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The LGBT March on DC Is Happening: Five Post-Election Reasons This Is Important

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The Women’s March ‘Set the Tone With Their Leadership and It Is Our Intention as a Community to Follow Their Lead and Play Our Part’

Drawing inspiration from last week’s Women’s March on the capital – and in hundreds of cities around the world – activist David Bruinooge has begun planning The National Pride March, an LGBT march of solidarity on Washington, D.C. Coinciding with D.C.’s Pride event the march is scheduled for June 11, 2017.

“I thought the gay community should be doing something like [the Women’s March] to follow up on the momentum,” Bruinooge, an openly gay New York resident told the Washington Blade. He cited that he was inspired by the country’s women who “[took] to the street [to get] their voices heard.” D.C.’s Women’s March in particular, which was echoed in 60 countries and on seven continents, became the largest inauguration-related demonstration in U.S. history and easily exceeded the attendance of Donald Trump’s inauguration.

“They set the tone with their leadership and it is our intention as a community to follow their lead and play our part,” The National Pride March Facebook event page reads, advising that the event is all-inclusive and peaceful. Bruinooge said that he chose June 11 for the event as it coincides with D.C.’s Capital Pride Festival, which reportedly had an estimated 275,000 in attendance in 2016.

Bruinooge contacted Ryan Bos, the executive director of the Capital Pride Alliance, who expects the march and the D.C. Pride events to complement one another, with the intent that the march begin in the morning and end at the site of the Pride festival. “[Capital Pride Alliance] obviously [has] the infrastructure and the mass support to help this become a reality,” Bruinooge said.

The LGBT community is no stranger to marching on the nation’s capital. The National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, the first major LGBT march on D.C., took place on October 14, 1979, partly in response to the assassination of openly gay politician Harvey Milk. The last, the National Equality March in 2009, took place on October 11 of that year and coincided with National Coming Out Day.

The Trump Administration is already no stranger to protests and demonstrations, and many members of the LGBT community joined the Women’s March, in D.C. and across the world. So why now, and why should the LGBT community take the lead on visible opposition to the current administration?

Setting aside Mike Pence, arguably the most anti-LGBT politician in modern U.S. history, and even the twelve bills that have been filed across nine states targeting transgender people, one need only look to this small sampling of post-election examples to find the answer:

1. Potential Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Donald Trump nominated Jeff Sessions for the role of Attorney General. Sessions, whose past racially-charged comments kept him from being confirmed to the federal bench, has voted for a Constitutional ban on marriage equality, against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, spoke in opposition to SCOTUS’ ruling on marriage equality, voted against repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and even voted against the Violence Against Women Act and against expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation, gender and disability. If confirmed, Sessions would lead the U.S. Department of Justice, which is tasked with the fair and impartial administration of justice.

2. Potential Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price.

Donald Trump nominated Tom Price for the role of Secretary of Health and Human Services. Price falsely said that “promoting the homosexual agenda” has a “tremendous medical health impact and economic impact.” He also voted against repealing the ban on LGB people serving openly in the military, against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, voted against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, and called SCOTUS’ ruling on marriage equality “not only a sad day for marriage, but a further judicial destruction of our entire system of checks and balances.” If confirmed, Price would be responsible for overseeing nearly 80,000 employees, and be responsible for policy across the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

3. LGBT Youth are experiencing a spike in bullying and harassment.

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has released the results of its post-election survey of 50,000 people, ages 13-18, which is believed to be the largest survey conducted of its kind. The survey found that 70% of respondents have witnessed bullying, hate messages or harassment since the election. Over the last 30 days, 50% of transgender youth reported feeling worthless most of the time, with 36% having personally been bullied or harassed and 56% percent having changed their self-expression or future plans due to the election. Almost 50% of LGBT youth said that they’d taken steps to hide their sexual orientation or delay their coming out.

Donald Trump nominated Betsy DeVos for the role of Secretary of Education, who donated $200,000 to Michigan’s ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage, and whose family donated more than $800,000 in funding to Focus on the Family, an anti-LGBT organization which supports conversion therapy to change a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity or expression.

4. Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Gore.

Donald Trump selected John Gore for the key role in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. Gore defended the University of North Carolina in its legal challenge to the state’s anti-LGBT law HB2. “HB2 places transgender North Carolinians in harm’s way and bans cities from passing non-discrimination protections, which has cost the state more than $600 million,” HRC’s Legal Director Sarah Warbelow released in a statement. “President Trump appears to be assembling an anti-LGBTQ team to lead the very agency charged with ensuring every American is protected from discrimination.”

