systemic RacisM

7 23 started as place to put denial but also proof it's real?

How national TV news covered Gary’s prolonged power outage

On August 11, a powerful derecho brought winds reaching 99 mph to northern Indiana, toppling trees and utility poles and causing the worst outage in NIPSCO’s history. The utility reported nearly 375,000 outages across its service territory, and approximately 40,000 Gary residents — almost 60% of the total population — lost power. The following day, Mayor Eddie Melton declared a local disaster emergency.
Parts of Gary remained without power for two weeks. By August 25, NIPSCO said it had restored power to 99% of affected customers, although hundreds remained without electricity and recovery from the storm was continuing.
“These aren’t simple repairs,” said Melody Birmingham, an executive at NIPSCO parent company NiSource, as the outage entered its second week. “These are systems that are being rebuilt.”
The storm caused extraordinary damage — Birmingham said approximately 300 utility poles and 44 transmission poles in Gary needed to be repaired or replaced. But the scale and duration of the outage also raised questions about NIPSCO’s maintenance practices, infrastructure investments, and response. Gov. Mike Braun called for state regulators to investigate the utility, while residents filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that inadequate vegetation management contributed to the damage.
The prolonged outage unfolded in a city where decades of steel-industry job losses and population decline have contributed to widespread abandonment, a diminished tax base, and aging infrastructure. Today, 76% of Gary’s approximately 67,000 residents are Black, one-third live in poverty, and the median household income is under $39,000.
As the outage dragged on, the costs mounted. Gary Common Council President Linda Barnes-Caldwell told Free Press Indiana that some residents had spent money on hotel stays and diesel for generators and were approaching the end of the month with rent still due. “They’re just trying to maintain a level of survival,” she said. The Associated Press reported that residents had discarded hundreds of dollars in groceries and that school closures could force families living paycheck to paycheck to miss work to provide childcare, while one Gary restaurant owner estimated losing $19,000 in sales during an eight-day closure.
In a city where a significant number of residents are poor, those costs were part of what made the prolonged outage a climate and environmental justice story.
National television news initially paid little attention to that story. The major corporate broadcast and cable news networks combined mentioned Gary in only 2 segments on August 12, both within broader coverage of the storm and its damage across Indiana. They aired no additional segments about the city for the next six days. Coverage began focusing specifically on Gary’s prolonged outage on August 19. From August 19-25, the networks aired 40 segments as outages became increasingly concentrated in Gary, with thousands of residents approaching two weeks without electricity.
ABC, CBS, and NBC aired 16 segments about Gary’s prolonged outage and recovery. Most focused on the immediate conditions residents faced and the logistics of restoring power, including extreme heat, homes without running water, and the arrival of additional assistance. Several also examined NIPSCO’s preparedness and response, including the class-action lawsuit and the state investigation into the utility.
The August 24 episode of *NBC Nightly News* was the only broadcast segment to mention Gary’s demographic or socioeconomic conditions. The segment documented the outage’s medical and economic consequences and asked Mayor Eddie Melton whether race contributed to Gary’s delayed recovery.
The omission of those issues from other coverage is consistent with a broader pattern in broadcast environmental justice reporting. Media Matters previously found that the number of environmental justice segments aired by ABC, CBS, and NBC decreased from 19 in 2021 to just 2 in 2025. Even when the networks have documented environmental harm, their reporting rarely explained how racial and economic conditions, infrastructure, and public policy shaped who was most exposed or least equipped to recover.
Cable news featured 26 total segments about Gary’s prolonged outage and recovery (CNN aired 13, MS NOW ran 9, and Fox News had 4). CNN and MS NOW provided the most sustained coverage, including reports from Gary and interviews with residents and local officials. Across their 22 segments, the two networks included 17 mentions of Gary’s socioeconomic conditions. Fox’s 4 segments included no such mentions.
The difference in reporting was not whether the networks recognized that Gary residents were suffering — broadcast and cable segments documented many of the same immediate hardships. Instead, it was whether the coverage explained why the outage had become especially difficult for Gary to withstand and what the city’s stalled recovery revealed about infrastructure, inequality, and accountability. CNN and MS NOW were the networks that most consistently made those connections.

