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RIGHT WING EXTREMISM

The Religious-Right Coalition Behind Kansas’ Sweeping Anti-Trans Legislation

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Kansas legislators passed sweeping anti-trans legislation this week that has a religious-right coalition’s fingerprints all over it.

On Tuesday, the Republican-led Kansas legislature passed Senate Bill 180—which would make it illegal for trans people to use the bathroom corresponding with their gender identity and illegal to change their name or gender identity on drivers’ licenses—sending it to Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s desk with a veto-proof majority.

SB 180, which opponents say attempts to erase trans people from society, was introduced by Kansas state Sen. Renee Erickson. Erickson is a graduate of the Family Policy Alliance’s Statesmen Academy, which promises to “equip [participants] with foundational Christian worldview training.” The Family Policy Alliance is also a leading partner in the anti-trans coalition that has dubbed itself “Promise to America’s Children.”

Formed in 2021, “Promise to America’s Children” vows to “protect” children who it says “are under attack” from “politicized ideas about sexual orientation and gender identity ideology.” The 23 groups that make up the coalition portray feminism and LGBTQ equality as threats to the Christian right’s narrow vision of “the natural family.” With behemoth partner organizations like Alliance Defending Freedom and the Heritage Foundation, the coalition drafts model legislation and works with aligned state lawmakers to introduce them in their state legislatures.

A day after passage of SB 180, the state’s Republican-controlled Senate also overrode Kelly’s veto of House Bill 2238, which bars trans kids from playing on sports teams according to their gender identity and which trans rights advocates worry could lead to state-mandated genital inspections of some athletes. That legislation includes identical language to a 2020 Idaho bill drafted by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a leading partner of the anti-trans coalition. It was also introduced by Rep. Barb Wasinger, a participant in Family Policy Alliance’s Statesman Academy who has signaled her support of the anti-trans coalition by signing its “promise.”

The anti-trans coalition’s website lists six signatories from Kansas in total—state Reps. Barb Wasinger, Steven Howe, Lisa Moser, Eric Smith, Mike Thompson, and Susan Humphries—all of whom voted to pass both both pieces of anti-trans legislation.

The anti-trans coalition also had some influence in testimony. The groups that testified in support of SB 180, which makes it illegal for trans people to use the bathroom corresponding to their gender identity, included Kansas Family Voice, a state chapter of the Family Policy Alliance and a state partner of the anti-trans coalition. The Family Policy Alliance has worked with at least one of the other groups that testified in support of the anti-trans legislation: Women’s Liberation Front, also known as WoLF, a self-described radical feminist organization that criticizes transgender people as a threat to cisgender women.

The pairing of self-proclaimed feminists and ardent anti-feminists is strategic. In 2017, Right Wing Watch reported on the anti-trans strategies and tactics being discussed at the religious-right Values Voters Summit. Among them was a suggestion that anti-trans activists avoid using religious language because secular arguments would be more successful at building alliances with anti-trans feminists.

Fomenting opposition to trans girls’ participation in sports has been used to build momentum for even more aggressive anti-trans legislation. A 2021 Right Wing Watch investigation found that “Promise to America’s Children” was focusing attention on trans athletes while working behind the scenes to draft and pass legislation that would not only keep trans girls and women from playing on sports teams, but also remove access to gender-affirming care for trans youth.

 

This article was originally published by Right Wing Watch and is republished here by permission.

Image by Victoria Pickering via Flickr and a CC license

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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.

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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.

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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.

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