Mehdi takes down Bret Stephens’s viral argument and explains why Israel is unmistakably committing genocide in Gaza. Ever since Israel began their horrific war on Gaza, many pro-Israel pundits and genocide-denialists have suddenly decided that they know far more about war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and genocide than actual human rights experts. How convenient! New York Times’ conservative columnist Bret Stephens is of course no exception. In this latest ‘DEBUNKED’ video, Mehdi breaks down why Stephens’s viral argument – in which he claims that calling Gaza a genocide is “farcical” – is total BS. Watch the full video above to watch Mehdi bring the receipts and show Stephens how real journalism is done.
If you read the law it lets anyone claim to be offended by any media and that it doesn’t need to be declared obscene to be labeled obscene. Why is that? Because to a small group of very vocal haters just the existence of LGBTQ+ people is obscene. It offends their god so it offends them. But don’t try to claim the Bible is obscene or pushes offensive stuff it has special carve outs that make all the icky bad parts OK. I hope this will be appealed to the full appeals court as this attempt to errase an entire population of people based on bigotry must not be allowed to stand. I also just read where the education department under the hypermaga education secretary will not be enforcing or even recording the bullying and abuse of the LGBTQ+ kids at school. Her view is let the little fagots fend for themselves it seems. Remember she and her husband turned a blind eye to the many young boys being sexually assaulted by the wrestlers in their group.
Also the majority of the three judges panel said that the three patrons did not have standing to object because no books had been banned yet. They seem to have a wait and see if the victim is stabbed before taking the knife from the threatening person. That is stupid. Everyone knows what the law is intended to do and the writers of the law admit that openly. It seems the tRump appointed judges want to let attacks on the librarians and on the books that mention gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, non-binary, and questioning kids / people be removed as soon as possible knowing it is harder to put them back than to ban them in the first place. Hugs.
The “social section” in Crawford County Library’s Van Buren branch (Screenshot from court documents)
A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that Arkansas’ 2023 law restricting access to library materials can go into effect, three years after a judge blocked two sections of the law on First Amendment grounds.
The three-judge panel from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis ruled that the 18 plaintiffs had no standing to challenge one section of Act 372 and failed to prove that the other section was unconstitutionally vague.
The two sections create criminal liability for librarians who distribute content that some consider “obscene” or “harmful to minors,” and give city and county governing bodies the final say over library content.
Republican Attorney General Tim Griffin praised the ruling, saying it “allows Arkansas to move forward in enforcing a law that protects children from obscene materials while increasing accountability for public-library curation decisions.”
The plaintiffs challenging the law include libraries, bookstores, advocacy groups and individual library patrons. Their lead attorney, John Adams, said in a statement that the legal team is “evaluating all available legal options, including further review by the courts,” after Thursday’s ruling.
“Libraries and bookstores should be places where people can freely explore ideas — not where booksellers and librarians face criminal liability for selling, checking out, or even just shelving constitutionally protected books,” Adams said. “The freedom to read is fundamental to a free society and has always been protected by the First Amendment.”
Griffin said Act 372 was meant to “to address legitimate concerns about minors’ access to obscene materials and to establish a process for reviewing challenged content.”
School and public libraries already had content challenge policies before Act 372. The law stalled in the Legislature in 2023 before it was amended to say library materials would be relocated to an area inaccessible to minors, not removed from the premises, if elected officials find them to be “obscene.”
Section 5 of Act 372 allows city and county governing bodies to relocate challenged material if a challenger disagrees with a library panel’s decision to keep it in its original section.
Another section of the law that gave school boards the same authority over school library materials had not been challenged.
Adams told the appeals court in June that Crawford County, a defendant in the case, showed what the law’s restrictions would look like in practice. The county’s five library branches separated LGBTQ+ children’s books from the rest of the collection after public outcry, and county officials cited Act 372 as a reason to maintain these “social sections,” even before the legislation became law.
Crawford County lost a separate federal lawsuit in 2024 after three parents alleged that the “social sections” violated the First Amendment.
The three library patrons who sued over the state law do not have standing because Section 5’s book challenge and relocation policies do not harm the plaintiffs, the appeals court panel said Thursday.
