A twenty-four year old right-wing extremist based in the metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona area, Ethan Schmidt, posted a short video of himself accompanied by Kyle Clifton who describes himself as “authoritarian Christian nationalist,” driving in an undisclosed area announcing that he and Clifton will be “hunting ‘LGBT supporters” and people in area Target retail stores. Last Fall Schmidt posed with Trump endorsed Republican candidate for Arizona Governor Kari Lake as he burned a LGBTQ+ Pride flag.
Schmidt previously appeared on JMG when he harassed cancer patients at a wig store for wearing masks.
In January, he was banned from the Arizona Capitol after harassing a black lawmaker, saying that his mask was a “slave muzzle.”
In February, he earned national headlines when he berated store employees for selling Black History Month items.
Earlier this month he was detained after his group harassed abortion rights protesters and his accomplice was arrested for assault.
According to the Tucson Sentinel, Schmidt is currently awaiting trial for DUI. In a video posted to Reddit, Schmidt can be seen flaunting his ankle monitor.
His “anti-maskers club” still has a YouTube account. You know what to do.
This is a great idea! Recently I posted how a 17 year old was so ashamed of his nude body and that he was recorded masturbating that he first paid off the scammers then killed himself when they wanted more with threats to show the pictures / videos to his parents. I said then we need to teach kids what their bodies are, what they are feeling is natural, what to do in some situations (I read in one of the Scandinavian countries they teach teen boys how to discretely hide their erections until they subside) and to not be ashamed to talk about things that they need to ask or tell an adult what is happening to them. It is a fact that young people / kids see porn and nude bodies. They shouldn’t be terrified of seeing a nude person or their developing feelings. It is a fact kids will explore each other. It is a fact that kids have sexual feelings and desires. It is a fact that how an adult reacts or talks about bodies, nudity, and sexual acts can leave a kid scared they are broken and that they are abnormal. Often how an adult reacts to catching a teen in a sexual situation is more traumatic than the actions they were involved in. Remember kids will talk to each other about sex / feelings and if they cannot talk to an adult then the information they get from the other kids their age maybe be badly wrong.
Porn is another area where comprehensive sexual education is needed. Kids of all ages see porn. Younger kids won’t care, but as kids get older toward puberty (around 10 / 11 years old most kids get really interested) and what they see / what their older siblings watch for porn will give them wrong ideas. Adults know or should know that porn is a game, a story acted out for the pleasure of the watcher. It is not real, it is not how real sex happens, and it is often geared to a segment of the audience. I have read studies of what kids think their sex acts should be based on the porn they watched, and it is scary how misinformed they are. Some boys thought girls liked to be abused and called names during sex. There were other misconceptions based on duration of the acts and other things, but the thing that stood out to me was that because boys were seeing men aggressively take women and dominate them, they thought that was the way they had to act. When the girls objected, the boys were confused. So I think that these types of educational opportunities should be explored.
BERLIN — Progressive German publication Taz published an opinion piece last week suggesting that state public media fund “educational” porn as part of their mandate to “protect children,” rather than attempt to censor the commercial variety.
The article argues that “so far, an inefficient fight against free porn platforms is being waged.”
“There is no need for bans, just good alternatives,” Taz’s Arabella Wintermayr noted.
The “bans” the article refers to are efforts related an ongoing censorship campaign being waged by obscure local politician Tobias Schmid, director of the State Media Authority of North Rhine-Westphalia, and Germany’s self-appointed one-man War on Porn. Schmid has been fighting in the courts to push for “age verification compliance.”
Last month Schmid bragged about an AI tool called KIVI, which automatically scans all online content to determine which images are not compliant with the AV law.
He explained that he coined the name KIVI after “KI” — the German initials for AI — and “VI” from the Latin word “vigilare,” meaning “to survey.”
While some might view such surveillance as an authoritarian fantasy, Schmid called it a “fantastic combination,” German tech news site NetzPolitik.org reported.
Schmid was also the architect of the judicial “network block” against xHamster, one of the country’s most popular tube sites.
The Case for Government-Funded Porn
Taz quoted pornographer and activist Paulita Pappel, who leads the European chapter of the Free Speech Coalition, and who criticized Schmid’s approach.
“They try de facto to silence the discourse about pornography in public and hide behind the protection of minors,” Pappel told Taz. “The idea that these network blocks would make sense is completely absurd. A 12-year-old can bypass them in no time with a VPN.”
The magazine also noted that Pappel’s Lustery studio recently released a scene in partnership with mainstream public broadcasting talk show “ZDF Magazin Royale,” which the company promoted as “the first-ever government-funded porn film.”
According to Lustery, the talk show’s producers reached out to them to “produce an ethical porn film as an alternative to the many tube sites.”
“Since the show is part of a public service broadcaster,” a Lustery rep explained, “they were able to use German TV tax [monies] paid by private individuals, companies and institutions in Germany” to produce the almost 30-minute scene titled “FFMM straight/queer doggy BJ ORAL orgasm squirting ROYALE (gebührenfinanziert).”
“Many people are loudly supporting it because they feel like the tax — annually, €220.32 — that everyone needs to pay is finally being used for something important and useful,” the rep noted. “Others are outraged because they either don’t understand why they’d need to pay for porn or they demonize porn and don’t want their money being used for such things.”
“But the fact is every German paid for it, no matter their attitude towards the genre,” the rep added.
A Proposal With Intriguing Potential
Taz concluded that this approach “would have potential.”
“In addition to normalizing feminist perspectives on sexuality and competing with the market power of free platforms,” they wrote, “the relationship to pornography would also change if it suddenly no longer took place on questionable websites but in the mainstream.”
“Consuming pornography would no longer be associated with something dirty,” Pappel theorized. “As a result, people would be freer from feelings of guilt, and communication about sexuality might be more open. Which may even prevent aggression.”
“There is a public broadcasting mandate to provide a basic supply of information, education, entertainment and advice,” added a legal expert consulted by Taz. “It should expressly reflect diversity that cannot be represented in the mainstream of the private sector.”
The educational mandate, the expert continued, “could be fulfilled, for example, by the films shown illustrating how consensus, communication and genuine desire work. This would set an appropriate framework that implements this basic service.”
Taz concluded by questioning the censorship-first approach, and suggested that the state media authorities should welcome “the approach of [public media] competing with the big free porn platforms … if they are actually concerned with the protection of minors. After all, [public media networks] are already taking age control very seriously.”
Military police say they are satisfied with assurances of Israeli troops over death of US-Palestinian despite international demands
Foreign activists and Palestinians take part in a protest in Berlin on 18 May, after the death of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh. Photograph: APAImages/Rex/Shutterstock
Israel will not launch a criminal investigation into the killing of the US-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh, which Palestinian officials and witnesses have blamed on Israeli soldiers.
In a statement released on Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces claimed that because Abu Aqleh was killed in an “active combat situation”, an immediate criminal investigation would not be launched, although an “operational inquiry” would continue.
According to a report in the Haaretz newspaper, the Israeli military police branch has accepted the assurances of Israeli troops that they were not aware she was in a village adjacent to the Jenin refugee camp when she was killed on 11 May.
The Biden administration and the UN security council have called for a transparent investigation.
Abu Aqleh was a household name across the Arab world, known for documenting the hardship of Palestinian life under Israeli rule for Al Jazeera. Her killing received widespread international coverage and prompted criticism from the White House.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, promised her family that Washington would demand that her death be properly investigated.
Abu Aqleh was killed during an arrest raid by an Israeli commando unit on Palestinian militants.
According to Haaretz, the head of the Commando Brigade, Col Meni Liberty, identified six occasions during the raid when Israeli soldiers opened fire, allegedly at armed Palestinians who were near Abu Aqleh and other journalists.
The Israeli military had previously released an account that said it could not unequivocally determine the source of the bullet that killed Abu Aqleh. That account speculated that the bullet could have been fired by either a Palestinian militant or an Israeli soldier using a “telescopic scope” at 200 metres.
