Tag: Bigotry

New Montana law limits what flags can be flown at schools and government buildings

The entire article is saying that the public schools should be for everyone … except LGBTQ+ kids and parents of those kids.  Yes gay and trans children exist and need / deserve to see themselves represented in the community just as much as straight cis kids do.  This is a hate bill, banning a group because the majority in charge doesn’t like them.  The flags they say are ok to fly like the Gladstone flag or the thin blue line flag are not neutral and they most definitely represent a political ideology.  Again this is about erasing the LGBTQ+ kids / people from society to make the Christian fundamentalist and insecure parents who know they can’t have produced a gay / trans kid feel better about themselves.  It is a desire to force the fundamentalist view point on every one regardless if they believe it.  It is a desperate attempt to return to the 1950s.   Hugs

https://www.ktvh.com/news/new-montana-law-limits-what-flags-can-be-flown-at-schools-and-government-buildings

By: John Riley
Posted 2:53 PM, May 21, 2025 
and last updated 6:48 PM, May 21, 2025

A new Montana law limits what flags can be flown on government property or at public schools.

House Bill 819, sponsored by Rep. Braxton Mitchell, R-Columbia Falls, restricts any flags that “represent a political party, race, sexual orientation, gender or political ideology.”

The law effectively bans Pride flags and other LGBTQ flags from being flown at schools or government buildings. In 2019, Gov. Steve Bullock, D-Montana, flew a Pride flag over the state Capitol, which drew criticism from Republicans.

Language in the bill does allow flags like the Gadsden flag and other “official historical flags” to be flown. It also allows flags for law enforcement officers and fallen officers, like the “Thin Blue Line” flag, which Gov. Gianforte, R-Montana, flew above the Montana Capitol on Thursday, May 15, 2025.

When HB 819 was debated on the floor of the Montana House of Representatives, Mitchell said the bill was intended to ensure government entities remain a place of neutrality and was not to impact an individual’s free speech.

“Government buildings, schools and public facilities serve all citizens and should not be used to promote political, ideological or activist messaging,” said Mitchell during the March 6 floor debate.

Critics of HB 819 say the bill targets free speech by allowing provisions for specific flags like the Gadsden “Don’t Tread on Me” flag to be flown, while others were prohibited. Rep. Pete Elverum, D-Helena, said under the language, a Confederate flag could be flown.

“What we’re doing here is we’re expressly prescribing what speech is allowed, ‘these flags’, and what speech is not allowed, ‘these other flags’,” said Rep. Pete Elverum, D-Helena, on March 6. “And as for the definition of ‘promoting a certain ideology,’ those [flags] are expressly prohibited, but at the exact same time we’re sitting here with a bill proclaiming to be about free speech, we’re expressly prohibiting some and promoting others.”

Flags of tribal nations, foreign countries, military service branches, the POW/MIA flag and official school or government entities’ flags are also permitted under the law.

HB 819 went into effect immediately after Governor Greg Gianforte signed it.

This year, both Utah and Idaho have passed similar laws restricting or banning Pride flags on government property or at schools.

New Montana law decides which flags fly in public schools.

— The Pulp (@thepulp.org) 2025-05-23T21:15:13.391Z

So is this one allowed, or not?

U.S. citizen with REAL ID handcuffed and held in immigration raid before being released

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/us-citizen-immigration-raid-real-id-handcuffed-alabama-rcna208794

The man told Noticias Telemundo that authorities took his ID from his wallet and told him it was fake before handcuffing him.

By Suzanne Gamboa

A U.S.-born citizen who was wrestled into the dirt, handcuffed and detained in a vehicle as part of an immigration raid had a REAL ID on him that was dismissed as fake, the man’s cousin said Friday.

Video of the arrest, aired by Noticias Telemundo, showed authorities grabbing Leonardo Garcia Venegas, 25, while at a job site in Foley, Alabama, on Wednesday and bending his arms behind him. Someone off-camera can be heard yelling, “He’s a citizen.”

