Sunday, April 23, 2023

The Decay of Democracy

We hear a lot these days about democracy, as if the institution is threatened. Well, because it is.

I remember growing up in a conservative state, and people would say, "America is not a democracy, it's a republic" -- they're still saying that. Even as a kid I thought: so what? We don't vote on everything that happens, we elect leaders to do our will in the halls of government. It seemed more efficient and had the added benefit that it was not so vulnerable to media-generated fads such as the current uproar over transgender athletes, or erroneous beliefs about crime rates. Elect somebody, give them a few years to work on some legislation, their re-election depends on them keeping the people happy but they are relatively buffered from the whims of the crowd -- Brexit shows you the kind of thing you get when everybody votes on complicated policies.

Now I understand the deal. Conservatives see it differently from the rest of us. We think of electing representatives to serve us, and they think of electing dictators to tell us what to do. From the conservative point of view, once they're in office an official can do whatever crazy thing they want to. They want to close the libraries, okay -- that wouldn't pass a popular vote but some minor-league dictators can do it. A couple of them are squeamish about drag shows? The public doesn't really object to them but our little demagogues can pass laws to make drag shows illegal, even as the press turns up pictures of half of the Republican party cross-dressing. You want to turn down federal money for state health care systems? The people of the state sure wouldn't do that, but their elected dictators can do it. To make a statement.

Abortion? The people who live in this country realize that abortion is a necessary form of health care. Everybody knows somebody who has had an abortion, and has seen why they did it. It isn't Reaganesque "welfare queens," it's your sister, your wife, your mother. The people don't want to ban abortions but states that elected Republicans now have to live with the depravity of forced childbirth. I once saw a Republican Congressman try to describe late-term abortion in graphic terms, as if abortion is just murdering babies. In reality third-trimester abortions are very rare and when they happen it is because something is terribly wrong. Now, with abortion banned in many states, the Congressman's words come true. Women are forced to give birth to babies that should not have been carried to term, that are not viable, that die as soon as they are born, or before. It is disastrous for the family, for the woman, for all who loved them. It is pure sadism, cruelty with no point.

People don't want that.

People are fine with gay people marrying. They are fine with trans people using public bathrooms. They are fine with using the right pronouns. People are in favor of helping the poor, with getting people back on their feet to make their lives better. Nobody knows what to do about homelessness but the problem is not that they are unsightly and scary looking, the problem is finding them homes. People want to see the end of the opioid crisis and know that illegal immigrants are not responsible for it, so much as greedy pharmaceutical corporations.

Most people in the US would like to see some rational measures taken to decrease gun violence. A recent poll showed that 34% of Americans are satisfied with the country's gun laws. But look who gets their way. The majority? No, but thank you for asking.

There is a small minority of people in the country who feel sure they are right and the rest of us are wrong. They feel it is their duty, that it's a good and moral thing for them to do, to make the rest of us live by their perverse, life-annulling standards. This is why democracy was proposed in the first place, to prevent this sort of thing. The idea is that most people are smart enough to make good decisions, and a majority vote will at least get the people what they want. It is fine if these religious nuts have their bizarre beliefs, but it is not fine to engineer society so that everyone has to live by principles that are important to one small, irrational minority.

A hurtful handful of weirdos can manage to get control of the system. Gerrymandering and targeted voter suppression lead to biased elections and the appointment of judges and next thing you know the Supreme Court is sitting over there considering whether a regular FDA approval process of a drug might have missed something. For a medication has now been used millions of times with near-zero ill effects. It's not about the FDA, of course, or the safety of the mifepristone, it's about Christian conservatives imposing their bizarre interpretation of "God's will" (it's not even in the Bible) on the rest of us. A radical Christian judge in Texas said nobody in the United States can take this important medicine, and now the Supreme Court has issued a stay, meaning that the judge's ruling won't go into effect until it has met some legal challenges. The fight is not over, it is just "stayed." Some total raving nuts are making life miserable for millions of American families, against the will of the people, and they are not giving up.

This is why there is concern for democracy. There is a Constitution and a justice system in place, but these extremists have replaced fair and reasonable legislators and judges with religious radicals, so they can go through the charade of following the law while they force their unpopular religious views on the population.

79 Comments:

Anonymous Here in America, Christians want you to believe that Drag Queens are dangerous to your children said...


NAIROBI, April 21 (Reuters) - Kenyan police on Friday began exhuming remains from more than a dozen suspected graves in the east of the country thought to contain followers of a Christian cult who believed they would go to heaven if they starved themselves to death.

On Thursday, homicide detectives marked out patches of earth with sticks and yellow tape in Shakahola forest in Kilifi county, near the location where police rescued 15 members of the Good News International Church last week, according to footage broadcast by Citizen TV.

Police began exhuming bodies on Friday, said Charles Kamau, a detective in the nearby town of Malindi, without giving further details.

The leader of the church, Paul Mackenzie, was arrested following a tip-off that also suggested the existence of shallow graves belonging to at least 31 of Mackenzie's followers.

Mackenzie's lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment.

Police said the 15 rescued worshippers had been told to starve themselves to death so they could meet their creator. Four of them died before they reached hospital.

Titus Katana, a former member of the church, helped police identify the graves.

"We have shown the graves to the police, and in addition, we have saved the life of a woman who only had a few hours left, otherwise she'd also be dead," Katana told Citizen TV.

Matthew Shipeta from Haki Africa, a human rights group, said he had seen at least 15 shallow graves in the forest.

Helen Mikali, the manager of a children's home who was also helping investigators, said she had visited several nearby villages where parents and children had disappeared.

"Personally I have visited about 18 children's graves," Mikali told Citizen TV. She did not say how she knew the graves contained the remains of children.

Last month police arrested and later released Mackenzie, who they identified as Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, for encouraging the parents of two boys to starve and suffocate their children to death.

During a court appearance in that case, Nthenge said he was unaware of the events that led to the deaths of the two boys, adding he was the target of hostile propaganda from some of his former colleagues, The Standard newspaper reported.

April 23, 2023 11:02 PM  
Anonymous FIGHT HATE said...

The most recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was an anti-trans hatefest, but even by their low standards, the effort by D-list speaker Michael Knowles to get attention was revolting. "There can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism," he declared, successfully beating Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in the headline-attracting contest. "For the good of society, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely."

It was a well-crafted troll, garnering not just outrage, but creating an opportunity for right-wingers to pretend Knowles wasn't saying what he was obviously saying. Sure enough, when progressives pointed out that Knowles' rhetoric is genocidal — that you can't eradicate "transgenderism" without eradicating trans people — there was a tedious and predictable explosion of disingenuous umbrage-taking on the right. They are just talking about the "ideology," they insisted, eliding the fact that the "ideological" belief in question is that trans people have a right to exist.

The angels-dancing-on-heads-of-pins argument that you can somehow separate hatred of trans "ideology" from hatred of trans people has always been bad faith. And that was once again proven this week in Montana, where Republicans voted for the removal of a trans legislator from the state house.

It all started last month, when Montana Republicans brought up a bill to bar trans kids from receiving gender-affirming care, such as puberty blockers. The bill, like those in other states, is being justified with false accusations that adults are pressuring minors into transitioning, allowing anti-trans people to claim they are "protecting" children. All of these bills restricting trans rights to health care and public accommodation are not about "protecting children," much less some vague claim about "ideology." It's about a belief that trans people should be booted from public life altogether — in a word, eradicated.

So last week, Democratic state representative Zooey Zephyr, who is trans, denounced the bill by saying, "I hope the next time there's an invocation, when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands."

For this, Zephyr has now been barred from the state house floor in a party-line vote held Wednesday. Republicans claim it wasn't just her words, but because she supposedly encouraged a protest on her behalf on Monday. That excuse doesn't fly, however, as the protest was in response to earlier Republican efforts to silence Zephyr by cutting her microphone and barring her from debate.

April 28, 2023 8:14 AM  
Anonymous FIGHT HATE said...

Republicans claim this is not about trying to erase the voice and presence of the only trans person in the state legislature from debate about what kind of health care trans people are allowed to have. Instead, as with the bad faith justifications for the similar "Tennessee Three" expulsion votes earlier this month, there's a lot of Republican lip-flapping about "decorum" and "civility."

This is transparent nonsense anywhere, but especially in Montana, where the Republican governor was literally convicted of using violence to silence a journalist who had done nothing more than ask him a question. In 2017, Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs asked then-state house candidate Greg Gianforte about his health care views, to which Gianforte exploded in rage. "Get the hell out of here," Gianforte can be heard on tape, as he body slams Jacobs. Gianforte was convicted later that year. He has since been handsomely rewarded for his violent temper by Republicans, who promoted him to the governor's mansion.

Obviously, the party that's about to re-nominate Donald Trump for president, even after he incited an insurrection, does not care about "decorum." They do care very much about doing whatever they can to silence, erase, and yes, eradicate trans people. As Zephyr told NBC News, she is not being "hyperbolic" when she says Republicans are killing people with anti-trans bills. Studies show anywhere from 40-56% of trans and non-binary young people have attempted suicide, with higher rates in red states. Research published by the American Academy of Pediatrics shows that gender-affirming care like puberty blockers is highly effective at reducing suicidal ideation in young people.

Republicans have been shown these statistics again and again, but they keep banning this life-saving care anyway. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Republicans would rather have young people be dead than trans. Sounds harsh, but this is the same party that's more avid about banning books than banning guns, as well. And the same party that is passing draconian abortion bans, even as the evidence piles up that it's maiming and will likely start killing women to do so. Republicans simply don't care who their policies kill, so long as they get to control who you are, how you use your body, and even what you're allowed to think about.

With Gianforte, the cruelty is incredibly personal. His own son, David Gianforte, identifies as non-binary and has publicly pleaded with his father to veto this anti-trans bill, writing that "these bills are immoral, unjust, and frankly a violation of human rights." Yet Gov. Gianforte has publicly demurred when asked if his own child's concerns bother him enough to reconsider signing a bill he has been eagerly supporting so far. I wouldn't hold your breath, however, waiting for Greg "Body Slam" Gianforte to start showing signs of humanity.

Meanwhile, outside of Montana, the genocidal impulse towards LGBTQ people continues to animate the Republican Party.

In Florida, Republicans dramatically expanded the "don't say gay" bill to high school students, in an overt effort to force teenagers back into the closet. They also passed provisions to criminalize gender-affirming care for minors, threatening parents and medical providers with prison if they want to save the lives of trans youth. To make the situation uglier, Florida Republicans have also passed a bill that would make it legal for the state to remove trans children from the homes of parents who support their gender identity.

April 28, 2023 8:15 AM  
Anonymous FIGHT HATE said...

The United Nations classifies the abduction of children to "re-educate" them as a "grave violation." That's why the International Criminal Court has charged Russian President Vladimir Putin with war crimes. He's being accused of conspiring to kidnap Ukrainian children to force them to be Russian loyalists. Taking someone's child to brainwash them to hate themselves and/or their family is taken that seriously as a human rights violation, for good reason. Not that Republicans care how much psychological damage they would do to children by going this route. Causing pain to those who they see as "different" is the entire point.

Zephyr, for her part, remains defiant. During her speech before she was officially banned from the floor, she said she refuses "to be complicit in this legislature's eradication of our community."

Rex Huppke of USA Today argued there is "some good to be found in seeing what the smallness of Republicans in the Montana Legislature did to Zooey Zephyr. By trying to silence her, they made sure she was heard." She went from a relatively unknown politician to a national figure. Just by being visible, Zephyr is doing the necessary, if basic, work of showing people that may not know much about trans people that she is not a scary figure at all. She's just a woman trying to do her job and live her life. She's not a threat to kids, but she is trying to protect them.

That visibility terrifies Republicans. It's why they threw a national tantrum over Budweiser sending some beers to trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney. They see Mulvaney, who has 1.8 million Instagram followers, as a threat simply because she's cute and charming. She reveals the truth they want so badly to hide, which is trans people are fine the way they are and should be allowed to be themselves. Not erased from existence, as Republicans clearly intend with their anti-trans legislation.

By AMANDA MARCOTTE

April 28, 2023 8:15 AM  
Anonymous Montgomery police to patrol drag story hours after Proud Boys protest said...


A group of men yelled homophobic and transphobic slurs, held wooden signs with graphic imagery, and shouted “you’re bad parents!” at families walking into a Silver Spring bookstore for a story hour with a drag queen on Saturday, according to Montgomery County Council member Kristin Mink. The men, members of the Proud Boys, also confronted volunteers holding rainbow umbrellas and ushering in children to the program, she said, by shoving and pushing against them.

Montgomery County police officers, who responded to the scene shortly after 1 p.m. at Loyalty Bookstores, will be present at future story hours “in a peacemaker role,” Montgomery County Police Chief Marcus G. Jones said in a statement Monday.

“Officers will be on hand to ensure the safety of attendees and participants,” Jones said. “If protesters are present, we will make sure that there is distance between the two groups, so attendees are able to come and go safely without interference.”

Although Montgomery County police responded to the scene at Loyalty Bookstores on Saturday, Mink said Proud Boys were mostly able to continue approaching those defending the story hour. There were no arrests or official reports of injuries Saturday.

Mink, who said she met with the police chief and requested a more robust response, said she hopes the police department’s approach to future story hours will prevent altercations and allow families and children to hear a drag queen tell stories without fear of intimidation, harassment and violence.

Mink said she, along with other volunteers from a local chapter of Parasol Patrol, a group that protects kids heading into story hours, vastly outnumbered the protesters, who donned clothes and signs with the Proud Boys’ colors, name and logo.

John Zittrauer, 40, a volunteer for Parasol Patrol, said he was injured when the Proud Boys pushed against his group, but he was unsure what, exactly, busted open his nose. Police on scene checked in with him, and he replied that he was okay, he said.

“It’s unacceptable for us to be putting our residents in a place, in a situation that exposes them to violence like this,” Mink said.

Drag Story Hours include books that highlight the values of kindness and being inclusive, said Beth DiGregorio, president of the local Drag Story Hour chapter, who attended the Silver Spring event. DiGregorio hopes the children at the story hours are able to “learn about different types of families, different types of people.”

“That’s very important for everyone, because if you don’t know about these things, then there’s a tendency to be afraid of them or even start to hate them,” she said.

Across the country, Proud Boys and other far-right groups with white-supremacist ideologies have increasingly targeted LGBTQ individuals and events with hateful and violent acts. Less than 1 percent of Proud Boys protests before 2022 were related to drag shows or story hours, according to data from the Crowd Counting Consortium, an academic project tracking and sharing data on protests across the United States. Those numbers have steadily climbed, the data show, reaching 25 percent since the start of 2022 and 36 percent since May 2022.

Republicans and conservative Christian groups have been amplifying false and dangerous claims that gay and transgender people are “preying” on or “grooming” children. At least 26 bills have been introduced in 14 states in the 2023 legislative session by Republican legislators restricting drag events, including some seeking to ban children from the performances. Florida’s novel restrictions ban discussions of gender and sexuality in the classroom.

April 29, 2023 5:38 PM  
Anonymous Montgomery police to patrol drag story hours after Proud Boys protest said...


But that has not been the case in Montgomery County, where council members last year approved legislation requiring gender-inclusive, single-user restrooms in public and government-run facilities, WTOP reported. The county’s public schools also added six LGBTQ-inclusive books that teachers can choose to incorporate into lessons.

