Please understand that Miller and his ilk believe that white men should have all the better jobs, that black people and LGBTQ+ people should have only lowing paying menial jobs if they are hired at all. No woman should work at all in their world. No out LGBTQ+ person should be allowed to work. These are white supremacist and they love tRump. And tRump like this guy’s ideas. He is a sack of hate and vile bile bigotry. Hugs. Scottie
A former anchor on KCAL and KCBS has filed a $5 million lawsuit claiming he was fired because he was a white man. Jeff Vaughn is represented by America First Legal, the conservative legal group that has taken aim at diversity, equity and inclusion programs, calling them illegal “anti-white discrimination.”
Vaughn worked at the CBS-owned station group for eight years, until his departure last September. In the suit, he says he was never given a reason for his firing. “But it was obvious,” the suit states. “He was fired because he is an older, white, heterosexual, male.”
A tRump appointed judge in a case filed by maga republicans and anti-LGBTQ+ bigots / haters to try to strip the gay and trans kids of rights and protections. Notice some places I highlighted, these groups and the Judge used misinformation and republican talking points to make their case. It comes down to hate and bigotry, also the unwillingness to allow society to progress adding more equality. There are no proven cases of any trans person assaulting a straight person in a bathroom, in fact there are many cases that are just the opposite, where trans kids / people have been attacked and even died from assaults by cis people. These people claim that boys will just claim to be trans, that is not how it works. No boy is going to with stand the harassment to change his name, his hair, his mode of dress just to peek in the girl’s locker room or bathroom. What they hell would they see in a girl’s bathroom people, there are no urinals just stalls. Unless the girls like to undress in the sink area, WTF is the boys to see? Again simply hate and bigotry wanting to stop society from change, they want their 1950s society back, not the 2010s. Hugs. Scottie
Republicans have argued that the rule is a ruse by the Biden administration to allow transgender females to play on girls’ and women’s sports teams.
Kansas high school students, family members and advocates rally for transgender rights in Topeka on Jan. 31.John Hanna / AP file
TOPEKA, Kan. — Enforcement of a federal rule expanding anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ students has been blocked in four states and a patchwork of places elsewhere by a federal judge in Kansas.
U.S. District Judge John Broomes suggested in his ruling Tuesday that the Biden administration must now consider whether forcing compliance remains “worth the effort.”
Broomes’ decision was the third against the rule from a federal judge in less than three weeks but more sweeping than the others. It applies in Alaska, Kansas, Utah and Wyoming, which sued over the new rule. It also applies to a Stillwater, Oklahoma, middle school that has a student suing over the rule and to members of three groups backing Republican efforts nationwide to roll back LGBTQ rights. All of them are involved in one lawsuit.
Broomes, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, directed the three groups — Moms for Liberty, Young America’s Foundation and Female Athletes United — to file a list of schools in which their members’ children are students so that their schools also do not comply with the rule. Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, a Republican who argued the states’ case before Broomes last month, said that could be thousands of schools.
The Biden administration rule is set to take effect in August under the Title IX civil rights law passed in 1972, barring sex discrimination in education. Broomes’ order is to remain in effect through a trial of the lawsuit in Kansas, though the judge concluded that the states and three groups are likely to win.
Republicans have argued that the rule represents a ruse by the Biden administration to allow transgender females to play on girls’ and women’s sports teams, something banned or restricted in Kansas and at least 24 other states. The administration has said it does not apply to athletics. Opponents of the rule have also framed the issue as protecting women and girls’ privacy and safety in bathrooms and locker rooms.
“Gender ideology does not belong in public schools and we are glad the courts made the correct call to support parental rights,” Moms for Liberty co-founders Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice said in a statement.
LGBTQ youth, their parents, health care providers and others say restrictions on transgender youth harms their mental health and makes an often marginalized group even more vulnerable. The Department of Education has previously stood by its rule and President Joe Biden has promised to protect LGBTQ rights.
The Department of Education did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Tuesday.
