Daily Links #121: Trump’s trans military ban blocked yet again

Will you look at that: 500 posts. Do I win something?

• Trump’s trans military ban just keeps getting, er, banned by federal courts.
  (via @fark)

• The Supreme Court just made it a little harder for the Trump administration to deport immigrants.
  (via @Popehat)

• What white people can learn from the Starbucks arrests; or, the importance of recognizing, and fighting against, implicit bias.

• You’d think a professional defender of the Catholic Church’s handling of child-diddling priests would know better than to weigh in on the David Silverman affair. (Yes, of course it’s Bill Donohue.)

• Finally, Ed Brayton presents: Eight Rules for Understanding Our Teenage President.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Daily Links #119: SC cops shoot at man 57 times over $100 pot sale

Julian Betton

• South Carolina cops shot at a man ^[pictured] 57 times, hitting him nine times and paralyzing him, during a drug raid over a $100 pot sale. They claimed they’d announced themselves and that he fired at them first, and an “oversight” agency claimed the shooting was justified; his surveillance camera proved they lied about everything. The shooters and prosecutors have now given him a $2.75 million settlement.
  

• Slate exposes the junk science and blatant lies behind Trump’s trans military ban, including the fact that Defense Secretary Mattis was overruled by Mike Pence who, aided by fellow bigots like Tony Perkins, helped sway Trump to ignore the testimony from actual experts who say the ban accomplishes nothing good.
  (via @fark)

• Trump’s EPA continues to attack and lie about science at every turn.
  (via @BadAstronomer)

• You know someone has a bad case of Christian persecution complex when they complain that Sweet Jesus ice cream shop’s name is “offensive”.

• Finally, coal baron Bob Murray apparently thought it would be a good idea to send a complaint letter to the judge who dismissed his bogus defamation suit against John Oliver. The ACLU is amused. The judge is not.
  (via @adamsteinbaugh; retweet by @Popehat)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Trump admin. enacts new trans military ban

The Pentagon had until tonight to institute Trump’s policy to ban trans servicemembers, and characteristically, Trump signed the order at the last minute. Months of legal challenges later, the trans military ban is now in place:

Following a Pentagon policy review after a tweet by President Donald Trump last year, the White House said the policy will say "transgender persons with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria -- individuals who the policies state may require substantial medical treatment, including medications and surgery -- are disqualified from military service except under certain limited circumstances."

[…]

According to a Pentagon memo about the policy, exceptions to the ban include people who have been "stable for 36 consecutive months in their biological sex prior to accession," servicemembers who "do not require a change of gender" and troops who started serving under the Obama administration's policy prior to the new memo.

It doesn’t matter what excuse or rationale they bring up to bolster this move; it won’t hide the fact that this is no more than a gift to Trump’s regressive base, the same that has a conniption at the thought of trans people using the right bathrooms. The facts were already clear when Trump first tweeted the policy change last August and they’ve only been hammered home since: Thousands of trans troops are already in the US armed forces, they serve every bit as competently and professionally as their cisgender comrades, and throwing them out would only weaken the military, not strengthen it. (It’s never been made clear just how throwing out thousands of dedicated soldiers, trans or otherwise, is supposed to strengthen the military’s combat readiness.) This is discrimination in its plainest form.

The lawsuits are guaranteed to keep coming, so it’s anyone’s guess how it’ll turn out. But I’m not holding onto hope; in the end, the executive branch has the power to implement whatever conditions for enlistment it wants, barring anything blatantly unconstitutional. Trans people were already banned up to 2016; there’s little reason things couldn’t go back to that.

Trump admin. drops trans military ban for now

After months of repeated court losses, Trump & co. have now stopped trying to ban fully qualified US citizens from serving in the armed forces (and kick out the thousands who are already there) based only on their gender identity.

The Trump administration has abandoned its bid to prevent openly transgender people from serving in the U.S. military, the Pentagon announced late Friday night.

In July, the Trump administration attempted to delay an Obama-era Department of Defense ruling allowing openly transgender Americans to enlist in the military from January 1.

[…]

However the policy has met with several federal court challenges—with two federal appeals courts upholding rulings that the Trump administration could not enforce the ban.

In a statement to Reuters, the Department of Justice said it would not fight the January 1 deadline and was not challenging the court rulings, but that the Trump administration may consider other means of blocking transgender people enlisting.

"The Department of Defense has announced that it will be releasing an independent study of these issues in the coming weeks," the official said.

