A Trump-appointed federal judge has blocked portions of Alabamaβs so-called βVulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act,β a law that punishes adults who help transgender children access gender-affirming healthcare.
Last Friday, Judge Liles C. Burke of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama temporarily blocked parts of the law that made it a felony to prescribe hormones and puberty blockers to trans youth, saying that the law is likely to cause irreparable harm if it goes into effect while the lawsuits works their way through the court system.
Burkeβs decision said parents have a fundamental right to provide their children with medically-accepted treatments. Hormones and puberty blockers are used to treat various medical conditions in non-trans youth. But since Alabamaβs law only sought to punish the drugsβ use by transgender youth, the lawsuit alleged that this part of the law was driven by unconstitutional sex-based discrimination.
Burke allowed other parts of the law to stand, including one requiring school teachers and nurses to out trans students to their parents and another forbidding doctors from performing gender-affirming surgical procedures on trans youth.
βDoctors had testified that such operations were not being performed on children in Alabama before the law had been enacted,βΒ The New York TimesΒ noted.
Alabama lawmakers said that the transphobic law is meant to protect kids from βirreversibleβ and βexperimentalβ medical treatments βaggressively push[ed]β by doctors and βideological interest groups,β state lawyers said in court documents. But Burke said Alabama failed to provide βcredible evidence to show that transitioning medications are βexperimental,ββ adding that hormones and puberty blockers are βwell-established, evidence-based treatments for gender dysphoria in minors.β
βParents, pediatricians and psychologists β not the state or this court β are best qualified to determine whether transitioning medications are in a childβs best interest on a case-by-case basis,β Burke wrote in his decision.
When signing the bill into law, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) said, βI believe very strongly that if the Good Lord made you a boy, you are a boy, and if he made you a girl, you are a girl. We should especially protect our children from these radical, life-altering drugs and surgeries when they are at such a vulnerable stage in life.β
However, her religion-based opinion goes against the best practices of trans-related pediatrics outlined by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, and the American Psychological Association. The organizations find that gender-affirming medical care is medically necessary and reduces suicide and depression among trans youth.
Comedian John Oliver mentioned the stateβs law on the Sunday night installment of his cable news programΒ Last Week Tonight.
In the program, Oliver interviewed 15-year-old transgender girl Harleigh Walker, who said, βIf I did stop my gender-affirming care, my physical outside wouldnβt reflect who I was inside, and that would, like, completely destroy me mentally and physically.β
Oliver said, βIf you can look at Harleigh, or any child, and comfortably say, βTake away their care that gives them peace and a sense of self,β you are aΒ badΒ person.β
During a hearing in front of the Alabama legislature last year, Dr. Morissa Ladinsky explained that surgery and hormonal therapy for trans youth both involve βlengthy informed consent [and] lengthy mental health oversight.β
Oliver quipped, βOf course, doctors are going to be thoughtful and rigorous when caring for their patients because, unlike the Alabama Legislature, they actually care about kidsβ well-being,β
βTo trans children in Alabama right nowβ¦ you are important,β Oliver added. βYour lives are important. I cannot imagine trying to build self-esteem in childhood as your own government attempts to undermine your very existence, but you should know: You are profoundly valuable and you are irreplaceable.β
As of May, 15 Republican-led states have either passed bans on medical care for trans youth or are considering similar laws. Some of the bans have equated gender-affirming care with child abuse and threatened to arrest parents of trans youth, de-transitioning their kids and placing them in state care. Others attack doctors and threaten them with jail time for providing gender-affirming care to trans youth.
These laws are part of a larger nationwide push by Republicans to pass laws targeting LGBTQ youth. Other such laws have attempted to ban trans youth from playing sports or to ban any LGBTQ content from classrooms. These billsβ supporters have said thatΒ anyone who opposes the laws are pedophilic βgroomersβ, language which encourages violence against LGBTQ people and allies.
Ivey also recentlyΒ signed a transphobic βbathroom billβΒ requiring students to use changing and restroom facilities matching the gender listed on their original birth certificates, as well as a βDonβt Say Gayβ bill limiting discussion of LGBTQ topics in state classrooms.
What confuses me is changelings, people who work with oppressors against their own kind / people.Β Another word is collaborators.Β Β The LGBTQ+ has the Log Cabin Republicans and Peter Thiel, the blacks have people like Candis Owens, Tim Scott, Burgess Owens to name a few.Β Β Some claim they like the tax cuts, some are as racist against immigrants as the white Republicans, and some are grifters.Β I never understood why poor people vote for the party that works against them to help the wealthy.Β Β Hugs
Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate Kathy Barnette marched with members of a right-wing extremist group prior to the violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to footage recently unearthed on social media.
