* Bloomberg…

Citigroup Inc. has been dropped from the group of banks poised to handle the biggest-ever municipal-bond transaction from Texas after the state’s attorney general’s office determined the firm “discriminates” against the firearms industry, barring it from underwriting most government borrowings in the state.

The Texas Natural Gas Securitization Finance Corp. board met on Thursday and took action to “reconstitute” the syndicate on the $3.4 billion deal, according to Lee Deviney, executive director of the Texas Public Finance Authority, the state agency overseeing the borrowing. Citigroup had been listed in the original iteration of the underwriting firms approved by the board in May and is no longer included in the final group. […]

Citi’s removal from the deal isn’t a surprise after Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office last month said that they would no longer “approve any public security issued on or after today’s date in which Citigroup purchases or underwrites the public security,” according to a Jan. 18 letter to bond counsels written by Leslie Brock, assistant attorney general chief of the public finance division. […]

Citigroup is the second bank to be removed from the transaction. UBS Group AG was kicked off the deal in October after the state listed them among firms it considers to “boycott” the fossil fuel industry.

* ABC…

The Mississippi House passed a controversial bill that would form a court system of unelected judges and prosecutors to preside over part of the majority-Black city of Jackson.

Black residents make up 82.8% of the city’s population, according to the U.S. Census.

The bill would expand the city’s capitol complex improvement district, which “was created by the Mississippi Legislature to establish regular funding and administration of infrastructure projects within a defined area of the city of Jackson,” according to city documents.

Instead of giving the city’s majority-Black residents an opportunity to vote for judges and prosecutors in the court, the Republican-backed bill would require government officials to choose who fills those positions.

* Jessica Valenti…

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit yesterday against the Biden administration over their guidance to pharmacies about not discriminating against people when dispensing medication. Essentially, the guidance was a reminder to pharmacists that they can’t discriminate against someone based on their ability or perceived ability to get pregnant. So, for example, they can’t withhold arthritis medication from a woman just because the medication could induce abortion.

Again, this guidance didn’t say that Texas or anywhere else had to prescribe abortion medication. Yet Paxton is suing, saying that the Biden administration “has no legal authority to institute this radical abortion agenda.” (You also may remember Paxton as the AG who sued the Biden administration over the state’s right to refuse emergency life-saving abortions.) What’s doubly upsetting about this is that the media coverage is getting it all wrong, with headlines mirroring Paxton’s claim that the lawsuit is about abortion.

The Texas Tribune’s headline, for example, reads, “Texas sues to block Biden’s abortion medication guidance”—language that’s repeated in multiple other news outlets. I think the least we can ask from mainstream media is that they get the basic facts right.

* WATE…

The organizers of the annual Knoxville Pride Festival said the event will be cancelled if a bill restricting where drag shows can take place becomes law.

If passed, drag performances on public property or where they can be seen by someone who is not an adult would be banned effective April 1. A first offense for a performer would be a Class A misdemeanor, but a second or subsequent violation would be a Class E felony.

The bill passed the Tennessee Senate on Thursday and now must be approved by the house to become law. […]

The festival is the largest fundraiser of the year for the 501c3 organization that helps fund the Knox Pride Resource Center, which provides a food pantry, a thrift store to provide low and no-cost clothing to houseless and precariously housed individuals, life skills classes, and more, Knox Pride said.

According to Camp, the 2022 festival had 75,000 attendees and 125 performers, 100 who were drag artists, in Downtown Knoxville.

*New York Times…

Mr. DeSantis is the latest figure, and among the most influential, to join a growing list of Republicans calling on the court to revisit the 1964 ruling, known as The New York Times Company v. Sullivan.

The decision set a higher bar for defamation lawsuits involving public figures, and for years it was viewed as sacrosanct. That standard has empowered journalists to investigate and criticize public figures without fear that an unintentional error will result in crippling financial penalties.

But emboldened by the Supreme Court’s recent willingness to overturn longstanding precedent, conservative lawyers, judges, legal scholars and politicians have been leading a charge to review the decision and either narrow it or overturn it entirely. […]

During the panel discussion on Tuesday, Mr. DeSantis accused the press of using Sullivan as a shield to intentionally “smear” politicians and said the precedent discouraged people from running for office. Would the current Supreme Court, he asked the panelists, be “receptive” to revisiting the case?