Baylor recognizing National Sexual Assault Awareness Month
WACO, Texas (FOX 44) – Baylor University is once again joining universities and communities around the country to increase public awareness and prevention education about sexual assault and interpersonal violence during Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM).
Throughout the month of April, the university's Equity, Civil Rights, and Title IX Office are providing opportunities for students, faculty and staff to join its commitment to fostering a safe and healthy campus, preventing acts of sexual violence and treating all members of the campus community with dignity and respect.
Baylor's schedule of events for SAAM are below:
Tuesday, April 1, 2025SAAM Active Awareness EventFountain Mall, 3 to 4 p.m.
Join staff from the Equity, Civil Rights, and Title IX Office at Fountain Mall to learn more about Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
Wednesday, April 2, 2025Empowerment JourneyFountain Mall, Noon to 2 p.m.
The Equity, Civil Rights, and Title IX Office welcomes partners from across campus and the community to share how everyone can be a part of preventing sexual violence and supporting survivors. Participating partners include the Counseling Center, the Care Team, BUPD, Student Government, Health Services and Waco`s Advocacy Center for Crime Victims and Children.
Thursday, April 3, 2025Light the Night/Campus Lit for SAAMBaylor Campus, 7 p.m.
The Baylor campus will glow teal in support of SAAM. Light the Night begins at 7 p.m. in Fountain Mall as teal lights go on at Rosenbalm Fountain, Pat Neff Hall and the Mark and Paula Hurd Welcome Center.
Wednesday, April 9, 2025Teal TreatsBaylor Sciences Building E-Side Atrium, Noon to 2 p.m.
Students are invited to come by and sample teal treats and learn more about SAAM.
Wednesday, April 16, 2025Succulents for SurvivorsBaylor Sciences Building, Noon to 2 p.m.
Decorate a succulent in honor of a survivor and learn more about preventing sexual violence and supporting survivors.
Tuesday, April 22, 2025Empowerment & Self-Defense ClassFoster Campus, Room 404, 5 to 7 p.m.
Learn about the importance of stopping the cycle of violence and how to defend yourself in high-risk situations during a free self-defense class led by trained instructors.
Wednesday, April 30, 2025Denim DayBarfield 213, Noon to 2 p.m.
Denim Day, a national awareness campaign, encourages wearing denim on the last Wednesday of Sexual Assault Awareness Month to demonstrate support for survivors of sexual assault. Participants are encouraged to share photos on Instagram with #DenimDay and tag @BU_Equity. Denim Day was established in 1999 in response to a judge`s ruling that a survivor could not have been assaulted since she was wearing tight jeans. The day was set aside in solidarity with survivors and to shift misconceptions surrounding sexual assault.
For more information about Baylor University events or resources, you can email Title_IX@baylor.edu, call 254-710-8454 or visit baylor.edu/equity.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Forbes
12 hours ago
- Forbes
Celebrating 60 Years At Detroit's Charles H. Wright Museum Of African American History
Elonte Davis, 'If You can Make it.' Charles H. Wright (1918–2002). M.D. Medical Doctor. No small achievement for a Black man born and raised in Alabama during the darkest depths of Jim Crow segregation. Every instrument of society at that time was used to prevent African American achievement. Still, Wright overcame. He established an OB-GYN practice in Detroit in the mid-1950s, his second stint in the city. From individual excellence, Wright moved on to hero stuff. He worked to integrate Detroit's hospitals and put his life at risk as an emergency physician during Civil Rights Movement marches in Alabama and Louisiana. Throughout, he took numerous trips to Africa. He studied African culture and history, and African American culture and history. He started collecting items related to both. In 1965, he opened a small museum in his home to display the collection–the International Afro-American Museum. The museum quickly outgrew his residence and expanded to a trailer. From those humble beginnings evolved the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. 'He had always been fascinated with the culture and wanted to do something to teach–particularly young people–about their history and about how significant and powerful African nations are and were,' museum president Neil Barclay told "Ensuring that generations, especially young African Americans, are made aware of and take pride in the history of their forebears and their remarkable struggle for freedom," Wright explained. Bear in mind, he was not a trained historian or museum professional. He was a medical doctor. African and African American culture and history were hobbies. No matter. 'It strikes me how important it is for us to determine, or think about, how we as individuals can improve the planet and the communities we live in,' Barclay said. 