Daily Archives: May 13, 2017

Editor's note: This story has been updated throughout

Just ahead of Mothers Day, two bills seeking to curb Texas alarming rise in maternal deaths were among more than 100 that met their demise Friday, the result of maneuvering by a group of House Republicans dedicated to disruption in the chamber.

In a stunning blow to public health experts and advocates, the 12-member House Freedom Caucus used a parliamentary maneuver to kill a wide slate of bills, including House Bill 1158, which would have connected first-time pregnant women enrolled in Medicaid to services, and House Bill 2403, which would have commissioned a study on how race and socioeconomics affect access and care for pregnant black women.

Both bills were aiming to help the state better understand how to better reach expecting mothers.

The Texas Tribune thanks its sponsors. Become one.

Between 2011 and 2012, 189 Texas mothers died less than a year after their pregnancy ended mostly from heart disease, drug overdoses and high blood pressure, according to the states Task Force on Maternal Mortality and Morbidity. And the states maternal mortality rates nearly doubled between 2010 and 2014, the medical journal Obstetrics and Gynecology reported last year.

The efforts to address that problem were far from the only ones thwarted as a result of the Freedom Caucus maneuvering, which began during an emotional session Thursday, ahead of the Houses deadline to pass legislation originating in that chamber.

The other legislation that died included a bill from Rep. Helen Giddings, which would have banned school districts from identifying students without enough money in their school lunch accounts,by allowing families a grace period to resolve an insufficient balance on a meal card.

Rep. Tony Dales effort to crack down on sexual coercion of young children using the internet was also a casualty.

Additionally, a sunset safety net bill died. If a similar measure does not come out of the Senate, it could mean Gov. Greg Abbott will have to reconvene lawmakers for a special session to keep a long list of state agencies from shutting down. All state agencies must undergo periodic "sunset" reviews by the Legislature or be forced to shut down if reforms arent passed.

The caucus blocked the bills by objecting to their listing on the local and consent calendar, which fast tracks legislation not expected to generate debate. If five or more lawmakers object to a bill on that calendar, it must be considered in the regular legislative process.

The Texas Tribune thanks its sponsors. Become one.

The caucus members booted the bills from that calendar and slowed down proceedings Thursday night to prevent many other bills from being discussed before the midnight deadline.

The caucus members announced Thursday they were punishing House leaders after what they called a session of routine obstruction of key anti-abortion, 2nd Amendment and property rights bills.

The fact that we stand at the back mic to hold leadership accountable for the rules, and they get frustrated and they start killing our legislation is absolutely absurd, one caucus member, state Rep. Tony Tinderholt, R-Arlington, said Thursday. The fact that priority items and emergency items for Republicans are not being brought to the floor for us to fight for is absolutely disgusting.

Rep. Shawn Thierry, D-Houston, was in tears Friday morning recounting how she tried to talk to members of the Freedom Caucus, including Tinderholt, Jonathan Stickland and Kyle Biedermann, out of putting HB 2403 on their hit list.

She argued to them that it was a "pro-life" bill, because the black mothers who died had carried their babies to term. Caucus members agreed, she said, but declined to change their plans and told Thierry it wasn't personal.

"It was like a drive-by shooting," Thierry said.

Thierry said she would try to resurrect the bill as an amendment on Brenham state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst's Senate Bill 1929. That bill would include sunsetting the state's Task Force on Maternal Mortality and Maternal Morbidity in 2023.

The Texas Tribune thanks its sponsors. Become one.

Giddings was among those also hoping to revive bills by attaching them to other measures still moving through the Legislature in its final weeks. The House still has time to pass bills originating in the Senate, which can be amended.

"I think what's happened to this bill is unconscionable," Giddings said of House Bill 2159. "We are going to fight till the end."

Alana Rocha and Morgan Smith contributed to this report.

Read related Tribune coverage:

See original here:

House Freedom Caucus blocks maternal mortality bills, more than 100 others - Texas Tribune

Vice President Pence stood before a packed ballroom in downtown D.C. on Thursday, looking out on an audience of Orthodox priests, evangelicals, Catholics, and other Christians from all over the world. Franklin Graham, the son of the evangelist Billy Graham and head of the international charity Samaritans Purse, had convened a world summit on the persecution of Christians. Attendee name-tags hinted at the gruesome details of their lives: Persecuted individuals in the room wore badges that read PP. Pence bowed his head with Graham in prayer, and made a promise: Protecting religious freedom is a foreign-policy priority of the Trump administration.

Although the White House has made a strong verbal commitment to addressing violence against religious minorities overseas, it is not yet clear how this will play out in the realm of diplomacy. On Thursday, Pence focused on the role of the military in addressing global religious-freedom issues. He emphasized the need to defeat radical Islamic terrorists, and specifically ISIS, to protect those who have faced beheadings and other violence in the Middle East. America will not rest, we will not relent, Pence declared, until we hunt down and destroy ISIS at its source.

