#not to mention florida voted majority for abortion rights but they have a rule that things need to have 60% for it to pass

[sixty-silver-wishes]

well, it's fourth of july. if you're like me, and you're in the us, you're probably feeling pessimistic right now, given the state of things. I made a joke post about how I feel about it the other day that blew up, and tbh I'm not surprised. that being said, I'd like to talk a bit more in detail about my thoughts on the matter this year.

so, to begin with, it's pretty obvious why I'm feeling so disillusioned this year. the us presidential election isn't looking good, fascism is on the rise and seems to be met mainly with apathy, the us is aiding in genocide in gaza, while many politicians are restricting the rights of american civilians, especially those belonging to marginalized groups- abortion is being criminalized, as is trans healthcare, and rulings have been upheld gerrymandering black-majority voting districts, not to mention the state of education surrounding POC and queer history. the supreme court is out of control. climate change gets worse every year, with consequences all around the world; hurricane beryl's early arrival and its devastation of the caribbean was just one more instance of the worsening state of the environment. russia is still invading ukraine, with global tensions worsening as multiple major powers battle for global prominence. all that is to say, it's a scary time to live pretty much anywhere in the world, and given the slew of problems in the united states, it's impossible to feel a shred of patriotism as many people of prominence in our country either worsen or are otherwise complicit in many of the aforementioned issues.

all that being said, I want to begin by saying that I don't think you're necessarily a bad person if you celebrate fourth of july. I don't think guilting people is a productive way to go about things, or to alleviate any feelings of cognitive dissonance. I don't know why everyone is celebrating; maybe you want to focus on the positive aspects of american culture, such as its diversity or the accomplishments of those who have been able to advocate for themselves despite oppression from within their own country. or maybe you just want a day off to spend with your family and friends, without anything to do with america. what you do today is your business, and it's not up to me to police what you should or shouldn't do.

I do, however, want to offer some resources for those of you like me, who feel like we can't celebrate. I don't think we should be paralyzed by guilt and do nothing, but I also acknowledge that what we can do varies from person to person. maybe you can do a mix of both- spend the day with your family while also taking time to engage with these resources. You don't have to engage with all of them, but I would appreciate if people took the time with these resources, whether it means educating themselves on various issues or donating money to a cause. So, here are some I think deserve some attention:

NDN Collective: NDN Collective is an Indigenous-led organization that focuses on sustainability, the Land Back movement, intersectional activism, and climate justice.

Native Land Digital: This interactive digital map shows the location of precolonial Indigenous land around the world, so you can find whose land you're living on. Clicking on a location on the map may provide you with links affiliated with specific tribes or Indigenous groups, allowing you to learn more about the history, culture, and issues regarding Indigenous peoples in the area where you live. For instance, I live on Seminole land, and clicking on the Seminole area of the map leads me to the official Seminole tribe website.

The Afiya Center: The Afiya center is a Texas-based organization that focuses on reproductive health issues regarding Black women and AFAB people in Texas. This includes abortion and contraceptive resources, as well as preventing STI's.

Zebra Youth: Zebra Youth is a Florida-based organization that provides resources to LGBT adolescents, such as housing and mental health resources.

Operation Olive Branch: Operation Olive Branch is a spreadsheet that contains various verified fundraisers to help people evacuate or survive in Gaza during the current genocide.

Healing Our Homeland: An organization that delivers food and humanitarian relief to Palestinians.

Nova Ukraine: Delivers humanitarian relief to Ukraine.

ASAN: Autism Self-Advocacy Network- An autistic-led organization that aims to better representation for autistic people, provide educational resources, and improve accommodations.

This article contains links to relief efforts to help the victims of Hurricane Beryl.

Of course, please remember to vote this year! As bad as the choices are, either a democrat or a republican will be the president in 2025, and organizing for progress is going to be a hell of a lot easier under one than the other. For now, let's continue to uplift our communities, provide support where we can, and continue to learn about intersectional issues and diverse viewpoints.

[pashterlengkap]

Donald Trump scrambles to make voters think he supports abortion & IVF rights

Former President Donald Trump on Thursday scrambled to salvage any hope of earning the votes of suburban women and others opposed to Republican efforts to strip them of their bodily autonomy, even denouncing his state’s six-week abortion ban and promising free in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments. “We want more babies, to put it very nicely,” Trump pandered. Related Southern Baptists just voted to oppose IVF Republicans are scrambling to combat the perception that they’ll ban IVF in an election year, but many religious conservatives oppose the procedure. Fearing the impact of two years of judicial and legislative assault on reproductive freedoms in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which ended federal protections for abortion rights, Trump went on offense Thursday, trying to soften his image on the issue. Your LGBTQ+ guide to Election 2024 Stay ahead of the 2024 Election with our newsletter that covers candidates, issues, and perspectives that matter. Subscribe to our Newsletter today At a town hall in Michigan hosted by the anti-LGBTQ+ former Democratic Congresswoman and failed presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, Trump claimed not only that he was a big supporter of IVF but that a second Trump administration would pay for the treatments. “I’m announcing today in a major statement that under the Trump administration, your government will pay for, or your insurance company will be mandated to pay for, all costs associated with IVF treatment,” the former president said in Potterville. “And for this same reason, we will also allow new parents to deduct major newborn expenses from their taxes so that parents that have a beautiful baby will be able, so we’re pro-family,” Trump continued. “I’ve been in favor of IVF right from the beginning,” Trump added. He didn’t specify how the free treatments — which normally run into the tens of thousands of dollars and higher — would be paid for or who would be eligible. IVF is a popular family-building tool for LGBTQ+ people. The Alabama Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that fertilized embryos had the same rights as children and adults, and their destruction in the process of IVF was murder. Assigning “personhood” to fertilized embryos is at the heart of Republicans’ efforts to ban abortion and hasn’t changed despite Trump’s efforts to paint a more moderate picture. “I kept hearing that I’m against it, and I’m actually very much for it,” Trump reiterated at an event in Wisconsin later in the day. The Harris-Walz campaign wasn’t buying it. “Donald Trump’s own platform could effectively ban IVF and abortion nationwide,” said Sarafina Chitika, a campaign spokesperson, following Trump’s promises of free stuff. “Trump lies as much if not more than he breathes, but voters aren’t stupid,” she added. In another effort to gaslight the public on Republicans’ true intentions around reproductive freedoms, Trump prevaricated in an interview with NBC on whether he would support Amendment 4 in his home state of Florida. The ballot initiative would render moot the state’s draconian six-week abortion ban in favor of restrictions in line with Roe. “Well, I think the six weeks is too short. It has to be more time,” Trump said. “And I’ve told them that I want more weeks.” Shortly after, the Trump campaign walked back the candidate’s declaration. In a statement to CNN, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said, “President Trump has not yet said how he will vote on the ballot initiative in Florida, he simply reiterated that he believes six weeks is too short.” Both the Republican platform and Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s Christian nationalist-inspired blueprint for a second coming of the former president, redound with policy aimed at curtailing the right to choose. While the platform was watered down to avoid any mention of a national ban on abortion, both that document and Project 2025 lay the groundwork for revoking… http://dlvr.it/TCllR0

[nigeiadigitalmarketingcompany]

Roundup Roundup: Judge Slashes Punitive Damages Award in Glyphosate Lawsuit

Digital Elixir Roundup Roundup: Judge Slashes Punitive Damages Award in Glyphosate Lawsuit

By Jerri-Lynn Scofield, who has worked as a securities lawyer and a derivatives trader. She is currently writing a book about textile artisans.

Alameda County Superior Court Judge Winifred Smith on Thursday slashed a punitive damages award from $2.055 billion to $87 million in a lawsuit that concluded Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide caused cancer. This is the second time this month and the third time overall that a judge has reduced a jury’s punitive damages award in a glyphosate lawsuit.

The moves to reducing damages are not unexpected – as I previously discussed (see Glyphosate Use Surges in Midwest, Lawsuits Mount: What Will the Supremes Say?). And the punitive damages awarded originally in this case were for the eye-popping amount of $2 billion. A series of precedents over the last couple of decades has drastically circumscribed overall punitive damages awards on constitutional grounds, and now largely limits them to single-digit multipliers of economic damages (see, e.g., State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co. v. Campbell (2003)).

The seemingly arcane area is just one in which judges have handed down business-friendly decisions.  Other areas include: limitations on class actions, upholding mandatory arbitration clauses; and narrowing grounds for personal jurisdiction to sue an out-of-state corporation in a plaintiff’s home court. Taken together, these legal decisions increase the formidable obstacles ordinary people face in getting one’s day in court – let alone prevailing in a lawsuit. The increased pro-corporate bias of the judicial system in turn reduces accountability and the pressures on corporations to do the right thing, else they might lose a lawsuit and payout a substantial judgment.

I should mention that this pro-business legal shift is a bipartisan affair: it’s not simply Republican nominees who comprise the majorities that make these decisions (up to and including the United States Supreme Court). Democrat appointees also support and affirm these judgements.

Alas, when Democrats are in charge of judicial appointments, many mainstream Democrats privilege a prospective jurist’s likely stances towards abortion rights and voting rights, and don’t focus on where s/he is likely to rule on issues of corporate accountability. Additionally, credentialism is rampant, with not enough attention paid to what roles a judicial candidate has played in the legal system (see my earlier musings on this topic, Doing Time: Prison, Law Schools, and the Membership of the US Supreme Court and Barriers to Entry: On Bar Exams and Supreme Court Seats). So we get benches largely made up of academics, corporate lawyers, and former prosecutors, and see far fewer public defenders, public interest lawyers, or plaintiffs’ attorneys chosen as judges.

Roundup Ruling: Victory for Plaintiffs

Yet despite slashing the amounts of damages, the latest case represents a solid win for plaintiffs. And the damages awarded, a mix of compensatory and punitive damages, remain substantial: $86.7 million. (Although I must mention, the appeals process is far from exhausted, and it’s far too early to assess how these lawsuits will play out – and how much money Bayer will ultimately fork out.)

Let’s nonetheless focus here on the victory at hand. As the San Francisco Chronicle reports in Alameda County judge reduces $2 billion jury award in Monsanto case to $86.7 million:

Evidence at the Oakland trial, though disputed, supports the jury’s conclusion that Roundup was “a substantial factor” in causing non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in both Alva and Alberta Pilliod, said Superior Court Judge Winifred Smith. She said the evidence also supported the jury’s finding that Monsanto had known the herbicide’s active ingredient, glyphosate, could be dangerous while the Pilliods were still using it and had failed to warn them.

Further, Smith said, there was clear evidence that Monsanto, after learning of the dangers, “made efforts to impede, discourage or distort scientific inquiry” by regulators who approved its use, “reprehensible” conduct that justifies punitive damages.

The plaintiffs were well aware that the jury’s damages award would be cut. According to the LA Times in Judge reduces $2-billion award in Monsanto Roundup cancer case to $87 million::

The couple had anticipated the reduction, and their lawyer said the overall ruling was “a major victory.”

Although “the reduction in damages does not fairly capture the pain and suffering experienced by Alva and Alberta,” attorney Brent Wisner said in a statement, “the judge rejected every argument Monsanto raised and sustained a very substantial verdict.”

The judge dismissed Monsanto’s motion for a JNOV (judgement notwithstanding verdict) – whereby the presiding judge in a civil jury trial in a US court may overrule the decision of a jury and reverse or amend their verdict. But Judge Smith granted Monsanto’s motion for a new trial – unless the plaintiffs agree to accept the reduced $87 million damages award.

Bayer’s Position

Bayer – which assumed Roundup legal liabilities when it acquired US manufacturer Monsanto last year  – is faced with more than 13,000 pending glyphosate actions. The company has lost three cases far in California courts – all in the Bay Area – and won zero.  According to the San Francisco Chronicle:

A San Francisco Superior Court jury awarded $289 million last August to former school groundskeeper Dewayne “Lee” Johnson of Vallejo, who doctors say may have less than a year to live. A judge later reduced the award to $78.5 million. In March, a federal court jury in San Francisco awarded more than $80 million to Edwin Hardeman of Sonoma County, whose cancer is in remission. A judge has reduced that award to $25.2 million.

As Deutche Welle reports in US judge reduces $2 billion Monsanto Roundup verdict against Bayer, the legal verdicts have “[pounded] its share price and [left]  the entire company with a stock market capitalization less than the $63 billion it paid for Monsanto in a takeover completed last year.”

Bayer continues to affirm – at least in its public statements – that its legal strategy will be upheld on appeal.

As the FT reports in US judge slashes $2bn verdict against Bayer in Roundup case:

In a statement, Bayer said it welcomed the judge’s decision as a “step in the right direction”, but that it would still file an appeal to have the entire verdict overturned. The German group has insisted all along that glyphosate-based pesticides are safe for use.

“The court’s decision to reduce the punitive, non-economic, and future medical damage awards is a step in the right direction, but we continue to believe that the verdict and damage awards are not supported by the evidence at trial and conflict with the extensive body of reliable science and conclusions of leading health regulators worldwide,” Bayer said.

However these glyphosate lawsuits ultimately play out, I think it’s difficult to dispute the conclusion that the company seriously underestimated the risks of acquiring Monsanto (see this Der Spiegel take, Safe Or Not, Roundup Is Toxic for Bayer – written in January, before the latest legal setbacks).

