National Student Walk Out Day
A month after the Parkland School Shooting, the EMPOWER group has called for a National School Walkout. The National school walkout happened today at 10am ET, and was scheduled to last 17 minutes.The walkout was open to American students, teachers and staff.
The idea originated with EMPOWER, the youth branch of the Women's March. EMPOWER is facilitating the walkout by providing local student organizers with tool kits to help them get started. The kits include a step-by-step guide to organizing a walkout, sample letters to administrators to request permission to participate and an explanation of students' rights.
The nationwide protest is both a memorial and protest action. Students and teachers across the United States walked out of their schools and universities to honor the lives of the 17 people killed at Stoneman Douglas and press lawmakers to pass stricter gun control laws. Among their demands, participants want Congress to: ban assault weapons, require universal background checks before gun sales, and pass a gun violence restraining order law that would allow courts to disarm people who display warning signs of violent behavior.
The demonstrations were not limited to school property, students also gathered outside the White House and on Capitol Hill. In nearly 3,000 reported protests nationwide, students from the elementary to college level took up the call in a variety of ways. In Massachusetts, Georgia, and Ohio, students went to the statehouse to lobby for new gun regulations. While some schools are allowing students to walk out of class, others have forbidden participation citing safety concerns and objections to disrupting class time. Those students could face disciplinary action if they join the walkout without the permission of school administrators.
POLL: 3-in-5 students say campus climate 'deters speech'
A Gallup/Knight Foundation poll that was published on Monday found that 61 percent of students in 2017 said that the climate on college campuses deters free expression. The same poll taken in 2016 revealed that only 54 percent of U.S. college students believed that campus climate “prevents some people from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive.”
One in four college students say they have personally felt uncomfortable on campus because of comments they heard about their race, ethnicity or religion.
ICE Director Fires Back at Nancy Pelosi: 'How Dare You' Call ICE Agents 'Cowardly'
Nancy Pelosi issued a statement on March 7 to ICE after the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against California, claiming three recently passed state laws that are deliberately interfering with federal immigration enforcement.
Pelosi issued a statement saying, “The Trump Administration has dragged its attacks on California and all communities with the courage to stand up to its anti-immigrant agenda to a new low. Just last week, President Trump decided to terrorize innocent immigrant families in the Bay Area with his unjust and cruel raids. The President has now desperately decided to brazenly abuse the legal system to push his mass deportation agenda.”
Acting Director of ICE, Thomas Homan responded to Nancy Pelosi for her recent criticism against the ICE agency. Thomas Homan slammed Nancy Pelosi for characterizing ICE as a threat to immigrant communities.
“How dare she say we are terrorizing communities,” Thomas Homan said, arguing that it’s the immigrants that are in the country illegally that ICE arrested who are posing the threat.
Thomas Homan argued that ICE does not arrest innocent people and said that, during the agency’s operation in Los Angeles in February, 88 percent of the people arrested were convicted criminals.
Thomas Homan said that ICE was merely enforcing immigration laws that Congress had empowered them to execute. “If people don’t like it, people like Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein can certainly change the law, they are legislators,” Thomas Homan said.
Homan also criticized Dianne Feinstein for attacking ICE even though she voted in favor of the Immigration Control and Financial Responsibility Act of 1996 that gave ICE the authority to carry out such operations.
Democrat Conor Lamb declares victory in Pa. special election
Democrat Conor Lamb is poised to deliver an upset to the Republican Party in a Pennsylvania district Donald Trump handily won in 2016.
After a long night of drama, the race was too close to declare a winner. At this point, however, Republican Rick Saccone would have to overcome a significant uphill climb to overtake Lamb in the vote count. Republicans, however, have not ruled out the possibility of a recount.
In 2016, Trump won the district by double digits, but the race between Conor Lamb, a moderate Democrat, and Rick Saccone, a Republican, had become unexpectedly competitive.
Tim Murphy, a Republican, resigned from the seat last year after reports that he encouraged a woman, with whom he had an affair, to have an abortion.
