#U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas

[nationallawreview]

Opposing Decisions – Does the FTC Have the Authority to Ban Non-Compete Clauses?

In April, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) promulgated a new rule banning non-competes (the Rule); the FTC adopted the Rule to prohibit employers from entering into or enforcing non-compete clauses with workers and senior executives. Several lawsuits were quickly filed challenging the rules. Separate parties filed in Texas (in which cases were consolidated), and ATS Tree Services, LLC, filed an…

[tomorrowusa]

Normie users are finally leaving Twitter/X in a more noticeable way.

Journalists begin new exodus from Elon Musk's X

Elon Musk’s social media toilet X is facing a new exodus by journalists and organizations fed up with both the tanking quality of the site and the upcoming changes to its terms of service set to take effect Nov. 15. X’s new service terms require users who wish to sue the company to file in specifically the “U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas or state courts located in Tarrant County, Texas.” These courts are a favorite of conservative activists as they are stocked with Republican appointees. On Wednesday, The Guardian announced it would no longer post on the site, though it would not block X users from sharing its articles. “Social media can be an important tool for news organisations and help us to reach new audiences,” the media outlet writes, “but, at this point, X now plays a diminished role in promoting our work.” Journalist Don Lemon, who is in the midst of a lawsuit with Musk for alleged breach of contract, also posted a statement on Wednesday about leaving the site. “I once believed it was a place for honest debate and discussion, transparency, and free speech, but I now feel it does not serve that purpose,” he wrote.

Bluesky surges as users seek social media alternatives to X

After X, formerly Twitter, saw a record estimated 281,600 accounts deactivated worldwide in just one day on November 6, according to internet traffic analyzer Similarweb, speculation has surged that the best days of Elon Musk's social media platform are behind it.  Other microblogging sites, including Bluesky, have rocketed to the top of app download rankings and courted millions of new users in the week since Donald Trump won the US election. Whether users are permanently leaving X or simply establishing new accounts elsewhere is unclear. But major brands and individuals are citing Musk's substantial financial and rhetorical backing of Trump in the US election, as well as the polarizing nature of the X platform, as the reason for their departures. [ ... ]

Among the reasons cited for departing the platform is the continued increase in negative content on the platform. That includes the increase of toxic content, remarked by The Guardian in its published statement as "the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism."

So what excuses do you hear from people who still cling to a virulently pro-Trump platform?

[printedword]

The Supreme Court said on Friday that it would take up a challenge to a part of the Affordable Care Act that requires insurance companies to cover some kinds of preventative care at no cost. The law, President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement, has survived three major earlier encounters with the court. The new challenge is directed at a task force that decides which treatments are covered. It has determined that insurers must pay for, among other things, screenings to detect cancer and diabetes; statin medications to reduce the risk of heart disease and strokes; physical therapy for older adults to prevent falls; and eye ointment for newborns to prevent infections causing blindness. The law’s requirement of coverage for lung cancer screenings alone saves more than 10,000 lives each year, the Biden administration told the justices. Several Texas residents and two small Christian-affiliated businesses that provide health insurance to employees sued to contest the way the task force had been appointed, saying it violated the Constitution. The plaintiffs objected to the task force’s decision to cover medication preventing H.I.V. infection in some at-risk people, saying the drugs “encourage and facilitate homosexual behavior.��� Judge Reed O’Connor, of the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Texas, agreed, ruling that the United States Preventive Services Task Force had not been properly appointed by Congress and so did not have the constitutional authority to decide what services a health insurer must cover. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, affirmed that ruling, saying the task force had too much independence. In its petition seeking review of that decision, the Biden administration said the appeals court’s “legal rationale would inflict immense practical harms.” “Millions of Americans,” the petition added, “rely on insurance coverage for preventive services without cost sharing. If allowed to stand, the decision below would call into question the legal duty of insurance issuers and group health plans to cover” the task force’s recommendations. In their response, the challengers agreed that the Supreme Court should hear the case. Their brief objected to some forms of preventive care, including “a highly controversial pronouncement that compels private insurance to cover all F.D.A.-approved contraceptive methods, including contraceptive methods that some regard as abortifacients.”

[profeminist]

"U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Friday temporarily blocked lower court rulings that imposed tighter restrictions on the abortion pill mifepristone.

U.S. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. Northern District of Texas suspended the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone last week.

The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked that part of Kacsmaryk’s order and kept the FDA approval in place. But the appeals court temporarily re-imposed tighter restrictions on how mifepristone is used and distributed, which would make it more difficult for women to access the drug."

Read the full piece here: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/14/supreme-court-temporarily-blocks-abortion-pill-restrictions.html

[eretzyisrael]

by Adam Kredo

A U.S. district court rejected the Biden administration’s bid to dismiss a landmark lawsuit alleging it engaged in an "illegal and dangerous $1.5 billion terrorism subsidy program for the Palestinians."

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled on Friday that the lawsuit brought by victims of Palestinian terrorism can proceed, marking the second time the Biden administration’s motion to dismiss the case has been rejected. The court, in its latest decision, said there is evidence the Biden administration continued awarding taxpayer cash to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)—the leading aid organization in Gaza—even after Congress blocked funding to that group due to its support for Hamas’s military infrastructure.

The lawsuit, originally filed in December 2022 by American victims of Palestinian terror attacks and Rep. Ronny Jackson (R., Texas), alleges the Biden administration violated federal law when it restarted aid to the Palestinians, including for programs in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. This money, they argue, subsidized terrorism and contributed to the Palestinian government’s "pay to slay" program, which provides imprisoned terrorists and their families with monthly stipends.

The latest decision paves the way for the case to "move forward, tearing away the veil from the Biden Administration’s illegal and dangerous $1.5 billion terrorism subsidy program for the Palestinians," America First Legal, a watchdog group handling the lawsuit on behalf of terror victims, said in a summary of the case provided to the Washington Free Beacon.

"This administration has been illegally funding terrorism by providing taxpayer dollars to Palestinian terrorists who want to bring harm to American and Israeli interests,"  said Rep. Jackson. "This critical decision will help to hold the Biden administration accountable and ensure that the national security of the United States and Israel is prioritized over the illegal funding of terrorism with American taxpayer dollars."

The court agreed that America First Legal provided sufficient evidence that the Biden administration’s financial support for UNRWA "is undiminished," even after Congress outlawed funding to the group following revelations its employees participated in Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel. UNRWA facilities have also been used as Hamas command centers, and weapons stockpiles have repeatedly been discovered in the agency’s buildings.

The Biden administration attempted to argue that the plaintiff’s use of "Trump policies" in its initial suit was "amorpheous [sic] or indeterminate," but the court also rejected this claim, saying the suit clearly demonstrates that aid to both the Palestinians and UNRWA was frozen during the previous administration and subsequently restarted when President Joe Biden took office.

The lawsuit "makes that distinction clear," the court determined, adding that the Biden administration’s "decision to resume those two sources of funding each constitute discrete and final agency actions."

Reed Rubinstein, America First Legal’s senior vice president, said the latest ruling indicates the Biden administration knew it was violating the law by sending aid to the Palestinians but moved forward with this policy anyway.

[beardedmrbean]

The U.S. Department of Justice said an illegal immigrant has reached an agreement to plead guilty to charges related to stealing a U.S. citizen's identity to vote in multiple elections and fraudulently obtain an American passport. 

Angelica Maria Francisco, a 42-year-old undocumented individual who most recently resided in Russellville, Alabama, is facing a nine-count information filed in federal court for false claims of citizenship in connection with voting, false statements in application for a United States passport, use of a United States passport obtained by false statements, and aggravated identity theft.  

A plea agreement was filed as well, indicating that Francisco has agreed to plead guilty to all nine counts, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama Prim F. Escalona and Resident Agent in Charge Joseph R. Wysowaty of the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) Atlanta Resident Office announced on Thursday. 

Francisco is accused of assuming the identity of a U.S. citizen in or around 2011. Prosecutors say she used the false identity to get an American passport in 2011. She then allegedly used the passport to travel to and from her native Guatemala in 2012, 2015 and 2018. Using the same identity, she allegedly also registered to vote in Alabama in 2016, before voting in the 2016 and 2020 primary and general elections.

In 2021, Francisco allegedly used the same false identity to apply for and receive a renewed passport, which she used to travel to and from Guatemala in 2022.

The State Department's Diplomatic Security Service investigated the case, with assistance from the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, the East Metro Area Crime Center, and the Alabama Secretary of State’s Office. 

"I have been very clear that a top priority of this Office is ensuring only eligible American citizens are voting in Alabama elections," Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen said in a statement. "I want to thank the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Northern District of Alabama for their diligent efforts investigating and charging this individual. We will continue to assist law enforcement in every way possible as they prosecute individuals who vote illegally in Alabama elections to the fullest extent of the law." 

Allen, a Republican, has made election integrity a top priority this cycle and previously sounded the alarm to Fox News Digital about how state agencies receiving federal funding are required under Executive Order 14019 to send out voter registration information to anyone who comes into contact with those agencies without any verification of citizenship. President Biden signed the order in 2021 as a way of "promoting access to voting," but Republicans argue that its broad interpretation of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993 essentially mobilizes the federal government apparatus to become voter registration agencies. 

