And this fellow viewers is what we are up against. This passes as smart and witty for the radical right wing. This is the result of the hate spewing from elected republicans. They are driving this. This must not be acceptable to do. Thank you DeathSantis and other republican governors driving don’t say gay bills. I don’t know how to stop him and those like him who are so sure they are in the right and can force everyone to do as they demand. They have a right to make others act like they want them to, it is their freedom to tell you what to do and your freedom is to obey them. After Putin pushed a law making any positive mention of gays in public illegal, thugs rounded up gay men or men thought to be gay and tortured them in horrible ways and dump them on the streets. Now it is happening in the USA. I am really fed up the last few days with this shit. Hugs
A total loser known for filming himself harassing retail employees was back on his bullshit by hectoring workers at a PetSmart.
The total loser filmed his encounter, in which he asks an employee – who is likely making the minimum wage or slightly above – about a pride flag decal displayed near a register.
“I’m just curious – what is that flag right there?” the demented dirtbag asks a cashier, knowing full well what it is. The talking pustule then claims the flag stands for “pedophilia” and demands, “Respect your customers.”
That’s all the setup you need. Just watch the first clip.
Schmidt, who has said he’s “hunting” LGBTQ rights supporters, recently said he’s also “bringing back Jew hunting” to celebrate “white history.”
Ethan Schmidt last appeared on JMG last month when he was arrested after menacing abortion rights protesters with an assault weapon.
Schmidt previously appeared on JMG when he harassed cancer patients at a wig store for wearing masks.
In January, he was banned from the Arizona Capitol after harassing a black lawmaker, saying that his mask was a “slave muzzle.”
In February, he earned national headlines when he berated store employees for selling Black History Month items.
Earlier this month he was detained after his group harassed abortion rights protesters and his accomplice was arrested for assault.
According to the Tucson Sentinel, Schmidt is currently awaiting trial for DUI. In a video posted to Reddit, Schmidt can be seen flaunting his ankle monitor.
QAnon Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake has approvingly appeared in an earlier video by Schmidt.
PetSmart manager stands up to Kari Lake supporter Ethan Schmidt, kicks him out of the store for harassing employees over a pride flag. pic.twitter.com/YGvFMG4cU9
Kari Lake appeared in a video promoting Ethan Schmidt’s account.
Kari Lake refuses to publicly denounce Ethan who is now stating he will “hunt LGBT supporters” at Target and across Phoenix. pic.twitter.com/FB9Ue831G9
Religious people really have proven themselves to be child molesters and rapists and it is independently verified by centuries of testimony, lawsuits and settlements.
Ask any law enforecment person or prosecuter what gay organization, event or subculture is behind the most child molestation arrests and 100% of the time theyll tell you that the #1 place children are groomed and molested is in churches!
This bigoted dolt can film himself harassing employees inside a store, but people can’t peacefully demonstrate outside a restaurant where Brett Kavanaugh munches on his dinner.
I wish the manager would have said that if he wants to protest child rape and grooming, take it to a Christian church. But, the manager would have been fired. And, the Christian superpower of always claiming constant victimhood and persecution would have been sent into overdrive. Imagine the screams on the right and religious.
The first guy should have been more assertive and the policy should just be to automatically call the police.
I wrote on the last thread when a tweet was posted, that if the right claims companies are people, then companies can stand their ground. This, employees are able to stand their ground. Yes, it is a joke. They have garbage dumpsters. That is a ready made disposal.
What the heck is eating these people. What have people like Ron and I ever done to them? Why do they think they are so much better than we are? Why do they think they should have the right to marry who they love while denying that right to us? I have known straight people who have gotten married and then divorced within a week yet the relationship of life long gay people or straight people who have more than two people in the relationship is unthinkable to them. I am tired of it. I did not sign on to their religious views, why do they think they get to force me to live by their church dictates? Being straight is not a badge of honor, the rest of us don’t care. Hugs
This week the U.S. House of Representatives passed the deceptively named “Respect for Marriage Act” in a 267-157 vote.
If this bill becomes law, it would formally repeal the Defense of Marriage Act—a law that was passed in 1996 defining marriage for federal purposes as the union of one man and one woman.
While I’m not surprised that all of the House Democrats voted in favor of this bill, I was confused by the 47 Republicans who followed suit.
God says that marriage is to be between one man and one woman—not two men, not two women. The GOP used to believe that too.
Will you pray for God’s intervention as this bill moves on to the Senate? Only He can save us from our evil and rebellious ways.
Make sure you know how your representatives vote because it reveals where they stand on these and other important Biblical and moral issues.
Remember, elections are our opportunity to vote for men and women who support Biblical values and morality.
Will you pray for God’s intervention as this moves to the Senate? Make sure you know how your representatives vote bc it reveals where they stand on important Biblical & moral issues. Elections are our opportunity to vote for men & women who support Biblical values & morality.
God says that marriage is to be between one man and one woman—not two men, not two women. The GOP used to believe that too.
Hm, your God had a much different definition of marriage in your Old Testament, where certain God-favored dudes not only had multiple wives, but also concubines, handmaids, and slaves that they could fuck at their pleasure. Guess that your God must have changed his mind for some reason.
So wait, God didn’t stop gay marriage the last time, right? Does that mean it is his will? Or if he stops this bill, is that his will? Or is he just a bully, giving gay people marriage, then taking it away? Or maybe, just maybe, He exists only in your imagination.
