Mexico City bans violent bullfighting, sparking fury and celebration
Mexico City lawmakers on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly to ban violent bullfighting, triggering outrage from aficionados and celebration from animal rights advocates.
The legislation, approved by a 61-1 vote, prohibits the killing of bulls and the use of sharp objects that could injure the animals. It also sets time limits on how long bulls could be in the ring, all part of an initiative dubbed 'bullfighting without violence.'
The decision sparked angry protests from bullfighting supporters and matadors, some of whom tried to breach a police barricade at the local Congress. Some carried signs that read 'Being a fan of la fiesta brava (bullfighting) is not a crime, it's a point of pride.'
Animal rights protesters celebrated, and were joined by Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada of the ruling Morena party, who said the decision will help the Mexican capital become a place 'that respects the rights of animals and that will not tolerate them being subjected to abuse or violence.'
Tuesday's vote appeared to be an attempt to broker a compromise between two warring sides of the debate after years of back-and-forth about the practice.
Bullfighting has long been considered a tradition and a pastime in Latin American nations, but has come under criticism for animal cruelty because bulls are often killed at the end of the fight. Animal rights groups say that approximately 180,000 bulls are killed every year in bullfighting worldwide.
The tradition, which has long drawn big crowds to arenas across Mexico, was dealt a blow when a judge in Mexico City banned the practice in June 2022, shutting down an arena that has been billed as the world's largest bullfighting ring. The judge ruled that bullfights violated city residents' rights to a healthy environment free from violence.
While animal rights advocates celebrated it as a victory, and a step toward ending the bloody tradition, bullfighters said it dealt an economic blow to the city. The National Association of Breeders of Fighting Bulls in Mexico says bullfighting generates 80,000 direct jobs, and 146,000 indirect jobs across the country.
In 2023, Mexico's Supreme Court overturned the ban without explanation, allowing bullfighting arenas to be flooded once again with fans of the so-called 'fiesta brava."
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The Guardian
32 minutes ago
- The Guardian
UnitedHealth faces federal scrutiny into whistleblower claims
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In response to a question about the two representatives' letter, the company said the Department of Justice 'has already declined to pursue the matter' – a reference to the agency's previous decisions not to intervene in two whistleblower lawsuits against UnitedHealth filed under the US False Claims Act. One of those lawsuits was ultimately dropped and the other is pending in federal court in Georgia. Another Democrat, the Oregon senator Ron Wyden, announced last month on X that his office was 'launching a full investigation to verify these whistleblower accounts'. 'This reporting demands further inquiry – nobody deserves to have their medical care jeopardized to pad insurance company profits,' Wyden, the ranking member of the Senate's finance committee, said. 'My staff on the Finance Committee have a decade-long record of thorough and objective investigations that follow the facts towards solutions that improve federal health care policy for all Americans.' Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican who sits on the Senate investigations subcommittee, said it is 'alarming to hear these serious allegations' about the company's practices. 'I look forward to securing justice for patients, policyholders and whistleblowers alike who've been harmed by insurance companies.' Another Republican, Georgia representative Buddy Carter, expressed similar concerns. 'If these allegations are true, UnitedHealth must be held responsible for their gross abuse of patients,' Carter, chair of the House subcommittee on health, said in a statement. 'Patients should always come before profits.' Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, ranking member of the Senate investigations subcommittee, said the 'courage and conviction' of the whistleblowers will serve as 'an impetus for reform. Shining a light on abuses of consumer trust is a call to action – and a demand for accountability.' 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Her declaration says her experiences as a nurse practitioner within its nursing home programs gave her 'first-hand insight into the evolution and impact of substandard care practices resulting from the training, culture, processes and bonus system of delays and denials of medically necessary care'. That declaration criticizes the company's '[a]ggressive [p]ush for DNRs' and says 'the decision to receive life-saving care should rest with the patient or their legal representative, not myself, and certainly not the insurance company'. UnitedHealth said the allegations in the anonymous whistleblower's declaration show she 'did not fully understand our clinical model' and that her perspective 'does not reflect the dedication and excellence of the many outstanding clinicians who understand the impact they have in supporting their patients and improving health outcomes'. The company also denies the claims regarding DNRs. 