“Commonplace at most universities, but BYU?”
That was the hate-baiting question far-right Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) posed in a tweet about a professor at Brigham Young University who shared with her students the fact that she has a transgender child.
A hateful chorus of online bullying soon followed.
One reply urged the Mormon-owned university to “send her packing.… Maybe she took too many pills while pregnant.”
Another read: “The woke/Satan mind virus has been allowed to take over/infiltrate BYU.”
A third said the headline should be changed to “former BYU professor speaks.”
Lee’s target was Brigham Young family life professor Sarah Coyne, who teaches a required course at the school on “eternal marriage.”
A critical article, which appeared in the conservative, student-run Cougar Chronicle, called out Coyne for mentioning that she has an eight-year-old transgender child, something Coyne has done consistently in her lecture, with intention, for several years.
Those passions were expressed in a “very homophobic” way by the outspoken congresswoman, Weingarten told Yahoo News last Friday. The hearing had taken place two days before, but she was still plainly rattled by the exchange.
During the hearing, Greene repeatedly noted that Weingarten is not a “biological mother,” a seeming reference to the fact that the 65-year-old American Federation of Teachers president is married to a woman, Sharon Kleinbaum, a rabbi at the world’s largest LGBTQ synagogue. She sat behind Weingarten during the hearing.
“She was just attempting to dehumanize me,” Weingarten said of Greene.
Weingarten told Yahoo News that she has been forced to travel with a security guard since November of last year, when former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called her “the most dangerous person in the world.”
The retired, three-time NBA championship winner spent 16 years playing for the Miami Heat and is set to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame later this year. However, when journalist Rachel Nichols asked what the star had to say to anti-trans Florida legislators during an April 27 interview on Showtime’s Headliners, Wade opened up about how living in the Sunshine State isn’t in his family’s best interests.
“That’s another reason I don’t live in the state. A lot of people don’t know that,” he said. “I have to make decisions for my family, not just personal decisions.” Wade and his family moved to California after he retired from the NBA in 2019.
"Iraq snapshot"(THE COMMON ILLS):
State Sen. Shevrin Jones can often be seen at the Florida Capitol greeting staff and colleagues with a smile or laugh, but when he’s alone it’s a different story.
“The outward expression is to show God’s love. That’s what I was taught,” said Jones, a Democrat. But, he said, “I have enough tears in my car to fill a lake.”
For Jones, who is gay, the past two years have been emotionally draining as Florida passed a flurry of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.
BeerBoard, which tracks sales data, previously told CNN that the 3,000 locations it tracks poured 6% less Bud Light than rivals — including Miller Lite and Coors Light — from April 2 to April 15, a turnaround from previous weeks. Also, Bud Light sales fell 17% in the week ended April 15 compared to the same week in 2022, according to an analysis of NIQ data compiled by Bump Williams Consulting provided to the Wall Street Journal.
Still, it’s too soon to tell whether the boycott efforts will have long-lasting sales impacts, as customers often don’t commit to them for long. And the stock of Bud Light owner Anheuser-Busch (BUD) has fallen only about 3% in the last month, suggesting Wall Street isn’t too worried. Anheuser-Busch (BUD) reports earnings on May 4.
Randell and his family are bracing for the worst-case scenario.
Over the past few months, the 16-year-old North Texas boy has watched Senate Bill 14 — which would bar transgender youth like himself from receiving puberty blockers and hormone therapy — sail through the Senate and a House committee. The legislation would also ban transition-related surgeries, but they are rarely performed on kids. And on Tuesday, the bill could be up for a key vote in the lower chamber, where the legislation has more than enough support to pass.
“I am a really happy kid, and I have a really positive outlook on life,” said Randell, who is usually quick to laugh. “That would push me past my breaking point.”
That legislative progress means Texas, which has among the country’s biggest trans youth populations, is on the brink of joining over a dozen other states in banning transition-related care for minors — treatment medical groups and LGBTQ advocates say is vital for a portion of the youth population at high risk for depression and suicide.
