coming for your kids

trifecta

Merri ok

see hype fear

see kid indoctrinate pink pill

see groomer, pedo homophobe

SEE transgender drag

hypocrisy

see human trafficking // conspir plus racism flynn

moral panic

tucker 5

see parent rights

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aha before any gop dirty trick ok rationalized b/c THEY dems are baby murderers; now secession --> dog whistle for violent civil war:

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James Fishback Urges People To Buy An AR-15 To Protect Their Children From 'James Talafreako'

RWW 10 26

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MMA

MAGA media: If Democrats take power in Congress, they will “trans your kids”

*Special* ProgramsLGBTQ

Written by Helena Hind

Published 10/29/26

Ahead of the midterms, MAGA media figures are trotting out their usual attacks against Democrats, including one particularly familiar argument: Vote Republican because Democrats want to “trans your kids, cut the genitals off your children.” Echoing anti-trans campaign rhetoric from 2024, some right-wing hosts and guests have repeated this narrative, warning their audiences, “You let those people get into power, you don’t have a country anymore.”

Several have specifically attacked Democratic Texas Senate nominee James Talarico for his public statements supporting transgender people.

The current anti-trans approach is an apparent rehash of a 2024 attack line. That year, Fox News significantly boosted its anti-trans coverage, airing at least 47 segments mentioning trans athletes in October 2024 compared to just six such segments in September 2024, an increase of more than 683%. A Trump campaign ad similarly attacking then-Vice President Kamala Harris for her support of gender-affirming care aired more than 30,000 times before Election Day.

GOP losses in 2025 gubernatorial elections, however, suggested that the anti-trans strategy was unreliable. Right-wing media portrayed the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races as further referendums on trans issues, and both Republican candidates lost. As Media Matters previously explained, those losses demonstrate that “the supposed backlash vote exists mainly in right-wing media rhetoric, not in voter behavior.”

Nevertheless, Republican candidates and organizations that support them have reportedly spent over $180 million on anti-trans political ads attacking Democratic candidates during the 2026 midterm cycle, even though few voters have ranked trans issues among their top concerns in recent polls. And with Republicans trailing in the polls, right-wing media have been getting more desperate and extreme in their attacks against Democrats, including by resorting to their same old anti-trans strategy.

Podcaster Steven Crowder: “We have a two-party system. One of them wants to trans your kids.” Crowder then played various clips of trans-affirming statements from Talarico and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). [Rumble, Louder with Crowder, 10/21/26]

Podcaster Andrew Kolvet attacked Democrats’ education policies and claimed, “They want to trans your kids.” Kolvet: “Let’s go through the list. What is the left better on, exactly? Are they better on the border? No, no, objectively no. Are they better on education? They want to indoctrinate your kids. They want to trans your kids. They don’t want to let you get school choice or vouchers to take your kids to a Christian school or a classical education school. No. So they’re not better there. Schools are failing.” [Real America’s Voice, The Charlie Kirk Show, 10/20/26]

Right-wing commentator Chad Prather claimed “Democrat socialists” want to “trans your kids, cut the genitals off your children,” warning, “You let those people get into power, you don’t have a country anymore.” Prather: “These people running on the progressive left side, these Democrat socialists that are out there — I mean, if [Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul] El-Sayed is not evidence of that — if these people out there that want to put you on train cars that are dancing on the grave of Charlie Kirk that literally are wishing death upon conservatives in America. These people who want to trans your kids, cut the genitals off your children, these people, they want to abort babies up into toddlerhood — you let those people get into power, you don't have a country anymore. And I'm not overstating that. They've literally come out and said what they intend to do, what they want to do.” [BlazeTV, Sara Gonzales Unfiltered, 10/6/26]

Federalist CEO Sean Davis said Republicans should frame the midterms as “a choice between” Republicans and “people who want to cut off your kids' genitals, people who want to trans your kids.” Asked by podcaster Benny Johnson what he would like to see as a “closing midterm message” from Republicans, Davis replied: “I think it would be important for them to make clear that people have a choice, and you have a choice between a guy, Donald Trump, and Republicans, who really have done incredible work, even if they've not done everything we've wanted, and the choice between that and people who want to cut off your kids' genitals, people who want to trans your kids, people who want to import infinity Third-World Islamic jihadist radicals.” Johnson added, “We can put that on a shirt: godless American communists that want to cut your … children's genitals off.” [YouTube, The Benny Show, 9/29/26]

