Arkansas governor signs law allowing doctors to refuse treatment to LGBTQ people
Just a day after Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson became the second U.S. governor to sign an anti-trans sports bill this year, he signed into law a bill that allows doctors to refuse treatment to anyone because of religious or moral objections. On Friday, Hutchinson signed into law the Medical Ethics and Diversity Act, which allows health care professionals to deny any nonemergency services to patients according to their “conscience.” It also protects health care institutions from “discrimination, punishment, or retaliation as a result of any instance of conscientious medical objection. Human righ… Read More
Fight over Georgia election reforms now heads from Legislature to new fronts
ATLANTA — The battle over Georgia's sweeping rewrite of election rules now shifts to the courthouse, the campaign trail and the halls of Congress after Gov. Brian Kemp quickly signed into law the Republican-backed overhaul that imposes new voting restrictions. Voting rights groups filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the constitutionality of the changes hours after Kemp's closed-door signing of the measure, claiming they amount to a “grab bag of voting restrictions” that violate the federal Voting Rights Act. With promises to exact revenge at the ballot box next year, potential Democra… Read More
Families say athletic bans would exact toll on rural transgender youth
CLARKSDALE, Miss. — Katy Binstead's 13-year-old transgender daughter, Emily Wilson, enjoyed playing basketball recreationally this past summer. When school reopened, she decided to try out for the girls basketball team at her middle school on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The school denied Emily the chance, her mother recalled, telling her to try out for the boys team instead, because her birth certificate identified her as male. As dozens of states consider legislation that would restrict transgender girls' participation in sports, Emily and her mom are advocating for other families who may fac… Read More
Will Bunch: President Biden's ‘mistake' at US southern border isn't what clueless pundits, GOP think it is
As a political leader whose defining moment has been the mass shooting of 20 kindergartners and first graders in his home state in 2012, and his aggressive push for stricter gun laws ever since, Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy has never been one to mince words about either the welfare of children or human rights hypocrisy, either at home or abroad. A strong supporter of his fellow Democrat, President Joe Biden, Murphy was candid this weekend in admitting that he was troubled by the scenes he witnessed on a bipartisan congressional tour of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing center in… Read More
Trump Says Ending The Senate Filibuster Would Be ‘Catastrophic' For Republicans
Former President Donald Trump said that any effort to abolish the Senate filibuster would cause irreparable damage to the Republican Party. Trump discussed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell‘s attempt to fight off talk from progressives to eliminate the longstanding filibuster rule during an interview on the podcast The Truth with Lisa Boothe. “Look, he's hanging by a thread right now with respect to the filibuster,” Trump said of McConnell. “And if they get the filler, he's hanging on [Democratic Sen.] Joe Manchin, who always goes with the Democrats. Joe talks, but he ends up going with t… Read More
Out Georgia State Rep. Park Cannon Arrested For Trying To Observe Signing Of Voting Restriction Law
Georgia state Rep. Park Cannon was pulled out of the state's Capitol building and arrested on Thursday for trying to observe the signing of the state's new suite of voting restrictions hastily passed through the Senate this week. A video shows several police officers pushing Cannon while she is retrained. Cannon was knocking on Gov. Brian Kemp‘s door while he signed the voting restrictions into law. The governor decided to sign the bill behind closed doors in a highly irregular process. In a statement Thursday night, Georgia State Patrol wrote that at 6:33 p.m. Rep. Cannon “was beating on the… Read More
‘Bathroom bill 2.0': Effort to bar transgender athletes in Texas schools gets hearing
AUSTIN, Texas — A bill that would bar transgender athletes from participating in school sports based on their gender identity is set to spark a passionate debate at the Texas Legislature over an issue that some in the transgender community are comparing to the “bathroom bill” fight of 2017. Ricardo Martinez, CEO of Equality Texas, said he knows of at least 70 people who were planning to testify against the bill at a Senate committee hearing Friday. He said the bill has had a deep emotional impact among transgender Texans on top of the collective trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic. “We're going th… Read More
