Texas governor signs controversial 'Save Chick-fil-A' bill into law

Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Monday signed the so-called “Save Chick-fil-A” bill into law, a new provision that supporters say defends the fast-food restaurant and protects religious freedoms. Opponents have argued it discriminates against the LGBT community.
Abbott, a Republican, did not hold a public signing ceremony, but he had signaled his support through a tweet a few weeks ago, DallasNews.com reported.
On May 20, Abbott tweeted a picture of a Chick-fil-A soft drink in front of a laptop showing a news article with the headline “'Save Chick-fil-A' bill heads to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk” and wrote, “So. What are the odds I’ll sign the Chick-fil-A bill? I’ll let you know after dinner. @ChickfilA #txlege”
The new law stops the government from taking unfavorable action against a business or person for contributions to religious organizations.
The bill was fast-tracked in the GOP-controlled legislature and originally was introduced after the San Antonio City Council blocked Chick-fil-A from opening a location in the city’s airport because of reported donations to organizations that protest gay marriage and other LGBT issues.
Some council members said they were taking a stand over Chick-fil-A’s values and the fact that the owners have donated to anti-LGBT causes.
In March, councilmember Roberto Trevino reportedly said the city did “not have room in our public facilities for a business with a legacy of anti-LGBTQ behavior.”
Republicans responded with a bill that would not allow cities to take “adverse action” against an individual based on contributions to religious organizations.
The bill rekindled battles over divisive social issues. The legislature was riled over a “bathroom bill” targeting transgender people two years ago. LGBT lawmakers reportedly said during emotional floor speeches that they'd had enough.

Texans holding signs supporting gay marriage outside of a Chick-fil-A in Tyler, in 2012.  (Sarah A. Miller/Tyler Morning Telegraph via AP, File)

State Rep. Jessica Gonzalez, a Democrat, said the bill was a personal insult given she is openly gay, DallasNews.com reported.
"Of course this bill is aimed at me," she said. "It's about reminding those of us who have never belonged not to get too comfortable."
Fort Worth Republican Rep. Matt Krause, the House sponsor, defended the bill as a way to protect the rights of religious Texans, DallasNews.com reported.

Gov. Greg Abbott signed the "Save Chick-fil-A" bill into law Monday. (Getty, iStock)

The media outlet reported that Krause said Chick-fil-A was unfairly labeled as anti-LGBT because of its donations to organizations such as the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which also reportedly receive donations from other big companies.
The lawmakers involved did not immediately return Fox News' requests for comment.
The new law is set to go into effect on September 1.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Ingraham: Why are we helping illegal immigrants when we can't help ourselves?

Fox News' Laura Ingraham addressed politicians who are putting America's health and well-being "at risk," specifically the government of California.
"Over the weekend, we learned that California has gone from sanctuary state for dreamers to just being a sucker state for Americans. They just announced state budget deal will now give health care benefits to many adult illegals too. Those between the ages of 19 and 25 will now be eligible for California's 'Medicaid' program known as 'Medi-Cal,'" Ingraham said Monday night on "The Ingraham Angle."
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed $98 million a year to cover low-income illegal immigrants between the ages of 19 and 25, but the state Assembly’s bill would cover all illegal immigrants over the age of 19 living in California – a proposal that would cost an estimated $3.4 billion.
The state Senate, meanwhile, wants to cover adults ages 19 to 25, plus seniors 65 and older.
Ingraham argued California is ignoring their homeless problem and homeless vets and instead helping in favor of illegal immigrants.
"Think those homeless people including homeless vets might be able to use that money?" Ingraham said.
Ingraham also pointed out that Californians will tax citizens who don't have health insurance, essentially reviving the penalty part of the Affordable Care Act.
"How they're going to pay for this by the way, by taxing citizens who don't have health insurance. In other words, reviving the penalty of Obamacare," Ingraham said.
The Fox News host also brought up the 500 migrants from African nations -- including the Republic of Congo -- that have been apprehended in Texas, at the Del Rio Border Patrol sector of the U.S.-Mexico border, since May 30, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The African migrants were recently sent to San Antonio, Texas while eastern Congo is experiencing an Ebola outbreak with over 2,000 cases reported.
Ingraham raised concerns for the health of San Antonio citizens.
"One wonders where is the concern for the health of the San Antonio citizenry? Frankly citizens across the United States. Who's going to translate their concerns to federal officials? And why is no one questioning the pressure that this will place on communities across the country that are now obligated to house, educate, and feed people from other continents when we seem incapable in some cases of caring for our own citizens," Ingraham said.
Fox News' Danielle Wallace, David Montanaro and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Maine governor signs abortion bill allowing non-doctors to perform procedure

