Sen. Chris Murphy D-Conn., became emotional on the Senate floor begging his Republican colleagues to compromise on gun legislation following the shooting at a Texas elementary school. He compared the Uvalde shooting to Sandy Hook, and said, “This only happens in this country and no where else.”
This guy lies so often I think he wouldn’t know the truth if he tripped over it. How the Republicans in Georgia support him is beyond me. He has domestic abuse charges, admits pulling a gun on his wife, has lied about everything in his life, has a certified mental illness and brain damage. But he has two things they really want. He has an R next to his name and he is black which they need because the guy he is running against is a black man also. Hugs
In interviews and campaign appearances, the former Dallas Cowboy and Heisman Trophy winner takes credit for founding, co-founding and sometimes operating a program called Patriot Support. The program, he says, has taken him to military bases all over the world.
But corporate documents, court records and Senate disclosures reviewed by The Associated Press tell a more complicated story. Together they present a portrait of a celebrity spokesman who overstated his role in a for-profit program that is alleged to have preyed upon veterans and service members while defrauding the government.
But Patriot Support is not a charity. It’s a for-profit program specifically marketed to veterans that is offered by Universal Health Services, one of the largest hospital chains in the U.S. Walker wasn’t the program’s founder, either. It was created 11 years before Universal Health Services says it hired Walker as a spokesman, which paid him a salary of $331,000 last year.
Herschel Walker boasts of his charity work helping members of the military through a program he created, called Patriot Support. But court filings and company documents show Walker did not found the program. It's also not a charity. https://t.co/i2ok26OClZ
— Stars and Stripes (@starsandstripes) May 21, 2022
Herschel Walker lied about his role in a “charity” that turns out not to be a charity? It’s not the first lie he has told, and I’m sure it’s not the last. Walker should not be elected to Congress. There are too many lying Republicans there, already.
Let’s see, he’s a liar, an idiot, sexual abuser, and of a criminal mind – makes him perfect for a Republican candidate – perhaps he can be Trump’s running mate or chief of staff in 2024.
She thinks that acting like a douchebag gets daddies love and approval.
Oh look. The lying liar lies again…this time about running a “charity.”
Most former professional football players are proud enough of their success in their sport. What kind of insecure, moronic, mentally-unstable fabulist has to keep spewing such easily disprovable fictions?
He’s been busted for quite a few lies, that’s why Trump’s supporters love him. They love the lies.
After getting dragged for blaming Biden for gas prices while wearing a $1,200 shirt, GA Senate candidate Herschel Walker’s son Christian puts out a video trying to mock Democrats. This is going to be an interesting campaign. pic.twitter.com/T5lfFAfNAe
A think tank found 20 state lawmakers, or 12% of the Legislature, were members of Facebook groups deemed to be “far-right,” including ones spreading COVID-19 misinformation and raising concerns about the integrity of the 2020 election.
Some groups began as a coalition of members pushing back on restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic but appear to have grown into a broader range of discussion on right-wing issues ranging from critical race theory to conspiracy theories about voter fraud.
The IREHR report, titled “Breaching the Mainstream,” said the survey was of particular importance given the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection in the U.S. Capitol and the increase in misinformation at statehouses nationally.
Read the full article. Among those found to be members of the groups is state Rep. Tatum Lee, who appeared on JMG last month when she co-sponsored a bill that would provide a blanket religious exemption for all childhood vaccinations required to attend public schools.
A new report reveals that 20 Republican #ksleg-islators are members of far-right Facebook groups. Lawmakers with these hateful, divisive views have no place in our statehouse. https://t.co/V2mpTOPIwT
It was only one half-hour into Wednesday’s congressional hearing on abortion access when it became clear that the Republican contributions to the day would be loonier than a QAnon message board.
“In places like Washington D.C.,” fetuses are “burned to power the light’s of the city’s homes and streets,” claimed Catherine Glenn Foster, who had, just minutes before, sworn not to lie under oath. The GOP-summoned witness let loose the wild and utterly false accusation that municipal electrical companies are powered by incinerated fetuses.
Foster is not some random nut that Republicans pulled off a soapbox at a subway station minutes before the hearing started. She is a Georgetown law school graduate who is paid $190,000 a year to be the president of Americans United for Life, one of the largest anti-abortion non-profits in the country. So it’s not surprising that Foster believed she would get away with this absurd nonsense. Hers was merely one of a truly overwhelming number of lies that poured out of Republican lawmakers and witnesses alike throughout the course of Wednesday’s hearing. When lies are coming out like chocolates on a conveyor belt aimed at Lucille Ball, the liars can be assured they’ve overwhelmed the fact-checkers beyond any hope of accountability.
