Less than a month after a key abortion pill hearing, the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday heard arguments for another major reproductive rights case—one out of Idaho that could impact healthcare for pregnant women and people across the country.

Idaho is among the over 20 states that have tightened restrictions on abortion since the high court's right-wing majority reversedRoe v. Wade nearly two years ago with Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. Since August 2022, abortions have been banned in the state except for reported cases of rape or incest or when "necessary to prevent the death" of the pregnant person.

"If the court does not uphold emergency abortion care protections, this ruling will have devastating consequences for pregnant people."

Before Idaho's near-total ban on abortion took effect, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill barred enforcement of it to the extent that it conflicts with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), a 1986 federal law requiring emergency departments that accept Medicare to provide "necessary stabilizing treatment" to any patient with an emergency medical condition.

The Biden administration argues that such care includes abortion; Idaho's Republican policymakers—backed by the far-right Christian Alliance Defending Freedom—disagree. The U.S. Supreme Court in January paused Winmill's order and agreed to hear arguments in Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States.

As The New York Timesreported Wednesday:

In a lively argument, questions by the justices suggested a divide along ideological lines, as well as a possible split by gender on the court. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative, appeared skeptical that Idaho's law, which bars doctors from providing abortions unless a woman's life is in danger or in specific nonviable pregnancies, superseded the federal law. The argument also raised a broader question about whether some of the conservative justices, particularly Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., may be prepared to embrace language of fetal personhood, that is, the notion that a fetus would have the same rights as a pregnant woman.

Also noting Barrett's apparent alignment with the three liberal women on the court, Law Dork's Chris Geidner predicted "it comes down to" Chief Justice John Roberts and fellow right-winger Brett Kavanaugh.

"Already, we see women miscarrying and giving birth to stillborn infants in restrooms and in their cars after hospitals have turned them away, and medical professionals put in impossible positions by extremist lawmakers," said MomsRising executive director and CEO Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, citing Associated Pressreporting from last week.

"Of all the horrors SCOTUS unleashed with its appalling, dangerous, massively unpopular ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, the threat that pregnant people—most of whom are moms—will be denied emergency medical care is among the worst," she asserted. "An adverse ruling in this case will mean emergency rooms can deny urgently needed care to people experiencing serious pregnancy complications that can destroy their health, end their fertility, and take their lives."

Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, deputy director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, similarly stressed that under a decision that favors the Idaho GOP, "pregnant people will suffer severe, life-altering health consequences, and even death."

"We're already seeing the devastating impact of this case play out in Idaho, where medical evacuations to transport patients to other states for the care they need have dramatically spiked since the Supreme Court allowed state politicians to block emergency abortion care," she noted.

The has also been an exodus of healthcare providers. Pointing out that those who violate Idaho's ban face five years in prison, The Guardianreported Wednesday that "between 2022, when Roe was overturned, and 2023, about 50 OB-GYNs moved out of the state."

As Republican lawmakers in various states have ramped up attacks on reproductive freedom since Dobbs, states that still allow abortions have seen an influx of "healthcare refugees." A Planned Parenthood spokesperson confirmed in January that about 30% of its abortion patients in Nevada—which borders Idaho—are from other states.

"With several of Nevada's bordering states enforcing abortion bans, pushing many people seeking care to our state, we've seen firsthand the devastation that anti-abortion policies are already wreaking," Reproductive Freedom for All director of Nevada campaigns Denise Lopez said Tuesday. "The Supreme Court must not allow us to spiral further into this healthcare crisis."

If the high court rules in favor of Idaho's Republican lawmakers, she warned, "all states will be impacted, even in places like Nevada with more than 4 in 5 voters supporting reproductive freedom."

Destiny Lopez, acting co-CEO of the Guttmacher Institute, declared that "at its core, this Supreme Court decision will reflect who we are becoming as a society: Are we okay with requiring pregnant individuals who face severe complications to suffer life-threatening health consequences rather than granting them access to abortion? Are we okay with forcing doctors to choose between violating federal law by not providing emergency abortion care or violating state law if they do?"

"If the court does not uphold emergency abortion care protections, this ruling will have devastating consequences for pregnant people—particularly Black and Brown folks, immigrants, people with lower incomes, those without health insurance, and LGBTQ+ communities—while further emboldening extremists," she emphasized.

Arguments in the case have sparked multiple demonstrations, from a weekend rally in Boise, Idaho to a Wednesday gathering outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., where Women's March organized a die-in to highlight the potential consequences of the forthcoming ruling.

"It's a horrifying time to be someone who needs critical abortion care in America right now," said Women's March executive director Rachel O'Leary Carmona. "The GOP is chipping away at women's bodily autonomy and livelihoods one illegitimate court case at a time—from fast-tracking a case on the authorization of a medication that's been safely administered for decades last month, to now bringing the fate of emergency abortion care to a Supreme Court captured by their radical, anti-choice agenda."

"We know what these cases really are: They're part of a series of efforts by Christian nationalist politicians to do anything they can to control women's bodies and cut back women's decisions about their healthcare, their family planning, and their lives," she added.

Similar warnings about far-right Christian nationalist attacks on a range of rights have dominated political contests this cycle—including the race for the White House. In November, Democratic President Joe Biden, who supports access to abortion care, is set to face former Republican President Donald Trump, who brags about appointing three of the six justices who reversed Roe.

The case has renewed arguments for considering changes to the country's top court, which over the past few years has not only seen plummeting levels of public trust but also been rocked by repeated ethics scandals.

"Idaho's abortion ban is a direct consequence of the court's radical decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and allow partisan state legislatures to determine Americans' access to abortion care," said Stand Up America managing director of policy and political affairs Brett Edkins. "If the Supreme Court once again sides with anti-abortion extremists, it will be further proof that this court is radically out of touch with the American people and must be reformed."

US President Joe Biden has condemned Iranian attacks on Israel and pledged a coordinated G7 diplomatic response. "I condemn these attacks in the strongest possible terms," Biden said in a statement. He said he had spoken with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to "reaffirm America’s ironclad commitment to the security of Israel." "I told him that Israel demonstrated a remarkable capacity to defend against and defeat even unprecedented attacks – sending a clear message to its foes that they cannot effectively threaten the security of Israel." G7 leaders would meet "to coordinate a united ...

Conservative pundit Piers Morgan on Friday told Bill Maher that he doesn't "respect" Donald Trump's recent reversal on abortion. Morgan, who was silenced on his own television show last month when broadcaster Mehdi Hasan delivered a brutal rundown of his reasons why former President Trump should not be reelected as president, appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher. The commentators discussed abortion, where Maher mocked Trump's hard-left turn on the crucial issue. Want more breaking political news? Click for the latest headlines at Raw Story. ALSO READ: Revealed: What government officials priva...

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Democratic Arizona state Senator Eva Burch made headlines last week after speaking on the floor of the state Senate about her plans to obtain an abortion after receiving news that her pregnancy was nonviable. Arizona has banned all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. “I felt like it was really important for me to bring people along, so that people could really see what this looks like,” says Burch, a former nurse practitioner who worked at a women’s health clinic before running for office, about why she decided to publicly tell her story. “I wanted to pull people into the conversation so we can be more honest about what abortion care looks like” and “hopefully move the needle in the right direction,” she adds.

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

As we continue on the issue of reproductive rights, we’re joined by Democratic Arizona state Senator Eva Burch. Last week, she made headlines when she gave a speech on the floor of the Arizona state Senate where she shared her plans to get an abortion after receiving news that her pregnancy was nonviable. State Senator Burch spoke about her struggles with fertility and miscarriage she had over a decade ago.

SEN. EVA BURCH: Two years ago, while I was campaigning for this Senate seat, I became pregnant with what we later determined was a nonviable pregnancy. It was a pregnancy that we had been trying for, and we were heartbroken over it. But now I wish I could tell you otherwise, but after numerous ultrasounds and blood draws, we have determined that my pregnancy is once again not progressing and is not viable. And once again, I have scheduled an appointment to terminate my pregnancy. I don’t think people should have to justify their abortions, but I’m choosing to talk about why I made this decision, because I want us to be able to have meaningful conversations about the reality of how the work that we do in this body impacts people in the real world.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Arizona state Senator Eva Burch, a former nurse practitioner who worked at a women’s health clinic and has been widely critical of abortion restrictions in Arizona, where abortions are banned after 15 weeks of pregnancy, no exceptions for rape or incest. State Senator Eva Burch is joining us now from Phoenix.

We welcome you to Democracy Now! And let me start by saying you publicly announced plans last week to have an abortion. I can’t believe we’re talking about this globally. Did you have the procedure? And what was it like to have to make this public to everyone? And as you did this, Republicans walked out of the state Senate.

SEN. EVA BURCH: Good morning. Thank you for having me on the show today.

You know, I felt like it was really important for me to bring people along so that people could really see what this looks like. I’m at this critical intersection in the abortion conversation, because I’ve been healthcare provider, I’ve been a patient seeking abortion care, and now, as a lawmaker, I knew that my perspective was unique. And I wanted to share that. I wanted to pull people into the conversation so that we could be more honest about what abortion care looks like in Arizona — but this is happening all over the country — and who the abortion patient is, and really try to break through some of the stigma and some of the misunderstanding about abortion care, and hopefully move the needle in the right direction.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Senator, could you talk about how your profession as a health provider and a nurse practitioner has influenced your approach, the conversations perhaps you’ve had with other women in similar situations?

SEN. EVA BURCH: Certainly. I worked in the reproductive healthcare space for some time. I don’t work in abortion care, because that’s not something that’s available to me as a nurse practitioner, but I have had patients who were pregnant who had questions, patients who were concerned about whether or not Arizona is a hospitable environment for someone who is pregnant, patients who are unsure about whether or not continuing their pregnancy is the right decision for them. And we have to counsel them with the understanding that our laws here are in flux, that abortion care is not guaranteed in Arizona by any means, not only for patients who are just uncertain about whether or not they want to continue their pregnancy, but for patients who might be experiencing complications in their pregnancy or pregnancy loss the way that I was.

AMY GOODMAN: You spoke —

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you —

AMY GOODMAN: Go ahead, Juan.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Can you talk about the reaction, since you made your announcement, from other members of the Senate, as well as protesters, how you and your family have coped with that?

SEN. EVA BURCH: Yes, I have had an overwhelmingly positive response. It has really been moving for me. I’ve had people sending me letters to the Legislature. I have had emails and messages and direct messages on social media to the tune of thousands. What I’m mostly receiving are people telling me their own stories or just thanking me for giving them a seat at the table. I think that people really don’t want to bring people along with them with their abortion experiences. This is highly personal, and it’s a little bit taboo, and often it’s a sensitive subject. People don’t want to talk about it, but they want to be heard. And I think people are just really grateful for this opportunity to pull people in and to have a voice, to have a seat at the table.

Now, as far as the reaction within the Legislature, I haven’t had any of my Republican colleagues reach out to me to talk about this, not in the way that maybe I would have hoped for, but I wasn’t overly optimistic about that. It wasn’t so much about trying to convince my colleagues as much as it was about trying to bring light to what’s happening in Arizona so that our constituents can make decisions for themselves and hopefully get engaged in the political process and help us to elect pro-choice candidates up and down the ticket. That’s really what we need in Arizona and in this country to make real change.

AMY GOODMAN: In one of the articles, many about you, state Senator Burch, they said you said that “I was told I could choose adoption, I was told I could choose parenting, which were two things that I couldn’t choose. It was cruel to suggest that that was an option for me, when it’s not.” If you could explain that, then also what it was like to have these Republicans walk out on you, one of them, a female state legislator, walking in, thinking you were done with your speech, then walking out for the second time?

