Tag Archives: state

President Trump Just Ordered Military Strikes Against Syria in Response to Chemical Attack

by Jenna7462kwcfl Posted on April 7, 2017

Mother Jones

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The United States fired more than 50 tomahawk cruise missiles at Syrian government targets on Thursday night in response to the Syrian government’s chemical weapons attack on civilians earlier this week, according to multiple news reports. The target of the US strike appears to be the Syrian regime airbase where the chemical attack is said to have originated.

President Donald Trump made a televised address to the nation Thursday night from his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago. He said that the strike was in “vital national security interest to the United States” and called on “all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types.”

The Trump administration spent much of Wednesday developing potential military responses against Syria, according to multiple reports.

The chemical attack, which took place Tuesday and killed as many as 100 people, including at least 11 children, is thought to be the deadliest use of chemical weapons since August 2013, when more than 1,000 people were killed in a chemical weapon attack carried out by the regime of Bashar al-Assad on the outskirts of Damascus. At the time, President Barack Obama stated he would seek congressional authorization for the use of force against Syria. But then-Secretary of State John Kerry issued an ultimatum: Assad could turn over chemical weapons stockpiles and avoid military strikes. No congressional vote ever took place.

NBC News reported Wednesday that US military personnel saw Syrian aircraft appear on radar at the time of the latest attack, and then saw them drop bombs on civilians in Khan Sheikoun in rebel-held Idlib in northern Syria. Soon after, the US radar system detected flashes from the attack.

“It crossed a lot of lines for me,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday. “When you kill innocent children, innocent babies, babies, little babies, with a chemical gas that is so lethal people were shocked to hear what gas it was, that crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line.”

But in previous days, the Trump administration signaled multiple times that removing Assad from power was no longer a long-term priority. On Monday, Nikki Haley, the American ambassador to the United Nations, stated, “Our priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out. We can’t necessarily focus on Assad the way that the previous administration did.”

Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, shows pictures of Syrian victims of chemical attacks at a Security Council meeting on Wednesday. Bebeto Matthews/AP

Late last week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that Assad’s future “will be decided by the Syrian people,” which, as The Daily Beast puts it, is “a euphemism used by Damascus, Moscow, and Tehran to indicate that he isn’t going anywhere.”

Trump’s previous approach to Assad’s crimes could perhaps best summed up by his campaign statement: “I don’t like Assad at all, but Assad is killing ISIS. Russia is killing ISIS, and Iran is killing ISIS.”

ISIS isn’t located in the area where the chemical weapons fell this week.

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President Trump Just Ordered Military Strikes Against Syria in Response to Chemical Attack

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168 Hours of Syria Policy in the Trump Administration

by LuigiLandseer Posted on April 6, 2017

Mother Jones

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Let’s roll the tape on the past few days:

Last Friday: Sean Spicer confirms remarks by Secretary of State Tillerson that Trump is OK with leaving Bashar al-Assad in power in Syria. “There is a political reality that we have to accept,” he says.

Tuesday: Trump learns the downside of haphazard policy changes driven mostly by a desire to be different from Obama. Assad, feeling more secure after learning the United States accepts his leadership of Syria, launches a chemical attack on rebels in the town of Khan Sheikhoun.

Wednesday: Trump, apparently shocked to find out that Assad is a butcher, says Assad has “crossed many, many lines.”

Today: Trump tells reporters about Assad, “I guess he’s running things, so something should happen.” Tillerson translates this into English: “It would seem there would be no role for him to govern the Syrian people.”

Later today: We learn that the Pentagon is preparing recommendations for military action in Syria.

A few minutes after that: Regime change is once again official policy. “Those steps are underway” for the US to lead an international effort to remove Assad.

So in the space of a week, we’ve gone from Assad can stay to Assad must go to let’s bomb Syria. This is quite the crack foreign policy team we have in Washington these days.

I can hardly wait for Trump to launch a bombing campaign for a few days—something that’s a routine favorite of US presidents—and then declare it a massive, game-changing retaliation, “something that’s never been done before.” But at least that would be better than something that really was a game changer. Just remember: whatever John McCain recommends, do the opposite.

