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Lt. Governor Mark Robinson, currently the leading candidate for the GOP nomination for governor, launched an attack on transgender women years after the Tar Heel State’s last GOP governor cost the state millions – and possibly billions – of dollars, and cost him his political career over the very same issue.“We’re going to defend women in this state,” vowed Robinson, according to WUNC, at a campaign stop earlier this month.

U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville says Democrats “hate” women and want them to be “extinct.”The Alabama Republican freshman lawmaker made a name for himself by blocking hundreds of critical military promotions last year over the military’s policy of reimbursing service members who are forced to travel out of state to obtain reproductive care and abortion services.

has been endorsed by then-President Donald Trump, U.S. Reps.

bill aims to silence accusations of racism, homophobia, sexism, transphobia, or any other allegations of discrimination, making them “defamation” under the law and potentially costing the person who made them up to $35,000 in the state known for its “Don’t Say Gay” law.The sweeping legislation also appears to void journalists’ right to not reveal sources, and, chillingly removes the long-standing requirement that a public figure needs to show “actual malice” to win a defamation lawsuit.“In cases of alleged homophobia or transphobia, defendants charged with defamation are not allowed to use the plaintiff’s religious or scientific beliefs as part of their defense. If they are found liable for defamation, the defendant could be fined at least $35,000,” The New Republic reports, noting it “would silence basically any accusations of discrimination.”“The bill applies to statements made in print, on television, or on social media.

smoke-filled back rooms, targeting their political opponents – like Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, and Eric Cantor did on January 20, 2009, just hours after Barack Obama was sworn into office.“On the night of Barack Obama’s inauguration, a group of top GOP luminaries quietly gathered in a Washington steakhouse to lick their wounds and ultimately create the outline of a plan for how to deal with the incoming administration,” PBS’s “Frontline” reported a decade ago, in 2013. “After three hours of strategizing, they decided they needed to fight Obama on everything.

Sub. H.B. No.

Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is promoting his far-Christian right beliefs in his latest fundraising email, which asks, “Does America Need More God, Patriot?”Johnson, who last year was the lead sponsor of a federal “Don’t Say Gay” bill, lamented in his email that an increasing number of high school students identify as LGBTQ+. He also claimed “America is hanging on by a thread,” “I fear America may be beyond redemption,” and said, “we live in a depraved culture.”“I’m uneasy, Patriot,” Johnson’s email, sent via the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC), begins, as Insider reported.

READ MORE: ‘A Real Problem With Winning’: Right Wing Pundits Stunned by ‘Major Victories’ for Democrats“Think about what some people are doing, trying to dehumanize other human beings. Trying to turn people against each other.

KFile, on Wednesday uncovered Johnson’s remarks in support of so-called “ex-gay” conversion therapy, which major medical institutions and government agencies have pronounced dangerous, possibly deadly, and likened to or defined as torture.Johnson had collaborated with an “ex-gay” ministry and his employer before he entered politics in the mid-2000’s, a Christian legal organization that is now designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBTQ hate group.Wednesday evening, as Mediate reported, CNN played audio of Johnson talking about an annual event he worked on with his employer, the Alliance Defense Fund (now Alliance Defending Freedom) and Exodus International, a now-defunct and debunked “ex-gay” organization that claimed gay people could become heterosexual through conversion therapy.That event was targeted toward school children.READ MORE: Johnson Mocks Reports GOP Plan to Defund IRS Will Cost US Taxpayers Up to $90 Billion“Our race, the size of our feet, the color of our eyes, these are things we’re born with and cannot change. But what these adult advocacy groups like the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network are promoting is a type of behavior.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA), who House Republicans unanimously voted for last week, has scrubbed his personal website, apparently deleting all 69 weekly podcasts he and his wife Kelly began recording last year.Kelly Johnson’s business website, Onward Christian Counseling, has also been scrubbed. HuffPost reports she “runs a counseling business that advocates the belief that homosexuality is comparable to bestiality and incest, according to its operating documents.” Attempts to access both websites now result in an “Error” message, although those web addresses have been archived.Speaker Johnson has been described as a far-right Christian nationalist and Christian dominionist.Last week, after Johnson was elected the third-most powerful official in America, Politico published a profile on “the Christian nationalist ideas that shaped House Speaker Mike Johnson.” The New York Times wrote, “The new House speaker has put his faith at the center of his political career, and aligned himself with a newer cohort of conservative Christianity that some describe as Christian nationalism.”An MSNBC columnist last week wrote, “Mike Johnson’s Christian nationalist track record isn’t a mystery — it’s a tragedy,” and added, “The new speaker cut his teeth trying to erode the separation of church and state and abortion and LGBTQ rights as a lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund.”On Thursday, in a Daily Beast opinion piece, David Rothkopf wrote, “Here’s Why Mike Johnson Is More Dangerous Than Donald Trump.”“In interviews he has spoken of the fact that ‘We don’t live in a democracy’ we live in a ‘Biblical republic,'” Rothkop said.

