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Charles Pierce | Criminal Charges Against Trump Take a Leap Toward Reality
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "You can't make me believe Donald Trump could face criminal charges. I will not believe it until I see the indictment papers on this very screen."
Given [gestures helplessly toward 2015–2021 A.D.], it's amazing that the Stormy Daniels Escapade could be first out of the gate.
You can't make me believe Donald Trump could face criminal charges. I will not believe it until I see the indictment papers on this very screen. From The New York Times:
The prosecutors offered Mr. Trump the chance to testify next week before the grand jury that has been hearing evidence in the potential case, the people said. Such offers almost always indicate an indictment is close; it would be unusual for the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, to notify a potential defendant without ultimately seeking charges against him.[...]Mr. Bragg could become the first prosecutor to charge Mr. Trump, but he might not be the last. In Georgia, the Fulton County District Attorney is investigating whether Mr. Trump interfered in the 2020 election, and at the federal level, a special counsel is scrutinizing Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the election results, as well as his handling of classified documents. The Manhattan inquiry, which has spanned nearly five years, centers on a $130,000 payment to the porn star, Stormy Daniels, who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump. The payment was made in the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign by Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer, who was later reimbursed by Mr. Trump from the White House.
It would be an incredible irony if, after all the other stuff, this tawdry transaction is what brings him down. Of course, on his own little website, he took the Times piece with his customary sangfroid.
I did absolutely nothing wrong, I never had an affair with Stormy Daniels, nor would I have wanted to have an affair with Stormy Daniels. This is a political Witch-Hunt, trying to take down the leading candidate, by far, in the Republican Party while at the same time also leading all Democrats in the polls, including Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Congress and numerous Democrat District Attorneys, Attorneys General, and the Department of Injustice itself, which has unprecedentedly placed top DOJ prosecutors into the Manhattan District Attorney’s office in order to “get Trump”, have found that I did nothing wrong. Now, they fall back on the old, and rebuked case which has been rejected by every prosecutor’s office that has looked at this Stormy “Horseface” Daniels matter, where I relied on counsel in order to resolve this Extortion of me, which took place a long time ago.
(He goes on, but you get the idea.) But I won't believe it until I see it. And maybe not even then.
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A demonstration in response to the death of Manuel Terán, who was killed during a police raid inside Weelaunee People's Park, the planned site of a "Cop City" project, in Atlanta. (photo: Cheney Orr/Reuters)
Protesters Take to the Streets Against So-Called 'Cop City' Police Training Facility
Kiara Alfonseca, ABC News
Alfonseca writes: "Protesters in Atlanta say they are hoping to reignite the energy from the 2020 racial reckoning during a rally they are calling their National Day of Action Against Police Terror on Thursday."
Demonstrators are fighting against an in-construction police training center.
Protesters in Atlanta say they are hoping to reignite the energy from the 2020 racial reckoning during a rally they are calling their National Day of Action Against Police Terror on Thursday.
Across the country, anti-police brutality and racial justice activist groups will be hosting marches, teach-ins, and demonstrations against what they say is the militarization of police forces at the in-construction Atlanta Public Safety Training Center that critics are calling “Cop City.”
To culminate a weekslong effort, organizers will be holding a rally and march Thursday at 6 p.m. at the King Center, a center focused on nonviolent civil disobedience, in Atlanta.
Protesters argue the facility is “supporting the police narrative as opposed to finding alternatives to [policing]. Less people with guns, more actually interacting with the community,” Kamau Franklin, founder of Community Movement Builders and one of the lead organizers of #StopCopCity, told ABC News.
The #StopCopCity campaign is an effort to try and disrupt the construction of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, which will be used for specialized training for both law enforcement and fire department service workers.
The center will include an "auditorium for police/fire and public use," a "mock city for burn building training and urban police training," an "Emergency Vehicle Operator Course for emergency vehicle driver training," a K-9 unit kennel and training, according to the center's website. The first phase of the training center is scheduled to open in late 2023.
The facility is intended to “boost morale, retention and recruitment of our public safety personnel” as well as “give us physical space to ensure that our officers and firefighters are receiving 21st century training, rooted in respect and regard for the communities they serve,” according to former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms.
The facility was approved last year with widespread support from local lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, and across all racial and ethnic lines.
But groups including the Movement for Black Lives, Black Voters Matter, Community Movement Builders and others are calling on Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens to “end the lease with Atlanta Police Foundation,” the organization behind the facility. The organization’s board members include representatives from major corporations, banks and companies.
Dickens recently created a community task force "to seek further community input and expert recommendations on key issues" amid the unrest, according to a press release from his office.
The training site has been at the center of yearslong tension between police and protesters.
Demonstrators argue that the center is further militarizing the police and may lead to more instances of police brutality and violence.
“Training is a misnomer,” Franklin said, pointing to the hundreds of hours of training that police convicted in murders are required to have received.
“We’ll continue to uplift and talk about the people who’ve been murdered by the police in the Black community, and how policing doesn't work,” Franklin said.
Other demonstrators argue that the center’s construction will take over parts of the Weelaunee Forest, which Franklin says is “one of the most significant urban forests in the U.S., which borders a Black working-class neighborhood in Southeast Atlanta.”
Criticism over the new facility began initially with concerns that the city would need to tear down trees in one of Atlanta’s largest remaining green spaces. Across the city, signs that read “Defend the Atlanta Forest” sprung up in yards. The environmentalist movement Defend the Atlanta Forest is one of the groups leading protests against the facility.
