Feds Warn Employers Can Be Punished for Failing to Use Preferred Transgender Pronouns, Restrooms

Gender Neutral Restroom

In landmark guidance, the federal commission created to fight racial and sexual discrimination declared Monday that employers that fail to use a worker’s preferred pronoun or refuse them the chance to use the restroom of their choice will be engaging in prohibited harassment.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission published the new harassment guidelines Monday after voting along partisan lines on Friday to approve them, even in the face of opposition from nearly two dozen red states. Three Democratic appointees approved the rules while two Republicans opposed them.

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Trump Leads Biden in Seven Swing States Including Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona: Poll

Trump Biden

Former President Donald Trump has now pulled ahead of President Joe Biden in seven battleground states, including Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona, according to polling released Tuesday.

Pollsters found Trump beat Biden by two percent in Pennsylvania, with the former president garnering the support of 47 percent of those polled compared to Biden’s 45 percent. Eight percent of Pennsylvania respondents told pollsters they are undecided.

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Top Democratic Leaders Say They Will Save Speaker Johnson from MTG-Led Ouster

Congressman Hakeem Jefferies with Speaker Mike Johnson (composite image)

Democratic leaders in the House indicated Tuesday that if Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., attempted to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson, they would work against such a move.

“We will vote to table Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Motion to Vacate the Chair,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Whip Katherine Clark, and Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar said in a statement, according to CBS News. “If she invokes the motion, it will not succeed.”

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Pentagon Says It Can’t Calculate Diversity Training Costs Because Congress Defunded DEI Offices

Soldiers

The Pentagon told Congress it could not provide a required accounting of diversity training to Congress because it didn’t have enough people working in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) positions, the Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.

Congress mandated the Pentagon compile a report detailing how much the entire military spent on diversity training, salaries for DEI administrators and any impacts on recruiting and retention across the force that was due March 1, according to last year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which sets defense policy for the next fiscal year. But the Pentagon is nearly two months behind the due date for the report after the same defense authorization act for fiscal year 2024 slashed the salaries of DEI personnel, effectively gutting the departments, the DCNF learned.

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Several GOP-Led States Ban DOJ Election Monitors From Polling Sites in 2024 Presidential Election

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft

Several Republican-led states said that they are banning U.S. Department of Justice election monitors from entering polling sites in the November general election after the agency sent observers to various states in the 2022 midterms.

When the DOJ announced that it was sending election monitors to polling sites in multiple states for the 2022 midterm elections, Florida and Missouri said that the department employees would not be permitted to observe the polls. Now, eight other states have said that they will also not allow DOJ election monitors to enter polling sites during the election this November, with some saying that banning them prevents federal interference in elections.

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Commentary: Efforts to Control Gaza Protests Threaten Free Speech and Academic Freedom

Pro-Palestine protest

When I was in college, one of my professors had written her PhD thesis on the cultural aspects of the post-civil-war militias, organizations that would evolve into the National Guard of today. These units proliferated at the time to give men, who lived in the shadow of their fathers’ and grandfathers’ Civil War service, a chance to emulate their exploits. When the Spanish-American War began in 1898, the men of these militias volunteered en masse. They finally had a chance to prove themselves worthy of their forbears and do something daring and dangerous.

My professor suggested that she and other academics were in an analogous situation. For them—and they were almost all on the left—missing out on the 1960s meant they missed out on a period of revolutionary change and ferment. For left-leaning academics, the 1960s was the era of breaking rules, smashing idols, and inventing new ideas and methods to address the abandonment of the old authorities. This period featured the debut of influential prophets of “unmasking” so prevalent in academic life today, such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Herbert Marcuse

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DeSantis Touts More Spending for the Developmentally Disabled in Florida

Ron DeSantis

Floridians with developmental disabilities will benefit from a record level of funding for direct services after Gov. Ron DeSantis announced a multi-billion dollar investment from the state.

DeSantis spoke at the Els Center in Jupiter on Monday and announced that as part of the Live Healthy legislation spearheaded by Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, and his Focus on Florida’s Bright Future Budget that $2.2 billion will be going to the Agency for Persons with Disabilities for services through the iBudget waiver.

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Congress Seeks to Unmask Funding for Students for Justice in Palestine and Its Anti-Israel Protests

National Students for Justice in Palestine

The National Students for Justice in Palestine is a driving force in the anti-Israel protests sweeping across the country at college campuses. The national group says it supports 350 “Palestine solidarity organizations” throughout North America, primarily SJP chapters across America.

The funding of the student chapters largely come from U.S. universities, however, National SJP is funded through intermediaries and it is not required to disclose its own finances. This dark money arrangement has obscured funding sources and donations to the group and has spurred congressional interest.

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‘Economic Suicide’: Biden Admin Justifies Tax Hike Based on Racial Criteria

President Joe Biden

The Biden administration’s analysis of its revenue proposals for fiscal year 2025 argues targeted tax hikes that disproportionately affect white people would ease racial wealth inequality.

Increasing taxes on capital gains and income-based wealth would reduce racial wealth inequality for black and Hispanic families, the Treasury Department outlined in the analysis published in mid-March. The Treasury points out that white families disproportionately hold assets subject to capital gains tax or are in a higher tax bracket, meaning a hike in those taxes would benefit black and Hispanic families.

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Commentary: The World Health Organization’s Pandemic Treaty Ignores COVID Policy Mistakes

World Health Organization

The World Health Organization is urging the U.S. and 193 other governments to commit next month to a new global treaty to prevent and manage future pandemics. Current estimates suggest over $31 billion per year will be needed to fund its obligations, a cost most lower income countries cannot afford. But that isn’t the only reason to oppose it. Validating this treaty is a vote for the disastrous policies of the Covid years. Rather than taking time for deep reflection and serious reform, those pushing the pandemic treaty are set on ignoring and institutionalizing the WHO’s mistakes.

From the Spring of 2020, many experts warned that the panic begun in Wuhan’s unprecedented lockdown would cause wide-ranging damage—and indeed they did. School closures deprived a generation of children—especially poor children—of access to basic education. Businesses were shuttered. Vaccine and mask mandates made public health an authoritarian exercise of power devoid of science. Border quarantines promulgated the idea that the rest of the world is unclean.  

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Chinese Spy Ship Stalks US Warships During Military Drills

Chinese spy ship stalks US Navy Ship

At least two Chinese surveillance ships kept a close eye on U.S. Navy ships conducting military drills just outside of Philippine territorial waters in the South China Sea, according to media reports Monday.

U.S., Philippine and French warships initially set off from Puerto Princesa, the Philippines, on Thursday to complete the maritime component of the Balikatan 2024 military exercises, U.S. Naval Institute News reported. Once they entered international waters of the South China Sea to which Beijing has laid claim on Saturday, two People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) warships were spotted stalking the multilateral formation within a few nautical miles, multiple outlets reported.

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