Black Lives Matter Activists Not Happy Civil Rights Leaders Attended Trump Meeting

Don Emmert / AFP / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Young black activists are frustrated with the black leaders and organizations who have met with President-elect Donald Trump's transition team in recent days — exacerbating generational a split between with the old-guard civil rights activists and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Tensions between black groups over how to deal with presidents are not new, dating back to the early days of the Civil Rights movement; not even President Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States was exempt. And the movement’s dissatisfaction with black leaders who get access to Trump or his senior staff goes back to the campaign. In November 2015, Campaign Zero’s Brittany Packnett was among young activists of black-led organizations that expressed dismay at black ministers who met with Trump.

But now Trump will be president — and on Wednesday, civil rights leaders and left-leaning activists attended a meeting convened by Trump transition official Omarosa Manigault.

Among the leaders were Barbara Arnwine, director of the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights; Melanie Campbell, president and CEO of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation; Hilary Shelton, director the NAACP's Washington Bureau, and its senior vice president for advocacy and policy; and Ben Chavis, a former associate of Dr. Martin Luther King, who is currently head of the National Newspaper Publishing Association. The National Association of Black Journalists, which has advocated for black journalists since 1975, also met with Trump’s transition team.

In response, Campaign Zero co-founder DeRay Mckesson said that Trump’s cabinet nominees and rhetoric “did not demonstrate a commitment to justice or equity during his campaign.”

“There will continue to be consistent pressure applied to Trump, his administration, and Congress to ensure that issues, programs, and funding related to black people and marginalized people remain intact and at the forefront of his presidency,” he said.

While a growing number of black moderates in Washington, as well as non-partisan operatives say black Democrats need to find ways to work with Trump on issues like related to criminal justice, jobs, and education, Black Lives Matter activists largely find that unacceptable. Some contend that groups like the alt-right, a new white nationalist movement, and the KKK, which supported Trump, have made his presidency unique.

On a policy level, the incoming president campaigned on law and order, and is supported by the Fraternal Order of Police, which has encouraged Trump to throw out recommendations to improve the relationship between communities and police made by a task force convened by Obama.

“Here's the thing,” a still downtrodden movement activist involved in police-community relations said. “He's going to have to give them something.”

Trump even singled the movement out, telling Bill O’Reilly that Black Lives Matter had “in certain instances” instigated targeted shootings of officer last summer that rocked the entire country — and had many inside the movement unsure how to proceed.

Shelton, who attended Wednesday’s meeting, said he used his seat at the table to push the administration on voting rights, and on the nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions to lead the Justice Department. Civil rights leaders, he said, have a duty to make sure the country lives up to its constitutional promises of equal protection under the law and equal opportunity for all “if we plan on staying in this country.”

“We can’t run,” he said, adding that the NAACP is inviting Trump its annual convention this summer. “The presidential administration has an awful lot of power and they can decide how to wield it. We have to do everything in our power to make sure they know what the challenges are and [know] what we want to be able to address issues of our communities.”

Shelton said that while he respects young civil rights activists, “I think they have to decide what they want.”

In interviews, over a dozen young activists said they were disappointed with leaders that met with Trump’s transition team, citing his treatment of women and President Obama, and how he campaign treating Muslims and people of color who they feel will be more vulnerable under Trump’s administration.

Calling Trump “one of the most divisive and outright racist demagogues,” Peter Haviland-Eduah, the policy chair of the Million Hoodies Movement for Justice said Trump’s involvement with the Central Park Five and giving rise to birtherism are disqualifying.

“Submitting to this harmful agenda should not be and is not a prerequisite to living in the United States and we refuse to live on those terms,” he said. “We too are citizens of this nation and will continue to demand equality and accountability until the struggle is won.”

On Wednesday, a coalition of several dozen youth-led black groups known as the Movement for Black Lives announced it was set to shortly release “powerful tools for people across the country to better organize, resist and learn.” In a statement, the activists said it was necessary in light of a “new political moment, marked by overt racism, sexism, and control of the federal government by billionaires.” The group said it was responding to increased violence against black people.

