US news

Subterms

    More stories

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Pete Hegseth decried out gay troops in US military as part of Marxist agenda

      by

      Policies allowing out gay people to serve in the US military have been denounced as part of a “Marxist” agenda aimed at prioritising social justice above combat-readiness by Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s embattled defence secretary pick.The assertion was among many contentious “anti-woke” views expressed in Hegseth’s latest book, The War on Warriors, published this year, in which he lambasted a previous policy – known as don’t ask, don’t tell (DADT) – that tolerated gay service members as long as they did not disclose their sexual orientation, while also excoriating its repeal.DADT was introduced as a compromise during Bill Clinton’s presidency in 1993 to allow lesbians and gay men to serve in the military in the face of opposition from senior commanders. The policy overturned a previous blanket ban that had been in place since the second world war.It was repealed in 2011 during the presidency of Barack Obama following numerous complaints of discrimination resulting from the dishonourable discharges of armed service personnel after their sexuality had come to light.Hegseth – whose nomination has become imperilled following allegations of drunkenness, sexual misconduct and financial mismanagement – has denounced DADT as the start of ideological “tinkering” with the armed forces for social justice ends, CNN reported .But he has also voiced regret over its repeal, calling it “a breach in the wire” that opened the path to a wider ideological and cultural change in the armed forces.Recalling how he was getting ready to deploy to Afghanistan when the policy was annulled, he wrote: “Our commander briefed the unit, peppered with a few jokes. You know, infantry stuff.“We mostly laughed it off and moved on. America was at war. Gays and lesbians were already serving in the military. I had seen the enemy with my own eyes. We needed everybody.”He now says that inclusive and tolerant attitude was a mistake, suggesting it paved the way for admitting transgender people into the military and allowing women to serve in combat roles, from which they were barred until a 2013 reform.“It started with Clinton under ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’,” Hegseth told the conservative broadcaster, Ben Shapiro, in an interview this year in which he cited a military recruitment advertisement of a soldier with two lesbian mothers as illustrative of a shift in military culture.“At least when it was an ‘Army of One’, they were, you know, [a] tough-looking, go get ’em army,” he said.“Now you just have the absurdity of ‘I have two mommies and I’m so proud to show them that I can wear the uniform too.’ So they, it’s just like everything else the Marxists and the leftists have done. At first it was camouflaged nicely and now they’re just open about it.”Hegseth’s aversion to gay people in the military and women in combat was expressed before Trump nominated him for a cabinet position that would give him decision-making power over both policies.Interviewed this week by CNN, Hegseth – a former army national guard soldier and Fox News host – declined to say whether he still believed it was a mistake to repeal don’t ask, don’t tell.He also said he supported “all women serving in our military” – despite previously arguing that their presence led to an “erosion in standards”.Hegseth repeatedly took issue with the concept of female combatants in a chapter of his latest book titled “The (deadly) obsession with women warriors”.“I’m going to say something politically incorrect that is perfectly commonsensical observation,” he wrote. “Dads push us to take risks. Moms put the training wheels on our bike. We need moms, but not in the military, especially in combat units.”In another provocative passage, he wrote: “If you train a group of men to treat women equally on the battlefield then you will be hard pressed to ask them to treat women differently at home.”Hegseth conflated the issue of women and gay people in the military in comments to Fox News in 2015, Meidas News reported.“Through don’t ask, don’t tell and women in the military and these standards, they’re going to inevitably start to erode standards because they want that one female special operator, that one female Green Beret, that one female Army Ranger, that one female Navy Seal, so they can put them on a recruiting poster and feel good about themselves – and [that] has nothing to do with national security,” he said. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Ontario leader threatens to halt energy exports to US if Trump imposes tariffs

