YOU CAN’T MAKE IT UP - TRUMP-PENCE WANTS TO DIVERT MONEY FROM RYAN WHITE HIV&AIDS PROGRAM TO TARGET FAMILIES AT BORDER: “This administration’s cruelty toward undocumented children and families has been unconscionable,” said David Stacy, HRC's Director of Government Affairs. “Now, we learn they are considering diverting funds from programs to provide health care for people living with HIV and medical support for refugees in order to pay for this president's heartless obsession with imprisoning kids. The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program is one of our nation's premier public health efforts, and it is unthinkable that this administration would divert funds away from HIV treatment to fund its cruel attacks on kids and families at the border.” More from Slate.
WHAT’S AT STAKE AT THE SUPREME COURT: The next Supreme Court justice will shape civil and constitutional rights jurisprudence in the country for decades to come. In the coming years, the Supreme Court will be asked to decide critical issues for the LGBTQ community including:
- Whether our nation’s nondiscrimination laws include protections for LGBTQ people, as many lower courts have already concluded. This would impact employment, housing, healthcare and education civil rights statutes.
- Whether individuals and organizations have a license to discriminate against LGBTQ people when receiving taxpayer dollars to provide critical services.
- Whether LGBTQ people and families can be turned away from businesses open to the general public, simply because of who they are or whom they love.
- Whether qualified transgender people can be excluded from serving in the military, simply because of who they are.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT HOW TRUMP’S SCOTUS PICK COULD UNDERMINE LGBTQ RIGHTS, REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS, HEALTH CARE AND MORE: Brett Kavanaugh currently serves as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. During his tenure, he has clearly established a judicial philosophy that the personal beliefs of individuals should dictate the lives of others. Kavanaugh has ruled that an employer’s religious beliefs should be allowed to override their workers’ access to birth control. While refusing to answer whether he believed Roe was correctly decided during his confirmation hearing for the DC Circuit, once on the bench he wrote that his colleagues had “badly erred” by determining that an undocumented immigrant teen should have access to an abortion. In dissenting against the Affordable Care Act, Kavanaugh claimed that “the President may decline to enforce a statute… when the President deems the statute unconstitutional, even if a court has held or would hold the statute constitutional.” More from HRC.
WHAT WE’RE WATCHING WEDNESDAY -- HRC PRESIDENT CHAD GRIFFIN (@CHADHGRIFFIN) AT THE UnidosUS FORUM ON CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE TRUMP ERA: Griffin joined Sherrilyn Ifill, President and Director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund; Vanita Gupta, President and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights; Neera Tanden, President of the Center for American Progress; and María Teresa Kumar, President and CEO of Voto Latino to discuss strategies to fight the Trump administration’s sweeping assault on immigrants and the rights of women, minorities, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ people. More from Washington Blade.
