ALEXANDER WARD, JOE GOULD and CONNOR O’BRIEN, - Politico
Stephan:
How far are the Republicans willing to go to control women? Senator Tommy Tuberville, who I personally think is a classic rather dim christofascist, is causing damage to the entire military over the military’s paying pregnant women in the military stationed in Red states to go to Blue states if they want to have an abortion. If you are a senior officer who has spent the last 20 years of your life in service, and you have been selected for promotion and a new assignment, that is a major event in your life, and significant for your service as well. Tuberville is just screwing all of that up. It’s insane.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville received a vote on a related push to scrap rules issued by the Department of Veterans Affairs to expand abortion access. Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP
Sen. Tommy Tuberville is rejecting off-ramps and advice from more senior Republicans to end his hold on military promotions, even as Pentagon officials step up their warnings that the maneuver is compromising America’s security.
The Alabama lawmaker’s colleagues have approached him in recent weeks to broker a compromise that would allow roughly 250 senior officer promotions to clear the Senate. The hold threatens to ensnare President Joe Biden’s pick for Joint Chiefs chair, Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown, along with others preparing to rotate in as senior military leaders prepare to retire.
Tuberville first imposed the blocks in protest of the Defense Department’s new policy to pay travel costs for service members seeking abortion or other reproductive care. He claims that decision from late last year cuts against the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, and vows to maintain the holds until Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin changes course or the senator […]
The christofascist cartel that controls the Supreme Court has done almost immeasurable damage to the country, both its people and its land. I did an earlier story on this court decision. and here is a good second look at what is happening. The Senate has to do something about this court, or the damage will continue.
The US Supreme Court is seen in Washington DC Credit: Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty/ North America / TNS
States’ to-do lists just got a little longer: Decide how — or whether — to oversee building, planting and water quality in some wetland areas.
Last month, a U.S. Supreme Court decision struck down federal protections for wetlands covering tens of millions of acres across the country, leaving no regulation of those areas in nearly half the states.
The court’s narrowing of the Clean Water Act has left some states scrambling to enact their own safeguards and others questioning whether their regulators can handle the workload without their federal partners.
Other states, though, see the loss of federal oversight as an opportunity to roll back corresponding state laws at the behest of developers and farmers, who argue such regulations are overly burdensome.
“State protections are not all the same,” said Jim McElfish, senior research and policy adviser with the Environmental Law Institute. “It’s going to be up to the states to fill the gap, and they might act […]
This is a very sad story, with long term oncsequences. Like medicine, and the law, America’s college network is breaking down. And like everything else in this country it is about greed and profit. As a culture we seem to lack the will or the values to foster wellbeing.
The mid-2010′s saw an uptick in U.S. college closures, particularly among private nonprofit schools. This trend has affected tens of thousands of college students across the country.
Since 2016, 91 U.S. private colleges have closed, merged with another school, or announced plans to close, according to a CNBC analysis of data from Higher Ed Dive. Almost half of those schools closed after the onset of the Covid pandemic in 2020. For many struggling schools the pandemic was the final straw — but two major themes showed up consistently throughout the closures: finances and enrollment.
“There are two significant issues affecting higher education right now, specifically, through the admission and enrollment offices,” said Robert Franek, editor-in-chief of The Princeton Review. “Number one, it is the admission cliff, and that is the impending decline [in the number of prospective students]. We’ll be graduating our lowest high school classes by population in 2025. And most enrollment professionals have been wringing their hands about this date of 2025, but many schools have seen those enrollment declines already.”
About 95% of U.S. colleges rely on tuition, according to Franek, meaning they rely on money from students to operate. Dwindling enrollment numbers mean less money, fewer […]
FREDERICK CLARKSON, Senior Research Analyst at Political Research Associates - Salon
Stephan:
Here is the best explanation of what has happened to Christianity in the United States and how it linked inextricably with the Republican Party to create American christofascism.
I think this is a very important report about a major cultural trend that the media simply does seem to understand or want to talk about properly. I consider the New Apostolic Reformation one of the most destructive trends in the country, and a direct threat to democracy.
A statue modeled after the Statue of Liberty holds up a cross instead of a torch with “America Return to Christ” outside of World Overcomers Church in Memphis, Tennessee, United States on January 07, 2018. Credit: Samuel Corum / Anadolu Agency / Getty
“You’ve got a friend in Pennsylvania!” was the theme of the state’s ad campaign to promote tourism in the 1980s. That was a veiled historical reference to the Society of Friends, better known as the Quakers, the liberal Christian sect to which William Penn, for whom Pennsylvania is named, belonged. But since the early 2000s there has been a quiet campaign in the Keystone State and beyond to unfriend anyone outside certain precincts of Christianity — and most Quakers would almost certainly be among the outcasts.
That campaign got a lot less quiet this April, as many leaders of the neo-charismatic movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation, who have been hiding in plain sight for a generation, began ramping up a contest for theocratic power in the nation and the world. Their […]
Jeffrey M. Jones, Ph.D., Senior Editor - The Gallup OrganizationJeffrey M. Jones, Ph.D.
Stephan:
As gender and racial equality become the norm for the majority — watch the television commercials — the heated MAGAt world is increasingly incensed, and to some degree they are succeeding. Here is the evidence. Note the Red Blue difference. This minority wants to move back to their fantasy of the 50s, not recognizing all the problems suffered then.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
64%, down from 71%, say same-sex relations are morally acceptable
Slightly more (60%) than last year (55%) say death penalty is morally OK
Birth control, divorce still most widely viewed as morally acceptable
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans’ views about the morality of a number of behaviors and practices are largely stable compared with a year ago. However, significantly fewer say same-sex relations are morally acceptable, and more say the death penalty is.
Americans are most likely to say birth control is morally acceptable, with 88% holding that view. At least seven in 10 say the same about divorce, sex between an unmarried man and woman, and having a baby outside of marriage. Same-sex relations and the death penalty are in the next group, along with gambling, stem cell research and wearing animal fur, with between 60% and 69% of Americans approving of those five issues from a moral perspective.
U.S. adults are least likely to condone married men and women having an affair, human cloning and suicide.
These results are based on Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs poll, conducted May 1-24. Gallup previously reported other findings from this list, including that 52% of Americans find abortion to be morally acceptable, […]
