#in any regard? at all? what have they done to protection abortion rights? lgbt rights? they wont even DISCUSS court reform

[anotherpapercut]

something I will never ever forget as long as I live is seeing a post in 2020 that was like "I don't care how you feel about Biden, you HAVE to vote for him NO MATTER WHAT because Republicans don't care what their candidate does. they'll vote for a rapist just because it says Republican after his name!!" like within weeks of credible assault allegations against Biden surfacing lol. like can you guys at least TRY to pretend you're not advocating for the exact same thing you claim Republicans are doing

[taikeero-lecoredier]

WHAT TO WRITE WHEN CONTACTING YOUR LEGISLATORS

Hello there, I am making this post as an extra for this post right here . Its about a dangerous Californian bill that will forces any websites to collect people’s ID to prove their age through third parties sites, in order to “protect children” Which honestly is just an excuse to breach people’s privacy and force them to give up on their online anonymity. The focus is to contact Californian Legislators, and ask them to stop this law. The governor must be contacted, as he’s the most important. Here’s his contact : Governor Gavin Newsom : Phone: (916) 445-2841 Fax: (916) 558-3160 Here are two scripts/ text exemples written by people I’m sharing an Anti Earn It Act Bill discord server with, namely knifefuckt and EternalE. Thank you for having written this ! !! Make sure you remain polite,and re-word your own scrip/ text,and use the following texts as inspiration so legislators don’t think its send by the same person !! California's AB2273 bill regarding internet censorship was written by Baroness Beeban Kidron who thinks open technology pursues a "regressive set of ideas, which deprive[s] children of rights, privileges, and expectations." Aside from the overwhelming stats that contradict that repressed ideology completely, it was copy-pasted from British past-tense Hollywood director Beeban Kidron and is being sponsored by 5Rights Foundation, which is a London/Brussels based office. Why is the United Kingdom pushing United States legislature? It's extremely suspicious, not to mention really REALLY dangerous.

This bill allows a small group of people in power to regulate an open source of information and connection, which is, again, extremely dangerous.

The actual data behind "internet safety" shows that the harms are INCREDIBLY overstated.

Open web has done more good for the people than any other source of modern information. California has a process in which wealthy organizations get to write their own bills and fund them through legislature.

What part of that ISN'T dangerous? We're letting foreign countries, foreign wealthy big business write American laws?

Legislature doesn't run this country, but big business does?

Its a bill that is impossible to comply with and is basically a micro EARN IT Act bill but British.

Its not realistic and its not helpful and it shouldn't be a secret.

For the sake of our experience online as a whole, please look into unbiased internet use data and make the right decision, and veto this bill from ever becoming an option.

You're not protecting children, if anything, you'll silence them.

Second exemple: To Governor Gavin Newsom,  I am writing today to urge you to stop AB 2273 (the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act) from becoming law. On the surface, it pretends to be about protecting children, but like the EARN IT Act and many other "child protection" laws, it's true intentions are aimed at subverting the safety of everyone on the internet via destroying our privacy and civil rights during a dangerous time when that is the last thing we need. It targets websites "accessed by kids" (anyone under 18), which in this day and age is practically every website on the internet. It forces websites to verify everyone's ages, and the only way to do that is to submit your govt ID or scan your face to third-party sites. This is coming at a time where people are being charged with felonies for accessing abortion care online, and being fired for posting pro-LGBT content online. More surveillance will literally ruin people's lives and get people killed. Furthermore, California has been doing everything in it's power to be recognized as a progressive bastion, especially with the rise of fascist attacks and rhetoric from the far right, both on our media and our fellow Americans. It would reflect poorly on California to enforce what is essentially the same kind of censorship laws in our state that the far right have been desperately trying to force onto all of us for the past few years. This only becomes worse when one considers that this bill is being sponsored by the British Baroness Beeban Kidron's non-profit 5Rights Foundation, which has a seething hatred for children and the open internet, which in our dangerous times, can end up being interpreted by the world as being foreign interference not too different from what the likes of Trump and the GOP enabled during his presidency. Something that I think would look extremely bad for any potential presidential considerations, and especially would only make California look even worse in the eyes of the world. Professor Eric Goldman claims this law will destroy the entire internet, and he is right. We need privacy protection, but not like this. This destroys our privacy, our 1st amendment rights, and our human and civil rights. You can't block children from the internet, to protect them you need parental oversight, not governmental or private from companies. So please, do not allow this bill to become law. California is already doing well enough without these kinds of laws; don't ruin it when we need it to be better.

[whoneedssexed]

The US military should not exist. This is not trans rights. Trans ppl do not have the right to destroy other countries for a job.

Trans ppl shouldn't be in it, cis ppl shouldn't be in it. The WAR Department will NEVER be socially positive.

This is not progress, not what we've been asking for.

THIS IS NOT TRANS RIGHTS Actually do something. Do not pretend like this old fuck had done anything for us.

I’ll just copy and paste what I said in a discord server.

Banning people for being trans from anywhere sets a precedent to ban us from anywhere, not to mention the language used always implies we're “psychotic”, unfit for responsibility or employment or reliability, and that we're dangerous and predatory and can't be trusted. So I also hard disagree on trans or any marginalized group banning in the military. 

Discrimination doesn't protect anyone, it just calls people too inferior and disgusting to be worth acknowledging and allowing to exist. Doesn't matter if you disapprove of the place they're banned from. It's never going to end in our favor, it always is a foot in the door method to stripping our rights. 

That's why the shithead who refused to bake a gay wedding cake was an issue. You think we want to go to their bakery after that? Fucking no, but them being allowed to do that says others can, says it's fine to hate us to the extent of seeing us unworthy of them and keeping us from things. 

 Idk how to explain segregation bad

Like after trump was allowed to do that, he went after our protections in education and employment. If I'm banned from working one job, then he knows he can ban me from others. Like that was literally the plan, the same tactics anti abortion groups use

Nobody said anything about social positivity or the “right to destroy other countries”.

Get your head out of your ass and understand what it means when a group of people are legally disbarred from doing something that anyone else can do. Otherwise you sound like a libertarian who doesn’t support LGBT+ marital rights because “marriage shouldn’t even be an institution” and doesn’t think it matters since you can get everything else anyway.

It’s about the fact that it shows as us an inherently lesser class and that there’s a “good reason” we’re not allowed. 

I don’t give a g-d damn about the military or the wars or anything. You might notice about the only thing we post regarding these things are, you know, people being killed or abused and assaulted, or people committing suicide, or trauma, etc. IE negativity. 

For that reason, I think you don’t even know us, don’t even follow us, and are just running around with your “everyone’s a warhawk if trans people can have this job” garbage to anyone who speaks about this issue. 

I’ll dig in my heels all day every day about trans people being allowed to fucking exist the same way anyone else fucking does. Get over it.  Banning trans people doesn’t do a damn thing about imperialism no matter how much you scream that we shouldn’t be around. Shut your liberal ass up with your false target bullshit and go make some real change about it.

