Appeals Court Decides In Favor of First Amendment to US Constitution

Hamburger Mary’s Goes to the 11th Circuit by Joyce Vance

A case you need to know about! Read on Substack

This post is about a case that could be easily overlooked with so much Trump news spewing through the fire hose these days. But Florida’s continued aggression in the culture wars has the potential to affect all of us. So, as here, when a brave plaintiff takes its case to court and wins, it’s news we all need to know about.

On Tuesday, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals decided HM Florida-ORL, LLC v. Sec. of Florida DBPR, a case involving Hamburger Mary’s, a restaurant and bar in Orlando that regularly hosted drag performances, including family-friendly shows. When the Florida legislature passed SB 1438 in 2023, Hamburger Mary’s canceled its family-friendly drag shows and prohibited minors from attending any of its other shows out of fear of losing its business and/or liquor license. As a result, Hamburger Mary’s lost 20% of its bookings.

The new law gave state agencies the power to target LGBTQ+ friendly businesses in two major ways:

It gave the Department of Business and Professional Regulation discretionary authority to fine, revoke liquor licenses, and even shut down establishments.
It made it a crime to admit young people to any performance, exhibit, play, or show that the state deems inappropriate, even if the child’s parents think it is appropriate for their family.

The bill was an effort by conservative politicians, led by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, to impose their beliefs on the entire state. It was a major salvo in the culture wars. Their too-clever-by-half mechanism was to punish private businesses that included or supported the LGBTQ+ community in order to exclude that community from being a public presence in Florida. The law’s language was so vague that businesses had no realistic way of knowing what it prohibited, meaning they had to take the extreme steps Hamburger Mary’s took to pull back their offerings in order to avoid the risk they’d be put out of business.

So, Hamburger Mary’s filed a lawsuit against Florida, its governor, and Secretary of the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation (FDBPR) Melanie Griffin, seeking a preliminary injunction that would keep the state from enforcing its law while the litigation proceeded. The district court granted the preliminary injunction and the Secretary appealed to the Eleventh Circuit.

The issue in the case involves the First Amendment, as you’ve probably figured out by now. Although the technical legal issue was whether the district court had been correct to grant the injunction, the substantive issue is whether Florida’s Senate Bill 1438 (“The Protection of Children Act”), which prohibits children from attending “adult live performances,” is unconstitutional under the First Amendment, because it is both vaguene and overly broad.

The Eleventh Circuit ruled in Hamburger Mary’s favor, keeping the injunction against enforcement of SB 1438 in place, because the panel believed the law was likely unconstitutional—both too vague for people to understand what they could and couldn’t do to remain in compliance with it and overbroad in its supposed efforts to protect children without regard to their parents’ views.

It’s significant that this decision comes out of the conservative Eleventh Circuit, although admittedly, the composition of this panel, which included both an Obama and a Biden appointee, is unusual. Florida could seek en banc review from the full court, in hopes of getting a more favorable hearing. The decision was 2-1. The third judge on the panel, Senior Judge Gerald Bard Tjoflat, was appointed by President Gerald Ford. His objection to the majority’s decision primarily involved a belief that the injunction came too early, and the courts should have demurred until they saw how the state enforced the law in practice.

Among the most interesting points made in the opinion:

The Court found the penalties for violations under SB 1438 “grievous.” The penalties for violations include a $5,000 fine for a first offense or a misdemeanor prison sentence of up to a year.
On protecting First Amendment rights, they noted that “The government cannot shroud rules in foggy language and then blame would-be speakers for their fears of what may lurk in the fog.” Laws like this use vagueness as a means to get private individuals and businesses to obey in advance, staying as far back as possible from the line of conduct the law prohibits in order to avoid the consequences of violating it. In this way, the state restricts far more First Amendment-protected conduct than they are legally entitled to. The panel wasn’t having any of it. It noted the importance of securing “breathing room for free expression” in a case like this.
We’ve seen injunction cases before, so we know that Hamburger Mary’s had to demonstrate it was likely to succeed on the merits of its claim in order to get the injunction. The court underscored the point above when it found that they met this burden, discussing the “chilling effect” laws like this have, and the way they discourage people from speaking their minds, even if their speech doesn’t fall squarely within what the law prohibits. They noted that “[T]he Act’s vagueness…means it is likely to stifle a substantial amount of protected speech,” explaing that at oral argument, the state had been unable to explain, for instance, how to decide what kind of performances would be acceptable for kids of different ages, which the law requires venues to do to avoid penalties. They concluded, “If the Secretary’s attorney can’t articulate the difference, it’s hard to imagine how we could expect performance proprietors to know what the Act means.”

