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Years Of Anti-Gay Bullying Leads To Suicide Of Tennessee Teen

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A Tennessee high school teen succumbed to suicide after years of anti-gay bullying that friends charge went unacknowledged by local school officials. Jacob Rogers reportedly stopped going to school around Thanksgiving friends say, and completed suicide yesterday. As is almost always the case, school officials claim they had little knowledge there was a problem.

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Local Nashville Tennessee TV station WSMV reports:

“He started coming home his senior year saying ‘I don’t want to go back. Everyone is so mean. They call me a f****, they call me gay, a queer,'” friend Kaelynn Mooningham said.

Kaelynn said her friend Jacob felt ignored.

“Jacob told me no one was helping him. He constantly was going to guidance,” she said.

But Cheatham County Schools Director Dr. Tim Webb said the school was only aware of one incident of bullying.

“She actually intervened and called the students in accused of bullying or picking. She called them in, talked to them and gave them warnings. Subsequently after that, she ran into the student and asked him if things were better and he indicated that things were better,” Webb said.

But Kaelynn knows that Jacob wasn’t OK. Things were still so bad around Thanksgiving that he ultimately quit going to school.

“No one would listen and stand up for him,” she said.

…

And now, those like Kaelynn are wondering when is enough, finally enough?

“It just doesn’t have to make sense. How many kids have to die before Cheatham does something,” she said.

Kaelynn says Jacob lived with his grandmother who primarily took care of him. She found a couple notes that Jacob left for her. In those notes Jacob left passwords to his email and his phone so investigators could determine why he chose to kill himself.

As for Cheatham Central, counselors will be on hand again Thursday for grieving classmates.

Friends of Jacob’s family say they likely don’t have enough money to hold a funeral. Donations for a funeral are being accepted at Sandman’s Ink Shop, a local tattoo shop in Ashland City.

Via an email this morning, Jonathan Cole, the President and Chair of the Tennessee Equality Project notes:

This terrible event serves as a reminder to all parents, teachers and school administrators that they share a responsibility for supporting the well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Individuals, families, communities and the whole of society have a responsibility to promote a culture that welcomes, accepts and supports LGBT students for who they are.

Cole has created a petition at Change.org to motivate school officials to “Support an LGBT-Inclusive Bullying Policy in Cheatham County Schools.”

Cole adds:

Following this terrible event, Tennessee Equality Project calls upon the Cheatham County School Board to fully investigate the school’s response to the bullying of Jacob Rogers. We also call upon the School Board to implement the following recommendations from GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) for addressing anti-LGBT harassment and bullying:

  1. Revise district policy to explicitly prohibit student discrimination, harassment, bullying, and intimidation based on sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression. The school district must establish an enumerated policy for unwelcomed conduct that focuses on sex, race, ethnicity, religious belief, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. An enumerated policy is crucial to ensure that anti-bullying policies are effective for all students.
  2. Require staff trainings to enable school staff to identify and address anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying, and harassment effectively and in a timely manner.
  3. Support student efforts to address anti-LGBT bullying and harassment on campus, such as the formation of a Gay-Straight Alliance or participation in events such as the National Day of Silence and Ally Week.
  4. Institute age-appropriate, inclusive curricula to help students understand and respect difference within the school community and society as a whole.

Regular readers will remember that two months ago, The New Civil Rights Movement reported that the principal of a Madisonville, Tennessee high school reportedly verbally and physically assaulted 17-​year old high school student Chris Sigler merely for wearing a tee-​shirt advocating for a gay-​straight alliance.

Of course, Tennessee is home to the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which is still on the back burner, with the possibility of becoming law next year.

Our hearts and thoughts today are with the family and friends of Jacob Rogers.

UPDATE:
Dan Savage, Towleroad, and Joe.My.God. have set up a fund to help pay for Jacob’s funeral. Click one of the links to donate.

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Trump Admin Orders Immediate Mass Firing of Some Federal Workers — 200,000 Possibly at Risk

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February 13, 2025

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The Trump administration has told agency heads to terminate the employment of probationary workers, which could number at least 200,000, and to do so within the next two days. Probationary workers are those employed under one year, and have no recourse other than the discretion of the agency heads who were reportedly given the ability to make “case by case exceptions.”

Agency chiefs were given “final authority over the removal of their probationary employees,” according to the Federal News Network, which first reported the firing direction.

The latest data from the Office of Personnel Management “shows 216,079 federal employees had one year of service or less, as of March 2024,” FNN reported. But for some workers the probationary period could be longer. Reuters noted that “about 280,000 civilian government workers were hired less than two years ago, with most still on probation.”

