SYDNEY (AP) —
Australian police charged a top Vatican cardinal on Thursday with
multiple counts of historical sexual assault offenses, a stunning
decision certain to rock the highest levels of the Holy See.
Cardinal George
Pell, Pope Francis' chief financial adviser and Australia's most senior
Catholic, is the highest-ranking Vatican official to ever be charged in
the church's long-running sexual abuse scandal.
Victoria state Police Deputy Commissioner Shane
Patton said police have summonsed Pell to appear in an Australian court
to face multiple charges of "historic sexual offenses," meaning offenses
that generally occurred some time ago. Patton said there are multiple
complainants against Pell, but gave no other details on the allegations
against the cardinal. Pell was ordered to appear in Melbourne
Magistrates Court on July 18. Pell has repeatedly denied all abuse allegations made
against him. The Catholic Church in Australia, which issues statements
on Pell's behalf, did not immediately respond to a request for comment
on the charges. "It is important to note that none of the allegations
that have been made against Cardinal Pell have, obviously, been tested
in any court yet," Patton told reporters in Melbourne. "Cardinal Pell,
like any other defendant, has a right to due process." The charges are a new and serious blow to Pope
Francis, who has already suffered several credibility setbacks in his
promised "zero tolerance" policy about sex abuse. For years, Pell has faced allegations that he
mishandled cases of clergy abuse when he was archbishop of Melbourne
and, later, Sydney. His actions as archbishop came under intense
scrutiny in recent years by a government-authorized investigation into
how the Catholic Church and other institutions have responded to the
sexual abuse of children. Australia's Royal Commission into
Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse — the nation's highest
form of inquiry — has found shocking levels of abuse in Australia's
Catholic Church, revealing earlier this year that 7 percent of Catholic
priests were accused of sexually abusing children over the past several
decades.
Last year, Pell acknowledged during his
testimony to the commission that the Catholic Church had made "enormous
mistakes" in allowing thousands of children to be raped and molested by
priests. He conceded that he, too, had erred by often believing the
priests over victims who alleged abuse. And he vowed to help end a rash
of suicides that has plagued church abuse victims in his Australian
hometown of Ballarat. But more recently, Pell himself became the
focus of a clergy sex abuse investigation, with Victoria detectives
flying to the Vatican last year to interview the cardinal. It is unclear
what allegations the charges announced Thursday relate to, but two men,
now in their 40s, have said that Pell touched them inappropriately at a
swimming pool in the late 1970s, when Pell was a senior priest in
Melbourne. Australia has no extradition treaty with the
Vatican. That leaves two likely outcomes: Either Pell volunteers to
return to Australia to fight the charges, or the Vatican could tell the
cardinal to do so, said Donald Rothwell, an international law expert at
the Australian National University. "I would think that the pope would be very
concerned to think that one of his cardinals, and someone who holds a
high position within the Vatican government structure, is being wanted
on criminal charges in Australia," Rothwell said in a recent interview.
"So if the pope was to say, 'Well look, Cardinal Pell, I'd like you to
return to Australia and mount a defense,' I'm sure Cardinal Pell would
probably follow that instruction. ... In the case of someone like
Cardinal Pell, the sway that the pope and the church has over him is
much greater than the ordinary citizen." The charges put Pope Francis in a thorny
position. In 2014, Francis won cautious praise from victims' advocacy
groups when he created a commission of outside experts to advise him and
the broader church about "best practices" to fight abuse and protect
children. But the commission has since lost much of its
credibility after its two members who were survivors of abuse left.