At least for now, the First Amendment is still alive and kicking in Florida. The majority in this case held that the state was trying to “empower those who would limit speech” but that “the First Amendment empowers speakers instead.” “Requiring clarity in speech regulations,” the court wrote, “shields us from the whims of government censors.” This case is important for Floridians and for the LGBTQ+ community. Beyond that, in a time when our rights are under attack, it’s important for all of us.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

From The Morning Memo:

Quote Of The Day

“This is a once-in-a-century brain gain opportunity.”–Australian Strategic Policy Institute, urging its government to woo U.S.-based scientists and researchers caught in the Trump II attack on research and development

https://morningmemo.talkingpointsmemo.com/i/163554935/quote-of-the-day

Good Info For These Days:

Don’t let the news overwhelm you — use this tool to stay engaged

When it feels like progress isn’t happening, a force field analysis can reveal where the status quo is shifting and point to other strategic leverage points.

Daniel Hunter May 10, 2025

This article is adapted from a Choose Democracy newsletter email.

If you try to track every piece of news, you may find it impossible to mentally survive the onslaught of these times. Donald Trump and Elon Musk have unleashed a barrage of civil rights rollbacks, weaponized institutions and passed off idiotic/dystopian spectacles as governance. The sheer velocity can numb the senses, tempting us to shut down, turn off the feed and retreat.

But you also cannot be good to the world (or yourself) if you keep your head down and pay attention to nothing. Withdrawal is understandable, even necessary at times — but permanent disengagement only cedes ground to the authoritarian momentum, while reinforcing our image of ourselves as powerless.

With that in mind, an important question emerges: How do we observe what’s happening without being crushed by its weight?

This is where the work of social psychologist Kurt Lewin becomes a powerful tool. Lewin — a Jewish intellectual who fled Nazi Germany — developed force field analysis to understand how power, behavior and transformation occur in real social systems.

He saw that any given situation is held in place by a dynamic equilibrium between forces pushing for change and those resisting it. To shift the status quo, you don’t necessarily need to move everything at once — you can focus strategically on specific forces or actors that influence the whole.

In activist training, I was taught force field analysis as follows: First you make a list of forces and organizations pushing towards the dreary authoritarian oligarchy-controlled vision. Then you make a list of forces pushing towards a reordered society that’s deeply democratic and where wealth is shared.

There’s a tension between these two forces. For example, on the authoritarianism side right now, Trump’s FBI ordered the arrest of a state judge for allegedly trying to prevent ICE from detaining a man in her courtroom or the arrest of New Jersey’s gubernatorial candidate Ras Baraka. On the democracy side, judges, lawyers and plaintiffs have defeated Trump 93 percent of the time in court because his orders are sloppy and patently illegal. What’s more, the Trump administration has quietly followed the judge’s orders most of the time.

Again, however, pushing in the authoritarian direction, the administration has been deporting people to an El Salvadoran prison in open defiance of the courts. Meanwhile, Trump’s cruelly-written ban on trans people in the military has been temporarily upheld by the Supreme Court.

Back on the democracy side, Harvard is standing up to Trump’s intimidation tactics — and a growing body of universities are organiz ing in resistance. It’s worth noting that Harvard initially wanted to make a deal but ended up veering toward resistance because of the administration’s recklessness.

While all authoritarians favor loyalty over competency, this regime is particularly extreme in its mistakes. And Trump is still fighting Harvard, and trying to take over now museums too. But again, new frontline resistance is appearing in the arts community and amongst librarians and museum leaders.

There can be an impulse to want to ask, on any given day, “Are we winning? Or are we losing?” Like a basketball game, many of us do a kind of score keeping about how many points we are down. But, just to continue with the sports analogy, our situation is more like soccer — where a lot of the game isn’t about immediate scoring but positioning, repositioning, quick advances and quick retreats. Progress may not always be visible or immediate, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

A Colombian elder — who has lived her whole life in the shadow of war — recently told me, “People in the U.S. are obsessed with winning, and it’s very unhealthy in moments like this. You keep wanting to know if it’s going well or not — and these times can’t be analyzed in headlines or moments. Sometimes it just is what it is. It’s losing and winning. The yardstick is measured in hearts, and the timeline is generations of work on people’s attitudes and views.”

