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Christian Group Gets SCOTUS to Agree to Review Its Anti-Gay Baker’s Case. Now They’re Trying for Their Anti-Gay Florist.

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Group Has Support of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Who Addressed Them in a Private Speech Behind Closed Doors Last Week

Alliance Defending Freedom late last month successfully petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to agree to review the case of a Colorado baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. Having finally gotten SCOTUS to accept the case of Jack Phillips, owner of the Masterpiece Cake Shop, the ADF is now petitioning the Supreme Court to accept another, similar case: a Washington state florist who refused to do provide a floral arrangement for a same-sex couple’s wedding.

The two cases are very similar. Both Jack Phillips and Barronelle Stutzman, the owner of Arlene’s Flowers in Washington, claim they aren’t anti-gay, while insisting they have a First Amendment right to refuse service to gay people based on their deeply-held religious beliefs and artistic expression. Both have lost every case along the way. And both are represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a far right Christian legal firm that appears on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of anti-gay hate groups.

And as the embedded photo above proves, ADF’s business model is turning in to collecting bakers and florists and others who refuse to serve same-sex couples or have exhibited anti-gay bias and taking their cases as far as they can, while fundraising off them.

RELATED: ‘I Don’t Believe Jesus Would Have Made the Cake’: Christian Baker Whose Case Is at Supreme Court Speaks on ‘The View’

The Barronelle Stutzman case borders on the absurd, and the ADF and their attorney handling the case have not been shy about playing loose with the facts, while mounting a full-fledged fundraising campaign as they failed at every turn.

“We need 1 million brave people to stand with us by donating $24 today,” reads a fundraising appeal on ADF’s website. “If 1 million people each give $24, we can match the amount that the ACLU just added to their funds, which they use to sue people of faith like Barronelle. And thanks be to God, generous Ministry Friends have given a $2 million matching grant to help provide a strong legal defense for Barronelle and other Christians like her. Please stand with us … and with Barronelle by making a tax-deductible gift, that will be matched dollar for dollar, today.”

Barronelle Stutzman’s continuing struggle to save her religious freedom should have every Christian in America deeply concerned,” reads yet another fundraiser on the ADF site. (Why do they single out “Christians”?) “But today there is good news that could impact Barronelle’s case and others like it across the country. A generous Christian family has just given a $1.5 million matching grant to help provide a strong legal defense for religious freedom.”

In a statement published by The Washington Blade, which reported on the news ADF is petitioning the Supreme Court, Stutzman explained her refusal to sell flowers to her long-time customer, Rob Ingersoll.

“There was never an issue with his being gay, just as there hasn’t been with any of my other customers or employees. He just enjoyed my custom floral designs, and I loved creating them for him. But now the state is trying to use this case to force me to create artistic expression that violates my deepest beliefs and take away my life’s work and savings, which will also harm those who I employ. I’m not asking for anything that our Constitution hasn’t promised me and every other American: the right to create freely, and to live out my faith without fear of government punishment or interference.”

Notice Stutzman’s statement claims losing the case will “take away my life’s work and savings.”

WATCH: Top Anti-LGBT Attorney Says ‘No Evidence’ Gays or Lesbians ‘Have Been Denied Service’

That’s at best an inaccurate statement, one that ADF attorney Kristen Waggoner and the ADF have repeated countless times.

In 2015 Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson offered to settle with Stutzman for that $2000. She refused.

“Your offer reveals that you don’t really understand me or what this conflict is all about,” Stutzman wrote in her response to State Attorney General Bob Ferguson. “It’s about freedom, not money. I certainly don’t relish the idea of losing my business, my home, and everything else that your lawsuit threatens to take from my family, but my freedom to honor God in doing what I do best is more important.”

Attorney General Ferguson made clear he wasn’t out to bankrupt Stutzman, as NCRM reported. 

“My primary goal has always been to bring about an end to the Defendants’ unlawful conduct and to make clear that I will not tolerate discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation,” AG Ferguson said in a statement.

The case escalated. She was then offered an even better deal: $1001.

She refused.

But along the way, Waggoner has repeatedly made statements like this – which the right wing media has been only too happy to repeat.

Here she is in an ADF video:

Fox News, in 2016: “The 70-year-old Stutzman is now at risk of not only losing her business but also losing her life savings and personal retirement assets.”

“Barronelle Stutzman is now going to lose her business, her life savings, and possibly her own home for putting her faith into practice,” Fox News’ Erick Erickson claimed, incorrectly, in 2015.

In a 2015 Christian Post article, Waggoner made a similar claim:

“The lesson from the court’s decisions is that you put your home, your family business, and your life at risk by daring to defy a government mandate that forces you to promote views you believe are wrong,” Waggoner, an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom, said in a statement.

