oped

Actress Jane Fonda is using her celebrity to help women farm and domestic workers raise their voices on Capitol Hill.

The 80-year-old actress was in D.C. this week with the National Domestic Workers Alliance, National Farmworkers Women’s Alliance and the National Women’s Law Center to meet with lawmakers and ask them to pass laws to protect working women.

So why was Tom Perez, chair of the Democratic National Committee, making an appearance at this year’s Essence Festival in New Orleans, an event known for its high-powered mix of music, culture and empowerment, geared to engage black women globally? Did he see and enjoy “Girls Trip,” the 2017 mega-hit about the reunion of four black female buddies, set against the backdrop of the festival, and decide to get in on the fun, maybe take in a Janet Jackson concert?  

Or was he connecting with his party’s most loyal base, which has carried the electoral load for years, and has also expressed dissatisfaction when that contribution was downplayed or overlooked?

Competing claims about what Rep. Jim Jordan knew or didn’t know about an Ohio sexual abuse scandal this week haven’t made a dent in his public profile, according to a new poll.

Jordan, a powerful Ohio conservative who is considering a run to take Paul Ryan’s place as Republican House leader, is seen as a top contender for that job by 9 percent of Americans, according to an Economist/YouGov poll published Thursday. That’s almost unchanged from last week, when 10 percent of respondents said they had a “very favorable” opinion of Jordan as a House leadership candidate.

Scandal-plagued former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt may no longer work at the agency, but at least some of the investigations into his alleged misdeeds will continue.

From the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigation that has uncovered damaging allegations of Pruitt’s misuse of staff, to numerous open EPA inspector general audits of his travel spending, Pruitt’s cloud over the EPA is likely to linger as conclusions from the multiple probes trickle out through the rest of 2018.

There was a time when I saw appearing on cable news shows, both left and right, as an opportunity for a civil debate on serious policy issues. That was probably naive, but I believed in the inherent value of proof-based and polite argument in providing the nation with the information to make good policy choices.

But as time went on, I began to feel like Michael Palin in the famous Monty Python “Argument Clinic” sketch. In the comedy bit, Palin goes to the “clinic” to buy an argument. He pays out his five pounds, but when he meets his “arguer,” Graham Chapman immediately goes on the attack.

It is a memory seared into Brett Kavanaugh’s soul — and it may well be an image that briefly flickers through his mind every time a loud siren goes off in Washington.

In his Monday night East Room debut as Donald Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee, Kavanaugh harked back to working for George W. Bush on 9/11. Introducing his wife, Ashley, Kavanaugh said, “We met in 2001 when we both worked in the White House. Our first date was on Sept. 10, 2001. The next morning, I was a few steps behind her as the Secret Service shouted at all of us to sprint out the front gates of the White House because there was an inbound plane.”

The judge that President Barack Obama unsuccessfully tried to put on the Supreme Court in 2016 and the judge President Donald Trump selected Monday sit on the same federal appeals court — and their divergent rulings in recent cases echo the Senate’s partisan divide on key policy issues.

The two judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit — Obama pick Merrick Garland and Trump pick Brett Kavanaugh — went different ways in just the past two years on cases about immigration and abortion, criminal sentencing, police misconduct claims and employee rights.

Sen. Gary Peters handed a binder to 18-year-old Thomas Stephenson on Tuesday as they headed for the Capitol from his office.

“Take your football,” the Michigan Democrat said. “I told him, you gotta have your football. He’s got the same thing I do.”

Republican leaders in Ohio’s 4th District are sticking by Rep. Jim Jordan amid allegations that he did not report sexual abuse while an assistant wrestling coach.

Matt Gilmore, chairman of the Mercer County Republican Party, said the allegations did not affect his opinion of Jordan and said as a lawyer, there is no way he would take the case of the accusers.

Now that we know President Donald Trump has settled on Judge Brett Kavanaugh as his next choice for the Supreme Court, Senate Republicans are poised to deliver on a promise they have been making to conservatives for decades.

In Kavanaugh, the GOP has both its biggest opportunity to move the court to the right for a generation as well as its biggest danger — months of unscripted moments when abortion, reproductive rights and women will be at the center of a heated debate that Republicans have proved uniquely terrible at navigating over the years.