So the republican “freedom caucus” wants to end my freedom to be married to my husband. See what freedom they really mean? The freedom to harass and control other people even to what sexual pleasures consenting adults may have. Really, that is freedom, their controlling your bedroom. I fought when the republicans came for the trans people. I fought when they came for women body autonomy, I will fight now that they are coming for everyone else not following ridged rules of accepted behavior based on the rules of a book written 2,500 years ago. Scary times in the former land of the free. Hugs
The House Freedom Caucus is urging Senate Republicans to oppose the Respect for Marriage Act that would codify federal protections for same-sex marriage, even though its chair, Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), voted in favor of the legislation.
“The ‘Respect for Marriage Act’ was rushed through the House as yet another weapon to distract, confuse, and deceive American Citizens. It allowed no hearings or markups, and less than a day to review,” the Freedom Caucus said in its official position statement.
“The radical Left has launched an all-out campaign on America’s traditional values and sacred institutions. It has weakened the nuclear family, attacked the norms of masculinity and femininity, and now it wants to further erode the sacred institution of marriage,” the caucus said.
The radical Left has launched an all-out campaign on America’s traditional values and sacred institutions. It has weakened the nuclear family, attacked the norms of masculinity and femininity, and now it wants to further erode the sacred institution of marriage,” the caucus said.
My god, drama queening much? – Its already law. It doesn’t do anything new. It merely protects what has already happened.
The nuclear family has been weakened by heterosexuals. It has nothing to do with radical left or radical right. You need to only look at three Trump marriages, three Gingrich marriages, and God knows how many marriages by Larry King.
The norms of masculinity and femininity are culture specific. In fact, they aren’t really norms. and no one is attacking them.
As for weakening the sacred institution of marriage, it’s not a sacred institution, it’s a civil contract which may have religion attached to it. If anything has weakened it— an assertion, not a proof — it is the heterosexual majority refusing to get married, preferring to shack up, or getting married multiple times. See Trump and Gingrich above. Not to mention, religious people who wine on and on about the sanctity of marriage, but seem to be divorced more often than anyone else
Why would there need to be discussions? It is about maintaining rights or taking away rights from people. Yes or no. We don’t need to hear you incessant sniveling bullshit about jeebus and the buybull.
The article claims big money funded groups are drawing up list of positions they want cleared to put their people put into. Yes some might be big money polluters but what do you want to bet that the religious groups are going to push hard and pay to get their people into the regulating bodies and they daily bureaucratic positions that make the daily rules the government functions on. This is another reason we cannot let the Republicans get into to office. Think of this, a Texas tRump judge said Biden couldn’t change tRump’s polices on the Southern border. That is the job of the president to set policy on the borders, but the racist don’t want no one allowed in policy to change, so this judge said Biden had to continue the tRump rules. Biden appealed to the SCOTUS which said they would leave the ruling in place and hear the case in December for a ruling next year. They never made tRump operate on a lower court ruling. So that tells you how the SCOTUS is going to rule, fully republican racist overturning the Federal government’s ability to set policy of the borders. ICE and the border patrol are now a rogue agency with no controls over them. Scary isn’t it. This is a bit long but worth the read. Better to be forewarned than taken by surprise. Hugs
Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photos: Seth Herald, Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images
Former President Trump’s top allies are preparing to radically reshape the federal government if he is re-elected, purging potentially thousands of civil servants and filling career posts with loyalists to him and his “America First” ideology, people involved in the discussions tell Axios.
The impact could go well beyond typical conservative targets such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Internal Revenue Service. Trump allies are working on plans that would potentially strip layers at the Justice Department — including the FBI, and reaching into national security, intelligence, the State Department and the Pentagon, sources close to the former president say.
During his presidency, Trump often complained about what he called “the deep state.”
The heart of the plan is derived from an executive order known as “Schedule F,” developed and refined in secret over most of the second half of Trump’s term and launched 13 days before the 2020 election.
The reporting for this series draws on extensive interviews over a period of more than three months with more than two dozen people close to the former president, and others who have firsthand knowledge of the work underway to prepare for a potential second term. Most spoke on condition of anonymity to describe sensitive planning and avoid Trump’s ire.
As Trump publicly flirts with a 2024 comeback campaign, this planning is quietly flourishing from Mar-a-Lago to Washington — with his blessing but without the knowledge of some people in his orbit.
Trump remains distracted by his obsession with contesting the 2020 election results. But he has endorsed the work of several groups to prime an administration-in-waiting. Personnel and action plans would be executed in the first 100 days of a second term starting on Jan. 20, 2025.
Their work could accelerate controversial policy and enforcement changes, but also enable revenge tours against real or perceived enemies, and potentially insulate the president and allies from investigation or prosecution.
They intend to stack thousands of mid-level staff jobs. Well-funded groups are already developing lists of candidates selected often for their animus against the system — in line with Trump’s long-running obsession with draining “the swamp.” This includes building extensive databases of people vetted as being committed to Trump and his agenda.
The preparations are far more advanced and ambitious than previously reported. What is happening now is an inversion of the slapdash and virtually non-existent infrastructure surrounding Trump ahead of his 2017 presidential transition.
These groups are operating on multiple fronts: shaping policies, identifying top lieutenants, curating an alternative labor force of unprecedented scale, and preparing for legal challenges and defenses that might go before Trump-friendly judges, all the way to a 6-3 Supreme Court.
The centerpiece
Trump signed an executive order, “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,” in October 2020, which established a new employment category for federal employees. It received wide media coverage for a short period, then was largely forgotten in the mayhem and aftermath of Jan. 6 — and quickly was rescinded by President Biden.
Sources close to Trump say that if he were elected to a second term, he would immediately reimpose it.
Tens of thousands of civil servants who serve in roles deemed to have some influence over policy would be reassigned as “Schedule F” employees. Upon reassignment, they would lose their employment protections.
