Newsweek observed that the White Dudes for Harris X account had been suspended after the group held a star-studded virtual call on Monday night that raised more than $4 million.
The automated message when the account was suspended read: “X suspends accounts which violate the X rules.” Mike Nellis, who is involved in the organization, shared an update on Tuesday explaining that while the X account is live again, it still remains suspended.
He said the account is “permanently in read-only mode,” meaning it cannot post. When contacted by Newsweek for comment, X’s press office responded: “Busy now, please check back later.”
Classic. @elonmusk puts false video smearing VP Harris with lies in an AI generated audio/video of statements never made. He violates his own rules but because he’s on the wrong side of history now is reduced to muzzling honest support for #Kamala4President2024 . https://t.co/VTCxKDixLL
Technically not GOP, but definitely a platform for white racist bigots, Nazis, and other hate-filled bigots. Which, I suppose, is pretty much the same thing nowadays.
I like to combine the old name into the new: Xitter, with the X pronounced as /sh/, because that is exactly what it has become since Musk took over. In a similar fashion, the messages are now xits, with x pronounced the same way
At the risk of repeating myself until the end of time, I continue to be annoyed that Kamala Harris and her allies emphasize how she “stood up to the big banks.” In reality, nobody stood up to the big banks after the 2008 financial crisis. No executive saw a prison cell for the mountain of fraud committed; their companies only got bigger, nearly all of the penalties imposed on them amounted to taking the air out of their books; homeowners saw virtually no relief (literally less than 10 percent of what was promised); and millions of families lost their homes unnecessarily and in most cases illegally. To elevate that as some kind of accountability moment is an insult to foreclosure victims.
But I want to make myself clear: Nobody stood up to the big banks. Harris was no worse than any of the other law enforcers who brought us that shameful course of events, and at least in one key area, she was actually better. Harris insisted that California have its own monitor for the National Mortgage Settlement, someone who could scrutinize banks’ compliance with the terms of consumer relief and improve it to the greatest extent possible. (emph. mine-A)
That monitor, who made the very best of a bad deal, ensuring that California wound up playing host to nearly two out of every five principal reductions granted in the settlement (the most sustainable form of relief), was Katie Porter, then a law professor at the University of California, Irvine. You now know her as Rep. Katie Porter, who served three terms in Congress—and it was her experience as California monitor that really launched her career in politics. She happens to be the only person now in Congress who has actually worked for Kamala Harris, and so I tracked her down to talk about that experience. (snip)
There was a national monitor for the $25 billion settlement, North Carolina banking commissioner Joseph Smith. But other than California, no state had one. “This position was a creature of [Harris’s] will,” Porter told me. “She pushed to get something like this. The banks didn’t want it.”
When the time came to choose a monitor, Porter explained, Harris wasn’t steeped in consumer protection issues, having just become attorney general a year earlier after a career as a prosecutor in criminal cases. So she asked Elizabeth Warren, who at the time was still a Harvard law professor, for advice on who to choose for the position. Porter had been Warren’s student at Harvard Law and had co-authored a book with her. So Warren asked Porter to identify possible monitors. Porter suggested three other people, including the current director of the U.S. bankruptcy trustee program, Tara Twomey. Ultimately, though, Harris selected her.
Of the issues where Porter thought she could be most helpful, she cited affordable housing.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis addresses the crowd before publicly signing “Stop W.O.K.E” bill in Hialeah Gardens, Florida, on April 22, 2022. (Daniel A. Varela/Miami Herald via AP)
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis often says the Sunshine State is the place where “woke goes to die.” But a federal judge on Friday killed part of the Stop W.O.K.E. Act championed as standing up against “indoctrination.”
Judge Mark Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida issued a permanent injunction, saying the law that bans diversity training in private workplaces “violates free speech rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.” The ruling follows a three-judge appeals court panel’s March decision that upheld Walker’s original injunction. The State of Florida did not oppose the motion to make the ruling permanent.
Florida honeymoon registry company Honeyfund.com and Primo Tampa, a subsidiary of a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream franchisee, were among those who filed the lawsuit after the Legislature passed the law in 2022. Shalini Goel Agarwal counsel for Protect Democracy which filed the lawsuit on their behalf said the ruling is “a powerful reminder that the First Amendment cannot be warped to serve the interests of elected officials.”
