Trump on the Civil War: ‘Why Could That One Not Have Been Worked Out?’
By JONAH ENGEL BROMWICHMAY 1, 2017
President Trump in March, saluting the grave of President Andrew Jackson in Nashville. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
President Trump mused in an interview that the Civil War could have been avoided if only Andrew Jackson had been around to stop it. Jackson had been dead 16 years and long out of office when the war started in 1861.
Mr. Trump’s comments, among several he made about Jackson in an interview broadcast Monday on satellite radio, quickly drew condemnation from his critics and from historians who said they appeared to show the president profoundly misunderstanding American history.
“People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why?” he told his interviewer, Salena Zito, a host on SiriusXM’s P.O.T.U.S. channel, who spoke to Mr. Trump for an article that was published on Sunday in The Washington Examiner.
Mr. Trump has often professed admiration for the seventh president’s populism and visited his tomb in March.
Julian E. Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, called Mr. Trump’s comments on Jackson and the Civil War the “height of inaccurate historical revisionism.”
We fact-checked Mr. Trump’s claims with the help of Jon Meacham, the historian whose 2008 biography, “American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House,” won a Pulitzer Prize.
Trump: ‘He had a very, very mean and nasty campaign. Because they said this was the meanest and the nastiest.’
President Trump is correct that the 1828 race between Andrew Jackson and the incumbent, John Quincy Adams, was hard-fought and often descended into ad hominem attacks on both sides. The insults leveled at Jackson’s wife, Rachel, were particularly vicious — she was accused of marrying Jackson before her divorce from her first husband, Lewis Robards, was final.
Trump: ‘His wife died. They destroyed his wife, and she died.’
The campaign took a notable toll on Rachel Donelson Robards Jackson. She died suddenly, shortly before Christmas in 1828.
“There’s no question that Jackson believed that the campaign had killed his wife,” Mr. Meacham said. “That’s basically right.”
Trump: ‘I mean had Andrew Jackson been a little later you wouldn’t have had the Civil War. He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart. He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War, he said, “There’s no reason for this.” ’
Jackson died in 1845. The Civil War broke out in 1861.
Mr. Meacham said he thought that Mr. Trump may have been referring to the nullification crisis, which did occur during Jackson’s lifetime.
The crisis, which began in 1832, was a conflict between the federal government and South Carolina, a Southern state that would later be instrumental in the movement for secession.
During the crisis, President Jackson “took a firm stand on the side of the union,” Mr. Meacham said, adding, “There are two stray Trumpian ideas that collided into each other when he talked.”
Trump: ‘People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why? People don’t ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?’
Mr. Trump has questioned the necessity of the Civil War before, in an interview with Mr. Meacham before the election. At the time, President Trump said that he had “always felt that the South overplayed their hand,” he told Mr. Meacham.
Had Jackson been alive at the start of the Civil War, Mr. Meacham said, it would be difficult to predict his reaction. It would have brought his commitment to the Union into conflict with his identity as an unapologetic slave owner. Mr. Jackson was from Tennessee, which fought for the Confederacy. Mr. Trump visited his tomb there this year.
But any president would have had to contend with the South’s attempt to expand the institution of slavery into territory newly acquired by the United States. It’s what Mr. Meacham called the unavoidable historical question.
“The expansion of slavery caused the Civil War,” he said. “And you can’t get around that. So what does Trump mean? Would he have let slavery exist but not expand? That’s the counterfactual question you have to ask.”

Economist Shows Why Escaping Poverty Is So Difficult In America
April 30, 2017 1:55 pm

