All tagged donald trump

The Big and Little Lies About Reproductive Health

The Big and Little Lies About Reproductive Health

Tatiana Prophet
Health Care

Photo: Jemarius Jachin Harbor, Jr., born at 21 weeks gestation in December 2019 at Emory University Medical Center in Decatur, Ga., is the youngest preemie ever to be born. His mother, Jessica McPherson, had lost her previous two pregnancies at 22 weeks. She told Fox 5 Atlanta: “We looked at each other in the eye and I told him just give it a try. I just want you to try as long as you try that’s all that matters to me, don’t just up and say that you can’t do it. Just ‘cause you haven’t done it doesn’t mean it can’t be done.”

By TATIANA PROPHET

Every year in the United States, between 7,000 and 15,000 fetuses are aborted late in their development (21 weeks or more). More than half are healthy.

Wait, this can’t be true – right? Only 1 percent of all abortions are after 21 weeks. With total annual abortions hovering over or under 1 million, that 1 percent is actually a lot of procedures.

By abortion advocates’ own admission, the number of late-term abortions per year is roughly 15,000.

Further, according to the same study, most late-term abortions are elective.

“The body of research on women who have dealt with fetal anomalies or life endangerment … describes … pregnancy wantedness and tragic circumstances,” wrote Professor Diana Greene Foster in 2013. “But data suggest that most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.”

COVID-19 TIMELINE: PREDICTION AND DIAGNOSIS

COVID-19 TIMELINE: PREDICTION AND DIAGNOSIS

Tatiana Prophet
Health Care

By TATIANA PROPHET

A healthy society should not only have one voice. - Dr. Li Wenliang, reluctant whistleblower, who died of Covid-19 in Wuhan, China, after warning his fellow doctors to be alert in their facilities, on a private chat system. Someone leaked his comments and he was reprimanded publicly by police.

NOVEMBER 9, 2015 RALPH BARIC, AN INFECTIOUS-DISEASE RESEARCHER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL, published a study on his team’s efforts to engineer a chimeric virus with the surface protein of the SHC014 coronavirus, found in horseshoe bats in China, and the backbone of one that causes human-like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in mice. The hybrid virus could infect human airway cells and caused disease in mice, according to the team’s results, which were published in Nature Medicine. The team included four scientists from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one from the Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens in Wuhan, China, one from Zurich and two from Harvard.

In defense of Ukraine

In defense of Ukraine

Tatiana Prophet
Foreign Affairs

By Tatiana Prophet

In the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, Democrats have pointed to lethal defensive aid for Ukraine that was held up by the President as a clear example of abuse of power.

According to a Government Accountability Office decision released Jan. 16, 2020, President Trump’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) violated the law when he ordered a pause in lethal aid to Ukraine that was authorized by the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2019.

“Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” the decision stated. “OMB withheld funds for a policy reason, which is not permitted under the Impoundment Control Act (ICA). The withholding was not a programmatic delay. Therefore, we conclude that OMB violated the ICA.”

Burisma founder: From 'wanted man' to 'in-demand'

Burisma founder: From 'wanted man' to 'in-demand'

Tatiana Prophet
Foreign Affairs

Part IV: From ‘wanted man’ to ‘in demand’
How Burisma’s founder turned scrutiny into prestige

“I said I’m going to be leaving here in six hours. If the prosecutor’s not fired, you’re not getting a billion dollars. Well, son of a bitch. Got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid. At the time.” — Joe Biden, January 2018.

By Tatiana Prophet

According to James Risen at The Intercept and Lucian Kim at National Public Radio, when Joe Biden called for a prosecutor to be fired in 2016, that prosecutor was not investigating Biden’s son Hunter; according to everyone in the Western world, Viktor Shokin was corrupt himself and had no interest in exposing corruption. Why, then, did Shokin’s replacement close the books on the investigation into Hunter’s employer, Burisma Holdings?

Wrote Risen: “The then-vice president issued his demands for greater anti-corruption measures by the Ukrainian government despite the possibility that those demands would actually increase – not lessen — the chances that Hunter Biden and Burisma would face legal trouble in Ukraine.”