Why Trump's Executive Order on Religious Liberty Left Many Conservatives Dissatisfied

The community of policy experts who work on international religious-freedom issues, and particularly those who advocate for persecuted Christians, have been waiting for a message like this for a long time. Behind the scenes, many have been pushing for religious-liberty issues to become a higher priority at the State Department. In the quiet December days after the election, Congress passed a little-noticed law, the Frank R. Wolf Act, to shift the way the State Department handles religion. The law allows government watchdogs to call out people and groups, not just countries, that threaten religious freedom. Most importantly, it underscores that global religious freedom is not just a human-rights issue. The law argues that its a core part of U.S. national security.

The administration has echoed this argument, particularly with Pences Reagan-esque speech on Thursday. The administration is reaffirming Americas role as a beacon of hope and life and liberty, he said, declaring that America was and is and ever will be a shining city on a hill. The vice presidents speech was almost like a sermon, observed Johnnie Moore, a former Liberty University vice president who works on religious-freedom issues. It was strong on evangelical nuance, Moore said, filled with biblical references; over and over, Pence expressed solidarity with followers of Christ.

During his first month in office, President Trump has also spoken about religious liberty in striking terms. At the National Prayer Breakfast, he spoke of Muslims being brutalized, victimized, murdered, and oppressed by ISIS killers, threats of extermination against the Jewish people, and a campaign of genocide against Christians, where they cut off heads. This, he has said, is the ultimate reason to fight radical Islamic extremism.

And yet, when it comes to issues like refugee resettlement and diplomacy, Trumps approach has been mixed. His pending executive order on immigration and refugees directs the State Department to prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individuals country of nationality. But it would also bar all refugee admissions from countries where religious minorities have faced intense persecution and violence, including Syria.

So far, the Trump administration has not yet appointed a new ambassador for international religious freedomthe State Department official responsible for tracking and coordinating diplomacy on these issues, a newly elevated role under the Wolf Act. Several Washington officials who work on these issuesincluding Nina Shea, the director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute, and Frank Wolf, the former Republican congressman from Virginia who is the namesake of the 2016 legislationsaid they believe an appointment is imminent and the administration is ready to make an announcement. In the new Wolf Act, Congress also advised the administration to appoint a deputy assigned to the National Security Council.

The ambassador position has been around since 1998, when Congress passed the International Religious Freedom Act. That legislation created a religious-freedom office in the State Department and established a separate watchdog body, the U.S. Commission on International Freedom. Both bodies largely exist to make lists: Each compiles an annual report about the status of religious freedom around the world, including countries where its under threat, and submits those findings for the presidents use.

Since the laws inception, these lists have been plagued by their ambiguous status in policymaking. It was always a frustration that while their monitoring was good, there really wasnt any policy implication, said Shea. I think that ambassador role was mostly overseeing the reports and making speeches.

Weve been solemnly vowing never again to be silent in the face of genocide, and yet this post seemed almost inconsequential.

Part of this was the structure of the job, but some religious-freedom advocatesliberals and conservatives alikehave complained that various White Houses have not taken the topic seriously. It was not a priority in a meaningful way under either the Obama administration or the Bush administration, said Katrina Lantos Swett, the former chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, the watchdog agency known as USCIRF. Everybody likes to pay lip service, but beyond that, the commitment and the seriousness is not as much as I would like to see it.

Especially among conservatives, a major point of concern during the Obama administration was the White Houses alleged lack of attention to violence against religious groups in the Middle East. As early as 2014, the State Department faced enormous pressure to declare that ISIS is committing genocide. Eventually, Secretary of State John Kerry made the designation in the spring of 2016. It was disappointing that the [religious-freedom] office was not able to step up at a pivotal moment in history, said Shea. This is only the second time in U.S. history that a genocide designation has been made by the government. Weve been solemnly vowing never again to be silent in the face of genocide, and yet this [ambassador] post seemed almost inconsequential.

Critics also point out that the religious-freedom-ambassador position has often stayed vacant for long stretches. It took months for the Bush administration to install Ambassador John Hanford, the second person to serve in the newly created role, and his work was effectively isolated at Foggy Bottom during the Bush years, with little impact on American foreign policy, wrote the Georgetown University professor Thomas Farr in 2009. Obama had already been in office for two years when his first nominee for the position, Suzan Johnson Cook, was confirmed. Cooks nomination was reportedly blocked for nearly a year by then-Senator Jim DeMint, who seemed to believe she didnt have much relevant foreign-policy experience, according to congressional records. (During Cooks eventual confirmation hearing in 2011, then-Senator Barbara Boxer commended her for traveling to five continents, which I think is a tremendous education, asking, And is it true you speak Spanish?)

