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22 LGBT Advances That (Probably) Will Disappear Under A President Romney

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Under a President Mitt Romney, there are at least 22 advances in LGBT civil rights delivered by President Barack Obama that most likely will disappear. While Nancy Pelosi and, to a far lesser extent, Harry Reid, have worked to support civil rights and protections for the gay community, Barack Obama has — sometimes with great fanfare, oftentimes in the shadows — delivered important advances.

Back in 2010, at Change.org, I wrote a somewhat controversial (at the time) article, “Obama’s Gay Rights Come With An Expiration Date,” which stated:

President Obama should know better than to incrementalize gay rights, and tie them to his presidency. And yet, that’s exactly what he’s doing.

…

President Obama has slowly and quietly doled out rights to the LGBTQ community. These are rights we should have by the very nature of our existence, rights that every other American has upon birth, but the president has doled them out cautiously, meekly, without pomp or circumstance, and, worse, he has tied them to his presidency.

This tactic is problematic for two reasons.

First, by expanding our civil rights by issuing executive orders and memoranda, President Obama’s gay civil rights come with an expiration date. Yes, that’s right. The rights he has decreed, without working through Congress, are tied to his presidency. Any of his successors can, simply with the stroke of a pen, wipe out all our hard-earned rights, just because he or she wants to. Do you honestly think the next Republican president won’t do that?

Today, the Washington Blade’s Chris Johnson posts a long list of 21 LGBT advances a President Romney could — with the stroke of a pen or incrementally — make disappear into a more progressive history.

Asking, “Would President Romney undo pro-LGBT advances?,” Johnson notes:

Many of the pro-LGBT advances that have happened under the Obama administration occurred through changes made by the executive branch rather than through legislation. Changes that were made without the consent of Congress could be reversed under an administration that wanted to cozy up to the religious right.

The Washington Blade has identified five regulatory changes and 16 sub-regulatory changes enacted by the Obama administration that could be reversed if Romney were elected to the White House. These changes include giving greater recognition to same-sex couples, protecting federal LGBT workers against discrimination and ensuring the federal government recognizes the correct gender of transgender people.

The one Johnson doesn’t include in his list of “five regulatory changes and 16 sub-regulatory changes” is the most-obvious: Obama’s support of same-sex marriage equality.

Here’s the list from the Blade:

Regulations

The Administrative Procedures Act provides safeguards against politically motivated policy switches. Thus repealing the policies below would involve a multi-year process.

  • The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) adopted a regulation ending the ban on HIV-positive visitors and immigrants.
  • President Obama issued Presidential Memorandum in April 2010 directing HHS to issue regulations requiring all hospitals receiving Medicaid and Medicare to prohibit discrimination in visitation against LGBT people. HHS issued a final regulation that went into effect in early 2011.
  • HUD issued final regulations in January 2012 prohibiting discrimination in federal public housing programs and federally insured mortgage loans.  HUD also requires its grantees to comply with LGBT-inclusive state and local housing discrimination protections.
  • The Office of Personnel Management published final regulations in the Federal Register expanding the eligibility for long-term care coverage to same-sex partners and sick leave to care for a same-sex partner.
  •  The federal Prison Rape Elimination Commission proposed national standards to reduce sexual abuse in correctional facilities, including standards regarding LGBT and intersex inmates. They were later instituted as a rule finalized by the Justice Department last month.

Sub-Regulatory Guidance/Policy Announcements

These are policy advances instituted by — and subject to the will of — the administration.

