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Winning the right to vote for women took 70 years, and many pioneering suffragistsincluding Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Sojourner Truthnever lived to see the certification of the 19th amendment on August 26, 1920. Today, exactly 100 years later, on what is now celebrated as Womens Equality Day, those three women have been honored in a monument in Central Park.

On hand in the park to celebrate the occasion was former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

There is nothing more important to honor the women portrayed in this statue than to vote, she told the small, socially distanced crowd.While the passage of the the 19th amendment was a critical, important, historic victory, it was also an incomplete one. It would take decades longer to guarantee the franchise to women of color, especially Black and Native American women, and a century later, the struggle to enforce the right to vote continues.

The 14-foot-tallWomens Rights Pioneers Monument, by sculptorMeredith Bergmann, literally places womens history on a pedestal and honors the role of three New Yorkers in that monumental effort. Our rights were not gained by one dramatic action but from long shared struggle, Bergmann said after the unveiling.

Hillary Clinton poses with sculptor Meredith Bergmann after the unveiling of the statue of womens rights pioneers Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Sojourner Truth in Central Park. Photo by Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images.

The monument is the first public monument to honor real historical female figuresrather than fictional onesin Central Park, where it joins statues ofAlice in Wonderland and Mother Goose. It is also the first depiction of an African American there. In the city as a whole, there are just five existing civic sculptures of historic women, compared to 145 of men.

I cant think of a better monument to the history and spirit of New York than these fiercely determined women who fought for a better, more inclusive, more just future, said New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in a message broadcast during the unveiling ceremony, which was livestreamed from the park. Every woman who votes, protests, or serves in office today does so standing on the shoulders of these three giants.

The nonprofit Monumental Womenspearheaded the new statue,raising $1.5 million in fundsincluding contributions from local Girl Scout troops from their cookie salesto donate the work to the city. The effort was seven years in the making.

Seven years ago, no one was talking about statuesand now folks are mostly talking about tearing them down, said Manhattan borough president Gale Brewer, who, with councilwoman Helen Rosenthal, raised $135,000 for the project. We set out to break the bronze ceiling, and it wasnt easy.

Meredith Bergmann, Womens Rights Pioneers Monument (model). Photo by Michael Bergmann.

There hadnt been a new permanent sculpture in the city in 70 years, and Monumental Women received all sorts of reasons why that wasnt going to change, Brewer recalled. The park is closed to new statues. Women dont want a statue, they want a garden. If we say yes to this statue, we have to say yes to any statue. And, my personal favorite, you have to prove that each of these women actually set foot in Central Park.

Now, the monument, located on the parks Literary Walknear 68th Street, is the first in a new wave of public artworks honoring New Yorks historic women. Thecity introduced the She Built NYC initiative tocommission artworks honoring womens history in 2018, and has sinceannounced plans for monuments to jazz legend Billie Holiday, public health pioneer HelenRodrguez Tras, civil rights leaderElizabeth Jennings Graham, lighthouse keeper Katherine Walker, and Shirley Chisholm, the nations first Black congresswoman.

Central Park is also getting a new statue of Albro Lyons, Mary Joseph Lyons, and their daughter Maritcha Lyons, educators and abolitionists who lived in Seneca Village, the African American community displaced to make way for the park.

Meredith Bergmann working on the Womens Rights Pioneers Monument. Photo by Michael Bergmann.

These efforts to increase representation of women in the citys public places are not without controversy. The public was invited to nominate women for She Built NYC, but the top vote-getter,St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, was ultimately passed over, outraging some among the Italian American community. And the Lyons family sculpture has been criticized for its planned location, some 20 blocks north of the former village.

TheWomens Rights Pioneers Monument, too, faced significant backlash for its original intent to depict just Anthony and Stanton. After widespread criticism that the design ignored the contributions of Black women to the suffrage movement, the artist addedTruth to the monument in 2019. Nonetheless, it still has its detractors, even after a secondsecond redesignaddressed concerns that Truth seemed too passive in the sculpture.

