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Trump Just Made Life Harder for Transgender Students

by ChaunceSchurr Posted on February 23, 2017

Mother Jones

On Wednesday, Donald Trump’s administration rescinded Obama era guidance directing schools to treat transgender students according to their gender identity.

While the most talked about part of Obama’s rules allowed students to use the bathroom that aligned best with their identity, the guidance also explained teachers should use students’ chosen name and pronoun and recommended steps to limit access to and amend transgender students’ school records. The move, which comes in a joint letter from the departments of justice and education, rescinds all such protections.

“This is the administration saying very clearly to anti-trans bullies…’These students are not worthy of protection….and we are not going to enforce the law,'” says Mara Keisling, the head of the National Center for Transgender Equality.

The letter claims rescinding the standing rules “does not leave students without protections from discrimination, bullying, or harassment,” and emphasizes that schools are responsible for ensuring all students “are able to learn and thrive in a safe environment.” But unlike Obama’s directive, which specified that a hostile environment could, for example, be established by failing to recognize students gender identity, the Trump administration’s letter gives no such guidance. That nod to bullying and harassment was reportedly added at the urging of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who, according to the New York Times, expressed discomfort at rescinding the guidance. When asked Wednesday about infighting between DeVos and Attorney General Sessions, who pushed strongly to rescind the guidance and who has long history of opposing LGBTQ rights, the administration maintained DeVos supports the move “100 percent.”

Without federal policies, transgender students’ rights will be inconsistent state to state and even between school districts and individual schools. In a statement released shortly after the letter, DeVos argued this “is an issue best solved at the state and local level…Schools, communities, and families can find—and in many cases have found—solutions that protect all students.”

“No child in America should have their rights subject to their zip code,” said Eliza Byard Executive Director of GLSEN, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making schools safe for LGBTQ students.

The Obama administration developed the guidance after the Education Department received questions from educators, administrators, parents, and students about how Title IX, a law which bans sex discrimination in educational programs and schools receiving federal assistance, protects transgender students. Bathroom access proved to be controversial, but it was seen as a key step towards compliance with the law by department officials.

“Students in kindergarten, elementary school classes are made to line up by boys and girls to go to the bathroom,” said Catherine Lhamon, a former assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education who helped develop the guidance. “Transgender students had to face a choice everyday about which line to get in and answering questions from their peers about why they’re in one line versus another, and that causes harm and humiliation to a student to have to explain.”

Private bathrooms can also invite questions from other students, be far from classes, or require an adult to unlock them, which can make students late for class.

“There were physical consequences to students of having to go through extra barriers just to be able to relieve themselves at school,” she says. “There were psychological consequences to students from having to explain who they are inside everyday to other students rather than just being able to be who they are.”

The Trump administration’s decision to roll back the protections comes just weeks before the Supreme Court is set to hear its first transgender rights case. Virginia high schooler Gavin Grimm sued his school board after it adopted a policy barring him from the men’s bathroom. At the center of the case: the question of whether Title IX protections apply to transgender students.

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Trump Just Made Life Harder for Transgender Students

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Democrats to White House: What Did Trump Know, and When Did He Know It?

by JanisWhatley Posted on February 15, 2017

Mother Jones

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Michael Flynn may have lost his job as national security adviser, but congressional Democrats have made clear that they aren’t going to let the Trump administration sweep the scandal under the rug. The ranking Democrats from six separate House committees sent a detailed letter to the White House’s top lawyer Wednesday afternoon demanding answers regarding what administration officials knew about Flynn’s communications last year with the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, when they knew it, and what they did in response.

The letter is directed at Donald McGahn, the White House counsel. As The Washington Post reported on Monday, McGahn was personally informed last month by then-Acting Attorney General Sally Yates that Flynn may have lied to members of the Trump administration, including Vice President Mike Pence, about the nature of his conversations with Kislyak—and that Flynn could even be vulnerable to blackmail by Moscow. The Democrats’ letter points out that despite that warning, White House officials continued to claim for weeks that Flynn did not discuss US sanctions during his talks with Russia’s ambassador.

“These reports raise grave concerns about the honesty and integrity of White House officials with the public,” the letter says. “The National Security Advisor provided false information to the public, which was then repeated by several senior White House officials. Even after learning that this information was inaccurate, no White House officials corrected those falsehoods.”

