Family Issues – R&R – Reachout and Rebuild

The Children in the Camps

David Posnett — Tue, 16 Jul 2019 14:12:19 +0000

Submitted by Shoshana Hershkowitz

Picture drawn by child in our border camps.

I am haunted every day by the images of children in the camps. I am haunted by the pictures they draw, which bear a frightening resemblance to those in the book, “I Never Saw Another Butterfly”, drawn by the 15,000 children who were imprisoned in Terezin before dying at Auschwitz.

Mostly, I’m haunted as I go through the tasks of everyday life with my own children. As I put lotion on my son’s mosquito bites, as I go and lay down with my daughter when she wakes up from a nightmare. As I take them to swim lessons, to play dates, as they play on the street. I’m haunted by the normalcy of our lives in these abnormal times, where #NeverAgain is now.

My mind is constantly in conflict. On the outside, I am trying to give my children the life they and all children deserve, one where they feel loved, secure, and joyful. When they cry, I hold them. When they want to talk about their feelings, I listen. When they want me to notice what they’re doing, I enthusiastically cheer them on. It’s what parents do. And as I do it, I think about those kids in the camps. Those kids who haven’t had a shower, a change of clothes, a warm blanket, a hug, an adult to care for them. And as I look at my own children, I am haunted. There are tears in my eyes as I hug them, listen to them, put band aids on their scrapes, because I know that this crime against humanity is happening in my country, and here I am, relatively unscathed, privileged.

I don’t know how we end this madness. I write, I call, I protest, I donate, I organize, I vote. It doesn’t feel like enough. It’s not enough. I think we need sustained collective outrage, the kind that ended the Vietnam War, the kind that happened during the Civil Rights Movement. Those families deserve our collective outrage. Our democratic experiment requires that outrage. It’s failing, and I think we are failing it.

I think this will only end when each of us who still has a conscience that transcends our political affiliations tunes in to that twinge we’re feeling when we see those pictures. Too often, we push those feelings down, shove the discomfort away to focus on what’s in front of us. Don’t ignore the twinge. Don’t look away. Be haunted. That’s your humanity speaking to you. It’s asking you to care and to act. Because #NeverAgain is now.

Shoshana Hershkowitz

Save the Children

David Posnett — Wed, 26 Jun 2019 19:18:26 +0000

Contributed by James Ewing (Watermill, NY).

Watch this powerful video from the border where Alyssa Milano is broadcasting live:

Over the past year approximately 400,000 migrants have been detained by the Customs and Border Protection (CBP).They are primarily from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.

Customs and Border Protection Commissioner John Sanders recently said that the Border Patrol is holding 15,000 people, and the agency considers 4,000 to be at capacity.

On any given day, 2,000 children are in Border Patrol custody, and the problems are hardly confined to one facility…Legally, they’re not supposed to be held by border agents for more than 72 hours before being sent to the Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for finding their nearest relative in the US to house them while their immigration cases are adjudicated.

Almost all of these children have family members, including parents, in the United States, who are able to and want to take care of their children.

At the Border Patrol facility in Clint, Texas, some of the children are going weeks without enough food, water, or hygienic sanitation. Researchers report that kids are sick, caring for each other, and lack baths and diapers.

These kids and teens are being forcibly separated from their families. Which, in spite of Trump’s repeated claims to the contrary, has not been the norm in previous administrations.

Unlike privately contracted child detention facilities (which charge the US taxpayer up to $750 a day per child), Border Patrol stations like the Clint Detention Facilty, are federal facilities, exempt from state health and safety standards, according to Texas Department of Health and Human Services spokesman John Reynolds. Child abuse and neglect investigators are not allowed to investigate the stations because they not licensed by the state.

Law professor Warren Binford, saw a 4-year-old with hair so matted and dirty she thought it would have to be cut off. The child had not bathed in more than a week, she said. She witnessed a 14-year-old caring for a 2-year-old without a diaper, shrugging as the baby urinated as they sat at a table because she did not know what to do. Here, in a warehouse filled with filthy kids who had not bathed in days, some with lice and influenza, it was kids taking care of kids. There was no soap. And when she tried to find baby food, there was none of that, either. All they had was instant oatmeal for breakfast, instant soup for lunch and a frozen burrito for dinner, “every single day,”

The Trump administration argued before a Ninth Circuit panel Tuesday that the government is not required to give soap or toothbrushes to children apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border and can have them sleep on concrete floors in frigid, overcrowded cells, despite a settlement agreement that requires detainees be kept in “safe and sanitary” facilities.

A 14-year-old girl from Guatemala said she had been holding two little girls in her lap.
“I need comfort, too. I am bigger than they are, but I am a child, too,” she said.

“She’s suffering very much because she’s never been alone. She doesn’t know these other children,” said her father.

