Judicial Watch Sues for Records of Attacks by Biden German Shepherd

•        All email records (including attachments, URL links and electronic database links) of Miguel Cardona to or from (President of the National Education Association (NEA)) Rebecca (Becky) Pringle and (President of the American Federation of Teachers) Rhonda “Randi” Weingarten from June 1, 2023, to July 15, 2023, on the ed.gov domain.

• •    All communications about book bans or book banning.
  •    All communications about Moms for Liberty and/or Ron DeSantis.

•        All email records (including attachments, URL links and electronic database links) sent and/or received by Miguel Cardona to or from any/all: President of the American Library Association Emily Drabinski, from June 1, 2023, to July 15, 2023, on the ed.gov domain.

• •    All communications about book bans or book banning.
  •    All communications about Moms for Liberty.

Records and communications regarding the application and approval process for transgender, non-binary, gender non-conforming, and intersex individuals receiving Guaranteed Income for Transgender People (GIFT) benefits.

Records identifying the legality or constitutionality of using transgender, non-binary, gender non-conforming, and intersex status as a factor in deciding who receives GIFT benefits.

Records and communications regarding the administration of funds to participants of the Guaranteed Income for Transgender People (GIFT) benefits.

Records and communications regarding the development of eligibility requirements for GIFT benefits.

Records and communications regarding financial literacy services and workshops associated with the GIFT program.

Selected participants in this program will identify as transgender and extremely low-income (<30% of Area Median Income, approximately less than $28,000 per year for a household of one person). Within this population, there will be a specific focus on Black and Latinx transgender women. A monthly $1,200 stipend will be provided to participants so they may focus on their basic physical and mental health and wellness without worrying about income. Prepaid cards are being utilized because some participants may not have bank accounts.

[The Mayor’s Office] will purchase Prepaid cards with funding supported by the General Fund and dedicated specifically for the Transgender Basic Income pilot program.

The collaborative leading this program will focus on a target population of low-income transgender, non-binary, gender nonconforming and intersex (TGI) individuals residing in San Francisco County. The program will prioritize enrollment and retention of BIPOC [Black, Indigenous People of Color] trans and nonbinary people who also engage in survival sex trades, living with disabilities, elders, living with HIV/AIDS, undocumented, monolingual Spanish speakers, formerly incarcerated, and unhoused and marginally housed. [Emphasis in original]

We will work collaboratively to create equity guidelines for enrollment, centered on the reality of how racism disproportionately disadvantages BIPOC, black trans women, and undocumented monolingual Spanish speakers. The program enrollment will ensure the 55 participants is 66% BIPOC, at least 30% Black Trans Women, and at least 20% Latinx Trans Women.

Lyon-Martin Health Services will provide wrap-around peer-led services such as gender-affirming primary medical and holistic care, gynecological and sexual health care, mental health services, case management, crisis response services, financial literacy training and workforce development services, and outreach and harm reduction services, to the enrollees. [Emphasis in original]

Thanks! This looks great. I’d like to see if we can provide more nuance and explanation around the legal name question as this will be very important for the transgender pilot. My understanding is that the city will allow a provider to enroll participants using their chosen name vs legal name and it may be very challenging for someone to put their dead name on the card. So I think we can provide more context - “when you use the card in person you may be asked to verify your id. If you don’t have id that matches the name on the card, you could be turned away.”

TTX [Treasurer & Tax Collector’s Office] has hired a firm to advance our Racial Equity initiative. TTX has budgeted for these costs. The scope of the work includes the following:

A. Executive Leadership Team Assessment and Training
1. Racial equity assessment - Assess leadership competencies in the areas of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. This assessment should be leveraged to develop capacity building and lead to clear recommendations that help leaders lead with equity in mind.
2. Customized facilitated learning sessions – Work with the varying levels of comfort and practice with concepts of structural and organizational equity including: coaching around racial equity in supervision and program delivery design, customer service, decision-making processes, communications and daily practices.

B. All Staff Training Sessions
1. Department wide training - Facilitate one to two Department-wide Racial Equity trainings for All Department Staff. The content will be based on discussions with the Core Team and the consultant assessment of the Department's racial equity journey.

C. Restorative Justice Dialogue and Reflection
Facilitate restorative justice conversations in order to provide insight on how systemic and historic issues of racism and bias are inherently part of conversations, which is therefore limiting full participation and reflection on how work environments and systems of communication (Human Resources/Discipline/Performance) are being heard/interpreted. Garner insights from key conversations to alleviate immediate issues as well as reflect on changes to be made, which may include training.

D. Hiring, Recruitment, and Promotion Strategy
1. Address specific job classifications that lack racial diversity, including Managers, Administrative Analysts, Accountants and Auditors. The consultant shall develop recommendations for identifying barriers to application and employment within these job classifications with the aim to broaden diversity and inclusion throughout the hiring and employment cycle. Recommendations may be shared with the Central Department of Human Resources and/or Civil Service. The consultant will also interview the teams to identify group norms and biases within the sections that inhibit full participation by staff.
2. Review current hiring and recruitment policies and make recommendations to ensure they align with ORE’s racial equity framework. The consultant will make recommendations to broaden recruitment strategies to increase diversity in candidate pools.
3. Review current employee assessments tools and surveys and recommend the inclusion of questions to gauge sentiment on the department’s effort to address diversity and inclusion. The consultant will evaluate current exit interviews and recommend changes to questions to ensure a racial equity lens is applied.
4. Review any current candidate exit interviews and propose new questions to gauge sentiment on the department’s effort to address diversity and inclusion and to solicit any feedback or recommendations in this area.

