Latest news with #Velshi
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Ali Velshi: The U.S. may have just entered the most dangerous chapter of the post-Roe era yet
This is an adapted excerpt from the June 8 episode of 'Velshi.' We may have just entered the most dangerous chapter of the post-Roe era to date. With new, but little-noticed, developments over recent days, it's apparent that not only are women under greater threat of being criminalized for their pregnancies, but the health and lives of pregnant women are more endangered now than at any time since the Dobbs decision was handed down. Since the Supreme Court's 2022 decision, draconian abortion bans have been enacted in more than a dozen states. We have seen the deadly impact of those bans. In Georgia, Amber Thurman died of sepsis after not receiving an abortion procedure, known as dilation and curettage, that could have saved her life. Also in Georgia, Candi Miller died after she was too afraid to seek medical care because of the state's abortion ban. In Texas, Josseli Barnica, Porsha Ngumezi and Nevaeh Crain all died after being denied proper care following miscarriages. And in the same state, Kylie Thurman lost part of her reproductive system after being turned away from a Texas hospital with an ectopic pregnancy. These are just some of the cases we know about. To put it quite simply: Abortion is health care, emergency abortion is emergency health care — and without it, women die. Despite that fact, last week the Trump administration revoked guidance issued by the Biden administration that directed hospitals to provide emergency abortions to women regardless of a state's abortion laws. So why would the Trump administration want to come after emergency abortions specifically? The ones where, if you don't get them, you could die? Well, University of California, Davis law professor Mary Ziegler has a theory. She notes that the new guidance from the Trump administration does not just revoke the Biden-era guidance on providing emergency abortions, it also suggests that hospitals are required to protect the health of a pregnant woman's 'unborn child.' This, Ziegler suggests, hints at a broader anti-abortion strategy. As she writes in a new piece for MSNBC: 'In the longer term, the end of the Biden-era guidance may be the tip of the sword further carving up abortion protections, even in states where that right is still protected.' So not only is it dangerous to experience a pregnancy complication in the wrong state, it's likely to get more complicated even if you live in a 'safe' state. But that is not even the end of the alarming trends in anti-abortion zealotry. Miscarriage is the most common pregnancy complication in America, affecting up to 1 in 5 pregnancies, according to the National Institutes of Health. And yet, since Dobbs was handed down, we have seen case after case of this common medical condition becoming a criminal investigation. Mallori Patrice Strait spent five months in police custody after miscarrying in a public bathroom in Texas. Those charges were dropped, and an autopsy determined she had naturally miscarried a nonviable fetus. Brittany Watts was arrested on felony corpse abuse charges in Ohio, for her miscarriage, which happened at home after she had been to a hospital with severe bleeding and was told her pregnancy was not viable. The charges against her were eventually dropped. In Georgia, Selena Maria Chandler-Scott had a miscarriage and was arrested for disposing of the fetal tissue. Those charges were also dropped. In South Carolina, Amari Marsh was accused of murder after losing her pregnancy. She was held in jail without bond for 22 days, ultimately released on house arrest with an ankle monitor. Thirteen months later, she was cleared by a grand jury. If you're not following these stories closely, it might be tempting to think of each as a one-off: a bad arrest or a wrong judgment call. But make no mistake, this is systematic criminalization of women's bodies — and they are saying it out loud. Tom Truman, a prosecutor for Raleigh County, West Virginia, said that while he would be unwilling to charge a woman for her miscarriage, other prosecuting attorneys in the state have discussed the possibility. Speaking to a local news outlet, Truman advised that if women who miscarry want to avoid arrest, they should call authorities to tell them that their pregnancy has ended. 'Call your doctor. Call law enforcement, or 911, and just say, 'I miscarried. I want you to know,'' Truman said. ''Isn't there a difference between somebody that's eight months pregnant and nine weeks pregnant?' … Those are going to be decisions that are going to have to be parsed out.' Strict abortion bans could turn a common medical outcome, one that only happens to pregnant women, into a matter for the police. The idea is that you are supposed to call 911 if you have a miscarriage at home so that it can be investigated as a crime. This is America in 2025. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Ali Velshi: Have Americans grown numb? Trump's new travel ban met with muted reaction
