Now it turns out that he not only did his big set of moderation changes to please Trump, but did so only after he was told by the incoming administration to act. Even worse, he reportedly made sure to share his plans with top Trump aides to get their approval first.
That’s a key takeaway from a new New York Times piece that is ostensibly a profile of the relentlessly awful Stephen Miller. However, it also has a few revealing details about the whole Zuckerberg saga buried within. First, Miller reportedly demanded that Zuckerberg make changes at Facebook “on Trump’s terms.”
Mr. Miller told Mr. Zuckerberg that he had an opportunity to help reform America, but it would be on President-elect Donald J. Trump’s terms. He made clear that Mr. Trump would crack down on immigration and go to war against the diversity, equity and inclusion, or D.E.I., culture that had been embraced by Meta and much of corporate America in recent years.
Mr. Zuckerberg was amenable. He signaled to Mr. Miller and his colleagues, including other senior Trump advisers, that he would do nothing to obstruct the Trump agenda, according to three people with knowledge of the meeting, who asked for anonymity to discuss a private conversation. Mr. Zuckerberg said he would instead focus solely on building tech products.
Even if you argue that this was more about DEI programs at Meta rather than about content moderation, it’s still the incoming administration reportedly making actual demands of Zuckerberg, and Zuckerberg not just saying “fine” but actually previewing the details to Miller to make sure they got Trump’s blessing.
Earlier this month, Mr. Zuckerberg’s political lieutenants previewed the changes to Mr. Miller in a private briefing. And on Jan. 10, Mr. Zuckerberg made them official….
This is especially galling given that it was just days ago when Zuckerberg was whining about how unfair it was that Biden officials were demanding stuff from him (even though he had no trouble saying no to them) and it was big news! The headlines made a huge deal of how unfair Biden was to Zuckerberg. Here’s just a sampling.
Also conveniently omitted was the fact that the Supreme Court found no evidence of the Biden administration going over the line in its conversations with Meta. Indeed, a Supreme Court Justice noted that conversations like those that the Biden admin had with Meta happened “thousands of times a day,” and weren’t problematic because there was no inherent threat or direct coordination.
Yet, here, we have reports of both threats and now evidence of direct coordination, including Zuckerberg asking for and getting direct approval from a top Trump official before rolling out the policy.
And where is this bombshell revelation? It’s buried in a random profile piece puffing up Stephen Miller.
It’s almost as if everyone now takes it for granted that any made-up story about Biden will be treated as fact, and everyone just takes it as expected when Trump actually does the thing that Biden gets falsely accused of.
With this new story, don’t hold your breath waiting for the same outlets to give this anywhere near the same level of coverage and outrage they directed at the Biden administration.
It’s almost as if there’s a massive double standard here: everything is okay if Trump does it, but we can blame the Biden admin for things we only pretend they did.
I’m used to hypocrisy in the political world, but this is beyond ridiculous. It’s now being made clear that the Trump admin is actually doing the exact thing that people were (falsely, misleadingly) blaming Biden for.
And it’s just a random aside in a story, and no one seems to be calling it out. Other than us here at Techdirt.
The fact is these kids are exposed to sex and gender as soon as they learn there is a difference between boy and girl. Hey what do you tell a boy in kindergarten when they need to go to the bathroom. That’s right in all their younger grades they are instructed to use the bathroom of their gender, boy go to the boys bathroom, girls go to the girls bathroom. That teaches them gender regardless of these cis straight religious people want to admit it or not. Plus their goal seems to deny their kids the idea that some people are different, have different feelings when those very kids are in their class and maybe their friends? They seek to deny these kids friendships with people who are different from them. It reminds me of the segregation issues in the southern state. White supremacist did not want their pretty white kids in the same class as the black kids they felt were … something. It is like they thought the black was able to spread and be caught. No matter if these religious people like it or not the world has changed, society has changed and it is not the time of their bible nor the fabled 1950s they dream existed. Trying to deny the existance of the LGBTQ+ is like trying to deny black people exist. Hugs.
Parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, want to be able to opt out of instruction on gender and sexuality that they say goes against their religious convictions.
January 17, 2025 at 6:54 p.m.
A large group of parents protested in Rockville, Maryland, on June 27, 2023, in an effort to allow their children to opt out of books that feature LGBTQ+ characters in Montgomery County schools. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
The Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear a case about whether public schools must give parents ofelementary schoolchildren a chance to opt out of instruction on gender and sexuality that they saygoes against their religious convictions.
Parents, who are Muslim,Roman Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox, filed suit in 2023, saying the policy violates their First Amendment rights to freedom of religion.
