![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Today's News (2020/7/1): Everything Else edition
Getting in all the beatdowns on queers while they can.
----- 1 -----
Trump Signs Anti-LGBTQ Child Welfare Executive Order
By Currey Cook, Counsel and Youth in Out-of-Home Care Project Director
June 30, 2020
https://www.lambdalegal.org/blog/20200630_trump-admin-child-welfare-executive-order
Last week, the Trump administration issued a child welfare executive order, which was largely a repackaging of long-called-for and already-underway child welfare reform measures. And, in a familiar move at odds with professional child welfare standards, directed HHS to issue guidance authorizing government-funded, faith-based agencies to turn away qualified prospective foster and adoptive parents because they are same-sex couples, LGBTQ, or don’t practice the agency’s faith.
Incredibly, the order touts the need for “Ensuring Equality of Treatment and Access for all Families,” while it sanctions discrimination and and ignores the alarming levels of harm LGBTQ families and youth face in in the system.
Notably, in a moment where the nation is finally confronting long-standing racism and inequality, the order makes no mention of the over-representation of youth and families of color. Its call for more funding and efforts at prevention also do not address advocates’ long-standing pleas to drastically reform or abolish the current system as we know it because of systemic racism and resulting racial disparities. With the COVID-19 pandemic raging — which has disproportionately impacted people of color and hit the child welfare system hard — the silence speaks volumes.
The sudden concern for equality and access in the child welfare system is cynical considering that Lambda Legal has been busy challenging actions taken by this administration that do the exact opposite.
----- 2 -----
Thousands of U.S. judges who broke laws or oaths remained on the bench
In the past dozen years, state and local judges have repeatedly escaped public accountability for misdeeds that have victimized thousands. Nine of 10 kept their jobs, a Reuters investigation found – including an Alabama judge who unlawfully jailed hundreds of poor people, many of them Black, over traffic fines.
By MICHAEL BERENS and JOHN SHIFFMAN in MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA
Filed June 30, 2020, noon GMT
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-judges-misconduct/
Judge Les Hayes once sentenced a single mother to 496 days behind bars for failing to pay traffic tickets. The sentence was so stiff it exceeded the jail time Alabama allows for negligent homicide.
Marquita Johnson, who was locked up in April 2012, says the impact of her time in jail endures today. Johnson’s three children were cast into foster care while she was incarcerated. One daughter was molested, state records show. Another was physically abused.
“Judge Hayes took away my life and didn’t care how my children suffered,” said Johnson, now 36. “My girls will never be the same.”
Fellow inmates found her sentence hard to believe. “They had a nickname for me: The Woman with All the Days,” Johnson said. “That’s what they called me: The Woman with All the Days. There were people who had committed real crimes who got out before me.”
In 2016, the state agency that oversees judges charged Hayes with violating Alabama’s code of judicial conduct. According to the Judicial Inquiry Commission, Hayes broke state and federal laws by jailing Johnson and hundreds of other Montgomery residents too poor to pay fines. Among those jailed: a plumber struggling to make rent, a mother who skipped meals to cover the medical bills of her disabled son, and a hotel housekeeper working her way through college.
Hayes, a judge since 2000, admitted in court documents to violating 10 different parts of the state’s judicial conduct code. One of the counts was a breach of a judge’s most essential duty: failing to “respect and comply with the law.”
Despite the severity of the ruling, Hayes wasn’t barred from serving as a judge. Instead, the judicial commission and Hayes reached a deal. The former Eagle Scout would serve an 11-month unpaid suspension. Then he could return to the bench.
----- 3 -----
Coronavirus Brings American Decline Out in the Open
Without fixes for infrastructure, education, health care and government, the U.S. will resemble a developing nation in a few decades.
By Noah Smith
June 29, 2020
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-29/coronavirus-brings-american-decline-out-in-the-open
The U.S.’s decline started with little things that people got used to. Americans drove past empty construction sites and didn’t even think about why the workers weren’t working, then wondered why roads and buildings took so long to finish. They got used to avoiding hospitals because of the unpredictable and enormous bills they’d receive. They paid 6% real-estate commissions, never realizing that Australians were paying 2%. They grumbled about high taxes and high health-insurance premiums and potholed roads, but rarely imagined what it would be like to live in a system that worked better.
When writers speak of American decline, they’re usually talking about international power -- the rise of China and the waning of U.S. hegemony and moral authority. To most Americans, those are distant and abstract things that have little or no impact on their daily lives. But the decline in the general effectiveness of U.S. institutions will impose increasing costs and burdens on Americans. And if it eventually leads to a general loss of investor confidence in the country, the damage could be much greater.
The most immediate cost of U.S. decline -- and the most vivid demonstration -- comes from the country’s disastrous response to the coronavirus pandemic. Leadership failures were pervasive and catastrophic at every level -- the president, agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration, and state and local leaders all fumbled the response to the greatest health threat in a century. As a result, the U.S. is suffering a horrific surge of infections in states such as Arizona, Texas and Florida while states that were battered early on are still struggling. Countries such as Italy that are legendary for government dysfunction and were hit hard by the virus have crushed the curve of infection, while the U.S. just set a daily record for case growth and shows no sign of slowing down.
