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
Judge’s deadline looms for Trump administration to return man mistakenly deported
The administration has conceded the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a green card holder, was an “administrative error,” but it has resisted a judge’s order to bring him back to the U.S.
EXCLUSIVE: The Trump administration has acknowledged that it grabbed a Maryland father with protected status and mistakenly deported him to El Salvador—but claims that courts are powerless to order his return, @NickMiroff reports: https://t.co/GLR1VzwGzE
The Trump Administration admitted in court filings that it made “an administrative error” when it deported a protected status holder—the father and husband of U.S. citizens—to a notorious maximum-security prison in El Salvador.
Trump’s tariffs are a direct attack on Europe. We won’t let it slide. The EU is gearing up to strike back: IP rights suspension, blocking U.S. tech giants from public contracts, and more. This isn’t just a trade war—it’s a sovereignty war. Trump fired the first shot. Europe will… pic.twitter.com/wZQKm2sUaN
Shoppers in Denmark boycott American goods over Trump admin's push to own Greenland: “We love the U.S. and the culture, but we just dislike the president." https://t.co/fZgeN26vgm via @nbcnews
— Lesley Abravanel 🪩 (@lesleyabravanel) April 1, 2025
MASSIVE SHIFTPro-democracy channels on YouTube are now growing faster than right-wing channels for the first time.MeidasTouch is proud to lead the way as the fastest-growing YouTube channel in Q1 2025.Keep this momentum going: YouTube.com/@meidastouch
Almost half of the country’s health insurance now rests in the hands of a man who once sold miracle pills — with zero proof they worked — on daytime TV.
It is imperative that the stories of transgender people real and fictional are told.We cannot allow ourselves to be forced into defending our very human existence at all turns, cornered by baseless accusations and animus from talking heads and politicians.The onus of hearsay is on them. Not us.
Palestine is undergoing a daily mass slaughter event. The Holocaust of Gaza is underway and the US Senate just approved another $8.8 billion in military aid to Israel.The shots out of Rafah that aren't of dead children are nothing short of apocalyptic
He’s tanking the economy, destroying our standing in the world, depriving women and LGBTQ communities of their fundamental rights, attacking the environment, disappearing legal immigrants, gutting Veteran’s benefits and Social Security. And he’s making you pay for his golf trips while he’s at it.
No one has ever been released from CECOT in El Salvador. I imagine Bukele will not allow it simply because this Kilmar will talk to the media in the US and could be a witness for ICC investigations into human rights abuses.
He’s tanking the economy, destroying our standing in the world, depriving women and LGBTQ communities of their fundamental rights, attacking the environment, disappearing legal immigrants, gutting Veteran’s benefits and Social Security. And he’s making you pay for his golf trips while he’s at it.
I love how Rev. Ed Trevors looks at other faiths and religions. They are not a threat to him, his religion, nor his god. I personally think if a person’s faith doesn’t harm others and helps them it is grand even if I don’t believe the same way. If you get benefit from your faith, your god, your religion and cause no harm to others … and maybe even helps other then it is a grand thing. Remember even though I am an atheist I was rescued at 17 yrs old by a very devout Christian. He did not turn his back on an abused kid like so many others did. So I don’t, do not, believe that religion poisons everything. It is like everything else in life it is how you use it that makes it good or bad. If you use your faith, your god as a crutch for your own hate, if you claim your deity hates others based on who you hate … then you are not following the Christian Jesus but maybe the one that tempted him. As Belle and Beau say … It is just a thought. Hugs.
Reverend Ed Trevors did a video on this. He liked the guys message but thought the way he did it was wrong. For me it is amazing that in Florida he was not seriously hurt by the police that came to the scene. They read his message and did not use their authority to harm him for it. As you know in Florida the authorities are not respectful or kind to those who are expressing a message of kindness, tolerance, and acceptance of others. Hugs
By Melinda Henneberger Updated March 31, 2025 6:57 PM
“I wasn’t preaching hate or using profanity,” says Jimbo Gillcrist. Then he was thrown to the ground. Melinda Henneberger
A man who walked up to the pulpit at the church he’d grown up in, Holy Spirit Catholic Church in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park, a few minutes before last Sunday’s 11 a.m. Mass was soon wrestled to the ground by four parishioners.
Jimbo Gillcrist had just started to recite his own version of the “Our Father,” and to say how we’re all God’s children. He had intended to talk to his fellow Catholics about care for the migrant, but he didn’t get to before being taken down, marched out and handcuffed by OP police.
“I thought the worst that could happen is maybe they’d try to shout me down and ask me to leave,” Gillcrist told me in an interview on Friday. “I in no way thought I’d be tackled in a church.”
When one of those who removed him called the police, they reported, “He has long hair and a beard.”