The case puts the high court at the center of a contentious national debate over how to teach and treat gender and sexuality in schools, which has spurred fights over books, bathroom use and on which teams transgender athletes should be allowed to play.
Eric Baxter, an attorney for the families, said in a statement that the school system’s decision to disallow opt-outs was “cramming down controversial gender ideology” to 3-year-old pupils. Becket, a public interest institute that pushes for religious liberty, is representing the families, and has been involved in other cases on LGBTQ+ issues.
“The Court must make clear: Parents, not the state, should be the ones deciding how and when to introduce their children to sensitive issues about gender and sexuality,” Baxter said.
Montgomery County schools declined to comment, citing the pending litigation. Butthe districtwrote in filings to the high court thatan adverse ruling could upend long-standing legal precedent that guides how schools teach.
“Petitioners seek to unsettle a decades-old consensus that parents who choose to send their children to public school are not deprived of their right to freely exercise their religion simply because their children are exposed to curricular materials the parents find offensive,” attorneys for the schools wrote.
During the 2022-2023 school year, Montgomery County schools introduced a reading list of books that included LGBTQ+ characters as part of an effort to be more inclusive to its diverse student population. The lists were intended for students from prekindergarten to 12th grade and were created with parental feedback.
The school system required teachers to read at least one storybook a year from a group of titles that included “Pride Puppy,” which is about a gay pride parade; “Intersection Allies,” which is about a group of children discussing their differences; and “Love, Violet,” which is about a girl who has feelings for a female classmate.
“The storybooks are not used in any lessons related to gender and sexuality,” the school district wrote in itsfiling. “Nor is any student asked or expected to change his or her views about his or her own, or any other student’s, sexual orientation or gender identity. Instead, the books are made available for individual reading, classroom read-alouds, and other educational activities designed to foster and enhance literacy skills.”
The parents wrote in court documents that the Montgomeryschool board also issued guidance that instructed teachers to emphasize that “not everyone is a boy or girl” and that some “people identify with both, sometimes one more than the other and sometimes neither.”
As teachers started using the books in the classroom, some families wanted to opt their children out of the discussions due to concerns that the lessons and subsequent discussions would conflict with their religious views. The books that targeted elementary-aged students were particularly controversial.
Originally, some principals let families pull their children out of the classroom when the books were read. But in March 2023, the school system’s central office announced that opt-outs would not be permitted.
More than 1,100 parents signed a petition asking the district to restore the opt-out right and hundreds protested the decision. Maryland is one of 47 states and the District of Columbia that have opt-out or opt-in provisions for sex education in schools, according to the parents’ filing.
In May 2023, a group of parents filed a lawsuit against the school system, alleging that the district violated their First Amendment rights and that the decision went against a district policy that allows for religious accommodations. The parents are not asking the school system to drop the curriculum.
Other parents did not support opting out of the curriculum.
After the lawsuit was filed, the school system quietly stopped teaching two of the books referenced in the lawsuit because of concerns that it would “require teachers to explicitly teach vocabulary terms outside of the context of the lesson,” according to a district database.
The parentswho sued the district asked a federal judge in Maryland for a preliminary injunction to restore the opt-out provision, but the judge denied the request, ruling the parents were unlikely to succeed because they could not show “that the no-opt-out policy burdens their religious exercise.”
That ruling was upheld by a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond, before the parents petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case. Oral arguments in the case will be scheduled later.
Mark Eckstein, a Montgomery County schools parent and LGBTQ+ advocate, said he wasn’t surprised the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, given that discussions around gender and sexuality have roiled school communities across the country.
“I strongly believe that the district court ruled correctly, and I’m hoping there will be a vigorous defense of the wisdom of that decision and MCPS’s policy,” he said.
Montgomery is one of a number of school districts where controversy has flared over books dealing with sexuality and gender. In 2023,a Georgia teacher was fired after she read a book about gender conformity to her fifth-grade class. She sued.
A group of parents in Dearborn, Michigan, sued the school district in 2022, seeking to remove books from school libraries they felt had inappropriate sexual content. Hundreds of mostly Muslim parents also protested at a school board meeting.
The effort was part of a broader push to pull somebooks from schools and libraries. The American Library Association found more than 4,200 book titles were targeted for removal from schools in libraries in 2023, greatly outpacing the 2,500 targeted the year before. Almost 50 percent of the titles dealt with gay and minority themes.
The Supreme Court has moved in recent terms to expand religion in education and the rights of the religious.
In 2o22, a divided court ruled that Washington state discriminated against a football coach who prayed at midfield after a high school football game. The same year, the high court ruled Maine could not exclude religious schools from a voucher program that provides public assistance for education.
