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Meet Mike Pence, America’s New Prime Minister

Mother Jones

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The front page of my morning LA Times happened to feature the headlines on the right. The headline on women reminds me of this Slate piece about how a lot of women who voted for Trump are now worried that he might defund Planned Parenthood. And of course, there’s yesterday’s news about all the business titans who are suddenly concerned that Trump might raise tariffs. Even on the right, it seems like everybody’s worried or alarmed or concerned these days.

We’ve seen dozens and dozens of headlines like this over the past few weeks. An awful lot of Trump backers seem sort of shocked by what’s going on. I mean, he wasn’t serious about all that stuff on the campaign trail, was he?

Who knows? But it looks to me like America has finally adopted a constitutional monarchy. The nice thing about this arrangement is that you have one person, the king or queen, who handles all the ribbon cuttings and so forth, and another person, the prime minister, who can then focus almost entirely on actual governing. In our case, Donald Trump is the new king of America, tweeting out nonsense, going on victory tours, and hobnobbing with famous people at Mar-a-Lago.

And then we have our new prime minister, Mike Pence. Freed from the demands of public appearances, he spends all his time behind closed doors running the country. He wants to kill Planned Parenthood. He wants to privatize the VA. He wants to immiserate millions of people on Obamacare.

Maybe Trump wants some of this stuff too. There’s no telling, really. As near as I can tell, he’s basically the guy tasked with distracting everyone while Pence fills the cabinet and chats with Paul Ryan about how to run the country. Among other things, this probably means that the business community doesn’t need to worry. Pence and Ryan will talk Trump out of the wall and the tariffs and the replacement for Obamacare. If he starts to balk, they’ll get Jared Kushner to whisper soothingly in his ear and then turn on the TV.

Welcome to the Mike Pence administration.

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Meet Mike Pence, America’s New Prime Minister

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These Photos Show What Life Is Like for Girls in Juvenile Detention

Mother Jones

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The number of kids entering the juvenile justice system has declined steadily in recent years, yet girls continue to represent an ever-growing share of those arrested, detained, and committed to custody. In his latest collection of photographs, Girls in Justice, Richard Ross—who has spent the past eight years documenting incarcerated kids—explores the lives of young women in custody. His haunting photos, taken across 250 different detention facilities, illuminate the difficult circumstances (absent caregivers, poverty, physical abuse, sexual violence, etc.) that drive girls into the system and in many cases keep them there.

BN, age 15

“We confine and often demonize a group of kids who have been abused and violated by the very people who should be protecting and loving them,” writes Ross, who also won a 2012 National Magazine Award for a photo collection on juvenile justice, in the preface. “These girls in detention and commitment facilities are further abused by an organized system that can’t recognize or respond to their history and their needs…Is this the only solution we can offer?”

In the book, for privacy reasons, the girls are identified only by their initials, and their faces are obscured. BN, the 15-year old at right, told Ross how she was forced into prostitution as a child—by her mom: “My mom’s 32, a crack and meth addict,” she explained. “I think I was in the fourth grade. Once you’re in the game, it’s hard to get out of it. And I like the money now. I had gonorrhea when I was 12. Nobody wanted to help me. I don’t know what they are going to do with me. I would be a mother to my brother and sister. I would do things like pay all the house bills.”

SG, age 17

BN also said she was a runaway—sort of: “I really didn’t run away, but my mom kicked me out of the house.”

Most of the girls Ross interviewed reported that their first arrest was either for running away or for larceny theft, which lines up with the statistics: Girls account for about 60 percent of arrests for running away from home.

Seventeen-year-old SG told Ross that she ended up in detention after being on house arrest; she left the house to go to church. “I was a meth baby,” she said, noting that she’s used meth too, but had been clean for a year. SG said her father beat her when she was little—he left the family when she was six. He later went to prison for child abuse and drug charges. When she was seven, SG said, she was abused by an adult that worked with kids at a local Boys and Girls Club. She waited six years to tell the police: “I don’t think they did anything.”

BW, age 18

Eighteen-year-old BW told Ross that her mother used to burn her with cigarettes when she and her siblings were young, and would hit them with extension cords if they got in trouble at school. She also recounted being sexually abused by her stepfather. “My aunt came in and said, ‘Did you touch my babies? Did you touch them?’ And he said, ‘I didn’t touch them goddamn kids.’ Then he comes in with a gun. He got the gun to her head like, ‘Don’t you snitch on me, don’t you tell the police.’ So we’re thinking ‘My auntie is gonna lose her life right in front of our eyes.'”

These sorts of experiences are common among girls in juvenile facilities: A 2009 Department of Justice study of 100 South Carolina girls in detention found that 81 percent reported experiencing some kind of sexual violence, 35 percent reported being sexually abused by an adult they knew, and 69 percent reported having “consensual” sex with an adult.

