Thursday, February 23, 2017

Robert Reich
2.22.2017

Attorney General Jeff Sessions wants to reverse an Obama directive that allows transgender students to use public school bathrooms of their choice. Secretary of education Betsy DeVos initially resisted signing off on the order. Trump has sided with Sessions, telling DeVos in a meeting in the Oval Office yesterday that he wants her to drop her objections. The official order from the administration reversing the Obama directive is expected to be released as early as today.

What does this brouhaha reveal?
1. Transgender rights issues, for which Trump initially expressed sympathy for during the campaign, continue to split Republicans even as many in the party argue it is time to move away from a focus on social issues.
2. Trump has been swayed by conservatives in the administration who reminded him that he had promised social conservatives and the religious right he’d side with them.
3. Sessions is as right-wing as many of us expected, and will have an outsized influence over domestic policy. As someone who has a long record of opposing efforts to broaden federal protections on a range of matters under his purview — immigration, voting rights and gay rights, for example — he has moved quickly to set the Justice Department on a strikingly different course than his predecessors in the Obama administration.
4. The Trump White House continues to leak more than any White House in living memory.
What do you think?

Source
https://www.facebook.com/RBReich/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED&fref=nf

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