I don’t care if you watch it, but I want to make a point about the resurgence of bathroom bills. You know those bills that say trans people must use the bathroom of their assigned sex at birth. Mostly because cis women have been told that trans women or women who do not look feminine enough will violate and hurt them. Yes we must judge everyone by their looks so we can tell who fits the girl enough or the boy enough categories. We already know that the idea that a person will go to the effort to claim to be trans to assault women in a bathroom is debunked and stupid. If a guy wants to assault women they are not going to change their entire life to do it in a woman’s bathroom, they will just charge into one and do it, or do it when the woman comes out or a dozen other ways. It simply is not reasonable. But let’s go back to comfort. A cis female person I respect said she would be uncomfortable in a bathroom with a “manly looking woman”. OK please look at this person in the video that says they are trans. That means if these “go to the toilet of your assigned birth” laws are enforced this person would be forced by law to use a female’s bathroom no matter how uncomfortable for them or the women. This is the stupidity of these laws and the people pushing the bigotry. Look at this guy, what bathroom does he belong in? These bathroom laws are based in bigotry and made up fears. What are you people doing in the bathroom, holding a social gathering? We have to understand what is driving these bathroom bill laws is an attempt to stop societal change and progression by the groups that are scared of the new ways. The die hard religious groups, the traditionalist who say it was not done this way when I was growing up, and the people that just simply feel the need to control society to make sure it stays the same so they feel comfortable. Hugs
Burried in the story is what I think it clearly amounts to, forcing a change of religion for the child. The Marine claimed that taking the girl amounted to Christian love and that his family was raising the girl as a Christian in a good Christian home, despite the family she was with being devote Muslims who was raising the girl in the Muslim faith. What I don’t understand is this is a simple case of kidnapping and religious bigotry of a adoption court that ruled for the Marine even though other courts and the government had ruled that the little girl belong with the Muslim family. if you read the story the court not only had to skip my of the required procedures in order to let the Marine adopt the child he kidnaped, but they flat out broke the law to do it. I can not understand why this is being allowed. Is it religious bigotry, political, or the fact that he is a Marine that keeps the police from taking the child from the kidnapper and returning her to her real family. Even the US government who said the Marine broke several laws by taking the child has not ordered him to return the child. Weird. Hugs
By MARTHA MENDOZA, CLAIRE GALOFARO and JULIET LINDERMANyesterday
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FILE – A Qatar Airways aircraft takes off with foreigners from the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, Sept. 9, 2021, as some 200 foreigners, including Americans, flew out of the country, the first such large-scale departure since U.S and foreign forces concluded their frantic withdrawal at the end of the previous month. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue, File)
The Afghan woman ran down the street towards her friend’s apartment as soon as she heard the news: the White House had publicly weighed in on her family’s case.
Surely her child, who she says was abducted by a U.S. Marine more than a year ago, would now be returned, she thought. She was so excited that it was only after she’d arrived that she realized she wasn’t wearing any shoes.
“We thought within one week she’d be back to us,” the woman told The Associated Press.
Yet two months after an AP report on the high-stakes legal fight over the child raised alarms at the highest levels of government, from the White House to the Taliban, the baby remains with U.S. Marine Corps Major Joshua Mast and his family. The Masts claim in court documents that they legally adopted the child and that the Afghan couple’s accusations are “outrageous” and “unmerited.”
“We are all concerned with the well being of this child who is at the heart of this matter,” said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre after the AP detailed the child’s plight in October.
Last month, the U.S. Justice Department filed a motion to intervene in the legal wrangling over the fate of the child, arguing that Mast’s adoption should never have been granted. The government has said Mast’s attempts to take the child directly conflicted with a U.S. foreign policy decision to reunite the orphan with her Afghan family. They asked that the case be moved from a rural Virginia court to federal court, but were denied by Presiding Circuit Court Judge Richard E. Moore.
Additionally, federal authorities say multiple investigations are underway.
“We all just want resolution for this child, whatever it’s going to be, so her childhood doesn’t continue to be in limbo,” said Samantha Freed, a court-appointed attorney assigned to look after the best interests of the child. “We need to get this right now. There are no do-overs.”
The legal fight has taken more than a year, and Freed is worried it could take months — maybe even years — more. The child is now 3 ½ years old. The Afghan family spoke with the AP on condition of remaining anonymous out of fear for their safety and concerns for their relatives back in Afghanistan.
Mast became enchanted with the child while on temporary assignment in Afghanistan in late 2019. Just a few months old, the infant had survived a Special Operations raid that killed her parents and five siblings, according to court records.
As she recovered from injuries in a U.S. military hospital, the Afghan government and the International Committee of the Red Cross identified her relatives, and through meetings with the State Department, arranged for their reunification. The child’s cousin and his wife — young newlyweds without children yet of their own — wept when they first saw her, they said: Taking her in and raising her was the greatest honor of their lives.
Nonetheless, Mast — in spite of orders from military officials to stop intervening — was determined to take her home to the United States. He used his status in the military, appealed to political connections in the Trump administration and convinced the small-town Virginia court to skip some of the usual safeguards that govern international adoptions.
Finally, when the U.S. military withdrew from Afghanistan last summer, he helped the family get to the United States. After they arrived, they say, he took their baby from them at the Fort Pickett Virginia Army National Guard base. They haven’t seen her since and are suing to get her back.
The Afghan woman gave birth to a daughter just weeks after the girl they’d been raising was taken from them. Every time they buy an outfit or a present for their daughter, they buy a second matching one for the child they pray will come back to them soon.
The Masts did not respond to repeated requests for an interview. Stepping out from a recent hearing, Joshua Mast told AP they’ve been advised not to speak publicly.
In court filings, Mast says he acted “admirably” to bring the child to the United States and care for her with his wife. They say they’ve given her “a loving home” and have “done nothing but ensure she receives the medical care she requires, at great personal expense and sacrifice.” Mast celebrated his adoption of the child, whose Afghan family is Muslim, as an act of Christian faith.
The toddler’s future is now set to be decided in a sealed, secret court case in rural Virginia — in the same courthouse that granted Mast custody. The federal government has described that custody order as “unlawful,” “improper” and “deeply flawed and incorrect” because it was based on a promise that Afghanistan would waive jurisdiction over the child, which never happened.
The day Mast and his wife Stephanie Mast were granted a final adoption, the child was 7,000 miles away with the Afghan couple who knew nothing about it.
In court, Mast, still an active duty Marine, cast doubt on whether the Afghan couple is related to her at all. They argue that the little girl is “ an orphan of war and a victim of terrorism, rescued under tragic circumstances from the battlefield.” They say she is a “stateless minor” because she was recovered from a compound Mast says was used by foreign fighters not from Afghanistan.
The case has been consumed by a procedural question: Does the Afghan family — who raised the child for a year and a half — have a right under Virginia law to even challenge the adoption?
Judge Moore ruled in November that the Afghan family does have legal standing; the Masts’ appeal is under review.
The child’s Afghan relatives, currently in Texas, believe the U.S. government should be doing more to help them, because numerous federal agencies were involved in the ordeal.
“The government is not doing their job as they should,” said the Afghan woman. “And in this process, we are suffering.”
A State Department official said one of the agency’s own social workers stood with Mast when he took the baby at Fort Pickett, but “had no awareness of the U.S. Embassy’s previous involvement in reuniting the child with her next of kin in Afghanistan.” The official described how the U.S. had worked hard in Afghanistan to unite the child with her relatives.
“We recognize the human dimension of this situation,” said the official.
The Department of Defense said in a statement that the decision to reunite the child with her family was in keeping with the U.S. government’s foreign obligations, as well as international law principles that mandate family reunification of children displaced in war. The Defense Department said it is aware that Mast “took custody” of the child but declined to comment further.
The Afghan couple pleaded for help from the tangle of agencies at Fort Pickett: the military, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the police. Some didn’t believe them, some said there was nothing they could do, some tried to intervene to no avail.
The couple eventually reached Martha Jenkins, an attorney volunteering at the base.
“When I first heard their story, I thought there must be something lost in translation — how could this be true?” said Jenkins. She contacted authorities.
Almost two months after they lost the child, Virginia State Police dispatch records obtained by the AP show “an advocate” called to report what had happened.
“The family is on Fort Pickett, they are requesting an investigation to the validity of the adoption and if it was done under false pretenses,” wrote the dispatcher. The record notes that the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI were involved.
Jenkins, who was in Virginia temporarily, called every Virginia adoption attorney she could find until she reached Elizabeth Vaughan.
“It was very surprising to me that no one helped them,” said Vaughan, who offered to represent the Afghan couple for free. “I don’t think they had a lot of the paperwork Americans like to see when someone’s proving that they have custody. But there are laws about people, trusted adults, who arrive with a child. So much more investigating should have been done.”
A Marine Corps spokesperson wrote in a statement that they are fully cooperating with federal law enforcement investigations, including at least one focused on the alleged unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material. In emails Mast sent asking for help bringing the child from Afghanistan, now submitted as exhibitions in court, he referenced reading classified documents about the raid that killed the girl’s family.
Investigators and prosecutors declined to comment, citing the ongoing inquiries.
On the other side of the globe, the Taliban issued a statement saying it “will seriously pursue this issue with American authorities so that the said child is returned to her relatives.”
Now every night before bed, the Afghan couple scroll through an album of 117 photos of the year and half they spent raising her — a sassy child with big bright eyes, who loved to dress up in shiny colors and gold bangle bracelets. There’s a photo of the child wearing a black and green tunic and tiny gold sandals, nestled on the young Afghan man’s lap, smiling mischievously at the camera. In one video, she runs alongside the man, bouncing down the sidewalk to keep up with his stride.
They’ll soon be moving to a new two-bedroom apartment. There, they say, the little girl’s room will be ready for her, whenever she comes home.
The weird thing is this entire lie is not needed unless they want to claim to be victims and then vindicated. Every article on this I have read states that what he demanded the libraries do is to give him the space and promote his Christian religious readings. That was the rub he wanted the libraries to sponsor him, pay him, and promote his religion. They refused. But they all allowed him to book a room and promote it himself, but that wouldn’t give him the media anti-drag queen vibe he wanted. So then he agrees to book a room, holds his reading which has very few kids and lots of adults, and lies about the mass of people attending. He claims 2,500 people attended, look how much more popular god is than the sinful drag queens. But as the library says, their biggest room only holds 300 people. And he did not book the biggest room. Why the need to lie? To push the idea that his god is great and popular and yes the right wing rabid media will report that number as truth knowing it is a lie. As I was once told it is not a lie if it is for Christ or if it helps us win. Hugs.
Actor Kirk Cameron went on Fox News Channel on Friday to discuss his fight against libraries who have been turning down story-hour book-reading pitches from the publisher of Cameron’s new children’s book As You Grow.
The sit-down came after a reading Thursday a the Indianapolis Public Library drew a sizable crowd — though the library disputes the attendance figures given by publisher Brave Books and repeated by Cameron on air.
Brave Books tweeted out Thursday that the event drew “over 2,500 people,” calling it a record crowd in the library’s 137-year history — stats Cameron referenced on the air. The library disputed that today.
Read the full article. The video below from Cameron’s publisher has 1.1 million views at this writing.
We are being inaccurately portrayed in news/social after a room rental yesterday. Our estimated door count during the event is around 750, not 2500. We've had larger events. We turn 150 yrs old in 2023. And our auditorium, which our guests chose not to rent, holds 300, not 2000. pic.twitter.com/ETwtOhS7AP
The same Heritage Foundation judicial organization funded by wealthy Christion dominionists billionaires that also are funding the rabid right wing groups attacking the trans kids and drag queens. All in an attempt to stop the US from joining every other industrial advanced nation in the world in advancing civil rights and social understanding. These people are demanding the US retreat into a world they think existed long ago written about 2,500 years ago by people who did not understand anything about germs, the earth being round, space itself, or biology because they thought / wrote that striped sticks seen while animals bred would cause the color of the offspring. Think of that last alone. The people the fundamentalists are basing their anti-trans idea on comes from people who thought striped sticks (some versions say just sticks or branches) caused a difference in the color of the birthed offspring if the animals seen them while fucking. Really that is the level of understanding these people are basing their anti-trans, they’re there is no such thing as a different gender ID than the one identified at birth? I am tired of trying to play nice on this with these assholes. These are the same people that bankrolled a bunch of ideologs on to the SCOTUS who rushed to help trump because he was promoting their god and a future theocracy and are doing everything they can to deny Biden the same presidential powers because they want to enforce racism and religion. Let those with eyes see the truth of it. Hugs
Arizona v. Mayorkas, the Court’s new Title 42 decision, appears to be the latest act of gamesmanship by a Republican Supreme Court.
Former President Donald Trump shakes hands with Justice Brett Kavanaugh before delivering the State of the Union address on February 5, 2019. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
Ian Millhiser is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States. He received a JD from Duke University and is the author of two books on the Supreme Court.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court handed down a one-page, 5-4 decision extending the life of a Trump-era border policy known as Title 42, which expels numerous immigrants seeking to enter the United States using an expedited process.
That decision came in Arizona v. Mayorkas, and is typical behavior from the Supreme Court — or, at least, is reflective of this Court’s behavior since a Democrat moved into the White House at the beginning of 2021. It’s the latest example of the Court dragging its feet after a GOP-appointed lower court judge overrides the Biden administration’s policy judgments, often letting that one judge decide the nation’s policy for nearly an entire year.