At the Republican National Convention in July, Allen told Fox News Digital that he had also spoken with House Speaker Mike Johnson regarding a piece of legislation called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which aims to require states to obtain proof of citizenship – in person – when registering an individual to vote and require states to remove non-citizens from existing voter rolls. 

Last month, prominent conservative Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Mike Lee, R-Utah, pushed for the SAVE Act to be attached to a spending bill extension to avoid a government shutdown at the end of the fiscal year. 

"Punting new government spending into 2025 when we have a new President and attaching the SAVE Act ensures House Republicans avoid a Biden-Harris lame duck omnibus and secures our elections at the same time," Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., said in a statement on Friday. "The Senate can either ensure only eligible American citizens are voting in our elections – or shut down the government. To me, it’s a no-brainer."

[follow-up-news]

A federal judge in Texas has blocked a new government rule that would slash credit card late-payment charges, a centerpiece of the Biden administration's efforts to clamp down on "junk" fees.   Judge Mark Pittman of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas on Friday granted an injunction sought by the banking industry and other business interests to freeze the restrictions, which were scheduled to take effect on May 14. In his ruling, Pittman cited a 2022 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that found that funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the federal agency set to enforce the credit card rule, is unconstitutional.  The regulations, adopted by the CFPB in March, seek to cap late fees for credit card payments at $8, compared with current late fees of $30 or more. Although a bane for consumers, the fees generate about $9 billion a year for card issuers, according to the agency. After the CFPB on March 5 announced the ban on what it called "excessive" credit card late fees, the American Bankers Association (ABA) and U.S. Chamber of Commerce filed a legal challenge.  The ABA, an industry trade group, applauded Pittman's decision. "This injunction will spare banks from having to immediately comply with a rule that clearly exceeds the CFPB's statutory authority and will lead to more late payments, lower credit scores, increased debt, reduced credit access and higher APRs for all consumers — including the vast majority of card holders who pay on time each month," ABA CEO Rob Nichols said in a statement.  Maria Monaghan, U.S. Chamber of Commerce Litigation Center counsel, echoed the sentiment, called the ruling "a major win for responsible consumers who pay their credit card bills on time and businesses that want to provide affordable credit."  Consumer groups blasted the decision, saying it will hurt credit card users across the U.S. "In their latest in a stack of lawsuits designed to pad record corporate profits at the expense of everyone else, the U.S. Chamber got its way for now, ensuring families get price-gouged a little longer with credit card late fees as high as $41," Liz Zelnick of Accountable.US, a nonpartisan advocacy group, said in a statement. "The U.S. Chamber and the big banks they represent have corrupted our judicial system by venue shopping in courtrooms of least resistance, going out of their way to avoid having their lawsuit heard by a fair and neutral federal judge." According to consumer advocates that support the CFPB's late-fee rule, credit card issuers hit customers with $14 billion in late-payment charges in 2019, accounting for well over half their fee revenue that year. Financial industry critics say such late fees target low- and moderate-income consumers, in particular people of color. Despite Pittman's stay on Friday, analysts said the legal fight over late fees is likely to continue, with the case possibly heading to the Supreme Court. 

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Emily Yoffe

Published: Jan 25, 2025

The courageous Texas surgeon was facing a decade in federal prison for blowing the whistle about gender surgery for minors. Trump just dismissed the case.

Until this afternoon, Dr. Eithan Haim, 34, was facing a potential decade in federal prison for revealing publicly that Texas Children’s Hospital was continuing to perform gender transitions on children even after declaring a moratorium on the controversial practice. For this, Haim, a Texas surgeon, became the target of the Biden Department of Justice, which indicted him for allegedly violating patient privacy laws.

There was no violation of patient privacy. What Haim blew the whistle on were surgeries to insert hormonal devices that prevent children from going through puberty. The records he revealed about these interventions carefully redacted identifying information about the patients. What’s more: He had caught the hospital in a bald-faced lie about the very existence of the program. Most dangerous for Haim was that he had run afoul of the Biden administration’s unquestioning support of medical transition of young people distressed about their gender.

“Eithan Haim was the only person with the courage to stand up for what was right,” Haim’s wife, Andrea, wrote on X about her husband taking on the powerful children’s hospital, the country’s largest. “For him, it wasn’t even a decision. Kids were being harmed, and he had to stop it.”

It came with a high price. The couple lost close friendships, all their savings, and their peace of mind. But they never budged.

On Friday came vindication.

