During the 2016 campaign, Trump mocked Elizabeth Warren for saying she was of Native American ancestry. He challenged her to take a DNA test and pledged to give $1 million to the charity of her choice if she was right. She did, she is, Will he pay? Don’t hold your breath.
From the Boston Globe:
While you were sleeping: US Senator Elizabeth Warren released DNA results to the Globe that show that she does, indeed, have some Native American heritage. One of the leading DNA analysts in the world, Professor Carlos D. Bustamante of Stanford, said Warren’s DNA test provides “strong evidence” that she had a Native American in her family tree dating back 6 to 10 generations. That comports with her family lore from her childhood in Oklahoma that her great-great-great-grandmother, O.C. Sarah Smith, was at least partially Native American. Presumably Warren is picking out a charity to which Trump has said he will donate $1 million of his own money. Or should we say of his father’s and taxpayers’ money.
Warren has chosen the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, which works to stop domestic violence against Native American women and children.
Warren also released what sure feels like a presidential campaign video. If you recall, the Globe’s Annie Linsky thoroughly debunked Republican charges that Warren used her claim of Native American heritage to get into law school and advance her career.
The Globe reported:
“WASHINGTON — Senator Elizabeth Warren has released a DNA test that provides “strong evidence’’ she had a Native American in her family tree dating back 6 to 10 generations, an unprecedented move by one of the top possible contenders for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president.
“Warren, whose claims to Native American blood have been mocked by President Trump and other Republicans, provided the test results to the Globe on Sunday in an effort to defuse questions about her ancestry that have persisted for years. She planned an elaborate rollout Monday of the results as she aimed for widespread attention.
“The analysis of Warren’s DNA was done by Carlos D. Bustamante, a Stanford University professor and expert in the field who won a 2010 MacArthur fellowship, also known as a genius grant, for his work on tracking population migration via DNA analysis.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Trump’s snide answer was, “Who cares?” Good luck seeing any money or an apology.
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Don’t forget that this is the man who sent a $7 check from his own foundation to pay for his son’s Boy Scout registration. Not from his wallet.
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Ravitch Warren 2020
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Or Warren Ravitch. I’ll bubble in my bubble for either.
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IMPEACH. I will not stop saying or writing “IMPEACH” until he is gone.
Bumper Stickers: Take out the T and one gets RUMP.
Rump is jealous of anyone who has a brain and morals, because he has neither.
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What Sen. Warren should say, “OK Donald, I’ve got a great way to save you a million dollars. I’ll call off the bet if you show us your taxes.”
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love it. He will do neither.
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How about,”I’ll call off the bet if you’ll resign now.”?! Better!
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When I read this, I was elated that she had fact to back up her assertion. I hope this means she is getting serious about 2020.
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FYI: These details about Warren’s heritage are on Facebook. https://elizabethwarren.com/fact-squad/heritage/?fbclid=IwAR0CRX-vsn_pB2K2KrFfKM2dnreyU9eaRDkF3l4WEz0G7MVUPMWnWh7-OOY
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He never pays his bets, or bills. He’s a dead beat lying AH.
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Adolf Hitler?
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LOL. Both.
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The online DNA test companies must be loving this and expecting a boost in business.
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I’m a little surprised Warren allowed herself to get suckered by yet another one of XLV’s silly distractions. He’ll get several more news cycles of diversion from this and she’ll get nothing but mocked all over again.
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I thought maybe she wanted to clear up any doubt before she declares herself a candidate for 2020. By doing so, she deflates any attempt by Trump to try to make this a talking point in the future. She gets a distraction out of the way which gives her more time to nail him on his policies.
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I highly doubt it. You have to think like a bully. The bully and his enablers sees this as a signal that Warren cares a lot about whether people know she’s 0.01% “Native American.” You can imagine how it will go from there.
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She is 1/32 native American. DNA get diluted over time, but it never disappears. If you look at the video I posted from Warren, it certainly sounds like someone getting ready to run a campaign.
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Not so clear from the report. The Globe story ran this correction after the initial story:
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I got the figure from Warren’s original press release.
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Yes, I assume she’s revised that by now.
Even if she revised it to say “1/64,” that would be inaccurate. The report concludes that there’s a very strong likelihood that she has an “unadmixed” Native American ancestor, “likely” in the range of 6 to 10 generations ago. So the test is predicting a range, it’s not predicting a single number. If Warren’s original press release said “1/32,” that means she just took the highest number in the range and presented it as the conclusion of the test–which it absolutely was not.
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C’mon, she couldn’t resist giving in to all those ancestry.com and 23andme ads. She’s only human (and one part Indian)!
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That was my thought. There are many things – especially that come out of Trump’s mouth – that shouldn’t be dignified with a response.
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Jon,
Exactly right.
Trump baited her and she fell for it.
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Warren blundered. As FLERP says, she needs to think like a bully. She should start calling Trump “Orangutan” and seriously insist he’s half orangutan (as Bill Maher jokingly did). This will make her audience laugh derisively at Trump they way his audience laughs at her. In debates, she should faux-seriously demand a DNA test from him, and then dismiss its results as fake science, etc. She should demand hair samples from him and have biologists compare them to orangutan hair. Ask him if he liked growing up in Borneo. Throw him bananas. Mirror what he does.
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Instead of “lock her up”, “put him back in the zoo!” Demand to know where in the Constitution does it say that a monkey can be president. Totally ignore any actual facts he responds with. Find her inner mean girl and out-bully the bully (while keeping an ironic air).
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Ponderosa: You are getting really good!!!! Excellent idea! “Put him back in the zoo!”
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Ponderosa: I worked in Borneo for two years. Orangutan means ‘man of the jungle’ in Malay. Orangutan’s are smart and care for each other. That puts them much higher on the evolutionary scale than the Orange IDIOT. Mankind’s DNA is 99.99% similar to orangutans.
I like the idea of splattering him with degrading names. He is an insult to the
intelligence of humanity.
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What happened to “When they go low, we go high”?
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I’m not sure that going lower than the lowest is a good strategy. No one can out-Trump Trump in vulgarity and stupidity. If both parties wrestle in a mosh pit, who will want to be part of that degrading spectacle?
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NO, she did NOT!! We have been suffering through a series of ridiculous, childish debates for the ILL-Annoy gubernatorial race, whereby a moderator had to interrupt with, “Boys, boys!” & commentators have been saying that these debates have taken on Trumpian words & actions. Bill Maher is a comedian, Elizabeth Warren is a legislator who works for us.
Do we need even more legislators to imitate his “winning” (his answer to the Kavanaugh-Blasey-Ford hearings to Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes, “We won. We won.”) ways?
Warren has responded the way I would expect someone of her integrity to respond…”nevertheless, she persisted.”
2020–run, Elizabeth, run!
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I agree that Mr. Trump deserves that kind of treatment. The issue here, though, isn’t whether he deserves that kind of treatment; it’s whether Elizabeth Warren, & we, deserve to become like him.
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Trump’s “science” will call it a lie anyway.
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If you look at the above link, Warren gets the guy that is running the Human Genome Project from Stanford to examine her DNA. It would be fairly difficult to ignore the veracity of his findings.
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Yes. These guys are old pros at just providing their “alternative” science. They can spout any nonsense, and their ignorant base, the Republicultists, will believe it. They did this on big tobacco. They are doing this on climate change. They can certainly do it with Warren’s heritage.
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Does anyone really think that a hiring preference should be given on the basis of being 1/32nd Native American? Or that such a slender thread adds to the diversity of universities? Meanwhile the hard work of Asian Americans is tossed away, victims of identity politics gone mad.
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You missed a part of the story.
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If you check the Globe’s 3rd para, there’s a link (“debunked”) that walks you thru her employment ppwk ( they even interviewed the hiring committees). She was never considered as anything but a “white woman” for hiring purposes.
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23% of the students at Harvard are Asian Americans. Asian Americans are 6% of the population.
The purpose of the lawsuit, launched by a rightwing activist, is intended to eliminate any effort to promote diversity in higher education.
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I heard that Sen. Warren was identified as a woman of color breaking ground as a Harvard faculty member. The road to a second Trump term goes right through the Warren campaign HQ. only worse choices are Sen. Spartacus of NJ or Danang Dock Blumenthal of CT.
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I think the issue is silly and she should not have let Cadet Bone Spur bait her.
I spent about 30 minutes with Senator Warren in a private meeting a couple of years ago in her office. I have met a lot of elected officials. She is probably the smartest, most thoughtful one I have ever met. She listened. She responded. She was very impressive.
