In just a few short years in politics, Evelyn Rios Stafford has managed to make an impression at the highest levels of government, and at the most local, too.
The first transgender person to hold elected office in Arkansas, Rios Stafford serves as Justice of the Peace for her small district in Fayetteville. In her role, she’s officiated dozens of weddings for constituents. “That’s one of the highlights of this gig as Justice of the Peace. It always gives me such a warm fuzzy feeling to do that for people,” she told LGBTQ Nation.
Now, Rios Stafford is running for reelection to the post without serious opposition, a vote of confidence even before the election that constituents view her time in office as effective.
Rios Stafford’s first political involvement was getting a local civil rights ordinance passed in the late 2010’s. In 2020, she ran for an open seat on the local Quorum Court, the equivalent of a board of supervisors, and won. She represents about 16,000 people in her district.
At 49, with a broad smile and the easy, thoughtful cadence of a Texas native, Rios Stafford says being trans wasn’t a focus of her first campaign. “You know, I made one post…about it on National Coming Out Day during the campaign. But that was about it.” It wasn’t until after she was elected that “some folks got wind of the fact that I was a first of something.”
But her victory would become pivotal in the fight over trans rights in the state.
In 2021, the Arkansas legislature passed HB1570, also known as the Save Adolescents from Experimentation or SAFE Act. Like similar legislation introduced in other red states, the bill would ban all gender-affirming care for minors, prohibit insurance from covering gender transition procedures, and criminalize those assisting minors in the process.
The bill was awaiting Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson’s signature when Rios Stafford was enlisted by an Arkansas legislator to help halt the bill’s march into law. From the “phone call to me to meeting the governor was probably, I’d say 24 hours.”
While Rios Stafford was trans, she hadn’t transitioned as a youth. “I knew that I needed to also make space for folks who had this experience and were directly impacted, because their voices are really the ones that have been left out of this whole thing,” she said. Rios Stafford brought 18 year-old Willow Breshears, who began transitioning at 16 with her family’s active support, to the ornate conference room table for her meeting with the governor.
“This was probably the first time that he had ever had a sit down, face-to-face discussion with a trans person before, or in this case two trans people. And, you know, he was kind of starting at zero in terms of knowledge.” A 15-minute appointment turned into half an hour and then 45 minutes. “He was just wanting to know more, basically.”
“I was on pins and needles walking out of that room, like, you know, almost on the verge of having a panic attack. I was replaying all of my answers in my head, like, did I say the right thing, did I screw this up completely?”
Not only did Hutchinson veto the bill, he wrote a Washington Post op-ed explaining why and also went on Tucker Carlson’s show to defend his decision. No matter, the Arkansas legislature overrode his veto, though the law remains tied up in court challenges.
Still, Rios Stafford was satisfied to hear “echoes of some of the things we talked about” in Hutchinson’s defense of the veto.
“‘Traditionally, Republicans have held themselves up as champions of limited government,’” Rios Stafford told the governor. “‘In what way, shape or form is this limited government? Because this is big government. This is government getting in between the families and their doctors.’”
Rios Stafford’s own gender awakening was pivotal to her work in her adopted home state. She majored in English at Rice University in Houston and was pursuing a career in journalism when she got a call from the ABC-TV affiliate in San Francisco asking her to come in for an interview. She got the job. She was young and bright and on the loose in Baghdad by the Bay.
“It was a great time to come there,” she recalled. “During the dot-com boom, the city was kind of going crazy, and it was a really fun time to be there in my 20s. And obviously San Francisco is a place where you can really explore your identity, as well.”
Born and raised in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas, she grew up attending Catholic school, where she encountered the first signs of her conflicted gender identity.
“In Catholic school, I had a boyfriend when I was 15. A couple of our friends knew about it, but it definitely wasn’t something that we were out about. I knew that I wasn’t straight, exactly,” she remembers thinking, “but I didn’t really have the language or knowledge to have an understanding of exactly in what way.”
