Why is the US PAC in an authoritarian anti-democracy country? Notice the reporters says they are there rallying against the progressive excesses of the west, and that they are for God, homeland, and family and the conservatives want to do what he did there in the US. What he did was roll back social understanding and acceptance of differences and to take a hardline on immigration. He also talked about the need to control the media and to limit what they can report on. Free societies don’t restrict reporting nor what can be spoken about. The US is losing the being a free country and in red states like Florida becoming an authoritarian state where the government dictates what people can see, hear, learn, and do in all aspects of their lives. Also Orban wants to not challenge Putin as he supports how Putin has removed LGBTQ+ from Russia and returned the country to God, the homeland, and family. Just certain families of course. This is one of the biggest Republican organizations, is this Ameria first? Is this making America great? Hugs
CPAC is partnering with a government that is backsliding on democracy and holding its first European conference in Hungary. Included in the lineup of conservative speakers is Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. CBS News Correspondent Adam Yamaguchi is one of the only western journalists who has gained access to the conference. He joins “CBS News Mornings” to share his first-hand experience attending, and the response he has seen following a controversial speech from Prime Minister Orban.
Please note as Brian says this is the University in a very deep red state, and even they acknowledge not every human is born strictly male or female and they refute the Republican speaker who claims it is a scientific truth that people are either male or female. I include a screenshot of the statement from the university below.
A Trump-appointed federal judge has blocked portions of Alabama’s so-called “Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act,” a law that punishes adults who help transgender children access gender-affirming healthcare.
Last Friday, Judge Liles C. Burke of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama temporarily blocked parts of the law that made it a felony to prescribe hormones and puberty blockers to trans youth, saying that the law is likely to cause irreparable harm if it goes into effect while the lawsuits works their way through the court system.
Burke’s decision said parents have a fundamental right to provide their children with medically-accepted treatments. Hormones and puberty blockers are used to treat various medical conditions in non-trans youth. But since Alabama’s law only sought to punish the drugs’ use by transgender youth, the lawsuit alleged that this part of the law was driven by unconstitutional sex-based discrimination.
Burke allowed other parts of the law to stand, including one requiring school teachers and nurses to out trans students to their parents and another forbidding doctors from performing gender-affirming surgical procedures on trans youth.
“Doctors had testified that such operations were not being performed on children in Alabama before the law had been enacted,”The New York Times noted.
Alabama lawmakers said that the transphobic law is meant to protect kids from “irreversible” and “experimental” medical treatments “aggressively push[ed]” by doctors and “ideological interest groups,” state lawyers said in court documents. But Burke said Alabama failed to provide “credible evidence to show that transitioning medications are ‘experimental,’” adding that hormones and puberty blockers are “well-established, evidence-based treatments for gender dysphoria in minors.”
“Parents, pediatricians and psychologists — not the state or this court — are best qualified to determine whether transitioning medications are in a child’s best interest on a case-by-case basis,” Burke wrote in his decision.
When signing the bill into law, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) said, “I believe very strongly that if the Good Lord made you a boy, you are a boy, and if he made you a girl, you are a girl. We should especially protect our children from these radical, life-altering drugs and surgeries when they are at such a vulnerable stage in life.”
However, her religion-based opinion goes against the best practices of trans-related pediatrics outlined by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, and the American Psychological Association. The organizations find that gender-affirming medical care is medically necessary and reduces suicide and depression among trans youth.
Comedian John Oliver mentioned the state’s law on the Sunday night installment of his cable news program Last Week Tonight.
In the program, Oliver interviewed 15-year-old transgender girl Harleigh Walker, who said, “If I did stop my gender-affirming care, my physical outside wouldn’t reflect who I was inside, and that would, like, completely destroy me mentally and physically.”
Oliver said, “If you can look at Harleigh, or any child, and comfortably say, ‘Take away their care that gives them peace and a sense of self,’ you are a bad person.”
During a hearing in front of the Alabama legislature last year, Dr. Morissa Ladinsky explained that surgery and hormonal therapy for trans youth both involve “lengthy informed consent [and] lengthy mental health oversight.”
Oliver quipped, “Of course, doctors are going to be thoughtful and rigorous when caring for their patients because, unlike the Alabama Legislature, they actually care about kids’ well-being,”
“To trans children in Alabama right now… you are important,” Oliver added. “Your lives are important. I cannot imagine trying to build self-esteem in childhood as your own government attempts to undermine your very existence, but you should know: You are profoundly valuable and you are irreplaceable.”
As of May, 15 Republican-led states have either passed bans on medical care for trans youth or are considering similar laws. Some of the bans have equated gender-affirming care with child abuse and threatened to arrest parents of trans youth, de-transitioning their kids and placing them in state care. Others attack doctors and threaten them with jail time for providing gender-affirming care to trans youth.
These laws are part of a larger nationwide push by Republicans to pass laws targeting LGBTQ youth. Other such laws have attempted to ban trans youth from playing sports or to ban any LGBTQ content from classrooms. These bills’ supporters have said that anyone who opposes the laws are pedophilic “groomers”, language which encourages violence against LGBTQ people and allies.