Besides Broomes, two other federal judges issued rulings in mid-June blocking the new rule in 10 other states. The rule would protect LGBTQ students by expanding the definition of sexual harassment at schools and colleges and adding safeguards for victims.
Like the other judges, Broomes called the rule arbitrary and concluded that the Department of Education and its secretary, Miguel Cardona, exceeded the authority granted by Title IX. He also concluded that the rule violated the free speech and religious freedom rights of parents and students who reject transgender students’ gender identities and want to espouse those views at school or elsewhere in public.
Broomes said his 47-page order leaves it to the Biden administration “to determine in the first instance whether continued enforcement in compliance with this decision is worth the effort.”
Broomes also said nontransgender students’ privacy and safety could be harmed by the rule. He cited the statement of the Oklahoma middle school student that “on some occasions” cisgender boys used a girls’ bathroom “because they knew they could get away with it.”
“It is not hard to imagine that, under the Final Rule, an industrious older teenage boy may simply claim to identify as female to gain access to the girls’ showers, dressing rooms, or locker rooms, so that he can observe female peers disrobe and shower,” Broomes wrote, echoing a common but largely false narrative from anti-trans activists about gender identity and how schools accommodate transgender students.
U.S. District Judge John Broomes’ decision was the third against the rule from a federal judge in less than three weeks but more sweeping than the others.James L. Greenlee2 days ago
They really seem to believe that LGBTQ kids don’t exist, unless they’ve been convinced by someone to “turn.” It’s so ludicrous.
WTF is wrong with these people? Nobody, never in the history of everything, never has someone decided to be Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Trans. It’s how a person is born. Not protecting the rights of LGBT human beings is like denying rights to a person because of the color of their eyes, or their skin. Yeah, we used to do the skin thing and that was a gigantic mistake that these motherfuckers want to make a reality again.
Also, why do this? How someone lives their life has exactly zero impact on your life. You’re just being a dick.
Like I keep saying, I am dead. This is purgatory. I need to find the light to pass on.
They continue to believe the lie that sexual orientation is freely chosen and that if you choose to be gay you’re sinning, because Jesus said so – only he didn’t.
Christians think people “choosing” to be gay presents an existential threat to humanity that must be eradicated, as though LGBT people haven’t existed throughout time.
Well, they lost all the arguments to that effect so they’re legislating and ruling as if the arguments never took place and as if their lies are facts.
There is too much on the line in our next election to let the main stream media dictate the terms of who should be POTUS. All of us with skin in the game should put our nose to the grindstone and reelect Biden/Harris 2024!
Some quotes from the article that show these walls are useless, and can be over come with a battery operated reciprocating saw most hardware stores sell rather cheaply. What I want to know is what is driving this need by Texas republicans? Is it political or is it hate and bigotry, racism to save the white majority they will soon lose. Hugs. Scottie
“Walls do not achieve the objectives for which they are said to be erected; they have limited effects in stemming insurgencies and do not block unwanted [migrant] flows, but rather lead to a re-routing of migrants to other paths,” wrote Élisabeth Vallet of the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute in a 2022 report.
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🇺🇸🇲🇽 American-Mexican Border Wall: Not as Effective Against Immigrants as Intended 🪜The border wall was meant to be a major deterrent, but recent data suggests it hasn't significantly slowed immigration. Just need a big ladder pic.twitter.com/1MpvtHaQQT
Gov. Greg Abbott looks at crane lifting a section of the border wall in place after giving a press conference at Rio Grande City on Dec. 18, 2021. Credit: Jason Garza for The Texas Tribune
Three years after Gov. Greg Abbott announced Texas would take the extraordinary step of building a state-funded wall along the Mexico border, he has 34 miles of steel bollards to show for it.
That infrastructure — which has so far run up a price tag of some $25 million per mile — isn’t yet a contiguous wall. It has gone up in bits and pieces spread across at least six counties on Texas’ 1,254-mile southern border. Progress has been hampered by the state’s struggles to secure land access, one of myriad challenges signaling a long and enormously expensive slog ahead for Abbott.