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What you “heard” was false. Still haven’t read the Globe “debunked” link? Harvard students demonstrating for a diversity hire considered this one non-responsive [“just bringing in a white woman”]; hiring committee wasn’t aware/ didn’t consider ‘diversity’ [the issue was whether her pedagogy was ‘too practical,’ i.e. B-school instead of ivory tower; Warren wasn’t identified as “Native American” until months after hire. Even Harvard claiming one [unidentified] Native American on faculty in early ’90’s was thought more likely to refer to a female enrolled tribe member who taught American Indian Law there.
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The Boston Globe article is behind a paywall
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Jon Awbrey nails this one. Here we are, in the final stretch of the midterm campaign, and we are in a new news cycle about whether Elizabeth Warren is a Native American, how much Native American “blood” she actually has, and all of the rest of the discussions that will surely flow from those points. Brava, Senator.
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No no no — you’ve got it all wrong! You should have understood that when he said he would donate a million dollars, he actually meant to say he wouldn’t donate a million dollars. The most misunderstood President in history!
🙂
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Based on what I read today in the news roundups relating to this story, what Trump said was that he would pay her a million dollars if she took a DNA test and it showed “she’s an Indian.”
Is Sen. Warren claiming that this DNA test — which concludes that there is a very strong likelihood that she had an “unadmixed” Native American ancestor somewhere between 6 and 10 generations ago, and therefore is between 1/64 and 1/1,024 Native American — shows that she is Native American? That would be one doozy of a claim.
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So you’re saying that Trump hedged his bet. I don’t believe that Warren ever claimed to be an Indian, but that doesn’t matter since Trump promised a million bucks if she was.
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“Hedging” would imply some strategic consideration to the language. Trump just blurts. But, as blurted, Trump only promised to pay her a million dollars if she took a DNA test that proved she was “an Indian.” Is Warren going to say this test shows she is “a Native American”? Clearly not, if she has any sense.
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I should add that I don’t know if Trump is making this argument. It’s a great argument, in my opinion. He may be too stupid to make it, though.
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Sen. 1/1024 has effectively ended her 2020 presidential campaign – if not Pocohantas does this mean Spartacus is the frontrunner?
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If Trump can win a presidential election, then Senator Warren can certainly win a presidential election. All that matters in the end is how many people you get to the polls. I think focusing on identity will only make that task more difficult for her. But I see people in the comments here who seem to think this DNA test stunt was a good idea that improved Warren’s standing. If that’s what her yes-people are whispering in her ear, it’s going to be a difficult road for her. IMO, naturally.
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Charlie Pierce is a Boston native.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a23845480/elizabeth-warren-native-american-dna-test-media-coverage/
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As I wrote below, the only reason that Warren’s ancestry became an issue is because of the revelation that Harvard Law School touted her as a “Native American” professor to defend itself against accusations that its faculty was insufficiently diverse. Years ago, Warren should have made clear that what Harvard did was factually and ethically wrong (factually because she is “white,” not “Native American”; ethically because, as supporters of affirmative action might note, presenting Warren as a minority reduced pressure on Harvard to hire faculty who were actually minorities). Instead her response was “No, I actually have Native American ancestry.” Well, bully for her, that’s just wonderful, but that doesn’t have anything to do with the real issue of whether it was proper for Harvard to hold her out as a minority hire. And as a practical effect, it calcified the narrative of this issue into an argument about how “Native American” Elizabeth Warren is.
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Yes FLERP!: if you’re looking for the swing voters, you don’t want to use something with gaping holes that can be exploited by Trump. He might be a fool but his PR machine knows what it’s doing.
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“I should add that I don’t know if Trump is making this argument. It’s a great argument, in my opinion. He may be too stupid to make it, though.”
True dat
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Trump would never pay any money for having insulted Warren. He now says he no longer ‘cares’ about this issue. He has others to insult. There never seems to be a shortage of nasty names that he can pull out of his filthy mind.
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In a brief conversation with reporters outside the White House, the president reacted to Warren’s DNA findings by saying: “Who cares?”
Trump’s top White House counselor Kellyanne Conway was similarly dismissive. “I know that everybody likes to pick their junk science or sound science depending on the conclusion it seems some days,” she told CNN. “But I haven’t looked at the DNA test and it really doesn’t interest me.”