Garcia told Noticias Telemundo that authorities took his ID from his wallet and told him it was fake before handcuffing him. REAL ID is the identification U.S. citizens are required by law to have in order to travel through airports and enter federal buildings. It is considered a higher security form of identification.

“Apparently a REAL ID is not valid anymore. He has a REAL ID,” his cousin Shelah Venegas said. “We all made sure we have the REAL ID and went through the protocols the administration is asking for. … He has his REAL ID and then they see him and I guess because his English isn’t fluent and/or because he’s brown it’s fake, it’s not real.”

Garcia had told Noticias Telemundo that “they grabbed me real bad” and the handcuffs were placed “very hard” on him.

Garcia said he was released from the vehicle where he was held after he gave the arresting officials his Social Security number, which showed he is a U.S. citizen.

The arrest has left Garcia, who was born in Florida, shaken, particularly because the officers also arrested and detained his brother, who is not in the country legally, Venegas said. She added that Garcia lived with his brother. Their parents are from Mexico.

Leonardo Garcia Venegas.
Leonardo Garcia Venegas.Telemundo

“He was actually pretty sore when he got back,” Venegas said of Garcia. “He said his arms were hurting and his hands. His wrists, you could see where he had all the marks from the handcuffs. … The way they put him on the ground, his knees also were hurting.”

She said they have been trying to find a lawyer but local ones have told them that it is nearly impossible to sue a federal agent. It is not clear from the video whether the authorities were federal immigration agents or local law enforcement carrying out enforcement duties.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement to NBC News that Garcia interfered with an arrest during a targeted worksite operation.

“He physically got in between agents and the subject they were attempting to arrest and refused to comply with numerous verbal commands,” said Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary. “Anyone who actively obstructs law enforcement in the performance of their sworn duties, including U.S. citizens, will of course face consequences which include arrest.”

The response did not address the dismissal of Garcia’s identification.

Garcia denied that he interrupted an arrest. He told NBC News that he was trying to take out his phone when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent took it and threw it to the ground and then an agent began grabbing him.

Venegas said Garcia’s brother has signed deportation papers because the family didn’t want him detained “forever” as they’ve seen happen to another family member, who was held for months in a Louisiana detention center.

“It’s inhumane, what they are doing to our people. They are treating them as if they were murderers,” she said.

Venegas said the immigration arrests are creating repercussions among Hispanics, even among U.S. citizens.

“It’s about race now. It’s not about whether you are here legally or not,” she said.

Her family owns a fairly large contracting company, she said, “and a lot of the people that work with us are not working. … They are refusing to go to work. They said they are not going to go until this stuff calms down.”

Venegas added that the majority of her family is self-employed and “we do the same thing every other citizen does.”

“It’s just insane we can’t be different, the color that we are. We contribute to this country the same way every other citizen does with their taxes,” she said. “But we have to be the ones that every time we go to work, we are going to be scared that we’re going to get discriminated.”

“I think about my family,” she said. “Even though a lot of them are citizens, I think about how we all work in the same area in construction and they can’t sit out there because they could literally get harassed or attacked the way my cousin did.”

Did The Government Just Make Immigration a Game Show?

 

Trump administration seeks to end basic rights and protections for child immigrants in its custody

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/22/trump-children-flores-settlement-agreement

Flores Settlement Agreement limits how long children can be detained and requires they be provided with food, water and clean clothes

Detained children line up in the cafeteria at the Karnes County Residential Center in Karnes City, Texas, on 10 September 2014. Photograph: Eric Gay/AP

The Trump administration is trying to end a cornerstone immigration policy that requires the government to provide basic rights and protections to child immigrants in its custody.

The protections, which are drawn from a 1997 consent decree known as the Flores Settlement Agreement, limit the amount of time children can be detained by immigration officials. It also requires the government to provide children in its custody with adequate food, water and clean clothes.

The administration’s move to terminate the Flores agreement was long anticipated. In a court motion filed Thursday, the justice department argued that the Flores agreement should be “completely” terminated, claiming it has incentivized unauthorized border crossings and “prevented the federal government from effectively detaining and removing families”.

