Thursday marks 25 years since Matthew Shepard's death, but activists say LGBTQ+ rights are still at risk
CBSN
Thursday marks 25 years since the death of Matthew Shepard, an openly gay 21-year-old student at the University of Wyoming who succumbed to brutal injuries six days after being beaten by two young men and abandoned while tied to a fence in a remote area near Laramie.
Shepard's murder is remembered as one of the nation's most notorious and egregious hate crimes. It was also a watershed moment for the LGBTQ+ rights movement that would help catalyze legislation for years to come.
From the perspective of the movement's activists — some of them on the front lines since the 1960s — progress was often agonizingly slow, but it was steady.
President Biden on Monday signed into law a defense bill that authorizes significant pay raises for junior enlisted service members, aims to counter China's growing power and boosts overall military spending to $895 billion despite his objections to language stripping coverage of transgender medical treatments for children in military families.
It's Christmas Eve, and Santa Claus is suiting up for his annual voyage from the North Pole to households around the world. In keeping with decades of tradition, the North American Aerospace Command, or NORAD, will once again track Santa's journey to deliver gifts to children before Christmas 2024, using an official map that's updated consistently to show where he is right now.
An anti-money laundering law called the Corporate Transparency Act, or CTA, appears to have been given new life after an appeals court on Monday determined its rules can be enforced as the case proceeds. The law requires small business owners to register with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, by Jan. 1, or potentially pay fines of up to $10,000.