“Plaintiffs are speculating libraries might decide to segregate certain books as part of their curation policies, which they have not yet adopted, or in response to challenges, which have not yet been filed,” the panel wrote.
The librarian and bookstore plaintiffs have standing to challenge the other section of the law because they would be at risk of prosecution for noncompliance, according to the ruling, but the three judges disagreed with Adams’ claim that Section 1 of Act 372 was too vague.
This section makes “furnishing a harmful item to a minor” a Class A misdemeanor. Conviction would lead to a maximum prison sentence of one year.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks wrote that the law’s lack of a definition for terms like “furnishing” and “harmful” could lead to violations of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech.
An unchallenged provision of Act 372 removes schools and public libraries from the part of Arkansas state code that previously exempted them from prosecution for disseminating obscene content. Another unchallenged provision made school and public library employees liable for a Class D felony if they “knowingly” distribute obscene material or inform others of how to obtain it. A Class D felony conviction carries a maximum prison sentence of six years.
However, the language of Section 1 “limit[s] its application to situations when a person knowingly furnishes an item to a minor knowing of the item’s harmful character” and therefore is not too vague, the appeals court ruled.
Chief Judge Steven Colloton wrote in a concurring opinion Thursday that he understood the plaintiffs’ vagueness claim but disagreed with it “because third-party library patrons have no constitutional right to receive unfettered access to books of their choice at taxpayer expense.”
Colloton was appointed to the court in 2003 by then-President George W. Bush and has been chief judge since 2024. President Donald Trump appointed the panel’s other two judges, Ralph Erickson and L. Steven Grasz, in 2017.
Erickson was on the three-judge panel in April that allowed a 2023 Iowa law to go into effect, requiring the removal of books containing “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act” from Iowa public school libraries.
The removal of the injunction on Act 372 comes as the Arkansas Department of Education has been considering requiring public libraries to restrict children’s access to “sexually explicit materials” in order to receive state funding.
Dozens of Arkansans told the education department in June that they oppose requiring libraries to ensure patrons age 16 or younger cannot check out materials that depict or describe sexual contact and behavior.
The Arkansas State Library Board will meet Aug. 14 to consider sending the rules to a legislative panel for further approval. Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders appointed all six board members.
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Tess Vrbin
Tess Vrbin came to the Advocate from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, where she reported on low-income housing and tenants’ rights, and won awards for her coverage of 2021 flooding and tornado damage in rural Arkansas. She previously covered local government for The Commercial Dispatch in Mississippi and state government for the Columbia Daily Tribune in Missouri.
Arkansas Advocate is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
I do not think the punishment fits the crime here. These people tried to stop other people from exercising their civil rights simply due to the bigotry and hate of the oppressors. Hate doesn’t give people the right to stop people from gathering or enjoying legal activities. These haters got away with it. That will simply encurage others to do the same thing over and over until they drive those they hate underground and out of the public view. Which is what these haters want to accomplish: remove those they hate from society. Hugs
The group behind the incident, NSC-131, will be permanently barred from ‘unlawful discriminatory practices’ in the state, if a judge approves
By Steven Porter Globe Staff,Updated July 31, 2026, 25 minutes ago
In this file photo, Christopher R. Hood Jr. appears at West Roxbury Municipal Court on July 25, 2022, when he was 23 years old. Hood founded the Nationalist Social Club 131 in 2019.Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff
The founder of a neo-Nazi group that sent masked men to protest outside a 2023 drag queen story hour event in Concord, N.H., has admitted their anti-LGBTQ intimidation tactics amounted to a civil rights violation, the New Hampshire attorney general’s office announced Thursday.
Christopher R. Hood Jr. of Newburyport, Mass., and his group, the Nationalist Social Club-131, or NSC-131, will be permanently barred by court order from engaging in any further unlawful discriminatory practices, if a judge accepts the deal. Anyone who violates those terms could face further sanctions.
Hood, 27, will be required to complete 250 hours of community service and pay $2,500 in civil penalties, plus another $7,500 if he violates the terms of the court’s order, according to a motion filed by prosecutors. He’ll also be barred from coming within 250 feet of the eatery where this occurred or any other Teatotaller Café location.