READ MORE: ‘Corruption’ Claims Fly Over Musk’s Modi Meeting as Trump Shrugs: ‘I Don’t Know’

Some “probationary employees were told they would be terminated from their jobs at 3 p.m. today,” FNN also reported.

“Thousands of workers were laid off in messages delivered through prerecorded videos and on group calls,” The Washington Post reported. “Some were ordered to leave the building within 30 minutes. Others were told they would be formally fired by email, which never arrived.”

And while the mass terminations reportedly were ordered to reduce the overall federal workforce — a goal of President Donald Trump — some communications suggested the reason for their firing was poor performance.

“Probationary employees, dozens who said they had never received negative feedback about their work, received emails citing their performance to assert they ‘have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest,’ according to the correspondences reviewed by The Washington Post,” the paper reported.

READ MORE: ‘Palpable Harm’: Hegseth Slammed for ‘Screwup’ of ‘Biggest Foreign Policy Issue’

 

Image via Reuters 

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‘Corruption’ Claims Fly Over Musk’s Modi Meeting as Trump Shrugs: ‘I Don’t Know’

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12 hours ago

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February 13, 2025

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Thursday afternoon’s meeting between Elon Musk, President Donald Trump’s Director of the Department of Government Efficiency, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sparked criticism and allegations of corruption.

Some critics are questioning why Musk, rather than the President, was engaged in the talks. The meeting has fueled speculation that the billionaire tech mogul may wield more influence over the Oval Office than voters bargained for. Musk is only a temporary “special government employee” and has expressed strong business interest in India, one of the largest per capita consumer markets in the world, second only to China.

President Trump did not appear concerned about the billionaire’s meeting with Modi, nor did he seem to know why the two met.

When asked if Musk talked with Prime Minister Modi as “an American CEO” or as a representative of the U.S. government, Trump told reporters, “I don’t know.”

READ MORE: ‘Palpable Harm’: Hegseth Slammed for ‘Screwup’ of ‘Biggest Foreign Policy Issue’

“They met, and I assume he wants to do business in India,” Trump said. “I would imagine he met because, possibly, he’s running a company.”

Suggesting the event had at least some official significance, The Bulwark’s Sam Stein noted that the “meeting was in the Blair House with a US Flag draped right behind Musk.”

Blair House, which is across from the White House, is known as “The President’s Guest House,” and “the world’s most exclusive hotel.”

The Prime Minister indicated he and Musk discussed a wide range of issues, which appear to be both governmental and business.

“These are photos a head of state would normally post with the president, vice president, secretary of state or a top congressional leader,” CBS News White House and national politics reporter Kathryn Watson observed.

READ MORE: ‘Like a Weed’: Must Expands DOGE Plan, Says ‘We Need To Delete Entire Agencies’

Democratic strategist Matt McDermott went even further: “These are photos of a ‘government official’ using a government building and an official backdrop for what is clearly a meeting to advance his own private business interests. Just a stunning level of public corruption.”

“Keep in mind, this was the second international business arrangement that Musk was hammering out today,” Stein mentioned, adding that Musk “also had a talk this morning with Sheikh Hamdan of Dubai.”

Former Obama National Security Council spokesperson Tommy Vietor quipped, “I’m sorry, who is actually president? Trump or @elonmusk. Hard to tell these days!”

But noting that Musk has been trying to get his Tesla electric vehicles and his Starlink satellite internet service into India, CNN’s Erin Burnett Wednesday night remarked that the DOGE Director’s “role does seem to be getting bigger by the day.” She spoke with U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, who has emerged as one of Trump’s and Musk’s strongest critics.

“Do you have any problem with Musk’s presence in a meeting with Modi?” she asked.

“I mean, this is a fundamental corruption,” Senator Murphy responded. “This is a fundamental corruption.”

“We cannot let this be normalized, that the richest man in the world is operationalizing American foreign policy so that he can make himself richer. That is what is going on here. I mean, it’s extraordinary that you are going to have Elon Musk, who is essentially running the government right now, be sitting across from the Indian leader and asked the Indian leader to give him personal financial favors, instead of asking for things that would broadly help the American public.”

“Musk wants to outsource jobs, to India, he wants to outsource jobs to China, and he is using his access to Donald Trump to be able to shutter jobs in the United States and make himself more money,” Murphy charged. “We’ve never seen anything like this, even in the Gilded Age of the early 1900s, you didn’t have J.P. Morgan and the Rockefellers literally sitting in the White House using their access to the president in order to cut deals with foreign governments that would help them.”

On Thursday, Senator Murphy again warned on the potential for corruption.

“The richest man in the world who was working inside the White House just did a meeting with the Prime Minister of India to advance his own business interests. Like, why isn’t everybody’s hair on fire here about that?” the Connecticut Democrat asked, according to HuffPost’s Igor Bobic. “It’s heartbreaking to me that so many Republicans seem to have just come to peace with this stunning corruption.”