Economist Shows Why Escaping Poverty Is So Difficult In America
In order to get out of poverty, you have to basically be extremely lucky for almost 20 years, according to a new bookThe Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy, by economist Peter Temin.
So many deep-seeded factors have lead to the economic and wealth inequality in the U.S. today (from slavery through to the new Jim Crow prisons crisis of today, to technological shifts, to globalization, corporatization and so much else) that few Americans stand a realistic chance of ever changing their economic status. Writer Gillian B. White explains this in a detail in an April 27 piece in the Atlantic, which sums up Temin’s new book.
In the book, Temin explains the problem via a concept he calls the “dual economy.” He divides the American economic system between an “FTE sector” of college educated, computer literate, high-salaried people (he estimates these make up about 20 percent of the roughly 320 million Americans); and the “low-wage sector,” (which represents the majoirty of the nation).
Temin’s estimates trace workers’ families back to before 1970, and he does the math to determines that America’s economy runs on a two-class system, in which race plays a significant role. He establishes that it would take almost 20 years of “nothing going wrong,” as White’s piece puts it, for an average person in poverty to dig their way out.
As White summarizes in the Atlantic:
“Education is key, Temin writes, but notes that this means plotting, starting in early childhood, a successful path to, and through, college. That’s a 16-year (or longer) plan that, as Temin compellingly observes, can be easily upended. For minorities especially, this means contending with the racially fraught trends Temin identifies earlier in his book, such as mass incarceration and institutional disinvestment in students, for example. Many cities, which house a disproportionate portion of the black (and increasingly, Latino) population, lack adequate funding for schools. And decrepit infrastructure and lackluster public transit can make it difficult for residents to get out of their communities to places with better educational or work opportunities. Temin argues that these impediments exist by design.”

April M. Short is a yoga teacher and writer who previously worked as AlterNet’s drugs and health editor. She currently works part-time for AlterNet, and freelances for a number of publications nationwide.

This article was made possible by the readers and supporters of AlterNet.

Trump’s One Great Accomplishment? Implicating The Entire GOP In Potentially Impeachable Crimes
May 1, 2017 7:00 am
Trump’s One Great Accomplishment? Implicating The Entire GOP In Potentially Impeachable Crimes
You don’t even need to be a liar, though that is necessary if you’re going to say that Trump “has given more financial disclosure than anybody else” when he hasn’t even released one tax return, after promising to release them dozens of times, becoming the first president not to make this bare minimum of disclosure in more than 45 years.
The only absolutely necessary qualification to work for or with Trump is a willingness to abet his potentially impeachable crimes. And the good news for Trump is that nearly his entire party is proving that their prime concern is covering up his potential wrongdoing — even from themselves.
Last week, only one Republican in the House voted for a measure that would have required Trump disclose his tax returns and the official visitor logs to the White House. The Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into Russia’s interference with our elections is still being run by Senator Richard Burr (R-NC), a member of Trump’s transition team, who is reportedly slow-walking the entire process, ideally into irrelevance.
But despite their best efforts, the weight of the evidence demanding scrutiny of Trump’s campaign and presidency hasn’t been squelched.
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), who led the House investigation until it became obvious even to Republicans that he was more interested in abetting Trump’s abuses of power than examining anything Russia or Trump did, had to recuse himself. As did Attorney General Jeff Sessions. And Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), whose sudden decision to retire from the House and his roost as chairman of the House Oversight Committee this term suggests that his imagined job of inventing Hillary Clinton scandals is nowhere near as much fun as concealing Donald Trump scandals.
Since Chaffetz made that announcement, he is suddenly doing some oversight into Trump’s possible violations of the Emoluments Clause and General Michael Flynn’s lack of disclosures of foreign payments in his background checks. But he’s still echoing the White House’s ridiculous accusation that Flynn’s background check can all be blamed on the Obama administration.
Trump is arguing that he didn’t trust Obama to vet refugees or his own birth certificate, but relied on his earlier endorsement of a general whom Obama later fired?
Abetting this nonsense is one thing. But when Trump repeatedly rejects the consensus opinion that Russia interfered in our elections after parroting Russia propaganda and celebrating the disclosures of Wikileaks, an organization his CIA director now calls “a hostile intelligence agency” — and his party fails to rebuke him en masse — then the choice made by that party is clear.
The GOP as a whole may not have been a part of the (alleged) crimes, but it’s all in on the coverup.
The question isn’t whether there is a case to be made for the impeachment of Donald Trump, but which case is the most compelling.

On Slate’s Trumpcast, Harvard law professor Noah Feldman convincingly argued that there are actually three cases for impeachment: corruption, abuse of power, and the violation of democratic norms, all potentially impeachable crimes.

Corruption is pretty obvious. You’re not supposed to use the presidency as a pop-up ad for the hundreds of businesses you still own and from which you directly benefit.
“In this constitutional sense, using the perks and tools of government to enrich the president personally is an impeachable offense, an offense that would grow out of a pattern of such acts of corruption,” Feldman wrote, noting that the odd advertisement for the president’s Mar-A-Lago resort that showed up on a State Department site this week could fit this pattern.
Is there an honest person alive who doesn’t believe Trump is using this office to enrich himself right now?
Abuse of power comes when you, say, accuse a former president of impeachable crimes with no proof or understanding of the law you suggest he broke. Or it could be from targeting the press as enemies of the people.

The Russia stuff, which has convinced many on the left that treason occurred in the Trump campaign, is the most complicated case to make, given that the alleged wrongdoing took place before the president took office. But the White House’s refusal to participate, for instance, in disclosing Mike Flynn’s entanglements or communication as National Security Advisor suggest that there could be a case for potential high crimes in office. Likewise, any attempt to reward a foreign interest for interfering in the 2016 election would be impeachable, Feldman suggests.
Democrats in Congress will be reluctant to mention the “I” word for fear of turning off “moderates.” This clinging to past propriety lingers on the left, despite America electing a birther who called Mexican immigrants rapists and couldn’t identify his own health care bill with the help of Google.
Yet it’s clear the GOP is rotting from the head. So the “I” word Democrats need to stress is independent investigation.
Two out of three Americans want such to see a commission that seeks the facts about Russia’s involvement in the Trump campaign, without the skew of partisanship. Conceivably, such a process could end in full absolution for Trump, but the public senses that something is amiss and is being hidden from them. And that alone is an indictment of the entire Republican Party.
Copyright 2017 The National Memo

go suck a d-ck like name calling bitches like to do..............

Yep....and for the biased types here that accuse Obama of the same thing, they conveniently overlook Mc Connell and his announcement of his plans to obstruct and how they undermined a lot of things that would have helped the recovery and the SCOTUS jack move of blocking Obama's last nominee....

Republicans Want to Punish Students Who Shut Down Controversial Speakers on Campus
Katie Reilly Apr 30, 2017

Republican lawmakers are wading into the intensifying debate over free speech on campus, proposing legislation in at least half a dozen states to regulate student protests and discipline hecklers.
Inspired by a spate of recent demonstrations that shut down controversial conservative speakers at universities from Vermont to California, Republicans are seeking more formal punishments for students who disrupt speeches, including expulsion.
"All across the nation and here at home, we've seen protesters trying to silence different viewpoints," Speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly Robin Vos, a Republican, said in a statement last week, announcing the Free Speech on Campus Act. " We need more speech, not less; it’s time to put in appropriate measures to ensure all speech is protected at our universities."
In the past few months, schools across the country have struggled to handle protests and counter-protests that derailed events featuring controversial speakers. Conservative writer Charles Murray was shouted down and then physically confronted by protesters who surrounded his car at Vermont's Middlebury College. Peaceful protests turned violent and resulted in more than $100,000 in damage at the University of California, Berkeley, forcing the cancellation of an event with far-right pundit Milo Yiannopoulos. Last week, conservative pundit Ann Coulter canceled her event at Berkeley, calling it a "dark day for free speech in America" after a lengthy back-and-forth that culminated in the Berkeley College Republicans suing the university.
The proposed Wisconsin law would require students to be suspended for at least one semester or expelled if they are twice found responsible for "interfering with the expressive rights of others." The bill also requires that campuses be open to all speakers who are invited and asks that universities strive to remain neutral on public policy issues.

The bill, which would only apply to state universities, is similar to legislation currently under consideration in Illinois, Michigan, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia, according to the conservative Goldwater Institute, which drafted the bill after which they're modeled.

Those who support the legislation and those who oppose it all say they have the same aim: to shore up freedom of expression on campus. But their approaches differ — with liberals calling for the right to protest views they deem offensive, while conservatives say they want to protect space for unpopular ideas that spark disagreement.

Jim Manley, senior attorney at the Goldwater Institute, said the goal of the proposed legislation is to prevent future speaking events from being canceled. "The reaction should be: 'How can we challenge these ideas and present what we think is the right viewpoint?'" he said.

