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The GOP War On Women Demands A New Women’s Rights Agenda for America

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“Feminism” with a capital “F” is making a roaring comeback, thanks to the Republican War On Women: misogyny on steroids. It’s time we demand a new women’s rights agenda.

As a young girl growing up in basketball-crazed Indiana, I used to go to bed often crying myself to sleep as I was explicitly prohibited from playing on my school’s basketball team because I was a girl.

This was an enraging situation, indeed intolerable and I took action to level the playing field in a number of creative ways: I challenged every boy in the neighborhood — among them were Rocky Hollingsworth, Shorty Miller and John Patty ( real names) – to a game of “21.” I beat them methodically, recording their humiliating defeats for posterity in my first “little black book” of life.

It was 1966 — only two years after the Civil Rights Act became law and included sex as a protected class of Americans — when I ceremoniously confronted Mr. Willen, the principal of Lincoln Junior High School in Indianapolis, by thrusting my little black book into his face as prima facie evidence, arguing that if I can beat the boys, why can’t I join them too and proudly wear the uniform of the Lincoln Junior High basketball team? Why can’t I too feel the thrill of sinking a 15-foot jump shot from the corner before a cheering crowd?

In retrospect, the Willen encounter turned out to be my first lobbying experience (which has become a life-long avocation) and he compromised by inviting me to participate in an intramural sports wrestling program, an odious prospect I imagine he calculated to offer, thinking I would be dissuaded from pursuing my “ridiculous” goal of playing on the basketball team. But I leapt at the chance to demonstrate that I could play with the big boys, although it took me on a temporarily circuitous path away from my immediate goal of playing basketball.

My experience with Willen and the neighborhood boys taught me very early in life that girls were always a step down and you had to fight like hell to push against the invisible wall of sex discrimination. I experienced the searing taunts of “why do you want to be a boy?” and felt the loud silence of disapproval from my tongue-clucking teachers and classmates, who were horrified at my behavior and physically turned away from me because I sought to dribble and shoot a ball!

I did not ultimately benefit from the passage of the Title IX law that passed in 1972, the year I graduated from high school, but I have witnessed the thrilling transformation of women’s sports in America that has given girls the experience of physical discipline along with the special bonding with women teammates while playing for high school and NCAA titles and competing for Olympic medals in a multitude of sports.

There has been push back by the right wing on Title IX too, and who is surprised by it? Those of us who are the women of the “Baby Boomer” generation, who knew life before Title IX and were denied graduate school education via quotas which admitted minuscule numbers of women; who dodged and managed unplanned pregnancies before the Supreme Court decided in Griswold v. Connecticut which provided that women possessed the constitutionally-protected right of privacy to seek birth control for themselves and their families in 1965; and who were forced to seek illegal, back-alley abortions, while many died from botched abortions, before Roe v. Wade was decided by the Supreme Court in 1973, agreeing that women had the right to safe, legal abortions in the first trimester of pregnancy.

 


Consequently, these overt, sustained and outrageous attacks by elected officials of the Republican Party and their supporters—in Congress and state legislatures–on these hard fought gains is enraging and frightening for women’s rights advocates and has all the tell-tale signs of radicalizing a new generation of women, and some men, waking them up to the reality that misogyny has been openly tolerated by American society and its culture, writ large for a very long time.


 

A third, significant advance was achieved in 1994 when the domestic violence movement achieved passage of the first Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) that was made federal law, marking 30 years of sustained advances on behalf of American women. Now Republicans in the Senate are blocking a floor vote on reauthorization of VAWA that extends protections to same-sex couples and illegal immigrants who may have been victimized by violent partners.

One of the first setbacks to women’s access to legal abortion was dealt by President Reagan in 1983 when he ordered military hospitals to no longer offer abortions to women service members or family members, effectively denying a constitutionally protected medical procedure to women who are serving our country, arguably putting them at great risk if forced to seek an illegal abortion, because medical privacy in the military is more permeable with real possibilities of misconduct charges for pregnancy out of wedlock, as an example.