'At no time have we encouraged or pushed' nursing home residents 'to sign a DNR directive', a UnitedHealth representative said. 'Our health care providers are ethically bound to respect patient autonomy and support informed decision-making without coercion.' The Guardian's previous reporting also references allegations relating to the legal claims of a third whistleblower, Brook Gonite, a former salesperson for UnitedHealth's nursing home program. Gonite alleges in a lawsuit in federal court in Georgia that UnitedHealth wrongly solicited and enrolled vulnerable, elderly patients for its nursing home programs through improper marketing tactics, including violations of Hipaa, the federal medical privacy act, and paid kickbacks to nursing homes to obtain illegal referrals of their residents. UnitedHealth denied those allegations and moved to dismiss Gonite's lawsuit. The Department of Justice, which declined to formally intervene in the case, opposed UnitedHealth's motion to dismiss. In April, federal judge Marc Treadwell denied UnitedHealth's motion to dismiss, finding that Gonite's lawsuit puts forth 'substantial and concerning' factual allegations that 'plausibly' assert violations of federal protections meant to ensure vulnerable nursing home residents can make informed decisions about their medical care. The company continues to deny those claims and says Gonite was fired for engaging in illegal sales tactics similar to those alleged in his suit. In a statement, the company said its employees 'are trained on compliant interactions with nursing home staff and nursing home residents, in accordance with the Medicare Marketing Guidelines and other applicable laws'. Last week, shortly before the Guardian was to publish a second story providing additional detail about Gonite's pending lawsuit and the other two whistleblowers' declarations, UnitedHealth filed a lawsuit against the Guardian in Delaware state court, claiming the allegations were false and libelous. 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NBC News
an hour ago
- NBC News
House passes Republican-led bills to repeal D.C. laws on noncitizen voting and policing
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The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
Trump to restore Confederate generals like Robert E. Lee to military bases after Biden changed them
President Donald Trump on Tuesday claimed he would restore the names of Confederate traitors who fought to keep Black people enslaved to American military bases across the country despite Congress mandating their removal in a law enacted over his veto five years ago. Speaking to active duty troops at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Trump told the assembled soldiers he would be restoring the names of Fort Pickett, Fort Hood, Fort Rucker, Fort Polk, Fort AP Hill and Fort Robert E Lee, all of which were placed on facilities in the Southern United States — the former pro-slavery confederacy — by racist lawmakers who sought to honor the 'Lost Cause' of the fight against emancipating Black people from slavery. 'We won a lot of battles out of those forts — it's no time to change,' said Trump, who said he was 'very superstitious' and therefore against renaming the bases despite Congress ordering it done in the waning months of his first term. Trump actually vetoed the legislation which mandated the renaming of bases that had been named for Confederate generals, the Fiscal Year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, in December 2020, citing the provisions for renaming the facilities as justification for the unprecedented rejection of the must-pass bill. In a veto message, Trump complained that the NDAA 'would require the renaming of certain military installations,' with those provisions having been added by House and Senate members in the wake of racial justice protests following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. 'Over the course of United States history, these locations have taken on significance to the American story and those who have helped write it that far transcends their namesakes,' he said, condemning Congress' directive as a 'politically motivated attempts like this to wash away history and to dishonor the immense progress our country has fought for in realizing our founding principles.' That 2020 law remains in effect, which means Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth will have to find other veterans with identical names to rename the bases after. Earlier this year, Hegseth ordered Fort Bragg, which had been renamed Fort Liberty during the Biden administration, to be renamed Fort Bragg, echoing the base's former namesake, Confederate general Braxton Bragg. But this time, the base is named for Private First Class Roland L. Bragg, a Second World War veteran who earned a Silver Star and Purple Heart for his actions during the Battle of the Bulge. In a statement at the time, Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Jack Reed, the Democratic Senator from Rhode Island, said Hegseth had 'not violated the letter of the law, but he has violated its spirit.'
