This post was originally published on this site

It’s unclear how a GOP candidate could be so bold as to contact the daughter of a civil rights legend like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at all, let alone to do so claiming he knows more about her father’s legacy than she does. But hey, there’s a reason they call it white privilege. Josh Mandel is a former Ohio state representative and state treasurer recently endorsed in the Ohio Senate race by Sen. Ted Cruz.

Instead of focusing on his race or perhaps in service to racist supporters, Mandel tweeted Bernice King on Tuesday that her father, who an assassin shot and killed on April 4, 1968 on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, “knew the importance of the Second Amendment.”

RELATED: One of the most mendacious Senate candidates we’ve ever encountered is back for another run in Ohio

Mandel claimed Martin Luther King Jr. “tried to exercise his right to self-defense and was wrongly denied a gun permit by anti-gun racists … Firearms ≠ violence. Study your history better @BerniceKing,” Mandel added in the tweet.

The social media post was part of a thread started by Mandel when he thanked Bernice King and the King Center, a nonprofit dedicated to nonviolent social change, for motivating his latest campaign ad. In the ad, Mandel is shown walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the historic landmark King led more than 2,000 Black and white protesters across in Selma, Alabama, to advocate for the federal Voting Rights Act. The response from Southern racists and law enforcement at the Edmund Pettus Bridge was repeated beatings, teargas bombings, and deadly encounters so violent that the scene televised for the country to witness on Sunday, March 7, 1965 was dubbed Bloody Sunday. Mandel evoked the memory to vocalize opposition to critical race theory.

A framework for interpreting law that maintains racism has an undeniable effect on the legal foundation of American society, the theory would be pretty exclusively confined to law schools if not for Republicans attempting to redefine it as anything that makes white people feel bad about racism.

“Martin Luther King marched right here so skin color wouldn’t matter,” Mandel said erroneously. “I didn’t do two tours in Anbar Province fighting alongside Marines of every color to come home and be called a racist.”

No, apparently he “did two tours in Anbar Province fighting alongside Marines of every color to come home” and be a racist.

“Josh: Regretfully, I do not believe that I or @TheKingCenter legitimately motivated you to film this ad, as it is in opposition to nonviolence and to much of what my father taught,” Bernice King responded on Twitter. “I encourage you to study my father/nonviolence in full.”

She included a link to nonviolence training at the King Center Institute.

Kevin Kruse, a historian and New York Times bestselling author, posted a thread on Twitter giving Mandel exactly the history lesson he so desperately needs. “I know everyone’s aghast at Mandel having the gall to lecture MLK’s own daughter @BerniceKing about MLK’s legacy, but I want to focus on the second part here, about how MLK was ‘wrongly denied a gun permit by anti-gun racists,'” Kruse tweeted.

He added, citing King Institute research:

Early in the Montgomery campaign, when King was still formulating a philosophy of nonviolence, his house was bombed. In that brief moment, King asked the local sheriff to approve gun permits for the men guarding him, but the sheriff denied the request.

…

It turned out to be a fortunate decision, because it deepened King’s commitment to nonviolent direct action as the best path to progress. As he later put it, “I was much more afraid in Montgomery when I had a gun in the house.”

…

So, no, King was not some kind of strong supporter of the Second Amendment and, given the fact that he was assassinated by a firearm, it seems bizarre — and almost willfully mean-spirited — to insist to his daughter that he was.

Kruse tweeted that Martin Luther King Jr.’s requests for gun permits were denied “not because the sheriff was anti-gun, but because he was a racist … And when racists are in charge of administering seemingly race-neutral laws, they often apply them in uneven ways that reflect their racism,” Kruse said in the tweet. “That’s what Critical Race Theory stresses!”

This post was originally published on this site

In a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Monday, Trump Justice Amy Coney Barrett previewed the horrors to come from the extremist Supreme Court majority. She attempted to posit that the increasingly destructive opinions the majority has issued and will issue are not aimed at imposing a “policy result,” and that Americans should wait and “read the opinion” to learn why the court took those controversial actions.

