Tennessee sued over new transgender bathroom sign law

Source: Associated Press



NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit Friday challenging Tennessee’s first-of-its-kind law that requires businesses and government facilities to post signs if they let transgender people use multiperson public bathrooms of their choice, seeking to block the requirement from taking effect on July 1.
In this Aug. 15, 2019 file photo, Rep. Tim Rudd, R-Murfreesboro, speaks on his bill that would impose new restrictions on groups that hold voter registration drives during a House session in Nashville, Tenn. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit Friday, June 25, 2021, challenging Tennessee’s first-of-its-kind law that requires businesses and government facilities to post signs if they let transgender people use multiperson public bathrooms or similar facilities of their choice. Rudd, says the law is not discriminatory and doesn’t limit businesses on which facilities they can let people use. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File)

The ACLU and its Tennessee chapter brought the lawsuit in Nashville on behalf of Bob Bernstein, owner of Fido restaurant in Nashville; and Kye Sayers, owner of the Sanctuary Performing Arts venue in Chattanooga, which was founded by members of the transgender community; and their corresponding businesses. It names the state fire marshal, state codes enforcement director and two district attorneys as defendants.

With the threat of misdemeanor penalties, the law requires that the following sign be posted in bold, uppercase letters outside public multiperson bathrooms, locker rooms or changing rooms wherever transgender people are not prevented from using the facilities of their choice: “This facility maintains a policy of allowing the use of restrooms by either biological sex, regardless of the designation on the restroom.” It’s one of five new Tennessee laws this year that have drawn backlash from LGBTQ advocates.

The lawsuit argues that the sign requirement infringes on the business owners' First Amendment rights by requiring them to “communicate a misleading and controversial government-mandated message that they would not otherwise display.” The lawsuit says the phrase “either biological sex" is ”offensive to transgender and intersex people because it asserts that transgender people are not the sex they know themselves to be and ignores the existence of intersex people."





Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/tennessee-sued-over-new-transgender-bathroom-sign-law/ar-AALs8ih

POLITICO Playbook: Graham: Biden made GOP look like 'f---ing idiots'

The article actualy contains a plan, and/or playbook of expected steps to pass both the bipartisan and Democratic infrastructure.

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2021/06/25/graham-biden-made-gop-look-like-fing-idiots-493371

MUTUALLY ASSURED DESTRUCTION — President JOE BIDEN, Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER and Speaker NANCY PELOSI unveiled a rather daring new strategy Thursday for getting the president’s agenda passed.

The gist is this: If Biden’s proposal for “family infrastructure” and climate change doesn’t pass, then neither will the bipartisan infrastructure deal that senators just struck. Think of this as a Plan B after Sens. JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.) and KYRSTEN SINEMA (D-Ariz.) refused to promise they’ll support Part 2, Democrats’ multitrillion-dollar reconciliation package.

But the Biden-Schumer-Pelosi playbook also has the makings of a serious legislative cluster — and high drama over whether Democrats can actually pull this off — this summer and possibly into the fall.

Here’s your new timeline, according to Hill sources, and bear with us for a bit of procedural wonkery:

1) The Senate will turn the bipartisan agreement into legislative text in the coming days so it can pass it out of the chamber in July. The House will likely have its own version. But instead of conferencing and approving a combined bill for Biden’s signature before the August recess, leaders will put infrastructure on ice until the Democrats-only bill catches up.

2) Schumer and Pelosi plan to have both their chambers pass their respective budget resolutions before the August recess, enabling Democrats to unlock the fast-tracking reconciliation tool.

3) That budget will include instructions for each committee to tackle everything from corporate tax hikes to climate change, education, paid family leave and the like — in other words, everything Democrats want that’s not included in the bipartisan infrastructure package. The panels will work over the August recess to draft the massive reconciliation bill, which Sen. BERNIE SANDERS (I-Vt.) hopes will top $6 trillion.

4) When lawmakers return in September from the August recess, they’ll have a few weeks to clear both bills at the same time. The new deadline for getting both to Biden’s desk, per Democratic leaders, is Sept. 30, when a bunch of surface transportation programs expire.

Matt Gaetz Tweets 'Defund The FBI' Then Deletes It Amid FBI Probe

Representative Matt Gaetz called for the FBI to be defunded by Democrats in a tweet on Wednesday, and then deleted it immediately.

"If Democrats want to defund the police, they should start with the FBI," the tweet read.

Newsweek has reached out to Rep. Gaetz's team for comment but did not hear back by publication time. It is unclear why Gaetz deleted the tweet a minute after posting it.

The Florida congressman is currently being investigated by the FBI for allegations that he violated sex trafficking laws and allegedly paid a 17-year-old to have sex with him, The New York Times first reported back in late March. Gaetz has denied these allegations and has not been charged.

Lawmakers expand investigation of troubled Baltimore vaccine plant

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe's Lawsuit Over Firing From FBI Headed to Mediation

Source: Law And Crime


After almost two years of litigation, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s lawsuit against the FBI and Attorney General Merrick Garland over McCabe’s very public 2018 firing is headed to mediation, according to a Tuesday court filing.

Garland, of course, wasn’t named as a defendant in McCabe’s lawsuit

McCabe and Barr appear to have been locked in procedural back-and-forth for more than a year, but Barr’s motion to dismiss was denied in September 2020, and it looked like McCabe’s case would proceed.

Now, however, it looks like both McCabe and Garland are trying to make the mediation happen, and soon.

