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University of Texas Opens Inquiry of Regnerus Study; NCRM Reporting Plays Central Role

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The New Civil Rights Movement writer Scott Rose’s recent series of investigative reporting articles  about the Mark Regnerus study of “gay findings” at University of Texas has played a central role in the university’s decision to conduct a scientific misconduct inquiry  

Between January, 2011 and June of 2012, Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas, Austin, plotted, carried out and then had published a “study” of dubious scholarly merit, alleged to show, but not actually showing, that homosexual parents are dangerous to children.

Funding for the Regnerus study was arranged through the National Organization For Marriage‘s Robert P.George along with George’s anti-gay-rights colleagues at The Witherspoon Institute and the Bradley Foundation. George is an author of the anti-gay NOM pledge signed by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

NCRM Writer Invited to be Interviewed

This reporter mailed a Scientific Misconduct complaint about Regnerus to University of Texas President William Powers, Jr. on June 21.  On June 25, UTA Research Integrity Officer Dr. Robert Peterson told me in an e-mail that he will be conducting an inquiry as per university policy.

Dr. Peterson invited this reporter to Austin to be interviewed by the Inquiry Panel, or alternately to participate in a teleconference with the panel. As of this writing, this reporter’s interview with the panel is scheduled to take place between July 6 and July 11.  Nonetheless, at this time it is not clear that Dr. Peterson has committed to a full and thorough investigation.

More Evidence Should be Considered by University of Texas

There now is far more evidence for the Inquiry Panel to consider.  This reporter provides the following additional evidence: 

A thorough “Scientific Misconduct” investigation of Regnerus would include examinations of whether 1) Regnerus’s study, taken as is, lacks scientific integrity; and whether 2) Regnerus has engaged in any improper relationships with his funders and/or others in connection with the study.

Even on some basic points, informational clarity is lacking.  For example, Regnerus writes in his study: “The New Family Structures Study (NFSS) was supported in part by grants from the Witherspoon Institute and the Bradley Foundation.” That sentence is unambiguously worded to mean that the study got funding from sources in addition to the Witherspoon Institute and the Bradley Foundation. Yet, according to David Ochsner, Director of Public Affairs at University of Texas, Austin, Regnerus is now alleging that Witherspoon and Bradley were his study’s sole funders.

However that may be, Dr. Peterson thus far, disappointingly, has declined my request that he obtain, and provide copies to this reporter, and other members of the public: 1) all written and/or typed communications; 2) all notes taken about telephone and all other communications, between; 3) Regnerus and his study funders, the Witherspoon Institute and the Bradley Foundation, and between Regnerus and anybody else, involving his study, between 3) the initial contact about such a study, between Regnerus and The Witherspoon Institute and/or anybody associated with Witherspoon, and the time that Witherspoon gave Regnerus a $35,000 “planning grant” through to 4) Witherspoon’s and Bradley’s approval of the study plan and resulting full funding of the study; and between aforementioned parties through to 5) the present day.

Additionally, I have requested Dr. Peterson to provide this reporter with copies of; and 6) a full accounting of study fund disbursements, including; 7) a verifiable record of how much Regnerus was paid in association with the study.

That documentation is necessary for the actualization of a full and true investigation. As UTA’s investigation protocol says; “The purpose of the investigation is to: explore in detail the allegations; examine the evidence in depth; and, determine specifically whether misconduct has been committed, by whom, and to what extent. The investigation also will determine whether there are additional instances of possible misconduct that would justify broadening the scope beyond the initial allegations.”

The UTA Investigation protocol goes on to say: “The Research Integrity Officer immediately will sequester any additional pertinent research records that were not sequestered previously. The sequestration should occur before or at the time the respondent is notified that an investigation has begun.”

Additional Allegations

The very name of the Regnerus’s project, “The New Family Structures Study,” is deceptive — and is an anti-gay bigot dog whistle — in ways characteristic of Regnerus’s funder NOM’s Robert George of the Witherspoon Institute and the Bradley Foundation.

Because of that, and for reasons elaborated below, this reporter insists that for its Scientific Misconduct inquiry of Regnerus, the University of Texas, Austin must examine in its investigation, and provide, copies of all written communications, and notes, such as of phone conversations, and all other documentation of the relationship between Mark Regnerus and The Witherspoon Institute from the time those two parties first considered a study about children of gay parents, to include the time that Witherspoon gave Regnerus a $35,000 “planning grant” and subsequent to when the plan had been formulated and Witherspoon approved Regnerus for his full study funding.