New presidents typically get to replace more than 4,000 so-called “political” appointees to oversee the running of their administrations. But below this rotating layer of political appointees sits a mass of government workers who enjoy strong employment protections — and typically continue their service from one administration to the next, regardless of the president’s party affiliation.
An initial estimate by the Trump official who came up with Schedule F found it could apply to as many as 50,000 federal workers — a fraction of a workforce of more than 2 million, but a segment with a profound role in shaping American life.
Trump, in theory, could fire tens of thousands of career government officials with no recourse for appeals. He could replace them with people he believes are more loyal to him and to his “America First” agenda.
Even if Trump did not deploy Schedule F to this extent, the very fact that such power exists could create a significant chilling effect on government employees.
It would effectively upend the modern civil service, triggering a shock wave across the bureaucracy. The next president might then move to gut those pro-Trump ranks — and face the question of whether to replace them with her or his own loyalists, or revert to a traditional bureaucracy.
Such pendulum swings and politicization could threaten the continuity and quality of service to taxpayers, the regulatory protections, the checks on executive power, and other aspects of American democracy.
Trump’s allies claim such pendulum swings will not happen because they will not have to fire anything close to 50,000 federal workers to achieve the result, as one source put it, of “behavior change.” Firing a smaller segment of “bad apples” among the career officials at each agency would have the desired chilling effect on others tempted to obstruct Trump’s orders.
They say Schedule F will finally end the “farce” of a nonpartisan civil service that they say has been filled with activist liberals who have been undermining GOP presidents for decades.
Unions and Democrats would be expected to immediately fight a Schedule F order. But Trump’s advisers like their chances in a judicial system now dominated at its highest levels by conservatives.
Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), who chairs the subcommittee that oversees the federal civil service, is among a small group of lawmakers who never stopped worrying about Schedule F, even after Biden rescinded the order. Connolly has been so alarmed that he attached an amendment to this year’s defense bill to prevent a future president from resurrecting Schedule F. The House passed Connolly’s amendment but Republicans hope to block it in the Senate.
Machine-in-waiting
No operation of this scale is possible without the machinery to implement it. To that end, Trump has blessed a string of conservative organizations linked to advisers he currently trusts and calls on. Most of these conservative groups host senior figures from the Trump administration on their payroll, including former chief of staff Mark Meadows.
The names are a mix of familiar and new. They include Jeffrey Clark, the controversial lawyer Trump had wanted to install as attorney general in the end days of his presidency. Clark, who advocated a plan to contest the 2020 election results, is now in the crosshairs of the Jan. 6 committee and the FBI. Clark is working at the Center for Renewing America (CRA), the group founded by Russ Vought, the former head of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget.
Former Trump administration and transition officials working on personnel, legal or policy projects for a potential 2025 government include names like Vought, Meadows, Stephen Miller, Ed Corrigan, Wesley Denton, Brooke Rollins, James Sherk, Andrew Kloster and Troup Hemenway.
Others, who remain close to Trump and would be in contention for the most senior roles in a second-term administration, include Dan Scavino, John McEntee, Richard Grenell, Kash Patel, Robert O’Brien, David Bernhardt, John Ratcliffe, Peter Navarro and Pam Bondi.
Following splits from some of his past swathe of loyal advisers, Trump has tightened his circle. The Florida-based strategist Susie Wiles is Trump’s top political adviser. She runs his personal office and his political action committee. When he contemplates endorsements, Trump has often attached weight to the views of his former White House political director Brian Jack, pollster Tony Fabrizio, and his son Donald Trump Jr. He often consults another GOP pollster, John McLaughlin. For communications and press inquiries Trump calls on Taylor Budowich and Liz Harrington. Jason Miller remains in the mix.
As Trump’s obsessions with 2020 fester, he has also broken with many traditional conservative allies in Congress. Most notably, his relationship with the man who delivered Trump the rock-solid conservative Supreme Court he hankered for — Sen. Mitch McConnell — is broken. McConnell is no longer on speaking terms with the former president.
Now Trump looks to Rep. Jim Jordan as his closest confidant on Capitol Hill. He has stayed close to former Rep. Devin Nunes, who runs Trump’s social media company, Truth Social. Trump continues to be a big fan of the far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The advocacy groups who have effectively become extensions of the Trump infrastructure include the CRA, the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), and the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI).
Other groups — while not formally connected to Trump’s operation — have hired key lieutenants and are effectively serving his ends. The Heritage Foundation, the legacy conservative group, has moved closer to Trump under its new president, Kevin Roberts, and is building links to other parts of the “America First” movement.
Sources who spoke to Axios paint a vivid picture of how the backroom plans are taking shape, starting with a series of interactions in Florida earlier this year, on April 28.
Trump’s new targets
On that warm spring night in April, an armada of black Escalades drove through the rain from a West Palm Beach hotel to Donald Trump’s Mediterranean-style private club.
Donors and Trump allies were getting soaked through their clothes as they waited in a brief downpour to be frisked by wands before they could access the inner sanctum of Mar-a-Lago.
Inside, near the bar past the patio, a balding man with dramatically arched eyebrows was the center of attention at a cocktail table. He was discussing the top-level staffing of the Justice Department if Trump were to regain the presidency in 2025.
With a background as an environmental lawyer, Jeffrey Clark, a veteran of George W. Bush’s administration, was unknown to the public until early 2021. By the end of the Trump administration, he was serving as the acting head of the Justice Department’s civil division — although other DOJ leaders paid him little attention. But Trump, desperate to overturn the election, welcomed Clark, the only senior official willing to apply the full weight of the Justice Department to contesting Joe Biden’s victory, into his inner circle.
In February of this year, Clark repeatedly asserted his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination during a deposition with the Jan. 6 committee. And in the early hours of June 22, federal agents with an electronics-sniffing dog in tow arrived at Clark’s Virginia home to execute a search warrant and seize his devices.
