President Trump said Monday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's obsession with his impeachment continued into the coronavirus outbreak, hitting back at her accusation that the president "fiddles" while people have been dying.
"Don't forget, she was playing the impeachment game, her game where she ended up looking like a fool," ...
President Donald Trump’s critics keep trying to downplay his extraordinary measures to curtail the spread of the coronavirus in the United States, but the fact is that he has been thinking ahead of everybody when it comes to the pandemic response.
I can’t overstate how important it was that President Trump shut down travel from China, and then Europe, as soon as he did. Without those travel restrictions, we would have had a much larger, much more widespread problem to deal with. As we’ve seen in countries such as Italy and Iran who failed on this measure, limiting exposure to infected individuals in the early stages is crucial to minimizing the eventual extent of the outbreak.
Yet, rather than commending the president for his foresight, the news media attack him as a “racist” for publicly acknowledging that the pandemic originated in China. What is next? Are we to rename Chinese restaurants because it’s “racist” to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and its communist government?
In January, President Trump also assembled a top-notch coronavirus task force composed of world-class health and public policy experts who have patiently guided the public through the crisis and are working closely with businesses and the leaders of state and local governments to devise both mitigation strategies and long-term solutions. This complex tapestry of private/corporate/government/military cooperation has never been done before—we will see it pay off for the American people.
Yes, there was intelligence being provided to the White House and the administration in January and February—many of us, inside and outside of the administration, were reviewing and evaluating this information as national security professionals while the mainstream media and political Left focused on impeachment. We were trying to ascertain the facts and realities regarding the Chinese coronavirus threat to prepare —not panic— the nation.
Unfortunately, as some of those very experts have pointed out, our country’s efforts to combat the coronavirus have been hampered by the poor decisions of previous administrations, which left us ill-equipped to respond to the type of threat we face today.
There was a critical blind spot in our initial assessment, a blind spot that exists to this very day—the Chinese government. Because of the Chinese Communist Party’s stonewalling and deception regarding Wuhan and the scope of the outbreak, and our lack of independent “biological surveillance” capabilities, the assessment was hampered.
The Obama administration was similarly short-sighted when it came to employing big data techniques to conduct global disease surveillance. While the White House did make some half-hearted efforts to develop a domestic biological surveillance program, Obama’s team ultimately deferred to the World Health Organization’s system, which has repeatedly fallen short due to inadequate reporting compliance on the part of countries such as China. This lack of independent biological surveillance by the U.S. intelligence community is an issue that must be fixed to detect new outbreaks early.
Our ability to conduct an aggressive response was also hampered by another Obama administration neglect. In response to the first outbreaks of Ebola virus in the late-1970s, the U.S. government created the Aeromedical Isolation and Special Medical Augmentation Response Team (AIT-SMART) in 1978 to safely evacuate highly contagious U.S. patients out of outbreak areas. The transport team would take the patients to a Medical Containment Suite, where they could receive intensive care while remaining under the most stringent biosafety protocols, known as Biosafety Level 4. Through comprehensive planning and intensive training, the AIT-SMART teams became adept at repatriating infected Americans without exposing other citizens to the risk of contagion.
In 2010, however, this critical capability was lost when AIT-SMART fell victim to the Obama-era “sequestration” cuts. It almost felt like nature was warning us of our folly four years later, when a new outbreak of Ebola nearly spread to American communities because we lacked the expertise to safely repatriate infected Americans from the hot zone.
Another key fact that has been lost by the U.S. media is this: President Trump realized shortly after his election that the country’s ability to rapidly produce a vaccine was a critical part of national defense neglected by the Obama administration. He consequently launched a multi-year effort to develop the latest cell culture-based technology for vaccine manufacturing on U.S. soil, most particularly for influenza and emerging disease agents like the coronavirus. This capacity continues to grow after years of neglect.
President Trump’s calm and confident demeanor when he updates the country about our effort to fight the coronavirus is only possible because he took the threat seriously from the very beginning. As a leader, he has to take practical steps to stop the virus and mitigate the damage it causes to our economy, but he also has to offer moral leadership to sustain morale as he asks the American people to make necessary sacrifices for the common good.
