X owner Elon Musk is threatening to sue the Anti-Defamation League for defamation, claiming that the nonprofit organization’s statements about rising hate speech on the social media platform have torpedoed X’s advertising revenue.
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Musk said US advertising revenue is “still down 60%, primarily due to pressure on advertisers by @ADL (that’s what advertisers tell us), so they almost succeeded in killing X/Twitter!”
Musk also claimed that since he took over the platform in October 2022, the ADL “has been trying to kill this platform by falsely accusing it & me of being anti-Semitic.”
“To clear our platform’s name on the matter of anti-Semitism, it looks like we have no choice but to file a defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League … oh the irony!” he said.
The ADL said as a matter of policy it does not comment on legal threats. But the organization noted it recently met with X leadership, including CEO Linda Yaccarino, who Musk hired to help revive ad revenue. Yaccarino thanked ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt following the meeting last week, saying in a post on X, “A strong and productive partnership is built on good intentions and candor.”
Meanwhile, Musk, the platform’s owner, has recently liked and engaged with a series of posts criticizing the organization.
A #BanTheADL campaign has spread on X, and the ADL accused Musk of “lifting” the campaign.
“ADL is unsurprised yet undeterred that antisemites, white supremacists, conspiracy theorists and other trolls have launched a coordinated attack on our organization. This type of thing is nothing new,” an ADL spokesperson said.
The ADL and other similar organizations, including the Center for Countering Digital Hate, have found that the volume of hate speech on the website has grown dramatically under Musk’s stewardship.
In one instance, the CCDH found the daily use of the n-word under Musk is triple the 2022 average and the use of slurs against gay men and trans persons are up 58% and 62%, respectively. The ADL said in a separate report that its data shows “both an increase in antisemitic content on the platform and a decrease in the moderation of antisemitic posts.”
Musk called the reports in May by the two watchdog groups “utterly false,” claiming that “hate speech impressions,” or the number of times a tweet containing hate speech has been viewed, “continue to decline” since his early days of owning the company when the platform saw a spike in hate speech designed to test Musk’s tolerance.
Still, two brands last month paused their ad spending on X after their advertisements ran alongside an account promoting Nazism. X suspended the account after the issue was flagged and said ad impressions on the page were minimal.
Last month, Musk sued the CCDH, accusing the nonprofit group of deliberately trying to drive advertisers away from the platform by publishing reports critical of the platform’s response to hateful content.
It specifically claims CCDH violated the platform’s terms of service, and federal hacking laws, by scraping data from the company’s platform and by encouraging an unnamed individual to improperly collect information about Twitter that it had provided to a third-party brand monitoring provider.
In response, CCDH’s CEO Imran Ahmed previously told CNN that much of the lawsuit, particularly its claim about the unnamed individual, “sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory to me.”
“The truth is that he’s [Elon Musk] been casting around for a reason to blame us for his own failings as a CEO,” Ahmed said, “because we all know that when he took over, he put up the bat signal to racists and misogynists, to homophobes, to antisemites, saying ‘Twitter is now a free-speech platform.’ … And now he’s surprised when people are able to quantify that there has been a resulting increase in hate and disinformation.”
Elon Musk’s X Corp., the parent company of the platform formerly known as Twitter, on Friday sued California’s attorney general over the state’s new content moderation law.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed bill AB 587 into law last September. The law requires social media companies to post their terms of service online and submit a semiannual report to the state attorney general outlining their content moderation policies and practices. Platforms must, among other things, disclose how their automated content moderation systems work, how they define controversial content categories such as “hate speech” and “disinformation,” and the number of pieces of content flagged or removedin such categories.
Newsom’s office touted the bill as a way to improve transparency from social networks. But in a complaint filed in California’s Eastern District Court against California Attorney General Robert Bonta, X alleged that the law violates the First Amendment and California’s constitution by potentially compelling the companyto moderate users’ politically charged speech.
The law “compels companies like X Corp. to engage in speech against their will, impermissibly interferes with the constitutionally-protected editorial judgments of companies such as X Corp., has both the purpose and likely effect of pressuring companies such as X Corp. to remove, demonetize, or deprioritize constitutionally-protected speech,” the company alleged in the complaint. It added that the law could place an “undue burden” on social media companies such as Musk’s X, which is headquartered in California.
Attorney General Bonta’s press office said in an email to CNN: “While we have not yet been served with the complaint, we will review it and respond in court.”
A spokesperson for Newsom sent CNN a statement from last September in which the governor remarked on the bill.
“California will not stand by as social media is weaponized to spread hate and disinformation that threaten our communities and foundational values as a country,” Newsom said in the statement. “Californians deserve to know how these platforms are impacting our public discourse, and this action brings much-needed transparency and accountability to the policies that shape the social media content we consume every day.”
The lawsuit comes as Musk has escalated his rhetoric over what kinds of speech should be permitted on his platform, as the company’s core advertising business has taken a major revenue hit over concerns, among other things, about theapproach to content moderation. Under Musk’s leadership, the platform has made several changes to its content policies, including ceasing enforcement of its Covid-19 misinformation policy and reinstating many previously banned users.
Just last month, at least two brands paused their ad spending on X after their advertisements ran alongside an account promoting Nazism. (X suspended the account after the issue was flagged and said ad impressions on the page were minimal.)
The billionaire this week threatened a lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League for defamation, claiming that the nonprofit organization’s statements about rising hate speech on the social media platform have torpedoed X’s advertising revenue. (The ADL says it does not comment on legal threats, but CEO Jonathan Greenblatt spoke out against the #BanTheADL campaign on X.)
In Friday’s lawsuit, X Corp. alleged that requiring social media companies to report their moderation practices could pressure the platforms into “limiting or censoring constitutionally-protected content that the State finds objectionable.” It also claimed that the law could force social platforms “to take public positions on controversial and politically charged issues” and thus tailor those positions in a way it otherwise wouldn’t to avoid public scrutiny.
The law “‘compel[s]’ X Corp. to ‘speak a particular message,’ which necessarily ‘alters the content of’ its speech,’” in violation of its First Amendment rights, the company alleges in the complaint.
The lawsuit seeks a jury trial on the constitutionality and legal validity of the California law.
For nearly a decade, US Coast Guard leaders have concealed a critical report that exposed racism, hazing, discrimination and sexual assault across the agency.
The 2015 “Culture of Respect” study, a copy of which was obtained by CNN, documented how employees complained of a “boys will be boys” and “I got through it so can you” culture. Many said they feared they would be ostracized and retaliated against for reporting abuse and that those who did come forward often had their complaints dismissed by supervisors.
Some of the report’s core findings mirrored those of another secret investigation into rapes and sexual assaults at the Coast Guard’s academy. The existence of that probe, which was dubbed Operation Fouled Anchor and completed in 2019, was revealed by CNN earlier this year. That investigation found that serious misconduct had been ignored and, at times, covered up by high-ranking officials, allowing alleged offenders to rise within the ranks of the Coast Guard and other military branches.
Following CNN’s stories on the Fouled Anchor investigation and subsequent Congressional outrage, the Coast Guard’s commandant, Linda Fagan, apologized to cadets and the workforce, and acknowledged that the Coast Guard needed to be more transparent to service members, Congress and the public about such matters.
“Trust and respect thrive in transparency but are shattered by silence,” she wrote.
But under her watch, the Coast Guard continued to keep the report hidden from the public even though she had been asked to release it long before the Fouled Anchor controversy unfolded this summer. And although the Culture of Respect study is more than eight years old, more than a dozen current and recent Coast Guard employees and academy cadets told CNN many of the problems that were identified continue to plague the agency.
In response to questions from CNN this week, a spokesman for Fagan said the commandant plans to make the report public next week as part of her “commitment to transparency,” alongside the findings from a 90-day internal study of sexual assault and harassment within the agency, prompted by the Fouled Anchor reporting.
Coast Guard officials further said in a statement that the Culture of Respect report was not originally intended to be released widely to the workforce, but rather was to be used by senior leaders to inform policy decisions. Officials, however, did not explain why Fagan had not found a way to release the report sooner, particularly since alleged victims or perpetrators were not named in the report.
The document has long been shrouded in secrecy. The copy of the report obtained by CNN states that it was to be stored in “a locked container or area offering sufficient protection against theft, compromise, inadvertent access and unauthorized disclosure.” It was to be distributed only to people on a “need to know basis” and should not be released to the public under the Freedom of Information Act, the report stated.
The study, which was conducted internally and included interviews from nearly 300 people from across the organization, highlighted concerns that “blatant sexual harassment of women” and hazing were regularly accepted as just part of the culture. Those accused of discrimination, assault and other misconduct, were allowed to “escape accountability and instead resign, retire, or transfer,” the report found, with some offenders getting rehired by the Coast Guard in civil service positions even after being forced to retire or otherwise leave military service. “We are allowing potentially dangerous members back into society with no punishment,” stated one employee. Others said leaders brushed serious problems ‘under the rug,” and that “senior leaders care about themselves and their careers” instead of “the folks that work for them.”
Authors of the report also noted a common concern among victims of misconduct, who said they believed coming forward would mean putting their careers on the line with little hope of their alleged perpetrators facing serious consequences. “Victims are ostracized, there is a stigma,” one person told interviewers. “No one believes them, no one helps them.”
Even seeking mental health treatment could prove risky, they said, with one interviewee bringing up how the Coast Guard could “involuntarily discharge” employees diagnosed with a mental health condition in the wake of an assault or other traumatic experience on the job.
Examples cited in the report reveal a culture in which service members faced pervasive assault, harassment, sexism, racism and other discrimination. In one case, multiple witnesses saw a supervisor striking a subordinate but nobody came forward to report it because of fear of retaliation.
Improving the Coast Guard’s culture would in some cases require “fundamentally different approaches,” the report concluded. The Coast Guard said this week it had enacted or partially enacted 60 of 129 recommendations, including additional training and additional support services for victims. Nine more are in the works, according to the Coast Guard’s statement agency, and the it “found better ways to achieve the desired result” for 20 others.
The original report had also recommended that a new review be conducted every four years, but that did not happen. The Coast Guard said other studies of the workforce culture have been conducted instead.
Recent government data and records, meanwhile, show that dangerous and discriminatory behavior is still rarely punished at the agency.