SEN. EVA BURCH: Yes. So, I think that a lot of people don’t really understand the ways that laws can be sort of weaponized against patients, not to necessarily ban abortion, but to make abortion inaccessible or a difficult experience, to create a hostile environment in the abortion clinic, to create confusion in the patient and provider relationship. And we have a lot of that in Arizona. There is this mandatory counseling, where they have to talk about adoption and parenting as alternatives to abortion, which, of course, is not always relevant to patients, which is why it should be medical providers who are determining the appropriate counseling for their patients. They also have to talk about the probable physical and anatomical properties of the fetus at the time that your abortion will take place, which, again, certainly in my case, but in general, is inappropriate and unnecessary. And my pregnancy was not progressing. My embryo was dying and not subject to the probabilities of a normal healthy pregnancy, so that information was also just factually inaccurate for me. But that’s what the providers are required to do because of out-of-touch legislators, who don’t have any medical professional experience, who are writing the laws and dictating what doctors have to say to patients in that environment.

As far as my Republican colleagues filtering in and out and not really listening to what I had to say, I have a couple of thoughts on that. One of them is just that I think that these laws are intended to do what they did. So I don’t think that they are surprised by it or concerned about it. I think that, really, it just reinforces that what they’re doing with these laws is having the intended impacts. So I don’t think that there’s necessarily any need for my Republican colleagues to hear what I have to say, because they’re not going to make any changes or do things any differently because of that. I will also say that I have good relationships with a number of my Republican colleagues. We disagree on a lot of things. It’s really the leadership in the Arizona Senate that is so skewed far to the right. They are extremists. And they really have sort of set themselves up for failure in that way. But I didn’t experience anything that I wasn’t expecting in the chamber that day.

AMY GOODMAN: We just have 30 seconds. If you could respond to the mifepristone oral arguments in the Supreme Court?

SEN. EVA BURCH: Yes. I mean, I can’t believe we’re even talking about it, to be honest with you. I mean, mifepristone has — what is it? — 26 years of safety data and is extremely safe and effective medication. I think that we cannot be setting this precedent where we are allowing religious or extremist organizations to be able to go to highly partisan, Trump-appointed judges and bring a case all the way up to the Supreme Court. I just really hope that they do the right thing. It’s unimaginable that this is where we are with the mifepristone case. We use this medication so much more safely than so many medications that you can buy over the counter. It’s an outrageous conversation that we’re having with this. But I am hoping that the right decision will be made, but it just goes to show how serious the consequences are when we have someone like Trump who is designing a highest court in the land for the people of this country. And we have to be so conscious of that and to work so hard to make sure that we are making better decisions in November.

AMY GOODMAN: Eva Burch, Democratic Arizona state senator, nurse practitioner, announced in her speech on the state Senate floor that she planned to get an abortion last week, to call attention to the restrictions she and others now face.

In Mississippi, six former sheriff’s deputies have been sentenced to between 10 and 40 years in prison for raiding a home and torturing, shooting and sexually abusing two Black men, Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker, in January 2023. The six former deputies, all of whom are white, called themselves the “Goon Squad” and have been linked to at least four violent attacks on Black men since 2019. Two of the men attacked and tortured by the group subsequently died. To discuss the case and the verdict, we’re joined by Eddie Parker and attorneys Malik Shabazz and Trent Walker. “Never have we seen this many police officers sentenced to this kind of time in one week,” says Shabazz, who calls the verdict “historic.” Jenkins, Parker and Shabazz are currently suing the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department over its track record of civil rights violations and racist targeting of Black residents.

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

We end today’s show in Mississippi, where six former law enforcement officers have been sentenced to between 10 and 40 years in prison each for raiding a home and torturing two Black men. The officers, all of whom are white, belonged to a group that described itself as the “Goon Squad.”

In January of 2023, the six officers burst into a home, then beat, handcuffed, waterboarded and tasered Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker. The officers also sexually abused them with an object while shouting racial slurs. One of the officers put a gun in Jenkins’s mouth for a mock execution and pulled the trigger. The bullet lacerated his tongue, broke his jaw, exited through his neck. The officers then planted drugs at the scene in an attempt to cover up their act.

The attack occurred in the majority-white Rankin County, which is about 20 miles away from majority-Black Jackson, Mississippi. Some of the officers were also sentenced for their role in a separate assault just two weeks earlier, when another member of the Goon Squad repeatedly tased a man and put his genitals in his mouth. While the charges focused on these two cases, The New York Times and Mississippi Today have revealed that deputies in the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department have for decades barged into homes, handcuffed people, tortured them for information or confessions.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a statement Thursday saying, quote, “The depravity of the crimes committed by these defendants cannot be overstated, and they will now spend between 10 and 40 years in prison for their heinous attack on citizens they had sworn to protect,” AG Merrick Garland said.

We go now to Jackson, Mississippi, where we’re joined by Eddie Parker, as well as his attorney Malik Shabazz, who is with Black Lawyers for Justice.

Malik Shabazz, let’s begin with you. Can you talk about the courtroom scene and the sentencing of these sheriff’s deputies and police officers for what they did?

MALIK SHABAZZ: Good morning to the Democracy Now! audience and Ms. Goodman.

The scene inside of this courtroom in the United States district court for the sentencing of the Goon Squad was absolutely incredible. And you wouldn’t believe it if it was a movie. I mean, to see the big, bad, intimidating, murderous Goon Squad, to see all of them there, to see all of them in court, crying tears out of their eyes and begging the judge, begging Eddie and Michael, in this packed room, was absolutely incredible. But it was well deserved, because so many other families and victims have had to shed those tears and go to jail for a long time behind their crimes and lies. I mean, Amy, it was absolutely incredible. And never have we seen this many police officers sentenced to this kind of time in one week. And it was awesome.

AMY GOODMAN: Malik Shabazz, talk about how this self-described Goon Squad operated.

MALIK SHABAZZ: OK. Well, they operate worse than criminals. I mean, they handcuff people, like they did to Eddie. When they handcuff, they don’t use warrants. They beat, they tase, they take their private parts out of their pants on another victim. They used dildos on Eddie and Michael, at least attempted to use them on Eddie and Michael. They waterboard, like U.S. troops did in Iraq. They put guns to heads, guns in mouths. They shoot in mouths. I mean, they are — everything you have ever heard that police may do, they did. They throw down guns. They carry throw-down guns. They plant guns. They steal videotapes.

And this is why they have received the longest and strongest sentences for any police brutality case in the history of the United States of America, and even the world. This week, the 132 years given to the Goon Squad defendants represent the longest criminal sentences ever given out, collectively and individually, to police officers in the history of the United States of America. And they deserve every day and hour of it.

AMY GOODMAN: Eddie Terrell Parker, your feelings in the courtroom, after having been so seriously brutalized and tortured, to see these officers put away for years?

EDDIE TERRELL PARKER: It was a moment in history. I mean, it was satisfying. I enjoyed every second of sitting and watching it all, you know, come to reality.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to Michael Jenkins’ mother, Mary Jenkins, who earlier in the week spoke outside the federal courthouse in Jackson, Mississippi.

MARY JENKINS: When I first found out that my son was shot, and that he was shot in the mouth, I was almost certain that he was dead. I called Rankin County, and at first they wouldn’t let me speak with anyone. They said they were in a meeting. And when I finally spoke with someone, I asked him if my son was alive. And he said, “As far as I know.” I said, “When can I see him?” He said, “When we let you see him.” This is a crying mother on the phone trying to inquire about her son. He said, “Michael is our property.” That’s what that deputy told me on the phone. My son’s shot in the mouth, and he’s telling me that Michael is their property.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Mary Jenkins, Michael Corey Jenkins’ mother. Malik Shabazz, will Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker also civilly sue for — not only personally these men, but, clearly, one of the things that their lawyers argued, the lawyers for the sheriff’s deputies and the officers, is that there was this permissive atmosphere that allowed them to operate in this way. Will they be suing the state or the city?

MALIK SHABAZZ: No, we are suing Rankin County and its Board of Supervisors and Sheriff Bryan Bailey, who was supposed to be running a department that supervised and monitored its officers. Unfortunately, during the sentencing hearings, it came out that Brett McAlpin, who is the chief investigative officer, which is similar to internal affairs — the criminals ran the department in Rankin. And that’s why they are facing a very large civil judgment and civil trial in this case. This is a pattern and practice of the Rankin County Police Department to routinely ignore constitutional rights violations.

I want to say one thing, and then I want you to hear from Mississippi attorney Trent Walker. He’s with me. He’s from Rankin. But Eddie Terrell Parker gave the most powerful victim’s testimony in these six days — I mean, these three days of sentencing these six defendants. He was very powerful. Mr. Mel Jenkins, Michael Jenkins’ father, was very influential in these hearings. But I would like you to hear a further answer on your question from Mississippi attorney Trent Walker, who is from Rankin County. Here he is.

TRENT WALKER: Good morning.

AMY GOODMAN: Hi, Trent Walker.

TRENT WALKER: Hello.

AMY GOODMAN: If you can — go ahead. If you can talk about the significance of what’s happened? And does this open up hundreds of cases, going back decades?

TRENT WALKER: It should open up hundreds of cases, going back decades, anything that these six have touched, in point of fact, given the testimony that they themselves gave. And they used terms like there was a “culture of violence.” More than one of them said that, and that violence and brutality was expected for you to work on the night shift, which they did not refer to as the night shift. They talked about it as the “Goon Squad shift.” And so, yes, anything that they touched should go back, be reexamined, and really, just as a matter of course, overturn, because when you find that they’re willing to plant evidence and falsify reports — you know, they had Michael Jenkins charged with aggravated assault on a police officer and with possession of drugs. Michael could have been sentenced to up to 38 years in prison. And as a criminal law practitioner in Rankin County, I can tell you, he would not have been slapped on the wrist, and he would have served many years in prison for those charges that they falsified and put on him.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to U.S. Attorney Darren LaMarca speaking last year, announcing the federal charges against the former officers for the attack.

DARREN LAMARCA: These defendants committed heinous acts of violence against handcuffed victims when they terrorized under color of law. As reflected in the informations unsealed today, these men sexually abused their victims, repeatedly tased them, tortured them, all under the authority of the badge, which they disgraced. … But not only did they brazenly commit these acts, but after inflicting serious bodily injury by firing a shot through one of the victims’ mouths, they left him lying in a pool of blood, gathered on the porch of the house to discuss how to cover it up. What indifference. What disregard for life.

AMY GOODMAN: So, I’m wondering if either Trent Walker or Malik Shabazz can talk about the state charges, also federal charges, what this means. We’re talking about officers sentenced not only for the attack that we’re describing today on Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker, but for two weeks before, when they barged into someone’s home. I think this was Dedmon. And how has he been described? The judge said he committed the most “shocking, brutal and cruel acts imaginable.” Attorney Shabazz, you’ve described Dedmon as “oppressive” and “sick.” Talk about these acts that you know about that they did, that they were sentenced for in addition to the case of Michael and Eddie.

MALIK SHABAZZ: Well, about a month before, they had targeted a person named [Alan] Schmidt. And [Alan] Schmidt allegedly had offended Dedmon because he had allegedly stolen something from one of Dedmon’s friends. So, the Goon Squad gangsters, they had his tag, and they had the tag tracers, and they had an order out. They had an order out that if they found him driving anywhere, without any probable cause to stop him, that they were going to stop him and deal with him.