"It’s so important for universities to be bastions of free speech because the university is a place where you can think the unthinkable, and ideas can be debated in a way that helps us seek truth," Manley added. "If we put artificial guard rails on that discussion, we’re all the poorer for it."

Democrats in some states, though, have criticized the legislation as extreme and potentially harmful.

“I disagree strongly that the university needs us to tell them how to handle this,” Rep. Terese Berceau, a Democrat representing Madison, Wis., told the Wisconsin State Journal, calling the issue an "artificial, political controversy." Democratic Rep. Dianne Hesselbein said the bill might protect one student's right to free speech at the expense of another's. Other lawmakers said the bill is unnecessary because universities already have disciplinary policies for disorderly conduct.

And in North Carolina, where a similar bill passed the House last week, some Democratic lawmakers voiced concern that if universities strive to remain neutral on public policy, it could affect their ability to research or comment on climate change.

But free-speech watchdog groups said the proposed legislation could be a step in the right direction.

"I have to say, after a state legislative season where we’ve seen a lot of bills trying to penalize or prohibit protest, it’s certainly nice to see state legislatures trying to protect speech," ACLU attorney Lee Rowland said, while adding that it will be challenging to get the balance right. She said the bills are written too broadly and don't effectively distinguish between peaceful protests and aggressive obstruction.

Joe Cohn, l egislative and policy director at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which supports civil liberties on campus, said the provisions that enforce a minimum suspension or expulsion might be "too heavy-handed." But he said some sanctions are necessary when protests get out of hand, " otherwise you foster an environment where the way you get your way or the way you stop your political adversaries is engaging in violence."

Cohn, who is working with the Goldwater Institute and lawmakers on this legislation, said it's crucial to ensure that all forms of constitutionally protected speech remain protected under new laws. That means distinguishing between acts of free speech — booing or silently walking out of a lecture — and acts of censorship, which include grabbing a microphone, assaulting a speaker or blocking the entrance to a building.

"When you actually prevent others from hearing a speaker, then you have infringed on free speech rights," Cohn said. "And free speech means nothing if you don’t also have the freedom to listen."

welcome to Obama's world....too bad Dems could not tie up the SCOTUS also....and have someone come out and say their goal is to make trump a one-termer and block all of his BS....that would only be fair play......turnabout......

Spread of Hate Crimes Has Lawmakers Seeking Harsher Penalties
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/30/us/hate-crimes-legislation.html?emc=edit_th_20170501&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=51247735

Florida Deal Would Reverse Key Part of Obama’s Medicaid Expansion
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/30/us/politics/medicaid-expansion-trump-obama-florida.html?emc=edit_th_20170501&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=51247735

Trump’s Tax Cuts May Be More Damaging Than Reagan’s
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/01/opinion/trumps-tax-cuts-may-be-more-damaging-than-reagans.html?emc=edit_th_20170501&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=51247735&_r=0

