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White House, GLAAD Honor Transgender Day Of Remembrance

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President Obama’s White House today honored the 14th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance by meeting with transgender community advocates. Gautam Raghavan, an Associate Director in the White House Office of Public Engagement explains:

Earlier today, a group of transgender community advocates met with White House staff to mark Transgender Day of Remembrance and discuss ways in which we can work together to ensure dignity, equality, and justice for all people.

Throughout America and around the world, many transgender people face bullying, harassment, discrimination, and violence. Far too often, we hear shocking and tragic stories about transgender people who have been assaulted and even killed because of their gender identity or expression. The Obama Administration is committed to preventing violence against all people, including all members of the LGBT community, and this meeting was an important opportunity to explore ways to make our communities and neighborhoods safer.

At the meeting, community leaders highlighted a range of issues and concerns of importance to transgender people. In the months and years ahead, we look forward to working to ensure the safety and wellbeing of all transgender people.

As we mark Transgender Day of Remembrance and reflect upon the lives that have been lost to violence and injustice, let us all recommit ourselves to ensuring dignity, equality, and justice for all people.

Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis today issued the following statement regarding the Transgender Day of Remembrance, memorializing transgender Americans who have lost their lives as a result of violence:

“The Transgender Day of Remembrance will be commemorated in cities and countries around the world today, reflecting on those who have died as a result of fear, hate and transphobia.

“I stand proudly today — and every day — as an ally to the transgender community and to every person and family impacted by anti-transgender bullying and violence. Transgender people are part of the diversity that America celebrates today and they, like every American, deserve to live without fear of prejudice or violence.

“What Gwendolyn Ann Smith began as an online project in 1998 to memorialize Rita Hester’s murder has today evolved to include hundreds of vigils and events in workplaces, churches and community centers around the world. I hope that this year’s commemoration will serve as an opportunity to shine a brighter light on both progress made and the challenges ahead.”

GLAAD notes that the “Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) is an annual observance on November 20 that honors the memory of those whose lives were lost in acts of anti-transgender violence.”

The Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) was started by transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith as a vigil to honor the memory of Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was killed in 1998. The vigil commemorated all the transgender people lost to violence that year and began an important memorial that has become the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance.

“The Transgender Day of Remembrance seeks to highlight the losses we face due to anti-transgender bigotry and violence. I am no stranger to the need to fight for our rights, and the right to simply exist is first and foremost. With so many seeking to erase transgender people — sometimes in the most brutal ways possible — it is vitally important that those we lose are remembered, and that we continue to fight for justice.”
– Transgender Day of Remembrance founder Gwendolyn Ann Smith.

GLAAD also notes:

The 2011 Hate Violence Report from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Projects shows anti-LGBT hate crime murders increased 11% from 2010, in which 27 murders occurred, to 2011, in which 30 murders occurred. Of the victims murdered, 87% were people of color, and 40% were transgender women. Transgender people of color were also 28% more likely to experience physical violence compared to people who were not transgender people of color. Findings from the ‘Injustice at Every Turn’ report conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force showed alarming rates of violence and harassment expreienced by the more than 6,000 transgender repondents across a variety of contexts, including educational settings, at work, in interactions with police and with family members, at homeless shelters, accessing public accommodations, and in jails and prisons. According to the International Transgender Day of Remembrance website, there have been 8 people murdered out of anti-transgender bias during 2011 in the U.S. As murders of transgender people often go unreported, and the identity of transgender murder victims is often misreported, there is no way to know accurate numbers.

Please visit GLAAD’s Transgender Day of Remembrance page for more information and ways you can get involved. You can also visit GLAAD on Facebook.

You can also learn more via Twitter, hashtag #TDOR.

Image via GLAAD

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‘Disgraceful’: ICE Slammed After Allegedly Pepper-Spraying US Congresswoman

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U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) is accusing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents of pepper-spraying her in her face while she was at a local Tucson, Arizona restaurant.

Rep. Grijalva in a video on social media said she saw about 40 mostly-masked ICE agents at a restaurant she frequents weekly.

The agents were “in several vehicles that the community had stopped right here, right in the middle of the street, because they were afraid that they were taking people without due process, without any kind of notice.”

READ MORE: Warning Signs Flash as Trump Slump Raises Fears of 2018 Blue Wave Rerun: Conservative

She said that the community was “protecting their people” when she was “sprayed in the face by a very aggressive agent,” and “pushed around by others when I literally was not being aggressive.”

“I was asking for clarification, which is my right as a member of Congress,” she continued. “So, once I introduced myself, once I did, I assumed that it would be a little calmer, but there was literally only one person that was trying to speak to me in any kind of civil tone, and everyone else was being rude and disrespectful, and I just can only imagine if they’re going to treat me like that, how they’re treating everybody else.”

Congresswoman Grijalva said she saw “people directly sprayed,” including “members of our press” and staff members.

She blasted President Donald Trump, saying that he “has no regard for any due process, the rule of law, the Constitution — they’re literally disappearing people from the streets.”

Critics slammed the agents’ action.

READ MORE: Trump: Democrats Are Plotting ‘Total Obliteration’ of Supreme Court

U.S. Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) wrote that Rep. Grijalva “was doing her job, standing up for her community.”

“Pepper-spraying a sitting member of Congress is disgraceful, unacceptable, and absolutely not what we voted for. Period,” he added.

“This is unacceptable and outrageous,” observed Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes. “Enforcing the rule [of] law does not mean pepper spraying a member of Congress for simply asking questions. Effective law enforcement requires restraint and accountability, not unchecked aggression.”

The Bulwark’s Sam Stein noted, “quite the beginning for Grijalva, who wasn’t seated for weeks, [cast] the decisive vote to get the Epstein files, and now has apparently been pepper sprayed in the face by immigration agents.”

Also calling the action “outrageous,” U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) wrote: “We are Members of Congress with oversight authority of ICE. Rep Grijalva was completely within her rights to stand up for her constituents. ICE is completely lawless.”

“First they tackle a sitting Senator,” noted U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY). “Now they’re pepper spraying a Representative. It’s clear ICE is spinning out of control. We will hold the agency accountable.”

READ MORE: Trump’s Ballroom Seen as ‘Key Evidence’ He’s Out of Touch as Cost of Living Spikes

 

Image via Reuters 

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Warning Signs Flash as Trump Slump Raises Fears of 2018 Blue Wave Rerun: Conservative

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A well-known conservative commentator has a warning for the Republican Party: take action now or face a repeat of the 2018 midterms when the GOP lost 41 House seats in a landslide. And this time, he says, the Senate could go to the Democrats as well.

Award-winning writer and journalist Bernard Goldberg reminded readers at The Hill that in 2018, during President Donald Trump’s first term, “Republicans got walloped … and a good chunk of that had President Trump’s name written all over it.”

Trump’s “approval ratings were in the low 40s, and independents — the folks who usually decide elections — had seen enough. They broke hard for the Democrats,” Goldberg noted. “Now here we are, staring down 2026, and you can almost hear history clearing its throat, getting ready to repeat itself.”

READ MORE: Trump: Democrats Are Plotting ‘Total Obliteration’ of Supreme Court

Goldberg noted that Trump’s approval rating is currently the lowest it’s been this term.

“Among Republicans, his support dropped from 91 percent right after the 2024 election to 84 percent last month. Among independents, it cratered — from 42 percent to just 25 percent.”

“If the trend continues,” he warned, “Republicans could be headed for another blue wave — and this time, it could wash away not just the House majority, but control of the Senate too.”

Why?

“It’s the economy — still,” he wrote.

“Trump is out there saying the economy is humming. Biden said the same thing before him. But voters didn’t buy it then, and they’re not buying it now. Why? Because it’s not GDP numbers that matter. It’s affordability,” Goldberg noted.

READ MORE: Trump’s Ballroom Seen as ‘Key Evidence’ He’s Out of Touch as Cost of Living Spikes

That’s a word that President Trump continues to call a “con job,” while his own administration tries to claim he is focused on.

He pointed to a Karl Rove Wall Street Journal column and wrote: “The Republicans may have ‘avoided disaster’ in Tennessee, but the result should be a wake-up call for Republicans. He’s right.”

Goldberg asked: “will anyone in the Republican Party actually pick up the phone?”

“Because if Republicans don’t wake up — and fast — they’re going to find out the hard way what happens when you keep rerunning the same movie and expecting a different ending. To lose in 2026, all they have to do is nothing. And right now, that’s pretty much what they’re doing.”

READ MORE: Trump Urges Judge Aileen Cannon to Keep Jack Smith Report Secret

 

 

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Trump: Democrats Are Plotting ‘Total Obliteration’ of Supreme Court

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President Donald Trump is claiming that the top priority of Democrats is the “total obliteration” of the U.S. Supreme Court. His remarks came just hours after SCOTUS gave Republicans a 6-3 win along partisan lines, in the form of approving Texas’s redrawn mid-decade congressional maps that could help add five GOP-held seats to the U.S. House of Representatives. A lower court had ruled the redrawn Texas maps were likely racially biased.

Although there are different ways to measure, one study by Court Accountability this fall found that the Supreme Court has ruled in Trump’s favor 90% of the time.

“Most of these wins for the president came from the court’s ‘shadow docket’ slate of opinions — where the court has typically, in the past, only ruled on administrative measures,” according to Truthout. “However, in recent years, the Supreme Court has been making announcements on cases, issuing injunctions or allowances of actions to remain in place, that have the same effect, essentially, as a final decision.”

READ MORE: White House Touts Trump’s ‘Track Record’ on Affordability

On Friday, the president declared that the “Democrats number one policy push is the complete and total OBLITERATION of our great United States Supreme Court.”

“They will do this on their very first day in office, through the simple Termination of the Filibuster, SHOULD THEY WIN THE UPCOMING ELECTIONS,” he wrote.

Trump has strongly advocated for Republicans to eliminate the Senate filibuster.

“The Radical Left Democrats are looking at 21 Justices, with immediate ascension,” he wrote, claiming that Democrats would more than double the current size of the court.

“This would be terrible for our Country. Fear not, however, Republicans will not let it, or any of their other catastrophic policies, happen. Our Country is now in very good hands. MAGA!!!”

Some court reform advocates have suggested the Supreme Court be expanded to 13 justices, one for each of the thirteen U.S. Courts of Appeals.

READ MORE: Trump’s Ballroom Seen as ‘Key Evidence’ He’s Out of Touch as Cost of Living Spikes

 

Image via Reuters 

 

 

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