It was President Trump, however, who said at a rally in Montana this summer that he would give $1 million to charity should Warren take a DNA test proving her heritage claims.
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Apparently Sen. Warren had herself listed as a “woman of color” the first appointed to the faculty of Harvard Law School. 1/1024 Native American. Diversity?
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bxny5752xyz: “She did not use her ancestry to win preferential treatment as a law professor at Harvard or the Univ. of Pennsylvania.” AND: “Mr. Trump said that he would only donate the money if he could “test her personally.”
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The news is yet another signal that Ms. Warren is all-but-officially running for president and trying to preemptively deal with expected lines of attack.
Check out what she’s done over the past two months:
• Released 10 years of tax returns.
• Disclosed academic records indicating she did not use her ancestry to win preferential treatment as a law professor at Harvard University or the University of Pennsylvania.
• Deployed staff to help with midterm races in early presidential primary states and key 2020 battlegrounds.
Today’s release was complete with a polished political video interspersing interviews with Ms. Warren’s family with Republican attacks. Ms. Warren’s focus was ostensibly on Mr. Trump. But her release was aimed at assuaging concerns among Democrats worried about potential political vulnerabilities.
Republicans pointed to Ms. Warren’s small percentage of Native American ancestry. The Boston Globe reported Ms. Warren is “between 1/64th and 1/1,024th Native American.”
When asked by reporters this morning, Mr. Trump denied that he previously vowed to contribute $1 million to Ms. Warren’s favorite charity if she took a DNA test and it showed she had Native American roots.
Ms. Warren tweeted in response: “Here’s something you won’t ‘forget,’ Mr. President: You’re the least popular president in modern history & your allies will go down hard in the midterm elections. 22 days. Tick-tock, tick-tock.”
Asked again later in the day, Mr. Trump said that he would only donate the money if he could “test her personally.” He added, “That will not be something I enjoy doing, either.”
Consider the exchange a preview of the next few years.
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‘Asked again later in the day, Mr. Trump said that he would only donate the money if he could “test her personally.” He added, “That will not be something I enjoy doing, either.”’
I guess he doesn’t relish her spitting into any receptacle he might be holding.
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The Orange One is SO eloquent in his verbiage. Dementia?
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In early July, the president held a campaign rally in Montana, and here’s the relevant portion of the transcript:
“She of the great tribal heritage. What tribe is it? Let me think about that one. Meantime, she’s based her life on being a minority. Pocahontas – they always want me to apologize for saying that and I hereby – oh no, I want to apologize. I’ll use tonight. Pocahontas, I apologize to you. I apologize – to you I apologize.
“To the fake Pocahontas, I won’t apologize. No, it’s causing problems. You know that’s name causing – because now even the liberals are saying, ‘Take a test. Take a test.’
“You know, the – I tell you, I shouldn’t tell you because I like not to give away secrets but this one. Let’s say I’m debating Pocahontas, right? I promise you I’ll do this. I will take – you know those little kits they sell on television for $2. Learn your heritage. The guy says I was born in Scotland, it turns out he was born in Puerto Rico. And that’s OK. It’s good, you know. Guy says I was born in Germany, well, he wasn’t born in Germany. He was born someplace else.
“I’m going to get one of those little kits and in the middle of the debate when she proclaims that she’s of Indian heritage because her mother says she has high cheekbones. That’s her only evidence, that her mother said she had high cheekbones. We will take that little kit and say, but we have to do it gently. Because we’re in the me-too generation so I have to be very gentle. And we will very gently take that kit and we will slowly toss it, hoping it doesn’t hit her and injure her arm even though it only weighs probably two ounces.
“And we will say, I will give you a million dollars to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test so that it shows you’re an Indian. You know. And let’s see what she does. I have a feeling she will say no.”
Warren has already challenged the president to send his $1 million check to the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center. I’m starting to get the impression that Trump isn’t prepared to pay up.
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It is exactly the type of ignorant, dismissive response expected from the vulgarian, #45.
