WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden will sign a proclamation Monday establishing a national monument honoring the late FDR-era Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, the first woman appointed to serve in a presidential Cabinet and a driving force behind the New Deal, according to the White House.
Biden is expected to visit the Labor Department on Monday to make the announcement and sign the proclamation that will establish the monument in Newcastle, Maine, the White House said.
As labor secretary, Perkins helped President Franklin D. Roosevelt formulate policies behind the 1930s New Deal and create safeguards in the national economy following the Great Depression.
During her 12 years as Roosevelt's labor secretary, she was credited with helping establish the Social Security Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and the National Labor Relations Act that established workers' rights to organize, and collective bargaining.
“Frances Perkins accepted the position as the first female Cabinet member only after President Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed to support her goals to improve working conditions for all people,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement. “She worked tirelessly to see them to fruition, and she set a standard of excellence that is a beacon for all of us who serve.”
Perkins and her family had deep roots in Newcastle, where she was buried after her death in 1965.. The monument would be established on her family homestead and managed by the National Park Service.
Biden is expected to be joined at the signing by Haaland, acting Labor Secretary Julie Su and other Cabinet members, as well as labor and women's rights leaders.
The proclamation comes with just over five weeks left in Biden's presidency and as he seeks to burnish his legacy as a champion of women's and labor rights.
Haaland toured the Frances Perkins homestead in August and met community leaders to discuss the historic site.
Haaland on Monday also announced five new national historic landmarks recognizing women’s history: the Charleston Cigar Factory in Charleston, South Carolina; the Furies Collective, and Lucy Diggs Slowe and Mary Burrill House, both in Washington, Azurest South in Petersburg, Virginia; and the Peter Hurd and Henriette Wyeth House and Studios in San Patricio, New Mexico.
FILE - Former Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins chats with reporters in New York, Nov. 27, 1945, as she arrives from Europe aboard the Queen Mary, after she headed the American Government's delegation to the International Labor Organization conference in Paris. (AP Photo/Harry Harris, File)
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, right, and Bryan Newland, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs at the Department of the Interior, left, present President Joe Biden with an Eighth Generation blanket from a tribally-owned business, embroidered with "Joe Biden Champion for Indian Country," at the 2024 White House Tribal Nations Summit at the Department of the Interior in Washington, Monday, Dec. 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
President Joe Biden, accompanied by Vice President Kamala Harris, left, and first lady Jill Biden, right, delivers his remarks at the Democratic National Committee's Holiday Reception at Willard Hotel in Washington, Sunday, Dec. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The death toll in the Gaza Strip from the 14-month war between Israel and Hamas militants has topped 45,000 people, Palestinian health officials said Monday, with 52 dead arriving at hospitals across the bombed-out strip over the past 24 hours.
The Gaza Health Ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count, but it has said that more than half of the fatalities are women and children. The Israeli military says it has killed more than 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
With the death toll mounting ever higher, efforts to reach a ceasefire have picked up in recent weeks after repeatedly faltering. Qatar, Egypt and the United States have renewed their efforts to broker a deal at senior levels in recent days. Mediators have said there appears to be more willingness from both sides to conclude a ceasefire.
The Health Ministry said 45,028 people have been killed and 106,962 have been wounded since the start of the war. It has said the real toll is higher because thousands of bodies are still buried under rubble or in areas that medics cannot access. The latest war has been by far the deadliest round of fighting between Israel and Hamas, with the death toll now amounting to roughly 2% of Gaza’s entire prewar population of about 2.3 million.
Among the dead reported in the overall toll were 10 people, including a family of four, who were killed in an overnight Israeli strike in Gaza City, Palestinian medics said.
The strike late Sunday hit a house in Gaza City’s eastern Shijaiyah neighborhood, according to the Health Ministry’s emergency service. Rescuers recovered the bodies of 10 people from under the rubble, including those of two parents and their two children, it said.
Israel claims Hamas is responsible for the civilian death toll because it operates from within civilian areas in the densely populated Gaza Strip. Rights groups and Palestinians say Israel has failed to take sufficient precautions to avoid civilian deaths.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250. Israel responded by heavy bombardment and a ground incursion into the Palestinian enclave. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead. Most of the rest were released during a cease-fire last year.
A separate strike on a school on Sunday in the southern city of Khan Younis killed at least 13 people, including six children and two women, according to Nasser Hospital where the bodies were taken. The hospital initially reported the strike had killed 16 people, but it later revised the death toll as the three other bodies had been from a separate strike that hit a house.
Louise Wateridge, a spokeswoman for UNRWA, the United Nations relief agency for Palestinians, said she met with children injured in Sunday’s strike on the the school turned shelter. They included a 17-year-old girl who suffered a severe leg injury and shrapnel wounds. She survived along with her twin sister and three other sisters, Wateridge said.
Their mother died and Wateridge said one of the sisters described “how their mother’s bones were crushed under the rubble. There was nothing they could do to save her.”
Wateridge also met with two siblings aged 2 and 5 at Nasser Hospital where the casualties were taken. Both children have severe head and body injuries, with 2-year-old Julia losing sight in her eye. “There is nothing we can do. We are already waiting for the next attack,” Wateridge quoted a doctor as telling her.
The Israeli military said it had “conducted a precise strike on Hamas terrorists who were operating inside a command and control center embedded within a compound” that had served as a school in Khan Younis. It did not provide evidence.
In central Gaza's Nuseirat urban refugee camp, mourners gathered for the funeral of a Palestinian journalist working for the Qatari-based Al Jazeera TV network who was killed Sunday in a strike on a point for Gaza's civil defense agency. They carried his body through the street from the hospital, his blue bulletproof vest resting atop.
The strike also killed three civil defense workers, including the local head of the agency, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. The civil defense is Gaza’s main rescue agency and operates under the Hamas-run government.
Al Jazeera said Ahmad Baker Al-Louh, 39, had been covering rescue operations of a family wounded in an earlier bombing when he was killed.
The International Federation of Journalists said last week that 104 journalists and media workers have been killed so far in 2024, with more than half of them perishing during the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
The group said that since the Oct. 7, 2023, start of the war, at least 138 had been killed, including 55 Palestinian media professionals in the calendar year.
The Israeli military said its strike had targeted Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants “who were operating in a command and control center embedded in the offices of the ‘Civil Defense’ organization in Nuseirat.” It accused the journalist of having been a member of Islamic Jihad, an accusation his colleagues in Gaza denied.
Gaza's civil defense also rejected the claims that militants had been operating from the site.
“We were stunned by the Israeli occupation statement,” Mahmoud al-Lawh, the journalist’s cousin, told The Associated Press. “These claims are lies and misleading to cover up this crime.”
Magdy reported from Cairo
Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Israelis protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government and call for the release of hostages held in the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Saturday, Dec. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)
Israelis protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government and call for the release of hostages held in the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Saturday, Dec. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)
Israelis protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government and call for the release of hostages held in the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Saturday, Dec. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)
A dead child is carried into the Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al-Balah after an Israeli army strike in the Bureij refugee camp, central Gaza Strip, Saturday Dec. 14, 2024.(AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians carry the body of a relative killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip at a hospital in Deir al-Balah, Sunday, Dec. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians pray next to the bodies of their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, at a hospital in Deir al-Balah, Sunday, Dec. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians mourn over the bodies of civil defense workers victims of an Israeli army strike in the Nuseirat camp, at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Sunday Dec.16, 2024. Four cicivil defence workers were killed according to Palestinian civil defense and health ministry.(AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