Gov. Janet Mills delivers her State of the Budget address to the Legislature, Monday, Feb. 11, 2019, at the State House in Augusta, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Maine’s Democratic governor signed an abortion bill into law on Monday that allows medical professionals who are not doctors to perform the procedure.
Gov. Janet Mills signed the bill expanding abortion access which she introduced herself. It will formally go into effect 90 days after the Legislature adjourns, around September.
But the law is facing criticism for expanding the list of professionals who could perform an abortion. Critics say it could potentially make the procedure less safe.
“Expanding who is allowed to perform an abortion does not expand the safety of the procedure,” Republican state Sen. Stacey Guerin has said.

“Expanding who is allowed to perform an abortion does not expand the safety of the procedure.”
— Republican state Sen. Stacey Guerin

Carroll Conley, executive director of the Christian Civic League of Maine, also echoed the safety concerns and told the New York Times that it’s unclear whether nurses and other health care professionals will receive enough training to administer abortion by the time the law takes effect.
She added that the legislation is more about politics as there’s no evidence that women in Maine are experiencing problems in getting abortion services due to proximity.
In most states, only physicians perform abortions, but Maine is now set to allow nurse practitioners, physician assistants and certified nurse-midwives to provide abortion medication and perform in-clinic abortions.
Maine will be the second state after California with a law allowing non-doctors to perform in-clinic abortions, according to Maine’s Office of Policy and Legal Analysis. Nearly two dozen states, including Vermont and New Hampshire, have expanded their list of abortion-medication providers following court or agency rulings.
Supporters of the bill say abortion is one of the safest medical procedure and the restrictions on who can perform the procedure are outdated.
“States across the country, including Vermont and New Hampshire, have already eliminated this outdated restriction on abortion care,” said Sara Gideon, the speaker of the Maine House of Representatives. “This law will allow women to receive the care they need from a provider they trust and eliminate the financial and logistical hurdles they face today.”
The law in Maine comes after other Democrat-led states moved to protect or expand abortions access in their states following a series of pro-life measures in red states, most notably in Alabama where abortion was banned after six weeks.
“Maine is defending the rights of women and taking a step toward equalizing access to care as other states are seeking to undermine, rollback, or outright eliminate these services,” the state governor said.
The law also came in the wake of lawsuits from advocacy groups and abortion clinic suing Maine over its abortion provider restrictions and ban on state Medicaid funds for abortions.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Dems halt effort to secure pay increase for lawmakers, as contempt votes, funding drama loom

House Democrats on Monday evening abruptly halted an effort to increase congressional pay for the first time since 2009, saying the proposal would be reviewed carefully after several freshman Democrats made overt efforts to block it.
Members of Congress generally make $174,000 per year, with senior leaders earning more, and no cost-of-living adjustments have been made in the past nine years. However, vulnerable swing-state Democrats, concerned how the proposed $4,500 pay hike would look if it didn't also have Republican support, had signed onto amendments rejecting the measure.
“It needs more discussion,” House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., told Fox News.
New York Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, meanwhile, told Fox News Monday that the planned $4,500 bonus was simply a cost-of-living adjustment.
"“It’s not even like a raise," Ocasio-Cortez said. She called opposition to the pay increase "superficial. ... This is why there's so much pressure to turn to lobbying firms and to cash in on member service after people leave, because precisely of this issue."
Ocasio-Cortez added that both members of Congress and people making minimum wage deserve more money.

“It’s not even like a raise."
— New York Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

