Category: Children / Kids / Minors / Teens / Family
Lobbying with Quakers
can be easily done on this page: https://fcnl.quorum.us/ . They don’t ask personal questions. You can choose your issue, and go to work. It’s very easy. I get, I think, 3 emails from them most weeks, but most are news. Today I was there to write my buttsy senators a letter about their votes opposing the child tax credit, and I thought I’d just drop the link to the action center (above) so anyone can go there, anytime, and work on what they will.
https://fcnl.quorum.us/ is the Action Center. Here’s a local-ish story about KS’s senators: https://hayspost.com/posts/c1412ea0-1b11-460b-a576-79e635d1e2fa , if anyone’s interested. It’s fairer coverage than I expected; the West is pretty red. But, there are children in poverty in every county of this state, lots of them, and everyone knows it. Now if we could just get someone to run against these Republican senators…
Why We Investigated Matthew Trewhella, the Far-Right Wisconsin Pastor Influencing Republican Politics
Some people said militant anti-abortion activist Matthew Trewhella was a ’90s figure who’s no longer relevant, but our reporting shows he’s influencing policies, bills and movements today.
by Phoebe Petrovic, Wisconsin Watch Aug. 2, 5 a.m. EDT
This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Wisconsin Watch. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.
In the fall of 2022, Phoebe Petrovic, an investigative reporter at Wisconsin Watch and a member of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, noticed a pastor and his church appearing in local news coverage for their anti-LGBTQ+ protests. Looking closer revealed Pastor Matthew Trewhella’s startling history. And digging even deeper, she noticed an untold story: his broader influence on modern Republican politics. His rise helps illustrate the growing power of the Christian right in the Republican party. Here, Petrovic describes how she reported the story and what she learned.
What were the key takeaways from your reporting?
- A few decades ago, Trewhella was known as a militant anti-abortion activist. Today, he’s got a different reputation: thought leader on the far right, increasingly welcomed by Republicans.
- Trewhella helped to rehabilitate his reputation through his 2013 self-published book, “The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates,” which uses a 16th-century Protestant doctrine to argue that government officials have a God-given right and duty to defy laws, policies or court opinions deemed “unjust or immoral” under “the law of God.”
- He’s preached this doctrine to county Republican parties and local groups across the country, even to the National Sheriffs’ Association, a preeminent law enforcement organization.
- His book has influenced Second Amendment sanctuary resolutions. At least 10 measures across the country refer to lesser magistrates. One of the earliest, issued in 2019, was authored by a county commissioner who has described reading Trewhella’s book as a “turning point” for him.
- A prominent booster of debunked election conspiracy claims is using Trewhella’s book to disrupt future elections.
How does Trewhella fit into the election? What does he say about his work?
- In the cast of characters who might influence the upcoming election, Trewhella is not rallying crowds the same way as Steve Bannon, the former Donald Trump strategist, or Charlie Kirk, the founder of the conservative student group Turning Point USA. Trewhella is more behind the scenes, providing a religious justification for some far-right policies and causes.
- Trewhella says that he promotes nonviolence. But after an activist killed an abortion provider in 1993, he signed a document describing the murder of these doctors as “justifiable.”
- In a brief interview, I asked Trewhella about his reputational shift over the decades. He responded: “Most people will always only care about three things in life: me, myself and I. … It’s only because of their mundane, self-absorbed lives that they would think someone like me is an extremist. That’s my answer.”
- Trewhella did not respond to over a dozen attempts to set up a second interview. He did not answer written questions by email and refused a certified letter containing them.
What did experts tell you about Trewhella?
- Frederick Clarkson, a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, which studies threats to democracy and human rights, has tracked Trewhella for decades. Clarkson said, “All of those county commissioners and mayors and whatnot who are entertaining this stuff, they’re putting people’s lives and the entirety of civil order at risk by playing footsie with Matt Trewhella.”
- Another extremism researcher, Devin Burghart, said, “I think that the public needs to know that he’s a dangerous theocrat, who would fundamentally alter the United States in irreparable ways that would harm many, including women, people of color and the LGBTQ community.” Burghart is president of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, which tracks the far right. (snip-More)
https://www.propublica.org/article/investigating-matthew-trewhella-wisconsin-pastor
House kills child online safety bills that could’ve hurt LGBTQ+ kids & allies
Photo: ShutterstockDespite passing in the Senate earlier this week, the Kid’s Online Safety Act (KOSA) is reportedly dead in the U.S. House after progressives, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), worried that it would possible censor LGBTQ+ content. Some Republicans also opposed the bill, stating that it would violate free speech protections for social media platforms and their users.
