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Congressional Republicans Found the Most Useless Way to Combat Race and Sex Discrimination

Mother Jones

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Republicans in Congress are trying to end race and sex discrimination—in the womb. The Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act (PRENDA) would ban abortion on the basis of the race or sex of the fetus. Republicans say the measure is necessary to protect the civil rights of African Americans and women.

“It took the Civil War to make the state-sanctioned practice of human slavery come to an end,” said Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), the bill’s author, during a recent hearing on the measure. “One glaring exception is life itself, the most foundational civil right of all.”

According to Franks, who has introduced various versions PRENDA since 2008, ending race- and sex-selective abortions is the “civil rights struggle that will define our generation.” During a hearing by an all-male committee earlier this month, Franks also noted that upward of 50 percent of African American babies are “killed before they’re born,” and that “a Hispanic child is three times more likely to be aborted than a white child.”

The proposed measure would make it illegal for a physician to perform on abortion on a pregnant woman who wants the procedure because the fetus isn’t her desired sex or race. Under the measure, the father of the unborn child and the pregnant woman’s parents could sue a physician who performs such an abortion. Doctors would also be required to report suspected cases to law enforcement.

It’s unclear where Franks is getting his numbers. A 2012 Guttmacher report found that evidence of sex- and race-based abortions in the United States is limited and inconclusive. According to the report, two studies using 2000 US census data found that although the sex ratio of first-born children was normal in families of Chinese, Indian, and Korean descent, those families did have a preference for sons in second and third births. The authors in that study were unable to conclude whether the imbalance was caused by abortion or fertility treatments.

But in a single 2011 study, commonly cited by PRENDA advocates, 65 Indian Americans who were interviewed had practiced sex selection, through either fertility treatments or abortion.

More recent data suggests that contrary to some stereotypes, Asian American communities are not biased in sex selecting for sons. A 2014 report by researchers at the University of Chicago Law School and two abortion rights groups analyzed population data from 2007 to 2011 and found that Chinese, Indian, and Korean Americans have more girls that white Americans.

Evidence to suggest that black and Hispanic communities are targeting their abortions is even less clear. According to Guttmacher, abortions are more common in black communities than white ones because unintended pregnancies are also more common. As a result, African American women get abortions at a rate five times higher than white women. “The truth is that behind virtually every abortion is an unintended pregnancy,” wrote Susan A. Cohen in a 2008 article on abortion and women of color.

In a letter to the House, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of 200 civil rights organizations, points out that health and economic disparities of black and Hispanic women are likely to blame for increased abortion. “African American women and Latina women have less access to contraception, prenatal care, and other critical reproductive health services, resulting in stark disparities across a number of sexual and reproductive health indicators,” the Leadership Conference wrote.

Loretta Ross, the national coordinator of SisterSong, a reproductive justice organization for women of color, told Mother Jones in 2011, “It’s kind of hard to find evidence that a black woman is going to have an abortion because she’s surprised to find her baby is black. It just strains credulity to think that’s a problem. I mean, she wakes up in the morning and says ‘Oh my God! My baby’s black!’?”

According to abortion rights advocates and Democratic legislators, the measure could increase discrimination against pregnant women, particularly women of color, by forcing doctors to speculate on the reasons their patients seek abortions, and then requiring the physicians to report suspected discriminatory abortions. Because of stereotypes that Asian communities prefer male children, advocates worry that Asian women would be especially vulnerable to profiling by their physicians.

“This bill is so horrendous that I could not believe it when it was first brought up,” said Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.). “It is a nightmare. This is a piece of legislation that would impose criminal penalties on providers and limit the reproductive choices of women of color and all women.”

Seven states already ban abortion based on sex selection. Only Arizona, which Franks represents, also bans race-selective abortions.

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Congressional Republicans Found the Most Useless Way to Combat Race and Sex Discrimination

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Ted Cruz Launches Anti-Transgender Attack: It’s Like Donald Trump Dressing Up as Hillary Clinton

Mother Jones

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Sen. Ted Cruz has dived into the controversy surrounding the growing number of anti-transgender bills popping up around the country, arguing that in the absence of such ordinances people are vulnerable to sexual “predators.”

