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A Congressman, a VP, a Hate Group Head, or the Wife of a SCOTUS Justice: Who Was Behind Trump’s Transgender Military Ban the Most?

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It was July 26, 2017. Three and a half years ago, almost to the day, when President Donald Trump shocked the nation with a series of tweets that seemed to have come out of nowhere.

“After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail,” Trump’s tweets read. “Thank you.”

The Commander in Chief had just placed a total ban on transgender service members. Just like that, in the blink of an eye.

Literally every word of that statement was a lie.

President Joe Biden just a few short hours ago reversed the ban via an executive order.

Trump had not consulted with his generals or military experts. Transgender service members do not carry tremendous medical costs, nor does employing them create disruption. Even the “thank you” seemed false.

Civil rights and LGBTQ organizations sued in federal courts and won, multiple times.

But the U.S. Supreme Court, as it did so many times during his tenure, bowed to Trump and granted him the “right” to ban all transgender military service members.

Only later would Americans learn Trump made the announcement not only for purely political reasons, but at the urging of some of the far right’s and the religious right’s most powerful partisans.

Among them, anti-LGBTQ hate group head Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. Less than one year later Trump would elevate him directly into the administration, to serve on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. Perkins is now the Chair of that group. Trump announced his trans ban just days after Perkins asked him for it.

Related: Longtime BFFs Mike Pence and Tony Perkins Reportedly ‘Played Leading Role’ Drafting Pentagon Ban on Transgender Service Members

Also, Ginni Thomas, the conspiracy theorist and far right lobbyist who happens to be the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. She met with Trump in January of 2019, apparently in part to force him to enact the ban he had announced 18 months earlier, that was tied up in the courts.

And then-Congressman Mark Meadows (R-NC), who would later become Trump’s White House chief of staff, reportedly  took a “significant role” in pushing for the transgender military ban. (Politico reports today Meadows, now out of the White House, is so unemployable he is now forced to consider taking a job with the Trump Organization post-presidency.)

According to ThinkProgress, Arkansas megachurch pastor Ronnie Floyd, who also sat on Trump’s evangelical advisory board, along with Perkins, both “had the ear of the president and have used it to advocate against allowing transgender people to serve their country.”

Floyd actually joined other evangelical leaders at the White House two weeks beforeTrump announced the ban on Twitter last year, where they openly advocated for the president to reverse the Obama administration’s decision to let trans people serve.

There was more to Trump’s out-of-the-blue ban on transgender service personnel.

Perkins, ThinkProgress adds, “personally took credit for lobbying Trump for the ban, and admitted to knowing it was coming even though the military’s leadership did not. Perkins also contributed to a secret working group impaneled by Vice President Pence to overrule any trans-friendly recommendations made by a military study group. Documents show that the official military panel only heard testimony in favor of letting trans people serve, yet the final recommendations somehow called for the opposite.

And then there’s Vice President Mike Pence.

According to Slate in 2018, “a ‘panel of experts’ has been crafting a report, also released on Friday, designed to provide pretextual justification for Trump’s ban. According to multiple sources, Vice President Mike Pence played a leading role in the creation of this report, along with Ryan Anderson, an anti-trans activist, and Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, an anti-LGBTQ lobbying group.”

“House Republicans were planning to pass a spending bill stacked with his campaign promises, including money to build his border wall with Mexico,” Politico reported at the time. “But an internal House Republican fight over transgender troops was threatening to blow up the bill. And House GOP insiders feared they might not have the votes to pass the legislation because defense hawks wanted a ban on Pentagon-funded sex reassignment operations — something GOP leaders wouldn’t give them.”

They turned to Trump, who didn’t hesitate. In the flash of a tweet, he announced that transgender troops would be banned altogether.

In other words, he didn’t bat an eye, just made up a lie to push his agenda forward. Didn’t even think twice about the tens of thousands of lives that would be affected.

Two years later, he was still lying about the ban.

“They take massive amounts of drugs,” Trump told a UK news outlet about transgender people, which is a lie, “they have to — and, also you’re not allowed to take drugs in the military, and they have to after the operation.”

Those “drugs,” as NBC News reported when Trump made the offensive remarks, are prescription medication, and “the military does not prohibit service members from using prescription drugs — including hormones.”

HRC posted this video at the time:

 

Image: Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead via Flickr

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law

Arkansas Senator Files Bill to Abolish State Library, Give Education Department Control

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The right-wing war on knowledge continues as an Arkansas state senator filed a bill Thursday to abolish the State Library as well as the library board.

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Jonesboro), along with State Rep. Wayne Long (R-Bradford), filed Senate Bill 536 on Thursday. The bill would not just remove all references to the State Library from existing laws, but also put the state’s other libraries under the control of the Arkansas Department of Education.

A previous version of the bill, SB184, would have also shuttered the Arkansas Educational Television Commission, which oversees the state’s PBS stations, according to the Arkansas Advocate.

READ MORE: Clean Up Alabama Wants State to Dump ‘Marxist’ American Library Association

The Arkansas State Library is not just a regular library. In addition to providing information to state agencies and lawmakers, it also distributes funding to the other libraries around the state. Under SB536, the Department of Education would take on all its responsibilities. The State Library is officially a part of the Department of Education already, but it operates as an independent organization.

While the proposal may sound like a shuffling-around of duties, the main thrust of the bill is to allow more direct control over the Arkansas library system by controlling the purse strings. The bill would keep libraries from distributing “age-inappropriate materials” to those under 17 years old and sex education materials from those under 12. Libraries would also have to set up a system where those in the community could request that certain items be banned for minors, according to KARK-TV. Those that don’t meet these restrictions will have state funding pulled.

