I watched this three times because the message is so good. The fact that the reverend of this faith can rejoice in diversity makes me wonder what hater preachers and haters get out of their faith, out of their hate? I have been listening to the book Separation of Church and Hate by John Fugelsang. He is like Dan McClellan in that he is a biblical scholar; he knows the original manuscripts, times of use for each edition, and where different translations screw things up, and Fugelsang is a comedian, so he can throw it all out there with humor. I recomend everyone try to find the book or the audio book. He has whole chapters taking on the different haters and the clobber verses of the bible. He shows what the original meaning, as far as can be known of each of those verses was, correcting the misunderstand and hate. He like me feels that Christians follow Christ, biblcians follow the bible and they get that wrong because they don’t know the subtext or original intent; they hear only what the weekend preacher said who is preaching his version of the bible, not Christ’s. Happy Pride week Halifax. Long may your flags fly. Hugs
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Billionaire TERF influencer J.K. Rowling has announced that she will cover the legal costs of anti-trans groups named in a report by Amnesty International (UK), which called them “anti-rights.”
The report was retracted shortly after publication and replaced with a statement from the organization saying the report was uploaded “without going through the established internal review processes” and that its “language does not reflect the position of Amnesty International UK, which is why it was promptly removed.”
But the withdrawal and public acknowledgement was not enough to sate the organizations that have fought tooth and nail to exclude and/or antagonize the transgender community in the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom is notoriously more perilous for free speech than the United States. For our neighbors across the pond, the burden of proof lies with the defendant to prove the statement is true; here in the United States, the burden of proof lies with the aggrieved to prove that a statement is categorically false, and published knowingly or at least recklessly regardless. The US also benefits from “anti-SLAPP” laws to prevent such frivolous lawsuits waged by wealthy individuals or powerful corporations against those who criticize them.
So Rowling capitalized on the spectacle to, in essence, help dozens of groups in what appears to be an attempt to sue Amnesty into oblivion.
CAPTION: Screenshot from Rowling’s Twitter, where she offers “women’s organizations” backing to sue Amnesty International (UK) through her own charitable fund. She quote tweets a group of people who self-identify as “trans widows”—referring to cisgender people whose spouses or ex-spouses came out as transgender.
The saga began earlier this month, when Amnesty International (UK) released a report titled “A growing threat: the anti-rights movement in the UK.” It released a similar report last year, but this year, it added a new category for what appears to be the anti-rights movement’s most rapidly growing sector: “Gender critical” groups, or groups that are antithetical to transgender rights and inclusion.
Rowling rushed to tweet about the situation.
CAPTION: Rowling tweets a group’s response to Amnesty International (UK)’s report on “anti-rights” groups.
She lauded “LGB” groups—another anti-trans buzzword, which, as the name suggests, describes groups that wish to erase transgender people from the queer liberation movement—like the Gay Men’s Network, an organization that has pushed for anti-trans policies. That group posted a public letter indicating it might sue Amnesty International for defamation. The Network demanded a retraction of the report and then claimed that Amnesty is guilty of “trying to control gay and lesbian free speech.”
In the day or so that followed, Rowling retweeted around a dozen similar letters. The posted letters include groups like Genspect, a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group that threatened Amnesty International with legal action, as well as groups like LGB Alliance and Sex Matters.
Amnesty International (UK) did not formally reply to a request for comment for this piece.
Gender critical activists, often financed by Rowling, rely on legal “guerilla warfare” said one U.K.-based trans rights organizer, who could only speak to Erin in the Morning if granted anonymity. The tactic is familiar: Wear down non-profits and individuals who dare speak out against anti-trans and anti-rights groups. They don’t have to win a lawsuit; they can just file again, and again, and again, draining valuable time and resources.
“They have sued organizations into the ground,” the advocate said.
Some context for just a handful of these groups so up in arms about being labeled as hateful: Helen Joyce, the director of advocacy for Sex Matters, gave a speech at a Genspect conference (both are groups on the anti-rights list) about how “beauty” is “inimical to trans bullshit.