“We’re very, very fortunate here,” said Morgan Merriman, the vice-chairperson for the MoCo Pride Center. “The support that we’ve gotten from the overall community in the past few days has been amazing. And I’m really hoping it does deter some future action from the Proud Boys or from other groups that have plans that are not as positive for the children.”

On Telegram, a social media app favored by far-right extremists, members of the Proud Boys’ local chapter celebrated their efforts at the Silver Spring story hour. Yet the group was outnumbered Saturday by those supporting the story hour, and the event continued as scheduled inside the bookstore, according to organizers and volunteers.

While Proud Boys yelled and shoved outside the entrance, the children inside Loyalty Bookstores laughed, did the hokey pokey and danced as drag queen Charlemagne Chateau, dressed as a princess, read stories, they said.

“The kids had a full story time, and they had their full fun, and there is not an amount of hate that was equal to the amount of community,” said Hannah Oliver-Depp, the founder and head buyer for Loyalty Bookstores, a Black-, queer- and Asian-owned local shop that specializes in diverse books.

She credited the successful story time to the Parasol Patrol volunteers who blocked the entrance with rainbow umbrellas, loudly sang “Let It Go” from “Frozen” so children could not hear the protesters, and refused to back down when Proud Boys pushed against them. Oliver-Depp said the bookstore has hosted several story hours before and will continue to do so.

April 29, 2023 5:40 PM  
Anonymous Meanwhile, SCOTUS delegitimizes itself and poor baby Alito feels targeted for aiming to turn women into forced breeders said...

Justice Samuel Alito would like everyone to know that in the wake of the Supreme Court revoking 50 years of abortion rights and then being plagued by corruption scandal after corruption scandal, our criticism of him and his institution is very much hurting his feelings.

Alito told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published Friday that attacks on the “legitimacy” of the high court are “new during [his] lifetime.”

“We are being hammered daily, and I think quite unfairly in a lot of instances. And nobody, practically nobody, is defending us,” he said. “The idea has always been that judges are not supposed to respond to criticisms, but if the courts are being unfairly attacked, the organized bar will come to their defense.” But “if anything,” the justice continued, “they’ve participated to some degree in these attacks.”

Let’s briefly roll through some of the Supreme Court ethics scandals that have surfaced just in the past two weeks: Clarence Thomas, whose wife Ginni tried to overturn a presidential election, is being financed by a billionaire GOP megadonor who literally collects Hitler memorabilia and has a garden full of dictator statues (oh, and who doesn’t charge Thomas’ mother rent). Neil Gorsuch, who discloses gifts as small as cowboy boots and a fishing rod, did not disclose that he sold a 40-acre Colorado property he co-owned to the CEO of a law firm that often argues cases before the court. And Insider reported Friday that Chief Justice Thomas Roberts’ wife, Jane, was paid 10.3 million in commissions from “elite law firms” that, of course, also had business before the court.

And as story after story come out about just how corrupt, unethical, and frankly, bought the people are who are deciding things like what we can do with our bodies and who gets voting rights in this country, Alito is complaining that they are the victims in all this, because someone leaked his draft opinion in Dobbs a month early and people protested.

“Those of us who were thought to be in the majority, thought to have approved my draft opinion, were really targets of assassination,” he told WSJ. “It was rational for people to believe that they might be able to stop the decision in Dobbs by killing one of us.”

Nevermind that Alito himself was reportedly the one who leaked the Hobby Lobby birth control decision to donors in 2014, before calling the leak a “grave betrayal” and blaming it on some “angry left-wing law clerk.” The call, sir, appears to be coming from inside the house...

The National Review then published a defense of Clarence Thomas, titled “Justice Thomas Acted Properly and Was Not Required to Disclose His Trips,” that came with this hilarious note: “(Full disclosure: I worked on Justice Thomas’s confirmation as a lawyer in White House in 1991, have co-edited a book on him titled Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words, and remain close friends with him. I have also represented Ginni Thomas in the January 6 Committee inquiry.)“

In short, no one is “de-legitimizing” the Supreme Court more than themselves, at this point.

April 30, 2023 6:34 AM  
Anonymous Guess who's getting indicted for election fraud said...


Ashe-McPherson pleaded guilty 10 months ago to a single felony count in which she admitted to fraudulently submitting absentee ballots in the 2021 primary and general elections as she sought reelection to the city council. She is scheduled to be sentenced June 13.

The criminal cases have dealt a crippling blow to the county’s GOP power structure. In January, McLaughlin was acquitted of state criminal charges alleging he had stolen $5,000 from a campaign account and falsified records to cover it up. That case was prosecuted by the state attorney general’s office and unrelated to the federal grand jury investigation.

McLaughlin, the highest-ranking county official, has not been implicated in the federal voter fraud cases.

The Times Union learned that the investigation had revealed numerous instances in which county employees were enlisted to do political campaign work — much of it related to securing absentee ballots at times when they allegedly were being paid to work for the county.

FBI investigators also had interviewed individuals, including county employees, who may have had absentee ballots submitted without their knowledge.

More than a year ago, the federal grand jury issued subpoenas seeking a trove of materials from the county’s Board of Elections related to the 2020 and 2021 elections. The subpoenas sought absentee ballot documents and communications of multiple county officials — and were delivered five days after FBI agents had seized the mobile phones of Crist and Gordon.

As part of a separate investigation that’s at a much earlier stage than the federal probe, the state attorney general’s office served a grand jury subpoena on Rensselaer County seeking a trove of absentee ballot documents that were handled by Crist and Gordon.

That subpoena also sought absentee documents that may have been handled by Wallace and Sara J. McDermott, who also works for Rensselaer County. McDermott has also been described by county political insiders as a GOP operative but has not been accused of wrongdoing.

At Thursday’s arraignment, attorneys for the defendants and assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Barnett argued at length over the defense’s request that they receive a copy of the government’s witness list. William J. Dreyer, an attorney for Crist, argued that they could inadvertently violate the court’s order not to interfere with a witness if they aren’t aware which of those may be county employees that they supervise.

“It sets these defendants up for a potential violation,” Dreyer said.

Barnett had asked the judge to only order the government to disclose Board of Elections records that would reveal all county employees who applied for or voted by absentee ballot in 2021.

But Baxter sided with Dreyer, whose request to know the identity of those witnesses was supported by Wallace’s attorney, former Rensselaer County District Attorney Joel Abelove, and Gordon’s attorney, Jillian Groshans of Albany.

“I’m very concerned about the prospect of witness tampering or coercion,” Baxter noted before making the ruling. Barnett said the government may appeal the decision.

April 30, 2023 3:44 PM  
Anonymous The racist remarks of GunsOverPeople party Gov. Abbott said...

The details of the mass shooting near Houston, Texas on Friday are harrowing. The suspect entered the home with an AR-15, allegedly intoxicated, intent on gunning down an entire family in revenge for them asking him to be quieter late at night. Two of the five dead were women who were found laying on top of living children, having died to shield them from harm. One of the dead was a child. The natural, human response is abject horror and sympathy for these innocent victims, who were just trying to live their lives and raise their children in peace.

Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, however, has erased his own humanity in his ongoing bid to be a prominent leader in MAGA America. So he responded to the shooting by demonizing the victims, calling them "illegal immigrants" in his tweet about the crime. This bit of casual cruelty came packaged with an expensive fig leaf: A $50,000 reward to anyone who shares information leading to the suspect's capture. No doubt Abbott hoped propping that cash up would deflect attention from his racist pandering.

So far, thankfully, it's not working.

Abbott's ugly words are being contrasted in the press with the reaction of San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers, who choked up as he told reporters, "My heart is with this 8-year-old little boy. I don't care if he was here legally. I don't care if he was here illegally. He was in my county. Five people died in my county, and that is where my heart is—in my county, protecting my people to the best of our ability." An activist shared the permanent residence card of one of the victims, proving that "illegal immigrant" is just a racial slur that has no relationship to the actual immigration status of people who get tagged with it.

Carlos Eduardo Espina
@cespina1998

I just spoke to the husband of one of the victims. He confirmed to me that his wife was a permanent resident of the US. He even sent me a picture of her ID confirming this.

But I guess to Greg Abbott, anyone who is from another country is an ‘ilegal immigrant’. Shameful.

11:34 PM · Apr 30, 2023


We can all contribute to help the horrifically harmed by a legal weapon of war Honduran "PERMANENT RESIDENT" family members at https://www.gofundme.com/f/ayuda-para-los-5-hondurenos-asesinados-en-texas?

May 02, 2023 8:38 AM  
Anonymous As Donald Trump arrives in his 'home' Scotland, any welcome should be a chilly one – Scotsman comment said...

As Donald Trump emerged onto the tarmac at Aberdeen Airport, he said, “it’s great to be home” before explaining that “this was the home of my mother”, a reminder of something that many people in Scotland had worked hard to forget.

So while the populist Trump does not appear to be a fan of the ideals expressed in the phrase ‘mi casa, su casa’, he seems to be in favour of what could be described as ‘mama casa, mi casa’, which some might think a bit rich coming from a US president infamous for separating children from their migrant parents.

Clearly, in normal circumstances, the arrival of a former American leader would have been cause for much celebration. However, given Trump’s attempts to overturn the presidential election result and his supporters storming of the US Capitol in a shocking attack on democracy, one wonders just who did arrange for the red carpet and two pipers that greeted him on arrival. Of course, it would be completely ridiculous to imagine that Trump would set up such a welcome for himself, but then again he is more than a little ridiculous.

He is also facing an array of legal troubles. Trump has denied falsifying business records in an ongoing criminal case, while yesterday former Elle magazine advice columnist E Jean Carroll was giving evidence in a New York court, where she is suing him for defamation after he called her allegation that he raped her in the mid-1990s “a hoax and a lie”.

So those offering too wholehearted a welcome to this individual may come to regret it – even more than they currently should.

May 02, 2023 9:46 AM  
Anonymous when will Hunter be arrested and tried? said...

"We hear a lot these days about democracy, as if the institution is threatened. Well, because it is."

yes, we understand that any democratic process that doesn't yield a victory for the Democratic Party is, by definition, broken in the eyes of TTF.

"Now I understand the deal. Conservatives see it differently from the rest of us. We think of electing representatives to serve us, and they think of electing dictators to tell us what to do."

apparently, you don't understand the deal

you thought Ron DeSantis was a dictator when he didn't tell everybody when to wear a mask

and you think Montgomery County is a libertarian paradise even though Marc "Jabba the Hut" Elrich, re-elected by around 38%, would hold regular pressers to tell us what "privileges" he would "allow" that week

"From the conservative point of view, once they're in office an official can do whatever crazy thing they want to"

that sounds like Biden's and Obama's executive orders

"Abortion? The people who live in this country realize that abortion is a necessary form of health care."

a perfect example of TTF demagoguery

"the people who live in this country" hold many nuanced views about abortion

only a murderous, bloodthirsty minority agree with the TTF view that abortion should be legal in all cases

the Supreme Court wisely turned this never settled issue back to the democratic process where it belongs

Democrats, uniformly, want to have abortion laws dictated by the court

btw, guess who declared he is running for the Democratic nomination for President a few weeks ago and already polls at 20%?

Robert F Kennedy Jr

he is a vaccine sceptic, thinks the CIA killed his uncle, and Sirhan Sirhan didn't kill his father

this should make it hard for Dems to continue to call Repubs conspiracy theorists

May 02, 2023 5:22 PM  
Anonymous I oppose forced birth said...

A Florida woman, unable to get an abortion in her state, carried to term a baby who had no kidneys. Her son died in her arms shortly after he was born, just as her doctors had predicted he would. cnn.it/44pypgW

May 03, 2023 9:37 AM  
Anonymous RFK Jr,,,LOL!!!!!!!!!! said...

"I oppose forced birth"

this is a euphemism for "I oppose the law protecting unborn children from being murdered"

unless someone was forced to get pregnant, why shouldn't they have the obligation to fulfill their responsibility?

"A Florida woman, unable to get an abortion in her state, carried to term a baby who had no kidneys. Her son died in her arms shortly after he was born, just as her doctors had predicted he would."

so, your point is that women and doctors should be able to kill any unborn child they want to, right?

May 03, 2023 11:31 AM  
Anonymous TTF,,,LOL! said...

"A hurtful handful of weirdos can manage to get control of the system. Gerrymandering and targeted voter suppression lead to biased elections"

that's true

the state of Maryland is one of the most egregious examples

here, Democrats have gerrymandered to the extent that GOP candidates can only win statewide elections

and remember when the referendum that the powers that didn't and suppressed voter signatures with a bunch of technicalities? TTF pitched in on the suppression effort to prevent a vote

May 03, 2023 3:58 PM  
Anonymous two homosexuals don't reproduce, they ain't ever a marriage.. said...

"There is a small minority of people in the country who feel sure they are right and the rest of us are wrong"

isn't that what the small minority of weirdos that call themselves "TTF" believe?

that they are right and everyone else is wrong?

May 03, 2023 4:02 PM  
Anonymous Maryland 2022 statewide elections results said...

"here, Democrats have gerrymandered to the extent that GOP candidates can only win statewide elections"

GunsOverPeople party can't win statewide in MD anymore and an honorable GOPer like Hogan will be eaten alive by Rump's QAnon/MAGAtards who are awaiting JFK, Jr.

Governor:

Cox/Schifanelli 32.12%
Morre/Miller 64.53 %

Comptroller:

Glassman. 38.33%
Lierman 61.56%

Attorney General:

Peroutka 34.9%
Brown 64.95%

US Senator

Chaffee 34.07%
Van Hollen 65.77%

May 03, 2023 5:39 PM  
Anonymous Biden's a bum said...

"GunsOverPeople party can't win statewide in MD anymore"

the previous governor was a Republican

you can't gerrymand a whole state

Maryland Democrats are the most notorious gerrymanders in America

May 03, 2023 9:26 PM  
Anonymous It's just part of the GOP plan to make women property again said...


STEVEN CROWDER, THE right-wing podcaster, is getting a divorce. “No, this was not my choice,” Crowder told his online audience last week. “My then-wife decided that she didn’t want to be married anymore — and in the state of Texas, that is completely permitted.”

Crowder’s emphasis on “the state of Texas” makes it sound like the Lone Star State is an outlier, but all 50 states and the District of Columbia have no-fault divorce laws on the books — laws that allow either party to walk away from an unhappy marriage without having to prove abuse, infidelity, or other misconduct in court.

It was a hard-fought journey to get there. It took more than four decades to end fault-based divorce in America: California was the first state to eliminate it, in 1969; New York didn’t come around until 2010. (And there are caveats: Mississippi and South Dakota still only allow no-fault divorce if both parties agree to dissolve the marriage, for example.)

Researchers who tracked the emergence of no-fault divorce laws state by state over that period found that reform led to dramatic drops in the rates of female suicide and domestic violence, as well as decreases in spousal homicide of women. The decreases, one researcher explained, were “not just because abused women (and men) could more easily divorce their abusers, but also because potential abusers knew that they were more likely to be left.”

Today, more than two-thirds of all heterosexual divorces in the U.S. are initiated by women.

Republicans across the country are now reconsidering no-fault divorce. There isn’t a huge mystery behind the campaign: Like the crusades against abortion and contraception, making it more difficult to leave an unhappy marriage is about control. Crowder’s home state could be the first to eliminate it, if the Texas GOP gets its way. Last year, the Republican Party of Texas added language to its platform calling for an end to no-fault divorce: “We urge the Legislature to rescind unilateral no-fault divorce laws, to support covenant marriage, and to pass legislation extending the period of time in which a divorce may occur to six months after the date of filing for divorce.”

