virginia

This weekend, extremely disturbing images emerged from Charlottesville, Va. When we have actual fascists marching in our streets, spreading hate, waving Nazi flags and screaming slogans of rage aimed our neighbors, friends, family members and coworkers, disengagement is not an option. Decent Americans are morally compelled to respond – not with violence but with pledges to support and protect the communities under attack and through reminders to our nation and the world that we are better than this.

Gavin Grimm didn’t ask to be the face of the fight for transgender civil rights in America. But that’s just what he became when he asked his Virginia high school to recognize his humanity.

Today, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle will hear arguments on whether President Donald J. Trump’s second Muslim ban should remain on hold nationwide.

Gavin Grimm is the 17-year-old high-school senior at the center of the first U.S. Supreme Court case on the civil rights of transgender persons. At issue: Whether a provision in federal law known as Title IX, which forbids discrimination in public schools on the basis of sex, also protects transgender students who have been denied the equal use of school facilities based on their gender identity.

Last night the Trump administration officially revoked an Obama-era guidance reminding public schools that a provision in a 1972 federal law known as Title IX prohibits discrimination against transgender students, including denying them access to the restrooms consistent with their gender identity.

Every so often, right-wing commentator Pat Buchanan lurches out of the far-right fever swamp where he has resided for the past 50 years to offer all of us some pearls of wisdom.

His latest is an old standby: If you don’t like a court ruling, find a way to shut down the court.

Yesterday, a judge on the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., issued a preliminary injunction that prevents the Trump administration from enforcing its unconstitutional Muslim ban in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

While this order aligns with those of almost every other court that has heard a challenge to the Muslim ban thus far – including the nationwide restraining order issued by the U.S. District Court in Seattle and upheld by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals – the Virginia court’s analysis was notably different in one respect: its focus on religious freedom.

Today is “Wear Red for Ed” day: It’s a day to show support for public education as well as opposition to Secretary of Education nominee Betsy DeVos.

After the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which recognized same-sex couples’ right to marry, the fight to attain equal treatment for all advanced to a new and much-needed area of the law: protecting the rights of transgender persons.