- mod BP

[wp-yahoo-style-1042-yahoopa-blog]

How the Trump Administration’s First 100 Days Have Affected Women and Families

A look at how President Trump’s first 100 days have affected women. (Photo: Getty Images)

Saturday, April 29, marks the 100th day of Donald Trump’s presidency, and what these 100 days reveal about the Trump administration’s outlook and agenda when it comes to women, and women’s equality, is pretty grim.

“President Trump often talks about empowering women and investing in women, but so far all we’ve seen is a real disconnect with families,” Shilpa Phadke, senior director of the Women’s Initiative at the Center for American Progress (CAP) and a veteran of the Obama administration, tells Yahoo Style.

CAP released a report — and digital interactive piece — on April 25 detailing 100 ways in which the Trump administration has harmed women and families during its first 100 days.

Phadke points out that to get a sense of the Trump administration’s supposed investment in women, or lack thereof, one need look no further than the president’s personnel choices.

“Trump’s cabinet has only four women,” Phadke says. “It is more white and more male than any cabinet since Reagan. For every three men that have been appointed, there is one woman when it comes to jobs that do require Senate confirmation. We’ve heard nothing as to what they are doing with the White House Council on Women and Girls. And when you couple the lack of women in high leadership positions with the people he is putting in power — Mike Pence, Tom Price, Jeff Sessions, Steve Miller, Steve Bannon — the people there to do the work don’t really reflect today’s families and the diverse challenges women are feeling.”

But that’s not all, Phadke says. The Trump administration has consistently made moves in every policy realm to jeopardize women’s security — physical, social, and economic.

The outline of the proposed Trump budget, for example, would lead to significant funding cuts for the National Domestic Violence Hotline and to the Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women. The new amendments announced on April 25 to the Republican-proposed health care bill that aims to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would stop coverage of critical preventive care services that women rely upon, in addition to rolling back coverage for maternity care, domestic violence services, and counseling services.

“Some of the things that scare me the most are the lack of Trump’s moves to fulfill campaign promises regarding maternity leave policy proposals, childcare policy proposals. We haven’t seen any of that. What we have seen is an attack on abortion rights and women’s health broadly,” Phadke says. “We’re seeing attacks on families when it comes to the Muslim ban, immigration raids, LGBT kids being bullied more, the declines we’re seeing among Latinas, especially in reporting sexual violence and rape — women are nervous to report things because there’s this fear of being detained. The Trump administration is creating fear in communities.”

Another example of how Trump’s first 100 days have hurt women? His administration’s delay in enacting the Obama-era overtime rule that would have broadened the base of hourly employees eligible for overtime pay for working more than 40 hours a week.

“Women, and women of color especially, have the biggest pay disparities and thus would be most impacted by this,” says Phadke. The Trump administration has also blocked pay transparency protections, another critical measure for women’s economic development and security.

“This is hitting people at their wages,” Phadke says. “If you’re eroding families’ economic security and they can’t pay for the health care that you have planned on, this hurts the economy overall.”

Need more evidence of the kind of policy maneuvering that quietly hurts women’s ability to support themselves and their families? Look no further than the Trump administration’s hiring freeze, which is negatively affecting military childcare programs, along with budget cuts for nurse training programs (for a disproportionately female field), to name a few.

The Trump administration’s attacks on women’s health and reproductive rights are also particularly concentrated and hard to ignore. 

On Jan. 25, just days after taking office, President Trump signed an executive order reinstating the “global gag rule,” also known as the “Mexico City policy,” thus barring U.S. foreign aid and federal funding from going to any international nongovernmental organization (NGO) that discusses abortion care or refers patients for abortion care. And he did so surrounded by a group of men, no less.

“We’ve got your best interests at heart, ladies. Believe me.” pic.twitter.com/2ZY4Sc6sKh

— Greg Greene (@ggreeneva) January 23, 2017

On Jan. 27, Vice President Pence and senior counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway both spoke at the March for Life. It was the first time a vice president had ever attended the event — a clear signal of where the administration’s priorities lie when it comes to women’s reproductive rights.

It was my honor to speak at the @March_for_Life today w/ my family & share the commitment of @POTUS to restore culture of life in America. pic.twitter.com/2ucCZBAdHj

— Vice President Pence (@VP) January 27, 2017

On Jan. 31, Trump nominated Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Gorsuch has long asserted the rights of corporations over individuals’ rights, including in the Hobby Lobby case that gave the crafting megastore the ability to deny its employees insurance coverage for contraception because it violates the majority stakeholders’ religious beliefs. Throughout his campaign for the presidency, Trump promised to nominate a Supreme Court justice who would ensure the overturn of Roe v. Wade and end the practice of safe, legal, and constitutionally guaranteed abortion in the U.S.

Georgia Congressman Tom Price became the new Secretary of Health and Human Services on Feb. 10, bringing his long voting record of seeking to defund Planned Parenthood, criminalize abortion, and ban certain forms of birth control, along with his vehement opposition to the Affordable Care Act and the protections it affords to women.

Pence met with anti-choice leaders on March 9 to “reaffirm [Trump’s] commitment to the sanctity of life” — and plan to make abortion illegal in the U.S.

Grateful to host pro-life leaders today & reaffirm @POTUS Trump's commitment to the sanctity of life in the Obamacare repeal & replace plan. pic.twitter.com/W3yHUhOGZ1

— Vice President Pence (@VP) March 10, 2017

On March 13, Republicans revealed the first draft of the planned bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. The draft contained language to not only block Planned Parenthood from serving as a Medicaid provider but also opened the door to insurance companies to not guarantee maternity care coverage in their plans. A revised version of the bill contained a clause that would force unemployed women covered by Medicaid to find employment within 60 days of giving birth if they wanted to keep their coverage.

On March 10 and March 23, respectively, Trump nominated Scott Gottlieb to head up the Food and Drug Administration and Roger Severino to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights. Gottlieb is opposed to insurance coverage for contraception, and Severino is a vocal supporter of systemic discrimination for LGBT individuals.

On March 30, Pence cast the tie-breaking vote to advance the Senate’s legislation seeking to undo the Obama-era federal family planning program, Title X, which prevents states from blocking Planned Parenthood and other abortion care providers. Without Pence’s vote, Republicans in the House would have been unable to advance the bill.

On April 3, the Trump administration announced that it would eliminate all U.S. funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the division of the United Nations that provides reproductive and sexual health care services, including family planning, HIV/AIDS screening and care, and infant and maternal mortality prevention services to those in need in more than 150 countries worldwide.

Representatives of the anti-choice organization called the Susan B. Anthony List were literally at Trump’s side on April 13 as he signed legislation rolling back former President Barack Obama’s rule that protected Title X funding for abortion providers.