Last year, the high court ruled that the constitution’s free speech provisions shield some businesses from being required to provide services to same-sex couples, after a web designer argued she should not have to do such work because of her religious beliefs.
Justin Jouvenal covers the Supreme Court. He previously covered policing and the courts locally and nationally. He joined The Post in 2009. follow on X@jjouvenal
The case was filed by the Catholic anti-LGBTQ hate group, the Becket Fund, whose senior counsel celebrates below.
The Becket Fund last appeared here in July 2024 when they sued to overturn Michigan’s ban on ex-gay torture.
In 2014, the Becket Fund joined with NOM, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, and Alliance Defending Freedom to form an anti-LGBTQ “supergroup” to battle same-sex marriage.
In 2013, the Becket Fund joined with major Catholic groups in sponsoring the so-called Manhattan Declaration, signers of which avow that they will “civilly disobey” laws that protect LGBTQ people from discrimination.
The Becket Fund was founded in 1994 by a former Reagan administration Justice Department lawyer who worked under future Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
The group is named for Saint Thomas Becket, who was Archbishop of Canterbury under King Henry II until he was murdered by followers of the King in the year 1170.
Outside of LGBTQ issues, the Becket Fund is best known for winning cases on behalf of the Little Sisters of the Poor and Hobby Lobby.
These people are driven and a serious threat to democracy. They demand a theocracy of their god and a government enforcing their church doctrines. No non-Christians may be tolerated. Look at what they say, we don’t want government in our churches but we should be in government, and there is no separation of church and state. Plus how would these people react if a Muslim group did this, a Hindu church, or even a Jewish temple? They would lose their minds. Somewhere in the past the atheist stopped fighting these people and let them use their endless supply of church members contributions to push their goals ever closer to taking over. We must again fight back, get the people to understand the risk and what is true in history. These people will rewrite every thing to prove their lies. Hugs.
“There is no separation between church and state,” Republican Party of Texas Chair Abraham George said at a small rally with clergy and GOP lawmakers. “We don’t want the government in our churches, but we should be in the government.”
Polling from the Public Religion Research Institute found that more than half of Republicans adhere to or sympathize with pillars of Christian nationalism, including that the U.S. should be a strictly Christian nation. Of those respondents, roughly half supported having an authoritarian leader who maintains Christian dominance in society. Experts have also found strong correlations between Christian nationalist beliefs and opposition to immigration, racial justice and religious diversity.
One of his movement’s ultimate goals, he said Tuesday, is to draw a lawsuit that they can eventually take to the U.S. Supreme Court, which they believe will ultimately overturn the prohibition and unleash a new wave of conservative, Christian activism.
One Christian nationalism expert said Tuesday’s events showed how normalized the ideology has become among broad swaths of the Republican Party. “I’ve argued for years that, in the Trump era, charismatic evangelicals have displaced the old guard of the (Religious Right) and brought in a new, more aggressive evangelical politics,” Matthew Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, & Jewish Studies, wrote on social media. “That was on vivid display in (Texas) today.”
Taylor has spent much of his career focused on the New Apostolic Reformation, a movement of “charismatic” Christians who often weave prophecy, “spiritual warfare” and demonology into their calls for Christians to take control over all spheres of society.
Abraham George’s comments are the latest sign of the state GOP’s embrace of fundamentalist ideologies that seek to center public life around their faith.
Landon Schott, pastor of Mercy Culture, leads a worship service in the state Capitol extension auditorium on the first day of the 2025 state legislative session in Austin on Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2025. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune
Two hours after Rep. Dustin Burrows of Lubbock was elected Texas House speaker on Tuesday, Christian worshippers gathered in a Capitol meeting room to prepare for “spiritual war” and protect lawmakers from demonic forces.
“Pray for the fear of the Lord to come into this place,” Landon Schott intoned from the stage as a small band played acoustic hymns and 100 or so faithful laid their hands on walls, hoping to bless the room and ward off evil spirits. “Let the fear of the Lord return to Austin. In Jesus’ name.”
Schott is the pastor of Mercy Culture Church in Fort Worth, and was among the Christian leaders who spent Tuesday rallying fellow believers ahead of a legislative session that they hope will further codify their conservative religious views into law. He was joined in those efforts by a throng of pastors and Republican leaders, who throughout the day claimed that church-state separation isn’t real, called progressive Christians heretics, or vowed to weed out “cowardly” clergy who refuse to politick from the pulpit.
“There is no separation between church and state,” Republican Party of Texas Chair Abraham George said at a small rally with clergy and GOP lawmakers. “We don’t want the government in our churches, but we should be in the government.”
