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Billie Jean King to join Jill Biden to mark Title IX's 50th anniversary

Billie Jean King and Jill Biden are teaming up to mark the 50^th anniversary of Title IX at a celebration in Washington.

The first lady and the tennis champ’s participation in the Wednesday event at Capitol One Arena was announced Tuesday by the White House.

Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibited sex-based discrimination in educational programs that receive federal financial assistance, was signed on June 23, 1972.

Seventy-eight-year-old King — who famously won the 1973 “Battle of the Sexes” match against Bobby Riggs — has been a longtime gender equality advocate.

It’s not the first time that King has championed Title IX at an event tied to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The 39-time Grand Slam champion also marked the 40^th anniversary of Title IX back in 2012 as part of a star-studded panel hosted by the White House Council on Women and Girls.

The Wednesday gathering will also recognize the 10^th anniversary of the State Department’s global sports mentoring program, according to the White House. Biden, King and a soon-to-be college track athlete are all expected to deliver remarks at the Title IX anniversary ceremony.

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Existing home sales tank in May on low supply and affordability

Existing home sales dipped in May for the fourth consecutive month while prices continued to soar, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday, a signal that depressed inventory means the housing market still isn’t able to keep up with elevated demand.

Total existing home sales in May, the most recent month for which data is available, fell 3.4 percent over April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.41 million units. From a year earlier, sales sank 8.6 percent.

“Home sales have essentially returned to the levels seen in 2019 – prior to the pandemic – after two years of gangbuster performance,” NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said Tuesday.

Yun said further month-over-month sales declines are expected through the next few months due to inventory and affordability constraints. For the first time since the NAR began collecting data on sales of existing homes, the national median existing home price jumped above $400,000, up nearly 15 percent from one year ago.

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That’s led a growing number of Americans to turn toward renting, NAR President Leslie Rouda Smith said Tuesday, although the price of renting a home in the U.S. has also shot up markedly as demand for housing increases. In May, rents rose by more than 5 percent from a year earlier, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said this month.

But higher prices haven’t shut buyers out of the housing market completely, and home-buying remains exceedingly competitive. As of May, an existing property spent an average of  just 16 days on the market before it was purchased, down from 17 days in April.

Almost 90 percent of homes sold in May this year were on the market for less than a month, according to the NAR.

“Nonetheless, homes priced appropriately are selling quickly and inventory levels still need to rise substantially – almost doubling – to cool home price appreciation and provide more options for home buyers,” Yun said Tuesday.

Sales of homes priced at $100,000 and below rose 4 percent in May, according to NAR data, while sales of homes priced at $100,000 to $250,000 were up 20 percent and sales of homes available for $250,000 to $500,000 rose 42 percent.

Monthly sales of existing homes priced at $500,000 to $750,000 rose 19 percent in May and sales of homes in the $750,000 to $1 million range were up 7 percent. Even sales of homes listed for more than $1 million rose 8 percent in May – an increase of 26 percent over last year.

But inventory levels in nearly every price category remain muted. At the end of May, about 1.2 million units were available for sale, an increase over April but still a 4.1 percent decline over the previous year.

Substantial movement on that front isn’t expected anytime soon. In May, building permits issued for privately owned housing units fell 7 percent over the previous month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.695 million, according to Census Bureau data released earlier this month.

At the current sales pace, the inventory of existing homes would be depleted in just under two and a half months, according to the NAR.

Notably, sales of both existing single-family homes and condominiums declined in May, which Yun said could be a sign that more people are moving back to cities and more populated urban areas after retreating to suburban ones at the height of the pandemic.

“The market movements of single-family and condominium sales are nearly equal, possibly implying that the preference towards suburban living over city life that had been present over the past two years is fading with a return to pre-pandemic conditions,” Yun said.

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George Takei: 'The Texas GOP is practicing fascism'

George Takei is calling out the Texas Republican Party for labeling homosexuality “abnormal,” saying the move reeks of “neo-fascist dehumanization.”