As their actual political views become harder to defend on the merits, Republicans increasingly embrace conspiracy theories and urban legends to justify the unjustifiable.
Republicans pretended progressives don’t know what a “woman” is. They insisted that the mere existence of abortion shows that birth control efforts are useless. (On the contrary, the abortion rate has gone down as birth control access has improved.) They pretended, over and over, that the issue at hand was only late-term abortions. In reality, the abortion bans being passed start at two weeks after a missed period, if not sooner. And then there was the repulsive contributions of Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who pretended that women wait until they go into labor and then abort the pregnancy right before the baby is born. Having made this lie up, he then berated Alabama-based OB-GYN Dr. Yashica Robinson for the existence of a procedure that, quite literally, only happens in his bizarre fantasies. (Thanks to Charles Pierce at Esquire for the transcript.)
Johnson: Do you support the right of a woman who is just seconds away from birthing a healthy child to have an abortion?
Robinson: I think that the question you’re asking does not realistically reflect abortion care —
Johnson: In that scenario, would you support her right to abort that child?
Robinson: I won’t entertain theoretical —
Johnson: It’s not a theoretical, ma’am. You are a medical doctor.
Indeed it is not theoretical — it is entirely fantastical. Johnson’s showboating was the equivalent of berating a doctor over unicorn horn removal surgery. But Johnson, eager to talk about anything but the realities of abortion care, continued to play this game. He went on to insist that Robinson answer for killing a baby “halfway out of the birth canal,” forcing her to pointedly remind him that actual murder is already illegal.
When lies are coming out like chocolates on a conveyor belt aimed at Lucille Ball, the liars can be assured they’ve overwhelmed the fact-checkers beyond any hope of accountability.
Anti-choicers love this hypothetical of a woman who aborts during labor. In reality, it makes about as much sense as banning men from touching their penises out of fear one might one day he might cut his off. But of course, Republicans would rather talk about their lurid fantasy lives than the realities of abortion.
In the aftermath of the leaked draft opinion that indicates that the Supreme Court will be overturning Roe v. Wade in a few short weeks, the grim reality of what banning abortion means is just starting to dawn on the larger public. Poverty, child abuse, derailed lives, women trapped in abusive relationships, people mutilated or killed in attempted self-abortions, people being imprisoned for trying to get abortions, and even just the looming anxiety hovering over every sexual encounter: That’s what the GOP wants to inflict on Americans, and it is not exactly the most popular politics.
Sadly, there’s nothing surprising about this turn towards wild tales about fetus-powered street lamps and women demanding abortions during labor.
As their actual political views become harder to defend on the merits, Republicans increasingly embrace conspiracy theories and urban legends to justify the unjustifiable. Want to ban schoolchildren from reading about Martin Luther King Jr.? Just falsely claim that something called “critical race theory” is being taught to school kids and use that as cover. Want to deny trans kids the right to be treated with dignity in public schools? Roll out some wild story about how kids are now “identifying” as cats and using litter boxes in school. Want to rile up the GOP going into the midterms? Screw making any substantive arguments! Just claim that Democrats are conspiring to “replace” white Christians with people of different races and ethnicities, a conspiracy theory lifted directly from neo-Nazis, with the details barely tweaked before being repeated hundreds of times on Fox News.
Of course, in the latter case, the cost is paid in blood. We’ve seen repeated mass murders as a result of this “great replacement” conspiracy theory, with the latest in Buffalo, New York. This points to another, even darker purpose of the Republican reliance on urban legends instead of evidence: Dehumanizing the targets of their sadistic political views.
Indeed, it’s arguable that the abortion debate is how conservatives honed the art of spooling out monstrous false accusations in order to dehumanize their opponents. Falsely accusing doctors and abortion patients of “murder” has been standard conservative rhetoric for decades, and the human cost has been staggering: Assassinations of doctors, the bombing of clinics, and mass shootings of patients. Yet Republicans never let up, because despite claiming to be “pro-life,” they can always be counted on to prioritize political point-scoring over actual human life.
