niyad
niyad's JournalDay 27 of the month. Mass shootings* SO FAR: 34. Dead: 35. Wounded: 166.
mass shooting defined as 4 or more dead or wounded, including the gunman.
WE'RE NUMBER ONE!!!
Trump's Republican Trifecta Sets Up Massive Transfer of Tax Dollars from Reproductive Health Clinics to Unregulated Cris
(lengthy, extremely disturbing article about the misogynist, christofascist woman-hating attack on reproductive rights)
#####’s Republican Trifecta Sets Up Massive Transfer of Tax Dollars from Reproductive Health Clinics to Unregulated Crisis Pregnancy Clinics
PUBLISHED 8/18/2025 by Jenifer McKenna | UPDATED 8/21/2025 at 9:07 A.M. PT
Update Aug. 21, 2025: The effort to “defund” Planned Parenthood hit a major roadblock Tuesday, Aug. 19, when the 1st Circuit rejected the Trump administration’s request to enforce the Medicaid “defund” provision included in the reconciliation law while its appeal of the preliminary injunction proceeds. This means Planned Parenthood health centers can continue to seek Medicaid reimbursements for now, ensuring millions of patients are still able to access critical care. But the fight is far from over. Advocates warn that “defunding” Planned Parenthood is an unconstitutional attack that would devastate abortion access nationwide and jeopardize care for the 1.1 million Medicaid patients who rely on Planned Parenthood every year.
“The 1st Circuit made it clear: Patients and entire communities across the country will be harmed if this ‘defund’ provision is allowed to take effect,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “Birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing, and other essential care from their trusted Planned Parenthood provider—that’s what is at stake in this case. We know the fight isn’t over, and we are prepared to see it through.”
Antiabortion activists march to the Planned Parenthood clinic Feb. 1, 2025, in New York City. (Robert Nickelsberg / Getty Images)
#####, Republicans and antiabortion extremists are dismantling reproductive care for low-income women, funneling them into ideological clinics masquerading as health centers.
Within days of the 2024 election, antiabortion leaders were calling on the incoming ##### administration to “defund” Planned Parenthood and redirect federal funds to “pro-life” pregnancy centers. As of this summer, all three Republican-dominated branches of our federal government are working in tandem to realize this mission: to replace the infrastructure of publicly funded, evidence-based reproductive healthcare with a network of unregulated pregnancy clinics (UPC)—also known as crisis pregnancy centers—nationwide. Together, the ##### administration, 119th Congress and the John Roberts-led Supreme Court are engineering a massive repurposing of federal tax dollars away from Planned Parenthood and the Title X family planning program, while also boosting direct federal funding streams, to further bankroll the $2 billion UPC industry and position it to replace reproductive health clinics in all 50 states.
As Republicans aggressively move this project forward on multiple fronts—with Congress and the Court stripping Planned Parenthood of Medicaid reimbursement eligibility, and ##### stripping Planned Parenthood and other family planning providers of Title X grants—UPC industry leaders have been vigorously lobbying for those funds, to “replace that broken model with real life-affirming support for women.” The UPC industry has long maneuvered to “replace” Planned Parenthood. The Obria Group, for example, was founded in 1981 as a “medical model” crisis pregnancy center network, for the express purpose of drawing funding away from Planned Parenthood. In 2005, Texas created its UPC grant program—now the largest state funding program in the country—with the explicit intent to redirect public funds from Planned Parenthood to crisis pregnancy centers.
. . . .
President of Planned Parenthood Alexis McGill Johnson speaks during a news conference on the budget reconciliation bill at the U.S. Capitol on May 14, 2025. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) held a news conference to urge Republicans not to cut Medicaid and defund Planned Parenthood. (Alex Wong / Getty Images)
UPCs are largely religious nonprofits that pose as health clinics while operating free of the health, safety, licensing and patient privacy standards that govern Planned Parenthood health centers and other medical offices. Not only is this industry entirely ill-equipped to provide maternal or infant healthcare—UPCs do not come close to meeting American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ (ACOG) Level 1 requirements for Basic Maternal Care, as they provide no neonatal services—their very mission, to prevent people from accessing abortion, is in direct conflict with providing actual, even lifesaving, healthcare. In fact, shocking new revelations about UPC ultrasound and ectopic pregnancy practices show these antiabortion sites pose an urgent threat to pregnant people and the public health. New research from Reproductive Health and Freedom Watch documents that all three major UPC networks are training staff and volunteers not to scan women they suspect have ectopic pregnancies. Rather than prioritizing patient safety, UPC staff are instructed not to diagnose this life-threatening condition, not to follow up with at-risk women and, above all, not to assume liability.