The move was so characteristically Trumpian in its pointless, petty cruelty to begin with. Trans service members are no less physically and psychologically capable than are cisgender troops; what medical requirements some of them have are comparatively minor, costing only a tenth of the military’s Viagra budget; thousands of them are already in service at home or overseas; and studies have confirmed that allowing them to serve openly has “no significant impact on unit cohesion or operational readiness” – in short, kicking them out serves no real purpose whatsoever and would only weaken the military, all in order to get rid of trans people because the current White House leadership doesn’t like them (or is possibly pandering to the reliably bigoted White Evangelical crowd).

It’s almost as though letting naked bigotry direct decision-making makes for shitty and harmful policy. Who’d a’ thunk it?

(via Joe.My.God.)

Courts deal Trump double-whammy on sanctuary cities and trans military ban

Donald Trump

Amidst all the grim news hanging over us these days, it’s worth remembering that good things do happen. Here’s some: Trump just had a bad couple days in court. Now relax and enjoy the schadenfreude.

First, a federal judge yesterday killed one of Trump’s first executive orders wherein he tried to cut off funding to “sanctuary cities” that refuse to sell out undocumented immigrants to the federal government:

In a summary judgment ruling, U.S. District Judge William Orrick III found Trump’s Jan. 25 executive order violated the Constitution in multiple ways: by invoking spending powers that belong exclusively to Congress, and by placing unrelated conditions on federal grants in violation of the Tenth Amendment.

“Federal funding that bears no meaningful relationship to immigration enforcement cannot be threatened merely because a jurisdiction chooses an immigration enforcement strategy of which the President disapproves,” Orrick wrote in a 28-page ruling.

Orrick temporarily banned the executive order in April after San Francisco and Santa Clara County filed separate lawsuits against the presidential directive.

With billions in annual federal aid on the line, both jurisdictions cited the risk of major budget uncertainty. San Francisco receives $1.2 billion in annual federal aid and $800 million in multiyear grants, while Santa Clara County relies on $1.7 billion each year to fund essential services, including public health and child protective services.

And today, a second federal judge (following a similar ruling last month) has blocked the trans military ban from going into effect, citing the harm it would cause to trans troops who already face hardship:

In a 53-page ruling, US District Court Judge Marvin Garbis in Maryland concluded that transgender service members are "already suffering harmful consequences," and went a step further than an earlier ruling by specifically prohibiting the Trump administration from blocking those challenging the ban from completing their medically necessary surgeries.

"They have further demonstrated that they are already suffering harmful consequences such as the cancellation and postponements of surgeries, the stigma of being set apart as inherently unfit, facing the prospect of discharge and inability to commission as an officer, the inability to move forward with long-term medical plans, and the threat to their prospects of obtaining long-term assignments," Garbis wrote. "Waiting until after the directives have been implemented to challenge their alleged violation of constitutional rights only subjects them to substantial risk of even greater harms."

The judge, a Bush Sr. appointee, was “particularly unmoved” by the Justice Department’s claim that Trump’s Twitter-announcement of the ban totally didn’t count as a policy decision, and he did not mince words:

"A capricious, arbitrary, and unqualified tweet of new policy does not trump the methodical and systematic review by military stakeholders qualified to understand the ramifications of policy changes."

“Capricious”, “arbitrary” and “unqualified” … I think he just described the entire Trump presidency.

(via Joe.My.God.)

Roy Moore, Christian-fascist hypocrite

Roy Moore

From the man who was twice removed as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, first for refusing to remove a Christian monument from his courthouse and then for trying to enforce an illegal ban on same-sex marriage:

Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore (R) said the federal judge who stopped President Trump’s proposed ban on transgender people in the military should be impeached, the Birmingham News reports.

He called it “a perfect example of the outlandish doctrine of judicial supremacy whereby judges exalt themselves over the Constitution they are sworn to uphold.”

Irony is dead. Long live irony. And this man is expected to easily win the race for Jeff Sessions’s vacant Senate seat.

“Ayatollah of Alabama” indeed.

(via @GrahamDavidA; RT: @Popehat)

Federal court blocks trans military ban (for now)

Though overshadowed by today’s big news, another big development is the fact that federal judge has blocked Trump’s attempt to kick trans troops out of the armed forces:

Trump announced in an August memo that he intended to reverse course on a 2016 policy that allowed troops to serve openly as transgender individuals. He said he would order a return to the policy prior to June 2016, under which service members could be discharged for being transgender.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote Monday that transgender members of the military who had sued over the change were likely to win their lawsuit and barred the Trump administration from reversing course.

