President Donald Trump has threatened “fire and wrath” against North Carolinians who fail to apologize for the state’s new law banning transgender people from using public bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity, a senior White House official told CNN.
The president tweeted Monday that if North Carolina didn’t comply with a federal court order barring it from enforcing the law, he would use the Justice Department’s powers under the law to “tear down this state’s unconstitutional law.”
“North Carolina has no business telling the federal government what to do with its own people.
That’s what the Democrats in North Carolina did,” the official said, adding that Trump would send a message to other states that don’t comply that “they can’t have it both ways.”
North Carolina Gov.
Roy Cooper, who signed the law into law, said Monday that the law is discriminatory and will make North Carolins “worse off.”
“Today, I signed HB2 into law,” Cooper tweeted.
“North Carolina is a leader in protecting LGBTQ+ people, but we have to be vigilant in protecting our families and our neighbors.”
The governor, who was joined by Attorney General Roy Cooper in signing the law last week, was responding to a federal judge’s ruling that said the law violated the U.S. Constitution’s ban on states discriminating against LGBT people.
The order issued Friday by U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said the legislation is a violation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and a violation not only of international law, but also North Carolina’s constitution.
The law also discriminates against transgender people, and does not provide the protections to which North Carolinas citizens are entitled under the 14-year-old federal law, the U of N said.
The U.K.-based Human Rights Campaign, which supported the law at the time, condemned the law as “disproportionate, unnecessary, and unnecessary.”
“It is absolutely outrageous to say that we should be discriminating against transgender women,” said HRC President Chad Griffin.
“We should be allowing transgender people to use public bathrooms consistent with their true gender identity.
But now, the Trump administration is saying we should discriminate against North American women.”