Free Republic

A 37-year-old man has admitted in court that he ripped off a woman's hijab on board a flight in the US after screaming "Take it off! This is America!". Gill Parker Payne of Gastonia, from North Carolina, pleaded guilty in a New Mexico federal court to a misdemeanour hate crime charge of using force to intentionally obstruct the woman's free exercise of her religious beliefs. Seated a few rows in front of him was a woman he had never met before. She was wearing a hijab, which Payne recognised as a Muslim practice. He stood up, walked down the aisle...

Management of the New York City area’s three major airports is fed up with long lines at security check points, and they have given the Transportation Security Administration an ultimatum: Either shorten the lines or we’ll find someone else to do it. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, tasked with running John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark airports, is threatening to privatize the process of screening passengers before boarding their flight, according to a document sent from the Port Authority to TSA Administrator Peter Neffenger. “We can no longer tolerate the continuing inadequacy of the TSA passenger...

The Obama administration told U.S. public school districts across the country on Friday to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms that match their gender identity, rather than their gender at birth. The new guidance comes as the Justice Department and North Carolina battle in federal court over a state law passed in March that prohibits people from using public restrooms not corresponding to their biological sex. Officials from the Education and Justice departments told schools that while the new guidance does not carry legal weight, they are obligated not to discriminate against students, including based on their gender identity....

U.S. immigration officials are planning a month-long series of raids in May and June to deport hundreds of Central American mothers and children found to have entered the country illegally, according to sources and an internal document seen by Reuters. The operation would likely be the largest deportation sweep targeting immigrant families by the administration of President Barack Obama this year after a similar drive over two days in January that focused on Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina. Those raids, which resulted in the detention of 121 people, mostly women and children, sparked an outcry from immigration advocates and criticism...

Standing on principle, not to mention common sense, is so rare these days that when someone does it they make headlines. That's because you can quickly be labeled a "bigot" if you oppose a lot of the sludge dumped on us by the secular left, and few can withstand the onslaught. North Carolina's Republican governor, Pat McCrory, is unafraid. On Friday, the Department of Justice sent him a letter warning that North Carolina's House Bill 2, also known as the bathroom bill, violated the Civil Rights Act. The bill, which requires that transgender people use public bathrooms that match their...

Hudson Valley Community College (HVCC) in upstate New York has a solid baseball team this season. In fact, player Kyle Bestle believes “I think we have a real shot at going to the national championship.” It would be the culmination of years worth of work, practice, and dedication to reach the nationals. A dream come true. Alas, it is not to be. Why? Is it because of a player injury? An unfortunate outcome in the qualifying tournament? Not quite. The HVCC baseball team will not be going to nationals because of Governor Cuomo’s ban on non-essential travel to North Carolina,...

Burr calls NC GOP governor 'off base' for seeking congressional action North Carolina's senior senator said his state's Gov. Pat McCrory is "off base" in calling for congressional intervention to resolve a state dispute over restroom access for transgender people. "I've never seen Congress get involved in judicial matters and this is turned over to the court system now," Republican Sen. Richard M. Burr said Tuesday. "So, I think the governor's off base."... Burr said he would rather see the issue remain in the courts. "That's where they chose to put it,” he said. “I would have preferred that they...

What if a state department of motor vehicles or a public school insisted that only biological females could use the restroom set aside for females and that biological males had to use the restroom set aside for males? Would that be a rational policy? Would it be just? The U.S. Justice Department is now arguing in federal court that such a policy wrongfully discriminates against people whose "gender identity" does not "align" with their biological sex. The department filed suit on Monday against the State of North Carolina. At issue is the law North Carolina enacted this year that states:...

By adding to an already challenging legal environment in North Carolina, HB2 could cost the state almost $5 billion a year, according to a new report by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. "The repeal of HB2 would not only reverse the threat to over $5 billion in economic activity for the state, but would also begin to bring North Carolina some of the economic advantages that come when a state embraces diversity and its LGBT citizens," said Christy Mallory, Senior Counsel at the Williams Institute and co-author of the new report. While prior reports have focused on...

