“Manifest Destiny,” “annexation,” and “settlements” represent different terms with similar meanings: unethical and immoral robbery of other people’s land.
Green Line concrete wall separating Israel and Palestine. Security wall also known as West Bank Barrier.Photo: Shutterstock
On December 23, 2016, the 15-member United Nations Security Council took a highly controversial step by voting 14-0 (Resolution 2334) to condemn Israel’s construction of so-called “settlements” on the occupied West Bank taken after the 1967 War with its Arab neighbors.
The UN Resolution stated that Israeli settlements constitute “a flagrant violation under international law” and said that all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, must “immediately and completely cease.”
We must not use the past to justify surrendering to the supposed impossibilities posed by seemingly irreconcilable and intractable differences.
The United States chose to abstain, but throughout his presidency, Barack Obama had voiced the long-standing official policy of his country by designating Israeli settlements as a major impediment in any hoped-for two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then President-elect Donald Trump, on the other hand, blasted the United Nations’ vote. Trump’s proposed U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, a far-right-wing lawyer, did not support a “two-state solution,” but did support Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the “settlement” program, and Israel’s annexation of the occupied West Bank.
When in office, Trump unilaterally declared that the Golan Heights is a literal part of Israel. Trump’s unilateral movement of the U.S. embassy to the contested city of Jerusalem increased already inflamed tensions. He unilaterally pulled out of the Iranian nuclear deal, and Trump’s obvious support for and collusion with Netanyahu was intended to sway the Israeli election in Netanyahu’s favor.
Though declared illegal under international law, approximately 570,000 Israelis live in the more than 130 so-called “settlements” (a.k.a. stolen land) since the 1967 War. Approximately 475,000 Palestinians live in the West Bank and 230,000 in East Jerusalem.
Many see Israel’s “settlement” policy on the occupied West Bank in the same light as Russia’s illegal incursion into Eastern Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, which likewise threaten political and military stability in the area and further endanger world peace.
Historian Joel Spring refers to this “cultural genocide,” as “the attempt to destroy other cultures” through forced acquiescence and assimilation to majority rule and standards. This cultural genocide works through the process of “deculturalization,” which Spring describes as “the educational process of destroying a people’s culture and replacing it with a new culture.”
An example of “cultural genocide” and “deculturalization” is evident in the case of Christian European American domination over Native Americans, whom European Americans viewed as “uncivilized,” “godless heathens,” “barbarians,” and “devil worshipers.”
White Christian European Americans deculturalized indigenous peoples through many means: confiscation of land, forced relocation, undermining of their languages, cultures, and identities, forced conversion to Christianity, and the establishment of Christian day schools and off-reservation boarding schools far away from their people.
The expansion of the republic and movement west was, in part, justified by overriding philosophical underpinnings since the American Revolution. Called “Manifest Destiny,” it was based on the belief that God intended the United States to extend its holdings and its power across the wide continent of North America over indigenous peoples from East Coast to West. The doctrine of “manifest destiny” embraced a belief in American Anglo-Saxon superiority.
“This continent,” a congressman declared, “was intended by Providence as a vast theatre on which to work out the grand experiment of Republican government, under the auspices of the Anglo-Saxon race.”
A mid-19th century missionary wrote: “As tribes and nationals the Indians must perish and live only as men, [and should] fall in with Christian civilization that is destined to cover the earth.”
Throughout the Alaska territory, Christian missionaries, including Presbyterians, Catholics, and Moravians, vied to win converts. Simultaneously, the United States government issued laws barring Alaskan Indian ceremonies regarded as “pagan” and contrary to the spread of Christianity.
During the early years of the new republic, with its increasing population and desire for land, political leaders like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson advocated that Native American lands should be obtained through treaties and purchases.
President Jefferson, in 1803, wrote a letter to then-Tennessee political leader Andrew Jackson advising him to convince Native Americans to sell their “useless” forests to the U.S. government and become farmers. Jefferson and other government leaders overlooked the fact that this style of individualized farming was contrary to Native American communitarian spiritual and cultural traditions.
Later, however, when he inhabited the White House, Jackson argued that white settlers (a pleasant term for “land thieves”) had a “right” to confiscate Native American land. Though he proposed a combination of treaties and an exchange or trade of land, he maintained that white people had a right to claim any Native American lands that were not under cultivation. Jackson recognized as the only legitimate claims for Native American lands those on which they grew crops or made other “improvements.”
The Indian Removal Act of 1830 authorized President Jackson to confiscate Native American land east of the Mississippi River, “relocate” its former inhabitants, and exchange their former land with territory west of the River. The infamous “Trail of Tears” during Jackson’s presidency attests to the forced evacuation and redeployment of entire Native American nations during which many died of cholera, exposure to the elements, contaminated food, and other environmental hazards.
The Naturalization Act of 1790 excluded Native Americans from citizenship, considering them, paradoxically, as “domestic foreigners.” They were not accorded rights of citizenship until 1924, when Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act, though Asians continued to be denied naturalized citizenship status.
In addition, though Jackson founded the Democratic Party and brought greater popular control to government, as a farmer his wealth increased enormously through his enslavement of Africans, and he gave the lash to any who attempted escape.
I found a definition of “settler” as “a person who settles in an area, typically one with no or few previous inhabitants.” I would add an essential condition that for this person to settle, the area must not have prior claim by others who call it their home.
How could Columbus have discovered what would later be called “the Americas” when people lived on this land for an estimated 12,000 years after coming over the Bering Isthmus during a glacial age when sea levels dropped? How can one “discover” people who have been here so long? Actually, First Nation people discovered Columbus on their land!
We must interrogate (analyze) the concept of “settler,” of “discovery,” of “the New World” as distinguished from “the Old World.”
Say, for example, I own a house, and someone knocks on the door, walks in, pushes me outside, and claims: “I like your house, and I am now settling here. You get going on your way. Goodbye!” And he slammed the door in my face.
“Manifest Destiny,” “annexation,” and “settlements” represent different terms with similar meanings: unethical and immoral muggings and robbery of other people’s land. I fully support the United Nation’s courageous resolution.
I read on a different post that Christian nationalist feel entitled to force everyone to view their religious material. And only their religious matter. See they know that this country is a Christian nation and atheist have stolen it from them. Just like the 2020 election was stolen, and just like they know it is their country which to them means the maga right wing conservative minority. You just can not argue with these people, they are so convinced of their belief in a formerly religious country just as they are sure their god exists, and only their god. But it is not good enough to force their church doctrines on the public in our country. They need to force their god all over the world. Hugs. Scottie
Rep. Tim Walberg, a former Bible salesman, encouraged Ugandan leaders to resist U.S. efforts to roll back the vicious law.
Every once in a while, the right in the U.S. can’t help but look longingly at countries where repression of LGBTQ is a matter of law. But Rep. Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican, went one step further. He actually took a trip to Uganda to meet with leaders there andurge them to “stand firm”in support of their draconian anti-LGBTQ law,which includes the death penalty for gay people.
Walberg took the trip last October, but it escaped notice until Salon revealed it this week. Walberg was the keynote speaker at the Uganda’s National Prayer Breakfast. Uganda President Yoweri Museveni, who signed the Anti-Homosexuality Act into law in May, was among those present for Walberg’s speech. Museveni said that Walberg’s presence proved that there were Museveni later said that Walberg’s speech showed that some Americans “think like us.”
“Though the rest of the world is pushing back on you, though there are other major countries that are trying to get into you and ultimately change you, stand firm. Stand firm,” Walberg counseled the attendees.
Walberg cited the Bible as justification for a law to kill people. “Worthless is the thought of the world,” Walberg said. “[W]orthless, for instance, is the thought of the World Bank, or the World Health Organization, or the United Nations, or, sadly, some in our administration in America who say, ‘You are wrong for standing for values that God created,’ for saying there are male and female and God created them.’”
“Whose side do we want to be on?” Walberg continued. “God’s side. Not the World Bank, not the United States of America, necessarily, not the U.N. God’s side.”