Two days later, from the shadow docket, Barrett and four of her colleagues gutted states’ ability to protect their own waters, and with it put the 1972 Clean Water Act in jeopardy. Without issuing an opinion for any of us to read. The shadow docket ruling comprises one paragraph reinstating a Trump environmental rule that limits states’ ability to block projects that could pollute rivers and streams pending an appeals court hearing. There is no decision to read in the policymaking move by five conservative justices.

RELATED STORY:  The conservative Supreme Court majority is issuing some of its most extreme rulings in the shadows

That it is five justices instead of six is notable because Chief Justice John Roberts was not in the majority. What’s even more notable is that Roberts signed onto Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent, blasting the court’s majority for using the shadow docket to issue a momentous decision on the flimsiest of grounds. “The request for a stay rests on simple assertions—on conjectures, unsupported by any present-day evidence, about what States will now feel free to do,” Kagan wrote.

That the court issued this stay—when the applicants showed no harm and there was no “emergency” that required the Supreme Court to intervene—shows the “Court goes astray,” Kagan wrote. “It
provides a stay pending appeal, and thus signals its view of the merits, even though the applicants have failed to make the irreparable harm showing we have traditionally required.” The court just spoiled the case in the appeals process. It just told the lower court what it is going to do when the case ultimately reaches it.

“That renders the Court’s emergency docket not for emergencies at all,” Kagan says. “The docket becomes only another place for merits determinations—except made without full briefing and argument.”

What is so significant is that this is the first instance of Roberts opposing the tactic. “Although Chief Justice Roberts has joined the Democratic appointees in prior shadow docket dissents (Roman Catholic Diocese; Tandon; SB8), this is the first time he’s joined an opinion criticizing the majority for abusing what Kagan here calls ‘the emergency docket,’” Stephen Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor, tweeted.

In fact, he told The Washington Post, “This is the ninth time that Chief Justice Roberts has publicly been on the short side of a 5-4 ruling since Justice Barrett’s confirmation. … Seven of the nine have been from shadow docket rulings. This is the first time, though, that he’s endorsed criticism of the shadow docket itself.”

Return to Kagans’ dissent: The emergency docket, the shadow docket, “becomes only another place for merits determination—except without full briefing and argument.” That’s a remarkable departure for the court. It flies in the face of Barrett’s assertion that the majority is carefully weighing the cases before it, reasoning through the process.

The fact that Roberts, the conservative chief justice, signed onto Kagan’s dissent criticizing the majority proves one thing: The court’s legitimacy isn’t just in question, it’s lost. If the institution is going to be saved, it has to be wrested from the control of the extremist ideologues. It has to be expanded.

RELATED STORIES

This post was originally published on this site

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is no ally of the LGBTQ+ community. DeSantis recently signed the hateful, discriminatory “Don’t Say Gay” bill into law (while surrounded by young children, but I digress) effective July 1. DeSantis, and the Republicans who bolstered the bill up to his desk, have continued to allege it’s not about being anti-queer, but about being appropriate with minors. Now, we know children are exposed to cisgender, heterosexual norms essentially from birth, and this includes norms in the classroom—whether it’s concerning history lessons, pronouns, or even teachers talking about their families. It’s only when a teacher references their same-sex partner, for example, or the role of LGBTQ+ activists in a historical movement comes up, that conservatives get outraged.

DeSantis has referenced January Littlejohn, a resident of Leon County, Florida, to defend why he needed to sign hate into law. DeSantis has claimed that Littlejohn was not appropriately consulted about a public school’s approach to gender-affirming care for her child, including their name and pronouns. According to CNN, however, emails from public records suggest DeSantis’ presentation of the situation is far from the full story.

RELATED: And Republicans say queer people are the groomers …

Before we get into the email conversation as reported by CNN, let’s review some of how DeSantis has presented this situation. At a recent press conference, for example, DeSantis referred to a mother from the county who said her child was attending school and experiencing “some people” at the school changing their child’s name and clothing without telling the mother or getting her consent. 

“First of all, they shouldn’t be doing that at all,” DeSantis said. “But to do these things behind the parents’ back and to say that the parents should be shut out. That is wrong.”

The clothing allegation is notably weird, but it’s actually wonderful for a school to be supportive of a child’s name and pronouns. No need to have a parent give consent in order to have their child be treated with affirmation and respect in the classroom…. Because children are actually their own people, not just little dolls and pets for parents to project their entire being onto.

