   “Governments must also guarantee pluralism; uphold the human rights of civil society actors, election observers and the opposition; repeal repressive laws like ‘foreign agent’ legislation; and ensure accountability and reparations for any violations.”   June 2025   Reverse the decline of freedom of expression to protect free and fair elections: UN expert   The global decline in freedom of expression is endangering free and fair elections and must be reversed for the sake of democracy as well as human rights, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, Irene Khan, said today, presenting her latest report to the Human Rights Council.   “Polarised politics in backsliding democracies, social media platforms awash with disinformation and hate speech and a media sector too weak to debunk the lies have imperilled both freedom of expression and the right to vote,” Khan said.   “While lies are not new during elections, digital technology and social media platforms have changed the game, enabling and amplifying the degradation of the electoral information environment as never before,” the expert said.   “Vilifying minorities and marginalised groups, smearing women politicians, discrediting independent journalists, targeting electoral officials, delegitimising electoral outcomes were worrying trends in many recent elections,” she said.   The Special Rapporteur said public officials and politicians bear a significant responsibility for the degradation of the information environment, as they weaponise their own freedom of expression to incite hate and violence while denouncing the prohibition of incitement as censorship.   “The advocacy of hatred to incite violence, rampant on some campaign trails and platforms, is prohibited under international law even when it masquerades as political speech,” Khan said.   The report notes that while some States have adopted good practices based on freedom of expression, others have spread disinformation, denied access to information, attacked independent media and fact-checkers and criminalised political expression under the guise of fighting disinformation.   “Undermining freedom of expression in the name of fighting disinformation is short-sighted and counter-productive.” Khan said.   “At a time of rising hate and lies I am alarmed that large social media platforms and search engines are rolling back electoral integrity, safety, transparency and risk management for political and ideological reasons as well as economic and technological ones,” she said.   “Platforms and search engines, as major vectors of the right to information, must prioritise human safety and human rights over political and commercial interests,” the expert said.   “Democracies need a healthy media sector, and governments must also urgently address the decline of media freedom, independence, diversity, and pluralism,” Khan said. “Multi-stakeholder strategies grounded in human rights are the most effective antidote for a degraded information environment.”   “Public trust in the integrity of elections is at an all-time low. States, companies and civil society must work together to close the trust deficit urgently,” she said.   http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/06/global-super-election-cycle-intensified-civic-space-restrictions-and http://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/ahrc5944-impact-2023-2025-super-election-cycle-rights-freedom-peaceful http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/06/reverse-decline-freedom-expression-protect-free-and-fair-elections-un-expert http://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1m/k1ml8kkqun
	Trump budget bill hurts America’s poor and working-class to give tax cuts to rich by Steven Greenhouse Guardian news, agencies USA   "Never before has legislation taken so much from struggling families to give so much to the richest. It makes the biggest cuts to food aid for hungry families, executes the largest cuts to health care ever".   Under the Trump Administration's Billionaire First governing policy, as part of the Make America Great for Billionaires Again: $117 billion in tax cuts are directed to the richest 1 percent of Americans next year, exceeding the amount going to the entire bottom 60 percent of taxpayers.   The top 1 percent by income will receive tax cuts totaling $1.02 trillion over the next decade.. while at least 17 million Americans will lose health coverage, 7 million people, including over 2 million children, will lose food aid or have their food aid cut dramatically..   Last November, Donald Trump made a solemn vow to all Americans: “Every citizen, I will fight for you, your family and your future every single day.” Eight months later, Trump is vigorously backing many policies that will mean pain for millions.   Trump has pushed to enact the Republican budget bill, which would make significant cuts to Medicaid, Obamacare, and food assistance, and would do the greatest damage to those Americans struggling hardest to make ends meet – the 30% of the US population that lives in households earning under $50,000 a year.   Even as Trump and Republican lawmakers are rushing to cut over $1.4tn in health and food assistance for non-affluent Americans, Trump continues to pressure Congress to extend over $3tn in tax cuts that disproportionately help the wealthy and corporations.   Trump has embraced these Robin-Hood-in-reverse policies, even though it was voters earning less than $50,000 a year who delivered victory to him last November. They favored him over Kamala Harris by 50% to 48%, according to exit polls, while Trump and Harris tied among voters earning $50,000 or more a year.   Several social policy experts said Trump has engaged in hypocrisy at best and betrayal at worst when it comes to the working-class and blue-collar Americans he promised to fight for. Speaking about the Republicans’ “big, beautiful” budget bill, Sharon Parrott, president of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, said: “Who’s getting hit, who’s bearing the cost? It’s people with low and middle incomes, people that the president and many Republican policymakers promised to serve and support in the last election.”   