This is an adapted excerpt from the June 8 episode of 'Velshi.' On Monday, the Trump administration's travel ban on nationals from 12 countries — almost all in Africa and Asia — went into effect. Last week, Donald Trump announced full bans would be issued on Afghanistan, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. He also announced partial restrictions on nationals from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela. The White House's official argument is that the countries on this list, as determined by the secretary of state, do not adequately provide information to the U.S. for screening and vetting visa applicants. In a prerecorded video address discussing the order, Trump cited the firebombing attack in Boulder, Colorado, at an event honoring hostages taken by Hamas in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack. An Egyptian national has been charged in the firebombing, but Egypt is not included on the list of countries under the new restrictions. Mark Hetfield, president of a refugee resettlement agency, told The Washington Post there was a commonality between the countries included in the order. 'They're travel bans from countries that obviously don't respect human rights and don't respect the rule of law and have foreign relations issues with the United States,' Hetfield said. 'But those are exactly the kinds of countries that produce the refugees and, in particular, produce refugees that the United States would have an interest in resettling.' You may recall that in Trump's first term, he restricted travel from a group of mostly majority-Muslim countries: Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen. That 2017 ban typified Trump's first term. It was met with outrage and immediate protest, with activists, immigration lawyers and citizens alike camping out in airports to decry the order. It also typified Trump's first term in its sloppiness. The order was immediately rejected by a court, rewritten, rejected again, and rewritten a third time. When it reached the Supreme Court in 2018, the Court ruled 5 to 4 that the president did have authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act to restrict the entry of people from countries that do not share adequate vetting information or could otherwise pose a national security risk. With this new ban, the Trump administration appears to have learned from that first-term experience and adapted its approach. The new order references the very same clause of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which reads: Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may … suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.' Back in 2018, Chief Justice John Roberts said this language 'exudes deference to the President in every clause.' Perhaps Trump's first travel ban faded from public consciousness, but it was the law of the land until it was repealed by his successor, Joe Biden, in 2021. And the legal world's perception is that this latest ban is built to survive a legal battle as well. Trump's second term has been replete with lessons he learned from the first: He spent four years out of office, stewing on plans to wield the power he lost in 2020, and he came back into office armed with a 900-page playbook to bend the government to his whims and many executive orders already written, ready for him to sign. In the public's reaction to Trump's second ban, we see another difference: It wasn't met with the same outcry as his first. Although Americans are protesting the president's policies at Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities across the country, no spontaneous protests against the travel bans have broken out in airports like last time (at least not so far). It's apparent even in the media: Trump made the announcement Wednesday night, and by Thursday afternoon, he and Musk were in their spat, which took up all the oxygen in the news cycle. As Adam Serwer argued in a recent piece for The Atlantic, this story is evidence that Americans have grown numb. 'The number of disastrous things the administration is doing makes prioritizing difficult for its opponents,' Serwer wrote. 'But there is also the reality that Trumpism is a kind of authoritarian autoimmune disease, one that has been ravaging the American body politic for so long that there are fewer small-d democratic antibodies left to fight it off.' This article was originally published on
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Media's glaring double standard exposed: Musk vilified while Dem senator gets a pass for identical gesture
