Tag Archives: pence

Stop Calling Mike Pence Boring. Here’s His Track Record on Gays, Women, Immigrants, and the Planet.

by StevieF65vjg Posted on October 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Indiana Gov. Mike Pence will square off against Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) tonight in the campaign’s only vice presidential debate. The showdown could prove pretty interesting, even if it cannot approach the pyrotechnics of last week’s Trump-Clinton matchup. Pence and Kaine may seem “boring” compared with their running mates, but, Trump aside, Pence is anything but. Over nearly two decades in political life, first as a congressman and later as Indiana’s governor, Pence has been one of the leaders in efforts to push extreme conservative ideas—from limiting abortion access to questioning climate change—into public policy.

We’ve covered plenty of these before, but here’s a refresher:

In March, Pence signed a bill into law requiring burial or cremation for aborted fetuses.
Last month, Pence said he’d like to “send Roe v. Wade to the ash heap of history.”
Pence signed a 2015 bill permitting Indiana business owners to cite religious beliefs as a reason to refuse service to gay and lesbian customers.
As Indiana’s governor, Pence slashed Planned Parenthood funding, arguably contributing to one county’s HIV outbreak.
During his 12 years as a congressman, Pence voted against nearly every piece of environmental legislation.
Pence voted to bar the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases.
Pence voted for opening the Atlantic up to offshore oil drilling.
As a congressman, Pence gave a floor speech advocating the teaching of creationism in public schools.
Pence wrote an op-ed arguing that “smoking doesn’t kill.”
Pence has advocated the use of public funds for conversion therapy, a discredited and potentially harmful form of anti-gay therapy.
Gov. Pence funneled $3.5 million in Indiana’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds, intended for needy families with children, to crisis pregnancy centers, which counsel women against having abortions.
Gov. Pence refused to comply with Obama administration rules aimed at reducing prison rape.
As congressman, Pence voted in favor of a bill that would have allowed for the detention of undocumented immigrants seeking hospital treatment.
Pence co-sponsored a bill in Congress that would have eliminated automatic citizenship for children born on US soil to undocumented parents.
Pence was one of 31 governors to oppose the resettlement of Syrian refugees in his state, declaring that state agencies wouldn’t cover the cost of some social services for Syrian refugees. His behavior earned him a strong rebuke from a panel of three federal judges, including one whom Donald Trump put on his Supreme Court nominee short list.

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Stop Calling Mike Pence Boring. Here’s His Track Record on Gays, Women, Immigrants, and the Planet.

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Where the veep candidates stand on climate and energy

by JacelynUmberger Posted on October 3, 2016

The Tuesday vice presidential debate may not get as much attention as the main show, but the rivals are nearly as polarized on the issues — especially when it comes to climate and energy.

On the left, we’ve got former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine — whose pitch to voters on the campaign trail includes, “Do you believe in climate science or don’t you?”

On Team Trump, it’s more complicated. Veep candidate Mike Pence is an Indiana governor and former member of Congress who has previously said that creationism should be taught in schools, smoking won’t kill you, and global warming is a myth. Pence has also, however, recently reversed himself on global warming, splitting from Trump’s position: “Well, look,” he told CNN after the first presidential debate, “there’s no question that the activities that take place in this country and in countries around the world have some impact on the environment and some impact on climate.”

Here’s where the two stand:

Mike Pence

In his 2012 gubernatorial campaign, Pence received at least $850,000 from the energy sector, including $95,000 from coal magnate Robert Murray and $300,00 from David Koch. The friend of fossil fuels has also said that Trump will “end the war on coal,” and opposes President Obama’s signature environmental legislation, the Clean Power Plan. Indiana, the nation’s eighth largest coal producer, is one of 29 states currently fighting the legislation in court.

In 2014, Pence overturned an energy efficiency program enacted by his Republican predecessor, despite that fact that the Indiana Public Utility Commission estimated the program would create more than 18,600 jobs. That same year, Indiana ranked second among all states for industrial greenhouse gas emissions.

While in Congress, Pence also voted to bar the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases, and voted in favor of opening the Atlantic to offshore oil drilling. In fact, he voted against nearly every piece of environmental legislation during his 12 years in Congress, earning a lifetime score of 4 percent by the League of Conservation Voters (LCV).