      by

      The leader of Canada’s largest province says he’s prepared to halt energy exports to the United States, warning that other premiers “need to be ready to fight” as threats escalate ahead of possible American tariffs.The Ontario premier, Doug Ford, says he’s weighing options to fight back against a 25% levy on all Canadian goods that the US president-elect Donald Trump has pledged to implement when he assumes office.Following a meeting with the nation’s premiers and the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, Ford said other leaders were also drawing up lists of exports that could be halted.“But we will go to the full extent, depending how far this goes, we will go to the extent of cutting off their energy, going down to Michigan, going down to New York state and over to Wisconsin,” said Ford. “I don’t want this to happen, but my number one job is to protect Ontario, Ontarians and Canadians as a whole.”Canada’s most populous province is also among the most vulnerable to American tariffs because roughly 85% of its exports – including billions in automotive parts – are sent to a handful of US states. As a result, Ford has emerged as the Canadian politician most vocal about the devastating effects the tariffs would have on hundreds of billions of shared trade.“We need to be ready. We need to be ready to fight,” said Ford. “This fight is coming 100% on January 20 or January 21.”Ford’s threat aims to highlight both the integrated nature of North American economies and also to put pressure on state governors. But is unclear how much Ford could follow through on his pledge to cut electricity exports, given that premiers do not make international energy policy.Canada supplies roughly 60% of all American oil imports and even more of its electricity imports. In 2022, Canada’s revenue from electricity exports to the United States hit a record high of C$5.8bn. Quebec is the largest exporter, with Ontario following second at 13.9m megawatt-hours of power sent south.“We will use every tool in our tool box to fight back,” said Ford. “We can’t sit back and roll over. We just won’t as a country. And isn’t this a shame, our closest friends and allies.”Trump threatened last month to apply the devastating levies of 25% on all goods and services from both Mexico and Canada, vowing to keep them in place until “such time as drugs, in particular fentanyl, and all illegal aliens stop this invasion of our country!”Last week, Trump seemed to take joy in the panicked response from Canadian officials, calling Trudeau Canada’s “governor” of a potential “51st” state. More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      North Carolina GOP lawmakers override veto to strip power from Democratic officials

      by

      On the brink of losing their supermajority in the state legislature, North Carolina Republicans overrode a gubernatorial veto on Wednesday to enact a new law that gives them control over elections in the state and strips the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general of some of their powers.Currently, North Carolina’s governor appoints the five members of the state board of elections, allowing him to select a three-person majority from his party. The new law transfers that appointment power to the state auditor. A Republican won control of the state auditor race this fall for the first time in more than a decade.The bill also changes how local election boards in each of North Carolina’s 100 counties would be appointed. Currently the state board appoints members and the governor appoints the chair. Under the new law, the auditor-appointed state board would still pick the local boards, but the auditor would pick the chair. Taken together, the new law would give Republicans control over both the state and local boards of elections.Lawsuits are expected challenging the changes, which were tucked into a bill that allocates more than $200m in relief money for Hurricane Helene. The money will not be immediately availableand the funds cannot be spent until the legislature acts again, according to the Associated Press.The outgoing governor, Roy Cooper, and the incoming governor, Josh Stein, both Democrats, have criticized the measure as a power grab. Republicans are poised to lose their supermajority in the state legislature next year.“Western North Carolina small businesses and communities still wait for support from the legislature while Republicans make political power grabs the priority. Shameful,” Cooper said in a statement.The measure also makes significant changes to election procedures. Voters currently have more than a week to provide ID or proof of residence when they vote. The new law shortens that window to just two and a half days and requires local election officials to count provisional ballots more quickly.That change seems directly in response to a state supreme court election in which the Democrat Allison Riggs trailed her opponent by 10,000 votes on election night but then pulled ahead as more votes were counted. She appears to have won the election by a little over 700 votes.It also limits Jeff Jackson, the incoming Democratic attorney general, from taking positions contrary to the general assembly and dilutes the governor’s power to fill judicial vacancies.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Unfortunately, Western North Carolina had to watch as every Republican in the general assembly shamelessly put their desire to strip political power away from recently elected Democrats ahead of the aid and relief their communities need,” Anderson Clayton, the chair of the North Carolina Democratic party, said in a statement. “Using the guise of Hurricane Helene relief is a new low, even for general assembly Republicans.” More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Meta donates $1m to Donald Trump’s inaugural fund

