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South Carolina Senator’s Bill Would Legalize Religious Anti-Gay Marriage Discrimination

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A South Carolina state senator’s legislation would allow state employees to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Meet Lee Bright. In 2009, he took his seat as a South Carolina Republican state senator, having left his prior employment as the head of his father’s trucking firm. On a campaign disclosure – Bright tried, and failed, to unseat U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham – he reported “owing 29 creditors between $1.4 million and $3.1 million,” according to The State.

Now 44 years old, Bright is on a mission to expand the right of South Carolinians to discriminate against LGBT people.

Bright moving toward his anti-gay goal by filing a bill last week that would exempt any employee who works for the State of South Carolina from having to do their job by issuing a marriage license to any same-sex couple. That state employee, should Sen. Bright’s bill pass and become law, merely has to claim they have a sincerely-held religious belief against same-sex marriage and they almost literally get a “get out of jail free” card.

“At the end of the day I want to know I did all I could, and I think it’s something we need to do to protect these judges so they can serve in these honorable positions without feeling like they betrayed their faith,” Bright said. 

But it’s not as if Bright has an internal fairness doctrine operating and wants to help or protect LGBT people, or judges whose faith supports same-sex marriage. “Faith” isn’t necessarily the driving force behind Bright’s bill. 

In January, Bright called for judges whose rulings support marriage equality to be impeached.

“Congress ought to stand up and do its job and impeach one of these federal judges,” Bright told a Tea Party group. “And I think when you do that, being a federal judge is a pretty good gig, and I think if you’ll impeach just one, the rest of them will do the right thing. And they’ll do it out of necessity, because self-preservation is an instinct that so many folks have.”

And in April, Bright railed against what he claims is “indoctrination” of college students into “the homosexual agenda.”

Sen. Bright was on C-SPAN with Family Research Council Action leader and reality TV star Josh Duggar, and announced, “we’ve got the homosexual agenda on the full march in our institutions of higher ed and we’ve gone from education to indoctrination, so we are in a fight — they have seized the educational establishment and we’ve got to take that back and we’ve got to get folks involved in that or otherwise that’s our next generation.”

Here’s Bright delivering an offensive speech on the floor of the South Carolina Senate, railing against LGBT people.

 

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Hat tip: Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters

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News

Trump Teases 2028 ‘Campaign’ With New Slogan

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President Donald Trump continues to tease out a possible 2028 run, despite the constitutional prohibition on a third term. On Friday, the 79-year old unveiled a new “slogan,” and his new name for Trump Republican voters.

Trump has acknowledged the constitutional block on a third term, recently telling reporters that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a constitutional attorney, told him a third term is not allowed — a fact he appeared to accept.

But Trump on Friday afternoon posted an AI meme of a silver-haired, older-looking Donald Trump, holding a campaign sign that reads — not “Make America Great Again” — but, “Trump 2028, Yes!”

READ MORE: ‘For Sale’: Trump Torched Over Report He’d OK Russia Controlling Parts of Ukraine

The post, on his Truth Social website, also says, “Trumplicans!”

“There is a new word for a TRUMP REPUBLICAN, which is almost everyone,” he recently wrote. “It is, TEPUBLICAN??? Or, TPUBLICAN???”

Apparently, “Trumplicans” won out.

Health care activist Melanie D’Arrigo remarked on Wednesday that “Trump is workshopping names for his cult, while Americans struggle to afford the rising costs of groceries, healthcare and housing.”

Reporting on Trump’s musings, TIME on Thursday noted that his new MAGA moniker comes “amid high-profile divisions within the MAGA base.”

Were Trump to run for a third term, he would be 82 on Election Day in 2028.

READ MORE: Trump Order to Keep ‘Jalopy’ Coal Plant Open Costs Taxpayers Over $100 Million

 

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‘For Sale’: Trump Torched Over Report He’d OK Russia Controlling Parts of Ukraine

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President Donald Trump is under fire over a report that claims he is proposing that the U.S. recognize Russian control of parts of Ukraine, including Crimea, which Russia has unlawfully annexed, as a means to end the war.

“The Telegraph understands that Donald Trump has sent his peace envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner to make the direct offer to Vladimir Putin in Moscow,” the news outlet reported. “The plan to recognize territory, which breaks US diplomatic convention, is likely to go ahead despite concerns among Ukraine’s European allies.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin “on Thursday said Washington’s legal recognition of Crimea and the Donetsk and Luhansk regions as Russian territory would be one of the key issues in negotiations over the US president’s peace plan,” according to The Telegraph.

READ MORE: Trump Order to Keep ‘Jalopy’ Coal Plant Open Costs Taxpayers Over $100 Million

Critics are blasting President Trump.

Shaun Pinner, a former British soldier who served as a contracted Marine fighting in Ukraine’s armed forces, responded to the report:

“I’ve lived through the cost of losing ground. I’ve seen the bodies, the destroyed homes, and I’ve been tortured by Russia like so many others. Land is never ‘just land.’ It’s people. Families. Lives shattered.”

“So yes, watching Trump casually bargain away territory that isn’t even his to give feels like a deep betrayal,” he added. “It’s a lesson I wish none of us had to learn the hard way, and one far too many are being forced to relive again because one of our so-called allies is now suggesting we reward genocide.”

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Michael McFaul, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, remarked, “Trump would be rewarding imperial conquest, thereby encouraging other autocrats to do so, resulting in a very unstable world.”

Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, co-founder of the Renew Democracy Initiative, issued a warning:

“If the US recognizes territory taken by force, just replace ‘leader of the free world’ with ‘for sale’. Xi can come up with more cash than Putin for Trump and his pals to do the same for Taiwan.”

Marko Mihkelson, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Estonian Parliament, remarked, “If this is true, then we have a major problem, Houston.”

READ MORE: Republicans Scuttled Trump Health Care Fix Because They Felt ‘Left Out’: Report

 

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Trump Order to Keep ‘Jalopy’ Coal Plant Open Costs Taxpayers Over $100 Million

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A Trump administration order to keep an aging and unneeded Michigan coal-fired power plant open and online reportedly is costing taxpayers about $615,000 per day, or $113 million to date. Closing the plant would save taxpayers about $640 million by 2040.

“The Trump administration in May ordered utility giant Consumers Energy to keep the 63-year-old JH Campbell coal plant in western Michigan, about 100 miles north-east of Chicago, online just as it was being retired,” according to The Guardian.

“The costs of unnecessarily running this jalopy coal plant just continue to mount,” Michael Lenoff, an attorney with Earthjustice, which is suing over the order, told The Guardian.

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President Donald Trump signed a national energy emergency order on his first day in office this year, rolling back regulations.

In court documents, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said that the administration’s latest order is “arbitrary and illegal.”

Consumers Energy, the operator of the plant, did not ask the Trump administration for the order to keep the coal plant running, and the Trump administration did not consult local regulators, a spokesperson for the Michigan public service commission (MPSC), told the Guardian in May.

“The unnecessary recent order … will increase the cost of power for homes and businesses in Michigan and across the midwest,” the chair of the MPSC, Dan Scripps, said in a statement at the time.

Reporting on what it called Trump’s “pro-fossil fuel agenda,” The Guardian in January quoted the president:

“We have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have, the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we are going to use it – let me use it,” Trump said in his inaugural address. “We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it.”

READ MORE: Republicans Scuttled Trump Health Care Fix Because They Felt ‘Left Out’: Report

 

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