Thank you @POTUS for signing H.J. Res. 43, undoing Obama's pro-abortion rule & allowing states to defund Planned Parenthood! #ProLife???? pic.twitter.com/bBguYb9WkY

— Susan B Anthony List (@SBAList) April 13, 2017

Or, as Kaylie Hanson Long, national communications director for NARAL Pro-Choice America, tells Yahoo Style, “President Trump’s first 100 days provide all the evidence needed to disprove Sean Spicer’s claim that the president is ‘committed to empowering women.’ Day after day, he has chipped away at the equality and freedom of women in the United States and across the globe. His administration poses an immediate threat to our rights, and we will keep rallying, marching, and calling in protest.”

So is there anything good that Trump has done for women in the first 100 days?

“No. There’s nothing good,” Phadke says. “We’re talking about a budget that slashes the budgets for WIC, strips public schools of funding, eliminates funding for after-school programs, endangers LGBT students and homeless kids, is proposing budget cuts for the agencies that fund AmeriCorps and the Boys & Girls Clubs and is cutting funding to prevent teen pregnancy. It feels like an all-out assault. You look at the personnel, the Supreme Court nominee, the attorney general appointee, the head of HHS, and you couple that with staffing in the White House, and it’s hard to feel that there’s any understanding of what women and families need.”

She continues, “We just came up with 100 ways that Trump has harmed women in the first 100 days, but there are probably more than that in terms of how the administration is falling short in affirming women’s progress. The first daughter is obviously representing the United States in talking about women’s empowerment, but it rings hollow. She’s not moving the ball on real, core issues for women, whether it be health care or economic security — she’s not looking at the structural impediments that limit women’s economic participation.”

Phadke adds: “What we want is to see concrete progress on something that feels like a push for women’s equality and real policy proposals to back that. There is this real disconnect — the [Trump] administration doesn’t really understand what women and families are going through and how all those challenges are connected.”

Read more from Yahoo Beauty + Style:

Ivanka Trump Says Women Deserve Equal Pay, but Some Disagree. Here’s What You Need to Know

Our Survey Shows How Women Feel in Trump’s America: Stressed, Motivated … and Happy

7 States Are Quietly Moving to Restrict Abortion Access

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. For Twitter updates, follow @YahooStyle and @YahooBeauty.

[iwriteaboutfeminism]

Trump vs. The Resistance: : Week 1

January 20-27, 2017

A lot’s been going on. Let’s review.

Trump’s inauguration was attended by between 250,000 and 300,000 people, on the smaller side in comparison to other modern inauguration crowds yet in line with his abysmal approval ratings. Entering office (a time when, historically, a President’s ratings are at their highest) trump’s popularity is sitting at 40%. If this is the high, I can only imagine where he’ll go from here. Especially after what he’s been up to this week…

Within his first few hours as President, one of trump’s first orders of business was to reverse an executive action by President Obama from earlier this month, which, as of January 27th, would have decreased insurance premiums for homeowners with FHA mortgages by an average of $500 a year. What trump has done will mean that low-income homeowners will have to continue to pay higher fees.  

The day after the inauguration, 500,000 people packed DC for the Women’s March. They were joined by sister marches in over 600 cities across the US and around the world, totaling over 4.1 million protesters in the US, making this the largest one-day protest in US history. They were an overwhelming force of resistance and solidarity, uniting around the principles of intersectionality.

Organizers of the march have provided participants with tons of resources on ways to stay involved going forward. The first step in their 10 Actions in 100 Days campaign, for example, is to mail a postcard to your Senators on the issue(s) that matter most to you.

Since the Women’s March, three more marches on Washington have been announced. They include the March for Science, (on April 22nd), the People’s Climate March (on April 29th), and the LGBT National Pride March (on June 11th).

This show of strength from the Women’s March, right on the heels of trump’s own ego-bruisingly low turnout, was something he couldn’t let pass without comment. Against the advice of his aids, he forced his Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, to open his first press conference by deliberately lying about how many people attended his inauguration, claiming it was “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration. Period.” An objectively false statement, easily disproven, yet forced forward in order to stroke the president’s hurt feelings.

When Kelly Ann Conway, trump’s aid and former campaign manager, was asked on Sunday why they put out this absurd falsehood, she stated that while the media reported the fact that trump’s inauguration was clearly smaller than Obama’s 2009 inauguration, Spicer was merely asserting an “alternative fact.” Let the memes begin.

At a speech at CIA headquarters on Saturday, trump doubled-down on the lie, claiming that the real number of attendees was “like a million, or a million-and-a-half.” Video of the speech appears to show a receptive crowd, yet reporting on the event includes the claim from some CIA officials that the first few rows were deliberately filled with trump supporters, brought in by the president’s team in order to cheer and clap for him. They also dispute the White House’s claim that “there were people waiting to get into the event,” by saying that of the thousands who were invited to attend the event, about 400 showed up. In fact, instead of describing the crowd as receptive or supportive of the new President, sources described the impressions of the crowd as “uncomfortable,” “stunned and at times offended,” and feeling as though the visit actually “made relations with the intelligence community worse.”

The CIA is certainly far from the only agency to feel put off by trump this week. On Tuesday he forced a social media ban on the Environmental Protection Agency and the US Department of Agriculture. This bans them from posting any information on their social media sites, providing any information to journalists, issuing new contracts, grants, or work assignments, and publishing any press releases, fact sheets, or photos.

Lucky for all of us, employees of these agencies and related departments have created alternative social media accounts, most notably the @AltNatParkSer and @RogueNASA, (among many others) where they have “gone rogue” by posting scientific facts about the environment and climate change.

The ways that restricted or selective access to scientific work may impact global climate policy will soon become clear, but we have a very good idea right now on the immediate impacts of trump reinstating- and expanding- the Global Gag Rule. Also known as the Mexico City Policy, this executive order bans all funding to foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which provide health care that includes even the availability of information about abortion.

We have seen firsthand how the giving and taking away of this funding over the past three decades, depending entirely on the party affiliation of the president, severely impacts the health, well-being, and even mortality of people dealing with pregnancy across the world. By reinstating the Global Gag Rule, trump has opted to let people die rather than provide them access to information on a range of healthcare options, including birth control methods.  Restricting information on and safe access to abortion does not reduce the number of abortions, but rather increases the number of people who will experience complications from unsafe, often self-administered, procedures. Thousands will die, and millions will lose access to birth control, HIV treatment, and maternal and pre-and post-natal care. We know this. And trump knows it too.

In response, the government of the Netherlands is organizing “an international fund which would finance projects relating to access for birth control, abortion and women’s education, throughout developing countries,” in order to “compensate this financial setback as much as possible”. They have committed $10 million to the project, which, while dwarfed by the amount being withheld by the US- $600 million over four years- is greatly welcomed nonetheless. The Canadian government is currently considering options for assisting the Netherlands in this effort, though they have yet to commit a dollar amount.

Trump followed this executive order the next day with several others which call for a fast-tracking of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines and a general fast-track for all new infrastructure projects which would radically limit the depth and time given to current environmental impact studies of proposed projects.