At around 2:30 p.m. on Friday, Haim received notice that the Trump DOJ issued a dismissal of all charges against him, with prejudice—meaning the charges cannot be refiled. In a conversation with The Free Press, while he and his wife were celebrating over champagne, he said, “We didn’t think it was going to happen. We took on the federal leviathan and we won.” He added, “This is epic. This is like Lord of the Rings.”

Although Haim had raised more than $1.2 million in a GiveSendGo account, mounting a case to stay out of federal prison has cost $2 million. “We’ll be paying legal bills for 20 years,” he said.

Andrea knows about federal indictments. She herself is an assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas—her husband was indicted in the Southern District. Andrea, who gave birth to their daughter four months ago, said of their ordeal, “I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in a year without worrying my husband would be in prison and I would be raising our daughter alone. We are now going back to normal life.”

As the Trump administration got underway, Haim had an upcoming jury trial on the Biden-era indictment. “I was facing a kangaroo court in a few weeks,” he said.

Marcella Burke, Haim’s attorney, said she and his other lawyers began to ask everyone they knew with any connection to the new administration to make the dismissal of Haim’s case a priority. But she said she had no warning that their efforts had been successful.

“We thank everyone who helped along the way to bring this massive injustice to light, and we are grateful to secure this victory on behalf of our client,” Burke said in a statement. “The fight against the evils he exposed continues, but this dismissal represents a repudiation of the weaponization of federal law enforcement and the first step in accountability for the misdeeds we have all witnessed in this case.”

Missouri senator Josh Hawley went on X Friday afternoon to tout the effectiveness of his lobbying to get the charges against Haim dismissed. He wrote, “Following my call this morning, I am delighted to report the Trump DOJ is now moving to DISMISS this illegitimate prosecution.”

Andrea Haim wrote on X that the couple had no regrets. “[I]f you ask either of us, we would do it again in a heartbeat. Because of Eithan, the world is a better place for children, including our daughter. There is no greater gift we can give her than the knowledge that her daddy is a hero.”

To support Eithan Haim and his family, please click here.

[ Via: https://archive.today/eS9WS ]

==

Somehow, blowing the whistle on gender lobotomies is a crime, but illegally performing gender lobotomies is not.

🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️

[partisan-by-default]

A federal judge in Texas overseeing a high-profile lawsuit filed by billionaire Elon Musk against the watchdog group Media Matters was buying and selling stock in Musk’s Tesla company in 2023, the year Musk filed the suit, according to financial disclosure reports recently made public.

In August, NPR reported that U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas had made an investment in Tesla of between $15,001 and $50,000. O’Connor has delivered a string of decisions in the Media Matters lawsuit in favor of Musk, who argues the advocacy group disparaged X, his social media site.

That investment was revealed in a 2022 financial disclosure form required of all federal judges. But questions remained about whether the judge could have later sold his stock in Tesla — and if so, whether that happened before or after O’Connor accepted the Media Matters case in November 2023.

While Tesla is not directly part of Musk’s Media Matters suit, legal ethics experts called on O’Connor to recuse himself from the case, since the outcome of a lawsuit involving one of Musk’s companies could, in turn, have an effect on the stock value of another part of his empire, including electric vehicle company Tesla, which represents the majority of his wealth.

But a newly public financial disclosure form filed with the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts covering 2023’s calendar year shows that O’Connor bought and sold Tesla stock that year, with his position in Tesla still totaling up to $50,000. All three transactions were made before November: O’Connor bought Tesla stock in January, sold some in June, and bought again in September.

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

A federal court prevented the Department of Education (DOE) from enforcing its revised Title IX guidance in Texas Tuesday — a major win in the fight to protect women’s rights and spaces.

A judge on the U.S. District Court for Northern Texas ruled in favor of The Lone Star State after determining the DOE’s interpretation of Title IX to include protections for so-called gender identity “functionally rewrites [the statute] in a way that shockingly transforms American education and usurps a major question...

[nationallawreview]

Corporate Transparency Act Recent Update

As previously reported, in early December, the District Court for the Northern District of Texas issued a nationwide injunction against the enforcement of the CTA [1]. The government quickly appealed. Just a few weeks later, on December 23, 2024, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals granted the government’s emergency motion to stay the nationwide injunction — effectively lifting the injunction and…

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Jack Ohman, Tribune Content Agency

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

May 1, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAY 02, 2024

Today, Florida’s ban on abortions after six weeks—earlier than most women know they’re pregnant—went into effect. The Florida legislature passed the law and Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed it a little more than a year ago, on April 13, 2023, but the new law was on hold while the Florida Supreme Court reviewed it. On April 1 the court permitted the law to go into operation today. 

