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Texas lawmakers considering bill to ban gender changes on birth certificates

Texas lawmakers considering bill to ban gender changes on birth certificates

Lawmakers in the Texas legislature are considering a bill that would prohibit people in the state from changing the gender marker on their birth certificate to reflect their gender identity. The measure, Senate Bill 406, is now being debated in the Texas Senate. Last year, the Texas Department of Public Safety stopped changing gender on driver’s licenses unless courts intervened, according to FOX 4. The Senate bill would block changes to gender on birth certificates, regardless of whether there is a court order. TEXAS LAWMAKER PROPOSES BILL TO BAN GENDER TRANSITION TREATMENT FOR EVERYONE, INCLUDING ADULTS “This bill is not about restricting anyone’s personal expression. It is about ensuring legal documents reflect accurate statistics,” GOP state Sen. Mayes Middleton, who sponsored the bill, said Monday in a State Affairs Committee hearing. “Right now, the only way to change sex is by court order, and this bill prevents that.” Testifying before the committee, Megan Benton of the group Texas Values said this is “a matter of public safety and public record.” “If a man can legally change his birth certificate to say he is a woman, then it’s possible to get a driver’s license, passport, and social security card that also says he is female,” she said. Several transgender Texans also testified before the committee, saying they believe they are being unfairly targeted. “I’m not a monster. This is not a fetish for me, and I did not decide to be a woman,” Amanda McLaughlin said. Megan Fairbanks asked, “What harm have I caused society?” “I don’t play sports. The only thing I want to do in the bathroom is use the bathroom and touch up my makeup and wash my hands,” Fairbanks said. The Transgender Education Network of Texas’ policy coordinator, Landon Richie, argued that the bill would lead to isolation and incentivize others to discriminate or put targets on the backs of transgender people who he said are already vulnerable. DYLAN MULVANEY REACTS TO GAVIN NEWSOM’S REMARKS ON TRANS ATHLETES PARTICIPATING IN WOMEN’S SPORTS The bill is expected to pass through the Senate and be sent to the House. This comes after state lawmakers passed legislation banning biological men from competing in girls’ school sports. At the federal level, President Donald Trump signed an executive order recognizing male and female as the only genders.

Donald Trump, facing terrible coverage, softens tone and tactics for Elon Musk’s DOGE crusade

Donald Trump, facing terrible coverage, softens tone and tactics for Elon Musk’s DOGE crusade