As happens, not a single one of the family structures considered in the Regnerus “New Family Structures Study” is actually “new.”

Regnerus says he surveyed people aged 18 – 39, and raised by:

a) married biological heterosexual parents – which is not a “new” family structure;
b) adoptive parents – again, not a “new” family structure;
c) divorced heterosexual parents – not a “new” family structure;
d) stepparents – not a “new” family structure.

Moreover, it is not “new” for gay adults to raise children. Major league baseball pitcher Joe Valentine, born in 1979, was raised from birth by two lesbian mothers. Very important to note in the context of the Regnerus matter: We only know about Joe Valentine’s lesbian mothers raising him because he went on to become famous. In the general population, there are many family groupings like that of Joe Valentine’s, suitable to the study that Regnerus alleges he intended to carry out, yet failed to carry out in reality with anything even remotely resembling scientific rigor. When baseball scout Warren Hughes signed Joe Valentine for the White Sox, by the way, he shook both lesbian parents’ hands after they agreed to an $80,000 bonus.

Dorothy Dandridge, born in 1922, and the first African-American actress nominated for an Academy Award, was raised by two lesbian mothers. Actress Jodie Foster, born in 1962, was raised by two lesbian mothers.

There numerous additional existing examples of people raised entirely by a gay or lesbian couple, for a number of decades through the 1990s, especially including non-famous persons raised by such couples.

Regnerus’ Survey Methodology is not Current

Regnerus’s claim that the probability-based web panel that he used is the best of all existing sampling methods for surveying gay fathers and lesbian mothers is false, totally and utterly false. For his sampling, Regnerus relied on the company Knowledge Networks to find his survey respondents through Knowledge Networks’ existing panelist system, which is based on a combination of random digit dialing sampling and address-based sampling.

The sampling method superior to that combined one, is commonly referred to as “address-based sampling,” unadulterated by any random digit dialing sampling application. By the way, as turns out, Knowledge Networks, Regnerus’s survey management company, will carry out pure address-based sampling, given enough resources in time and money.

The precise reason that old-fashioned random digit dialing (RDD) sampling is now inferior is especially relevant to this scientific misconduct complaint against Regnerus.

Here is the precise reason: RDD sampling does not include households without landline phones. In 2010, the Centers for Disease Control conducted a study of households that cannot be reached through RDD. The percentage of unreachable households is highest for the age demographics that Regnerus alleges he studied.

Forty percent of persons ages 18- 24; and 51 percent of persons ages 25 – 29; and 40 percent of those ages 30 – 34 cannot be reached through RDD.

That is the main reason why Regnerus’s survey data barely included a handful of young adult children of actual gay parents, and yet a hodge-podge of others whom Regnerus fraudulently shoehorned, for his convenience, and against sound scientific practice,  into the “lesbian mother” and “gay father” categories.

It is therefore of vital importance to fully investigate the allegations brought to the scientific misconduct complaint against Regnerus that the UTA Inquiry Panel thoroughly examine a) what Address-Based Sampling is; b) why it is superior to the sampling method Regnerus used, and; c) the fact that Regnerus is being disingenuous and duplicitous when he alleges that finding actual young adult offspring of gay parents would have been too difficult, and that he therefore had to settle for a sampling hodge-podge of people not actually raised by gay parents, to uncover and measure harms allegedly done to children by gay parents.

Here, then, is an explanation of how survey companies carry out address-based sampling (ABS):

ABS involves probability-based sampling of addresses from the U.S. Postal Service’s Delivery Sequence File. Randomly sampled addresses are invited to complete a researcher’s survey through a series of mailings and in some cases telephone refusal conversion calls when a telephone number can be matched to the sampled address. Invited households can respond by one of several means: by completing and mailing back a paper form in a postage-paid envelope; by calling a toll-free hotline; or by going to a designated web site and completing a screening form at the website. The key advantage of the ABS sample frame is that it allows sampling of almost all U.S. households. 

An estimated 97 percent of households are “covered” in sampling nomenclature. Regardless of household telephone status, they can be reached and contacted via the mail. Not only does ABS allow coverage of the growing proportion of cell-phone-only households, but it also improves sample representativeness (compared to random digit dial, or RDD, samples) for sexual minorities, minority racial and ethnic groups, lower educated, and low-income persons. ABS-sourced sample tends to align more true to the overall population demographic distributions and thus the associated adjustment weights are somewhat more uniform and less varied. This variance reduction efficaciously attenuates the sample’s design effect. The approach’s advantage is its representative sample.

