the health care needs. upton said, even as he added this amount to the high risisk pools, i'm not sure this is going to be enough. i'm not sure this is going to work. this beat ofhink the process, the commitment of the republicans to keep their promise to their political base was what has been driving t this push on repeal and will continue to drive their ideology around health care. it always has. that will continue. i frankly think they are not that preoccupied with facts. from collins is a frightening quote. what a decision to have made that impacts so many people in his state, in his district and acroross the country without e n reading the bill. the bill is not even that long. it makes me wonder, did you read the amendments? theink the whole process --

bill is terrible, the process has been terrible and disturbing. it does not bode well for what is going to happen moving forward in the next step of the process. i want to bring monica simpson into the conversation, the executive director of sister colora women of reproductive health collective. what has happened, the penalizing, cutting off funds to planned parenthood if they provovide abortion -- which is what they do. how will this affect people? >> it greatly affects peoeople, especially the folks we work with every single day, the most marginalized communities, low income communities. it impacts her access to health care. that is what really troubles me about the moves of this administration. it does not seem like they are censoring the need of the most marginalized communities. they're not thinking about the lives of these communities. thinking about how this will affect planned parenthood in defining those services, yes,

provide abortion access because abortion access is part of overall health care. for women. also noteportant to is this also prevents screenings, very important screenings around cancer. it provides maternity care. it provides an opportunity for people to have sti/std screenings. to have an administration move in this way that limits and prohibits that is really scary. really scary for us on the ground. amy: what has the situation been for georgia? georgia's governor nathan deal did not vote for medicaid expansion. >> no, he didn't. we saw this across the region. southern activist were fighting for all across the region, medicaid expansion. hundreds o of thousands of folks still fill in the gap, not being able to have access to the

services that they need for themselves and their families. when we already were dealing with the large gaps, to now put this on top of that really continues to send the message that this admininistration does not care about the lives of the american peoeople. amy: monica simpson, i want to ask about something else that in washington.ay president trump signed an executive order to allow religious organinizations, whate described d as greater freedom n political speech. your thoughts about this measure and what it actually means? it does not mean it goes i into force.e. it would need congress to pass it. >> but this is also troubling. if we look at the narrative behind what this executive order means, he is trying to move not religious people -- he is talking about a certain type of religious person. he is talking about the fundamentalist, those who are trying to have political power to move a certain agenda. for those types of measures, we see things that happened like in

the state of north carolina with transgender bathroom bills. we see those types of legislations whenever you move this type of religious liberty forward that he is calling. what we know historicically is religious -- religion has been used to move some really harsh things forward. we can go back to the beginning --re slavery was definitely we talked about how they use religion to justify slavery. if we continue to take that down the line, like, we can see things like that start to creep in a again. be in't want people to jeopardy. we don't want p people to live n fear. moving those types of things for, executive orders, that is the message he is sending. amy: and it also means that preachers, ministers, religious people could endorsese candidats from t the pulpit. >> absbsolutely. why we have separation of church and state. but that is not what happens whenever you move these types of

things forward. and if i want to thank you, monica simpson, executive director of sister song, a women of color reproductive health collective here in atlanta. and margarida jorge, co-executive director of healthcare for america now & healthcare for america now education fund and washington, d.c. stay with us. ♪ [music break]

amy: this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and

peace report. i'm amy goodman. in france, voters head to the polls sunday in a presidential election that pits former investment banker emmanuel macron against far-right politician marine le pen. macron on thursday won the support of former u.s. president barack obama, who urged french voters to reject the politics of fear. le pen, who has campaigned on an openly xenophobic and racist platform, faced protests thursday as she campaigned at a trucking company in brittany. protesters shouted, "out you fascists!" and threw eggs at le pen hitting her once in the , head. le pen has called for france to crack down on immigration and leave the european union. for more, we go to paris where we're joined by yasser louati, french human rights and civil liberties activist and researcher. it is good to have you with us. can you talk about the significance of this runoff election this weekend? actually, theon past 35 years, in 2002 there was

a huge demonstration against the arrival of marine le pen's father in the second round of the election. that is what you do not see that many mass movements. that is not happening out of a coincidence. is a point of convergence from the far left to the far right. they can disagree on anything, but when it comes to stigmatizing -- everyone agrees. theher example is that ththree openly religious candidates, altogether, 46% of the vote during the first round. regardless of whether marine le pen makes it to the presidential palace, her ideas already won. the signal was sent last summer

which actually [indiscernible] they spoke about identity politics. they were very vague. marine le pen talked about shutting borders without saying how she would prevent a recession. said he wants to launch a nation of start up companies. that will decimate the working class. why? they will be dependent on [indiscernible] huge corporations online without much benefits. , yasser wrote a piece louati.

