I am an older gay guy in a long-term wonderful relationship. My spouse and I are in our 36th year together. I love politics and news. I enjoy civil discussions and have no taboo subjects. My pronouns are he / him / his and my email is Scottiestoybox@gmail.com
The entire article is saying that the public schools should be for everyone … except LGBTQ+ kids and parents of those kids. Yes gay and trans children exist and need / deserve to see themselves represented in the community just as much as straight cis kids do. This is a hate bill, banning a group because the majority in charge doesn’t like them. The flags they say are ok to fly like the Gladstone flag or the thin blue line flag are not neutral and they most definitely represent a political ideology. Again this is about erasing the LGBTQ+ kids / people from society to make the Christian fundamentalist and insecure parents who know they can’t have produced a gay / trans kid feel better about themselves. It is a desire to force the fundamentalist view point on every one regardless if they believe it. It is a desperate attempt to return to the 1950s. Hugs
The law effectively bans Pride flags and other LGBTQ flags from being flown at schools or government buildings. In 2019, Gov. Steve Bullock, D-Montana, flew a Pride flag over the state Capitol, which drew criticism from Republicans.
Language in the bill does allow flags like the Gadsden flag and other “official historical flags” to be flown. It also allows flags for law enforcement officers and fallen officers, like the “Thin Blue Line” flag, which Gov. Gianforte, R-Montana, flew above the Montana Capitol on Thursday, May 15, 2025.
When HB 819 was debated on the floor of the Montana House of Representatives, Mitchell said the bill was intended to ensure government entities remain a place of neutrality and was not to impact an individual’s free speech.
“Government buildings, schools and public facilities serve all citizens and should not be used to promote political, ideological or activist messaging,” said Mitchell during the March 6 floor debate.
Critics of HB 819 say the bill targets free speech by allowing provisions for specific flags like the Gadsden “Don’t Tread on Me” flag to be flown, while others were prohibited. Rep. Pete Elverum, D-Helena, said under the language, a Confederate flag could be flown.
“What we’re doing here is we’re expressly prescribing what speech is allowed, ‘these flags’, and what speech is not allowed, ‘these other flags’,” said Rep. Pete Elverum, D-Helena, on March 6. “And as for the definition of ‘promoting a certain ideology,’ those [flags] are expressly prohibited, but at the exact same time we’re sitting here with a bill proclaiming to be about free speech, we’re expressly prohibiting some and promoting others.”
Flags of tribal nations, foreign countries, military service branches, the POW/MIA flag and official school or government entities’ flags are also permitted under the law.
HB 819 went into effect immediately after Governor Greg Gianforte signed it.
This year, both Utah and Idaho have passed similar laws restricting or banning Pride flags on government property or at schools.
New Montana law decides which flags fly in public schools.
May 23, 2025, 3:13 PM EDT; Updated: May 23, 2025, 3:35 PM EDT
Allie Reed
Correspondent
A large transgender flag with signatures and messages during a protest.
Photographer: Manaure Quintero/Bloomberg
The Trump administration must republish two Harvard Medical School professors’ papers it censored because they contained words related to gender ideology, a federal judge ruled Friday.
“The plaintiffs are likely to succeed in proving that the removal of their articles was a textbook example of viewpoint discrimination by the defendants in violation of the First Amendment,” Judge Leo Sorokin wrote for the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
The US Department of Health and Human Services took down peer-reviewed articles by doctors Gordon Schiff and Celeste Royce from the now-inactive Patient Safety Network website, run by the HHS’s Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
PSNet said the articles were taken down in accordance with President Donald Trump’s executive order directing agencies to remove content that promotes “gender ideology.” Schiff’s article, on suicide risk assessment, and Royce’s, on endometriosis, both referenced transgender people.
“This is a flagrant violation of the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights as private speakers on a limited public forum,” Sorokin wrote.
The government can only restrict speech on a limited public forum like PSNet in a way that is reasonable and viewpoint neutral, the order said, and the administration’s restrictions were not.
Sorokin said it is not within his discretion “to evaluate the wisdom of restricting access to peer-reviewed scientific information that enhances patient safety by fostering more informed and timely diagnostic care—or of eliminating entirely a free, online repository of patient-safety resources accessed each year by thousands of medical professionals seeking to provide better, safer care to their patients in the United States. Those are matters for the political branches of government to decide.”
The preliminary injunction applies to Schiff and Royce’s articles, as well as other content removed from PSNet in a similar manner.
The Trump administration is asking a federal judge to reject a challenge from two Harvard University Medical School physicians seeking to block the government’s removal of research papers because they included terms related to the LGBTQ communities. https://t.co/Bj8Wuuu8c7
A U.S.-born citizen who was wrestled into the dirt, handcuffed and detained in a vehicle as part of an immigration raid had a REAL ID on him that was dismissed as fake, the man’s cousin said Friday.