Lewin’s brilliance was in recognizing that we don’t have to act on everything all at once just because we see the bigger picture of what’s happening. We can begin by identifying the different forces at play: forces for good, forces against and some forces that are mixed. Crucially, in his analysis, you then assess which of these forces can be strengthened or weakened.

This is where it’s helpful to get practical. Courage anywhere begets courage everywhere. Because Trump has picked a strategy of everywhere all at once — nearly every group has a chance to stand up and support each other to be more bold. We’re already seeing great examples of this, such as the hundreds of nonprofits signing on to support Harvard’s fight, the lawyers retaking their oaths to the Constitution in public, and the government workers resist ing unauthorized access by DOGE and continu ing their important work.

In practical terms, the best strategy might be not focusing on Musk or Trump directly, but on amplifying local election protections, funding investigative journalism, or supporting tech workers organizing against misuse of platforms. You don’t need to tackle the entire regime to weaken its foundation. You need leverage points — clear, concrete places to act.

Using Lewin’s tool helps prevent burnout. It turns despair into direction. It gives structure to what might otherwise feel like flailing.

So, yes: These are hard days. But it’s not all bad or good — it’s a force field in motion. Even small acts, strategically placed, can shift the balance. We are not powerless — we are participants.

Sooner or Later, There Turns Out to Be A Reason For Everything

I have bitterly wondered why people wouldn’t just go vote for whoever they had to, but to just vote, especially in the 2024 election. I’ve had a hard time with the non-voters. But, turns out, some of them have legitimate reasons (I’ve spoken with none,) but it turns out that not all the non-voters are asses. -A

Political tension and fears of violence may have depressed voter turnout in 2024

This story was originally reported by Grace Panetta of The 19th. Meet Grace and read more of her reporting on gender, politics and policy.

Women and gender-nonconforming people were more likely than men to fear violence and harassment while voting in the 2024 election, and those who expressed concerns about safety were more likely not to vote at all, new research shows.

The study, released Monday and shared first with The 19th, was conducted by States United Democracy Center, a nonpartisan organization focused on promoting fair and secure elections and upholding the rule of law.

“Tens of millions of Americans ultimately cast their ballots in 2024 without incident,” the report said. “But voting was not straightforward and safe for all Americans. Many were harassed, and a limited number were subjected to physical violence.”

The study found that the 2024 election was, as a whole, safe, fair and securely conducted, with voters overwhelmingly reporting feeling safe at the polls and confident in the safety and security of the election. But rising incidents of political violence, heightened political polarization and gender-based harassment had a measurable impact on how women and gender-noncomforming people especially viewed the safety of voting in the 2024 election — and whether they turned out to vote at all, the study says.

Researchers surveyed voters before and after the 2024 election in partnership with research data and analytics group YouGov and held a series of seven focus groups before the election — with three groups of White women, three groups of women of color and one made up of gender-nonconforming participants. They also fielded surveys of state lawmakers, election administrators and law enforcement officials in partnership with the nonprofit CivicPulse. The study is also one of the first of its kind to study the voting experiences of gender-nonconforming voters, who are subject to gender-based discrimination and harassment at the polls.

Women, people of color and gender-nonconforming people were more likely to have perceived the election environment as being unsafe, reported experiencing higher rates of voting-related harassment and were more likely to take precautionary measures when going to the polls. The study also compared pre-election survey responses to voting records and found that higher expectations of experiencing violence or harassment at the polls was correlated with lower voting rates.

“Concerns about violence or harassment depressed turnout, likely turning millions of voters into non-voters,” the report said.

The pre-election survey, conducted September 23 to 30, 2024, surveyed 4,016 American adults with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.7 points. The post-election survey, conducted November 7 to 19, surveyed a separate group of 4,017 registered voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.6 points. The researchers asked a series of questions to identify gender-nonconforming respondents in its surveys with YouGov, resulting in a sample of 81 gender-nonconforming voters in the pre-election survey and 103 in the post-election survey.

