Tag: US Politics
Episcopal Bishops Encouraging Flock To Stand Up For Migrants
I like this person and his teachings. Clearly. In truth had he been the one to save me as a 17 yr old beaten boy hiding in his barn I think he may have still sent me to a church school to protect me but he wouldn’t have then expected me to go on and become a priest in their religion. I couldn’t tell my savior who wanted that from me why I rejected his strong demand / offer and instead went into the military was that I was gay. I had accepted it to myself. I was well versed enough in the acts of it due to my abuse to know that along with my internal emotions about guys vs women that the acts themselves did not repulse me. Just the way they were forced on me. Remember I had been forced to please females as well as males since I was 3 years old and I understood my attractions were to males. I was very gay. Instead I think he would have asked me my goals and I would have had to tell him the mystical parts of the religion I had issues with … but the reason I need to withdraw was I was gay. If he responded as he did in my comment to him, then I would have stayed in his congregation. Not believing the magic parts of the religion but the community and acceptance that their god has for those different. Rev. Ed Trevors admits he doesn’t preach facts, he preaches faith, and much of what he stresses is things as a humanest I can fully endorse.
I do wonder with his … more violent past if he had found a badly beaten very thin small 17 year old boy who told him he was being abuse if he would have done more than force the parents … well in their mind’s owner of the boy to let him leave. But again maybe that is my hopes / emotions talking over my understanding of reality. Hugs
Oklahoma GOP Bills Would Criminalize Viewing Porn, Criminalize Drag Story Hour, And Ban No-Fault Divorce
Has Oklahoma already become a theocracy? Is the will of the people not important, or only the doctrines of the fundamentalist Christ the majority of these people belong to so their god will be happy is important. The voters don’t matter, the wants and needs of those who elect the lawmakers don’t matter, only pleasing their one version of a god out of 1100 other versions of god. To hell with the rights of the people, to hell with the instruction of the woke hippy Jesus, just push the hates and desires of white males cis straight males to dominate and run everything. As Roger says if they win how long will they start warring with each other for the top positions of speaking for their god? Hugs
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From Oklahoma GOP state Rep. Dusty Deevers:
Sen. Dusty Deevers, R-Elgin, announced on Tuesday a bold slate of eight legislative measures aimed at restoring moral sanity in Oklahoma. Together, these bills set a course for pushing back against the moral decay foisted upon Oklahoma by the far-left’s march through our institutions to destroy the moral foundations upon which the United States and Christian Civilization had long rested.
“Sadly, the left’s century-long assault on morality and decency has been so successful that some have come to accept as normal a society that is drowning in hardcore pornography, prenatal homicide, and sexual performances for children. None of this is normal. Each one of these evils is a result of a policy choice to not stand for what we know is right. Opposing these evils does not mean we are extremists. It means we are sane,” Deevers said.
“Contrary to what the left would have us believe, it doesn’t have to be this way. We can and should imagine and move toward a society that celebrates virtue in the public square rather than vice. We can restore normalcy, decency, and morality; we can protect the most vulnerable, restore a high view of marriage, and shield children from explicit material that can warp their innocent minds. We simply must have the courage to stand against the most radical and degenerate elements of the far-left.”
A sampling from Deever’s bills:
SB456 – The Abolition of Abortion Act
SB456 seeks to protect the lives of all preborn children in Oklahoma by closing the self-managed abortion loophole. While clinics may be prohibited from performing abortions, pro-life laws currently being enforced allow mothers to order abortion pills online and administer them herself. Recent research from the Foundation to Abolish Abortion shows that an estimated 3,274 self-managed abortions are taking place annually in Oklahoma.