May 04, 2023 8:28 AM  
Anonymous There is no limit to the rationalizations MAGA true believers are capable of coming up with to justify their refusal to face reality. said...

"the previous governor was a Republican"

And the 2022 Maryland election results show us that Maryland is a deeply Democratic state with GunsOverPeople party candidates garnering no more than 38.33% in the most recent statewide elections.

QANON/MAGA has destroyed the Republican party of Hogan.

"Former President Donald Trump has endorsed Maryland Del. Daniel Cox’s bid for the Republican nomination for governor. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan is doing the opposite.

"Dan Cox [won 32.12% of the vote for MD Governor in 2022] ... is a QAnon whack job who was in favor of calling Mike Pence, my friend, a traitor, when they were talking about hanging him," Hogan said at a news conference on crime.

The Washington Post reported Trump’s endorsement Monday described Cox as a “tough lawyer and smart businessman” who fought "the Rigged Presidential Election every step of the way."

In addition to fighting 2020 presidential election results certification, Cox sued Republican Gov. Larry Hogan over stay-at-home orders.

Trump said Cox’s opponent Kelly Schulz, was “handpicked" by Hogan, and called him a “RINO.” Hogan tweeted that he'd "prefer endorsements from people who didn’t lose Maryland by 33 points.”

May 04, 2023 9:18 AM  
Anonymous more scandal from the party that brought us Hunter and a gerrymandered Maryland... said...

Liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor declined to recuse herself from multiple copyright infringement cases involving book publisher Penguin Random House despite having been paid millions by the firm for her books, making it by far her largest source of income, records show.

In 2010, she got a $1.2 million book advance from Knopf Doubleday Group, a part of the conglomerate. In 2012, she reported receiving two advance payments from the publisher totaling $1.9 million.

In 2013, Sotomayor voted in a decision for whether the court should hear a case against the publisher called Aaron Greenspan v. Random House, despite then-fellow Justice Stephen Breyer recusing after also receiving money from the publisher.

May 04, 2023 10:08 AM  
Anonymous There is no limit to the rationalizations MAGA true believers are capable of coming up with to justify their refusal to face reality. said...

"records show"

Unlike Justice Thomas, whose long held secret about luxury vacations are finally seen in the disinfecting light of day, and who has refused to recuse himself from cases that involve his wife's political stunts.
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Jane Roberts, the wife of Chief Justice John Roberts, made more than $10 million in commissions over an eight-year stretch where she matched top lawyers with elite law firms—including some that had cases before the Supreme Court.
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Just days after Neil Gorsuch was confirmed to the Supreme Court, the head of a major law firm purchased property that was co-owned by the justice. In April 2017, Brian Duffy, the chief executive of Greenberg Traurig, bought a house in which Gorsuch held a 20 percent stake. The sale of the 3,000-square-foot log home in Granby, Colorado, made between $250,001 and $500,000 in profit for Gorsuch, who did not report the identity of Duffy as the purchaser on his federal disclosure forms. Gorsuch was one of three co-owners of the property. Since the $1.825 million sale, Greenberg Traurig has been involved in at least 22 cases before the Supreme Court, Politico reported. Gorsuch’s opinion was recorded on 12 of those cases, where he sided with Greenberg Traurig’s clients eight times and against them four times.
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Financial disclosure forms indicate that three justices on the U.S. Supreme Court each earned more than $100,000 in 2021 as a result of book deals.

The three justices are:

• Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who received $425,000 from the Javelin Group, a literary agency. The amount is likely an advance on a reported $2 million book deal previously reported by Politico, which relied on unidentified sources.

• Justice Neil Gorsuch, who received $250,000. He will be writing a book about his views on the judicial and regulatory process, a spokesperson for HarperCollins told the Washington Post. He previously received $650,000 for A Republic, If You Can Keep It, his 2019 book.

• Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who received $115,593 in royalties for her two children’s books from Penguin Random House and $5,125 for optioning one of them to a TV production company. Sotomayor has earned nearly $3.4 million in book advances and royalties since joining the Supreme Court, according to Fix the Court.

May 04, 2023 10:50 AM  
Anonymous Proud Boys... whatcha gonna do when the come for you? said...


PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The former leader of the far-right Philadelphia Proud Boys group Zachary Rehl was convicted of numerous felonies, including seditious conspiracy for their roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

A federal jury in Washington, D.C. on Thursday found Rehl, along with one-time president of Proud Boys Enrique Tarrio, Ethan Nordean and Joseph Biggs guilty of conspiring to prevent the peaceful transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden and using force and prior planning to hinder the 2020 presidential election certification.

Rehl now faces up to 20 years in prison.

There was no verdict for Dominic Pezzola on the most serious charge, seditious conspiracy, and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. After the reading of the partial verdict, Judge Timothy Kelly sent the jury back to deliberate on these charges and several other felonies that they did not come to verdict on.

All five were found guilty of several other felonies, including obstructing an official proceeding; obstructing Congress; conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging duties; obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder and aiding and abetting and destruction of government property.

But Tarrio, who was arrested on Jan. 4, 2021, and not at the Capitol, was found not guilty of assaulting officers. Only Pezzola was found guilty of that charge.

They now likely face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Prosecutors had argued the defendants had conspired to unlawfully use force — and the crowds gathered in Washington, D.C. — to keep former President Donald Trump in office.

Soon after the election, investigators alleged Tarrio began posting on social media and in message groups about a "civil war," later threatening, "No Trump…No peace. No Quarter."

Proud Boys leaders saw themselves as "a fighting force" that was "ready to commit violence" on Trump's behalf, the government alleged.

The verdict came less than a month before Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes will be sentenced for a conviction of seditious conspiracy. A jury in Washington, D.C., found him and codefendant Kelly Meggs guilty of the high crime but acquitted three others of the charge.

A group of four more Oath Keepers was separately convicted of the seditious conspiracy count earlier this year, all in spite of efforts by defense attorneys to argue the charge is too extreme and Washington, D.C. jurors too biased.

Defense attorneys in the trial consistently laid the blame for the riot at the feet of Trump himself, many mentioning the former president in their opening and closing arguments.

Tarrio's attorney, Nayib Hassan, was even more explicit, telling the jury in closing arguments that "it was Donald Trump's words, it was his motivation, it was his anger that caused what occurred on January 6."

"They want to use Enrique Tarrio as a scapegoat for Donald Trump and those in power," Hassan said.

May 04, 2023 1:35 PM  
Anonymous Ranking Member Raskin’s Statement on Republicans’ Subpoena of Unverified FBI Tip said...

May 3, 2023 Press Release

Washington, D.C. (May 3, 2023)—Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, issued the following statement after Republicans issued a subpoena to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for documents based on an unverified tip:

“Committee Republicans are recycling unsubstantiated claims floated by Senate Republicans by issuing a subpoena to the FBI to require the release of a June 2020 tip from an unknown informant. During this same time period, Rudy Giuliani and Russian agents, sanctioned by Trump's Treasury Department, were peddling disinformation aimed at interfering in the 2020 presidential election. Given Chair Comer’s commitment to ‘dismantle’ the FBI, it’s no surprise that he would rely on these unverified tips to attack President Biden in one more baseless partisan stunt.”

May 04, 2023 2:20 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Great post, Jim!

Hello everyone,

I posted a few weeks back that I expected to make a long post shortly but now I really don't know when I will make it. I started writing a post a couple of months back and I kept thinking of things I should add at at one point I decided I'm just going to keep writing down everything that's relevant and important until I don't have anymore. When I had about half of what I've currently written I thought I was close to done so now I don't know how long it will be. With all the effort I put in I thought I must have close to written a book but it turns out what I've got is nowhere near that long yet, I estimate it currently would be about 17 pages when printed out on 8 & 1/2 by 11 paper at 60 lines per page. I'm a deep thinker, lol!

I hope I can be back soon with my treatise. In the meantime please have a look at my blog post "How To Argue With An American Conservative". It's a collection of emails I exchanged with a conservative columnist I contacted after reading a couple of his wildly distorted articles. At first I thought "No one can actually believe this b.s.!" but after a few exchanges I wasn't so sure about that any more. During the exchange I methodically pick apart his arguments and show him the error of his ways (which he's rather reluctant to see). I quite enjoyed the exchange, I hope you will too:

http://fairnessfirst2.blogspot.com/2022/10/how-to-argue-with-american-conservative.html

May 04, 2023 3:14 PM  
Anonymous Is he tired of winning yet? said...


A New York judge has tossed out Donald Trump’s lawsuit against The New York Times, and ordered the former president to pay all attorneys fees, legal expenses, and associated costs.

Trump filed the lawsuit in 2021, alleging that the newspaper, three of its reporters and his niece Mary Trump engaged in an “insidious plot” to obtain his private records for a Pulitzer-winning story about his tax issues.

While the court tossed out Trump’s claims against the newspaper and its reporters, the claims against the ex-president’s niece have yet to be ruled upon.

“The New York Times is pleased with the judge’s decision today,” a paper spokesperson wrote in a statement to The Daily Beast. “It is an important precedent reaffirming that the press is protected when it engages in routine newsgathering to obtain information of vital importance to the public.”

The twice-impeached former president’s claims against the defendants “fail as a matter of constitutional law,” New York Supreme Court Justice Robert R. Reed wrote in his ruling filed on Wednesday afternoon, deeming the paper’s newsgathering as being at “the very core of protected First Amendment activity.”

Reed further ruled that Trump failed to demonstrate any tortious interference when Times journalist Susanne Craig provided his niece with a burner phone to communicate about the records. Furthermore, the judge said the ex-president failed to prove unjust enrichment or negligent supervision on the parts of the Times or reporters Craig, David Barstow, and Russell Buettner

In the original lawsuit Trump alleged that the Times colluded with his niece to “smuggle records out of her attorney’s office and turn them over ” to the paper despite a confidentiality agreement she signed in 2001 during a family dispute. He further claimed that Craig, Barstow, and Buettner were “motivated, at least in part, by their actual malice” in reporting on the details within tax returns he’d refused to disclose.

After her uncle initially filed his lawsuit in September 2021, Mary Trump told The Daily Beast: “I think he is a fucking loser, and he is going to throw anything against the wall he can. It’s desperation. The walls are closing in and he is throwing anything against the wall that will stick. As is always the case with Donald, he’ll try and change the subject.”

May 04, 2023 3:38 PM  
Anonymous the gay agenda is totalitarian said...


"Great post, Jim!"

not really

just more projection from someone who longed ago crossed the propaganda Rubicon

there's no going back for Mr TTF

he actually believes, against all clear reality, that liberals just want everyone to be free to be you and me

LOL!

"Hello everyone,"

WELL, HELLO STRANGER!

"I posted a few weeks back"

THAT WAS MORE THAN A FEW WEEKS AGO

IT'S A CLEAR SIGN OF mENTaL IlLNEsS TO LOSE ALL SENSE OF TIME

THAT'S WHY WE CAN'T LET GUYS WHO DRESS LIKE GIRLS AND HAVE A HISTORY OF mENTaL IlLNEsS IN THE LADIES LOO!

"that I expected to make a long post shortly but now I really don't know when I will make it. I started writing a post a couple of months back and I kept thinking of things I should add at at one point I decided I'm just going to keep writing down everything that's relevant and important until I don't have anymore. When I had about half of what I've currently written I thought I was close to done so now I don't know how long it will be."

you know, one of the great luxuries of the modern age is that you don't have to share every mad thought that prances across your "mind"

just ask your psych

he'll tell you

"I estimate it currently would be about 17 pages"

is that as good as your time estimate?

ROFL!

May 04, 2023 5:12 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

W/R/BA said "he actually believes, against all clear reality, that liberals just want everyone to be free to be you and me".

Really? What are liberals trying to coerce you to be?

Because conservatives are trying to force everyone to be heterosexual and non-trans. They're making it illegal to make any mention of lgbt people in schools to send the message to children that lgbt people are so evil they are unspeakable and deserve to be punished and pushed out of society. They're passing laws ostensibly to ban drag performances but their definition of drag makes no distinction between a drag queen and a trans woman just going about being a woman:

They define drag as "performing while using dress, makeup and mannerisms associated with a gender other than the one assigned to them at birth" - the vague broad wording potentially makes illegal any feminine expression by one assigned male at birth and there is no doubt eventually some right wing authoritarian District Attorney is going to decide such a law does just that and try to imprison people like me for six years for having a feminine gender expression or even just making a stereotypical feminine gesture.

W/R/Ba pooh-poohs that concern calling it a lie just like they pooh-poohed warnings that Trump was trying to become a dictator until finally after Jan 6 they admitted this was true on Jan 08, 2021:

In this thread at January 08, 2021 10:52 AM Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "his actions Wednesday were clearly impeachable and to see him sitting next to Biden on the inauguration stand will be an abomination." and at January 09, 2021 7:14 AM Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "impeaching Trump is the right thing to do, if nothing else, for the sake of historical precedent no future President should think he could get away with something like this without consequences" and "everyone wants him removed after his crimes on Wednesday"


I haven't heard anything they've said about Trump since then, but no doubt they're back to full throated support of the dictator and denying he was ever a threat to democracy.

Hey W/R/BA, how come you stopped addressing me as Randi Schimnosky as you did for quite some time up until I posted just before Crismas 2022?

May 04, 2023 7:09 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Hard to believe, but for once I largely agree(except about liberals wanting this and AI coming from "the devil") with hate group spokesman and anti-lgbt christian bigot Franklin Graham:

"Artificial Intelligence is being programmed to lie. The powerful force of AI is being built with biases, agendas, and outright lies that can impact our future.

As Elon Musk told the media—“They’re training the AI to lie.” Artificial Intelligence reflects the ideology of its creators, and pushes those values on others.

You can imagine a future where the understanding of people around the world is determined by those who are pulling the strings of Artificial Intelligence... AI can falsely document “history,” falsely accuse people, and much more.

It is called “human-competitive intelligence”—so think about what happens when AI determines that it is more intelligent than its creators?"

It's a shame Republican politicians are so fixated on punishing and destroying harmless lgbt people and ignoring the serious threat of artificial intelligence. They should be spending their time figuring out how to best regulate this instead of just blindly assuming regulation is a bad thing and businesses should be given free rein to maximize profits without restriction or concern for humanity or the environment.

May 04, 2023 7:17 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

While right wing authoritarians like W/R/BA try to gaslight Americans into believing liberals won't let them be free to be who they want to be the Florida legislature passed a bill Thursday that will let the state take transgender minors away from their families if they are receiving gender-affirming care.

As Republicans ban freedom of gender identity and expression and outlaw being transgender they hypocritically claim liberals are trying to make them be someone other than the a-holes they are. When they want to be people who unjustly punish and oppress the innocent they figure it's discrimination against them if they are not allowed to discriminate against others.

May 04, 2023 8:02 PM  
Anonymous lunatics lurk among us said...


The belief being pushed by LGBT activists and transgender supporters is that if a person feels like the opposite sex, all they need to do is physically and medically transition to live “their truth” and be made “whole.” Unfortunately, what many transgender individuals are coming to find out is that this is a patent lie and mutilating your body and disrupting its natural processes do not and will never resolve the underlying psychological issues of gender dysphoria.

Recently, the detransition movement has been picking up steam and receiving more attention. Over the weekend, in Manchester, England the world’s first gender detransition conference was held. The sold-out conference drew in 200 people and featured real-life stories and expert testimonies.