Human Rights Campaign‘s ad, expected to air nationwide according to The Hill.“Instead, they’re trying to limit the health care you and your family can access, ban books and flags and block enforcement of civil rights laws, all while risking the government grinding to a halt.”“Tell Congress to reject the politics of hate and get back to work,” the video adds.READ MORE: ‘Careening’ Toward ‘Risk of Political Violence’: Experts Sound Alarm After Trump Floats Executing His Former General“In addition to attaching numerous anti-LGBTQ+ provisions to their draft spending bills,” HRC adds in a press release, “the legislative attacks from Republicans in the House of Representatives also include stand-alone bills such as H.R. 734 — a nationwide ban on transgender students playing sports — as well as larger legislative packages like H.R.

Canada’s new warning to its LGBTQ people is a “political” attack on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and not an “actual concern,” several Fox News hosts on Thursday delivered caustic commentary against the Canadian government and U.S. cities including LGBTQ-friendly San Francisco and New York.“Well, they’re talking about Florida, right? They’re aiming this at Ron DeSantis, and the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill, which is one of the most ridiculous interpretations of that bill that I’ve ever seen,” declared Fox News guest host Michele Tafoya, the former NBC Sports reporter who kicked off her political career with a “controversial stand on race relations.”After mentioning that the NAACP had issued a travel warning for LGBTQ people thinking of visiting Florida, Tafoya insisted, “this is all very much, this is very political, and it’s misdirected.”READ MORE: Governor Smacks Down GOP Lawmaker and Trump for ‘End Run’ Attempt to Derail Fani Willis’ RICO Prosecution“I think they need to be a little more concerned about countries in the Middle East who throw LGBTQ types off buildings and disrupt weddings and don’t even allow us to think about it,” she continued.

Fox News co-host Jessica Tarlov, the lone liberal on the the right-wing cable channel’s very popular afternoon show “The Five,” destroyed her conservative co-hosts’ talking points on a wide variety of culture war issues.Behind a chyron of “Tyranny of the Minority” – related to remark made by Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy – Tarlov on Wednesday fed facts to the conservatives who tried to claim the majority of Americans oppose the right to choose an abortion, and the majority of Americans do not support transgender people.“On the trans issue, for instance,” Tarlov offered, “our own Fox polling shows that 57% of Americans think that trans kids and their families being the target of political attacks, as in these anti-trans bills, is a major problem.”“When you look at the actual numbers of kids that are, for instance, they have gender dysphoria, and they’re getting top surgery. How many kids do you think got top surgery last year?” she asked, not receiving a response from any of her co-hosts.READ MORE: DeSantis ‘Shuts Down’ Question of How He Would Handle His Kids Being LGBTQ: ‘We’ll Leave That Between My Wife and I’“Under 300,” answered Tarlov, who “holds two Master’s degrees in political science and public policy, as well as a Ph.D.