The main evidence that the State Department doesnt take religious freedom seriously is that the United States keeps working closely with nations that have long been tagged by USCIRF as countries of particular concern, according to advocates.

Saudi Arabia is a prime example. Since 2004, the Commission has repeatedly called out the country for its uniquely repressive [restrictions on] the public expression of any religion other than Islam. Typically, that would trigger certain consequences: The president could choose to withdraw development aid, deny the country security assistance, or impose a variety of economic sanctions. Instead, for more than a decade, the State Department has allowed an indefinite waiver on actions against the Saudis. In the short run, theres always a good argument to not do anything to upset the apple cart, orpardon my languagepiss off somebody youre trying to work with in other arenas, said Lantos Swett.

The Vice President was saying that America will be that covenant Tillersons words were not quite that way.

Thats how countries like Saudi Arabia can stay on the bad side of U.S. officials for years and not suffer any repercussions: Religious freedom isnt always seen as a top priority in diplomacy. According to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, this administration isnt likely to change that status quo. Early in May, he told State Department employees that if you condition our national-security efforts on someone adopting our valuesincluding freedom, human dignity, [and] the way people are treatedthen we probably cant achieve our national-security goals or our national-security interests. In other words, he seemed to be saying, human-rights concerns shouldnt limit U.S. diplomacy, particularly when it comes to national-security issues.

This seemed to conflict with Pences message on Thursday, observed Wolf, who introduced the original religious-freedom act in 1998. President Reagan said that the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were a covenant, he said. I think what Vice President [Pence] was saying is that America will be that covenant. Tillersons words were not quite that way.

During his tenure as secretary, Kerry attempted to raise the profile of religious-freedom issues. This is a huge priority within the State Department, he said during a 2015 hearing concerning the role of Rabbi David Saperstein, the latest religious-freedom ambassador. The last thing hes going to suffer for is lack of access to me, I assure you. Conservative and liberal advocates who work on international religious freedom widely praised Saperstein in interviews, and Wolf credited him with helping to secure the genocide designation against ISIS.

Kerry also created a separate office dedicated to religion, housed right down the hall from his suite on the seventh floor: the Office of Faith-Based Community Initiatives. Its mission, Kerry said when it was created, is to engage more closely with faith communities around the world. There is an enormous partnership, I believe, there for the asking. While State Department officials had always worked with religious groups in various ways, there had never before been an effort to systematically establish those relationships in the United States and around the world.

By the end of Kerrys tenure, the two major religion officesled by Saperstein and Shaun Casey, a seminary professorhad more than 50 staffers between them, Saperstein said. The International Religious Freedom office saw its budget double, he said, and he took part in regular meetings among senior staff and the specials, as he put itenvoys and ambassadors with a topical area of focus.

The 2016 legislation was not so much about overhauling the position, Saperstein said, as solidifying it. What the people on the Hill wanted was to somehow institutionalize it, so that it wouldnt be lost in future administrations who might not have the same commitment or see the same need for this, Saperstein said. It wasnt a functional change at all. Farr, the Georgetown professor, sees the ambassadors newly elevated role as an important symbol, as well. While the new status will not convey a magic wand, he wrote in an email, it will signal to foreign governments, the global victims of persecution, and the American diplomatic corps that, for the first time, an American administration is treating the head of [international religious-freedom] policy as a senior diplomatic official.

If you write off an entire religion like Islam it undercuts the ability to achieve goals.

What stands to change most under the Trump administration is the State Departments orientation toward one religion in particular: Islam. One of the greatest threats today to religious freedom around the world for all groups is Islamic extremism, said Shea. It should be at the heart of our policy, and [we should be] looking at the national-security implications of this. Pence echoed this in his Thursday speech.

Saperstein sees this single-minded focus on Islam and religious persecution as a major shift. Preferencing religious persecution over ethnic persecution or racial persecution is a change in our policy that I dont think represents our values or our interests, he told me. He also sees potential danger in the rhetoric around Islamic extremism. To the extent that you write off an entire religion like Islam and everyone connected with it, he said, it undercuts the ability to achieve the very goals that such rhetoric is hoping to achieve. Lantos Swett also worried that a focus on global religious freedom might run into a certain tension with advocacy for LGBT rights around the world.

Its not clear what will happen at State, especially when it comes to the faith-outreach office Kerry created. As with any plum diplomatic positionespecially one thats recently been elevated by Congressthere has been some jostling in Washington over who will get the ambassador role. Early rumors suggested Ken Starr, the former U.S. solicitor general who carried out the Monica Lewinsky investigation under President Bill Clinton, might be in the running. But several people who work on these issues told me they were concerned about how his confirmation process might go, due to his highly politicized and controversial career. The latest rumor, shared with me by roughly half a dozen policymakers, is that Kansas Governor Sam Brownback will get the post. The White House did not respond to a request for confirmation.

