News & Commentary

March 8, 2017

Hannah Belitz

Hannah Belitz is a student at Harvard Law School.

Today is International Women’s Day, and many women around the country are participating in a strike that has been billed as “A Day Without a Woman.”  The action is intended to highlight the economic importance and impact of women on society, and it was organized following the Women’s March on January 21.  CNN reports that American women “aren’t the only ones taking to the streets.”  In Ireland, women and pro-choice activists are expected to rally across the country in a day of action dubbed “Strike 4 Repeal,”  aimed at repealing Ireland’s eighth amendment, which places the right to life of an unborn child on equal footing with the right to life of the mother.  In Australia, thousands rallied in Melbourne, demanding economic justice and reproductive rights for women around the world.  In the Philippines, women’s rights activists marched to the embassy in Manila, carrying signs calling for employment and discrimination reforms. Protests also took place in Rome and Moscow.

Politico weighs in on Trump’s revised executive order, noting that attention “may now shift to the refugee-related provisions” in the order.  The new order exempts valid visa holders and eliminates the provision that called for the U.S. to prioritize religious minorities (i.e. non-Muslims) in refugee admissions, but left in place a 120-day suspension of the refugee resettlement program (although Syrian refugees are now barred only temporarily, whereas before they were barred indefinitely).

At the Atlantic, Alana Semuels interviews David Weil, an Obama appointee who directed the Department of Labor’s wage-and-hour division, about the future of DOL under Trump.  One of Weil’s big worries concerns “the overlay of immigration policies on…the labor market.”  As Weil put it, “There’s a lot of writing on the wall that deeply, deeply concerns me.”

In international news, Argentina’s main labor union led a mass picket on Tuesday to protest job cuts and pay raises.  According to Reuters, the picket attracted tens of thousands of demonstrators and took place in the midst of a two-day teachers’ strike.  The protests also come at a bad time for Argentinian President Mauricio Macri: key congressional elections are slated to take place in October, and Macri needs his political coalition to do well “in order for him to keep pushing his economic reforms through Congress and position himself for re-election in 2019.”

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