The U.S. Department of Justice issued a statement of interest Friday in support of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis over a decision that led to the firing of a Catholic teacher in a same-sex marriage, according to a report.
The
Justice Department's statement says the First Amendment gives the
diocese the right to apply Catholic doctrine in employment decisions,
The Indianapolis Star reported.
“The United States has no reason
on this record to doubt that Plaintiff was an excellent teacher,” the
Justice Department’s statement says, adding the government can “cast no
judgment on whether the Archdiocese’s decision is right and proper as a
matter of Catholic doctrine or religious faith.”
Cathedral High School
(Google Maps)
Joshua Payne-Elliott is
suing the archdiocese for wrongful termination, alleging they illegally
interfered in his employment contract at Cathedral High School, which is
part of the archdiocese.Of course he's Suing :-)
Payne-Elliott
worked as a social studies teacher at the school from 2006 until last
June. The school had offered to renew his contract but then said they
were letting him go at the direction of the archdiocese.
Payne-Elliott’s
husband, Layton Payne-Elliott, works at another school that was
temporarily kicked out of the archdiocese for refusing to fire him. The
Vatican this week interceded to temporarily halt the school’s removal,
pending an appeal.
Payne-Elliott’s lawyer, Kathleen DeLaney, says the issued is about an employment dispute, not religious liberty.
"Josh
Payne-Elliot was employed by Cathedral High School," she said,
according to The Star. "Cathedral High School fired my client because
the archdiocese told them to and threatened to take various actions
against Cathedral if they refused to fire my client."
"That is
textbook intentional interference in an employment relationship," she
added. "He was not employed by the archdiocese but the archdiocese had
him fired."
Payne-Elliott said he hoped the case would "put a stop to the targeting of LGBTQ employees and their families." The
school said it sees its teachers as "ministers" who are required to
uphold Catholic teachings, which prohibit same-sex marriage.
Two
guidance counselors were also fired from another high school in the
archdiocese this year for being in sex-sex marriages. One of the
counselors has filed a lawsuit and the other is expected to soon.
The archdiocese began requiring Catholic high school teachers to sign a morality clause, but Payne-Elliott says he never did.
The Justice Department's statement of interest has no official bearing on the case, The Star reported.
The Democratic National Committee has a money problem. And that could hurt its nominee’s chances of beating President Donald Trump in 2020. In
the first four months of 2019, the party spent more than it raised and
added $3 million in new debt. In the same period, its Republican
counterpart was stockpiling cash.
Democratic donors overall have
been generous, pouring three times as much into their party’s
presidential and congressional campaigns in the first quarter of the
year than Republicans gave to their national office-seekers. But the DNC
isn’t benefiting from the same donor enthusiasm, putting at risk its
ability to help the nominee take on Trump, donors said.
Whoever wins the party’s nomination will rely heavily on the
DNC in the general election for organizing, identifying voters and
getting them to the polls. That will ultimately cost hundreds of
millions of dollars by election day, but the party needs to spend early
to prepare, which is why it’s been borrowing money. It’s also sending
out fundraising appeals under the presidential candidates’ names,
something it’s never done before.
"It’s trouble, it’s going to affect us," said Allan Berliant,
a Cincinnati-based Democratic bundler, who says the party needs to open
offices and get boots on the ground around the country. "All of that
starts with fundraising," he said.
Party officials and fundraisers
blamed the deficiency on several factors, and chief among them is
competition from the 23 Democrats who are running for president and
vacuuming up contributors’ cash. Giving to the party isn’t as compelling
as supporting the presidential hopefuls, said John Morgan, an
Orlando-based trial attorney and Democratic fundraiser.
“Do you want to fix up the barn or do you want to bet on the horses?” he said.
But
major donors also pointed to the perception of some contributors that
the national party is disorganized -- a hangover from the 2016 election.
The growing schism between the old-guard establishment and the younger,
activist wing could be discouraging donors, too, they said.
Fundraising Compared
By the end of April, the DNC had collected
contributions of more than $24.4 million, but had spent $28.4 million,
according to the latest disclosures. It had $7.6 million cash on hand,
$1 million less than in January. It posted $6.2 million in debt,
including bank loans and unpaid invoices to vendors, Federal Election
Commission records show.
