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Shelby County utility-scale battery manufacturing plant expected to create over 1,500 jobs

Liam Niemeyer — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 17:35:43 +0000

Shawn Qu, center, the founder of Canadian Solar, at a Friday morning press conference about a new battery manufacturing plant in Shelby County.

Gov. Andy Beshear, local elected officials from Shelby County and leaders with a Canadian manufacturer announced a nearly $712 million battery manufacturing plant expected to be operational in Shelbyville by the end of 2025.

The Canadian company e-Storage through its subsidiary Shelbyville Battery Manufacturing will be establishing a Shelbyville plant to build utility-scale battery cells, eventually ramping up to produce enough batteries each year to have the combined capacity of six gigawatt-hours of electricity. These cells are modular and can be packaged into containers, creating large batteries that electric utilities can utilize for energy storage.?

The announcement is expected to create 1,572 jobs over 15 years, considered to be the largest economic development announcement in Shelby County’s history and the third largest announcement during Beshear’s time as governor.?

“Our commitment is, this facility is going to be so profitable that they come back and say, ‘Maybe we can do a little bit more. Maybe we can go even a little bit bigger,’” Beshear said during an event at the state Capitol this morning. “But we are thrilled at this monumental announcement today and how it’s going to continue to move Kentucky to the forefront of our national economy.”?

Utilities across the country are investing significantly in battery storage systems, increasingly to pair with zero-emission renewable energy systems such as solar and wind energy. Such energy sources are considered to be “intermittent,” meaning they only produce electricity when the sun is shining or wind is blowing. But when coupled with battery systems, such energy sources can charge batteries to essentially provide zero-emission power around the clock.?

Shawn Qu, the founder of Canadian Solar, the parent company of e-Storage, told a gathered audience at the state capitol that utility-scale batteries would become increasingly important with the expected rise in electricity demand driven by artificial intelligence and increased domestic manufacturing.?

“Battery cells are the heart of an utility-scale energy storage system. Therefore, this project will put Kentucky to the center of the effort to build a robust and secure electricity grid for this country,” Qu said.?

Shelby County Judge-Executive Dan Ison touted the work done by the governor, Kentucky Senate President Robert Stivers and state lawmakers representing Shelby County to bring in the project, and Shelbyville Mayor Troy Ethington called the announcement “transformative.”?

“Shelbyville continues to become one of the fastest growing communities in the Commonwealth, and we’ve been preparing for a moment like this over the last four to five years,” Ethington said. “Our local economy will experience a renaissance. We are proud of the strong small businesses in our community of Shelbyville, and this expansion will give them the support they need to flourish.”?

e-Storage is eligible for up to $35 million in tax incentives if it’s able to create the anticipated jobs and pay an average hourly wage of $25.34 across those jobs.

This story was updated to clarify the combined capacity of batteries produced annually at the Shelbyville plant.?

Market problems, poor planning causing price hikes in nation’s largest electric market, critics say

Robert Zullo — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 20:51:21 +0000

The coal fired Brandon Shores Power Plant, on March 9, 2018 in Baltimore, Maryland. Critics say that PJM, which is responsible for coordinating the flow of electricity in 13 states and the District of Columbia, should have been prepared for the retirement of Brandon Shores. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

After years of climbing electric prices nationwide, customers in the United States’ largest power market are about to get squeezed harder.

Last month, PJM, which coordinates the flow of electricity for an area that includes all or parts of 13 states, including part of Kentucky, stretching from the Midwest to New Jersey plus the District of Columbia, released capacity auction results that hit a record high.

The auction, held by the regional transmission organization to ensure there’s enough power generation to meet demand spikes, such as during severe weather and other grid emergencies, produced a price of nearly $270 per megawatt day for much of the footprint (with some areas spiking much higher) compared to nearly $29 per megawatt day during the last auction. That increase, more than 800%, will cost customers across the region of 65 million people nearly $15 billion for the period covered by the auction (June 1, 2025 to May 31, 2026) the Maryland Office of People’s Counsel noted in a report released last week.

The costs will not hit equally across the PJM footprint, however, since utilities that own and operate their own power plants, like Virginia’s Dominion Energy, are both sellers and buyers in the capacity market, which will blunt the impact for their ratepayers. But Exelon, a company that owns six so-called “wires-only” utilities with 10.5 million customers in PJM states, expects the capacity prices to trigger double-digit rate increases for some customers, Utility Dive reported.

What makes the capacity costs tougher to swallow is that much of the increase can be laid at the feet of planning shortcomings, market design failures and governance problems at PJM, the organization’s critics contend.

“The tools to enhance reliability are in PJM’s hands,” said Clara Summers, campaign manager for Consumers for a Better Grid, a watchdog group that is part of the Citizens Utility Board of Illinois. “Instead PJM is dragging its feet on the clean energy transition and doing everything it can to keep fossil fuel plants online and ultimately ratepayers are the ones who suffer from this shortsightedness.”

‘All sorts of problems’

In particular, critics point to PJM’s long delayed interconnection queue, which is the waiting list for generation projects looking for permission to connect to the grid. They say that even as PJM complains about fewer power plants entering its capacity auction and the increasing pace of old generating station retirements, it is seeking exemptions to a landmark new federal rule intended to streamline interconnection processes and get new power resources online quickly.

“PJM is the place with the most acute need for interconnection reform and they’re refusing to do what they’ve been told to do on it rather than be proactive on it,” said Tom Rutigliano, a senior advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council who focuses on PJM.

Jeff Shields, a PJM spokesman, said the organization has been working hard to fix its interconnection process and clear the backlog. He pointed out that many projects that have cleared the queue still aren’t getting built because of supply chain, financing or permitting problems that are beyond PJM’s control.

“We are not arguing about whether we need queue reform, we have only taken issue with some details,” he said.

David Lapp, Maryland’s people’s counsel, an advocate for the state’s residential utility customers, said interconnection delays are just part of the problem at PJM.

Transmission costs — because of a lack of competitive bidding of projects and a failure to plan for the long term, watchdogs argue — have also climbed over the past decade.? And a deficient process for managing power plant retirements, along with market errors, have also hurt customers, Lapp said.

”Our customers are bearing the consequences of all sorts of problems at PJM, whether they be problems with the market structure, problems with the interconnection queue, problems related to planning failures or just mistakes,” Lapp said in an interview with States Newsroom. “PJM really needs to start taking the interest of customers more seriously into account in terms of how it develops its policies.”

How the retirement of Brandon Shores, a Talen Energy coal-fired power plant southeast of Baltimore, has been handled, exemplifies a lot of what’s wrong with PJM, Lapp added. Lapp and others, including members of Maryland’s congressional delegation, say PJM was caught flat-footed by the plant’s retirement, which should have been foreseeable given the limited amount it was running, a deal with the Sierra Club to quit burning coal and financial troubles for its operating company. PJM counters that it was told the plant would switch to burning oil and continue running.

“It is not reasonable to expect PJM to have anticipated the imminent deactivation of the Brandon Shores units when numerous public statements and direct conversations between PJM and Talen all supported the notion that Brandon Shores was on a path to remain online, albeit using a different fuel source,” PJM President and CEO Manu Asthana wrote in a December letter to the Sierra Club,

‘How much sense does that make?’

Regardless, PJM now has pushed for an urgent suite of transmission projects that will cost Maryland ratepayers about $800 million to bring in enough power to make up for the loss of the Brandon Shores station and another nearby Talen plant, Wagner, that is also retiring. PJM will also keep both plants running under what are known as“reliability must run” arrangements that could cost Maryland ratepayers $629 million through 2028, the People’s Counsel report says, and comes with no guarantee they will actually be able to produce power when called upon. It also means the plants will exit the capacity market, which is designed to increase prices as energy supply tightens to encourage more generation sources to enter the market. “The logic was that you want to treat them as gone to send a price signal for new entry,” Rutigliano said. But even if a new generation source wanted to take advantage of the high capacity prices in the zone affected by the plant closure, the interconnection queue delays mean it could be years before it can participate in the auction.

“With PJM’s interconnection process so far behind that simply doesn’t work,” Rutigliano said. “Price signals are worthless if you’ve got a six-year delay in responding to them.”

And since PJM has already decided on a transmission solution to make up for the plant’s retirement, forcing customers to bear the high capacity prices doesn’t make sense, Rutigliano said.

“They exclude them from the market to get a high price signal but build transmission to ease the load pocket. Those are contradictory,” he said.

The upshot is that Talen gets a windfall (the Office of the People’s Counsel report found the company’s revenues for the 2025-2026 delivery year are $360 million higher than what they would have been had Wagner and Brandon Shores participated in the capacity market) and electric customers in Maryland will be paying extra for plants that may not run much at all. They will also be paying extra for the loss of that plant to the capacity market in order to create a market signal that won’t matter because of the transmission solution PJM has already decided upon, which will also be paid by local customers. Lapp called it a “triple whammy.”

“We have the illogical situation where customers are paying big dollars for a plant that is not going to run almost all the time,” Lapp said. “They still have no performance obligation. There are no consequences if PJM says ‘We’re hitting a peak time. We need you to run.’ And Talen says ‘We can’t.’ …? How much sense does that make?”

Shields, the PJM spokesman, says PJM will continue working to improve markets, transmission planning and generator interconnection. But he added that, of the PJM states, Maryland has the second-fewest projects in the queue over the next few years.? “We encourage Maryland policymakers to analyze why and what can be done to encourage development,” Shields said. “There is no debate – Maryland needs energy infrastructure. Maryland needs generation to produce power for and transmission to move power to the customers who need it. The Maryland Office of People’s Counsel knows all of this to be true, and these critical issues deserve a better discussion than ongoing exercises in finger pointing.”

Seeking variances?

Particularly frustrating for PJM reformers are the exemptions it is seeking to a new Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rule to speed the connection of new power resources to the grid, which seems counterintuitive for an organization that has worried about having enough power to meet demand. PJM did begin its own interconnection reforms prior to the FERC order, and its request for variances indicates it wants to stick to that plan rather than conform completely to the new FERC rules, per a coalition of environmental and consumer organizations that are challenging the request before the commission.

“The interconnection queue in PJM is among the longest in the nation, whether measured by the number of projects, total electric capacity, or how long projects languish awaiting studies,” the groups wrote in a FERC filing, noting that PJM won’t review new interconnection applications until 2026 at the earliest. “At the same time, PJM is sounding the alarm about a reliability crisis because new generation cannot come online quickly enough to replace retiring power plants. To accelerate interconnection and bring new generation online to avoid reliability challenges from foreseeable retirements, PJM should welcome Order No. 2023’s reforms with open arms. Instead, PJM resists reform to its interconnection process.”

Mainly PJM is seeking permission for increased study timelines and a laxer penalty structure? and wants to sidestep reporting requirements on how it evaluates grid-enhancing technologies, which can save time and money over traditional transmission solutions. It also wants to avoid the requirement to realistically consider how energy storage resources will affect peak load.

Grid-enhancing technologies have been used for years elsewhere in the world to get more out of existing power systems and in many cases are faster and cheaper than building new transmission lines, but they’ve been slow to catch on in the U.S., in part because American utilities make more money by building big, expensive projects rather than more cost-effective solutions, proponents have said.

PJM wants out of a requirement to demonstrate that it has considered those technologies, said Katie Siegner, a manager who works on markets and electric grids at the Rocky Mountain Institute, a nonprofit focused on decarbonization.

“What they’re saying is, ‘We already consider them but don’t make us show you how,’” she said.

The other major exemption PJM wants deals with battery storage resources and what grid upgrades are needed to accommodate them. Some grid operators, including PJM, want to continue to use a worst-case assumption — that the batteries will charge at times of peak electric demand. That flies in the face of the economic model for grid-connected batteries, which seek to charge when prices are low and discharge when they spike.

“Assuming that storage will charge during a time of peak load is one of those worst-case conditions even though it’s antithetical to the action it will take in the market,” Siegner said. And even if PJM was concerned about that happening, it could write a prohibition into an interconnection agreement, rather than requiring storage developers to pay for expensive grid upgrades that might never be needed, she added.

“It’s just a nonsensical way of studying these resources that has to change,” Siegner said.

The bigger problem, said Summers of the Citizens Utility Board, is that at PJM, fossil fuel generators, big utilities and transmission companies hold a lot of sway.

“Many of these companies came of age in the fossil fuel era and their incentives are to try to prevent the fossil fuel transition or make it as expensive as possible. PJM has a pattern of dragging its feet on the energy transition,” Summers said.

Indeed, how PJM is governed and how stakeholders are voting in lower level meetings is drawing increasing scrutiny from state lawmakers. Four blue state governors with decarbonization goals also recently called for a “robust process for states to engage with PJM” on planning decisions.

And for many of PJM’s critics, the fact that projects have made it through the queue but haven’t gotten built doesn’t excuse the mess the interconnection process has become.

“PJM must take responsibility for its role in establishing and maintaining an effective interconnection process,” Siegner said. “The faster that interconnection requests are processed, the easier it is to get financing and navigate supply chain hurdles. It’s a lot harder if you’re waiting in the queue for five years and you have no idea what your network upgrade costs will be.”

U.S. Secret Service director resigns amid fury over agency failures in protecting Trump

Ariana Figueroa — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 17:00:31 +0000

United States Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on Tuesday, July 23, 2024. The day before, Cheatle testified before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — ?U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned Tuesday, following widespread outrage that her agency failed to prevent the assassination attempt on former President Donald J. Trump during a July 13 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Cheatle’s resignation follows an intense congressional hearing where Democrats and Republicans demanded she step down after they grew dissatisfied with her answers about how a gunman was able to get within shooting range of the former president. In the hearing, Cheatle noted that the Secret Service was told about a suspicious person two to five times before the shooting.

According to an email obtained by The Associated Press, Cheatle said to her staff that she took “full responsibility for the security lapse.”

Ronald L. Rowe, the U.S. Secret Service Deputy Director will serve as acting Director of the Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.

