Trump Administration's New Rule Would Exclude LGBT Families

The Trump administration is finally going through on a rule that would affect the evangelical community greatly, a group that Trump has a very loyal support of.

His administration on Friday proposed a rule that would allow faith-based foster care and adoption agencies, mostly those who are Christian and Catholic, continue to get taxpayer funding even if they exclude LGBT families and others from their services based on religious beliefs.

The announcement comes with sharp backlash from both Democratic lawmakers and LGBTQ advocacy groups. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) said that the Trump administration is working to "implement cruel and discriminatory policies and wasting taxpayer dollars in its obsessive pursuit."

The concern of many evangelical voters has been that Democrats have unnecessarily imposed policies that were not faith-based and felt that it went against their core mission to include only those who are part of their faith. This was part of the religious freedom they were talking about.

This rule would redo an Obama-era rule that included sexual orientation as a protected trait under anti-discrimination protections. However, many knew that once Trump got into the Oval Office that this was going to be one of the rules that he would scale back on, because it was important to him to please religious voters and have them choose who they would support and not support.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops said that the Obama-era rule had restricted the work of faith-based organizations, and that it was unfair and served no one.

The Family Research Council, which is a conservative advocacy group, said that charities will no longer have to choose between "abandoning their faith or abandoning homeless children."

Katie Hill's Resignation

Is Congress having a #MeToo problem or is it just a small scandal that enveloped a one-time Congresswomen?

The first female to resign in the #MeToo era belongs to one-term Congresswomen Katie Hill.

On Thursday, barely a week into her own publicized scandal, Hill announced that she plans to resign and will not run for reelection. Hill is now the 10th member of Congress to announce plans she will not run for re-election for her district.

Hill gave a fiery speech on the House floor, a speech that ends her as a rising star in politics and was only 10 months in after taking the oath and won a leadership post in a giant class of freshmen House Democrats.

Hill's resignation could give some retrospect among lawmakers about how cases unfold like this and the proper ways in which to handle these kind of cases going forward. However, it is highly unlikely that her speech could impact the House going forward, especially among Republicans, who will nonetheless take advantage of the absence to elect a Republican into her district.

Hill said in her speech, "I am leaving because I no longer want to be used as a bargaining chip. I am leaving because I didn't want to be peddled by papers and blogs and websites, used by shameless operatives for the dirtiest gutter politics that I've ever seen and the right-wing media to drive clicks and expand her audience."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said about the moment that Hill is "very smart, strategic, patriotic" and said she has been victimized. However, the resignation is likely to change much or make any sort of impact going forward, at least for now.

Yes, Katie Hill has been victimized and she could've been used as a bargaining chip, in her words, to drive clicks, audiences, and even anger. So she got out before even more attention would've hurt her and her chances at getting re-elected.

Now that there's a House Ethics Committee investigation into her, we wait to see what the results will bring up. But it's clear it was a short rise and fall for a one-time Democratic star who had a chance to shape the future of the Democrat party.