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Campaign Week in Review: Clinton’s ‘Military Families Agenda’ Includes Calls for Family Leave, Child Care

As part of her plan, Clinton would move to “ensure that family leave policies meet the needs of our military families so that, for example, new parents, as practical and consistent with mission, can care for their families at a pivotal moment.”

“Military families, who serve alongside our service members, are vital to the strength of our military and the health of our nation,” reads Clinton’s plan. Shutterstock

This week on the campaign trail, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton released her agenda for helping military families, and anti-choice voters remain ambiguous about Donald Trump’s positions on abortion.

Clinton Releases Plan to Expand Family Leave and Access to Child Care for Military Families

Clinton released her “Military Families Agenda” on Tuesday, detailing the former secretary of state’s plan, if elected, to support military personnel and their families.

“Military families, who serve alongside our service members, are vital to the strength of our military and the health of our nation,” reads Clinton’s plan. “Ensuring our military families have the support they need to balance service to the nation with the demands of family life helps our nation attract and retain the most talented service members.”

As part of her plan, Clinton would move to “ensure that family leave policies meet the needs of our military families so that, for example, new parents, as practical and consistent with mission, can care for their families at a pivotal moment.”

Clinton also vowed to improve access to child care for both active duty and reserve service members “both on- and off-base, including options for drop-in services, part-time child care, and the provision of extended-hours care, especially at Child Development Centers, while streamlining the process for re-registering children following a permanent change of station (PCS).” ​She did not say exactly what these improvements would entail.

“Service members should be able to focus on critical jobs without worrying about the availability and cost of childcare,” continues Clinton’s proposal.

Paid family leave has been a critical issue for Democrats on the campaign trail, and both Clinton and rival Democratic candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) rolled out clarifications and additional details about their proposals on the issue in January. Though the two candidates support similar federal policies, they would pay for them in different ways, with Clinton proposing raising taxes on the wealthy and Sanders pushing a payroll tax on workers and their employers.

Clinton released a plan in early May to address the rising cost of child care in the United States, proposing that the federal government cap child-care costs at 10 percent of a family’s income, though the candidate’s campaign has yet to release details on how it would be implemented and funded.

Analysis conducted by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) in 2015 found that increasingly, “child care is out of reach for working families,” and in in 33 states and Washington, D.C., child-care costs were higher than the average cost of in-state tuition at public universities.

Anti-Choice Voters Unsure About Trump’s Stance on Abortion

Recent polling found that the majority of voters who describe themselves as “pro-life” aren’t sure about whether they agree with presumptive Republican nominee Trump’s position on abortion.

The poll, conducted by Gallup during the first week of May, found that 63 percent of anti-choice respondents were unable to say whether they agreed or disagreed with Trump’s stance on abortion. Almost equal shares of anti-choice respondents said they agreed or disagreed with the Republican candidate: 19 percent agreed while 18 percent disagreed.

The majority of overall respondents—56 percent—had “no opinion” on whether they agreed with Trump on abortion or not. Just 13 percent of those polled agreed.

Meanwhile, 38 percent of those polled who considered themselves “pro-choice” said they agreed with Clinton’s position on abortion while 47 percent had “no opinion.” Twenty-two percent of all people surveyed said they agreed with Clinton, while 32 percent disagreed and 46 percent had no opinion.

Gallup’s findings follow months of ambiguity from both Republicans and the anti-choice community about Trump’s position on reproductive rights. Though Trump has consistently pushed his opposition to abortion on the campaign trail, his past statements on “punishing” abortion patients should abortion become illegal, and willingness to change the GOP platform on abortion to include exceptions for cases of rape, incest, and life endangerment have landed him in hot water with some conservatives.

Anti-choice activists, however, are slowly starting to warm to the presumptive Republican nominee. Troy Newman, president of the radical group Operation Rescue, signaled he may be willing to back Trump in a blog post in May instructing the candidate to “earn” the anti-choice vote. Priests for Life and the Susan B. Anthony List officials both backed Trump in statements to the Washington Times, though they had previously spoken out against the Republican.

What Else We’re Reading

Eric Alterman explains in a piece for the Nation that the media’s willingness to provide a false equivalency to both sides of every issue “makes no sense when one side has little regard for the truth.”

“I don’t want to sound too much like a chauvinist, but when I come home and dinner’s not ready, I go through the roof,” said Trump in a 1994 interview with ABC News when discussing his romantic relationships. “I think that putting a wife to work is a very dangerous thing …. If you’re in business for yourself, I really think it’s a bad idea.”

Sanders spotlighted Native American communities while campaigning in California ahead of the state’s primary. “This campaign is listening to a people whose pain is rarely heard—that is the Native American people,” said Sanders at a Sunday campaign rally. “All of you know the Native American people were lied to. They were cheated. Treaties they negotiated were broken from before this country even became a country. And we owe the Native American people a debt of gratitude we can never fully repay.”

Fusion’s Jennifer Gerson Uffalussy questions why Trump has said so little about the the Zika virus.

CNN embedded in a chyron a fact-check on Trump’s false claims about nuclear weapons.

Ohio removed thousands of voters from the state’s voter registration rolls because those voters had not cast ballots since 2008, in a move that could reportedly help Republicans in the state. Though states do occasionally cleanse their rolls, “only a handful [of states] remove voters simply because they don’t vote on a regular basis,” reports Reuters.