But back in April, as Clark circulated at Mar-a-Lago wearing a loose-fitting black suit and blue shirt, any troubles related to the Jan. 6 investigation seemed a world away. Clark sounded optimistic. Half a dozen or so donors and Trump allies surrounded him at the high-top table.
One of the donors asked Clark what he thought would happen with the Justice Department if Trump won the 2024 election. Conveying the air of a deep confidant, Clark responded that he thought Trump had learned his lesson.
In a second term, Clark predicted, Trump would never appoint an attorney general who was not completely on board with his agenda.
There was a buzz around Clark. Given Trump wanted to make him attorney general in the final days of his first term, it is likely that Clark would be a serious contender for the top job in a second term.
By this stage in the evening, more than a hundred people were crammed onto the Mar-a-Lago patio. They were a mix of wealthy political donors and allies of the former president and they had come to see Trump himself bless Russ Vought’s organization, the Center for Renewing America.
Vought was a policy wonk who became one of Trump’s most trusted officials. Before joining the Trump administration in 2017 as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget — and ultimately going on to run the agency — Vought had a long career in conservative policy circles.
That included a stint as executive director and budget director of the Republican Study Committee — the largest bloc of House conservatives — and as the policy director for the House Republican Conference.
Trump was helping raise money for Vought’s CRA, which has been busily developing many of the policy and administrative plans that would likely form the foundation for a second-term Trump administration.
Trump himself was running late to the reception. But the introductory speaker, his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, was filibustering, entertaining the crowd with stories about Trump and Vought’s efforts to fight a deep state that had tried to thwart them. Meadows paused. He scanned the patio. “Are there any Cabinet secretaries here?” he asked the audience. “Raise your hand if you’re a Cabinet secretary.”
Nobody raised their hand. “Well that’s a good thing,” Meadows said. “They often weren’t cooperating with us.”
Meadows was picking up on a theme from earlier in the day, when Vought’s group had held off-site sessions at The Ben, a luxury hotel a 10-minute drive up the coast from Mar-a-Lago.
In those closed-door sessions, Trump confidants, including former senior administration officials, discussed the mistakes they had made in the first term that would need to be corrected if they regained power.
They agreed it was not just the “deep state” career bureaucrats who needed to be replaced. Often, the former Trump officials said, their biggest problems were with the political people that Trump himself had regrettably appointed. Never again should Trump hire people like his former chief of staff John Kelly, his former defense secretaries, James Mattis and Mark Esper, his CIA director Gina Haspel, and virtually the entire leadership of every iteration of Trump’s Justice Department.
Shortly after noon, Kash Patel entered The Ben’s ballroom. Donors and Trump allies sat classroom-style at long rectangular tables in a room with beautiful views of the Atlantic Ocean.
The group was treated to a conversation between Patel and Mark Paoletta, a former senior Trump administration lawyer with a reputation for finding lateral ways to accomplish Trump’s goals. The Patel-Paoletta panel discussion was titled, “Battling the Deep State.”
Paoletta was a close family friend and prominent public defender of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginni Thomas. Throughout the Trump administration, Ginni Thomas had taken a strong interest in administration personnel. She complained to White House officials, including Trump himself, that Trump’s people were obstructing “MAGA” officials from being appointed to key roles in the administration.
As Axios previously reported, Ginni Thomas had assembled detailed lists of disloyal government officials to oust — and trusted pro-Trump people to replace them.
Her recommendations to the White House included appointing the right-wing talk radio provocateur and former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino for a Homeland Security or counterterrorism adviser role. Thomas has recently been a subject of interest to the Jan. 6 Select Committee after the committee obtained text messages she sent to then-chief of staff Mark Meadows urging him to work harder to overturn the 2020 election.
Patel had enjoyed an extraordinary rise from obscurity to power during the Trump era. Over the course of only a few years, he went from being a little-known Capitol Hill staffer to one of the most powerful figures in the U.S. national security apparatus.
He found favor with Trump by working for Devin Nunes when he played a central role in the GOP’s scrutiny of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Patel was the key author of a memo in which Nunes accused the Justice Department and the FBI of abusing surveillance laws as part of a politically motivated effort to take down Trump.
Some of Nunes’ and Patel’s criticisms of the DOJ’s actions were later validated by an inspector general, and Trump came to view Patel as one of his most loyal agents. He put him on his National Security Council and made him the Pentagon chief of staff.
In one astonishing but ill-fated plan, Trump had wanted to install Patel as either the deputy director of the CIA or the FBI late in his administration. He abandoned this only after vehement opposition and warnings from senior officials including Haspel and former Attorney General Bill Barr, who wrote in his own memoir that he told then-chief of staff Mark Meadows that Patel becoming deputy FBI director would happen “over my dead body.”
Never again would Trump acquiesce to such warnings. Patel has only grown closer to the former president since he left office. Over the past year, Patel has displayed enough confidence to leverage his fame as a Trump insider — establishing an online store selling self-branded merchandise with “K$H” baseball caps and “Fight With Kash” zip-up fleeces.
He hosts an online show and podcast, “Kash’s Corner,” and he is a prolific poster on Trump’s social media network, Truth Social. In May, Patel re-truthed (the Truth Social equivalent of re-tweeting) a meme of himself and special counsel John Durham “perp walking” a handcuffed Hillary Clinton.
He also set up the Kash Patel Legal Offense Trust to raise money to sue journalists. He recently authored an illustrated children’s book about the Russia investigation in which “King Donald” is a character persecuted by “Hillary Queenton and her shifty knight.” Trump characteristically gave it his imprimatur, declaring he wanted to “put this amazing book in every school in America.”
