Again they want the gay and trans people erased from society. They don’t want people to be themselves, they want everyone including their kids to be clones of them. These people don’t want freedom for others, they want the freedom to force you to have their views on everything. They are conservatives so say right wingers who feel it is OK to be rude and insulting but don’t like the fact that their children don’t think that is OK. In the article it says the parents don’t have an issue that their kids came out as gay which is a weird way to word saying that their kids are gay, but I don’t think they respected their children or their own ideas. I have delt with this before, such as when a family member refused to stop using the “N” word slur when talking about black people. The only thing you can do is refuse to be around them to get the point across. Being progressive and accepting the modern society is a cult to these people. She says the daughter made a big deal over a coffee cup, but in fact the mother is the one who refused a cup due to the rainbow flag on it. So the real issue is the parents are bigots whose kids don’t want to be around bigots and the parents want to force their kids to become bigots like the parents are. I had to laugh at the way K. Yang talks about a global conspiracy to … make things better and less oppressive for everyone which the right / conservatives cannot tolerate. Hugs
“I never even considered trying to find a deprogrammer,” one mother said. “But I think it’s too late for me and my kids.”
A new trend seems to be all the rage for anti-LGBTQ+ parents, who have been increasingly touting the need to “deprogram” their progressive children and turn them conservative.
A recent report from the New York Post features a group of mothers who say their children refuse to talk to them after being “indoctrinated” with “gender and race ideology” by progressive high schools and colleges.
The article likens progressive values to being in a cult and details the mothers’ desire to find a “deprogrammer” to jolt their children back to reality.
The mothers were inspired by another story from the New York Post, that of Annabella Rockwell, a pharmaceutical fortune heiress, a rightwing activist, and a Mount Holyoke alumna who claimed that her mother hired a $300/day “deprogrammer” to turn her conservative after college.
“I saw Annabella’s story and my life turned upside down,” said 54-year-old Beth Pensky, whose son and daughter don’t speak to her.
“I realized I wasn’t alone and I saw what happened to her was similar to what I think happened to my kids. I never even considered trying to find a deprogrammer. I didn’t know they existed. But I think it’s too late for me and my kids. They won’t even talk to me.”
A mother named Dorothy, whose last name was not given, also connected to Rockwell.
“Reading about Annabella was the first time I connected the dots to everything that had happened with my daughter,” she said.
“She had what she called ‘an awakening’ and became very angry at me and her father. It was a big personality change. We are conservatives so [our political views] became a huge problem. We were not allowed to visit her on campus. She went on a mission to convert her brother against us. She told him that he should be against us because we’re conservatives and that we all should be against men.”
Pensky and Dorothy also both claimed they did not have any problem with the fact that they each had daughters come out as gay. Rather, they say it was the way their daughters treated them in the aftermath that was the problem.
The article also featured an anonymous mother of five daughters who she claimed were turned against her by the upscale New York City private school Dalton and then further lured into the cult of progressivism in college.
“The emotional stress is unbelievable,” she said. “I consider myself a Democrat and a liberal but it doesn’t matter. I’ve had fights with some of my girls just because I wouldn’t get myself a Rainbow pride Starbucks cup. The cup itself became this huge battleground. Apparently it matters what cup you hold.”
And the deprogramming business is apparently booming.
36-year-old K. Yang was once a trans and gay rights activist who used they/them pronouns but has since “deprogrammed” herself. She said she is extremely busy these days as a full-time deprogrammer
Yang’s website claims to be “exposing the trans agenda.”
“There’s a war for our bodies & minds and it’s all connected,” it says.
Yang touts the ideology of Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs), claiming that advancing trans rights somehow contributes to a lessening of rights for cisgender women.
“A lot of these parents are completely bewildered,” Yang told the Post. “A lot of them noticed a marked difference in their children’s behavior. Then all of a sudden ‘she’ identifies as ‘he.’ A lot of this is like a cult except parents don’t realize their child is being indoctrinated — not from an old-fashioned cult that takes you away somewhere but through schools and their devices. This is happening to kids everywhere, even those with a robust family life.”
Yang claimed there is a global conspiracy to “restructure society” that goes all the way up the United Nations.
“They are undermining the sexually dimorphic nature of reality and breaking down the differences between the sexes to break down our identity. They are constructing identities for us and they want us to adopt them.”
The article even featured the so-called “father of deprogramming,” 92-year-old Ted Patrick who was known in the 1970s and 1980s for helping parents “deprogram” their kids who had fallen victim to cults. Patrick’s controversial practices led to multiple jail sentences and dozens of indictments on grounds like kidnapping and conspiracy.
Patrick claims young people today are in a state of emergency and essentially says they should be kidnapped to fix it.
“It’s worse now than it was then,” Patrick said. “But parents are more scared and weak than they were then. You’ve got to get these kids alone. I’ve snatched people from Yale. I deal with the mind. You have to go into the mind, into that container, and bring the real person out. Once you get the person out you have to get the person thinking again — thinking like a critical thinker.”
Students at a high school in Florida are pointing to the state’s Parental Rights in Education law, aka Don’t Say Gay, as the reason for the sudden cancellation of a long-scheduled drama department production.
The canceled play, Indecent by Paula Vogel, depicts the true story of another stage play called God of Vengeance, which was shut down in New York in 1923 on charges on indecency; the Broadway production of the Yiddish play depicted the first-ever onstage kiss between a lesbian couple in American theater.
The production at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville was scheduled last May and cast in December. Indecent was to premiere March 1, coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the ill-fated Broadway show.
Senior cast member Madeline Scotti, 17, shared news of the cancellation in an emotional Instagram video on Thursday night.
“Indecent is a story about how detrimental censorship is, about how its damaging effects can ruin a nation and a community. I don’t need to point out the irony,” Scotti said.
An email from Douglas Anderson principal Tina Wilson the same evening informed parents that Anton Chekov’s The Seagull would replace Vogel’s play. “A closer review of the mature content” of Indecent led school officials “to the conclusion that Seagull is better suited for a school production,” Wilson wrote.
In her Instagram video, Scotti claims school administrators all but acknowledged the show was axed due to the Don’t Say Gay law, which prohibits discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in grades K through 3 and restricts them in higher grade levels.
“Tonight during rehearsal our company was notified that the school board is shutting us down not because of, but related to the ideals stated in the Don’t Say Gay bill,” said Scotti. “They are trying to tell us this play is dirty, immoral, obscene, and, of course, indecent. And by that nature, they’re trying to tell me that I myself and my community is dirty, immoral, obscene, and indecent.”
A spokesperson for Duval County Public Schools denied any connection to the controversial new law, enacted in September.
“Indecent contains adult sexual dialog that is inappropriate for student cast members and student audiences,” Tracy Pierce told Teen Vogue. “It’s that simple. The decision has no relevance to any legislation but is rather a function of our responsibilities to ensure students engage in educational activities appropriate for their age.”
Drama productions at Douglas Anderson preceding the Parental Rights in Education law include Rent, depicting multiple LGBTQ+ relationships and the devastation wrought by the AIDS epidemic, and Chicago, a musical featuring singing prostitutes.
My dogs that love gravy please make no mistake in thinking what these people are driving hard for. It is not the 1950s as most of us assume, but for these die hard Christian white male power nationalists the goal is the 1850s. Hugs
As of last week, Republican efforts to ban birth control in America have officially started, and teenagers in Texas are its first victims
To paraphrase Pastor Niemöller, first they came for our abortion rights. Now they’re coming for our birth control.
Psychologist Dr. Marty Klein notes at Psychology Today that there are typically only a few reasons why people oppose birth control. They are:
— Fundamentalist religions fear sexual pleasure, which birth control facilitates — Contraception effectively limits family size, empowering women — Contraception promotes personal autonomy [making women more likely to challenge male authority] — Birth control may make abortion more acceptable to society
As of last week, Republican efforts to ban birth control in America have officially started, and teenagers in Texas are its first victims.
When Clarence Thomas wrote in his Dobbs concurring opinion that the Supreme Court should next overturn the right to birth control in the United States, a lawyer and a judge in Texas were apparently listening.
