Free Republic

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawyer Chase Strangio appeared to employ a new term for an adult human female Tuesday. The trans rights activist — who is also a transgender man — appeared on the left-wing digital news show “Democracy Now!” to slam President Donald Trump’s executive order on sex and gender. Strangio complained to show host Amy Goodman that Trump “is targeting trans people by focusing on retrenching this notion of a fixed gender binary at the time of conception.” While making the case, Strangio referred to biological women as “non-transgender women.” […] After refusing to call biological women...

That didn’t take long, but we knew it wouldn’t. Lefty organizations have been fundraising off their promises to fight Trump for a decade now. And since most of them aren’t going to be organizing protests and there are no more presidential elections coming up featuring Trump, that mostly means suing the federal government. Don’t underestimate lawfare. A barrage of lawsuits helped slow the Trump agenda to a crawl in his first term so it was always going to be a rush out of the gate. And the ACLU got in first with a lawsuit challenging an end to birthright citizenship...

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship. The lawsuit was filed in New Hampshire on Monday evening, just hours after the executive order was signed. Under Trump’s order, a baby born in the United States will not have automatic citizenship unless one of the parents is a citizen or green card holder. .....Snip ..... The ACLU argues that the order violates the 14th Amendment and the Administrative Procedures Act. “Denying citizenship to U.S.-born children is not only unconstitutional — it’s also a reckless and ruthless repudiation of American...

The transfer is the largest yet during the Biden administration. ... In a major development, the Pentagon on Monday announced the transfer 11 Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo Bay to Oman, a move that now leaves only 15 detainees still at the detention facility. "The United States appreciates the willingness of the government of Oman and other partners to support ongoing U.S. efforts focused on responsibly reducing the detainee population and ultimately closing the Guantanamo Bay facility," said a DOD statement. In recent weeks, the Pentagon had transferred out four other detainees from Guantanamo including a detainee who was brought to...

This time around, the ACLU shows no signs of backing off, particularly since Trump has once again made big promises to overhaul the border and immigration protocols.ACLU leadership warned two days after the Nov. 5 election that the organization stood ready to take on Trump again.“As Trump returns to the White House, we’re ready to return to the courts and Congress to fight for our civil liberties,” the group said in a statement last month.“Starting on day one, we’re ready to fight for our civil liberties and civil rights in the courts, in Congress, and in our communities,” it continued....

A federal judge ruled on Monday that sections of an Arkansas law, which sought to impose criminal penalties on librarians and booksellers for distributing “harmful” material to children, were unconstitutional. The law, known as the Arkansas Act 372, was signed into law last year by Republican governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders. It was challenged by a coalition of organizations in the state, leading to a lengthy legal battle that concluded this week. Two sections of Act 372 subjected librarians and booksellers to jail time for distributing material that is deemed “harmful to children”. Proponents of the law, including Sanders, said the...

An incoming Democrat state representative in West Virginia has been arrested after he allegedly threatened to kill five of his soon-to-be Republican colleagues. Joseph de Soto, 61, was arrested by state police Thursday in Martinsburg after an investigation found that he made “several threatening/intimidating threats against government officials,” according to a statement from Lieutenant Leslie T. Goldie Jr. of the West Virginia State Police. Police did not provide additional details as to what the threats were or whom exactly they were directed towards. Local outlet WDVM reported that West Virginia Republican Speaker of the House Roger Hanshaw was one of...

Today the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that sought to overturn a ban on gender affirming care for minors in Tennessee. Of course you can't always tell how things are going to turn out by listening to the arguments but you can sometimes get a hint of what each justice is thinking. So here are some of the highlights (or lowlights depending how you look at it).U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar Argues the Ban is Sex DiscriminationFirst up and setting the tone for the opponents of the ban was Prelogar.She argues that the law is a...

Attorney Chase Strangio will be arguing before the Supreme Court on Wednesday this week to advocate for child sex changes on behalf of the ACLU. Strangio, a trans-identified female, will be arguing that Tennessee must allow children in the state to undergo pharmaceutical and surgical sex changes. The US DOJ brought suit against Tennessee, claiming that "the law leaves the same treatments entirely unrestricted if they are prescribed for any other purpose." In other words, if girls can be prescribed estrogen for medical reasons, then it is discriminatory to deprive boys of that estrogen for gender reasons. As an activist...

Far-left groups with a history of engaging in violent protest are being recruited ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20. Flyer are now suddenly appearing around college campuses in Washington, D.C. After scanning the QR codes on the flyers, a collection of links invites individuals to fight fascism by joining the following groups: The People’s Medic Collective (PMC) The DMV Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) The Socialist Action Initiative (SAI) The groups recently took part in the pro-Palestinian protests at the nation’s capital following Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks against Israel. One post-election flyer reads “What now?”...