Most people think of government workers as part of a faceless bureaucracy with cushy and clearly useless jobs. Now it’s true that the federal workforce is bloated and needs to be trimmed. But the politics of Elon Musk’s mass firings are shifting, prompting President Trump to soften his approach to the DOGE campaign. A major factor in this evolution is the negative media coverage, which Trump follows with great interest. It’s no accident that he said the other day the budget cutbacks should be done with a “scalpel” and not a “sledgehammer.” He’s acutely attuned to the growing backlash against the massive layoffs–which include 80,000 at Veterans Affairs.   Many of the stories, on television and in print, follow a formula: Lead off with one person who has been booted or negatively impacted by the Musk bros. That puts a face to the story, an actual saddened person whose life has been upended. Consider this New York Times piece:  “At the Veterans Affairs hospital in Pittsburgh, researchers spent months preparing for a clinical trial of a new drug to treat advanced cancers of the mouth, throat and voice box. LATEST TRUMP EXECUTIVE ORDER WILL SHIFT POWER OVER MANAGING NATURAL DISASTERS OUT OF DC “They were ready last month to start enrolling patients — veterans whose cancer had spread to other tissue and who had run out of treatment options. Then a problem arose. “The hospital was unable to renew the job of a key staff member involved in running the study, a typically routine process thwarted by a hiring freeze imposed under the government-cutting project led by President Trump and Elon Musk. Suddenly, the clinical trial was on hold. “‘They were ready to enroll,’ said Alanna Caffas, the chief executive of the Veterans Health Foundation, which administers the trials. ‘They had the lab kits on site. They had the drug to dispense. But they couldn’t get the clinical research coordinator renewed.’” Here’s a Washington Post report from Texas: “Jaylee Williams needed to find somewhere to deliver her son. The 19-year-old knew more about barrel racing on her horse Bet-n-pep than the complicated metrics of who takes what health insurance. But relief for Williams and her boyfriend, Xander Lopez, came when they realized Medina Regional Hospital — just 15 minutes from their home — accepted Medicaid, the federal-state program that covers medical costs for lower-income Americans. “Provider groups an hour away in San Antonio had refused to take the insurance, she recalled while cradling little Ryker. ‘You never know when something could happen,’ Williams said, with Lopez adding, ‘I have no idea where we would have gone’ without Medina Regional Hospital. But the lifeline that the 25-bed critical-access hospital offered to Williams and Lopez could disappear in Hondo and other communities like it.”  That’s because rural hospitals are fearing “massive Medicaid cuts,” since they’re so dependent on the federal-state program. Trump says he will not allow cuts to Medicaid, as well as Medicare and Social Security, but that would be the only way Republicans could save a promised $80 billion. Some 72 million people are on Medicaid. In the Atlantic, Jonathan Lemire says Trump’s shift on DOGE began on Feb. 19. “Jesse Watters, a co-host of the Fox News hit show ‘The Five’…told a surprisingly emotional story about a friend working at the Pentagon who was poised to lose his job as part of the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to the federal workforce. ‘I finally found one person I knew who got DOGE’d, and it hit me in the heart,’ said Watters, who urged his Fox colleagues to ‘be a little bit less callous.’… “Trump watched the clip and asked advisers if it was resonating with his base of supporters, according to one of three White House officials I spoke with for this story.”  Lemire adds that “over the ensuing weeks, the president grew unhappy with the television coverage of cuts affecting his voters, according to two of those officials, while the White House fielded calls from Cabinet members and Republican lawmakers frustrated by Elon Musk.” MUSK VOWS TO TRACE HACKERS BEHIND ‘MASSIVE CYBERATTACK’ CRIPPLING X SOCIAL MEDIA SITE Trump decreed that agency heads should make the layoffs and cutbacks, and Musk should step in only if they fail to take action. The move also may be aimed at the various lawsuits against Trump, since Musk is only supposed to be an adviser and not a government employee. Tensions have been rising behind the scenes (as well as publicly at town hall meetings, to the point that the GOP urged its members to stop holding the events). As the Times reports: “Marco Rubio was incensed. Here he was in the Cabinet Room of the White House, the Secretary of State, seated beside the president and listening to a litany of attacks from the richest man in the world. Seated diagonally opposite, across the elliptical mahogany table, Elon Musk was letting Mr. Rubio have it, accusing him of failing to slash his staff. You have fired ‘nobody,’ Mr. Musk told Mr. Rubio, then scornfully added that perhaps the only person he had fired was a staff member from Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. Mr. Rubio had been privately furious with Mr. Musk for weeks, ever since his team effectively shuttered an entire agency that was supposedly under Mr. Rubio’s control: the United States Agency for International Development. But, in the extraordinary cabinet meeting on Thursday in front of President Trump and around 20 others — details of which have not been reported before — Mr. Rubio got his grievances off his chest. Mr. Musk was not being truthful, Mr. Rubio said. What about the more than 1,500 State Department officials who took early retirement in buyouts? Didn’t they count as layoffs? He asked, sarcastically, whether Mr. Musk wanted him to rehire all those people just so he could make a show of firing them again. Then he laid out his detailed plans for reorganizing the State Department. “Mr. Musk was unimpressed.

