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Kansas to Allow Trans Residents to Change Gender on Birth Certificates

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Kansas, look at you!

Transgender people born in Kansas will now be able to correct the gender marker on their birth certificates under a consent judgment between Lambda Legal and state officials issued Friday evening by a federal court.

“I’m glad to see the state of Kansas has agreed to recognize us for who we are. It should have not taken a lawsuit to reach that conclusion. This judgment makes me feel safer and like my state finally recognizes me and respects me as a woman,” said Nyla Foster, 30, a plaintiff on the case. “I am proud that transgender Kansans like me will no longer be forced into dangerous situations because their identity documents do not match who they are.”

“This is a tremendous victory for all transgender people born in Kansas. By acknowledging that its policy prohibiting transgender Kansans from correcting the sex designation on their birth certificates was discriminatory and unconstitutional, the State of Kansas has done the right thing and has taken a huge step forward,” said Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, Senior Attorney at Lambda Legal.

Gonzalez-Pagan added, “This court-issued judgment builds not only on our recent court victories striking down similar policies prohibiting transgender people born in Idaho and Puerto Rico from having accurate birth certificates, but also upon years of advocacy by transgender Kansans. With this judgment Kansas will now finally be in line with the rest of the country, where already 47 states, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico have acknowledged the importance of individuals having access to essential identity documents that accurately reflect who they are.”

“After courts in Idaho and Puerto Rico found these categorical exclusions violate equal protection under the law and the right to privacy, Kansas’s position was untenable. We look forward to the last two states with these archaic policies, Ohio and Tennessee, to follow suit,” said Kara Ingelhart, Staff attorney at Lambda Legal.

Lambda Legal filed the lawsuit captioned Foster v. Andersen in October 2018 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas.

Under the consent judgment entered by the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas, the court orders the Secretary for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and other Kansas government officials to provide accurate birth certificates that reflect their true sex, consistent with their gender identity, and agrees that the policy prohibiting gender marker corrections to birth certificates violated the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

“As a transgender Black man living with a disability, I experience discrimination and embarrassment often, but a birth certificate inconsistent with who I am only made things harder. It is a huge relief to finally have an accurate birth certificate that is a true reflection of who I am,” said another plaintiff Luc Bensimon, a 46-year-old resident of Topeka, Kansas.

According to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, almost one-third of transgender individuals who showed an identity document with a name or gender marker that conflicted with their perceived gender were harassed, denied benefits or services, discriminated against, or assaulted. Transgender individuals also are disproportionately targeted for hate crimes.

In addition to its victory in Foster v. Andersen, Lambda Legal also successfully challenged similar categorical bans in Idaho in F.V. v. Barron and Puerto Rico in Arroyo v. Rossello, and has sued the State of Ohio in Ray v. Himes and State of Tennessee in Gore v. Lee over their bans.

Read more about the case here.
Read the consent judgement here.
Learn more about the plaintiffs here:

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Trump Organization Fined $1.6 Million for Tax Fraud, But It’ll Barely Harm the Company

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A court has ordered The Trump Organization to pay $1.6 million after being convicted of payroll-tax fraud last December in New York state.

While the fine is the maximum allowed under state law, the fine is less than the millions the company allegedly saved by paying its executives off-the-book perks like luxury cars and apartments, Insider reported.

“I want to be very clear, we don’t think that is enough,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said of the state’s maximum fines for financial fraud. “Our laws in this state need to change in order to capture this type of decade-plus, systemic, egregious fraud.”

Even Judge Juan Merchan acknowledged that the fine “may have limited impact on a multibillion corporation,” according to the New York Times.

During the trial, defense attorneys claimed that Trump family members at the top of the company were completely clueless about the organization’s financial misdealings.

The Trump Organization’s ex-CFO Allen Weisselberg essentially took the fall for the misdeeds and was sentenced to five months in Riker’s Island prison and a $2 million fine as a result.

The organization’s attorneys have pledged to appeal the decision. However, Trump himself may find himself in hot water if prosecutors determined that he cheated on his past taxes, which were released just two weeks ago.

In late December, the House House Ways and Means Committee released Trump’s tax returns from 2015 through 2020. In three of the six years, Trump’s taxable income was zero. This means he paid no income tax in three of the years, and just $750 in 2016.

Investigative financial journalist David Cay Johnston wrote that Trump definitely cheated on his taxes, lowering his owed income taxes by claiming “huge business expenses despite having zero revenue.”  Trump also did this in his 1984 tax return, resulting in two judges ruling that he had committed civil tax fraud, Johnston noted.

“That Trump persisted in using the same fraudulent technique in six years of recent tax returns is powerful evidence of mens rea or criminal intent,” the reporter wrote. “This device is not Trump’s most lucrative tax cheating technique, but it is the easiest for jurors to understand should Trump be indicted on tax charges.”

Greater scrutiny of Trump’s taxes could find that he committed other shady dealings “including charitable deductions that may be bogus or overstated; treating personal expenses as business expenses; loans to his three older children that may be to escape gift taxes; and reporting almost $5 million of capital contributions as tax-deductible business expenses,” Johnston wrote.

Because there’s no statute of limitations on civil tax fraud, Trump could eventually be pursued for back-owed taxes even if he’s never indicted for fraud.

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Watch: Ron Johnson Caught on Camera Admitting Trump Lost Because of GOP Voters

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Far right Republican U.S. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin was caught on camera admitting that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election because GOP voters voted for other candidates, and acknowledged “there’s nothing obviously skewed about the results.”

“The only reason Trump lost Wisconsin,” Sen. Johnson told Lauren Windsor, a woman who poses as a Trump supporter, “is 51,000 Republican voters didn’t vote for him.”

Asked if President Joe Biden “won the state fair and square,” Johnson would only say, “it’s certainly plausible, there’s nothing obviously skewed about the results.”

Johnson is one of the country’s biggest purveyors of the “Big Lie,” and regularly traffics in dangerous conspiracy theories and far right wing propaganda, from election fraud lies to false claims about the insurrection to vaccine and coronavirus lies.

Windsor is the executive director of American Family Voices and the executive producer of the political web-show “The Undercurrent,” and has caught other politicians on camera, like Sen. Ted Cruz.

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‘Fox & Friends’ Graphic Destroys Trump for ‘Baselessly’ and ‘Falsely’ Claiming Election Was Rigged

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Viewers of Fox & Friends were treated to a dose of the truth on Thursday when the show admitted that President Donald Trump has “baselessly” and “falsely” claimed that the 2020 election was rigged.

The message to Fox News viewers appeared on the network’s ticker graphic that is displayed at the bottom of the screen.

“President Trump phoned into a meeting organized by Republicans in Pennsylvania Wed., baseless claiming that the election was ‘rigged’ and falsely claiming that he won it ‘by a lot,’” the Fox News ticker reported. “Most of Trump’s legal efforts to challenge voting procedures in PA, MI and other states have been thrown out and his campaign has not produced sufficient evidence to back up claims of widespread voter fraud.”

The ticker continued: “At the hearing Wed., Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani claimed Trump had potentially won VA, when in fact the state’s vote count shows Trump lost VA by over 450,000 votes.”

According to the Fox News report, “states where the Trump campaign has contested results, including GA, MI, PA and NV, have all either certified or moved closer to certifying their results in the past week, further confirming President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.”

Read the ticker in the Fox News video below.

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