One prominent woman leader said the group is planning to “take Trump at face value,” using strategies to resist that will look the same, even though the target is different.

“There’s no sense in wasting time negotiating with a person who has already made clear by his cabinet picks how he feels about our families and our lives,” she said. “We are already clear that Trump doesn't believe black lives matter.”

As A Broader Movement, Black Lives Matter Braces For Trump’s Presidency

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Senators Urge Trump Not To Roll Back Federal Rules On Campus Rape

Sen. Bob Casey

Jessica Kourkounis / Getty Images

Two Democratic senators urged President-elect Donald Trump in a letter Thursday not to roll back key federal rules for how colleges are expected to respond to sexual assault cases involving students.

Sens. Bob Casey (D-Penn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wa.) sent a letter to Trump expressing concern about the possibility that his administration would rescind a 2011 Dear Colleague letter issued by the US Department of Education.

The 2011 letter clarified what the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights expects schools to do about sexual violence on their campuses to comply with the gender equity law Title IX. However, elements of the letter have been challenged by critics who said it removed or disregarded due process rights for accused students. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) recently placed the letter on a list of regulations he wants to see Trump roll back, claiming it "virtually dictates one-size-fits-all procedures which provide less protection to the accused."

"Campus sexual assault is a widespread problem affecting millions of college students across the nation, and institutions of higher education have struggled to respond even with the best of intentions," Casey and Murray wrote in their letter, obtained by BuzzFeed News.

Murray is the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, and both she and Casey are on the Senate HELP committee, which will be holding a confirmation hearing for Betsy DeVos, Trump's nominee for Education Secretary, on Wednesday.

The senators' letter was sent just as Vice President Joe Biden headlined the final event from the Obama White House on combatting campus rape.

“I’m working very hard with this incoming administration to convince them to understand that this is, in a sense, the civil rights issue of our time, the human rights issue of our time," Biden said at the White House event.

Casey and Murray focus in their letter on the preponderance of the evidence standard that the Education Department says schools should use when deciding an accused student's guilt. Using the standard means school officials must decide they're more than 50% certain of someone's guilt, much lower than the beyond a reasonable doubt standard used in criminal courts when someone is facing jail or prison time.

"One of the most important pieces of the 2011 guidance clarified longstanding policy at the Office [for] Civil Rights, dating back to at least 1995 and explicitly supported by the George W. Bush Administration, that expects institutions to use the preponderance of the evidence standard of proof for conduct proceedings following a report of domestic or sexual violence," the letter states. "The preponderance of the evidence standard is well established for violations of civil rights laws and civil court proceedings, and we believe this is the correct and appropriate standard to use."

Documents from the Education Department show the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both instructed schools to use the preponderance standard. Several former officials in the department's Office for Civil Rights told BuzzFeed News that prior to the 2011 Dear Colleague letter, it was known internally that the preponderance standard was expected in campus sexual assault cases.

However, the 2011 letter was the first time all schools nationwide were told to use it. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a civil liberties group, is sponsoring a lawsuit against the Education Department for not allowing colleges to comment before issuing the guidance.

“We certainly were blindsided. Everyone I’ve talked to was blindsided," Robert Shipley, executive director of the group, told BuzzFeed News. "Obviously that was part of the problem."

Yet, higher education groups aren't necessarily pining to have the standard of proof in these cases raised. Makese Motley, a lobbyist for the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, said it makes schools "very nervous" to raise the standard because they also deal with sexual misconduct issues that might not rise to a criminal level.

“We would have huge concerns about changing the preponderance standard and raising it even higher," Motley told BuzzFeed News. "That’s something that makes us very nervous, especially as public colleges. Maybe the conduct doesn’t rise to the criminal code or felony code, but may have been actions or conduct taken that still warrants [the accused student] being suspended."

Casey and Murray were the original sponsors of the Campus SaVE Act, legislation included in the 2013 Violence Against Women Act reauthorization, that codified several portions of the 2011 Dear Colleague letter, but did not include the standard of evidence.

"We respectfully urge you to strongly support these efforts to end campus sexual assault," the letter concludes.