SB593 – Prohibiting Pornography in Oklahoma
The bill prohibits pornography in general, providing for criminal penalties of up to 10 years in prison for production, distribution, or possession. It also provides heightened 10-to-30-year criminal penalties for organized pornography trafficking. “Pornography is both degenerate material and a highly addictive drug,” Deevers said. “It ruins marriages, ruins lives, destroys innocence, warps young people’s perception of the opposite sex, turns women into objects, turns men into objects, degrades human dignity, and corrodes the moral fabric of society. Any decent society will stand against this plague with the full weight of the law.”
SB550 – Prohibiting Drag Performances for Children
SB550 would ensure that Oklahoma kids are not subjected to adult cabaret performances including Drag Queen Story Hour. Under the provisions of the bill, the performer would be subject to a prison sentence of one-to-five years, while the organizer of the event would face up to one year behind bars.
SB228 – The Covenant Marriage Act
The Covenant Marriage Act would allow for couples in Oklahoma to opt into a covenant marriage, based on the traditional understanding of marriage as a binding legal contract with meaningful vows to one another. Covenant marriages would only be able to be dissolved in cases of abuse, adultery, or abandonment. Couples who opt into a covenant marriage would be eligible for a $2,500 tax credit.
SB829 – Prohibiting No-Fault Divorce
This bill would end no-fault divorce in Oklahoma by removing “incompatibility” as a justification for divorce, leaving abandonment, gross neglect, extreme cruelty, habitual drunkenness, insanity for a period of five years, adultery, unknown pregnancy, and fraudulent contract as the available justifications. It also establishes that the at-fault parent must pay restitution to the victims of divorce–that is, the children–in the form of a trust fund that they get access to when they turn 18.
Deever’s appeared here in January 2024 when he first tried to make viewing porn and sexting a consenting person a felony.
In March 2024, he declared during a Oklahoma House floor speech that all federal regulations are “against God’s law.”
In September 2024, he declared that people who vote for Kamala Harris are “possessed by demons.”
As you’ve probably already guessed, Deever’s is a pastor.
Report finds 266,000 LGBTQ+ young people left states with anti-LGBTQ laws
- by Matthew S. Bajko, Assistant Editor
- Wednesday January 22, 2025
Logan Casey, left, of the Movement Advancement Project, and Steven Hobaica, Ph.D., with The Trevor Project, worked on a report looking at LGBTQ+ youth who leave a state because of anti-LGBTQ laws. Photos: Courtesy MAP, Trevor Project
A new report estimates that roughly 266,000 LGBTQ+ young people and their families have uprooted their lives and left a state because of anti-LGBTQ politics or laws. It is also detailing in stark relief the positive outcomes on the health and wellbeing of LGBTQ youth that state lawmakers can have when enacting policy.
The eight-page research brief being released Wednesday by LGBTQ youth advocacy nonprofit The Trevor Project and the Movement Advancement Project used data sets from both organizations to draw its conclusions. It is the first time the two groups have utilized their data in such a way.
The report drew on the findings of Trevor’s 2024 U.S. National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ+ Young People, which was based on the responses of 18,663 LGBTQ+ young people between the ages of 13 to 24 from across the country. And it incorporated MAP’s policy tally scores for all 50 states that it compiles based on what laws individual states have passed benefitting or targeting the LGBTQ community.
“Year over year has been a record-breaking year for anti-LGBTQ bills. And the attacks continue to escalate,” said Logan Casey, a queer and transgender man who is MAP’s director of policy research. “The more we can do to illustrate the harm of those attacks, and on the flip side the positive impacts of good policy, I think the better it will be to help us communicate to the public, policymakers and beyond that policies matter in shaping everyone’s individual lives, and that is true for LGBTQ people as well.”
One of the key findings in the brief is that an overwhelming 90% of LGBTQ+ young people cited “recent politics” as having impacted their well-being. Among transgender and nonbinary youth, the percentage was 94%.
Nearly half (45%) of the transgender and nonbinary young people reported considering moving to a different state because of their home state’s LGBTQ+ politics or laws. Among all LGBTQ+ youth, just 39% had done so.
