Survivors deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and when they step forward they should be heard, not silenced. Today, Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump published a rule that flies in the face of that belief and guarantees that college campuses will be less safe for our nation’s young people.

Simply put: this new rule gives colleges a green light to ignore sexual violence and strip survivors of their rights. It lets colleges off the hook for protecting students, by permitting them to choose to investigate only more extreme acts of violence and harassment and requiring them to investigate in a way that dissuades survivors from coming forward.

This rule fundamentally disregards student’s civil rights under Title IX, which has helped pave the way for millions of women to access education. Survivors and advocates have fought to hold schools accountable and give young people truly fair access to education. Today’s rule rolls back the clock and reverses those hard-fought victories.

Our young people deserve better. During the Obama-Biden Administration, I traveled to the University of New Hampshire — a school with one of the best programs to prevent sexual assault in the nation — to announce that colleges would have new guidance and support from our Administration on how best to prevent and respond to campus sexual assault.

With that encouragement — and the It’s On Us campaign that President Obama and I launched — schools took great steps towards leveling the playing field for survivors and accused students. Working with survivors and advocates, we helped to bring this violence out of the shadows and required schools change their practices.

Now, Trump’s Education Department — led by Betsy DeVos — is trying to shame and silence survivors, and take away parents’ peace of mind. It’s wrong. And, it will be put to a quick end in January 2021, because as President, I’ll be right where I always have been throughout my career — on the side of survivors, who deserve to have their voices heard, their claims taken seriously and investigated, and their rights upheld.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a test result that he called “a tremendous relief,” the Attorney General, Bill Barr, has tested negative for integrity, Barr confirmed on Friday.
Barr submitted to the test after learning that he had come into contact with career Justice Department prosecutors who were found to be integrity carriers.

“When I learned that there were still people at the Justice Department with integrity, I was understandably furious,” Barr told reporters. “I told them to go home at once.”

Barr said that he was putting into place new protocols that would require Justice Department employees to be tested for integrity before entering the building.

“I thought that anyone with integrity had already left the Justice Department, but apparently I was mistaken,” he said. “It’s better to be safe than sorry.”

Although he was elated to learn that he had tested negative for integrity, Barr said that he shuddered to think how close he came to contracting the dreaded virtue.

“Having integrity would have made it impossible for me to work for President Trump,” he said.

I know that we have been inundated with tragedy these past several months. But I wanted to take a moment to address one particular tragedy, a grave injustice that claimed one life but that resonates in so many others across the thread of our history into the present day.

By now, many of us have seen the harrowing footage of Ahmaud Arbery out for a jog on a February day. Shot down in cold blood. Lynched before our very eyes, lynched so plainly, unmistakably and without mercy. He would have turned 26 years old today.
His family deserves justice and they deserve it now. They deserve a swift, full, and transparent investigation into his brutal murder.

The two men responsible for his death have now been arrested, two-and-a-half months after committing the crime.
They were arrested only after Americans saw the footage and spoke out. That shouldn’t be what’s required to get justice in America.

Those arrests are just the start of achieving justice, not only for Ahmaud’s family, but for our entire nation. America needs to reckon with this.

This vicious act calls to mind the darkest chapters of our history and more recently, the awful specter of white supremacists on the march in Charlottesville, of massacres in houses of worship, of a rising pandemic of hate. Ahmaud should be alive today, we have no recourse for the life he lost.

But we can make this promise that together, we will recommit America to equal justice and root out the racial inequities, the gender inequities, and the income-based inequities within our system.

African American mothers and fathers should feel confident that their children are safe walking on the streets of America. Until we get there the work remains urgent and unfinished.

That is the promise I make to all of you as President, I will work tirelessly to get us to that day.

Thank you — and God bless you.

Judges in Dallas County have rebuked the state's top legal officer amid the controversy surrounding a Dallas salon owner.

In a letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, 12 civil district judges called Paxton's letter to Judge Eric Moyé "inappropriate and equally unwelcome."


The rebuke was in reference to Paxton's letter calling the sentencing of Shelley Luther outrageous. Luther was sentenced to jail after being found in contempt of court in a case involving keeping her hair salon open despite closure orders.

She was ordered to be released Thursday by the Texas Supreme Court.

"As a current Member of the Bar, you certainly should be aware of the impropriety of this contact, as prohibited by Canon 3(b)(8) of the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct," the letter to Paxton stated. "In this context, for you to "Urge" a Judge towards a particular substantive outcome in this matter is most inappropriate and equally unwelcome. Please do not communicate with the Court in this manner further."