October, 13 2009, 01:38pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
1050 Connecticut Ave NW,Suite 65500,Washington, DC 20035,Phone: 202-393-5177
Task Force Applauds Gov. Schwarzenegger for Signing into Law Three LGBT Rights Bills
Task Force first national organization to call for Harvey Milk Day
WASHINGTON
The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force applauds California
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for signing into law three lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights bills. Schwarzenegger signed a
bill that marks May 22 as Harvey Milk Day, recognizing the
contributions of slain civil rights leader Harvey Milk. The Task Force
was the first national organization to support the Milk day of
recognition and recently called upon the U.S. Postal Service to issue a
stamp in honor of the gay leader.
Schwarzenegger also signed a bill granting same-sex couples married
before the passage of Proposition 8 full recognition as married spouses
in California, regardless of whether they married in California or out
of state. In addition, the new statute confirms that same-sex couples
married outside of California after Nov. 5, 2008, must be given all of
the rights, protections and responsibilities of married spouses under
California law, with the sole exception of the designation of
"marriage."
The governor also signed the "LGBT Domestic Violence Programs
Expansion Bill," which will leverage funding for same-sex domestic
violence services. He vetoed two bills: the "Equal ID Act," which would
have allowed transgender people to obtain new birth certificates, and
the "LGBT Prisoner Safety Act," which would have considered sexual
orientation and gender identity to safely house prisoners.
Statement by Rea Carey, Executive Director
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
"We applaud Gov. Schwarzenegger for doing the right thing by
honoring a true civil rights hero. Harvey Milk gave hope to a
generation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. His
history is our history, and a day in his honor will preserve his legacy
for generations to come. It is a great tribute to mark a day in name of
an openly gay leader for his outstanding contributions to California
and the nation.
"We are also grateful that Gov. Schwarzenegger has signed the
'Marriage Recognition and Family Protection Act,' and the 'LGBT
Domestic Violence Programs Expansion Bill,' two measures that will
provide important protections and services to the LGBT community.
"We are disappointed by the vetoes of the 'Equal ID Act' and the
'LGBT Prisoner Safety Act.' We urge the state to keep working to ensure
LGBT people receive the rights and protections in these critical areas.
"We congratulate Equality California for spearheading the efforts on these critical bills."
The National LGBTQ Task Force advances full freedom, justice and equality for LGBTQ people. We are building a future where everyone can be free to be their entire selves in every aspect of their lives. Today, despite all the progress we've made to end discrimination, millions of LGBTQ people face barriers in every aspect of their lives: in housing, employment, healthcare, retirement, and basic human rights. These barriers must go. That's why the Task Force is training and mobilizing millions of activists across our nation to deliver a world where you can be you. Join us!
LATEST NEWS
South Carolina Teen Sues School, Teacher Who Shoved Her Over Pledge of Allegiance Refusal
"The thing that's beautiful about America is we have freedoms," said the student's lawyer. "Students in our schools should feel safe."
Mar 10, 2023
Marissa Barnwell, a 15-year-old high school student in Lexington, South Carolina, was joined by her parents and the family's lawyer on Thursday as they spoke publicly about a federal lawsuit they filed against her school district, the state Department of Education, and a teacher who they say assaulted Barnwell late last year for not reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
Surveillance footage from River Bluff High School shows Barnwell walking through a school hallway on November 29, 2022 when the pledge began playing over a loudspeaker.
A state law passed three decades ago requires public schools to play the Pledge of Allegiance over their intercom systems each day at a specific time, but it prohibits any punishment of people who refuse to recite the pledge as long as "they are not disruptive or do not infringe on others."
Barnwell continued walking and was quickly confronted by a special education teacher, Nicole Livingston, who yelled at her and pushed her against a wall before sending her to the principal's office.
"I was just in disbelief," Barnwell said at the press conference Thursday. "You can hear me say in the video, 'Get your hands off of me.'"
Barnwell's parents learned about the incident when she called them in tears, according to the Associated Press. The school did not talk to them about the alleged assault and has reportedly "never responded" to their requests for an explanation.
"It will not be tolerated, and we will get justice for this action that [Livingston] did," Fynale Barnwell, Marissa's mother, toldNews 19 WLTX, a local CBS affiliate.
The lawsuit was filed last month, with the family arguing Livingston violated Barnwell's "constitutional rights by yelling and demanding that M.B. stop walking and physically assaulting her by pushing M.B., on the wall and forcefully touching M.B., in an unwanted way without her consent."
The Secular Coalition for America applauded the family for taking legal action.
Tyler Bailey, the Barnwells' attorney, said Barnwell was "threatened for exercising [her] constitutional rights."
"The thing that's beautiful about America is we have freedoms," Bailey said Thursday. "Students in our schools should feel safe."
According toThe State, a local newspaper, Livingston is still employed by the school.
"Nobody did anything," Bailey said. "This is why the federal civil rights lawsuit has been filed."
