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In a broad ruling reaffirming the sovereignty of Native American tribes, the U.S. Supreme Court declared unanimously on Tuesday that tribal police officers have the power to temporarily detain and search non-Native Americans on tribal land if they’re suspected of violating state or federal law.

The case, United States v. Cooley, involved a 2016 incident on the Crow Reservation in Montana where the defendant, Joshua James Cooley, was arrested after a Crow Police Department officer searched his vehicle and found weapons and methamphetamine.

Cooley was later indicted by a federal grand jury on drug and gun charges, but submitted a motion to suppress the drug evidence arguing that the tribal police officer lacked the authority to detain and search him because he is not Native American. The District Court and the Ninth Circuit Court had ruled in favor of Cooley’s argument, which the Supreme Court overturned.
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“This is an extremely important ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court,” Colette Routel, the co-director of the Native American Law and Sovereignty Institute at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law, writes TIME in an email, explaining that the “decision was made on broad grounds” that extend beyond the Crow tribe’s specific treaty rights, and was unanimous, which “is rare in Indian Law cases in recent decades.” Routel adds that she views the ruling as part of a larger shift by the court to respect tribal sovereignty and treaty rights, explaining that the court has decided in favor of tribal interests in the past five cases that have gone before it.

The landmark Supreme Court ruling Montana v. United States in 1981 said tribal governments don’t have jurisdictions over non-members on “fee lands” (and, in a 1997 expansion of the ruling, roadways where the federal government has the right of way, like the public highway Cooley was on when detained) with two exceptions: if the non-native person has a consensual relationship with the tribe, like an employment contract, or if their behavior “threatens or has some direct effect on the political integrity, the economic security, or the health or welfare of the tribe.” Tuesday’s decision is the first time the court has applied that second exception.

The ruling could impact the ability of tribal governments to enforce their laws over non-native people amid the crisis of violence against Indigenous women, which Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has said she will make it a priority to combat. “With the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP), it is absolutely essential that tribal law enforcement be able to lawfully detain anyone within the tribal boundaries that poses harm to others, whether a tribal member or non-member,” writes Angelique EagleWoman, the co-director of the Native American Law and Sovereignty Institute at Mitchell Hamline, in an email.

According to the Indian Law Resource Center, more than four out of five American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence, and more than one in two have experienced sexual violence. Per the U.S. Department of Justice, American Indian women also face murder rates over 10 times the national average.

“[The] impact of the case will be to better protect residents of reservations,” writes Joseph William Singer, a professor at Harvard Law School, “and to restore the notion that Indian nations in the U.S. have the legitimate sovereign power to act to protect both their people and anyone within the reservation from harm.”

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Covid UK: Every adult will be able to get vaccinated within weeks - Daily Mail

Covid UK: Every adult will be able to get vaccinated within weeks Daily Mail
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‘I Don’t Want To Be a Trend.’ Leyna Bloom on Opening Doors for the Next Generation of Transgender Talent in Film and Fashion

There are two words Leyna Bloom uses to describe ballroom culture: “walking magic.” “It’s a source of being, it’s the blueprint of a lot of courage in the world,” says the actor, dancer and model.

Viewers get a glimpse of that magic in Bloom’s film Port Authority, which premiered at Cannes in 2019 and arrives on demand and digital on June 1 following a limited theatrical release. With the film’s selection for the world’s most prestigious international film festival, Bloom became the first openly trans woman of color to lead a feature-length movie at a major festival. Next month, she’ll be pioneering another first, becoming the first Black and first Asian openly trans woman in the pages of the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. For Bloom, who has long campaigned for greater inclusivity in the fashion industry, it’s a euphoric moment. “We’re living in a new world right now,” she says. “I’m just glad to be born at this time so I could really be the first one to do things, so the next generation can have the resources, information or inspiration to do what they need to do.”
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Port Authority centers on the blossoming relationship between Paul (Dunkirk’s Fionn Whitehead), who has recently left home in Pennsylvania for New York City, and Wye, played by Bloom, a young trans woman who is part of the city’s ballroom scene. Writer-director Danielle Lessovitz, who is white and queer, told IndieWire last year about her goal of acknowledging the privilege of herself and audiences, while “[entering] the space in a loving respectful way, to honor the cultural contributions of this community.”

Bloom was drawn to the story for its many parallels with her own life: when she was 17, she moved from Chicago to New York City, taking a Greyhound bus and arriving at the city’s notoriously dingy Port Authority Bus Terminal. From a young age, Bloom aspired to turn her passion for dancing into a career; she had scored a prestigious scholarship to the Chicago Academy for the Arts. But the institution refused to recognize her gender as a woman, and Bloom decided to pursue her dreams in New York instead. It was there that, between waiting tables and searching for a more permanent home, she began to carve out a career as a model, and in 2017, became the first openly trans woman of color to feature in Vogue India.