. . .
U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) at the annual antiabortion March for Life rally on the National Mall on Jan. 19, 2024, in Washington, D.C. (Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)
. . . .
https://msmagazine.com/2025/08/18/trump-republicans-anti-abortion-unregulated-clinics-crisis-pregnancy-center-congress-medicaid-title-x-defund-planned-parenthood/
Over a Million Women Are at Risk of a Pay Cut Under a New Trump Rule
Over a Million Women Are at Risk of a Pay Cut Under a New Trump Rule
PUBLISHED 8/20/2025 by Seema Nanda
Care workers were deemed ‘essential’ during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, the Trump Department of Labor wants to strip away their most basic wage protections.
Activists advocate for sweeping federal care legislation, including affordable childcare, universal paid leave, and accessible in-home care for disabled and aging persons on Feb. 28, 2023, in Washington, D.C. (Leigh Vogel / Getty Images for Caring Across Generations)
Imagine Angela, a home health aide worker in Georgia who spends her days helping elderly and disabled clients eat, bathe and manage their medications for a national home healthcare agency employing over 30,000 workers in 25 states. She works 10-hour days, often six days a week, and—thanks to a 2015 rule introduced by Obama’s Department of Labor—earns overtime. But under a ##### administration newly proposed rule, she could legally lose overtime protections and even be paid less than the federal minimum wage. The law that once protected her paycheck would be eliminated as “obsolete.” This isn’t just theoretical. The ##### administration’s Department of Labor recently proposed a new rule that would directly take earnings away from the more than 1.5 million home care workers in the United States, more than 80 percent women, and their families.
Between 2019 and 2040, the population of adults ages 65 and older is expected to balloon from 54 million people to nearly 81 million people, comprising an estimated 22 percent of the U.S. population. That means that the direct care workforce is projected to grow at a faster rate than any other occupation over the next decade. These workers were deemed “essential” during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, the ##### Department of Labor wants to strip away their most basic wage protections. #####’s secretary of labor has defended the rollback as clearing away “outdated regulations” to give workers more “freedom and purchasing power.” In reality, the Obama rule addressed an interpretation that was outdated in the worst way—written nearly a century ago, it excluded whole categories of workers, predominantly women and particularly, women of color.
The Obama administration rightly interpreted an exemption under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which guarantees minimum wage and overtime protections to most workers, to ensure that home care workers employed by third parties—such as large national agencies—received basic minimum wage and overtime protections. In the years since the rule was enacted, private equity firms have bought up an increasing share of home care agencies, illustrating that these firms can still make a hefty profit, even when required to provide basic wage protections. ##### campaigned on helping “forgotten” American workers. But his attempts to roll back laws protecting them tells a different story. Currently, one in six live below the federal poverty line. If the 2015 rule is rescinded, these workers wouldn’t even be required to be paid $7.25 under federal law. Meanwhile, as profits increase, the executives at home health companies continue to be paid high salaries. It’s the same reverse-Robin Hood scenario we’ve seen before by Trump: taking from those who have the least to give to those who have the most.
Families First Day of Action organizes a rally against healthcare cuts and immigration raids on July 26, 2025, in Chicago. (Kamil Krzaczynski / Getty Images for Families First National Action)
I’ve seen firsthand what’s at stake. As solicitor of labor, I led cases that recovered millions in stolen wages from health care companies that broke the law. During the Biden administration, the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division recovered over $148 million from healthcare companies in back wages and fines. That money went straight back to workers like Angela. If ##### and his labor secretary truly wanted to help America’s hardworking families, in an industry dominated by women, they would keep the current home care rule in place and strengthen enforcement against wage theft. Rolling back these protections isn’t modernization—it’s choosing corporations and their profits over working women.
https://msmagazine.com/2025/08/20/trump-care-work-minimum-wage-rule/
Welcome To Wonkette Happy Hour, With This Week's Cocktail, The Paper Plane!
Calling Aristus!!!
Welcome To Wonkette Happy Hour, With This Week's Cocktail, The Paper Plane!
