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First Thoughts from a North Carolina Couple on a Big Day at the Supreme Court

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“We will win full marriage equality.  We are convinced of that.” Entrepreneurs and LGBT Activists Bob Page and his partner Dale Frederiksen offer their thoughts on this historic day. 

First Thoughts from a North Carolina Couple on a Big Day at the Supreme Court

By Bob Page & Dale Frederiksen

With today’s Supreme Court rulings on the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s ban on same-sex marriages in that state, we didn’t win the Powerball.  We’d hoped for the really big win — a ruling proclaiming the Constitutional right of same-sex couples like us to marry — even though we didn’t expect it.  But that doesn’t mean that we aren’t thrilled.  It’s a great day, a historic day, and we are excited – excited for the couples in California who soon will be marrying and, long-term, for all the ways the DOMA decision will change how same-sex couples are viewed and treated across America.  Although today we have many unanswered practical questions, we believe that the Supreme Court’s decision – requiring the federal government to recognize state-sanctioned same-sex marriages – deals a body blow to marriage inequality in the United States.  We are significantly further along the way in claiming our right to marry and to have our marriage be recognized, regardless of which state we live or marry in.

Ryan, one of our almost 14-year old twin sons, asked last night, “Did they rule yet on same-sex marriage?”  At the heart of all this legal wrangling is something very meaningful to those of us living in families with two dads or two moms.  It’s political and legal, yes, but it’s so personal, too.  Justice Kennedy’s words, which moved us ten years ago today when Lawrence v. Texas was decided, move us again today in the Windsor case.  While Justice Kennedy’s opinion was heavy on concepts like “federalism,” it also spoke powerfully about “pride” and “dignity” and our “evolving understanding of the meaning of equality.”  As Justice Kennedy said, “Responsibilities, as well as rights, enhance the dignity and integrity of the person.”  That gets close to what all of this is about for us and for our families—claiming our dignity and our equal status in the human family.  As Justice Kennedy said of DOMA, “[i]t humiliates tens of thousands of children now being raised by same-sex couples.”  A law doing such a thing should never have passed, and we’re overjoyed that a section of a law hurting so many of us is forever wiped away.

Wonderful as it is to have Section 3 of DOMA dead and gone, much remains to be done.  Things were complicated before, and things remain complicated.  Lawyers everywhere still have lots to do to hash out what all this will mean for people like us and the thousands and thousands of couples who live in one of the thirty-one states banning same-sex marriage. This gets back to today’s one bittersweet note:  the Supreme Court could have ended the whole marriage controversy at ten o’clock this morning.  It didn’t, and on we fight.  The costs, financial and human, are high.  It saddens us to know that friends who wish to marry may not live to see that day in our state.  But the day of final victory for our community will come – every poll of public opinion tells us that, and so does today’s DOMA decision.  We will win full marriage equality.  We are convinced of that.

 

Bob Page 1 2010Replacements, Ltd. Chairman and CEO Bob Page grew up on a small tobacco farm in rural North Carolina before graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1967 with a BSBA. Page served two years in the U.S. Army prior to starting an accounting career. During the 1970s, Page hated his job as a state auditor and lived for his hobby of searching for china and crystal at flea markets for resale. Longing to make a living doing what he loved, in 1981 he started Replacements, Ltd. in the attic of his home and grew the business into the world’s largest retailer of old and new china, crystal, silver and collectibles with revenue exceeding $80 million for the 2012 fiscal year. Page lives in Greensboro, North Carolina with his partner Dale Frederiksen and their twin sons, Owen and Ryan.

daleDale Frederiksen grew up in Waterford, Michigan.  In 1980, Dale moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, to attend Tennessee Temple University, graduating in 1984 with a BS degree in secondary education.  He taught junior and senior high mathematics in Kansas City, Kansas, before returning to Chattanooga in 1987 to teach mathematics and to coach volleyball at Ooltewah Middle School.  In 1989, Dale joined Replacements, Ltd., which he serves as Senior Vice President & Chief Product Officer.  With his life partner of twenty-four years, Bob Page, Dale has co-authored 21 books on tableware.  When not actively parenting his twin sons, Owen & Ryan, Dale particularly enjoys service on the Board of Directors of the National Conference for Community & Justice of the Piedmont Triad, as well as softball, tennis, and travel.