Palestinian officials have refused to give the recovered bullet to Israeli authorities to analyse but said it welcomed international investigations.
The decision by the Israeli military advocate general, Maj Gen Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, not to order an investigation by the military police criminal investigation division marks a departure from the majority of recent incidents involving IDF shootings of civilians in the occupied West Bank, which have been followed by investigations.
Last week the UN high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, complained about a lack of Israeli accountability for deaths in the occupied territories.
Commenting on Abu Aqleh’s killing and the subsequent violence at her funeral, Bachelet said: “As I have called for many times before, there must be appropriate investigations into the actions of Israeli security forces.
“Anyone found responsible should be held to account with penal and disciplinary sanctions commensurate to the gravity of the violation. This culture of impunity must end now.”
Israel knows it will get away with the attack on Shireen Abu Aqleh’s funeral
Elizabeth Tsurkov
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The Israeli NGO Yesh Din criticised the decision not to investigate, saying that “the army law enforcement mechanisms no longer even bother to give the appearance of investigating”.
More than 100 artists, including Hollywood stars, acclaimed authors and prominent musicians, have meanwhile signed a joint letter condemning Abu Aqleh’s killing.
Steve Coogan, Kathryn Hahn, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon and Tilda Swinton were among the signatories to a letter published by Artists for Palestine UK that called for “full accountability for the perpetrators of this crime and everyone involved in authorising it”.
The Israel Defence Forces released a statement on Thursday claiming that “dozens of Palestinian gunmen fired recklessly and indiscriminately while IDF soldiers were conducting counter-terrorism activities in the Jenin camp” on the day that Abu Aqleh died.
“An exchange of fire occurred between Palestinian gunmen and the soldiers. Toward the end of the activity, the journalist Shireen Abu [Aqleh], who was present at the battle zone during the exchange of fire, was hit.
“Due to the nature of the active combat situation, an immediate [military criminal] investigation was not launched. A decision regarding the necessity of an … investigation will be determined by the military advocacy, in accordance with the findings of the still-ongoing operational inquiry, as is standard in such cases.”
The police branch decision came a day after Israeli authorities said they have given the go-ahead for flag-waving Jewish nationalists to march through the heart of the main Palestinian thoroughfare in Jerusalem’s Old City later this month, in a decision that threatens to re-ignite violence in the holy city.
The office of the public security minister, Omer Barlev, said the march would take place on 29 May along its “customary route” through Damascus Gate, which is an Arab neighbourhood.
The Old City, located in East Jerusalem, has experienced weeks of violent confrontations between Israeli police and Palestinian demonstrators, and the march threatens to trigger new unrest.
WASHINGTON — Five Republican senators are demanding an overhaul of the current TV ratings system to include warnings about LGBTQ+ content, which they claim “not only harms children, but also destabilizes and damages parental rights.”
The effort to expand labeling is spearheaded by Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), who is joined by Mike Braun (R-Ind.), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah).
The five senators penned a highly homophobic and transphobic letter sent on Wednesday to Charles Rivkin, chairman of the TV Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board, which regulates the parental guidance ratings broadcast before television programs. The letter includes shocking, stigmatizing language about trans people and their experiences.
In the letter, Sen. Marshall and his fellow Republican legislators claim that “concerning topics of a sexual nature have become aggressively politicized and promoted in children’s programming, including irreversible and harmful experimental treatments for mental disorders like gender dysphoria.”
“To this end,” the anti-trans senators continue, “we strongly urge you to update the TV Parental Guidelines and ensure they are up-to-date on best practices that help inform parents on this disturbing content.”
Besides asking for an expansion of government-backed intervention on the definition and labeling of sexual content, the senators tendentiously quote background material surrounding the Telecommunications Act of 1996 — which was struck down by the courts as unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds — alleging that Congress found that “studies indicate that children are affected by the pervasiveness and casual treatment of sexual material on television, eroding the ability of parents to develop responsible attitudes and behavior in their children.”