The center is expected to cost $90 million and take up over 85 acres, with the "remaining portion of the 265-acres property as greenspace," according to the center's website.
Tensions came to a head with the fatal police shooting of Manuel Esteban Paez Terán in January, who was shot and killed by police as they raided the campground occupied by environmental demonstrators who had allegedly been camping out for months to protect the forest.
Officials say the protester fired the first shot at a state trooper, who was injured. Other law enforcement officers returned fire, hitting the man. There is no body camera footage of the incident. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is investigating the incident.
On March 5, more than 30 people were arrested after authorities say a group of “agitators” launched an attack on officers using fireworks, large rocks and Molotov cocktails following a music festival.
Twenty-three of the 35 protesters arrested Sunday were charged with felony domestic terrorism. Most of those protesters were from out of state, and one was from Canada and another from France.
No officers were injured during the incident, though police said that "the illegal actions" of protesters "could have resulted in bodily harm." According to representatives from the racial justice organizations, the incident was not connected to the music festival and demonstration being held nearby.
The mayor's office and the Atlanta Police Foundation has not responded to ABC News' requests for comment. Atlanta Police officials directed ABC News to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which declined to comment.
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A Ukrainian soldier guards his position. (photo: Mstyslav Chernov/AP)
Ukraine Says Bakhmut Battle Is Grinding Down Russia's Best Units as Kyiv Restores Power Supply
Olena Harmash, Reuters
Harmash writes: "Ukraine has decided to fight on in the ruined city of Bakhmut because the battle is pinning down Russia's best units and degrading them ahead of a planned Ukrainian spring counter-offensive, an aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said."
Ukraine has decided to fight on in the ruined city of Bakhmut because the battle is pinning down Russia's best units and degrading them ahead of a planned Ukrainian spring counter-offensive, an aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
The comments by Mykhailo Podolyak were the latest signal of a shift by Kyiv this week to continue the defence of the small eastern city, site of the war's bloodiest battle, as Moscow tries to secure its first major victory in more than half a year.
"Russia has changed tactics," Podolyak said in an interview published by Italy's La Stampa newspaper. "It has converged on Bakhmut with a large part of its trained military personnel, the remnants of its professional army, as well as the private companies."
"We, therefore, have two objectives: to reduce their capable personnel as much as possible, and to fix them in a few key wearisome battles, to disrupt their offensive and concentrate our resources elsewhere, for the spring counter-offensive. So, today Bakhmut is completely effective, even exceeding its key tasks."
Russia has made Bakhmut the main target of a winter push involving hundreds of thousands of reservists and mercenaries.
It has captured the eastern part of the city and outskirts to the north and south, but has so far failed to close a ring around Ukrainian defenders.
Kyiv, which had seemed at the start of March to be planning to withdraw westward, announced this week that its generals had decided to reinforce Bakhmut and fight on.
Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said that, as Russia pressed its offensive, "our soldiers are doing everything possible to prevent the enemy implementing their plans".
Russia's advances have appeared to slow amid highly public complaints from Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner private militia leading Russia's assault, that the military command was failing to provide his men with enough ammunition.
Prigozhin on Friday thanked the government publicly for a "heroic" increase in output - but in the same audio message said he was "worried about ammunition and shell shortages not only for Wagner ... but for all units of the Russian army".
Moscow says capturing Bakhmut would punch a hole in Ukrainian defences and be a step towards seizing all of Ukraine's Donbas industrial region, a major target.
Trench warfare, described by both sides as a meat grinder, has claimed a huge toll. But Kyiv's decision to stay and fight suggests it believes Russia's losses far exceed its own.
MOSCOW SHORT OF MISSILES?
After making gains throughout the second half of 2022, Ukrainian forces have been mostly on the defensive since mid-November, while Russia has gone on the attack with troops called up in its first mobilisation since World War Two.
But apart from around Bakhmut, the Russian winter offensive has largely failed. Meanwhile, Kyiv is awaiting a surge in Western military aid expected in coming months for an offensive once muddy ground dries in late spring.
Kyiv and the West also saw signs of exhaustion in Russia's latest mass salvo of missile strikes on Ukrainian targets.
Russia fired hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of missiles across Ukraine on Thursday, including an unprecedented six of its hypersonic Kinzhal ('Dagger') missiles, touted as a superweapon to which NATO has no answer. It is believed to possess only a few dozen Kinzhals.
The barrage killed civilians, including a family buried under rubble while they slept in their homes near Lviv, 700 km from the battlefield. But otherwise it appeared to have achieved little, with damaged power systems mostly quickly restored.
The worst damage appears to have been in the eastern city of Kharkiv, where the regional governor said around 450,000 people were still without power on Friday evening.
It had been three weeks since the last similar Russian attack, the longest lull since such strikes began in October. Previously, Moscow had been unleashing such attacks roughly every week, challenging Ukraine's ability to repair infrastructure before the next onslaught.
Britain's Ministry of Defence said on Friday the reason for the longer lull was probably that Moscow was running out of missiles.
"The interval between waves of strikes is probably growing because Russia now needs to stockpile a critical mass of newly produced missiles directly from industry before it can resource a strike big enough to credibly overwhelm Ukrainian air defences," it said.
Ukrainian resistance may also be having a wider effect on Russia's economy.
Gas traders said tankers loaded with Russian liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) were unable to get out into the Black Sea because it was not considered safe for them to pass under the Crimean Bridge, a road link across the mouth of the Azov Sea badly damaged in October by a blast that Russia blamed on Ukraine.
