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McCain Wants To Charge America Another $4.4 Million To ‘Study’ DADT

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I remember an old joke, popular when I was a child: A driver is sitting at a traffic light. The light changes several times and after a few minutes, a police officer says to the driver, “What’s the matter? Don’t we have any colors you like?”

This is the exact same thing we’re doing by humoring Senator John McCain. After twenty-two studies on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the military spent another $4.4 million dollars this year to “study” “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” yet again. This time, it was to study how to best repeal the unconstitutional law.

But Sunday, Senator McCain, the leading opponent of repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” said on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” “we need a thorough and complete study of the effects – not how to implement a repeal, but the effects on morale and battle effectiveness.”

CBS reports, “McCain said he thinks the report should be subject to further scrutiny, however, and that the Senate should not lift the ban on allowing gays to serve openly in the military during Congress’s lame duck session, which kicked off this week.

“Once we get this study, we need to have hearings. And we need to examine it. And we need to look at whether it’s the kind of study that we wanted,” he said.”

Adam Serwer gets it right.

“Good news for McCain: A study of that kind was already conducted in 1993 by the Rand Corporation. That study, which looked at the effect of allowing gays and lesbians to work as police, firefighters, and serve as soldiers in foreign militaries, found that there was no danger in allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly. The reason was that while gay and lesbian servicemembers serving openly might undermine “social cohesion,” it wouldn’t undermine “task cohesion,” which is the only factor that impacts military effectiveness. In spite of the evidence, the politics and prevailing cultural prejudices of the time resulted in the “compromise” policy of allowing gays and lesbians to serve as long as they conceal their orientation. The truth is that we’ve known that this kind of social diversity doesn’t hurt the military since the government studied integrated units during the Korean War in the 1950s. When it comes to foxholes, bigotry is less common than atheism.

“For McCain and the GOP, this isn’t about principle, it isn’t about empiricism, and given the way that DADT actively harms military effectiveness, it most definitely is not about national security. It’s about ideology.”

So, Senator McCain, despite the fact that a preliminary release of the report shows that fully seventy percent of American servicemembers either don’t care if their foxhole mate is gay or straight, you want the American people to pay millions of dollars more to study something that fully seventy-eight percent of Americans don’t have an issue with in the first place?

Talk about a bridge to nowhere.


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News

NYC Officials to Defy Trump Admin Over Pride Flag Removal From Stonewall National Monument

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7 hours ago

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February 10, 2026

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New York City officials plan to defy the Trump administration after the National Park Service removed the iconic LGBTQ pride flag from the historic Stonewall National Monument, following guidance from the Trump administration. Many consider the Greenwich Village landmark to be the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ civil rights movement, and the backlash to the removal was swift.

Some officials vowed earlier to re-raise the flag on federal property. Those who do so are “setting up a potential fight with the White House,” according to Politico.

Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal told Politico that he and other NYC-area officials will re-raise the flag on Thursday.

“I think it’s important that we speak out and stand up for the community, frankly, just as our forebearers, who exhibited much more courage back in 1969,” Hoylman-Sigal said.

READ MORE: White House Shuts Down Briefing After Declaring Lutnick ‘Very Important’ to Trump’s Team

“This is not a moment for our community to stand by idly as attempts to undermine our history are put forward by Trump and the federal administration,” he added, calling it “another outrage by the Trump administration directed at the LGBTQ community, whether it’s transgender youth or immigrants or queer people in general.”

It’s unknown which other officials plan to be present on Thursday.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul told The Recount, “I believe in peaceful resistance, because we’re not going to be subjugated to someone who thinks he’s a king — and you cannot diminish or undermine an important community to all of us.”

“I’ll do whatever I can,” she added, “if I have to go out there and put my own flag right back up.”

New York City Mayor Kwame Mamdani wrote, “I am outraged by the removal of the Rainbow Pride Flag from Stonewall National Monument. New York is the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, and no act of erasure will ever change, or silence, that history. Our city has a duty not just to honor this legacy, but to live up to it. I will always fight for a New York City that invests in our LGBTQ+ community, defends their dignity, and protects every one of our neighbors—without exception.”

Human Rights Campaign national press secretary Brandon Wolf told CBS News, “Bad news for the Trump administration: these colors don’t run.”

READ MORE: Carville Predicts Trump Will Get a Complete and Total ‘Whipping’

“The Stonewall Inn & Visitors Centers are still privately owned, their flags are still flying high, and that community is still just as queer today as it was yesterday. While their policy agenda throws the country into chaos, the Trump administration is obsessed with trying to suffocate the joy and pride that Americans have for their communities,” Wolf said.