In pre-recorded remarks aired at the unveiling, New York congresswoman Carolyn Maloney called on viewers to draw momentum from the new monument and join her decades-long push to build a Smithsonian Womens History Museum on the National Mall, and to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, currently caught in a legal battle.

For too long womens history has been swept aside or simply ignored, Maloney said. No more.

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Hillary Clinton Urged Americans to Vote During the Unveiling of a New Monument to Suffragists in Central Park - artnet News

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the mob, each in their own way, last week increased the risk that we will face a fairly grave constitutional moment.

Mrs. Pelosi, in an unscripted moment, with her usual charm, identified the president and his allies in Congress (one can only assume she meant all the congressional Republicans) as domestic enemies of the United States. For her part, Mrs. Clinton publicly advised Democratic presidential candidate Jose[h R. Biden not to concede the election under any circumstances. The mob attacked a U.S. senator in the street.

In ordinary times, these comments and actions would be remarkable enough and worthy enough of severe approbation. But in a presidential election cycle in which there is a very real possibility of a contested result, identifying the opposition as domestic enemies, counseling no concessions of any kind and assaulting an elected official merely because he is an elected official amount to material endangerment of the republic.

How likely is a contested election? In 1876, the election was close enough that it hinged on the votes (and the voting certification process) in three states: South Carolina, Louisiana and Florida. This year, vote counts may take weeks because of a surge in voting by mail and early in-person voting. A shortfall of poll workers and an increase in claims of voter fraud also will complicate matters, as will likely violence in select cities on Election Day.

The timeline is a problem as well. By Dec. 14, just 41 days after the Nov. 3 election, states are required to convene their presidential electors and forward their certified results to the House. Think about that for a moment. In less than six weeks, states will have to count all the votes, settle the inevitable legal disputes over vote counting and forward the results to the House.

That is going to be a challenge in states such as Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania, where the election results are likely to be very close and very material to the question of who will be president on Jan. 20, 2021.

When the House convenes on or around Jan. 5, 2021, its first order of business will be to pass rules for the organization of the House, as well as vote for its leaders. The second order of business will be to officially receive and approve the certification and votes of electors from the states. Thats where the wheels can fall off the cart.

If the House is given multiple certifications for a state, it can decide which it chooses to accept or it can determine on its own to disallow or ignore a certification for good reasons or no reason at all. If the House is unable to determine and certify a winner, it must vote for a president. In such an event, each state delegation has one vote. Currently, the House is split almost down the middle 26 delegations are majority Republican, 23 majority Democratic and Pennsylvania is evenly split. That arrangement might change in the wake of this years elections, or it may not.

In 1876, governors and legislatures in the three states in question sent competing certifications to the House for Democratic nominee Sam Tilden and Republican nominee Rutherford B. Hayes. Unable to determine which to accept, the House was seized by paralysis, and for a time it looked as if the the U.S. would head toward warfare for the second time in 15 years. What saved the day was a deal under which Reconstruction would be terminated in exchange for seating Hayes as president.

Thats the problem with Mrs. Pelosis and Mrs. Clintons comments and the surliness of the mob. If the election is marked by uncertainty, delay and competing claims of legitimacy, it is imperative that leaders on both sides maintain their composure and optionality. Identifying a rival party as a domestic enemy, or foreclosing any possible remedy to a crisis, is not wise.

We all hope that the election is safe and straightforward, and the results conclusive. But if it isnt, and they arent, we all need to be proceed as if our republic is at risk. Because it will be.

Michael McKenna, a columnist for The Washington Times, is the president of MWR Strategies. He was most recently a deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs at the White House.

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Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton's scare tactics endanger the presidential election and the republic - Washington Times

Poised over the piano, Carole King was set to play I Feel the Earth Move during a recent virtual fundraiser for Joe Biden when the Democratic presidential nominee himself beat her to it.

On my playlist, Carole! Mr Biden proclaimed, holding up his phone and letting a few seconds of the song blast.

Oh, well, Ill just sit back and let you play your playlist, Ms King said with a laugh.

The four-time Grammy winner isnt the only Biden playlist mainstay helping his campaign against Donald Trump. Jimmy Buffett noted that Come Monday was among the hits stored on Mr Bidens phone before singing it at another recent fundraiser. And James Taylor told another group that he learned to play America the Beautiful for Barack Obamas 2013 inauguration, when Mr Biden was sworn in for four more years as vice president.

With in-person campaigning largely suspended because of the coronavirus, a parade of movie and TV stars, pop icons and sports standouts are proving crucial in helping Mr Biden raise money and energise supporters as campaign surrogates. Events this week with celebrities and advocates including actress Alyssa Milano are serving as counter-programming to the Republican National Convention.

Were just flooding the zone as much as possible, said Michelle Kwan, Mr Bidens surrogate director and an Olympic silver and bronze medallist figure skater who held a similar post for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Our artists and actors who are surrogates, they tend to be at home so their availability and their schedule has opened up (and) theyre willing to do more things.

Mr Bidens campaign now has a team of 15 staffers dedicated to organising surrogate activities.

Republicans point to the events as evidence that Mr Biden and his running mate, California senator Kamala Harris, are closer to Hollywood than the heartland. Speaking at the RNC this week, party chairwoman Ronna McDaniel noted that actress Eva Longoria, known for her role on Desperate Housewives, moderated one night of last weeks Democratic convention.

Well, Im actually a real housewife and a mom from Michigan with two wonderful kids in public school who happens to be only the second woman in 164 years to run the Republican Party, Ms McDaniel said.

Still, Mr Biden has gone beyond celebrities in search of campaign surrogates. Hes enlisted the help of nearly all of the 20-plus Democrats he beat during the primary. And Mr Obama has taken a more aggressive role in supporting his former vice president.

The campaign often pairs celebrities with lesser-known officials from all levels of government to make personalised pitches to voters, especially when Mr Biden himself isnt able to attend an event.

Ms Milano has appeared with former labour secretary Hilda Solis, and actors like Connie Britton held an online event with former Obama administration official Valerie Jarrett while Don Cheadle hosted a youth activist forum.

Other times it is elected officials who are far from household names carrying online events alone: former interior secretary Ken Salazar addressed Hispanics in New Mexico and former secretary of state John Kerry brought his New England appeal to Maine voters. As many as a half dozen such events now come multiple times per week often when Mr Biden himself is only doing a single, separate fundraiser or two in the meantime.

The campaign also holds events partnering some of its staffers with celebrities so that discussions on policy reach audiences that may not be closely following the presidential race, deliberately blurring the line between pop culture and politics even more.

Were introducing our campaign to their followers who might not always be involved with the campaign, said Adrienne Elrod, a Clinton 2016 spokeswoman who is now Mr Bidens director of surrogate strategy and operations.

Mr Bidens team distributes a one-page list of virtual event guidelines, with tips including making sure wifi is working correctly and that no one in the house sucks up bandwidth during show time. Such preparations cant prevent everything. Just as actor Forest Whitaker was introducing Mr Biden at a virtual event in June, an Amber alert shrieked from his phone.

Star appeal doesnt always translate to votes. Ms Clintons unsuccessful presidential bid was endorsed by everyone from singer Lady Gaga to actress Lena Dunham to NBA star LeBron James. She failed to win Pennsylvania, despite a sprawling Philadelphia rally on Election Day eve featuring singers Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi and the Obamas.

University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire political science professor Eric T Kasper compared celebrity endorsements to yard signs, saying they are unlikely to sway a race but are effective at getting people talking. Stars generate candidate buzz, help with fundraising and can build campaign event crowds even for those online.

You have this national audience as a presidential candidate youre trying to seek favour from, said Mr Kasper, who has researched the intersection of politics and popular culture. Its much more difficult to connect in terms of retail politics, especially in a general election, on a nationwide scale.

Mr Trump used his personal celebrity to build hype for his 2016 bid. His re-election campaign has been holding its own online events with top supporters nearly every night for months and says its online events average 2.6 million views per broadcast, though its headliners are often the presidents children. A similar roster is dominating this weeks convention.

Enthusiasm for Joe Biden simply does not exist, said Trump re-election campaign spokeswoman Courtney Parella, and no celebrity he hides behind will fix that problem.

Some stars are supporters of the president, including actors Dean Cain and Jon Voight, who narrated a pro-Trump convention video. So far, though, they havent been actively campaigning for him. Instead, Mr Trump has used the advantages of incumbency to crisscross the country on official business that draws throngs of supporters.

The Trump campaign has also seized on Mr Bidens preferred venue for participating in online events, a basement studio in his Delaware home accusing the former vice president of hiding from voters.

Mr Biden has shrugged off such criticisms and, during a recent fundraiser, actor Tom Hanks noted that Mr Biden was appearing from his notoriously bad basement, which the actor said didnt seem so terrible.

I could talk to you for another four and a half hours, Mr Hanks joked after 40-plus minutes. But I dont think America needs another Zoom call that long.

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2020 election: Biden campaign follows in Hillary Clintons footsteps by flooding the zone with celebrity backers - The Independent

This spring, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden agreed with his former primary rival Sen. Bernie Sanders to form joint task forces on health care, criminal justice, climate change, the economy, education, and immigration. It is clear from the reports of those bodies, issued earlier this summer, that under a President Biden U.S. domestic policy would shift well to the left of where it would have been under a President Hillary Clinton in 2016.

But none of those committees covered foreign policy as traditionally defined. The ideological flames fanned by Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and then brought to a white heat by the Black Lives Matter movement, have barely touched foreign affairs, which is often isolated from domestic politics. A Biden promise to return to the status quo ante would be a brain-dead response to a transformed world, but it would not be politically costly.

Yet the assumption that under a President Biden domestic policy would move left, but foreign policy would not, presupposes a distinction between the two that is itself an artifact of an earlier era. Some elements of a Biden foreign policy would almost certainly move left as a dependent variable of domestic policy. Biden uses the expression a foreign policy for the middle class to express the idea that trade and international economic policy must be guided by the benefits they will bring to average Americansrather than to American multinationals. For those of you keeping an ideological scorecard at home, that policy may be taken as the death knell of neoliberalism.

That term neoliberalism, which began as a neutral descriptor before turning pejorative in recent years, describes the faith that a lightly regulated global marketplace in which goods, services, capital, and firms moved across borders with minimal friction would unleash growth that would increase jobs and spread prosperity, especially in the United States, the engine room of globalization. That was the guiding doctrine of the administration of President Bill Clinton. Its high apostles, including Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, served as President Barack Obamas senior economic advisors.

Some of the most interesting thinking at the edges, if not always the center, of Bidens pool of advisors and influences has to do with the shortcomings of that doctrine. Jennifer Harris, an international economist who served in the State Department under Hillary Clinton, argues that from the time of its founding the United States, like all great powers, has used its economic power to advance its geopolitical standingpursuing what she and others call geoeconomics. To that end, U.S. policymakers have adopted a sequence of economic models tailored to the circumstances of their time. The neoliberal model suited an era when the U.S. economy reaped vast benefits from globalizationor at least seemed to. That is no longer seen to be the case: Globalization is now blamed for widening inequality and hollowing out the middle class. Whats more, at a time when China, an unabashed geoeconomics power, is wielding trade and economic relations as a diplomatic weapon, the United States cannot simply repeat shibboleths about the free movement of capital and goods. (Harris and Jake Sullivan, one of Bidens key advisors, laid out this argument earlier this year in an article in Foreign Policy.)

Harris asserts that the American trade officials who negotiated the Trans-Pacific Partnership had so thoroughly internalized neoliberal dogma that they simply took it for granted that increasing the pharmaceutical industrys access to Asian markets was good for the United Stateseven if doing so created neither jobs nor tax revenue in the United States. The war over just how free trade is, Harris said in an interview with Foreign Policy, has become sterile at a time when trade barriers are already at historic lowsor were until President Donald Trump began jacking them back up. So-called trade agreements are, in fact, the modern site of geoeconomic strugglebut arent being acknowledged as such. There is a desire, said Harris, for some kind of economic engagement that improves the lived experience of middle-class Americans.

That desire is now widespread. Mainstream economists having increasingly accepted the evidence that competition with China has led to a net loss of jobs at home, a cost that must be weighed in the balance against cheap televisions and smartphones. Tom Perriello, another progressive who served in the Obama administration, said in an interview that if you expressed doubts about the free market model among Obama economic officials, as he did, you were seen as having horns growing out of your head. Now, he added, if you repeated some of the old chestnuts, People would say, Are you cryogenically frozen?

Once you accept that what is good for overall global growth or even for the stock market is not necessarily good for the American worker, it becomes possible to envision a form of economic nationalism that guides U.S. behavior both at home and abroad. This seems to be what Biden has in mind with his plan for a Made in All of America agenda. The big investments he plans in infrastructure, education, health care, and research and development would be directed to U.S. firms to create jobs at home. A pro-American worker tax and trade strategy would take aggressive trade enforcement actions against China but also eliminate tax incentives for U.S. firms to move operations overseas.

Biden has proposed an ambitious federal effort to bring back global supply chains in sensitive areas including medical supplies and pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, energy grid resilience, and the like. This would entail rebuilding domestic manufacturing capacity in those areas, including through use of the Defense Production Act; making changes in the tax code to encourage domestic production of pharmaceuticals; increasing federal stockpiles of sensitive products; and establishing a new program to fund worker retraining in critical manufacturing fields. Economic nationalism is thus both a response to the rise of China and a means of equipping the United States to win the economic struggle with China.

The new nationalism has a political as well as an economic dimension. Foreign policy has traditionally been the province of experts who tell Americans where national interests lie rather than ask them where they think their own interests lie. This has become increasingly unsustainable, both because deference to expertise is a thing of the past and because the United States no longer seems to be winning the global struggle for supremacy. In 2018 the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace set out to rectify this problem by sending scholars to three places very far from WashingtonOhio, Nebraska, and Coloradoto ask citizens how foreign policy affected their lives. The study, titled U.S. Foreign Policy for the Middle Class, was directed by Salman Ahmed, former head of strategic planning at the Obama National Security Council; among the authors were Jennifer Harris and Jake Sullivan. The project was authorized by Carnegies director, William Burns, a leading candidate for secretary of state in a Biden administration.

Very few of the hundreds of people interviewed had anything to say about the liberal international order or Russias encroachments on Ukraine. On such remote questions most offered stock responses that appeared to depend on what news channel they watched. But they had a great deal to say about China, trade, jobs, and foreign investment. The answers varied greatly both across and within states, but few of them sounded like Washingtons nightmare of a nationalistic heartland. Even in hard-pressed Ohio manufacturing towns, the authors note, people express strong support for free trade and accept that technological advances and other market forces will continue to transform employment in their area. However, they insist on fair trade and additional measures that would give them a fighting chance.

The answers were mildly encouraging, if not terribly surprising; the most important aspect of the project may have been the decision to ask the question. A sustainable foreign policy must be rooted in the real interests of the great mass of Americans. When those interests change, so must the policy.