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Joe Biden. (photo: Frank Franklin II/AP)
Why Big Oil Is Less Worried About Biden Phasing Out Fossil Fuels
Timothy Puko, The Washington Post
Puko writes: "Oil and gas industry leaders say they've seen a big shift in tone from the Biden administration over the past year, helping to smooth over one of the president's rockiest relationships."
For industry executives, the president’s slower approach is evidence that pragmatism is winning out. Climate activists are less than pleased.
Oil and gas industry leaders say they’ve seen a big shift in tone from the Biden administration over the past year, helping to smooth over one of the president’s rockiest relationships.
Just two weeks before election night in 2020, President Biden dropped a bomb on fossil fuel businesses while debating the incumbent Donald Trump. “I would transition from the oil industry. Yes,” he said. “It has to be replaced by renewable energy — over time. Over time.”
He then set a pace that infuriated many in the industry, using his first weeks in office to block the Keystone XL pipeline and suspend federal oil and gas leasing, among other moves targeting fossil fuels.
But in the past year, the Biden administration has resumed oil leasing under terms of the major climate-and-energy-spending law Biden signed last year. The president has backed up his previous support for more new laws to speed up infrastructure permitting, including for natural-gas pipelines. And, to avoid instability emanating from Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the Biden administration promised to help grow U.S. natural gas exports and spearheaded efforts to get more gas to European allies.
The president’s more cautious approach toward phasing out fossil fuels culminated last month at his State of the Union address.
“We’re going to need oil for at least another decade … and beyond that,” Biden said, recalling what he has told industry leaders. “We’re going to need it.”
For industry executives, it is evidence that pragmatism is winning out over more aggressive environmental policies. Shaken at times by rising energy prices and Russia’s influence as a giant oil and gas exporter, the administration has more consistently accepted and supported fossil fuels’ having a place in the world’s energy mix, at least for now.
“Everyone is moving to the middle,” said François Poirier, chief executive of TC Energy, the Canadian developer once behind Keystone XL. “Because pragmatism has shown you can’t ignore reliability and affordability in the quest for sustainability.”
For their part, White House officials say the president remains as committed as ever to the energy transition, noting that Biden rolled out a budget this week that includes significant investments in clean energy.
But environmentalists have also noticed a shift. They fear more pragmatic short-term policies could slow the long-term adoption of cleaner fuels to address climate change. Many are watching for a decision expected from the Biden administration within days on permits for the largest proposed oil development in the country, ConocoPhillips’s Willow project in Alaska.
“They’re highly cross-pressured. And the president has not been able to keep all his promises,” said Abigail Dillen, president of the environmental law firm Earthjustice. “This is without a doubt the most ambitious administration on climate in our history. And I know the commitment is real. But I am very concerned.”
At a yearly energy conference here in Houston known as CERAWeek, executives from some of the world’s largest oil and gas companies have called for world leaders to foster a more “orderly” — probably slower — transition to cleaner energy. And many have lauded Biden for, they say, moving in that direction, helping to calm investor fears about oil’s place in the world and to restore the industry’s status on Wall Street.
Biden’s relationship with the oil and gas industry has long been testy. He has accused it of polluting and price-gouging, criticizing executives for spending massive profits last year to help shareholders rather than reinvesting more in supply growth to help consumers. Executives have called his energy policy incoherent, and in turn blamed his environmental priorities for the severe price spikes of last year.
At CERAWeek a year ago — less than two weeks after Russia’s attack sent commodity prices soaring — Biden officials said the attack showed Washington “should double down and triple down on the transition.”
Industry leaders punched back. Oil’s top advocate in Washington, the American Petroleum Institute’s Mike Sommers, said Biden was exacerbating problems by castigating U.S. oil companies from the White House rather than hosting their executives for in-person meetings there.
While differences remain, company executives who felt the administration launched “a cold war” against them in its first year feel it works more constructively with them now, Sommers said in an interview Monday. The administration’s softening rhetoric alone has helped.
“The president’s statement at the State of the Union … shouldn’t be underestimated,” said Sommers, the API’s president. “It’s not like, you know, open doors. But there’s a regular dialogue.”
Sommers’s statement this week contrasts with a tweet he sent following Biden’s State of the Union address, when the API leader criticized Biden for divisive attacks on fossil fuel industries “that employ millions of Americans, pay taxes and provide energy for the world.”
U.S. officials say they have long backed a balanced and nuanced energy strategy and only recently has the industry given them credit for it. Even from the debate, Biden had said the transition would happen “over time.” And it was still in his first year when Biden, with help from the president’s energy envoy, Amos Hochstein, and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, began pushing, often very publicly, for more oil and gas production.
Granholm, during a keynote lunch speech Wednesday, echoed language common among oil and gas company executives in pushing for “a managed transition,” in which government and business work together methodically to ensure they can still meet consumer energy demand while new, cleaner fuels are developing.
She reiterated Biden’s comments that the country will still use fossil fuels in the middle of the century, but implored people in the room to develop the technology that allows people to burn it without releasing greenhouse-gas emissions.
John D. Podesta, a top White House climate adviser, spoke on the first day of the conference to tout White House efforts to speed up permitting of projects. But he focused almost exclusively on expediting electric transmission projects for clean energy.