George’s comments — delivered some-50 yards from another rally that focused on interfaith unity — are the latest sign of the Texas GOP’s embrace of fundamentalist ideologies that seek to center public life around their faith by claiming church-state separation is a myth or that America’s founding was God-ordained, and its laws should thus favor conservative Christianity.
Polling from the Public Religion Research Institute found that more than half of Republicans adhere to or sympathize with pillars of Christian nationalism, including that the U.S. should be a strictly Christian nation. Of those respondents, roughly half supported having an authoritarian leader who maintains Christian dominance in society. Experts have also found strong correlations between Christian nationalist beliefs and opposition to immigration, racial justice and religious diversity.
Worshippers link hands in prayer while attending a worship service led by a variety of religious groups from across Texas, including My God Votes, in the Capitol extension auditorium. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune
The party’s embrace of those separate-but-overlapping ideologies has come as it has increasingly aligned with far-right megadonors Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, two West Texas oil billionaires who have sought to cleanse the Texas GOP of moderate voices and push their hardline religious views. At the same time, some Republican lawmakers have adopted an increasingly existential view of politics that paints opponents — unwitting or not — as part of a concerted effort to destroy Christianity, including by normalizing LGBTQ+ acceptance or undermining “traditional” family structures.
Such claims have been used as the pretext for a litany of bills and reforms that would further infuse Christianity into public life. During the 2023 legislative session, lawmakers passed a law allowing unlicensed chaplains to supplant counselors in public schools; sought to weaken Texas’ constitutional ban on providing taxpayer money to religious institutions, a core plank of the school voucher movement; and almost passed a bill that would require the Ten Commandments to be posted in public school classrooms.
Lawmakers are expected to continue that trend during this year’s legislative session (the Ten Commandments bill already has been refiled). And pastors, emboldened by President Donald Trump’s reelection and the ultraconservative U.S. Supreme Court, said Tuesday that they believe they have their best shot yet to topple the church-state wall and the Johnson Amendment, a federal rule that prohibits churches from engaging in overt political activity.
Rick Scarborough has spent decades working to do exactly that. A former Southern Baptist pastor in Pearland, he has become a leader in a movement that seeks to mobilize pastors and undermine the Johnson Amendment, which he says is toothless but has been used by “cowardly” pastors who don’t want to engage in politics. The result, he said, has been an ineffectual Texas Legislature that has often cowered to the LGBTQ+ community and their heretical, progressive Christian allies. (Texas lawmakers have passed dozens of anti-LGBTQ+ bills in recent years, overriding opposition from a large majority of Democrats).
One of his movement’s ultimate goals, he said Tuesday, is to draw a lawsuit that they can eventually take to the U.S. Supreme Court, which they believe will ultimately overturn the prohibition and unleash a new wave of conservative, Christian activism.
“The Johnson Amendment is nothing but a fig leaf to cover the fear that pastors already have,” he said in an interview after praying over GOP lawmakers on the Capitol lawn. “Most pastors are so fearful of their reputation that they won’t stand, and they don’t know how much God will defend them if they get out there and stand up and speak fearlessly.”
Few congregations have taken up Scarborough’s mantle like Mercy Culture Church, the Fort Worth congregation that Schott pastors. In recent years, Mercy Culture has become an epicenter of Texas’ fundamentalist Christian movement, helping push the state and local GOP further right, demonizing their detractors — Schott has called critics of the church “warlocks” and “witches,” and claimed Christians can’t vote for Democrats — and rallying voters behind church leaders as they campaign for public office. Among the church’s pastors is Rep. Nate Schatzline, who was elected to the Texas House in 2022 and has since continued to frame his political life as part of broader, spiritual struggle.
“This isn’t a physical battle,” Schatzline said in a Tuesday interview. “It’s not a political battle we’re in. We really believe this is a spiritual battle.”
Hours later, Schatzline kicked off the worship session at the Capitol with a bold promise.
“We’re going to give this space back to the Holy Spirit,” he said. “We give You this room. … The 89th Legislative session is Yours, Lord. The members of this body are Yours, Lord. This building belongs to You, Jesus.”
One Christian nationalism expert said Tuesday’s events showed how normalized the ideology has become among broad swaths of the Republican Party. “I’ve argued for years that, in the Trump era, charismatic evangelicals have displaced the old guard of the (Religious Right) and brought in a new, more aggressive evangelical politics,” Matthew Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, & Jewish Studies, wrote on social media. “That was on vivid display in (Texas) today.”
Taylor has spent much of his career focused on the New Apostolic Reformation, a movement of “charismatic” Christians who often weave prophecy, “spiritual warfare” and demonology into their calls for Christians to take control over all spheres of society.
