The nature preserve on the US-Mexico border became a target of rightwing ire after it opposed construction of Trump’s wall
Marianna Treviño-Wright, executive director of the National Butterfly Center: ‘I used to believe much better of people.’ Photograph: John L Mone/AP
In Mission, Texas, on the border between the US and Mexico, sits the National Butterfly Center. A 100-acre nature preserve once exclusively dedicated to the conservation of plants and wildlife, it has now been thrust into the national spotlight and become a focal point of divisions over the country’s immigration policy.
This week, the butterfly center was forced to close its doors indefinitely amid ongoing threats from far-right conspiracists and QAnon followers who falsely claim it is a haven for human-trafficking and illegal migration.
“They’re not conspiracies, they’re just outright lies,” Marianna Treviño-Wright, the executive director of the National Butterfly Center, told the Guardian. “I think that’s a very important point that needs to be made. As long as they’re called ‘conspiracies’, then it seems like there’s some plausibility.”
The North American Butterfly Association (NABA), which runs the center, decided to close it down indefinitely on Wednesday as a precautionary measure, after being warned to “be armed at all times or out of town” during a We Stand America rally in support of a border wall.
The butterfly center first attracted the attention of the far right in 2017. Treviño-Wright and the NABA made headlines for suing the organizations behind the construction of a section of Donald Trump’s border wall after they sought to build straight through the butterfly preserve. Those groups included We Build the Wall, led by Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon and founder Brian Kolfage, which is now facing corruption and fraud charges.
Conspiracy theories about the butterfly center snowballed after Kolfage posted a series of tweets, claiming it was run by “left wing thugs with a sham butterfly agenda” and asserting without evidence that “rampant sex trade” was taking place on the property. Treviño-Wright said an increase in online and in-person harassment soon followed.
A court date for the case about the section of border wall on the center’s property has not been set yet.
Treviño-Wright said since the lawsuit she has faced personal threats and on one occasion, assault, by the extremist Virginia Republican congressional candidate Kimberly Lowe who visited the butterfly center last month and demanded to see “‘illegals crossing on rafts”. In an audio recording of the visit, Lowe is heard claiming baselessly that Treviño-Wright was “OK with children being sex-trafficked, raped and murdered”.
“It’s utterly ridiculous that instead of Democrats and a pizza joint, it’s immigrants and a butterfly center,” Treviño-Wright said, comparing the situation to the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy that took off in 2016 in an attempt to paint the then presidential candidate Hilary Clinton as a proponent of human trafficking.
The butterfly center’s closure this week did not come as a surprise to Treviño-Wright.
“This has been escalating. Not just the attacks on us, but the agenda in the political landscape. I think it makes sense for the [NABA] board to pump the brakes. If this madness is going to continue until the midterms or, God forbid, beyond that, we need to have personnel and a plan in place to protect ourselves as best as possible to be prepared for this horrible situation.”
Marianna Treviño-Wright stands near a section of the new border wall in Mission, Texas. Photograph: Eric Gay/AP
Treviño-Wright said the construction of sections of the border wall, andthe subsequent vitriol that came from QAnon followers and Trump supporters, had a profound effect on the butterfly center and its staff.
“When you’re targeted by laws that are designed to be destructive, it’s very difficult to continue operations as normal. So it’s been disruptive. It’s been destructive. And it’s made it very difficult for us to focus on our mission, which is environmental conservation and education.”
Choking back tears, Treviño-Wright explained the events of recent years had put a strain on her mental health and personal relationships.
“It really has made me a misanthrope. I used to believe much better of people, but now I’m afraid to even go to the grocery store because I can’t trust that the person with the cart next to me doesn’t believe” the lies, Treviño-Wright said.
On her accidental venture into political activism, Treviño-Wright called herself: “Utterly reluctant, unwilling, and anxious-to-not-be-here-or-be-doing-this-any-more.”
The butterfly center is now sharing strategies for dealing with confrontational conspiracists with the Children’s Museum of Denver, which was forcibly shut down after anti-maskers frequently directed their anger towards staff.
Treviño-Wright said she didn’t know if her center would reopen, but “certainly hope[s] it does.