But, again, this doesn’t even seem to be the full story. According to emails obtained by CNN, Littlejohn reached out to the school back in 2020 and let a teacher know her child wanted to use different pronouns. In the email, Littlejohn said she was not trying to prevent her child from using different pronouns or a different name. 

In the email to the teacher, Littlejohn stressed that it’s been a “difficult” situation but that both parents are trying to be as “supportive” as they can. Littlejohn went on to detail their child’s gender identity and pronouns and shared that while they aren’t using their updated name at home, they gave her permission to use her updated name while at school.

When the teacher asked if parents wanted them to share the child’s updates with other teachers, Littlejohn noted again it was a difficult and confusing situation, but that the teacher could do what they thought was “best” or the child could decide themselves. 

Littlejohn shared in another email with the same teacher that the situation has “thrown us for a loop” and expressed sincere appreciation for the teacher’s support. They added, “I’m going to let [] take the lead on this.”

Nice. While I raise my eyebrows at any parent or guardian who isn’t using a child’s name or pronouns as requested at home, this parent certainly doesn’t seem against the school being supportive, and that is definitely more than many other folks can say.

According to CNN, however, about two months after these emails happened, Littlejohn and her husband filed a lawsuit against the school board over how the school handled their child’s gender identity. The parents claimed officials at the school created a student support plan with their child which includes things like their new pronouns, bathroom usage, and “expectations” for overnight trip housing. Again, sounds reasonable and affirming. But Littlejohn says the school denied parents access to these meetings. They’ve since hired legal representation from Child & Parental Rights Campaign, which seems to exist to do exactly what its name implies.

And for the school district? In a statement to CNN, the district communications coordinator Chris Petley said that “the family clearly instructed the school staff via email to allow their child to ‘take the lead on this’ and to do ‘whatever you think is the best.” They went on to claim the superintendent did meet with the family and pledged to amend any “vague or unclear” policy language.

In the very big picture, this all comes down to the conservative rallying cry about parental “rights.” Whether it’s trying to get books by and about LGBTQ+ people pulled from school libraries and classrooms, trying to bar youth from accessing potentially life-saving gender-affirming health care, or trans youth being able to play sports, the real rationale from Republicans is to stomp out LGBTQ+ youth by allowing their parents to effectively keep them in the closet as long as possible, or punish and control them if they dare to step out. 

The role of teachers is not to appease parents. Teachers do not exist to parrot what parents or guardians say in the home. Teachers (and other staff at schools) should prioritize the comfort and safety of the student, period, especially when we know gender-affirming actions like respecting names and pronouns can significantly improve a young person’s mental health.

Republicans like to stir controversy by talking about gender-affirming health care as simply surgeries, but that’s far from the case. In fact, many medical professionals agree that (especially for younger ages) gender-affirming health care can be as simple as honoring a child’s pronouns or name. Nothing irreversible about that, and yet conservatives can’t agree to that, either, because suddenly it’s all about the “rights” of parents.

It’s almost as if Republicans don’t see minors as people unless they’re trying to marry them. Funny how that works.

This post was originally published on this site

Longtime media critic and former Daily Kos contributor Eric Boehlert has died at the age of 57 after a tragic bike accident in New Jersey.

Soledad O’Brien broke the news on Twitter. 

Boehlert was a media analyst who consistently challenged the narratives propagated by traditional media. He launched his Press Run newsletter in early 2020 and drew widespread praise for his efforts to hold the media accountable.

Boehlert was well-known in the blogging community. He was a senior fellow at Media Matters for 10 years. He wrote Bloggers on the Bus: How the Internet Changed Politics and the Press in 2009.

Boehlert joined the Daily Kos community in 2007 and later become a regular contributor as a media analyst. His final contribution at Daily Kos was a blistering critique of the media’s inability to hold Donald Trump accountable, titled: “2019, the year the press tried—and failed—to stand up to Trump.” That was just one of the many insights he brought to our audience and elsewhere.

More recently Eric Boehlert was a guest on ‎Daily Kos’ The Brief: Has the political press learned anything in its coverage of the Trump Republican Party?

You can see his full Daily Kos history of thought-provoking media critiques here.

His final post at Press Run was Why is the press rooting against Biden?

