By Jeremy Selvidge
On Friday, Donald Trump was sworn in as the forty-fifth president of the United States. As a candidate, Trump pledged to sign the “First Amendment Freedom Act,” a bill originally introduced in 2015 that would allow discrimination based on the “moral conviction that marriage is… the union of one man and one woman,” were Congress to pass the measure. The 2015 bill was introduced shortly before the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which found state laws restricting same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional.
The Trump administration has “outlined… plans for shrinking the federal bureaucracy,” including the elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The proposed changes would also reduce or eliminate funding for other government programs, including grants for Violence Against Women programs and environmental initiatives. As of this writing, Congressional Republicans have a 241-194 majority in the House of Representatives and a 52-48 majority in the Senate.
In Texas, the state legislature is considering a “bathroom bill” similar to the one signed into law in North Carolina in 2016. The Texas law would “keep transgender Texans from using bathrooms that align with their gender identity” in public buildings such as public or charter schools, courthouses, and libraries.
