This story is bat shit. Random nobody staffer copy and pasted a Presidential directive to pull out of Afghanistan without consulting any national security leaders. He’s the guy running Project 2025. These fuckers are a menace. https://t.co/KYKyG4LOx1
Trump's aide John McEntee was fired today because he is currently under investigation by DHS for serious financial crimes. Minutes after McEntee was escorted from the WH, he was named a senior adviser to Trump's reelection campaign. Only the best people! https://t.co/vYhq57nVxl
Good old Johnny McEntee – the fuckboi frat bastard that ran trump’s Presidential Personnel Office – where if you came across a bottle of Smirnoff Ice, you were obligated to chug it. (That’s not a joke) https://t.co/xL81DTePeG
Read the full article. According to the piece, the flag was re-popularized in 2013 by Christian nationalist Dutch Sheets and is now often seen at far-right and QAnon events. Rioters brandished the flag during the attack on the US Capitol. As I reported this morning, Johnson is presently attending a far-right conference in Paris.
"An Appeal to Heaven" flag outside #NAR Mike's speaker's office.
"But for the past decade it has become a symbol of the NAR movement and their goal of establishing a “Seven Mountain Mandate" over the government."
Read the full article. The piece notes that $1.7 million is more than Ohio dioceses spent running local Catholic Charities programs last year. Cincinnati Archbishop Dennis Schnurr last appeared here in 2014 when he launched a “prayer in defense of marriage” campaign as the Sixth Circuit Court considered the same-sex marriage case that ultimately would be folded into the Obergefell case before the Supreme Court.
Read the full article. The original clip has nearly 10 million views at this writing. As you can see below, Salzman appears to be a supporter of Moms For Liberty. Salzman has one of the wildest Wikipedia entries that you’ve likely seen.
What happened in Wichita and JoCo is happening nationwide, the AP reports. Voters rebuked conservative candidates who want to ban books and restrict classroom conversations on race and gender. #ksedhttps://t.co/OF1RKOg15G
Yesterday CNN reported that “a plumber, a maid, a chauffeur and a woodworker are among Mar-a-Lago staffers and contract workers who federal prosecutors may call to testify against former President Donald Trump.”
In 2023, a whole bunch of orcas started attacking boats off the coast of Spain. Was this the first battle in an all-out interspecies war? Well, probably not. But it’s a pretty neat look into how trends come and go in orca pods – like salmon hats.
The title is very low-key and misleading until the hard a punch this post has. I have to admit, I am jealous I can not write this well and put such emotion with detail into a post. The author is an accomplished writer who can lead a reader down a path and then deliver the real message. Please read and enjoy. Hugs. Scottie
One of the most serious reasons I quit being a member of TYT and refuse to watch their shows was because of Cenk’s and Anna’s constant refrain that the left supporting trans people was a losing issue, causing the republicans to win races. They were vicious about it, how the left had to stop supporting trans people, stop talking about them, and just let the right have that space. Even as it was pointed out to both of them that the election results showed they were wrong, they doubled down on the idea that the left needed to stop supporting trans people, pushing for trans people to play sports with the gender they identified with, and letting trans people use the public / school restrooms of the gender they identify with. This election again shows how Cenk and Anna have become so out of touch with the left now. They doubled down because in their minds they are the experts that everyone must agree with and follow. Hopefully these election results will get Cenk to drop his grift of running for president against Biden. I will also remind everyone that Riley Gaines is a failed losing swimmer that makes her money being a star of the anti-trans movement complaining that she mistreated but always fails to mention the truth both her and Lia Thomas were beaten by four other women swimmers. If Thomas had such great advantages, why was she beaten by four other women? Gaines is just a poor swimmer compared to the competition. Hugs. Scottie
Does Kentucky’s election show that trans rights isn’t a winning issue for Republicans?
Kentucky’s Democratic Gov. Andy BeshearPhoto: Shutterstock
Despite an outside organization spending millions of dollars on ads attacking transgender people to support GOP candidate and state Attorney General Daniel Cameron, incumbent Gov. Andy Beshear (D) is projected as the winner in the Kentucky gubernatorial race with 90% of precincts reporting.
“We have been through a lot together,” Beshear told supporters late last night after the race was called. “Devastating tornadoes in the west, historic flooding in the east and after each I made a promise, a promise that I would help rebuild every home and every life. And thanks to the people of Kentucky and thanks to this election, we’re going to see that promise through.”
Transgender rights became a major campaign issue this past year in the state. One of the ads funded by the American Principles Project PAC (APP-PAC) said that Beshear would send the FBI to take trans kids away from their parents if their parents didn’t accept their identities, which was not a part of Beshear’s platform.
Another ad showed a drag queen and accused Beshear of pushing “child sex changes with permanent consequences.” The ad was removed from YouTube under the platform’s hate speech policy.
In several other ads featuring former University of Kentucky swimmer and anti-trans activist Riley Gaines, APP-PAC attacked Beshear for vetoing a bill to ban trans kids from participating in school sports. The Republican legislature ultimately overturned his veto.
In the ad, Gaines complained about tying with trans University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas for fifth place in a competition, a moment Gaines described as “heartbreaking and somber.” She has used her story for the past two years in political ads and speeches as she decries trans equality.
In the ad, Gaines also said that Beshear wasn’t a “real man” while calling Thomas a “male” and misgendering her.