LifeSiteNews reports:

The event also marked the official launch of the Detransition Advocacy Network headed by Charlie Evans, 28, a woman who identified as a man for a decade. Evans decided to found the group to help the hundreds of young people she says have reached out to her after regretting their own experiments with hormonal treatments and surgeries.

The two-hour meeting was live-tweeted by the “Safe Schools Alliance UK,” a lobby group that seeks to ensure the safeguarding of children in schools, which includes protecting girls’ bodily privacy from males and all children from pressure to consider themselves transgender.

The meeting was kicked off by Charlie Evans, who said, “We are not motivated by hate. We are motivated by solidarity, sisterhood, and a strong sense of justice.”

Several detransitioners gave their personal stories such as Max, who said she wanted to be a male to escape “lesbophobia and male harassment,” while another named Kira, said she had always been a “gender noncomformist child” until she “began to feel pressure to conform to femininity.” After beginning hormone therapy and having a double mastectomy at age 20, Kira realized these things were not contributing to any kind of self-acceptance.

“How can I possibly be loving myself if I am sacrificing my general health in order to change my whole being?” she asked.

This is a point worth pausing on. The entirety of the LGBT movement is to focus on “self-love” and “self-acceptance” but transgenderism is centered on the very idea that you have to change literally everything about yourself to be able to accept yourself. It’s complete lunacy and really exposes just how hollow and dangerous the LGBT ideology really is.

May 04, 2023 9:03 PM  
Anonymous lunatics lurk among us said...


Experts who spoke at the conference included Dr. David Bell, a consultant psychiatrist in the Adult Department of London’s Tavistock Centre, where the Gender Identity Development Service for children is located. Bell pointed out that, by his estimation, gender “reassignment” clinics are not following up with patients post-operation.

This is really part of the problem. There is no actual concern for the well-being of these individuals. These clinics are just revolving doors for vulnerable people who are suffering from gender dysphoria. They come in, receive their drugs, undergo mutilation, and are pushed right back out the door without any follow-up or check-in. It’s a medical travesty.

Bell also said he believes the term “puberty blockers” is completely misleading and while they are a powerful drug given to young children to delay the onset of puberty, he surmises they most likely have physiological ramifications beyond delaying puberty. As if delaying puberty isn’t troublesome enough.

“The lack of long term evidence is the biggest issue in this field,” he said.

His point was supported by Dr. Hannah Ryan, an infectious disease researcher, who noted that there is no long-term data collecting happening after puberty-blockers and hormone replacement therapy, which she points out are both long-term treatments.

Many at the conference discussed being labeled as hateful and being silenced because of their stances on these issues.

“We are advised against using the terms ‘detransition’ and ‘desisters’,” one worried medical professional in attendance noted.

A psychologist in the audience expressed concern about the ‘affirmation-only model’ which, the Safe Schools Alliance UK member noted, “advocates immediate social transition for gender-questioning children.”

Still another audience member voiced concern that gender ideology sounds like “old school sexism”, and Dr. Bell replied by saying he had observed a “caricaturing of gender stereotypes” through transition.

The issue of girls feeling that girls are supposed to follow a narrow concept of femininity or “transition” into men appeared again when a panel of young women who are now “detransitioning” from their attempts to be men discussed their experiences. One young woman, called Ellie, said she had lacked role models of “masculine” females.

May 04, 2023 9:05 PM  
Anonymous lunatics lurk among us said...


The LGBT crowd insists that there should be no pressure to conform to a gender all the while they push the idea that if you don’t fit into a gender, you should change your gender. That is literally the same as saying, “girls should behave like girls and boys should behave like boys,” which is exactly what they claim to be against. It’s mind-boggling.

The detransitioners at this conference are the voices the LGBT crowd and its supporters need to be hearing. They prove that there are not individual truths but rather only one truth and that truth says you are born the gender you are meant to be and physically damaging and mutilating your body will never change that. It will never bring happiness.

This conference is both a beacon of hope and a somber reminder of why we need to keep fighting on against the wicked LGBT ideology and agenda that has already claimed so many victims.

These women have been left abused and scarred by medical professionals who claimed they were “helping” them. They’ve been betrayed by those who have promised to do no harm through their Hippocratic oaths. They’ve been abandoned by the very movement who persuaded them to take this path to begin with. LGBT activists are vehemently supportive of members within their community, just not these members who do nothing to further the cause.

Pray for the spiritual well-being of those who are dealing with the regret of their transitions. It must be a very heavy burden to bear.

May 04, 2023 9:06 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/Regina, I'm disappointed in you. You didn't answer my question:

You say liberals don't believe in allowing you to be free to be who you are, who do you think liberals are coercing you to be?

Wyatt/Regina/bad anonymous said "The LGBT crowd insists that there should be no pressure to conform to a gender all the while they push the idea that if you don’t fit into a gender, you should change your gender. That is literally the same as saying, “girls should behave like girls and boys should behave like boys,” which is exactly what they claim to be against."

I've never heard any lgbt person push the idea that if you don't fit into a gender you should change your gender. Our position is that you should decide for yourself which gender you identify with, if any at all. Unlike the bigots we don't believe anyone should be pressured to adopt any particular gender identity or sexual orientation.

Anti-lgbt conservatives try to gaslight the public by euphemistically calling their attempts to ban freedom of gender identity and expression "protecting children".

The Republican bans on gender affirming health care purportedly are to prevent instances of a child transitioning to a different gender, regretting their choice and then de-transitioning. Research consistently shows this happens less than 1% of the time and when it does it is usually due to the unwillingness of others to accept the trans person as they wish to be rather than to them deciding their pre-transition state better fit how they see themselves. It's an admirable goal to prevent the one child in a hundred from transitioning who will later regret it, but what about the other 99% of children who get gender affirming health care and benefit from it? Don't they have a right to concern from society too? Surely we should worry about the 99% as much as the 1%?

May 04, 2023 11:06 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Oops, I forgot this part:

Whenever there is a conflict that sees some people benefiting from a policy and others harmed by it we need to ask ourselves: "Which way helps the most people and harms the fewest?". The answer is irrefutable, far more children with gender dysphoria are helped by gender affirming health care than are harmed by it. It makes no sense to set policy so that 1 person is not harmed but 99 others are, which is not to say we shouldn't do what we can to prevent that one percent from being harmed by a gender transition that didn't work out for the best. Republican bans on gender affirming health care and criminalization of parents and doctors who provide it isn't about protecting children, it's about suppressing and punishing harmless gender non-conforming behaviour and expression, it's about hurting the innocent people they don't approve of, the cruelty is the point, they see happy trans children as an enemy.

May 04, 2023 11:10 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

A higher percentage of Viagra users die than Mifepristone users - why did a Trump appointed Judge rule that Mifepristone shouldn't have been approved by the FDA instead of Viagra????

Republican judges, any B.S. they can dream up to backwards engineer the legal decision they want and force the will of the minority on the majority,

90% of Americans want common sense gun laws. Why are Republicans thwarting the will of the people and recklessly removing every regulation on the sale of guns that they can?

May 04, 2023 11:56 PM  
Anonymous euphemistic propaganda isn't the solution to our problems, euphemistic propaganda is the problem.... said...


"90% of Americans want common sense gun laws. Why are Republicans thwarting the will of the people and recklessly removing every regulation on the sale of guns that they can?"

the whole point of the Constitution is that certain rights are not subject to a vote

the Constitution says law-abiding citizens have the right to own a gun

it's just like a lot of Americans think we shouldn't allow foreign trolls to post anti-American propaganda on the blogs of the nation

yet, the Constitution protects freedom of speech so malicious nuts like Priya are allowed to post freely

as a matter of fact though, if "90% of Americans" really want "common sense gun laws", they would vote out any politician that didn't support those laws

clearly, "90% of Americans" don't consider this an important issue worth voting on

"far more children with gender dysphoria are helped by gender affirming health care than are harmed by it. It makes no sense to set policy so that 1 person is not harmed but 99 others are"

the mutilation encouraged by lunatic fringe homosexual advocates, and euphemistically called "gender affirming health care," is irreversible

children shouldn't be allowed by irresponsible woke adults to engage in this act of self-hate

there is no harm is having kids wait until they're adults to take irreversible self-destructive steps

just like we protect children from other self-destructive activities, like smoking and buying porn and eating edibles and watching drag shows

May 05, 2023 7:01 AM  
Anonymous Alvin Bragg...LOL! said...

"Oops, I forgot this part"

kinda like Priya's motto

May 05, 2023 7:03 AM  
Anonymous Oh, so you say you're "ex-trans"?! said...

"This conference is both a beacon of hope and a somber reminder of why we need to keep fighting on against the wicked LGBT ideology and agenda that has already claimed so many victims."

Why does this smell a whole lot like the "ex-gay movement" that turned out to be just a bunch of religious ideologues desperately promoting their failed believe system on damaged and gullible people?

Having seen this episode before, it will probably take less time to find the fraudsters behind this movement.

May 05, 2023 8:47 AM  
Anonymous transgenderism is sexist.... said...


The official launch of the Detransition Advocacy Network headed by Charlie Evans, 28, a woman who identified as a man for a decade. Evans decided to found the group to help the hundreds of young people she says have reached out to her after regretting their own experiments with hormonal treatments and surgeries.

Several detransitioners gave their personal stories such as Max. After beginning hormone therapy and having a double mastectomy at age 20, Kira realized these things were not contributing to any kind of self-acceptance.

“How can I possibly be loving myself if I am sacrificing my general health in order to change my whole being?” she asked.

This is a point worth pausing on. The entirety of the LGBT movement is to focus on “self-love” and “self-acceptance” but transgenderism is centered on the very idea that you have to change literally everything about yourself to be able to accept yourself. It’s complete lunacy and really exposes just how hollow and dangerous the LGBT ideology really is.

May 05, 2023 11:55 AM  
Anonymous There's a reason all the ex-gay groups shut down said...

"The entirety of the LGBT movement is to focus on “self-love” and “self-acceptance” but transgenderism is centered on the very idea that you have to change literally everything about yourself to be able to accept yourself."


That is simply, utterly, and entirely wrong.

The reason for transition is to get the extreme, all-encompassing, devastating, and agonizing pain of gender dysphoria down to a level where you can go on living without constantly thinking of harming yourself - or worse.

Depending on the severity, a person may be able to get to that level with their presentation and clothes. Others may need hormones as well. Only about 25% of those who fall under the term "transgender" actually go on to have surgeries as well. Part of that is due to costs alone, but the other part is that, working with their therapists, they find the point where they can be comfortable with the minimum amount of medical intervention, and stop there.

But I don't know why I bother to explain basic stuff like this to you because after more than a decade, it's clear you only believe right-wing propaganda anyway.

Why don't you tell us again about that "tourist visit" on Jan 6th? It seems you've been rather mum about that whole topic - and the so called "steal" since all the evidence of its fabrication have come out and people are starting to go to jail for seditious conspiracy.


May 05, 2023 12:15 PM  
Anonymous when will Hunter be arrested and tried? said...


"Why don't you tell us again about that "tourist visit" on Jan 6th? It seems you've been rather mum about that whole topic - and the so called "steal" since all the evidence of its fabrication have come out and people are starting to go to jail for seditious conspiracy."

I don't recall ever using the term "tourist visit." I think most were at the January 6 event to protest and a minority got out-of-control. There are usually such elements at the many protests that happen regularly in DC. The difference this time is that law enforcement didn't effectively control things.

As for the "steal", I have never used that term and have always said here that I think the senile Biden won the election.

Transgenderism is the only delusion that psychs treat by trying to make it so.

Why?

May 05, 2023 2:01 PM  
Anonymous Hunter will be arrested and tried when they find enough REAL evidence of a crime - that's who our system is supposed to work said...

What you like to call "transgenderism" simply isn't a delusion. If it was, they could treat it with a variety of psychotropic medications. While those help with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression, and other mental disorders, they have been shown to have no effect on gender dysphoria.

Talk therapy and anti-depressants can help with depression which can be a comorbid condition with gender dysphoria, they do nothing to ameliorate the suffering from the dysphoria.

The only thing scientists have found that DOES help with the gender dysphoria is the treatment regimen offered to Christine Jorgensen (and other transsexuals) in the 1950's, which included hormone therapy prescribed by Dr. Christian Hamburger. The therapy, hormones, and surgery regimen (only for full transsexuals) has proven successful for over 7 decades, and in the past couple of decades, brain studies have figured out why - trans people show physical features (size, shape & enervation levels) of specific sexually dimorphic brain regions that they identify with. MRI studies of trans teens and adults (before and after hormone therapy) show that they have measurable responses to pheromones and other odorants that largely match the brain sex of the gender they identify with.

Anyone can find these studies on the web themselves and take some time to learn a few things.

The underlying issue isn't that these folks are "delusional." In fact, any therapist suspecting a patient of being delusional will be refused treatment for GD - if for no other reason than they fear being sued when the patient suddenly becomes "un-delusional."

The full medical transition can take 5 to 10 years, and GD patients have to prove that their ability to function in society improves as they take each incremental step in the transition process. If they don't, then the problem ISN'T gender dysphoria and they need to step back and figure out what else is going on. The patient or the therapist can stop the transition at any time either one of them feels uncomfortable with what's happening.

The reason that children have started to be treated for this in the past 20 years is that after the 50 previous years of study on adult patients - all of whom reported GD as part of their earliest childhood memories - it became clear that starting treatment earlier for GD can spare these people decades of suffering, reduce the cost to transition, minimize the needs for surgery, and improve the final results of the process.

But I've stated all that before, but like any other information available from scientists and doctors, you refuse to believe any of it in favor of your own delusional beliefs.

Why?

The treatment for many cancers involve injecting patients with toxic chemicals that kill off plenty of living cell tissue, and may even kill the patient if dosage requirements and side effects aren't carefully monitored. We also blast these chemo patients with even more toxic radiation - a known carcinogen no less - to kill off even more tissue.

On the face of it, pumping up sick people with toxic chemicals and irradiating them flesh-destroying radio nuclides sounds like a very bad idea, but we keep doing it.

Why?

Because it has been shown to work for decades, and saved millions of lives.

That's why.

May 05, 2023 4:32 PM  
Anonymous Tony Robbins said...

“Change happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change.”

May 05, 2023 4:38 PM  
Anonymous there is REAL evidence of crimes committed by Hunter... said...


"it became clear that starting treatment earlier for GD can spare these people decades of suffering, reduce the cost to transition, minimize the needs for surgery, and improve the final results of the process"

became clear?

not very scientific rhetoric from someone attempting to appropriate the gravitas of true science

it's actually clear that many people who undergo gender reassignment surgery actually receive no relief from suffering at all

but no research will be done unless the conclusion supporting the gay agenda is assured

true science involves free inquiry and a commitment to follow where the evidence leads

btw, no one is opposed to adults being free to mutilate themselves

kids should wait until they are old enough to make consequential decisions

May 05, 2023 9:43 PM  
Anonymous Biden will clearly lose if the GOP is not Trump - but he will lose anyway... said...

Democracy must be decaying because Biden is on track to lose next year. Here's why, assuming Trump is the nominee:

1. Biden really is an extraordinarily weak candidate. His approval rating his been in the low 40’s seemingly forever. Right now it stands at a little under 43 percent in the 538 rolling average. Generally, presidents get pretty close to their approval rating in voting support. The last three incumbent presidents (W. Bush, Obama, Trump) got only 1-2 points higher support than their approval rating at the time of the election. This pattern would make Biden dead in the water if his low ‘40s approval rating continues to election day.