The new Florida law is possible because two years ago, on June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court  overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized the constitutional right to abortion. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the modern court decided that the right to determine abortion rights must be returned “to the people’s elected representatives” at the state level. 

Immediately, Republican-dominated states began to restrict abortion rights. Now, one out of three American women of childbearing age lives in one of the more than 20 states with abortion bans. This means, as Cecile Richards, former president of Planned Parenthood, put it in The Daily Beast today, “child rape victims forced to give birth, miscarrying patients turned away from emergency rooms and told to return when they’re in sepsis.” It means recognizing that the state has claimed the right to make a person’s most personal health decisions. 

Until today, Florida’s law was less stringent than that of other southern states, making it a destination for women of other states to obtain the abortions they could not get at home. In the Washington Post today, Caroline Kitchener noted that in the past, more than 80,000 women a year obtained abortions in Florida. Now, receiving that reproductive care will mean a trip to Virginia, Illinois, or North Carolina, where the procedure is still legal, putting it out of reach for many women. 

This November, voters in Florida will weigh in on a proposed amendment to the Florida constitution to establish the right to abortion. The proposed amendment reads: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.” Even if the amendment receives the 60% support it will need to be added to the constitution, it will come too late for tens of thousands of women.

It is not unrelated that this week Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, along with other Republican attorneys general, has twice sued the Biden administration, challenging its authority to impose policy on states. One lawsuit objects to the government’s civil rights protections for sexual orientation and gender identity. The other lawsuit seeks to stop a federal rule that closes a loophole that, according to Texas Tribune reporter Alejandro Serrano, lets people sell guns online or at gun shows without conducting background checks.  

In both cases, according to law professor and legal analyst Steve Vladeck, Paxton has filed the suit in the Amarillo Division of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, where it will be assigned to Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, the Trump appointee who suspended the use of mifepristone, an abortion-inducing drug, in order to stop abortions nationally. 

Last month the Judicial Conference, which oversees the federal judiciary, tried to end this practice of judge-shopping by calling for cases to be randomly assigned to any judge in a district; the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas says it will not comply. 

And so the cases go to Kacsmaryk, who will almost certainly agree with the Republican states’ position.

Republicans are engaged in the process of dismantling the federal government, working to get rid of its regulation of business, basic social welfare laws and the taxes needed to pay for such measures, the promotion of infrastructure, and the protection of civil rights. To do so, they have increasingly argued that the states, rather than the federal government, are the centerpiece of our democratic system. 

That democracy belonged to the states was the argument of the southern Democrats before the Civil War, who insisted that the federal government could not legitimately intervene in state affairs out of their concern that the overwhelming popular majority in the North would demand an end to human enslavement. Challenged to defend their enslavement of their neighbors in a country that boasted “all men are created equal,” southern enslavers argued that enslavement was secondary to the fact that voters had chosen to impose it.

At the same time, though, state lawmakers limited the vote in their state, so the popular vote did not reflect the will of the majority. It reflected the interests of those few who could vote. In 1857, enslaver George Fitzhugh of Virginia explained that there were 18,000 people in his county and only 1,200 could vote. “But we twelve hundred…never asked and never intend to ask the consent of the sixteen thousand eight hundred whom we govern.” State legislatures, dominated by such men, wrote laws reinforcing the power of a few wealthy, white men. 

Crucially, white southerners insisted that the federal government must use its power not to enforce the will of the majority, but rather to protect their state systems. In 1850, with the Fugitive Slave Act, they demanded that federal officials, including those in free states, return to the South anyone a white enslaver claimed was his property. Black Americans could not testify in their own defense, and anyone helping a “runaway” could be imprisoned for six months and fined $1,000, which was about three years’ income. A decade later, enslavers insisted that it was “the duty of the Federal Government, in all its departments, to protect…[slavery]…in the Territories, and wherever else its constitutional authority extends.”

After the Civil War, Republicans in charge of the federal government set out to end discriminatory state legislation by adding to the Constitution the Fourteenth Amendment, establishing that states could not deny to any person the equal protection of the laws and giving Congress the power to enforce that amendment. That, together with the Fifteenth Amendment providing that “[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” Republicans thought, would stop state legislatures from passing discriminatory legislation.

But in 1875, just five years after Americans added the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, the Supreme Court decided that states could keep certain people from voting so long as that discrimination wasn’t based on race. This barred women from the polls and flung the door open for voter suppression measures that would undermine minority voting for almost a century. Jim and Juan Crow laws, as well as abortion bans, went onto the books.

