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For Immediate Release
January, 09 2012, 12:01pm EDT
Monday January, 09 2012, 12:01pm EDT
Contact:
Angela Dallara
angela@freedomtomarry.org
646-430-3925
NJ Legislators to Fast-Track Freedom to Marry Bill
Today New Jersey Senate President Stephen Sweeney and House Speaker Sheila Oliver announced that they will fast-track and prioritize legislation that would end the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage in New Jersey. The announcement was made at a press conference today in which Freedom to Marry's National Campaign Director Marc Solomon offered the organization's full support in helping secure passage of the law.
NEW JERSEY
NEW JERSEY - Today New Jersey Senate President Stephen Sweeney and House Speaker Sheila Oliver announced that they will fast-track and prioritize legislation that would end the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage in New Jersey. The announcement was made at a press conference today in which Freedom to Marry's National Campaign Director Marc Solomon offered the organization's full support in helping secure passage of the law.
The below is an excerpt from Solomon's remarks:
"Freedom to Marry is proud to partner with Garden State Equality and New Jersey's tremendous legislative leaders, Senate President Sweeney and House Speaker Oliver, as we work together to make New Jersey the next state to end the exclusion of gay couples from marriage. What New Jersey's legislative leaders are telling us clearly today is that the Garden State values its gay and lesbian citizens fully, and does not accept treating same-sex couples and their families as second class citizens, as it presently does with civil unions. Marriage matters for same-sex couples and their families, both because it says we're a family through thick and thin in a way that nothing else does, and because it provides a critical safety-net of protections that civil unions do not."
Following the 2006 passage of civil union legislation, the 2008 New Jersey Civil Union Commission concluded there was "overwhelming evidence that civil unions will not be recognized by the general public as the equivalent of marriage in New Jersey with the passage of time." It recommended enacting marriage in its place.
The House and Senate bills (respectively numbered A. 1 and S. 1) are expected to be taken up early this year. The numbering of the bills reflects the importance which the legislative leaders are giving to the effort.
Freedom to Marry is the gay and non-gay partnership working to win marriage equality nationwide. Headed by Evan Wolfson, one of America's leading civil rights advocates and lawyers, Freedom to Marry brings new resources and a renewed context of urgency and opportunity to this social justice movement.
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Trump's Vision for US Now Includes Allowing Gun Sellers to Skip Background Checks
"These aren't just policy changes—they're deliberate choices that prioritize gun industry profits over American lives," said one gun violence prevention advocate.
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A reported Trump administration plan to eliminate a "zero tolerance" policy for firearm sellers who violate gun safety regulations is aimed at benefiting two groups, said one gun violence prevention advocate: "The gun sellers knowingly endangering communities, and the gun CEOs getting rich off of weapons sales to criminals."
"It absolutely does not benefit the American people," said Emma Brown, executive director of Giffords.
Attorney General Pam Bondi is expected this week to announce the reversal of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) policy, which was implemented by the Biden administration to hold gun sellers accountable for falsifying records, skipping background checks, and otherwise disobeying regulations meant to keep guns out of the hands of people who pose a danger to others or themselves.
As The New York Timesreported Monday, President Donald Trump plans to order FBI Director Kash Patel, the interim leader of ATF, to move toward eliminating a ban on pistol braces, which can convert handguns to weapons that resemble rifles, and a rule requiring background checks for private gun sales.
Enforcement of the rules has been down since Trump took office in January, with federal courts moving to freeze and weaken the two ATF rules.
"This administration is systematically dismantling the safeguards designed to keep weapons out of dangerous hands."
But Brown said the official repeal of the regulations would embolden "reckless" gun sellers.
"The impact here is simple: Putting gun dealers who break the law back in business will increase crime," said Brown. "Dealers who are willing to sell guns to traffickers and criminals have been given our president's seal of approval at the cost of Americans' safety."