She also became a renowned member of the ballroom community, known for walking in the category of “face,” one of several categories where contestants are judged based on certain skills or techniques. Bloom felt a sense of responsibility to represent the culture authentically in Port Authority. “It’s a place where I found refuge, where so many people can find inspiration, can find who we are, in this world that has rejected us.”

Ballroom culture, which traces its origins to the Harlem Renaissance, is both a social movement and an art form, pioneered by Black, brown and Latinx transgender and gender nonconforming folks who established LGBTQ networks in underground nightclubs, at a time when discrimination was pervasive in all aspects of life. The 1990 documentary Paris is Burning helped bring wider attention to what was then described as a subculture, and in recent years, depictions on the fictional FX television series Pose (Bloom is currently starring in its third and final season) and HBO Max’s reality competition Legendary have helped lead to its mainstream recognition.

For Bloom, that growing popularity is helping cement ballroom’s dominance and keeping those traditions alive. “Queer, brown, Black trans bodies may be at the bottom of the food chain in some aspects, but over the years, the world has really dived into our core of who we are,” she says. “I feel like the more people tap into ballroom and queer culture, they will see the essence of where it started, and know where it began.”

Photo courtesy of Momentum PicturesLeyna Bloom as Wye and Fionn Whitehead as Paul in ‘Port Authority’

As well as sensitively approaching the themes of interracial relationships and the experience of being a trans woman of color, Port Authority leans into the concept of chosen families. In one scene, Paul asks Wye whether the other performers in her house are her real brothers. “Not in, like, the most traditional way,” she replies. That sense of uplifting and inspiring one another has meant a great deal to Bloom during her time in the ballroom community, as have her relationships with her biological family—among them dancers, entertainers and visual artists. She recounts watching the film recently with her father, and reflecting on her childhood, when her mother was deported to the Philippines, and she, her father and her older brother became homeless for some time. “To see us go from that to where I am right now is just really powerful for him. He always grounds me and says okay, this is amazing, what’s next?”

The next first for Bloom will come in July, with her appearance in the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Participation in the shoot for the issue in Tampa was a profound moment, which came a couple of years on the heels of a viral campaign Bloom had launched in 2018, calling for Victoria’s Secret to include her as the first transgender woman of color to walk a runway show. (Bloom didn’t get the gig, and the following year, Victoria’s Secret hired Valentina Sampaio, an openly trans model from Brazil, for an ad campaign.) And even though things may have progressed slightly since then, Bloom feels there’s still a great deal of work to be done within the fashion industry and beyond to ensure inclusive values are consistent, and come from a genuine place. “I don’t want to be a trend. I want to be taken seriously,” she says. “I would like my child to be born in a world where when they wake up, and they walk outside, they look left, or they look right, and they see people from all different walks of life. I want representation to be fluid, universal and heartfelt.”

For Bloom’s future projects, “it’s always going to be purpose over popularity,” she says, referring to barrier-breaking “gladiators” that came before her including pioneering actor Dorothy Dandridge and model, activist and Paris is Burning subject Octavia St. Laurent. “When I leave, I want to leave something [behind], so people can live off of it forever. That’s what I was brought here to do: to be walking magic.”

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In Texas, Democrats Go All In to Fight Voting Restrictions

With the midnight deadline for the Texas legislature to pass any more bills less than two hours away, State Rep. Chris Turner sent his fellow Democrats a text that helped seal the plan to kill a sweeping voting restrictions measure. “Leave the chamber discreetly. Do not go to the gallery. Leave the building,” said Turner, the chair of the House Democratic Caucus. (The text was first obtained by The Texas Tribune.) More than 60 Democrats poured out of the Capitol building on Sunday night and made their way to a predominantly Black church in Austin, where they held a press conference criticizing the bill.
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In taking their leave, Democrats ensured there was no longer a quorum for a vote on a bill that would have set new limitations on voting by mail and voting hours, among other restrictions. The measure had the support of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and the GOP majority of members of both chambers. It’s one of hundreds of bills Republicans in other state legislatures are pursuing to impose fresh voting restrictions after the 2020 elections.

The Texas measure is dead for now, but probably not for long. Abbott has already signaled that he intends to call for a special session to allow lawmakers to approve the legislation. That could be as early as this week or in a few months. Either way, Democrats have vowed to fight on, cementing Texas’ place as one of the few epicenters of the fight over voting rights in the nation.

TIME spoke with Turner about why Democrats staged the walk-out and why he opposes the bill on Tuesday morning. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

TIME: How are you doing? I’m guessing this wasn’t how you expected the legislative session to end.

Turner: It was definitely an unusual ending. The short answer is tired but gratified for the few dozen members of the House Democratic caucus who made a strong stand.

You sent a text message to fellow Democrats asking them to leave the chamber discreetly. How did you come up with that strategy?

So it was very much a collective idea from the Democratic Caucus. Big picture: we were determined to do all we could to fight this bill. We had a few options. Sunday, when we staged the walkout, was the last day that the Texas legislature can pass bills. We knew we had an opportunity to push this bill back, closer to the midnight deadline, to get it in the danger zone. So we worked to first bring up other non controversial bills or bills that had bipartisan support, partly because we wanted them approved but also to bide more time.