Dave Archambault II, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, spoke out strongly against the order which violates his tribe’s long-standing legal right to the land. “By granting the easement,” he said, “trump is risking our treaty rights and water supply to benefit his wealthy contributors and friends at DAPL. […] Creating a second Flint does not make America great again.” Organizers around the county called for emergency protests to take place that evening to oppose trump’s strong-arming, resulting in thousands of activists mobilizing in cities throughout the country, including Washington DC, New York City, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Philadelphia.

On Wednesday, trump signed two more executive orders, this time on immigration. The first calls for “the immediate construction of a physical wall on the southern border,” yet outlines no plan to pay for this massively expensive- and ultimately ineffective- project. He also called for the hiring of an additional 5,000 Customs and Border Patrol agents, and 10,000 additional Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, increasing their current numbers by 50 percent.

Under Obama, priority cases for deportation were (relatively) limited to those who were “convicted of a felony, serious misdemeanor or multiple misdemeanors.” Now, any undocumented person charged with any crime, even wrongly, could face a fast-tracked deportation. But that’s not the only threat. ICE officers have also been granted expanded authority, allowing them to deport any undocumented immigrant whom, in their opinion, poses “a risk to public safety or national security.”

His second executive order also calls for the withholding of federal funds to the approximately 300 cities and communities which have policies protecting the undocumented. These communities are commonly referred to as sanctuary cities. In his executive order, trump described these cities as having caused “immeasurable harm to the American people and to the very fabric of our Republic,” and likely intends to have Jeff Sessions, should he be confirmed as Attorney General, “sue [sanctuary] cities on the grounds they are violating federal law by refusing to cooperate with immigration enforcement.”

Yet another frightening aspect of his order on sanctuary cities is the call for a comprehensive list to be made public on a weekly basis outlining crimes committed (or, allegedly committed) by undocumented immigrants. Ostensibly for the purpose of “better inform[ing] the public regarding the public safety threats associated with sanctuary jurisdictions,” such a list, especially if “comprehensive” means the inclusion of personal information, can only result in a lessening of public safety.  

Historian and author Andrea Ptizer compared the impetus behind such a list to a feature in an old Nazi newspaper called Der Stürme. “…They had a department called "Letter Box," and readers were invited to send in stories of supposed Jewish crimes. And Der Stürmer would publish them, and they would include some pretty horrific graphic illustrations of these crimes, as well.” Speaking with Juan Gonzalez on “Democracy Now,” they explained how purposely focusing on the alleged crimes of one marginalized subset of the population makes those alleged crimes appear more common or depraved than crimes committed by others, despite the proven fact that crimes rates among immigrants in the US are actually lower than crimes committed by those born here.

Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, has described the President’s actions as “extremist” and said that he is “taking a wrecking ball to our immigration system. It shouldn't come as a surprise that chaos and destruction will be the outcome."

Fortunately, several Mayors (most notably from New York, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, and Seattle)are taking a strong stand, defending their status as sanctuary cities and vowing to remain welcoming and safe communities for all of their residents. Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel spoke clearly about his commitment to remaining a sanctuary city. “We’re going to stay a sanctuary city,” he promised. “There is no stranger among us. Whether you’re from Poland or Pakistan, whether you’re from Ireland or India or Israel and whether you’re from Mexico or Moldova, where my grandfather came from, you are welcome in Chicago as you pursue the American dream.”

The Mayor of Boston, Marty Walsh, likened the order to “a direct attack on Boston’s people, Boston’s strength and Boston’s values.” He stated that 28% of Boston’s residents are immigrants, and that nearly half have at least one foreign-born parent.  “I want to say directly to anyone who feels threatened today or vulnerable you are safe in Boston,” Walsh vowed. “We will do everything in our power to protect you – if necessary we will use City Hall itself to shelter and protect anyone who is targeted unjustly.”

To finish out his first week in office, trump published yet another executive order on Friday, instituting a 90-day ban on any non-citizen trying to enter the country from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, or Yemen, including legal immigrants  and permanent residents who have already been vetted and issued valid visas.  Travelers with dual-nationalities are also denied entry by the ban. Refugees have been banned for 120 days, even those who have already been through- and approved by- the toughest, longest vetting process in the world, and have already waited between 18 and 24 months to enter the country.

The executive order also calls for cutting the number of refugees from any country accepted into the United States for 2017 by more than half, down to 50,000 from 110,000. In 2016, 12,486 Syrian refugees found safe haven in America, but now refugee applications from Syria have been suspended indefinitely. “I hereby proclaim,” the President said, “that the entry of nationals of Syria as refugees is detrimental to the interests of the United States.

Americans disagree.

Protesters quickly mobilized at airports around the country, with the largest groups at Dulles in Washington D, JFK in New York City, and O’Hare in Chicago, to make sure that immigrants and refugees were being treated civilly and knew that they were welcome. They were also there, of course, to express their anger at the trump administration for instituting a Muslim ban to the United States, a country founded on the principle of religious liberty.  Throughout the weekend, nearly 100 airports around the country saw large solidarity rallies.

While trump’s administration likes to say this isn’t a ban specifically on Muslims, they show their hand when they admit that, as refugee applications re-open, priority will be given to Christians who have faced “religious persecution.” In an interview Friday, trump seemed to believe that for the past several years the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security had been favoring Muslim refugees, making it “impossible, or at least very tough” for Christians from Syria to enter the US.

He provided no evidence of this, which would have been impossible, or at least very tough, because there is no evidence that such a policy was in practice. In fact, of all refugees accepted into the country last year, 50.9% were Muslim and 49.1% were Christian. In Syria specifically, 87% of the population is Muslim, and 10% is Christian. Among those accepted in the US as refugees in 2016, 99% were Muslim, and 1% Christian. Still, as trump has halted all refugee immigration from Syria, it’s unclear how he intends to prioritize any of them. It should also be noted that trump’s claim that Christians in the Middle East are specifically targeted by terrorists is false. The vast majority of people that ISIS kills are Muslim.

People in Syria find themselves and their families in grave and immediate danger every day. They want to get away from extremism. They want to be free from terror. And when we close our doors to them, we are the ones responsible for their deaths. Our president may be willing to turn his back on them, but we never will.

We have seen a truly amazing outpouring this week of love in action. We have seen solidarity and intersectionality and hope. We have stood by each other, stood for each other, and proved to each other and ourselves that we are not alone.

Week two; we’re ready.