“For over a year, they’ve been on a witch hunt, targeting rainbow crosswalks, pride flags, Black Lives Matter murals, and throwing a tantrum about a Super Bowl performance they couldn’t control. But they will fail. We will keep showing up at Stonewall, for each other, and being out and proud. There’s nothing the White House can do about that,” he added.

READ MORE: Fascism Expert Warns Trump Could Invoke Emergency Powers to Cancel the Election

 

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White House Shuts Down Briefing After Declaring Lutnick ‘Very Important’ to Trump’s Team

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9 hours ago

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February 10, 2026

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After Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick told senators on Capitol Hill that he took his family for lunch to the private island owned by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2012, the White House insisted that he remains an important part of the administration. There is bipartisan support for Lutnick to resign from the administration.

A reporter, mentioning Lutnick’s congressional testimony, reminded Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt that the family lunch occurred “after he said that he had cut ties with Epstein,” and that a DOJ document “showed that he was in contact with Epstein through 2018 over messages.”

Leavitt replied, “Secretary Lutnick remains a very important member of President Trump’s team, and the President fully supports the Secretary.”

Epstein was first convicted in 2008.

READ MORE: ‘Bullies’: Backlash as Trump Admin Pulls Pride Flag From Stonewall National Monument

Leavitt then chastised reporters for not asking questions about the White House’s recent “wins” — and then cut the press briefing short after about 20 minutes.

As The Independent reported, “rather than face follow-up questions about Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s relationship with deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein after documents released by the Justice Department — and Lutnick’s own sworn testimony to Congress — revealed how he lied about the extent of his ties to the late pedophile,” Leavitt “abruptly cut short a briefing with reporters.”

READ MORE: Carville Predicts Trump Will Get a Complete and Total ‘Whipping’

 

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‘Bullies’: Backlash as Trump Admin Pulls Pride Flag From Stonewall National Monument

Published

11 hours ago

on

February 10, 2026

By

The Trump administration has removed the LGBTQ pride flag from New York City’s historic Stonewall National Monument, which many consider to be the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ civil rights movement. In 2016, the Stonewall National Monument became the first LGBTQ site to receive a national monument designation.

The move came in response to the Trump administration’s guidance on which flags may be displayed on federal properties.

“The removal comes amid a broader federal effort to scrub LGBTQ+ history from government sites and single out transgender people, raising fears among LGBTQ+ advocates that their community faces erasure from public life,” Axios reported.

According to Gay City News, which first reported the removal, the flag was raised “at Christopher Park in 2022 — back when the Biden administration allowed the flag to go up.”

READ MORE: Carville Predicts Trump Will Get a Complete and Total ‘Whipping’

“Under government-wide guidance,” a spokesperson for the National Park Service told Gay City News, “including General Services Administration policy and Department of the Interior direction, only the US flag and other congressionally or departmentally authorized flags are flown on NPS-managed flagpoles, with limited exceptions.”

“Any changes to flag displays are made to ensure consistency with that guidance. Stonewall National Monument continues to preserve and interpret the site’s historic significance through exhibits and programs.”

Axios noted that a “January memo includes narrow exemptions for non-agency flags, such as those that ‘provide historical context’ or ‘are part of historic reenactments.'”

Vowing to raise the pride flag again, Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal said, “We have confirmed that a January 21st federal order has resulted in the removal last weekend of the Pride flag at Stonewall, birthplace of the modern LGBTQ human rights movement. They cannot erase our history.”

New York State Senator Eric Bottcher wrote, “Ordering the removal of Gilbert Baker’s Pride flag from the Stonewall National Monument is a shameful attempt to rewrite history. Stonewall is where our community fought back and demanded to be seen. You cannot separate that place from the symbol that grew out of it.”

READ MORE: Trump Pushes Claim Schiff and Swalwell OK’d Leaks to ‘Overthrow’ the Government

Calling Stonewall “sacred ground,” New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin declared the flag’s removal “a deliberate and cowardly attempt to erase … history.”

“This is an attack on LGBTQ+ New Yorkers,” she added, “and we will not stand for it. Our history will not be rewritten, and our rights will not be rolled back.”

California State Senator Scott Wiener commented, “Petty & mean are the point. Like removing the rainbow crosswalk at Pulse & removing Harvey Milk’s name from the navy ship. What these bullies forget is LGBTQ people have been bullied forever & we learned how to fight back. We fought back hard at Stonewall & we’ll do it again.”

U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) called the flag’s removal “another disgusting example of the Trump Administration’s effort to erase the LGBTQ+ community. Removing the Pride flag will not make us forget the legacy of Stonewall. I fought for Stonewall to become designated as a National Monument and I will fight to see that the Pride flag is raised again.”

READ MORE: ‘Lied About His Ties’: Fury After ‘Fraud’ Lutnick Says He Took Family to Epstein Island

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