Marjorie Taylor Greene's Desperate Scramble to Stop Steve Bannon From Going to Prison (2024)

Related Topics:crimeLawNewsPolitics

Enjoy this piece?

… then let us make a small request. The New Civil Rights Movement depends on readers like you to meet our ongoing expenses and continue producing quality progressive journalism. Three Silicon Valley giants consume 70 percent of all online advertising dollars, so we need your help to continue doing what we do.

NCRM is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. From unflinching coverage of religious extremism, to spotlighting efforts to roll back our rights, NCRM continues to speak truth to power. America needs independent voices like NCRM to be sure no one is forgotten.

Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Help ensure NCRM remains independent long into the future. Support progressive journalism with a one-time contribution to NCRM, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click here to donate by check.

Amy Coney Barrett Says Court Made ‘Textual Backflips’ to Protect January 6 Rioters Government Agencies Limited in Second Supreme Court Ruling This Week Amid Increasing Calls to Replace Him After Debate, Biden Spotlights Trump’s Lies Drag PAC Formed by Famous Queens to Fight Anti-LGBTQ Legislation 68% of Nonvoters in 2020 Election Think US Headed in the Wrong Direction Supreme Court Declines To Rule on Trump Immunity Before Debate

The lone justice to dissent called the Texas Supreme Court ruling to uphold the ban on gender-affirming care for minors “cruel” and “unconstitutional” Friday.

The Texas Supreme Court, currently made up of all Republican justices, decided 8-1 to uphold a ban on providing gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers, to transgender people under the age of 18. The Court said that it did “not attempt to identify the most appropriate treatment for a child suffering from gender dysphoria,” claiming it to be a “complicated question” for doctors and legislators.

The Court ruled that even though “fit parents have a fundamental interest in directing the care, custody, and control of their children free from government interference,” that interest is bound by “the Legislature’s authority to regulate the practice of medicine.”

READ MORE: Republican Gov. Mike DeWine Vetoes Anti-Trans Bill After Talking to Families With Trans Kids

“[W]e conclude the Legislature made a permissible, rational policy choice to limit the types of available medical procedures for children, particularly in light of the relative nascency of both gender dysphoria and its various modes of treatment and the Legislature’s express constitutional authority to regulate the practice of medicine,” Justice Rebeca Aizpuru Huddle wrote.

Justice Debra Lehrmann, the only justice to dissent, was clear in her disagreement. She wrote that the decision means “the State can usurp parental authority to follow a physician’s advice regarding their own children’s medical needs.” Lehrmann identified that gender-affirming care can be “lifesaving.”

She also mocked the idea that the Court’s ruling didn’t “deprive children diagnosed with gender dysphoria of appropriate treatment.” Lehrmann pointed out that by upholding the law, it “effectively forecloses all medical treatment options that are currently available to these children … under the guise that depriving parents of access to these treatments is no different than prohibiting parents from allowing their children to get tattoos.”

“The law is not only cruel—it is unconstitutional,” she wrote, calling the ban a “hatchet, not a scalpel.”

Lehrmann also put the lie to the claims by anti-LGBTQ activists that surgery is common for transgender minors.

“Indeed, the leading medical associations in this field do not recommend surgical intervention before adulthood. Without a doubt, the removal of a young child’s genitalia is something that neither the conventional medical community nor conscientious parents would condone,” she wrote. “Moreover, medical experts do not recommend that any medical intervention … be undertaken before the onset of puberty.”

Lehrmann is correct. Prior to puberty, transgender care is basically limited to social changes. For example, wearing gender-affirming clothing and using appropriate pronouns, according to Advocates for Trans Equality.

Puberty blockers can be prescribed for those who are starting puberty. Puberty blockers are safe, according to Cedars-Sinai, and are not only used for transgender youth. A common purpose is to stop precocious puberty, which affects 1 in 5,000 children, including children as young as 6. For both transgender youth and kids going through precocious puberty, puberty blockers are known to improve patients’ mental health, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Puberty blockers are also fully reversible. However, in terms of trans youth, a study published in The Lancet found that 98% of those on puberty blockers went on hormone replacement therapy upon turning 18. But even for those few teens who realize after being on puberty blockers that they aren’t trans, all they have to do is stop taking them, and their puberty will progress as normal.

Continue Reading

After two Uvalde cops were charged over their botched response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary, a Texas state senator says more officers should be charged.

Former Police Chief Pete Arredondo and then-officer Adrian Gonzalez were charged on felony counts of child endangerment, according to the San Antonio Express-News. The May 24, 2022 shooting was Texas’ worst; 19 children and two teachers were killed.

Uvalde cops were criticised for not stopping the shooting earlier, particularly when camera footage was released showing officers standing in a hallway while the shooting continued.