Indeed, the president’s message becomes more positive with each press briefing he gives—and with good reason. With each passing day, we increase the arsenal of weapons available to fight the coronavirus, and understand better how to deploy them.
Even some of Donald Trump’s most stalwart critics, such as Democrat Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar, have gushed about how “incredible” his response to the pandemic has been.
To quote the president, when this is all over, “we’re gonna say, well, we won. I think we’re gonna win faster than people think. I hope.” So do I, Mr. President; and so, I’m sure, does every American. If we do prevail rapidly, it will be due entirely to President Trump’s ability to overcome the institutional handicaps left for him to overcome.
Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer is a retired senior intelligence operations officer and President of the London Center for Policy Research.
This piece was written by Lt Col Tony Shaffer on March 30, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.
Read more at LifeZette:
‘Home Improvement’ star blasts Hollywood elites over coronavirus: ‘Separate the 1 percent…from the 99 percent that represents hardworking, everyday Americans’
Rep. Ilhan Omar insults healthcare workers, calls for ‘national lockdown’
Tucker Carlson says Biden ‘will not be the Democratic nominee:’ Predicts who will take the nomination instead
The post President Trump Has Done The Right Things To Combat Coronavirus From Day One appeared first on The Political Insider.
This guest post is by the chief of the Law Library’s Public Services Division, Andrew Winston. Andrew has written several posts for the blog, including The Constitution Annotated–Impeachment Clauses, Federal Courts Web Archive Launched, A Visit to the Peace Palace Library, and The Revised Statutes of the United States: Predecessor to the U.S. Code.
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Anna Price, legal reference librarian, at the Law Library of Congress Reading Room reference desk. Photo by Barbara Bavis. [Note: the photo is for illustrative purposes only; no staff are currently working in the Reading Room.]
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It was just hours before the start of President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial when Sen. Tom Cotton began to panic.
The Arkansas Republican had spent Martin Luther King Day weekend poring over news reports from Asia describing a new, highly infectious disease traced to a provincial city of 11 million inside China, hardening his already deeply held disdain for the Chinese Communist Party.
Cotton was struck by the way the Chinese government was putting a positive spin on its handling of the new virus, while taking increasingly drastic steps to try to contain it. “That’s when it really kind of crystalized for me,” he told POLITICO in an interview. “Those two things obviously do not match.”
So he started badgering the White House to bar travel from China immediately. Cotton called the president, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and other top officials, warning about the dangers of the virus and pressing them to ground flights.
Soon, he said, he had made his point so thoroughly that he would simply point down to the ground every time he saw White House legislative affairs director Eric Ueland -- a sign for “get the planes down.”
But Cotton, along with a handful of others, was the exception on Capitol Hill when there still might have been a chance to prevent the worst.
Though lawmakers have now approved a gargantuan spending package, overcoming initial White House skepticism to assemble -- in a matter of days -- a $2.2 trillion life raft for the sinking American economy, Congress was ill-prepared heading into 2020 to help the country combat the pandemic itself.
For years, lawmakers underfunded key public health programs despite experts’ warnings. More recently, House and Senate leaders spent months squabbling over impeachment, which reached its crescendo in the crucial early weeks of the outbreak. And even after they awoke to the gravity of the threat coronavirus posed, members of Congress struggled to overcome their lack of trust in each other, and in an administration that had long ago torched its credibility on Capitol Hill.
As Cotton was placing calls to the White House, Trump was publicly downplaying the virus. “We have it totally under control,” the president said on Jan. 22. “It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” An infected man from Wuhan, the sprawling capital of Hubei province, had already arrived in Seattle, where officials believe he may have been the first to bring the novel coronavirus to American shores.
Back then, the potentially catastrophic nature of the outbreak was still not widely understood. On Jan. 24, at the urging of Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), administration officials held a briefing for the full Senate. But the classified session was sparsely attended, two Senate aides said, because it was put together at the last minute and was held on the same day as a deadline for senators to submit their impeachment questions. Only about 14 of them showed up.
“The initial thought from the Dems, I think, is that we were trying to distract from impeachment,” a GOP Senate aide said. A White House official recalled his surprise at the “incredibly” poor attendance, noting that it came “even though the amount of concern expressed then was rather intense.”