Tim Kaine

Kaine supports the Clean Power Plan and introduced a budget amendment to help the Department of Defense prepare for climate change. The avid outdoorsman and conservationist has a lifetime score for 91 percent by the LCV.

He was an early opponent of the Keystone XL Pipeline, coming out against it in 2013.

During his tenure as governor, however, Kaine’s administration approved plans for a 668-megawatt coal plant in southwest Virginia. He’s also been in favor of offshore drilling in the Atlantic (although that changed after he joined the Clinton ticket).

Kaine says he views natural gas a “bridge fuel,” and — despite his opposition to Keystone — penned an an op-ed referring to himself as a “pro-pipeline senator.” According to ClimateWire’s Emily Holden, he supported fracking in national forests as governor, and he voted to fast-track natural gas export terminals.

Yet he’s endorsed the goal of transitioning the U.S. to 25 percent renewable energy by 2025, and Kaine protected 400,000 acres of land from development and worked to help coastal communities prepare for climate change.

If history is any indication, climate change won’t get much attention in Tuesday’s debate — in all presidential and vice presidential debates in the past five election seasons, climate change had a grand total of 37 minutes and 6 seconds.

If it were up to us, we’d want to hear a lot more about Pence’s recent comments on human-made climate change. Hearing from Pence and Kaine for a few minutes on climate would hardly be the most shocking turn of this election. After all, we’ve been surprised before.

Election Guide ★ 2016Making America Green AgainOur experts weigh in on the real issues at stake in this election

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Where the veep candidates stand on climate and energy

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Pence Tells Evangelicals He’ll Help Trump Restrict Abortion Rights

by KelseyNunley Posted on September 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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GOP vice presidential nominee Mike Pence spoke to a convention of conservative Christians Saturday, drawing loud applause for his promises that he will work with Donald Trump to restrict abortion rights and appoint right-wing justices to the Supreme Court.

“Let me be clear: People who know me well know I’m pro-life, and I don’t apologize for it,” said Pence, the Republican governor of Indiana, to the largely evangelical crowd at the Values Voters Summit in Washington, DC. “I want to live to see the day that we put the sanctity of life back at the center of American law, and we send Roe v. Wade to the ash heap of history, where it belongs.”

Pence’s speech provided a stark contrast to his running mate’s address at the same summit. On Friday night, Trump asked attendees for their support in November without ever mentioning abortion or marriage. The pair of speeches reinforced this political duo’s dynamic, with Pence—a lifelong anti-abortion advocate with a legislative record to prove it—once again providing a salve for religious voters skeptical of the thrice-married, formerly pro-choice Trump.

Penny Nance, the president of Concerned Women for America, introduced Pence. She opened with an anecdote about getting a call from a reporter after Trump’s selection of Pence. She told the reporter there was one thing people needed to know: On abortion, “Mike Pence has a 100 percent Concerned Women for America voting record, and a zero percent record with the National Abortion Rights Action League,” also known as NARAL Pro-Choice America, an abortion rights group.

The audience roared with applause, and Nance lavished praised on Pence’s record both as a congressman and as Indiana Governor. “Mike was a leader in Congress before most people knew Planned Parenthood was the abortion mafia,” she said, citing the deceptively edited Center for Medical Progress videos released last summer that purported to show Planned Parenthood officials negotiating the sale of fetal tissue. (So far, four congressional investigations and 12 state-level investigations have found no wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood.) Nance also lauded Pence’s efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, both in Congress and as Indiana’s governor. By 2014, Pence had cut Planned Parenthood’s funding nearly in half in his state, resulting in the closure of five clinics, none of which ever provided abortions.

When Pence took the podium, he sharply criticized Hillary Clinton. He cited the Benghazi investigation—a popular topic among many of the speakers. Pence also blasted Clinton’s comments at a New York fundraiser Friday night, in which she said that “half” of Trump’s supporters represented “a basket of deplorables.”

