• During an interview with France 24, Woody Allen defended his work by saying he has “done everything that the #MeToo movement would love to achieve.”
• Allen has been the subject of controversy in Hollywood since he was accused of sexually assaulting his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow when she was a child, though he has denied these claims.
• His name appeared in the news earlier this week when actress Scarlett Johansson said she believed him and would work with him. 
• Farrow responded to Johansson by saying she “has a long way to go in understanding the issue she claims to champion.”

Woody Allen Speaks to France24

Film director Woody Allen, who has long been accused of sexual assault, claimed his work supports the goals of the #MeToo movement. 

Allen sat down with France24 on Friday, just prior to the premiere of his new film, A Rainy Day in New York at a film festival in France. The film’s lead actors, Elle Fanning, Timothée Chalamet, and Selena Gomez are not scheduled to walk the red carpet. Amazon also shelved the film from a theatrical release in the United States. 

Allen claimed he was unconcerned about his movie not receiving screen time in the states and addressed a past claim he made about being the poster boy for the #MeToo movement.

“I’ve worked with hundreds of actresses, not one of them has ever complained about me, not a single complaint,” he said. “I’ve worked with, employed women in the top capacity, in every capacity, for years and we’ve always paid them exactly the equal of men.” 

“I’ve done everything that the #MeToo movement would love to achieve,” Allen added.

Allen has often been the subject of controversy in Hollywood since his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow said he sexually assaulted her when she was a child. Many in the industry have distanced themselves from the director due to the allegations against him. Specifically, vocal advocates for the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements have condemned him.

Scarlett Johansson’s Recent Defense of Allen

Allen’s name was in headlines earlier this week when actress Scarlett Johansson defended him while speaking with the Hollywood Reporter. Johansson first worked with the director in 2006 while starring alongside Hugh Jackman in Scoop.

“I love Woody,” she said in her interview. “I believe him, and I would work with him anytime.”

The Avengers star has spoken in favor of women’s equality movements in Hollywood and even spoke at the 2018 Women’s March in Los Angeles dawning a Time’s Up t-shirt. She faced significant backlash for her remarks about Allen, most notably from Farrow herself.

“Scarlett has a long way to go in understanding the issue she claims to champion,” Farrow wrote on Twitter.

See what others are saying: (The Hollywood Reporter) (The Guardian) (IndieWire) 

• President Trump received backlash after displaying a forecast of Hurricane Dorian’s expected path modified with a Sharpie to include Alabama.
• Trump previously said Alabama would be hurt by the storm and doubled down on his claim, even after the National Weather Service said it was incorrect.
• Trump argued a forecast from Aug. 28 had shown the storm hitting Alabama, but others pointed to an official White House photo from Aug. 29 that showed Trump looking at an updated forecast that did not include the state.
• Dorian has already caused lasting damage to the Bahamas, where 20 people were killed in the storm. It has now made its way up to the U.S., causing floods and blackouts along the Carolina coast.

Sharpie Drawn on Hurricane Map

President Donald Trump doubled down Thursday on his claims that initial forecasts said Hurricane Dorian would have significantly hurt Alabama.

The day before, the president was criticized for displaying a forecast map that appeared to be modified with a Sharpie to include Alabama as a state that would be at risk.

Some have speculated that the move was an apparent attempt to validate a claim made by Trump on Sunday.

“In addition to Florida – South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated,” Trump wrote in the tweet.

The National Weather Service quickly responded by issuing its own tweet contradicting the president’s assertion.

“Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian,” NWS wrote. “We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane #Dorian will be felt across Alabama. The system will remain too far east.”

However, Trump still repeated that claim while speaking at FEMA headquarters later that day.

“It may get a little piece of a great place: It’s called Alabama,” the president said, speaking about Dorian. “And Alabama could even be in for at least some very strong winds and something more than that, it could be. This just came up, unfortunately. It’s the size of — the storm that we’re talking about.”

Trump Doubles Down

Trump again insisted it was a fact that original forecasts showed Alabama as a threated area after Jon Karl of ABC News reported that what Trump said was false.

“Such a phony hurricane report,” the president wrote on Twitter.