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Whose mind did this stunt change? If you’re a Warren supporter, you’re still a Warren supporter – and would have been if she hadn’t done it. If you’re a Trump supporter this doesn’t change your mind – you’re still going to mock her as “Pocahontas” and now you’re just going to parse what constitutes “really Indian” or “Indian enough”. FLERP! is right about bullies.
f you’re on the fence about Warren, chances are you’re still on the fence because whether or not she’s Indian was probably never one of your concerns – you’re probably wondering just how progressive she really is. It’s that latter group that Warren (and the Democratic Party generally) needs to be speaking too. Not worrying about Trump’s mocking distractions. What fascinates me about Trump is the power he has to make nearly everyone – his admirers and his enemies alike – dance to his tune. Why would you let someone like Trump have that kind of power over you?
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She should offer $1million to the charity of his choice (himself) if he reveals his taxes
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Donald Trump: Lying, dissembling, disparaging, and degrading America and Americans, day by day by day.
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Diane,
Now back to a more serious item regarding education and related to Janus and the current lawsuits that may effect the Unions.
From EDWEEK
By Madeline Will
October 15, 2018
Months after the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a hefty blow to teachers’ unions, a rash of new lawsuits has emerged that could further damage these labor groups.
Across the country, teachers’ unions are facing more than a dozen legal challenges from two major right-leaning sources in the wake of the Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council 31 decision, which ended public-sector unions’ ability to collect agency, or fair share, fees. Those fees were charged to workers in some states who chose not to become full members of their unions. They were meant to cover the cost of collective bargaining.
The decision, issued in June, is expected to significantly dent teachers’ unions’ treasuries and membership numbers. (The extent of the fallout is still to be determined.) But as it turns out, that lawsuit was only the beginning of the unions’ struggles.
There are two main strands to this new wave of anti-union lawsuits: 1) challenges to time-limited windows during which teachers can opt out of membership payroll deductions, and 2) pushes for teachers to be reimbursed for the agency fees they paid before the Janus decision.
“Everybody knows where the end of this litigation road is, which is the Supreme Court,” said Sharon Block, the executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School. “Janus is sadly not the end of the road. This road just got a lot harder.”
There are even a few cases arguing that unions should not act as the sole representative for all workers in a bargaining unit if some workers do not want to be union members. Currently, unions bargain on behalf of all teachers in a district, regardless of whether teachers choose to be members.
This multipronged legal campaign is not unexpected, experts say.
“The Janus decision still left much up for individual states to interpret and decide,” said Bradley Marianno, an assistant professor of educational policy and leadership at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “We’re seeing states and courts try to navigate how to implement the different aspects of the Janus decision right now.”
One of the most prolific sources of litigation against teachers’ unions has been Jonathan F. Mitchell, a conservative attorney who was tapped by President Donald Trump to head the Administrative Conference of the United States, a nonpartisan agency charged with improving government processes and procedures. The Senate has yet to confirm Mitchell’s nomination.
This year, Mitchell has filed at least nine federal class-action lawsuits against teachers’ unions, including in California, Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. He’s also filed several similar lawsuits against other public-sector unions. Mitchell did not respond to a request for comment.
And in a separate legal campaign, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is supporting several additional lawsuits against teachers’ unions, with more expected soon.
“These suits are part of a larger, coordinated effort by the right wing do two things,” said Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, in a provided statement. “They want unions to spend the time and money to defend them so they can defund and distract us, and they want these cases to get to the Supreme Court, now that [Brett] Kavanaugh and [Neil] Gorsuch are seated, to further erode workers’ rights.”
Should Unions Refund Fees?
So far, the bulk of the cases center around the question of whether teachers who were obligated to pay fees to the unions in the past should have that money repaid to them.
Those teachers are “entitled to their money back,” said Patrick Semmens, a spokesman for the National Right to Work Foundation. The Supreme Court had ruled that the collection of agency fees violated teachers’ First Amendment rights, because they were essentially paying a union whose policies and actions they might not support.
Semmens added that Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his decision in the Janus case that unions have been “on notice for years” about the Supreme Court’s misgivings toward agency fees. In 2012, the Supreme Court described the practice as a First Amendment “anomaly.”
“They knew there was a risk when they continued taking dues after [the 2012 case],” Semmens said.
Under the statute of limitations in most states, teachers could potentially get up to two years of agency fees paid back, Semmens said—putting millions of dollars at stake for the unions. But for their part, the unions have consistently rebuked the validity of these claims.