Members of that movement played central roles in the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, and were well-represented at the Texas Capitol on Tuesday: Schatzline and Mercy Culture have deep ties to the New Apostolic Reformation, as does Brandon Burden, a Frisco pastor who led a caravan of buses and activists to pressure lawmakers ahead of the House speaker vote. In January 2021, he told his congregants to keep weapons loaded for what he prophesied would be a national blackout orchestrated to keep Trump out of office.
Burden repeatedly appeared alongside Republican officials on Tuesday. Minutes after George, the Texas GOP chair, claimed that church-state separation doesn’t exist, Burden led a group of pastors and activists as they prayed over a small group of GOP lawmakers. “We take charge and authority of the 89th legislative session,” he prayed. “We, the people of God, called by the name of Jesus and covered in the blood of the lamb, have been given spiritual jurisdiction over the affairs of men.”
At the Texas Capitol, Christian worshippers are blessing the walls of a hearing room to protect lawmakers from spiritual forces and the “Jezebel” spirit.
“Pray for the fear of the Lord to come into this place,” says MercyCulture pastor Landon Schott. pic.twitter.com/1NAIOYkRtC
Notice that Marge Greene has not volunteered to read to kids. Maybe she struggles with the words, but I am sure the kids would help her sound them out. I am tired of the internet troll wannabees that are masquerading as Federal congress people now. All this is for is to get her name in the press, get hate generated at a marginalized group for doing what she can’t. It is for the clicks. It is the chimp standing on the rock beating her chest shouting “look at me”. The thing is we have tried to ignore it but they won’t go away, and the louder they get the more the fellow monkeys believe them. So we must take the offense and show them the clowns they are. We must fight back. Hugs.
Far-right congresswoman dead named transgender colleague
Far-right U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) leveled the baseless and false accusation that U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.) a “groomer” and “child predator” in a post on X Monday, responding to a video shared by the anti-LGBTQ account Libs of TikTok in which the freshman congresswoman is seen reading to kids in a classroom.
According to the signage featured in the clip, McBride, who is the first transgender member of Congress, was participating in the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s “Jazz and Friends National Day of School and Community Readings.”
The program is part of the organization’s Welcoming Schools initiative, which provides “trainings and resources for elementary school educators” to help “welcome diverse families, create LGBTQ and gender inclusive schools, prevent bias-based bullying, and support transgender and nonbinary students.”
Prior to her first election to the Delaware state legislature, McBride served as press secretary for HRC from 2016-2021.
Monday’s post was not the first time in which Greene has, without evidence, accused LGBTQ people and allies of child sexual abuse or grooming, often for their support of age-appropriate classroom instruction on matters of LGBTQ history, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
She is not alone. As culture wars over issues of sexual orientation and gender identity have intensified in recent years, conservatives have increasingly used false allegations of pedophilia, bringing back a smear that was historically used against gay, queer, and trans people but until recently was considered out of bounds in mainstream political discourse.
RAINN, a national anti-sexual violence group, has highlighted the ways in which these baseless allegations are harmful not just to LGBTQ people but also to children, because they can diminish the experience of survivors and steal the focus away from real cases of child sexual abuse.
After her election to Congress in November, Greene and other House Republicans like U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina began attacking McBride, personally — proposing rules to prohibit her from using women’s restrooms in the Capitol and deliberately dead-naming and misgendering her.
By contrast, McBride last week introduced bipartisan legislation with GOP U.S. Rep. Young Kim (Calif.) to protect consumers from fraudulent scams that offer false promises to repair poor credit scores, becoming the first first-year member to introduce a bill designed to help American families.
The Washington Blade has reached out to representatives from HRC, McBride’s office, and the Congressional Equality Caucus for comment on Greene’s post.
The attention seeking lady screams out during a hearing at a member of the other party getting lots of attention from everyone in the room and also now from the media. And of course Comer who is a total republican tool who is lacking in the ability to think and reason but always pushes the maga talking points and wishes of the cult leader found that Mace threatening a fellow member was not in any way against the rules that say members can’t do that. Just as before he forgave the actions of Marge Greene. No matter what republicans can do no wrong regardless of what they do, however democrats are wrong even when they are following the rules 100%. Hugs.
The House Oversight Committee went off the rails on Tuesday as Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) fumed at Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) for using the term “child” in reference to her, resulting in Mace asking the Texas Democrat if “she wants to take it outside.”
“Somebody’s campaign coffers really are struggling right now. So she can’t keep saying trans, trans, trans, so that people will feel threatened. And child, listen,” Crockett said in a clip that quickly went viral, hitting Mace for her constant attacks and numerous social media posts about the trans community in recent months.
Mace jumped in and said, “I am no child! Do not call me a child. I am no child. Don’t even start, I am a grown woman, 47 years old.”