Outside California

The next challenge Bayer faces is its first glyphosate lawsuit to be tried outside California.  As Reuters reports in In Roundup case, U.S. judge cuts $2 billion verdict against Bayer to $86 million:

In August, the company is scheduled to face its first trial outside California at a courthouse in St. Louis, Missouri. Monsanto has recruited Missouri-based expert witnesses to make its case in a place where it has century-old roots but where juries often hit companies with huge damages.

I really don’t see that a Missouri jury is less likely to decide against plaintiffs than a California one. After all, even red Southern states have active and successful plaintiffs’ bars – IIRC, Florida, Mississippi, and Texas litigators we’re key players in the litigation that led to the 1998 tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.

Roundup Roundup: Judge Slashes Punitive Damages Award in Glyphosate Lawsuit

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2GzCu9j via IFTTT

[marymosley]

The Life and Legacy of John Paul Stevens

Below is my column in the Washington Post Sunday on the legacy of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. With roughly 35 years on the bench, he was the nation’s second oldest and third-longest serving justice.

Stevens will lie in repose at the Supreme Court on Monday. On Tuesday his funeral will be held and he will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. I expect he would have preferred center field at Wrigley but this is a strong second option.

Here is the column:

After 35 years on the court, John Paul Stevens remained one of the most difficult justices to interview. Stevens was old school, and tended to avoid public speeches and discussions of his legacy. In 2010, as rumors of his retirement were spreading, I tried every angle to land an appointment. I phoned his office and invoked the fact that we were both Chicago natives who attended the University of Chicago and Northwestern. No dice. We were both die-hard Cubs fans. Nope. I finally resorted to the lowest possible approach. When I saw Stevens at a legal gathering, I told him that I doubted that Babe Ruth really “called the shot” before his famous home run, into the bleachers, off Cubs pitcher Charlie Root in the fifth inning of Game 3 of the 1932 World Series. Stevens pounced, describing what he’d seen from the stands as if it were still Oct. 1, 1932, and he was that 12-year-old kid with his dad at Wrigley.

While some claim that the Babe might not have actually been pointing but was just swinging his bat, Stevens insisted that he “was pumping the bat” at his intended destination. I immediately relented, of course, and then asked, “Okay, now how about your retirement?”

I can’t say I got anything earthshaking out of that brief conversation, but my desperate bait-and-switch was not entirely random. Stevens, as I’ve written before, was the “uncalled shot” of the Supreme Court. Entering the court as a conservative appointed by President Gerald Ford, Stevens would finish his tenure as the indisputable leader of the liberal wing. He is an example of how a jurist can find not just his voice but his vision on the court.

While most Americans may not recognize Stevens’s name, he changed this country in fundamental ways with dozens of historic rulings. Those opinions were written in direct and unadorned language. He was also crafty. As the center of the court shifted to the right, Stevens repeatedly found ways to forge majorities or avoid review in critical cases.

Born into a wealthy Chicago family, Stevens was headed for an advanced degree in English before he took a detour into naval intelligence. He joined the Navy the day before Pearl Harbor was bombed and would receive the Bronze Star for his role in a code-breaking operation that led to the downing of the plane carrying the leader of that attack, Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto. When he returned to Chicago, he opted for law school and graduated with the highest average in the history of Northwestern University School of Law .

After a clerkship with Justice Wiley B. Rutledge Jr., he turned down an offer to teach at Yale and went into private practice, specializing in antitrust law. He investigated possible corruption in the Illinois court system, a complex enterprise that led to the resignation of two state Supreme Court justices. After Watergate, Ford wanted to appoint someone to the court with impeccable ethics and unimpeachable standing in the legal profession. He chose Stevens, who succeeded the liberal stalwart William O. Douglas.

Stevens left a legacy that transcends those of all but a handful of justices, and his shift from the right to the left of the court is one of the most striking in the institution’s history. He would come to regret some of his earlier votes, such as one reinstating the death penalty (in Gregg v. Georgia, in 1976). In 1978, Stevens wrote a strong dissent against affirmative action in University of California Regents v. Bakke . Yet he would finish on the court as one of the great supporters of the practice, upholding race as a criterion in university admissions in a series of cases. He would also emerge as one of the most consistent and strongest voices supporting abortion rights, gay rights and women’s rights.

His most consequential decision may have been in Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. (1984). There, Stevens laid out the standard for the review of agency decision-making, an opinion that would create great deference to administrative decisions. Stevens held that, when a statute is ambiguous and an agency acts, the only question courts must resolve is “whether the agency’s answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute” – a standard that largely insulates agency decisions from challenge. Chevron greatly magnified the role of agencies in U.S. governance and remains among the most-discussed court rulings.

His voice on the court became more distinctive and powerful as time went on – and this was particularly true after such towering figures as Thurgood Marshall and William Brennan left the court.

The style as well as the content of Stevens’s opinions evolved: His early decisions tended to be not just more conservative but also shorter and somewhat underdeveloped, in the vein of his appellate decisions. Years ago, Stevens and I flew to Milwaukee to speak at a judicial conference. He mentioned that he probably wouldn’t be able to attend my speech (which was frankly a bit of a relief since I was speaking about the Supreme Court). During the discussion, a judge asked about my proposal to expand the court and whether I would also support term limits for justices or mandatory retirement ages. I answered no, and said I could explain why in three words: John Paul Stevens. I said that Stevens’s early opinions were sometimes incomprehensible or incomplete, while his later opinions were profound and transformative. That is when I spotted Stevens. He later approached me with his signature grin and said, “Incomprehensible?”

The fact is that Stevens came into his own on the court. I disagree with some of his decisions – particularly one supporting sweeping eminent-domain powers ( Kelo v. City of New London , 2005). Yet he always wrote not out of hardened ideology but an innate sense of fairness, equality and inclusion.

He would truly emerge as a leading voice on the jurisprudential left a decade into his tenure. In his dissent to Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), Stevens vehemently disagreed with the upholding of a Georgia statute criminalizing sodomy between consenting adults. It was one of the worst decisions in the history of the high court, and Stevens denounced the analysis. His views would later prevail in the landmark Lawrence v. Texas (2003), which struck down anti-sodomy laws.

Stevens authored one of the most powerful defenses of the First Amendment in Reno v. ACLU (1997), writing the opinion striking down the criminalization of “indecent transmission” of “obscene or indecent” messages under the Communications Decency Act of 1996. The vagueness of the law was clearly incompatible with the guarantees of the First Amendment, and Stevens held that the law “threaten[ed] to torch a large segment of the Internet community.”

Stevens was also a critic of expansive interpretations of the Second Amendment. He wrote a stinging dissent to the decision in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), which recognized, for the first time in U.S. history, an individual right to bear arms. He wrote a comprehensive account of the origins of the amendment and argued: “The Court would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons, and to authorize this Court to use the common-law process of case-by-case judicial lawmaking to define the contours of acceptable gun control policy. Absent compelling evidence that is nowhere to be found in the Court’s opinion, I could not possibly conclude that the Framers made such a choice.”

Despite sharp disagreements, Stevens rarely used the kind of hyperbolic or dramatic language that characterized the opinions of some of his colleagues. But he was both direct and forceful in his dissent to the decision to stop the recount in Florida in the 2000 presidential election. In Bush v. Gore , Stevens warned that the court had crossed a dangerous line, putting its own legitimacy at risk. He expressed hope that “time will one day heal the wound . . . inflicted by today’s decision,” adding: “Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.”

Likewise, Stevens was ardent, in 2010, in dissenting from Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission , which struck down limits on political contributions by corporations as an unconstitutional denial of free speech. “While American democracy is imperfect,” he wrote, “few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.”

Such opinions are like the man himself: impassioned yet direct; honest and unpretentious.

When I received the first call informing me of Stevens’s death, I was watching our Cubs play the Cincinnati Reds. I left the game on as I started to write about his exemplary life and work. The Cubs won in extra innings, with Kyle Schwarber hitting a long ball at Wrigley into the bleachers, the same area where Babe Ruth once made history in front of an awed 12-year-old named John Paul Stevens. Schwarber’s home run was no “called shot.” But some great players, like great justices, just make the play, without the fanfare or the theatrics.

is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University.

The Life and Legacy of John Paul Stevens published first on https://immigrationlawyerto.tumblr.com/

[ninja-suffragette]

News From The USA -13 Days Later

That’s 20th January - 2nd February 

no look it’s fine, I’ll start with some good(ish) news

Lead Levels in Flint Water Drop, but Residents Still Can’t Drink It - NY Times   24th January 2017

Protest activism and resistance

After 2 Weeks In Office, Trump Faces More Than 50 Lawsuits - NPR    2nd February 2017

Stephanie Murphy files bill that would remove Stephen Bannon from National Security Council - Orlando Weekly and also at Murphy’s own website (Tumblr Link)     1st February 2017

Trump's first days in office spawn dozens of lawsuits - CNN (Tumblr Link)    1st February 2017

“Remember that the spectre of trans women was already a useful wedge issue & get-out-the-vote driver in the 2016 campaign. There’s precedent. We will be used as a weapon and a vulnerability against the rest of you for as long as our opponents know we won’t be protected by the Left “ - Twitter Storm    1st February 2017

Reuters orders reporters to cover Trump like an authoritarian regime: Expect ‘physical threats’ - rawstory  (Tumblr Link)    1st February 2017

  Texas Mayor Jess Herbst Comes Out As Transgender -  Huffington Post (Tumblr Link)     1st February 2017

‘But what if an emergency vehicle needs to get through?’ Protesters in  Minnesota part to make way for fire engine - Facebook   1st February 2017   

The Attorney General of Massachusetts, Maura Healey [x]   (Tumblr Link)

Republican Lawmakers in Five States Propose Bills to Criminalise Peaceful Protest -  The Intercept    19th January 2017

Unverified 'alternative' government accounts target Trump on Twitter - CNN   27th January 2017

I believe RoguePOTUSstaff is a Russian disinformation account - Twitter  30th January 2017

Thread about AltNatParkSer on twitter (you should still take this with a grain of salt. There’s no proof that they are who they say they are).

That goes for RogueNASA too. I’m sorry I know they’re really cool.

In response to the new president’s stances on a range of issues, more scientists are preparing to run for political office - The Atlantic (Tumblr Link)    25th January 2017

“Remember, the present U.S. administration wants you to be overwhelmed...” - Tumblr

Four journalists are facing 10 years in prison and a $25,000 fine after covering inauguration unrest - The Guardian  24th January 2017

UPDATE: LAWMAKERS IN TEN STATES HAVE PROPOSED LEGISLATION CRIMINALIZING PEACEFUL PROTEST  - The Intercept     23rd January 2017  

In Minnesota, Washington state, Michigan, and Iowa, Republican lawmakers have proposed an array of anti-protesting laws that center on stiffening penalties for demonstrators who block traffic; in North Dakota, conservatives are even pushing a bill that would allow motorists to run over and kill protesters so long as the collision was accidental. Similarly, Republicans in Indiana last week prompted uproar over a proposed law that would instruct police to use “any means necessary” to clear protesters off a roadway.

Minnesota Lawmakers Push Anti-Protest Bill to Charge Activists Costs of Policing - Democracy Now    26th January 2017

Black Bloc Participants Rescue Disabled Woman from Police Attack - Youtube (Tumblr Link)      20th January 2017

Standing Rock Protests

Over 70 arrested at Standing Rock as Dakota Access aims to finish pipeline - The Guardian     2nd February 2017

What Trump's Latest Executive Order Means For Standing Rock - Refinery29 (Tumblr Link)    25th January 2017  

Today, Trump signed an Executive Order allowing the construction of both Keystone XL and the Dakota Access Pipeline. - Mark Ruffalo on Tumblr    24th January 2017

Trump, Bannon, White Supremacy, Hate Crimes

Donald Trump administration 'wants to cut white supremacism from counter-extremism programme' - The Independent (Discussion on tumblr)    2nd February 2017      

Pence wants us all to remember president Lincoln for black history month because of course he does - Twitter     2nd February 2017

Jewish people give Muslims key to their synagogue after town's mosque burns down - The Independent   1st February 2017

Donations and an online fundraising campaign have raised more than $900,000 (£717,000) for reconstruction.