During that April 28 discussion at The Ben, Patel portrayed the national security establishment in Washington, D.C., as malevolently corrupt. He claimed the intelligence community had deliberately withheld important national security information from Trump.
According to two people in the room, Patel told the audience he had advised Trump to fire senior officials in the Justice Department and he lamented the appointments of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI director Christopher Wray. Paoletta also recounted to the audience instances in which Trump officials refused or slow-walked lawful directives because they disagreed with the former president’s policies.
Patel’s message to the audience was that things would be different next time. A source in the room said later the takeaway from the session was that if Trump took office in 2025, he would target agencies that conservatives have not traditionally viewed as adversarial.
Sources close to the former president saidthat he will — as a matter of top priority — go after the national security apparatus, “clean house” in the intelligence community and the State Department, target the “woke generals” at the Defense Department, and remove the top layers of the Justice Department and FBI.
A spokesperson for Patel, Erica Knight, did not dispute details from this scene at The Ben in West Palm Beach when Axios reached out for comment.
Regarding his other post-government activities, she said Patel wanted Axios to include this statement, in its entirety, in the story: “The fundraising focus has changed from the Kash Patel Legal Offense trust to the broader K$H foundation with an expanded mission of a variety of efforts including education, youth development projects, and veterans assistance. All money raised via K$H merchandise will benefit these great causes. The Kash Foundation is properly operating as a not-for-profit organization, has applied for tax exempt status, submitted the designation request to the IRS and is awaiting a designation.”
As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the Kash Foundation would likely be required to file detailed annual reports on its finances and activities with the IRS. But until that tax-exempt status is secured, it is difficult to know what Patel’s group — currently structured as a legal trust, Knight said — has raised financially or how it has spent its money. Knight declined to provide details on the group’s activity to date.
Later that day, at the Mar-a-Lago reception for CRA, Trump confirmed some of these impressions from Paoletta and Patel about his deep-rooted animosity toward top people in his administration. In a 45-minute speech, Trump rambled over a long list of grievances about his government, according to a witness.
He ridiculed his first Defense Secretary James Mattis, calling him “the most overrated general” in history, and added that a lot of the generals were overrated and should not be allowed to appear on television. Eventually, Trump asked the people who were holding up their iPhones to stop recording.
Trump saved his kindest words that night for two individuals: Mark Meadows and Russ Vought. He praised their organizations and the important work they were doing.
During the past year, Vought’s group has been developing plans that would benefit from Schedule F. And while the power rests largely on the fear factor to stifle civil service opposition to Trump, sources close to the former president said they still anticipate needing an alternate labor force of unprecedented scale — of perhaps as many as 10,000 vetted personnel — to give them the capacity to quickly replace “obstructionist” government officials with people committed to Trump and his “America First” agenda.
In other words, a new army of political partisans planted throughout the federal bureaucracy.
Rejecting the textbooks puts Miami in a precarious situation by leaving the school district without an approved sex ed curriculum for middle and high school students.
LGBTQ supporters and Democrats rallied against the legislation, branded as “Don’t Say Gay,” disputing that those lessons are being taught in Florida schools and maintaining that the policies would further marginalize LGBTQ students and their families. | Wilfredo Lee/AP Photo
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Miami-Dade County students could go months without sex education books after school board members this week rejected two proposed textbooks over concerns they violate the state’s “Parental Rights in Education” bill, known by opponents as “Don’t Say Gay.”
The decision, which came down to a tight 5-4 vote on Wednesday, marks one of the first major instances of the contentious measure shaping local school policies, an action that came amid parents opposing the books for broaching topics like abortion and contraceptives.
Rejecting the textbooks puts Miami in a precarious situation by leaving the school district without an approved sex ed curriculum for middle and high school students with the fall semester less than a month away. Miami-Dade is the fourth largest school district in the country.
“Some of the chapters are extremely troublesome,” said board member Mari Tere Rojas, who voted against the books. “I do not consider them to be age appropriate. In my opinion, they go beyond what the state standards are.”
Wednesday’s vote came after three hours of public comment and debate over the two “Comprehensive Health Skills” books for students in middle and high school, texts that have been under scrutiny in Miami for months now.
Miami-Dade school officials recommended approving the textbooks following a public hearing on June 8 to field some 278 petitions against the materials, which the district denied.
Some parents argued the lessons extend beyond what schools should be educating students on sex education while others contested that rejecting the books would allow a vocal group to drive the decision for a school district serving some 340,000 students. The outcry in Miami against the sex education books included the local chapter of County Citizens Defending Freedom, a conservative group that aims to “defend their freedoms and liberties at the local level.”
Under Florida law, any parent can opt their child out of sex education lessons.
“Our current … process defends parents and their children who do not want to be exposed to this,” said Steve Gallon III, the board’s vice chair who supported the sex education textbooks. “But we cannot deny parents who want to have access for their children to this critically important information.”
The move by the school board shows how Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill, passed earlier this year and championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, is shaping school curriculum in the wake of its passage. The law prohibits teachers from leading classroom lessons on gender identity or sexual orientation for students in kindergarten through third grade. It also prohibits these lessons for older students unless they are “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate.”
LGBTQ supporters and Democrats rallied against the legislation, branded as “Don’t Say Gay,” disputing that those lessons are being taught in Florida schools and maintaining that the policies would further marginalize LGBTQ students and their families, leading to drastic outcomes like bullying and even suicide. The bill also sparked a fight between Florida conservatives and Walt Disney Co. after the entertainment giant said it would work to repeal the parental rights measure.
County Citizens Defending Freedom’s local executive director, Alex Serrano, claimed Wednesday that “significant portions” of the materials proposed in Miami-Dade “may violate Florida state law” and “much of the content is not age appropriate, usurps parental rights, and is scientifically inaccurate and not factual.”