Ivey also recently signed a transphobic “bathroom bill” requiring students to use changing and restroom facilities matching the gender listed on their original birth certificates, as well as a “Don’t Say Gay” bill limiting discussion of LGBTQ topics in state classrooms.
“He’s an Azov, he’s a gay guy, he’s got all these insignias. He comes across – he says he’s a left-wing authoritarian, an eco authoritarian. It’s in the manifesto, which they won’t release. I don’t know, just release it, it’s not gonna warp people’s mind. People can make decisions, parents got to be on top of stuff. Why are the parents that – is this kid going to church? Is he in church?” – Steve Bannon, inventing things that nobody else who have actually read the shooter’s manifesto have reported.
Speculating on motivations, Steve Bannon claimed the Buffalo shooter was “a gay guy” and asked where the shooter was attending church. pic.twitter.com/d6VK0PbFBu
Steve Bannon claims the media is “inappropriately” focused on Tucker Carlson in the wake of the Buffalo white supremacist shooting. pic.twitter.com/4dyROPBcYU
“Let’s just put a lot of crazy shit out there that the left and media will spend time responding to so they don’t focus as much on the fact that we 100% enabled, encouraged, and applauded the mass murderer terrorist.”
I am so tired of the daily batshittery, pull whatever out of your ass, “news.”
Smear the Queer… Find someone whose done a horrendous act and smear them as being gay soas to smear the gay community as harbingers of evil. Ties in well with his anti-woke and his don’t say gay support.
“It’s in the manifesto, which they won’t release.”
If they won’t release it, how do you know it’s in it. I’ve seen other people on the right claiming he’s a Bernie supporter. They’re desperate to shift the blame.
Hear that, folks? He wasn’t motivated by the stuff you’ve been hearing on my radio show like he said. It was really something about the environment all along, or some kind of fаggot shit like that. Yeah…that’s it.
Now that we’ve settled that, back to how the Jews are using the blacks to overwhelm and replace the poor, embattled white race.
The state will likely assume control of Disney World’s Reedy Creek Improvement District, rather than local governments absorbing it, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Monday. DeSantis said he is working on a proposal that likely will be considered by the Legislature after the November elections.
Reedy Creek, which encompasses Disney World and neighboring properties, is set to dissolve on June 1, 2023. The governor’s office hasn’t released a written plan detailing how the dissolution of Disney World’s private government will unfold.
At an event in Sanford, DeSantis also insisted Central Florida taxpayers will not be forced to absorb the district’s nearly $1 billion in debt. Under state law, the district’s assets and liabilities would be transferred to the “local general purpose government” when it’s abolished.
Read the full article. In other words, every Floridian will eat that billion dollars, not just the residents of Orange and Osceola counties.
Class president and first openly LGBTQ student at his school Zander Moricz is taking on his school for censorship. Jayar Jackson and Jessica Burbank break it down on The Watchlist.
“Florida high school senior Zander Moricz was called into his principal’s office last week. As class president his whole high school career — and his school’s first openly LGBTQ student to hold the title — this was a fairly routine request. But once he entered the administrator’s office, he said, he immediately knew “this wasn’t a typical meeting.” ***
President warns of new attacks by Trump-dominated political party after supreme court ruling draft leak on abortion
Joe Biden delivered remarks on economic growth, jobs, and deficit reduction at the Roosevelt Room on Wednesday. Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty Images
Joe Biden has warned of new attacks on civil rights as the supreme court prepares to strike down the right to abortion, telling reporters at the White House that LGBTQ+ children could be the next targets of a Trump-dominated Republican party he called “this Maga crowd” and “the most extreme political organization … in recent American history”.
Contraception could come under fire next if Roe v Wade is overturned
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“What happens,” the president asked, if “a state changes the law saying that children who are LGBTQ can’t be in classrooms with other children? Is that legit under the way the decision is written?”
Biden’s remarks, at the end of a brief session on deficit reduction, referred to a leaked draft of a ruling by Justice Samuel Alito. One of six conservatives on the supreme court, Alito was writing on a Mississippi case which aims to overturn both Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling which guaranteed the right to abortion, and Casey v Planned Parenthood from 1992, which buttressed it.
The Mississippi case is expected to be resolved in June. The leak of the draft ruling to Politico, which reported that four other conservatives on the nine-justice court supported it, caused a storm of controversy and anger.
In a statement and remarks on Tuesday, Biden condemned Alito’s reasoning and intentions and called for legislation to codify Roe into law.
But the president has faced criticism within his own party for seeming reluctant to contemplate reform such legislation would require, namely abolishing the Senate filibuster, the rule that requires 60 votes for most bills to pass.
A lifelong Catholic who nonetheless supports a woman’s right to choose, Biden has been eclipsed as a strong voice against the attack on abortion rights by high-profile Democratic women including the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, who spoke angrily outside the court on Tuesday, and the vice-president, Kamala Harris.
