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Jennifer Lawrence and Malala Yousafzai shed light on Afghan women’s fight for freedom in new film
A powerful new documentary is exposing the harsh realities faced by women in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. The film, “Bread and Roses,” is directed by Afghan filmmaker Sahra Mani, produced by Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence and executive produced by Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai.
Mani details the grim reality faced by millions of women in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, which drew the attention of Lawrence in 2021.
“My first reaction when watching that was to do what the Taliban did not want us to do, which was give access and facilities to the people on the ground to capture what was happening on the ground in real-time,” she said. “Because obviously the Taliban flourishes in secrecy.”
Some of the strict limitations imposed on women in Afghanistan under Taliban rule include prohibiting women from working, pursuing education, or even leaving their homes without a male escort. They are also barred from singing, playing music, making films, and, more recently, dining at restaurants or purchasing food in public.
Lawrence and her producing partner, Justine Ciarrocchi, set out to reveal these realities in Afghanistan through the eyes of Afghan women. They enlisted Mani to direct the documentary and Yousafzai joined the project as an executive producer to help amplify its message.
When asked why the Taliban opposes women’s education, Yousafzai said, “We have been trying to figure out an answer to that for the past 30 years…I cannot find any explanation that justifies it to me. How can you stop a girl from her school? They come up with these excuses that it’s culture, it’s religion. There is no culture, excuse. The true representatives of that culture are the Afghan women and girls that we’ve seen in the documentary.”
The documentary follows three Afghan women who secretly filmed their protests. Mani said she wanted to capture the intimate moment of their life and give people an opportunity to see what life is like for Afghan woman under a Taliban dictatorship. But she also wanted to encourage by highlighting their strength.
It’s a reality that Lawrence said would be difficult to experience.
“I can’t imagine not being able to take a taxi or being able to listen to music. I can’t imagine if just the sound of my voice was illegal,” she said.
Lawrence, known for her activism, acknowledged the dangers of speaking out but said the stakes were too high to stay silent.
“There’s 20 million women whose lives are in danger,” she said.
Yousafzai, who survived a Taliban attack in 2012, reflected on the ongoing fight for women’s rights.
“What really shook me was the fact that people stand with you once you have survived, but we don’t look at people who are still under a big threat,” she said. “Let’s share our solidarity with them.”
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H&R Block and Intuit drop on a report that Elon Musk’s DOGE may develop a new tax-filing app
H&R Block and Intuit shares dropped on Tuesday after the Washington Post reported that President-elect Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, which is run by billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, is looking at developing a free app for people to file their taxes.
The publication cited two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, in reporting that the leaders of the incoming administration’s DOGE discussed the idea of crafting a mobile app to file income tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service.
H&R Block shares tumbled 8.2%, while Intuit shed 5.1% on Tuesday. As the dominant players in tax preparation, H&R Block and Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, generate billions in revenue annually by offering online and in-person services.
The Biden Administration in March rolled out a pilot Direct File program through the IRS in 12 states. It allows qualified taxpayers file directly through a federal portal. Additionally, the IRS provides services through its Free File program for those who made an adjusted gross income of $79,000 or less.
More than 100,000 taxpayers used the new Direct File program to file their taxes this year, which marked the first time the system was in operation, according to the Treasury Department.
The DOGE, which has been directed by Trump to slash government spending and cut federal regulations, criticized the complexity of the U.S tax code in a Nov. 16 post on X, the social media service owned by Musk.
“In 1955, there were less than 1.5 million words in the U.S. Tax Code. Today, there are more than 16 million words,” its X account wrote. “Because of this complexity, Americans collectively spend 6.5 billion hours preparing and filing their taxes each year.”
Intuit and H&R Block also have free filing options.
That said, the Federal Trade Commission earlier in the year barred Intuit from advertising its popular TurboTax product as free when most people have to pay to use it. The FTC in February filed an administrative complaint against H&R Block, alleging it marketed its tax-prep products as free yet deleted the data as a way to pressure them to pay for pricier services. Both companies said they’d appeal.
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Washington — President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he has selected Dr. Mehmet Oz — a celebrity heart surgeon who hosted a daytime television show — to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The agency falls under the Department of Health and Human Services and oversees Medicare, the federal portion of the Medicaid program, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the federal health insurance marketplace. Trump has selected Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of Health and Human Services. Both positions require Senate confirmation.
“America is facing a health care crisis, and there may be no physician more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to make America healthy again,” Trump said in a statement. “He is an eminent physician, heart surgeon, inventor, and world-class communicator, who has been at the forefront of healthy living for decades.”
The president-elect said Oz will work with Kennedy, if he is confirmed, “to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake.” He also indicated there may be cuts to CMS, writing that Oz “will also cut waste and fraud within our country’s most expensive government agency, which is a third of our nation’s healthcare spend, and a quarter of our entire national budget.”
Oz was defeated by Democratic Sen. John Fetterman in the 2022 Senate race in Pennsylvania after receiving Trump’s endorsement.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