Whoever gets the job, he or she will help determine whether the administration can actually carry out its big promises on religious freedom. And the timing is urgent: Shea said shes heard from religious leaders in the Middle East who are running out of food and medicine for fleeing populations. Right now, the infrastructure is not there to turn [Trumps] principles into action, she said. By the time that gets settled these Christian communities and Yazidis will disappear.

See original here:

'Protecting Religious Freedom Is a Foreign-Policy Priority of the Trump Administration' - The Atlantic

Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years in military prison the longest sentence ever recorded in the US for an official leak. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

On Wednesday, some time after dawn, the security gates at the US disciplinary barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, will be thrown open and a slight 5ft 2in woman will walk out into the open air and freedom.

For Chelsea Manning, release from military incarceration will mark a colossal turning point. Having been arrested seven years ago when she was an unknown, lowly and outwardly male soldier, she will emerge into an entirely new life as a civilian, a celebrity, and an openly transgender woman.

The day will be momentous in ways that go far beyond its huge personal ramifications for its subject. Mannings discharge, a parting gift of President Obama as one of his final acts in office, will bring to an end one of the more shameful chapters in US military history.

It began with the humiliating breach that saw vast quantities of state secrets downloaded by a relatively junior army private from supposedly secure intelligence databases on to a Lady Gaga CD. It passed through the harsh treatment of the perpetrator in the military brig in Quantico, Virginia, denounced by the UN as a form of torture. And it was capped by the imposition of the longest prison sentence ever recorded in the US for an official leak: 35 years in military prison.

Now Manning, her punishment foreshortened, has the chance to put all that behind her. Im looking forward to breathing the warm spring air again, she told the Guardian from her prison cell as she prepared for release.

I want that indescribable feeling of connection with people and nature again, without razor wire or a visitation booth. I want to be able to hug my family and friends again. And swimming I want to go swimming!

Mannings release will be greeted with rejoicing by public figures who have spoken out in her support over the years, from Daniel Ellsberg of the Pentagon Papers to Michael Stipe of REM and the designer Vivienne Westwood, among many others. But no one carries as much weight as an empathizer of Mannings spell in the whistleblowing wilderness than Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor who followed her into the abyss and who has paid a similarly heavy price in the form not of imprisonment but of exile.

Im grateful that Chelsea will finally have a chance to enjoy the freedoms she gave so much to defend

Snowden, speaking from asylum in Russia, told the Guardian that in his opinion the timing of the soldiers release was apt, given the ominous noises coming out of the White House in the week of the firing of the FBI director James Comey. With a president who offers democracy nothing but contempt and a Congress that represents party over public, whistleblowers have never been more important, he said.

Snowden lamented what he called the draconian sentences handed down to Manning and others like her, that weaken democracys safeguard of last resort, the free press, by cutting off its most reliable source of critical truths. He praised her as a citizen who, knowing the costs, left behind the safety of silence to speak a truth that saved lives.

Despite the hardship Manning has endured over the past seven years, Snowden said he draws solace from the worldwide campaign for her freedom that will culminate with her release this week. In a comment that might be said to contain more than a grain of wistfulness, given his own state of limbo, he said: Im grateful that Chelsea will finally have a chance to enjoy the freedoms she gave so much to defend. Courage to her and volume to her voice.

Manning has indicated that she intends to live in Maryland after her release, a move that will bring her story full circle. It was here in early 2010, at a branch of the Barnes & Noble in suburban Maryland, barely 20 miles away from the Pentagon, that she used the bookstores open public wifi network to upload to WikiLeaks what she later described at her trial as some of the more significant documents of our time.

Manning was on leave from duty in Iraq at the time and staying with her aunt in Potomac. She had brought with her from the US forward operating base Hammer outside Baghdad a camera memory stick carrying hundreds of thousands of secret documents that she had downloaded from intelligence databases initially onto that infamous Lady Gaga CD.

As Manning had been poring through those classified databases in her work as an army intelligence analyst, she had grown increasingly disturbed by what she was reading, material that she believed pierced through the fog of war and revealed the true nature of -21st-century asymmetric warfare. Other documents she transmitted to WikiLeaks exposed civilian casualties from US attacks as well as evidence of corruption, censorship and other nefarious behavior on the part of Iraqi government forces and other US allies.

David Coombs, the lawyer who represented Manning at trial, spent three intense years preparing her defense and got to know her very well. He said that he came to appreciate the motives that drove her to commit a massive leak of classified information.

I can understand how Chelsea Manning was the person who did this, Coombs said. She is caring, intelligent, she sees that we dont always do the right thing and that we could be better and that if people are informed, maybe they would make better decisions.