And in a memo advising against a Pennsylvania ordinance, ADF claimed “the government seeks to punish Barronelle because she declined to violate her religious beliefs about marriage. Now she might lose her businesses, her life-savings, and everything she owns simply because she believes that marriage is the union of a man and a woman and that her faith forbids her from celebrating any other view of marriage. Indeed, if she does not prevail in the lawsuit brought against her, Barronelle will be forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to the attorneys who have been prosecuting her.”

It’s absurd to claim “a government mandate” will force Stutzman to “lose her businesses, her life-savings, and everything she owns simply because she believes that marriage is the union of a man and a woman,” when she was repeatedly offered options – or she could have shuttered or altered her business to comply with laws and ordinances of the state she chose to license her business in.

This same “religious freedom” argument was used to convince people there was nothing wrong with refusing service to Black people. 

Have we not learned?

RELATED STORIES:

Anti-Gay Florist Pens Washington Post Op-Ed, Gets Totally Panned In Comments Section

Watch: ADF Attorney Tells Christian Conference Matthew Shepard’s Murder Wasn’t A Hate Crime

Florist Baronelle Stutzman Refuses To Settle Discrimination Case Against Her

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‘Tenfold Increase in Number of Deportations’: Trump Hands Stephen Miller Top Policy Post

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Stephen Miller, the architect of Donald Trump’s child and family separation policy and one of his longest-serving, die-hard loyalists, will become the incoming president’s deputy chief of staff for policy, a top role in the second administration of the Republican nationalist.

Miller, an immigration hardliner who was also responsible for Trump’s Muslim-majority country travel ban, has a history of promoting white nationalist rhetoric. He is responsible for the separation of thousands of young children from their parents, and even from their siblings, as a means to deter other asylum seekers from crossing the southern border into the United States. Under Trump and Miller’s “zero tolerance” policy, there were no plans to reunite the children with their parents.

Despite efforts by the Biden administration, thousands of children have never been placed back into their families. As of May, 1400 children remained separated from their parents.

READ MORE: Trump Nomination of Stefanik to UN Resurfaces ‘Ultra MAGA’ Transformation

“Miller will return with more influence than he had in the first Trump administration, where he served as a senior adviser for policy, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN,” The Daily Beast adds, noting that Miller was also behind Trump’s “American carnage” inauguration address.

CNN reports that “Miller is also a lead architect of the president-elect’s plans for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. He has said that a second Trump administration would seek a tenfold increase in the number of deportations to more than 1 million per year. In an interview on Fox News last week, Miller expressed eagerness at the prospect of beginning mass deportations as soon as possible.”

“They begin on Inauguration Day, as soon as he takes the oath of office,” Miller said.

“Confirming the appointment, Vice President-elect JD Vance posted a message of congratulations on Monday to Miller on X and said, ‘This is another fantastic pick by the president.’ The announcement was first reported by CNN,” The Associated Press reports.

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In 2019, The Guardian called Miller “the white nationalist at the heart of Trump’s White House,” amid an “extraordinary email leak” that revealed Miller had “promoted white nationalist articles and books in emails to a writer at Breitbart, who after leaving the hard-right website leaked 900 messages to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).”

Miller also wrote at least part of Trump’s infamous January 6, 2021 speech at the Ellipse, during which he said, “…and we’re going to walk to the Capitol…”

CNN, in a minute-by-minute analysis of the insurrection,  reported that at 9:52 AM, “Trump talks to senior adviser and lead speechwriter Stephen Miller for 26 minutes, according to White House records that were obtained by the committee and released at a public hearing. After Trump’s conversation with Miller, Trump adjusts a draft of his upcoming speech to add more lines about Pence and the joint session of Congress, according to the committee, which reviewed the drafts.”

In February of 2017, just weeks into Trump’s first term, Miller told reporters, “our opponents, the media, and the whole world will soon see, as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial, and will not be questioned.”

Watch the video bel0w or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Probably Illegal Rumors’: Trump Calls for Investigations — to Protect His Interests

 

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Trump Nomination of Stefanik to UN Resurfaces ‘Ultra MAGA’ Transformation

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U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) has accepted Donald Trump’s nomination to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, drawing criticism from opponents who challenge the president-elect’s decision to cite her prior controversial and shifting statements, including her apparent hostility toward the international organization.

“Stefanik has repeatedly attacked the United Nations over accusations that the world body is antisemitic. Last month she called for a ‘complete reassessment of U.S. funding of the United Nations’ in response to efforts by the Palestinian Authority to expel Israel from the United Nations as war rages in the Middle East,” Politico reports. “Stefanik this year drew praise from Republicans and Jewish leaders after she grilled college presidents in a House hearing on their handling of campus demonstrations over the Israel-Gaza war.”

But before Donald Trump won the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, Congresswoman Stefanik had opposed the real estate mogul and later attributed responsibility for the January 6, 2021, insurrection to the now-former president, who sought to overturn his election defeat.