5. This:

Donald Trump announced (unsurprisingly) via Twitter that he will name his nominee for the Supreme Court next week. While Trump said he is “fine” with same-sex marriage because it’s “settled law,” moments later he spoke in opposition to “settled law” in Roe v. Wade. He’s previously vowed to nominate a justice “in the mold” of the late, vehemently anti-LGBT Justice Antonin Scalia, and last week met with a judge believed to be one of his top candidates for the position: a man who has likened same-sex sex to “prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia.”

Given that the State Department website has removed John Kerry’s historic apology to former State Department employees who were fired for being perceived as LGBT, and given that at the time of this publication, the Trump Administration has yet to replace any mention of the LGBT community that it removed from the White House website, it’s clear that the LGBT community must stand together in solidarity.

And march.

“We urge all supporters, friends, and family to descend on D.C. for the Pride 2017 weekend (June 8-11th) to make sure our voices are heard,” The National Pride March’s event page reads. “If you cannot attend the March in Washington… we urge you to reach out to your local Pride organizations to assist in creating solidarity through your existing Pride events. Let’s make this truly a ‘National Pride March’ that spreads from coast to coast and shows solidarity through our Pride movement.”

At the date of this publication, the National Pride March event page lists that 17,000 people will be attending, with 70,000 interested in the event. Additional event details can be found at their event page, here.

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News

‘Fascist to the Core’: Trump’s Top General Slams Ex-President as ‘Most Dangerous Person’

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General Mark Milley, one of then-President Donald Trump’s top generals who served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says the Republican presidential nominee is “fascist to the core” and there is no one in America who has ever posed more of a threat to the nation.

Milley, appointed by Trump in 2019, served as the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. Armed Forces until his retirement last year. His remarks appear in Watergate journalist Bob Woodward’s latest book, “War,” The Independent reports.

After the January 6, 2021 insurrection, Gen. Milley requested a meeting with incoming Attorney General Merrick Garland, “to urge him to investigate domestic violent extremism and far-right militia movements.”

“According to Woodward, a senior Department of Justice lawyer said at the time that Milley’s sit-down with Garland might have been the first-ever meeting between a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the country’s top civilian law enforcement official. He writes that the general asked for the meeting because he was ‘deeply convinced’ that Trump remained ‘a danger to the country’ even though he had been forced from office after Biden’s election win.

READ MORE: Elon Musk’s X Engaged in a ‘Pattern of Election Interference’ to Help Trump: Reports

Later, in March of 2023, Milley spoke directly to Woodward, telling him that “no one has ever been as dangerous to this country” as the former president.

Milley had talked to Woodward about Trump for a previous book, “Peril,” but apparently his concerns had grown stronger since then.

“Do you realize, do you see what this man is?” Milley asked the veteran journalist. “He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country.”

“A fascist to the core,” the General declared.

The Guardian adds that Milley “fears being recalled to uniform and court-martialed should Trump defeat Kamala Harris next month and return to power.”

“He is a walking, talking advertisement of what he’s going to try to do,” Milley recently “warned former colleagues,” Woodward writes. “He’s saying it and it’s not just him, it’s the people around him.”

Former top Trump adviser Steve Bannon, according to Woodward, has vowed to hold Milley “accountable.”

READ MORE: Trump Campaign an ‘Influence Operation’ Says Former State Dept. Official — Experts Agree

In 2021, Woodward’s book “Peril” revealed Milley acted to ensure Trump could not misuse the nation’s nuclear arsenal.

“Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley took steps to prevent then-President Donald Trump from misusing the country’s nuclear arsenal during the last month of his presidency, according to a new book by The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Robert Costa obtained by NBC News,” the news organization had reported.

The book “recounted a phone conversation Milley had with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after the Jan. 6 violence at the Capitol, which Pelosi blamed on an ‘unhinged’ Trump. Pelosi said in January that she spoke to Milley about ‘preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike.'”

“‘I can guarantee you, you can take it to the bank, that there’ll be, that the nuclear triggers are secure and we’re not going to do — we’re not going to allow anything crazy, illegal, immoral or unethical to happen,’ Milley told her, according to a transcript of the call obtained by the authors.”

“The president alone can order the use of nuclear weapons. But he doesn’t make the decision alone. One person can order it, several people have to launch it.”

READ MORE: ‘Dangerous’: Musk Laughing at Idea of ‘Puppet’ Kamala Harris Being Killed Sparks Fury

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Elon Musk’s X Engaged in a ‘Pattern of Election Interference’ to Help Trump: Reports

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Billionaire Elon Musk, the world’s richest man who purchased the social media platform Twitter and renamed it X, is “all in” on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, The New York Times reports. X has “reportedly worked with Donald Trump’s campaign to censor material that could be harmful to the former president’s White House chances as part of a pattern of election interference that is unprecedented in U.S. history,” according to The Daily Beast.