“Let me just say from the bottom of my heart: Hillary, they are not a basket of anything,” Pence said. “They are Americans and they deserve your respect.” Pence added that he hadn’t heard “that level of disdain for Americans” since 2008, when Barack Obama said that residents of Midwestern towns with high unemployment “get bitter and cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Pence went on to promise that a Trump administration would shore up the military, stand with Israel, and cut a variety of taxes. But soon, he turned back to abortion. Citing his own extensive record—including his funding for crisis pregnancy centers in Indiana and state legislation prohibiting women from obtaining an abortion because of the race, gender, or disability of the fetus—Pence outlined the Trump team’s plan for reproductive health access.

He promised to work with Congress to pass the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection act, a bill that would outlaw abortions after 20 weeks with exceptions only for cases of rape, incest, and threats to the woman’s life. (These kinds of abortions are rare and often happen when a serious fetal disability is discovered late in pregnancy.) “We will end late-term abortions nationwide,” Pence said. The post-20-week abortion ban failed in the Senate in September 2015, but was resurrected with a hearing in March.

Pence promised to uphold the Hyde amendment, which prohibits federal funding for abortions, and to defund Planned Parenthood. “The days of public funding for Planned Parenthood are over when the Trump-Pence administration arrives in Washington, DC,” he said.

And finally, Pence returned to Trump’s main selling point with evangelicals: the Supreme Court. “When it comes to life and our liberties,” he declared, “Donald Trump will appoint justices to the Supreme Court of the United States who will strictly construe the constitution of the United States in the tradition of the late and great Justice Antonin Scalia.”

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Pence Tells Evangelicals He’ll Help Trump Restrict Abortion Rights

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We Are All Mike Pence Laughing at Donald Trump’s Outrageous Black Support Claim

by AustinSwartwood Posted on August 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Friday, Donald Trump attempted to convince African-American voters to support his presidential campaign with the stark question: “What the hell do you have to lose?” After all, the real estate magnate reasoned, black people in America were jobless and impoverished and therefore risked nothing by rejecting his rival Hillary Clinton. Trump then announced that if he were elected president, he would secure 95 percent of the black vote by 2020.

When asked about the remarks on Monday, Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, couldn’t even maintain the illusion he took Trump’s assertions seriously. Instead, during an interview with Ainsley Earhardt on Fox news, the former Indiana governor joined the general response to the GOP candidate’s claim: he laughed out loud.

When Earhardt asked why he was laughing, Pence replied, “Well, that’s Donald Trump.”

(h/t Daily Beast)

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We Are All Mike Pence Laughing at Donald Trump’s Outrageous Black Support Claim

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Trump Adviser Claims Father of War Hero Is a "Muslim Brotherhood Agent"

by FilomenaWharton Posted on August 1, 2016

Mother Jones

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Roger Stone, an informal adviser to Donald Trump, took to Twitter on Sunday to claim that Khizr Khan, the father of a slain war hero who spoke at last week’s Democratic National Convention, is working for the Muslim Brotherhood.

The link that accompanied Stone’s tweet outlines a conspiracy theory that claims Khan is working to bring radical Muslims to the United States. The article Stone linked to also alleges that Khan’s son, Capt. Humayun Khan, was a Muslim martyr who was killed “before his Islamist mission was accomplished.”

Stone’s shocking tweets come just a day after Trump told ABC News that like the Khan family, he has made many sacrifices. The Republican nominee also attacked Khan’s wife, who stood alongside her husband during his DNC address, suggesting that perhaps she “wasn’t allowed” to speak because of the couple’s Muslim faith.

On Sunday, Trump’s vice presidential pick Mike Pence attempted to quell the mounting controversy by claiming Trump believed Khan’s family should be “cherished.” In the same Facebook post, however, Pence said that he supported Trump’s plan to suspend “immigration from countries that have been compromised by terrorism.”

After whipping up a storm of controversy on Sunday, Trump returned to knocking Khan on Monday morning.

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Trump Adviser Claims Father of War Hero Is a "Muslim Brotherhood Agent"

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Indiana Managed to Keep One Syrian Refugee Family Out. Here’s Why That Won’t Happen Again.

by OlenMcgehee Posted on November 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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Earlier this week, a Syrian family of three on their way to the United States received an unexpected surprise: their long-awaited resettlement to Indiana was, with less than 24 hours to go, being shifted to Connecticut, because Indiana Gov. Mike Pence had demanded that no Syrian refugees be allowed into his state.

