National Briefing

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/01/us/national-briefing.html

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Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick on Tuesday encouraged the state’s 1,200 school districts to defy the Obama administration and ignore a directive calling on schools to allow transgender students to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity. Last week, Texas and 10 other states sued the Obama administration over the federal recommendation to United States public schools earlier this month. Mr. Patrick, a Republican, who has previously said Texas is willing to forfeit $10 billion in federal education funding rather than comply, said he was sending a letter to all school districts this week emphasizing that the state would support schools that defied the directive. “Transgender students deserve the rights of anyone else,’’ he said. It does not mean they get to use the girls’ room if they’re a boy.” Several parents of transgender students criticized his comments. “You, specifically you, are endangering my child’s life,” said Ann Elder, the mother of a 10-year-old transgender child near Houston. “You have now told everyone in the state of Texas it is O.K. to harass my child.” Also Tuesday, a federal appeals court said it would not reconsider a three-judge panel’s ruling that a transgender teenager must be allowed to use the boys’ restroom at a Virginia school. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit denied the Gloucester County School Board’s appeal of a case brought by a student at Gloucester High School. (AP)

Residents of some rural southeastern Texas counties were bracing for more flooding along the Brazos River, which reached a record crest on Tuesday but could swell further with more rain expected in the coming days. Suburban areas southwest of Houston were underwater and hundreds of people were evacuated from their homes before the Brazos crested at nearly 54 feet in Fort Bend County, just two years after it had run dry in places because of drought. The sky was clear in the affected areas on Tuesday, but an additional one to three inches of rain that is expected later this week could keep the Brazos in major flood stage into the weekend. A Brazos River Authority map showed that all 11 of the reservoirs fed by the river were at 95 to 100 percent capacity. The crest on Tuesday eclipsed the previous record by three feet and exceeded levels reached in 1994, when extensive flooding caused major damage. (AP)