NEW YORK (AP) — Singer Justin Timberlake was arrested early Tuesday and is accused of driving while intoxicated on New York’s Long Island, authorities said.

Timberlake was expected to be arraigned in Sag Harbor, on the eastern end of Long Island, according to a statement from the Suffolk County district attorney’s office.

Timberlake’s representatives did not immediately return requests for comment from The Associated Press.

Sag Harbor is a coastal village in the Hamptons, around 100 miles (160 kilometers) from New York City. In the summer, it is a hotspot for wealthy visitors.

A young Timberlake was a Disney Mouseketeer, where his castmates included future girlfriend Britney Spears. He rose to fame in the popular boy band NSYNC and embarked on a solo recording career in 2002. As an actor, Timberlake has won acclaim in movies including” The Social Network” and “Friends With Benefits.”

He has won ten Grammy awards and four Primetime Emmy Awards.

Last year, Timberlake was in the headlines when Spears released her memoir, “The Woman in Me.” Several chapters are devoted to their relationship, including deeply personal details about a pregnancy, abortion and painful breakup. In March, he released his first new album in six years, the nostalgic “Everything I Thought It Was,” a return to his familiar future funk sound.

Timberlake has two upcoming shows in Chicago on Friday and Saturday, then is scheduled for New York’s Madison Square Garden next week on Tuesday and Wednesday.

For over a year, employees of the Texas Department of Agriculture (TDA) have been subject to a dress code that is transphobic and potentially illegal. The policy has caused turmoil within the agency, emails obtained by the Texas Observer and interviews reveal, along with contributing to a chilling atmosphere for LGBTQ+ workers. 

Last April, the Observer broke the news that the TDA had implemented a new dress code which required employees to dress “in a manner consistent with their biological gender”—an apparent attempt to restrict how transgender and nonbinary employees express themselves. Sid Miller, the Texas Agriculture Commissioner, defended the policy in media appearances and on social media. Since then, the nonprofit American Oversight obtained a cache of emails pertaining to the policy through a public information request and provided those emails to the Observer. The emails show that senior agency staff were aware TDA was wading into legally dubious waters and that a number of employees objected to its implementation and felt personally discriminated against.

Austin Kaplan, an employment attorney in Austin, told the Observer he was “surprised” that no one has yet sued TDA over the policy. “It certainly seems like an issue that could be ripe for litigation because it’s right on its face discriminating against people for sexual orientation or transgender status.”

In a landmark 2020 Supreme Court decision, Bostock v. Clayton County, justices ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees against discrimination for their gender or sexual identity. In the emails, the question of whether that ruling applies to the proposed dress code is discussed by senior staff at the TDA. 

“I do not feel the same level of safety that I did in previous state jobs.”

On April 18, 2023, TDA Policy Analyst Carter Page, shared a chart comparing interpretations of the law under the Obama and Trump administrations, commenting: “This table below offers a very good summary, regarding how volatile these controversial related policy / legal questions have remained over the last decade or so.” This email was to multiple recipients including TDA General Counsel Tim Kleinschmidt and Terry Keel, Assistant Commissioner of Agriculture for Enforcement, Consumer Protection, and Border Security. On April 24, 2023, Page shared news of Ken Paxton supporting a lawsuit over transgender athletes led by Tennessee, including Paxton’s legal arguments about both Title VII and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act. The email was sent to Miller and other top TDA officials. 

“The records that we have received demonstrate that senior TDA officials were well aware of the potentially unlawful nature of their policy,” said Chioma Chukwu, interim executive director at American Oversight, a nonprofit that aims to use public records law to combat corruption. “[TDA officials] were taking precautions to try and defend something that is otherwise indefensible in light of Title VII.”

According to Kaplan, “It was made abundantly clear by the Supreme Court that LGBTQ+ rights are protected by federal statute and employers are not permitted to discriminate. The conservative politicians might not like it, the conservative elected agency heads might not like it, but they don’t really have a choice.”

Though the Supreme Court hasn’t ruled specifically on dress codes for transgender employees, Kaplan noted that courts have begun to make important rulings based on Bostock. For example, in March, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a transgender male prison guard who sued after being repeatedly harassed over his gender identity by coworkers. 

TDA did not respond to multiple requests for comment about its dress code or other topics revealed in the emails.