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168 Hours of Syria Policy in the Trump Administration

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North Carolina Republicans Try to Block Transgender People From Bathrooms—Again

by PBIJannieaz Posted on April 4, 2017

Mother Jones

Republican lawmakers in North Carolina have filed a bill that could make it more difficult for transgender people to use the bathroom by imposing stiff penalties on anyone convicted of “trespassing” in a restroom.

House Bill 562, co-sponsored by state Rep. Brenden Jones, was filed on Tuesday, shortly after the NCAA announced that it was lifting its boycott of North Carolina because the state’s Legislature partially repealed a law that had required people to use bathrooms consistent with the sex they were assigned at birth.

The text of the new bill does not mention transgender people or even refer to a person’s sex. Instead, it states that entering or remaining in a bathroom “without authorization” after being asked to leave by the owner of the facility, a manager, or anyone else in the room will be considered trespassing. “My bill will do two things,” Jones wrote in a Facebook post last Thursday. “First, it will specifically state it is a second degree trespass for entering the restroom or changing room of the opposite sex; secondly, it would enhance the punishment from what is now, a class 3 misdemeanor punishable up to only 10 days, to a class 1 misdemeanor, punishable up to 120 days in jail.” Jones did not respond to a request for comment.

Requiring “authorization” to be in a bathroom could be particularly harmful for transgender people, says Cathryn Oakley of Human Rights Campaign, a gay and transgender rights advocacy group. By Oakley’s reading of the bill, a trans male college student could be prosecuted for trespass if he uses the men’s room on his campus after being asked to leave by another student in the room.

Last week, the state Legislature replaced House Bill 2, the so-called bathroom bill, with a new law that LGBT groups have described as “HB2.0” because it opens the door for these types of restrictive regulations. The replacement law prevents cities, schools, and localities from passing nondiscrimination ordinances for trans people in bathrooms, preventing any local guarantees that trans people can use facilities consistent with their gender identity. “There’s no backstop to prevent further anti-LGBTQ legislation from being introduced, debated, and potentially passed,” Oakley says. “The North Carolina General Assembly is not going to stop going after transgender people.”

The latest bill, says Democratic Rep. Deb Butler, appears to be a direct response to the recent replacement of the original bathroom bill. “A faction of the Republican Party here in North Carolina is angry that HB2 was repealed,” she says. “They wanted it, they liked it just the way it was. This is, I am sure, their attempt to thumb their nose at the compromise.” Butler says the new bill will likely be introduced to the Legislature on Wednesday and assigned to a committee. “The lunacy persists.” A companion bill has been filed in the state Senate.

Jones voted in favor of the HB2 replacement last week. Jones wrote on Facebook after the vote that “our children will not be forced to share bathrooms with those of the opposite sex…I will never waiver on this vital issue of privacy.” Police officers and other experts note that there is no evidence that sexual predators are taking advantage of legal protections for transgender people in public restrooms.

Update, 10:30 p.m.: Gov. Roy Cooper has come out against the trespassing bill. “The Governor is not supportive of efforts such as these as he believes we ought to be working to expand statewide protections for LGBT North Carolinians,” Ford Porter, a spokesman for Cooper, said in a statement.

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North Carolina Republicans Try to Block Transgender People From Bathrooms—Again

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The Trump Administration Just Suffered a Defeat on Voting Rights

by DarrellBarreiro Posted on April 3, 2017

Mother Jones

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In a significant rebuke of the Trump administration Monday, a federal judge in Texas rejected the Department of Justice’s request to halt a major voting rights case that had been filed during Obama administration.

The case in question dates back to 2013, when the Obama DOJ joined voting rights advocates, Democratic lawmakers, and a group of Texas residents in suing to block a draconian voter ID law in Texas. This coalition scored a major victory last year when a federal appeals court ruled that the law discriminated against minorities and needed to be softened. The Texas legislature is currently working on amending the law.

However, the appeals court left open a key question in the case: whether the discrimination was intentional. It sent the case back to federal district court for a determination on that issue. The question of intent is significant. The finding of a discriminatory effect necessitates altering the law. But if the court finds that Texas acted with a discriminatory intent, the judge could throw the law out entirely. What’s more, if Texas is found to have engaged in intentional voting discrimination, a judge could require the state to seek federal approval for future changes to its voting laws. In arguing that Texas lawmakers indeed sought to discriminate against minorities, critics of the law pointed out that it allows voters to prove their identifies with concealed carry permits, which are disproportionately held by white people, but excludes IDs issued to state employees and state university students, which minorities are more likely to have.