The news of Eric Boehlert’s death is reverberating around the internet and there will be more to say in time, but let’s hold Eric’s family and friends in our thoughts for a moment. 

This post was originally published on this site

Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison on Wednesday offered a particularly apt summation of Republicans on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.  

“It is a party built on fraud, fear and fascism,” Harrison said. “They don’t deserve to be in power.”

The three Fs—Fraud, Fear, and Fascism—are perfect alliteration for the GOP. The fact that it could fit on a bumper sticker is a notable advancement for Democratic messaging.

Culling Republicans down to a sticky umbrella message about the pervasive corruption pulsing through the GOP would be super helpful for Democrats.

Every time Republicans say the 2020 election was stolen, the response can be, “There they go again.”

Every time they claim their efforts to suppress votes and rig election outcomes are legitimate attempts to curb fraud, the response can be, “There they go again.”

Every time they blanket Democrats with repulsive smears like “pedophiles” or “groomers,” the response can be, “There they go again.”

But let’s linger for a minute on the latest trope Republicans are rolling out to smear Democrats and anyone else who dares to disagree with them: the notion that they are pedophiles who are grooming children for sexual abuse. On one level, it’s a preposterous charge—the whole pedophile ring thing is so 2016. But the coked-up party of orgies does have a recurring obsession with lobbing sexual smears at their political opponents.  

The “groomer” charge is just so on brand and perfectly repugnant for the GOP, catering to QAnon cultists steeped in the notion of a global cabal of sex traffickers run by Democrats and their allies.

Moderate Republicans who still exist in this world get it. As Never Trumper and The Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell says of the messaging, “When your team tries a coup, you gotta think hard about what’s worse than that. Hence, the ‘groomer’ discourse.”

But The Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last absolutely nails the political strategy Republicans are employing and the choice they are making in the process.

“The modern Republican party has found a way to integrate voters who believe in a bizarre internet cult,” Last writes. “But it has no desire to integrate voters who maintain that Joe Biden won the 2020 election fair and square.”

That indeed is the modern Republican Party in a nutshell. And frankly, it represents an opportunity for Democrats: a critical slice of those reality-based Republicans are gettable for Democrats if they are continually reminded of exactly what the GOP has become.

For their part, Democrats cannot make the mistake of ignoring these Republican smears. They must train voters to see words like “groomer” or phrases like “endangers our children” as devices, dog whistles designed to draw Democrats into seedy defenses while juicing the impulses of their most deluded, fringiest members.

That’s where a rhetorical phrase like “There they go again” can work very well, particularly if it’s paired with an umbrella theme such as, “The GOP is a party built on fraud, fear and fascism.” It allows Democrats to call out the despicable tactic, stay above the fray, and then pivot to whatever issue they prefer to discuss.

This post was originally published on this site

Judd Legum at Popular Information has another damning exclusive report demonstrating how deep into Russia the Koch conglomerate of intertwined corporate and political interests really is. He obtained an internal email from one the network’s influential nonprofits, Stand Together, that argues the U.S. needs to deliver a partial “victory” to Russia in Ukraine. Perhaps not so coincidentally, the Koch network’s corporate and nonprofit opposition to sanctions on Russia happened at the same time congressional Republicans began obstructing them.

Koch Industries, the multinational conglomerate run by right-wing billionaire Charles Koch, is uncharacteristically making national news this week by remaining one of few Western companies to continue operations in Russia. The Koch operation generally flies under the radar of traditional media—which works just fine for all concerned, they prefer a low profile—but after Legum’s newsletter broke the story, pressure built on Koch Industries to respond.

The Koch group was forced to issue a statement on March 16 explaining—and doubling down on—the decision to keep their operations in Russia going. That same day, the email Legum has uncovered was sent by the supposedly independent think-tank internally. That raises some serious questions about how dependent upon Koch Industries profits the supposedly nonprofit side of the operation is.

RELATED STORY: Senate Republican death cult kicks back in gear, aligning with Putin and COVID-19

Dan Caldwell, Stand Together’s vice president of foreign policy, sent the email to the organization staff with a subject line, “An Update on Ukraine.” After a rhetorical denunciation of Russia for the invasion and of Putin, Caldwell launches into a condemnation of international sanctions on the Russian government and assistance to Ukraine. “[O]verly-broad sanctions rarely work as intended and often strengthen the authoritarian regimes,” Caldwell wrote. The organization, he said, only supports “aggressive and targeted sanctions against Russian leaders.” Meaning none of the money-making in Russia should be endangered, and its economy should be protected.

