Religious oppression

Trans Woman Arrested, Sent to Men’s Jail For Entering Florida Capitol Bathroom

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/trans-woman-arrested-sent-to-mens

Does this keep us safe?  What harm does washing her hands cause?  What is more traumatic, a passing trans person in the bathroom washing their hands or the police barging in and arresting someone in the bathroom.  I can see the mistake she made.  She thinks they know in their hearts that it is wrong to make bans on trans people.  No they are sure their god, one with the same name as her own god, but their god is the hateful vengeful fundamentalist Old Testament god while her is a loving Jesus.    Hugs.

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“I’m not a political activist,” she maintained. “I’m just a normal college student who thinks this law is wrong.”

Trump administration concedes Maryland father from El Salvador was mistakenly deported and sent to mega prison

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/trump-administration-concedes-maryland-father-from-el-salvador-was-mistakenly-deported-and-sent-to-mega-prison/ar-AA1C2Ovi

This is horrific.  They finally admit that without due process they are grabbing anyone brown and anyone Muslim even if they are here legally having a visa or green card and sending them as quickly as they can to a notorious horrific prison in El Salvador.  They claimed they were all gang members and they did not care if they were or were not.    The point was a Steven Miller Shock and Awe cause fear in anyone brown or Muslim.  He is a hard core white supremacists.  But the worst part is they know he is not the only one and they are refusing to bring him or any others back.  Refusing a judges orders.  

The administration argued that it cannot bring back Abrego Garcia because he’s in Salvadoran custody and knocked down concerns that he’s likely to be tortured or killed in CECOT.

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Salvadoran prison guards stand next to alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and the MS-13 gang recently deported by the US government to be imprisoned in the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) prison, as part of an agreement with the Salvadoran government, in Tecoluca, El Salvador, in this handout image obtained March 31, 2025.© Secretaria de Prensa de la Presidencia/Handout/via Reuters
 

The Trump administration conceded in a court filing Monday that it mistakenly deported a Maryland father to El Salvador “because of an administrative error” and argued it could not return him because he’s now in Salvadoran custody.

The filing stems from a lawsuit over the removal of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national who in 2019 was granted protected status by an immigration judge, prohibiting the federal government from sending him to El Salvador.

 

The filing, first reported by The Atlantic, appears to mark the first time the administration has admitted an error related to its recent deportation flights to El Salvador, which are now at the center of a fraught legal battle.

“On March 15, although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error,” the Trump administration filing states.

Abrego Garcia, who attorneys say fled gang violence in El Salvador more than a decade ago, had been identified by his wife in a photo of detainees entering intake at El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison CECOT.

Prior to his removal, he had been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in mid-March “due to his prominent role in MS-13,” according to a court declaration from a senior ICE official. His attorneys say he’s not a member of nor has any ties to the MS-13 gang.

 

“Abrego-Garcia was not on the initial manifest of the Title 8 flight to be removed to El Salvador,” Robert Cerna, an acting ICE field office director, said in his declaration, referring to federal immigration law. “Rather, he was an alternate. As others were removed from the flight for various reasons, he moved up the list and was assigned to the flight. The manifest did not indicate that Abrego-Garcia should not be removed.”

“Through administrative error, Abrego-Garcia was removed from the United States to El Salvador. This was an oversight, and the removal was carried out in good faith based on the existence of a final order of removal and Abrego-Garcia’s purported membership in MS-13,” the declaration reads.

The administration argued that it cannot bring back Abrego Garcia because he’s in Salvadoran custody and knocked down concerns that he’s likely to be tortured or killed in CECOT.