E. Core Team Racial Equity Capacity Building
1. Customized learning sessions on racial equity leadership & facilitation - interactive workshops and learning sessions that build capacity to lead with equity through dialogue, analysis and reflection. The sessions should build a foundational understanding and framework for racial equity in the workplace and basic terminology and definitions. The learning sessions must help the Core Teams to push beyond this shared understanding to address topics such as: the role of team members in leading organizational antiracist changes and make recommendations to transform practices that are heavily influenced by white-supremacist culture and practices. The learning sessions should address the specific racial equity work to be done by the cohort within the department building on the racial equity plan.
2. Coaching, facilitation & technical assistance on racial equity plan implementation - Operationalizing the Racial Equity Action Plan as well as provide the Team with tools that help foster inclusion and racial equity across the Agency. The consultant will also provide coaching and support racial equity working groups including: barriers to hiring, supplemental questionnaires, minimum qualifications, etc.

The government’s September indictment on corruption charges of Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, opened with a bang. Prosecutors displayed sensational photographs of gold bars, a Mercedes Benz, and piles of cash—more than $480,000—found at the home of Menendez and his wife, Nadine.

Justice may endeavor to be blind, but the prosecution of politicians is inherently political. The Justice Department failed to convict Menendez in a high-profile 2017 corruption case and doubtless is eager to take another shot at him. And while reliably liberal on many issues, Menendez has taken a hard line on Cuba and Iran as chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, often thwarting Biden—and earlier Obama administration—initiatives. He’ll have zero support from the White House and Democratic Party establishment as he fights the new charges.

Menendez and his wife are charged with bribery, honest services fraud, and extortion. Also charged are three businessmen with ties to Egypt. U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams said the conspirators were engaged in “a corrupt relationship” that included payments by the businessmen to the Menendez couple of “hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes, including cash, gold, a Mercedes Benz, and other things of value—in exchange for Senator Menendez agreeing to use his power and influence to protect and enrich those businessmen and to benefit the Government of Egypt.”

Corruption concerns have swirled around Menendez for decades. A product of the famously corrupt Hudson County, New Jersey, political machine, Menendez was schooled in the amoral world of Union City Mayor William Musto, who hired him as aide in the 1970s. By the early 1980s, he had turned on Musto and testified at the mayor’s corruption trial. By 1986, in a campaign touting his Cuban roots and “reformer” image, he was elected mayor of Union City. From there he rose through state government and into the halls of Congress.

Judicial Watch has been ringing alarm bells about Menendez for more than a decade. In 2012, we put him on our list of Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians.” In 2014, we highlighted concerns about Menendez and a “never-ending saga of political corruption and cronyism.”

In 2017, it looked like the jig was up for Menendez. The Justice Department indicted him and an old friend and benefactor, Florida ophthalmologist Salomon Melgan, on charges of bribery and honest services fraud. The government charged that the duo conspired to corruptly influence Menendez’s “official acts” and defraud the U.S. of the “honest services of a public official.” Sound familiar?

In the new case, the government similarly charges that Menendez “agreed to take a series of official acts and breaches of his official duty” in return for bribes from the three Egypt-connected businessmen.

First, the government charges, Menendez “improperly pressured” an Agriculture Department official about an Egypt-related business directly benefiting the co-defendants.

Second, Menendez tried to “disrupt” a New Jersey state investigation related to the co-defendants.

Third, Menendez recommended the appointment of a U.S. Attorney that he believed would be more friendly to one of the co-defendants under federal investigation.

Back in 2017, Judicial Watch took a close look at that first Menendez federal corruption case. We noted that a year earlier, the Supreme Court had significantly narrowed the definition of official acts and honest services fraud in the McDonnell ruling. Prosecutors now needed to prove a direct “official action” connected to an illegal payment. An “official act” must be more than “setting up a meeting, talking to another official, or hosting an event,” the court ruled. We were skeptical that prosecutors in 2017 could meet that standard. It turned out, we were right. Menendez beat the rap.

Will history repeat itself in the new Menendez prosecution?

Let’s go back to those gold bars and piles of cash. The meaning of the photos is of course to suggest corrupt intent. How could gold bars and $400,000 in cash stashed at home not be corrupt? That’s a smart media play by the prosecution.

But Menendez struck back. The cash and the gold? Blame the communists—blame Cuba—an argument that may find sympathetic ears at a jury trial. “For 30 years,” he told the media in a statement that highlighted his hardscrabble Cuban background, “I have withdrawn thousands of dollars in cash from my personal savings account, which I have kept for emergencies and because of the history of my family facing confiscation in Cuba.”

Weightier perhaps is how Menendez will exploit McDonnell. We’ll have more to say on this as the trial nears, but based on the current indictment, the government could have trouble drawing a quid pro quo that will satisfy a jury. The co-defendants may have provided something (the quid, the cash, the gold) but what did they get in return (the quo)? Given what we currently know about the case, Senator Menendez appears to have been singularly unsuccessful in delivering for his friends.