“Censoring business owners from speaking in favor of ideas that politicians don’t like is a moved ripped straight from the authoritarian playbook,” she said in a statement.
“We have every right as a state to provide protections for employees and businesses to say if they are doing woke training which is basically discriminating against folks on the basis of race, you have a right to opt out,” he said. “It’s not a question of what the company can say. They can say whatever they want. But you have a right to not self flagellate. You have a right to not sit there and listen to that nonsense.”
Sara Margulis, CEO of Honeyfund.com, hailed the appeals court decision from March.
“We moved Honeyfund to Florida in 2017 because it was known as a business-friendly state,” she said in a statement. “Passing laws that seek to squash free speech like HB7 is not only a violation of The First Amendment but is also a losing strategy because businesses serve people of all backgrounds, walks of life, and political views. Therefore the law would have effectively hampered the ability of Florida businesses to grow and serve their market. I don’t think that’s what Florida really wants. It’s clearly not in line with American values. I couldn’t be happier that we stood up for free speech and business in the state of Florida.”
The legislation — HB 7, formally called the “Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act” — is also aimed at blocking school teachers and college professors from offering their opinions on what DeSantis described as “pernicious ideologies” that could potentially make students, because of their race, feel personally responsible for past racism, sexism, or other discrimination in the U.S. That part of the law also has an injunction and is awaiting a ruling from a higher court.
Critics have said it’s an attempt to stop meaningful discussion of the ongoing effects of longstanding systemic discrimination and topics including critical race theory and privilege. A slew of lawsuits were filed against the legislation including by professors, students and the ACLU. Courts have repeatedly blocked portions of the law.
According to the bill’s text, “[i]t shall constitute discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, or sex under this section to subject any student or employee to training or instruction that espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels such student or employee to believe” the following:
1. Members of one race, color, national origin, or sex are morally superior to members of another race, color, national origin, or sex.
2. A person, by virtue of his or her race, color, national origin, or sex is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.
3. A person’s moral character or status as either privileged or oppressed is necessarily determined by his or her race, color, national origin, or sex.
4. Members of one race, color, national origin, or sex cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to race, color, national origin, or sex.
5. A person, by virtue of his or her race, color, national origin, or sex bears responsibility for, or should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of, actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin, or sex.
6. A person, by virtue of his or her race, color, national origin, or sex should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment to achieve diversity, equity, or inclusion.
7. A person, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, bears personal responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the person played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin, or sex.
8. Such virtues as merit, excellence, hard work, fairness, neutrality, objectivity, and racial colorblindness are racist or sexist, or were created by members of a particular race, color, national origin, or sex to oppress members of another race, color, national origin, or sex.
Matt Naham and Marisa Sarnoff contributed to this report.
TRIGGER WARNING: Contains disgusting descriptions of the nasty-ass Guinea Worm, though no photos. Do not Google the photos.
…
So this is very nice, former President Jimmy Carter — who is still alive and 99 years young, though in hospice — has succeeded in his decades-long goal to get Guinea Worm Disease cases down to zero before he dies. (Warning, the picture at that link is disgusting.) There have now been zero cases of Guinea Worm disease in the past three months, and there were only 14 last year. Extremely promising signs that maybe they are truly gone forever! If no more Guinea Worms burst through anybody’s flesh within the next nine months, then it’ll officially be the second disease eradicated by humanity after smallpox.
When the Carter Center started trying to take down big Guinea Worm back in 1988, more than 3.5 million people in Africa and India were suffering from it. And BOY WERE THEY SUFFERING, because while the worm won’t directly kill you, it is agonizing and SO RETCHINGLY GROSS. First, nasty-ass fucking worm larva gets into your guts through dirty drinking water. Then it grows in your stomach for a fucking year. And THEN, a fucking THREE-FOOT WORM POPS OUT OF YOUR SKIN which hurts like fucking hell, obviously. And there is no vaccine or cure, the only solution is to pull this FUCKING DISGUSTING WORM out of your fucking skin by winding it around a fucking STICK.
