Health Care Talks Continue as Republicans Face Questions on Obamacare Repeal

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With members of Congress home in their districts for the next two weeks, negotiations over a health care bill repealing and replacing Obamacare remain ongoing as Republicans continue working to gain consensus on a plan.

After the House GOP’s health care bill was pulled from the floor last month, Republicans left Washington, D.C., with little progress made on their campaign promises to repeal and replace Obamacare.

But conservative and centrist Republicans have continued to discuss the path forward for health care reform with fellow lawmakers, the White House, and even Democrats in hopes of brokering a deal.

According to USA Today, Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, R-N.C., is in “final negotiations” with Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-N.J., co-chairman of the centrist Tuesday Group, and members of House leadership of a deal they hope will win the support of a majority of House Republicans.

The plan to repeal and replace Obamacare would allow states to seek waivers to opt out of some of Obamacare’s regulations, but keep in place a provision that requires insurers to cover customers with pre-existing conditions.

“What we’re trying to do is work through issues that are important to all of us but make sure that pre-existing conditions are taken care of,” Meadows told USA Today.

Meadows and fellow members of the House Freedom Caucus have been urging Republican leaders to put forth legislation that tackles the rising cost of health insurance premiums.

Conservatives felt the original health care bill failed to do that, and in the face of considerable opposition from Freedom Caucus members and centrist Republicans, House Speaker Paul Ryan pulled the bill late last month.

Since then, Meadows has been in frequent contact with his fellow Republicans, GOP leaders, and Vice President Mike Pence in hopes of brokering a deal that repeals some of Obamacare’s insurance regulations—which conservatives say drove up the cost of premiums—but also protects sick patients.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a Freedom Caucus leader, said the group has always been concerned with making sure people with pre-existing conditions are protected.

The conservative caucus backed a plan from Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., that would require insurers to cover patients with pre-existing conditions so long as they maintained continuous coverage.

“We just want to reward responsible behavior,” Jordan told The Daily Signal.

The Ohio Republican said the roughly 30-member Freedom Caucus supports Meadows and his efforts to find consensus on a health care bill, and Jordan said the group’s chairman has briefed his fellow conservatives. But Jordan also stressed that they want to see the proposal’s language first before agreeing to a deal.

“[Meadows] has been working hard to try to figure out a way we can actually bring down premium costs for American families,” Jordan said. “In order to do that, there are certain Obamacare regulations that have to be repealed. That’s what we’ve been focused on and we’ll continue to focus on, and we’re trying to get to an agreement there.”

While Meadows has continued talks with fellow Republicans and the White House, Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., co-chair of the Tuesday Group, has been speaking with House Democrats in an attempt to pursue bipartisan health care reform, he told Axios.

“If we attempt to muscle this thing through on a partisan basis, I feel we’ll have a similar result,” Dent said, referencing Obamacare.

Working with Democrats, he said, would require Republicans to scrap the current health care bill and start over.

Joining Dent and Meadows, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican, is also getting in on the health care talks.

According to Axios, the Republican has talked to both Dent and Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, about reforming the health care system.

Members of Congress returned to their districts Friday for a two-week recess, and Republicans are already fielding questions from constituents about the future of the Affordable Care Act and their plans to replace the law.

Though lawmakers are scheduled to remain home until the end of April—they’ll return to Washington with four days to pass a stopgap spending bill—Meadows isn’t ruling out an early return.

“It’s our encouragement to have a vote as soon as we possibly can, even perhaps before we return back to D.C. in 13 days,” Meadows told a North Carolina radio station Tuesday.

The Freedom Caucus chairman also said a deal is “very close”—a statement the White House agreed with.

“We clearly are getting closer, more votes are moving in our direction, and these ideas are very helpful as we are getting closer,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said during a press briefing Tuesday. “We feel buoyed by the direction this is going.”

Before members left Washington, Republicans unveiled a late change to the health care bill, called the American Health Care Act, after President Donald Trump urged them to make some progress on the proposal.