At least 17 bomb threats called in to JCCs nationwide in third wave of harassment - Jewish Telegraphic Agency   31st January 2017

The FBI Has Quietly Investigated White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement - The Intercept (Tumblr Link)    31st January 2017

The psychiatrist who wrote the criteria for narcissism just made an extremely important point about what’s wrong with diagnosing Trump with mental disorders - Refinery 29 (Tumblr Link)    31st January 2017

After Trump Deemed China Foreign Enemy, Anti-Asian Hate Crimes In LA Surged - Huffington Post (Tumblr Link)   27th January 2017

Neo-Nazis slogans and imagery drawn outside 3 Florida Synagogues - Tumblr     23rd January 2017

Trump Just Signed The Order To Build The Wall On The Mexico Border - Buzzfeed  23rd January 2017

Trump wants a border wall — and this sheriff is offering to have his inmates help build it - The Washington Post (Tumblr Link)    20th January 2017

Vicente Fox Quesada’s twitteroff with Donald Trump -   6th January 2017

Alabama found guilty of racial gerrymandering - Think Progress (Tumblr link)    20th January 2017

Trump supporters less likely to support public policies when cued with a black face. (Sociological Images)   December 23rd 2016

Steve Bannon, Trump's Top Guy, Told Me He Was 'A Leninist' Who Wants To ‘Destroy the State’ - The Daily Beast    22nd August 2016

Muslim Travel Ban

Science Solidarity List Offers Labs to Scientists Stranded by Travel Ban - Seeker (Tumblr Link)    2nd February 2017

Hasan Minhaj examines the uplifting public response to Trump’s Muslim ban - The Daily Show (Tumblr Link)    31st January 2017

The Muslim ban has brought the US close to constitutional crisis - The Guardian (Further discussion on tumblr and twitter)     30th January 2017

Meanwhile this statement about the Yates firing is suitably insane - Twitter        30th January 2017

Woman And Her 2 Children Held At Dulles Airport for 20 Hours With No Food - Jezebel    29th January 2017  

ACLU volunteer attorneys working to help people detained in airports  Donate to the ACLU - Twitter  29th January 2017

The Illinois senators are asking for an investigation into the DHS’s execution of Trump’s anti-immigration EO. - (Tumblr Link)    29th January 2017  

We are deeply concerned by [Customs and Border Protection’s] failure to respond to time-sensitive Congressional oversight inquiries and allegations that the agency refused to permit attorneys to meet with detained LPRs at O’Hare and other airports across the country.”

The 1st woman who was held has been let through. Crowds chant USA as she’s reunited with her family -  Hannah VanHuss Davis On twitter (Tumblr Link)   28th January 2017

John Oliver explains how unbelievably through the refugee vetting process is in America -  (Tumblr Link)  Last Week Tonight   20th September 2016

Trump’s Muslim Ban Realized - Tumblr and Twitter     27th January 2017

The White House will publish a weekly list of crimes committed by immigrants - Quartz (Tumblr Link)    26th January 2017

Pro-immigration rallies happening right now in New York City and Washington, DC. We are #HeretoStay! - Twitter       25th January 2017  

Source: Huffington Post

 Other Other Terrible Things Trump’s Trying To Do

Republicans move to sell off 3.3m acres of national land, sparking rallies - The Guardian (Tumblr Link - NSFW blog)    31st January 2017

Congress moves to give away national lands, discounting billions in revenue - The Guardian (Tumblr Link)    19th January 2017

Senate committee approves DeVos for education secretary, sends nomination to full Senate. - The Associated Press on Twitter    31st January 2017 

Trump’s early moves trigger business backlash - Politico   30th January 2017 Fear is rippling across corporate boardrooms from Silicon Valley to Wall Street over the new White House’s erratic approach to policy, with damage mounting from a travel crackdown, trade protectionism and a persistent habit of singling out individual companies for stinging public criticism.

Trump's state department purge sparks worries of 'know-nothing approach' to foreign policy  - The Guardian    29th January 2017

The sudden dismissal of several senior officials has left a gaping hole at the heart of US diplomacy: ‘The machinery is still there, but no one’s in the cockpit’

Judicial branch explainer missing from Whitehouse website - The Hill (Tumblr Link)   29th January 2017

it gained fresh focus Sunday, after a federal judge in New York issued an emergency stay Saturday temporarily halting the removal of individuals detained after President Trump issued an order to ban immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S.   

What “Things Going Wrong” Can Look Like - Medium  (Tumblr Link)   28th January 2017 

Behind closed doors, Republican lawmakers fret about how to repeal Obamacare, 2 - MSN news  (Tumblr Link)  28th January 2017

Katie Rich of SNL was suspended for a tweet she made about Barron Trump ( 23rd January 2017) and while we can talk for an age about all the things that SNL has failed to suspend people over, i think she completely deserves this. There is a lot to focus on right now, don’t put energy into horrible things about Trump’s younger kids. Not that any of you would, obviously.

Trump’s new FCC chief is Ajit Pai, and he wants to destroy net neutrality - The Verge (Tumblr Link)   23rd January 2017

Congress’ First Move Under Donald Trump Is To Make Abortion More Expensive -  Huffington Post  24th January 2017

The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act would make permanent the Hyde Amendment, which denies abortion coverage in health insurance plans for women on Medicaid, military servicewomen, federal employees, residents of the District of Columbia, women in federal prisons, and women covered by the Indian Health Service.

“The Global Gag Rule bans health organizations around the world from receiving US funding if they so much as *mention* abortion...” -Laci Green on tumblr

Trump's global abortion gag rule goes much further than any previous administration - Vox (Tumblr Link)   January 26th

CEOs of Tesla, Uber, and Pepsi Join Trump’s Business Council - NBC News (Tumblr Link)  28th December 2016

The Inauguration

Interior Department Banned From Tweeting After Parks Department Posts Unflattering Images Of Trump Inauguration -  22nd January 2017   (Tumblr Link)   Reverb Press

Anna Rascouët-Paz: ‏Spicer's lies - Twitter    22nd January 2017 

When Camera Angles Matter - Twitter    20th January 2017

Donald Trump Inauguration Draws Much Smaller Crowds Than Barack Obama’s   - The Huffington Post (tumblr link)    20th January 2017

The whole inauguration cake debacle - Twitter, facebook, tumblr and a telegraph link just to show we’re not making it all up     20th-22nd January 2017

In His Inaugural Address, Donald Trump Embraced Anti-Semites’ Slogan “America First” - The Huffington Post (Tumblr link)    20th January 2017

President Trump tells the FEC he qualifies as a candidate for 2020 - The Washington Post (tumblr link)    20th January 2017 

[todaynewsstories]

Chaos grips Senate hearing on Trump Supreme Court pick Kavanaugh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Chaos engulfed the U.S. Senate confirmation hearing for Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court pick, as Democrats on Tuesday complained bitterly about Republicans withholding documents about the nominee’s past White House service and shouting protesters were arrested in droves.

More than seven hours went by during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing before Kavanaugh, the conservative federal appeals court judge Trump selected for a lifetime job on the top U.S. judicial body, got to deliver his opening statement.

Kavanaugh, nominated by a president who has often criticized the federal judiciary, told the senators that “a judge must be independent, not swayed by public pressure. Our independent judiciary is the crown jewel of our constitutional republic.”

With Democratic senators repeatedly interrupting the committee’s Republican chairman Chuck Grassley at the outset of the hearing, the session quickly became a ruckus. U.S. Capitol police said 61 protesters were removed from the room and charged with disorderly conduct, along with nine more outside the hearing.

Democrats decried the withholding of the documents and sought to have the proceedings adjourned, as Grassley struggled to maintain order.

“This is the first confirmation for a Supreme Court justice I’ve seen, basically, according to mob rule,” Republican Senator John Cornyn said, a characterization Democrats rejected.

“What we’ve heard is the noise of democracy,” Democratic Senator Dick Durbin said.

Protesters, mostly women, took turns yelling as senators spoke, shouting, “This is a travesty of justice,” “Our democracy is broken” and “Vote no on Kavanaugh.” Demonstrators voiced concern about what they saw as the threat posed by Kavanaugh to abortion rights, healthcare access and gun control.

Democratic Senator Cory Booker appealed to Grassley’s “sense of decency and integrity” and said the withholding of the documents by Republicans and the White House left lawmakers unable to properly vet Kavanaugh.

“We cannot possibly move forward. We have not had an opportunity to have a meaningful hearing,” Democratic Senator Kamala Harris said.

Grassley deemed the Democrats’ request to halt the hearing “out of order” and accused them of obstruction. Republicans hold a slim Senate majority and can confirm Kavanaugh if they stay united. There were no signs of Republican defections.

Trump blasted the Democrats on Twitter, saying the hearing was “truly a display of how mean, angry and despicable the other side is” and accusing them of “looking to inflict pain and embarrassment” on Kavanaugh.

If confirmed, Kavanaugh, 53, is expected to move the court – which already had a conservative majority – further to the right. Senate Democratic leaders have vowed a fierce fight to try to block his confirmation. Democrats signaled they would press Kavanaugh on abortion, gun rights and presidential power when they get to question him starting on Wednesday in a hearing due to run through Friday.

Democrats have demanded in vain to see documents relating Kavanaugh’s time as staff secretary to Republican former President George W. Bush from 2003 to 2006. That job involved managing paper flow from advisers to Bush. Republicans also have released some, but not all, documents concerning Kavanaugh’s two prior years as a lawyer in Bush’s White House Counsel’s Office.

Republicans have said Democrats have more than enough documents to assess Kavanaugh’s record, including his 12 years of judicial opinions as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

U.S. Supreme Court nominee judge Brett Kavanaugh speaks during a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., September 4, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

‘LAST LINE OF DEFENSE’

Kavanaugh sat, fingers intertwined, quietly staring ahead at committee members as protesters in the audience screamed while being dragged out of the room. He occasionally jotted notes on paper.

When he finally got to speak, Kavanaugh called the Supreme Court “the last line of defense for the separation of powers (in the U.S. government), and the rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.”

“The Supreme Court must never be viewed as a partisan institution,” added Kavanaugh, who also paid tribute to his family and the justice he is nominated to replace, the retiring Anthony Kennedy.

Republican Orrin Hatch accused Democratic senators of political opportunism, noting, “We have folks who want to run for president,” though he did not mention any by name. There has been speculation Booker and Harris might consider 2020 presidential runs.

Hatch grew visibly irritated as protesters interrupted him.

“I think we ought to have this loudmouth removed,” Hatch said.

As the hearing paused for a lunch break, Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter who was killed in the Parkland, Florida high school mass shooting in February, tried to talk to Kavanaugh but the nominee turned away. Video of the encounter was shared widely on social media.

“I guess he did not want to deal with the reality of gun violence,” Guttenberg wrote on Twitter afterward.

White House spokesman Raj Shah said security intervened before Kavanaugh could shake Guttenberg’s hand.

The Democratic frustrations that boiled over on Tuesday had been simmering for more than two years. Democrats have accused Senate Republican leaders of stealing a Supreme Court seat by refusing to consider Democratic former President Barack Obama’s nominee to the high court Merrick Garland in 2016, allowing Trump to fill a Supreme Court vacancy instead.

Republicans also last year reduced the margin for advancing Supreme Court nominations from 60 votes in the 100-seat Senate to a simple majority in order to force through the confirmation of Trump’s first high court nominee Neil Gorsuch.

The Senate is likely to vote on confirmation by the end of September. The court begins its next term in October.

The hearing gave Democrats a platform to make their case against Kavanaugh ahead of November’s congressional elections in which they are seeking to seize control of Congress from Republicans.

Liberals are concerned Kavanaugh could provide a decisive fifth vote on the nine-justice court to overturn or weaken the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion nationwide.

Kavanaugh is likely to be questioned about his views on investigating sitting presidents and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and possible collusion between Moscow and Trump’s campaign.

Slideshow (23 Images)

Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Andrew Chung, Amanda Becker, Lisa Lambert; Editing by Will Dunham

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Source link

The post Chaos grips Senate hearing on Trump Supreme Court pick Kavanaugh appeared first on Today News Stories.

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2Q62nka via IFTTT

[patriotsnet]

Why Do Republicans Hate Planned Parenthood

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-republicans-hate-planned-parenthood/

Why Do Republicans Hate Planned Parenthood

Rest Assured: Planned Parenthood Is Here To Stay Planned Parenthood Is The Nations Leading Provider And Advocate Of Sexual And Reproductive Health Care And Largest Provider Of Sex Education

Planned Parenthood’s 600 health centers nationwide care for 2.4 million people per year. These health centers have survived  “defund” attacks before, and they will do so again. 

Overall, an estimated one in five women in America has come to Planned Parenthood at some point in their life for care. That’s why a majority of Americans support Planned Parenthood, and why so many people choose to say #IStandWithPP.

The Fight Over Federal Funding For Planned Parenthood Seems To Be About Much More Than Whether Taxpayer Dollars Should Be Going To Planned Parenthood

Doug Mataconis·Sunday, February 27, 2011·

I must admit that I’ve never quite understood why social conservatives are so vehement in their opposition to contraceptive use, or even the very idea of sex education, while at the same time being stridently pro-life. After all, it seems quite logical that more widespread use of contraceptives would make abortion far less likely, which is something I think that both “pro-choice” and “pro-life” people would say is a good thing. Nonetheless, the opposition continues, as personified by Kathryn Jean Lopez’s column at Townhall today:

That certainly seems to be the implication, for example, in the post that Robert Stacey McCain writes about Lopez’s column:

While Mccain doesn’t really come out and say that contraception should be illegal — which is quite different from the question of whether or not an organization like Planned Parenthood should receive government subsidies — the mention of Griswold seems telling. That, after all, is the case where the Supreme Court struck down a Connecticut law that made it a crime to sell contraceptives even to married couples, based primarily on a right to marital and sexual privacy emanating from the un-enumerated rights protected by the Ninth Amendment. Several years later, that holding was extended to strike down a statute that prohibited the sale of contraceptives to unmarried couples. In that case, Eisenstadt v. Baird, the Court said:

The Pressure On The Susan G Komen Foundation Is Just Part Of A War To Separate Abortion Rights And Women’s Health

“I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood,” Karen Handel, the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s senior vice president for public policy, wrote in 2010, during her failed gubernatorial bid in Georgia. It’s worth asking again what that mission is and why the right hates it so much, now that the foundation has withdrawn its funding for Planned Parenthood to provide breast cancer screenings to low-income women.