Donald Trump also tried to end these protections during his first term, making very similar arguments.

law enforcement officer walk with a detained person
Ice arrests at immigration courts across the US stirring panic: ‘It’s terrifying’
Read more

The move to end protections follows a slew of actions by the Trump administration that target children, including restarting the practice of locking up children along with their parents in family detention. Immigration advocacy groups have alleged in a class-action lawsuit filed earlier this month that unaccompanied children are languishing in government facilities after the administration unveiled policies making it exceedingly difficult for family members in the US to take custody of them. The president and lawmakers have also sought to cut off unaccompanied children’s access to legal services and make it harder for families in detention to seek legal aid.

“Eviscerating the rudimentary protections that these children have is unconscionable,” said Mishan Wroe, senior attorney at the National Center for Youth Law. “At this very moment, babies and toddlers are being detained in family detention, and children all over the country are being detained and separated from their families unnecessarily.”

The effort to suspend the Flores agreement “bears the Trump administration’s hallmark disregard for the rule of law – and for the wellbeing of toddlers who have done no wrong”, said Faisal al-Juburi of the Texas-based legal non-profit Raices. “This administration would rather enrich private prison contractors with the $45bn earmarked for immigrant detention facilities in the House’s depraved spending bill than to uphold basic humanitarian protections for babies.”

The Trump administration in 2019 asked a judge to dissolve the Flores Settlement Agreement, but its motion was struck down. During the Biden administration, a federal judge agreed to partially lift oversight protections at the Department of Health and Human Services, but the agreement is still in place at the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agencies.

“Children who seek refuge in our country should be met with open arms – not imprisonment, deprivation and abuse,” said Sergio Perez, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law.

The settlement is named for Jenny Flores, a 15-year-old girl who fled civil war in El Salvador and was part of a class-action lawsuit alleging widespread mistreatment of children in custody in the 1980s.

Since the settlement agreement was reached in 1997, lawyers and advocates have successfully sued the government several times to end the mistreatment of immigrant children. In 2018, attorneys sued after discovering unaccompanied children had been administered psychotropic medication without informed consent.

In 2024, a court found that CBP had breached the agreement when it detained children and families at open-air detention sites at the US southern border without adequate access to sanitation, medical care, food, water or blankets. In some cases, children were forced to seek refuge in portable toilets from the searing heat and bitter cold.

 

Trump ambushes South Africa’s president with video footage in Oval Office

https://www.axios.com/2025/05/21/trump-south-africa-president-video-footage-oval-office

A US and a South African delegation sit in the Oval Office.

President Cyril Ramaphosa meets with President Trump in the Oval Office on May 21. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

In a shocking moment during President Trump‘s meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday, Trump requested that videos be displayed purporting to show evidence of violence against white people in the country.

The big picture: Trump, who cut all foreign assistance to South Africa, has embraced the false accusations of genocide against white South Africans as justification for granting them refugee status in the U.S.

  • A South African court in February dismissed claims of a “white genocide” as not real.

Driving the news: In a stunning scene reminiscent of the Oval Office showdown with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump asked for the lights to be dimmed before playing the videos.

  • While Trump watched the video, Ramaphosa looked away, appearing uncomfortable.
  • At one point, speaking over the video, Trump said the screen was displaying “burial sites.” Ramaphosa inquired where the scene was located, adding, “This I’ve never seen.”
  • Later on, Trump paged through articles from the “last few days” while repeating, “death, death, death.”

Catch up quick: In the question that preceded the video display, a reporter asked Trump what it would take for him to be convinced there was no genocide in South Africa — an inquiry Ramaphosa answered.

  • “It will take President Trump listening to the voices of South Africans,” Ramaphosa said.
  • Trump jumped in, saying there were “thousands of stories” and “documentaries.”
  • “It has to be responded to,” he said before the footage began.

Context: The video played in the Oval Office featured the voice of Julius Malema, a firebrand politician and leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, who was ejected from Parliament.