7 things you're not hearing about Stormy Daniels

7 things you're not hearing about Stormy Daniels

Tatiana Prophet
Politics

Suits, settlements and strip teases

By TATIANA PROPHET

Stormy Daniels filed a defamation suit against President Donald Trump in a New York court Monday, for a tweet in which he called the composite sketch of the man she described as threatening her a "con job." (Seriously? We are living in an alternate reality, folks.)

Sometimes it's really hard to follow exactly how many lawsuits and countersuits there are.

Following are items not generally being discussed in the virtual salons and coverage of a 2006 affair between porn actress Stormy Daniels, aka Stephanie Clifford, and the current President of the United States, Donald Trump.

1. 'PUSSYGATE' HOOK. Stormy Daniels was motivated to contact the media after the release of the Access Hollywood audio during the presidential campaign.

Steak or garnish? 6 jaw-dropping moments from the Comey-Trump show

Steak or garnish? 6 jaw-dropping moments from the Comey-Trump show

Tatiana Prophet
Politics, Foreign Affairs

By TATIANA PROPHET

James Comey is the anti-Trump, and it appears many -- who are tired of this strange theater that has overtaken our political arena –- hope he is the antidote. He is everything that Trump is not. He speaks in sentences of 20 words or more. He rattles off impeccable syntax and manages to elucidate adult FBI topics for listeners of all stripes. He is polite, deferential, and especially now that he is no longer in government, very willing to answer questions (except ones that would give an impression that anybody at all was innocent in the Trump investigation – in case he had a “duty to correct”).

So from Wednesday, when he released his prepared written testimony, to Thursday when he verbally recounted several Orson Welles-worthy scenes set in the Oval Office, the nation was riveted.

The brains of Americans on both sides pleaded: Give us something new! Anything to relieve the tedium of “officials familiar with the matter” telling us in our nation’s top papers, yet again, that this investigation is being conducted, oh yes, being conducted every day -- but never appearing to give us any sort of, well anything to digest.

So were we satisfied? Most of us have something to munch on. There’s brain food for both sides. And as would be expected, one man’s steak is another man’s garnish.

Facts on Comey firing: Lost in speculation

Facts on Comey firing: Lost in speculation

Tatiana Prophet
Intelligence

By TATIANA PROPHET

The whirlwind of relevant reportage on the exit of erstwhile FBI director James Comey all started with an article posted late Monday night by the news site Pro Publica, quoting two anonymous sources as saying that Comey gave inaccurate testimony last week before a Senate committee regarding Huma Abedin's handling of State Department e-mails.

"According to two sources familiar with the matter -- including one in law enforcement -- Abedin forwarded only a handful of Clinton emails to her husband for printing -- not the "hundreds and thousands" cited by Comey," wrote Peter Elkind, special to Pro Publica.

Pro Publica, tagline "News in the public interest," has already garnered four Pulitzer prizes in its short tenure since its founding 2008. Headquartered in Manhattan, by its own account it's a nonprofit consisting of 50 journalists on staff. Board members are a who's who of established media and business leaders, and a main donor is banker Herbert Sandler, who is also the founding chairman.

A change in the wind

A change in the wind

Tatiana Prophet
Immigration

PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. – Gabino González was finishing up repairing a small wall where a tree had fallen after rainstorms in this Los Angeles suburb, mere minutes from the beach.

As he finished cleaning up the job site, he pulled out his cell phone and said, “Este es mi dádi, this is my daddy.” Then, with difficulty, he added: “Mi vida es esto, my life is this.” In the photo is a vaquero, a cowboy on a horse, who he said works out in the country in the state of Hidalgo. His father is 78 years old, and he has not seen him in six years.

The election, by the numbers

The election, by the numbers

Tatiana Prophet
Politics

So many post mortems have been written. But one of the starkest post mortems of the 2016 presidential election is the simple pie chart. The pie chart shows how the country is divided -- yes, in a bipolar way, of left versus right, but also in thirds. There were an unprecedented number of non-voters in this election -- a full 32 percent of those registered.