That compared with the Republican National Committee, which thanks in part to Trump’s non-stop fundraising since winning the White House had $34.7 million in the bank and no debt. It raised nearly $62 million so far this year, two-and-a-half times the DNC’s haul.
‘Fundraising Machine’
Democratic
rainmakers said contributions should pick up as the crowded field of
presidential hopefuls thins. "We will have the largest and most
enthusiastic fundraising machine that the Democrats have ever seen,"
said Chris Korge, a longtime Democratic bundler who took over the
party’s fundraising operation in May. The Miami-based attorney and
investor said he’s educating donors on how the party is investing its
funds, and said money won’t be a problem, even if Republicans outraise
it.
Democratic donors elsewhere have been generous. From January
through March, 16 presidential candidates collectively raised $77
million, or $3 million more than Trump’s committees and the Republican
National Committee combined. That follows the 2018 midterms in which
Democratic committees of every type spent $525 million more than
Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
The national party has been overshadowed by other Democratic
organizations on a number of fronts. The Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee, which supports House candidates, says it has to
protect the House majority that Democrats won in 2018. Its Senate
counterpart, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, is aiming to
end Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s tenure.
Messages Resonate
Both messages resonate with donors, bundlers say. The DCCC has raised more than $40 million this year, besting the DNC’s totals each month. The DSCC has raised $18 million.
The
DNC is also competing with super PACs, which can accept unlimited
amounts from companies, unions and individuals but can’t coordinate with
candidates. Priorities USA, the main super PAC for supporting the
party’s presidential nominees, counts among its donors some of the
biggest Democratic givers, including billionaire investor George Soros
and hedge-fund operators S. Donald Sussman and James H. Simons.
"There’s a lot of competition for dollars right now," said
Jamie Ansorge, a member of the DNC’s finance committee who focuses on
young professionals in the New York City area.
Splitting Contributions
For
the first time, the party is sending fundraising pitches from its
presidential candidates to its vast donor list -- and splitting the
contributions evenly. Campaigns get another set of donors to pitch to,
and the party gets to cash in on the crowded field. For example, the
party has emailed solicitations for former Texas congressman Beto
O’Rourke, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete
Buttigieg and California Senator Kamala Harris.
“The Democratic
nominee for president will need a strong Democratic Party,” O’Rourke’s
email said. Booker cited the financial advantage Trump and the GOP have
in the early going, and the need to keep up.
The DNC isn’t sharing
in the money bonanza in part because of the perception that it hasn’t
recovered from 2016’s self-inflicted blows, fundraisers said. Emails
hacked by the Russians and published by WikiLeaks showed
that it was working to help Hillary Clinton defeat Bernie Sanders for
the nomination even though it was publicly pledging neutrality. That led
to the resignation of DNC chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, on the eve of the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia.
“Debbie
Wasserman Schultz really destroyed a lot of confidence in the DNC for a
lot of people and for a lot of different reasons,” said Morgan, the
Orlando-based fundraiser. Her favoring of Clinton and mismanagement of
the party continues to give donors pause, he said.
When she stepped down, Wasserman Schultz cited the successes
of her tenure, including aiding Obama’s reelection in 2012,
strengthening partnerships with state parties and conducting the 2016
primary in a statement. Wasserman Schultz didn’t respond to a request
for comment.
Some potential contributors would rather not support a
party they perceive as dominated by establishment figures and their
more moderate approach to issues, said one bundler who who has held
fundraisers for the party, but asked not to be named because he’s not
authorized to speak publicly on its behalf.
To compete in 2020,
the DNC has acquired 100 million cellphone numbers during the midterms,
allowing the party to make contact with voters via text message. This
summer, it will train about 1,000 college juniors who will be ready to
hit the ground running next year and is stressing those tactics with
donors.
Tom Perez, who took over as chairman in 2017, in a recent
email solicitation highlighted the effort to train college students and
warned it might be scaled back if its fundraising goal wasn’t met.
In the few days since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opened an impeachment inquiry into President Trump, Republicans have capitalized on conservative outrage, pulling in millions of dollars in donations.
As of Friday, Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign received $15 million in small donations, including 50,000 from new donors, according to a tweet from Eric Trump.