CNN and MS NOW consistently connected Gary’s prolonged outage to race and poverty

In their strongest segments, those connections were more than demographic shorthand. CNN and MS NOW examined how poverty limited residents’ options during the outage, why an overwhelmingly Black city accounted for a disproportionate share of the customers still without power, and whether wealthier communities were receiving help faster.
During the August 22 episode of CNN This Morning Weekend, host Victor Blackwell interviewed small-business owner Shatiya Hardin about residents’ limited access to food, fuel, and other necessities. Hardin contrasted conditions in Gary with those in nearby communities, where stores were open and residents had more resources available to them. “Because we are a poverty-stricken area, the cries are not heard,” she said. “Their residents have different options other than what we have.”
Video
Citation
From the August 22, 2026, episode of CNN This Morning Weekend
A segment during the August 22 episode of MS NOW’s Connect with Jacob Soboroff made the disparity plain: More than half of the approximately 32,000 customers still without power across NIPSCO’s service territory were in Gary. The segment did not treat that concentration as merely another measure of the storm’s damage. It reported that NIPSCO charges Indiana’s highest electric rates but has the state’s worst service-reliability record, then detailed a lawsuit alleging that the utility’s failure to maintain trees and vegetation around power lines contributed to preventable outages.
Video
Citation

From the August 22, 2026, episode of MS NOW's Connect with Jacob Soboroff
During the August 23 episode of CNN Newsroom Live, Indiana University public affairs professor Courtney Page-Tan connected the outage to a changing climate, warning that extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and hitting communities harder. Communities still planning for the storms of the previous century, she said, “are planning for a climate that no longer exists.” Anchor Salma Abdelaziz then noted that Gary is predominantly Black, roughly one-third of its residents live in poverty, and many were still waiting for power nearly two weeks after the storm. She asked whether Gary was “simply being left behind” and whether wealthier communities appeared to be receiving help faster. Page-Tan pointed to research repeatedly finding that minority communities are disproportionately affected by environmental problems. She also emphasized the importance of food pantries, churches, and other “social infrastructure” when government, institutions, or the energy grid fail.
Video
Citation
From the August 23, 2026, episode of CNN Newsroom Live
These segments did more than document the consequences of the outage or cite Gary’s demographics in passing. They used race and poverty to examine why residents had fewer options as the crisis dragged on, compared Gary’s recovery with that of surrounding communities, and scrutinized the systems and institutions responsible for restoring power.

Gary’s post-storm struggles show why national news must follow communities through recovery

As Gary’s recovery stalled, the strongest coverage began asking the questions that define climate and environmental justice reporting: not only how many people remained without power but who they were, what resources they could draw on, how the city’s grid had been maintained, and who should answer for the delay. Those questions were relevant from the first day, but their urgency became clearer as power restoration advanced across northern Indiana while thousands of Gary residents remained in the dark.

CNN and MS NOW had more time than the broadcast networks for sustained interviews and follow-ups. However, the differences in coverage were not simply a function of airtime. Their strongest segments brought residents, local officials, and experts into the story and connected the immediate crisis to Gary’s racial and economic conditions, aging infrastructure, history of disinvestment, and NIPSCO’s response. Broadcast networks can make many of those same connections within shorter segments by incorporating demographic context and questions about infrastructure and accountability into the reporting they are already producing.

Gary offers more than an example of a gap in national coverage. It provides a practical model for reporting that follows communities through recovery and treats climate and environmental justice as essential to understanding what happens the moment after an extreme weather event is over.

Methodology...

0-=-=

AN 5 26

Tennessee schools bans Pulitzer Prize-winning book 'Roots' - Alternet.org

---

AN PHOENIX FLA 7 26

“‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’”

That’s how federal judge Mark Walker began his 2022 injunction blocking enforcement of Ron DeSantis’ “Stop Woke Act” in Florida institutions of higher education.