      by

      Meta has donated $1m to Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, the company confirmed on Thursday.The donation, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, appears to be the latest effort by the social media company and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, to improve relations with the incoming president, and comes just weeks after Zuckerberg dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.Meta confirmed its donation to the Guardian on Thursday but did not provide details regarding the reason for the contribution.During the dinner last month at Mar-a-Lago, the Meta CEO reportedly congratulated the president-elect on his victory and the two “largely exchanged pleasantries”, according to the New York Times.Zuckerberg also reportedly met with Senator Marco Rubio, Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, the Wall Street Journal reported, and other incoming White House advisers, such as Stephen Miller.A spokesperson for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, told the BBC at the time that Zuckerberg was “grateful for the invitation to join President Trump for dinner and the opportunity to meet with members of his team about the incoming administration”.“It’s an important time for the future of American Innovation,” the statement added.Zuckerberg’s team informed Trump’s inaugural team about Meta’s plans to contribute to the inaugural fund before meeting the president-elect for dinner at Mar-a-Lago, according to the Wall Street Journal.The donation by Meta seems to mark a shift for the company, as Meta did not make any contribution to Trump’s 2017 or Biden’s 2021 inaugural fund.Over the last several years, the relationship between Trump and Meta has been strained. Trump has accused the company of unfairly censoring him and other conservative voices on its platforms.In March of this year, Trump referred to Facebook as “an enemy of the people” during an interview with CNBC. He stated: “I think Facebook has been very dishonest. I think Facebook has been very bad for our country, especially concerning elections.”After the January 6 attack on the Capitol in 2021, Meta suspended Trump from posting on its platforms. Two years later, in 2023, the company restored his account with certain restrictions in place. However, in July of this year, those restrictions were lifted.Earlier that month, in a post on Truth Social, Trump said that if he’s elected in November, “election fraudsters” would be imprisoned, and referred to Zuckerberg.“If I’m elected President, we will pursue Election Fraudsters at levels never seen before, and they will be sent to prison for long periods of time” Trump wrote. “We already know who you are. DON’T DO IT! ZUCKERBUCKS, be careful!”.And in a book titled Save America, Trump accused Zuckerberg of “plotting” against him during the 2020 election and “steering” Facebook against him.But over the summer, the New York Times reported that Mark Zuckerberg and Trump had several private phone calls. In one of those calls, Zuckerberg reportedly wished Trump well following the assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, and expressed that he was “praying” for him.In a July interview with Bloomberg, Zuckerberg publicly praised Trump’s reaction to the Pennsylvania assassination attempt – when he stood up and began pumping his fist in the air – and described the moment as “one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life”.Zuckerberg expressed regret around some of his past political activities in a letter to Congress in late August and accused the Biden administration of pressuring Meta in 2021 into censoring more Covid-19 content than he was comfortable with.He did not endorse any candidate for the 2024 election, and has stated that he wants to stay away from politics.Trump told a podcast in October that he liked Zuckerberg “much better now”, adding: “I actually believe he’s staying out of the election, which is nice.”After Trump’s election victory in November, Zuckerberg congratulated him and said he was looking forward to working with the president-elect.“We have great opportunities ahead of us as a country. Looking forward to working with you and your administration,” he wrote.Earlier this month, reports indicated that Zuckerberg was seeking an “active role” in the Trump administration’s tech policy decisions.Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, who is also a former UK deputy prime minister, also added that Zuckerberg wanted to participate in “the debate that any administration needs to have about maintaining America’s leadership in the technological sphere”. More