The Republican senators then go on to conflate “sexual situations,” which the ratings system is meant to flag, with the very existence of LGBTQ+ characters.
Targeting a Disney policy of inclusivity, the senators claim that, “to the detriment of children, gender dysphoria has become sensationalized in the popular media and television with radical activists and entertainment companies” and assert that this “not only harms children, but also destabilizes and damages parental rights.”
Reductive, Pseudo-Medical Musings About ‘Puberty’
Senator Marshall and the others also condemn Disney in the letter for denouncing Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. “Sexual orientation and gender identity instruction,” the senators declared, without providing any meaningful evidence, “often entails a discussion concerning an individual’s pattern of emotional, romantic and sexual attraction.”
The letter also includes shockingly reductive, pseudo-medical statements about human sexual development by the avowedly anti-sex, religiously-inspired politicians.
“Considering that the cognitive markers of sexual desire emerge during puberty when adolescents undergo natural hormonal and physiological changes,” they write, “it is wholly inappropriate to display this content in a TV-Y7 category and for other young audiences. This dialogue often involves the promotion of irreversible experimental treatments that involve surgical and otherwise invasive cosmetic procedures that are detrimental and life-altering, and do not evidence medical necessity.”
The letter also implies deliberate “grooming” on the part of Disney executives and TV producers, a smearing accusation which appears intended to chill free speech.
“The motivations of hyper-sexualized entertainment producers striving to push this content on young audiences are suspect at best and predatory at worst,” the senators write.
The senators then double down on the threat by summoning the members of the TV Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board to attend Congress for “an in-person briefing.”
Sen. Marshall Demands Answers About ‘Problematic’ She-Ra, Princesses of Power
According to a Rolling Stone report today, although the senators “do not cite any problematic shows in their letter,” Marshall’s office “provided the Kansas City Star with a list of four: Nickelodeon’s ‘Danger Force’ and ‘The Loud House,’ and Netflix’s ‘She-Ra and the Princesses of Power’ and ‘Dead End: Paranormal Park.’”
Disney, Rolling Stone points out, “has been under assault from conservatives for speaking out against Florida’s new law that prohibits teachers in kindergarten through third grade from discussing sexual orientation or gender identity. The law also allows parents to sue over alleged violations.”
Senator Marshall accompanied Wednesday’s letter with a tweet lambasting “Disney’s latest campaign to embed left-wing sexual politics in its children’s programming.”
A non-binary Texas high schooler is rallying fellow students and community members to oppose their school district’s ban on LGBTQ websites, which includes suicide prevention websites.
Cameron Samuels, a senior in the Katy Independent School District (KISD) of southeast Texas, says the district does little to address anti-LGBTQ bullying and slurs. The district also has an internet filter that blocks content related to “Human Sexuality” from school computers.
KISD said the filter was implemented to comply with the Children’s Internet Protection Act, a federal law meant to protect children from online predators. But the filter specifically blocks access to LGBTQ resources, including The Trevor Project, an organization dedicated to preventing suicide among LGBTQ youth.
District officials told Samuels that KISD blocked the Trevor Project because of the “chat capabilities” on the organization’s website. However, the district’s web filter still allows students to access social media platforms, including Twitter and Facebook. Both websites have chat capabilities that have been used by online sex traffickers to exploit children.
“The assumption that people communicating on the Trevor Project are predatory is bigoted and homophobic,” Samuels wrote for The Los Angeles Blade.
School officials also told him that students can still access non-LGBTQ suicide prevention resources. However, Samuels doesn’t understand why the district wouldn’t want its students to have complete access to any resources that might help save lives.
The web filter allows access to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, to websites covering heterosexual marriage, as well as to Alex Jones’s rabidly anti-LGBTQ disinformation website InfoWars.
However, the filter blocks access to LGBTQ news websites, the Human Rights Campaign and LGBTQ community resource centers.
Students struggling with their LGBTQ identities may rely on private, free computer access provided by schools to safely search for queer-affirming resources away from their families, Samuels added. By denying students access, the district prevents students from supporting their emotional and mental well-being, they said.