So yes, laugh at the weird anti-choice lady raving during a congressional hearing about fetus-powered street lamps. But remember the almost unfathomably deep cynicism that fuels such lies. Republicans are determined to set back women’s rights by decades, punish people for having sex, and prop up racial inequities. They frankly do not care how many lives are ruined — or lost — in the process. And they don’t care how stupid they sound when they roll out urban legends, so long as they finish the sadistic task of making unwanted childbirth mandatory across much, if not all, of the United States.
In his ruling Alito mentioned a lack of babies to adopt. He doesn’t care that there is lots of older kids needing homes, but he was only worried about the babies. Why? Could it be because as they grow they are the easiest to indoctrinate into religion and bigotry? Here one of the leaders of the right claims forcing white women to carry pregnancy to term will help stop the white people from becoming a losing their majority power. Make women forced to birth facing death and long-term physical damage so white babies may be born. But really what they are saying is that women mean nothing if they can possibly get a white male child or a girl child they can force to give birth to more kids. At what point do these people mandate how many babies / kids each white family has to increase the white race? Will there be a minimum number of children for the white women? How long until these people start insisting that people of color that have more than one child be sterilized? This seems to have been their plan for a long time. All due to fear of a time when they wont be the most powerful. Why would they fear that? Could it be that they have been so horrible to others while they have power they are worried that those they mistreated would respond in kind to them? Maybe they should just try to be nice and treat everyone fairly. Hugs
“Roe v. Wade is being adjudicated at the Supreme Court right now, for people that believe that we somehow need to replace populations or bring in new workers, I think it is an appropriate first step to give the enshrinement in law the right to life for our own unborn children.
“If you say there is a population problem in a country, but you’re killing millions of your own people through legalized abortion every year, if that were to be reduced, some of that problem is solved. You have millions of people who can take many of these jobs.
“How come no one brings that up? If you’re worried about this quote-unquote replacement, why don’t we start there? Start with allowing our own people to live.” – Matt Schlapp, speaking today at CPAC Hungary.
The “Great Replacement” theory has fueled horrific acts of hate and terror against Americans. Using it to justify abortion bans is the latest example of a Republican leader embracing this abhorrent, far-right conspiracy theory. https://t.co/q0nnyN4Ibj
— Senate Judiciary Committee (@JudiciaryDems) May 19, 2022
The majority of white people will be able to travel to states and still get abortions. Its poor black and brown that are going to be forced to give birth. JFC, these folks dont even understand basic economic reality.
Worse. They understand, but they also know it’ll force continued generational poverty for those unable to obtain abortions. Which will keep “those” people out of view (except for crime stats and other ways of making them seem lesser/undesirable), and continue the broadening difference between the haves and the have nots, both in terms of color and wealth/education/opportunity.
There is a large underclass of Caucasian poor who will not be able to do so. It is important to keep a steady supply of poorly educated, impoverished white people to do menial work as well as to join the military to fight in our wars overseas. Running an empire requires a large pool of potential soldiers.
Legal weed is something conservatives can’t stop and they are shitting their pants about it because incarcerating young black non violent offenders is so incredibly profitable and provides a conveyor belt of cash back to conservative politicians. More poor black and brown kids are a guarantee that the cash flow doesn’t stop.
That’s what he’s saying. That’s what he wants. Women are to be enslaved by the state for the purpose of pumping out babies. And the unspoken part is he wants them to be white babies.
Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy took his hood off during an interview about his state having the highest rate of maternal mortality in the country, saying that Louisiana’s maternal mortality rate isn’t all that bad if you “correct out population for race”. So by neglecting all of the Black and other POC populations and only focusing on white people, things aren’t that bad according to Cassidy.
“Republican Senator Bill Cassidy gave a jaw-dropping answer to a question about the maternal mortality rate in his home state of Louisiana, pointing out — among other things — that it’s not so bad if you don’t count all the Black women. Cassidy sat for a lengthy interview with Politico Reporter Sarah Owermohle, who asked Cassidy about a variety of health-related subjects, including the Justice Samuel Alito-authored draft opinion that would overturn the constitutionally right to abortion should it become final. But early in the interview, Owermohle drew out a startling response from Cassiday when she asked about the high rate of maternal mortality in Louisiana. He pointed out that his state’s maternal mortality rate is not an “outlier” if you “correct our population for race,” and also said that some definitions of maternal mortality include “someone being killed by her boyfriend””
I hate canned hunts. Every hunter I know hates them. A helpless animal who is use to humans drawn in to be suddenly killed by a person who has not skill to track or hunt an animal. Every time I hear of these hunts I think of the scene in Jurassic Park where the goat is tied out to bait the T-Rex. These “hunters” are shooting the tied goat, and then claiming they are some great alpha male. Really? To me they are simply the sniveling losers that couldn’t really cut it. Hugs
Utah hunting guide Wade Lemon faces five years in state prison for the death of a Carbon County bear killed during a guided hunt on May 18, 2018. But Lemon, a well-known guide didn’t pull the trigger — Donald Trump Jr. did, according to the Utah Department of Natural Resources (DNR).