The right’s hatred of Planned Parenthood requires some logical inconsistencies, to put it mildly. It means constantly accusing the nonprofit organization of greedy profiteering, even while fantasizing over how stripping Planned Parenthood of federal funding for health services might shut its doors. It means professing to hate abortions but doing everything possible to deny access to contraception — from trying to keep Planned Parenthood from getting Title X funding to opposing comprehensive coverage for contraception under the Affordable Care Act, for which Planned Parenthood was a key lobbyist.

As long as women remember Planned Parenthood as their lifesaver in providing sexual health counseling, emergency contraception or a pap smear, it’s harder to peg abortion providers as back-alley butchers. And it’s easier for them to understand the reality that abortion services are inseparable from any truly comprehensive women’s healthcare, whether one wants to choose them or not.

Planned Parenthood Plays A Pivotal Role In Our Health Care System Defunding It Would Have Massive Consequences

There’s a bigger problem with Republican claims that women could just “go somewhere else” if Planned Parenthood were defunded: It’s not true.

Some women, especially higher-income women who can afford to travel or spend more on birth control, can probably find another place to go. But they might not want to. And many women simply have no other options — or the options they do have wouldn’t give them the same quality of care they can expect at Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood says it operates about 650 clinics that serve 2.5 million patients every year nationwide, and about 80 percent of its patients receive services to prevent unintended pregnancy. It also offers education and outreach on sexual health to millions.

Planned Parenthood clinics are “safety net” health centers, which means they use public funds, including Medicaid, to provide free or reduced-fee services to at least some clients.

Planned Parenthood plays a hugely disproportionate role in serving women who need affordable birth control, and who tend to turn to these safety net clinics to get it.

“Unfortunately, many communities do not have a glut of general reproductive health care providers just waiting around to serve patients”

Planned Parenthood has a robust network of providers. And it specializesin reproductive health care services — which isn’t the case for all clinics that offer contraception.

Forget The Excuses For Ending Planned Parenthood’s Grants The Goal Has Always Been To Take Away Birth Control

The reason Republicans keep trying to take birth control away from women is simple:  They think birth control is bad and you shouldn’t be able to get it.

This should seem obvious, but apparently it is not. Every time Republicans find some new avenue to take away birth control, there is always some elaborate excuse — dutifully repeated by the mainstream media as fact — for why they don’t want to take away your birth control, but simply have to for some other reason that is always, they claim, not about birth control. Birth control is never the target, they swear. It’s always just the unfortunate collateral damage of some fight over, they swear, something else.

Don’t buy it. The reason Republicans keep taking away birth control is because Republicans want to take away your birth control. They hate the power it gives women, especially young women and low-income women.

Conservatives are modern Puritans and, as H.L. Mencken famously said, they are driven by the “haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

The cover story this time is about abortion. The Trump administration passed a new Department of Health and Human Services rule terminating Title X funding for any clinic that offers abortion referrals to patients who might need one. Planned Parenthood, along with any other clinic that follows responsible health care practices, is now facing the loss of this extremely important source of contraception funding.

Congress Moving Ahead With Plans To Cut Medicaid Payments Grant Money To Planned Parenthood

During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump joined other Republicans in vowing to end federal funding for Planned Parenthood, solely because the health services provider helps some patients obtain abortions.

At a GOP debate in Houston, Trump responded to criticism from Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida that Trump had defended Planned Parenthood.

“As far as Planned Parenthood is concerned, I’m pro-life. I’m totally against abortion, having to do with Planned Parenthood,” Trump said on Feb. 25, 2016. “But millions and millions of women — cervical cancer, breast cancer — are helped by Planned Parenthood. So you can say whatever you want, but they have millions of women going through Planned Parenthood that are helped greatly. And I wouldn’t fund it.

“I would defund it because of the abortion factor, which they say is 3 percent. I don’t know what percentage it is. They say it’s 3 percent. But I would defund it, because I’m pro-life. But millions of women are helped by Planned Parenthood.”

WHY HE’S PROMISING IT

Politicians and groups opposed to abortion rights attacked Planned Parenthood after a series of heavily edited videos appeared in the summer of 2015.

Those videos, from the group Center for Medical Progress, purported to show officials from Planned Parenthood discussing how the organization illegally sells tissue from aborted fetuses for profit.

WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN

HOW MUCH IT WILL COST

WHAT’S STANDING IN HIS WAY

POSSIBLE TIMELINE

No Democrats voted for the measure.

Trump Administration Blocks Funds For Planned Parenthood And Others Over Abortion Referrals

The new rule would steer federal family planning funds under Title X to anti-abortion and faith based groups.

The Trump administration announced on Friday that it will bar organizations that provide abortion referrals from receiving federal family planning money, a step that could strip millions of dollars from Planned Parenthood and direct it toward religiously-based, anti-abortion groups.

The new federal rule is almost certain to be challenged in court. Clinics will be able to talk to patients about abortion, but not where they can get one. And clinics will no longer have to counsel women on all reproductive options, including abortion, a change that will make anti-abortion providers eligible for funding.

The rule, which has been expected for months, is the most recent step by the Trump administration to shift the direction of federal health programs in a conservative direction. The administration has expanded the ability of employers to claim religious or moral objections to the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that they offer employees insurance coverage for contraception. It has channeled funding for teen pregnancy prevention programs and family planning grants into programs that emphasize sexual abstinence over contraception.

Some of these changes are being challenged in lawsuits by groups that support reproductive rights, but the new policies have broad support among evangelicals, who are a big part of the president’s political base.

Politicians Behind Defund Attacks Have One Goal In Mind: To Shut Down Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood is a not-for-profit organization with about 600 health centers nationwide that provide a full range of sexual and reproductive health care, including abortion. Discriminatory federal policies have long prevented the use of public programs like Medicaid and Title X to pay for abortion.  

Going after patients who would obtain government-funded care at Planned Parenthood, politicians show they’re willing to block access to essential care — like birth control, STD testing and treatment, and Pap tests — for the sake of their agenda. They want to make safe, legal abortion as difficult as possible to access — and if people lose access to lifesaving care in the process, so be it.

House Republicans Balk At Idea Of Giving Steve King Back His Committee Assignments

WASHINGTON — Top House Republicans are voicing opposition to allowing Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King to get his committee assignments back, including the highest-ranking Republican woman.  

King was stripped of his spot on House committees last year after he made controversial comments about white supremacy and Western Civilization to the New York Times, which he claims were taken out of context by the newspaper.

A spokesperson for Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney told NBC News “Cheney does not support” giving King back his committee assignments.  She was the first Republican leader to condemn King’s comments and even called for him to resign from Congress.

At a forum on Monday night in Spencer, Iowa, King claimed that Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy was going to advocate for giving him his committee assignments back, as first reported by the Sioux City Journal.

“On April 20, Kevin McCarthy and I reached an agreement that he would advocate to the steering committee to put all of my committees back with all of my seniority because there is no argument against my fact-check document, I have disproven all of those allegations,” King said at the republican forum Monday. 

“When Congress comes back into session, when the steering committee can get together, I have Kevin McCarthy’s word that then, that will be my time for exoneration.”

  King criticized Stivers in a statement to NBC News, calling him “only one vote on Steering” and a “Never-Trumper.”

What Does It Actually Mean To Defund Planned Parenthood At The Federal Level

The more than $500 million Planned Parenthood receives annually from the federal government — the funding that Republicans in Congress now want to take away — pays for specifichealth services, like birth control or cervical cancer screening, for people who couldn’t afford them otherwise.

Most of the funds are actually reimbursements from Medicaid, the US’s public health insurance program for the poor. Just like with any other insurance, Medicaid patients go to their health care appointment first and then have Medicaid pay all or most of the bill later.

The rest of Planned Parenthood’s federal funds come in the form of grants from Title X, the nation’s only federal program for family planning. Title X grants are awarded on a competitive basis to clinics that meet the program’s standards for family planning coverage and services. Title X subsidizes free or low-cost contraception and other preventive services, and it’s especially helpful for low-income or uninsured people who make too much to qualify for Medicaid.

In practice, defunding Planned Parenthood takes funding away from its mostly low-income patients

However, Republican lawmakers often argue that if the federal government funds Planned Parenthood through these programs, it’s still effectively funding abortion — which violates the spirit of the Hyde Amendment.

Defunding would be a huge financial blow to Planned Parenthood. But it would still keep offering abortion services.

First Competitive Special House Elections In Coronavirus Age Set For Tuesday

WASHINGTON — With the coronavirus pandemic forcing candidates off of the traditional campaign trail, the 2020 election season gears up Tuesday when the first competitive House special elections since the start of the crisis will take place and produce two new members of Congress representing Wisconsin and California.

Facing off in California’s now-empty 25th House District, where the GOP hopes to reclaim the seat won by Democratic Rep. Katie Hill in 2018, are Democratic state Assemblywoman Christy Smith and former Navy pilot, Republican Mike Garcia.

In Wisconsin’s 7th House District, a historically Republican district that President Trump won by 20 points in 2016, Democrat Tricia Zunker and Republican state Sen. Tom Tiffany are vying for the seat vacated by GOP Rep. Sean Duffy.

For more about the two races and what they could could mean for effectively campaigning and winning elections in the coronavirus era, read the breakdown from NBC News’ political unit here.

Also check out the First Read analysis of how the scandal surrounding former congresswoman Katie Hill could increase Republican chances of taking back the district by looking at the history of scandal-induced special elections.

With Efforts In Congress Unsuccessful Attention Turns To Regulatory Process

Over the past year, President Donald Trump and his Republican allies have failed in several efforts to defund Planned Parenthood.

As we’ve noted, federal dollars do not actually fund abortions. A longstanding provision known as the Hyde Amendment excludes Planned Parenthood and other medical providers from using federal dollars to pay for most abortion services, except in instances of rape, incest or when a woman’s life is in danger.

Abortion opponents argue that even these types of federal payments mean that the government is indirectly supporting abortion, so they have pursued various legal and regulatory approaches to shut down the federal funding streams that currently support organizations like Planned Parenthood.

Indeed, estimates show that the organization receives about 40 percent of its funding from the government. Planned Parenthood receives more than $500 million in combined state and federal government funds.

Planned Parenthood gets most of its funding through Medicaid reimbursements and from Title X, a Health and Human Services grant program that funds comprehensive family planning services.

Those who support defunding Planned Parenthood cheered when Congress and Trump in 2017 effectively overturned an Obama administration rule that had been written to prevent state and local governments from pulling federal funding from Planned Parenthood and other clinics.

For now, the administration hopes to defund Planned Parenthood through a regulatory process.

Coercion Is At The Heart Of Social Conservatives Reproductive Health Agenda

HIGHLIGHTS

Coercive intent and practices are at the core of social conservatives’ reproductive health agenda, including virtually every reproductive health–related initiative from the Trump administration and social conservatives in Congress over the past year.

Coercion can take many forms, including withholding information, obstructing access to health services or providers, attempting to ban services outright and empowering third parties to impose their views on others.

Such coercive measures particularly target people who are in vulnerable positions, for instance because of their immigration status, youth or lack of financial resources.

In October 2017, the first case of the Trump administration attempting to forcibly prevent an unaccompanied immigrant minor in federal custody from obtaining an abortion made headlines around the United States. At the center of these actions is the Office of Refugee Resettlement within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which is led by an ardent abortion-rights opponent. Lawsuits and media reports have revealed that officials are using a variety of tactics to pressure young women not to have the abortion they requested, including physically barring individuals in the government’s care from accessing the procedure. One attorney, speaking of her client, said that officials “literally held her hostage”1 to force her to continue the pregnancy.

Us Ethics Official To White House: No These Rules Definitely Apply To You

Together, providing contraception and the testing for and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases made up three-quarters of the services the organization provided in one year.

That means low-income women could be among the most heavily affected by this bill, as it may force them to find other providers for reproductive health services.

Of the other government money that goes to Planned Parenthood, most of it comes from Title X. That federal program, created under President Richard Nixon, provides family planning services to people beyond Medicaid, like low-income women who are not Medicaid-eligible.Earlier this year, Republicans started the process of stripping that funding.

Republicans Want To Defund Planned Parenthood As Part Of Obamacare Fight

House speaker Paul Ryan gave first official word that repeal legislation would also renew the congressional assault on the women’s health organization

Last modified on Tue 18 Jul 2017 18.00 BST

House speaker Paul Ryan said on Thursday that Republicans would legislate to defund Planned Parenthood as part of their attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Read more

The same day, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund announced a national effort against such attempts to defund it.

Ryan spoke a day after a special House panel issued a report criticizing Planned Parenthood, which provides women’s health services, for its practices regarding providing tissue from aborted fetuses to researchers.

