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Bernie Sanders Duke Appearance Postponed

A “looming budget vote” is keeping Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders from a scheduled appearance at Duke Chapel tomorrow.

Sanders, the former presidential candidate, was supposed to partake in a discussion with the Rev. William Barber as part of Duke’s 2018 Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration and Duke Chapel’s Bridge Panel series. Barber is the former president of the North Carolina NAACP and is now national co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, a revival of King’s work.

All the free tickets for the event ,”The Enduring Challenge of a Moral Economy: 50 years After Dr. King Challenged Racism, Poverty and Militarism,” had already been snapped up.

According to the university, the event “is being postponed because of the likelihood of votes in the United States Senate that will require Sen. Sanders to remain in Washington. Effort are underway to reschedule the event.” All tickets will be honored at the rescheduled event.

Bernie Sanders Bursts Into Laughter Over GOP Claim That Dems Don’t Care About CHIP

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders laughed off Republican efforts to paint the Democrats as the party that doesn’t care about providing health insurance to kids if the short-term GOP spending bill doesn’t pass the Senate in the next 24 hours.

The GOP is using CHIP as a political pawn in their effort to pass a short-term budget to keep the government open, and Democrats aren’t likely to take the bait.

Sanders said the American people will not be fooled into thinking that the Dems are to blame if the government shuts down.

As Trump Denies Science, ‘Terrifying Trend’ Continues as 2017 Among Hottest Years Ever Recorded

Climate action groups urged action and pointed to the Trump administration’s blatant disregard for human activity’s impact on the planet, as two government agencies announced Thursday that 2017 was among the hottest year on record.

NASA’s data revealed that the year was the second-warmest year since scientists began compiling such data, while the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found that it was the third-warmest.

“The latest reports from NASA and NOAA show that not only was 2017 one of the warmest years on record, but 17 of the 18 hottest years since preindustrial times have occurred since 2001,” said Rachel Licker of the Union of Concerned Scientists, “It’s startling to know there are individuals on the brink of adulthood who have spent their entire lives in a climate that, largely due to human activity, is vastly different from the one their parents experienced growing up.”

Both agencies’ findings support scientists’ claim that the past four years have been the hottest four on record.

New York City homeless shelter faces resistance from ‘Billionaires’ Row’

A homeless man in Manhattan. The proposed shelter would provide housing for 150 people.

A plan by New York mayor Bill de Blasio to house the city’s rising homeless population is facing opposition over a shelter that backs on to a super-luxury residential skyscraper on “Billionaires’ Row”.

According to the city’s department of homeless services, the former Park Savoy Hotel at 158 W 58th St in midtown Manhattan will house 150 homeless people. It is scheduled to open in March, and backs on to One57, a 75-storey skyscraper on 57th Street.

But the plan, part of a program to create 90 new shelters across all five New York boroughs that de Blasio says will be “in every kind of neighborhood”, is opposed by local residents who accuse the recently re-elected major of playing political games.

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De Blasio has previously said the city’s “Turning the Tide on Homelessness” program would include shelters in every neighborhood, as the city moved to tackle “a new kind of homelessness that is driven by years of wages not keeping up with the cost of most of the housing in our city”.

Recent figures showed more homeless people live in New York City than in any other city in the country. The city estimates that the population has been growing for 35 years, with the population now standing at 76,501 on any given night, according to the US housing department.

New office will help medical providers deny treatment on religious grounds

The Trump administration is creating an office to protect the religious rights of medical providers, including those who may oppose abortion or transgender rights, in a decision that is likely to be a lightning rod for controversy.

The new “division for conscience and religious freedom” in the US Health and Human Services Agency will defend healthcare workers who, on religious grounds, refuse to treat patients or take part in procedures. The division will be part of the agency’s Office for Civil Rights.

“Laws protecting religious freedom and conscience rights are just empty words on paper if they aren’t enforced,” said Roger Severino, the director of the health department’s civil rights division, and an outspoken opponent of abortion, same-sex marriage and anti-discrimination protections for transgender people.

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Already, civil rights campaigners have raised alarms about the new division.

“Religious liberty doesn’t include a right to be exempt from laws protecting our health or barring discrimination,” said Louise Melling, deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union. “It doesn’t mean a right to refuse to transport a patient in need because she had an abortion. It doesn’t mean refusing care to a patient because she is transgender.

