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18 States Fight Federal Trans Agenda on Pronouns, Bathrooms

In response to new federal rules on pronouns and bathrooms based on gender identity, 18 state attorneys general are suing the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. 

The lawsuit, led by Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, a Republican, was filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee.  

“This end-run around our constitutional institutions misuses federal power to eliminate women’s private spaces and punish the use of biologically accurate pronouns, all at the expense of Tennessee employers,” Skrmetti said in a public statement. 

The Daily Signal first reported last month that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission published guidance determining that an employer would be guilty of harassment for requiring someone to use a restroom that comports with his or her biological sex, or for referring to someone by a personal pronoun that the person doesn’t want used.

The guidance, which the EEOC adopted on a party-line vote of 3-2, would determine how the commission would handle an employee complaint on the matter and also could affect other employee litigation as the formal federal policy. 

EEOC has 2,331 employees, according to its 2023 annual report

Joining Tennessee in the lawsuit are Republican attorneys general from the states of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia. 

“In America, the Constitution gives the power to make laws to the people’s elected representatives, not to unaccountable commissioners, and this EEOC guidance is an attack on our constitutional separation of powers,” Skrmetti, Tennessee’s attorney general, said. “When, as here, a federal agency engages in government over the people instead of government by the people, it undermines the legitimacy of our laws and alienates Americans from our legal system.”

The EEOC issued new sexual harassment guidance that extends Title VII’s prohibition of sex-based discrimination to cover gender identity. Title VII forbids employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It applies to any employer, public or private, with more than 15 employees.

Under this guidance, an employer may be responsible under Title VII if the employer, or another employee, uses a name or personal pronoun other than the one an employee prefers for his or her gender identity, or limits access to a restroom or other sex-segregated facility that isn’t consistent with what the employee prefers to use. 

This rule prevails regardless of the biological sex of the employee in question.

“Harassing conduct based on sexual orientation or gender identity includes … repeated and intentional use of a name or pronoun inconsistent with the individual’s known gender identity (misgendering) or the denial of access to a bathroom or other sex-segregated facility consistent with the individual’s gender identity,” EEOC’s new enforcement guidance says.

An EEOC spokesperson referred The Daily Signal to the Justice Department for comment on this report. A Justice Department spokesperson didn’t respond by publication time. 

In a previous public statement, EEOC Chairwoman Charlotte Burrows, a Democrat, praised the enforcement guidance. 

“Harassment, both in-person and online, remains a serious issue in America’s workplaces,” Burrows said shortly after the commission announced the guidelines. “The EEOC’s updated guidance on harassment is a comprehensive resource that brings together best practices for preventing and remedying harassment and clarifies recent developments in the law.”

Joining Burrows to vote in favor of the updated harassment guidance were two other Democrats, Vice Chair Jocelyn Samuels and Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal. The commission’s two Republican members, Keith Sonderling and Andrea Lucas, voted against the guidance.

In 2021, Burrows attempted to unilaterally include such actions under what constitutes harassment through a press release, without public comment or a vote by the full commission. 

However, a federal court in Tennessee enjoined the guidance from going forward in 2022. Another federal court in Texas vacated Burrows’ guidance altogether. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission did not appeal the rulings.

The post 18 States Fight Federal Trans Agenda on Pronouns, Bathrooms appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Biden Admin in a DEI Bind(er) of Its Own Making, Stuck With Incompetent Jean-Pierre

The following is an updated version of a column originally published in December 2022.

One of the bestselling books of the 1970s was “The Peter Principle,” a business management book by Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull.

The book’s premise was that employees get promoted based on their performance in their previous jobs until they are ultimately elevated to a position in which they’re incompetent, since skills and success in one position don’t necessarily ensure success in the next. “In a hierarchy,” Peter explained, “every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”

If “The Peter Principle” were published today, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre would be a case study in the phenomenon, now called “failing upward.” In Jean-Pierre’s case, that’s reflected in her work for the short-lived Democratic presidential campaigns of John Edwards in 2004 and Martin O’Malley in 2016, and now as the chief spokeswoman for the Biden administration. On Monday, she will mark her second anniversary in that role.

In recent weeks, however, with the 2024 election campaign shifting into high gear, there have been well-sourced reports that high-ranking figures in the Biden administration are not-so-subtly seeking to push Jean-Pierre out of the role—for which she was never qualified to begin with. Many of the same administration figures reportedly behind those efforts to oust her are, not surprisingly, denying the accuracy of the reports.

The New York Post quoted a source as saying the high-ranking administration figures “‘were trying to find Karine a graceful exit’ because of the ugly optics of removing her against her will,” especially because she thinks she’s doing a good job. (One face-saving exit strategy was to offer her the presidency of EMILY’s List, an abortion rights group.)

But as a textbook example of an affirmative-action hire, Jean-Pierre appears not to be going anywhere. An administration so thoroughly wedded to so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion is, in this case, now finding it difficult to divorce itself from DEI. (More on that below.)

The most glaring evidence that Jean-Pierre, 49, has been promoted to her level of incompetence as White House press secretary is her near-total dependence on a binder full of administration talking points, which she often reads from directly at her daily news briefings to the White House press corps.

It’s so bad that Fox News commentator Jesse Watters has taken to referring to her derisively as “Binder,” and it’s so, well, cringeworthy that other critics deliberately mispronounce “Karine” as “Cringe.”

Just as an aside, recall how 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was ridiculed mercilessly in the liberal media for saying during the second presidential debate that he had “binders full of women.” That was his awkward way of referring to files of résumés of women he would consider for staffing his administration were he to win the election. Many of the talking heads’ “binder” jokes snarkily suggested that the squeaky-clean Romney was engaged in some form of BDSM with those women.

It’s standard operating procedure for a press secretary to have notes for ready reference. It’s quite another thing to stare down at them and read those notes all but verbatim.

As far as we know, none of the talking heads who ridiculed Romney has ever mentioned—much less made fun of—Jean-Pierre’s near-complete dependence on her press-briefing binders. Nor have they satirized her oft-repeated deflection—“I don’t have anything”—when she doesn’t have answers to questions for which she’s unprepared.

Nor have the liberal media (or the late-night TV comics) noted, much less lampooned, how Jean-Pierre has mispronounced or mangled words and phrases in the course of her press briefings.

On Dec. 13, 2022, Jean-Pierre touted “bicarmel” support in Congress for the so-called Respect for Marriage Act. “Bicarmel, bipartisan support was had for this piece of legislation,” she said.

But this was no one-off slip of the tongue: She used the term “bicarmel” three times to describe it in the course of the half-hour press briefing. It should have been “bicameral,” of course; meaning, support in both chambers of Congress.

The official White House transcript of the briefing was dishonestly corrected in all three instances to “bicameral” with no indication that it was not an accurate reflection of what was actually said.

On Nov. 28, 2022, in congratulating three Americans who had won Nobel Prizes in chemistry, physics, and economics, she mispronounced “Nobel” five times in 40 seconds as “noble.”

Two months to the day earlier, on Sept. 28, Jean-Pierre said that as part of Vice President Kamala Harris’ then-pending trip to South Korea, the veep would visit the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas. Jean-Pierre helpfully noted that it had been “nearly 70 years since the Korean ‘armtis’”—not to be confused with the Korean armistice.

Three weeks before that, on Sept. 6, Jean-Pierre conflated a Russian natural gas pipeline with an upscale American department store chain. She accused Russia of causing an energy crisis in Europe by shutting down its Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which she referred to as the “Nordstrom 1” pipeline.

One can only imagine how former President Donald Trump’s press secretaries, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and later Kayleigh McEnany, would have been pilloried by the liberal White House press corps had they made those sorts of repeated verbal gaffes.

One reason Jean-Pierre still has the high-visibility press secretary’s job, to which she was elevated on May 13, 2022, despite all of the gaffes, is because President Joe Biden is legendary for his own innumerable flubs and miscues.

“White House communications staff has had to correct President Joe Biden’s public remarks at least 148 times since the beginning of 2024, a review of official White House transcripts shows,” the Daily Caller reported April 29. Biden couldn’t very well hold Jean-Pierre to a higher standard, could he?

But the real reason Jean-Pierre remains in her post today is because of the identity politics to which the Biden administration and the Democratic Party have sworn undying allegiance. She is immune from criticism—and from reassignment to a less high-profile post—only because she checks all of the boxes of identity-politics “intersectionality” as the first black, first LGBTQ, and first immigrant White House press secretary.

In the Biden administration, Jean-Pierre demonstrates daily that meritocracy is an afterthought—if it’s thought of at all. The moral of this story: Live by DEI, die by it.