These legal advances have taken decades to manifest which now reflect equal access for women in education, who have higher enrollments in colleges than men and have achieved parity in professional and graduate schools, save hard sciences; had achieved women’s access to birth control and safe, legal abortion procedures that was private and negotiated between a woman and her doctor and advances that have provided some protection and legal advocacy, albeit imperfectly, to women and some men, who are survivors of domestic violence.

Consequently, the overt, sustained and outrageous attacks by elected officials of the Republican Party and their supporters—in Congress and in state legislatures–on these hard fought gains is enraging and frightening for women’s rights advocates and has all the tell-tale signs of radicalizing a new generation of women, and some men, waking them up to the reality that misogyny has been openly tolerated by American society and its culture, writ large for a very long time.

“Feminism” with a capital “F” is making a roaring comeback, thanks to Republican misogyny on steroids.

Right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh’s over-the-top attacks on Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown University law student, labeling her a “slut” and “prostitute” for her advocacy before Congress calling for universities, including religion-affiliated ones, to provide insurance covered contraceptives for women’s health, may mark a turning point in American social and cultural history.

Limbaugh’s sustained efforts to paint Fluke as a modern-day Hester Prynne, the fictionally created “Scarlet Letter” adulteress of the 18th century, backfired against him, causing a firestorm and uprising by women and their supporters who effectively pressured more than 100 advertisers to drop Limbaugh’s show in less than two weeks. This could be a watershed moment in America, which has marked a momentary wholesale rejection of misogyny and sexism in the Fluke example. I hope it is such and time will tell if my supposition is true.

But a focus on Republican transgressions does not give Democrats a pass, which are not exempt from infection by this disease and should not get a pass when it is warranted. Bill Maher, a so-called comedian who appears regularly on HBO, customarily refers to women as “twats” and c_ _nts, contributed $1 million to the Obama Super PAC.  Maher waded into the Limbaugh firestorm by defending his lame apology to Fluke. Since then, David Axelrod, the Obama campaign manager who was scheduled to appear on Maher’s show has since indicated he will not be appearing for the time being. Nonetheless, the Obama Super PAC has accepted the money and does not appear it will be returning it anytime soon.

 


Women still earn less than men in America–making 78 percent of what men earn on average, according to the 2010 census.

The Senate has yet to ratify the international Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). We share this sad exception with countries such as Iran, Somalia and Sudan (and two small Pacific island countries).

The United States also has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the Western Hemisphere and the only modern democracy that has not ratified CEDAW.

The U.S. is ranked 78th by the International Parliamentary Union (tied with Turkmenistan) in women’s elected representation in Congress—16.8 percent are women (73) in the House of Representatives and 17 percent (17) in the Senate.

We are one of the lowest ranking Western democracies in the world with respect to women holding elected office.


 

With every challenge, there is opportunity and in this moment, we need to fight like hell. The state-by-state efforts to roll back access to legal abortion and now incredulously, these new obstructions to birth control medication too, reminds of the virulent attacks against the LGBT community who has been forced to fight these vigilantes similarly in a protracted battle to protect gains or fend off anti-homosexual measures on a state-by-state basis for years.

These tactics are not new strategies, but in the moment, there is an energized new coterie of right wing legislators who are initiating these rollbacks from Arizona to Pennsylvania. They must be stopped and turned out of office now and should be replaced with pro-choice women and men, who are across the board the most progressive lawmakers in support of policies and programs that uplift “others” in our society– those who have been left out of the American political compact–like the LGBT community, for example. Now more than ever, we need to elect many more pro-choice women to elective office.  It’s as if the Republic hangs in the balance amid this craziness that feels run-amuk and out-of-control. We don’t have another second to waste.

So in this election year it’s time to pull out our little black books, tell our stories and bring to bear not only the law, but also our votes. Civil disobedience actions have to be put on the table as a strategy that goes into the mix. It was effectively used in Virginia recently when demonstrators forced Gov. Bob McConnell to withdraw his support of state-sanctioned rape that would have required women to undergo a transvaginal sonogram prior to exercising their legal right to an abortion.