On X, Terry Schilling of APP-PAC said that the group spent $2 million on the anti-trans ads in Kentucky.
Schilling got national attention in 2020 when he told Politico that he hoped to make opposition to transgender rights a wedge issue to support Republican candidates. His group paid for anti-trans ads supporting Trump’s campaign. Trump ultimately lost the election by about seven million votes.
“What I’m hoping is that once we release these ads and numbers start to move, the Trump campaign will see it’s a powerful issue that the Republican Party can use to its success,” Schilling said at the time.
I am seriously getting tired, scared, and very worried that these terrorist groups can operate openly spewing hate with impunity. This is incitement to committed violence and terrorism. And the right wing fascist fundamentalist Christians groups love these actions, as they are looking forward to a time of legal moral police and the Christian Taliban church doctrine enforcers. This is domestic terrorism.
noun
The use of violence or the threat of violence, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political goals.
Resort to terrorizing methods as a means of coercion, or the state of fear and submission produced by the prevalence of such methods.
The act of terrorizing, or state of being terrorized; a mode of government by terror or intimidation.
Brookings, South Dakota. A university LGBTQ+ group is hit with a flood of hate mail, culminating in a bomb threat that terrifies students.
San Lorenzo, California. A drag queen story hour is one of several Pride events across the country stormed by suspected members of the extremist street gang the Proud Boys. The men shout homophobic slurs and threats, and a performer hides in a back room, waiting for police to arrive.
Philadelphia. Boston. Pittsburgh. Washington, D.C. Akron, Ohio. Threats hit hospitals and medical clinics, and some temporarily evacuate their patients while law enforcement assesses the danger.
Then comes summer and fall 2023, at least two dozen public schools and libraries start receiving bomb threats. In California, Colorado, Oklahoma and Wisconsin, they cancel classes and evacuate students.
These cases, and many more, share a common link: The victim of each threat had also been targeted, in the days before, by the enormously popular conservative social media channel Libs of TikTok.
In almost every case, the perpetrator of the threat is unknown, and Chaya Raichik, the far-right influencer who runs Libs of TikTok, says she opposes violence, and that because there have been almost no arrests, there’s no proof the threats come from her followers.
Numerous news reports have covered individual threats, noting the target had also been mentioned by Libs of TikTok. But the new analysis of years of tweets, including archives of many Raichik has since deleted, shows the pattern is more extensive and pervasive than has been previously known – and that threats, specifically against schools, have ratcheted up significantly in the past two months.
Media Matters used searches of published news reports to help identify more than 30 possible threat incidents. USA TODAY verified bomb, death and other threats in more than two dozen cases.
The research most likely undercounts the total number of cases. Other threats may never be reported to police or the media, and some targets are reluctant to publicize their plight for fear of drawing even more harassment.
As Libs of TikTok’s reach has expanded – the account now has more than 2.6 million followers on X, formerly known as Twitter – so, too, has the frequency and ferocity of the threats that follow Raichik’s posts.
Hospitals have been evacuated; schools and libraries have cleared classrooms and canceled lessons while police officers search for bombs. Bookstores, Pride parades, cafes, even a dog rescue center, have had to lock down for fear of reprisals – and violence.
“We can only insulate ourselves from what’s happening on social media for so long,” said Ari Drennen, LGBTQ+ program director for Media Matters. “In a country where so many people have the ability to take things into their own hands, that’s a very real worry.”
Libs of TikTok: A far-right force driving the conversation and fueling outrage
The @LibsofTikTok Twitter handle was created in April 2021 by Raichik, a former Brooklyn real estate agent who grew up in Los Angeles.
Raichik created the account to “raise awareness about the situation in America,” she told USA TODAY. “There’s a clear pattern of the sexualization of children going on in public schools, and I think that’s a problem,” she said. “I think it’s super harmful, and I want to call it out, and raise awareness to it.”
The account has become a creator of, and a force multiplier for, right-wing outrage, particularly on LGBTQ+ issues. On X it has been amplified by the platform’s owner Elon Musk, and a hive of conservative politicians, media personalities and far-right online influencers, including former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson and podcaster Joe Rogan.
For 2½ years, the account has posted a drumbeat of videos, photographs and links, often featuring TikTok or Instagram videos recorded by progressive leftists, accompanied by a derisive comment from Raichik.
Like most social media influencers, Raichik doesn’t produce all the content she tweets about. Libs of TikTok regularly shares videos and posts created by other far-right accounts, often with inaccuracies, misinformation and thinly veiled hatred mixed in.
But while those other accounts may have a smaller reach, once Libs of TikTok chooses a target, the viral response can quickly spin out of control.
Once Raichik posts something, “it just gets amplified to an order of magnitude larger audience,” said Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic who has been openly critical of Libs of TikTok. “Any tweet she puts out gets – instantly – millions of views and potentially tens of thousands of retweets and likes. So it gets wide dissemination.”
Shortly after – media reports and interviews show – is when the threats often begin.
Hospitals receive threats after Libs of TikTok posts
In Spring 2022, Raichik began directing her audience toward doctors, hospitals and medical facilities that provide care to LGBTQ+ patients, especially children.
On March 16, 2022, Libs of TikTok targeted Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Oregon, part of the Oregon Health and Science University’s health system, for providing gender-affirming care to youth. Almost immediately, the hospital and its staff started receiving harassment and threats.