In the 1950s the Supreme Court began to use the Fourteenth Amendment to end those discriminatory state laws—in 1954 with the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision that prohibited racial segregation in public schools, for example, and in 1973 with Roe v. Wade. Opponents complained bitterly about what they called “judicial activism,” insisting that unelected judges were undermining the will of the voters in the states. 

Beginning in the 1980s, as Republicans packed the courts with so-called originalists who weakened federal power in favor of state power, Republican-dominated state governments carefully chose their voters and then imposed their own values on everyone. 

Just a decade ago, reproductive rights scholar Elizabeth Dias told Jess Bidgood of the New York Times, a six-week abortion ban was seen even by many antiabortion activists as too radical, but after Trump appointed first Neil Gorsuch and then Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the balance of power shifted enough to make such a ban obtainable. Power over abortion rights went back to the states, where Republicans could restrict them.

Trump has said he would leave the issue of abortion to the states, even if states begin to monitor women’s pregnancies to keep them from obtaining abortions or to prosecute them if they have one. 

Vice President Kamala Harris was in Jacksonville, Florida, today to talk about reproductive rights. She put the fight over abortion in the larger context of the discriminatory state laws that have, historically, constructed a world in which some people have more rights than others. “This is a fight for freedom,” she said, “the fundamental freedom to make decisions about one’s own body and not have their government tell them what they’re supposed to do.” 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[ausetkmt]

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Nine current or former Northern California police officers were charged Thursday in a federal corruption investigation that found evidence they committed civil rights violations and fraud in an effort to get a pay raise and lied on reports to cover up the use of excessive force, U.S. authorities said.

Ismail J. Ramsey, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California, filed four indictments that outlined charges including wire fraud, deprivation of rights under color of law, conspiracy against rights, and conspiracy to distribute anabolic steroids. Nine police officers and one community service officer are named in the charges, though only two are charged in multiple indictments.

The investigation centered on the departments in Antioch and Pittsburg, two cities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Only three of the officers remain employed by the departments and were not on active duty, officials said.

Arrest warrants were served Thursday in California, Texas and Hawaii, said Robert Tripp, special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Francisco Field Office. One has not yet been arrested, officials said.

Morteza Amiri, Eric Allen Rombough, Patrick Berhan, Samantha Peterson, Brauli Rodriguez Jalapa and Ernesto Juan Mejia-Orozco pleaded not guilty to various charges, and most were released on condition that they posted property bonds, the Bay Area News Group reported.

Rombough appeared in Oakland federal court dressed in ripped clothes, with bloody hands and knees and wearing a shirt that read: “don’t weaken,” the Bay Area News Group reported.

His attorney, Will Edelman, told the judge that there was “absolutely no reason” that his client had to be taken into custody and handcuffed because he would have willingly appeared if ordered.

The defendants could face decades in federal prison if convicted of the charges.

Tripp said the arrests were the result of a two-year investigation.

“Any breach of the public’s trust is absolutely unacceptable,” Tripp said while discussing charges against Antioch officers that include using their official positions as officers to deprive people of their rights.

Charges against Amiri, Rombough and Devon Christopher Wenger say the three Antioch police officers conspired between February 2019 and March 2022 “to injure, oppress, threaten and intimidate residents of Antioch, California” and later falsified reports about the encounters.

In obscenity-laden text messages, the three men referred to some suspects as “gorillas.” They laughed and joked about harming people who apparently had surrendered or appeared to be asleep by setting Amiri’s police dog on them or Rombough shooting them with a 40mm “less-lethal” projectile launcher, the indictment said.

Prosecutors say from 2019 to 2021, the dog bit 28 people while Rombough used the launcher 11 times in 2020 and 2021.

Amiri posted graphic photos of the dog wounds, and Rombough said he was keeping the projectiles to make a trophy flag, according to the indictment.

In one case, a man suspected of five armed robberies had given up and was lying on the ground when Amiri’s K-9 bit him, the indictment alleged.

In one text, Amiri wrote: “let’s (f-obscenity) some people up next work week.”

Amiri says that he will find some action and write up the police report, adding: “Just come over and crush some skulls.”

In one 2020 text sequence, Amiri says that he confronted a transient he believed had stolen his mail “and dragged him to the back of a car to ‘discuss’ the matter.”

“Lol. Putting a pistol in someone’s mouth and telling them to stop stealing isn’t illegal,” he texted. “It’s an act of public service to prevent further victims of crimes”

“Defendants authored police reports containing false and misleading statements to suggest that the force they used was necessary and justifiable,” the indictment said. “In truth and in fact, and as the Defendants well knew, Defendants willfully used excessive force in numerous incidents, including those identified in this Indictment.”