KOSA would have mandated that social media companies take measures to prevent recommending any content that promotes mental health disorders (like eating disorders, drug use, self-harm, sexual abuse, and bullying) unless minors specifically search for such content. Opponents worried that Republican attorneys general who see LGBTQ+ identities as harmful forms of mental illness would use KOSA’s provisions to censor queer web content and prosecute platforms that provide access to it.
“KOSA was a poorly written bill that would have made kids less safe,” said one of the bill’s most vocal opponents, Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future, a nonprofit that protects human rights in the digital age. “It’s good that this unconstitutional censorship bill is dead for now, but I am not breathing a sigh of relief.”
“KOSA was always too controversial to succeed, and divided our coalition,” Greer added. “If we want to take on Big Tech and win, we have to quickly regroup and make a plan for next Congress. We need strong privacy, antitrust, and algorithmic justice legislation that address the harms of Big Tech without endangering free expression and human rights.”
Many other groups opposed the bill, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, the LGBT Technology Partnership, as well as LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations in six states.
While KOSA passed in the Senate earlier this week in a 93-1 vote, three senators voted against the bills: Ron Wyden (D-OR), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Rand Paul (R-KY) — all three made statements explaining why.
Wyden specifically said he voted against the bills because he worried a future administration could use the legislation to “pressure companies to censor gay, trans, and reproductive health information,” The Hill reported.
Lee said, “This legislation empowers the [Federal Trade Commission (FTC)] to censor any content it deems to cause ‘harm,’ ‘anxiety,’ or ‘depression,’ in a way that could (and most likely would) be used to censor the expression of political, religious, and other viewpoints disfavored by the FTC.”
Paul wrote in a recent Louisville Courier Journal opinion article, “KOSA would impose an unprecedented duty of care on internet platforms to design their sites to mitigate and prevent harms…. This requirement will not only stifle free speech, but it will deprive Americans of the benefits of our technological advancements.”
KOSA was introduced by anti-LGBTQ+ Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who said that one of the bill’s top priorities is to protect children from “the transgender in this culture.” Blackburn’s office told LGBTQ Nation that her comment had been “taken out of context” and wasn’t related to KOSA. Nevertheless, the anti-LGBTQ+ conservative think tank Heritage Foundation has also said it wishes to use the law to “guard” kids against the “harms of… transgender content.”
Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, said, “KOSA compounds nationwide attacks on young peoples’ right to learn and access information, on and offline. As state legislatures and school boards across the country impose book bans and classroom censorship laws, the last thing students and parents need is another act of government censorship deciding which educational resources are appropriate for their families.”
Men Need To Talk About Their Sexual Abuse | Seth Shelley | TEDxUNBC
One of the guys on the MS blog shared this with all of this. Hugs. Scottie
Seth speaks to an issue common around the world, sexual assault. However, it is men who also need to share their stories of abuse. Far too many men are silent about their own stories of trauma and eventual healing. It is our society’s ideas around masculinity which prevent men from opening up, and steal their narratives from them. Only through sharing with friends and family do we reclaim our stories for ourselves.
Followup on OSBoE and Supt. Walters
(Authoritarians always go too far before they’ve made sure what they’re doing is legal. It seems that Gov. DeSantis came the closest to figuring that out, and setting himself up, though courts won’t back him. Still, he’s going until they make him stop. Anyway, I hope Oklahomans do hold the entire Board accountable, especially the Superintendent, and make him restore the inappropriate charges for his trips, too.)
OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — Legal experts tell News 4 the events of Wednesday’s Oklahoma State School Board meeting are unprecedented, and should alarm anyone with power to hold State Superintendent Ryan Walters and the Oklahoma State Board of Education accountable.
Those events include Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters personally attacking multiple public officials by making verifiably false claims about them, and the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office alleging Walters and the Board may have violated state law.
At Wednesday’s meeting, the Oklahoma State School Board (OSBE) and Supt. Ryan Walters voted to table a decision on whether they would allow State Sen. Mary Boren (D-Norman) and other legislators to sit in on their executive session discussions, despite getting guidance from the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office advising them they legally had to let the legislators in.
In comments made to reporters following Wednesday’s meeting, Walters seemed to be unaware the Attorney General’s Office had emailed him and all state school board members a letter with guidance on July 18.
Following the meeting, the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office released a statement suggesting Walters and the board may have willfully violated Oklahoma’s Open Meeting Act.
OSDE no longer has lawyers on staff according to department’s website
After the meeting, Walters also falsely claimed to reporters that Sen. Boren wants to “make it where we can’t remove pedophiles from classrooms.”
He also called Bixby Public Schools superintendent Rob Miller a “clown” when asked about claims Miller had made on social media.