In college, she figured it out. It was “literally, when I was, like, doing research in the college library, that I came across the idea of transgender. And it was this lightbulb moment of like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s what’s been going on with me.’”
In San Francisco, she embraced her new reality. “Gradually, I became more and more out,” Rios Stafford recalled. “It was not a surprise for some people. It was a surprise for others.” While she was “bracing for the worst,” she was “really pleasantly surprised and so grateful for having such a positive experience.”
Evelyn Rios Stafford on her wedding day Provided
“Back then, this was sort of like, this was new territory,” she said. “I think I was the first employee at an ABC owned-and-operated station to transition on the job.” The following year, Rios Stafford picked up two Emmys for her producing. “I feel like it was all tied together.”
The total package arrived shortly after she transitioned, when Rios Stafford met her future husband, Bob Stafford, an artist and graphic designer, online. She was “smitten from the beginning.” The two shared mutual friends in the arts scene South of Market in San Francisco, and Southern roots, as well. Soon after, the couple moved east to Stafford’s hometown of Fayetteville. They were married in 2016.
According to Rios Stafford, performing weddings in her job as Justice of the Peace is optional. “Not all the JPs do it. I have a feeling that one or two of them might not be on there because if they were on the list, they might have to do a same-sex wedding, and it’s against their personal beliefs or something? But I was like, ‘Sign me up! I’ll do anybody.’”
In a test of the maturity of anyone who happens across this story, Rockman School Board candidate Craig Ladyman has been exposed for posting violently queerphobic and antisemitic imagery online.
Ladyman posted an image of four pride flags arranged to form a swastika pattern on Trump social media network Truth Social under the incredible username “@LadymanForLiberty”. The candidate writes, “Like my new Pride flag?” (very respectfully capitalizing the “P” in “Pride”, of course).
Appalled parents and voters sent the post along to Superintendent Steven Matthews, who says he shares in their outrage.
“It makes me feel angry,” he tells Fox WXMI. “Certainly, a symbol like that represents the and represents divisiveness. It’s a symbol that I don’t think represents who we are as a community, and anybody who would use it I don’t think represent who we are as a community.”
In addition to the bastardization of the Pride flag, the invoking of nazi imagery is deeply unsettling to community members.
Rabbi David Krishef, a leader at the Ahavas Israel congregation in neighboring Grand Rapids, explains to WXMI the harm that sentiments like Ladyman’s pose.
“It cheapens the Holocaust, it cheapens the suffering,” he says. “It’s a misuse of the imagery, it’s a misuse of the language.
“No matter what’s going on in this country, whether you’re coming from the right wing being afraid of what the left wing are doing or vice versa, we are not rounding people up wholesale and consigning them to concentration camps and death camps. But that’s what the Nazi imagery evokes.”
Not to psychoanalyze transphobes on main, but this candidate’s anti-trans rhetoric is particularly vehement and loud. His official school board candidacy poster reads, “Vote Craig Ladyman/Rockford School Board/He knows what a woman is!”
It’s giving “graphic design is my passion”:
His campaign website boasts, “I promise to fight for parental rights and children’s rights in school. I will never go along with unconstitutional mandates, medical tyranny, or the woke agenda.”
We’re not saying that this man was so horribly bullied for his name growing up that gender stricture became deeply embedded in his psyche and is now his only personality trait. Not out loud, at least.
In a recent segment on his Fox News show, host Tucker Carlson shared the names and photos of Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s board of directors while ranting against hospitals that provide gender-affirming care.
Gender-affirming care for both adolescents and adults has been endorsed by the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatric Association, and many other professional groups as necessary and frequently life-saving for transgender individuals. Yet Carlson falsely framed the issue as medical experimentation on children, accusing hospitals of profiting off “the mental anguish of children” in thrall to a supposed “fad.”