After Trump showed the altered map on Wednesday, The Washington Post asked Trump about the incident. He told The Post that his briefings included a “95 percent chance probability” that Alabama would be hit.

When asked if the chart had been drawn on, Trump said: “I don’t know; I don’t know.” However, White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley seemed to confirm that the drawing was made using a black Sharpie.

“Watching the media go ballistic over a black sharpie mark on a map would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad,” he wrote on Twitter. 

Trump also defended his statement in a tweet, where he showed an official forecast from August 28.

“This was the originally projected path of the Hurricane in its early stages,” he wrote. “As you can see, almost all models predicted it to go through Florida also hitting Georgia and Alabama. I accept the Fake News apologies!”

Trump is correct that the earlier forecast from that date did show that Alabama had a chance of getting hit by Dorian. However, others pointed out, there are official White House photos from August 29 that show Trump being briefed on the hurricane forecast.

In those pictures, Trump can be seen looking at the updated forecast, the same one that had the Sharpie on it, which by that time made it clear that Alabama was not at risk of being affected by the storm.

The president appeared to press the point even further Thursday. In a series of tweets, Trump argued that “certain models strongly suggested that Alabama & Georgia would be hit.”

“Alabama was going to be hit or grazed, and then Hurricane Dorian took a different path (up along the East Coast),” he added in a later Tweet. “The Fake News knows this very well. That’s why they’re the Fake News!” 

Hurricane Dorian

Meanwhile, Hurricane Dorian is currently right off the Carolina coast where it is causing massive power outages and flooding, as well as spurring small tornadoes.

Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia have all declared states of emergency, and a number of coastal counties all across the Eastern Seaboard have also issued mandatory evacuation orders.

According to CNN, more than 240,000 customers have reportedly lost power in Georiga and the Carolinas. Most of the outages were in South Carolina, where around 225,000 were reported and where about 360,000 people have been evacuated.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency have also put out a warning that surge waters could flood up to eight feet in some areas.

Right now, experts anticipate the Carolina coast will be experiencing extreme weather conditions for a full 24 hours. After that, Dorian is expected to travel further north up the coast, where tropical storm watches are ongoing.

While damages are expected, they are not anticipated to be as severe as the destruction caused by Dorian in the Bahamas, where it made landfall as a category 5 hurricane on Sunday.

With the storm just recently receding, the total damages to the islands are not yet clear. Whole neighborhoods have been decimated, leaving many without homes. Streets were flooded and massive power outages, some of which have spanned entire islands, were reported.

According to early reports, around 13,000 homes and businesses were destroyed, but officials expect that number to be much higher.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Hubert Minnis announced that the death toll in the Bahamas was officially at 20, though he said he expected that number to rise. Minnis also described Dorian as “the greatest national crisis in our country’s history.”

Search and rescue efforts were also made much more difficult due to massive flooding in hospitals and airports, including one airport which local reports have said is entirely underwater.

While the hurricane rages on, some have argued that Trump’s insistence that Alabama could be hit is dangerous —both because it could create panic in Alabama despite the lack of a storm threat, and also because some believe he should be focusing on delivering correct emergency information to people who need it.

Others have also pointed out that there is actually a federal law that says it is illegal to alter official government weather forecasts.

If you want to help out those affected by Hurricane Dorian, here are a few places you can donate: (Bahamas Red Cross) (World Central Kitchen) (GlobalGiving)

See what others are saying: (The Washington Post) (CNN) (Fox News) 

• The Department of Justice filed a brief on Friday asking the Supreme Court to rule that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not protect workplace discrimination on the basis of being transgender.
• The DOJ filed the brief in response to a case against Harris Funeral Homes brought by Aimee Stephens, a transgender funeral director who says she was fired after coming out to her boss and saying she would wear a female uniform.
• Harris Funeral Homes and the DOJ argue Title VII protects against discrimination based on biological sex only, while the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says LGBTQ+ workers should be protected under sex-based discrimination.

DOJ Submits Brief Against Trans Protection

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice submitted a brief asking the Supreme Court to rule that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not protect transgender individuals in the workplace.

The brief comes in response to an upcoming case the Supreme Court will hear in October concerning a transgender funeral director who was fired after coming out to her boss in 2013.

