A group of alt-right American Nazis attended a protest against the reading of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto at a public library in Providence, Rhode Island. The reading was organized by an African American left-leaning organization and faced threats of violence and intimidation from the protestors. Ana Kasparian discusses on The Young Turks. “Historical Alt-right and Nazi group in America attended to protest against a communist manifesto reading in a public library, Rhodes Island that was organized by a African American left leaning movement.”
Texas’ conservative governor Greg Abbott has ordered state agencies to recognize gender-affirming care to transgender children as a form of child abuse. Abbott claims that the Department of Family and Protective Services is “responsible for protecting children from abuse” and that teachers, medical professionals/doctors, and parents who don’t report the ‘abuse’ may face legal consequences. “Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered state agencies to investigate reports of transgender kids receiving gender-affirming care as “child abuse,” but it’s unclear what immediate effect the directive will have on kids, teachers, doctors and parents. In a letter to the Department of Family and Protective Services sent Tuesday, Abbott said the agency “is responsible for protecting children from abuse.” He warned that educators, medical professionals and others who don’t report alleged abuse could face consequences. “Texas law imposes reporting requirements upon all licensed professionals who have direct contact with children who may be subject to such abuse, including doctors, nurses, and teachers, and provides criminal penalties for failure to report such child abuse,” Abbott said.”
In a letter sent Tuesday (22 February), Abbott reminded the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services that it is “responsible for protecting children from abuse” so must shield trans youth from treatment.
The Republican demanded the agency “to conduct prompt and thorough investigations of any reported instances of Texas children being subjected to abusive gender-transitioning procedures”.
Doctors and nurses, he said in the directive, could face jail time for failing to report such care and said parents and guardians should also incur criminal penalties for pursuing treatment on behalf of their trans children.
Abbott’s intervention signalled Texas‘ clearance intent yet to erase trans youth, with treatments such as puberty blockers, that researchers say is “life-saving,” being dubbed “monstrous” by the attorney general Ken Paxton.
On Monday, Paxton issued a 13-page legal opinion under the category “child abuse” providing public officials with a justification to hammer down on trans healthcare.
While an attorney general’s opinion does not carry the force of law and is just advisory, state officials are expected to take them into account in their decision-making.
“Sex-change operations and puberty blockers prescribed by kids is ‘child abuse’ under Texas law,” Paxton tweeted.
“These procedures are monstrous and tragic,” he tweeted before quoting his statement: “I’ll do everything I can to protect against those who take advantage of and harm young Texans.”
Paxton said that “it remains medically impossible to truly change the sex of an individual because this is determined biologically at conception”, a claim that Abbott said he agrees with.
Paxton issued his opinion, which is a written interpretation of current law, after Republican Fort Worth representative Matt Krause asked him to weigh in on the issue.
Neither Paxton’s opinion nor the governor’s directive has any legal effect, but both amount to domineering efforts to tear down the rights of trans people in Texas.
“The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) has now confirmed in the enclosed opinion that a number of so-called ‘sex change’ procedures constitute child abuse under existing Texas law,” Abbott wrote in his letter.
Texas attorney general Ken Paxton. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
“Because the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) is responsible for protecting children from abuse, I hereby direct your agency to conduct a prompt and thorough investigation of any reported instances of these abusive procedures in the State of Texas.
“As OAG Opinion No. KP-0401 makes clear, it is already against the law to subject Texas children to a wide variety of elective procedures for gender transitioning, including reassignment surgeries that can cause sterilisation, mastectomies, removals of otherwise healthy body parts, and administration of puberty-blocking drugs or supraphysiologic doses of testosterone or estrogen.”
A spokesperson for DFPS said in a statement to local news outlet KCAN that the agency “will follow Texas law as explained in attorney general opinion KP-0401”.
“At this time, there are no pending investigations of child abuse involving the procedures described in that opinion,” the spokesperson added. “If any such allegations are reported to us, they will be investigated under existing policies of Child Protective Investigations.”
Activists decry anti-trans Texas governor and attorney general: ‘This is an absolute nightmare’
As much as overwhelming evidence shows that providing gender-affirming healthcare to trans youth is more beneficial than hurtful, Republican legislators have increasingly sought to ban treatments altogether.
Withholding gender-affirming healthcare from trans youth can lead to higher rates of anxiety, depression and suicide, studies have found.
This culture clash more or less came out of nowhere, with a wave of more than 100 anti-trans laws being proposed in early 2021, according to legislative tracker Freedom for All Americans. And this trend has continued to rip into 2022, with dozens already introduced.