Francis also scrapped the commission's signature proposal — a tribunal
section to hear cases of bishops who covered up for abuse — after
Vatican officials objected. In addition, Francis drew heated criticism
for his 2015 appointment of a Chilean bishop accused by victims of
helping cover up for Chile's most notorious pedophile. The pope was
later caught on videotape labeling the parishioners who opposed the
nomination of being "leftists" and "stupid." When Francis was asked last year about the
accusations against Pell, he said he wanted to wait for Australian
justice to take its course before judging. "It's true, there is a
doubt," he told reporters en route home from Poland. "We have to wait
for justice and not first make a mediatic judgment — a judgment of
gossip — because that won't help." "Once justice has spoken, I will speak," he said. Francis appointed Pell in 2014 to a five-year
term to head the Vatican's new economy secretariat, giving him broad
rein to control all economic, administrative, personnel and procurement
functions of the Holy See. The mandate has since been restricted to
performing more of an oversight role. It remains to be seen how Pell — and the pope — will respond to the developments. Given Francis' credibility is on the line,
any decision to keep Pell on as prefect while facing charges would
reflect poorly on Francis, given he remains one of the pope's top
advisers. At the same time, the Vatican has a history
of shielding its own: When Cardinal Bernard Law resigned in disgrace in
2002 over his cover-up of abuse in Boston, victims expressed outrage
that St. John Paul II gave him a plum position as archpriest of a Rome
basilica. The transfer spared Law what would likely
have been years of litigation and testimony in U.S. courts as victims
sued the archdioceses for their abuse, though Law himself was never
criminally charged with wrongdoing. In the 1980s, the Vatican refused to
cooperate with Italian investigators when one of its officials,
Archbishop Paul C. Marcinkus, was indicted over a banking scandal. The
Vatican successfully cited his diplomatic immunity. ___ Associated Press writer Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.
U.S. Air Force veteran Kelly Gregory (Photo: Courtesy of Kelly Gregory)
For Kelly Gregory, serving in the U.S. military has been a long-standing family tradition. “We fought in every war this country’s ever engaged in,” said Gregory, an Air Force veteran who served in the first Iraq war. Now, 25 years after retiring from the military, Gregory is fighting for her country in a different way. “I want to be the last American that dies because I didn’t have access to health care,” said Gregory. “That’s my goal.” Gregory, 48, has stage IV breast cancer. And she’s
one of nearly two million veterans who risk losing access to Medicaid
under the Republican health care bill currently stalled in the Senate. “A lot of people are under the assumption that
everyone who’s ever served in the military is covered by the [U.S.
Department of Veteran’s Affairs] and that the VA is a 360 health service
[provider],” Gregory said. “Neither of those things are true.”
Female veterans at a news conference on issues pertaining to their health care. (Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
In fact, as of December 2015,
only about 40 percent of the nearly 22 million veterans living in the
U.S. were enrolled in the Department of Veterans Affairs health care
system. Not all veterans qualify for health care benefits through the VA
— anyone who was dishonorably discharged or served for less than 24
consecutive months is out. But even among those who are eligible, many
either do not live near a VA hospital or find that the VA does not treat
their particular condition. In Gregory’s case, the length of her Air Force service ended just six weeks short of the required 24 months. Thanks to Medicaid, which she was able to
enroll in only after receiving her dire cancer diagnosis in the spring
of 2011, Gregory has been under the care of top oncologists and surgeons
in Nashville. Within the first few weeks of her diagnosis,
Gregory’s doctors discovered that her cancer had metastasized to her
spine, making it stage IV, or “end stage.” She was given six months to a
year to live. Exactly six years, nine surgeries, six months of chemotherapy, and 30 radiation treatments later, she’s still alive.
Kelly Gregory (Photo: courtesy of Kelly Gregory)
“Medicaid absolutely saved my life,” she said. That’s why Gregory is determined to pressure
her representatives in Congress to push back against the Senate health
care legislation, which the Congressional Budget Office predicts will
cause 15 million people to lose Medicaid coverage by 2026. Approximately 1.75 million veterans rely on
Medicaid for health care coverage — and that doesn’t include military
spouses, children or other family members. A report
by the Urban Institute found that veterans were among the
demographic that saw the greatest increases in insurance coverage,
thanks to the Affordable Care Act — including 340,000 veterans who are
now covered under the law’s Medicaid expansion. According to one estimate,
by the progressive nonprofit Center for American Progress, 459,500
veterans would lose Medicaid coverage by 2026 under Senate Republicans’
proposed plan. Following the unveiling of the bill last
week, Gregory joined fellow Tennessee vets for a press conference
outside the VA hospital in Nashville, where they called on other former
service members from across the state to do the same. This week, Gregory
met with staffers for Tennessee’s Republican senators, Bob Corker and
Lamar Alexander, at their field offices in Nashville. “I will shame whoever I have to shame,” she
said. “This is a DEFCON 1 situation. If they pass this bill the way it’s
written right now … it will devastate Medicaid as we know it.” Will Fischer, a former United States Marine and Iraq war veteran, is also employing the shame tactic — but on a national scale. “Trumpcare is an antiveteran bill,” said
Fischer, who now serves as director of government outreach for VoteVets,
a progressive veterans advocacy organization. “If Trumpcare passes,
veterans will die. That’s a simple fact.”