According to the parties’ joint request to stay proceedings, both sides are “currently working to identify a mutually agreeable private mediator who is available to hold and complete mediation proceedings by August 30, 2021.”

https://lawandcrime.com/politics/former-fbi-deputy-director-andrew-mccabes-lawsuit-over-firing-from-fbi-headed-to-mediation/


Read more: https://lawandcrime.com/politics/former-fbi-deputy-director-andrew-mccabes-lawsuit-over-firing-from-fbi-headed-to-mediation/

The Supreme Court Just Overhauled the U.S. Patent Regime. Here's What It Means.

Democrats' voting rights bill is a big test for Biden's global democracy agenda

beginning a few paragraphs into the article:

...It’s unclear if HR 1 will pass in its current form, or at all. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will bring it up for a procedural vote on Tuesday, where lawmakers will decide if the bill should come up for an approve-or-deny vote in the future. Most analysts say the bill won’t clear that hurdle, potentially killing HR 1 for good in this Congress.

That would be a serious blow to Biden’s domestic agenda. After the House passed the bill in March, the president said its measures were “urgently needed to protect that right [to vote], to safeguard the integrity of our elections, and to repair and strengthen our democracy.” Biden even made Vice President Kamala Harris his point person for voting rights.

But on a grander scale, it could potentially harm the core message of Biden’s foreign policy. “Biden’s global democracy agenda depends on US democracy continuing to strengthen at home,” said Heather Hurlburt, a director at the New America think tank in Washington, DC, and so far the record is “terrible on voting rights and election integrity. So turning those around is important.”

Two articles from CNN providing cover story for two recent scandals.

CNN)The subpoena that swept up the records of two Democratic congressmen, their staff and family members in 2018 appears to have been the result of a leak investigation that initially included scrutinizing a senior aide on the House Intelligence Committee, and not the lawmakers themselves, sources told CNN.

The Justice Department's original secret subpoena to Apple, sources say, was an effort to identify people connected with the staffer. Apple provided names connected to the accounts the company had records for, including then-House Intelligence ranking member Adam Schiff and Rep. Eric Swalwell, two vocal political enemies of former President Donald Trump. This was potentially the first instance federal investigators knew they had records of the two California Democrats, according to the sources.

When former President Donald Trump lost last year's election, most Republicans didn't do what most losing parties do -- agonize over how to modify their message and appeal to a majority to deliver them future power.
Instead, party leaders in Washington and the states dedicated themselves to enshrining his anti-democratic behavior as GOP orthodoxy and whitewashing events that led to Trump's disgrace, including his pandemic failures, lies about non-existent major electoral fraud and the Capitol insurrection.
Instead of examining why voter

s rejected the ex-President after a single term, Republican state legislators drew up bills rooted in his falsehoods about a stolen that could make it easier to install their preferred victor after future elections -- even if voters decide otherwise.

Trump Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross made at least $53 million from private companies while serving

...While leading the Department of Commerce, Ross reported making a minimum of $53 million to $127 million in outside earnings.

However, according to the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Ross may have "earned significantly more as he was not required to specify certain income totals over $1 million."


...According to the CREW report, Ross made at least $42 million in 2017, which included "more than $6 million he was paid for giving up unvested restricted Invesco shares and more than $5 million from selling Invesco stock."

The development comes after The Washington Post reported last month that a security unit within the Department of Commerce had morphed into a counterintelligence-like operation "that collected information on hundreds of people inside and outside the department."


...The Investigations and Threat Management Service (ITMS) searched workers' offices in the evenings and looked through emails in search of possible foreign influence, according to the Post.

Per the Post report, the Biden administration paused all ITMS investigations in March and suspended its activities last month.

According to Forbes, Ross started a special purpose acquisition company in the Cayman Islands in January while still in his government role.

The High Cost of Biden's Meeting with Putin

New Yorker allows one free read.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-high-cost-of-bidens-meeting-with-putin

Biden’s main negotiating tool appears to have been the carrot of bringing Putin back to the world stage. The summit gave Putin what he craves: being treated as an important voice in world affairs, getting a photo op with Biden, holding a press conference before Biden if not with him, being called a “worthy adversary” by the American President. Biden warned Putin that this access and respect were conditional: if the jailed opposition politician Alexey Navalny were to die in prison, or if Russia waged cyberattacks on critical infrastructure in the U.S., Putin would find himself even more marginalized than he was before the summit. If there is a way to talk to Putin without harboring illusions—without pretending that he is a good-faith negotiator—this is probably it. But it comes at a cost.

Negotiations necessarily begin with establishing the interlocutors’ respective positions, making them instantly normal. Consider Navalny. Biden didn’t demand his immediate release; he demanded only that he not be killed in prison. Consider Ukraine: Biden didn’t demand that Russia withdraw from the parts of the country it has occupied, but only asked that Russia work within the framework of the Minsk agreement, a series of cease-fire agreements that would not necessarily return the occupied territories to Ukraine. Georgia, another country where Russia has occupied about a fifth of the territory, didn’t figure in either President’s account of their conversation. The very act of drawing red lines legitimizes the status quo.

Another perk of the summit for Putin is the amount of Western media attention to his person and his words. The most shameful example was a sit-down interview with the NBC correspondent Keir Simmons. The journalist asked him about being called a killer; Putin smirked, deflected, and lied. Simmons moved on to his next prepared question. It was entertaining, and Putin got the last word on a lot of people who are either dead or in jail.

The world is probably a slightly safer place following the summit. The Presidents agreed to return ambassadors to their respective postings. It’s likely that Alexey Navalny is a little safer now, too. But President Biden and this country paid a high moral price for it.