In snippets of the textbooks circulated by the group, they highlighted lessons surrounding unplanned pregnancies that include definitions of abortion and emergency contraceptives like the Plan B pill.
One speaker at the board meeting claimed the books teach students there are “nine genders,” a likely reference to a page that describes a list of gender identities such as androgenous, cisgender, nonbinary and transgender. The Miami Herald reported that the school board removed the “Understanding Sexuality” chapter from the books for middle and high school students.
“Teachers that will be providing this material to children, which is illegal in the state of Florida, and the board that votes to adopt this, in the end — the country, the state and your community, will consider all of you groomers,” speaker Lourdes Galban, told the board during public comment.
The majority of speakers at Wednesday’s meeting, including parents and students, supported the sex education textbooks and pushed for their adoption. They said that the lessons were crucial for students, pointing to sexual activity rates among teens and that they “want kids to be prepared when the time comes.”
“Parents who wish to limit their children’s information about reproductive health have always had the option to opt out,” speaker Gina Vinueza told the board Wednesday.
“The proposed approval of the textbooks today would not take that choice away from them. However, if the board does not approve the textbooks, they will be taking away the rights of everyone to public ed that is based on facts and science.”
The board’s move to reject the sex education textbooks could trigger school officials to restart the adoption process for the classroom materials. School staffers at Wednesday’s meeting estimated it could take between four and eight months for different books to be approved, a timeline posing an issue for high school students on tap to learn those lessons in the fall.
Miami-Dade’s sex education curriculum is embedded in science and personal fitness classes, school officials said.
Hildegard von Bingen (b. 1098), a German nun, was a woman of many talents: abbess, composer, mystic, writer, philosopher, and, perhaps most surprisingly, medical provider. And although it may sound implausible to the modern ear, Hildegard the Catholic nun—who is now sainted—also prescribed medicinal abortions.
In the medieval era, monasteries served as proto-hospitals, with nuns and monks tending injured and ill community members, soldiers, and travelers. Hildegard’s parents had tithed their tenth child to the church, so at age 14 she was sent off to a double monastery (housing men and women) in the Lower Rhine region. It’s likely she was trained as a worker in their infirmary.
Hildegard published several works on religion and science. She is believed to have begun writing her two massive medical texts, Physica and Causae et Curae, around 1150. In the books, Hildegard makes 437 claims of medicinal uses for 175 different plants. She describes the use of several botanical emmenagogues (menstruation stimulators) and abortifacients: asarum, white hellebore, feverfew, tansy, oleaster, farn.
In the case of asarum, also known as European wild ginger or wild spikenard, she explains: “A pregnant woman will eat it, either on account she languishes or she aborts an infant which is a danger to her body, or if she has not had a menstrual period for a time period so that it hurts.”
Hildegard prescribed other treatments specifically for “retention of the menses:” A bath of fresh river water heated with warm tiles and filled with tansy or chrysanthemum, mullein, and feverfew. The bath should fully cover the belly. Tansy is a well-known abortifacient. In addition to the bath, the person should “take rifelbere [barberry] and one-third as much yarrow, aristologia, and about one-ninth as much yue, and crush this mixture in a mortar. Put it in a little bag and then cook it in wine; add clove and white pepper (a little less white pepper than clove) and honey. Drink this daily both fasting and with meals… for five days or fifteen or until the matter is resolved.”
Many of the plants Hildegard mentions have been proven by modern pharmacological studies to be effective at bringing on menstruation or abortion, though it’s important to note that medieval preparations and dosages have not been replicated exactly.
Illustration of the flower, fruit, and root of a wild tansy plant. Plate 6 from Elizabeth Blackwell’s A curious herbal.
Blocked menses was seen as a problem in humoral medicine. And just like other types of bodily blockages (bowels, for instance), it required unblocking. A regular period was a necessary monthly expulsion of evil humors. Retention could cause “suffocation of the matrix.” Some scholars argue that treating retained menses was always about treating amenorrhea, in hopes of increasing fertility. But it’s very likely people also used these methods to end unwanted pregnancies.
“That the herbs widely advocated to stimulate healthy menstruation were also reputed to cause abortion created a zone of opportunity for women who resolved to terminate a pregnancy,” the historian Etienne van de Walle wrote in The Journal of Interdisciplinary History.
Prescriptions for birth control or abortion methods were widely circulated among medical professionals and also regularly appeared in household recipe books. The first century pharmaceutical textDe Materia Medica, by the Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides, lists 959 substances, 141 of which are noted to bring on menstruation, 49 to expel an embryo, 18 to terminate an embryo, and six to “cause abortion.” Such recipes regularly appeared in medical books throughout the medieval era, which suggests that abortion was considered a routine healthcare procedure.
Although these written medical texts are all that remain of women’s medical care during this period, much of the knowledge would also have been passed down orally from woman to woman, across generations. “[T]he presence of folkloric knowledge regarding the female body as well as the need to control the body’s reproductive purpose are difficult to ignore, particularly in light of many sources which seek to ‘move the menses’ or evacuate the womb,” writes Lydia Harris, a historian specializing in abortion and contraception in medieval Europe. It’s believed that Hildegard learned what she knew about the medicinal properties of botanicals, tinctures, stones, and animal parts not only from her superiors at the monastery, but from nearby folk healers and herbalists. That’s because her texts mix the Latin of traditional medicine with a healthy dose of German terms and folkloric wisdom.
A plant (Aristolochia rotunda L.) related to birthwort: entire flowering plant. Coloured etching by M. Bouchard, 1774.