“School officials have said sites with LGBTQ+ content are not part of the educational curriculum or common classroom activities,” Samuels continued. “Yet they won’t explain how People magazine, ESPN, Gun Show Trader, or Breitbart meet this same standard.”
For almost a year now, Samuels and their classmates have asked district and school board officials to un-block the resources. The officials have promised to do so, but have yet to follow through on their promises.
So the students have launched a petition calling for the unblocking of LGBTQ sites and the inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identities in KISD’s publicly available non-discrimination statements. The school districts of Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio have all included them in their statements.
It is going to be a long day. I may not be at the computer much. Ron is moving better than I but not well. We both have taken the two main shots of Moldova, and the first booster. We had no negative reactions. Never bothered either of us a bit.
Yesterday we went at noon and got the second booster. By evening Ron said that the spot he got the shot was swelling and it was hurting. Mine was still OK. No problem. In the middle of the night I woke up in trouble. I was running a fever, I had chills and was shivering, my arm with the shot was swollen and hurt bad (remember I take medication for pain), and I was having body aches so bad I had to take more medication to just to stand it. Then by the time the sun came up the muscle spasms started.
Ron woke up and told me he was having the same. The good news he said he looked it up and that meant it was working for us. Really little comfort I can tell you. I am sipping my coffee and not moving much. For me sitting letting the pain medication work is the best and helping a lot, for Ron it is moving around and puttering on things. Both Ron and I are feeling better but I think it will be a long slow day for us with naps. Drinking coffee helps get rid of the chills. He says it should go away in a day or so. I still recommend the boosters just lay in a supply of feel better stuff. I will say that Odie came in during the night and moved up to my chest and pushed into me as a way to say he knew I did not feel well. But after a short while it hurt too much to have him there and I moved him to the middle / lower end of the bed. Hugs
He lists the taxes he claims poor or retired people don’t pay but if they buy something they pay the tax. They don’t get to skip it; he is lying to make it seem the good Republican base pays all the taxes and no one else does. Second he says there is low worker participation, but it is the lowest unemployment is a very long time, so he is lying again. But mostly listen to what he says about wanting to force people back to work. The people he wants to force back to work are the disabled and the seniors in retirement. To do that he wants to cut their income and tax the remaining bit they get. Why? Because employers in the US love and need a desperate work force struggling to survive that will take any low paying job under any harsh conditions so they can eat / live. Remember who Rick Scott is, a multimillionaire who stole from Medicaid to become wealthy. When he was governor of Florida he ruined the unemployment system so it wouldn’t work, which caught the state in the ass when Covid shut everything down. He tried to privatize everything he could and slashed taxes on the wealthy and corporations by moving the burden of funding the state to the lower incomes, adding to their already crushing burden. Hugs
Bigotry and putting religious ideas before real science is not limited to Republicans. It seems to be getting worse in the US as more people use their fake morals from 2-4 thousand years ago to dictate what they understand or accept. This is a throwback to the 1980’s. It is more deserving that a Republicans would say this than a Democrat. Hugs
The queer community is firing back at the Democrat’s shameful remarks and they’re not mincing words.
The queer community is firing back at the Democrat’s shameful remarks and they’re not mincing words. Two LGBTQ political organizations have condemned homophobic and transphobic comments made by a Democratic candidate for the Texas House.
The Stonewall Democrats of Dallas and the LGBTQ Victory Fund have both condemned Sandra Crenshaw, a former Dallas City Council member who is running against gay candidate Venton Jones for the Democratic nomination in the 100th Texas House district race.
In her May 17 comments to the Dallas County Commissioners Court, Crenshaw said, “What I find deceptive is the fact that my opponent Venton Jones announced to The Dallas Morning News that he wants to be the first Black gay legislator living with HIV. We have officials who are both drug addicts, alcoholics, gambling disorders, but HIV does not have to be disclosed unless you want it to be.”
“Gay activist Vincent Jones did not use this race as a platform to educate Black people about HIV,” she continued. “Jones did not once in his plethora of literature, not one time did he mention that he’s openly gay living with HIV, not one time, okay?”
