A man who was pardoned for his actions during the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol breach was recently handed down a life sentence for what he attempted to do while awaiting trial. Specifically, for his plan to murder the FBI officials who were working on his case. Let's go through the story together.
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RFK Dismisses All 17 Members of CDC’s Vaccine Committee, Installs New Replacements
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dismissed all 17 members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee on June 9—specifically, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). It’s essentially the CDC’s vaccine expert panel responsible for studying the effects—including the side effects—of vaccines that are still in development, as well as those that are already on the market.Let’s go through the details of why he chose to gut this committee, as well as who he chose to replace the fired members.
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Who Counts? Trump to Reform Census to Avoid Counting Noncitizens
After several years of record-breaking illegal immigration, the second Trump administration is looking to make a significant change to the way that the U.S. Census is conducted. Specifically, they are seeking to end the practice of including illegal aliens when counting up a state’s official population. Last month, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, Stephen Miller, said that the second Trump administration was determined “to clean up the census and make sure that illegal aliens are not counted.”Mr. Miller didn’t mention it in that speech, but the ramifications of making this kind of change would be dramatic. This is because the census count is used to apportion the number of House seats that each state gets, to determine the number of votes that each state has in the electoral college, and to decide where trillions of dollars in government funds should flow. Meaning that the question of whether or not illegal aliens are counted could determine who controls the U.S. House of Representatives after 2030.Let’s go through the details of the Trump administration’s plan together.
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Supreme Court Sides With Religious Parents, Allows Kids to Opt Out of LGBT Instruction
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of parents who were having a dispute with their local school district. Specifically, these were religious parents who wanted to make sure that their elementary-aged kids were not being exposed to LGBT storybooks.The parents wanted to be able to opt their kids out of having to learn that material.After several years of litigation, the parents proved successful in their case, and in the process they opened the door for the rest of the country to do the same.Let’s go through the details together.
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US Supreme Court Allows State Bans on Transgender Procedures for Kids to Remain
In 2023, the state legislature of Tennessee passed a law called SB 1, which explicitly banned minors who identified as transgender from receiving puberty blockers and hormone therapy. It was also later amended to ban “gender-affirming surgeries”.The text of the bill prohibited health care providers from administering puberty blockers or hormones for the purpose of “enabling a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex [or] treating purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.”This law applied to anyone in the state below the age of 18—even if that child had obtained their parents' consent.However, the law did allow for some exceptions. Children who needed these treatments for medical reasons would still be allowed to have them. For instance, under the law as it was written, a child who experienced early onset puberty could still be given puberty blockers by their doctor. It’s just that these interventions could no longer be given to children simply because they identified as transgender.Within days of passing, the law was challenged in court.Civil rights groups sued the state, arguing that the law was a violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. On the flip side, the state of Tennessee argued that this wasn’t discrimination; rather, it was simply the regulation of medical care for minors—something well within the purview of the state.The case eventually made its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court where, after hearing both sides of the argument, there was a 6–3 split decision in favor of Tennessee—and in favor of the other 25 states that have similar laws on their books.Let’s go through the details of this ruling together.
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