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RIGHT WING EXTREMISM

Revealed: Anti-LGBTQ Group Behind Abortion Pill Ban Lawsuit Left 1000s of Secret Files on an Open Google Drive

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An anti-LGBTQ hate group’s secret files reveal marketing “pushing schools to adopt junk science painting transgender youth as carriers of a pathological disorder,” and files detailing methods to indoctrinate pre-teens into a culture of “sexual purity” and opposing same-sex relationships.

The august-sounding American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) is not the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The American Academy of Pediatrics is the highly-respected and largest group of pediatricians in America. The American College of Pediatricians, classified as an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is one of several groups behind the lawsuit attempting a nationwide ban of mifepristone, better-known as the abortion pill.

“The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) is a fringe anti-LGBTQ hate group that masquerades as the premier U.S. association of pediatricians to push anti-LGBTQ junk science, primarily via far-right conservative media and filing amicus briefs in cases related to gay adoption and marriage equality,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

READ MORE: Watch: DeSantis Declines to Say If He Supports ‘Mainstream Human Rights’ When Reporter Asks ‘Yes or No?’

WIRED on Tuesday published a bombshell report revealing that the American College of Pediatricians “has suffered a significant data breach.”

“A link to an unsecured Google Drive published on the group’s website pointed users last week to a large cache of sensitive documents, including financial and tax records, membership rolls, and email exchanges spanning over a decade. The more than 10,000 documents lay bare the outsize influence of a small conservative organization working to lend a veneer of medical science to evangelical beliefs on parenting, sex, procreation, and gender.”

Indeed, ACPeds has a very small membership, reportedly just 700 people, whereas the American Academy of Pediatrics boasts 67,000 members.

WIRED found records going back to the group’s inception, which include files on how it tried to recruit members, which apparently has been a challenge during its 21 years.

Its primary directive was literally to target Christian physicians.

“One document outlining recruitment efforts states in bold, red letters: ‘TARGET CHRISTIAN MDs,” WIRED reports. “The ongoing recruitment of doctors and medical school students seen as holding Christian views has long been its top priority.”

Other files reveal a far more sinister focus: attacking transgender children.

WIRED found “volumes of literature crafted specifically to influence relationships between practicing pediatricians, parents, and their children. It includes reams of marketing material the College aims to distribute widely among public school officials. This includes pushing schools to adopt junk science painting transgender youth as carriers of a pathological disorder, one that’s capable of spontaneously causing others–à la the dancing plague–to adopt similar thoughts and behaviors.”

That marketing material apparently was based on a dubious research paper that hypothesized about something it called “rapid onset gender dysphoria,” which has been debunked, including in a recent study, according to Fenway Health.

READ MORE: Ted Cruz Defends Clarence Thomas by Co-Opting Controversial Covers From a Black-Owned 1990s Magazine That Attacked Him

Also found were files detailing ACPeds’s other efforts at indoctrination, including coaching parents on how to ply their children with a day of shopping and gifts, take them on an overnight trip, all with the intent of getting the children to embrace abstinence and oppose same-sex relationships.

“While the material is not expressly religious, it is clearly aimed at painting same-sex marriage as aberrant and immoral behavior,” WIRED reveals. “Physicians lobbied by the group are also told to urge patients to purchase Christian-based parenting guides, including one designed to help parents broach the topic of sex with their 11- and 12-year-old kids. The College suggests telling parents to plan a ‘special overnight trip,’ a pretext for instilling in their children sexual norms in line with evangelical practice. The group suggests telling parents to buy a tool called a ‘getaway kit,’ a series of workbooks that run around $54 online. The workbooks methodically walk the parents through the process of springing the topic, but only after a day-long charade of impromptu gift-giving and play.”

“These books are full of games and puzzles for the parent and child to cooperatively take on,” WIRED adds. “Throughout the process, the child slowly digests a concept of ‘sexual purity,’ lessons aided by oversimplified scripture and well-trodden Bible school parables.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s report on the American College of Pediatricians includes over a dozen comments by ACPeds officials and official statements from its publications. One likens LGBTQ people to pedophiles, one claims so-called trans activists “groom” children, and another dangerously states the “transgender movement is an opening for a totalitarian government.”

In a recent video, the American College of Pediatricians’ founders freely admit the group was created in response to the American Academy of Pediatrics’ support for same-sex marriage and parenting.

“The tipping point for me and my co-founding colleagues came when the AAP endorsed same-sex adoption, claiming that children reared by homosexual parents fared as well as those reared by their own biological heterosexual parents,” says co-founder and past ACPeds president Den Trumbull, MD, FCP.

Numerous studies prove that children raised by same-sex parents in fact fare as well as those raised by different-sex parents.

 
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News

Arizona State Senator Proposes Health Study Looking Into ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’

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President Donald Trump and his allies have long accused critics of suffering from the imaginary ailment Trump Derangement Syndrome. Now, an Arizona state senator wants the local health department to conduct a study on the made-up disease.

