Sightings
Jo Freeman: There’s Plenty To Do at the RNC – If You Have the Right Credentials
by Jo Freeman
Every national nominating convention has plenty of auxiliary events, some authorized, some not. Getting space can be a challenge; getting the word out even more so. But they do it nonetheless. Press were given a RNC 2024 Master Event Calendar, which was updated a few days later. Events began on Sunday and ended on Thursday. The actual convention sessions were just one item on the list. The calendar said if an event was Open or Closed to press, and also whom to contact to register. I’m going to describe some of the events, including a couple I went to, and a couple I was turned away from.
Since my focus is on women, I obviously wanted to go to those events – if I could.
The National Federation of Republican Women is the largest grassroots Republican women's organization in the country with hundreds of clubs. Founded in 1938, its members made the phone calls and knocked on the doors that elected Republican candidates for decades. It’s Tuesday luncheon featured Arkansas Governor Sarah Sanders. The Master Calendar said it was SOLD OUT and they wouldn’t let me in. I was able to get into their lounge at the Fiserv Forum Wednesday evening, where I was repeatedly asked if I was a member, and if not, would I join. “I’m press,” I said. “I can’t join anything partisan.” I then said: “What brings you here?” On hearing that, finding anyone willing to chat with me was like pulling teeth.
Moms for Liberty met in a concert hall that afternoon. I had pre-registered, and I got in. From high in a balcony seat I listened to several people talk about the evils of transgenderism. It’s webpage says WE BELIEVE Power Belongs to the People. Sound Familiar? With a focus is on parental rights, it wants to “STOP WOKE indoctrination.”
Tuesday I went to “The New Mavericks” reception co-hosted by the Black Republican Mayors Association and the Georgia Republican Party. They honored Sen. Tim Scott, four Congressmen and two Georgia delegates – all male. There was only one mayor on stage, from Aurora, IL. The chair of the Georgia Republican Party was the one white man on the stage. At that event, women served; they didn’t speak. The RNC reported that 55 delegates to the 2024 convention are Black, up from 18 in 2016.
I missed the Independent Women’s Forum toast to “Women Who Make Our Country Great” because I went to Convention Fest: The Official Delegate Experience, which was held in the streets outside the Fiserve Forum and Baird Hall as well as some space inside Baird. To get to that one you not only needed a credential of some sort, but a USSS pass (which I have).
Concerned Women for America parked its pink bus across from the Baird Center the week before the RNC. No one was home. When Convention Fest opened on Tuesday afternoon, they set up a pink tent, from which its leaders preached to whomever passed by. It calls itself “the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization” but its focus is evangelical Christian. The slogan on the side of its pink bus captures this emphasis: “She Prays, She Votes.” A prayer precedes each sermon.
New Ammunition For An Appeal: Judge Accepts Medicare’s Plan To Remedy Misunderstanding On Therapy Coverage
The government will have a new website devoted to the 2013 settlement that will include information on how claims should be handled, as well as a simple explanation that improvement is not a criterion for coverage. The statement the judge accepted was largely written by the plaintiffs' lawyers and says, in part, "that the Medicare program will pay for skilled nursing care and skilled rehabilitation services when a beneficiary needs skilled care in order to maintain function or to prevent or slow decline or deterioration (provided all other coverage criteria are met)." more »
Tattooed New York Explores Early Communities of Body Art Aficionados and the City's Influence on the Phenomenon
A new exhibition at the New-York Historical Society examines three centuries of tattooing in New York, including the city's central role in the development of modern tattooing and the successive waves of trend and taboo surrounding the practice. Tattooed New York features more than 250 works dating from the early 1700s to today — exploring Native American body art, tattoo craft practiced by visiting sailors, sideshow culture, the 1961 ban that drove tattooing underground for three decades, and the post-ban artistic renaissance. more »
Stream Protection Rule ... Passed and Overturned in a Few Weeks .... Sad
In its first few days in session, Congress has used a backdoor tactic known as the Congressional Review Act to eviscerate a clean water protection that took years of scientific research and public engagement to create. The Stream Protection Rule was a common sense safeguard that provided the monitoring of streams near coal mining operations — many of which feed into drinking water sources — for pollutants such as lead, arsenic, selenium, and manganese. more »
A Conundrum: Preserving Fertility When It Is Threatened By Life-Saving Medicine
Angela Thomas thought her breast cancer diagnosis and the double mastectomy that followed were the most traumatic things she would ever experience. When the 32-year-old actress sought fertility treatment so she could have a baby after the cancer care was finished, her insurance company refused to pay. Thomas didn't need chemotherapy, which can affect fertility. But her doctors told her she shouldn’t get pregnant for the next five years, while she was on a cancer-related medication, and that having a healthy baby could be harder in her late 30s.
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