3.13.19 As U.S. Supports LGBT Protections, Equality Act Heads Back to Congress.
| As U.S. Supports LGBT Protections, Equality Act Heads Back to Congress. More than 40 years after its original introduction, the Equality Act could soon see a vote in Congress. The bill would sharpen the language in existing civil rights laws to broaden protections for LGBT Americans. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) tells NBC News why the time is now for the Equality Act. “If you just had an up or down vote, we would have sufficient votes in both houses,” Baldwin says. “I think what the House passage will tell us is that the 2020 elections are really important to create and vote for a pro-equality Senate and president.” PRRI’s most recent data shows that majorities of Democrats (79 percent), independents (70 percent), and Republicans (56 percent) say they favor laws that would shield LGBT people from various kinds of discrimination. The bill is expected to be introduced on Wednesday. |
| How a Morning Talk Show Became A Go-To Stop for 2020 Democrats Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Kamala Harris (D-CA) are just two of the growing number of presidential candidates who have made stops at Power 105.1 in New York City after announcing their presidential campaigns. The Breakfast Club morning show, which first aired in 2010 and is played on almost 100 stations around the country, has become a must-stop for 2020 candidates. “The show provides a platform for candidates to reach diverse young audiences,” Maxwell Tani and Gideon Resnick say in The Daily Beast. “Sixty percent of the show’s daily audience is African-American, and the show’s hosts feel that their background allows them to ask questions that many mainstream political journalists and cable-news hosts couldn’t ask—or wouldn’t ever think to.” PRRI data shows 66 percent of young Americans age 15-24 believe that the news media promotes negative stereotypes about African-Americans, something that The Breakfast Club seeks to clarify. |
| Instagram Friendly Bibles: The New Wave of Scripture? Friends and entrepreneurs, Brian Chung and Bryan Chung, have created what people are referring to as an “Instagram-friendly” Bible. Their company, Alabaster, expects to sell over $900,000 worth of Bibles by the end of 2019. “We want these books to be true and relevant to millennials,” Bryan Chung tells Chavie Lieber of Vox. “We are all on our iPhones, but we also respond really well to visual imagery, and so it has to really grasp our attention. If it does, it can change the way we think.” Creating Bibles for the “selfie generation” could prove difficult, Lieber writes. PRRI data from 2018 shows that 48 percent of the country seldom or never attends church. |
| President Trump Promotes ‘Jexodus’ Advocate On Tuesday Morning, President Donald Trump promoted a Fox and Friends appearance by former campaign staffer turned spokesman for “Jexodus,” Elizabeth Pipko. Pipko claimed that the Democratic Party is the “party of anti-Semitism,” and that Jews were leaving the Democratic Party. “Jewish people are leaving the Democratic Party. We saw a lot of anti-Israel policies start under the Obama Administration… They don’t care about Israel or the Jewish people,” Pipko says. Recent PRRI data shows that only 18 percent of Jews self-identify as Republican, down two percentage points from 2016, PRRI CEO and founder Robert P. Jones said via Twitter. |