“The harassing calls, emails and other messages that OHSU received in March 2022 objected to gender-affirming health care. Most of these messages cited social media posts that contained inaccurate or misleading information about life-saving and medically necessary care for gender-diverse patients,” reads a hospital statement provided to USA TODAY. “OHSU and its staff continue to be subjected to anti-transgender harassment today.”
By the summer, Raichik focused on Boston Children’s Hospital.
From Aug. 11 to 15, 2022, Libs of TikTok tweeted about the hospital at least seven times, Media Matters found. In one post, Raichik shared a debunked – but wildly popular – video claiming the hospital was performing hysterectomies on children.
Almost immediately, far-right message-boards and Twitter caught fire, with one poster threatening to “start executing these ‘doctors.’” On Aug. 16, the official Twitter feed for Boston Children’s Hospital posted a statement saying it had “been the target of a large volume of hostile internet activity, phone calls and harassing emails, including threats of violence towards our clinicians and staff.”
The statement specifically cited the false video about hysterectomies as the driver of the campaign.
The next day, Aug. 17, the local U.S. attorney announced an investigation into the threats and a month later, federal agents arrested 37-year-old Catherine Leavy, charging her with making a false bomb threat against the hospital. Leavy pleaded guilty in September and faces up to 10 years in prison.
But the Libs of TikTok tweets against healthcare workers continued unabated.
On Sept. 18, 2022, the account posted about gender-affirming care at Akron Children’s Hospital in Ohio. The online abuse got so bad, the hospital had to take down a section of its website.
A few days later, on Sept. 21 it was the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s turn, when Libs of TikTok posted about the hospital’s efforts to help parents of transgender children. The hospital soon reported increasing its security because of threats to staff.
And it’s not just big institutions; Libs of TikTok has also targeted individual doctors.
Last October, Raichik posted a video of Dr. Katherine Gast, co-director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s UW Health gender services program, describing gender-affirming operations. The backlash was swift, with thousands of Twitter accounts sharing the post, including Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
The subsequent harassment campaign against Gast was “scary and overwhelming,” she told NBC News.
“The followers of Libs of TikTok and Ted Cruz lied about my practice to stir up outrage, doxxed me and my family, and my clinic is receiving harassing phone calls,” she told the network.
‘They want to become famous’
Asked for her reaction to the established pattern of harassment that follows her tweets, Raichik has a simple – and standard – response: She’s merely reposting what institutions and individuals have already, themselves, chosen to put out to the world on social media, she says.
“If an individual posts publicly on TikTok, the goal of TikTok is to get views,” Raichik said. “That’s why people post on TikTok – they want to become famous, they want clicks, views.”
But Raichik doesn’t just repost other people’s content.
First, her posts almost always include some kind of commentary. One in October, for example, featured an Instagram video of a New York music teacher, joyfully waving a Progress Pride flag while the message “Happy National Coming Out Day – Black, Gay and Thriving” appears at the bottom of the screen. “An actual elementary school teacher in NY,” reads Raichik’s comment on the video.
That teacher told USA TODAY that while he had not been aware Libs of TikTok posted his video, he had seen an immediate surge of hate mail. “I’m so mortified by this!” Eric Williamson said via email. “I have seen an increase of nasty messages on my post this week and wondered why.”
Other posts either directly or indirectly encourage Libs of TikTok’s followers to contact the original poster directly. In a post last April for example, Raichik sarcastically told her followers “definitely do not keep up the pressure” on a school district in Oregon that supported transgender students using their chosen pronouns. Asked about that post, she acknowledged it was a call to action, but only to “tag” or mention the account on social media. “I’ve done that a couple times, where I told people to tag accounts on Twitter,” she said. “That is nowhere near telling people to call in bomb threats.”
Libs of TikTok also doesn’t post solely public material.
Posts regularly include clandestine photos and videos that have been sent to Raichik or her network, presumably without the permission of a hospital, school clinic or library.
And some of the material she posts is doctored or fake – something Raichik acknowledged in her interview with USA TODAY. In April 2022, she reposted photographs and claims purporting to show an elementary school teaching children about a lifestyle some people believed depicts a fetish for animal costumes. The original post was an easily debunked hoax, and Raichik later deleted her tweet.
“I deleted it, and actually it taught me a lot, because now I’m much more careful in vetting everything,” Raichik told USA TODAY. “But yes, that is one example, I’ll admit, of a story that wasn’t true.”
Early this year, Raichik said, she deleted all of her prior tweets from 2022 and 2021 – an act she called a “one-time editorial decision.” She wouldn’t elaborate on her reasoning.
In recent months, Raichik, who calls herself a journalist, has begun labeling certain posts as “Scoops” – indicating they contain original reporting that nobody else has published, including the targets of her posts.
She told USA TODAY she is increasingly filing requests under public records law, with the hope of revealing previously unknown information. That’s a shift away from her original brand – the idea that she just posts videos the “libs,” themselves, already made.
Whatever her intention, Raichik has clearly spent recent months focused on one target: public schools.
Libs of TikTok turns its attention to schools
In at least 12 cases in the past two years, Libs of TikTok posts about schools, school districts and teachers have been followed by bomb threats, Media Matters found – often multiple bomb threats against the same location.
Most of these happened in the past two months.
Since Aug. 21, Media Matters tallied, and USA TODAY confirmed, there have been at least 25 bomb threats against schools, libraries, school administration buildings and universities after Libs of TikTok posts.