“The last appointment we went to, the endocrinologist didn’t start with, ‘Hey, how’s your medicine going?’” said Kay, Randell’s mother. “They started with, ‘The government’s probably going to shut down the clinic. Where will you go for your next appointment?’”
It pains me because once a person has been made to feel unwelcome, it's a real uphill battle for them to be welcomed again into a church community. In 2003, a group of sisters, myself included, started an inclusive Catholic group.
The group was birthed out of our frustration with the lack of equality that was happening around us, not just in the Catholic Church, but in the U.S. as a whole. Creating the group was our way of telling people who have felt unwelcome in the church: "You belong."
Over the last two or three years, a group of justice promoters from vowed Catholic religious communities have spoken about LGBTQ+ rights and women in the church, and inclusion.
I've lost track of how many state legislatures have horrendous bills in front of their state houses that are very anti-trans. In the U.S., we know violence against trans women of color especially is skyrocketing.
In early February, ahead of International Transgender Day of Visibility in the U.S., we decided to write a statement of solidarity as Catholics, knowing full well that our church has been a source of much sorrow and pain for the LGBTQ+ community.
We met on March 17, but just a few days after, the United States Catholic Bishops Conference (USCCB) put out a teaching about what Catholic healthcare institutions are allowed to do in terms of offering medical or surgical treatment to the trans community.
So, after our bishop's conference came out with this statement, we felt an even greater urgency to speak up and say: "Wait a minute." There are a whole lot of Catholic persons who welcome members of the LGBTQ+ community, we know that you're whole as you are, and we're going to find a way to reach out to you and to be there with you.
That is what being a Catholic sister is about. Part of our life commitment is to reach out to the people that are pushed aside and to those who are being made to feel like they are less than whole.
[T]he Court’s latest LGBTQ+ rights case, 303 Creative v. Elenis, may deliver a substantial blow to the civil rights and liberties of same-sex couples and the greater LGBTQ+ community.
The case concerns Lorie Smith, a Colorado-based graphic designer and owner of the web design firm 303 Creative, who refuses to create wedding websites for LGBTQ+ couples, citing her deeply held religious beliefs. Smith is seeking an exemption from a Colorado law that prohibits discrimination in public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Smith is arguing that being forced to comply with this law would infringe on her First Amendment rights by compelling her to use her art to convey a “message” she finds objectionable. She’s being represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), an organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled an anti-LGBTQ hate group. (ADF disputes that label.) For nearly three decades, the ADF has been associated with legal efforts to allow businesses to deny goods and services to LGBTQ+ people, among other homophobic policies.
According to several legal experts Teen Vogue spoke to, the arguments against Smith’s case are entirely reasonable. The state is not forcing her to sell a particular service or create a particular message that goes against her beliefs. Colorado’s public accommodations law only requires businesses to provide the same goods or services to people of all sexual orientations and gender identities.
“There's a range of all sorts of reasons that a business can refuse to serve a customer, but not based on discriminatory reasons that are prohibited by the statute,” said Jennifer Pizer, chief legal officer for the LGBTQ+ civil rights firm Lambda Legal. “She's engaged in conduct very well calculated to communicate to the entire country that she opposes marriage for same-sex couples, but if she wants to sell a particular service that she has chosen to sell, then she should be required to do that consistently to the state law.”
The oddest part about this case is that it’s based entirely on something that has not yet occurred: Smith’s company does not currently offer wedding website designs, nor has she turned away any same-sex couples seeking this service. Unlike most Supreme Court cases dealing with nondiscrimination protections, there are no specific aggrieved individuals in this case. Instead, lawyers at the ADF have preemptively filed a lawsuit against the state of Colorado on Smith’s behalf in order to directly challenge and undermine this law.