The case got widespread national attention as a symbol of the backlash against Syrian refugees following last week’s terror attacks in Paris. But nonprofit groups that help resettle refugees across the country say the case wasn’t a sign of things to come, but a one-off that won’t be repeated.

“We’re not going to capitulate to this,” says Carleen Miller, executive director of Exodus Refugee Immigration, the Indianapolis resettlement organization that was handling the Syrian family’s case. “We intend to resettle Syrians.” Wendy Johnson, the communications director for Episcopal Migration Ministries, the national group that works with Exodus, was equally firm. “The case in Indiana was a one-time occurrence,” she remarks.

Miller says Pence’s gambit worked because of short notice. Her office received a letter from the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration on Tuesday saying the state wouldn’t provide resettlement funds for Syrian refugees. Those dollars help pay for a variety of services, including English classes, counseling, and food assistance. By the time the letter arrived, the family was on its way to the United States, and Miller says she didn’t have time to scramble for other resources. “The decision I made to redirect the family to Connecticut was because the family was coming in less than 24 hours and all this had erupted, and nobody told me what the governor could or couldn’t do that would disrupt services or benefits to the client,” she says. Rather than giving the family an uncertain welcome, she chose to send them to another destination where resources were fully available.

If a resettlement group has more time to prepare, it can find private money to make up for state aid that is taken away, Miller explains. She adds, “That’s what we need to know, that families will be welcomed by us and that we’ll have the resources to provide what they need.”

Officials at resettlement agencies haven’t yet received definitive word on what state governors can actually do to prevent refugees, but they insist that moves by Pence and other governors who have refused Syrian refugees are illegal on several counts. “If this was to be implemented, we’re going to be in default of our international covenants,” says Erol Kekic of Church World Service, a resettlement agency. “Article 31 in the UN refugee convention basically says we can’t discriminate based on nationality or membership in a particular religious group, and this is exactly what we’re doing.”

Even the supposed state refugee funds that governors control aren’t strictly theirs to manage: States receive that money from the federal government. The cash is typically doled out by a state refugee coordinator, but that’s not mandatory. “It’s actually at the discretion of the director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement of the Department of Health and Human Services to decide who administers these funds,” Kekic says. “They’re not state funds.”

This Syrian family’s quick shift to Connecticut was motivated by logistics and not a fear of local backlash, according to refugee advocates, but that doesn’t mean refugees feel safe. Resettlement agencies say their local offices have fielded numerous calls from nervous refugee families and have also received reports of harassment. Carleen Miller of Exodus reports that one Syrian refugee family in Indiana expressed concern about the signal conveyed by Pence’s move. At school, the couple’s child was confronted by another student. “The classmate said, ‘Are you a supporter of ISIS?’…It’s really disturbing on a variety of levels.” Another refugee in Louisville, Kentucky, reported a death threat. “We have had one report of a Middle Eastern client…getting off the bus and somebody yelling, ‘I will kill you!'” says Kekic, from Church World Service. “So the guy went home and shaved his beard and cried, and then called the agency to say, ‘I don’t know what to think anymore. I didn’t do anything to anyone. Here I am, what do I do next?'” Local resettlement offices have also received threats, Kekic points out.

Many refugee families now live in a constant state of tension, according to resettlement officials. “They feel afraid, they’re not sure what to do, they don’t know if they belong there anymore, how should they behave,” Johnson say. But refugee assistance groups also note that local communities have mostly been welcoming.

In Connecticut, the Syrian family of three—they have so far declined to give their names to media outlets—arrived in New Haven on Wednesday and was greeted by Democratic Gov. Daniel Malloy, one of the few politicians to publicly welcome Syrian refugees in the past week. “Americans sometimes overreact to issues, but in the end they come back and find center,” he reassured the family, according to Chris George, the executive director of Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, the group that inherited the case from Exodus.

Then, after Malloy left, the family prepared for their first night in their new homeland.

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Indiana Managed to Keep One Syrian Refugee Family Out. Here’s Why That Won’t Happen Again.

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