“Try to imagine what it’s like for these children, not as a parent, but as one of the children. To be hungry, without anyone to help you, to be abandoned to filth with no way to get clean, to be trying to take care of yourself and children who are even younger that you are, to be confused about what might happen next and to be terrified that you will never be loved or cared for by anyone again.” (Unknown Field notes)

“In my 22 years of doing visits with children I have never heard of this level of inhumanity”— Holly Cooper—UC Davis Immigration Law Clinic

While existing aid levels to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras will not be reduced this year, the Trump administration “will not provide new funds for programs in those countries until we are satisfied that the Northern Triangle governments are taking concrete actions to reduce the number of migrants coming to the U.S. border, said State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus. ‘This is consistent with the president’s direction and with the recognition that it is critical that there be sufficient political will in these countries to address the problem at its source.’ ” Washington AP 6/18/1

At least 24 adults and 6 children have died in US custody under Trump’s border policies.

“The death of a child is always a terrible thing, but here is a situation where, because there is not enough funding they can’t move the people out of our custody,” says outgoing CPB Commissioner John Sanders.

The victims from upper left (clockwise): Wilmer(2), Darlyn (10), Carlos (16) ,Mariee (20 mos), Felipe (8), and Juan (16)

By the way, Perry Gershon has it right regarding potential solutions.

Lee Zeldin parrots the Trump and FOX line. What a disaster. Think about it in November 2020.

Here is what one Candaian thinks:

and here is what you can do right now:

Trump (and Zeldin) are creating MS13’s across America

David Posnett — Thu, 07 Feb 2019 16:22:08 +0000

On Feb 5, 2019, at 7:36 AM, Judith Hope wrote:

“It’s all about spotlighting MS13 to inflame support for his Wall. It needs to be said (often & loudly) that gang violence is largely a result of young people who have been separated from parental influence. Trump and the GOP have separated thousands of young children & youths from their families at the border, and LOST TRACK of them! They are responsible for creating future MS13’s all over America.”

I don’t know many gang members! But I know of one example (hear say info). They are a set of brothers. The younger one was born prematurely because his mother was beat up by his dad when she was 26 weeks pregnant. The mother later died of unknown causes and the father was essentially absentee, siring many children from different partners. He was a wife beater. The 2 boys (both born in this country) were picked up by the Latin Kings and taught how to become car thiefs. They both spent time in jail. They can be violent. They never had parents…

Relevant posts:

1) From Perry Gershon’s FB page:

https://www.facebook.com/perry4congress/posts/355618388366690?__tn__=-R

2) From the Dailly Beast: Mother and daughter separated at the border

3) Livestream congressional hearing “Examining the Failures of the Trump Administration’s Inhumane Family Separation Policy” – TODAY

4) Feb 10, Sunday at 12:30: Where Are The Children Protest Rally – Rt 110 and Jericho Tpke Huntington

10 REASONS WOMEN MUST #FlipThe1st!

David Posnett — Fri, 26 Oct 2018 14:25:08 +0000

Issue #2: August, 2018 by Jacquelyn Gavron and Amy Turner

Lee Zeldin repeatedly votes for laws that jeopardize the health and financial wellbeing of 55% of his constituents: the 310,000 females in New York’s 1st Congressional District. Women in NY01 deserve a representative who understands that when women succeed, families and communities do too. Here’s Zeldin’s voting record, which speaks for itself.

#1 “FEMALE” IS NOT A PRE-EXISTING CONDITION

Zeldin and the GOP-controlled house voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and replace it with the American Health Care Act (AHCA). Had it passed, 61,951 people in NY01 would have lost their health care (ACASignups.net). And insurance companies would be allowed to charge women more than men and refuse to cover:

Essential services—pregnancy, maternity and newborn care
Pre-existing conditions —pregnancy, C-sections, celiac disease, hysterectomies, eating disorders, and treatment for domestic violence and sexual assault
Preventive services—mammograms, screenings for cervical cancer, osteoporosis, anemia, gestational diabetes and preeclampsia; and breastfeeding support and supplies.

Did you know. . . Zeldin has received a whopping $267,975 in contributions from insurance companies since 2014. (OpenSecrets.org).

#2 WOMEN DESERVE EQUAL PAY

In Suffolk County, women earn $51,014 for a job that pays men $65,326—$14,312 less. (labor.ny.gov). Don’t expect Zeldin to help. He’s repeatedly undermined equal pay protection by:

Voting to block Congress from considering the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill to end the pay gap and protect workers from retaliation for sharing info on their wages. (H.R. 1619, 2015)
Voting to make it extremely difficult for women seeking equal pay to bring a class action lawsuit against their employers. (HR 1927, 2016).

#3 LET WOMEN CONTROL THEIR OWN BODIES

Zeldin voted for a bill to ban abortion at 20 weeks (directly challenging Roe v. Wade), which was opposed by the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists as a serious threat to women’s health and not based on sound science. Zeldin has supported:

Amending the constitution to ban abortion except to save life of mother
A nationwide ban on private insurance coverage of abortion
Federal legislation allowing parents to prevent their daughters from receiving abortions
Requiring rape victims to wait 48 hours before obtaining an abortion
Barring the government from distributing emergency contraceptives

#4 GUN VIOLENCE IS A WOMAN’S ISSUE

Zeldin co-sponsored the federally mandated concealed carry bill, which would override New York’s strict gun laws and let gun owners with a history of violence against women roam our neighborhoods with a hidden, loaded gun. Most people don’t know the hidden toll guns take on women:

50 women a month are shot to death by a current or former partner
4.5 million American women have been threatened with guns, often by intimate partners, so they live in fear for themselves and their children for days, months and even years.
U.S. women are 16x more likely to be killed with a gun than in other high-income countries.