“I appreciate his willingness to lead the Secret Service at this incredibly challenging moment, as the agency works to get to the bottom of exactly what happened on July 13 and cooperate with ongoing investigations and Congressional oversight,” Mayorkas said. “At the same time, the Secret Service must effectively carry on its expansive mission that includes providing 24/7 protection for national leaders and visiting dignitaries and securing events of national significance in this dynamic and heightened threat environment.”

The Secret Service declined to comment and deferred to DHS.

“I am responsible for leading the agency, and I am responsible for finding the answers to how this event occurred and making sure that it doesn’t happen again,” Cheatle said during Monday’s House Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing.

Task force will still investigate

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said even though Cheatle has stepped down, he still plans to continue with plans to form a bipartisan task force to investigate the security failures that led to the attempted assassination, in which Trump was shot and his right ear injured.?

“Her resignation is overdue,” Johnson told reporters. “It certainly was the director, but there may be others in the line of authority who are also culpable in what happened in the errors and mistakes there.”

Johnson said the task force will continue “to ensure that those mistakes do not happen again.”

On Trump’s social media site, Truth Social, the former president wrote that the Biden administration “did not properly protect me, and I was forced to take a bullet for Democracy. IT WAS MY GREAT HONOR TO DO SO!”

In a statement, President Joe Biden thanked Cheatle for her service and said he plans to appoint a new director soon.

“As a leader, it takes honor, courage, and incredible integrity to take full responsibility for an organization tasked with one of the most challenging jobs in public service,” Biden said.

He added that an independent review, which he directed the Department of Homeland Security to undertake shortly after the shooting, will “get to the bottom of what happened on July 13.”

“We all know what happened that day can never happen again,” Biden said.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, Democrat of Nevada, issued a joint statement in which they said they have introduced bipartisan legislation that would require all future directors of the Secret Service be subject to confirmation by the Senate and serve a single 10-year term.

“Our bill is a crucial step toward providing the transparency and accountability that Congress and the American people deserve from the Secret Service,” Grassley said. “In light of former Director Cheatle’s resignation, Congress must now move quickly to pass our legislation and put a qualified individual at the agency’s helm.”

Cortez Masto said that by requiring the director of the Secret Service to be confirmed by the Senate, this will “ensure the same level of oversight as other federal law enforcement agencies and support our hardworking agents in doing the best job they can.”

Mayorkas also praised Cheatle for her work, noting her 29 years of service.

“Over the past two years, she has led the Secret Service with skill, honor, integrity, and tireless dedication,” Mayorkas said in a statement. “She is deeply respected by the men and women of the agency and by her fellow leaders in the Department of Homeland Security.”

Booker, Castro urge feds to prepare for DACA recipients seeking health care access

Shauneen Miranda — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 23:55:41 +0000

Sen. Cory Booker and other Democrats told federal officials Tuesday they need to put resources into outreach so DACA recipients can access health insurance provided under the Affordable Care Act. (Danielle Richards for New Jersey Monitor)

WASHINGTON — Worried about the outcome of the 2024 election, a slew of congressional Democrats called on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday to take steps to ensure?Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals?program recipients can actually access health insurance provided under the Affordable Care Act when they become eligible this year.

The?Biden administration published a final rule?in May, set to go into effect on Nov. 1, that will allow DACA recipients to “apply for coverage through HealthCare.gov and state-based marketplaces, where they may qualify for financial assistance to help them purchase quality health insurance.”

But for DACA recipients to take full advantage of the expansion as early as possible, HHS needs to put resources into outreach, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas and 86 other Democrats said in a?letter?to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and provided first to States Newsroom.

The lawmakers praised the recently finalized rule, while noting that “for this expansion to be successful, HHS must ensure that every newly eligible individual is fully informed and supported during the enrollment process.”

A total of 73 U.S. representatives and 15 U.S. senators from across the country signed the letter. The letter is dated Monday, when members agreed on the final language, and the lawmakers sent it to HHS on Tuesday.

With DACA recipients eligible for health insurance benefits as early as December if enrolled by Nov. 15, the lawmakers want to ensure that the recipients are “able to navigate the registration process so that they can take full advantage of their new access to medical care.”

The lawmakers pressed Becerra on the actual implementation of this imminent accessibility, including how the department plans to minimize barriers to enrollment for a group that has historically faced challenges in verifying their identity.

They also asked the secretary to address what steps the department will take to make sure the recipients are aware of the special enrollment period, what resources will be allocated for media outreach, how the department will ensure the information is shared to this group and how they will help prevent instances of scams or fraud targeting the recipients throughout the enrollment period.

HHS did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Future of DACA in the balance?

The letter comes as DACA’s future remains unknown.

Former President Donald J. Trump — officially nominated Monday as the 2024 GOP presidential nominee — tried to?end the program?during his first term.

Recipients of DACA are?awaiting a court case?to determine the legality of the program after Trump sought to end it.

DACA — an?Obama-era program?created in 2012 — was designed to protect children who were brought into the country illegally from deportation. The Biden administration said that its final rule released in May is set to help more than 100,000 uninsured young people.

Representatives for the 2024 Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday regarding DACA.

For second year in a row, Kentucky overdose deaths decrease?

Sarah Ladd — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 17:44:17 +0000

A Narcan vending machine in the exit lobby of the Louisville Metro Department of Corrections. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Sarah Ladd)

Overdose deaths in Kentucky decreased in 2023 for the second year in a row, Gov. Andy Beshear announced Thursday as he released the Drug Overdose Fatality Report.?

In 2022, 2,135 Kentuckians died from an overdose, marking the first decline since 2018. Ninety percent of those deaths were from opioids and fentanyl.?

In 2023, the number of fatal overdoses was down to 1,984. Fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid, accounted for 1,570 of those — about 79% of the 2023 deaths. The 35-44 age group was most at risk, the report shows. Methamphetamine accounted for 55% of 2023’s overdose deaths.?

Despite the overall decrease, the number of Black Kentuckians who died from a drug overdose increased from 259 in 2022 to 264 in 2023.?

“We recognize that even while we celebrate progress, there’s a lot of heartbreak and pain because of this epidemic that continues,” Beshear said.?

Van Ingram, the executive director for the Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy, said distribution of Narcan, which can reverse opioid overdoses, in the state is key. Local health departments, recovery community centers and regional prevention centers provide free Narcan across the state. Find free Narcan near you here. In 2023, 160,000 doses of Narcan were distributed in Kentucky.?

“Fentanyl is what’s driving this crisis,” Ingram said. “If we can ever get a handle on that, I think the success we can have is unbelievable.”?

In 2023, the legislature decriminalized fentanyl test strips. Check with your local health department to obtain the test strips, which can easily detect the presence of fentanyl in pills and other drugs within moments.?

The fatality report shows the highest rates of fatal drug overdoses were Estill, Lee, Breathitt, Powell and Floyd counties. Fentanyl and meth potency was the highest in Jefferson, Fayette, Kenton, Madison and Pike counties.?

This map shows drug overdoses where fentanyl was present. (Screenshot from fatality report)

Signs of an overdose include labored breathing, unresponsiveness, choking and more.?

If you think someone is overdosing, here’s what experts say to do:?

First, call 911 so help is on the way.
Try speaking to the person. For example, say: “I believe you might be overdosing, and I am going to administer Narcan.”?
Rake your knuckles over the person’s chest. This may also elicit a response.?
If the person isn’t responsive, administer Narcan.?

Public health experts recommend people carry Narcan so they can best respond to overdoses. Narcan is for sale at many pharmacies, and health departments distribute free boxes. A box of Narcan comes with user instructions, which include these rescue steps:

Put the person on their back.?
Tilt the person’s head back.?
Insert the Narcan nozzle into one of the person’s nostrils.?
Press the plunger and then remove the nozzle from the nose.?
If the person doesn’t respond, in two minutes, repeat the process.?
Stay with the person until emergency medical staff arrive.

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

Biden enlists local officials to revive immigration deal

Ariana Figueroa — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 19:59:29 +0000

Asylum seekers board a bus en route to a shelter at Port Authority Bus Terminal on May 18, 2023, in New York City. President Joe Biden said Monday cities need more federal support to deal with an influx of migrants. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Monday urged local officials to lobby their members of Congress to pass the bipartisan border security deal struck in the Senate that Republicans walked away from this year.

In a brief speech touting the administration’s accomplishments to more than 2,000 mayors, city officials and other advocates in Washington for the National League of Cities’ Congressional Cities Conference, Biden said cities needed more federal support to deal with a surge of newly arrived migrants.

“It has the funds that many of our cities badly need,” Biden said of the bipartisan border security bill. “Tell your members in Congress to show up, show a little spine, and pass the bipartisan border security bill.”

Cities such as New York, Chicago and Denver have had their resources stretched following bus arrivals of migrants sent from GOP Texas Gov. Greg Abbott without warning to Democrat-led cities. Many local officials have pressed the administration for aid and supported that bipartisan bill that would have overhauled immigration policy, especially at the southern border.

At the behest of GOP presidential front-runner Donald J. Trump, who has campaigned on fears of immigration at the southern border and was against the bill, congressional Republicans last month dropped their initial support.

Biden’s speech mainly focused on promoting the federal funding for state and local governments his administration championed in several major laws Congress passed since Biden took office. Those laws include the American Rescue Plan that provided pandemic-related economic assistance, the bipartisan infrastructure law and a law to spur investment in semiconductor manufacturing.

He rattled off a list of bridges that are being updated and repaired with funding from the infrastructure law, such as the Brent Spence Bridge that connects Kentucky and Ohio.

As the president gears up for the November election, he laid out to conference attendees how he wants to continue working in a bipartisan manner and strengthen the economy, including by building more housing.

“Every family deserves a place to call home, a place to have your American dreams come true,” Biden said.

Former GOP officials warn of ‘terrifying possibilities’ if Trump immunity claim accepted

Jacob Fischler — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 00:18:21 +0000

A group of anti-Trump Republican former officials warned against former President Donald Trump’s claims of presidential immunity in a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court. In this photo, Trump speaks at a campaign event on Jan. 6, 2024 in Newton, Iowa. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Accepting former President Donald Trump’s claim of presidential immunity would embolden future presidents to use military force to stay in office indefinitely, a group of anti-Trump Republican former officials warned in a Tuesday brief to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Rejecting Trump’s immunity claim, which he has said should protect him from prosecution on charges of lying to and encouraging supporters who turned violent on Jan. 6, 2021 and attacked the U.S. Capitol, is essential to preserve American democracy, the officials wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief.

The 26 former U.S. Department of Justice attorneys, lawmakers and others who authored the brief were elected Republicans or served in Republican administrations. They include former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, former U.S. Sen. John Danforth of Missouri and former U.S. Rep. Mickey Edwards of Oklahoma.

Trump, who is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, asked the court Monday to further delay his trial in District of Columbia federal court as the justices consider his presidential immunity claim. Trump’s attorneys asked the justices to adopt a broad view of presidential immunity, which they said was critical for protecting the power of the office.

In Tuesday’s brief, the Republican officials said the implications of the former president’s argument present “terrifying possibilities.”

“Under former President Trump’s view of absolute immunity, future first-term Presidents would be encouraged to violate federal criminal statutes by employing the military and armed federal agents to remain in power,” they wrote.

“No Court should create a presidential immunity from federal criminal prosecution, even for official acts, that is so vast that it endangers the peaceful transfer of executive power that our Constitution mandates.”

While Trump argues that such a “lurid hypothetical” of a president using the military or armed federal agents should not prevent him from being granted immunity, the former Republican officials say the particular allegations against the former president weigh heavily against accepting his argument.

For one, they write, the federal indictment against Trump alleges he used the Department of Justice as a tool in his fake elector scheme.

Specifically, the amici point out, the indictment alleges that a letter signed by Trump’s acting attorney general pressured states to replace legitimate Biden electors with false ones supporting Trump.

“Under Mr. Trump’s vast rationale for federal criminal immunity, a future President would be emboldened to direct the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security, as well as the Attorney General, to deploy the military and armed federal agents to support efforts to overturn that President’s re-election loss,” they wrote.

The framers of the Constitution meant to limit executive power and highly valued a peaceful transfer of power, the officials wrote.

Alexander Hamilton wrote in a Federalist Papers entry that the Constitution meant to prevent a “victorious demagogue” from staying in power, they wrote. Accepting Trump’s broad interpretation of presidential immunity would threaten that protection and encourage future presidents to go to extreme lengths to stay in power, they said.

“What kind of Constitution would immunize and thereby embolden losing first-term Presidents to violate federal criminal statutes — through either official or unofficial acts — in efforts to usurp a second term?” they wrote. “Not our Constitution.”

Constitutional experts weigh in

In addition to the former Republican officials, several constitutional law experts filed an amicus brief Tuesday arguing that Trump is not immune from federal prosecution.

The six law professors argued that Trump’s dual claims that he is immune because his actions were taken while he was still president, and that he is protected from any criminal prosecution following his Senate impeachment trial acquittal, are a “misreading of constitutional text and history as well as this Court’s precedent.”

The absolute immunity argument “finds no support” in the Constitution, the experts wrote.

“Seeking to distinguish the president from a British King, the Constitution’s framers and ratifiers repeatedly indicated that a president ‘may be indicted and punished’ after ‘commit[ting] crimes against the state,’” the experts wrote, citing debates at several state conventions about the federal Constitution.

Like the former Republican officials, the professors of law and politics asked the Supreme Court to deny Trump’s request to further delay the trial court’s proceedings.

On Trump’s impeachment clause argument, the constitutional law experts wrote: “The framers viewed the impeachment process as entirely distinct from criminal prosecution and thus thought that a verdict against an officer in one proceeding should have no impact on the other.”

The brief’s authors include Frank O. Bowman III, of the University of Missouri School of Law, Michael J. Gerhardt, of the University of North Carolina School of Law, Brian C. Kalt of Michigan State University College of Law, Peter M. Shane, of the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law and New York University School of Law, Laurence H. Tribe, professor emeritus of Harvard University and Keith E. Whittington, professor of politics at Princeton University and forthcoming chaired professor of law at Yale Law School.