He added: This was not someone trying to harm America or the war effort, but a person who was hoping that this would spark a debate.

By the time Manning had completed the dump of data to WikiLeaks, she had effectively put into the public domain a vast mountain of previously secret digital information. The trove included war logs from Afghanistan and Iraq, more than 250,000 US embassy cables from around the world, and official files on 765 Guantnamo detainees.

The single element that probably had most impact was footage of an aerial attack by a US Apache helicopter in Baghdad in which two Reuters staffers and other civilians were killed. WikiLeaks published the video in April 2010 under the title Collateral Murder, causing an international outcry.

When a collective of international news organizations led by the Guardian began publishing stories on the back of Mannings leaks, the global reaction was immediate, and highly divided. There were those, like the current deputy National Security Advisor to President Trump, KT McFarland, who called for the source of the leaks to be executed.

Then there were those like Hillary Clinton who were fork-tongued in their response. The then US secretary of state, embarrassed by the unveiling of hundreds of thousands of intimate diplomatic cables, insisted publicly that the leak puts peoples lives in danger, threatens our national security and undermines our efforts to work with other countries. Privately, though, she spent hours on the phone with foreign diplomats reassuring them that no one was in peril.

Seven years later, Mannings leaks continue to evoke sharply differing opinions from informed observers. Micah Zenko, an expert on US national security policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, is skeptical of their long-term significance. They provided fascinating detail and color, he said, but I do not think they had a lasting, strategic impact, except on officials and diplomats themselves who now assume everything can leak.

David Hearst, chief editor of the London-based news and opinion site Middle East Eye, is convinced that Mannings leaks have had a far more substantial legacy. He points to embassy cables whose revelations helped to spark the Arab Spring by exposing for instance the nepotism of the Tunisian leader Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and the suppression of popular movements in Bahrain.

WikiLeaks undermined key US allies in the Middle East by opening a window on how the US really sees and reported on its closest middle east allies and how they see each other, in turn undermining them further in the eyes of their people, Hearst said. The disclosures confirmed the existence of US war crimes in Arab eyes, such as the Apache helicopter tape, and provided Arab youth with a unifying message that acted as an accelerator for the Arab spring uprising.

A third attitude prevalent among conservatives and parts of the military is that the leak, irrespective of its content, was an act of treachery that Obama was wrong to have rewarded with this weeks release. It was a breach of the fundamental trust between fighting men and women on which the military depends, said David French, a former major in the US army who now writes for the National Review. Obama doesnt understand that to grant early release breaks the faith.

Amid such diversity of views, one thing is certain: the US government responded to Mannings act with the severity of a category five hurricane. Coombs recalls the feeling of having virtually the entire US national security apparatus bear down on them, with the army, Pentagon, Department of State and the intelligence services all piling in to prosecute the soldier. They were pushing every legal extreme in order to obtain an outcome that would give them the greatest chance at a lengthy sentence.

Coombs and his client fought back as best they could. In the most memorable moment of the trial at Fort Meade in Maryland, the lawyer taped out on the floor of the court the precise measurements of the isolation cell in Quantico in which Manning had been penned for months, and placed inside the outline her actual prison mattress to illustrate the draconian conditions of her confinement. We couldnt bring the courtroom to Quantico, so laying it out inside the court was the next best thing, Coombs said.

Coombs and Manning succeeded in rebuffing the most serious charge, aiding the enemy, which was an important victory. But they couldnt prevent the final outcome of the trial landing like a body blow. The sentence was deflating, Coombs said.

Jesselyn Radack, a human rights lawyer who defends whistleblowers, said the 35-year sentence was wholly out of kilter with previous cases. The sentence was radically harsher than the treatment of any of the other whistleblowers that have been prosecuted in recent times, she said.

The prison term left Manning facing decades in captivity, a grim prospect starkly compounded by the fact that she would be in a male-only institution even though since childhood she had privately identified as a woman. The day after the sentencing, Coombs went on NBCs Today show and announced that Manning was a transgender woman and was determined to transition, and within hours of that statement the US military gave its considered reply: no way.

Chelseas captors took a blatantly anti-constitutional anti-trans position, said Chase Strangio, the ACLU lawyer who has represented Manning in her battles over gender transition while inside military lock-up. Even in 2013 it was pretty clear that they couldnt just announce they were going to withhold all care.

Not for the first time, the US government underestimated the doggedness of Chelsea Manning and her supporters. Over the past four years, with the help of the ACLU, she has managed to push the military into the 21st century.

She won the right to hormone treatment, a first for a military prisoner. Last year she broke further ground when she was told that she could have gender reassignment surgery while in Fort Leavenworth.