Video

Citation

From the September 29, 2026, edition of The Benny Show, streamed on YouTube

On War Room, guest Danielle Buck said Talarico “wants to trans our kids,” adding, “This man is going to ruin our state.” Buck stated, “He wants to open our borders. He wants to trans our kids. He believes that there are six genders. He believes that God is nonbinary. Like, this man is going to ruin our state.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 9/23/26]

Blaze Media’s Glenn Beck claimed Democrats started “telling you that you got to trans your kid” after the 2020 election, adding, “They win this election, they're going to double down again.” Beck: “They’re going to double down after this election. They’re going to double down. You think it was bad then? Do you remember what it was like under Obama? And then Trump lost in 2020 and all of a sudden you’re like, oh my gosh, these people are monsters. What are they doing? All of a sudden, they're telling you that you got to trans your kid. And you're like, wait a minute, I didn't vote for any of that. You thought that was bad? They win this election, they’re going to double down again.” [Blaze Media, The Glenn Beck Program, 10/22/26]

PBD Podcast panelist Adam Sosnick: “They're going to trans your kids. They're going to Talarico your kids, and that's what's basically the Democratic brand is at this point.” Sosnick said the Democrats used to be “the party of the working man. Now they are the party of the working woman — the college-educated, liberal ideology, go to school in your ivory towers. The only thing that’s masculine about the Democratic Party these days are the Abdul El-Sayeds that want to put women in hijabs. That’s about as masculine as it gets. Other than that, they’re going to trans your kids. They’re going to Talarico your kids, and that’s what's basically the Democratic brand is at this point.” [Valuetainment, PBD Podcast, 10/19/26]

On his podcast, Donald Trump Jr. said that if Democrats come into power, there will be “trans kids back in school” and “trans agendas back in school, in your classrooms, with your children.” [Rumble, Triggered with Donald Trump Jr., 10/12/26]

Article III Project founder Mike Davis urged War Room viewers to vote Republican, asking, “Do you want Democrats funding trans surgeries for kids? Or do you want Trump blocking that?” Davis continued, “We need to … make a very rational decision here. It is team America versus team Mohammad.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 10/23/26]

Daily Wire host Michael Knowles said Democrats “want to send CPS to your house to take your kids away if you don't want to trans your kids.” Answering the question “What could the Republicans focus on” in the midterms, Knowles listed immigration, violence, and supposed “predations” on Christians as issues Republicans could talk about before saying, “Let's talk about transing your kids. That's a major social issue. Let's talk about the LGBT indoctrination in kindergarten. Let's talk about all of those issues that we win on. Those are the 80-20 issues. Those are the 90-10 issues.” [The Daily Wire, The Michael Knowles Show, 9/28/26]

Fox News host Greg Gutfeld attacked Talarico: “The moment we get a Democrat president, he might just flip back again and start cutting up kids all over again.” Gutfeld also called Talarico “disturbing” and accused him of “demonic trickery.” [Fox News, The Five, 10/15/26]

Two-thirds of Fox segments about James Talarico included anti-LGBTQ attacks

06/16/26 10:12 AM EDT

Right-wing media told Republicans anti-trans politics would deliver a winning coalition. 2025 races show they misunderstood why the message ever worked.

11/06/25 5:23 PM EST

Kellyanne Conway: “The trans stuff is really just the tip of the spear” for Trump's culture war targets

08/14/25

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MMA

September 1, 2026, edition of The Benny Show, uploaded to YouTube

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): But this is the fundamental question of our time, and it's a curse on us, and it makes me so angry at older generations. And I love y'all. This is not gonna be some boomer hate screed. But you don't understand what was destroyed. And it's impossible because it's so hard for — this is why, like, the whole victimhood stuff is such trash — so impossible to put yourself in somebody else's position. It really is very hard for somebody to do this. So I'm not going to ask you to do it, but, like, think about what's been destroyed.

I have to homeschool my kids. Because I can't trust that they're not going to be indoctrinated or abused inside of the public school or killed, you know, right? Obviously, like, killed by a gang of like Third World miscreants that want to scalp a white kid. That didn't exist when I was growing up, when the boomers were raising their kids, except maybe the worst conceivable schools in the worst conceivable parts of the most downtrodden bombed out cities in America. Maybe you could find a public school like that. Now it's every public school, every one. Institutional trust is at absolute zero. That's why homeschooling is exploding.