Most Americans have no idea this high-stakes drama — heading toward the Supreme Court but already now law in Texas — is even going on.
Lost in the Christmas holiday chatter, a Trump-appointed federal district judge in Texas just a week ago put a stop to teenagers getting confidential access to federally-funded birth control pills and devices in that state.
He did it based on a lawsuit filed by attorney Jonathan Mitchell, the same man who co-authored the Texas “abortion vigilante” law. Everybody ridiculed that effort at first, you’ll recall, but the Supreme Court upheld it and today it’s Texas law and spreading across Red states like a fungus.
Mitchell is also known as the guy who supported the Mississippi abortion ban before the Supreme Court that led to the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade.
Perhaps anticipating Clarence Thomas’ later call to overturn Supreme Court decisions legalizing birth control, homosexual behavior, and gay marriage (Griswold v Connecticut, Lawrence v Texas, Obergefell v Hodges), Mitchell even wrote in his amicus brief for the Dobbs case an originalist reference similar to the argument the Texas judge would later make against birth control:
“The right to marry an opposite-sex spouse is ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’; the right to marry a same-sex spouse obviously is not.”
In the Texas federal lawsuit Mitchell brought, Deanda v. Becerra, Trump-appointed Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled that teens between 15 and 18 shouldn’t be able to make birth control decisions independent of their parents because, he ruled, that had always been the law in the early years of America:
“For centuries, the common law held minors were incapable of giving consent to make important life decisions.”
Somehow, he managed to overlook the fact that the age of sexual consent “for centuries” was, in every American state from the founding of this nation in 1789, 10 to 12 years old. It wasn’t raised to 14, 15, or 16 in any US state until the 1930s.
But don’t try to argue facts with people running on religious or male-power arguments.
Although the fight for women’s bodily autonomy is as old as time, this part of the story begins in 1970.
Richard Nixon had a reputation as an awkward, bumbling prude when it came to sex, but even he knew that teenagers should be able to get birth control without their parents’ consent.
A teenage pregnancy could destroy a young woman’s life, and, at that time, over one-in-ten girls became pregnant between 15 and 19 years old. Fully 92 percent of those teenage pregnancies, according to research published in the following decade, were unintended and could have been prevented with access to birth control.
So, in 1970, President Nixon signed into law Title X, a federal grant program that included funds for confidential access to birth control for people across the nation regardless of their age.
Nonprofit agencies were formed in each state to receive the federal money and provide birth control (among other services): in Texas “Every Body Texas” is the group that administers Title X statewide through 32 agencies and 156 clinics.
The week of Christmas, because of Kacsmaryk’s Deanda v. Becerraruling, Texas agencies affiliated with Every Body Texas learned they had to start turning away teenagers, virtually all of them girls and women, who were seeking confidential birth control.
This is now the law in Texas.
Picking up the beat, Republican legislators in Missouri, Idaho, and Louisiana have introduced or are proposing birth control bans in those states, according to the Pew Trust. Expect Republicans in your state to soon try the same.
Lest you think that hyperbolic, consider how Republicans in the US House and Senate voted when Democrats introduced the Right to Contraception Actimmediatelyafter Clarence Thomas suggested the Court should overturn that right.
Fully 195 Republicans voted against the legislation in the House; only 8 supported it. And when it reached the Senate, it was killed by a Republican filibuster.
The Deanda v. Becerradecision in Texas banning confidential dispensing of contraception to teenagers will be appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, known across the nation as the place most likely to uphold crackpot rightwing rulings. From there it goes to the six crackpot rightwingers on the Supreme Court.
Republicans appear quite fixated on banning both abortion and birth control nationwide.
Authoritarian societies have a long history of trying to regulate women’s bodies.
The first books the Nazis burned in May of 1933 were birth control guides by Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, shortly before Hitler banned birth control in that nation (soldiers were allowed to possess condoms “to maintain their good health”).
Birth control was similarly banned in Romania by Nicolae Ceaușescu, bringing that nation Europe’s highest infant mortality rate and lowest life expectancy (particularly for women), a legacy which continues to this day even though Ceaușescu was overthrown and killed in 1989.