#5 WE NEED PAID FAMILY LEAVE

Most workers are covered by the Family Medical Leave Act, which lets you take up to 12 weeks of leave a year to care for family members. But for most people, that leave is unpaid. The GOP solution? Take a “loan” from Social Security and delay receipt of your retirement income.

#6 SOCIAL SECURITY: ON THE CUTTING BLOCK

The GOP tax scam gives huge tax cuts to the wealthy and large corporations that add $2 trillion to the national debt. They’re using this as an excuse to slash Social Security—it’s especially important to women as they earn less, take more time out of the workforce, live longer, save less and get smaller pensions.

In NY01, 150,262 people receive Social Security. Zeldin said he’d “continue to support legislation that protects and supports Social Security and Medicare” (letter, 6/2017) but he:

Voted YES to a constitutional amendment that would allow Social Security to pay beneficiaries only if a federal budget surplus could offset them. (HJ Res.2, 4/12/18)
Voted to block the transfer of tax revenue to keep the Disability Insurance afloat—unless it was part of a larger plan to cut benefits or tax increases. (HRes 5, 1/6/15; Politico).

#7 GOP GUNNING FOR MEDICARE & MEDICAID

In New York, nearly 2 million women rely on Medicare for their health insurance. Zeldin voted for a budget resolution (H.Con.Res 71, 10-15-17) that would pay for Trump’s huge tax cuts by:

Slashing Medicare by $487 billion
Increasing the age at which you can apply for Medicare from 65 to 67 nscpssm.org

More women than men are covered by Medicaid as they often work in lower paying jobs, and many work for small businesses that don’t offer health insurance. But Zeldin voted to take way the Medicaid option. And Trump recently gave the go-ahead for states to take away Medicaid from people who aren’t working a minimum number of hours a month. This disproportionally hurts women because they:

Often work in low-wage jobs with inconsistent hours that may not meet the requirements.
Typically care for children or other family members and aren’t in the paid workforce

#8 UN-AFFORDABLE CHILD CARE

Trump’s tax scam doubled the maximum child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000—“but the parents of about 29 million kids won’t get the credit because their families earn too little.” (TPC.org).

#9 PLANNED PARENTHOOD

Zeldin has repeatedly voted to defund Planned Parenthood. Perhaps he doesn’t understand that Planned Parenthood provides a wide range of health care services to 2.4 million clients, including, prenatal care, breast exams, PAP smears, vasectomies, HIV and STD testing and treatment, and sex education.

#10 WOMEN DESERVE A REP WHO VALUES WOMEN

In January 2017, thousands of Zeldin’s constituents showed up at women’s marches in D.C., NYC, Port Jeff, Sag Harbor and other places to advocate for women’s rights. But rather than acknowledge their concerns, Zeldin questioned their sanity, suggesting that some of his constituents might hold views that are “off the reservation” and using his 37th birthday two weeks later as an occasion to express his “love” for “even those Hillary supporters who have lost [their] beautiful minds since the election.”

Does the Constitution Permit a State to Abolish Marriage?

David Posnett — Wed, 21 Mar 2018 16:44:32 +0000

This is what makes constitutional law so interesting…

21 MAR 2018

MICHAEL C. DORF

After the Supreme Court found a constitutional right to same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges in June 2015, county clerks and other state and local officials around the country began to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, but some probate judges in Alabama were uncertain of their legal obligations, given a prior state supreme court order barring the issuance of marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Into the breach strode the then-Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy Moore, who issued an order barring probate judges from issuing such licenses. Although Moore cited technical procedural doctrines in his order, no one who knew the man who would someday run a scandal-filled and unsuccessful campaign for the US Senate was fooled. Moore sought to undercut the US Supreme Court and the constitutional rights of lesbian and gay Americans in Alabama.

Roy Moore has returned to private life, but the sentiment that drove his Court-defying order remains very much alive in the Heart of Dixie. As reported recently on NPR, Alabama and some other states are seriously considering proposals that would avoid the obligation to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples by eliminating any requirement that couples obtain marriage licenses from the state. Although the Alabama bill’s sponsor characterizes his proposal as aimed at “getting Alabama out of the marriage business,” that is not quite accurate. The bill would eliminate the requirement of obtaining a marriage license, but it quite clearly would leave the state-recognized status of marriage intact. A similar billpassed one house of the Oklahoma legislature in 2015.

