Trump plan for school security includes armed school staff

The White House said Sunday that the federal government will help provide "rigorous firearms training" for qualified volunteer school personnel as part of a package of policy changes he will proposal after the mass shootings in Parkland, Fla. President Donald Trump will call on states to pass measures allowing police to remove weapons or prevent gun sales for those who pose a threat.

Major ruling expected on stash-house stings, racial bias

A federal judge in Chicago is slated to issue a first-in-the-nation ruling Monday about whether law enforcement stings where suspects are talked into robbing non-existent drugs from non-existent stash houses are racially biased. The ruling could determine whether agencies nationwide curtail their reliance on phony stash-house stings, which date to the 1990s and are overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Trump’s plan seeks to ‘harden’ schools against shootings

President Donald Trump's plan to combat school shootings will include the creation of a new task force and an effort to "harden" schools so they're less vulnerable to attacks, the White House said Sunday. But it will not include a call on states to increase the minimum age for purchasing assault weapons, as Trump had previously advocated.

Trump’s plan to combat school shootings includes

President Trump is creating a federal commission on school safety, ordering a review of the FBI tip line that ignored warnings about the gunman who killed 17 people at a Florida high school, and encouraging states to arm more qualified adults so schools are less vulnerable to attacks, administration officials said Sunday night. The president also is calling on Congress to approve legislation aimed at improving the federal system of background checks of criminals, and is promoting another bill that would provide grants to states to prevent school violence.

Thanks to Trump, This Senator Finally Gets Her Chance to Decimate Alaska’s Environmental Protections

When President Donald Trump took office in January 2017, Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski had been a member of the United States Senate for 15 years. She'd pulled off a historic write-in campaign, built a reputation as someone who thinks deeply about policy, and helped pass a sweeping bipartisan public-lands deal.

Los Angeles Times: Dona t let Jeff Sessions strangle criminal-justice reform in its crib

Despite the partisanship that has paralyzed Washington on so many issues, some Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Senate have come together around the proposition that America imprisons too many people for too long and that the burden of incarceration disproportionately falls on racial minorities. Ominously, however, the enlightened legislation they have produced is opposed by the Trump Justice Department.

White House ignores congressional inquiry on security clearance procedures

The White House is ignoring a bipartisan congressional inquiry regarding documents about the Rob Porter scandal, prompting the House Oversight Committee's top Democrat to request that the White House be subpoenaed over the matter. The committee's investigation into White House security clearances began after Porter, a former staff secretary, resigned amid domestic abuse allegations, which he denies.

Federal appeals court rules for fired transgender funeral director

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission [official website] pursued the claim on behalf of Aimee Stephens, a former employee of Defendant-Appellant R.G. and G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, Inc. [website]. Stephens was terminated two weeks after revealing to the funeral home that she was transgender and would begin dressing as a woman for work.

Striking West Virginia Teachers Revive a Proud Labor Heritage

In West Virginia, striking public school teachers and staff celebrated a victory this week, inspiring educators outside their state to take action for better pay and working conditions. Their nine-day wildcat strike - the longest in recent West Virginia history - put in stark relief another national debate on teachers: President Donald Trump's plan to arm teachers with concealed firearms in the aftermath of the Valentine's Day school massacre in Parkland, Florida.

DOJ Announces Sexual Harassment Enforcement Initiative – State and…

State and local governments many of whom are already facing new sexual harassment regulations and enforcement actions at the state level are now subject to additional federal scrutiny and potential enforcement pursuant to a recently announced initiative by the U.S. Department of Justice . The DOJ on Feb. 28, 2018, announced its Sexual Harassment in the Workplace Initiative , which seeks to combat workplace sexual harassment in the public sector.

How Ayn Rand became a big admirer of sadistic serial killer William Hickman

There's something deeply unsettling about living in a country where millions of people froth at the mouth at the idea of giving health care to the tens of millions of Americans who don't have it, or who take pleasure at the thought of privatizing and slashing bedrock social programs like Social Security or Medicare. It might not be so hard to stomach if other Western countries also had a large, vocal chunk of the population that thought like this, but the U.S. is seemingly the only place where right-wing elites can openly share their distaste for the working poor.

What swamp? Lobbyists get ethics waivers to work for Trump

President Donald Trump and his appointees have stocked federal agencies with ex-lobbyists and corporate lawyers who now help regulate the very industries from which they previously collected paychecks, despite promising as a candidate to drain the swamp in Washington. A week after his January 2017 inauguration, Trump signed an executive order that bars former lobbyists, lawyers and others from participating in any matter they lobbied or otherwise worked on for private clients within two years before going to work for the government.

Clark, DeLauro introduce bill to protect tipped workers

Katherine Clark and Congresswomen Rosa DeLauro today introduced the Tip Income Protection Act, legislation to protect tipped workers from having their tips taken by their employers. In a House Appropriations Committee hearing yesterday, Clark and DeLauro pressed Department of Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta on the recent DOL proposal allowing restaurants and other employers to keep workers' tips.