Politics

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case involving the image of a Confederate flag on a license plate and decide how much control state governments can exert over slogans and messages on vehicle tags. The court will hear an appeal from the state of Texas, which refused five years ago to approve a specialty plate for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, including a logo of a Confederate battle flag surrounded by group’s name and the year 1896.

After hearing public comments, the state motor vehicle authority rejected the request, explaining that “many members of the general public find the design offensive,” and associate the flag “with organizations advocating expressions of hate…”

Read the rest of the story from our partners at NBC News

Filming is slated to start next year on Southside With You

As President Obama enters the back half of his second term, it’s time to start thinking about a biopic. No, not the kind where he makes major decisions about world events. The kind where he goes on a first date with a pretty lawyer.

Shooting will allegedly begin next year on Southside With You, a film depicting Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson’s first date, Deadline Hollywood reports. The future president famously took Michelle to see Do the Right Thing in Chicago on a summer afternoon in 1989. They also visited a Baskin Robbins and shared their first kiss on the curb outside, where a plaque now celebrates that fateful smooch.

Tika Sumpter, who appeared in the James Brown biopic Get on Up, will play Michelle, while the role of Barack has not yet been cast. The movie has been described as a romantic drama, so expect it to be more Before Sunrise and less My Date With the President’s Daughter.

[Deadline Hollywood]

A young star in Michigan is spending his final days as a lawmaker working to expand the state's civil rights protections

In Michigan, a 28-year-old Republican state lawmaker is using his lame-duck session to fight for a bill that cost him his reelection in a primary this summer. Rep. Frank Foster is trying to extend the state’s civil rights act—which protects people from discrimination on the basis of age, race, religion, sex and weight—to also include sexual orientation. Even though he puts his bill at a 10% chance of passing, he says he has no regrets. “This is important, and if it’s not law in 2014, we’re still having the conversation,” Foster tells TIME. “Until it’s equal, it’s not equal.”

On Dec. 3, the commerce committee, of which Foster is the chair, was the site of a heated debate about tolerance and persecution. The public was invited to give testimony on Foster’s bill and another bill to amend the civil rights act to include both sexual orientation and gender identity. Supporters of the bills made arguments that passing them wasn’t just about protecting another class of citizens but about Michigan’s reputation and making the state feel welcoming to the broadest possible array of workers and companies.

One of those testifying in support was Allan Gilmour, a former second-in-command at Ford who made headlines when he came out as gay after his first retirement from the company in 1995. Updating the law, he said, “is necessary if Michigan is to attract and retain talent. And on an individual basis, no one should live in fear that they will lose their job or injure their careers should they live openly.”

Those opposing the bills, largely representatives from Christian groups, argued that the measures threaten to jeopardize religious freedoms, like those of Christian small-business owners who would prefer not to bake a cake or take photographs for a same-sex wedding—and might lose their business license for such a refusal under an amended civil rights law. “Why should that baker or photographer be forced against their religious beliefs and conscience to participate in that? And if they refuse to because of their religious conscience, to be put out of business?” said David Kallman, speaking on behalf of Michigan Family Forum, a conservative Christian organization. Multiple speakers also argued that there was no hard data showing that LGBT discrimination was a problem that needing solving. (There are reports on the issue and more research is being done on the topic.)

After giving his own testimony, Foster oversaw the meeting stoically, with one exception. Stacy Swimp, President of the National Christian Leadership Council, gave a speech about how he was “rather offended” that anyone would equate lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans to black Americans when it came to fights for civil rights. “They have never had to drink out of a LGBT water fountain,” he said, recounting that black Americans had been lynched and denied many basic rights in the past. He called any comparison “intellectually empty, dishonest” and accused the LGBT community of exploiting the struggles of black Americans.

Once he finished, Foster pulled his own microphone toward him. “Sir, I will agree with you on the fact that African Americans in this country’s short history have been discriminated against,” he said. “But if you don’t think the LGBT community has been discriminated against, been drug behind cars, been hung up by their necks til they’re dead, been denied housing, been denied commerce opportunities, then you’re just not looking very far.”

It was an impassioned speech from a native Michigander who never met a homosexual person until going to college at Grand Valley State University. Foster grew up in the tiny town of Pellston (pop. 831) in the midst of his current district, which spans the water where the state’s upper and lower peninsulas nearly meet. It’s an area known for fishing and hunting and tourism on islands like Mackinac, whose residents are also among his constituents. It’s also socially conservative.

