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No, the Trump Administration Did Not Just ‘Rescind Transgender Student Protections’ – They Told Schools to Ignore the Law

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Federal Law, Not Obama Guidance, Already Protects Transgender Students – Trump Just Decided to Target Children

The Trump administration Wednesday evening revoked Obama-era guidelines directing schools to protect the civil rights of transgender students, which included helping school administrations understand they must allow trans students to use restrooms that correspond with their gender identity.

Here are some inaccurate mainstream media headlines:

Trump administration rolls back protections for transgender students (Washington Post)

Trump Administration Rescinds Protections For Transgender Students (Huffington Post)

Trump administration withdraws federal protections on transgender bathrooms in schools (CNN)

Trump administration revokes transgender students’ bathroom protections (The Guardian)

Trump administration withdraws protections for transgender students (The Hill)

What the administration did was to replace Obama guidance, which was supported by court rulings based on Title IX, a federal civil rights law, and replace it with a wink and a nob, a “thumbs up” to schools implying they can ignore federal law, telegraphing the implicit message that the Department of Justice will not enforce Title IX, at least when when it comes to transgender children.

However, as NCRM noted in our reporting on the Trump administration’s move tonight, Title IX does not change depending on who occupies the White House.

Lambda Legal issued a statement in responding to the Trump administration’s decision to rescind the Obama guidance. This explains clearly what just happened:

“Trump’s actions do not change the law itself—transgender students remain protected by Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972—but abandoning the guidance intentionally creates confusion about what federal law requires. The law bars discrimination – the new administration invites it.”

Transgender students really need to be told this — they need to know this.

Take a look at the whole statement:

Even for a bully like Trump,

attacking children is a new low

Administration withdraws guidance for schools on what the law requires for transgender students

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Department of Education today rescinded the Obama administration’s 2016 Title IX guidance clarifying the rights of transgender students. Rachel B. Tiven, CEO of Lambda Legal, the nation’s oldest and largest LGBT legal organization, released the following statement:

“We all know that Donald Trump is a bully, but his attack on transgender children today is a new low. The U.S. Department of Education’s decision to withdraw guidance clarifying the rights of transgender students endangers the well-being and safety of children across the country.

“Trump’s actions do not change the law itself—transgender students remain protected by Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972—but abandoning the guidance intentionally creates confusion about what federal law requires. The law bars discrimination – the new administration invites it.

“Betsy DeVos became Education Secretary just one week ago. At her brief confirmation hearing she publicly committed to protecting LGBT students – this harms them. 

“Over the past week Donald Trump has attacked perhaps the two most vulnerable groups of children in America: transgender children and refugee children. While his Education Secretary was busy withdrawing protective guidance for trans kids, his Homeland Security Secretary signed memos that strip legal protections from children who arrive alone at our borders, seeking refuge.

“Now Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Secretary DeVos give us sickening echoes of the racially segregated schools era by claiming that enforcement of this federal civil rights law is a ‘states’ rights issue.’ This is not just a bizarre misunderstanding. We recognize that language. This is a cynical rejection of the federal government’s responsibility to enforce federal law protections for vulnerable students.

“While the Trump/Pence administration wages its War on Children, Lambda Legal will redouble our efforts to protect transgender and other vulnerable kids. At Lambda Legal, we are already in court fighting for transgender students, and we are prepared to sue any school district that discriminates in the wake of the Trump administration’s actions today.”

 

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BREAKING NEWS

Trump Files Sweeping Legal Motion to Try to Block Georgia Grand Jury Findings and District Attorney Fani Willis

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Attorneys for Donald Trump Monday morning filed a sweeping 483-page legal motion asking a Georgia court to block any report from the Fulton County special grand jury and any evidence the grand jury may find, and to force District Attorney Fani Willis to recuse in the investigation into his unlawful attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in that state.

The Daily Beast’s Jose Pagliery first reported the filing. The Atlanta Journal Constitution also reports Trump’s attorneys have filed the motion.

Lawfare Blog’s Anna Bower, who has been covering the Fulton County case, calls the filing “mammoth.”

