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Mississippi Lawmakers on Brink of Passing Georgia-Style Anti-LGBT ‘Religious Freedom’ Bill

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GOP Governor Backs Hateful Anti-LGBT Bill as Senate Vote Looms

Although much of the LGBT community’s attention has been focused on North Carolina and House Bill 2 this week, the Mississippi Legislature is on the brink of passing an equally disgusting anti-LGBT measure. 

The GOP-controlled Mississippi Senate is expected to vote today on House Bill 1523, which has already cleared the House. Gov. Phil Bryant told Mississippi News Now he would sign the measure. 

“I don’t think it’s discriminatory,” Bryant said. “I think it gives some people as I appreciate it, the right to be able to say that’s against my religious beliefs and I don’t need to carry out that particular task.”

By “that particular task,” Bryant ostensibly means treating LGBT people with any shred of dignity whatsoever. But it’s not just LGBT people who’d be affected. HB 1523 would also open the door to discrimination against anyone who’s had extramarital sex — a category of people which, according to one study, includes 95 percent of Americans. 

Titled the “Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act,” HB 1523 is a version of the so-called “First Amendment Defense Act” introduced in Congress last year, and it’s similar to the bill vetoed by Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal this week. 

As one gay black man who protested the bill on the steps of the Mississippi Capitol on Tuesday put it, HB 1523 is essentially “Jim Crow for the gays.” 

However, the bill is also explicitly anti-transgender. HB 1523 would bar the state from taking action against individuals, religious organizations, nonprofits and other entities that discriminate based on their belief that marriage should be between one man and one woman, that sexual relations should be reserved to such a union, or that “male” and “female” refer to someone’s “immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy and genetics at time of birth.”

The bill not only gives schools and businesses the right to bar trans people from using restrooms and locker rooms according to their gender identity, but also specifically allows counselors, doctors and others to refuse treatment to trans people. 

According to Protect Thy Neighbor, a project of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, here are a few other potential consequences of HB 1523: 

  • a government clerk could refuse to issue a marriage license to a couple because one person had been previously divorced;
  • a taxpayer-funded adoption agency could refuse to place a child with a happy and loving family because the parents lived together before they were married;
  • a taxpayer-funded organization that provides shelter to kids who have suffered child abuse could turn away a pregnant teenager;
  • a counseling group practice could refuse to see a mother and her teen who is experiencing severe depression because the woman is unmarried;
  • a counselor could refuse to help an LGBT person who called a suicide hotline;
  • a fertility clinic could refuse to treat a veteran and his partner because they are not married;
  • a car rental agency could refuse to rent a car to a same-sex couple on their honeymoon; and
  • a corporation could fire a woman for wearing pants.

After the bill cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, the Human Rights Campaign noted that it would also allow foster parents to subject LGBT children to “conversion therapy,” in addition to legalizing “Kim Davis-like discrimination” on the part of government employees.

HB 1523 passed the House 80-39, and today is the last day for the Senate to take it up. 

The Senate, made up of 31 Republicans and 20 Democrats, convenes at 9 a.m. Central time. Watch the proceedings live here. 

 

Image by Blake Feldman via Twitter 

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Trump ‘Laser-Focused’ on Affordability Says White House After Calling It a ‘Hoax’

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The White House says President Donald Trump has been “laser-focused on making America affordable” since taking office. Just one month ago, President Trump called affordability a “hoax” perpetrated by Democrats.

President Trump has recently attempted to preserve his sweeping tariffs amid Supreme Court review, has engaged in foreign policy messaging involving Venezuela, Iran, and Greenland — including promoting himself as the “acting President of Venezuela” — and has responded sharply to protests involving federal officers.

The president campaigned on lowering the cost of living on “day one,” but nearly 51 weeks into his second term, inflation remains high.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that the president would travel to Detroit on Tuesday to deliver a speech about “all of the positive economic news that we continue to see as a result of his agenda.”

READ MORE: ‘Organized Gangs of Wine Moms’ Are Impeding Federal Agents Says Fox Columnist

“So tomorrow, he looks forward to traveling to the great state of Michigan, a state he won big, to not only tour a factory that produces Ford F-150s, and is going to be hiring more, and producing more trucks right here in the USA because of President Trump’s effective tariff policies,” Leavitt said.