It's also worth noting that NBC polling shows Biden losing by 6 points to a generic (unnamed) Republican party candidate. This is a contrast to Obama who at a similar point in the cycle was leading a generic Republican by 3 points. But it is very similar to Trump’s situation in 2019 when he was also losing to a generic opponent by 7 points—and went on to lose to a real opponent in 2020.

And did I mention he’s a little bit on the old side?

2. Trump may be a stronger opponent than Democrats expect. There’s no question that Trump has a lot of baggage, including his incessant dwelling on the “stolen” 2020 election, that should weaken him as an opponent. But consider some uncomfortable facts. Trump is a point ahead of Biden in the RealClearPolitics rolling average or just a point behind in a polling average reported by Nate Cohn. Yes, it is early but these results are not nothing. We are talking about a candidate who is very, very well-known to the voting public, warts and all. But that is not translating into a big advantage for Biden, quite the contrary.

3. Biden and the Democrats have not moved to the center on cultural issues. Biden and the Democrats seem to be operating under the questionable assumption that they don’t need to draw any line whatsoever against the cultural extremists in their own party. This calculation overlooks the fact that voters think Democrats and Republicans are equally too tolerant of extremist groups in their ranks.

That means the Biden campaign will need to contend throughout election season with a burgeoning backlash against lax enforcement on crime and illegal immigration; ideological curricula in schools; the undermining of academic achievement standards; the introduction of mandatory, politically approved vocabulary; proliferating “diversity, equity and inclusion” bureaucracies; and the unvetted mainstreaming of “gender-affirming care.” Republicans are now widely preferred by voters to Democrats on immigration and crime; they have reduced the traditional Democratic advantage on education, and are set to take advantage of a conservative turn among the public on transgender issues.

There is a middle ground in all these areas, but Democrats are clearly resisting it. Witness the fierce intraparty reaction to Biden’s modest attempts to move to the center on crime by supporting an override of the new D.C. law that reduced penalties for carjacking and to his suggestion that he might resume detention of migrant families who enter the United States illegally.

May 06, 2023 7:53 AM  
Anonymous Biden will clearly lose if the GOP is not Trump - but he will lose anyway... said...


4. Abortion may not be the silver bullet many Democrats assume it will be in 2024. There is a serious tendency for Democrats to overinterpret the results from 2022 and 2023 and map that overinterpretation onto a high turnout presidential election when many issues will be in play. It may well be a factor in Biden’s favor but the idea that it will override all other issues and deliver certain victory is wishful thinking. Even in 2022, many Democrats underperformed abortion referenda and general pro-choice sentiments, frequently by wide margins, indicating the limits of the issue.

It’s well to remember that American voters, by and large, are moderate on the abortion issue and do not support abortion on demand throughout pregnancy. Newly-released Marist/NPR data (consistent with much other survey data) show two-thirds of voters supporting limiting on-demand abortion to the first three months of pregnancy. Among working-class voters, these sentiments go up to 72 percent.

5. There is a working-class sized hole in Biden’s re-elect strategy. That brings us to perhaps the biggest problem Biden may have matching up with Trump. Biden’s opening video and the general message from his nascent campaign is very heavy on democracy issues, abortion rights, and denouncing “MAGA extremists”. It is fair to say that this message will play best among the college-educated voters the campaign is clearly targeting.

The problem here is that working-class voters are much more numerous than their college-educated counterparts. A reasonable guess is that as a group they will be half again as large as college voters in 2024. That means that slippage in the working-class vote can have on outsize effect on the outcome.

May 06, 2023 7:53 AM  
Anonymous remember Reagan in 76, Ted Kennedy in 80, Pat Buchanan in 92? Like RFK Jr will do, they made the incumbent a one-term loser... said...


Biden World thinks everything is hunky dory, but there is one nagging nuisance that has the potential to do more damage than they may appreciate. Two weeks ago, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the 1968 presidential hopeful and nephew of the 35th President announced his own plans to win the White House. Most serious Democrats have dismissed Kennedy as an inconvenience whose past flirtation with vaccine misinformation would eventually prove disqualifying. Those sage insiders are probably correct in their diagnosis.

But past serious primary challengers have proven popular enough to throw incumbent Presidents off their game. Former California Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1976 primaried incumbent President Gerald Ford, who got the job only when Richard Nixon resigned. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy—RFK Jr.’s uncle—primaried Jimmy Carter four years later. And in 1992, activist Pat Buchanan tried to take out President George H.W. Bush. All of those challengers failed, but exposed intra-party divisions that helped to make each incumbent a one-term President.

Amid Biden’s listless support within his own party, polling shows Kennedy hitting double-digits. In fact, polls consistently show Democrats don’t want Biden, the oldest person ever to do the job, to seek a second term; if re-elected, Biden would leave office at age 86. A stunning 52% of Democrats told AP-NORC pollsters Biden shouldn’t run again, and among all voters that sentiment reaches 73%. The findings are in line with other surveys. Add in there this inconvenient fact: Biden himself is effectively barred from competing in Iowa or New Hampshire, historically lead-off contests but this time falling afoul of Democratic Party rules and thus turning into media-based events. Biden pushed the Democratic National Committee to start the clock running in South Carolina, meaning he could be arriving in the Palmetto State with his face stained by scrambled eggs made in Des Moines or Manchester diners.

Biden, nonetheless, on Tuesday made his plans official. The slick online video and subsequent comments didn’t change voters’ mind, at least not yet in public surveys or private chats in Washington. RFK Jr.’s standing in the Fox News poll showed him on the eve of Biden’s entrance at a staggering 19%—hardly enough at this point to do any real damage to Biden, but sufficient to be a piece of gravel in Biden’s loafers.

Now, the fact that roughly 1-in-4 Democrats are pulling for someone other than Biden doesn’t matter all that much on its own. But it may be an early sign of troubles to come, even if RFK Jr. never poses a serious threat to Biden securing the party’s nomination. Kennedy does his best among women—white women, specifically—and a nagging 15% of people who voted for Biden in 2020 are now backing his upstart challenger.

May 06, 2023 8:03 AM  
Anonymous out with the bums who have damaged America's children and working class..... said...


"The Decay of Democracy"

when Biden and the aging gay agenda lose next year, it will prove democracy is alive and kicking!

kicking out the bums!

May 06, 2023 8:06 AM  
Anonymous two homosexuals don't reproduce, they ain't ever a marriage.. said...

"remember Reagan in 76, Ted Kennedy in 80, Pat Buchanan in 92? Like RFK Jr will do, they made the incumbent a one-term loser"

Biden and the LBGT gang is doomed to lose

dooooomed

May 06, 2023 9:15 AM  
Anonymous the despicable day of anti-family forces is nearing nightfall said...


"This is why there is concern for democracy."

glad to hear that TTF, after years of pushing the idea that scientists should make all the rules, is recommitting to democracy

a poll in today's Post says that 57% of Americans believe your gender is the one you were born with

66% believe biological males should not compete against women in high school and college

62% oppose medical intervention to block kids from going through puberty if they want to change genders

75% believe it is inappropriate to discuss gender identity with kids third grade and younger

I assume TTF will be issuing apologies to JK Rowling and Ron DeSantis

May 08, 2023 8:55 AM  
Anonymous I wonder if TTFers agree with any part of the Constitution.... said...

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president-biden-job-approval-7320.html

latest poll shows 37% approve of Biden

does TTF think he should resign?

May 08, 2023 9:15 AM  
Anonymous 27% of blacks and 43% of Hispanics plan to vote for Trump in 2024 said...


President Joe Biden’s most loyal voting bloc might not be quite as loyal when 2024 rolls around. Black voters, who were instrumental in helping Biden win the Democratic primaries during the 2020 campaign, have soured on the president after his over two years in office according to a recent survey. It appears his adventures with Corn Pop have finally caught up to him.

A recent poll conducted by ABC News and the Washington Post has revealed a significant decline in support for Biden among black Americans. The survey indicated that only 52% of black respondents approved of Biden’s performance as president, a sharp decline from the 82 percent approval rating he enjoyed when he took office in 2021.

This 30-point drop in support represents the lowest point of Biden’s presidency and comes as he prepares for his reelection campaign. The survey also highlighted an increase in support for former President Donald Trump among black Americans, with 27 percent of respondents indicating a likelihood of voting for him or leaning toward him, more than double the support he received in the 2020 election.

In addition to waning support from black Americans, President Biden’s approval ratings among Hispanics have also experienced a decline. Only 40 percent of Hispanics expressed approval of Biden’s performance, and 43 percent stated they would probably or definitely support Trump in a rematch or lean toward him.

This figure is only 11 points higher than the 32 percent of the Hispanic vote Trump received in the previous election. Among white Americans, Biden’s approval rating was even lower, with just 32 percent expressing approval. The president also faces challenges in maintaining support from other key demographics, including women and independents, who gave approval ratings of 39 percent and 30 percent respectively. Furthermore, Biden’s declining support extends to moderates, as only 40 percent of this group currently approves of his performance, and about half of them would choose Trump over Biden in a rematch.

May 08, 2023 9:23 AM  
Anonymous Who's leading the Grab Our Pussies Party? said...

Civil rights attorney Nancy Erika Smith was flabbergasted by former President Donald Trump's self-incriminating statements during his deposition in the civil rape trial brought by writer E. Jean Carroll.

Speaking to "CNN This Morning," she explained the implications of what Trump said — and why it matters.

"The former president, obviously, decided not to testify. It's E. Jean Carroll's battery and defamation trial against the former president," said anchor Phil Mattingly. "Says he won't testify, even after he's accused of raping the former magazine columnist and defaming her by denying that claim, but saying that she wasn't his type. We should note that the former president has denied all of the charges here. What stands out to you about what you've seen throughout the course of this trial so far?"

"What stands out is his deposition and his defense of the 'Access Hollywood' tape, where he says famous and powerful men can assault women with impunity," said Smith.

Smith was specifically referencing the moment — played on CNN as they spoke — in which Trump said, "well, if you look over the last million years, I guess that's been largely true. Not always, but largely true. Unfortunately or fortunately."

"And you consider yourself to be a star?" the interviewer asked.

"I think you can say that, yeah," Trump said.

"Most notable is he says 'fortunately or unfortunately,'" said Smith. "It's actually possible in his mind that it's fortunate that powerful men can assault women with impunity. It's actually an incredible admission in front of a jury. Also, his deposition makes it impossible for him to testify. It's no surprise. He contradicts himself regularly. And he shows the two elements that, really, rapists have in common. Misogyny. 26 women are not his type, meaning they're not attractive enough to rape or assault. That's an incredibly sexist comment. And power and domination. You can see in the deposition repeatedly how he tries to control the deposition by abusing Miss Carroll's lawyer and saying, you're not my type either, and you're a disgrace."

"I've been a lawyer for 42 years," added Smith. "No one's ever talked to me — and I've taken depositions of powerful sexual assaulters — nobody talks like that. It's like an admission of the characteristics of a man who assaults women. In addition to admitting it on tape. And saying it might be fortunate that he can."

May 08, 2023 9:40 AM  
Anonymous "Well-regulated militia murders 8 people in Allen, TX"H said...

Here’s a particularly hilarious and galling example of the GunsOverPeople hypocrisy, on display in the ongoing debt ceiling fight. Last week, the House Republicans passed their debt-limit budget bill, with all but four members of their caucus voting aye. The bill puts off the debt limit problem for a year, but in exchange, it demands a raft of the usual right-wing priorities—work requirements for poor people getting government assistance, the repeal of student-loan relief, attacks on Joe Biden’s renewable energy priorities, and, just to show us all how proud they are of their hatred of science, boosts for fossil-fuel production.

Democrats have never wanted to defund the police. In fact, last year, Biden sought $37 billion in additional federal funding for police departments. The Republican debt ceiling bill, however, would defund the police! At both the local and federal levels.

Let’s look at the numbers. Federal spending on local law enforcement isn’t a huge program. But there are two categories of federal spending on police that are reasonably significant. The Community Oriented Policing Services program, or COPS, doles out $225 million in grants to local police departments. Another grant program called the Byrne-JAG hands out a little more, around $270 million or so. These dollars are used for personnel, equipment, crime prevention, and so on. A lot of money goes to small-city and small-town departments—which is to say, police departments in red America.

Democrats are more inclined, given their interests and priorities, to make noise about social-service cuts. They should do that—those cuts are unpopular too. Some examples: The Office of Management and Budget estimates that the GOP bill would result in the layoffs of 108,000 teachers, and 30 million fewer outpatient visits for veterans.

Americans generally like teachers and veterans. I have days when I think Biden should just roll over, let the Republicans have their way, and say to America, “Okay, folks, let’s live according to Republicans’ priorities for a while,” just so people can feel the impact of the cruelty and hypocrisy in their daily lives. But as a liberal, I actually give a crap about things like kids having an adequate supply of teachers and veterans getting decent care, so I’d rather not subject ordinary Americans to the full impact of the Republican Party’s grand social experiments, edifying though they may be.

Republicans do these things because they’re shameless, and they know that the average person is too busy living their lives to sit down and connect these complicated dots on their own. That’s why it’s the White House’s job to do that for them. It’s how Democrats win this fight.

May 08, 2023 1:39 PM  
Anonymous Merrick Garland....LOL!!!!!!!!!!! said...


"Democrats have never wanted to defund the police."

It's particularly hilarious that you think anyone will believe that!

"In fact, last year, Biden sought $37 billion in additional federal funding for police departments."

Unlike authoritarian states, we don't have national police force.

so, why would that be in the Congressional budget?

"The Community Oriented Policing Services program, or COPS, doles out $225 million in grants to local police departments. Another grant program called the Byrne-JAG hands out a little more, around $270 million or so. These dollars are used for personnel, equipment, crime prevention, and so on. A lot of money goes to small-city and small-town departments—which is to say, police departments in red America."

both programs should be eliminated

police forces should be covered by local taxes

"The Office of Management and Budget estimates that the GOP bill would result in the layoffs of 108,000 teachers"

teachers should be covered by local taxes

"Americans generally like teachers"

which is why we don't want to make them Federal employees

we don't like Federal employees

"I think Biden should just roll over, let the Republicans have their way, and say to America, “Okay, folks, let’s live according to Republicans’ priorities for a while,”"

That's how Clinton became so popular

Slidin' Biden should try it


btw, did you hear?

57% of Americans believe your gender is the one you were born with

66% believe biological males should not compete against women in high school and college sports

62% oppose medical intervention to block kids from going through puberty

75% believe it is inappropriate to discuss gender identity with kids third grade and younger

May 08, 2023 2:24 PM  
Anonymous the despicable day of dastardly Democraps is nearing nightfall said...


"75% believe it is inappropriate to discuss gender identity with kids third grade and younger"

and Disney wonders why they no longer enjoy special privileges in Florida

Walt is rolling over in his grave that his beloved institution supported promoting transgenderism to young kids in public schools

May 08, 2023 5:48 PM  
Anonymous nightfall nears,,,, said...


The decade-long French Revolution that broke out in 1789 soon devolved into far more than removing the monarchy, as it became antithetical to the earlier American precedent. American notions of liberty and freedom were seen as far too narrow, given the state, if only all-powerful and all-wise, could mandate “equality” and force “fraternity” among its subjects.

