Clerk of the House Cheryl Johnson presided over the fifth most balloted Speaker election in US history, all other House business at a standstill. (They didnât even know if they had healthcare, or would their staff be paid at midmonth as usual.) Voting started with 212 for House Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York (and stayed there virtually throughout) vs 203 for Kevin McCarthy, with radical Republicans voting for neither or for Andy Biggs, R-Ariz, as a demand for key commitments that McCarthy make easier to depose a speaker, weaken the powers of the speaker's office to drive the legislative agenda and assign committee posts, and drive legislation for term limits on members of Congress. Republicans hold a narrow 222-212 majority at the moment, with one vacancy, totalling 234 members rather than 235âŠ
Finally, at about 1:00 this morning, after a motion to adjourn was quashed, came the 15th ballot âa number exceeded only in 1820, 1849, 1855 (a record 133 ballots) and 1859â electing McCarthy on 216 votes âpossible because six radical Republicans voted âpresent,â reducing the total he needed for a majority.
The stand-off resembled a kind of 2nd anniversary re-enactment of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, the House committee on that only weeks ago concluding its work, its full report including recommending the Ethics Committee investigate McCarthy for his refusal to comply with that investigation.
There appears to be no news yet on <big>who will be the next Clerk of the House</big> but clearly s/x/he will need the savvy and stamina displayed this past week by âMadam Clerkâ Cheryl Johnson,
born [1960] in New Orleans [to] Rev. Charlie and Cynthia Davis Johnson ⊠graduated from the Univ. of Iowa with a bachelorâs in journalism and mass communications in 1980 ⊠earned her <big>J.D.</big> degree from Howard Univ School of Law in 1984 ⊠attended Harvardâs Kennedy School's senior management program in 1988âŠ. served as director and counsel for the Committee on House Administration's Subcommittee on Libraries and Memorials, House Committee on Post Office, and Civil Service Subcommittee on Investigations, [working] with the Subcommittee chair ... to exercise oversight and legislative responsibility over the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution ... served as the chief education and investigative counsel [and principal policy advisor and spokesperson] for the House Committee on Education and the Workforce ... primarily focused on elementary and secondary education issues, juvenile justice, child nutrition, labor issues, and older Americans' employment and nutrition programs .. After nearly twenty years in the House ⊠[she moved to] the Smithsonian Institution's Office of Government Relations for ten years, serving one of those years as director.
In late December 2018, Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi [nominated Johnson as the next] Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives ⊠the second African American [to hold that post, after Lorraine C. Miller]. On February 25, 2019 Johnson was sworn in as the 36th Clerk and assumed the role [the next day].
Johnson lives in Chevy Chase, MD [with her husband and their son]. She is a member of the [D.C.] and Louisiana Bars ⊠serves on the board of the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church and the Faith and Politics Institute
[From] January 3, 2023 [through approx 1:00a.m. January 7, 2023], Johnson [presided] over the first session of the 118th United States Congress [through 15 attempts by the new Republican majority] to elect a Speaker of the House ...
Along with other House officers, the Clerk is elected every two years after election of the Speaker, âThe full House adopts a resolution to elect the [remaining] officers, who ... begin serving ... after they [take] the oath of office.â Thus, it is the previously elected clerk of the House who summons Representatives and convenes each new Congress for the first time, calling the House to order
by gaveling it into session. After a prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance, the clerk then calls the roll of representatives-elect, which is done as an electronic quorum call in the modern era, and then oversees the election of a Speaker. During these processes, the Clerk must "preserve order and decorum and decide all questions of order" [which is subject to appeal]. The Speaker is then sworn in, takes the chair, administers oaths to the rest of the of members-elect, and the House then proceeds with [the next order of business: nominating and electing the remaining officers, including Clerk...]
BTW, TheConversation provides information on the job of a Speaker of the House for any govt&politics junkies lacking enuf for the week!
And HERE IS Rachel Paine Caufield, an expert on all thing Congress at Drake University, to clarify the details of a situation that for those 4 days we kind of had no one in the House doing the work of government (except possible Madam Speaker), because until the members are sworn in, they canât, and until thereâs a Speaker, thereâs no one who can do the swearing in. And other fascinating details that strongly remind me of the popular question âwhoâs in charge of the country if the president is incapacitatedâ â for four days, the House was incapacitated even though their first ballot the first day came out 212 for a Democrat and only 203 for a RepublicanâŠ.