Police unions did not immediately respond to requests for information on whether the defendants had lawyers who can speak on their behalf. Emails to the Pittsburg and Antioch police departments seeking comment were not immediately returned.

Thousands of incendiary text messages by more than a dozen officers in the Antioch Police Department had previously come to light and led to a federal lawsuit. The texts contained derogatory, racist, homophobic and sexually explicit language. In some of them, the officers bragged about making up evidence and beating up suspects. They freely used racial slurs and made light of the police killing of George Floyd in 2020.

The city of Antioch, with about 115,000 residents 45 miles (72 kilometers) east of San Francisco, was once predominantly white but has diversified in the last 30 years. Federal and state prosecutors have dropped or dismissed dozens of cases that relied on the impugned officers, and the city now faces a federal civil rights lawsuit over the text messages.

Jalapa, Mejia-Orozco and Amanda Carmella Theodosy/Nash, as well as Antioch community service officer Peterson, were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud surrounding allegations they had other people take and complete online university courses toward a criminal justice degree. The police departments offered reimbursement for college tuition and pay raises for those who graduate college, prosecutors said.

Two Antioch officers, Daniel Harris and Wenger, were charged with several counts related to distributing anabolic steroids.

Another Antioch officer, Timothy Manly Williams, faces charges related to the obstruction of a federal investigation for allegedly using a personal cellphone in 2021 to talk to the target of an FBI wiretap investigation and then made sure the call wasn’t recorded or accurately logged.

“Today is a dark day in our city’s history, as people trusted to uphold the law, allegedly breached that trust and were arrested by the FBI,” Antioch Mayor Lamar Thorpe said in a statement. “As our city absorbs this tragic news, we must come together as one. Today’s actions are the beginning of the end of a long and arduous process.”

Thorpe is among three Black, progressive members of the five-person council who have said they are committed to holding police accountable.

“To those that have accused me and others of being anti-police for seeking to reform the Antioch Police Department, today’s arrests are demonstrative of the issues that have plagued the Antioch Police Department for decades,” he added.

[dnaamericaapp]

Black Businesses Face Uphill Battle After Reverse Racism Ruling From Trump-Appointed Judge

Earlier this month, a federal court delivered yet another blow to government efforts to close the racial equity gap and better serve Black and brown communities.

The latest set back came by a ruling from Judge Mark Pittman that ordered the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) to no longer consider race or ethnicity when deploying its services to U.S. small businesses.

“This is not one attack, but it’s a series of attacks on the measures that the federal government has put in place to remedy,” Patrice Willoughby, senior vice president of global policy and impact at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), told theGrio.

Using the same constitutional argument the U.S. Supreme Court used to overturn race-conscious affirmative action in college admissions last year, Pittman, appointed to the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Texas by former President Donald Trump, said MBDA’s qualification for “disadvantaged” business owners violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

In other words, the judge argued the agency violated the constitutional rights of white business owners.

“While the agency’s work may help alleviate opportunity gaps faced by MBEs (minority business owners), two wrongs do not make a right,” Pittman wrote in his ruling.

Elected officials and advocates are decrying the federal court ruling, blaming a movement led by conservatives and affirmed by Republican-appointed judges that is undoing decades-long efforts to right historic wrongs that have afflicted Black and brown communities. The MBDA ruling, proponents fear, could further exacerbate existing racial disparities in ownership and wealth. -(source: the grio)

DNA America

“It’s what we know, not what you want us to believe.”

#dna #dnaamerica #news #politics

[reasoningdaily]

The Associated Press: 22 attorneys general oppose 3M settlement over water systems contamination with 'forever chemicals'

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — Twenty-two attorneys general urged a federal court Wednesday to reject a proposed $10.3 billion settlement over contamination of U.S. public drinking water systems with potentially dangerous chemicals, saying it lets manufacturer 3M Co. off too easily.

The deal announced in June doesn’t give individual water suppliers enough time to determine how much money they would get and whether it would cover their costs of removing the compounds known collectively as PFAS, said the officials with 19 states, Washington, D.C., and two territories. In some cases the agreement could shift liability from the company to providers, they said.

“While I appreciate the effort that went into it, the proposed settlement in its current form does not adequately account for the pernicious damage that 3M has done in so many of our communities,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta, leader of the multistate coalition.

3M spokesman Sean Lynch said the agreement “will benefit U.S.-based public water systems nationwide that provide drinking water to a vast majority of Americans” without further litigation.

“It is not unusual for there to be objections regarding significant settlement agreements,” Lynch said. “We will continue to work cooperatively to address questions about the terms of the resolution.”

