Category: Diversity / Inclusivity

Update-It’s Tonight! TV Alert For Black History

Start TV to premiere award-winning documentary, ”Who in the Hell is Regina Jones?” in February

By: Start TV Staff Posted: January 14, 2026, 1:17PM 

Start TV is set to premiere the award-winning documentary, Who in the Hell is Regina Jones?, on Monday, February 16 at 8P | 7C with a special encore immediately after at 10P | 9C.

The stellar production from Weigel Productions Corp. shines a light on legendary journalist Regina Jones. The documentary, which won the Outstanding Documentary Feature Award at the Greater Cleveland Urban Film Festival, turns a lens on Jones’ historical journey – the invisible labor, turmoil, struggle, and joy of a modern-day Black woman, who emerged as publisher and founder of the groundbreaking SOUL newspaper. On this nationwide platform, Black artists could get coverage long before other publications entered the arena.

Pregnant and married at 15, Regina Jones experienced the Watts Rebellion of 1965, raised five children, stepped into places where she was not wanted, and navigated a world that offered her no favors. SOUL was the first publication devoted specifically to Black musicians and perspectives in music, published from 1966 to 1982. During its run, the publication profiled some of the era’s most prominent Black artists, including Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Diana Ross, Gladys Knight, and Stevie Wonder.

Who in the Hell is Regina Jones? was produced by Weigel Productions Corp and directed by Soraya Sélène and Billy Miossi, edited by Nancy Novack A.C.E., co-edited by Alisa Selman, produced by Alissa Shapiro, and executive produced by Academy Award nominee Sam Pollard.

Check out the trailer.

https://www.starttv.com/stories/start-tv-to-premiere-award-winning-documentary-who-in-the-hell-is-regina-jones-in-february

New Jersey elementary school students run from ICE

Frightened little kids who are U.S. citizens are running from agents of their own government because their skin color is brown instead of white.  My childhood was full of fear.  It is horrifying and in the case of these children it is complete bigotry and racism directed by Nazi wannabe Stephen Miller.  

What is wrong in this country where adults think terrorizing little kids because of their skin color is acceptable?  I cannot accept this. I cannot accept terrified children running from adults just because of skin color!  What are we, apartheid South Africa?  This video is horrific!  Only racists could like seeing this.  Hugs

How Cool Is This?

Chart Shows Widespread Side Effect to Bad Bunny Performing in Spanish

By Melissa Fleur Afshar Life and Trends Reporter

Duolingo saw a sharp rise in Spanish learners following Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Halftime Show, according to a post shared by the language-learning app on social media.

“Duolingo saw a 35 percent increase in Spanish learners last night. Better late than never,” the company wrote on Threads on February 9, under its official account, @duolingo. The post, which included a graph showing a clear spike in Spanish lessons, has been liked more than 7,500 times to date.

The surge followed Bad Bunny’s history‑making performance at the Super Bowl Halftime Show, where he became the first artist to sing primarily in Spanish during the most-watched sporting event in the U.S. Duolingo’s official Threads account shared the data shortly after the night ended, highlighting the immediate impact the performance appeared to have on language learning behavior.

Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl appearance came months after he used a Spanish-language monologue on Saturday Night Live (SNL) to tell audiences they had “four months to learn” Spanish ahead of the game. Despite online backlash from some commentators at the time, the data shared by Duolingo suggests many viewers embraced the message, with interest in learning Spanish rising sharply during the Halftime Show.

Snip-MORE

Joy

His wife joins him during this dance.

Today In History/Black History

From LitHub.

Malcolm X is assassinated in New York City.

On Sunday, February 21, 1965, a little after 3pm, as he was preparing to address his Organization of Afro-American Unity in New York’s Audubon Ballroom, the controversial civil rights leader and revolutionary Malcolm X was shot dead by members of the Nation of Islam, the religious group X had broken from the year before. He was 39.

“In the aftermath, rivers of ink spilled across New York City’s many newspapers,” wrote Ted Hamm. The legendary journalist Jimmy Breslin was callous and dismissive; Langston Hughes “somewhat cryptic.”  