Russia’s war in Ukraine has heightened the urgency on all fronts, said Jose W. Fernandez, State Department undersecretary for economic growth, energy and the environment. U.S. officials are emphasizing the need to quickly build more clean-energy capacity for the long term, while recognizing that key allies in Europe face potential energy shortfalls now. They see natural gas imports, especially from U.S. suppliers, as the best way to fill the immediate gap, Fernandez and others said.
“It has highlighted the need to really accelerate the energy transition,” he said in an interview Tuesday. “At the same time, in the short term, we’ve got some challenges to deal with, and that’s what we’ve also focused on.”
The Biden administration and its allies have made tough choices to ensure people can still get affordable energy, and it’s a delicate balancing act, said Mark Brownstein, senior vice president, energy transition at Environmental Defense Fund. The trend could threaten the climate if these new fossil fuel investments that are now relatively short-term — with returns over five years or fewer — become longer-term investments that seriously delay the transition to cleaner fuels, he added.
“That’s when we become really concerned,” he said.
Industry executives and other gas advocates often promote gas as a climate solution, a “bridge fuel” between dirtier fossil fuels and still-developing renewables. Administration officials over the past year have shown more willingness to support its use as a way to replace more coal.
Toby Rice, chief executive of the largest U.S. natural gas producer, EQT, credits the administration for supporting money in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act for carbon capture, a technology he says is an imperative for eliminating the oil and gas industry’s emissions. And he says the administration has helped support efforts to get more gas exports to Europe and has been an ally in pushing Congress to pass new laws that can speed up permitting for energy infrastructure projects.
“I think the messaging from the White House has been extremely favorable,” Rice said, adding later that energy-security concerns have driven their change. “There’s a lot more focus now.”
Many executives also said their own industry is changing, too. Several here said the Inflation Reduction Act’s climate and energy programs are creating new opportunities for their businesses in clean-energy technology. That has them embracing — or at least accepting — a new era in which government is intervening deeply into the economy and partnering with the private sector.
At TC Energy (formerly known as TransCanada), Biden’s decision on Keystone XL came as company executives were realizing they had to adapt their business to the heavy influence of policymakers. Keystone was once an $8 billion project, but with climate change now so heavily dictating energy policy — and consumer demand — none of the company’s current $34 billion capital-expenditure, or “capex,” program is tied to oil.
As demand rises for natural gas, the company is focusing more on that fuel to replace coal, and on electricity, where they feel they have more support from Washington and other North American governments. The Keystone XL experience shows that companies risk big failures if they buck the priorities of governments, said the chief executive, Poirier.
“We tried butting heads and we didn’t get anywhere,” he added. “You can’t prosecute a $34 billion capex program if you can’t get along with who’s in charge.”
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A rally for transgender rights in Texas. (photo: Jay Janner/AP)
The GOP's Coordinated National Campaign Against Trans Rights, Explained
Nicole Narea and Fabiola Cineas, Vox
Excerpt: "From Florida to Oklahoma, transgender rights are facing a fresh wave of attacks in Republican-controlled state legislatures."
Republicans are unleashing a torrent of anti-trans bills at the state level ahead of 2024.
From Florida to Oklahoma, transgender rights are facing a fresh wave of attacks in Republican-controlled state legislatures.
Though many of the bills being proposed will never become law, they serve a practical purpose for Republicans. Whether or not they are enacted, they allow conservative state legislatures to perform opposition to the “woke left” and ensure evangelical voters show up to vote — even after the religious right achieved its decades-long goal of overturning Roe v. Wade last year. A recent report from Mother Jones showed that leading religious-right organizations are playing a prominent role in creating and promoting the bills.
The political debate is escalating at a volatile time. Trans Americans are four times more likely to be victims of violent crime than their cisgender peers, according to a 2021 study. Trans youth, who have been the primary focus of anti-trans legislation this year, are experiencing a mental health crisis: A 2022 survey by the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention group focused on LGBTQ youth, found that 86 percent of trans or nonbinary youth reported negative effects on their mental health stemming from the political debate around trans issues, and nearly half had seriously considered suicide in the past year.
While Democrats have sought to fight back with their own legislation affirming protections for the trans community at the state level, there’s not much they can do federally at the moment. The Equality Act, which was passed by the then-Democrat-controlled House last year and would prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ Americans, doesn’t currently have the votes to become law.
That’s despite the fact that most Americans currently support protecting trans people from discrimination, according to a June 2022 Pew survey, although there are sharper divisions over gender-affirming care for youth and public school curricula about gender identity.
All of that makes for a bleak outlook for trans Americans in red states, where their rights have become a political wedge.
“These lawmakers want to homogenize the lives that people are living, and they have this very small-minded idea of who people are and how people should look, live their lives, and should think,” said Tori Cooper, the director of community engagement for the Human Rights Campaign’s Trans Justice Initiative. “There is an intentional effort to use misinformation and disinformation to deceive folks who don’t know any trans, nonbinary, or queer people personally to perpetuate harm and dissuade folks from living honest and true and accurate lives.“
State GOP lawmakers are working to aggressively limit trans rights
Republicans have made clear that they intend to run on trans issues as part of a broader “protect the children” platform heading into 2024, following the success of Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s 2021 campaign centering on parental rights.
It’s become a means of proving conservative bona fides to GOP primary voters, including right-wing evangelicals, and it’s coming from the top down: Former President Trump announced earlier this year that, if reelected, he would “stop” gender-affirming care for minors, which he said was “child abuse” and “child sexual mutilation.” He also said he would bar federal agencies from working to “promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age.”
