Southwest
Abbott says Texas won't accept Biden's 'ham-fisted' Title IX changes
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has announced his state will not be implementing changes to Title IX protections propagated by President Biden’s administration.
Abbott, in a letter sent to the White House on Monday, rebuked the Biden administration’s expansion of Title IX protections to protect “gender identity.”
“Title IX was written by Congress to support the advancement of women academically and athletically,” the letter states. “The law was based on the fundamental premise that there are only two sexes — male and female. You have rewritten Title IX to force schools to treat boys as if they were girls and to accept every student’s self-declared gender identity.”
FLORIDA, OKLAHOMA INSTRUCT SCHOOLS TO IGNORE BIDEN’S TITLE IX CHANGES, PENDING LEGAL CHALLENGES
The letter continued, “This ham-handed effort to impose a leftist belief onto Title IX exceeds your authority as President. I am instructing the Texas Education Agency to ignore your illegal dictate.”
The Biden administration unveiled the new rules earlier this month to address concerns expressed by LGBTQ+ groups regarding gender identity protections.
“No one should face bullying or discrimination just because of who they are, who they love,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said. “Sadly, this happens all too often.”
GEORGIA AG FILES SUIT AGAINST BIDEN ADMINISTRATION FOR TITLE IX REVISION: ‘DESTROYING WOMEN’S SPORTS’
The unveiled rule changes also rolled back regulations put in place by former Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos that ensured due process for those accused of misconduct.
Abbott’s letter declining to comply with the updated federal protections focused solely on the expansion to cover “gender identity,” which he claimed was an illegitimate overreach and would be challenged in court.
“Your rewrite of Title IX not only exceeds your constitutional authority, but it also tramples laws that I signed to protect the integrity of women’s sports by prohibiting men from competing against female athletes,” Abbott wrote. “Texas will fight to protect those laws and to deny your abuse of authority.”
Texas is not alone in opposition to the Title IX updates — state officials from Florida, Oklahoma, Georgia, and elsewhere have expressed intentions to legally challenge the federal government on implementing the protections.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr has already filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration, accusing the White House of “gutting commonsense provisions that protect female athletes.”
State attorney generals from Alabama, South Carolina, and Florida have joined Georgia in the suit.
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Southwest
Arpaio verdict reportedly costing taxpayers some $314 million
Seven years after Joe Arpaio was ousted as sheriff of Arizona’s most populous county, taxpayers are still footing the bills from a racial profiling verdict over his signature immigration crackdowns – and those costs have been getting heavier since.
The tab for the legal and compliance costs in overhauling the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office is expected to reach $314 million by mid-summer 2025, including $41 million approved Monday by county officials — the most expensive for Maricopa County taxpayers since the lawsuit was filed in 2007.
Nearly 11 years ago, a federal judge concluded sheriff’s deputies had racially profiled Hispanics in Arpaio’s traffic patrols that targeted immigrants. Consequently, the judge ordered costly overhauls of the agency’s traffic patrol operations and, later, its internal affairs unit.
ARIZONA AG CONFIRMS RUDY GIULIANI SERVED IN ELECTIONS CASE AMID FORMER TRUMP ASSOCIATE’S 80TH BIRTHDAY PARTY
The taxpayer spending is expected to continue until the sheriff’s office attains full compliance with the court-ordered changes for three straight years. Though progress has been made on some fronts, the agency hasn’t yet been deemed fully compliant.
The money being spent on turning around the sheriff’s office looms large in law enforcement and political circles in Arizona.
Earlier this year, the heavy compliance costs were cited by critics who said the city of Phoenix should resist entering a consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department, which is investigating the city’s police department. In recent weeks, the financial toll was brought up by immigrant rights advocates as they criticized a proposed ballot measure before the Arizona Legislature that would draw local police into immigration enforcement.
Raul Piña, a longtime member of a community advisory board created to help improve trust in the sheriff’s office, has criticized the efforts by Arpaio and his immediate successor, Sheriff Paul Penzone, to comply with the court-ordered changes.
But Piña said the agency might finally be turning the corner under the leadership of Penzone’s replacement, Sheriff Russ Skinner. While pointing out his comments shouldn’t be considered an endorsement of Skinner, Piña said he was impressed when seeing the current sheriff squarely acknowledge the agency’s failures at a community meeting.
“For the first time that I’ve been involved, the sheriff finally said, ‘We own this, we have to fix this,’” said Piña.
Skinner’s office didn’t respond Monday to a request for comment.
The overwhelming majority of the spending goes toward hiring employees to help meet the court’s requirements and a separate staff working on the court’s behalf to monitor the sheriff office’s compliance with both overhauls.
Arpaio led 20 of the large-scale patrols targeting immigrants from January 2008 through October 2011. Under Arpaio’s leadership, the agency continued immigration enforcement in smaller, more routine traffic patrols until spring 2013.
That led to Arpaio’s conviction for criminal contempt of court for disobeying a judge’s 2011 order to stop the patrols. He was spared a possible jail sentence when his misdemeanor conviction was pardoned by then-President Donald Trump in 2017.
Arpaio, who turns 92 next month and is running for mayor of the affluent suburb where he has long resided, said he has no regrets about launching immigration crackdowns.
He blamed the judge’s ruling for the ongoing taxpayer costs and said Arizona’s 2005 immigrant smuggling ban gave him authority to conduct the patrols. “I did what I was supposed to do,” Arpaio said.