“There is no greater evil than predators,” Cruz said at a campaign event on Saturday. “If the law says that any man, if he chooses, can enter a women’s restroom, a little girl’s restroom, and stay there, and he cannot be removed because he simply says at that moment he feels like a woman, you’re opening the door for predators.”

At the same event in Indiana, the Republican presidential candidate took aim at front-runner Donald Trump, who initially said North Carolina’s version of the law was “problematic” and that transgender people should be able to use the bathroom of their choice. (The real estate magnate has since backtracked.)

“You know the most interesting thing about Donald Trump embracing the PC police is it shows who he really is,” Cruz said. “It shows that Donald Trump is a creature of the elite New York liberals.”

The issue over bathroom laws, which opponents say are enacted to force transgender people to use the bathroom assigned to their birth gender, has proved to be a contentious question for the three remaining Republican presidential candidates, with everyone from Fortune 500 company CEOs and celebrities publicly rebuking the measures as a form of discrimination.

Gov. John Kasich, who is reportedly aligning with Cruz to beat Trump out of winning the party’s nomination outright, has said he would not have signed North Carolina’s bill into law.

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Ted Cruz Launches Anti-Transgender Attack: It’s Like Donald Trump Dressing Up as Hillary Clinton

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The John Kasich-Ted Cruz Alliance Is Already Unraveling

Mother Jones

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On Sunday night, it finally happened. Just before 11 p.m., the campaigns of Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz released matching statements promising to work together to stop Donald Trump from clinching the Republican nomination before the convention. The agreement they struck was that Kasich would stop campaigning in his neighboring state of Indiana, to give Cruz a chance to catch Trump there, and Cruz would stop campaigning in his neighboring state of New Mexico, as well as Oregon, in the hopes of boosting Kasich there. Anti-Trump voices had been calling for candidates to work together for months (Cruz trampled over Marco Rubio’s frantic appeal for help in Florida); the alliance was a sign that reality had set in.

But one thing missing from the agreement was any indication that Kasich and Cruz would actually tell their voters in Indiana, New Mexico, or Oregon, to support the other guy. And sure enough, while eating at a diner in Philadelphia on Monday morning, Kasich decided to pour water on the whole plan. Would the governor, a reporter asked, tell his supporters in Indiana to vote for Cruz? No, Kasich said. “I’ve never told them not to vote for me; they ought to vote for me.” He explained that the deal had nothing to do with strategic voting—it was only about whether to campaign or not campaign. Sounds like a strong alliance!

This is the most passive-aggressive thing Kasich has done since the last time someone tried to make a deal with him:

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The John Kasich-Ted Cruz Alliance Is Already Unraveling

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We Dare You to Not Break Down Watching Prince’s Tribute to Freddie Gray

Mother Jones

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Prince wasn’t just a major pop icon—he was also a staunch supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement. Last May, after weeks of protests in Baltimore that followed the death of Freddie Gray in police custody, he released a tribute song, “Baltimore,” which honored Gray and those demonstrating against police brutality. Prince performed the song live that month at a free show in Baltimore. He also gave a nod to the Black Lives Matter movement while presenting the award for Album of the Year at the 2015 Grammys. “Albums still matter,” he said. “Like books and black lives, albums still matter.”

Today fans are mourning the death of the legendary pop star. This week also marks the one-year anniversary of Freddie Gray’s death. Check out the video for Prince’s tribute to Gray below.

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We Dare You to Not Break Down Watching Prince’s Tribute to Freddie Gray

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The Pay Gap Is Costing Women $500 Billion Per Year

Mother Jones

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In 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, a law meant to close the wage gap between working men and women. But more than 50 years later, women on average earn just 79 cents for every dollar paid to men. And according to a new report by the National Partnership for Women and Families that was released before National Equal Pay Day on Tuesday, the persistent wage gap means women lose a combined $500 billion every year.