Almost half of female service members who reported a case of sexual harassment said the person they complained to took no action, according to a 2021 military survey. Nearly a third said they were punished for bringing up the harassment. Meanwhile, the vast majority of women who allegedly experienced “unwanted sexual contact” said they chose not to report it, often citing concerns about negative consequences or that the process wouldn’t be fair and that nothing would end up coming of their allegations.
Instead, records show how employees found to have committed serious wrongdoing have escaped court martial proceedings or military discharge. As a result, alleged perpetrators avoided criminal records and their retirement benefits were not affected.
A cadet at the Coast Guard Academy accused of sexual assault by two different classmates in the 2019-20 school year, for example, was kicked out of the academy but allowed to enlist in the Coast Guard to pay back the cost of the schooling he had received. Around the same time, a lieutenant commander was allowed to resign in lieu of going to trial for military crimes including sexual assault and drunk and disorderly conduct. Even when another officer was found guilty at a court martial of abusing his seniority to “obtain sexual favors with a subordinate,” he received only a letter of reprimand.
The Coast Guard did not comment on concerns that problems remain at the agency, or the statistics or examples cited by CNN.
The limited access to the Culture of Respect has been a topic of contention for years within the workforce and even Congress.
Fagan was asked about the report last year by Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman in a list of questions submitted as part of Congressional testimony. She criticized the agency for not releasing it publicly, saying this was “limiting the workforce and the public’s visibility into the problems that were identified and the recommended solutions.”
Watson Coleman also pushed Fagan, who took the helm of the Coast Guard in June of 2022, to commit to completing a new study and releasing it to the public this time, but Fagan did not directly answer the question – instead citing other recent studies.
More recently, Fagan was asked about releasing the report while attending a faculty meeting at the Coast Guard Academy. She was there following the Fouled Anchor debacle, promising more transparency when a captain who taught at the school called upon her to release the Culture of Respect report, according to multiple people who attended the meeting.
Retired Coast Guard Commander Kimberly Young-McLear, who is a Black lesbian woman, has been perhaps the most vocal in requesting that the report be released.
Her efforts to get the report disseminated stem from her own complaints about “severe and pervasive bullying, harassing, and discriminating behavior” based on her race, gender, sexual orientation and advocacy for equal opportunity in the Coast Guard.
After filing a whistleblower complaint in 2017, the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General found that she had indeed faced unlawful retaliation. Yet to this day, none of the accused service members from her case have faced any consequences. Young-McLear said she has never received a written apology from Coast Guard leaders despite requests from Congress, and that the years of harassment and lack of accountability have taken a significant mental toll on her.
She said she learned about the existence of the Culture of Respect report while she worked at the Coast Guard’s academy and that she was able to read it when she attended a small summit discussing its findings in 2019. She was outraged when she saw that it exposed the same issues she had reported.
“Had the Coast Guard actually taken the 2015 Culture of Respect report results seriously… then perhaps the years of bullying, harassment, intimidation, and retaliation I endured could have been prevented altogether,” Young-McLear said in Congressional testimony at 2021 hearing on diversity and accountability within the Coast Guard, questioning why the report still hadn’t been made public.
In the last four years, Young-McLear said she has asked for the report to be released more than two dozen times, to various admirals and to the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Coast Guard. A handful of other academy employees have made similar pleas at faculty meetings with the school’s superintendent, she said. “We’ve been saying it until we’ve been blue in the face.”
The Coast Guard’s secrecy and inaction, she says, speak to the very same issues the Culture of Respect report and other examinations have repeatedly raised and show that the agency has failed to hold itself to task in the same way perpetrators have been let off the hook.
“If we don’t hold individuals and institutions accountable,” said Young-McLear, “it is providing a safe haven for abusers and allowing them to rise through the ranks.”
Do you have information or a story to share about the Coast Guard past or present? Email melanie.hicken@cnn.com and Blake.Ellis@cnn.com.
“You’ll never be successful,” Errol Musk in 1989 told his 17-year-old son Elon, who was then preparing to fly from South Africa to Canada to find relatives and a college education.
That’s one of the scenes Walter Isaacson paints in his 670-page biography of Elon Musk, who is now the richest person who ever lived. The biography allows readers new glimpses into the private life of the entrepreneur who popularized electric vehicles for the masses and landed rocket boosters hurtling back to Earth so they could be reused.
But Musk’s public statements and actions have become increasingly unhinged, filing and threatening lawsuits against nonprofits that fight hate speech and allowing some of the internet’s worst actors to regain their platforms.
Isaacson portrays Musk as a restless genius with a turbulent upbringing on the cusp of launching a new AI company along with his five other companies.
Musk allowed Isaacson to shadow him for two years but exercised no control over the biography’s contents, the author said.
Here are four key takeaways.
Musk’s upbringing and father haunt him
Isaacson’s book attributes much of Musk’s drive to his upbringing. He recounts the emotional scars inflicted on Musk by his father, which, Isaacson writes, caused Musk to become “a tough yet vulnerable man-child with an exceedingly high tolerance for risk, a craving for drama, an epic sense of mission and a maniacal intensity that was callous and at times destructive.”
Musk decided to live with his father from age 10 to 17, enduring what Musk and others describe as occasional but regular verbal taunts and abuse. Musk’s sister, Tosca, said Errol would sometimes lecture his children for hours, “calling you worthless, pathetic, making scarring and evil comments, not allowing you to leave.”
Elon Musk became estranged from his father, though he has occasionally supported his father financially. In a 2022 email sent to Elon Musk on Father’s Day, Errol Musk said he was freezing and lacking electricity, asking his son for money.
In the letter, Errol made racist comments about Black leaders in South Africa. “With no Whites here, the Blacks will go back to the trees,” he wrote.
Elon Musk has said that he opposes racism and discrimination, but hate speech has flourished on X, formerly known as Twitter, since he purchased it 11 months ago, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Musk threatened to sue the ADL for defamation last week, arguing that the nonprofit’s statements have caused his company to lose significant advertising revenue.
Isaacson reported that Errol, in other emails, denounced Covid as “a lie” and attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci, the United States’ former top infectious disease expert who played a prominent role in the government’s fight against the pandemic.
Elon Musk, similarly, has criticized Fauci and raised many questions about public health policy during the pandemic. But he has said he supports vaccination, even if he doesn’t believe the shots should be mandated.
Musk’s fluid family and obsession with population
Musk has a fluid mix of girlfriends, ex-wives, ex-girlfriends and significant others, and he has many children with multiple women. Isaacson’s book revealed Musk had a third child (Techno Mechanicus) with the musician Grimes in 2022, and Musk confirmed the revelation Sunday.
Musk has frequently stated that humans must be a multiplanetary species, warning space exploration will ensure the future of humanity. He similarly has spoken numerous times that people need to have more children.
“Population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming,” Musk said last year.
Musk has referred to his desire to increase the global population as an explanation for his unique family situation.
The book reports that Musk encouraged employees such as Shivon Zilis, a top operations officer at his Neuralink company, to have many children. “He feared that declining birthrates were a threat to the long-term survival of human consciousness,” Isaacson writes.
Although the book presents their relationship as a platonic work friendship, Musk volunteered to donate sperm to Zilis. She agreed and had twins in 2021 via in vitro fertilization; she did not tell people who the biological father was.
Zilis and Grimes were friendly, but Musk did not tell Grimes about the twins, according to the book.
Musk asked Zilis if her twins might like to take his last name. Isaacson reports that Grimes was upset in 2022 when she learned the news that Musk had fathered children with Zilis.
“Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis,” Musk tweeted at the time, trying to defuse the tension. “A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far.”
One of Musk’s children, Jenna, often criticized her father’s wealth specifically and capitalism broadly. In 2022, she disowned her father, which Isaacson reports saddened Musk.
Isaacson reports that Musk’s fractured relationship with Jenna, who is trans, partly led to Musk’s rightward turn toward libertarianism and questioning what he considers the “woke-mind-virus, which is fundamentally antiscience, antimerit, and antihuman.”
Musk has called into question the use of alternate gender pronouns and made numerous statements some critics consider to be anti-trans.
“I absolutely support trans, but all these pronouns are an esthetic nightmare,” Musk posted in 2020.
But in December 2020 he also posted a tweet, since deleted, that said “when you put he/him in your bio” alongside a drawing of an 18th century soldier rubbing blood on his face in front of a pile of dead bodies and wearing a cap that read “I love to oppress.”
The purchase of his favorite social media platform, gutting the staff and tinkering with policies and branding have taken time and resources away from Musk’s other companies and projects, Isaacson reports.
“I’ve got a bad habit of biting off more than I can chew,” Musk told Isaacson at one point.
After a protracted legal battle over his decision to purchase Twitter, Musk said he regained his enthusiasm for taking over the company when he realized that he wanted to prevent a world where people silo off into their own echo chambers and would prefer a world of civil discourse.
But Isaacson notes “he would end up undermining that important mission with statements and tweets that ended up chasing off progressives and mainstream media types to other social networks.”
Musk team members, such as his business manager Jared Birchall, his lawyer Alex Spiro and his brother Kimbal, sometimes try to restrain Musk from sending text messages or tweets that could create legal or economic peril, according to the book. Some friends convinced him to place his phone in a hotel safe overnight on one occasion, before Musk summoned hotel security to open the safe for him.
During Christmas in 2022 with his brother, Kimbal warned Elon about how fast he was making enemies. “It’s like the days of high school, when you kept getting beaten up,” he said. Kimbal stopped following Elon on Twitter after his brother’s tweets about Fauci and other conspiracies. “Stop falling for weird s—.”
Are robocars, an AI company and a robot called Optimus on tap?
Musk continues moving forward on new engineering projects. Since 2021, Musk has been working on a “humanoid” robot called Optimus that walks on two legs instead of like four-legged robots coming from other labs. He unveiled an early version of the Optimus robot in September of 2022. Musk told engineers that humanoid robots will “uncork the economy to quasi-infinite levels,” according to Isaacson, by doing jobs humans find dangerous or repetitive.
Some of Musk’s top engineers are also working on a “robotaxi,” a driverless vehicle that shows up like an Uber. This past summer, he spent hours each week preparing new factory designs in Texas to produce the next-generation Tesla cars that would look similar to Tesla’s cybertruck.