In case you don’t recognize the quotation, it’s from George Orwell’s “1984:” You know, the novel where the Ministry of Truth rewrites history and forbids free enquiry.

Certain words are banned; wrong thinking is punished. Even hearing about disfavored ideas is considered an attack on decency and order.

As defendant in the case, the State of Florida argued (apparently with a straight face) university professors have the right to free speech, sure, but only if the state approves of that speech.

The law forbade teaching anything that explores racial or gender injustice.

You weren’t allowed to say, given how we still struggle to overcome discrimination against minorities, women, and the disabled, that maybe diversity, equity and inclusion programs helped a lot of people; you must embrace color-blindness in all things (because we all know race doesn’t matter in America!); yet, woe betide you if you ever made a white person feel “guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the person played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin, or sex.”

Like many of us teaching in the state university system, the judge was unimpressed.

DeSantis and the legal team from his Ministry of Truth appealed up the food chain to the 11th Circuit, and what do you know?

They lost again.

‘Breathtaking assertion of power’

The majority opinion, by a Trump appointee, is unsparing.

Judge Britt C. Grant wrote, “If the First Amendment offers any boundary of protection at all for public university classrooms, this statute crosses it.”

She called the Stop Woke law “a breathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse.”

Naturally, the governor pitched a little hissy fit, taking to social media to say, “State universities are funded by taxpayers and directed by elected officials and their appointees. The state has both a right and a responsibility to ensure instruction at these universities is consistent with the underlying mission and to exclude indoctrination and ideological agendas.”

He called the decision “judicial overreach.”

Let’s talk about gubernatorial overreach. Or, to put it another way, what is this guy’s problem with education?

Is he really that frightened of ideas?

If he and his education appointees are so convinced their positions — slavery had an upside, gender is 100% biological, capitalism is divinely ordained, a woman’s highest destiny is to be a mother, vaccines are unnecessary, climate change isn’t real — are valid, surely they’d welcome testing them with historical records, expert reports, and empirical evidence.

Facts, even.

Reading books by and about, say, gay people, teaching the history of Stonewall, or examining central Supreme Court decisions such as Obergefell v. Hodges, do not mean straight people will somehow become gay, any more than studying Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” will necessarily inspire you to assassinate any official you think has gotten too big for his britches.

Gender studies will not destroy heterosexuality; it’s simply a way to talk about the ways people understand who they are, how they present themselves, how other people see them.

Snowflakes

Universities are supposed to be where you encounter people who aren’t like you, unfamiliar, maybe upsetting, points of view, tricky topics, and ideas your parents don’t approve of.

Intellectual freedom means we should be able to discuss almost anything.

Yet the DeSantis administration act like snowflakes, hypersensitive, unwilling to contemplate anything outside their very white, very Christian, pathetically nationalist, bubble.

DeSantis is especially nervous America’s racial history, trying to outlaw “The 1619 Project,” a brilliant collection of writings about how the arrival of the first slaves on the Virginia shore has informed and shaped our country, shutting down or crippling African American Studies programs.

I guess white people are so used to considering themselves the “real” Americans who had all the good ideas, invented all the good stuff, and “built this country,” the reality that Africa is as central to our identity as Europe is scary.

The governor and his crew seem especially freaked out by the possibility students might encounter Critical Race Theory. Listening to them, you’d think CRT is to blame for everything from high gas prices to the common cold.

CRT is pretty simple: Race is socially constructed (not biological) and racism is not merely a product of individual bias (though that’s part of it) but embedded in our legal, educational, medical, and financial systems.

Say a white person and a Black person commit the same crime. It would make sense if they got the same sentence, right?

But in most cases the Black person will get a longer sentence.

‘The perfect villain’

The Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health policy think tank, has repeatedly shown structural racism (conscious or not) in the medical profession means doctors and nurses misdiagnose Black, Latino, and members of other ethnic communities far more often than they do whites, and, unlike with white patients, tend to dismiss their pain.