Was it a challenge to get everyone on board?

The majority of our Democratic caucus was definitely on board with leaving the Capitol to ensure the House had no quorum. Had they not been, it would not have worked. Even for the Democrats who did remain in the House, they may not have supported that particular tactic, but they were just as strongly opposed to the bill and were fighting it in different ways.

Some might ask what’s the point of doing this if Republicans are just going to call a special session to pass the legislation? What’s your response?

Well, we can’t control what the Republicans decide to do; we can only control what we do. In Texas, only the governor has the ability to call a special session, for which he also determines the agenda. That’s an immense amount of power. The governor is going to do what he wants to do and then it will be our job to figure out the best way to continue to protect our constituents. If the governor chooses to put a needless voter suppression bill on the agenda for a future special session, then we’re going to fight it just as hard as we fought it this week.

Gov. Abbott has said that he intends to cut funding for the legislative branch, threatening that there would be “no pay for those who abandon their responsibilities.” What’s your reaction to that?

I mean, it’s absurd. First off, the governor doesn’t have the ability to individually cut specific members’ pay. Further, every member of the House and Senate makes $600 a month. We do get a per diem during the session. If you calculated it out—if you took the hour and a half where there was no quorum before the midnight deadline—I think it comes down to about $16 a person. So it’s just a silly diversionary comment. Our constitution sets up three equal branches of government. The executive doesn’t get to defund the people in the legislative branch of government.

What specific provisions of this bill worries you?

This bill was problematic for a number of reasons. First, it empowered partisan poll watchers to potentially harass and intimidate voters and election officials. Texas already has an issue of vigilante poll watchers stirring up trouble. Secondly, the bill would have restricted early voting on Sundays, when many African American churches in Texas and across the country do Souls to the Polls events where the congregation goes to vote after attending church. (The legislation said early voting may not occur before 1 p.m. on Sundays.) Church service is usually in the morning. That’s straight up voter suppression. Thirdly, limitations on being able to send vote by mail applications to voters and people who qualify to vote by mail is simply a needless and a suppressive tactic.

Do you have broader concerns about the bill?

It’s based on Donald Trump’s false narrative that he actually won the last election and that it was stolen from him due to voter fraud, which has been consistently and thoroughly debunked. Republicans in Texas and across the country, in their fealty to Donald Trump, continue to promote and give credence to that Big Lie and say we have to pass these so-called voter fraud bills. And that is just a noxious form of lawmaking that is really insidious, and has no place anywhere in America.

We often see lengthy debates when controversial bills emerge in state legislatures. What was it about this moment that made so many Democrats feel it wasn’t enough to just talk?

The Texas Legislature has a number of hard deadlines on passing bills as they make their way through different chambers. As the minority party in the House, we use every tactic we have. Extending debates to push things past the deadline is something we’re very used to doing and we’re pretty good at it. Earlier this session, we extended debate to kill bills that would have restricted abortion or harmed transgender youth.

In this case, this bill was before us with this hard deadline at midnight on Sunday. And our first line of attack was to extend the debate and push the bill past midnight and kill it the same way. However, we also knew that there was a procedural move the Republicans were going to use to cut off all debate and force an immediate vote on the bill. And as we got closer to midnight, it was increasingly clear that that attempt to cut off debate was imminent. And that’s when the last members who were still there made the decision to leave.

There was a lot of talk related to this bill about singling out Harris County, which in last year’s election allowed 24-hour voting and drive-thru voting. This bill would have banned both. Why does Harris County keep coming up?

First of all, Harris County is home to Houston and it’s the largest county in the state of Texas. Harris County has increasingly become more Democratic over the last several elections and shows that Texas is increasingly becoming a competitive state. In last year’s election, the Harris County election officials were innovative in expanding voting access. So yes, they did allow for overnight voting because you know what, when people that work the night shift get off work at 4 a.m. and want to come vote before going home to sleep, they should be able to do so.

Drive thru was partly a convenience thing, but also a response to the fact that we had a pandemic taking place during the last election. Republicans don’t like that, because they don’t want voting to be more accessible to all voters. They want to make it harder to vote. And so that’s why they very intentionally targeted those innovations in Harris County.

What is the message you want to send not just to Texans, but to Americans in general, by doing this?

I hope that all Texans and all Americans understand that the unified Democratic opposition to voter suppression measures is driven by our belief in democracy—that a democracy is healthiest and strongest when it is open and accessible to all eligible voters in our nation, and attempts to make it harder to vote for eligible voters, making it harder to register to vote or vote by mail is antithetical to who we are as as a country.

My colleague and dean of the House Democratic Caucus Senfronia Thompson articulated it well. How can Americans try and promote democracy abroad but not reflect on what we are doing in our own country? I hope that our efforts in Texas this week will add impetus and urgency for Congress to pass strong federal legislation to prevent subsequent voter suppression bills and stop discriminatory and unfair redistricting.

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