“We believe we will be successful in defending a proposition that when someone acts in good faith based on existing law to collect fees as the unions did, … there is not liability,” said Alice O’Brien, the general counsel for the National Education Association.
Some of the lawsuits that Mitchell filed also create a new class of plaintiffs: teachers who say they joined the unions because they felt like they had little choice. Had they not been required to pay agency fees, which often cost nearly as much as a full membership, they would not have become members, they argue. Those teachers are seeking restitution in the amount of the agency fees they paid, whether they retained or resigned their union membership.
For example, in a lawsuit filed against Education Minnesota, plaintiff Deborah York, a now-retired teacher, chose to remain a member of the union even though she opposed its collective-bargaining activities and political and ideological advocacy, “because resigning her membership would have saved very little money and would not have been worth the cost of losing her vote and whatever little influence she might have in collective-bargaining matters,” the suit read.
But unions, including Education Minnesota, maintain that teachers always had a choice whether to belong to the union or just pay agency fees.
“I don’t think the law runs backwards in that way,” O’Brien said. “I think the law holds people to the choices they made at the time they made them.”
‘Hotel California’ Agreements
Another thread of litigation is a challenge to unions’ opt-out, or drop, windows. In many places, teachers’ union dues are deducted from employees’ paychecks. Some unions only allow teachers to stop the payroll deduction during a certain date range in the year. That means teachers could decide they want to leave the union, but have to keep paying membership dues for months until the drop window rolls around. The drop window varies in duration, but can be as short as a few days.
There are at least two separate lawsuits—in New Jersey and Washington state—challenging these opt-out windows. (Those suits are against public-sector unions, but not specifically teachers’ unions.) Some of Mitchell’s lawsuits also incorporate this complaint. And Semmens said there will likely be more litigation to come.
“You have a right not to be a union member, and the second you’re no longer a formal union member, then any money taken from you violates your constitutional rights,” he said.
In the case against Education Minnesota, the plaintiffs are asking the court to order the union to “immediately honor and enforce” a teacher’s decision to withdraw payment, regardless of the time of year that decision is made. Douglas Seaton, an attorney who is Mitchell’s co-counsel in the Minnesota case, called the seven-day window akin to “Hotel California-style agreements.”
In a provided statement, Education Minnesota President Denise Specht said the opt-out windows are “valid and reasonable,” likening them to enrollment windows for health-care plans.
“Drop windows prevent someone from joining the union only long enough to vote on a contract or to obtain a member-only benefit, including our popular relicensure classes, before canceling their membership,” she said. “Drop windows also give our union predictability in our finances so we can provide services to members based on an annual budget, just like any other organization.”
A Long, Hard Road for Unions
Even if the unions ultimately triumph in these legal challenges, it will be a long, expensive battle to fight them in court. And the loss of agency fees—and an expected loss of members, now that it’s easier to cut ties with the union—has already hit teachers’ unions’ coffers. The National Education Association’s 2018-20 budget includes a $50 million reduction.
However, the NEA’s budget, which passed this summer, also invested more money into the union’s legal fund to defend against these kinds of legal attacks. Union leaders themselves expect the post-Janus litigation to eventually reach the nation’s highest court.
If so, the case will be heard by a mostly conservative bench, which includes the newest justice, Brett Kavanaugh. Union leaders had fought bitterly against Kavanaugh’s nomination, in part because of his record on labor cases. Harvard’s Block said he has been “hostile to the interests of workers” in the past.
In the meantime, the University of Nevada’s Marianno said unions will have to double down on attracting and retaining dues-paying members. That will likely be through an increased emphasis on teacher voice, he said, which could include more labor unrest. There were six widescale teacher walkouts and protests in the spring, and already this school year, there was a series of teacher strikes in Washington state. Teachers in the nation’s second-largest district, Los Angeles Unified, could soon strike, too.
Indeed, AFT’s Weingarten warned that the parties filing the cases should “be careful what [they wish] for.”
“Where once labor questions were resolved at the bargaining table, cases like these, if successful, make it far more likely they’ll be fought in statehouses and the streets,” she said. “They will make unions more political, not less.”
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The hard-right never stops hating unions. It wants to crush them. But the teacher strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma and other states show that the need for unions remains, and the more unions are suppressed, the more wildcat strikes there will be. When the bosses have no one to negotiate with, they will long for unions.