The Title 42 program, which the Biden administration determined must be terminated last May, will now likely remain in effect for several more months due to the Court’s decision. Indeed, even if the Court ultimately decides that the administration should prevail in this case, the Court is unlikely to lift its order extending this Trump-era program until June. And that delay may be the best-case scenario for the Biden administration — and for the general principle that unelected judges aren’t supposed to decide the nation’s border policy.
A brief history of the Supreme Court’s politicized scheduling
In August 2021, a Trump-appointed judge named Matthew Kacsmaryk handed down a poorly reasoned opinion ordering the Biden administration to reinstate a program, known as “Remain in Mexico,” that required many asylum seekers to stay on the Mexican side of the US southern border while they awaited a hearing. Although the Supreme Court eventually reversed Kacsmaryk, it sat on the case for more than 10 months — effectively letting Kacsmaryk exercise the homeland security secretary’s authority over the border during that entire period.
Worse, when the Court did eventually decide this case, known as Biden v. Texas, it left one looming issue in the lawsuit unresolved and sent the case back to Kacsmaryk. The Supreme Court determined that Kacsmaryk misread federal immigration law to only give the federal government two alternatives when an asylum seeker arrives at the Mexican border, when in fact the government has many options. It left open the question of whether the Biden administration properly completed the appropriate paperwork when it terminated Remain in Mexico.
When the case returned to Kacsmaryk, a former Christian right activist with a record of granting legally dubious victories to conservative litigants, he handed down a second order indicating that the administration must reinstate the Remain in Mexico program. It could be a year or more before the Supreme Court gets around to reviewing Kacsmaryk’s new attempt to impose Trump’s immigration policies on the country.
Similarly, last July, a Trump judge named Drew Tipton effectively seized control of much of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s authority over Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency that enforces immigration law within US borders. Tipton’s opinion is exceedingly weak and cannot be squared with more than a century of Supreme Court precedents, and a majority of the justices appeared likely to reverse Tipton during oral arguments on the case in November.
But the Court has also sat on this case for months, rejecting the Justice Department’s request to immediately restore Secretary Mayorkas’s lawful authority over ICE in July. The Supreme Court may not rule on the case, known as United States v. Texas, until next June — at which point Tipton will have unlawfully usurped Mayorkas’s authority for 11 months.
The Court’s tendency to manipulate its own calendar isn’t restricted to immigration cases. One of the most high-profile examples of the Court delaying resolution of a case brought by left-leaning litigants occurred in September 2021, before the Court’s 2022 decision overruling Roe v. Wade. A 5-4 Court refused to decide a case challenging Texas’s strict anti-abortion law known as SB 8, effectively allowing Texas to ban many abortions while Roe remained good law. (In fairness, the Court did eventually rule on SB 8 the next December, but that decision established that SB 8 is immune from any meaningful constitutional challenge.)
The Court, which currently has a Republican supermajority, did not behave this way when a Republican occupied the White House. In Barr v. East Bay Sanctuary(2019), for example, a lower court blocked a Trump administration policy that effectively locked virtually all Central American migrants out of the asylum process. The Trump administration asked the justices to reinstate this policy in late August 2019, and the Court agreed to do so about two weeks later.
Similarly, in Wolf v. Cook County(2020), the Court reinstated a Trump administration policy targeting low-income immigrants — and it did so just eight days after Trump’s lawyers asked the Court to do so.
Indeed, under Trump, the Court was so quick to intervene when a lower court blocked one of the Republican administration’s policies that Justice Sonia Sotomayor complained in dissent that her GOP-appointed colleagues were “putting a thumb on the scale in favor of” the Trump administration.
As these cases show, the Supreme Court can wield tremendous power not just by handing down substantive rulings that determine what federal law requires. It can often reshape federal policy for months or even longer by manipulating how quickly it attends to the cases on its docket.
Although the Court has historically discouraged litigants of all kinds from seeking relief on its so-called “shadow docket,” cases that are decided using an expedited process and without full briefing or oral argument, these longstanding norms faded away when Trump was president. When lower courts blocked Trump policies, the Court frequently raced to reinstate those polices.
Judicial partisanship, in other words, is often much more subtle than a Supreme Court opinion definitively ruling that the law must be read to implement Republican policies. Sometimes, locking GOP policies in place, at least temporarily, can be accomplished with little more than creative scheduling.
The winding road that brought Title 42 to the Supreme Court
Setting aside the question of when the Court will determine if the Title 42 program should continue to exist, it should be noted that the Court’s decision in Arizona is difficult to defend on the merits. As Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee who normally behaves like a doctrinaire conservative, writes in his Arizona dissent, the Title 42 program was justified by a public health emergency — the acute phase of the Covid-19 pandemic — which has “long since lapsed.”
Federal law permits the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to “prohibit, in whole or in part, the introduction of persons and property from such countries or places as [it] shall designate in order to avert” the spread of a “communicable disease” that is present in a foreign country. Beginning in late 2020, when the Covid pandemic was raging, the Trump administration used this authority to order large numbers of noncitizens arriving at the Canadian and Mexican borders to be immediately expelled from the United States.
The program is called “Title 42” because the statute permitting it to exist is part of Title 42 of the United States Code.
The Biden administration, for its part, decided to leave this policy in place for more than a year after President Biden took office — Title 42 is both a useful tool for officials seeking to limit immigration at the southern border and an increasingly difficult-to-justify tool because its only legal basis is a statute permitting temporary immigration restrictions to prevent the spread of disease.
Eventually, the Biden administration determined that the program could no longer be called necessary. On April 1, the CDC concluded that “the cross-border spread of COVID-19 due to covered noncitizens does not present the serious danger to public health that it once did, given the range of mitigation measures now available.” Accordingly, the CDC announced that it would terminate the Title 42 policy as of May 23, 2022.
But that order never took effect. Shortly after CDC announced that the Title 42 program would end, a group of Republican state officials filed a lawsuit claiming that the program must continue in order to maintain what they described as “the abrupt elimination of the only safety valve preventing this Administration’s disastrous border policies from devolving into an unmitigated chaos and catastrophe.” The case was assigned to Judge Robert Summerhays, a Trump appointee to a federal court in Louisiana, and Summerhays issued an order requiring the administration to continue the policy three days before Title 42 was supposed to end.
Summerhays’s decision is wrong. In it, he claims that the Biden administration was required to undergo a lengthy process known as “notice and comment,” which can take months or years to complete, before it could terminate the Title 42 program. But the whole point of the public health statute at issue in this case is that sometimes the government has to issue emergency immigration orders to mitigate a public health crisis.
If the government had to complete a months-long process every time it issues an order under this statute, then the statute serves no purpose. If a new disease were to emerge in, say, Switzerland tomorrow, it would be pointless for the government to close the border to Swiss people months from now. Such an emergency order must be issued as fast as possible.
Nor should a different process apply when the CDC decides to lift an emergency order. As the Supreme Court said in Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Association (2015), “agencies use the same procedures when they amend or repeal a rule as they used to issue the rule in the first instance.”