In other news:
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Women in the State House: in 2022, a Record Number of Women Were Elected Governor â how that happened: 7 Things to Know:
#1 â to win, you have to runâŠ
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January 3 â U.S. Mint Begins Shipping American Women Quarters honoring Bessie Colman.
The American Women Quarters Program is a series of [twenty-five-cent coins] featuring notable women in U.S. history, commemorating the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The United States Mint is issuing five designs each year from 2022 to 2025 ... 20 total .... One woman will be honored on the reverse of each coin, selected for "contributions to the United States in a wide spectrum of accomplishments and fields, including but not limited to suffrage, civil rights, abolition, government, humanities, science, space, and arts." The obverse depicts George Washington with a new design.
The program was authorized by the Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020, sponsored by Representatives Barbara Lee and Anthony Gonzalez [originally] for 56 quarters, honoring one woman from each state and territory, but [was amended due to] a set of circulating coins intended to be released in 2026 for the United States Semiquincentennial [one in that] set will also feature a woman. It replaced a ... proposal of quarters featuring animals or endangered species [and] will be followed 2027â2030 with [depictions of] youth sports [and] succeeds the America the Beautiful quarters and Washington Crossing the Delaware quarterâŠ.
[The honorees by order of issue as announced so far are] âșMaya Angelou âș Sally Ride âș Wilma Mankiller âș Nina Otero-Warren âș Anna May Wong âș <big>Bessie Coleman</big> âș Edith KanakaÊ»ole âș Eleanor Roosevelt âșJovita Idar âșMaria Tallchief ...
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Treated Like a Criminal: Native American womanâs death sparks questions
In May of 2021, Abbey Lynn Steele [who turned 19 that month] gave birth to her first child, a baby boy. A urine test showed methamphetamine in his system. [She tested positive too, dooming full custody of the baby under South Dakota law, and setting] in motion a series of events that defined the rest of her short life.
Instead of receiving [counseling or] treatment, the young mother was charged with felony ingestion of a controlled substance. Some states criminalize drug ingestion, but South Dakota is the [only US state] with a law explicitly [allowing felony charges] that could result in prison time. For well over a year, Steele, a Native American, struggled to comply with the conditions of her pretrial release[, repeatedly writing] letters to a judge to plead for another chance on a pre-trial sobriety program after missing drug testing appointments or missing court and landing in jail â a place she deeply feared, her family said [because of her physically very small stature].
On Nov. 16, 2022, for reasons that are under investigation, Abbey Steeleâs heart stopped at the Pennington County Jail, a few hours after an arrest on warrants for missed court appearances [and paramedics were unable to resuscitate her]. Sheâd given birth to her second child in an emergency cesarean section at a Rapid City hospital just five days earlierâŠ.
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on three first-degree felony charges of kidnapping âfirst-degree felony is the most serious â and three third-degree counts of gross sexual imposition (rape) during examinations of patients.
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TheConversation âWhisper networksâ rise when women lose faith in formal systems of reporting sexual harassment: <small>a Research Brief on recent academic work.</small>
[I found that] Whisper networks â [in this case mean] informal channels that women create to warn one another about sources of sexual harassment, abuse or assault â take root because formal reporting systems can re-traumatize people who have been harmed. These networks form when women are determined to protect each other once they learn of misconduct, because their experience has shown them that formally reporting incidents is slow and generally doesnât workâŠ.
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The outrage and frustration had been building for years at California State Universityâs Maritime Academy, an elite training ground for students bound for work on the sea. It reached a peak last year, when student cadets publicly confronted the schoolâs president, a retired rear admiral.
Dozens of cadets gathered on the quad that day to protest what they said was widespread sexual misconduct, racism and hostility toward women and transgender and nonbinary students.
One student told President Thomas Cropper that a male classmate sexually harassed her. Another accused administrators of failing to adequately discipline cadets who exchanged messages disparaging trans people as âfagsâ and comparing them to a castrated dogâŠ.