And now the GOP wants to ban birth control in the United States, starting with the youngest and most vulnerable among us. Authoritarians, after all, always first attack those least able to defend themselves before they climb the ladder of the society they intend to conquer.
This opening shot — coming out of Texas, just like the first ban on abortion (and from the same lawyer) — should make all Americans sit up and take notice.
This teacher doesn’t want stories of black people overcoming racism because she claims it will make the white kids uncomfortable, but she is not worried about the black students being uncomfortable as she uses the “N” word and talks racist crap including stating her entire clan fought for the confederacy whose goal was to keep blacks as slaves. Imagine the discomfort of being a black kid in her class knowing the teacher who grades you supports the idea of you being a slave with no rights. Not to mention her other out of time ideas. She claims books like “And Tango Makes Three” gives kids the idea that gay couples are OK something she also claims kids wouldn’t think if they were not told that. WTF! They are OK, it is normal, and kids should be told it is OK / normal / acceptable as straight couples. Just because she is a racist bigot who is filled with hate and intolerance doesn’t mean she gets to tell all of society and other peoples children that same sex couples are wrong. She is living in a distant past not the modern society but she cannot and wont accept it, and in Florida the kingdom of DeathSantis and the regressive Christian nationalist right she doesn’t have to. It appears that her superiors support her views even denying a parents demand their child be removed from her class, what happened to the great parents rights laws passed in Florida? Oh yes that is really only right wing racist bigoted Christian maga parents have rights bills passed in Florida. Hugs
Northview High School English teacher Vicki Baggett during an interview with Studio 850 in September 2022. (Screenshot via Facebook)
Vicki Baggett, an English teacher at Northview High School in Florida, is pushing for the Escambia County School District to remove nearly 150 books from school libraries. In an interview last month, Baggett told Popular Information that she is challenging books like When Wilma Rudolph Played Basketball — the story of a sprinter who overcame racial discrimination to become an Olympic champion — because she’s concerned the book could make white students “feel uncomfortable.” Baggett said she has “a responsibility to protect minors” from this kind of content.
While Baggett claims she is keeping inappropriate content away from children, her former and current students tell Popular Information that Baggett openly promoted racist and homophobic beliefs in class.
Peggy Sunday, who graduated from Northview in 2021, told Popular Information that, during a 10th-grade English class, Baggett said she opposed interracial marriage. “[Baggett] said in the Bible somewhere it says that it is a sin for races to mix together and that whites are meant to be with whites and blacks are meant to be with blacks,” Sunday alleged. About 15 students, from a variety of racial backgrounds, were enrolled in the class.
Another student in the same class, Stone Pressley, recalled the same incident. Pressley said that Baggett said she was opposed to “race mixing” because “she wanted to preserve cultures” and “didn’t want everyone to turn the same color eventually.” Pressley said that although Baggett had a reputation for controversial remarks, he found Baggett’s comments on interracial relationships “shocking.” After the incident, Pressley recalled asking his science teacher if it was possible, as Baggett claimed, for everyone to be “the same color one day.”
Another student in the class, Hamza Jacobs, confirmed Baggett’s comments opposing “race mixing.” A fourth student in the class, who asked to remain anonymous due to the nature of the allegations and Baggett’s standing in a small community, also confirmed the episode.
Sunday said that Baggett is known throughout Northview as an “openly racist teacher.” Sunday worked at a local pool and, one day, Baggett asked her about “the black-to-white” ratio. According to Sunday, Baggett then asked two Black students if they “knew how to swim” because “most black people don’t know how to swim.” The incident was confirmed by one of the Black students targeted by Baggett, who asked to remain anonymous. That student said Baggett “asked me and another girl of color in my class ‘could we swim because black people usually can’t.'” Jacobs and Pressley also confirmed the incident.
A Black student in the class also alleged Baggett said that “she didn’t understand why black people get tattoos in black ink” because “you can’t even see them.” Pressley and Sunday confirmed the incident. Sunday and Jacobs recalled Baggett frequently commenting on the hair of a Black female student. Sunday said Baggett questioned why the young woman wore hair extensions and asked if her hair “was heavy or hurt her.”
