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A bunch of kids confronted Senator Dianne Feinstein over the Green New Deal

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It’s becoming increasingly clear that kids, not grownups, are driving the global conversation around climate action. As you read this, young people in Europe and the United States are organizing marches, walk-outs, and sit-ins to protest the way their governments are handling (or ignoring) climate change. It’s not just a cute stunt, in many cases, these kiddos are getting serious results.

In the latest round of the kids v. adults showdown: A bunch of children and young folks stormed Senator Dianne Feinstein’s office to ask her to back the Green New Deal. And the California Democrat took the opportunity to publicly back the proposal! Just kidding.

The meeting was organized by the Sunrise Movement, the same climate group that staged a sit-in in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office to demand she support the GND after the midterms. The kids, and at least one adult, presented Feinstein with a handwritten letter asking her to vote “yes” on the progressive climate plan.

Judging by the video, Feinstein appeared prepared to negotiate at first. “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “We have our own Green New Deal.” But after being interrupted multiple times, Feinstein got a little feisty, and things turned testy.

“Some scientists have said we have 12 years to turn this around,” a little girl told the senator. “Well, it’s not going to get turned around in 10 years,” Feinstein responded, which is the political equivalent of telling a kid that the tooth fairy doesn’t exist. Except maybe meaner.

Whether you’re on the side of the kids or the grandma (not an insult, Feinstein reports she has seven grandchildren), one lesson here is that telling a bunch of kids that you won your race by “a million vote plurality” isn’t the best way to endear yourself to an increasingly rambunctious climate movement.

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A bunch of kids confronted Senator Dianne Feinstein over the Green New Deal

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This Is the Only Recent Time Jeff Sessions Voted to Expand Health Care Coverage

Mother Jones

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President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), has voted numerous times against expanded access to health care. He has cast just one vote in recent years to expand health care access. The group he believed deserved better access to coverage? Fetuses.

In 2008, Sessions voted yes on an amendment to remove pregnant women from the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and instead give coverage to the fetus. At the time of the vote, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) described the amendment as follows: “It takes it away from the woman and gives it to the fetus. Now, if the woman is pregnant in an accident, loses the child, she does not get coverage, the child gets coverage.” The amendment failed, with 46 senators voting for it and 52 against it.

It’s the only time in recent years that Sessions has voted in favor of expanding health care coverage—if you can call it that. He voted against expanding access to care for low-income people under Medicare and Medicaid in 2008, against expanding SCHIP to four million children in 2009, and against the Affordable Care Act in 2010. The clear difference, of course, is that Sessions’ vote for fetuses wasn’t really a health care vote; it was an anti-abortion vote.

If confirmed as attorney general, Sessions would have a huge say on the issues of abortion and women’s reproductive health care. Sessions could choose to investigate Planned Parenthood, for example, and defend state and federal policies that make it harder for women to access an abortion or reproductive care.

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This Is the Only Recent Time Jeff Sessions Voted to Expand Health Care Coverage

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