Allegations regarding such practices were at the heart of a scandal involving videos filmed by an anti-abortion activists. Investigations in 13 states concluded without criminal charges, and Planned Parenthood officials have denied any wrongdoing.

Ryan’s comments, while expected, were the first official word that repeal legislation would also renew the congressional assault on the group.

“The Planned Parenthood legislation would be in our reconciliation bill,” Ryan said.

Last year’s Obamacare repeal measure also contained an effort to defund Planned Parenthood, which receives government reimbursements from the Medicaid program for non-abortion health services to low-income women. It receives reimbursements for contraception services from a different government account.

Take A Closer Look At The Crusade Against Womens Rights And Health Care

A simple explanation for defunding Planned Parenthood that is offered up ad nauseum by talking heads across the political spectrum is that Republicans hate abortion. That doesn’t tell the whole story. Not only does Planned Parenthood offer many services that aren’t abortions, abortion only accounts for 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services. Eighty percent of Planned Parenthood’s services go toward preventing unintended pregnancy. If Planned Parenthood were to go away overnight, the result would be an increase in abortions. In over 100 counties in America, Planned Parenthood is the only “safety net” health center that deals with women’s reproductive health. Poor and working-class women in America depend on Planned Parenthood for essential medical care.

What Do Planned Parenthood And Acorn Have In Common Republican Attacks

Wade

New Orleans   Hey, it’s not just me that’s noticed the haters pulling out their playbook big time again on Planned Parenthood just as they did on ACORN. Here’s a thoughtful, spot on piece by Brenden Gallagher published on the merryjane.com website. I’m glad to bring truth wherever I find it, so here goes:

Why Do Republicans Hate Planned Parenthood So Much?

Take a closer look at the crusade against women’s rights and health care.

A simple explanation for defunding Planned Parenthood that is offered up ad nauseum by talking heads across the political spectrum is that Republicans hate abortion. That doesn’t tell the whole story. Not only does Planned Parenthood offer many services that aren’t abortions, abortion only accounts for 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services. Eighty percent of Planned Parenthood’s services go toward preventing unintended pregnancy. If Planned Parenthood were to go away overnight, the result would be an increase in abortions. In over 100 counties in America, Planned Parenthood is the only “safety net” health center that deals with women’s reproductive health. Poor and working-class women in America depend on Planned Parenthood for essential medical care.

How Would Defunding Planned Parenthood Actually Affect Peoples Lives

sturti

In practice, defunding Planned Parenthood takes funding away from its mostly low-income patients — who might be forced to seek care elsewhere if the government stopped subsidizing their visits to Planned Parenthood. Low-income women will be hit especially hard, but all Planned Parenthood patients may be affected.

Reproductive health care is an incredibly basic, essential need, especially for women. Pregnancy is both a major medical event and a major financial one, and the decision of whether and when to give birth or become a parent is one of the most foundational, life-altering choices a person can make. Sexually transmitted diseases threaten lives and fertility if left undetected or untreated. Birth control can literally affect women’s lives every day, from helping them fully participate in public life by avoiding unwanted pregnancy to alleviating the horrifying symptoms of endometriosis or premenstrual dysphoric disorder .

And to put it bluntly, having a vagina can be really expensive.

Do you know how much it costs as a woman just to test for a UTI if you don’t go to PP? With insurance? Roughly $180.

— Liz January 6, 2017

Together, Medicaid and Title X combine to form our nation’s family planning safety net. Unfortunately, that safety net isn’t well-funded enough to actually meet the country’s needs for subsidized contraception — about 20 million women were in need of publicly funded contraceptive services in 2014, and only 7.8 million got them.

Trump Slightly Outraises Biden In April Maintains Large Cash On Hand

WASHINGTON — President Trump, apparent Democratic nominee Joe Biden and the umbrella of party organizations backing them raised over $60 million in April, according to the two campaigns. The Trump team reported a $61.7 million cash haul, while the Biden camp brought in just slightly less with $60.5 million. 

On top of money raised by their campaigns, the pro-Trump effort includes fundraising from the Republican National Committee as well as other groups affiliated with his re-election effort. And Biden’s effort includes the Democratic National Committee as well.

This is the first monthly filing period in which both teams are reporting their fundraising from their joint fundraising committees. April is also the first month in which Biden was the sole Democratic candidate for the majority of the reporting period. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders dropped out of the primary race on April 8. 

While Biden and the Democratic National Committee have not released their cash on hand numbers, the president’s campaign says it has over $255 million in the bank — and that juggernaut may be Biden’s greatest financial weakness. The last officially reported numbers, filed for March, showed Biden and the DNC with just over $62 million on hand. 

Both campaigns will report their full fundraising filing for April on May 20. 

Trump Rule Change Prods Planned Parenthood To Forgo Federal Funds

After a string of setbacks, opponents of abortion chalked up a significant victory in 2019 with the enactment of a federal regulation to prevent a major type of federal funding from reaching entities that provide abortion services.

At issue was Title X funding, a Department of Health and Human Services grant program that targets lower-income Americans who are facing unintended pregnancies or seeking family planning services.

The Trump administration enacted a rule that effectively said that any facility receiving federal Title X funding cannot also be an abortion provider. Previously, abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood could receive Title X funds as long as the funds were only used for non-abortion services.

“When this rule was instituted, Planned Parenthood was faced with having to choose between continuing to receive the Title X funding for family planning care or continuing to provide abortion services at some of their clinics,” said Gretchen E. Ely, a professor at the State University of New York-Buffalo’s School of Social Work.

In August 2019, one month before the rule was scheduled to take effect, Planned Parenthood decided to stop taking Title X rather than discontinuing abortion services. A federal appeals court upheld the rule’s legality in February 2020.

The Texas case represented “the first time the federal government has allowed a state to explicitly waive Medicaid’s free choice of provider for family planning provision,” Lau said.

Trump’s Attempts To Defund Planned Parenthood Met With Roadblocks

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump promised to defund Planned Parenthood. That has yet to happen.

Trump joined other Republicans in opposition to federal funding for the health services provider on the grounds that Planned Parenthood helps some patients obtain abortions.

“I would defund it because of the abortion factor, which they say is 3 percent,” Trump said on Feb. 25, 2016. “I don’t know what percentage it is. They say it’s 3 percent. But I would defund it, because I’m pro-life. But millions of women are helped by Planned Parenthood.”

Federal funding does not actually fund abortions. The Hyde Amendment excludes Planned Parenthood and others from using federal dollars to pay for most abortion services, except in instances of rape, incest or when a woman’s life is in danger. Abortion opponents argue the government is tacitly supporting abortion by funding non-abortion services.

So how far has Trump come in keeping his promise?

First, it’s important to note that Planned Parenthood is not a line item on the budget, so it can’t simply be crossed out. Planned Parenthood gets most of its funding through Medicaid reimbursements for preventive care and some from Title X, a Health and Human Services grant program that funds comprehensive family planning services.

But the best shot Trump had at getting rid of the Medicaid reimbursements was through failed health care reform.

Reasons Why Planned Parenthood Should Not Get Government Money

Heritage expertSarah Torre gives all the facts Congress needs to know about Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood has become a billion-dollar organization on the backs of taxpayers. They earned $128 million in revenue with over $1.4 billion in net assets last year. In the same year, federal and state governments gave them over $528 million to fund their lucrative programs.

Planned Parenthood performs one in three abortions in the U.S. They reported performing 327,653 abortions last year. Former employees have even made allegations that there are mandatory “abortion quotas” each affiliate must meet.

Planned Parenthood emphasizes abortions instead of preventative care. They made only 1,880 adoption referrals and just 18,684 prenatal services last year. Even cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood have decreased 50 percent since 2004.

Planned Parenthood has been accused of financial fraud with taxpayer dollars. In 2013, an affiliate payed a settlement of over $4 million to Texas for Medicaid fraud. Similar investigations revealed over $8 million in possible fraud across nine states.

Planned Parenthood fights laws that protect women and children. They have opposed legislation that would protect infants born alive after failed abortions and tried to derail an anti-human trafficking bill because the legislation included a longstanding and widely-supported policy against taxpayer funding of abortion.

Do you think the government should be funding Planned Parenthood?

Democrats Lay The Groundwork For Possible Virtual Convention

WASHINGTON — The Democratic National Committee moved Tuesday to allow for a virtual 2020 convention if the party determines that to be necessary as the coronavirus continues to claim American lives.

A resolution approved by the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee lets delegates vote and “participate in the Convention in person or by means that allow for appropriate social distancing.”

DNC Chairman Tom Perez said he still expects and hopes to see a full convention in Milwaukee, and that a “precise format” has not been decided.

“This will give the convention team the tools necessary to adapt and plan in order to ensure that every delegate is able to accomplish their official business without putting their own health at risk – whether that be participating in person or by other means to allow for social distancing,” he said.

Also on Tuesday, the DNC panel approved waivers by states seeking to move their primary dates as a result of the COVID-19 crisis.

Democratic Super Pac Trump Campaign Launch New Ad Campaigns

WASHINGTON — Unite the Country, a super PAC that supports apparent Democratic nominee Joe Biden, and President Trump’s campaign are spending big money ahead of the parties’ conventions this summer.

Unite the Country’s $10 million ad campaign launched Friday and will last until the Democratic convention. Their first ad of this campaign, entitled “Deserve”, focuses on rebuilding the economy and Biden retelling his family’s story of leaving Pennsylvania for work opportunities during the 2012 Democratic convention.  

“A job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It’s about dignity, it’s about respect, it’s about your place in the community,” Biden said in 2012. 

Unite the Country was formed by Biden allies in October to support his candidacy during the Democratic primaries. Now, it is one of several super PACs working to boost Biden in the general election. While this ad signals a positive message, another prominent super PAC, Priorities USA, has been spending heavily on Biden’s behalf with spots strongly critical of President Trump and his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

On Thursday, the Trump campaign came out with its own 60-second ad attacking the former vice president on China. Like past ads the campaign and PACs supporting the president have run against Biden, the ad alleges Biden would be soft on China. 

Fire in the hole! pic.twitter.com/Mxs3lsfap6

— Brad Parscale – Download our Trump 2020 App today! May 7, 2020

[democratsunited-blog]

Trump Won Pennsylvania. Democrats Want the State (and His Voters) Back.

https://uniteddemocrats.net/?p=8088

Trump Won Pennsylvania. Democrats Want the State (and His Voters) Back.

CONWAY, Pa. — The rules are workable enough in the right hands, in the right corner of a right-leaning region of a state like this one.

Avoid the jacket-and-tie look, so voters — wary enough of Democrats — do not think they are looking at a Jehovah’s Witness. “That happened,” recalled Representative Conor Lamb, now in a polo shirt.

Pivot to safe subjects. After a local here loudly mocked the idea of “Russian collusion” with President Trump to a peer, Mr. Lamb, 34, moved in to introduce himself, telling the man (who said he was Russian) about falling in love with Russian cuisine when he was in the Marines.

And if all else fails — and it will, often — there is always prayer.

“I was reading a little Isaiah this morning,” Mr. Lamb said at a town festival recently, approaching Paul Strano, 69, whose hat read, “F.B.I.: Firm Believer In Jesus.” The two bowed their heads.

“A man of faith, backing the party of abortion, homosexual promotion,” Mr. Strano, a Trump supporter, said afterward. “But the man sold himself.” Mr. Lamb had his vote.

In his 2016 victory, Mr. Trump swiped several states that Democrats had assumed were theirs: Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida. But perhaps no outcome matched the psychic toll of losing Pennsylvania, where the past Democratic coalition of city-dwelling liberals, racial minorities and white working-class voters in union towns had long defined the party’s identity as a big-tent enterprise.

Two years later, a return to power — winning the House in November, winning the presidency in 2020 — will hinge in large measure on how effectively Democrats can peel off voters who migrated to Mr. Trump. The challenge is real: Unemployment in the state is below 5 percent, and Mr. Trump’s approval rating, while underwater over all in Pennsylvania, remains high among the Republicans who populate districts like Mr. Lamb’s. But in candidates like him and others across the state, national Democratic officials believe they have found a model, with a curious signature feature: Democrats in no rush to remind certain audiences that they are Democrats.

Best known for his special election victory in March in a district that the president carried by nearly 20 points, Mr. Lamb has sought to reach both college-educated suburbanites dismayed at Mr. Trump’s excesses and union workers who defected to Republicans in 2016, when the president won the state by less than a percentage point.

The balance is delicate. Mr. Lamb speaks of labor rights and economic fairness, in the Democratic tradition, but stakes out more conservative ground on social issues like guns. He begs off questions about national politics, but makes clear that he wants to see Nancy Pelosi replaced as the leader of House Democrats. He observes that “heroin kills both Democrats and Republicans,” the only mention of the D-word on his campaign website’s home page.

He claims to have few strong feelings about Mr. Trump’s job performance.

“I’m not real concerned about it,” Mr. Lamb said in an interview. (After the chat was over, he wanted another pass at the topic. “It’s not that I’m not concerned about job performance,” he clarified. “It’s that I don’t think it’s my role to be a speculator or analyst.”)