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From CalMatters email: (included because women increasingly are heads of household)
the state this year will get its first glimpse of the impacts of two new laws that aim to speed up affordable housing development in former commercial areas. Lawmakers will also consider a bill to make it easier for religious organizations and nonprofit colleges to build 100% affordable housing on their property. Meanwhile, some local governments are facing a Jan. 31 deadline to submit blueprints requiring the state to plan for 2.5 million homes by 2030 â but, although the state is enforcing this more seriously than it has in the past, itâs all fun and games until the actual homes get built, as CalMattersâ Manuela Tobias put itâŠ.
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Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase are asking a federal court in New York to throw out lawsuits that claim the big banks should have seen evidence of sex trafficking by Jeffrey Epstein, the high-flying financier who killed himself in jail while facing criminal charges.
The banks said in filings late Friday they didnât commit any negligent acts that caused harm to the women who filed the lawsuits and that the lawsuits failed to show that they benefited from Epsteinâs sex traffickingâŠ.
âŠ.The lawsuits, which seek class-action status to represent other Epstein victims, claim that the banks knowingly benefited from Epsteinâs sex trafficking and âchose profit over following the lawâ to earn millions of dollars from the financier.
<big>ec</big>: âIANAL, but it sounds to me like the women have a case!â
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AP/Medscape Court: Abortion Doctors Can't Be Charged Under Arizona Law
An Arizona 1864 law, pre-statehood, criminalized nearly all abortions. allowing it only fif the patientâs life was in jeopardy. The Roe v. Wade ruling blocked it from 1973 onward. With the 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe, Arizonation Attorney General Mark Brnovich asked a state judge to allow the 1964 law to be implemented. On 30 December 2022...
...An Arizona [Court of Appeals ruled] that abortion doctors cannot be prosecuted under [the] pre-statehood law [although the court declined to repeal that law] which carries a sentence of two to five years in prison for anyone who assists in an abortion and provides no exceptions for rape or incest.
Still, [though non-doctors are still subject to be charged under the old law] the court said doctors can't be prosecuted for performing abortions in the first 15 weeks of pregnancy because other Arizona laws passed over the years allow [it] ... "The statutes, read together, make clear that physicians are permitted to perform [elective] abortions as regulated" by other abortion laws...
...In a statement, Brittany Fonteno, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood Arizona, said the decision means a state law limiting abortions to 15 weeks into a pregnancy will remain in place. "Let me be crystal clear that today is a good day ⊠The Arizona Court of Appeals has given us the clarity that Planned Parenthood Arizona has been seeking for months: When provided by licensed physicians in compliance with Arizona's other laws and regulations, abortion through 15 weeks will remain legal."...
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In a 3-2 decision nearly seven months after the SCOTUS bombshell ruling that overturned the federal constitutional right to terminate pregnancies. SCâs Supreme Court ruled that the 6-week abortion ban violates the right to privacy â South Carolinaâs state constitution explicitly gives citizens that right.
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Research: TRAP laws promote suicide.
From 1974 to 2016, among reproductive age women in 21 states with âtargeted restrictions on abortion providersâ...
...suicide rates increased 5.8%...
"Stress is a key contributor to mental health burden and a major driver of increased suicide risk," researcher and psychiatrist Ran Barzilay, MD, PhD, said in a news release.
In addition to looking at suicide rates prior to and during the lawsâ enforcement, the researchers also used control comparisons of suicide among older women and deaths from another leading cause: motor vehicle accidents. Even after further controlling for demographic and economic factors such as race and unemployment status, the link between living in a state with TRAP laws and suicide remained.
"This association is robust -- and it has nothing to do with politics," Barzilay said. "Itâs all backed by the data."
Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young women, the researchers notedâŠ.
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KHN In North Carolina, More People Are Training to Support Patients Through an Abortion
Lauren Overman has a suggested shopping list for her clients preparing to get an abortion. The list includes a heating pad, a journal, aromatherapy oils â things that could bring physical or emotional comfort after the procedure.
Overman is an abortion doula.
She has worked as a professional birth doula for many years. Recently, Overman also began offering advice and emotional support to people as they navigate having an abortion, often a lonely time. [She works virtually and in person with clients across the U.S., including in states that have banned or restricted abortion access.] She makes her services available either free or on a sliding scale to abortion patients. Other abortion doulas charge $200 to between $200 and $800.
