Category: MAGA / Republican
Texas installs barrier at New Mexico border to deter migrants
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4264027-texas-barrier-new-mexico-border-deter-migrants/
How greatly the republicans in that state must hate brown people. If given half a chance, they would gleefully restart slavery. I don’t see how this is even legal. Think of where this money could be spent to help the people. Hugs
BY LAUREN SFORZA – 10/18/23 9:51 PM ET
Texas is adding to its border wall to deter migrants from entering the state by constructing a barrier between itself and New Mexico.
“Texas installs fencing along NEW Mexico border. Our barriers around El Paso forced the migrants crossing illegally to enter into New Mexico. They then entered into El Paso from there. To end that, we are building a barrier on the New Mexico border,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Construction of a wall along the Texas-Mexico border has been in the works for months since Abbott committed to the project in 2021. He has continually posted videos and images of the border wall on X, but last week’s announcement revealing the construction of a wall between Texas and the neighboring state of New Mexico marks the latest step in his Operation Lone Star.
KFOX14 reported earlier this month that members of the Texas National Guard reinforced the wall between New Mexico and Texas with concertina wire — a type of barbed wire that already lines the Texas-Mexico border. Abbott said Texas had plans to build a barrier between the two states during an appearance at the Manhattan Institute last month.
New Mexico and Texas Democrats condemned the action in a joint statement.
“Earlier this month, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced the placement of razor wire fencing along the Texas-New Mexico border north of the Rio Grande near Sunland Park, NM. This is the latest Operation Lone Star stunt funded by the working Texas family’s tax-dollar that will result in environmental damage, community division and injuries of vulnerable migrants,” the statement read.
“It’s clear that Governor Abbott has no plans on actually addressing our broken immigration system head on — but instead adding more fuel to Operation Lone Star’s dumpster fire,” the statement added.
Is Abbott aware that New Mexico is part of the United States and not “Old Mexico?”
I sort of being serious. There are people in this country who get confused about this. I’ve heard it from JMGers who reside in NM.
This is a real article that I saved years ago from USA Today newspaper.
I swear it was in the comments section of this blog that someone nearly had immigration called on him/her because s/he told a fellow American that s/he came from New Mexico and didn’t go through customs. It was a whole “facepalming” nightmare.
I remember a story decades ago about a man who had a huge hassle from the IRS because he wasn’t paying the right taxes. He lived in NM and they insisted he report his “out of the country” income.
I read that there is a surprising percentage of Texans that think New Mexico is part of Mexico. And an even higher percentage of non-Texans that think that. I’m not surprised on either count.
Fascist Abbott is building these walls to lock women in so they will be unable to leave the state to obtain legal reproductive care elsewhere.
Ohio Has a New Universal Voucher Program, and the Problems Are Already Starting
This is important to understand what the goal of the right is. The goal is to destroy public education, and instead force public taxpayer funds, the public treasury, to be diverted to private businesses and religious institutions. They want to give religious organizations, church affiliated schools that discriminate against LGBTQIA tax dollars of people they discriminate against, so they can indoctrinate public schools kids with their churches doctrines. Here are some quotes. There is more in the article at the link above. Hugs. Scottie
That means it will be difficult to discern whether the spike in EdChoice scholarships came from parents looking to leave public school or those whose children already attend (private schools).” One serious problem here is that the voucher expansion is to be paid for out of the school foundation budget that also pays for the state’s public schools.
In Iowa, 40 percent of more than 17,000 applicants to the state’s new universal education savings account program have left public schools, while the remaining 60 percent were not enrolled in public schools before applying…. The gap is even wider in Florida, where 69 percent of roughly 122,000 new applicants… were already in private schools before applying…. Another 18 percent are children entering the K-12 system for the first time as kindergarteners….”
“Northeast Ohio Catholics have been thrust into the national debate about LGBTQ rights after the diocese released its policy…. for churches and 79 elementary schools and five high schools. It includes bans on students and staff from undergoing gender-affirming care; their use of new pronouns or first names; and the use of restrooms or other facilities different than their ‘God-given biological sex.’ Church and school staff must notify parents if their child may be transgender. Students and staff cannot display LGBTQ pride flags or other symbols. Students cannot attend dances or mixers with a date of the same sex.” Most of these Cleveland Catholic diocesan schools accept EdChoice Expansion vouchers from the state of Ohio.
But the larger injustice exposed here is even more distressing. More and more students under the state’s new universal school voucher expansion will be using public tax dollars to pay tuition at Catholic schools in greater Cleveland which are now—seemingly with impunity—explicitly discriminating against a specific class of students whose rights are protected under Title IX of the Constitution of the United States.