“It’s a magical place and it’s a place I’ve poured the last 10 years of my life into developing and defending. I hope there’s a wonderful future in store for the National Butterfly Center, but as long as these people get away with these things, I’m not sure of anything. Not just for anything but for our entire country.
“It’s just unbelievable that somehow things have reached this point in American history that a nature center stands at the crossroads of whether our country slides full-on into authoritarianism or our democratic republic survives.”
The financier famed for bankrolling some of Steve Bannon’s best-known ventures, as well as the far-right strategist’s jet-setting lifestyle, is in deep trouble for steering a $28 million yacht—the same boat where federal agents arrested Bannon in 2020—out of American waters.
A New York judge slapped Guo Wengui, who also uses the aliases Kwok Ho Wan and Miles Guo, with $134 million in contempt of court fines on Wednesday for violating multiple restraining orders barring him from selling or relocating the boat or any other property he controls.
The high price tag results from nearly a year of the fugitive Chinese national defying the court’s order that he return the craft to a U.S. port—an order that carried a daily forfeiture of $500,000.
The yacht is being sought as an asset to cover unpaid loans allegedly owed to a Hong Kong investment firm.
Wengui is also the chief financial backer of the social media platform GETTR.
Several years ago he and Bannon flew banner planes around Manhattan which declared them to be the Chinese government in exile.
Wengui presently lives in a $68 million Manhattan penthouse.
A New York judge slapped Guo Wengui with $134 million in contempt of court fines on Wednesday for violating multiple restraining orders barring him from selling or relocating the boat or any other property he controls. https://t.co/yBwR1f7ZgS
There is a maga group trying to finish destroying a very important preserve that tRump against court rulings just started destroying for his vanity wall. They want the preserve gone, revoked , or just ruined beyond ability to function so they can get their wall section that wont make a bit of difference.
Yes that would cause kid real distress. Funny thing about those who think that teaching history about slavery causes white kids discomfort forget is black kids experience racism long before they start school.
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Misleading right wing media cartoons / memes
I find the misleading right wing media’s obsession with a civil servant weird. Dr Fauci is accomplished yes, but he only a bureaucrat. He has no power or authority to make rules and regulations. His only task is to advise based on his skill and education, like others in the government. Yet the right has developed an almost cult like mythology around this person. I wonder why? Could it be he is an intelligent well skill person who knows what he is talking about? Could it be he refutes and shoots down all the right wing nonsense over Covid and public health measures? Or could it be he disagreed with the cult leader tRump and the followers of the dear leader must now attack him with everything they have to protect the snowflake that claimed Covid would just disappear like magic called tRump? I wonder?
Silly cartoon. China doesn’t allow protests and has ever person allowed to enter the stadium vetted. No one would dare protest.
I know no leftist will ever concede this truth, but if we hadn’t had the mandates and lockdowns and monetary incentives we’d actually be better off now and would’ve lost less people, regardless of any vaccines existing.
Right wing cartoon comment sections I commented on
The Oklahoma Legislature started its 2022 session this week with a slew of anti-abortion bills, which isn’t uncommon. “This is my 12th year in the legislature now, and it feels like every year we go through this,” said Oklahoma House Minority Leader Emily Virgin (D).
But this year’s anti-abortion bills ― 11 were pre-filed before the legislative session even began ― bring fresh menace. The state’s Republican governor has already promised that he would sign any abortion restriction the Oklahoma Legislature sends his way. Moreover, some bills, which clearly go beyond what’s allowed by Roe v. Wade and normally would immediately get bogged down in the court system, could actually become law given the looming U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which could upend five decades of abortion rights.
And the bills coming to the floor range from extreme to downright dystopian, including one that would create a state-run database of some pregnant people in the state.
“[W]e have absolutely seen the bills get more and more extreme,” said Virgin. “That’s due to the national landscape and the conservative majority on the Supreme Court. I think the anti-abortion movement has been strengthened and emboldened by that. And with our current governor, it’s pretty likely that he’ll sign any anti-abortion bill that makes it to his desk.”