They found him one night. They called Dedmon, who came, off duty, on duty. And then Dedmon, who was on this night shift — now, I want to remind you that according to the sentencing hearings, you could not work the night shift in Rankin County Sheriff’s Department without being a part of the Goon Squad. And overall, you could not rise or be promoted into the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department without participating in violence and being violent at night with the Goon Squad. And every one of the defendants said that they were doing OK in their careers until they were inducted into this gang called the Goon Squad. OK?

So, Dedmon himself — it’s so much sickness here. But any officer who you see that will whip out his private parts and attempt to put it in the mouth of a defendant —

TRENT WALKER: On the side of the interstate.

MALIK SHABAZZ: — on the side of the road, take his gun out, shoot it by the side of his head to make him believe he’s going to be killed, pull his pants down while handcuffed — this came out in court — pulled the man’s pants down while handcuffed, grabbed his genitals, told him how — the size of his genitals, then dry humped him. I say that it came out in court that Dedmon dry humped the man after they took him to a private house in another jurisdiction. I mean, you wouldn’t believe it if you saw it in a movie, but I’m imagining it will be that one day. But, you know, in Mississippi —

AMY GOODMAN: Well —

MALIK SHABAZZ: I must give — I’ve got to say this. We have a Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, that is headed by a Black woman, and Kristen Clarke takes her job seriously. And her Southern Division attorneys have pursued and made history in this area. And Judge Thomas Lee — they thought that Judge Thomas Lee down here in Mississippi would not do justice. And, oh, how he has set a standard and put police officers on notice all over America that if you do the crime, you’re going to do the time, just like anybody else.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I just want to say, Eddie Terrell Parker, you and Michael Corey Jenkins, amazingly brave in coming forward and describing what happened to you, which seems to have broken open all of these investigations right now. I want to thank civil rights attorney Malik Shabazz and Trent Walker with Black Lawyers for Justice and Eddie Parker, who was tortured by the Goon Squad. Thank you so much, joining us from Jackson, Mississippi.

And that does it for our show. Very happy belated birthday to Tami Woronoff. I’m Amy Goodman. Our website is democracynow.org. Thanks so much for joining us.

Three of the leading U.S. manufacturers of medical-grade nitrogen gas said this week that they will not allow their products to be used in executions, a move that came after Louisiana approved the controversial capital punishment method recently used to kill an Alabama prisoner who appeared to be in agony before he died.

Airgas—owned by the French company Air Liquide—along with Air Products, and Matheson Gas toldThe Guardian that they are banning the use of their nitrogen gas products in the previously untested execution method used to cause death by hypoxia, or deprivation of oxygen to vital tissues.

Veterinarians consider nitrogen gas unethical for euthanizing animals and United Nations human rights experts have asserted that the execution technique may violate international anti-torture law.

"Airgas has not, and will not, supply nitrogen or other inert gases to induce hypoxia for the purpose of human execution," the company said.

Matheson Gas told The Guardian that use of its products in executions is "not consistent with our company values," while Air Products told the U.K.-based newspaper that it has established "prohibited end uses for our products, which includes the use of any of our industrial gas products for the intentional killing of any person (including nitrogen hypoxia)."

Four states—Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma—have approved nitrogen gas for use in executions. Last week, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, signed legislation passed by the GOP-controlled state Legislature expanding execution methods to include the electric chair and nitrogen hypoxia. This, despite the agonizing execution in January of 58-year-old Kenneth Smith, who was killed by the state of Alabama by nitrogen hypoxia on January 25 after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his last-ditch appeal.

Rev. Jeff Hood, a spiritual adviser to U.S. death row inmates, witnessed Smith's killing, which he described as "horrific and cruel." Hood and other witnesses said Smith convulsed violently for several minutes while he was strapped to a gurney and forced to breathe nitrogen gas through a mask. Even prison guards were taken by surprise as the gurney shook and Smith struggled for his life.

Alabama officials had claimed that nitrogen hypoxia is "perhaps the most humane method of execution ever devised."

States have sought alternative means of killing condemned prisoners—including nitrogen gas and firing squads—ever since the European Union banned the sale and export of lethal injection drugs in 2011.

Maya Foa, co-executive director of the anti-death penalty group Reprieve, told The Guardian that "drug manufacturers don't want their medicines diverted and misused in torturous executions and the makers of nitrogen gas share the same objection: They do not want their products to be used to kill."

"States which claim that the lethal injection or gas inhalation are 'humane' methods of execution are merely seeking to mask what it means for a state to forcibly put someone to death," Foa added. "The makers of these products see through the lie and naturally want nothing to do with it."

Last week, an attempt to pass a bill in the U.S. Senate protecting access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) was blocked by Republicans, an example of the ongoing struggle within the party to both appear open to the procedure while also declining to provide legal protections for it.

In the days since the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that gave fertilized embryos the same rights as children, GOP candidates have largely been scrambling to distance themselves from the implications of a policy they have been voting in favor of for decades in anti-abortion legislation.

But the failure last Wednesday to receive a vote on a request for unanimous consent by Democratic Illinois U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth — a disabled veteran who used IVF to become a mother — further signals that IVF and reproductive health care will be a significant issue in the 2024 election.

“My girls are my everything,” Duckworth said, referring to her two daughters. “They likely would have never been born if I had not had access to the basic reproductive rights that Americans, up until recently, had been depending on for nearly a half-century.”

The U.S. Senate debate crystallized how statements by GOP legislators about IVF and what they are willing to do to keep it available are often in conflict.

On Feb 23, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-White Lake), who’s running for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat, posted to his X account a strong renunciation of the Alabama decision.

“IVF has been critical to helping Americans grow their families and realize the blessing of life and parenthood. I oppose any and all efforts to restrict access to IVF — period.”

Rogers’ statement came just hours after a memo was sent by National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) Executive Director Jason Thielman to GOP candidates instructing them to “clearly” state their support for IVF and other fertility-related services and “publicly oppose” any efforts to restrict access to those treatments.

“When responding to the Alabama Supreme Court ruling, it is imperative that our candidates align with the public’s overwhelming support for IVF and fertility treatments,” stated the memo. “By advocating for increased access to these services, opposing restrictions, and emphasizing the importance of supporting families in their journey to conceive, our candidates can demonstrate compassion, respect for family values, and a commitment to individual freedom. This approach aligns with the views of our electorate and positions Republicans as champions for accessible healthcare and family support.”

The NRSC is chaired by Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mon.) who was an original co-sponsor of an IVF ban in 2021.

Rogers is among a slew of GOP candidates seeking the nomination for the Senate race: former U.S. Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Grand Rapids), former U.S. Rep. Justin Amash (R-Grand Rapids), Board of Education member Nikki Snyder; Businessman Sandy Pensler, Alexandria Taylor, an attorney who has previously represented former Michigan GOP Chair Kristina Karamo; Sherry O’Donnell, a former 2022 congressional candidate and Michigan state chair for U.S. Term Limits; conservative businessman J.D. Wilson; Sharon Savage, an educator who worked for the Warren Consolidated School District for 42 years, Ottawa County Commissioner Rebekah Curran; and Michael Hoover, who previously worked for Dow Chemical Co.

But because Rogers is one of only three who has already served in Congress, he has a voting record that can be compared to his statement.

And that is exactly what many X users did, prompting a Community Note on the post.

“In his 14 years in Congress Mike Rogers sponsored 4 bills that would have the same effect as the Alabama Supreme Court’s IVF ruling,” stated the note, which then linked to each of those four bills from 2005, 2007, 2009, and 2013, each of which would provide legal personhood from the moment of conception.

U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly), one of the Democrats seeking the Senate seat, was also quick to connect Rogers to his voting record.

“Come on, Mike,” she posted. “In your 14 years in Congress, you co-sponsored FOUR bills — the last one with Jim Jordan in 2013 — that would have the same effect as the Alabama Supreme Court’s IVF ruling, making it impossible for millions of couples to have a family. You don’t get to run away from your own record because you’re just now understanding the consequences.”

Slotkin is also planning to hold a virtual IVF Town Hall at 7 p.m. Wednesday.

Actor Hill Harper of Detroit and businessman Nasser Beydoun also are seeking the Democratic nomination.

Meijer has not made any statement on the Alabama decision, but similarly cosponsored a 2021 bill that would essentially outlaw IVF, a fact the Michigan Democratic Party made sure to note.

“Mike Rogers and Peter Meijer support dangerous anti-IVF legislation that would rip away Michiganders’ freedom to make personal decisions. Rogers’ and Meijer’s extensive anti-choice records show that they are out-of-step with Michiganders,” said Sam Chan, Michigan Democratic Party spokesperson.

Also supporting the 2021 bill were Meijer’s fellow Republican U.S. Reps. Jack Bergman (R-Watersmeet), Bill Huizenga (R-Zeeland), Lisa McClain (R-Bruce Twp.) and John Moolenaar (R-Midland).

It does not appear Amash sponsored any personhood legislation during his time in Congress, but he is firmly anti-abortion.

“I believe that life begins at conception, and it is unconscionable that government would sanction the taking of the helpless and innocent. I will always vote against government funding of abortion and will fight to protect life at all stages,” stated his former campaign website for Congress.

IVF and how it relates to the Alabama case

In vitro fertilization is a process in which eggs are removed from a patient’s ovaries and then fertilized with sperm in a laboratory. The fertilized embryo is then reimplanted in the uterus so that a pregnancy can result. Approximately 2% of babies born in the United States are conceived through IVF.

However, several attempts may be required for success, so multiple embryos are created during the fertilization process. Those embryos that are assessed to be viable are then usually frozen for future use by the couple.

That was the situation in the Alabama case, in which embryos stored at a fertility clinic in Mobile were accidentally destroyed when they were dropped in 2020 by a patient who “managed to wander” into the clinic. The clinic was sued under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of A Child Act. The lawsuit was dismissed by a lower court which ruled that the embryos did not fit definitions of “person” or “child,” and as such were not applicable in a wrongful death claim.

On appeal, the Alabama Supreme Court, in an 8-1 ruling, determined that the law “applies to all children, born and unborn, without limitation.” Where the issue gets contentious for some is the invocation of overtly religious principles to make judicial decisions that have an effect on the public at large.

Concerns over national reproductive rights ban

Last week, the GOP-controlled GOP legislature quickly passed legislation sponsors said would protect IVF in the state.

Also scrambling to distance himself from the all-GOP Alabama court ruling was former President Donald Trump, who called on state lawmakers to “find an immediate solution” on IVF. The Alabama House and Senate obliged last week and passed separate bills extending criminal and civil immunity to IVF practitioners for IVF treatments. However, it’s unclear how that will ultimately square with the Supreme Court’s stance.

Trump has taken credit for placing three of the justices on the U.S. Supreme Court who voted with a 6-3 majority in the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organizationdecision that overturned 1973’s Roe v. Wade decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion. The Dobbs decision was cited in the Alabama Supreme Court’s IVF opinion and also uses the phrase “unborn human being” multiple times.

By removing the federal protections for abortion that had been provided for half a century, the Dobbs decision allowed each state to set its own laws, which several did, like Michigan, enshrining the right to an abortion in their state constitutions.

The result has been a new push to enact a national ban on abortion that would supersede any and all state laws on the topic.

“I’m not OK with abortion states and non-abortion states. I want an abortion-free America,” said Right to Life of East Texas director Mark Lee Dickson, standing outside the White House last month, at a sparsely attended protest organized by the Christian Defense Coalition where activists held signs of aborted fetuses.