But she also had to endure the daily struggle of being in an all-male environment in which she was obliged to undergo a forced haircut every two weeks to keep her within male military grooming standards. At times the denial of treatment sapped at her confidence and threatened even her survival.

There was a hopelessness. She was never going to get the treatment she needs, Strangio said. Chelsea was punished not once but twice with solitary confinement for trying to take her own life for reasons directly related to the denial of her care.

If gender transition has been Mannings overwhelming priority in her years of captivity, transition in more ways than one will likely remain a dominant theme when she walks out of those Fort Leavenworth gates. Her battle to live as a woman will continue, coupled with the arguably even greater transition of the return to civilian life.

Chelsea has been through years of institutional life of one sort or another, with a lot of trauma. Nothing is going to be easy, Strangio said.

Mannings aunt Debbie, with whom she was staying in Maryland when she uploaded the files to WikiLeaks, said that now was Chelseas chance to put her difficult childhood and troubles with the military behind her and finally achieve her dream of going to college. Shes extraordinarily gifted intellectually and will make a real contribution to society.

Debbie, who has rarely spoken in public, also had a stern word for military chiefs. She told the Guardian: I hope that these past few years have caused the army to think seriously about its treatment of Chelsea before and after she was deployed and make sure that other emotionally challenged soldiers are given proper treatment and are not sent into global hot spots when they are in serious need of psychological counselling.

On the up side, the minute Manning steps out into the blazing sunlight of freedom she will find herself surrounded by a family of like-minded people who will understand her journey and her challenges. As Strangio put it: Shes going to get the benefits of a beautiful and vibrant community, people who she can hug and touch and talk to, theres going to be a huge amount of support.

Touch is so important, Chelsea Manning agreed when she talked to the Guardian, after seven long years having been deprived of it. Not to forget swimming. There will be plenty of time for swimming.

Read the original post:

Chelsea Manning prepares for freedom: 'I want to breathe the warm spring air' - The Guardian

OAKLEY Aday after Freedom High administrators and police determined a threat to shoot some people at school was not credible, students using their cell phones fanned the rumor by text and Snapchat on Fridayprompting a return of police for a midday rally.

People were saying there would be a shooting during the rally, Freedom Principal Kelly Manke said Friday by phone. Students started sending text messages and it got out of control.

Oakleypolice again Friday determined it was not a credible threat, and that the social media buzz was linked to Thursdays incident, she said.

Manke sent a notice Friday to parents about both incidents and reminded students to report rumors of violence to adults, rather than to each other by social media. What added to the confusion was much of the rumors on the Snapchat app disappeared once students read the messages, so administrators had trouble tracking down the discussion.

The students who initiated the text messages were interviewed and it was determined that the text chain started yesterday evening in response to the comments made in class at the end of the day on Thursday, Manke wrote in the letter. The Oakley PD has determined that the text messages are connected to yesterdays comments and that it is not a credible threat.

It was shortly before 3 p.m. Thursday when a student reported to a teacher that he overheard aclassmate threatening to shoot people on campus. The student who made the report was questioned and the school resource officer visited the home of the person who made the threat where he spoke to that student and parent, Manke said.

That Oakley police officer determined the threat was not credible, she said.

Friday morning, before students had a spring rally to celebrate athletes, honor students and the upcoming end to the school year, an administrator received a report of a text chain regarding a student bringing a gun on campus. The school resource officer was contacted again and they determined the chain of social media messages started Thursday evening after students heard rumors of the earlier incident, Manke said, and Fridays rumors werealso deemed not to be credible.

There was no lockdown. But we did have a police presence at the rally, the principal said.

The rally otherwise continued as scheduled, Manke said.

Go here to read the rest:

False rumors of high school shooter threat spread via text, Snapchat for second day - The Mercury News

Turkish Freedom Wanes Along with Erdogan's Popularity: America's Moral and Strategic Interests Violated CNSNews.com Journalists enjoyed greater freedom and Europeans believed he could bring Turkey into their continent's orbit. Alas, many observers, this writer included, overestimated Erdogan's commitment to a Western model. What looked too good to be true turned out ... Turkey warns US of blowback from decision to arm Kurdish fighters in SyriaReuters all 247 news articles »

See the article here:

Turkish Freedom Wanes Along with Erdogan's Popularity: America's Moral and Strategic Interests Violated - CNSNews.com

Can a Christian adoption agency require households that adopt children to consist of both a mom and a dad? Can a foster parent prevent a pregnant foster child from getting an abortion? These questions should have a clear answer yet theyve stirred up great controversy in Texas.

Christian Homes & Family Services based in Abilene, for example, considers only prospective adoptive parents who attend church weekly and have been married for two years, The Dallas Morning News reported. Buckner International, based in Dallas, will consider single people on a case-by-case basis, but lets only couples married for four years or more become foster parents.