----- 4 -----
Trump administration wants to end another Obama-era protection for transgender people
By Devan Cole, CNN
Updated 7:45 PM ET, Wed July 1, 2020
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/01/politics/transgender-homeless-shelters-rule-change-ben-carson/index.html
Washington (CNN)The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced Wednesday that it plans to roll back an Obama-era rule that barred federally funded homeless shelters from discriminating against transgender people.
The department said in a statement that it will soon publish a modification to the 2016 part of the Equal Access Rule, which was put in place under then-President Barack Obama, that required shelters to provide lodging regardless of gender identity. It's another move from the Trump administration in its ongoing assault on federal protections for transgender Americans.
"The new rule allows shelter providers that lawfully operate as single-sex or sex-segregated facilities to voluntarily establish a policy that will govern admissions determinations for situations when an individual's gender identity does not match their biological sex," the statement read.
The department, which proposed a similar rule change last year, said in the statement that the new change would "better accommodate religious beliefs of shelter providers," as well as other practical concerns.
Under the proposed change, a shelter that does not accept a transgender person would be required to hand out "information about other shelters in the area that can meet their needs." A shelter that does accept transgender people would be required to give anyone uncomfortable with that "a referral to a facility whose policy is based on biological sex."
----- 5 ----
Izzy Rizinti
twitter.com/BellaRizinti
1 July 2020
https://twitter.com/BellaRizinti/status/1278249615838584834
In a completely unprofessional move, the LGB Alliance have been emailing the Stonewall100 Charities to tell them NOT to support twitter.com/stonewalluk - This is the LGB Alliance who has done NOTHING, not 1 thing for LGB people, they only attack trans folks. It's a hate group.
The letter:
[EMBEDDED IMAGE OF LETTER]
----- 6 -----
CBS News
twitter.com/CBSNews
1 July 2020
https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1278444454681153536
The Department of Homeland Security says it's sending rapid deployment teams across the country to protect statues and monuments, as the debate about Confederate symbols intensifies. twitter.com/SkylerHenry reports: http://cbsnews.com/live
[EMBEDDED VIDEO AT LINK]
- Trump Signs Anti-LGBTQ Child Welfare Executive Order
- Thousands of U.S. judges who broke laws or oaths remained on the bench
- Coronavirus Brings American Decline Out in the Open
- Trump administration wants to end another Obama-era protection for transgender people
- LGB Alliance have been emailing the Stonewall100 Charities to tell them NOT to support Stonewall UK
- Department of Homeland Security says it's sending rapid deployment teams across the country to protect statues and monuments
----- 1 -----
Trump Signs Anti-LGBTQ Child Welfare Executive Order
By Currey Cook, Counsel and Youth in Out-of-Home Care Project Director
June 30, 2020
https://www.lambdalegal.org/blog/20200630_trump-admin-child-welfare-executive-order
Last week, the Trump administration issued a child welfare executive order, which was largely a repackaging of long-called-for and already-underway child welfare reform measures. And, in a familiar move at odds with professional child welfare standards, directed HHS to issue guidance authorizing government-funded, faith-based agencies to turn away qualified prospective foster and adoptive parents because they are same-sex couples, LGBTQ, or don’t practice the agency’s faith.
Incredibly, the order touts the need for “Ensuring Equality of Treatment and Access for all Families,” while it sanctions discrimination and and ignores the alarming levels of harm LGBTQ families and youth face in in the system.
Notably, in a moment where the nation is finally confronting long-standing racism and inequality, the order makes no mention of the over-representation of youth and families of color. Its call for more funding and efforts at prevention also do not address advocates’ long-standing pleas to drastically reform or abolish the current system as we know it because of systemic racism and resulting racial disparities. With the COVID-19 pandemic raging — which has disproportionately impacted people of color and hit the child welfare system hard — the silence speaks volumes.
The sudden concern for equality and access in the child welfare system is cynical considering that Lambda Legal has been busy challenging actions taken by this administration that do the exact opposite.
----- 2 -----
Thousands of U.S. judges who broke laws or oaths remained on the bench
In the past dozen years, state and local judges have repeatedly escaped public accountability for misdeeds that have victimized thousands. Nine of 10 kept their jobs, a Reuters investigation found – including an Alabama judge who unlawfully jailed hundreds of poor people, many of them Black, over traffic fines.
By MICHAEL BERENS and JOHN SHIFFMAN in MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA
Filed June 30, 2020, noon GMT
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-judges-misconduct/
Judge Les Hayes once sentenced a single mother to 496 days behind bars for failing to pay traffic tickets. The sentence was so stiff it exceeded the jail time Alabama allows for negligent homicide.
Marquita Johnson, who was locked up in April 2012, says the impact of her time in jail endures today. Johnson’s three children were cast into foster care while she was incarcerated. One daughter was molested, state records show. Another was physically abused.