So it is not the glamorous kind of affliction that makes a good poster for a benefit concert or bake sale, or plays well on an ad with Sarah McLachlan playing in the background. But one fixed relatively simply, with clean drinking water. And so that is what sweet peanut-farming Jimmy worked at. His Carter Center partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and has been quietly toiling to eradicate many other un-glamorous diseases that no one in the year of our Lord 2024 should have to suffer from, including: poliomyelitis (a virus that paralyzes mostly children), mumps, rubella, lymphatic filariasis (aka elephantiasis, a roundworm transmitted by mosquitoes), cysticercosis (tapeworm infection), measles, river blindness, and yaws (a nasty spirochete bacteria that causes bursting lesions). (snip-More)
Adidas has apologised to the model Bella Hadid after pulling adverts in which she was promoting a sport shoe first launched to coincide with the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Adidas last week said it was “revising” its campaign after criticism from Israel over Hadid’s involvement in the campaign for the retro SL72 trainers. Hadid is an American whose family has roots in Palestine.
The apology, issued on Instagram, said: “Connections continue to be made to the terrible tragedy that occurred at the Munich Olympics due to our recent SL72 campaign,” referring to the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre when Israeli athletes were taken hostage by the Black September Organization, a Palestinian militant group. Eleven Israelis, a German police officer and five of the attackers died.
The statement continued: “These connections are not meant, and we apologise for any upset or distress caused to communities around the world. We made an unintentional mistake. We also apologise to our partners, Bella Hadid, ASAP Nast, Jules Koundé, and others, for any negative impact on them and we are revising the campaign.”
On Friday, the German-based company had said in a statement it was “revising the remainder of the campaign” after criticism over Hadid’s involvement by Israel on X. “Guess who the face of their campaign is?” read a post on Israel’s official account. “Bella Hadid, a model who has a history of spreading antisemitism and calling for violence against Israelis and Jews.”
Hadid had previously been criticised by Israel for allegedly chanting: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,”on a march in 2021.
Adidas was condemned by some Jewish organisations, with the American Jewish Committee labelling its decision as either a “massive oversight or intentionally inflammatory”. Others came out in support of Hadid. One fellow Adidas ambassador, the Palestinian-American author and activist Amani al-Khatahtbeh, posted an email she sent to Adidas on X, in which she said: “Bella Hadid is a model of Palestinian origin that has been a much-needed outspoken advocate for human right.” She added: “Adidas’s disappointing response conflates our Palestinian identity with terrorism.”
Hadid, 27, whose father is the Palestinian businessman Mohamed Hadid, has been vocal in her support for Palestine. In May she expressed her solidarity by wearing a dress crafted out of red and white keffiyehs during the film festival in Cannes. In 2023 she denounced the far-right Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir for saying Jewish settlers had more rights than Palestinians in occupied territories.
When she appeared on the cover of Vogue magazine in 2021, she said on Instagram: “A Palestinian girl on the cover of Vogue. The joy it brings me to say that … I won’t stop talking about the systematic oppression, pain and humility that Palestinians face on a regular basis.”
Hadid, who recently launched her own wellness brand, has faced death threats for her outspoken support.
The apology to Hadid and her fellow Adidas partners comes amid reports that she is speaking to lawyers about her options.
The conservative blueprint envisions ‘a biblically based’ definition of marriage and wants to protect adoption agencies that only work with Christians
Rebecca McCrayWed 24 Jul 2024 07.00 EDTShare
In 2021, Liz and Gabe Rutan-Ram decided to take the next step toward growing their family and applied to foster a child. After identifying a three-year-old in Florida who they hoped to ultimately adopt, the Rutan-Rams turned back to their home state of Tennessee to start training to become foster parents.
But their plans quickly fell apart when the Christian state-funded foster care placement agency informed them by email that they “only provide adoption services to prospective adoptive families that share our belief system”. The Rutan-Rams, who are Jewish, were out of luck.
“There’s already emotions playing into wanting to be a parent, and then to have us attacked personally just made it that much harder,” Liz Rutan-Ram told the Guardian.
The Rutan-Rams sued the Tennessee department of children’s services, arguing that a state law permitting private agencies to refuse to work with prospective parents on religious grounds violates the Tennessee constitution’s equal protection and religious freedom guarantees. The case will soon go to trial.
The predicament facing the Rutan-Rams could become more common under a second Trump administration. Project 2025, a 900-plus page blueprint for the next Republican administration and the policy brainchild of the conservative Heritage Foundation, contains an explicitly sympathetic view toward “faith-based adoption agencies” like the one that rejected the Rutan-Rams, who are “under threat from lawsuits” because of the agencies’ religious beliefs.
