Thanks to a new rule passed by one North Carolina board of education, students in Salisbury-area high schools will be allowed to carry pepper spray with them on campus in the upcoming school year. According to one board member, the spray could be “pretty valuable” for female students, in case they encounter a trans woman in the bathroom.

The Department of Justice is filing a federal civil rights lawsuit against North Carolina, Governor Pat McCrory, the North Carolina Department of Public Safety and the University of North Carolina as a result of the state’s “bathroom bill” known as HB2 (or the Public Facilities Act), announced Attorney General Loretta Lynch at news conference this afternoon.

Last week, the Justice Department gave North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory until the end of the day on Monday to scrap the transphobic “bathroom bill.” Instead, he’s filing a lawsuit against the federal government.

In a macabre attempt to push his platform, Texas Governor Rick Perry has suggested that Joan Rivers might still be alive had the clinic where her botched endoscopy was performed been held to the same stringent standards required under his controversial abortion law.