“Unbelievable numbers!!” he tweeted. “Keep it going — you and the dems are handing @realDonaldTrump the win in 2020!”
Pelosi
announced on Tuesday the House would launch a formal impeachment
inquiry against the president, accusing him of betraying the oath of
office by pressuring Ukraine to open an investigation into former Vice
President Joe Biden, a frontrunner for the Democratic presidential
nomination, and his son.
Trump has maintained that he acted appropriately.
Twenty-four
hours later, Trump’s reelection campaign and the Republican National
Committee raked in a combined $5 million, according to Trump’s campaign
manager, Brad Parscale.
The National Republican Congressional Committee, meanwhile, said its online fundraising was up 608 percent Friday.
State-level
Republican groups are also fundraising off of Democrats’ efforts to
impeach Trump, with the Nevada Republican Party selling a shirt that
says “Impeach This,” over an image of the 2016 election map.
Of
course, Democrats are also turning impeachment into a chance to raise
money: ActBlue, the company that processes a majority of Democratic
online donations, said it brought in $4.6 million in donations on
Tuesday -- one of its largest fundraising days not tied to a Democratic debate or monthly deadline.
Susan Rice, who was one of President Obama's
closest advisers during his time in office, blasted President Trump on
Friday night for storing details about his July 25 call with Ukraine's
President Volodymyr Zelensky in a separate, highly secured computer
system.
Rice,
who was a guest at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, addressed
whistleblower allegations that the Trump administration worked to "lock
down" these records to presumably hide his interaction with Zelensky
where he dangled about $400 million in military aid to get Kiev to
investigate the Bidens relationship to the country.
Both Trump and Zelensky
denied the allegations. Trump insisted that the conversation was
"perfect" and he was just making sure the country was making good on its
promise to weed out corruption.
Obama’s former national security
adviser said the "normal system" that holds information on similar
calls is protected and classified. She said there was "no classified
substance" in the Trump phone call and yet the administration "hid it on
a very highly sensitive, highly compartmentalized server that very few
people in the U.S. government have access to in order to bury it."
She
was asked by the moderator if the Obama administration ever kept calls
on a separate server. She responded by saying only if "they were
legitimately in their contents classified."
"It’s rare that a
presidential conversation would be classified to that highest
level," she said. "It's not impossible. It’s very rare. Even when they
are two leaders discussing classified information. Here’s a case where
there was nothing classified and it was moved to the most secure,
sensitive server.” The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday
that the Trump administration—after sensing problematic leaks early in
his presidency—worked to protect presidential phone calls. Politicians
on both sides of the aisle understand the importance of a sitting
president’s ability to engage with a foreign leader in a conversation
that would not face public scrutiny.
The
Trump administration reportedly said the phone call with Ukraine’s
leader was only added to the server after guidance from National
Security Counsel lawyer.
The New York Times said they want to allow their readers to make
their own judgments about whether the whistleblower is credible. The
paper’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, said readers should know the
whistleblower is a CIA officer with extensive knowledge about Ukrainian
politics, who at one point worked in the White House.
Baquet regarded the information as vital to set the record straight
after he said President Trump and some of his supporters have attacked
the credibility of the whistleblower. The president and several
officials have stated the subject’s complaint about the Ukraine phone
call consisted of political bias and secondhand information.
“Basically, that person never saw the
report, never saw the call…heard something and decided that he or she
or whoever the hell it is…they’re almost a spy. I want to know who’s the
person that gave the whistleblower the information?” — President Trump
Despite the New York Times trying to disprove President Trump’s
argument, disclosing the identity backfired into a larger debate.
Baquet’s statement alludes to the whistleblower’s gender as the editor
refers to the complainant as “him” and “he.”
National Intelligence officials noted the publication has now
endangered the whistleblower’s life and reputation, and has set an
alarming precedent that would prevent potential whistleblowers to come
forward in the future.
The general public also objected across the board as the hashtag —
#CancelNYT — appeared trending on Twitter, kick-starting a movement for
everyone to cancel their subscriptions. Others called for Baquet to step
down and noted his New York Times continuously fails to meet basic
journalistic standards.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Insisting he wasn’t making a threat, Pakistan’s
leader denounced his Indian counterpart on Friday and warned that any
war between the nuclear rivals could “have consequences for the world.”