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Did gerrymandering keep Republicans from a bigger majority? Absolutely not | David Daley

      by

      Mike Johnson, the House Speaker, will soon have the challenge of leading a three-seat Republican majority. He has an interesting theory about why the Republican edge will be so slender. Last week, on Fox News, he blamed Democratic gerrymandering.While it’s always a delightful surprise to hear a Republican leader express concern about the evils of gerrymandering, Johnson has the facts and the math completely backwards.The truth is the opposite: Republicans drew the district lines of nearly three times as many US House seats as did Democrats – 191 to 71. Republicans gerrymandered more than three times as many seats than Democrats. They started from a position of power after drawing historic gerrymanders in 2011 that lasted a decade in states like Wisconsin, Ohio and North Carolina. And the Republicans’ gerrymandered advantage was preserved and protected by the Republican supermajority on the US supreme court.Johnson is right about one thing: he holds the speakership because of gerrymandering – but because of the election rigging done by his own side.The Republican party’s three-seat majority would not exist at all without a new, mid-decade gerrymander in North Carolina that gift-wrapped the Republicans the three additional seats that made the difference. Before the Republican-controlled state supreme court upended North Carolina’s congressional map, the purple state elected seven Democrats and seven Republicans. (When Democrats controlled the court, they mandated a fair map, not a Democratic one; when Republicans took over, the gerrymander returned.)And what happened after the newly seated Republican court destroyed the balanced map and returned it to the Republican legislature to be tilted in its direction? The new map produced 10 Republicans and four Democrats. Many experts believe it could yet elect 11 Republicans and three Democrats. The gerrymander handed Johnson the three seats that made him speaker. Without it, Democrats might even control the House.Johnson, quite simply, couldn’t be any more wrong. Both parties certainly gerrymandered where they could. But Republicans had the power to gerrymander far more districts in far more places.Overall, according to the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at New York University law school, it all adds up to a 16-seat edge for Republicans nationwide. “The bias in this cycle’s maps strongly favors Republicans due primarily to aggressive gerrymandering in GOP strongholds in the South and Midwest,” a Brennan report concludes.There are no redistricting angels. The US supreme court made sure of that with their 2019 decision in Rucho v Common Cause, which closed the federal courts to partisan gerrymandering cases at exactly the time when lower-court judges appointed by both parties had found the tools they needed to determine when partisan gerrymanders went too far.But when the Republican court ended the possibility of a national solution, it launched a game of mutual assured destruction: the Republican party built its advantages in state legislature and Congress throughout the 2010s via redistricting. With no hope of help from neutral courts in leveling tilted playing fields in Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Georgia and elsewhere, Democrats were left with little choice but to maximize gerrymanders of their own. This is terrible for voters. It’s bad for democracy. Sometimes it is even hypocritical. Yet doing nothing while Republican gerrymanders run wild isn’t a better strategy and presents no moral victory.So in 2021, Democrats turned a 13-5 map in Illinois into a 14-3 edge, gaining one seat and wiping away two from the Republicans. (Illinois lost a member in reapportionment.) Democrats also helped themselves to an additional seat in Oregon, Nevada and New Mexico, and retained their gerrymander of Maryland. This year, a court-ordered redistricting in New York resulted in one additional Democratic seat, and mildly strengthened a handful of others, each by no more than a percentage point. (Only one flip in New York this cycle can be attributed to redistricting.)Those are the only gerrymanders Johnson wants you to know about. The truth is that they are dwarfed by what Republicans did themselves.Start in Florida, where Ron DeSantis, the governor, oversaw an aggressive and likely unconstitutional gerrymander that netted the Republican party four additional seats, wiped away two historically Black