"It may be politically convenient, and it may make you look good in the short term for saying, 'Oh we're not voting for pay increases,' but we should be fighting for pay increases for every American worker," she said. "We should be fighting for a $15 minimum wage pegged to inflation so that everybody in the United States with a salary with a wage gets a cost of living increase. Members of Congress, retail workers, everybody should get cost of living increases to accommodate for the changes in our economy. And then when we don't do that, it only increases the pressure on members to exploit loopholes like insider-trading loopholes, to make it on the back end."
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) found in May that, adjusted for inflation, salaries for members of Congress "have decreased 15 percent since the last pay adjustment in 2009." Following a cost-of-living adjustment formula established in 2009, members of Congress should currently be making $210,900, the CRS found.
The turnaround on congressional pay was one in a series of dramatic developments during a whirlwind day on Capitol Hill, with many more potentially still to come. In the evening, the Democrat-led House Rules Committee conducted a hearing in which it prepared a resolution for debate Tuesday that would enforce a subpoena via contempt for both Attorney General William Barr and former White House Counsel Don McGahn.
The resolution does not mention contempt by name. But it is, for all intents and purposes, a civil contempt resolution. The full House is expected to vote on the resolution Tuesday.
"I wish we didn’t have to be here today," Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said at the hearing. "I wish Donald Trump acted more like a president and less like a king. But this resolution is necessary because of his actions and those of his administration."
The Judiciary Committee, led by chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., earlier in the day backed off its own effort to hold Barr in criminal contempt. Nadler reached a deal with the Justice Department for access to evidence related to former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia report, although the precise contours of the arrangement remained unclear.
In a statement, Nadler announced the agreement with the Justice Department to turn over key evidence from Mueller’s investigation pertaining to the review of whether President Trump obstructed justice. Nadler asserted only that the "most important files" would be revealed to members of the committee from both parties.
As of 8 p.m. ET, Democrats said they expected to receive the files shortly.
Nadler's deal with the DOJ came moments before the Judiciary Committee opened a fireworks-laden hearing with Nixon Watergate counsel John Dean. House Republicans lined up to hammer Dean, saying he deliberately obstructed their questioning of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen earlier this year and pointing out how he's accused numerous Republican presidents of Watergate-like misconduct over the years.
At one point, the hearing room broke out into laughter, as Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz grilled Dean for turning Nixon comparisons into a profitable "cottage industry" for himself.
"Mr. Dean, how many American presidents have you accused of being Richard Nixon?" Gaetz asked.
"I actually wrote a book about Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney with the title, 'Worse than Watergate,' Dean responded, prompting loud laughter from the audience.
The House Oversight Committee, meanwhile, said it will prepare a separate contempt resolution for Barr and Commerce Secretary William Ross over documents and information related to the citizenship question in the 2020 census. That vote is expected Wednesday and relates to Democrats' concerns that the Trump administration included a citizenship question to deter illegal immigrants from filling out their census forms.
Legal experts generally have concurred that under the 14th Amendment, the census constitutionally must count all people in the U.S., including illegal immigrants. Census figures, in turn, are used to calculate how many members of Congress each state is afforded. Democrats, by many accounts, would lose representation in Congress if illegal immigrants were undercounted.
The Supreme Court is currently weighing the legality of the Trump administration's decision to include the census question, following a lawsuit by 18 states against the addition. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, speaking to a meeting of lawyers and judges earlier this week, remarked that "the event of greatest consequence for the current term, and perhaps for many terms ahead" was the resignation of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was replaced by Brett Kavanaugh.
That comment prompted speculation that the high court would uphold the census question by a 5-4 margin.
The citizenship question was last asked on the census in 1950, but beginning in 1970, a citizenship question was asked in a long-form questionnaire sent to a relatively small number of households, alongside the main census. In 2010, there was no long-form questionnaire.
"There is no credible argument to be made that asking about citizenship subverts the Constitution and federal law," Chapman University law professor and constitutional law expert John Eastman told Fox News. "The recent move is simply to restore what had long been the case."
And yet, more drama remains possible this week concerning the Democrats' spending bills, which were to contain the pay hike for legislators. The rest of the amalgamated spending bill is still expected to be on the floor later this week, funding four of the 12 federal spending areas. The combination measure would fund State and Defense Department operations, Energy and Water programs, as well as the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services.
The so-called Hyde Amendment, which blocks federal funding for abortion, is customarily a part of the Labor Department-Health and Human Services (HHS) appropriations bill.
A recent furor over the Democrats' position on abortion -- and votes that former Vice President Joe Biden took over the years supporting the Hyde Amendment -- could derail the bill. Biden last week suddenly changed his decades-long support for the once-bipartisan Hyde Amendment amid pressure from the party's progressive wing.
Biden's communications director, in a testy interview with CNN, struggled to explain why Biden had changed his mind, if not for political expediency.
Fox News' Chad Pergram and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

Justin Amash gone from House Freedom Caucus after saying Trump's conduct was 'impeachable'