Overman is one of around 40 practicing abortion doulas in North Carolina, according to an estimate from local abortion rights groups â a number that could soon grow. North Carolina groups that train doulas said theyâve seen an uptick in people wanting to become abortion doulas in the months since Roe v. Wade was overturnedâŠ.
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From Jessica Valenti AT Substack [Abortion, Every Day]: the latest anti-choice tactics since Roe was overturned:
Replacing "life of the pregnant person" exceptions with a rhetoric of "equal care" for pregnant person and fetus.
⊠Study after study shows that Americans overwhelmingly oppose abortion bans, especially those without exceptions. Even in the reddest of states, people want ⊠abortion access for sexual assault victims protected, along with womenâs health and lives.
And with horror stories from anti-choice states rolling in at record speedâfrom sobbing cancer patients and raped children being denied care to women going into sepsisâconservatives have realized that they need a new message and tweaked legislation. And they need it fast.
Extremist anti-abortion groups that carefully crafted deliberately vague health and life exceptions arenât exactly eager to undo all their hard work; but they also know that public opinion is against them, and they need to at least appear to give a shit about womenâs livesâŠ.
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The Charlottesville Case: Judge Norman Moon slashes penalties by 90%, from $26M awarded by jury to $2.35M
...against the organizers of the 2017 white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia [where] Heather Heyer, a counter-protester ... was murdered, and others ... were injured or otherwise affected by the attacksâŠ.
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BBC As South Korea abolishes its gender equality ministry, women fight back <small>(good article-highly recommended)</small>
[In South Koreaâs transformation into a cultural and technological powerhouse and] one of the richest countries in the world, women have been left trailing. They are paid on average a third less than men ⊠the worst gender pay gap of any rich country in the world. Men dominate politics and boardrooms. ⊠women hold just 5.8% of the executive positions in ... publicly listed companies. They are still expected to take on most of the housework and childcare [and to perform domestic labor for male co-workers, and tolerate misogyny, sexism, and digital and other sex crimes in] a pervasive culture of sexual harassmentâŠ.
But ... South Korea's new President Yoon Suk-yeol has said structural sexism is "a thing of the past". He was propelled to power by young men who claim that attempts to reduce inequality mean they have become victims of reverse discrimination. Upon entering office, [he] scrapped government gender quotas ... appointed just three women to his 19-member cabinet [and] is now trying to abolish the government's Gender Equality Ministry, which supports women and victims of sexual assault, claiming it is obsolete. More than 800 organisations have come together to protest against the closure, arguing it could have a damaging impact on women's livesâŠ.
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ArabNews.com Why Latin Americans are marching in solidarity with Iranâs persecuted protesters
Many in Latin America have been demonstrating against Iranâs brutal crackdown on nationwide protests sparked by the death in September of Mahsa Amini, 22, at the hands of the countryâs morality police for allegedly wearing her hijab incorrectly. Activists â especially women â have marched and gathered in front of Iranian embassies, denouncing Tehranâs repression and human rights violations ⊠galvanized by the fact that hundreds of Iranians are now facing long prison terms and even [execution â at least 100 so far, according to Human Rights Iran, an NGO based in Norway] for protesting.
âThe demonstrationâs catalyst was the death sentence issued against footballer Amir Nasr-Azadani,â activist Paola Schietekat, who co-organized the [September Mexico city] protest, told Arab News. But that was not the only reason, she said. âWe were horrified by the large list of people currently facing death sentences. The message that the Iranian government wants to convey is that citizens must be afraid of expressing their political opinions.â Schietekat said some of the Iranian-born participants were identified by the embassyâs surveillance cameras and later had problems renewing documents ⊠now ⊠âafraid of retaliation and preferred not to attend. It was important for them that we, Mexicans, showed our solidarity,...â
...There have also been recent demonstrations in Argentina, but the most visible action coming from the country has been an online petition against Nasr-Azadaniâs execution. Created by Natalia Marcellino, the campaign has already been supported by 1.8 million people worldwideâŠ.
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OpenDemocracy.net Latin American feminists vow to continue fight for abortion rights in 2023
Last year, while US conservatives led the Supreme Court to remove constitutional protection for abortion, feminists across Latin America and the Caribbean moved several governments in the opposite direction.