Other Democrats in Trump-supporting areas have tested their own modulated message. In northeastern Pennsylvania, Representative Matt Cartwright, whose district Mr. Trump won by 10 points, is quick to recall Democratic triumphs of generations past, like Franklin D. Roosevelt signing Social Security into law. Like Mr. Lamb, he emphasizes the need to secure affordable health coverage and tend to moldering roads and bridges. Unlike Mr. Lamb, he won his office by initially challenging a conservative incumbent Democrat from the left in a 2012 primary, declaring himself a member of “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.”

But direct criticisms of the president have been relatively sparse. Though Mr. Cartwright, 57, said in an interview that he wished Mr. Trump would “act more presidential,” he reached for empathy when explaining his own constituents’ choices in 2016.

“They voted for the change candidate, and you do that when you are hurting,” he said. “And I try to remind them that it is the Democratic Party that cares about the people who are hurting more than any other party. And I say to myself, I have to redouble my own efforts because these are my people who are hurting.”

Across the state, candidates have been similarly introspective. Perpetually a bellwether — with bipartisan representation in the United States Senate currently and seesawing control of the governorship for decades — Pennsylvania has assumed an especially prominent place in the present political moment. Not only are Gov. Tom Wolf and Senator Bob Casey, both Democrats, fighting to keep their seats this November, but congressional districts have been rendered more competitive under a redrawn map, making the state central to any Democratic path back to a House majority in Washington.

Mr. Wolf, a businessman from south central Pennsylvania, will face Scott Wagner, who owns a waste-hauling company and served in the State Senate. Mr. Casey — long an understated senator, now emitting more fire in the Trump age — is running against Representative Lou Barletta, an immigration hard-liner and early Trump supporter. Polls have shown both Democrats with double-digit leads, buoyed in part by deep antipathy toward Mr. Trump in urban areas — enough to make Mr. Casey entirely comfortable opposing Mr. Trump’s recent Supreme Court pick before his identity (Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh) was even revealed.

And under the redrawn map, several Democratic women are running in congressional districts that are either leaning in their favor or are solidly blue, including Madeleine Dean, Chrissy Houlahan and Mary Gay Scanlon in suburban Philadelphia, and Susan Wild in the Lehigh Valley. Democrats see at least a half-dozen potential pickup opportunities in the state this fall, when they will need to flip 23 seats nationwide to take back the House.

This jumbling of the boundary lines has also coincided with a wider upheaval in the state — demographically, economically, socially. Democrats have clustered ever more tightly in major cities. Pittsburgh, so synonymous with steel that the word lives in the name of its football team, has transformed into a haven of “eds and meds,” with greener medical complexes, a Google campus and a test track for autonomous cars.

A surge of immigrants has spawned resurgence and resentment in equal measure in some long-flagging labor towns, where blue-collar white voters have often felt left behind, their grievances reflected back in the racially-hued message and zero-sum populism of Mr. Trump.

“Two things can be true at the same time: There is xenophobia and nationalism and racist undertones,” said John Fetterman, the longtime mayor of Braddock, outside Pittsburgh, and the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor. “But there’s also people that are reachable.”

Often, success is as much a matter of emphasis as policy. Rick Bloomingdale, the president of the Pennsylvania A.F.L.-C.I.O., said that despite a “great economic plan” from Hillary Clinton in 2016, the piece of her platform that broke through most was “how awful Trump was.”

“People don’t want to hear you tell them how bad Trump is,” Mr. Bloomingdale said. “They either know or they don’t care.”

Though Democrats hope to erase the memory of Mrs. Clinton’s race statewide, regions like Mr. Lamb’s and Mr. Cartwright’s have been a particular focus of the political reclamation project. The party once ruled many of the labor strongholds of the southwest, where the river’s edge is pocked with brownfields and shuttered taverns and roadside sunflowers that tilt backward, like a boxer dodging a punch, when a truck cuts a curve too sharply.

And northeastern Pennsylvania has long carried particular significance for Democrats as a point of electoral pride in an increasingly cosmopolitan party. Mrs. Clinton’s father came from there, as she liked to tell her Pennsylvania crowds. She learned to shoot a gun, she said, at her family’s cottage on nearby Lake Winola. Mr. Casey is another Scranton man, like his father — a two-term Democratic governor — before him. So is former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., from whom Mr. Lamb said he learned a crucial lesson about grip-and-grin hustle at parades.

“I watched him do it once,” Mr. Lamb said. “He had to change his shirt afterward. That was the metric of success.”

So perhaps nowhere was Mr. Trump’s success more striking than across the northeastern ZIP codes where Democrats had long held firm. In Luzerne County, which includes Wilkes-Barre, President Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney in 2012 by five points; Mr. Trump won it by 19. In neighboring Lackawanna County, which includes Scranton, Mr. Obama won by 27 points; Mrs. Clinton beat Mr. Trump there by only three.

Mr. Cartwright’s Republican opponent in the area is John Chrin, a former investment banker who has pumped more than $1.3 million into his campaign. Mr. Cartwright is seen as the favorite, but he is one of a small number of incumbent House Democrats nationwide whose races are viewed as competitive. A recent ad from Mr. Chrin’s campaign accuses Mr. Cartwright of supporting so-called sanctuary cities and “protecting criminals,” while also voting in lock step with Ms. Pelosi.

But the congressman has strained to avoid such typecasting as a liberal shill. Among other flourishes, he has been eager to share word of a new hobby with prospective voters: deer hunting.

“My job is to get to know people and learn about their passions,” he said in the interview.

There is another upside. “It helps me talk to Republican members of Congress, too,” Mr. Cartwright said. “It’s a nice way to say, ‘You know, I don’t hate you.’”

Some skeptical voters have commanded extra care from Mr. Cartwright and his team. Outside the bingo tent at a church bazaar in Tannersville, Mr. Cartwright encountered Duane Grady, a Trump voter who owns a home heating oil business and expressed fondness of the Republican tax cuts. He said he used to support Democrats.

“You heard it from Uncle Matt: We want you back, man,” Mr. Cartwright told him.

Soon after, a Cartwright campaign worker offered his own pitch to Mr. Grady. The congressman, he noted, does not support “open borders” or abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an idea that some liberal Democrats have embraced. (Last month, both Mr. Lamb and Mr. Cartwright voted for a symbolic resolution supporting I.C.E.)

“Don’t let that far left-wing fringe, like antifa and stuff like that, make you think that they control the entire party,” the worker said. “Don’t think that we all belong to that side.”

Mr. Grady, it turned out, lived outside of Mr. Cartwright’s district, but he is the sort of voter Democrats need just the same. And he remained ambivalent. “I’d love to go back,” he said of voting Democratic. “But they got to get a whole new wave in there.”

Mr. Lamb’s campaign has likewise required a hard sell at times. At a neighborhood parade in Bairdford — where a State Senate candidate passed out Steelers schedules with his face on the top — Mr. Lamb drew a mixed reception.

“Gripping and grinning,” a man grumbled from his folding chair as Mr. Lamb passed.

A baby began to cry. “I get that reaction from a lot of people,” Mr. Lamb said.

But Mr. Lamb, prone to sports metaphors and coaching wisdom, does not discourage easily. He recalled a quote attributed to Bill Russell, the basketball legend: “Hustle is a talent.” And often, voters seemed to remember him from the ubiquitous advertisements during his special election. This has made him at least as recognizable as his Republican opponent, Keith Rothfus, a three-term incumbent whose new district lines are far less favorable. (A recent poll showed Mr. Lamb with a solid lead.)

Some fellow Democratic candidates, eager to emulate Mr. Lamb’s performance in conservative-leaning districts, have reached out in recent months for advice. There is little to give, Mr. Lamb suggested.

“There really is no playbook or master plan or strategy,” he said.

But Mr. Lamb has pursued a hobby of his own, as needed.

When two seniors began dancing beside an inflatable bounce-house at the festival in Conway, Mr. Lamb joined them — all limbs and peer pressure — twisting and kicking to the beat.

“Are you allowed to just do whatever you want with your hands?” he asked, mid-shuffle.

Yes, he was told. There was no playbook or master plan or strategy.

Matt Flegenheimer reported from Conway, Pa., and Thomas Kaplan from Tannersville, Pa.

Read full story here

[maxwellyjordan]

Kavanaugh’s confirmation process: Democrats in the Senate

At 9:00 p.m. on July 9, President Donald Trump nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court left by the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy late last month. The nomination now goes to the Senate for confirmation, where majority leader Mitch McConnell has said he would like a vote to confirm Kavanaugh by the fall. This post will examine the key players in the Democratic minority.

The 49-seat Democratic caucus will be unable to block Kavanaugh’s nomination on its own. Now that the filibuster has been eliminated for Supreme Court nominations, only a simple majority of senators is needed to confirm a Supreme Court nominee. Republicans currently hold 51 seats in the Senate, though Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is away from Washington while he receives treatment for brain cancer. If McCain is unable to vote, every Republican will have to vote for Kavanaugh to ensure confirmation without Democratic help.

A contentious confirmation fight will be nothing new for Kavanaugh; his nomination to the D.C. Circuit stalled for three years amid heavy Democratic opposition before he was confirmed in 2006. When his vote eventually occurred, only four Democrats supported his nomination. Tom Carper of Delaware is the only one of those four still serving today, but he has indicated that he will vote against Kavanaugh’s confirmation this time.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer

This will be Schumer’s second Supreme Court confirmation fight since he assumed the Democratic leadership post from Harry Reid after the Nevada senator’s retirement in 2016. The main drama last time centered on whether Schumer would lead a Democratic filibuster of Neil Gorsuch’s nomination and whether McConnell, in turn, would use the “nuclear option” of eliminating the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations. Schumer and McConnell both followed through, and so the filibuster will not be in play this time.

Immediately after Kennedy’s retirement, Schumer tried to pressure McConnell to honor the so-called “McConnell Rule.” Schumer argued that because McConnell delayed the nomination of Merrick Garland in an election year in 2016, he should do the same this year and wait until after the midterm elections to confirm Kennedy’s replacement. This line of argument, however, has subsided in recent days as it became clear that the Republicans have no intention of following this rule.

In the face of the Republican majority’s plan to hold hearings and a vote on Kavanaugh, Schumer had two strategic options. First, he could lead his caucus in fighting Kavanaugh’s nomination vigorously to rile up the ascendant activist left and increase turnout for the midterm elections. On the other hand, he could take a more conciliatory approach intended to protect the 10 Democratic senators up for re-election in states that Trump won in 2016.

Schumer chose to fight the nomination aggressively. On the night of the nomination, his office released a statement saying that he would “oppose Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination with everything I have, and I hope a bipartisan majority will do the same. The stakes are simply too high for anything less.” In addition, it has been reported that Schumer is cautioning fellow Democrats that they will face a uproar from their base if they do not fight the nomination. According to this report, Schumer has instructed his caucus to focus on criticizing Kavanaugh specifically rather than raising procedural objections. Schumer’s own statement, which asserts that Kavanaugh’s record indicates that he “would rule against reproductive rights and freedoms, and that he would welcome challenges to the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act,” reflects this strategy.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee

Feinstein all but definitively came out against Kavanaugh in a series of statements after the nomination was announced, saying, “Brett Kavanaugh’s record indicates that he would be among the most conservative justices in Supreme Court history, his views are far outside the mainstream and there’s every reason to believe he would overturn Roe v. Wade.”

Feinstein has a reputation as a moderate but may have an incentive to adopt a more confrontational style during the confirmation fight. She is up for re-election in 2018, but because of California’s top-two primary system — in which the two highest vote-getters in a given primary, regardless of party, advance to the general election — she is being challenged from the left by fellow Democrat Kevin de Leon in the general election. In fact, de Leon was recently endorsed by the California Democratic Party in a rebuke to Feinstein.

Last year Feinstein, who will lead any Democratic effort to stall Kavanaugh’s nomination in committee, aggressively questioned Neil Gorsuch on his work in the George W. Bush administration. Given Kavanaugh’s work in the same administration, it would be fair to expect Feinstein to focus some of her questioning on that period of his career during the confirmation hearing.

The Gorsuch voters

Three Democrats voted for Neil Gorsuch last year: Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Each is up for re-election this November in a state that Trump won easily in 2016. They are three of five Democrats that conservative groups are hoping to pressure into voting for Kavanaugh. The statements put out by Donnelly, Heitkamp and Manchin, in contrast to those of most of their fellow Democrats, show some openness to supporting the nominee.

Donnelly said after Kavanaugh’s nomination:

As I have said, part of my job as Senator includes thoroughly considering judicial nominations, including to the Supreme Court. I will take the same approach as I have previously for a Supreme Court vacancy. Following the president’s announcement, I will carefully review and consider the record and qualifications of Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

Heitkamp’s statement sought to differentiate herself from fellow Democrats by saying, “I understand that many members of Congress and outside groups will announce how they stand on the nominee before doing their due diligence and instead just take a partisan stance — but that isn’t how I work.” She specifically mentioned her support for Gorsuch in the same statement.

For his part, Manchin seems to have settled on the specific issue that will determine whether he supports Kavanaugh: the Affordable Care Act. His statement on the night of the nomination singled out healthcare as a key issue:

I will evaluate Judge Kavanaugh’s record, legal qualifications, judicial philosophy and particularly, his views on healthcare. The Supreme Court will ultimately decide if nearly 800,000 West Virginians with pre-existing conditions will lose their healthcare. This decision will directly impact almost 40% of my state, so I’m very interested in his position on protecting West Virginians with pre-existing conditions.