LINK: What A Trump Presidency Could Mean For Combating Campus Rape

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Trump Can Fill More Seats On A Key Federal Court

AP Photo/Susan Walsh

WASHINGTON — A fourth judicial vacancy has opened up on the federal trial court in Washington, DC, giving President-elect Donald Trump another opportunity at the start of his presidency to choose nominees for an important court that routinely hears lawsuits against the federal government.

US District Judge Richard Leon became a senior judge at the start of 2017, creating a vacant active judgeship on the DC bench. Senior judges can still hear cases, but have the option of a smaller docket.

The court, the US District Court for the District of Columbia, currently has no Republican-appointed active judges, but now Trump will be able to nominate four people to the court — more than one-fourth of its active judgeships.

A former prosecutor who served as a counsel to Congress in multiple presidential investigations, Leon was confirmed to the DC federal district court in 2002. He was not immediately available for comment on Wednesday.

Leon ruled in late 2013 that the National Security Agency's bulk collection of telephone metadata was "most likely unconstitutional" after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents to the media that revealed the surveillance program's existence.

Trump is already set to inherit more than 100 federal court vacancies when he takes office this month, giving him an early opportunity to influence the bench nationwide. But the DC court is of particular importance given the number of cases filed there that involve policy and the operations of the federal government.

Nine judges on the DC court were nominated by President Obama, filling a majority of the court's 15 active judgeships. By the end of 2016, Leon was the only active judge on the court who was nominated by a Republican president.

The US Senate did not act on Obama's three nominees to the court, who were sent back to the White House at the start of the new congressional session this week.

The DC court is the primary forum for lawsuits over public records requests under the federal Freedom of Information Act. Dozens of lawsuits related to access to emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private server were filed in DC, and some are still being litigated.

The court also handles a large number of cases challenging the legality of federal regulations, and high-profile public corruption, fraud, and government leaks cases have been prosecuted there. Appeals from the DC court go up to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, an influential court on administrative law.

In recent years, defendants to come through the DC court included former Illinois congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., who pleaded guilty to misusing campaign funds; cyclist Lance Armstrong, who is fighting civil claims that he defrauded the government by doping while his team was sponsored by the US Postal Service; and former professional baseball player Roger Clemens, who was acquitted of charges that he lied to Congress about using performance enhancing drugs.

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Omarosa Angers Black Republicans With Invite-Only Meeting

Drew Angerer / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Black Republicans are figuring out how to respond to an invite-only meeting taking place Wednesday between senior staff of President-elect Donald Trump’s transition and mostly Democratic-leaning civil rights groups and clergy.

The meeting, first reported by ABC News, which began late Wednesday morning, sent black Republicans scrambling for answers well into the night Tuesday into Wednesday morning, setting off fears that the Trump transition team does not intend on having black Republicans who helped Trump get elected be involved with influencing the team on policy.

Many of the black Republicans not invited view it as a snub; after all, they are longtime party loyalists who stuck with Trump through a tough — and, at times, embarrassing — campaign.

It’s not clear which representatives from different groups are attending, but names left off the list alarmed black Republicans who feel that they should have gotten access.

An invitation provided to BuzzFeed News described the meeting as an “African-American Listening Session.”

“You are invited to an African-American Listening Session with Omarosa Manigault and senior members from the Trump Transition Team," the invite from the transition team’s office of national engagement reads. “This meeting will allow for an opportunity to briefly share your priority issues with the official Transition Team. To the extent that you would like to share brief policy papers on issues of importance to your organization, please do so either in advance of or immediately following the meeting.”

Two well-placed sources said the meeting is the Manigault’s undertaking. Multiple outlets reported Tuesday that she would have a role in the White House as a public engagement liaison.

One notable absence on Wednesday, multiple sources in the room said, was strategist Elroy Sailor, who served as an adviser to Reince Priebus over the course of the campaign. Sailor did not return messages seeking comment.

The lack of well-known black conservatives or lawmakers alarmed one invitee, Bishop Harry Jackson of the Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, Maryland.