“It is unacceptable that the wage gap has persisted, punishing the country’s women and families for decades,” wrote Debra L. Ness, president of the National Partnership, in a press release. “At a time when women’s wages are so critical to the economic well-being of families, the country is counting on lawmakers to work together to advance strong, fair and family friendly workplace policies that would promote equal pay.”

The National Partnership used Census Bureau data to analyze the wages of workers in every state and Washington, DC, and broke down the numbers by state and congressional district, as well as by demographic information. Louisiana has the biggest pay gap (women there are paid 65 cents for every dollar), and DC, with just a 10 cent difference, has the smallest.

The gender pay gap is even larger for women of color. African American women are paid 60 cents for every dollar paid to white men, and Latin American women make even less, at 55 cents for every dollar. All in all, the pay gap amounts to more than $10,800 in lost wages for the average woman each year.

That’s costly for families, many of which rely on mothers as the sole or primary breadwinner. According to the National Partnership, mothers are the heads of households in nearly 40 percent of families. Yet the wage gap for mothers is even larger than for women overall: Women with children are paid 71 cents for every dollar paid to fathers, and single mothers make only 58 cents for every dollar to fathers.

Wage inequality got national attention in March when five high-profile players on the women’s national soccer team filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission accusing the US Soccer Federation of gender-based wage discrimination. The players—who last year brought in their third World Cup gold medal and are projected to rake in $18 million in revenue next year—say they are paid four times less than their male counterparts.

“Simply put, we’re sick of being treated like second-class citizens,” wrote Carli Lloyd, who scored a record-breaking hat trick in the final World Cup game against Japan last year, in a New York Times op-ed on her decision to file the complaint. “It wears on you after a while. And we are done with it.”

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The Pay Gap Is Costing Women $500 Billion Per Year

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400 Non-Violent Protesters Were Arrested on Capitol Hill

Mother Jones

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More than 400 people protesting the role of big money in politics outside the U.S. Capitol were arrested on Monday. The non-violent demonstration, which was organized by the advocacy group Democracy Spring and involved members of over 100 individual groups, was the first of similar rallies planned for this week.

According to police, protesters on Monday were arrested for “unlawful demonstration activity” and charged with “crowding, obstructing, and incommoding.”

The Democracy Spring website claims 3,500 people have pledged to participate in this week’s demonstrations. The April events come on the heels of a 10-day march from Philadelphia to Washington.

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400 Non-Violent Protesters Were Arrested on Capitol Hill

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Lackland Air Force Shooting Leaves At Least Two Dead

Mother Jones

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At least two people are dead following a shooting at Texas’ Lackland Air Force Base on Friday morning that is being investigated as an apparent murder-suicide. Authorities say the shooting occurred at around 8:40 a.m. local time.

“We do feel like the situation is contained and everything is OK at this point,” James Keith, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office said. The area is no longer on lockdown.

This is a breaking news event. We will update when more information becomes available.

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Lackland Air Force Shooting Leaves At Least Two Dead

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San Francisco Just Did Something Really Cool for Working Parents

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, San Francisco became the first US city to require that all new parents—mothers, fathers, and same-sex partners—get fully paid parental leave for six weeks after giving birth or adopting a child. The new law follows the efforts by tech companies in the area, including Amazon, Apple, Google, and Twitter, to offer employees robust parental leave policies in an effort to increase work-life balance.

California is one of only five states that already offers some form of parental leave, but this new city-wide law is one of the most generous in the country. Workers in the Golden State now get six weeks off, but they receive just 55 percent of their pay. New Jersey and Rhode Island have similar laws, and Washington state recently passed a parental leave law that has not taken effect. In March, the New York legislature approved a parental leave policy that will cover 12 weeks of paid time off, though the law will go into effect in 2018 and will initially cover only 50 percent of average pay.