hitler or uber. explain. >> donald trump and hillary clinton [indiscernible] they have to choose between an openly racist candidate like marine le pen or white supremacy . on the other hand, you have emmanuel macron who sends a signal of, yes, it is going to be about empowering people through entrepreneueurship will stop the problem is his version countryty is you run a like you run a company. the problem is nothing in his theram actually goes aside working class.

they tap you on the shoulder and say [indiscernible] the lesser of two evils. urgency is to block marine le pen from becoming president, but the next the upcoming parliamentarian elections. macron will depend on parliament. [indiscernible]

activists with greenpeace unveiled a giant banner on the awful tower -- eiffel tower. >> today's action is the banner deployed behind me with the .alues of our national motto yet it was to remind people the importance of these values two days before the presidential election and to say that today the biggest threat of the zeiss is the potential election of marine le pen and the national front. thatamong the issues marine le pen has raised, the far right xenophobic candidate, was that the french did not round up jews in paris and put them in the stadium.. yasser louati, you are an arab-french human rights activist. the response to this, the denial of a well known fact about the holocaust?

that, it first heard was beyond words. the french police we have today ones who sent the the kids to the death camps. higighnment that allows state officials to carry these policies. after the collaborationist government who round up the jews , after that government fell, they continued with their careers within the french apparatus. what marine le pen is trying to do is whitewash the crimes of france. [indiscernible]

that was also a strong signal to [indiscernible] she had to make that declaration in order to ensure her ideological base saying france was not guilty. france was guilty of collaborating with the nazis and sending its own jewish kids to the death camps. there's no question about it. now marine le pen is try to minimize the application. the same people who tell you colonization brought some goods into africa. no, it did not. as long as you have a domination of one group over another and of legitimize the killing innocents because they happen to be from a different make

background or religion, that makes you a criminal. one last point, marine le pen herself, her party is the direct inheritance of a direct legacy from the people who run the jews in the 1940's. amy: yasser louati, thank you for being with us. we will continue to follow what happens over the weekend. french human rights and civil liberties activist and researcher speaking to us from paris. and we come back, we will speak with the head of the naacp about what has happened in louisiana with the killing of alton sterling and the justice department closing the case without an dotting the police officers. also, a teenager killed in dallas. we will get the latest and we will speak with carol anderson who just won a major literary award. she is a professor at emory university. her book is called "white rage." stay with us.

♪ [music break]

amy: this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. the south, in atlanta, georgia. we're going to talk about what happened in baton rouge, louisiana. the family of alton sterling, an african-american father of five who was gunned down by police in 2016, called wednesday for the state's attorney general to bring criminal charges against his killers. the call came after the justice department declined to bring federal charges against officers blane salamoni and howie lake. sterling family lawyer chris stewart said the u.s. attorney's office provided new details about the killing, including how officer salamoni shot sterling six times. >> we learned some new things today. we learned that officer salamoni walked up to out in sterling and put a gun to his head and said "i will kill you, bitch."

you heard me correctly. we heard from them that officer salamoni kept instigating the situation. you heard me correctly. hasattorney general phenomenal case because no police officer conduct themselves like that. amy: in a statatement, louisiana attorney g general jeff landry promised a thorough investigation into whether to charge officers lake and salamoni. alton sterling's aunt, sandra sterling, said she was devastated afterer learning new details about how her nephew was killed. >> what i heard today, the suffering still contntinues. now that i know it is not a civil matter anymore, now it is a human matter. alton is no longer here, but his voice will still be heard through us. stay behind us as we love alton and we don't not want this to end. remember his name. amy: alton sterling's killiningn july 5 of last year sparked nationwide protests s against

police brutalility. for more, we go to washington, d.c., where we're joined by cornell william brooks, president and ceo of the naacp. he's also a longtime human rights advocate, civil rights lawyer, and minister. welcome baback to democracy now! let's start with alton sterling. what are you calling for at the naacp? >> we are calling for the attorneys general of the state of louisiana to conduct a thorough investigation into vigorously pursue charges against these police officers. the fact that mr. salamoni put a gun to alton sterling said -- sterling's head, referred to him with a slur, cursed him, if you will, those actions suggest is propensity to use violence and those actions also put into mr.ext any actions by sterling. this whole encounter from than ang to end was less