The budget bill would mean a net financial loss for the bottom 30% of American households by income – after factoring in its tax provisions and cuts in benefits. The House bill would hit the lowest-earning 10% of Americans hardest: for them, it would mean a painful $1,600 cut in income on average (a 3.9% drop), according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).   At the same time, the Trump-backed bill would be a boon to wealthy households – it would mean a $12,000 increase in net income, on average, for households in the top 10%, those earning above $692,000 a year. According to the Yale Budget Lab, the top 0.1% – those with income over $3.3m – would receive tax cuts of $103,500 on average.   The CBO says the income of the bottom 10% tops off at $22,868 (before factoring in government transfers). The second lowest decile earns from $22,868 to $43,137; the third decile earns up to $55,628; and the fourth up to $68,601.   The Yale Budget Lab found that the bottom 20% of US households would see their incomes drop by 2.9% on average over the next decade, and the second lowest quintile – moderate-income households – would suffer a 0.4% loss of income on average. But the richest 20% would see their incomes rise by 2.3%. Those in the top 1% would see their incomes climb by $29,585 on average.   Trump is demanding these big tax cuts for the rich even though the CBO says the budget bill will increase the federal debt by $3.3tn – a move that will push up interest rates and make mortgages and home-buying more expensive.   According to the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy, the $121bn tax cuts that would go just to the richest 1% next year are significantly more than all the tax cuts that would go to the bottom 60% of Americans in terms of income.   The poorest 20% of Americans would receive just 1% of the bill’s tax cuts next year, while the highest earning 5% would receive 44% of the cuts.   Last week, Trump urged lawmakers to enact the bill, saying: “There are hundreds of things in there. It is so good.” At a news conference, the president said the more than $1tn in Medicaid and food assistance cuts wouldn’t hurt anyone.   “It won’t affect anybody,” he said. “It is just fraud, waste and abuse.”   But Parrott took a sharply different view: “The bill stands alone historically for its unique upside-down mix of large tax cuts for the top, deep cuts that affect low- and middle-income people, and massive increases in deficits and debt.”   John Ricco, the Yale Budget Lab’s associate director of policy analysis, said: “It’s unambiguous that low- and moderate-income Americans will be worse off on average under the budget bill, and that’s principally because the cuts in Medicaid and Snap [the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] would by definition fall most heavily on these groups,” Ricco said.   Jeanne Lambrew, the Century Foundation’s director of health policy reform, estimates that at least 17 million Americans will lose health coverage because of the budget bill – refuting White House claims that “no one will lose coverage”. Lambrew said the bill would cause a more than 50% increase in the number of uninsured nationwide, to nearly 45 million people.   What’s more, the Trump-backed plan sharply reduces Affordable Care Act subsidies, and that will force millions of Americans to either drop coverage or pay far more for coverage. Millions of Americans will find it harder to obtain healthcare, with many forced to take on far more medical debt.   While Trump and many Republicans say the Medicaid cuts are all about reducing “waste, fraud and abuse”, Lambrew calculates that a mere 3.5% of the $1tn in healthcare cuts come from cutting waste and abuse. “What Trump has been saying is, ‘We’re not cutting Medicaid. We’re just cutting fraud.’ That’s gaslighting.” Lambrew said.   Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, sent the Senate a letter that harshly criticized the budget bill. “As Pope Leo XIV recently stated, it is the responsibility of politicians to promote and protect the common good, including by working to overcome great wealth inequality,” he wrote. “This bill does not answer this call. It takes from the poor to give to the wealthy.”   According to a Quinnipiac University poll, only 27% of registered voters support the GOP budget bill, while 53% oppose it. A Fox News poll found that 38% support the bill, while 59% oppose it.   The House bill’s deep cuts in food benefits will cause 7 million people, including over 2 million children, to lose food aid or have their food aid cut significantly. The Trump-supported bill also makes sharp cuts in Pell grant awards. The Center for American Progress says this means 4.4 million students from low- and moderate-income families could lose some or all of their federal grant aid.   In another blow to Americans earning under $50,000, Trump pushed to have the budget bill eliminate the “Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program”, which, as one website put it, “keeps poor people from freezing to death at home”. Killing the program would end heating subsidies for 6 million Americans, but so far congressional Republicans have spared the program and not bowed to Trump on this.   In another blow to blue-collar Americans, the bill would undo much of Joe Biden’s efforts to speed the creation of clean-energy industries, and that could put hundreds of thousands of potential jobs at risk, many of them factory jobs.   “In this bill, folks in Congress went out of their way not to give anything to low-income people,” said Chuck Marr, vice-president for federal tax policy at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. He noted that in previous tax cut bills that favored the rich, GOP lawmakers made sure to include some sweeteners for low- and moderate-income Americans.   “But in this bill,” Marr said, “folks in Congress said: no, we’re going to go after these people. They’re going after healthcare and food, and these are the people who are also going to get hammered by Trump’s tariffs.” Lower-income people spend a higher percentage of their income on goods.   “This bill is a major shift,” Marr added. “They’re taking away from poor people and working-class people and channeling it to very high-income people. I think it’s punitive. It’s harsh. It’s mean, brutal.”   Trump’s tariffs would also hit less affluent Americans hardest. One study found that Trump’s planned tariffs would cause the bottom 20% of households to pay up to 5.5% of their income toward tariff-caused higher prices. That’s more than two and a half times the percentage that those in the top 20% would pay (2.1% of income).   Trump has repeatedly boasted that the bill contains several provisions he championed to help working-class Americans. At a White House event to promote the bill, he pointed to a DoorDash driver from Wisconsin who was on hand to help make his case that the “no tax on tips” provision would help workers.   But tax experts say that provision will help only a tiny fraction of those earning under $50,000. Only 4% of workers in the bottom half by income are in tipped jobs. Moreover, nearly two-fifths of tipped workers are already earning so little that they don’t pay federal income taxes.   “Given how the current income tax system works, this provision will provide little or no benefit to those workers,” said Ricco. “Those workers tend to have low incomes, and the US system doesn’t basically tax their incomes, and this won’t offer them any additional tax reduction.”   As for Trump’s much-ballyhooed “no tax on overtime” provision, that, too, will do little for those earning under $50,000, Ricco said. “That provision is really geared to middle- and upper-middle groups,” he said. “People in the bottom 50% aren’t paying much income tax, and so no tax on overtime wouldn’t benefit them much. People in the bottom 40%, they’re often in a precarious employment situation.”   Ricco estimated that for Americans in the bottom 40% by income, the no tax on overtime provision will mean “less than a $10 tax cut per year”. “It’s essentially a rounding error,” he said.   Republicans boast that increasing the child-tax credit will help millions of struggling families – the House bill would increase that credit, now $2,000, to $2,500, while the Senate raises it to $2,200. Under current law, one in four children – about 17 million – are ineligible to qualify for the full $2,000 credit because their family’s income is too low to qualify for the full credit. A two-parent family with two children needs to earn over $48,000 to obtain the full credit.   Under the House bill, a single parent with two children who earns $16,000 a year would get no additional tax credit, while a married couple with two kids and a $400,000 income would see their tax credit jump by $1,000.   With their eagerness to cut the social safety net, Republicans seem to be treating millions of Americans who earn less than $50,000 as undeserving takers. “People earning under $50,000 are major targets of the Republican agenda. Their health coverage is targeted. Their food security is targeted,” said Marr. “They are left out of key provisions expanding tax cuts, like the child tax credit. They are most at risk from the Republican tariffs. They’ll be hurt across the board.”   Marr said the budget bill treats “these people very harshly”.   “It’s the harshest bill we’ve ever seen since budget deficits became an issue 40 years ago,” he said. “This is the first bill that simultaneously targets programs for poor people and working-class people to pay for it, and then takes that money to pay for tax cuts for very wealthy people. It makes poor and working-class people worse off.”   Children’s Defense Fund ‘Deeply Disturbed and Disappointed’ by budget reconciliation package.   "On Thursday, the United States House of Representatives passed a budget reconciliation package that includes massive tax cuts for the rich and wealthy.   “Children’s Defense Fund believes all young people deserve to grow up with dignity, hope, and joy. That is why, for more than 50 years, we have committed to a vision of children and families across this nation thriving. And that is why, today, we are deeply disturbed and disappointed by the passage of H.R. 1.   “The bill has been called ‘big’ and ‘beautiful,’ but it is big only in its audacious harms to everyday people. It is bad and brutal in its gutting of essential programs children and families rely on for their day-to-day needs.   “A budget is a statement of our values—a moral document that reveals who we choose to protect and who we leave behind. This package values the rich, wealthy, and corporations. And it devalues children and youth by making historic cuts to Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). It devalues the families of 17 million children by deeming them ‘ineligible’ and ‘undeserving’ of the vital Child Tax Credit (CTC).   “In this moment, we are reminded that poverty is a policy choice. That every child who goes without basic health care, a nutritious meal, and a safe place to sleep bears the burden of choices made on Capitol Hill".   http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/03/trump-budget-bill http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/07/01/least-17-million-americans-would-lose-insurance-under-trump-plan/ http://itep.org/megabill-is-on-its-way-to-trump-heres-what-its-tax-changes-mean-for-families-across-the-u-s http://itep.org/top-1-to-receive-1-trillion-tax-cut-from-trump-megabill-over-next-decade/ http://www.childrensdefense.org/childrens-defense-fund-deeply-disturbed-and-disappointed-by-h-r-1-passage/ http://www.cbpp.org/press/statements/republican-bill-will-raise-costs-poverty-and-hunger-take-health-coverage-away-from http://www.epi.org/blog/the-radical-republican-budget-bill-steals-from-the-poor-to-give-tax-cuts-to-the-rich/ http://breachrepairers.org/get-involved/news/a-house-passed-domestic-policy-bill-threatens-millions-of-poor-low-wage-americans/ Visit the related web page
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