If a national ban can be implemented on abortion, then abortion rights supporters argue that a similar ban can be placed on other issues connected to fertility, including IVF and contraception.

Democrats attempt IVF protections

Duckworth, who is a co-chair of President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, told ABC News’s “This Week,” that she was not at all surprised by the Alabama ruling.

“Republicans have put the rights of a fertilized egg over the rights of the woman. And that is not something that I think the American people agree with,” she said.

Also making the Sunday talk show circuit was Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who was emphatic on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Republicans’ pro-IVF rhetoric wouldn’t undercut the Democratic case that the GOP has extreme positions on issues surrounding women’s bodily autonomy.

“Hell no, it does not,” said Whitmer. “We’ve always known that with the appointments Trump made to SCOTUS that IVF, a woman’s ability to make her own decisions about her body and things that come from that were in jeopardy.”

This year, Democrats introduced H.R. 7056, the Access to Family Building Act, which would establish a federal right to access assisted reproductive technology, including IVF. U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Flint) is a cosponsor of the legislation, which he says would preempt state efforts to limit IVF access and ensure that no parents or doctors were punished for taking part in the process.

“What is happening in Alabama to restrict women’s health care is direct result of former President Trump’s promise to overturn Roe,” Kildee said. “Congress must act immediately to preserve women’s reproductive freedom, including access to IVF. If extreme Republicans support access to IVF, then they will bring this bill to the floor immediately. Every Michigan family deserves the freedom to decide if, when, and how to build a family.”

Joining Kildee in cosponsoring the bill were Slotkin and fellow Michigan Reps. Hillary Scholten (D-Grand Rapids) and Shri Thanedar (D-Detroit).

Advocacy organizations square off

In the wake of the Alabama decision, the National Right to Life organization has not made an official statement. However, the group’s website published an article on Feb. 20 that characterized IVF as “countless embryonic preborn children are created and then discarded when they are deemed unfit or unwanted.”

Similarly, Michigan Right to Life has made no statement on the decision, but has criticized IVF in past social media posts as creating ethical concerns over “designer children” and turning “children into mere commodities.”

Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood said the decision was the logical extension of efforts to date concerning women’s health care.

“We should all be able to build the families and the futures we want, without interference from courts or politicians,” the group posted on social media. “This ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court is the result of years of attacks on reproductive freedom, and efforts to restrict access to health care, including IVF.”

Mary Zieger, a law professor at the University of California Davis, has published six books since 2015 about the history of the national abortion debate.

She told the Associated Press that decisions like the one rendered by the Alabama Supreme Court, which provide fetal personhood, may provide the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority a convenient path forward to grant Constitutional rights to fetuses and embryos.

“And then they’re going to say, ‘Well, look, there’s also all these states that hold this position,’” said Ziegler.

A desire to unite church and state

In a concurring opinion, Alabama Chief Justice Tom Parker repeatedly invoked scripture to make the argument that life begins at conception, thus the frozen embryos that were accidentally destroyed were protected under the law as having the same rights as all citizens.

“But the principle itself — that human life is fundamentally distinct from other forms of life and cannot be taken intentionally without justification — has deep roots that reach back to the creation of man ‘in the image of God.’ Genesis 1:27,” stated Parker.

Parker has also expressed support for the Seven Mountain Mandate, or 7M, a Christian Domionist precept that there are seven aspects of society that Christians need to influence: family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business, and, most tellingly, government.

During a recent interview with Tennessee evangelist Johnny Enlow, Parker detailed his belief in 7M and the concept that only Christians should have political power.

“God created government, and the fact that we have let it go into the possession of others, it’s heartbreaking,” said Parker.

Another adherent to the Seven Mountain Mandate is U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who was among Republicans who expressed support for IVF after the Alabama ruling.

Johnson has numerous connections to a group called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), which has strongly promoted 7M, especially among elected officials. A visible symbol of this affiliation can be seen outside Johnson’s Washington, D.C., office where an “Appeal to Heaven” flag resides. The flag, featuring a pine tree on a white background with the phrase “Appeal to Heaven,” was originally a Revolutionary War symbol, but has been adopted by Christian Nationalists, and was among those prominently displayed during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

Also infusing religious belief into legislative action is the document referred to as Project 2025. Created by The Heritage Foundation, a Washington D.C.-based arch-conservative think tank, the manifesto for a new Trump presidency has created a firestorm of condemnation for its authoritarian agenda that would, among other things, “defund the Department of Justice, dismantle the FBI, break up the Department of Homeland Security and eliminate the Departments of Education and Commerce.”

It also would promote a “Life Agenda” that would explicitly recognize the personhood of an embryo from the moment of conception.

“From the moment of conception, every human being possesses inherent dignity and worth, and our humanity does not depend on our age, stage of development, race, or abilities,” it states.

Even more explicit is the thinking about IVF by the Heritage Foundation itself. Emma Waters is a senior research associate in the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at The Heritage Foundation. She recently called Alabama’s IVF ruling “an unqualified victory.” Waters has also written extensively on how biblical interpretation must be a necessary guide to approaching the procedure.

“[T]he use of many reproductive technologies may violate God’s vision for marriage, sex, and procreation,” said Waters, who added “When people try to produce children in their own power and control, Scripture calls such work vain.”

In a Feb. 26 memo, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre notes Johnson was among more than 120 Republicans, including Bergman, Huizenga, McClain and Moolenaar, to co-sponsor the Life at Conception Act, which she called “an extreme, dangerous bill that would eliminate reproductive freedom for all women in every state.” The bill provides no exception for IVF.

Jean-Pierre concluded her memo saying officials are trying to “obfuscate their way out of their support for these extreme policies,” but their true intent is in their voting record.

“They have spent decades trying to eliminate the constitutional right to choose and undermine reproductive freedom everywhere,” she said. “Their agenda is clear, they’re just worried it’s not popular.”

Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan J. Demas for questions: info@michiganadvance.com. Follow Michigan Advance on Facebook and Twitter.

Abortion rights opponents in Texas dictated terms and pressured officials in New Mexico municipalities to pass ordinances restricting clinics, according to public records — potentially as part of a bigger legal strategy.

Emails show former Texas Solicitor General Jonathan Mitchell and Mark Lee Dickson, founder of the “Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn” initiative, succeeded in influencing local governments in rural parts of the state — despite warnings and hesitation from local officials.

In late 2022 and early 2023, the New Mexico cities of Clovis and Hobbs passed ordinances saying people have no right to violate the Comstock Act of 1873, a previously obscure federal statute that bans the mailing of abortion pills or abortion-related materials. They were later joined by Eunice and Edgewood, and Roosevelt and Lea Counties.

There are some variations among the six ordinances: Lea County’s ordinance specifies financial penalties for violations; the Roosevelt County and Edgewood ordinances allow a private citizen to sue and win monetary damages; and the Clovis, Hobbs and Eunice ordinances impose new licensing requirements on abortion clinics.

Emails obtained via public records requests show Mitchell and Dickson approaching local New Mexico governments to pitch versions of the ordinances.

A legal nonprofit called Democracy Forward brought the emails to light, and Source New Mexico independently verified the records through interviews with local officials and our own records requests.

The emails also show influence and control: Mitchell required any changes to the Clovis ordinance be approved by him, he was providing free legal advice to Eunice about amending the ordinance, and Dickson directed the language of the Hobbs ordinance.

Hobbs Mayor Ed Cobb said in a phone interview that it’s “not unusual for us to be provided information,” adding that the city has taken input from outside attorneys on other ordinances in the past.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean that we copy and paste it, but it’s not prohibited,” Cobb said.

The ordinances now face a challenge at the New Mexico Supreme Court, because they throw up regulatory roadblocks for abortion clinics by barring them from having drugs for medication abortions shipped from other states through the mail. And a 2023 statute gives the state — not local governments — the final say on reproductive health care.

New Mexico’s Democratic Attorney General Raúl Torrez is prosecuting the case against the local governments. He’s asking the justices to nullify the ordinances, and to go even further by setting legal precedent to ensure abortion rights under the New Mexico Constitution.

As of Monday morning, the justices had yet to issue a ruling.

Mitchell is banking on federal law superseding both state law and the New Mexico Constitution, according to a court filing in the case.

Mitchell toldThe Nation that regardless of how the New Mexico justices rule, the legal challenge will accelerate his goal of getting Comstock in front of the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court.

“That is the end game here,” said Joe Gatea, director of oversight and engagement at Democracy Forward and one of the attorneys who originally obtained the records.

Comstock is key in the anti-abortion rights movement’s push for national restrictions, according to legal experts.

Democracy Forward tracks the far-right legal movement and has clashed with Mitchell in courts in Texas and other states. In 2023, the organization noted his efforts as part of “a city-by-city campaign to ban abortion.”

States Newsroomreports that since the decision overturning Roe v. Wade leaked in May 2022, anti-abortion rights activists have flooded state legislatures and city governments with proposals to criminalize pregnancy termination or to add burdensome regulations.

Neither Mitchell nor Dickson responded to multiple requests for comment submitted over weeks.

‘I should have been involved’

Before the ordinances were passed, Mitchell promised to represent Edgewood, Clovis, Hobbs and Eunice in court if they would adopt the measures, which could prevent abortion clinics from operating in their cities.

Some in these communities, including city and county officials, warned against getting involved in this fight over abortion at Mitchell and Dickson’s urging.

“Oh Mylanta. I hope your County Attorney is present to let them know they have no legal authority to do any of those things,” Quay County Clerk Ellen White wrote in an email to Roosevelt County on Sept. 19, 2022.

Reached via phone, White said, “I just didn’t really think it was the business of a county commission to deal with that.” She declined to comment further.

Two attorneys for Hobbs and one for Clovis, along with a Hobbs commissioner, also raised doubts about the ordinances’ legality, the records show.

Clovis does not have an in-house attorney but instead contracts with private lawyers. Jared Morris said he “generally” represents the city in “most of their matters” — but not the abortion ordinance.

Morris said in an interview that he had “zero involvement” in the ordinance.

“(Mitchell and Dixon) already had this ordinance, had it drafted, and their M.O. is to take it to these governing bodies — county or city commissions — and circumvent the in-house attorney, usually,” he said. “So that’s how it worked here.”

But the Clovis city charter requires the city attorney to prepare all ordinances.

“My interpretation is that I should have been involved in the drafting,” Morris said.

While Mitchell’s control over the ordinance’s language is strange, Morris acknowledged it doesn’t necessarily mean the ordinance itself is invalid.

For Gatea with Democracy Forward, the most surprising revelation in the records was one Clovis official’s expression of feeling manipulated.

Morris said in an Oct. 13, 2022 email to the commissioners that Mitchell over in Texas had to approve any changes.

“Mayor was told last night that all changes to the ordinance, even the most minute, must be approved by Jonathan Mitchell to maintain our free defense,” he wrote.

Five days later, Clovis Commissioner Megan Palla raised concerns about Dickson and Mitchell’s motives in an email after noticing “extreme edits” between two different versions.

“I understand Jonathan Mitchell approved all edits, but why?” Palla wrote. “It makes me feel like there is something else up their sleeve and they don’t care what our ordinance says, they just want us to stick our neck out and pass something. Is there some other motive? I feel like a pawn in a game, but I don’t know the rules of the game and what the end result they are looking for.”

Palla did not respond to a request for comment.

And when a commissioner expressed a desire to add an exception to the ordinance for rape and incest survivors, Clovis Mayor Michael Morris — no relation to the attorney — wrote: “Please run it by Mitchell if you like. I support you.”