  • Ramaphosa clarified that the utterances in the footage were not “government policy,” saying, “We have a multiparty democracy in South Africa that allows people to express themselves.”
  • South Africa’s Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen — who is white — reiterated Ramaphosa’s point, emphasizing that the two people in the video are opposition leaders. He said his party, the Democratic Alliance, chose to join forces with Ramaphosa’s “to keep those people out of power.”

Trump interjected, “You do allow them to take land … and then when they take the land, they kill the white farmer, and when they kill the white farmer, nothing happens to them.”

  • South Africa recently passed the Expropriation Act, which allows the government to take some land and redistribute it as part of a long-running effort to lessen the racial and economic disparities created by apartheid.
  • White people make up 7.3% of South Africa’s population and own 72% of the farmland.

Ramaphosa acknowledged there is “criminality” in the country — but said the majority of people killed have been Black people.

  • Trump claimed the “farmers are not Black” and said, without evidence, that people were being killed “in large numbers” and were decapitated. He repeatedly lashed out at reporters, saying, “The fake news in this country doesn’t talk about that.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Republicans caused or did this. We should ban them.

Comer: James Comey Was “Trying To Jizz Up A Coup”

Trump Admin To Close Famed NASA Research Center

Photo: Acting NASA Administrator Janet Petro, who also serves as Kennedy Space Center director, a post she assumed in 2021. Trump elevated Petro to lead NASA after he ousted former Sen. Bill Nelson for believing in climate change.

 

WaPo: The Federal Brain Drain Is Rapidly Escalating

 As previously reported here, European governments have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to lure US scientists.

OK Schools Chief Calls Education Ranking “Fake News”

Newly-released data shows that Oklahoma ranks 46th in per-pupil spending, but Walters, who is eyeing a run for governor, has called for cuts to his state’s “wasteful” education spending, including $250,000 to provide school districts with emergency inhalers. 

In his KFOR interview, Walters did boast about getting new teachers a signing bonus, but as was widely reported the time, $290,000 of that money had to be clawed back because it had gone to teachers who did not qualify. Some of those teachers had already spent the money.

Combat Sports Clubs Are Recruiting White Nationalists

The SPLC’s report is here. The February 2024 report linked below shows that the same thing is happening in the UK.

Tesla Effectively Bans Its Investors From Suing Them

 Guess who donated to the Texas Republicans behind the new law?

 

Felon Has Another Screaming Fit On “Stolen Election”

Trump Demands That Walmart “EAT THE TARIFFS”

Feds Seize Shipment Of Shirts From Anti-ICE Brand

Something something free speech.

New: CBP seized a shipment of t-shirts from @cola.baby featuring a swarm of bees attacking a cop. The company also sells "ELIMINATE ICE" t-shirt and previously was threatened by LAPD for "FUCK THE LAPD" shirts and hats. Shirts to be "destroyed under CBP supervision"www.404media.co/cbp-seizes-s…

— Jason Koebler (@jasonkoebler.bsky.social) 2025-05-15T19:44:07.171Z

Forbes: Canadian US Tourism Boycott Is Growing

Canadian Travel Boycott Has Strengthened—Car Travel To U.S. Plummeted 35% In April, Fourth Consecutive Month Of Year-Over-Year Declines

— Forbes (@forbes.com) 2025-05-13T11:53:03.619Z

Trump Posts Video Claiming Hillary Is A Serial Killer

OH GOP Bill Would Designate “Natural Family Month”

Rep. Beth Lear first appeared here in January 2024 when she defended her anti-trans bathroom bill by citing the “millstones” bible verse which calls for drowning anyone who hurts children.

She later blamed “depraved monster” Alfred Kinsey, liberals, and the ACLU for transgender people even existing.

Rep. Josh Williams first appeared here in July 2024 for his bill that would criminalize drag shows in the presence of children. Williams reintroduced his bill last week.