The letter presses McGahn for a clear timeline of events. It asks whether Trump himself or other members of his team were aware of Flynn’s discussion of sanctions with Kislyak prior to McGahn’s January 26 meeting with the Department of Justice, and whether anyone ordered Flynn to engage in those discussions. The letter points to a tweet from Trump on December 30, 2016—just a day after Flynn talked with the Russian ambassador—in which Trump lavished praise on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision not to retaliate against US sanctions. “Great move on delay (by V. Putin) – I always knew he was very smart!” Trump wrote.

The Democrats also asked McGahn to explain why Flynn was allowed to receive classified briefings after the administration learned of his apparent deception. Referencing White House statements that Flynn had lost Trump’s trust, the letter states that “these reports raise more than ‘trust’ issues—they also raise significant national security concerns.”

The letter was sent by top Democrats on six committees: Elijah Cummings(Oversight and Government Reform), John Conyers (Judiciary), Adam Smith (Armed Forces), Bennie Thompson (Homeland Security), Adam Schiff (Intelligence), and Eliot Engel (Foreign Affairs).

Read the letter below:

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Democrats Letter to White Counsel Donald McGahn (PDF)

Democrats Letter to White Counsel Donald McGahn (Text)

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Democrats to White House: What Did Trump Know, and When Did He Know It?

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California Mobilizes for War Against Trump

by BessieHatley Posted on January 13, 2017

Mother Jones

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Here in America’s most populous state, the wealthy pay the nation’s highest income tax rate, the minimum wage will soon rise to $15 an hour statewide, more than a quarter of the population is foreign born, and the economy is booming. California, the world’s sixth-largest economy and a bastion of progressivism, is now being hailed as a kind of great blue firewall—Democrats’ most important bulwark against the retrograde policies of Donald Trump.

“If you want to take on a forward-leaning state that is prepared to defend its rights and interests, then come at us,” Xavier Becerra, the state’s incoming attorney general, taunted the president-elect in December.

“One thing that should be made very clear is that one election won’t change the values of the state of California,” Kevin de León, the Senate president pro tempore, told Mother Jones. “What we would say to the incoming Trump administration is that we hope you find value in what we do in California—by growing the economy, creating real jobs that can be verified, reducing our carbon footprint, respecting immigrants for who they are, and recognizing that diversity, a rich mosaic of different hues, is actually a strength, not a weakness.”

Soon after Trump announced Cabinet nominees that “confirmed our worst fears about what a Trump presidency would look like,” says de León, he and his colleagues in the Statehouse retained former US Attorney General Eric Holder to advise on potential legal challenges from the next White House. “He brings a lot of legal firepower to do everything within our power to protect the policies, people, and progressive values of California.”

In a state where Democrats control all statewide elected offices and a supermajority of the Legislature, the economy grew 4.1 percent in 2015—the fastest in the country and nearly double the national average. Since 2011, when Democrat Jerry Brown replaced Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor, the state has turned a $26 billion budget deficit into a surplus that is projected to include upward of $8 billion for a rainy-day fund by the end of 2017. California has leveraged its booming economy to expand social services; since 2014, it has increased its budget for child care and preschool for low-income children by 24 percent, to $3.7 billion.

Trump’s bigoted rhetoric and alignment with far-right extremists during the presidential campaign alienated many people in California, which boasts an economy that in many ways is defined by immigrant labor, global free trade, and a progressive regulatory regime. A push to deport undocumented farmworkers could hurt the state’s agricultural sector. The green-energy sector fears a loss of subsidies and more drilling, maybe even in pristine federally protected waters just off the coast. Silicon Valley is suspicious of Trump on cybersecurity, trade protectionism, and the import of highly skilled tech workers. And then there is Hollywood: Meryl Streep’s condemnation of Trump at the Golden Globes this month underscored a deep antipathy for the president-elect among celebrities, many of whom have declined to perform at his inauguration.

But California’s leaders aren’t just engaging in a rhetorical war on Trump. Here’s what the Golden State is already doing to counter the president-elect on a range of major issues and defend its progressive achievements.

Climate Change

Trump famously suggested global warming is a Chinese hoax and has vowed to “cancel” the Paris Accord committing nearly every nation to curb emissions. His pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, is a climate change denier best known for suing the EPA in an effort to overturn its clean-energy policies. A darling of oil and coal interests, Pruitt has vowed as EPA chief to fight “unnecessary regulations” and promote “freedom for American business.”