On Aug. 21, Libs of TikTok posted about a public library in Davis, California, where staff refused to allow a group to continue a public presentation. During a speech about transgender athletes, the speakers broke library rules by repeatedly referring to them as “biological males.” Libs of TikTok then tweeted a video of the confrontation, which has been viewed more than 1.4 million times and liked by 20,000 accounts.
The library almost immediately received bomb threats, and had to close temporarily, according to local media reports and the local police. And though the event was at a public library, the Davis Joint Unified School District also then received at least five bomb threats, and district staff stated publicly that their personal information was posted online. The FBI are assisting local authorities in investigating.
“The County of Yolo unequivocally condemns hate crimes and incidents that have cast their shadows over our vibrant community,” Dwight Coddington, a spokesman for Yolo County, which includes Davis, told USA TODAY. “Hate crimes and incidents have no place in Yolo County.”
In recent weeks, similar bomb threats have been made following Libs of TikTok tweets about schools in Oklahoma, Iowa, Massachusetts, Illinois, Wisconsin, Colorado, Washington and Oregon.
Despite the steady, and increasing, drumbeat of bomb threats against the very public schools and libraries her posts have targeted, Raichik said she was not convinced Libs of TikTok is connected to these harassment campaigns.
Schools, hospitals and other public institutions get bomb threats all the time, she told USA TODAY.
“It’s possible that some of these bomb threats were not even real bomb threats, you know,” she said. “Why are these bomb threats – the ones that are allegedly coming after my tweets – why are those making it to the news, while others aren’t?”
Two school security experts told USA TODAY that many schools do, indeed, receive more bomb threats than the public might realize. But victims and experts say the pattern of threats following Raichik’s posts shows more than just coincidental timing.
At the Cherry Creek School District in Arapahoe County, Colorado, for example, a local media station received a threat in September claiming multiple bombs had been placed at three schools and two administration buildings. The buildings, including a day care center, were evacuated.
The day before, Cherry Creek had been the subject of a Libs of TikTok blog post claiming the district kept “pornographic” books in elementary school libraries. The Libs of TikTok post ended with a call to readers to contact the district.
Almost immediately, the district was inundated with thousands of harassing phone calls, emails and social media posts. Then came the bomb threat.
In a letter to parents, the district superintendent, Chris Smith directly connected the threat to “bullying” and homophobic views expressed about the LGBTQ+ books on social media.
“The attacks from last week were driven by hate and have no place in our schools,” he wrote.
Ken Trump, a former Federal Protective Service officer and author who runs a school safety consultancy, said he’d be very surprised if the recent string of threats immediately following Libs of TikTok posts had happened by chance.
“I’ve seen some coincidences in my years doing this work, but that would be a really big one,” Trump said.
Libs of TikTok targets Pride events
Alyssa Gonzales was standing in her parents’ kitchen when she got the phone call late last November: A bomb threat had been made against the South Dakota State University Gender and Sexualities Alliance, where Gonzales volunteered and now serves as president.
Gonzales’ parents knew something was up.
Her father quizzed her about the call, and Gonzales’ reaction to it. The 19-year old took a deep breath. She had never told her parents she was gay. Now, she couldn’t wait any longer.
She came out to her family, explaining she had become heavily involved with LGBTQ+ causes at SDSU, and that she and her colleagues were now the target of a bomb threat.
The chain of events had begun a few days earlier, when Libs of TikTok reposted a video of a drag queen dressed in an outfit designed to make the wearer appear naked. The tweet claimed the video was from a “family friendly” drag show hosted by SDSU’s Gender and Sexualities Alliance.
It wasn’t.
The clip was actually from the previous year’s drag event, at which no children were present. But that didn’t stop the outrage. Replies to the tweet flooded in. The university began fielding hundreds of hateful and threatening emails, and eventually the bomb threat that led to Gonzales’ untimely coming out to her parents and grandparents.
The threats didn’t stop Gonzales and her colleagues at the college. Instead, in an act of defiance, they like to read out some of the more bizarre messages in ridiculous voices at their meetings.
“It feels like, ‘Oh, we’ve made it, we’re making news, and people are going to notice us.’” Gonzales said. “And if they notice us, then we can talk more, too – we can still say that, despite all this, we’re here, we’re queer, we’re out, and we’re proud.”
Other activists and performers across the country have also taken the threats in their stride.
Panda Dulce, a drag queen from the San Francisco Bay Area, hosted the event at the San Lorenzo library in summer of last year. It had been targeted by Libs of TikTok tweet, then was disrupted by a group of men wearing black and gold – the colors of the extremist group the Proud Boys. The men shouted homophobic slurs at Dulce as she tried to read to children, she said.
“They called me a ‘pedophile,’” Dulce wrote in an email to USA TODAY.
Dulce said the men made direct threats at her safety. “It was clear I was the target and focus of their attack,” she wrote.
But more than a year later, Dulce said she can’t let hate win.
“I still lead Story Hours,” she wrote. “I will not stop simply because some hobbyless extremists decided to cosplay Call Of Duty and throw a tantrum in a shameless grab for attention.”
For Gonzales, despite the bomb threat incident forcing her to come out to her family, the process went really well, she said. Her parents were loving and accepting, open and embracing – and all the more so given the hostility they knew their daughter was facing.
“They were very understanding,” she said. “They don’t get everything, but they’re still accepting.”