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has suspended all city-sponsored travel to North Carolina and Mississippi due to the states’ new transgender laws. Rawlings-Blake made the announcement Tuesday in a letter to city officials, saying she hopes the city’s efforts combined with those of other governments and companies “will push North Carolina and Mississippi” to change. …

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/05/09/prominent-feminist-bans-on-sex-discrimination-emphatically-do-not-require-unisex-restrooms/

The U.S. Justice Department is putting the feelings of transgenders -- men who think they are women and women who think they are men -- above the privacy rights of the vast majority of people who don't contest the biological facts of who they actually are. "And what we must not do, what we must never do, is turn on our neighbors, our family members, our fellow Americans for something that they cannot control and deny what makes them human," Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on Monday. "[N]one of us can stand by when a state enters the business of...

It’s always hard coming out. But it’s even harder not being true to yourself. So, inspired by Bruce Jenner and other intrepid souls, I’ve decided to finally start living the life I was meant to: I identify as Barack Obama. Oh, I can hear the cynical statements now. “Duke, your I.Q. is 50 points too high.” “Duke, you can speak fluently without a Teleprompter.” “Duke, you know there aren’t 60 states and can pronounce “corpsman.” “Duke, you’re melanin compromised.” All these things are inconsequential details, the stuff of tiresome prigs -- sort of like genitalia on a man. Given my...

(CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Justice Department is putting the feelings of transgenders -- men who think they are women and women who think they are men -- above the privacy rights of the vast majority of people who don't contest the biological facts of who they actually are. "And what we must not do, what we must never do, is turn on our neighbors, our family members, our fellow Americans for something that they cannot control and deny what makes them human," Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on Monday.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: The North Carolina governor is turning right around and suing the DOJ on this bathroom law that they passed. The DOJ, the Obama Justice Department, gave Colorado three days, essentially, to throw that bill out. What people don't know is it's not just North Carolina they gave three days, they gave everybody three days. If the DOJ gets their way, every business 15 employees or more, is gonna have to have unisex bathrooms and anybody can go into whatever bathroom they want depending how they want to identify or want to present that day. The solution here...

On Monday, CNN not only continued to misinform its viewers about the contents of the North Carolina bathroom law, but it also used a misleading CNN/ORC poll to dubiously claim that most Americans oppose the law. New Day, CNN Newsroom, and Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield have so far cited the poll claiming that 57 percent of Americans oppose the bathroom law, but the wording of the poll gives the false impression that transgenders are required to use the public restroom of their gender at birth when, as clarified by the North Carolina governor's office, the law still allows transgenders...

he investment firm for Austria’s billionaire Reimann family agreed to buy Winston-Salem-based Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc. for about $1.35 billion, adding the doughnut chain to a coffee empire that already includes Keurig Green Mountain and Peet’s Coffee & Tea. The firm, JAB Holding Co., will pay Krispy Kreme investors $21 a share in cash, the company said in a statement Monday. That represents a 25 percent premium over the stock’s closing price on Friday. The deal brings a sweet edge to JAB’s sprawling coffee enterprise. Krispy Kreme gained fame with its yeast-raised, glazed doughnuts, and only made a major push...

A "law enforcement action". Will be live-streamed. 3:30 Eastern. https://www.justice.gov/live-stream

Gov. Pat McCrory of North Carolina on Monday escalated the nation’s clash over transgender rights by suing the Justice Department, which said last week that the state had violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when it passed a law prohibiting people from using public restrooms that do not correspond with the gender listed on their birth certificates. In the suit, the governor accused the Justice Department of a “radical reinterpretation” of the law. “The department contends that North Carolina’s common sense privacy policy constitutes a pattern or practice of discriminating against transgender employees in the terms and conditions of...

Americans broadly oppose laws that would require transgender people to use facilities that correspond with their gender at birth rather than their gender identity, according to a new CNN/ORC Poll, and three-quarters favor laws guaranteeing equal protection for transgender individuals. Overall, 57% say they oppose laws requiring transgender individuals to use facilities that do not match their gender identity, 38% support such laws. Strong opposition (39%) outweighs strong support for these laws (25%). There's a partisan gap on the question, with Democrats and independents more apt to oppose them than Republicans. But Republicans aren't broadly in favor of them either....