Musk, The Times reports, “seen over the weekend jumping for joy alongside former President Donald J. Trump at a rally in Butler, Pa., is now talking to the Republican candidate multiple times a week.”

Video (below) shows Musk wore a black “Make America Great Again” cap with the words “Never Surrender” embroidered on the side and praising the ex-president’s actions during the attempted assassination.

The relationship between Musk and Trump “has proved significant in other ways. After a reporter’s publication of hacked Trump campaign information last month, the campaign connected with X to prevent the circulation of links to the material on the platform, according to two people with knowledge of the events. X eventually blocked links to the material and suspended the reporter’s account.”

READ MORE: Trump Campaign an ‘Influence Operation’ Says Former State Dept. Official — Experts Agree

The reporter, Ken Klippenstein, whose work often focuses on national security issues, published the document because “it’s of keen public interest in an election season.”

Klippenstein last month called his ban “political,” and wrote: “It’s been widely reported that my suspension from X (Twitter) is only temporary. Those reports are false. My ban from X, the company says, is permanent.”

The New York Times’ Aric Toler writes: “Trump’s campaign worked with Musk/Twitter to implement a blanket ban on sharing the link to the Vance dossier.” NBC News’ Kevin Collier adds, “Per NYT, X’s crackdown on Ken Klippenstein and the Iran-hacked Vance doc came after the Trump campaign reached out. Well within each party’s right, but this is the exact same thing Musk, Trump, and the right threw a yearslong fit about over Hunter Biden.”

Journalist Steve Mullis notes, “It’s crazy that this is a single paragraph in the NYT’s Elon Musk story. Given that there were congressional hearings accusing Biden and Democrats of doing this sort of thing, this should be its own huge story.”

Musk, The Times adds, “has effectively moved his base of operations to Pennsylvania, the place that he has recently told confidants he believes is the linchpin to Mr. Trump’s re-election,” and “relentlessly promoted Mr. Trump’s candidacy to his 201 million followers on X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter that he bought for $44 billion and has used to spread conspiracy theories about the Democratic Party and to insult its candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris.”

The Times’ article ends with this: “Online, Mr. Musk has painted a dark picture of what would happen if Mr. Trump lost, a circumstance that could hurt Mr. Musk personally. In an interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, he acknowledged ‘trashing Kamala nonstop’ and being all in for Mr. Trump.”

“If Mr. Trump loses, he joked, ‘how long do you think my prison sentence is going to be?'”

Democratic strategist Matt McDermott writes, “Doesn’t seem to be enough appreciation for the fact that it’s entirely reasonable to assume that Elon Musk is going all in on Trump because he’s worried about a federal probe into corporate corruption + election interference and knows Trump will shut down an investigation.”

The Times notes that Musk “is personally steering the actions of a super PAC that he has funded with tens of millions of dollars to turn out the vote for Mr. Trump, not just in Pennsylvania but across the country. He has even proposed taking a campaign bus tour across Pennsylvania and knocking on doors himself, in part to see how his money is being used.”

READ MORE: ‘Dangerous’: Musk Laughing at Idea of ‘Puppet’ Kamala Harris Being Killed Sparks Fury

The Times does not include news from August related to Musk’s super PAC, America PAC.

Attorney Jay Kuo alleged on Substack, “Elon Musk’s PAC Is Harvesting Voter Data.”

“The America PAC is using fraudulent techniques to obtain highly personal information from voters in swing states,” Kuo wrote, pointing to a CNBC “explosive report on how Elon Musk’s America PAC is defrauding voters through online ads. As the report explained, Musk’s Trump-aligned PAC is running a scheme that pretends to register people to vote. But in many cases, the PAC simply collects higher personal information from users that it can later use to retarget them.”

According to The Washington Post, some of Musk’s foreign backers in his $44 billion purchase of Twitter include Billionaire investor Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud ($2 billion) and The Qatar Investment Authority ($375 million). Buzzfeed News in 2022 referred to them as “countries that have historically restricted freedom of speech.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

“What’s even more telling is that America PAC only collects this personal information from users residing in swing states, such as Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina. For anyone else, it actually does assist them with registering to vote,” Kuo wrote. “It’s possible that America PAC simply ‘messed up’ badly by forgetting to actually redirect users in swing states to voter registration sites after scraping their personal information. In so doing, however, it has made it abundantly clear that it treats swing state users very differently than non-swing state ones. In exposing its own operations this way, it has raised a more troubling question: Is Musk involved in improper data harvesting and planning to improperly influence the election, just like we saw in 2016?”