Feb. 20 deadline

Also on Tuesday, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. set a Feb. 20 deadline for Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is prosecuting the case for the Justice Department, to respond to Trump’s request for a stay in the trial.

The one-week deadline suggests the justices are seeking a speedy resolution to the issue.

Attorneys for Trump filed the request with the Supreme Court late Monday following a ruling last week from a three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, comprising judges appointed by members of both parties, upholding a lower court’s decision to reject Trump’s immunity claim.

Trump’s stay request noted the former president would appeal the decision to the Supreme Court, as well as petition for a rehearing by the full D.C. Circuit. Trump asked that pretrial activity in the federal district court not proceed while those appeals are ongoing.

The immunity issue, which does not address the merits of the case Smith’s team has compiled against Trump, has gone on for months and delayed the scheduled March 4 trial date.

Trump made a pretrial motion to U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan in October seeking to throw out the four-count indictment based on his presidential immunity theory.

Chutkan denied the request, and Trump appealed her decision to the D.C. Circuit.

The Supreme Court also heard arguments last week in a case over whether Colorado could bar him from the presidential primary ballot because a provision in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment disallows insurrectionists from seeking office. The justices met Colorado’s argument with skepticism. A decision is expected soon.

Reliability v. sustainability: Inside the debate over the EPA’s proposed carbon rules

Robert Zullo — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 10:40:37 +0000

A coal-fired power plant in Romeoville, Illinois, as a polar vortex increased demand from power systems across the Midwest, Feb, 1, 2019. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Electric reliability has been a hot topic lately — from congressional hearings to regulatory agencies and at the regional transmission organizations that run the electric grid in much of the country.

The American electric grid is undergoing a major change, prodded by state and federal decarbonization policies, market forces pushing cheaper and cleaner forms of electricity and aging power infrastructure.

That’s run up against electric transmission constraints, big delays in getting new wires built and massive backlogs in getting new, mostly renewable projects connected to the grid. Grid operators, in particular, are worried about the pace of the change, arguing fossil plant retirements are accelerating too quickly to ensure there are enough new resources to replace them.

Into that tumult the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency earlier this year dropped a proposal to again attempt to regulate carbon from power plants, which are responsible for about a quarter of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

Since they were rolled out in May, the proposed rules have been a lightning rod for congressional Republicans and drawn fire from competitive electric generators as well as concern from federal and state energy regulators and grid operators that the regulations go too far, too fast.

But the EPA and clean energy proponents say the time frames are workable and crucial to cutting carbon emissions while allowing time for compliance and the flexibility needed to keep the lights on during the transition.

What is the EPA proposing??

EPA’s draft rule creates different emissions targets for gas and coal plants depending on their planned retirement date and capacity factors, a measure of how much power a plant produces over time relative to how much it could have produced at full operation.

“We have committed ourselves to designing and implementing regulations to serve the public’s dual needs of healthful air quality and reliable and affordable electricity,” said Joseph Goffman, a principal deputy administrator at EPA, at a Nov. 9 FERC technical conference on electric reliability. “These emissions are helping fuel an escalating climate crisis that is already having devastating impacts on Americans across the country.”

The general approach, according to Carrie Jenks, executive director of Harvard Law School’s environmental and energy law program, is to require coal and gas units that don’t plan to retire in the near term and are operating at higher capacity factors to undertake more rigorous carbon reductions.

“If you’re operating a lot, and a lot throughout the year and really frequently, then you have to do more to reduce your emissions from those plants. But if you’re operating either as a peaker or intermediate, meaning not all the time, then there’s different options that are available for those plants,” Jenks said at a media briefing organized by Energy Innovation, a non-partisan energy and climate policy think tank.

For example, for a coal plant that intends to operate beyond 2040, EPA is proposing that the facility will need to capture 90% of its carbon emissions by 2030.

For a plant that will retire by 2040, its emissions rate is based on co-firing with natural gas at a rate of 40%. A coal unit that plans to retire by 2035 could agree to operate at 20% capacity and not be bound by any new carbon restrictions, Jenks said. If it’s retiring before 2032, it can operate as is.

“2030 is really the decision point for units for how they plan to operate going forward,” Jenks said, noting the exact thresholds and parameters could change in response to comments EPA receives. There are similar requirements for gas plants (though they differ slightly for new and existing plants) to either blend with hydrogen to reduce emissions or capture emissions depending on whether they are baseload (above 50% capacity factor) or so-called “peaker plants,” which fire on during periods of high demand.

However, EPA’s reliance on carbon capture and storage as well as hydrogen blending have drawn lots of criticism, mainly because both sets of technologies are relatively in their infancy and have yet to be deployed at any kind of scale.

Anthony Campbell, president and CEO at East Kentucky Power Cooperative, speaking on behalf of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, said EPA’s rule “is unlawful and unworkable” at the FERC technical conference. Campbell said that under the proposed rule, plans are due to EPA by 2026, making it impossible for plant operators to make compliance decisions given the uncertainty surrounding carbon capture and hydrogen production.

“They will be forced into either retirement of essential, dispatchable coal units or curtailment of those units to capacity factors below 20% by 2032 and complete retirement by 2035,” Campbell said. “The disorderly retirement and elimination of baseload generation will leave the electricity grid with a significant deficit of dispatchable generation that cannot be replaced by intermittent resources, especially during a time of economic growth.”

‘The arithmetic doesn’t work’

Electric reliability debates can get complex. But FERC Commissioner Mark Christie, a former Virginia utility regulator, said at the Nov. 9 technical conference on reliability that the fundamental problem facing the U.S. electric grid is as simple as two lines on a chart. One is the demand for power.

“That line’s going up,” Christie said. “It may go up astronomically if ‘electrify everything’ takes place — you electrify the transportation sector, you electrify the home heating sector.”

The other line is supply of power.

“And that line ain’t going up, or it’s certainly not going up nearly as rapidly,” he said. “The arithmetic doesn’t work. And that’s the fundamental issue.”

According to the Clean Energy States Alliance, a coalition of state energy agencies, 23 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, have 100% clean energy goals. Along with federal policy like the landmark Inflation Reduction Act, and market conditions, utilities, many of which have their own decarbonization goals, are being prodded into retiring older coal and gas plants.

(At a FERC meeting Thursday, Christie warned that two of the nation’s largest regional transmission operators, MISO and PJM, are “basically hemorrhaging dispatchable resources.”)

Jim Robb, president and CEO of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation — which, for the first time, has started listing “energy policy” as a reliability risk — told the commissioners at the reliability conference that the expansion of so-called inverter-based resources like wind, solar and batteries introduce new variability into grid management, especially as they become bigger parts of the power mix.

“This is a country that hasn’t proven its ability to develop infrastructure to support that,” Robb said. “We’re going to need to figure out how to get transmission built, we’re going to have to figure out how to speed the development of new resources onto the grid and importantly we need to figure out how to retain the stuff that we have to meet any of these policy objectives.”

Goffman, the EPA official, said the agency is committed to continuing engagement with regulators and grid operators “over the coming weeks and months so that we can ensure we arrive at a final rule for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that is effective, workable, and fully compatible with maintaining reliable and affordable electricity.”

‘The grid can absolutely be reliable’?

Ric O’Connell, executive director of GridLab, which he called a public interest organization that provides technical expertise on the electric grid to policy makers, told the FERC conference that the EPA rules and ensuring reliability are compatible.

“The grid can absolutely be reliable under the proposed EPA rules but we’ll need to plan and take action,” he said, adding that the rules codify “what’s already happening due to economic and policy forces.” He noted that 2 terawatts (2 million megawatts) of power resources, mostly wind, solar and battery resources, are stuck in interconnection queues across the country.

In a media briefing hosted by Energy Innovation, O’Connell said there’s “an enormous wealth of academic and industry literature” that shows the path to cutting carbon from the power sector drastically over the next decade.

“We do that through a very simple playbook. It’s deploy wind, solar and batteries over the next decade,” he said. Couple that with keeping carbon-free sources like hydropower and nuclear plants online and use existing gas fleets at low levels to provide the crucial balancing services large amounts of renewables will require, O’Connell added.

He noted that the United Kingdom has gone from 71% coal power in 1990 to less than 1% this year and that California and New England’s electric grids are already largely coal free. Even Texas, he noted, “is well on its way to looking like this as well.” He noted that MISO’s projections envision a similar grid, with natural gas plants running at very low capacity factors by 2040.

“Can we run our grid without coal? The simple answer is yes,” he said.

YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.

Biden administration, senators divided on how to move ahead on border security

Jennifer Shutt — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 21:09:05 +0000

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, right, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, left testify during a hearing before the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Nov. 8, 2023, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Members of Congress and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas were at odds Wednesday on how lawmakers should improve border security, as they wrestle with how to handle a White House request for emergency spending.

Mayorkas, speaking to the Senate Appropriations Committee, pointed to a sweeping proposal President Joe Biden released early in his term and repeatedly rejected the idea of making smaller changes to immigration policy. He instead told senators that a full overhaul is needed.

“It is unanimous that our broken immigration system is in dire need of reform,” Mayorkas said. “On the very first day of this administration, President Biden presented Congress with a blueprint for that reform. We fully endorsed the need for policy changes, not in piecemeal form, but in a comprehensive form.”

Several senators on the panel, however, called for Mayorkas and the Biden administration to work with Democrats and Republicans on a few bipartisan changes that could be agreed to quickly.

Kansas Republican Sen. Jerry Moran noted that he’s seen a lot of attempts throughout the years for broad, comprehensive immigration bills, but nothing has made it to a president in decades.

“While I might agree that comprehensive reform or changes are advantageous, it has been my experience in my entire time in Congress that we keep waiting for comprehensive reform and as a result we do next to nothing,” Moran said. “And I hope that you, the administration, will use this opportunity to seriously work with those of us who are willing to make changes to defeat this circumstance in our national security.”

Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an independent, said that while it’s clear DHS needs the additional funding the White House has requested, the agency also must work with Congress on policy changes.

“I would encourage the Department of Homeland Security and the administration to also recognize what I think is fairly obvious, which is that policy must be changed in order for us to get control of the situation on the border,” Sinema said.

Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said that while she would support an overhaul of the country’s immigration laws, the Biden administration must recognize “that we need to make some incremental gains here.”

“We need to be able to look critically at some of the policies that we have in place and admit that they’re just not working right now,” Murkowski said. “And so I hope you take that to heart.”

Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray, a Washington state Democrat, encouraged GOP senators to work with Democrats “on common sense, bipartisan solutions to help us humanely manage encounters at the border, process claims of non-citizens seeking protection under our nation’s asylum laws, while continuing our country’s long tradition of welcoming people, who flee violence and persecution.”

White House requests

The Biden administration sent Congress two emergency supplemental funding requests last month. The first, for national security, proposes aid to Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and for U.S. border security.

The second, for domestic funding, includes child care, home heating assistance for low-income families and wildland firefighter pay.

The $105 billion national security funding request asks lawmakers to approve $13.6 billion for the Department of Homeland Security.

The $56 billion domestic spending supplemental request calls on Congress to provide? $22 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services, about $16 billion of which would go to child care assistance. About $23 billion would go to several federal departments for disaster response and recovery.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra testified alongside Mayorkas on Wednesday, advocating for the child care funding.

“Child care in this country is either unaffordable or unavailable for millions of Americans,” Becerra said. “The average cost of child care ranges from $5,000 to over $17,000 a year depending on where you are in the country. That’s like college tuition for most families.”

Murray said the pandemic-era funding Congress approved to help parents afford childcare and help prop up those businesses expired at the end of September

“Unless we take action, more parents are going to be forced out of the workplace, small businesses are going to be left without the employees they need and families along with our entire economy are really going to feel the consequences,” Murray said.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins, the top Republican on the committee, said she supports “improving access to quality, affordable childcare,” though she said that should be through the Child Care Development Block Grant program and not emergency funding assistance.

That program provides financial assistance to low-income families.

Becerra said he and his staff would be more than happy to work with Collins on a long-term solution, but he encouraged her and other senators to approve the emergency funding as well.

“While we get to that long-term solution, we need something for the small businesses that are going to close tomorrow. We need something for those parents who are looking for quality childcare service today,” Becerra. “And without the stabilization funds, we will lose ground, we will lose businesses.”

Georgia man arrested while carrying assault-style firearm near U.S. Capitol

Jennifer Shutt — Tue, 07 Nov 2023 21:47:28 +0000

First responders load a suspect identified as?Ahmir Lavon Merrell, 21, into an ambulance after U.S. Capitol Police used a taser on him and arrested him for allegedly carrying a semi-automatic firearm near the U.S. Capitol building on Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2023. (Jennifer Shutt/StatesNewsroom)<

WASHINGTON — U.S. Capitol Police used a taser on and arrested a man on Tuesday whom they alleged walked with an assault-style weapon near the Capitol building, though it didn’t initially appear the man made any direct threats against members of Congress.

USCP Chief Tom Manger said during a brief press conference that a 21-year-old registered sex offender from Atlanta, Georgia, will be charged with several federal crimes, including having a firearm on U.S. Capitol grounds.

USCP officers had “limited contact and limited conversations” with Ahmir Lavon Merrell, though Manger said there was “some indication he may be dealing with some mental health issues.”

“We don’t know why he was in the park with a gun. He made no statements as to why he was here, or what he intended to do,” Manger said. “Again, it’s still an ongoing investigation.”

Manger said he didn’t know as of Tuesday afternoon if the gun was loaded.

The U.S. Capitol Police are continuing to investigate the incident to determine where Merrell was before he came into contact with police officers on Tuesday afternoon and whether the semi-automatic firearm that appeared “a little bit like an AR-15” is registered.