She also boasted about manufacturing a moral and medical panic about how, although only a “small” segment of trans kids are prescribed puberty blockers, it has been a strategic “rhetorical device” to erode the rights of transgender people more broadly.
Depending on who you ask, TERFs are considered either a self-branded liberal faction of gender critical ideology, or a different term for what is essentially the same movement. TERF stands for “trans exclusionary radical feminist,” a term to describe self-proclaimed “feminists” who oppose giving transgender women and cisgender women equal rights.
Many of these TERF or “gender critical” groups have close ties to far-right Christian groups. DonorsTrust, the conservative donor behemoth and primary financier of initiatives like Project 2025, also forked over hundreds of thousands of dollars to groups like the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine and Thoughtful Therapists, both of whom made the “anti-rights” list because, as Amnesty International (UK) among many others have put it, they promote “conversion practices.”
One major point of contention was the inclusion of Rowling’s own organization, Beira’s Place. It does not primarily seem to function as any sort of advocacy organization. Rather, it’s a women’s shelter for those fleeing domestic violence, but it also has an explicit anti-trans policy, banning transgender women from accessing its services.
However, as the report explained, none of these groups exist in a vacuum. “These entities must be understood as an ecosystem sharing values, goals, strategy and tactics and, for some of them, formal collaboration,” it reads.
Amnesty isn’t the first or last institution or expert to call out gender critical ideology for being anti-rights. UN Women has published materials saying as much.
Meanwhile, University of Sheffield sociologist Dr. Sally Hines has called this framework “deeply conservative.” In the Journal for Gender Studies, she writes that “despite its origins within a branch of radical feminism, [gender-critical ideology] has a profoundly misogynist agenda that stands opposed to the rights of women.” It is a “key force within a current conservative pushback against the rights of women and minoritized sexual groups.”
Gender critical activists continue to use the language of oppression to characterize their plight. Many say “TERF” is a slur. Others believe criticizing a group because of its arguably regressive politics is grounds for a lawsuit.
Despite the fact that the report was pulled down, Erin in the Morning was able to retrieve a copy reposted by an anti-trans news outlet. You can read a full version of that archived version below.
Report A Growing Threat The Anti Rights Movement In The Uk July 2026
I am very concerned about this situation. I have all ways said we need to listen to abuse victims and evaluate their accusations while giving every leaning to understanding the situation they were / are in. But an accusation is just that. It is not proof positive of an actual event happening or a crime occurring. I am concerned with the statements of the accuser since the Times article came out and why she said she came forward in the Politico article. I agree with Joe Scarbourghs thoughts on the timing and the fact that even though he denies it happened he doesn’t have time to clear his name before the election. With all the financial support being withdrawn he has no chance forward even if he is eventually cleared of these charges.
As the other reporter reports, there is a deep sense this is a coordinated attack by the establishment and the AIPAC big money. I do believe in redemption and the ability of people to change. However I don’t have the needed evidence to say for certain that these groups did organize this against him, I just know that in the Times article it was clearly a republican oppertive attacking and that she could only say she was drunk, he pushed her into a room with a bed, locked the door with him on the outside, and told her to calm down. She said he did not touch her sexually and did not hurt her. He did not bother her the rest of the night as she slept off being drunk.
The woman in the Politico report says she decided to come forward not because she had wanted or believed the Times article would showcase other women being sexually abused like she claims. But the times article was clear they did not find any such accusations and she at the time did not come forward with them. I have heard but not seen one of the “proofs” being used is she talked to her therapist about the assault. How ever the ones I have seen accredited to her show she did not talk to her therapist about the sexual assault but only dealt with her possible media exposure. She was asking if she should do it and if the therapist thought it would be good for her. Not questions that really back up the assault. She says it happened only five years ago, she could if she wants share emails with her therapist from earlier where she is concerned about her emotional state from the abuse.