Nonetheless, state contractors have already propped up more wall mileage than former President Donald Trump’s administration managed to build in Texas, and Abbott’s wall project is plowing ahead at a quickened pace. State officials hope to erect a total of 100 miles by the end of 2026, at a rate of about half a mile per week. The governor frequently shares video of wall construction on social media and has credited the project with helping combat immigration flows. To date, though, steel barriers cover just 4% of the more than 800 miles identified by state officials as “in need of some kind of a barrier.” And at its current rate — assuming officials somehow persuade all private landowners along the way to turn their property over to the state — construction would take around 30 years and upwards of $20 billion to finish.
Under Abbott’s direction, state lawmakers have approved more than$3 billion for the wall since 2021, making it one of the biggest items under the GOP governor’s $11 billion border crackdown known as Operation Lone Star. The rest of the money is being used for items like flooding the border with state police and National Guard soldiers and transporting migrants to Democrat-controlled cities outside Texas, all of which Abbott and other Republicans say is needed to stem the historic number of migrants trying to enter the country.
Democrats and immigration advocates have cast the wall project as a taxpayer-funded pipe dream that will do nothing to address the root causes driving the immigration crisis. And they say the governor, in reviving what was once a hallmark of Trump’s agenda, is using public money to boost his political stock.
Even some immigration-hawk Republicans are showing unease about the mounting costs of the wall.
“I am, too, concerned that we’re spending a whole lot of money to give the appearance of doing something rather than taking the problem on to actually solve it, and until we do that, I don’t expect to see much happen,” state Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, said last fall before voting in committee to spend another $1.5 billion in wall funding.
Abbott’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Acquiring land
The construction pace has largely hinged on the state’s success securing rights to build the wall through privately owned borderland. Early on, the project showed little signs of life as state contractors struggled to obtain the needed easements. But things picked up last year as the state began working out more agreements covering larger tracts. Through mid-June, officials had secured 79 easements covering about 59 miles of the border, according to Mike Novak, executive director of the Texas Facilities Commission, which is overseeing the effort.
At a facilities commission meeting last month, Novak said state officials were in various stages of negotiation with landowners over another 113 miles.
“We knew from the beginning that this was going to be the choke point, you know, one of the most challenging parts of this program,” Novak said of land acquisition. “And it proved true. But we’ve remained steadfast.”
Officials had built 33.5 miles of wall through June 14, a facilities commission spokesperson said.
The state’s ability to secure land rights has also dictated the wall’s location, though officials say they have focused on areas pinpointed by the Department of Public Safety as the “highest priority.” TFC officials have declined to share exactly where the wall is being built, citing security concerns, though Novak recently said construction was underway on wall segments in Cameron, Maverick, Starr, Val Verde, Webb and Zapata counties.
Though the Texas-Mexico border spans more than 1,200 miles, Abbott’s budget director, Sarah Hicks, told a Senate panel in 2022 that DPS had identified 805 miles “as vulnerable, or [that] is in need of some kind of a barrier.” Another 180 miles are covered by natural barriers, mostly in the Big Bend region of West Texas, while existing barriers already cover another 140 miles, according to state officials.
Novak has said the pace of building about half a mile of wall per week is expected to continue for the “foreseeable future.” At that rate, about 100 miles would go up every four years, with the full 805 miles covered sometime after 2050, when Abbott would be in his 90s.
The earliest wall construction has cost roughly $25 million to $30 million per mile, according to TFC officials. That would amount to $20 billion to $24 billion for the entire 805-mile span, or about three times the cost of paying every Texas public university student’s tuition last year. The estimate does not account for the cost of maintaining the wall once it is built, which TFC estimates will cost around $500,000 per mile each year.
Lubbock state Sen. Charles Perry, who last year carried Texas’ new immigration law that allows state police to arrest people for illegally crossing the Mexico border, is another Republican who has expressed concern about the wall’s cost.