Popular Information previously reported that, in 2015, Baggett posted an image of the Confederate Flag to her Facebook page. In the December 2022 interview, Baggett defended the posting, because “everyone in my clan fought in the Civil War” and she was not “ashamed of that.” Baggett added that she was a member of the Daughters of the Confederacy, which has been designated as part of the Neo-Confederate movement.
The Escambia County School District did not answer a detailed list of questions about Baggett’s behavior but did provide the following statement to Popular Information: “We categorically condemn any form of discriminatory speech. Our mission is to reach all students, regardless of race, background, or gender identity.”
Baggett did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the allegations made by her students. She has, however, continued to submit challenges to books in Escambia County school libraries. Most recently, Baggett challenged a bestselling book of poetry available in high school libraries, The Sun and Her Flowers, on January 5.
Baggett accuses a student of “faking being a lesbian”
Both Sunday and Pressley recalled another incident involving Baggett that “the whole school talked about.” According to Sunday, Baggett told a 10th-grade student that her sister, who had a girlfriend, was “faking being a lesbian for attention.” Baggett allegedly said that “nobody’s born that way.”
The incident was confirmed by a student, who asked to remain anonymous, who witnessed Baggett’s comments. Popular Information also confirmed the identity of the targeted student and her sister but is not publishing their identities due to the nature of the allegations.
In September 2019, a Northview parent emailed principal Michael Sherrill objecting strenuously to Baggett’s classroom conduct. (The email was obtained by Popular Information on the condition that the identity of the parent not be disclosed.) In the letter, the parent accused Baggett of “a toxic and hostile learning environment for her students” and asked that “a full investigation of her actions be conducted.”
The letter states that Baggett “has expressed her utter distaste for homosexuals to her students.” According to the parent, Baggett “stated she thinks homosexuals are DUMB/STUPID for wearing the rainbow and pink colors because, according to Mrs. Baggett, that is the way that Hitler marked homosexual males during the Holocaust.” (The pink triangle was used by Nazis but has been reclaimed by the LGBTQ community as a symbol of pride.) The parent expressed concern that these comments would make students in her class feel “judged” and “humiliated.”
Many of the books challenged by Baggett have LGBTQ themes. Among the books challenged by Baggett is And Tango Makes Three. The book is the story of two male penguins, Roy and Silo. The pair build a nest together and raise an adopted child, Tango. Baggett alleges the book promotes the “LGBTQ agenda using penguins.” On the form, Baggett said she believes the purpose of the book is “indoctrination.”
In the December 2022 interview with Popular Information, Baggett said And Tango Makes Three includes sexual “innuendo” and K-3 students are “too young to even be concerned about sex.” Baggett explained that she objected to the book because if a second grader read the book “that idea would pop into the second grader’s mind… that these are two people of the same sex that love each other.” Baggett’s challenge says the book is inappropriate for all grade levels.
The September 2019 parent letter also claims that Baggett “openly stated that men and women should ‘Know Their Role.'” Baggett allegedly said that “men are the protectors and the women are the nurturers” and that is why “women have the children and the men go to work to provide and protect the women.”
The parent demanded their child “be removed from Mrs. Baggett’s classroom effective immediately.” But the parent told Popular Information that no action was taken in response to their complaint. The school did not address the specific allegations in the letter, and Principal Sherrill told the parent that Baggett was “a good person.”
A former student in Baggett’s class told Popular Information that, despite her “wild” conduct in class, “a lot of people were scared” to complain to administrators about Baggett. Northview is a small high school, with about 90 people in each graduating class, and Baggett has taught English at Northview for more than 30 years.
Inside Baggett’s classroom today
Baggett is seeking to remove books like When Wilma Rudolph Played Basketball from Escambia County libraries, claiming texts that detail historic discrimination amount to “race-baiting.” The form Baggett submitted to the school district says When Wilma Rudolph Played Basketball “opines prejudice based on race” and is inappropriate for students in any grade.