[trumptweettuesdays-blog]

TTT 1.23.18

This week’s themes are Government Shutdown, Women’s March, Fake News,  Propaganda, and Presidential Notes 

Government Shutdown

This past week the government was shutdown for three days as Republicans and Democrats fought over major social issues, the largest being immigration and DACA specifically.  Trump’s stance on undocumented immigration has wavered and certainly been unclear - one minute he seems willing to work with undocumented immigrants and the next he is enforcing deportation and insisting on a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.  In the budget negotiations, Trump (and some Republicans) wanted funding for the Mexico wall, but Trump was also unwilling to make any permanent concessions regarding DACA.  The Democrats insisted that DACA receive Republican support in exchange for agreeing to the budget terms.  This stalemate lasted three days and coincided with the one year anniversary of Trump’s inauguration.  Trump called it the #DemocratShutdown and Democrats called it the #TrumpShutdown, both groups were afraid of consequences in the midterm elections.  Trump also marketed the shutdown as a threat to the military and our country’s safety even though that is misleading because the military continues to run, even during a shutdown.  Democrats ended up agreeing to a measure that funds the government for three more weeks in exchange that Republicans would discuss a plan to support undocumented immigrants.  The budget agreement also funds CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program) for another six years.  It is unclear what will happen within the next few weeks as Republicans and Democrats negotiate a more permanent budget.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/22/us/politics/government-shutdown.html

https://www.npr.org/2018/01/22/579552110/the-thorny-logistics-of-a-government-shutdown

Women’s March

On the one year anniversary of Trump’s inauguration, there was a second Women’s March held in cities across the nation. New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago are among some of the major cities where marches were held with between 200,000-600,000 marchers in each city.  Marchers protested on a range of issues including abortion rights, sexual assault, Blacks Lives Matter, immigrant rights, and the environment.  In a moment of complete arrogance that is reflective of Trumpism, Trump Tweeted out to the marchers that it was a beautiful day to recognize all he has done for them.  Many were angry that Trump would use Twitter to make fun of women and their right to protest his policies, including NY Governor Cuomo who said Trump’s Tweet was “insulting to all those women out there who are looking for leadership and looking for someone to get behind them.  And, instead, he makes a joke out of the march.”  

On a funny note, Jimmy Kimmel cleverly made fun of Trump’s Tweet - see link below.

On the same weekend of the Women’s March, Trump went to the March for Life, a pro-life activist event.  Although Trump supported abortion before his presidential candidacy, he changed his tune and has catered to pro-life activists.  Trump provided remarks via a live video-feed where he praised women for supporting and raising children and said America was having a “life crisis.”

Women’s March

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/20/us/womens-march.html

http://thehill.com/homenews/media/370229-cnns-cuomo-tears-into-conway-over-womens-march-reaction-isnt-that-insulting

http://time.com/5114421/kimmel-trump-womens-march/

March for Life

https://www.npr.org/2018/01/19/578928911/trump-unlikely-champion-of-anti-abortion-rights-movement-to-address-march-for-li

Fake News

Trump has declared himself the consultant on what counts as “news,” and particularly what counts as good and credible news.  He has Fox News wrapped around his finger and they are in a perverted symbiotic relationship where Trump continually rewards Fox News and so in return, Fox News says Trump is a wonderful president.  Thus, those that support Trump and watch only Fox News are lacking in insights that reveal anything but the Trump propaganda. In addition, Trump has consistently attacked all other news outlets as “fake” and unreliable.  This past week Trump and the GOP released the “fake news awards,” which consisted of a list of events where news sources made an error in their reporting.  Among the awards, Trump particularly said the news on Russia was fake and completely false.  This statement is outstanding because the Russia investigation continues; Attorney General Jeff Sessions was questioned by Robert Mueller last week and counsel is seeking to interview Trump.  

In relation to this point, Trump signed Bill 702 that continues NSA’s ability to surveill digital communications from foreigners outside the U.S.

And, yes, in the past year news outlets did make some errors but the errors were corrected (usually within 24 hours and often much quicker) and there were consequences for the reporters.  These news outlets never pretended as though they didn’t make an error and were quick to fix it.  On the other hand, Trump consistently lies or makes an error but never corrects himself. So, news is still good news so long as they continue to rely on facts and evidence, which is something that Trump does not do.

Fake News Awards

https://gop.com/the-highly-anticipated-2017-fake-news-awards/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/01/17/fact-checking-president-trumps-fake-news-awards/?utm_term=.d5ff1ab11e50

Bill 702

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-cyber-surveillance/trump-signs-bill-renewing-nsas-internet-surveillance-program-idUSKBN1F82MK

Propaganda

Per usual, Trump made his regular propaganda Tweets this past week about how great the economy is doing and making the country safe.  Though, this past week he made a few specific comments that can actually be verified (or not).

One comment was that Chrysler was moving some production back to the U.S. from Mexico. This point is somewhat true.  Chrysler did decide to move some production back to Michigan citing Trump’s legislation that made corporate tax rates lower. However, Chrysler is also keeping its plant in Mexico and is not lowering production at that location.

Trump also said that his new legislation is what led Apple to bring money back into the U.S.  Again, this point is partly correct.  Apple is bringing some funds back to the U.S. but they are still manufacturing their goods abroad and keep a good amount of their profits in offshore accounts. It is also unclear whether this move will lead to any significant amount of new jobs as Apple’s expansion in the U.S. seems to be stable, regardless of Trump’s tax law. And, in all honesty, Trump’s tax law did what it intended to do which is reward giant capitalist behemoths like Apple.

And, Trump said he was going to Pittsburgh to talk about his agenda and support Rick Saccone for Congress.  The White House said Trump’s visit was purely about policy and his legislation and was not about supporting any particular candidate - Trump’s Tweet clearly says otherwise.

With all this said, our favorite propaganda Tweet of this week was Trump looking to his son, Eric Trump, as evidence that Trump is an awesome president. A father asking their son for evidence that he’s a great president isn’t exactly reliable nor mature.

Chrysler

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/jan/18/donald-trump/trump-said-chrysler-leaving-mexico-it-isnt/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2018/01/11/fiat-chrysler-moving-some-production-back-mexico/1027093001/

Apple

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/17/technology/apple-tax-bill-repatriate-cash.html

Trip to Pittsburgh

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jan/18/white-house-says-trumps-trip-pittsburgh-about-poli/

Presidential Notes

Former senator Bob Dole received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest medal from Congress to recognize distinguished achievements and contributions.  Dole served 35 years in Congress and later in his life helped found the Bipartisan Policy Center. Dole received votes in support of his medal from all 100 senators.  

Trump met with Kazakhstan’s President Nazarbayev to discuss security and economic policies.  It is said they also discussed the situation in Afghanistan.

Trump proclaimed Jan 16, 2018 as “Religious Freedom Day” in honor of the 232nd anniversary of the Virginia law that emphasized religious liberty.  The irony - or hypocrisy - of this proclamation is that Trump has catered to his base in “protecting Christians.”  He supports that Christians can discriminate against LGBTQ customers and that they can refuse to provide certain women’s health care services.  Religious freedom doesn’t mean freedom to discriminate.

