In Georgia and Mississippi, new "religious liberties" bills that would allow government workers, taxpayer-funded groups and businesses whose owners or operators oppose gay marriage to discriminate againt gays, have advanced. Legislators in over twenty other states are pursuing similar actions. And in Texas, a new Kim Davis is on the horizon, as Molly Criner, the clerk of rural Irion County, says she may not give out marriage licenses to gay couples (no couples have apparently yet come to get one). She testified last week before a Texas legislative committee. "This is going to be something that violates my oath," she claimed.

A backlash against LGBT equality is in full swing, eight months after marriage equality came to the entire nation, and it's not just happening in very conservative places. In Houston, a city which had a lesbian mayor and prided itself on inclusiveness, a ballot measure rescinded the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance with an overwhelming majority last November, as opponents targeted transgender people with a campaign of hate and "bathroom panic" via television ads.

LGBT leaders not only didn't have a plan then, they've still not figured out how to deal with bathroom panic and the right's age-old tactic of exploiting people's fears about their children with regard to the presence of gay or transgender people.

LAS VEGAS — Ahead of Nevada's Democratic caucuses, the Service Employees International Union is distributing literature to members touting Hillary Clinton's support for a $15 hourly wage for workers. But Clinton, who won SEIU's endorsement in November, has not actually endorsed a federal $15 minimum wage. Clinton has said since the beginning of her campaign that she backs a federal minimum wage of $12 an hour.
“Hillary Clinton supports our fight for $15 and a union,” read the SEIU fliers, which were distributed in English and Spanish. The literature also featured quotes from Clinton supporting New York’s proposal to raise wages for fast-food workers to $15 an hour.

<snip>

The fliers were sent out as a tool to provide members information about where Clinton stands on SEIU’s agenda, according to an email obtained by POLITICO.
SEIU’s Nevada state director, Brian Shepherd, told POLITICO the fliers were not misleading about Clinton’s position.
“Hillary Clinton was the first candidate who came and met with workers and said she supported our movement,” Shepherd said. “The fight for $15 is about creating a movement of people to talk about the inequality in America. That’s been the focus of the fight for $15.”
Shepherd said the union has been stumping for Clinton in working-class neighborhoods and has knocked on 36,000 doors and distributed 10,000 pledge cards on her behalf.

The latest batch of emails dating back to Hillary Clinton’s tenure as U.S. secretary of state shows her appearing to lobby members of the Senate on controversial trade bills and her office communicating with the New York Times about holding a sensitive article. The State Department release of documents on her private email server Friday came the day before the Democratic presidential candidate heads into the Nevada caucuses.

Other emails show Clinton seeming to personally lobby her former Democratic colleagues in the Senate to support free trade agreements (FTAs) with Colombia, Panama and South Korea. She had previously told voters she would work to block the Colombian and South Korean pacts.

An email Oct. 8, 2011, to Clinton from her aide Huma Abedin gave notes about the state of play in Congress on the proposed trade pacts. The notes provided Clinton “some background before you make the calls” to legislators.

Two days later in an email titled “FTA calls,” Clinton wrote to aides indicating she had spoken to Sens. Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Jim Webb of Virginia, both Democrats. She told the aides she had talked with “Webb who is strong in favor of all 3” trade agreements, and then asked, “So why did I call him?” — indicating she was otherwise phoning to try to convince wavering lawmakers to support the deals.

Only three years earlier, Clinton wooed organized labor during her presidential campaign with promises to oppose those same deals. She called the South Korea agreement “inherently unfair.” She also said, “I will do everything I can to urge the Congress to reject the Colombia Free Trade Agreement.” Clinton has lately courted organized labor’s support for her current presidential bid by pledging to oppose the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, a deal she repeatedly touted while secretary of state.

The latest batch of emails dating back to Hillary Clinton’s tenure as U.S. secretary of state shows her appearing to lobby members of the Senate on controversial trade bills and her office communicating with the New York Times about holding a sensitive article. The State Department release of documents on her private email server Friday came the day before the Democratic presidential candidate heads into the Nevada caucuses.