Listen and subscribe to Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast with Markos Moulitsas and Kerry Eleveld

Caldwell argues that the harsh economic sanctions imposed by the European Union, individual countries, and the U.S. should be abandoned at the risk of escalating the war “into a larger conflict between a nuclear-armed Russia and the United States.”

“This is not to say the United States should do nothing,” Caldwell continues. No, the U.S. should be allowing the Russians to declare some kind of victory. “The United States should support diplomatic efforts to help end the war,” he wrote. “An outright victory by either Russia or Ukraine is increasingly unlikely and a diplomatic resolution is the path that best limits the bloodshed and minimizes the risk that the current war could escalate into a larger conflict.” Since Russia can’t have an “outright victory,” the U.S. needs to create a glide path for it to declare some kind of moral victory. Those diplomatic efforts, by the way, would likely involve ceding huge chunks of Ukraine to Putin, at the least. Russia would likely also demand the ouster of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and installation of a pro-Russia regime.

That’s all problematic from the standpoint of Ukraine’s future. More prosaically, it should be a problem for the Koch dark money “nonprofit” network. Caldwell explicitly tells Stand Together staff to read the statement from Koch Industries doubling down on the decision to stay in Russia, and reinforces the justification used by the commercial arm of the organization that halting business operations there would “do more harm than good.” It’s the same argument he’s making about sanctions: Basically, it’s all for the good of Russia, Ukraine, and world peace to let Russia overrun a sovereign nation and slaughter its people.

“Stand Together is a non-profit and, as a result, receives tax benefits from the federal government,” Legum explains. “Specifically, any money donated to Stand Together by Charles Koch (or others) is tax-deductible, and Stand Together itself does not have to pay income taxes. But, as a result, Stand Together’s resources cannot legally be deployed for the specific benefit of Koch Industries.” The tax-exempt Koch network think tank definitely appears to be promoting policies that would benefit Koch Industries’ economic interests.

Eight House Republicans voted against the revocation of Russia’s permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status back on March 17, when the Koch groups were formulating their opposition to sanctions and economic punishment of Russia. That opposition has ballooned to the point that on Tuesday night, 63 House Republicans voted against a bipartisan resolution that expresses  “unequivocal support for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as an alliance founded on democratic principles.”

And now we have growing Republican refusal to punish Putin and to support liberal democracy. What started as Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) having a similar fit over the human rights violations segment in the revocation of permanent normal trade relationship with Russia bill has grown into multiple problems with the legislation from unnamed senators—almost certainly Republicans—preventing the bill from having a quick vote in the Senate. At this point, it won’t be resolved before the Senate leaves for two weeks of recess.

The Koch money—a fortune built with the help of both Hitler and Stalin—has bankrolled Republicans for decades. Is it a coincidence that Republican opposition to further sanctions on Russia gelled following the Kochs doubling down on fighting them?

RELATED STORIES

This post was originally published on this site

Georgia has long had a problem with its prison system—everything from brutal sexual abuse and assault on LGBTQ inmates, to unchecked gang violence, to the deaths of incarcerated people at the hands of fellow prisoners.

On Mar. 28, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a petition against the state demanding that the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) comply with a subpoena and hand over documents related to an investigation into a slew of alleged issues. But The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) reports that the GDC is refusing, citing the need for the DOJ to sign a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) in order to maintain the safety of staff and inmates.

RELATED STORY: Inmates filing lawsuit after medical staff gave them ivermectin for COVID, said it was ‘vitamins’

In addition to not allowing DOJ access inside any of the state’s prisons or to speak with inmates or staff, the AJC reports, the DOJ also alleges that thus far, the GDC has given them “only an incomplete set of policies” amounting to “a fraction of those requested,” and “blank form documents,” the filing reads.

In an email sent to the AJC, GDC spokesperson Joan Heath wrote:

“GDC will provide DOJ with the requested information once the DOJ agrees to take the appropriate precautions with these documents. … In the interim, GDC cannot and will not forfeit the safety and security of our staff and offenders.”

