November 30, 1215 Pope Innocent II, in a papal bull (or major sacred pronouncement of canon law), ordered that Jews, “whether men or women, must in all Christian countries distinguish themselves from the rest of the population in public places by a special kind of clothing.” The rule was interpreted as requiring a badge on clothing as determined by each country. In England, for example, the tablets with the 10 commandments were used. Read more
November 30, 1967 Senator Eugene McCarthy (D-Minnesota) announced that he would run on an anti-Vietnam war platform against President Lyndon Johnson for the nomination of the Democratic Party. McCarthy, though a contender to be Johnson’s running mate in 1964, had since become increasingly disenchanted with U.S. policy toward Vietnam, and opposed the war in his campaign.
McCarthy on the campaign trail
“I am not for peace at any price, but for an honorable, rational and political solution to this war; a solution which I believe will enhance our world position, encourage the respect of our Allies and our potential adversaries, which will permit us to get the necessary attention to other commitments . . . and leave us with resources and moral energy to deal effectively with [the] pressing domestic problems of the United States itself.” Read more, see photosJo Freeman
November 30, 1993 The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act became law. It provided for a waiting period before the purchase of a handgun, and for the establishment of a national instant criminal background check system to be used by firearms dealers before the transfer of any handgun.The law was named for James Brady, President Ronald Reagan’s press secretary, who became a paraplegic after being shot in the assassination attempt on Reagan. Following his recovery, he and his wife, Sarah, became leading proponents of controlling the proliferation of handguns. James Brady watches President Clinton sign the bill
November 30, 1999 Tens of thousands of activists, students, union members and environmentalists demonstrating for global justice shut down the World Trade Organization (WTO) summit in Seattle, Washington. International media coverage ignored both the blockade and the police riot (and an enormous labor-sponsored rally and march), focusing instead on minor property damage committed by a few dozen self-described anarchists. photo Elaine Brière What the protests were about
The American economy expanded at a healthy 2.8% annual pace from July through September on strong consumer spending and a surge in exports, the government said Wednesday, leaving unchanged its initial estimate of third-quarter growth
ByPAUL WISEMAN AP economics writer
November 27, 2024, 8:39 AM
The American economy expanded at a healthy 2.8% annual pace from July through September on strong consumer spending and a surge in exports, the government said Wednesday, leaving unchanged its initial estimate of third-quarter growth.
U.S. gross domestic product — the economy’s output of goods and services — slowed from the April-July rate of 3%, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday.
But the GDP report still showed that the American economy — the world’s largest — is proving surprisingly durable. Growth has topped 2% for eight of the last nine quarters.
Within the GDP data, a category that measures the economy’s underlying strength rose at a solid 3.2% annual rate from July through September, up from 2.7% in the April-June quarter. This category includes consumer spending and private investment but excludes volatile items like exports, inventories and government spending.
Still, American voters — exasperated by high prices — were unimpressed by the steady growth and chose this month to return Donald Trump to the White House to overhaul the nation’s economic policies. He will be supported by Republican majorities in the House and Senate.
Consumer spending, which accounts for about 70% of U.S. economic activity, accelerated to a 3.5% annual pace last quarter, up from 2.8% in the April-June period and fastest growth since the fourth quarter of 2023. Exports also contributed to the third quarter’s growth, increasing at a 7.5% rate, most in two years. Still, the third-quarter growth in both consumer spending and exports was lower than the Commerce Department initially estimated.
But growth in business investment slowed sharply on a drop in investment in housing and in nonresidential buildings such as offices and warehouses. By contrast, spending on equipment surged.
When he takes office next month, President-elect Trump will inherit an economy that looks broadly healthy.
Growth is steady. Unemployment is low at 4.1%. Inflation, which hit a four-decade high 9.1% in June 2022, has fallen to 2.6%. That is still above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, but the central bank felt satisfied enough with the progress against inflation to cut its benchmark interest rate in September and again this month. Most Wall Street traders expect the Fed to cut rates again in December.
Wednesday’s report also contained some encouraging news on inflation. The Federal Reserve’s favored inflation gauge — called the personal consumption expenditures index, or PCE — rose at just a 1.5% annual pace last quarter, down from 2.5% in the second quarter. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core PCE inflation was 2.1%, down from 2.8% in the April-June quarter.
The public still feels inflation’s sting: Prices are about 20% higher than they were in February 2021, just before inflation started picking up
Trump has promised an economic shakeup. On Monday, for example, he vowed to slap new import taxes on goods from China, Mexico and Canada. Mainstream economists view such taxes — or tariffs — as inflationary. That is because they are paid by U.S. importers, who then seek to pass along the higher costs to their customers.
Wednesday’s report was the second of three looks at third-quarter GDP. The Commerce Department will issue the final report on Dec. 19.
___
This story has been corrected to show that consumer spending rose at the fastest pace since the fourth quarter, not the first quarter, of 2023.
Again this shows that while the fundie Christians and republican right maga are trying hard to wipe out trans people to then start on the rest of the LGBTQ+, the voters do not support that. Voters support trans people! They keep showing it. The Democrats must come out in force to support the trans population to remain relevant. Look Harris was so very careful never to mention trans people, never voice support for DEI or the LGBTQ+ because they are afraid of the haters. But the DEI and LGBTQ+ supporters are far greater than the haters or fundamentalist Christian theocracies. Hugs
In a major victory for Democrats, first-time candidate Derek Tran defeated Republican Rep. Michelle Steel in a hotly contested Orange County congressional race that became one of the most expensive in the country.
Tran will be the first Vietnamese American to represent a district that is home to Little Saigon and the largest population of people of Vietnamese descent outside of Vietnam.
The race was the third-to-last to be called in the country. As Orange County and Los Angeles County counted mail ballots, Steel’s margin of victory shrank to 58 votes before Tran took the lead 11 days after the election. Tran was leading by 613 votes when Steel conceded Wednesday.
Pete Hegseth, a nominee for Secretary of Defense under Donald Trump, has voiced enthusiastic support for a convention of states, a controversial proposal that has long been championed by far-right groups. Speaking during a promotional interview with his wife in June, Hegseth revealed not only his alignment with the cause but his active participation in its efforts, which included joining Zoom calls dedicated to advancing the movement and named dropped Mark Meckler, a proponent of the movement.
Pete Hegseth
Facebook
A convention of states, enabled under Article V of the Constitution, would allow state legislatures to propose sweeping amendments to the Constitution without Congressional approval. Because this process would allow for the Constitution to be rewritten, critics warn of the potential for chaos and extremism, with the possibility of unraveling fundamental protections enshrined in the Constitution.
Hegseth’s endorsement of the effort aligns with a growing push by far-right activists who hope to capitalize on Republican control in state legislatures. His suggestion that such a convention would become “more relevant than ever” due to the political scrutiny facing Trump underscores the ideological motivations behind this proposal.
Pete Hegseth with Trump
Instagram
The idea of a convention of states is seen by many as a fringe concept that threatens to undermine the delicate checks and balances of the American system, and therefore, is opposed by groups on both sides of the political divide. During a convention of states, far right groups could enshrine a nationwide abortion ban, end marriage equality, and abolish term limits for the presidency which means it could be a path for Trump to serve longer than 4 additional years.
Hegseth’s vocal advocacy for this cause as a potential Secretary of Defense would put him in a position to back decisions made by convention of states with military might. At a time when democracy itself faces numerous challenges, Hegseth’s support for such a radical initiative should give both lawmakers and voters pause about his fitness for a role as critical as Secretary of Defense.
I am sorry but how does this protect any student or adult … it also includes higher education. Notice this part … About 3% of high school students identify as transgender, according to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That is in a country of 337 million people.
This is only a hate bill based on the absurd idea that trans women want to assault girls. Notice it is always trans girls / women they talk about never trans boys or trans men. It is a made up problem that never happened so they have to destroy a small minority of people’s lives to prove a point of their bigotry. I am so sick of this posturing on the part of republicans trying to do to trans what they couldn’t do to the gays 30 years ago. It is the same tactics and hate they promote. If you want to know the real cost listen to the trans students who quit school because they had nowhere to go to the bathroom, or the trans students who were given approved bathrooms so far from their classes that they missed some and got bad marks for simply needing to pee before the class started. These bills have real world consequences for young people in every state. It is not just the bathroom issue but it makes a trans person a target even if there is a “trans bathroom” assigned. It means any student using it is outing themselves to the ones that want to target them for abuse.
