Trump's Abortion Win

Plus, an update on the coronavirus and the war in Afghanistan, along with a word from Pope Francis.

Mar 01, 2020

Good morning readers! Thanks for stopping by once again. If you stumbled upon this newsletter out of curiosity, click here to read about my purpose. Also, it would be greatly appreciated if you would like, share, and subscribe. The haters are already telling me there’s no market for what I’m doing. Help me prove them wrong.

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News Rundown

The coronavirus (COVID-19) has hit more than 80,000 people worldwide, including 69 Americans (45 of which were people brought back to the US from China and the Diamond Princess cruise ship). A Washington state man died from the illness yesterday. He was in his 50s and had underlying health issues.

President Trump has placed Vice President Mike Pence in charge of overseeing the coordinated effort to combat the spread of the coronavirus. Trump cited Pence’s experience in overseeing similar efforts as governor of Indiana when the first American case of MERS, a previous coronavirus, showed up in his state in 2014.

Although Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said it is inevitable that the virus will spread in the US, it is not inevitable that it will be widespread or have severe consequences.

Here’s some context: This year’s flu season hasn’t even been particularly bad, but has killed at least 16,000 people and hospitalized over 300,000 while infecting millions, just in the US alone. Compare that with the global coronavirus numbers.

Me:

Of course, regardless of how this unfolds, don’t forget to wash your hands, especially before eating!

Before I move on: It should be noted that America’s pandemic-fighting infrastructure has suffered to some degree under the Trump administration. We don’t yet know how costly it will be, but individuals like Bill Gates warned the White House that the cuts they were seeing would make us vulnerable to the “significant probability of a large and lethal modern-day pandemic occurring in our lifetimes.” This is not to throw shade at Trump, but to remind you that the government is often like an attorney—you hate ‘em until you need a competent defense.

In related news, US markets, like others around the world, have taken a substantial hit—the worst since the financial crisis in 2008—in the last several days due to economic concerns related to the coronavirus. Of these concerns, the most significant may be disruptions to global supply chains. For example, the iPhone is designed by Apple in California, but it’s components are made in 40-plus countries on six continents, including China. Ya can’t sell ‘em if ya ain’t got ‘em.

Other concerns include a slump in export demand to places like China and a hit to the travel industry, not to mention the continuing existence of wet markets where the coronavirus likely started to begin with.

When President Trump took office, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals (one of 13 federal appeals courts) was known as the most liberal circuit court in the nation with Democratic-appointed judges having an eleven-seat majority (20 to 9 seats). After making several appointments to the 9th Circuit, Trump has slimmed the liberal majority down to three (16 to 13).

This change paid off for the White House and pro-lifers this week when the 9th Circuit upheld a Trump administration rule that bans federal funds under Title X—that provide family planning services and related preventative healthcare to people with low-income—from going to health providers who perform or refer patients for abortion services.

So, this is to make sure federal funds don’t pay for abortions?

Well, yes and no:

The Hyde Amendment has prevented federal funds from paying for most abortions since 1976. Therefore, before the new rule was implemented, it was already illegal for organizations like Planned Parenthood, who alone performs between one-third and one-half of US abortions, to use Title X funds to perform those abortions.

But wait, what if federal funds received by Planned Parenthood for legitimate reasons freed up resources that indirectly helped them perform abortions as a nonprofit organization? Well, that’s precisely what opponents of such organizations argue.

What the Trump administration did with the new rule is mandate that abortion providers must physically (meaning in another building) and financially separate the conduction of abortion services from other family planning services in order to continue receiving Title X funding at all. This way, the potential for federal funds indirectly subsidizing abortions is removed.

What is Planned Parenthood going to do?

Planned Parenthood withdrew from the Title X program instead of complying (they’re not the only one), foregoing about $60M a year. One problem is that a whopping 41% of those that receive Title X services get them through Planned Parenthood. Where will they go now? Many of them will have virtually no where else to go to receive Title X funded services like birth control, cancer screening, STD testing and treatment, and more. (In many counties, Planned Parenthood centers are the only ones that provide some of these Title X funded services to low-income people.)

Of course, one could argue that Planned Parenthood wasn’t forced to deny the Title X funds, but they would argue that they shouldn’t be encumbered by this rule for providing abortions that women have a right to. From that perspective, the blame would be on the Trump administration for reducing access to reproductive health services for millions of women.