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, currently polling 40 points behind GOP 2024 presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, in a rare TIME magazine interview refused to answer a reporter’s question about what he would do if one of his three children were LGBTQ – but he did spend time promoting his parents’ rights platform.“I think we were viewed, really from Day One, as the candidate that had the strong record on the issues important to parents,” the Florida Republican told TIME’s national political correspondent Molly Ball in a 30-minute interview at the Iowa State Fair published Wednesday,“’It has been an issue, really, from the beginning,’ he says of the ‘parents’ rights’ agenda that has been central to his struggling presidential candidacy. ‘And so I do think we’ve tapped into that, and we’ll continue to do it.'”Parents’ rights is the latest conservative code word for “family values,” as TIME’s national political correspondent Molly Ball notes.READ MORE: ‘We’re Gonna Start Slitting Throats on Day One’: DeSantis Makes New Deep State Pledge in Campaign RebootBut it really was really a platform the Florida governor grabbed after it proved to be a winning issue for Virginia Republican Glenn Youngkin in what had been a “long-shot” gubernatorial battle.

Senate Bill 12 was passed by the state Senate and House on May 29, and signed into law by Republican Governor Greg Abbott on June 18. The law bans “sexually oriented performances” on public property or in the presence of anyone under 18 years old.

annual conference at Liberty University last month, the event featured a “para-legislative session” at which state legislators and religious-right activists proposed and discussed various resolutions and sample legislation.Among the speakers at the session was Allan Parker, president of religious-right organization The Justice Foundation, who urged the lawmakers in attendance to return to their states and introduce resolutions declaring the month of June to be “Christian History Month.”“I think people are feeling it’s time for Christian History Month,” Parker said. “I hadn’t thought about when but I’m going to suggest June because it’s also Celebrate Life Month.

generated lots of media coverage by making appearances before North Carolina school boards to rant about the supposedly “perverted” books that are available in school libraries. He’s so pleased with himself that he’s taking his bigotry-promoting show on the road.Amanchukwu is a pastor at Upper Room Church of God in Christ in Raleigh, North Carolina, which is overseen by virulently anti-LGBTQ pastor Patrick Wooden, who also happens to be Amanchukwu’s father-in-law.

firearms regulations, corporate diversity programs, a Florida school’s policy on a transgender student’s privacy, and the decision by credit card companies to separately classify gun purchases, to name a few issues.READ MORE: GOP Senators and Right-Wingers Freak Out Over Biden Ordering 3000 Reservists to Ready for Possible Deployment to EuropeHe or his office have also accessed the medical records of transgender people,Earlier this week anchor Rachel Maddow took a look into Skrmetti “demanding and obtaining the private medical records of trans people in Tennessee as Republicans look for ways to make the lives of trans people miserable,” MSNBC reported.Just yesterday, Skrmetti headed a coalition of 13 Republican state attorneys general “warning the nation’s largest companies — many of which have diversity and equity programs — they could face legal action for using race-based policies,” Tennessee Lookout reported. The sharply-worded letter “put Fortune 100 companies on notice they could be hit with legal action for violating the U.S.

six-page letter, dated July 5, also appears to promote a form of Christian nationalism, suggesting right-wing boycotts over the LGBTQ Pride products harmed the company’s market value, and then stating: “It is likely more profitable to sell the type of Pride that enshrines the love of the United States. Target’s Pride Campaign alienates whereas Pride in our country unites.”The letter also refers to reports from right-wing media including the National Review, Fox News, the New York Post, and the Daily Caller, along with articles from Reuters and Axios.It denounces Target’s financial support of GLSEN.

Ron DeSantis is now personally defending the anti-LGBTQ ad his official 2024 presidential campaign promoted last week, which drew massive outrage from the left and the right for being homophobic and transphobic. The ad wrongly attempts to paint Donald Trump as being pro-LGBTQ by using some of his remarks from years ago, rather than his long record as president and presidential candidate of targeting and attacking the LGBTQ community.“Identifying Donald Trump as really being a pioneer in injecting gender ideology into the mainstream, where he was having men compete against women in his beauty pageants — I think that’s totally fair game, because he’s now campaigning saying the opposite,” DeSantis said Wednesday to  right-wing commentator Tomi Lahren, as NBC News reports.The video, which went viral on Twitter and currently has nearly 25 million views, includes this message from the DeSantis campaign attacking Trump: “To wrap up Pride Month, let’s hear from the politician who did more than any other Republican to celebrate it.”READ MORE: ‘Disgusting’: Pro-DeSantis Former GOP Lawmaker Pulls Support and Slams Florida Governor After Anti-LGBTQ AdTrump’s anti-LGBTQ record is extreme, despite his pre-presidential remarks and actions.

because she refuses to provide that service to same-sex couples. The case is 303 Creative vs.

