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Marco Rubio Gets Mixed Reviews After Denouncing Russia for Chechnya’s Gay Concentration Camps

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Rubio’s Ongoing Work Harming LGBT People Is Not Erased by One Act of Decency

There’s no question many were pleasantly surprised to see Republican Senator Marco Rubio denounce Russia over Chechnya‘s gay concentration camps. There’s been insufficient attention around the world over reports of – some say of several – detention facilities in Chechnya, where about 100 gay men are held, tortured, and sometimes killed.

“We should use our voice on the global stage to call attention to these horrifying acts and to ensure that they are condemned in an appropriate way, ultimately in the hopes that they will be stopped,” Sen. Rubio said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “We should never, ever tolerate human rights violations against any person for their political views, their religious beliefs, or their sexual orientation.”

His words were welcome, leading some in the LGBT community to praise him. The Human Rights Campaign even posted a tweet with the clip of Rubio’s remarks.

And HRC’s president also offered praise:

Others on Twitter offered praise and support for the move, given Rubio’s strong anti-LGBT record.

But it should be noted that Senator Rubio was not giving a speech in support of LGBT civil rights, he was giving a speech attacking Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, and Chechnya’s dictator, Ramzan Kadyrov.

“Unfortunately this is not a new reality for those living under the brutal tyranny of the Chechen leader, who by the way happens to be a loyal ally of Vladimir Putin,” Rubio said in his speech. “There have been reports in the past of similar abuses, although these reports seem to be the most brutal and should provoke anger in all of us.”

“The actual complaints are all around us,” the Florida Republican also noted. “They have been well documented in publications throughout the world, but instead, Vladimir Putin is choosing to prop up Kadyrov, the Chechen brutal dictator, and prop up his brutal regime instead of holding them accountable.”

“The United States and other responsible nations should do more to ensure that all people are protected, and those who harm them are held responsible. We should use our voice on the global stage to call attention to these horrifying acts and to ensure that they are condemned in an appropriate way, and ultimately in the hopes that they will be stopped.”

As he did in going back on his word that he would not seek re-election if he failed to win the White House last year, Sen. Rubio once again used LGBT people as his pawns, as a tool. Rubio used the horrific Pulse massacre in Orlando to claim that he was needed in the Senate after all. 

“My family and I will be praying about all this, and we’ll see what I need to do next with my life in regards to how I can best serve,” Sen. Rubio said the morning after the mass shooting, which was the nation’s worst anti-gay hate crime and deadliest terror attack since 9/11.

Absolutely, the LGBT community and all minorities, especially in the age of Trump, need all the support we can get. LGBT people, and especially, per reports, the gay men in Chechnya, need everyone’s help. And many are grateful for Rubio’s comments, and for shining more light on this ongoing tragedy.

But let’s not forget Rubio’s record. He’s voted against every LGBT issue that’s come before him. And today, right now, he supports the First Amendment Defense Act, which, if it becomes law, would allow anyone who claims a sincerely-held religious belief to discriminate against LGBT people. Anyone, including your neighbor, your boss, your supermarket, credit card company, insurance company, your local, state, and federal government. Anyone.

It was just three weeks ago that Senator Rubio joined 17 other Republicans in signing a letter urging President Trump to sign an executive order that would harm LGBT people under the guise of protecting “religious freedom.”

An executive order requiring federal government agencies to protect the right to religious freedom is necessary, and directing agencies to adhere to existing federal laws protecting religious freedom is sound policy.  The federal government has pushed organizations like the Little Sisters of the Poor to change their health care plan to offer services that violate the Little Sisters’ deeply held religious beliefs.  Highly-qualified faith-based organizations are being denied or they are declining to compete for federal contracts and grants because of their religious beliefs, the same beliefs that lead them to provide charitable work on behalf of the most vulnerable populations in our country and around the world. The threat of loss of accreditation or charitable tax status lingers in the wake of the United States Solicitor General’s comments upon the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that the loss of charitable tax status was, “certainly going to be an issue.” Religious groups on college campuses are being banned, threatened, or forced to change their bylaws.

Not everyone on social media who saw Senator Rubio’s remarks were wholly supportive.

It’s great Senator Rubio is helping to get the word out on the crisis in Chechnya. But his ongoing work harming LGBT people is not erased by one act of decency. 

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

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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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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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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

 

Image via Reuters

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