On Thursday, the House Rules Committee added an amendment sponsored by Reps. Gary Palmer, R-Ala., and David Schweikert, R-Ariz.—both Freedom Caucus members—to the legislation that created an invisible risk-sharing program, which they say is intended to lower premiums and protect sick customers.

The amendment was created to address the concerns of both centrist Republicans and conservatives, who both took issue with the original health care bill and backed the change. (For more from the author of “Health Care Talks Continue as Republicans Face Questions on Obamacare Repeal” please click HERE)

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Trendy to Be Transgender: Child Psychologist Reveals Something Terrifying about Many Kids

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An Australian child psychologist said that to some children, being transgender “is the new black.”

Many of the children Stephen Stathis sees in his gender clinic are actually confused about their sexuality. They could also be desiring to stand out, Heatstreet reported Monday.

Stathis runs his gender clinic at the Lady of Cilento Children’s Hospital in the state of Queensland, Australia. It began after Stathis received so many referrals for gender issues that his appointment waiting list jumped to two years.

Gender “Variant,” Not Dysphoric

Stathis has diagnosed children as genuinely transgender — including a 3-year-old boy (now 9) who identifies as a girl. But he says not all his patients are actually gender dysphoric.

In a recent interview with Brisbane Times, Stathis said many children are “getting their sexual identity mixed up with their gender identity.” Others are “gender variant.” This means they enjoy activities associated with the other gender, but don’t identify with it.

This is especially common among boys, he said. Girls who enjoy masculine toys or activities are usually considered tomboys. Boys “put on a pink tutu and you’re off to see the doctor.”

Some girls who had been sexually abused told Stathis they wanted to transition. They thought they wouldn’t have been abused as a boy.

“It became really, really complex,” he admitted.

Social Contagion

In 2016 the American College of Pediatricians released a study of gender dysphoria in children. It confirmed Stathis’ experiences.

According to the study, many children “self-diagnose” as transgender after social media “binges.” “This suggests that social contagion may be at play,” the study says. “In many schools and communities, there are entire peer groups ‘coming out’ as trans at the same time.”

The study further suggests that factors like parental abuse and social reinforcement influence a child mentally. These factors can “contribute to the development and/or persistence” of gender dysphoria.

After Puberty, Nevermind

Stathis supports giving puberty blockers to children entering puberty. (Blockers stall the development of sex-specific characteristics.) He says they help children who identify as transgender avoid depression.

He’s seen many children attempt to cut off body parts or avoid regular hygiene because they are ashamed of their genitalia, he told the Times. But he’s also seen children who aren’t really “gender dysphoric” obtain hormones illegally.

“There may be other issues going on and that needs to be worked through,” he said.

Stathis requires prepubescent children to live transgender for six months before taking puberty blockers. At 16 they can choose to start cross-sex hormone treatment. But most of them don’t.

“About 75 per cent of boys and girls who present with gender variant interests and behaviours” don’t follow through, Stathis told the Times. (The American College of Pediatricians says 80-95 percent of gender-disphoric children without “social affirmation” come out of puberty fine.) He continued:

You might get a six or seven-year-old girl wanting to dress as a boy. She may even say she wants to be a boy. When she hits puberty, she says ‘no, I’m just a girl who likes to do boy things’.

A 2008 study concluded the same thing. It noted that “most children with gender dysphoria will not remain gender dysphoric after puberty.”

Dangers of Blockers and Cross-Sex Hormones

The full effects of puberty blockers are unknown, but they are generally considered safe. Even so, the American College of Pediatricians warns against their use. The study claims that over 40 gender clinics in the U.S. support the use of blockers and even cross-sex hormones. Cross-sex hormones present a myriad of known health risks. They can also irreversibly damage one’s fertility.

PBS reported in 2015 that some children in the U.S. started cross-sex hormone treatment as young as 13-years-old. Official guidelines suggest 16 as the minimum age. This is despite the fact that there is no “single large, randomized, controlled study that documents the alleged benefits and potential harms,” the American College of Pediatricians finds.