James Baldwin, who was in London at the time, famously shouted at the reporters who found him after X’s death: “You did it! It is because of you—the men that created this white supremacy—that this man is dead. You are not guilty, but you did it. … Your mills, your cities, your rape of a continent started all this.” 
Later, Baldwin told the story this way:

“There we were, at the table, all dressed up, and we’d ordered everything, and we were having a very nice time with each other. The headwaiter came, and said there was a phone call for me, and Gloria rose to take it. She was very strange when she came back—she didn’t say anything, and I began to be afraid to ask her anything. Then, nibbling at something she obviously wasn’t tasting, she said, ‘Well, I’ve got to tell you because the press is on its way over here. They’ve just killed Malcolm X.’ The British press said that I accused innocent people of this murder. What I tried to say then, and will try to repeat now, is that whatever hand pulled the trigger did not buy the bullet. That bullet was forged in the crucible of the West, that death was dictated by the most successful conspiracy in the history of the world, and its name is white supremacy.”

“I was certainly saddened by the shocking and tragic assassination of your husband,” Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote to Betty Shabazz, X’s wife, after the murder. 

“While we did not always see eye to eye on methods to solve the race problem, I always had a deep affection for Malcolm and felt that he had a great ability to put his finger on the existence and root of the problem. He was an eloquent spokesman for his point of view and no one can honestly doubt that Malcolm had a great concern for the problems that we face as a race.”

More than sixty years later, some details about the assassination remain unclear. But Malcolm X has endured as a cultural icon, death being, in the end, not quite enough to silence him.
MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM

 How Two of America’s Biggest Columnists Reacted to the Assassination of Malcolm X   

Fatima Bhutto on Channeling the Fearlessness of Malcolm X  

Naming the Unnamed:On the Many Uses of the Letter X
EVERGREEN QUOTE:“You’re not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong no matter who does it or who says it.”–Malcolm X

‘A feature, not a bug’: Trump admin’s pattern of hiring people with extremist views

Ohio Bill Would Overturn Local Ex-Gay Torture Bans

Again it is a fundamentalist / evangelical Christian who wants to force everyone to follow their church doctrines by enshrining them in the civil laws.  Their hate seems to drive them far more than Jesus’s love.   All studies ahve show that not only does conversion therapy not work it is very harmful to those that experience it.  These people don’t care because they want the LGBTQ+ gone, erased from society.  When will they learn it is inherent and can’t be changed by outside forces or because a person wants it to?  I like to ask people who believe in it if they could be converted to gay or trans and the response is always no that would be crazy.  Then why try to convert LGBTQ+ kids / people.  Because they see it as a choice and a sin, and nothing on can say will change their minds.  Horrible people doing horrible things.  Hugs

Ohio Bill Would Overturn Local Ex-Gay Torture Bans

February 13, 2026

The Ohio Capital Journal reports:

Ohio Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation that would punish state agencies and local governments for being too supportive of LGBTQ+ youth. Among a slew of provisions, conversion therapy would be reinstated where it has been banned, teachers may be prevented from using a student’s preferred pronouns, and parents wouldn’t be able to lose custody due to refusing to support their child’s gender identity.

“State institutions, government institutions cannot promote that woke ideology,” state Rep. Gary Click, R-Vickery, said in an interview Tuesday. Click believes government agencies have been overly affirming of LGBTQ+ children, which he claims has hurt parents. “It is not conversion therapy to help children discover their identity and who they are biologically,” Click said. Click has focused significant time in the legislature targeting LGBTQ+ people.

Read the full article.

Click, a former pastor, last appeared here in December 2025 when he introduced the “Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act,” which would mandate teaching public school students about “the positive influence of Christianity on American culture.”

He first appeared here in 2018 when he led the invocation at Trump rally by asking Jesus to protect Trump from “wicked jungle journalism.”

In 2023, Click appeared here when he convened a hearing against transgender rights during which his invited guest testified that non-Christian lawmakers are “possessed by demons.”

Click is a regular on Tony Perkins’ podcast.

 

TN Advances Bills To Legalize Anti-LGBTQ Discrimination

TN Advances Bills To Legalize Anti-LGBTQ Discrimination

February 13, 2026

Nashville’s NPR affiliate reports:

Tennessee lawmakers have advanced a host of anti-LGBTQ bills that would run counter to U.S. Supreme Court precedent. Two measures, both proposed by Rep. Gino Bulso, R-Franklin, would challenge landmark cases that legalized same-sex marriage and established protections for discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville, questioned the legality to going against Bostock v. Clayton County, which established that LGBTQ people are protected from discrimination under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Tom Lee, member of the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Pride Chamber, spoke against the bill, arguing that it could allow discrimination against LGBTQ couples.