Project 2025’s Adoption Reform section calls for the passage of legislation to ensure providers “cannot be subjected to discrimination for providing adoption and foster care services based on their beliefs about marriage”. It also calls for the repeal of an Obama-era regulation that prohibits discrimination against prospective parents and subsequent amendments made by the Biden administration.
Though Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from the project, his campaign’s own 16-page policy agenda echoes many of its goals, and his ties to the plan’s architects are well-established. In Milwaukee last week, the Heritage Foundation’s role in the Republican national convention was on full display, both on welcome banners at the airport and in the millions of dollars invested in the event itself. Following Trump’s announcement of his vice-presidential pick, the organization’s president, Kevin Roberts, said he was “good friends” with JD Vance, and effusively declared him “a man who personifies hope for our nation’s future”. Vance has previously said there were “some good ideas” in Project 2025.
Project 2025 is divided into four broad pillars, the first of which is to “restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children”. A conservative vision of family pervades the document, and the authors call on policymakers “to elevate family authority, formation, and cohesion as their top priority and even use government power, including through the tax code, to restore the American family”.
The plan envisions upholding “a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family”. It would remove nondiscrimination roadblocks governing faith-based grant recipients, such as the agency that denied the Rutan-Rams. The authors argue that “heterosexual, intact marriages” provide more stability for children than “all other family forms”. In addition to calling for the passage of the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act, which would allow adoption and foster care agencies to make placement decisions based on their “religious beliefs or moral convictions”, it also calls on Congress to ensure “religious employers” are exempt from nondiscrimination laws and free to make business decisions based on their religious beliefs.
To the Rev Naomi Washington-Leapheart, a professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University and a queer parent, the image of family portrayed by the policy agenda is blatantly exclusionary. The Christian nationalist plan rejects unmarried parents, single parents and LGBTQ+ families.
A billboard in Milwaukee, part of a campaign by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, to raise awareness of Project 2025, that ran during the Republican convention. Photograph: Americans United for Separation of Church and State
“The definition of family according to Project 2025 leaves a lot of folk out,” Washington-Leapheart told the Guardian. “This blueprint really delegitimizes the kinds of families that are day in and day out raising children, paying taxes, contributing meaningfully to society.”
The Rutan-Rams have become the face of a campaign led by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who are representing them in their lawsuit, that seeks to shed light on what they call the Christian nationalist goals of Project 2025. As part of the campaign, visitors to the Republican convention last week may have seen billboards reading “You gotta keep ’em separated,” in reference to church and state.
Project 2025’s vision is already law in a number of states. The Rutan-Rams are battling a Tennessee law, modeled after similar laws in at least 10 other states, that permits faith-based foster care and adoption agencies to exclusively work with prospective parents who share their beliefs.
Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and author of a book titled How to End Christian Nationalism, contends that the scale and reach of Project 2025 pose a far greater danger to democracy than a patchwork of state laws.
“What’s different about Project 2025 is the sweeping nature of its plan,” said Tyler. “It would really rewrite the federal government and change policies in so many different areas at once in a way that would hasten our journey down that road to authoritarian theocracy.”
The Holston Home for Children in Tennessee, Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation did not respond to requests for comment.
Tyler worries that Project 2025’s deliberate erosion of the separation between church and state, a founding principle embedded in the first amendment to the US constitution, will get a helping hand from the US supreme court, which has handed a series of victories in recent years to Christian activists. She specifically mentioned the 2021 decision in Carson v Makin, which struck down a Maine law that banned the use of public funds for religious schools. It was “an earthquake of a decision that a lot of people didn’t really pay attention to that has really opened the door to government funding of religion”, said Tyler.
The threat of a theocracy doesn’t seem far-fetched to Washington-Leapheart.
“Project 2025 says that religion is a permanent institution that should influence American life,” said Washington-Leapheart. “That alone communicates the kind of arrogant way Christianity is situated as an inevitability. And it’s not. I say that as a Christian person who is firmly grounded in my faith. It is not an inevitable part of my identity, it is a choice I make every day.