few minutes. in other words, from the time mr. sterling was confronted by these police officers, having a gun put to his head, and being shot, less than 30 seconds after he was pinned to the ground, took place in a matter of minutes. this is not standing operating procedure. this is not standing -- standard policing. we are asking that the attorney general conduct a thorough investigation, that he consider the full range of the officer's conduct during the encounter. it also the kind of officer he was. and is. this happens with brutal regularity, as you know quite well. a young black man is 21 more times likely to lose his hands at the police than his white counterpart. this occurs with brutal normality that we cannot

countenance. we cannot put up with. yes, the state investigation should continue because the state standard as opposed to the federal standard is broader and lower, not easy to meet, but easier to meet than the federal standard that the department of justice declined to pursue charges under. astounding, truly the only people arrested in the case and the death of alton sterling were two men. one was a man who owned the triple s convenient store. they took his video. he had video, surveillance video at the store. and the other person was chris leday, who works at a military base here in georgia, saw video from bystanders, posted it online. before he knew it, he was handcuffed and frog marched across the military base.

and he was jailed. this is for posting the video. we see how horrifying that video is that alton sterling was shot at point-blank range as he lay on his back. >> that's right. three in the chest, three bullets in the chest, three in the back. what is so frightening is these investigations, state and federal, are being conduducted n an atmosphere, dangerous silence and presumption. dangerous silence in the since this code of blue prevents people from coming forward, inhibits a free and frank discussion and testimony -- which is what has happened in so many instances. also, the code of dangerous presumption. namely, the conduct of officers is presumed to be reasonable, assumed to be reasonable in the face of god awful facts. the fact this man lost his life in a matter of moments, in a

matter of moments after being accosted by police officer, spoken to in the most vile way with a gun homeland does pointed to his head, visit everything, not only about the value or lack of value of alton sterling's life, but the value of black lives across the country and the lack of humanity that black lives recorded in this country. i was a that extends to the lives of others. members of the move -- muslim community, lgbt, latino. we have wrote policing going on. we have far too many prosecutors, far too many police chiefs and an attorney general who does not of -- appreciate the breadth and reality of this. amy: i want to turn to the case of jordan in dallas, texexas. blackr oliver shot the teen in the head while he was in

a car leaving a party. oliver was fired tuesday. this is the attorney for jordan edwards family speaking at a news conference. >> this happened saturday. the family is extremely raw. the community is extremely rough. they're demanding transparencyy and we on bebehalf of the family are demanding action. action from the balch springs police department and action from the dallas county district attorney's office, and change. we are declaring war on bad policing. this has happened far too often. we are tireded of making t the e rhetorical demands, as having the same hashtags. amy: you went, cornell william brooks, to dallas right after this happen. talk about what is happening there. >> you have come as you said, a

family that requested that marches and demonstrations not be done until after the funeral. they are grappling with the most in conference abu grief -- in coppery and civil grief. you have a larger community beyond the family grieving. community grieving, schoolmates grieving. we conducted a prayer vigil at we conductedesent this prayer vigil to train young people in civil disobedience and nondirect action and to pray for the family and the community. what we know is where we have seen young black and brown lives taken at will and at whim of the police in case after case after case of cross this country, it is only because of public pressure that these cases get any attention and any pretense

of investigation anywhere in the country. so we have to keep the pressure of. we have to continue to make these cases and these names known. what we know, the fact that people are grieving. beyond that, we also know that -- we noticed that community members are demanding that we not go through this same cycle hashtags created, police offering explanations i do not explain, and investigations do not lead us to anywhere. and charges that do not lead to convictions. we have to break this ugly and loop. we went to this prayer vigil, but we're also talking about -- considering pursuing an independent investigation, hiring our own investigators, looking into this matter

ourselves. this has been done before. it is an option. it is a way of bringing evidence forward. in ferguson, we worked with the prosecutors to encourage people to come forth. perhaps we need to conduct our own investigation to get people to come forward, to get them to speak about what happened here. the point being here, amy, is that we cannot continue doing business as usual when business as usual is resulting in the death and destruction of black lives all across this country. the fact of the matter is, in the last century, the naacp brought in and to lynching. se in blueing by tho was brought to an end. the decision to do so has to begin at the top. that means our attorney general. justicertment of acknowledging the reality of this. you cannot add a blessing and a

benediction to bad policing by saying you're not going to use decrease.rren say that dissent degrees and holding police officer's accountable leads to crime as opposed to two bothasing crime and making police officers and communities safer. this we know. this is a moment in our democracy where we have got to not only call for reform, but demand reform. and that means not only lawyers and the courts pursuing charges, pursuing prosecution a bad police officers, but activists in the streets engaging in serious civil disobedience, serious disruption of business as usual, and bringing the system of police misconduct and brutality to a grinding halt. amy: were you arrested once or twice and senator sessions office protesting --