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Another link to this story is here.  This article has more information and is slightly longer.   It expands what the tRump government lawyers told the judge even thought the farmer had legal asylum they won’t bring him back with more detail than the story above.  Hugs

Trump admin. admits it wrongly deported Maryland dad from El Salvador

“The heavy interest in the President’s primacy in foreign affairs outweigh the interests on the Plaintiffs’ side of the scale. Although the Defendants recognize the financial and emotional hardships to Abrego Garcia’s family,  the public interest in not returning a member of a violent criminal gang to the United States outweighs those individual interests,” the filing continues.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/trump-admin-admits-it-wrongly-deported-maryland-dad-from-el-salvador/ar-AA1C3WtD

MS Restaurant Offers Free Food To Straights Only

March 30, 2025

The Mississippi Clarion-Ledger reports:

A Mississippi Gulf Coast restaurant came under fire after posting a video offering a free food deal to straight people only. The LGBTQ community is boycotting the business, and the owners’ stances on the matter have been erratic, swinging from backing the decision to apologizing before once again justifying their actions. Now, they’re defending the move.

On Tuesday, March 25, Darwell Yeager III and Nettie Mechelle Yeager shared a free food deal at Darwell’s Happiness Cafe in Long Beach.

Both spelled out that trans, lesbian and gay couples could not get the deal. Only heterosexual couples, regardless of how long they’d been together. In the following days, the owners have invoked President Donald Trump’s goal to “end to all this wokeness” and briefly shared a MAGA discount before deleting it.

The New York Post reports:

A Mississippi eatery that appeared on Guy Fieri’s “Diners, Drive-ins and, Dives” is facing backlash after its owners posted a video offering “something free” to only straight couples that stopped by to eat at the Cajun joint on Tuesday.

“If you come in and you’re a couple … husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, guy, girl couple, the real kind of couple,” Darwell Yeager said before his spouse cut in and said, “Because we don’t do the trans or the lesbian or gays, I’m sorry.”

“When you come in for the next hour and a half and you are a couple, can-produce-a-child couple, we’ll give you something free,” Darwell Yeager concluded in the since-deleted video that has spread online.

There’s a lot more at the first link, including multiple quotes from the couple’s now-deleted Facebook posts. The screenshot above is from a local station’s regular feature, “In The Kitchen With Darwell’s Happiness Cafe.” You should watch the video below.

FCC Chairman Enlists Anti-LGBTQ Activist To Help Him Block Major Media Mergers If Companies Back Diversity

OK again it is another old one.  I should have saved the Disney board standing up to the hateful anti-LGBTQ+ anti-DEIA and the board voting to keep the policies and associations even as they did agree to end the idea of a trans character in a show and do more conservative story lines / characters.  But think how tRump at every rally and in front of every courthouse claimed Biden was weaponizing the DOJ and government against him.  Remember how bad it said it was that Biden was using the government against his enemies which meant every republican criminal.  But now tRump is doing it and his maga cult that used to be called republicans are fine with it.  Just like the debt and debt ceiling doesn’t matter now under tRump and did not matter under the first tRump term, but during Biden’s term those two things were constantly shouted by maga on every right wing media show.  It is like the party who used to champion family values and law and order was never a believer in those things.  Hugs

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March 21, 2025

Bloomberg Law reports:

The US Federal Communications Commission is prepared to block mergers and acquisition proposals from companies that promote “invidious” DEI policies, according to chairman Brendan Carr.

The move could threaten billions of dollars worth of deals in the communications sector, with Carr specifically mentioning Paramount Global’s merger with Skydance Media, Verizon’s acquisition of Frontier Communications, and T-Mobile, which is seeking to purchase US Cellular Corp.’s wireless operations.

“Any businesses that are looking for FCC approval, I would encourage them to get busy ending any sort of their invidious forms of DEI discrimination,” Carr said in an interview Friday.

Fox News reports:

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr is vowing to use every tool at his disposal to eliminate Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs from the companies his agency regulates, and has enlisted the help of a high-profile conservative activist in the effort.

Carr met with activist Robby Starbuck on Wednesday to discuss ways the agency can use its enforcement powers to stamp out DEI in the telecommunications sector. The two discussed ways the agency can enforce existing civil rights laws along with President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders targeting DEI in the public and private sectors.

“It’s my hope that this meeting is a wake-up call for businesses within the FCC’s purview that the days of violating the law with DEI are over,” Starbuck told Fox News Digital.

Robby Starbuck has successfully bullied multiple major firms into dropping LGBTQ support with threats of national boycotts.

Since becoming FCC chair, Carr has launched investigations into NPR, PBS, and the east coast flagship broadcast affiliates of ABC, CBS, and NBC.

Carr first appeared here in 2022 when he supported Trump’s demand to ban TikTok. Trump famously reversed on banning TikTok once he found out that GOP megadonor Jeffrey Yass holds a $15 billion stake in the platform.

In 2023 Carr accused then-Rep. Adam Schiff of running a “secret and partisan surveillance machine.” He has also accused the World Health Organization of “beclowning itself” with COVID mitigation advice.

In 2020, Carr told Fox News host Lou Dobbs that “far-left” social media platforms had “hopped from hoax to hoax to hoax” in attacks on Trump.

Carr is a vehement opponent of Net Neutrality and opposed efforts to block Elon Musk from purchasing Twitter.

Last year Carr wrote a full chapter in the Heritage Foundation’s book in support of Project 2025.

What Are Satanists Up To In Kansas???

By my dogs that love gravy I like this man’s message.  I enjoy listening to him as he asked everyone including the Christians to love each other, to be kind to each other.  He reaches even a complete atheist like me.  The fact is you can gain more converts, more adherents to your view with kindness and joy, than you will ever be able to do with anger, hate, and force.  This man will bring far more people to Jesus and to the principles that Jesus taught than the Christian nationalist hate preachers ever will even if they get their way.  No law forcing a person to sit in a pew can ever make them believe the stuff that is against the inborn idea of fairness, kindness, respect for others … or as someone said treat others as you would like to be treated.  Period.  The saying was not treat others the way you want to be treated only if they are like you, only if they believe as you do, only if they are the same skin color or the same sexual orientation.   Treat everyone as you would like to be treated.  Hugs

Texas Gov Backs Batshit QAnon Bill To Ban “Furries” In Schools, Resurrects Stupid QAnon “Litter Boxes” Claims

I know this is ten days old, but I had it open in a saved tab to share.  Most of those I am deleting but this one is just too over the top stupid in a way to keep their maga cult base hyped up or enraged.  This has to be one of the greatest hoaxes ever pulled on the right.  But remember Texas is run by a group of very wealthy fundamentalist religious leaders who demand society return to the 1950s society they remember and loved.  They want a state / country that is white Christian male dominated and give unearned respect.  They want Christianity, their version of the god worshiped by their church to be forced on everyone so they can get more donations, more forced white babies that are dragged to church by their parents, more butts in pews, more donations in the plate, more tithes.  These are the kind of people that if they don’t feel that way, if they are not into something, then no one should be.  They are straight cis people who think anyone not straight or cis is doing it as a choice because they are mentally ill and need to be fixed / cured.  These are the people with no empathy who want conversion therapy torture done on children and young adults who are LGBTQ+.  Hugs

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March 21, 2025

The Dallas Observer reports:

A freshly filed bill brings the topic of furries in Texas schools to the House. The bill, Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Education Act, pet-named the F.U.R.R.I.E.S Act, would ban students from observing “non-human behaviors,” which include, but are not limited to, meowing, barking and hissing; wearing a tail, collar, or ears; and licking oneself in a grooming manner.

The F.U.R.R.I.E.S Act, filed by Rep. Stan Gerdes [photo], a Republican lawmaker from Central Texas, does not apply to any specific age group, and instead blankets all students at Texas schools, at the public and private level. The only exceptions are mascots, designated dress-up days and children participating in performances.

The bill follows a debunked right-wing conspiracy theory that teachers were providing students who identify as cats with litter boxes. Indeed, a section of the bill explicitly prohibits “using a litter box for the passing of stool, urine, or other human byproducts.”

