Week 5, Wednesday
President Trump is set as early as today to issue new guidelines to reverse an order from the Obama administration allowing students to use the restroom of their gender identity. The guidelines will rescind anti-discrimination protections for transgender students in a move favored by Attorney General Sessions and initially opposed by Education Secretary DeVos. Trump sided with Sessions and DeVos ultimately chose to go along with them, though the administration could not have gone forward with the new guidelines without her approval.
The nation’s food industry is preparing for the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement plans to take effect. Farm groups and food processors fear worker shortages that could negatively affect harvesting, while also leaving restaurants, slaughterhouses, and processing plants short-staffed.
The Trump federal hiring freeze has resulted in the closure of daycares for families of U.S. military personnel overseas, as well as the closure of an Army child care center in Kentucky, because staff who leave cannot be replaced. Meanwhile, Trump’s trips to Mar-a-Lago and security for Trump Tower in New York City have cost taxpayers more than $10M in just the first month of his presidency.
As Oklahoma’s attorney general, EPA Director Scott Pruitt regularly communicated with fossil fuel companies and electric utilities about ways to effectively fight against federal regulations put in place by the agency he now heads. Approximately 7,000 pages of emails were turned over this week and show an extremely close relationship between Pruitt, ultra-conservative groups, and the fossil fuel industry; it took a liberal organization more than two years and a court order to gain access to the documents.
Update: Rollback Official
From The Washington Post:
Officials with the federal Education and Justice departments notified the U.S. Supreme Court late Wednesday that the administration is ordering the nation’s schools to disregard memos the Obama administration issued during the past two years regarding transgender student rights. Those memos said that prohibiting transgender students from using facilities that align with their gender identity violates federal anti-discrimination laws.
The two-page “Dear colleague” letter from the Trump administration, which is set to go to the nation’s public schools, does not offer any new guidance, instead saying that the earlier directive needed to be withdrawn because it lacked extensive legal analysis, did not go through a public vetting process, sowed confusion and drew legal challenges.
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