What purpose do such bills serve? They appear to be a means by which to excuse government officials who oppose same-sex marriage on religious or other grounds from having to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. In the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, the Supreme Court will soon decide whether the owner of a bakery has a First Amendment right to refuse to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple, but whatever result the Court reaches in that case, government officials stand on a different footing, as the saga of Rowan County, Kentucky clerk Kim Davis illustrated. Government officials may well be constitutionally obligated to issue marriage licenses where state law requires such licenses to marry.

So long as Alabama, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and other states continue to recognize marriage—and continue to recognize same-sex marriage on an equal footing with opposite-sex marriage—laws that change the mechanism by which any couple establishes their marriage will likely be upheld as constitutional. But what if a state were to go further? What if a state really were to get out of the marriage business by abolishing the legal status of marriage? Would that be unconstitutional?

A short but insightful essay by Stanford Law Professor Pamela Karlan in the California Law Review anticipated that question five years before the Supreme Court decided Obergefell. Professor Karlan identified two potential constitutional violations. First, abolishing marriage could be said to violate equal protection if it were adopted for the purpose of denying marriage to same-sex couples. And second, because marriage is a fundamental right, the state may be obligated to make it available to all competent adults. I shall consider these possibilities in turn.

Leveling Down

The equal protection argument meets with an immediate objection: If the state abolishes marriage for everyone, how does it deny equality to same-sex couples, who would be treated no differently from opposite-sex couples? As a general rule, states comply with equality when they extend a previously exclusive benefit to everyone on an equal basis or when they take it away from everyone. The latter approach—so-called “leveling down”—has repeatedly been deemed permissible by the Supreme Court, including as recently as last year, when Justice Ginsburg wrote a majority opinion in a sex equality case holding that Congress would have preferred leveling down to leveling up.

Leveling down appears to be an option even when it is undertaken for the obvious purpose of denying a right to a disfavored group. That’s what the city of Jackson, Mississippi, did in the 1960s when it was ordered to stop operating racially segregated public swimming pools; it closed all of its public swimming pools. Observing that, despite the city’s evil intentions, its actions did not result in unequal treatment, the Supreme Court rejected an equal protection challenge to the pool closings in the 1971 case of Palmer v. Thompson.

Professor Karlan writes that Palmer might not be decided the same way today, because it “rested in substantial part on the since-eroded proposition that the motive or purpose behind a law is irrelevant to its constitutionality.” That’s true, but Palmer also rested on the proposition that the African American residents of Jackson were not materially disadvantaged by the city’s closing of the pools. The post-Palmer cases that make illicit motive actionable all involve both illicit motive and some kind of disparate impact.

To be clear, Palmer was wrongly decided on its facts. As Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe explained in a 1993 article in the Supreme Court Review, white Jackson residents undoubtedly had greater access to private (racially segregated) pools than African American Jackson residents had, so, in addition to an illicit purpose, the pool closings did have a disparate racial impact.

Still, the general principle of Palmer may well survive: when government levels down, even with an illicit purpose, there is no equal protection violation in the absence of a disparate impact. And if that principle survives, then a state’s complete abolition of marriage would be consistent with equal protection, because it would affect all married and potentially married couples equally.

An Unusual Fundamental Right

Even assuming that Palmer remains good law, however, there is an obvious distinction between shutting down public swimming pools and shutting down state recognition of marriage. There is no constitutional right to swim in a public pool, but the Supreme Court has repeatedly said that marriage is a fundamental constitutional right. Indeed, in Obergefell itself, Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion placed chief reliance on the liberty to marry, with principles of equality entering into the analysis only secondarily.

Leveling down may be a valid response to remedy a denial of equality, but where the vice of a law is its denial of liberty, taking the liberty at issue away from a larger group exacerbates rather than remedies the violation.

And yet, a right to marry is an odd kind of fundamental right. Except in special circumstances, such as the right to free counsel for indigents in criminal cases, the US Constitution protects rights against government interference, rather than rights to government assistance or recognition. In that sense, the right to marry differs from other fundamental rights that the Court has found in the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.

A right to use contraception is a right to use it without penalty by the government. Likewise, a right to abortion is a right to an abortion without undue government interference. So too, the right of adults to consensual sexual relations regardless of the sex of their partners protects against government regulation of such relations. By contrast, the right to marry asks the government to do more than stay out of the way.

Dissenting in Obergefell, Justice Thomas made just that point. By failing to recognize marriage, he said, states were not restricting anyone’s ability “to enter same-sex relationships, to engage in intimate behavior, to make vows to their partners in public ceremonies, to engage in religious wedding ceremonies, to hold themselves out as married, or to raise children.” Justice Thomas protested that “receiving governmental recognition and benefits has nothing to do with any understanding of ‘liberty’ that the Framers would have recognized.”

Justice Thomas was wrong about the bottom line in Obergefell, because he failed to take seriously the equal protection argument for same-sex marriage in states that recognize opposite-sex marriage. But he had a fair point about liberty, did he not? And if so, does that mean that a state really could abolish marriage for everyone?

