This article adds more information to the story I posted earlier. Notice the law signed was to prevent same sex couples from being able to adopt, it was designed to let Christian agencies to discriminate against same sex couples. Scottie
A Knoxville couple is suing the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services, saying a state-sponsored Christian-based adoption agency refused to help them because they are Jewish.
It is the state’s first lawsuit to challenge a new law that allows religious adoption agencies to deny service to families whose religious or moral beliefs aren’t in sync with the provider’s, the family’s attorney told Knox News on Wednesday.
The adoption agency, the Holston United Methodist Home for Children based in Greeneville, Tennessee, denied Elizabeth and Gabriel Rutan-Ram from acquiring Tennessee-mandated foster-parent training and a home-study certification as they attempted to adopt a child from Florida last year, the Rutan-Rams say.
The organization was previously but is no longer an arm of the Holston Conference of the United Methodist Church. A spokesperson for the conference directed questions to the home.
In December, the Greenville-based Holston sued the Biden administration for regulations that prohibit discrimination in programs funded by U.S. Health and Human Services grants “on the basis of religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and same-sex marriage status,” saying it violates its First Amendment rights.
In that lawsuit, the organization said it receives public money to provide foster care placement and training, among other services, for the state Department of Children’s Services.
The Home for Children’s president and CEO Bradley Williams could not be reached for comment Wednesday. Instead, a receptionist at Home for Children told Knox News to email the organization’s law firm, Alliance Defending Freedom, which bills itself as “the world’s largest legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, marriage and family, parental rights, and the sanctity of life.” Representatives of the firm did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
The lawsuit was filed Wednesday by Americans United for Separation of Church and State on behalf of the Rutan-Rams in Davidson County Chancery Court. A spokesperson for DCS declined to comment on pending litigation, as did a spokesperson from the state Attorney General’s Office.
The lawsuit comes nearly two years to the date that Gov. Bill Lee signed into law a measure that allows religious adoption agencies to deny service to same-sex couples. The law allows adoption agencies to refuse to participate in a child placement if doing so would “violate the agency’s written religious or moral convictions or policies.”
“The Tennessee Constitution, like the U.S. Constitution, promises religious freedom and equality for everyone. Tennessee is reneging on that promise by allowing a taxpayer-funded agency to discriminate against Liz and Gabe Rutan-Ram because they are Jews,” Alex J. Luchenitser, associate vice president and associate legal director at Americans United, said in a news release.
“Public funds should never be used for religious discrimination,” Luchenitser told Knox News. “The law should never create obstacles that keep loving parents from taking care of children who need a home. That should certainly never occur because of religious discrimination.”
The couple is joined by six others in the suit against the state. They are:
The Rev Jeannie Alexander, an interfaith pastor from Davidson County
The Rev. Elaine Blanchard, a Disciples of Christ minister from Shelby County
The Rev. Alaina Cobb, a Christian minister from Davidson County
The Rev. Denise Gyauch, a Unitarian Universalist minister from Davidson County
Dr. Larry Blanz of Davidson County, a retired psychologist with more than 40 years of experience that includes working with foster parents and children
Mirabelle Stoedter, a Davidson County resident who serves as treasurer of the Tennessee chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Attempting to adopt
After realizing they could not have biological children of their own, in early 2021 the Rutan-Rams located a child in Florida they were excited about fostering with plans to adopt. They say they were initially told by Holston that the organization would help them with their out-of-state placement.
However, on the day they were to begin their training, the organization told them it only serves families who share their Christian belief system, the lawsuit says. The couple was not able to complete the process to become foster parents to the child.
“I felt like I’d been punched in the gut,” Elizabeth Rutan-Ram said in a news release. “It was the first time I felt discriminated against because I am Jewish. It was very shocking. And it was very hurtful that the agency seemed to think that a child would be better off in state custody than with a loving family like us.”
The Rutan-Rams are currently fostering and hope to adopt a teenage girl through a separate agency, Luchenitser told Knox News, and they also would like to adopt another child in the future.
Last Sunday on Meet the Press, James Carville offered Democrats good advice: “Quit being a whiny party and get out there and tell people what you did … the exact truth.” On the vital issue of jobs, they should be cheering, because the Biden administration has helped create and sustain a remarkable employment boom.
When it comes to what’s been called the “Great Resignation,” there’s nothing new about Americans quitting their jobs to look for something better. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that from 2015 to 2019, an average of 38 million full-time and part-time working people voluntarily left their jobs per year—and that excludes retirements and layoffs. In 2021, those voluntary “quits” jumped to 47 million, the highest level ever.
The pandemic almost certainly played a role by inspiring workers to reconsider their life choices. But for most people, moving from ruminating to resigning requires confidence that they can find a good position somewhere else. That’s why huge numbers of quits only happen in a booming job market.