But even if the Trump administration works to pull America back toward its carbon-spewing past, it will have little impact in California, which last year enacted a bill requiring the state to slash greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. Recently, Gov. Brown and other state leaders said they would bypass Trump and work directly with other nations and states to reduce emissions; California already trades emissions credits with Quebec, and in 2013 the state inked a pact with China committing to joint efforts to combat climate change and support clean energy—the only such agreement China has signed with a subnational government.

California plays a unique role in setting national energy policy: Section 209 of the Clean Air Act allows California, but not other states, to set its own stricter-than-federal emissions standards for automobiles if they address “compelling and extraordinary conditions.” Other states are then allowed to adopt those regulations. To date, 10 other states, representing 40 percent of the US population, have signed on to California’s tighter efficiency and emissions rules for cars, appliances, and automobiles. “The California standard actually governs in many cases rather than the federal standard,” notes Hal Harvey, president of Energy Innovation, a policy research group in San Francisco, “because nobody wants to make two product lines.”

California plays a less decisive role in directly supporting environmental sciences and energy research, which depend heavily on federal support, but Brown has signaled a desire to step in if Trump pulls the plug. “We’ve got the scientists, we’ve got the lawyers, and we’re ready to fight,” Brown said at the American Geophysical Union Conference in San Francisco. He even suggested that if Trump follows through on some advisers’ ambitions to end NASA’s role in climate science, California could step in and “launch its own damn satellite.”

Immigration

Though Trump campaigned on the idea of deporting America’s estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, he has more recently said he will focus first on deporting 2 million to 3 million immigrants with criminal records—a number that would presumably include many people who’ve committed minor infractions. (Only about 820,000 undocumented immigrants have been convicted of crimes, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.) But pursuing mass deportations in California won’t be easy. A 2014 law bans state authorities from holding immigrants convicted of minor crimes for any longer than required by criminal law, thereby protecting them from being turned over to federal authorities for deportation. Many California cities have even broader “sanctuary city” policies.

Last month, state legislators introduced a package of bills that would go even further: Legislation authored by de León would bar state and local authorities from enforcing immigration laws, limit records sharing with federal immigration officials, and create “safe zones” at schools, hospitals, and courthouses where immigration enforcement would be prohibited. “To the millions of undocumented residents pursuing and contributing to the California Dream, the state of California will be your wall of justice should the incoming administration adopt an inhumane and overreaching mass-deportation policy,” de León said last month.

Other proposed bills would subsidize immigrant legal services by training public defenders in immigration law and setting up a fund to cover legal bills for immigrants caught up in deportation proceedings. Studies have shown that immigrants with a lawyer are far more likely to succeed in challenging deportation proceedings. Los Angeles last month announced a $10 million immigrant legal fund; the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office has proposed a similar $5 million fund.

More than a quarter of immigrants in the United States illegally live in California. In 1994, voters approved Proposition 187, a ballot measure making undocumented immigrants ineligible for public benefits. But since then, the state has moved sharply in the other direction. In 2011, Brown signed the California DREAM Act, allowing Californians who came to the country illegally when they were children to apply for financial aid from state colleges. In 2013, California allowed undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses, qualify for in-state tuition, and obtain law and other professional licenses. Last year, the state expanded its California-only Medicaid (Medi-Cal) program to undocumented children.

Anticipating that the Trump administration could use records collected through such programs to identify and round up undocumented immigrants, the American Civil Liberties Union is pushing for further safeguards here. “We’re concerned about ensuring that information is protected and can remain confidential,” says Jennie Pasquarella, the director of immigrant rights for the ACLU of California. “It is critical that California first show a model for the rest of the country—our values as a state that is filled with immigrants.” California’s Kamala Harris announced earlier this month that her first act as a US senator would be to co-sponsor legislation to protect the nation’s 744,000 “DREAMers” from deportation.

Health Care

Republicans and Trump have vowed to repeal the Affordable Care Act—but in California the law is overwhelmingly popular and successful. The law has provided $20 billion for the Medi-Cal program and for insurance subsidies for 1.2 million Californians, helping to cut the state’s uninsured rate by half, from 6.5 million people in 2012 to 3.3 million in 2015. Patient advocacy groups don’t want to give up those gains. In December, the California Endowment announced that it would spend $25 million over three years to defend against federal cuts to Obamacare and other social programs. “California has made great progress both economically and on the health front over the past several years,” says Daniel Zingale, senior vice president of the Endowment’s Healthy California program. “We think it is important to defend that from threats in Washington.”