The emails also show that some employees revolted against the policy. On April 30, 2023, Lena Wilson, assistant commissioner for food and nutrition, gave her employees a warning. “Please remember that political discussions need to occur outside the office,” she wrote. “I can’t stress enough how important it is for you to voice your concerns with your leadership chain or HR.”

About two weeks later, an employee whose name was redacted wrote that “The email on 4/30/2023 made me unsure about how to express my concern about the new dress code policy since discussing political or sensitive subjects appeared to be discouraged. … The audacity and impact of this policy has garnered national attention, damaging the reputation of the agency and our division,” the employee continued. “How can we as a division mandate that our program participants comply with civil rights policy when our own leadership does not?”

Another employee with a redacted name wrote: “Within the past six months, several trans, queer, and/or gender-nonconforming staff have been hired by the TDA. This timing could lead one to conclude that this policy is a direct result of trans visibility in the workplace. By implementing discriminatory policies, TDA forces compliance with behaviors that contradict our identities, or makes the workplace uncomfortable enough that we are forced to leave.”

This May, the Observer spoke with a current employee in TDA’s food and nutrition division, who confirmed that the dress code remains in place. “I was disgusted while reading through all of the agency operating procedures during my first few days of work,” said the employee, who is queer and requested anonymity to avoid retaliation from TDA.

Previously, the employee worked elsewhere in state government. “Although I am open about my queerness, I do not feel the same level of safety that I did in previous state jobs.”

Natalie Rougeux, an employment lawyer in New Braunfels who represents employers and has provided employment law training for TDA, told the Observer she’d strongly advise her clients against adopting similar policies to the TDA dress code. “Let’s just say, hypothetically, an employee is terminated from employment, and they feel that it’s due to their transgender status. That policy could certainly be used as circumstantial evidence of an animus toward individuals who are transgender.” 

Rougeux noted that the Supreme Court, in its Bostock decision on gender identity, had not ruled on issues like attire, which it deliberately left for future cases. “I don’t want one of my clients to be that future case.” 

An email from Rougeux was included in the documents provided by American Oversight. In it, Rougeux responded to an apparent complaint (not included in the records) from a TDA human resources employee about a training Rougeux had provided. “I removed the issue of bathroom choice and attire from my training in light of the Texas and Tennessee cases and your commissioner’s stance on the issue, but I feel that deliberately deadnaming an individual could still be harassment. … My apologies if I did anything upsetting. However, I do stand by my training,” Rougeux wrote in the June 12, 2023, message. 

“Deadnaming” means calling a transgender person by a former or incorrect name. In the email, Rougeux referenced 2022 court rulings in Texas and Tennessee that struck down federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines on sexual orientation and gender identity. The EEOC has since issued revised guidelines, which Texas and other states are once again challenging. But, the bottom line, according to Rougeux, is that nothing prevents “employees from filing claims if they felt they were being mistreated in the workplace due to their gender identity or sexual orientation.” 

Kaplan agreed with Rougeux. “If you’re deadnaming someone, you may well be harassing them on the basis of their sexual orientation.”

Sid Miller took to social media to share a transphobic meme last April. (Screenshot/Twitter)

TDA’s dress code has drawn continued fire from advocates. Sarah Kate Ellis, president of the national pro-LGBTQ+ group GLAAD, condemned the policy in a written statement to the Observer.  “LGBTQ people farm, work and live in Texas,” she wrote. “Commissioner Miller works for them too. All Texans deserve a public servant who serves all in public, and at minimum doesn’t waste time and money targeting people for who they are or how they dress.”

Miller has continued to publicly defend the dress code on social media as recently as April. In response to the Observer reposting its original story about the TDA policy on X, Miller responded: “Men are men. Women are women, and the @TexasObserver is a clown show.” 

According to Chukwu, this kind of public behavior along with the emails themselves show Miller’s priorities are out of alignment with his job. 

“The commissioner, who was one of the policy’s architects, was more concerned with appeasing the anti-trans and anti-nonbinary sentiments of certain officials than with creating a comfortable and inclusive work environment for all employees.”

PORTLAND, Ore. — As Democrats make their case to voters around the country this fall, one challenge is that some of the bluest parts of the country — cities on the West Coast — are a mess.

