Issues

Bills Introduced: A bill to direct the administrators of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation to produce a report to Congress regarding the efforts to support minority women involvement in STEM fields; A bill to prohibit the use of restraints and restrictive housing on inmates during the period of pregnancy, labor and postpartum recovery; A bill to require certain companies to disclose information describing any measures the company has taken to identify and address conditions of forced labor, slavery, human trafficking, and the worst forms of child labor within the company’s supply chains. more »

Julia Sneden wrote: "Bosky," my mother the English teacher said firmly. "It means covered with trees and shrubs. Thickly grown. And a dell is a..." "I know," I said, falling easily into our mother/teacher, daughter/pupil mode. "A dell is a small valley or hollow, usually secluded." I find myself wondering how long it will take people to realize that when we take out trees, we take out the oxygen producers that keep us alive. Humans inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. Trees inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen. It's that simple. more »

CDC and public health and regulatory officials in several states are investigating a multistate outbreak of multidrug-resistant Salmonella infections linked to raw turkey products. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA-FSIS) is monitoring the outbreak. In the meantime, a significant, positive change in FDA’s food safety policies, and one that The Pew Charitable Trusts and 10 other public health groups had urged because store information can help people determine whether they may have bought or eaten potentially dangerous items. Previously, agency officials often said they were required to keep retailer information from the public, even amid outbreaks such as one linked to papayas in 2017 that resulted in more than 230 Salmonella infections. more »

Jo Freeman writes: While some races are still too close to call, 2018 also saw a great leap upward in the number of women running and winning. More than a quarter of all candidates running for Congress or Governor this year were women (272 of 964). What 1992 has in common with 2018 is that these candidates were overwhelmingly Democrats. For the Democratic Party, this was another year of the woman; not so much for the Republicans. In November, Democratic women ran for 93 seats and won nearly half. Republican women ran for 13 and won less than a quarter. Several issues were prominent which attracted women voters. Exit polls said that the chief issue in 2018 was healthcare. Family separation of would-be immigrants was another. more »