The “Star Trek” actor, who married husband Brad Takei in 2008, changed his Twitter profile this week after Republicans in the Lone Star state adopted a new platform over the weekend that referred to homosexuality as “an abnormal lifestyle choice.”

“We believe there should be no granting of special legal entitlements or creation of special status for homosexual behavior, regardless of state of origin,” the document containing the party’s new guiding principles stated.

“I am an abnormal lifestyle choice,” Takei wrote on his profile, saying the bio change came “in honor of the Texas GOP.”

The 85-year-old performer, a fierce critic of former President Trump, wrote to his 3.4 million followers this week: “We must see the labeling of homosexuality ‘an abnormal lifestyle choice’ by the Texas GOP’s platform for what it is: neo-fascist dehumanization.”

“Fascists target vulnerable minority groups and seek to galvanize public hate against them,” wrote Takei, who was sent to a World War II-era Japanese internment camp when he was 5-years-old.

“The Texas GOP is practicing fascism,” Takei said.

Takei suggested that every Republican candidate running for office this year should be asked where they stand on the state Republican Party’s platform.

“The abnormal lifestyle choice here is being a hate-filled, radical MAGA,” he said, a reference to Trump’s 2016 “Make America Great Again” presidential campaign slogan.

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Bipartisan victories in Congress are a foundation for change

Something good is happening in Washington D.C.

Members of Congress have briefly suspended their vicious personal combat and have come together to address two of the greatest crises of our time, not as Republicans or Democrats but as Americans.

Last week, a bipartisan negotiating team of U.S. senators announced an agreement on a framework for a significant package of gun safety legislation that appears likely to be passed into law.

On May 19, the Senate passed a $40 billion emergency aid package for Ukraine by an overwhelmingly bipartisan 86 to 11 vote. Now, with the Ukraine war in its fourth month, lawmakers in both parties are backing a broad consensus approach to the crisis and showing striking unity in the face of a common enemy.  

As House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) stated, “The gravity of this moment calls for Congress to speak with one voice.”

It has happened before — bipartisanship has periodically blossomed at key moments throughout American history.

In the wake of post-World War II Soviet repression in conquered East European nations, the formerly isolationist Republican U.S. senator from Michigan, Arthur Vandenberg, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee joined forces with Democratic President Harry S. Truman to persuade Congress to support the formation of NATO and the Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe. It was Vandenberg who popularized the idea that partisan politics should stop “at the water’s edge,” and his support and that of many Republicans was crucial to the enduring success of these post-war initiatives. Similarly, U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms control agreements forged by presidents John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan enjoyed wide support from members of both parties.

Major bipartisan achievements have occurred in domestic affairs too, such as the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act and a series of  joint victories later engineered by the unlikely team of conservative Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch (Utah) and liberal Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy (Mass.) in the 1990s. They include the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. In 2018, Hatch joined Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and lawmakers from both parties to pass the STOP School Violence Act, a measure that issues grants to school violence prevention programs around the country. Incredibly, that law was praised by both Sandy Hook Promise and the National Rifle Association. 

Bipartisanship is no guarantee of wisdom —  the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan debacles were joint Democratic and Republican affairs. Costly bipartisan federal attempts to improve the nation’s childhood education system over the last 20 years have largely failed. 

But the tragedy in Ukraine, and the slaughter of innocents in Buffalo, Uvalde, and Tulsa remind us that the enemy is not us. The real enemy is not our fellow law-abiding citizens, or Republicans or Democrats, or imagined freedom-hating American Marxists or American fascists.

The most dangerous adversaries confronting America and the world today are ignorance, dictatorship, disinformation, nationalistic hatred and nuclear proliferation, as well as hunger, terrorism, discrimination and violence itself. They remind us that while there are times for partisanship, this is not one of them.

Right now, the nation cries out for constructive, compassionate, creative and bipartisan action on a host of issues, including immigration, infrastructure, education, energy, poverty and health care. 