Jackson said Manigault was impressive in her presentation, saying the team would be listening to the invitees — about 80 in total, he estimated — and prioritizing issues for the administration to address.

"I have to say I was a little put off in the beginning because I'm looking around going, 'Where are all the black conservatives?' But then I thought that since Ken Blackwell was there, they can easily get that perspective."

Jackson also said that Manigault specifically addressed people in the room who did not vote for the President-elect, saying that the transition team had wanted to hear from them, too.

She did not return an email message seeking comment.

Conference calls among top black Republicans who had hoped to set their own black agenda to the transition team left them scrambling and, according to one source, disagreeing over the right course of action.

Black Republicans are hyper-aware of Trump's penchant for singling out people who make inflammatory statements. None of the black Republicans reached for this story would speak on the record about the situation for fear of reprisal from Trump, the transition team — but mostly Manigault, who has handled most of the transition team’s outreach to black groups.

Anxious black Republicans have been hammering out policy platforms and ideas for the administration to pursue. They focus on conservative approaches to national issues facing black Americans they say have been failed by the Democratic Party.

But in turning to mostly Democratic-leaning groups like the CBC, 100 Black Men, and the NAACP (all reported by ABC News), the meeting is in line with the president-elect's break with traditional partisan norms. Some fear it’s a harbinger that the Trump administration may not conduct business as the last George W. Bush administration did.

Two sources that spoke with BuzzFeed News on the condition of anonymity said that they had been deeply concerned with Manigault's past as a Democratic operative in the Clinton White House in the days that followed Trump’s win. At different points throughout the campaign, it was clear that Manigault didn’t understand their approach to politics, one said.

Others are more optimistic that there’s no break, saying the current tension between party insiders the transition team is part of longstanding problems that predate Trump.

“The root issue is black Republican have no leverage in the party outside of personal relationships,” Charles Badger, a former Jeb Bush campaign staffer with ties to prominent black Republicans, who supported Hillary Clinton during the campaign. “It’s because everyone knows black Republicans aren't representative of most black folks. So the assumption — often true, but sometimes not — is that there's not the depth of relationships there. So if you want to talk to black folks, are you going to go to black Republicans or through the NAACP, Urban League, black Greek letter organizations, clergy, etc., groups with wider reach.”

But that is now almost certainly unlikely to assuage black Republicans’ frustration on the eve of Trump’s inauguration who want see Republicans like former RNC Chair Michael Steele, Kay Coles James, a former senior Bush administration official, or Bob Woodson, the founder and Center for Neighborhood Enterprise be given a seat at the table.

Trump has continued to pledge to “drain the swamp” in Washington, keeping the theme alive during transition. But people that spoke with BuzzFeed News said they don’t think it’s a descriptor that applies them.

“I would say black Republicans aren’t the swamp that needs draining,” one black Hill Republican said. “We are just getting the perfect opportunity to put solutions forward to help our communities and we need to make sure these solutions have a voice at the table.”

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Why John McCain Wants The Russia Investigation To Be Public

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If Donald Trump’s tweets about Julian Assange this morning had a particularly gleeful quality, perhaps it’s because he has reason to celebrate: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell yesterday succeeded in blocking one of the most serious threats to Trump’s nascent presidency.

There had been two options. One is a Senate investigation primarily behind the closed doors of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, overseen by North Carolina’s Richard Burr, who endorsed Trump in May and served on his campaign's national security advisory council. The other is a select committee led Senator John McCain along the lines of the legendary 1970s investigations into Watergate and the CIA, and of the less legendary House investigation of Benghazi.

Tuesday, McCain and Lindsey Graham told Politico they didn’t think the Republican leader would support the higher-profile investigation.

“He said he doesn’t think we need it,” McCain said.

McCain and Graham played down the setback, and said they’ll give the existing committee structure a go. McCain has an Armed Services hearing on hacking planned tomorrow.

But while McCain has kept a level tone, a former top adviser of his offered a glimpse at the urgency some Republicans felt in convening the select committee.

