The First Amendment safeguards our rights to free speech. Now, the Trump administration and Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke are proposing to take those free speech rights away. Until October 15 the National Park Service is taking comments — comments they must consider before they can make any change to the regulations. More than 10,000 people have commented on the plan and there is still time.
The regulations would affect all public lands and crucial free speech gathering areas in Washington DC: the National Mall, White House sidewalks, the Lincoln Memorial, Freedom Plaza, Pennsylvania Avenue.
It would:
Impose steep fees and costs on demonstrations in Washington, D.C
Effectively ban protests on the White House sidewalks
Force protesters to pay the costs of barricades erected at police discretion, park ranger wages and overtime, and harm to grass from standing on it
Need a permit? You’ll have to wait and the government is not obliged to to promptly process or approve permits.
Restrict and suppress spontaneous demonstrations that respond to breaking events
Create hair-triggers allowing police to end protests for the most minor of issues
Restrict sound and staging
Ban long term vigils or protest presencesMake protesters pay for expensive "turf covers"
In Oregon, one person died in an accident on Interstate 84 in the Columbia River Gorge near Rooster Rock State Park on Tuesday morning when a semi-truck collided with their SUV
Authorities from Seattle to Portland, Oregon, have said one of their biggest concerns amid the cold front is ensuring that homeless people living on the streets have access to shelter.
The 814-page report released late Thursday comes after the panel interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, held 10 hearings and obtained more than a million pages of documents. Read full report.
The deep freeze from a deadly winter storm that walloped much of the United States will continue into the week. The extreme weather stretched from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande along the border with Mexico. Temperatures plummeted drastically below normal from east of the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians
The chair of the Higher Education and Workforce Investment Subcommittee said the financial incentive supports ongoing state efforts to provide competitive wages for teachers and address the national teacher shortage.