May Day 2017

Roasted in absentia
Hasan Minhaj wins over the Trump-less correspondents gathering.
LORRAINE ALI TELEVISION CRITIC
No one had a harder gig Saturday than comedian Hasan Minhaj, except perhaps for the poor soul who had to tell President Trump that Minhaj didn’t blow it roasting the commander in chief onstage at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
The senior correspondent for “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” was the latest in a long line of hosts, including Seth Meyers, Rich Little and Bob Hope, at the annual Washington black-tie event. All have roasted the press and presidents alike.
But unlike those big names, the lesser-known political satirist Minhaj, 31, had to fill a gaping hole in the festivities while making stiffs like Wolf Blitzer laugh.
That’s because Trump wasn’t there. He’s the first president since Ronald Reagan in 1981 to bow out of the annual event (and Reagan was recovering from an assassination attempt). Trump instead had his own rally earlier in the day, in front of supporters in Pennsylvania, where he called news outlets like the New York Times and CNN failing, incompetent and dishonest.
“We’ve got to address the elephant that’s not in the room,” said Minhaj near the jittery beginning of his monologue. “The leader of our country is not here. And that’s because he lives in Moscow, it’s a very long flight. As for the other guy, I think he’s in Pennsylvania because he can’t take a joke.”
C-SPAN broadcast the dinner in its entirety, as they did a march in Washington earlier Saturday where an estimated 200,000 people protested Trump’s climate policy. In between the march and the dinner programming was a broadcast of Trump’s pep rally in Harrisburg.
It was a C-SPAN trifecta of political tension, rancor and laughs. “A large group of Hollywood actors and Washington media are consoling each other in a hotel ballroom in our nation’s capital right now,” said former Hollywood celebrity Trump of the dinner.
He noted that the press’ “priorities are not my priorities, and not your priorities” and said “if the media’s job is to be honest and tell the truth, then I think, we would all agree, the media deserves a very, very big fat failing grade.” Trump’s own approval rating is at 43%, the lowest of any president at this point in his term since 1953.
All of it happened on Trump’s 100th day in office, a tenure that’s been one of the most contentious and rocky — particularly regarding the president’s relationship with the press — in modern memory. Trump also asked that his White House staff not attend the dinner.
The event at the Washington Hilton, sponsored by the White House Correspondents’ Assn., kicked off with the theme of speaking truth to power. Washington Post Watergate reporters and “All the President’s Men” authors Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were the guests of honor.
Minhaj initially appeared out of his depth at the podium after such heavyweights but gradually began to win over a crowd hesitant to laugh at Trump jokes without the president in the room dishing it back as other presidents historically have.
“I would like to say it’s an honor to be here, but that would be an alternative fact,” he said. “No one wanted to do this so, of course, it landed in the hands of an immigrant. That’s how it always goes down.”
Minhaj, who called the gig “one of the strangest events I’ve ever done in my life,” loosened up with the crowd and midway through finally prevailed over one of the most awkward televised correspondents’ dinners ever.
“In the age of Trump, I know that you guys have to be more perfect now, more than ever, because you are where the president gets his news,” he joked. “That’s why you’ve got to be on your game. You’ve got to be twice as good. Because when one of you messes up, he blames your entire group. And now you know what it feels like to be a minority.”
By the close of his 20-plus-minute monologue, Minhaj — who is usually steadfast and controlled in his duties as a “correspondent” on “The Daily Show” — became impassioned as he spoke about the role the press now plays in keeping American democracy alive.
“I was asked not to roast the president and the administration in their absentia,” said Minhaj. “We are in a very strange situation where there is a very combative relationship between the press and the president. But now that you guys are minorities, just for this moment, you might understand the position I’m in. It’s the same position a lot of minority kids feel in this country. Do I come up here and just try to fit in and not ruffle any feathers? Or do I say how I really feel because this evening is about celebrating the 1st Amendment and free speech?
“Free speech is the foundation of an open democracy, from college campuses to the White House,” he said. “Only in America can a first-generation, Indian American Muslim kid get on this stage and make fun of the president. The Orange Man behind the Muslim ban. It’s a tradition that shows the entire world that the president is not beyond the reach of the 1st Amendment.”
He continued, “But the president didn’t show up because Donald Trump doesn’t care about free speech. The man who tweets everything that comes into his head refuses to acknowledge the amendment that allows him to do it. [Hours from now] Donald Trump will be tweeting about how bad Nicki Minaj bombed at this dinner … and that’s his right. I’m proud all of us are here to defend that right, even if the man in the White House never would.”
lorraine.ali@latimes.com

**people are starting to unravel....I guess we'll all need to be armed. This is what people like ao talks about....shooting people**