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‘Not Legal’: Trump May Dissolve Dept. of Education in Days, Democrat Warns

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The U.S. Department of Education may be “dissolved” in the coming days, U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) reportedly has said, claiming that Elon Musk’s DOGE team currently is “actively dismantling” Department of Education programs.

Congresswoman Stansbury “said Elon Musk’s DOGE team is ‘actively dismantling’ federal Department of Education programs today,” HuffPost White House and congressional reporter Jennifer Bendery wrote Tuesday afternoon.

“They are in the building, on the 6th floor, canceling grants and contracts,” Stansbury said.

“Stansbury says her understanding is the Trump admin ‘has been running drills for the last couple of weeks, planning for this,'” Bendery reports. “She also said she expects that ‘the Department of Education is going to potentially be dissolved in the coming days.’ And yes, this is illegal.”

READ MORE: ‘Serious Injuries to Public Health’: Judge Scorches Trump Removal of Health Websites

“It’s not legal. They know it’s not legal. But they’re doing it anyway,” Stansbury told Bendery. “The only recourse we have right now is to … go the courts.”

The U.S Department of Education was created in 1979 by an act of Congress and would legally require another race of Congress for it to be shut down.

Musk, according to The New York Times, has announced cuts at the Department of Education of more than $900 million.

“Most, if not all, of the contract cuts hit the Institute of Education Sciences’s portfolio, including Education Innovation and Research grants and review projects associated with the What Works Clearinghouse, which produces and curates research on best practices in education, according to three people familiar with the department’s contracting. The people requested anonymity out of fear of reprisal because they were not authorized to discuss the cuts,” the Times noted.

“Less than two weeks after the release of new federal testing data showing reading achievement at historic lows, the cuts were likely to hit research intended to answer questions about some of the biggest problems in American education since the Covid-19 pandemic, such as absenteeism and student behavioral challenges.”

Should Trump go through with attempting to eliminate the Department of Education by means not including Congress, it would be up to the federal courts to stop him. But Trump and his vice president, JD Vance, along with a growing number of their allies, appear to have convinced a number of his MAGA base that judges should not have the ability to block any actions the president takes. Judges, however, can, and do.

Last week, MSNBC reported that “Elon Musk says Department of Education no longer ‘exists’.”

Democrats on Tuesday hit back.

READ MORE: General Slams Pentagon’s ‘Racist’ Decision to Drop Key Black Engineers Recruitment Event

“The chaos and the corruption at the White House continues unabated,” U.S. Rep. Pete Aguilar said Tuesday (video below). “Elon Musk has illegal access to sensitive personal information of every taxpayer in America. He’s setting his sights on cutting Social Security benefits for American seniors who have earned their benefits over a lifetime of work, just so Tesla can continue to pay zero dollars in federal taxes.”

“And now Donald Trump has directed him to launch a Republican war on students by dismantling the Department of Education,” the California Democratic congressman continued. “President Trump and Elon Musk want to cut public education for our children and our neighborhood schools to finance a five trillion dollar tax giveaway to billionaires and wealthy corporations. By eliminating the Department of Education, Republicans are sending a clear message that they don’t care about our children reaching their full potential.”

“The American people did not vote for their neighborhood schools to be closed or class sizes to be larger. They did not vote to cut special education. The Republican war on students won’t lower the cost of eggs or groceries, but it will raise property taxes as the costs of Trump’s education cuts will be forced onto parents and homeowners,” Aguilar said.

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: The 27 Words the NSA Is Scrubbing From Its Websites: Report

 

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‘Serious Injuries to Public Health’: Judge Scorches Trump Removal of Health Websites

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A federal judge has directed harsh criticism at the Trump administration for removing countless public health web pages and websites, ordering them restored by midnight, and suggesting their deletion may have risked violating federal law.