“The American people are owed the information on what happened fully and completely,” John Weaver, a longtime McCain confidant, said in an interview just before the news that the select committee push had failed. “It’s really irresponsible that Leader McConnell and to a lesser degree [Speaker Paul Ryan] have not embraced a full select committee.”

Weaver has spent two decades in a prominent, if off-center, role in Republican presidential politics. He was the garrulous political adviser to McCain’s 2000 bid for the presidency and advised McCain again in 2008 before shaping two other center-right campaigns for the White House: Jon Huntsman’s and John Kasich’s. A lanky, looming background figure who still speaks to McCain, he emerged unexpectedly this summer on Twitter as a scathing #NeverTrump voice, and his warnings about the new president-elect have intensified even as some Republicans have come around to the idea.

But he says his old boss doesn’t carry an anti-Trump agenda.

McCain was “trying to do the right thing,” he said. “I think in these dark days he is willing and able to be a strong voice — a beacon of righteousness, a beacon of freedom, and I think he wants to look at this and let it lead to wherever it leads to. I think he’s outraged that a murderous thug KGB man was able to attack our democracy and so far be able to sit back in Moscow, very smug.”

Now, he says, Weaver question of who handles Russia investigation should be a central issue.

A select committee “puts it on a higher stage and gives it more importance,” Weaver said. “If it’s in an individual committee, even if you have an aggressive chairman like you have with McCain, the scope is still limited. And the intelligence committee — much of their work is done behind closed doors.”

Weaver says Trump and his entourage should be the ones demanding a real investigation.

“I if I were Kellyanne Conway or Steve Bannon or [Reince] Priebus or anyone else, and I thought a foreign power had intervened in an election I was part of and tried to benefit my candidate, I would be the first one calling for an investigation,” he said. “They’re certainly acting like there’s something to hide.”

Weaver said he was surprised that the shocked, disorganized political opposition doesn’t see what’s at stake in this choice. Though Democratic leader Chuck Schumer signed on to a letter last month calling for a select committee, the issue has faded in the face of battles over health care and ethics, and now former defense and intelligence figures of both parties are focusing on calls for a bipartisan commission — something McConnell will presumably also block.

“What’s there to hide? What’s the problem here?” Weaver asked. “I don’t understand why the Democrats aren’t screaming bloody murder.”

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Trump Trusts Wikileaks's Assange Over US Intelligence Agencies

Now, President-elect Donald Trump thinks the "intelligence" briefing delay on "Russian hacking" is "very strange."

Trump suggested in a tweet Tuesday night that the delay was to give the intelligence community more time to "build a case."

The implication confused many intelligence officials, who said that there was no delay and that the briefing had been originally scheduled for Friday, according to the Associated Press.

In the months leading up to and following the election, the Obama administration has accused Russia of facilitating the hacking in order to influence the outcome of the election.

In an interview on Fox News’ “Hannity,” which was filmed at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, anchor Sean Hannity asked Assange if the Russian government or anybody affiliated with them gave Wikileaks emails.

“Our source is not a state party,” Assange said. “The answer, for our interactions, is no.”

He also emphasized the ease with which John Podesta’s emails could have been hacked, given how open he has been with his password information.

“There’s a number of hacks [of] the DNC and Podesta — based on the publicly available information because it’s not coming from our sources — we published as part of our policy of full disclosure and not interfering with the material,” Assange said. “We published several Podesta emails which shows Podesta responding to a phishing email,” Assange said.

“Now, how did they respond? Podesta gave out that his password was the word ‘password.’ His own staff said, ‘This email you’ve received? This is totally legitimate,’” he said in the interview.

“This is something that a 14-year-old, a 14-year-old kid could have hacked,” he said.

Kellyanne Conway, the president-elect's incoming White House counselor, said on CNBC Tuesday night that people "should pay significant attention to that because [Assange] knows the source of the emails that he received."

Trump responded Wednesday morning with a tweet asking why the DNC could be so "careless."

Watch Assange's full interview on "Hannity" here.

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Former Apprentice Contestant Omarosa To Join Trump's White House Staff

Donald Trump and Omarosa Manigault in Detroit, Michigan, on Sept. 3 2016.