Musk is also starting his own AI company called X.AI, which he told Isaacson will compete with Google, Microsoft and other companies surging ahead in the past year with public AI projects. Musk had co-founded OpenAi with Sam Altman in 2015 and contributed $100 million to the non-profit. He became angry when Altman converted the project into a for-profit. Musk also ended a friendship with Larry Page when the two disagreed on AI. According to the book, Musk believes he has a better vision for AI and humanity and thinks the data he owns from Tesla and Twitter will be an asset to his next AI plans.
“Could you get the rockets to orbit or the transition to electric vehicles without accepting all aspects of him, hinged and unhinged?” Isaacson asks in the last chapter.
The US Coast Guard, rocked by allegations that its leaders for years concealed damning information about sexual assaults and other serious misconduct, released a highly critical report Wednesday acknowledging it had “failed to keep our people safe,” while vowing to make reforms that would better protect them.
After spending 90 days speaking with hundreds of service members, reading through more than 170 written comments and “sifting through a mountain of data,” an internal review team said it had heard a resounding message from the workforce that “these failures and lack of accountability are entirely unacceptable” and that leaders “must do something about it.”
“Too many Coast Guard members are not experiencing the safe, empowering workplace they expect and deserve (and) trust in Coast Guard leadership is eroding,” the authors wrote in the roughly 100-page report, noting that they had heard from victims of sexual assault and harassment stretching from the 1960s to the current day who “expressed deep rooted feelings of pain and a loss of trust in the organization.”
The scathing internal review was launched after CNN exposed a secret criminal investigation, dubbed Operation Fouled Anchor, which found that serious misconduct had been ignored and, at times, covered up by high-ranking officials. It wasn’t until CNN started asking questions about Fouled Anchor this spring that Coast Guard leaders rushed to officially brief Congress on the scandal — leading to outrage on both sides of the aisle, multiple government investigations and proposed legislation.
CNN’s coverage of Fouled Anchor and subsequent reporting revealing that Coast Guard leaders declined to prosecute a retired officer for sexual misconduct “have led people to experience feelings ranging from disappointment to outrage,” the report said.
“For so many victims, there are even deeper levels of broken trust: in leaders who failed them in preventing and responding to sexual violence; in a military justice system with antiquated legal definitions of rape; in non-existent support programs for those impacted prior to 2000,” it stated. While the report outlined a number of changes made in the last two decades, it also acknowledged that reforms to date have not been enough to prevent assaults and properly support victims.
The review did not seek to hold past perpetrators or officials involved with the Fouled Anchor cover-up accountable, saying multiple government investigations launched by Congress remained ongoing.
Instead, it looked to the future and focused on preventing future assaults and other misconduct, describing the report as a “road map aimed at improving” the agency’s culture.
Along with the report’s findings, the Coast Guard announced a series of actions directed by the agency’s leader, Commandant Linda Fagan, through recommended changes to everything from training and victim support services to strengthening processes for holding perpetrators accountable.
“This report acknowledges the Coast Guard’s failures and uses them to inform a way ahead, rebuild trust, and set the baseline for organizational growth,” the document states, noting that many of the actions require additional funding and authority to implement.
Among the reforms are the creation of a mentorship program for victims to help them navigate the aftermath of a sexual assault, the development of a “safe to report” policy so that victims are not penalized for collateral minor misconduct (such as alcohol use at the time of an incident), more secure locks on Coast Guard Academy bedrooms and improved oversight of the school and its cadets – including a new chain of command for the academy head.
Fagan also directed officials to better keep tabs on the academy’s hallmark “Swab Summer” training program, which is run by upperclassmen at the academy, and to consider strengthening policies that allow the agency to reduce pension payments for those found to have committed misconduct.
The report was the Coast Guard’s most expansive response to the growing criticism of its handling of misconduct. And while it was being released publicly, and members of Congress had been briefed on its contents earlier, the report was specifically addressed to “U.S. Coast Guard workforce, past and present.”
“You made it clear that you want and expect our Service to confront this issue and make it better. You want our Service to deliver meaningful change,” the report stated. “Whether you’re a member who has a story to share — or the shipmate standing beside them — this is our time. Let’s get it right.”
While the Coast Guard is focused on the future, members of Congress are still determined to get answers about past failures as well.
“This new report still does not hold anyone accountable for past failures—particularly those at the Coast Guard Academy,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, where the Coast Guard Academy is located. Murphy and other lawmakers have continued to slam the agency for its failure to be transparent about sexual assault and other misconduct. “It does lay out a modest plan to improve oversight, training, and support for survivors, but a report is nothing more than paper until concrete steps are taken.”
Democratic Senators Maria Cantwell and Richard Blumenthal also criticized how, despite calling this effort an “accountability” review, the Coast Guard still failed to hold anyone to task for the mishandling of sexual assault cases. Cantwell reiterated the importance of an independent investigation, saying she is looking forward to seeing the results of the probe currently being conducted by the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General.
Earlier this year, CNN reported how former Commandant Karl Schultz and his second-in-command, Vice Commandant Charles Ray, failed to act on plans to share the findings of Fouled Anchor with Congress and the public. Ray resigned from his position at a Coast Guard Academy leadership institute soon after, but no other current or former Coast Guard officials have publicly faced any consequences.
“Current Coast Guard personnel are being told to trust their leadership, but their leaders aren’t holding predecessors accountable,” K. Denise Rucker Krepp, a former Coast Guard officer and former chief counsel of the Maritime Administration wrote in a recent letter to Congress, describing how she had attended a “community healing” event sponsored by the Coast Guard Academy Alumni Association last month.
“Before my first cup of coffee I learned about a woman who was raped shortly after joining the service. She never told her parents about the crime,” she wrote. “While washing my hands in the bathroom, another woman shared that she was raped while attending the Coast Guard Academy in the late 1990s. Another woman shared that she was gang-raped by three students at the school and had spent two-thirds of her life on medication because of the crimes that occurred almost 40 years ago.”
Next week, more survivors of sexual assault and harassment at the Coast Guard Academy are slated to share their experiences publicly in a Congressional hearing. The hearing, announced just yesterday, is part of an ongoing Senate probe launched in reaction to the Fouled Anchor cover-up.
Do you have information or a story to share about the Coast Guard past or present? Email melanie.hicken@cnn.com and Blake.Ellis@cnn.com.
Nnete Matima said she was attracted to work at TikTok because of how the social media platform was “really built upon Black culture” and the work of Black creators.
She saw and welcomed TikTok’s public pledge of support for the Black community in the wake of the 2020 police murder of George Floyd and applied to work for the company because she felt its corporate values “really resonated with me,” Matima told CNN.
Shortly after she began working at TikTok-parent company ByteDance last year, however, she alleges she encountered “toxicity and racism” in the workplace. Her manager would refer to her as a “black snake” behind her back and set unrealistic and uneven expectations for her compared to her white peers, Matima claims. The mistreatment only got worse, she said, after she spoke up about it via human resources channels.
Matima is one of two Black former ByteDance employees who together filed a formal complaint with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Thursday. Their complaint asks the agency to investigate alleged racial discrimination and retaliation against Black workers at the social media giant.
Corporate America has long come under fire for racism in the workplace, especially in the wake of the racial reckoning that swept through the nation in 2020. The criticism is especially pointed for technology companies, where having employees with diverse perspectives is especially crucial because tech products have faced accusations of perpetuating racial and ethnic discrimination.
Matima, who is based in New York City, and fellow former employee Joël Carter, who is based in Austin, Texas, alleged in the proposed class action complaint that they each faced repeated instances of discrimination at work and then faced retaliation when they raised concerns about it.
“Rather than holding anyone accountable, TikTok denied the blatant discrimination that Ms. Matima and Mr. Carter suffered, failed to stop it from continuing, engaged in sham ‘investigations’ of their complaints, took away their work, and then terminated Ms. Matima and Mr. Carter in retaliation for complaining about race discrimination and mistreatment,” the complaint states.
“We are asking the EEOC to investigate TikTok’s pattern or practice of retaliation against workers who complain about discrimination,” the complaint adds.
In a statement to CNN on Thursday, a TikTok spokesperson said: “We take employee concerns very seriously, and have strong policies in place that prohibit discrimination, harassment, and retaliation in the workplace. As an organization, we have a strong record of championing diversity and inclusion.”
TikTok skyrocketed in popularity in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic and as of this year has amassed more than 150 million American users. As the app has become more entrenched in American culture, it has also faced mounting scrutiny from US lawmakers over perceived security concerns due to its China-based parent company’s ties to Beijing. Talks of an outright US ban of the app have simmered in Washington, DC, since the Trump era but have largely subsided in recent months as lawmakers turn their attention to the rise of generative AI out of Silicon Valley.
Even TikTok itself has also acknowledged the important role that Black users play on the platform — and its need to support them.
“Black creators inspire mainstream culture and continue to define what’s next — from creating viral moments and pioneering new spaces in fashion and music, to advocating for others and organizing for a better future, they have always been at the forefront of innovation,” the company said in a statement last January.
Two years earlier, TikTok had acknowledged concerns that Black users felt “unsafe, unsupported, or suppressed” and vowed to “actively promote and protect” diversity on the platform.
‘Dehumanizing and demoralizing’
Carter, who began working at TikTok in June 2021, told CNN in an interview that experience at the company was “dehumanizing” and “demoralizing.”
Carter was initially hired as a risk analyst responsible for managing the safety of TikTok’s ad ecosystem, but was transferred to the platform’s ad policy team as a policy manager eight months later. Shortly after starting his new role, Carter alleges, he discovered that he was being significantly underpaid compared to his colleagues. He says he raised these concerns to human resources and his department leader. Carter was at the time the only Black employee on his 80-person ad policy team, the complaint states.
Carter’s manager prevented him from attending important meetings and took credit for Carter’s work, according to the complaint. Carter alleges that in response to his complaints, his role at the company “was changed and severely diminished,” prompting him to again alert human resources that he was concerned about discrimination and retaliation.
The complaint filed with the EEOC shares parts of Carter’s April 2022 performance evaluation, where he was given an overall score of: “Exceeds expectations.” A reviewer described Carter as “open and humble above all” and a “great teammate.” He was “happy to provide assistance or guidance whenever needed. He never had an ego and was always open to collaboration and feedback,” the reviewer added, per the complaint.
But after Carter began raising concerns at work about racial discrimination, he alleges he was retaliated against in a performance review in April 2023.