“Musk is effectively operating as the Secretary of State, and he is meeting with a key foreign leader not to ask for concessions that would benefit Americans, but for concessions that would make him rich. It’s shameless corruption at a scale never seen before in our history,” Senator Murphy added.

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: Musk Complying With Federal Laws White House Says — Will Not Release Disclosure

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‘Palpable Harm’: Hegseth Slammed for ‘Screwup’ of ‘Biggest Foreign Policy Issue’

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16 hours ago

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February 13, 2025

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U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s public statements on negotiations to try to end the war in Ukraine and on NATO are drawing strong criticism from diplomatic, defense, and political experts, after the former Fox News weekend host appeared to publicly grant extreme concessions to Russia on Wednesday, only to take them all back on Thursday. One expert described his comments as “palpable harm” to America’s national security.

“With regard to Ukraine’s potential membership in NATO, SecDef Hegseth now says ‘everything is on the table’ when it comes to negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, and that he is ‘not going to stand and declare what President Trump will do or won’t do, what will be in or what will be out,'” CNN Pentagon and national security correspondent Natasha Bertrand reported Thursday.

But those remarks vastly diverge from what the Defense Secretary declared less than 24 hours earlier.

READ MORE: ‘Like a Weed’: Must Expands DOGE Plan, Says ‘We Need To Delete Entire Agencies’

Hegseth “said on Wednesday that the war between Ukraine and Russia ‘must end,’ that Kyiv joining NATO is unrealistic and that the US will no longer prioritize European and Ukrainian security as the Trump administration shifts its attention to securing the US’ own borders and deterring war with China,” CNN reported.

The Defense Secretary also “said Wednesday that it is ‘unrealistic’ to aim for a return to Ukraine’s borders as they were before 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and supported separatists who took over swaths of the country’s east,” NBC News reported.

“Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering,” Secretary Hegseth told a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group.

NBC also called Hegseth’s remarks “the clearest indication yet that the United States will support negotiations between Ukraine and Russia in which Ukraine cedes territory that’s already been seized by the Kremlin.”

The Associated Press reported that Hegseth’s statements, which included, “Reading the riot act to U.S. allies,” had “thrown the world’s biggest military alliance,” NATO, “into disarray, raising troubling questions about America’s commitment to European security.”

Here at home, the Republican Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Roger Wicker, “weighed in to criticize Hegseth’s statement, which took Ukraine NATO membership off the table,” Punchbowl News’ Max Cohen reported.

“I’d prefer we don’t give away negotiating positions before we actually get started,” Wicker told Cohen.

But all that appeared to change dramatically on Thursday when Hegseth addressed NATO.

“I want to be clear about something as it pertains to NATO membership not being [a] realistic outcome for negotiations” over Ukraine and Russia, he said, according to CNN’s Bertrand. “That’s something that was stated as part of my remarks here, as part of the coordination with how we’re executing these ongoing negotiations, which are led by President Trump.”

READ MORE: Musk Complying With Federal Laws White House Says — Will Not Release Disclosure

“All of that said, these negotiations are led by President Trump. Everything is on the table. In his conversations with Vladimir Putin and Zelensky, what he decides to allow or not allow is at the purview of the leader of the free world, of President Trump. So I’m not going to stand and declare what President Trump will do or won’t do, what will be in or what will be out, what concessions will be made, or what concessions are not made.”

Former Obama National Security Spokesperson Tommy Vietor blasted the Secretary of Defense.

“Pete Hegseth f***ed up the biggest foreign policy issue on his plate on his first foreign trip. Tell me again how this cabinet is a meritocracy?” he asked, appearing to cite President Donald Trump’s attacks against DEI and vow to only install people in his government via merit.

“This was a huge f****p by Hegseth,” Vietor continued. “There’s no walking back his initial comments that Ukraine won’t join NATO or gain back all the territory lost since 2014. He wrote Putin a big check that has already been cashed. Maybe don’t make an unqualified Fox News host @SecDef?”

“Hegseth’s lack of experience is already showing. Publicly makes a series of pre-emptive concessions prior to the most important negotiations in many years, and then has to publicly explain that he had no authority to say any of those things,” observed Shashank Joshi, the defense editor for The Economist.

“Welp,” remarked Brian P. McKeon, a national security advisor who served as the Deputy Secretary of State in the Biden Administration, “this is a big screwup. It suggests his statement [Wednesday] wasn’t cleared with the WH and/or the Dear Leader.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

RELATED: ‘Demolition Plan’: Dems Warn DOGE Guts Government to Empower Billionaires, Harm Americans

 

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