But Alexander, along with three Senate colleagues, issued only a bland statement afterwards that betrayed little sense of alarm. “We are monitoring the outbreak of a novel coronavirus closely and are in close communication with United States government agencies on actions and precautions needed to prevent further spread of this virus,” the Jan. 24 statement read. “We thank administration officials for providing us with an update on this important issue, and for detailing their efforts to protect the American public. We will continue to work closely with administration officials to ensure the United States is prepared to respond.”
Within days, however, Democrats began stepping up their warnings. On Jan. 26, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called on the Department of Health and Human Services to declare coronavirus a public health emergency, which would free up $85 million in funding for federal agencies. “Should the outbreak get worse they’re going to need immediate access to critical federal funds that at present they can’t access,” Schumer said.
Washington state’s two Democratic senators, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, demanded in a Jan. 28 letter that Azar keep them apprised “with the latest information regarding the severity of the disease, the country’s capacity to diagnose cases, what steps were being taken to prepare U.S. health care workers, what screening systems were in place at U.S. airports, the status of a novel coronavirus vaccine.” At the time, just five cases of coronavirus had been discovered in the U.S.
On Jan. 31, the White House banned most travel from China and declared a public health emergency. A White House official partly credited Cotton’s frantic warnings, which he said “did play a role in the administration’s ultimate decision to take action.”
It was the first major U.S. response to the emerging disaster, metastasizing far beyond what nearly anyone on both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue ever imagined. But the administration made little use of its temporary firewall: A mere two months later, hospitals are overwhelmed, ventilators and protective equipment for health workers are in dangerously short supply, and some morgues are even running out of space as the U.S. death toll blows past the 2,000 mark.
Some Republicans, including Cotton, fault impeachment, which officially wrapped up on Feb. 5, for distracting their colleagues from early warning signs. “It’s unfortunate that during the early days of a global pandemic, the Senate was paralyzed by a partisan impeachment trial,” Cotton said.
“The entire executive branch was consumed by impeachment, and it totally distracted Congress, too,” said a Senate GOP aide. “If we weren’t doing impeachment, we wouldn’t have had a briefing, we would’ve had hearings—and a lot more public oversight to scrutinize all of this.”
The Hill’s focus on impeachment drove coverage decisions in newspapers and on television, too. When national media outlets did write about the mysterious virus spreading in China, those stories were often buried behind scores of others chronicling high-profile battles over impeachment witnesses and testimony.
Many Democrats insist impeachment wasn’t a factor at all, noting that the House wasn’t even fully briefed on COVID-19 until after the Senate trial was over and pointing out that Republicans, from the president on down, consistently downplayed the threat both publicly and privately. Democrats began pushing for emergency supplemental funds to combat the virus during a closed-door coronavirus briefing led by Azar on Feb. 5, the last day of impeachment; leading GOP senators, meanwhile, repeated administration assurances that the outbreak was contained even as several of them dumped stocks.
“Senate Republicans were not using February to pressure the president to get serious about an early supplemental [appropriations] request,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), one of the more prescient lawmakers in warning of the havoc a pandemic would wreak. “[T]hey aren’t taking this seriously enough,” Murphy tweeted after leaving the Feb. 5 brieing. “Notably, no request for ANY emergency funding, which is a big mistake. Local health systems need supplies, training, screening staff etc. And they need it now.”
Democrats acknowledge, however, that there’s little chance Congress would have done much more to help the country prepare.
“In an alternate world in which impeachment wasn’t happening, I don’t think the replacement would have been an earlier bill on coronavirus,” said Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.). “Even as we were passing our Phase 1 coronavirus bill many House Republicans were not taking coronavirus seriously, even mocking the issue.” On March 9, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) wore a gas mask onto the House floor, appearing to make light of the issue. Another Democratic lawmaker said his GOP colleagues described coronavirus coverage at the time as “hysteria” and wondered why it was getting more attention than the seasonal flu.
What the two sides generally agree on is this: The slow-moving disaster crept up not just on the Trump administration but also on Congress, stymying a quicker response.
"I think it’s natural to underestimate a threat like this when the world hasn’t faced a threat this severe in probably 100 years -- since the Spanish influenza,” Cotton said.