Carlson directed his outrage primarily at Tennessee’s Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Earlier this week, anti-LGBTQ commentator Matt Walsh targeted VUMC in a Twitter thread falsely claiming that the staff at the medical center’s Transgender Health Clinic “castrate, sterilize, and mutilate minors as well as adults, while apparently taking steps to hide this activity from the public view.” VUMC has since shut down the website for its Transgender Health Clinic and released a statement defending the work they do for trans patients and accusing Walsh of misrepresenting the facts.
The stunt has led social media users to wonder whether Calson’s rant could lead to violence against the hospital’s staff.
“Within the past few hours after Matt Walsh’s attack on Vanderbilt and Tucker Carlson’s coverage, users of 4chan and the Donald are calling for the outright murder of doctors. This is exactly what they want,” tweeted Harvard Law Cyberlaw clinical instructor Alejandra Caraballo.
Within the past few hours after Matt Walsh's attack on Vanderbilt and Tucker Carlson's coverage, users of 4chan and the Donald are calling for the outright murder of doctors. This is exactly what they want. pic.twitter.com/YNjI17EzbI
Earlier this month, Media Matters reported that Carlson had responded to the threats and harassment targeting BCH and other children’s hospitals by amplifying anti-trans misinformation. This week, in another anti-LGBTQ segment falsely accusing teachers and doctors of “sexualizing children,” Carlson went so far as to suggest that “neighborhood dads” should “mete out instant justice to anyone who even thought about sexualizing their kids.”
“No matter what the law says, your duty, your moral duty, is to defend your children,” he said. “This is an attack on your children and you should fight back.”
This country is not a theocracy yet! Why are these religious bigots crafting legislation to instill their religious beliefs into secular laws? I am tired of these people insisting I live according to the limits of the people who lived 2,500 years ago. Societies grow, they change, they improve, and the way we treat people shows that growth, unless you live by the regressive rules of a religion. Hugs
Pennsylvania GOP state lawmakers are pushing a bill to limit school instruction that is more expansive than the Florida legislation that has been described by its opponents as the “don’t say gay” law. During a rally at the Capitol, Republican lawmakers and supporters framed the legislation, House Bill 2813, as a way to guarantee parental oversight and control over the availability of school materials that they portrayed as increasingly obscene.
“It is patterned after the Florida bill, but mine goes further,” said Rep. Stephanie Borowicz, R-Clinton/Centre, the bill’s prime sponsor. “It really needs to be protected up through 12th grade, we need to go all the way,” she told reporters. The GOP gubernatorial candidate, Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Adams/Franklin, appeared briefly at the event to voice full-throated support for such measures.
Borowicz last appeared on JMG in March 2020 when she introduced a resolution calling for prayer because the COVID pandemic was God’s punishment for sin. Her first appearance here came in March 2019 when she held widely-criticized floor prayer for conversions to Christianity moments before the swearing-in of a Muslim rep.
This is so sad and hateful. In our great Commonwealth, we don't “other” people. That is literally antithetical to our history.https://t.co/bECHWH51VK
Pennsylvania state representatives have introduced a bill regulating classroom instruction that is more restrictive than Florida’s infamous “don’t say gay” law. https://t.co/LH04cow20U
The absence of talking about LGBTx people communicates a lot — it says we’re “controversial”, tainted in some way, not to be discussed in general public… it teaches shame. Which is 100% everything the Christian agenda wants to teach about us.
It’s funny you should mention 1976. I remember that year vividly. I was a junior in high school who had just come out to myself (albeit to no one else) and I can remember reading an article that year in Newsweek magazine about the happy homosexuals who were making a community for themselves in San Francisco. Back then, it seemed like the world was young and new and that all things were possible. Little did I know the fierce backlash that would result from those happy homosexuals who were just trying to live their lives with happiness and some degree of integrity. But I would soon find out. Anita Bryant appeared with her crusade the very next year and it wasn’t long afterwards that Jerry Falwell and Ralph Reed appeared on the scene to turn the clock backwards.