Will Fisher (Photo: maritimetrades.org)
In May, VoteVets teamed up with Families USA, a nonpartisan consumer health advocacy group, to produce a detailed report on the state-by-state impact of deep Medicaid funding cuts to veterans and their families. The report, Fischer said, was distributed to
“every congressional office on House and Senate side to make sure they
were aware of how this affects veterans.” Since then, Fischer has been taking to
Capitol Hill to impress upon lawmakers the consequences they themselves
may face by supporting such drastic cuts. “We’ve made it very clear that we’re paying
close attention to how people vote,” Fischer said, explaining that
VoteVets is prepared to run attack ads and launch canvassing campaigns
against any senator who votes “to gut Medicaid and to rip health care
from veterans.” “That senator’s not going to be able to go
anywhere in their state … without their constituents having the
knowledge that there’s a senator who thought it would be a good idea to
punish veterans with Trumpcare,” he said.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., speaks during the Senate Democrats’
rally against Medicaid cuts, June 6, 2017. (Photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll
Call)
Democratic Senator and Iraq War veteran Tammy
Duckworth, of Illinois, hopes the potential consequences for veterans
will convince her Republican colleagues to reconsider the proposed
Medicaid cuts in their current bill. “The bill is devastating for veterans,” said
Duckworth, who lost both her legs in combat. “I would hope Republican
senators, especially those with large military posts in their states
[like] Texas, North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia … care as much about
their veterans as they say they do and will take that into account when
deciding whether to vote for legislation that could [take coverage away
from] one in 10 veterans.” Gregory described her meetings at Corker and Alexander’s field offices as “productive” and “positive.” Both Corker and Alexander praised the decision,
after it was announced, to delay a vote on the health care bill.
Neither of them responded to requests for comment on this story, nor did
Republican senators John McCain of Arizona, himself a veteran, nor Dean
Heller of Nevada and Jerry Moran of Kansas, who both serve on the
Senate Veterans Affairs committee. The White House also did not respond to a
request for comment on the bill’s possible ramifications for veterans.
But neither Duckworth nor Fischer are optimistic that the fallout for
veterans will influence the president’s position on the health care bill
—despite his many promises to improve veterans’ health care.
Donald Trump after signing bill S. 544, the Veterans Choice Program
Extension and Improvement Act, April 19, 2017. (Photo: Molly Riley/pool
via Bloomberg)
“I would hope that the president thinks twice
about supporting Trumpcare, this bill, that would hurt so many
veterans,” said Duckworth. However, she continued, “He’s already shown
that he’s willing to break promises all across the board.” “Point blank, when it comes to veterans
issues, Donald Trump is a liar and a charlatan,” said Fischer,
suggesting that the president only “likes veterans when he’s able to use
one as a prop on a stage.” “He’s as absent for us now as he was for us in Vietnam,” Fischer said, referring to Trump’s draft deferments. Gregory also said she considered it more
worthwhile to focus her energy on lobbying members of Congress and state
officials than to appeal to the president. “It doesn’t matter why you joined, once
[you’re] a member of military, what you’ve done is say you’re willing to
put your physical body between mortal danger and your country,” she
said. “That is a level of service and sacrifice that I don’t think that
man understands.” Still, she can’t help but feel disillusioned
by the fact that so many Republicans in Congress are willing to support a
bill that could harm millions of veterans and their families. “What’s deeply frustrating for me that this
same group of people, when they get ready to fight a war, they know
exactly where to find people like me, like my family,” she said. “They
love us when we’re marching off to war but when I need help, they want
to talk about me like I’m less than human.” Read more from Yahoo News:
Miguel Montero is a backup catcher, and the role of
backup catcher comes with one and only one job requirement: be a good
guy. Montero’s predecessor in that role with the Chicago Cubs, David
Ross, lasted 15 years in the major leagues almost strictly on how much
people loved him. Do that and a decade of employment working maybe two
days a week is possible. If the gig were any more plum, it would be a