Walberg explicitly aligned himself with Museveni and the Ugandan legislators who overwhelmingly passed the “Kill the Gays” bill. Referring to the Ugandan president, Walberg said, “He knows that he has a Parliament, and … even congressmen like me who will say, ‘We stand with you.’”
A former Bible salesman, Walberg has always been a standard issue religious conservative in Congress. HRC designated him a member of its Hall of Shame in 2014. This year he was the author of a provision he called the Parental Rights Over the Education and Care of Their (PROTECT) Kids Act, part of a larger GOP bill that went nowhere.Under Walberg’s provision, schools would be required to get parental consent before changing a student’s pronounsor preferred names.
His trip to Uganda was sponsored by the U.S. National Prayer Breakfast, a formerly bipartisan group that has recently taken a hard-right turn. The new head of the groupis Caroline Aderholt,a former leader Concerned Women of America, a long-time anti-LGBTQ group. Aderholt’s husband is Rep. Robert Aderholt, a Republican from Alabama who once tried to stop adoption agencies from allowing gay people to adopt.
While Walberg has gotten blowback for his comments, don’t expect his fellow Republicans to condemn him. If anything, Walberg is saying what at least a few other Christian nationalist types in the ranks are thinking as well. He’s just another reminder that when it comes to today’s Republican party, nothing is considered entirely beyond the pale, even killing LGBTQ people.
As conservatives become more radicalized and grow more detached from reality, their perception of the world is changing as well. In this video we’ll look at several delusional claims made by conservatives.
Republican presidential primary candidate Nikki Haley made a massive miscalculation when she denied the reality of the civil war during a New Hampshire town hall event.
By my dogs that love gravy, how far entrenched and deep is this fascist racist bigoted stain go in the US? WTF. A bit long, but the first half is riveting in the way these people think. They all want to act out, to harm others, to do what ever they feel they should have the right against anyone else … but they fight hard not to be held accountable for what they have done. They love to shout their racist bigoted misogynistic shit as loud as possible and when they get the chance to act on it, but they know it is not acceptable so when called out on it they hide. Hugs. Scottie
There are a lot of photos and stuff at the website I don’t want to take the time to individually copy over. To see the “chilling images from Jan 6th …” please go to the link above.
The young man is seen running with the crowd of Trump supporters toward the U.S. Capitol early in the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021. He wears a thigh-length dark blue coat, his face almost fully covered with a mask. The bill of an off-white baseball cap pokes out of the hood of his gray sweatshirt.
At 2:35 p.m. and 20 seconds, a security camera inside the Capitol captures the man as he steps across the threshold of the west door of the upper west terrace, holding up his phone, apparently capturing the moment himself. Immediately behind him is the far-right internet personality “Baked Alaska.”
For a few seconds, his distinctive pink Adidas Continental 80 sneakers are visible.
The security footage is among videos released during the trial of another Jan. 6 participant, a member of the Proud Boys prosecuted for seditious conspiracy. In it, and in other photos from the day, his face remains partly concealed behind the mask.
But all signs point to Oliver Krvaric, a young Republican star and scion of a powerful GOP family from San Diego. Krvaric is most notable for his job at the time of the riot.
A USA TODAY review of arrests concluded Krvaric would be the first full-time employee of the Trump administration identified entering the Capitol in the insurrection. On Jan. 6, 2021, Krvaric was working for the Office of Personnel Management on a short-lived Trump executive order that sought to rid federal agencies of certain diversity and inclusion training.
By then, the 22-year-old had built a public persona as an up-and-coming student GOP leader. Even earlier than that, his name had been used to create an identity on a site for white supremacists.
Asked whether he was at the Jan. 6 riot, Krvaric initially told USA TODAY he was not. Pressed about the photos that online researchers say show him that day, Krvaric acknowledged he attended former President Donald Trump’s speech, but said he didn’t go inside the Capitol. Asked about images that appear to show him inside the Capitol, he then said he didn’t remember whether he went inside. Sent copies and links to the footage, he stopped responding.