“When we incorporated the MAP data, I was not surprised, but it was striking. It was very clear to me the data had a very clear relationship to how LGBTQ-related policy is related to relocation,” said Steven Hobaica, Ph.D., a Honolulu-based licensed clinical psychologist who is a research scientist at The Trevor Project.
According to the research brief, titled “How State Policy Affects the Well-Being and Relocation of LGBTQ+ Young People,” 12% of transgender and nonbinary youth said they had traveled to another state to receive medical care due to their own states’ policies. Among all LGBTQ+ young people, 9% reported doing so.
Twenty-seven percent of LGBTQ+ young people reported living in a state with a negative policy index, or within a particularly harmful policy environment, according to the brief. Unsurprisingly, LGBTQ+ young people in states that received a lower LGBTQ+ policy index from MAP, meaning their states have less LGBTQ+-affirming policy, were more likely to consider moving and to travel to another state to access health care, compared to those residing in states that have adopted more LGBTQ+-affirming policy.
“For me, I think sometimes when individuals approach policy surrounding a community they are not a part of, they often don’t understand the impacts it can directly have on that community. I hope it points to that,” Hobaica, who identifies as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, said of the research brief.
The Trevor project did not ask the youth what states they had moved to in order to find a more LGBTQ-welcoming legislative environment. It remains unclear how many LGBTQ youth and their families have relocated to California, one of a handful of states to declare itself a transgender sanctuary, to escape the anti-LGBTQ laws adopted in their former states.
Kathie Moehlig, executive director of Trans Family Support Services, told the Bay Area Reporter that her San Diego-based organization two years ago routinely had fielded calls from LGBTQ families wanting to move out of their states due to anti-LGBTQ laws, especially when it came to health care for their trans children. More recently, they have handled far fewer requests for such assistance.
“Most people who sat in a privileged position and could move out of state for care have done that,” said Moehlig, whose 24-year-old son is trans.
A graph shows the number of LGBTQ+ youth considering leaving a state because of its anti-LGBTQ laws. Image: Courtesy The Trevor Project
Trump impact uncertain
She has not seen any numbers on how many such families have moved to California, but surmised relatively few have due to the high cost of housing in the state and other factors. What impact the Trump administration and its attacks on trans rights will have on such relocations remains to be seen, she added.
“With Trump, maybe more families will move. More likely families will be hunkering down, finding resources, staying connected to community, and staying engaged in what may be coming our way,” said Moehlig. “We really don’t know. We just have to wait and see.”
The researchers noted that only 4% of LGBTQ+ young people in the sample they used had reported leaving a state because of LGBTQ+-related policies. Using estimations that 9.5% of youth age 13 to 17 and 15.2% of young people age 18 to 24 in the U.S. are LGBT, they then deduced the 266,000 number for how many have relocated to a new state.
“Unsurprisingly, these issues are even more pronounced for trans and nonbinary youth,” said Hobaica. “It impacts the whole LGBTQ community, but especially trans and nonbinary youth are going to be the youth who feel the most impact and typically are attacked the most by policymakers.”
In Missouri, where Casey lives, LGBTQ rights have been under assault. It has a negative rating on MAP’s policy tally, with an over score of -1.5/49.
“Politicians here are playing games with LGBTQ people’s lives, in particular LGBTQ young people’s lives,” said Casey.
He has had friends leave the state for Minnesota, California, and Pennsylvania. Casey told the B.A.R. he had contemplated doing so himself but hasn’t yet because Missouri is his home, he grew up in Ferguson, outside St. Louis, and he can still access the health care he needs.
“What me and other trans people are watching is whether the state or the new Trump admin will cut off medical care. That is the line in the sand for many people who either choose to move or have to move,” said Casey.
Positive benefits
While the media’s and public’s attention are usually focused on the negative LGBTQ policies being adopted, and the impacts they have, what often goes missing from the discourse is how LGBTQ people, particularly young people, positively benefit when policymakers adopt affirming legislation, noted Casey. The research brief intentionally highlights those outcomes, noting LGBTQ+ young people are more likely to report being positively impacted by recent politics if they live in a state assigned a higher LGBTQ+ policy index by MAP.