U.S. Capitol Police first learned about a man walking with a gun around 12:39 p.m. Eastern when someone saw him in the park between the Capitol building and Union Station, which is about two blocks away. That person told police officers in the Russell Senate Office Building, which sits across the street from the U.S. Capitol and borders the park.

“He was walking along the sidewalk and he was holding the gun down as he walked. They ordered him to stop. He did not,” Manger said. “He was walking at a fairly slow pace down the sidewalk toward Union Station. The officers came up behind him. One officer, who had a taser, tasered him in the back, he fell forward onto his gun. At that point, the officers took him into custody.”

Less than three minutes passed between when the person warned U.S. Capitol Police and when the suspect was detained, Manger said.

The man was walking away from the Capitol and toward Union Station when police officers arrested him, Manger said.

Merrell was taken away from the area in an ambulance around 1:45 p.m. to be checked out by health care providers after the taser was used on him.

Kentucky’s youth are caught in the middle as Beshear-Cameron spar over transgender care

McKenna Horsley — Wed, 16 Aug 2023 09:10:59 +0000

Students gathered at the Capitol to protest SB 150, which removed access to gender-affirming medical care for trans minors. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

Ysa Leon is questioning their future in the commonwealth. The outcome of Kentucky’s gubernatorial race this November will be a deciding factor.?

“I’ve told my family: Be prepared in November because that might change where I’m staying after I graduate in May,” said Leon, a 20-year-old nonbinary student at Transylvania University, where they are?president of the ?Student Government Association.

Ysa Leon (Provided by Ysa Leon)

Leon and other transgender Kentuckians have been concerned for much of the year as Kentucky politics filled with heated discourse on the rights of trans people, specifically over what gender-affirming medical care for youth should be permitted in the state.?

After the Kentucky General Assembly passed one of the strongest anti-trans bills in the country, Senate Bill 150, Ray Loux, 17, decided to enroll in Fayette County Public Schools’ Middle College program for his senior year. He did not want to worry about which bathroom he should use, what pronouns his teachers will use and “not being able to talk about who I am with my friends in school.”

Ray is considering going to a college out of state.?

“I had a panic attack the other day because I wasn’t sure what my health care situation would look like going forward,” Ray said, as he must taper off his hormones while he is underage.?

Now, the issue of trans rights has reached the governor’s race.?

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, who is seeking a second term in office, has released a 15-second ad called ‘Parents.” It focuses on claims made by Republicans, including his opponent Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron, that the governor supports “sex change surgery and drugs” for kids.

Wearing basic dad attire — a blue button down under a red quarter zip pullover — Beshear stares into the camera and says: “My faith guides me as a governor and as a dad.”?

He then repeats a familiar line — “all children are children of God” — before saying Cameron’s attacks are not true, adding: “I’ve never supported gender reassignment surgery for kids – and those procedures don’t happen here in Kentucky.”?

GOP backlash was swift, and rhetoric uplifting culture wars reached the annual Fancy Farm Picnic in West Kentucky earlier this month. Among his jokes for the day, Cameron riffed that come November Beshear’s pronouns will be “‘has’ and ‘been,’” and criticized the governor for protecting “transgender surgeries for kids.”

In a press conference last week, Cameron highlighted a letter from a University of Kentucky health clinic, stating it has performed “a small number of non-genital gender reassignment surgeries on minors who are almost adult,” but stopped after Kentucky’s ban on gender-affirming medical care for youth went into effect.?

Hours later, Beshear said in his press conference the letter was new to him, and added that had a bill that only banned gender reassignment surgeries for minors made its way to his desk, he would have signed it.?

“At the end of the day, how has this race gone here? Daniel Cameron’s taken this race to the gutter in a way that I’ve never seen,” Beshear said. “I mean, right now, I think if you ask him about climate change, he’ll say it’s caused by children and gender reassignment surgeries.”?

As politicians put a spotlight on gender-affirming medical care, advocates say the lives of trans Kentuckians — especially those of the commonwealth’s trans youth — are on the line.??

‘It’s hard to be a trans child anywhere’

Transgender youth are already vulnerable, and the way that politicians talk about trans people in general is “really dehumanizing,” said Oliver Hall, the director of Trans Health at Kentucky Health Justice Network. They work directly with transgender youth, a demographic that Hall said is being used as a “political football.”?

“It’s hard to be a kid. It’s hard to be a teenager in general,” Hall said. “And then it’s additionally hard to be a trans teenager. It’s hard to be a trans child anywhere.”

Leon, who came out as queer in 2020 and then as trans and nonbinary in 2021, said it took a lot of therapy to find themselves. At first, only their roommates and close friends referred to them with they/them pronouns in private.?

“When I heard it the first time, I felt like I took the biggest breath ever — this exhale that I’d been holding in for so long. All of this pent up anxiety was gone and I felt so good,” Leon said. “And it’s not that that fixed everything for me, but accepting yourself and having other people accept you changed my life. It changes everything for some people.”?

Kentucky’s trans youth no longer have access to gender-affirming medical care because of Senate Bill 150, which went into effect in July.?

The law, which Cameron’s office is defending against a legal challenge brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, bans gender-affirming medical care for anyone under 18, including forcing those already taking puberty blockers to stop. It also allows teachers to misgender trans kids, regulates which school bathrooms kids can use and limits the sex education students can receive.

Beshear vetoed the legislation, but the Republican supermajority in the General Assembly easily overrode it. In his rejection of the bill, Beshear wrote that he was doing so based on the rights of parents to make decisions about how their child is treated and that the law would allow government interference in medical care.?

“Improving access to gender-affirming care is an important means of improving health outcomes for the transgender population,” the governor wrote in his veto message.?

What someone’s gender-affirming care looks like is different for each transgender person, Leon said. They did not use puberty blockers because they came out as an adult, but socially transitioned with support from their friends and family. Gender-affirming medical care is also not always covered by health insurance companies.?

Having such laws on Kentucky’s books mixed with support from politicians running for the highest state office in the Commonwealth has “a detrimental effect on the physical and mental health of trans people,” Hall said.

Ray Loux with his cat, Oswald (Ozzy).
(Photo provided)

Some in the trans community fear that, eventually, gender-affirming care for adults could be banned as well, said Ray’s mother, Shavahn Loux. While her son is in a “better situation than a lot of kids” because he will be an adult in a few months and could regain access to health care, she said “it’s scary” to think Ray’s access to hormone treatment in general could end completely.?

“I know a number of people who were thinking about coming here and are now no longer considering it because of this,” she said. “That’s true for trans individuals and non-trans individuals.”?

When asked recently if he thought gender-affirming medical care for adults should be banned in Kentucky, Cameron told reporters that he supported “what our legislature did in protecting our children.”?

“Adults can make different decisions but this is about protecting kids and making sure that we don’t rob them of youth and innocence,” Cameron said.?

‘The right buzzwords’

After a federal judge reversed a temporary block on the health care part of the new state law Cameron issued a statement calling the treatments “experimental” and vowed that his office would continue to “stand up for the right of children to be children, free from the influences of leftist activists and radical gender ideology.”

Rebecca Blankenship, the executive director of Ban Conversion Therapy Kentucky and the first openly transgender person ever elected to public office in the state, noted that Cameron’s defense was initially “rebuked” by the judge in the injunction, who noted that the drugs “have a? long history of safe use in minors for various conditions.”

This shows, she said, that “Attorney General Cameron is willing not only to lie to voters, but even to the courts to advance these political talking points.”

People think they can say whatever they want, and not realize the harm that it does.

– Ysa Leon, Transylvania University student

Alexander Griggs, the community outreach coordinator for the Fairness Campaign, said such messaging argues “trans people shouldn’t have autonomy over the decisions they make over their bodies” and that their medical needs are “wrong.” With that constant messaging, transgender youth may internalize it, Griggs continued.

“The more of that language that’s used, the more damage is being done,” he said.?

Leon agreed, saying that “people think they can say whatever they want, and not realize the harm that it does.”?

As a teenager, Leon said they tried their best to fit in with their cisgender peers. They turned to their church, but were presented with the option of conversion therapy, a practice that seeks to change a person’s sexual or gender identities. It has been rejected by leading medical and mental health organizations. They did not undergo the practice.?

“My mental health and my self-love improved more than I could have ever imagined after I came out as nonbinary,” Leon said.?

Beshear has taken a more moderate stance on gender-affirming medical care. Bobbie Glass, a transgender woman who testified before lawmakers against Senate Bill 150, said Beshear’s recent ad used “very specific” language to discuss his position, pointing out that he did not discuss his position on puberty blockers.?

Beshear is using “the right buzzwords” that people in the transgender community will understand, she said, adding that people who don’t understand the terms could interpret the ad to mean “he believes the same thing” they do.?

“But then, Daniel Cameron’s going to turn around and try to exploit that stuff with the language he used in his veto,” Glass said. “And so it’s still going to have the effect of just making life miserable.”??

Blankenship appreciates Beshear’s ad for “advancing the conversation, in that he’s lowering the temperature of it, and focusing on the truth.” Ban Conversion Therapy Kentucky does not endorse or oppose political candidates.?

“He has been unwilling to bow to pressure from radicals to hurt us,” Blankenship said of the governor. “But at the same time, it’s difficult to point to anything that he’s done since maybe 2020, that was clearly designed to help LGBT people.”?

The legal landscape

At least 15 laws banning gender-affirming care for transgender youth have been enacted across the country, according to the Human Rights Campaign, along with at least seven laws that require or allow the misgendering of transgender students. HRC also found that more than 220 bills specifically targeting transgender and non-binary people were introduced in state legislatures this year.?

The Trevor Project, which aims to end suicide among LGBTQ+ youth, also reported in 2022 that 59% of Kentucky’s transgender and non-binary kids considered suicide, and 24% tried to take their own lives.

Members of the LGBTQ+ community have asked the governor’s administration to direct the Cabinet for Health and Family Services to track suicides within the community or where conversion therapy is happening in the state, Blankenship added.?

If Beshear is reelected, Hall hopes Beshear “will acknowledge the support that trans Kentuckians have given him” and enact executive orders to ensure policies like anti-discrimination protections for transgender people statewide.

Leon said they saw Beshear’s recent ad as “appropriate.” Ray called Beshear’s first term “empowering” for trans Kentuckians.?

“It was really nice to be able to see somebody in a position of power in Kentucky who was accepting of people like me and welcoming of us and embracing us to live in this state,” Ray said.?

A February Mason-Dixon poll released by the Fairness Campaign showed 71% of Kentucky registered voters don’t want lawmakers making the decisions about trans youth’s healthcare. But how harmful rhetoric is spread could impact public opinion, Blankenship said.?

“What the consequences will be will depend upon … the radicals’ ability to spread their message far and wide and will depend on the LGBT community’s ability and willingness to stand up for ourselves and tell the truth,” she said.?

Hall also highlighted increased rhetoric that has grown “even over the past couple of years.” According to the Trevor Project’s 2023 U.S. National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ Young People, 27% of transgender and nonbinary young people reported being physically threatened or harmed in the past year because of their gender identity.

“It’s radicalizing people, and people are treating trans people even worse than we have been treated historically,” Hall said.?

The politics, Griggs noted, feels like a tactic to distract the public from other issues. Transgender people having autonomy over their lives shouldn’t be a partisan issue, he said.

Protesters against SB 150 filled the Capitol earlier this year. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Mariah Kendell)

“If we let them get away with any of it, like we give them an inch, they’re going to take a mile,” Griggs said. “Before we know it, no one will have rights.”?

Ray has embraced being openly trans because of the political spotlight on the community. He said he has “the privilege to be out and be safe at home in my life,” so that’s why he’s spoken openly with media outlets and friends.?

Ray’s friends who are trans in Kentucky’s more rural areas have “experienced a lot worse than I have since the passing of this bill,” he said. Because of that, they are not visible.?

“Ray’s quiet and unassuming and a good kid, but you never know who’s just going to have it in their mind that that’s wrong and that people like that shouldn’t exist,” his mother said.?

She’s seen some of Ray’s friends who are trans and were open about it have since “shrunk back and are not as willing to put themselves out there because they’re worried about what might happen.”?

“You’re not going to eliminate trans kids,” Shavahn said. “You’re just going to make them a lot more scared to be themselves and to let people know that they’re trans.”

Both Leon and Ray say the outcome of the November election will impact their future in Kentucky. Ray is prepared to leave the state for college if he has to.

“If Beshear loses, I think Kentucky is going to become a lot less welcoming of a place,” he said.?

Leon hasn’t decided.

“I’m kind of weighing: Do I stay here and fight for people like me and make it a better state for people like me or do I protect myself and go somewhere where I am safe?”

Correction: We have updated this story to reflect that Ysa Leon did not go through conversion therapy.

Who’s who among the fake electors, conspirators indicted in Fulton DA’s 2020 election probe

Stanley Dunlap — Wed, 16 Aug 2023 08:31:34 +0000

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani walking through the Georgia Capitol in December 2020. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis says she’s aiming to start a trial against Donald Trump and his allies within six months of a grand jury’s Monday indictment on charges of a multi-state criminal conspiracy to overturn the former president’s narrow defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

Trump, several members of legal and political advisors, and state and local political allies are accused of spreading unfounded allegations of massive voting fraud, which led to incidents such as the breach of the state’s voting system in Coffee County in January 2021, and a slate of Georgia Republicans filing false electoral votes declaring Trump the winner.

The 19 defendants face multiple felony counts including racketeering and conspiracy, making false statements, filing false documents, impersonating a public officer, computer theft and trespass and conspiracy to defraud the state and other offenses.

Willis said that she wanted to resolve the election interference case before the 2024 presidential election, in which Republican nominee Trump could possibly face Biden in a rematch. The defendants will have until noon on Friday, Aug. 25 to turn themselves in, Willis said.

Read the 98-page indictment here.

Willis’ investigation gained momentum after a recording of a phone call was made public in which Trump asked Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough Georgia votes to sway the election in his favor.