While similar proposals were pitched by Republicans in the past, efforts in 2021 and 2022 to chip away at trans rights are now often more organised and slick, with bill names that claim to be promoting “fairness” in single-sex sports or “protecting” children.
“This is an absolute nightmare,” tweeted Chase Strangio, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union.
“What [Paxton and Abbott] are doing is terrifying,” they added. “They are scaring kids, their families and their doctors into believing they will be investigating if they affirm their trans children and patients.
“This will cause severe stress and anxiety, could limit medical care, will discourage parents from loving and supporting their kids and could lead to illegal investigations into families.”
I want to make clear because the article doesn’t that sex surgeries re not happening on minors for gender dysphoria. Sex surgeries have happened on minors if there is an accident or a problem with the genitals. No minor is having breast removed or penises changed. Also puberty blockers are not new and they are not dangerous. They have been proscribed for a lot of different medical issues. Plus they are completely reversible by simply not taking them. That is all that happens, a person goes through puberty later. No what they are important for is so a trans kid doesn’t develop the features of an adult of the wrong gender. No male wants female parts, no female wants to look like a guy. It is incredibly hard to change these features once they are set. Imagine being a young person watching your body changing daily into something horribly wrong for you. But for a political party that keeps touting parents’ rights in schools and in book banning’s from libraries, now they want to remove parents’ rights when it comes to medical decisions for the child.
The 15-year-old accused in the deadly mass shooting at his suburban Detroit high school in November should be kept in adult jail as he awaits trial, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Oakland County Assistant Prosecutor Kelly Collins said during a hearing about the teenager’s confinement that he’s demonstrated he can be calculating, has a desire to be remembered for his alleged crimes, and enjoys the notoriety the case has brought him, including email from women.
“How to do I get my fan mail, how do I get my hate mail”? he has said, according to Collins.
He has “a deeper and more calculated mind than any other 15-year-old,” she argued in court.
The teenager’s defense team formally asked the court that he be transferred from Oakland County jail to Children’s Village in Pontiac.
Collins said the teen already killed four classmates atOxford High School on Nov. 30 and that teenagers at the juvenile facility would be put in danger that is “contrary to the rehabilitation of those at Children’s Village.”
“He enjoyed his dark side,” Collins said. “He’s fascinated with violence.”
The teenager’s defense team said he’s hardly been in direct contact with anyone, except his lawyers, since he’s been in jail, despite a possible need for psychiatric supervision.
“The jail is not equipped with handling juveniles,” attorney Paulette Loftin said during the hearing.
Because the defendant had no prior criminal or disciplinary school record to speak of, Loftin said, he should be allowed to wait for trial in the children’s facility with defendants his age.
Loftin argued that because many of the people sending him email are women, such communication could be better supervised if he was held at Children’s Village.
“These are emails from strangers all around the world,” Loftin said. “At Children’s Village we are able to control that communication.”
Loftin did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday night.
Judge Kwame Rowe said he would make a decision in the upcoming days.
The suspect, Ethan Crumbley, has pleaded not guilty to two dozen charges, including murder. His parents are also being jailed on four counts each of involuntary manslaughter in the shooting. They have pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The 15-year-old accused in the deadly mass shooting at his suburban Detroit high school in November should be kept in adult jail as he awaits trial, prosecutors say. https://t.co/EqL8YBLsw1
Democratic lawmakers and activists are decrying a proposed amendment they say would require schools to inform a parent of their child’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
The amendment is among a slew lawmakers will consider Tuesday on a measure opponents are calling the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The bill (HB 1557) seeks to closely regulate LGBTQ instruction and conversation in the classroom.
It would restrict primary schools from “encouraging classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity.” It also would allow parents to sue over alleged violations. Levy County Republican Rep. Joe Harding is the bill sponsor. He is also sponsoring the amendment.
Read the full article. The full Florida House votes tomorrow.
If you want a sense of what kind of guy @josephbharding is, he recently promoted a tweet claiming "the left is having full-blown meltdowns" about his bill because "teachers are not going to be able to groom kids anymore in Florida." pic.twitter.com/bju9ltiY6H
I am absolutely disgusted with @josephbharding. If you have already determined that outing a student would result in abuse, abandonment, or neglect, then there is NO WAY to make a "safe, supportive, and judgement-free environment" that involves that parent. #DontSayGayhttps://t.co/w5GHWRjlaw
Harold Hamm, one of the wealthiest oil execs in America, recently doled out an estimated $2.3 billion to each of his five children…completely tax-free.
It is hard to overstate how damaging trickle-down economics has been for the American economy. It has eviscerated our tax code and empowered a class of oligarchs that dominate our political system.
The right calls anything that helps the public socialism. Republican block any attempt to require the upper wealthy pay their share of taxes so the country can have more than the bare minimums of survival. The country did best when the upper class paid more in taxes including wealth taxes. The country had the money to expand and create, to do things that astonished the world. Now a we have multimillionaires and billionaires paying next to nothing ruling the country while 80% of the people struggle for a decent quality of life. 40% of the country couldn’t handle an unexpected $400 expense. We need to do better on the messaging and help people see they have been lied to by the wealthy to steal the countries assets.
The end of privilege feels like loss for so many.
Mark my words: if Russia invades Ukraine, the same Republicans in Congress who were silent when Trump cozied up to Putin will criticize Biden to no end.
Before GOP leaders pass their next trim to voting rights, they should visit Philly’s Constitution Center’s Xcllnt exhibit on Reconstruction. Republican Congress passed historic voting rights. pic.twitter.com/gy0O0yodJz
“It’s really, massively stupid not to welcome vaccination,” the 98-year-old Munger said. “We probably have 30% of the people in the country that think vaccination is evil and [is] coming after them like the hobgoblins. It’s not good that there’s that much ignorance left.”
Republicans attract the ignorant, then weaponize their self-interests and sadism.
Always reasonable to oppose US intervention overseas but the formulation "I don't give a shit if other people die" always reflects a hollow, immoral politics. https://t.co/4NYBbQYkse
Putin doesn’t have all those troops in Belarus and Crimea to just invade the Donbas.
Strategically, I would think Putin would want to make them fight on multiple fronts at once, too — I’m still expecting Kyiv to be targeted https://t.co/hokKdQPC0u
“So I’m gonna break into your house and take what I want, and if your dog bites me, you’re responsible for me burning down your house” https://t.co/YnqIDeoqPr
FFS, corps are having record profits, CEOs & execs are getting big bonuses and raises. The supply chain is breaking down, slowing products from the Wall Street bottom liners outsourced factories to the market, decreasing supply and driving up prices even further. The Owning Class is engaged in wholesale looting, and Real Leftist Ted Rall is putting this drivel out? GTFO.
Wages are up and people are still buying. If people are willing to spend over retail for vehicles and such, inflation will continue. The white supremacist backed road blocks impeding commerce between the USA and Canada certainly didn’t help do anything good to slow inflation. Republicans are desperate to find an issue they can run with. One fizzle after another. Hillary still seems the best bet for them.
The protesting truckers were a small percentage of all the truckers in Canada. The truckers union and the majority of truckers condemned the protest. It wouldn’t have stopped food deliveries nor caused shortages in grocery stores. This cartoon is about fear. Be afraid, don’t let the government require vaccines or you will go hungry.
The slogan is awkward but it is correct. The police have become too militarized with too many non-law enforcement jobs required of them. Right now the police are more occupying army than protectors of the people. Police shouldn’t be the primary ones answering mental health calls, they should only be a back up to the mental health workers trained for that job. Several places have tried switching to having trained professionals answer those types of calls and it works. Right now in many areas of the country the police have become gangs, thugs demanding ever higher pay, perks, and military gear. Time to get back to what core policing really is and leave the video game commando tactic to the gaming consoles. Civilian boards should be in charge of police investigations, No excuses for body cams not on or worn. It is time for civilians to be in charge, not the gangs of cops. A national database for bad cops and those in that data base do not get rehired if they are fired for cause.
A protest organized by a fascist Qanon leader and supported mainly by far right white supremacists with the goal of over turning a law in the US about not being able to cross the US / Canada border without being vaccinated. This was vaccine protest was in a country already 90% vaccinated. The public did not support this, the truckers union did not support this action, and the protest was conducted by a very small percentage of Canadian truckers. It was promoted on social media by foreign governments interested in causing unrest and chaos in the US and Canada. The majority of funding was coming from the US. Which might explain the Confederate battle flag being flown by the protestors.
Springboro families were shaken to their cores in 2019 when they learned a former gym teacher had been accused of inappropriately touching first grade girls.
John Austin Hopkins was ultimately sentenced for 34 counts of gross sexual imposition involving 28 students, whom he would pull onto his lap or hold between his legs. The children didn’t know they were being abused, prompting parents to speak out in favor of efforts to bring sexual abuse prevention to classrooms, the Dayton Daily News reported.
Lawmakers got the message.
Last summer – one year after Austin Hopkins’ sentencing, the Ohio House approved a bill that would require school districts to teach child sexual abuse prevention in kindergarten through sixth grade classrooms and sexual violence prevention in grades 7-12. The vote was opposed by only eight Republicans.
Sponsors say the bipartisan bill has enough support to pass the GOP-controlled Senate and move to Gov. Mike DeWine’s desk. However, a conservative lobbying group has been working for months to derail the measure over concerns that it leaves parents in the dark and flies in the face of abstinence-only sex education.
“Who would not want to protect children?” Rep. Scott Lipps, R-Franklin, said.
Fighting over abstinence, opt-out
The bill in question, dubbed Erin’s Law, mirrors legislation approved by three dozen other states. It’s named for Erin Merryn, a child sexual assault survivor who is working to pass the law across the country after action in her home state of Illinois.
Lipps and Rep. Brigid Kelly, D-Cincinnati, have pushed the bill in Ohio’s last two legislative sessions, and it was introduced multiple times before that.
Child sex abuse prevention should include information about counseling and resources for children who have been sexually abused. No other content requirements are outlined in the bill.
The Ohio Department of Education must provide free resources to help districts develop curricula on sexual violence, an all-encompassing term that includes sexual assault, incest and intimate partner violence.
School districts would be required to notify parents and guardians about the lessons and let them review the materials if requested.
Parental notification isn’t enough for opponents at the Center for Christian Virtue. Policy director David Mahan said the bill should allow parents to opt their children out of the curriculum altogether and argued it lacks a clear definition of what “age-appropriate” instruction means.
Mahan also contends the measure violates state law because it does not emphasize abstinence. Ohio currently requires educators to teach students that abstinence is the only guaranteed practice to avoid sexually-transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies.
“If we’re going to do that in the state of Ohio, it’s got to be abstinence-related,” he said. “It’s not opinion. It’s law.”
Allowing parents or guardians to remove their children from the program raises red flags for advocates. One in 9 girls and 1 in 53 boys under 18 are sexually abused by an adult, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, and one-third of the perpetrators are family members.
“Any effort to attach parental consent to this law is another layer of perpetuation of violence, removing power, control, agency and autonomy from the victim,” said Rosa Beltré, president of the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence. “The vast majority of survivors of child sexual assault express that their victimization occurred at the hands of a caretaker, an adult they trusted, a parent.”
Erin’s Law: Bill in Ohio faces uncertain future
After meeting with the Center for Christian Virtue, Lipps said lawmakers agreed to let the group submit their own version of the bill for consideration.
The proposed draft would limit the teaching of abuse prevention to once in middle school, while dating violence education would be taught annually in grades 6-12. The courses could not encourage sexual activity among children, demonstrate contraceptive use or include information from groups that advocate for abortion access. It also says abuse prevention courses should note “that sexual activity is only appropriate in marriage” and discourage any implication that parents aren’t trustworthy.
“It absolutely guts Erin’s Law,” Lipps said. “There’s no reason that we would pass this bill.”
The future, for now, is uncertain. Lipps and Kelly want to avoid starting over so survivors don’t have to retell their traumatic experiences to lawmakers. The committee’s chairman, Sen. Andrew Brenner, expects further hearings but said they may be delayed because of redistricting.
“We have a bipartisan bill,” Kelly said. “We have a lot of support from families, from survivors, from advocates. I would think that those voices should carry weight in the statehouse.”
But the Center for Christian Virtue is still determined to squash the bill. Mahan said the topics are important – and in some cases already taught in schools – but the details don’t work for them.
“It’s important in terms of the what, but the how is an issue,” he said. “It’s not like if we oppose (the bill) we’re for abusing children, which is absolutely ridiculous.”
Rentier capitalism is a term currently used to describe the belief in economic practices of monopolization of access to any kind of property (physical, financial, intellectual, etc.) and gaining significant amounts of profit without contribution to society.
It’s ironic that Fox is so outraged by the media properly passing on the Durham probe fabrications, when they are so flagrantly ignoring the real story about Trump’s financial corruption. It’s just more proof that Fox has never been a news network. And it’s why their audience is so pitifully uninformed, or even worse, misinformed, about everything from the Biden economic boom, to the COVID pandemic, to the 2020 presidential election, and so much more. They are the “New Ignorati.” And that’s exactly how Fox News wants them.
Fox News has been completely distorting the Durham Nothingburger to falsely claim that it proves that Hillary Clinton was spying on Trump. There is no truth to that whatsoever, and the filing doesn’t even make that allegation. But that didn’t stop Sean Hannity from fictionalizing the story.