“LGBTQ+ young people living in states with a higher LGBTQ+ policy index reported that recent politics were less likely to negatively impact their well-being. They were also less likely to report crossing state lines for health care or consider moving to another state,” noted the research brief.
Casey told the B.A.R., “It is not just bad policies lead to bad outcomes, it is the reverse is also true. Good policies lead to improved outcomes for mental health and all other kinds of outcomes.”
Shira Berkowitz, senior director of public policy and advocacy at PROMO, Missouri’s statewide LGBTQ advocacy group, believes the research brief will be beneficial to the lobbying efforts it and similar groups in other states undertake this year.
“We do significant policy work to change the landscape in this area so people feel Missouri is a state they can live and thrive in,” said Berkowitz, noting that “the most important thing to most lawmakers is the condition or ability for their state to thrive, or it should be.”
Hopefully the research brief will embolden lawmakers who want to help protect the LGBTQ community, said Casey.
“I hope it adds to the growing body of evidence that harmful policies have real costs on LGBTQ young people and their families across the country, but also that it will encourage legislators in states who want to do something proactive that they should,” said Casey.
For Moehlig, she would like to see pro-LGBTQ lawmakers make an effort to reach LGBTQ young people where they are at. It is not enough to just pass laws and talk about doing so at events, in media outlets, or on social media platforms that may not be reaching LGBTQ youth, contended Moehlig.
“I don’t think it is spoken enough in spaces where kids are going to hear that,” she said. “They need to be reaching in to where they are, whether on social media or whether communicating through their schools. They need to be finding those spaces so kids are hearing directly from the people who hold the power to say, ‘We’ve got you here.'”
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Fact check: Trump made more than 20 false claims in his Inauguration Day remarks
https://www.cnn.com/politics/fact-check-trump-inauguration/index.html
13 minute readPresident Donald Trump made only a smattering of false claims in his inaugural address on Monday, mostly sticking to vague rhetoric, subjective assertions and uncheckable promises of action.
But then he embarked on a lying spree.
In an unscripted second speech on Monday, to supporters who had gathered in the US Capitol Visitor Center’s Emancipation Hall, Trump made false claims about elections, immigration and the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, among other subjects. He then made additional false claims in a freewheeling third speech at Washington’s Capital One Arena and again while speaking to reporters as he signed executive orders in the Oval Office.
Here is a fact check of some of his Monday claims.
Economy
Trump’s tariffs on China: In the Oval Office, Trump repeated his false claim that the US has “taken in hundreds of billions of dollars from China” through the tariffs he imposed during his first presidency. US importers make the tariff payments, not China, and study after study has found that Americans bore the overwhelming majority of the cost of Trump’s tariffs on China; it’s easy to find specific examples of companies that passed along the cost of the tariffs to US consumers.
Previous presidents and tariffs on China: Trump repeated his frequent false claim that no previous president had imposed tariffs on Chinese imports, saying that “until I came along, China never paid 10 cents to this country.” Aside from the fact that US importers pay the tariffs, the US was actually generating billions per year in revenue from tariffs on Chinese imports before Trump took office; in fact, the US has had tariffs on Chinese imports since 1789. Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, imposed additional tariffs on Chinese goods.
Tariffs: In his inaugural address, Trump said, “Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.” But this description of tariffs is false. Tariffs imposed by the US government are paid by US importers, not foreign countries.
Inflation rates: Trump falsely claimed during his inaugural address that the US experienced “record inflation” during the Biden administration. Trump could fairly say the US inflation rate hit a 40-year high in June 2022, when it was 9.1%, but that was not close to the all-time record of 23.7%, set in 1920. (And the rate has since plummeted. The most recent available inflation rate at the time Trump spoke here was 2.9% in December.)
