US Politics

House Republicans are escalating attacks on transgender athletes under the guise of protecting women’s sports, according to the passage of a new bill.During a Thursday press conference the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, and other legislators announced the passage of the so-called “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act” in a party-line vote.Calling the policy an attempt to “protect basic fairness”, the bill would prohibit transgender women from competing on women’s sports teams in schools and universities that receive public funding.“Men shouldn’t be able to compete in women’s sports,” said Louisiana congressman Steve Scalise, the House majority leader, at a press conference following the vote.House Democrats unanimously voted against the legislation.“You should hang your heads in shame,” said Massachusetts congresswoman Katherine Clark, the House Democratic whip, during an impassioned floor debate on Thursday, warning that the legislation would further “incite fear and discrimination and hatred” against trans youth.“What are we doing here?” she said. “What are we doing here as members of Congress?”Joe Biden has vowed to veto the measure. Republicans called a potential veto a “slap in the face” to “women’s rights, science and common sense”.The Biden administration put forth a proposal earlier this month that would forbid schools and colleges from enacting bans on transgender athletes in sports team.But under Biden’s proposal, teams could put limits on participation under certain circumstances to ensure fairness, though the proposal did not elaborate on such limits.LGBTQ+ advocates and civil rights leaders have called such bills banning transgender athlete participation transphobic and unnecessary.“Every student should be able to have the full experience of attending school in America, including participating in athletics, free from discrimination,” said US education secretary Miguel Cardona in a statement.At least 21 states have passed similar bans or restrictions on the participation of transgender athletes in school sports, according to data from the Movement Advancement Project.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLast March, Iowa governor Kim Reynolds signed a bill that bans transgender girls and women from participating in high school or collegiate sports.Earlier this month Kansas’s legislature passed a bill that would ban transgender athletes from girls and women’s sports from kindergarten until college, the Associated Press reported. The bill passed via a veto override, the third veto of Democratic governor Laura Kelly on such a bill.“It breaks my heart and certainly is disappointing,” said Kelly to reporters, adding that she believed legislators would regret voting for “this really awful bill.”Kansas legislators also passed a bill broadly banning transgender people from using the bathroom that matches their gender identity.Republican lawmakers have also passed or introduced a number of other bills targeting the rights of transgender people and LGBTQ+ community, notably access to gender-affirming care.While House Republicans and state legislatures attempt to push bans on trans people in the name of women’s rights, they’re simultaneously curbing reproductive access – including similar state-level restrictions or total bans on abortions. More

Book bans in US public schools increased by 28% in the first half of the 2022-23 academic year, the writers’ organisation Pen America said on Thursday, describing a “relentless” conservative “crusade to constrict children’s freedom to read”.Releasing a new report, Banned in the USA: State Laws Supercharge Book Suppression in Schools, Pen said the increase was over figures for the previous six months.“Censorious legislation in states across the country has been a driving force behind new restrictions on access to books in public schools,” it said.“Since Pen America started tracking public school book bans in July 2021, [it] has recorded more than 4,000 instances of banned books … this includes 1,477 individual book bans affecting 874 unique titles during the first half of the 2022-23 school year.”Book bans are more common in Republican-run states. According to Pen, “seven districts in Texas were responsible for 438 instances of individual book bans, and 13 districts in Florida were responsible for 357 bans”.It added: “Of the 1,477 books banned this school year, 30% are about race, racism or include characters of colour, while 26% have LGBTQ+ characters or themes.”Pen also highlighted “the misapplication of labels such as ‘pornographic’ or ‘indecent’ by activists and politicians to justify the removal of books that do not remotely fit the well-established legal and colloquial definitions of pornography.