“It is a plaintiff in search of a problem in order to create a constitutional rule, which would, I think, at the end of the day, potentially subjugate same-sex couples who are in the public square,” Anthony Michael Kreis, an assistant professor of law at Georgia State University’s College of Law, told Teen Vogue. “Not only has this case been manufactured, which is unusual in terms of the way litigation develops, but it has been done so for the express purpose to harm same-sex couples, and that has been the ADF's mission for many, many years now.”
Exactly. As we've long noted here -- in response to Jonathan Turley's cheering the case on -- the hateful Lori has no standing. She has not damaged. This is hypothetical and normally the Supreme Court would wait for a plaintiff to have standing -- to be able to show some way that the law is impacting her actual business.
Turning to Iraq, and
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei decried the presence of the US military in Iraq during a meeting with Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid in Tehran on Saturday.
“The presence of even one American in Iraq is too much,” Khamenei said, Iranian state media outlet IRNA reported.
“Americans are not friends with anyone and are not even loyal to their European allies,” Khamenei said, as he called for Iran and Iraq to expand “bilateral cooperation.”
The US has been on the outside of recent major diplomatic developments in the Middle East - a restoration of ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia and Saudi-led moves to welcome Syria back into the Arab League. Washington was 'blindsided' by the developments, according to reports."
PM Sudani conducted a visit to the Baghdad airport on Saturday to evaluate its services and facilities. A video emerged on social media soon after showing Sudani angrily shouting at Hussein Qasim Khafi, the airport’s director, during his visit to the airport.
“What is this mess?... How long have you have you been working here?” Sudani is seen telling Khafi in the video, before shrugging off the director’s attempt at a response by yelling “Enough!”
On 16 March, a member of Iraq’s parliament, Hussein Mones, filed an accusation against Kadhimi at the Public Prosecution Office for “gross negligence” and “failing to provide necessary security information to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces to take appropriate measures that would prevent endangering the safety of civil aviation at Baghdad International Airport on January 3, 2020.”
Mones’ official accusation also highlights “intentional damages to public property,” which include the vehicles that were transporting Soleimani and Muhandis when the illegal US strike happened.
The accusations pertain to Kadhimi’s tenure as the head of the country’s National Intelligence Service – a role he occupied before his becoming prime minister in May 2020.
In July 2020, Iran suggested that it had evidence that linked Kadhimi to the killing of Soleimani and Muhandis.
Central to the effort was a series of highly publicized night raids in late 2020 on the homes of public figures accused of corruption, conducted under the authority of the Permanent Committee to Investigate Corruption and Significant Crimes, better known as Committee 29. The architect of the raids was Lt. Gen. Ahmed Taha Hashim, or Abu Ragheef, who became known in Iraq as the “night visitor.”
But what happened to the men behind closed doors was far darker: a return to the ugly old tactics of a security establishment whose abuses Kadhimi had vowed to address. In more than two dozen interviews — including five men detained by the committee, nine family members who had relatives imprisoned, and 11 Iraqi and Western officials who tracked the committee’s work — a picture emerges of a process marked by abuse and humiliation, more focused on obtaining signatures for pre-written confessions than on accountability for corrupt acts.
Those interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters or, in the case of detainees and their families, to protect their safety.
“It was every kind of torture,” one former detainee recalled. “Electricity, choking me with plastic bags, hanging me from the ceiling by my hands. They stripped us naked and grabbed at the parts of our body underneath.”
In at least one case, a former senior official, Qassim Hamoud Mansour, died in the hospital after being arrested by the committee. Photographs provided to The Post by his family appear to show that a number of teeth had been knocked out, and there were signs of blunt trauma on his forehead.
Allegations that the process was riddled with abuse became an open secret among diplomats in Baghdad last year. But the international community did little to follow up on the claims and the prime minister’s office downplayed the allegations, according to officials with knowledge of the issue. Although a parliamentary committee first revealed the torture allegations in 2021 and Iraqi media have raised the issue sporadically, this is the fullest attempt yet to investigate the claims and document the scale of the abuse.