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rww 8 26

Mark Meckler Thinks The DSA Is Trying To 'Take Your Children Away From You'

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child sex trafficking // qanon, gives cover from baby jail?

vigilante militia?

mma

January 14, 2025, edition of Rose Unplugged, streamed on Rumble

TOM HOMAN (INCOMING TRUMP “BORDER CZAR”): So, look, we got a lot of people to find, and we got to find them. And we're going to do it. And — but I'm telling you right now, it's going to be hard. So that's why we're — especially with children, we're going to bring in some private sector organizations that work trafficking on their own.

We're also going to count on the American people. We have to deputize every American citizen, especially parents, right? Parents have an innate ability to recognize when something's not right with a child. So we want people who look and pay attention. If you see something, say something, and make a phone call from a provided 1-800 number. And, look, if even if one out of every hundred phone calls turn up that a child is being abused, that's one child we can save. So we're going to count on the American people to step up for this thing too. So that's something — you know, bring in the private sector is going to be great because I think every American citizen is sick over this issue. I think they're all going to volunteer to step in and do what they can do to help us.

rww

11/04/2024

Kyle Mantyla

Charlie Kirk warns that if Democrats get power "we will have never before seen crusade and jihad against our nation's children." vid]

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mma

QAnon influencer with ties to Michael Flynn says conspiracy theorists will become part of government under Trump

Ben Moore of Flynn's America's Future organization claimed that “Trump is going to make [Flynn] a special adviser, and then Flynn’s going to have his team,” which will bring “child traffickers to justice” with “nooses”

Written by Kayla Gogarty & Alex Kaplan

Published 10/18/24

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has suggested that his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, whom he pardoned at the end of his first term, will be involved in his potential second administration, telling Flynn at a May 2023 event: “We’re going to bring you back.”

During an October 14 social media discussion that included QAnon figures, Ben Moore — a QAnon influencer known online as “Sun Tzu” — predicted that Flynn would be appointed as a “special adviser” to Trump during a potential second Trump administration, and Flynn would lead a “special advisory board” that “brings child traffickers to justice.”

Flynn and his group, America’s Future, have been increasingly tied to the QAnon conspiracy theory. Several QAnon figures and conspiracy theorists have served as advisory board members for the group, including Moore.

Longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon has also floated the idea of Flynn in a second Trump administration.

During the October 14 discussion, held on X (formerly Twitter), Moore specifically floated himself and other America’s Future members for Trump's “special advisory board” — including QAnon-affiliated figures Brian Gamble and Liz Crokin, conspiracy theorist Lara Logan, and election denier Ivan Raiklin.

Later in the discussion, Moore even suggested using “nooses” against people who “try to take over our republic.”

QAnon influencer with ties to Michael Flynn says conspiracy theorists will become part of government under Trump

October 14, 2024

Audio file

Audio

CitationFrom an October 14, 2024, X Space

BEN MOORE (QANON INFLUENCER AND AMERICA’S FUTURE ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER): I'm going to think big. I'm going to think proactively in this situation. Trump is going to get reelected one way or the other. OK? The people that have been on the forefront of this fight, exposing child trafficking, are going to be the forefront of the justice arm, the arm of justice. That's going to be people like Liz Crokin, Mike Smith, Brian Gamble. All right? Don't think for a moment that Gen. Flynn's not going to get appointed to a position to expose and to execute justice on these people. OK?

I know Ivan Raiklin. I love Ivan. Love Ivan. Had so many talks with him. And I know Liz has too, like, [UNINTELLIGIBLE] or someone — I literally talked to Ivan for four to five hours straight. Dude is one of the most brilliant guys I know. He's a green beret, and he's a lawyer. He's dangerous, he's deadly, he's effective. OK? But what I'm going to tell you guys is that people like Ivan Raiklin, Liz Crokin, Mike Smith, Brian Gamble, will be on the board of justice that brings child traffickers to justice. And Gen. Flynn will be leading the way. He'll be appoint to a position that does not need to be approved by Congress. Because if it's a position like national security director that needs to be approved by Congress, they're going to try to jam it up.

Trump is going to make him a special adviser, and then Flynn's going to have his team. And I'm going to tell you who's on his team. Everyone that's on the board of advisers for America's Future Project to Defend and Protect Children is going to be on Flynn's team. And they are the people that are awake, that know what the fuck's going on. Sorry for my language.

And there's — you guys have no clue. And I am being braggadocious right now. OK? I am predicting some things that are going to happen before it happens because I am confident. I know that God ultimately wins, and God is going to expose these people and people that have been laughed at, that have been just, you know, mocked, like Liz Crokin, Lara Logan, Mike Smith, they're going to be on this team that's going to be on this special advisory board that Trump has that's going to bring to justice these child traffickers.