Video of the arrest, aired by Noticias Telemundo, showed authorities grabbing Leonardo Garcia Venegas, 25, while at a job site in Foley, Alabama, on Wednesday and bending his arms behind him. Someone off-camera can be heard yelling, “He’s a citizen.”
Garcia told Noticias Telemundo that authorities took his ID from his wallet and told him it was fake before handcuffing him. REAL ID is the identification U.S. citizens are required by law to have in order to travel through airports and enter federal buildings. It is considered a higher security form of identification.
“Apparently a REAL ID is not valid anymore. He has a REAL ID,” his cousin Shelah Venegas said. “We all made sure we have the REAL ID and went through the protocols the administration is asking for. … He has his REAL ID and then they see him and I guess because his English isn’t fluent and/or because he’s brown it’s fake, it’s not real.”
Garcia had told Noticias Telemundo that “they grabbed me real bad” and the handcuffs were placed “very hard” on him.
Garcia said he was released from the vehicle where he was held after he gave the arresting officials his Social Security number, which showed he is a U.S. citizen.
The arrest has left Garcia, who was born in Florida, shaken, particularly because the officers also arrested and detained his brother, who is not in the country legally, Venegas said. She added that Garcia lived with his brother. Their parents are from Mexico.
Leonardo Garcia Venegas.Telemundo
“He was actually pretty sore when he got back,” Venegas said of Garcia. “He said his arms were hurting and his hands. His wrists, you could see where he had all the marks from the handcuffs. … The way they put him on the ground, his knees also were hurting.”
She said they have been trying to find a lawyer but local ones have told them that it is nearly impossible to sue a federal agent. It is not clear from the video whether the authorities were federal immigration agents or local law enforcement carrying out enforcement duties.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement to NBC News that Garcia interfered with an arrest during a targeted worksite operation.
“He physically got in between agents and the subject they were attempting to arrest and refused to comply with numerous verbal commands,” said Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary. “Anyone who actively obstructs law enforcement in the performance of their sworn duties, including U.S. citizens, will of course face consequences which include arrest.”
The response did not address the dismissal of Garcia’s identification.
Garcia denied that he interrupted an arrest. He told NBC News that he was trying to take out his phone when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent took it and threw it to the ground and then an agent began grabbing him.
Venegas said Garcia’s brother has signed deportation papers because the family didn’t want him detained “forever” as they’ve seen happen to another family member, who was held for months in a Louisiana detention center.
“It’s inhumane, what they are doing to our people. They are treating them as if they were murderers,” she said.
Venegas said the immigration arrests are creating repercussions among Hispanics, even among U.S. citizens.
“It’s about race now. It’s not about whether you are here legally or not,” she said.
Her family owns a fairly large contracting company, she said, “and a lot of the people that work with us are not working. … They are refusing to go to work. They said they are not going to go until this stuff calms down.”
Venegas added that the majority of her family is self-employed and “we do the same thing every other citizen does.”
“It’s just insane we can’t be different, the color that we are. We contribute to this country the same way every other citizen does with their taxes,” she said. “But we have to be the ones that every time we go to work, we are going to be scared that we’re going to get discriminated.”
“I think about my family,” she said. “Even though a lot of them are citizens, I think about how we all work in the same area in construction and they can’t sit out there because they could literally get harassed or attacked the way my cousin did.”
ICE wrestled Alabama worker to the ground & detain him for hours—he is a U.S. citizen.
Young man was begging & shouting, "I am a U.S. citizen"—but that didn't stop ICE agents from dragging him off to a detention center.
Multiple sources shared details with the Daily Beast about a meeting in which the ABC News president delivered a message that left the co-hosts unnerved.
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/ABC
Disney and ABC News have asked the hosts of The View to tone down their political rhetoric, multiple sources told the Daily Beast.
Since President Donald Trump’s election in 2024, the panel of co-hosts on The View—Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sara Haines, Ana Navarro, Sunny Hostin, and Alyssa Farah Griffin—have consistently criticized Trump administration officials and policies.
But its constant focus on Trump and politics seems to have roiled the network’s top bosses, including Disney CEO Bob Iger and ABC News President Almin Karamehmedovic.
Almin Karamehmedovic lights the Empire State Building in Partnership with ABC News in Celebration of Nightline’s 45th Anniversary at The Empire State Building on March 28, 2025 in New York City.Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Empire State Realty Trust
Karamehmedovic convened a meeting with The View‘s executive producer Brian Teta and its hosts, and suggested the panel needed to broaden its conversations beyond its predominant focus on politics, two sources familiar with the meeting said. Karamehmedovic highlighted episodes with celebrity guests that he said were highly rated, one source said, and encouraged them to lean into such coverage moving forward.