He was labeled as “tense” and “angry” and accused of “slamming doors” in the office in that review, the complaint states. But Carter says he never slammed a door in the office. In fact, he says, the doors at the office were hydraulic — not even capable of being slammed.
Carter told CNN that he felt his managers were trying “to establish this narrative of me about being the ‘angry Black man.’” Carter grew emotional as he talked to CNN about the pain and “the historic significance of using that kind of inflammatory language, especially when it’s unfounded.”
His experience at work deeply impacted his mental health, and for the first time in his life he began seeing a psychiatrist and dealing with symptoms of depression for “months on end,” he said. “It was like overwhelming feelings of hopelessness and helplessness.”
Matima — who worked in sales for Lark, ByteDance’s workplace communication division — similarly alleges she was treated differently from the colleagues on her team “who were nearly all white,” according to the complaint. For example, Matima says she was not given adequate time to complete required onboarding courses before being asked to start her work, so she had to finish the courses during nights and weekends. By contrast, Matima’s white colleagues “were given ample time during normal work hours to complete their training before they were required to start their sales outreach,” the complaint states.
In January 2023, the complaint alleges, Matima was told by a colleague that her manager and other colleagues “commonly referred” to her as a “black snake.”
“This outrageous ‘black snake’ nickname was not only racially derogatory and inflammatory, but also suggested that Ms. Matima is a deceitful, untrustworthy, and sneaky person,” the complaint states.
Matima and Carter both allege that multiple requests to switch managers were denied and that their complaints to the company’s human resources department were not adequately investigated and managed.
Both Matima and Carter were ultimately terminated by TikTok in August.
Now Matima says she feels a “moral obligation” to share the experiences publicly. “When there is injustice happening, it festers in the dark and the shadows,” she said. “By going public, we can inspire others who are still suffering in there to stand up and speak out.”
Are you a current for former employee of TikTok or ByteDance and have information to share about what it’s like to work there? Learn how to reach out journalists securely: https://www.cnn.com/tips/
O’FALLON, Mo. — In the national reckoning that followed the police killing of George Floyd three years ago, about 2,000 protesters took to the streets in a St. Louis suburb and urged the mostly white Francis Howell School District to address racial discrimination. The school board responded with a resolution promising to do better.
Now the board, led by new conservative board members elected since last year, has revoked that anti-racism resolution and copies of it will be removed from school buildings.
The resolution passed in August 2020 “pledges to our learning community that we will speak firmly against any racism, discrimination, and senseless violence against people regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, immigration status, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or ability.
“We will promote racial healing, especially for our Black and brown students and families,” the resolution states. “We will no longer be silent.”
The board’s decision follows a trend that began with backlash against COVID-19 pandemic policies in places around the nation. School board elections have become intense political battlegrounds, with political action groups successfully electing candidates promising to take action against teachings on race and sexuality, remove books deemed offensive and stop transgender-inclusive sports teams.
The Francis Howell district is among Missouri’s largest, with 17,000 students, about 87% of whom are white. The vote, which came during an often contentious meeting Thursday, rescinded resolutions 75 days after “a majority of current Board of Education members were not signatories to the resolution or did not otherwise vote to adopt the resolution.”
While a few others also will be canceled, the anti-racism resolution was clearly the focus. Dozens of people opposed to its revocation packed the board meeting, many holding signs reading, “Forward, not backward.”
Kimberly Thompson, who is Black, attended Francis Howell schools in the 1970s and 1980s, and her two children graduated from the district. She described several instances of racism and urged the board to stand by its 2020 commitment.
“This resolution means hope to me, hope of a better Francis Howell School District,” Thompson said. “It means setting expectations for behavior for students and staff regardless of their personal opinions.”
The board’s vice president, Randy Cook, said phrases in the resolution such as “systemic racism” aren’t defined and mean different things to different people. Another board member, Jane Puszkar, said the resolution served no purpose.
“What has it really done,” she asked. “How effective has it really been?”
Since the resolution was adopted, the makeup of the board has flipped. Just two board members remain from 2020. Five new members elected in April 2022 and April 2023 had the backing of the conservative political action committee Francis Howell Families.
In 2021, the PAC described the anti-racism resolution as “woke activism” and drafted an alternative resolution to oppose “all acts of racial discrimination, including the act of promoting tenets of the racially-divisive Critical Race Theory, labels of white privilege, enforced equity of outcomes, identity politics, intersectionalism, and Marxism.”
Cook, who was elected in 2022 and sponsored the revocation, said there is no plan to adopt that alternative or any other.
“In my opinion, the school board doesn’t need to be in the business of dividing the community,” Cook said. “We just need to stick to the business of educating students here and stay out of the national politics.”
Many districts are dealing with debates over topics mislabeled as critical race theory. School administrators say the scholarly theory centered on the idea that racism is systemic in the nation’s institutions is not taught in K-12 schools.
Others assert that school systems are misspending money, perpetuating divisions and shaming white children by pursuing initiatives they view as critical race theory in disguise.
In 2021, the Ohio State Board of Education rescinded an anti-racism and equity resolution that also was adopted after Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020. It was replaced with a statement promoting academic excellence without respect to “race, ethnicity or creed.”
Racial issues remain especially sensitive in the St. Louis region, nine years after a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown during a street confrontation. Officer Darren Wilson was not charged and the shooting led to months of often violent protests, becoming a catalyst for the national Black Lives Matter movement.
Revoking the Francis Howell resolution “sets a precedent for what’s to come,” St. Charles County NAACP President Zebrina Looney warned.
“I think this is only the beginning for what this new board is set out to do,” Looney said.
The House on Tuesday passed a resolution affirming support for Israel – a direct response to Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s now walked-back comments about Israel being a “racist” state.
The bipartisan vote was 412 to 9 with nine Democrats voting against it.
The Democrats who voted against the measure were: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, Jamaal Bowman of New York, Cori Bush of Missouri, Andre Carson of Indiana, Delia Ramirez of Illinois and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.
In a sign that Republicans sought to put Democrats in a tough spot, Majority Leader Steve Scalise tweeted ahead of the vote: “It should be an easy vote. Will Dems stand with our ally or capitulate to the anti-Semitic radicals in their party?”
Top House Democrats rebuked the Congressional Progressive Caucus chair’s comments from this past weekend that “Israel is a racist state,” which she sought to walk back on Sunday.
“Israel is not a racist state,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Whip Katherine Clark, Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar and Vice Chair Ted Lieu said in a statement Sunday that did not mention the progressive leader by name.
On Tuesday, Jayapal voted for the pro-Israel resolution.
The vote to approve the resolution comes after of Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit to the White House Tuesday and ahead of his address to a joint meeting of Congress a day later, which some progressives have said they’ll skip, citing concerns about human rights. House progressives have been vocal about their opposition to Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the US sponsorship of Israel’s Iron Dome defense system.
Jayapal, a Washington state Democrat, said “Israel is a racist state” on Saturday while addressing pro-Palestine protesters who interrupted a panel discussion at the Netroots Nation conference in Chicago.
“As somebody who’s been in the streets and participated in a lot of demonstrations, I want you to know that we have been fighting to make it clear that Israel is a racist state, that the Palestinian people deserve self-determination and autonomy, that the dream of a two-state solution is slipping away from us, that it does not even feel possible,” she told protesters chanting “Free Palestine.”
Jayapal sought to clarify her remarks in a Sunday afternoon statement, saying that she does “not believe the idea of Israel as a nation is racist,” while offering an apology “to those who I have hurt with my words.”
This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — A northern Michigan city is investigating after a local hair salon owner posted on social media that anyone identifying as other than a man or a woman is not welcome at her business.
Christine Geiger’s online posts have drawn criticism from Traverse City’s mayor and other officials, who said they were looking into whether she was violating a municipal anti-discrimination ordinance.
Demonstrators chanted and carried signs Wednesday outside the business, Studio 8 Hair Lab — Education & Beauty Supply.
In an Associated Press interview, Geiger stood by her posts and said small business owners should be free to serve whomever they wish.
“I just don’t want the woke dollar. … I’d rather not be as busy than to have to do services that I don’t agree with.”
A post last weekend on the salon’s Facebook page, which is no longer available, read, “If a human identifies as anything other than a man/woman please seek services at a local pet groomer. You are not welcome at this salon. Period. Should you request to have a particular pronoun used please note we may simply refer to you as ‘hey you.’”
In another post regarding whether her establishment was “LGBTQ+ friendly,” Geiger wrote, “LGB are more than welcome however the rest of it is not something I support.”
Geiger told the AP her statements weren’t prompted by the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 30 ruling that a Christian graphic artist who wants to design wedding websites can refuse to work with same-sex couples, although she agreed with the decision.
Geiger, 48, said she was motivated primarily by personal experiences and objection to schools and doctor’s offices informing children about gender identification matters.
She said she had been a licensed hairstylist since 2006 and never knowingly had rejected a transgender person’s request for service. Her salon does not take walk-in clients. Her customers are mostly acquaintances and people whom they refer.
“I’ve had a big outpouring of support from my existing clients,” she said, but she’s also been flooded with angry messages, some making threats.
Jack Winn, CEO of a Texas-based hair products company whose merchandise Geiger has used and promoted in her salon, said Thursday he disapproved of her comments and had severed ties with her after receiving more than 1,600 emailed complaints.
State Rep. Betsy Coffia, a Democrat from Traverse City, said Geiger’s comments reflected “breathtaking hate and bigotry.”
City attorney Lauren Trible-Laucht said she would investigate complaints against the salon “based on the relevant legal standards,” including Supreme Court rulings and Traverse City’s 2010 ordinance barring discrimination on numerous grounds, such as sexual orientation and gender identity.
“We are disheartened to hear of any discriminatory behavior in our region,” Mayor Richard Lewis said. “The City of Traverse City has valued itself on providing a safe environment for all people.”
The city of 15,700 anchors a Lake Michigan resort community with sandy beaches, cherry orchards and arts festivals. Some residents say the city’s cheery exterior masks racial and cultural divides similar to those elsewhere in the U.S.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
I started my career as a serial entrepreneur in disruptive technologies, raising tens of millions of dollars in venture capital, and navigating two successful exits. Later I became the chief technology architect for the nation’s capital, where it was my privilege to help local government agencies navigate transitioning to new disruptive technologies. Today I am the CEO of an antiracist boutique consulting firm where we help social equity enterprises liberate themselves from old, outdated, biased technologies and coach leaders on how to avoid reimplementing biased in their software, data and business processes.