Elon Musk and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., made similar gestures this year that were handled very differently by the press, according to a study conducted by the Media Research Center. Musk was famously accused of doing the Nazi salute in January while celebrating President Donald Trump's inauguration at the Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., when the Tesla mogul placed his hand over his heart and quickly extended it in a motion that alarmed liberal pundits. Booker made a similar gesture on Saturday when he capped off a speech to the California Democratic Party's convention by placing his right hand on his chest before raising it to the crowd. When Musk made the motion, he told the crowd he wanted to thank Trump supporters "from my heart to yours," but many quickly accused Musk of the Nazi-era salute. When Booker did it, many conservatives took to social media to remind them that Musk's critics frowned upon the move, but their point was essentially disregarded by the press. Booker Slammed For Alleged 'Nazi Salute' To Cali Dems Just Months After Musk Was Dragged For Same Gesture CNN, MSNBC and PBS spent 16 minutes and 17 seconds on the Musk ordeal in the week immediately following his gesture, according to the Media Research Center. The outlets found time to cover Musk during the midst of the inauguration as President Donald Trump made nonstop news with a bevy of executive orders. Booker's similar gesture was completely ignored by CNN, MSNBC and PBS, along with the broadcast networks, according to the MRC. Read On The Fox News App ABC, NBC and CBS didn't cover either gesture, according to the MRC. NewsBusters senior research analyst Bill D'Agostino, who conducted the MRC study, noted that pundits continued to cover Elon's "salute" long after the first week. "Musk's salute has been brought up a total of 55 times on left-wing cable – CNN/MSNBC – and PBS, but only 22 of those occurred during the first week immediately following the incident," D'Agostino told Fox News Digital. Elon Musk And Cory Booker Made Similar Salutes But Media Reacted Much Differently "The longest single discussion about it took place more than a month after the actual incident, on the February 23 edition of MSNBC's 'Velshi,' during a larger segment which solely focused on the question of whether Musk is, in fact, a crypto-Nazi," D'Agostino added. "Musk was rarely given the benefit of the doubt for the gesture." D'Agostino found that much of the CNN and MSNBC coverage featured commentators or journalists calling it a "Nazi salute" or "Hitler salute." "The vast majority were eager not only to describe it as such, but to draw connections between it and Musk's subsequent speech to Germany's AFD party," D'Agostino said. "They're still talking about it," he added, noting that Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh even mentioned Musk's gesture this week on CNN. Elon Musk's Mother Urges Him To Sue Cnn, Other News Outlets For Peddling 'Nazi Salute' Narrative Booker's team has attempted to downplay the similar hand gesture. "Cory Booker was obviously just waving to the crowd. Anyone who claims his wave is the same as Elon Musk's gesture is operating in bad faith. The differences between the two are obvious to anyone without an agenda," a Booker spokesperson told Forbes. Booker's office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. Heritage Foundation media fellow Tim Young told Fox News Digital he believes the ordeal is yet another "of the many instances where you see a clear media bias" against Republicans, as Musk was still tied to Trump when the incident occurred. Musk and Trump have had a messy public spat this week, but it remains to be seen if that will improve Musk's standing in the anti-Trump article source: Media's glaring double standard exposed: Musk vilified while Dem senator gets a pass for identical gesture
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Ali Velshi: How Americans can defend our democracy against Trump
This is an adapted excerpt from the May 24 episode of 'Velshi.' In the wake of Donald Trump's second term, more and more Americans are asking a critical question: 'What can I do to defend democracy in America?' That question marks a shift away from the comforting illusion that courts, politicians or institutions will save America's democracy on their own. They won't. Institutions have failed us repeatedly, as we have learned that what we thought were guardrails are merely suggestions, reliant on goodwill, decency and the honor system. Real political change in America doesn't come from the top; it never has. It comes from the bottom, from ordinary people resisting in big and small ways. That's the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement. The political scientist Gene Sharp, nicknamed the 'dictator slayer,' wrote something of a playbook for resisting authoritarian regimes. He didn't invent these strategies, but he observed them. For decades, Sharp studied how ordinary people challenged brutal regimes around the world, and what he found was simple, yet powerful: All rulers — even the most oppressive — rely on the cooperation of the people. Through fear, apathy or consent, they maintain power. But when people refuse to cooperate, when they disobey, that's when authoritarian systems begin to crack. That's why historian Timothy Snyder begins his book titled 'On Tyranny' with this warning: 'Do not obey in advance.' Because it's in those first, often invisible, acts of surrender that authoritarianism takes root. As we face creeping authoritarianism here at home, Snyder's advice stands as a call to action for Americans confronting Trump. History shows that the courage to stand up to authority and hold power to account has helped sustain our democracy and other democracies around the world. The historian Drew