The Obergefell majority did not directly address this question, because it did not need to. Neither have any of the other cases involving marriage in the Supreme Court. In those other cases—chiefly Loving v. Virginia, which involved the right to interracial marriage, and Zablocki v. Redhail, which involved the right to marry by a person under court order to pay child support—the state generally recognized marriage but limited the right to certain people under certain circumstances. Although it is clear that these cases conceptualized marriage as an exercise of liberty, the Court has never had occasion to consider whether a state could get out of the marriage business completely.

Yet that fact itself is telling. Conservatives sometimes insist that the Court should only recognize constitutional rights that are deeply rooted in our nation’s history and traditions. On that score, marriage clearly qualifies. From colonial times through the present, American jurisdictions have had laws giving recognition to marriage. Yes, a right to government recognition differs from a right to be left alone by the government. But nowhere does the Constitution expressly rule out the possibility that by denying recognition to an institution or practice, the government could be denying an aspect of liberty.

What about Justice Thomas’s complaint in his Obergefell dissent that a right to affirmative recognition of marriage would have been unrecognizable by the Framers? Perhaps the best answer appears in a majority opinion authored by Justice Kennedy in another gay rights case. In Lawrence v. Texas, he wrote: “Had those who drew and ratified the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth Amendment or the Fourteenth Amendment known the components of liberty in its manifold possibilities, they might have been more specific.” If they had been more specific, however, constitutional law would probably be less interesting!

Postscript: I dedicate this column to the memory of my dear friend Julie Hilden. I set out a few thoughts on Julie’s life and work on my blog. Here I would just add that same-sex marriage was an issue of personal importance to Julie, who, out of solidarity, delayed marrying her longtime partner until there was marriage equality.

DeVos to revamp Obama-era schools sexual assault policy

David Posnett — Thu, 07 Sep 2017 21:10:02 +0000

POLITICO

By BENJAMIN WERMUND 09/07/2017 12:20 PM EDT

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said the Trump administration will revamp the guidance through a rule-making process that likely will take months. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said Thursday that she will replace an Obama-era schools directive on sexual assault in an attempt to balance the rights of victims and the accused.

“The truth is that the system established by the prior administration has failed too many students,” she said during a half-hour speech at George Mason University, after which she took no questions. “Survivors, victims of a lack of due process and campus administrators have all told me that the current approach does a disservice to everyone involved.”

But the announcement drew howls of protest from womens’ groups and victims advocates, who said DeVos was making a false equivalence between victims and the accused.

“Schools are not getting it right sometimes — both for accused students and survivors,” said Neena Chaudhry, director of education at the National Women’s Law Center. “But the answer is not to change the law, but to help schools comply with it. Title IX already requires a fair process for both sides.”

The 2011 Obama guidance for the first time pushed school district, college and university leaders to combat sexual harassment, including sexual violence, saying the institutions were required to do so under Title IX, a federal law that prohibits sex discrimination. Women’s groups hailed that as a crucial step in cracking down on sexual violence on campuses. But critics said it trampled the rights of the accused.

The Trump administration will revamp the guidance through a rulemaking process that likely will take months, DeVos said during her speech, in which she blasted the guidance for having “weaponized the Office of Civil Rights to work against schools and against students.” She said the administration will give all sides a chance to offer opinions on how it should move forward.

“We will seek public feedback and combine institutional knowledge, professional expertise and the experiences of students to replace the current approach with a workable, effective and fair system,” DeVos said.

“This is not about letting institutions off the hook. They still have important work to do. ”

The far-reaching 2011 Obama-era guidance, issued in the form of a Dear Colleague Letter, was controversial from the start. It threatened a loss of funding to schools that failed to do enough to make students safe from sexual harassment, assault and rape. Critics said it pushed colleges to trample the rights of the accused. Among other things, the guidance pushed a lower standard of proof in campus disciplinary hearings than is used in criminal trials.

Many of those critics hailed DeVos’ announcement as “a really positive development.”

“I think it was a strong signal from the department that the current approach is unworkable and needs to be changed,” said Joe Cohn, legislative and policy director at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a civil rights group that brought a court challenge to the 2011 guidance.

Chris Perry, deputy executive director of the group, Stop Abusive and Violent Environments, which represents people accused of sexual assault, said DeVos’ remarks show “the secretary is listening to folks.”

As an interim measure, the Education Department will issue temporary Title IX guidelines for school districts, colleges and universities as it works on a permanent replacement for Obama-era guidelines, agency spokeswoman Liz Hill said.

“The 2011 guidance will be replaced, and in the interim, the department will make clear to schools how to fulfill their current obligations under Title IX,” Hill said. “OCR (the Office for Civil Rights) will work directly with schools to provide support and technical assistance.”

Asked whether the department plans to rescind the 2011 letter before it writes a permanent policy, Hill said “we will not rescind the letter without interim guidelines in place for schools.”

The decision to launch a notice-and-comment process was long expected. DeVos said in July — after a series of meetings with sexual assault survivors, students accused of assault and college officials — that she would overhaul the policy. She told reporters at the time that “it’s clear that there are failings in this process. A system without due process protections ultimately serves no one in the end.”

