August 29, 1758 The first Indian reservation, Brotherton, was established in New Jersey. A tract of three thousand acres of land was purchased at Edge Pillock, in Burlington County. The treaty of 1758 required the Delaware Tribes, in exchange for the land, to renounce all further claim to lands anywhere else in New Jersey, except for the right to fish in all the rivers and bays north of the Raritan River, and to hunt on unenclosed land.History Of The Brotherton Reservation
August 29, 1957 Following consultations among the NATO allies and other nations, the Western (non-Communist) countries presented to the United Nations a working paper entitled, “Proposals for Partial Measures of Disarmament,” intended as “a practical, workable plan to start on world disarmament.” The plan proposed stopping all nuclear testing, halting production of nuclear weapons materials, starting a reduction in nuclear weapons stockpiles, reducing the danger of surprise attack through warning systems, and beginning reductions in armed forces and armaments.
August 29, 1957 African Americans in Milledgeville, Georgia, wait in line to vote following the Civil Rights Act of 1957. The U.S. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, the first such law since reconstruction. The bill established a Civil Rights Commission which was given the authority to investigate discriminatory conditions. A Civil Rights Division was created in the Department of Justice, allowing federal prosecutors to obtain court injunctions against interference with the right to vote, among other things.In an ultimately futile attempt to block passage, then-Democrat, former Dixiecrat, and later Republican Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina set the all-time filibuster record: 24 hours, 19 minutes of non-stop speaking on the floor of the Senate. A filibuster is the deliberate use of prolonged debate and procedural delaying tactics to block action supported by a majority of members. It can only be stopped with a 60% majority voting to end debate. Senator Strom Thurmond with his 24-hour filibustering speech
August 29, 1961 Robert Moses, leader of SNCC The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was pursuing its voter registration drive in Amite County, Mississippi. Of 5000 eligible Negro voters in the county, just one was registered to vote. SNCC leader Robert Moses was attacked and beaten this day outside the registrar’s office while trying to sign up two voters. Nine stitches were required but the three white assailants were acquitted. Hear Moses recall the time
August 29, 1970 Between 15 and 30 thousand predominantly Chicanos (Americans of Mexican descent) gathered in East LA’s Laguna Park as the culmination of the Chicano National Moratorium. It was organized by Rosalio Munoz and others to protest the disproportionate number of deaths of Chicano soldiers in Vietnam (more than double their numbers in the population). There had been more than 20 other such demonstrations in Latino communities across the southwest in recent months. Three died when the anti-war march turned violent. The Los Angeles Police Department attacked and one gunshot, fired into the Silver Dollar Bar, killed Ruben Salazar, a Los Angeles Times columnist and a commentator on KMEX-TV (he had been accused by the LAPD of inciting the Chicano community). The Chicano Moratorium Ruben Salazar LA Times
Gunner Scott had a simple solution to making sure he had a trans-friendly bathroom when he served as a juror in Boston: Every day at lunch he left the building.
The year was 2009 and the Suffolk County Superior Court where Scott served as a juror for five days didn’t have a gender-neutral restroom. So, on his break, Scott walked up the street to his office.
“I heard one too many stories,” said Scott, who is a longtime transgender advocate.
The stories were about trans people being assaulted and harassed in bathrooms. Scott was not confident he could pass as male in a men’s room in 2009. More than that, his activism had made him a known public figure in the city. He feared someone would recognize him and target him for being trans and using a men’s restroom.
But over the years, as states have started to block trans people from using bathrooms and participating in other areas of public life, courtrooms have moved in the opposite direction by trying to make facilities available to people of all genders, experts say.
That movement is not only key to providing a roadmap for inclusivity for the nation. It also ensures that juries reflect the general population and that everyone gets the opportunity — or burden, in some cases — of serving on them.
Courtrooms may illustrate practical solutions to access as the nation grapples with increasing trans visibility and more traditional ideas about the safety and comfort of a larger public.
The issue of transgender accessibility in courts is a chapter in a longstanding fight for civil rights for LGBTQ+ Americans, prime targets of far-right legislation and discourse these days. The Equality Act, which bars discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, was first introduced to Congress 50 years ago but has never been passed into law. While its first draft only protected gay Americans, subsequent iterations have aimed to shield trans Americans from bias.
The Equality Act specifically mentions jury selection. The bill bans lawyers from striking queer jurors because they are LGBTQ+. Last year, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire introduced a standalone bill to the same effect. Reps. Becca Balint of Vermont and Lizzie Fletcher of Texas are sponsoring the measure in the House, where it is unlikely to pass, at least while Republicans are the majority.
Balint told The 19th that courtroom accessibility is key to ensuring that jury pools reflect the makeup of the country.