As for the online persona, an email address in Krvaric’s first and middle names was used in 2016 to create a profile on a neo-Nazi website. That user praised Adolf Hitler, backed deportation of non-white people and expressed disgust of the LGBTQ+ population.
Kvaric said he did not recall the posts. He did not deny making them, and said he did “not particularly” recognize the email address behind them.
“I don’t know if that’s long in the past, or — I wouldn’t recognize anything,” Krvaric said about the posts, which appeared on the now-defunct white supremacist forum “Iron March.” “I just don’t have a recollection.”
Krvaric led the College Republicans while at San Diego State University. In a 2020 opinion column in the San Diego Union Tribune, he penned a portentous message:“The temporary upheaval that consumed the Republican Party up through the early months of the new administration is nothing like what’s coming should President Trump lose re-election in November.”
The following January brought the insurrection. Since then, more than 1,000 people have been charged for crimes ranging from simply entering the building to seditious conspiracy. But as the third anniversary approaches, hundreds of other participants who may be identifiable in photos and videos remain free.
Online sleuths used high-tech facial recognition software to try matching photos of Krvaric to photos from Jan. 6. That technology pointed toward the man in the blue coat.
But other evidence also places Krvaric on the streets of the capital that day.
Krvaric was working in D.C. at the time, and acknowledges being at Trump’s rally on Jan 6. Others close to him had also heard he was involved in the insurrection, including two former colleagues who told USA TODAY they heard Krvaric’s younger brother bragging about Krvaric storming the Capitol. One of the former colleagues reviewed the photos from the day for USA TODAY and identified the man in the mask as Krvaric.
The man in the blue coat was also photographed waving a flag connected to a far-right group Krvaric has been photographed with in the past.
And then there are the distinctive shoes. A year and a half before the Jan. 6 insurrection, Krvaric appeared in photographs from a San Diego Republican Party event. On his feet in those photos: Adidas Continental 80s. Color: pink.
At the insurrection
A spokesman for the Office of Personnel Management, which serves as a sort of human resources department for federal agencies, confirmed that Oliver Krvaric was employed by the department as a “confidential assistant” from November 2020 to January 2021.
Krvaric also lists his work for the Trump administration on his LinkedIn page. He now works for a security firm, and his LinkedIn page says he’s looking for political work.
In his interview with USA TODAY, where he acknowledged being in Washington on Jan. 6, he initially said he was at work that day, not at the Capitol.
Only after being asked about the photographs of the man in the blue coat in the crowd, holding a Trump flag and a blue “America First” flag connected to the far-right extremist “Groyper” movement, did Krvaric acknowledge he was on the streets of the capital that day. He said he attended Trump’s now-infamous speech at the Ellipse, where the former President called on protestors to march to where the votes from the 2020 election were being certified.
“I was not in the Capitol. I did not go into any offices, I didn’t wander the halls,” he said. “I was not in the premises.”
Then asked if that meant he truly never crossed the threshold of the building, he said, “What do you mean by ‘the threshold’?”
Told of the surveillance video from inside the Capitol, Krvaric said: “I don’t know about that, I’d have to see it.” USA TODAY sent him a text message with a link to that footage in early December. He has not responded.
In the footage, the man in the blue coat walks down a corridor toward a second door, looks inside and nods his head enthusiastically, before retracing his steps. As he heads toward an exterior door, a camera catches him in full frame: ball cap, blue coat and pink Adidas shoes.
It’s unknown whether he went elsewhere in the Capitol. Mere presence inside the building has been enough for a charge in other cases. Among the 1,000-plus people charged for events that day, one of the most common charges is “entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds.”
Anthime Gionet, the far-right extremist influencer known as “Baked Alaska,” who livestreamed video online as he walked into the Capitol at the same time, was charged with knowingly entering and remaining on restricted grounds, violent entry and disorderly conduct. In January he was sentenced to two months in prison and ordered to pay $2,500. Other rioters who committed vandalism and violence have been sentenced to harsher sentences.