The core allegation in this case was that Hood, his organization, and 19 unnamed co-defendants — who directed intimidating chants and homophobic slurs at those inside the establishment, performed Nazi salutes, and banged on the cafe’s glass windows — had sought to compel a place of public accommodation to engage in unlawful discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity.
“No individual or organization has the right to threaten, intimidate, or coerce a New Hampshire business into violating the law or denying lawful access based on protected characteristics,” Attorney General John M. Formella said in a statement.
“This resolution delivers accountability and sends the message that organized hate group activity that violates the law will not be tolerated,” he added.
The attorneys who represented the defendants in this case, Bradford Ryan Stanton and William E. Gens, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Formella said certain terms under the agreement apply to NSC-131 as an unincorporated association. For example, the group will be permanently barred from all unlawful discriminatory practices and will be prohibited from coming within 250 feet of any location that’s part of the Teatotaller Café business, which has since rebranded as Totally Tea and Coffee.
That means an individual who didn’t participate in the 2023 incident could theoretically be subjected to the terms of this agreement in the future, if there is evidence of their affiliation with NSC-131, he said.
The motion Formella’s office filed with the court indicates NSC-131 has disbanded and Hood has stated he intends to discontinue his involvement with that group and other organized hate activity.
Formella told the Globe that securing a victory in which the defendant admitted wrongdoing represents a significant achievement.
“It was worth it, I think, in the greater context of our civil rights efforts to get that admission,” he said.
This wasn’t Formella’s first attempt to clamp down on NSC-131’s activity. His office filed a complaint in early 2023 alleging the group had committed civil rights violations by hanging a “Keep New England White” banner from a Portsmouth overpass in 2022. But the New Hampshire Supreme Court ultimately ruled in early 2025 that the prosecution was unconstitutional on free-speech grounds.
Formella’s office filed the second case against Hood and NSC-131, regarding the Teatotaller incident, in late 2023.
Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell also filed a complaintin late 2023 against Hood, NSC-131, and a group leader named Liam McNeil of Waltham, Mass., over incidents involving LGBTQ events and immigrants in emergency shelters. That case is still pending, according to court records.
Hood was formerly part of Patriot Front and the Proud Boys before he founded NSC-131 in late 2019. The members of his group disrupted or shut down several drag queen story events in Massachusetts in 2022, according to the lawsuit. Members of the group regularly wore khaki pants, black shirts or jackets, and ski masks, balaclavas, and neck gaiters to hide their identities.
I had my allergy shots this morning. I’m in agony right now. Not from the shots, but from the pain in my back muscles as they spaum. Every since I have had the operation on my lower back to reduce the pain in my right leg, the pain in my back from the rest of the back muscles spasuming is out of control. When I saw the surgeon this week, he looked and noticed how badly swollen the mucles were and agreed that I needed immediate relief from the situation I was in. He put in for mucle relaxing trigger point injections to relax the mucles. But other than lying down and taking muscle relaxers, there is little I can do at this point. I do have a hot tub, but if I push Ron to open it and get it ready to work, he will have to stop the work on the rest of the projects, including my new office, which I really need finished. So I suffer and often go to bed.
This video is a great way to talk about how to deal with Christian nationalist bigotry and the forcing of Christian religion on others who have different beliefs. In fact I read a post while waiting for my shots about a new trend of Christian evangelicals going on airplanes and forcing those in the plane to listen to sermons and preach about the Christian god. I don’t get this, but I experienced something similar in the military, where a sect of Christians would try to cornor me every time I sat down for a meal in the chow hall to eat they would swarm my table demanding I listen to them talk about their god. It did not make me feel better about their faith nor did it make me less gay, which was their real goal. In fact when I returned the gesture to talk to them about my beliefs, they got really offended. Strange how they think pushing their religion goes only one way in their minds. The thing is they know religion is a protected class where sexual orientation is not, but some friends and I came up with a good way to discourage them. We would listen to their spiel if they listened to ours first. We then spun them a made up religion on the house of Approditie, a religion based on having sex and being body worshippers. They got so grossed out over having to discuss the sex and nudity that they stopped pushing their shit on me. I wonder if it would work today on the religions and indiscretions you hear about in the news. Hugs.