Last year alone, Oklahoma passed a six-week abortion ban, a “trigger” ban if the high court rules against Roe v. Wade, a total ban and restrictions on medication abortion and other measures restricting reproductive rights (almost all have been blocked in lower courts).
The 2022 pre-filed bills include two six-week abortion bans and a total ban with similar enforcement mechanisms to Texas’ draconian restriction that deputizes private citizens to sue to enforce the law. Other proposed measures give personhood status to fetuses, ban abortion at 30 days and add a constitutional amendment declaring Oklahoma does not protect the right to abortion.
The most radical of the bunch is Senate Bill 1167, filed by state Sen. George Burns (R). Titled the Every Mother Matters Act, or EMMA, it would establish a government database for pregnant people looking to get abortions in Oklahoma. Each pregnant person will call a hotline and be connected with a “pre-abortion resource” assistant, but that person is legally not allowed to refer a patient to an abortion provider. The pregnant person would then be assigned a “unique identifying number” in the database, and abortion providers would be mandated to keep the information for seven years.
As part of the program, the woman will “be connected with a care agent who will provide, at no cost to her, an assessment of eligibility and offer assistance in obtaining support services, other than abortion, for her or the unborn child’s biological father,” according to a press statement from Burns’ office. The services include information on adoption, housing, employment, child care and more, but not on abortion care. It is unclear if the hotline assistants will have any medical expertise in reproductive care, but the legislation does bar anyone who’s worked for an abortion clinic in the past from signing up to be a resource agent.
“Many women facing unexpected pregnancies turn to abortion because they feel like they have no choice. We want to make sure they have an opportunity to connect with medical, financial and other resources that they may not know about,” Burns said in the press statement. “This legislation will do that as well as provide screening to identify those who’ve been victims of crime so that, with the woman’s consent, a report can be made to the appropriate law enforcement agency.”
Burns added that his “ultimate goal is ending abortion.” He did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
But, like so many of Oklahoma’s pre-filed abortion restrictions, S.B. 1167 is redundant. Oklahoma already has informed-consent laws that require pregnant people be told about parenting and adoption as abortion alternatives.
The proposed legislation is “truly off the deep end,” said Kristin Ford, vice president of communications and research at NARAL Pro-Choice America. “This bill is just so beyond the bounds of what any rational person would consider an appropriate role for politicians to play in people’s personal lives and family decisions.”
“Despite the framing that this is about helping folks, it’s pretty obvious that this is about expanding the state’s surveillance apparatus over pregnant people. People who aren’t even seeking abortion are going to fall under the surveillance apparatus, too.”
– Grace Howard, author of “The Pregnancy Police: Conceiving Crime, Arresting Personhood”
Tracking pregnant people who are seeking abortions is a slippery slope, added Grace Howard, an assistant professor of justice studies at San Jose State University who is writing a book, “The Pregnancy Police: Conceiving Crime, Arresting Personhood.”
“Despite the framing that this is about helping folks, it’s pretty obvious that this is about expanding the state’s surveillance apparatus over pregnant people. People who aren’t even seeking abortion are going to fall under the surveillance apparatus, too,” Howard said.
“The resources that are spent on this redundant, unhelpful and burdensome abortion legislation could be better utilized,” said Dr. Joshua Yap, an abortion provider for Planned Parenthood Great Plains’ Tulsa clinic.
If any of these restrictions pass ― but especially something like a 30-day or six-week abortion ban ― they won’t only affect Oklahomans. For five months now, Texans have been coming to Oklahoma to receive abortion care due to the Lone Star State’s extreme six-week abortion ban. Yap told HuffPost in November that his clinic staff had to double- or even triple-book their schedule to accommodate patients, 75% of which were from Texas.
Oklahoma abortion clinics were already booking weeks out when the Texas ban went into effect, delaying care and pushing people farther and farther into pregnancy. Those ripple effects will be even greater if Oklahoma’s access to abortion is further limited.
Yap believes Oklahoma and Texas patients who can travel will head to Kansas, a neighboring state that only has four clinics left. “Barely six months ago, we were trying to prepare ourselves emotionally for the Texas law going into effect, and now we’re having to re-brace ourselves going into this legislative session,” he said. “It feels like we’re really powerless from preventing these measures from going through.”
The decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, involving a Mississippi bill, is expected sometime this spring. Most advocates and pro-abortion rights lawmakers are not very optimistic given the court’s conservative majority.
When asked how Virgin, the Oklahoma House Democratic leader, is feeling about the pending decision, she responded that she’s scared.
“It’s scary to think about not having all of the health care options available to folks who find themselves in that situation. I’ve talked to people who run the gamut of reasons why they seek abortion care, and I think of all of them when I think about Roe potentially being overturned,” she said.
“We know that across the country, people do believe that there should be a right to access this kind of care. Whether it gets overturned or not, I think that we still have to fight for those options to be available.”
Walmart is almost exclusively self-check out now while bragging they create American jobs. And let's get one thing straight: I refuse to use these machines because I do not work for Walmart.
.@RbReich says it best: there’s no “labor shortage” that’s pushing up wages. There’s a shortage of good-paying jobs that would support working families. Raising interest rates right now will only hurt working families more. https://t.co/TALAuh8H9r
This has to be a parody. Can’t be real. Not an actual-live human being who decided to say this publicly. You can’t convince otherwise. No way. https://t.co/MfldSAezMQ
Specious reasoning: any argument or analysis that has the apparent ring of truth or plausibility but is actually incomplete, deceptive, or even altogether fallacious. https://t.co/xjE40VXK5I
This is not to argue Dems couldn't and shouldn't expand the court, they absolutely should
But SCOTUS Republicans are likely imagining they can get away with anything because, without something dramatic like court expansion, their majority is securehttps://t.co/9TC5f98Zml
I wrote about the GOP's latest fake racist meme––"Biden handing out crack pipes"–and why dems needs to vigorously defend safe injections sites now rather than doing what they did with ACORN & Shirley Sherrod: forfeit to racist mobs & throw it under the bushttps://t.co/in065WUWEE
THIS SHELTER HAS BEEN THERE FOR YEARS. For 20+ years, certain kids who arrive at the border get sent to shelters run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
If the shelter is too far for a bus, they take a plane.
The death of 16-year-old Carlos Hernandez was tragic and may well have been preventable. The Border Patrol agents who job it was to check in on him lied about doing it, and left him lying in a pool of his own blood for hours while he died.
The US incarcerates more people than any other country. We might want to be careful when throwing around charges of human rights abuses.
“They just want to exclude trans people"
Exclusive: Leaked guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) shows it plans to exclude trans people in Britain from single-sex spaces unless they have a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC).https://t.co/s3P8SaadZA
The facts change and the people responsible for public policy have to change their advice to match the new circumstances.
Complete projection and trying to hide what they are doing. Remember this is the party that is pushing bills to ban subjects from being taught in schools, banning even talking about LGBTQ+, requiring teachers to wear cameras, out kids to parents, has a media arm called Fox News, and trying to call an insurrection riot legitimate political discourse.
I wondered how long it would take for the right wing cartoonist to pick this up. Took less than a day from when Fox News aired a misleading story on it and the cartoonist drawing what the misinformation is. No the US government is not buying crack pipes. They are funding ways to keep addicts from dying or over dosing along with spreading disease. Beau has a good video on this with some of the things the bill funds. So I expect this to be a big shit storm on the comment section of the radical right cartoons.
The preponderance of evidence indicates that mask wearing reduces transmissibility per contact by reducing transmission of infected respiratory particles in both laboratory and clinical contexts. Public mask wearing is most effective at reducing spread of the virus when compliance is high.
Leffler et al. (29) used a multiple regression approach, including a range of policy interventions and country and population characteristics, to infer the relationship between mask use and SARS-CoV-2 transmission. They found that transmission was 7.5 times higher in countries that did not have a mask mandate or universal mask use, a result similar to that found in an analogous study of fewer countries (30). Another study looked at the difference between US states with mask mandates and those without, and found that the daily growth rate was 2.0 percentage points lower in states with mask mandates, estimating that the mandates had prevented 230,000 to 450,000 COVID-19 cases by May 22, 2020 (31).
We’re not going away from mask mandates because they’re ineffective. We’re going away from them because the will to use them is evaporating.