“I want to find out which of those emails,” Crockett tried to continue as Mace spoke over her.
“I have broken more glass ceilings,” Mace continued as Crockett also spoke.
“I am not a child, I am a grown woman. If you want to take it outside,” Mace added as Chairman James Comer (R-KY) gaveled her down.
“Mr. Chairman, the committee is not in order. Order or point of order! Point of order! Order! Order! Order!” other members could be heard saying.
Democrat Maxwell Frost (D-FL) took to social media to explain what happened next, writing, “Nancy Mace asked Jasmine Crockett to “go outside”. Chair Comer ruled that threatening violence against another member is okay, as long as it’s in the form of a question! Wild.”
The spat between Mace and Crockett came as the House voted to ban trans athletes from women’s sports at federally funded institutions. Crockett spoke again later during the committee meeting and slammed the GOP for attacking “the most vulnerable” members of society instead of trying to help the American public and govern.
“But I don’t know. I can make all kinds of horrible theories up in my head, conspiracy theories and everything else, but it just seemed a little convenient that there was no water and that the wind conditions were right and that there are people ready and willing and able to start fires.
“And are they commissioned to do so or just acting on their own volition?” – Mel “Horse Paste Cures Cancer” Gibson, last night on Laura Ingraham’s show.
Lucky the above guy who destroyed expensive public property did not get caught buying weed or being a doctor saving a woman’s life by giving them a needed abortion. Hugs
New: Meta has deleted trans and nonbinary Messenger themes, as well as the blog posts announcing them. Happens the same week that it has changed its rules to allow users to say LGBTQ+ people are "mentally ill"www.404media.co/meta-deletes…
Another large company has fallen to right wing pressure and the fear of being on tRump’s bad side. This right wing media pressure campaign we had better find a way to stop and combat. Hugs.
A commitment to helping Black people live “free from fear,” and all occurrences of the term “transgender” disappeared from a page listing the online retailer’s policies late last month.
An Amazon logo hangs on a wall at Amazon’s HQ2 in Crystal City, Virginia in 2023. (Eric Lee for the Washington Post)
As Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House, Amazon has cut commitments to protecting the rights of Black and LGBTQ+ people from a public listing of its corporate policies.
Statements that said Amazonsupported the rights of transgender people and would protect the safety of Black employees and customers disappeared from a webpage stating the company’s positions late in December, archived versions show.
Sections titled “Equity for Black people” and “LGBTQ+ rights” were removed from the page, along with all mentions of the term transgender.The “Diversity, equity, and inclusion” section wasupdated to say that “inequitable treatment of anyone — including Black people, LGBTQ+ people, Asians, women, and others — is unacceptable.”
The changes come as other corporations have also adjusted their policies in ways apparently calculated to fit the change of political weather in Washington.
McDonald’s this month scaled back its diversity goals and Meta confirmed Friday that it would dismantle its employee diversity and equity, or DEI, programs. A growing number of Fortune 500 companies have abandoned or reduced DEI initiatives in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn affirmative action in college admissions in 2023.
Some Amazonemployees who noticed the changes to its policy page this weekwere dismayedby the apparent changes in the company’s positions, screenshots of internalconversations seen by The Washington Post showed. The Information earlier reported the changes.
Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in an email statement, “We update this page from time to time to ensure that it reflects updates we’ve made to various programs and positions.” The company also pointed toan internal memo from December in which vice president Candi Castleberry said it was rolling back some DEI initiatives. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.
Before late December, Amazon’s webpage listing its policy positions said the company stood “in solidarity” with Black employees and customers, and supported “legislation to combat misconduct and racial bias in policing, efforts to protect and expand voting rights, and initiatives that provide better health and educational outcomes for Black people.”
Amazon also previously saidon that page it was “working at the U.S. federal and state level on legislation” on protections for transgender people. It saidthat the company provided “gender transition benefits based on the Standards of Care published by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH).” The section with those claimshas also been deleted.
This article is from September 12, 2019. However it is a reminder of several factors of our justice system. First the hysteria around cannabis needs to be addressed at the federal level. I don’t know if it is older people not able to process that reefer madness was a complete lie made up to scare people / kids off using the devil’s weed. The other thing I noticed was that the sentence was way over the top. Why? Racism clearly. She is Native American in a state known for being very racist against the first people. The third thing I noticed was the lack of rehabilitation the state had just looking for her to be returned to prison. The lack of support for a former inmate, the stigma of the conviction in the population, and the crazy need for the state to keep applying more pressure to get money / harass a former inmate until they break and are returned to prison. Please notice the difference in treatment a poor woman got in the legal system vs what wealthy tRump got. Hugs
Sitting in her jail cell this week, Patricia Spottedcrow couldn’t imagine where she was going to get the money she needed for her release.