Florida Is Not A Red State – Rep. Maxwell Frost
Harvard Students Doxxed Following Anti-Israel Statements
WTF !!!! This is wealthy Jewish supporters doxing young adult students just for exercising free thought! It is entirely an attempt to stop any expression of support for anything but the Israeli ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip. Texas requires teachers to sign a pledge to Israel. It is not being done by Jewish people, it is being done by evangelical Christians to get to their end time. Hugs.
MAGA Heckler Owned – Steve Hofstetter
Far-right Christian dominionists infiltrate schools, civic offices in Texas
Book bans in Texas spread as new state law takes effect
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/10/11/texas-library-book-bans/
The hate and misinformation continues and spreads. The over the top rush to return to a regressive past of strict gender roles, censorship, and an enforced social acceptance of only what is acceptable to the leading churches in the area. Think of the time these people want desperately to return to, and ask why. It did not fix anything, it did not solve any problems. Gay kids were still born, they just had miserable lives. Trans people were still born, they just had to suffer with no social acceptance or relief. These people hate civil rights for anyone but themselves. They are demanding a return to a time when it was not only legal but acceptable to discriminate against anyone who was not a straight cis white person. That is what they want so badly, the right to insult, shame, targeting for bullying and harming people who are different. I have to ask why, what makes that time so attractive for these people. I think it is the right to abuse others, to feel superior to them! Again I repeat that a lot of this hate and bigotry is driven by fundmentlist religious sects. Below is are two quote. Hugs
The ALA said book challenges nearly doubled nationally in 2022 and are “evidence of a growing, well-organized, conservative political movement, the goals of which include removing books about race, history, gender identity, sexuality, and reproductive health from America’s public and school libraries that do not meet their approval.”
“The book fair is one of our biggest fundraisers, but unfortunately, we have seen more and more books that promote and support LBGTQ+ views,” the school wrote. “We’re at a crossroads where we share different values and beliefs, especially when it comes to exposing young children to adult topics. Friendswood Christian School is a private institution devoted to creating a complete learning environment for children by incorporating Christian principles into the academic framework. We want to provide an environment where children can hang on to their innocence as long as possible.”
BY JEREMY SCHWARTZ, THE TEXAS TRIBUNE AND PROPUBLICAThe American flag reflects off a Houston Little Free Library designed to look like a prison filled with banned books. Credit: Callaghan O’Hare/ReutersThis article is co-published with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for ProPublica’s Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox as soon as they are published. Also, sign up for The Brief, our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.
As a new Texas law further restricting what books students can check out of school libraries takes effect, local bans are gaining steam in districts across the state — in some cases going in startling directions.
In Katy, a growing Houston suburb, school officials recently bought $93,000 worth of new library books and promptly put them in storage so an internal committee could review them. The district then banned 14 titles (bringing its total since 2021 to 30), including popular books by Dr. Seuss and Judy Blume, as well as “No, David!” an award-winning children’s book featuring a mischievous cartoon character who at one point jumps out of a bathtub, exposing a cartoon backside. (This wasn’t the district’s first foray into regulating cartoon nudity; over the summer, a book about a crayon that lost its wrapper, becoming “naked” in the process, was flagged for review but ultimately retained.)
Following the latest removals, the Katy school board decided that cartoon butts would be exempted from a district policy that called for removing books showing nudity. “Explicit frontal nudity,” on the other hand, would not be allowed.
“The board’s intent was never to remove well-known cartoon-like children’s books just because they showed a little drawing of a little boy’s rear-end,” its president, Victor Perez, said, according to the Houston Chronicle.
One hundred miles to the east, a school district near Beaumont made headlines last month after removing a substitute middle school teacher who had read students portions of an illustrated adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary, which detailed her hiding from the Nazis and was published after her death in the Holocaust.
The graphic novel version includes descriptions of Frank’s attraction to other girls as well as her clinical descriptions of her private parts.
The book, which had not been approved as part of the district’s curriculum, had been included on a reading list sent to parents at the start of the school year, according to television station KFDM.
The district is investigating whether administrators knew the book was being used in the class, according to news reports.
And just south of Houston, the private Friendswood Christian School announced it was canceling its Scholastic Book Fair, barring the nation’s largest children’s book publisher, which has put on book fairs at schools around the country for decades.
In a letter to parents, obtained by ABC13 in Houston, the school made clear the decision was aimed at books featuring LGBTQ+ themes and characters.