“Judge Hayes took away my life and didn’t care how my children suffered,” said Johnson, now 36. “My girls will never be the same.”
Fellow inmates found her sentence hard to believe. “They had a nickname for me: The Woman with All the Days,” Johnson said. “That’s what they called me: The Woman with All the Days. There were people who had committed real crimes who got out before me.”
In 2016, the state agency that oversees judges charged Hayes with violating Alabama’s code of judicial conduct. According to the Judicial Inquiry Commission, Hayes broke state and federal laws by jailing Johnson and hundreds of other Montgomery residents too poor to pay fines. Among those jailed: a plumber struggling to make rent, a mother who skipped meals to cover the medical bills of her disabled son, and a hotel housekeeper working her way through college.
Hayes, a judge since 2000, admitted in court documents to violating 10 different parts of the state’s judicial conduct code. One of the counts was a breach of a judge’s most essential duty: failing to “respect and comply with the law.”
Despite the severity of the ruling, Hayes wasn’t barred from serving as a judge. Instead, the judicial commission and Hayes reached a deal. The former Eagle Scout would serve an 11-month unpaid suspension. Then he could return to the bench.
----- 3 -----
Coronavirus Brings American Decline Out in the Open
Without fixes for infrastructure, education, health care and government, the U.S. will resemble a developing nation in a few decades.
By Noah Smith
June 29, 2020
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-29/coronavirus-brings-american-decline-out-in-the-open
The U.S.’s decline started with little things that people got used to. Americans drove past empty construction sites and didn’t even think about why the workers weren’t working, then wondered why roads and buildings took so long to finish. They got used to avoiding hospitals because of the unpredictable and enormous bills they’d receive. They paid 6% real-estate commissions, never realizing that Australians were paying 2%. They grumbled about high taxes and high health-insurance premiums and potholed roads, but rarely imagined what it would be like to live in a system that worked better.
When writers speak of American decline, they’re usually talking about international power -- the rise of China and the waning of U.S. hegemony and moral authority. To most Americans, those are distant and abstract things that have little or no impact on their daily lives. But the decline in the general effectiveness of U.S. institutions will impose increasing costs and burdens on Americans. And if it eventually leads to a general loss of investor confidence in the country, the damage could be much greater.
The most immediate cost of U.S. decline -- and the most vivid demonstration -- comes from the country’s disastrous response to the coronavirus pandemic. Leadership failures were pervasive and catastrophic at every level -- the president, agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration, and state and local leaders all fumbled the response to the greatest health threat in a century. As a result, the U.S. is suffering a horrific surge of infections in states such as Arizona, Texas and Florida while states that were battered early on are still struggling. Countries such as Italy that are legendary for government dysfunction and were hit hard by the virus have crushed the curve of infection, while the U.S. just set a daily record for case growth and shows no sign of slowing down.
----- 4 -----
Trump administration wants to end another Obama-era protection for transgender people
By Devan Cole, CNN
Updated 7:45 PM ET, Wed July 1, 2020
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/01/politics/transgender-homeless-shelters-rule-change-ben-carson/index.html
Washington (CNN)The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced Wednesday that it plans to roll back an Obama-era rule that barred federally funded homeless shelters from discriminating against transgender people.
The department said in a statement that it will soon publish a modification to the 2016 part of the Equal Access Rule, which was put in place under then-President Barack Obama, that required shelters to provide lodging regardless of gender identity. It's another move from the Trump administration in its ongoing assault on federal protections for transgender Americans.
"The new rule allows shelter providers that lawfully operate as single-sex or sex-segregated facilities to voluntarily establish a policy that will govern admissions determinations for situations when an individual's gender identity does not match their biological sex," the statement read.
The department, which proposed a similar rule change last year, said in the statement that the new change would "better accommodate religious beliefs of shelter providers," as well as other practical concerns.
Under the proposed change, a shelter that does not accept a transgender person would be required to hand out "information about other shelters in the area that can meet their needs." A shelter that does accept transgender people would be required to give anyone uncomfortable with that "a referral to a facility whose policy is based on biological sex."
----- 5 ----
Izzy Rizinti
twitter.com/BellaRizinti
1 July 2020
https://twitter.com/BellaRizinti/status/1278249615838584834
In a completely unprofessional move, the LGB Alliance have been emailing the Stonewall100 Charities to tell them NOT to support twitter.com/stonewalluk - This is the LGB Alliance who has done NOTHING, not 1 thing for LGB people, they only attack trans folks. It's a hate group.
The letter:
[EMBEDDED IMAGE OF LETTER]
----- 6 -----
CBS News
twitter.com/CBSNews
1 July 2020
https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1278444454681153536
The Department of Homeland Security says it's sending rapid deployment teams across the country to protect statues and monuments, as the debate about Confederate symbols intensifies. twitter.com/SkylerHenry reports: http://cbsnews.com/live
[EMBEDDED VIDEO AT LINK]