Warren says she's open to decriminalizing sex work

2020 hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said she is open to decriminalizing sex work, according to a statement shared with Dave Weigel of the The Washington Post.

“I’m open to decriminalization. Sex workers, like all workers, deserve autonomy but they are particularly vulnerable to physical and financial abuse and hardship,” Warren said in the statement.

“We need to make sure that we don’t undermine legal protections for the most vulnerable, including the millions of individuals who are victims of human trafficking each year."





https://thehill.com/campaign-issues/labor/449428-warren-says-shes-open-to-decriminalizing-sex-work

Lexapro is a lifesaver

It's been nearly a month on the Lexapro and I've seen a remarkable reduction in the physical manifestations of my anxiety with minimal side effects. I still have some tough moments, so the doctor prescribed an additional medication for those few occasions, but the bottom line is I am finally feeling human again. So if your physician brings it up, don't dismiss it out of hand.

NY-16: Group that backed AOC targeting longtime New York Rep. Eliot Engel

Longtime New York Rep. Eliot L. Engel is getting a primary challenger who has support from the progressive group that backed New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in her bid for office.

Jamaal Bowman, 43, a public school principal from the Bronx, announced Tuesday he is challenging Engel in the Democratic primary for New York’s 16th District, a longtime bastion for the party.

He was quickly endorsed by Justice Democrats, a group targeting incumbent Democrats it feels do not represent their districts’ liberal tendencies.

In a press release Tuesday, Bowman hammered Engel, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, for initially supporting the Iraq War, voting in favor of the 1994 crime bill and voting to deregulate investment and commercial banking in 1999.

“My opponent has been in office for over 30 years,” Bowman said in a statement. “Over those 30 years, my opponent voted for an unjust war in Iraq, deregulating Wall Street, school privatization, and building more prisons. While the very few at the top continue to build their wealth and power, the majority of us continue to struggle.”


https://www.rollcall.com/news/campaigns/group-backed-aoc-targeting-longtime-new-york-rep-eliot-engel

Tweet of the Day

"THE BLUE WAVE IS REALLY COMING BACK": HOW THE SUPREME COURT JUST FLIPPED THE SCRIPT IN VIRGINIA

Arguably, Virginia’s 66th District is the precise epicenter of the nation’s political wars—and the Supreme Court, with the help of two of its most conservative judges, just tilted it toward the Democrats. In a somewhat unexpected decision, the Court dismissed the challenge to a lower court ruling in which the judges said 11 districts in Virginia were racially gerrymandered. Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch sided with the liberal wing of the Court—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan—in arguing that Republicans in the Virginia House of Delegates didn’t have the legal standing to challenge the decision of the Eastern U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Virginia’s 66th was redrawn. Its representative is Republican Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates Kirk Cox, who has represented the district for 29 years. Cox led the House Republican effort to overturn the lower court’s decision, at the cost of millions of dollars to Virginian taxpayers. In a January interview with the Washington Post, Cox slammed the new map as “legally indefensible” and designed to “target senior Republicans” like himself. In the wake of the court’s decision, the Republican is expected to face his first tough race in decades in his redrawn district, which is expected to be a full 32 percentage points more favorable to Democrats this November.

By pure accident, Cox drew the national spotlight earlier this year when Virginia’s top three political officials, Democrats, were besieged by scandal. Within the span of five days, Governor Ralph Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring both admitted to wearing blackface and a college professor accused Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax of sexual assault. (Fairfax denied the allegations.) Had all three resigned, the next in line to the governor’s mansion would have been Cox, who only ascended to his leadership position thanks to a literal luck of the draw. The scandals had given the Trump campaign ambitions to flip the state in 2020—but the Supreme Court decision once again puts Republicans on the defensive.

he person who is happiest about the verdict is Cox’s challenger, Sheila Bynum-Coleman. “With this particular district, it’s like a circle around my community. With the previous district, it was like over the river through the woods. It definitely cut out Democratic voters. The people who live down the street from me were not able to vote for me. And now I go to the grocery store or the corner store and people are excited to know that they can,” she told me. “When you divide communities, you disenfranchise people.”

Virginia Democrats will now face a much more favorable map this November and hope to build on the legislative gains they made in the Commonwealth in 2017 and 2018. “We’ve seen that Virginia is a big indicator of national trends. We’re the only southern state that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Then in 2017, it was really the start of the blue wave, right? Our 15-seat pickup was the biggest pickup in over a hundred years in Virginia. The Democratic Party lost the majority in Virginia back in 1999 so it’s been a really long time serving in the minority in the house of delegates here,” Kathryn Gilley, the communications director for the Virginia House Democrats, told me. “Now we’re seeing the blue wave is really coming back to Virginia and we’re here to finally flip the house. Which is going to be momentous to have a Democratic majority for the first time in 20 years.”



https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/06/supreme-court-gerrymandering-virginia-kirk-cox-sheila-bynum-coleman?utm_medium=social&utm_brand=vf&mbid=social_twitter&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=twitter&verso=true

Threats of mass shooting at synagogue lead to arrest of Concord man

A 23-year-old Concord man in possession of Nazi writings and an illegal semiautomatic rifle is in jail after being arrested for online threats to commit a mass shooting at a synagogue, authorities said.

