Page 14 - Florida Sentinel 10-4-19

News Around The Nation
‘Hyde’s Days Are Numbered’: Reps. Pressley, Lee, And AOC Vow To Repeal Law That
Housing Regulator Settles Sexual Harassment Suit Tied To Mel Watt
The Federal Housing Fi- nance Agency has reached a settlement with an employee who accused former Director Mel Watt of sexual harass- ment, ending a 16-month saga that spawned three govern- ment investigations and an eight-hour congressional hearing.
The terms of the settlement were not made public, but FHFA special adviser Si- mone Grimes, who sued the agency for $1 million last year, said she was happy with the resolution of her claims against Watt.
The agreement comes a year to the day after Grimes testified before Congress on the same September morning that Christine Blasey Ford detailed her allegations against Supreme Court nomi- nee Brett Kavanaugh on the other side of the Capitol — a split-screen that marked an extraordinary cultural mo- ment as Washington reckoned with the #MeToo movement.
A lawyer for Grimes cast the settlement as a major win for the two-year-old move-
MEL WATT
ment.
“Since the #MeToo move-
ment started, this is the first victory against a Senate-con- firmed official,” said John Tye, an attorney at the legal nonprofit Whistleblower Aid. “We think this is an important marker that yes, Senate-con- firmed officials are account- able,” he added.
Watt’s five-year term as the director of the FHFA, the regulator responsible for over- seeing mortgage giants Fan- nie Mae and Freddie Mac, ended as scheduled in Janu- ary. He was not disciplined, despite an inspector general investigation concluding that he had misused his office.
Restricts Abortions For Low-Income Women
On the 43rd anniversary of the passage of the Hyde Amendment, a key piece of legislation that restricts abor- tion rights for Medicaid re- cipients, Representatives Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez (D-N.Y.), and Ayanna Pressley (D- Mass.) have announced the law’s days are numbered.
In a video shared exclu- sively with The Root, the con- gresswomen condemn the “egregious policy rider,” named for former Illinois Representative Henry Hyde, for restricting abor- tion access for the women who are most socially and economically vulnerable. They also draw attention to the legislative fight to repeal it.
“Our access to reproduc- tive justice and reproductive freedom should not be in- come-based,” Rep. Ocasio- Cortez says.
“Hyde’s days are num-
Representatives Ayanna Pressley, Barbara Lee and Alexan- dria Ocasio-Cortez.
bered. Tick-tock, y’all.” Pressley chimes in later.
The Hyde Amendment has received renewed scrutiny re- cently because it stands at the intersection of two key Dem- ocratic issues for 2020: re- productive justice and healthcare. By banning the use of federal money for abortions, the law effectively means Medicaid—upon which 1 in 5 Americans rely to fund their health and longterm care—can’t be used for abortion procedures un- less the mother’s life is in
danger, or the pregnancy re- sulted from rape or incest.
Rep. Lee, author of the EACH Woman Act (Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance), which seeks to repeal the Hyde Amendment, vividly recalls being “furious” at the amend- ment’s passage. At the time, she was a House staffer.
“I couldn’t believe it, be- cause I knew exactly what this would do, and that would be to deny low-income women and women of color access to the full range of re- productive rights, including abortion,” Lee says in the video.
“I remember the days of back-alley abortions very well. Before Roe v. Wade, I had to go to Mexico for an abortion. That was horrible. My own country would not allow [the procedure],” Lee recalls.
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