To measure fears of harassment and violence, researchers asked respondents how likely they thought it was to experience events ranging from verbal or written harassment to property damage and acts of physical violence. While all gender groups provided average responses of “somewhat unlikely” across all five, gender-nonconforming respondents had a higher expected likelihood of harassment or violence.

Overall, 91 percent of men, 89 percent of women and 73 percent of gender-nonconforming respondents said in the post-election survey that they felt safe voting. But respondents’ perceptions and feelings of safety varied by race among women and gender-nonconforming people. In the post-election survey, 92 percent of White respondents said they felt completely or mostly safe voting, compared with 85 percent of Black voters and 84 percent of Hispanic voters.

In pre-election surveys, women and voters of color were more likely than men and White respondents to view voting as unsafe and to say they were taking precautions as a result. Among women, the most common safety precaution respondents said they were likely to take was not bringing their children to the polls (32 percent), while the most common safety precaution for gender-nonconforming people was not interacting with others at the polls (46 percent). About a quarter of women and gender-nonconforming respondents said they were likely to vote by mail.

Several women voters in focus groups cited the potential of gun violence as a concern.

“I don’t go to the polls, because you never know what you will encounter there,” said a White independent woman voter who participated in one of the focus groups. “It seems like everybody in Arizona has a gun. We vote by mail, because it’s safer. Everybody has an opinion; you get in line, and you hear it all. You never know, if they don’t agree with you, they’ll shoot you. People are crazy.”

Others spoke to the heightened political climate and general political tensions around the election as a reason they feared threats, harassment and even heated conversations in line.

“I go early, or late, when I won’t run into anybody I know, and there won’t be any conversation,” said a Black Republican woman focus group participant. “I don’t want to deal with the emotional, ‘Who did you vote for?’ And me saying, ‘I don’t want to discuss it.’ So there are no issues, fighting, cussing, yelling. Save my peace of mind.”

People who feared violence and harassment at higher levels were less likely to vote, researchers found by comparing survey responses to verified voting records. When controlling for turnout differences based on demographic considerations, the study still found an average three percentage point decline in the likelihood of voting.

“For context, differences in voter behavior based on education level, one of the strongest predictors of turnout, are only half as large as differences explained by expectations of violence or harassment,” the report said. “Put another way, generalizing our results to the nationwide electorate, roughly 6 million Americans may have decided not to vote in 2024 because of concerns about violence or harassment.”

Gender-nonconforming voters face particularly unique challenges and barriers when it comes to voting.

A rise in anti-transgender political rhetoric from the right has been accompanied by a slew of laws targeting transgender people in Republican-controlled states. Some of these laws have sought to create strict definitions of gender and bar transgender individuals from changing the sex listed on their official identification to align with their gender identity. In states that require voters to show photo identification at the polls, that could open up transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals to scrutiny and potential harassment. In the pre-election survey, a third of gender-nonconforming voters said they were likely to dress differently at the polls.

“I’ve been a registered voter for decades. When I attempted to vote last time, they had a hard time ‘finding’ my registration,” said a gender-nonconforming Black independent who participated in a focus group. “I could tell I was being judged. The attitude of the person looking at your information to give you the voting packet can be intimidating. My documents have been submitted, I have my ID, what’s the problem? I felt there was judgment as far as was my information correct or was it fraudulent.”

In the post-election survey, over half of gender-nonconforming respondents said they took at least one safety precaution when voting, compared with about a third of men and women who said they took at least one precaution. Thirteen percent of gender-nonconforming respondents reported experiencing verbal harassment, intimidation and threats compared to 5.2 percent of men and 4.8 percent of women. In all, 18 percent of gender-nonconforming voters reported experiencing violence or harassment during the 2024 election season.

“I am obviously queer when you look at me, and I’ve been harassed for it,” said another focus group participant, an Asian-American Democratic voter. “Depending on how I do my hair or what I wear [on election] day, it’s a higher chance I’ll get harassed. If I was girly, I would be afraid someone could see through that and do me harm.”

This story has been updated to clarify support and funding for the report.

Clay Jones Works, Adds a Few Words About A.I.