Carlo Allegri / Reuters

Omarosa Manigault, a contestant on the first season of Donald Trump's The Apprentice, is going to work in the next White House.

Manigault will work on public engagement in the upcoming Trump administration, the Associated Press reported. A representative for Trump did not immediately respond to BuzzFeed News request for additional information.

Manigualt first appeared on The Apprentice in 2004. In 2008, she appeared on the show's spinoff, Celebrity Apprentice, where she was fired in the 10th episode. She subsequently went on to appear in various other reality shows, including The Ultimate Merger, a dating show that Trump executive produced.

In summer 2016, Manigault began doing outreach to black voters for Trump, and joined his transition team last month. She previously worked for Al Gore during the Clinton administration.

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No Settlement In Trump Lawsuit Against Celebrity Chef, Lawyer Tells Judge

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump has no plans to settle his lawsuit against a celebrity chef who pulled out of opening a restaurant in one of Trump's hotels, a lawyer for the Trump Organization told a judge on Tuesday.

Trump is suing restaurateur Geoffrey Zakarian, who canceled a deal for a restaurant in Trump's hotel in downtown Washington after Trump made disparaging comments about Mexicans and immigrants at a campaign event in 2015.

Trump has resolved several lawsuits that involve his eponymous companies since the election in November. But Rebecca Woods, a lawyer in Washington representing the Trump Organization in the lawsuit against Zakarian, told a DC Superior Court judge on Tuesday that mediation had been unsuccessful so far and that the two sides had reached an "impasse."

The lawyer representing Zakarian's company, Deborah Baum, said she agreed with Woods.

A bench trial before DC Superior Court Judge Brian Holeman could take place by the end of 2017. No trial date has been set, but the parties are due back in court on May 17 for a pretrial hearing.

The Trump Organization is pursuing multiple cases in Superior Court related to the DC hotel. Trump is suing restaurateur Jose Andrés, who, like Zakarian, pulled out of plans for a restaurant at the hotel because of Trump's campaign remarks about immigrants.

Trump accused Zakarian and Andrés of breaching their contracts. The chefs say that Trump broke the deal with his campaign comments, arguing that his remarks imperiled the future success of the restaurants.

Trump also is challenging taxes assessed by the District of Columbia on the hotel property, which Trump is leasing from the US General Services Administration.

Trump during the campaign spoke about his aversion to settling lawsuits, but since the election he's done just that. In November, Trump agreed to pay $25 million to settle three lawsuits that accused the now-defunct Trump University of fraud. Trump tweeted at the time that he thought he could have won the cases, but agreed to settle in order to "focus on our country."

Trump last month resolved disputes with labor unions representing workers at his Las Vegas hotel, and dropped a case in the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit challenging a finding by the National Labor Relations Board of labor law violations.

But the suits against Zakarian and Andrés press on. Last month, the judge in the Andrés case denied Trump's request to stop Andrés' lawyers from questioning him. The deposition is slated to take place next week in New York. Trump was already deposed by Zakarian's lawyers over the summer.

A pretrial court hearing in the Andrés case is scheduled for March 7.

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NAACP Occupies Jeff Sessions' Office In Alabama To Protest Attorney General Nomination

WASHINGTON — The NAACP is staging a sit-in at Sen. Jeff Sessions' office in Mobile, Alabama, to protest his nomination as US attorney general, saying they will not leave until Sessions withdraws his nomination or the protesters are arrested.

NAACP President Cornell William Brooks, joined by activists from Alabama, held a press conference outside Sessions' office midday Tuesday before proceeding inside. Brooks tweeted a photo of himself and other protesters seated on the floor.

The NAACP has also been live-streaming the demonstration inside Sessions' office on Facebook. A woman who answered the phone at the Mobile office referred questions about the sit-in to Sessions' press office in Washington. A spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment.

According to a spokeswoman for the Mobile Police Department, no arrests have been made so far.

Sessions, a former federal and state prosecutor in Alabama and a US senator since 1997, is scheduled to appear for confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Jan. 10 and 11. Republicans announced on Tuesday that Sessions will no longer sit on the Judiciary Committee.