Woman fatally shot, 7 hurt at pool
Shooter apparently targeting blacks is killed by officers at San Diego apartment complex, police say.
By Matt Hamilton
One woman was killed and seven people were wounded, several critically, when a man opened fire Sunday at a San Diego apartment complex swimming pool where a number of adults were attending a birthday party.
Police rushed to the apartment building in the University City area and fatally shot the man after he pointed his gun at officers, San Diego Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman said.
Authorities received several calls just after 6 p.m. about the shooting at the La Jolla Crossroads apartments, an upscale complex in the 9000 block of Judicial Drive.
The reports were grim: a white man wearing brown shorts was armed with a gun and shooting at what two witnesses described as approximately 30 people around the pool, most of them African American.
A police helicopter reached the area first and, from above, authorities could see a shooter near the pool who appeared to be reloading his weapon, Zimmerman said.
Three officers arrived and went to the pool area. There, the gunman pointed what was described as a large-caliber handgun at police, and all three officers opened fire. The shooter, whom police have not identified, was pronounced dead. The gunman, identified as Peter Selis, 49, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Seven people, all adults, were hit by gunfire: four black women, two black men and a Latino man. A black woman later died at the hospital. Her name was not released. A black man broke his arm while fleeing the shooting, Zimmerman said.
It was unclear what motivated the shooting and police were still interviewing witnesses, including the responding officers. Zimmerman said the gunman and at least one of the partygoers lived at the apartment complex.
A resident at the complex told KFMB-TV, the CBS affiliate in San Diego, that he was in his apartment about 6 p.m. when he heard gunshots followed by yelling and screams. He said he ran to his building’s clubhouse, where he could see the pool.
The shooter seemed at ease, he said, while bloodied victims struggled.
“He had his beer in one hand and his gun in the other,” said the witness, who provided only his first name, John. “There were two victims lying on the ground, one trying to crawl toward the other one to help.”
Amberjot Riat, 22, and Kaela Wong, 20, were in the jacuzzi at the complex when the gunfire erupted. Riat said they stayed in the water in hopes of avoiding the shooter’s attention. They heard the gunman speak to young women who were attending to a wounded friend. “You can either leave or you can stay here and die,” he reportedly told them.
matt.hamilton@latimes.com

Democrats need abortion foes
Making the issue a litmus test is a mistake for the national party.
By Janet Robert
T he Democratic Party is in serious trouble . It has lost more than 900 state legislative seats, 12 governors, 69 House seats and 13 Senate seats over the last decade, and a recent poll indicates that it has a lower approval rating than President Trump.
To right this political ship, it must recapture pro-life liberals such as my mother, who was a loyal Democrat until 1996, when President Clinton vetoed the bill banning partial-birth abortions.
The party lost her. And though it never lost me, it sure has done its best to push me out along with all the other pro-life Democrats in the United States, some 20 million in number.
Abortion activists claim that the fetus is just a mass of tissue, and that women are too weak to succeed without abortion. Not only do pro-life Democrats accept the settled science that shows the prenatal child is a human organism, we know that with the right support, women are more than up to the challenge of difficult or unplanned pregnancies.
We also support a living wage, Medicare, paid family leave, affordable childcare and worker protections provided by strong unions. And we strongly resist a small-government Republican Party that refuses to support women and mothers.
Yet because of our views on abortion, many of us are intimidated into silence. Indeed, we get stronger pushback from Democratic leadership than from Republicans.
I first saw this dynamic in 1990, when I moved to Minnesota and pro-lifers were shouted down at the first Democratic caucus I attended. But I felt it most acutely when I ran for Congress in 2002. Planned Parenthood’s executive director spread falsehoods about my position on government funding for contraceptives. Party activists I had worked with only months before explained that they couldn’t vote for me or donate to my campaign. Even my Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee team hid my pro-life stance.
As a result, the following year, I joined Democrats for Life of America. I’ve since learned that a large number of Democratic legislators hide their pro-life positions in order to get endorsed and raise money. Many others are under tremendous pressure to stay silent, including Muslims, women of color and, yes, members of the white working class.
The party’s leadership, located largely in pro-choice bubbles on the coasts, claims that support for abortion is a political winner. This is simply not true, especially given that 7 in 10 Americans want to ban abortion in most cases after week 12 of pregnancy. Tellingly, women support restrictions on late-term abortion at higher rates than men .
Democratic politicians shouldn’t make sweeping statements about what “the country” believes without paying careful attention to regions . While polls consistently show that Americans are pretty evenly divided on abortion, opposition in the Midwest is 27% higher than the national average. In the South, it’s 35% higher.
If the Democratic Party is to become a truly national party — one that can win consistently outside of urban, coastal America — it has no choice but to welcome people with different views on abortion. The number of voters who cite abortion as their single-most-important issue is the highest in the history of Gallup’s poll . This group is dominated by pro-lifers.
Thankfully, after the Trump election, Democratic leaders seem to understand that they have a crisis on their hands. Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez has undertaken a “unity tour” with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), with both party leaders acknowledging that any political math for a “50-state strategy” must include pro-life Democrats. And although NARAL and other pro-choice inquisitors pounced on Perez and got him to retract his position, a principle of openness to pro-lifers has been reiterated by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco ) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.).
During the 2016 campaign, Sanders rightly pointed out that Planned Parenthood belongs to “the establishment,” implying that a litmus test on abortion would not be required by the new, exciting, growing edge of the party. There is a legitimate debate about abortion to have within the party, but the progressive Sanders wing is wise to separate the toxicity of that argument from the party’s central goals.
If the Democratic Party needs a litmus test, it should be economic justice and civil rights for all. The pro-life Democrat Hubert H. Humphrey said it best: “The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”
Janet Robert is a founder of Progressive Talk Radio AM 950 Minneapolis and president of Democrats for Life of America .