This superior sampling approach is not inexpensive to carry out, particularly when targeting a low-incidence demographic like young adult children of gay parents. For example, to survey a general population sample, one could begin with a sample of 10,000 and estimate that approximately 1,000, or 1 percent would respond and complete the survey. However, if there are eligibility criteria to participate in the survey that screen out (for instance) 99 of every 100 persons willing to respond, to obtain 1,000 survey respondents, one would need to begin with a sample of 1,000,000 and estimate that 100,000, or 10 percent, would respond and complete the screener, and 1,000, or 1 percent of those would be determined eligible and would complete the survey.

Thus, even had a sample of 1,000,000 people — recruited via address-based sampling — produced only 500 young adult children actually raised by gay parents, that address-based sampling still would have produced twice the number of study subjects Regnerus used but is inaccurately categorizing as having been raised by gay parents.

To sum this point up; 1) Regnerus likely misleads when he asserts he compared young adult children of gay parents to young adult children of “intact biological families;” 2) In the study itself, and in his public promotions of the study, Regnerus likely misleads when he states that he would not by any means have been able to survey an adequate sampling of young gay adults substantially raised by gay parents up through the 1990s; and 3) Regnerus likely misleads when he states that he used the best existing survey method for surveying young adult children of gay parents.

Regnerus’ Contract with Knowledge Network for Survey Participants is Incentive Based 

An additional point of vital importance must be made regarding how Knowledge Network retains its panel of survey subjects. “Panel members” — as KN calls them — after being invited in, take on average at least one survey per week. Members are given payment incentives for completing screeners and surveys; they additionally are incentivized through entries into raffles and sweepstakes with cash and other prizes. Additionally, where KN recruits panelists who do not have computers, KN gives them a laptop with free monthly internet service.

Obviously, panel members desirous of the cash rewards, entries into sweepstakes and raffles, and of continuing with the free internet service and laptop, will want to remain in the game, answering weekly surveys. With their ongoing experience in answering different surveys, they learn how to answer tell-tale screener questions, such that they can go ahead with the survey rather than being cut off from it.

At the beginning of the Regnerus “survey instrument,” respondents are asked whether 1) they had lived with their biological mother and father until age 18; and then 2) whether they had ever had an adoptive parent.  At that point, a lot of possibilities remained, including, for example, that of being raised by a single parent.

This is extremely important: The next question was “From when you were born until age 18 (or until you left home to be on your own), did either of your parents ever have a romantic relationship with someone of the same sex?”

Knowledge Networks’ experienced survey takers looking at that question would understand that this study needed people who answer yes to that unusual screener question. They would understand that the study was substantially about such people. These survey-rewards-addicted responders want their incentive rewards for answering special and/or long surveys, they want their reward entries into raffles and sweepstakes. A survey taker could very well be motivated to answer “Yes,” even if in truth, neither of their parents ever had had a relationship with someone of the same sex. They could then just wing the rest of the answers. And, there is no way to fact check the thing; Regnerus takes for granted that his survey respondents always told the truth, even though many had documented incentives for not always telling the truth.

Regnerus Survey Manipulates Question Sequencing

In numerous ways, the Regnerus Survey Instrument was contrived to stack the deck against parents whom the study arbitrarily labeled as “gay.” To cite one example; the first question asks if the respondent lived with their biological mother and father through to 18. If the respondent answered “Yes,” they got skipped forward in the survey, and never asked whether one or both of their biological parents was homosexual. Meanwhile in real life, there are families like that of Leonard Bernstein, bi-sexual if not actually homosexual, and his wife Felicia. They lived together through the time their first two children were 18, even as Leonard was having liaisons with males. The Bernstein children had what the Regnerus study considers “good” outcomes, but would have attributed those good outcomes to an “Intact Biological Family,” even though the Bernstein father was at least as gay as anybody Regnerus labels “Gay father” in his study.

In sharp and disturbing relief against Regnerus’s manifest negligence about precisely determining the extent to which his respondents were raised by actual gay parents, the Regnerus Survey Instrument includes many questions of marginal if any meaning to the alleged topic of the study. For instance, the Survey Instrument asks “When did you last masturbate?”

If Regnerus’s main aim was to compare young adult offspring raised by heterosexual married parents with young adult children raised by gay parents, why did his Survey Instrument omit crucial relevant questions while asking such flabbergastingly tangential things as “When did you last masturbate?”?