Trade with the European Union: In the Oval Office, Trump repeated his false claims that the European Union doesn’t “take” farm products, cars or “almost anything” from the US.
While the EU certainly has some trade barriers that make it harder for US companies to export products there, it’s a massive exaggeration to categorically declare it doesn’t accept “almost anything.” The US exported more than $639 billion worth of goods and services to the EU in 2023.
The US government says the EU bought $12.3 billion worth of US agricultural exports in the 2023 fiscal year, making it the fourth-largest export market for US agricultural and related products behind China, Mexico and Canada.
And while US automakers have often struggled to succeed in Europe, according to a December 2023 report from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, the EU is the second-largest market for US vehicle exports — importing 271,476 US vehicles in 2022, valued at nearly 9 billion euro. (Some of these are vehicles made by European automakers at plants in the US.)
Immigration and the border
Prisons and mental institutions: Trump spoke in all three speeches of migrants having come from foreign prisons and mental institutions into the US under President Joe Biden, a frequent refrain during his 2024 campaign. In the first speech, he said “many” Biden-era migrants have come from such facilities; in the second speech, he said, “We don’t want the jails of every country in the world virtually being deposited into the United States”; in the third, he said, “All over the world they’re emptying their prisons into our country; they’re emptying their mental institutions into our country.”
All of this is uncorroborated. Trump and his presidential campaign have never corroborated the claim that “many” Biden-era migrants have come from prisons or mental institutions, though it’s of course possible that some migrants spent time in such facilities. And Trump’s campaign could not substantiate his stories about numerous foreign countries supposedly opening up such facilities to somehow bring the people in them into the US.
The president has sometimes tried to support his narrative by asserting the global prison population is down. But that’s incorrect. The recorded global prison population increased from October 2021 to April 2024, from about 10.77 million people to about 10.99 million people, according to the World Prison Population List compiled by experts in the United Kingdom.
“I do a daily news search to see what’s going on in prisons around the world and have seen absolutely no evidence that any country is emptying its prisons and sending them all to the US,” Helen Fair, co-author of the prison population list and research fellow at the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research at Birkbeck, University of London, said in June.
Venezuela and migration: Trump spoke in the arena speech about gang members being “taken off the streets of Venezuela and deposited into our country,” claiming crime in Venezuela has plummeted “because they took their criminals and gave them to us through an open border policy of the previous administration.”
Trump has never corroborated his claims about Venezuela’s supposed practice of somehow intentionally bringing its unwanted criminals into the US under Biden, and experts have told CNN, PolitiFact and FactCheck.org that they know of no evidence for them.
Border wall construction: Trump repeated his false claim in his post-inaugural speech that he had “571 miles of wall” built on the southern border during his first administration. That’s a significant exaggeration; official government data shows 458 miles were built under Trump — including both wall built where no barriers had existed before and wall built to replace previous barriers.
Birthright citizenship: In the Oval Office, Trump repeated his false claim that the US is “the only country in the world” with birthright citizenship. CNN and various other outlets debunked the claim when Trump made it during his presidential campaign in 2015, during his first presidency in 2018 and during his presidential transition in 2024. About three dozen countries provide automatic citizenship to people born on their soil, including US neighbors Canada and Mexico and the majority of South American countries.
Elections and January 6, 2021
Pelosi and January 6, 2021: In the post-inaugural speech, Trump repeated his false claims that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected his offer of 10,000 National Guard troops to protect the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and that Pelosi “admitted it on tape, that her daughter made.” He reprised the claim later in the Oval Office.
There is no evidence Pelosi turned down such an offer — and it is the president, not the speaker, who is in charge of the District of Columbia National Guard, so Pelosi wouldn’t have had the power to reject the offer even if it had been made to her, which Pelosi says it wasn’t. In addition, Pelosi is not on tape admitting that Trump’s story is correct.
