 12 December 19 A Moment to Honor Those Who Sustain RSN
The problem of people who use Reader Supported News but will not contribute is so serious that it often overshadows the efforts of those who are quite willing to help sustain the organization, and there are many.
We are a long way from finished for December. Let’s take a moment however to thank sincerely our sustainers, large and small each and every one.
In solidarity.
Marc Ash
Sure, I'll make a donation!Founder, Reader Supported News Update My Monthly Donation
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11 December 19
Impeachment as National Security: The Framers' Intentions
Charles Edel, Lawfare
Edel writes: "Fearful of the potential for unlimited, arbitrary or tyrannical exercise of power by an unprincipled president, the Constitution's authors allowed Congress to remove a president before the completion of his term if a sufficient number of lawmakers concluded that the president had committed 'Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.'"
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Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders. (photo: Mary Schwalm/AP)
Charles Edel, Lawfare
Edel writes: "Fearful of the potential for unlimited, arbitrary or tyrannical exercise of power by an unprincipled president, the Constitution's authors allowed Congress to remove a president before the completion of his term if a sufficient number of lawmakers concluded that the president had committed 'Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.'"
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Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders. (photo: Mary Schwalm/AP)
Bernie Sanders Has a Plan to Turn the Internet Into a Public Utility With Low Prices and Fast Speeds - Here's How It Works
Ben Gilbert, Business Insider
Gilbert writes: "Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders just unveiled a sweeping billion proposal that would fundamentally reshape how the internet works in the United States."
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Speaker Nancy Pelosi. (photo: Alex Wong/Getty)
Ben Gilbert, Business Insider
Gilbert writes: "Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders just unveiled a sweeping billion proposal that would fundamentally reshape how the internet works in the United States."
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Speaker Nancy Pelosi. (photo: Alex Wong/Getty)
Cameron Joseph, VICE
Joseph writes: "On Tuesday morning, House Democrats unveiled their articles of impeachment against President Trump. Just one hour later, they handed him a key policy victory."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Democrats announced Tuesday that they’ve hammered out a deal to support the USMCA, a trade agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada that updates and revises NAFTA.
If the deal passes Congress it’ll be Trump’s biggest policy victory since Republicans slashed corporate and personal tax rates two years ago — and could prove to be a huge political win for Trump, shoring up his populist bona fides for the 2020 election.
“Trump is going to take the fact that there was a bipartisan deal to say his trade policy is working,” Jeff Hauser, a Democratic strategist with deep ties to the labor movement, told VICE News. Pelosi's "wrong on the substance and dangerously wrong on the politics.”
Trump’s 2016 wins were fueled in part by his fierce criticism of international trade deals like NAFTA — a message that helped him sweep through the Midwest. Democrats struck back and won big in 2018 largely by painting him as a phony and a hypocrite on economic issues, hammering him and Republicans for failing to improve infrastructure and threatening voters’ healthcare while slashing tax rates for rich people and big corporations.
President Trump speaking at Israeli-American Council summit. (photo: Getty)
'A Dangerous Move to Silence Free Speech': Jewish Groups React to Trump's Plan to Designate Judaism as a Nationality
Clark Mindock, The Independent
Mindock writes: "Donald Trump's plan to designate Judaism as a 'nationality' through executive order has been met with criticism by progressive Jewish organizations, who say the proposal is just another act of antisemitism from the president."
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Kathleen Eaton Bravo's remarks show how xenophobic fears about immigrants 'replacing' white Christian populations have influenced anti-choice campaigners in the US. (photo: YouTube)
ALSO SEE: Doctors Arrested While Offering Flu Vaccines
for Immigrants in Border Patrol Custody
Clark Mindock, The Independent
Mindock writes: "Donald Trump's plan to designate Judaism as a 'nationality' through executive order has been met with criticism by progressive Jewish organizations, who say the proposal is just another act of antisemitism from the president."
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Kathleen Eaton Bravo's remarks show how xenophobic fears about immigrants 'replacing' white Christian populations have influenced anti-choice campaigners in the US. (photo: YouTube)
ALSO SEE: Doctors Arrested While Offering Flu Vaccines
for Immigrants in Border Patrol Custody
CBP Denies Access to Doctors Seeking Flu Vaccinations for Migrant Children
Wendy Fry, The San Diego Union-Tribune
Fry writes: "Doctors say they will come back each day to administer free flu shots until they are successful."
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Wendy Fry, The San Diego Union-Tribune
Fry writes: "Doctors say they will come back each day to administer free flu shots until they are successful."
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Kathleen Eaton Bravo's remarks show how xenophobic fears about immigrants 'replacing' white Christian populations have influenced anti-choice campaigners in the US. (photo: YouTube)
Prominent Anti-Abortion Chief Warned of Muslims 'Replacing' Christian Europeans
Stephanie Kirchgaessner, Guardian UK
Kirchgaessner writes: "The chief executive of Obria, an anti-choice and anti-contraception organization that has been awarded millions of dollars in grants by the Trump administration, once said that Christianity was dying out thanks to contraception and abortion, leading Europeans to be 'replaced' by immigrant Muslims."