MAGA Wishlist by Clay Jones

Trump takes bribes Read on Substack

I was watching Trump talk about the “gift” from Qatar, the 747 jet that’s going to be our newest Air Force One. He said, “I could be a stupid person and say we don’t want a free plane, but this helps us out.” That sounds a lot like an excuse from a guy who just took a bribe.

This plane doesn’t help us out, it helps him out. If Qatar were trying to help us out, they would have given the gift without any stipulations, except they didn’t give us the gift. They gave it to Trump, and only to Trump.

Yeah, sure. It technically belongs to the Air Force, but the stipulation is that when Trump leaves office, which is supposed to be in January 2029, the plane is transferred to his presidential library. Three odd things about this is, why does Qatar get to tell us how to use its gift, why can’t the plane remain in service, and why does an illiterate fuckface get a library?

Don’t believe me on the illiterate part? Check this out from 2017. I noticed three things in that video.

One, he can’t read.
Two, he’s calling out his new friend in Qatar and accusing them of financing terrorism, which includes groups like Hama, ISIS, al Qaida, and the Taliban (who are also his friends now).
Three, the wind is having a very difficult time budging that bleached, dead aardvark on his head. What the hell does he put in that shit, concrete?

Maybe Qatar bribed Trump to stop accusing them of financing terror while encouraging him to learn how to read. There’s no help with the bleached, dead aadvark shit.

So what does Qatar get from this bribe? Maybe we’ll find out from his personal business deals in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. Trump is visiting all three nations during this trip. By the way, the Trump Crime Family’s net worth increased by $3 billion since January. I’m sure that happening after Trump becoming president (sic) is just a coincidence.

It was announced last week that a brand new Trump Tower and hotel resort will be built in Qatar. It’s even being developed by one of the government’s companies. The Trump Organization announced an ethics (haha) pledge for Trump 2.0, and that it would permit foreign business deals, but explicitly bar partnerships with foreign governments. HAHAHA. Ethics from the Trump Organization.

On my GoComics page, there’s an idiot still screaming about Joe Biden’s “foreign” business deals.

There’s also going to be a $5.5 billion Trump beachside golf course in Dubai in the UAE, which was canceled years ago but re-approved in 2025. What explicit timing.

Saudi Arabia, the nation that butchered an American-protected journalist, recently announced new deals for Trump properties in several of its cities, which I’m sure had nothing to do with Trump giving them huge arms packages today.

Also, I should have scratched out the hamberders on the list, because the Saudis rolled out a full-size, mobile McDonald’s truck ahead of Trump’s arrival, knowing that a corrupt toddler with power was coming.

Trump is announcing investments in America from these three nations worth billions and perhaps even trillions, but the thing with these promises is that they’re just promises. Sure, they’ll invest, but in what and for how much? You can’t trust Trump’s numbers. It’s like all those factories he promised would be built by companies that exported jobs. They didn’t arrive.

The Trump Organization also announced deals for new golf resorts in Vietnam, which are with the Communist Party.

One last point for the day: If President Joe Biden were corrupt, some foreign country would have bought him a plane.

Speaking of Gocomics: The streak of posting a brand new cartoon every day on GoComics is now at eight years. I passed it on May 6, but I was too busy drawing a cartoon to notice.

AI thieves: So this is new. A couple of YouTube channels are using AI to copy cartoons, or as ToonAmerica says, reported by the Daily Cartoonist, finish “manually sketch[ed] unique, raw cartoon concepts”

First off, when my cartoon is published, it’s “finished.” I get annoyed simply by a reader telling me how the cartoon could be better or how I should have drawn it, but this shit?

I don’t like to give these guys publicity, but I do need to post the links so you know where to go to report them.

The Are, AmeriSatire and ToonAmerica.

I’m very protective of my work. I don’t like it when Facebook pages steal my cartoons to build their audience, don’t even give me a tag or credit, and then argue that they had the right to steal it. But this theft of copying my work, and doing it with AI, really pisses me off.

Someone defending AI posted to Facebook a few days ago, “What’s the problem?” This. This is the problem, asshole. Another user of AI “art” told me today not to take it personally. I hope he doesn’t take it personally after I block him.

So, when people steal my work, I go after them. Fortunately, I’m not alone this time, because he/it/they hit a bunch of cartoonists.