The biggest risk on the horizon for leaders today in regard to implementing biased, racist, sexist and heteronormative technology is artificial intelligence (AI).
Today’s entrepreneurs and innovators are exploring ways to use to enhance efficiency, productivity and customer service, but is this technology truly an advancement or does it introduce new complications by amplifying existing cultural biases, like sexism and racism?
Soon, most — if not all — major enterprise platforms will come with built-in AI. Meanwhile, employees will be carrying around AI on their phones by the end of the year. AI is already affecting workplace operations, but marginalized groups, people of color, LGBTQIA+, neurodivergent folx, and disabled people have been ringing alarms about how AI amplifies biased content and spreads disinformation and distrust.
To understand these impacts, we will review five ways AI can deepen racial bias and social inequalities in your enterprise. Without a comprehensive and socially informed approach to AI in your organization, this technology will feed institutional biases, exacerbate social inequalities, and do more harm to your company and clients. Therefore, we will explore practical solutions for addressing these issues, such as developing better AI training data, ensuring transparency of the model output and promoting ethical design.
Enterprises rely on AI software to screen and hire candidates, but the software is inevitably as biased as the people in human resources (HR) whose data was used to train the algorithms. There are no standards or regulations for developing AI hiring algorithms. Software developers focus on creating AI that imitates people. As a result, AI faithfully learns all the biases of people used to train it across all data sets.
Reasonable people would not hire an HR executive who (consciously or unconsciously) screens out people whose names sound diverse, right? Well, by relying on datasets that contain biased information, such as past hiring decisions and/or criminal records, AI inserts all these biases into the decision-making process. This bias is particularly damaging to marginalized populations, who are more likely to be passed over for employment opportunities due to markers of race, gender, sexual orientation, disability status, etc.
How to address it:
Keep socially conscious human beings involved with the screening and selection process. Empower them to question, interrogate and challenge AI-based decisions.
Train your employees that AI is neither neutral nor intelligent. It is a tool — not a colleague.
Ask potential vendors whether their screening software has undergone AI equity auditing. Let your vendor partners know this important requirement will affect your buying decisions.
Load test resumes that are identical except for some key altered equity markers. Are identical resumes in Black zip codes rated lower than those in white majority zip codes? Report these biases as bugs and share your findings with the world via Twitter.
Insist that vendor partners demonstrate that the AI training data are representative of diverse populations and perspectives.
Use the AI itself to push back against the bias. Most solutions will soon have a chat interface. Ask the AI to identify qualified marginalized candidates (e.g., Black, female, and/or queer) and then add them to the interview list.
Risk #2: Developing racist, biased and harmful AI software
ChatGPT 4 has made it ridiculously easy for information technology (IT) departments to incorporate AI into existing software. Imagine the lawsuit when your chatbot convinces your customers to harm themselves. (Yes, an AI chatbot has already caused at least one suicide.)
How to address it:
Your chief information officer (CIO) and risk management team should develop some common-sense policies and procedures around when, where, how, and who decides what AI resources can be deployed now. Get ahead of this.
If developing your own AI-driven software, stay away from public internet-trained models. Large data models that incorporate everything published on the internet are riddled with bias and harmful learning.
Use AI technologies trained only on bounded, well-understood datasets.
Strive for algorithmic transparency. Invest in model documentation to understand the basis for AI-driven decisions.
Do not let your people automate or accelerate processes known to be biased against marginalized groups. For example, automated facial recognition technology is less accurate in identifying people of color than white counterparts.
Seek external review from Black and Brown experts on diversity and inclusion as part of the AI development process. Pay them well and listen to them.
Risk #3: Biased AI abuses customers
AI-powered systems can lead to unintended consequences that further marginalize vulnerable groups. For example, AI-driven chatbots providing customer service frequently harm marginalized people in how they respond to inquiries. AI-powered systems also manipulate and exploit vulnerable populations, such as facial recognition technology targeting people of color with predatory advertising and pricing schemes.
How to address it:
Do not deploy solutions that harm marginalized people. Stand up for what is right and educate yourself to avoid hurting people.
Build models responsive to all users. Use language appropriate for the context in which they are deployed.
Do not remove the human element from customer interactions. Humans trained in cultural sensitivity should oversee AI, not the other way around.
Hire Black or Brown diversity and technology consultants to help clarify how AI is treating your customers. Listen to them and pay them well.
Risk #4: Perpetuating structural racism when AI makes financial decisions
AI-powered banking and underwriting systems tend to replicate digital redlining. For example, automated loan underwriting algorithms are less likely to approve loans for applicants from marginalized backgrounds or Black or Brown neighborhoods, even when they earn the same salary as approved applicants.
How to address it:
Remove bias-inducing demographic variables from decision-making processes and regularly evaluate algorithms for bias.
Seek external reviews from experts on diversity and inclusion that focus on identifying potential biases and developing strategies to mitigate them.
Use mapping software to draw visualizations of AI recommendations and how they compare with marginalized peoples’ demographic data. Remain curious and vigilant about whether AI is replicating structural racism.
Use AI to push back by requesting that it find loan applications with lower scores due to bias. Make better loans to Black and Brown folks.
Risk #5: Using health system AI on populations it is not trained for
A pediatric health center serving poor disabled children in a major city was at risk of being displaced by a large national health system that convinced the regulator that its Big Data AI engine provided cheaper, better care than human care managers. However, the AI was trained on data from Medicare (mainly white, middle-class, rural and suburban, elderly adults). Making this AI — which is trained to advise on care for elderly people — responsible for medication recommendations for disabled children could have produced fatal outcomes.
How to address it:
Always look at the data used to train AI. Is it appropriate for your population? If not, do not use the AI.
Conclusion
Many people in the AI industry are shouting that AI products will cause the end of the world. Scare-mongering leads to headlines, which lead to attention and, ultimately, wealth creation. It also distracts people from the harm AI is already causing to your marginalized customers and employees.
Do not be fooled by the apocalyptic doomsayers. By taking reasonable, concrete steps, you can ensure that their AI-powered systems are not contributing to existing social inequalities or exploiting vulnerable populations. We must quickly master harm reduction for people already dealing with more than their fair share of oppression.
LONDON — Officials on the Orkney Islands, a corner of Scotland with Viking roots and an independent spirit, seized a moment in the global spotlight on Tuesday and voted to explore ways of seeking more autonomy — or even independence — from neglectful U.K. governments.
Journalists from across Britain and around the world tuned in remotely as Orkney Islands Council voted to study “alternative models of governance” for the archipelago, which has a population of 22,000.
The proposal from council leader James Stockan grabbed international headlines with its mention of potentially restoring Orkney’s “Nordic connections.” Orkney was under Norwegian and Danish control for centuries until 1472 when the islands were taken by the Scottish crown as part of Margaret of Denmark’s wedding dowry to King James III of Scotland.
Stockan said his proposal “is not about us joining Norway,” but about countering the “discrimination that we’ve had against this community” from the Scottish and U.K. governments.
“I say, ‘Enough,’” he said. “I say it is time for government to take us seriously, and it is time for us to look at all the options we’ve got.”
A report accompanying Stockan’s motion suggested Orkney should investigate options including a status like the Faeroe Islands, a self-governing dependency of Denmark that lies between Scotland and Iceland. Another option is emulating Britain’s Crown Dependencies such as the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey.
Long an impoverished area reliant on the unpredictable fishing industry, Orkney prospered after large reserves of oil were discovered offshore in the 1960s. The islands, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) north of mainland Scotland, also have a burgeoning wind-power industry and a growing tourism sector.
But Stockan said Orkney gets less support from the Scottish government than other island communities in Shetland or the Hebrides, and is desperately in need of new ferries to keep its many islands connected.
Another councilor, Duncan Tullock, said Orkney was “living off crumbs.”
“I’ve never been more disillusioned in my life with both the Scottish and the U.K. governments,” he said. “We have had promise upon promise upon promise, every single one of them empty.”
Any major constitutional change is a long shot, likely requiring a referendum and legislation by the Scottish and U.K. governments. The governments in Edinburgh and London are themselves at loggerheads over the Scottish administration’s ambition to make Scotland an independent country outside the United Kingdom.
The U.K. government said there was “no mechanism” to change the status of Orkney. The Norwegian government said the debate was “a domestic and constitutional British matter” on which it had no view.
Councilor David Dawson criticized some of the ideas being floated for Orkney as “daydreams” — especially the “quite frankly bizarre fantasy of becoming a self-governing dependency of Norway.”
He said the U.K.’s rocky departure from the European Union served as a warning about the risks of going it alone.
“Let me caution you with one word,” he said. “Brexit.”
Unrest across France sparked by the police shooting of a 17-year-old appeared to slow on its sixth night, but still public buildings, cars and municipal trash cans were targeted nationwide by fires and vandalism overnight into Monday
Police officers patrol on the Champs Elysees in Paris, Saturday, July 1, 2023. President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday scrapped an official trip to Germany after a fourth straight night of rioting and looting across France in defiance of a massive police deployment. Hundreds turned out for the burial of the 17-year-old whose killing by police triggered the unrest. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
The Associated Press
PARIS — PARIS (AP) — Unrest across France sparked by the police shooting of a 17-year-old appeared to slow on its sixth night, but still public buildings, cars and municipal trash cans were targeted nationwide by fires and vandalism overnight into Monday.
In all, according to the Interior Ministry, there were 157 arrests overnight, out of a total of 3,354 arrests in all since June 27, and two law enforcement stations were attacked, among other damage.
Around 45,000 officers were deployed nationwide to counter violence fuelled by anger over discrimination against people who trace their roots to former French colonies and live in low-income neighborhoods. Nahel, the teenager killed last Tuesday, was of Algerian descent and was shot in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.
Across France, 297 vehicles were torched overnight along with 34 buildings.
A 24-year-old firefighter died of a heart attack while responding to a blaze in an underground garage that spread to the apartment building above, according to a statement from Paris police. The cause of the fire was under investigation, the statement said.
A burning car stuck the home of the mayor of the Paris suburb L’Hay-les-Roses over the weekend, an unusually personal attack amid the backdrop of fires and vandalism targeting police stations and town halls.