The photos and video showing Barnette marching alongside the Proud Boys originally surfaced on Sunday via writer Chad Loderβs Twitter account. On Monday, the photos were verified by NBC News.
Barnette has been a prominent promoter of election conspiracy theories, including organizing buses to attend the βStop the Stealβ rally that preceded the violence at the Capitol.
Well, first of all, allow me to correct you. I was not with the Proud Boys. I was out there because I wanted to hear what the president had to say.
I was also out there because, Iβm sure your listeners will understand, the first five rights in the First Amendmentβfreedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to petition your government with grievances and freedom to assemble, as well as freedom of the press.
And so, as a law-abiding American citizen, I had every right to go to a rally in support of my president.
Just read an interview with 10 Republicans from Georgia, Pennsylvania and Ohio in the NYT. Unbelievably divorced from historical reality. Disheartening that these, our fellow citizens, most of whom were able to form complete sentences, want to give the “businessman” another shot.
We must show up in November. These people are nuts. And they’ll put Trump back in office if they have their way.
I don’t know why she’s trying to distance herself from the Proud Boys. She agrees with them on most things, right? Apart from that tiny little detail about skin color, but that part is so small sheΒ¨s fine with ignoring it. So why the distancing?
Probably the ‘optics’ of the court cases – especially the ones where PBs have been pleading guilty. She’s happy saying the quiet part out loud much of the time, but not being dragged into potential judicial proceedings.
She looks so fucking nice and normal. If I was a low information voter who didn’t follow politics closely, as a Dem, I might vote for her just based on her appearance, but hopefully they are watching her TV ads with the sound on because she’s as crazy as a bedbug and as evil as Cruella deVille..
Hopefully folks are paying attention in PA. Hard to imagine they wouldn’t be..
A white supremacist teenager recently shot and killed 10 people, almost all of them Black, in a Buffalo, New York supermarket. The gunman provides insights into his motivations from a self-published manifesto that was posted online days before he committed the shooting.
“A teenage gunman entranced by a white supremacist ideology known as replacement theory opened fire at a supermarket in Buffalo on Saturday, methodically shooting and killing 10 people and injuring three more, almost all of them Black, in one of the deadliest racist massacres in recent American history.β
The white supremacist gunman who just killed 10 people, almost all of them Black, provides insights into his motivations from a self-published manifesto that was posted online just before he committed the shooting. He cited 4Chan and the Internet for his rapid white nationalist radicalization, the infamous βwhite replacement theoryβ, as well as anti-semitic and racist propaganda as reasons for why he wanted to commit the shooting.
“Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the No. 3 House Republican, and other GOP lawmakers came under scrutiny Sunday for previously echoing the racist βgreat replacementβ theory that apparently inspired an 18-year-old who allegedly killed 10 people while targeting Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo. The baseless conspiracy theory claims that politicians are attempting to wipe out White Americans and their influence by replacing them with non-White immigrants. The theory was cited repeatedly by 18-year-old shooting suspect Payton Gendron in an online document that appeared to have outlined his intention to carry out his planned attack in Buffalo because of its significant population of Black people. Eleven of the 13 people shot at a Tops Friendly Markets store on Saturday were Black, according to police.β
After the Buffalo, New York mass shooting left 10 dead at the hands of the white supremacist shooter, right-wing journalist Glenn Greenwald tried to distract from the event and provide cover for his hate-mongering buddies like Tucker Carlson. Greenwald wrote an entire Substack rant defending how Tucker has made the βwhite replacement theoryβ mainstream and more digestible for regular TV viewers by completely ignoring it.
According to Sanner, anxiety about how Putin will respond is slightly overblown, and she argued that “basically, Putin can’t do anything” and that Putin has already moved the goal posts by declaring the countries’ potential expansion of NATO doesn’t pose a threat to Russia.
“I don’t think there’s that much [Putin] can do, so he doesn’t want to make a big deal out of it because it will look stupid,” Sanner said.
Sanner also spoke to Russia’s fledgling military campaign, which has seen significant setbacks due to the ferocity of the Ukrainian military’s defense, saying the world is “starting to see some cracks” in Putin’s stability as a leader due to the fact that “people are starting to recognize” that the Russian government is struggling, especially in light of “anecdotal reports” that some Russian troops are starting to refuse orders.
“Russia is running out of manpower and that means that Putin may have to change his war aims even more narrowly.”