Trump Jr. is not named in a recent filing against Lemon, but the DNR confirmed his identity as the person named in the felony complaint as Lemon’s “client” on the hunt. Prosecutors have indicated there was no evidence showing Trump Jr. would have known about the alleged baiting that went on during the hunt.
Trump Jr. was in Utah to help launch Hunter Nation, a hunting advocacy group. That group would later launch its own super PAC, Hunter Nation Action, which spent $96,997 in ads against Democrats in the 2020 election, according to the campaign spending transparency site Open Secrets.
Utah hunting guide Wade Lemon is facing up to 5 years in prison for using pastries to illegally bait a bear killed on a hunt by Donald Trump, Jr. https://t.co/tIIhTOG8an
— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) May 21, 2022
Wade Lemon Hunting has been investigated eight times for allegedly breaking the law to ensure a successful hunt, though he was not charged with a felony until Tuesday, according to DNR.https://t.co/i2ZtI0H0lV
Wade Lemon Hunting has been investigated eight times for allegedly breaking the law to ensure a successful hunt, though he was not charged with a felony until Tuesday, according to DNR.https://t.co/i2ZtI0H0lV
Fourteen GOP legislators warned Lyft that they’d seek to ban companies that pay for abortions from doing business in Texas. The extent of support for the idea is unclear.
State Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, and 13 other Texas House Republicans have laid out their legislative priorities in a letter to the Lyft CEO. Credit: Jordan Vonderhaar for The Texas Tribune
With Texas poised to automatically ban abortion if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, some Republicans are already setting their sights on the next target to fight the procedure: businesses that say they’ll help employees get abortions outside the state.
Fourteen Republican members of the state House of Representatives have pledged to introduce bills in the coming legislative session that would bar corporations from doing business in Texas if they pay for abortions in states where the procedure is legal.
This would explicitly prevent firms from offering employees access to abortion-related care through health insurance benefits. It would also expose executives to criminal prosecution under pre-Roe anti-abortion laws the Legislature never repealed, the legislators say.
Their proposal highlights how the end of abortion would lead to a new phase in — not the end of — the fight in Texas over the procedure. The lawmakers pushing for the business rules have signaled that they plan to act aggressively in the next legislative session. But it remains to be seen if they’ll be able to get a majority on their side.
The members, led by Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, laid out their plans in a letter to Lyft CEO Logan Green that became public on Wednesday.
Green drew the lawmakers’ attention on April 29, when he said on Twitter that the ride-share company would help pregnant residents of Oklahoma and Texas seek abortion care in other states. Green also pledged to cover the legal costs of any Lyft driver sued under Senate Bill 8, the Texas law that empowers private citizens to file lawsuits against anyone who assists in the procurement of an abortion.
“The state of Texas will take swift and decisive action if you do not immediately rescind your recently announced policy to pay for the travel expenses of women who abort their unborn children,” the letter states.
The letter also lays out other legislative priorities, including allowing Texas shareholders of publicly traded companies to sue executives for paying for abortion care, as well as empowering district attorneys to prosecute abortion-related crimes outside of their home counties.
Six of the 14 signers, including Cain, are members of the far-right Texas Freedom Caucus. How much political support these proposals have in the Republican caucus is unclear. House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, declined to comment. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Gov. Greg Abbott did not respond.
Since the legislative session is more than seven months away, Cain said in an email that “a quickly drafted and sent letter can hardly be said to reflect the pulse of my Republican colleagues.” He was confident, however, that his ideas would find some support in the Senate.
“Knowing that chamber and its leadership, I’m willing to bet legislation targeting this issue will be promptly filed in January,” Cain said.
But doing so would likely mean targeting companies that the state has wooed as potential job creators. Tesla, for instance, announced this month that it would pay for employees’ travel costs when they leave the state to get an abortion. Abbott celebrated the electric car company’s move to Austin last year and this year urged its CEO, Elon Musk, to move Twitter’s headquarters to Texas, too, if he completes his purchase of the social media firm.