On Sept. 14, 2021, the DOJ announced its official investigation into the Georgia prisons in order to explore “whether Georgia provides prisoners reasonable protection from physical harm at the hands of other prisoners,” and “whether Georgia provides lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex prisoners reasonable protection from sexual abuse by other prisoners and by staff.”

According to The Georgia Voice, the DOJ began an investigation based on the case of Ashley Diamond, a transgender woman. In 2015, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) filed a suit on Diamond’s behalf alleging that the GDC denied her doctor-prescribed hormone medication while she was imprisoned and that she’d been sexually assaulted by several inmates.

In a press release at the time, Chinyere Ezie, a staff attorney for SPLC, wrote:

“Ashley Diamond was not sentenced to sexual assault and a gender change when she was imprisoned for a parole violation. … Tragically, the state of Georgia is forcing Ashley to transition from female to male by denying her the protection and medical care she needs. Transgender inmates like Ashley have a right to be kept safe and to receive medically necessary treatment, including hormones.”

The frightening thing is that the GDC is also declining to offer documentation on the homicide rates inside the state’s prisons. AJC reported last month that at least 57 inmates were murdered while imprisoned in Georgia, with 29 deaths in 2020 and 28 in 2021.

Ultimately, the GDC and its attorneys are claiming that the DOJ hasn’t laid out a framework for why it’s investigating the prisons, and that the NDA is vital because privacy is at the center of inmates’ health records.

Meanwhile, according to The Current, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is pushing to allocate $600 million to begin building two new prisons in exchange for closing four others.

In a January budget report, Kemp wrote: “As our judicial system has focused on providing rehabilitative support in the community where appropriate for low-level, nonviolent offenders to avoid recidivism, our state prison population has become filled with increasingly violent offenders. … Our aging prison facility infrastructure was not intended to house the level of offender who resides there today, and it requires higher levels staffing and facility maintenance to manage these dangerous environments.”

Criminal justice activists argue that Kemp’s $600 million would be better spent on improving mental health facilities and educational programs as a preventative measure to being incarcerated, The Current reports.

Georgia boasts “one of the largest prison systems” in the nation, with nearly 53,000 inmates.

This post was originally published on this site

Sen. Marsha Blackburn tried to put Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on the spot with a question that sounded innocent if you have followed absolutely zero coverage of recent U.S. politics, but was intended as a trap on transgender issues that might someday come before the Supreme Court: “Can you define the word ‘woman’?”

”Can I provide a definition?” Jackson replied. “No, I can’t. I’m not a biologist.”

What do you know? She doesn’t have the relevant expertise and was not going to offer an uninformed answer. She has respect for expertise and won’t leap to judgment without hearing from people who know what they’re talking about.

Of course, to Republicans the refusal to fall into the trap laid by a self-righteous pile of hair was itself a problem, because the whole point was to put Jackson in a no-win situation. But, HuffPost found when it turned the question back on some of those same Republicans, they didn’t have great answers themselves.

RELATED STORY: The Republican malignancy in America demands a response: Expand the court

As a bonus, here’s a small sampling of some science writing on this very complicated issue:

“Stop using phony science to justify transphobia,” by neuroscientist Simón(e) Sun in Scientific American

“The idea of two sexes is simplistic. Biologists now think there is a wider spectrum than that,” by developmental biologist Claire Ainsworth in Nature.

Sex can be much more complicated than it at first seems. According to the simple scenario, the presence or absence of a Y chromosome is what counts: with it, you are male, and without it, you are female. But doctors have long known that some people straddle the boundary—their sex chromosomes say one thing, but their gonads (ovaries or testes) or sexual anatomy say another. Parents of children with these kinds of conditions—known as intersex conditions, or differences or disorders of sex development (DSDs)—often face difficult decisions about whether to bring up their child as a boy or a girl. Some researchers now say that as many as 1 person in 100 has some form of DSD2.