At age 50, she decided to move north to Bingen on the Rhine and have a new monastery built for her. She would go on to spend 30 years as an abbess there. This is where she wrote her medical books and where she became a renowned medical practitioner.
“According to the monk Theodoric, who was an eye witness, she had to so high a degree the gift of healing that no sick person had recourse to her without being restored to health,” wrote the physician F. A. Reuss in the introduction to his 1855 translation of Physica. “It is certain that Hildegard was acquainted with many things of which the doctors of the Middle Ages were ignorant.”
If these medical handbooks offer a peek into the practice of abortion in medieval Europe, then laws and religious texts can tell us more about what society thought of abortion in theory. Opinions on abortion and contraception were as varied in the medieval era as they are now. Officially, the church considered ending a pregnancy a sin, though if done before the fetus was “formed” or “ensouled”—once the pregnant woman senses fetal movement, known as the “quickening”—it was a much lesser sin than a late-term abortion. Often, “quickening” meant the difference between one year of penance or three.
“From the earliest Christian times, churchmen had inveighed in vain against both contraception and abortion, and there is no doubt that common herbs with effective contraceptive and abortifacient properties were well known throughout early medieval Europe,” the historian Julia M. H. Smith writes in Europe After Rome: A New Cultural History 500-1000.
What’s unclear is how far these teachings trickled down through the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Did these dogmas make it into the sermons or guidance of local parish priests? Though fervently against abortion, one early church father preached the surprisingly progressive stance that sex workers shouldn’t be condemned for having abortions; her clients were to blame, not her. “For even if the daring deed be hers, yet the causing of it is thine,” Father John Chrysostom proclaimed in his Homily 24.
In the early and late middle ages, several secular law codes throughout Europe also punished abortions, but likewise typically considered how far along the pregnancy was and whether the woman’s life was threatened. Lawmakers also felt it was necessary to punish women who maliciously deprived their husbands of an heir. It was a wife’s duty to provide her husband with progeny; sabotaging that obligation couldn’t go unpunished. Overall, laws tended to be more concerned with another party causing the termination of a wanted pregnancy, either through coercion, poison, or assault.
Yarrow (Achillea santolina): flowering plant with leaf and floral segments. Etching, c. 1718, after C. Aubriet.
“Both intentional and violent abortion happened and were punished, but not always in the same way and to the same extent,” medieval scholar Marianne Elsakkers explains.
Women were largely the ones penalized. According to Elsakkers, several Old Frisian laws “explicitly associate women with poisoning, knowledge of herbs, remedies and recipes, and finally the female witnesses.” Similarly, Old Germanic laws “imply that women were the ones who knew the recipes for abortifacients, and that fertility management was usually women’s business.” But at least one law suggests “husbands could be involved in intentional abortion, and that they may have agreed to the procedure, or forced or pressured their wives into having an abortion.”
Abortifacient herbs were not without their risks. Depending on the dosage, there could be a fine line between efficacious and harmful. An overdose of asarum, for instance, can lead to paralysis; too much yew can cause heart problems or death. Many medieval laws regulated the supply of herbs classed as potentially poisonous. The fact that medieval laws and church texts address abortion suggests that it was a common enough occurrence to warrant mentioning and codifying, though just how often abortion occurred in the medieval era is impossible to determine. Lacking official data on abortions, historians must consider the fact that there likely was a gap between what the law declared and what happened in society.
“It is difficult to determine how much influence theologians actually had over the reproductive practices of medieval women, if they actually had any at all,” Harris concluded in an article in Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality. Just how much sway official religious and legal doctrine had over what actually happened between practitioner and patient is tough to parse. Outside of monasteries, medicine was primarily practiced in the domestic realm, most often by the women of the house or by lay folk healers. Knowledge of basic medical treatments was an essential element of women’s household management. Most midwives were women, so their work faced less oversight than that of university-trained male physicians. The relative invisibility of women practitioners and patients rendered regulation of their interactions virtually impossible.
Elsakkers asserts that “in many cases probably no one else besides the pregnant woman and her (female) helpers would ever know about the abortion. It seems that resourceful women would have been aware of how their bodies worked, they would have known what to do, and whom to consult, when coping with an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy.”
Bilberry plant (Vaccinium myrtillus L.): flowering and fruiting stems with separate floral segments and a description of the plant and its uses. Coloured line engraving by C.H.Hemerich, c.1759, after T.Sheldrake.
And just like in modern times, wealth and power meant greater access to abortions. Ladies of the court had storied apothecaries at their disposal, while the poor had to do with whatever they could glean or procure from folk healers.
“[M]edical treatises produced by and for wealthy Christian women across the Middle Ages… had a host of pharmaceutical contraceptives, various practices for inducing miscarriages, and surgical procedures for the termination of pregnancies,” historian Roland Betancourt writes in Scientific American. “[W]ealthy and elite Christian women had not only recourse to the best medical knowledge of their era but also the privacy to undertake these practices without shame.”
It may seem hard to square Hildegardean medicine with the religious beliefs she professed: a saintly Christian woman healer describing abortifacients. But Betancort assures us this was the norm: “When it came to saving a woman’s life, Christian physicians unhesitatingly recommended these procedures.”
Hildegard may indeed be a continuation of the tradition of saintly reproductive medical care. After examining hagiographies and other texts from 5th through 8th century Ireland, religion historian Maeve Callan concluded: “These accounts celebrate saints who perform abortions, restore female fornicators to a virginal state, contemplate infanticide, and result from incest and other ‘illegitimate’ sexual unions. Moreover, the texts themselves generally reflect a remarkably permissive attitude toward these traditionally taboo acts, an attitude also found in Irish penitentials and law codes.”