Infant mortality among people of color is at least twice as high than it is for whites.

There’s nothing sinister or anti-American in acknowledging, as Justice Thurgood Marshall said, the original Constitution was “defective from the start,” given that it upheld slaveholders’ rights in their human property and protected the slave trade.

Slavery was at the heart of our republic since its beginning.

It still reverberates in our culture.

There’s nothing anti-white in pointing this out. The Founders installed in the Constitution ways to amend it, fix social problems, even change American society.

The country is an ongoing project: We’re still striving for that “more perfect union,” and acknowledging the blindingly obvious ways in which our deals don’t match up with our reality is not a heinous assault on patriotism.

CRT was developed by legal scholars, and has long been part of law school curricula. Nobody much noticed it until 2021, when a right-wing activist called Christopher Rufo kicked off a national moral panic.

You might remember Rufo from the 2024 presidential campaign, amplifying J.D. Vance’s lies about Haitians in Ohio eating cats and dogs.

Before that, Rufo had made a name for himself as a warrior against anything he saw as “woke,” especially in higher education.

DeSantis appointed Rufo to New College’s Board of Trustees (he’s since left) to help destroy what once was an admired, creative, and tolerant liberal arts school, labeling any teaching he didn’t like “Critical Race Theory.”

CRT, he said, is “the perfect villain.”

Army of lefties

Having tried to banish CRT along with sociology, the unpleasant parts of American history, the novels of Toni Morrison, and any science that might reveal things are more complicated than they’d like, DeSantis, the various mediocrities running Florida’s Department of Education, and fellow travelers such as Moms for Liberty, have convinced themselves universities are hotbeds of “Marxist indoctrination.”

Apparently, professors — especially in the Humanities and Social Sciences — are not merely “woke,” we’re a bunch of commies, determined to brainwash the Youth of Florida into hollering “Workers of the World Unite!” — assured they have nothing to lose but their chains.

Or something like that.

Alas, all my colleagues and I must be really lousy at indoctrination. I don’t know anybody who’s been successful in producing even one committed Marxist.

But DeSantis et al. are convinced higher education is a plot to produce an army of lefties.

Not that they can produce much evidence of this.

They’re more ideologically rigid than the most committed Trotskyite, and less logical than the American officer who, standing in the ruins of a Vietnamese provincial capital in 1968, told reporter Peter Arnett, “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”

Maybe the administration’s idea is to destroy higher ed in order to save it.

Hypotheticals

No doubt DeSantis took some comfort from the dissent in the 11th Circuit’s ruling.

Judge Barbara Lagoa, a former member of the Florida Supreme Court, (indeed, a DeSantis appointee and often mentioned as a potential U.S. Supreme Court justice), argues, what if “a professor who says that Hamas’s October 7th attack on Israel was ‘exhilarating’ and something to be celebrated and encouraged?”

She goes on to say, “Florida acts well within its authority to curb professorial endorsements of that kind within its own classrooms.”

First of all, if someone were stupid enough to say such a thing, that professor could be disciplined for creating a hostile educational environment.

But taking a hypothetical case of poor judgment and concluding somehow professorial speech must always be equivalent to the views of the state violates the First Amendment.

The First Amendment protects offensive speech — even hate speech.

In George Orwell’s essay “Freedom of the Press,” he writes, “If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

Or to quote again from the majority opinion, the university’s mission is to get students to “puzzle through ideas that are good and bad, easy and hard, ideally getting ever closer to the truth.”

Professors call this “teaching.”

---

AN 6 26

President Donald Trump reportedly wants to seize the Smithsonian Institution, one of America’s most prestigious collection of museums, and to use them to whitewash the United States’ history on issues like slavery.

“When President Trump summoned Lonnie Bunch, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, for lunch at the White House on August 28 of last year, Bunch’s advisers assumed that the end was near,” The Atlantic’s Clint Smith wrote on Monday. “Trump had spent months threatening the Smithsonian’s independence; just nine days earlier, he’d written on Truth Social that ‘the Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been.’”