The news comes just hours after reports District Attorney Willis could be considering RICO, or conspiracy and racketeering charges against Trump.

READ MORE: ‘This Man Is a Criminal’: George Conway Busts GOP’s ‘Completely Ridiculous’ Trump Defense

This is a breaking news and developing story. 

Image via Shutterstock

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News

‘RICO’: Trump Could Be Facing Racketeering and Conspiracy Charges Used to Prosecute Organized Crime

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Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis is reportedly considering RICO charges against Donald Trump in her probe of his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, CNN reports. RICO charges are generally used when prosecuting organized crime cases.

“The reason that I am a fan of RICO is, I think jurors are very, very intelligent,” Willis had said last year about a different case. “They want to know what happened. They want to make an accurate decision about someone’s life. And so RICO is a tool that allows a prosecutor’s office and law enforcement to tell the whole story.”

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, a law professor and an NBC News/MSNBC contributor, Monday morning on Twitter, pointing to CNN’s report, said Willis “is seriously considering a RICO charge.” She repeated that claim on MSNBC shortly after.

READ MORE: Experts Warn Trump Is Encouraging Violence One Day After He Announces Rally at Waco on 30th Anniversary of Siege

CNN reports, “Investigators have a large volume of substantial evidence related to a possible conspiracy from inside and outside the state, including recordings of phone calls, emails, text messages, documents, and testimony before a special grand jury. Their work, the source said, underscores the belief that the push to help Trump was not just a grassroots effort that originated inside the state.”

On-air Monday morning, CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig, a former federal and state prosecutor, explained conspiracy, racketeering, and RICO, saying, “conspiracy” is “a loaded word. But all it really means is an agreement, a meeting of the minds between two or more people to commit a crime.”

But he added, “if we go up to racketeering, now, this is a really powerful tool the prosecutors use. What you have to do is show two things. First of all, the existence of what we call a racketeering enterprise, that can be a Mafia family, that can be a drug trafficking organization, but it could also be a corporation or a political entity, and then you have to show that they engage in what we call a pattern of racketeering activity, meaning that they committed two or more crimes in an organized fashion, which brings us to this other new piece of information. There’s a third phone call we already know about, of course, the infamous phone call to Brad Raffensperger. ‘I just want to find 11,780 votes.’ There’s also a public recording of Donald Trump talking to this investigator, Francis Watson, when he tells her, ‘when the right answer comes out, you’ll be praised.'”

READ MORE: ‘Reacting to a Cult Leader’: Trump Supporters Organizing to ‘Stock Up on Weaponry’ Says GOP Adviser

“Now we know, Trump also called the former Georgia Speaker of the House asking him to convene a special session,” Honig continued. “As we know we’ve heard from some of the grand jurors special grand jurors who’ve come out, they’ve told us that they recommended indictments for more than a dozen people.”

Watch CNN’s report below or at this link.

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‘This Man Is a Criminal’: George Conway Busts GOP’s ‘Completely Ridiculous’ Trump Defense

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George Conway ripped Republicans for defending lifelong “criminal” Donald Trump against a looming indictment in New York.

The ex-president apparently expects to be charged in the Stormy Daniels hush money payoff, and the conservative attorney told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that he richly deserves it.

“The Republicans are behaving like complete disgraces,” Conway said. “They’re basically saying that, by saying that Trump is being persecuted, they’re essentially saying, you can’t touch Trump and Trump is above the law. Whatever slack you might have wanted to cut a former president, that was gone after Jan. 6. This man is a recidivist criminal, he’s committed fraud all his life, he’s lied all of his life.”

“This Stormy Daniels thing was something he cooked up,” Conway added. “The notion that [Michael] Cohen is going to be discredited on it is ridiculous given the paper trail. We see the checks signed by Donald Trump. It’s hard to say he is being picked on for paying $130,000 in hush money to a porn star and concealing that and using a straw donor, which was Cohen, to do that, and saying he’s being persecuted somehow when no one has ever done that it is completely ridiculous.”

RELATED: Georgia weighs slapping Trump with racketeering charges: CNN

Watch the video below or at this link.


 

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