“We need every American who is eligible to serve on a jury to be in the jury pool,” Balint said. “Conversations change concerning LGBTQ people when LGBTQ people are in the room, and when you exclude people from the judicial process, it makes the system inherently less free and less fair.”
Jury service and the belief that jurors should reflect the nation’s diversity is a closely held American belief today. Historically, though, juries were defined by their exclusivity. For centuries, women were banned or discouraged from jury duty because they were believed to be too fragile to handle criminal trials or deemed “the center of home and family life,” as stated in a 1961 Supreme Court ruling. Fourteen years later, the court ruled in Taylor v. Louisiana that systematically excluding them violated a defendant’s rights to a representative jury. But it wasn’t until 1994 that a decision around the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment specifically prohibited using gender to strike potential jurors.
Black Americans were barred from service due to slavery and after its abolition, discrimination. Even after the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which prohibited race-based jury selection, many states failed to enforce anti-discrimination protections, leading to lopsided convictions against people of color, a legacy that continues.
In legally recognizing trans people, states have faced increasing pressure to make government facilities accessible to them. In 2015, then-Boston Mayor Marty Walsh made headlines when he signed an executive order requiring gender-neutral bathrooms at City Hall.
Many courthouses have also installed gender-neutral options or found workarounds that allow trans and nonbinary people to safely use the court, say experts. The difference is that the change has largely gone unnoticed.
Ezra Young, a constitutional scholar and professor in New York, said he has seen even the most conservative courts put in extra effort to allow trans people bathroom access.
“I think one of the benefits of a judiciary is certain things about the very administration of the buildings aren’t really politicized,” Young said. “It’s under presumption that courts need to be generally accessible to people.”
Quite simply, the judicial system has no choice.
“Courts have a constitutional responsibility to make sure that courts are generally accessible to the public and specifically to people who need to use the court,” Young added.
Bathrooms have long been contested public spaces for marginalized groups, and courtrooms have not been immune. That means transgender access is not the first challenge facing court facility managers.
“Some of them didn’t even have women’s bathrooms until quite recently. Usually when reconstruction for bathrooms is done, they try to make sure things are accessible,” Young said.
Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court, encountered that problem in 1981 when she was sworn in.
“[The bathroom] was a long way down the hallway, so it wouldn’t have been convenient,” she told NPR in 2013. “And we had to find something in the way of a restroom that was near the courtroom that I would be able to use when we were back there or in the room where we discussed cases.”
Government buildings have undergone similar upgrades to make bathrooms accessible for people with disabilities since the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Courthouses also reconfigured racially divided bathrooms and courtrooms in the wake of desegregation during the civil rights movement.
Now, all-gender access is the next goal for many municipalities. Nearly half of states (22 plus Washington D.C.) allow residents to opt for “X” gender markers on their state ID cards, and the federal government has been issuing “X” gender markers on passports for two years now. Just three states bar trans people from updating their IDs post-transition.
In Los Angeles County, officials have worked to ensure that every courthouse has a gender-neutral bathroom, according to a spokesperson for the superior court of the county.
“The Court supports inclusivity and seeks to expand access to justice by identifying and addressing barriers — substantive, procedural, physical and in appearance —that may inhibit full participation in the judicial process,” the court said in a statement.
In Cook County, which encompasses Chicago and has one of the world’s largest judicial systems, officials are engaged in research and design plans to add gender-neutral bathrooms to all of its courts. Such facilities already exist at the main courthouses for criminal court, domestic violence, juvenile cases and in the city branch courts.
Even today, Scott worries about violence and harassment in public restrooms. According to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, 60 percent of trans people avoided using a public bathroom for fear of discrimination.
While trans people have gained acceptance in many areas of public life, data shows that discrimination remains high or has increased from a decade ago. A more recent survey in 2022 found that 47 percent of trans Americans considered fleeing their states because anti-trans laws, including bathroom bans, had made their communities less safe.
But Young, who is also transgender, hopes that courts today will provide visitors with a different experience than the one Scott had 15 years ago. For the most part, Young has had positive experiences as a trans person in courts. His transgender clients have, too.
That doesn’t mean that every court is perfect, he adds. Many still won’t have a gender-neutral bathroom, and often visitors will need to ask a judge for access. But Young thinks that most courts will aim to provide safety for trans people.
“They want to make sure that people can be in court,” Young said. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they might agree with the litigant just because of who they are, but they really do care about making sure that litigants and the broader public understand that they’re part of the overarching community.”
Some news headlines and my thoughts dealing with billionaires and donations to super PACs, Speaker Johnson trying to pull attention away from tRump debate and rile up outrage against Biden and Harris. tRump’s lies about Afghanistan trying to blame Harris for it, I share what tRump did to make it impossible for the US to stay. Lastly I talk about the cult creating and spreading lies about Walz dog. Sorry for the noise hum in the background, I forgot to turn off the A/C.
tRump is a racist and Nazi supporter. tRump stealing money, money disappearing and not traceable. Fox Host claims Democrats are the real authoritarians.
