As conservative media, and politicians alike, spent hours and hours trying to discredit the story of a 10-year-old Ohio rape victim who had to travel to Indiana to receive an abortion, they have now turned the story into an investigation into the doctor who performed the abortion. Indiana’s Republican AG Todd Rokita told Jesse Watters that his office will investigate Dr. Caitlin Bernard, a gynecologist, and reproductive health activist. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss on The Young Turks.
“After Republicans and conservative media spent days suggesting the viral story of a 10-year-old rape victim who was forced to travel across state lines for an abortion was fake before an arrest was made Wednesday, the Republican attorney general of Indiana now wants to investigate—the doctor who did the procedure.
Indiana AG Todd Rokita said Wednesday his office is now investigating whether Dr. Caitlin Bernard, who told the Indianapolis Star earlier this month about the case without identifying the patient, reported the assault of the 10-year-old girl to Indiana authorities.
Rokita made this very official announcement—where he didn’t officially accuse Bernard of anything—on Fox News, of course.
“We’re gathering the evidence as we speak, and we’re going to fight this to the end, including looking at her licensure if she failed to report,” Rokita told Jesse Watters, who’d had Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost on two nights prior to suggest that the story was fake.”
In a recent interview, President Joe Biden openly admitted that he’s willing to go to war with Iran if they continue to build up their nuclear weapon arsenal. Although Biden has slammed Trump for leaving the critical Iran Nuclear Deal, it’s curious that he is now sending threats to a country that we need to negotiate with to rejoin the deal. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss on The Young Turks.
“U.S. President Joe Biden said in an interview aired Wednesday that he would be willing to go to war with Iran to prevent the country from obtaining a nuclear weapon, a position that drew condemnation from advocacy groups and foreign policy analysts who questioned the moral, strategic, and legal bases for such a stance.
Biden also reiterated in the sit-down interview with Israeli broadcaster N12 that he is committed to keeping the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organizations list, even if it means sinking the prospects of a deal to revive the nuclear accord that former President Donald Trump violated in 2018.
While acknowledging that Trump’s decision to abandon the seven-country deal was a “gigantic mistake,” Biden said he would not delist the IRGC to advance nuclear talks that have hit a wall in recent weeks.
Biden offered a one-word answer—”yes”—when asked whether he would keep the IRGC on the terror list “even if that means that kills the deal.””
Herschel Walker gave a rambling, barely coherent, and absurdly false speech about climate change. It would be hilarious but for the fact that the people the Republicans promote to the highest level of their party have the capacity to cause such great harm to us all. Meidas Contributor Coach D breaks it down.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is trying his best to provide cover for the right-wing’s horrible record in dismantling family and social services by pitching a “pro-family” social spending program. Too bad Rubio’s plan includes a child tax credit program that gives no benefits to parents earning less than $30,000, a parental leave program that forces parents to ‘borrow’ from their Social Security benefits at retirement, docking checks until you die, or docking checks for only five years of retirement. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss on The Young Turks.
“Late last month, Marco Rubio released what he described as a “pro-family framework following the Dobbs decision.” The actual content of the framework is recycled policies Rubio put out many years ago, but they perhaps deserve a second look, especially in light of Rubio’s new framing of them as pro-life benefits.
The Rubio framework has two main welfare benefits in it, the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and a parental leave program, which I will discuss in order below.”
The religious feelings of the clerk took priority over the woman’s being equal to a man and able to determine her own sexual / medical needs. This is what the SCOTUS has created, a place where the Christian religion which views women as inferiors who must submit to the rules of the males, she is basically own by men. It strips women of the rights of life, liberty, and happiness and any equality rights of the constitution. Thomas made a mistake because many think mixed race marriages like his are against their religion. But think on this, in the TYT video I posted a woman was denied the right to birth control her doctor prescribed and a company was losing sales due to the religious beliefs of one woman in the pharmacy that refused to fill or sell the medications the doctor prescribed. Women welcome to the discriminations trans people have experience for years. But what this comes down to is these religious people feel they have a right to push their religion on to other people and the religious person has the right to regulate the personal behavior of the other person. They really feel they have the right to tell you how to have sex, when you can have sex, and also tell you who you can have sex with. Think of that. They feel their religion allows them the right to tell you, to control your sexual activity when they are not even involved. It creates a ruling religious class that all people are required to obey. Will dress standards for modestybecoming next, will religious people be able to tell others that the skin they are showing in public offend their religious moral convictions and require they change or go inside? The US Christian Taliban. Hugs
Walgreens says the employee followed company policy. But what about people who need access to condoms?
