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The Trump-Pence Theocracy Continues to Take Shape, As “Abstinence” Is Elevated To National Policy

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By Dartagnan / Daily Kos

Between 2007 and 2015, the rate of teen pregnancies in the United States dropped approximately 50%. Much of the credit for that goes to federal and state educational programs that teach teenagers about birth control and making informed choices about sex. The Teen Pregnancy Prevention program, implemented in 2010 during the Obama Administration, was one of the most effective of these efforts, providing annual grants totaling 200 million dollars to the states to operate and evaluate their public health programs aimed at preventing unwanted teen pregnancies.

These programs are vital because more than 25% of American girls become pregnant by age 20. Many of these pregnancies are neither expected or wanted. The drastic negative economic and social implications of that fact–to women and American society— should be obvious. The real beneficiaries of programs such as the TPP are women because it is women (in this country at least) who have been burdened socially with major responsibility for contraception. It is women’s lives and futures that are impacted the most by an unwanted pregnancy.

In August of last year the Trump Administration, through its Department of Health and Human Services, effectively ended funding for the TPP program two years before it was to be re-authorized. In its place, the Administration specified that any recipients of grants from the TPP must follow one of two “abstinence-based” agendas,  de-emphasizing birth control as a method of preventing pregnancy.   [Read more…]

World Press Freedom Day: US Press Freedom Ranking Drops To 45th

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May 3rd is World Press Freedom Day as declared by the United Nations. This year’s theme is “Keeping Power in Check: Media, Justice and The Rule of Law”.

By Mark Taylor Canfield / Daily Kos

Although this annual commemoration serves to highlight the struggle for press freedoms around the globe, the real work of securing these rights goes on daily in dozens of nations where reporters are threatened, jailed and killed.

The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 262 reporters were imprisoned in 2017. 62 have been killed in 2018 and 58 are missing globally.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the press is facing major challenges from an adversarial presidential administration.   [Read more…]

Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson Leaves People Nowhere to Go

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“It is absolutely unthinkable that the Trump Administration’s response to the crisis is to make things worse with draconian rent increases and work requirements.”

By Tara Raghuveer / People’s Action Blog 

75 low-and moderate-income tenants and manufactured homeowners repeatedly disrupted Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson at a speech in Las Vegas on Wednesday, asking, “where will we go?”

Carson’s response? Instead of offering solutions, he insulted poor tenants, saying “This is a perfect example of what happens when the swamp gets ahold of people.”
  [Read more…]

Parkland Shooting Survivor David Hogg Says Follow the Money

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By Abby Zimet / Common Dreams

The woke kids are still at it. Days before a planned National School Walkout to mark the anniversary of the Columbine shootings, Parkland survivor and firebrand David Hogg has suggested a boycott of massive money managers BlackRock and Vanguard, the biggest owners of publicly traded gun makers Sturm Ruger and American Outdoor Brands, parent company of Smith & Wesson Corp.

Citing the scale of the two asset managers’ holdings – according to Bloomberg, their wealth exceeds current U.S. GDP,  approaching $20 trillion – Hogg noted their ownership of gun stocks, suggested to shareholders who oppose blood-soaked investments that, “If you use them, feel free to let them know,” and added the hashtags #BoycottVanguard and #BoycottBlackrock.   [Read more…]

“Things That Make White People Uncomfortable”: Michael Bennett’s Essential New Book

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By Jessie Hagopian / Common Dreams

Today, my good friend Michael Bennett, former Seattle Seahawk, and current Philadelphia Eagle, releases his new book, “Things That Make White People Uncomfortable”—the memoir/manifesto that he wrote with my other dear friend Dave Zirin.

I am going to assume my position as a teacher here and officially assign you homework: read this book! Take notes. Report back on it to your community. Then take action. It is indispensable for anyone who wants to understand why so many players today are refusing to just shut up and play and are creating the new national pastime of protest and play. But this book is much more than just an expository essay about the new Black athlete.

This is one of those rare books you read that will change the way you understand yourself and your place in the world. Only a few books have had that kind of impact on me. Books like “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” and “Angela Davis: An Autobiography.” Uncomfortable has me feeling like a kid again, remembering how those amazing autobiographies turned me upside down and inside out.   [Read more…]

The Science Can No Longer Be Ignored: Legal Cannabis Access Reduces Opioid Abuse and Mortality

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By Paul Armentano / Alternet

Scientific data is growing exponentially in support of the notion that legalized cannabis access can significantly mitigate opioid use and abuse.

On Monday, the esteemed Journal of the American Medical Association, Internal Medicine published a pair of persuasive new studies reinforcing this opinion.

In the first study, investigators from the University of Kentucky and Emory University assessed the relationship between medical and adult-use marijuana laws and opioid prescribing patterns among Medicaid enrollees nationwide. Enrollees included all Medicaid fee-for-service and managed care enrollees—a high-risk population for chronic pain, opioid use disorder, and opioid overdose.

  [Read more…]

Breast Cancer and Screening Info Removed from Government’s Women’s Health Website

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By Jen Hayden / Daily Kos

A variety of important information about breast cancer and breast cancer screenings has gone missing from the Department of Health and Human Services women’s health website. The Sunlight Foundation tracks changes to government sites and they published a report on the now-vanished information. 