By February, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees had been receiving updates from the intelligence community about the spread of the virus for about a month. The first staff-level briefings, updates and written products from the intelligence community began in January and roughly coincided with the first public reports to emerge about the outbreak, said two Democratic aides. Those updates increased throughout February, and by March were being pushed to the House panel on a daily basis.
Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told POLITICO that the intelligence briefings and warnings from the CDC and World Health Organization led him to become “alarmed that more was not being done to prepare the U.S. for the spread of this virus.”
Schiff had begun hearing directly from constituents on the issue starting around February 12, particularly those trapped in quarantine off the coast of Japan at the time on the Diamond Princess cruise ship. Coronavirus was also “the major subject of private conversations at the Munich Security Conference” in mid-February, Schiff said, which “raised additional alarms to me that our European allies seemed to be more concerned with the virus than their U.S. counterparts.”
Around this time, it became clear to many on Capitol Hill that they would need to bolster the government’s capacity to fight the budding outbreak—and swiftly. The administration downplayed the idea—the White House asked for billions less than it ultimately received—but Democrats especially were adamant: You’re going to need more money, or else doctors on the front lines will soon be overwhelmed.
Some of the fault lies with Congress itself. For years, public health experts had implored lawmakers to spend hundreds of millions more for federal programs under the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, legislation created after 9/11 to ready the nation’s health system for a major disaster. Many of the programs had been reduced to dangerously low levels, as Congress and successive administrations consistently offered less than what the experts thought was needed.
For 2019, for instance, rather than appropriate the advised $820 million-plus for public health grants and $470 million-plus for hospital preparedness, Congress only agreed to spend about $675 million and $275 million, respectively. Lonely voices like Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.), who urged more funding, lost the argument.
“Congress now has to do emergency supplementals partly because there wasn’t money in place to respond earlier,” said Dr. Asha George, the executive director of the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense and a former senior staffer on the House Homeland Security Committee.
Perhaps the most concrete result was a shared neglect of the Strategic National Stockpile, the federal government’s emergency stash of supplies like masks and ventilators, which held just a fraction of the materials now needed to fight the pandemic. Funding for the stockpile has hovered around $600 million per year for the past few years, rising to $700 million in 2019. But the agency in charge warned last year that more than a billion dollars was needed to replenish its stores and replace expired drugs and equipment.
Despite the urgency, Congress got bogged down over side issues, including a disagreement over legal liability that, for almost a month, kept a key hurdle in place from providing face masks to health care workers who desperately needed them.
As lawmakers got to work in February, manufacturers who make face masks said they would be able to provide tens of millions more N95 face masks — also called respirators — to hospitals and first responders. But they needed Congress to shield them from lawsuits over the alternative masks, which were originally made for industrial use and thus hadn’t gone through the FDA approval process that traditional hospital masks are required to go through before they are used in health care settings. (Both types of masks are N95 quality -- meaning they are meant to fit closely around the face and filter out 95 percent of airborne particles -- but industrial masks are made for uses such as construction sites.)
Trial lawyers have long lobbied against such immunity provisions, arguing that health care workers and patients should be able to sue companies if something goes wrong.
In early March, Deb Fischer, the Republican senator from Nebraska, introduced a bill with bipartisan backing that would protect makers of the respirators, like 3M, from lawsuits if those companies produced masks upon the federal government’s request.
“The trial lawyers are already trying to figure out who they’re going to sue and how much they’re going to get out of this,” a Senate GOP aide complained. “Every time we tried to pass Deb Fischer’s bill, the trial lawyers were first ones out blocking it. They refused to negotiate with us.”
Democratic leaders in the House, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, were similarly concerned about waiving consumers’ rights to sue a company over potentially faulty equipment. Republicans inserted a provision, mirroring Fisher’s bill, that would have solved the issue into the $8.3 billion coronavirus relief bill that passed in early March, but House Democratic leaders stripped the language.
“Why should mask makers have special immunity?” said one Pelosi aide, explaining her thinking.
In mid-March, as the U.S. economy began to blink red and concerns mounted about a widespread shortage of masks, Congress scrambled to pass a second wave of emergency legislation, and then a third.
A temporary waiver on liability on mask makers that included some, but not all, N95-grade masks was included in the Phase 2 bill negotiated by Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, and the Trump administration announced that companies would begin producing “tens of millions” more masks a month. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—who canceled the Senate’s planned recess for the week of March 16—made the waiver permanent in Phase 3, which will also allow for more types of masks to be used.