Dole

https://www.npr.org/2018/01/17/578568074/sen-bob-dole-to-receive-congressional-gold-medal

Kazakhstan

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-kazakhstan/trump-will-meet-with-kazakhstans-nazarbayev-at-white-house-on-january-16-idUSKBN1EZ012

Religous Freedom Day

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/president-donald-j-trump-proclaims-january-16-2018-religious-freedom-day/

https://www.advocate.com/politics/2018/1/16/religious-freedom-day-trump-declares-open-season-lgbt-people

http://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/369085-on-this-religious-freedom-day-remember-that-religion-is-not-a-license-to (Opinion)

[lady-divine-writes]

Frustrations from a lonely person: I’m a solid advocator of free speech. With that being said, if someone is going to dish it, then they better be able to take it. I speak in regards to the Golden Globes. The rich socialists spent the entire night insulting the 60 million people who voted for Trump, all in the name breath calling themselves the victims. I feel myself becoming more and more repulsed with Hollywood. I wish entertainment could just be entertainment and not a moral lecture. :(

Hey nonnie :) I’m writing this in my car so please excuse any times when I may lose my train of thought or skip off topic for a second. Part of Meryl Streep’s speech had to do with the press, with the necessity of press to be preserved. It seems like freedom of speech in this country, one of the greatest freedoms we have here, to be honest, has come under attack. So many back flips are being done to protect things that Trump and Trump supporters are saying, to make sure that they have the right to say what’s on their mind, no matter how destructive it might be to whole groups (the LGBT, women, Muslims, etc.), but when any other side has a platform to speak and uses it to criticize Trump or the Republican party, those opinions must be vetted, sterilized, etc. This is a dangerous thing. We the people must have the right to speak openly without fear of persecution. But anyone who opposes Trump gets ridiculed, gets maligned, gets threatened. There are other countries that censor their media to pieces. They hold their people hostage by feeding them the information they feel is relevant, whether it’s true or not. Would you rather we become one of those countries? Many times I hear the argument that stars shouldn’t talk politics and athletes shouldn’t talk politics and business owners shouldn’t talk politics because of their influence, their unfair reach, etc. But all of those qualifiers are really another form of censorship. Why should the amount of money someone makes (large or small), or the job they have (celebrity or not) preclude someone from speaking their minds? And let’s take a look at celebrities. You call them “rich socialists”. A lot of people say they’re elitists. They don’t understand the problems of the working class, so they can’t speak for us. But who made them elitist? In this country, we put so much more value on celebrity than we do anything else. If they’re elitist, we made them that way. We go to their movies, we see their games, we buy their music and their books. We throw money at them left and right. That status that they have - we’ve given them that. So we elevate them to this status, and then say, “No, no, no. You don’t get to have an opinion. You’re just our puppet now. Look pretty and keep quiet.” Why? That’s like saying, “You’re just a school teacher/cashier/cab driver. You know nothing about politics. You work hard and stay quiet, let the professionals do their jobs.” And who are those professionals? Trump? Who’s never held political office in his life? Who has no problem whatsoever going on Twitter at the drop of a hat and spewing the most ridiculous and immature levels of hate? And who, by the way, was one of the original reality show celebrities? You say that entertainment should go back to being entertainment and not a moral lecture. But when was that ever the case? The arts throughout time has been one of the most vocal forms of protest. It spoke to the common man, in the common man’s tongue, relayed his pains and frustrations, made fun of those in power. Playwrights have been tortured and killed for heresy and treason because of things written in plays. Movies and plays and books and operas and symphonies - they lighten our hearts in the face of adversity, make us believe that there are better times to come, a better life out there for everyone. They even remind us of our history in the hopes that we won’t repeat our mistakes. But the thing I’m the most curious about is how what Meryl Streep said insulted Trump voters. Is it because you equate voting for Trump as being aligned with him, which, by the way, you are. You believed in him, in his message, in his party, and you voted for him. And other people didn’t. Other people are justifiably upset and scared because this man is taking office. You are upset because you feel an actress, maybe several actors and actresses, criticized you. But what about what your soon-to-be-president is doing for your image and the image of this country already, even though he’s not in office yet? Senators in Ireland call him a monster and a fascist. People on the streets of England have no clue how he could have been voted into office. Every horrible thing that other countries feel America is, that’s what we’ll become the moment he steps into the oval office. Is it because she made mention of football and MMA? Because those are considered “blue collar” sports? (Which is something I don’t understand because football players make millions of dollars. How does the average football player relate to the average American worker? But I digress.) She mentioned those things because a) traditionally the arts in America are underfunded in lieu of football teams. Football coaches on college campuses make more than most professors with tenure. And b) Trump’s name has been synonymous with wrestling for most of his career. That wasn’t a jab at blue collar America. That was a prime example of the values that are going to be preserved when Trump is in office. If you were offended or frustrated by her speech, by the things she said, which were spoken against a man who makes fun of the disabled, who bullies and incites violence, I think an important thing that you need to ask yourself is why. Why were you upset? Because you had no problem when he talked about being able to touch women without their permission? When he claimed that women who have the gall to have abortions should be punished? When he felt the need to make fun of a disabled man? When he lied to his own supporters? What value did he represent that was so important to you that when Meryl Streep said she was upset and heartbroken by the actions of this man that 60 million people voted into public office that you felt personally offended? Did it have to do with those mining jobs that had no hope of coming back? Was it how he was going to “drain the swamp” which obviously was a lie? Please come back, nonnie, not to be ridiculed, but by way of discussion. What in particular offended you? How were you personally criticized? I’m eager to know your answer. Stay blessed, nonnie. We all need a little extra blessings nowadays

[nothingman]

Democrats have a problem. Most Americans agree with their economic stances but they have been unable to translate this fact into policy and electoral outcomes.

As an example, for almost two decades, respondents to Gallup polls have said that providing health coverage to everyone was a “responsibility” of the federal government. Similar majorities have long existed for increasing taxes on the wealthy, regulating businesses and financial markets more tightly, and pretty much every other domestic policy issue favored by the party’s left wing.

Some on the left have blamed Democrats’ electoral dysfunction on ever more sophisticated forms of gerrymandering, and indeed Republican-led redistricting in several states after the 2010 census has helped lock in a GOP House majority. But that does not explain why Republicans have won a majority of U.S. Senate elections since the mid-1990s, or the fact that they consistently do much better in the state-by-state vote, in presidential elections, than in the national popular vote.

In 2016, Donald Trump carried 30 states, while losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by more than 2.5 million. In 2012, despite losing the popular vote by almost 4 percentage points, Mitt Romney actually won 24 of the 50 states. In 2008, John McCain managed to carry 22 states, even though he lost the popular vote by a landslide, finishing nearly 10 million votes behind Barack Obama. In the 2004 presidential election, George W. Bush narrowly won the national popular vote — the only time a Republican has done that since 1988 — but he won 31 states in the Electoral College.

Democrats’ current fortunes in this regard are a striking reversal of the party’s situation during the 1970s and 80s. In those decades, the party had great difficulty winning the presidency, but tended to dominate congressional races.

One way of understanding this turnabout for both Republicans and Democrats at the presidential and congressional levels is by considering the changing issue climate facing the parties over those decades. During the latter years of the Cold War, Americans often trusted Republican presidents like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan to check the power of the Soviet Union. At the same time, however, the legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society, meant that many people trusted Democrats to handle domestic issues in Congress.