The foster parent can remain a foster parent without violating his or her religious convictions.

Lawmakers in Texas have taken steps to ensure the government does not punish faith-based adoption and foster care service providers for acting in accordance with sincerely held religious beliefs. Meanwhile, the LGBT community has fired back with a falsely painted narrative about the situation.

The Freedom to Serve Children Act (HB 3859) passed 93-49 in of the Texas House of Representatives this week. The legislation applies to both taxpayer-funded and privately run child welfare services. Among other provisions under consideration, the bill ensures that a child welfare service provider who has declined or will decline to provide, facilitate, or refer a person for abortions, contraceptives, or drugs, devices, or services that are potentially abortion-inducing wont face adverse action.

For example, if a foster parent has a religious objection to providing an abortion for a foster child, then this bill would permit the foster parent to refer the child to the state agency or to another provider to get the abortion, Justin Butterfield, senior counsel at religious-freedom law firm First Liberty Institute, told LifeZette in a phone conversation. So the foster parent can remain a foster parent without violating his or her religious convictions.

Related: Trump: People of Faith Will Not Be Bullied or Silenced Anymore

Essentially this increases the number of paths available to children to be connected with adoptive families, Butterfield said.

The religious protections also extend to providers who choose to send a child to a private or religious school.

Media outlets quickly saw the religious protections as discrimination. Consider these headlines: Teen Vogues Texas Bill Would Ban Muslim, Jewish, and LGBTQ Families From Adoption; and the APs Texas House OKs Letting Adoption Groups Deny Non-Christians.

Those headlines are clearly spun for their audiences.

The Texas law takes nothing away from anyone, Ryan Anderson, a senior research fellow at the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, told LifeZette in an email. It doesnt prevent same-sex couples from adopting. It simply prevents any given agency from being penalized for not doing a same-sex adoption, if doing so would violate its beliefs.

Anderson co-authored a new book just published by Oxford University Press, Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination.

Related:The Real Objectives of Trumps Religious Liberty Order

There is no need to force adoption and foster care agencies to embrace LGBT orthodoxy, Anderson argued.

No adoption agency should be penalized by the state because it works to find children homes with a married mom and dad, Anderson added. Shutting down agencies or disqualifying them from government programs because they believe kids deserve both a mom and a dad does nothing to help children in need. All it does is score a point for LGBT activists [who are] using children as pawns in their culture war.

If a prospective parent is turned away from one adoption service, other agency choices are available. It does not allow the providers to do whatever they want, but rather to sayno in very specific, limited circumstances, the bills author, Rep. James Frank, a Republican, stated.

The bill requires [Child Protective Services] to maintain a diverse network of homes and provides reasonable accommodations to those who are helping solve our foster care capacity crisis, Frank said, according to The Dallas Morning News.

Still, the LGBT community has pushed back against the legislation.

Its horrific that the Texas House would allow state-funded or private adoption agencies to use religious exemptions as a weapon to ban qualified LGBTQ families from adopting a child, Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of the LGBT organization called GLAAD, said in an email to Teen Vogue.

Is there really any reason to opposes such a bill? Groups such as the advocacy organization American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have heavily done so, stating the bill could harm children. "Discrimination in the name of religion has no place in our laws or in our state, and it certainly should not be used to harm children," Rebecca L. Robertson, legal and policy director for the ACLU of Texas, said in a statement.

"We're further casting these children off. We're making it more difficult for them to be adopted," House Rep. Jessica Farrar, a Democrat, stated.

First Libertyattorney Butterfield testified in relevant legislative committees on this topic. "A more accurate narrative would be the Freedom to Serve Children Act promotes inclusivity and diversity among adoption and foster care agency by ensuring that the government doesn't discriminate against any of them," Butterfield told LifeZette. "It protects religious liberty rights for people of all faiths and ensures that they don't have to choose between following their faith and serving children."

The legislation "avoids unnecessary litigation" and "ensures we maximize the number of families who can provide child welfare [and placement] services," Butterfield also noted.

Other states (Virginia, North Dakota, South Dakota, Michigan, Alabama) have passed similar legislation, Butterfield said. At the federal level, related bills called the "Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act" have been introduced in the House and Senate.

In Texas, the bill must go through the Senate before it goes to the desk of Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican.

See the original post:

'Freedom to Serve Children Act' in Texas Brings Out the Knives - LifeZette

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

GLENN GREENWALD: The Barrett Brown case is probably one of the most significant threats to press freedom that has happened in the United States in the last, I would say, two decades at least. And its received remarkably little attention in the mainstream press, because they only pay attention when they themselves are attacked. So, Donald Trump attacks someposts some childish insult about the media or calls them the enemy of the people, and its wall-to-wall coverage in The New York Times and CNN. And yet, here was Barrett, doing some of the most intrepid and important journalism in the United States, digging into this incredibly opaque and powerful faction, and because of his journalism into those areas, that is what directly triggered this FBI investigation and attempt to imprison him. And the reason he got so little support from media organizations defending his press freedom was because they only care about press freedom when it comes to large corporate media outlets that arent actually threatening to the government.