  • The Department of Health and Human Services revised its funding guidance around abstinence-only-until-marriage sex education programs, requiring that recipient programs are inclusive of and non-stigmatizing toward LGBT youth.
  • HHS, in partnership with the Department of Education and Department of Justice, launched stopbullyingnow.com.
  • The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency recently released new 2011 Performance Based National Detention Standards.  These new standards provide guidance that aims to improve treatment of LGBT and HIV-positive people in detention facilities.
  • In summer 2011, ICE published a memo and clarifying guidance providing that an individual’s family relationships, including a same-sex relationship, would be considered as a factor in labeling certain deportations as low-priority deportations.
  • The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol announced a proposed regulatory change expanding the meaning of “members of a family residing in one household” for the purposes of the customs declaration form, which must be completed prior to re-entry to the United States.
  • The DOJ issued an opinion clarifying that the criminal provisions of the Violence Against Women Act related to stalking and abuse apply equally to same-sex partners.
  • The State Department revised the standards for changing a gender marker on a passport, making the process less burdensome for transgender people.
  • In September 2011, the Social Security Administration confirmed that it ended the practice of allowing gender to be matched in its Social Security Number Verification System (SSNVS). This resulted in the immediate cessation of SSA sending notifications that alert employers when the gender marker on an employee’s W-2 does not match Social Security records.
  • The State Department extended numerous benefits to the partners of Foreign Service officers, including diplomatic passports and access to emergency evacuation.
  • The State Department reversed a Bush administration policy that refused to use a same-sex marriage license as evidence of a name change for passports.
  • The Department of Education issued guidance clarifying when student bullying may violate federal law, distributed a memo outlining key components of strong state anti-bullying laws and policies and made clear to public schools that gay-straight alliances have a right to form and meet.
  • The Department of Education published guidance and, in coordination with the Department of Justice, has pursued Title IX complaints filed by LGBT students experiencing harassment based on sex or sex stereotyping.
  • OPM added gender identity to the equal employment opportunity policy governing all federal jobs.
  • The Department of Labor issued guidance clarifying that an employee can take time off under the Family and Medical Leave Act to care for a same-sex partner’s child.
  • The IRS clarified that domestic partners (and their children) can be designated beneficiaries for VEBA funding/payment purposes.
  • The Census Bureau overturned the Bush administration’s interpretation of the Defense of Marriage Act and agreed to release data on married same-sex couples along with other demographic information from the 2010 Census.

SOURCE: HRC

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News

Trump ‘Let Americans Die’ By Secretly Handing COVID Testing Machines to Putin: US Senator

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October 9, 2024

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A leading Democratic U.S. Senator is calling Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s alleged handing over of COVID testing machines to Russian President Vladimir Putin during the height of the pandemic, “damning” and “disqualifying.”

“So, news just broke that Donald Trump, when he was president, at the beginning of the pandemic—when we didn’t have enough supplies to keep people alive here in the United States—sent critical in-demand testing equipment to Vladimir Putin,” explained U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT). “Donald Trump chose to keep Vladimir Putin alive and let Americans die.”

“That revelation alone should disqualify Donald Trump from being President of the United States,” said Sen. Murphy, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“Donald Trump helped Putin and hurt us at a moment where we didn’t have enough testing equipment to go around in this country, at a moment where our lack of testing equipment was resulting in Americans unnecessarily dying and even worse, he hid the fact that he gave Putin the testing equipment from the American public,” Murphy added.

READ MORE: Trump’s Upcoming Madison Square Garden MAGA Rally Sparks Comparisons to 1939 Nazi Event

Senator Murphy was responding to news this week from Watergate journalist Bob Woodward’s latest book, “War,” that reveals Trump handed the vital testing machines—not boxed tests but “point-of-care” fast-testing devices, to Putin, an alleged war criminal who is conducting an illegal war in Ukraine.

“Donald Trump should not be President of the United States,” Sen. Murphy continued. “Nobody should be president of the United states who puts the health of a brutal dictator, an enemy of the United States, ahead of the health and well being of Americans, not during the pandemic, not ever.”

The Kremlin confirmed Trump gave Putin the testing machines, Politico reported, adding that “Woodward writes in his book that when Trump was still president in 2020, he ‘secretly sent Putin a bunch of Abbott Point of Care Covid test machines for his personal use’ during a time period when Covid tests were scarce.”