Other emails show Clinton seeming to personally lobby her former Democratic colleagues in the Senate to support free trade agreements (FTAs) with Colombia, Panama and South Korea. She had previously told voters she would work to block the Colombian and South Korean pacts.

An email Oct. 8, 2011, to Clinton from her aide Huma Abedin gave notes about the state of play in Congress on the proposed trade pacts. The notes provided Clinton “some background before you make the calls” to legislators.

Two days later in an email titled “FTA calls,” Clinton wrote to aides indicating she had spoken to Sens. Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Jim Webb of Virginia, both Democrats. She told the aides she had talked with “Webb who is strong in favor of all 3” trade agreements, and then asked, “So why did I call him?” — indicating she was otherwise phoning to try to convince wavering lawmakers to support the deals.

Only three years earlier, Clinton wooed organized labor during her presidential campaign with promises to oppose those same deals. She called the South Korea agreement “inherently unfair.” She also said, “I will do everything I can to urge the Congress to reject the Colombia Free Trade Agreement.” Clinton has lately courted organized labor’s support for her current presidential bid by pledging to oppose the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, a deal she repeatedly touted while secretary of state.

Asking for Hillary Clinton’s transcripts from her paid speeches to Goldman Sachs “could be a slippery slope” for even more requests, one of the candidate’s top surrogates insisted Thursday.
“I think there’s nothing to hide, but I think that could be a slippery slope and we could end up asking for all sorts of things,” David Brock, the founder of the pro-Clinton Correct the Record PAC, said in an interview with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

In defending Clinton’s paid speeches to Goldman Sachs, in particular, Brock cited former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who embarked on his own speaking tour prior to running for the Republican nomination in 2008.
“She got fair market value for her speeches. She made that decision,” he said, remarking that it is up to Clinton and her campaign to decide whether to release the transcripts.

FAILING TO win white voters in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton needs her black firewall like never before. Her speech yesterday in Harlem touched on criminal justice and economic opportunity. Those remarks follow a stop in majority-black Flint, Mich., to decry its lead-water crisis, and a debate in segregated Milwaukee, where she pledged to “tackle” discrimination. She also took a shot at Bernie Sanders’ criticism of Wall Street with the question: “If we broke up the big banks tomorrow, would that end racism?”

Never mind that Wall Street investors and bankers play a huge role in discriminatory redlining, predatory lending, and foreclosures. Clinton, who earned an estimated $1.8 million in big-bank speaking fees in 2013 and 2014, shamelessly counts on blacks for support while she is engaged with the system that holds back the aspirations of too many black people. She is hoping that no one remembers how husband Bill put the black poor before the criminal-justice firing squad and how she is in bed with the big banks that stole the American dream from black homeowners.

Eight years later, she is again watching a coronation become a conundrum of her own centrist making. Sanders has begun to campaign seriously in black communities, with a brand of democratic socialism that is starting to earn black endorsements, including from writer Ta-Nehisi Coates.

That is not yet enough to suggest that Clinton will lose South Carolina. But she is running on a fundamental and untenable racial contradiction. She claims she will fight “systemic racism” at a time when the system and Bill’s role in it is under a fresh microscope from a new generation represented by the Black Lives Matter movement. At some point, the firewall cannot hold back the flames the Clintons fanned

How do you solve a problem like Bernie?

Belatedly appreciating the Sanders threat, Hillary Clinton is trying everything to stop the septuagenarian socialist democrat from Vermont. She has attacked his position on guns, his support for a single-payer health care system and his idealistic penchant for believing that Washington can be changed. Nothing has proved to be the silver bullet that would take out the unlikely spoiler of the second almost-coronation of Hillary Clinton. So, what’s next? Sanders himself predicted at his New Hampshire victory speech that soon the kitchen sink would be coming his way.