Again this solves no problem but does promote hate and bigotry … and it is driven by religious bigotry because of the fundamentalist belief that their god created them male and female only. They are demanding we run our society, or 2024 understands on the book written by religious leaders 2,500 years ago. Think about it, these people had no idea of everything we take for granted today, yet the fundamentalist who demand we ;deny rights to trans people do it based on that book of people who did not even understand germs! These bills are designed to promote a religion and a religious view of life / morality in the public life. I am an old gay man, this still affects me. Because bigotry against one group’s rights is bigotry against all people’s rights! If these people get the right to exclude trans people from bathrooms what is next? Gay people on the same idea that we are a threat? Or hell watch about the old segregation idea that blacks are a threat to whites in bathrooms? See this is the same playbook. This is not different from black people shouldn’t be in white people’s bathrooms. Hugs
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has signed a bill into law banning transgender students from using school bathrooms and locker rooms that match up with their gender identity.
The law requires people at Ohio K-12 schools and universities use the restroom that aligns with their gender assigned at birth. It also bans students from sharing overnight accommodations with people of the opposite sex from their assigned sex at birth at K-12 schools.
This does not prevent a school from having single-occupancy facilities and does not apply to someone helping a person with a disability or a child younger than 10 years old being assisted by a parent, guardian or family member.
The law will take effect 90 days after DeWine signed the bill.
Several transgender Ohioans, allies and educators called on DeWine to veto the bill. The Ohio Capital Journal recently talked to a family who plans on moving out of Ohio because of anti-transgender legislation at the Statehouse.
The bathroom ban (House Bill 183) was added to a bill that revises College Credit Plus (Senate Bill 104) in the eleventh hour of a House Session at the end of June before the lawmakers went on an extended break.
The American Medical Association officially opposes policies preventing transgender individuals from accessing basic human services and public facilities consistent with gender identity.
Slightly more than half of transgender and nonbinary youth in Ohio considered suicide in 2022, according to the Trevor Project.
About a third of LGBTQ+ students were prevented from using the bathroom that aligned with their gender and slightly more than a quarter were stopped from using the locker room that aligned with their gender, according to Ohio’s 2021 state snapshot by GLSEN, which examines the school experiences of LGBTQ middle and high school students.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine gives his 2024 State of the State address in the Ohio House chambers at the Ohio Statehouse on Wednesday afternoon. (Pool photo by Barbara J. Perenic, Columbus Dispatch.)
Forty-two percent of transgender and nonbinary students were unable to use the bathroom that aligned with their gender and 36% couldn’t use the locker room that aligned with their gender, according to the Ohio GLSEN report.
Transgender youth who can’t use the bathroom that aligns with their gender are at a greater risk of sexual violence, according to a 2019 study published in the journal Pediatrics.
Florida, Oklahoma, Idaho, and Tennessee’s laws have all been challenged. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit blocked Idaho’s law last year.
North Carolina made history in 2016 by becoming the first state to ban bathroom access to transgender people. The law was quickly appealed in 2017 and settled in federal court in 2019, but the state ended up losing hundreds of millions of dollars as the NBA All-Star Game and NCAA events were moved out of state.
This is the hyper Fundamentalist Christian who is radically against trans people and the entire LGBTQ+. He has made it his mission in political life to push bigotry and hate to anything he thinks the Christian god hates while trying to promote Christianity as a state religion at every turn. So here he is trying to shut down a homeless shelter. Really what Jesus would ask his followers to do, right? No this is not based on religion or faith, this is about profit and who gives him money. He pushes religious stuff because his main benefactor and political protector is a billionaire fundamentalist Christian preacher who thinks the government should force every person to be a Christian with his views. And what about the homeless shelter … Well local business don’t like the look or the congestion so more donations to remove them … Get the point. The point is the wealthy people who support this … Ultra Christian simply don’t like the poor around. They want them to go away and never be seen. Hugs.
In this June 22, 2017, file photo, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks at a news conference in Dallas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez, File)
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to shut down an Austin, Texas, homeless center, calling the charity a public nuisance.
The Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center says it’s the largest provider of homeless services in Travis County. According to its website, the center provides a number of services, including physical and mental health care, substance abuse care, harm reduction, housing interventions and benefits enrollment. The center has received over a $1 million from the city of Austin, according to Paxton’s complaint.
“In South Austin, a once peaceful neighborhood has been transformed by homeless drug addicts, convicted criminals, and registered sex offenders,” Paxton says in the complaint, filed in Travis County District Court. “These people do drugs in sight of children, publicly fornicate next to an elementary school, menace residents with machetes, urinate and defecate on public grounds, and generally terrorize the surrounding community.”