The Clovis mayor did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.

Mayor Cobb of Hobbs, on the other hand, said while Dickson did offer Mitchell’s free legal representation, the commission and the city’s legal team never entered into an attorney-client relationship with either of them.

“He offered to represent the city and has provided some information, but we’ve never had formal engagement with Mr. Mitchell,” Cobb said. “He did not come down here and tell us what to do. That’s the bottom line.”

Cobb said Mitchell commented on drafts, but the mayor never saw any draft directly from Mitchell, who “was never in any deliberations that I had with city staff.”

But the emails show Hobbs officials did defer to the Texas abortion rights opponents.

In an Oct. 2, 2022 email to Hobbs’ former city attorney, Mitchell wrote, “Attached is a revised Hobbs ordinance along the lines we discussed,” adding that Dickson “signed off on this version.”

Source New Mexico is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Source New Mexico maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Shaun Griswold for questions: info@sourcenm.com. Follow Source New Mexico on Facebook and Twitter.

The ACLU of Florida on Friday led condemnation of a bill passed by the Republican-controlled lower chamber of the state Legislature that "seeks to deny the legal existence of transgender individuals by requiring individuals to identify as their sex assigned at birth instead of their gender on their driver's licenses and ID cards."

Dubbed the Trans Erasure Bill by opponents, H.B. 1639 passed by a vote of 75-33. The ACLU notes that the legislation "also requires health plans to cover the widely discredited practice of conversion therapy and creates additional obstacles for health plans to cover gender-affirming care."

"H.B. 1639 is harmful, vague, and does nothing to improve the lives of Floridians," ACLU of Florida policy strategist NR Hines said in a statement. "It is eerily silent on the consequences for transgender individuals who identify their gender on their driver's license or other government-issued identification instead of their sex assigned at birth."

"It weaponizes state agencies and private insurance companies to threaten the safety and inclusion of transgender people," they asserted. "It is a cruel bill aimed at erasing transgender Floridians out of public life entirely. We have deep concerns about the life-altering impacts on the trans community."

Hines continued:

Last month, we learned of the death of a transgender student after they experienced violence on school grounds in Oklahoma. Nex Benedict should still be alive today. While this violence didn't occur in Florida, the fear and hate towards trans people that some elected officials are spreading directly leads to these unsafe situations. Rest assured that the passage of this discriminatory bill would have a detrimental and real-life impact on the trans community. Thankfully, there is currently no Senate companion bill, and Senate leadership has stated the bill will not be heard.

"We hope this remains true," Hines added. "Trans people belong and deserve the freedom to be who they are."

LGBTQ+ rights—and especially trans rights—are under attack across the country. The ACLU is currently tracking 471 anti-LGBTQ+ bills in a majority of states, including 11 pieces of proposed legislation in Florida.

Last year, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a failed GOP presidential candidate, signed a bundle of bills that activists condemned as the most extreme slate of anti-trans laws in modern history. Among these were S.B. 254, which bans gender-affirming care for minors, while prohibiting nurse practitioners from providing such healthcare to adults.

Last June, federal Judge Robert Hinkle temporarily blocked the enforcement of certain provisions of S.B. 254, saying they constituted "purposeful discrimination" against transgender people.

DeSantis also signed H.B. 1069, which expands the so-called "Don't Say Gay or Trans" law to prohibit educators from discussing sexual orientation or gender identity in grades K-12.

H.B. 1521 empowers cisgender people to order transgender people to leave publicly available restrooms—in places including airports, sports arenas, convention centers, beaches, parks, and public and even private healthcare and educational institutions—or face criminal trespass charges that could result in up to a year behind bars for those who refuse to comply.

The Human Rights Campaign—the largest LGBTQ+ political advocacy group in the United States—issued a first-ever national emergency declaration for LGBTQ+ people last June, citing the torrent of discriminatory and dangerous legislation emerging from Republican-controlled legislatures across the country.

Republican lawmakers in several states have resurrected and expanded the fight over whether transgender people may use bathrooms and other facilities that do not match their sex assigned at birth.

At least one bill goes so far as making it a crime for a transgender person to enter a facility that doesn’t match the sex listed on their birth certificate.

The debate has been popping up in statehouses across the nation in recent months, predominantly in conservative, rural states, including at a hearing of the Arizona Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee in February. Proponents of that state’s SB 1628, which defines “male,” “female,” and other terms through rigid definitions of biological sex, argued that women’s rights are at stake. Opponents disagreed and said the language would erase transgender people from state statute and remove legal protections.

The bill states that Arizona may provide “separate single-sex” environments for males and females, including within athletics, living facilities, locker rooms, bathrooms, domestic violence shelters, and sexual assault crisis centers, meaning that transgender women could be prohibited from entering such spaces meant for women. Researchers have found that transgender women experience assault at a rate nearly four times as high as cisgender women.

The latest round of proposals, like the one in Arizona, expand on an earlier spate of “bathroom bills,” which sought to restrict transgender people’s access to public restrooms and locker rooms. In some instances, the proposed laws would extend far beyond access to facilities by excluding trans people from state anti-discrimination laws and dictating makeup of athletic teams. Legal experts say the new bills put states at risk of violating federal anti-discrimination laws, which could throw billions of dollars in federal funding into jeopardy for states and crisis centers that receive federal grants.

At least one state — Utah — removed lines that specifically mention shelters and similar facilities because of concerns about losing federal funding.

In addition to the bill passed in Utah, lawmakers introduced similar bills in Idaho, Georgia, Arizona, New Mexico, Iowa, and West Virginia. The measures mirror a model bill created by the Independent Women’s Law Center, a conservative nonprofit that seeks to rewrite state laws to rely on sex assigned at birth. Versions of the policy were approved through legislation or executive orders last year in Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Montana. A similar bill was also introduced in Congress last year by Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) and Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.)

Jennifer Braceras, vice president for legal affairs and founder of the Independent Women’s Law Center, testified in support of the proposal in Arizona.

“Everyday Americans know that a woman is an adult human female,” Braceras said, referring to the definition in the bill that a female is “an individual who has, had, will have or would have, but for a developmental anomaly or accident, the reproductive system that at some point produces ova.”

She told state lawmakers that activists seek to convince judges and others that men who identify as women have an unfettered right to enter women’s spaces and said the policy is a tool to restrict that access.

Braceras added that just because the model legislation does not include gender in its definitions, that doesn’t prohibit state lawmakers from choosing to include it in their policies. Conservative proponents of the legislation emphasize the difference between sex and gender, saying the former is an immutable biological fact and the latter a set of cultural norms.

The narrow definition of sex and provisions that declare certain spaces be protected as “single-sex environments,” including domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers in some states’ versions of the policy, raise questions about compliance with federal laws that prohibit discrimination based on sex or gender.

Anya Marino, director of LGBTQI equality at the National Women’s Law Center, said that if a court found these state statutes at odds with federal laws, the federal law that ensures protection on the basis of gender would supersede the state laws.

Beyond how the laws could be interpreted or implemented, Marino expressed concern about other consequences these debates can have, including violence against people who “fail to conform against an extremist idealistic view of how sexes should appear,” she said.

“It’s part of a larger objective to control people through body policing to determine how they love and how they navigate their daily lives.”

Yet the legal ramifications are unclear.

In Montana, where one of these proposals became law after SB 458 was approved during last year’s session, lawmakers weighed the risks of potentially violating federal law and losing billions in funding.

The state’s legislative fiscal analysts determined that $7.5 billion in federal funds were on the line in the first year, depending on how state agencies implemented the law and whether those actions were deemed violations of anti-discrimination laws. The bill passed regardless and was signed by Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte.

A legal challenge of the statute is pending. Regardless, the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services cited the law’s passage as justification to revive a ban on transgender people changing the sex designation on their birth certificate. The ban was originally instituted in 2022 and struck down by a judge before the new law passed.

“DPHHS must follow the law, and our agency will consequently process requests to amend sex markers on birth certificates under our 2022 final rule,” department director Charlie Brereton said in a Feb. 20 statement announcing the change.

Lawmakers in Utah removed language specifically identifying domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers as “sex-designated” spaces that could exclude transgender people after hearing concerns from local and state leaders about losing federal funding. Though lawmakers removed mention of those specific venues from the bill, they kept provisions that prohibit transgender people from entering sex-designated restrooms, public showers, or locker rooms that don’t correspond with their sex assigned at birth unless their birth certificate has been amended or they’ve undergone gender-affirming surgery accordingly. The bill was fast-tracked, approved, and signed by Republican Gov. Spencer Cox two weeks after the legislative session began.

More recently, West Virginia lawmakers removed language from HB 5243 that named domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers as places where the state could distinguish between the sexes.

Republican Delegate Kathie Hess Crouse, lead sponsor of the bill, said the language was removed because it was unnecessary.

“By removing the specific examples, we’re making it extremely clear that this list is not the full list of single-sex environments that West Virginia may have,” she said.

The West Virginia House approved the bill in February and it is pending approval from the Senate.

Asked about constituents who testified in opposition to the bill with concerns that it would negatively affect transgender people, Hess Crouse said they were misinformed. She asserted the bill doesn’t create new rights or take any away.

“The bill is a definitional bill for our courts to have guidance when interpreting laws that already exist in West Virginia,” she said. “If anyone in the state is not happy with the laws we already have on the books, they can work with their legislator to bring a bill that changes the law.”

Hugo Polanco, a trial attorney for the Maricopa County public defender’s office, testified in opposition to the bill in Arizona on behalf of the state’s American Civil Liberties Union chapter.

“Let’s be clear,” he said. “Trans rights are women’s rights. Advances in trans rights tear down barriers based on gender stereotypes, creating the opportunity for each of us to determine our own life story.”

Alex del Rosario, a national organizer with the National Center for Transgender Equality, said this slate of bills harms transgender people by attempting to eliminate protections for them.

“Policing people’s bodies while excluding transgender and intersex people from using the restroom does not protect anyone’s privacy,” they said. “Extremist politicians have been taking advantage of the American public, projecting a false image of transgender people, especially transgender women, to stoke fear and distrust of a community that many people don’t understand.”

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He was a crooked, gaslighting sadist who a jury found guilty of sexually attacking a woman he’d chewed so savagely that the wounds he inflicted helped to kill her. He led a white-nationalist drive so successful that it could have landed him in the White House. And much of what he did happened right here in Ohio.

It’s important during Black History Month to highlight the struggles and successes of giants and martyrs who helped clear away barriers for all who came behind them. But as the commemoration draws to an end today, it’s also important to remember just how high and hateful those barriers really were, if we ever really knew that in the first place.

Fever

Fighting after 1915 to keep the most forbidding barriers in place was the resurgent Ku Klux Klan. It was led by one D.C. Stephenson, a man who came north seemingly from nowhere, set up shop on the Indiana portion of the Ohio River and began a rise that appalled much of the country while taking the rest of it by storm.

Author Timothy Egan paints a terrifying portrait of the utterly amoral Stephenson in his 2023 book “A fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them.”

Stephenson was actually born in Texas, but he lied so relentlessly about his background — and everything else — that by the time he showed up in Evansville in 1920, he could have been from anywhere.

“His new life in Evansville was a dash and a dodge, just a few steps ahead of the multiple lives he’d left behind,” Egan writes. “He’d knocked around from town to town, selling linotype parts, stock in a coal company, but mostly selling himself. He could talk a dog off a meat wagon, as they said in those parts.