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Looks like Senator Warren has decided to stand up to the bully, in his very own milieu:
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Christine Langhoff: Elizabeth Warren is smart!!! I loved her comeback. She is putting him in his sunken place without ‘going lower’.
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I’m sad to say I doubt a woman can win in this country. I’ve met so many working class men who seem adamantly opposed to electing a woman president. Many Trump voters say they would have voted for Bernie over Hillary. Something about strong women “triggers” many men –including Latino and black men. I think the Kavanaugh fight is hurting Dems with Latinos, especially but not only Latino men. I don’t feel a strong current of feminism in the Latino communities I work with. Many are anti-abortion and pro-traditional gender roles. Dems can’t afford to lose these voters.
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Hope I’m wrong but I’ve got to agree with Hoss (rolls off the tongue easier than “ponderosa”). It’s like we popped the bubble with an African American president. Now it’s back to the same ol’ same ol’s.
But nobody ever thought we’d have a Catholic (Kennedy) or African American president…so what do I know?
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So now the Orange one is calling Elizabeth Warren a fraud and ‘Pocahontas”. He can’t resist calling people names. What a great president!! I do hope history looks very unkindly at him and reveals him to be the con man that he is.
In my opinion this whole thing has been blown out of proportion. Warren has a right to claim a native Indian heritage as long as she doesn’t use it to further her political ambitions. Native Americans are discriminated against. Why would this help her?
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Elizabeth Warren angers prominent Native Americans with politically fraught DNA test
…But the public rollout, accompanied by a campaign-like video, has provoked strong rebukes from tribal leaders and activists.
“It makes a mockery out of DNA tests and its legitimate uses while also dishonoring legitimate tribal governments and their citizens, whose ancestors are well documented and whose heritage is proven,” Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr. said in a statement. “Senator Warren is undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage.”
Hoskin said the tests cannot even reliably determine lineage among North or South American tribal groups.
Trump seized on the Cherokee Nation’s criticism Tuesday morning in a three-tweet salvo in which he resumed using his derisive nickname for Warren, “Pocahontas.”
“Thank you to the Cherokee Nation for revealing that Elizabeth Warren, sometimes referred to as Pocahontas, is a complete and total Fraud!” he said.
Warren has defended herself, saying she did not benefit professionally from claiming indigenous lineage. But she appeared to concede a main line of criticism from Native American leaders – that sovereign tribal groups determine citizenship and cultural lineage, not DNA tests such as the one she took.
“I won’t sit quietly for @realDonaldTrump’s racism, so I took a test,” Warren wrote on Twitter. “But DNA & family history has nothing to do with tribal affiliation or citizenship, which is determined only – only – by Tribal Nations. I respect the distinction, & don’t list myself as Native in the Senate.”…
https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/article/Elizabeth-Warren-angers-prominent-Native-13310976.php?utm_campaign=email-desktop&utm_source=CMS%20Sharing%20Button&utm_medium=social
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“In my opinion this whole thing has been blown out of proportion. Warren has a right to claim a native Indian heritage as long as she doesn’t use it to further her political ambitions. Native Americans are discriminated against. Why would this help her?”
My feelings, exactly.
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Nothing’s simple.
Warren says she has Native American blood in her. She’d been told this for decades. She did a DNA test and it shows that, indeed, she has some Native American descendants.
But the percentage becomes a talking point. How dare she even mention it if it’s not above __% !!??
Then the head of the Cherokee Nation is interviewed on NPR and he’s taking offense to her assertion because she’s not a functioning member of that sovereign state, mentioning the criteria that’s necessary to establish citizenship. He goes on to say that the DNA proof is not important or relevant, because of her lack of true affiliation with Cherokee Nation (I fully expect Trump to latch on to that one).
All she was saying is that she’s got Native American ancestors.
Nothing’s simple.
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This is an idiotic move by Warren. As someone said above, this test will not change anyone’s mind. She played right into this trap.
Who is advising her, or did she come up with this idea herself? “Let’s take a DNA test and show you are 0.01% American Indian”. Sure, sounds like a great idea….
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There is actually something real under all this noise and BS. The “Pocahontas” thing all stems from the discovery, during Warren’s campaign against Scott Brown, that Harvard Law School had been defending the ethnic diversity of its faculty by holding Warren out as a “Native American” professor, on the basis of law directory entries where Warren had been listing herself as a “minority” for several years.