Several California leaders are even pushing Trump to replace Obamacare with “Medicare for All,” a.k.a. single-payer health care. “The one I am counting on the most to push nationalized health care is Trump,” RoseAnn DeMoro, the head of the Oakland-based National Nurses United union, told Politico, citing Trump’s “international perspective” as a businessman and the fact that his wife comes from Slovenia, which has a single-payer system. Another major backer of “Medicare for All” is California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, who as mayor of San Francisco in 2007 launched Healthy San Francisco, a health care plan available to all city residents regardless of their immigration status, employment, or preexisting conditions.

Marijuana

Trump’s pick for attorney general, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, last year killed a bipartisan bill that would have reduced prison sentences for some lower-level drug offenders. He said last April that “good people don’t smoke marijuana” and that “we need grown-ups in charge in Washington to say marijuana is not the kind of thing that ought to be legalized.”

Though Sessions moderated that rhetoric during his confirmation hearing this week, his nomination is staunchly opposed by California’s $3 billion legal marijuana industry and its representatives in Washington. “Sessions has a long history of opposing marijuana reform, and nothing he said at the hearing suggests he has changed his mind,” Bill Piper, senior director of the Drug Policy Alliance’s Office of National Affairs, said in a press release. The DPA was a major backer of November’s successful California Proposition 64, which legalizes recreational marijuana.

In an echo of the Proposition 64 campaign, drug policy reform groups have partnered with civil rights groups such as the NAACP and LatinoJustice to oppose Sessions on the grounds that the war on drugs has fueled mass incarcerations of people of color for nonviolent offenses. They want to make sure Trump stands by his 2015 statement to the Washington Post that marijuana legalization “should be a state issue.”

Marijuana industry leaders expect California to vigorously defend Proposition 64 from any federal court challenges. “We would expect a very, very strong pushback from the state, because the reality is it’s a public safety issue,” Nate Bradley, executive director of the California Cannabis Industry Association, told the Los Angeles Times. “They have decriminalized a product, so if you don’t allow any sort of regulation in place for people to access that product, the underground market is only going to grow.”

Guns

Enthusiastically endorsed by the National Rifle Association, Trump has vowed to diminish federal gun regulations, including eliminating gun-free zones at schools and on military bases, and he supports a national right-to-carry law for concealed guns. During the presidential campaign he also suggested he would appoint an explicitly anti-gun-control justice to the US Supreme Court.

But California this year further strengthened its gun laws, which were already among the toughest in the nation. In July, Brown signed off on legislation that outlawed the possession of ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 bullets, required background checks for the purchase of ammunition, and banned the sale of certain types of semi-automatic assault rifles. Proposition 63, approved by voters in November, added requirements for owners to report lost and stolen guns and created a system for confiscating guns from felons.

“The United States is a federal republic, not a monarchy, and California plays an outsized role in our nation’s success,” Lt. Governor Newsom, the architect of Proposition 63, said in a statement to Mother Jones. “The reduction of our state’s gun violence rate is a model for the nation and we’re resilient, flexible, and well prepared for any effort by the NRA and the President-elect to make California a Wild West again.”

One place where California hasn’t pushed back much against Trump since the election is Silicon Valley. A few rank-and-file tech workers have held meetings with civil rights groups, but tech CEOs have quietly sidled up to the president-elect. A few weeks ago, a handful of top tech names climbed Trump Tower for an awkward photo op with Trump and his children. “We definitely gave up a little stature now for possible benefit later,” one source told Recode’s Kara Swisher at the time. “It’s better to be quiet now and speak up later if we have to, and save our powder.”

The San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, which defends free speech and privacy on the internet, took out a full-page advertisement in Wired magazine in December, warning the technology community, “Your threat model has changed.” The ad calls upon tech companies to secure their networks against an incoming Trump administration by encrypting user data, scrubbing data logs, and disclosing government data requests while fighting them in court.

“For California, Trump is creating a lot of fronts where organizations and government are going to be fighting battles,” says Dave Maass, an investigative researcher at EFF. “We are focused on civil liberties and privacy, and we believe they are fundamental to whatever kind of activism battle that you want to fight. If you don’t have free speech and don’t have the ability to organize, then you can’t do anything.” He anticipates that California lawmakers will be generating a flurry of new bills, and that no small number of them “are going to be direct responses to Trump.”