“I didn’t see early on that it would be this challenging. I just thought it was a logical way to go forward,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who sponsored a version of Fisher’s bill in the House in 2019, before coronavirus came on the scene. “Now, companies are working around the clock to supply a need.”
Nearly a month after the original debate over the provision of masks, Congress is now poised to further free up mask production. But in between the start of the debate and its resolution, a critical shortage has surfaced. Doctors and nurses in the most in-demand areas are being forced to reuse masks, which they have described as a serious health risk, wear bandanas, or even make their own.
“Whatever needs to happen to increase the ability of manufacturers in this space to ramp up production has to happen,” said Mark Howell, senior associate director of policy at the American Hospital Association. “And it has to happen now so that we can get things off the conveyor belt and into providers’ hands.”
Democrats reject the notion that they missed the ball on coronavirus, noting that several were speaking out about it during the impeachment process.
“To effectively beat infectious diseases like coronavirus, we need all hands on deck,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tweeted on Jan. 28. “But like so much else, Trump’s approach to keeping us safe from disease outbreaks is a mess.”
To effectively beat infectious diseases like coronavirus, we need all hands on deck. But like so much else, Trump’s approach to keeping us safe from disease outbreaks is a mess. When he's gone, we must fix the damage he's done—and I've got a plan for that. https://t.co/Ud6G53iCNv
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) January 28, 2020
The administration’s briefings were generally unhelpful, said Senator Murphy, and raised red flags among some lawmakers that Trump wasn’t taking the growing threat seriously. He pointed to a Feb. 5 briefing in which, he said, officials claimed they could handle the outbreak response under existing appropriations.
In mid-February, Democratic lawmakers even considered going alone on a supplemental spending bill, according to one Democratic congressional source, because they doubted the administration’s reassurances. But without a specific request from the administration for emergency supplemental funds, their options were limited.
“I’ve never heard of an emergency supplemental without the cooperation of the administration,” said Murphy.
Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.) agreed. “I can’t think of another time when Congress would have been that far ahead of a president in time of crisis,” he said.
Democrats also pointed to the yawning gap between the dire warnings being issued by infectious disease specialists, like the CDC’s Dr. Nancy Messonier -- who told Congress in late February that “it’s not so much of a question of if this will happen anymore, but rather more of a question of exactly when” the virus would disrupt Americans’ lives -- and top Trump officials, who consistently asserted the opposite.
“It was so stark to me that there was a disconnect between what we were being told by experts -- the warnings they were issuing -- and response from White House,” said Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), a Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.
Some who have criticized Congress’s response are willing to absolve lawmakers of primary responsibility for the botched response to the coronavirus -- arguing that they used what few tools they had once the emergency struck.
“From my perspective, Congress has been engaged from very early on,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security who testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on Feb 5.
Congressional leaders were not oblivious to the wide-ranging economic and security risks posed by emerging infectious diseases, either. The House Intelligence Committee, for instance, included a specific provision on pandemics in the Intelligence Authorization Act encompassing 2018, 2019 and 2020 that required the director of national intelligence to submit a report “on the anticipated geopolitical effects of emerging infectious disease ... and pandemics, and their implications on the national security of the United States.”
George, the former House staffer, noted that Congress did actually have the foresight to predict such a public health emergency, and pointed to the Public Health Emergency Fund created by Congress in 1983. But the fund, which was created specifically so the Health and Human Services secretary would be able “to rapidly respond to the immediate needs resulting from” a public health emergency, went decades without being replenished.
But ultimately, experts agreed, the failure to prepare for an outbreak of this severity -- and swiftly organize a coherent and competent response as it finally arrived -- lies with the executive branch.
“You want the technical leaders who are actively working on these issues to be the ones to request resources to be able to do it,” Nuzzo said. “Congress should be there to support the agencies, but I don’t see this as a failure of Congress.”
Alice Miranda Ollstein and Daniel Lippman contributed to this report.
On Sunday, during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (because I refuse to call her Speaker of the House) sharpened her criticism of President Trump’s early dismissal of the coronavirus, saying the delay cost American lives.
Pelosi said that “His denial at the beginning was deadly.”