Advocacy groups — including those representing both sexual assault survivors and students accused of assault — were not invited to attend Thursday’s announcement in person, despite meeting with DeVos on the subject in July.
Instead, DeVos delivered the announcement during a tightly controlled half-hour event at the university’s Arlington, Va., campus, sponsored by the university law school chapter of the Federalist Society, a conservative group. Shouts from protesters outside could be heard as she spoke.

Advocates for survivors of sexual assault said they felt they were given short shrift and noted that research has shown false claims of rape are rare. They said DeVos had indicated she would hold similar listening sessions in other parts of the country before making a decision.

Giving them just one meeting with the secretary “feels a little bit like paying lip service to the importance of having survivors in the room,” said Jess Davidson, managing director of End Rape on Campus.

“I think there’s been a really concerning false equivalence of the concerns of survivors and the accused throughout this entire process with the Department of Education,” Davidson said.

Sexual assault survivors rallied outside the university ahead of the announcement, urging DeVos to keep what they see as crucial protections in place.

“It’s really telling us that we don’t matter, that our pain is not relevant to people in power,” said Chessy Prout, 18. Prout said she was assaulted as a high school freshman and subsequently had to change schools.

Advocates slammed the speech afterward. “Don’t be duped by today’s announcement,” said Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center. “What seems procedural is a blunt attack on survivors of sexual assault. It will discourage schools from taking steps to comply with the law — just at the moment when they are finally working to get it right. And it sends a frightening message to all students: Your government does not have your back if your rights are violated. This misguided approach signals a green light to sweep sexual assault further under the rug.”

Complicating the issue for DeVos are comments made by her civil rights chief, Candice Jackson, who told The New York Times this summer that 90 percent of sexual assault claims stem from drunken and regretted sex. Another complication is President Donald Trump’s boast about groping women in the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape.

“Secretary DeVos decided today to continue a pattern of undermining survivors’ rights, once again showing a clear lack of understanding or empathy for the millions of students who have experienced sexual violence on campus,” Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat and ranking member of the Senate education committee, said in a statement.

But her announcement drew praise from at least one Republican lawmaker.

“The Department of Education is taking a positive first step in soliciting comments from stakeholders to get a better understanding of ways to better address the problem,” Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford said. “However, this is an issue where Congress must give the Department of Education clear statutory authority to properly regulate.”

Despite the administration’s plan to rewrite rules on Title IX, it’s unlikely that schools will immediately change policies that they spent the last six years writing — and sometimes rewriting — to remain in compliance with federal law.

“No school is going to go back to doing what they were doing before the 2011 guidance,” said Terry Hartle, senior vice president at the American Council on Education.

Women working in Trump’s White House only make $0.80 to the man’s dollar

David Posnett — Mon, 03 Jul 2017 23:45:40 +0000

Published 9h ago on July 3, 2017

by Marie Solis

President Donald Trump waves as he arrives on Air Force One

Source: Carolyn Kaster/AP

The country’s gender wage gap goes all the way to the White House, according to a new CNN analysis.

Using the findings from the White House’s annual report to Congress, which was released on Friday, the outlet found women working in President Donald Trump’s White House earn an average salary of roughly $83,000, while their male colleagues earn an average of roughly $104,000.

That disparity works out to women making just $0.80 to the man’s dollar, a pay gap falling just below the national average: As of April’s Equal Pay Day, women made $0.82 for every dollar earned by a man.

However, the White House’s pay gap problem isn’t specific to Trump.

In 2014, the Washington Post reported that then-President Barack Obama hadn’t yet succeeded in closing the gender wage gap in his White House, albeit a much smaller gap than Trump’s. Under Obama, women in the White House earned an average salary of $78,400 to men’s $88,600, adding up to a 13% wage gap, or $0.87.

Trump speaks along with daughter Ivanka during a video conference in the Oval Office in April.

Source: Pool/Getty Images

Still, a hallmark of Obama’s presidency was his dedication to solving the country’s gender wage gap problem. Just a little over a week into his presidency, Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, equal pay legislation named for a woman who discovered at the end of her 19-year career that she’d been paid less than her male colleagues all along. In 2014, Obama signed an executive order promoting fair pay and safe work conditions, including mandates for paycheck transparency and a ban on forced arbitration in cases of sexual harassment, gender-based discrimination or sexual assault.

In March, Trump revoked the latter Obama-era policy, just days before Equal Pay Day on April 4.

This move, along with Trump’s apparent animus toward other issues affecting women’s lives, means the wage gap could widen under the 45th president. In a December interview with Mic, Fatima Goss Graves, a senior vice president at the National Women’s Law Center, said it’s in Trump’s power to decide if he wants to close it.

“[You can either decide to] change the range of factors that really are leading to lower wages, or you can continue to lean into the things you know cause the problem in the first place,” she said. “That’s the question for the Trump administration: Are they on the side of equal pay [and equal rights] for women?”