Yet the very different currents of opinion within the Democratic Party mean that one can hardly expect a consensus to form around the question of what foreign policy best advances the interests of average Americans. Biden is a foreign-policy traditionalist to whom the language of geoeconomics is alien; the same is true of almost all the people around him. Progressives hope theyll move beyond those instincts. Perriello, who like Harris has many ties to Bidens team, would like to see global agreements on antitrust laws, corporate taxation, and even minimum wages in order to prevent a race to the bottom. An international embrace of Americas Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, prohibiting the weaponized corruption practiced by nations like Russia, which uses its vast oil and gas wealth to pay off friends and blackmail enemies, would, he says, do a helluva lot more for free trade than current trade agreements would.

Any president who adopted so ambitious an agenda would face enormous resistance from Americas own allies. Low-tax havens such as Ireland will not easily agree to a program of corporate-tax equalization; export powers such as Germany will bridle at a confrontational policy towards China. A program of global regulation might, in any case, prove too outr for Biden and his senior team. Perriello, like Harris, places a great deal of hope in Sullivan, a liaison between the two camps who has, he says, taken the three years out of power to grapple authentically and deeply with the things they got wrong during the Clinton campaign. Sullivan officially shed his neoliberal skin in a 2019 essay in Democracy in which he called for a new old Democratic platform focusedyou will not be surprised to hearon rescuing and rebuilding the American middle class.

New old Democrat sounds like just the right hat for Joe Bidens silver head. Should he win in November, we will see if he is prepared to wear it.

This is the second of a weekly series reporting on Joe Bidens foreign-policy vision. Ready the first installment here.

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Biden Wants to Bury the Clinton Era's Neoliberalism - Foreign Policy

Donald Trump Jr. threw some shade at Hillary Clinton on Saturday, April 25.

He joked to his Twitter followers that she had been behind the death of the disgraced financier and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. The comment was in response to Clintons jab at his father POTUS Donald Trump for his sarcastic suggestion that coronavirus could be treated with disinfectant.

Clinton had shared, Please dont poison yourself because Donald Trump thinks it could be a good idea. In response to this, Donald Trump Jr. shared, We know, we know poison is reserved for a long list of people like Jeffrey Epstein and servers. Am I right? along with a wink emoji.

Epstein was mysteriously found dead in his cell at the Manhattan Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) on August 10 last year.Epstein, 66, had escaped significant jail time following his initial conviction in 2008 following a plea deal he struck with the then-Florida US Attorney Alex Acosta but was once again arrested in July 2019 on federal charges of sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York.

Epstein was found unconscious in his prison cell with injuries to his neck. The guards who were supposed to be conducting regular checks on Epsteins well-being fell asleep on the job and security camera footage from outside Epsteins cell was surprisingly also not usable.

It is believed that Hillarys husband, former President Bill Clinton had been a frequent flyer on Epsteins private jet with logs showing that Bill had taken at least 26 trips on the Lolita Express, Fox News reveals.

Many celebrities, politicians, and businessmen have been accused of fraternizing with the pedophile- including the president himself.

However, the presidents lawyer, Alan Garten shared in a statement that the two were never friends. There was no relationship between Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump. They were not friends and they did not socialize together, Garten revealed.

The president had made the remark about disinfectants during a press conference on Thursday, April 23. During the press conference, he seemed to suggest that coronavirus could be cured by using UV light inside the body and by injecting disinfectants.

His closest aides who were shocked at his comments blamed his remarks on an eagerness for the president to deliver some positive news, NBC reveals. The comments were subject to global mockery with many health experts quickly pointing out the dangers of consuming disinfectant.Even disinfectant manufacturers like Lysol were forced to issue a statement where they warned their customers not to try such methods and warned against consuming cleaning products as a cure for the deadly coronavirus.

On April 25, POTUS declared that the White House news conferences were not worth the time and effort as the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions.He took to Twitter to call out fake news and cancel WH press briefings. What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions, & then refuses to report the truth or facts accurately, he wrote.

They get record ratings, & the American people get nothing but Fake News. Not worth the time & effort! he added.

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Trump Jr jokes Hillary Clinton poisoned Jeffrey Epstein after her jibe at his dad for disinfectants suggestion - POP TIMES UK