“I am for border security. I am not against a wall. But to me, at least from what I can tell, it is a perpetual circle. We’re on the hamster wheel,” Perry said last fall as he prepared to vote for the $1.5 billion wall funding bill. “[At some point] the response has not to be more money for infrastructure. At some point this state must draw the line in the sand.”
Still, no Texas Republican has voted against border wall funding. Lawmakers approved nearly $2.5 billion for the effort in the state’s current two-year budget — more than was allotted in state funds to all but a handful of state agencies, and more than twice what Texas spends on its court and juvenile justice systems.
State Rep. Christina Morales, D-Houston, said she doesn’t think Texas’ GOP leadership “really understands why people are crossing in the first place.”
“Spending billions of dollars on a wall really does not address the root causes of the migration that’s happening,” said Morales, who is vice chair of the House’s Mexican American Legislative Caucus. “What we should be investing in is our education, our health care, real solutions for problems that are happening right now in Texas.”
Since 2021, federal officials have recorded an average of about 2 million illegal border crossings a year, a record that Abbott has attributed to President Joe Biden for rolling back some of Trump’s border policies. The governor has touted the wall construction as a way for Texas to “address the border crisis while President Biden has sat idly by.” Biden and other Democrats have blamed Republicans for shooting down a sweeping bipartisan border deal earlier this year.
The scope of Texas’ wall construction — and Abbott’s broader border security efforts — are unprecedented in nature, as the federal government is generally responsible for immigration enforcement and the costs associated with it.
Even with the state’s improved pace securing easements, Novak has said land access remains the biggest challenge for the project, and “it’ll probably remain that way through most of the program.” The Trump administration encountered the same issue after the former president famously said he would build the wall and make Mexico pay for it. Even using the federal government’s power to seize some borderland, Trump’s administration built just 21 miles of new wall along the Texas-Mexico border.
The painstaking negotiations are required for Texas’ wall because lawmakers barred the use of eminent domain to gain land access.
Last year, state Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, filed legislation to change that, arguing TFC officials could only build a complete wall if they were authorized to use eminent domain powers. The proposal failed to make it through the Senate, though Creighton said he plans to file it again for the session that starts next January.
“Of course, we can continue to negotiate with ranchers, but that is a very slow process,” Creighton said. “And it’s an incomplete process, because there will always be holdouts for different reasons.”
Creighton, one of the upper chamber’s more conservative members, said he still supports using state funds to build a border wall, even as some of his GOP colleagues have raised objections.
“I say no to waste, inefficiencies, potential fraud and unreasonable spending as much as any member,” Creighton said. “But … there are times, with all of that fiscal conservatism, that we have to use the money that we save efficiently to protect Texans and Texas.”
“A difficult and complex task”
Most border wall advocates acknowledge barriers alone will not deter people from trying to enter the country illegally. But they say a wall would work if paired with more law enforcement officers and technology, arguing it would slow down attempted crossers to give border agents more time to apprehend them and encourage migrants to seek asylum via ports of entry.
“Walls do not achieve the objectives for which they are said to be erected; they have limited effects in stemming insurgencies and do not block unwanted [migrant] flows, but rather lead to a re-routing of migrants to other paths,” wrote Élisabeth Vallet of the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute in a 2022 report.
With construction plunging ahead, Novak has projected confidence about the wall’s status, pointing to the recent progress after an initial slow start, which saw officials build less than 2 miles in the 12 months after Abbott announced the effort.
It’s not just land access that complicates wall construction, Novak said at the June TFC meeting, where he ticked off a list of other factors: changing soil conditions that require “complicated engineering solutions”; steering clear of irrigation systems when building on agricultural land; weather; and “sensitivity” to cattle, oil and gas and hunting operations.
“It’s a difficult and complex task, at best,” Novak said. “But with that said, we’re whipping it. The latest stats reflect what I like to call just steadfast progress.”
“So, if I went back to NBC right now to do something, they would do anything I wanted to do, showbiz-wise, I’m talking about. Doing a show, anything I wanted to do right now, 100%.
“Because one thing I know about that business, and I learned more about that business than anybody else could learn in a short period of time.