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California Mobilizes for War Against Trump

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Donald Trump Will Make His Son-In-Law A Senior White House Advisor, Which May Be Illegal

by ElizaGrano Posted on January 9, 2017

Mother Jones

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In November, Kevin Drum warned that liberals needed to start paying more attention to Jared Kushner.

Looks like he was right:

There’s a law that Congress passed after RFK was Attorney General that forbids family from serving in the Executive, but lawyers for Trump are expected to argue that as long as the President-Elect’s son-in-law doesn’t take a paycheck for his work in the White House his appointment would not run afoul of the prohibition.

Buckle up.

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Donald Trump Will Make His Son-In-Law A Senior White House Advisor, Which May Be Illegal

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Flint Officials Were Just Charged With Multiple Felonies in the City’s Water Crisis

by BennettR89 Posted on December 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette charged two former emergency managers with multiple felonies in an ongoing investigation of the dangerous levels of lead that turned up in Flint’s drinking water. Darnell Earley and Gerald Ambrose, who were tasked with overseeing the beleaguered city’s finances between 2013 and 2015, were accused of false pretenses, conspiracy to commit false pretenses, misconduct in office, and willful neglect. Schuette also charged two former Flint officials, Howard Croft and Daugherty Johnson, with false pretenses and conspiracy to commit false pretenses. If found guilty, Earley and Ambrose would face up to 46 years in prison; Croft and Johnson would face 40 years.

Schuette opened the investigation in January this year; to date, 13 former city and state officials have been charged.

“All too prevalent in this Flint Water Investigation was a priority on balance sheets and finances rather than health and safety of the citizens of Flint,” said Schuette in a statement.

The charges call into question the efficacy of the emergency manager role, which enables the governor to appoint a representative to help balance a budget of economically failing cities. Other states have similar roles, but Michigan’s is the most expansive: Emergency managers have the power to cancel city contracts, unilaterally draft policy, privatize public services, fire elected officials, and more. Flint was one of the first cities in Michigan to be assigned an emergency manager, in 2011.

In 2014, under the management of Earley, the city switched water sources to the Flint River—a cost-saving measure that would prove to be disastrous. (Earley would go on to become the emergency manager of Detroit Public Schools before stepping down in February this year.) In March 2015, as residents were reporting foul-smelling, tainted water coming from the taps, the Flint City Council voted to “do all things necessary” to switch back to Detroit’s water system—its former water source. Then-acting emergency manager Ambrose nixed the vote, calling it “incomprehensible.” By the end of the year, Flint Mayor Karen Weaver had declared a state of emergency because of children’s soaring blood lead levels.

Tuesday’s charges come just days after congressional Republicans quietly closed a yearlong investigation into the crisis, and two weeks after Congress cleared $170 million to address the Flint water crisis and help other areas with lead-tainted water. A recent Reuters investigation found nearly 3,000 areas with blood lead poisoning rates at least double those in Flint at the peak of the crisis.

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Flint Officials Were Just Charged With Multiple Felonies in the City’s Water Crisis

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Minnesota Cop Who Killed Philando Castile Is Charged With Second-Degree Manslaughter

by Benito46Kjksdbk Posted on November 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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The suburban police officer who shot and killed Philando Castile during a Minnesota traffic stop is being charged with second-degree manslaughter, John Choi, Ramsey County’s top prosecutor, announced on Wednesday.

Castile, 32, was shot by officer Jeronimo Yanez last July. According to Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, who was also in the car along with the couple’s young daughter, the officer fired his weapon as Castile reached to get his ID, after Castile informed Yanez he had a (legally permitted) gun. Reynolds live streamed the aftermath on Facebook, and her video sparked weeks of protests in Minneapolis and nationwide.

Officer Yanez’s use of deadly force “was not necessary, was objectively unreasonable, and was inconsistent with generally accepted police practices,” Choi said. “No reasonable officer—knowing, seeing, and hearing what Officer Yanez did at the time—would have used deadly force under these circumstances.” Yanez’s discharge of his firearm also put Reynolds and her daughter at risk, Choi added. The officer will be charged with two counts of reckless discharge of a firearm as well.