Here’s a look at the key ways Republican lawmakers seek to restrict life for trans people and other members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Republicans want to severely restrict access to gender-affirming treatment
Gender-affirming treatments have been targeted by Republican lawmakers in dozens of states, even though many major medical associations — including the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics — deem those treatments “medically necessary care.”
Those treatments include hormonal therapies that can delay puberty or promote the development of certain characteristics such as facial hair or breasts. They also include surgical procedures to reduce Adam’s apples and procedures that alter chest tissue or genitalia, also known as top surgery and bottom surgery.
Many proposals center on limiting the availability of those treatments for trans youth under the age of 18, for whom surgical interventions are already uncommon: Fewer than 300 minors with a gender dysphoria diagnosis received top surgery in 2021. Lawmakers in Texas, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Virginia are now also seeking to restrict access to this care for adults, but those bills might be a tougher sell.
In addition to banning the treatments outright, state legislators are seeking to make doctors and parents liable for administering and approving them and to limit the use of public funds to pay for them.
In 2021, Arkansas became the first state to issue a ban on hormone treatment, puberty blockers, or surgery for trans youth, a measure that also barred doctors from referring patients elsewhere for those treatments. The bill was temporarily blocked in court, and an Arkansas federal judge will decide whether to strike it down permanently in what will be the first ruling on the legality of such bans. At least six other states have passed similar bans, and about 30 states are still considering them.
In the meantime, the Arkansas legislature has sought to make it easier to bring malpractice suits against doctors who administer treatments to trans youth, which would effectively discourage them from offering such treatment altogether. Similar legislation has been proposed at the federal level. At least 11 states are going further in trying to impose criminal penalties on doctors and parents. For example, an Alabama law that was temporarily blocked in federal court last year, but could be reinstated by an appeals court, would hit doctors, parents, and anyone else who aids trans youth in getting care with up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $15,000.
Other states want to curtail public funding for trans care. Among the most stringent proposals introduced this year is one that has advanced through the Oklahoma Senate, which would prevent health care facilities or individual providers that receive public funds, including those located on public land, from administering gendering-affirming care. It would also bar insurance companies from covering that care.
Republicans are continuing to push “bathroom bills”
For several years, the GOP has been pushing so-called bathroom bills, which are designed to exclude trans people from multi-user restrooms, locker rooms, and other gender-segregated spaces. Though proponents argue that gender-segregated facilities protect women and children from assault, researchers at UCLA have found that allowing trans people to use public facilities that align with their gender identity doesn’t have any effect on crimes committed in those facilities, which are rare.
One of the earliest bathroom bills was a North Carolina law that was implemented in 2016 and later repealed following protests and boycotts. The momentum behind these bills hasn’t waned in the years since, with at least six bills being advanced or introduced in state legislatures across the country this year.
The Arkansas Senate has already approved a bill that would require public school students to only use facilities that correspond to their sex assigned at birth and a bill under which people could be charged with misdemeanor sexual indecency for entering a public restroom or changing room where a “minor of the opposite sex” is present. Iowa and Kansas lawmakers have advanced similar bills concerning public school students.
There’s a question as to whether the bills relating to public schools will survive legal scrutiny. There are now multiple, conflicting appellate court rulings on the subject, and it’s not clear whether trans advocates will decide to take the issue to the US Supreme Court for fear of an adverse ruling.
Religious liberty bills are threatening trans civil rights
At least 19 states do not have laws that shield people from discrimination based on gender identity, and some are trying to strengthen religious liberty protections in a way that trans advocates say would allow employers, businesses, and medical providers to discriminate against trans people.
A number of bills concern what religious liberty advocates call “conscience rights” for medical providers. The Idaho House, for instance, has passed legislation to ensure that counselors and therapists will not be required to take on clients when it would conflict with their “sincerely held principles.” Iowa and Missouri lawmakers have similarly advanced legislation to prevent health care providers generally from performing care to which they have religious objections.
So far, legal precedent seems to favor religious liberty advocates. A federal appellate court ruled in 2021 that a professor could not be forced to use a trans student’s pronouns on the basis that doing so would have conflicted with his religious beliefs. But that’s likely not the last time the issue will be litigated in court.
Republicans want to make it impossible to update ID cards and documents
In recent years, dozens of states have introduced bills that make it harder for people to change their gender information on state identification cards, driver’s licenses, and documents like birth certificates. These laws are currently in effect in Tennessee, Kansas, Ohio, and Oklahoma. Such bills have been introduced in Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Texas, and Virginia but failed.
ID restrictions stand to harm trans and nonbinary people by putting them at risk of increased harassment, among other threats. Identification that accurately reflects a person’s gender is necessary for employment, travel, and moving freely through public without consequences.
In 2022, Oklahoma became the first state to sign a bill against nonbinary gender markers. The law forbids the symbols on birth certificates for people who don’t identify as female or male. Now lawmakers in the state want to define “women” as those identified as female at birth in all state laws.
In Tennessee, the state’s Vital Records Act says that the gender listed on one’s birth certificate cannot be changed as a result of surgery, though the state allows transgender residents to change the listed gender on their driver’s licenses and state ID cards. Transgender plaintiffs who have sued the state over its policy said not being able to change their gender on their birth certificate outed them as transgender and exposed them to bullying at work.
The anti-trans laws are part of a larger wave of Republican anti-LGBTQ legislation
Republicans have introduced and passed a number of bills that prevent trans students from participating in activities like sports and censure talk about LGBTQ people and issues. Some of the bills even force teachers to out their students.
Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law, which took effect in 2022, makes it illegal for teachers to discuss gender and sexuality with students in grades K-3 and criminalizes instruction that isn’t “age-appropriate” for students in grades K-12. Under the law, teachers must notify parents if they believe their child is transgender, and parents have the ability to sue schools or school districts that violate the restrictions.
Advocates told Vox that the state’s rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at the higher education level also harms queer students and faculty. Leslie Hall, the director of the Human Rights Campaign’s HBCU partnership, said, “The challenge we face now is that individual schools and systems are very afraid and there’s a lot of anxiety around combating these laws or bills. For example, it’s hard for me to go to Florida A&M University or Bethune Cookman University and ask how they plan to continue with initiatives that piss off the governor and defy his fascism.”
Other laws allow teachers to refuse to use a student’s correct pronouns. In a Texas school district, teachers don’t have to address students by the pronouns that match their gender identity, even if the student’s parents ask them to. The Supreme Court of Virginia ruled that a school had to reinstate a gym teacher who wouldn’t refer to students by their pronouns.
Several states have also introduced bills that, if signed into law, could limit the LGBTQ community’s right to freedom of expression as guaranteed under the First Amendment. In Tennessee and Arkansas, lawmakers have already passed restrictions limiting drag performances. The ACLU has argued that overly broad wording in the Tennessee law means it’s actually not illegal to perform in drag in the state. Nearly a dozen similar bills are making their way through red states, with Republicans claiming that drag performances expose children to inappropriate sexual themes.
Nearly two dozen states have adopted trans youth sports bans, which bar transgender girls from competing in girls’ sports. According to lawmakers, the bans are an attempt to protect girls, and opportunities for girls, in sports, but advocates for trans rights say the laws want to push trans youth into hiding. As Katelyn Burns wrote for Vox, the laws “exclude and punish trans kids” and the “messaging that classifies young trans girls as ‘biological boys’ is scare-mongering and unfair, and only seeks to reinforce ugly stereotypes about trans girls and women to an uninformed public.”
“I’m 53 years old and trans kids have always played sports and we’ve always used the bathrooms. It only became an issue in the last administration,” Cooper said. These lawmakers “are saying that we’re doing things to people that we’re not, that we’re out to do certain things that we are not. And, unfortunately, they’re able to pass these policies based on creating fear over outright lies.”
The wave of bills is fostering fear and uncertainty
There’s increasing fear the wave of legislation will prevent trans people from simply going about their lives, trans rights activists told Vox.
“If your access to public spaces, your own name, how you’re dressed in public, where you can go, what kind of medicine you can take, what goes on between you and your doctor — if all of that is restricted and taken away from you, then how can you be yourself?” said Mandy Giles, the founder of the advocacy organization Parents of Trans Youth.
And advocates worry that the deluge of disinformation about trans people — the false and harmful idea that they want to prey on women in bathrooms, for example — will curtail the progress being made in some states, making life difficult not just in states with harsh anti-trans laws, but across the US.
“A lot of the bills are aimed at creating not only fear in the community, but also making anti-trans sentiment part of the general conversation,” said Simon Willis, a co-president of PFLAG Houston, an organization that hosts support groups for LGBTQ+ communities.
So far, the GOP has gotten a handful of bills signed into law, and the party isn’t slowing down as dozens of bills work their way through state legislatures this spring. One speaker at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference exclaimed in a speech that “transgenderism” must be eradicated, a statement that directly calls for the elimination of transgender people. The statement stoked greater alarm as Republicans launch their campaigns for the presidency, with platforms that will surely blast more anti-trans rhetoric.
“It’s really important that people who aren’t in danger speak up,” Willis said. “We end up hearing a lot more about the anti-trans bills, but we don’t hear very much about anything going the other direction. There doesn’t seem to be enough people in positions of power pushing back against that [anti-trans] narrative.”
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Palestinian women attend a protest in solidarity with female Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails in Gaza City. (photo: AFP)
How Israel's Supreme Court Enables Torture of Palestinian Prisoners
Janan Abdu, Middle East Eye
Abdu writes: "Before the current far-right government's war on the judiciary, there was a little covered news story out of the Israeli Supreme Court."
While Israelis protest against Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir's war on the judiciary, the high court of Israel enables the state's use of torture against Palestinian prisoners
Before the current far-right government's war on the judiciary, there was a little covered news story out of the Israeli Supreme Court.
On 29 December 2022, the high court once again capitulated to the demands of the state regarding the issue of prison conditions and the size of prison cells in particular. It granted the state's request and extended, for the third time, the deadline for expanding the living space of detainees until 31 December 2027.
In response to a petition by Israeli human rights organisations including the Association for Civil Rights (ACRI), the Supreme Court issued an order in June 2017 to expand the living space of prisoners to 4.5 sqm - giving the Israel Prison Service an initial deadline of nine months (HCJ 1892/14 ACRI v Public Security Minister).
In most Western countries, the size of standard prison cells ranges between six and 12 sqm, while in Israel, it is less than 3 sqm.
The ruling seemed to acknowledge the cruel, humiliating, and inhuman living conditions of the prisoners. In the opening statement of the decision, Judge Yitzhak Amit wrote that "society is evaluated…through its treatment of prisoners". He pointed out that "depriving them of their freedom through imprisonment does not mean depriving them of their right to dignity, which stems from the prisoner's right to determine the minimum living space”.