The Houston Chronicle reports:

Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday resurrected debunked rumors that public schools were putting litter boxes in classrooms for students dressed as cats, amplifying right-wing criticism of some educators as he pushes for a statewide private school voucher program. The Texas Republican told a gathering of pastors at a Baptist church in Austin that the so-called furries trend is “alive and well” in communities across the state, and that lawmakers needed to ban it.

“In some small rural sections of school districts in the state of Texas, they have in their schools, what are called furries. Y’all know what this is?” Abbott asked the crowd, which responded with a smattering of “yeahs.” “Kids go to school dressed up as cats with litter boxes in their classrooms,” Abbott said. Abbott referenced two rural school districts but did not name them in his address to the Texas Pastors Policy Conference.

From the editorial board of the Dallas Morning News:

No, there aren’t schools in Texas putting out litter boxes for kids to use. That’s internet garbage that naive people take as gospel. In fact, we can think of few more effective ways to spread “furry” culture than to tell the kids it’s against the law. Gov. Greg Abbott, repeating the internet hoax about litter boxes in place of school bathrooms, has either fallen for furry worry or knows there are enough gullible people among his electorate that he can play like a fiddle by plucking their fears.

Abbott has gone full batshit QAnon.

Disapering people and breaking democracy, government by thugs

This is from https://liberalsarecool.com

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THE ERA OF VANISHING HAS BEGUN

They are not arresting people. They are vanishing them.

Rumeysa Ozturk wasn’t read her rights. She wasn’t told why she was being detained. She was walking to break her fast in Somerville, Massachusetts when masked men in an unmarked SUV pulled up, took her phone, slapped on handcuffs, and dragged her into a vehicle like she was some kind of national security threat.

She’s a doctoral student. A Fulbright scholar. A trauma researcher. But in Donald Trump’s America, she fit the profile: Muslim, foreign-born, sympathetic to Palestinians.

Now she’s locked in a for-profit detention center in Louisiana, hundreds of miles from her lawyer, after a federal judge specifically said she wasn’t to be moved.

They moved her anyway. Because rules no longer apply to those with badges — real or fake.

A MOVEMENT BUILT ON CHAINS AND COWARDS

Alireza Doroudi is gone too.

He’s a doctoral student at the University of Alabama, born in Iran, studying mechanical engineering. No criminal record. No warning. Just scooped off the grid.

ICE refuses to say where he’s being held. No public charge has been announced. His only crime appears to be existing in the wrong body, from the wrong country, in the wrong era.

Mahmoud Khalil was next — a Columbia student, arrested for leading pro-Palestinian protests. Trump labeled him a “radical foreign Hamas sympathizer” on Truth Social. Days later, he was gone.

Jeanette Vizguerra was taken from her Target shift in Colorado, chained at the waist.

Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez, a farmworker organizer, was dragged from his car at dawn in Washington. His window was smashed by federal agents. His voice silenced.

These aren’t isolated incidents. These are deliberate acts of political intimidation.

They are testing the system — testing us — to see how many people they can disappear before we stop calling it democracy.

WHEN ICE IS A BADGE — AND A COSTUME

While the real ICE disappears scholars, organizers, and mothers, the fakes are circling like vultures.

In South Carolina, Sean-Michael Johnson posed as an ICE officer. He pulled over a van of Latino men, screamed slurs, jiggled their keys, and knocked a phone out of someone’s hand. “You’re going back to Mexico!” he shouted. He wasn’t an agent — but he played one with conviction.

In North Carolina, Carl Thomas Bennett used a fake badge to sexually assault a woman at a motel. He told her if she didn’t comply, he’d have her deported. He held up a counterfeit ID and pretended to be the state.

And in Philadelphia, a Temple University student in an “ICE” shirt tried to storm a dorm building with two accomplices. They were dressed for the part, intoxicated by the illusion of authority, emboldened by the climate.