In the book, Ross points out that involvement in the system can lead to symptoms of post-traumatic stress for girls. The militarized climate of detention facilities is one contributing factor.

A lot of detention facilities have “a very paramilitary framework,” he notes in an email. “Hands behind your back, eyes down, arms length.” The guards typically come from a military or law-enforcement background. “They treat the kids as little adults, small soldiers. The long hallway and locked doors are typical: 8×10 cells, concrete bed, mattress too flat, bed too hard, pillow too flat, blanket too thin…Their shoes are parked outside the door, indicating ‘There is a body inside the cell,’ to quote the guard.”

One young girl, 15-year-old KN, showed Ross her tattoos. At the time he photographed her, she had been in detention for two months. She said she’d been put in placement—a less restrictive detention option—after being charged with battery and assault of a girl at school, but she kept going AWOL and finally ended up in a lockup situation.

KN, age 15

After her four month stint in detention, she would most likely be sent back to placement. “But mostly, I want to go home,” she told Ross. “I have a girlfriend here. And on the outs. My parents are real Catholic. They say God doesn’t like you being with girls, but they’re glad that I do because that way I won’t get pregnant…God thinks I can do better with my life and He knows I will do better.”

Name unknown, age 11

“Who tattoos this across their fingers? Where can this lifetime commitment to purge and reject love come from?” Ross asks his readers. “‘Fuck Love’ is the response to a familial trust shattered. A wish to announce that she rejects those that have rejected her.”

One of the facilities that Ross visited is Maryvale, a Los Angeles residential treatment center for girls ages 8 to 17. It used to be an orphanage. One of the girls Ross photographed there was only 11. He doesn’t know her name and was not allowed to interview her. “Some of them are too fragile,” he writes. “They come from abusive homes and the results are the fragile world between dependency and detention.” In this facility, the girls are in rooms with real bedspreads and lots of stuffed animals. Ross asked the director why there were so many stuffed animals, even for the older girls. “The response was, ‘These kids have never had a real childhood, so we try and allow it at every age.'”

RT, age 16

Black, Native American, and Latina girls are all detained at higher rates than white girls. And the racial disparities in detention have an impact even after the girls leave. Ross cites a study from the American Academy of Pediatrics that shows that detention radically increases the likelihood of early mortality for Latinas. The study found that girls who have been in detention are five times more likely than the general population to die within 16 years of their detention. And for Latinas, the risk is nearly twice as high.

RT, a 16-year-old undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, told Ross that she was working at a packing plant when Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided the place. She was one of many minors working there, she said. “They deported most of the people, but kept some of us to go to court against the owners…All of us were from the same village in Guatemala. We live in houses that the company owns. I think they let me stay because of my baby.”

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These Photos Show What Life Is Like for Girls in Juvenile Detention

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Germany’s Anti-Islam Protests Play Into Extremists’ Hands

Mother Jones

For two Mondays in a row, Dresden was the scene of massive protests against the growing number of Muslims living in Germany. The first, attracting about 18,000 supporters, happened two days before the attack in Paris on Charlie Hebdo, and the second was this week. The anti-immigration protesters, who call themselves PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West), were claiming they had gathered to promote nationalism and call for the protection of German culture.

But waving German flags and brandishing posters that demanded “Homeland Protection Not Islamization,” the demonstrators in Dresden slammed asylum-seekers from Muslim regions for abusing Germany’s welcoming policies toward refugees and for tainting the culture of Germany. Dresden is home to a small percentage of foreigners, but after France, Germany hosts the largest population of Muslims in Western Europe—as many as 4.3 million, according to a 2009 estimate published in Germany’s Federal Republic.

Thousands of counterprotesters have appeared at the demonstrations staged by PEGIDA across Germany in recent months and have advocated tolerance and support for Muslim immigrants. But, prior to this week, PEGIDA supporters have easily outnumbered them; since its founding in October 2014 by Lutz Bachmann, a former petty criminal who now runs a public relations firm, the group has quickly grown in force and number. These anti-immigrant rallies have caused much debate and concern in Germany, but PEGIDA supporters may not realize that their protests have unintended consequences: Radical Islamist groups see their case against the West bolstered and legitimized by PEGIDA and other anti-Muslim protesters. PEGIDA’s actions allow radical Islamists to claim the West is hostile to Muslims—the argument used by radical groups such as ISIS to recruit disenfranchised, angry youths in search of a cause.