In any event, Summerhays’s decision is not currently before the Supreme Court — it’s currently on appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. But the decision matters because his order is the specific thing that prevents the Biden administration from terminating the Title 42 program immediately.
The Arizona case — the one that is actually before the Supreme Court — involves a parallel lawsuit heard by Clinton-appointed Judge Emmet Sullivan, in a case called Huisha-Huisha v. Mayorkas. That decision determined that the Title 42 program is itself unlawful and must be terminated.
Frankly, there is nearly as much to criticize in Sullivan’s opinion as there is to criticize in Summerhays’s. Both decisions depart from the ordinary rule that public health policy should be set by officials who are accountable to an elected president, and not by unelected judges. They also depart from the text of the relevant public health statute, which provides that public health officials — and not judges like Robert Summerhays or Emmet Sullivan — should determine when emergency immigration restrictions should be implemented to control the spread of a communicable disease.
But Sullivan’s order would also have the practical effect of implementing the same policy that the Biden administration sought to put in place last May. While Summerhays attacked the CDC’s order terminating the Title 42 program, Sullivan concluded that the Title 42 program is itself illegal and must be terminated on his authority.
Except that the Supreme Court decided to halt Sullivan’s order, at least for now.
The Supreme Court’s Title 42 decision makes no sense
If you are confused by this convoluted tale of two competing lawsuits, I should warn you that things are about to get even more complicated.
The Biden administration did not seek a prolonged stay of Sullivan’s order, which means that this order should be in effect right now and the Title 42 program should be terminated. But the states behind the Louisiana lawsuit (the one heard by Summerhays), did ask a federal appeals court to stay Sullivan’s order — even though those states are not a party to the Huisha-Huisha lawsuit.
While it is sometimes possible for a non-party to a lawsuit to “intervene” in a case, and gain the power to act as if they were a party to the suit in the process, a bipartisan appeals court panel determined that the red states waited too long to intervene in the Huisha-Huisha case. That order — not the merits of Sullivan’s decision, but the appeals court order determining that the states waited too long — is what’s before the Supreme Court in the Arizona case.
The Court’s 5-4 decision in Arizona, meanwhile, effectively ruled that the Title 42 program must remain in effect while the justices consider whether the red states failed to intervene in the Huisha-Huisha case in a timely manner.
So, to summarize, one judge, a Republican, has determined that the Republican Party’s preferred immigration policy must remain in effect. His opinion is poorly reasoned and at odds both with a federal statute and with binding Supreme Court precedents. Meanwhile, a second judge, a Democratic appointee, has determined that the Republican Party’s preferred immigration policy is illegal.
The CDC — the only institution that actually has the statutory authority to determine when the Title 42 program should be terminated — decided that this program must end in May. But CDC’s April order has been trapped in limbo for months due to the Republican judge’s erroneous decision. And it is now likely to be trapped in limbo for much longer while the Supreme Court ponders a minor procedural question about when parties seeking to intervene in a lawsuit must do so.
All of this is happening, moreover, against the backdrop of a Supreme Court that took only days to determine that a Republican administration’s policies must be put into effect right away, but that often sits on cases blocking Democratic policies for months — even when the justices ultimately determine that the lower court’s order blocking the Democratic policy was wrong.
In 2021, Trump-appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett delivered a speech at the University of Louisville’s McConnell Center (named for Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell), in which she announced that her goal was “to convince you that this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks.” But if that is truly her goal, she and her colleagues might want to consider applying the same scheduling rules to cases brought by Republicans that her Court applies to cases brought by Democrats.
For those who had any doubts that this was not really the people rising up but actually a well funded well organized by right wing billionaires’ effort to stop society from progressing further from the bible views of how to live. This article points out how these groups get started and funded. It points out the ones driving these issues are the religious ones founded by Christian fundamentalist billionaires with the goal of creating a repressive society that will conform to a hierarchical theocracy with them at the top being the rulers. It is not so much about god as it is power to rule over others as god’s messengers. The interview is not long but really informative. Hugs
Imara Jones accepting the NABJ-NAHJ Journalist of Distinction AwardPhoto: Screenshot
Imara Jones is an award-winning journalist, thought leader, and content creator whose work focuses on trans people and the intersection of religious fundamentalism, the LGBTQ+ community, and civil rights. The sequel to her award-winning podcast The Anti-Trans Hate Machinedrops in March.
Jones shared some time on a chilly afternoon in Brooklyn to describe the state of the far right’s campaign targeting trans kids, drag queens, and “groomers,” from a billionaire Christian cabal spreading nationalist gospel and unlimited cash to a new and made-to-order frontline hate group called Gays Against Groomers.
LGBTQ Nation:I imagine for your work it’s got to be a full-time job just keeping up with all the connections between attacks and protests and media fueling them, and the money fueling the organizations. Do you have a giant bulletin board in your office, like a detective, with pictures and pushpins and strings connecting everything?
IJ:Yes, we have. Generally, we create what we call sitemaps. And we kind of look for who’s where, and who are they connected to, and how they link back. And at a certain point it, you know, you don’t even have to do that as much anymore because you hear a name, or you see an organization, and you go, “Oh yeah, there are links to X.” In the right-wing space that fuels a lot of his hate, you see the usual suspects and don’t have to look that hard.
LGBTQ Nation:There’s been a recent focus on drag shows and story time hours by frontline groups and media outlets like Libs of TikTok and Project Veritas. Is that a shift away from casting young people as villains, like the ones playing girls’ sports and 10-year-olds testifying in state legislatures, and moving to adults as villains or what they’re calling groomers? Is that an easier sell for hate groups and far-right media than attacks on kids and parents?
IJ:I don’t see it as an either/or. I see it as an expansion of the battlespace rather than a conversion of it from one thing to the other. We have to understand from the perspective of the right that these distinctions about gender and gender identity, it’s like blurred into one thing. Drag is very threatening because it has wide acceptance. It’s about bending gender, right? And about the part of gender that’s an illusion. And so for them that fits very much in the space of trans people.
And when I look at conservative media, they haven’t let up at all on trans people and trans kids. You know, we have anti-trans bills that were passed this year in Georgia and in Florida, and as a centerpiece of the campaigns of [Republican Gov. of Texas] Greg Abbott and [Republican Gov. of Florida] Ron DeSantis, and on and on and on. There was a huge emphasis in Uvalde in an online campaign that moved to conservative media that then moved to a member of Congress to say that the shooter was trans. So, I don’t think that it’s a flip. It’s looking new to us because it’s greatly expanded, but it’s actually not.
LGBTQ Nation: Tell us about the Betsy DeVos/Prince clan, and why we don’t hear about their influence.
IJ:Can I take those questions in reverse? I would say why don’t we hear about it, one, because they’re powerful people and people are afraid of powerful people, including newspapers, and we know that. Secondly, I think it’s because they have a degree of mainstream credibility because she was a secretary of education, even in the midst of a controversial administration. And one of the reasons why they’re so effective is because their extremism is cloaked behind this air of comity and rectitude. There’s a certain way in which she composes herself, which I think doesn’t scream extremist.