The NAACP is one of many civil rights groups that oppose Sessions as the next attorney general. Sessions' nomination for a federal judgeship in 1986 failed after allegations surfaced that he made racist comments while he was a US attorney in Alabama. One of his former colleagues reported at the time that Sessions had called the NAACP "un-American."

Sessions acknowledged making some of the comments at issue, but said he had been quoted out of context or that certain remarks — such as that he thought the Ku Klux Klan was okay until he learned its members used marijuana — were meant as a joke. He denied accusations of racism.

In a statement released in anticipation of Tuesday's protests, Brooks said that Sessions couldn't be "trusted" to enforce voting rights.

Benard Simelton, president of the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, said in a statement that Sessions has "been a threat to desegregation and the Voting Rights Act and remains a threat to all of our civil rights, including the right to live without the fear of police brutality."

The NAACP held protest events on Tuesday at Sessions' fives offices in Alabama.

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Federal Judge Halts Obamacare Transgender, Abortion-Related Protections Nationwide

Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell and President Obama

Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Texas on Saturday issued a nationwide injunction halting enforcement of Obama administration protections for transgender and abortion-related healthcare services just one day before they were due to go into effect.

The lawsuit — brought by Texas, a handful of other states, and some religiously affiliated nonprofit medical groups — challenges a regulation implementing the sex nondiscrimination requirement found in the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

The Health and Human Services (HHS) regulation "forbids discriminating on the basis of 'gender identity' and 'termination of pregnancy'" under Obamacare, as US District Court Judge Reed O'Connor wrote in his opinion halting enforcement of those provisions in the rule.

Explaining the lawsuit, O'Connor wrote, "Plaintiffs claim the Rule's interpretation of sex discrimination pressures doctors to deliver healthcare in a manner that violates their religious freedom and thwarts their independent medical judgment and will require burdensome changes to their health insurance plans on January 1, 2017."

The states and nonprofits in the healthcare lawsuit allege that the regulation violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) — which sets the rules for federal government rule-making — and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).

O'Connor found that the plaintiffs had standing to bring the lawsuit because they "have presented concrete evidence to support their fears that they will be subject to enforcement under the Rule."

Spokespersons from the Justice and Health and Human Services departments did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The next steps from the administration could include seeking to appeal the injunction or asking O’Connor to limit his order to the plaintiffs in the case, although it was not clear — with 20 days left in the Obama administration — what the government would choose to do.

White House officials also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

O'Connor is the same trial court judge assigned to a lawsuit brought by several states, again led by Texas, challenging the Obama administration's transgender protections in schools provided under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

In August, O'Connor issued a nationwide injunction halting enforcement of the Obama administration's schools guidance because he found it was not permitted under Title IX. (The administration is challenging the nationwide scope of the injunction at the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.)

Because Title IX is referenced as providing the basis for the ACA's sex discrimination ban, O'Connor found, accordingly, that "HHS's expanded definition of sex discrimination exceeds the [Title IX] grounds" provided for in the ACA, making that provision contrary to law and a violation of the APA.

O'Connor similarly found that the rule's failure to include the religious exemptions found in Title IX similarly "renders it contrary to law."

The judge also found a "substantial likelihood" that the states and nonprofits would succeed in their RFRA claim.

O'Connor found that because "numerous" other options were available to the government for "expand[ing] access to transition and abortion procedures," the rule is not the "least restrictive means" of advancing that interest — as required by RFRA.

Notably, O'Connor also questioned strongly whether the government even showed that the rule "advances a compelling interest," as required by RFRA, but assumed that it did so because he had found the rule had not met the "least restrictive means" prong of RFRA either.

Because the rule affects "almost all licensed physicians" and one of the nonprofit groups — the Christian Medical and Dental Associations — has members across the country, O'Connor found that a nationwide injunction halting enforcement of the transgender and abortion-related provisions in the rule was appropriate.

LINK: Texas Leads Four Other States, Nonprofits In Lawsuit Over Transgender Health Rule

LINK: Federal Judge Blocks Obama Administration Protections For Transgender People

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