But a current student in Baggett’s 12th grade English class told Popular Information that Baggett’s curriculum includes texts that cover racial issues in crude terms. Popular Information is withholding the name of the student because the student is a minor and is currently enrolled in Baggett’s class.
Among the texts covered in Baggett’s 12th grade English class this academic year was A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor, an acclaimed but controversial author. (See “How Racist Was Flannery O’Connor?” in the New Yorker.) In A Good Man Is Hard to Find, a man named Edgar Atkins Teagarden courts a woman by leaving a watermelon at her doorstep every Saturday carved with his initials — E.A.T. The punchline is that a Black child, referred to in the story with the n-word, ate the watermelon because he interpreted Teagarden’s initials as an invitation.
According to the student, Baggett played an audio version of the story that included the unredacted racial slur. During the classroom discussion, Baggett also allegedly spelled out the n-word, which the student said made many of her classmates uncomfortable. Another student in the class posted a screenshot of the of the passage from A Good Man Is Hard to Find with the n-word to social media, commenting that it was a “regular day in Ms. Baggett’s class.”
Baggett previously told Popular Information that her 12th grade class included texts with the n-word. But Baggett claimed that when the text was read in the classroom, she “basically skipped over” the part of the book that included the slur because it was her job to make “students all feel comfortable.” (During the December 2022 interview, Baggett herself used the racial slur in full oin describing the incident.) Baggett declined to name the text, so it’s unclear if it was A Good Man Is Hard to Find or another story.
There is nothing particularly unusual about including a Flannery O’Connor story in a 12th grade English class. But it highlights a troubling contradiction in Baggett’s approach. Baggett maintains that A Good Man Is Hard to Find is appropriate for high school students but books like When Wilma Rudolph Played Basketball and And Tango Makes Three are inappropriate andshould be removed from all school libraries.
The fascist that ran the Jan 6th insurrection / coup did not go away. The plan to install a strongman dictatorship one party rule in the US that disregards the constitution is still on going. Plus what most people don’t understand is these same people are pushing this form of fascism authoritarian government worldwide in every country they can. The funding for this all comes from a few very wealthy people who push this form of government for their own benefit and from wealthy religious fanatics who plan to install a government to enforce the religious rules and morality of their versions of Christianity. These people see what Putin and Xi Jinping as role models and want to do here what they did in their countries. It is the loss of personal freedoms and the rule of strict government these people are demanding for the US, and they have started on the way to getting it. Hugs OT: I have a doctor’s appointment today and three days this week. They are testing me for heavy metal poisoning. Hugs
How Trump’s allies stoked Brazil Congress attack
IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES
Image caption,
Protesters smash windows as they invade the presidential palace in scenes reminiscent of the US Capitol riot in January 2021
Mike Wendling
US disinformation reporter
The scenes in Brasilia looked eerily similar to events at the US Capitol on 6 January two years ago – and there are deeper connections as well.
“The whole thing smells,” said a guest on Steve Bannon’s podcast, one day after the first round of voting in the Brazilian election in October last year.
The race was heading towards a run-off and the final result was not even close to being known. Yet Mr Bannon, as he had been doing for weeks, spread baseless rumours about election fraud.
Across several episodes of his podcast and in social media posts, he and his guests stoked up allegations of a “stolen election” and shadowy forces. He promoted the hashtag #BrazilianSpring, and continued to encourage opposition even after Mr Bolsonaro himself appeared to accept the results.
Mr Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, was just one of several key allies of Donald Trump who followed the same strategy used to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 US presidential election.
And like what happened in Washington on 6 January 2021, those false reports and unproven rumours helped fuel a mob that smashed windows and stormed government buildings in an attempt to further their cause.
‘Do whatever is necessary!’
The day before the Capitol riot, Mr Bannon told his podcast listeners: “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow.” He has been sentenced to four months in prison for refusing to comply with an order to testify in front of a Congressional committee that investigated the attack but is free pending an appeal.
Along with other prominent Trump advisers who spread fraud rumours, Mr Bannon was unrepentant on Sunday, even as footage emerged of widespread destruction in Brazil.
“Lula stole the Election… Brazilians know this,” he wrote repeatedly on the social media site Gettr. He called the people who stormed the buildings “Freedom Fighters”.