LGBTQ Nation:And how about the DeVos/Prince clan itself?
IJ:When we say the DeVos family, we’re talking about the fusion of two billionaire families into one. Betsy DeVos was born Betsy Prince into the really wealthy Prince family. And then she married Richard DeVos. It’s actually a giant clan, a billionaire clan. And there is not a far-right organization, and in many cases designated hate groups, who exist without the largess of that family. Betsy DeVos, or Betsy Prince and her husband, Richard DeVos are the second generation in this billionaire kind of clan.
Richard DeVos’ father, for example, was extremely important to the founding of the Heritage Foundation. The Prince family, which is Betsy DeVos, helped to fund the headquarters of the Family Research Council, which is designated by the SPLC [Southern Poverty Law Center] as a hate group. And they’ve been involved in so many far-right organizations throughout the decades. And so what you have here in this second generation is kind of a sophistication of their operation and particularly in Betsy Prince, this kind of fusion of strategy, of money and a whole host of other things.
LGBTQ Nation:How does that manifest itself?
IJ: So this family is kind of the royal family of the Christian nationalist movement. And they set the example for how to move money throughout the right wing for all of the other really wealthy families. They participated in an annual gathering of Christian nationalist billionaires called The Gathering, in which Betsy DeVos is on tape coaching them in terms of how, as a wealthy person in this far-right movement, you move money to other things, and encouraging them to do so. There is religious extremism in their views, which is what’s driving a lot of this.
As well, all of the Trump administration’s anti-trans policies came out of the DeVos Center for Family and Religion that’s housed in the Heritage Foundation. People were moved from that center into the Trump administration where they began to disseminate these policies. I think that we have to keep in mind that Betsy DeVos is just the most visible person of this large, far-right billionaire clan that has been active for over 40 years.
LGBTQ Nation:How did DeVos end up as education secretary in the Trump Administration?
IJ:They didn’t know who to appoint to anything because their win was a surprise, right? So they were like, “What in the world are we going to do?” So they turned to Erik Prince. It’s gonna sound familiar, younger brother of Betsy. And he’s like, okay, we’ll get you linked up with the right people. And one, he clued them into his sister and, two, they went to the Heritage Foundation, and the Heritage Foundation said, “Boy, you know, this is actually what we’ve wanted to do for a really long time.”
And so it flows that the Heritage Foundation would recommend Betsy DeVos because their family is a longtime founder at that center and they know that she’s been really active in education and educational circles. And then they basically started to populate the entire administration with people recommended by a combination of the Heritage Foundation and Erik Prince and that’s literally how she got in the mix.
LGBTQ Nation:The DeVos family are adherents of Dominionism. What is that?
In Ecclesiastes, there is the charge to basically create theocracies that are based on kind of a real religious caste system. And so how do you do that? The way you do that is something called Dominionism. And that is to say that you seize the seven mountains of society, you gain control of those things. And once you have control of them, you can then move society towards this theocratic vision. And so what are some of the seven mountains? They’re business and finance, they’re education, they’re the media, arts, etc. So the charge for Betsy DeVos at this epic gathering in the early 2000s was to charge really wealthy people and billionaires to pick their mountain, and then focus on it. As people who have been told over and over and over that their wealth flows from the fact that they are chosen and special, you can see how they gravitate towards something like Dominionism, and they have. Their whole family has.
LGBTQ Nation: I’d like to zero in on one particular group as an example of one at the bottom of this organizational hierarchy. What can you tell us about Gays Against Groomers? It appeared out of nowhere about six months ago, fully formed and led by a woman named Jaimee Michell. Do you think it’s organic?
IJ:There’s very little on the right that’s organic. It’s really funny, because I have to explain this a lot to mainstream and even the liberal funders, where, you know, on the left, a lot of things are organic, and people just form them and then they get funded. A lot of times, what happens on the right is, they’ll say, “Who’s gonna start an organization that will do X?” And then someone raises their hand.
This is one of the things we’re going to document next year on the podcast, but one of the things that they do on the right is that they go out and they shop for people from the communities that they’re targeting who are willing to essentially carry the message that they want them to carry if they give them a large enough check. And so they will go out and they’ll look for a Jaimee Michell — this is not uncommon — they’ll be actively looking for these people online or elsewhere. And once they find them, they will either engage them or platform them or say, “Can we introduce you to other people?” and that’s literally how it gets started.
A lot of the TERFs that you see platformed, and TERF organizations, it’s all because the Heritage Foundation went and found them and put them on a panel, and after that, all those people began to be kind of off to the races in terms of their public voice and platforming and a whole host of other things.
LGBTQ Nation:It says very prominently on the Gays Against Groomers website that they’re “a 100% independent, self-funded nonprofit organization.”
IJ: They’re not an official 501(c)(3). I think they claim that. I don’t think there are any 990’s on them. So, to self-assert that you’re self-funded, without in any way showing that you’re self-funded, and the fact that they have so many people — I can look at it right now and say they have a budget of close to a million dollars? Or over a million dollars? So where did that come from? There’s not a million dollars-worth of Gays Against Groomers money in the gay community, right? It’s not an organic conversation. Whereas like, okay, Gays Against Guns. Can they go out and do a GoFundMe campaign amongst people, raise money? Yeah. There’s support for that. But no, there’s nothing organic about this. It reads to me like a slick version of the ex-gay organizations that were funded and founded by Focus on the Family in the 1980’s.
LGBTQ Nation:What’s in store for Season 2 of Anti-Trans Hate Machine?
IJ: We are focusing on the way that the right has manufactured a cultural and media debate about the validity and worthiness of trans people and trans kids, and then has gone on to weaponize that to justify both political and actual violence.
LGBTQ Nation:What do you mean by weaponize, exactly?
IJ:So, you create a conversation. It’s like what happened in the 1930s — and there’s nothing analogous to the Holocaust — but there is an analogy to how you got there as a society. And one of the things that happened in the 1930s is that they just started a conversation about the bad people that needed to be separated from Germany. And that conversation was actually started by the Nazis. Once that conversation had reached a certain level, they use it as justification — they weaponized it — to then begin this campaign of physical separation and then targeting. You create the conversation, and then you recognize the conversation that you created, in order to take the action that you really want to take.
It was one of the most elaborate mid-winter parties in human history. Fragrant boughs of fir trees decked the halls, genitalia-shaped cakes accented banquet tables overflowing with food, and rich slave owners – sometimes tarted up in elaborate drag – served their domestics the best cuts of meat while high on a combination of booze, sex, and gratitude. Social norms were paused for a whole week of December, pranks and taboos prioritized, and all workers given PTO.
It was called Saturnalia, and the church snuffed it out.