Republican politicians have to tread much more carefully on abortion politics if Roe v. Wade falls, said Florida State University professor Mary Ziegler, who wrote a book on abortion law in the United States. Whereas in the past, lawmakers could pass any number of abortion restrictions that were bound to be struck down by courts, that backstop would no longer exist.
Ziegler said while a broad conservative coalition wants to ban abortions in Texas, there is disagreement over how aggressively to enforce related criminal laws or to attempt to prevent pregnant residents from leaving the state for the procedure. Republican politicians, therefore, have an incentive to remain quiet on the issue until they can determine which course of action is the most politically prudent.
“It’s not easy to be a Republican anymore,” Ziegler said. “Before, everyone was like, ‘Yes, let’s get rid of Roe v. Wade.’ Now, if you can do whatever you want, what is it that you want to do?”
Lyft did not respond to a request for comment. Several other large companies, including Amazon, Uber and Starbucks, have also said they would help employees or customers seek abortion care outside of Texas. None responded to requests for comment.
Concerns from the business community helped derail a push by Republican lawmakers to enact the so-called bathroom bill in the 2017 session, which would have required people to use the facilities that corresponded with their sex assigned at or near birth. Moderate Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, rebuffed requests from Patrick to make the bill a priority.
State Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, said that although Straus has since retired, she hoped a coalition of Democrats and centrist Republicans would form to block abortion-related laws that place new restrictions on businesses.
“There were opportunities for business-minded Republicans and business-minded Democrats to come together and prevent these kinds of extreme policies,” Howard said of Straus’ tenure. “I’m hopeful that will happen again. … We’re at a pivotal point here of doing severe damage that’s going to be hard to undo.”
The Texas Association of Businesses, Texas Chamber of Commerce Executives and Greater Houston Partnership either declined to comment or did not respond to questions about the abortion-restriction proposals in the Republicans’ letter.
It's worth noting that Briscoe Cain sneaked into last year's Texas Democratic convention with a handgun and tried to hand out yard signs inviting shooters to attack Democrats' houses.
This man is not well and should not be a state representative, OR own guns. https://t.co/zcJc0EEMuT
As Beau said the military will pull bases from states that give their people too hard a time. The military is not going back to a time of hidden LGBTQ+. Also military families have LGBTQ+ kids and the air force has already said they will do everything possible to see trans kids get the medical treatment they need including transferring families away from bigoted states. Hugs
A base member wears rainbow socks during the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month Five Kilometer Pride Run at Joint Base Andrews, Md., June 28, 2017. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Valentina Lopez)
The Army is circulating a draft policy tweak that would specify that soldiers can request to move if they feel state or local laws discriminate against them based on gender, sex, religion, race or pregnancy, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the plans.
The guidance, which would update a vague service policy to add specific language on discrimination, is far from final and would need approval from Army Secretary Christine Wormuth. But if enacted, it could be one of the most progressive policies for the force amid a growing wave of local anti-LGBTQ and restrictive contraception laws in conservative-leaning states, where the Army does most of its business.
The policy would ostensibly sanction soldiers to declare that certain states are too racist, too homophobic, too sexist or otherwise discriminatory to be able to live there safely and comfortably.
“Some states are becoming untenable to live in; there’s a rise in hate crimes and rise in LGBT discrmination,” Lindsay Church, executive director of Minority Veterans of America, an advocacy group, told Military.com. “In order to serve this country, people need to be able to do their job and know their families are safe. All of these states get billions for bases but barely tolerate a lot of the service members.”
If finalized, the new rules would clarify what situations would entitle a soldier to a so-called compassionate reassignment. Right now, those rules are vague but are mostly used for soldiers going through family problems that cannot be solved through “leave, correspondence, power of attorney, or help of family members or other parties,” according to Army regulations.
The updated guidance, which sources said was drafted in response to several state laws but before a draft of a potential Supreme Court decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked, would instruct commanders that they can use compassionate reassignment specifically to remove troops facing discrimination from their duty stations.
The tweak came from a MILPER message, which is an internal tool for Army leaders and planners to issue policy clarifications, though the guidance has not yet been fully worked out through the policy planning process or briefed to senior leaders, according to one Army source.