MATT WALSH (HOST): Because although this β I was going to call him a kid but heβs 18 years-old β this manβs ideology is a mess β heβs, again, a lunatic β all over the place, he does mention the so-called great replacement theory.
And this is what theyβre trying to hang around the neck of Tucker Carlson, Fox News, really any conservative, myself included.
Because Tucker Carlson and other conservatives have in the past pointed out that the Democrats have been very open about the fact that, you know, they want to minimize what they call whiteness in America.
And they want to bring in voters, you know, from other countries. They donβt want voter ID laws, you know, they want to be able to bring in the voters and have them vote because they know theyβre going to be voting Democrat.
So, they want to replace, especially white male voters, with voters who they think are going to be beholden to them.
Now, this isnβt a conspiracy theory. Thereβs nothing wild or speculative about it. Itβs just a fact. And one of the ways you know that itβs a fact is the left and the media β The New York Times, CNN β theyβve been very open about it, many times.
So if it is a theory β if the great replacement theory is a theory, then itβs a theory propagated by the left. Theyβre the ones who go around talking about this supposed scourge of whiteness. Whatβre we going to do to minimize whiteness?
And how are we going to fight against whiteness? So they say all of that and then on the right, if we notice that theyβve said that and we point out that, oh, they said these things, then weβre the ones somehow responsible for a conspiracy theory.
Walsh last appeared on JMG when he declared that lesbians willΒ cease to existΒ over the next 30 years.
Before that, he appeared here when he called forΒ banning adoptionΒ by LGBT people. And before that, he appeared here when he called forΒ dissolvingΒ the United States.
Walsh also claims thatΒ shooting peopleΒ βis not against the law.β Early this year, WalshΒ declaredΒ that βeverybody would be happierβ if arranged marriages were mandatory.
If we're reading this lunatic's "manifesto" and taking it seriously then what about the part where he says he was radicalized from spending all his time online during the COVID lockdowns? I guess we're just glossing over that part. Not the conversation the media wants to have.
It’s sort of funny that Shapiro is the one to give these people a platform. Like… does he think that they’re not antisemites? Or does he just think that they’ll never get into power? Or that they’ll leave him alone because he’s ‘one of the good ones’? Fucking come on you dim little shite.
The alt-right/great replacement slogan is literally ‘Jews will not replace us,’ how can that possibly be spun as anything other than antisemitism? Even by republicans!
The only reason the “Pro-Israel” Party exist now, is that they need the State of Israel to exist, along with a certain number of Jews to be there, in order for them to fulfill “The Rapture”!!! Otherwise, they are the SAME Anti-Semites, that they were before, they realized the “need”!!!
Sure it was the lockdowns that radicalized him, not the RWNJ sites that he visited on social media and online and would have still used whether covid happened or not.
βHeβs an Azov, heβs a gay guy, heβs got all these insignias. He comes across β he says heβs a left-wing authoritarian, an eco authoritarian. Itβs in the manifesto, which they wonβt release. I donβt know, just release it, itβs not gonna warp peopleβs mind. People can make decisions, parents got to be on top of stuff. Why are the parents that β is this kid going to church? Is he in church?β β Steve Bannon, inventing things that nobody else who have actually read the shooterβs manifesto have reported.
Speculating on motivations, Steve Bannon claimed the Buffalo shooter was βa gay guyβ and asked where the shooter was attending church. pic.twitter.com/d6VK0PbFBu
— PatriotTakes πΊπΈ (@patriottakes) May 16, 2022
Steve Bannon claims the media is βinappropriatelyβ focused on Tucker Carlson in the wake of the Buffalo white supremacist shooting. pic.twitter.com/4dyROPBcYU
— PatriotTakes πΊπΈ (@patriottakes) May 16, 2022
“Let’s just put a lot of crazy shit out there that the left and media will spend time responding to so they don’t focus as much on the fact that we 100% enabled, encouraged, and applauded the mass murderer terrorist.”
I am so tired of the daily batshittery, pull whatever out of your ass, “news.”
Smear the Queer… Find someone whose done a horrendous act and smear them as being gay soas to smear the gay community as harbingers of evil. Ties in well with his anti-woke and his don’t say gay support.
“Itβs in the manifesto, which they wonβt release.”
If they won’t release it, how do you know it’s in it. I’ve seen other people on the right claiming he’s a Bernie supporter. They’re desperate to shift the blame.
Hear that, folks? He wasn’t motivated by the stuff you’ve been hearing on my radio show like he said. It was really something about the environment all along, or some kind of fΠ°ggot shit like that. Yeah…that’s it.
