Biden to pardon vets discharged for same-sex relationships
by Ashley Murray ~ Florida Phoenix ~ June 26 ~ tinyurl.com/Iguana2005
President Joe Biden will pardon U.S. military veterans who were discharged or convicted under military law for consensual same-sex relations, the administration announced. They estimate thousands were convicted over several decades and may be eligible. The convictions were enforced under a military law that prohibited certain types of sex from May 1951 to December 2013.
‘Challenges our authority’: School board in Florida bans book about book bans
by Douglas Soule ~ USA Today Network – Florida ~ June 11 ~ tinyurl.com/Iguana2030
School officials in Indian River County have banned a book about book banning. The book, “Ban this Book” by Alan Gratz, is a children’s novel about a fourth grader who creates a secret banned books locker library after her school board pulled a multitude of titles off the shelves. Board members said they disliked how it referenced other books that already had been removed from schools and accused it of “teaching rebellion of school board authority.”
Five truly awful things you may have overlooked about ‘Trump v. United States’
by Bill Blum ~ The Progressive Magazine ~ July 11 ~ tinyurl.com/Iguana2027
The ruling in Trump v. United States clears the way for the establishment of an imperial presidency that can operate above the law and will go down in history as one of the most regressive in the Supreme Court’s history. The opinion gives presidents a license to commit crimes, opens the door to criminal conspiracies, and guts the Constitution’s impeachment judgment clause.
Inside the Trump plan for 2025
by Jonathan Blitzer ~ The New Yorker ~ July 15 ~ tinyurl.com/Iguana2031
The Center for Renewing America is a conservative policy shop whose most recent annual report emphasized a “commitment to end woke and weaponized government.” The Center is one of roughly two dozen right-wing groups that have emerged in Washington since Trump left office, united through a wealthy network based on Capitol Hill called the Conservative Partnership Institute, which many in Washington regard as the next Trump Administration in waiting.
Julian Assange is finally free — but should not have been prosecuted in the first place
by Kenneth Roth ~ The Guardian ~ July 1 ~ tinyurl.com/Iguana2032
Julian Assange’s lengthy detention has finally ended, but the danger that his prosecution poses to the rights of journalists remains. As is widely known, the U.S. government’s pursuit of Assange under the Espionage Act threatens to criminalize common journalistic practices. Sadly, Assange’s guilty plea and release from custody have done nothing to ease that threat.
The ‘Trash School’: Officials knew a Gainesville school sat on a former dump
by Georgia Gee ~ The Intercept ~ June 4 ~ tinyurl.com/Iguana2033
Where children played, the ground bubbled. Birds swarmed, feeding on trash. At one point, a pile of 20 dead dogs and cats were dropped in the yard of the elementary school, just 100 feet away from classrooms.Yes, in the 1950s, the City of Gainesville chose the backyard of a school, in the predominantly Black part of town, for a dump. Sixty years later, the site is overgrown grassland, but contamination at the school still poses a large risk to students’ health.
UNC professor’s contract not renewed after University recorded classes without notice
by Ananya Cox ~ The Daily Tar Heel ~ July 7 ~ tinyurl.com/Iguana2034
Larry Chavis’ contract at the University of North Carolina was not renewed after his classes were recorded and reviewed without his knowledge during the University’s 2024 spring semester. The clinical professor of strategy and entrepreneurship has worked at the Kenan-Flagler Business School for 18 years. Chavis was given no explanation why his classes were secretly recorded or why he was terminated, although he wrote administration’s concerns likely stemmed from his using an email exchange with his dean as a class example of how not to build an inclusive environment in an organization.
When free speech rights collide
by Bill Lueders ~ The Progressive Magazine ~ July 2 ~ tinyurl.com/Iguana2028
After Facebook and Twitter shut down President Donald Trump’s accounts due to incendiary rhetoric and disinformation, Florida and Texas passed laws making it harder for Internet platforms to keep “dangerous lunatics” from posting whatever they want. The companies sued in response, insisting on their right to remove content that violates their policies. The key question: are social media platforms more like newspapers and magazines — free to decide what they publish, or more like telecommunications companies, which are required to transmit everyone’s messages?
Who’s a bigger threat to democracy — immigrants, or billionaires
by Sonali Kolhatkar ~ Independent Media Institute ~ July 19 ~ tinyurl.com/Iguana2035
We may think of elections in terms of one person, one vote. But, not only do undemocratic structures such as the electoral college dilute our votes, the money that elites flaunt places a hefty thumb on the scales of who represents us. Yet, we hear more about the threat of, say, immigrants than the threat of billionaires, to our democracy.