Just so we’re clear: Sanders is an unserious pie-in-the-sky candidate because he wants to rein in campaign spending and institute a health care system that is commonplace in Europe. Clinton, on the other hand, will eradicate sexism and racism in America. Who’s the dreamer here? After all, Clinton can’t even keep her own campaign surrogates — Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright — from taking sexist swipes at young female Bernie supporters.

In its latest reframing of reality, the Clinton campaign is lowering expectations for the Nevada Democratic caucuses Saturday, claiming the state is “80% white” and thus will favor Sanders. Actually, Democratic caucus voters in 2008 were 36% non-white. Moreover, the demographics of the state are exactly the same as when Nevada was being cast as Clinton’s “Western firewall.”

Where the Clinton campaign might be right is that the state could end up favoring her opponent. Bernie is a problem Hillary can’t figure out how to solve, perhaps because he’s not the problem. She is.

Washington (CNN)Likely Democratic caucusgoers in Nevada are split almost evenly between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders ahead of Saturday's caucuses, according to a new CNN/ORC Poll.

Though Clinton holds an edge over Sanders on handling a range of top issues, the results suggest the extremely close race hinges on divided opinions on the economy.

Overall, 48% of likely caucus attendees say they support Clinton, 47% Sanders. Both candidates carry their demographic strong points from prior states into Nevada, with Clinton holding an edge among women, while Sanders tops the former secretary of state among voters under age 55.

READ: The complete CNN/ORC poll results

ATLANTA — Hillary Clinton’s top bundlers and donors are reconciling themselves to a jarring new reality: The money advantage that they had long taken for granted is unlikely to last — and the campaign might even be outraised by Bernie Sanders’ over the rest of the primary season.
Now, with two weeks left before Super Tuesday and the prospect of an extended contest ahead, they’re girding for a suddenly crucial late-February fundraising sprint they hope will keep pace with Sanders’ blazing clip.

“They now know this is going to be a fight as prolonged as the Obama ’08 fight was,” said former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a longtime Clinton ally and former Democratic National Committee chairman who’s helped with Clinton’s fundraising, echoing a theme that arose in conversations with more than a dozen people close to the Clinton finance operation. “It’s clear to me that this race will not be decided by who has the most money.

If Clinton can pull off a series of convincing victories — or at least not allow Sanders to collect headline-grabbing wins — in the March states, bundlers expect her own online fundraising to start picking up, on top of the campaign support they’re expecting in increased measure from the main pro-Clinton super PAC, Priorities USA Action, and a handful of advocacy groups and unions that have endorsed her. (The SEIU’s political arm, for example, reported spending $100,000 between Nevada and South Carolina on Sunday.)
That surge, they hope, would help their candidate maintain her cash-on-hand advantage over Sanders, who has had to spend heavily to build up his national campaign quickly.
Should Sanders start to roll up wins in March states, however, some Clinton allies worry that Clinton could start to run low on money as the campaign drags on, while her opponent’s coffers keep filling up.
“Now Sanders goes into South Carolina and March 1st restocked, while the Clinton camp has to figure out how to win those states frugally,” warned one former aide who stays in touch with the campaign team.
“Nothing raises more small-dollar contributions [than] seeing a guy delivering a victory speech week in and week out.”

As the presidential election campaign in the United States heats up, the question of whether America is ready for a female president has arisen, given that Hillary Clinton is a serious contender in the race.

This question has become even more pertinent as one of the front-runners in the Republican Party is the misogynistic, racist, xenophobic and narcissistic Donald Trump, who has turned his campaign into a C-grade reality TV show, complete with swear words and derogatory names for women.

Surprisingly, Hillary Clinton’s candidacy has divided, rather than united, women. Younger women, it appears, prefer the other Democratic Party candidate, the left-leaning, anti-war Bernie Sanders, whose popularity seems to be rising.

Older feminists who are in Hillary’s age-group, such as the iconic Gloria Steinem, are supporting her simply because she is a woman, as they believe it is time that the world’s only superpower had a woman at the helm.

However, many younger women have refused to buy this argument, not because they do not believe in gender equality, but because they are not convinced that having a “token” woman in the White House is enough to bring about a significant change in the current world order.