“Imagine if under this bill a private employer said, ‘Well, you can’t take family leave because I, as a private citizen, don’t recognize — using the language of the bill — your purported marriage,’” Lee said. “Or a bank says, ‘You’ll pay the higher rate (for unmarried couples). We’re not bound by the 14th Amendment. You’re not married in our eyes.’”

From my January 2025 report:

The Banning Bostock Act would codify that laws prohibiting sex discrimination would not prohibit discrimination against a person for being homosexual or transgender, nor would it prohibit discrimination because of sexual orientation, sexual behavior, gender identity, or gender non-conforming behavior.

Meanwhile, the next bill would allow private citizens, businesses, and organizations to refuse to recognize same-sex marriage, and protect attorneys from being punished for refusing to celebrate or perform a same sex marriage.

Bulso first appeared here in February 2024 for his ultimately failed bid to ban Pride flags, which he is now attempting again. In April 2024, we heard from Bulso when he objected to a ban on marriages between first cousins because gays can’t make babies. Last year Bulso launched a failed bid to fill the US House seat left open by the abrupt resignation of Rep. Mark Green.

 

Kansas Gov Vetoes Anti-Trans Bathroom Bounty Bill

Why is the most intense bigotry always seem to be pushed by Christians?  I don’t understand the hate because no one is walking around nude in bathrooms, and women’s bathrooms do not have urinals just enclosed stalls.   No one can see in the stalls.  All the talk of protecting little girls is BS because if a man ws going to hurt a child he wouldn’t have to pretend to be trans, he would just walk in and do it.  Nope this is all about making trans lives miserable and keeping them out of the public / society.  This is all about forcing their religious views on everyone else.  There church doctrines don’t accept trans people so no one can accept trans people or be trans in public according to them.  They see no problem forcing their religious views on everyone else but scream to their highest heaven when they are told they have to respect other people’s views. Hugs

Kansas Gov Vetoes Anti-Trans Bathroom Bounty Bill

February 13, 2026

First, the backstory about the bill:

Just last week, the Kansas legislature passed some of the most far-reaching measures to push trans and gender-nonconforming people out of public life to date. Bathroom bans that bar trans people from restrooms aligned with their gender identity have become grimly common; over 20 states have such a law on the books. But Kansas’s new anti-trans bathroom bill adds a dangerous twist: a bounty hunter provision.

The law would permit private citizens to sue and seek monetary reward based on claiming to encounter a trans person in the bathroom. That’s on top of some of the harshest punishments of any existing bathroom bans, such as criminal charges, steep fines and even jail time.

The language of the bill, while vague, says that any person who alleges to be “aggrieved” by the presence of a trans person they encounter in a restroom facility can file a civil suit against that individual for “damages” of at least $1,000. Kansas Republicans rushed through the bathroom ban, skirting public comment by essentially sneaking the bill into another piece of legislation aimed at denying trans people correct government IDs.

Just in via press release:

The following veto message is from Governor Kelly regarding her veto of House Substitute for Senate Bill 244:

“This poorly drafted bill will have numerous and significant consequences far beyond the intent to limit the right for trans people to use the appropriate bathroom. Under this bill: If your grandfather is in a nursing home in a shared room, as a granddaughter, you would not be able to visit him. If your wife is in a shared hospital room, as a husband, you would not be able to visit her.

“If your sister is living in a dorm at K-State, as a brother, you would not be able to visit her in her room. If you feel you have to accompany your nine-year-old daughter to the restroom at a sporting event, as a father, you would have to either enter the women’s restroom with her or let her use the restroom alone.

“I believe the Legislature should stay out of the business of telling Kansans how to go to the bathroom and instead stay focused on how to make life more affordable for Kansans. “Therefore, under Article 2, Section 14(a) of the Constitution, I hereby veto House Substitute for Senate Bill 244.”

The bill passed with a veto-proof majority in both chambers, so an override is probably likely. The bill’s author is GOP Rep. Susan Humphries, whose bio notes that she is a graduate of Texas Christian University. Humphries last appeared here in 2024 for her bill that would somehow ban minors from visiting any website that mentions LGBTQs.

ICE is cracking down on US citizen protesters with charges, tracking

Horrific abuse of civil rights.  ICE is trying to scare people.  People have legal right to protest and to follow / record ICE gang thugs.  The ICE gang thugs have no authority to arrect citizens as they do not have police powers.  Again are we a free people, do we have rights anymore?  Hugs