“Alarmist rhetoric about ‘porn in schools’ has been a significant factor behind such mischaracterisations, which routinely conflate books that contain any sexual content or include LGBTQ+ characters with ‘pornography’.”According to Pen, the most frequently banned books in the 2022-23 US school year were Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe, Flamer by Mike Curato, Tricks by Ellen Hopkins and The Handmaid’s Tale: a Graphic Novel by Margaret Atwood and Renée Nault.Atwood last year supported Pen by auctioning an “un-burnable” edition of her dystopian feminist novel, which was published in 1985 and became the inspiration for a hit TV series. It raised $130,000.Atwood said then: “Free speech issues are being hotly debated, and Pen is a sane voice [amid] all the shouting.”Book bans have not been without political blowback.In Florida on Wednesday, so-called “don’t say gay” laws regarding the teaching of gender and LGBTQ+ issues were expanded from public elementary schools to the whole state system. But the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, last week saw a major donor pause support for his nascent presidential run, citing book bans as one policy of concern.Interactive Brokers founder Thomas Peterffy told the Financial Times: “I have put myself on hold. Because of his stance on abortion and book banning … myself, and a bunch of friends, are holding our powder dry.”The Pen chief executive, Suzanne Nossel, said: “The heavy-handed tactics of state legislators are mandating book bans, plain and simple.“Some politicians like Ron DeSantis have tried to dismiss the rise in book bans as a ‘hoax’. But their constituents and supporters are not fooled. The numbers don’t lie, and reveal a relentless crusade to constrict children’s freedom to read.” More

The Republican-dominated legislature in Florida has moved quickly to amplify Governor Ron DeSantis’s feud with Disney over LGBTQ+ rights, advancing a proposal to overcome the company’s thwarting of his earlier plan to seize control of the theme park giant.DeSantis, a likely candidate for the Republicans’ 2024 presidential nomination, was outfoxed by Disney after installing a hand-picked board of directors with oversight of the state’s biggest private employer. At its first meeting, the board discovered a last-minute deal between Disney and outgoing directors had rendered it in effect impotent.Now, in a move Democrats say is unconstitutional, lawmakers on Wednesday introduced a measure handing the DeSantis loyalists retroactive power to nullify the agreement by amending a land use law relating to special taxing districts.And in its own separate meeting the same day, the new board laid out its plans for Disney, including a huge increase in taxes and building low-income housing on land adjacent to its popular theme parks.Earlier this week, DeSantis had touted building a new state prison there, among other proposals.The escalation comes amid growing evidence that DeSantis’s focus on punishing Disney for speaking out against his “don’t say gay” law banning classroom discussion on LGBTQ+ issues is harming his political standing.Although he has yet to declare his candidacy, he trails former president Donald Trump by a significant margin in Republican polls for the White House nomination; is struggling to attract endorsements of Florida’s congressional delegation; and has lost the backing of influential donors.He is also under fire from Republicans who have derided his “unconservative” attacks on a private business as an act of revenge.“That’s not the guy I want sitting across from President Xi [Jinping] and negotiating our next agreement with China,” the Republican former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, a possible rival for the nomination, told Semafor.“Or sitting across from [Vladimir] Putin and trying to resolve what’s happening in Ukraine. If you can’t see around a corner that [Disney chief executive] Bob Iger creates for you, I mean, I don’t think that’s very imposing.”The latest Disney measure is expected to become law. Republicans in the Florida legislature, who secured a supermajority at the same time DeSantis was re-elected by a 19% margin last November, have so far been compliant with every item on the governor’s cultural wishlist.As well as lawmakers advancing the land use amendment on Wednesday, the Florida house passed a bill banning children from drag shows, and DeSantis’s board of education approved an expansion of the “don’t say gay” law outlawing classroom conversations on sexual orientation and gender identity to all grades.Also this session, the legislature passed a six-week abortion ban and permitless carry for firearms, and it is mulling DeSantis’s extremist immigration agenda that would make it a felony for anyone to knowingly transport an undocumented person.Democrats say the Disney proposal, which would give DeSantis’s allies on the central Florida tourism oversight district the authority to overturn any agreements made in the three months before it took power, contravenes the Florida constitution.“I’m all about corporate accountability, but this isn’t it,” state congresswoman Anna Eskamani said, according to the Miami Herald. “And it continues to be a distraction for us to focus on real-life issues by continuing the Disney versus DeSantis drama.”But in a tweet lauding the move, Jeremy Redfern, DeSantis’s deputy press secretary, said Disney’s deal with the outgoing board was an “illegal and unconstitutional effort” to evade oversight. More