“The should give everyone pause,” the study says. (For more from the author of “Trendy to Be Transgender: Child Psychologist Reveals Something Terrifying about Many Kids” please click HERE)

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Tillerson Issues Tough Ultimatum to Putin

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U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson issued a ultimatum to Russian President Vladimir Putin over his support of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. He made the comments Tuesday to reporters after a meeting with diplomats in Italy.

Tillerson pressured the G-7 countries to join together against Assad’s regime, and demanded that Putin choose between his ally in Syria accused of war crimes and Hezbollah, or join his detractors, led by the United States. He also made it clear that the United States placed at least part of the blame on Russia for the chemical attack.

“Last week Bashar al-Assad’s regime killed even more of its own people using chemical weapons,” he explained. “Our missile strike in response to his repeated use of banned weapons was necessary as a matter of U.S. national security interests. We do not want the regime’s uncontrolled stockpile of chemical weapons to fall into the hands of ISIS, or other terrorist groups who could and want to attack the United States and our allies” . . .

“It is also clear that Russia has failed to uphold the agreements they had entered into under multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions,” Tillerson added. “These agreements stipulated Russia as the guarantor of a Syria free of chemical weapons, that they would also locate and destroy all such armaments in Syria. Stockpiles and continued use demonstrate that Russia has failed in its responsibility to deliver on its 2013 commitment. It is unclear whether Russia failed to take this obligation seriously, or Russia has been incompetent.” (Read more from “Tillerson Issues Tough Ultimatum to Putin” HERE)

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United Airlines Admits Controversial Flight Wasn’t Actually Overbooked

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The United Airlines flight from which a passenger was forcibly removed to make room for airline employees wasn’t actually overbooked, a company spokesman told The Daily Caller, contradicting previous reports.

Kentucky doctor David Dao was dragged from the plane after he refused to give up his seat to make room for airline employees. The spokesperson said that “a United Express crew needed to get to Louisville to operate a flight downline.”

(Read more from “United Airlines Admits Controversial Flight Wasn’t Actually Overbooked” HERE)

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The Real Reason the Media Still Believe Susan Rice’s Lies

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There is one undeniable truth within the D.C. press corps. If an ally of the Left says something, it is believed until proven false; deference which is decidedly not given to conservatives or even more liberal members of the GOP. The latest case in point is Susan Rice, the former Obama national security adviser and ambassador to the United Nations. Rice, a habitual liar, is believed time and time again by the media, so much so that it is embarrassing. Especially in light of her whopper regarding Syrian chemical weapons.

When Bloomberg’s Eli Lake dropped the bombshell that it was Susan Rice who had the names of Trump associates unmasked in foreign communications intercepts, the media fell in line to protect Rice and former President Barack Obama. CNN led the charge, using another former Obama administration political appointee, Jim Sciutto — who is now a CNN employee — to forcefully downplay the allegations. CNN’s Don Lemon told his audience that he wouldn’t “aid and abet” those trying to blame Rice.

Of course, Lemon and the rest of the MSM have no problem with aiding and abetting Rice, or any other leftist if it pushes their agenda.

The Daily Caller News Foundation followed up on the story with a claim that Rice ordered the preparation of “detailed spreadsheets” regarding Trump associates’ foreign communications. The MSM downplayed those allegations as well. Andrea Mitchell, stenographer to the Clintons and Obama, had Rice on MSNBC to profess her innocence.

There would be no problem with the mainstream media doing this if, in fact, Rice had proven herself in the past to be trustworthy.

Time and time again, however, she hasn’t.

After the terrorist assault on the Benghazi consulate on September 11, 2012, Rice went on the weekend news shows to blame the assault on a reportedly anti-Islamic video. The producer of that video was later arrested by the Obama administration. It has since been proven that it was never a video that was the reason for the attack.

Rice lied.

Then there was the fact that Rice said earlier this year that she knew nothing about the unmasking of names of Trump associates. A claim she contradicted in the interview with Mitchell. To his credit, CNN’s John King played both clips and said it was troubling, and asked “will the real Susan Rice please stand up?” It was a rare moment of truth seeking, regarding Rice, on the network.