Regnerus’s written study Introduction makes plain that; 1) he was concerned about the impact of child-rearing studies on “the legal boundaries of marriage;”  — that phrase is an exact quote from Regnerus’s written study, and I’m going to repeat it because of its importance here: “the legal boundaries of marriage.” 2) he was concerned about study conclusions showing that homosexual orientation does not preclude one from being a good parent; and that 3) he was concerned about a recent slip, from exclusive perceived superiority, of “intact biological families,” and that 4) he wanted to use this study to help to restore “intact biological families” to their position of exclusive perceived superiority.

Regnerus Funding Arranged by NOM Head Robert George

Regnerus’s funder Robert George of the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage is obsessively concerned with “the legal boundaries of marriage.” Robert George has written a draft for a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages throughout the nation. He does not like to see gay parenting study results with good child outcomes, as they are work against his known, ferocious anti-gay political goals. George’s aims in arranging for the funding of Regnerus’s study precisely match the concerns expressed in Regnerus’s introduction.

After George got Regnerus his $35,000 “planning grant” through The Witherspoon Institute, the study plan was cunningly elaborated to guarantee that gay parents would come out looking bad. Regnerus has been lying to the public to hide that truth. For example, writing in Slate, Regnerus said that all of the family scholars involved in the study design “lean left.” Yet we know some came from Brigham Young University, whose “Honor Code” at the time of the study design forbid all BYU community members from “promoting homosexual relations as being morally acceptable.” And BYU has a formidable record of enforcing its “Honor Code.” How credible is Regnerus’s claim that his study designers from Brigham Young University “lean left” on gay parenting? Who are those Brigham Young people?  Can I interview them for publication, so that their BYU higher-ups will be sure to know that they “lean left” on gay parenting?

Even more importantly, if one is interested in a genuinely scientific result, why would any political leaning matter, above one’s devotion to scientific integrity? Why is Regnerus defending his study to the public, by alleging that Brigham Young University family scholars “lean left” instead of by saying that they are first and foremost rigorous and uncompromising scientists?

Now, in what ways is the deceptive Regnerus title “The New Family Structures Study” similar to deceptions known to be promulgated by Regnerus’s anti-gay-rights funding arranger Robert George?

Regnerus did not survey anybody raised in an era with legal recognition of same-sex spouses. And — as previously explained — he absolutely did not survey anybody raised in any genuinely new family structure. But he did write into his study Introduction a concern with how child-rearing studies impact “the legal boundaries of marriage.” He also wrote into his study introduction a concern with re-establishing, through this study, the exclusive perceived superiority of the “intact biological family.”

Regnerus’s title of “The New Family Structures Study,” for public consumption purposes, in reality references no one studied, but rather, families who more recently have been benefiting from expanded same-sex couples’ legal recognition in domestic partnerships, civil unions and marriages.

Regnerus has been promoting his study as evidence against expansion of legal recognition of gay couples’ relationships. In one of his Slate articles, Regnernus wrote that gay-rights “advocates would do well from here forward to avoid simply assuming the kids are all right,” and then, after barely paying lip service to the notion that marriage recognition could perhaps help children being raised by gay parents, he ends his article by saying that the New Family Structures Study  “may suggest that the household instability that the NFSS reveals is just too common among same-sex couples to take the social gamble of spending significant political and economic capital to esteem and support this new (but tiny) family form while Americans continue to flee the stable, two-parent biological married model, the far more common and accomplished workhorse of the American household, and still—according to the data, at least—the safest place for a kid.”

Despite Regnerus’s politically brazen and fallacious statements, Regnerus’s study could not possibly have revealed household instability among same-sex couples raising children, because by Regnerus’s own admission in the written study, he did not study same-sex couples raising children, yet there he is, writing in mass-market online venues that his study “reveals” that household instability among same-sex couples raising children is “just too common.”

That false claim is fully characteristic of anti-gay bigots’ argumentation against legal recognition for gay couples. Any of NOM’s Robert George, Maggie Gallagher, Brian Brown or Thomas Peters might have unloosed it themselves. It is 1) too pointed and wild-eyed in its elaboration; and 2) too involved with “turning the knife in the wound” against gay rights after ejaculating a known falsehood about the study and about gay couples raising chidren; and finally 3) too clearly politically-motivated to be the words of a sociologist who does not agree with its substance.