Earlier this month, the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas put out a statement in which he addressed the storm of criticism that has engulfed him following the blockbuster ProPublica report that revealed his failure to disclose lavish gifts of luxury vacations and private-jet travel from a Texan real estate magnate.Thomas confirmed that the Dallas billionaire and Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow and his wife Kathy were “among our dearest friends”. Thomas admitted, too, that he and his wife Ginni had “joined them on a number of family trips during the more-than-a-quarter-century we have known them”.The justice, who is the longest-serving member of the nation’s highest court and arguably its most staunch conservative, insisted he had taken advice that “this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends” did not have to be reported under federal ethics laws. He emphasized that the friend in question “did not have business before the court”.But a close look at Thomas’s judicial activities from the time he became friends with Crow, in the mid-1990s, suggests that the statement might fall short of the full picture. It reveals that a conservative organization affiliated with Crow did have business before the supreme court while Thomas was on the bench.In addition, Crow has been connected to several groups that over the years have lobbied the supreme court through so-called “amicus briefs” that provide legal arguments supporting a plaintiff or defendant.In 2003, the anti-tax group the Club for Growth joined other rightwing individuals and organisations, including the Republican senator Mitch McConnell and the National Rifle Association (NRA), in attempting to push back campaign finance restrictions on election spending.At the time of the legal challenge, from at least 2001 to 2004, Crow was a member of the Club for Growth’s prestigious “founders committee”. Though little is known about the role of the committee, it clearly commanded some influence over the group’s policymaking.During the course of a 2005 investigation into likely campaign finance violations by the Club for Growth, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) noted that rank-and-file club members could “vote on an annual policy question selected by the founders committee”.Crow has also been a major donor to the club, contributing $275,000 to its coffers in 2004 and a further $150,000 two years later.The 2003 legal challenge championed by the Club for Growth targeted the McCain-Feingold Act, which had been passed with cross-aisle backing the previous year. The legislation placed new controls on the amount of “soft money” political party committees and corporations could spend on elections.On appeal, a consolidated version of the lawsuit, Mitch McConnell v FEC, was taken up by the supreme court. In a majority ruling, the court allowed the most important elements of the McCain-Feingold Act to stand (though they were later nullified by the supreme court’s contentious 2010 Citizens United ruling).Thomas was livid. He issued a 25-page dissenting opinion that sided heavily with the anti-regulation stance taken by the Club for Growth and its rightwing allies. Thomas began his opinion by breathlessly accusing his fellow justices of upholding “what can only be described as the most significant abridgment of the freedoms of speech and association since the civil war”.By the time Thomas issued his opinion in December 2003 he had already forged his deep relationship with Crow. According to the billionaire, they first met at a conference in Dallas in 1994 – by which time Thomas had already been nominated by George HW Bush to the most powerful court in the land.The businessman had already showered Thomas with several lavish gifts before the McCain-Feingold challenge reached his court. Thomas disclosed for instance a 1997 flight from Washington to northern California on Crow’s private jet to attend an all-male retreat at Bohemian Grove at which the justice went on to become a regular guest.There was also a Bible once owned by Frederick Douglass, then valued at $19,000. In 2001 Crow made a $150,000 donation to create a Clarence Thomas wing within the Savannah, Georgia, library the justice frequented as a child.The federal law 28 US Code section 455 requires any federal judge – including the nine supreme court justices – to recuse themselves from any proceeding “in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned”.ProPublica’s explosive investigation earlier this month exposed undeclared gifts and travel that have continued to be bestowed by the billionaire on Thomas to this day. They included a nine-day vacation with Ginni in Indonesia in the summer of 2019 the cost of which probably exceeded $500,000.In a later report, ProPublica revealed that in 2014 Thomas sold his mother’s home in Savannah to Crow. That transaction was also left undisclosed.The ProPublica disclosures have prompted a debate about the need for greater scrutiny of the conduct of supreme court justices. Top Democrats have called for an official inquiry into Thomas’s behavior and for all the justices to be subject to a strict ethics code.The progressive Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, speaking on CNN, decried Crow’s largesse as “very serious corruption” and called for Thomas to be impeached.Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a non-partisan group which advocates supreme court reform, said that a crisis of trust in Thomas’s ethical judgments had been bubbling below the surface for some time. “The reason that it is so salient now is that the supreme court has grown exponentially in power since Justice Thomas took that first private plane ride in 1997 – when the court becomes the most powerful government body, then ethics issues become all the more critical.”The Guardian contacted Thomas at the supreme court but did not receive a response.This week, the normally media-shy Crow, who has assets valued at $30bn and who has donated at least $13m to Republicans, gave an in-depth interview to the Dallas Morning News. He claimed the furore around his relations with Thomas was a “political hit-job” by the liberal media.He insisted he and Thomas were just friends who spent their time talking about their kids and animals. “We talk about dogs a lot,” he said.Asked whether he ever considered their friendship as a ticket to quid pro quo, he replied: “Every single relationship – a baby’s relationship to his mom – has some kind of reciprocity.”Crow’s office, in a statement to the Guardian, disputed any relevance of Crow’s links with the Club for Growth, his friendship with Thomas, and the justice’s opinion in the McConnell v FEC case. “Harlan Crow was not a party to the litigation, was only a financial supporter of Club for Growth, and had no role whatsoever in any Club for Growth litigation decisions.”The statement continued: “Any insinuation that Justice Thomas wrote his opinion in this case because Harlan Crow was a supporter is ridiculous as Justice Thomas had already expressed these same views in a previous case, Nixon v Shrink MO PAC.”The billionaire’s office insisted that Thomas’s skepticism of the constitutionality of campaign finance regulation “was established before he had even met Harlan Crow”.Crow has never personally come before the supreme court, and denies ever trying to influence Thomas on any legal or political issue. But he has served on the boards of at least three conservative groups that have lobbied the supreme court through amicus briefs. Early in his friendship with Thomas, Crow sat on the national board of the now defunct Center for the Community Interest, which filed at least eight amicus briefs in supreme court cases backing rightwing causes such as sweeping crime off the streets and countering pornography.He has also been a trustee for more than 25 years of the American Enterprise Institute, a thinktank advancing free enterprise ideas that has filed several supporting briefs to the court. In 2001 AEI gave Thomas a bust of Abraham Lincoln then valued at $15,000.Crow is an overseer of the Hoover Institution, a conservative thinktank based at Stanford University. In February, Hoover senior fellows led an amicus brief filed to Thomas and his fellow justices challenging the $400bn student loan debt-relief program introduced by Joe Biden.The supreme court is likely to rule on whether the scheme can go ahead this summer. In oral arguments in February, Thomas was among the rightwing justices who hold the supermajority who indicated they were skeptical of the program, raising the possibility that the court will scupper the hopes of more than 40 million Americans eligible for the debt relief. More

TikTok will either need to divest itself from Chinese ownership or face a ban in the United States, according to the commissioner of the US federal communications commission, Brendan Carr, who accused the company of “gaslighting” the public on surveillance concerns.Appearing before the Australian Senate inquiry into foreign influence through social media, the Trump appointee said concern about TikTok in the US was “broad and deep”, and crossed party lines.Following the United Kingdom, Australia and other countries’ ban of the app from government devices, the US is considering a full ban nationally. Legislation enacting a statewide ban was recently passed in Montana.TikTok has attempted to head off any potential ban by moving US user data to third-party servers within the country. It is also allowing its source code to be scrutinised by US tech firm Oracle, which will screen TikTok app updates.Carr told the committee while that was ultimately an issue being handled by the US Treasury department, there was a common view among Democrats and Republicans that the data could not be prevented from being accessed by Chinese government officials under the 2017 national security law.Carr, the most senior Republican member on the FCC, said only an outright ban of the app in the United States or removing all corporate ties to China would be acceptable.“Ultimately, I think some sort of … legislation that imposes a ban or a genuine divestiture is the way forward right now,” he said.“The argument that somehow TikTok is going to stand up to the CCP is belied by their inability to do it at any point in time publicly. For instance, when asked in US media interviews, whether they acknowledge the existence of the Uyghur genocide, their official on TV refused to address it.”Carr said that a Project Texas plan might work for other Chinese companies, but TikTok’s actions to date meant there was no trust for the United States.