Paul Waldman, writing in the Washington Post, said the Rice affair was a “fake scandal” that was “ginned up by right-wing media.” Yes, that bastion of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy … Bloomberg News, allied with Trump.

This week, Waldman’s colleague Glenn Kessler somewhat begrudgingly wrote about another Rice whopper. Her statement in January that “Obama got Syria to ‘verifiably give up its chemical weapons stockpile.’” After Syria launched a chemical weapons attack this week, that notion was proven to be verifiably false.

Here’s what Rice said to NPR on January 16, 2017.

“We were able to find a solution that didn’t necessitate the use of force that actually removed the chemical weapons that were known from Syria, in a way that the use of force would never have accomplished. Our aim in contemplating the use of force following the use of chemical weapons in August of 2013 was not to intervene in the civil war, not to become involved in the combat between Assad and the opposition, but to deal with the threat of chemical weapons by virtue of the diplomacy that we did with Russia and with the Security Council. We were able to get the Syrian government to voluntarily and verifiably give up its chemical weapons stockpile.”

— Susan E. Rice, then-national security adviser, in an interview with NPR’s “Morning Edition,” Jan. 16, 2017

Kessler gave Rice the Post’s worst rating for those comments: four Pinocchios. That rating denotes “a whopper” according to the Post.

Given Rice’s long tortuous history with the truth, it is perplexing to understand why the media would continue to believe her. Shouldn’t the default position of anyone in the press dealing with Rice be that she is lying?

If the media operated with that level of skepticism regarding Rice and other members of the Obama administration, it would become harder to carry their water. That is why they don’t. (For more from the author of ” (For more from the author of “The Real Reason the Media Still Believe Susan Rice’s Lies” please click HERE)

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Idaho’s ‘Free Market’ Education Program Is Just Another Form of Government Control

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A new program the Idaho Department of Education is calling “Advanced Opportunities” is being hailed as a “revolutionary” and “free-market” approach to improve student outcomes. The program works by giving public school students a $1,500 scholarship for every year skipped and graduated early, which can then be used for post-secondary education in the state.

The term “free market” appears to have slowly morphed into code for the insidious meddling of behavioral economics, invariably carried out with the power of government. In fact, there’s nothing market-based about subsidies, wealth redistribution, and a centrally directed incentive structure that treats students as pawns in a master plan rather than as capable, self-actualizing individuals.

In fairness, I can see where the program’s proponents are coming from. Students who are too bright to be stuck in high school for four years are allowed to leave early, and use the taxpayer resources they would have consumed for more productive endeavors. Sounds great. But, in fact, this reeks of social engineering.

In a free market, people pay for services they wish to consume. You pay for school, because you want what it has to offer, including classes and a diploma. In Idaho’s perverse model, it is the schools that effectively pay students for obtaining a diploma, which is precisely backward from how business is supposed to work.

If families were receiving back the same amount they pay in taxes for schools, that would be one thing, but in most cases not only will they receive significantly more (also known as a government subsidy), it is the state that gets to choose how those funds are spent. This is the illusion of choice — not actually allowing students to self-direct their learning.

Furthermore, the Idaho program assumes that early graduation is the best thing for students. Government always presumes to know what students need. And while some would undoubtedly flourish from graduating early, others would not. Yet the incentives are purposely lined up to encourage one behavior over the other, without any regard for individual variation.

When you establish these centralized incentives, it can push students in the wrong direction, or make them feel forced into a path they wouldn’t have chosen.

There’s a simpler and better way to reform education without all this technocratic tinkering. If you want to give students more options, repeal mandatory education laws and let them choose. If you want people to have more resources for education, stop taxing them for schools they don’t want to go to.

The problem with education policy is that it has all become about the details, while failing to examine fundamental philosophies of learning and childhood. It would be hard to think of a better example of missing the forest for the trees.

Policy becomes an endless debate about which forms of control work best, with nobody stopping to ask whether we need to control people at all. Freedom is never on the table.