“His smile was toothy and his cheeks dimpled, his eyes blazed, his shoes sparkled and his clothing was impeccable. He liked heavy food, a good cigar and many a drink. He looked prosperous, even if he wasn’t. He sounded educated, an incontinent user of five-dollar words even if the college he attended changed with each telling. But the truth of his background didn’t matter; his swagger was convincing.”

Stephenson was, in other words, both a fraud and a born salesman. But he was also something more and much more sinister.

As he maneuvered his way into one of the top two slots in the Klan and the recruiter across a vast swath of the Midwest, Stephenson made himself rich by skimming off a hefty portion of the money members paid for dues and robes. And he hid the grift behind a veneer of respectability.

Stephenson made common cause with the Anti-Saloon League and other Christian conservatives while being such a drunkard that he at one point required medical treatment. He was also a bigamist, rapist and murderer.

Stephenson was hardly alone in his rank hypocrisy. Egan described how time and again, Klansmen paid off Protestant clergy to get them to spread the Klan message of hate from the pulpit. They dressed it up as “100% Americanism,” but through a mix of fear and greed, those erstwhile messengers of Jesus espoused a creed antithetical to any actual Americanism or any true Christianity.

Fear in a changing nation

Never one for humility, Stephenson boasted that he was the world’s “foremost mass psychologist.” And he understood that he wasn’t selling people anything new so much as appealing to something very old: a fear of the “other” that was already present in so many.

Stephenson’s new Klan continued the relentless, violent persecution of Black people that its earlier, Southern forebear did, with many highly racialized lynchings taking place through the 1920s.

But Stephenson expanded the circle of hate to encompass those he said were responsible for the country’s “national decline.” They included beer-brewing, wine-drinking immigrants, independent young women known as flappers, Mexicans, Chinese, Catholics and of course Jews — who were supposedly masterminding the “national decline” because… something.

Of course, the claim of decline was laughable. The economic engine that was the United States had just brought an end to the Great War and it was by far the richest nation in the world — and strong immigration played a vital role fueling that growth.

But the country was changing. Women were voting and smoking, dark-complexioned people who spoke scary-sounding languages were crowding the cities, kids were running around in cars and they were wild about music created by Black people.

By the time he was ensconced in a Klan-owned mansion in the Irvington neighborhood of Indianapolis in 1923, Stephenson was manipulating those anxieties like the master he was. People joined out of a fear of change or a fear of the Klan — extortion, to put it bluntly. For example, some farmers were advised that joining was a way to protect their livestock from a malady known as “bullet in the brain.”

Stephenson, known to his henchmen as “Steve,” was just as effective using carrots and clubs to dominate politicians and businessmen — especially in Indiana. By 1925, a Klan slate promising to keep Black children out of most city schools and to officially segregate Indianapolis neighborhoods swept to victory, giving the benighted city the nickname “Klanopolis.”

Metastasis

The power of Stephenson and the Klan radiated far beyond the Hoosier State and especially into Ohio.

Old clippings from The Columbus Dispatch show that as the organization rose in the Buckeye State, the paper had a hard time deciding whether that was a good or bad thing.

A brief published on May 23, 2021 described a Klan raid on an Akron home in which members cut the beard off of a man who was likely Jewish or foreign-born — or both — “after an alleged assault on his aged and crippled wife.”

But less than three months later, on Aug. 5, 1921, the paper published a brief extolling the group as a positive good.

“The Ku Klux Klan is a patriotic order, which stands for law enforcement and true Americanism,” it said, credulously.

As Klan chapters formed across the state, there was pushback. Ohio had done as much as any state to win the Civil War, and some veterans’ organizations were adamantly opposed to an organization that sought to undo the second founding of the nation that had come at the cost of so much blood.

On Oct. 2, 2021, the Rev. G.W. Hopewell, a member of a “colored” Ohio post of the American Legion, made a powerful speech against the Klan at the state convention. It was so well received that he was elected to be a delegate to the national convention in Kansas City.

“The resolutions committee in a report condemned all societies discriminating against race, color or religion ‘under the guise of 100% Americanism,'” the Dispatch story said.

But the fire continued to rage.

Some may want to forget it now. But racism was then so sweeping and so ingrained that even the president of Harvard University, A. Lawrence Lowell, embraced the pseudoscience of eugenics and sought to limit the numbers of Jews admitted to his university. So it’s not surprising that humbler people who felt more buffeted and bewildered by change would turn to racist nonsense to explain a world that scared the crap out of them.

Impunity

In Ohio, the predatory Klan leader Stephenson received a disconcerting welcome.

“Ohio was a second home for Steve during the warm months,” Egan wrote. “He’d purchase a showcase at Buckeye Lake, where many of the wealthy and powerful of the state passed their summers. He could count on Ohio judges, prosecutors, politicians as friends of the order. Youngstown, 170 miles from the site of the police encounter, was about to elect a Klan mayor.”

Egan was referring to a June 1923 incident just outside Columbus that foreshadowed what would lead to Stephenson’s downfall a few years later.

Two motorcycle-mounted Franklin County sheriff’s deputies stopped by a car parked alongside a dark, lonely road. In the back seat, they found Stephenson with his pants down and a young woman with her dress up.

Stephenson, who maintained a public persona of Christian virtue, at first refused to identify himself. Deputies only let him go when he pulled out a badge showing he was a deputy with the Horse Thief Detective Association.

Horses were mostly gone from midwestern roads in 1923. But Stephenson had built the detective association into a paramilitary force in Indiana. He swelled its ranks to 14,000 and used his troops to entrench his power much as Benito Mussolini’s Black Shirts did in contemporary Italy.

Stephenson escaped accountability on the outskirts of Columbus only to sin again. On July 12, 1923, even he was surprised that 75,000 showed up for a Klan rally at Buckeye Lake that was ridiculously known as a Klonklave. It was the largest Klan gathering in Ohio history.

“Three days later, Stephenson stumbled down his Buckeye Lake compound to a cottage that housed some of the women who worked for him,” Egan writes. “It was 3:30 a.m. He was naked but for his underpants and so drunk he could hardly stand. He barged inside and went to the bedroom of his stenographer, a 19-year-old from Indianapolis who had been an employee since April. She jumped out of bed, terrified at the sight of the glassy-eyed Klansman stumbling toward her.

“He grabbed the girl and tried to kiss her. He was her boss; she was told when she was hired that she should never cross the Old Man. He threw her on the bed and lowered his underwear. As he tried to pin the woman, she squirmed out of his grasp.”

Stephenson desisted when she threatened to scream. But Egan noted that it was at least his second attempted rape in two weeks — and the second for which he’d suffered no consequences.

To the contrary, just a few weeks later, Stephenson was hosting Ohio Gov. A. Victor Donahey and other high officials on his 98-foot yacht, Reomar II, as it sailed out of its home port in Toledo.

Another attack

Stephenson continued to consolidate his wealth and power — including by extorting Black, Jewish and Catholic business owners to pay up or face Klan boycotts.

His control over Indiana state government was so complete that he was able to force through a bill ordering a health-education curriculum. It was so specific that only he could control the content and publication of the textbook from which it would be taught.

But the woman to whom he dangled authorship of that text proved to be Steve’s downfall.

Madge Oberholtzer was a 28-year-old who had formerly been a student at Butler College, which was then in the Indianapolis suburb of Irvington near Stephenson’s Klan compound. She was known as lively and independent. She’d made, for example, a cross-country driving trip with a female friend at a time when rural roads were nothing like they are now and attitudes about what women could properly do on their own were even more primitive.

Stephenson was the most important man in Indiana and when she came to his attention and he dangled the book project, Oberholtzer took a wary interest.

After the two had become more familiar, a Stephenson aide made a nighttime telephone call to Oberholtzer’s parents’ Irvington home on March 15, 1925. The aide demanded that Madge come to the Klan compound for some sort of emergency. After some resistance, Oberholtzer got into a car driven by a Klan flunky.

At the compound, an intoxicated Stephenson ordered his henchmen to force Oberholtzer to take several drinks that turned out to be drugged. They then drove to Indianapolis’s Union Station and boarded a train to Chicago.

In a berth once the train was underway, Stephenson forced himself on Madge.

“He bit her neck, her face, her breasts — a burst of savagery,” Egan wrote. “Blood flowed out. He chewed her tongue and spit out blood. He chewed her breasts again. He moved on to her legs, her ankles, mutilating her body. The pain was excruciating.”

Stephenson and his party disembarked in Hammond, short of the Illinois state line. He knew he could control Indiana state law enforcement. But if he carried Oberholzer into Illinois, he would be subject to federal jurisdiction and Steve didn’t know if he could control that.

Courage and comeuppance

As Stephenson ate and slept in a Hammond hotel, Oberholtzer demanded to be taken to a drug store so she could get medicine for her wounds. Unbeknownst to her Klan escort she also bought bichloride of mercury, a poison used in the well-publicized death of a silent film star in 1920. Madge took six of the pills.

When Stephenson learned what Oberholtzer had done, he was furious and ordered an aide to get a car. On the way back to Indianapolis, Madge changed her mind about suicide and begged to be taken to a hospital.

Stephenson refused unless Oberholtzer agreed to marry him, thus giving him a way around a rape charge. There was no such crime as marital rape in Indiana until the 1990s.

A disgusted, suffering Oberholtzer doggedly refused, so Stephenson drove her back to the Klan compound. He told her it would be futile to report what he’d done to her.

“What’s done is done,” Steve said. “I am the law and the power.”

Back at her parents’ home, Madge Oberholtzer clung to life for nearly a month. And as she did, she dictated a painstaking account of what she suffered at the hands of Grand Dragon Stephenson, the most powerful man in Indiana.

In a state where Stephenson controlled most public offices from the governor down to sheriffs and judges, lawyers and prosecutors were understandably reluctant to take up Oberholtzer’s cause. But several did, anyway.

In a trial held months later just to the North in Noblesville, prosecutors were able to use Oberholtzer’s dying declaration to damn Stephenson from beyond the grave. And doctors testified that her death wasn’t just a suicide from the poison she took — a severe infection from the bites Steve had inflicted played an important role in killing her.

In the end, an all-male jury of stolid farmers convicted Stephenson of second-degree murder on Nov. 14, 2025. He was sentenced to life in prison two days later.

Worry and hope

Surely reinforcing prosecutors and jurors against the phalanx of threats they faced was a large group of women who attended court day after day in support of Oberholtzer’s cause.

“Here was a crime that strikes at the very foundations of our life as Christian people,” reads a statement by the Irvington Women’s Club that Egan quotes in his book. “If we permit perpetrators of such acts to go unpunished it will show that our ideals have become obscured or that our sense of justice has been blunted.”

The women’s advocacy and their attendance at the trial were brave in their own right. But they surely also bespeak a long history of abuse that mostly went unreported and unpunished, as Stephenson’s many other depredations had.

In the end, the horror and thievery exposed at trial — and in the Klan more broadly — irreparably harmed a gang that tried to pretend that it was protecting Christianity and “Americanism.” And Stephenson himself brought down Indiana Gov. Ed Jackson when that official refused to pardon the Klansman.

But during the trial, as Stephenson’s monumental cruelty was being exposed to the world, many refused to believe what they read or heard. In jail, the grand dragon was flooded with letters of support and gifts of food. Those supporters included Stephenson’s jailer, Hamilton County Sheriff Charles Goodling, a “lawman” who continued his fealty in the face of Stephenson’s utter lawlessness.

It’s worrying to think that a monster such as Stephenson achieved unaccountable power in states like Indiana and Ohio, which sent thousands to die in a war against his kind. It’s even more disturbing that such a man had a plausible path to the American presidency.

