Tennessee campus carry becomes law without Haslam signature
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A bill allowing staff and faculty at Tennessee’s public colleges and universities to be armed on campus became law Monday without the Republican governor’s signature.
Gov. Bill Haslam said in a statement that he disagreed with the bill for not allowing institutions “to make their own decisions regarding security issues on campus.”
But the governor acknowledged the final version of the measure addressed concerns raised by college administrators during the legislative process by including provisions protecting schools from liability and a requirement to notify law enforcement about who is armed on campus.
The law, which takes effect immediately, will keep gun bans in place for stadiums or gymnasiums while school-sponsored events are in progress, meetings where disciplinary or tenure issues are being discussed, hospitals or offices where medical or mental health services are provided and any location prohibited by another law.
Education secretary calls for repeal of 2 transgender laws
BOSTON (AP) — Laws in North Carolina and Mississippi that restrict the rights of transgender Americans are hateful and should be repealed, Education Secretary John B. King Jr. said Monday.
Asked about the laws during the Education Writers Association national conference in Boston, King called them hateful and said gender identity should be protected.
He said the laws send a problematic message to students and he is calling on state legislatures to repeal them.
“My hope is legislators will realize they’ve made a terrible mistake,” he said.
Trump’s rise is driving immigrants to become citizens
MIAMI (AP) — On a recent Saturday morning in South Florida, 50-year-old Edgar Ospina stood in a long line of immigrants to take the first step to become an American.
Ospina has spent almost half his life in the U.S. after emigrating from his native Colombia, becoming eligible for citizenship in 1990. But with Donald Trump becoming a more likely presidential nominee by the day, Ospina decided to wait no more, rushing the paperwork required to become a citizen.
“Trump is dividing us as a country,” said Ospina, owner of a small flooring and kitchen remodeling company. “He’s so negative about immigrants. We’ve got to speak up.”
Nationwide, immigrants such as Ospina are among tens of thousands applying for naturalization in a year when immigration has taken center stage in the presidential campaign, especially in the race for the Republican nomination.
Trump, the GOP front-runner, has pledged to deport the estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. illegally. He’s also vowed to bar Muslims from entering the country and threatened to cut off remittances that Mexican immigrants in the U.S. send back home. And he’s called for building a border wall — among other proposals to deal with unlawful immigration, saying the federal government has failed to protect the border from people and drugs illegally entering the country.
That rhetoric, immigrant advocates and lawmakers say, is driving many foreign-born residents to seek citizenship.
Nationwide, naturalization applications are up 14 percent in the last six months of 2015 compared with the same period in 2014, according to the government.
And the pool of future U.S. citizens is large. Nearly 9 million legal permanent residents, or green-card holders, are eligible to become Americans. Of those, about 4 million are Hispanic.