In 2010, the young Oklahoma mother, who had been caught selling $31 worth of marijuana to a police informant after financial troubles caused her to lose her home, was sentenced to 12 years in prison. It was her first-ever offense, and the lengthy sentence drew national attention, sparking a movement that led to her early release.
But once she was home free, Spottedcrow still owed thousands in court fees that she struggled to pay, since her felony conviction made it difficult to find a job. Notices about overdue payments piled up, with late fees accumulating on top of the original fines. On Monday, the 34-year-old was arrested on a bench warrant that required her to stay in jail until she could come up with $1,139.90 in overdue fees, which she didn’t have. Nearly a decade after her initial arrest, she was still ensnarled in the criminal justice system, and had no idea when she would see her kids again.
“I had no idea how I was going to pay this off,” Spottedcrow told KFOR on Wednesday, after strangers raised the money for her release. “I knew I was going to be sitting here for a while.”
In 2011, Spottedcrow became an unwitting poster child for criminal justice reform when the Tulsa World featured her in a series about women incarcerated in Oklahoma. Then 25, she had just entered prison for the first time, and didn’t expect to be reunited with her young children until they were teenagers.
At the time of her arrest, Spottedcrow was unemployed and without a permanent home, the paper reported. She was staying at her mother’s house in the small town of Kingfisher, Okla., when a police informant showed up and bought an $11 bag of marijuana. Two weeks later, he returned to buy another $20 worth of the drug from Spottedcrow. Both mother and daughter were charged with distribution of a controlled substance, and, because Spottedcrow’s children were at home when the transaction took place, possession of a dangerous substance in the presence of a minor.
“I was home on vacation and it was just there, and I thought we could get some extra money,” Spottedcrow told the paper. “I’ve lost everything because of it.”
The two women both were offered plea deals that would have netted them only two years in prison, the World reported, but Spottedcrow didn’t want her 50-year-old mother, who has health issues, incarcerated. Because neither had a prior criminal record and they had sold only a small amount of pot, they took their chances and pleaded guilty without negotiating a sentencing agreement, assuming they would be granted probation.
Instead, the judge sentenced Spottedcrow to 10 years in prison for the distribution charge, plus another two years for possession. Her mother received a 30-year suspended sentence so that she could take care of the children. Kingfisher County Associate District Judge Susie Pritchett, who retired not long afterward, told the World she thought the sentence was lenient. The mother-daughter pair had been behind “an extensive operation,” she claimed, adding, “It was a way of life for them.”
Spottedcrow said that wasn’t true. “I’ve never been in trouble, and this is a real eye-opener,” she told the paper at the start of her prison stint. “My lifestyle is not like this. I’m not coming back. I’m going to get out of here, be with my kids and live my life.”
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After the World’s story published in 2011, supporters rallied around Spottedcrow’s cause, urging officials to reconsider her punishment. At the time, Oklahoma had the highest per capita rate of female incarceration in the country, a title it continues to hold today. Advocates contended that lengthy sentences like hers were part of the problem, and questioned whether racial bias could have played a role — Spottedcrow is part Native American and part African American.
That same year, a different judge reviewed Spottedcrow’s sentence and agreed to shave off four years. Then, in 2012, then-Gov. Mary Fallin (R) approved her parole. Spottedcrow got home in time to surprise her kids when they stepped off the school bus. The American Civil Liberties Union described her release as a “bittersweet victory,” noting that serving only two years of a 12-year sentence was highly unusual, but the penalty that she received for a first-time, nonviolent drug offense wasn’t out of the ordinary for Oklahoma.
It also wasn’t the end of her troubles. In 2017, five years after Spottedcrow was released from prison, Ginnie Graham, a columnist for the World, checked in to see how she was doing. The picture that she painted was dispiriting: Spottedcrow’s growing family was living in a motel off the interstate because having a felony drug conviction on her record made it virtually impossible for her to find housing, and she hadn’t been able to find work, either.
“I’ve never had Section 8 or HUD, but I need it now,” she said. “I even called my (Cheyenne and Arapahoe) tribe to help, and they didn’t. I called the shelters, and they don’t take large families.”
That same year, at a forum on criminal justice reform, Spottedcrow explained that she couldn’t go back to working in nursing homes like she had done before her arrest because of her felony conviction. And in a small town like Kingfisher, every other potential employer already knew about her legal woes.
“I can’t even go in and act like I feel good about getting this job, because they already know who I am,” she said. “So it’s been really hard.”
