New Saturday feature of collected news by Barb Miller of Indivisible Ventura
Civil Liberties
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- Two federal appeals courts, one in Washington and one in Virginia, last week rejected the administration’s request to put on hold orders by lower court judges requiring the military to begin accepting transgender recruits on Jan. 1. The U.S. military will start accepting transgender recruits on Monday unless President Donald Trump’s administration seeks a last-minute Supreme Court intervention to try to enforce his blocked transgender ban. Justice Department spokeswoman Lauren Ehrsam said on Friday there was no update on whether the administration would file an emergency application at the Supreme Court. The administration has appealed the previous three rulings.
- Two Reuters journalists who have been detained in Myanmar for the past two weeks were remanded in custody for a further two weeks on Wednesday as a probe continues into allegations they breached the nation’s Official Secrets Act. The two journalists had worked on Reuters coverage of a crisis in the western state of Rakhine, where – according to United Nations’ estimates – about 655,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled from a fierce military crackdown on militants. They were detained on Dec 12 after they had been invited to meet police officials over dinner. The Ministry of Information has said they “illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media” and faced charges under the British colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. The two journalists said they had not been mistreated in custody.
- Two federal appeals courts, one in Washington and one in Virginia, last week rejected the administration’s request to put on hold orders by lower court judges requiring the military to begin accepting transgender recruits on Jan. 1. The U.S. military will start accepting transgender recruits on Monday unless President Donald Trump’s administration seeks a last-minute Supreme Court intervention to try to enforce his blocked transgender ban. Justice Department spokeswoman Lauren Ehrsam said on Friday there was no update on whether the administration would file an emergency application at the Supreme Court. The administration has appealed the previous three rulings.
Taxes
- President Trump kicked off his holiday weekend at Mar-a-Lago Friday night at a dinner where he told friends, “You all just got a lot richer,” referencing the sweeping tax overhaul he signed into law hours earlier. “Merry Christmas”, indeed.
Continue reading “The Miller Saturday Collection (Dec. 22 – 29, 2017)”
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