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"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Our Nation has made tremendous progress in advancing the cause of equality for LGBTQI+ Americans. To keep building on that progress, we must reflect honestly on the darkest chapters of our story and on how far we have come. Seventy years ago, as the Cold War set in, President Eisenhower signed an Executive Order banning LGBTQI+ Americans from serving in the Federal Government. This action codified a shameful chapter in our Nation’s history known as the “Lavender Scare.” It was a decades-long period when 5,000 to 10,000 LGBTQI+ Federal employees were investigated, were interrogated, and lost their jobs simply because of who they were and whom they loved.
On this anniversary, we acknowledge the importance of telling the complete history of our Nation, reflecting on the lives changed by this discrimination, honoring the courageous Americans who fought to end this injustice, and celebrating the contributions of today’s proud LGBTQI+ public servants — including members of our Armed Forces.
Our Nation was founded on the sacred idea that all of us are created equal and deserve to be treated equally under our laws. But for so many members of the LGBTQI+ community, hate, discrimination, and isolation throughout our country’s history have denied them the full promise of America. The Lavender Scare epitomized — and institutionalized — this injustice. As LGBTQI+ employees were forced out of the workforce, the Federal Government attempted to defend its policies by propagating false and hateful stereotypes — accusing this community of being a threat to our national security and unworthy of public trust. Employees who were fired under these policies often lost future employment, other opportunities, and even relationships with their own families. Many endured poverty and public disgrace. Some took their own lives as a result of the trauma they had to bear.
While this is a story of profound injustice, it is also a story of remarkable bravery. From seeking relief in the courts to picketing in front of the White House, activists stood up for their rights and helped lay the foundation for the modern-day LGBTQI+ civil rights movement. One such trailblazer was Franklin Kameny, an Army astronomer, who after being fired because he was gay, dedicated over 50 years of his life to activism and helping LGBTQI+ workers stand up for their rights. In 2009, I was proud to meet Frank Kameny in the Oval Office as President Obama and I officially expanded many Federal benefits to same-sex partners of Government employees.
I am equally proud to have mandated additional protections for the fundamental rights of LGBTQI+ Americans. I have appointed barrier-breaking LGBTQI+ leaders to the highest levels of Government, including the first openly gay Senate-confirmed Cabinet Secretary, the first two openly transgender Americans to be confirmed by the United States Senate, and the first open lesbian to achieve the rank of Ambassador. When Americans tune in to the daily White House press briefing, they see the first openly gay White House Press Secretary representing my Administration on the world stage.
But this is just the beginning. I rescinded the discriminatory ban on transgender service members, paving the way for these brave Americans to once again serve openly in the United States military. I signed an Executive Order on Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Federal Workforce, taking additional steps to ensure that LGBTQI+ public servants are treated with dignity and respect. I also signed a landmark Executive Order charging the Federal Government to prevent and combat discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Federal agencies have since strengthened or clarified protections for LGBTQI+ Americans in housing, health care, education, employment, credit and lending services, and the criminal justice system. Just last year, I proudly signed the Respect for Marriage Act to defend the rights of LGBTQI+ and interracial couples.
The struggle for equal justice is not over. Today and in each generation, we must rededicate ourselves to ending the hatred and discrimination that LGBTQI+ Americans continue to face. That includes addressing a wave of discriminatory laws that target them — especially transgender children — and that echo the hateful stereotypes and stigma of the Lavender Scare. My Administration is standing firmly with brave LGBTQI+ Americans to push back against these injustices.
Great nations face their history openly and honestly: the good, the bad, and the truth. Today, we make our message simple to every public servant who suffered from the un-American policies and discrimination of the Lavender Scare: We see your sacrifices. We acknowledge what you lost and what you wrongfully endured. I have mandated my Administration to do all we can to write a new chapter of our American story that will demonstrate our abiding commitment to equal rights, respect for human dignity, and limitless opportunity for all.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim April 27, 2023, as the 70th Anniversary of the Lavender Scare. I call upon government officials and the people of the United States of America to honor the contributions of LGBTQI+ public servants, to recognize the lives impacted by the Lavender Scare, and to celebrate the great diversity of the American people.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-sixth day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-seventh.
JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.
The "lavender scare" was a moral panic about homosexual people in the United States government which led to their mass dismissal from government service during the mid-20th century. It contributed to and paralleled the anti-communist campaign which is known as McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare.[1] Gay men and lesbians were said to be national security risks and communist sympathizers, which led to the call to remove them from state employment.[2] It was thought that gay people were more susceptible to being manipulated, which could pose a threat to the country.[3] Lesbians were at less risk of persecution than gay men, but some lesbians were interrogated or lost their jobs.
In 1947, at the beginning of the Cold War and the heightened concern about internal security, the State Department began campaigns to rid the department of communists and homosexuals, and they established a set of "security principles" that went on to inspire the creation of a dual loyalty-security test which became the model for other government agencies, as well as the basis for a government-wide security program under President Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration.[9] Under the criteria of the State Department's security principles, "disloyal" persons included communists, their associates, and those guilty of espionage, along with persons known for "habitual drunkenness, sexual perversion, moral turpitude, financial irresponsibility or criminal record," and were to be denied federal employment.[10] With the inclusion of "sexual perversion" among those considered unsuitable for federal employment, discrimination against homosexuals was implicitly built into State Department policy, and it was grandfathered into federal governmental protocol and procedure. Between 1947 and 1950, over 1700 applicants to federal jobs were denied the positions due to allegations of homosexuality.[11]
Even before the 1947 establishment of State Department security principles, the United States military had developed discriminatory policies targeting gay men and lesbians. In 1940, President Roosevelt and his Selective Service advisers were convinced by psychiatrists of the need to implement screening programs to determine the mental health of potential soldiers as to reduce the cost of psychiatric rehabilitation for returning veterans.[12] Although the initial plan for psychiatric screenings of military recruits included no direct references to homosexuality, within a year, direct references were added – this development in military bureaucratic processes contributed towards the momentum of the military's preoccupation with homosexuality during World War II.[13] The new psychiatric screening directives and procedures introduced to the military the idea that homosexuals were unfit to serve in the armed forces because they were mentally ill: a change from the military's traditional way of approaching homosexuality as a crime.[14] During World War I, punishment of homosexual soldiers was first codified in American military law, and during World War II, final regulations were declared and homosexuals were banned from all branches of the military in 1943.[15] Despite all of the regulations, the need for troops allowed for loopholes regarding the acceptance/rejection of homosexuals to fight in war. Around 4,000–5,000 out of 18 million men that had been in consideration were turned away.[3] Those serving in the military were ordered to report homosexual acts by other soldiers that were serving. Between two thousand and five thousand soldiers were suspected to be homosexuals in the military, where women were discharged at a higher rate than men.[16]
If the influx of people into Washington, D.C., during the New Deal created the urban and professional environments that allowed a gay and lesbian subculture to flourish, then World War II accelerated the process: for many lesbians and gay men, the war was a national coming out experience.[17] Mobilization for World War II and the war experience gave birth to a new addition to the American social urban landscape – the lesbian and gay community. To many Americans, this visible homosexual subculture seemed to prove their suspicions that the war had loosened puritanical moral codes, broadened sexual mores and certainly represented a viable threat to ideals of puritanical gender roles, heterosexuality, and the nuclear family. After the war, as families were united and as Americans struggled to put their lives back together, a national narrative rigorously promoted and propagated idealized versions of the nuclear family, heterosexuality, and traditional gender roles in the home and the workplace.[18]
