Louisiana classrooms now required by law to display the Ten Commandments–CNN

By Stephanie Gallman and Dianne Gallagher, CNN
Louisiana public schools are now required to display the Ten Commandments in all classrooms, after Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed the requirement into law Wednesday.

House Bill 71, approved by state lawmakers last month, mandates that a poster-size display of the Ten Commandments with “large, easily readable font” be in every classroom at schools that receive state funding, from kindergarten through the university level.

The legislation specifies the exact language that must be printed on the classroom displays and outlines that the text of the Ten Commandments must be the central focus of the poster or framed document.

Before signing the bill, Landry called it “one of (his) favorites.”

“If you want to respect the rule of law, you gotta start from the original law given which was Moses. … He got his commandments from God,” Landry said.

***

Read more…

TRANSPHOBIC DRESS CODE PROMPTED TURMOIL IN AGRICULTURE DEPARTMENT, EMAILS SHOW–Texas Observer

The Texas agency’s policy may be ripe for a lawsuit. 

by KIT O’CONNELL

For over a year, employees of the Texas Department of Agriculture (TDA) have been subject to a dress code that is transphobic and potentially illegal. The policy has caused turmoil within the agency, emails obtained by the Texas Observer and interviews reveal, along with contributing to a chilling atmosphere for LGBTQ+ workers. 

Last April, the Observer broke the news that the TDA had implemented a new dress code which required employees to dress “in a manner consistent with their biological gender”—an apparent attempt to restrict how transgender and nonbinary employees express themselves. Sid Miller, the Texas Agriculture Commissioner, defended the policy in media appearances and on social media. Since then, the nonprofit American Oversight obtained a cache of emails pertaining to the policy through a public information request and provided those emails to the Observer. The emails show that senior agency staff were aware TDA was wading into legally dubious waters and that a number of employees objected to its implementation and felt personally discriminated against.

***

Read more…

New York’s high court dismisses Trump’s gag order challenge –The Hill

BY ELLA LEE AND ZACH SCHONFELD

“…Appeal dismissed without costs, by the Court sua sponte, upon the ground that no substantial constitutional question is directly involved…”  NYS Court of Appeals.

***

New York’s top court on Tuesday turned away former President Trump’s challenge to a gag order imposed on his public statements in his hush money criminal case.  

The gag order, which remains in effect after being imposed weeks before his trial began, blocks Trump from publicly commenting about jurors, witnesses, court staff or the judge’s family, but it does not bar him from attacking the judge himself or Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D).

***

Read more…

Statement of Concern Regarding Improper Use of Judicial Offices in Relation to Law Clerk Hiring and Refusal to Hire–NYC Bar Ass’n

The New York City Bar Association released a statement Monday condemning a group of federal judges for what the organization called “improper use of the judicial offices” over the judges‘ recent letter stating they would no longer hire law clerks from Columbia University over its handling of the pro-Palestinian protests.

***

We are deeply concerned that the signatories to the May 6 Letter have seen fit to use their judicial offices to intervene in a highly charged political controversy.  We are further concerned that they have done so in an effort to pressure Columbia to more harshly punish student protesters and police the ideological composition of its faculty—goals that implicate the free speech rights of members of the Columbia community and of the university itself.  Compounding the problem, the judges have targeted Columbia students in an indiscriminate manner that holds every Columbia student collectively responsible for the alleged misdeeds of Columbia’s administration.

Moreover, the May 6 Letter leaves the public at large with the impression that the purpose of the letter’s self-declared “boycott” is to change the composition of Columbia University’s faculty and administration to one more suiting the judges’ social and political preferences.  Indeed, the May 6 Letter objects specifically to the “ideological homogeneity” it attributes to Columbia’s faculty and administration and insists that the boycott will continue until there is “[v]iewpoint diversity on the faculty and across the administration—including the admissions office.”  Whatever the merits of these criticisms, it is not the business of federal judges—government actors with particularly stringent duties of impartiality—to police the political views of school administrators and faculty.

***

Read Complete Statement of NYC Bar…

Blood on their hands–Opinion

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

Today’s Edition Newsletter

***

It is merely a matter of time until a “law-abiding citizen” exercising his “Second Amendment rights” uses a Supreme-Court-sanctioned machine gun to inflict mass deaths on schoolchildren and adults. When that happens, there will be a direct line from their opinion in Garland v. Cargill to the dead and mangled bodies killed by a weapon that can fire 800 rounds a minute with a single pull of the trigger.