[…]

Kollar-Kotelly said in her opinion that the president’s directives are “not genuinely based on legitimate concerns regarding military effectiveness or budget constraints, but are instead driven by a desire to express disapproval of transgender people generally.”

When a judge smacks you down and says they can see through your pretense to the underlying bigotry, you should probably stop right there. Of course, there will almost inevitably be appeals and attempts to rewrite the ban, so this is hardly over. But it’s still satisfying to imagine the sort of nightmarish day Trump is having.

Defense Secretary Mattis halts trans military ban pending review [corrected]

CORRECTION (08/30/17 @ 7:13 PM ET): Seems a lot of reports jumped the gun, including the USA TODAY article I based this on. As others have noted, Mattis isn’t postponing Trump’s ban at all; he’s obeying a memo Trump signed ordering a review on how best to implement the ban. As I did note, though, it’s basically a foregone conclusion that the ban is going through one way or another. The original post follows.

DefSec James Mattis

Defense Secretary Mattis just ordered a freeze on Trump’s newly signed trans military ban until a study on its consequences could be completed:

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis late Tuesday announced that transgender troops will be allowed to continue serving in the military pending the results of a study by experts.

[…]

"Once the panel reports its recommendations and following my consultation with the secretary of Homeland Security, I will provide my advice to the president concerning implementation of his policy direction," Mattis said in the statement. "In the interim, current policy with respect to currently serving members will remain in place."

Mattis' move buys time for the Pentagon to determine how and if it will allow thousands of transgender troops to continue to serve, whether they will receive medical treatment, or how they will be discharged.

As Defense Secretary, Mattis has emphasized that he has little tolerance for policies that detract from military readiness or the Pentagon's effectiveness on the battlefield.

One can thus imagine how he felt about his Commander-in-Chief’s decision to kick out thousands of active troops because of pure bigotry and politics. It’s not like trans troops negatively impact military readiness, nor do they cost much – trans healthcare expenses total at most just over $8 million annually (roughly the cost of one Trump golf trip) out of a defense budget of $600 billion.

Mattis’s move may also have something to do with this:

A new report estimates banning transgender service members would set the U.S. back $960 million, challenging President Donald Trump's pro-ban argument about "the tremendous medical costs" associated with permitting transgender people to serve in the military.

The report, co-authored by the Palm Center and current and retired professors at the Naval Postgraduate School, estimates the cost to replace transgender service members would be 100 times greater than current estimates for the annual cost of providing them transition-related care.

Why, it’s almost like arbitrarily slashing thousands of qualified and devoted troops out of the armed forces without checking what the consequences may be or even asking anyone involved beforehand was a stupid thing to do.

Of course, there’s zero indication that Trump will be at all receptive to being told, even backed with evidence and research, that his decision was knuckleheaded and that he should reverse course. After all, Trump is never wrong. Or rather, he can never admit when he’s wrong, which he probably thinks is the same thing.

What a great president that 25% of the country elected.

(via Joe.My.God.)

Lawsuits filed against Trump’s trans military ban

The legal battle commences:

A pair of advocacy groups said Monday they are going to court to overturn the Trump administration’s ban on transgender troops serving in the military, in the latest legal assault on the controversial directive.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of five transgender service members. The suit, filed by the Maryland branch of the ACLU, argues the ban is unconstitutional and discriminatory and has hired Covington and Burling, a powerful D.C. law firm, to represent it.

Also, Lambda Legal and OutServe-SLDN, which includes currently serving LGBT military personnel, separately filed suit on behalf of two transgender people who want to join the military and one currently in uniform, also citing constitutional concerns.

The Human Rights Campaign and the Gender Justice League are included in the effort.

“The law is on our side; justice is on our side," said Peter Perkowski, legal director for OutServe-SLDN. “Trump can’t tweet his way out of this one.”

Have a mental high-five, Mr. Perkowski. And good luck.

The best part: The ACLU’s complaint includes embedded screenshots of Trump’s tweets announcing the ban. This is where we’re at now.

(via Joe.My.God.)

Trump signs trans military ban into law

With the US focusing on Texas and its hurricane woes (stay safe, Lone-Star-Staters), one development that’s received comparatively little attention is the culmination, earlier today, of Trump’s month-old Twitter promise to ban trans people from serving in the military:

President Donald Trump on Friday directed the military not to move forward with an Obama-era plan that would have allowed transgender individuals to be recruited into the armed forces, following through on his intentions announced a month earlier to ban transgender people from serving.