OMG Hooper's behind the stick at a brand new speakeasy!
Matthew Hooper
Aug 22, 2025
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!KezQ!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7ef3e5a1-94a5-4420-9ae4-f5fe96014a17_4032x3024.jpeg
The Paper Plane in its native environment, a beautiful cocktail bar. And now, my home.
Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender. I am hip deep in work right now — we’re taking my new home bar, Hemingway’s Underground, on her shakedown cruise. It’s going to be a ton of work, but I’m surrounded by rock star chefs and bartenders who are dedicated to making this place awesome. I’ve got just enough time to snap some pictures of the new place and make a drink. Let’s have a Paper Plane together. Here’s the recipe.
Subscribe to Wonkette, we have Friday cocktails!
Paper Plane
¾ oz Sazerac Rye Whiskey
¾ oz lemon juice
¾ oz Aperol
¾ oz Amaro Nonino
Shake all ingredients over ice and strain into a coupe glass. Garnish with the smallest paper plane you can make.
When a cocktail like this comes off the printer, bartenders breathe a sigh of relief. A cocktail with equal measurements means not having to look through the recipe book or rack your brain for the recipe. And this drink chooses its ammunition wisely. It would be easy to balance the lemon juice with simple syrup, but legendary bartender Sam Ross was playing on a different level when he built this drink in 2008. The Aperol is sweet enough to drag this cocktail into balance, providing bitterness and citrus that give the spicy rye whiskey and herbal Amaro Nonio a place to hang their hats. This is genuinely one of my favorite cocktails. It’s complex enough to keep you sipping, but not so bitter or sour that you need a palate cleanser. This is what a cocktail should be.
When I saw this cocktail on the menu of Hemingway’s, I knew I was in a place that loved cocktails. There’s so many good things going on here. We’ve taken every classic you can think of — the Cosmopolitan, the dirty martini, the margarita — and put a little spin on them that makes them better. We’ve got all the diary secrets behind the bar — some Fernet Branca, some Malort, and some shots of Underberg to help finish the night. (Underberg is like Fernet Branca, only more so. It’s A Thing.) Our chef has a killer Italian menu in mind with a few Greek and North African dishes to change up your expectations. Everyone I’m working with is proud of their skills and wants to work as a team to make this place special. I am quite literally giddy with excitement.
It helps that the bar crew is just as talented and dedicated as I am (if not more so). Kiki is an absolute monster behind the bar, shaking up drinks just as fast as me. She loves fall flavors; a pumpkin spice martini is in the works from her. Kalya has decades of experience behind the stick as well; she loves delicate gin flavors. She’s got a Hendrick’s and St. Germain cocktail up her sleeve called “Afternoon Gin” that I adore. Sophia and Melissa don’t have as much craft cocktail experience, but they’re hitting their stride quickly, and I expect them to be putting their own drinks on the menu soon. And the owners, Courtney and Zane, are total cocktail nerds. Courtney is “obsessed,” in her own words, with my Malort cocktail, The Regrettable Tattoo. What that says about her is your call … but expect to see that drink on the menu here soon dear Lord, it’s on the menu tonight!
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!RbOU!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff0232139-3554-4bdc-ae87-85d8230154cc_4032x3024.jpeg
As you are reading this, we’re cutting the ribbon and opening the joint up. Let’s talk about the ingredients while we’re dusting off the tables:
Come on in. Last call isn’t for another hour.
Sazerac Rye: Sazerac is the house rye whiskey here at Hemingway’s. It is also one of my favorites — spicy like a rye, but still sweet enough to enjoy. I’d suggest Rittenhouse Rye as a substitute; at 100 proof, Rittenhouse pulls no punches.
Aperol: This bitter orange liquor is becoming a favorite of mine — I’ve woven it into several recipes by now. It’s barely sweet and has a citrus note complemented by bergamot and other herbs. Don’t skimp and use a knockoff brand; it can’t compare to the original.
Amaro Nonino: This bittersweet Italian digestif has orange and caramel notes that play right into the Aperol and rye whiskey. I’ve tried substituting other amaros for nonino, and it never works properly. For a proper Paper Plane, nothing else will do.
Lemon Juice: Are you using fresh lemon juice in your cocktail? We are at Hemingway’s. Be like the cool kids at Hemingway’s. Use fresh juice.