Special counsel Jack Smith has charged former President Donald Trump in a superseding indictment in his federal election interference case that charges him with the same offenses in the original indictment, but is adjusted to the Supreme Court’s recent presidential immunity ruling.
“The superseding indictment, which was presented to a new grand jury that had not previously heard evidence in this case, reflects the Government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings and remand instructions,” a Justice Department spokesperson said Tuesday.
Trump last August pleaded not guilty to federal charges of undertaking a “criminal scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 election to remain in power. Last month, in a blockbuster decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Trump is entitled to immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts undertaken while in office, and sent the case back to the trial court to sort out which charges against him can stand.
In a separate filing Tuesday, the special counsel said he does not oppose waiving Trump’s appearance for an arraignment on the superseding indictment.
While the original indictment laid out five ways Trump allegedly obstructed the function of the federal government — having state election officials change electoral votes, arranging fraudulent slates of electors, using the Department of Justice to conduct “sham” investigations, enlisting the Vice President to obstruct the certification of the election, and exploiting the chaos of the Jan. 6 riot — the new indictment removes mention of his use of the Department of Justice, which was explicitly mentioned in the Supreme Court’s ruling as falling within his official duties.
While the original indictment mentions the Justice Department on over 30 occasions, the new indictment makes no mention of the DOJ.
It also reframes the portion of the original indictment outlining that Trump allegedly knew his claims of election fraud were false. (snip)
In multiple places, Smith’s new indictment adds clarifying language to state when he believes Trump was clearly acting outside of his official duties, saying, for instance, that Trump “had no official responsibilities related to any state’s certification of the election results” and highlighting when Trump was allegedly acting “not as President but in his capacity as a candidate for office.”
The superseding indictment also removes key allegations about Trump’s refusal to act as rioters stormed the Capitol.
The new indictment no longer includes allegations that Trump refused advisers’ requests to send a message calling off rioters and that Trump later refused to withdraw his objections to the certification despite the plea of his White House counsel.
The new indictment is 36 pages, while the original indictment was 45.
It comes just days after Smith, in a filing, urged the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a federal judge’s surprise dismissal of Trump’s classified documents case, which Smith is also overseeing.
I’m reading through the Morning Memo from TPM (yeah, it’s 4PM; so what?🌞) and see a bit about an Atlantic article written by Elaina Plott Calabro. It’s a profile of Kash Patel. I’ve used up my Atlantic freebies, but am providing links here, plus a copy-paste of a thread that’s available for free. The link to the thread is just below the one for the Morning Memo, both beneath the copy-paste. Either the event detailed has somehow slipped my mind, or this is yet another example of how the Don’s administration was dangerous to US national security.
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In the course of reporting on Patel, and the threat that he and other loyalists like him would pose to the country in a second Trump term, I struggled to shake what I learned about a series of events that took place on October 30, 2020. I want to share them with you here.
(snip-embedded tweet visible on the page)
On that Friday, according to multiple reported accounts, SEAL Team 6 was awaiting the green light on a rescue mission in West Africa. The admin had recently learned where gunmen were holding an American who had been kidnapped that week from his farm near the Niger/Nigeria border.
As multiple agencies coordinated on final details for the evening operation, the State Department worked to resolve the last outstanding task: securing airspace permission from Nigerian officials.
Around noon, Patel called the Pentagon with an update: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, he said, had gotten the approval. The mission was a go.
The SEALs were close to landing in Nigeria when DOD discovered that State had not, in fact, secured the clearance, as Patel had claimed. The aircraft were quickly diverted, and flew in circles for the next hour as officials scrambled to alert the Nigerian gov’t to their position.
With the operation window narrowing, Esper and Pompeo called the Situation Room to put the decision to the president: Either they abort the mission and risk their hostage being killed, or they proceed into foreign airspace and risk their soldiers being shot down.
But then, suddenly, the deputy secretary of state was on the line, Esper later wrote in his memoir: They’d been cleared, and the rescue operation was ultimately a success. But back in Washington, the celebration was checked by anger. How to make sense of Patel’s bad report?
Two people familiar with the exchange told me that Tony Tata, the Pentagon official and retired Army general to whom Patel had originally given the green light, confronted Patel in a rage. “You could’ve gotten these guys killed!” he shouted. “What the fuck were you thinking?”
Patel’s response: “If nobody got hurt, who the fuck cares?”
Through a spokesperson, Patel denied saying this, or making up the approval story. But three former senior administration officials independently cited the near catastrophe in West Africa as one of their foremost recollections from Patel’s tenure.