A Cruel Joke — 13 men are in charge of healthcare for all American women.

David Posnett — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 15:57:46 +0000

POSTED IN THE GUARDIAN

Lucia Graves

Wednesday 28 June 2017 11.34 EDT

Regressive gender politics are resurgent in 2017, as demonstrated by a Republican bill that would be devastating to women’s health

John Barrasso, Mitch McConnell, and John Cornyn: three of the men behind the Senate healthcare bill. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP

A decade or two ago, the notion that 13 men would be plotting the fate of American women’s healthcare behind closed doors, that they would delight in defunding the women’s health organization Planned Parenthood and impeding healthcare access for millions of American women, would have felt like the politics of a bygone era.

Midway through 2017, it feels more like deja vu.

As Republicans prepare for their delayed vote on their updated measure to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, women’s groups and senators have vocally hit out against male dominance of the healthcare debate – exemplified by the GOP’s 13-man working group that crafted the Senate bill.

The Democratic senator Kamala Harris told the Guardian the bill “is terrible for women”, while her New York colleague Kirsten Gillibrand has described it as “a cruel joke” and a “blatantly partisan attack on women’s health”.

But for many, it’s more than the substance of the bill that rankles. Specifically, it feels like a return to a kind of regressive gender politics they hoped had passed in America: a politics in which men make the decisions about what happens to women’s bodies.

“It’s outrageous that the future of healthcare for millions of women lies in the hands of 13 men,” Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, said. “It’s clear they don’t care about our opinion or our lives – because if they had asked us what we thought, we’d all be in a very different position right now.”

The Senate healthcare bill would increase the number of uninsured people in the US by 22 million, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, and is opposed by the American Medical Association on the grounds that it violates the Hippocratic oath.

It would also be particularly devastating to women’s health, in a number of ways. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate’s health committee, called it “nothing less than an attack on women’s health and rights”.

Harris said: “It blocks millions of women on Medicaid from getting care at Planned Parenthood. It allows states to stop requiring insurance companies to cover essential health benefits – like maternity care and birth control. Women in this country will not be silenced on this issue. We will only get louder.”

Under the Republican bill, women could pay as much as $1,000 more per month for maternity care, Murray told reporters in a conference call on Friday, and millions would lose access to even the most basic preventive care services at Planned Parenthood.

As Dana Singiser of Planned Parenthood put it on the call: “If we listed all the cruel things this bill would do we’d be here all day.”

Often the men who tout defunding Planned Parenthood seem to have no idea what the organization actually does.

Donald Trump signs the global ‘gag rule’, surrounded by men. Photograph: Ron Sachs / Pool/EPA

“Frankly, I am sick of coming down to the Senate floor to explain to Republicans what Planned Parenthood does,” Elizabeth Warren said in a recent statement posted to her Facebook page. “I am sick of explaining that it provides millions of women with birth control, cancer screenings, and STI tests every year. I am sick of pointing out again and again that federal dollars do not fund abortion services at Planned Parenthood or anywhere else.”

Because of the Hyde amendment, federal funding does not actually go toward abortion services, but to the other basic healthcare services Warren outlined, including life-saving cancer screenings and treatments.

It isn’t the first time in recent years she has had to explain to the men in charge of women’s healthcare how the largest US provider of reproductive healthcare operates. When the GOP mounted another effort to defund Planned Parenthood back in August 2015, she made a similar speech.

“Do you have any idea what year it is?” Warren asked at the time. “Did you fall down, hit your head, and think you woke up in the 1950s or the 1890s? Should we call for a doctor? Because I simply cannot believe that in the year 2015, the United States Senate would be spending its time trying to defund women’s healthcare centers.”

Perhaps she shouldn’t have been that surprised. For years, Republicans have worked to strip away women’s rights to make choices about their own bodies and more often than not, the efforts have been led by men. When Donald Trump signed the global “gag rule”, pulling US funding from any global organizations that so much as mention the word “abortion”, he did it flanked exclusively by white men in suits. A photo of President George W Bush signing a ban on a rare abortion procedure reveals yet another group of grinning, self-congratulatory men.

As Jill Filipovic, writing in the New York Times, has noted, in a way, men controlling women’s bodies is an election promise delivered. “At some point, we have to ask: Is this really a pattern of errors?” she writes. “Maybe these aren’t tone-deaf mistakes at all, but intentional messages to rightwing supporters.”

Warren seems to agree, at least with the notion that the bill is all about political messaging.

“Women come to the floor, we explain, we cite facts. But Republicans would rather base healthcare policy on politics than on facts,” she said recently, after the House speaker, Paul Ryan, called the bill “pro-life”. “Calling something pro-life won’t keep women from dying in back alley abortions; it won’t help women pay for the cancer screenings that could save their lives; it won’t help them take care of their families, have safe sex or afford their medical bills.”

Murray was even more sweeping in her assessment. “The moment we’re in right now is truly a pivotal one for women and women’s rights,” she told reporters Friday, adding that for every woman and everyone who cares about their access to healthcare, now is the time to fight back.