I don’t have a problem with people who don’t want to wear a mask, however I do have a problem with people going into establishments without a mask demanding service when the owners of those establishments require their employees to wear a mask. House rules, follow the house rules of get out of the house. If you do get sick are you willing to forgo expecting your health insurance company to pay your medical bills since you decided not to take precautions?
^^^Just can’t stop repeating lies…
Has the U.S.-Mexico border been left completely open for anyone to cross?
No. And we’ve been here before.
In March, we rated False a claim that the border “is now open to anyone from anywhere in the world who wishes to enter our country.” In April, we rated False a claim that the U.S. is locked down and there’s “a wide open border.” And in July, we rated Mostly False a claim that Biden “is restricting travel for Americans into Mexico, but is keeping the border wide open for illegal aliens to walk right into our country.”
Here’s what is happening now.
Biden has continued a policy — initiated by former President Donald Trump — to restrict Americans’ travel to Mexico, as a way to fight the spread of COVID-19. On Nov. 26, after omicron was identified in South Africa, Biden banned travel from South Africa and seven other African countries.
Most people trying to cross at the border into the U.S. are being turned away, under a March 2020 order by the Trump administration to curb the spread of COVID-19. The Biden administration is still enforcing that policy, although it’s exempting children who arrive alone, as well as some families.
Encounters at the southern border rose each month since Biden took office through July, before dropping the next two months. The latest U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures show there were more than 1.7 million encounters during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.
In September, the last month for which data was available, there were 192,001 encounters, 102,673 of which resulted in expulsion.
No policies have been changed that would make the borders more open, said Michelle Mittelstadt, spokesperson for the Migration Policy Institute.
The claim that the U.S.-Mexico border is completely open is False.
A majority of the right wing comments are simply insults with no information, no credible sources, and no acceptance of reality. They some how think winning is to “own the libs with insults” like little kids on a school playground.
No, it's not radical to expand the Supreme Court. What's radical is allowing Supreme Court justices — appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote — to take away voting rights from millions of Americans.
The Roberts Supreme Court has turned democracy upside down – making it harder for the poor to vote (approving racist gerrymandering and gutting the Voting Rights Act) and easier for the rich to corrupt our system (removing all limits on campaign donations).
Respectfully, if you’re waiting on his base to turn against him, you’re looking at the wrong thing.
His hardcore base is approximately 25% of the Republican Party — we don’t care about them. We care about moderates and independents — those are the ones who win or lose elections. https://t.co/mrtskJK1bt
No, you’re just a snowflake. If they can wear an N95 while playing hockey, you’ll probably survive wearing one to pick up your potato chips at the store https://t.co/VIExLlUqo0
Well intentioned vaccine minimisation–downplaying the effectiveness of COVID vaccines, in other words–is rampant in parts of the online left and it keeps spiralling into some particularly ugly episodes. https://t.co/F1wSqiitr2
Looks like some Harvard profs are regretting signing the letter defending Comaroff without bothering to find out the other side of the story. pic.twitter.com/Wt41iPWszh
The sheer amount of tweets from anti-trans hate mongers that involve attributing to "TRA"s stances literally NOBODY holds and things that simply ARE NOT TRUE is staggering.
— M. A. Melby (@mamelby on mastodon.lol) (@MAMelby) February 9, 2022
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Misleading right wing media cartoons / memes
I did not think Rivers could sink any lower than he has been, but he surprised me with this one. I don’t post it for the message but to see how some right wing cult members see the world.
It’s a sad comic. President Biden really wants unity but the GOP has no wish to join the US of A. Got to give Joe credit for trying though.. His predecessor actively did and continues to divide the nation. Biden would love to have a unified government but you can not expect the Republicans to do anything to help the country because they think their chances of reelection come from denying Biden anything especially if it helps the public.
So true. The misleading right wing media arm of the Republican party can not stand to have Biden credited with anything. They are all about obstruction and misinformation to try to get Republicans elected to office.