That’s really what Democrats did and as usual, she’s blaming Trump for something she’s guilty of. Where was she at the beginning? I mean the district she governs, is in the worst shape of all, so she has to blame someone else causes hey elections are coming.
MORE NEWS: Nancy Pelosi: ‘As The President Fiddles, People Are Dying’
I don’t have to say how much more ignorant it is to use this virus and the deaths of Americans as a political weapon. I think if someone looks in the right place and asks the right questions, you’re going to find an ugly truth about what was really behind this virus pandemic starting and whose responsible.
Zip, she has done absolutely nothing but rips Trump, scare and divide Americans. Even when Trump banned travel from China – Pelosi blasted Trump for over-reacting. Now All health experts agree that the travel ban saves thousands of US lives.
Who was it that held up the relief bill to add emissions standards for aircraft, solar panel credits, amnesty for illegals and a bunch of other non-essential items that push their agenda? It seems to me, holding the American voter hostage for your party’s program is irresponsible and callus.
Worldwide, at the time of this writing, there have been 685,000 cases, 481,000 are mild with little or no symptoms, 146,000 are already fully recovered. The world has had 32,000 deaths from COVID-19.
Where was San Fran Nan with her opinions when that was happening?
Let’s dig a little deeper. While this was going on in January and early February, what was Congress doing? Hmmm. Oh, they were impeaching Trump. Hindsight is 20/20, and Trump has made some mistakes, but don’t put it all on the President. The Congress was not exactly doing what they needed to do in January, February, and early March, either.
As more people become ill, each country’s health care systems will be pushed to the brink to treat an increasing number of patients. Under President Trump’s leadership, the United States is helping its citizens and small businesses with a $2 trillion rescue package. Our president also made the right call by shutting down all passenger air traffic with China and Europe, and fast-tracking desperately needed medical equipment and supplies to critical hotspots like New York. He has the right team in place to see us through this crisis.
If I remember right, the latest Gallup poll shows that 60% of Americans approve of the president’s handle of the pandemic. Maybe it is Pelosi that is trying to deflect wasting time on impeachment, adding to non-health related items to the latest CO-VID bill, etc. Well, you get the idea.
President Trump could come up with a cure for this virus and Pelosi would complain he was trying to put the pharmaceutical companies out of business. Trump is doing a great job dealing with this crisis.
The post It’s Time To Remove Pelosi From Congress So This Country Can Move Forward appeared first on The Political Insider.
Trish Regan referred to the coronavirus as an "impeachment scam" on her March 9 show. She and Fox parted ways three weeks later.
Muslim-Americans continue to face Islamophobia and discrimination based on their religion and appearance. Despite Muslims making strides in their community and working to bridge the gap between identities, stereotypical portrayals of Muslims in the media can often contribute to misconceptions and xenophobic ideology. Studies of FBI hate crime statistics have found an increase in hate crimes and assaults based on religion since Sept. 11 in 2001. Recently, representation in the media has allowed for stories of Muslim-Americans to be shared. While Muslim women often face more discrimination, narratives by and stories of men are shared more frequently. In 2017, data from the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding found that Muslim women were more likely than Muslim men to report discrimination. Although more likely to be targeted in bias crimes—especially if they wear hijab—Muslim women were also found less likely to say they feared for their safety from racist groups.
Discrimination against Muslim women occurs across the country each day, taking the form of not only physical hate crimes but verbal abuse and bias in everyday activities. In 2016, Amani Al-Khatahtbeh declared Muslim Women’s Day on March 27. Al-Khatahtbeh is the founder of MuslimGirl.com, a platform for Muslim women to share their voice. She launched the day to celebrate and support Muslim women who are often excluded from mainstream media, Women’s Day celebrations, and feminist movements. "In the current climate, Muslim women are rarely given the space to be heard above all the noise," Al-Khatahtbeh wrote in a tweet.
Halima Aden:
In 2016, then 19-year-old Halima Aden became one of the first Muslim-American women to compete for the title of Miss Minnesota USA while fully covered. Aden made American history as the first-ever contestant in the competition to wear a hijab and burkini. She later made headlines again for being the first Muslim model to pose in a burkini for Sports Illustrated.
