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Marco Rubio Doubles Down With New Plan To Take Away LGBT Rights

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GOP Presidential Candidate Recruits Well-Known Anti-Gay Activists To Reverse The Supreme Court’s Marriage Equality Ruling

In his continued efforts to strip the LGBT community of their rights, Marco Rubio just doubled down on his presidential campaign promise to reverse last year’s marriage equality ruling. A press release issued on Saturday ahead of the GOP debate announced that Rubio’s campaign has formed a Marriage & Family Advisory Board devoted to “rebuilding a vibrant culture of marriage and family.” That’s code for taking away equal marriage rights for same-sex couples.

Rubio echoed that goal at the GOP debate Saturday:

In announcing Rubio’s new Marriage & Family Advisory Board, Eric Teetsel, the Rubio campaign’s Director of Faith Outreach, chose to attack same-sex marriage.

“The Supreme Court’s decisions in Windsor and Obergefell are only the most recent example of our failure as a society to understand what marriage is and why it matters,” Teetsel, former head of the head of the Manhattan Declaration, said.

“For decades, we have taken for granted the unique and necessary contributions of moms and dads in the lives of their children, from lax divorce laws to marriage penalties in the tax code and the failure of husbands and wives to live up to their marriage vows. Marco understands the many causes of family breakdown and the consequences. He has pulled together a board of experts who understand the same and have devoted themselves to rebuilding a vibrant culture of marriage and family.”

Rubio has recruited some of the most anti-gay activists in the public sphere. The Marriage & Family Advisory Board includes Ken Blackwell, Senior Fellow at the Family Research Council, an organization that was declared a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The board also includes Ryan T. Anderson, a Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Anderson is known for advocating for harmful conversion therapy and for comparing same-sex attraction to pedophilia and alcoholism.

Rubio has never been shy about his disdain for the Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality, even though he claims he doesn’t discriminate against the LGBT community. “It’s not about discrimination,” he said two months ago in an interview with Chuck Todd on Meet The Press. “It is about the definition of a very specific, traditional, and age-old institution.”

RELATED: Marco Rubio: Same-Sex Marriage Law Not ‘Settled’ (Video)

As for one of his strategies to reverse the marriage equality ruling, Rubio said  he plans to appoint anti-gay Supreme Court justices. “I don’t believe any case law is settled law,” Rubio said. “Any future Supreme Court can change it. And ultimately, I will appoint Supreme Court justices that will interpret the Constitution as originally constructed.”

On Twitter, some notables weighed in:

Jim Obergefell, whose case won marriage at the Supreme Court:

Lambda Legal attorney Eric Lesh:

Former GOProud head Jimmy LaSalvia:

  

EARLIER:

Watch: Rubio Tells Man And His Husband To Change The Law If They Disagree With His Anti-Gay Marriage Stance

Marco Rubio: ‘I Always Allow My Faith To Influence Everything I Do’ (Video)

Marco Rubio: ‘I’ve Been Called A Bigot’ (Video)

 

Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license
Hat tip: Joe.My.God.

 

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

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Prominent political strategist James Carville served up some strong language and colorful remarks about President Donald Trump on Super Bowl Sunday.

On his Politicon streaming show, Carville predicted that Trump would get a complete and total “whipping,” and will be “disgraced.”

“You can knock down the East Wing. You can s — — all over the Kennedy Center. It is not gonna do any good, because the country hates you,” he declared. “They literally cannot stand you.”

“My recommendation for everybody that loves the United States, every patriotic American, and every person that is disgusted by a putrid behavior of the United States government, join the party,” Carville continued. “Because it’s coming to an end.”

READ MORE: ‘Interests of Justice’: Pirro Signs DOJ Motion to Toss Bannon Indictment

“We’re not just gonna win, people. We’re gonna win in ways that you can’t imagine,” the political consultant, author, and a Democratic pundit added. “And not only are we gonna win, we’re gonna watch these sorry, slimy people in an effort to try to save themselves — disgrace themselves, disgrace their families, disgrace their children, their grandchildren, their great grandchildren and everything else.”

Carville also denounced “spineless jellyfish” U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), while praising “these courageous athletes in Italy” at the Olympic Games.

“You see courageous people in the streets of Minneapolis. You’re gonna see courageous people, about a million, show up at the next No Kings rally.”