The charging documents revealed new details about the incident: Through the driver’s side window, Yanez asked Castile for his driver’s license and insurance information. Castile provided Yanez with an insurance card and then informed Yanez that he was carrying a weapon. Yanez said “okay” and told Castile not to reach for it. Castile—apparently still reaching for something—responded, “I’m not reaching for it.” Yanez yelled, “Don’t pull it out!” Castile’s girlfriend assured Yanez that Castile wasn’t reaching for the gun. Yanez again ordered Castile not to pull his gun out, and seconds later, he fired seven shots. Castile died on the scene soon after.

Another document, made public by the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department, showed that Castile had a legal permit to carry a firearm.

Source – 

Minnesota Cop Who Killed Philando Castile Is Charged With Second-Degree Manslaughter

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The most accurate picture of the Dakota Access showdown might be on social media.

by Onopriyll7 Posted on October 28, 2016

The New York State Supreme Court is requiring the oil giant and its accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers to turn over documents subpoenaed by state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. He’s conducting a fraud investigation into the company, spurred by a report from InsideClimate News last year that revealed Exxon knew fossil fuel burning was heating up the atmosphere back in the 1970s and deliberately misled the public about it.

Earlier this month, Exxon attempted to halt the investigation by suing Schneiderman, as well as Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, and arguing that their investigations are politically motivated.

Exxon has also been arguing, under a Texas statute, that documents held by PricewaterhouseCoopers are privileged. But yesterday, the New York court ruled against the company on that point. The court, as the Washington Post reports, determined that New York law, not Texas law, governs the dispute, and ordered the company to comply with Schneiderman’s subpoena.

Schneiderman was pleased with the ruling, of course. He said he looks forward to “moving full-steam ahead with our fraud investigation” and called on Exxon to “cooperate with, rather than resist,” the probe.

ExxonMobil has no such intention. The company said it will appeal the ruling.

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The most accurate picture of the Dakota Access showdown might be on social media.

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Bay Area Police Sex Scandal Keeps Getting Weirder

by AngleaBozeman Posted on September 13, 2016

Mother Jones

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This past Friday, Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley announced that she would pursue charges against seven officers for conduct related to a sex scandal that has been roiling Bay Area law enforcement since March. The announcement came days after Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf, who has compared the Oakland Police Department to a “frat house,” said she would recommend that the OPD fire one cop (three others have already resigned), suspend seven, and provide training and counseling to yet another. Officers with at least four other Bay Area agencies have been fired, reassigned, or have resigned over the scandal, which claimed three successive Oakland police chiefs in just nine days in June. Oh, and one other thing: The victim is AWOL. Here are the dirty details:

1. Crimes: Five current and former Oakland police officers, a former Contra Costa County sheriff’s deputy, and a former Livermore cop are to be charged on 16 counts including oral copulation with a minor and engaging in prostitution—both felonies—and engaging in a lewd act in public. Two cops will be charged with unauthorized use of a police database: Celeste Guap, the 18-year-old at the heart of the scandal, alleged that officers gave her confidential information about her friends’ arrest histories—not to mention money, protection, and information about upcoming prostitution stings—in exchange for sex. Another officer will be charged with failure to report a crime. The DA’s investigation—which included interviews with Guap and various officers, and a review of more than 100,000 pages of social media posts and text messages—determined that two of the officers not charged with sex crimes did actually have sexual contact with Guap. But because those alleged contacts occurred outside of Alameda County, O’Malley’s office has no jurisdiction, she said Friday.

2. Punishments: An investigator with the Alameda County DA’s office who formerly worked for the OPD was fired in July. A Contra Costa County sheriff’s deputy and an officer with the Livermore Police Department resigned earlier this year over their alleged connections with Guap. Two Richmond officers who were determined to have had sex with Guap when she was 18 were reassigned from positions where they regularly interacted with youth. The Livermore Police Department said on Saturday that it had concluded a criminal investigation, but several police agencies are still conducting investigations related to the scandal.