“The Army does not comment on leaked, draft documents,” Angel Tomko, a service spokesperson, told Military.com in an emailed statement. “AR 600-100 and 600-200 establish the criteria for which soldiers may request for a compassionate reassignment. The chain of command is responsible for ensuring Soldiers and Families’ needs are supported and maintain a high quality of life.”
According to a 2015 study from Rand Corp., roughly 6% of the military is gay or bisexual and 1% is transgender or nonbinary. Those numbers are likely low, given that the survey was conducted only four years after the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and before transgender troops could serve openly. Gen Z troops, the latest generation starting to fill the ranks, are also much more likely to identify as LGBTQ.
It’s unclear whether the Army’s inclusion of pregnancy on the list would protect reproductive care for soldiers if Roe v. Wade is overturned. That language could be intended to protect pregnant service members or their families from employment or other discrimination, but could also be a means for some to argue for transfers based on broader reproductive rights.
The sources who reviewed drafts of the potential policy had different interpretations of what the change would mean. In practice, however, reassignment to a new installation wouldn’t happen overnight, and it would be almost impossible for a woman to find out she’s pregnant, have her command approve a transfer, complete the move and then be able to seek different reproductive care during a pregnancy.
“The answer is yes, we are drafting policies to ensure we take care of our soldiers in an appropriate way,” Grinston told a House Appropriations Committee subpanel. “There are drafts if it were to be overturned, but that would be a decision for the secretary of the Army to decide the policy.”
However, the policy tweak shared with Military.com was written in April, weeks before news broke of a draft decision overturning the landmark abortion ruling, according to an Army official with direct knowledge of the situaiton.
At least 13 states have so-called trigger laws that will immediately outlaw abortion if and when Roe v. Wade is overturned. Additional GOP-controlled states are expected to follow suit with similar legislation. Meanwhile, some state lawmakers are considering restricting contraception such as IUDs and Plan B. Some officials, like Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, haven’t ruled out an outright ban on contraception. Idaho State Sen. Brent Crane, who is the state’s vice majority leader, said he would be open to legislation banning some birth control methods.
Currently, Tricare, which covers 9.6 million troops and veterans, covers IUDs, contraceptive diaphragms, prescription contraceptives and surgical sterilization, which could all be severely curtailed if states go forward with banning or limiting birth control as many service members and their families receive medical care paid for by Tricare off base.
The Army’s consideration of a policy to protect soldiers from discriminatory laws is part of a wider Defense Department campaign to start shielding service members from increasingly divisive laws and rhetoric from state-level lawmakers.
Multiple Defense Department and veterans advocate sources have told Military.com the other services are considering similar policies, but it is unclear how far those discussions have advanced.
The closest to a direct challenge from a service to the rise of potentially discriminatory policies coming out of state legislatures occurred in April, when the Air and Space Force vowed to provide medical and legal resources to troops who are impacted by laws “being proposed and passed in states across America that may affect LGBTQ Airmen, Guardians, and/or their LGBTQ dependents in different ways,” according to a press release from those services.
Texas has the highest population of soldiers in the nation, serving as the home to the Army’s largest installation, Fort Hood. It is also the home of Fort Bliss, in addition to having the nation’s second-largest National Guard force. The Army also has major bases in Georgia and North Carolina, as well as a constellation of other smaller bases in conservative southern states including Florida.
Some Republicans have latched onto the culture wars in hopes that new actions will fire up their base ahead of the midterms and the next presidential election.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is largely seen as a GOP front-runner in the event Donald Trump doesn’t run for the White House again, signed what critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay Bill.”
That policy forbids teachers from referencing sexual orientation or gender identity to students between kindergarten and third grade. Gay teachers fear that means even mentioning their spouses could get them fired or land them in the midst of an ugly political fight in school board meetings that have become a staple of right wing media.
In April, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed into a law a sweeping measure to prevent transgender kids from playing on sports teams aligning with their gender identity and limiting schools from teaching about race. Kemp also signed a policy that bans books deemed offensive from school libraries and gives parents tools to file complaints.
“What we’re seeing across the board is a small group of elected officials who are trying to politicize and weaponize LGBTQ identities in despicable ways. They’re not only doing that to our youth, but the collateral damage is hurting our service members,” Jacob Thomas, communications director for Common Defense, a progressive advocacy organization, told Military.com. “[Troops] can’t be forced to live in places where they aren’t seen as fully human.”
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/9dbdb2acbd4ec0b893768c37f88d7096/House%20Republican%20Caucus%20JV%20TT%2012.jpg)
Scottie's Playtime 