The move was not framed as an edict, one source said, but the suggestion alone rankled the hosts. The group pushed back forcefully, with hosts like Navarro noting the show’s audience routinely seeks out its perspective on politics, especially when the administration’s radical attempts to upend the government can potentially affect their daily lives.
One source familiar with the meeting characterized the hosts as telling their boss, “‘This is what our audience wants. Isn’t it gonna look kind of bad if we’re all of a sudden not talking about politics?’”
Ultimately, the women found the requests “silly” and that “they were just going to keep doing their thing.”
Ellen Pompeo is a guest on “The View” on March 17, 2025.Al Drago/ABC via Getty Images
Still, the conversation continued to stay at top of mind for at least one of the co-hosts. During Disney’s Upfront presentation day to advertisers last week, an annual glitzy gathering where media companies seek to woo brands to advertise with their shows, Navarro had a direct conversation with Iger, according to multiple sources.
Navarro thanked Iger for allowing the hosts to continue doing their jobs in a politically turbulent environment, the sources said. Iger confirmed he supported the show—but he also reaffirmed that the show needed to tone down its political rhetoric, the sources said.
The conversation made clear the suggestion to tone down the politics went all the way to the top, the sources said.
ABC News did not comment, and a Disney spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. Navarro did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Bob Iger at the Los Angeles Premiere Of Marvel Studios’ “Thunderbolts*” at Dolby Theatre on April 28, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images
Another source familiar with the matter said ABC will “constantly have conversations with talent based on viewer feedback, and this instance was no different,” suggesting the show’s viewers have indicated that they want the show to be less political.
Despite suggestions otherwise by ABC’s top brass, the political coverage appears not to have affected the show’s ratings. The show was the No. 1 among daytime network talk shows and news programs during 2025’s first quarter, according to TheWrap, beating time slot competitor The Faulkner Focus on Fox Newsin both total viewers and women ages 25-54, its chief advertiser-focused demographic, throughout the quarter.
Even earlier this month, it maintained that No. 1 title, beating competitors like NBC’s TODAY Third Hour and TODAY with Jenna & Friends during the week of May 5, according to ABC.
The executives’ efforts to push The View in a less political direction highlight the current difficult circumstances facing media organizations as Trump and his administration set their sights on bending them to their will over critical coverage.
Trump got Disney to pay his presidential library $15 million and $1 million in legal fees in December when he sued the network and anchor George Stephanoupolous over an interview that mischaracterized a verdict that found him liable for sexual abuse as opposed to rape. Disney made the decision in part to avoid brand damage and risk stripping press freedom protections across the industry should it have lost at trial, according toThe New York Times.
Trump has also been at legal war with CBS and its parent company Paramount Global, suing the two for $20 billion over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. CBS has called the lawsuit baseless, but as Paramount’s controlling shareholder Shari Redstone seeks to merge the company with David Ellison’s Skydance Media, the company has entered into mediation talks with Trump to secure a settlement.
Federal Communications Chairman Brendan Carr, an outspoken supporter of Trump, has also launched an investigation into Disney and ABC over its diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, and said the 60 Minutes interview would factor into the FCC’s review of the merger. And on Wednesday, Trump lashed out at an NBC News reporter and suggested NBC’s parent company Comcast “ought to be investigated.”
“Bob Iger writes a check for $15 million and then the FCC opens an investigation into DEI? What are they thinking?” one source said. “If anybody could stand up to Trump, it’s Bob Iger, and he already decided not to.”
The View, the long-running opinion talk show that became creator Barbara Walters’ crowning achievement in her celebrated run at ABC News, has long been a major player in the political media landscape. Democrats like Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Harris have flocked to the show’s glass-adorned table to appeal to its predominantly female audience, and arun of Democrats and Republicans appearing on the show in 2019 promptedTheNew York Times Magazine to label it the “the most important TV show in America.”
Pundits speculated whether Harris’ admission at the table that she wouldn’t have done anything differently from President Joe Biden cost her the 2024 election, highlighting the show’s political relevance.
But just as common as its friendly approach to Democrats has been its vocal criticism of Trump and his policies. The show railed against the once-View regular—Trump appeared on the show more than a dozen times before effectively shunning it ahead of the 2016 election—and Goldberg warned last year his reelection could put the U.S. “in danger.”
But Trump won the election—a month after calling its panel “degenerates”—prompting the show to figure out its next move. The Daily Beast reported at the time that it planned to invite Trump to the table, though it had no plans to add an explicitly pro-Trump panelist.