READ MORE:Listen: Uvalde School Massacre Was God’s Plan Says Texas AG Ken Paxton – ‘Life Is Short’

Democratic Texas State Senator Roland Gutierrez said that the charges against Arredondo and Gonzalez were not enough. Gutierrez represents District 19, which includes Uvalde.

“If they’re going to indict those two officers, they need to indict the 13 DPS troopers in that hallway,” Gutierrez told the Express-News. “That’s very disturbing to me.”

Almost 400 law enforcement officers had responded to the shooting, the Express-News reported, including 28 officers from the Uvalde PD.

During the shooting, Arredondo and Gonzales were among the first officers to enter the building in the first few minutes of the incident. The incident started at 11:29 a.m., when the shooter crashed near a funeral home, fired on the employees, then entered onto the school campus, according to the official timeline from the Uvalde Police’s internal investigation.

At 11:30, police were dispatched; the shooter entered the building at 11:33 and started firing. At 11:35, four officers, including Gonzalez and Arredondo, entered the building. Approximately a minute later, officers opened the unlocked door to the classroom, and were fired upon and injured. At 11:38 a.m., Arredondo ordered the officers to retreat.

At 11:55 a.m., as the shooting continued, Arredondo ordered police to clear the rooms surrounding the classrooms and start to negotiate with the shooter. Police finally entered the classroom nearly an hour later, at 12:50 p.m., and took down the shooter. During this wait, Arredondo was waiting for someone to bring him keys to the door, mistakenly thinking the classroom was locked.

Police inaction during a school shooting is sadly not uncommon. In 2018, former officer Scot Peterson was acquitted for not acting to stop the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Footage showed Peterson was on the scene, but was standing outside the building as the shooting continued.

A federal judge also dismissed a lawsuit against Broward County officials including the sheriff for not protecting the students at the school. The judge ruled that though the 14th Amendment requires police to protect those in custody, there is no police duty to protect people not in custody, according to CNN.

In that shooting, 14 students and three teachers were killed; another 17 victims were wounded.

Continue Reading

Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett slammed the Supreme Court for making “textual backflips” in justifying its ruling to limit the prosecution of January 6 rioters for obstruction.

Friday morning, the Court issued its ruling inFischer v. United States, which rules that the law against the obstruction of official proceedings applies to only those rioters who “impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records, documents, objects, or other things used in an official proceeding, or attempted to do so,” according to Chief Justice John Roberts’ ruling.

The ruling was 6-3, but not along ideological lines. The conservative justices other than Barrett were joined by liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, while Barrett wrote the dissent, and was joined by the other two liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

READ MORE:Trump Falsely Says Mike Pence Is to ‘Blame’ for Violence on January 6

“As the Solicitor General acknowledged at oral argument, under the Government’s interpretation, a peaceful protester could conceivably be charged… and face a 20-year sentence,” Roberts wrote. “And the Government would likewise have no apparent obstacle to prosecuting… any lobbying activity that ‘influences’ an official proceeding and is undertaken ‘corruptly.’

Jackson concurred, but in her opinion she wrote that she agreed with the ruling based on the law, but was unconvinced that it necessarily applied to many January 6 defendants. She said that would be up to lower courts to decide.

“Joseph Fischer was charged with… corruptly obstructing ‘a proceeding before Congress, specifically, Congress’s certification of the Electoral College vote,” she wrote. “That official proceeding plainly used certain records, documents, or objects—including, among others, those relating to the electoral votes themselves.”

Barrett’s dissent argued that the congressional joint session to go over the electoral votes was obviously an “official proceeding,” and tried to force an end to said proceeding.

“Fischer’s alleged conduct (which includes trespassing and a physical confrontation with law enforcement) was part of a successful effort to forcibly halt the certification of the election results. Given these premises, the case that Fischer can be tried for ‘obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding’ seems open and shut. So why does the Court hold otherwise?” Barrett asked.

“Because it simply cannot believe that Congress meant what it said. Section 1512(c)(2) is a very broad provision, and admittedly, events like January 6th were not its target. (Who could blame Congress for that failure of imagination?) But statutes often go further than the problem that inspired them, and under the rules of statutory interpretation, we stick to the text anyway. The Court, abandoning that approach, does textual backflips to find some way—any way—to narrow the reach of subsection (c)(2). I respectfully dissent.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland also condemned the ruling in a statement, calling January 6 an “unprecedented attack on the cornerstone” of government. Garland added that the ruling would not affect the “vast majority” of January 6 defendants.

Similarly, special council Jack Smith, said that Friday’s ruling will not affect the election interference case against former President Donald Trump, according to the Associated Press. The ruling will affect approximately half of the 50 defendants still serving out their sentences for their roles in the January 6 riots, the AP reported.

Continue Reading