At the end of her three-minute testimony period, Jones said that Black voters “deserve transparency.”
She then added this transphobic anecdote: “The ACLU in another state says that transgender men is unconstitutional in the jail cells, and so they put them in a cell with another woman, and they ended up impregnating two of those women. So when are you going to protect straight men from injustices?”
Crenshaw was referencing April reports of two cisgender female inmates in a New Jersey prison who became pregnant after having sex with two pre-surgical transgender female inmates. The New Jersey State Department of Corrections stated that the sex was “consensual.” The state has required trans women to be housed with cis women since June 2021.
In her March 4 primary race against Jones, Crenshaw won 34.2 percent of the vote and Jones won 25.6 percent. The two are now competitors in a runoff election to fill the seat of Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat who is seeking a seat in the U.S. Congress.
Jones is endorsed by the Dallas chapter of the Stonewall Democrats, and the organization criticized Crenshaw for her comments against him, The Dallas Voice reported.
Annise Parker, the lesbian former Houston mayor who is president & CEO of the LGBTQ Victory Fund, also criticized Crenshaw for her comments.
“Crenshaw’s uninformed remarks — rooted in her own ignorance and homophobia — reveal a candidate shamefully unaware of priorities in this district and clearly unfit for the challenges of the office,” Parker said in a statement.
“She, astonishingly, attacks Venton Jones for not revealing his sexual orientation and HIV status by referencing his remarks in The Dallas Morning News discussing exactly those things,” Parker added. “Thinly veiled anti-gay and transphobic insults reveal the character of this perennial candidate.”
“Politicizing someone’s sexual orientation and HIV status is unacceptable, particularly from a person who wants to be a public official. Crenshaw should immediately apologize,” she concluded.
The runoff election between Crenshaw and Jones officially occurs on May 24, though early voting for the seat will run from May 16 to May 20.
I listen to three podcasts Allison Gill does. She is smart, funny, and has a great grasp of politics and the law. But her story here in this short interview shows the incredible harm of the Republicans taking away the right of full body autonomy for healthcare and abortion from women. She was drugged and raped as a young service member. She became pregnant with the rapist child. Her command told her if she reported the rape by a married man, she would be the one charged and punished, not him. There was no plan B or pills to end the pregnancy back then. She was looking at being a single woman in the military trying to carry a rapist baby to term and give birth, how could she do her job, would she be discharged? Thankfully, she was in a place where there was a Planned Parenthood, and she could get an abortion. She doesn’t complain about this but I damn sure will, she had to pay for it herself. Drugged, raped, unwanted pregnancy, and still she had to come up with the money to have the abortion while the married rapist faced no penalty for his actions. Damn it people this is the world the Republicans, at the urging of the hyper religious, are dragging us back to. Where men can force themselves on women, make them pregnant, leave them with the life destroying problem, and walk away happy to have used a woman’s body to have sex and cum in. I have been raped. As a child repeatedly. As an adult three times. The only saving grace is that I cannot get pregnant. I never faced that issue. This beyond me how any decent people can be OK with this. I said before these anti-abortion rights people have an image in their minds of a year old bouncing baby or a toddler that is being aborted. But it is not. In most cases it is a clump of cells, it is something smaller than a gold ball. No matter what trimester it has no consciousness, never drew a breath, never had a dream of its future, never desired anything in life, never experienced anything, yet Republicans and the rabid right want to make that thing more important than a woman that has done all of those. I just don’t understand. Hugs
I want to point out the shortage of baby formula is because of deregulation and the defunding / lack of personnel of the FDA that was done under the tRump administration. The restricting of imports of formula was done to increase profit. The company that was shut down for killing babies with contaminated product tried to hide the contamination from the FDA so they could make more profit. Yet they are championed and rewarded by the elected Republicans in congress. Also those same elected Republicans voted this week against funding so the FDA can find and fix problems like the contaminated formula that killed babies. Those same Republicans voted against ways to increase the amount of safe formula in the country because they don’t care about the hungry babies, they care about politics and want to hurt Joe Biden and the Democrats. It is a game to them, and it is people’s lives to the Democrats. Yet the Republicans are winning with a rabid base willing to do violence because of Republican lies. Hugs
The “party of life” is so mad that certain babies aren’t starving that they’re casually calling people pedophiles.