But this ancient Pagan festival honoring Saturn, Greek titan of agriculture, and not starving to death, developed beyond being a colorful end-of-the-year bash for Zeus’ Zaddy (according to mythology Saturn, aka Cronus, was father to gods Poseidon, Hades, and Zeus, among others). In the hands of the Romans, the celebration was curated to not only encourage egalitarianism, but also to appreciate working class and enslaved peoples’ contributions to functioning society.
And because all of it was rooted in Greek traditions, Saturnalia was more than a little gay.
I asked Susan Lanigan, anthropologist and bioarchaeologist, to rate how queer Saturnalia was on a scale of Nick Cannon to Harvey Fierstein.
“Somewhere in the Fierstein category, cuddled firmly between Elton John and Liberace,” Lanigan explains without hesitation. “It’s no secret Ancient Greece was super queer, but the Romans were a bit more prudish and often kept queer relationships in the taboo category. However, Saturnalia was all about emulating the social freedom integral to Greek culture. Hence, drag was openly encouraged. We have more than one record from the period describing boys running naked through the streets, men dressed as women, women dressed as men, masters of the house waiting on slaves, and an overabundance of wine, cunnilingus, and fruitcake. In that order.”
Which is the correct order. Fruitcake before cunnilingus is how infections happen.
The heyday that Lanigan references begins around 133 B.C. Saturnalia did exist before this, but as a shorter, day-long feast on December 25, and with less of the stylized shenanigans which would eventually characterize the festival’s approximate stretch from December 17-23.
One hallmark of the longer, more-involved Saturnalia festivities was the election of a Saturnalicius princeps, who became each household’s designated “King of Saturnalia.” This agent of chaos, usually plucked from the servant class, was chosen specifically to lead the home in celebratory debauchery, which could range from elaborate pranks to Friar’s Club-style roasts of guests; erotic cake bake-offs to scavenger hunts; nude choral performances to full-on orgies.
If you’ve ever been to a New Orleans Mardi Gras, or celebrated Venetian Carnival, you’re familiar with this socially playful “king for a day” concept, as well as the grace extended to Lords of Misrule for whatever they pulled before everyone sobered up.
Many elements of ancient Saturnalia are still visible in the contemporary West today. Wreaths of evergreen trees, candlelit altars and dinner tables, stacks of gifts, and seasonal songs are just a few. The combination of drag, social inversion, and bawdy jokes are hallmarks of the long holiday tradition of British pantomime pageants, as well as countless TV specials in the USA.
As the 4th century came to a close Saturnalia was systematically replaced with a party for Jesus Christ. Despite evidence that Jesus was actually a Spring baby, it was decided through a combination of politicking and purposeful cultural appropriation – shoehorning pagan traditions into Christianity made the viral religion more appealing to potential converts – that December 25th was henceforth Christ’s birthday.
Christmas rituals began to supplant centuries of Greek-style revelry. Saturnia’s admirable practice of giving working-class people a seat at the table, and repaying the lowest social castes for their struggle with gifts, was diluted over the next several centuries to sung platitudes like “peace on earth, goodwill to men,” which is a nice idea with no assimilable nutritional value.
Saturnalia’s cheery December cries of “io Saturnalia!” (“io” is pronounced “ho”) mutated into Santa’s “Ho Ho Ho” and “Merry Christmas,” and wandering choruses started wearing Puritanical robes instead of showing up buck naked. **sad trombone sounds here**
None of this means modern-day revelers can’t close their calendar year with their own Saturnalia, however. For the sake of not getting arrested some changes to the O.G. itinerary are necessary, but many parts of the ancient festival are still accessible to anyone with a little altruism and/or a decent wig collection.
“Since Saturnalia was like the lovechild of Carnival and Christmas, elaborate costumes and thoughtful gift-giving are the way to go,” Lanigan offers to anyone looking to partake. “If you happen to do both of those things while getting drunk at an orgy, well…you’re on the right track. Just make sure everyone involved is good, giving, and game, friends.”
I wonder if the far right republican fascist hate drag because it is the opposite of what they are. Drag is about exploring boundaries, about expressing yourself, about color and fun. What is authoritarian fascism about? doing what you are told, stay in the line, don’t be an individual, don’t be colorful, always fit nicely in the boxes. Hugs
Over the past year, the sense of safety and joy experienced at drag performances has been punctured and replaced.
“Baby, you’re a plaaaaaaastic bag,” sings the drag queen Per Sia, parodying Katy Perry’s “Firework” as reusable tote bags sail around a usually-silent library in San Francisco. The children around her delight in the chaos, hanging on to Sia’s every word. Between sermons on the importance of reducing plastic and loving yourself, the kids leap up, grab the floating tote bags, and begin to dance. Their bodies wiggle with glee as they experience the joy — costumes! music! dance! — of drag.
The scene would be familiar to any kindergarten teacher: “It’s the play and pleasure of reading time, but dialed up a few notches,” says Harper Keenan, a Professor of Education and Pedagogy at the University of British Columbia. Keenan is referring to Drag Story Hour, events where drag performers read, sing, and make crafts with children in schools, libraries, and bookstores across the country.
Sia, who is an elementary school teacher, says that when she began performing for Drag Story Hours, “we would walk into schools and get treated like royalty.” Initially the opportunity to integrate her expertise in early childhood education with drag was a dream come true. It was a chance to embody her full humanity and show students that a world existed in which they could unapologetically be themselves, too.
Over the past year, however, that sense of safety and joy has been punctured and replaced with a miasma of fear and danger. A year ago, a sizeable backlash against the art form seemed an improbability, but this year, threats against drag performances across the country, including Drag Story Hours, have increased in number and hostility. In Oklahoma, a donut shop was fire-bombed for the second time this year after hosting a drag performance. In Nevada, a man identified as a member of the Proud Boys, a white nationalist group, interrupted a Drag Story Hour reading with a gun, forcing the children in attendance to flee for safety. And in California, a group of eight Proud Boys stormed into a library where drag performer Panda Dulce was reading to children. The men made white power hand gestures and hurtled homophobic and transphobic comments at Dulce, who was rushed out of the room, along with the children. According to several parents in attendance, the far-right protesters were traumatizing the children they claimed to want to protect.
These are just some specific examples of a worsening trend. This already-horrific year, which saw at least 124 significant threats and protests against drag performances, according to a November report from GLAAD, was punctuated by immense tragedy on November 19, when a shooter killed five people during a “Drag Divas” night at Club Q in Colorado Springs. An art form that has provided LGBTQ+ people a sense of community for decades has been weaponized against them, and has forced drag queens to question what safety means in a culture intent on causing them harm.
Per Sia, courtesy of the artist.
The current string of attacksagainst drag performers is part of a broader movement by the far-right to demonize LGBTQ+ people, including by claiming they are “groomers” and “pedophiles,” and therefore a threat to young children. Across the media landscape, from Fox News host Tucker Carlson to the far-right podcast InfoWars, conservative pundits are increasingly perpetuating the dangerous, harmful lie that proximity to drag queens and trans and nonbinary people increases the likelihood of child abuse.