By the time he finished his degree at Grand Valley State, Foster had been elected student body president, twice. He had organized rallies and marches against an amendment to ban affirmative action (which eventually passed by a nearly 20-point margin in 2006). He had accompanied administrators to Washington, D.C., to argue for better higher education funding. And he had worked to get gender identity added to non-discrimination policies in the student and faculty handbooks. “That was really the first time I socialized with people of different ethnic backgrounds and different races,” he says. “College was the way it was supposed to be for me.” He won his first race for a seat in the state House of Representatives in 2010, with 63% of the vote, and became one of only two freshmen to be appointed committee chairs.

After Foster was reelected in 2012, a Democratic colleague approached him about helping to support a non-discrimination bill. Like many people—one poll put the number at 87%—Foster assumed it was already illegal to fire someone for their sexual orientation, though there is no federal protection and only 21 states have passed such a law (18 of those, and D.C.’s, also include gender identity). Eventually, Foster and his colleague decided it would be more powerful if the Republican didn’t just co-sponsor the bill but introduced it. “I had no idea we did not have those folks included in Michigan’s civil rights act. When I found that out, it became a passion of mine,” he says, adding that he thought “as a young Republican, I could communicate to my colleagues and the party where we needed to go.”

Before Foster got around to actually introducing a bill, word got out that he planned to and he did interviews that confirmed people’s suspicions. In late 2013, Foster also called for the resignation of his Republican colleague Dave Agema, who caused an uproar after posting an article on Facebook that decried the “filthy” homosexual lifestyle. Agema was among those who encouraged a teacher at a Christian academy—who was considering running for Foster’s seat when he hit his term limit in 2016—to run against Foster in 2014 instead. Foster says his opponent, Lee Chatfield, gave him a deadline to publicly come out against legislation that would amend the civil rights act. “I wasn’t able to make that deadline, didn’t want to make that deadline,” says Foster. “So he filed in January and made this the center point of the campaign.” Foster lost by less than 1,000 votes in the primary against Chatfield, who had support from the Tea Party.

That loss not only cost Foster his job, but hurt his chances of getting the bill passed. The prospects had been looking good. He and other supporters of the bill had been rallying support among his fellow Republicans and gained the backing of the Michigan Competitive Workforce Coalition, a group with big-name members like Chrysler, Delta Airlines, Google and Kellogg that formed to support the legislation. “After my election, they slowly faded away,” Foster says of his GOP colleagues. “It was a pretty successful, religious-mounted campaign that beat me, and if that can happen in my community, that can happen anywhere.”

Foster says he’d like to see a bill pass that includes both sexual orientation and gender identity but had limited his to the former thinking that it would have a better chance of passing. When Michigan’s civil rights act was proposed in the 1970s—named Elliott-Larsen for the lawmakers who championed it—the inclusion of sexual orientation threatened to kill the bill, so it was removed. “Forty years later, here we are still trying to add sexual orientation, and it’s the transgender piece that was slowing the bill down,” Foster says. He also knows that by compromising, he may lose the support of Democrats. “Democrats are not going to vote for anything less than fully inclusive, and Republicans will not vote for fully inclusive,” he says. “So, in my mind, we’re sort of stuck.”

After winning his reelection, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, sat down with the Detroit Free Press and its editorial board reported that “he will encourage the Legislature to take up an expansion of the Elliott Larsen Civil Rights Act to also include the LGBT community, prohibiting discrimination in hiring and housing decisions.” Foster is somewhat hanging his hopes on that report. “He can add some muscle to the argument and help me get this thing across the line,” Foster says. For now, both bills remain in the commerce committee. After potentially being voted out, a bill still has to win a floor vote in the House before repeating the process in the Senate.

Regardless of what happens, Foster is going home at the end of the session. He’ll work full time at Rehabitat Systems, a company which provides long-term care to people with traumatic brain and spinal-cord injuries, where he’s currently an executive officer. Right now, he’s frustrated with where the two-party system has gotten him. “I don’t want to necessarily be in the box anymore, where if I’m Republican it means I’m x, y and z,” he says. “The rest of my demographic, the 20-somethings, don’t think that way.”

But he says he’d like to have another go at being a Republican politician down the line, especially because their fiscal policies resonate so strongly with him. “There needs to be some more time,” Foster says. “My party has to change some of its social stances. And if that can happen, I think I’ll become more appealing to the party and vice versa.”

His absence from White House ceremony highlights transition woes

Army Sergeant Chuck Hagel knew how to toss a hand grenade when he served in Vietnam in 1968. Friday he made clear he still knows how to do it, declining to attend the White House nomination announcement of his successor, Ashton Carter, after the Administration had let it be known he’d be there.

It’s the latest in a string of snafus that has marred the transition between President Obama’s third and fourth Defense secretaries.