Garnish: Make a tiny paper airplane is a bit tricky. I found that folding the ticket from the service well printer makes a paper airplane just big enough to balance on the lip of a coupe glass properly. Feel free to experiment.
Our first day open to the public is WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 27, and I promise I’ll be behind the stick at Hemingway’s Underground, right here in Medina, Ohio. I promise you that I’ll make ANY drink that I’ve written over the years, ingredients willing. Come see me and have a blast!
https://www.wonkette.com/p/welcome-to-wonkette-happy-hour-with-f68
A statue of women's rights pioneers Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
A statue of women’s rights pioneers Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton was unveiled on the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment on August 26, 2020, in New York City’ Central Park. Artist Meredith Bergmann, a lifelong New Yorker, sculpted the statue of three of the main figures in the women’s rights movement. None of the woman lived long enough to see American women gain the right to vote. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)
The 19th Amendment, Explained
(lengthy, extremely informative, extremely important, history of 19A and the frequently ugly battles, to get where we are today)
The 19th Amendment, Explained
PUBLISHED 8/22/2025 by Kendall Verhovek
It took more than a century of fighting by generations of activists to achieve suffrage for all American women.
Two images of a suffrage-era, mechanical trade card, with a young girl watching a hat box, with a lid that opens to reveal a ‘Votes for Women’ pennant, published for the American market, circa 1900. (Emilia van Beugen and Ken Florey Suffrage Collection / Gado / Getty Images)
Originally published by the Brennan Center for Justice.
What is the 19th Amendment?
The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” The amendment granting women the right to vote was enacted at the start of the Roaring Twenties, decades after a prolonged and meandering fight for enfranchisement.
When did women get the right to vote?
The 19th Amendment codified women’s suffrage nationwide, but long before its ratification, unmarried women who owned property in New Jersey could and did cast ballots between 1776 and 1807. Beginning in 1869, women in Western territories won the right to vote. And in the decade leading up to the 19th Amendment’s passage, 23 states granted women full or partial voting rights through a series of successful campaigns. The complicated story of women’s suffrage is a winding road, from the early conventions that catapulted the likes of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony into national acclaim to the ultimate adoption of the amendment that resulted in the single largest expansion of voting rights in American history. There is no clear starting point, though many identify the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 as the dawn of the movement.
Christina Tart, of Reading, poses for a portrait at the home of Candace Stitzman-Duley in Muhlenberg Township on Aug 24, 2020. She is the chair of the Pennsylvania Women’s Caucus of the Democratic Party, and is also a distant relative of suffragist Susan B. Anthony. (Ben Hasty / MediaNews Group / Reading Eagle via Getty Images)
As far back as the late 1830s, the push for women’s suffrage was deeply intertwined with the movement to abolish slavery. Many women who became skilled at organizing and advocacy through the abolitionist cause—including Sojourner Truth, Lucretia Mott, Ida B. Wells and Sarah and Angelina Grimké—found their way into the suffrage movement. It would still take many decades after the earliest stirrings of the women’s rights movement for women to achieve full and equal voting rights. And for many women of color, the realization of that right would take even longer. Although the ratification of the 19th Amendment allowed Black women in the North and West to vote and hold office for the first time, in the South, millions of women of color remained excluded from the process due to the racially discriminatory tactics of the Jim Crow era.
When was the 19th Amendment adopted?
More than 160 years after women cast their first votes on American soil, Congress approved the 19th Amendment on June 4, 1919. It didn’t become part of the Constitution, however, until it was ratified by the 36th state legislature—Tennessee—on Aug. 18, 1920.
Did the 19th Amendment grant all women the right to vote?
When the 19th Amendment became the law of the land after hard-fought campaigning, white women immediately benefited from its ratification. But for millions of women of color across a significant portion of the country, gaining the right to vote would take several more decades. The 19th Amendment did not eradicate the systemic racism that pervaded the South, where most Black women lived, and other regions. Fifty years earlier, the 15th Amendment, which barred states from denying the right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” was ratified. Despite this guarantee, with the blessing of the courts, states across the South enacted racially discriminatory policies—such as poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses and felony disenfranchisement laws. These restrictions kept many Black women, Black men and other voters of color out of the democratic process until the rise of the civil rights movement in the mid-20th century.
. . . .