Grounding out a strategic women’s rights agenda in America must be sought with elevated efforts led by the president of the United States in view of these recalcitrant and calculated attacks on women’s lives and their bodies.

No one could be more proud of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s paradigm-shifting women and girls global agenda-setting at the State Department intended for the world, beyond America’s shores. And even though then-First Lady Hillary Clinton electrified the world’s women in Beijing in 1995 when she uttered “women’s rights are human rights and human rights are women’s rights,” America does not measure up to international human rights standards when it comes to women’s rights, where we decidedly lag behind Northern Europe and a number of Western European countries, in everything from political elected leadership to family medical leave and child care support.

Women still earn less than men in America–making 78 percent of what men earn on average, according to the 2010 census. And although women live longer than men in America, they are charged more for health insurance, which is to be remedied within two years by the Obama healthcare act. The Senate has yet to ratify the international Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). We share this sad exception with countries such as Iran, Somalia and Sudan (and two small Pacific island countries). The United States also has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the Western Hemisphere and the only modern democracy that has not ratified CEDAW.

The U.S. is ranked 78th by the International Parliamentary Union (tied with Turkmenistan) in women’s elected representation in Congress—16.8 percent are women (73) in the House of Representation and  17 percent (17) in the Senate.  We are one of the lowest ranking Western democracies in the world with respect to women holding elected office.

All of us–women, people of color and LGBT people are intertwined in this struggle–those of us who seek to tangibly manifest the pursuit of happiness; the promise of America’s Declaration of Independence is to seek civil rights and human rights predicated on  America’s political compact that it has carried out during the past 235 years–to bend toward freedom and  the arc of justice and to flourish in all our diversity–to this we strain and struggle toward and shall not yield.

Images by DonkeyHotey: Aspirin, Chastity Belt

Tanya L. Domi is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University who teaches about human rights in Eurasia and is a Harriman Institute affiliated faculty member. Prior to teaching at Columbia, Domi worked internationally for more than a decade on issues related to democratic transitional development, including political and media development, human rights, gender issues, sex trafficking, and media freedom.

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White House Mum After Classified Info Reportedly Appears on Musk’s DOGE Website

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The White House has yet to comment after classified information reportedly appeared on Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency website — information related to one of the federal government intelligence agencies his SpaceX company does business with.

“Elon Musk’s team at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency has posted classified information about the size and staff of a U.S. intelligence agency on its new website, raising bigger concerns about where Musk’s programmers got this information and what they are doing with it,” HuffPost reported Friday afternoon.

“DOGE’s database provides details on the National Reconnaissance Office, the federal agency that designs, builds and maintains U.S. intelligence satellites. Not only are NRO’s budgets and head counts classified, but the prospect of Musk’s tech team meddling in sensitive personnel information is setting off alarms for some in the intelligence community,” HuffPost explained. “Musk can’t claim he wasn’t aware that the National Reconnaissance Office is one of the nation’s intelligence agencies. His company, SpaceX, has a $1.8 billion contract with NRO to build hundreds of spy satellites.”

READ MORE: ‘United States of Extortion’: New Trump Ukraine ‘Shakedown’ Called ‘Cheap Mafia’ Move

A Senate staffer who works on intelligence matters told HuffPost that DOGE sharing this information “is absolutely a problem under the current intelligence standards.”

“These 25-year-old programmers, I don’t think they have enough experience to know what they don’t know,” the aide said. “Really, the question is: Where did they get this information and what are they doing with it?”

HuffPost also reported that a White House spokesperson “did not respond to a request for comment on where DOGE workers got this information, why they are sharing it publicly and if the president is concerned about DOGE workers accessing sensitive data.”