Most of the time, my colleagues support me in these fights and say, “Go get ‘em, Tiger,” but they don’t get off the bench. They were too afraid to go after Ted Rall when he was working for a Russian propaganda outlet, they remained silent about the anonymous cartoonist (Rivers) or outright supported him, and most refuse to call out all the tracers out there (there’s a bunch). But now, they want to form a posse. Welcome to the game, fuckers.

I’ve been trying to fight for this industry, and not just for myself. Other cartoonists don’t want to ruffle feathers or get in trouble with colleagues. Maybe I’m the stupid one for doing so. But now, other cartoonists are ready to fight because someone stuck their fingers in their pies.

I told a couple of colleagues on Facebook, who are victims of this AI theft, that I would help them, and that was before I found out I was a victim too. They should take note of that. So far, the only ones I’ve noticed who have spoken out about this are the ones who’ve been affected.

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Comic Strip of the Day: Mike Peterson does a great service for political cartoonists with his daily feature, Comic Strip of the Day, which can be found at the Daily Cartoonist. But there are times when I think he’s full of himself.

Today, he included two cartoons about the pope being an American. The cartoons were the same cartoon, and he wrote, “I’m ignoring cartoons about Leo XIV being a White Sox fan or refusing to put ketchup on hot dogs, and even the mildly sacrilegious jokes about deep-dish communion hosts. While I don’t think they’re insightful or funny, I’m not particularly offended.”

Peterson uses my work quite often, and I appreciate it. A lot of the White Sox and Hot Dog jokes did get old (but I was the first with the hot dog thing). But, Mike, with all due respect, I would never rely on you for what’s insightful or funny.

Creative note: I chose this over Trump pausing tariffs on China. I may go back to that tomorrow.

Music note: I listened to Lit.

Drawn in 30 seconds: (snip-go see)

Peace & Justice History for 5/14

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may14

DOJ Says Susman Godfrey Is National Security Threat… For Giving Money To GLAD

https://abovethelaw.com/2025/05/doj-says-susman-godfrey-is-national-security-threat-for-giving-money-to-glad/

Their goal is to copy Russia. The goal is to wipe the LGBTQ+ community from society, from the public view. They want to make us illegal like in the most hateful countries or again to be like Russia under Putin. I used to think these people wanted to return to the 1950s but now I think I was wrong. They want to return to the early 1930s when the Nazi party was very active and strong in the US. I kept telling the people who wanted the LGB to let the t go to protect the rest that it was a divide and conquer strategy and that they would come for the rest of us next. And they are doing that. Just being gay or fighting the haters trying to deny gay people rights is a security risk to nation according to them. Hugs

Stupid, but also disturbing.

By Joe Patrice on May 12, 2025 4:55 pm

There’s a new “Axis of Evil” in the Trump administration cosmology and it’s not al Qaeda or North Korea. Instead, the preeminent threat to national security, according to the hapless folks at Donald Trump’s personal law firm, is anyone who ever donated money to LGBTQ civil rights organization GLAD. At least that’s the government’s new working theory as it tries to justify its retaliatory executive order against Susman Godfrey.

Had Susman, for example, taken on that GLAD challenge pro bono, the allegation would still be risible, but when the whole argument hinges on the firm generally donating to a prominent non-profit it crosses into professionally embarrassing.

Not quite, “making up fake Supreme Court quotes” embarrassing, but still.

Aside from trying to tag Susman for its charitable contributions, it’s also deeply troubling to suggest that filing a federal lawsuit is a “dangerous effort to undermine the effectiveness of the United States military.” In a rule of law society (I know, I know, but humor me on this idea for the moment), “going to court” isn’t sedition, but the system working as intended. Checks and balances and all that stuff. To call a federal lawsuit an effort to undermine the government, requires adopting the premise that it’s a threat to make sure the government isn’t doing anything illegal. Courts can get the law wrong, but the point is that we encourage people to take grievances to court and not storm federal buildings… you know, the behavior that we traditionally considered a “dangerous effort to undermine” the government. Not so much these days.

There’s no bright line between the GLAD challenge and any other discrimination case brought against the DOD. If the government chooses to contest a suit for any reason, under this standard, it’s an effort to undermine the effectiveness of the military. Frankly, there’s not much keeping the DOJ from expanding this rationale to any other case brought against the government. That would put us a little beyond warnings about a slippery slope and into “that point where Wile E. Coyote hasn’t noticed he’s off the cliff yet.”