“Those 13 men cutting backroom deals about your healthcare access clearly didn’t want to hear from you, so make sure they do now,” she said.

Trump Wants to Charge Retailers to Accept SNAP Benefits (Food Stamps)

David Posnett — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 17:37:44 +0000

When is the GOP’s cruel assault on the most vulnerable going to end?

From Modern Farmer

By Andrew Amelinckx on June 9, 2017

You’ve probably heard about the White House’s proposed overhaul of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) program, formerly known as food stamps—the program would see deep cuts if President Donald Trump’s budget goes forward. But you may not be familiar with another proposal that could also affect the 43 million Americans who rely on SNAP, as well as the grocers who accept these benefits from their customers.

Trump wants to charge grocery stores and other retailers a fee for accepting SNAP benefits to the tune of more than $2 billion over 10 years, with businesses from corner stores to Walmart bearing the cost. Currently, retailers don’t pay a fee to get authorized to accept SNAP benefits, but they are required to register with the Department of Agriculture, the agency responsible for overseeing the program.

As outlined in the White House’s Major Savings and Reforms—which makes up the budget plan and also A New Foundation for American Greatness—the fees would be on a sliding scale, and would be charged when a retailer first signs up to participate and again when they renew their application every five years. Small businesses, like convenience stores, would pay somewhere in the range of $250 while large supermarket chains would have to shell out as much as $20,000. It’s unclear what type of fee farmers markets and CSAs—many of which now accept SNAP benefits–would be responsible for under the proposal.

According to The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which is responsible for producing the president’s budget plan, the current system “fails to recognize the Federal costs of application processing and oversight of retailers, and the significant portion of a retailer’s revenue that SNAP can represent.”

Also: Check out what Food & Wine has to say: http://www.foodandwine.com/news/trump-charges-stores-for-accepting-food-stamps

What I’m Doing to Keep Birth Control Free in the Face of Trump’s and the GOP’s Health Care Rollback

David Posnett — Tue, 20 Jun 2017 19:37:56 +0000

Op-Ed in Teen Vogue

By Eric Schneiderman

The summer after I graduated high school, I worked in an abortion clinic in Washington, D.C.

This was a year before Roe v. Wade, and abortion was still outlawed in states throughout the country. Many women still had to travel far from home for safe, legal reproductive health care.

I used to drive our patients from the airport to the clinic and back again. I still remember the fear in the eyes of many women as they tried to leave the recovery room too early because they wanted to get home as quickly as possible. Their parents or husbands or bosses had no idea they were there. Abortion was still something that was whispered about — and anti-women laws made it far more dangerous than it should have been.

After Roe v. Wade, I remember thinking, Well, at least we’ll never see that kind of inhumane treatment of women in America ever again.

But unless Americans — especially young Americans — rise up to stop President Trump and his allies in Congress, I’m afraid we could be heading back to those bad old days.

We’re already seeing the Trump administration take some big steps to limit the rights of women to control their own bodies.

The new House health care bill, which passed this spring, aims to defund Planned Parenthood and the vital health care it provides. I’ve made clear that if Trump signs the bill into law, I will challenge it in court.

And right now, Trump’s team is considering a new rule that would allow any company to drop coverage for birth control — a cruel and unnecessary rollback of common sense policy. I don’t need to tell you that access to affordable birth control is not a trivial issue. The pill can cost up to around $1,200 per year. If you’re earning minimum wage in New York, that’s about the equivalent of a full month’s pay.

So it’s no surprise that before the Affordable Care Act’s free contraception mandate, more than half of women under age 34 had been through times when they couldn’t afford birth control. Before the Affordable Care Act’s contraception rules went into effect, about 20% of women paid out of pocket for oral contraceptives. Now less than 4% do, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate, the National Women’s Law Center reported that American women now save roughly $1.4 billion per year on oral contraceptives — and more women now have the financial freedom to choose the birth control that’s right for them, like an IUD.

If you care about women’s autonomy, if you care about preventing unplanned pregnancies, protecting cost-free access to birth control is a no-brainer.

I won’t sugarcoat it — these rights are under attack. But we can fight back.

In my state of New York, I’ve introduced a bill that would require all health plans to provide cost-free contraceptive coverage — no matter what Washington does. It would also mandate that health plans cover emergency contraception and male contraception.

States have the power to make a real difference, and New York isn’t alone. A number of states have taken similar action.

So get on the phone. Call your state senator. Call your governor. Call your state attorney general. Tell them to ensure anti-choice leaders in Washington can never take away your access to affordable contraception. States have the power to protect you, even if the federal government won’t. Demand that they stand with you and fight for your rights.

There are many people in Washington who want to take us back to the pre-Roe days. But there are allies in every state ready and eager to fight. Find them. Join them. And together, we can protect the rights of all women to the reproductive health care they need.

Thank you for taking the time to read my op-ed. Together we will ensure that all New Yorkers have access to cost-free contraception.

All my best,

Eric Schneiderman