Boren says she showed up to Wednesday’s meeting with one focus: to sit in on the second of two scheduled executive session discussions OSBE had on its agenda for the meeting.
The agenda indicated the board planned to use the first executive session to hold “confidential communications with board counsel concerning a request by Senator Mary Boren to observe all executive sessions of the Board on July 31, 2024.”
It said, in the second executive session, the board would “discuss possible action” on four separate issues involving the possible revocation of certain teachers’ teaching certificates.
The second executive session is what Boren said she wanted to observe.
According to the agenda, the board would first take a vote to enter the first executive session. After the board completed that session they were to vote to return to open session, and then discuss and take “possible action regarding the matters discussed” in the first session.
Boren expected, after the first session, the board would vote as to whether or not they would allow her to observe the second executive session.
Records suggest previous business, personal relationship between top OSDE advisor, contractor
The agenda indicated, after that occurred, the board would then hold a vote to enter into the second executive session.
Israeli Soldier BOASTS Of War Crimes – They Couldn’t Be Prouder Of Genocide
A Prayer for Resistance. Please join, if you will.
Followup article on Vivian Wilson
I was gonna snip it, but I couldn’t find a good place to stop, and then I was at the end. Here it is:
By David Ingram
Vivian Jenna Wilson, the transgender daughter of Elon Musk, said Thursday in her first interview that he was an absent father who was cruel to her as a child for being queer and feminine.
Wilson, 20, in an exclusive interview with NBC News, responded to comments Musk made Monday about her and her transgender identity. On social media and in an interview posted online, Musk said she was “not a girl” and was figuratively “dead,” and he alleged that he had been “tricked” into authorizing trans-related medical treatment for her when she was 16.
Wilson said that Musk hadn’t been tricked and that, after initially having hesitated, he knew what he was doing when he agreed to her treatment, which required consent from her parents.
Musk’s recent statements crossed a line, she said.
“I think he was under the assumption that I wasn’t going to say anything and I would just let this go unchallenged,” Wilson said in a phone interview. “Which I’m not going to do, because if you’re going to lie about me, like, blatantly to an audience of millions, I’m not just gonna let that slide.”
Wilson said that, for as long as she could remember, Musk hasn’t been a supportive father. She said he was rarely present in her life, leaving her and her siblings to be cared for by their mother or by nannies even though Musk had joint custody, and she said Musk berated her when he was present.
“He was cold,” she said. “He’s very quick to anger. He is uncaring and narcissistic.”
Wilson said that, when she was a child, Musk would harass her for exhibiting feminine traits and pressure her to appear more masculine, including by pushing her to deepen her voice as early as elementary school.
“I was in fourth grade. We went on this road trip that I didn’t know was actually just an advertisement for one of the cars — I don’t remember which one — and he was constantly yelling at me viciously because my voice was too high,” she said. “It was cruel.”
Musk didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Wilson and her twin brother were born to Musk’s first wife, author Justine Musk. The couple divorced in 2008, and Wilson said her parents shared custody between their homes in the Los Angeles area.
Musk, 53, is among the wealthiest people in the world through his stakes in Tesla, where he’s CEO, and in SpaceX, which he founded. He has also become a significant political figure, having endorsed former President Donald Trump this month for another term in the White House. Musk has 12 children, including Wilson.
Now a college student studying languages, Wilson has never granted an interview before and has largely stayed out of public view. She did, however, attract attention in 2022 when she sought court approval in California to change her name and, in the process, denounced her father.
“I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form,” she said in the court filing.
She told NBC News that at the time, she was surprised by the media attention to the court filing, which she submitted when she was 18. She said in the interview that she stands by what she wrote, though she said she might have tried to be more eloquent had she known the coverage it would get.
Wilson said that she hadn’t spoken to Musk in about four years and that she refused to be defined by him.
“I would like to emphasize one thing: I am an adult. I am 20 years old. I am not a child,” she said. “My life should be defined by my own choices.”
Musk threw a spotlight on Wilson on Monday by speaking about their relationship in a video interview with psychologist and conservative commentator Jordan Peterson streamed live on X, saying he didn’t support Wilson’s gender identity.
“I lost my son, essentially,” Musk said. He used Wilson’s birth name, also known as a deadname for transgender people, and said she was “dead, killed by the woke mind virus.”
And in a post on X, Musk said Monday that Wilson was “born gay and slightly autistic” and that, at age 4, she fit certain gay stereotypes, such as loving musicals and using the exclamation “fabulous!” to describe certain clothing. Wilson told NBC News that the anecdotes aren’t true, though she said she did act stereotypically feminine in other ways as a child.