Around the time that the anti-smuggling law was passed, advocates for tougher immigration enforcement said cracking down on the problem would help reduce the financial losses that Arizona suffers from its porous border with Mexico.
In an interview Wednesday, Arpaio dodged a question about whether compliance costs from the profiling case would exceed any savings that the public might have gained from such enforcement efforts. Instead, he focused on the influx of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years.
“And you’re complaining about me – that I cost taxpayers money?” Arpaio said. “Start adding up what’s going on today.”
Traffic-stop studies conducted since the profiling verdict show deputies often treat drivers who are Hispanic and Black differently than other drivers, though the reports stop short of saying Latinos were still being profiled.
While the profiling case focused on the agency’s traffic patrols, the judge presiding over the lawsuit later ordered changes to the sheriff’s internal affairs operation, which critics alleged was biased in its decision-making under Arpaio and shielded sheriff’s officials from accountability.
Penzone, who served as sheriff from 2017 until his resignation effective in January, was found in civil contempt of court in November 2022 for taking too long to close internal affairs investigations. The internal affairs unit has faced criticism for having a crushing backlog of open cases. Over the last year, the backlog has been reduced from about 1,900 to 1,600 cases.
The agency’s compliance percentages are near or at 100% on two of the three court orders issued in the case. But its scores on the third court order, issued in November 2022, are more modest.
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Los Angeles, Ca
Widow of man shot dead in unprovoked attack on L.A. Metro bus speaks out
The wife of a man tragically gunned down on a Metro bus in Commerce last week is speaking out and sharing her pain over what investigators are calling a random and unprovoked murder.
The fatal May 16 shooting happened just before 5 p.m. aboard a Metro bus at Slauson and Boxford avenues.
Authorities say the suspect, 30-year-old Winston Apolinario Rivera, got on the bus in the 6200 block of Slauson and sat behind his victim, 32-year-old Juan Luis Gomez-Ramirez.
“As the bus came to a stop, the defendant allegedly walked to the rear exit, stopped behind Gomez-Ramirez, pointed a gun at his head and shot, instantly killing him,” prosecutors with the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office said in a news release.
Sarahi Lopez, the victim’s widow, told KTLA’s Chris Wolfe that she still feels compelled to visit the crime scene, parts of which are still stained with blood from the senseless shooting.
“With every day that passes, I feel more and more confused, like I don’t have any answers,” Lopez said in Spanish, as her attorney, Mario Acosta Jr., translated.
Lopez said she’s been agonizing over how the deadly incident happened, say her husband and father to their 1-year-old boy, was not the type to cause any conflict with anyone.
The couple worked as special education teachers in Mexico and had arrived in Los Angeles in February for a vacation. Wanting to stay longer, but needing cash, her husband landed a job packing clothes at a Commerce warehouse not far from where the shooting occurred.
Rivera was captured in the 6100 block of Peachtree Street, where he was hiding under a train, officials said. The 30-year-old has since been charged by the DA’s office with murder and a special allegation that he used a firearm while committing a crime.
“I need the killer to tell me why he did what he did,” Lopez said through her attorney. “I want him to be punished because he ended our family.”
Gomez-Ramirez’s killing came just hours after board members of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority held a press conference to talk about their response to a spree of high-profile violent incidents on and near buses and trains.
On May 13 alone, there were two separate stabbings aboard the Metro system. In the weeks leading up to those incidents, there was a stabbing on a train that left a grandmother dead in Studio City and another that left a bus driver and passenger in South Los Angeles injured.
On May 5, a driver on a Dash bus, which is operated by the city of L.A., was brutally assaulted by a homeless woman in an attack that was captured on video.
In March, a transient armed with an airsoft gun hijacked a Metro bus and crashed into the Ritz-Carlton in downtown Los Angeles.
The family’s attorney is now working to help Lopez with immigration issues, so she can stay in the United States and participate in the trial of her husband’s accused killer. The widow is considering a lawsuit against Metro and potentially other entities.
In the meantime, a GoFundMe has been organized to help her and her young son get by during this terrible ordeal.
Los Angeles, Ca
City yet to pay for cars destroyed in massive Los Angeles garbage truck fire
The owners of three cars burnt to scrap in the Los Angeles’ neighborhood of Harvard Heights during a massive city trash truck fire want to know why the cars have not been removed and when officials plan to reimburse them for their loss.
The May 13 fire occurred at around 2:15 p.m. in the 1700 block of Westmoreland Boulevard when flames erupted inside the trash truck and spread to nearby cars parked at the curb.
Firefighters quickly doused the flames with water and foam, but at least six parked vehicles caught fire, several of which appeared to be total losses.
“My Volkswagen Sport Wagon and my Smart Car are both total losses,” Kelton Green told KTLA.
With nothing to salvage and no vehicle to get around in, Green and others were hoping the city would act quickly to reimburse them for the extensive damage, but so far, the burnt-out vehicles remain on the residential street and at least one of the owners, who filed a claim with the city, said he has yet to hear from officials.
“I’ve been waiting for the city to contact us,” Alex De Leon, whose Lexus was destroyed in the fire, said. “I filed a claim, and we went to the city office, but we still haven’t heard anything back.”
First responders said they did not know what exactly sparked the fire, but that it may have started from an electrical fire inside the truck that ignited the truck.
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