Regnerus Study’s Excerpts Exploited by Religious Right for Political Gain – Is Regnerus in Cahoots with NOM’s Robert George?

If Regnerus’s friend Robert George had paid Regnerus to be one of NOM’s “Expert Witness Project” professors producing excerptible anti-gay-rights quotes to inflame voters’ passions against gay rights, he could not have done any better than he did with that last quote from Regnerus.  And as a matter of documented record, Regnerus’s inflammatory, false, highly emotional and propagandistic anti-gay-rights quote is being used all over the country and beyond right now to incite people to deeper misunderstandings and distrust of gay people and their families. A more in-depth understanding of the political motivations of Regnerus’s funders may be had from this reporter’s article, NOM-Regnerus ‘Gay Parenting’ Study; A One-Percenter Dirty Campaign Trick.

Robert George’s Witherspoon Institute – a Regnerus funder — has devoted a stand-alone site to the Regnerus and Marks studies – where the Regnerus Slate article with the aforementioned offending quote is at the top of the site’s list of study-related articles “From the Web.”

Robert George’s NOM has a website page dedicated to “Marriage Talking Points.” There, anti-gay-rights activists are told that one phrase to avoid using “at all costs” is “Ban gay marriage,” because studies show that use of that phrase causes NOM to lose about ten percentage points of support in polls. Even though NOM exists to “ban gay marriage,” and the NOM pledge signed by Romney seeks a ban of same-sex marriage, NOM’s “Marriage Talking Points” page tells people to say that they support “marriage as the union of husband and wife” and not that they want to “ban gay marriage.”

That same brand of political, deliberately deceptive, anti-gay-rights attack through scheming, misleading words appears to have been applied to the Regnerus title of “The New Family Structures Study.” The manifest goals of that deceptive title are 1) to be able to exploit the study, towards a cessation of legal recognition of same-sex couples, which anti-gay-rights forces want to be able to do because, as a matter of documented reality; 2) increasingly common legal recognition is – for legal purposes — (including the legal rights of the people in the families) — creating actual New Family Structures, while Regnerus’s study meanwhile is serving 3) to give anti-gay-rights forces fraudulent cover for alleging that Regnerus has studied child outcomes for those actual new legal family structures, and shown that homosexuals are dangerous to children, even though; 4) Regnerus has not studied new family structures at all.

Regnerus did not even study the authentic human precursors to the new legal family structures for same-sex parents, such as the two lesbian mothers who raised Joe Valentine, even though by means of address-based sampling, he would have been able to do so.

Robert George’s NOM’s 1) instructions to anti-gay-rights activists not to say that they want to “ban gay marriage,” has in common with 2) Regnerus’s study title “The New Family Structures Study” the aim of  3) distracting people from an accurate understanding of the true nature of George’s and Regnerus’s anti-gay-rights activities.

All of the above must be fully and appropriately weighed and investigated by the University of Texas, Austin in its investigation of Associate Professor Mark Regnerus and included within the current Scientific Misconduct allegations that have been lodged against him.

Especially considering that Regnerus himself has admitted that 1) had he done this study through the National Institutes of Health instead of  2) through the Witherspoon Institute’s and the Bradley Foundation’s obsessed anti-gay-rights crusaders; 3) the higher scientific research standards that the NIH would have required him unwaveringly to observe would have 4) worked to the long-term best interests of science, it 5) defies belief that any observer concerned with scientific integrity could judge this matter without finding Regnerus guilty of scientific misconduct.

 

New York City-based novelist and freelance writer Scott Rose’s LGBT-interest by-line has appeared on Advocate.com, PoliticusUSA.com, The New York Blade, Queerty.com, Girlfriends and in numerous additional venues. Among his other interests are the arts, boating and yachting, wine and food, travel, poker and dogs. His “Mr. David Cooper’s Happy Suicide” is about a New York City advertising executive assigned to a condom account.

 

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News

‘Reeks of Eugenics’: RFK Jr.’s Autism ‘Registry’ Draws Nazi Germany Comparisons

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The Trump administration reportedly has plans to scrape your private medical data from sources like your doctor, your pharmacy, your insurance company, the lab that processes your bloodwork, your smartwatch, and your fitness apps—to create a “registry” of people with autism.

“The National Institutes of Health is amassing private medical records from a number of federal and commercial databases to give to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new effort to study autism,” CBS News reported. “The new data will allow external researchers picked for Kennedy’s autism studies to study ‘comprehensive’ patient data with ‘broad coverage’ of the U.S. population for the first time, NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya said.”