French President Emmanuel Macron has blamed social media for the spread of the unrest and called on parents to take responsibility for their teenagers. Eric Dupond-Moretti, the justice minister, told France Inter radio that parents who abdicated that responsibility “either through disinterest or deliberately” would be prosecuted.
He was cautious when asked whether he thought the protests had eased definitively.
Mayor Vincent Jeanbrun said his wife and one of his children were injured and criticized the government for doing too little, too late — and said blaming social media or parents was papering over a bigger problem.
“The base ingredients are still there. For several years now, all summer long, explosives go off that keep people from sleeping, that make them crazy,” he told BFM television on Monday. “We are powerless summer after summer.”
A new U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing a Colorado Christian graphic artist to refuse to work with same-sex couples has LGBTQIA+ people across the country worried about just how far the consequences will reach.
The high court’s conservative majority sided with Lorie Smith, a designer of wedding websites for heterosexual couples who argued that a ruling against her would force writers, painters, musicians and other artists to do work that is against their beliefs. Opponents warned that a win for Smith would allow a range of businesses to discriminate, refusing to serve Black, Jewish or Muslim customers, interracial or interfaith couples or immigrants.
“We’re treading into some weird territory as people. We’re starting to become the ‘Morality Police,’ and that’s not freedom as far as I am concerned,” Dallas Lyn Miller-Downes, a queer visual artist and activist based in Portland, Oregon, said Friday, hours after the court’s 6-3 ruling. “What I am scared of is that this goes beyond the art. Where do we stop with this?”
One of the court’s liberal justices wrote in a dissent that the decision’s effect is to “mark gays and lesbians for second-class status” and that it opens the door to other discrimination.
In Topeka, Kansas, where several dozen people gathered Friday for a transgender rights rally, Kirby Evers, a 31-year-old bisexual Lawrence resident, said the ruling will make people more comfortable being openly rude or using slurs, particularly to trans people.
He called the Supreme Court “compromised by fascists,” adding, “They’re going to do as much destruction to our Constitution as possible.”
Raiden Gonzalez, a 22-year-old gay Salina, Kansas, resident participating in the rally, said he’s regularly gotten looks over how he walks and talks — and brusque treatment in stores and school, even occasionally from teachers.
“People in the LGBTQ community should be scared of this,” he said.
Miller-Downes said the ruling feels like just another way art is being used as a weapon against the queer community — with drag artists banned in some parts of the country and LGBTQ+ customers at risk of being banned from artistic businesses in others.
“Art should inspire people, heal people and start conversations. We should be known for how we love, not who we exclude — that’s a morality I can stand behind as a Christian and an artist,” Miller-Downes said. “We need to, as a society, celebrate businesses owned by marginalized people so other marginalized people, queer people, know where to get help.”
Legal analysts on both sides of the issue have said the decision is narrow and won’t apply to most businesses. Jennifer C. Pizer, the chief legal officer for Lambda Legal, said in a statement that the ruling applies specifically to businesses that create original artwork and pure speech, and then offer that work as limited commissions.
Still, she said, the ruling continued the court majority’s “dangerous siren call to those trying to return the country to the social and legal norms of the Nineteenth Century.”
Sarah Warbelow, legal director at Human Rights Campaign, said Friday’s ruling does not dismantle the public accommodations laws that protect people based on sexual orientation and gender identity in 22 states.
Those states can still enforce their nondiscrimination laws for employment, housing and buying goods that are not highly customizable with speech, she said. For instance, someone preparing for a same-sex marriage could still buy a wedding gown customized with colors.
But Warbelow said the ruling also opens the door to businesses being allowed to discriminate against people for reasons other than sexual orientation, like religion.
Many conservative religious leaders welcomed the ruling, including Brent Leatherwood, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy wing.
“If the government can compel an individual to speak a certain way or create certain things, that’s not freedom — it’s subjugation. And that is precisely what the state of Colorado wanted,” said Leatherwood.
Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, which advocates for greater LGBTQ+ acceptance in the Catholic Church, said the decision “dangerously allows religious beliefs to be weaponized for discrimination.”
“Religion should be a tool to help unite people across ideological lines, not cause greater isolation into camps that oppose one another,” he said.
Christine Zuba, a transgender woman from Blackwood, New Jersey, has been active in seeking to increase acceptance of trans people in the Catholic Church. She said the justices who made the “extremely disappointing and concerning” ruling were “naïve” to think the decision wouldn’t lead to discrimination against other groups as well.
While some small businesses could use the ruling to stop serving some customers, they should be aware that there will be repercussions, said Gene Marks, owner of The Marks Group, a small business consulting firm in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.
“If you’re a business and you’re going to turn down customers just because they’re different or your religion doesn’t support their style of life, fair enough, but it’s going to be a loss of revenue to you not only from that customer, but also from their friends, their family, their community,” he said. “And it can also be potentially bad press regardless of how the Supreme Court rules.”
___
AP journalists Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey; John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; David Crary and Mae Anderson in New York; Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina; and Jessica Gresko in Washington contributed to this story. Boone reported from Boise, Idaho.
A new U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing a Colorado Christian graphic artist to refuse to work with same-sex couples has LGBTQIA+ people across the country worried about just how far the consequences will reach.
The high court’s conservative majority sided with Lorie Smith, a designer of wedding websites for heterosexual couples who argued that a ruling against her would force writers, painters, musicians and other artists to do work that is against their beliefs. Opponents warned that a win for Smith would allow a range of businesses to discriminate, refusing to serve Black, Jewish or Muslim customers, interracial or interfaith couples or immigrants.
“We’re treading into some weird territory as people. We’re starting to become the ‘Morality Police,’ and that’s not freedom as far as I am concerned,” Dallas Lyn Miller-Downes, a queer visual artist and activist based in Portland, Oregon, said Friday, hours after the court’s 6-3 ruling. “What I am scared of is that this goes beyond the art. Where do we stop with this?”
One of the court’s liberal justices wrote in a dissent that the decision’s effect is to “mark gays and lesbians for second-class status” and that it opens the door to other discrimination.
In Topeka, Kansas, where several dozen people gathered Friday for a transgender rights rally, Kirby Evers, a 31-year-old bisexual Lawrence resident, said the ruling will make people more comfortable being openly rude or using slurs, particularly to trans people.
He called the Supreme Court “compromised by fascists,” adding, “They’re going to do as much destruction to our Constitution as possible.”
Raiden Gonzalez, a 22-year-old gay Salina, Kansas, resident participating in the rally, said he’s regularly gotten looks over how he walks and talks — and brusque treatment in stores and school, even occasionally from teachers.
“People in the LGBTQ community should be scared of this,” he said.
Miller-Downes said the ruling feels like just another way art is being used as a weapon against the queer community — with drag artists banned in some parts of the country and LGBTQ+ customers at risk of being banned from artistic businesses in others.
“Art should inspire people, heal people and start conversations. We should be known for how we love, not who we exclude — that’s a morality I can stand behind as a Christian and an artist,” Miller-Downes said. “We need to, as a society, celebrate businesses owned by marginalized people so other marginalized people, queer people, know where to get help.”
Legal analysts on both sides of the issue have said the decision is narrow and won’t apply to most businesses. Jennifer C. Pizer, the chief legal officer for Lambda Legal, said in a statement that the ruling applies specifically to businesses that create original artwork and pure speech, and then offer that work as limited commissions.
Still, she said, the ruling continued the court majority’s “dangerous siren call to those trying to return the country to the social and legal norms of the Nineteenth Century.”
Sarah Warbelow, legal director at Human Rights Campaign, said Friday’s ruling does not dismantle the public accommodations laws that protect people based on sexual orientation and gender identity in 22 states.
Those states can still enforce their nondiscrimination laws for employment, housing and buying goods that are not highly customizable with speech, she said. For instance, someone preparing for a same-sex marriage could still buy a wedding gown customized with colors.
But Warbelow said the ruling also opens the door to businesses being allowed to discriminate against people for reasons other than sexual orientation, like religion.
Many conservative religious leaders welcomed the ruling, including Brent Leatherwood, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy wing.
“If the government can compel an individual to speak a certain way or create certain things, that’s not freedom — it’s subjugation. And that is precisely what the state of Colorado wanted,” said Leatherwood.
Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, which advocates for greater LGBTQ+ acceptance in the Catholic Church, said the decision “dangerously allows religious beliefs to be weaponized for discrimination.”
“Religion should be a tool to help unite people across ideological lines, not cause greater isolation into camps that oppose one another,” he said.
Christine Zuba, a transgender woman from Blackwood, New Jersey, has been active in seeking to increase acceptance of trans people in the Catholic Church. She said the justices who made the “extremely disappointing and concerning” ruling were “naïve” to think the decision wouldn’t lead to discrimination against other groups as well.
While some small businesses could use the ruling to stop serving some customers, they should be aware that there will be repercussions, said Gene Marks, owner of The Marks Group, a small business consulting firm in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.
“If you’re a business and you’re going to turn down customers just because they’re different or your religion doesn’t support their style of life, fair enough, but it’s going to be a loss of revenue to you not only from that customer, but also from their friends, their family, their community,” he said. “And it can also be potentially bad press regardless of how the Supreme Court rules.”
___
AP journalists Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey; John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; David Crary and Mae Anderson in New York; Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina; and Jessica Gresko in Washington contributed to this story. Boone reported from Boise, Idaho.
A new U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing a Colorado Christian graphic artist to refuse to work with same-sex couples has LGBTQIA+ people across the country worried about just how far the consequences will reach.
The high court’s conservative majority sided with Lorie Smith, a designer of wedding websites for heterosexual couples who argued that a ruling against her would force writers, painters, musicians and other artists to do work that is against their beliefs. Opponents warned that a win for Smith would allow a range of businesses to discriminate, refusing to serve Black, Jewish or Muslim customers, interracial or interfaith couples or immigrants.
“We’re treading into some weird territory as people. We’re starting to become the ‘Morality Police,’ and that’s not freedom as far as I am concerned,” Dallas Lyn Miller-Downes, a queer visual artist and activist based in Portland, Oregon, said Friday, hours after the court’s 6-3 ruling. “What I am scared of is that this goes beyond the art. Where do we stop with this?”
One of the court’s liberal justices wrote in a dissent that the decision’s effect is to “mark gays and lesbians for second-class status” and that it opens the door to other discrimination.