A woman named Jessica Pentz has shared her story of an employee of a Walgreens drugstore refusing to sell her a box of condoms. The employee told her that selling condoms was against his religious beliefs.
In response, a Walgreens spokesperson said that its employees are allowed to “step away from completing a transaction to which they have a moral objection.” The company’s policy has troubling implications considering that the U.S. Supreme Court may soon reconsider its decision guaranteeing people’s rights to contraception.
While vacationing in Wisconsin with her husband, Pentz realized she left her oral contraceptives at home, she told the Star Tribune. So she visited a Walgreens store in the city of Hayward to purchase condoms.
When she arrived at the checkout register, a clerk named John told her, “I can’t sell those to you.” When she asked for clarification, the clerk allegedly replied, “We can sell that to you. But I will not, because of my faith.”
Pentz said, “That’s none of your business.”
The clerk responded, “Well, I’m sorry, this is what my faith demands.”
“You’re not sorry,” Pentz replied.
She said that during their interaction, a line of customers began forming behind her. She then realized she was the only woman in the store. She began wondering if the clerk would’ve refused to sell her the condoms if she were a man.
The clerk called over a manager who signed the clerk out of the register, and the clerk reportedly left the area with a smirk. The manager then proceeded to sell Pentz the condoms.
When Pentz left the store, another customer named Alec Jeffery followed her into the parking lot. He had overheard her conversation with the clerk, had seen the clerk’s smirk, and told Pentz, “It was complete bulls**t, and you handled that way better than I would have.”
Pentz was shocked that a store clerk would refuse to sell her a product carried in their own store. She also felt bad for any younger or less confident person who might experience similar pushback from an unwilling sales clerk.
When asked about the incident, a Walgreens spokesperson said, “Our company policy allows team members to step away from completing a transaction to which they have a moral objection and refer the transaction to a fellow team member or manager who will complete the customer’s request.”
The policy is troubling considering that Walgreens, the second-largest pharmacy chain in the U.S., may serve as the only source for contraceptives in some communities.
The store’s policy is even more alarming considering that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas recently stated wish to overturn previous Supreme Court decisions, including Griswold v. Connecticut, the ruling that recognized the right to access to contraceptives.
Even if the Supreme Court doesn’t overturn that ruling, it could still issue a “religious freedom” ruling that would empower employees of any business to refuse to sell just about any item to an LGBTQ customer or any other customer under the guise of “religious beliefs,” even if a state bans discrimination in public accommodations.
A married woman was refused by a religious Walgreens employee from purchasing a box of condoms, saying that the sale goes against their religious beliefs. If that wasn’t startling enough, Walgreens sided with the employee, saying that there’s a company policy that protects employees from “completing a transaction to which they have a moral objection.” Ana Kasparian discusses on The Young Turks.
“A woman named Jessica Pentz has shared her story of an employee of a Walgreens drugstore refusing to sell her a box of condoms. The employee told her that selling condoms was against his religious beliefs.
In response, a Walgreens spokesperson said that its employees are allowed to “step away from completing a transaction to which they have a moral objection.” The company’s policy has troubling implications considering that the U.S. Supreme Court may soon reconsider its decision guaranteeing people’s rights to contraception.
When she arrived at the checkout register, a clerk named John told her, “I can’t sell those to you.” When she asked for clarification, the clerk allegedly replied, “We can sell that to you. But I will not, because of my faith.””
“It’s hard to even see the mission right now, much less put your faith in it,” one Biden bundler said regarding the difficulty of fundraising for the president these days.
Scott Bixby
White House Reporter
Angelo Merendino/Getty
The Biden administration’s halting response to the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, along with an inflammatory criticism by a senior White House official over the weekend, has angered some of the very people that President Joe Biden hopes will stir up voters ahead of the midterms—and even a few of the people who are supposed to support those efforts with their wallets.
“Furious,” texted one Biden bundler for whom abortion is a key issue, when asked about the mood of like-minded financial supporters of the president. “The statement was just so unnecessarily disrespectful of people who helped elect him, truly.”
“We are experts at at what we do and what it takes to get an abortion in this country,” said Morgan Hopkins, the interim executive director of campaigns and strategies at All* Above All, an abortion-rights group, who pointed out that it was activists who pushed Biden to reverse his opposition to the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funding going to abortion services. “We have a political organization, we know the importance of voting, and people across this country know the importance of voting, and we need the boldest of action from the White House.”