Accounts like Libs of TikTok, a conservative social media account that has become notorious for anti-queer and anti-drag rhetoric, post videos making fun of LGBTQ+ people and drag performers without context or consent. The video has also been caught posting doctored videos that make it seem as if drag queens are performing sexually in front of children, even if the videos are blatantly false. Criminal investigators even believe that Libs of TikTok may have provoked the Proud Boys attack on Drag Story Hour in California. In a segment from October, Carlson, who has been a vocal supporter of the social media account, called on his three million nightly viewers to “arm” themselves against drag performers. This messaging has been dangerously effective: according to the Human Rights Campaign, there was a 406% increase in tweets using “groomer” or “pedophile” in the first six months of 2022. Tragically, there has been accompanying escalation of attacks on drag performers during the same period.
“The LGBTQ+ community is constantly at the whim of disinformation and misinformation,” activist Raquel Willis wrote on Instagram the day after the Colorado Springs shooting. “Hateful politicians craft dangerous narratives about us and encourage the general public to continue to do the same. Ignorance is disgusting AF and we need to be vigilant about confronting it.”
As Willis notes, these in-person acts of violence are often stoked — and, in some cases, engineered — by far-right politicians. Florida Governor Ron Desantis has stated that parents who bring children to drag shows should be investigated for child abuse. Florida Senator Marco Rubio even featured Lil Miss Hot Mess, a member of Drag Story Hour, in a reelection campaign video in which he claimed that the “radical left” seeks to “indoctrinate children and turn boys into girls.” These politicians foster a climate of fear in which hatred and misinformation proliferates.
However, as many drag performers are quick to point out, this rhetoric obscures the fact that gender identity and drag are distinct, though sometimes overlapping, categories. Both cisgender men and transgender women, for example, can do drag. Crucially, though, “drag generally refers to a kind of consciously artistic performance intended for an audience. In contrast, trans people do not seek primarily to entertain,” wrote Keenan and Lil’ Miss Hot Mess in a June 2021 academic article about Drag Story Hour.
According to Keenan, though, violence against drag queens is rooted in transmisogyny, or the intersection of transphobia and misogyny as experienced by trans women and transfeminine people. In videos such as Rubio’s, the phrase “turning boys into girls” exemplifies this trans and femme-phobic line of attack, and the underlying truth that the far-right’s goal is not simply to stop all-ages drag performances. It is to exploit transphobia for political points, no matter the cost to human life.
In a year in whichover 300 state bills have been introduced to curb LGBTQ+ student and teacher rights, what’s become clear is that a rising right-wing moral panic against LGBTQ+ people — including smearing drag performers as groomers, nonbinary children as mentally ill, and gender-affirming healthcare providers as pedophiles — has ensnared the drag community. Today, after Club Q, it’s become increasingly clear that this rhetoric has concrete, real-world ramifications.
Guy Smallman/Getty Images
“It’s the scariest it’s ever been. I fear for my safety, even when I’m not doing Story Hour,” said Sia. The attacks have left many drag performers feeling torn between doing what they love and subjecting themselves to the possibility of violence, leading some drag queens to pause or stop their performances altogether. Programmers at one San Antonio music venue, were forced to cancel an entire season of drag performances due to violent threats. In North Carolina, when the power went out during a drag performance, performers said their immediate instinct was to listen for gunfire.
Paradoxically, some experts believe that the far-right has taken such extreme steps against drag performances because drag has become so popular. The visibility of shows such as RuPaul’s Drag Race, drag brunches, and online drag personalities have enabled performers to share their unique vision of liberation—and millions of people have found that vision appealing.
Drag Story Hours and family brunches, in particular, have helped LGBTQ+ youth feel accepted and seen. Keenan notes the surprising number of straight parents among attendees of drag story hours and brunches nationwide. “They’re looking for resources,” he says, to provide their children with a LGBTQ+ affirming space that they may not know how to cultivate at home. It is a chance to move past the rigid expectations of gender they were raised with, and offer their children something new.
All of this visibility comes at a cost. It has drawn attention to some of the most vulnerable members of the LGBTQ+ community, such as the trans, queer, and femme people of color who pioneered the “iconic” dance moves and looks we now associate with drag, without protection. “If what you really want is to target queerness and transness, then drag is a huge part of that. It’s a visible celebration of culture,” said the attorney Chase Strangio in a recent interview with The Atlantic.
Boston Globe/Getty Images
Indeed, in the midst of escalating fear and violence, drag performances continue to offer a unique form of celebration as resistance. This impulse toward new worlds was on full display during a recent prom for LGBTQ+ youth in Birmingham, Alabama. During the drag portion of the night, performer Sharon Cocx unexpectedly stopped in the middle of her set.
“You can be anything you want to be. You can be president, you can change the world,” she told the crowd. After such a difficult year in the state — Alabama has passed some of the strictest anti-trans legislation in the country — it was a cathartic moment of release for the directly-impacted teens there. According to several people who attended the event, many were in tears by the end of the speech. This is drag’s unique power: to challenge the conditions of the present, and embody a longed-for future.
The day after the attack in San Lorenzo,Per Sia had a performance a few miles away in Piedmont, CA. When she arrived at the library, half a dozen police officers were outside with their sirens on, “which was triggering in and of itself,” she said. Since many performers, like Sia, are queer people of color, the presence of police at performances can feel like a compounding of the violence they face, not an alleviation of it. As a result, organizers across the country have created safety plans rooted in abolitionist frameworks. These plans seek to keep children and performers safe without involving the police.
As Sia entered the library, several staff members walked her through a hastily developed safety plan, which Sia had never experienced before. They walked up a claustrophobic flight of stairs. “If anything happens, I will bring you up here,” the librarian said, “Then go down this hall and hide under that desk. If anything happens, do not come out until you hear my voice.” In her decades of teaching children and performing drag, it was unlike anything Sia had experienced before. It was terrifying in a visceral, cruel way.
“It was a hard pill to swallow,” she said, “but queer folks are resilient. We have always had to fight for our basic needs to be met, and simply to exist.” The performance took place in the library’s parking lot during a cloudless, blue summer day. The sunlight streamed over Sia as she read to the jam-packed crowd, who hung on her every word. Many had come to support Drag Story Hour in response to the previous day’s violence. “It was beautiful,” she said. “It really, really was.”
“When I was doxxed, someone from Ron DeSantis’s team called me. She said, ‘The governor wanted me to give you a message. If you don’t feel safe, if you need a place to go, to hide, to stay, you can come to the governor’s mansion.’
“She said, ‘We have a guest house for you, and you can stay as long as you need. I was almost in tears. He took time out of his extremely busy schedule to send someone to call me to make sure I’m safe.
“It was incredible, I don’t even have the words for it.” – Chaya Raichik, creator of the Twitter account LibsOfTikTok.