With the end of the Cold War and George W. Bush’s disastrous war in Iraq, Republicans lost their advantage on foreign policy. But instead of becoming the majority party at every level — as they were in the middle of the 20th century — Democrats have been continually stymied in state and local elections, reportedly losing more than 1,000 legislative seats in non-coastal states during the Obama years. This is partly due to the ongoing segmentation of the country — what many demographers call The Great Sort — into urban areas that are culturally liberal and vote Democratic and rural and exurban areas that support Republicans’ cultural conservatism.

This divide isn’t anything new; people who live in cities have historically been more liberal. What’s changed is that both parties have become more ideologically homogeneous on cultural issues. In the past, the Democratic Party was a broad coalition that housed labor-union socialists and civil rights activists alongside ardent Southern segregationists and anti-communist Cold Warriors.

After the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union — which reordered the global map and drove socialism to the ideological margins, at least temporarily — Democrats reoriented themselves on economics, largely at the instigation of “New Democrats” like former President Bill Clinton. This strategy worked for the party at the presidential level; as noted above, Democrats have won the popular vote in six of the last seven elections. But it has been a dismal failure at the state and local level, for a simple but subtle reason: There are more people in total who hold liberal or progressive views on issues like LGBT rights, race relations, abortion and immigration — but that majority is clustered into relatively compact areas, largely in the Northeast Corridor and on the Pacific Coast.

To break that down a little: In 2012, according to demographer Richard Florida, Mitt Romney won a total of 214 metropolitan areas. Barack Obama carried a significantly smaller number of metro areas, just 150 — but the ones he carried were far more populous. The average Obama area was home to more than 1 million people, while the average Romney area was home to just over 400,000.

Put simply, more people agreed with Democrats but Republicans are more efficiently distributed, from a purely political standpoint.

*  *  *

Democratic officials at the national level seem to have been presented with at least some of these data points. On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer flat-out stated that he believed it was time to refocus the party’s agenda during a news conference to roll out a new Democratic agenda called “A Better Deal.” While Republicans (and some leftists) have mocked the idea, comparing it to a Papa John’s Pizza slogan, Democratic officials say the agenda was formulated after months of polling and electoral analysis.

“The focus starts on economic issues,” Schumer said. “There is not that divide on economic issues.”

He continued: “That’s where the American people are hurting. That’s what we most felt was missing in the past in the last several elections.”

In an interview with Politico, Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said that party leaders had reached an “overwhelming consensus” on the agenda items of creating more better-paying jobs, lowering health care costs and pushing back against businesses through fighting mergers and fees. According to Schumer, even Sen. Bernie Sanders — the Vermont independent who has been a persistent thorn in the side of Democratic officials he sees as too cautious and too conservative — was consulted extensively.

“What we’ve tried to do here is choose things that just about every Democrat can support but that really resonates with the American people,” Schumer said at the Monday press conference. “And a lot of them are things Bernie Sanders campaigned on.”

While liberals have faulted the party’s new agenda for being too small-bore, Schumer, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders say they plan to add more items to the “Better Deal” agenda. In a Sunday interview with ABC’s “This Week,” Schumer said that expanding government health care programs is under consideration as well.

“Many things are on the table. Medicare for people above 55 is on the table. A buy-in to Medicare is on the table. A buy-in to Medicaid is on the table,” Schumer said.

“Week after week, month after month, we’re going to roll out specific pieces here, that are quite different than the Democratic Party you heard in the past. We were too cautious. We were too namby-pamby,” Schumer added.

The new agenda earned some praise from Rep. Tim Ryan, an Ohio Democrat who represents the blue-collar area surrounding Youngstown, which Trump visited Tuesday evening to try and rally his supporters.

“I think it’s a good step in the right direction, focusing on the economy, jobs and wages,” Ryan said in an interview with Salon. “In addition, we need to talk about some of the values that are behind these policies — that if you work hard and play by the rules, you can get ahead in a democratic country.”

That praise is notable because Ryan is one of several Democratic members of Congress who have sought to depose Nancy Pelosi from her longtime post as party leader in the House of Representatives.

According to Ryan, in last year’s presidential campaign Trump managed to steal Democrats’ thunder by copying their rhetoric on protecting jobs and keeping a level playing field for people who follow society’s rules.

“What’s an America 2.0 going to look like, what’s a Democratic Party 2.0 going to look like?” Ryan asked. “We need to start organizing around that in a big way — in contrast to Trump who’s trying to take us back to coal mines and steel mills that he said he was going to reopen. He can’t do any of that, but we have to present our own plan.”

Refocusing the Democratic Party onto economic issues has also been a big concern for Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a congresswoman from Washington state who has become a rising star on the party’s leftward side.

“I think part of the problem is that we have narrowed the voting base more and more,” Jayapal told Salon. “In doing that, we’ve been kind of catering to a smaller set of voters each time, while also simultaneously making the differences between the two parties even smaller as well.”

According to Jayapal, progressives have placed too much emphasis on a larger sense of political identity, instead of on political issues themselves.

“A lot of voters are not inspired. They don’t feel like they’re voting for someone who represents their values,” she said. “Even though I’m a progressive and I talk about progressives across the country, I think a lot of the issues that we’re fighting for are not ‘progressive,’ they’re just right for working people.” She cited higher minimum wages, domestic-oriented trade policies and free college tuition as examples of policies that anyone could support, regardless of where they think they fall on the political spectrum.

The way forward for Democrats, Jayapal says, is for the party to focus not just on getting loyal Democrats to vote, but also to encourage Americans who feel isolated from political elites. Beyond emphasizing more populist economics, she argues that Democrats also need to abandon a one-size-fits-all approach to political rhetoric.

“I’ve never liked the false choice between ‘identity politics’ and economics because I think that race, class and gender are deeply intertwined,” she said. “But I think different groups of people respond to those issues in different ways, so there’s no single way to talk to everybody. What you do, though, is that once you’ve won their trust on one piece, you can draw the dots to the other two.”

Time will tell just how committed Democrats are to this rebranding campaign. But they appear open to the idea that while President Trump himself is deplorable, many of the people who voted for him aren’t, an idea Sanders emphasized in a speech this past April.

“Some people think the people who voted for Trump are racists, sexists and homophobes, just deplorable folks,” he said at the time. “I don’t agree, because I’ve been there.”

The way to solve the problem, Sanders told a Boston crowd, is to restructure the Democratic Party to orient itself away from the billionaires, celebrities and Wall Street types who have dominated its donor class and driven its issue positions in recent decades.

“We need a Democratic Party which is not the party of the liberal elite but a party of the working class of this country,” Sanders said. “We need a party that is a grassroots party, a party where candidates are talking to working people.”

Some social-justice progressives will undoubtedly raise concerns about the party’s apparent shift toward a more economically-oriented message. One response to this is the argument that while the religious right keeps on fighting the culture war, in terms of overall public opinion that conflict ended some time ago. Poll after poll has demonstrated that most Americans want to keep abortion legal, support marriage equality and oppose  discrimination under the guise of religious freedom.

Those issues may still be able to motivate the GOP’s base of aging voters, but they are a declining regional minority within the American population, including among young Republicans.