Bunch, who unambiguously believes that slavery was a negative for America, was also the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. He is known to have pushed back against attempts by Vice President JD Vance and Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-FL), who sits on the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, as well as others in the Trump administration to scrub so-called “woke” ideas in the museum that they described as a “divisive ideology.” Trump also tried to fire the director of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, even though the Smithsonian is meant to be independent of the government.

Despite these challenges, Bunch was able to avoid winding up in the administration’s crosshairs, at least for a while. Yet as various key personnel step down from the museums’ boards, Smith anticipates that Trump may ultimately get his wish of hiring loyalists who will reshape the museum to his liking.

“The current and looming vacancies, and the need for congressional and presidential approval, raise the possibility that Trump could attempt to install new board members who are loyal to his agenda,” Smith wrote. “(Trump’s March 2025 executive order said that the White House would work with officials ‘to seek the appointment of citizen members to the Smithsonian Board of Regents committed to advancing the policy of this order.’)”

Smith added, “In April, The New York Times reported that the regents had agreed on nominations for some of the replacements, but the House committee responsible for reviewing and vetting the nominees before they move to the full legislature for approval had yet to receive the names under consideration—intrigue that suggests some manner of strategy, although it’s far from clear whose. Minutes from board meetings earlier this year show that the regents have voted to give existing members additional duties because of the current and expected vacancies.”

Despite these pressures, Bunch vowed in an internal memo to staff that “we remain steadfast in our mission to bring history, science, education, research and the arts to all Americans. We will continue to showcase world-class exhibits, collections and objects, rooted in expertise and accuracy.”

Earlier this month, federal Judge Angel Kelly ruled against Trump’s attempts to remove historic content that is featured at national parks. Trump specifically targeted content that discussed America’s history of racism, including slavery.

"To establish a likelihood of success on the merits, Defendants must do more than express disagreement with the Court’s prior ruling; they must make a strong showing that they are likely to prevail on appeal," Kelley explained in response to the administration’s objection to being forced to allow the National Parks Service to accurately represent American history.

She added, "To establish irreparable harm, Defendants bear the burden of demonstrating that, absent a stay, they will suffer irreparable injury that is substantial, certain, and inadequately remedied by monetary damages or later appellate relief. ... Here, Defendants raise three theories: (1) the Injunction Order hampers government speech by preventing the National Park Service (“NPS”) from proffering its preferred narrative at National Parks; (2) implementation of the Injunction Order is practically infeasible and costly; and (3) the Injunction Order conflicts with a recent order issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit regarding Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, PA, thus subjecting Defendants to inconsistent obligations with respect to that site. The Court is unpersuaded by these arguments and explains why."

---

Joel Webbon Claims SPLC Indictment Proves Racism Is 'Not Real' | People For

VID?

Joel Webbon Claims SPLC Indictment Proves Racism Is 'Not Real'

04/27/2026

Kyle Mantyla

When the Trump administration unveiled its politically motivated indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center last week, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche accused the organization of "manufacturing racism to justify its existence."

While the indictment merely alleges that the SPLC committed financial crimes by making payments to informants working in various extremist groups, Blanche's inflammatory framing was designed to create the impression that the well-documented racism, sexism, and antisemitic extremism within the right-wing movement doesn't actually exist.

The SPLC had long drawn the ireof conservatives who are now eager to use the indictment to discredit the SPLC and its decades of work tracking and exposing right-wing extremism and, by extension, whitewash the movement's long history of extremism. .

This is leading to absurd situations where racist, antisemitic, and deeply misogynistic theocratic fascist Christian nationalist pastor Joel Webbon is using the indictment as evidence that "America does not have a racist problem."

"It's so clear that America does not have a racist problem, at least in terms of like pure, baseless, mindless hatred towards minority people," Webbon said on his program last Friday.