“Medical standards, not religious belief, should guide medical care,” said Melling.

Groundbreaking Study Maps ‘Insidious’ (and Alarmingly Successful) Strategy of Anti-Choice Movement

A new report released Thursday details how American anti-choice activists have used their “insidious power” to chip away at reproductive rights, infiltrate the Trump administration, and advance “their fringe agenda” nationwide.

The Insidious Power of the Anti-Choice Movement (pdf), published by NARAL Pro-Choice America, outlines how “the anti-choice movement has spent decades building the political infrastructure they need to attack abortion access from all sides.”

The report shows how those opposed to a woman’s right to choose have used judicial and political influence, fake health centers, protesters, and misinformation to impact policies and politics.

Currently, it warns, “anti-choice activists sit in influential roles across the Trump administration, have unprecedented influence over judicial nominations, and are introducing the most extreme anti-choice legislation ever seen in Congress.”

Acknowledging that the report is the first of its kind, NARAL Pro-Choice America president Ilyse Hogue explained that it “documents the inner workings of the anti-choice movement in a way that far exceeds what people currently understand about its agenda,” which “is critical to understanding how the movement’s insidious and out of step agenda is becoming reality.”

Chelsea Manning: ‘I’m a very different person than I was 10 years ago’

A few weeks after Chelsea Manning was released from military prison, having served seven years of a 35-year sentence for leaking official secrets, she came to a terrible realization. “I was out, but I saw that while I had been away, the prison had moved out here as well. That’s how I feel. I feel like I haven’t left, we’ve just exchanged prisons.”

That grim assessment, that even in freedom she was trapped within a prison, dawned on her as she walking one day through the streets of Brooklyn. The New York borough has a reputation for hipster cool, but she was shocked to see so many heavily armed police.

“There was this immense police presence and they were militarized. I’ve been part of an occupying force in a foreign country, and I know what that looks like. That’s what I saw in Brooklyn – an occupying force.”

Her powerful fear about what America has become in the seven years of incarceration, combined with an equally powerful determination to do something about it lies behind Chelsea Manning’s announcement this week that she is running for a US Senate seat.

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In the first interview Manning, 30, has given since she posted details of her Senate bid on Twitter, the Guardian asked her whether she drew a straight line between becoming one of the most famous – and most severely punished – official leakers in US history and her political ambitions today. “It’s certainly not a direct line,” she said. “It’s windy, a lot has happened. I’m a very different person than I was 10 years ago.”

But there are certainly parallels between the two events. It was an act of extreme courage – some would, and did, say folly – to download and transmit war logs, embassy cables, videos and Guantanamo files to WikiLeaks. It is an act of extreme courage – some might, and are, saying folly – to run for the US Senate.

A Year Ago, They Marched. Now a Record Number of Women Are Running for Office

Erin Zwiener returned to Texas to settle down. At 32, she had published a children’s book, won Jeopardy! three times and ridden roughly 1,400 miles from the Mexico border up the Continental Divide on a mule. In 2016, she moved with her husband to a small house in a rural enclave southwest of Austin with simpler plans: write another book, tend her horses, paint her new home blue.

One day last February, she changed those plans. Zwiener was surfing Facebook after finalizing color samples for her living room–sea foam, navy, cornflower–when she saw a picture of her state representative, Jason Isaac, smiling at a local chamber of commerce gala. “Glad you’re having a good time,” she commented. “What’s your position on SB4?” After a tense back-and-forth about the Lone Star State’s controversial immigration law, Isaac accused her of “trolling” and blocked her. That’s when she decided to run for his seat. Zwiener never got around to painting her living room. She’s trying to turn her Texas district blue instead.

Zwiener is part of a grassroots movement that could change America. Call it payback, call it a revolution, call it the Pink Wave, inspired by marchers in their magenta hats, and the activism that followed. There is an unprecedented surge of first-time female candidates, overwhelmingly Democratic, running for offices big and small, from the U.S. Senate and state legislatures to local school boards. At least 79 women are exploring runs for governor in 2018, potentially doubling a record for female candidates set in 1994, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

‘Outrage, plus a plan’: how the Women’s March is shaking Washington from within

A year ago, more than 1 million people took to the streets in cities around the US wearing pink knit “pussy hats” and waving wry placards, in an extraordinary display of dissent against a newly vested president. Then, after the rousing success of the march, organizers were left with the inevitable question: what next?