3. Complications: O’Malley’s office can’t formally charge or arrest any of the officers yet, because Guap is no longer in California. She’s in a Florida jail cell. Late last month, the alleged victim checked into a Stuart, Florida, sex-and-drug addiction program. Three days later, according to the East Bay Express, the local weekly that broke the scandal, Guap allegedly bit a security guard and was arrested, charged with aggravated battery, and jailed—bail was set at $300,000. The Richmond Police Department used victim’s compensation funds to help pay for Guap’s rehab—the Contra Costa County DA’s office told the Express that it helped process the application for the funds. Guap’s mother and attorney Pamela Price, who represents Guap, suspect a cover-up of some kind: They questioned why Guap wasn’t placed in a local program instead. This latest news has renewed calls by local activists for federal or state authorities to launch an independent investigation. On Friday, O’Malley said the Richmond police did not consult her before paying for Guap’s trip to Florida, and that she would not have approved such a trip. She can understand the public outcry over the decision, she added. The Martin County DA is expected to decide this week whether to pursue the charges against Guap.

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Bay Area Police Sex Scandal Keeps Getting Weirder

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Prosecutors Drop All Remaining Charges Against Officers in Freddie Gray Case

by AOZSilkepxfuwi Posted on July 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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Maryland prosecutors announced Wednesday morning that they are dropping all charges against three officers still awaiting trial for their involvement in the death of Freddie Gray, bringing to an unsuccessful close a legal saga that has become a focal point for the Black Lives Matter movement. The decision comes after a judge acquitted three other officers of all charges and the trial of a fourth officer ended in a mistrial. Gray died after suffering a spinal cord injury during a ride in the back of a police van last April.

Prosecutors announced the decision in a pre-trial hearing for Baltimore police officer Garrett Miller, who would have been the fourth of six officers to stand trial on charges related to Gray’s death. The case that ended in a mistrial in December, against officer William Porter, was due for another hearing, and charges were also pending against Sergeant Alicia White. Charges against all three are being dropped.

Judge Barry Williams acquitted officers Edward Nero, Caesar Goodson, and Brian Rice in May, June, and July, respectively. Several officers have sued Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby for defamation, claiming she damaged their reputations by prosecuting officers in the case on what they say is little evidence.

Legal experts had speculated that the prosecution would be a tough one for Mosby, and her decision to bring charges against all six officers involved in Gray’s arrest and transport last April was seen as a bold move. She received criticism for what some observers called an apparent bias against the officers. “I hear your calls for ‘no justice, no peace,'” she told Black Lives Matter protesters at a press conference announcing charges against the six officers last May. At the Republican National Convention last week, audience members cheered as Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke criticized the “malicious prosecution of activist State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby.”

Throughout the earlier trials, prosecutors argued that officers had acted negligently and ignored their training by failing to buckle Gray’s seatbelt after placing him in the back of a police van, handcuffed and shackled at the legs—a situation that ultimately resulted in his death. In explaining his rulings, Judge Williams repeatedly said prosecutors had failed to present sufficient evidence that officers intentionally sought to harm Gray. The decision to drop charges would appear to be a concession by prosecutors that their evidence would likely not have produced convictions had these three remaining cases gone to trial.

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Prosecutors Drop All Remaining Charges Against Officers in Freddie Gray Case

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Does Exxon Have a Constitutional Right to Deny Climate Change?

by TammaraDaddario Posted on June 30, 2016

Mother Jones

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Does Exxon Mobil have a constitutional right to sow doubt about climate science? That’s the subject of a high-stakes legal battle playing out between dozens of state attorneys general, members of Congress, corporate executives, and activists.

Last fall, investigations by Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times revealed that the oil giant has decades of internal documents showing that its own scientists and executives knew fossil fuels contributed to climate change. Publicly, the company argued that the threats posed by global warming were far from certain, presumably as part of an effort to fight off regulations.

A March 2000 Exxon Mobil ad about climate science. (Click here for a larger image.) Greenpeace

The revelations have sparked a barrage of legal actions. The attorney generals of Massachusetts, California, and New York launched investigations of Exxon, while Democratic AGs from other states have expressed their support. Some have drawn parallels to the tobacco industry’s deception on the dangers of smoking. Exxon has countered that the investigations are unconstitutional and has filed motions asking courts to block the subpoenas. “This…is about freedom of political speech,” the company recently argued in the Massachusetts case.

In March, US Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker served the company with a subpoena seeking records that he claimed might prove that Exxon had defrauded consumers and the government by “misrepresenting its knowledge” that its fossil fuels contribute to climate change. Walker specifically pointed to a state racketeering statute that prohibits obtaining money by false pretenses. He demanded any documents detailing Exxon’s knowledge of climate change and its strategies to address it, including research studies, publications, statements, and communications with outside groups. Exxon responded by filing a lawsuit against Walker to block the subpoena. Exxon prevailed on Wednesday, when Walker agreed to withdraw the subpoena.