In a recent town hall with constituents, Manchin said that he would ask Kavanaugh if he believes that the ACA is constitutional. As Tejinder Singh wrote for this blog last week, Kavanaugh’s record as a circuit judge “shows that [he] is willing to look for artful ways to avoid deciding questions he does not want to decide.” If Kavanaugh is able to convince Manchin that he will not vote to repeal the ACA, he may well have the West Virginian’s vote.

Other threatened Democrats

Donnelly, Heitkamp and Manchin are only three of the 10 Democratic senators running for re-election in states Trump won in 2016. The other two senators whom conservative groups are most focused on pressuring into voting for Kavanaugh are Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Jon Tester of Montana. Both of them have said little about Kavanaugh, only offering that they will meet with the nominee and consider his record.

The other five most vulnerable Democrats, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Bill Nelson of Florida, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, have all indicated or confirmed that they will vote against Kavanaugh’s nomination.

Tim Kaine represents Virginia, a state that Hillary Clinton won, with Kaine on the ballot for vice president, in 2016, but he is up for re-election and has said he will wait to decide on Kavanaugh until after he watches the confirmation hearing. He has singled out the ACA and abortion rights as issues he is most focused on.

The last Democrat who could potentially vote to confirm Kavanaugh is Doug Jones of Alabama, who upset Roy Moore in a special election last year. Jones is not up for re-election until 2020, but he represents a deep-red state. He has said only that he is “going to do a deep dive of his record and we’ll talk about that record… I’ll make my judgment at that point.”

Presidential hopefuls

The New York Times identified four members of the Democratic caucus who are preparing to run for the party’s nomination for president in 2020: Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kamala Harris of California, Cory Booker of New Jersey and Bernie Sanders of Vermont. None will vote for Kavanaugh, but it is worth monitoring how they each approach the nomination fight. Harris and Booker, as members of the Judiciary Committee, have an opportunity to produce a viral soundbite in hearings.

Warren and Sanders, along with another potential 2020 candidate, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, will likely be battling for the support of the ascendant left-wing base. As some on the left have begun to call for a future Democratic president to pack the Supreme Court to ensure a liberal majority, one of these three senators may try to appeal to that base by saying he or she will pack the court if elected. Although it is unlikely that any senator will call for court-packing during the Kavanaugh proceedings, any lines of attack that suggest that Trump’s nominees are illegitimate could foreshadow an attempt to neutralize their power on the Supreme Court.

Conclusion

The Democrats are ultimately powerless to stop Kavanaugh’s nomination if the most likely scenario, in which no Republican breaks rank and the party has either 51 or 50 votes depending on McCain’s health, comes to fruition. In that case, it would be reasonable to expect somewhere between three and six conservative Democrats to also vote to confirm Kavanaugh as they seek to appeal to potential moderate voters in November. If, however unlikely it may be, it seems that a Republican senator is seriously considering voting against Kavanaugh, look for Schumer to aggressively shepherd his caucus into holding a firm line in the hopes of defeating Trump’s nominee, which would be a major blow to the GOP ahead of the midterms.

The post Kavanaugh’s confirmation process: Democrats in the Senate appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

from Law http://www.scotusblog.com/2018/07/kavanaughs-confirmation-process-democrats-in-the-senate/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[dani-qrt]

Washington insider Kavanaugh boasts conservative credentials

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Brett Kavanaugh, the consummate Washington insider picked by President Donald Trump on Monday for a lifetime seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, has viewed business regulations with skepticism in his 12 years as a judge and taken conservative positions on some divisive social issues.

Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington, U.S., July 9, 2018. REUTERS/Jim Bourg

His extensive record on the bench and in prior Washington jobs means the 53-year-old conservative federal appeals court judge promises to attract a barrage of questions during what is likely to be a contentious U.S. Senate confirmation process.

A senior White House aide under Republican former President George W. Bush who previously worked for Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who investigated Democratic former President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, Kavanaugh faced a long confirmation battle when Bush nominated him to his current post in 2003. Democrats painted him as too partisan, but he ultimately was confirmed by the Senate three years later.

Kavanaugh grew up in Bethesda, a Maryland suburb of Washington, and attended the same high school as Trump’s first Supreme Court appointee, Neil Gorsuch. Both men served as clerks for Kennedy in the Supreme Court’s 1993-1994 term.

Kavanaugh has been a judge on the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since 2006. Merrick Garland, Democratic former President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee who was blocked by Senate Republicans in 2016 in a move that allowed Trump to nominate Gorsuch last year, serves on that court alongside Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh has come under fire in some conservative circles for his ties to Bush, a member of the Republican establishment that is eschewed by Trump, as well as for not sometimes ruling aggressively enough on issues of importance to conservative activists.

Some conservatives have faulted his reasoning in a dissenting opinion in a case involving Democratic former President Barack Obama’s 2010 healthcare law, dubbed Obamacare.

Kavanaugh dissented from his court’s 2011 conclusion that Obamacare, a law detested by conservatives, did not violate the U.S. Constitution, asserting that it was premature to decide the case’s merits. Kavanaugh in his dissent mentioned that a financial penalty levied under Obamacare on Americans who opted not to obtain health insurance might be considered a tax, a pivotal distinction in the conservative legal challenge to the law.

Conservative critics said Kavanaugh’s dissent provided the roadmap that helped persuade U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts to cast a crucial vote in upholding the law when it reached the Supreme Court in 2012.

In his remarks on Monday, Kavanaugh sought to spotlight his bipartisan credentials. He noted that he has taught at Harvard Law School, where he was hired by former dean Elena Kagan, who Obama appointed to the Supreme Court in 2010. “My law clerks come from diverse background and points of views,” Kavanaugh said, adding that a majority of his clerks have been women.

CONSERVATIVE CREDENTIALS

Kavanaugh has shown conservative credentials on gun rights and in abortion-related cases.

Last October, he was part of a panel of judges that issued an order preventing a 17-year-old illegal immigrant detained in Texas by U.S. authorities from immediately obtaining an abortion. That decision was overturned by the full appeals court and she had the abortion.

Kavanaugh, who emphasized his Roman Catholic faith in his appearance with Trump at the White House on Monday, said in a dissent that the full court was embracing “a new right for unlawful immigrant minors in U.S. government detention to obtain immediate abortion on demand.”

Kavanaugh also dissented in 2015 when the court spurned religious groups that sought an exemption from a requirement under Obamacare that employers provide health insurance that covers birth control for women.

In 2011, he dissented as the court upheld a District of Columbia gun law that banned semi-automatic rifles. Kavanaugh said such guns are covered by the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, which protects the right to bear arms.

In several cases, Kavanaugh faulted environmental regulations issued under Obama, including some aimed at combating climate change.

Kavanaugh dissented in 2017 when his appeals court declined to reconsider its decision upholding “net neutrality” regulations implemented under Obama – and later rescinded under Trump – requiring internet providers to guarantee equal access to all web content.

In 2016, Kavanaugh wrote the appeals court’s decision that the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, formed under Obama, was unconstitutional.

Kavanaugh worked for Bush during the contentious recount in the pivotal state of Florida in the 2000 presidential election, then headed the Bush administration’s search for potential judicial nominees.

He previously worked for four years for Starr, whose investigation of Clinton helped spur an effort by congressional Republicans in 1998 and 1999 to impeach the Democratic president and remove him from office.

In 2009, Kavanaugh wrote a law review article questioning the value of that investigation and concluding that presidents should be free from the distractions of civil lawsuits, criminal prosecutions and investigations while in office.

That view has assumed fresh relevance, with Trump facing several civil lawsuits as well as a Russia-related criminal investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The Supreme Court could be called upon to weigh in on these matters.

A graduate of Yale Law School, Kavanaugh is married and has two children.

Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Will Dunham

The post Washington insider Kavanaugh boasts conservative credentials appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2maQcoB via Online News

[cleopatrarps]

Washington insider Kavanaugh boasts conservative credentials

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Brett Kavanaugh, the consummate Washington insider picked by President Donald Trump on Monday for a lifetime seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, has viewed business regulations with skepticism in his 12 years as a judge and taken conservative positions on some divisive social issues.

Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington, U.S., July 9, 2018. REUTERS/Jim Bourg

His extensive record on the bench and in prior Washington jobs means the 53-year-old conservative federal appeals court judge promises to attract a barrage of questions during what is likely to be a contentious U.S. Senate confirmation process.

A senior White House aide under Republican former President George W. Bush who previously worked for Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who investigated Democratic former President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, Kavanaugh faced a long confirmation battle when Bush nominated him to his current post in 2003. Democrats painted him as too partisan, but he ultimately was confirmed by the Senate three years later.

Kavanaugh grew up in Bethesda, a Maryland suburb of Washington, and attended the same high school as Trump’s first Supreme Court appointee, Neil Gorsuch. Both men served as clerks for Kennedy in the Supreme Court’s 1993-1994 term.

Kavanaugh has been a judge on the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since 2006. Merrick Garland, Democratic former President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee who was blocked by Senate Republicans in 2016 in a move that allowed Trump to nominate Gorsuch last year, serves on that court alongside Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh has come under fire in some conservative circles for his ties to Bush, a member of the Republican establishment that is eschewed by Trump, as well as for not sometimes ruling aggressively enough on issues of importance to conservative activists.

Some conservatives have faulted his reasoning in a dissenting opinion in a case involving Democratic former President Barack Obama’s 2010 healthcare law, dubbed Obamacare.

Kavanaugh dissented from his court’s 2011 conclusion that Obamacare, a law detested by conservatives, did not violate the U.S. Constitution, asserting that it was premature to decide the case’s merits. Kavanaugh in his dissent mentioned that a financial penalty levied under Obamacare on Americans who opted not to obtain health insurance might be considered a tax, a pivotal distinction in the conservative legal challenge to the law.

Conservative critics said Kavanaugh’s dissent provided the roadmap that helped persuade U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts to cast a crucial vote in upholding the law when it reached the Supreme Court in 2012.

In his remarks on Monday, Kavanaugh sought to spotlight his bipartisan credentials. He noted that he has taught at Harvard Law School, where he was hired by former dean Elena Kagan, who Obama appointed to the Supreme Court in 2010. “My law clerks come from diverse background and points of views,” Kavanaugh said, adding that a majority of his clerks have been women.

CONSERVATIVE CREDENTIALS

Kavanaugh has shown conservative credentials on gun rights and in abortion-related cases.

Last October, he was part of a panel of judges that issued an order preventing a 17-year-old illegal immigrant detained in Texas by U.S. authorities from immediately obtaining an abortion. That decision was overturned by the full appeals court and she had the abortion.

Kavanaugh, who emphasized his Roman Catholic faith in his appearance with Trump at the White House on Monday, said in a dissent that the full court was embracing “a new right for unlawful immigrant minors in U.S. government detention to obtain immediate abortion on demand.”

Kavanaugh also dissented in 2015 when the court spurned religious groups that sought an exemption from a requirement under Obamacare that employers provide health insurance that covers birth control for women.

In 2011, he dissented as the court upheld a District of Columbia gun law that banned semi-automatic rifles. Kavanaugh said such guns are covered by the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, which protects the right to bear arms.

In several cases, Kavanaugh faulted environmental regulations issued under Obama, including some aimed at combating climate change.

Kavanaugh dissented in 2017 when his appeals court declined to reconsider its decision upholding “net neutrality” regulations implemented under Obama – and later rescinded under Trump – requiring internet providers to guarantee equal access to all web content.

In 2016, Kavanaugh wrote the appeals court’s decision that the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, formed under Obama, was unconstitutional.

Kavanaugh worked for Bush during the contentious recount in the pivotal state of Florida in the 2000 presidential election, then headed the Bush administration’s search for potential judicial nominees.

He previously worked for four years for Starr, whose investigation of Clinton helped spur an effort by congressional Republicans in 1998 and 1999 to impeach the Democratic president and remove him from office.

In 2009, Kavanaugh wrote a law review article questioning the value of that investigation and concluding that presidents should be free from the distractions of civil lawsuits, criminal prosecutions and investigations while in office.

That view has assumed fresh relevance, with Trump facing several civil lawsuits as well as a Russia-related criminal investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The Supreme Court could be called upon to weigh in on these matters.

A graduate of Yale Law School, Kavanaugh is married and has two children.

Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Will Dunham

The post Washington insider Kavanaugh boasts conservative credentials appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2maQcoB via News of World

[dragnews]

Washington insider Kavanaugh boasts conservative credentials

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Brett Kavanaugh, the consummate Washington insider picked by President Donald Trump on Monday for a lifetime seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, has viewed business regulations with skepticism in his 12 years as a judge and taken conservative positions on some divisive social issues.

Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington, U.S., July 9, 2018. REUTERS/Jim Bourg

His extensive record on the bench and in prior Washington jobs means the 53-year-old conservative federal appeals court judge promises to attract a barrage of questions during what is likely to be a contentious U.S. Senate confirmation process.