The idea that Krvaric participated in the Jan. 6 Capitol raid has circulated in political circles in his hometown.
Two former colleagues of Oliver Krvaric told USA TODAY Krvaric’s younger brother, Victor, bragged to them that Oliver had entered the Capitol on Jan. 6. Two other former colleagues said they heard this rumor from people Victor told. All four sources asked not to be identified because they still work in local politics.
Victor Krvaric declined comment for this story.
One of Oliver Krvaric’s former colleagues said she was concerned enough to alert the FBI in late 2021. She’s the one who was shown the footage of the man in the blue coat and commented that it showed Krvaric’s “very distinctive face” – which is long, with close-set eyes.
“Oh yes that’s him,” she wrote in a message.
The FBI, asked whether it had received a tip or was investigating Krvaric, declined to comment.
The man in the security footage is not apparently included on current FBI “wanted” lists. However, as USA TODAY reported earlier this year, even among those whose faces have been published on FBI lists, many have yet to be charged. A USA TODAY report in March identified two such people; the FBI arrested them in August and November – nearly three years after the insurrection.
House speaker Mike Johnson has promised to release tens of thousands of hours of security footage from the Capitol in the coming months.
Research about Krvaric was first provided to USA TODAY by a member of the Sedition Hunters, a group of volunteer sleuths who have used facial recognition and other research to identify hundreds of people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Kevin Bowyer, a computer science professor and expert on facial recognition, said because the man in the blue coat’s full face isn’t seen in footage and photographs, any facial recognition match is a starting point for further research.
USA TODAY reviewed the surveillance videos, photos from outside the Capitol, social media photos identifying Krvaric, and the leaked online data and public records that linked him to the email address for the profile that made the white-supremacist online posts.
Working for the federal government
The list of people already charged or convicted for activity inside the Capitol that day includes numerous active-dutymilitary members, and at least onepolitical appointee, but does not so far appear to include regular federal employees.
The details of Krvaric’s work as a federal employee aren’t clear. The spokesman wouldn’t discuss his work at the federal agency beyond confirming dates of employment. Krvavic’s LinkedIn page says he was hired by the OPM “for immediate assistance with enforcement and implementation of Executive Order 13950.”
That order, signed by Trump on Sept. 22, 2020, purports to “promote unity in the Federal workforce, and to combat offensive and anti-American race and sex stereotyping and scapegoating.”
At the time, a national debate was raging over the teaching of so-called “Critical Race Theory” in schools, colleges and places of work, and this order was widely seen as Trump’s contribution to the pushback. President Joe Biden revoked the order the day he was inaugurated.
For Krvaric, the brief stint working in Washington perhaps couldn’t have been a better fit with his own worldview. It also aligned with a profile that had been created, years earlier, on the notorious neo-Nazi forum “Iron March.”
Posts on a neo-Nazi forum
On Sept. 12, 2016, a new user posted on Iron March. The newcomer used the handle “NeoSvensk.” “Svensk” means “Swedish” in the Swedish language. Tony Krvaric, Oliver’s father, emigrated to the United States from Sweden.
Three years after the post appeared, Iron March was hacked and the site’s data was posted online for all to see. The data reveals that the NeoSvensk account was created by someone using an email address that begins “OllyIvan.” Ivan is Oliver Krvaric’s middle name. The IP address connected to the account was geo-located in San Diego.
The username NeoSvensk was also used to create an account on the instant messaging app Kik. That account’s profile picture is a stylized photograph resembling Krvaric.
In Iron March posts obtained by USA TODAY, NeoSvensk – applying to join the forum and meet like-minded white supremacists – bragged of his Swedish ancestry. He talked openly of his admiration for Hitler and fascism and his disdain for multiculturalism, and used a derisive term for gay men, whom he described as “utterly revolting.”
Other details from those accounts all show alignment between Oliver Krvaric and the person writing as NeoSvensk: The poster said he was 18 — Krvaric’s age in September 2016; that he was attending university and living in California — Krvaric lived in San Diego at the time and graduated from high school that spring; and that he has a grandmother in Malmö, Sweden — where Krvaric’s father grew up.