“The book fair is one of our biggest fundraisers, but unfortunately, we have seen more and more books that promote and support LBGTQ+ views,” the school wrote. “We’re at a crossroads where we share different values and beliefs, especially when it comes to exposing young children to adult topics. Friendswood Christian School is a private institution devoted to creating a complete learning environment for children by incorporating Christian principles into the academic framework. We want to provide an environment where children can hang on to their innocence as long as possible.”
Kasey Meehan, the Freedom to Read program director for the New York-based free speech organization PEN America, said that as Texas enters what is essentially its third consecutive school year of book banning activity, efforts have taken some troubling directions.
“Even after that first removal of books, what we see is a continued chilling effect that happens across schools,” she said in an interview. “There are these ripples that are going to extend beyond simply removing a book to just read, erring on the side of caution and bringing a bit more scrutiny to any availability of books and any opportunities that students can have to access books.”
The local censorship efforts come as courts wrestle with a new Texas law that requires booksellers to rate public school library books based on their depictions of or references to sex. Books in which such references are deemed “patently offensive” by the vendors will be issued a “sexually explicit” rating and can’t be sold to schools and must be removed from shelves of school libraries. Books that reference or depict sex generally will be rated “sexually relevant” and require parental permission to read.
Texas schools would be barred from buying books from vendors who don’t use the ratings.
On Sept. 18, a U.S. district judge in Austin issued a written order blocking the law, which was passed this spring, from taking effect. Judge Alan D. Albright, a Trump appointee, ruled the law would impose “unconstitutionally vague requirements” on booksellers and “misses the mark on obscenity.”
“And the state,” he wrote, “in abdicating its responsibility to protect children, forces private individuals and corporations into compliance with an unconstitutional law that violates the First Amendment.”
A week later, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the judge’s ruling, temporarily allowing the law to go into effect while the court considers the case, which it is expected to take up this month.
Book bannings have increased precipitously in the state since ProPublica and The Texas Tribune started reporting on the issue in rural Hood County two years ago, where a fight over library books foreshadowed the intense partisanship that has come to mark many Texas school board races. The U.S. Department of Education launched an investigation into the Granbury Independent School District after the superintendent was secretly recorded ordering librarians to remove library books with LGBTQ+ themes.
The federal probe, which followed a ProPublica-Tribune investigation with NBC News, remains open, according to the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. Last year, in response to the outlets’ investigation, the district said it was committed to supporting students of all backgrounds.
The issue continues to roil Granbury, as some community members and trustees don’t believe the district has gone far enough to remove books. Last month, the school board censured a trustee who wants additional titles removed after she was accused of sneaking into a school library to examine books with a cellphone flashlight.
According to a report from the American Library Association, Texas was home to the most attempts to ban or restrict books in 2022.
Of the 1,269 documented attempts to remove books from school or public libraries across the nation in 2022, 93 took place in Texas, affecting over 2,300 titles, the association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom found. The ALA said book challenges nearly doubled nationally in 2022 and are “evidence of a growing, well-organized, conservative political movement, the goals of which include removing books about race, history, gender identity, sexuality, and reproductive health from America’s public and school libraries that do not meet their approval.”
The American Library Association itself has come under fire among conservative circles in Texas. In August, Midland County commissioners voted to withdraw from the association. Days later, the Texas State Library and Archives Commission pulled out.
A similar report by PEN America found 3,362 instances of book banning at K-12 schools during the 2022-23 school year, up 33% from the previous year. According to the organization, Florida schools accounted for the most removals, 1,406, followed by Texas with 625.
What’s been your experience with school library book bans in Texas? Email Austin-based reporter Jeremy Schwartz at jeremy.schwartz@propublica.org to let him know.
Information about the authors
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Jeremy Schwartz
REPORTER, PROPUBLICA/TEXAS TRIBUNE INVESTIGATIVE UNIT
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MEDIA STILL QUESTION WHETHER TRUMP’S CHRISTIANS ARE ‘REAL’ CHRISTIANS
I can not remember who sent me this one, but thank you. It is in one of my old windows of open tabs. Hugs.
The criminal former president is so far ahead of his closest GOP rival that the Washington press corps is already reviving themes from the 2016 and 2020 elections. Here’s the AP on Friday: “Some critics see Trump’s behavior as un-Christian. His conservative Christian backers see a hero.”
How can a lying, thieving, philandering sadist like Donald Trump continue to hold the overwhelming approval of “conservative Christians”? Since he first ran for president, reporters have tried explaining this apparent contradiction. They’re going to keep trying.