Why China isn’t as worried about Trump’s trade war as in 2018

Why China isn’t as worried about Trump’s trade war as in 2018

Taipei, Taiwan – As United States President Donald Trump kicks off a new trade war with China, analysts say he will face a much stronger and more prepared adversary in Beijing compared with his first term in office. Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has already imposed a 20 percent tariff on Chinese imports, citing Beijing’s alleged failure to curb the export of the deadly opioid fentanyl to the US. The tariff comes on top of previous duties imposed by Trump and former US President Joe Biden on more than $400bn worth of Chinese goods. After condemning the latest US tariffs as “bullying” and “intimidation,” Beijing hit back last week by announcing tariffs of 10-15 percent on numerous US agricultural goods, including corn, beef, pork, dairy and soybeans. The tariffs, which went into effect on Monday, followed Beijing’s announcement last month of a 10 percent tariff on crude oil, agricultural machinery, pick-up trucks, and some cars, and a 15 percent tariff on coal and liquefied natural gas. Advertisement “If war is what the US wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight till the end,” Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lin Jiang told reporters last week. While the tit-for-tat measures recall Trump’s first trade war in 2018, both Washington and Beijing are facing very different conditions today than seven years ago. The world’s two biggest economies have steadily decoupled in recent years, reducing their mutual dependency and blunting the impact of tariffs, according to analysts. Christopher Beddor, a deputy China research director at the Beijing-based Gavekal Dragonomics, said the latest tariffs should be “pretty manageable” for China, and noted that they are significantly below the 60 percent rate threatened by Trump during his election campaign. “I don’t want to understate the impact – that’s almost a tripling of the effective tariff rates for Chinese goods that are coming into the United States, so it’s big,” Beddor told Al Jazeera. “But Chinese exports into the United States are a pretty modest share of its overall economy,” Beddor said. Declining trade share China’s share of total US trade – measured as the sum of exports and imports – dropped from 15.7 percent to 10.9 percent between 2018 and 2024, according to Bloomberg. Over the same period, the US’s share of China’s total trade fell from 13.7 percent to 11.2 percent. Lynn Song, chief Economist for Greater China at ING, said Beijing is not likely to be panicking over the tariffs – at least for now. Advertisement “While avoiding this sort of trade friction would’ve been preferable, it’s something that’s been planned for, so I wouldn’t say there’s a feeling of panic,” Song told Al Jazeera. “With that said, with every tariff escalation, there inevitably will be parts of trade which become unviable and companies that will be impacted.” Another factor mitigating the impact of tariffs, Lynn said, is that Chinese exporters such as Shein and Temu have found success selling low-cost goods directly to customers by taking advantage of a tariff exemption on shipments worth less than $800. Beijing has continually rolled out measures to insulate the economy from any trade shocks. At the “Two Sessions” meetings last week in Beijing, the National People’s Congress – the highest body of state power in China – announced several fiscal stimulus measures, including raising the debt level for local governments and issuing 1.3 trillion yuan ($179bn) in long-term treasury bonds. Carsten Holz, an expert on the Chinese economy at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said Beijing’s domestic policy moves have given it a significant buffer against US demands. “Even the effect of a complete Trump ban on imports from China – hardly realistic in an age when, for example, the bulk of iPhones are produced in China – may not make a dent larger than a fraction of a percentage point in China’s GDP,” Holz told Al Jazeera. “For an authoritarian leadership determined to project strength, this is unlikely to be enough to join what may look to the Chinese public like ‘peace talks’ with a foreign aggressor.” Advertisement Some analysts believe that despite its stronger position compared with 2018, Beijing still wishes to negotiate with Trump – at least for the moment. ‘Avoiding escalation’ One of the strongest signals that Chinese officials are open to talking is that their opening round of tariffs was relatively mild and restricted to a limited number of goods, suggesting a strategy of “avoiding escalation,” said Even Rogers Pay, a food and agricultural analyst at the Beijing-based research group Trivium China. “The retaliation demonstrates that while China’s government doesn’t intend to take trade pressure lying down, they are also not going to be baited into an escalatory trade conflict where early overreaction could make striking a deal more difficult,” Pay told Al Jazeera. “Instead, by applying moderate tariffs to a short list of key industries, Beijing is ramping up political pressure in the red states that are major exporters of corn, soybeans, sorghum and other farm products that they hope will bring Trump to the table.” Beijing may be angling for a “phase two” deal along the lines of the “phase one” deal struck with Trump in 2020 to bring an end to the first trade war, Pay said. Under the phase one deal, China pledged to buy $200bn in US goods and services, including agricultural products, over two years. Beijing, however, only fulfilled about 58 percent of this amount after trade was derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Peterson Institute for Economic Research. John Gong, a professor of economics at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, agreed that China can withstand the pressure but is also ready to negotiate. Advertisement “The government in China is, of course, worried, but won’t back down in a humiliating way. They would love to negotiate a deal, but if it can’t, they would have a ‘so-be it attitude’,” Gong told