The Women's March group is returning with a series of D.C. protests in light of President-elect Trump's win.Why it matters: The first Women's March was held the day after Trump's 2017 inauguration to protest what the participants saw as threats the administration posed to issues like civil rights and gender equality. It's considered to be the U.S.' biggest-ever single-day demonstration.And now, almost eight years later, the group is protesting another Trump presidency.State of play: The Women's March group will host a rally in D.C. Saturday at Columbus Circle in front of Union Station "to build community and power ahead of...

Just filed our papers in the Arizona Supreme Court opposing the ACLU’s effort to extend ballot curing past the statutory 5 pm deadline today. Now we wait for the high court to rule … ... There’s no way Trump won Arizona & Lake didn’t. ... The same criminals curing the ballots in Arizona are the same criminals curing the ballots in Nevada. ... This extended ballot counting is ridiculous and has to be stopped .... No one in AZ that voted for Trump voted for Gallego. I have friends there & they're outraged. 1,394,484 votes for Gallego with 1,266,536 reg...

Tens of thousands of people are expected in Washington ahead of Inauguration Day in January to protest President-elect Donald Trump and policy priorities that they say will undermine the rights of women, immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community and racial and religious minorities. The demonstration, dubbed the “People’s March on Washington,” is scheduled for Jan. 18, two days before the inauguration. It is being organized by leading civil rights, racial justice and reproductive health organizations, including the Women’s March and Abortion Access Now, a coalition of organizations including the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and the National Women’s Law Center. Organizers estimate 50,000 people...

A federal judge ruled Sunday that hundreds of ballots from potential noncitizens can have their validity challenged, while critics say that it will threaten the voting rights of recently naturalized citizens. The case was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union in Des Moines, the capital of Iowa, on behalf of the League of Latin American Citizens of Iowa and four recently naturalized citizens who were on the state's list of questionable registrations to be challenged by local elections officials. U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, sided with the state, according to Fox News....

Reprinted with permission from Tablet magazine. In the September debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Trump said something so ludicrous that many viewers must have dismissed it out of hand. “She did things that nobody would ever think of,” Trump said, while rattling off a list of some of the vice president’s most radical “Now she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.” The idea that the vice president “wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison” seemed so patently absurd that The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser cited it in...

When a recently-freed political prisoner who was foreign and black (and a former communist terrorist by his own admission) visited the U.S. in 1990 to request economic and diplomatic sanctions against the segregationist government that jailed him the U.S. media and political establishment went absolutely bonkers with acclaim and adulation. “The hero of oppressed people everywhere!" (hailed ABC.) "A larger than life figure!" (gushed CNN) "A virtual symbol of freedom!" ( heralded CBS). "His name has a mystical quality--a worldwide hero!" (rhapsodized Dan Rather.) “A Hero in America!” (headlined Time magazine.) Other reports compared Nelson Mandela to the Pope, Jesus...

In a recent meeting of the Board of Education in the city of Artichoke, Alabama, it was decided to ban the reading of Homer's Illiad and Odyssey in the classroom. The grounds given for the exclusion of these towering masterpieces of ancient literature is that reading them in a public school violated the first amendment's guarantee of the separation of church and state. Wallace Nobrainer, the attorney for the Artichoke school system, explained that "the Homeric texts are obviously designed to promote the polytheistic view of the Greeks," and hence they should be looked upon in the same light as...

A federal judge ruled on Saturday that part of a Texas law that enacted new voting restrictions violated the U.S. Constitution by being too vague and restricting free speech. The ruling, made by U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez, immediately halted the state’s ability to investigate alleged cases of vote harvesting, such as the investigation into the League of United Latin American Citizens by Attorney General Ken Paxton. Before today’s ruling, a person who knowingly provided or offered vote harvesting services in exchange for compensation was committing a third-degree felony. This meant that organizers of voter outreach organizations and even volunteers...

Chicago is testing a mass surveillance tool to detect guns at CTA stations, even as debate rages around the effectiveness of another detection system used by the city, ShotSpotter. The Chicago Transit Authority announced Thursday it is one month into a year-long pilot program with ZeroEyes, a company that uses artificial intelligence to identify guns in surveillance video and alert police. The CTA says it has deployed the technology on about 250 cameras at L stations — but it won’t say which stations, citing security concerns. CTA spokeswoman Maddie Kilgannon defended the new technology as adding more “eyes” to its...

The Biden-Harris administration has deployed a little-known hiring mechanism to staff key divisions of the Department of Justice (DOJ) ahead of the 2024 election, according to documents provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation by Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT). Hundreds of people, primarily lawyers and judges, have been appointed to the Environmental and Natural Resources (ENRD) and Antitrust and Immigration Review divisions of the DOJ using its “Schedule A” hiring authority since President Joe Biden took office, documents shared with the DCNF by PPT show. Schedule A hiring does not require appointments to be made on the basis of...