“It’s about one thing: ratings. If you have ratings, you can be the meanest, most horrible human being in the world. There’s only one thing that matters: ratings.
“You can be nice, or you can be mean. You can be evil. You can be horrible. You can be crude or elegant. There’s only one thing that matters and that’s ratings.
“If you don’t have ratings, it doesn’t matter.” – Trump, in newly released audio from his interview with author Ramin Setoodeh.
Trump: If you have ratings, you can be the meanest, most horrible human being in the world. There's only one thing that matters. Ratings. You can be evil, horrible, cruel, or elegant. There's only one thing that matters and that's ratings… pic.twitter.com/eOYkHvnp69
This is who tRump is, a vindictive kid with a lot of authority who only wants his way, never be corrected, allowed to do anything he wants, be a king, be worshiped and idolized, and punish anyone who displeases him. And the right wing republican Ideologues on the SCOTUS just gave him immunity for doing any of it. We simply must not let him become president. Hugs. Scottie
Former President Donald J. Trump has escalated his vows to prosecute his political opponents, circulating posts on his social media website invoking “televised military tribunals” and calling for the jailing of President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Senators Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer and former Vice President Mike Pence, among other high-profile politicians.
One post that he circulated on Sunday singled out Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming congresswoman who is a Republican critic of Mr. Trump’s, and called for her to be prosecuted by a type of military court reserved for enemy combatants and war criminals.
A separate post included photos of 15 former and current elected officials that said, in all-capital letters, “they should be going to jail on Monday not Steve Bannon!” Those officials included Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris, Mr. Pence, Mr. Schumer and Mr. McConnell — the top leaders in the Senate — and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker.
Former President Donald Trump canceled an interview with military reporter Mike Gooding after the campaign asked what questions the reporter was going to ask Trump.
Trump held a rally in Chesapeake, Virginia on Friday — the day after a CNN debate with President Joe Biden at which Trump rattled off as many as 50 falsehoods that went unchallenged by the moderators.
During that debate, President Biden also challenged Trump about his reported remarks calling U.S. military casualties “suckers” and “losers” — remarks that were confirmed by Trump’s then-Chief of Staff John Kelly.
Gooding, military correspondent for ABC affiliate WVEC’s 13News Now — was scheduled to interview Trump after the rally. On Friday morning, they even teased the interview on the air.
But when 13News Now’s Preston Steger and Alex Littlehales covered the rally online, they noted that Trump abruptly canceled the interview — after asking for questions in advance:
It was a winding speech, meandering back and forth on a lot of different talking points and policies.
After the rally, 13News Now’s military reporter Mike Gooding was scheduled to interview Trump, but his campaign team canceled the interview after asking Gooding what his questions would be, and telling him there was no more time and Trump only wanted to talk about the debate.
Ahead of Trump’s visit, WVEC covered Virginia Democrats who held a press conference with veterans to denounce Trump over the “suckers” and “losers” remarks.
The Biden campaign flagged the cancellation and tied it to the debate in a campaign memo:
Here are just a few questions Donald is running away from answering – many of which he either dodged or lied about on the debate stage:
Why can’t you commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election?
What do you say to voters who believe that you violated your oath through your actions and inaction on January 6 and worry that you’ll do it again?
What do you say to the service members who you insulted as “suckers” and “losers”?
Do you think women forced to give birth in states with total abortion bans, risking their lives, is still a “beautiful thing”?
13News Now’s reporting doesn’t say what questions Gooding was going to ask Trump, or whether they provided the subject matter for the interview to Trump’s team — although the reporting notes the campaign said “Trump only wanted to talk about the debate.”
Mediaite has reached out to Gooding for comment but has not received a response as of this writing.
CNN HOST PAMELA BROWN: “You’re saying that the teaching of the Bible in the classroom is a must, that every teacher must accept that. The bible includes beheading, rape, and incest. Do you support teaching children about those topics?”
RYAN WALTERS: “I support teaching children our history accurately and what we’ve seen is the radical left and the teachers’ union have driven the bible out of schools.