Michigan Repubican Rep. Justin Amash announced Monday evening he was leaving the influential conservative House Freedom Caucus, just weeks after he attracted the ire of his colleagues by arguing in Twitter posts that President Trump had committed impeachable offenses, Fox News has learned.
Amash, speaking at a Freedom Caucus board meeting, insisted his departure was voluntary. Amash said he did not want to continue to be a "further distraction" for the caucus, which is chaired by North Carolina GOP Rep. Mark Meadows.
Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, a member of the Freedom Caucus, told Fox News' "Ingraham Angle" Monday evening that Meadows and Amash mutually came to the decision after several conversations.
Jordan said the Republican members of the group still consider Amash a friend, but that their disagreements were "sharp" and significant.
"Some of the president's actions were inherently corrupt," Amash, who said Trump had "engaged in impeachable conduct," tweeted in May. "Other actions were corrupt -- and therefore impeachable -- because the president took them to serve his own interests."
Amash also accused Attorney General Bill Barr of intentionally misrepresenting Mueller's report through lawyerly sleights of hand.
President Trump responded by writing that Amash was a "loser" and a "lightweight" seeking to gain national name recognition.
At a town hall in Grand Rapids, Mich., late last month, some of Amash's constituents excoriated him for pushing for impeachment, while several others commended him for breaking ranks with his party and standing on principle.
"You talk about the Constitution and how important that is, but yet nothing that Mueller came out within this report, nothing that has been said about him and President Trump is constitutional and has been a smear tactic because that's how the Democrats work," one Trump supporter told Amash. "How can you become a Democrat when we voted for you as a Republican because you've just drank the same Kool-Aid as all the Democrats."
Amash then defended his record in Congress, telling the town hall attendees he has "one of the most constitutionally conservative and fiscally conservative" voting records of all sitting lawmakers and that he's at the top "of nearly all the scorecards" of conservative groups.
Amash had a high 88 rating from the American Conservative Union (ACU) in 2018, up from 78 in 2017. Jordan scored 100 for both years, while Meadows notched 91 and 100, respectively. The group's Federal Legislative Ratings scores members of Congress based on how they vote in line with conservative principles. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., by contrast, had a 4 rating in 2018.
Another woman at the town hall, Anna Timmer, criticized Amash for "grandstanding" and trying to raise his "national profile," while arguing that an impeachment inquiry would "tear this country apart."
She later told Fox News the town hall was "packed with Democrats" who were "shaking their fists" at her.
In May, another caucus member, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, echoed Timmer's complaints. (McCarthy's ACU rating was 80 in 2018.)
"This is exactly what he wants, he wants to have attention," McCarthy said on "Sunday Morning Futures." He went on to express doubt over Amash's Republican leanings in general.
"You've got to understand Justin Amash. He's been in Congress quite some time. I think he's asked one question in all the committees that he's been in. He votes more with Nancy Pelosi than he ever votes with me. It's a question whether he's even in our Republican conference as a whole."
Amash criticized Republicans and Democrats for rushing to judgment over Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report, accusing his colleagues of speaking out based on which side of the political aisle they are on, and not the facts.
"Few members of Congress even read Mueller’s report; their minds were made up based on partisan affiliation," Amash tweeted, "and it showed, with representatives and senators from both parties issuing definitive statements on the 448-page report’s conclusions within just hours of its release."
McCarthy, meanwhile, accused Amash of simply being contrarian, saying, "You could have a bill with 400 votes all supporting it, there will always be one opposed and that is Justin Amash."
Amash stated earlier this year that he was considering running against Trump in 2020 as a third-party candidate.
Fox News' Chad Pergram and Mike Emanuel contributed to this report.

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Pres. Trump: Twitter Is Making a ‘Giant’ Mistake

President Donald Trump speaks during a ceremony to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day at The Normandy American Cemetery, Thursday, June 6, 2019, in Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy, France. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

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UPDATED 11:03 AM PT – Sunday. June 9, 2019

President Trump says Twitter is making a ‘giant mistake’ by quieting conservative users.
In a Tweet Sunday, the President said Twitter has violated freedom of speech and should lift its recent bans on conservative activists.
Twitter has been under fire from conservatives who allege the site pushes a left-leaning bias.
These claims came after his after conservative actor, James Woods, and Info Wars’ host, Alex Jones were banned on the site in addition to several other social media platforms.
Twitter has denied a left-leaning bias on its platform and disputes all allegations.