Each cycle of French revolutionary fervor soon became more radicalized and cannibalistic—until it reached its logical ends of violent absurdity.

Originally, the idea of curbing the power of a Bourbon king through a parliamentary republic became lethally counter-revolutionary.

Soon even attacks on the Catholic Church and the abolition of the monarchy entirely were deemed insufficient. The king himself and his consorts had to be beheaded. Monasteries and churches were to be ransacked, and priests exiled or lynched.

The sometimes moderate Girondins, who favored constitutional government, were mostly executed by their former friends among the Montagnards. In turn, the latter were soon deemed too conservative for the emerging crazy Jacobins. So they, too, had to be decapitated. The ensuing year-long reign of terror guillotined thousands of innocents, deemed guilty of being guilty of something.

By 1793, the revolution had turned nihilist and suicidal. The foundational date of France was recalibrated (not as 1619 but) as 1789—or “year one.”

Jacobins sought to wipe out religion, both materially and spiritually. They replaced God, first, with the atheistic “Cult of Reason” and then a stranger still “Cult of the Supreme Being”—a dreamed-up, living, humanistic god that only the murderous Robespierre could fully envision, but eerily similar to our own Green New Deal deity.

The months of the year themselves were renamed, the days of the week renumbered and relabeled. Statues were toppled, first at night, later in shameless daylight. Place names were erased and renamed. The original revolutionary heroes were not to be mentioned; their uncouth successors deified. Money was printed to “spread the wealth”—until it was worthless.

Murderous cancel culture ran unchecked. Yesterday’s French revolutionary became today’s counterrevolutionary—and tomorrow’s decapitated.

Almost everyone who originally had opposed the absolute monarchy, and, like the Americans, wished for a constitutional replacement, was eventually executed by revolutionaries who were then executed by more radical revolutionaries. The longer and more radical the revolution ran, the meaner, dumber, and more deadly the revolutionaries who emerged from the woodwork.

Finally, what could not go on, did not go on, as French society unraveled. Then the so-called Thermidors put an end to the madness of the Robespierre brothers and their sidekick, the 26-year-old Saint-Just, and did to them what they had done to thousands.

The final revolutionary correction saw a Directory, then a Consulate, and finally the dictator Napoleon—the self-described emperor who claimed he was the final absolutist manifestation of the “Revolution.”

May 08, 2023 10:00 PM  
Anonymous nightfall nears,,,, said...


We are swept up in similarly scary revolutionary times, after the perfect storm of the 2020 rioting, the COVID destructive lockdowns, and a radical socialist takeover of the old Democratic Party.

Decades of successful and legitimate efforts to ensure equality of opportunity, a safety net for the poor, and increased civil liberties have transmogrified into an “equity” agenda, or state-mandated equality of result—or else!

“Diversity” is now an Orwellian word for racial essentialism to the one-drop degree. Jim Crow racism was not eliminated permanently. It now has resurfaced as woke or “good” segregation. Racially separate facilities and events are apparent “reparatory justice.” Black activists are calling for $800 billion in reparations from San Francisco, a city that is melting down as we speak.

The old precivilizational tribalism and monotony of thought are now deemed “diverse.” “Inclusion” means replacing one racial hierarchy of the 1950s with a newer one of the 2020s. Woke leftists prove “inclusive” by excluding as “haters” and “denialists” any who disagree and cannot be easily refuted.

The Nike admen Colin Kaepernick and LeBron James ended up with millions of dollars in endorsements ultimately derived from Communist Chinese exploiters of servile labor—a fact that all their pseudo-revolutionary performance art cannot mask.

Like the rich and elite Montagnards and Jacobins, well-off, degreed suburban grifters suddenly became “woke” arbiters of the “correct.” Thousands of diversity, equity, and inclusion czars bloated administrations, broke university budgets, and terrified faculty and employees with their panopticon surveillance. And yet did any of them result in a single better student reader, or at least one more accomplished university math major? Have K-12 scores soared with DEI monitors on hand?

We have not descended to the guillotine yet, but we are getting there with online cancel culture, doxxing, deplatforming, boycotts, mandatory diversity statements, indoctrination training, ostracism for an incorrect word, and violence redefined as activism.

Black Lives Matter ended when its supposedly Marxist architects all vanished into comfortable bourgeoise estates and cushy retirements—along with the millions of dollars they shook down from guilt-ridden corporations.

#MeToo sputtered out once the mantra of “believe women” turned its attention to candidate Joe Biden and Tara Reade. It turned out that she most certainly must not be believed when she swore the Delaware Democrat had sexually assaulted her.

Supposed transgendered heroes vie for profitable TV endorsement commercials that are as lucrative to them as they are ruinous to their employers.

In our revolutionary times, mediocre biological male athletes “transition” into female sports and suddenly become rich and famous. Women who transition to males, for some reason, find no such profits from male competitions.

A black transient with 42 arrests and three assault convictions is accidentally killed by a would-be Samaritan bystander who takes action to stop his threats on the subway. The tragedy becomes a rallying cry for “activist” leaders, eager for continuous notoriety and profits, while 10,000 black people murdered per year, mostly by other black people, do not earn a snore from these same “civil rights” leaders.

May 08, 2023 10:05 PM  
Anonymous nightfall nears,,,, said...

Like Revolutionary France, our woke revolution was contrary to human nature and therefore had to be imposed by force or coercion.

Merit is the great enemy of wokeness. One day SAT tests were blind mechanisms to allow the less privileged to compete on the basis of talent rather than parentage. The next day such tests were deemed counterrevolutionary, racist enemies of the people. Universities boast of rejecting 60-70 percent of those who scored perfect on SATs, as if their excellence was proof of their “privilege.”

Jurisprudence was tarred as racist, as if laws against shoplifting, looting, smash-and-grab, car-jacking, and arson were created only by elite white men who never had the need to steal or loot and who therefore made silly, arbitrary laws against them.

Like the Jacobins, our woke elite deem prisons arbitrary detention centers. So thousands of those arrested for committing violent crimes have either never been charged, never convicted, never sentenced, or never incarcerated. These exemptions rest on the principle that the revolutionaries who destroyed the enforcement of law have the wherewithal to protect themselves from the dystopia they created.

Borders disappeared, apparently on grounds they were 19th-century racist relics. Yet sanctuary cities prove the least welcoming of the tens of thousands they all but invited into distant other towns and counties.

The homeless were no longer deemed vagrants, or selfish in their take-over of public spaces, but the victims of an oppressive society.

So public defecation, urination, fornication, and injection were rebranded as mere lifestyle choices of the unfortunate, not to be judged wrong or unlawful by the victimizers who supposedly made thousands homeless. Ancient laws of hygiene and municipal cleanliness were thrown out as bourgeois, as cities reverted to the protocols of their medieval forebears.

Leftists who created these Frankenstein-like monsters, like the fictive Dr. Frankenstein himself, became targets of their own experiments. It was no longer enough to support civil rights for the transgendered. Suddenly any questioning of the wisdom of biologically born males competing in women’s sports or of teenagers with penises undressing among teenage girls in locker rooms, or of state-sponsored drag-queen shows with children in attendance condemned one as transphobic and worse.

Advocating a secure border and strictly legal immigration was proof of nativism. Equal opportunity for all races was racism. Advocacy for the use of natural gas as a needed transitional fuel indicted one as a climate “denialist.”

May 08, 2023 10:07 PM  
Anonymous nightfall nears,,,, said...

As our woke version of the Jacobin revolution accelerated, society itself began to unwind—as expected given America relied on meritocracy, free expression dissent, the rule of law, forbearance, and tolerance.

In less than three years, our major cities became filthy to the point of unhealthiness. Violent crime and thievery drove businesses and commuters away. Subways at night became the domain of the homeless and criminal. Vacancy rates in San Francisco or downtown Portland shot up to 25 percent or more. Millions began leaving Jacobin blue cities and states, and headed for sanctuaries in more suburban and rural red states.

Once-trusted and familiar government agencies became weaponized—and inevitably incompetent. The FBI was not interested in the organizers of 120 days of violent looting, arson, murder, and rioting in summer 2020, or the threatening mobs who showed up at the homes of Supreme Court Justices. Instead, it fixated on parents at school board meetings, Latin Mass Catholics, former Trump Administration officials, and anyone daring to question the Russian collusion or Russian disinformation laptop hoaxes.

The Pentagon brass oversaw a flight from Afghanistan, in the greatest military humiliation in modern American history. Yet at the same time, it focused on rooting out white rage and white privilege despite presenting no data to substantiate its accusations. Former intelligence officers and “authorities” misled the country and warped an election, to ensure Americans did not take seriously the incriminating evidence in Hunter Biden’s laptop of the Biden family’s widespread corruption.

So, the world became topsy-turvy. Throwing a firebomb into a police-occupied patrol car earned a light sentence, while protesting illegally at the Capitol won a decade in prison.

An American who did not get vaccinated was to be thrown out of the U.S. military; an illegal alien crossing the border unlawfully without a vaccination might earn a free phone and free lodging in a big-city hotel.

The more the government printed money it did not have, the more the country was slandered as cruel and mean to its underclass. The more standards were dropped for admission, hiring, promotion, and retention, the more employers were deemed unfair and bigoted.

As the American Jacobin phase accelerated, the more it, too, seemed to pursue its own destruction. Few now trust that the graduates of the Ivy League and marquee universities know what they once did. And why not, when students are admitted without test scores, but are assured passing grades, watered-down classes, and graduation to be synonymous with admission?

The U.S. military fell short by thousands of recruits. And why not, when it advertised for manpower with invitations from drag queens, and hounded those as racists who had died at twice their numbers in the population in Afghanistan and Iraq?

May 08, 2023 10:08 PM  
Anonymous nightfall nears,,,, said...


At peak woke, our reign of terror is beginning to lose momentum because its continuation would erode all the work of 247 years of American progress and sacrifice.

Former and current liberals—an Elon Musk, Bill Maher, Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Glen Greenwald, Naomi Wolf, or a Richard Dreyfuss—are deemed counterrevolutionaries for questioning the excesses of wokeism, and so began questioning the premises of wokeism itself.

New polls showed scant public support for open borders, for multiple sexual identities, and for biological men competing in women’s sports. Reparations from an insolvent government to black Americans—on the principle that those whose ancestors might have been enslaved eight generations ago were owed money from those whose ancestors might have owned slaves eight generations ago—is widely rejected by the general population.

When corporations like Anheuser-Busch or Disney tried to ingratiate themselves to the woke Jacobins, they lost billions in revenue—just as the woke Pentagon has lost thousands of recruits.

Woke networks like CNN have smaller audiences than some one-person podcasts.

A desperate and woke NBA now brags that its recent playoff televised audience reached over 4 million viewers. A quarter-century ago, when the U.S. population was nearly 60 million smaller, the pre-Jacobin NBA won over 70 million viewers who watched the 1998 finals.

Joe Biden, the thin veneer of the woke revolution, polls below 40 percent. Even that favorability is propped up by the consensus that he has no idea where he is or what he is saying—and thus at least is deserving of 40 percent support for not being responsible for what he has empowered.

A counterrevolution is building, not just because people are angry at what has become of their country, but because they now are learning that if they do nothing, they will have no country—and soon.

May 08, 2023 10:09 PM  
Anonymous Big anti-groomer caught grooming said...

Texas state Rep. Bryan Slaton, a far-right Republican who equated drag performers with “groomers” who sexualize children, resigned from office Monday after a state-led investigation found he engaged in a sexual relationship with his 19-year-old intern, plied her with alcohol and demanded her silence.

Slaton, who is 45 and married, turned in his resignation, effective immediately, one day before the Texas House was set to vote on expelling him and two days after the House General Investigative Committee released an explosive 16-page report on Slaton’s behavior ― neither of which he mentioned in his letter of resignation to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R).

“It has been an honor to represent my friends, neighbors and the great people and communities of House District 2,” Slaton, a former pastor, wrote, adding that they “voted overwhelmingly to send me to the Capitol.”

According to the five-person committee’s report, Slaton invited his 19-year-old intern over to his home on March 31, and she arrived with two other young women working as legislative aides at the Capitol, along with one of their boyfriends. While there, the intern said, Slaton “kept refilling” her drink with rum to the point that she was “really dizzy” and had “split vision.”

She declined to answer investigators’ questions about any sexual activity with Slaton, but according to the other women present that night, she later told them she’d “lost her virginity” to Slaton after the rest of the group left and described the encounter in great detail, saying she was “in love” with him.

Days later, according to the probe’s findings, Slaton hinted to the intern that it would be a problem if their relationship got out. He then said that “everything would be fine” but that “everyone involved just has to stay quiet.”

The intern, along with the 19- and 20-year-old aides who’d joined her at his apartment, all filed complaints against Slaton over the following three weeks, setting off the investigation. At the time, Slaton’s attorney said that the claims against him were “outrageous” and “false,” but he has otherwise stayed quiet about the allegations.

The investigators noted that while conducting their probe, Slaton did not deny having sex with his intern. One of Slaton's colleagues in the house also told investigators that when asked about rumors of his misconduct, Slaton confessed to his colleague about the sexual encounter.

Ultimately, the report determined that Slaton’s intern “could not effectively consent to intercourse and could not indicate whether it was welcome or unwelcome.” Furthermore, Slaton “took advantage of his position to engage in sexual conduct after completing training in which he had been advised that conduct of this type was harassment because of the power imbalance.”

He resigned Monday after his several key allies withdrew their support for him, including the Texas Right to Life, a anti-abortion group that backed his political campaigns, and party officials from the counties he represented.

Slaton has been one of the loudest voices in the GOP’s hysteria campaign over drag artists and transgender people. He said he planned to introduce legislation this year banning minors from drag shows.

“We have to stop sick adults from sexualizing kids,” he has repeatedly tweeted. “Yes to protecting innocence. Yes letting kids be kids.”

“No one has the right to victimize a child by subjecting them to grooming,” he wrote in January regarding drag performances with children in attendance.

While the concept of grooming is often discussed in reference to adults manipulating people under 18, it’s also applicable to other relationships with large power imbalances, such as the one Slaton’s accused of having with his teenage intern.

Had the state House voted to expel Slaton on Tuesday, it would have been the first time in nearly 100 years that a member of the chamber was forcibly removed from office.

May 08, 2023 11:11 PM  
Anonymous While the right is wrapping themselves in flags, they don't want you to notice they are looking more like Nazis said...

They had to pass barricades, metal detectors, bomb-sniffing dogs, a background check by event organizers and a sign still bearing the scorch marks of what authorities called an attempt by a neo-Nazi to “burn … the entire church to the ground”.

But on Saturday 1 April, more than 100 residents of north-east Ohio gathered inside the Chesterland Community church and listened to a group of drag queens read stories to children. “It was amazing,” the church’s pastor, Jess Peacock, said. “I kept seeing the smiles on the kids faces and for me it was like, that’s why we did this.”

Saturday’s event was the first Drag Queen Story Hour held by the church, in a community where the same church held the first local LGBTQ+ Pride event just last year.

Peacock said that they expected to receive a certain amount of backlash – “hate mail and hate voicemail and social media hate” – when they began publicizing the event, but the response to the story hour went far beyond the usual.

“The messages we started getting were much more vitriolic, in the sense of accusations of pedophilia, grooming and horrible things being done to kids,” they said. “It felt like this was a bit different. And then once someone tried burning our church down, it went to a whole other level.”