Trump narrowly won Michigan, taking less than half of the vote and besting Vice President Kamala Harris by 1.4 percentage points.

Leavitt said that “mortgage rates that are falling under 6% for the first time in years,” “the national average of gasoline is the lowest that it’s been in five years,” and core inflation is “at its lowest level in five years.”

She suggested that “with a little bit of patience, the American people are going to continue to see that the best is yet to come,” and claimed that Trump “has a proven economic formula that works.”

Leavitt also said that Trump has a housing plan “in the works” and a healthcare plan “in the works,” and vowed that Americans will “continue to hear from the president, and he’ll continue to hit the road across the country to speak directly with the people he loves most, the American people.”

READ MORE: Trump ‘Losing Political Fight’ to Fed Chair: Analyst

 

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Trump DOJ Fires Attorney Who Refused to Prosecute James Comey

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The Trump Department of Justice has terminated a 64-year old attorney, the number-two official in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, after he refused to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey in a highly-controversial case.

MS NOW on Monday reported that Robert McBride, a senior DOJ prosecutor and former Navy lawyer, “was brought into the prominent satellite office of the Justice Department to serve as first assistant to U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan and took a more prominent role as her status was in question and after a judge ruled in late November that she was not legally appointed to run the office.”

McBride reportedly had held private meetings with judges, MS NOW reported, calling it a move that was “viewed as undermining the Administration.”

He had declined to prosecute Comey, sources said, reportedly telling top Justice Department officials that it would be difficult to do that and also run the office.

MS NOW’s Carol Leonnig added that McBride was also suspected of “gunning for” the top job.

The New York Times reported that there was a “disagreement about whether he would take charge of the Trump administration’s effort to re-indict James B. Comey,” and called McBride’s firing “the latest development in the fallout in the Justice Department over President Trump’s effort to punish Mr. Comey, the former F.B.I. director and his longtime nemesis, whom the president blames for past investigations of his conduct.”

The Times added that meeting with judges is considered “commonplace.”

 

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‘Screwed’: Trump Warns Supreme Court on Tariffs

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With many Americans awaiting a Supreme Court decision on the sweeping Trump tariffs and some experts believing the Court will rule on them any day nowpossibly as soon as Wednesday — the president is once again sending a clear warning to the justices: allow the tariffs or America is “screwed.”

During the November oral arguments, liberal and conservative justices appeared skeptical of the administration’s claim it has the power to impose global tariffs by declaring a national emergency.

President Trump has repeatedly said the tariffs are necessary for national security, and said that if the court does not allow them the U.S. would be in no position to give refunds of billions of dollars. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent late last week said refunds “won’t be a problem.”

Trump on Monday appeared to disagree.

READ MORE: ‘Organized Gangs of Wine Moms’ Are Impeding Federal Agents Says Fox Columnist

“The actual numbers that we would have to pay back if, for any reason, the Supreme Court were to rule against the United States of America on Tariffs, would be many Hundreds of Billions of Dollars,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday afternoon. It is possible the Court could rescind the Trump tariffs and not require refunds.

The president then added that “the amount of ‘payback’ that Countries and Companies would require for the Investments they are making on building Plants, Factories, and Equipment, for the purpose of being able to avoid the payment of Tariffs. When these Investments are added, we are talking about Trillions of Dollars!”

He claimed any negative ruling would create “a complete mess,” and make it “almost impossible for our Country to pay.”

Despite his Treasury Secretary’s remarks, Trump added, “Anybody who says that it can be quickly and easily done would be making a false, inaccurate, or totally misunderstood answer to this very large and complex question.”

“It may not be possible but, if it were, it would be Dollars that would be so large that it would take many years to figure out what number we are talking about and even, who, when, and where, to pay,” he claimed.

And he warned point-blank, “if the Supreme Court rules against the United States of America on this National Security bonanza, WE’RE SCREWED!”

READ MORE: Trump ‘Losing Political Fight’ to Fed Chair: Analyst

 

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