People who quit in 2021 generally found new positions much faster than normal. The number of open jobs waiting to be filled averaged 9.6 million per month in 2021, 47 percent higher than the average for 2015 to 2019. Those openings outpaced the high levels of quits by 70 percent. As a result, the median length of unemployment fell from 18.4 weeks in January 2021 to 12.4 weeks by December.
The current employment boom is fueled by a highly successful economy and soaring rates of business creation. The Census Bureau reports that Americans created nearly 5.4 million private businesses in 2021—68 percent higher than the average of 3.2 million per year from 2015 to 2019. This historic level of business formation helped make the record level of quits possible, including those who left their jobs to start their own business. It also should help sustain healthy job gains throughout 2022.
In every recent period, some laid-off workers start their own businesses, often by necessity rather than choice. And they are a small piece of current business formation: All told, 16.7 million people lost their jobs in 2021, compared to 47 million who left their jobs voluntarily.
All of these factors contributed to the strongest job growth in more than 40 years. In 2021, the economy added 6.4 million jobs—a gain of 4.5 percent, or more than three times the average job growth of 1.4 percent from 2015 to 2019.
Of course, it’s normal to see outsized job growth following any period of large job losses. This time, most of the bounce back from the 2020 lockdowns came later that year. Unemployment peaked at 14.7 percent in April 2020 and fell to 6.4 percent by January 2021. The economic success of the Biden presidency was even better, stunning government forecasters. In February 2021, the Congressional Budget Office forecast a 5.3 percent unemployment rate at the end of 2021. Thanks to the Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, passed the following month, the jobless rate fell to 3.9 percent by November, for an additional decline of 39 percent in 11 months.
The impact of that winter 2021 stimulus is clear when we compare 2021 to previous deep recessions. In the serious downturn of 1981–82, after joblessness peaked at 10.8 percent, it took 49 months for the unemployment rate to decline by 39 percent. And following the Great Recession of 2008–09, it took 62 months to recede by 39 percent. Granted, a medically induced economic coma like the shutdowns is not the same as a traditional recession, but it’s also much more severe.
Another advantage of the Biden economic and employment boom is that the greatest benefits are going to people with less education and lower earnings. Data collected by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta shows that for the first time in decades, median hourly wages and salaries in 2021 increased faster among Americans with high school diplomas or some college but no degree. Similarly, median hourly wages or salaries in 2021 increased most rapidly among working Americans in the lowest earnings quartile.
One reason is that two industries employing large numbers of people without college degrees—retail and food services and accommodations—saw especially large increases in both quits and new businesses. Nearly 16.4 million people voluntarily left their jobs in those two industries in 2021, 3.3 million more than the annual average for 2015 to 2019. The two industries also saw nearly 1.3 million new businesses open in 2021, more than twice the annual average for 2015 to 2019. As the economy expanded rapidly through 2021, businesses trying to find and hire millions of new workers had to raise their wages.
Across most of the economy, wage gains in 2021 lagged the sudden onset of inflation: Overall, they were up by 4.6 percent before inflation and down 2.1 percent after inflation. But for regular workers in those two industries—everyone but managers and professionals—inflation-adjusted hourly wages rose by 7.6 percent in food services and accommodations and remained steady in retail.
As with the historic level of quits in this period, much of the current spurt of inflation is tied to the pandemic. Happily, epidemiologists expect the Omicron variant to recede, as already appears to be happening in Cleveland, Newark, and Washington, D.C. Yes, more variants may appear. But with increasing vaccination rates, the new antivirals, the enhanced immunity from Omicron, and the administration’s new program for routine free testing, the COVID-19 crisis should finally subside.
For that reason and others, most economists expect inflation to recede in the coming months. The bond market is not panicking. But we haven’t seen inflation tied to supply-chain problems since 1946–47, so those predictions may be off. If they’re right and inflation ebbs, the sharp increase in wages before inflation will be permanent, since companies know that wage cuts inspire more quits and destroy morale for those who stay. The result would be the strongest GDP growth in a generation, fast-rising new businesses, a red-hot labor market, and real wage gains for most Americans.
All of that might not happen in time for the midterms. But over a longer-term—say, by 2024—Americans will clearly recognize the Biden boom.
Even as COVID-19 cases drop and hospitalizations show signs of plateauing in hard-hit pockets of the United States, the still-rising death toll from the Omicron variant highlights the trail of loss that follows every virus surge.
Coronavirus deaths hit an 11-month high on Sunday, climbing 11% in the past week when compared to the prior week,according to a Reuters analysis.
COVID-19 fatalities are a lagging indicator, meaning their numbers usually rise a few weeks after new cases and hospitalizations.
