Daddy's Girl

Ivanka Trump
"[The] Trump manipulation machine wants us to think that Ivanka is really his women's-rights representative." "In other words, Ivanka is a wholly owned subsidiary of 'My Father,' as she almost religiously called him at the Republican convention."

"Ivanka is like the token black or Latino employee of the 1970s -- the one exceptional person who is hired and then used to prove that everything is fine for everyone else of their kind, when patently it is not." "Women -- so many of whom are underpaid, undervalued, disregarded and abused -- shouldn't think that they can put their fate into the hands of someone who, no matter hard she's worked in her father's company, has no clue of what struggle really means. The fact that Ivanka is supposedly guiding women's policy shows just how little -- not how much -- My Father cares about it." [1]

The proposal (six weeks of maternal leave), that Ivanka supposedly sold to her father,  is unclear, as it seems to exclude half of same-sex mothers (only a birth mother can receive the benefit), all unmarried mothers, all mothers of adopted infants, and certainly all fathers, whether in heterosexual or same-sex marriages.

Jeff Sessions: Foe of Consent  Decrees
Attorney General Jeff Sessions is re-negotiating the consent decree struck between the Justice Department and the city of Baltimore. The decree includes a community oversight task force, an independent federal monitor, and the requirement that officers receive instructions about implicit bias. He has asked his subordinates to review agreements with other police departments to be sure that they accomplish such goals as boosting morale and the recruitment of police. A memo from Sessions states flatly: "It is not the responsibility of the federal government to manage non-federal law enforcement agencies."

When city and town elected officials sign consent decrees, they are agreeing that their police departments have fallen well short of standards expected of them. These officials then agree to a set of remedies to fix the problems. What Sessions is doing will allow these problems to fester, further driving a wedge between communities and those they have expected to serve and protect.

Destroying Our Democracy
"After a month in office, Donald Trump has already proved himself unable to discharge his duties; the disability isn't laziness or inattention. It expresses itself in paranoid rants, non-stop feuds carried out in public, and impulsive acts that can only damage his government and himself." "The notion that at some point, Trump would start behaving 'Presidential' was always a fantasy." [2]

Senator John Coryn (R-TX), the Republican whip, made it plain: Trump can go on being Trump "as long as we're able to get things done." Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) explained: "We'll never even get started with doing the things we need to do, like repealing Obamacare, if we're spending our whole time having Republicans investigate Republicans."

"An authoritarian and erratic leader, a chaotic presidency, a supine legislature, a resistant permanent bureaucracy, street demonstrations, fear abroad: this is what illiberal regimes look like. If Trump were more rational and more competent, he might have a chance of destroying our democracy." [3]

Unequal at Birth
"Each year in the United States, more than 23,000 infants die before reaching their first birthday. Across the United States, black infants die at a rate that's more than twice as high as that of white infants." [4]

One study found that black women living in poorer neighborhoods were more likely to have low-birth-weight infants, regardless of their own socioeconomic status. The more segregated cities have greater black/white infant-mortality disparities; women whose babies are born severely underweight are more likely to report experiences of discrimination.

When it comes to the practice of discrimination, the state of Wisconsin stands out as being unique, as it locks up more of its black men than any other state in the country. Last year, the state stripped hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from Milwaukee's home-visiting program. Wisconsin Republicans have also fought efforts to increase the minimum wage, which could have a positive effect on the infant-mortality rate. [5]

Footnotes
[1] Amy Wilentz, "This Particular Daddy's Girl," The Nation, February 20, 2017.

[2] George Packer, "Official Duties," The New Yorker, February 27, 2017.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Zoe Carpenter, "Black Births Matter," The Nation, March 6, 2017.

[5] Ibid.