At this time I believe it is a he said / she said situation. I am not willing to damn a person on hearsay. I will wait but if it comes out she was assaulted as she said I will back her completely and hope she holds him accountable. How ever if it does come out in a short while that she only did this for financial advantage or emotional payback to a former boyfriend then I will hold everyone who used this to attack Platner and smear him accountable as well. If it turns out his chance to serve the people who overwhelmingly like his political message was sabotaged by the corporate establishment and well paying lobbies for Israel then I think the man is owed far more than a chance to show his redemption should be accepted but it should also alert everyone to the power of the political establishment to do the bidding of the wealthy elite. Hugs
tRump is desperate not to have anymore files or information released. His personal lawyer / attack dog is now the person in charge of the DOJ. He will do or say anything to protect tRump and the wealthy abusers. I fear that this was very close to saying to the court “go fuck yourself, we are not going to obey the court”. Hugs
The Department of Justice on Thursday declined to turn over additional information from the Epstein files as ordered by a judge, arguing the materials include sensitive victim information or were appropriately redacted as required by law.
Hours ahead of the deadline to turn over the materials or explain why they were properly withheld, Associate U.S. Attorney General Stanley Woodward asked the judge to delay the deadline by 60 days or disregard it entirely by accepting the DOJ’s reasons for withholding the materials.
“Although the Government strongly disagrees with the Court’s ruling that the [Epstein Files Transparency Act] is enforceable by private parties through the Administrative Procedure Act, the Government welcomes this opportunity to resolve any confusion regarding the records at issue in this case,” Woodward wrote.
Close up image of a tablet screen displaying a portrait of Jeffrey Epstein beside the official U.S. Department of Justice website page titled Epstein Library in Washington District of Columbia United States on February 11, 2026.
Veronique Tournier/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images
According to Woodward, some emails in question — which had their senders and recipients concealed — were redacted to protect the names of victims. For one of the emails, Woodward claimed that some of the information was withheld because “many communications written by victims, without context, can appear disturbing on their face.”
Woodward also claimed that the redactions to a draft 2007 indictment from the Southern District of Florida were present in the original file obtained by the Department of Justice and that they have been unable “to locate an unredacted version of this specific photocopy.”
Regarding the interview notes from a woman who made unsubstantiated assault claims about President Donald Trump, Woodward claimed that the materials were “deemed duplicative of the typewritten reports memorializing the interviews.”
“Their handwritten nature further complicates the redaction process and increases the risk of inadvertent disclosure of victim [personal identifiable information] — including because of technical limitations on the Department’s ability to run meaningful quality control checks for victim PII across handwritten materials,” he wrote.
The claims made by the woman were uncorroborated, and Trump has denied the allegations. The DOJ has released the interview reports from some of those interviews, but not the underlying notes.
The U.S. Department of Justice logo is seen on a podium before a news conference, Monday, May 4, 2026, in Washington.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
Woodward also pushed back on the U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan’s conclusion that the Department of Justice effectively conceded that they violated the law passed by Congress to force the release of the Epstein files.
“Indeed, the Department has not knowingly violated, nor has it ever acknowledged violating, the EFTA as it continues working to comply with statutory requirements,” he wrote.
In his order last week, Sullivan rejected the DOJ’s arguments against releasing the materials and concluded that the Public Integrity Project, a public interest law firm, demonstrated that independent journalist Katie Phang was harmed by the materials being withheld.
The DOJ began releasing thousands of pages of documents related to Epstein late last year, following the release of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
However, the department faced criticism from some lawmakers who questioned whether the department violated the act by withholding some materials and missing the deadline to release the files.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has stated repeatedly that the DOJ has complied with the law.
House Democratic subcommittee report outlines web of alleged corruption, wire fraud and pay-to-play schemes
The interim report, “From Vanity to Insanity: How the White House Cheated the American People Out of Their 250th Birthday”, outlines a web of alleged corruption, wire fraud and pay-to-play schemes orchestrated through a shadow corporation embedded within the National Park Foundation (NPF).