In a nation engaged in combat in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, such theatrics might be viewed by outsiders as mere distraction. But inside the Pentagon—and in ruling circles around the world—such drama is often seen as a national-security team fumbling the ball. If they can’t handle a handoff, the thinking goes, how can they run a war?

Perhaps Hagel felt that putting him on stage Friday alongside the President and Carter would only have highlighted the problem. Pentagon officials said Hagel didn’t want to shift attention from Carter’s debut alongside the President.

But the President dragged Hagel into the announcement, anyway. “A year ago, when Ash Carter completed his tenure as deputy secretary of defense, Secretary Hagel took to the podium in Ash’s farewell ceremony and looked out at the audience of our civilian and military leaders, and he said, ‘I’ve known Ash Carter for many years. All of us here today have benefited from Ash’s hard work, his friendship, from his inspiration, from his leadership.’ And Chuck then went on to express his gratitude to his partner for ‘what Ash has done for this country and will continue to do in many ways.’”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Obama added.

Hagel actually may have turned gun shy following his Thursday press conference at the Pentagon, where he rolled out the Defense Department’s latest sexual-assault report. After working for a year to reduce sexual assaults in the military—and actually having some good news to share on the subject—reporters only asked him about his impending departure, and the reasons for it.

Both Hagel and Obama have stressed that each felt it was simply time for a change. But White House officials made clear they were unhappy with his performance, which has driven Hagel loyalists bonkers. “This was a mutual decision based on the discussions that we had,” Hagel said Thursday of their discussions. “I don’t think there’s ever one overriding or defining decision in situations like this, unless there’s some obvious issue, and there wasn’t between either one of us.”

Yet Hagel put Obama in a tough spot by submitting his resignation Nov. 24, as soon as it became clear he had lost the President’s confidence. That put the White House in the awkward spot of hailing Hagel’s impending departure amid wartime without his replacement standing alongside.

So perhaps it was only fitting 11 days later—after background investigations into Carter finally wrapped up—that Hagel was the missing man this time around.

Former Secretary Chuck Hagel declined to attend the ceremony

President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate Ashton Carter as his next Secretary of Defense Friday, to replace current Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel, who resigned last month under pressure from the White House.

Obama praised Carter, the former Pentagon No. 2 under Hagel and a respected technocrat, in a small Roosevelt Room ceremony, before an audience of administration officials and selected lawmakers, saying Carter “brings a unique blend of strategic perspective and technical knowhow.”

“With a record of service that has spanned more than 30 years as a public servant, as an adviser, as a scholar, Ash is rightly regarded as one of our nation’s foremost national security leaders,” Obama said.

In a brief statement, Carter thanked Obama for the nomination and promised to provide candid advice and to ensure that military commanders can do the same. “If confirmed, I pledge to you my most candid, strategic advice, and I pledge to you you will receive equally candid military advice,” he said.

In an awkward turn, Hagel, who was scheduled to attend the announcement, backed out of the ceremony Friday morning, leaving Obama to quote Hagel’s praise of Carter from a year ago when he resigned as Deputy Secretary.

“Secretary Hagel will not attend today’s ceremony at the White House,” a defense official said in a statement. “The Secretary believes strongly that this day belongs to Ash Carter and his nomination to be the next Secretary of Defense … The Secretary is proud of Ash and of their friendship and does not want in any way to detract from or distract the proper focus of the day.”

Obama closed with a call on the Senate to swiftly confirm Carter to the post.

Why one publisher says it may not end up in bookstores

In theory, the upcoming Senate report on torture has all the makings of a government bestseller. It’s an in-depth, well-researched document on a juicy and secretive topic.

In the past, publishers have jumped on the chance to release big government reports as trade paperbacks: W. W. Norton published the 9/11 Commission Report, PublicAffairs Books put out the Starr Report on President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky and Cambridge University Press published a collection of legal documents about U.S. policy on torture, to name a few. (The Starr Report even set off something of a scramble among publishers.)

But it’s not clear yet whether the torture report will get the same treatment. Clive Priddle, publisher at PublicAffairs Books, told TIME that his company contacted the committee about publishing the document once it is released because there will be “significant public interest in the report,” but the committee has “not expressed a willingness to go forward.”

Tom Mentzer, press secretary for California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that isn’t exactly what happened. He said the committee told PublicAffairs Books that it would “look into it,” but that “the committee staff—which is quite limited in manpower—is devoting its attention to getting the executive summary released.”

To be fair, publishers don’t exactly need the committee’s cooperation to reprint a report that will be in the public record as early as next week. And the lack of a trade paperback wouldn’t mean it wasn’t available to the average citizen — a government printing office will send thousands of copies to libraries around the country and the report will be available online.

