Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper signs bill repealing and replacing parts of controversial law
Last Updated Mar 30, 2017 4:19 PM EDT
Cooper, a Democrat, signed the bill soon after the North Carolina House and Senate approved the measure earlier Thursday.
The compromise plan, announced Wednesday night by the state’s Democratic governor and leaders of the Republican-controlled legislature, was worked out under mounting pressure from the NCAA, which threatened to take away more sporting events.
Cooper had urged lawmakers to support the deal, which among other things repeals a year-old law that said transgender people have to use the public restrooms that correspond to the sex on their birth certificate.
“Today’s law immediately removes that restriction. It’s gone,” Cooper said.
Deal reached to repeal and replace N. C. “bathroom bill”
Sarah Warbelow, the legal director for the Human Rights Campaign, joins CBSN with more on her organization’s efforts to fight the HB2 “bathroom b…
The compromise was condemned by some on both sides, with conservatives staunchly defending the law, known as House Bill 2, and gay and transgender activists complaining that the new measure still denies them protection from discrimination. They demanded nothing less than full repeal.
Republican Sen. Dan Bishop, a primary sponsor of HB2, denounced the new deal on the Senate floor, where it was approved 32-16, with nine of 15 Democrats among the yes votes.
“This bill is at best a punt. At worst it is a betrayal of principle,” the Charlotte-area legislator said.
The House passed the bill 70-48 later in the day.
North Carolina’s state senate has voted to replace the controversial HB2 law that governed which bathroom transgender people could use. Transgend…
Republican Rep. Scott Stone, who lives in Charlotte, urged his colleagues to vote for the bill.
“We are impeding the growth in our revenue, in our ability to do more things for tourism, for teacher pay, while we have this stigma hanging over,” Stone said. “The time has come for us to get out from under the national spotlight for negative things. You can’t go anywhere on this planet without somebody knowing what is HB2 and having some perception about it.”
While the new measure eliminates the rule on transgender bathroom use, it also says state legislators — not local government or school officials — are in charge of policy on public restrooms.
House Bill 2 had also restricted local governments’ ability to enact nondiscrimination ordinances. Under the new law, local governments can’t pass new nondiscrimination protections for workplaces, hotels and restaurants until December 2020.
That moratorium, according to GOP House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger, would allow time for pending federal litigation over transgender issues to play out.
“This is a significant compromise from all sides on an issue that has been discussed and discussed and discussed in North Carolina for a long period of time,” Berger said. “It is something that I think satisfies some people, dissatisfied some people, but I think it’s a good thing for North Carolina.”
Gay rights activists blasted the deal, saying it was not a true repeal.
“It doesn’t matter if you are a Democrat or a Republican, if you vote for this bill, you are not a friend of the LGBT community,” Equality North Carolina Executive Director Chris Sgro said. “You are not standing on the right side of the moral arc of history or with the civil rights community.”
The deal came as the NCAA said North Carolina sites won’t be considered for championship events from 2018 to 2022 “absent any change” in House Bill 2, which it views as discrimination. The NCAA had mentioned a deadline of noon on Thursday to make changes to the law, CBS affiliate WNCN-TV reports. North Carolina cities, schools and other groups have offered more than 130 bids for such events.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association is pulling seven championship events from North Carolina over the state’s so-called “bathroom law,” …
The NCAA already removed championship events from the state this year because of the law.
HB2 also prompted businesses to halt expansions and entertainers and sports organizations to cancel or move events, including the NBA All-Star game in Charlotte. An Associated Press analysis this week found that HB2 already would have cost the state more than $3.76 billion in lost business over a dozen years.
HB2 supporters argued that the bathroom law was needed to preserve people’s privacy and protect them from sexual predators. Opponents said that was nonsense and that the danger was imaginary.
Several potential compromises have failed over the past year, including one during a special session in December that collapsed amid partisan finger-pointing.

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The Senate Intelligence Committee is holding its first hearing on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, in which Sen. Marco Rubio revealed hacking attempts on his former campaign staff
Last Updated Mar 30, 2017 4:11 PM EDT
Members of the U. S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence launched into their first day of hearings on Russian interference in the 2016 election Thursday, answering months of calls from Democrats and some Republicans for a Capitol Hill probe.
Democrats for months have called for a probe into any Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, but the Republican-controlled intelligence committees are just now beginning to hold public hearings. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio revealed in the hearing that an IP located in Russia attempted to hack former members of his presidential campaign in July 2016, and as recently as Wednesday at 10:45 a.m. The attempts were unsuccessful, said Rubio, refusing to address claims that Russians interfered with his bid for the Republican nomination for president.
Witnesses for the hearing on Russian tactics of disinformation and influence campaigns include retired Gen. Keith Alexander, former director of the National Security Agency, along with Kevin Mandia, chief executive officer of cybersecurity company FireEye, and Thomas Rid, professor at the Department of War Studies at King’s College in London.
The afternoon hearing comes on the heels of a New York Times report that a pair of White House officials helped provide Rep. Devin Nunes, a California Republican and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, with intelligence reports showing President Donald Trump and his associates were included in foreign surveillance sweeps by American spy agencies. Some critics fear Nunes is too close to Mr. Trump to handle investigations into any Russian interference into the presidential election.
During an earlier hearing on the same subject Thursday, cybersecurity experts told the Senate panel that Russia had every ability to create fake social media accounts by mimicking profiles of voters in key election states and precincts in the 2016 election, and use a mix of bots and real people to push propaganda from state-controlled media outlets like Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik.
Mandia said it’s tough to differentiate between bots and humans as bots become smarter, and the U. S. can’t fight Russia with cyber tactics alone.
“It just feels like we’re in a glass house throwing rocks at a mud hud,” he said.
FBI Director James Comey revealed last week the FBI is investigating any possible ties between President Donald Trump and Russia.
Follow our live-blog from earlier below.
“It just feels like we’re in a glass house throwing rocks at a mud hud,” he said.
“Could they have drastically changed the outcome of the election?” Manchin said.
“I have no idea,” Mandia responded.
“I think it’s remarkably consistent,” Mandia said.
“I think that’s the most important program that’s out there, especially in counterterrorism,” Gen. Alexander said.
“You can’t always connect the dots,” Mandia said, but added, “It absolutely stretches credulity to think they were not involved.”
“I believe they were involved,” Gen. Alexander said.
“I believe they were involved as well,” Rid added.
Warner next asked if it was possible for the Russians to target voters at the precinct level with a network of bots.
Possible to target precinct levels with a botnet network for specific precincts?
Alexander: “I think it’s technically possible,” Gen. Alexander said, adding he couldn’t confirm how much that happened.
“The more polarized a society, the more vulnerable it is,” Thomas Rid said.
Russian intelligence operations by 2015 began combining the tools of hacking and leaking, targeting defense and diplomatic entities, Rid said.
Russia likes to use “unwitting” agents, Rid said, adding that Wikileaks, Twitter and “over-eager” journalists contributed to Russia’s efforts in 2016.
“What’s Russia trying to do, and why are they trying to do it?” he said.
Gen. Alexander said the U. S. can’t shy away from or ignore Russia.
“I believe we have to engage and confront,” he said.
“It is our view that the United States is going to continue to see these things happen,” Mandia said.
Mandia said the U. S. needs to know who is behind the hacking, which requires international cooperation. Only then can the U. S. determine a proportional response, he said.

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