“Fani Willis has brought a case that is as large and as comprehensive as the attempted coup itself; looking at that nationally but also through the lens of Georgia,” said Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at public policy think-tank The Brookings Institution and CNN legal analyst. “It’s one of the most important cases that has been brought in the history of our country.”

Below is a list of some of the allegations listed in the indictment that led the grand jury to find probable cause against the former president and 18 others.

Trump’s attorneys, advisors

Rudy Giuliani, former Trump attorney and ex-New York City mayor: At Georgia Legislative hearings following the 2020 election, the ex-U.S. attorney promoted conspiracy theories about election fraud while advocating for lawmakers to intervene on Trump’s behalf. Among Giuliani’s recommendations was that an alternate slate of GOP electors should cast votes for Trump despite state election officials confirming Biden the winner.

Mark Meadows shown talking to reporters on Dec. 18, 2019 in Washington, D.C., when he was a still a congressman representing North Carolina. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows: Alleged to have set up a Jan. 2, 2021, phone conversation in which Trump asked Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to tilt Georgia’s election in the outgoing president’s favor. The conversation took place a few days prior to the Jan. 6th U.S. Capitol attack as Congress was set to certify Biden’s election. The indictment also alleges Meadows texted a Georgia Secretary of State investigator in December asking if Fulton County’s ballot signature verification could be sped up if Trump’s campaign provided financial assistance.

Ex-Trump attorney John Eastman: He promoted a dubious legal argument that he claimed could lead to Vice President Mike Pence overriding the 2020 presidential election results.

Sidney Powell, attorney: Indicted on charges of tampering with electronic ballot markers and tabulating machines in Coffee County voting systems breach. Powell contacted a computer forensics company to help recover data from voting equipment.

Jenna Ellis, attorney: Accused of making false statements about election fraud to state officials in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona in an attempt to have illegitimate electors appointed in those states, the indictment says.

Lawyer Kenneth Chesebro: Provided the documents signed by Georgia’s Republican electors in an attempt to have Congress consider them as legitimate electoral votes for Trump, according to the indictment.

Jeffrey Bossert Clark, Trump’s top environmental lawyer: Alleged to have conspired in election interference by attempting to solicit the U.S. attorney general and deputy attorney general in December 2020 to provide false statements to high-ranking elected officials in Georgia and several other states that the U.S. Department of Justice had identified significant concerns that might have changed the outcome of the election.

2021 Georgia GOP false electors

One of the focal points of the election interference probe are the events that led up to and followed the Dec. 14, 2020, meeting where sixteen Georgia Republican electors, who signed false election certificates that were sent to the vice president and other government officials to be counted by Congress.

The bogus Republican electors met at the state Capitol on the same day as legitimate state Democratic electors selected Biden as the winner of the 2020 election.

The indictments do not cover the entire slate of Georgians who signed the fraudulent electoral certificates. At least eight of the electors have accepted plea deals, agreeing to cooperate with Fulton prosecutors, according to court filings.

David Shafer, former chairman of the Georgia Republican Party

Former Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer: The staunch Trump supporter helped coordinate and served as a Republican fake elector as they cast their ballots in favor of Trump while meeting inside the state Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020.

Cathleen Latham: Latham is ex-chair of the Coffee County GOP Party who played a role in the voting systems breach at Coffee County’s election office in 2021. Surveillance footage, uncovered by plaintiffs embroiled in a voting system security lawsuit, shows Latham leading forensics experts for Trump-allied lawyers into the Coffee County election offices in order to gain unfettered access to the Dominion Voting Systems used statewide for elections. Latham was also indicted for serving as a Republican false elector.

State Sen. Shawn Still: The Norcross Republican is serving his first term in the state Legislature and has previously served in leadership positions with the Georgia Republican Party.

Other Fulton County election interference indictments

Former Coffee County Elections Director Misty Hampton and bail bondsman Scott Hall: Both were indicted on charges of tampering with electronic ballot markers and tabulating machines related to the Coffee County voting breach.

Stephen Cliffgard Lee, Harrison W.P. Floyd and Trevian Kutti: Indicted on charges related to making numerous calls and sending text messages to Fulton County poll worker Ruby Freeman, who in 2020 became a prime target of Trump and other conspiracy theorists pushing unfounded ballot stuffing allegations when they served as poll workers at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena. According to the indictment, Lee, Kutti and Floyd falsely offered Freeman protection in order to influence her testimony before government officials.

This article was first published by the?Georgia Recorder, a sister publication of Kentucky Lantern in the States Newsroom network.

The U.S. is undergoing its worst bird flu outbreak ever. Is a poultry vaccine the answer?

Adam Goldstein — Fri, 12 May 2023 19:56:15 +0000

Bird flu has decimated poultry flocks and contributed to spikes in U.S. egg prices. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The deadliest outbreak of bird flu in U.S. history is prompting growing concern in Congress, and Department of Agriculture researchers are awaiting the preliminary results of four trials of vaccines for poultry.

Some lawmakers are warming to the idea of a vaccination campaign, long considered a fringe idea due to the cost and potential consequences. Trade groups warn that vaccinated poultry would not be accepted in many overseas markets, disrupting exports.

While bird flu likely poses little health danger to humans, it’s contributed to spikes in U.S. egg prices and decimated poultry flocks. Among the domestic poultry affected are chickens, turkeys, pheasants, quail, ducks and geese — in both big commercial operations and increasingly popular backyard flocks.

Since the current strain of highly-pathogenic avian influenza — H5N1 — began circulating in the country in February 2022, farmers across the country have lost or had to cull more than 58 million poultry birds.?

The USDA estimates it has already spent more than $670 million in insurance indemnities and sanitation services to combat the ongoing bird flu outbreak.

And with many wild birds starting their spring migration, roughly 140,000 poultry birds were infected with the virus nationwide in April.?

While food costs are stabilizing, members of Congress from both parties are asking how the U.S. can do better at controlling bird flu.?

“We’ve all seen first-hand how high pathogenic avian flu has devastated domestic poultry populations, where depopulations have had to take place,” said Rep. Jim Costa, a California Democrat, at an April 18 House Agriculture Committee hearing.?

“We’ve got to continue to refine and improve our approach to address animal disease, and USDA needs all the tools to guarantee a robust response.”

The USDA is testing two proprietary vaccines developed through its Agricultural Research Service, as well as bird flu vaccines from pharmaceutical companies Merck Animal Health and Zoetis, Inc.?

But animal health experts note that a bird flu vaccine is not the immediate solution that some believe it to be.

Jenny Lester Moffitt, undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs at the USDA, said at an April 24 press event that it will take a minimum of 18 to 24 months to produce a viable vaccine, which is not guaranteed to be effective against infection.?

Yuko Sato, a poultry veterinarian and associate professor at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, said at an April 26 media event that “the vaccine is not a silver bullet” for an end to the outbreak.

“You would have to make sure that if you vaccinate — but still have positive birds — you can stamp out the virus,” Sato said. “Otherwise, we’ll never be looking at eradicating the virus from the United States.”?

Here are the answers to some common questions about the ongoing bird flu outbreak and potential vaccines:

What is highly-pathogenic avian influenza??

Highly-pathogenic avian influenza, commonly known as HPAI, bird flu, or “high-path,” is a deadly respiratory virus that affects wild birds and poultry.

The contagious disease comes from the Influenza A family, and is characterized by the H5 or H7 categories of hemagglutinin — or spike protein — structures on its surface, which it uses to infect cells. The virus is spread via airborne transmission, or exposure to the byproducts of an infected bird, like saliva, mucus or feces.?

Poultry and other domesticated birds with the disease will often exhibit a lack of energy, produce soft-shelled or misshapen eggs, and have swollen heads.?

The highly-pathogenic version of the disease was first identified in China in 1996, and has mutated several times over the last three decades through swapping genetic material with low-pathogenic avian influenza strains within wild birds.?

David Swayne, former director of the Agricultural Research Service’s Southeast Poultry Research Lab in Athens, Georgia, said at an April 26 media briefing that 87% of avian influenza strains are made up of blended genetic material from other strains. He said that this natural mutation process can make a vaccine less effective against the virus year over year.?

Wild migratory birds are the primary transmission vector in the current outbreak, accounting for roughly 85% of disease spread, according to the USDA. These animals, including terns, ducks, and geese, can contract and pass along the disease without obvious physical symptoms.?

Yet an HPAI infection spreads quickly among a flock of poultry, with infections leading to mortality at a rate of 90% to 100% in chickens and turkeys, often within 48 hours, according to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

When a farmer detects the disease in a commercial flock, the only USDA-recommended option is to kill the remaining birds, dispose of the carcasses, and decontaminate the facility to mitigate spread.?

Who is getting infected? Should I be worried??

Despite the threat H5N1 presents to poultry, experts with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that people do not need to brood over getting sick.?

The agency reports that 11 cases of bird flu have been reported among humans since 2021, with only one “mild” case occurring in the United States. And as of 2023, there have been no reported cases of human-to-human transmission of HPAI, according to the World Health Organization.?

Swayne said at the media event that only 875 human cases of H5 bird flu have been reported since 1996. About 40% were fatal. He noted these infections have occurred largely among humans handling domesticated poultry, and not from encounters with wild birds.

The USDA has documented 176 mammals in the United States? infected with the disease since 2022, including skunks, foxes, seals, and mountain lions, among other species. Wildlife experts from the U.S. Geological Survey published a study in April?finding much of this disease spillover can be traced back to predation on wild birds.?

Still both Swayne and Hill pointed to a recent event in which 3,500 sea lions became infected with the virus in Peru as one worth monitoring for mutations that could affect mammals.?

How does the current outbreak compare to past bird flu outbreaks?

The current iteration of the highly-pathogenic avian influenza virus was first detected domestically on Jan. 13, 2022, in a wild bird in Colleton County, South Carolina. The first domesticated animal case of the disease was found on a turkey farm in Dubois County, Indiana, on Feb. 8, 2022.?

Since then, the disease has spread across 47 states, affecting more than 833 commercial and backyard poultry flocks.?

Still, this is not the first outbreak of HPAI that the federal government has responded to. And despite the scope of these numbers, many animal health experts say current USDA efforts represent a significant improvement over earlier outbreaks of the disease.

Sato recalled that a 2015 outbreak of HPAI, previously considered the worst outbreak on record, required the culling of 50.4 million birds on Midwestern poultry operations.?

She added that 70% of the cause of new infections from that outbreak was farm-to-farm lateral spread from workers in 21 states, including Arkansas, Iowa, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.?

In contrast to that outbreak, Sato said that now “we’ve done a really good job with biosecurity.” Biosecurity refers to preventive measures producers can take to limit spread of the disease, like disinfecting farm machinery and providing clean clothing and protective equipment to farmworkers.

Sato said that with producers embracing these practices, the lateral spread of avian influenza decreased from 70% of reported cases in 2015 to roughly 16% of reported cases in 2023.?

Moffitt added that efforts to control the virus are projected to cost the country less than 50% of its 2015 expenditures of $1.6 billion.?

However, animal disease experts caution that the U.S. is dealing with a more widely dispersed and distinct disease than that of the 2015 HPAI outbreak.?

Nichola Hill, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts, said at the April 26 media event that researchers have detected the virus in 150 of the approximately 1,000 wild bird species found in the U.S., and the disease has affected more than 6,000 wild birds.?

Greg Tyler, the president and CEO of USA Poultry and Egg Export Council, said that this version of the disease has also gotten into all four major migratory flyways for wild birds in the U.S.?

Sato said that more backyard flocks of poultry are being affected by the spread of bird flu from migratory populations — a total of 507 small to mid-sized flocks — in contrast to the 21 backyard flocks affected in 2015.?

There are also new concerns emerging among experts that this deadly disease could become endemic to North America without significant public-private collaboration to reduce spread, according to an April study from researchers at the University of Maryland.?

“Federal agencies, state agencies, the agriculture sector and wildlife management — we are all going to have to deal with this together, because we can’t afford not to,” said Jennifer Mullinax, an assistant professor in the University of Maryland Department of Environmental Science and Technology, in a release.?

What about a vaccine??

While some animal health experts say developing a vaccine for the current bird flu strain could be a valuable tool, trade experts caution that a national vaccination strategy would not come quickly, or without tradeoffs for the nation’s $6 billion poultry export industry.

Sato said that a national vaccination strategy for the roughly 10 billion commercial-purpose birds in the United States could be time-intensive, and cost billions of taxpayer dollars.?

Tom Super, senior vice president of communications at the National Chicken Council, said that his organization does not support the use of a vaccine for HPAI right now, as most countries do not accept exports from countries that vaccinate for the virus.?

These non-tariff trade barriers are designed to protect other nations’ unvaccinated poultry flocks from immunized birds that still carry the disease. Super added that if the U.S. vaccinates domestic birds, the broiler industry will be cut off from exports, costing billions of dollars to the U.S. economy every year.

Tyler added that his organization found that if a vaccination campaign happens without adjustments to trade policy, there could be a potential loss of 200,000 farm jobs.?

Moffitt said that negotiations between the USDA and foreign partners are still ongoing to maintain international poultry export markets for certain states amid outbreaks in others in the country.?

Tyler said that the Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and Foreign Agricultural Service have made significant progress in developing regionalization agreements with foreign governments since 2015.?

He noted that the U.S. poultry industry has managed roughly $11.7 billion in exports over the last two years, despite the ongoing challenges of HPAI and bans on poultry exports by certain countries like China.?

Super and Tyler both advocated for continued funding for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to provide rapid-response support to farms.?

Moffitt urged adhering to biosecurity measures like interstate surveillance and the Defend the Flock?program at the April 18 hearing. Moffitt cited that the number of infections in commercial flocks in March 2023 decreased tenfold compared to March 2022, proof the USDA’s current strategy of rapid tests and reporting is working.

“We know how to respond quickly, so producers can get back to producing food, how important biosecurity is, how to keep markets open,” she said. “We know what to do, and we are ready.”