“I will not take being called an activist as an insult,” Hopkins said. “Activism works.”
The statement in question—in which outgoing White House communications director and longtime Biden media guru Kate Bedingfield declared that the president’s “goal” was not to “satisfy some activists who have been consistently out of step with the mainstream of the Democratic Party”—incensed abortion rights advocates when it was first published in TheWashington Post on Saturday.
“People around the country are rightfully terrified and seeking leadership that is bold and effective,” said Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, which recently joined 18 other civil rights groups to demand a meeting with Biden to discuss concrete steps to protect abortion access. “Advocates around the country are pushing every leader to do more, and that must include the White House.”
But while Biden and his team have long since grown accustomed to public displays of frustration from activists on issues ranging from immigration to LGBTQ rights, some told The Daily Beast that this latest slight risks discouraging those groups from coordinating with the White House going forward—with the razor-thin Democratic majorities in Congress at stake.
Biden ‘to Nominate an Anti-Abortion Judge in Kentucky’
WHAT A DEAL
“We have never depended on Biden to get abortions—when he was vice president or now,” said Renee Bracey Sherman, founder and executive director of We Testify, an organization that represents those who have had abortions. “The question is whether he’s ready to plug into the organizing that’s happening with or without his administration.”
In the weeks after the initial leak of a draft decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that found ruled that the ability to end a pregnancy was a constitutional right, the Biden administration pledged to pursue a “whole-of-government” response to any potential threat to abortion access. But once the decision was finally released on June 24, that plan has primarily focused on encouraging Democrats to vote more abortion supporters into office in order to codify Roe into law.
“The only way we can secure a woman’s right to choose and the balance that existed is for Congress to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade as federal law,” Biden said hours after the Dobbs decision was released, noting that as president, he was powerless to do so himself. “Voters need to make their voices heard. This fall, we must elect more senators and representatives who will codify a woman’s right to choose into federal law once again.”
That is a tall order ahead of midterm elections in which the Democratic Party is on track to lose its majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate—and the kind of plan that requires working hand-in-hand with advocates and activists who have decades of experience mobilizing voters who support abortion access.
Abortion-rights advocates say there’s no chance that they will walk away from the work they’ve done for decades because of one pissy statement. But the Biden administration’s “vote, vote vote” message, to them, feels like an abdication of authority—to say nothing of the White House’s rejection of proposals like expanding the Supreme Court, building abortion clinics on federal lands and declaring a national public-health emergency.
“We’ll continue doing what we’ve always done for the past decade: getting people to the abortions they need and organizing our communities,” said Sherman. “But the president cannot continue to say that he’s doing everything he can to support abortion when he had to be begged to say the word and is installing a lifetime of barriers in the judicial system.”
The feeling of disengagement from Biden, if not from the midterm elections entirely, has also percolated up to the donor space, according to three high-dollar bundlers from the 2020 presidential campaign. The White House’s cautious response to Dobbs, one of the bundlers said, won’t singlehandedly push donors to ditch Democrats—but combined with Biden’s poor polling and the gloomy outlook for his domestic agenda, is not exactly making the case for doubling down on investing in Biden’s political future.
“When you’re a fundraiser and you’re reaching out to your network on a candidate’s behalf, you need to believe in that candidate and his/her mission,” one bundler said. “It’s hard to even see the mission right now, much less put your faith in it.”
Negative feelings about the administration’s handling of any issue, another noted, makes fundraising more difficult—even if the president’s biggest bundlers are still stalwart supporters.
“Nobody who stayed Team Biden during Iowa-New Hampshire-Nevada is going to ditch him over this,” they said. “But the parvenus who came onboard once he got the nomination are fickle almost by definition.”
Across the board, bundlers and activists noted that with the Senate filibuster intact and the Supreme Court’s makeup set for years, the decks are largely stacked against major executive action. Biden has also issued executive orders directing his administration to help increase access to abortion medication, as well as promising to fight state laws that could criminalize crossing state lines to obtain an abortion.
“They have taken important steps,” Goss Graves said. “The executive order was important, the materials the agencies are releasing this week have provided critical clarity, but the work is not done.”
But that work will require working together, said Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, who said that her organization is “committed” to working with the Biden administration on abortion protections.
“We recognize that there are limits to what the Biden administration can do to remedy the chaos caused by this decision,” said McGill Johnson. “People expect actions from elected officials at all levels of government—including the president—that not only affirm, but protect their right to abortion and freedom to make decisions about their own bodies and futures.”
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