The “Breast Cancer” website and related pages were removed from within the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office on Women’s Health (OWH) website. While content about mammogram breast cancer screening remains, informational pages and factsheets about the disease, including symptoms, treatment, risk factors, and public no- or low-cost cancer screening programs, have been entirely removed and are no longer found elsewhere on the OWH site. Among the material removed is information about provisions of the Affordable Care Act that require coverage of no-cost breast cancer screenings for certain women, as well as links to a free cancer screening program administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The office did not proactively announce or explain the removals.   [Read more…]

Privatizing the Veterans Administration: A Key Part of the Trump Agenda

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By Mark Sumner / Daily Kos

The replacement of Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin has two narratives in the media—that Shulkin “embarrassed” Donald Trump with a trip to Europe that included days of sightseeing, and that Shulkin “clashed” with other officials at the VA.

Despite the amount of play the first item has received in the press, and despite some completely justified criticisms of Shulkin’s efforts both slip his wife’s travel costs onto the VA’s dime and indulgence in gifts he should never have accepted, the idea that he was pushed out over travel costs is clearly ludicrous. Scott Pruitt has engaged in far more lavish—and ridiculous—travel policies, hauling along a vast entourage on trips to Italy and Morocco, and the only thing his actions have earned from Trump is a suggestion that Pruitt may get a promotion to some other department ripe for wrecking. Besides, Trump isn’t capable of embarrassment. 

And when the press reports that Shulkin butted heads with officials, what they really mean is that Shulkin was blocking appointees from Trump who were pushing to privatize the VA. Fast. The conflict was simple: Shulkin, the only hold-over in Trump’s cabinet from the Obama administration, was trying to maintain the VA as a viable system of health care for veterans. The Trump appointees that filled all the other VA slots, were actively working to do to the VA what Pruitt has done to the EPA—destroy it.   [Read more…]

2020 Census Citizenship Question Amounts to a ‘Sabotage’ of Democracy

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By Jake Johnson / Common Dreams

In a move denounced by immigrant rights advocates and legal experts as an effort to “undercount communities of color” that could have an enormous impact on the drawing of congressional districts, the Trump administration announced late Monday that the 2020 Census will ask respondents whether or not they are U.S. citizens.

“This is an attempt to racially rig the census,” argued Common Cause president Karen Hobert Flynn in a statement after the move was made public in a late-night press release by the Commerce Department. “An accurate census is essential in the redrawing of our congressional and legislative districts and budgeting decisions that impact our schools, hospitals, roads, and veterans.”

Shortly after the decision to include a citizenship question on the 2020 Census was announced, California Attorney General Xavier Beccera joined civil rights advocates in condemning the move and filed suit against the Trump administration, arguing that inclusion of the question is “not just a bad idea—it is illegal.”   [Read more…]

This Is the Bunny I Love: The Stellar Trolling of Mike Pence

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This week’s Canny Resistance Award goes to John Oliver, who deftly stole Mike Pence’s family’s homophobic thunder by, hours before the release of their children’s book profiling their pet rabbit Marlon Bundo’s “Day in the Life of the Vice President,” released his own “Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo” – who is, gasp, gay. 

Oliver announced the book Sunday night on his Last Week Tonight show after an angry, lengthy look at Pence’s bigoted history, including his long association with the anti-LGBTQ, conversion-therapy-loving wingnuts of Focus On the Family. Oliver admitted the only thing he likes about Pence is his rabbit Marlon Bundo – or at least he did until learning that the book created in his honor, which was written by Pence’s daughter Charlotte and illustrated by his wife Karen, was being promoted in partnership with Focus on the Family to underline the notion that family-friendly means not, ewww, gay.

“It turns out, in a complete coincidence, we also wrote a book about Mike Pence’s rabbit,” Oliver smilingly told his audience.   [Read more…]

What to Do About All the Good Food Getting Trashed

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By Walter Einenkel / Daily Kos

Back in summer 2015, France’s Parliament voted to end food waste at grocery stores. After a judicial decision concerning the constitutionality of such a law, it went into effect at the beginning of 2016. 

The law banned groceries from throwing away edible food—a practice the entire developed world partakes in. Under the law, not donating edible foods you are getting rid of can result in a $4,500 fine—every time.

As NPR reports, after more than a year in practice, the French law has not turned France into some totalitarian dystopia.

  [Read more…]

A Nation Bamboozled: Invasion of Iraq 15 Years Later

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By Bill in Portland Maine / Daily Kos

Today is the anniversary of one of the most avoidably-idiotic days in American history—the day Republicans shot our country in the face and expected a parade of sweets and flowers for it. It’s the 15th dumbstickiversary of the invasion of Iraq. As always, we mark the occasion with a reminder of some of the lying and/or moronic statements made by the band of Very Serious People who orchestrated and/or promoted the debacle. Feel free to hurl rotten tomatoes as you see fit…

“Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof—the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”
—George W. Bush (10/7/02)

“I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego that military action will not last more than a week. Are you willing to take that wager?”
—Bill O’Reilly (1/29/03)   [Read more…]

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