READ MORE: ‘Trafficking in Nazi Race Science’: Trump Blasted After ‘Vile Trifecta’ of Antisemitism

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OPINION

Trump Campaign an ‘Influence Operation’ Says Former State Dept. Official — Experts Agree

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A prominent former U.S. State Department official who worked to fight Russian disinformation has labeled the Trump presidential campaign an “influence operation,” with several experts echoing his assessment.

Richard Stengel, an NBC News/MSNBC analyst who spent seven years as TIME magazine managing editor and served as the chief executive of the National Constitution Center, on Thursday shared his evaluation.

“The Trump candidacy is not so much a political campaign as what intelligence services call an influence operation, a coordinated effort to use mis-and-disinformation to undermine democratic institutions and processes,” declared Stengel.

Stengel, who served as U.S. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, is the author of the 2019 memoir, “Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do About It.”

READ MORE: ‘Trafficking in Nazi Race Science’: Trump Blasted After ‘Vile Trifecta’ of Antisemitism

Stengel’s comment received hundreds of thousands of views on social media, and garnered responses from experts.

“This is correct,” replied Ruth Ben-Ghiat, the well-known professor of history and an expert on fascism, authoritarians, propaganda, and democracy.

“True,” asserted Eric Chenoweth, Director of the Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe, adding, “it is correlated with Russian influence operations.”

“The Trump effort has the support of his BFF Putin, who has paid agents in the US as social ‘influencers’ to help promote Russia’s pro-Trump narrative,” noted former U.S. Ambassador to Kosovo, Greg Delawie.

Indeed, early last month the U.S. Dept. of Justice announced it had seized “32 internet domains used in Russian government-directed foreign malign influence campaigns,” which “used these domains, among others, to covertly spread Russian government propaganda with the aim of reducing international support for Ukraine, bolstering pro-Russian policies and interests, and influencing voters in U.S. and foreign elections, including the U.S. 2024 Presidential Election.”

Days later, MSNBC’s Ja’han Jones reported, “MAGA influencers are scrambling after the DOJ’s Russia indictment,” and mentioned “an unsealed affidavit … alleging a Kremlin-backed agency had nearly 600 U.S.-based influencers in its sights as it waged an online-based election manipulation operation in the United States.”

The Washington Spectator’s Dave Troy, an investigative journalist and tech entrepreneur who has written extensively on Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin, responded to Stengel’s post: “Yes. And this would have been a very cool thing for the Obama administration to say in 2015-2016.”

Dr. Joanne Freeman, a professor of American history and of American studies, replied to Stengel’s post with a simple “YUP.”

Stengel’s pronouncement wasn’t so much a revelation as a reminder.

READ MORE: Trump Stands Silently for ‘God Bless the USA’ Then Trashes Detroit to Detroit Economic Club

Earlier this week, David Corn, Mother Jones’ Washington bureau chief and co-author of “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump,” penned an important piece titled: “Trump Is Running a Disinformation Campaign, Not a Political Campaign.”

“He’s not just lying. He’s creating an alternative reality,” Corn states. “His campaign is a full-fledged project to pervert how Americans view the nation and the world, an extensive propaganda campaign designed to fire up fears and intensify anxieties that Trump can then exploit to collect votes. And the political media world has yet to come to terms with the fact that Trump is heading a disinformation crusade more likely to be found in an authoritarian state than a vibrant democracy. This is unlike other presidential campaigns in modern American history—other than his own previous efforts.”

Even before Donald Trump left the White House in disgrace in January of 2021, experts were busy analyzing just how damaging his time on office then had been.

The day after the November 2020 election which Trump ultimately lost but falsely had declared victory, The Washington Post‘s Dan Balz wrote: “Trump has attacked democracy’s institutions, but never so blatantly as he did overnight.”

“For four years, President Trump has sought to undermine the institutions of a democratic society, but never so blatantly as in the early morning hours of Wednesday. His attempt to falsely claim victory and to subvert the election itself by calling for a halt to vote-counting represents the gravest of threats to the stability of the country,” Balz wrote. “A president who respected the Constitution would let things play out. But Trump has shown once again he cares not about the Constitution or the stability and well-being of the country or anything like that. He cares only about himself and retaining the powers he now holds. And so he cries “fraud” when there is no evidence whatsoever of any such thing.”

The Niskanen Center, a D.C. think tank, one week before the violent and deadly January 6, 2021 insurrection Trump allegedly incited, asked: “How Much Did Trump Undermine U.S. Democracy?

READ MORE: ‘Sick’: Dem Mom Who Lost Son to Gun Violence Horrified to See Herself in Anti-Harris Ad

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