Keep ReadingShow Less
House Freedom Caucus Economic Hostage-Takers Issue Latest Ransom Demands
"These power-hungry lawmakers are so determined to keep the Biden administration from rebuilding the middle class that they're willing to tank the economy to do it," one advocate warned.
Mar 10, 2023
A cadre of far-right Republicans announced Friday that they may only vote to raise the debt ceiling if Congress agrees to cut hundreds of billions of dollars in social spending, limit federal agencies' future budgets, and abandon progressive elements of President Joe Biden's economic agenda.
Since Washington's arbitrary and arguably unconstitutional borrowing limit was breached in January, the Treasury Department has implemented "extraordinary measures" enabling the U.S. government to meet its obligations for a few additional months. Unless the Biden administration takes unilateral action to disarm the debt ceiling, Congress has until sometime between July and September to increase or suspend the nation's borrowing cap. If Republicans refuse to do so, the U.S. is poised to suffer a catastrophic default.
Led by Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), the House Freedom Caucus said Friday in a
statement that its 45 members would "consider voting" to raise the debt limit if their colleagues in the House and Senate agree to:
- Eliminate Biden's $400 billion student debt cancellation plan;
- Rescind unspent Covid-19 relief funds;
- Nix nearly $400 billion worth of clean energy investments approved in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA);
- Repeal the IRA's roughly $80 billion funding boost for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS);
- Restore Clinton-era work requirements on welfare recipients;
- Require congressional approval before any major federal regulations can take effect;
- Cap future federal spending at 2022 levels for the next 10 years; and
- Find "every dollar spent by Democrats that can be reclaimed for the American taxpayer."
Although Capitol Hill's deficit hawks are eager to attack the poor and slash popular programs, they
don't support reducing the ever-expanding U.S. military budget or hiking taxes on corporations and the rich to increase revenue. Rescinding the IRS funding boost, meanwhile, would help wealthy households evade taxes and add an estimated $114 billion to the federal deficit.
"The MAGA extremists running the House fully intend to manufacture a disastrous default crisis by making demands they know to be nonstarters—like letting wealthy tax cheats and big polluters off the hook," Liz Zelnick, director of Economic Security and Corporate Power at Accountable.US, said in a statement.
"These power-hungry lawmakers are so determined to keep the Biden administration from rebuilding the middle class that they're willing to tank the economy to do it," Zelnick continued.
With Republicans possessing a five-seat House majority and the ability of any party member to introduce a motion to remove the House speaker—a new rule the Freedom Caucus secured in exchange for electing Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to the role—a few dozen of the GOP's most right-wing members have significant leverage over the fate of the U.S. and world economy.
"They demand sacrifice only from everyday Americans while they insist on preserving or even expanding wasteful tax breaks for billionaires and greedy corporations," said Zelnick. "They're playing a dangerous game of chicken with the economy and the lives of millions of working families."
"The MAGA extremists running the House... demand sacrifice only from everyday Americans while they insist on preserving or even expanding wasteful tax breaks for billionaires and greedy corporations."
A 2011 debt ceiling standoff—when Biden was vice president—enabled congressional Republicans to impose austerity and also resulted in a historic downgrading of the U.S. government's credit rating, but the country has never defaulted on its debt. Economists warned during the last standoff in 2021 that a default would trigger enough chaos in global financial markets to destroy almost six million jobs and roughly $15 trillion in household wealth in the U.S. alone.
Fully aware of the stakes, GOP lawmakers have threatened on multiple occasions over the past few months to unleash economic pain on a mass scale unless they succeed in gutting the relatively underdeveloped U.S. welfare state.
"Speaker McCarthy is not going to cut a deal with Democrats," Perry said Friday at a press conference. "We're not assuming that leadership is opposed to these thing[s]... this is all reasonable stuff."
The latest ultimatum from the Freedom Caucus "appeared to complicate efforts to clinch a deal and avert a looming fiscal calamity," The Washington Post reported.
Biden has repeatedly denounced Republicans for taking the economy hostage in a bid to force through harmful changes, declining to entertain what he calls their "gut punch to the middle class." The president on Friday reiterated his refusal to consider the GOP's proposed cuts, saying, "I don't know [if] there's much to negotiate on."
On Thursday, the White House released its budget request for fiscal year 2024. Notwithstanding Biden's attempt to further increase Pentagon spending, the framework has been hailed by progressives for proposing tax hikes on corporations and the wealthy to expand a range of public goods, including substantial funding for climate action, childcare, education, healthcare, housing, and more.
Although Biden's proposal would reduce the federal deficit by nearly $3 trillion over the next decade—the same amount mentioned in the Freedom Caucus' austerity blueprint—Perry said Friday that the White House's progressive tax and investment plan is "not happening."
In an ominous sign, "Republicans readied a bill earlier this week that would prepare the government in the event of a default," the Post reported. "The measure, which the tax-focused Ways and Means Committee sent to the full House, essentially would prioritize some federal payments over others in the event the United States no longer had the authority to borrow."