But after Trump was sworn in and Jeff Sessions became attorney general, the federal government changed course. In February, the DOJ requested to withdraw its claim that the law was enacted with discriminatory intent, arguing that the Fifth Circuit’s instructions were to let the legislature amend the law before the courts decided whether to resolve to the intent question. In March, the government urged the court not to issue any opinion until after the legislature had acted. On Monday, the court allowed the US government to withdraw from the case—but rejected its reasoning for trying to halt the case.

United States District Court Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos took issue with the idea that the state legislature’s action would remove the need to litigate the intent issue. “It is well-settled that new legislation does not ipso facto eliminate the discriminatory intent behind older legislation and moot a dispute regarding the violation of law,” the judge wrote. In her eight page order, she went on to dispute the logic the government’s lawyers presented in their briefs and cited multiple cases to explain why the case should proceed. The judge indicated she will issue a ruling on the discriminatory intent question this spring, without waiting on Texas lawmakers to act.

In a series of tweets, Gerry Hebert, an attorney representing the plaintiffs fighting this law, celebrated the judge’s order as “good news for voters seeking relief” and an “important victory.”

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The Trump Administration Just Suffered a Defeat on Voting Rights

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John Oliver Explains Why It’s Time to Update Federal Marijuana Laws

by EstelleGariepy Posted on April 3, 2017

Mother Jones

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Despite the fact that recreational marijuana has been legalized in eight states—with 44 states also allowing some form of medical marijuana use—federal law continues to classify weed as an illegal Schedule 1 drug. On Sunday, John Oliver took on the issue of clashing marijuana laws, explaining why the Trump administration is likely to make it even harder to fix such outdated laws.

“If you have marijuana right now, even if you are acting completely legally according to your state, you may still be in serious jeopardy,” Oliver said. “And that’s not your weed-induced paranoia talking.”

The Last Week Tonight host also pointed to attorney general Jeff Sessions’ history of opposing marijuana use to show why current legislative attempts to finally reclassify the drug may be doomed.

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John Oliver Explains Why It’s Time to Update Federal Marijuana Laws

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Tens of thousands of teachers are getting climate-denying propaganda in their mailboxes.

by MikkiDjrtbodb Posted on March 29, 2017

That’s the outcome of an agreement to settle a lawsuit that sought to force the state of Michigan to provide door-to-door delivery of bottled water to homes in the city. Flint’s drinking water was deemed unsafe in 2015 due to high lead levels.

The suit was filed last year by a coalition that includes the Natural Resources Defense Council, Michigan’s ACLU, and a local resident. A judge approved the settlement on Tuesday.

Under its terms, $97 million will be set aside to replace lead or galvanized steel water pipes going into Flint homes with copper pipes. The state has three years to assess the piping and swap it out, if need be, in at least 18,000 area residences.

The deal allows the state to avoid delivering water to homes, and it provides a timeline for shutting down nine distribution centers in Flint that offer free bottled water and filters. If monitoring finds that lead levels are below an EPA-set threshold for the first half of 2017, Michigan can close those stations in September.

“For the first time, there will be an enforceable commitment to get the lead pipes out of the ground,” said Dimple Chaudhary, an NRDC attorney. “The people of Flint are owed at least this much.”

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Tens of thousands of teachers are getting climate-denying propaganda in their mailboxes.

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This Clever Legal Strategy Could Take Down the Officer Who Shot Laquan McDonald

by gxnlynwood Posted on March 27, 2017

Mother Jones

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Last Thursday, prosecutors announced that Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke is facing new criminal charges in the fatal October 2014 shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. Van Dyke was indicted by a grand jury earlier this month on 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm—one count, apparently, for each bullet he fired at McDonald. Van Dyke had previously been indicted on charges of first-degree murder and misconduct in office. Special prosecutor Joseph McMahon filed the new indictment—which included the original charges—to replace the first one.

All of which begs a few questions: Why would prosecutors charge Van Dyke separately for each bullet he fired? How common are these kinds of charges in shooting cases? And how likely is it that a jury will buy the argument that Van Dyke committed 16 separate felonies?