“Borowicz’s bill also contains requirements for parents to be notified about health services provided through schools,” So if a school nurse found too many bruises on the kid, the school would have to give the abusive parents a heads-up? Yikes!
Yep, to these hateful higots children have no rights, they are just pieces of property so when property gets damaged the slave owner should be notified
Her district is smack-dab in the middle of the state, but avoiding Penn State University and its bedroom communities. She’s a stay at home mom and appears to believe that’s the only acceptable role for women– probably hates women who work for wages (including single parents . . . especially single parents).
Although the plain text of the Pennsylvania bill would include a ban on any instruction regarding sexual identity – even heterosexuality – the rhetoric around such laws has clearly targeted LGBTQ people, Pick said.
There should be lawsuits if any heterosexuality is mentioned in any way. Any relationships mentioned illustrating heterosexual relationships like James Madison and Dolly Madison.
Only when they say the schools are “grooming” you kids to be gay or trans.
They really want erasure of anything LGBT. Right now there is a big uproar in Sarasota FL because a teacher had to revise her teaching material so it didn’t mention Sally Ride was a lesbian or had a long term partner.
“Our students must be able to choose the time and the manner in which they share their transness and with whom. It is not our place to force them to do so.”
Dawn Riggs, Ohio Board of Education Speech Photo: Screenshot
A teacher is making waves on Twitter for her impassioned speech before the Ohio State Board of Education in support of trans students.
Dawn Riggs, a teacher of 33 years, was testifying against a resolution that would require Ohio schools to out trans and nonbinary students to their parents, allow teachers the right to refuse to use a student’s preferred name and pronouns, and require students to participate on sports teams based on their sex assigned at birth, effectively excluding trans girls from school sports.
The “Resolution to Support Parents, Schools, and Districts in Rejecting Harmful, Coercive, and Burdensome Gender Identity Policies” was introduced by Board member Brendan Shea as a reaction to new federal Title IX rules that expand protections for LGBTQ students.
Riggs spoke before the board about the difference it makes to support trans students.
“I have many trans and nonbinary students in my classes. My experience with transgender individuals spans my entire career. I am still in touch with some of those folks. Every single former student has told me how much knowing they had a safe space to be their authentic selves has meant to them”
Riggs said students have opened up to her about their trauma and suicidal thoughts, and their “wish to disappear.”
“The fact that they could walk into my classroom, be called the name they chose, and be called by the pronouns that reflect their lived experience made a difference. Even if no other adult in their life affirmed their identity, they knew they would be safe for at least a little while each day.”
She added, “It is no burden to use a name that we are asked to use. It is no burden to use the pronouns that are shared with us. If your friend William asked you to call him Billy, you don’t blink an eye.”
She also lambasted the board for considering allowing schools to out students to their parents.
“Our students must be able to choose the time and the manner in which they share their transness and with whom. It is not our place to force them to do so. I urge you to oppose this hateful and misguided rhetoric.”
Teachers: this is the person you should strive to be.
On Twitter, people praised Riggs for her words and actions.
“She saved lives, 100% certain.” one user wrote.
“If more people had her attitude and kindness there would be a lot more happier trans and non binary people in the world,” said another.
Three members of the Board of Education also released an official statement against Shea’s resolution, writing that they “are embarrassed that our time as a board will be spent discussing an issue that so egregiously works to bully children and threaten adults.”
“Shea not only presented a resolution full of factual errors and based in religious pedagogy,” the statement continued, “but he also submitted a resolution that works to detract our body from the work many of us were elected to do.”
Editor’s note: This article mentions suicide. If you need to talk to someone now, call the Trans Lifeline at 1-877-565-8860. It’s staffed by trans people, for trans people. The Trevor Project provides a safe, judgement-free place to talk for LGBTQ youth at 1-866-488-7386. You can also call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.