character in Clue. A good backup catcher knows, for example, that after a
tough loss, like the Cubs’ on Tuesday against the Washington Nationals,
it is not standard protocol to take off his gear, change into a
button-down shirt with a patch on the front that says Miguel in cursive,
ascend three stairs, pull a handle to shut the door, adjust his
pneumatic seat and drive that bus right over Jake Arrieta. To see
Montero blame the Nationals’ seven stolen bases Tuesday
on Arrieta’s slow delivery wasn’t just stunning for its utter flouting
of baseball decorum. It was the second reminder this week that a
clubhouse culture is only as good as its win-loss record. The Cubs are 39-38, one game out of first place in the National League Central and sporting a new backup catcher after they designated Montero for assignment
on Wednesday, about 12 hours after he committed the cardinal sin of
treating a random June night like it was Festivus. Baseball players
don’t air their grievances – and if they happen to, teams hope it’s a
bit more genuine than Montero absolving his culpability in throwing out
just 1 of 32 baserunners this season when Willson Contreras, the Cubs’
starter, works with the same set of pitchers and has nabbed 16 of 47
attempted steals. To see Montero’s comments as indicative of some sort
of chasm in the Cubs’ clubhouse would be incorrect. Because of his
propensity to talk, he never has been the most popular figure with his
teammates, dating back to his time with the Arizona Diamondbacks. Still,
it is a reminder of the fragility of sticking 25 alpha millionaires in a
small room every day for eight months and hoping they get along. Not
winning only compounds the difficulty.
At some point, the festering tension in every
disappointed clubhouse wends its way out of the place where baseball
players are taught to bury it. Winning is like a magic blanket that
keeps it dormant, but when enough disillusionment piles up, nothing can
stop it. Earlier this week, it was Ken Rosenthal’s report
about how something as trivial as stretching had bubbled to the surface
as an issue of divisiveness in the San Francisco Giants’ clubhouse. For
all the messenger-shooting that followed, the fact that multiple people
were compelled to go to Rosenthal with the information shows the effect
of a 29-51 start. The Cubs aren’t that bad. They’re also nothing like the team coming its first World Series title
in 108 years. This year was supposed to be like last year. Instead, the
Cubs’ starting pitchers velocity is markedly down. Their precious-metal
gloves have turned to scrap. Their leadoff hitter and World Series hero
is down at Triple-A. They’ve waited half the season to see some sign of
what they believed they were. They’re still waiting.
Backup catcher Miguel Montero opened his mouth and was cut by the Cubs as a result. (Getty Images)
What they didn’t need was Montero pointing
out the obvious. Yes, Arrieta is painfully slow to the plate, and
someone like Trea Turner will prey on him. Arrieta knows this. He has
not corrected it. Were he pitching better, this might be understandable.
He isn’t. And so that part of Montero’s point is valid, but its
validity does not necessarily excuse the break in protocol. The ultimate
question is: Would Montero calling out Arrieta’s delivery publicly have
any tangible effect on his willingness to change it? The answer, almost
certainly, is no, which is what made it such a red line for the Cubs. Montero’s id did lead to some delightful
garbage being spewed back and forth Wednesday morning. Anthony Rizzo,
the Cubs’ most vocal leader, took to ESPN radio in Chicago
before the Cubs cut Montero and said: “When you point fingers, you’re a
selfish player. We have another catcher that throws everyone out.”
After the Montero news broke, he went on the station and was asked if
the Cubs miss Ross. “Nah, I don’t think so,” he said. “Maybe Rizzo
misses him.” Give Miguel Montero this: His troll game is
A+. If he was going down – and there had been some internal discussions
among the Cubs about how his arm was becoming a liability – then he was
going down trailed by a stream of gasoline with a pack of matches in his
hand. The fire will die down within 24 hours,
because in the end this isn’t some grand reckoning for the Cubs. It’s a
disgruntled and mouthy employee doing what disgruntled mouthy employees
do. At the same time, teams have rallied around less, and if the shared
experience of living through Miguel Montero’s verbal diarrhea can do
wonders for a team that could use every one it can get, all the better. Until then, enjoy the show. This might be the most entertaining thing the Cubs have done all season.
Can Democratic pediatrician Mai-Khanh Tran unseat one of the most powerful House Republicans in 2018?
FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif. — In many ways, Dr. Mai-Khanh
Tran isn’t all that different from millions of other Democrats who have
been dismayed or depressed or indignant since Donald Trump was elected
president. On election night, Tran watched in shock as the
returns rolled in. The next morning, she wept at work — Tran is a
pediatrician — with her colleagues. Later, she joined the protesters
shouting slogans and waving signs outside the Orange County offices of
several Republican congressmen. But Tran didn’t stop there. Last month, she actually
decided to enter elected politics herself, launching a long-shot
campaign to unseat 12-term Republican Rep. Ed Royce, chairman of the
House Foreign Affairs Committee. While defeating Royce may seem like a tall order for a
political novice, Tran, 51, has already spent her entire life
overcoming impossible odds. In 1975, Tran arrived in America as a 9-year-old
refugee from war-torn Vietnam — without her parents. She spent her
summers picking strawberries in rural Oregon, eventually working her way
through college at Harvard as a janitor. And she survived two bouts
of breast cancer and endured eight rounds of in vitro fertilization
before finally getting pregnant at age 46. “I think you’ve got to have total commitment to
everything you do in life,” Tran said on a recent Thursday afternoon as
she sipped from a bowl of bone-in kalbi soup on the patio of a new
pan-Asian restaurant in Orange County’s Little Saigon. “You’ve got to do
things for the right reasons. And when you have the right reasons — if
what you’re doing is needed, on behalf of others — you will do it until
you succeed. I truly believe that.” Whether Tran can succeed her in mission to topple
Royce remains to be seen. But if any place encapsulates the challenges
facing Republicans in 2018, Orange County is it. And if any Democratic
hopeful embodies the political crosscurrents that will likely define the
coming midterms, Tran may be the one.
Topping the list of those forces? Health care. The first patient Tran saw the morning after
the election was a child with a brain tumor. The girl’s mother, a local
nail salon worker, couldn’t get health insurance for her children until
Congress passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010. Realizing that her
coverage might change under Republican rule — that “this was going to
affect her daughter’s life soon” — the two women cried together in
Tran’s examination room. A few months later, the mother called Tran.
The House had just passed the American Health Care Act — the GOP’s
Obamacare repeal bill — and she was, according to Tran, “petrified.”
Dr. Mai-Khanh Tran currently works as a pediatrician in Orange County, Calif. (Photo: Courtesy of Facebook)
That’s when Tran decided to run for Congress. “It was the speed of that vote, the secret
way it was done, that just pushed me,” Tran told Yahoo News, noting that
she had spent the previous three months appearing on local
Vietnamese-language TV to explain what was at stake. “I thought, ‘We can
do all the prep work, all the work to inform the public, but when it
comes down to it, their voice just isn’t there where it matters. On the
floor. In the caucuses. All of the meetings.’ It just made me so angry.
And I said, ‘You know what? We need to have people who really understand
health care in Washington. We need to be in the game.’” As the Republican Senate struggles to pass
its own version of a bill to repeal Obamacare, health care is shaping up
to be the central issue in 2018. In part, that’s because 217 GOP House members — including all four Orange County Republicans — voted for the AHCA, a deeply unpopular measure that even President Trump has called “mean.” Democrats plan to spend millions of dollars between now and next November reminding voters of this fact. The so-called resistance to Trump — and, more
specifically, the resistance to his party’s Obamacare repeal push — has
inspired newcomers like Tran, many of whom are also doctors or scientists or women, to get off the sidelines and run for office themselves. The result is a rookie class of grassroots
candidates rallying around a potent message. The question is whether
fresh faces and passionate resistance will be enough to flip the 24
seats Democrats need to regain control of the House.
Opportunity in Orange County
Despite its conservative past — Orange County
voted for the GOP candidate in every presidential election from 1936 to
2012 — the O.C. now overlaps with the districts of four of the 25 most
vulnerable Republicans in Congress: Darrell Issa, Dana Rohrabacher, Mimi
Walters and Ed Royce. Hillary Clinton captured all four of their
districts in the 2016 presidential race — a first for a Democrat — and
won the county as a whole by 9 percentage points. A growing minority
population, a concentration of college-educated whites and a declining
GOP registration advantage are making the area more and more treacherous for Republicans, especially with Trump in the White House.
Democrats have taken notice, fielding several promising candidates,
including multimillionaire stem-cell pioneer Hans Keirstead; real estate
entrepreneur Harley Rouda; environmental activist Mike Levin; and
retired U.S. Marine Col. Doug Applegate. “It’s districts like these that will decide
whether the Democrats can make a serious run at control of the House,”
the New York Times’ Nate Cohn recently wrote.