And this was a case where Barrett discovered extreme levels of wrongdoing and corruption, including this slide that said it wanted to destroy my reputation to prevent me from continuing to defend WikiLeaks, talking about defendingdestroying the reputation of people who are activists against the Chamber of Commerce. He was doing incredibly important work. Hes obviously a very talented journalist. The scribblings he did for us in prison on paper with pencil won the National Magazine Award for the columns that we published. And yet, now hes saying, just like Laura Poitras felt when she had to edit her film Citizenfour, that he cant safely do journalism in the United States. So we love to talk about Russia and press freedoms there, even though we have no impact on it when we do. We spend very little time talking about the real threats to press freedom in this country, because they happen to people like Barrett Brown rather than to MSNBC and The New York Times.

AMY GOODMAN: But explain why it mattered what HBGary was saying, this information coming out, for example, on you.

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, these contractors, that very few people have heard about, including HBGaryI had never heard of them until this happenedor Palantir, the organization funded by the billionaire Peter Thiel, exert extreme levels of power inside of this murky world of intelligence and defense contractors. And what they were planning to do was they were putting a pitch together to Bank of America, using the firm Hunton & Williams, which is this powerhouse in D.C., to try and tell the Bank of America, which at the time thought it was going to be the target of a WikiLeaks disclosure, "Let us use our dark arts and dirty little tactics to destroy the people who will be your critics." And that was the plan they were putting together, that Anonymous discovered and Barrett reported on. And the only reason why it was discovered is because Anonymous randomly hacked into it. And what was amazing about it was, there were dozens of people talking about these plans, that were illegal, or certainly unethical, and not one person ever said, "Wait a minute. Isnt this going a little bit too far to destroy journalists for reporting on these events?" Thats how common this mentality is in that world and how much impunity there is for it. And that was what Barrett was on the verge of really uncovering at the time the FBI began trying to put him in prison.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, in an interview on Tuesday with the ACLU, you talked about, elaborated on the point you made now, about how the media itself persecutes its own sources and that journalists take the lead in advocating for policies that would restrict their own press freedom. So, could you explain why you think that is? Because, of course, its completely counterintuitive.

GLENN GREENWALD: Right. You would think, in just a normal, healthy democracy, you would have the government over here being adversarial to press freedoms, and then you would have journalists vehemently defending the power of the freedom of the press. Thats how its supposed to work. And yet, in so many cases, especially when the government targets journalists who arent popular among or working within these mainstream outlets, not only do the journalists ignore it or acquiesce to these efforts to punish and criminalize and attack independent journalists, they become the leading cheerleaders. When I first started doing the Snowden reporting, it wasnt, you know, James Clapper or Keith Alexander going on TV calling for my imprisonment; it was David Gregory or Andrew Ross Sorkin or other journalists who work at The New York Times, someone with an institution with a history of defending press freedom. And so, that is a huge problem, is, because so many mainstream journalists in the United States identify not with journalism, but with serving the interest of the U.S. government and the national security state, they become the leading spokespeople, the leading advocates, for the right to criminalize journalism. The U.S. government doesnt have to defend trying to put Julian Assange in prison for publishing documents. Journalists are happy to take the lead in arguing that that should happen, even though that will directly threaten them.

AMY GOODMAN: Has that changed at all under Trump? Now that Trump has called the media the enemy of the people, the enemy of the American people, the media has found its backbone in some cases.

GLENN GREENWALD: Definitely.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that will extend to what youre describing?

GLENN GREENWALD: No, unfortunately, I dont. And if you notice, there are certain lines that the, quote-unquote, "resistance," including the media, wont cross. So, for example, when Trump bombed Syria with no congressional authorization and no plan, the media largely cheered. When he dropped the so-called Mother of All Bombs in Afghanistan, the largest bomb short of a nuclear weapon in Afghanistan, the media cheered. And now that the CIA and Jeff Sessions are threatening to prosecute WikiLeaks and Julian Assange under the Espionage Act for publishing documents, you have major media figures, simply because they hate WikiLeaks and are incredibly shortsighted, supporting Jeff Sessions, supporting Mike Pompeo, in the idea that WikiLeakss publication of documents should be criminalized, even though that can then be turned around and used against them. So, no, they place off-limits certain policies that are really dangerous, even if Trump is the one advocating them.

Read more from the original source:

Glenn Greenwald on Barrett Brown, Press Freedom & the Failings of the Corporate Media - Democracy Now!