However, despite this statement, the court approved maintaining these conditions for an additional five years which then became 10 years from the initial judgement.
'Unfit for human beings'
In 2014, ACRI, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR-I), and other groups petitioned the Supreme Court to address overcrowding in Israeli jails and prisons and compel the state to immediately increase the living area of prisoners to a minimum 4.5 sqm as a temporary solution until it is raised even further as part of a long-term plan.
The petition stated that prisoners are forced to spend hours of their day in bed, without the ability to move or stand, and those sharing a cell are unable to stand or walk at the same time in the limited space.
As a result, prisoners are often forced to carry out their entire daily routine in bed, including eating. It further argues that overcrowding creates suffocation in the cells, harms the health of the prisoners, and causes increased friction between them.
It is far from the acceptable size in countries considered democratic (8.8 sqm) and from the minimum adopted by international institutions to ensure reasonable adequate living conditions that are mentioned in a 2012 report published by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Unfortunately, the situation in Israeli prisons has been the same for decades, but the state has done nothing to offer solutions or make changes. In its 2019-2020 annual report, Israel's Public Defence warned of prison overcrowding and prisoner rights violations. The report described the existing prison conditions as a "serious violation of human dignity". It criticised the narrow size of the prison cell at 2.5 sqm, asserting that it is "too small for even one resident".
The report reiterated earlier calls to immediately stop holding prisoners in these cells, maintaining that they are "unfit for human beings". It further noted that a prison cell area today is less than half of the minimum approved by Israel Prison Service, the main carceral authority which specified 6 sqm as a reasonable amount of space.
The Public Defence report further held that this matter not only affects the rights of detainees, but also violates the state's obligation to refrain from cruel, inhumane, and degrading punishment, a basic standard of international law.
Failure to comply
On 13 June 2017, the Supreme Court ordered the state to increase the minimum prison living area. To ease the implementation of these reforms, the high court divided the process into two stages: the first would grant the state nine months to increase the living area for prisoners to 3 sq m (not including a toilet and shower). An additional nine months from the court order to increase the living area further to 4.5 sqm would comprise the second stage.
However, on 5 March 2018, a week before the deadline for stage one reforms expired, the state submitted a request to the court to postpone the implementation for 10 years from the initial ruling to 2027. The state argued that compliance with the timeline established by the court would require a "mass release" of prisoners and "endanger" the public.
The petitioners rejected these claims, arguing that the state took no action to construct new detention centres, and restating the high court's observation about the inadequate facilities, many of which were built during the British Mandate. It also opposed the suggestion of a public safety issue, calling these "idle threats intended to intimidate the court".
The court sharply criticised the state's actions and initially rejected the state's request. This compelled the state to submit a plan to construct new wings for hundreds of security prisoners and an increase of administrative release that will result in the evacuation of about 1000 places of confinement.
In June 2018, the state updated the court on its intent to use Saharonim Prison in the Negev desert as an immigration detention centre as part of the first stage of reform.
As for the second stage of the ruling - guaranteeing a minimum living space of 4.5 sqm for each prisoner by December 2018 - the state failed to make any progress on this matter, leading human rights groups to demand that the court force it to adhere to the letter of its judgement.
A torture loophole
In a notice issued on 29 July 2018, the state informed the court of its plan to establish by the year 2026 new centres for housing prisoners interrogated by Shin Bet, Israel's security service. It also announced its intent to petition the high court to amend its judgement in order to exempt Shin Bet facilities from expanding the living space for prisoners until 2027. Currently, the Shin Bet cell size is 2 sqm or less.
The petitioners representing various human rights groups opposed the state's request, arguing that this population should actually receive priority in the efforts to adapt prison conditions to the court's ruling and that postponing the execution date of the ruling by at least eight years is unreasonable.
The state then argued that expanding prisoner living space would harm Shin Bet’s ability to obtain information and would strongly affect the number of investigations launched at a time.
Ironically, its justification was based on full recognition that the detainees' living space, below the minimum area, clearly constitutes a tool of torture and pressure to "obtain information" or confessions from Palestinian detainees
Most of the so-called security investigations target Palestinians, subjecting them to conditions that violate the Convention against Torture to which Israel is a signatory.
In 2022, an Israeli parliament committee twice unanimously approved a draft law to amend the penal code (Powers of Arrest, Living Space in the Shin Bet Detention Centres), which also exempts Shin Bet detention centres from expanding the living space of prisoners as ordered by the Supreme Court.
To make matters worse, the draft law suggests implementing secret standards by an official and the Shin Bet director. Human rights organisations expressed concerns that these "standards" would fail to protect the rights of prisoners who would be subjected to conditions of torture in violation of international law.
As stated in the draft law explanation, the determination of standards and laws for the living space of security detainees is carried out by the prime minister, with the approval of the minister of justice and the ministerial committee of the Shin Bet, as well as the approval of a joint special committee of the Foreign Affairs, Defence Committee and the Law Committee in the Knesset.
This proposal was met with strong opposition by human rights organisations, and a number of them - the Committee Against Torture, the Centre for the Defence of the Individual (HaMoked), and Physicians for Human Rights - submitted on 8 February 2020 their observations on the proposed draft law to the acting judicial advisor. They affirmed that it attempts to circumvent the court’s decision, and that the proposal continues to unreasonably infringe upon detainees' rights and discriminate against these detainees, in particular.
They also noted that any law must be subject to legal standards and noted that it contravenes what was approved in the Israeli Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom.