In Topeka, Kansas, where several dozen people gathered Friday for a transgender rights rally, Kirby Evers, a 31-year-old bisexual Lawrence resident, said the ruling will make people more comfortable being openly rude or using slurs, particularly to trans people.
He called the Supreme Court “compromised by fascists,” adding, “They’re going to do as much destruction to our Constitution as possible.”
Raiden Gonzalez, a 22-year-old gay Salina, Kansas, resident participating in the rally, said he’s regularly gotten looks over how he walks and talks — and brusque treatment in stores and school, even occasionally from teachers.
“People in the LGBTQ community should be scared of this,” he said.
Miller-Downes said the ruling feels like just another way art is being used as a weapon against the queer community — with drag artists banned in some parts of the country and LGBTQ+ customers at risk of being banned from artistic businesses in others.
“Art should inspire people, heal people and start conversations. We should be known for how we love, not who we exclude — that’s a morality I can stand behind as a Christian and an artist,” Miller-Downes said. “We need to, as a society, celebrate businesses owned by marginalized people so other marginalized people, queer people, know where to get help.”
Legal analysts on both sides of the issue have said the decision is narrow and won’t apply to most businesses. Jennifer C. Pizer, the chief legal officer for Lambda Legal, said in a statement that the ruling applies specifically to businesses that create original artwork and pure speech, and then offer that work as limited commissions.
Still, she said, the ruling continued the court majority’s “dangerous siren call to those trying to return the country to the social and legal norms of the Nineteenth Century.”
Sarah Warbelow, legal director at Human Rights Campaign, said Friday’s ruling does not dismantle the public accommodations laws that protect people based on sexual orientation and gender identity in 22 states.
Those states can still enforce their nondiscrimination laws for employment, housing and buying goods that are not highly customizable with speech, she said. For instance, someone preparing for a same-sex marriage could still buy a wedding gown customized with colors.
But Warbelow said the ruling also opens the door to businesses being allowed to discriminate against people for reasons other than sexual orientation, like religion.
Many conservative religious leaders welcomed the ruling, including Brent Leatherwood, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy wing.
“If the government can compel an individual to speak a certain way or create certain things, that’s not freedom — it’s subjugation. And that is precisely what the state of Colorado wanted,” said Leatherwood.
Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, which advocates for greater LGBTQ+ acceptance in the Catholic Church, said the decision “dangerously allows religious beliefs to be weaponized for discrimination.”
“Religion should be a tool to help unite people across ideological lines, not cause greater isolation into camps that oppose one another,” he said.
Christine Zuba, a transgender woman from Blackwood, New Jersey, has been active in seeking to increase acceptance of trans people in the Catholic Church. She said the justices who made the “extremely disappointing and concerning” ruling were “naïve” to think the decision wouldn’t lead to discrimination against other groups as well.
While some small businesses could use the ruling to stop serving some customers, they should be aware that there will be repercussions, said Gene Marks, owner of The Marks Group, a small business consulting firm in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.
“If you’re a business and you’re going to turn down customers just because they’re different or your religion doesn’t support their style of life, fair enough, but it’s going to be a loss of revenue to you not only from that customer, but also from their friends, their family, their community,” he said. “And it can also be potentially bad press regardless of how the Supreme Court rules.”
___
AP journalists Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey; John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; David Crary and Mae Anderson in New York; Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina; and Jessica Gresko in Washington contributed to this story. Boone reported from Boise, Idaho.
The mother of a 17-year-old killed by French police said she blames only the officer who shot her son for his death, a tragedy that has sparked three consecutive nights of destructive unrest and revived a heated debate about discrimination and policing in low-income, multi-ethnic communities.
The boy, Nahel, was shot dead during a traffic stop Tuesday morning in the Paris suburb of Nanterre. Footage of the incident filmed by a bystander showed two officers standing on the driver’s side of the car, one of whom fired his gun at the driver despite not appearing to be in any immediate danger.
The officer said he fired his gun out of fear that the boy would run someone over with the car, according to Nanterre prosecutor Pascal Prache.
“I don’t blame the police, I blame one person, the one who took my son’s life,” Nahel’s mother, Mounia, told television station France 5 in an on-camera interview.
Prache said that it is believed the officer acted illegally in using his weapon. He is currently facing a formal investigation for voluntary homicide and has been placed in preliminary detention.
Despite calls from top officials for patience to allow time for the justice system to run its course, a sizable number of people across France remain shocked and angry, especially young men and women of color who have been victims of discrimination by police.
That anger has, for three nights in a row, given way to violent protests across the nation.
Ahead of another expected night of unrest, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said 45,000 policemen would deploy across France on Friday, and that he is also mobilizing more special units, armored vehicles and helicopters.
Some 917 people were detained following overnight violence on Thursday, including 13 children, Darmanin told French TV channel TF1.
The death of the young man “cannot justify the disorder and the delinquency,” the minister added.
Confrontations flared between protesters and police in Nanterre on Thursday, where a bank was set on fire and graffiti saying “vengeance pour Nael” (using an alternative spelling of his name) was spray painted on a wall nearby.
Overseas French territories have also witnessed protests. A man was killed by a “stray bullet” in Cayenne, capital of French Guiana, during riots on Thursday.
Scars from three days of protests were clear in the suburb on Friday, as was the acrid smell left behind by burning detritus, which was being removed. Streets remained charred where burning cars used to be, with patches of graffiti calling on justice for Nahel and insulting the police. Near the site of a pitched battle with police, a smattering of dug-up bricks, tear gas canisters, rubber bullets and metal barriers remain splayed about.
Across the country, 200 government buildings were vandalized on Thursday night, according to the French Interior Ministry.
All “large-scale events” in France have been banned as of Friday afternoon, and bus and tram services across faced a nationwide shutdown ordered for 9 p.m. on Friday evening.
In Britain, authorities issued a travel warning due to “violent” riots targeting “shops, public buildings and parked cars.” They also cautioned disruptions to road travel, local transportation and the implementation of curfews.
The German government expressed “concern” over the nationwide protests in France, adding there was no indication that Macron would cancel an upcoming state visit to Berlin.
The violence has prompted President Emmanuel Macron to hold a crisis meeting the second day in a row, BFMTV reported, as his government tries to avoid a repeat of 2005. The deaths of two teenage boys hiding from police that year sparked three weeks of rioting and prompted the government to call a state of emergency.
He had returned from a European Council summit on Thursday in Brussels to convene the crisis meeting.
The French president called for calm and asked parents to take responsibility for their children amid the unrest. He said the situation is “unacceptable” and “unjustifiable, especially when the violence is targeting public building.”
A third of the almost 900 people detained overnight are young, Macron told reporters at the Interior Ministry. Authorities will be investigating the role of social media in inciting the riots, and there will be further “measures” announced in the coming hours, he added.
Continued unrest would be a major blow to the government’s agenda. Macron and his ministers have spent much of the year dealing with the fallout of pushing through extremely unpopular pension reforms that were divisive enough that the government felt it necessary to launch a 100-day plan to heal and unite the country.
That deadline is up on July 14, France’s national day.
Macron attended an Elton John concert in Paris on Wednesday, even as the demonstrations boiled over.
Elton John’s husband, David Furnish posted a picture on Instagram on Thursday of himself and Elton John smiling backstage with the French president and his wife, Brigitte Macron after the show at the Accor Arena.
If Macron’s government is to address allegations of institutional racism in response to Nahel’s death, it will be a tough balancing act.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called on France to address “deep issues of racism and discrimination in law enforcement’ on Friday, a statement the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs described as “totally unfounded.”
The ministry described law enforcement in France as subject to various levels of “judicial control that few countries have.
“France, and its police forces, fight with determination against racism and all forms of discrimination. There can be no doubt about this commitment,” the ministry added. “The use of force by the national police and gendarmerie is governed by the principles of absolute necessity and proportionality, strictly framed and controlled.”
Race and discrimination are always tricky political issues, but in France they are particularly challenging due to the country’s unique brand of secularism, which seeks to ensure equality for all by removing markers of difference, rendering all citizens French first.
In practice, however, that vigorous adherence to French Republicanism often prevents the government from doing anything that would appear to differentiate French citizens on the basis of race, including collecting statistics.
Mounia, like other activists, believes her son’s race was a factor in his killing. French media have reported that Nahel was of Algerian descent, and the country’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday issued a statement extending its condolences to Nahel’s family.
“He saw an Arab face, a little kid, and wanted to take his life,” she said, referring to the police officer who fired their weapon.
“Killing youngsters like this, how long is this going to last?” she added. “How many mothers are going to be like me? What are they waiting for?”
While the government’s approach has so far been cautious, left-wing politicians and some activists have called for police reform, including abolishing a 2017 law that allowed police greater leeway in when they can use firearms.
Laurent-Franck Lienard, the lawyer of the officer accused of shooting Nahel, told French radio station RTL that his client acted in “compliance of the law.” He claimed his client’s prosecution was “political” and being used as a way to calm the violent tensions.
He added that his client was “devastated” by Nahel’s death and he did not want to kill him.
“He committed an act in a second, in a fraction of a second. Perhaps he made a mistake, justice will tell,” Lienard said.
Women over the age of 40 have long faced workplace discrimination, but a new study reveals that younger female employees don’t have it much better. CBS MoneyWatch associate managing editor Aimee Picchi has more.
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
WASHINGTON — In a defeat for gay rights, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled on Friday that a Christian graphic artist who wants to design wedding websites can refuse to work with same-sex couples. One of the court’s liberal justices wrote in a dissent that the decision’s effect is to “mark gays and lesbians for second-class status” and that it opens the door to other discrimination.
The court ruled 6-3 for designer Lorie Smith despite a Colorado law that bars discrimination based on sexual orientation, race, gender and other characteristics. Smith had argued that the law violates her free speech rights.
Smith’s opponents warned that a win for her would allow a range of businesses to discriminate, refusing to serve Black, Jewish or Muslim customers, interracial or interfaith couples or immigrants. But Smith and her supporters had said that a ruling against her would force artists — from painters and photographers to writers and musicians — to do work that is against their beliefs.
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court’s six conservative justices that the First Amendment “envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands.” Gorsuch said that the court has long held that “the opportunity to think for ourselves and to express those thoughts freely is among our most cherished liberties and part of what keeps our Republic strong.”