Times change. Medical understandings lead to social and cultural changes. This is one of them. In some parts of the world women are still required to leave the home and stay in an outbuilding or even just outside. I remember about a year ago a woman died because her period happened during a hurricane and she was forced to go outside and stay there during the storm. It was in a country that had religious laws instead of science as their fundamental rule making requirements. But she was a woman so only her family that loved her really cared about it. Are we ready for the US Christian Taliban take over now? Hugs
Again the moral police anti-trans US Christian Taliban managed to shut down the web site of a hospital providing legal medical best practice trans affirming care. That is what all the major medical groups support. Here is some of the medical organizations that support trans affirming treatment.
Look over the list again. These anti-trans haters like Matt Walsh claim to know more than all these medical providers. Based on their religious beliefs I guess. These gang of thug maga right wing win bigots are doing the dirty work so that the red state governor can pretend there is a problem, but these haters are making the problem. It is like they flood a bathroom by stopping up the drains and then stage an investigation into the plumbers’ organizations claiming that they are why the bathroom flooded. How long is the US going to be ruled by a small minority of thugs, gangs using threats of violence, lies, and misinformation to force the rest of the public to follow their religious views of sexuality / gender. They want to erase all the social gains of the last 60 years. They want the women to return to being subservient to men and the LGBTQ+ to go away / not to exist. Hugs
The state’s anti-LGBTQ governor is threatening to launch an investigation based on a Twitter thread.
Conservative anti-LGBTQ commentator Matt Walsh has targeted Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) this week in a crusade against gender-affirming healthcare.
In a Twitter thread on Tuesday, Walsh claimed that based on the results of an investigation by him and his team, the staff at VUMC’s Transgender Health Clinic “now castrate, sterilize, and mutilate minors as well as adults, while apparently taking steps to hide this activity from the public view.”
Walsh criticized the clinic’s Trans Buddy program – which offers peer support to patients – and repeatedly accused the medical staff of “drugging and sterilizing” kids for financial gain.
And his accusations are fueling anti-LGBTQ politicians. In response to Walsh, anti-LGBTQ Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) released a statement expressing that Walsh’s claims warrant an investigation.
“The ‘pediatric transgender clinic’ at Vanderbilt University Medical Center raises serious moral, ethical and legal concerns,” Lee said. “We should not allow permanent, life-altering decisions that hurt children or policies that suppress religious liberties, all for the purpose of financial gain. We have to protect Tennessee children, and this warrants a thorough investigation.”
The office of the state’s Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti also reportedly confirmed an investigation is taking place.
VUMC has since shut down the website for the Transgender Health Clinic and has released a statement defending the work they do for the trans community. The statement opens by saying the video footage and social media posts Walsh used to accuse the hospital of using trans people to make money “misrepresent facts.”
“VUMC began its Transgender Health Clinic because transgender individuals are a high-risk population for mental and physical health issues and have been consistently underserved by the U.S. health system,” the statement says.
“We have been and will continue to be committed to providing family-centered care to all adolescents in compliance with state law and in line with professional practice standards and guidance established by medical specialty societies.”
The hospital emphasized that parental consent is required to treat all trans minors and that employees may decline to participate “in care they find morally objectionable.”
“The Trans Buddy program mentioned in the video has received national acclaim,” it continued. “Its purpose is to provide peer volunteers who support persons who are seeking highly personal care in an unfamiliar environment, and who may have been refused medical services in the past or avoided seeking them out of fear of being met with hostility.”
Anti-trans conservatives continue to put hospitals (and the children they treat) at risk by spreading lies about gender-affirming health care.
The Boston Children’s Hospital was recently forced to evacuate after an anonymous bomb threat was called in following a weeks-long harassment campaign from anti-LGBTQ groups.
After far-right Libs of TikTok founder Chaya Raichik falsely claimed the hospital was conducting gender-affirming surgery on children as young as two or three years old, physicians received so many death threats, harassing calls, and emails that the hospital had to hire extra security and give doctors new guidance on responding to threats.