One week before the planned story hour, on 25 March, Peacock was alerted to damage at the church. They found burn marks on the building and broken bottles on the ground – detritus from an apparent molotov cocktail attack.

The attempted arson came amid an escalating campaign against LGBTQ+ rights in the US, waged both through street-level intimidation of drag or other LGBTQ+-themed events and through a state-level legislative assault that has seen more than 400 bills aimed at restricting LGBTQ+ rights introduced in 2023.

On Friday 31 March, federal authorities arrested and charged a member of a neo-Nazi group with two counts related to the attempted arson at the Chesterland church.

Aimenn Penny, 20, told investigators that he made the molotov cocktails and used them at the church because “he was trying to protect children and stop the drag show event”, according to the charging affidavit. “Penny stated that he would have felt better if the molotov cocktails were more effective and burned the entire church to the ground.”

Penny is a member of “White Lives Matter, Ohio”, a group with “racist, pro-Nazi, and homophobic views”, according to the complaint. He had previously protested another drag queen story hour “wearing military-style gear” and distributed racist and white nationalist flyers in his home town of Alliance, Ohio. Law enforcement found “a hand-written manifesto that contained ideological statements” and Nazi memorabilia in his residence.

He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted for malicious use of explosive materials.

While the arson attack caused great anxiety for Peacock and their congregation, it also strengthened their resolve.

“We didn’t want to become crusaders for this, but once it became clear that we needed to be, we shifted gears,” they said.

Security for the event was coordinated by Mallory McMaster, who runs a local social justice event planning business. McMaster said security cost about $20,000 and was even more intense than when she worked for an abortion provider.

“This was by far the most involved and multilayered security process I’ve ever had to do for any event, let alone an event that six months ago would not have needed any security,” McMaster said.

“The rhetoric is so incendiary, and the language is getting more and more volatile,” she said. “This is what we tried to tell people before [abortion provider] Dr [George] Tiller was assassinated … it’s escalating.”

She added: “I hope this creates a blueprint for other organizations or cities. Even if they’re conservative or don’t have a big LGBTQ community, they still don’t have a choice: they have to stand up to Nazis.”

May 08, 2023 11:18 PM  
Anonymous While the right is wrapping themselves in flags, they don't want you to notice they are looking more like Nazis said...


June 13, 2022

A white supremacist militia was arrested en route to a pride event in Idaho this weekend, where they had been planning to stage a riot.

Thirty-one individuals affiliated with the group Patriot Front were detained in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, on Saturday after an anonymous caller reported people dressed like a “little army” were packing into a U-Haul at a hotel. That group included the group’s founder, Thomas Ryan Rousseau, who traveled to Coeur d’Alene from Grapevine, Texas. He founded Patriot Front after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017. The group had planned to attack the North Idaho Pride Alliance’s annual Pride in the Park event, which was its first in-person event after a two year hiatus.

Rousseau was not the only member who traveled to Idaho for the express purpose of terrorizing a pride event; in fact, mayor Jim Hammond told CNN that of the members who were detained, only two were actually from Idaho.

Members reportedly came from all over the country, including Michigan, Illinois, Washington, Oregon, Utah, Colorado, South Dakota, Wyoming, Virginia, and Arkansas, per CBS News. Coeur d’Alene Police Chief Lee White additionally told the publication that the group “had shields, shin guards, and other riot gear with them, including at least one smoke grenade,” though no firearms, as well as an “operations plan” that was found in the U-Haul, though it was unclear if they had firearms.

Although a pride event in north Idaho might seem like an unlikely target for violence from a nationally active white supremacist group, the event was bolstered by the conservative Twitter account Libs of TikTok, which frequently targets local LGBTQ+ events and content creators with its audience of over one million followers.

At a press conference on Monday, White spoke to the magnitude of backlash that the Coeur d’Alene Police received for detaining the Patriot Front members.

“Of the 149 calls that have come in, they’re about 50/50 split between individuals in our community who are happy to give us their name and tell us that they’re proud of the work we did and that they’re happy to be part of this community,” White said,

“and the other 50% who are completely anonymous and who want nothing more than to scream and yell at us and use some really choice words.”

White and others have reportedly received death threats, with calls coming from as far away as Norway.

The North Idaho Pride Alliance released a statement on its Facebook page on Sunday, writing that “as a small community nonprofit” the group would be “taking a much-needed day of rest after successfully organizing a momentous, joyful, and SAFE Pride in the Park community celebration under the most challenging of circumstances.”

Despite the circumstances, the event was still the community’s most successful pride event yet, as organizers told local news outlet KREM 2, with the largest crowds that they had ever seen.

“We have been through so much, so much,” Jessica Mahuron of North Idaho Pride Alliance told the publication. “Harassment, and attempts to intimidate on the psychological level, and the truth is if you allow yourself to be intimidated you let them win and what we have shown today is that you will not win.”

May 08, 2023 11:27 PM  
Anonymous While the right is wrapping themselves in flags, they don't want you to notice they are looking more like Nazis said...


Hundreds of far right protesters, including neo-Nazis and members of other white nationalist groups, stormed a drag queen story hour at a park in Wadsworth, Ohio, on Saturday.

The all-ages show, dubbed the “Rock-n-Roll Humanist Drag Queen Story Hour,” was held at the city’s Memorial Park. The event was held to promote a Humanist children’s book, and concluded with a “short Rock-n-Roll drag celebration performance,” a description of the event said.

The park was chosen for the event because a private venue had refused to host it, organizer Aaron Reed said. Proceeds from the event were donated to survivors of the Club Q massacre and the B. Riley House, an LGBTQ addiction recovery center in Cleveland.

The event was interrupted by hundreds of far right protesters, some of whom waved swastika flags, threatened violence and spewed Nazi jargon — including “seig heil” and “there will be blood.”

One call and response was “Weimar conditions, Weimar solution” — a blatant call for the mass murder of LGBTQ people. Germany’s Weimar era, which took place immediately before Adolf Hitler’s ascent to power, was known for the sexual liberation movement, which included advocacy for LGBTQ rights.

Members of Parasol Patrol, an LGBTQ advocacy group from Colorado, also attended the event, using umbrellas to shield children from the protesters. But far right protesters vastly outnumbered those in support of the performers, Reed said.

According to journalist Ford Fischer, who documented the event through videos on Twitter, the far right protesters included members of “White Lives Matter” Ohio, the Proud Boys, and Patriot Front. (Other reporters documented that members of Blood Tribe, a neo-Nazi group, were also present.)

Though non-affiliated protesters of the event claimed they were only there to protest the drag show, they ultimately “weren’t at all ashamed to stand shoulder to shoulder with that kind of hate,” Reed said.

Two individuals at the event — one in support of the drag show and one against — were arrested by police for disorderly conduct. A person in support of the drag show used mace on a person who charged toward them wearing chainmail armor from the direction of the anti-drag protesters. Shortly after, an anti-drag protester pulled out what appeared to be a handgun. (It was later revealed to be a pepper-spraying device shaped like a gun.) That person was later arrested when they used their white nationalist flag as a weapon against a person in support of the performance.

In addition to anti-LGBTQ slurs, protesters repeatedly used the N-word. A Black journalist from The Akron Beacon Journal had to leave the event early out of fear for his own safety.

“Bring a journalist with social anxiety is one thing, but being a Black journalist subjected to the Wadsworth anti-drag show protests who were more fired up for anti-blackness is another,” Anthony Thompson, a Black journalist with that publication, said on Twitter. Thompson didn’t confirm whether he was the journalist who had to leave early.

The response to the drag queen story hour comes as right-wing lawmakers across the U.S. have introduced legislation to restrict drag performances — a blatant attack on LGBTQ people and a clear violation of the First Amendment. Just this past week, Tennessee’s legislature became the first in the country to pass a bill banning drag performances in public venues.

Earlier this month, right-wing commentator Michael Knowles called for the eradication of transness at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a statement that trans advocates have said is outright genocidal.

In response to these attacks, LGBTQ advocates have been mobilizing to defend themselves. Members of the left-wing community defense group Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club provided security for a drag show in Texas last month, for example, defending performers and guests from armed Christian nationalists.

May 08, 2023 11:31 PM  
Anonymous euphemistic propaganda isn't the solution to our problems, euphemistic propaganda is the problem.... said...


"Texas state Rep. Bryan Slaton, a far-right Republican who equated drag performers with “groomers” who sexualize children,"

TTF considers anyone who opposes the gay agenda to be "far-right"

but if 75% of Americans oppose exposing kids third grade or younger to discussions about gender identity, that's not "far" anything

it's mainstream

and TTF is on record supporting democracy

"resigned from office Monday after a state-led investigation found he engaged in a sexual relationship with his 19-year-old intern, plied her with alcohol and demanded her silence."

oh, he got that idea from Bill Clinton'

it's Monica Lewinsky deja vu

"But on Saturday 1 April, more than 100 residents of north-east Ohio gathered inside the Chesterland Community church and listened to a group of drag queens read stories to children. “It was amazing,” the church’s pastor, Jess Peacock,"

is that his stage name?

"said. “I kept seeing the smiles on the kids faces and for me it was like, that’s why we did this.”"

really?

it sounds more like you were trying to support the gay agenda

why not just have clowns come read stories and hand out ice cream?

if that's why you did it

"Saturday’s event was the first Drag Queen Story Hour held by the church, in a community where the same church held the first local LGBTQ+ Pride event just last year."

sounds like a church that has long ago lost its way

“The messages we started getting were much more vitriolic, in the sense of accusations of pedophilia, grooming and horrible things being done to kids,” they said. “It felt like this was a bit different. And then once someone tried burning our church down, it went to a whole other level.”

One week before the planned story hour, on 25 March, Peacock was alerted to damage at the church. They found burn marks on the building and broken bottles on the ground – detritus from an apparent molotov cocktail attack."

everyone knows you need to throw a molotov cocktail through a window to start a fire

might have been some teens having a party on the side of the church

remember when Black Lives Matters protestors tried to burn down St John's in Lafayette Square?

btw, 75% of Americans oppose exposing kids third grade or younger to discussions about gender identity

"through a state-level legislative assault that has seen more than 400 bills aimed at restricting LGBTQ+ rights introduced in 2023"

the word "restriction" is the latest assault on the English language

it's code for anytime special privileges aren't granted to LBGTsters

for example, the new Biden rule, that makes clear that schools can segregate sporting events by gender, is seen by the lunatic fringe as a restriction on biological males who want to compete against girls instead of other biological males

but it's just expecting them to follow the same rules as everyone else

it's not a matter of rights, it's a discussion about whether to give special privileges to guys who think they're girls

that's not fair to real girls

transgenderism is intrinsically misogynist

May 09, 2023 6:08 AM  
Anonymous We need more politicians reading books and fewer politicians censoring them said...

"Unlike authoritarian states, we don't have national police force.

so, why would that be in the Congressional budget?"

COPS is merely a more recent program that arms US police forces with military materials under the auspices of the DOD, which IS definitely "in the Congressional budget." These programs started at the end of WWII, a fact that apparently slipped right by you.

"The Law Enforcement Support Office (LESO) is a division under the United States Department of Defense (DoD) responsible for managing the "1033 Program", which transfers excess weapons, equipment, and vehicles from the United States Armed Forces to civilian law enforcement agencies. The program legally requires the DoD to make various items of equipment available to local law enforcement, ranging from supplies to materiel.[1]

LESO is a division of DLA Disposition Services, which is a subordinate command of the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), which is itself a division of the DoD.

Precedent legislation of the 1033 Program's concept has existed since the end of World War II. The modern program arose in 1990, when the U.S. federal government permitted the transfer of DoD resources to law enforcement for drug enforcement purposes.[2] In 1997, usage was expanded into other areas, including counterterrorism.[3]

As of 2020, 8,200 local law enforcement agencies have participated in the 1033 Program, which has transferred $5.1 billion in military material from the DoD to law enforcement agencies since 1997.[4] According to the DLA, material worth $449 million was transferred in 2013 alone. Though most media attention is placed on the materiel acquired from the 1033 Program—such as service weapons, ammunition, body armor, and armored vehicles—the items most commonly requested by law enforcement through the program include clothing, flashlights, medical supplies, sandbags, sleeping bags, and electrical wiring.[5]

LESO and the 1033 Program have been criticized by the media, the ACLU, and the NAACP out of police militarization concerns;[6] by both Democrats and Republicans following the use of 1033 Program equipment during the Ferguson unrest; by the DoD Office of Inspector General in 2003;[7] and by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which uncovered mismanagement within LESO.[7] Proponents of the program argue the equipment acquired from LESO protect police officers and civilians, may be necessary at any time in the event of a terrorist attack or mass shooting, and are not heavy military weaponry such as armed combat vehicles.[8][9]..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_Enforcement_Support_Office

May 09, 2023 6:49 AM  
Anonymous RWDS -- far-right extremists who glorify violence against their political enemies said...

The shooter who killed eight people at a Dallas-area mall was wearing a patch that read “RWDS” — short for “Right Wing Death Squad” — a phrase that has been embraced in recent years by far-right extremists who glorify violence against their political enemies.

Authorities have not said what they believe might have motivated 33-year-old Mauricio Garcia, who was killed by a police officer who happened to be near the mall Saturday when Garcia opened fire.

Social media accounts authorities believe were used by Mauricio Garcia also appear to have expressed interest in white supremacist and neo-Nazi views, according to an official who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they could not discuss details of the investigation publicly. The official cautioned that the investigation is in the early stages.

The “RWDS” acronym is one of countless shorthand terms used by extremists. Others include “RaHoWa,” short for “racial holy war,” and “ 1488,” an alphabet-driven code combining references to a white nationalist slogan and Adolf Hitler.

The term “Right Wing Death Squad” originally emerged in the 1970s and ’80s to describe Central and South American paramilitary groups created to support right-wing governments and dictatorships and oppose perceived enemies on the left, said Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.

It reemerged in the 2010s among right-wing groups who use it on stickers, patches and in online forums. Other far-right gear and online memes specifically glorify Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the brutal Chilean military dictator whose death squads killed thousands of political opponents.

May 09, 2023 7:06 AM  
Anonymous Texas GOP Lawmaker Resigns After Probe Found Inappropriate Relationship With Teen Staffer said...

Rep. Bryan Slaton, who's made accusing drag artists of sexualizing and grooming children the crux of his political identity, resigned ahead of a vote over expelling him.

Texas state Rep. Bryan Slaton, a far-right Republican who equated drag performers with “groomers” who sexualize children, resigned from office Monday after a state-led investigation found he engaged in a sexual relationship with his 19-year-old intern, plied her with alcohol and demanded her silence.

Slaton, who is 45 and married, turned in his resignation, effective immediately, one day before the Texas House was set to vote on expelling him and two days after the House General Investigative Committee released an explosive 16-page report on Slaton’s behavior ― neither of which he mentioned in his letter of resignation to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R).

“It has been an honor to represent my friends, neighbors and the great people and communities of House District 2,” Slaton, a former pastor, wrote, adding that they “voted overwhelmingly to send me to the Capitol.”

According to the five-person committee’s report, Slaton invited his 19-year-old intern over to his home on March 31, and she arrived with two other young women working as legislative aides at the Capitol, along with one of their boyfriends. While there, the intern said, Slaton “kept refilling” her drink with rum to the point that she was “really dizzy” and had “split vision.”

She declined to answer investigators’ questions about any sexual activity with Slaton, but according to the other women present that night, she later told them she’d “lost her virginity” to Slaton after the rest of the group left and described the encounter in great detail, saying she was “in love” with him.