Gilpin Faust, a former president of Harvard University, captured that spirit in a powerful essay for The New York Times about the Union soldiers of the Civil War. She wrote: I have read dozens of these men's letters and diaries, windows into why they fought, into what and whom they loved and what they hoped for at the end of a war they knew they might not survive. Together they did save the Union … These men made our lives possible. They were impelled to risk all by a sense of obligation to the future. We possess a reciprocal obligation to the past. We must not squander what they bequeathed to us. We owe it to them, and every generation that came after them: women who won the right to vote, students who walked into newly desegregated schools under armed guard, trade unionists who faced violence for fighting for the rights of workers, those who fought for voting rights, reproductive freedom and LGBTQ+ dignity. They didn't wait for permission. They disobeyed in advance. They withdrew their cooperation from injustice. Oftentimes, they blatantly and openly broke the law, as TV cameras rolled. Which brings us back to Sharp's basic premise, a very Gandhian premise. He believed that noncooperation, the deliberate refusal to obey or comply, is one of the most powerful ways to disrupt oppressive systems. Because when enough people stop participating in the machinery of control, that very system begins to break down. So, if you're wondering what you can do, here are some ideas that draw from proven strategies of resistance — adapted for today's world. In Missouri, a government-run tip line targeting the trans community was flooded with thousands of fake reports, including the entire movie script of 'The Bee Movie' submitted over and over again. The result? Total system collapse. Utah and Texas faced similar backlashes, with Utah shutting down its own surveillance hotline under the weight of memes and mass trolling. This, of course, is what undergirded the Civil Rights Movement in America, but here's a more recent example: In Idaho, a middle school teacher refused to remove a sign that read 'Everyone Is Welcome Here.' It didn't mention politics, race or gender, but was still deemed too controversial. After a monthslong battle, she resigned two weeks ago in protest. This can include using the opposition's own tools against them. In 2024, Oklahoma's Republican-controlled Legislature passed a law allowing parents to opt their children out of 'harmful' educational material. Now, a group of parents has turned that law on its head. In response to Superintendent of Public Education Ryan Walters' new curriculum, which includes conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and Christian nationalist ideology, a parent group called We're Oklahoma Education, or WOKE, is fighting back. They've created an opt-out form allowing families to withdraw their children from lessons on 'Judeo-Christian concepts of ethics and government' and 'discrepancies in 2020 election results.' Their approach is not only bold but legally savvy since the group is using the very law that conservatives passed, which was designed to shield students from so-called progressive content. The opt-out letter warns schools that failure to comply could result in legal action. This one, of course, is close to my heart. When Target pulled Pride merchandise and scaled back diversity, equity and inclusion commitments, thousands of Americans launched a boycott campaign on TikTok, Facebook and other platforms. The result? Target's quarterly profits dropped and the company admitted that backlash from both sides had harmed its bottom line. In Worcester, Massachusetts, viral footage of an aggressive U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid showed federal agents detaining a woman as her daughters clung to the car, one of them holding a baby. Bystanders, including a city councilor and a school board candidate, intervened. The video sparked immediate outrage and protests across the state. In response, Worcester officials released bodycam footage and then took action: The city issued an executive order barring city employees from cooperating with ICE or inquiring about immigration status. This is the final, and perhaps my favorite, form of disruption. Civil rights activist Bruce Hartford noted that humor and audacity go hand in hand: 'You can weaken, unbalance, and ultimately overthrow the king quicker by laughing at him than by futilely screaming fury at him.' Groups like the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and The Satanic Temple have used satire to expose religious favoritism in public institutions. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whose adherents refer to themselves as 'Pastafarians,' mocked efforts to teach intelligent design in public schools by proposing a noodle-based deity, highlighting the dangers of blurring church and state. The Satanic Temple, which is not to be confused with the Church of Satan and does not promote devil worship, took similar action, demanding equal representation when governments promoted religious symbols like Ten Commandments monuments or sanctioned prayer in public schools. Their logic forced officials to either accommodate all religions or retract their policies altogether. So if you're asking yourself what one person can do, these are ideas to hopefully get you thinking. And remember this final piece of advice from Snyder: 'Be as courageous as you can. If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.' This article was originally published on