The Omicron death toll has now surpassed the height of deaths caused by the more severe Delta variant when the seven-day average peaked at 2,078 on Sept. 23 last year. An average of 2,200 people a day, mostly unvaccinated, are now dying due to Omicron.
That is still below the peak of 3,300 lives lost a day during the surge in January 2021 as vaccines were just being rolled out.
“It will be a while until we see (a) decrease in death as very sick people with COVID remain hospitalized for a long time,” said Wafaa El-Sadr, a professor of epidemiology and medicine at Columbia University in New York City.
As Omicron surged in December and earlier this month, hospital systems from New Jersey to New Mexico buckled under the sheer number of patients brought in by the apparently less severe but highly infectious variant, prompting the federal government to send military medical aid to six states.
“More infectious variants tend to run through a population very rapidly,” said El-Sadr in an email. “Even if such new variants cause less severe disease (particularly among those vaccinated and boosted), we will likely still see increase in hospitalizations and deaths due to vulnerability of unvaccinated and unboosted.”
COVID-19 hospitalizations are still setting records in some states including Arkansas and North Carolina. Nationally they are now under 147,000, compared with a peak of 152,746 on Jan. 20, the Reuters tally shows.
Cases nationally are down by 12% in the last seven days compared with the prior seven, the analysis found, prompting some health officials to strike a cautiously optimist tone on the trajectory of the pandemic.
“It’s certainly reached its peak in certain regions of the country,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease official, said in an interview with MSNBC on Monday. “I believe that in the next few weeks we will see – as a country – that it is all turning around.”
U.S. COVID-19 data often lag a few days behind the actual state of affairs and paints an imperfect picture.
Positive findings from the now ubiquitous at-home tests are not included in the official case count, while hospitalization counts often do not differentiate between patients who are receiving treatment for COVID-19 and others who test positive while in the hospital with other issues.
On Monday, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that it was dangerous to assume Omicron would herald the end of COVID-19’s most acute phase, and exhorted nations to stay focused to beat the pandemic.
The Omicron wave scrambled the hopes of Americans for a gradual transition into a post-pandemic reality and re-ignited tensions around masking and vaccines in schools and workplaces, exposing once again the deep political fault lines cracked open by the health crisis.
On Sunday, large crowds rallied in Washington, D.C., in opposition of COVID-19 mandates, some holding signs that read “people call the shot, not the government.”
Virginia’s new Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin is facing a lawsuit from seven school boards seeking to stop his order that would make masks optional in school as of Monday.
A spokesperson for Youngkin, vowing to fight the lawsuit, said on Monday, “We are disappointed that these school boards are ignoring parent’s rights.”
Tom Hanks penned a guest essay for The New York Times on Friday in which he called for the truth about the 1921 Tulsa race massacre to be taught in schools.
Calling himself a “lay historian” who studied history in high school and community college in Oakland, California, Hanks notes that his education, in which he learned about the Emancipation Proclamation, the Ku Klux Klan and Rosa Parks’ heroism, did not include the Tulsa massacre.
“I never read a page of any school history book about how, in 1921, a mob of white people burned down a place called Black Wall Street, killed as many as 300 of its Black citizens and displaced thousands of Black Americans who lived in Tulsa,” Hanks writes.
The actor notes that this experience is common, due to history being “mostly written by white people about white people like me, while the history of Black people — including the horrors of Tulsa — was too often left out.”
Hanks emphasizes that the truth about Tulsa, and the violence against Black Americans by white Americans, has typically been “systematically ignored, perhaps because it was regarded as too honest, too painful a lesson” for young white students.
Hanks goes on to write, “It seems white educators and school administrators (if they even knew of the Tulsa massacre, for some surely did not) omitted the volatile subject for the sake of the status quo, placing white feelings over Black experience — literally Black lives in this case.” He asks readers to consider how different one’s perspective might be if the Tulsa massacre were taught to students as early as the fifth grade. “Today, I find the omission tragic, an opportunity missed, a teachable moment squandered.”
He adds that, in addition to predominantly white schools omitting the Tulsa race massacre in their education programs, the entertainment industry also did not take on the subject in films or television shows until recently, in projects such as Watchmen and Lovecraft Country. He notes that historically based fiction entertainment “must portray the burden of racism in our nation for the sake of the art form’s claims to verisimilitude and authenticity.”
Considering whether schools today should teach students about Tulsa, Hanks simply says yes. Though he goes further and calls for “the battle to whitewash curriculums” to end. Hanks acknowledges that America’s history is “messy,” but knowing the truth makes people “wiser and stronger.”
Toward the end of Hanks’ essay, he writes that 1921 is “the truth, a portal to our shared, paradoxical history.”
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