Medical providers understood that uterine diseases, pelvic malformations, age (too young or too old), and other issues could cause premature or difficult births that would endanger women’s lives. The loss of the fetus was seen as an acceptable price to pay for saving the life of the pregnant woman. The fourth-century medical writer Theodorus Priscianus likened abortion to pruning the branches of a tree or ejecting the cargo of an overladen boat during a storm.
“The overall consensus, although officially against any form of controlling procreation, was also sympathetic to the dangers that awaited women and the social implications that the loss of a mother would have had on a family structure if she were to die from an unwanted pregnancy,” Harris noted.
These views would have informed Hildegard’s ethos. Gestational age and, with it, “ensoulment” or “quickening” of the fetus were taken into consideration, but medieval practitioners prioritized the health and well-being of the pregnant woman.
The House passed the Right to Contraception Act on Thursday ― a bill that codifies the right to birth control and other contraceptives amid fears that the Supreme Court may come for that aspect of reproductive health care next after the high court repealed Roe v. Wade’s protection of abortion rights last month.
The bill passed despite 195 Republicans who voted against the bill in a final vote of 228 to 195. Republicans who voted against the legislation included Reps. Matt Gaetz (Fla.), Paul Gosar (Ariz.), Jack Bergman (Mich.) and Joe Wilson (S.C.). Just eight Republicans voted in favor of the bill.
NEW: The House passed the Right to Contraception Act on Thursday despite 195 Republicans who voted against it. The bill would codify the right to birth control and other contraceptives. https://t.co/vVZBUKaP3O
228-195: House passes the bill codifying the right to contraceptives into law.
Only eight Republicans voted in favor of the legislation: Cheney, Mace, Upton, Kinzinger, Katko, Fitzpatrick, Salazar, Gonzalez (OH). pic.twitter.com/PqN6G2DsNO
It is not just the RCC that is against contraceptives. Many Evangelical churches and mega churches want younger women to stop delaying families and preach against it.
I once heard a mega church sermon blaming women for delaying families, and The Pill made them infertile. Of course the women had delayed pregnancies because they were educated and with their husbands were saving for the down payment on a house in the $$$$ suburb.
Some popular forms of birth control work by preventing a fertilized egg from implanting in the womb. If they support this bill, it can be used to say they are not truly pro-life and support killing babies.
That’s probably the most likely explaination. Doesn’t Plan B work that way, and also IUDs prevent a fertilized egg from implanting. So they are more afraid of the Pro-Life people than the anti-gay people.
Perhaps the Federal Goverment, as they have classified Tomatoes as vegetables, can classify abortion drugs as ‘contraception.’
It’s like a group insanity that’s infected the party to the very top level. They don’t seem to understand how unpopular allowing states to ban contraception is because they’ve gone down this rabbit hole of “but the poor little (zygote) babies!”
This is important to watch. It quickly goes over what happened to create the Roe down fall, but then gets to the situation we are in and what is coming. We are screwed. As one of the people said, this is a results drive court, they have the result they want and they don’t care if the law allows it, they will simply cherry pick and force it into being the current law as they wish get the result they want. In my opinion we now have a lawless court. The second time in the US and we will have them for the next forty years or maybe forever if the Democrats do not develop a spine and either expand the court to return it to the rule of law or remove the illegal justices that are on the current court. Hugs
Roe v. Wade has been overturned. So now what the hell are we supposed to do? The hosts of the Strict Scrutiny podcast — law professors Leah Litman, Melissa Murray, and Kate Shaw — are back to help Jon process the shocking decision. Writers Kris Acimovic and Tocarra Mallard also weigh in on why the Democrats answer to this crisis seems to be giving them $15.
“Rather than work with us, Democrats again are spreading fear and misinformation to score political points. That opens the door further to extreme abortion-on-demand and their agenda. H.R. 8373 is a Trojan Horse for more abortions.
“It should be called the ‘Payouts for Planned Parenthood Act!’ It would send more taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood.” – GOP Rep. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, during today’s debate on codifying to right to access contraceptives.
Rodgers is a creationist nutbag who authored Washington state’s bill that would have outlawed same-sex marriage.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) inaccurately claims the bill codifying the right to contraception is a “Trojan horse for more abortions”:
It’s absurd that, in the year 2022, Congress actually has to cast a vote on whether or not women in this country deserve access to contraception like birth control pills, IUDs or condoms. And yet, thanks to extremist members of the GOP, here we are. pic.twitter.com/45EcpCzjwB
Contraception can involve the penis. Contraception can involve the vagina
This is morally reprehensible and has no place in decent society. Once people have access to contraception, they will have sex with animals and marry their toaster. Won’t someone think of the children?
Their anti-freedom positions are so appalling, misogynistic, and hateful, Rethugs have no alternative other than to keep lying about the facts, lying about their own position, and lying about the position and goals of our side.
Read up on the history – Jerry Falwell / Paul Weyrich (Moral Majority) used abortion to drive evangelical votes to GOP when DOJ under Carter said “no government money for segregated colleges” like his “Liberty University” and Bob Jones University, which were “whites only”, even in the mid 70s.
Not just women, men too. I am pretty sure there’s more than a few men who would not want to be forced into supporting a child they weren’t expecting or wanting with a woman they maybe weren’t really wanting to have a lifetime attachment to.
![Demonstrators hold signs saying "It's OK to Say Gay!"](https://www.politico.com/dims4/default/c73e738/2147483647/strip/true/crop/5515x3677+0+0/resize/630x420!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.politico.com%2F18%2F6e%2Fec74a44f4561a2a4a57edc8b3f5a%2Fflorida-same-sex-silencing-29222.jpg "Demonstrators hold signs saying "It's OK to Say Gay!"")
Scottie's Playtime 