Ali Alexander, a fringe activist who emerged after the 2020 election as one of the leaders of the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” movement, encouraged the crowds, writing “Do whatever is necessary!” and claiming to have contacts inside the country.
Figures involved in January 6 are currently applauding what's happening in Brazil pic.twitter.com/oRRplmHKxg
Bolsonaro supporters railed online about an existential crisis and a supposed “communist takeover” – exactly the same type of rhetoric that drove the rioters in Washington two years ago.
IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES
Image caption,
Supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro clash with security forces as they raid the National Congress in Brasilia
Casting doubt on voting systems
The links between Mr Bolsonaro and the Trump movement were highlighted by a meeting in November between the former president and Mr Bolsonaro’s son at Mr Trump’s Florida resort.
During that trip, Eduardo Bolsonaro also spoke to Mr Bannon and Trump adviser Jason Miller, according to reports in the Washington Post and other news outlets.
As in the US in 2020, partisan election-deniers focused their attention on the mechanisms of voting. In Brazil, they cast suspicion on electronic vote tabulation machines.
A banner displayed by the rioters on Sunday declared “We want the source code” in both English and Portuguese – a reference to rumours that electronic voting machines were somehow programmed or hacked in order to foil Mr Bolsonaro.
A number of prominent Brazilian Twitter accounts which spread election denial rumours were reinstated after the election and acquisition of the company by Elon Musk, according to a BBC analysis. The accounts had previously been banned.
Mr Musk himself has suggested some of Twitter’s own employees in Brazil were “strongly politically biased” without giving details or evidence.
IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES
Image caption,
Mr Bolsonaro’s supporters smashed windows and trashed government offices
Some of Mr Trump’s opponents in the US were quick to put the blame on the former president and his advisers for encouraging the unrest in Brazil.
Jamie Raskin, a Democratic Party member of the US House of Representatives and a member of the committee that investigated the Capitol riot, called the Brazilian protesters “fascists modeling themselves after Trump’s Jan. 6 rioters” in a tweet.
The BBC attempted to contact Mr Bannon and Mr Alexander for comment.
Before the legislative session begins on Monday, three bills have already been introduced by Republican senators aimed at regulating and limiting drag shows in Arizona. The most controversial of the three is a bill that wants stricter regulations on adult drag shows, including limiting the hours they’re allowed to operate.
Introduced by Republican Senator Anthony Kern, SB 1030 specifically calls for regulation and business licenses for drag shows and a limitation of their hours, not allowing shows between 1 a.m. and 8 a.m. Monday-Saturday and prohibiting shows on Sundays from 1 a.m. to 12 p.m. That would impact Sunday morning drag brunches.
Kern last appeared on JMG in August 2022 when he and US Rep. Paul Gosar were ordered to pay a Democratic state lawmaker $75,000 for filing a “lawsuit for the purpose of harassment.” In 2014, Kern was fired from a local police department for lying to superiors. In 2020, Kern joined US Rep. Louie Gohmert in a lawsuit seeking to overturn the Electoral Count Act. Also in 2020, Kern was among the 11 local Republicans who falsely claimed to be Arizona electors. In January 2021, Kern tweeted a video showing himself as present during the attack on the US Capitol. In April 2021, reporters spotted him counting ballots inside the Maricopa County election center, despite rules saying that the counters must be nonpartisan.
Three bills just dropped in Arizona that would define "people dressing opposite of their biological sex at birth and exaggerating their gender" as "adult content."
It says they can only do it in strip clubs, not before noon on Sundays.
One of the proposals states that nobody can dress opposite of their gender identity and "engage in singing, dancing, or monologuing exaggerating their gender performance" in front of minors pic.twitter.com/fj2zHTnAT1
So more and more they push their fascist agenda. Maybe they’ll call drag performers and the gays ‘degenerates’. This is exactly what the Nazis did and then packed the degenerates off to the Camps with the Jews. It’s not so long ago. I was classed as a criminal in Ireland until 1994. But then the faeries all came to my rescue.