I remember when the religious people claimed same sex marriage would be giving special rights to gays / lesbians that straight people did not have. As if straight people couldn’t already marry who they loved. Now the bigots openly admit it is entirely about keeping special rights and privileges for themselves. And same gender couples harm no one and cause no lack of status or dignity for the joining in the legal partnership of marriage. The real reasons that most of the bigots claim that marriage is only for straight male / female pairings are religious in nature as if marriage did not exist before Christianity got involved with it. That is crazy and they know it. People were pairing up long before the Christian church decided to make females male property. Again the bigots like to claim that female / male couples are best for children and the bedrock of society which denies the truth of well documented studies and data. The fact is studies have shown that the children of same gender couples do as well if not even better than the children of opposite gender couples. And societies were formed, grew, and functioned very well without the need for such strict gender conforming couples. It is just uninformed bigotry of a religious nature and the desperate need not to extend equal rights to everyone. Hugs
The president of Poland, Karol Nawrocki, vetoed two bills last week that would have extended recognition to same-sex couples.
The bills would have created “cohabitation contracts,” according to Reuters, which would have given some legal recognition to same-sex couples when it comes to medical information, property rights, and funeral arrangements.
The bills were part of reforms promised when Prime Minister Donald Tusk took office in 2023, which included measures regarding LGBTQ+ people’s rights and abortion. The current ruling coalition in parliament is considered liberal and pro-European.
Nawrocki, though, ran as an independent in 2025 after having been chosen as the candidate for the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, moving the country to the right. He said that the cohabitation contracts were too similar to marriage.
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“These proposals create a new, formalized institution of family law, equipped with a broad catalog of rights similar to those of marriage,” he said in a statement. He said that the bills would lead to “the loss of the special status of marriage,” defined as “a union of a man and a woman under the protection and care of the Republic of Poland.”
LGBTQ+ rights advocates denounced the vetoes. The organization Campaign Against Homophobia said that the bills were “merely a fragment” of what they wanted to get when it comes to domestic partnership rights in the country.
“Today’s veto of the bill, however, shows that even the absolute minimum of rights the bill was intended to provide is too much for the president,” the group said.
Former Equality Minister and New Left Member of Parliament Katarzyna Kotula said Nawroicki “turned his back on 2 million people living today in informal relationships.”
Earlier this year, a gay couple who traveled to Berlin to get married won the right in court to have their marriage recognized in Poland.
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More hate and bigotry enacted against all the medical safety data available. Guess I am just not being understanding today because these laws are not only not needed but also very harmful. They cause a lot more problems than the pretended harm they claim to solve. It is the attempt to regulate and restrict sexual / gender standards into the laws. It just causes kids and people problems for no reason and promotes anger / bigotry against a small minority of people. Hugs
The United Kingdom’s Department of Education has published its updated guidance for “Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026” (KCSIE) and it will take effect on September 1. However, the guidance is likely to put trans and gender-non-conforming children at greater risk.
“We criticise numerous aspects of the guidance, especially as to how schools should approach requests related to ‘social transition,’” The Good Law Project wrote in a statement responding to the draft guidance earlier this year. “We also emphasise its failure to properly explain how schools should accommodate the needs of trans pupils in accessing various aspects of school life, such as toilets, changing facilities, and sports.”
Last year, the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court ruled that, for the purposes of the 2010 Equality Act, the legal definition of “woman” is based on “biological sex.” In the aftermath, the Equality and Human Rights Commission released temporary guidance on barring trans people from single-sex spaces. They’ve now released their finalized plan, which says that businesses and institutions should prevent trans people using a single-sex spaces, and that if they allow trans people to use them, they will no longer be considered single-sex spaces.
The aggressive new schools guidance set out in KCSIE is set to comply with the EHRC’s updated policies around single-sex spaces, ruling that trans and gender-questioning children cannot use spaces aligned with their gender identity, even if they have socially transitioned.
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“Schools must not allow children into toilets designated for the opposite biological sex,” the guidance reads. “This includes where schools are responding to a request to support any degree of social transition for children who are questioning their gender.”
The same policy is applied to changing rooms for those over 11 years old, nor should the students “share overnight accommodation with a child of the opposite biological sex,” it states.
