Trump to Remove Protections for Transgender Students
President Trump could issue new guidelines as early as Wednesday to rescind anti-discrimination protections for transgender students, overruling his education secretary who had pushed to keep them in place.
“I would expect further guidance to come out on that today,” Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said, declining to provide specifics. Mr. Trump, he added, is “a firm believer in states’ rights.”
Mr. Spicer declined to discuss details of a rift on the issue between Betsy DeVos, the secretary of education, and Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, who was adamant that the administration move quickly to reverse an order from the Obama administration that allowed transgender students to use the restroom of their gender identity.
But Mr. Spicer said during a White House news conference that Ms. DeVos was “100 percent” supportive of the president’s decision.
Mr. Sessions, who strongly opposes expanding gay, lesbian and transgender rights, fought Ms. DeVos on the issue and pressed her to relent because he could not go forward without her consent. The order must come from the Justice and Education Departments.
Chinese Feminist Group’s Social Media Account Suspended
The main social media account of a leading feminist organization in China has been taken down for 30 days, and Chinese feminists are bracing for another wave of repression before major political meetings this year.
The closing of the account for the organization, Feminist Voices, may have been linked to an article it posted about a women’s strike planned in the United States on March 8, International Women’s Day, feminists said on Wednesday. The strike, which is being coordinated by the organizers of the Women’s March on Washington last month, is called “A Day Without a Woman.”
Feminist Voices (Nuquan Zhisheng) was founded in 2009 and has operated on Weibo, a Twitter-like platform in China, since 2010. It said it had received notice that it was being shut down late Monday from its host, the media giant Sina.com.
“Hello, because content you recently posted violates national laws and regulations, your account will be banned for 30 days,” the notice said, according to a message Feminist Voice circulated on another social media account.
This Years Carpet-Baggers at the Oscars
And the Oscar this year doesn’t go to: Andre Royo, for his lead role as a melancholic ex-con in “Hunter Gatherer”; Alan Rickman, posthumously, for playing a thoughtful general in the drone warfare thriller “Eye in the Sky”; Margo Martindale, who stole scenes as the matriarch in “The Hollars”; John Goodman, for his performance as a survivalist in “10 Cloverfield Lane”; Susan Sarandon, who played a garrulous widow in “The Meddler.”
Each received an awards push, or at least an awards nudge, from publicists, distributors, studios or some combination thereof. Yet for myriad reasons — timing, competition, dearth of funds, off-the-mark campaigns, lack of je ne sais quoi — none of those performances managed to gin up much interest, though some arguably were deserving.
Crucial to understanding the machinations of the Academy Awards is knowing that the nominees, and winners, aren’t necessarily the year’s best but rather the most popular. So, in the week before Hollywood turns its gaze to the winners’ circle on Sunday at the Dolby Theater, the Bagger is looking instead to the could-have-beens, whose dashed dreams join the other ghosts of seasons past.
7 Earth-Size Planets Orbit Dwarf Star, NASA and European Astronomers Say
Not just one, but seven Earth-size planets that could potentially harbor life have been identified orbiting a tiny star not too far away, offering the first realistic opportunity to search for signs of alien life outside of the solar system.
The planets orbit a dwarf star named Trappist-1, about 40 light-years, or 235 trillion miles, from Earth. That is quite close in cosmic terms, and by happy accident, the orientation of the orbits of the seven planets allows them to be studied in great detail.
One or more of the exoplanets in this new system could be at the right temperature to be awash in oceans of water, astronomers said, based on the distance of the planets from the dwarf star.
“This is the first time so many planets of this kind are found around the same star,” Michael Gillon, an astronomer at the University of Liege in Belgium and the leader of an international team that has been observing Trappist-1, said during a telephone news conference organized by the journal Nature, which published the findings on Wednesday.
Hispanic Leaders Plan Fight Against Trump’s Agenda
As President Trump is giving his first address to a joint session of Congress next week, Hispanic political leaders plan to meet in Washington to draft a strategy to counter his agenda, particularly his immigration crackdown.
The Latino Victory Fund, a political action committee that works to elect progressive Hispanic leaders, will meet on Tuesday, as Mr. Trump speaks to Congress, to begin recruiting candidates at the federal, state and local levels who can push back against the president’s policies, including in cities and municipalities where they are having immediate impact.
Those include in so-called sanctuary cities, which are jurisdictions that limit their cooperation with federal authorities seeking to detain unauthorized immigrants.
“As the president is outlining his plans to break up families, roll back civil rights protections and gut the environment, we are going to be finalizing our strategy to defeat him,” said Cristóbal Alex, the president of the Latino Victory Project, a civic group affiliated with the Latino Victory Fund.
Mr. Trump, he added, “literally started his campaign on Day 1 by attacking us, and his policies have reflected that, so we need to build up our power and fight back.”