The post Biden Admin in a DEI Bind(er) of Its Own Making, Stuck With Incompetent Jean-Pierre appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Ohio Attorney General Breaks Down Leftist Legal ‘Trick’ to Block GOP Efforts to Protect Kids

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost is not going to allow one lone judge to dictate whether the children of Ohio are protected from “transgender” surgeries and hormones, he shared in an interview with The Daily Signal.

Yost asked the state’s Supreme Court to intervene after Judge Michael Holbrook issued a temporary restraining order for House Bill 68, the Saving Ohio Adolescents From Experimentation, or SAFE, Act, on Tuesday.

That law bars physicians from performing “transgender reassignment” surgeries on children and from prescribing cross-sex hormones or drugs to block children’s puberty. It also would allow students to sue if they are deprived of a fair playing field in sports due to transgender activism (such as a boy who “identifies” as a girl playing on a girls’ volleyball team) and would protect parents’ rights to raise their children according to their biological sex.

A supermajority of Republican lawmakers voted to override Gov. Mike DeWine’s controversial veto of the bill in January, and before Holbrook blocked it, it was scheduled to go into effect on April 24.

On Monday, Yost, the Medical Board of Ohio, and the state of Ohio filed an emergency motion for a writ of prohibition, asking that Holbrook be ordered to modify his temporary restraining order to “comply with Ohio statutory and procedural limitations.”

The Ohio attorney general discussed the move and what he hopes will ensue from here in an interview with The Daily Signal.

“This is actually a trick that the Left has been using for a long time,” he explained. “Go to court with a couple of sympathetic plaintiffs, get a court order restraining the law from applying to anybody anywhere, and then use it to avoid majority rule and democratic processes that we have here in America.”

“It’s contrary to the law, it’s a misuse of the judicial process, and its fundamentally anti-Democratic,” he said.

Listen to the interview below:

The post Ohio Attorney General Breaks Down Leftist Legal ‘Trick’ to Block GOP Efforts to Protect Kids appeared first on The Daily Signal.

After Judge Blocks Law Protecting Kids From Transgender Surgeries, Ohio Calls on State Supreme Court to Intervene

The attorney general of Ohio has asked the state’s Supreme Court to intervene in a matter involving an Ohio judge who temporarily blocked a law protecting children from “transgender” surgeries and procedures.

Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Judge Michael Holbrook had issued a temporary restraining order for House Bill 68, the Saving Ohio Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act, on Tuesday.

That law bars physicians from performing “transgender reassignment” surgeries on children and from prescribing cross-sex hormones or drugs to block children’s puberty. It also would allow students to sue if they are deprived of a fair playing field in sports due to transgender activism (such as a boy who “identifies” as a girl playing on a girls’ volleyball team) and would protect parents’ rights to raise their children according to their biological sex.

A supermajority of Republican lawmakers voted to override Gov. Mike DeWine’s controversial veto of the bill in January, and before Holbrook blocked it, it was scheduled to go into effect on April 24.

On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, the Medical Board of Ohio, and the state of Ohio filed an emergency motion for a writ of prohibition, asking that Holbrook be ordered to modify his temporary restraining order to “comply with Ohio statutory and procedural limitations.”

“Ohio statutes, civil rules, and equitable principles authorize Ohio courts to grant preliminary injunctive relief only to parties before the court and only as to provisions that allegedly harm them,” the complaint says. “Respondent’s injunction vastly oversteps those express limitations on the court’s authority.”

The Ohio attorney general also argues that immediate relief is required because the judge and the Common Pleas Court of Franklin County “patently and unambiguously lack jurisdiction to grant preliminary equitable relief to millions of individuals not before the court, or to enjoin statutory provisions that plaintiffs do not allege harm them.”

Additionally, the filing states the judge’s order “foments uncertainty” in a “broad array of institutions and actors” that are affected by the law, including hospitals, schools, and universities.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio had filed a lawsuit on behalf of a child who allegedly identifies as transgender and that child’s family. When Holbrook temporarily blocked the law, ACLU of Ohio’s legal director, Freda Levenson, said in a statement that the ACLU was “thrilled and relieved” that “transgender youth can continue, for the near term at least, to access medically necessary health care.”

“Our legal battle will continue until, we hope, this cruel restriction is permanently blocked,” Levenson said. “Ohio families have a constitutional right to make personal health care decisions without government intrusion.”

Yost’s Monday filing came a week after the United States Supreme Court paved the way for Idaho to enforce its law protecting children from so-called gender-affirming care, or transgender surgeries and procedures. A judge appointed by former President Bill Clinton, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill, had temporarily blocked Idaho’s Vulnerable Child Protection Act in December, The Washington Post reported.