Stefanik, 40, currently also serves as the Chair of the House Republican Conference, a role she won after MAGA Republicans ousted U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) from that leadership position. Cheney, who opposed Donald Trump, served as one of two Republicans on the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.

READ MORE: ‘My Family in Danger’: Democratic Congressman Reveals Chilling Details of ‘Potential Plot’

In 2021, Mother Jones reported that Stefanik had said Trump was soft on Russian President Vladimir Putin, and noted that her replacing Cheney “marks the triumph of Trump-uber-alles fealty within GOP circles. A heretic is being excommunicated and replaced by a loyalist. It’s been noted that Stefanik entered the House as a moderate and now is being anointed as a top Trumper who has fully supported Trump’s Big Lie that the election was rigged against him.”

“But Stefanik’s Trumpification stands out because only a few years ago—well into Trump’s presidency—she was speaking critically about him on key fronts. In fact, at times Stefanik sounded practically like a Never Trumper, as she called on Trump to recognize that Russia had attacked the 2016 election to help him, urged him to release his tax returns, and assailed him for his comments about women.”

The following year, Stefanik proudly declared, “I am ultra-MAGA.”

Before that, Stefanik had made decisively anti-Trump statements, like, “Russia meddled in our electoral process,” and, “We’ve seen evidence that Russia tried to hurt the Hillary Clinton campaign,” and, “I am concerned about some of the contacts between Russians and surrogates within the Trump Organization and the Trump campaign.”

In December of 2022, The New York Times published a lengthy profile on Congresswoman Stefanik, detailing how she had “embarked on one of the most brazen political transformations of the Trump era. With breathtaking speed and alacrity, Ms. Stefanik remade herself into a fervent Trump apologist, adopted his over-torqued style on Twitter and embraced the conspiracy theories that animate his base, amplifying debunked allegations of dead voters casting ballots in Atlanta and unspecified ‘irregularities‘ involving voting-machine software in 2020 swing states.”

“Ms. Stefanik’s reinvention has made her a case study in the collapse of the old Republican establishment and its willing absorption into the new, Trump-dominated one.”

Critics now note that she deleted her original statement condemning the January 6, 2021 violence at the U.S. Capitol during the insurrection.

And point to an interview she did that highlighted that New York Times report:

Her “reinvention” would also come to include her full-throated support for George Santos, the now-expelled Republican former U.S. congressman and convicted felon, an endorsement that remains on her social media page.

READ MORE: ‘Chief Shareholder in the Presidency’: Musk on Trump-Zelenskyy Mar-a-Lago Call Fuels Fears

In January, Stefanik declared she had “concerns about the treatment of January 6 hostages.”

Former Republican Capitol Hill communications director Tara Setmayer blasted Stefanik for, among other things, calling those convicted of crimes surrounding the January 6 insurrection “hostages.”

Stefanik faced condemnation after that declaration, but escaped a resolution that would have censured her.

NPR’s Brian Mann, who had reported on Stefanik in 2018, wrote Monday that the New York Republican lawmaker’s “foreign policy values during her early career (neocon, antiRussia, internationalist, proNATO) have proven entirely flexible. They have been adjusted or abandoned to reflect Trump’s agenda.”

“Underestimating Stefanik,” he warned, “has ended so many careers.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Probably Illegal Rumors’: Trump Calls for Investigations — to Protect His Interests

 

 

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‘My Family in Danger’: Democratic Congressman Reveals Chilling Details of ‘Potential Plot’

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U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz Friday evening revealed the chilling details of an apparent potential assassination plot he says has endangered his life and his family. The Florida Democrat says police arrested a suspect who is a former felon, had body armor, a rifle, an antisemitic manifesto, with “only my name on the ‘target’ list.”

“The day before the election, I was notified by the Margate Police Department, located in my Congressional District, about a potential plot on my life,” Congresman Moskwitz said in a statement. “The individual in question was arrested not far from my home; he is a former felon who was in possession of a rifle, a suppressor, and body armor. Found with him was a manifesto that, among other things, included antisemitic rhetoric and only my name on the ‘target’ list. There are many other details that I will not disclose as I do not want to interfere with an ongoing investigation. I want to thank local law enforcement, the US Marshalls, the FBI, the US Capitol Police, and the US Attorney’s office.”

READ MORE: ‘Chief Shareholder in the Presidency’: Musk on Trump-Zelenskyy Mar-a-Lago Call Fuels Fears

“As someone who was appointed to the Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump, I understand the failures and importance of fixing the protection of our current and future Commander- In-Chief and Vice President.”

Rep. Moskowitz adds that, “At the same time, I am deeply worried about Congressional member security and the significant lack thereof when we are in the district. Regardless of our political affiliations or differences, we all have families we want to keep safe.”

In a post on social media, Moskowitz added, “Serving my constituents is a great honor, but it has put my family in danger.”

READ MORE: ‘Probably Illegal Rumors’: Trump Calls for Investigations — to Protect His Interests

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