districts and created a wildly disproportional 20-8 Republican delegation.The North Carolina gerrymander added three more seats. This was hardball politics to the core: national Republicans deeply wired into Leonard Leo’s court-packing, billion-dollar dark money entity helped fund the takeover of North Carolina’s state supreme court. The new Republican majority quickly did the national party’s dirty work and overturned a year-old decision that created the balanced 7-7 map and enabled the Republican state legislature to radically tilt it toward Republicans.Florida and North Carolina alone account for more Republican gerrymanders than Democratic ones. They don’t stop there.Republicans gerrymandered two additional seats in Texas, creating an unbalanced 25-13 Republican delegation. In Ohio, Republicans lawlessly stiff-armed the state supreme court not once, not twice, but seven times to preserve gerrymanders of the state’s legislature and congressional delegation. A federal court packed with Federalist Society and Leonard Leo acolytes allowed them to get away with it.Republican judges similarly abused the legal process to allow Wisconsin to get away with its congressional gerrymander which awards the Republican party a 6-2 edge in the ultimate swing state. The US supreme court slow-walked cases on racial gerrymandering, which also accrued, unsurprisingly, to the Republicans’ benefit.In Tennessee, the Republican party wiped a Democratic seat in Nashville off the map by cracking the blue city in half and attaching small pieces to conservative, rural districts. They played similar tricks with swing seats in Salt Lake City, Oklahoma City and Indianapolis, and reinforced a Republican seat in Omaha, Nebraska, swapping suburban areas for more Republican, rural ones. It might well have tipped Democratic this year otherwise.Republican hardball with Iowa’s redistricting commission added another seat. In Arizona, Republicans didn’t bother playing games at all; they simply hijacked the entire process by taking over an obscure state board that vets the commissioners and packing the field of supposedly independent chairs with longtime partisans, friends and family of Republican leadership, and business acquaintances. Arizona now consistently sends a 6-3 Republican-dominated delegation to Washington, even in years where Democrats all but sweep statewide offices.Mike Johnson doesn’t want to admit it, but Republican gerrymanders are the only reason he will wield the gavel for another term.Whether Democrats should control the chamber is a trickier question; Republican candidates did win four million more votes nationwide. Yet the “national popular vote” for the House is a statistic that has also been distorted and made meaningless by gerrymandering. Uncompetitive gerrymandered seats generate weak opposition and lower voter turnout. Nearly all of that bulge comes from states where gerrymanders gutted competitive elections and created Republican delegations wildly disproportionate to the presidential vote: Florida, Texas, Ohio and North Carolina.Fair maps and competitive contests in those Republican and mixed states – rather than districts rigged so one side comes away with three-quarters of the seats in a 50/50 state – would make the “popular vote” look entirely different. (It is, of course, equally exciting to see Republican leaders talk about the popular vote as it is to hear them discuss gerrymandering concerns.) No one would look at the results in nations where district lines have been so drastically warped and suggest that they reflect the will of the people. We shouldn’t either.Johnson’s gaslighting, however, probably has a deeper purpose. He may well be laying the groundwork for a Republican package to change how we vote. What if the Republican party advanced a package of redistricting “reforms” that actually reverberated to their advantage – say, ending any consideration of race, counting population based on citizenship rather than all residents, requiring congressional districts to be drawn by the legislature and not an independent commission, and making it more difficult to challenge maps in the courts? Or if they required prioritizing “compactness”, which could naturally pack Democratic voters in a handful of urban districts and benefit the party that is spread out more efficiently?We live in a gerrymandered nation twisted into extremism by one side as eager to warp the map as they are to protect their ill-won gains. And every time you think it can’t get worse, or harder to overcome, Johnson’s mistruths suggest that it very much still can.

