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Florida Republicans pass school bills on pronouns, diversity

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Florida Republicans pass school bills on pronouns, diversity

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Florida Republicans on Wednesday accepted payments to ban variety packages in faculties and stop college students and lecturers from being required to make use of pronouns that don’t correspond to somebody’s intercourse, constructing on prime priorities of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The 2 proposals got remaining passage by the Republican supermajorities within the Home and Senate. DeSantis is anticipated to signal the payments into legislation.

DeSantis, who is anticipated to announce a presidential marketing campaign within the coming weeks, has pushed a hardline conservative agenda as he seeks to bolster help of Republican major voters forward of his White Home run.

The state’s Legislative session, scheduled to finish this week, has been dominated by divisive cultural points, with Republican allies of DeSantis approving his precedence payments on sexual orientation, gender id, race and training which might be anticipated to help the governor in his presidential bid.

The Senate on Wednesday voted to develop the legislation critics name “ Don’t Say Homosexual,” a serious calling card of DeSantis, with a sweeping invoice that forestalls faculty staffers or college students from being required to confer with individuals by pronouns that don’t correspond to the individual’s intercourse.

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It additionally bans classroom instruction on gender id and sexual orientation as much as the eighth grade, legally reinforcing a DeSantis administration transfer to ban such classes in all grades. Moreover, the invoice strengthens the system during which individuals can lodge challenges towards faculty books, one other DeSantis initiative that has led to the elimination of fabric he and his supporters argue are inappropriate for youngsters.

“Take into consideration what we’re doing, actually. Take into consideration how this can have an effect on households that don’t appear to be yours,” mentioned Sen. Tracie Davis, a Democrat. “They’re nonetheless households. They’re Florida households. However we’re treating them like they’re outsiders and we’re telling them we don’t need them right here.”

Republicans mentioned the invoice is meant to defend youngsters from sexualized content material and reinforce that lecturers ought to conform to current state curriculums.

“You see society coming at our youngsters in a tradition battle that has an agenda to make them confused,” Republican Sen. Erin Grall mentioned. “We’re depriving youngsters of the power to determine who they’re after we push an agenda, a sexualized agenda, down onto youngsters.”

Individually, Republicans within the Home gave remaining passage to a DeSantis precedence invoice that bans faculties from utilizing state or federal funding for variety, fairness and inclusion packages.

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Such initiatives, generally known as DEI, have come below rising criticism from Republicans who argue the packages are racially divisive.

Republican lawmakers in a minimum of a dozen states have proposed greater than 30 payments this 12 months focusing on variety, fairness and inclusion efforts in larger training, an Related Press evaluation discovered utilizing the bill-tracking software program Plural.

“They need rote perception in the identical factor. They are saying they need inclusion, however they don’t until you consider what they consider,” mentioned Rep. Randy Effective, a Republican. “These packages are getting used all around the nation. Think about how nice our universities might be after we are the one ones who aren’t.”

The Home additionally accepted a proposal to ban individuals from coming into loos that don’t correspond to their intercourse, a invoice aimed toward transgender lavatory use.

DeSantis is anticipated to formally announce his presidential candidacy after the top of the legislative session. He has spent vital time in latest months touring to battleground states and elsewhere to advertise his conservative agenda and trumpet his insurance policies on race, gender and training.

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Within the statehouse, Democrats, who haven’t any energy to cease the Republican laws, have more and more begun to vent over the rightward shift in coverage emanating from the GOP.

“The message that resonates from this chamber over the previous few years is one in every of hate and exclusion and punishment,” mentioned Democratic Sen. Jason Pizzo. “There’s little or no grace and little or no compassion.”

___

Related Press author Curt Anderson in St. Petersburg, Florida, contributed to this report.

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Trump presses Judge Cannon to take up immunity question in classified documents case in Florida | CNN Politics

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Trump presses Judge Cannon to take up immunity question in classified documents case in Florida | CNN Politics



CNN
 — 

Attorneys for former President Donald Trump are now seeking to use the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision to help him in his criminal case in Florida over the mishandling of classified documents.

In a new court filing Friday, Trump’s team said they want an updated schedule in the federal classified documents case so they can argue points related to the Supreme Court decision.

The decision “guts the Office’s position that President Trump has ‘no immunity’ and further demonstrates the politically-motivated nature of their contention that the motion is ‘frivolous,’” Trump’s attorneys wrote.

The Supreme Court’s decision directly applies to the federal case over 2020 election subversion efforts in Washington, DC, but it could impact all four of the criminal cases against the former president.

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In the filing Friday, Trump’s attorneys also noted Justice Clarence Thomas concurrence to the decision, questioning the validity of special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment. Trump’s attorneys argue the concurrence “adds force” to motions Trump has filed against how Smith was appointed and funded.

CNN previously reported that Trump’s legal team planned to use this week’s Supreme Court opinion to try to get key evidence in the classified documents case tossed out, and Friday’s filing is the first step toward that end.