U.S. District Judge John Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, “ordered federal health agencies Tuesday to restore pages they removed from their websites last month to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order on ‘gender ideology and extremism,’ saying the decision to pull them down could be detrimental to public health,” Politico reported. The order extends to the CDC, HHS, and the FDA.

“In his opinion,” Politico added, “Bates said the agencies’ decisions to take down certain webpages ‘likely’ constitute an ‘order’ that’s reviewable under federal administrative law.”

The Trump administration’s claims that the removal was necessary to review their contents and amounted to mere “maintenance” were not arguments the judge appeared willing to accept. Judge Bates instead denounced the “widespread disruption that defendants’ abrupt removal of these critical healthcare materials has caused.”

READ MORE: General Slams Pentagon’s ‘Racist’ Decision to Drop Key Black Engineers Recruitment Event

Bates blasted the Trump administration, writing, “it bears emphasizing who ultimately bears the harm of defendants’ actions: everyday Americans, and most acutely, underprivileged Americans, seeking healthcare. These individuals rely on the care of doctors… If those doctors cannot provide these individuals the care they need (and deserve) within the scheduled and often limited time frame, there is a chance that some individuals will not receive treatment, including for severe, life-threatening conditions. The public thus has a strong interest in avoiding these serious injuries to the public health.”

In his opinion granting Doctors for America a temporary stay, Bates offered several examples of “irreparable harm” the government’s actions have already caused.

Doctors for America “has shown its members are already suffering such harm. To start, [one doctor] serves the students of ‘one of the most underserved high schools in Chicago.'”

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“In this work, she ‘regularly’ relies on CDC’s resources on sexually transmitted diseases (‘STDs’)… The harm she has suffered since CDC removed those pages is neither hypothetical nor far off. The high school ‘recently had an outbreak of Chlamydia,’ and now that she is ‘[w]ithout t[he] crucial CDC resources,’ she is ‘not able to do [her] job to help address this urgent situation.'”

Bates also cited a statement from a leading physicians’ group, and wrote that “the lost materials are more than ‘academic references—they are vital for real-time clinical decision-making in hospitals, clinics and emergency departments across the country.'”

“Without them, health care providers and researchers are left ‘without up-to-date recommendations on managing infectious diseases, public health threats, essential preventive care and chronic conditions.'”

Politico reports Doctors for America had sued “the Office of Personnel Management, the CDC, the FDA and HHS last week, claiming the missing information ‘deprives’ doctors and researchers of ready access to data that’s critical to treating patients and addressing public health emergencies.”

READ MORE: ‘Stomach Turning’: Trump Defends His J6 Pardons as ‘Great for Humanity’

 

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General Slams Pentagon’s ‘Racist’ Decision to Drop Key Black Engineers Recruitment Event

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In 1976, during America’s bicentennial, President Gerald Ford became the first president to recognize February as Black History Month. Ten years later, after a joint resolution of Congress decreed it, President Ronald Reagan signed a proclamation observing the event. Every president since Reagan has issued proclamations observing Black History Month.

President Trump’s Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, has scrapped recognition of all “identity” events, including Black History Month, Pride Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, Women’s History Month, and National Disability Employment Awareness Month — declaring them all “Dead,” via a memo, according to USA Today.

“Our unity and purpose are instrumental to meeting the Department’s warfighting mission,” Hegseth’s memo, titled, “Identity Months Dead at DoD,” reads. “Efforts to divide the force – to put one group ahead of another – erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution.”

Standing on a stage last week at a Pentagon town hall (video below), Secretary Hegseth elaborated.

“I think the single dumbest phrase in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength.’ I think our strength is our unity. Our strength is our shared purpose. Regardless of our background, regardless of how we grew up, regardless of our gender, regardless of our race, in this department, we will treat everyone equally. We will treat everyone with fairness. We will treat everyone with respect, and we will judge you as an individual by your merit and by your commitment to the team and the mission. That’s how it has been. That’s how it will be.”