In a video recorded by her filmmaker daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, on January 6 and later obtained by House Republicans, who posted a 42-second snippet on social media in June, Pelosi was shown expressing frustration at the inadequate security at the Capitol, and she said at one point, “I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more.” But that general statement is clearly not a specific admission that she had rejected a Trump offer of 10,000 troops.
In fact, another part of the video appears to undermine Trump’s frequent claims that Pelosi was the person who turned down a National Guard presence in advance of January 6. She said, “Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with?”
After Trump began referencing this video in June, Pelosi spokesperson Aaron Bennett said in an email to CNN: “Numerous independent fact-checkers have confirmed again and again that Speaker Pelosi did not plan her own assassination on January 6th. Cherry-picked, out-of-context clips do not change the fact that the Speaker of the House is not in charge of the security of the Capitol Complex — on January 6th or any other day of the week.”
The Capitol rioters: Trump said in the Oval Office that he believes that “in many cases” January 6 rioters were “outside agitators,” suggesting they weren’t actual Trump supporters. (He added a note of humility, saying, “What do I know, right?” but then reiterated, “But I think they were.”)
Trump’s belief is baseless. While one man convicted for his role in the riot admitted that his goal was to rile up Trump supporters, there is no evidence there were “many” such people in the crowd, nor for the Trump-promoted conspiracy theory that left-wing Antifa members were responsible for the attack. Almost all of the more than 1,500 people charged over the riot were fervent Trump devotees.
The January 6 committee and documents: In his post-inaugural speech, Trump spoke of the House select committee that investigated the January 6 attack on the Capitol, whose members Biden pardoned in one of his last acts as president. Trump falsely claimed that “they destroyed and deleted all of the information, all of the hearings, practically not a thing left.” He returned to the subject later in the Oval Office, falsely claiming that “they destroyed all of the documents, they deleted all of the information, there’s no information.”
There has been a long-running dispute between Republicans and Democrats over the status of certain committee records that Republicans said should have been archived and that Democratic committee chair Bennie Thompson argued did not have to be archived, such as because they were not useful to the committee’s investigation. But there’s no basis for Trump’s claim that “all” information and documents were discarded.
As FactCheck.org reported on Monday, the January 6 committee released not only a final report that more than 800 pages long, but also transcripts of interviews with more than 140 witnesses – and, according to Thompson, the committee’s staff worked with the National Archives and Records Administration and other government bodies “in preparing the Select Committee’s more than 1 million records for publication and archiving.”
The legitimacy of the 2020 election: In his post-inaugural speech to supporters, Trump returned to his lie that the 2020 election “was totally rigged”; he made the “rigged” claim again in the arena speech. Trump legitimately lost a free and fair election to Biden.
Democrats and the 2024 election: Trump falsely claimed in his post-inaugural speech that unspecified opponents “tried” to rig the 2024 election but were unable to do so. This is nonsense, too; Trump beat former Vice President Kamala Harris in a free and fair election.
California and the 2024 election: In the post-inaugural speech, Trump said, “I think we would’ve won the state of California” if the state had stronger voter identification laws. There is simply no basis for the claim; there is no sign of mass fraud in California, and Trump lost to Harris thereby more than 3 million votes.
Trump’s margin of victory in Alabama: In the post-inaugural speech, Trump falsely claimed, “We won Alabama by 48 points.” Trump did win the conservative state by a large margin, but not as large as he claimed; he beat Harris there by about 30.5 percentage points.
Trump and “the youth vote”: As he did the day before the inauguration, Trump falsely claimed in his arena speech Monday that “we won the youth vote by 36 points” in the 2024 election. He didn’t say how he was defining “the youth vote” — his transition team didn’t respond to CNN’s Sunday request for clarification — but there’s no basis for his claim by any reasonable definition.