'Here was an individual, an obstetrician, and he gets this idea of wanting to share the artifacts he has so that kids will understand, appreciate more about their culture, and it ends up being one of the first and largest African American museums in the country. We think that we don't make a difference, that we can't do anything to make a change in the world we live in, and here's an individual who has totally transformed an entire part of the cultural sector.' DETROIT - OCTOBER 31: Dignitaries pay the first respects to the late Rosa Parks at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History on October 31, 2005 in Detroit, Michigan. Parks, the woman who refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus in 1955, is credited for sparking the American civil rights movement. Parks will lie in honor at the museum until 5am November 2, and her funeral will take place at 11am at Greater Grace Temple in Detroit. (Photo by Susan Tusa-Pool/Getty Images) Two memorials symbolize the Wright Museum's significance to Detroit over its 60 years in existence, Detroit's contributions to America, and African Americans' contributions to American history. Rosa Parks lied in state at the museum in 2005. She became an icon protesting segregated buses in Montgomery, but moved to Detroit to live out the remainder of her days following the famous boycott. Aretha Franklin was similarly honored at The Wright following her passing in 2018 and decades defining the Motown sound. Parks and the Queen of Soul are both buried in Detroit's Woodlawn Cemetery. '(The Wright has) been significant as a gathering place, as a point of pride, as a place where our community has gathered and has really taught the rest of our friends, our colleagues, our allies, the significance of the African American journey in American history,' Barclay explained. 'We always talk about how African American history is American history. It's a slice of it. It's intrinsic to an understanding of American history, and indeed, we get people, literally all races and ages from around the world, coming to try to understand what it was about African Americans that so influence what America became, and what we now consider to be a democratic ideal.' What America became and the democratic ideal are under attack today. Much as The Wright focuses on the nation's past, its most important work lives in the now. In the wake of the Trump administration's efforts to dismantle crucial Civil Rights protections and federal diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, the instruments of society are again being used to derail African American achievement. Black history, voting rights, policing reform, and environmental protections attempting to bring equality to African Americans have all been under daily assault by the administration. Tragically, as America lurches backwards from enlightenment, uplifting the narratives of Black culture and history have never been more urgent. 'We just continue to tell the truth about the stories that we know particularly from a lived experience that African Americans have had,' Barclay said. 'I don't think that that will go away. Our history is one of resilience, of having to stand up for the truth that we understand and know, and that's what we're called to do in this moment.' As Wright was called to do in the 1950s and 1960s. 'Whether folks want to call it DEI or not, these are values that we have had for centuries. It has nothing to do with the current rhetoric,' Barclay continues. 'We continue to espouse those values. We continue to put forward that we believe in diverse cultures. We believe in including as many people as possible in the work that we do, and we believe that all people should be treated fairly and equitably. We've believed that for 400 years, that's a story of the fight of African Americans in this country.' Hard to imagine those ideals are controversial, but here we are. Welcome to America in 2025. Dominick Lemonious, 'Pray for my City.' The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History celebrates its 60th anniversary this summer with a special exhibition, 'Luminosity: A Detroit Arts Gathering,' presenting the work of more than 60 present-day Detroit artists, long-departed masters, and selections from the museum's archives all celebrating the rich landscape of the city's Black arts scene. For these artists, creativity isn't just a practice, it's a legacy passed down through generations of Detroiters. Nearly 100 artworks–paintings, sculptures, photography, woodcuts, prints–honor The Wright's six-decade presence and impact on Black artistry in the city. 'Arcing across six decades, the artworks are shared in a collective light that reveals (Detroit's) extraordinary urban experiences and distinctive sorrows,' Ann Arbor, MI based exhibition guest curator, Vera Ingrid Grant, founding director of Harvard University's Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art, told 'Shown in abundance, together, they offer shared histories, personal memories, and intense dreams and anxieties of our past, present, and future. This congregation of artworks presents an astonishing vista of storytelling marked by startling tensions and at times a powerful stillness. It's a paradoxical story of vulnerability and resilience that still continues.' Grant has split the presentation into halves: 'DayLight' and 'NightLight.' 'Some of the arrays depicted scenes from an ordinary day, social life, kinship and home—or moving about and working in the metropolis of Detroit. These tableaus seemed to belong in 'DayLight'–a gallery that resounds with a boisterous and eclectic energy,' she explained. 