Stephanie Kirchgaessner, Guardian UK
Kirchgaessner writes: "The chief executive of Obria, an anti-choice and anti-contraception organization that has been awarded millions of dollars in grants by the Trump administration, once said that Christianity was dying out thanks to contraception and abortion, leading Europeans to be 'replaced' by immigrant Muslims."
Kathleen Eaton Bravo, whose company Obria has taken millions from Trump, said abortion ‘threatens our culture’s survival’
he chief executive of Obria, an anti-choice and anti-contraception organisation that has been awarded millions of dollars in grants by the Trump administration, once said that Christianity was dying out thanks to contraception and abortion, leading Europeans to be “replaced” by immigrant Muslims.
The reported remarks by Kathleen Eaton Bravo, the founder and chief executive officer of the Obria Group, raise new questions about the Trump administration’s controversial decision to award millions of dollars in health and human services grants to the group, which runs a national network of health centers opposed to abortion and contraception.
Bravo’s remarks, which were published in a 2015 interview with the Catholic World Report, shows how xenophobic fears about immigrants from African and Middle Eastern countries “replacing” white Christian populations have influenced anti-choice campaigners in the US.
In the interview, Bravo was asked whether abortion was getting the attention it deserved. She said it was not, because abortion had become a political rather than a moral issue.
“Few realize that it has had a devastating impact on our society, and threatens our culture’s survival. Take the example of Europe. When its nations accepted contraception and abortion, they stopped replacing their population. Christianity began to die out. And, with Europeans having no children, immigrant Muslims came in to replace them, and now the culture of Europe is changing,” she said.
The idea that white people are being “replaced” by non-whites and non-Christians has long been a fallacy propagated by white supremacists. The chants “you will not replace us” and “Jews will not replace us” were used by white supremacists in Charlottesville in 2017 and were part of the racist ideology espoused by mass shooters in El Paso and New Zealand.
Bravo also said in the interview that the US was bound to follow in Europe’s footsteps.
“In only two of the past 40 years have we replaced our population. We’re on the same track as Europe. The church and family are in crisis,” she said.
The Guardian attempted to reach Bravo for comment but she did not return a detailed message left for her at her office, or an email message sent through the group’s website.
The Obria chief has emerged as a force in the conservative and Catholic anti-choice movement that has sought to siphon public funds away from healthcare clinics like Planned Parenthood, which provide reproductive care and abortion services.
Obria received a $1.7m grant from the Trump administration in March 2019 and is due to receive an additional $3.4m over the next two years. The designation is controversial because such federal family planning funds – known as title X funding – was until recently only offered to groups that offered women access to contraception and referrals and counseling for abortion services.
Clinics were already barred from using title X money to directly provide abortions, but new restrictions imposed by the Trump administration have made it illegal for staff at health clinics that receive federal funds – which mostly help poor women – from referring patients to other facilities where they can terminate their pregnancies.
Planned Parenthood, which has for years been vilified by anti-choice campaigners, previously operated about 40% of the clinics that serve poor women, and received about $60m in family planning funds from the federal government annually. It left the title X program this year, however, after the new Trump administration restrictions on counseling and referrals went into effect. Planned Parenthood said at the time that the move would lead to suffering for its patients, and that the gag rule was both unethical and illegal.
Bravo was highly critical of Planned Parenthood in the 2015 interview, suggesting that the group promoted a “hook-up” culture and “oral sex, anal sex, and S&M sex”.
An investigation by the Campaign for Accountability, a not-for-profit watchdog group, found that Obria’s quest to win grant money from HHS was supported by political appointees at the department, including Diane Foley, who is in charge of title X funding. Foley congratulated Bravo in an email after Obria won its 2019 grant, and invited Bravo to have a private call with her to discuss the funding.
HHS did not return a request for comment about Bravo’s remarks.
Alice Huling, CFA’s counsel, told the Guardian that HHS has said that changes to its title X program were designed to diversify its grant applications. But Huling said that in reality, the change has given groups like Obria, which do not provide contraception or abortion-related services, access to federal funds for the first time, possibly opening the “floodgates” for similar organizations to win grants that would otherwise have gone to organizations that do provide such services.
The Guardian reported earlier this year that Obria has also received $150,000 in free advertising from Google, even though the group has run deceptive ads that suggest its clinics provide abortion services. The ads are designed to attract “abortion-minded women” to the clinics, even though they cannot obtain abortion services.
Google changed its advertising policy in the wake of the Guardian’s report, and has started publishing information under some of its ads that state whether the clinics do or do not provide termination services.
Students demonstrating in support of a Green New Deal. (photo: Getty)
The New Deal Funded the Arts. The Green New Deal Should, Too.
Ashley Dawson, In These Times
Dawson writes: "Cultural work needs to be seen as a vitally important part of the new green economy."
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Ashley Dawson, In These Times
Dawson writes: "Cultural work needs to be seen as a vitally important part of the new green economy."
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n November 16, 1989, six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter were murdered in their residence on the campus of the Jesuit Central American University (UCA) in San Salvador, El Salvador. Thirty years later, the massacre remains emblematic of the indiscriminate savagery exercised by the servants of the Salvadoran ruling class, the impunity they enjoy, and the devastating legacies of US intervention in the region.