Really asinine. Non-citizens can not vote! It takes years. In general, a non-citizen must spend at least 5 years as a lawful permanent resident to be eligible for naturalization while a spouse of a U.S. citizen must spend at least 3 years as a lawful permanent resident3. The median years spent as an LPR for all citizens naturalized in FY 2020 was 7.1 years. To think this is the Democrats plan you give Democrats far to much credit for future planning.
The cartoonist is way off base, no one I knows says it is OK for Democrats to use the N-word. I think this is in anger over Republicans being called on the carpet for using that word. Having said that I have an issue with “bad words”. I really don’t think there are any words that should be outlawed. I understand that words can hurt and wound. I have some words that make me cringe and Ron has words he doesn’t like me to use. But words only have the meanings we give them, and it is the same with the power words have. Their power comes from us. By making the word referred to by its initial makes it more powerful than it ever should be. It is not like a person doesn’t know what the N-word means so is their a difference between using the word or using the n-word to mean the same thing.
Complete lie and misdirection. The crime has risen in cities and states with both Republican and Democratic leadership. Plus crime is still lower than it has been in the last decade. It is expected to decline as the country returns to non-pandemic conditions. What prosecutors are doing is not prosecuting non-violent crime with lower dollar values so that they can use more programs designed to rehabilitate people and not feed the school to prison for profit pipelines. They are not prosecuting low level drug crimes such as possession when so many states have legalized cannabis. The sad fact is there is profit in incarcerating a lot of people in the country, there is a political reason to incarcerate black people and take away their voting rights. There is an attempt to stop any reforms to the justice system and prosecutions in the US. Again this cartoon is misdirection and misinformation.
No police forces have been defunded, most have seen budget increases. However the Republicans did vote against more money for the police. Yes the Republicans did vote no to police getting more money! The Build Back Better bill had money for police departments all across the US and Republicans killed it. Not one Republican voted for it. So save your pious fake tears.
This is BS. Trying to explain science to science deniers is a waste of time. The world is not flat. The world is way more than 6000 years old. The Bible is fiction, not canon. Vaccines work. Masks protect the wearer and the people around the wearer when worn properly.
If it weren’t for 1/2 the population wearing masks, this pandemic would be far worse…
If 100% of the population wore masks, we would not be so deep into this pandemic NOW!
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And now some for fun
On the above, Ron and I tell each other when we are going to go for a nap so the other can join in. But we have only been together 32 years.
Had a dental appointment today, made a red sauce with meatballs for a spaghetti supper, and some thick sliced garlic cheese toast for supper. I had to take extra medication to be able to do that. So I am too tired to finish the roundup. I don’t have any appointments tomorrow so I plan to add the cartoons I missed today ( about half the normal pages I go to ) into tomorrows roundup. Best wishes to all
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No one buys the exact things each week. But we all buy mostly the same foods all the time that we like to eat and we normally by the same detergents or other supplies. And the truth is only lately has wages started to rise but there are still far too low. In my area I am reading that to be able to rent a 1 bedroom apartment a person needs a wage of $20.17 an hour for 40 hours. $24.82 for a two bedroom. Most people work for less than $15 dollars an hour around here.
This is what a corrupt political system looks like. This is why billionaires get richer. This is what Oligarchy is all about. https://t.co/WyKfp3dt2r
National Archives confirms in a statement that they had to retrieve 15 (!!!) boxes of Trump presidential records from Mar a Lago in January of this year.
Btw, this redistricting cycle is the first in 50+ years where states with a history of discrimination don’t have to approve voting maps with the federal government.
No reason to sugarcoat this. If Dems fail to pass voting protections before the midterms, the GOP is going to gerrymander their way into power across the country.