Political novice
In person, Tran doesn’t seem like a
politician. Petite, with a few gray hairs peeking through an otherwise
black bob, she trembles slightly when she starts to answer a question,
her soft voice starting and stopping and wavering as she struggles for
the right words to express her views, none of which have yet been
scripted for her by some cadre of consultants. She apologized for “not
being good at this,” and teared up four times over the course of a
two-hour conversation. At one point, she unleashes a few choice words
about Donald Trump, then said, “This is off the record,” which prompts
her sole campaign adviser to laugh and explain that “you have to say
you’re off the record before you say something, Mai-Khanh.” “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Tran said. But Tran’s outward gentleness masks a fierce
inner strength that has been fostered by decades of unimaginable
hardship and improbable success. Of her childhood in Vietnam, the things Tran
remembers most are the near-constant explosions. “Every night, every
other night, there would be bombs going off,” she said. “We’d all go
into a little space under staircase. We’d hear the bomb go by — zoom! —
and we’d run in there.” One day in early 1975, Tran’s father, a
prominent Saigon judge, took her and her three siblings, the youngest of
whom was still wearing diapers, to a local Catholic orphanage, leaving
them behind without any explanation. Tran recalls that her father was
wearing sunglasses, but only later did she realize that he must have
been crying. “It was an act of total desperation on my
dad’s part,” Tran said. “A lot of people were giving up their children
so they could get them out. This was their last resort.” The U.S. military airlifted Tran and her
siblings to San Francisco, where “big Marines” carried each of them off
the plane. “I tell you, even today, if I see a guy in uniform, I really
do get so emotional,” Tran said. “I still am so grateful and humble.” Eventually, the children ended up at a
convent in Salem, Ore. Six months later, their parents, who escaped
Vietnam during the fall of Saigon, joined them. In America, Tran’s
father could no longer work as a judge; the closest he came was a gig
cleaning the local courthouse. To make ends meet, the Trans rented out
their apartment’s single bedroom to a college student while the six of
them slept together in the living room. “My first Fourth of July celebration was in
1976 — the bicentennial,” Tran said. “The fireworks were huge. And I was
cowering in fear. It was so loud, like bombs. Even to this day, I don’t
like fireworks.” Inspired by her grandfather, a traditional
medicine man, Tran decided early on that she wanted to be a doctor.
Every moment she wasn’t working was spent reading. After four years at
an inner-city high school in Portland — she and her friends were bused
in from the Vietnamese “ghetto” — Tran graduated first in her class and
was accepted by Harvard. “Maybe because I am an immigrant, I feel like I need to know more,” Tran said. “I need to know more and do more.” Tran loved her college experience, but it
wasn’t exactly easy. Without money for a hotel, her father was forced to
request Freshman Weekend accommodations from random Vietnamese locals,
and Tran paid her way through school with three simultaneous jobs —
janitor, security guard and reader for the blind. “I cleaned the jocks’ dorm,” she said. “The
rich kids’ dorm. And, you know, they throw out a lot of things. I
remember picking up things that we could use. I don’t think I ever felt
like I belonged there.” A stint as a health care analyst on Wall
Street followed, then medical school at Brown-Dartmouth. After her
residency at UCLA, Tran started her own practice in Fountain Valley,
where she has spent the last 25 years treating working-class immigrants,
educating the community and leading thrice-yearly medical missions to
hot spots around the world — leper colonies in the Vietnamese jungle,
typhoon-ravaged villages in the Philippines, impoverished neighborhoods
in Tijuana. That experience, she says, is what has convinced her she’s ready for Congress. “We have to figure out how we’re going to
feed these people,” Tran explained. “We help them with job training. We
set up farms for them. We set up revolving loans for them. We do clean
water. We make sure their kids get the education they need. As a
congresswoman, I plan to bring that sort of comprehensive approach to my
community and my constituents.” Tran’s successful battles with breast cancer
and infertility have convinced those around her that she can succeed in
the political arena as well.
Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., at a news conference on Capitol Hill, Sept. 21, 2016. (Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)
“She’s like Wonder Woman,” said adviser Courtni Pugh,
whose other clients include Kevin de Leon, California Senate president
pro tempore. “Everything Mai-Khanh has overcome in her life? We need to
create, like, a meme. We’ll put her in a red cape.”