“This is a moment when COVID is running wild, not just in the United States, in the world,” Woodward told “CBS Sunday Morning” in an interview, the news network reported Wednesday. “He gives Abbott [the manufacturer] point-of-care testing kits to Putin. I mean, these are precious assets to anyone in the world, in the country, and he gives it to him for his personal use.”

Since the start of the COVID pandemic, 1.2 million Americans have died from the disease.

In February of 2021, still the height of the pandemic, The Guardian reported the U.S. “could have averted 40% of Covid deaths, says panel examining Trump’s policies.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: Top GOP Strategist Names Three Key Issues That Will Get Republicans to Vote for Harris

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Trump’s Upcoming Madison Square Garden MAGA Rally Sparks Comparisons to 1939 Nazi Event

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11 hours ago

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October 9, 2024

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Twenty years ago, Republicans gathered at midtown Manhattan’s iconic Madison Square Garden for their national convention. But in 1939, the precursor to the renowned New York City venue hosted a different, and infamous event. With a name similar to Donald Trump’s “America First” MAGA rallies, it was called the “Pro-American Rally”—yet the party behind it was anything but.

The German American Federation, or German American Bund, was essentially the American Nazi Party. Its leader, Fritz Julius Kuhn, reportedly “was to become seen simply as an incompetent swindler and liar who spoke poor English.” He would later be exposed as a foreign agent, and, according to the FBI, “denaturalized in 1943 due to his pro-Nazi allegiances and deported to Germany in 1945.”

Slated for October 27, just nine days before Election Day, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign rally at Madison Square Garden “will kickoff an ‘arena tour’ for the former president who plans to visit battleground states in the final push before the Nov. 5 election,” NBC News reports.

Back in April, Trump “teased” out the event.

READ MORE: Top GOP Strategist Names Three Key Issues That Will Get Republicans to Vote for Harris

“We’re going to be doing a rally at Madison Square Garden, we believe,” the ex-president said. “We think we’re signing Madison Square Garden to do. We’re going to have a big rally honoring the police, and honoring the firemen, and everybody. Honoring a lot of people, including teachers by the way.”

In 2019, NPR reported on the February 20, 1939 Nazi rally.

“The organizers had chosen the date in celebration of George Washington’s birthday and had procured a 30-foot-tall banner of America’s first president for the stage. More than 20,000 men and women streamed inside and took their seats. The view they had was stunning: Washington was hung between American flags — and swastikas.”

” In the 1930s, the Bund was one of several organizations in the United States that were openly supportive of Adolf Hitler and the rise of fascism in Europe. They had parades, bookstores and summer camps for youth. Their vision for America was a cocktail of white supremacy, fascist ideology and American patriotism.”

“Attendees wore Nazi armbands, waved American flags and held aloft posters with slogans like “Stop Jewish Domination of Christian America,'” NPR reported, describing the mood inside the rally as “jubilant.”

“The speeches were explicitly anti-Semitic, and tirades against ‘job-taking Jewish refugees’ were met with thunderous applause.”

Award-winning journalist and co-founder of Spy magazine, Kurt Andersen, noted: “History doesn’t repeat but it rhymes.” Award-winning historian Michael Beschloss posted a photo from that 1939 rally.

“Historian here,” remarked Professor Manisha Sinha, President of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, “not the first time that Madison Square Garden has hosted a Nazi rally. Businessmen trying to overthrow a democratically elected government? History doesn’t repeat but it sure rhymes!” she also said.

READ MORE: What We Know About FBI’s ‘Sham’ Kavanaugh Investigation and How Trump WH Blocked the Probe

“Let’s be clear,” warns Democratic New York State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, whose district includes Madison Square Garden. “Allowing Trump to hold an event at MSG is equivalent to the infamous Nazis rally at Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939.”

He’s calling on the owners of The Garden to cancel the event.

“This is a disastrous decision by Madison Square Garden that will endanger the public safety of New Yorkers and has the potential to incite widespread violence. For the good of NYC and its residents, I demand @TheGarden keep our city safe by cancelling the Trump rally.”