Rep. Elise Stefanik with Donald TrumpPhoto: Office of Congresswoman Elise Stefanik
One of the top Republicans in Congress is calling Democrats “pedo grifters” because immigrant detention centers have baby formula.
House Republican Conference chairperson Elise Stefanik – the third-highest member of House GOP leadership – said that “pedo grifters” are sending food to immigrant babies as the right continues to use baseless accusations of pedophilia as insults against pretty much anyone who disagrees with them.
“The White House, House Dems, & usual pedo grifters are so out of touch with the American people that rather than present ANY PLAN or urgency to address the nationwide baby formula crisis, they double down on sending pallets of formula to the southern border,” she wrote. “Joe Biden has NO PLAN.”
Stefanik’s casual use of the word “pedo” shows just how mundane it has become for rightwingers to call anyone they disagree with a pedophile.
For years, the rightwing QAnon conspiracy theory has claimed that there is a secret cabal of pedophiles operating a Satanic international child sex ring led by Hollywood celebrities and Democratic elites. Effectively, the QAnon conspiracy theory allowed believers an intellectual shortcut: instead of trying to understand why people would disagree with their policy preferences – a process that requires listening to others and the ability to understand multiple ideas at once – they could just accuse anyone who disagreed with them of being a Satanic pedophile, and who really cares why Satanic pedophiles believe what they believe?
The casualization of accusing political opponents of pedophilia heightened over the last couple of months as conservatives started referring to LGBTQ people – especially teachers – as well as anyone who supports LGBTQ equality as pedophiles and groomers. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) accused Tyra Banks of grooming children because she produced a documentary about teen drag queens. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) press secretary accused anyone who opposes the Don’t Say Gay bill of being a groomer or supporting grooming.
Chaya Raichik of the anti-LGBTQ Twitter account “Libs of TikTok” regularly accuses LGBTQ teachers of “grooming” even though she has no evidence of sexual abuse occurring. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said it was grooming for a science camp to have non-binary counselors, and conservatives even called the anti-suicide organization The Trevor Project “a grooming organization.”
While Stefanik may have been saying that those who want babies in detention centers fed so that they can later be sexually abused, it’s more likely that she does not have any ability to engage her political opponents other than to accuse them of pedophilia. Actually presenting a plan for what to do about baby formula shortages in the U.S. – and then arguing why that plan is better than the Biden administration’s plan – is a lot harder than just calling people pedophiles.
And the baby formula shortage is real. Currently, 40% of formula is out of stock in the U.S., which has led parents to stockpile formula, exacerbating the shortage. The shortage follows the recall of a major formula producer’s products because deadly bacteria was found in a factory, the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on supply chains, and restrictive trade policies around formula.
Stefanik was echoing rightwing complaints that immigrants forced to live in processing centers near the U.S.-Mexico border.
“What is infuriating to me is that this is another example of the ‘America Last’ agenda the Biden administration continues to perpetuate,” Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) said last week, not presenting any alternative to immigrant access to formula other than letting babies in processing centers starve.
President Joe Biden announced a plan to address the crisis last week that included making it easier to use WIC benefits to buy formula of different sizes and types, increasing imports of formula, and cracking down on price gouging.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said that the House will soon vote on a bill to grant emergency authority to WIC to address supply chain disruptions and relax certain regulations not related to the safety of baby formula.
In a later statement Stefanik’s office said that “pedo grifters” was referring to the Lincoln Project, a group of Republicans and former Republicans who advocated against the reelection of Donald Trump. They are not involved in the baby formula shortage and they aren’t in charge of presenting a plan to end the baby formula shortage, so it’s unclear how that statement explains what she said.
Scottie's Playtime 