Uphill climb
Wonder Woman or not, Tran is still a serious
underdog in the race against Royce. If she wins the Democratic primary —
her opponent is former chemistry professor Phil Janowicz — she’ll be
facing off against a politician who’s been winning elections for as long
as she’s been a pediatrician. Incumbency isn’t Royce’s only advantage
either. Even though Clinton won CA-39, Royce was easily reelected with
57 percent of the vote, and he’s the most popular of the four vulnerable
Orange County Republicans. He’s also a prodigious fundraiser, with $2.8
million already stockpiled for 2018. Tran believes the same demographic shifts
that boosted Clinton to victory throughout Orange County could work in
her favor. CA-39, for example, is more than 60 percent Asian and
Hispanic — and only 34 percent white. Many of these whites are exactly
the sort of college-educated suburbanites Trump lost in November, and
while older Vietnamese-Americans have voted Republican for decades —
like older Cuban-Americans, they tend to be staunch anti-Communists —
their children have been registering as Democrats or independents. For now, Tran is focused on getting her
fledging campaign up and running. She’s talking to potential hires.
She’s sounding out local politicos. And she’s spending hours every
afternoon in her garage, dialing for dollars. The work can be grueling. Devastated after
one particularly fruitless fundraising session, Tran looked up to see
her aging mother leaning over her. “Do you need me to give you my last
gold nugget?” her mother said, referring to the small bars that she and
other refugees had brought with them to America more than four decades
ago, just in case. “You know, to help your campaign?” Tran had to remind herself that the road ahead would be long — and that she was running for the right reasons. “It was my mom who, throughout the years,
said, ‘You’ve got to help people, you’ve got to speak for people,” Tran
explained. “So if there’s an opportunity here, it is for a Democrat who
resonates and listens. And so I go back to what makes me a good
candidate: I’m a good listener. As a physician, that’s all I do. I
listen to my patients. I listen to their pain, their suffering, their
concerns. That’s what I’m good at. Then hopefully I’ll try to find a
solution that might alleviate their pain, their suffering, their
concerns. “I don’t think that’s what people are doing
in the political sphere right now,” Tran continued. “They have agendas.
They have ideas they’re trying to push. But they’re not listening to
their constituents. More and more, their constituents in these districts
have changed so much; their needs have changed so much. And it’s just
not connecting with the people who are currently representing them.”
A Florida man who police said was trying to help a
missing toddler locate her parents over the weekend ended up beaten and
shamed on social media by the child's family members after they mistook
him for a kidnapper, according to a report. The good Samaritan, who was not identified by
authorities, was attempting to help a 2-year-old who had become
separated from her parents while attending a baseball game at the
Southwest Sports Complex in Lakeland, Florida, on Saturday, but her
parents "feared that the citizen was attempting to kidnap the child,"
the Lakeland Police Department said in a statement Tuesday. "At least one independent witness stated they
observed the citizen walking with the child trying to help find her
parents," police said. "The parents were alerted by bystanders that the
citizen was walking towards a playground, which is near the parking lot,
and feared that the citizen was attempting to kidnap the child. This
was not the case." The police department said it "thoroughly investigated" the incident and concluded that the man committed no crime. However, he ended up being attacked by the child's
father, who admitted to punching him repeatedly, according to ABC
affiliate WFTS. "When I got there, I just swung on him," the father
told WFTS. He acknowledged that he really didn't know whether the man
was looking to kidnap his daughter but he said he doesn't regret
assaulting him. "You don't pick somebody's kid up in that direction,
towards the parking lot, whether you were going towards the parking lot
or not," the toddler's father said. The good Samaritan, who police identified as a
father and a local businessman, was also targeted in a social media
smear campaign, according to WLS. The station reported that the
toddler's family posted the man's name, photo and place of employment
online, referring to him as a child predator. The man has reportedly opted against pressing charges against members of the family. The Lakeland Police Department did not confirm
assault allegations, but it appeared to use the incident to educate the
public about the dangers of posting or sharing inaccurate information on
Facebook. "Accounts of this incident have circulated on social
media with false information and speculation," the department said in
its statement Tuesday. "Be careful about what you post on social media
so as not to victimize an innocent person."