But all this rests on an assumption—two assumptions, actually. Once we drop them, a greater truth stands before us in plain sight: For Donald Trump’s Christians, there is no difference between religion and politics. They’re not pretending otherwise. The rest of us shouldn’t either.
What assumptions?
The first is that Christianity is just one thing—the particular teachings of Jesus regarding God’s universal love, let’s say. The second, based on the first, is that there’s a contradiction between Trump and Christianity. How could supporters believe in God’s universal love while backing a man whose campaign has become explicitly a vengeance movement?
There is no contradiction, however, if we concede the obvious—that there’s more than one kind of Christianity, that there’s always been more than one kind, and that there are varieties of Christianity.
Once you concede this, you see a relationship that’s not at all based on a contradiction. It’s based on common interests. They aren’t drawn to him in spite of the fact that he’s a lying, thieving, philandering sadist. They’re drawn to him because he’s a lying, thieving, philandering sadist.
The implication here is one that few want to talk about, including religion reporters and their religious sources. If a variety of religion makes common cause with a bad man (for instance, with a lying, thieving, philandering sadist), isn’t that religion, well, a bad religion?
Reporters don’t want to be seen as adjudicators of faith. So they pretend that politics and religion are separate. Their religious sources don’t want the reputations of their respective religions to be irreparably harmed by Trump and his Christians so they pretend that religious faith isn’t what’s pushing them together. It’s politics, they say.
For instance, the AP cited retired Catholic priest, the Rev. Peter Daly.
In 2017, Daly wrote “Donald Trump’s gospel is not the Gospel of Jesus” in which he “depicted Trump as an uncharitable bully, prone to lying, lacking in empathy and tolerance.”
“He sees every opponent as someone to be shouted down or roughed up,” Daly wrote. “He is not a peacemaker.”
Six years later, the AP reported, Daly still can’t fully explain “why so many conservative Christians remain in Trump’s camp despite behavior and rhetoric ‘that are antithetical to everything they stand for.’”
It must be politics, not religion, he says. According to the AP:
“Some pro-Trump pastors have relished the proximity to power afforded during White House visits or special political events, Daly said. And some rural, white Christians ‘feel like nobody speaks for them,’ Daly added. ‘They think, “Here’s Donald Trump. He’ll be our champion.” It has nothing to do with being Christian. It’s the politics of grievance.’”
Oh, but it has everything to do with being a Christian!
This is evident by Christian supporters explaining themselves in Christian terms:
“Some evangelicals, since early in Trump’s presidency, have likened him to Cyrus the Great, the Persian king who, according to the Bible, enabled Jews to return to Israel from their exile in Babylon.” [The Jews here are metaphors for God’s chosen people.]
They explain themselves in explicitly political terms, too.
Megachurch Pastor Robert Jeffries told the AP: “In many ways, Christians feel like they are in an existential cultural war between good and evil, and they want a warrior like Donald Trump who can win.”
There’s no difference between religion and politics.
I don’t know why there’s so much resistance to stating the obvious. Any religion that supports Donald Trump, and does so in explicitly religious terms, is not a religion that anyone, especially religious people, should be defending. Christianity isn’t just one thing. There are many Christianities. What’s so bad about calling one of them bad?
Most people, especially religious people, prefer to say that the Christians who support Trump aren’t “true” or “real” Christians—as if all Christianities privilege the Bible’s more peaceful and inclusive teachings. This is not (and never has been) the case.
God’s universal love, for many Christianities, is secondary to God’s particular (non-universal) punishment of God’s enemies—of the people who stand against Donald Trump. Politics and religion are not separate. They are one. Trump’s Christians don’t pretend otherwise.
The rest of us shouldn’t either.
North Carolina Republicans Are Creating a ‘Secret Police Force’
https://www.thedailybeast.com/north-carolina-republicans-are-creating-a-secret-police-force
How deep are these red states willing to go in the authoritarian fascist rabbit hole? They are fast rushing into single party only allowed rule. They seem to hate democracy, free press, transparency, and government responsibility. They do not want to represent the people but to rule them. The scarcest part to me is anyone investigated can’t say anything, can not complain about constitutional violations. Yes they put it that way, they plan to violate the constitution and the target of their abuse can not even publican complain about it. You can not even get a lawyer or legal counsel if they come after you. WTF! Below is a quote from the article. Hugs
Any way you slice it, Gov Ops seems like a recipe for government overreach and abuse. If you find yourself under investigation by Gov Ops, you won’t be allowed to publicly discuss any alleged constitutional violations or misconduct by the investigators. All communications with committee personnel would be treated as “confidential.” Shockingly, you’d also be denied the right to seek legal counsel regarding your rights if Gov Ops were to search your property without a warrant, irrespective of whether it’s in a public or private space.