Dangerous mixed signals about Iran
Trump’s incoherent approach to the nuclear agreement isn’t in the best interests of the U.S.
S ince being elected, President Trump has reversed or softened a number of problematic positions he took during last year’s campaign. He has decided not to declare China a currency manipulator, he has not withdrawn the U.S. from the North American Free Trade Agreement — as he threatened to do if Canada and Mexico didn’t agree to “immediately” renegotiate its terms — and he hasn’t followed through with a promise to “dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran” that placed limits on that country’s nuclear program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions.
Yet on Iran, the president continues to send dangerously mixed signals that could jeopardize the nuclear agreement, divide the United States from its allies and embolden hard-liners in Iran. Trump is right to be concerned about Iran’s support for militant groups in Lebanon, Yemen and Afghanistan, and its insistence on testing ballistic missiles that potentially could be used to deliver nuclear weapons. But he can respond to those provocations without repudiating — or hinting that he will repudiate — an agreement that is as much in this country’s interest as it is Iran’s.
On April 18, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sent a letter to Speaker of the House Paul D. Ryan informing Congress that Iran was complying with its obligations under the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action it negotiated in 2015 with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, Germany and the European Union. The agreement requires Iran to dismantle much of the nuclear infrastructure it has assembled, provides for intrusive inspection of known nuclear sites and includes a mechanism for the re-imposition of sanctions in the case of Iranian violations.
But, reportedly at the behest of the White House, the letter had been revised to include language that seemed to cast doubt on the United States’ long-term commitment to the agreement. Tillerson noted that “Iran remains a leading state sponsor of terror through many platforms and methods.” Then, ominously, he said that “President Donald J. Trump has directed a National Security Council-led interagency review of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that will evaluate whether suspension of sanctions related to Iran pursuant to the JCPOA is vital to the national security interests of the United States.”
Tillerson has continued to sow doubt about U.S. commitment to the accord. At a State Department news conference, he complained that the agreement “fails to achieve the objective of a non-nuclear Iran” and only “delays their goal of becoming a nuclear state.” It’s true that many of the specific restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program are time-limited, but the architects of the agreement rightly believed that a significant delay in Iran’s ability to “break out” to achieve a nuclear weapon was preferable to no deal at all. That is still the view of America’s allies.
Trump himself has added to the confusion by asserting that the Iranians “are not living up to the spirit of the agreement.” Of course, Iran and the other signatories (including the United States) are bound by the letter of the agreement, not by its “spirit,” which is open to any number of interpretations.
Trump’s, we assume, is that in exchange for the sanctions relief the agreement delivered, Iran would not only freeze certain aspects of its nuclear program and submit to inspections but also would stop testing missiles that potentially could deliver nuclear weapons and, for good measure, reduce its support for nations and militias hostile to the West.
We agree with Trump that many of Iran’s actions are provocative and inimical to U.S. interests.
But the U.S. can take steps to discourage Iranian adventurism without calling into question the viability of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or seeking to undermine it. Indeed, in February the Trump administration reacted to Iran’s testing of a medium-range ballistic missile by imposing new sanctions on 13 individuals and 12 other entities linked to the missile program.
The problem is that some in the administration, and in Congress, would like Trump to go further and punish Iran in ways that would violate the nuclear agreement. He needs to make it clear that, so long as Iran abides by the letter of the nuclear agreement, so will the United States.