Title VII protects workers from employment discrimination on the basis of sex, race, color, religion, and national origin.

While some argue sexual orientation and gender identity are protected under the term “sex,” the DOJ argued “sex” only refers to a person’s biological sex. It said when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, the interpretation rested on the basis of biological sex.

In the brief, the DOJ stated “[Title VII] simply does not speak to discrimination because of an individual’s gender identity or a disconnect between an individual’s gender identity and the individual’s sex.”

Instead, it argued Title VII prohibits discrimination of people in similar positions and of the opposite biological sex.

The DOJ asserted any changes in the law should be made through Congress, not through the judicial system. Currently, no federal laws prohibit workplace discrimination on the basis of being transgender; however, in 2017, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded an Obama-era policy that included LGBTQ+ identities in the “sex” category.

“While the issue that the Supreme Court took up is a narrow one, whether civil rights protections against ‘sex’ discrimination passed in 1964 should include ‘gender identity’ and transgender rights, it will have vast implications for religious groups,” said Craig Parshall, General Counsel for National Religious Broadcasters. “There is an increasing movement to force faith-based employers to bend to the newly-minted doctrine that a person’s subjective ideas of how they think of their own gender should always prevail, regardless of the religious conscience of employers, businesses, and ministries.”

Meanwhile, the Human Rights Campaign and the American Civil Liberties Union have condemned the action.

“The Trump-Pence administration’s filing today is both legally and morally unjustifiable,” said HRC Legal Director Sarah Warbelow in a Friday statement. “Their argument is un-American, anti-business, and flies in the face of decades of federal case law, including established Supreme Court precedent. There can be no justification for such a narrow interpretation of the term ‘sex.’ Our community will not be silent, and we will not be erased.” 

R.G. and G.R. Harris Funeral Homes V. EEOC & Aimee Stephens

Aimee Stephens worked for R.G and G.R. Harris Funeral Homes in Michigan as a funeral director from 2007 to 2013, presenting as a man for the six years of her employment.

In 2013, she decided to come out to her boss, Thomas Rost, in a letter where she stated she would begin wearing a woman’s uniform and start her transitioning process.

She said the decision came after many years of struggling to accept her identity. At one point in her life, she said she considered killing herself.

Though she said she hoped her job performance over the years would help ease her transition, she was fired soon after.

She then filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which in turn, sued the funeral home for discrimination, sending the case to district court.

In court, the funeral home argued Stephens needed to wear a man’s uniform, saying that “[m]aintaining a professional dress code that is not distracting to grieving families is an essential industry requirement that furthers their healing process.”

Rost, who is a devout Christian, also said he does not believe people can change their gender and defended his firing of Stephens under the protection of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The district ruled in favor of the funeral home on both points, concluding Title VII does not extend to discrimination on the basis of being transgender.

In 2018, Stephens and the EEOC appealed the case in circuit court, where it overturned the district decision and ruled in their favor.

“Discrimination against employees, either because of their failure to conform to sex stereotypes or their transgender and transitioning status, is illegal under Title VII,” the decision states. “The unrefuted facts show that the Funeral Home fired Stephens because she refused to abide by her employer’s stereotypical conception of her sex.”

The circuit also struck down the district’s religious freedom ruling.

This time, the funeral home sought to overturn the decision, arguing that the circuit court had over-reached its authority, and particularly, that it had expanded the definition of what it means to be a man or woman. It asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case. In April, the Supreme Court agreed to hold a hearing.

“Harris Homes ‘administers its dress code based on [its] employees’ biological sex, not based on their subjective gender identity,’ the DOJ’s Friday brief states. “Rost has stated that he ‘believe[s] that the Bible teaches that a person’s sex is an immutable God-given gift,’ and he would ‘violat[e] God’s commands’ by ‘permit[ting] one of [Harris Homes’] funeral directors to deny their sex while acting as a representative of [the] organization’ or by permitting a funeral director of either sex to ‘wear the uniform for’ funeral directors of the opposite sex ‘at work.’”

The Supreme Court will also hear two LGBTQ+ other cases involving “sex” discrimination in relation to Title VII and sexual orientation.

See what others are saying: (CNN) (Time) (NBC)