The document was produced by Democratic staff of the House of Representatives’ natural resources committee’s oversight and investigations subcommittee. It has not been officially adopted by the committee.
‘A sanitized view of America’: inside Trump’s campaign to erase US history from national parks
Read more
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“Under President Donald Trump, this anniversary has been hijacked and perverted into a hotbed of corruption and self-enrichment,” it states, contending that the machinery built for a national commemoration was converted “into an apparatus for raising and spending money in service of the President’s ego, political ideology, and pet projects”.
How Trump is making the US’s 250th anniversary about himself – video
In 2016 Congress established the US semiquincentennial commission, operating as the non-profit America250 Foundation, to plan the nation’s 2026 celebrations on a non-partisan basis. However, under Trump, the White House launched a sustained pressure campaign to subsume the commission.
When America250 leadership resisted its demands to shift focus toward partisan, campaign-style spectacles, the Trump administration created Freedom 250 as a wholly owned subsidiary of the congressionally chartered NPF.
The interim report finds that, by taking control of the NPF board and installing key campaign operatives such as Meredith O’Rourke and Chris LaCivita, the White House secured an opaque vehicle that enjoyed the NPF’s non-partisan credibility and tax-exempt status while operating outside standard government transparency laws.
Jared Huffman, a California congressman who is the top Democrat on the natural resources committee, said: “I can’t, in my time here in Congress, remember anything even remotely like this: watching this trusted, venerable charity organisation, the National Parks Foundation, literally be hijacked for a craven political agenda that tries to steal the celebration of America’s 250th anniversary and turn it into something that’s all about Trump, advancing this very divisive agenda and even enriching Trump and those around him.”
The interim report alleges that Freedom 250 surreptitiously diverted resources intended for America250 for its own benefit, leaving America250 scrambling for funds.
Sources interviewed by Democrats on the committee said fundraisers including O’Rourke misled prospective America250 donors by providing them with Freedom 250’s banking and routing numbers instead. The report finds this could constitute wire fraud and charitable solicitation fraud under federal and District of Columbia law.
This deceit extended to the entertainment industry. Artists recruited for the kickoff of the Great American State Fair – including Martina McBride and Young MC – were assured the event was non-partisan, only to face social media backlash when the event was revealed to be a Trump-backed rally. In the words of Young MC, the booking was a “bait and switch”.
The investigation also outlines how Freedom 250 effectively put a price tag on presidential access, circulating sponsorship packages starting at $500,000 and climbing above $10m for tiered recognition, culminating in a “historic photo opportunity” with Trump.
The report also points to perhaps the most clear example on 14 June when the White House hosted a huge Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event on the South Lawn to celebrate the president’s 80th birthday. The event was heavily sponsored by corporations facing impending federal regulation and used vast government resources for “Super Bowl-level security” marshalled by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Fighters received bonuses in “USD1”, a cryptocurrency issued by World Liberty Financial, a trust run by the president’s children, and Trump personally bought up to $50,000 in stock in the UFC’s parent company weeks before the event.
Freedom 250 has also functioned as a conduit for steering federal funds to Trump campaign loyalists. Event Strategies – the same firm that planned the January 6 rally that preceded the US Capitol attack – was awarded 18 federal contracts totalling roughly $40m, along with an indefinite delivery master contract worth up to $100m.
Beyond lucrative contracts, the administration is accused of building a partisan political database disguised as a government domain. Freedom 250’s website, initially managed by former “Department of Government Efficiency” (Doge) employees known for past data leaks, extensively logs user data.
Event registration is powered by Campaign Nucleus, a firm founded by Brad Parscale, a veteran of Trump election campaigns. Campaign Nucleus openly boasts about using artificial intelligence to analyse personal data and target “persuadable” voters. Unsuspecting visitors, such as attenders of a free Fifa World Cup Fan Zone on the National Mall, unwittingly fed their personal information directly into this Republican campaign apparatus.