      David Daley is the author of the new book Antidemocratic: Inside the Right’s 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections as well as Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count More

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump picks Kari Lake as Voice of America director

      by

      President-elect Donald Trump has picked Kari Lake as director of Voice of America, installing a staunch loyalist and immigration hardliner to head the congressionally funded broadcaster that provides independent news reporting around the world.Lake, who ran unsuccessfully for Arizona governor and a Senate seat, was a television news anchor in Phoenix for nearly three decades until she left in 2021 after making a series of controversial statements on social media, including sharing Covid-19 misinformation during the pandemic.She launched her political career a short time later, quickly building a loyal following and national profile as she sparred with journalists and echoed Trump in her sharp criticism of what she called the “fake news”. In 2022, she said she would be a journalist’s “worst fricking nightmare” if she won the race to be governor of Arizona.She endeared herself to Trump through her dogmatic commitment to the falsehood that both she and Trump were the victims of election fraud. She has never acknowledged her defeat in the 2022 gubernatorial race and lost her Senate race last month by an even larger margin. Trump considered her for his vice presidential running mate before deciding on JD Vance.Trump has in the past been a fierce critic of Voice of America (VOA), including saying in 2020 that “things they say are disgusting toward our country.”The broadcaster drew additional criticism during Trump’s first term for its coverage of the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, with a White House publication accusing it of using taxpayer money “to speak for authoritarian regimes” because it covered the lifting of lockdown in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the virus first emerged.VOA was founded during the second world war, and its congressional charter requires it to present independent news and information to international audiences. It responded to Trump’s criticism by defending its coverage.Upon taking office in January 2021, President Joe Biden’s administration swiftly removed a number of senior officials aligned with Trump from VOA and positions affiliated with it.Also on Wednesday, Trump announced Leandro Rizzuto as his choice to be the US ambassador to the Washington-based Organization of American States, and said he wanted Florida personal injury attorney Dan Newlin to be his administration’s ambassador to Colombia.He also picked Peter Lamelas, a physician and the founder of one of Florida’s largest urgent care companies, to be the US ambassador to Argentina. Lamelas is also a large donor to the past campaigns of Trump and other top Republicans. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      FBI director Christopher Wray will resign before Trump takes office

      by

      The director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, announced he was stepping down on Wednesday, after Donald Trump said he would fire him and install the firebrand loyalist Kash Patel in his place.Wray, who Trump himself appointed as director during his first presidency after firing Wray’s predecessor James Comey in 2017, announced his decision to staff at the bureau’s Washington headquarters.“I’ve decided the right thing for the bureau is for me to serve until the end of the current administration in January and then step down,” he said. “This is the best way to avoid dragging the bureau deeper into the fray, while reinforcing the values and principles that are so important to how we do our work.”In the emotional remarks, Wray added: “This is not easy for me. I love this place, I love our mission and I love our people.”The news was greeted with elation by Trump, who called it “a great day for America” and said Wray’s departure would end what he has characterised as the “weaponisation” of the US justice system.Trump used a post on his Truth Social network to celebrate Wray’s demise while elaborating on his grievances against a public official he had once extolled.“It will end the Weaponization of what has become known as the United States Department of Injustice,” Trump wrote.“I just don’t know what happened to him. We will now restore the Rule of Law for all Americans.”He added that, under Wray’s leadership, “the FBI illegally raided my home, without cause, and worked diligently on illegally impeaching and indicting me”.“They have used their vast powers to threaten and destroy many innocent Americans, some of which will never be able to recover from what has been done to them.”Wray’s decision means he will depart more than two and a half years before the end of the 10-year term that directors of the bureau are customarily appointed to.By leaving early, Wray may reduce the chances of his name being dragged into what are likely to be highly contentious Senate confirmation hearings surrounding the nomination of Patel. Patel has branded the FBI as part of a “deep state” and pledged to shut its Washington headquarters, dispersing its agents across the US.Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a statement, praising Wray’s service.“Under Director Wray’s principled leadership, the FBI has worked to fulfill the Justice Department’s mission to keep our country safe, protect civil rights, and uphold the rule of law,” Garland said. “He has led the FBI’s efforts to aggressively confront the broad range of threats facing our country – from nation-state adversaries and foreign and domestic terrorism to violent crime, cybercrime, and financial crime.”Garland also used the moment to restate what he sees as the FBI’s mission at a moment when there are widespread fears of how Patel and Trump may seek to use the bureau.“The Director of the FBI is responsible for protecting the independence of the FBI from inappropriate influence in its criminal investigations. That independence is central to preserving the rule of law and to protecting the freedoms we as Americans hold dear,” he said.Wray originally fell foul of Trump and his supporters after declining to investigate the then president’s baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election – won by Joe Biden – had been stolen and riddled with voter fraud.He further earned Trump’s ire after, as previously mentioned by Trump himself in an aforementioned post, FBI agents raided his home in Mar-a-Lago in 2022 to retrieve classified documents that he had retained from his time in the White House.Trump claimed that FBI agents had been “locked and loaded” and ready to kill him, even though the raid had been agreed upon with his lawyers in advance and there was time to ensure he would not be present.The president-elect made his displeasure with Wray plain in an interview with NBC last weekend.“He invaded Mar-a-Lago. I’m very unhappy with the things he has done,” Trump said.It was a far cry from his words of praise at the time of Wray’s appointment, calling him “a man of impeccable credentials”.Trump was also unhappy that the bureau would not confirm that he had been shot in the ear with a bullet after a failed assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, last July. Agents cited the need to examine fragments as part of its investigation before saying what had caused Trump’s wound.Wray’s tenure also coincided with FBI investigations into Biden after he, too, was alleged to have improperly kept classified documents at his home in Delaware, as well as into his son Hunter who was subsequently convicted of gun and tax evasion charges.Biden granted his son an unconditional pardon last weekend days before he was due to be sentenced. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Montana supreme court blocks ban on gender-affirming care for trans minors