The company, based in St. Paul, Minnesota, manufactures per- and polyfluorinated substances — a broad class of chemicals used in nonstick, water- and grease-resistant products such as clothing and cookware, as well as some firefighting foams.

Described as “forever chemicals” because they don’t degrade naturally in the environment, PFAS have been linked to a variety of health problems, including liver and immune-system damage and some cancers.

3M has said it plans to stop making them by the end of 2025.

Some 300 communities have sued 3M and other companies over water pollution from the compounds. A number of states, airports, firefighter training facilities and private well owners also have pending cases.

They have been consolidated in U.S. District Court in Charleston, South Carolina, where the proposed settlement was filed last month.

Although the company put its value at $10.3 billion, an attorney for the water providers said it could reach as high as $12.5 billion, depending on how many detect PFAS during testing the Environmental Protection Agency has ordered over the next three years.

The law firm representing the water providers did not immediately respond Wednesday to messages seeking comment.

EPA in March proposed strict limits on two common types, PFOA and PFOS, and said it wanted to regulate four others.

In addition to California, states urging Judge Richard Gergel to reject the deal included Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Wisconsin. Also opposed were Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands.

In a court filing, the attorneys general said it would force nearly all public water providers nationwide to participate unless they withdraw individually — even those that haven’t filed suits or tested for PFAS.

“Troublingly, they would have to make their opt-out decisions without knowing how much they would actually receive and, in many cases, before knowing the extent of contamination in their water supplies and the cost of remediating it,” the officials said in a statement.

A provision in the proposed deal would shift liability from 3M to water suppliers that don’t opt out, the statement said. That could enable the company to seek compensation from providers if sued over cancer or other illnesses in PFAS-affected communities, it said.

“As such, the proposed settlement is worth far less than the advertised $10.5 billion to $12.5 billion,” the attorneys general said.

The attorneys general did not take a position on a separate $1.18 billion deal to resolve PFAS complaints against DuPont de Nemours Inc. and spinoffs Chemours Co. and Corteva Inc.

[beardedmrbean]

A Dallas anesthesiologist was sentenced to 190 years in federal prison for injecting drugs into IV bags, leading to at least one death.

Dr. Raynaldo Ortiz was convicted in April on five counts of intentional adulteration of a drug, four counts of tampering with consumer products resulting in serious bodily injury and one count of tampering with consumer products.

Leigha Simonton, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, compared Ortiz to a gunman "spraying bullets indiscriminately into a crowd" in a statement after the sentencing.

"But he wielded an invisible weapon, a cocktail of heart-stopping drugs, concealed inside an IV bag designed to help patients heal," Simonton said.

Ortiz was sentenced in federal court Wednesday to 2,280 months, which the judge ordered he serve consecutively.

A public defender for Ortiz said the defense "respectfully disagrees" with the verdict and intends to invoke Ortiz's right to appeal.

From May to August 2022, several patients at Baylor, Scott & White SurgiCare North Dallas experienced cardiac emergencies during routine procedures, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.

During that time, Dr. Melanic Kaspar, an anesthesiologist who worked at the practice, died shortly after she used an IV bag to treat herself for dehydration.

Doctors began to suspect an issue with the IV bags in August 2022, after an 18-year-old patient’s condition became critical during a routine sinus operation, prosecutors said. A lab analysis of the IV bag used in the procedure found evidence of a drug cocktail that included a nerve-blocking agent, a stimulant and an anesthetic, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said at trial that Ortiz injected saline bags used for the IV drips with epinephrine, bupivacaine and other drugs before he placed them in a warming bin for colleagues to use.

Video presented as evidence also showed Ortiz “repeatedly retrieving IV bags from the warming bin and replacing them” shortly before the bags were taken into surgery, prosecutors said.

Doctors testified that the medical emergencies occurred shortly after new IV bags were hung during the procedures.

Kaspar’s husband, John Kaspar, was one of several people who gave victim impact statements at Ortiz's sentencing, NBC Dallas-Fort Worth reported.

Kaspar told the station that Ortiz killed his wife. “It wasn’t through malice,” he said. “It was through pure calculation.”

Ortiz has not been charged in Kaspar’s death.

U.S. District Judge David Godbey said Wednesday that Ortiz caused her death and described his other conduct as “tantamount to attempted murder.”

At the time of the cardiac emergencies, Ortiz was facing disciplinary action for “an alleged medical mistake made in one of his own surgeries” and faced losing his license, the prosecutor’s office said in April, citing evidence presented at trial.

The Texas Medical Board suspended Ortiz's license in September 2022 "after determining his continuation in the practice of medicine poses a continuing threat to public welfare."

His suspension was listed as temporary, but the status has not been updated with additional board actions.