State Sen. Janae Shamp introduced Senate Bill 1070 on Monday, asking Arizona’s Department of Health Services to “conduct or support research” on TDS, “including its origins, manifestations and long-term effects on individuals, communities and public discourse.” If the bill were passed into law, the department would have a year to submit a report on its findings.

READ MORE: ‘Monstrous’: Trump Blasted for Blaming Rob Reiner’s Death on ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’

Shamp’s bill defines Trump Derangement Syndrome as “a behavioral or psychological phenomenon that is characterized by intense emotional or psychological reactions to Donald J. Trump, his actions or his public presence as observed in individuals or groups.” From there, the bill lays out its reasoning—mainly a laundry list of Trump’s accomplishments, including reducing the corporate tax rate by 14%, eliminating “22 regulations for every new one in 2017”, and “affirming biological truth in federal policy to protect family values.”

“Despite these contributions to America’s prosperity, security 26 and values, ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ (TDS) has emerged since his 2016 campaign,” Shamp wrote.

“TDS has led to significant social harm, with Americans who 33 support President Trump or his policies reporting discrimination, 34 intimidation or ostracism in professional, academic and social settings, 35 further eroding community cohesion,” she added.

The bill borrows heavily from a House bill proposed by Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH), according to Tucson.com. It is unknown what chances Shamp’s bill has of passing the Arizona Senate; Davidson’s bill died in committee. But even should it pass, it is unlikely to be signed into law by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs.

When asked if Hobbs would sign the bill, her spokesperson laughed and told a KTVK-TV reporter “You can quote me on that.”

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CORRUPTION

Sotomayor Slams SCOTUS Over Ruling ‘Declaring All Latinos Fair Game to Be Seized’ by ICE

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Justice Sonia Sotomayor had harsh words for the Supreme Court in her dissent in a ruling allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement to continue to arrest people based on profiling Latinos working low-wage jobs.

Monday morning, the Supreme Court of the United States issued an emergency decision in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo. The case concerns “Operation At Large,” which deployed ICE agents in the Los Angeles area to car washes, bus stops, farms and other locations believed to be frequented by Latino people who may or may not be undocumented immigrants. On July 11, the Central District Court of California ruled that ICE had to stop Operation At Large until appeals in the case could be heard.

The Court’s ruling contained no official explanation for the ruling, however Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a concurrence. In his concurrence, Kavanaugh said the law allowed ICE to “‘briefly detain’ an individual ‘for questioning’” if they have “a reasonable suspicion, based on specific articulable facts, that the person being questioned . . . is an alien illegally in the United States.”

READ MORE: Loyalty Litmus Test? Trump Allies Quietly Prep SCOTUS Short List

Operation At Large, he said, represented “reasonable suspicion” to detain someone on the following factors: “(i) presence at particular locations such as bus stops, car washes, day laborer pickup sites, agricultural sites, and the like; (ii) the type of work one does; (iii) speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent; and (iv) apparent race or ethnicity.”

He added that “apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion” but could be a “‘relevant factor,” and that if someone detained by ICE turned out to be a citizen, they would be “free to go after the brief encounter.”

Sotomayor disagreed that this is what was happening, citing what had happened to other citizens. Jason Gavidia worked at a Los Angeles tow yard that ICE stopped at. Agents repeatedly asked if he was a citizen. They then took his phone, pushed him against a metal fence, twisted his arm, and took away his identification, according to Sotomayor’s dissent.

“Other Operation At Large encounters have included even more force and even fewer questions. For example, agents pulled up in four unmarked cars to a bus stop in Pasadena; ‘the doors opened and men in masks with guns started running at’ three Latino men who were having their morning coffee, waiting to be picked up for work,” she wrote.

“In Glendale, nearly a dozen masked agents with guns ‘jumped out of . . . cars’ at a Home Depot, and began ‘chasing’ and ‘tackl[ing]’ Latino day laborers without ‘identify[ing] themselves as ICE or police, ask[ing] questions, or say[ing] anything else.’ In downtown Los Angeles, agents ‘jumped out of a van, rushed up to [a tamale vendor], surrounded him, and handled him violently,’ all ‘[w]ithout asking . . . any questions.'”

Sotomayor concluded that Operation At Large and the Court’s decision “all but declared that all Latinos, U. S. citizens or not, who work low wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction.”

She also condemned the court for not issuing an explanation beyond the concurrence. She alleged that the Court had been eager to “circumvent the ordinary appellate process” when it comes to President Donald Trump and his administration.

“Some situations simply cry out for an explanation, such as when the Government’s conduct flagrantly violates the law,” Sotomayor wrote, adding that Operation At Large and the Court’s ruling clearly violates the Bill of Rights.

“The Fourth Amendment protects every individual’s constitutional right to be ‘free from arbitrary interference by law officers.’ After today, that may no longer be true for those who happen to look a certain way, speak a certain way, and appear to work a certain type of legitimate job that pays very little. Because this is unconscionably irreconcilable with our Nation’s constitutional guarantees, I dissent,” she wrote.

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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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