Harris’s struggles as vice-president have been widely reported but on Tuesday night, speaking to the Emily’s List advocacy group in Washington, she seemed to hit her stride.
The former prosecutor and California senator said: “Those Republican leaders who are trying to weaponize the use of the law against women. Well, we say, ‘How dare they?’
“How dare they tell a woman what she can do and cannot do with her own body? How dare they? How dare they try to stop her from determining her own future? How dare they try to deny women their rights and their freedoms?’”
She asked: “Which party wants to expand our rights? And which party wants to restrict them? It has never been more clear. Which party wants to lead us forward? And which party wants to push us back? You know, some Republican leaders, they want to take us back to a time before Roe v Wade.”
At the White House on Wednesday, Biden took brief questions. He was asked about sanctions on Russia over the invasion of Ukraine and about “the next step on abortion once this case gets settled”.
“As I said when this hit, as I was getting on the plane to go down to Alabama, this is about a lot more than abortion,” he said. “I hadn’t read the whole opinion at that time.”
The 79-year-old president then gave a lengthy, somewhat rambling answer about “the debate with Robert Bork”. Bork was nominated to the supreme court by Ronald Reagan in 1987. Biden was then chair of the Senate judiciary committee. The nomination failed.
US supreme court justices on abortion – what they’ve said and how they’ve voted
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At the White House, Biden said Bork “believed the only reason you had any inherent rights was because the government gave them to you”, a stance with which Biden said he disagreed.
Biden also said Bork had opposed Griswold v Connecticut, the 1965 case which established the right to contraception – a right many on the left fear may be left open to rightwing attack once Roe, another case concerning privacy, has been overturned.
In her speech the previous night, Harris said: “At its core, Roe recognizes the fundamental right to privacy. Think about that for a minute. When the right to privacy is attacked, anyone in our country may face a future where the government can interfere in their personal decisions. Not just women. Anyone.”
The vice-president also said: “Let us fight for our country and for the principles upon which it was founded, and let us fight with everything we have got.”
A new Alabama law that targets trans youth went into effect on May 8 and is causing concern for LGBTQ+ people, their families, and allies. Signed into law by Governor Kay Ivey on April 8, the “Alabama Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act” makes it a felony for doctors to prescribe hormones and puberty blockers for those under age 19, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
The law is part of a wider swath of anti-trans youth legislation cropping up across Republican-controlled states, but this bill is uniquely extreme in targeting health care providers with potential felony charges. Dr. Morissa Ladinsky, an Alabama pediatrician who treats gender dysphoria in children, testified during the bill’s federal court hearing: “This will force us into a place of risking a felony conviction for providing evidence-based care.”
As of this writing, the law is in effect, meaning that providing gender-affirming medical care for trans youth in Alabama is a felony. According to AL.com, the law is being challenged by a lawsuit filed by parents of four transgender youth who argue the law will “deprive their children of access to established medical care that is safe, effective, and necessary.” Also party to the suit are a child psychologist who works with trans youth, a pediatrician, and a pastor. In the meantime, plaintiffs are asking for a temporary hold on the law.
Trans advocates and experts are sounding the alarm. As Chase Strangio, deputy director for trans justice with the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, told Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman during a May 9 appearance on the program, this “[creates] an absolutely terrifying sea change in the reality on the ground for trans people, their families, and their doctors in Alabama — and not just in Alabama, but across the Southeast.”
I have been working in trans legal advocacy for 18 years and today is probably the most upsetting day with a felony ban on health care going into effect in Alabama. Not much noise nationally from our “allies” either.
“The University of Alabama has a gender clinic that is serving trans adolescents and their families, not just in Alabama, but in Georgia and Florida and Tennessee and Mississippi,” Strangio continued. “And in a matter of hours, all of that care is becoming a felony, which means families are uprooting their lives. They’re trying to figure out what, when, and whether they can get life-saving care for their adolescent children.”
In other states, legislators are pushing to adopt “trans refuge” policies that would welcome trans people and their families from hostile states. California senator Scott Wiener, who sponsored a bill in his home state as part of this effort, publicly criticized Alabama’s law. “At midnight, Alabama’s vile law criminalizing trans youth accessing gender-affirming care — threatening parents & doctors with 10 years in prison — went into effect. We’re working in coalition w/19 other states to pass laws granting refuge to impacted families. We have your backs,” Wiener wrote on Twitter.
According to Bay City News, the proposed California bill would stop other states from subpoenaing medical records from California in order to separate trans children from their parents or to penalize families for seeking gender-affirming care, and would bar law enforcement from, as reported by the outlet, “making or intentionally participating in the arrest of an individual with an out-of-state warrant for allowing a child to receive gender-affirming health care.”
Twenty-one LGBTQ lawmakers in 16 states have committed to introducing similar legislation, according to the Victory Institute, an organization that promotes LGBTQ politicians.
Photo: Shutterstock
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