This is what the M4L and other fundamentalist Christian racist bigot groups want here in the US. This is what they are trying to do. Wipe the existence of LGBTQIA people from public sight / society. They want us gone, outlawed, a progressive society of equality for all so all can live freely as themselves without oppression from government or other people. Instead, they want to replace it with the regressive oppressive society of the 1950s and worse only allow the public display of church approved doctrine. Remember when on TV married couples could only be shown going to bed in separate beds, because god forbid people get the idea that married people slept together back then. The idea that non-married actors would lay down on the same surface was pornographic even if they had their clothing on and were playing a married couple. Remember when the only way a gay or lesbian character could be shown is as a depraved villain who got destroyed somehow by the end of the film, showing that good church doctrines triumph over such evil beings every time. See that is the society they think everyone should be forced to live today, by church doctrines, never letting on people have sexual desires or that anything other than straight cis people exist or are good people. This is the person Orbán, that the right wing pushes as the perfect way to run the US, he is a complete authoritarian driven to change the country and government to his view of morality and under his personal control. Former rights and liberties have been restricted and outlawed. When people show you who they are, believe them. This who the fundamentalist right wing Christian majority are. Hugs. Scottie
Hungary’s cultural minister on Monday fired the director of the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest, accusing him of failing to comply with a contentious law that bans the display of LGBTQ+ content to minors.
The dismissal of Laszlo L. Simon, who became director of the museum for a five-year term in 2021, came after Hungary’s government determined in late October that five photos on display at the prestigious World Press Photo exhibition violated the law restricting children’s access to content that depicts homosexuality or gender change.
The museum subsequently put a notice on its website and at the entrance to the World Press Photo exhibition — which showcases outstanding photojournalism — that the collection was restricted to visitors over 18.
Read the full article. Writing this morning on his Facebook page, Simon notes that the age restriction went into place immediately upon the government’s order, adding, “As a father and grandparent of four children, I strongly refuse that our children should be protected from me or the institution I manage.”
As I noted last week, the five offending photos merely portray elderly queer Filipinos caring for each other in a group home they’ve shared for decades. Speaking this weekend to Florida Republicans, Trump again lavished praise on Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban and again falsely claimed that Hungary and Russia share a border.
Hungary has fired the national museum director over LGBTQ+ content in World Press Photo exhibition https://t.co/KDHPFLZR5f
I assume they wouldn’t even know the subjects of the photos were gay except the descriptions of the photos informed them of it? Image how delicate and unstable they must be to be trigger just by knowing that someone is gay.
Idiotic, but that’s the way fascists roll. I saw the exhibition in Montréal in August. If you’re a normal person, the elderly queer Filipinos caring for one another were among the most hopeful and least disturbing in the show. Other images feature bloody war, famine, terrorism, environmental catastrophe etc. But it’s the caring queens that’s supposedly too much for youths. It should be noted that Budapest is NOT Orban-friendly like other parts of Hungary.
Thanks for sharing that. Gender fluidity in precolonial Philippines tracks the tradition of other Pacific Island and First Nations cultures. Trans persons were referred to as Babaylan, Hawaiian and Tahitians were Mahu and held similar roles in pre-contact society. Generally perceived as shaman or spiritual beings.
How exactly would those photos damage children? Were there nudity? Sexual content? Or is it too much for the fragile Hungarians to see men taking care of other men?
Anti abortion is never about pro-life, anti drag queen is never about children grooming and so on and so forth. This is the standard fascist talking point.
Harmless images of gay seniors somehow are more offensive than the scantilly clad beach goers? These fascists love to make a mountain out of a molehill to spin their lies.
If the Republicans win next year they will pass all kinds of laws against lgbtq and have setup the best supreme court to make them stick. When Lawrence v Texas is overturned we’ll all go back to being outlaws.
Can we not see the abuse of the legal system to target and cause harm to your opponent? In many ways it is terrorism. This is a deliberate attempt to remove a group of people, a segment of the public from schools and other media, so only they can be seen or represented. Calling any book with and LGBTQIA character in it pornography is ridiculous but resonates with people who don’t know how innocent these books are. They surely are cleaner and safer than the bible they claim is so moral. But their fire is dying down as more people see them for what they are. They are now like Marge Greene playing to a maga base for views and clicks in the media. As more of us get the word out about what they are doing, they have lost momentum and support. This is a deliberate attempt to whitewash an entire society to install a white religious over class, just as Russia did. Change the removal of books with LGBTQIA to the removal of books with black or brown people in then because it is pornographic, now who does it seem? Wouldn’t it be racist? Notice also how she claims that people like her fighting to censor and remove books are the good people using their rights, but she claims it is illegal for any groups or people to oppose or try to form groups against what her group is doing. WTF! Hugs. Scottie Also there is videos at the link above I am unable to repost here.
Two members of Moms for Liberty, a right-wing activist group, have reported several Florida school librarians to law enforcement. They claimed they had evidence that librarians were distributing “pornography” to minors and requested that law enforcement officers be dispatched. This represents a serious escalation of the tactics deployed by members of Moms for Liberty against school librarians.
On October 25, Jennifer Tapley, a member of the Santa Rosa County chapter of Moms for Liberty and a candidate for school board, contacted the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office. “I’ve got some evidence a crime was committed,” Tapley said in an audio recording of the call obtained by Popular Information through a public records request. “Pornography given to a minor in a school. And I would like to make a report with somebody and turn over the evidence.” Tapley made the call from the lobby of the main office of the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office in Milton, Florida.