In February 1950, the same year that Senator Joseph McCarthy claimed 205 communists were working in the State Department, Undersecretary of State John Peurifoy said that the State Department had allowed 91 homosexuals to resign.[19][20] Only two of these were women.[21] Following this, the administration of President Harry Truman was accused of not taking the "threat" of homosexuality seriously enough. In June 1950, an investigation by the Senate began into the government's employment of homosexuals. The results were not released until December, but in the mean time federal job losses due to allegations of homosexuality increased greatly, rising from approximately 5 to 60 per month.[11] On April 19, 1950, the Republican National Chairman Guy George Gabrielson said that "sexual perverts who have infiltrated our Government in recent years" were "perhaps as dangerous as the actual Communists".[22] The danger was not solely because they were gay, however. Homosexuals were considered to be more susceptible to blackmail and thus were labeled as security risks.[23] McCarthy hired Roy Cohn as chief counsel of his Congressional subcommittee. Together, McCarthy and Cohn – with the enthusiastic support of the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover – were responsible for the firing of scores of gay men and women from government employment, and strong-armed many opponents into silence using rumors of their homosexuality.[24][25][26] In 1953, during the final months of the Truman administration, the State Department reported that it had fired 425 employees for allegations of homosexuality.[27][28][29]
McCarthy often used accusations of homosexuality as a smear tactic in his anti-communist crusade, often combining the Second Red Scare with the Lavender Scare. On one occasion, he went so far as to announce to reporters, "If you want to be against McCarthy, boys, you've got to be either a Communist or a cocksucker."[30] At least one recent historian has argued that, by linking communism and homosexuality with psychological imbalance, McCarthy was employing guilt-by-association when evidence for communist activity was lacking.[31] Political rhetoric at the time often linked communists and homosexuals, and common beliefs among the public were similar, stating that both were "morally weak" or "psychologically disturbed," along with being godless and undermining traditional families.[32]
For example, McCarthy spoke on the Senate floor about two individual people, "Case 14" and "Case 62," as communists who were "unsafe risks" which he directly linked to their homosexuality.[32] He said a top intelligence official had told him "every active communist is twisted mentally or physically," and he implied that these people were vulnerable to recruitment by communists because of their "peculiar mental twists" of homosexuality.[32]
Due to the image of the State Department now being tainted with homosexuality, many male employees became self-conscious about the possibility of being perceived as homosexual. They often refused to be seen in pairs, and made statements confirming their heterosexuality when introducing themselves. For example, one unnamed employee often said at parties, "Hi, I'm so-and-so, I work for the State Department. I'm married and I have three children."[33]
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, the first LGBTQ individual to serve in her role, tweeted that the anniversary of the original executive order is of “personal importance” to her.
“It’s a reminder of how far we’ve come and the work that continues under this Administration to advance full inclusion and equal protection for LGBTQI+ Americans,” she said.
“I don’t think we should be surprised at all,” says Don Christensen, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who served as the Air Force’s chief prosecutor. “It’s clear that we at least have a subculture of racism and antisemitism within the military, and that there are people who are willing to act out by sharing classified information or making terroristic threats against those minorities or Jewish people.”
The military is one of the nation’s most diverse organizations, and only a small percentage of servicemembers are racist. But when it comes to leaks, even a handful of white nationalists can do a lot of damage.
Teixeira’s racism appears to have been more casual, rather than organized and violent, like other racist members of the military who have recently faced charges. A video of him at a shooting range obtained by The Washington Post showed the Air National Guardsman yelling racist and antisemitic slurs while popping off rounds at a shooting range. And on his Discord servers, users regularly posted similar memes.
It’s unclear what made Teixeira post volumes of sensitive documents on social media. He embraced right-wing conspiracy theories, including a false claim that the white-supremacist massacre at a Buffalo grocery store was part of a secret government plot. But he mostly appeared keen to share classified documents in order to revel in the awe of the young teenagers who looked up to the 21-year-old in his small Discord server.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) just said something wicked to stepparents everywhere by implying that they aren’t really parents.
During the House Oversight and Accountability Subcommittee on Select Coronavirus Crisis hearing Wednesday, the Republican congresswoman decided to grill Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, about her credentials.
“Are you a medical doctor?” Greene asked, followed by, “Are you a mother?”
Weingarten admitted she was not a doctor and was “a mother by marriage” and added that her wife was also at the hearing.
Greene then noted that Weingarten hadn’t taught a class since the 1990s, to which the union leader pointed out that she would be a guest teacher at Cornell University later in the year.
Greene grilled Weingarten about a tweet the union leader posted that supported Twitter suspending Greene, leading her to say that Weingarten was more of “a political activist” than anything else on her resume.
After Greene raged about Black Lives Matter, Weingarten delivering supplies to teachers in Ukraine and COVID-19 school closures, Weingarten tried to speak up in protest.
That set Greene off even more, and she railed against Weingarten for, among other things, not being a biological parent.
“I didn’t ask you a question. What I would like to talk about is your recommendations to the CDC, as not a medical doctor, not a biological mother, and really not a teacher, either. So, what you did is you advised the CDC?” Greene said.
The exchange inspired Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) to mention Greene’s unacceptable decorum and give Weingarten a moment to note that she is a mother whether Greene believes her to be or not.
I'll stay with the people -- all the people. Especially the ones who need allies. Especially the ones who are targeted because of their race or their gender or the sexuality.
The former Fox News host has long been the target of advertiser boycotts due to the fascist content consistently churned out on his show. Carlson’s anti-immigrant and racist program was frequently the highest-rated show on Fox during the Trump presidency and following his failed coup, drawing upwards of 3 million viewers a night.
Trump
expressed his dismay at Carlson’s departure, writing on his social media
network, “The fact that Tucker Carlson will no longer be on Fox News is
a big blow to Cable News, and to America. Tucker was insightful,
interesting, and ratings gold. He will be greatly missed!”
Similarly,
Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson wrote on Twitter that Carlson
“has been engaging in the best journalism on TV uncovering and exposing
the truth. This is a huge loss to Fox News.”
Disoriented
middle-class and libertarian elements, such as journalists Glenn
Greenwald, Max Blumenthal, Anya Parampil and Aaron Maté along with
comedian Jimmy Dore and fascist Jackson Hinkle also took to social media
to praise Carlson, primarily for his professed opposition to US
involvement in the Ukraine war and the Syrian civil war.
Carlson,
an early proponent of the Iraq war, is not a genuine opponent of US
imperialism but, like Trump, seeks to capitalize on broad antiwar
sentiment in the working class, and channel it to the advantage of the
Republican Party.
+ Tucker Carlson’s transformation from the brattish scion of a “Deep State” diplomat and former head of Voice of America to a bow-tie-wearing talk show smart-aleck into the white working-class tribune of Fox Populi is one of the greatest acts of political crossdressing in American history.
+ As in all these cases, Tucker’s offense wasn’t his racism or lies or on-air libels but threatening the bottom-line of the Boss. There are many more Tuckers being test-driven now in Rupert’s Body Shop.
+ When Tucker was asked the pressing question of our time, “What is a woman?” He apparently answered with the C-word.
+ We are meant to believe that the man who built his media empire by running photos of topless women (many of them barely legal teenagers) on page 3 of The Sun every day for 44 years fired Tucker Carlson for being a misogynist.
+ Is this the best the NYT has dug up about the offenses of Fox’s Wanker of Mass Destruction? “In video obtained by The Times…Mr. Carlson is shown discussing his “postmenopausal fans” … and in another video, he is overheard describing a woman he finds “yummy.””
+ Someone said Tucker sounds like a sober Charlie Sheen. Sounds about right.
+ Some of us are old enough to remember when Rupert fired himself, his son James, Les Hinton (head of Dow Jones), and his favorite editor, Rebekah Brooks, after the phone-hacking scandal and not much changed at NewsCorp., politically or in terms of their “journalistic” practices.
+ The fact that FoxNews apparently has an executive charged with amassing kompromat files on some of its biggest stars, including Tucker Carlson, is one of the Foxiest things ever.