“You can’t talk about our rights coming from God, as Thomas Jefferson referenced, you can’t talk about Abraham Lincoln talking about being on God’s side in what he does and that inspires him?
“You can’t talk about the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King Jr., who routinely referenced examples from the bible, including from a “Letter from Birmingham Jail”?
“I’m doing the things I’m doing is because of the tenets taught to me by the bible, so it’s essential that our kids understand our history and we’re going to put it back in and the left is going to continue to try to censor our history. Well, we’re not gonna allow it here in Oklahoma.”
BROWN: “Okay, you didn’t answer my question. We’re going to get to the history and everything, and by the way, Thomas Jefferson, he advocated for freedom of religion, actually not the establishment of a religion for one, but are you okay with all teachings of the Bible? If you want to bring it back into the classroom, rape, incest, beheading. Is that acceptable to you?”
WALTERS: “Again, I’ll answer your question, you might not like to answer, but it is the answer. It is our history is referenced, the bible was referenced multiple times in American history. It had a profound influence on American history.
“It was the bestselling book in American history, to not teach that in the classroom is academic malpractice. Our kids have to understand our history and we’re not going to hide that from them.”
BROWN: “Okay, so will you allow teachers to teach all aspects of the Bible? How are teachers supposed to know what of the bible to teach and what of the Bible not to teach? It’s a simple question, given the fact that the bible includes, also, you know, pornographic material, something you’ve come out against and actually took a teaching certificate away from a teacher for giving access to students— pornographic material. That’s in the bible.”
WALTERS: “Yeah, let me be crystal clear. The bible is not on the same plane as Gender Queer and Flamer. These are pornography, the bible is a book that was referenced throughout American history.
“We have academic standards that tell our teachers that you are to talk about the bible in reference to the Mayflower Compact, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” the Declaration of Independence, so these are all very clear.
“It’s very clear from primary sources that these individuals reference history— in our history, they referenced the bible. So look, when it’s historically accurate, we’re absolutely going to include that.
“I mean, think about how absurd it would be to teach about the Pilgrims if you don’t mention their intention for moving to the New World, it’s crucial and we’re not gonna allow the radical left to continue to push a false history on our kids that said that faith played no role, well, just read the history. It’s clearly there.”
The moment that the words “the radical left “comes out of someone’s mouth, I stop listening because I know that they can’t be taken seriously and engaging with them is pointless.
The Bible isn’t history, ours, or anyone else’s. We teach history, including the use of the Bible by historical personages by reading their primary documents. Teach the Mayflower Compact, teach the Declaration of Independence, teach the Letters from the Birmingham Jail, teach On Walden Pond, teach a wide variety of English literature that uses Biblical themes, none of which is teaching “from” the Bible, nor teaching the “full story” of the Bible.
Exactly, the Bible is a tribal scrap book from the bronze age. It contains, myths, legends from various traditions. laws, and strategically placed and conveniently discovered historical forgeries. In our 8th grade Ancient Semitic History class we began learning what the various sources from specific books and verses were. It included spending a lot of time with Gilgamesh and Enkidu before reading the Song of Solomon.
It was an inoculation against the fundamentalism prevalent in Utah.
I don’t think that’s what Ryan Walters has in mind for kids in Oklahoma
“I support teaching children our history accurately…”
Since you can’t really compare the Babble with anything peer reviewed or that can be otherwise corroborated factually, the implication here that using the Babble to teach history to children “accurately” is ludicrous.
Even his attempt to tie the Babble to early American history is pushing the envelope, by a LOT. The hubris alone of automatically implying that a mention of Gawd somehow means specifically the Gawd referred to in his Babble is breathtaking.
“I mean, think about how absurd it would be to teach about the Pilgrims if you don’t mention their intention for moving to the New World,”
Oh yes, go ahead and teach kids how they were religious bigots who thought the Dutch were corrupting their youth and so set sail to establish an intolerant theocracy (see how the puritans treated Quakers as just one example).
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Scottie's Playtime 