Raichik began posting content denigrating liberals on her personal social media accounts around April of 2020, but rebranded as Libs of TikTok a year later.
Raichik started by poking fun at Anthony Fauci, the country’s chief medical advisor at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Then she started spouting hate toward Black victims of police violence before repeatedly depicting queer and trans people as predators who endangered children.
Yesterday Raichik described LGBTQ people as members of an “evil cult” dedicated to grooming children.
Her so-called doxxing was merely being named by the Washington Post as the person behind the account that has incited violent and often armed extremists to protest outside of LGBTQ events.
It’s likely that the DeSantis flack who reached out to her was the viciously anti-LGBTQ Christina Pushaw, who was his spokesperson at the time.
When you have a Supreme Court that has made it clear it’s okay to declare open season on LGBT people, this is the result.
In less then 5 hours after the Tucker interview they were able to identify Chaya Raichik's (LibsOfTikTok) face & attire while on the Capital Grounds on Jan 6th.pic.twitter.com/4o5sc4bpj9
I would add that the WaPo article identified her using publicly available information.
It’s really something, the way social media has helped make psychopaths and grifters more successful than they ever could have been in any previous era.
On WHAT does this evil bitch BASE anything she says but her own vile bigotry?! What gives her ANY authority or credibility to speak on ANY issue, let alone to slander, denounce, and DEMONIZE whole groups of people based on NOTHING but LIES and her malicious FEELINGS?! Why do the serious media refuse, in their role as the “Guardians of Democracy,” to call out and DENOUNCE the right-wing media for spreading hate propaganda, for indulging in stochastic terrorism?! Because that’s ALL this is, and it has NO PLACE in ANY forum that gives it wide exposure in a modern democratic society!
It belongs nowhere but the GUTTER PRESS, which all decent people and all true journalists regard with nothing but CONTEMPT! There is no difference between THIS and giving wide exposure to spokesmen from the KKK or the American Nazi Party! This is the same kind of rabid, dehumanizing defamation the Nazis engaged in against the Jews under Hitler. Those engaged in it and in enabling it, in helping it spread its POISON, should be DENOUNCED by every true journalist in this country, by everyone who holds the truth and the principles of genuine democracy dear! That it is NOT denounced, and roundly, is a clear sign of advanced decadence, of societal ROT!
I never thought after the gains we’ve made in civil rights that we would slide backward so fast and without anything being done to these thugs. Find the shit on this bitch and all the other ones who would give her a voice.
Then she started spouting hate toward Black victims of police violence before repeatedly depicting queer and trans people as predators who endangered children.
Yesterday Raichik described LGBTQ people as members of an “evil cult” dedicated to grooming children.
Did she complain about the fact that DeSantis’s state party is full of open neonazis? As in, not just fascists, but Holocaust deniers. No? Didn’t think so.
You know, I grew up never trusting authority figures… including anyone involved in politics. And throughout the years, I’ve tried to mellow my views on that. But, boy-o-boy, I never thought we’d see elected officials sink this fucking low. I mean, it was one thing when they just completely ignored the AIDS crisis, but now elected Republicans are openly, gleefully, and without any blowback, ginning up maniacs to go out and murder us. And the elected officials on the left just kinda go, “Man, this awful. I’ll write a strongly worded kumbaya tweet about this, and that’ll be my due diligence.”
The Fort Lauderdale show at the Broward Center was the first of four performances around the state.
The 2022 Florida debut of “A Drag Queen Christmas” in Fort Lauderdale has triggered a state investigation, according to a tweet from the account of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Press Secretary.
The show went on in Miami’s James L. Knight Center Tuesday night — with limited tickets still available — and was scheduled to hit the heights in Orlando and Clearwater for successive nights. But it might be coming to the attention of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, according to a statement from the state Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR).
DBPR “is aware of multiple complaints about a sexually explicit performance marketed to children held in Fort Lauderdale on December 26. The Department is actively investigating this matter, including video footage and photographs from the event,” said the statement that Bryan Griffin tweeted.
“Exposing children to sexually explicit activity is a crime in Florida, and such action violates the Department’s licensing standards for operating a business and holding a liquor license.”
According to the traveling production’s website, Dragfans.com, the show has been going on for eight years. And, on the site’s “Past Tours” page, the show has made stops in Florida for five different Christmases, according to the posters displayed there.
The production company says that “all ages” are welcome at its shows, as does the website advertising the Orlando show. But the site listing all the tour stops does say potential patrons might be barred depending on local regulations.
Miami’s show, for example, is advertised with the caveat, “Adult content. Recommended for audiences — 18+. Minors must be accompanied by an adult.” In Clearwater, it says that only those older than 18 will be admitted to Ruth Eckerd Hall for the performance.
Critics of the show tweeted videos showing a full house in the Broward Center for the Performing Arts Monday night. And the Dec. 22 event in Knoxville, Tennessee, was sold out, according to Tennessee state Rep. Gloria Johnson’s Twitter account.
The controversy is reminiscent of a July complaint about a drag queen brunch put on at R House Wynwood after a video surfaced showing a toddler dancing with a drag queen. Statements from Gov. Ron DeSantis indicated the venue’s liquor license was at risk for the same issue.
The current status of the investigation was unavailable Tuesday, but the restaurant’s website seems to indicate that the drag brunch is still happening Saturday and Sunday with four seatings.
In July, DeSantis said his criticism of the drag brunch’s entertainment is part of his fight for Florida to be “where kids can be kids.” That includes efforts to pass the Parental Rights in Education law, which more closely regulates schoolhouse discussions.
Starting its four-night Florida tour, 'A Drag Queen Christmas' triggers state investigation
These parents in Broward county while trying to be tolerant are actually guilty of child abuse. This tour is pedophile based. Florida Gov. DeSantis's office to investigate drag show event for exposing children to inappropriate contenthttps://t.co/TnJnqxTtXJ
you saw this drag show was happening you bought tickets for the day after christmas you sat through act one you sat through intermission you sat partway through act two just to get banned from ever attending the broward center again
Wow Nelson gets shamed by audience, loses his shit & runs out of the venue by a herd of cops – trespassed & threatened with jail what a spectacular FAIL!
He’s always breathing so hard it sounds like he’s about to stroke out from adderal abuse pic.twitter.com/4NVEKZfcWb
Not only was the out of control Chris Nelson trespassed from @browardcenter for screaming during the show – he was seen by police as the instigator for street violence as he attempted to grab peoples masks & cameras pic.twitter.com/rMzY4RmS60
Chris Nelson, the far-right nationalist who leads protests outside drag shows ranting about “grooming” & “sexualization of kids” is shown here at his wedding with anti-masker Nicole Struelens — head up her skirt while a child looks on in the background.
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Imara Jones accepting the NABJ-NAHJ Journalist of Distinction AwardPhoto: Screenshot
Photo: Shutterstock
Scottie's Playtime 