CBS also adds that “a new disease registry is being launched to track Americans with autism, which will be integrated into the data. Advocacy groups and experts have called out Kennedy for describing autism as a ‘preventable disease,’ which they say is stigmatizing and unfounded.”

“By bringing the data into one place,” Bhattacharya “said it could give health agencies a window into ‘real-time health monitoring’ on Americans for studying other health problems too.”

“What we’re proposing is a transformative real-world data initiative, which aims to provide a robust and secure computational data platform for chronic disease and autism research,” he said.

READ MORE: Trump’s SignalGate Sit-Down Mocked as a ‘Him in a Nutshell’ Moment

Critics warn that a registry of people with autism poses great privacy and health risks, while others wonder about HIPAA violations—especially in light of what some say is Secretary Kennedy’s apparent bias against autism and people on the spectrum.

Last week, Secretary Kennedy’s remarks about children with autism drew intense fire.

“This is an individual tragedy,” Kennedy declared (video below). “Autism destroys families. And more importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which our children. These are children who should not be, who should not be suffering like this. These are kids who, many of them, were fully functional, and regressed because of some environmental exposure into autism when they’re two years old.”

“And these are kids who will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted. And we have to recognize we are doing this to our children,” he alleged, to widespread criticism.

“How are they going to collect all this data without violating HIPAA laws and privacy protection?” Dr. Joel Shulkin asked, as The Daily Dot reported. “How are they going to de-identify all the data so that it cannot be misused against people who are involved in it? And what are they planning to do with that data once they finish their so-called study?”

ASAN, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, warned: “There is no indication that autistic people whose data is being taken would be afforded any say in whether their data is used or what it is used for. This raises significant moral, legal, and practical concerns. People have a right to decide what is done with data about their health. Unethical science is bad science.”

“Medical data can also easily be manipulated by unscrupulous researchers to create the appearance of causation where it does not exist,” ASAN added. “This has already happened this year with an anti-vaccine ‘study’ about autism that RFK Jr. approvingly cited during his confirmation hearing. The study, which was not published in a reputable scientific journal and did not go through peer review, used Medicaid data from Florida to show that children who had doctors visits to receive vaccinations were statistically more likely to also have doctors visits to receive care for autism.”

And the National Consumers League warns that “RFK Jr.’s autism study will pull private medical records, pharmacy data, insurance claims—even data from your fitness tracker—all under the banner of a flawed and stigmatizing narrative that autism is a ‘preventable disease.’ This kind of data grab raises serious questions about privacy, consent, and how personal health info could be misused in the name of speculative science.”

“RFK Jr.’s proposed national autism registry is straight-up dystopian,” declared Democratic strategist Chris D. Jackson. “Centralizing private medical data—from pharmacies, labs, fitness trackers, even veterans—and handing it to third parties? That’s not research. That’s surveillance. Let’s be clear: this echoes the darkest chapters of history, when regimes like Nazi Germany used medical registries to target and dehumanize vulnerable populations.”

READ MORE: ‘Incompetent. Irresponsible. Negligent’: Calls Mount for Hegseth’s Ouster or Prosecution

“And calling autism a ‘preventable tragedy’? That’s not science—it’s dangerous, ableist propaganda. Autistic people deserve respect, not to be tracked, labeled, or erased.”

Dr. Kristin Lyerly, who hosts The Dr. Kristin Lyerly Show, wrote: “I am very concerned about this effort for so many reasons, including health privacy and respect for people and families living with autism. This reeks of eugenics.”

“First RFK Jr says that people on the autism spectrum are useless eaters,” noted Yale Professor of History Timothy Snyder, an expert on authoritarianism. “And then he announces that the government is going to make a list of them, a ‘registry.'”

Daily Beast columnist Wajahat Ali, like many social media users, wrote: “Nazis did registries by the way.”

Fred Wellman, a West Point and the Harvard Kennedy School graduate, an Army veteran of 22 years who served four combat tours, and now a political consultant and the host of the podcast “On Democracy,” blasted the Trump administration:

“RFK Jr. wants to create a national registry of people with autism. The Admin wants to increase baby supply with a motherhood medal. Trump wants to deport US citizens to a third world gulag. They formed an Anti-Christian Bias Task Force to prosecute people for their speech. A White House advisor is floating arresting Americans for speaking in support of immigrants as terror supporters. Does this all sound familiar?”