>> twice. amy: in senanator sessions's' oe were protesting him becoming the attorney general of the united states. i want to thank you cornell william brooks for joining us, head of the naacp. we turn to another guest. we're broadcasting from atlanta, georgia, home to emory university. i want to bring in carol anderson. her book "white rage: the unspoken truth of our racial divide" just won the national book critics circle award for criticism. jurors called it "a searing critique of white america's systematic resistance to african-american advancement." carol anderson, welcome to democracy now! that picture i saw of you winning the award, you are rather surprised. has notr of your book been lost on anyone. in these last minutes we have

together, can you talk about the significance of what is happening right now? >> what t we're seeing is the penultimate in white rage. president.ack pay we had african-americans and latinos coming out in scores of voting for the first time, for dissipating in this democracy. thisrticipating inn democracy. there has been a response to in fact undermine a and undercut tt black advancement. what we now w have is donald trump. it is with voter suppression, giveven felony disenfranchisemet in florida, given the chicanery and north carolina, the chicanery in wisconsin with all of the voter ids, back and forth, that in fact led to this very narrowed victory set foot a white nationalist regime in

power in the united states. and from there, you then get these policies, such as jeff sessssions, the attorney genera, who happened to greet donald trump surrounded by women in antebellum dresses. to give you a sense of what make america great again means to them. they put up the standing up for law enforcement page. >> yes. that is law and order. that is pure dog whistle from the nixon and reagan years. what that has led to has been the mass incarceratition of african americans and latinos. what it has led to is the undermining of the civil rights act of 1964 and the voting rights act of 1965. amy: what do you say, professor anderson -- there are those who say donald trump is an outright

racist, white nationalist. others say he is just speaking his mind.d. he tosses political correctness. what do you say? >> i say that is a load of hooey. he started his campaign by getting the groundwork with the birtherism, demanding to see over on his birth certificate. and then he launches his campaign by saying mexicans are andst and -- rapitsts criminal. what normally would have let distance, through the gop base in to a depth of fervor where the latest pollsls have shown wt was driving his base was not all of his economic anxiety that pundits talked about, but the increasing diversity of america. the fact of america was becoming more black and more brown, s so can'tite space said "we have that. we have got to somehow security power and the resources of the united states in our hands alone."

amy: your book came out before donald trump was integrated, but it is called " "white rage: the unspoken truth of our racial divide." how does this presidency underscore what you have found? >> it underscores a beautifully because you see all of this masking in terms of language. for instance, take the health care bill that trump pushed forward, the one that just pass the house. when you begin to really look at it, it goes after women, after the poor, and he goes after black people. he goes after those who are getting out of their place. but it is doing so in this really a knock your us -- in aqua's leg which of democracy -- in oculus language of democracy. in fact, it is going to impoverish and sicken millions upon millions of americans. and have a massive transfer of wealth to the top 400 families. under the guise of democracy.

that is white rage. amy: thank you for being with us, professor carol anderson chair of the african american , studies department at emory university. she is author of the book "white rage: the unspoken truth of our racial divide," which just won the national book critics circle award for criticism. and that does it for our show. by the way, we have openings for a video news fellow and many internships. check our website and apply immediately at democracynow.org. citye on our many democracy now! c covering the momovement changing g america t. i will be speaking -- go to democracynow.org for a complete list. democracy now! is looking for feedback from people who appreciate the closed captioning.

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>> this is a production of china central television americica. >> a barrier is something that can keep people apart. it can prevent communication or even progress in one's life,

but breaking barriers is often where growth happens. this week on "full frame," we talk with those who are breaking barriers and taboos in the world of arts and culture, from embracing creative expression new to their society or building awareness around issues people just don't want to talk about. i'm mike walter coming to you from the heart of new york city's times square. let's take it full frame.