Any sensible person would say that this is ridiculous: that Elizabeth Warren is not a “minority” in any meaningful sense, but rather is what every sensible person understands to be “white,” and that Warren’s presence on the Harvard Law School faculty does not add one iota of “Native American” diversity to that school. In my view, the proper response to this would be to acknowledge these facts and to admit that what Harvard did was wrong, both factually and ethically. To my knowledge, Warren has never gone down that road (anyone please correct me if I’m wrong), but instead has responded by arguing that (1) she really does have Native American ancestry and (2) she never used her self-described “minority” status to her own professional benefit. And so here we are, all these years later, being asked to assess the meaning of a DNA test.
There’s an article on the Intercept that tries to get at the point I’m talking about.
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Thanks for this, FLERP!
Here’s another piece:
https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/forgiving-and-forgetting-elizabeth-warren/
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Riddle me, riddle me, riddle me this . . .
Who am I?
I am. . . .
From New York
In the construction/building trades
Launder money for mobsters
Evade taxes
Do lots and lots and lots of big cash deals
Brag constantly about my wealth and my genius
Have the “best” of everything
Keep my tax returns and sources of income very, very secret
Have a violent temper
Have a thing for junk food
Demand loyalty oaths from subordinates, and if they
don’t deliver, get rid of them
Thrive on obsequiousness from those around me
Am constantly paranoid about betrayal
Constantly ridicule others
Constantly make up belittling nicknames and think that this is extraordinarily funny
Gesticulate a lot
Have two expressions: 1. utter rage and 2. smirk
Am casually and profoundly racist
Am extraordinarily narcissistic
Have a comb-over
Wear expensive, dapper suits
Am a serial abuser of women
Mangle the language
Am a blowhard
Cannot utter a sustained, coherent thought
Conduct business out of my “club”
Constantly complain about “fake news”
Am surrounded by dirty lawyers
Am subject to lots of investigations that don’t stick
Brag about how they will never catch up to me
Figured it out yet?
Gotti. John Gotti.
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Bob: It sounds just like someone else. This one has dominated the news for at least two years and is wearing the country out. He is fat, has a weird hair cut, an orange complexion and wears an extra long red tie. Figured it out yet? [Hint: He’d look fantastic in an orange jump suit.]
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Hmmm. Can’t imagine whom you might be think of there, Carol. BTW, have you heard. There are reports that Democrats are planning attacks on Republicans using multi-syllabic words and science. George Soros is going to bus them in. Ever since they started teaching Sharia law in schools, because of Obama, there are plenty of these snowflake Antifa people to recruit–you know, Obama, the guy who put chemicals into the drinking water to turn teenagers transexual. Start watching Hannity. You can find out all about this.
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I do like the orange on orange on orange ensemble idea, though.
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The poet Randall Jarrell once wrote that it was getting difficult to write parody because our leaders do a better job of parodying themselves than any writer can. Prescient.
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So, will I be voting for Elizabeth Warren, the first Native American President, or the first white, privileged, woman president? Maybe a twofer.
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I’m glad to hear that you have finally come to your senses, Harlan. BTW, your old pal Mitch McConnell has just called for dramatic reductions in Social Security and Medicare to cover the 30 percent drop in federal revenues caused by his and Paul Ryan’s enormous tax break for corporations and the wealthy. Enjoy that.
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Re, decimating SS and Medicare to cover the enormous loss of tax revenue from their “Tax Reform” package:
As predictable as the sunrise. I’d mock their lack of imagination if it wasn’t so incredibly destructive.
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It’s breathtaking. They’ve been trying to make this play ever since Social Security was first enacted. You might remember that Ronald Reagan, when he was first running for president, was calling Social Security a Communist plot, before his people put him on a script that would play. Now they think that they have it in sight.
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And thanks, Harlan, for illustrating so clearly my point that the ultra-right-wing parodies itself much more clearly than any opponent could do.
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Subject: I just signed this
I just told Congress to investigate the credible new evidence of Trump’s tax fraud, and I think you should, too.
https://act.credoaction.com/sign/trump_tax_fraud?sp_ref=451092066.4.191522.e.617879.2&referring_akid=.1912996.EeJyXP&source=mailto_sp
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