In his complaint, Paxton notes the center’s location across the street from an elementary school. The Texas Attorney General’s Office said in a statement on the lawsuit that the school has been forced into lockdown repeatedly due to violent behavior from people receiving services at the center.
Paxton also takes issue with the center allowing a clean syringe distribution program on its property, which he says amounts to facilitating drug use. Part of a “harm reduction” philosophy, clean syringe programs aim to help people who are already using intravenous drugs do so more safely. In Texas, such programs operate in a legal grey area, as they are not authorized by the state and Texas law criminalizes the possession of drug paraphernalia.
“Drug activity and criminal behavior facilitated by this organization have hijacked an entire neighborhood,” Paxton said in a statement. “By operating a taxpayer-funded drug paraphernalia giveaway next to an elementary school, this organization is threatening students’ health and safety and unjustly worsening daily life for every single resident of the neighborhood. We will shut this unlawful nuisance behavior down.”
Paxton seeks an injunction requiring the center to close for a year and prohibiting it from conducting operations within 1,000 feet of a school, playground or youth center. But in a statement, the center’s executive director Mark Hilbelink said the services will continue.
“It is regrettable that Attorney General Paxton took this route, especially during the week of Thanksgiving, but Sunrise intends to keep offering services to people in our community who need them,” Hilbelink said in a statement. “We are committed to being a good neighbor. We will continue to work, every day, to support Joslin Elementary School, our neighborhood, and our entire community.”
He also noted the center is a ministry of Sunrise Community Church and is therefore protected by the First Amendment, the U.S. Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act and the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
“These laws have been tested in court on multiple occasions, always with the same result: churches are protected to do work that is an expression of their religious practice,” Hilbelink said.
The Texas committee that examines all pregnancy-related deaths in the state will not review cases from 2022 and 2023, the first two years after Texas’s near-total abortion ban took effect, leaving any potential deaths related to abortion bans during those years uninvestigated by the 23 doctors, medical professionals and other specialists who make up the group.
Leaders of the Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee said the change was made to “be more contemporary” — allowing them to skip over a backlog of older cases and review deaths closer to the date when they occurred, and therefore offer more relevant recommendations to policymakers. At least three women have died in Texas because of delays in care related to the abortion bans, according to reporting from ProPublica.
Boxes of mifepristone, the first pill given in a medical abortion, are prepared for patients at a clinic in New Mexico on Jan. 13, 2023. Credit: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
A Louisiana law that reclassified abortion-inducing drugs as controlled substances has made it more difficult for doctors to treat a wide range of gynecological conditions, doctors say.
Now, a similar proposal has been filed in Texas.
Texas Rep. Pat Curry, a freshman Republican from Waco, said the intent of House Bill 1339 is to make it harder for people, especially teenagers, to order mifepristone and misoprostol online to terminate their pregnancies. Doctors in Louisiana say the measure has done little to strengthen the state’s near-total abortion ban, but has increased fear and confusion among doctors, pharmacists and patients.
“There’s no sense in it,” said Dr. Nicole Freehill, an OB/GYN in New Orleans. “Even though we kept trying to tell them how often [these medications] are used for other things and how safe they are, it didn’t matter. It’s just a backdoor way of restricting abortion more.”
These medications are often used to empty the uterus after a patient has a miscarriage, and are commonly prescribed ahead of inserting an intrauterine device. Misoprostol is also often the best treatment for obstetric hemorrhages, a potentially life-threatening condition in which women can bleed to death in minutes. Since the Louisiana law went into effect, hospitals have taken the medication off their obstetrics carts and put them in locked, password-protected central storage.
One hospital has been running drills to practice getting the medications to patients in time, and reported, on average, a two minute delay from before the law went into effect, the Louisiana Illuminator reported.
“In obstetrics and gynecology, minutes or even seconds can be the difference between life and death,” Dr. Stella Dantas, president of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists, said in a statement after the Louisiana law passed. “Forcing a clinician to jump through administrative hurdles in order to access a safe, effective medicine is not medically justified and is, quite simply, dangerous.”
Curry said these restrictions won’t stop doctors from prescribing these medications when necessary, but will stop the “wide misuse” of the drugs to circumvent the state’s near-total abortion ban.
Curry said he consulted with the author of the Louisiana law, as well as OB/GYNs in Texas to draft the bill. He said the doctors who have criticized the legislation are raising these concerns as a “smokescreen” because they don’t want more restrictions.