The presidential memorandum also bans the Department of Defense from using its resources to provide medical treatment regimens for transgender individuals currently serving in the military.

Trump also directed the departments of Defense and Homeland Security "to determine how to address transgender individuals currently serving based on military effectiveness and lethality, unitary cohesion, budgetary constraints, applicable law, and all factors that may be relevant," the White House official said.

The White House official who briefed reporters on the memo on Friday evening declined to say whether current transgender troops would be allowed to remain in the military under those policy guidelines.

[…]

"He's going to continue to ensure that the rights of the LGBTQ community, as well as all Americans, is protected," the official added. "This policy is based on a series of national security considerations."

Except that’s bullshit and everyone who’s been paying attention knows it. A grand total of 4,000–15,000 trans troops are currently serving, depending on the study cited, in a military of 1.3 million. That smidge-more-than-1% of the US’s troops costs up to $8.4 million annually, or about 0.014% of the Defense Department’s annual budget of almost $600 billion. (That same budget already devotes $84 million per year to erectile dysfunction drugs.) Further, studies into the effects of letting trans personnel serve openly have established there’d be “no significant impact on unit cohesion or operational readiness”, despite bigots’ love of using those buzzwords in their perennial attempts at denying minority groups the right to serve in their military.

The simple fact is there’s no good, military-effectiveness-based rationale for doing this. It’s pure bigotry with a side of demagogic gamesmanship. That’s why politicians and experts on both sides of the political aisle have hammered him for it. But he knows it plays well to his heavily bigoted base, so if that means pointlessly tossing out thousands of devoted and fully capable service members, so be it.

Daily Links: 08/06/17 – Saudi Arabia to execute government critics

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA)

Slow couple news days (ain’t that a change?), so have a shortened Links post.

• The US’s wonderful ally, Saudi Arabia, is about to execute 14 people, including three who were juveniles when sentenced, who were convicted by a sham trial for criticizing their government.
  (via @radleybalko)

• White House issues their “guidance” for implementing Trump’s trans military ban: encouraging early retirement and firing trans officers up for promotion. Combat troops’ status is unclear. LGBTQ advocacy group Lambda Legal plans to challenge the ban in court.
  (via Joe.My.God.)

• Solid write-up in The Week about why so many on the Left don’t trust politicians like Kamala Harris ^[pictured] and Cory Booker, and why race has nothing to do with it, despite the sleazy accusations from establishment leaders. Not mentioned but also troubling is Harris’s support for civil asset forfeiture and defense of the death penalty.
  (via @ggreenwald)

• And finally, skepticism alert: Are Brooklyn antivaxxers refusing to vaccinate their pets over autism fears? Reports all point to one source, a local weekly newsletter, that features anecdotes from two vets who report “concerns” from an unknown number of clients, and quotes from several people on the street who don’t buy it. I wouldn’t at all be surprised if this were real to some extent, but let’s wait for actual data before drawing conclusions.
  (via Friendly Atheist; thanks to Lan for the Snopes link)

If you have any story suggestions, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

Daily Links: 08/03/17 – Court denies compensation to US citizen wrongly detained by ICE for 3 years

Davino Waters

• Appeals court rules a naturalized US citizen ^[pictured] who was wrongly imprisoned by ICE for three-and-a-half years without a lawyer isn’t eligible for compensation because the statute of limitations expired whilst he was in custody.
  (via RT by @radleybalko)

• Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) presents a bill to decriminalize pot nationwide, cut funding to states that target minorities, and dump that money back into Drug War-ravaged communities. It’s a commonsensical move that would improve lives and wellbeing all over, so of course it has zero chance of passing, least of all with Trump and his Drug-Warrior Attorney General.
  (via @ggreenwald & Joe.My.God.)

• For the second time in as many weeks, a group of Baltimore, MD cops gets busted planted drugs because they didn’t understand how their body cameras work.
  (via RT by @radleybalko)

• 56 retired US generals and flag officers warn in a press release that Trump’s trans military ban would cause significant disruptions and degrade military readiness, contrary to the howling of the far-Right fringe.
  (via Joe.My.God.)

• Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Trump White House: Ignore that.
  (via RT by @radleybalko)

• Poll: Trump’s approval rating continues to plummet with his credibility SO MUCH WINNING
  (via Joe.My.God.)

• And finally, from the ACLU of West Virginia, in an actual court document regarding coal king Bob Murray’s ridiculous SLAPP lawsuit against John Oliver: “Anyone Can Legally Say ‘Eat Shit, Bob!’” It only gets better from there.
  

If you have any story suggestions, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.