They remain unsettled by Patel’s actions, they told me, in large part because they have no clue what motivated them. If Patel had in fact just invented the story, as Esper’s team concluded, then why?
Was it because the election was in four days, and Patel was simply that impatient to set in motion a final potential victory for Trump, whatever the risk — was it as darkly cynical as that? Did his lack of experience mean he just had no grasp of the consequences?
I don’t know the answers to these questions. But three months of reporting later, they’re the questions I can’t stop thinking about it — particularly as Patel, in a second Trump term, could very well assume remarkable power atop America’s national security establishment.
Anyway, if you’ve made it this far, I hope you’ll read the whole story, from our October issue, here:
US researchers have developed a chalk-based coating that can reduce the temperature under fabric by roughly 5°C.
The researchers say their environmentally benign substance could be used to coat any type of fabric and turn it into a radiative cooling textile.
“We see a true cooling effect,” says Evan Patamia, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
“What is underneath the sample feels colder than standing in the shade.”
Patamia presented the team’s invention at the American Chemical Society’s 2024 Fall Meeting earlier this week.
Substances that can both reflect sunlight, and allow body heat to escape, are well-known to chemists. But they generally require costly or environmentally dangerous materials to make.
“Can we develop a textile coating that does the same thing using natural or environmentally benign materials?” summarises chemist Trisha Andrew, also at Amherst, of the work done by her and her colleagues.
Inspired by crushed limestone, which is used to cool buildings, the researchers tried solutions of calcium carbonate – the main component in limestone and chalk – as well as barium sulphate.
They used squares of fabric treated with a process called chemical vapour deposition, which added a layer of a carbon-based polymer onto the textiles.
When dipped in the solutions, the fabrics built up a chalky matte layer of crystals which could reflect UV and infrared light.
They tested the treated fabrics outside on a warm afternoon, and air underneath them was about 5°C cooler than the ambient temperature, and roughly 9°C cooler than air under untreated fabrics.
The coating is also resistant to laundry detergents.
“What makes our technique unique is that we can do this on nearly any commercially available fabric and turn it into something that can keep people cool,” says Patamia.
“Without any power input, we’re able to reduce how hot a person feels, which could be a valuable resource where people are struggling to stay cool in extremely hot environments.”
Andrew is now part of a startup aiming to test the process on larger bolts of fabric, to see if it can be scaled to industry.
by Skylar Tallal Fri, August 23rd 2024 at 10:30 PM
DES MOINES, Iowa — Summit Carbon Solutions is facing a set back in its proposed CO2 pipeline project, as the South Dakota Supreme Court ruled in favor of landowners who sued to keep Summit from surveying their land.
It’s a reversal of a lower court decision, with the state’s high court now claiming it’s premature to categorize Summit as a ‘common carrier’ for public utility. It’s something Summit needs to be able to prove before it can use eminent domain.
“One of our main arguments is that Summit’s not a common carrier,” Jess Mazour the conservation program coordinator with the Sierra Club Iowa Chapter said. “So it really does change the game here in Iowa as well.”
Summit can’t start building its pipelines in Iowa until it gets approval in North and South Dakota.
The Sierra Club Iowa Chapter calls the decision a victory for landowners. Even though the Iowa Utilities Commission isn’t taking up the club’s reconsideration request, the club is moving forward with its plan to take the fight to court.
“We now have precedent on our side and we’re going to have a strong base for when we file our appeal in district court,” Mazour said.
A similar court case is already on the books in Iowa, with Iowa’s highest court set to hear oral arguments October 8 at the state capitol.
“A landowner in Hardin County, Kent, he was sued for denying Summit access to his land and we are fighting that and also challenging Iowa’s survey law,” Mazour said.
Eminent Domain has been a major issue in Iowa over the last few years. Some Iowa lawmakers joined the pipeline opposition but haven’t been successful in their efforts to change state laws.
The topic is also coming up on the campaign trail, specifically in Iowa’s congressional races.
Congressional Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R) Iowa said carbon capture pipelines make sense for Iowa.
“So the carbon capture pipeline is only meant to lower the carbon intensity score of ethanol which makes it competitive globally,” Rep. Miller-Meeks said.
She said while eminent domain is a state issue, she hopes there will only be a limited number of landowners who don’t sign on voluntarily.
“Farmers and property owners need to look at the why the rationale and then determine if it’s in their best interest,” Rep. Miller-Meeks said. “Companies that are acquiring easements are looking at how do you make the land whole. How do you ensure farmers that you can grow crops in the near future?”
Iowa’s News Now did reach out to Summit for comment didn’t hear back.
” Joe 1, the first Soviet atomic bomb
African Americans in Milledgeville, Georgia, wait in line to vote following the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
Senator Strom Thurmond with his 24-hour filibustering speech
Robert Moses, leader of SNCC
