(C) Texas Tribune This story was originally published by Texas Tribune and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The Blast: Robert Morris’ abuse allegations [1] [] Date: 2024-06 Former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki will testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee next week at the behest of U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin. McCaul, who chairs the committee and has been seeking Psaki’s testimony for months, plans to interview her as part of the committee’s investigation into the Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. Psaki served in the White House during the withdrawal before going on to work for MSNBC. McCaul had sought Psaki’s testimony nine months ago. Psaki agreed to appear but kept it conditional on approval from the White House. “The Committee has a vested interest in understanding those diplomatic and information transmission failures, which led to misrepresentations regarding, amongst other things, coordination with allies, contingency planning, the foreseeability of Afghanistan’s collapse, and the safety of Americans and allies in Afghanistan,” McCaul wrote in a Monday letter to Psaki. “As a former public servant, and now, a private citizen in the public sphere, you have a duty to appear before Congress when called upon.” — Matthew Choi TITLE IX CONCERNS Texas Democrats in Congress are wading into Gov. Greg Abbott’s beef with the Biden administration over protections for LGBTQ+ students. In a letter this afternoon, U.S. Reps. Jasmine Crockett of Dallas and Sheila Jackson Lee, Al Green, and Sylvia Garcia of Houston urged the state’s higher ed agency to clarify new Title IX policies amid the governor’s orders to ignore them. The Department of Education issued new regulations in April that explicitly expand Title IX regulations to protect LGBTQ+ students at publicly-funded schools, making them responsible for investigating a wider range of discrimination complaints. Abbott then ordered state schools to ignore the new guidelines, saying they would “force schools to treat boys as if they were girls and to accept every student’s self-declared gender identity.” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is also suing the Biden administration over the guidelines. The Democrats say this puts Texas schools between a rock and a hard place. They can either: ignore the Biden policies and jeopardize their federal funding, or ignore Abbott's directive and face his ire. Their letter this afternoon asks the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to state whether schools should comply with or ignore the regulations. “Universities face the prospect of openly defying federal law, betraying their students, and jeopardizing federal funding for scholarships, facilities, and more,” the Democrats’ letter reads. A federal ruling has temporarily blocked the changes in Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana and Idaho, but they are still set to go into effect for Texas in August. The Department of Education has not clarified how the guidelines interact with laws like Texas’ ban on transgender student-athletes participating in sports teams that correspond to their gender identity. Last week, a Texas federal judge separately blocked a different set of Title IX policies first issued in 2021. — Isaac Yu [END] --- [1] Url: https://mailchi.mp/texastribune/the-blast-robert-morris-abuse-allegations Published and (C) by Texas Tribune Content appears here under this condition or license: Used with Permission: https://www.texastribune.org/republishing-guidelines/. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/texastribune/