Around the same time, Children’s National Hospital in Washington D.C. was targeted with bomb and death threats after the far-right anti-LGBTQ Twitter account Libs of TikTok falsely claimed that the hospital was performing hysterectomies (the removal of the uterus, cervix, fallopian tubes, and sometimes ovaries) on transgender children.
In reality, gender affirming surgery is almost never performed on minors.
Instead, puberty blockers are used in the treatment of transgender youth to hold off the permanent changes of puberty so that young people have more time to understand their gender identities better.
“The intent of these bills seems to be to wipe out any discussion and pretend that [LGBTQ people] don’t exist,” Ward said. And after they get the gays out of view in society who will be the next scapegoats. Remember this pandering by red state governors are to their base, which is a small minority of vocal and thuggish people. The majority of the public doesn’t want these enforced bigotry bills. The vast majority of the public wants acceptance and tolerance of diversity. Also don’t be fooled when the bills say notify the parents of any healthcare treatment they are talking of social transitioning such as name changes and use of pronouns. Basically outing kids to their parents. Hugs
Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania have introduced a new bill, “patterned” on Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law, that would ban discussions on LGBTQ+ topics in classrooms. (Getty)
Republican state lawmakers are rallying behind newly introduced anti-LGBTQ+ legislation that would ‘go further’ than Florida’s reviled ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law.
GOP politicians held a rally at the Pennsylvania state capitol Tuesday (20 September) to introduce House Bill 2813. The bill shares similarities with Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law, which bans discussions of LGBTQ+ topics in classrooms between kindergarten and third grade.
Pennsylvania state representative Stephanie Borowicz, the bill’s primary sponsor, said HB 2813 is “patterned” on the Florida legislation but actually “goes further” than the other measure, according to PennLive.
The bill states that any public or charter school “may not offer instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity to a student in kindergarten through fifth grade”.
It would also require schools to notify parents of “health care services offered by the school entity” to students. The legislation would also allow parents to bring civil action against schools that they believe are violating the measure.
Borowicz added she believed the bill could be extended further in the future and wanted to ban classroom discussions on LGBTQ+ topics through high school.
“It really needs to be protected up through 12th grade, we need to go all the way,” she said.
However, the bill is unlikely to pass into law as Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf has already promised to veto HB 2813 and other ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bills if they land on his desk.
Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf has promised to veto HB 2813 as he says it “denies humanity by reinforcing homophobic ideologies”. (Getty)
Wolf wanted lawmakers in the state to focus on the real issues facing Pennsylvanians rather than “engaging in discrimination and bullying”, WHTMreported.
“HB 2813 is an effort to scorch individuality and normalise unacceptance,” Wolf said. “This legislation denies humanity by reinforcing homophobic ideologies.”
Sharon Ward, senior policy advisor for the Education Law Center of Pennsylvania, warned this bill – like other ‘Don’t Say Gay’ measures – could “really add to the existing targeting and bullying of LGBTQ kids in schools”.
“The intent of these bills seems to be to wipe out any discussion and pretend that [LGBTQ people] don’t exist,” Ward said.
Pennsylvania lawmakers in the state Senate passed a similar bill, Senate Bill 1278, in June and currently awaits consideration in the House.
SB 1278 would also ban classroom discussions of LGBTQ+ topics for pre-kindergarten through fifth-grade students. Instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity would also be prohibited between sixth and twelfth grade unless it is done in an “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate” manner.
Campaigners have denounced the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bills as they attempt to “wipe out any discussion and pretend that [LGBTQ people] don’t exist”. (Getty)
The Pennsylvania Commission on LGBTQ Affairs described SB 1278 as a “copy-paste version of Florida’s discriminatory ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill that would harm students and set back human rights” in the state.
Rafael Álvarez Febo, executive director of the LGBTQ Affairs Commission, said the bill is a “cruel attempt to politicise” queer people and “deny their humanity” to “score cheap political points”.
“We at the Pennsylvania Commission on LGBTQ Affairs know that the guise of calling LGBTQ people and topics ‘age inappropriate’ is really just fearmongering,” Febo said.