They stressed that these special Shin Bet headquarters should receive more attention with regard to ensuring living space, as they are hidden from the public eye and even from official supervision in most cases. Moreover, the detainees in these facilities are usually prohibited from meeting lawyers.
The state's request to delay implementing the new space requirements sent the court into a spiral. While it has the power to extend deadlines, it can only do so on rare occasions.
As stated in the court decision, "extending deadlines, in turn, could lead to a situation in which the existing illegal situation continues to harm the parties' expectations of relying on the court, and harm putting an end to the arbitration. Also, extensions in unnecessary cases will lead to harming the principle of the rule of law."
This decision means that detainees and prisoners in Israeli prisons will continue to live in harsh, inhumane conditions for an additional five years.
These conditions, according to the public defence report, "are considered a severe abuse of the detainee rights, their dignity, their health, and their privacy, which is exacerbated by the harsh living conditions".
The worrisome matter is that these harsh conditions when added to the inhumane treatment amount to torture, especially in the Shin Bet detention centres - exempt from the court order - where severe cold, deafening noise, sleep deprivation, restrictions on movement, prevention from going out to the yard, bad food, a lack of beds and blankets, poor hygiene, and other torturous conditions prevail.
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Former vice president Al Gore. (photo: Alastair Grant/AP)
Al Gore Warns It Would Be 'Recklessly Irresponsible' to Allow New Alaskan Drilling Plan
Oliver Milman, Guardian UK
Milman writes: "Al Gore has warned it would be 'recklessly irresponsible' to allow an enormous, controversial oil drilling project to proceed in Alaska, speaking ahead of a decision from the Biden administration on whether to approve it."
Ex-vice-president says new projects ‘are a recipe for climate chaos’ ahead of Biden administration’s decision on Willow development
Al Gore has warned it would be “recklessly irresponsible” to allow an enormous, controversial oil drilling project to proceed in Alaska, speaking ahead of a decision from the Biden administration on whether to approve it. Gore spoke amid growing alarm among Democrats and campaigners that the Willow development will drastically undermine the US’s effort to confront the climate crisis.
The vast, multi-billion-dollar ConocoPhillips oil project, to be situated on the tundra of Alaska’s northern Arctic coast, is awaiting approval from the federal government that could arrive as soon as Friday. Gore, the former US vice-president and leading climate advocate, told the Guardian that the planned drilling would threaten local communities as well as the task of curbing dangerous global heating.
“The proposed expansion of oil and gas drilling in Alaska is recklessly irresponsible,” Gore said. “The pollution it would generate will not only put Alaska native and other local communities at risk, it is incompatible with the ambition we need to achieve a net zero future.
“We don’t need to prop up the fossil fuel industry with new, multi-year projects that are a recipe for climate chaos,” Gore added. “Instead, we must end the expansion of oil, gas and coal and embrace the abundant climate solutions at our fingertips.”
The Willow project has become a leading target for climate campaigners due to the huge volume of planet-heating emissions it could unleash. The drilling operation would extract up to 180,0000 barrels of oil a day, about 1.6% of total US oil production from one site alone. In a grim irony, ConocoPhillips has said it may have to re-freeze ground that is rapidly thawing as the Arctic heats up in order to stabilize the drilling equipment.
This drilling would result in 278m tons of greenhouse gases over a 30-year lifespan of the development, according to the administration’s own estimates, the equivalent of adding 2m gasoline-consuming cars onto the road or running more than 70 coal-fired power plants for a year. The pollution produced would comfortably wipe out the emissions saved from all renewable energy projects on US public lands by 2030.
The Department of the Interior has said it has “substantial concerns” about the Willow project’s impact upon the climate and the subsistence lifestyle of native Alaskan communities but has completed an environmental review of the development that it said would improve it, such as drilling at three sites rather than five and reducing the number of roads and other infrastructure that would be built in the wilderness.
The prospect of the administration approving a full or abridged version of the project has sparked alarm among local communities, climate campaigners and Biden’s Democratic allies.
The International Energy Agency has said no new fossil fuel infrastructure can be built if the world is to avoid disastrous climate change and two dozen Democrats in Congress have written to Biden warning that Willow poses “a significant threat to US progress on climate issues”. The lawmakers called upon the president to “stop this ill-conceived and misguided project”.
A wave of opposition to the Willow project has hit the White House in recent weeks, including in-person rallies in Washington DC and a viral #StopWillow campaign on social media. An online petition calling for the project to be halted has garnered more than 3m signatures. Critics have pointed out the project fatally undermines Biden’s promise to deal with the climate crisis, which he has called an “existential threat” to humanity.
“President Biden continues to address climate change during high-profile speeches and events but his actions are contradictory,” said Siqiniq Maupin, executive director of the Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, an Indigenous group that has warned the project would endanger the subsistence lifestyle of native communities that rely upon the migration of a caribou herd, as well as other established patterns in the environment, to live in their Arctic surrounds.
Biden has come under pressure from proponents of the project, too, with Alaskan lawmakers and some native groups arguing Willow would create much-needed jobs and investment for the region. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican senator from Alaska, has called the size of the project “minuscule” and that it has been “meticulously planned” to avoid harm to the environment.
The battle over Willow is likely to end up in the courts, with environmental advocates vowing to keep fighting any iteration of the project. “I think that litigation is very likely,” said Jeremy Lieb, a senior attorney for Earthjustice. “We and our clients don’t see any acceptable version of this project.”
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