“We’ve had this years-long approach that strikes me is nothing short of a gaslighting in terms of their misrepresentations,” he said.A spokesperson for TikTok said divestment wouldn’t solve the problem if national security is the objective.“A change in ownership would not impose any new restrictions on data flows or access. The best way to address concerns about national security is with the transparent, US-based protection of US user data and systems, with robust third-party monitoring, vetting, and verification, which we are already implementing.”The Australian government has announced no plans beyond the ban of TikTok from government devices, but the Coalition is likely to push the Labor government for more restrictions on the app.The chair of the inquiry and shadow home affairs minister, senator James Paterson, opened the hearing by saying that the inquiry would serve as a starting point on making Australians a harder target for foreign interference.“We cannot allow foreign authoritarian regimes to have unfettered access to the devices of millions of Australians and the powerful opportunity that offers them to influence our democracy,” he said. “The work starts today to make us a harder target against the threat of cyber enabled foreign interference.”TikTok this week issued a factcheck on claims made about the app, and denied that Australian user data could be accessed in China.The inquiry is holding initial hearings on Thursday and Friday, and is due to report back to parliament in August. More

Donald Trump considers a federal abortion ban as a losing proposal for Republicans as the party prepares to enter the first presidential election since the supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade and is unlikely to support such a policy, according to people close to him.The former president has told allies in recent days that his gut feeling remains leaving the matter of reproductive rights to the states – following the court’s reasoning in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization that ended 50 years of federal abortion protections.But Trump’s crystallizing stance appears to be, in essence, a recognition that a federal abortion ban could cost him in the 2024 election should he become the Republican nominee, mainly because a majority of Americans simply do not support making abortion mostly or entirely illegal.The thinking is informed in part by Republicans’ losses in the midterm elections they were supposed to dominate, which interviews showed were tied to the supreme court ruling. And in the six states where abortion-related questions were on the ballot in 2022, voters chose to reject further limits.The issue has emerged as an early litmus test for Republican presidential candidates, and Trump’s reluctance to endorse national restrictions would put him squarely at odds with prominent leaders of the anti-abortion movement who are demanding federal action.Yet his refusal to embrace the most hard-line position of party activists provides an opening for potential rivals such as Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, and his former vice-president, Mike Pence, to run to his right on an issue.Worried about the political risks of being viewed as over draconian on abortion, Trump’s allies told him that they were surprised last week to see DeSantis, his expected rival in the 2024 race, sign into law and become the face of the state’s six-week abortion ban.The feedback to Trump – which is shaping his stance – was that for all the claims by DeSantis that he was supposedly an electable alternative to Trump for the GOP nomination, the Florida governor would undermine his chances in general elections by becoming the face of a six-week abortion ban.Trump has talked about striking a balance, people close to him said: leaving abortion up to the states, while endorsing exceptions for rape, incest and in cases of harm to the mother, as well as appointing conservative judges to the federal bench and removing federal funds for planned parenthood, which he did as president.Trump’s less extreme stance on abortion underscores the enduring potency of one of America’s most politically charged issues. But his posturing could prove risky in the Republican primary, where social conservatives have outsized influence in the early-voting states, especially in Iowa.On Saturday, Trump is scheduled to speak at Iowa’s Faith and Freedom Coalition event – one of the most conservative conferences in the country – where he may be pressed on his abortion stance.Asked about Trump’s stance on abortion for 2024, the campaign reiterated his White House policies. “President Trump believes that the supreme court, led by the three justices which he supported, got it right when they ruled this is an issue that should be decided at the state level.”