“I understand that. We don’t need or want all kinds of regulations,” he said. “Especially as Republicans, regulations should not be high on our list, but in this case it’s a necessary evil given the situation.”
Texas roots for a Louisiana law
In March 2022, Mason Herring, a Houston attorney, spiked his wife’s water with misoprostol to force her to have an abortion. Catherine Herring was pregnant with the couple’s third child, a daughter who was born 10 weeks premature. She survived, but has significant developmental delays, according to the Associated Press.
Mason Herring was charged with felony assault to induce abortion, and pled guilty to injury to a child and assault to a pregnant person. He was sentenced to 180 days in jail and 10 years of probation.
Catherine Herring’s experience led her brother, Louisiana state Rep. Thomas Pressly, to file a bill that would have made it a crime to coerce someone into having an abortion.
But at the last minute, the bill was amended to also reclassify abortion-inducing drugs as controlled substances, according to the Louisiana Illuminator, leaving hospitals and doctors scrambling to comply with the new restrictions. The state health department advised storing the medication in a locked area on the crash cart, which at least some hospitals have said is not feasible.
“We had to rework how we utilize misoprostol across our hospital systems,” Freehill said. “Labor and delivery, pharmacy, nursing staff, you name it, they were all involved with figuring out how to stay within the law but still use these medications that we need access to.”
It’s rare for a state to decide on its own to classify a drug as a controlled substance. Most commonly, the federal government decides which medications should be “scheduled,” based on their medical usefulness and the potential for abuse. Schedule I drugs, like heroin, have no medical use and are often used recreationally; Schedule IV and V are medications that are useful but have a potential for abuse, like Xanax or Valium.
There are enhanced penalties for having a controlled substance without a prescription, and increased restrictions on how doctors can dispense them. Pharmacists must report any prescriptions for controlled substances to the state Prescription Monitoring Program, and doctors are required to check the database before prescribing certain controlled substances. Law enforcement also has access to that database.
Prescription monitoring has been key to combating the opioid epidemic by identifying doctors who were overprescribing and patients who were getting prescriptions from multiple providers. But with so much political attention on mifepristone and misoprostol as abortion-inducing drugs, doctors are worried about scrutiny for frequently prescribing these common medications.
“We had to fix a problem that wasn’t broken,” said Freehill. “There’s no reason for it to be Schedule IV. It’s not something people abuse. It’s not something people can become addicted to. It’s extremely safe.”
A group of Louisiana health care providers recently filed a lawsuit arguing the law discriminates against people who need mifepristone and misoprostol for other conditions, and challenging whether the last minute amendments to the bill were proper. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill has said the new restrictions are clear and should not delay care. Those who “have attempted to sow confusion and doubt,” she said in a statement, “profit from misinformation.”
When the law first went into effect, Anna Legreid Dopp, senior director of government relations for the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, told CNN that the group expected other states to consider similar measures.
“Almost immediately, our members raised concern that if this is being done in one state, it can easily be a template for other states to use it,” Dopp said.
Restrictions on medication
Curry, who recently won a special election to fill the seat long held by Republican Rep. Doc Anderson, said Pressly and Herring have offered to come testify in support of his bill this session. He anticipates it getting wide support from his fellow lawmakers.
Since the overturn of Roe v. Wade, conservative groups have turned their attention to restricting access to abortion-inducing medications. A group of anti-abortion doctors filed a lawsuit to revoke the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, which the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately rejected.
Curry said there are reasons to keep these medications on the market beyond abortion, but they need tighter restrictions.
“You can lie about your age, you can lie about your name, you can lie about your address, there’s no verification whatsoever,” he said, referring to online prescribers. “And it gets shipped to a 15-year-old girl, a 13-year-old girl.”
It is already a crime to mail abortion-inducing medications in Texas, and many of the online pharmacies operate in a legal gray area outside U.S jurisdiction. Others are working in states that have “shield laws” that protect doctors’ ability to prescribe and mail pills into states that have banned abortion. None of these interstate and international legal questions have been tested in court with regards to abortion.
Freehill said she would encourage Texas doctors to learn from what has happened in Louisiana as they prepare to advocate against this bill this session.
“There’s a lot of education that needs to be done surrounding what this means and what these drugs are really used for,” she said. “I don’t know that we would have been able to sway people, even with more time, but we can at least educate on why this is completely inappropriate and really governmental overreach.”
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