A ‘dangerous’ moment: Advocates denounce arrest of activist Mahmoud Khalil

A ‘dangerous’ moment: Advocates denounce arrest of activist Mahmoud Khalil

Free speech groups point out that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) accused Khalil of leading “activities aligned with Hamas, a designated terrorist organization”. But analysts note that the department’s allegation falls short of more tangible claims. US law, for instance, prohibits anyone in the country’s jurisdiction from providing “material support” to terrorist organisations. The rationale provided for Khalil’s arrest, experts argue, was overly broad and could be wielded against any voices critical of Israel and US foreign policy. “It’s a loophole so big that you could drive a truck through it,” Will Creeley, the legal director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a free speech group, told Al Jazeera. “I think what’s perhaps most dangerous about this moment is that, given the rhetoric coming out of the administration today, folks across the country are going to think twice before they criticise the government, whether it’s the US government or Israeli government, and that chill is a real problem,” he added. The effort to connect criticism of Israel with support for terrorism also appears to mirror Project 2025, a controversial series of policy proposals for Trump’s second term compiled by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank. The document drew alarm for its expansive interpretations of executive power, as well as its views on issues like the pro-Palestinian protest movement. One Project 2025 proposal states that pro-Palestine protests are part of a “highly organized, global Hamas Support Network (HSN) and therefore effectively a terrorist support network”. Greer has told media outlets that, when she spoke with ICE agents over the phone, they appeared to have incorrect information about Khalil’s immigration status, informing her they were going to revoke his student visa. Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia until December, was previously in the US on a student visa but has since obtained a green card, making him a lawful permanent resident of the country. Greer said that, when she informed ICE agents that he was a permanent resident, they said his green card would be revoked instead. Student negotiator Mahmoud Khalil speaks to media on the Columbia University campus on April 29, 2024 [Ted Shaffrey/AP Photo] Nithya Nathan-Pineau, a policy lawyer with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, told Al Jazeera that green card status can be revoked under some circumstances, such as the discovery of fraudulent information in an immigration application or certain criminal activity. “I haven’t seen any information about criminal convictions or arrests,” she said. “It sounds like the ICE agents just unilaterally decided that whatever immigration status he had, it didn’t matter.” Greer said that she and Khalil’s wife were told he was being held in an immigration detention facility in New Jersey, but when they arrived, he was not there. Khalil has reportedly been moved to a detention centre in Louisiana. “This is a tactic that ICE loves to use, transferring someone to a facility that is further away from their legal assistance, community and loved ones,” said Nathan-Pineau. “It increases the psychological strain of detention.” Greer has challenged Khalil’s detention, and a federal court is scheduled to hear the case on March 12. Adblock test (Why?)

Israeli warplanes attack military sites in Syria’s southern Deraa province

Israeli warplanes attack military sites in Syria’s southern Deraa province

Syrian and Israeli media report air attacks on southern Deraa province targeting military sites of former Bashar al-Assad regime. Israeli military aircraft have carried out attacks in Syria’s southern province of Deraa, according to media reports and a monitoring group, in the latest attacks targeting military positions of the former Bashar al-Assad regime. The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) said the attacks on Monday night hit two towns in the north of Deraa, which is located 103km (64 miles) south of the capital Damascus. “Israeli occupation aircraft carried out several strikes on the surroundings of the towns of Jbab and Izraa in the north of Deraa,” SANA reported. The UK-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 17 strikes by Israeli fighter jets hit two military positions located in the towns: the former regime’s Artillery Regiment 89 and the 12th Brigade. No casualties have been reported so far, the observatory said. Israeli media outlet Channel 14 said the air attacks targeted al-Assad regime army outposts, weapons depots, radars, tanks and artillery that rebel groups in Syria were “trying to take over”. Advertisement Since the overthrow of Syrian President al-Assad in December, Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes on targets in Syria. According to the Syrian Observatory, Israel’s military carried out more than 500 air attacks on targets in Syria between December 8 and December 31, 2024, and has carried out 21 documented attacks so far this year. Most Israeli attacks have targeted facilities and weapons once held by the toppled regime’s forces in what Israel has said is a bid to prevent military assets from falling into the hands of forces hostile to Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last month that southern Syria must be completely demilitarised, warning also that his government would not accept the presence of the forces of the new government in Damascus, headed by Syrian interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, near Israeli territory. Since the removal of al-Assad, Israel’s military has entered and taken control of territory inside a United Nations-patrolled buffer zone that has separated Israel and Syria in the occupied Golan Heights since 1974. Adblock test (Why?)