You can tinker with funding and incentive structures forever, arguing over the minutia of whether vouchers are preferable to charter schools. But until we start to examine seriously the basic assumptions of the government-run education system, we are unlikely to make any real progress. (For more from the author of “Idaho’s ‘Free Market’ Education Program Is Just Another Form of Government Control” please click HERE)

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Anonymous US Official: Russia Knew Syrian Chemical Attack Was Coming

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The United States has concluded that Russia knew ahead of time that Syria would launch a chemical weapons attack last week, a senior U.S. official says.

The official offered circumstantial elements to back up his claim, but no concrete proof. And others in the Trump administration cautioned that final American determination had been made that Russia had advance knowledge of the attack, which killed more than 80 people and prompted retaliatory U.S. cruise missile strikes.

The senior official said Monday that a drone operated by Russians was flying over a hospital as victims of the attack were rushing to get treatment. Hours after the drone left, a Russian-made fighter jet bombed the hospital in what American officials believe was an attempt to cover up the usage of chemical weapons. (Read more from “Anonymous US Official: Russia Knew Syrian Chemical Attack Was Coming” HERE)

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Mattis: Defeating Islamic State Still Top US Priority in Syria

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After attacking a Syrian air base in response to President Bashar Assad’s alleged battlefield use of chemical weapons, the Pentagon intends to refocus on defeating the Islamic State group without getting more deeply involved in the country’s civil war, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Tuesday.

“The military campaign is focused on … breaking ISIS, defeating ISIS in Syria,” Mattis told reporters in his first Pentagon news conference as President Donald Trump’s defense chief. Last week’s cruise missile assault on a Syrian air base “was a separate issue” meant to demonstrate that the Trump administration will not tolerate what it believes are violations of international conventions against the use of chemical weapons, Mattis said.

The Syrian government has denied that it used chemical arms in an attack on a Syrian town last week. (Read more from “Mattis: Defeating Islamic State Still Top US Priority in Syria” HERE)

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Red Crayons That Identify as Blue: The Latest in the Radical Indoctrination of Public Schools

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Sixth graders quizzed on what they’d do if asked to go to a gay bar, high schoolers forced to write the Islamic creed “There is no god but Allah, and Mohammad is his prophet,” first graders forced to read about a red crayon that self-identifies as blue. The push of radical ideology onto our public school children continues. These latest examples shock, but don’t surprise.

The Invitation to a Gay Bar

Students at a Florida middle school recently brought home a disturbing survey, reported The Blaze. A teacher asked her students to answer questions about how they would feel in different situations. The only problem? They were questions designed to teach the children liberal morals.

One question asked how the sixth-graders would feel if they were asked to a gay bar. Or if they went to a gay bar and someone of the same sex asked them to dance, if they saw their brother kiss a boy, or if two women down the hall (in a dorm) were lesbians.

Others were designed to detect racism. Students were asked how they would feel if they lived in a black neighborhood. Or how they would feel if they saw black men approaching them on the street.

Even the kids knew something was wrong. One sixth-grader named Tori told WFTS-TV that she felt the questions on the survey were “very inappropriate.” “I thought some of them were racist, I thought some of them were sexist, I thought it was completely intolerable.”

At some point, the teacher realized what she did. When kids asked if they could take the survey home to mom or dad, the teacher seemed to panic, said Tori. “She was going, ‘No, don’t show your mom, don’t take that home. I’m taking it back up.’” The survey came from a book titled Exploring White Privilege by Robert P. Amico.

This is not an isolated event. Schools nationwide thrust the liberal agenda on their students. Here are three more examples.

Islamic Creeds, Boys in Dresses

At least one lawsuit arose over a Maryland high school’s telling students to write out the Islamic creed, the Shahada, and recite the Five Pillars of Islam. According to The Free Beacon, students “were subjected to disparaging teachings about Christianity.” They were taught Christianity for one day but Islam for two weeks. So not only were the Christian students’ religion demeaned, but they had to memorize another religion’s tenets in opposition to their own.