Now that we’ve settled that, back to how the Jews are using the blacks to overwhelm and replace the poor, embattled white race.
The state will likely assume control of Disney Worldβs Reedy Creek Improvement District, rather than local governments absorbing it, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Monday. DeSantis said he is working on a proposal that likely will be considered by the Legislature after the November elections.
Reedy Creek, which encompasses Disney World and neighboring properties, is set to dissolve on June 1, 2023. The governorβs office hasnβt released a written plan detailing how the dissolution of Disney Worldβs private government will unfold.
At an event in Sanford, DeSantis also insisted Central Florida taxpayers will not be forced to absorb the districtβs nearly $1 billion in debt. Under state law, the districtβs assets and liabilities would be transferred to the βlocal general purpose governmentβ when itβs abolished.
Read theΒ full article. In other words,Β everyΒ Floridian will eat that billion dollars, not just the residents of Orange and Osceola counties.
About the author:Β Musa al-GharbiΒ is a Paul F. Lazarsfeld Fellow in sociology at Columbia University.
Isaac βIkeβ Lambert was a decorated detective who had served more than 24 years in the Chicago Police Department. In 2017, an off-duty officer shot a teenager named Ricardo Hayes, who had autism and whose caregivers had reported him missing hours before. Some officers, according to Lambert, then tried to charge Hayes with assault on the basis of a distorted police report. Lambert noticed that his colleagueβs official narrative of the encounter wasΒ sharply at oddsΒ with eyewitness accounts and other evidence (including video of the incident). Lambert declined to press charges against Hayes, then repeatedly refused to sign off on the officersβ fraudulent reportβdespite higher-ups insisting he help bury the incident. For this, Lambert asserted in a whistleblower lawsuit, he wasΒ promptly βdumpedβΒ to patrol duty.
In a case like this, an understandable inclination would be to focus on the victim, an unarmed autistic kid who had committed no crime, or on punishing the police officer who assaulted him. (Officer Khalil Muhammad received a mereΒ six-month suspensionΒ for shooting Hayes.) Lost in the discussion are principled officers like Lambert, who resisted attempted malfeasance by his colleagues and paid a price for it.
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He isΒ far from alone. Police officers in the United States engage in all manner of bad behavior, such as excessive force, sexual misconduct, financial impropriety, and the manipulation of evidence. Holding them to account criminally, civilly, or professionally isΒ extremely difficult, even in cases involving blatant malpractice and misconduct. Yet, even as bad cops evade punishment for wrongdoing, those who stand up to corruption, report negligence or abuse, or decline to comply with bad orders are frequently marginalized, demoted, or outright fired.
In May 2016, Stephen Mader, a police officer in Weirton, West Virginia, responded to a call by a distraught woman who said that her boyfriend, R. J. Williams, was threatening to harm himself with a knife. According toΒ subsequent reporting on the case byΒ ProPublica, she mentioned that Williams had a gun, but that it was unloaded, and she urged the police to intervene to save his life. When he arrived at the scene, Mader, a former marine, quickly surmised that Williams was not a threat and was trying to commit βsuicide by cop.β He tried to talk Williams down, and was making progressβthat is, until two other officers arrived on the scene and quickly shot Williams in the head. When officers inspected Williamsβs gun, they found it was unloaded, as was indicated in the call to dispatch. Rather than sanctioning the other officers for using unnecessary force against someone with a weapon that they had been told was unloadedβfor killing the very person they had been called upon to helpβWeirton policeΒ fired MaderΒ for exercising restraint.By failing to immediately shoot Williams, his superiors argued, heβd jeopardized his own life as well as the lives of his peers and any civilian bystanders. Mader sued for wrongful termination and ultimately settled for $175,000. However, he was not able to get his job back. He worked for a while as a truck driver before joining the National Guard, where he is now a military police officer.
In 2013, police officers in Auburn, Alabama, were assigned by their supervisor to a monthly quota of 100 βcontactsββthat is, arrests, traffic tickets, warnings, and so on. Officer Justin Hanners spoke out against the policy, arguing that cops should interfere with peopleβs daily lives as little as possible, and only when they were needed. He insisted that the role of police should be to serve and protect, not to shake down civilians for money. According to the libertarian magazineΒ Reason,Β Hanners was firedΒ for expressing his opposition to quotas and refusing to comply with them. (Auburn police officials insisted they had imposed no quota, but Hanners produced recordings that appeared to back up his contentions.) Hanners filed a wrongful-termination lawsuit against the city of Auburn; it was dismissed partly on the grounds that, as a municipal employee, his whistleblowing actionsΒ were not coveredΒ by Alabamaβs State Employee Protection Act. In the aftermath, unable to pay the bills, Hanners was forced to spend most of his retirement savings on keeping his family afloat. They ultimately lost their home to foreclosure and had to move in with relatives.