Moments like this can remind us of the words spoken by Abraham Lincoln at his first inaugural address: “We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”  

One such angel is the spirit of bipartisanship, of Democrats and Republicans clashing, negotiating and acting together for the common good, a spirit which can move the nation not to the right or to the left, but forward and higher to a better future.

Now is the time for American voters and the American media to start rewarding politicians based not on how well they tear down their opponents, but on how powerfully they can channel the spirits of Lincoln and our nation’s angels to build a better and stronger country, a society that can protect and nourish our children and inspire the world.

William Doyle is a Fulbright Scholar writing on politics, history and education and the author of the forthcoming book, “Titan of the Senate: Orrin Hatch and the Once and Future Golden Age of Bipartisanship.” being published in September by Center Street Books.

Source: TEST FEED1

How Brad Raffensperger stood up to Trump

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) will testify before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riots on Tuesday afternoon in what could be another revelatory hearing on the events leading up to the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Raffensperger, 67, will likely offer insights into how he defied former President Trump’s efforts to pressure him into overturning the 2020 election results in his state.

Fulton County in Georgia convened a special grand jury to investigate the pressure campaign, which centers on a January 2021 phone call in which Trump asked Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to reverse President Biden’s victory in the key swing state.

For resisting Trump, Raffensperger was scorned by Trump allies and seemingly faced an uphill climb in his re-election campaign.

Last month, however, he beat out a Trump-endorsed opponent in the GOP primary for Georgia secretary of state. Raffensberger and Gov. Brian Kemp, another Republican target of Trump’s, both won relatively easily. Raffensberger won 52 percent of the vote compared to 33 percent for Trump’s favored pick, Jody Hice.

Raffensperger was a civil engineer and owner of a design consulting firm called Trillium Structures and a restoration company called Tendon Systems before he ran for public office at the age of 56.

The small business owner threw his hat in the ring for a Johns Creek city council seat in Fulton County in 2011. In an interview with a local The Patch outlet ahead of election day, he expressed his desire for “resolute leadership combined with an optimistic, persevering spirit.”

After serving on the council from 2012 to 2014, Raffensperger won a seat at the Georgia House of Representatives in 2015 to represent Johns Creek with a pro-business stance.

Raffensperger ran for the secretary of state position in 2018. He told The Tifton Gazette he would push to ensure only Americans can vote in elections, bolster election security and get younger people involved in elections.

The 2020 general election went smoothly in Georgia compared to the tricky primaries in June, which were disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. President Biden became the first Democrat to win the state since 1992.

The election was officially certified in early December with Biden winning by 12,670 votes.

As Trump cried foul and repeated his claims of voter fraud, Georgia audited the election results in December in Cobb County, a key county in the election. The state did a statewide hand and machine recount.

In a press release announcing the audit results, Raffensperger said he was “always focused on calling balls and strikes in elections” but “in this case, three strikes against the voter fraud claims and they’re out.”

“This audit disproves the only credible allegations the Trump campaign had against the strength of Georgia’s signature match processes,” the secretary of state said at the time.

In early January, Trump called Raffensperger to pressure him to overturn the results. According to a transcript of the call, Trump told the state officials “I think it’s pretty clear that we won,” and said there were multiple concerns with mystery ballots and dead people voting.

Trump also disagreed with the Cobb County audit, arguing he really wanted an audit of Fulton County. After Raffensperger told him they audited the results in Cobb County because it was the only place they saw potential evidence of fraud, the president pressed him to “find” votes.

“So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state,” Trump said.

Raffensperger took a defiant posture in the phone call, telling the president “we don’t agree that you won.”

“We believe that we do have an accurate election,” he said.

Outlets leaked an audio tape of the roughly hour-long phone call, drawing a storm of controversy for Trump, who was wildly seen as pressuring a state election official in an illegal bid to overturn certified results.

The secretary of state did not back down from his belief the election was secure, despite drawing incendiary backlash from Trump’s loyalists. But he did work with Kemp to bolster election security laws in Georgia.

In the past year, Georgia passed two controversial election laws empowering an election police force and creating stricter voter ID requirements, among other changes.

Instead of addressing the 2020 election, Raffensperger neatly courted Republican voters by talking up election security and challenging Democrats’ positions on election laws.

In an interview with Fox News in January, he talked about “secure elections” in Georgia because of the new laws and suggested Congress pass a constitutional amendment that ensures only Americans can vote.

“They go down this rabbit trail that just their far left-wing base believes in any of this stuff. Same-day registration. And they want to do away with photo I.D. You’ll have non-citizens voting the next day,” he said.

In addition to testifying in front of the House panel, Raffensperger also testified in front of the special grand jury in Fulton County.

After his primary victory, Raffensperger mentioned that almost every political pundit had called his chance of winning re-election “hopeless.”

“In my heart of hearts, I don’t think the experts were looking at this the right way,” he said in a May 25 interview. “The vast majority of Georgians are looking for honest people for elected office, someone who will do their job, follow the law and look out for them regardless of the personal cost.”

Source: TEST FEED1

AARP ad buy urges Manchin to support Medicare drug negotiation in reconciliation bill

The AARP is launching a multi-million dollar ad campaign across print, radio, cable and TV broadcast networks in West Virginia urging Sen. Joe Manchin (D) to support a reconciliation bill that includes Medicare drug price negotiation.

The ads will start Wednesday and run through July 5 in markets across the state. They come as Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is privately trying to negotiate with Manchin to resurrect a spending bill that addresses climate change and lowers prescription drug prices.

The television ad, titled “The Right Thing,” urges Manchin to “keep fighting for lower drug prices.”

“Everybody knows Joe Manchin cares about West Virginians. And he knows too many of us are struggling to pay for our medicine. That’s why he supports letting Medicare negotiate lower drug prices,” the ad says.

Manchin has long supported action to lower drug prices, including price negotiation, and recently spoke at an AARP event in West Virginia to say Democrats must pass drug pricing legislation before the midterm elections. 

But it remains to be seen if he can reach a deal with Democratic leaders on a broader package that would include the drug pricing reforms. 

Drug price negotiation was included in the House-passed version of the Build Back Better legislation, but was dropped from the Senate framework during negotiations. 

Manchin ultimately opposed that version of the bill, effectively killing it. 

Because of Republican opposition, any measure needs all 50 Democrats to support it in order to use the reconciliation process to bypass a GOP filibuster in the Senate. 

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) another key moderate swing vote, has been the greater question mark on drug pricing action, so Democratic leaders will need her on board if they want to pass any sweeping negotiation plan.

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Here are the worst-run cities in America: report

The worst run city in America in 2022 is the nation’s capital, according to a new Wallet Hub analysis.  

WalletHub compared the operating efficiency of 150 of the largest cities in the nation along 38 “quality of services” metrics, which were then measured against the city’s budget, to determine which U.S. cities were managed the best – and the worst. 

Washington, D.C. ranked in the bottom five in several major categories, including the amount of outstanding debt per capita and high school graduation rate. The outstanding debt per capita in the city is more than 36 times higher than it is in the nation’s best-run city at $22,178.  

San Francisco, New York, Chattanooga and Cleveland carried the remaining four spots on the list of America’s five worst-run cities.  

Cleveland ranks near the bottom in the percentage of the population in poverty, median household income and unemployment rate.  

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Experts interviewed by Wallet Hub identified the most important issues they believe cities are currently facing, including rising crime. 

“The crime wave is clearly an important issue in many cities. The ability of city governments to provide adequate services to residents is an important issue due to declining revenues. This can be alleviated by state/federal assistance, but that is only a short-term solution,” said Gary L. Rose, a government professor at Sacred Heart University. 

