Mother Jones Daily: Briefing

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Operation Enduring Faith
The Poorest of the Poor

LAW AND JUSTICE
Operation Enduring Faith

While the Bush administration sells the “new-found religious freedom” of Iraqis to the American public, Democrats are fighting a battle at home to stop a GOP bill that would allow churches and other religious organizations to discriminate against potential employees based on their religious beliefs . Julia Elieperin and Alan Cooperman of the Washington Post report that the Workforce Investment Act, a program designed to assist the unemployed, provides federal funds to job training and literacy programs, many of which have religious affiliations. The Republican rationale is that religious organizations “must be free to preserve their essential character by hiring people who share their beliefs” — or maintain their disciminatory freedom, as it were.

The Act’s Thursday passage in the House is a renewal of a 1998 law that funds “One Stop Career Centers.” According to the Associated Press, the 1998 law prohibits religiously exclusive hiring practices. But Republican Congressmen claimed that “religious organizations are exempt in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, meaning they can use faith as a factor in hiring people to carry out a group’s mission.” Up until now, if an organization received federal funds, it was forced to follow federal hiring guidelines.

This move to extend the exemption is a reflection of the current administration’s characteristic attempts to meld church and state. The President signed an executive order in December that provided tax dollars to religious groups even when they hire based on religion, but, according to the AP, “Bush’s plan to open up federal contracts to religious groups has stalled in Congress, and Republicans have pledged to act on it piece by piece in various bills.” Watch out. In this case, at least, Democrats are prepared and ready to fight to keep the bill from passing in the Senate, as Elieperin and Cooperman report:

“Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), who mounted the fight against Bush’s initial faith-based initiative, said he is just as determined to block the proposed GOP changes to the jobs bill.

‘Our position is based upon a very simple premise: Individuals should not be discriminated against on religious grounds in a program that receives federal funds,’ Reed said. ‘We’re not going to back off it.'”

DOMESTIC NEWS
The Poorest of the Poor

According to a new The Children’s Defense Fund report, nearly one million African American children in the United States live not only in poverty, but in extreme poverty. The CDF defines a child in “extreme poverty” as a child living in a family that has an after-tax income below half of the poverty line. CDF charges the Bush Administration with dismantling crucial programs such as Head Start and Children’s Health Insurance Program which specifically aim to help these poorest children.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson from the Pacific News Service reports on this extreme poverty against the backdrop of the overall progress of Black America over the past twenty-five years.

Huchinson reports,

“The contrast to the tales of poverty can’t be more glaring. There are nearly 1 million blacks behind bars. The HIV/AIDS rampage, a sea of homeless persons and raging drug and gang violence plague many black communities.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate