Latest news with #advocacygroups
Bloomberg
5 days ago
- Health
- Bloomberg
Trump Moves Away From ‘Housing First' in New Order on Homelessness
US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday calling on cities and states to take action to remove homeless people from the streets and put them into treatment. Trump says the order's intent is to end homelessness, but the policy document prompted outcry from advocacy groups and providers who said that the White House is instead working to criminalize mental health disorders and chronic homelessness. The order signals the end of the federal government's support for 'housing first,' the principle that the best way to treat chronic homelessness is to provide people with shelter first, before requiring them to seek treatment for addiction or mental health disorders.
Fox News
17-07-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Democratic lawmaker calls out party for being 'scared' to offend immigration groups
Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., called out the Democratic Party in an interview on Thursday for being "scared" to offend immigration groups as they navigate the issue. "The Republicans are fomenting anti-immigrant hate as a policy and a strategy, and Democrats are so scared of offending either immigration groups or people to the left of them — maybe they're in a primary, they are concerned about saying: 'No, not everyone gets to be here. Not everyone has the right to live in the United States, and we, like every other country in the world, get to know who and what is coming across our borders,'" Slotkin told The New York Times in an interview. Slotkin argued that most Americans agree that immigrants are integral to the American economy, but they want immigrants to come here legally and through "vetted channels." "That kind of clamping down with rules tends to make a lot of my Democratic colleagues really nervous," she added. "There's been a lot of ink spilled about advocacy groups that don't seem to represent a lot of voters. We saw that in real time in this last election, when no one had a bigger swing toward Trump than Latinos. Some of these groups were trotting around Washington saying they represent the immigrant community, and they clearly did not," Slotkin said. Slotkin also said she thought Democrats had lost their "alpha-energy." The Michigan senator said "alpha-energy" was about emotion. "We respond to people's pain with a long list of wonky policies," Slotkin continued. "Alpha energy is synonymous with being bold. Call the tough play, take a risk, be bold. And don't be so damn scared of your own shadow." Slotkin delivered the official response to President Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress in March. She criticized Trump's foreign policy and called for "responsible" ways to make changes to the government. "We all want an end to the war in Ukraine, but Reagan understood that true strength required America to combine our military and economic might with moral clarity," Slotkin said after Trump's address. "As a Cold War kid, I'm thankful it was Reagan and not Trump in office in the 1980s. Trump would have lost us the Cold War."
CBC
27-06-2025
- Health
- CBC
Alberta judge grants injunction blocking a transgender health-care bill
An Alberta judge has put on hold a provincial law that bans doctors from providing gender-affirming care to youth. Justice Allison Kuntz, in a written judgment, has issued a temporary injunction against the law, saying it raises serious issues that need to be hashed out in court. Kuntz says a temporary stop to the law is needed to prevent what she calls "irreparable harm" coming to young patients while the issue is debated. The law, passed late last year but not fully in effect, would have prevented doctors from providing treatment such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy to those under 16. Kuntz says denying access to this care could force youth to experience permanent physical changes that don't match their gender identity. 2SLGBTQ+ advocacy groups took the case to court, while Premier Danielle Smith has said she believes the legislation is needed to protect young people from making permanent, life-altering decisions.
The Independent
27-06-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Supreme Court rules in Trump birthright citizenship case
The Supreme Court's conservative majority has stripped federal courts' authority to issue nationwide injunctions that have blocked key parts of Donald Trump's agenda. The court's anticipated ruling in a case attached to a question of whether the president can unilaterally redefine who gets to be a citizen states that nationwide injunctions 'exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to the federal courts.' A series of federal court rulings across the country struck down the president's attempt to block citizenship from newborn Americans who are born to certain immigrant parents. But the government argues those decisions should only impact the individual states — and the unborn children of pregnant mothers in them — who sued him and won. Opponents have warned that such a decision would open a backdoor to begin stripping constitutional rights. Allowing the president to unilaterally redefine who gets to be a U.S. citizen in states subject to Trump's unilateral rewriting of the 14th Amendment would create a patchwork system of constitutional rights and citizenship benefits — including voting rights. More than 150,000 newborns would be denied citizenship every year under Trump's order, according to the plaintiffs. In January, more than 20 states, immigrants' advocacy groups and pregnant plaintiffs sued the administration to block the president's executive order that attempts to redefine the Constitution to determine who is eligible for citizenship. Three federal judges and appellate court panels have argued his order is unconstitutional and blocked the measure from taking effect nationwide while legal challenges continue. During oral arguments, the Supreme Court's liberal justices appeared shocked at the president's 'unlawful' measure. But the administration used the case not necessarily to argue over whether he can change the 14th Amendment but to target what has become a major obstacle to advancing Trump's agenda: federal judges blocking aggressive executive actions. The government asked the court to limit the authority of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions, which have imperiled a bulk of the president's agenda, which has thus far been dictated largely through an avalanche of executive orders, not legislation. The government pushed the Supreme Court to reduce the federal judiciary's power to issue nationwide injunctions, cutting off one of the few critical checks and balances against an administration that critics warn is mounting an ongoing assault against the rule of law. More than half of the injunctions issued over the last 70 years were against the Trump administration, according to the Harvard Law Review, as Trump pushed the limits of his authority. In Trump's first term in office, his administration faced 64 injunctions, compared to 14 injunctions against Joe Biden and 12 against Barack Obama The second administration faced 17 within its first two months. In arguments to the Supreme Court, Trump's personal attorney John Sauer, who was appointed by the president to serve as U.S. solicitor general, called the 'cascade of universal injunctions' against the administration a 'bipartisan problem' that exceeds judicial authority. 'The vision of the district courts that's reflected in the issuance of these nationwide injunctions is a vision of them as a roving commission to correct every legal wrong that they can consider and to exercise general legal oversight over the executive branch,' he said. Trump's allies, however, have relied on nationwide injunctions to do the very same thing they commanded the Supreme Court to strike down. Critics have accused right-wing legal groups of 'judge shopping' for ideologically like-minded venues where they can sue to strike down — through nationwide injunctions — policies with which they disagree. After the government's arguments fell flat in front of a mostly skeptical Supreme Court last month, Trump accused his political opponents of 'playing the ref' through the courts to overturn his threat to the 14th Amendment. 'The Radical Left SleazeBags, which has no cards remaining in its illegal bag of tricks, is, in a very coordinated manner, PLAYING THE REF with regard to the United States Supreme Court,' Trump wrote. 'They lost the Election in a landslide, and with it, have totally lost their confidence and reason. They are stone cold CRAZY! I hope the Supreme Court doesn't fall for the games they play,' he added. In a separate post, written in all-caps, he claimed the nation's high court is 'BEING PLAYED BY THE RADICAL LEFT LOSERS' whose 'ONLY HOPE IS THE INTIMIDATION OF THE COURT, ITSELF.' The 14th Amendment plainly states that 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.' But under the terms of Trump's order, children can be denied citizenship if a mother is undocumented or is temporarily legally in the country on a visa, and if the father isn't a citizen or a lawful permanent resident. The president's attempt to define a key component of the 14th Amendment is central to his administration's sweeping anti-immigration agenda. His administration has effectively ended entry for asylum seekers, declaring the United States under 'invasion' from foreign gangs to summarily remove alleged members, and stripped legal protections for more than 1 million people — radically expanding the pool of 'undocumented' people now vulnerable for arrest and removal. The administration has also effectively 'de-legalized' tens of thousands of immigrants, and thousands of people with pending immigration cases are being ordered to court each week only to have those cases dismissed, with federal agents waiting to arrest them on the other side of the courtroom doors. The White House has also rolled back protections barring immigration arrests at sensitive locations like churches and bumped up the pace of immigration raids in the interior of the country. To carry out the arrests, the administration has tapped resources from other state and local agencies while moving officers from federal agencies like the FBI and DEA to focus on immigration.
CNN
26-06-2025
- Business
- CNN
State regulator: Proposed 10-year moratorium on AI law enforcement is ‘extremely disconcerting'
A measure tucked in President Donald Trump's sweeping domestic policy bill making its way through Congress would effectively block states from enforcing artificial intelligence-related regulations for the next decade, a rule that's alarming some followers of the tech world. The proposed moratorium comes as AI extends into more areas of Americans' lives — from health care and law enforcement to personal relationships and hiring. And despite Silicon Valley's promises of super intelligence that solves the world's problems, AI also poses major risks, such as putting humans out of work and spreading lies. There's no overarching federal law regulating AI, although Trump recently signed the Take It Down Act, which criminalizes sharing non-consensual explicit images, including those made by AI. But various states have passed AI laws, including around the use of deepfakes in elections and AI discrimination in hiring. Those state laws would likely become unenforceable if Senate Republicans' version of the 'big, beautiful bill' makes it to President Donald Trump's desk. Earlier this month, Senate Commerce Committee Republicans tied compliance with the moratorium to crucial federal funds for deploying internet infrastructure. The tech world has been divided on a state regulation pause: Some want to avoid a patchwork of state regulations, while others have opposed the proposed moratorium. The provision has also drawn backlash from academics, tech workers, advocacy groups and even some lawmakers. Among the opposition is a bipartisan group of 40 attorneys general who wrote to Congress last month urging lawmakers not to pass the moratorium, including North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson. 'Years from now, it could end up being the big story out of this reconciliation bill,' Jackson, who also represented North Carolina in Congress from 2023 to 2024, said in an interview with CNN earlier this week. Jackson detailed his concerns about the moratorium and why he's skeptical Congress will pass broad AI regulations. This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Duffy: What was your initial reaction to learning that this AI moratorium was part of the bill? Attorney General Jeff Jackson: I got a call from another attorney general, right when the reconciliation bill had just dropped. And they said, 'You've got to take a look at this provision.' And so I pulled it up and shared their concern, basically, that this is an incredibly broad new rule that would have cascading unintended consequences. Duffy: What are you and other attorneys general concerned will happen if this passes? Jackson: The first order consequence is it will effectively seek to repeal a number of consumer and voter protections that have been put in place by a handful of states to guard people against being intentionally fooled by the abusive use of AI by bad actors. The second order consequence is potentially far greater, because it's all the ways that AI will end up being weaponized by bad actors over the next decade that we can't possibly predict today. And the prospect of not being able to defend people against those bad actors is extremely disconcerting. If you look at the current AI laws on the books, they're pretty narrowly targeted to voter protection and consumer protection. It's stuff like, people can't digitally clone your face and voice without your consent. I think that's something that enjoys very broad support. I mean, (AI) is going to become misinformation on steroids, even if we have safeguards against it. I just can't imagine a world in which there is no legal recourse against deepfakes being created for the purpose of fooling tens of millions of voters. Duffy: Are there laws in North Carolina specifically that you're worried about losing the ability to enforce? Jackson: There are. They are more in the criminal realm. But my larger concern is how this is going to tie our hands going forward. My main concern here, really, is that I don't think Congress is going to put up any safeguards. My level of confidence in Congress following through on what they say they want to do in erecting some national safeguards is just very low, and I think that's well earned. They didn't put up any safeguards with respect to the internet or privacy or social media, not even with respect to protecting kids. And now they're saying, 'Hey, we know we failed at that, but trust us, we're going to get it right this time.' And I think we all know that AI is more complicated than any of those issues because of the multitude of ways that it can be used and will end up being integrated into our lives and our economy. If this were a simple choice between a patchwork approach with 50 states or a single, national set of safeguards, that would be a legitimate question, but I don't think that's the actual choice. The actual choice in the reality we currently inhabit is between allowing states to put up safeguards or doing nothing. And I simply cannot imagine doing nothing, and being locked into doing nothing for the next decade. Duffy: When it comes to AI, what makes you concerned that Congress won't act? I ask because we recently saw the Take It Down Act signed into law, where there was bipartisan agreement that this specific use of the technology was dangerous. Do you think that we need something broader, and that's what you think Congress isn't going to be able to act on here? Jackson: I've served in Congress, and I saw dozens of AI bills get filed that were narrowly targeted and I think would enjoy broad support, and none of them passed. We heard from (Republican) majority leadership in the House that, categorically, no AI bills were going to pass. It was a matter of stated policy by majority party leadership that they were going to block all of those bills, and they did so. Part of my extreme skepticism of Congress doing anything substantial here is based on the history, the clear record of failure when it comes to privacy, the internet and social media, and part of it is from recent history of having served in that body and being told they simply were not interested in doing anything significant. Duffy: Why is that? Jackson: All I know is that there's a mix of reasons. Some of those have to do with technological innovation, and some of them have to do with very powerful lobbyists. Duffy: On that note, we hear from the tech companies this argument that the US risks falling behind China in AI if there is too much regulation. What do you make of that argument? Jackson: I think it's perfectly reasonable to be concerned with over-regulation of a nascent technology that's going to be economically transformative. However, if we're weighing that against being locked in to doing literally nothing for the next decade, that's a major concern.