Febo continued: “Bills like these will cause LGBTQ teachers to have to conceal their identities and strip any resources available for LGBTQ youth out of schools.
“Even more alarming, these bills have emboldened far-right hate groups to mobilise to commit violence against LGBTQ people.”
Wolf has promised to veto both HB 2318 and SB 1278, but the bills await an uncertain future as Pennsylvania will have a new governor next year.
The Republican running for office, state senator Doug Mastriano, voted in favour of SB 1278. He described the anti-LGBTQ+ measure as a way to “empower parents” to ensure children aren’t exposed to so-called “sexually explicit materials and bizarre discussions about gender identity”.
A group of migrants huddle on a sidewalk in Martha’s Vineyard, MA on September 15, 2022 (Photo by Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Popular Information has obtained documentary evidence that migrants from Venezuela were provided with false information to convince them to board flights chartered by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R). The documents suggest that the flights were not just a callous political stunt but potentially a crime.
Last Wednesday, two planes landed in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and dropped off about 50 migrants from Venezuela. DeSantis quickly took credit. The migrants were used as political pawns in the hopes of provoking a negative reaction from a liberal community.
“When people are brought to their front door, they go berserk,” DeSantis said. “Their virtue signaling is a fraud.” But the people in Martha’s Vineyard did not go berserk. Instead, they rallied together to provide shelter, food, clothing, and other necessities for the group. On Friday, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker (R) facilitated their voluntary relocation to Joint Base Cape Cod, which is “a safe temporary accommodation appropriate for the specific needs of families and individuals.”
The charter flights appear to be inspired by a Tucker Carlson monologue from July 26, in which the notoriously xenophobic host suggested sending migrants to Martha’s Vineyard in “huge numbers.”
DeSantis reportedly sent a videographer along for the ride, and Fox News obtained “exclusive footage of the migrants’ arrival.”
In the aftermath of the flights, a key issue of contention is whether the migrants boarded the flights freely and voluntarily. While DeSantis and his administration repeatedly referred to the migrants as “illegal immigrants,” the migrants surrendered to immigration officials after crossing the border into Texas. They are now seeking asylum from the repressive authoritarian regime in Venezuela. The migrants are legally permitted to remain in the United States while their cases are being considered by immigration courts.
So these migrants are able to voluntarily travel within the United States. But many of the migrants told reporters that they were misled about the nature of the flights. Several migrants told NPR they were told the flight was going to Boston, not Martha’s Vineyard. According to the migrants, a woman who identified herself as Perla also said that, if they traveled to Boston, they could receive “expedited work papers.”
The allegation that the migrants were misled is legally significant. It would mean that the flights were not just heartless, but potentially criminal. If the migrants were misled, the scheme to transport them to Martha’s Vineyard could constitute fraud, false imprisonment, or kidnapping. “There is absolutely the possibility of both civil and criminal liability if people were lied to about where they were going [or] what they were going to get when they got there,” lawyer Susan Church told Politico.
DeSantis has been adamant that the migrants were not misled. He claims that migrants were provided with a map showing the destination was Martha’s Vineyard and describes the flights as “all voluntary.” Appearing on Fox News on Sunday Morning, Florida Lt. Governor Jeanette Nunez (R) called allegations that the migrants were misled “categorically false.”
Popular Information, however, has obtained a brochure that was provided to the migrants who ultimately agreed to the flights. It was provided to Popular Information by Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR), a Boston-based legal organization that represents 30 of the migrants. The brochure says that migrants who arrive in Massachusetts will be eligible for numerous benefits, including “8 months cash assistance,” “assistance with housing,” “food,” “clothing,” “transportation to job interviews,” “job training,” “job placement,” “registering children for school,” “assistance applying for Social Security cards,” and many other benefits.
None of this, however, is true.