Fast federal response to pandemic key to US economic recovery, economists say

Casey Quinlan — Thu, 11 May 2023 23:53:40 +0000

Workers demonstrate in Miami Springs, Florida, in September 2020, in support of continued federal unemployment benefits in the pandemic economy. Economists say that direct support to workers helped spur the country’s economic recovery. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

The public health emergency declaration ended on Thursday, and with it some of the policies that helped the U.S. recover from the many of the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Although COVID-19 is still a public health threat, the national economic crisis it created has subsided with the U.S. economy back to its pre-pandemic growth rate.

Economists say that the federal response to mass unemployment and business closures, through legislation that includes the CARES Act, Families First Coronavirus Response Act, American Rescue Plan Act, and other policies, helped fast-track the recovery. But the lasting effects of the pandemic on the labor force and how well prepared policy makers are to handle a potential recession or another pandemic is unclear.

“I think that this recovery was tremendous compared to any recovery in recent history because of the scale of the investments that were made by policymakers,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, pointing to the child tax credit as one example that helped fuel the strong recovery. “So I think the incredible bounceback that we saw in employment and wage growth was driven directly from, in large part, to the kinds of investments that policymakers made in things like shoring up the unemployment insurance system, making that stronger, making it a better safety net for many workers.”

Lessons learned from federal investments

The policies that helped the economy recover from the effects of the pandemic could have reached more vulnerable people, however, and some sectors, like healthcare, are still suffering because of it. There are also many potential long-term effects that economists don’t yet understand, such as how Long COVID is going to affect the workforce or whether more remote work is here to stay and how that will influence the economy. They added that the lessons learned from the federal government’s reaction to the pandemic could prepare us for a recession or another pandemic.

Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, said lawmakers should take a similar approach in the future and focus on direct support to workers.

“Workers are the backbone of the economy,” she said. “If our workers are home sick, we’re going to have to kick into high gear on the safety net again and the good news is we know how to do that, with student loans, the eviction moratorium, unemployment insurance, extended unemployment insurance for freelancers, child tax credits, and so on.”

Still, the business stimulus in particular could have been better targeted, said Connel Fullenkamp, economist and professor of the practice in economics at Duke University. The Small Business Administration’s inspector general, found that at least 70,0000 of the Paycheck Protection Program’s loans were fraudulent. Other loans went to businesses that possibly could have survived the economic fallout without assistance.

“I think what we’re finding out now is that it was a little too easy for a lot of unscrupulous players to grab a piece of that pie,” he said. “Some of that’s being clawed back, of course, but a lot of it is just going to be lost and up in the wrong pockets. … It’s really hard to do targeted stimulus to anybody and especially for business. If Biden actually gets his proposal across to increase funding to the IRS, they and other government agencies could do a much better job of simply tracking taxpayers and businesses in order to do things like more targeted stimulus stimulus payments.”

States used funds from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 for eviction prevention, food programs, mental health services, and wiping people’s medical debt, but also spent the monies on building more prisons and offsetting tax cuts. More of it could have also been spent on modernizing unemployment insurance, economists said.

Lauren Bauer, fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, said states could have done more to improve the administration of their programs as they received this huge influx of federal funding.

“The support for state and local governments was very, very generous in part because in the Great Recession, the lack of generosity to state governments really slowed the recovery. But because revenues didn’t actually fall that much, they were made more than whole,” Bauer said. “And so because of that, asking them to do some investment in administration of these social insurance programs seems like a pretty reasonable way to have them take responsibility for the role that they play in both protecting households but also getting money down to the ground so that it can be spent to stimulate a recovery.”

What the pandemic has meant for workers

The effects of COVID on the workforce, and certain sectors and industries in particular, are still developing, but economists say healthcare, education, child care, and public sector workers have all been seriously impacted. Fullenkamp said that it can be hard to disentangle labor market changes that happened because of expected generational shifts versus workers leaving the labor force because of the pandemic.

“I think one of the things that we can say for sure is that the pandemic accelerated the Baby Boomer retirement and brought a lot of retirements forward that would have otherwise played out over many, many years, much more slowly,” he said. “… I think we’re seeing that great resignation is more of a temporary phenomenon. We’re seeing people being drawn back into the labor market for a number of reasons. One is simply that the wages are going up finally and also that people did run out of stimulus money and prices are going up and that is going to pull some people back into the labor market.”

Low pay for “frontline” or “essential” workers needs to be addressed before the next pandemic, some economists said.

Gould said pay for public sector jobs such as those in healthcare and education, need to improve if we’re going to prepare for future economic challenges.

“We’ve seen this tremendous bounceback in private sector employment. Public sector employment, particularly state and local jobs, are still down. We have seen slow progress over the last few months but they’re still down a significant amount,” she said. “… I would have hoped that more of that [stimulus] money would have been used to help shore up that employment when the services that are being provided are in health care and education.”

Child care is also a huge issue, said Owens, of Groundwork.

“Between December 2019 and March 2021, about 9,000 child care centers closed,” she said. “The shortage of child care workers is gonna have to be addressed and that only gets addressed by making those jobs better. You’re going to have to pay child care workers more. … We will be weaker going into the next pandemic because we haven’t solved this for child care.”

The question of how COVID-19 illnesses will affect the labor force is still being researched and will take time to understand, economists say. Sixteen million working-age people have Long COVID, a 2022 Brookings Institution report found.

“I think it’s going to take a bit for someone to really carefully figure out how Long COVID and the changing health status of people and generally people’s feelings about public health and their own health are changing the labor force,” Bauer said.

Looking ahead to the next crisis

Is the U.S. prepared for the next pandemic or next recession? We’re better prepared for remote work and unemployment insurance isn’t going to hold people back from joining the labor force, some economists say. Policymakers have also demonstrated that they can mobilize quickly on vaccine rollouts.

“The very generous unemployment insurance didn’t really seem to hold people back from trying to get a job when jobs are available, which is a pretty big lesson for how to use the unemployment insurance system in the next recession to sustain consumption without preventing a labor market recovery,” Bauer said.

It’s still unclear what the effects of increased remote work will have on the economy overall, but some research has shown that the savings in time commuting to work can benefit employers because 40% of that time has been used to get more work done. However some employers have pushed back on remote work. An EY-Parthenon report released this month said that worker productivity fell 2.7% in the first quarter. Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon told Yahoo News that remote work could be a factor but that job churn may also be responsible. But in any case, businesses are better prepared for a sudden shutdown of offices than they once were.

“Businesses kind of figured out work from home pretty fast and were able to maintain, you know, decent levels of productivity in the workforce. We obviously won’t be kind of starting that process over from scratch if we have to send people home again,” Owens said.

Bauer added that more workplace flexibility could be better for keeping women in the workforce. Early in the pandemic, 9 million men lost jobs, but 11.5 million women did, and some women decided to take on child care and leave their jobs as it became more difficult to receive support outside the home.

She said a “no-brainer” in every recession is making sure that unemployment insurance and SNAP, and Medicaid are working swiftly and covering as many people as they can.

The pandemic has also exposed the problems in our supply chain, which have to be addressed before the next big economic vulnerability.

“A big part of the economy that we experienced really beginning in 2021 was because of our broken supply chain,” Owens said. “…We don’t have a spare semiconductor, a spare COVID test, a spare frozen pizza. … That left us really vulnerable to shortages and we have got to build resilience in our supply chain.”

The pandemic also showed us that for the next major health threat, the federal government is capable of moving quickly and should do so again, Owens added.

“The vaccine got done relatively fast and it’s worth remembering that there was massive federal incentive and investment in that, and that allowed it to lift off,” she said. “In the next pandemic, I would do all of that again.”

Kentucky Senate Judiciary chairman will not seek reelection in 2024

McKenna Horsley — Thu, 30 Mar 2023 13:44:05 +0000

Whitney Westerfield

A Republican state senator from Western Kentucky has announced that he will not seek reelection.?

Sen. Whitney Westerfield, R-Fruit Hill, released a statement about his decision on social media Thursday morning, the last day of the current legislative session. He said he was “eager to spend more time with my family” after his term ends in 2024.?

Westerfield’s announcement comes 19 months ahead of the election for his seat. He’s currently one of 30 Republicans in the Kentucky Senate and is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.??

“Election Day is still 19 months away. Amanda and our children, now eight and five, have sacrificed greatly so that I can serve the people of my district, but they’ve sacrificed enough,” the state senator said. “It is with these thoughts in mind and my desire to remain closest to those I hold most dear that I have decided not to seek reelection as the Kentucky State Senator for District 3.”?

Of his record in the Senate, Westerfield said he was proud to work on legislation in areas such as pro-life policy, economic growth and criminal justice. He also highlighted that he sponsored Marsy’s Law, which was a constitutional amendment on crime victim rights that voters approved in 2020. The Kentucky Supreme Court dismissed a legal challenge to the amendment in 2022.??

After his term ends, Westerfield plans to continue working in public policy, particularly in criminal justice and behavioral health.?

All 12 GOP governor candidates invited to Northern Kentucky debate

McKenna Horsley — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 21:47:16 +0000

Kentucky Governor's Mansion. Who'll live here next year? (Photo by Getty Images)

The 12 Republicans seeking the party’s nomination in the upcoming governor’s race have been invited to a two-night debate in Northern Kentucky next month.?

A collaboration between the Kenton County Republican Party, WCPO 9 and LINK nky, the event will be held at the Lincoln Grant Scholar House on April 25 and 26.?

A press release said the top half of candidates “as determined by the most recent, comprehensive polling results” will debate the first night. The rest will debate the second night. Both time slots will be 90 minutes.?

Shane Noem, the Kenton County Republican Party chairman, said confirmed participants and their night of participation will be announced after April 1.??

“The Kenton County Republican Party is excited to help showcase our candidates for governor in advance of the May 16 primary election,” Noem said in a press release. “As a party organization, we do not endorse in primaries, but we do have the honor and obligation of equitably providing platforms for candidates to make their case to Republican voters.”

Live streams can be found on platforms such as WCPO 9’s apps and LINK nky’s website and Facebook page. Questions will include a variety of topics, the press release said.?

“We are committed to extensive election coverage and making sure the voters know the candidates to make an informed decision and are honored to be able to participate in the debate,” said Jeff Brogan, vice president and general manager of WCPO 9.

Lacy Starling, LINK nky president and CEO said the future debate aligns with the news outlet’s mission.?

“LINK nky is dedicated to connecting the Northern Kentucky community to the people hoping to represent it,” she said. “This debate aligns with our mission to focus on public interest journalism that provides transformative coverage of the news of the day with a focus on the deeper issues that matter most to our community. Bringing the candidates who are running for governor to tell our region what they will do to advocate for our community does just that.”

A limited number of tickets were available to be reserved by the public. The tickets had been claimed as of Monday afternoon.?

The debate in northern Kentucky will be three weeks before the May 16 primary election. Four candidates— Attorney General Daniel Cameron, State Auditor Mike Harmon, Somerset Mayor Alan Keck and Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles— appeared at the Louisville GOP debate earlier this month. Former United Nations Ambassador Kelly Craft was invited but did not attend.?

Other upcoming debates ahead of the primary are a Republican debate hosted by Kentucky Sports Radio on April 19 and KET debates for both parties on May 1. Radio host Matt Jones said on Twitter he will moderate the KSR debate and other staffers may ask questions. Candidates to appear there are Craft, Cameron, Harmon, Keck and Quarles. Jones added that Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear will be offered an interview before the primary.?

KET has a list of criteria to invite candidates. It includes that a candidate has a campaign website with public policy statements and the candidate must have reported monetary contributions of at least $100,000 or reported expenditures of at least $100,000 for the current election.

House committee OKs 2024 vote on school choice constitutional amendment

McKenna Horsley — Tue, 14 Mar 2023 16:49:42 +0000

A high school classroom. (Getty Images)

FRANKFORT — A House committee voted 8-5 Tuesday to forward a bill that would let Kentucky voters decide in 2024 on a constitutional amendment to allow the legislature to provide funding for non-public schools.?

Rep. Josh Calloway, R-Irvington, the sponsor of House Bill 174, told the House Committee on Elections, Constitutional Amendments and Intergovernmental Affairs the amendment would let the legislature establish a school choice program.?

Currently, the state constitution adopted in 1891 says the General Assembly is limited to fund? “common schools,” or public schools. The Kentucky Supreme Court ruled the Education Opportunity Account Act, a school choice bill the General Assembly previously passed, as unconstitutional in December.?

Rep. Josh Calloway

After the meeting, the representative said he’s “committed to the cause” and wants to do everything he can to see it through. As of Tuesday morning, the bill had no floor readings in the House despite having more than 30 co-sponsors, but Calloway pointed to the quick movement of House Bill 470 and Senate Bill 150.?

“Everything is fluid right now,” he said. “And I think we’ll just see over the next few days, we’ll kind of see this thing shape out and so everything is really fluid.”?

Calloway said Kentucky elected “the most pro-school choice General Assembly” last year. A January poll from Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy firm found 54% of Kentuckians support school choice.??

Akia McNeary, a school choice advocate who has children in both public and private schools, joined Calloway in the committee meeting. She said Kentucky students deserve “the education that best fits their needs.”

Among questions Calloway received, Rep. Josie Raymond, D-Louisville, asked if the language that would appear on the ballot would be clear to voters. She also read it aloud during the meeting.

Text from House Bill 174 to allow Kentucky voters to make decision on allowing school choice by a constitutional amendment. (Screenshot)

Calloway said yes, and Andrew Vandiver, the president of EdChoice Kentucky and associate director of the Catholic Conference of Kentucky, also joined Calloway and added that it was important the language be specific because of the Kentucky Supreme Court decision that struck down Marsy’s Law in 2019. Both said messages about what the amendment would do would be communicated to voters within the next year.?

“I don’t know that the average voter knows that common schools means public schools,” Raymond said.?

Raymond also asked if Calloway thought tax dollars should support religious schools, but he said the amendment would not do that.?