"If America really was racist against brown people, black people, whatever, there wouldn't be much money to be made," Webbon claimed. "It wouldn't be lucrative. They wouldn't be doing it. They're only doing it because it's not real."

:{:{"There's a lot of money to be made in slaying dragons or pretending to slay dragons that have already been slain," he continued. "Either the dragon doesn't exist at all, and that's why it's lucrative, or—I'm just going to throw this out there—the dragon's actually good and it's actually the king who's commissioned the knights and they're actually the bad guys.}:

This whole witch hunt for white supremacists who hate brown people simply because they're brown, the reason why that's so lucrative and there are NGOs with millions and millions of dollars for that is because the white people in America are predominantly, on the whole, not racist. White people in America are, if anything, I think, too trusting, too gullible, toxic empathy. White people in America are like, 'You know what? I know that this will kill my grandchildren, but can we just import half of the country of Haiti, just to be nice?' So not only is racism non-existent, if anything, we could probably use a little bit more racism in America."}:

Video URL

IFrame Content

As amply demonstrated by this very video, Webbon himself is proof that racism in America is very real, and this is just the latest a long line of examples from him.

In 2024, Webbon declared that if he were facing the choice between seeing to a black doctor or a white doctor, he's chose the white doctor because "if there’s a chance that one of them was not qualified, and was given a free pass, it’d be the black guy."

IFrame Content

In 2025, Webbon told black people to "stop whining" about the oppression they have suffered throughout American history because "it's your fault."

IFrame Content

That same year, Webbon urged white parents to have "the talk" with their children about avoiding black people.

Video URL

In 2026, he said that he would discourage his daughter from marrying a moral, godly, upstanding Christian black man because "I would prefer for my grandchildren to look like me."

Video URL

Shortly after that, Webbon proclaimed that it is fair to generalize that all black people are impulsive and lazy.

---

---}:

AN 2 26

Trump has successfully pressured the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) into adopting new guidelines — and some officials feel that they amount to ideological loyalty tests.

The official letter emphasizes "uplifting and positive narratives of our shared American experience" but also instructs “improper ideology” be scrubbed from federal cultural institutions, according to a report by The Washington Post. Because the IMLS distributes grants to museums and libraries, they have the power to make both personnel and curatorial choices. As such, all references to "inclusive," "equity," and "diverse" or "diversity" have been removed from the IMLS’ recent 13 grant notices, even though they were previously commonplace in competitive applications. On some occasions, it has forced people out of the funding process.

"It feels like organizations like ours are boxed out from telling a complete and true and honest American story,” explained Ashley Rogers, executive director of the Whitney Plantation in New Orleans. Because of what Rogers does for a living, it is practically impossible for her to request grant money while remaining consistent with the administration’s standards.

"Our mission is to educate the public about the history and legacies of slavery,” Rogers told the Post. “We're a nonprofit. This is the only thing we do. I don't know how to make that align with the current funding opportunities at IMLS and more fundamentally than that, if I did, would I be betraying my mission?"

Lori Byrd, a former museum professional and IMLS grant reviewer, expressed a similar concern more broadly.

"If you even apply for this, are you going to get pushback from either your museum community or your fellow museum professionals because you're kind of caving to the administration?" Byrd asked. Museum consultant Andrea Jones made the same point when talking about her own professional responsibilities.

"Not only is the risk to my livelihood too great … but I care about doing credible, nuanced work — not being part of a propaganda machine,” Jones said.

Because of the uncertainty caused by the Trump administration’s approach, the IMLS grant cycle is already months behind schedule, The Post reported. Nor are Trump’s loyalty tests merely harming museums and libraries. A retired high-ranking military officer explained in a conservative publication that Trump’s policies are doing the same thing to America’s armed forces.

"The implications are immediate and corrosive," Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling wrote in The Bulwark earlier this week. "If promotions to general officer rank can be rescinded for perceived associations with others, officers may begin to prioritize 'safe' assignments or noncontroversial bosses. Candor — already fragile in large bureaucracies — may diminish if officers fear that honest service under controversial leaders will later be used against them. The apolitical ethic that underpins the profession of arms risks erosion."