By 2006, Officer Cariol Horne had put in 19 years for the Buffalo Police Department. Shortly before her scheduled retirement, she arrived at a crime scene to find a fellow officer choking a handcuffed Black man while her fellow cops stood idly by. By her account, she urged the offending officer, Gregory Kwiatkowski, to stand down, because the situation was under control and the suspect was not a threat. Her pleas were ignored. Worried that Kwiatkowski, who is white, was about to kill the man, she pulled her colleagueβs arm from around the suspectβs neck. In a rage, KwiatkowskiΒ punched Horne in the face, damaging her teeth, she contended. The suspect was taken into custody. Afterward, rather than punishing Kwiatkowski for choking a handcuffed man and then assaulting another officer, Buffalo policeΒ fired HorneΒ for obstructing justice, media reports indicate. (No other officer backed up her account, and Kwiatkowski successfully sued her for defamation.) She was denied her pension, and has been unable to retire. Instead, to pay the bills for herself and her three sons, she has been working as a driverβof semis, school buses, rideshares. She has often struggled to pay rent, and evenΒ had to live in a shelterΒ for a while.
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Suddenly, Buffalo police practices are under new scrutinyβafter two officers were filmed pushing an elderly protester to the ground in Juneβand city lawmakers have requested another review of Horneβs case. Buffaloβs earlier decision to punish Horne, not Kwiatkowski, proved fateful. According toΒ ABC7 Buffalo, he would go on choke another officer on the job, and in a separate incident, punch still another officer while off duty. Yet he remained on the force. In 2009, he was caught slamming four Black teenagers into the ground, then punching them and berating them as βsavage dogs.β Once again, his victims were already handcuffed. Kwiatkowski eventually pleaded guilty to using excessive force in this incident. According toΒ The Buffalo News, during his trial Kwiatkowski also admitted to having βlied several times in the past about using excessive force, including under oath in both a civil trial and an Internal Affairs investigation.β He was ultimately sentenced to a mereΒ four monthsΒ in jail for his crimesβroughly a decade after the 2009 incident. Unlike Cariol Horne, he was allowed to retire from the force andΒ keep his pension.
In the aftermath of George Floydβs death, many have demanded to know how the other Minneapolis officers captured on camera could have stood around with their hands in their pockets for eight minutes and 46 seconds, while Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on a manβs neck. Cariol Horneβs saga, andΒ others like it, help explain why. The system protects cops like Chauvin, who had at least 17 previous misconduct complaints and had been involved inΒ multiple incidentsΒ in which he or another officer used lethal force. However, cops who exercise restraint (in the case of Mader), stop others from engaging in brutality (like Horne), prevent officers from concealing wrongdoing (like Lambert), or blow the whistle on bad police practices (like Hanners)βtheyΒ are often immediately and severely sanctioned or pushed out, both throughΒ formal and informal means. This is perhaps one of the most significant yet largely neglected problems with policing in America: Departments are making an example not of the so-called bad apples, but of the good ones.
Yes, cities and towns need better ways to identify and purge bad cops and shouldΒ restructure law enforcementΒ to reduce violent encounters. But police departments also need betterΒ protectionsΒ andΒ incentivesΒ for those officers who prioritize their sworn duties above loyalty to their peers or their personal well-being. This is underdiscussed, but crucially important. If bad cops are spared any punishment while good cops lose their job, Americans should not be surprised when officers who know of wrongdoing by their colleagues stand aside and let it happenβallowing the bad cops to exert disproportionate influence over how the system functions.
In his speech against abortion, Montana Senator Steve Daines compares human fetuses to the eggs of sea turtles and eagles. Sandee Lovas breaks it down.
Class president and first openly LGBTQ student at his school Zander Moricz is taking on his school for censorship. Jayar Jackson and Jessica Burbank break it down on The Watchlist.
“Florida high school senior Zander Moricz was called into his principalβs office last week. As class president his whole high school career β and his schoolβs first openly LGBTQ student to hold the title β this was a fairly routine request. But once he entered the administratorβs office, he said, he immediately knew βthis wasnβt a typical meeting.β ***
Photo: ShutterstockΒ