We discussed this a bit here a few weeks ago, about Sinclair sending talking points to all their stations, so that local reporters had to report that as real news. Here’s some more, from yesterday, that I didn’t get to until late.
Eugene Ramirez, the lead anchor of Sinclair’s national evening news broadcast, resigned in January over concerns about the accuracy and right-wing bias of the content he was required to present on air, three sources told Popular Information. The sources — one current and two former Sinclair employees — spoke to Popular Information on the condition of anonymity, citing concerns about the potential professional repercussions of speaking out about Sinclair’s editorial processes. Ramirez’s show, which continues to air with a new host, appears on at least 70 of the hundreds of local television affiliates owned by Sinclair.
One of the primary issues that prompted Ramirez’s resignation was the requirement to include at least three stories produced by Sinclair’s Rapid Response Team (RRT) on a nightly basis. Sinclair’s RRT is a group of four reporters who work out of Sinclair’s national headquarters in Maryland. The group’s output is prodigious. A Popular Information review found that between January 1 and July 4 this year, the RRT published at least 775 stories.
Most of the RRT’s stories are short and aggregate information from other sources. Sinclair publicly claims that the RRT and other components of its national newsgathering operation, known as The National Desk, provide a “comprehensive, commentary-free look of the most impactful news of the day.” But a look at the RRT’s stories over the course of the year shows that the group frequently produces pieces that have more in common with right-wing agitprop than journalism.
Often, the articles summarize press releases or social media posts from Republican politicians or other right-wing groups. Recent headlines include:
53 parent groups confront Biden education secretary over new Title IX rules: ‘Disgraceful’
GOP senator says Fetterman proves how ‘radical’ Dems have become on Israel: ‘Nuts’
Trump PAC launches new ad hitting Democrats on border: ‘Joe Biden does nothing’
Biden mocked by US Oil and Gas Association for touting gas price drops: ‘You’re welcome’
Elon Musk rips VP Harris for ‘lying’ about Trump’s abortion stance
Through July 4, 2024, the RRT has produced 147 stories this year that portray Democrats in a negative light and just 7 stories that portray Democrats positively. Over that same time period, the RRT has produced 57 stories that portray Republicans positively and 22 that portray Republicans negatively.
Many of the pieces produced by the RRT that do not explicitly mention Republicans or Democrats (or do so only in passing) still promote a right-wing agenda, highlighting stories that portray immigrants or LGBTQ people negatively.
These are the stories that Ramirez was required to present each night. Sinclair’s headquarters sent a list of four stories produced by the RRT to the team that produced the evening news broadcast. At least three had to be read on air. One current employee at Sinclair’s headquarters described the RRT team as “the right-wing propaganda arm of the national digital operation.”
The RRT is run by Julian Baron, a 2021 graduate of Syracuse University. Despite having little professional experience (and none outside of Sinclair), Baron’s title is “Chief of Staff for News.” In that role, Baron serves as the right-hand man for Scott Livingston, Sinclair’s Senior Vice President for News.
According to a fourth source, who currently works at Sinclair’s headquarters, Baron and the RRT are also responsible for creating the “Question of the Day,” which around 200 Sinclair affiliates are required to include in their broadcasts. (The questions appear on Sinclair’s website without a byline.) Recent questions include:
Are you concerned violent criminals are crossing the border?
Do you think former House Speaker Pelosi deserves some of the blame for Jan. 6 riot?
Do you think some of President Biden’s family members broke the law in their business dealings?
Do you think the Veterans Administration should be involved in health care coverage for illegal immigrants?
Do you think the FBI is protecting the Biden family?
The reporters on the RRT team who work under Baron are Jackson Walker, Ray Lewis, and Kristina Watrobski. Walker was hired by Sinclair less than two months after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in May 2023. Walker spent his college years writing for The College Fix, a national right-wing student publication. On X, Walker frequently highlights when his stories are circulated by Libs of TikTok, an anti-LGBTQ activist. Walker retweeted a post by Libs of TikTok that highlighted one of his articles and described the LGBTQ community as a “child mutilation cult.” Lewis is a 2023 graduate of Rutgers University. Prior to joining Sinclair, he was an intern at the New York Post, a right-wing tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch. Watrobski is a 2020 graduate of SUNY Plattsburgh and previously worked for a Sinclair affiliate in Albany.