But the powerful movement behind such progressive change faces difficult challenges in 2023, including safeguarding hard-won rights and overcoming the disparity of abortion policies between different countries. Feminists are defending rights that âare permanently being disputedâ, Giselle Carino told openDemocracy. Carino, who is Argentinian and based in New York, is the CEO of FĂČs Feminista, an international alliance of sexual and reproductive rights groups. âThe key is to support feminist movements, as they are always at the forefront of the struggle and will be the ones to sustain the changes achieved,â
Abortion was legalised in Argentina in 2020 â a victory for the âGreen Waveâ movement born in the country two years before. The movement (named after the green-coloured bandanas abortion activists wear) is now a mass phenomenon that has infused new energy into feminist movements across the world â particularly in Latin AmericaâŠ.
Following in Argentinaâs footsteps, Mexican activists have succeeded in getting ten of the countryâs 32 states to recognise the legal right of women and girls to choose generally up to week 12 or 14, the most recent three states in 2022, after their landmark 2021 Supreme Court ruling that criminalisation of abortion is unconstitutional. In Colombia, abortion advocates moved the Constitutional Courtâs in February to decriminalise abortion up to 24 weeks, the Just Cause umbrella movement of more than 100 groups and thousands of activists from across the country presenting evidence-based arguments to the court. In Puerto Rico, abortion rights activists in November successfully drove [their legislature] to reject four bills [aimed] to restrict abortion access and punish those whoâd had terminations.
But 83% of Latin American and Caribbean women of reproductive age are in countries with restrictions on abortion: the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, HaitĂ, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua and Surinam, completely ban abortion. In El Salvador, a miscarriage or stillbirth is punishable by to 50 years in prison. In Honduras, rape results in three girls under the age of 14 becoming mothers EVERY DAY, abortion not allowed. It is limitedly allowed in Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela, most commonly when the womanâs health or life is at risk.
Yet, as explained by Indiana JimĂ©nez â communications director for Dominican NGO Profamilia, which offers sexual and reproductive services â women there daily face such struggle simply for their familiesâ âaccess to water, food, work, and [facing] brutal domestic violenceâ that abortion rights may not even be on their radar. Her organization has found that teaching/learning comprehensive sexual education has to come first and from that comes everything.
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seven women-centered exhibitions in the US showcasing historically marginalized communities â destined to make an impact, they offer audiences important ways to connect with new perspectives on the world, experience exciting materials used in innovative ways and see different approaches to just what art is.
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HighCountryNews What if Indigenous women ran controlled burns? <small>Fire management is predominantly white and around 90% male. In Northern California, the Karuk Tribeâs first-of-its-kind training seeks to extinguish hypermasculinity in firefighting culture.</small>
It was Saturday, a hot one. In the remote mountains of Northern California, a group of mostly Indigenous women took a break from conducting prescribed burns. Some sat on mats in the early October shade, pounding woodwardia fern, splitting maidenhair ferns and weaving the stems into baskets, while others stood at a stump by the fire pit, using a wooden paddle to stir hot rocks into a big pot of acorn soup, steaming it from within. Salmon heads and fillets smoked on stakes around a fire pit.Children ran and shrieked until scolded by elders, who were listening to cultural presentations about prescribed fire and weaving. This was the midpoint of the two-week inaugural Karuk Womenâs TREX, or prescribed fire training exchange â the first-ever such training tailored specifically for Indigenous women.
Historically, in KĂĄruk society, women were responsible for maintaining village areas with fire. Men burned, too, but farther away, usually on remote hunting grounds. But cultural fire was suppressed in 1911, when the Weeks Act outlawed igniting fires on public lands. Today, that colonialist law is still considered a conservation landmark. Recently, however, prescribed burns have gained favor with the Forest Service, and in 2008, it worked with The Nature Conservancy and several agencies from the Department of the Interior to organize the first TREX. Theyâve occurred around the country ever since.
The events spread the theory and practice of prescribed burning. But they are also a way to change mainstream fire culture, which has long been âvery exclusive, very militaristic, very socially and culturally homogenous,â said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, fire advisor for the University of California Cooperative Extension and director of the Northern California Prescribed Fire CouncilâŠ.
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