India’s prime minister took the opposite approach, skipping any mention
at the United Nations of his government’s crackdown in the disputed
region of Kashmir.
“When a nuclear-armed country fights to the
end, it will have consequences far beyond the borders. It will have
consequences for the world,” Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said in
a wide-ranging, at times apparently extemporaneous U.N. General
Assembly speech in which he called Modi’s actions in Kashmir “stupid”
and “cruel.”
“That’s not a threat,” he said of his war comments. “It’s a fair worry. Where are we headed?”
An
hour earlier, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the U.N.
meeting with a speech that focused primarily on his country’s
development, though he warned of the spreading specter of terrorism. He
never mentioned Kashmir directly.
India and
Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over the Himalayan region.
They’ve been locked in a worsening standoff since Aug. 5, when Modi
stripped limited autonomy from the portion of Kashmir that India
controls.
Modi’s Hindu nationalist
government imposed a sweeping military curfew and cut off residents in
the Muslim-majority region from virtually all communications. Khan said
there were 900,000 Indian forces in the region policing 8 million
Kashmiris.
“What’s he going to do when he lifts the
curfew? Does he think the people of Kashmir are quietly going to accept
the status quo?” Khan said. “What is going to happen when the curfew is
lifted will be a bloodbath.”
He added: “They
will be out in the streets. And what will the soldiers do? They will
shoot them. ... Kashmiris will be further radicalized.”
While
not mentioning Kashmir by name, Modi touched on terrorism: “We belong
to a country that has given the world not war, but Buddha’s message of
peace. And that is the reason why our voice against terrorism, to alert
the world about this evil, rings with seriousness and outrage.”
Modi has defended the Kashmir changes as freeing the territory from separatism. His supporters have welcomed the move.
Late
Friday evening, India took advantage of its right of response and sent a
diplomat — whose name was not immediately available — to briefly
condemn Khan’s words. She called them “hate speech” and “brinksmanship,
not statesmanship.”
“Rarely has the General
Assembly witnessed such misuse — abuse — of the opportunity to reflect,”
she said. She accused Khan of hypocrisy and said his words “reflect a
medieval mindset and not a 21st-century vision.”
Chinese
Foreign Minister Wang Yi said during his U.N. speech Friday afternoon
that “as a neighbor of both nations, China hopes to see the dispute
effectively managed and stability restored to the relationship between
the two sides.”
The difference in speech
styles between the Indian and Pakistani leaders was striking, with Modi
sticking closely to a prepared text and Khan appearing to speak off the
cuff and riff. While the U.N. distributed a transcript of Modi’s speech
moments after he finished talking, Khan’s had not been released hours
later.
Ahead of Modi’s and Khan’s
appearances at the U.N., residents of Indian-controlled Kashmir
expressed hope that their speeches would turn world attention to an
unprecedented lockdown in the region.
“We
really hope these leaders will do something to rid us of conflict and
suppression,” said Nazir Ahmed, a schoolteacher on the outskirts of
Srinagar, the main city in Indian-held Kashmir. “Conflict is like a
cancer hitting every aspect of life. And Kashmiris have been living
inside this cancer for decades now.”
As the
two leaders spoke Friday, large dueling protests supporting and opposing
India’s action in Kashmir were taking place across the street from U.N.
headquarters.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who met with both Modi and Khan this week, has urged the sides to resolve their differences.
India
and Pakistan’s conflict over Kashmir dates to the late 1940s, when they
won independence from Britain. The region is one of the most heavily
militarized in the world, patrolled by soldiers and paramilitary police.
Most Kashmiris resent the Indian troop presence.
Modi,
a pro-business Hindu nationalist, and his party won a decisive
re-election in May. The election was seen as a referendum on Modi, the
son of a poor tea seller whose economic reforms have had mixed results.
But he has enjoyed enduring popularity as a social underdog in India’s
highly stratified society.
Critics, however, say his Hindu-first platform risks exacerbating social tensions in the country of 1.3 billion people. Longtime Associated Press international correspondent Foster Klug is on
assignment at the U.N. General Assembly. Follow him on Twitter at
@APKlug. AP writers Shah Abbas and Edith M. Lederer contributed to this
story.