"Growing up in the United States, I never really felt represented because I never could flip through a magazine and see a girl who was wearing a hijab," Aden said in a video shoot for Sports Illustrated. "Don't be afraid to be the first.”
Ibtihaj Muhammad:
Ibtihaj Muhammad made history in 2016 as the first American woman to wear a hijab while competing for the United States. Muhammad, who competed in the 2016 Rio Olympics, won a bronze medal in the women's fencing team’s sabre event.
She began fencing at just 13 years old after her parents searched for a sport that she could participate in while wearing the hijab. “It’s a tough political environment we’re in right now. Muslims are under the microscope,” Muhammad said during the 2016 U.S. Olympic Committee summit in Los Angeles. “It’s all really a big dream—I don’t think it’s hit me yet. The honor of representing Muslim and black women is one I don’t take lightly.”
In 2017, Mattel unveiled its first-ever hijab-wearing Barbie doll in honor of Muhammad.
Noor Tagouri:
Noor Tagouri is a young, badass, award-winning journalist who made headlines as the first woman to be featured in Playboy Magazine with a hijab. Featured as a rule-breaker, Playboy said Tagouri “makes a surprising bold case for modesty.” Tagouri is known nationwide for her unapologetic and strong voice: In 2019 she received a Gracies award for Best Investigative Series for her podcast and documentary series, Sold in America: Inside Our Nation’s Sex Trade. As an outspoken and strong voice, Tagouri represents the unseen reality of many empowered Muslim women. “I believe in rebellion as a form of honesty,” she said during a TEDx Talk. “To be our most authentic self is to be rebellious.”
Rana Abdelhamid:
Rana Abdelhamid is a community organizer and activist from Queens, New York. Founder of the Women’s Initiative for Self-Empowerment (WISE), a self-defense and leadership program for Muslim women, Abdelhamid empowers women to find strength within themselves to combat Islamophobia. Abdelhamid is well known for her work with WISE in addition to her beautiful photography series, “Hijabis of New York,” a spinoff of the popular Humans of New York series.
Abdelhamid told PBS News Hour that surviving an attack by a man who tried to remove her hijab inspired her to found WISE. “I remember feeling a tug at the back of my hijab,” she said. “I turned around and there was a broad-shouldered man trying to reach again, trying to physically attack me and take off my hijab. I was able to get away from that, but I was left feeling very vulnerable … Because of that moment, I felt there was something that could be done to bring together Muslim women who are faced with these challenges.”
Dalia Mogahed:
Dalia Mogahed is a well-known scholar in the Muslim community for her activism, leadership, and engagement work. She currently serves as the Director of Research at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU). Former President Barack Obama appointed Mogahed to the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships in 2009. Her 2016 TED Talk on “What it’s like to be a Muslim in America” quickly became viral. “What happened after 9/11? Did we go to the mosque or did we play it safe and stay home? Well, we talked it over, and it might seem like a small decision, but to us, it was about what kind of America we wanted to leave for our kids: one that would control us by fear or one where we were practicing our religion freely,"
Ilhan Omar:
Born in Somalia, Ilhan Omar immigrated to the U.S. as a Somalian refugee when she was 12 years old. With her victory in Minnesota in 2016, she made history as the first Somali-American Muslim woman to be elected to a state legislature. Omar now serves as the U.S. Representative for Minnesota's 5th congressional district. Her outspoken and strong advocacy for immigrant rights and racial justice makes her stand out amongst other members of Congress. Omar, along with other progressives in the House, has been widely attacked by alt-right and Donald Trump supporters since taking office. “It is the land of liberty and justice for all, but we have to work for it,” Omar told HuffPost. “Our democracy is great, but it’s fragile. It’s come through a lot of progress, and we need to continue that progress to make it actually ‘justice for all.’”
Rashida Tlaib:
Ilhan Omar wasn’t the only Muslim woman to be elected into the House last year. Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American, shared the title with Omar as the first Muslim woman to be sworn into Congress in 2019. Tlaib serves as the U.S. Representative for Michigan's 13th congressional district. She remains a fierce role model for Muslim women worldwide. Prior to being sworn in, Tlaib shared a sneak peek of her outfit on Instagram, displaying her intention to be sworn into Congress wearing a traditional Palestinian thobe. In an article for Elle, Tlaib explained why she decided to wear the traditional attire: “Throughout my career in public service, the residents I have had the privilege of fighting for have embraced who I am, especially my Palestinian roots. This is what I want to bring to the United States Congress, an unapologetic display of the fabric of the people in this country. This is why I decided to wear a thobe when I am sworn into the 116th Congress.”