Carville said he doesn’t “live in an ivory tower,” but rather, walks around and talks to people: “I see the disappointment on faces of people that, for all I know, may have voted for Trump.”

“I’m looking at election results,” he added. “And what I’m watching, entire people that have had an accomplished life, that have had a life of some pride, become Lindsay Graham, the most pliable, malleable person in the history, maybe of U.S. politics.”

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

“We’re gonna beat these people,” Carville vowed. “Like, you can’t even believe what is getting ready to happen to them. And then they’re gonna all be disgraced by history.”

“But you know what you can’t steal?” Carville asked. “You cannot steal the heart of the American people. You can’t steal our traditions. You can’t steal our love of progress — and we may make a mistake, but we’re gonna correct it, and you’re gonna get corrected with the mistake.”

He also vowed that “we’re gonna enjoy ourselves in November” when Trump is “disgraced, and all of the acolytes around him will be disgraced even more.”

READ MORE: ‘Toast’: Latino GOP Strategist Warns ‘Republicans Are Gonna Lose So Big in November’

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‘Interests of Justice’: Pirro Signs DOJ Motion to Toss Bannon Indictment

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Longtime Trump ally and former White House senior counselor to the president, Steve Bannon, is trying to get his 2022 conviction on two counts of contempt of Congress overturned — and now he has the support of Trump’s Department of Justice to back him up.

“DOJ is trying to help Steve Bannon erase his conviction for defying a subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee,” reports Politico’s Kyle Cheney.

Cheney noted that the DOJ’s motion “has no career prosecutor” listed, only U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro. He also reported that the case had been headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The government has determined in its prosecutorial discretion that dismissal of this criminal case is in the interests of justice,” the motion reads.

Bannon served four months in prison and was released in October 2024. He was found guilty by a jury on two counts of contempt of Congress, the Associated Press reported, “one for refusing to sit for a deposition with the Jan. 6 House Committee and a second for refusing to provide documents related to his involvement Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race.”

He referred to himself as a “political prisoner” when he began serving his sentence.

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

 

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Dems Ignoring ‘Biggest Political Issue’ of 2028 Race: Strategist

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Democrats are ignoring the “biggest political issue” that will define the 2028 elections — an issue with long-range consequences — a prominent political strategist warns.

Artificial intelligence — and its effects on the workforce and the economy — is a phenomenon about which some Republicans have started to sound the alarm, says Kamala Harris’s 2024 deputy campaign manager, Rob Flaherty. But the Democratic Party needs to be better prepared, he writes in a New York Times op-ed.

“Being told you have no agency over a force that will reshape your job prospects, your community and your family’s future is a recipe for backlash,” writes Flaherty. “Democrats shouldn’t dismiss that anger. We should be the party that channels it and does something about it.”

“The coming A.I. revolution threatens the urban professional class that constitutes a central pillar of its political coalition — which already seems too small to win a national election,” he warns. “Democrats have a chance to unite the unemployed 25-year-old software engineer in Tucson, Ariz., and the underemployed middle-age autoworker in Detroit in a coalition big enough to win nationally and locally.”

READ MORE: ‘Toast’: Latino GOP Strategist Warns ‘Republicans Are Gonna Lose So Big in November’

Flaherty points to the chief executive of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, who “has predicted that artificial intelligence could displace half of all entry-level white collar jobs within five years. Already, layoffs are on the rise. Recent college grads are struggling to find work. And even for those of us fortunate enough to be employed, our retirement savings are increasingly dependent on the fortunes of a small handful of high-growth tech companies.”

Democrats have an opening with A.I., he says. “Americans feel pessimistic about A.I. Polling indicates that they are much more concerned than excited about the increasing use of A.I. in their lives.”

The 2028 elections, “set against the backdrop of discontent with A.I., will provide an opportunity to campaign against Big Tech’s excesses and a Republican Party that has enabled them.”

Flaherty sees A.I. as an opportunity to reimagine America’s “social bargain.” Who’s in charge? Who benefits? Who are we as a nation? He says these are the questions Democrats should be asking — and “letting voters know how we answer them.”

Democrats, he adds, need to “monopolize” the issue of artificial intelligence, “lest we risk losing voters we take for granted.”

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

 

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