Centrist voters can reasonably ask: Why put liberals in charge nationally when the places where they have greatest control are plagued by homelessness, crime and dysfunction?

I’ll try to answer that question in a moment, but liberals like me do need to face the painful fact that something has gone badly wrong where we’re in charge, from San Diego to Seattle. I’m an Oregonian who bores people at cocktail parties by singing the praises of the West, but the truth is that too often we offer a version of progressivism that doesn’t result in progress.

We are more likely to believe that “housing is a human right” than conservatives in Florida or Texas, but less likely to actually get people housed. We accept a yawning gulf between our values and our outcomes.

Conservatives argue that the problem is simply the left. Michael Shellenberger wrote a tough book denouncing what he called “San Fransicko” with the subtitle “Why Progressives Ruin Cities.” Yet that doesn’t ring true to me.

Democratic states enjoy a life expectancy two years longer than Republican states. Per capita GDP in Democratic states is 29% higher than in Republican states, and child poverty is lower. Education is generally better in blue states, with more kids graduating from high school and college. The gulf in well-being between blue states and red states is growing wider, not narrower.

So my rejoinder to Republican critiques is: Yes, governance is flawed in some blue parts of America, but overall, liberal places have enjoyed faster economic growth and higher living standards than conservative places. That doesn’t look like failure.

So the problem isn’t with liberalism. It’s with West Coast liberalism.

The two states with the highest rates of unsheltered homelessness are California and Oregon. The three states with the lowest rates of unsheltered homelessness are all blue ones in the Northeast: Vermont, New York and Maine. Liberal Massachusetts has some of the finest public schools in the country, while liberal Washington and Oregon have below-average high school graduation rates.

Oregon ranks dead last for youth mental health services, according to Mental Health America, while Washington, D.C., and Delaware rank best.

Drug overdoses appear to have risen last year in every Democratic state on the West Coast, while they dropped last year in each Democratic state in the Northeast. The homicide rate in Portland last year was more than double that of New York City.

Why does Democratic Party governance seem less effective on the West Coast than on the East Coast?

Intentions instead of oversight and outcomes

Sometimes I wonder if the West is less serious about policy than the East and less focused on relying on the most rigorous evidence. There’s some evidence for that. But I’m not sure, for it’s also true that West Coast states have managed to innovate exceptionally well in some domains. Oregon pioneered “death with dignity” through physician-assisted suicide and led the way to vote by mail, an important step for democracy. California has some of the smartest gun safety laws in America, championed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. As a result, California has a firearms death rate 40% below the national average.

So my take is that the West Coast’s central problem is not so much that it’s unserious as that it’s infected with an ideological purity that is focused more on intentions than on oversight and outcomes.

I ran for governor in Oregon two years ago (I was ousted from the ballot by Oregon’s then-secretary of state, who said I didn’t meet the residency requirement). While running, I’d meet groups of liberal donors in Portland, as the city’s problems cast a shadow over all of us; we’d all be wondering nervously if our catalytic converters were in the process of being stolen. The undercurrent in such a liberal gathering would be the failures of Republicans — but Portland was one mess we couldn’t blame on Republicans, because there simply aren’t many Republicans in Portland. This was our liberal mess.

Politics always is part theater, but out West too often we settle for being performative rather than substantive.

For example, as a gesture to support trans kids, Oregon took money from the tight education budget to put tampons in boys’ restrooms in elementary schools — including boys’ restrooms in … kindergartens.

“The inability of progressives, particularly in the Portland metro area, to deal with the nitty-gritty of governing and to get something done is just staggering,” Rep. Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat who has been representing and championing Portland for more than half a century, told me. “People are much more interested in ideology than in actual results.”

Consider a volunteer group called the Portland Freedom Fund that was set up to pay bail for people of color. The organization raised money from well-intentioned liberal donors, and the underlying problems were real: Bail requirements hit poor people hard.

In 2022, the Portland Freedom Fund helped a Black man named Mohamed Adan who had been arrested after allegedly strangling his former girlfriend, holding a gun to her head and then — in violation of a restraining order — cutting off his GPS monitor and entering her building. “He told me that he would kill me,” the former girlfriend, Rachael Abraham, warned.