The guidance allows for single-use restrooms “if a gender-questioning child does not want to use the toilet designated for their biological sex.” However, there is no actual requirement for this, but only the suggestion that “schools and colleges should consider whether they can provide an alternative toilet facility—for example self-contained individual toilets—without compromising the provision of single-sex facilities.”
When it comes to all of these arrangements, the guidance clearly states, “These alternative arrangements should not compromise the safety, comfort, privacy or dignity of the child, or of any other children.”
However, such arrangements in their own right will challenge the safety and dignity of trans children. One plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging Idaho’s bathroom bill died by suicide earlier this year. Before her death she said of similar provisions, “It is scary having to look around before to see if anyone will see me going into the single-user restroom, as I worry about people gossiping and speculating about me being transgender.”
When it comes to social transition at school, the guidance advises against staff and teachers supporting it, citing concerns raised in the controversial Cass Review. The guidance sets out extensive hurdles before any member of staff at a school or colleges can be supportive of a social transition.
The guidance establishes that “parents and carers should be actively involved and their views treated with importance.” That rule alone amounts to a forced outing policy that could put trans children at risk of harm if their family are not supportive. While the guidance goes on to carve out an exception for “rare circumstances” where involving parents and carers could pose a “greater risk,” such a policy would require a lot of trust and a careful hand from school administrators who are inexperienced with such matters.
The possibility of the school deciding not to allow the social transition is not only laid out but encouraged. The guidance notes that “when considering a child’s request for support with social transition will be to consider what is in the best interests of the child and other children, and a decision relating to social transition may not be the same as a child’s wishes.” They also note that, for younger children, support for a social transition should be “agreed very rarely.”
More of the choice is taken away from trans children and their families with the note that for “pre-pubertal children” clinical involvement should be part of the decision-making process and that “should include advising on the risks and benefits of social transition as a planned intervention, referencing best available evidence. This is not a role that can be undertaken by staff without appropriate clinical training.”
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This is what all the medical data and medical science shows which is why laws were passed to promote transgender acceptance. Then some people decided it was an insult to their god, some decided that they needed everyone to be the same as they are in life, and politicians realized it was a way to distract and get people to vote for them. There is no medical reason, no safety reason, and no social reason for hate towards trans people and other LGBTQ+. To be so dismissive of the needs of other people who cause you no harm is crazy and I do not understand the motivation of the bigots. Hugs
Good Law Project claims U.K. health secretary Wes Streeting’s department fought to block freedom of information requests for data on trans youth suicides.
John Russell (He/Him)February 12, 2026, 3:30 pm EST· Updated on February 13, 2026
The U.K. government appears to have covered up a dramatic rise in transgender youth suicides, according to data obtained by U.K.-based government accountability non-profit the Good Law Project.
As Erin in the Morning reports, data the non-profit obtained from the National Health Service (NHS)-funded National Child Mortality Database (NCMD) via a Freedom of Information request sharply contrasts with the government’s official report on trans youth suicides in the wake of the 2020 Bell v. Tavistock ruling.
As the Good Law Project notes, following the U.K. High Court of Justice’s initial ruling in Tavistock, which found that minors under 16 could not legally consent to receive puberty blockers for the treatment of gender dysphoria, the National Health Service (NHS) substantially limited access to gender-affirming care for minors. Those limits reportedly remained in place even after the Tavistock ruling was overturned in 2021.
The U.K. government commissioned its 2024 Appleby Report after the Good Law Project reported that two whistleblowers with the Tavistock gender clinic alerted the organization to a significant rise in suicides among young people on the NHS’s waitlist for appointments to begin gender-affirming care in the wake of the Tavistock case.
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According to Good Law Project, the Appleby Report identified only 12 suicide deaths among current or former Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) patients at the Tavistock clinic between 2018 and 2024. However, as Erin in the Morning notes, the report disregarded young people who were unable to access GIDS care due to long wait times, which, post-Tavistock, now last an average 25 years.
At the same time, Good Law Project submitted a Freedom of Information request with the NCMD, and has only just published the data it received.