Baron, according to three sources, has the authority to assign and publish RRT articles without any editorial oversight. In addition to appearing on the evening news broadcasts, RRT’s articles are automatically syndicated to hundreds of local news outlets, where they are given the imprimatur of mainstream media brands, including NBC, ABC, and CBS. According to two of the sources who spoke to Popular Information, this frequently caused rancor among the news staff of Sinclair affiliates, who were concerned about the posting of biased or inaccurate content on their websites.
Sinclair defended Baron’s work but acknowledged that local affiliates have objected to stories produced by the RRT on numerous occasions. “The Rapid Response Team has published several thousand stories,” Sinclair spokesperson Jessica Bellucci told Popular Information. “On perhaps one or two dozen occasions we have gotten questions from a station about those stories and had a healthy dialogue – sometimes leading to the stories being changed.”
Despite confirming the conflict between the RRT and local affiliates — and other aspects of Popular Information’s reporting — Bellucci also told Popular Information that “the statements made in your email are flatly untrue.” She suggested that Popular Information may be “misinforming us about having sources” and was only pursuing the story “in pursuit of your sixteenth minute of internet acclaim.” Bellucci accused Popular Information of “attacking our reporters for doing their job, reporting on stories that may be unpopular.”
The only specific statement Bellucci disputed was the characterization that Baron and the RRT work “outside of the normal editorial process.” Bellucci did not dispute that the Baron and the RRT team operate independently. Asked to clarify what other aspects of Popular Information’s reporting, if any, are “untrue,” Bellucci did not respond.
Don’t interrupt them
According to the sources who discussed Sinclair’s editorial process on the condition of anonymity, reading stories produced by the RRT was not the only issue that made Ramirez’s role in the evening broadcast untenable. Sinclair’s national leadership frequently booked guests from far-right groups, including Moms for Liberty and the Heritage Foundation. When Ramirez challenged the dubious claims made by these guests, he was admonished and instructed not to interrupt them. Sinclair’s leadership, including Livingston, emphasized that many of Sinclair’s affiliates were not in big cities, and the content of the broadcast had to reflect the sensitivities of those viewers. Representatives of progressive groups were almost never booked as guests.
The evening broadcast was also required to include “packages” produced by Sinclair’s Washington, D.C., bureau. Some of these packages had a strong right-wing bias or made unsubstantiated claims. Of particular concern were packages by Sinclair National Correspondent Kayla Gaskins. For example, after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in March 2023, Gaskins produced a piece questioning whether the bank was “too ‘woke’ to function.”
This package featured an interview with Bernie Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot, who said the bank’s downfall was the result of “[n]ot hiring the brightest people but hiring people based on what they look like or where they fall on the social register” and were too busy “playing the woke game” to head off problems. Marcus presented no evidence to support his claims.
The piece also featured Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Congressman James Comer (R-KY) making similarly unsubstantiated claims, clipped from Fox News, blaming the bank’s collapse on “woke” politics or DEI initiatives. After featuring on-camera comments by Marcus, DeSantis, and Comer, Gaskin notes in the last five seconds of the piece that Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) blamed former President Donald Trump’s deregulatory policies.
Another piece by Gaskin in April 2023 falsely claimed that “children in Washington state will soon not need their parents’ permission to switch genders.” But legislation, which became law in July 2023, is limited to homeless youth, and “doesn’t change the state’s medical consent laws.” In Washington state, “those under age 18 don’t generally have the right to make medical decisions without parental consent.”
The law deals exclusively with parental notification when a young person arrives at a homeless shelter. Previously, the shelter was generally required to notify parents within 72 hours. Under the new law, when a young person is seeking reproductive or gender-affirming care, the shelter has the option of instead contacting “the state Department of Children, Youth and Families, which could then attempt to reunify the family if feasible.” The purpose of the law is to encourage vulnerable homeless youth, who may be estranged from their parents, to obtain shelter rather than living on the street.
Gaskin’s piece uncritically quotes Landon Starbuck, president of the anti-LGBTQ group Freedom Forever, claiming the “state is stepping in and medically kidnapping kids from their parents.” This echoed a false claim, circulated by Donald Trump Jr. and others online, that the law allowed “the state to TAKE CHILDREN AWAY FROM PARENTS that do not consent to their child’s gender transition surgeries.”
Scottie's Playtime 