Harvard Law Cyberlaw Clinic Instructor Alejandra Caraballo warned: “This won’t be limited to just autism. They’re building the panopticon to track anyone with any ‘undesirable’ illness. This is eugenics, full stop.”

Fred Guttenberg, an anti-gun violence activist who lost his daughter in the Parkland mass school shooting, wrote: “Help me understand how these lunatics who spent years fighting me on gun safety & used the idea of a government registry to create fear, now believe in a government registry to track people with autism. Everything they say is a lie, & everything they do is designed to hurt people.”

A user on the social media platform X posted this response:

 

“I’m autistic And when I heard RFK Jr. wants a government registry to track people like me using private medical records I didn’t think ‘safety’ I thought Nazi Germany A roundup’s of disabled people Because I know history And I know exactly what comes after the list is made This isn’t about health This is about control It’s about fear It’s about marking people People like me Neurodivergent people Different people Don’t dress it up as policy This is how roundups begin You want to stop autism discrimination? Start by not creating a fucking list.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Taunting SCOTUS’: Concerns Mount Over ‘Openly Contemptuous’ White House

 

Image via Shutterstock

 

 

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Trump’s SignalGate Sit-Down Mocked as a ‘Him in a Nutshell’ Moment

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President Donald Trump announced he will be sitting for an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic who was erroneously included in a group chat about military strikes in Yemen and subsequently broke the SignalGate story.

Trump suggested he agreed to the interview with Goldberg and two other reporters because of the supposed title of the proposed article: “The Most Consequential President of this Century.” And while there have only been four presidents this century, including himself, Trump appeared happy to indulge the reporters in exchange for the compliment.

“Later today I will be meeting with, of all people, Jeffrey Goldberg, the Editor of The Atlantic, and the person responsible for many fictional stories about me, including the made-up HOAX on ‘Suckers and Losers’ and, SignalGate, something he was somewhat more ‘successful’ with,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

READ MORE: ‘Incompetent. Irresponsible. Negligent’: Calls Mount for Hegseth’s Ouster or Prosecution

“Jeffrey is bringing with him Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker, not exactly pro-Trump writers, either, to put it mildly! The story they are writing, they have told my representatives, will be entitled, ‘The Most Consequential President of this Century.’ I am doing this interview out of curiosity, and as a competition with myself, just to see if it’s possible for The Atlantic to be ‘truthful.’ Are they capable of writing a fair story on ‘TRUMP’? The way I look at it, what can be so bad – I WON!”

Despite Trump’s dismissals, the “suckers and losers” stories were well-documented, fact-based reporting, as was the SignalGate story.

Finance journalist James Surowiecki of Fast Company and The Atlantic, writes, “This may be my favorite Trump tweet ever – it’s him in a nutshell. He attacks Jeff Goldberg, and complains about The Atlantic. But of course he’s going to do the interview, because he can’t resist being the focus of attention, and being labeled ‘The Most Consequential President.'”

READ MORE: Trump Doubles Down Calling Egg Prices ‘Too Low’ as Costs Soar to Record Highs

Yahoo Finance’s Jordan Weissmann adds, “Trump grudgingly admitting Goldberg was ‘somewhat more successful’ with SignalGate is one of the funniest ‘OK, you got us there’ moments I’ve ever seen.”

Earlier this month Goldberg, speaking about his SignalGate article and Trump, said: “I’m not going to be bullied, because there’s no end to the bullying if you agree to be bullied in the first place. If there are consequences to not bending, fine.”

“It beats selling your soul.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Taunting SCOTUS’: Concerns Mount Over ‘Openly Contemptuous’ White House

 

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‘Incompetent. Irresponsible. Negligent’: Calls Mount for Hegseth’s Ouster or Prosecution

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With seemingly near-daily revelations about U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s alleged—and potentially unlawfulleaks of classified or sensitive information, concerns over his leadership, judgment, and efforts to reshape the Department of Defense, pressure for his resignation or removal and even prosecution is rapidly intensifying.

Hegseth, confirmed by the narrowest of margins (51-50), is one of the youngest (44) Defense Secretaries, and had already been one of the most controversial. His Senate hearings were flooded with allegations and questions about sexual assault, use of alcohol, infidelities, position on women in combat, previous alleged poor leadership and financial mismanagement at several small nonprofits, and general lack of experience—sans his weekend gig as a Fox News host.

