State courts are quickly becoming a heated battleground for abortion and LGBT issues, with left-leaning groups announcing legal strategies focused on the state level and launching efforts to educate the public on their role in electing local judges.
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Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes’ is defending her administration’s decision to keep in place a money transfer surveillance program that paves the way for a growing number of law enforcement agencies across the country to keep tabs on the dealings of potentially illegal activity. With the database originally set up nearly a decade ago under the stewardship of a Republican attorney general, the so-called Transaction Record Analysis Center (TRAC) act was billed as a voluntary agreement with Western Union aimed at combating drug trafficking that has now expanded to touch more than 600 law enforcement agencies.
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Oklahoma officials are calling for teachers pushing Critical Race Theory (CRT) to leave the classroom after an Oklahoma teacher spoke out against the states’ education law following her resignation.
Summer Boismier quit her high school teaching position at Norman Public Schools in Norman, Oklahoma, after she shared a QR code in her classroom linking students to “Books Unbanned,” a program through Brooklyn Public Library, that allowed students to access books prohibited from being taught by a state law. The law, HB 1775, prohibits teaching that one race or sex is superior to another, with the intent to prevent the teaching of CRT and certain elements of gender ideology.
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The Arizona affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Center for Reproductive Rights filed a motion Saturday that seeks to block the state’s “personhood” law which, they argue, could make all abortions illegal in the state.
The abortion rights groups filed an emergency motion one day after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, returning decisions about abortion to the states.
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The American Civil Liberties Union hosted a podcast earlier this month in which a man who identifies as non-binary, Alok Vaid-Menon, argued that society should discard the “gender binary.” People who do not affirm transgender and non-binary identity, the mixed-media artist and activist argued, are acting out of grief over being forced by society to be either masculine or feminine.
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Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz exposed the identity behind the “Libs Of TikTok” Twitter account in an article that widely characterized exposure of questionable school policy and problematic teacher-student interactions as “anti-LGBT.”
Rather than grapple with the issues the account brought to light — some of which resulted in discipline of teachers — Lorenz drew on interviews from left-wing activists at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the left-wing organization Media Matters, who predictably supported the narrative that exposing controversial classroom instruction to the public at large essentially amounts to bigotry for the transgender and gay community.
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Arizona now has new rules regarding transgender school sports athletes.
Governor Doug Ducey signed Senate Bills 1138 and 1165 on Wednesday.
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The U.S. Department of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is looking into the viability of autonomous robots resembling man’s best friend to traverse the Mexican border.
The department is working with the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate to expose the Automated Ground Surveillance Vehicles (AGSVs) to climate and terrain consistent with the southern border. In its Feb. 1 blog post, the department said initial testing in Lorton, Virginia, moved to El Paso, Texas, to give the machines a better taste of its potential work environment.
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The U.S. Capitol Police is running background checks and examining the social media histories of people meeting with lawmakers, Politico reported Monday.
Following the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, the Capitol Police adopted a new policy to dig into the social media feeds of individuals meeting members of Congress, Politico reported, citing three people familiar with the matter as well as internal Capitol Police documents and communications. Targets of the surveillance included congressional staffers as well as lawmakers’ constituents, donors and associates.
Julie Farnam, acting director of intelligence for the Capitol Police and former Department of Homeland Security official, directed analysts to run “background checks” on donors and associates of lawmakers, including instructions to “list and search all political opponents to see if they or their followers intend to attend or disrupt the event,” according to documents reviewed by Politico.
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The far-left American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a lawsuit against the state of Oklahoma over a recently-signed law that forbids the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in schools, according to CNN.
The lawsuit represents a group of teachers and students who support CRT, and is supported by the ACLU, the Oklahoma NAACP, the American Indian Movement (AIM), and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The suit claims that the law infringes on the rights of freedom of speech guaranteed under the First Amendment of the Constitution.
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A school board in Oregon is receiving backlash following its recent ban on educators displaying Black Lives Matter signs and gay pride symbols.
Newberg, which is situated just outside of Portland, now finds itself the site of the latest skirmish in a pitched struggle between traditional and woke approaches to education being waged in school systems across the country.
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