The Freedom Fund paid Adan’s bail, and he walked out of jail. A week later, Adan allegedly removed his GPS monitor again and entered Abraham’s home. The police found Abraham’s body drenched in blood with a large knife nearby; three children were also in the house.

Adan was charged with murder — no bail this time — and the incident prompted soul-searching in Portland. But perhaps not enough. A well-meaning effort to help people of color may have cost the life of a woman of color.

One of the passions of the left, drawing partly on Ibram X. Kendi’s book “How to Be an Antiracist,” has been that if a policy leads to racial inequity, then it’s racist even if it wasn’t meant to be. But by that standard, West Coast progressivism abounds in racism.

We in the West impeded home construction in ways that made cities unaffordable, especially for people of color. We let increasing numbers of people struggle with homelessness, particularly Black and brown people. Black people in Portland are also murdered at higher rates than in cities more notorious for violence, and Seattle and Portland have some of the greatest racial disparities in arrests in the country.

I don’t actually agree with Kendi. I think intentions and framing can matter, but it’s absolutely true that good intentions are not enough. What matters is improving opportunities and quality of life, and the best path to do that is a relentless empiricism — which clashes with the West Coast’s indifference to the laws of economics.

The basic reason for homelessness on the West Coast is an enormous shortage of housing that drives up rents. California lacks about 3 million housing units, in part because it’s difficult to get permission to build.

As long as there is such a vast shortage, housing is like musical chairs. Move one family into housing, and another won’t get a home.

Public sector efforts to build housing are often ruinously expensive, with “affordable housing” sometimes costing more than $1 million per unit, so the private sector is critical. Yet one element of progressive purity is suspicion of the private sector, and this hobbles efforts to make businesses part of the solution. Business owners who earn an income from their company are effectively barred from serving on the Portland City Council.

Needed: a healthy Republican Party

Perhaps on the West Coast we have ideological purity because there isn’t much political competition. Republicans are irrelevant in much of the Far West, so they can’t hold Democrats’ feet to the fire — leading Democrats in turn to wander unchecked farther to the left. That’s not so true in the Northeast: A Republican, Charlie Baker, was until recently governor of Massachusetts, and Republicans are competitive statewide in Maine, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Hampshire, New York and New Jersey.

Maybe a healthy Republican Party keeps the Democratic Party healthy, and vice versa.

Without opposition party oversight, problems aren’t always fixed expeditiously. For example, some blue states have well-intentioned laws meant to protect citizens from involuntary commitment to mental institutions — but these days, with drugs and untreated mental illness interacting to produce psychosis, such laws can crush the people they’re supposed to help.

One of my school friends in my hometown, Yamhill, Oregon, Stacy, struggled with alcoholism and mental illness. She became homeless and lived in a tent in a park, but it is almost impossible in such cases to move someone involuntarily into an institution. So she froze to death one winter night.

I think of Stacy suffering and dying unnecessarily, and I believe that instead of protecting her, our liberalism failed her.

Less purity, more pragmatism

One encouraging sign is that the West Coast may be self-correcting. I’ve been on a book tour in recent weeks, and in my talks in California, Oregon and Washington I’ve been struck by the way nearly everyone frankly acknowledges this gulf between our values and our outcomes, and welcomes more pragmatic approaches. California and Oregon have taken steps to boost housing supply, and Oregon ended an experiment in drug decriminalization. Homelessness seems a bit better in San Francisco and other cities, and homicides have dropped.

I’m still a believer in the West Coast. Partly it’s the physical beauty of the region and the outdoor opportunities, and partly it’s that the West has a history of reinventing itself. I remember Seattle’s struggles in the 1970s, when a billboard near the airport read, “Will the last person leaving Seattle — turn out the lights.” The West Coast has always rescued itself by seizing new ideas, from personal computers to the internet, and building on them. The Bay Area may be doing that again today with artificial intelligence.

On a visit to San Francisco in May, I took a Waymo self-driving taxi. It eerily stopped in front of me, unlocked itself and then drove me smoothly to my destination. That did feel like a futuristic journey in a futuristic city.

We need to get our act together. Less purity and more pragmatism would go a long way. But perhaps the first step must be the humility to acknowledge our failures.

Nicholas Kristof writes a column for the New York Times, 620 Eighth Ave., New York, NY 10018.

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