After Idaho appealed the block and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit refused to change the lower court opinion, Idaho asked the Supreme Court to intervene.

“Denying the basic truth that boys and girls are biologically different hurts our kids,” Idaho Attorney General Raúl R. Labrador said in a statement praising the ruling, The Washington Post reported. “No one has the right to harm children, and I’m grateful that we, as a state, have the power—and duty—to protect them.”

The post After Judge Blocks Law Protecting Kids From Transgender Surgeries, Ohio Calls on State Supreme Court to Intervene appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Maher: Constantly Talking Gender to Kids Entices Them to Do Things They Wouldn't Do, 'Inclusion Becomes Promotion'

On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher said that “endlessly talking about gender to six-year-olds isn’t just inappropriate, it’s what the law would call entrapment, which means enticing people into doing something they wouldn’t ordinarily do. …

The post Maher: Constantly Talking Gender to Kids Entices Them to Do Things They Wouldn’t Do, ‘Inclusion Becomes Promotion’ appeared first on Breitbart.

House Democrats Vow to Codify ‘Rights’ to Trans Surgeries, Hormones, Puberty Blockers

House Democrats released an agenda Thursday that includes a vow to codify a right to so-called gender-affirming care—transgender surgeries, hormones, and puberty blockers.

The promise came within the Congressional Progressive Caucus’ agenda, which House Democrats first shared with NBC News. That agenda includes a slew of left-wing interests, including promises of a higher minimum wage and stronger antitrust laws.

“If the progressive base is not excited and enthusiastic—and if they don’t feel like we are trying to earn their votes and that they are important—then I think the horrific idea of a second Donald Trump presidency could become reality,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., who chairs the progressive caucus, told NBC News in an interview. “We cannot afford to let that happen. And we won’t.”

Although NBC claims that the agenda goes “lighter on cultural issues,” under the category “advancing justice,” it promises to “codify the rights of transgender, nonbinary and intersex people, including gender-affirming care and health care.”

Jayapal did not respond to requests for comment for this article explaining what, exactly, codifying a right to “gender-affirming care” would entail.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash.—flanked by fellow Democratic Reps. Ann Kuster of New Hampshire and Joe Neguse of Colorado—speaks to reporters on Wednesday. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images)

In March 2023, she joined with other Democrats in introducing a “Trans Bill of Rights,” citing the rise in parental rights laws, laws protecting kids from gender transitions, and laws prohibiting boys from participating in girls and women’s sports.

“Day after day, we see a constant onslaught of anti-trans rhetoric and legislation coming from elected officials. Today, we say enough is enough,” Jayapal said at the time.  “Our Trans Bill of Rights says clearly to the trans community across the country that we see you, and we will stand with you, to ensure you are protected and given the dignity and respect that every person should have.”

That legislation would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include gender identity as “protected characteristics.” It would also amend federal education laws to say that they protect kids from being discriminated against based on gender identity.

The Trans Bill of Rights also called for ensuring that “every child has the right to grow up in a supportive environment by having their authentic identity respected in the classroom, ensuring they can participate in school sports with their peers, and ensuring access to an inclusive curriculum.”

It further called for “expanding access” to trans surgeries, hormones, and puberty blockers and codifying rights to abortion and contraception.

Jayapal told NBC News that progressive Democrats assume “this is an agenda for a Democratic president with a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House.”

She added: “We have to excite our base. We have to show them what the path forward is—not just say, ‘This is the most important election of your life, and we expect you to vote.’ I don’t think that’s going to turn people out. And so, I think this agenda, really, speaks to the needs of poor people, working people, progressives across the country who want us to make that case to them.”

“We are not seeing the momentum that we would like to see,” she told NBC. We’re going to have a tough election. … We know we’re going to have to put together that progressive coalition. And I think this is the thing that allows us to say, “‘Look, here’s what we’re fighting for.’”

The post House Democrats Vow to Codify ‘Rights’ to Trans Surgeries, Hormones, Puberty Blockers appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Ireland: police and teachers fear losing jobs over state-backed transgenderism

Ireland: police and teachers fear losing jobs over state-backed transgenderism
Ireland is now a perfect example of how fascism grows: fear of the state develops after politicians fully surrender to special interest groups or to certain ideologies. If police, the military and the media then capitulate to these politicians, who represent the state, then the host society is lost, along with the rights of its […]
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