The euphemistically named “Gov Ops” is a civil liberties disaster waiting to happen.
Republican state legislators In North Carolina are establishing a new investigative body that Democratic critics have aptly compared to a “secret police force.”
This new entity, formally known as the Joint Legislative Committee on Government Operations, or “Gov Ops” for short, will be chaired by Senate Leader Phil Berger (R) and House Speaker Tim Moore (R). It grants the state the authority to investigate various matters, including “possible instances of misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance, mismanagement, waste, abuse, or illegal conduct.”
Gov Ops, a product of North Carolina’s most recent state budget, was established via a comprehensive bill passed in late September. Despite Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s refusal to sign the legislation, the Republican majority in the state legislature pushed it through just 10 days later, thanks to their veto-proof majority and the state’s laws restricting the governor’s ability to make line-item vetoes. Gov Ops is slated to take effect next week.
Any way you slice it, Gov Ops seems like a recipe for government overreach and abuse. If you find yourself under investigation by Gov Ops, you won’t be allowed to publicly discuss any alleged constitutional violations or misconduct by the investigators. All communications with committee personnel would be treated as “confidential.” Shockingly, you’d also be denied the right to seek legal counsel regarding your rights if Gov Ops were to search your property without a warrant, irrespective of whether it’s in a public or private space.
Nora Benavidez, a senior counsel with the nonprofit advocacy group Free Press, told The Daily Beast, “This is a question for the courts ultimately. But the powers granted to the Gov Ops appear to give them overreaching investigative authority, which invokes constitutionality questions.”
A critical aspect of Gov Ops development lies in the language within the statute itself. The key phrase, as highlighted by Republican state legislators, is the investigation of “possible instances of misfeasance.”
It’s unsettling that North Carolina’s Republican state legislators are poised to wield unchecked partisan authority, devoid of any form of accountability, to determine what qualifies as “possible instances of misfeasance.” This newfound investigative power threatens to have far-reaching repercussions on fundamental civil liberties, particularly those closely intertwined with the state legislature—such as voting rights and abortion.
Consider the 2020 election aftermath. Following the election’s conclusion, several North Carolina Republican lawmakers—mirroring Trump and other far-right figures nationwide—demanded access to voting machines, relying on dubious sources and unfounded claims of voter fraud.
Initially, North Carolina Republicans asserted that they would work with police to obtain warrants for such inspections. However, with the advent of Gov Ops, committee leaders could now allege “possible instances of misfeasance,” eliminating the need for a warrant and keeping the public in the dark.
With the 2024 election looming, Republicans in the state legislature will redraw voting maps after the new conservative majority on the state’s Supreme Court legalized partisan gerrymandering. (The Princeton Gerrymandering Project called North Carolina one of the most gerrymandered states in the country.)
The redistricting process in the state has been grueling; since 2011, six different versions of maps have been drawn. The process has been conducted mainly behind closed doors, and North Carolinians continue to express frustration over how they’ve been locked out of the process.
A provision of Gov Ops will likely permit lawmakers drawing the maps to bypass public records requests: “lawmakers responding to public records requests will have no obligation to share any drafts or materials that guided their redistricting decisions.”
Now, let’s look at abortion. During a legislative hearing, state Sen. Graig Meyer (D) asked lawmakers, in a hypothetical scenario, if Gov Ops could access personal health records (like ultrasounds) that are required by the state to receive abortion pills. Sen. Meyer found that Gov Ops, with its widespread ability to investigate with zero oversight, could release information like this “to the public in a hearing” if it wanted to.
Benavidez explained, “At the end of the day, Gov Ops actions and requests for information are all protected as confidential, adding a layer of opacity which means people in North Carolina will have largely no idea what the Gov Ops entity is really doing.”
The consolidation of power by Republicans in North Carolina through Gov Ops is not just a cause for concern; it is a stark warning sign. The ability of state legislators to wield unchecked authority—shielded from the scrutiny of the voters they are obliged to serve—strikes at the heart of democratic principles.
Transparency and accountability are not optional in a democracy; they are its lifeblood.
When the process of drawing voting maps becomes cloaked in secrecy, when mechanisms to hold our elected officials accountable are dismantled, we risk losing our most cherished rights to our legislators, who should be our staunchest defenders.
Government powers like Gov Ops can potentially erode the very foundations of our democracy—which can’t work if politicians refuse to work for the people and have any accountability.