But it’s inspiring to think that principled citizens — including humble farmers, downtrodden minorities, and a woman who was uncowed even when facing death — were able, even if just barely, to turn the tide against Stephenson and the fear and hatred he hid behind.

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on Facebook and Twitter.

The tragic death of a nonbinary Oklahoma teen after a fight in a school bathroom is the not-so-secret fear of any parent of an LGBTQ+ student, namely that the ongoing tide of bigotry and hatred will focus itself in a brief moment on their child, placing them in danger of being injured — or worse.

For 16-year-old Oklahoma high school student Nex Benedict, who used they/them pronouns, that moment came on Feb. 7 when they said a fight erupted in a bathroom at Owasso High School.

The next day, Nex was dead, leaving their loved ones to grieve and many parents of LGBTQ+ children to confront a reality they’d prefer not to think about.

“It’s horrifying,” said Karessa Wheeler of East Lansing who’s a communications manager at the College of Social Science at Michigan State University and the mother of two trans kids, ages 15 and 20.

“When I think about it, I just feel sick, nauseous, heartbroken for that poor child and their family, and scared. It’s very terrifying for my children and all children like Nex,” Wheeler told the Michigan Advance.

“In today’s climate, I feel like it’s a very scary place to grow up,” she said. “They were always targets … but this one feels particularly cruel.”

On Feb. 21, police in Owasso, located about 13 miles northeast of Tulsa, said preliminary autopsy results indicated the teen’s death was not the result of “trauma” leading many to believe it meant that the death was not related to the fight. However, police have since walked back that statement.

Lt. Nick Boatman, the spokesperson for the Owasso Police Department, admitted to the Popular Information newsletter that he had not been explicitly informed by the medical examiner that Nex’s death was unrelated to the head injuries suffered in the fight and that the department had “reached out to the medical examiner’s office to try to head off some of this national scrutiny.” He has since told NBC News that the medical examiner’s office didn’t say it had ruled out the fight as causing or contributing to Benedict’s death and that “people shouldn’t make assumptions either way.”

Meanwhile, The Independent reported that court documents it obtained indicate police had initially treated Nex’s death as a possible homicide, obtaining a search warrant to look for evidence of “felony murder.” According to the paper, investigators took 137 photographs of the school, including inside the bathroom where the fight occurred, where they also collected two swabs of stains.

Benedict’s family, in a statement released by their attorney, indicated that not all of the pertinent details about the incident have been released and cast doubt on how the official investigation was being conducted.

“While various investigations are still pending, the facts currently known by the family, some of which have been released to the public, are troubling at best,” said the statement. “Notwithstanding, the family is independently interviewing witnesses and collecting all available evidence. The Benedict Family calls on all school, local, state and national officials to join forces to determine why this happened, to hold those responsible to account and to ensure it never happens again.”

Nex’s mother, Sue Benedict, told Popular Information she considered the Owasso Police statement as a “big cover” and believed it was only released as “something to calm the people.”

Owasso Public Schools said in a statement that the students involved “walked under their own power to the assistant principal’s office and nurse’s office,” where they were given a health assessment by a district registered nurse and that per policy, “students needing further support were transported to a medical facility either by ambulance or by a parent/guardian, depending on the severity of the injuries and preference of the parent/guardian.”

However, Benedict told The Independent that she was “furious” when she was called to the school and found Nex “badly beaten with bruises over their face and eyes, and with scratches on the back of their head,” but that neither an ambulance nor police had been called. She said she was also informed Nex was being suspended for two weeks.

Benedict called police once she arrived with Nex at the hospital. On Feb. 23, bodycam footage was released by the Owasso Police Department of school resource officer Caleb Thompson’s interview.

“So what happened today?” asks Thompson after he enters the exam room.

“I got jumped,” Nex responds.

Nex’s mother then tells Thompson that Nex had complained to her of being bullied, along with a friend, by three girls who were making comments, calling them names and throwing things at them. Sue Benedict said she told Nex to rise above it.

“She did, until she couldn’t in the bathroom,” said Benedict. “And they said that there was three girls that were on top of [Nex] just beating the crap out of [them].”

Nex then described for the officer what happened in the bathroom.

“I was talking with my friends, they were talking with their friends, and we were laughing,” said Nex. “And they had said something like, ‘Why do they laugh like that?’ And they were talking about us in front of us. And so I went up there and I poured water on them, and then all three of them came at me.”

Nex said the girls got their legs out from under them and then “started beating the s–t out of me,” before they blacked out.

Thompson indicated that the school had “dropped the ball” by not notifying him right away, but also discouraged Sue Benedict from filing a complaint.

“We’ve got this back and forth when both parties had equal opportunity to separate, so that’s where I’m saying it’s not going to be in the best of light for you,” he said. “But I can absolutely do that if that’s what you like. I’m just telling you it may not go the direction you want it to go.”

After Thompson said Benedict could still file a complaint the next day, she agreed to hold off and decide later.

However, that chance would never come.

After being assessed and treated at the hospital, Nex was discharged and sent home, but collapsed the following afternoon and later was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.

Benedict said the bullying of Nex became more focused at the beginning of the 2023 school year, just a few months after GOP Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a bill that required public school students to use only the bathroom of the sex listed on their birth certificate.

It was just the latest in a series of laws passed in recent years by the state’s Republican-led legislature targeting transgender and nonbinary people, including a ban on gender affirming care for trans kids, prohibiting the use of nonbinary gender markers on birth certificates, and a ban on transgender girls or women from playing on women’s sports teams.

The already hostile atmosphere to trans students has only been intensified by Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Schools Ryan Walters, who was elected in 2022 on a culture war platform of fighting “woke ideology” in public schools and stopping “radical leftists” he claims were indoctrinating students.

But when Walters named Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik last month to a Library Media Advisory Committee at the Oklahoma State Department of Education, it was a step too far for many.

The Libs of TikTok account that Raichik runs on the X platform has 2.8 million followers. It has been called a key influencer of right-wing dialogue and spotlights content that Taylor Lorenz of The Washington Post said in 2022 had a “direct correlation with the recent push in legislation and rhetoric directly targeting the LGBTQ+ community.” Lorenz on Friday posted a 53-minute video of her interviewing Raichik in which she admitted having only been to Oklahoma once, a red state she said had “a lot of wokeness,” and disclaimed any responsibility or connection to the threats that immediately target those she posts about.

That targeting included several days of bomb threats last August against a Tulsa-area school district after Libs of TikTok shared a video from a district librarian, who satirically posted about pushing a “woke agenda.”

It also included a post in 2022 that led to Owasso teacher Tyler Wrynn receiving death threats amid a harassment campaign, after he posted a video supporting LGBTQ+ students. Wrynn eventually resigned.

“Nex was very angry about it,” Sue Benedict told The Independent about Wrynn’s treatment.

Raichik has dismissed claims that her content results in violence or harassment, but has also reveled in that reputation. After USA Today featured her on the front page last November for a story that documented threats and harassment that follow Libs of TikTok social media posts, Raichik posted a picture of her holding the paper, while she smiled.

Media Matters also reported on a comment Raichik made in January 2023 during a podcast with Elijah Schaffer in which he said she was being labeled as a stochastic terrorist, or someone who intellectually inspires violence. Her reaction was to say, “Honestly that makes me feel really important, so thank you.”

While Walters said the death was a “heartbreaking tragedy,” during an Oklahoma State Board of Education meeting on Feb. 22, several attendees blamed the rhetoric from Walters and other state officials for the harassment and aggression Nex experienced.

“These children who attacked Nex had to be taught to hate,” said Mike Howe, a former Tulsa school principal who speaks at state board meetings regularly.

And last week, a Republican Oklahoma state senator called the LGBTQ+ community “filth” during a public forum.

Wheeler says that it may be easy for people to assume that type of extremist viewpoint isn’t something to worry about in Michigan, but that’s a luxury the LGBTQ+ community doesn’t have.

“We are fortunate to live where we do, that feels more supportive, but it doesn’t mean it can’t happen here,” she said. “If Roe v. Wade taught us anything, we can lose those [rights] just as quickly. One switch of administration in the governor’s office and we could be Oklahoma. So it’s very, very scary.”

The statistics bear out that fear. According to a November 2023 report by the Human Rights Campaign, since January 2013, 335 transgender and gender non-conforming individuals had been identified as victims of fatal violence in the United States, with 33 of those fatalities, almost 10%, occurring since 2022’s Transgender Day of Remembrance.

In fact, for the first time in their more than 40 year history, the Human Rights Campaign in 2023 declared a National State of Emergency for LGBTQ+ Americans, in response to what the organization said was a record-breaking 550 anti-LGBTQ+ bills that were introduced into state houses across the country, more than 80 of which were passed into law.

Wheeler said the type of fear and hatred being directed at the LGBTQ+ community creates a constant state of anxiety that manifests itself in situations that most people don’t think twice about.

“We had gone to Kensington Metropark over the winter break to do some birdwatching, and my youngest is transmasculine. And he followed me into the women’s restroom because he did not feel like he was safe enough to use the bathroom that he would prefer to use or that he would normally use because it was an unknown area, an area they hadn’t spent any time in,” she said.

Wheeler says that type or fear is constantly stoked by elected officials and people in power throughout Michigan and elsewhere who engage in “hateful speech that is targeting children and can cause their death.”

Whatever the final determination is about Nex’s death, Emme Zanotti, director of advocacy and civic engagement at the Equality Michigan Action Network, tells the Advance the atmosphere that Walters and other Oklahoma lawmakers encouraged is not an abstraction.

“I think it’s gravely irresponsible and disheartening to continue to see certain politicians and public figures play politics with kids’ lives, and regardless of how an autopsy turns out in Oklahoma, it sounds like pervasive bullying and harassment was an issue for Nex,” said Zanotti. “Pervasive bullying and harassment is an issue for young LGBTQ people all over our country.”

Zanotti says it’s well documented that the negative sentiments being pushed out by politicians in the media have negative mental health consequences for LGBTQ+ youth, but what happened to Nex is a perfect example of how that can also lead to negative physical consequences.

Vic Gipson, a co-facilitator of the My Trans Voice Youth Advisory Council with the Michigan Organization on Adolescent Sexual Health (MOASH), says Nex’s story has brought feelings of grief, anger, sadness and loneliness for many of the trans youth he works with.

“Many trans adolescents were able to imagine themselves in Nex’s shoes, whether reflecting on adverse previous experiences in restrooms or recalling threats and physical harm they’ve endured,” Gipson told the Advance. “Many shared the feeling of ‘that could’ve been me.’ Many parents have felt fear for their children and disgust toward the officials who made the decisions to let Nex down. Lots of trans community members have shared the same feelings of agreeing that this incident has been devastating.”

Those feelings are shared by Nex’s classmates, who on Monday staged a peaceful walkout at Owasso High School. At least 40 students are reported to have participated in the protest of what they described as a lack of attention to the bullying problem.

“I just want to get the word out and show these kids that we’re here,” Cassidy Brown, demonstration organizer and Owasso graduate, told KTUL-TV. “There is a community here in this city that does exist, and we see them, and they are loved.”

For those interested in making sure what happened to Nex won’t happen in Michigan, MOASH Executive Director Taryn Gal said they should understand that efforts to protect LGBTQ+ students have been extensive and ongoing.

“Although far from perfect, we are grateful to be in Michigan where there has been a lot of work done over many years to not only prevent incidents like this from happening, but to allow trans and nonbinary youth to thrive in Michigan schools,” Gal told the Advance.