She told the dispatcher that she did not want to provide her name because she was “afraid of people getting mad at me for doing this.” Tapley said that she would tell the Deputy Sheriff her name, but she didn’t want “any public records with her name on it because then people could look it up.”
In an interview with Popular Information, Tapley said she was “scrolling through Facebook” this summer and saw “a video of a mom reading a book” that was “really disgusting.” She later learned that there was a Moms for Liberty chapter in her area addressing the issue and joined the group. As a member of the group, she learned that local schools had “some really shocking pornographic books in our libraries.”
Tapley was accompanied at the Sheriff’s Office by Tom Gurski, who is also active in the local Moms for Liberty chapter. Soon, Deputy Sheriff Tyler Mabire and another officer arrived and interviewed the pair.
“The only reason we are here: A crime is being committed. It’s a 3rd-degree felony. And we’ve got the evidence,” Gurski said in a body cam video of the interview obtained by Popular Information. “The governor says this is child pornography. It’s a serious crime,” Tapley added. “It’s just as serious as if I handed a playboy to [my child] right now, right here, in front of you. It’s just as serious, according to the law.” The video has been edited to protect the identity of a minor:
The “pornography” at issue is actually a popular young adult novel, Storm and Fury, by Jennifer L. Armentrout. The book, which is 512 pages, is mostly about humans and gargoyles fighting demons. The main character of the novel, Trinity, is 18 years old. There are some passages with sexual themes, including a few makeout sessions, and one where the main character almost has sex. In the 2020-21 academic year, the Florida Association of Media in Education (FAME), a professional association of Florida librarians, recommendedStorm and Fury on its “Teen Reads” list. FAME says books on the list “engage” teens and “provide a spur to critical thinking.” Barnes and Noble recommends the book for readers 14 to 18. It was also recommended for students by the School Library Journal.
Armentrout told Popular Information that it was surprising to learn we are “living in an era where, apparently, some adults find it appropriate to contact the police over a fictional book involving gargoyles.” She said Storm and Fury “is very close to my heart, as the main character has the same degenerative eye disease, retinitis pigmentosa, as I do.” Armentrout said she wrote the book “to educate people on a little-known disease in a fun, suspenseful, and adventurous way.” The purpose of the book, Armentrout said, was not to “incite sexual excitement.”
Tapley told Popular Information that any book that has a “sex scene” is pornography and not “appropriate for minors.” She did acknowledge that there may be exceptions for “extreme classics.” But the books Moms for Liberty is targeting, Tapley says, are “without significant literary value.”
Florida law, however, only bans distributing a book or other material with sexual content if it is “harmful to minors,” a standard established by Supreme Court precedent. Under Florida law, a book is only “harmful to minors” if it “[p]redominantly appeals to a prurient, shameful, or morbid interest” and is “patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable material or conduct for minors.” Storm and Fury, a book that is predominantly about fighting demons, is routinely recommended by adults for high school students.
Gurski told the officer that Storm and Fury was checked out from Jay High School “by a 17-year-old, which is important because she is a minor.” Tapley showed the officers the book, with the offending passages marked with orange sticky notes.
In Santa Rosa County schools, once a book is challenged for sexual content, the policy is to take it out of circulation within five days, pending a review. Tapley alleged, “we have already turned in this book,” but the Jay High School librarian did not remove it. That allegation appears to be incorrect. Storm and Fury does not appear on lists of challenged books in Santa Rosa County maintained by the school district and Tapley.
In addition to the librarian at Jay High School, Tapley points the finger at Ruth Witter, the head librarian for the county. Tapley presents the officers with a printout of Witter’s Facebook page and claims it is proof that “she [has been a] member of Santa Rosa County Stop Moms for Liberty since May.” She explains that “Moms for Liberty is trying to… get rid of these books” and “fights for parents’ rights.” Meanwhile, Tapley alleges, Stop Moms for Liberty “are the people who are against Moms for Liberty.”
Tapley claims that, by following the Santa Rosa County Stop Moms for Liberty group, Witter is “fighting us actively.” She also connects this to alleged “death threats” against
Moms for Liberty members, without elaborating. Tapley does not mention that Witter also follows several conservative pages on Facebook, including Fox Nation and a Republican candidate for local office.
The librarian at Milton High School is also singled out by Tapley for posting in a Facebook group called Emerald Coast SWEEP, a local chapter of the group Red, Wine, and Blue. Tapley describes Red, Wine, and Blue as “a very liberal activist group of people fighting for abortion rights” that opposes the removal of books from public school libraries. Tapley says the Milton librarian is seeking “liberals” to join the school’s book review committee, which Tapley claims is “illegal.”
Asked if she would like to see librarians criminally charged, Tapley told Popular Information that it “depends on if there’s an intent.” She said her hope was that the Sheriff would tell the librarians, “you can’t do this,” and “if you continue to do this, then there would be charges.” Tapley added that she “didn’t really want to see anybody have their life ruined.”
In an interview, Tapley downplayed her role at the Sheriff’s Office, claiming she was not “seeking out any books and trying to go to the police with it or anything.” She described her role “as a helper.” She only put her name on the report “so that somebody else could be protected.” In an email, Tapley said she “had no interactions with the Sheriff’s Office beyond accompanying a citizen there” and “any reporting that states otherwise would be unfactual.”