I know that because I listened to the 38-minute audio of the whole thing that was recorded on Gillcrist’s phone, which his removers took away from him but failed to stop from recording.
So I can also say that the police who responded were a lot more chill than the church folk, one of whom asked the others, “Is anybody armed?” “Mine is in my car,” one responded.
“Mine is, too,” said another. All the better to protect followers of Christ from someone quoting Christ? Some horrible things have happened in churches throughout history, actually, so I could understand safety being a concern.
But the back-and-forth between Gillcrist and those who made him leave suggests they were more focused on propriety.
Holy Spirit’s pastor, Fr. Justin Hamilton, did not respond to a Friday message asking about what happened.
If Gillcrist’s name sounds familiar, he’s the theology teacher fired from Kansas City’s Rockhurst High School last November after telling his students that it would be their moral duty as Catholics to stand up against mass deportations. So here he is, doing that, or trying to.
‘Brother, you need to leave’ After he started his prayer, a priest approached him at the pulpit: “Come with me. Turn the sound off! Brother, you need to leave.”
And then, after the sounds of a very quick takedown came this: “Stay still. We’re not going to hurt you.”
“You already used violence against me in a church.”
“You’re trespassing.” “Trespassing? I’m a baptized Catholic.” “It’s inappropriate.” “To pray?” “There’s an appropriate time.” “It is the appropriate time.”
“No, you have to listen to your authorities, which is your pastor.”
As Gillcrist was taken out, he raised his voice for the first and only time, “Love your neighbor as yourself! And who is my neighbor?”
When police arrived, an officer asked those who had marched him out, “Did he do anything physical?”
“He pushed our priest off the steps” one answered, “but he didn’t fall or anything.”
A second officer arrived and said, “Is he the one who pushed the priest? Put him in handcuffs.”
“But I didn’t,” Gillcrist insisted.
We’ll figure it out, one of the officers said. And they did, while Gillcrist sat in the back of the patrol car in cuffs.
Video shows the moments before Jimbo Gillcrist was taken down at Holy Spirit Catholic Church. ‘So I see you mention Gaza and Ukraine’ Officers asked Gillcrist some questions as telling as his answers, so I’m just going to let the recording play:
“Why are they saying you pushed a priest?”
“They were trying to pull me away from the pulpit. I grabbed the pulpit and just held on. I didn’t push anyone. They had four guys grabbing me and dragging me off there.”
“What made you want to preach today?” “I’m worried about human beings, our brothers and sisters who live within our midst and are being targeted by the government.”
“What do you consider to be targeted by the government? What class of people are you …”
“Undocumented immigrants.”
“So you don’t agree with deportations and things like that?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did you say anything like that?”
“I didn’t even get there.”
Looking at a copy of Gillcrist’s prepared remarks, the officer said, “So I see you mention Gaza and Ukraine in here. What’s your message with that?”
“They’re our brothers and sisters. When we stop seeing people that way it’s so easy to start making laws or enacting policies that harm them.”
In the end, another officer said he had talked to the pastor and there wouldn’t be any charges for now, but “if you do return here, you will be charged with trespassing.”
So was this a pointless provocation or an important disruption?
I understand those who say church needs to be a refuge from politics. At the same time, I don’t see how you could take Matthew Chapter 25 seriously — “for I was a stranger and you gave me no welcome” — and register no protest right now.
Where is American Oscar Romero?
Jesus spoke a lot about care for the stranger, who is these days being snatched off the street without any due process and used by smiling Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem as a prop — with a shaved head and few clothes, looking shamefully for us not unlike a prisoner in Dachau.
If you’re an actress from Canada, maybe things will eventually be made right, but if not, who knows? The danger everyone ought to see is that if you can be picked up and shipped out without any hearing for supporting Palestinians — and without due process, we really don’t know that it’s any more than that — then you can also be sent away for supporting Israel, or Ukraine.
Or Jesus, or even Donald Trump.
Gillcrist belongs to a different, less conservative parish now. But what he was thinking in going to Holy Spirit, he said, is that those in his original faith home may not hear his point of view very often. If he could move even one person who doesn’t like what’s going on a little closer to speaking out about that, he had to try.
Of course, his effort might also have had the opposite effect. He went, too, because he sees the Catholic Church in the U.S. as silent when it should be strong.
“Where is the American Romero?” he asked, referring to Oscar Romero, the sainted Salvadoran archbishop assassinated in 1980 for standing up against a repressive regime.
Gillcrist had just started speaking when he was stopped, so I don’t know that he had the chance to change that one mind, or that he would have even if he’d been allowed to finish.
I do know, however, that many are wondering how to make this country a place where both people and the rule of law matter again. They’re not sure how to stop our slide into autocracy.