Last year the Obama administration threatened to pull funding from schools that did not let transgendered students use the bathroom they wanted. More than one school buckled under the pressure.

A first-grade book called Jacob’s New Dress was in every first-grade classroom in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina. After outrage from state legislators, the schools pulled the book. They replaced it with Red: A Crayon’s Story about a red crayon that self-identifies as blue. The Charlotte Observer reported that the school board is getting ready to add sexual orientation and “Gender identity/Expression” to its multiculturalism policy.

The Need for Vigilance

The drive to force radical ideas onto our children is alive and well in the classroom. Even at the first-grade level. “The purpose of our elementary schools is to teach writing, reading and arithmetic, not to encourage boys to wear dresses,” said Tami Fitzgerald of the North Carolina Values Coalition.

Thomas More Law Center’s President Richard Thompson urged parents to “be ever vigilant to the Islamic indoctrination of their children under the guise of teaching history and multiculturalism. This is happening in public schools across the country.”

Conservative and Christian parents must watch like hawks the education their children receive, especially if they go to public school. Too many schools in too many places want to feed our children information hostile to conservative or Christian values. (For more from the author of “Red Crayons That Identify as Blue: The Latest in the Radical Indoctrination of Public Schools” please click HERE)

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Religious Liberty Increasingly Under Threat in India Amid Surge of Hindu Nationalism

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Last week on April 5, a mob of Hindu vigilantes beat a man to death for transporting cattle in northern India.

Cows are sacred in the Hindu religion, but India is a multicultural country with many non-Hindu citizens.

This incident, along with the recent appointment of Hindu nationalist priest Yogi Adityanath as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh on March 19, raises concerns about the state of religious liberty in Uttar Pradesh.

Uttar Pradesh, home to approximately 220 million people, is the most populous state in India. It is also one of the poorest states in India, with three out of 10 people living in poverty within the state.

While Uttar Pradesh is predominantly Hindu, about one-fifth of its population is Muslim, and it also has smaller populations of Christians and other religious minorities. Due to its population and diversity, Uttar Pradesh is viewed as one of the most important electoral states in India.

Since his recent appointment, Adityanath has largely followed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s platform of targeting corruption and thus far avoided anti-Muslim or inflammatory rhetoric. However, Adityanath’s Hindu nationalist tendencies and previous statements regarding religious minorities is a cause for concern.

In one of his more famous comments, Adityanath accused Muslim men of conducting a “Love Jihad” campaign by converting Hindu women to Islam.

In response, he has called for Hindus to convert 100 Muslim women to Hinduism for every one Hindu woman converted. Even more concerning, he also said for every Hindu man killed, 100 Muslim men should be killed.

These comments become even more troubling when coupled with Adityanath’s arrest record. According to his election affidavit, he admitted to charges of attempted murder and defiling a religious site, in addition to several other charges relating to religious activity.

He also advocated building a Hindu temple on the site of an old, 16th-century mosque. This would be particularly inflammatory because the mosque was torn down in 1992 by Hindu nationalists and the ensuing riots killed about 2,000 people.

Since his appointment, Adityanath has cracked down on the slaughter and transport of cattle within Uttar Pradesh, demonstrating a willingness to act on his rhetoric.

Cows are a key source of meat for the Muslim and non-Hindu residents of Uttar Pradesh, and the crackdown has inflamed tensions between the Hindu and Muslim populations. The recent attack on the man transporting cattle is a perfect example of the danger this tension poses.

India is constitutionally a secular country, with religious liberty enshrined as a main tenet. This is an important consideration for a pluralistic society with a diverse population.

The international community should continue to closely monitor the state of religious freedom in India. Adityanath’s appointment comes amid a deterioration in religious liberty in India.

But it is in Modi’s interest to take a stand for religious freedom for people of all faiths. This shouldn’t be an afterthought. Rather, it should be a core tenet of Modi’s pro-freedom and pro-economic liberalization agenda. (For more from the author of “Religious Liberty Increasingly Under Threat in India Amid Surge of Hindu Nationalism” please click HERE)

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