Days later, according to the probe’s findings, Slaton hinted to the intern that it would be a problem if their relationship got out. He then said that “everything would be fine” but that “everyone involved just has to stay quiet.”

May 09, 2023 7:23 AM  
Anonymous Republicans aren't the solutions to our problems, they ARE the problem said...


Here is another poll those interested in democracy will enjoy:

https://apnews.com/article/gun-violence-covid-health-chicago-c912ecc5619e925c5ea7447d36808715

Do you favor, oppose, or neither favor or oppose each of the following policies?

A federal law requiring background checks on all potential gun buyers, including private sales and gun shows:
85% Favor, 8% Oppose

A federal law that bans those convicted of domestic violence from purchasing a gun:
83% Favor, 7% Oppose

Making 21 the minimum legal age to buy any gun nationwide:
75% Favor, 14% Oppose

A nationwide ban on the sale of AR-15 rifles and similar semiautomatic weapons:
59% Favor, 27% Oppose

A law in your state allowing people to carry guns in public without a permit:
29% Favor, 57% Oppose

May 09, 2023 7:59 AM  
Anonymous wonder what Brett Kavanaugh is drinking.... said...


quick democracy at work

Bud Light supports transgenderism

everyone stops buying it!

easy-peasy!

Sales of Anheuser-Busch products have dropped in the month since Bud Light went ahead with the disastrous campaign with Dylan Mulvaney.

Beer Business Daily commented that 'it's not pretty' for America's flagship brand and their parent company Anheuser-Busch after revealing the numbers for beer across April.

Anheuser-Busch volumes were down more than 12 percent last month, with Bud Light falling a staggering 21.4 percent - as the controversial trans influencer stepped out in pigtails

Initially sales of Bud Light were the only brand under the brewing conglomerates umbrella to be affected, but the new numbers have revealed that several products sales have dipped.

Budweiser was also hit with the knock-on effect of the controversy by dipping 11.5 percent.

Two more Anheuser-Busch brands were also feeling the result of the backlash, with Busch dropping 5.3 percent and Natural dropping 6 percent.

Competitors of the Belgian-owned beer giant both saw their volume rise – with Molson Coors, which produces Coors Light, jumping 7.6 percent and Constellation, the company behind Corona, spiking 3.8 percent.

Yuengling took the tumbling sales of Bud Light in their stride, rising up 14.7 percent, while Miller Light had a spike of 12.8 percent and Coors Light rose 10.9 percent, and Coors Banquet 20.5 percent.

The news came as Mulvaney, 26, stepped out wearing a light blue dress with his hair styled in pigtails.

He also donned a cozy teddy-style coat and matching jacket as he strolled in Hollywood Hills, LA, on Tuesday.

May 09, 2023 3:00 PM  
Anonymous "I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it." - DJT said...


A Manhattan jury unanimously sided with advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in her civil lawsuit against former President Donald Trump, whom she says raped her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s.

The panel reached its decision Tuesday after less than three hours of deliberation, finding him liable for sexual abuse — but not rape — and declaring he owes $5 million in total damages.

Trump, meanwhile, reacted angrily on social media, calling the verdict “A DISGRACE” and “A CONTINUATION OF THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME!”

She haa accused Trump of defamation, as the former president has repeatedly responded to her claims with an array of personal insults. Trump has said Carroll was a liar and called her claim a “hoax,” which could not be true because Carroll was not his “type.” He also suggested she was too old at the time of the alleged incident to compel his sexual interest, although they would have been nearly the same age. In his videotaped deposition played for the jury, Trump even confused Carroll for one of his ex-wives, Marla Maples, as he examined a decades-old photograph of himself at a party with the two women.

Jurors awarded Carroll $2 million for the finding of sexual abuse and another $3 million for the defamation claim; she had not asked for any precise monetary amount.

A witness for Carroll, Natasha Stoynoff, told People magazine she was “elated” to hear the verdict. Stoynoff was one of two women who provided testimony to establish a pattern of misbehavior on Trump’s part; she and Jessica Leeds both said in court that Trump sexually assaulted them.

“I hope women and all of those who come forward to share stories of sexual abuse, assault, and harassment find support,” Stoynoff told the outlet, adding, “There is power in the truth.”

While Trump faced no risk of jail time in connection with Carroll’s claims, criminal charges filed in April by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg relating to alleged hush money payments come with the possibility of time behind bars, albeit a slim one. Other investigations into Trump are also pending as he continues his campaign for a second presidential term.

Over several days’ worth of testimony before the panel of jurors and U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, the former Elle magazine columnist recounted the chance encounter with Trump in either late 1995 or early 1996. She bumped into Trump while leaving Manhattan’s Bergdorf Goodman luxury department store, she said.

“Hey, you’re that advice, lady!” Trump allegedly told her.

“Hey, you’re that real estate tycoon!” she said that she responded.

Carroll said Trump asked for her help in picking out a gift for a female friend and that she agreed because it sounded fun. But their friendly banter throughout the store gave way to Trump’s alleged attack.

In the lingerie section, Carroll said Trump told her to try on a lace bodysuit, and she replied by joking that he should try it on. Trump then allegedly trapped her in a dressing room, using his body weight to prevent her from escaping.

“The first push, I thought, ‘He couldn’t have meant that.’ I thought he had made a mistake. I thought it was very strange,” Carroll testified.

“We had just been laughing 12, 15 seconds before, and here I am being pushed up against the wall. It just didn’t make any sense,” she said. “Then he put his mouth against mine, and then I understood.”

She said that she struggled.

“But he had pulled down my tights, and his fingers went into my vagina, and it was extremely painful,” Carroll testified, per Politico. “Extremely painful because he put his hand inside me and curved his fingers. As I’m sitting here today, I can still feel it.”

“Then he inserted his penis,” Carroll said in court. She added that she had “so much adrenaline” running through her at the time that she was not sure whether she spoke but was able to run away after a few minutes.

May 09, 2023 5:55 PM  
Anonymous Those pesky facts, again. said...

GOP's Biden family investigation on brink of collapse as pressure mounts to produce evidence: report

A House Republican investigation led by Oversight Chair James Comer (R-KY) has been trying to link President Joe Biden and his family to accusations of essentially accepting bribes from foreign countries.

But Politico reports they have yet to deliver the goods — and are under pressure to do so, at the risk of their probe losing steam and legitimacy.

"The Oversight Committee chair’s pivotal moment comes in the form of a long-planned press conference on his panel’s investigation into President Joe Biden, his son Hunter who’s already facing a federal investigation, and other family members. Comer’s move follows weeks of doubt, including from some within his own party, that the Kentucky Republican can back up his promises to find a smoking gun that would tie the president to the private affairs of his relatives," Politico reported.

"No such link has publicly emerged. And unless Comer’s yet-to-be-released findings ... contain that hard proof, his maneuver is at serious risk of backfiring just as he’s ramping up efforts to get more buy-in for his probe."

This comes as CNN reports that Comer has released a memo alleging members of Biden's family, including his son Hunter, received payments from foreign entities in Romania and China — but stops considerably short of finding any proof of criminal wrongdoing.

"The foreign payments raise questions about Hunter Biden’s business activities while his father was vice president, but the committee does not suggest any illegality about the payments from foreign sources. The bank records by themselves also do not indicate the purpose of the payments that were made," reported Annie Grayer, Alayna Treene, Jeremy Herb, and Sara Murray. "Comer has suggested that Biden may have been improperly influenced by the financial dealings, particularly by his family’s foreign business partners, but the latest report does not show any payments made directly to Joe Biden, either as vice president or after leaving office."

In response to the new findings put forward by GOP Oversight, White House assistant Ian Sams tweeted, "Seriously?This was debunked literally 4 years ago."

May 10, 2023 1:46 PM  
Anonymous first gay Cabinet member: disaster!; first gay mayor of Chicago: disaster!... said...


The sheer magnitude of Biden family corruption uncovered by the House Oversight Committee can only be described as breathtaking. It is also deeply alarming. If the fruits of Chairman James Comer’s investigation are exactly what they appear to be, Joe Biden may have jeopardized our nation’s security by selling out America for cold hard cash.

Documents show that over $10 million in foreign money flowed like a river into more than 20 shell companies and LLCs created for the Bidens’ financial benefit, said Comer. Much of it was then surreptitiously shuffled around various accounts before it landed in the hands of nine members of the President’s family. Those companies have no apparent business purpose other than to serve as a receptacle for hiding cash derived from suspected influence peddling schemes overseas.

The incriminating evidence comes from thousands of subpoenaed banking records, wire transfers, and electronic transactions contained in more than 170 Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) that were flagged by banks and sent to the criminal division at the Treasury Department. The Biden Administration refused to cough up those records until the Committee recently forced its hand. There are still more documents to be examined, suggesting that the Biden profiteering could far exceed the millions of dollars already tracked.

In Washington, where corruption and graft are endemic, the Bidens appear to have taken it to dizzying heights. While greed was the likely motive, concealment was the key to success. In just one deal alone more than a million dollars involved 16 different wire transfers ran through 5 different bank accounts before the funds eventually landed in Biden family hands. This and other transactions were well hidden "in a web of deception and corruption," noted committee member Rep. Byron Daniels. Cycling through this many companies serves no other purpose but to disguise illicit, if not illegal, payments, he concluded.

May 10, 2023 3:19 PM  
Anonymous Dems are dangerous.... said...

"Seriously?This was debunked literally 4 years ago."

it was?

do you mean when the CIA lied and said the story was Russian propaganda?

because the idea it was Russian propaganda it was has been debunked

indeed, we now know that the CIA actively recruited the other intelligence agencies to make false statements to help Joe Biden get elected

hey, Alvin Bragg, would that be a campaign contribution by the CIA?

May 10, 2023 7:39 PM  
Anonymous Alvin Bragg...LOL! said...

The CIA both solicited signatures for and eventually approved the infamous 2020 letter claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop story was a Russian disinformation plot, recent congressional testimony suggests. According to a report to be released Wednesday by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, multiple former U.S. intelligence officials testified under oath about the CIA’s involvement in the distribution of the letter, which was eventually signed by more than 50 former senior U.S. intelligence officials.

“One signer of the statement, former CIA analyst David Cariens, disclosed to the Committees that a CIA employee affiliated with the agency’s Prepublication Classification Review Board (‘PCRB’) informed him of the existence of the statement and asked if he would sign it,” the House investigative report notes. “The Committees have requested additional material from the CIA, which has ignored the request to date.”

The Prepublication Classification Review Board (PCRB) is tasked with reviewing statements, letters, and books published by former intelligence personnel to determine whether the material contains any classified information that would need to be removed or redacted prior to publication.

In a March 5, 2023, email to congressional investigators, Cariens stated that a CIA official tasked with reviewing and approving a memoir he planned to publish told him about the Hunter Biden laptop letter and even asked him if he would like to sign it.

“When the person in charge of reviewing the book called to say it was approved with no changes, I was told about the draft letter,” Cariens wrote. “The person asked me if I would be willing to sign.”

According to the email, the CIA official also read specific language from the letter to Cariens to convince him to sign the letter. In his email, Cariens stated that he did not remember the name of the CIA official who asked him to sign the Hunter Biden laptop letter. Cariens’ wife Janice, who retired from the CIA in 1995, also signed the letter.

The letter was first submitted to the PCRB by former CIA acting director and Joe Biden campaign surrogate Mike Morell at 6:34 a.m. on Oct. 19, 2020. The CIA review board acknowledged receipt of the letter at 7:11 a.m. the same day. Just hours later, at 10:27 a.m., former CIA official Kristen Wood bcc’ed a distribution list of former intelligence officials asking them to sign the letter, which had been drafted by Morell and Marc Polymeropoulos, who retired from the CIA in 2019. Cariens later responded to Wood’s email and agreed to sign the letter.

During his own testimony before Congress, Morell admitted he drafted and circulated the letter to give Joe Biden a talking point to use during a 2020 presidential debate against then-President Donald Trump.

May 10, 2023 7:49 PM  
Anonymous Marcy Wheeler said...

emptywheel
@emptywheel
·
May 10
BREAKING:
@Jim_Jordan
spends 65 pages demanding that 51 private citizens be silenced.

When he said "weaponization," he knew what he planned.

Weaponization Committee
@Weaponization
·
May 10
�� #BREAKING: @JudiciaryGOP, @HouseIntel, @Weaponization Release Report on How Senior Intelligence Community Officials and the Biden Campaign Worked to Mislead American Voters on the Hunter Biden “Intel” Statement

�� Read it here: https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/2023-05-10_the_hunter_biden_statement_how_senior_intelligence_community_officials_and_the_biden_campaign_worked_to_mislead_american_voters-sm.pdf

emptywheel
@emptywheel
·
May 10
Among other things this "report" does is provide proof that those who signed the letter believed what they wrote--that the "laptop" had the hallmarks of a RU info operation.

Jordan has, in fact, proved the letter was TRUE.

Image

emptywheel
@emptywheel
Jordan also provided proof that the former spooks took care to distinguish between info op and false -- again, proving that many claims Jordan and others have made were false.

Is Jordan so dumb he doesn't realize he has proven himself wrong?

5:17 AM · May 10, 2023
·

May 11, 2023 2:03 PM  
Anonymous It turns out Trump could not sexually abuse someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. said...

On Thursday morning, network host Steve Doocy responded to Comer’s claims of “influence peddling” by the Biden relatives.

“That’s just your suggestion. You don’t actually have any facts to that point. You’ve got some circumstantial evidence,” Doocy told Comer. “And the other thing is, of all those names, the one person who didn’t profit — there’s no evidence that Joe Biden did anything illegally.”

Comer said Republicans hope to still find evidence of “active participation” by the president. This was an implicit admission that to date they have found none. Still, Comer insisted, “we know that Joe Biden was actively involved.”

May 12, 2023 5:04 PM  
Anonymous U.S. Supreme Court Unanimously Sides with Transgender Refugee, Affirming Her Identity in Historic Ruling said...

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote the court's opinion in Santos-Zacaria v. Garland, which is historic for its humanizing language to describe a transgender woman who fled persecution in Guatemala

The U.S. Supreme Court this week passed a decision that makes history not just for its impact on the law — but for its language about transgender people and non-citizens living in the United States.

Every judge — including the most conservative on the court — agreed with the court's ruling, and traditionally right-leaning justices co-signed the official opinion of the court, which uses proper she/her pronouns to describe a transgender woman who fled Guatemala after being assaulted and persecuted on the basis of her gender identity and sexual orientation.

The opinion also referred to the petitioner as a non-citizen, rather than an "illegal alien" (a dehumanizing term that has been in conservative opinions in the past).

Estrella Santos-Zacaria, the transgender refugee at the center of the case, had appealed a decision to deport her after she twice came to the U.S. seeking safety and a better life.

In a unanimous decision Thursday, the Supreme Court sided with Santos-Zacaria, allowing her another chance to fight the deportation decision and potentially remain in the U.S. if that bid is successful.

The decision is largely technical, but the language used in the opinion is historic, particularly considering the recent wave of anti-LGBTQ measures across the country.

In the court's opinion on the case, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — who made history as the first Black female justice to sit on the Supreme Court when she was sworn in last year — wrote using Santos-Zacaria's preferred name and pronouns of she/her. While Brown Jackson is a liberal-leaning justice, the ruling itself was unanimous...

May 13, 2023 6:34 AM  

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