This is what happens when the state makes cruelty a brand. When a badge becomes a fetish object. When the line between enforcement and cosplay disappears altogether.

THE WHOLE SYSTEM IS THE CRIME

Let’s stop pretending this is a coincidence.

This is a unified strategy. The Trump administration is using ICE like a personal strike force — targeting international students, protest leaders, organizers, and mothers with surgical precision.

They invoke secret designations. They bypass due process. They manufacture pretexts out of thin air and rely on the fog of bureaucracy to hide the blood on the floor.

The point isn’t law enforcement. The point is deterrence. Spectacle. Control.

This is what political cleansing looks like when it’s dressed up in the language of national security.

They’re showing the world that resistance has a cost — and the cost is your freedom, your voice, your visibility, your future.

SILENCE IS CONSENT. AND WE ARE LOUD.

There is no middle ground here. No fence to sit on. No neutral position when people are being kidnapped in the name of the state.

ICE doesn’t need your applause. It needs your silence. Every time a student vanishes and the media shrugs, every time a woman is cuffed and the public looks away, the machine gets stronger.

They are daring us to ignore it. They are counting on our numbness. They are betting that we’ll keep scrolling.

We cannot let them win.

This is not border policy. This is not visa enforcement. This is not safety.This is authoritarianism with a PowerPoint presentation.This is fascism disguised as formality.

This is the state stripping people from the land and pretending it’s order.

Let the record show:

They took people.

And we did not look away.

We saw it.

We named it.

We raised hell.

And we did not stop.

(I didn’t write this. Credit goes to Fear and Loathing: Closer to the Edge)

Laverne Cox On The Importance of Trans Issues & Stories

Some news items I wanted to post that got lost in the short time I have to share stuff.

These four articles come from March 17 / 18th and I really wish I could have posted them then.   Hugs


How many eggs can you send? U.S. asks countries to help lower soaring prices

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/how-many-eggs-can-you-send-us-asks-countries-help-lower-soaring-prices-2025-03-14/

The above is the tRump admin trying to get other countries with higher standards in their food to send us their eggs to protect tRump from the soaring prices.

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Hungary To Use Facial Recognition Against LGBTQs

Hungary To Use Facial Recognition Against LGBTQs

This scares me because the fundamentalist and white cis straight male supremacists will demand it be used here.  First on trans people to protect the children then expand it to the entire LGBTQ+ as they have been doing everything else they tried to use against trans kids / people. 


Famed Navajo Code Talkers Axed From Pentagon Sites

Famed Navajo Code Talkers Axed From Pentagon Sites

Yes I know that these were restored.  But now tRump is demanding Vance who is on the board of the Smithson and the National Zoo to remove all illegal (purge) references to race, gender, the LGBTQ+ and so much more.  He is demanding a national landmark the US government doesn’t control to toe the fundamentalist straight cis white supremacy Christians agenda to deny anything but them into history or society.  We really are seeing a complete take over of society and we must do all we can to prevent the rollback of all rights and equality of anyone not white straight cis Christian males.  This is horrifyingly scary.  Because these hate groups have learned if they can control information, control education, control what is considered good or bad by their standards they can force the youngest people in the country to voice that belief and grow up to enforce it.  It is what theocratic Islamic nations do.  Are we now a nation taken over by theocratic Christian fundamentalist demanding a change in even the constitution to force everyone to follow their god and their rules?  Please kill me first. 