***

The majority’s opinion in Garland v. Cargill is pernicious on multiple levels. The callousness of the majority’s conclusion is shocking. Their abandonment of settled rules of judicial construction is hypocritical. Their continued assault on the expertise of federal agencies charged with regulating complex, fact-dependent questions is part of their master plan to deconstruct the administrative state. Their willingness to base their decision on a lie about how bump stocks work continues the majority’s distressing pattern of making up facts to support otherwise unsupportable opinions.

***

Read more…

AI is getting very popular among students and teachers, very quickly–CNBC

Eric Rosenbaum

The American public as a whole remains on the fence with artificial intelligence, according to many polls, but in education, adoption among teachers and students is rapidly rising.

In a little over a year, the percentage of teachers who say they are familiar with ChatGPT — the breakthrough generative AI chatbot from Microsoft-backed OpenAI, which is next headed to the Apple iPhone — rose from 55% to 79%, while among K-12 students, it rose from 37% to 75%, according to a new pollconducted in May by Impact Research for the Walton Family Foundation, in conjunction with the Learning Engineering Virtual Institute’s AI Lab.

 

When it comes to actual usage, a similar spike occurred, with 46% of teachers and 48% of students saying they use ChatGPT at least weekly, with student usage up 27 percentage points over last year.

Maybe most notable, the reviews from students are broadly positive. Seventy percent of K-12 students had a favorable view of AI chatbots. Among undergraduates, that rises to 75%. And among parents, 68% held favorable views of AI chatbots.

***

Read more…

NY Governor to Mull Rollback of Public Notaries’ Record-Keeping Requirements–law.com

Public notaries saw a steep year-over-year decline as of the latest figures provided by the Department of State to the New York Law Journal on Tuesday.

Brian Lee 

To reverse the reduced numbers of public notaries in New York, lawmakers approved a bill that aims to downsize additional requirements thrust on them in 2023, after the state bar called out the new rules for being unduly burdensome.

The Assembly and Senate approved A07241A/S8663, a notarization reform bill sponsored by both legislative chambers’ Judiciary Committee chairs—Assemblyman Charles Lavine, D-Glen Cove, and state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal, D-Manhattan.

At the end of 2022, there were 275,612 public notaries, but by the end of 2023, there were 249,913, a nearly 10% drop, according to Mercedes Padilla, a department spokesperson.

***

Read more…

 

 

 

Judge strikes down Florida ban on gender-affirming care–The Hill

BY BROOKE MIGDON

***

The law, signed by DeSantis in May 2023, barred health care providers from administering gender-affirming care to minors and set up significant barriers for transgender adults seeking care. Gender-affirming health care for transgender adults and minors is considered medically necessary by every major medical organization, though not every trans person chooses to medically transition or has access to care. 

“Florida has adopted a statute and rules that ban gender-affirming care for minors even when medically appropriate,” Hinkle wrote Tuesday in a 105-page decision. “The ban is unconstitutional.” 

Hinkle, who temporarily blocked enforcement of the law last June, added that the law was motivated by state lawmakers’ “anti-transgender animus” and a “deeply flawed, bias-driven” report from Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration that determined gender-affirming care for minors is experimental and should be excluded from Medicaid coverage. 

 

***

Read more…

The Cheapest Way to Fly Private, According to Experts–thrillist.com

You don’t necessarily have to break the bank to fly on a private jet.

By Serena Tara

***

First of all, you should get on dedicated private jet booking platforms that allow you to see multiple options at the same time. Think of it as using a platform similar to Skyscanner, but for private jets.

“Some resources that make private flight shopping easier for compare-and-contrast [purposes] are Linear Air and KinectAir,” says Katy Nastro, travel expert at Going. “They allow you to see what is available for your specific itinerary dates at a nearby airport.”

A quick visit to either platform will show you what private jets are flying which routes, as well as when and for how many people. KinectAir also details the price per person, letting you know how much money each member of the party would have to shell out for the trip.

***

Read more…up, up, and away…

5 revelations from Supreme Court justices’ latest financial disclosures –The Hill

BY ZACH SCHONFELD AND ELLA LEE

The latest financial disclosures of Supreme Court justices were released on Friday, revealing tidbits such as a justice’s new rental property, hundreds of thousands of dollars in book royalties and even gifted concert tickets from Beyonce.  

Eight of the nine sitting justices’ 2023 disclosures were made public, while Justice Samuel Alito received a 90-day extension.  

***

Justice Clarence Thomas’s financial disclosure included an amendment to a filing made half a decade ago to include two trips paid for by billionaire Harlan Crow.

***

Read more…