Popular Information has posted the full video from the Santa Rosa Sheriff’s Office on YouTube.
“To see the orchestrated campaign to remove books from schools escalate to a police station is shocking,” Kasey Meehan, a Director at PEN America, a non-profit dedicated to free expression, told Popular Information. “Professional librarians apply sensible measures to curate their collections for diverse audiences of readers, and they should not be punished for making knowledge accessible to students that falls well short of the well-established legal standards for obscene materials.” Stephana Ferrell of the Florida Freedom to Read Project described the tactics of Moms for Liberty members in Santa Rosa County as an effort to “bully the district into sacrificing access to protected speech.”
Popular Information contacted Mariya Cakins, the chair of Santa Rosa Moms for Liberty, for comment. Cakins said that she would be happy to speak, but the request needed to be routed through the national Moms for Liberty organization. The group never responded to that request. Popular Information was unable to identify reliable contact information for Gurski.
The efforts of Tapley and Gurski to initiate an investigation by the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office appear to be unsuccessful. According to a document obtained through a public records request, the Sheriff’s Office quickly referred the report to Daniel Hahn, the director of safety at Santa Rosa County Florida School District. The Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office then closed the case.
Gurski, however, is having better luck with other law enforcement agencies.
Florida police department has open criminal investigation of Florida librarians
“Approximately ten days ago, I had a book in my hand that was issued by the Milton school library, which is not your jurisdiction,” Gurski told Deputy Mabire at the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office. “I went to the Milton police station. Submitted an affidavit and the evidence of that particular book. And they have that now for investigation.” Gurski said he considered the book pornography.
Tapley says the book reported by Gurski to the Milton police was another young adult novel, Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List, by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. The book is a romantic comedy and has some sexual situations and discussions. It also includes LGBTQ characters. It is recommended by Common Sense Media, an independent non-profit that evaluates media for parents, and Publishers Weekly for readers 14 and older.
In response to a public records request, the Milton Police Department said it could not release any information regarding Gurski’s complaint about the book because there is an “open and active investigation pending State Attorney review.”
The Vicki Baggett connection
Tapley told Popular Information that Vicki Baggett, an English teacher in Escambia County, has been “helping us.” Baggett, who Popular Information interviewed earlier this year, has challenged hundreds of books in public school libraries, including many that have LGBTQ characters or address racism. Baggett told Popular Information that she challenged When Wilma Rudolph Played Basketball — the inspirational story of a Black woman who overcame racial prejudice to become an Olympic champion — because it would make white students “feel uncomfortable” as “they are being white-shamed.” In a follow-up report, Baggett’s current and former students alleged that Baggett openly promoted racist and homophobic beliefs in class. Nevertheless, Baggett has been successful in getting numerous books removed from Escambia public schools. The Escambia school district is now facing a federal lawsuit from a group of authors and First Amendment advocates.
Tapley described Baggett as “a valiant warrior for the kids, an amazing English teacher, and a wonderful Christian woman.” According to Tapley, Baggett has come to Santa Rosa County and “has been helping us see what’s in our libraries.” Many of the challenges in Santa Rosa County are duplicates of those Baggett submitted in Escambia County. “She’s been the catalyst really for a lot of this,” Tapley said. “She taught me how to do it.” Baggett initially submitted the challenges in Santa Rosa County herself, but those were rejected because she is not a resident. Many of those challenges have been resubmitted with Baggett’s name alongside a Santa Rosa County resident.
When the Family Research Council held its annual “Pray, Vote, Stand” summit last week, Christian nationalist pseudo-historian David Barton was given a prime speaking slot, along with dozens of right-wing pastors, activists, commentators, and members of Congress.
While introducing Barton, FRC’s president Tony Perkins declared that what critics deride as Christian nationalism is simply true American history, and he credited Barton for having “done more than anyone else to help Americans, and Christians in particular, to know their history”—a history that Perkins claimed has intentionally been “hidden” by mainstream historians.
Perkins is correct in noting that nobody has been as influential as Barton in convincing millions of Americans that the United States was founded to be an explicitly Christian nation. And that is a problem, given that Barton’s misuse and misrepresentation of both American history and theBiblehave beenwell-documented.
Barton’s willingness to misrepresent history and scripture to promote his right-wing political agenda was on display when he spoke at Calvary Church in Moline, Illinois, last Wednesday as part of the Faith Wins voter mobilization effort.
One of Barton’s favorite methods of convincing his audience that America was founded as a Christian nation is to assert that Americans of the founding era were so deeply knowledgeable about the Bible that they referenced it continuously in their writings and speeches. The problem today, Barton insists, is that modern Christians are ignorant of both history and scripture and are thus incapable of recognizing the fact that our founding documents are chock-full of Bible quotes.
The irony of this assertion is that it relies on the very ignorance Barton decries in order to be effective, as anyone willing to look into the claims Barton makes will inevitably find that he is lying.
While speaking at Calvary Church, Barton trotted out a new example of this technique, when he claimed that first- and second-grade students attending public schools in New Jersey in the early 1800s were required to memorize large portions of the Bible as part of their curriculum.