'Alternately, some scenes felt imbued with features of stark and alternate visions–sober histories, strategies of healing, and validations of faith. They called for a more solemn setting and a more austere and traditional installation we managed in 'NightLight.' Artworks engage in universal themes of love, social critique, stories of families, and neighborhoods, but also subjects specific to Detroit. 'For these 60 and more artists of Detroit, you see in their vision the impact of migrations, the endurance of the city's imposing industrial structures–in various states of resilience, decay, and a promise of a beckoning renaissance–but you also feel the differing personal and community mappings and movements in the city of who goes where and when, and where in the city there may be infrastructure and where there may be none,' Grant explained. Throughout the exhibition and the museum, Detroit's position at the forefront of a national and international dialogue regarding the profound influence of African American history and culture are revealed. 'Luminosity' will remain on view through March 31, 2026. Mario Moore, 'These Are Not Yams But They Are Damn Good,' 2025. Oil on Linen 51 1/2 x 42 in 130.8 x 106.7 cm (MM018) The exodus of manufacturing jobs from America left Detroit on the mat for decades. Those who stuck out the hard times have finally gotten the city back on its feet. More than that, Detroit today belongs in the conversation for most exciting city in America. Black artists and the city's cultural institutions have been at the forefront of that transformation and continue leading it. Through August 10, 2025, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit presents 'Code Switch: Distributing Blackness, Reprogramming Internet Art.' Spanning multiple galleries, this interdisciplinary presentation highlights Black contemporary artists' impact on new media and cultivation of technology in arts and culture. 'Code Switch' brings together artists from across the globe to showcase the varying expressions of technology and the internet's impact on contemporary art, honoring Black cultural legacies in the field of new media and time-based practices. The presentation expands as a contemporary group exhibition celebrating Detroit as an integral meeting place where Black people have always been, and continue to be, pioneers in new media art and technologies. The city's deep history with sound—where techno was popularized in America—offers a framework for exploring the interconnectedness of Black people, bodies, and machines. Through July 30, 2025, Library Street Collective brings LaKela Brown and Mario Moore together in a joint exhibition exploring economic and community power through the lens of their shared Detroit heritage. Their work reflects a deep appreciation for the city's transformation while raising questions about who benefits from its growth. Through distinct yet complementary practices, Brown and Moore investigate the ways Black communities have historically cultivated wealth, resilience, and culture beyond mere financial capital. At the heart of the exhibition is their collaborative bronze coin sculpture, a striking 60-inch relief. Each artist sculpted one side–Moore's featuring a profile portrait of Brown, and Brown's adorned with a bouquet of collard greens–underscoring the significance of plant life in the formation of Black identity. The coin serves as both an artifact and a provocation, prompting viewers to consider who holds value in today's society. Alongside the collaborative sculpture will be individual works by both artists. Moore's paintings draw from 17th century Dutch devotional art, reframing them to celebrate Black culture–with garlands of plants significant to the Black diaspora such as watermelon, hibiscus, and periwinkle surrounding subjects like a Black urban farmer couple. Brown's wall-based sculptural relief works are rooted in ethnobotany and Black aesthetics, drawing inspiration from plants and foods that are at the forefront of her childhood memories. Another Detroit sculptor, Austen Brantley, continues a hot streak of major public commissions with a new statue of Joe Louis commissioned by the City of Detroit set to on the Joe Louis Greenway in August of 2025. Detroit's rising African American artists push boldly into the future on the shoulders of giants like Wright. Giants like Njia Kai and George Shirley. That duo will be celebrated at the GhostLight Arts Initiative's inaugural GhostLight Gala, taking place on Sunday, June 29, 2025, at the Garden Theatre. The event will celebrate five seasons of the Obsidian Theatre Festival, launch a bold new chapter for GhostLight's mission-driven work in the performing arts, and recognize two legendary figures in Detroit's arts community. Kai has been a leader in the Detroit arts and culture scene for decades, programming events that have uplifted Black cultural traditions. Affectionately known as 'Mama Njia' to many, she has mentored and trained countless young artists and producers across Detroit. Shirley was the first African American tenor to perform a leading role at the Metropolitan Opera, a professor at The University of Michigan, and a National Medal of Arts recipient. Proceeds from the Gala will help support GhostLight programming including the Obsidian Theatre Festival, Young Artist Workshop, Detroit Artist Fellowship Program, Neighborhood Engagement Programming, and Encore Michigan.