The move is likely to further elongate an already convoluted and slow road to trial in Judge Aileen Cannon’s courtroom in Fort Pierce, Florida. The judge has yet to decide a number of pretrial matters, including some motions that have been languishing on her docket for months.

Among them is a request from Trump to dismiss most of the charges because Trump’s team says he has presidential immunity for his decision to remove the classified records he held on to in Florida from the White House in the final hours of his presidency.

Cannon has not had a hearing on the matter, but she is likely to take into consideration the Supreme Court’s new ruling, which says the president’s core constitutional powers are immune from prosecution and that courts may need to look more closely at other actions a president takes to see if those may be immune as well.

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In the historic opinion released Monday, Thomas wrote about the legality of the special counsel’s office, saying he believed Smith may not be a legitimately appointed prosecutor under the Constitution. That topic hadn’t even been raised by Trump’s team in the DC case, but Trump’s legal team and Smith’s prosecutors argued about the issue at length during a hearing before Cannon last week, with Trump’s team in line with Thomas’ position.

Cannon, a Trump appointee, showed some interest in Trump’s arguments at the hearing but hasn’t yet issued a ruling on that either.

CNN’s Holmes Lybrand contributed to this report.

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Keir Starmer enters Downing Street as UK prime minister after historic victory

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Keir Starmer enters Downing Street as UK prime minister after historic victory

Sir Keir Starmer has entered Downing Street as Britain’s new prime minister after winning a historic Labour majority of more than 170 seats, declaring: “Our country has voted decisively for change.”

Starmer travelled to Buckingham Palace at midday on Friday and was invited by King Charles to form a government, putting him at the head of the first Labour administration since 2010.

Addressing flag-waving supporters outside Number 10, Starmer said he wanted to rebuild trust between the public and politicians. “This wound, this lack of trust, can only be healed by actions not words,” he said.

“My government will fight every day until you believe again,” the new prime minister added, promising to run a government that would “tread more lightly on your lives”.

But he cautioned: “This will take a while, but have no doubt that the work of change begins immediately.”

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Labour’s massive victory at Westminster saw the centre-left party win 411 seats so far, largely at the expense of Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives, who collapsed to the worst defeat in the party’s history.

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK swallowed up Tory votes, leaving the Conservatives with just 121 seats. Labour was able to win its majority with only 34 per cent of the vote, the lowest-ever winning share.

On Friday afternoon, Starmer named Angela Rayner as deputy prime minister and secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities.

Rachel Reeves was appointed chancellor of the exchequer, becoming the first woman in 800 years to hold the ancient post. David Lammy was made foreign secretary and Yvette Cooper home secretary.

Speaking from Downing Street earlier on Friday, Sunak announced his resignation as prime minister, adding that he would quit as Tory leader once procedures for choosing his successor were in place.

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Sunak said: “To the country, I would like to say first and foremost, I am sorry. I have given this job my all, but you have sent a clear signal that the government of the United Kingdom must change.”

“I have heard your anger and disappointment and I take responsibility for this loss.” In his short resignation speech, he described Starmer as a “decent, public-spirited man who I respect”.

Keir Starmer travelled to Buckingham Palace and was invited by King Charles to form a government © Yui Mok/PA Wire

It was a historic Labour victory — the party last won an election in 2005 under Sir Tony Blair — but Starmer will become Britain’s new prime minister knowing that Labour’s public support is shallow.

The party was set to win power with about 34 per cent of the national vote, only 10 points higher than the Conservatives on 24 per cent. Before the election, polls put Labour 20 points ahead. Former leftwing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn won 40 per cent of the vote in his 2017 election defeat.

But Labour’s performance is a triumph for Starmer, a former chief prosecutor who became his party’s leader in 2020 after its worst postwar election defeat. His victory is similar in scale to Blair’s 1997 Labour landslide.

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Starmer’s avowedly pro-business agenda appears to have paid off, with housebuilding companies leading a UK stock market rally on Friday. Labour has pledged to build 1.5mn homes over the next five years.

On Friday afternoon, Barratt Developments, Taylor Wimpey, Persimmon and Vistry were all up more than 2 per cent. The FTSE 250 index of domestically focused mid-cap stocks rose 0.6 per cent.

Labour won scores of seats because of the rise of Reform UK, which split the rightwing vote, punishing the Conservatives under the UK’s first past the post electoral system.

One of the victims was former prime minister Liz Truss, among many big Tory names to lose their seats. Her 49-day premiership, and the economic havoc it spawned, contributed to the Conservative meltdown.

“This looks more like an election the Conservatives have lost than one Labour have won,” pollster Sir John Curtice told the BBC.

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On Friday afternoon, Farage was heckled as he spoke following his election as an MP in Clacton at his eighth attempt. “Boring, boring, boring,” said the Reform leader as protesters accused him of bigotry.

The arch-Brexiter promised a fresh start for his populist party after it expelled several candidates facing racism allegations.

“We are going to professionalise the party,” he said. “We are going to democratise the party. And those few bad apples who have crept in will be gone.”

Turnout in the election was on course to be about 60 per cent, close to a record low, suggesting general public dissatisfaction with mainstream politics.