But Priddle argues there would be merit in publishing it commercially as well. “Not everybody reads everything online, and not everybody trusts everything that appears online,” he said. “And for a significant report like this I think there would be an enduring interest in it, and the durability of a physical book is better than an e-book file.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook "honored" to lend his name to the bill

Alabama lawmakers plan to name an anti-discrimination bill after Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook, who disclosed in a magazine essay last October that he was gay.

The ‘Tim Cook’ bill will bar discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender state employees, including school teachers, Reuters reports.

Alabama’s only openly gay state lawmaker, Patricia Todd, told Reuters that she originally posed the name in jest, but it gained traction in the media and eventually reached Apple’s executive suite. A statement from Apple confirmed that Cook was “honored” to have his name attached to the bill.

The statement came after a company official reportedly called Todd to express reservations, a position that was later reversed by Apple’s general counsel.

“I never in a million years would have expected it,” Todd said.

Read more at Reuters.

Will be interviewed on the comedian's show for the first time on Dec. 8

This week Lev Grossman, the author of this week’s cover story about Mark Zuckerberg, “Half The World Is Not Enough,” will answer questions from TIME subscribers at 1 p.m. on Friday. You should read the story here.

Grossman, among many other things, is also the author of the Magician trilogy, a fantasy series, and the 2010 Person of the Year profile of Zuckerberg.

To ask Lev a question, please write them in the comments below or via Twitter using the #AskTime hashtag. His responses will only be available to subscribers, but it’s easy, cheap and worth it to subscribe. Just click here. You get one year for $40, including the print issues delivered to your home.

Protesters Rally for Eric Garner

Thousands of protesters gathered in major U.S. cities for a second night on Thursday to rally against the police-involved deaths this year of unarmed black men, blocking major highways in New York City and Chicago, and staging “die-ins” in public areas

Millennials Worse Off Than Parents

Millennials make less money, are more likely to live in poverty and have lower rates of employment than their parents did at their ages 20 and 30 years ago

Putin Unnerves Russia’s Elites

The Russian leader felt his nation’s growing economic and security issues on Thursday, when his state of the nation address failed to please crowds

Benedict Cumberbatch Confirmed to Play Doctor Strange

Marvel said Thursday that Cumberbatch will play Doctor Strange in the superhero movie. The British star of the The Imitation Game was rumored to be in line for the part: a former surgeon entrusted with the power to protect Earth from mystical and extraplanetary forces

Bahraini Activist Jailed for Tearing Up Picture of King

A Bahraini human-rights activist has been sentenced to three years in prison for tearing up a photo of the Gulf state’s king, Amnesty International said Friday. The U.S. ally has repeatedly been condemned by human-rights groups for flouting international standards

Peter Pan Live! Recap: It’s a Gender Studies Field Day

Allison Williams, Christopher Walken, Minnie Driver, and Taylor Louderman on Thursday starred in NBC’s second live prime time musical. The verdict: J.M. Barrie’s vintage story poses too many awkward questions for a modern audience, despite NBC’s makeover attempt

Brooklyn Is Now the U.S.’s Least Affordable Housing Market

A recent study that analyzed the affordability of 475 counties through October 2014 finds that Kings County (Brooklyn) is the least affordable in the nation. Why? Likely a mixture of stagnant wages, investor interest and an influx of more affluent residents

Bill Cosby’s Lawyer Fights Back

Cosby’s lawyer Martin Singer on Thursday slammed claims alleging the 77-year-old comedian sexually assaulted Judy Huth, who was 15 at the time. Singer calls Huth’s claims false — and says her lawyer attempted to extort Cosby for $250,000 before filing the suit

The Philippines Faces a Terrifying Typhoon Again

Thousands are being evacuated from coastal areas of the Philippines as Typhoon Hagupit approaches. The massive storm, called Typhoon Ruby in the Philippines, threatens the very regions devastated by Supertyphoon Haiyan a year ago

Hollywood Stars Among Victims of Sony Hack

Hackers have released the private details of 47,000 Sony Pictures Entertainment employees — including stars like Sylvester Stallone and Judd Apatow. The information includes Social Security numbers, contracts and taxpayer-ID numbers

DNA Tests Confirm Lebanon Is Holding ISIS Leader’s Child

DNA tests have confirmed that the child held by Lebanese authorities is the daughter of the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. A woman also detained is believed to be the jihadist’s ex-wife

Wahlberg Seeks a Pardon for His 1988 Assault Conviction

Hollywood actor Mark Wahlberg is seeking a pardon for an assault conviction from 1988 for an attack that left a man blind in one eye. The incident occurred as Wahlberg, then 16, tried to rob a man outside a convenience store

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