“What this amendment does is it allows the legislature to have the opportunity to put some type of school choice program in place,” Calloway said. “This is not allowing for charter schools per se and a program. This is not allowing for Christian schools, private schools, religious schools as a program. That is a discussion that we will have at a later date.”?

A couple members of the public voiced opposition for the bill. Additionally, the Kentucky Education Association Executive Director Mary Ruble and President Eddie Campbell spoke against the proposed amendment.?

Ruble said the amendment would nullify four sections of the Kentucky constitution that relate to the legislature’s “obligations to the public schools.”?

“If the proponents of school choice are so confident that that’s what the people of Kentucky want, there is currently a constitutional fix for this without making changes to the Constitution, and it is to simply to put the question to a referendum of the people,” she said. “This is unnecessary. It is wide-ranging. It is extreme.”?

Committee Chairman and a bill co-sponsor Rep. Kevin Bratcher, R-Louisville, said after voting yes on the bill the issue of school choice has been around for many years and surrounding states have charter schools. The people should decide, he added.?

“Where did we corner the market on such intelligence?” he said. “I mean, is our schools that great— public schools— that you’d want to make a stand that you can’t make one change towards privatization? Is that where we’re at?”?

Two Republicans, Rep. Jennifer Decker and Rep. Matt Koch, voted yes on the bill after joining the committee following testimony. Other legislative committees were underway at the same time.?

Bipartisan Kentucky bill decriminalizing fentanyl test strips clears House

Sarah Ladd — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 21:46:08 +0000

Bags of heroin, some laced with fentanyl, displayed after a drug bust in New York. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

FRANKFORT — A bipartisan Kentucky bill that would pave the way for fentanyl strips to not be considered illegal drug paraphernalia passed the House unanimously 93-0 on Wednesday.?

House Bill 353 is sponsored by Rep. Kimberly Poore Moser, R-Taylor Mill and has three Democratic co-sponsors.?

Fentanyl test strips, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are paper strips that can detect the presence of fentanyl — a powerful synthetic opioid —?in pills and other drugs within minutes. Using them can help prevent overdoses, the CDC says.?

“People with a substance use disorder shouldn’t be arrested when they’re trying to stay alive,” Moser said on the House floor. “Access to fentanyl test strips and a strong education and awareness campaign are evidence-based practices that will prevent fatal overdoses and the all-to-present death that we see from fentanyl.”?

In 2021, 2,250 Kentuckians died from overdoses, Volunteers of America previously reported, with fentanyl playing a role in 73% of those fatalities. That’s an increase from 2020, when the CDC reported 2,083 deaths in the state, which had one of the nation’s worst rates of fatal overdoses.?

“Given the insidious introduction of fentanyl into the illicit drug supply chains, such as counterfeit pills that we see being bought on the street, the risk of accidental overdose and unintentional exposure is extraordinarily high,” said Moser. “Making fentanyl test strips more available is going to change behavior and it will save lives.”?

The bill may proceed to the Senate now.

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Bill to remake how Kentucky Board of Education members are selected passes state Senate

McKenna Horsley — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 00:25:26 +0000

Students arrive at Carter Traditional Elementary School in Louisville in January 2022. (Getty Images)

FRANKFORT — Among their debates on the Kentucky Senate floor Thursday, senators questioned if the creation of a committee to nominate members to the Board of Education would bring more or less politics to the process.

Senate Bill 107 seeks to create a nomination committee for the Kentucky Board of Education. The group would give recommendations to the governor for Board of Education appointments. The Senate voted 29-4 in favor.

Sen. Mike Wilson, R-Bowling Green, the primary sponsor, said on the floor that governors of both parties have used the board in a political way and referenced when Gov. Andy Beshear appointed new members to the Board of Education shortly after assuming office.

“It kind of removes the politics from him (the governor) being able to appoint somebody that he knows, that he really wants to be there,” Wilson said.

According to the text of the bill, the nominating committee would have seven members who represent each Supreme Court district. They would be appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate. The nominating committee would give the governor three nominations to select gubernatorial appointments to the Kentucky Board of Education.

The governor would also have to follow guidelines in making appointments to the nominating committee, which are:

“Equal representation of the two (2) sexes
No less than proportional representation of the two (2) leading political parties of the Commonwealth based on the state’s voter registration; and
The minority racial composition of the Commonwealth.”

“??In making its nominations, the committee shall consider the needs of the Kentucky Board of Education, locate potential appointees, review candidates’ qualifications and references, conduct interviews, and carry out other search and screening activities as necessary,” the bill says.

The commissioner of education would also be subject to Senate confirmation and annual review by the Kentucky Board of Education in closed executive sessions. The bill also calls for the education commissioner to serve for a defined employment contract with terms to not exceed four years.

The committee substitute version added an emergency clause to the bill, which means that it goes into effect immediately upon becoming law. It next goes to the House.

“I think you are potentially politicizing a process that should as much as possible be apolitical,” said Sen. Karen Berg, D-Louisville, before she voted against the bill.

Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, said in a floor speech that Democrats introduced a similar measure for university boards when they controlled the executive branch and both chambers.

Transgender youth face uncertain future as legislation targets their identities

Joe Killian — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 10:40:26 +0000

Alex Lounsbury (Courtesy photo)

In many ways, Alex Lounsbury has been lucky. He knows that.

Now in his senior year at Atkins High School, a technology magnet in Winston-Salem, N.C., he’s happy, healthy and looking toward the future. But it wasn’t easy getting there.

Assigned female at birth, Alex knew he was transgender by the time he was in middle school. But he wasn’t ready to talk about it with parents, teachers and all of his friends right away. When he did come out to his family, they were supportive.

“They just wanted me to be healthy and happy,” Lounsbury told Policy Watch this week. “I know a lot of people don’t have that from their parents. I wish everyone did. They wanted me to be myself and be who I really am.”

For Lounsbury and his family, that meant transitioning. First socially: telling friends, family, teachers and administrators he was changing his name and his gender pronouns. Nobody was ready for it, he said. The school had never encountered a transgender student.

“There was bullying, even assault,” he said. “But my parents supported me. We sat down with teachers, the principal. It just took time and persistence.”

At 16, he and his family began talking with doctors about hormone replacement therapy to begin a physical transition. In a few months, he’ll take the next step — a “top surgery” to remove his breasts, which he’s been working toward slowly and deliberately for years. At every step, with the backing of his family and the knowledge and advice of his doctors, he’s felt more at home and at peace in his own body.

As he moves toward graduation this year, he’s happy the environment has changed for young trans people since he came out.

“It’s just something people understand a little better now, they know about it more,” Lounsbury said. “Teachers hand out introductory cards at the beginning of the year, asking about preferred names and pronouns. That’s really helpful. There’s more of an understanding.”

But under two new bills moving through the North Carolina General Assembly, that could all radically change.

Senate Bill 49 would, among other provisions, require teachers to notify parents if a student questions their own gender — outing many young trans people before they’re ready to tell their families, who might be hostile to their identities.

House Bill 43 would make it illegal for anyone under 18 to receive the sort of gender affirming care Lounsbury did.

Lounsbury can’t help thinking of how much more difficult his life would have been under laws such as these.

“This would have been my nightmare,” he said. “Being outed, not being able to speak my truth about who I really am in my own time, when I decided to. And to not be able to make a decision with my family and my doctors. I don’t see why it’s anybody else’s place to say, why they belong in that conversation.”

For Lounsbury and many transgender youth, the two bills offer a perplexing insight into what Republican lawmakers believe to be the place of government in family and medical decisions.

Under SB49, the so-called “Parents’ Bill of Rights,” the place of parents is paramount in any discussion of gender, sexuality and identity. Its sponsors argue the government — in this case, through teachers and school administrators — has no place in conversations about a young person’s gender identity without them.

But under HB43 parents like Lounsbury’s, who support their transgender children and follow the standard of care prescribed by doctors and myriad medical associations, would see the government intervene to prevent any steps toward transition until they are 18.

These contradictory ideas about family versus government seem to be bridged by one overarching belief, Lounsbury said: the assumption that being transgender is dangerous, something to protect children against even if their families and doctors don’t share that view.

“What they’re saying is the parents should have these conversations and make these decisions — unless they support you,” Lounsbury said. “Then the government just makes the decision it wants them to. It’s only the parents who are against it whose rights matter.”

After years of advocacy, transgender North Carolinians have finally made progress, securing hard-won legal victories?about their rights to gender-affirming health care coverage and the right to change their gender marker on government documents.

But now they are facing a backlash. More than 200 anti-LGBTQ bills have been filed across the country already this year. Republicans who picked up seats in state houses are pushing through legislation and will likely use it campaign on in the next election cycle.

The certainty of a veto from Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, kept Republican leaders in the North Carolina General Assembly from even bringing some anti-LGBTQ bills to a vote in the last legislative session. But with gains in the last election, Republicans ?again have the votes to override a veto in the Senate and need the support or absence of just one Democrat in the House to override it that chamber.

That new legislative math makes bills codifying the most conservative view of gender identity a real possibility, despite the objections of LGBTQ families and the mainstream medical community.

“It doesn’t feel like a step back, it feels like a couple of hundred steps back,” Lounsbury said. “It’s completely and utterly terrifying to know that just being myself is possibly going to become illegal in some ways.”

Doing measurable damage

For State Rep. Marcia Morey (D-Durham), the attacks on LGBTQ people aren’t new. One of the General Assembly’s few out LGBTQ legislators, she’s spent years promoting bills that would offer greater protections for these marginalized communities. Under a Republican majority, those bills can’t even get a hearing.

Rep. Marcia Morey

With these new bills aimed at gender identity, Morey said, GOP lawmakers are sending a very clear message.

“The damage that we’re doing by introducing these bills is that it communicates to certain young people that something is fundamentally wrong with them,” Morey said. “They’re watching, they’re listening. They’re paying attention as we’re trying to legislate their identities at a very tender time.”

This week State Rep. Vernetta Alston (D-Durham), another out legislator, sponsored a competing House bill she said will account for the rights of both parents and students — including families like hers.

Alston and her wife are also parents, she said in a press conference Tuesday. LGBTQ students and their families need to be acknowledged when lawmakers legislate gender identity and sexuality.

“Like so many parents, my number one priority in life is the health, safety and well-being of my children,” Alston said. “Instead, my Senate colleagues are debating bills like Senate Bill 49 … a bill that will harm our students, especially our LGBTQ students who will only be more vulnerable and more isolated at school if Senate Bill 49 passes.”

Rep. Vernetta Alston

A Department of Health and Human Services report ?shows a 46% increase in North Carolina youth reporting a depressive episode since the COVID-19 pandemic began nearly three years ago. One in five high school students seriously contemplated suicide last year, according to the report. For LGBTQ students, that number is one in two.

Medical experts point to years of studies that show legislation targeting LGBTQ youth, particularly in schools where many find support they lack at home, contributes to a rise in depression and suicidal ideation. On Wednesday a panel of doctors from Duke University who study the issue and treat LGBTQ young people spoke out against the bills now moving through the legislature.

“There is a high likelihood both these bills … would have reverberating impacts on the health of LGBTQ+ children and adults throughout North Carolina,” Dr. Sarah Wilson, assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and co-lead of the Duke Sexual and Gender Minority Health Program.

That’s clear when studying the aftermath of HB2, Wilson said. The 2016 law excluded lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from statewide nondiscrimination protections. That legislation caused a national firestorm, with protests and boycotts leading to a partial repeal.

For LGBTQ people who lived through having their identities and rights debated and assailed daily throughout that controversy, the effects were devastating. Wilson pointed to a two-year study in HB2’s wake, highlighting a number of alarming trends.

“In North Carolina after HB2 … we saw gender identity-motivated hate crimes actually increased in the state,” Wilson said. “So there can be these larger cultural effects of the legislation that can adversely affect LBTBQ+ individuals by normalizing stigma. Where there is stigma, oftentimes there is increased violence.”

During the HB2 controversy and its aftermath, state lawmakers promoted right-wing groups that opposed same-sex marriage while rejecting the medical mainstream conclusions of the American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association and American Academy of Pediatrics. That came at a cost, Wilson said.

Dr. Sarah Wilson

“There are downstream effects of that increased exposure to stigma, violence and hate crimes where North Carolinians who are LGBTQ+ reported feeling increased depression and anxiety,” Wilson said. “This is a group that already faces disproportionate rates of discrimination, harassment, stigma, and these bills serve to potentially have an amplifying effect for these inequities we already see.”

Transgender people — especially youth and people of color — suffered the greatest negative impact.

“Suicidal ideation increased among transgender and gender non-conforming North Carolinians, and hate crimes increased,” Wilson said. “Depression and anxiety among transgender North Carolinians also increased. We saw these reverberating effects throughout people’s lives. We saw people delaying health care because of these bills because there was a concern over general attitudes towards transgender and non-binary folks.”

Limiting what students can hear, read and say about gender identity in their schools is particularly dangerous, Wilson said, as LGBTQ youth often find badly needed support and community there.

“We know the majority of LGBTQ+ youth report their home is not LGBTQ+ affirming — three in five,” Wilson said. “The rates are actually a little bit higher for schools. There are more LGBTQ+ who report their school is an affirming place than report their home is an affirming place.”

“Youth and adults turn to friends, teachers, other people in the community to be able to gain that acceptance and willingness to support the person regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity,” Wilson said.

Sen. Amy Galey is one of SB49’s main sponsors

Sponsors of these bills see that as the problem.?“Parents do not surrender their children to government schools for indoctrination opposed to the family’s values,” said Sen. Amy Galey, an Alamance County Republican and one of SB49’s main sponsors, said during a press conference last week.

That view was amplified in a Senate Rules committee meeting this week, where members of the conservative group Moms for Liberty made clear the religious motivations of the bill’s supporters.

“It seems that it would be extreme emotional abuse by the system to allow a child to believe and grow into something that is against the definition given by the Bible of truth and God’s word as far as their sexuality,” said Nicholas Jaroszynski, a board member of Moms for Liberty of Iredell County.