“Good Law Project can confirm that in 2021–2022 suicides of trans children in England surged to 22, a marked increase from 5 and 4 the previous two years,” the organization wrote in a February 7 release. “This spike follows the decision by NHS England to pull down the shutters on gender-affirming healthcare for young trans people” following the Tavistock case.
In total, the NCMD data show 46 transgender children in the U.K. died by suicide between 2019 and 2025. In addition to the nine accounted for between 2019–2021 and the alarming spike to 22 between 2021–2022, the data also show 10 suicide deaths between 2022–2023. And, according to Good Law Project, NCMD added that “the numbers reported in more recent years will likely be underestimated, due to a higher proportion of child death reviews that have not yet been completed.”
Good Law Project said it was “appalled” that U.K. health secretary Wes Streeting “commissioned and published a report to reassure the public that there was no significant rise in suicide rates, when 22 children took their own lives in a single year: 2021-22.” The Appleby report, they said, “denied the reality of trans deaths, as Streeting’s ban on puberty blockers denied the reality of trans lives.”
The nonprofit claims that Streeting department “fought tooth and nail” to block its freedom of information requests.
“To silence those raising the alarm on rising trans suicides as ‘dangerous’ while ramping up the policies correlating with that rise is an act of grave moral wickedness,” the group said.
Trans journalist Erin Reed said of these findings, “More alarming is what appears to be an explicit attempt to cover up trans youth suicide deaths. Those who seek to restrict gender-affirming care also seek to restrict any information showing those restrictions may lead to harm. Among the far right, claims have emerged that transgender youth are in no danger of suicide from the withdrawal of gender-affirming care, but this could not be further from the truth.”
Editor’s note: If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. The Trans Lifeline (1-877-565-8860) is staffed by trans people and will not contact law enforcement. The Trevor Project provides a safe, judgement-free place to talk for youth via chat, text (678-678), or phone (1-866-488-7386). Help is available at all three resources in English and Spanish.
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Again racism for the sake of saving white fraigle feelings. Nothing the president and this white nationalism administration have done to erase the true history of the US has worked to make them feel better about what the white people did in the past to the black people then and what the system is doing to black people now. The right and the white Christian nationlist desperatly always seem to need a scapegoat villain to keep their feelings from being hurt by preconceived slights that the loss of their privileges makes them feel. When everything is given to you automatically, when everything is just normally your privilege to be first and suddenly you have to start standing in line with others it seems like oppression rather than simply being equal to others. Hugs
If President Donald Trump gets his way, the first thing visitors to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History will be greeted with are signs warning them that because of “inaccurate information presented in the Museum” they should seek “accurate information” elsewhere.
The president on Friday ordered the installation of temporary “warning” signs on the museum’s sidewalks, marking a major escalation in his campaign to pressure the Smithsonian Institution to rewrite American history to better align with his administration’s ideology.
The executive order directs Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought and several other Cabinet officials to utilize “all available authorities to encourage” the Smithsonian Institution to “correct the issues found” in a scathing White House report released on July 4 that accused the museum of “extreme political activism” and claimed it “cannot be trusted to tell America’s story honestly and in a way that is inspiring, unifying, and worthy of our great republic.”
The sidewalks and walkways outside of the popular museum, which welcomes just shy of two million visitors annually, are federal property controlled by the National Park Service. The signs would “notify visitors that the Museum exhibits should be renovated consistent” with the findings of the July 4 report. They would also “direct visitors to locations and resources for accurate information regarding America’s history.”
Trump also accused the museum of failing to “to appropriately honor the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence during this 250th anniversary year of the founding of our country,” and instructed Burgum to install “temporary exhibits” on Smithsonian walkways to correct “inaccurate information presented in the Museum.”
“The Report demonstrates that the Smithsonian leadership does not present American history as a shared national inheritance to be taught and celebrated, but instead views American history as a ‘prime tool’ to advance ideas of social justice and the radical transformation of our society,”according to the newly signed executive order.
The signage order followed a week of congressional testimony by Smithsonian officials in hearings called by House Republicans in response to the White House report. Anthea Hartig, head of the National Museum of American History, was grilled over her patriotism and dedication to country.
Hartig said the White House report “does not fairly characterize the full body of work of this museum.” And under questioning from GOP lawmakers she reaffirmed her allegiance to her country multiple times, at one point answering, “I love this country unconditionally.”