Under the Biden administration, the rules helped empower the ATF to revoke 170 gun seller licenses—more than the agency revoked in the previous three years combined, said Giffords.
"With the reversal of the 'zero tolerance' policy federal firearms licensees who are violating the law will stay in business, allowing more illegal firearms to flow into communities," warned the group.
The gun violence prevention group Brady called the planned repeal "a gift to the gun industry," noting that homicide rates soared during Trump's first term and projecting that gun crimes will once again "skyrocket" after Bondi ends the zero tolerance policy.
"The data is clear and compelling—90% of crime guns come from just 5% of dealers," said Kris Brown, president of Brady. "By dismantling this policy, the Trump administration is deliberately empowering these irresponsible gun dealers to operate without accountability, effectively arming criminals who will use these weapons to terrorize our communities."
"This administration is systematically dismantling the safeguards designed to keep weapons out of dangerous hands," she added. "These aren't just policy changes—they're deliberate choices that prioritize gun industry profits over American lives."
US Supreme Court's Right-Wing Majority Sides With Trump on Fired Federal Workers
"Today's order by the U.S. Supreme Court is deeply disappointing but is only a momentary pause in our efforts to... hold the federal government accountable," said a group of nonprofits and unions.
Apr 08, 2025
A coalition of nonprofits and unions representing federal workers said Tuesday that it would remain "unwavering" in fighting to protect thousands of civil servants who were fired by the Trump administration, after the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the White House in a case regarding the mass dismissal of 16,000 people from various agencies.
In the 7-2 ruling, the court did not rule on whether the employees were unlawfully fired, as the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and other plaintiffs argued they were.
Instead, the unsigned opinion—approved by every member of the high court except Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson—held that the nonprofit groups that sued President Donald Trump's administration had not demonstrated they suffered "injury" due to the firing of 16,000 probationary employees, and that the plaintiffs did not have legal standing to sue and try to pause the firings.
The majority on the court sided with Trump's administration, which had argued that a lower court judge—Senior Judge William Alsup in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California—had overreached by ordering the reinstatement of people who had been fired from six federal agencies including the Pentagon, the Department of Energy, and the Department of the Treasury.
AFGE and other plaintiffs—including the Main Street Alliance and the American Public Health Association—suggested that the technical ruling, which will stand while the case regarding the probationary employees moves forward, does not change the fact that "thousands of public service employees were unlawfully fired in an effort to cripple federal agencies and their crucial programs that serve millions of Americans every day."
"Today's order by the U.S. Supreme Court is deeply disappointing but is only a momentary pause in our efforts to enforce the trial court's orders and hold the federal government accountable," said the coalition. "Despite this setback, our coalition remains unwavering in fighting for these workers who were wronged by the administration, and in protecting the freedoms of the American people. This battle is far from over."
The plaintiffs argued that the Trump administration not only acted outside its authority by dismissing 16,000 federal workers, but based the firings on a false claim by Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
They said Ezell ordered the termination of the probationary employees in a template letter that falsely claimed they were being fired for poor performance; federal employees are protected from at-will firings, and their supervisors must have a complaint about performance or misconduct to immediately dismiss them.
Many of the workers who learned they had been fired last month had not been at their jobs long enough to receive any performance reviews, or had only received positive feedback about their work.
In his earlier ruling last month, Alsup wrote that while "each federal agency has the statutory authority to hire and fire its employees, even at scale, subject to certain safeguards," OPM does not have that authority.
"Yet that is what happened here—en masse," said Alsup.
"The conservative Supreme Court stepped in and used a technical excuse to let Trump have his way."
The plaintiffs said in their lawsuit that other recent court rulings ordering the administration to reinstate fired employees bolstered their view that the dismissals were illegal. Last week, another federal judge in Maryland ordered the reinstatement of federal workers in 19 states and the District of Columbia.
The coaliton also denounced the government's claim that calling the workers back after terminating their employment would be onerous.