While young voters, particularly young men, did shift toward Trump compared with the 2020 election, exit poll data published by CNN found that Harris beat Trump 54% to 43% among voters ages 18-24, 53% to 45% among voters ages 25-29, and 51% to 45% among voters ages 30-39. Even if Harris’ actual margins were smaller — exit poll data is often flawed — there is simply no sign that Trump dominated Harris with young voters.
Foreign affairs
China and the Panama Canal: Trump vowed in his inaugural address that the US will take back the Panama Canal — and falsely claimed that “above all, China is operating the Panama Canal.” He added in the Oval Office that “China controls the Panama Canal.”
There are valid questions about Chinese influence over infrastructure on and around the Panama Canal. Most notably, a subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company operates a port at each end of the waterway, having first won the bidding competition for the contract in the 1990s. But Panama has run the canal itself since the US handed it over to the country in 1999. Specifically, the canal is operated by the Panama Canal Authority, whose administrator, deputy administrator and 11-member board are Panamanians selected by Panama’s government.
The vast majority of its employees are Panamanian. It is Panama that decides which companies get awarded the contracts to run the ports on the canal. And other canal ports are operated by companies that are not Chinese — including one run by an American-Panamanian joint venture.
“The Canal is and will continue to be Panama’s and its administration will continue to be under Panamanian control with respect to its permanent neutrality,” Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino said in a statement Monday. Without mentioning China directly, Mulino also appeared to reject Trump’s claim that China is operating the canal, saying, “There is no presence of any nation in the world that interferes with our administration.”
China’s oil purchases from Iran: In the arena speech, Trump repeated his false story about how he supposedly pressured China into stopping its purchases of oil from Iran during his first presidency. China’s oil imports from Iran did briefly plummet under Trump in 2019, the year the Trump administration made a concerted effort to deter such purchases, but they never stopped — and then they rose sharply again while Trump was still president. “The claim is untrue because Chinese crude imports from Iran haven’t stopped at all,” Matt Smith, lead oil analyst for the Americas at Kpler, a market intelligence firm, told CNN in 2023.
China’s official statistics recorded no purchases of Iranian crude in Trump’s last partial month in office, January 2021, and also none in most of Biden’s first year as president. But that doesn’t mean China’s imports actually ceased; industry experts say it is widely known that China has used a variety of tactics to mask its continued imports from Iran.
Kpler found that China imported about 511,000 barrels per day of Iranian crude in December 2020, Trump’s last full month in office. The low point under Trump was March 2020, when global oil demand crashed because of Covid-19. Even then, China imported about 87,000 barrels per day, Kpler found. (Since data on Iranian oil exports is based on cargo tracking by various companies and groups, other entities may have different data.)
Iran and terror groups: In the arena speech, Trump repeated his inaccurate boast that Iran “didn’t have money for Hamas” and “didn’t have money for Hezbollah” during his presidency. He emphasized in the Oval Office that Iran had “no money” for the two groups. Iran’s funding for these groups did decline in the second half of his presidency, in large part because his sanctions on Iran had a major negative impact on the Iranian economy, but the funding never stopped entirely, as four experts told CNN in 2024. In fact, Trump’s own administration said in 2020 that Iran was continuing to fund terror groups including Hezbollah. You can read a longer fact check here.
Spain and BRICS: Trump falsely claimed in the Oval Office that Spain is a member of the international organization known as BRICS, telling a reporter, “They’re a BRICS nation, Spain. You know what a BRICS nation is? You’ll figure it out.” Spain is not a member of BRICS; the “S” is for South Africa, which joined the group previously known as BRIC — Brazil, Russia, India and China — in 2010.
This story and headline have been updated to include additional information.
CNN’s Bryan Mena, Alicia Wallace, Phil Mattingly, Michael Rios and Elizabeth González contributed to this report.
Some The Majority Report from this last week. You should check out their YouTube channel and if you want to see the fun half free I can explain how. Hugs
Some important Bluesky posts. Really you should be there.