New York Times
4 days ago
- New York Times
Rebuffing Trump, New York Refuses to Rescind Native American Mascot Ban
The New York State Education Department on Thursday sternly rejected the Trump administration's demand that the state reverse a ban on Native American mascots, questioning the federal government's interpretation of civil rights law. The White House had accused New York last week of illegal discrimination, objecting to the state's requirement that school districts banish mascots that appropriate Native American culture or risk losing funding. After parents in Massapequa, N.Y., protested the elimination of the district's decades-old 'Chiefs' nickname and logo, the Trump administration ordered the state to allow all districts to choose their preferred mascots. But Daniel Morton-Bentley, the deputy commissioner for legal affairs at the state education agency, said in a Thursday letter to the administration that the federal Education Department's finding was based on 'internally inconsistent arguments.' The Trump administration outlined its view of civil rights law in a 'Dear Colleague' letter to schools in February, taking issue with diversity programs that 'stigmatize students who belong to particular racial groups based on crude racial stereotypes.' New York's two-year-old ban on Native American mascots, which many tribes argue are often historically inaccurate and draw from stereotypes, complies with the goal outlined in the administration's earlier letter, Mr. Morton-Bentley argued. He pointed out that under previous administrations, the Education Department has required some districts to eliminate Native American mascots. It was not the first time that New York's education leaders had responded to the Trump administration with defiance. After the federal Education Department threatened in April to pull school funding from states that did not eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs, New York was the first state to publicly repudiate the demand. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
CNN
5 days ago
- CNN
Inside Trump's gutting of the DOJ unit that enforces voting laws
The Justice Department's unit tasked with enforcing federal voting laws is down from roughly 30 attorneys to about a half-dozen, as most of its career staff has departed in the face of escalating pressure tactics from the Trump administration. The mass exodus that has whittled the voting section down to a fifth of its normal size came after a relentless campaign by the department's political leaders to smear the work of the longtime attorneys, dismiss noncontroversial cases, and reassign career supervisors. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, the Trump appointee who oversees the civil rights division, which houses the DOJ voting section, has joked about how the division has emptied out. More than 200 attorneys from the division, often called the 'crown jewel' of the department, took a buyout offered by the administration. 'The crying, the unhappy hours, the mass resignations, the leaking, there's a support group for former civil rights attorneys,' Dhillon told conservative commentator Tucker Carlson in a recent interview. 'These are all leading indicators of the stages of grief.' During President Donald Trump's first term, DOJ officials forced voting section attorneys to abandon the more high-profile work that had often been opposed by conservatives. But the gutting of the section during Trump's second administration goes far beyond that, according to former department attorneys and outside voter advocates. 'We are seeing many more people at this point, after many, many years of experience, leave the division,' said Thomas Saenz, the president of Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. 'That is obviously more devastating, because the work that's going to be done by them is going to be more clearly anti-voting rights and, frankly, done by less experienced people.' The Justice Department has already dropped challenges to Republican-drawn redistricting maps and GOP-backed election laws, as well as lawsuits that alleged Black voters in small communities had been discriminated against by longstanding local voting systems. The administration is abandoning preexisting cases brought under the Voting Rights Act as the 1965 civil rights law is under legal attack, with a new appeals court ruling foreclosing private enforcement of its main provision in a large swath of the country. It is unclear how the Justice Department will do even the most benign election law enforcement – like making sure military members serving abroad receive their ballots in time to vote – with the lack of staff and loss of expertise. And the attorneys' departure could undermine Trump's ability to execute his own agenda for voting practices, after his false beliefs that the 2020 election was stolen have only festered in the four years he was out of office. A provision of the president's sweeping executive order seeking to overhaul election rules has already been blocked by a judge in Washington, DC. Another major legal challenge will be scrutinized at a court hearing in Boston this week. Still, the voting unit and its barebones staff is pushing ahead, with a new lawsuit last week seeking to address the registration records of potentially tens of thousands of North Carolinians after election officials did not collect ID information required by law. A Justice Department official, pointing to the North Carolina lawsuit, said that the voting section 'remains active despite shifting priorities from the previous administration.' Now serving as acting chief, according to court filings, is Maureen Riordan, who served in various department roles – both career and politically appointed – during the first Trump administration before spending the Biden years at a conservative legal advocacy group that successfully opposed the Justice Department in a significant redistricting case. Dhillon and her boss, Attorney General Pam Bondi, have been outspoken about their desire to reshape the department by pushing out career officials who balk at pursuing the administration's agenda in court. 