Matt Cameron, a Boston-based immigration attorney, explained that the benefits described in the brochure are resettlement benefits available to refugees who have been referred by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and authorized to live in the United States. These benefits are not available in Massachusetts to the migrants who boarded the flights, who are still in the process of seeking asylum.
The migrants who boarded the planes “absolutely do not have access to cash, housing, and other resettlement benefits which are provided through both federal funds and partnerships with faith-based [organizations],” Cameron said.
The brochure, which is crudely designed to resemble a government document, does not explain that these benefits described are only available to specially designated refugees.
According to some of the migrants, the benefits described in the brochure were also promised verbally by Perla to lure them onto the planes chartered by DeSantis. “[T]hey told us that they were going to help us with the rent, to get a job, that was the only option left to us,” one migrant, Eduardo Linares, told the Texas Tribune. (Linares ultimately declined to board the flight.)
There could be real consequences for migrants who were convinced to board the flight under false pretenses. Seeking asylum is an “often years-long process through immigration courts that requires [migrants] to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement periodically.” Some migrants now find themselves thousands of miles away from where they need to report for their next check-in. A missed appointment can “be detrimental to their case.”
On Saturday, LCR wrote to U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, calling on them to open a formal investigation. “Individuals, working in concert with State officials, including the Florida Governor, made numerous false promises to LCR’s clients — including of work opportunities, schooling for their children, and immigration assistance — in order to induce them to travel,” LCR said in the letter. “[T]hose who had induced our clients to travel under these false pretenses disappeared, leaving our clients to learn that the offers of assistance had all been a ruse to exploit them for political purposes.”
DeSantis’ office did not respond to a request for comment about the brochure.
This one of the most watched loudest voices in right wing media. Spreading more lies so more people will be targeted for violence and more LGBTQ+ events will get shut down by the Proud Boys gang thugs enforcement arm of the republican party. Grooming is when someone builds a relationship, trust and emotional connection with a child or young person so they can manipulate, exploit and abuse them. Children and young people who are groomed can be sexually abused, exploited or trafficked. Anybody can be a groomer, no matter their age, gender or race. Teachers are not groomers, nor are drag queens reading stories with parents present. The ones sexualizing kids is the right who are claiming anything they don’t like is sexualizing kids, and anyone they are against is a grooming pedophile. Kids understand gender from the time they notice mommy and daddy, brother and sister, and kids understand love attraction again because they see it at home, on TV, at church, anywhere there are people in relationships. They understand it if Mr. T and Mr. B are a couple that they love each other like their family. They are not sexualized to see a picture of a straight spouse on a teacher’s desk and they are not sexualized to see a picture of a same sex spouse on a teacher’s desk. It doesn’t sexualize them in anyway. It is just the world around them. What does sexualize them is what the right wing is doing, making children a sexual pawn to criminalize / ban everything you don’t like in society. Don’t bring the kids into your hate, be honest and just say you hate some and are against it. Don’t hide behind the kids. Hugs
“In a healthy country, with an intact social fabric, neighborhood dads would give out instant justice to anyone who even thought about sexualizing their kids.
“And if you doubt that, go out and try it in Bulgaria or South Africa or the Solomon Islands. Good luck. Let us know how that ends, if you can still speak.
“Libs of TikTok was being banned from the internet — why? Because it showed documentary evidence of what was happening. Some people described what was happening as grooming.
“We are not exactly sure what that means, but if it’s sexually abusing children — yeah, that is what’s happening. But the term groomer is now hate speech, says NBC News.
“What you’re seeing is a society that hates children. You would have to hate children in order to sexualize them. Because sexualizing children screws them up for life — ask anyone to whom it has happened — period.
“No one should put up with this. No parent should put up with this for one second, no matter what the law says. Your duty — your moral duty — is to defend your children.
“This is an attack on your children and you should fight back.” – Tucker Carlson, on last night’s show.
Photo: Robert Stafford
Tucker Carlson Photo: Screenshot
Dawn Riggs, Ohio Board of Education Speech Photo: Screenshot
Photo: Shutterstock
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