      by

      Montana’s ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors has been temporarily blocked by the state supreme court on grounds that it is likely to violate the right to privacy enshrined in the state’s constitution.The top court in Montana sided on Wednesday with an earlier district court decision blocking SB 99, the ban introduced last year by the Republican-controlled state legislature. The decision will allow under-18 transgender girls and boys to continue gender-affirming medical treatment pending a full trial.Montana’s supreme court justices agreed with the district court judge Jason Marks who put a stop to the ban in September 2023, just days before it came into effect. Marks ruled: “The legislature has no interest … to justify its interference with an individual’s fundamental privacy right to obtain a particular lawful medical procedure from a healthcare provider.”The decision to allow gender-affirming treatment to continue for the time being was greeted with delight by the young plaintiffs and advocacy groups. Zooey Zephyr, a Democrat who is the first out trans member of the state legislature, said on social media: “Montana has a constitutional right to privacy, including in our healthcare decisions. Today our constitution continues to protect individuals from government overreach.”Zephyr was propelled into the national limelight in the spring of 2023 when she spoke passionately against the ban in the Montana house. She was banished from the chamber by the Republican leadership prompting large protests.Montana is among at least 26 states that have introduced bans on gender-affirming medical care for minors. By contrast, 15 states have enacted protections for under-18s seeking treatment.The state’s supreme court ruling comes at a critical moment in the nationwide battle over medical care for trans youth. Earlier this month the US supreme court heard oral arguments in a landmark case brought by the ACLU and others against Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming hormonal therapies for trans minors.The ultra-conservative supermajority of the US supreme court appeared to be minded to uphold the Tennessee ban. However, trans adolescents in Montana would be shielded against any adverse ruling from the country’s highest court because the Montana decision is based entirely on the state’s own constitution and as such is insulated from the federal courts.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I will never understand why my representatives are working to strip me of my rights and the rights of other transgender kids,” one of the plaintiffs, Phoebe Cross, a 17-year-old transgender boy, said in a statement after the state supreme court issued its decision. “Just living as a trans teenager is difficult enough, the last thing me and my peers need is to have our rights taken away.”Cross’s parents, Molly and Paul Cross, were also plaintiffs, alongside Jane and John Doe on behalf of their 16-year-old trans daughter. Two medical providers of gender-affirming care in Montana also joined the suit in protest against SB 99 that punishes doctors or healthcare professionals who knowingly violate the ban with suspension from medical practice for at least a year.Akilah Deernose, director of the ACLU of Montana which represented the plaintiffs, said the ruling “permits our clients to breathe a sigh of relief”. But she warned: “The fight for trans rights is far from over.” More