To get some answers, I reached out to Robert Milan, previously the No. 2 prosecutor in the state’s attorney’s office for Cook County, which includes Chicago. Milan has personally tried more than 100 shooting cases, he says, and “I’ve never seen charges shot by shot.”

Prosecutors, he says, may have filed the aggravated assault charges to preempt the defense’s inevitable argument that Van Dyke had the authority to use deadly force to protect himself and others, or to prevent McDonald—who was wielding a knife and had reportedly attempted to break into cars—from committing a violent felony.

Jurors would consider the battery charges in addition to (not in place of) first-degree murder. So prosecutors could ask the judge to instruct the jury to consider Van Dyke’s self-defense claim only for the bullets he fired before McDonald fell to the ground, on the grounds that the claim no longer applied after McDonald was down.

“If Van Dyke gets the total defense instruction for the entire act, I’m sure prosecutors are concerned that it covers all 16 shots,” Milan said. But “if the judge buys it, and Van Dyke doesn’t get that instruction, then that defense goes flying out the window for those shots. I really think that’s what they’re doing here.”

Which means, even if jurors find Van Dyke not guilty of murder and not guilty of the battery charges attached to the first few bullets, they could still potentially convict him on battery charges for the later bullets. The prosecutor’s strategy seems tailored to counter the special consideration a police office usually receives in shooting cases: “He’s covering his bases. Doing what a good prosecutor would do.”

Van Dyke’s attorneys have tried to get the charges in the original indictment thrown out on the grounds that former Chicago prosecutor Anita Alvarez had tainted the grand jury process with “irregularities.” Alvarez—who lost a re-election bid last year in part because of voter dissatisfaction with her handling of the case—was under pressure to secure an indictment against Van Dyke. She filed the charges in November 2015, just hours before the city—under court order—released police footage of the shooting.

Van Dyke’s next court hearing is scheduled for April 20. His attorneys say they intend to file a motion to have the new charges dismissed. Milan says they may argue that Van Dyke should be charged with only one count of battery, since the 16 bullets were part of a single incident—but the judge is unlikely to oblige. “Bottom line is you have this videotape showing what took place. The burden is not high to get somebody indicted and to lay it out there,” Milan says. “I don’t see this case getting dismissed prior to trial.”

If Van Dyke were convicted of multiple battery counts, the sentences—ranging anywhere from 6 to 30 years in Illinois state prison—could be served concurrently. Milan won’t speculate on how a jury might rule, but he agrees that if the prosecutor’s strategy succeeds, it could easily spread to police shooting cases in other places.

Caution: This video of the shooting, while relevant, is graphic and disturbing.

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This Clever Legal Strategy Could Take Down the Officer Who Shot Laquan McDonald

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This Climate Denying Lawmaker Has Proposed a Bill to Protect Climate Deniers

by DMPKellevsd Posted on March 23, 2017

Mother Jones

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A Maine lawmaker has introduced a bill that will safeguard political speech—with a special focus on climate change deniers.

Republican Rep. Lawrence Lockman, who told the Associated Press that whether or not human activity is causing global warming is an open question, proposed legislation that would ban the state from prosecuting people for their “climate change policy preferences.” The measure prohibits the state from discriminating against climate change deniers with respect to employment and hiring, and bars any state agencies or departments from refusing to purchase goods and services, or awarding grants and contracts, on the basis of a person’s opinion regarding climate change.

According to NASA, 97 percent of scientists acknowledge that our planet is getting warmer due to human activity.

The bill is in response the lawsuit filed by a group of state attorneys general, including Maine’s Janet Mills, against Exxon Mobil in 2016. The suit alleges that the oil giant misled the public about global warming and should pay a financial penalty.

Lockman told the Associated Press that the bill wasn’t just for climate deniers, because it would protect the free speech of others as well. “I don’t want to see a Republican attorney general issuing subpoenas for the records of progressive or liberal think tanks or public policy groups to chill their free speech,” he said.

But Democratic lawmakers do not seem convinced. Lois Galgay Reckitt, a Democrat in the state legislature, said that the entire Democratic caucus would oppose the bill, as would some Republicans.

“The issue for me is I’m a scientist and I live near the ocean,” she said to the Associated Press. “It’s absolutely clear to me that climate change is happening and it worries me. I will fight this tooth and nail.”

A public hearing is scheduled for April 6.