'I would have loved all the lawyers from civil rights… to roll up their sleeves and get to work with me,' Dhillon said in a recent address to the Federalist Society. But, she said, 'a lot of lawyers didn't want to do that.' As the deadline for the buyout opportunity approached this spring, the administration's squeeze on the division's voting section tightened. Several career supervisors in the section were targeted with reassignments just days before that offer's expiration, according to people familiar with the section's inner workings. 'That's what really made people nervous,' said one former DOJ lawyer, who asked for anonymity to speak candidly. The supervisors typically serve as the buffer between the career 'line' attorneys who litigate cases and the department's political appointees. Ultimately most of the supervisors, including the section's chief, left the department when confronted with the reassignments, which would have sent them to an administrative office that handles internal employee complaints. Just two trial attorneys remain at the section, sources told CNN, though the administration has tasked six attorneys in the civil rights division's housing enforcement section to pick up some of the voting section's work. The fact that the administration was bringing in attorneys from another section, while seeking to reassign the attorneys with longtime experience in voting law, shows that 'they don't want the people with the background and the experience,' the former lawyer said. A department official familiar with the matter told CNN that attorneys from sections with less work were being reassigned to clear case backlogs. The reassignments happened against the backdrop of a series of other administration maneuvers that encouraged the departures of career attorneys who thought, at the beginning of Trump's second term, they could stick it out. On her first day as attorney general, Bondi penned a memo requiring DOJ lawyers to 'zealously' advocate for administration positions or face disciplinary action and potential firing that set the tone. In the weeks that followed, the administration dropped a number of major cases including a Alabama voter purge lawsuit that had already produced a win for the DOJ; a Texas redistricting challenge that, after years of litigation, was about to go to trial; and the lawsuit brought against a Georgia overhaul of its election laws – an overhaul that was propelled by Trump's lies about the 2020 count and included new ID requirements and a ban on mobile voting. Before the Georgia case was formally dropped, Bondi said in a news release that the claims in the lawsuit were 'fabricated' and 'false.' Dhillon too slammed the Georgia lawsuit as a 'fact-free hypothesis.' Bondi's language was a 'huge allegation, and one that has consequences for your bar license,' the former DOJ lawyer told CNN. Gates McGavick, a Justice Department spokesperson, defended the Georgia case's dismissal and Bondi's rhetoric around it, saying in a statement to CNN that the legal challenge was 'based on conspiracy theories pushed by extremist politicians' and among 'the worst examples of weaponization under the prior administration.' Though less noticed, the Trump administration's move to dismiss a handful of more under-the-radar cases, dealing with challenges to the voting policies of municipalities, was perhaps an even greater blow to the morale of the career voting section officials. Those lawsuits were the type of unflashy cases the department has consistently brought under GOP administrations in the past, including the first Trump term, as they were not the partisan lightning rods like DOJ challenges to statewide election laws. 'Once small cases were dismissed, it became clear they weren't just shutting down controversial cases; they were shutting down Voting Rights Act enforcement,' another former DOJ attorney told CNN. One such case was a DOJ lawsuit against Houston County, Georgia, that alleged its system of elections for its county commission diluted the political power of Black voters, who make up nearly a third of the county's electorate. Among the Black candidates who were defeated over the years, under the county's at-large system, were candidates who ran as Democrats, Republicans or independents, according to the lawsuit, filed days before Trump's inauguration. 'You wouldn't have dismissed cases like those in Trump 1,' said a third former DOJ attorney, who did appellate work for the division before leaving at the beginning of the current administration. 'That's a signal to me that the Trump administration is just hostile across the board.' Amid the withdrawals, the Justice Department issued a new 'mission statement' for the voting section and other offices within the civil rights division. The statement signaled a focus on election fraud, as well as on defending Trump's executive order on voting. It also mislabeled the voting section (calling it the 'Voting Rights Section') and botched the name of a law that the voting section traditionally enforces, the National Voter Registration Act (calling it the 'National Voting Rights Act.') Though the Justice Department is abandoning the voting rights cases it brought under the prior administration, many of those lawsuits will continue because non-government voting rights groups are also involved in the legal challenges. Still, the department's withdrawal from the existing cases comes at a cost to the private litigators – and particularly so in the case alleging racial discrimination in the way Texas Republican lawmakers drew their legislative maps. A trial in that case began last month. 