It’s interesting to go back in those early records and see what was being taught in the schools. For example, let me take you to some early schools. I want to take in New Jersey. And in this case, I’m just going to choose 1816 [in] New Jersey. They’re going to show you what happens with first- and second-graders in New Jersey. Here’s what they say. It says, ‘All the scholars of the first and second classes commit to memory portions of the New Testament or Psalms, a lesson of the Catechism, several hymns, and the text of the preceding Sabbath.’ Everybody in public school in New Jersey, if you’re in first and second grade, this is what you’re getting memorize. And by the way, what are the texts of the preceding Sabbath? That means whatever Pastor Tim talked about on Sunday, we’re going to memorize those Bible verses; so whatever verses he referenced, we’re going to memorize. A public school is doing this? Yes, absolutely. This is what public schools did.
As we all know, some kids are sharper than other kids, and they talked about one of the kids that was really sharp. They said, ‘One of the scholars has committed to memory the Book of John, and the first 30 Psalms, together with 119th Psalm.’ A [student] in first and second grade memorized the Gospel of John, 30 Psalms, and Psalm 119. He was really sharp. The rest of the kids weren’t quite so sharp. Here’s what it said about the rest of them, ‘The majority have committed to memory the Gospel of John.’ The average kid has memorized the Gospel of John. Everybody does that in first and second grade, but we got one kid that added 30 chapters out of Psalms and Psalm 119. Really? Common for first and second grade is everybody memorizes the Gospel of John? Maybe one in 1,000 Christians today has memorized the Gospel of John, and that was first and second grade stuff back then.
Thanks to the quotations Barton cited, we were able to track down the document he used in making this claim. It was a report from the board of directors of the Free School Association of Elizabeth-Town published in a periodical called The Christian Herald and, predictably, Barton was blatantly misrepresenting it.
The first thing one notices upon reading the report is that the reference to “the scholars of the first and second classes” does not refer to what today would be called first and second graders. The report explicitly states students are “divided into seven classes” based upon their reading and writing abilities and that “most of the children in the fifth class were unable to read when they entered school.”
It is unlikely that first- and second-graders were memorizing entire books of the Bible, as Barton claimed, while fifth-graders were unable to read.
But more importantly, the document further reveals that this was not a public school at all, as Barton claimed, but rather a Sunday school.
As it notes, the students were “taught on the Lord’s day, immediately after the conclusion of public worship in the afternoon.”
In fact, the document itself confirms that these students were enrolled in Sunday school when it notes the existence of “two other Sunday schools” that were not under the board’s control.
As author James J. Gigantino II explained in his book, “The Ragged Road to Abolition: Slavery and Freedom in New Jersey, 1775-1865,” the Free School Association of Elizabeth-Town grew out of the so-called “Sabbath school” movement, in which “schools sponsored by churches and private donors took over black education and continued white paternalistic control over it. These schools were led by white teachers and administrators, focused primarily on reading, writing, and basic mathematics, and taught biblical reading knowledge and prayer to instill religious and moral lessons in their students.”
From “Church of the Founding Fathers of New Jersey: A History,” a book chronicling the history of the First Presbyterian Church Elizabeth, it is clear that these were indeed Sunday schools set up by Rev. John McDowell, the author of the document that Barton cited.
One of the great and enduring achievements of the church during John McDowell’s ministry was the founding of the Sunday School. The first Sunday Schools in America were founded about 1805 in Boston and Philadelphia. The movement spread rapidly to other cities of the country, but not always with success. In many places, the schools were virtually forced upon the church members and the communities, and after a brief trial period, they were abandoned.
Reverend McDowell decided that the idea of founding a Sunday School was good, and used a very cautious approach in establishing the first school in this area. He enlisted the support of his Session, and then contacted Reverend John Churchill Rudd, Rector of St. John’s Church, and Reverend Thomas Morrell, minister of the Methodist Church, to ask their support. Both men became convinced that the purpose of the proposed Sunday School was good, and the three clergymen began to “sound out” their congregations on the idea. The groundwork was laid in 1812 and 1813.
By the spring of 1814, enough parents were convinced that religious training for their children was a desirable thing, so the school was opened, meeting in the Public Academy located on the north-east corner of the church property. Presbyterian, Episcopal, and Methodist children met together, and were taught by the three ministers, at the first sessions. At once the school was a success, and at the end of the first month, it was necessary to open a second school for the Negro children of the town. The colored Sunday School was taught by a student who was studying theology with Reverend McDowell. An organization calling itself the Free School Association of Elizabethtown was set up to handle the administration of the Sunday Schools, with Miss Maria Smith as superintendent.
According to professor John Fea, chair of the History Department at Messiah University and author of “Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?,” a search of American newspapers and periodicals published in the early 1800s “clearly show that this is a Sunday School.”
“This once again shows that Barton fails to understand the larger context of the periods from which he cherry-picks his facts,” Fea told Right Wing Watch. “It would have taken Barton less than an hour, with the historical databases available to professional historians, or even just a search on Google Books, for him to dig up multiple primary sources showing that the ‘Free School Association of Elizabeth-Town’ was, in fact, a Sunday School. In fact, ‘public schools’ as we know them today did not exist in the early decades of the 19th century. This is the kind of sloppy work—void of any concept of context or change over time—that has characterized Barton’s entire career as a Christian Right activist who raids the past for something useful to help him advance his political agenda in the present.”
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Kentucky’s Democratic Gov. Andy BeshearPhoto: ShutterstockWill Carless
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By Kyle Mantyla | September 21, 2022 10:41 am
Scottie's Playtime 