READ MORE: The 27 Words the NSA Is Scrubbing From Its Websites: Report

Last week, Reuters noted that “Hegseth has criticized diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the military, and, in his latest book, asked whether the top U.S. general has the job because he is Black. Reuters has previously reported about the possibility of mass firing among top brass, something Hegseth repeatedly refused to rule out during his confirmation process.”

Journalist Errol Louis, who has degrees from Harvard, Yale, and Brooklyn Law, last week commented on Hegseth’s remarks: “In 5 years, most recruitable adults will be people of color. The military’s current recruitment crisis is likely to worsen under Hegseth.”

On Monday, Military.com reported that at least four of the five Military service branches — Army, Navy, Air Force, and Space Force — have pulled out of a top recruiting opportunity, “a prestigious Black engineering event,” and by doing so they are “turning down access to a key pool of highly qualified potential applicants amid President Donald Trump’s purge of diversity initiatives in the military.”

“Until this week, Army Recruiting Command had a long-standing public partnership with the Black Engineer of the Year Awards, or BEYA, an annual conference that draws students, academics and professionals in science, technology, engineering and math, also known as STEM,” Military.com reported. “The event, which takes place in Baltimore, has historically been a key venue for the Pentagon to recruit talent, including awarding Reserve Officers’ Training Corps scholarships and pitching military service to rising engineers. Past BEYA events have included the Army chief of staff and the defense secretary.”

Three years ago, DOD News, part of the U.S. Department of Defense, reported, “The Defense Department is likely the largest employer of engineers in the United States, and the department will need even more to continue to protect the nation, said Barbara McQuiston, who now performs the duties of the deputy undersecretary of defense for research and engineering.”

“The DOD has over 100,000 engineers, and they are incredibly important to us,” McQuiston also said, DOD News added. “You can imagine the range of capabilities and personnel that we have working on the hardest problems — from civil engineers and software engineers to material engineers and chemical engineers — just a whole range of engineers looking at some of the toughest problems for DOD. We couldn’t function without them. They touch everything that we do.”

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It appears some Army recruiters and officers are not pleased with the decision to pull out of the Black Engineer of the Year Awards conference.

“This is one of the most talent-dense events we do,” an unnamed Army recruiter told Military.com. “Our footprint there has always been significant. We need the talent.”

“It’s f—ing racist,” an unnamed active-duty Army general told Military.com. “For the Army now, it’s ‘Blacks need not apply’ and it breaks my heart.”

But the Pentagon’s involvement in some other recruiting events has not been scrapped.

“Last week, the same Army recruiting unit that would have attended BEYA instead participated in a National Rifle Association-sponsored event in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a predominantly white gathering that recruiters acknowledge is less likely to yield high-quality applicants,” Military.com noted.

Military.com spoke with five recruiters who “saw the move as a significant and problematic escalation in the Pentagon’s rejection of diversity initiatives, which have been widely interpreted as programs that recognize women and troops with minority backgrounds, as well as gay and lesbian troops.”

On Monday, Secretary Hegseth announced a “pause” for all medical treatments of transgender service members, and a pause on accepting any new transgender service members into the U.S. Military. During his first term, Trump tried to throw out every transgender service member, but his efforts were stymied in the courts.

Also on Monday, President Trump continued his efforts to entirely reshape the culture of America’s Armed Forces, starting at the very beginning of the pipeline.

“Our Service Academies have been infiltrated by Woke Leftist Ideologues over the last four years. I have ordered the immediate dismissal of the Board of Visitors for the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Coast Guard,” the Commander-in-Chief announced Monday afternoon. The Boards ensure accountability and civilian oversight at institutions like West Point. “We will have the strongest Military in History, and that begins by appointing new individuals to these Boards. We must make the Military Academies GREAT AGAIN!”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘People Are Really Angry’: Fury Over Musk and DOGE Triggers Spike in Calls to Congress

 

 

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