Hegseth’s repeated use of the insecure messaging app Signal on his cellphone, from which he reportedly shared sensitive and classified military strike secrets—in at least two separate instances, including one with his wife, brother, and personal attorney—alone, some say, should have led to his firing and prosecution.

“If a ‘regular’ clearance holder did this, almost assuredly they would lose their security clearance,” remarked national security attorney Mark Zaid, pointing to this NBC News report. “Given it is literally imminent military strike planning, not inconceivable prosecution would be on the table. In normal times. This ain’t that.”

READ MORE: Trump Doubles Down Calling Egg Prices ‘Too Low’ as Costs Soar to Record Highs

More recent news that he directed to have Signal installed on his Defense Department computer, that he spent thousands in Pentagon funds to construct a “makeup room” for TV spots, that his security credentials, including personal cell phone number, email address and password, and WhatsApp account were posted on the dark web, and the “disarray” in his inner circle, have served to strengthen the calls for his firing, resignation, or prosecution—and continued downplaying by the Trump administration.

“President Donald Trump is unlikely to dismiss Hegseth and has spoken to him twice since The New York Times and CNN reported on the second Signal group on Sunday night,” CNN reported Wednesday. “In their first call, Trump said he had Hegseth’s back and voiced frustration at ‘leakers’ he said were trying to damage his administration, according to a person familiar with the conversation.”

CNN also reports that “Hegseth’s most trusted advisers are now his wife, his lawyer and his junior military aide, who may soon be appointed his new chief of staff, multiple people familiar with the matter said.” Hegseth’s wife is a former Fox News producer who is not a Pentagon employee. It is “unclear,” the news network reported separately, if she has a security clearance.

“The Pentagon is in ‘total chaos’ and Hegseth is unlikely to remain in his role, according to its former top spokesperson, who painted a scene of dysfunction, backstabbing and continuous missteps at the highest levels of DOD,” Politico Deputy Managing Editor of Global Security Dave Brown reported Sunday evening.

READ MORE: ‘Taunting SCOTUS’: Concerns Mount Over ‘Openly Contemptuous’ White House

“Chaos in the world’s most lethal fighting force is an open invitation to our enemies,” responded U.S. Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), a, Iraq War veteran who served in the Marines for over a decade. “Amateur hour with Hegseth. Time to resign.”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s denouncement of classified inform action leaking on Wednesday also served to invite anger, upset, and concern over Hegseth’s actions.

“Politicization of our intelligence and leaking classified information puts our nation’s security at risk and must end,” Gabbard, Trump controversial DNI wrote. “Those who leak classified information will be found and held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. Today, I referred two intelligence community LEAKS to the Department of Justice for criminal referral, with a third criminal referral on its way, which includes the recent illegal leak to the Washington Post. These deep-state criminals leaked classified information for partisan political purposes to undermine POTUS’ agenda. I look forward to working with @TheJusticeDept and @FBI to investigate, terminate and prosecute these criminals.”

The Atlantic’s Dr. Norman Ornstein, the renowned political scientist, commented to Gabbard: “I am looking forward to the time when you refer Pete Hegseth for criminal prosecution.”

Calls for Hegseth’s ouster—one way or another—have flooded social media this week.

“When the Secretary of Defense screws up,” commented U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Mark Warner (D-VA), servicemembers’ lives are on the line. Pete Hegseth has shown time and time again he screws up way too much to do this job. He must resign or be fired.”

“The first thing they make you do before going into a classified meeting is to remove your phone,” noted U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA), an awarded former U.S. Air Force Colonel in the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps. “Why? Because phones can be hacked. (Eg look up Pegasus spyware). Hegseth using his personal phone multiple times to reveal combat operations is a dereliction of duty. He must resign.”

“Incompetent. Irresponsible. Negligent,” wrote U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH). “For our national security and the safety of our troops, Pete Hegseth must resign or be removed from his position.”

“Being the Secretary of Defense is serious business and it’s clear he’s not up to it. Hegseth needs to resign or be fired,” observed U.S. Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), who served for 25 years in the U.S.Navy, including as a NASA astronaut who spent 54 days in space.

Awarded Iraq War veteran U.S. Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY), a West Point graduate who served as an Army Captain in the Military Intelligence Corps, urged President Trump to fire Hegseth.

“Will Donald Trump, who made his reputation for quote unquote firing people, actually fire this guy and make our country safe again and really support our troops?” Congressman Ryan asked. “That’s what every American should be asking.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump’s Latest Target: The Watchdog That Keeps Suing Him

 

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