 

Alliance Defending Freedom: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Some clips from TizzyEnt

Again their doing stuff that hurts others

 

 

DOJ Claims Prominent Law Firm Is National Security Threat For Working With LGBTQ Rights Group GLAD

 

 

 

 

Pentagon Has Spent $21M On Migrant Flights To Gitmo

Texas House Passes Anti-Trans “Biological Truth” Bill

OH Cultist Films Himself Burning LGBTQ Library Books

Trump Defense Lawyer Named Librarian Of Congress

Blanche last appeared here when he sanctioned the American Bar Association because its lawyers have failed to show suitable obedience to Glorious Leader.

DHS Terminates Protected Status Of Afghan Refugees

 

White South African “Refugees” Arrive At DC Airport

But Trump claimed Monday that a genocide was taking place in South Africa. “Farmers are being killed,” the president said. “They happen to be White.

But White farmers are being brutally killed and their land is being confiscated in South Africa.”

Trump has imported a new Mickey Mouse from South Africa.

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Federal Judge Strikes Down LGBTQ Protections Against Workplace Discrimination

Federal Judge Strikes Down LGBTQ Protections Against Workplace Discrimination

Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s ruling marks one of the most alarming judicial rollbacks of LGBTQ rights in recent memory.

By
, 
ErinInTheMorning

Judge's gavel over red and black backgroundZolnierek / iStock / Getty Images Plus

On Thursday, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk — a far-right federal judge in the Northern District of Texas with a record of aligning with the GOP’s most extreme legal positions — issued a ruling declaring that Title VII no longer protects LGBTQ+ people from workplace discrimination. The decision directly contradicts the Supreme Court’s landmark 2020 ruling inBostock v. Clayton County, which held that discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is, by definition, sex discrimination. Kacsmaryk’s ruling marks one of the most alarming judicial rollbacks of LGBTQ+ rights in recent memory — and sets up a direct legal challenge to one of the foundational civil rights protections for queer and trans people in the United States.

The case was brought against the EEOC by the state of Texas alongside the Heritage Foundation, a central force behind Project 2025 — an aggressive right-wing policy blueprint that explicitly calls for rolling back LGBTQ+ protections in federal law. In siding with the plaintiffs, Judge Kacsmaryk pointed to the Texas Department of Agriculture’s current employee policy, which requires “employees to comply with this dress code in a manner consistent with their biological gender,” specifying that “men may wear pants” and “women may wear dresses, skirts, or pants.” The ruling also upheld the department’s policy banning transgender employees from using restrooms that align with their gender identity.

The judge reached a verdict that Title VII only protects “firing someone simply for being homosexual or transgender,” but that it does not protect transgender or gay people from “harassment”:

Judge Kacsmaryk ruling that gay and trans people can be harassed without repercussion under Title VII.
Judge Kacsmaryk ruling that gay and trans people can be harassed without repercussion under Title VII.

“In sum, Title VII does not bar workplace employment policies that protect the inherent differences between men and women,” Kacsmaryk writes in his ruling.

Judge Kacsmaryk further argued that disparate treatment of transgender employees does not constitute unequal treatment, reasoning that “a male employee must use male facilities like other males” — a statement that erases transgender identity altogether. He extended that logic to dress codes and pronouns, claiming that requiring employees to adhere to clothing standards and pronoun use based on their assigned sex at birth is not discriminatory because it applies “equally” to everyone. The argument mirrors the discredited legal reasoning once used to uphold bans on same-sex marriage — that such laws didn’t discriminate against gay people because they, like straight people, were allowed to marry someone of the opposite sex. It’s a circular logic designed to mask exclusion as neutrality. It also flies in the face of the fact that Texas allows people assigned female at birth to wear gender “pants, skirts, and dresses” but denies that same right to people assigned male at birth.

MAGA Judge Strikes Down LGBTQ Workplace Protections

Kacsmaryk, a former lawyer for an anti-LGBTQ hate group, was exposed in 2023 for failing to disclose millions in stock holdings.

Kacsmaryk was previously exposed for failing to disclose viciously anti-LGBTQ interviews and acting to hide his authorship of an anti-abortion article ahead of his Senate confirmation hearing.

Republican and Christian groups regularly filed their lawsuits in his district because they know they’ll get a friendly ear.

https://x.com/Mercedes_Allen/status/1923446881817948227