On Sunday, the first anniversary of the march, the organizers will head to Las Vegas to launch “Power to the Polls”, a national voter registration and mobilization tour that will target swing states ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.

“We started 2017 with perpetual outrage and now we are at the moment when we have perpetual outrage, plus a plan in place for 2018,” Linda Sarsour, a co-chair of the Women’s March, told the Guardian.

Meanwhile, women and supporters of the liberal movement around the world will return to the streets this weekend in opposition to Donald Trump. The largest protests are expected in Washington, New York and Los Angeles.

Sarsour said reclaiming liberal majorities in the House and Senate is the best – and only – way to stop Trump’s agenda. The Women’s March intends to endorse female and progressive candidates in 2018, and to partner with local organizations to register new voters and increase engagement.

“One year ago, we had millions of people marching in the streets of the streets,” she said. “The idea is that we march the same people and their families and their friends to the polls in 2018.”

Amazon Short-List Proves Something “Deeply Wrong” With America’s Race-to-the-Bottom Economy: Ellison

Critics of Amazon’s “race to the bottom” as it searches for a home for its second headquarters said on Thursday that the company’s newly released shortlist of 20 cities highlights a crisis in the U.S. economy—one exemplified by the huge incentives offered to Amazon in the bidding war among potential hosts.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) was among those slamming Amazon and the state and local governments willing to give billions of dollars in tax breaks to the extremely wealthy multinational company.

Tax breaks to Amazon promised by New Jersey: $7 billion. Tax breaks promised by Illinois: $2 billion. Something is deeply wrong with our economy & democracy when local governments offer up their tax base to a corporation worth over $500 billion. https://t.co/csnETiF5zT

— Keith Ellison (@keithellison) January 18, 2018

In addition to the incentives mentioned by Ellison, Boston offered $75 million to provide affordable housing to Amazon employees, while Maryland’s offer exceeded $5 billion.

House Republicans pass spending bill to avoid shutdown, prospects dim in Senate

House Republicans overcame a major obstacle late Thursday when the most conservative wing of the conference announced its support for the short-term spending measure to avoid a government shutdown. The measure passed the House on a mostly party line 230-197 vote.

But the fate of the measure is uncertain in the Senate where at least six Republican senators have come out against the measure and Democrats are confident they can block it from advancing.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has proposed a shorter stop-gap measure, lasting just four or five days, to be used as a hard deadline on an agreement on government spending levels and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program known as DACA.

In an animated and rare late-night debate on the Senate floor, Schumer and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sparred over the legislation, which would extend government funding for four weeks until Feb. 16th. The measure would also fund the low-income children’s health insurance program, or CHIP, for six years and delay some taxes that are key sources of funding for Obamacare.

McConnell insisted that it’s unreasonable to demand an agreement on immigrants when there is no immediate deadline.

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But Schumer argued in response that the Senate could reach agreement if an urgent deadline was set.

“Passing a short term continuing resolution ensures that both sides remain at the table and can quickly reach a deal that funds our military, our domestic priorities like the fight against opioids, protects Dreamers, funds health care and aid for those harmed by recent disasters,” Schumer said.

‘I just don’t like Muslim people’: Trump appointee resigns after racist, sexist and anti-gay remarks

An appointee of President Trump has resigned from the federal agency that runs AmeriCorps and other service programs after remarks he made disparaging blacks, Muslims, gays, women, veterans with PTSD and undocumented immigrants surfaced in the news media.

Carl Higbie lasted less than six months as the chief of external affairs in the Corporation for National and Community Service.

Higbie’s Thursday afternoon resignation, which was prompted after CNN unearthed the comments he made, comes amid increased scrutiny of the president’s appointees for racist or anti-Muslim statements made in the past.

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According to the reporting and audio clips published by CNN on Thursday, Higbie had a lengthy track record of making strongly racist and anti-Muslim statements before his appointment.

In 2013, he spoke about giving away free firewood while working in Virginia Beach on “Sound of Freedom,” an Internet talk radio show that he hosted, according to CNN. Higbie said that black women think “breeding is a form of government employment,” that blacks were “lax of morality,” and that culture “is breeding this welfare and the high percentage of people on welfare in the black race.”