
Airlines vowed to bring social distancing to the air. In practice, some are and some aren’t.

Airlines vowed to bring social distancing to the air. In practice, some are and some aren’t.
Enabling Saudi death squads in Yemen.

Military sales were suspended over concerns about Saudi human rights violations in Yemen. Now, Britain argues that Saudi violations there are “isolated incidents.”
Vote Blue in November. Stop oppression of women’s rights!

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The Trump administration is free to let employers deny their workers birth control coverage if they have religious or moral objections, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.
The 7-2 decision caps off years of lawsuits over the Affordable Care Act’s so-called “birth control mandate.” Ever since the Obama administration required employers to offer their workers contraceptive coverage nearly a decade ago, religious liberty proponents and reproductive rights advocates have been locked in a fight over which employers should be exempt from that requirement. Over the years, the government has given churches and other houses of worship, as well as some other employers, ways to skirt that requirement.
But in 2017, the Trump administration issued new rules that expanded the number of organizations who can refuse to cover their employees’ birth control. Under those rules, private employers with sincerely held religious and moral objections are exempt from the mandate.
Pennsylvania and New Jersey sued over those rules, and won in a lower court. But the Trump administration and the Little Sisters of the Poor — a Catholic religious group and an icon among conservatives for their opposition to the birth control mandate — asked the Supreme Court to overturn that ruling.
In the majority opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas ruled that the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, and Treasury did have the authority to carve out those exemptions.
“The only question we face today is what the plain language of the statute authorizes,” Thomas wrote. “And the plain language of the statute clearly allows the Departments to create the preventive care standards as well as the religious and moral exemptions.”
The reliably conservative Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh all joined Thomas’ opinion, as did Chief Justice John Roberts (who recently sided with the liberals in multiple cases).
Justice Elena Kagan also voted with the majority but wrote a separate opinion to explain why. Justice Stephen Breyer joined her opinion. Both of those justices typically vote with the liberal wing of the court.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, meanwhile, dissented in an opinion joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. In that dissent, Ginsburg pointed out the government has estimated between 70,500 and 126,400 women could lose their “no-cost contraceptive services” if more employers were exempt from providing it.
“This court leaves women workers to fend for themselves, to seek contraceptive coverage from sources other than their employer’s insurer, and, absent another available source of funding, to pay for contraceptive services out of their own pockets,” she wrote.
Ginsburg made history back in May, when she called into the arguments over the case — held over the phone, due to the coronavirus pandemic — from the hospital. At the time, she was recovering from a “non-surgical treatment” for a benign gallbladder condition.
Ginsburg wasted no time making it clear where she stood on the case.
“You are shifting the employer’s religious beliefs — the cost of them — onto the employees,” Ginsburg told then-Solicitor General Noel Francisco. Women who lose birth control coverage, she added, will likely be forced to hunt for coverage from government programs like Medicaid or pay for their health care out of pocket. “The women end up getting nothing.”
Cover: In this Aug. 26, 2016, file photo, a one-month dosage of hormonal birth control pills is displayed in Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)
Screw You! Why sentence us to illness and killing grandparents!
In a pair of tweets this morning, Trump criticized Democrats as wanting to keep schools closed for political reasons. [ more › ]
hypocrisy, hypocrisy, hypocrisy
Texas GOP Chairman James Dickey spoke during the final afternoon of the 2018 Texas GOP Convention in San Antonio.
Robin Jerstad for The Texas Tribune
The Republican Party of Texas is moving forward with its controversial in-person convention during the coronavirus pandemic — but elected officials including Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick will be giving their scheduled speeches virtually.
“All the elected officials are switching from a live, in-person speech to videos,” Kyle Whatley, the party’s executive director, said during a town hall livestreamed Tuesday night. “They’re doing that for us in order to focus all the attention on the business of the meeting and to get everybody in and out of here as quickly and as safely as possible.”
Texas Republican officials typically headline their party’s biennial state convention, which this year is scheduled for July 16 to 18 at Houston’s George R. Brown Convention Center. Roughly 6,000 people are expected to attend the event. Attendees will be required to wear masks during most of the gathering, according to party Chair James Dickey, after Abbott issued a statewide mask mandate last week.
Still, as the state has seen a surge in coronavirus cases, calls have been growing for the party to cancel its event. The State Republican Executive Committee, a 64-member body that serves as the party’s governing board, met last week to consider moving the convention online, but it approved a resolution supporting an in-person gathering in a 40-20 vote.
After that vote, at least two groups — the Texas Medical Association and the Texas Craft Brewers Guild — have withdrawn as sponsors for the event. Both cited safety concerns because Houston is one of the country’s hot spots for the virus.
In a letter Monday, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner asked the party to cancel the gathering and warned that health inspectors would have the authority to shut down the event if certain guidelines are not followed. His letter included a list of the Houston Health Department’s requirements.
“A virtual convention would protect the health and perhaps the very lives of those who intend on attending an in-person event, as well as the hundreds of workers needed to support such an event,” Turner wrote. “The best way to minimize risk is to hold a virtual convention.”
In his response, Dickey said the party planned to limit entry points, use thermal scans, create space for social distancing, place hand sanitizer stations in the center and provide attendees with face masks.
“That need to assemble is important, and we are taking every precaution to ensure it is done safely,” Dickey said.
He also suggested that Turner “must not have had the information about the measures being voluntarily implemented.”
Asked Tuesday about the health guidelines Turner included in his letter, Dickey said there have been “several questions about [the mayor’s] demands.”
“We just got that letter late this morning,” Dickey said on the livestream. “Our legal team is reviewing it, and we will let you know if there are any updates. We shall see.”
Shortly before Whatley made the announcement, Abbott was noncommittal in a TV interview when asked if he’d attend the convention in person.
“Yeah, listen, as for myself, as well as for everybody else, we will continue to see what the standards are that will be issued by the SREC, by the state Republican Party, to determine what the possibility will be for being able to attend,” Abbott told KENS-TV in San Antonio.
Patrick Svitek contributed to this report.
Disclosure: The Texas Medical Association has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
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Inclusivity seminars and books like White Fragility protect power; they don’t challenge it. We’re being hustled
Millions of Americans are still nobly protesting against police violence and the gross inequities of American life. Like the activists before them, they are realizing just how hard reform is to come by in the United States.
For a certain kind of progressive liberal, the only thing left to do, it would seem, is to continue “the conversation” about race. That has opened the door to the immediate beneficiaries of this political moment – a cottage industry of diversity consultants.

An independent audit faulted the social network for “vexing and heartbreaking decisions” that affect its users — and potentially the November elections.
Sad cases of learning and not from those having a hard time accepting this virus changes nearly everything.

The virus has infiltrated Sunday services, church meetings and youth camps. More than 650 cases have been linked to reopened religious facilities.

Maybe we’ve been expecting too much of her all along.
International students contributed $45 billion to the U.S. economy in 2018, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. Support about 400,000 jobs and Trump wants to throw that away!

International students will be required to take at least one in-person class to keep their visas, at a time when many universities are prioritizing online instruction.
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