In 2014, before the Obergefell vs. Hodges Supreme Court case, a Pew Research Center survey found that over 60 percent of self-identified Republicans between the ages of 18 and 29 supported same-sex marriage. On immigration, a survey conducted by PRRI released this month found that 62 percent of young Republicans support a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Even on the much newer issue of transgender rights, multiple congressional Republicans just yesterday publicly broke with the president’s ban on transgender military service.

via Salon: in-depth news, politics, business, technology & culture Salon

[featheroftruth-blog]

What a Trump Presidency Could Bring

    Well, ladies, gentlemen, and that weird rhino thing in the back, the day is finally upon us. Some of us believe this to be the greatest thing in the world, and others, the worst possible outcome. I am speaking, of course, of the inauguration of one Donald Trump.

Trump’s presidency has many thrilled and many worried. Your opinion of him is yours alone, and I make no move to change that. I’m only here to present the facts for those who don’t know or want to know more. Hopefully this will clear up some of the controversy and misunderstandings from both sides.

Now, I honestly cannot predict what Trump will actually do while in office. Anything I write here is based off of things that he has said in the past. Basically, his known stance on things, and his advisors stances. Let’s start off with an important issue, climate change.

Climate Change

-Trump has said, and I quote, “Give me clean, beautiful and healthy air- not the same old climate change (global warming) bullshit! I am tired of hearing this nonsense.” I feel like that shows his stance on it pretty well.

-According to National Geographic, Trump wants to revoke the Clean Power Plan. This plan puts limits on greenhouse gas emissions from fossil-fuel using power plants. His reasoning for this is that it puts a limit on business.

-On his website, Trump states that he wants to protect clean air and clean water, and unleash an energy revolution

-He has also stated that he wants to continue use of fossil fuels, instead of moving on to greener energy sources, which many scientists have suggested we do.

-He also wants to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, an agreement in which 195 countries pledged to reduce carbon emissions.

-To put this into perspective, scientists estimate that the overall temperature of the globe will rise by 2 degrees C if we don’t clean up our act. This might not sound bad, but it would melt the ice caps, cause droughts, make coastal cities uninhabitable, etc. And that could be a best case scenario

-The United States is the second largest producer of greenhouse gases in the world  

The Economy   

The way Trump will impact the economy is difficult to predict, and is honestly giving me a headache to research about. To put it simply, it could go either way.

-There’s currently the assumption that Trump will put policies into place that businesses will benefit from. The dollar has been strengthened because of this.

-The aforementioned policies would include cutting taxes, reducing regulations, and investing in infrastructure

-The reducing regulations thing could tie into climate change  

-He has pledged to create new jobs. So that’s a thing.

Trade, Immigration, and International Relations

-He plans to begin dismantling the Trans Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement signed by twelve Pacific rim (it is notable that China is not one of them). The TPP is meant to strengthen the economic ties between the twelve, and potentially create a new single market. There was some controversy surrounding it, as people said it could intensify competition countries’ labour forces, give companies a way to sue governments, and there was the possibility of secret negotiations. There were also concerns about climate change not being covered.

-On his website, as part of his ten point plan, he claims that an impenetrable wall will be built between the US and Mexico, and that Mexico will pay for the wall. It’s worth pointing out that the Mexican president said that no, Mexico would not be paying for anything. It’s possible that the wall is meant as a metaphor, though by a lot of his wording, it seems to me that he means it literally.

-Anyone who enters the country illegally will be subject to deportation

-Sanctuary cities, cities that protect undocumented immigrants by not turning them in, will be put to an end

-Make sure that jobs are offered to Americans before immigrants, and prioritize the jobs, wages, and security of the American people

-Protect the economic well-being of immigrants living and working in the US legally

-Trump has criticized NATO quite a bit

-Who knows how relations with Russia will go at this point. On one hand, it could go very well. On the other, there’s the election debacle, and the possibility that Russia holds compromising material on Trump, which could potentially be used for blackmail.

-The possibility of a 35% tariff being put on goods made in Mexico

-The possibility of withdrawing the US from the North American Free Trade Agreement, and from the World Trade Organization.

-One China could be under negotiation, which China itself has said is non-negotiable

-Though he says he will talk and negotiate, his previous comments about China could have already done some damage and strained relations

-He wants to dismantle the Iranian nuclear accord, but also doesn’t want to specify what exactly he will do

-Dismantling that could cause some shit in the Middle East, which it honestly doesn’t need any more of right now, the situation over there is already complicated enough      

Gay Rights, Abortion Rights, and Women’s Rights

-The White House’s LGBT page was taken down after Trump was sworn in, which is making many people uneasy

-Pence is notorious for supporting conversion therapy, and opposing the repeal of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Act. He has also spoken out against gay marriage in the past

-Marriage equality will most likely remain in place. That was a Supreme Court ruling, and would take a hell of a lot to overturn. I can’t speak for anything else regarding gay rights though. Only time will tell.

- He has pledged to sign the First Amendment Defence Act, which “Prohibits the federal government from taking discriminatory action against a person on the basis that such person believes or acts in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction that: (1) marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or (2) sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”

-In other words, you can discriminate against someone because of your religion, and you won’t get in trouble for it

-The First Amendment Defence Act could also thin the line between church and state, which we have tried to keep separate

-Trump openly opposes abortion, but at this point in time can’t really do anything to affect it. That’s a Supreme Court decision, and while Trump will nominate a new justice to replace Antonin Scalia, they don’t tend to like overruling their own past decisions

-The Supreme Court does have the potential to change a lot, though. If Trump were to nominate two new justices, things could drastically reverse. That would be the point when the matter of abortion might be sent back to the states.

-If abortion becomes a state issue, there are 21 states likely to ban abortion almost immediately, 20 would preserve abortion rights, and 9 would be stuck in a battle of what to do

-Abortion clinics may also be shut down, even without the repeal of Roe. This is something Texas has done.

-It’s worth noting here that cutting off a woman’s way to get legal abortions doesn’t stop abortions from happening at all. In countries where abortion is illegal, women get illegal abortions instead, often in unsafe conditions. The health and safety of women should be taken into consideration here.

-Trump has also said, when asked if he thought abortion should be punished, that yes, he thinks there should be some form of punishment for the women. He did not specify what kind of punishment.

-He is very pro-life and anti-abortion, that’s something that has been made abundantly clear

-The “grab them by the pussy” remark is very well known at this point. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions from that.

-He wants to provide six weeks of paid leave to new mothers before they return back to work

-He plans to give employers an incentive to provide childcare

-He also wants to rewrite the tax code to allow working parents to deduct from their income taxes for child care, or care for the elderly

Well, it’s late, I’m tired, and there’s still a good bit more that I haven’t covered. That should be posted some time in the next few days. I intend to cover what he plans on doing to the Affordable Care Act, how his presidency could affect the current situation in the Middle East, and want to do some digging to see if he’s said anything on stem cell research. If anyone has questions, comments, or wants me to cover a specific topic in more detail, feel free to contact me.