Thank You, Congressman Ribble, From Nine Million Women And Their Babies
Guest author Lon Newman, is president Wisconsin’s Family Planning Health Services, which administers the federally funded WIC program in Wisconsin, a nutrition program that helps families feed their children healthy foods. Â
WIC provides nutrition information, healthy foods, and help accessing health care to middle and low-income families. The program is available to families with pregnant women, new mothers (breastfeeding and non-breastfeeding), and children under the age of five.
A prolonged government shutdown would have close down WIC, leaving the women and children who rely on the program without fresh milk and nutritious food.
Here is an insider’s view on what transpired when the clinic director turned to two of the state’s Republican congressmen for help:
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Congressman Reid Ribble (R-Sherwood) voted to end the government shutdown and has been criticized for breaking with the tea party activists. He said his vote was for reason over emotion and that it was time to reopen the government.
The chair and vice-chair of my agency, as well as our director of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) met with our own congressman, Sean Duffy (R-Weston), Monday, October 14th. We explained to the congressman’s staff that in the 7th congressional district there are 15,000 WIC mothers and babies whose health was being jeopardized by the shutdown. He knew that the WIC program protects half of all newborns from malnutrition and starvation and that approximately 24% of the WIC newborns in our area are born prematurely –putting them at even higher risk without special formula that can cost $300-600/month for a young low-income family.
But unlike Congressman Ribble, (right) who based his vote on information and understanding, Congressman Duffy put himself on a national stage to make arguments for the shutdown based on misinformation and misunderstanding. For example, Representative Duffy argued that President Obama and employees of the administration and Congress should be “On Obamacare,†even though they already have employer-paid insurance and do not need to shop for other insurance coverage.
Congressman Duffy also loudly made a weak argument for “equal treatment under the law,†suggesting that because corporations have been given a delay on penalties for not offering health insurance, individuals should be also be given a delay. His ‘equal treatment’ rationale overlooks adverse selection and fundamental realities:
- Corporations are not denied health care due to preexisting conditions.
- Corporations do not have chronic diabetes or heart disease.
- Corporations do not have to choose between eating and taking their medications.
- Corporations do not show up in emergency rooms.
Simply put, corporations are NOT people.
Congressman Sean Duffy’s vote, based on weak reasoning and misinformation, can’t even be justified on partisan grounds. After the Speaker put the vote on the floor of the House floor, bringing the shutdown to an end, Congressman Duffy (right) voted against the Republican Speaker to continue the shutdown.
Sean Duffy, by his words and by his vote, has renounced his claim to care for the unborn, for pregnant women, for babies, for infants, or for toddlers.
The congressman is welcome to say he is anti-abortion. He may say he is opposed to contraception. But when he was given a clear choice between feeding pregnant women and their children and dancing with the tea party, he danced.
Thank you, Congressman Ribble, from nine million women and their babies.
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Lon Newman is President of the Family Planning Health Services, Inc, and the Women’s Health Network of WI, Inc.
Family Planning Health Services, Inc. (FPHS) provides high quality, affordable and accessible reproductive and nutritional services to women and their families. FPHS serves women and their partners in need by providing low-cost contraceptive care. They also provide young people with confidential reproductive health care as well as sexuality education for prevention and treatment.
FPHS helps pregnant women in need of prenatal care and nutritional education, and their young children who need nutritional food supplements. They promote ideals that knowledge of sexuality is preferable to ignorance and that prevention and health promotion are the means of achieving our purposes for people of all ages and incomes. The FPHS mission embraces an ongoing commitment to gender equity, community health promotion and community progress.
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Reps Ribble and Duffy photos from Facebook
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