The same Court that twice gutted Voting Rights Act & upheld extreme partisan gerrymandering now giving green light to extreme racial gerrymandering. Black voters make up 27% of AL electorate but hold just 1 of 7 Congressional districts (14%) under GOP plan reinstated by SCOTUS https://t.co/ibhytst6Ze
Kagan, dissenting: The court's decision today "does a disservice to Black Alabamians" who "have had their electoral power diminished—in violation of a law this Court once knew to buttress all of American democracy." https://t.co/iM4jxk75popic.twitter.com/YCKjLYCSbg
Lots of observations to make here, but here's one: Mississippi's speech ban would outlaw historically black colleges and universities explaining why they exist in the first place. https://t.co/9As4mGEv1I
In Tennessee, a right-wing activist group is using the state's new anti-CRT law to argue that 2nd Graders shouldn't read a book about MLK Jr. https://t.co/7j51LDwxmg
Sandra Bland would have turned 35 years old today, but her life was tragically cut short following a minor traffic violation. We honor her life, and will continue to fight to protect Black women. #SayHerNamepic.twitter.com/i2B8Cyh5hT
6/ Some white supremacists, by the way, want Jews in America to either convert to Christianity or move to Israel. They support Israel because they think it’s needed to fulfill the “end times.” They are still antisemitic. https://t.co/Wf6V53zUnx
It doesn’t have to be this way. One way to fix this, rent a large space to have children spread out at tables, have good wifi, and have a few adults to circulate around the large space. Just like a classroom but much bigger and each kid working on their own computer at their own speed. It is done in other countries why not the US.
And the misleading right wing cartoonist fails to mention the parties did a complete swap on ideals with the Democrats currently being against discrimination and the Republicans being for discrimination and oppression, not to mention insurrection and other throwing the government.
Pelosi said that the contestants should be aware of their situation and their safety so they might want to wait on their criticisms of China until they were safe. She did not say they shouldn’t say anything negative about China, she did not try to stop them from insulting China. But again facts don’t really matter to the right wing.
I want to scream when I see these cartoons. Because so many of the right wing cult members believe this is the god’s honest truth. I argue that no polices have changed other than family detention, I show court cases preventing Biden from making changes on the southern border, I point out illegals can not vote and illegals can not become citizens. Nothing matters to them. tRump said 3 million illegals voted for Hillary and now every right winger is convinced that Biden is busing illegal immigrants across the border to vote for Democrats.
Yet no outcry from Branco when ICE under tRump was taking children separated at the border from their parents on midnight flights all over the country and given to Christian adoption agencies to adopt out to Christian parents, collecting fees from those adopting parents, many of those children who have not been returned to their rightful parents. The very definition of child human trafficking.
The brazen occupation of Ottawa came as a result of unprecedented coordination between various anti-vaccine and anti-government organizations and activists, and has been seized on by similar groups around the world.
It may herald the revenge of the anti-vaxxers.
The so-called “freedom convoy” – which departed for Ottawa on 23 January – was the brainchild of James Bauder, an admitted conspiracy theorist who has endorsed the QAnon movement and called Covid-19 “the biggest political scam in history”. Bauder’s group, Canada Unity, contends that vaccine mandates and passports are illegal under Canada’s constitution, the Nuremberg Code and a host of other international conventions.
Bauder has long been a fringe figure, but his movement caught a gulf stream of support after the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, announced last year that truckers crossing the US-Canada border would need to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19. The supposed plight of the truckers proved to be a compelling public relations angle and attracted an array of fellow travelers.
Until now, a litany of organizations had protested Canada’s strict public health measures, but largely in isolation. One such group, Hold Fast Canada, had organized pickets of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s headquarters, where they claimed that concentration camps had already been introduced in the country.
Another group, Action4Canada, launched legal challenges to mask and vaccine mandates. In one 400-page court filing, they allege that the “false pronouncement of a Covid-19 ‘pandemic’” was carried out, at least in part, by Bill Gates and a “New World (Economic) Order” to facilitate the injection of 5G-enabled microchips into the population.
Both groups are listed as “participating groups” on the Canada Unity website, and sent vehicles and personnel to join the convoy.
Other organizers joined Bauder, including Chris Barber, a Saskatchewan trucker who was fined $14,000 in October for violating provincial public health measures; Tamara Lich, an activist for a fringe political party advocating that western Canada should become an independent state; Benjamin Dichter, who has warned of the “growing Islamization of Canada”; and Pat King, an anti-government agitator who has repeatedly called for Trudeau to be arrested.
Since they have arrived in Ottawa, the extreme elements of the protest have been visible: neo-Nazi and Confederate flags were seen flying, QAnon logos were emblazoned on trucks and signs and stickers were pasted to telephone poles around the occupied area bear Trudeau’s face, reading: “Wanted for crimes against humanity.”