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This Climate Denying Lawmaker Has Proposed a Bill to Protect Climate Deniers

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A Federal Judge Just Blocked Trump’s Revised Travel Ban Nationwide

by LetaFranklyn Posted on March 15, 2017

Mother Jones

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US District Judge Derrick Watson of Hawaii has blocked the latest version of the Trump administration’s travel ban, saying it likely violates First Amendment protections.

The judge issued a nationwide temporary restraining order against President Donald Trump’s revised executive order, which was due to go into effect Thursday. The ban would have halted the US refugee program and prevented people from six countries—Libya, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Iran, and Yemen—from traveling to the United States. The ban has been criticized for targeting immigrants from countries with Muslim-majority populations.

In their lawsuit challenging this new version of the ban, plaintiffs Ismail Elshikh and the state of Hawaii argued that “the notion that one can demonstrate animus toward any group of people only by targeting all of them at once is fundamentally flawed.”

This is a breaking news story. We will update the post when we have more information.

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A Federal Judge Just Blocked Trump’s Revised Travel Ban Nationwide

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Mississippi Still Won’t Make Domestic Abuse Grounds for Divorce

by SherryTKFuqf Posted on March 1, 2017

Mother Jones

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There are several grounds for divorce in Mississippi, including impotency, adultery, and even “habitual drunkenness.” But domestic violence is not one of them, and it won’t be anytime soon, after recent legislative efforts to add spousal abuse to Mississippi divorce law failed in a state House committee on Tuesday.

Battered spouses in Mississippi often argue that they have suffered “habitual cruel and inhuman treatment,” which qualify as grounds for divorce under state law. Domestic violence advocacy groups in the state say that the “habitual” standard requires a high burden of proof of recurring violence. But many cases of abuse, which often occur in private, are unable to meet this standard unless there is photographic evidence or a witness. Advocates also argue that the current law does not sufficiently cover spouses dealing with emotional or financial abuse.

In order to address these problems, Republican state Sen. Sally Doty introduced a bill earlier this year that would add domestic violence to the 12 grounds for divorce available in the state. The bill passed the Mississippi Senate by an overwhelming margin and seemed poised for an easy victory in the House. But when the bill arrived in Mississippi’s House Judiciary Committee, Chairman Andy Gipson, a Republican, quickly objected.

Gipson argued that the measure did not clearly define what constituted domestic spousal abuse and suggested the addition would lead to a sharp uptick in divorces in the state. “To me the way it’s worded could possibly be interpreted that if someone raised their voice at their spouse, is that domestic assault?” he asked, according to the Clarion-Ledger. “If that’s the case, then a lot of people would have a ground for divorce in Mississippi.”

According to local news outlet Mississippi Today, Gipson, who is also a Baptist pastor, said that at a time when “we need to be adopting policies that promote marriage and people sticking together, I have some serious concerns about opening the floodgates any more than they already are. I think the floodgates are already open and this just tears the dam down.”

Mississippi state law prefers that both parties agree to end a marriage, allowing couples with a mutual desire for a divorce to cite “irreconcilable differences” and move forward in the process. But when one party refuses to accept the divorce, things can become complicated. In those cases, the person seeking to end the marriage must reach an agreement with his or her spouse on the terms of the divorce or claim one of the grounds provided under state law. The final decision to grant the divorce is left to the courts.

This is the second time in two years that an effort to add domestic violence to Mississippi’s divorce laws has failed. Last year, a similar measure, also introduced by Doty, died in the state Senate after other new grounds for divorce were added to the bill.

Gipson has declined to consider at least one other divorce law proposed this year: He refused to advance a bill adding extended separation to the grounds for divorce. His actions suggest that few divorce proposals would ever win his support. “If there’s a case of abuse, that person needs to have a change of behavior and a serious change of heart,” Gipson said yesterday. “Hopefully even in those cases restoration can happen.”

Update, 8:52 p.m. EST: In a statement posted to Facebook, Gipson defended his decision to scuttle the domestic abuse bill, citing the “cruel and inhuman treatment” standard as sufficient protection for abused spouses. “The law already provides a clear way out of a marriage for victims of domestic abuse, without the need for another bill,” he wrote. “To deny this reality is to ignore the current state of Mississippi law.”

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Mississippi Still Won’t Make Domestic Abuse Grounds for Divorce

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