“Underfunded pension obligations continue to be an important issue in many cities. The strained relationship between police and persons of color within the cities is an important issue,” Rose said. 

Baltimore, Birmingham, St. Louis, Detroit and Memphis have the highest rate of violent crime, according to the analysis. 

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Trump praises ‘powerful’ Texas GOP after rejection of Biden win

Former President Trump applauded the Texas Republican Party’s proposed platform that declares President Biden “was not legitimately elected” on Tuesday. 

“Look at the Great State of Texas and their powerful Republican Party Platform on the 2020 Presidential Election Fraud,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, the social media platform he founded as an alternative to Twitter. “After much research and study, they disavow the national result for President.” 

The state party adopted the platform at its biennial convention this past weekend, also approving a resolution to reject the 2020 presidential election results. It claims that “substantial election fraud in key metropolitan areas” occurred in five swing states, leading to Biden’s victory. 

Trump and his allies have repeatedly claimed the 2020 election was tainted by widespread election fraud. However, state and federal elections officials have said there was no substantial evidence of widespread election fraud in 2020.

Trump and his campaign mounted dozens of legal challenges in an effort to overturn the election results. The majority of these challenges were unsuccessful.

Texas GOP communications director James Wesolek told The Hill on Monday that the resolution the party passed is not officially part of the platform. The resolution passed by a voice vote of delegates. Each delegate needed to vote in favor or against 275 proposals for the platform, and the results are expected to be counted this week. 

A University of Texas at Austin survey found in February that 22 percent of Republican respondents said Biden was legitimately elected while 67 percent said he was not. 

The platform’s approval comes as the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, which attempted to stop the certification of Biden’s victory, holds public hearings to share its findings. 

The platform also chastised Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) for his participation in trying to reach a deal on gun legislation with a bipartisan group of senators.

The tentative framework includes providing funding for mental health services and closing the so-called boyfriend loophole, which allows domestic abusers who have not been married to, lived with or had a child with a victim to obtain a firearm. 

“Whereas all gun control is a violation of the Second Amendment and our God-given rights, we reject the so-called ‘bipartisan gun agreement,’ and we rebuke John Cornyn,” the Texas GOP’s resolution on the legislation read. 

The 40-page platform also includes a section on “Homosexuality and Gender Issues” in which it describes homosexuality as an “abnormal lifestyle choice.” It opposes the use of public funds for gender-affirming care and backs counseling methods to “convert” LGBT individuals.

Source: TEST FEED1

Second American killed in Ukraine combat: State Department

The Department of State on Tuesday confirmed a second American citizen has died while fighting in Ukraine.

A State Department official, speaking on background, said U.S. citizen Stephen Zabielski died in Ukraine. The official did not offer any further details.

State Department officials “have been in touch with the family and have provided all possible consular assistance,” the official added.

“We once again reiterate U.S. citizens should not travel to Ukraine due to the active armed conflict and the singling out of U.S. citizens in Ukraine by Russian government security officials,” the official said. “U.S. citizens in Ukraine should depart immediately if it is safe to do so using any commercial or other privately available ground transportation options.”

Zabielski, 52, of Hernando, Fla., died while fighting in the village of Dorozhniank, according to his obituary in local news outlet The Recorder.

He is formerly of Cranesville, N.Y., and “enjoyed life,” including riding his Harley motorcycle as well as hunting and fishing.

“Steve will be missed by all who knew and loved him,” the obituary reads.

He is survived by his wife, five stepchildren, seven siblings and his extended family.

Zabielski is the second American citizen to die in Ukraine during combat after Willy Joseph Cancel, a 22-year-old former U.S. marine. Cancel’s family reported in April that a military contracting company sent him to Ukraine.

Other American citizens have also died in Ukraine, including 67-year-old James Whitney Hill in March and an American freelance filmmaker, Brent Renaud.

Two additional former U.S. Marines, Alexander Drueke and Andy Huynh, were recently captured by Russia after fighting in Ukraine.

Source: TEST FEED1