“I understand working from within the current system is frowned upon but it’s the only way I know,” the NeoSvensk account wrote.
Five years later, Oliver Krvaric was working inside the federal government.
Asked about the posts on Iron March, Krvaric said he didn’t recall making them. But when he was asked directly if he recognized the “OllyIvan” email address used to create the online accounts, Krvaric said, “Not particularly.”
“In order to mobilize and win the trust of their voters, Republican candidates must increasingly demonstrate their commitment to ‘MAGA,’” he wrote in a July 2020 opinion column in the San Diego Union Tribune.
When Carlson asked Krvaric what he thought about the H1-B visa program, which allows foreign nationals to work in the United States, Krvaric responded:
“Personally, I think it’s unconscionable … American patriots, going back to the 1990s and even further on, have repeatedly sounded the alarm on the guest worker abuse that’s displacing American workers.”
On Iron March, NeoSvensk had discussed immigration in other terms, expressing a particular admiration for the British fascist Oswald Mosley.
“[T]he accomplishments of white Europeans and their frequency vastly and significantly outweighs anything ever produced or built by those of any other race or continent,” a typical post reads. “I have no qualms with forcibly deporting and repatriating all non-whites from Sweden,” adds another post.
In interviews with USA TODAY, Krvaric stressed his conservative values and doubled down on his support for former president Trump. He disputed the categorization of his politics as “extremist.”
“The left will consider any conservative platform not entirely focused on lukewarm fiscal policy to be extreme,” he wrote by email. “They would prefer the GOP to be a defanged party.”
A family history
Tony Krvaric, patriarch of the Krvaric family, has been well-known in political circles in California for decades. While he no longer heads the local GOP, the elder Krvaric retains political power behind-the-scenes, said Larry Remer, a political consultant based in San Diego.
“He’s still a player in Republican politics,” Remer said. “He’s one of the local wise men of the Republican party.”
In 2020, an old animated video surfaced of the then-chairman of the San Diego Republican Party. The video, produced decades earlier, features photographs of Hitler doing a Nazi salute and swastikas, interspersed with photos of a young Tony Krvaric wearing dark sunglasses. It also depicts one man with a swastika drawn on his neck.
The elder Krvaric did not respond to phone calls and text messages from USA TODAY requesting an interview, but he condemned the video in an August 2020 interview with the San Diego Union Tribune, and said it was created as part of a smear campaign against him.
“Of course it’s in bad taste and it’s offensive,” he told the newspaper. “All those things go without saying.”
Last year, Victor Krvaric, Oliver’s younger brother who was a Marine reservist and now works for the family investment business, was investigated by the Marine Corps for alleged ties to white supremacist groups including the extremist Texas-based group Patriot Front.
Krvaric was separated from the Corps in May 2022, a Corps spokesman told USA TODAY.
According to copies of Patriot Front’s online chats, which were leaked online by the journalism collective Unicorn Riot, Victor Krvaric allegedly told a recruiter for the group that he was introduced to right-wing literature by his older brother.
On one topic, however, Oliver and Victor’s father, Tony Krvaric, has made a public comment: On Jan. 7, 2021, he retweeted a tweet from USA TODAY calling for help identifying people who broke into the Capitol the day before. He added a caption:
“I’m 100% on board with prosecuting everyone who broke the law yesterday.”
These laws are not based on medical science nor on any evidence of the conspiracies to turn cis kids into trans kids. That doesn’t happen any more than straight kids get turned gay by seeing a rainbow flag or reading a book with LGBTQIA characters. No these laws are based on bigotry and religious doctrines. How many times do you hear anti-trans people say god doesn’t make mistakes, so you have to be the gender of your body. But they said the same thing about people being gay decades ago, that people couldn’t be born gay because god did make mistakes. Guess what, it is not a mistake to be gay if you are gay and it is not a mistake to be trans if you identify as a gender different from what is showing between your legs. It is ignorance, hate, bigotry, and religious indoctrination masquerading as fake concern for “the children”. Hugs. Scottie
“Transgender children should receive equal treatment under the law. Parents should have the right to make the most fundamental decisions about how to care for their children,” Winmill said in his ruling.