+ FoxNews doesn’t seem to be dialing it back. Laura Ingraham this week: Democrats “believe that everyone in this audience, every one of you sitting here tonight, they — if they could, I really believe they would shut you down, whether put you in a camp, or put you — send you away somewhere so you’re never heard from again.”
+ Like many authoritarian demagogues, Tucker Carlson seems to be a truly weird person. His obsessions–filth, bizarre animal stories (“sex crazed pandas” and “psycho raccoons”), obesity, bodily excrescences, the subliminal messages of candy, testicle tanning–which he regularly inflicted on his audiences, range far beyond the usual tabloid grotesqueries and border on the pathological.
+ Still, we tend to vastly overstate the influence of cable-news bobbleheads like Tucker Carlson. On his best nights, Carlson had around 3 million watched his show for at least a couple of minutes, less than 1 percent of the US population. So, literally almost no one was watching him, which is how it should be.
+ The day after Fox fired Carlson and CNN booted Don Lemon, ABC terminated Nate Silver. Silver’s smug, poll-driven prognostications on just about everything had as pernicious an effect on political life in the US as the racist ranting of Tucker Carlson. Good riddance to both.
+ According to Nate Silver, Nate Silver had a 99.5% chance of keeping his job.
+ There’s rampant speculation over what “possessed” Rupert to fire Carlson, but I think we’ve finally located someone who’s divined the answer: demons.
+++
A cache of documents has undermined key evidence that was relied upon by Iraqi authorities to jail the Australian engineer Robert Pether, prompting renewed calls for his release.
Pether, a father of three, has meanwhile made allegations that a “confession” statement used against him was mistranslated by a biased employee of Iraq’s central bank before being handed to court.
Pether and his colleague Khaled Saad Zaghloul were jailed in 2021 for five years and fined US$12m over allegations their engineering firm defrauded the Iraqi government during a project to build the Central Bank of Iraq’s new headquarters.
Pether’s employer CME Consulting was accused of continuing to bill the government for the work of a subcontractor, Meinhardt, despite having told Meinhardt to stop work on the project almost immediately after the two firms signed a contract.
Testimony obtained by Guardian Australia shows that a Meinhardt employee told an Iraqi court that CME had told the subcontractor to stop work “three weeks after signing the contract”.
The employee alleged CME then ceased all contact with Meinhardt.
“We left the issue and the accused Khaled Saad Zaghloul did not contact us at all,” the Meinhardt employee’s 11 May 2021 testimony says.
“[We] told [the Central Bank of Iraq] that the accused Khaled Saad Zaghloul informed us in 2017 that the project had stopped so we left the case and that we did not send any of our engineers to the project site and did not provide any engineering consultations.”
But email correspondence reveals extensive contact continued between CME and Meinhardt for months, at odds with what the court was told.
The documents reveal that CME and senior Meinhardt employees exchanged 51 emails between January and July in 2018. The last of these was dated more than six months after the contract, also obtained by the Guardian, was signed.
The Meinhardt employee who authored the prosecution testimony was copied into five CME-Meinhardt emails from May to late June 2018, six months after the time he alleged all contact had ceased.
According to records obtained by The Guardian, CME and top Meinhardt personnel exchanged 51 emails between January and July 2018. The last of these was dated over six months after the contract.
From May to late June 2018, the Meinhardt employee who provided the prosecution testimony was copied into five CME-Meinhardt communications, six months after he claimed all interaction had halted.
Meanwhile, Pether, a father of three, alleged that a “confession” statement used against him was mistranslated by a biased employee of Iraq’s central bank before being handed to court.
Pether told The Guardian: “I recognized (my) translator as soon as he came into the room. He was known to me since 2016.
“Apart from facial recognition, he also has some distinguishing marks and characteristics.”
The Guardian has obtained contemporaneous court records confirming Pether brought this up during his criminal trial and complained that his translated statement was flawed and incorrect.
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