The report also focuses on the ideological overhaul of the semiquincentennial. Freedom 250 replaced America250’s civic engagement focus with overt Christian nationalist programming, operating in tandem with the Religious Liberty Commission, which recently recommended repealing the Johnson amendment to allow churches to engage in partisan politics.
A central feature of this effort was “Freedom Trucks” – a federally funded fleet of mobile museums dispatched to schoolchildren across the nation. Supplied with content from the conservative PragerU [the Prager University Foundation] and Hillsdale College, these exhibits recast the founding of the US as an exclusively Christian project, embracing demonstrable falsehoods.
Exhibits include an AI-generated George Washington claiming that “our rights are a gift from God”, a statement the first president is not documented as having made, alongside antisemitic tropes suggesting that Jewish merchants financed the revolutionary cause while omitting they also fought and died for it.
Concurrently, the administration aggressively moved to erase historical realities, removing national park signage detailing slavery, forced removal of Indigenous peoples and climate change. Huffman said it amounted to an attempt to reshape American identity to fit a narrow rightwing agenda.
“It’s a fantasy that airbrushes out the more complicated parts of our history – slavery, the Native American genocide, the actual secular ideals on which our government was founded. It wasn’t the opening of the clouds and some revealed covenant with God as they would have you believe.”
As Washington barrels towards Fourth of July, with another Trump speech and a big fireworks display planned for the national mall, Huffman acknowledges that Freedom 250 is unstoppable. But his goal now is exposure.
“The one thing we can do is make sure the American people know what they’re doing in our name and with our tax dollars,” the congressman said. “We should do that because what they have pulled off here is a potential template for other betrayals of public trust that they and maybe future generations will attempt if we don’t challenge them.”
Where are all the cries of stolen valor the right likes to throw at real military service? This is the nation’s highest military honor for draft dodging tRump to even mention it soils it. His sons never served either. No one in their family has. They are takers not givers. Typical dictator behavior, giving awards and medals to themselves, rewriting history to prove their greatness hoping to hide what slimy unworthy people they are. As someone who is proud to have served in two branches of the US military this makes me both angry and sad. Hugs
President Donald Trump suggested that he would give himself and either Eric Trump or Donald Trump Jr. the Congressional Medal of Honor to become part of what would be the third father-son pair to be given the award.
“I see my two beautiful sons sitting there. I think I’m going to give one to myself, one to them, and we’ll have a threesome,” Trump said at the opening of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora, North Dakota, on July 1.
The Medal of Honor is the nation’s highest military honor and is intended to honor servicemembers that distinguish themselves in combat “conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty.”
This is a kids summer camp and the kids seen are very young. The claim is this is an evangelical church in Kentucky doing a mock execution of an illegal immigrant. The kids are chanting “Take him out and blow him up”. The screen says praise the lord and pass the ammo. My question is when did jesus preach hate? I know the bible does, but Christians are to be followers of Jesus and aside from the money changers event Jesus preached love and acceptance of the stranger. Bible traditions said to welcome the stranger. Sodom and Gomorrah is about god being angry the town was not hospitable to the strangers and wanted to dominate them rather than feed / house them.
I googled when did Jesus preach hate and I got this summary. Jesus did not preach hate; rather, He taught love and forgiveness. In Matthew 5:43-44, He instructs, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” emphasizing the importance of loving others, even those who may oppose us. Below was a list of biblical hate passages including two in John. Guess what I read the chapters. The passages were not direct sayings from or attributed to Jesus. So what god are these “Christians” following? As to the YouTuber showing this he is not trans, he is a VTuber and uses an avatar his fans make and like. As all things on the internet it can get weird and he thought that as people kept sending him stuff as a female and a furry he would b=play along with the bit. I skip the fan art stuff at the beginning as that stuff bores me and it is only a few minutes. Hugs
This church performed a mock execution in front of CHILDREN at a BIBLE CAMP. And somehow these people are the ones saying that the left is indoctrinating their kids, meanwhile they normalize public executions to children.
Illustration: Guardian Design
Scottie's Playtime 
