Weekly Update: Us in the U.S.

Us in the U.S. is Women’s eNews’ weekly update summarizing all of the past week’s actions, policies and legislation that are being proposed, as well as passed, impacting women’s rights in the USA. Since our audience spans the globe, Women’s eNews wants to ensure that our readers are provided with all of the facts since we have always, and will forever, publish only the TRUTH:

Late last week, Donald Trump mocked the #MeToo movement and repeatedly attacked Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren over her heritage. Nicknaming Senator Warren “Pocahontas,’ Trump later mocked people who called on him to apologize for the remark. “I want to apologize. Pocahontas, I apologize to you. I apologize to you. To you I apologize,” he said. “To the fake Pocahontas, I won’t apologize.” He suggested that if Warren were to win the Democratic nomination in 2020 and they were to debate, he would toss an ancestry test to her and, in doing so, made light of the #MeToo movement, “We’ll take that little kit and say, we have to do it gently because we are in the Me Too generation, and we will very gently take that kit, slowly toss it” to her. In her tweet following his speech, Warren responded, “Hey, @realDonaldTrump: While you obsess over my genes, your Admin is conducting DNA tests on little kids because you ripped them from their mamas & you are too incompetent to reunite them in time to meet a court order. Maybe you should focus on fixing the lives you’re destroying.”
Trump’s comments came only days after he hired former Fox News executive Bill Shine, who has been accused of mishandling sexual harassment allegations at the network. On Thursday, Trump also defended Republican Rep. Jim Jordan against allegations he ignored sexual abuse when he served as a wrestling coach at Ohio State University. “I don’t believe them at all. I believe him,” Trump said.
Donald Trump announced on Monday his decision to nominate Brett Kavanaugh to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by Justice Anthony Kennedy’s decision to retire at the end of July. Supporters of women’s reproductive choice are concerned that he may vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion nationwide. In 2006, Kavanaugh was pressed by Senator Chuck Schumer on his personal opinion on Roe, but he declined to answer, by only responding, “I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to give a personal view on that case.” This exchange, which took place during a hearing to consider Kavanaugh’s nomination to serve on the DC circuit. coupled with his dissent from a ruling of the DC Circuit last October that an undocumented immigrant teen in detention was entitled to seek an abortion, are of increasing concern to protections under Roe v. Wade.
According to a recent report in the The New York Times, American officials at the World Health Assembly in Geneva wanted to modify a breastfeeding resolution. The American delegates sought to eliminate any language in the resolution that called on governments to “protect, promote, and support breastfeeding,” and when that didn’t work, they threatened Ecuador with reduced trade and aid measures. To read a commentary on this issue published in Women’s eNews , please click below: