Connect with us

News

Joe Biden Signs into law Same-Sex Marriage Bill at White House Ceremony

Joe Biden Signs into law Same-Sex Marriage Bill at White House Ceremony

(CTN News) – On Tuesday, President Joe Biden signed new federal protections for same-sex Marriage and multiracial couples into law, concluding a personal and societal development on a topic that has seen increasing acceptance over the previous ten years.

Before tens of thousands of invited visitors on the South Lawn, Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act in a ceremony the White House said captured the significance of the time.

“Marriage is a straightforward idea. Who do you cherish? From the South Lawn, the president asked, “And will you stay faithful to the person you love?” It isn’t any more difficult than that,

The bill, according to Biden, preserves the federal “protections that come with marriage” and acknowledges that “everyone should have the freedom to answer such issues for themselves without the intrusion of the government.”

Interracial and same-sex couples were excluded from these safeguards for the majority of American history, Biden remarked. It did not treat them with the same respect and decency.

This legislation now mandates that same-sex marriage be recognized as lawful in every state.

The Defense of Marriage Act established marriage as being between a man and a woman and is now formally defunct according to the new legislation.

States must recognize the legality of out-of-state marriage licenses, including those for same-sex and mixed-race partnerships.

Biden supported the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 as a senator. The conclusion of his change of heart was the bill signing on Tuesday.

After being approved by the Senate with the backing of 12 Republican senators, the measure was passed in the House with the support of 39 Republicans and Democrats.

Even though public opinion on same-sex marriage has continued to change over time, such a bill had previously seemed unlikely to many in Washington.

According to surveys from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Public Religious Research Institute, 68% of Americans supported same-sex marriage in 2021, up 14% from 2014.

However, when the Supreme Court rejected Roe v. Wade this year, the public rallied and pushed harder to approve federal protections for same-sex and interracial marriage, igniting new concerns that the nation’s top court might also review other current rights surrounding marriage equality.

Justice Clarence Thomas “explicitly urged to revisit the right of marital equality, the ability of couples to make their own decisions on contraception,” Biden cautioned on the day the Supreme Court’s historic decision was handed down in June.

The Court is now leading us down a radical and hazardous road. Later, in the run-up to the midterm elections, he would issue similar cautions: “We want to make it clear: It’s not only about Roe and choice.

The topic at hand is marriage, specifically same-sex Marriage. It’s about birth control. It involves a wide variety of issues on the agenda, he remarked in August at a Democratic National Committee event.

For Joe Biden, the gathering on Tuesday marked a turning point in American politics on the subject ten years earlier.

Biden startled the nation with an unexpected statement made in an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” when he was vice president: He publicly supported same-sex marriage for the first time.

When asked whether he supported same-sex Marriage, Biden said, “I am perfectly comfortable with the concept that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another are entitled to the same privileges, all the civil rights, all the civil freedoms.”

The senator from Washington, who had previously declared that marriage should only be between a man and a woman and had voted to oppose government recognition of same-sex weddings, underwent a startling personal transformation with those statements, which Biden later claimed were unplanned.

The interview would also prove to be a turning point in contemporary American politics, inspiring then-President Barack Obama to adopt the same stance a few days later and giving other national leaders the green light to do the same.

“That one interview changed the course of Biden’s career as a politician. According to Sasha Issenberg, author of “The Engagement: America’s Quarter-Century Struggle Over Same-Sex Marriage,”

“he always had been very cautious around LGBT issues, whether in the Senate, as a presidential candidate, or as vice president, afraid of taking any position opponents could use to portray him as a left-winger.”

However, his party received unanimous acclaim for what he said on “Meet the Press,” particularly from LGBT donors and activists who had previously been dubious of him.

Biden, who was enjoying the hero worship from liberal activists, went on to actively support LGBT issues in the following years. He has been especially “unusually brazen” when it comes to transgender rights, according to Issenberg.

Prominent LGBTQ activists and members of the LGBTQ community were among the guests invited to the bill signing at the White House on Tuesday.

They included James Slaugh and Michael Anderson, who survived the shooting at Club Q, and Judy Kasen-Windsor, the widow of gay rights activist Edie Windsor.

They also included several plaintiffs from cases that culminated in the historic civil rights case Obergefell v. Hodges, in which the Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that same-sex couples can marry anywhere in the country.

David Bohnett, a philanthropist and Democratic contributor who has long supported Biden and been an open advocate for homosexual and transgender rights, told CNN that the bill signing on Tuesday could not have occurred at a more critical time.

When rights are being attacked, “[Biden] has proved his support for lesbian and homosexual civil rights for decades, and Tuesday’s signing into law is a reaffirmation of that,” Bohnett added. ”

I believe that we are here in reaction to the racist and discriminatory acts and techniques by so many in the right-wing and by so many who want to demolish the rights that we battled so hard for such a long time,” says the protester.

Related CTN News:

Indian Supreme Court Considers legalizing Same-Sex Marriage

News

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

Google

Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

google

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

google

Pixa Bay

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

google

Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

Continue Reading

News

2024 | Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

trump

Washington — Trump Media,  The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will not hear an appeal from social media platform X about a search warrant acquired by prosecutors in the election meddling case against former President Donald Trump.

The justices did not explain their rationale, and there were no recorded dissents.

The firm, which was known as Twitter before being purchased by billionaire Elon Musk, claims a nondisclosure order that prevented it from informing Trump about the warrant obtained by special counsel Jack Smith’s team violated its First Amendment rights.

The business also claims Trump should have had an opportunity to exercise executive privilege. If not reined in, the government may employ similar tactics to intercept additional privileged communications, their lawyers contended.

trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

Two neutral electronic privacy groups also joined in, urging the high court to hear the case on First Amendment grounds.

Prosecutors, however, claim that the corporation never shown that Trump utilized the account for official purposes, therefore executive privilege is not a problem. A lower court also determined that informing Trump could have compromised the current probe.

trump

Trump utilized his Twitter account in the weeks preceding up to his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to spread false assertions about the election, which prosecutors claim were intended to create doubt in the democratic process.

The indictment describes how Trump used his Twitter account to encourage his followers to travel to Washington on Jan. 6, pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification, and falsely claiming that the Capitol crowd, which battered police officers and destroyed glass, was peaceful.

musk trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

That case is now moving forward following the Supreme Court’s verdict in July, which granted Trump full immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.

The warrant arrived at Twitter amid quick changes implemented by Musk, who bought the company in 2022 and has since cut off most of its workforce, including those dedicated to combating disinformation and hate speech.

He also welcomed back a vast list of previously banned users, including Trump, and endorsed him for the 2024 presidential election.

SOURCE | AP

Continue Reading

News

The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

Supreme Court

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP

SEE ALSO:

Could Last-Minute Surprises Derail Kamala Harris’ Campaign? “Nostradamus” Explains the US Poll.

Scientists Awarded MicroRNA The Nobel Prize in Medicine.

US Inflation will Comfort a Fed Focused on Labor Markets.

Continue Reading

Trending