Kentucky Republicans Overturn Ex-Gay Torture Ban

Kentucky Republicans Overturn Ex-Gay Torture Ban

Every accredited organization except those directly driven by fundamentalist religiously motivated agree this is simply torture.  The religious just simply refuse to believe sexual orientation is not a choice and no one wants to be like that no matter what has to be done to change it.  Including electroshock therapy to the genitals.   Think of yourself, gay straight, or any other orientation.  If you are cis and straight, how much conversion therapy would it take to make you believe you were gay / lesbian and desire that.  How could who you are attracted to be changed.  That all comes from the idea that it is a mental illness and a sickness that needs to be cured.  Which the majority of medical organizations reject, agreeing it is an inborn part of a fetus development.  Plus if you could change a sexual orientation … look at my childhood.  I was forced to please sexually both males and females.  But the only rapes that totally crashed me in the military was the one by a woman with more rank than me who demanded I have sex with her … four times.  The last time I was so upset and humiliated that I ran nude up the stairs of the housing unit for higher enlisted and pounded on my soon to be E-7’s door.  I was sobbing incoherently.  I have been raped all my life and was able to stand that.  Why did what this woman force me to do reduced me to that state?  Because it was against my very nature of who I was.  I was having same sex relations with another young guy and loving it.  What she was forcing me to do was against everything I felt inside.  That is what the people of these gay conversions want to do. 

Some of them think that being gay is a choice because … well when did they decide instead of men they would like to have sex with women?  No they just felt it, but what gay / lesbian people feel is not valid and must be forced to change. The rest of this group feels their interpretations of their view of what their god wants must be enforced on everyone even those that don’t follow their god.  Because it is their god and he must be pleased because their god hates what they hate.  Even if it is not in the bible or they misunderstood it, their hate preacher told them it was so.  They can not let others live their lives, everyone must live by their church dictates.  Why??? Because only that way their god will love them?  I am an atheist that is willing to let religious people believe as they wish as long as they don’t try to force their beliefs on others.   You do you … but why can’t they do the same.  They insist that no one can be different from them and their beliefs.   That is scary just that they think like that and more that they are now running the US government.  

PS.  When James was a newly teen of 13 his parents went to the Florida Keys with a group of us.  They always stayed apart even though they asked to be part of the caravan of RV going.  Well I caused an issue.  His … maybe abusive parents had lots of tattoos and were highly Catholic religious … even had a statue of the mother Mary in the entrance of their home.   Yes the husband ruled the house and told the wife what she would do at all times.  Which included the abuse of the child which is where we came in.  In a year or so after this even the boy started staying at our home because he was not allowed home until the mother was there.  I had seen a young kid come in with a Mohawk.  The boy had his hair shaved on both sides of his head and long in the front and back.  We had already talked to their son at our table because the parents they were trying to force the boy to get Christian tattoos. 

When I spoke up and said there is …. next hair cut … it will look grand on him.  His stepdad exploded and said he wouldn’t ever allow the boy in the house with that and he would hold him down and shave all his hair off.  As anyone can imagine I got triggered, I had been held down and had my hair cut.  I flew up from the table as Ron was grabbing at me and yelled you want him to have tattoos which is against the bible but a simple haircut which can be changed or grow back and has no mentioned in the bible upsets you so much you’re threatening the kid.  I loudly said, “What the fuck is wrong with you”!  They took the boy from our table and left his meal uneaten.  I was furious.  Others who did not know of my childhood tried to calm me down.  The family of the boy left that day from our group at the campground.  Next time the boy came to our home his hair was cut short and the parents never went on another trip with us.  Hugs


FL GOP Advances Ban On City Diversity Initiatives

FL GOP Advances Ban On City Diversity Initiatives

Again an attempt to turn the country into a while male cis straight only nation.  How much clearer can it be.  And all these republicans or most of them are fundamentalist Christians who were funded by their church in a steal run to get elected.   This not what the publican wants.   But these republican fundamentalist groups understand … politicians can force change in public opinion if they support something loud and forcefully enough.  Which is one why Kamala Harris l think lost the election, the democrats refused to respond to the attacks on trans people fearing it would hurt them.  That is how you bring people along to a new understanding.  The republicans are doing it in reverse of what the progressive movement did with government support in the early 2000s.  Now that democrats have retreated only the hard right republicans are getting their voices heard returning the countries view to pre-rights for LGBTQ+ people.  Hugs