While Spottedcrow struggled to care for her six children, the Kingfisher County Court Clerk’s Office mailed out more than a dozen notices saying she had fallen behind on her payments. Each letter meant that the court had tacked on another $10 fine, and that another $80 would be added on top of that if the office didn’t get the money within 10 days. When Spottedcrow first reported to prison, she owed $2,740 in fines. After her release, she made payments at least every other month, according to the World. But it barely made an impact on her ballooning debt: When she was arrested this week, she owed $3,569.76.
“We ask folks for years and years to continue to not have any interaction with law enforcement, to pay these fines and fees, and to pay for this supervision,” Nicole McAfee, director of policy and advocacy for the ACLU of Oklahoma, told KFOR. “In a way, we just oftentimes set folks up for failure.”
Spottedcrow’s arrest on Monday brought renewed attention to her nearly decade-old court case. KFOR morning news anchor Ali Meyer, who detailed the saga in a widely shared Twitter thread, noted that cannabis has been a booming industry in Oklahoma ever since the state legalized medical marijuana in 2018, and left it up to doctors to determine who qualified.
On Tuesday afternoon, Meyer posted the number for the Kingfisher County Court Clerk’s Office, which would allow anyone to make payments on Spottedcrow’s behalf. By Wednesday, seven anonymous supporters had covered not just the $1,139.90 that she needed to get out of jail, but her entire $3,569.76 outstanding balance, the station reported.
She’s out! Patricia Spottedcrow walked out of the Oklahoma Co. Jail today with no court fines hanging over her head. Guys, this is the face of a fresh start. To the generous, compassionate donors.. she says, “Thank you for everything!” pic.twitter.com/qaqlMHRtA2
Well well well. Now that he got his party / his guy elected, he admits it was all just a game that was not possible. He is trying to shove some of the years of slime off himself and crawl to the side of good. Too late Newt. You choose your path, stay in your pen or your own fellows will turn on you and destroy you themselves. Hugs
Newt Gingrich during the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on 17 July 2024. Photograph: Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images
Newt Gingrich, the former US House speaker and presidential hopeful, said a section of his own Republican party was “rabid” over immigration and predicted Donald Trump’s suggestion that he could deport documented people as well as millions of undocumented people will not come to pass.
“I’d be very surprised if you see any significant effort to change the game for people who are here legally,” Gingrich said, weeks before Trump’s return to the White House. “I just think there’s a very small faction of the party that’s rabid about this.”
He also warned that public support for mass deportations would “collapse” if stories began to come out “about mothers or babies or children being deported”.
The president-elect may not welcome Gingrich’s intervention. After all, Trump won last year’s election promising mass deportations involving the armed forces and detention camps. He has chosen ultra-hardliners including Tom Homan and Stephen Miller and has suggested his administration will attempt to remove children and documented people, telling NBC: “I don’t want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back.”
Also at issue is the fate of millions of so-called Dreamers, undocumented people who were children when they were brought to the US, and Trump’s vow to remove birthright citizenship, a right protected by the 14th amendment but which Trump says he will strike down by executive order.
Amid widespread predictions of chaos and protest, Gingrich said he was “passionately in favor of trying to help find a path to create legality for the Dreamers”, a position that may put him less at odds with Trump, given Trump’s suggestion he might accept a deal on the matter.
Gingrich continued: “It’s nonsense to say somebody who came here when they were two, only speaks English, graduated as a high school valedictorian and is currently a nurse or a doctor should be deported. We’re going to deport them and they don’t speak the language of whatever country their parents came from, and they’ve earned the right to be Americans?
“ … I think [the Trump administration has to] to realize that there are gradations here that we’re dealing with, and try to think through, how do you both meet the long-term identity and national security interests of the country and meet the human concerns. And I think it’s a real challenge.”
Now 81, Gingrich was a Georgia representative from 1979 to 1999, the last four years as House speaker. In 2012, he ran for the Republican presidential nomination. A prolific author, he remains close to Trump, to whom he offered advice during the attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
Gingrich spoke to the Guardian to mark the release of Journey to America with Newt and Callista Gingrich, a PBS documentary made with his wife about immigrants who have made major contributions to US public life.
“We are a nation of law despite some of the things that have been said [by Trump and his allies],” he said. “And I think that if you have legal standing in the American system, it’s very difficult to deport you. On the other hand, if you have no legal standing, it’s pretty easy to deport you, right? And I’m for doing the easy first. That’s why we should give [Dreamers] legal status, as a practical matter.”
Along those lines, Gingrich has put out a seven-step immigration plan, perhaps for Trump to consider.
Gingrich offered another warning: “Lincoln once said that with popular sentiment, anything is possible; without popular sentiment, nothing is possible. Well, you get very many human stories about mothers or babies or children being deported, then support for the deportation program will collapse.”
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