A statue of women’s rights pioneers Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton was unveiled on the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment on August 26, 2020, in New York City’ Central Park. Artist Meredith Bergmann, a lifelong New Yorker, sculpted the statue of the three main figures in the women’s rights movement. None of the woman lived long enough to see American women gain the right to vote. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)
. . . . .
Alice Paul and other women celebrating the passage of the 19th Amendment. (Universal History Archive / UIG via Getty images)
. . . . .
https://msmagazine.com/2025/08/22/what-is-19th-amendment-explained/
Women's Equality Day: Celebrate the Victories. Confront the Backlash.
Women’s Equality Day: Celebrate the Victories. Confront the Backlash.
PUBLISHED 8/22/2025 by Ms. Editors
Alice Paul, vice president of the National Women’s Party, broadcasts from her desk at the Capitol, on April 27, 1922. (Bettmann Archives / Getty Images)
Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2025, marks 104 years since the 19th Amendment was certified, recognizing women’s constitutional right to vote. But anniversaries like Women’s Equality Day are not just about looking back. They remind us of unfinished business. After helping securing women’s right to vote, leading suffragist Alice Paul in 1923 drafted the original version of the Equal Rights Amendment. Paul and other women’s rights activists believed the right to vote was only a first step and that full legal equality required constitutional protection through an amendment guaranteeing equal rights for all sexes.
Last week in Knoxville, Tenn., activists unveiled the Tennessee Woman Suffrage Heritage Trail Museum—just blocks from where, in 1920, Tennessee cast the deciding vote to ratify the 19th Amendment. That museum honors the suffragists who fought for decades, often facing ridicule, arrest and violence.
(Courtesy of the Tennessee Woman Suffrage Heritage Trail)
. . . .
The Power of Women’s Votes
Women’s votes have consistently shaped U.S. elections:
Since 1980, women have turned out at higher rates than men.
In 2020, a record-breaking gender gap allowed Joe Biden to triumph over Donald Trump.
In 2022, young women—many voting for the first time—swung key races in states like Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania.
In 2023 and 2024, women helped beat back antiabortion ballot measures and extremist candidates.
. . . .
View of marchers as they walk along Pennsylvania Avenue. Visible in the center background is the United States Capitol Building.A rally in honor of the 75th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, in Washington, D.C., Aug. 26, 1995. (Mark Reinstein / Corbis via Getty Images)
But wins are possible. As Ms. readers may know:
Tennessee was the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment on August 18, 1920, pushing the amendment past the two-thirds majority of states that women needed. But the vote was a close one: It only passed when Harry Burn, a 24-year-old member of the House of Representatives, decided at the last minute to reverse his longstanding opposition to women’s suffrage. Burn was the youngest member of the state legislature, and wore a red rose boutonniere that day to signify that he would vote against the potential new law. (Those in favor of ratification wore yellow roses, while those against wore red.) Going by the roses’ colors, many anticipated that the vote would end in a gridlock. That was, until Burn received a note from his mother, Phoebe Ensminger Burn. In the note, she wrote, “Hurrah, and vote for suffrage! Don’t keep them in doubt.” In a nod to suffragist leader Carrie Chapman Catt, she then added, “Be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put the ‘rat’ in ratification.” Still clutching his mother’s note, Burn voted “aye.” And only a few days later, on August 26, the 19th Amendment went into effect as law, ending suffragists’ half-century long campaign. Burn later defended his change of heart by saying, “A mother’s advice is always safest for her boy to follow, and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification.”
This Women’s Equality Day, we invite you to remember Tennessee’s suffragists—and finish what they started. Sign the national petition at Sign4ERA.org (https://www.sign4era.org/) urging Congress to do what the Constitution, and history, demand: Affirm the Equal Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment.
https://msmagazine.com/2025/08/22/womens-equality-day-era-equal-rights-amendment/
Hmmm. .so cankles krasnov is "going out on patrol" tonight. Does anybody
besides me think that he has it in what passes for his mind that this puts him on the same level as President Zelenskyy, a true war commander? krasnov thinks he and his buddy bibi are both "war heroes", just like rawdogging prostitutes was his own personal Vietnam.
"consies". I just remembered a rather pejorative nickname for a group
of conservationists in a sci-fi book I read wayyyyyy back in the last millenium. I have decided that this what I shall be calling conservatives for at least a while. Not that they will care, but it amuses me.
Profile Information
Member since: Tue Jul 29, 2003, 03:30 PMNumber of posts: 133,985