Statement by NOW President Toni Van Pelt:

Either Jim Jordan is lying—or the wrestlers he was paid to mentor and care for are.

The Ohio Congressman denies knowing about a team doctor groping student wrestlers when Jordan was the assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University between 1986 and 1995. The university says that former athletes from 14 OSU sports have reported abuse. But when former OSU wrestlers came forward to say that they saw Jordan witness or acknowledge the doctor’s behavior, Rep. Jordan attacked the whistleblowers and denied everything.

“Conversations in the locker room are a lot different than people coming up and talking about abuse,” Jordan said. “No one ever reported any abuse to me.”

In other words, because no one had a conversation with him in which the phrase “I was abused” was uttered, no wrongdoing occurred. As the Cleveland Plain-Dealer said in an editorial,

“With all due respect to Jordan, there’s a slang word Ohioans use to describe such fine-line distinctions: ‘Weaseling.’ “

Jim Jordan wants to make a run to succeed Paul Ryan as Speaker, but his colleagues should know by now that they can’t trust a word he says. Do they even care?

We don’t believe Jim Jordan. If he didn’t know about the abuse going on under his watch he should have known. It was his job to protect his students, and he failed miserably.

Contact

Brittany T. Oliver, comms@now.org

Statement by NOW President Toni Van Pelt

By naming Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, Donald Trump has set the table for a vote on repealing Roe v. Wade. That was the promise Trump made during the presidential campaign. In his final debate with Hillary Clinton, Trump said the Supreme Court would “automatically” overturn Roe once he became president, “because I am putting pro-life judges on the Court.”

Trump outsourced his Supreme Court nomination screening process to the radical Federalist Society, a group started during the Reagan era to move U.S. courts to the right. Its leader, right-wing activist Leonard Leo, has called abortion “a threat to human life,” and conservative activist Ed Whelan has said, “No one has been more dedicated to the enterprise of building a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe v. Wade than the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo.”

Now, Leo, the Federalist Society and the network of anti-abortion extremists, billionaires and committees have gotten their wish. After pushing Neil Gorsuch to the top of the pile last year, they are gearing up for a repeat performance now.

We can’t let them succeed. Mitch McConnell stole a Supreme Court seat by refusing to consider Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, and now Senate Republicans are at it again. We are on the threshold of the most consequential Congressional elections in modern times. Voters are going to the polls to express their views on who should be setting the agenda in Congress and whose values should be reflected on the bench. We call on the Senate to refuse to take up this nomination until the people they represent have voiced their opinions.

Contact

Dee Donavanik
press@now.org
(951) 547-1241