“Every family wants what is best for their children, and families who love and accept their transgender youth are no different,” Li Nowlin-Sohl, senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project said in a statement. “These dangerous efforts to control our bodies and our families threaten the well-being of trans youth, the strength of our communities, and the ability of every family to determine what’s best for their child.”
“This victory is significant for Idaho transgender youth and their parents,” one advocate said.
A federal court ruled on Tuesdaythat an Idaho law prohibiting doctors from providing transgender minors with access to gender-affirming care is likely unconstitutional and blockedthe law from taking effect. The gender-affirming healthcare ban, which was originally planned to go into effect on January 1, would have made providing puberty blockers and hormone therapies to transgender youth a felony.
“This victory is significant for Idaho transgender youth and their parents, and will have an immediate positive impact on their daily lives,” Leo Morales, executive director of the ACLU of Idaho, said in a statement.
Judge B. Lynn Winmill of the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho heldthat Idaho’s anti-trans law likely violated the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause under the 14th Amendment.
“Transgender children should receive equal treatment under the law. Parents should have the right to make the most fundamental decisions about how to care for their children,” Winmill said in his ruling.
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“Every family wants what is best for their children, and families who love and accept their transgender youth are no different,” Li Nowlin-Sohl, senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project said in a statement. “These dangerous efforts to control our bodies and our families threaten the well-being of trans youth, the strength of our communities, and the ability of every family to determine what’s best for their child.”
Another plaintiff in the lawsuit, Pam Poe, a 15-year-old trans girl, “struggled with depression, anxiety and self-harm” before receiving gender-affirming care which “greatly improved” her mental health. If the gender-affirming healthcare ban went into effect, her and her family would have considered leaving the state.
“This judicial decision is a much-needed ray of hope for trans people amid a years-long onslaught against their rights to access health care and ability to navigate the world around them,” Morales said in a press release. “Everyone should be free to live and thrive in their authentic identity, which means transgender people should not be shut out of accessing medically sound health care.”
Idaho is one of 22 states that have restricted or banned transgender youth from accessing gender-affirming care, according to the Movement Advancement Project(MAP). In a recent report, MAP described the gender-affirming healthcare bans as part of a “war against LGBTQ people in America and their very right and ability to openly exist.” While many of these bans have been temporarily blocked by the courts, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixthand EleventhCircuits have reversed lower court injunctions, allowing bans in Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama to go into effect.
Research by the Trevor Projectshows that debates around anti-trans bills negatively affect transgender and nonbinary youth’s mental health and a majority of those trans youth (55 percent) said anti-trans bills “very negatively” affected their mental health. Gender-affirming healthcare bans don’t just hurt transgender and nonbinary people, but also affect the health and well-being of LGBTQ+ adults, according to a Human Rights Campaign poll. The poll found that 8 in 10 LGBTQ adults said that the bans made them feel less safe and “worsen[ed] harmful stereotypes, discrimination, hate and stigma.”
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Remember there is no Hamas in the West bank. However, while the Palestinians are forbidden to have any guns, the settlers are allowed to be fully armed. I recently posted how a settler shot and killed a Palestinian man who the settlers were taking his land, while IDF soldiers were standing there watching. The settlers routinely take the positions, entire homes, lands, crops, and smash the property they don’t steal from the Palestinians. All with IDF soldiers standing there watching. The Palestinians have the same status as slaves did in the 1840s US southern states. None! Plus as this video shows, the killing of Palestinian children in the West Bank is at an all-time high as well. Now do you understand what fuels Hamas and the anger the Palestinians feel towards Jewish people and Israel? Think how you would feel if you were treated like that where you live? Hugs. Scottie
Green Line concrete wall separating Israel and Palestine. Security wall also known as West Bank Barrier.Photo: Shutterstock
Will Carless
Scottie's Playtime 