National security and civil liberties journalist Marcy Wheeler directed her ire at U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), the Chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

“I’m curious if you’re at all alarmed that one of USG’s Satellite Contractors, Elon Musk, just leaked details about satellite intelligence agency NRO on his DOGE site?” she asked in a social media post.

READ MORE: ‘Disgust’: Vance’s ‘Disturbing’ Speech Alarms Europe, Sparks Foreign Policy Fears

 

Image via Reuters

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‘United States of Extortion’: New Trump Ukraine ‘Shakedown’ Called ‘Cheap Mafia’ Move

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Just weeks into his second term, President Donald Trump’s administration is not only grappling with a growing colossus of self-inflicted crises, but is now igniting international tensions as well. The administration is pressuring Ukraine to relinquish rights to half of its valuable precious metals—just as Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin prepare to begin negotiations to end Russia’s illegal war against Ukraine.

“Multiple lawmakers here in Munich told me the U.S. Congressional delegation presented Zelensky with a piece of paper they wanted him to sign which would grant the U.S. rights to 50% of Ukraine’s future mineral reserves,” Washington Post foreign policy and national security columnist Josh Rogin reported Friday afternoon from the Munich Security Conference.

“Zelensky politely declined to sign it,” he added.

Trump has made it clear he expects Ukraine to hand over the rights to its rare earth minerals, which are extremely valuable.

READ MORE: ‘Disgust’: Vance’s ‘Disturbing’ Speech Alarms Europe, Sparks Foreign Policy Fears

“Rare earths are a group of 17 metals used to make magnets that turn power into motion for electric vehicles, cell phones, missile systems, and other electronics. There are no viable substitutes,” Reuters reported. The news outlet also noted that Trump “said on Monday he wants Ukraine to supply the United States with rare earth minerals as a form of payment for financially supporting the country’s war efforts against Russia.”

“We’re telling Ukraine they have very valuable rare earths,” Trump said. “We’re looking to do a deal with Ukraine where they’re going to secure what we’re giving them with their rare earths and other things.”

Trump’s expected haul: “close to $300 billion,” or more.

“We are going to have all this money in there, and I say I want it back. And I told them that I want the equivalent, like $500 billion worth of rare earth,” Trump said Monday, CBS News reported. “They have essentially agreed to do that, so at least we don’t feel stupid.”

The New York Times on Wednesday suggested Kyiv may be willing to play ball with the billionaire businessman.

“President Trump says he wants to make a deal for minerals from Ukraine in exchange for aid. That followed a long effort by Ukrainian officials to appeal to Mr. Trump’s transactional nature.”

Earlier this week Bloomberg reported on Trump’s call with Putin, saying, “European leaders, who were broadly aligned with Washington under Biden, were stunned to learn of the call and some said it appeared to signal that Trump was selling out Ukraine.”

“Trump is skeptical of providing more aid,” Bloomberg continued, “and if he does then he wants the US to be compensated – perhaps in the form of access to Ukraine’s mineral wealth. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was in Kyiv today to work on that part of the deal.”

READ MORE: ‘Brazen Criminality’: Allegations of ‘Quid Pro Quo’ Fly After Border Czar’s Admission

Garry Kasparov, the internationally famous Russian chess grandmaster and now vice president of the World Liberty Congress, likened Trump’s demand to that of a Mafia don.

“Trump wants to give Russia something for nothing and expects Ukraine to give America something for nothing. Cheap mafia behavior,” he charged.

Olga Lautman, a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) and researcher of organized crime and intelligence operations in Russia and Ukraine, deemed the move “extortion.”

“This extortion by the [Trump] regime is outrageous. Europe needs to step up asap and help Ukraine,” she urged.

Professor Roland Paris, director of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, doubly mocked the administration: “The United States of Extortion. (Can Google update its maps with this new name?)”

The Atlantic’s David Frum, a Bush 43 speechwriter, declared it, “Gangsterism.”

Jay Nordlinger, a senior editor for the right wing National Review, blasted the administration:

“The United States ought to back Ukraine because it is the right thing to do, morally, and, above all, because it is in the hard U.S. interest to do so. To shake down a country that is struggling for its very existence is, to my sense, repulsive.”