Exxon received some unusual assistance in its victory in the Virgin Islands case. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a tea-party-aligned Republican, went so far as to formally intervene—that is, he asked the court to allow the state of Texas to become a party to the case. Exxon, he wrote, had a First Amendment right to withhold the documents Walker was seeking. The brief was also signed by Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange (R). (Paxton and Strange also objected to Walker’s use of a private law firm to help conduct the investigation.)

In a press conference in May, Paxton had called Walker’s investigation “a fishing expedition of the worst kind” and said it represented “an effort to punish Exxon for daring to hold opinions on climate change that differ from theirs.”

“This is about the criminalization of speech and the criminalization of thought,” he said.

Two days later, Republican members of the House Science Committee sent letters to Walker and 16 Democratic attorneys general requesting documents related to the various Exxon investigations. They followed up with additional letters in June.

On June 15, Paxton and 12 other GOP attorneys general signed a letter criticizing the Exxon investigations. The letter laid out a free-speech argument in stark terms, saying, “Actions indicating that one side of the climate change debate should fear prosecution chills speech in violation of a formerly bi-partisan First Amendment consensus.”

Exxon, which is headquartered in Texas and is a major employer in the state, did not respond to a request for comment. The company’s former vice president of public and government affairs, Kenneth P. Cohen, previously told the New York Times, “We unequivocally reject the allegations that Exxon Mobil has suppressed climate change research.”

Paxton’s involvement in the case alarmed some environmentalists, who note that attorneys general are charged with enforcing state laws and regulations. It’s unusual for a state to intervene in support of a company that is under investigation, said Stacey Geis, managing attorney at Earthjustice, an environmental law organization.

It’s as if Paxton were trying to act as Exxon’s lawyer, she said.

Paxton’s deputy Brantley Starr disputed that allegation.

“If we were intervening on behalf of someone, it would be the Constitution,” he said in a phone interview.

Michael McConnell, a Stanford law professor and senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution, agreed that Paxton’s intervention was “highly unusual.” Nevertheless, he added in an email that Walker’s subpoena was “quite possibly unconstitutional.” Exxon, he said, has “a right to have a position on global warming.”

Other scholars and activists reject that argument. Naomi Ages, a project leader at environmental advocacy group Greenpeace, called the Virgin Islands investigation “legitimate” and said Paxton’s intervention was “unprecedented” and based on “pretty specious legal grounds.”

Robert Post, the dean of Yale Law School, argues that it is “irresponsible to invoke the First Amendment” to defend Exxon. “There are circumstances when scientific theories must remain open and subject to challenge, and there are circumstances when the government must act to protect the integrity of the market, even if it requires determining the truth or falsity of those theories,” wrote Post in a Washington Post op-ed last week. “Public debate must be protected, but fraud must also be suppressed.”

Starr counters that the Texas AG’s office was not claiming corporations can never be investigated for fraud, but rather that an investigation cannot be based on a public policy debate. “What we shouldn’t do is investigate public debate and say that there’s only one side of the public debate that we’re investigating,” he said.

Paxton has received nearly $1 million dollars in contributions from the oil and gas industry during his seven runs for public office, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics. During a recent event at the conservative Heritage Foundation, he warned that the investigation of Exxon could have resulted in job losses in his state, though he declined to provide a specific estimate of how many jobs were in jeopardy.

Meanwhile, Paxton is facing legal challenges of his own. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a complaint against him in April, alleging that he had recruited investors for a company without disclosing that he was receiving compensation in the form of stock in the company. This complaint followed three state criminal indictments on charges of securities fraud and failing to register as an investment adviser.

In a video released by his campaign in May, Paxton called the charges “false” and “politically motivated.”

When asked for comment on the SEC investigation at the Heritage Foundation event, Paxton declined to answer.

On Thursday, Paxton released a statement hailing the withdrawal of Walker’s Exxon subpoena as a triumph for free speech.

“The so-called ‘investigation’ by Walker was a constitutionally improper attempt to suppress the freedom of speech based only on the content being communicated. In America, we have the freedom to disagree, and we do not legally prosecute people just because their opinion is different from ours.”

This article has been updated.

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Does Exxon Have a Constitutional Right to Deny Climate Change?

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