National security and terrorism experts point out that even though PEGIDA’s anti-Muslim events may not directly boost the recruitment efforts of ISIS and other jihadist groups, it has fueled a dynamic that undermines the fight against terrorism. “This is truly a vicious cycle,” explains Brian Forst, a professor of justice, law, and criminology at American University. “Anti-immigration sentiments aimed primarily against Muslims in the West breed alienation among Muslims, and alienation breeds extremism and acts of terror, which only aggravate anti-Muslim sentiments and behaviors…Terrorism succeeds when the victim reacts badly.”

National security experts note that PEGIDA’s public demonstrations add to a climate that can be exploited by jihadists seeking recruits. “These protests create a further sense of disenfranchisement on the part of Muslim youth,” says Arie Kruglanski, a University of Maryland psychologist and terrorism expert. “So the result is further polarization of European societies and further rift…a clash of civilizations.”

In a report for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Marc Pierini, an expert on the Middle East and Europe, described the recruitment of Europeans by ISIS: “Of the Islamic State’s European followers, many are born Muslims, while some are converts…Problems of social exclusion, religious tensions, and political frustrations provide fertile ground for recruiting of young people.” Protests like PEGIDA’s only serve to deepen the social divide, providing ISIS and other radical groups vivid images to support their causes.

A 2005 Congressional Research Service report focusing on England, France, Germany, and Spain noted that “social deprivation, discrimination, and a sense of cultural alienation may make some European Muslims—especially those of the second or third generation—more vulnerable to extremist ideologies.”

A spokesman from Germany’s embassy in Washington dismisses these concerns, however, and says PEGIDA is merely a “local phenomenon” and incapable of affecting recruitment efforts for ISIS. “Whoever is ready to join ISIS will join ISIS without a PEGIDA,” he says.

A local gang of protesters can nonetheless have international impact, observes Michael O’Hanlon, a national security expert at the Brookings Institution. “Anger and a sense of rejection can contribute to joining ISIS,” he says. “Heaven knows there have already been lots of European jihadists who have gone to Syria, tragically.”

Following the massacre of 17 people around Paris last week, PEGIDA predicted record numbers would show up Monday night to support its cause. “The Islamists, against whom PEGIDA has been warning over the last 12 weeks, showed in France today that they are not capable of (practicing) democracy but instead see violence and death as the solution,” PEGIDA declared on its Facebook page. Analysts agreed with these predictions, suggesting that the numbers of anti-Islam protesters would swell by the thousands.

The attacks do appear to have bolstered the already strong opposition to PEGIDA, as Germans refuse to let PEGIDA take advantage of the Paris tragedy to point to radicalism in all Muslim communities. According to spectators in Germany on Twitter on Saturday, including journalists and bystanders, more than 30,000 people took to the streets across Germany, from Dresden to Liepzig, to protest PEGIDA. Here are a few tweets from people who say they witnessed the actions.

Nonetheless, Monday’s PEGIDA rallies drew a record number of about 25,000 anti-Islam protesters, who took to the streets in defiance of German politicians asking them to stay home in light of the Paris massacre.

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NASA Just Found the Most Earth-Like Planet Yet

Mother Jones

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Hello. Good day.

NASA just announced that astronomers have discovered the most Earth-like planet yet. Kepler-186f is the first Goldilocks planet—not too hot for water, not too cold for water—ever identified that is roughly the same size as Earth. (It’s a bit larger.)

So, is there life on that planet? It hasn’t been disqualified yet. So, maybe! But probably not. But maybe! But almost certainly not. But maybe! And even if there’s not its mere existence means there are very likely more planets like it out there, meaning Earth is maybe not necessarily unique, meaning life is maybe not necessarily unique to Earth. But basically, we don’t know much about this new planet. Take it away, WIRED:

Scientists have fairly little information about this new exoplanet, including its mass and composition. From what they can tell, the place is similar to our own world, though not quite Earth’s twin.

“We consider it more of an Earth cousin,” said astronomer Elisa Quintana of NASA’s Ames Research Center, lead author of a paper about the finding appearing today in Science. “It’s got the same size and characteristics, but a very different parent star.”

The planet is about 500 light years away, so it’s close, but not that close. This is all fun and exciting, but here’s the annoying bit: It was discovered by the Kepler space telescope which means we’re in for a cliffhanger:

Though Kepler is out of commission and won’t be able to provide any more information about this newest exoplanet, future telescopes could give us new insight. NASA is planning to launch the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) in 2017, which will watch bright nearby stars, including M dwarfs, for more exoplanets and be able to determine their masses. Follow up observations with the agency’s James Webb Space Telescope, currently slated to launch in 2018, could even look at the atmospheres of these worlds, providing definitive proof that they have chemicals like oxygen and water on their surfaces.

See you in 2017, possible Earth cousin!

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NASA Just Found the Most Earth-Like Planet Yet

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