Gal said there are several strategies to facilitate student safety that are already available to Michigan schools, including aligning policies and practices with the 2016 Michigan State Board of Education’s Statement and Guidance on Safe and Supportive Learning Environments for LGBTQ Students.

“This guidance outlines best practices in what school districts should implement to prevent something similar to what happened to Nex,” she said. “This guidance includes many concrete examples, such as starting a GSA (or similar) club; enumerating policies (e.g., anti-bullying) to include sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression, and then enforcing them; training staff and school boards; respecting student pronouns and access to bathrooms etc.; ensuring representation in curriculum.”

Gal said districts can also make sure their staff and administrators are trained by the Michigan Department of Education’s LGBTQ+ Students Project, which offers research-informed workshops on best practices to school districts across the state to ensure that learning environments are as safe, supportive, and affirming as possible.

But for any of those practices to be effective, she said districts need to be open to the dangers LGBTQ+ students face day in and day out.

“Be courageous,” she said. “We know that most school districts are doing and/or want to do the right thing. They know what the right thing is in order to best serve their trans and nonbinary students, which, ultimately, best serves all of their students. Do not be fooled by the loudest voices. Those loud (and often few) voices in opposition to these best practices are often not representative of the community and they are not representative of those most impacted.”

Wheeler said the situation that it appears Nex found themselves in, targeted for who they are, does not occur in a vacuum.

“I hope all people, and especially all parents, really put themselves in the place of Nex’s family and realize that these are people who are loved and are precious and they need to be respected,” she said. “If you’re going to teach your children hate, don’t be surprised when they end up killing a peer, because that is what it leads to. And we’ve got to be able to protect these kids.”

Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan J. Demas for questions: info@michiganadvance.com. Follow Michigan Advance on Facebook and Twitter.

Florida Republicans are unlikely to pass a so-called "fetal personhood" bill during the current legislative session following a Senate committee's decision on Monday to postpone further consideration of the proposal, which had been approved by several committees before an Alabama Supreme Court ruling last week sparked a national uproar over the right-wing push to secure rights for "the unborn."

The panel said it was temporarily postponing Senate Bill 476, which would define a fetus as an "unborn child" with the protections of civil negligence laws. The proposal is aimed at making abortion providers and others who help secure abortion care for pregnant people liable in potential civil lawsuits.

Under the law, said opponents, prospective parents could also potentially seek damages in the "wrongful death" of an embryo, in the case of in vitro fertilization (IVF).

"Florida's legislature needs to really take a hard and careful look at what the unintended impacts to IVF in Florida could be going forward."

The proposal garnered national attention in recent days after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that IVF patients could sue a clinic for the "wrongful death" of embryos that were accidentally destroyed, with the court claiming embryos have the same rights as children.

Republicans have backpedaled since the ruling was announced, claiming to support IVF—even though attacks on fertility treatments are hardly a rarity in the anti-abortion rights movement. During her confirmation hearing in 2020, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett sparked rebuke by refusing to oppose criminalization of IVF.

Florida's legislative session ends March 8, and the Senate Rules Committee canceled a hearing for a companion bill that had been scheduled for Monday.

Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried said that the Alabama ruling—but not genuine concern for the fact that IVF could be implicated in the bill—forced Republicans to shelve the proposal for now.

"‘If the Alabama ruling didn't happen last week, Florida's fetal personhood bills would likely have passed during legislative session," said Fried.

The public backlash over the ruling, said the state Democrats, "set an important tone with Republican lawmakers and sent a strong message that banning abortion and limiting a full range of reproductive healthcare is deeply unpopular."

The ACLU of Florida urged lawmakers to completely "shut down" the bill to prevent IVF clinics from shutting down for fear of liability due to the loss of embryos that is inherent in the IVF process.

"What we know from this past month in Alabama and what we've seen so far in Florida, is that anti-abortion extremists are not going to stop at a six-week ban, they are not going to stop with allowing frivolous civil lawsuits against providers and friends, and families, they are not going to stop with banning IVF," said Kara Gross, legislative director and senior policy counsel for the group. "Their goal is complete government control over any individual reproductive freedoms and this is one more step that takes them closer to that goal. Enough is enough."

"What was unthinkable a year ago is now a reality in Alabama," Gross added. "IVF clinics are pausing their operations. Florida's legislature needs to really take a hard and careful look at what the unintended impacts to IVF in Florida could be going forward."

Gross pointed out that Florida residents who suffer pregnancy loss "due to the wrongful acts of another are permitted to recover money damages" already—making the bill "unnecessary for that purpose."

In addition to opening IVF clinics up to liability, the bill would pave the way for cases like that of Texas resident Marcus Silva, who filed a civil lawsuit last year against friends of his ex-wife who helped her secure an abortion.

"This bill would have a chilling effect on doctors providing necessary healthcare," said Gross, "on patients seeking the care they need, and on family members and friends who support their loved one seeking access to abortion care."

Sheriff’s offices posting mugshots of booked people has been a commonplace practice for a while now. It also has some blood on its hands.

“An 18-year-old committed suicide because they did not have the money to get the mugshot removed, and he could not get a job,” said Tyrone Democrat Rep. Derrick Jackson.

Georgians who have not been convicted of a crime have lost their jobs and reputations because of their posted mugshot. Those with criminal records have unemployment rates at 27% according to the Prison Policy Initiative. For something as minor as a parking ticket, websites take these mugshots from the sheriff’s department’s website and memorialize them for profit.

Atlanta Democratic Rep. Roger Bruce is trying to do something to change all of that.

Bruce proposed House Bill 882 this year, legislation that would restrict sheriff’s offices from posting mugshots until the person has been convicted. If someone had been proven or assumed innocent, they could request their mugshot to be taken down. If the website doesn’t comply, they get a $500 fine every day until the photo is deleted.

Designated mugshot websites, such as the Georgia Gazette, upload mugshots with little context about the charged crime. After someone pays a fee for them to take it down, they often upload the photo on a different website and ask for more money, Bruce said.

It used to be a lot more work to remove the mugshots. Bruce worked on legislation in 2013 that required mugshot websites to take down the photos of innocent people in 30 days at their request. Bruce is now trying to get rid of the websites entirely.

“If you’re not convicted you should not be treated as if you have,” said Bruce.

The bill has bipartisan support, with Blairsville Republican Rep. Stan Gunter, chairman of the Judiciary Committee and Bremen Republican Rep. Tyler Paul Smith, chairman of the Judiciary Non-Civil Committee sponsoring the measure. Jackson and House Minority Leader James Beverly also sponsored the bill. Gunter was persuaded to support it after Bruce brought the issue to light.

“Republicans aren’t the only ones with good ideas,” said Gunter.

And Bruce is not the only one posing a bill curbing mugshot websites. Woodstock Republican Rep. Jordan Riley proposed a similar measure in the Public Safety Committee, House Bill 930. However, Riley’s measure differs greatly from Bruce’s.

One, it does not have bipartisan support, although it does bear the signatures of some influential Republicans in the GOP-controlled Legislature. Second, it’s more restrictive to journalists.

The press can still request mugshots of people who are booked into jail if they provide their credentials to the sheriff’s office under Bruce’s bill. Jackson said that journalists typically ask for mugshots for high-profile people, such as the Young Thug and Donald Trump cases pending in Fulton County. With Ridley’s bill, no mugshot would be released until conviction unless the sheriff determines that the release would make people safer.

Under Ridley’s bill, the press could not obtain anybody’s booking photo until conviction, putting the information flow in the sheriff’s office’s hands.

At the recent Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee meeting, Ridley’s bill piqued the interest of Mableton Democrat Rep. Terry Cummings.

However, issues with the workload placed on the sheriff’s office came into comment after J. Terry Norris, executive director of the Georgia Sheriffs’ Association said that offices were already overwhelmed as it is. The extra effort of tracking down those who have been convicted through the courts makes the bill “totally unachievable.”

Also in favor of suppressing mugshots for people not yet convicted is Mazie Lynn Guertin, executive director at the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Guertin said that defense attorneys have been pushing for legislation like this. Their clients have suffered from the publication of mugshots, Guertin said.

“This is just capitalizing on another person’s misfortune for your own financial gain,” said Guertin.

Nora Benavidez from the Georgia First Amendment Foundation sees flaws in the proposal to keep mugshots under wraps until the courts weigh in though.

“A person who has been taken into custody is effectively unprotected from abuse,” said Benavidez.

She, and other critics, claim that the bill removes protections from prisoners being abused. Because the public wouldn’t have access to these mugshots, they wouldn’t be aware that an arrest made was a part of a larger trend of arrests. The bill, to her, would also restrict what the press could report on because they wouldn’t be able to access the mugshots as easily.

That burden is especially placed on freelance reporters who would have to prove their credentials as legitimate to access the mugshot.

Jackson said that the spirit of the bill isn’t to “curtail free speech,” but to protect Georgians from exploitative websites. Bruce pushed back on the contention that his legislation runs counter to the First Amendment.

“I’m not stopping anybody from saying whatever they want to say. But I think the concept of innocent till proven guilty tops all,” Bruce said.

Despite the bipartisan support for the bill, it remains stuck in a subcommittee. The bill has to get out of the House committee by Wednesday to be considered in time for Crossover Day. If it doesn’t cross over from the House to the Senate by Feb. 29, it has to be reworked from scratch, as the legislative two-year cycle ends this session. Ridley’s bill also seems unlikely to pass through.

Still, sponsors of the bill hold fast to the notion that the state needs to protect Georgians from bad actors.

“We just want to make sure that we protect and preserve the identity of innocent Georgians so that they’re not exploited,” said Jackson.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and Twitter.

Republican Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee said Tuesday that "we should kill 'em all" after an activist pressed him to respond to atrocities that the U.S.-backed Israeli military is committing against Palestinians in Gaza, including children.

"I've seen the footage of shredded children's bodies," the activist told Ogles. "That's my taxpayer dollars that are going to bomb those kids."

"You know what? So, I think we should kill 'em all, if that makes you feel better," Ogles responded. "Hamas and the Palestinians have been attacking Israel for 20 years. It's time to pay the piper."

Watch the exchange:

Ogles, a vocal supporter of arming Israel unconditionally, was among the 212 House Republicans who voted in November to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) on the false grounds that she "justified" the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7.

Following the Tennessee Republican's call for the mass killing of Palestinians, Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid asked, "Any congressional resolutions to censure or expel Ogles?"

Video footage of Ogles' remarks was posted to social media hours after the Biden administration vetoed a cease-fire resolution at the United Nations Security Council—the third time since October 7 that the U.S. has wielded its veto power to block a measure calling for an immediate end to the bloodshed in Gaza.

Hours before the latest U.S. veto, an official with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) warned that Gaza is "poised to witness an explosion in preventable child deaths" as malnutrition and disease spread rapidly across the enclave.

Israeli forces have killed more than 12,400 children in Gaza since October 7, according to the territory's health officials. More than 600,000 children are currently trapped in Rafah, which Israeli forces are preparing to invade. On average, more than 10 Gaza children per day have lost one or both of their legs since October, according to Save the Children.

"After four months of relentless violence, we are running out of words to describe what children and families in Gaza are going through, as well as the tools to respond in any adequate way," Jason Lee, Save the Children's country director for the occupied Palestinian territory, said in a statement Tuesday. "The scale of death and destruction is astronomical."

"Children are being failed by the adults who should be protecting them," Lee added. "It's beyond time for the adults in the room to step up their responsibilities and legal obligations to children caught up in a conflict they played no part in, who just want to be able to live."