Tillerson Becomes Secretary of State
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson offered a solemn thanks to State Department staffers while making no specific mention of President Trump in his first public remarks since being fired by Mr. Trump on Tuesday morning. Tillerson will be replaced by CIA chief Mike Pompeo and Mike Pompeo will be replaced with current deputy director of the CIA, Gina Haspel, who will be the first woman to head the spy agency.
Tillerson made no remarks on the drama behind his termination, but said he received a call on Tuesday "a little after noon time" from the president as well as chief of staff John Kelly "to ensure we have clarity as to the days ahead." He said the top priority now was to "ensure an orderly and smooth transition" as the country faces "policy and national security challenges."
His time at the State Department will formally terminate at midnight on March 31.
Joy Behar Apologies, But Did She Mean It?
On Tuesday, Joy Behar took time on "The View" to apologize for the controversial comments she made about Vice President Pence's Christian faith last month. Behar’s on-air apology came after weeks of protests by viewers who were outraged by her remarks.
The controversy began last in February, when Behar and her co-hosts were discussing comments that former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman had made on “Celebrity Big Brother.”
“He’s extreme,” Manigault Newman said to her fellow contestants about Pence, who has ties to the evangelical community. “I’m Christian. I love Jesus. But he thinks Jesus tells him to say things. I’m like, ‘Jesus ain’t saying that.’” That prompted the women of “The View” to critique Pence’s faith on their February 13th program. “I don’t know that I want my vice president, um — speaking in tongues and having Jesus speak to him,” co-host Sunny Hostin said. Behar added, “It’s one thing to talk to Jesus. It’s another thing when Jesus talks to you. That’s called mental illness, if I’m not correct, hearing voices.”
On Monday, VP Pence was interviewed by Sean Hannity and this is what he said: “I give Joy Behar a lot of credit. She picked up the phone. She called me. She was very sincere, and she apologized and one of the things my faith teaches me is grace; forgive as you've been forgiven. I'm still encouraging her to use the forum of that program or some other public forum to apologize to tens of millions of Americans who were equally offended. One of the things my faith teaches me is grace -- to forgive as you've been forgiven. I said to Joy, 'Of course I'll forgive ya.' That's part of my faith experience, but I did encourage her -- and I'm still encouraging her -- to use the forum of that program or some other public forum to apologize to tens of millions of Americans who were equally offended.”
Finally, on Tuesday Behar apologized to viewers saying, "So I think Vice President Pence is right. I was raised to respect everyone's religious faith, and I fell short of that. I sincerely apologize for what I said."
UMN hosting prof to lecture on ‘the violence of whiteness’
At the University of Minnesota, which is a liberal school, they're bringing a person into lecture called 'Elephant in the room: a grown-up conversation about whiteness', they're not paying this woman.
The speaker is Lisa Anderson-Levy, she's a radical left professor who teaches at a Beloit College. She is a very radical person and the description of her lecture says, 'There has been little public discussion about the logic of white supremacy and how it contextualizes the ways in which we understand who is a terrorist, what counts as terrorism, who is a patriot, what counts as patriotism, who's an immigrant and what counts as unfavorable immigration.'
In her opinion, whiteness is not good, in her eyes. It's white supremacy. So, those of us who are white are, part of our mission is to keep down African-Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, keep them down because we're white and we want to keep them down. That is about as absurd and dishonest, a philosophy of white supremacy as there is, on this planet.
Mail Time!
- "Why was Tillerson ever selected to be Secretary of State. Why does the Senate have to approve a member of the president seems shouldn't be able to pick who he wants?".
- "Glad you addressed Kate's law. You said Harry Reid held it up. Reid held up virtually everything when he was the Senate leader. Now, Mitch McConnell is doing the same thing. What has he done about Kate's law?".
- "O'Reilly you say you know what President Trump is going to do in certain situations, what is he going to do in the next presidential election?"
Word of the Day: Lemming
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