Everyone’s FINALLY Admitting Bernie Sanders was Right About Everything
Trump’s inauguration is just days away. It didn’t have to be this way. In fact, Bernie Sanders warned the Democratic Party that Americans would fall for a far right demagogue if their material needs weren’t addressed. Hacks in the Democratic Party and mainstream media are finally admitting Bernie Sanders was right. In this video we explain why his theory of change was 100% correct and look back at how Democratic Party elites sabotaged the very movement that could’ve saved us all from Trump’s rise.
Peace & Justice History for 1/24
Also, in the early 2000’s as my Dem. county party chair, I had the great honor of representing Kansas St. Senator David Haley-a very gracious man!-at a local candidate’s forum as he was running for Secretary of State (he came close but did not prevail. I tried to take the blame, but he would not let me.) KS is a red state, but he ran against the Republicans anyway. At that time, Republicans loved the computerized voting machines with no chits, but Sen. Haley wanted verification. He is author Alex Haley’s nephew.
| January 24, 1970 John Lennon & Yoko Ono cropped their hair short for the first time in years, declaring 1970 “Year One for Peace” and helped organize a Toronto Peace Festival.  John and Yoko An interview with John later that year |
| January 24, 1977 The TV mini-series ”Roots,” based on the Alex Haley novel, began airing on ABC.  LeVar Burton portrayed Kunta Kinte, a young man captured in Africa and shipped to America to be a slave, in “Roots.” The story followed an African sold into slavery, and his family’s history through emancipation. It won numerous awards and drew an enormous and broad-based audience (third-highest Nielsen ratings ever for its final episode). 85 percent of all Americans watched at least some part of the series. Listen to thoughts on Roots 30 years later |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january24
Interesting. She Gives Follow-through Commentary, Even.
The ‘MAGA Granny’ Plans to Reject Trump’s Jan. 6 Pardon, and Her Reasons Behind it Might Shock You
Pamela Hemphill was sentenced to jail after posting videos of her inside the Capitol during the insurrection.
On his first day in office, President Donald Trump made good on his promise to pardon all of the roughly 1,500 Jan. 6 insurrectionists. But while many MAGA supporters like Jacob Chansley, the self proclaimed “QAnon Shaman” and the face of the deadly Capitol riot, celebrated their pardons, one MAGA celebrity is singing a different tune.
Pamela Hemphill is a 71-year-old Boise, Idaho resident. She was known as “the MAGA granny” to Trump’s supporters, but in May 2022, she was sentenced to two months in jail on a misdemeanor charge in the Capitol attack, according to the Department of Justice.
Hemphill pled guilty to the charge after she was caught live streaming the insurrection and posting videos on YouTube from inside the Capitol during the attack. More than two years later, Hemphill said she got exactly what was coming to her. “We were wrong that day, we broke the law,” she told BBC. “There should be no pardons.”
It’s been confirmed that five U.S. citizens were killed during the Jan. 6 riot. This includes Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick, who died on Jan. 7 as a result of injuries sustained during the attack, according to U. S. Capitol Police.
Rachel Scott, a senior congressional correspondent for ABC News, said she spoke to Sicknick’s brother. “We now have no rule of law,” he reportedly told Scott. The brother even went as far as to call Trump “a poor excuse of a man.”
Hemphill said accepting the president’s pardon “would only insult the Capitol police officers, rule of law and, of course, our nation.” She continued to the Idaho Statesman saying, “The J6 criminals are trying to rewrite history by saying that it was not a riot; it wasn’t an insurrection. I don’t want to be a part of their trying to rewrite what happened that day.”
So with that, she’s turning down the pardon offer, going against the president and his MAGA movement’s wishes, and she’s well within her rights to do so. The MAGA granny wouldn’t be the first person to reject a presidential pardon. In 1833, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a pardon recipient can indeed turn down the offer. The ruling was later upheld in 1915, according to the Library of Congress.
Hemphill says her attorney plans to file an official letter of rejection of the president’s pardon.
