Nurses at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital (RWJUH) went on an unfair labor practices strike on Friday, Aug. 4 — and have remained on the picket lines as their representatives from United Steelworkers (USW) Local 4-200 contend that management is refusing to negotiate on key issues.

USW LOCAL 4-200 represents over 1,700 nurses at RWJUH in New Brunswick. Their demands are for the hospital to set safer staffing ratios on floors, increase salaries, and freeze workers’ insurance premiums.

“Our members remain deeply committed to our patients,” Local 4-200 President Judy Danella said in a statement. “However, we must address urgent concerns, like staffing. We need enough nurses on each shift, on each floor, so we can devote more time to each patient and keep ourselves safe on the job.”

Nurses complain that they are often working understaffed and that, on average, they find themselves taking care of six patients per shift in a hospital that prides itself on being able to treat the state’s sickest patients.

This is the first time USW LOCAL 4-200 nurses have gone out on strike since 2006. The union began negotiations with hospital management for a new contract in April. After their contract expired on June 30, it was extended through July 21. But since then, the standstill in negotiations led to a July 24 notification that workers were ready to strike.

RWJUH is one of the 12 hospitals that make up RWJBarnabas Health, New Jersey’s largest healthcare provider. The Associated Press noted that the hospital has contracted with an outside firm to have replacement nursing staff cover the assignments of striking nurses while labor protests continue.

The hospital also acknowledged on Aug. 8 that it had enlisted the aid of 1,000 nurses from across the country to cover for its striking employees: “Simply put, if we do not have enough nurses, we cannot deliver the complex, high acuity care that our institution is known for. We cannot save lives,” said Dr. Anthony Altobelli III, the associate chief medical officer, in a video statement.

RWJUH remains open and continues to accept patients during the nursing strike.

Hospital spokesperson Wendy Gottsegen said in a statement: “Even after we extended a new offer on Wednesday that would have further addressed their staffing concerns, it was met with silence. We are awaiting a response from the union and are questioning why we are in this position instead of at the table, negotiating.”

USW LOCAL 4-200, though, said it wants to continue bargaining but wants its main concerns to be dealt with in a fair manner.

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Former President Donald Trump once famously said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and go unpunished.

“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose voters,” he boasted during a 2016 rally in Iowa.

Seven years, two impeachments later, a civil sexual assault conviction, three indictments, and a fourth coming soon —Trump just may have been right.

The GOP’s 2024 presidential frontrunner currently faces a staggering 78 felony charges spanning three criminal cases, many of which carry the potential for significant prison time.

Having faced judges in Florida, New York, and Washington, Trump hasn’t been required to take the standard mugshot, be perp walked, or even post bail or bond.

For example, he faces 34 criminal charges in New York where the average cash bail amount for a felony is approximately $39,000 per offense, or, in his case, a total of $1.36 million.

Typically, federal bail for felonies could run as much as $200,000 per felony, according to the Bail Agents Network.

That means that an individual seeking bail on 44 felony charges could have to ante up as much as $8.8 million to remain free pending trial.

Meanwhile, if Trump is convicted on all 78 counts, assuming he receives the maximum statutory penalties, he could receive an astonishing 641 years in prison.

But there remains the Fifth Avenue question.

Could a judge legally sentence the former president to a prison cell?

A major obstacle could be a law that guarantees lifetime Secret Service protection to all ex-presidents.

President Obama signed an updated version of that law in 2012, granting protection to minor children until the age of 16 and spouses unless and until they remarry.

The law could mean that Trump may have some say in his incarceration and the safety measures taken during any potential prison sentence.

Since 1965, lifetime protection has been afforded to former presidents, except for Richard Nixon, who waived it 11 years after his resignation.

Chuck Rosenberg, a former top federal prosecutor, and counsel to then-FBI Director James B. Comey, offered his insights.

“Any federal district judge ought to understand it raises enormous and unprecedented logistical issues,” Rosenberg told the Washington Post.

He said probation, fines, community service, and home confinement are all alternatives.
According to Rosenberg, the possibility of Trump serving prison time is “theoretically, yes and practically, no.”

On the Secret Service’s role, experts and commentators have varying opinions.
Mike Lawlor, an associate professor at the University of New Haven, suggested that Trump would likely have “one or two secret service details sitting outside his cell with the correctional officers” if he were to serve prison time.

Michele Deitch, an expert on prison oversight at the University of Texas at Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs, told Business Insider that a former president would “have a target on his back” and be closely monitored by the Secret Service.

Ronald Kessler, an author specializing in the Secret Service, provided further insights into the potential security arrangements.

He estimated that Trump’s current Secret Security detail could consist of up to 30 officers, with 10 to 12 agents on duty at any time.

Kessler dismissed the notion of just two agents posted at a prison, deeming it “crazy” given the dangerous environment. “Just think it through,” he told freelance journalist Dave Roos.

“What would just two agents do in such a dangerous environment?”

However, Kessler emphasized that if Trump were imprisoned, he would receive no other special treatment and would not be granted access to privileges like a telephone.

“[The prison] would have to serve him meals in his cell,” Kessler said. “It would just be pure protection.”

The prospects of Trump’s potential prison sentence and the accompanying Secret Service protection have raised complex questions that prosecutors may not consider.

Still, the charges the twice-impeached and thrice-indicted ex-president faces come with the possibility of serious prison time.

If Trump is remanded to prison, he “certainly would not be part of the general population,” retired FBI special agent Ken Gray told Business Insider.

“You could almost put him in a separate little hut.”

Finally, in an interview on MSNBC, Former Attorney General Eric Holder said the Secret Service could punt its responsibilities of protecting Trump to the Bureau of Prisons.

“If they were called upon to imprison a former president, I think they could come up with a way to do it,” Holder said.

“There is a way in which the Justice Department, the Bureau of Prisons could actually do it,” he insisted.

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(GIN) — Long-held grievances between anti- and pro-government Eritreans exploded in the streets of Stockholm this past week during an annual festival of Eritrean culture that drew thousands.

Eritreans who oppose President Isaias Afwerki tore down tents and set cars on fire, according to the Swedish newspaper Expressen. The protesters then marched toward the festival grounds, pushing past police cordons and using sticks and rocks as weapons.

“Between 100 and 200 people have been detained,” said Swedish police spokesperson Daniel Wikdahl. A significant police presence is still at the scene and investigations are underway, he added.

Sweden is home to tens of thousands of people with Eritrean roots. 

According to the local Nyhetsbyrån Järva news site, the Festival Eritrea Scandinavia has long been criticized for its connections to Afwerki’s government.

Human rights groups describe Eritrea as one of the world’s most repressive countries. Since winning independence from Ethiopia three decades ago, the small Horn of Africa nation has been led by Afwerki, who has never held an election. 

The festival began in the 1990s but was suspected of accepting millions of kronor (Swedish dollars) from the Eritrean government to hold the event.

In previous years, demonstrations against the festival were held by the Dawit Isaak Campaign, a group named after the Swedish-Eritrean writer who has been imprisoned in the country in appalling conditions, without trial, since 2001. Isaak, winner of Unesco’s Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, is being held incommunicado, without access to his family or lawyers, according to Reporters without Borders, because he did his job as a reporter and covered the political debate in Eritrean society 16 years.

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