"The scale of the task is simply a reflection of the scale of the government's own unlawful action and its 'move fast and break things' ethos," the plaintiffs wrote. "Accepting the government's argument would mean that it can act lawlessly as long as it acts quickly and destructively enough that restoring the status quo would be an 'enormous' task. That is not and cannot be the law."
The administration's argument was reminiscent of its claim in another case that the Supreme Court ruled on Monday—that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was expelled from the country by immigration officials and sent to El Salvador's prison system, despite having no criminal record and having proven to a judge earlier that he could face persecution and torture in El Salvador.
White House officials have claimed in recent days they have no way of bringing Abrego Garcia back to the U.S., as a lower coirt judge demanded. On Monday, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily blocked District Judge Paula Xinis' order demanding that he be returned.
On Tuesday, Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.) said that regarding the fired workers, "the conservative Supreme Court stepped in and used a technical excuse to let Trump have his way."
'What Corruption Looks Like': Trump DOJ Disbands Crypto Enforcement Unit
President Donald Trump and his family have a direct financial stake in the cryptocurrency industry, which pumped tens of millions of dollars into the 2024 election.
Apr 08, 2025
The Trump administration on Monday delivered another gift to cryptocurrency giants by directing federal prosecutors to curtail their focus on the industry and disbanding a U.S. Justice Department unit tasked with investigating and pursuing cases against criminal actors in the digital asset space.
The decision to dismantle the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, which the Biden administration established in 2021, was laid out in a memo authored by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who previously served as President Donald Trump's personal defense attorney.
Fortune first reported the existence of Blanche's memo on Tuesday and noted that other agencies—including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission—have received similar directives from leadership.
The new memo declares that the Justice Department "is not a digital assets regulator" and that the agency, now under the leadership of Attorney General Pam Bondi, will narrow its focus to prosecuting individuals who victimize digital asset investors, or those who use digital assets in furtherance of criminal offenses such as terrorism, narcotics and human trafficking, organized crime, hacking, and cartel and gang financing."
CNBCreported that the memo "explicitly states" that the Justice Department "will not pursue enforcement against crypto exchanges, mixing and tumbling services, or offline wallets for the actions of their users or 'unwitting violations of regulations'—marking a major departure from prior policy."
"Prosecutors are instructed not to charge violations of financial laws, such as unlicensed money transmission and unregistered securities offerings unless they can prove the defendant knew of the rules and willfully broke them," the outlet added.
"There's never been a better time to be a white-collar crook."
Cryptocurrency giants and industry-allied super PACs pumped tens of millions of dollars into the 2024 election—largely on the side of Republicans—and donated to Trump's inaugural committee, spending viewed as an attempt to influence the administration's regulatory posture.
Additionally, Trump and his family have a financial stake in the industry: Reutersnoted Tuesday that on top of the president and first lady's meme coins, "the Trump family has a claim on 75% of net revenues from token sales by World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture."
Trump’s family owns and invests in crypto businesses. Trump launched his own meme coins. The crypto industry gave his campaign at least $119M. Crypto CEOs chipped in $30M more. Now, his DOJ shut down the team investigating crypto fraud. This is what corruption looks like.
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— Melanie D’Arrigo (@darrigomelanie.bsky.social) April 8, 2025 at 12:31 PM
Blanche's memo comes weeks after Trump's SEC agreed to drop a lawsuit against the crypto exchange giant Coinbase, a move that one watchdog described as a "massive gift" to the cryptocurrency industry.
The Associated Presscharacterized the new memo as "part of a larger move by the Justice Department to step back from certain white-collar enforcement."
A tracker run by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen shows that the Trump administration has "halted, dropped, or withdrawn enforcement actions against more than 100 corporations" so far.
The list includes several cryptocurrency companies, including Crypto.com, which was facing an SEC probe.
"There's never been a better time to be a white-collar crook," Axios' Dan Primack wrote last month after Trump pardoned the three co-founders of the cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX.
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