“To allow the state to define that is even further of an abomination,” Jaroszynski said.

The view that acceptance and support for LGBTQ students amounts to indoctrination is problematic and scientifically unfounded, said Dr. Dane Whicker, a clinical health psychologist at Duke Health who provides therapy for LGBTQ+ adolescents and adults.

Decades of scientific research doesn’t support the political narrative that young people become LGBTQ because of outside influence, Whicker said, while volumes of research demonstrate that trying to prevent LGBTQ people from embracing their identities is harmful.

“There are no interventions or practices that can stop youth from having LGBTQ+ identities,” Whicker said. “In reality these types of bills, the impact they’re going to have, is on concealment – people hiding really important parts of their identity and depriving them of the support they need to navigate those really critical pieces that affect their health and trajectory in life.”

“New territory for a lot of people”

Dr. Deanna Adkins

Dr. Deanna Adkins, a pediatric endocrinologist at Duke Health and director of the Child and Adolescent Gender Care Clinic, has spent years working with hundreds of transgender patients.

The debate around gender affirming care has unfortunately strayed far from the realities of how doctors like her actually work with families and young transgender people, she said this week.

“Gender-affirming care is life saving care with decades of research behind it,” Adkins said. “You wouldn’t ask me to not practice the standard of care for any other care I give. You wouldn’t ask me to not do what the American Diabetes Association says I should do for my patients with diabetes.”

Current discussions don’t reflect the reality of the care, nor the risks of suddenly making it out of reach, Adkins said.

“This is a group of individuals, a small portion of the population, only about 3% of those under 18,” Adkins said. “And they are a quite vulnerable population. It would limit their access to potentially life-saving treatments that we have excellent evidence within the medical literature that this helps these patients in many ways. It decreases their suicidality, it improves their overall mental health, it decreases self-harm as well.”

For Sage, a 13-year old non-binary person from Greensboro, gender-affirming care of the type Adkins describes has been life saving — as has been the support of their family.

Because Sage and their family have experienced harassment and threats during Sage’s transition, Policy Watch has agreed to identify them by their first name.

After consultation with doctors, Sage and their family chose to use puberty blockers for about two years to delay its onset. The extra time allowed Sage to more consciously work through their gender identity and the steps they wanted to take to prevent gender dysphoria — the distress that comes from a misalignment of one’s body and gender identity.

The process was simple, safe and reversible, Sage and their family said.?“I had a lot of questions, of course,” said Sage’s mother, Debra. “This is new territory for a lot of people, us included at that time. We talked a lot with the doctors about what could be done, possible side effects, steps for the future. Ultimately, we weighed this treatment against the dangers of our child not wanting to live in their body and we made the decision that would make them healthy and happy. And they are.”

Legislation could soon prevent other young transgender people from having the same experience. That’s something Sage, still on their journey of transition, thinks about a lot. They’ve stopped puberty blockers and are weighing next steps, such as hormone therapy or eventually, surgery.

But having those options taken off the table by people outside the circle of their family and their doctors feels wrong.?“It’s really scary to me that the things that have been available to me might not be, and that could happen in a matter of weeks,” Sage said.

Adkins said she is hearing that concern from patients and their families daily. Without access to safe gender-affirming care, she said, there’s a danger some will turn to black market medications and treatments that aren’t safe and tested, out of desperation.

That’s not something their family will do, Sage’s mother Debra said. But they will take their child out of state for treatment if needed, she said, or even consider moving if it becomes necessary.

“This isn’t something that the government should be involved in, when a person and their family and their doctor make the decisions that are best for them,” Sage said. “Having freedom in this country, including freedom of religion, also means having freedom from having someone else’s religion used against you.”

Sage’s mother, Debra, said she’s proud her child felt supported enough to speak openly with her and her husband about their gender identity — and proud that their family has navigated this journey with love.

That’s not the story every LGBTQ person has, she said. Some face physical violence or abandonment by their families. Others face so-called “conversion therapy” — a scientifically debunked and harmful practice North Carolina has yet to ban.

“We need to be doing everything we can to make this easier for our kids, not harder,” Debra said. “For every kid who isn’t lucky enough to have the full support of their family, who doesn’t have access to the care they should, we shouldn’t be making this harder.

Senate unanimously approves legislative investigation of juvenile detention violence

McKenna Horsley — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 23:58:40 +0000

(Photo by Getty Images)

FRANKFORT —?Democrats pushed back against Republican criticism of the Beshear administration as the state Senate on Friday unanimously approved creation of a workgroup to investigate violence and dangerous working conditions in Kentucky’s juvenile detention centers.

Senate President Pro Tem David Givens, sponsor of the resolution to create the 12-member workgroup, said the detention system, which he has been told houses fewer than 150 juveniles, is in “operational breakdown.”

“Someone else is going to have to be watchdogging what’s going on here,” Givens, R-Greensburg, told the Senate.

Sen. Reggie Thomas, D-Lexington, countered that the legislature had failed to adequately fund the juvenile system, saying that until 15 months ago starting pay for employees in juvenile facilities was $14.22 an hour. The administration has increased the starting wage to $22.10 in an attempt to address the understaffing, said Thomas..

Thomas also said the numbers of juveniles in detention declined sharply during the pandemic with a corresponding decline in staff. When the number of offenders increased as the pandemic eased, staffing did not keep up, Thomas said..

Senators from both parties said the population of detained juveniles is more violent than in the past. Gov. Andy Beshear also has said the population of juvenile detainees is at its most violent ever.

Thomas said the state is dealing with “a different kind of offender than four years ago,” including many with ties to gangs.

?Givens’ resolution calls for the workgroup to make ?recommendations to the legislature by Feb. 7.

Among the questions the group would answer is whether the Department of Juvenile Justice should be placed under the state Department of Corrections and whether the state should operate a juvenile detention facility in Louisville.?

The resolution cites violence and riots at state-run facilities for juveniles in McCracken, Warren and Adair counties.?

“We not only are having a crisis in our juvenile detention facilities across the commonwealth but we as policymakers can’t seem to get the information about what’s going on,” Givens told fellow senators on Thursday.?

Senate Resolution 31 calls for an “immediate response legislative work group” to be created with members of the Senate and House of Representatives and up to four additional non-voting members appointed by each chamber.

The resolution says Louisville Metro closed its juvenile detention facility in 2020 as a result of budget cuts and began housing its juvenile offenders at an ill-equipped facility in suburban Jefferson County run by the state Department of Juvenile Justice. That facility in Lyndon was closed in November after rioting, employee injuries, fires and the escape of a juvenile, the resolution says.

The motion comes after another Sen. John Schickel, R-Union, said on the floor Wednesday that he wrote a letter to Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear about concerns with the state’s juvenile justice system and Beshear administration reform responses.

Schickel said the administration’s changes are creating a transportation burden. Law enforcement told him a male juvenile was taken into custody in Northern Kentucky and transported overnight to a Boyd County juvenile detention facility, a two and a half hour drive. Schickel said the juvenile was transported again to northern Kentucky to appear in court.

“This is just an unworkable situation and it is a breach of the agreement that was made 20 years ago that in exchange for counties closing down their facilities, the state would have a detention facility in every region of our state,” Schickel ?said.??

Previously, Beshear announced that a Campbell County facility would be converted to house only females. The governor told reporters Thursday that a state-controlled transportation system is needed for juveniles to be housed in facilities across the state by their level of charges and separated by gender.?

Beshear told reporters Thursday that he read Schickel’s letter and added that major changes must be made to the state’s juvenile justice system. The administration created a female-only facility and plans to house juveniles by level of offense, rather than closest to their home. ?Beshear said ?creating a transportation system within the Department of Juvenile Justice was discussed as part of those changes. He previously announced that juveniles could be housed separately before they appear in a court hearing, which typically takes 48 hours. After they are charged, they would then be transported to the appropriate facility.?

“I don’t want law enforcement to have to drive two and a half hours,” the governor said. “But in this instance, if it meant that all of those girls are better protected for the moment, you know that’s something that I think that we can work with and address, but I still fully support creating the female-only juvenile justice center.”?

On the floor Friday, Thomas said the recent changes by the administration are temporary “until we get a handle on it.”

In his Wednesday State of the Commonwealth Address, Beshear said his administration will ask the General Assembly to support higher salaries for employees of the juvenile justice system, upgrades to facilities and changes to state laws for reform. On Thursday, he said that it “would be better” if a male-only facility were in northern Kentucky and that was something he was willing to consider.?

After the address, both Republican House Speaker David Osborne and Senate President Robert Stivers told reporters members of their chambers were working on legislation to address Kentucky’s juvenile justice system.?

Osborne noted that the legislature approved pay raises in the most recent budget, but that a study from the Personnel Cabinet due in 2021 would give lawmakers insight on how to use funds in the future.?

“There is a need for pay increases in juvenile justice and corrections, in lots of different areas,” he said. “But I think that you’d have to look at it in its entirety as opposed to trying to piecemeal it together and make some common sense out of it.”?

Lantern editor Jamie Lucke contributed to this article.

D.C. nears Jan. 6 anniversary with warnings about extremism, awards for courage

Ariana Figueroa — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 20:17:47 +0000

On the first anniversary of the attack on the Capitol, then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi pauses for a moment of silence alongside fellow lawmakers and congressional staff members as they participate in a commeroative prayer vigil. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON – On the eve of the second anniversary of the U.S. Capitol insurrection, congressional Democrats and dozens of veterans on Thursday in a press conference called on incoming House Republican leaders to condemn political violence and hold their members who supported the attack accountable for their actions.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden is scheduled on Friday to host a ceremony where he will speak about the Jan. 6 attack, and award medals to a dozen people who“demonstrated courage and selflessness during a moment of peril for our nation,” according to a White House official.

They will include:

?Election workers Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman of Fulton County, Georgia, who were targeted by Trump administration officials and falsely accused of voter fraud.
Rusty Bowers, the former speaker of the Arizona House who resisted pressures to overturn 2020 election results.
Jocelyn Benson, the Michigan secretary of state who faced armed protesters outside her home when she resisted pressure over election results.
Al Schmidt, a former GOP commissioner in Philadelphia and member of the Philadelphia County Board of Elections who during the 2020 election faced threats for defending the integrity of the election.

At the veterans’ press event near the Capitol Reflecting Pool, House members Jason Crow of Colorado, Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania and Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey talked about how their values to uphold democracy started with their military service when they took an oath to protect the Constitution.

They voiced their concerns about how many veterans were part of the Jan. 6 mob.

“When you raise your right hand, and you take that oath to give everything to your country, that is a lifetime commitment,” Crow said. “A lifetime commitment and uniform, but continuing to fight for and preserve our democracy, and never has that been more important than the era that we live in right now.”

Extremism worries

House Democrats have held hearings and issued reports that have shown the growing worries about extremism among veterans and have recommended the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs protect veterans from those groups. Separately, an analysis by NPR found that 1 in 5 of the defendants charged for their involvement in the riot were veterans.

“While the individuals who descended upon and disrespected these storied halls represent a very small fringe faction of the population, it is no secret that they were inspired by some of the most senior officials in our government who failed to accept the results of the 2020 election,” said Houlahan.

She, Crow and Sherrill were in the House chamber during the insurrection, when hundreds of pro-Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to prevent members of Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election.

President Donald Trump was impeached for a second time for his role in the insurrection, and a special committee investigating the attack unanimously voted to refer him and others to the Justice Department for potential criminal charges, including inciting or aiding an insurrection.

The special House panel investigating Jan. 6 found that Trump was directly involved in efforts to pressure state officials in Georgia, Arizona and elsewhere to overturn the 2020 election results in their states.

White House awards

This will be the first time Biden will give out the Presidential Citizens Medal, which is awarded to individuals who have done an extraordinary act of service for the United States or fellow Americans.

Among the recipients will be Eugene Goodman, the U.S. Capitol Police officer who is credited with diverting rioters from the Senate floor, allowing senators and staff to evacuate.

The president will also posthumously award a medal to the late Brian Sicknick, a? Capitol Police officer who was injured while responding to the Jan. 6 attack and later died.

Michael Fanone, a Metropolitan Police Department Officer who responded to the Jan. 6 attack and was injured, will also receive a medal. Fanone later resigned, and has continued to put pressure on congressional Republicans to acknowledge their role in spreading the false narrative that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

He most recently sent a letter signed by more than 1,000 veterans to top Republican leaders on Wednesday, calling on them to denounce political violence and the Jan. 6 attack.

Fanone, who was at the press event, said he wants MAGA Republicans to know “that myself and thousands, tens of thousands of veterans and members of the law enforcement community are paying very close attention to the things that they’ve said.”

He singled out Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Kevin McCarthy of California, who is struggling to garner enough votes to secure the position of speaker of the House.

“This type of chaos will happen every single day in the House as some of the most extreme politicians our country has ever seen hold our democracy hostage,” Fanone said about the speaker race that has continued for three days.

Without a speaker, no members of Congress can be sworn in and the chamber cannot conduct government business such as committee meetings or constituent services.

The veterans’ press conference was hosted by Courage for America, an initiative organized by progressives to speak out against extremism and counter the GOP House, and Common Defense, a grassroots organization that works to promote progressive ideas in the veteran community.

A ‘new sense of hope’

Sherrill, who served in the Navy for nine years, said she remembers being crouched in the House gallery, a cell phone in one hand, calling her loved ones, and a gas mask in the other.

“I had this great sense of sorrow that it had come to this,” she said about veterans who attacked the Capitol. “The other side of my brain had really a sense of rage. How dare they?”

“And yet as I sit here today … I think about how far we’ve come with the January 6 hearings,” she said, adding that many people who ran as election deniers lost their campaigns.

“I feel a new sense of hope,” Sherrill said. “Our democracy is stronger and more resilient than ever, and so it’s with almost a sense of joy, that I start this new term in Congress, because I know the American people have our back.”