The official line from Bauder and his co-organizers, however, has remained focused; in a Facebook live broadcast, Bauder instructed his supporters to “stop talking about the vaccine” and instead stick to message of “freedom”.
Such strict message control has attracted mainstream support. Numerous members of the Conservative party, Canada’s official opposition, have come out to meet the protesters. Elon Musk and Donald Trump have both endorsed the convoy. Fox broadcasters Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson have provided glowing updates on the continuing occupation.
Bauder vowed the convoy would camp out in Ottawa until their demands are met, insisting to his followers that a “memorandum of understanding” would force the government’s hand, possibly even triggering fresh elections, if enough people sign.
A Canada Unity organizer went further, saying it would require the Senate to “go after the prime minister” for “corruption” and “fascism”. There is no legal basis for those claims.
King has laid out a more direct plan of action to the occupiers: “What we want to focus on is our politicians, their houses, their locations,” he said in a January Facebook stream. If political pressure doesn’t work, King said, blocking major supply chains “will be later on”.
Soon after, the head of security for parliament issued an extraordinary warning to members of parliament to avoid the protest entirely, for their own safety.
The occupiers have deliberately made life difficult for anyone in Ottawa’s downtown core. Trucks have been laying on their air horns throughout the day, often well into the early morning hours. An Ottawa court granted an injunction on Monday afternoon, ordering that the honking must cease.
In the shadow of parliament, a flatbed truck was converted into a stage – functioning as a speaker’s corner during the day, where far-right politicians and occupiers took the microphone to decry Trudeau and Covid vaccines. At night, the stage functions as a DJ booth for raucous dance parties.
US anti-vaccine mandate campaigners aim to mimic Canadian convoy tactic
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Technology has made the occupation even easier: drivers share information on routes and the best ways to evade police barricades via the walkie-talkie app Zello. Organizers in other cities use the secure messaging app Telegram to share information, coordinate messaging and plan solidarity protests.
The occupiers now have the resources to stay for an extended period of time: they have raised more than C$6m (US$4.7m) through various crowdfunding platforms, in cash and bitcoin, despite having been booted from GoFundMe’s platform after raising over C$10m.
The Ottawa occupation is proof that a few thousand determined protesters can overwhelm police and shut down major cities with enough vehicles and coordination. Solidarity convoys have shut down the busy Coutts border crossing between Alberta and Montana, strained police resources in Toronto and Quebec City, and activists as far away as Helsinki, Canberra, London and Brussels have taken note. On the convoy channels, protesters warn this is just the beginning.
Scottie's Playtime 
^^^Just can’t stop repeating lies…
Has the U.S.-Mexico border been left completely open for anyone to cross?
No. And we’ve been here before.
In March, we rated False a claim that the border “is now open to anyone from anywhere in the world who wishes to enter our country.” In April, we rated False a claim that the U.S. is locked down and there’s “a wide open border.” And in July, we rated Mostly False a claim that Biden “is restricting travel for Americans into Mexico, but is keeping the border wide open for illegal aliens to walk right into our country.”
Here’s what is happening now.
Biden has continued a policy — initiated by former President Donald Trump — to restrict Americans’ travel to Mexico, as a way to fight the spread of COVID-19. On Nov. 26, after omicron was identified in South Africa, Biden banned travel from South Africa and seven other African countries.
Most people trying to cross at the border into the U.S. are being turned away, under a March 2020 order by the Trump administration to curb the spread of COVID-19. The Biden administration is still enforcing that policy, although it’s exempting children who arrive alone, as well as some families.
Encounters at the southern border rose each month since Biden took office through July, before dropping the next two months. The latest U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures show there were more than 1.7 million encounters during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.
In September, the last month for which data was available, there were 192,001 encounters, 102,673 of which resulted in expulsion.
No policies have been changed that would make the borders more open, said Michelle Mittelstadt, spokesperson for the Migration Policy Institute.
The claim that the U.S.-Mexico border is completely open is False.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/dec/02/gateway-pundit/us-southern-border-completely-open-s-false/