In a dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote: “Today, the Court, for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class.” She was joined by the court’s two other liberals, Justice Elena Kagan and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Sotomayor said that the decision’s logic “cannot be limited to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.” A website designer could refuse to create a wedding website for an interracial couple, a stationer could refuse to sell a birth announcement for a disabled couple, and a large retail store could limit its portrait services to “traditional” families, she wrote.
The decision is a win for religious rights and one in a series of cases in recent years in which the justices have sided with religious plaintiffs. Last year, for example, the court ruled along ideological lines for a football coach who prayed on the field at his public high school after games.
The decision is also a retreat on gay rights for the court. For nearly three decades, the court has expanded the rights of LGBTQ people, most notably giving same-sex couples the right to marry in 2015 and announcing five years later in a decision written by Gorsuch that a landmark civil rights law also protects gay, lesbian and transgender people from employment discrimination.
Even as it has expanded gay rights, however, the court has been careful to say those with differing religious views needed to be respected. The belief that marriage can only be between one man and one woman is an idea that “long has been held — and continues to be held — in good faith by reasonable and sincere people here and throughout the world,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the court’s gay marriage decision.
The court returned to that idea five years ago when it was confronted with the case of a Christian baker who objected to designing a cake for a same-sex wedding. The court issued a limited ruling in favor of the baker, Jack Phillips, saying there had been impermissible hostility toward his religious views in the consideration of his case. Phillips’ lawyer, Kristen Waggoner, of the Alliance Defending Freedom, also brought the most recent case to the court. On Friday, she said the Supreme Court was right to reaffirm that the government cannot compel people to say things they do not believe.
“Disagreement isn’t discrimination, and the government can’t mislabel speech as discrimination to censor it,” she said in a statement.
Smith, who owns a Colorado design business called 303 Creative, does not currently create wedding websites. She has said that she wants to but that her Christian faith would prevent her from creating websites celebrating same-sex marriages. And that’s where she runs into conflict with state law.
Colorado, like most other states, has a law forbidding businesses open to the public from discriminating against customers. Colorado said that under its so-called public accommodations law, if Smith offers wedding websites to the public, she must provide them to all customers, regardless of sexual orientation. Businesses that violate the law can be fined, among other things. Smith argued that applying the law to her violates her First Amendment rights. The state disagreed.
The case is 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, 21-476.
___
Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.
The Supreme Court ended the systemic use of race as a factor in college admissions on Thursday. Jess Bravin, Supreme Court correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, joins CBS News to break down the decision. Plus, Andrew Brennen, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill graduate who testified in the case, shares his thoughts on the outcome.
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
Federal jurors in the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial will soon decide whether to sentence the convicted gunman to death or life in prison – two potential avenues for justice that in the years since the deadliest antisemitic attack in US history have found varying levels of support in an otherwise unified community.
As expected, shooter Robert Bowers was found guilty this month of all 63 counts he faced stemming from the Sabbath morning massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue that left 11 worshipers dead as three congregations gathered to pray. Eleven counts of obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs resulting in death and 11 counts of use and discharge of a firearm to commit murder during a crime of violence were capital counts, making Bowers eligible for the death penalty.
The 50-year-old shooter’s attorneys never contested he committed the 2018 attack, and the case’s main focus is the issue now at hand: whether he is sentenced to death – still an option amid a federal moratorium on carrying out executions – or life in prison without the possibility of parole. For a death sentence to be handed down, the jury must be unanimous.
But even in a community united – not only its grief but in its hope justice will be done – unanimity around the death penalty is elusive: In the years since the massacre, the victims’ families and congregations have expressed differing views about whether the shooter should be put to death. Some are convinced so egregious an attack warrants capital punishment, while others fear a death sentence could retraumatize their community or a life sentence would better honor the victims, they’ve said.
The divergence reflects a broader national split on capital punishment. Recent high-profile cases, too, have shown juries don’t always send mass killers to death row, with the gunman who killed 17 people at a Parkland, Florida, high school and the terrorist who killed eight on a New York City bike path sentenced to life in prison after their juries declined to unanimously opt for death.
Most of the families of those killed at the Pittsburgh synagogue want the shooter sentenced to die, according to a letter to the editor of the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle published in November and signed by seven of the nine families whose relatives were murdered.
“We are not a ruthless, uncompassionate people; we, as a persecuted people, understand when there is a time for compassion and when there is a time to stand up and say enough is enough – such violent hatred will not be tolerated on this earth,” reads the letter written to counter unspecified opinion pieces opposing the US Justice Department’s decision to seek a death sentence.
“Please don’t tell us how we should feel, what is best for us, what will comfort us and what will bring closure for the victims’ families. You can not and will not speak for us,” it reads. “The massacre of our loved ones was a clear violation of American law – mass murder of Jews for simply being Jewish and practicing Judaism, driven by sheer antisemitism – which the law rightfully deems is a capital offense.”
Others have offered a different view. The targeted Dor Hadash Congregation previously voiced its opposition to the death penalty in this case, as did the rabbi of New Light Congregation, who narrowly escaped the shooting in which his faith community lost three worshipers. CNN reached out to Rabbi Jonathan Perlman for comment on his prior position.
“I would like the Pittsburgh killer to be incarcerated for the rest of his life without parole,” Perlman wrote in an August 2019 letter to then-Attorney General William Barr before the decision to seek a death sentence was made. “He should meditate on whether taking action on some white separatist fantasy against the Jewish people was really worth it. Let him live with it forever.”
Perlman’s focus, he wrote, was “not letting this thug cause my community any further pain.”
“We are still attending to our wounds, both physical and emotional, and I don’t want to see them reopened any more. Many of us are healing but many of us (have) been re-traumatized multiple times,” Perlman said. “A drawn out and difficult death penalty trial would be a disaster with witnesses and attorneys dredging up horrifying drama and giving this killer the media attention he does not deserve.”
While the Torah “unambiguously” allows for capital punishment, rabbis in the first and second centuries were hesitant to support its implementation, said David Kraemer, professor of Talmud and rabbinics at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
They feared the flaws of a human court system out of concern innocents could be inadvertently punished, he told CNN. Those rabbis believed it best to err on the side of letting a guilty person go free in part because they believed the guilty would receive an appropriate punishment after death.
“I think the reason they were comfortable with that is because they believed that there was a divine court,” Kraemer said, “that would correct the error that the human court may have made.”
The Justice Department under Barr, an appointee of Republican President Donald Trump, initially chose to try the Pittsburgh shooting as a capital case, even as the US government at that time had not executed a federal death row inmate in almost 20 years. That changed in the Trump administration’s waning days, when 13 federal inmates were put to death over six months ending in January 2021.
The Dor Hadash Congregation lamented the Barr-era decision, writing afterward in late August 2019 it was “saddened and disappointed” the agency chose to push forward with a capital case, despite a letter the congregation said it had sent that same month asking both sides to agree to a plea deal giving the gunman life in prison without parole.
“A deal would have honored the memory of Dor Hadash congregant Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, who was firmly and unequivocally opposed to the death penalty,” its statement read. “It would have prevented the attacker from getting the attention and publicity that will inevitably come with a trial, and eliminated any possibility of further trauma that could result from a trial and protracted appeals.”
The congregation did not feel commenting on the death penalty was appropriate now that the trial has moved on from the guilt phase, its spokesperson told CNN. “We remain very grateful to the Department of Justice and the US Attorney’s office for their work in this matter over the course of the past 4 1/2 years,” Pamina Ewing of Dor Hadash said.
Then in July 2021 – a day after he issued a moratorium on federal executions – Democratic President Joe Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland was sent a letter from seven of the nine families of those slain in the Pittsburgh synagogue attack, urging him to continue to pursue a death sentence in the case, according to Diane and Michele Rosenthal, the sisters of victims David and Cecil Rosenthal.
The letter said the “vast majority of the immediate victim-family members” had not wavered in their desire for the death penalty. “As such, we respectfully beseech you to uphold the prior DOJ decision on the death-penalty qualification of this Capital Murder case and permit it to proceed as originally decided.”
The letter aimed to “reflect … our support in seeking the death penalty in this particular tragedy,” the sisters told reporters in April, weeks before the trial began. They spoke only for their own family, they said, adding the other signatories had agreed to let them share the letter.
The Justice Department under Garland is prosecuting the case, making it the second federal death penalty trial in the era of Biden, who’d campaigned on a promise to abolish the punishment at the federal level but has taken few substantive steps toward doing so.
Since his appointment two years ago, Garland has not authorized the department to seek the death penalty in any new cases, a Justice Department spokesman said, and he continues to assess new requests for authorization to seek or withdraw the death penalty on a case-by-case basis, consistent with federal law and the Justice Manual.
Americans overall remain divided nearly down the middle on the death penalty, as they have been for years following precipitous drops in support for it over recent decades. About 55% of Americans say they are in favor of the death penalty for convicted murderers, a split that’s been relatively unchanged for at least six consecutive years, polling from Gallup shows.
And like in Pittsburgh – where community members have supported each other before the trial and during it – victims of violent crime and their families are no monolith. While some express opposition to capital punishment, others look to it for some semblance of closure or justice.
The Pittsburgh synagogue “massacre was not just a mass murder of innocent citizens during the service in a house of worship. It was an antisemitic hate crime,” Diane Rosenthal said in April. “The death penalty must apply to vindicate justice and to offer some measure of deterrence from horrific hate crimes happening again and again.”
“We don’t want to be here,” she said, “and we know the emotional toll this trial potentially brings. But we owe it to our brothers, Cecil and David.”
Added Michele Rosenthal: “The suggestions published or reported that family members be relieved of the stress of a trial or that a cost-benefit analysis dictates a plea are offensive to our family,” she said. “Our family has suffered long and hard over the last four and a half years. … We don’t want to have to continue to defend ourselves and our position.
“We want justice.”
Beyond the families, many simply are bracing for the Pittsburgh synagogue trial’s penalty phase and how it may impact those touched by the wider ripples of the attack. After the gunman’s conviction, the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh opted to “take no position on what justice is,” its president and CEO told reporters.
“We trust the justice process,” Brian Schreiber said.
Whatever comes of the penalty phase, it will be “gut wrenching,” and “reopen wounds,” said Jeff Finkelstein, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh.
“They keep getting reopened for us here in our Pittsburgh community,” he said, “not just the Jewish community but this greater Pittsburgh region.”