The company that owns Madison Square Garden is owned by billionaire Trump donor Charles Dolan, who founded HBO.

Outrage online in response to the news of Trump’s planned Madison Square Garden rally has been palpable.

 

In 2020, PBS aired,” A Night at the Garden,” about the 1939 American Nazi rally.

Watch the video and see the social media posts above or at this link.

READ MORE: Chief Justice ‘Shaken’ by Public Reaction to Him Handing Trump Near-Total Immunity

 

Image via Shutterstock

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Top GOP Strategist Names Three Key Issues That Will Get Republicans to Vote for Harris

Published

14 hours ago

on

October 9, 2024

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Mike Madrid, a top Latino GOP strategist, says there are three key issues the Harris-Walz campaign must focus on to win over Republicans, these “three messages are far more important than the messengers,” and if they do so they will “win the race.”

Madrid, a Lincoln Project co-founder, is a veteran political consultant and one of the country’s authoritative experts on Latino voters. He is also the author of, “The Latino Century: How America’s Largest Minority Is Transforming Democracy.”

In an interview with The Independent, Madrid warned, “the Latino vote looks like it’s going to keep getting stronger” for Trump.

“Madrid,” The Independent reports, “attributed the growing strength for Trump among Latinos to years of inept Democratic messaging that assumed immigration — ensuring a compassionate attitude towards migrants from South and Central America — was a priority for voters who had roots in that part of the world.”

READ MORE: What We Know About FBI’s ‘Sham’ Kavanaugh Investigation and How Trump WH Blocked the Probe

“We’ve never been interested in immigration. It’s just this political and media narrative that the Democrats have been driving,” he said.

And he warns the Harris campaign is in “deep, deep trouble” in both Arizona and Nevada. The current FiveThirtyEight polling average puts Harris up by one point in Nevada and Trump up by one point in Arizona. Nationally, Harris is up just 2.6 percentage points over Trump.

“Demographically, the shift of North Carolina has made it far more important than Arizona,” he says, “so that if Harris wins North Carolina and Pennsylvania, there’s virtually no roadmap for Trump.”

Madrid believes Harris must focus on suburban women and college-educated voters.

“It’s gonna be the largest gender gap in the history of the country, and it’s correlated into the diploma divide,” he says. “What’s keeping her competitive is she is increasing the margins with college-educated women, and that includes Hispanic women, white women, African American women — all women with degrees are opening up this gap.”

He also warns Democrats to stop focusing so much on Republican “turncoats,” like Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and Alyssa Farah Griffin, to promote their message.

Madrid says Republicans don’t need someone telling them it’s OK to vote for Harris.

READ MORE: Chief Justice ‘Shaken’ by Public Reaction to Him Handing Trump Near-Total Immunity

“You do not need a permission structure to defend your body or your country,” he says on social media. “I’m deeply honored & grateful for those Republicans who have the courage to step forward against Trump. Everything helps at this moment. But let’s be clear – we’re way past a ‘permission structure’.”

“We’re not selling toothpaste folks,” he continues. “The threat to our country and our rights is existential and that’s why 17-20% of Republicans were peeling off Trump – before Nikki Haley, before Liz Cheney, before the convention. Republican defections will win this race for Harris but…We should not put politicians, personalities or pundits in front of the issues proven to move Republican voters. That’s called stepping on your message. Lead with what has proven to work. Lead with the three things that jarred GOP voters out of their haze.”

“There are three issues proven to move Republican voters past ‘The Bannon Line’ from 2020,” Madrid writes. They are, the January 6 insurrection, Trump’s “Big Lie” about voter fraud and a “rigged” election, and the Supreme Court overturning the constitutional right to abortion:

“January 6
The Big Lie
Dobbs

Focus on these three issues and you win the race. Harris can pass the Bannon line and get a record number of Republican votes.”

READ MORE: ‘They Are Partners’: Experts Warn on Trump and Putin After Bombshell Woodward Revelations

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