Another thing to consider:

The abortion rate is now lower than it was when the Roe v. Wade decision protecting a woman’s right to an abortion (during the first trimester) was issued:

The chart stops at 2014, but the rate has continued to drop. When women lose access to contraceptives at places like Planned Parenthood, will it go back up?

Hold on, what about the part of the rule that mentions providers not being allowed to refer patients for abortion services?

One part of the new rule is being called a gag rule because it makes it illegal for providers receiving Title X funds to give a referral for or encourage an abortion. To be clear, this doesn’t bar professionals from discussing abortion with patients, but some counselors say this will make it illegal for them to uphold ethical and medical standards that require them to fully inform patients. For example, many medical providers across the country will be prohibited from referring patients to where they can get a safe, legal abortion, if that’s the option they choose.

Quick aside: The topic is a bit complex, isn’t it? Ultimately, where you come down on the issue is probably determined by whether you are pro-life or pro-choice. However, I’d like to point out that this is a classic example of where good, honest people can disagree (most issues are that way). Too often our partisan news sources (or even presidents and other politicians) lead us to believe that the other side is evil or deplorable (f’ing socialists! white supremacists!). Anger and fear sells. The reality is that issues are complicated and in a pluralistic society, people are going to disagree. That’s normal. That’s okay. Does it usually lead to Congress being gridlocked? Yep, it was designed that way.

On September 11, 2001, 2,977 Americans were killed in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania at the hands of al-Qaeda. Those terrorists were being protected by another group of terrorists that ruled Afghanistan, the Taliban. After the Taliban refused to turn over Bin Laden, the US started launching air strikes against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in early October 2001.

After 18 years, there are still roughly 12,000 American troops stationed in Afghanistan that are training our allies, the Afghan government, and conducting missions against high-profile terrorists. However, the US and the Taliban agreed to a peace deal yesterday in Qatar that calls for a full withdrawal of American service members within 14 months. The deal requires that the Taliban guarantee that Afghan soil will not be used by terrorists against the United States and its allies.

The problem is that the Taliban cannot be trusted. They and their allies, al-Qaeda, still control a high percentage of Afghan territory after all these years (opium poppies keep sellin’ and terrorists keep thuggin’). Also, the Taliban has recently said they want to build an Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan. Remember when we left Iraq and ISIS happened? We could be headed for a repeat. In fact, several members of the House, including Liz Cheney and Dan Crenshaw wrote a letter to Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressing their concerns that this deal will lead to the rise of Islamic totalitarianism in Afghanistan that will ultimately threaten us once again.

With that being said, President Trump stated that it was time for someone else to do the work and that “if bad things happen, we'll go back with a force like no-one's ever seen."

Let’s hope we don’t have to.

Joe Biden took every county on his way to winning the South Carolina primary yesterday.

Here’s the update delegate tally as we head into Super Tuesday in two days!

Bernie Sanders - 54
Joe Biden - 44
Pete Buttigieg - 26
Elizabeth Warren - 8
Amy Klobuchar - 7

We’ve all seen a thousand Mike Bloomberg ads by now.

He has penetrated my subconscious to the point of recently making a cameo appearance in one of my dreams. So where are his delegates?! Stay tuned, he’s been focusing all his energy on the Super Tuesday prizes.

Fake News: Nazi History Lesson Edition

If you’ve been on social media for more than about three days, you’ve seen this or some version of it. If not, you will—soon. You’ll be seeing a lot of fake news about socialism/socialist policies (which isn’t to say you won’t also be seeing valid criticism). Before the fresh fakies come out of the oven, let’s go ahead and debunk this ole dusty musty crusty cookie I keep finding on Facebook’s intellectual floor.

Upon the abdication of power by the kaiser (German emperor) after WWI, Germany briefly became a republic. One of the political parties vying for power in the Weimar Republic (the new German state) was the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP; German Workers’ Party) founded in 1919. In 1920, they changed their name to Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP; National Socialist German Workers’ Party), aka the Nazi Party.

Long story short, Adolf Hitler went on to use the Nazi Party to launch his racist agenda and attempted restoration of German “greatness.” Not long after Hitler took over the party, it was no longer a party of socialists or workers. In fact, communists and socialists were banned from the German civil service and some were even sent to concentration camps.

The actual statement in this version of the meme is essentially true, but the implication that Hitler and the Nazis were socialist is false.