The Sussman indictment – and I’ve been saying this since it dropped because of a lack of materiality and unclear charges – will probably be dismissed before it even goes to trial. I describe this latest Durham stunt as “Kash Patel garbage in, Kash Patel garbage out, and then Trump threatening to kill people as a result. It’s that simple.”
No one from Clinton’s campaign ordered spying or hacking. No spying or hacking took place. A contractor that was tasked with analyzing DNS queries on government networks. They brought in a lawyer who works on cybersecurity matters to bring what they thought was suspicious activity to the attention of national security agencies. One of Bill Barr’s hacks claims the lawyer didn’t tell the FBI he had also done work for the DNC. The lawyer has proof that the FBI was well aware that he had worked for the DNC.
Minnesota Freedom Fund. The Minnesota Freedom Fund is working to end the discriminatory, coercive, and oppressive policy of cash bail, which criminalizes poverty and takes a disproportionate toll on communities of color. It is a well known problem that poor people spend more time in prison than those with money to pay bail. Justice shouldn’t depend on your income. Bail was used to insure a person will show up in court. But it has become a punitive measure used to harm people. Bail was not to be used as punishment but it is being used that way. Remember that a person is considered innocent until judged at trial.
The misleading right wing media wants to convince everyone that their favorite boogieman was spying on tRump. Fact is that was not true. Neither John Durham nor anyone else for that matter had actually provided any evidence of any such crime, let alone even suggested it. … (T)he actual reason that the “LameStream” media hadn’t covered the story was likely because, as the Times notes: (1) Sussmann’s conversation with the CIA had already been reported last October (2) Durham never once said anything about the White House being “infiltrate[d]” (3) the special counsel also never claimed the Clinton campaign had paid Joffe’s company and (4) perhaps most importantly, “the filing never said the White House data that came under scrutiny was from the Trump era.” In fact, lawyers for the data scientist who helped develop the data analysis in question, say this happened during— wait for it—Barack Obama’s presidency.
Almost a million Americans are dead, more reported Covid fatalities than any other country in the world. Yet some accuse leaders of doing too much.
S Kelley believes the Fox narrative. They really want her to run and tell everyone else she is. She lives rent free in all their heads. Conservatives just can’t get over the fact that Hillary won the popular vote in ‘16
This is what the intent was. To scare teachers from even approaching the subjects. They are being forced to teach lies or risk being personal money loss. There is no CC, sorry
The Florida House could be poised to pass two fiercely debated bills that would place restrictions on how issues about race, gender identity and sexual orientation are taught in public schools.
The Republican-dominated House is scheduled to take up the bills Tuesday, after weeks of opposition from Democrats and other critics such as LGBTQ-advocacy groups.
“If we are prohibiting discussion around sexual orientation, are we therefore prohibiting discussion around people being gay?” Rep. Fentrice Driskell, D-Tampa, asked Friday before the House Judiciary Committee voted 13-7 to approve the bill along party lines.
The bill would ban discussing these issues in primary schools and restrict how they are discussed in other grades if they are deemed “not age-inappropriate.” However, it does not specify what would be considered age-appropriate, or who decides.
Any parent could sue their child’s school for compensation for alleged harm if they believe those discussions have occurred. The likely outcome of the bill would be to deter teachers from addressing these issues and to chill open discussions and support for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students.
The bill would also require school personnel to notify parents of changes in a student’s physical, mental, or emotional health. It would significantly limit the ability of counselors and teachers to be a confidential resource for students.
The ABA is opposing provisions in Florida legislation dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill because they would undermine the well-being of LGBTQ students and chill beneficial faculty speech.
ABA President Reginald Turner outlined the ABA opposition to the bill, which discourages some classroom discussion about sexual orientation and gender identity, in a Feb. 16 letter to Florida lawmakers.
Turner’s letter said the ABA adopted a resolution in 2020 urging publicly funded elementary and secondary schools to include information about the contributions of LGBTQ people in their curricula.
UPDATE: Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill is scheduled for a vote in the House on Tuesday.
UPDATE: Florida House Republicans are allowing opponents a grand total of 40 MINUTES on Tuesday to debate the "Don't Say Gay" bill which would prohibit many teachers from discussing sexual orientation or gender in classhttps://t.co/pbtsY1ixuy
Texas attorney general Ken Paxton. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Scottie's Playtime 
Wages are up and people are still buying. If people are willing to spend over retail for vehicles and such, inflation will continue. The white supremacist backed road blocks impeding commerce between the USA and Canada certainly didn’t help do anything good to slow inflation. Republicans are desperate to find an issue they can run with. One fizzle after another. Hillary still seems the best bet for them.