The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser called it simply, “A shakedown.”

READ MORE: Trump Admin Orders Immediate Mass Firing of Some Federal Workers — 200,000 Possibly at Risk

 

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‘Disgust’: Vance’s ‘Disturbing’ Speech Alarms Europe, Sparks Foreign Policy Fears

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JD Vance’s speech on Friday at the Munich Security Conference deeply offended European leaders, drawing widespread criticism and fueling serious concerns about President Donald Trump’s foreign policy.

“Hard to convey the level of disgust with and rejection of Vance remarks,” explained veteran foreign policy journalist Laura Rozen, “which included lecturing Europe to be more open to Musk promoting the German far right party and which ignored Russia.”

Vance’s speech, Rozen continued, “was not about Europe doing more to protect European security. It was telling them how to be internally—more open to right wing/ hate speech/techno oligarchd/Russian election interference.”

“Truly disturbing,” she concluded.

READ MORE: ‘Brazen Criminality’: Allegations of ‘Quid Pro Quo’ Fly After Border Czar’s Admission

The New York Times did not hold back. Its headline reads: “Vance Tells Europeans to Stop Shunning Parties Deemed Extreme.”

A member of France’s armed services committee “could not believe [Vance] did not mention Ukraine/Russia,” Rozen noted, while adding that “the German defense minister was the most forceful in expressing his rejection.”

Indeed, Tom Nutall, the Berlin Bureau Chief for The Economist wrote: Blistering response by Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defence minister, to JD Vance’s speech.”

Nutall quoted the minister as saying: “Democracy does not mean that a vociferous minority can decide what truth is…democracy must be able to defend itself against extremists.” 

Pistorius continued, describing himself as “a staunch believer in the Transatlantic Alliance,” and “a staunch ally and friend of America,” Real Clear Politics reported.

“The American dream is something that has always fascinated me and influenced me, and this is why I cannot just ignore what we heard before, I cannot not comment on the speech we heard by the U.S. Vice President.”

“This democracy … was just called into question by the U.S. vice president. And not just the German democracy, but Europe as a whole, he spoke of the annulment of democracy and if I understood him correctly, he compares the condition of Europe with the condition that prevails in some authoritarian regimes.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is not acceptable. That’s it. This is not acceptable,” Pistorius declared.

Damian Boeselager, a member of the European Parliament, wrote: “JD Vance speech at the MSC was a disgrace. Telling Europe how to run a democracy and free speech while centralizing all power in the hands of a couple of power hungry people is a horrible cynicism.”

READ MORE: Trump Admin Orders Immediate Mass Firing of Some Federal Workers — 200,000 Possibly at Risk

The Guardian reported that the European Union’s “foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, reacting to US vice president JD Vance’s speech, said it felt like Washington was ‘trying to pick a fight’ with Europe.”

Other experts also agreed with Rozen’s remarks.

“This is definitely how most foreign policy elites in Europe interpreted US Vice President Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference,” wrote Dr. Leslie Vinjamuri, director of the U.S. and Americas program at the London-based think tank Chatham House, and a professor of international relations at the University of London.

“Exactly this. Another disturbing glimpse into MAGA thinking,” added David Hartwell, a former UK Ministry of Defense intelligence analyst.

“Shocking hypocrisy from Vance – lecturing Europe on democracy when he serves as vice president to a man who attempted a coup in the US,” wrote Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator for the Financial Times.

“It does not appear,” noted former Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath, who has a Master of Arts in international and global security studies from Johns Hopkins University, “that Vance, Hegseth or Trump on the same page when it comes to Europe, Ukraine, Russia. No coherent message. The world has no idea what American foreign policy is right now. I don’t think [the Trump] team knows either.”

Watch a portion of Vance’s remarks below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Corruption’ Claims Fly Over Musk’s Modi Meeting as Trump Shrugs: ‘I Don’t Know’

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