Earlier legislation filed by Sullivan and passed into law includes Act 242, which ended the requirement for library directors to have a master’s degree in library science, the Advocate reported.  Sullivan, however, was unsuccessful with a proposed amendment to another bill that would strip funding from libraries affiliated with the American Library Association—meaning most, if not all of them. That amendment was rejected this week over concerns the language in it was too broad, according to the Advocate.

The ALA has been a target of right-wing politicians and activists upset with its free speech stance and fights against censorship. Sullivan in particular has objected to a provision in the ALA’s Library Bill of Rights protecting library access for all ages, the Advocate reported. He also called for the state’s chapter of the ALA to be defunded—despite the fact that it receives no state funding.

Image via Shutterstock

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BIGOTRY

Texas to Investigate Anonymous Complaint Teachers Used Trans Student’s Pronouns

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After a Moms for Liberty member claimed that teachers at a Texas high school used a trans student’s new name and proper pronouns, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott ordered an investigation.

On February 13, Denise Bell of the right wing, anti-LGBTQ group Moms for Liberty, addressed the Houston Independent School Board. She read a statement that she said came from the parents of a trans student at Bellaire High School. The parents were upset that teachers used the student’s new name and pronouns, according to Erin in the Morning. The anonymous statement Bell read said that the change happened without parental consent, and “goes against our Christian faith, the advice of [their] therapist and quite frankly common sense.”

Bell then claimed that the school district was “purposely and secretively transitioning minors.”

READ MORE: GOP Candidate Complaining She Wasn’t Allowed to ‘Have Kids Laugh At’ Transgender Students in Viral Video Draws Rebuke

State Representative Steve Toth—who represents a different district than the school is in—informed Abbott of the complaint in a letter on February 26. Two weeks later, Abbott replied to Toth’s letter, revealing he told the Texas Education Agency to investigate the Bellaire High School, accusing the teachers of helping “to ‘socially transition’ a student—violating the express wishes of the child’s mother,” which Abbott called “inappropriate and potentially unlawful.”

Abbott directed the TEA to not just determine whether or not the teachers did indeed use the trans student’s name and pronouns, but also open a full investigation into the school. TEA was told to find out if the school had also violated “policies concerning sexual education curriculum, parental consent for communications with students, mental health services or guidance to students, and parent grievances”; if any school employees had “engaged in misconduct”; and whether any student “has been subjected to abuse or neglect.”

That last one has a footnote on “abuse or neglect,” referring to a statement from President Donald Trump’s March 4 speech in front of a joint session of Congress:

“A few years ago, January Littlejohn and her husband discovered that their daughter’s school had secretly socially transitioned their 13-year-old little girl. Teachers and administrators conspired to deceive January and her husband, while encouraging her daughter to use a new name and pronouns—‘they/them’ pronouns, actually—all without telling January, who is here tonight and is now a courageous advocate against this form of child abuse.”

This is not the first time Abbott and his administration have attacked the state’s trans community. In his “State of the State Address” this year, he said that teachers who discuss gender transition with students should be fired, according to KTRK-TV. Texas has also banned trans students from sports as well as the use of puberty blockers in cases of minors experiencing gender dysphoria, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Image via Shutterstock

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AMERICA FIRST?

Tim Walz: ‘Racism’ Motivates MAGA Movement to Pardon Derek Chauvin

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Minnesota Governor Tim Walz didn’t mince words when asked what the motivation was for the new movement among MAGA Republicans to convince President Donald Trump to pardon Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who killed George Floyd in 2020.

“Racism. It’s racist. OK? That’s what I believe,” Walz said in an interview with Semafor published Wednesday.

The calls to pardon Chauvin started with an online petition earlier this month, according to The Independent. The pardon push picked up steam this week when conservative commentator Ben Shapiro of the Daily Wire launched a webseries, “The Case of Derek Chauvin.” Shapiro claims the officer was convicted on “extraordinarily scanty evidence,” saying Floyd did not die from having Chauvin’s knee on his neck for over nine minutes, but rather from drugs in Floyd’s system and heart disease.

READ MORE: Derek Chauvin Sentenced to 22-and-a-Half Years for Murder of George Floyd – Less Than Maximum Possible Sentence

Walz, however, disputes this interpretation of events.

“This was a man who murdered George Floyd on TV,” Walz said, adding that a pardon “would undermine the faith in the system.”

The White House, however, has denied that a Chauvin pardon is in Trump’s plans. Earlier this month, Trump said he hadn’t even heard about a push to pardon Floyd’s killer, and on Wednesday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt repeated that a pardon is “not something he’s considering at this time,” according to The Grio.

However, some commentators, like The Hill’s Juan Williams are skeptical, pointing out that Trump has pardoned two police officers convicted of killing a Black man in the first days of his second term.

In 2020, after the killing, Trump condemned Chauvin.

“We all saw what we saw. It’s hard to conceive anything other than what we did see. It should have never happened,” Trump said.

If Trump were to pardon Chauvin, it would be largely moot. Presidents can only pardon those convicted on federal charges. Chauvin was convicted on both federal and Minnesota state charges. In the event Trump cleared the federal charges, the main thing that would happen is that Chauvin would be moved from the federal prison in Big Spring, Texas to a Minnesota state prison.

Minnesota sentenced Chauvin to 22 and a half years for murder; on the federal level, he was sentenced to 21 years for violating Floyd’s civil rights. Barring a federal pardon, the two sentences are running concurrently, not consecutively.

Image via Shutterstock

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