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Ali Velshi: Creatively cruel: GOP's abortion crackdown means losing a pregnancy could land you in jail
This is an adapted excerpt from the May 24 episode of 'Velshi.' As the journalist and author Jessica Valenti recently wrote, 'We don't need to imagine a dystopian future where women are being used as incubators and arrested for miscarriages, because that future is already here.' It's been almost three years since the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, ending the constitutional right to an abortion, and post-Roe America is turning out to be much worse than most of us imagined. It's not just the inhumanity of denying women rights over their own bodies and futures, or the deadly danger of forced birth. What we're witnessing is the criminalization of women's bodies. Women aren't just being arrested and jailed for their miscarriages; they are being pursued in creatively cruel ways that are a direct result of the radical anti-abortion ideology of fetal personhood. If a fetus is legally a person, then law enforcement is empowered to criminally investigate pregnancies. Let that sink in for a moment: If a fetus is a person in the eyes of the law, any miscarriage — which, by the way is not uncommon, 10% to 20% of known pregnancies end in miscarriages — if you live in the wrong state, can be treated as a potential homicide. This isn't theoretical. Consider the case of Mallori Patrice Strait, a Texas woman who was released from jail last week after spending nearly five months in custody for miscarrying in a public bathroom. Strait was arrested for 'corpse abuse' and accused of trying to flush fetal remains down the toilet. Ultimately, the medical examiner found she had, in fact, miscarried — that her fetus died in utero — and prosecutors found 'no direct evidence' that she tried to flush anything. But what she experienced cannot be undone: the compounded trauma of being criminalized after suffering something as emotionally and physically taxing as a miscarriage. Strait was dealt punishment when what she really needed was care. In Ohio, Brittany Watts was also arrested on corpse abuse charges after she had a miscarriage in a toilet; Watts' charges were also dropped. In Georgia, Selena Maria Chandler-Scott had a miscarriage and was arrested for disposing of the fetal tissue. Law enforcement accused her of 'concealing a death' and 'abandoning a dead body.' But just like the other cases, her charges were eventually dropped. According to the advocacy group Pregnancy Justice, there were at least 210 pregnancy-related prosecutions in the year after Roe was overturned, the highest number to ever be documented in a single year. It's important to note that low-income women and women of color have been disproportionately targeted. It's only expected to get worse as more states pass fetal personhood laws, declaring that fertilized eggs have the same legal rights as people, even though they cannot survive outside the womb. According to Pregnancy Justice, at least 24 states now include some form of personhood language in their anti-abortion laws. Seventeen already have laws on the books, and several others are considering extreme expansions, including Florida, where the University of Florida newspaper points out: If state lawmakers have their way, a simple sip of wine or a single cigarette — taken before a woman even knows she is pregnant — could become a criminal offense. Anything a woman does that could potentially injure a fetus, whether that be accidental or intentional, could be deemed as child abuse and neglect according to the proposed fetal personhood bill. Meanwhile, as the push to police and criminalize pregnant women intensifies, the Trump administration has been working to decriminalize activists who target abortion providers and their patients. One of Trump's first presidential actions was to pardon nearly two dozen people who'd been convicted of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (known as FACE), a federal law that protects patients from violence, threats and obstruction when seeking reproductive care. Then, the Justice Department announced that, moving forward, it would limit enforcement of the FACE Act. The FACE Act was passed 30 years ago with bipartisan support amid a wave of extremist violence against abortion providers. According to the National Abortion Federation, the violence has continued in post-Roe America. Over the past two years, there have been more than 700 incidents of obstruction, over 600 trespassing attempts, nearly 300 violent threats and over 128,000 protests aimed at abortion providers across the country. Despite this reality, Republicans in Congress are now pushing legislation to repeal the FACE Act altogether. This article was originally published on