In addition to being widely known for wearing a thobe, Tlaib made headlines hours after she was sworn in for advocating to impeach Donald Trump.
Representation matters.
In 2014, every superhero-loving Muslim girl leaped with joy to hear the announcement of Kamala Khan as the new Ms. Marvel. Created by a team of four, including two Muslim women—G.Willow Wilson and Sana Amanat—Marvel welcomed its first-ever Muslim hero into the Marvel Universe.
"Everywhere I looked, particularly in the media and pop culture, were versions of people that looked nothing like me," Amanat told Vox. "What happens is when you see that, you think that you're not worthy enough, or you're not good enough, or you're not normal, really." This representation allows Muslim youth to not only relate more to Marvel comics, but to feel included. In December, Disney was reportedly looking to cast a Pakistani-American for the role of Kamala Khan. (As a Pakistani-American from New Jersey, I fit the role. If I could act, you know I’d go for it.) Representation in all stages of life matters, and such representation impacts the development of youth.
“It’s time to hear from a community that’s often talked about but rarely given the chance to speak,” Al-Khatahtbeh wrote. “Contrary to what people might think, Muslim women talk back. And on Muslim Women’s Day, the world will be listening.”
After a week during which the nation began to watch the coronavirus horrors we have seen play out in other countries finally make their way into our own hospitals, it's worth remembering the active role Senate Republicans played in getting us here. During the critical early handling of the virus here in the U.S., senators from both parties had a window into what was to come—well before the virus had even made the radar of most Americans.
But instead of focusing on preparing for a potential pandemic in the making, Senate Republicans were busy staging a sham no-witness impeachment trial for Donald Trump so they could ultimately vote to acquit him, ensuring that Trump would be at the helm as the nation faced the greatest public health crisis in a century. That trial began on Jan. 16 and concluded on Feb. 5 with Trump's acquittal. But that critical three-week period also included early warning signs that U.S. senators, in particular, were privy to. As one U.S. official told The Washington Post about the intelligence reporting shared with both Trump officials and members of Congress in January, "Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were -- they just couldn't get him to do anything about it. ... The system was blinking red."
On Jan. 20, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) confirmed the first case of novel coronavirus here in the U.S., a Washington man who had recently returned from visiting Wuhan, China, the city where the disease had first taken hold.
On Jan. 24, the Senate Health and Foreign Relations Committees hosted a private, all-senators briefing on the coronavirus with Trump health officials, including the CDC director and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. That date has gained some notoriety in the past week as reports emerged that four U.S. senators began dumping stock shortly after that briefing. In fact, one of them, Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, reported her first stock sale on that very day. GOP Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma sold at least $180,000 in stocks on Jan. 27.
But the most glaring case was Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina unloading up to $1.7 million in stocks on Feb. 13 after getting access to all the latest intelligence on the virus as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. As a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, Burr was also briefed on Feb. 12 by government health experts about overall national preparedness and how an epidemic might impact the U.S. In fact, there's no question Burr was alarmed by what he was hearing because he ultimately relayed a very stark assessment of the catastrophe ahead during a private meeting with wealthy constituents in late February.
Bottom line: Republican senators were getting a window into the calamity the U.S. might be facing in just a couple of months’ time. GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa put out a statement on Feb. 4 saying the panel he heads, the Senate Finance Committee which oversees the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), had just been briefed by the National Security office within HHS.
“The coronavirus doesn’t appear to pose any imminent threat to Americans who have not recently traveled to the Hubei province of China," he said in a statement, downplaying the threat. “For now, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control have the resources needed to prevent any significant contagion from spreading into the United States. If more resources are needed, Congress stands at the ready."
The following day, Feb. 5, Grassley and 51 of his Republican colleagues voted to clear Trump of wrongdoing and keep him in office—every GOP senator except Mitt Romney of Utah.
They knew. They voted to keep Trump in charge. They own it. Never forget.