Hertling added, "The Army's strength has always rested on trust: trust that performance matters more than patronage, that merit outweighs politics, and that the institution protects those who serve honorably in any job they are assigned. Undermining that trust does not merely harm an officer's career; it weakens the foundation of professional military service."

Loyalty oaths are not just in libraries, museums and the military. The US economy itself could be at risk because of Trump’s loyalty oaths, as evidenced by the controversy over National Economic Council directorKevin Hassett calling for Federal Reserve officers to be “disciplined” for issuing a report which showed Trump’s tariffs are hurting ordinary Americans.

“In the end, Mr. Trump’s decision evinced both the risk and reward for an economist whose previous views had morphed in service of the White House and its economic agenda," The New York Times recently reported. "The president did not want to lose one of his most forceful champions, whose full-throated advocacy had won deep praise from Mr. Trump but had fueled fears that Mr. Hassett could not guide monetary policy while resisting political influence.”

---

rww

02/03/2026

Kyle Mantyla

Mark Meckler tells Christian parents to remove their children from public schools: "You are sacrificing your children to Moloch if you leave them in those schools. You are leaving them to the mercy of demons and people who hate the Creator."

Hank Kunneman claims that he issued a prophetic "word of warning" to President Donald Trump's campaign that resulted in Trump being pulled off the campaign trail for his safety.
John Doyle says that he is committed to destroying the "myths of the Civil Rights movement" so that "we can give people the permission to do what needs to be done without feeling guilty about it."

Rick Green insists that he has been "completely intellectually consistent" that anyone who attacks police deserves prosecution and punishment. He's lying.

Finally, Lara Logan warns that "there is an aggressive plan underway to take the House and the Senate, impeach Pres Trump & then savagely consolidate a permanent grip on power": "We are in a war. If you fail to see that, you will be one of those crying out in shock as they usher you into a gas chamber or killing field."

---

SEE MERITOCRACY BS from trust fund nepo babies

AN 1 25

Trump issued an abundance of executive orders after returning to the White House, some of which aggressively attack DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs in the federal government. This marks a major reversal from the Biden Administration, which ended when Trump was inaugurated on Monday, January 20.

Two days later, according to NBC News' Megan Lebowitz, federal government employees received an e-mail "warning that they could face repercussions if they do not report on co-workers who work in diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility positions that might have gone unnoticed by government supervisors."

A January 22 e-mail, Lebowitz reports, read, "We are aware of efforts by some in government to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language."

Government employees were also warned, "There will be no adverse consequences for timely reporting this information. However, failure to report this information within 10 days may result in adverse consequences."

Meanwhile, reporting from Washington Post journalists Julian Mark, Taylor Telford and Susan Svrluga details the extent the Trump Administration is going to in its anti-DEI, anti-affirmative action efforts.

"The flurry of executive orders was meant to put a hard stop to diversity, equity and inclusion programs (DEI) throughout the federal government," the Post reporters explain in an article published on January 23. "The (Trump) Administration ordered U.S.-run diversity offices to close and scores of their workers to be put on administrative leave by Wednesday. It also suspended dozens of contracting programs aimed at minorities and women, some of which have been operating for decades."

Mark, Telford and Svrluga continue, "But the orders go far beyond the federal government. Trump also directed agencies to draw up lists of public companies to investigate over their DEI policies — a move that legal experts said could send chills through the private sector."

The Post journalists note that that Trump even revoked a 60-year-old executive order from the late President Lyndon B. Johnson.

In 1965, LBJ directed federal contractors to take "affirmative action" to end discrimination in their firms.

Noah Feldman, who teaches constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School in Massachusetts, told the Post, "The Trump Administration is trying to give the death blow to diversity in legal and in political cultural terms."

---

sparked by am mainstreet initiative (also ~ masks)

Students lose out as cities and states give billions in property tax breaks to businesses - Alternet.org