The arrest of Ross Farca at his home followed a tip relayed by the FBI, according to a statement released Friday evening by the Concord Police Department.

The threats were made in a gaming chat room where Farca “threatened people of Jewish faith, discussed committing a mass shooting at a synagogue and shooting law enforcement,” the statement said. The tip went to the FBI, and the agency then determined the commentator’s location and passed the tip to Concord police.

When police showed up with a warrant Monday at Farca’s home, they said they found an illegal AR-15 semiautomatic rifle. Ammunition, camouflage and Nazi material were also found, the statement said.


https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Threats-of-mass-shooting-at-synagogue-lead-to-14000912.php?psid=afZtL

D.C. man refused to leave AOC's Queens office building, sprays cops with extinguisher

A Washington, D.C. man was charged with trespassing after he refused to leave Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s office building in Queens and tried to barricade himself inside a janitor’s closet, cops said Sunday.

Douala Hashi, 31, entered the Jackson Heights building on 37th Ave. near 74th St. a little before 5 p.m. Saturday and ran up to the third floor. When he wouldn’t get out, building security officers called police.

When cops arrived on the third floor, Hashi grabbed a fire extinguisher and sprayed it at the officers. He then ran into a janitor’s closet with a broken bottle but the officers were able to coax him out, police said.

Hashi was charged with menacing, criminal mischief and trespassing. He was taken to Elmhurst Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. His arraignment in Queens Criminal Court was pending.

The NYPD says the man never broke into Ocasio-Cortez’s actual office, which opened in March. Authorities do not believe he had any connection to the congresswoman, who was not in the office at the time of the incident.



https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/queens/ny-man-charged-trespassing-aoc-queens-office-20190616-bmfu4l2hfjd25eogynq4vu27by-story.html

IN-05 Moves to Lean Republican Followings Brooks's Retirement

The announcement Friday morning that Indiana GOP Rep. Susan Brooks won’t run for re-election moves her suburban Indianapolis seat from Solid Republican to the Lean Republican column and gives Democrats a pickup opportunity in the lone congressional district in the Hoosier State that’s been trending their way.

But as problematic for Republicans is the message that Brooks’s retirement sends — she is the recruitment chair for the National Republican Congressional Committee and has been a leading voice for trying to bring more GOP women into their ranks. Now, they’re losing one of their 13 women in what would have been a safe seat.

This growing district just north of Indianapolis gave President Trump 53% in 2016 — his lowest total in any Indiana district he won — and down from the nearly 58% that Mitt Romney got here in 2012. Brooks, the former deputy mayor of Indianapolis, has been easily re-elected, taking 57% last November. In 2016, she outperformed Trump by 9 points. The Hamilton County base of the district, which makes up over 40% of the district’s population, has also been trending away from Republicans, given its increasing income and education levels. In 2012 Romney got 66% in Hamilton, but Trump got just 57% four years later.

In making her announcement to the Indianapolis Star, Brooks tries to dispel what will be the obvious conclusions drawn from her decision -- that she’s leaving because life in the minority is no fun and she doesn’t think they can win back the majority in 2020.



https://cookpolitical.com/analysis/house/indiana-house/05-moves-lean-republican-followings-brookss-retirement

Ex-pastor in Texas accused of sexually abusing teen relative

HOUSTON (AP) — A former Southern Baptist pastor who supported legislation in Texas that would have criminalized abortions has been arrested on charges of child sex abuse, accused of repeatedly molesting a teenage relative over the course of two years.

Stephen Bratton is accused of subjecting the relative to inappropriate touching that escalated to “sexual intercourse multiple times a day or several times a week” from 2013 to 2015, according to Thomas Gilliland, a spokesman with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.

Court records show Bratton, 43, posted a $50,000 bond Saturday, The Houston Chronicle reported.

Bratton told his wife about the abuse in May, and admitted to his co-pastors at Grace Family Baptist Church that same day that he had “sinned in grievous ways,” according to court documents.

It isn’t clear whether Bratton has an attorney who can comment on his behalf. The Associated Press couldn’t locate a phone number for him Sunday.

Southern Baptist church leaders last week outlined a plan to address sex abuse in the largest U.S. protestant denomination. Aaron Wright, another pastor at the Grace Family Baptist Church, told the newspaper that Bratton has been excommunicated.



https://apnews.com/f89cd9682c3b4fa6abf56aa1a496f2b3

Three NYPD officers have died by suicide in less than 10 days

(CNN)Three members of the New York Police Department have died by suicide in less than 10 days, Police Commissioner James P. O'Neill said Friday.

Last week, a respected chief and an experienced detective died within 24 hours of one another, O'Neill said. Friday, a "promising 29-year-old police officer with six years on the job" died behind the NYPD precinct in Staten Island, where he worked, the commissioner said.

"This is a mental-health crisis. And we -- the NYPD and the law enforcement profession as a whole -- absolutely must take action," O'Neill said in a statement. "This cannot be allowed to continue. Cops spend so much of their days assisting others. But before we can help the people we serve, it is imperative that we first help ourselves."

This week, O'Neill asked members to "connect yourself or your friends and colleagues to the assistance that is so close by. We must take care of each other. We must address the issue -- now --- because it will not go away on its own. We must speak out. And we must end this crisis, together."



https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/14/us/nypd-third-suicide/index.html