Sarah Ruiz-Grossman
Powerful Photos Show Former Gang Members Without Tattoos
One photographer is hoping to counter misconceptions
about former gang members by showing what they’d look like without the
tattoos for which people often misjudge them. In the photo series ”Skin Deep,”
Steven Burton takes images of former gang members, and digitally alters
them to remove the tattoos, placing the before-and-after images side by
side.
“I did it for people to not be intimidated by
gang tattoos, so they take time to listen to people’s stories,” Burton
said. “People judge them just walking toward them, but you don’t know
them, you don’t know their situation.” In a new book
coming out this fall, Burton pairs the images with testimonies from the
former gang members who are seeing themselves for the first time
without any tattoos ― some for the first time in decades. “I think I would be more accepted if I looked
like this, without nothing on my face or my arms,” Francisco Flores, a
former gang member, said in a book preview sent to HuffPost. “More
acceptance from employers and certain people, I wouldn’t get judged as
bad.” Burton met the people featured in the series ― who are largely Latino and based in Los Angeles ― through Homeboy Industries.
It’s a nonprofit that helps people who have left gangs or prison by
providing services like parenting classes, job training, employment, as
well as free tattoo removal. People who have been involved with gangs sometimes get tattoos to mark their affiliation. Once they decide to leave that life behind, tattoos can be a major barrier to employment, with potential employers pre-judging candidates. But tattoo removal is painful and can be expensive, potentially taking years and costing thousands of dollars. Flores, who has been getting his gang tattoos
gradually removed over the past five years, said that when it came to
finding a job, his tattoos gave him “a hassle.” “A lot of people think I’m a bad person ―
they see me, they think ‘He’s gonna rob us’ or is somebody bad,” Flores
told HuffPost. “I want people to see the person that I am, not the one
they think they see. I’m really a really nice guy.” Flores joined a gang at age 11, after he was
kicked out of his house and was living on the streets. He then struggled
with heroin addiction later in life and was in and out of prison for
years. Now he’s been clean since 2010 and is a youth advocate with
Homeboy Industries, speaking to kids in school about his past experience
with gangs and drugs, and warning them against it. “The first people to take me in was [the
gang], and it felt like a family ― but it was fake love,” Flores told
HuffPost. “But [the students] don’t want to hear it from someone who
hasn’t been through the struggle.” Flores noted that he will be keeping some tattoos: ones of his kids, and those that reflect his Mexican heritage. Most of the subjects in the “Skin
Deep” series are somewhere in the process of getting their gang tattoos
removed, for a wide range of reasons, Burton said. After he showed them their portraits with
their tattoos photoshopped out, some would laugh at first, but then get
contemplative and even emotional. “At first I was surprised ― I haven’t seen
myself like that in years, it caught me off guard,” Flores told
HuffPost. “But after all the pain I’ve gone through, it was kind of
nice.” The most common response, according to Burton, was, “I’m going to show this to my mom.” It took Burton two years and around 400 hours to create the photo series, from re-touching the photos to capturing the testimonies, according to his website. A portion of the profits from the upcoming book will go to Homeboy Industries, and some to continuing the “Skin Deep” project. “Especially right now when everybody is so
scared of everybody, I hope this allows us to have more empathy,” Burton
told HuffPost. “It’s really hard to judge somebody if you know them.” You can see more images from the “Skin Deep” series below, or on Burton’s website.
This article originally appeared on
HuffPost
.
KRISTEN GELINEAU,Associated Press
6 hours ago
Caitlin Dickson
6 hours ago
Jeff Passan,Yahoo Sports
11 hours ago
KARMA ALLEN,Good Morning America
15 hours ago
A Florida man who police said was trying to help a
missing toddler locate her parents over the weekend ended up beaten and
shamed on social media by the child's family members after they mistook
him for a kidnapper, according to a report. 
Sarah Ruiz-Grossman
Wed, Jun 28 12:36 AM GMT+3
Burton met the people featured in the series ― who are largely Latino and based in Los Angeles ― through Homeboy Industries.
It’s a nonprofit that helps people who have left gangs or prison by
providing services like parenting classes, job training, employment, as
well as free tattoo removal.
Most of the subjects in the “Skin
Deep” series are somewhere in the process of getting their gang tattoos
removed, for a wide range of reasons, Burton said.
This article originally appeared on
HuffPost
.
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