Despite the conversations with Iger and Karamehmedovic, the hosts have continued to keep politics in focus this month. The women conducted a lengthy interview with former President Joe Biden and former first lady Jill Biden ahead of a book questioning his mental decline—though it was the Biden team that approached the show about the conversation, a Biden spokesperson told the Daily Beast.
Its “Hot Topics” segment on Tuesday also featured Behar questioning “when is Jake Tapper gonna write a book about the cognitive decline of the person who is in charge right now,” and Wednesday’s episode had a segment railing against “puppy killer” Homeland Security Kristi Noem for her bungled definition of the legal concept of habeas corpus.
But hints of a balancing act have emerged. During a robust discussion last week over the question of whether Democrats needed to focus on the question of Biden’s decline or move forward to fight Trump, Griffin appeared to strike a more balanced tone by highlighting how Trump’s low approval numbers were ahead of the Democratic Party.
“This table spends a lot of time criticizing Donald Trump and a lot of it is very valid and needs to happen, but it’s a fact his approval rating is 39 percent,” she said on Friday. “However, Democrats’ is 27 percent. People felt gaslit and lied to.”
That episode continued with a panel conversation about a Reddit post that asked whether Mother’s Day cards were appropriate for women who consider pets to be their “children.”
Detained children line up in the cafeteria at the Karnes County Residential Center in Karnes City, Texas, on 10 September 2014. Photograph: Eric Gay/AP
The Trump administration is trying to end a cornerstone immigration policy that requires the government to provide basic rights and protections to child immigrants in its custody.
The protections, which are drawn from a 1997 consent decree known as the Flores Settlement Agreement, limit the amount of time children can be detained by immigration officials. It also requires the government to provide children in its custody with adequate food, water and clean clothes.
The administration’s move to terminate the Flores agreement was long anticipated. In a court motion filed Thursday, the justice department argued that the Flores agreement should be “completely” terminated, claiming it has incentivized unauthorized border crossings and “prevented the federal government from effectively detaining and removing families”.
Donald Trump also tried to end these protections during his first term, making very similar arguments.
Ice arrests at immigration courts across the US stirring panic: ‘It’s terrifying’
Read more
The move to end protections follows a slew of actions by the Trump administration that target children, including restarting the practice of locking up children along with their parents in family detention. Immigration advocacy groups have alleged in a class-action lawsuit filed earlier this month that unaccompanied children are languishing in government facilities after the administration unveiled policies making it exceedingly difficult for family members in the US to take custody of them. The president and lawmakers have also sought to cut off unaccompanied children’s access to legal services and make it harder for families in detention to seek legal aid.
“Eviscerating the rudimentary protections that these children have is unconscionable,” said Mishan Wroe, senior attorney at the National Center for Youth Law. “At this very moment, babies and toddlers are being detained in family detention, and children all over the country are being detained and separated from their families unnecessarily.”
The effort to suspend the Flores agreement “bears the Trump administration’s hallmark disregard for the rule of law – and for the wellbeing of toddlers who have done no wrong”, said Faisal al-Juburi of the Texas-based legal non-profit Raices. “This administration would rather enrich private prison contractors with the $45bn earmarked for immigrant detention facilities in the House’s depraved spending bill than to uphold basic humanitarian protections for babies.”
The Trump administration in 2019 asked a judge to dissolve the Flores Settlement Agreement, but its motion was struck down. During the Biden administration, a federal judge agreed to partially lift oversight protections at the Department of Health and Human Services, but the agreement is still in place at the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agencies.
“Children who seek refuge in our country should be met with open arms – not imprisonment, deprivation and abuse,” said Sergio Perez, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law.
The settlement is named for Jenny Flores, a 15-year-old girl who fled civil war in El Salvador and was part of a class-action lawsuit alleging widespread mistreatment of children in custody in the 1980s.
Since the settlement agreement was reached in 1997, lawyers and advocates have successfully sued the government several times to end the mistreatment of immigrant children. In 2018, attorneys sued after discovering unaccompanied children had been administered psychotropic medication without informed consent.
In 2024, a court found that CBP had breached the agreement when it detained children and families at open-air detention sites at the US southern border without adequate access to sanitation, medical care, food, water or blankets. In some cases, children were forced to seek refuge in portable toilets from the searing heat and bitter cold.
1. Terrifying news for transgender people across the United States. In a late night development, the House Spending Bill was amended to ban transgender coverage for transgender ADULTS on medicaid!A manager's amendment removed the words "for minors."Subscribe to support my journalism.
I am certain that we will not hear about deficits and debt ever again from Republicans who are about to vote for a bill that adds more debt to a country’s balance sheet than any piece of legislation in the history of the human race.
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