Former Vice President Joe Biden, who announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination last week, blasted President Trump for badmouthing unions and labor, hours before Biden spoke to unions in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
“I’m sick of this President badmouthing unions. Labor built the middle class in this country. Minimum wage, overtime pay, the 40-hour week: they exist for all of us because unions fought for those rights. We need a President who honors them and their work.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden, who announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination last week, blasted President Trump for badmouthing unions and labor, hours before Biden spoke to unions in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
“I’m sick of this President badmouthing unions. Labor built the middle class in this country. Minimum wage, overtime pay, the 40-hour week: they exist for all of us because unions fought for those rights. We need a President who honors them and their work.”

Ryan Goodman, former Special Counsel for the Department of Defense and co-editor-in-chief of Just Security, wrote Monday that Volume One of the redacted Mueller report “identifies key findings of collusion (not just crimes).”...

“The redacted Mueller Report documents a series of activities that show strong evidence of collusion. Or, more precisely, it provides significant evidence that Trump Campaign associates coordinated with, cooperated with, encouraged, or gave support to the Russia/WikiLeaks election interference activities. The Report documents the following actions (each of which is analyzed in detail in Part II),” Goodman writes, before listing those actions.
In his second section of analysis, Goodman lays it out:...….

Goodman explains that one reason the report can’t prove criminal collusion (conspiracy) is many of the people involved, including the president himself, refused to give information, deleted evidence, lied to investigators, and obstructed the investigation.
The Report states, “Even when individuals testified or agreed to be interviewed, they sometimes provided information that was false or incomplete.”

With its particular focus on China’s oppression of religious and human rights, an independent watchdog group has decried in its annual report the state of religious freedom across the globe.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a bipartisan organization created 20 years ago, concludes in its Monday (April 29) report that “innumerable believers and nonbelievers across the globe continued in 2018 to experience manifold suffering due to their beliefs.”....

Two decades later it notes that Uighur Muslims, in particular, remain severely repressed by Chinese officials.
“Nearly 20 years later, Muslims are constantly surveilled, their phones confiscated and scanned, their skin pricked for blood samples to collect their DNA, their children prohibited from attending mosque,” reads the report’s introduction. “Even worse, the Chinese government has ripped entire families apart, detaining between 800,000 and two million adults in concentration camps and relegating some of their children to orphanages.”

Ms. Omar, 36, the first congresswoman to wear a hijab, has faced intense opposition over her outspoken, controversial positions on Israel and comments about Jews that many felt played on anti-Semitic tropes about money and dual loyalty.
Leaders of her own party drafted a resolution rebuking her comments. Republicans have threatened to censure her. Things escalated when President Trump accused her of playing down the events of Sept. 11 after comments she made about the aftermath of the attacks.

The Almighty may not think the Satanic Temple is a church.
But the taxman has given it the thumbs-up.
The Satanic Temple, which is featured in a documentary called “Hail Satan?,” announced this week that the IRS now recognizes it as a church.

That recognition means the group can now get the same benefits as religious organizations — including tax exemption and protection from discrimination....

I’m a secular person. As a co-founder of MoveOn, the political organizing group, I’ve talked for years about how most people want to do good and aim to be kind. I’ve spoken of the need to respect and honor the dignity of all people.
This year I’ve learned an even deeper way to talk about this work, using language from faith communities that are embracing this movement to love our neighbors, even those we don’t agree with...…

Wherever I go, I now talk about seeing the divinity in every person. Words like respect, dignity, kindness are core values that speak deeply to others and me, but they don’t go to the heart as directly as “love thy neighbor.” I may not be a member of any faith community, but seeing the divinity in everyone speaks to me too.

Seeing every person as divine means not dismissing “those people” as racist, elitist, mean-spirited or deluded — a reaction that has become common among people who are passionate about politics. People who see things differently are increasingly identified as bad people. “Why would I talk to them?” I worry that it has become dangerous to be friends with people on the other side: It can lead to having our loyalty to our own team questioned.

For most of the last 40 years, the notion that one's Christian beliefs should guide one's voting has largely been promoted by conservative Republicans.....

This year, a Democratic presidential candidate, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., is making the same argument, with a twist: A vote based on Christian values, Buttigieg suggests, would indeed turn the country around, but in a "progressive" direction.
Buttigieg says protecting the poor and welcoming immigrants is a Christian obligation that is inconsistent with Republican priorities....

Buttigieg's suggestion that liberals be willing to say that "Christian faith is going to point you in a progressive direction," as he told USA Today columnist Kirsten Powers, provoked some outrage on the right. One conservative academic argued that Buttigieg "doesn't get to make up his own Christianity," and another conservative dismissed Buttigieg's comments as "partisan nonsense."