Melinda Gates On How Birth Control Made Indonesia World's 8th Largest Economy

Melinda Gates return recently from Indonesia -- a trip planned long before President Donald Trump reinstituted the Mexico City rule, aka the global gag rule, in a significantly harsher updated version. 

Melinda and Bill Gates have one of the world's best brain banks when the topic is transforming economies -- not only with lip service words about empowering women -- but also with giving them access to contraceptives. As Melinda explains in her USA op ed, contraceptives are one of the greatest anti-poverty innovations the world has ever seen. 

Fifty years ago, fewer than one in 10 Indonesian women used birth control. The average Indonesian woman had five or six children and the entire family lived in extreme poverty. 

When offered support from donor nations like the US, Indonesia implemented a hugely successful family planning initiative in give decades. Today most women in Indonesia have two or three children, who stay longer in school. More women work outside the home and not only did family incomes rise, but so did the entire country's. 

Today, Indonesia has the globe's eight largest economies and family planning is a key reason. But now access to contraception is perilous across the world, because of proposed cuts by the Trump administration to family planning. 

Read AOC's Women News in-depth from (a furious) Melinda Gates about the impact of political budget cuts from the Trump administration. We MUST view these cuts through a dual lens. Yes, they are part of a massive attempt to cut everything from arts funding in America to school lunches. But the cuts to women's health are also politically motivated to curb women's empowerment and advancement worldwide.

The majority of members of the Trump administration say they believe in women's empowerment while taking every move to cut of funding to clinics who even utter the word 'abortion' not even offer them in their facilities. By greatly expanding the language in the Mexico City rule, the Trump administration is cutting off any access to contraceptives at the same time. His ultra right-wing administration has advanced this agenda around women for years. 

Does Kellyanne Conway Really Live In An Alternate Universe?

Writing for The Atlantic, Molly Ball takes a more serious look at Kellyanne Conway, giving her major credit for articulating the anti-immigration policy that came to dominate the Donald Trump primary and presidential campaigns. 

In 2014, Conway was part of a group of Republicans that produced a poll for FWD.us, an immigration-advocacy nonprofit founded by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. The poll showed that immigration reform was a political necessity for the GOP—a finding that contradicted the line Conway had been pushing since the 1990s. Two months later, Blueberry -- her Secret Service code name -- produced a different poll, demonstrating that “enforcement of current law” and “encouraging illegal immigrants to return to their home countries” could be a winning message. Conway's new findings were rebuffed by Republican donors. But Steve Bannon's far-right wing Breitbart.com called it a "blockbuster".

Savannah Cunningham, In Center Of Marine Online Misogyny Scandal, Starts Basic Training In April

Controversy has swirled around Savannah Cunningham, who has long aspired to become a Marine, for months. Savannah was the subject of lewd messages from men as she also learned that an all-male group of Marines was circulating a nude video of her on Facebook, thanks to a former boyfriend. 

"It was such a creepy invasion of privacy," Savannah told theNew York Times. "They were actively seeking nude images of me, anything they could get their hands on."

Most likely a majority of women would turn and run when confronted with this raw misogyny in Marine culture. Not Savannah. Cunningham ships off to basic training the first week of April. Checking on her Twitter feed, on March 4 -- just as news of the Marine scandal was breaking, Sav Cunningham posted: "Very happy, excited, & humbled right now. I am the top female poolee in all of Arizona. "

“Someone needs to stand up and say this does not represent the values of the Marine Corps,” Savannah said. “If not me, then who? Yes, for a long time it was a boys’ club, but there needs to be progress.” Read on In-Depth.