Wilson also addressed Musk’s recent comments in a series of posts Thursday on the social media app Threads.
“He doesn’t know what I was like as a child because he quite simply wasn’t there,” she wrote. “And in the little time that he was I was relentlessly harassed for my femininity and queerness.”
“I’ve been reduced to a happy little stereotype,” she continued. “I think that says alot about how he views queer people and children in general.”
In recent years, Musk has taken a hard–right turn into conservative politics and has been waging a campaign against transgender people and policies designed to support them. This month, he said he was pulling his businesses out of California to protest a new state law that bars schools from requiring that trans kids be outed to their parents.
On X, Musk has for years criticized transgender rights, including medical treatments for trans-identifying minors, and the use of pronouns if they are different from what would be used at birth. He has promoted anti-trans content and called for arresting people who provide trans care to minors.
After Musk bought X, then known as Twitter, in 2022, he rolled back the app’s protections for trans people, including a ban on using deadnames.
Musk told Peterson that Wilson’s gender transition has been the motivation for his push into conservative politics.
“I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that, and we’re making some progress,” he said.
Wilson was also mentioned in a biography of Musk by author Walter Isaacson — a book that she told NBC News was inaccurate and unfair to her. The book refers to her politics as “radical Marxism,” quoting Musk’s sister-in-law Christiana Musk, but Wilson said she’s not a Marxist, though she said she does oppose wealth inequality. The book also calls her by her middle name, Jenna.
Wilson said Isaacson never reached out to her directly ahead of publication. In a phone interview Thursday, Isaacson said he had reached out to Wilson through family members.
Christiana Musk didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday.
Wilson told NBC News that for years she had considered speaking out about Musk’s behavior as a parent and as a person but that she could no longer remain silent after his comments Monday.
She said she had never received an explanation for why her father spent so little time with her and her siblings — behavior that she now views as strange.
“He was there, I want to say, maybe 10% of the time. That’s generous,” she said. “He had half custody, and he fully was not there.”
“It was just a fact of life at the time, so I don’t think I realized just how abnormal of an experience it was,” she added.
Wilson said she came out twice in life: once as gay in eighth grade and a second time as transgender when she was 16. She said that she doesn’t recall Musk’s response the first time and that she wasn’t present when Musk heard from others that she was transgender, because by then the pandemic had started and she was living full-time with her mother.
“She’s very supportive. I love her a lot,” Wilson said of her mom.
The pandemic was a chance to escape Musk’s cruelty, she said.
“When Covid hit, I was like, ‘I’m not going over there,’” she said. “It was basically very lucky timing.”
Musk told Peterson in the interview that he had been “tricked” into signing documents authorizing transgender-related medical treatment for Wilson — an allegation Wilson said isn’t true.
“I was essentially tricked into signing documents for one of my older boys,” Musk said, using her birth name.
“This was before I had really any understanding of what was going on, and we had Covid going on,” he said, adding that he was told she might commit suicide.
Wilson said that, in 2020, when she was still a minor at 16, she wanted to start treatment for severe gender dysphoria but needed the consent of both parents under California law. She said that her mother was supportive but that Musk initially wasn’t. She said she texted him about it for a while.
“I was trying to do this for months, but he said I had to go meet with him in person,” she said. “At that point, it was very clear that we both had a very distinct disdain for each other.”
When she eventually went and gave him the medical forms, she said, he read them at least twice, once with her and then again on his own, before he signed them.
“He was not by any means tricked. He knew the full side effects,” she said.
She said she took puberty blockers before she switched to hormone-replacement therapy — treatments that she said were lifesaving for her and other transgender people.
“They save lives. Let’s not get that twisted,” she said. “They definitely allowed me to thrive.”
She said she believed the requirements to obtain such treatments remain onerous, with teenagers pressured to say they’re at extreme risk of self-harm before they’ll be approved. She said she felt judged by Musk and Peterson, in the Monday interview, for not being at a high enough risk in their eyes.
“I have been basically put into a point where, to a group of people, I have to basically prove whether or not I was suicidal or not to warrant medically transitioning,” she said. “It’s absolutely mind-boggling.”
Enough with the platitudes. How about some radical empathy and accountability?
Mark McCormick July 25, 2024 3:33 am
Note from A: I love this writer. He’s a heck of a great human. I used to read him when he wrote for the Wichita Eagle, and since have sort of kept up with different things he’s done over time. He wrote back a thank you note to me when I wrote in to thank him for some particularly incisive, also brave, coverage. I don’t recall what, but I’ll never forget he wrote back. Anyway, it’s good to see him writing again, and on a vital subject. Give it a look!
Scottie's Playtime 