The report, oversight hearings and signage demand compound more than a year of the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against the world’s largest museum, education and research complex. In March 2025, Trump signed an executive order that vowed to strip federal funding from Smithsonian programs that present what he viewed as “improper, divisive, or anti-American” ideology.
The Trump administration has since threatened to withhold federal funding from the Smithsonian Institution unless a number of its museums submit documentation for an expansive content review.
Sydney Carruth is a breaking news reporter covering national politics and policy for MS NOW. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at SydneyCarruth.46 or follow her work on X and Bluesky.
In this file photo, Christopher R. Hood Jr. appears at West Roxbury Municipal Court on July 25, 2022, when he was 23 years old. Hood founded the Nationalist Social Club 131 in 2019.Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff
The founder of a neo-Nazi group that sent masked men to protest outside a 2023 drag queen story hour event in Concord, N.H., has admitted their anti-LGBTQ intimidation tactics amounted to a civil rights violation, the New Hampshire attorney general’s office announced Thursday.Christopher R. Hood Jr. of Newburyport, Mass., and his group, the Nationalist Social Club-131, or NSC-131, will be permanently barred by court order from engaging in any further unlawful discriminatory practices, if a judge accepts the deal. Anyone who violates those terms could face further sanctions.Hood, 27, will be required to complete 250 hours of community service and pay $2,500 in civil penalties, plus another $7,500 if he violates the terms of the court’s order, according to a motion filed by prosecutors. He’ll also be barred from coming within 250 feet of the eatery where this occurred or any other Teatotaller Café location.The core allegation in this case was that Hood, his organization, and 19 unnamed co-defendants — who directed intimidating chants and homophobic slurs at those inside the establishment, performed Nazi salutes, and banged on the cafe’s glass windows — had sought to compel a place of public accommodation to engage in unlawful discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity.“No individual or organization has the right to threaten, intimidate, or coerce a New Hampshire business into violating the law or denying lawful access based on protected characteristics,” Attorney General John M. Formella said in a statement.“This resolution delivers accountability and sends the message that organized hate group activity that violates the law will not be tolerated,” he added.The attorneys who represented the defendants in this case, Bradford Ryan Stanton and William E. Gens, didn’t respond to requests for comment.Formella said certain terms under the agreement apply to NSC-131 as an unincorporated association. For example, the group will be permanently barred from all unlawful discriminatory practices and will be prohibited from coming within 250 feet of any location that’s part of the Teatotaller Café business, which has since rebranded as Totally Tea and Coffee.That means an individual who didn’t participate in the 2023 incident could theoretically be subjected to the terms of this agreement in the future, if there is evidence of their affiliation with NSC-131, he said.The motion Formella’s office filed with the court indicates NSC-131 has disbanded and Hood has stated he intends to discontinue his involvement with that group and other organized hate activity.Formella told the Globe that securing a victory in which the defendant admitted wrongdoing represents a significant achievement.“It was worth it, I think, in the greater context of our civil rights efforts to get that admission,” he said.This wasn’t Formella’s first attempt to clamp down on NSC-131’s activity. His office filed a complaint in early 2023 alleging the group had committed civil rights violations by hanging a “Keep New England White” banner from a Portsmouth overpass in 2022. But the New Hampshire Supreme Court ultimately ruled in early 2025 that the prosecution was unconstitutional on free-speech grounds.Formella’s office filed the second case against Hood and NSC-131, regarding the Teatotaller incident, in late 2023.Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell also filed a complaint in late 2023 against Hood, NSC-131, and a group leader named Liam McNeil of Waltham, Mass., over incidents involving LGBTQ events and immigrants in emergency shelters. That case is still pending, according to court records.Hood was formerly part of Patriot Front and the Proud Boys before he founded NSC-131 in late 2019. The members of his group disrupted or shut down several drag queen story events in Massachusetts in 2022, according to the lawsuit. Members of the group regularly wore khaki pants, black shirts or jackets, and ski masks, balaclavas, and neck gaiters to hide their identities.——————————————————————————————————Steven Porter can be reached at steven.porter@globe.com. Follow him @reporterporter.
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