When genetics is taken into consideration, the boundary between the sexes becomes even blurrier. Scientists have identified many of the genes involved in the main forms of DSD, and have uncovered variations in these genes that have subtle effects on a person’s anatomical or physiological sex. What’s more, new technologies in DNA sequencing and cell biology are revealing that almost everyone is, to varying degrees, a patchwork of genetically distinct cells, some with a sex that might not match that of the rest of their body. Some studies even suggest that the sex of each cell drives its behaviour, through a complicated network of molecular interactions. “I think there’s much greater diversity within male or female, and there is certainly an area of overlap where some people can’t easily define themselves within the binary structure,” says John Achermann, who studies sex development and endocrinology at University College London’s Institute of Child Health.

“Male or female? It’s not always so simple,” from the UCLA Newsroom:

People often are unaware of the biological complexity of sex and gender, says Dr. Eric Vilain, director of the Center for Gender-Based Biology at UCLA, where he studies the genetics of sexual development and sex differences. “People tend to define sex in a binary way—either wholly male or wholly female—based on physical appearance or by which sex chromosomes an individual carries. But while sex and gender may seem dichotomous, there are in reality many intermediates.”

Understanding this complexity is critical; misperceptions can affect the health and civil liberties of those who fall outside perceived societal norms, Dr. Vilain says. “Society has categorical views on what should define sex and gender, but the biological reality is just not there to support that.”

RELATED STORIES:

Nonbinary people deserve so much more

Trans girl who started school’s field hockey team may be banned from playing, thanks to Republicans

This post was originally published on this site

The Biden administration is directing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) prosecutors to consider dismissing deportation cases deemed low priority by the federal government, in a policy move that could reduce the massively backlogged immigration court system by potentially hundreds of thousands of cases.

Under an April 3 memo, ICE prosecutors are authorized to dismiss cases of the cases of people who have not crossed the border recently and do not pose serious threats. It points to a memo from Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas ensuring “finite DHS resources are used in a way that accomplishes the department’s enforcement mission most effectively and justly.”

“Note that every law enforcement agency does this to focus enforcement resources on serious, important cases, but DHS has not effectively applied it in immigration cases,” tweeted American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) Director of Government Relations Gregory Chen.

RELATED STORY: House progressives urge executive action to protect immigrant families from deportation

“The memo could be a way to cut the growing immigration court backlog,” BuzzFeed News reported. “The staggering list of cases in immigration court, which number over 1 million, is unsustainable, officials say. Some cases take years to be heard.” CNN reports that perhaps as many as 700,000 cases could be considered low-priority, according to one estimate from AILA. The immigration court backlog is currently the highest it has ever been, according to TRAC Immigration:

“If every person with a pending immigration case were gathered together it would be larger than the population of Philadelphia, the sixth largest city in the United States. Previous administrations—all the way back through at least the George W. Bush administration—have failed when they tried to tackle the seemingly intractable problem of the Immigration Court ‘backlog.’”

By comparison, the backlog was at roughly 150,000 cases at the start of the Bush administration, TRAC Immigration said. The Biden administration noted these years-long delays in announcing a finalized rule allowing asylum officers to handle some cases instead of leaving them solely to immigration judges. 

“Due to existing court backlogs, the process for hearing and deciding these asylum cases currently takes several years on average,” officials said last month. “When fully implemented, the reforms and new efficiencies will shorten the process to several months for most asylum applicants covered by this rule.”

House progressives in recommendations last month urged the removal of nonpriority cases, as well as other key actions to protect immigrant families from detention and deportation, including terminating or declining to renew private detention contracts in favor of community-based alternatives, the termination of agreements that allow local law enforcement to act as mass deportation agents, and an end to the debunked Title 42 policy.

Last week, the Biden administration announced the Stephen Miller policy will end by late May. Three GOP states have since sued, because they believe Democratic presidents have no right to govern.

ICE itself has now gone without a Senate-confirmed director for more than five years. While President Biden first put forward Harris County, Texas, Sheriff Ed Gonzalez a year ago, and received a committee hearing in June, his nomination stalled. Failing to receive a full floor vote before the end of 2021, Gonzalez’s nomination expired.

The administration again resubmitted his name in January, but it’s now April and he has yet to receive a confirmation vote. Tae Johnson, the final acting director under the previous administration, continues to remain in that role.

RELATED STORIES: Biden administration readies new policy intended to speed up asylum process

Biden administration officially rescinds draconian policy that expanded fast-tracked deportations

Biden admin resubmits ICE director nomination after it expired without full Senate vote