Not that GLAD’s challenge would’ve dangerously undermined effectiveness. General Mark Milley, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated unequivocally that there is no problem with transgender troops if they meet standards. But as a career soldier, Milley cared more about merit and the ability to do the job. A civilian talk show host more interested in texting war plans to his buddies might have… different priorities.

Though all of this remains far afield of the instant issue: Susman Godfrey, giving money to an organization that has in the past filed a civil rights challenge, is not even in the same universe as a threat to national security.

But you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take, I guess.

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Man accused of checking out books on Jewish, Black, LGBTQ history from Cuyahoga County Public Library and burning them on extremist website

https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/local/cuyahoga-county/man-accused-book-burning-jewish-black-lgbtq-topics-beachwood-cuyahoga-county-public-library/95-60a720fd-0e61-498a-8cc6-a4550e9d6aca

I can not understand the kind of hate or anger at different groups to want to cost yourself hundreds of dollars and possible jail time. To damage the books doesn’t erase the people they were written about and it doesn’t change history. It only hurts the library and the community which pays for the library. Hugs

Man accused of checking out books on Jewish, Black, LGBTQ history from Cuyahoga County Public Library and burning them on extremist website

A man checked out 100 books on topics including Jewish history, African American history and LGBTQ education before allegedly burning them in a social media video.

Credit: City of Beachwood, Ohio/Facebook

Author: Justin McMullen

Published: 10:52 PM EDT May 8, 2025

Updated: 10:52 PM EDT May 8, 2025

CLEVELAND — Cuyahoga County Public Library officials, in a police report obtained by 3News, accused a man of checking out 100 books on Jewish history, Black history and LGBTQ education last month before filming a book burning and posting the video on a social media site described by advocates as a hub for white supremacist, neo-Nazi and extremist content.

According to an investigative report filed last week by the Beachwood Police Department, the man went into the Beachwood library branch on Shaker Boulevard and applied for a library card on April 2. He was approved for the card and checked out 50 books by the library’s proper procedure.

A library official told police that the Princeton University Bridging Divides Initiative, a non-partisan research effort that tracks political violence in the United States and monitors suspected hate crimes on social media, notified the library that the man posted a photo to Gab.com of a car trunk full of books. The post came with a caption that referenced “cleansing” the libraries, the official told police. The books in the photo “appeared to match the topics” of the books the man had checked out and also had Cuyahoga County Public Library stickers on them, the police report states.

According to the Anti-Defamation League‘s Center on Extremism, Gab is a platform known for lax content moderation policies that is widely used by “conspiracy theorists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, members of militias and influential figures among the alt right.”

On April 10, the man returned to the Beachwood branch and borrowed another 50 books relating to similar topics. The man told a librarian that his son was a member of the LGBTQ community and he was trying to learn more about it. According to the police report, the librarian found the man’s behavior to be “very odd and concerning,” but the man did not make any threats during the encounter.

The Princeton researchers later reached out to the library again, this time saying that the man posted a video they believed depicted him burning all 100 books. The police report again states that the books in the video, a copy of which was obtained by police, “appeared to match the theme and titles” of the books that were checked out from the library. One of the books shown in the video had a CCPL sticker and was an exact match of one of the books the man withdrew, police said.

At the time the police report was filed on May 2, the man was not facing any charges in connection with the allegations. Police said the library staff were calling only to “document the incident,” and that the borrowed books were not yet overdue. The library told police that the man would be sent a bill once the books became overdue, and that the bill would be sent to collections if it was not paid.

The books had a combined total value of $1,700, the report stated.

Police told the library staff that “since a contract was entered and payment would eventually be billed,” the incident was likely a civil matter. The investigative report states the Beachwood city prosecutor would be consulted to determine whether criminal charges are warranted.

The library plans to ban the man from its property in the future. Police told the library staff to contact them for help issuing a trespass warning if the man returned.

“We Want Beer” and More, in Peace & Justice History for 5/13

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may13

Here’s A Useful Tool

from the Center for American Progress (remember them?) This gives us the info by congressional district, including the congresscritter’s names so we know just who to call about our concerns. There are options for pagination or a table.