The United States, which guarantees up to 12 weeks of unpaid parental leave, is the only developed country that does not guarantee all new parents paid parental leave. Expectant mothers get 18 weeks of paid leave in Australia, 39 weeks in the UK, and 480 days in Sweden.

For workers in both California and New York, paid parental leave was one of two victories this week. Governors in both states also signed legislation Monday that will increase the minimum wage in each state to $15 an hour, to be phased in over about seven years. The higher wages, which are more than double the federal minimum wage, will affect roughly 60 million Americans. President Obama responded to the wage increases by asking Congress to follow suit.

“Since I first called on Congress to increase the federal minimum wage in 2013, 18 states and more than 40 cities and counties have acted on their own—thanks to the strong leadership of elected officials, businesses, and workers who organized and fought so hard for the economic security families deserve,” he said in a statement. “Now Congress needs to act to raise the federal minimum wage and expand access to paid leave for all Americans.”

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San Francisco Just Did Something Really Cool for Working Parents

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Bernie Sanders Has an Interesting Theory About Why the Republican Party Exists

Mother Jones

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Rachel Maddow posed an interesting question to Sen. Bernie Sanders during their interview on Wednesday: Would he like to see the Republican Party just disappear? Sanders’ answer was also an interesting one. He didn’t take the bait; instead, he offered an alternative theory—the GOP would disappear if corporate media simply told the truth about the party’s agenda.

Sanders didn’t mean that as hyperbole. By his estimate, the Republican Party would drop to single-digit support if it weren’t for negligence by the press:

I think if we had a media in this country that was really prepared to look at what the Republicans actually stood for rather than quoting every absurd remark of Donald Trump, talking about Republican Party, talking about hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks for the top two tenths of 1 percent, cuts to Social Security and Medicare, Medicaid, a party which with few exceptions doesn’t even acknowledge the reality of climate change, let alone do anything about it, a party which is not prepared to stand with women in the fight for pay equity, a party that is not prepared to do anything about a broken criminal justice system or a corrupt campaign finance system, I think, to be honest with you—and I just don’t, you know, say this rhetorically, this is a fringe party. It is a fringe party. Maybe they get 5, 10 percent of the vote.

“The Republican Party today now is a joke,” he continued, “maintained by a media which really does not force them to discuss their issues.”

Sanders was returning to one of his driving issues over the years—a fervent belief that corporate-owned media was steering democracy off a cliff. In 1979, he wrote an essay arguing that TV networks were “using the well-tested Hitlerian principle that people should be treated as morons and bombarded over and over again with the same simple phrases and ideas” to prevent them from thinking critically about the world around them. He hit those same themes (albeit more diplomatically) in his book, Outsider in the House, arguing that TV news coverage was dumbing down America by inundating viewers with superficial coverage of O.J. Simpson instead of “corporate disinvestment in the United States.” Not surprisingly, when Maddow asked Sanders in an interview last fall what his dream job might be, he quickly blurted out, “president of CNN.”

A corporate media that obsesses over the issues Sanders obsesses over would certainly have some impact on the political landscape. But Sanders’ dismissal of the Republican base seems to miss a far more obvious takeaway. People vote for Republicans not because they’ve been brainwashed, but because they actually like what Republicans like Trump are proposing.

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Bernie Sanders Has an Interesting Theory About Why the Republican Party Exists

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Donald Trump Abandons Pledge to Support GOP Nominee

Mother Jones

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After previously pledging to support whoever becomes the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump said Tuesday that promise no longer stands. Instead, Trump said during CNN’s town hall in Wisconsin, “we’ll see who it is.”

Trump repeatedly noted in Tuesday that he does not need the support of Ted Cruz or of any of the GOP contenders who have dropped out, including Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, saying he doesn’t want to make anyone “uncomfortable.”

“I don’t want his support, I don’t need his support, I want him to be comfortable,” Trump said of Cruz.

Cruz, who appeared first during the town hall, was also asked whether he would support Trump if he is the nominee. Cruz refused to explicitly answer the question.

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Donald Trump Abandons Pledge to Support GOP Nominee

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