303 Creative vs. Elenis, was argued on First Amendment free speech grounds.“The First Amendment prohibits Colorado from forcing a website designer to create expressive designs speaking messages with which the designer disagrees,” the Court ruled on Friday, in a 6-3 decision along ideological lines.On Friday, Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, ruled in favor of the Colorado designer who claims she would like to expand her business to include producing wedding websites, but also claims her Christian faith requires her to refuse to do so for same-sex couples getting married.

Caitlyn Jenner, the pro-Trump former California Republican gubernatorial candidate and Olympic gold medal winner, is praising GOP 2024 presidential candidate Nikki Haley‘s apparent multi-pronged attack on transgender Americans, the U.S. Armed Forces, and the Biden administration’s foreign policy – while continuing to adhere to the GOP’s agenda of injecting “communists” into her messaging.“The Chinese Communist Party is building missiles and we’re arguing over gender pronouns.

303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, has echoes of another case that was decided a few years ago, Masterpiece Cakeshop v.

Club Q, a Colorado LGBTQ nightclub, and wounding 19 others with an AR-15 style assault rifle last year has been sentenced by a judge to life in prison, including over 2200 years behind bars.“Anderson Lee Aldrich, 23, was sentenced Monday to five consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for the 2022 massacre at Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colorado,” CNN reports.“Judge Michael McHenry also sentenced Aldrich to an additional 2,208 years in prison for the attempted murder charges. Aldrich also received a four-year sentence for bias-motivated charges, which are akin to hate-crime charges in other states.”RELATED: Watch: Club Q Owner Testifies Before Congress About ‘Hundreds’ of Messages of Hate He Received After Anti-LGBTQ AttackColorado does not have the death penalty.Unarmed patrons in the club took Aldrich down.Cheryl Norton, whose daughter Ashtin Gamblin survived after being shot nine times, urged Judge McHenry, “Please your honor, I’m pleading with you: Lock this animal away to the depths of hell.”Extremism expert Mark Pitcavage on Monday noted Aldrich “had prominently featured on his website an accelerationist white supremacist video urging killings and terrorist attacks.”Calling it “one of the worst mass killings in Colorado history,” NBC News adds that “Aldrich, 23, who identifies as nonbinary and uses Mx.

Reddit’s r/Oakland forum on Tuesday. Though the text of the post has since been deleted, according to KRON, Rike said he had the specific prescription filled for three years at the Telegraph Avenue location.

And Tango Makes Three, are suing a Florida school board as well as members of the Florida Board of Education. One of the arguments is that the book, based on a true story, is implied to be obscene by the fact that it’s banned.The lawsuit was filed Tuesday, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, the two authors of And Tango Makes Three, along with six children who wish to read the book and their parents.

tweeted Tuesday evening.Repeated, targeted harassment against any account will cause the harassing accounts to receive, at minimum, temporary suspensions. The words “cis” or “cisgender” are considered slurs on this platform.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 21, 2023READ MORE: Conversion Therapy Tied to Suicide Attempts by Transgender People, Massive New Study ShowsBut “cisgender” and “cis” isn’t a slur—it’s merely the opposite of “trans.” “Cis-” is a standard latin prefix, meaning “on this side of.” It’s particularly common in geography, where it just means the same side as the speaker.

declared Donald Trump the President of the United States and Joe Biden a “wannabe dictator,” Fox News once again is under fire, this time for an article and corresponding social media post that claimed “critics” say the LGBTQ pride flag “promotes grooming and pedophilia.”The White House in a rare move slammed the far-right wing propaganda network, which focused its article on an LGBTQ Pride flag hanging from the White House portico during President Biden’s LGBTQ Pride event this past weekend.Today, the People’s House – your house – sends a clear message to the country and to the world.America is a nation of pride. pic.twitter.com/ZZS9oTpDww— President Biden (@POTUS) June 11, 2023According to multiple reports, the initial headline on the Fox News article written by Kerry J.

American Family Association publicly attacked U.S. Senator Ted Cruz over the Texas Republican’s opposition to the “Kill the Gays” law in Uganda.