He thinks wearing a suit and tie while attacking people in drag makes him a real man. If he really wanted to outlaw drag, he would outlaw vestments for preachers and robes for judges.
This has nothing to do with Christianity. It has everything to do with a bunch of fascists looking for a group to “other” and allow the general public to hate while the fascists take away everyone’s civil liberties while transferring all economic power to the wealthy elites.
No, it doesn’t, but having read John Boswell’s “Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality,” I know that for most of the church’s 2000+ year history there have only been isolated brief pockets of time where some sort of accommodation was made for gay people but mostly it’s been full-on hate for over 2000 years. That’s just a fact.
I am not a Christian and never have been. I do not particularly like Christianity given the long history of issues between them and my own people. That said, far-right extremists have used the religious beliefs of of Americans to manipulate them just as often as they they have used to racial and ethnic prejudices of Americans to manipulate the American people.
The fact is that these fascist arseholes know that they can no longer just scream “fa&&ot” and work up a crowd the way they used to, so now they use Trans folks and drag queens and nonsense about grooming to get foolish people riled up. But it is just the same as the old stories from my younger day back in the 50s and 60s when it was how gay people had to recruit new gay people by turning children gay.
But, but, but, that’s good old fashioned Christian Traditional Family Values Cishet type of stuff. You know, stuff that little boys will grow up and ooogle to and little girls will aspire to be.
A conservative hotline in Texas was created for concerned citizens to “report” any and all drag shows happening in the state. Once LGBTQ allies learned about it, well, this hotline got a little bit more than it bargained for.
tRump was desperate to first get his hands on and then get back or keep the highly classified documents he stole. Now Jim Jordan one of his biggest as kissers is going to be able to access and get briefed on some of the nations biggest highly classified secrets. Why? What does he need that information for, and who will he share it with? He normally wouldn’t have the clearance for it. McCarthy gave away the country to get the Speakers gavel. Hugs
The proposed “select subcommittee” would operate under the Judiciary Committee expected to be chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) nominates Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to be Speaker of the House during the House speakership election at the U.S. Capitol Jan. 3, 2023. | Francis Chung/POLITICO
A proposed subcommittee to investigate “weaponization” of the federal government — a key demand of House conservatives who delivered Speaker Kevin McCarthy the gavel — would be given sweeping investigatory powers that include explicit authority to review “ongoing criminal investigations.”
The language of the proposed “select subcommittee,” which would operate under the Judiciary Committee expected to be chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), also gives the panel power to access any information shared with the House Intelligence Committee. That panel typically receives the highest-level classified intelligence and briefings of any committee in Congress.
Both provisions appear to have been added during final negotiations between McCarthy and a band of hardline detractors that briefly denied him the speakership. An earlier version of the proposal made no mention of ongoing criminal investigations or the Intelligence Committee and limited the probe to the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice.
The panel’s expected formation comes as the Justice Department continues to arrest and prosecute hundreds of rioters charged with breaching the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and amid two ongoing criminal investigations connected to former President Donald Trump. Those include the probe of his effort to overturn the 2020 election and his decision to warehouse highly sensitive national security documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate after leaving office.
Both Trump-related probes are now overseen by special counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November to manage the sensitive grand jury investigations.
The subcommittee proposal would permit McCarthy to name 13 members to the panel, including five after consultation with Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries — a structure similar to the Jan. 6 select committee. Pelosi opted to reject two of McCarthy’s picks to that panel, prompting him to withdraw from any participation.
Unlike the Jan. 6 committee, however, the GOP-led probe would be housed under Jordan’s committee. Subpoenas issued by the panel would be authorized by Jordan.
The panel would also be empowered to investigate how executive branch agencies “obtain information from, and provide information to the private sector, non-profit entities, or other government agencies to facilitate action against American citizens,” a likely harbinger of a review of FBI interactions with social media companies in advance of the 2020 election and more broadly.
The proposal also includes blanket clauses permitting the panel to pursue “any other issues related to the violation of the civil liberties of citizens of the United States” and “any other matter relating to information collected pursuant to the investigation conducted under this paragraph at any time during the One Hundred Eighteenth Congress.”
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