A senior White House aide under Republican former President George W. Bush who previously worked for Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who investigated Democratic former President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, Kavanaugh faced a long confirmation battle when Bush nominated him to his current post in 2003. Democrats painted him as too partisan, but he ultimately was confirmed by the Senate three years later.

Kavanaugh grew up in Bethesda, a Maryland suburb of Washington, and attended the same high school as Trump’s first Supreme Court appointee, Neil Gorsuch. Both men served as clerks for Kennedy in the Supreme Court’s 1993-1994 term.

Kavanaugh has been a judge on the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since 2006. Merrick Garland, Democratic former President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee who was blocked by Senate Republicans in 2016 in a move that allowed Trump to nominate Gorsuch last year, serves on that court alongside Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh has come under fire in some conservative circles for his ties to Bush, a member of the Republican establishment that is eschewed by Trump, as well as for not sometimes ruling aggressively enough on issues of importance to conservative activists.

Some conservatives have faulted his reasoning in a dissenting opinion in a case involving Democratic former President Barack Obama’s 2010 healthcare law, dubbed Obamacare.

Kavanaugh dissented from his court’s 2011 conclusion that Obamacare, a law detested by conservatives, did not violate the U.S. Constitution, asserting that it was premature to decide the case’s merits. Kavanaugh in his dissent mentioned that a financial penalty levied under Obamacare on Americans who opted not to obtain health insurance might be considered a tax, a pivotal distinction in the conservative legal challenge to the law.

Conservative critics said Kavanaugh’s dissent provided the roadmap that helped persuade U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts to cast a crucial vote in upholding the law when it reached the Supreme Court in 2012.

In his remarks on Monday, Kavanaugh sought to spotlight his bipartisan credentials. He noted that he has taught at Harvard Law School, where he was hired by former dean Elena Kagan, who Obama appointed to the Supreme Court in 2010. “My law clerks come from diverse background and points of views,” Kavanaugh said, adding that a majority of his clerks have been women.

CONSERVATIVE CREDENTIALS

Kavanaugh has shown conservative credentials on gun rights and in abortion-related cases.

Last October, he was part of a panel of judges that issued an order preventing a 17-year-old illegal immigrant detained in Texas by U.S. authorities from immediately obtaining an abortion. That decision was overturned by the full appeals court and she had the abortion.

Kavanaugh, who emphasized his Roman Catholic faith in his appearance with Trump at the White House on Monday, said in a dissent that the full court was embracing “a new right for unlawful immigrant minors in U.S. government detention to obtain immediate abortion on demand.”

Kavanaugh also dissented in 2015 when the court spurned religious groups that sought an exemption from a requirement under Obamacare that employers provide health insurance that covers birth control for women.

In 2011, he dissented as the court upheld a District of Columbia gun law that banned semi-automatic rifles. Kavanaugh said such guns are covered by the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, which protects the right to bear arms.

In several cases, Kavanaugh faulted environmental regulations issued under Obama, including some aimed at combating climate change.

Kavanaugh dissented in 2017 when his appeals court declined to reconsider its decision upholding “net neutrality” regulations implemented under Obama – and later rescinded under Trump – requiring internet providers to guarantee equal access to all web content.

In 2016, Kavanaugh wrote the appeals court’s decision that the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, formed under Obama, was unconstitutional.

Kavanaugh worked for Bush during the contentious recount in the pivotal state of Florida in the 2000 presidential election, then headed the Bush administration’s search for potential judicial nominees.

He previously worked for four years for Starr, whose investigation of Clinton helped spur an effort by congressional Republicans in 1998 and 1999 to impeach the Democratic president and remove him from office.

In 2009, Kavanaugh wrote a law review article questioning the value of that investigation and concluding that presidents should be free from the distractions of civil lawsuits, criminal prosecutions and investigations while in office.

That view has assumed fresh relevance, with Trump facing several civil lawsuits as well as a Russia-related criminal investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The Supreme Court could be called upon to weigh in on these matters.

A graduate of Yale Law School, Kavanaugh is married and has two children.

Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Will Dunham

The post Washington insider Kavanaugh boasts conservative credentials appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2maQcoB via Today News

[newestbalance]

Washington insider Kavanaugh boasts conservative credentials

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Brett Kavanaugh, the consummate Washington insider picked by President Donald Trump on Monday for a lifetime seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, has viewed business regulations with skepticism in his 12 years as a judge and taken conservative positions on some divisive social issues.

Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington, U.S., July 9, 2018. REUTERS/Jim Bourg

His extensive record on the bench and in prior Washington jobs means the 53-year-old conservative federal appeals court judge promises to attract a barrage of questions during what is likely to be a contentious U.S. Senate confirmation process.

A senior White House aide under Republican former President George W. Bush who previously worked for Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who investigated Democratic former President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, Kavanaugh faced a long confirmation battle when Bush nominated him to his current post in 2003. Democrats painted him as too partisan, but he ultimately was confirmed by the Senate three years later.

Kavanaugh grew up in Bethesda, a Maryland suburb of Washington, and attended the same high school as Trump’s first Supreme Court appointee, Neil Gorsuch. Both men served as clerks for Kennedy in the Supreme Court’s 1993-1994 term.

Kavanaugh has been a judge on the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since 2006. Merrick Garland, Democratic former President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee who was blocked by Senate Republicans in 2016 in a move that allowed Trump to nominate Gorsuch last year, serves on that court alongside Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh has come under fire in some conservative circles for his ties to Bush, a member of the Republican establishment that is eschewed by Trump, as well as for not sometimes ruling aggressively enough on issues of importance to conservative activists.

Some conservatives have faulted his reasoning in a dissenting opinion in a case involving Democratic former President Barack Obama’s 2010 healthcare law, dubbed Obamacare.

Kavanaugh dissented from his court’s 2011 conclusion that Obamacare, a law detested by conservatives, did not violate the U.S. Constitution, asserting that it was premature to decide the case’s merits. Kavanaugh in his dissent mentioned that a financial penalty levied under Obamacare on Americans who opted not to obtain health insurance might be considered a tax, a pivotal distinction in the conservative legal challenge to the law.

Conservative critics said Kavanaugh’s dissent provided the roadmap that helped persuade U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts to cast a crucial vote in upholding the law when it reached the Supreme Court in 2012.

In his remarks on Monday, Kavanaugh sought to spotlight his bipartisan credentials. He noted that he has taught at Harvard Law School, where he was hired by former dean Elena Kagan, who Obama appointed to the Supreme Court in 2010. “My law clerks come from diverse background and points of views,” Kavanaugh said, adding that a majority of his clerks have been women.

CONSERVATIVE CREDENTIALS

Kavanaugh has shown conservative credentials on gun rights and in abortion-related cases.

Last October, he was part of a panel of judges that issued an order preventing a 17-year-old illegal immigrant detained in Texas by U.S. authorities from immediately obtaining an abortion. That decision was overturned by the full appeals court and she had the abortion.

Kavanaugh, who emphasized his Roman Catholic faith in his appearance with Trump at the White House on Monday, said in a dissent that the full court was embracing “a new right for unlawful immigrant minors in U.S. government detention to obtain immediate abortion on demand.”

Kavanaugh also dissented in 2015 when the court spurned religious groups that sought an exemption from a requirement under Obamacare that employers provide health insurance that covers birth control for women.

In 2011, he dissented as the court upheld a District of Columbia gun law that banned semi-automatic rifles. Kavanaugh said such guns are covered by the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, which protects the right to bear arms.

In several cases, Kavanaugh faulted environmental regulations issued under Obama, including some aimed at combating climate change.

Kavanaugh dissented in 2017 when his appeals court declined to reconsider its decision upholding “net neutrality” regulations implemented under Obama – and later rescinded under Trump – requiring internet providers to guarantee equal access to all web content.

In 2016, Kavanaugh wrote the appeals court’s decision that the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, formed under Obama, was unconstitutional.

Kavanaugh worked for Bush during the contentious recount in the pivotal state of Florida in the 2000 presidential election, then headed the Bush administration’s search for potential judicial nominees.

He previously worked for four years for Starr, whose investigation of Clinton helped spur an effort by congressional Republicans in 1998 and 1999 to impeach the Democratic president and remove him from office.

In 2009, Kavanaugh wrote a law review article questioning the value of that investigation and concluding that presidents should be free from the distractions of civil lawsuits, criminal prosecutions and investigations while in office.

That view has assumed fresh relevance, with Trump facing several civil lawsuits as well as a Russia-related criminal investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The Supreme Court could be called upon to weigh in on these matters.

A graduate of Yale Law School, Kavanaugh is married and has two children.

Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Will Dunham

The post Washington insider Kavanaugh boasts conservative credentials appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2maQcoB via Everyday News

[party-hard-or-die]

Washington insider Kavanaugh boasts conservative credentials

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Brett Kavanaugh, the consummate Washington insider picked by President Donald Trump on Monday for a lifetime seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, has viewed business regulations with skepticism in his 12 years as a judge and taken conservative positions on some divisive social issues.

Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington, U.S., July 9, 2018. REUTERS/Jim Bourg

His extensive record on the bench and in prior Washington jobs means the 53-year-old conservative federal appeals court judge promises to attract a barrage of questions during what is likely to be a contentious U.S. Senate confirmation process.

A senior White House aide under Republican former President George W. Bush who previously worked for Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who investigated Democratic former President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, Kavanaugh faced a long confirmation battle when Bush nominated him to his current post in 2003. Democrats painted him as too partisan, but he ultimately was confirmed by the Senate three years later.

Kavanaugh grew up in Bethesda, a Maryland suburb of Washington, and attended the same high school as Trump’s first Supreme Court appointee, Neil Gorsuch. Both men served as clerks for Kennedy in the Supreme Court’s 1993-1994 term.

Kavanaugh has been a judge on the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since 2006. Merrick Garland, Democratic former President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee who was blocked by Senate Republicans in 2016 in a move that allowed Trump to nominate Gorsuch last year, serves on that court alongside Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh has come under fire in some conservative circles for his ties to Bush, a member of the Republican establishment that is eschewed by Trump, as well as for not sometimes ruling aggressively enough on issues of importance to conservative activists.

Some conservatives have faulted his reasoning in a dissenting opinion in a case involving Democratic former President Barack Obama’s 2010 healthcare law, dubbed Obamacare.

Kavanaugh dissented from his court’s 2011 conclusion that Obamacare, a law detested by conservatives, did not violate the U.S. Constitution, asserting that it was premature to decide the case’s merits. Kavanaugh in his dissent mentioned that a financial penalty levied under Obamacare on Americans who opted not to obtain health insurance might be considered a tax, a pivotal distinction in the conservative legal challenge to the law.

Conservative critics said Kavanaugh’s dissent provided the roadmap that helped persuade U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts to cast a crucial vote in upholding the law when it reached the Supreme Court in 2012.

In his remarks on Monday, Kavanaugh sought to spotlight his bipartisan credentials. He noted that he has taught at Harvard Law School, where he was hired by former dean Elena Kagan, who Obama appointed to the Supreme Court in 2010. “My law clerks come from diverse background and points of views,” Kavanaugh said, adding that a majority of his clerks have been women.

CONSERVATIVE CREDENTIALS

Kavanaugh has shown conservative credentials on gun rights and in abortion-related cases.

Last October, he was part of a panel of judges that issued an order preventing a 17-year-old illegal immigrant detained in Texas by U.S. authorities from immediately obtaining an abortion. That decision was overturned by the full appeals court and she had the abortion.

Kavanaugh, who emphasized his Roman Catholic faith in his appearance with Trump at the White House on Monday, said in a dissent that the full court was embracing “a new right for unlawful immigrant minors in U.S. government detention to obtain immediate abortion on demand.”

Kavanaugh also dissented in 2015 when the court spurned religious groups that sought an exemption from a requirement under Obamacare that employers provide health insurance that covers birth control for women.

In 2011, he dissented as the court upheld a District of Columbia gun law that banned semi-automatic rifles. Kavanaugh said such guns are covered by the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, which protects the right to bear arms.

In several cases, Kavanaugh faulted environmental regulations issued under Obama, including some aimed at combating climate change.

Kavanaugh dissented in 2017 when his appeals court declined to reconsider its decision upholding “net neutrality” regulations implemented under Obama – and later rescinded under Trump – requiring internet providers to guarantee equal access to all web content.

In 2016, Kavanaugh wrote the appeals court’s decision that the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, formed under Obama, was unconstitutional.

Kavanaugh worked for Bush during the contentious recount in the pivotal state of Florida in the 2000 presidential election, then headed the Bush administration’s search for potential judicial nominees.

He previously worked for four years for Starr, whose investigation of Clinton helped spur an effort by congressional Republicans in 1998 and 1999 to impeach the Democratic president and remove him from office.

In 2009, Kavanaugh wrote a law review article questioning the value of that investigation and concluding that presidents should be free from the distractions of civil lawsuits, criminal prosecutions and investigations while in office.

That view has assumed fresh relevance, with Trump facing several civil lawsuits as well as a Russia-related criminal investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The Supreme Court could be called upon to weigh in on these matters.

A graduate of Yale Law School, Kavanaugh is married and has two children.

Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Will Dunham

The post Washington insider Kavanaugh boasts conservative credentials appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2maQcoB via Breaking News