Starmer admitted that he faced an immediate task of reconnecting mainstream politics to voters. “The fight for trust is the battle that defines our age,” he said.

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With almost all results in, Labour had secured 34 per cent of the vote, the Conservatives 24 per cent, Reform 14 per cent and the Liberal Democrats 12 per cent. Labour had won 411 seats, the Conservatives 121, the Lib Dems 71 and Reform four.

The centrist Lib Dems’ tally smashed the party’s modern-era 62-seat record in 2005, as it made big gains in the Tory “blue wall” of well-heeled seats in the south of England.

The Scottish National party was behind Labour in Scotland with an expected 10 seats, delivering a hammer blow to the party’s dream of securing independence.

Among the high-profile Conservative casualties on a night of Tory desolation were Grant Shapps, defence secretary; Penny Mordaunt, leader of the Commons; Gillian Keegan, education secretary; Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, former cabinet minister; and Alex Chalk, justice secretary.

Corbyn held his Islington North seat, standing as an independent, while George Galloway, the leftwing pro-Palestinian MP for Rochdale, lost his seat to Labour.

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But Labour lost four seats — including one held by shadow cabinet member Jonathan Ashworth — to pro-Palestinian independent candidates, an indication of how Starmer’s position on the Israel-Hamas war has hurt his party among many Muslim voters.

The Green party also won all its four target seats in the general election, quadrupling the number of MPs it will send to Westminster and bringing its total in line with Reform UK.

Labour’s victory bucked international political trends, with far-right parties performing strongly in recent European and French elections, and Donald Trump leading in polls for the US presidential race.

Starmer has become only the seventh Labour prime minister in the party’s history. He will immediately form his cabinet after moving into 10 Downing Street on Friday, with an instruction to ministers to quickly deliver policies to jolt Britain out of its low-growth torpor.

Chancellor-in-waiting Reeves has said she hopes investors will now see the UK as a “safe haven”.

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The Conservatives’ total of 121 seats is lower than the party’s worst-ever result of 156 in 1906. Starmer’s expected seat haul is close to the 418 seats won by Blair in his 1997 landslide victory.

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Justice Department opens a criminal probe of the Chinese Olympic doping scandal

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Justice Department opens a criminal probe of the Chinese Olympic doping scandal

The Chinese and the Olympic flag wave during the opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. The World Anti-Doping Agency cleared 23 Chinese swimmers of doping allegations despite positive tests for banned substances, allowing them to compete in the 2021 Tokyo Games.

Petr David Josek/AP


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Petr David Josek/AP

The U.S. Justice Department has opened a criminal probe into a sports doping scandal involving nearly two dozen elite Chinese swimmers.

The Justice Department rarely comments on ongoing investigations, but two international sports organizations have confirmed to NPR that a criminal probe is underway.

In May, a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers called for an investigation. “It is imperative to assess whether these alleged doping practices were state-sponsored,” they said in a statement.

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Justice Department officials didn’t respond to NPR’s request for comment, but one focus of the probe appears to be on the World Anti-Doping Agency, known as WADA. The agency reviewed repeated positive tests for two banned substances by some elite Chinese swimmers over a period of years. But it kept results of the tests secret, and the athletes were allowed to compete in 2021 at the Tokyo Summer Games.

Chinese swimmers will compete in Paris

Eleven of those Chinese athletes have now qualified for China’s national team and are expected once again to swim head-to-head against U.S. athletes at the Paris Olympics.

World Aquatics, which governs international swimming competitions, said in a statement to NPR that its executive director, Brent Nowicki, has been subpoenaed “by the United States government” to testify in the case. “He is working to schedule a meeting with the government, which, in all likelihood will obviate the need for testimony before a grand jury,” said the World Aquatics statement.

WADA also issued a statement saying it handled the Chinese drug tests properly and was “disappointed” by the probe.

The organization, headquartered in Montreal, Canada, accused U.S. officials of exceeding their authority in the case. “The United States purports to exercise extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction over participants in the global anti-doping system,” said WADA’s statement.

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News of the positive test results first became public in April of this year.

The revelations sparked international condemnation of WADA, Chinese authorities and their decision to keep the doping cases under wraps.

‘People are just getting away with everything’

WADA, meanwhile, says it chose to accept the Chinese government’s explanation that repeated positive tests for performance enhancing drugs by top swimmers were the result of accidental contamination.

U.S. drug testing experts and many American athletes have rejected those explanations.

Testifying last month before a U.S. House committee, Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps called for major reforms to the international system designed to catch athletes who use drugs to cheat. “Right now people are just getting away with everything,” Phelps said. “How is that possible? It makes no sense.”

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Travis Tygart, head of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, which monitors and penalizes American athletes if they cheat, testified that WADA has failed for years to properly punish Chinese and also Russian sports teams that regularly use performance-enhancing drugs.

“Russia and China have been too big to fail in [WADA’s] eyes and they get a different set of rules than the rest of the world does unfortunately,” Tygart said.

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