“Republicans have been trying to get this done for 50 years, but we were unable to do so. President Trump, who is considered the most pro-life president in history, got it done. He will continue these policies when re-elected to the White House,” the statement said.Trump’s political thinking was also on display when the draft supreme court decision to overturn Roe v Wade was leaked last year, the people said, when he turned to friends and said it would anger suburban women and lead to a backlash against Republicans in the midterms.He initially demurred about taking credit for the ruling – unusual for someone typically so keen to claim any credit – and was silent even as his former vice-president Mike Pence and other conservatives from his administration declared victory for the anti-abortion movement.Later, Trump made sure to issue a statement applauding himself for sticking with his three nominees to the supreme court, who all ended up in the 6-3 majority opinion reversing Roe v Wade. “Today’s decision … only made possible because I delivered everything as promised,” he said.Trump has described himself as the “most pro-life president” in history, though he is also a former Democrat from New York who once supported abortion rights until around the time that he ran for president in 2016.While in office, Trump paved the way for the post-Roe legal landscape, also appointing to the federal bench in Texas US district court judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, whose recent ruling revoked the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of the abortion drug, mifepristone. The decision has been temporarily stayed.Trump’s comments about abortion being a political liability for Republicans have angered former allies. When Trump blamed the party’s midterm losses on “the abortion issue”, prominent anti-abortion groups fired back with a pointed warning that the former president still needed to earn their support.Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America group, told reporters prior to the March For Life in January that any candidate who did not support national restrictions on abortion had “disqualified him or herself as a presidential candidate in our eyes”.Jon Schweppe, policy director of the conservative American Principles Project, said Trump was not wrong that abortion had hurt Republicans in recent elections. But he said the answer was not to abandon the push for a nationwide ban, rather it was to build consensus within the party around a federal standard, such as a prohibiting the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy.“I think [Trump] sees abortion as why we lost the midterms and he’s not totally wrong,” Schweppe said. “But the answer is not: ‘There’s no federal role. We’er not going to do anything any more – I delivered you Dobbs.’ It’s gotta be: ‘This is the next step.’”“The pro-life movement still has quite a bit of sway,” he added, “and it’s going to have a major sway in the presidential primary.” More

Florida’s board of education has approved the expansion of the state’s so-called “don’t say gay” bill, which now prohibits discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity at school across all grade levels.Wednesday’s approval came at the request of the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, who in the past two years has waged what critics call a “culture war” across the state through his bans on gender-affirming care, Covid-19 precautionary measures and abortion rights, among other facets.According to an education department spokesperson, the proposal will take effect after a procedural notice period that lasts about a month, the Associated Press reports.The rule states that Florida educators “shall not intentionally provide classroom instruction to students in grades four through 12 on sexual orientation or gender identity unless such instruction is either expressly required by state academic standards … or is part of a reproductive health course or health lesson for which a student’s parent has the option to have his or her student not attend.”Previously, the Parental Rights in Education law focused on banning classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity only from kindergarten through third grade.Parents are allowed to sue school districts over violations and educators who violate the ban risk having their licenses revoked.The expansion is a part of a series of anti-LGBTQ+ being proposed in Florida, including a ban on gender affirming care that would allow the state to take “emergency” custody of a child whose parents allow them access to such care.Other bans include curtailing drag performances, banning pride flags from public buildings, as well as removing college majors and minors on gender studies and critical race theory, among other similar disciplines.In a statement to the Associated Press, Florida’s education commissioner, Manny Diaz Jr, said: “We’re not removing anything here. All we are doing is we are setting the expectations so our teachers are clear: that they are to teach to the standards.”As a result of DeSantis’s “don’t say gay” bill and his culture war against “wokeness”, the governor, who is widely expected to launch his 2024 presidential run, has found himself going head to head with Disney, one of the state’s largest private employers.Last month, Disney pushed back against DeSantis’s crackdown on LGBTQ+ rights by announcing its plans to host a major LGBTQ+ conference at Walt Disney World in Orlando. The announcement was widely regarded as a defiant response to DeSantis who assumed new powers in February that allow him to appoint members of the development board that supervises the theme park and its self-governing district. More

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