'A major player withdraws like that on the eve of trial, it's a concern,' said Saenz, whose organization is among the private groups that sued Texas. 'It increases burdens – both time burdens and money burdens, frankly – and could ultimately have an effect on the outcome.' And, as the department is apparently stepping away from enforcing a key Voting Rights Act provision known as Section 2, a federal appeals court cut off private enforcement of the provision in a ruling last month that applies to seven midwestern states. That ruling has been appealed. But in the meantime, as long at the department is not interested in bringing VRA cases, the 'heart' of the landmark civil rights law is 'effectively dead' in those seven states, said Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor who worked on voting issues in Democratic administrations, including in a top civil rights division role under President Barack Obama. Former DOJ attorneys told CNN that VRA enforcement on a local level was of particular concern. Those cases take significant resources, and often federal government subpoena power, to investigate and bring, as do enforcement actions brought under other federal voting laws. The Help America Vote Act, under which the department has brought cases dealing with ballot access for people with disabilities and requirements for provisional voting, cannot be enforced by private parties. Private parties can bring lawsuits under parts of the National Voter Registration law, which sets certain standards for voting registration in most of the country and also requires election officials take certain steps to keep their voter rolls clean. But their burdens are higher than they are for the DOJ, both because of a procedural threshold known as standing and because they lack the federal government's subpoena power to investigate voter registration practices. The unseen effort that goes into enforcing the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act has now also been called into question with the loss of the department's voting attorneys. The former appellate DOJ attorney described it as 'completely nonpartisan work,' and one of the section's 'highest priorities.' The law sets out the procedures to make sure US service members and other Americans abroad can vote. Voting section attorneys typically make contact with the top election officials in all 50 states ahead of every election to make sure their overseas ballot processes are on track to meet federal deadlines. The third former DOJ attorney described the effort as a 'really all-hands-on-deck process that involves dozens of attorneys.' The military vote has long been seen as sacrosanct, and UOCAVA was passed in 1986 with broad bipartisan support. Parts of Trump's election executive order would appear to make it harder for military families away from their homes to vote. The White House previously defended the executive order in an April statement that said Trump 'wants to ensure the right of every eligible citizen to vote while preserving election integrity.' A Justice Department official told CNN that the department 'will continue to enforce civil provisions of federal statutes that protect voter integrity,' including those in UOCAVA, NVRA and HAVA. Hollowing out the voting section could inflict collateral damage on the Republican Party, experts told CNN, because their supporters are infrequent voters who suffer the most if federal voting laws aren't enforced. And the ability of the administration to carry out Trump's stated goal of keeping voter rolls free of ineligible voters may now also be at risk with the career experts in the relevant law no longer working at the department. A test case for how the department operates without the longtime voting attorneys who left is the ongoing litigation challenging Trump's election executive order. Normally, a different DOJ division – the civil division – would defend a presidential order. In the legal challenges to it filed in DC, however, arguments were led by Deputy Assistant Attorney General Michael Gates, a top Trump appointee in the civil rights division. It was notable that Gates showed up to the mid-April arguments by himself, as in other high-profile cases challenging Trump policies, career attorneys have been present as back up for the political appointees making the arguments. Dhillon, Gates' boss, watched from the audience. The arguments did not go well. Gates struggled with the judge's questions about the legal authorities the department would be relying on to carry out Trump's directives. He was also grilled by the judge on evidence put forward by the plaintiffs – a letter from the US Election Assistance Commission about implementing the executive order – that contradicted a key legal argument the administration was making in the case. That latter dust up earned a sharp footnote in the opinion of Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who issued an order halting a provision of Trump's order that sought to expand requirements for Americans to show documents proving their citizenship when registering to vote. 'The Court is not currently of the mind that counsel for Defendants intentionally misrepresented the facts by failing to mention a letter authored by a declarant with whom he surely consulted,' she wrote. 'But the Court must remark that this exchange does not reflect the level of diligence the Court expects from any litigant—let alone the United States Department of Justice.' In a surprising move, the administration has indicated it would not appeal Kollar-Kotelly's preliminary order as the case moves forward on the merits. A hearing is scheduled on June 6 in a separate case, brought by Democratic-led states, that could produce a more sweeping order blocking other provisions in the executive order. The civil division is leading the administration's defense in that lawsuit.