Notably, this entire episode of fiscal brinkmanship could have been avoided had Democrats listened to Sen. Elizabeth Warren(D-Mass.) and other progressives who urged the party to raise the debt ceiling—or abolish it altogether—when it still controlled both chambers of Congress last year.
Conservative Democrats refused to act during the lame-duck session despite Warren's warning that GOP lawmakers desperate to win the White House in 2024 will "blow up the economy" and run ads blaming Biden for it.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Pro-Polluter' Manchin Announces He'll Block Biden's Nominee for Land and Minerals Regulator
"Climate policy is not a partisan issue," said one critic. "Voters across the political spectrum worry about the threats posed by drought, wildfire, heatwaves, rising seas, and other climate disasters."
Mar 10, 2023
Suggesting that the appointment of federal regulators who acknowledge the threat of the climate crisis is a signal of inappropriate "partisan politics," U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chair Joe Manchin on Friday announced that he will not advance President Joe Biden's nominee to oversee land and minerals management at the Interior Department.
In an op-ed for The Houston Chronicle, the right-wing West Virginia Democrat wrote after months of speculation that he will not allow Laura Daniel-Davis' nomination for assistant secretary for lands and minerals management to proceed.
Manchin wrote that he particularly objected to a recently revealed internal memo from the Interior Department which showed Daniel-Davis—currently principal deputy assistant secretary for lands and mineral management—approved a decision to not lower federal fees for fossil fuel companies.
As The Hill reported last week, the Interior Department considered charging lower royalties for leased parcels to oil and gas companies when it sold leases in Alaska's Cook Inlet. In theinternal memo, which was mistakenly made public on the department's website, Amanda Lefton, then-director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, claimed that cutting fees would "incentivize additional blocks receiving bids, increase bonus bids, and increase the chances of a discovery being developed."
"Nevertheless, because of the serious challenges facing the nation from climate change and the impact of [greenhouse gases] from fossil fuels, the bureau is not recommending this option since it would not include an appropriate surcharge to account for those impacts," Lefton added, in a decision that secured Daniel-Davis' signoff.
As he weighed Daniel-Davis' nomination last week—months after she was first nominated by Biden—Manchin expressed concern about the memo, saying he opposed the confirmation of anyone he believes has put "their radical climate agenda ahead of the needs of the people of Alaska and the United States."
"With this position vacant, critical clean energy and conservation funds will not reach the communities that need them most."
On Friday, he confirmed in the Chronicle his opposition to Daniel-Davis over what he called her "misguided reasoning" for maintaining higher royalties for fossil fuel companies.
"Even though I supported her in the past," he wrote, "I cannot, in good conscience, support her or anyone else who will play partisan politics and agree with this misguided and dangerous manipulation of the law."
Manchin backed Daniel-Davis in previous committee votes on her nomination last year.
The senator went as far as suggesting Daniel-Davis demonstrated insufficient loyalty to the U.S. when she approved the fees for oil and gas companies, writing on Friday, "Going forward, each and every proposed nominee I will review will be judged through one prism: Are they political partisans first or Americans first?"
On Wednesday, he also denounced officials in the Biden administration for "putting their radical climate agenda ahead of our nation's energy security."
Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, called Manchin's decision "baffling, hypocritical, and short-sighted," noting that Manchin confirmed many of former Republican President Donald Trump's nominees "by saying that he 'always understood the importance of an executive being able to assemble a team of people they trust.'"
"It appears that standard no longer applies," said Rokala.
The group particularly took issue with Manchin's suggestion that "shaping policy based on the threat posed by climate change makes someone a 'political partisan,'" even as polls show more than half of Republican voters back policies to confront the climate crisis.
"Climate policy is not a partisan issue. Climate change doesn't care whether you're a Republican, Democrat, or Independent," said Rokala. "Voters across the political spectrum worry about the threats posed by drought, wildfire, heatwaves, rising seas, and other climate disasters. But it's clear today that Joe Manchin's real constituents are the oil and gas executives at [global energy conference] CERAWeek, not the American people."
The Sierra Club noted that without an assistant secretary for lands and minerals management, "critical clean energy and conservation funds will not reach the communities that need them most."
Manchin's rejection of Daniel-Davis marks just his latest decision obstructing the climate agenda of his own party. Last month he signaled plans to revive a "dirty deal" to accelerate fossil fuel permitting and joined Republicans in pushing a proposal that would bar the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission from banning methane-powered gas stoves in the interest of protecting public health and safety.
The senator's latest financial disclosure forms show that he earned nearly $500,000 from his family's coal business and that his share of the company is worth between $1 million and $5 million. The fossil fuel industry donated more money to Manchin than any other lawmaker during the last election cycle.
Jamie Williams, president of the Wilderness Society, said Friday that Manchin's rejection of climate action led him to block a nominee who "is imminently qualified for this role and deserved a fair process."
"We regret that [Daniel-Davis'] exceptional bona fides were not enough to shield her from the politics that seem to have infected the process," said Williams.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular
SUPPORT OUR WORK.
We are independent, non-profit, advertising-free and 100%
reader supported.
reader supported.