I’m not, either, but we do know we have to try and then try some more. Whether or not Gillcrist went about it the right away, I give him credit for looking for different ways to express his straight-from-Jesus dissent.
Because for those of us revulsed by what’s going on, smiling along like we’re still in the “before times” is no longer possible. This story was originally published March 30, 2025 at 8:05 AM.
This video touches just briefly on child abuse in that the republicans / clergy / highly religious do in the defense of the LGBTQ+ especially trans people accused of it. The Rev. Trevors is a real supporter of the LGBTQ+ and he doesn’t like it when Christians use his god / bible to harm others. Hugs
The defense secretary, along with the wider Trump administration, has spent its months in office purging the Pentagon, military and federal government of anything it deems diversity related, which has been widely interpreted by the military services and many others to mean anything that recognizes women and people with minority backgrounds.
Hegseth issued a vague order for the Defense Department to remove all “news articles, photos, and videos promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), including content related to critical race theory, gender ideology, and identity-based programs.”
Display case at the U.S. Naval Academy which housed removed items that commemorated female Jewish graduates. (Photo courtesy of Military Religious Freedom Foundation)
The U.S. Naval Academy has confirmed that officials there removed items commemorating female Jewish graduates from a historic display ahead of a visit to the school by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, or MRFF, a nonprofit group that advocates for religious freedom, first reported on the move after its members noticed the removal of the items on display at the Commodore Uriah P. Levy Center and Jewish Chapel.
Cmdr. Ashley Hockycko confirmed late Tuesday that the historical items honoring the Jewish graduates had been removed but said that it was done so “mistakenly.” “U.S. Naval Academy leadership is immediately taking steps to review and correct the unauthorized removal,” she added.
The removal appears to be the latest example of military and defense officials removing displays, websites and other materials honoring the achievements of women and minorities within the military, often with the presumption of acting on Hegseth’s orders or reacting to his preferences and beliefs.
The defense secretary, along with the wider Trump administration, has spent its months in office purging the Pentagon, military and federal government of anything it deems diversity related, which has been widely interpreted by the military services and many others to mean anything that recognizes women and people with minority backgrounds.
Hegseth issued a vague order for the Defense Department to remove all “news articles, photos, and videos promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), including content related to critical race theory, gender ideology, and identity-based programs.”
Some of that content has been restored after the removals became public. However, Hegseth’s office has not offered a full accounting of what has been removed to date.
MRFF founder and President Mikey Weinstein told Military.com in an interview Wednesday that his organization heard from 31 Naval Academy faculty, Midshipmen and staff, who were “outraged” by the removal of the items.
According to the MRFF, the displays containing items from male Jewish graduates and service members were left untouched.
However, the items were removed for only a short time, and officials told Military.com that they had been restored by Tuesday evening, having been gone less than a day.
The military academy also purged nearly 400 books from its library around the time of Hegseth’s visit as well, an official confirmed to Military.com. The books were banned under the Trump administration push to purge materials related to diversity, and were culled from library shelves before the defense secretary’s visit to the academy, according to The Associated Press.
The move comes about a week after the Capital Gazette, an Annapolis newspaper, reported that leaders at the Naval Academy didn’t think they needed to remove any books since President Donald Trump’s January executive order banning materials on diversity applied to kindergarten through 12th-grade schools that receive federal funding — not colleges.
The Navy would not offer a list of the books removed when asked.
The orders and policies claiming to target “diversity, equity and inclusion” — a term that has taken on a difficult-to-define and amorphous meaning under the Trump administration — are leaving officials in the Pentagon and the military branches frustrated. They feel that many of the policies being released by Hegseth demand urgency but lack specifics and are open to interpretation.
One official who remained anonymous to speak freely without fear of retaliation frustratedly noted to Military.com that this dynamic sets up a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation.”
If the military services and their various offices overreact and remove content that becomes a scandal, they are slammed by Hegseth and his staff for “malicious compliance.”
That dynamic played out several weeks ago when the Pentagon was forced to walk back the removal of a website honoring trailblazing baseball player and Army veteran Jackie Robinson.
In a March 21 video, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell admitted that “some important content was inadvertently pulled offline” and attributed that to “the realities of AI tools and other software.” He said content was being both “mistakenly removed” and “maliciously removed.”
Meanwhile, the official went on to note, if the services take directives at their literal meaning, which was seemingly what the Naval Academy did when it decided it didn’t need to purge its library since it was not a K-12 school, that leads to the perception of noncompliance with orders and directives.
The result, according to the official, is a very uneven and ad hoc application of policy that leaves employees and officials paralyzed, frustrated and uncertain, with little more to go on than what they see in public statements like Parnell’s videos or Hegseth’s appearances on television.
“History is not DEI,” Parnell declared in his video.
“What does that mean? What am I supposed to do with that?” the official said.