And it's not going to be low-level child traffickers. It's going to be high-level. It's going to be the people that are in politics. It's going to be presidents of countries. It's going to be people that are in executive positions of countries around the world that are child traffickers. And people like Liz and Mike, who we can trust, because they've given it all, they've sacrificed everything for these children and for the republic, they're going to bring it to light. That's what's going to happen.

And so anyone that's listening, anyone with Media Matters, anyone with, you know, all these screwballs that are losers that are listening, that's going to happen. And there's nothing that can stop what is coming. So that's all I want to say. I know what's going to happen. I have it all mapped out, and I'll probably be on that team as well. So — and if I'm on the team, I'm doing it for free. I don't want to take any money from it. I just want to see justice. I want to see the children vindicated for fucking once, for fucking once. All these children that have been trafficked, I want to see them vindicated. I'm going to do it for free. If I get offered money, I'm going to decline any kind of payment. I just — I'm going to work for free. I'm going to work for free. So there it is.

X SPACE PARTICIPANT: I want to donate the ropes and the bullets. I'll donate the ropes and the bullets.

MOORE: No. Not the bullets, the nooses.

...

MOORE: The ropes and the nooses.

...

MOORE: I know what you're talking about, Stella, but it's the nooses. We're going old school on this. I am an advocate for everything that Ivan Raiklin says on this. And so just trust me. If you harm children and you try to take over our republic, there's going to be hell to pay.

Board members of Michael Flynn’s organization are allegedly sending “leads” from QAnon conspiracy theorists to law enforcement

04/24/24

### Leaked footage shows Michael Flynn on Zoom call telling QAnon influencers: “I love you guys”

01/12/24

### Trump appeared at a Mar-a-Lago event hosted for QAnon and Pizzagate supporter Mike Smith and his conspiracy theory film

03/29/24

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mma

October 9, 2024, edition of Fox News' Mornings with Maria Bartiromo

MARIA BARTIROMO (HOST): Just recently there were concerns about school boards telling kids, "Look, if you want to have transgender operations, just don't tell your parents."

LEE CARTER (GUEST): Well, it's a real thing.

BARTIROMO: It's a real thing, yeah.

CARTER: One of my daughter's very close friends, her older sister is in first grade, and they were read a book in school about crayons. Now, that sounds like nothing to be concerned about, except it was a red crayon who felt it was blue on the inside —

BARTIROMO: The crayon.

CARTER: The crayon. And it was okay that it was really a blue crayon even though on the outside, its label, was red. The answer was to go tell your teacher. Not to tell your parents. And this is what they're being read in school in first grade in a public school in Westchester County in New York. And that that scares me. I don't want the answer to be go to the teacher to have that conversation, I love teachers. I love my daughter's teacher. But I don't want her to be the one to have that kind of a conversation with my if daughter in the first grade.

BARTIROMO: You've got to be the last line of defense. The mother.

CARTER: Yeah. Absolutely. And that really, really does terrify me. And my husband and I have had conversations about this. If it ever gets to that point, would we keep them in public school, and that's, that's a terrifying thought because I believe in the public school system. I believe in public education. I believe in all of these, you know, access to opportunity for all. But I am very, very afraid that I'm not going to have the -- our family isn't going to have the decision making on how she's raised.

===

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mma

Where did Trump's false claim that schools are providing gender-affirming surgeries come from?

Trump’s campaign was unable to provide a single example supporting his claim, repeated at a rally over the weekend. Similar lies have been spread by right-wing media figures in the past.

Special ProgramsLGBTQ

Written by Ari Drennen & Alyssa Tirrell

Research contributions from Vesper Henry

Published 09/10/24

At a September 7 rally in Wisconsin, former President Donald Trump again repeated his baseless that schools could be providing gender-affirming surgeries to minors without parental consent.

IFrame Content

Mainstream outlets have debunked Trump's claim, assuring readers that “no children are going to school and receiving surgery there for gender dysphoria.” According to CNN, “Trump’s own presidential campaign could not provide a single example of this ever happening.”

But accusations that schools "groom" children into identifying as trans have circulated throughout right-wing media and politics in recent years. Some outlets and media figures have gone even further.

At a 2023 event, Rafael Cruz, father of Texas senator and onetime Trump primary opponent Ted Cruz, claimed that children were being “mutilated” by gender affirming care in public schools. Right-wing outlets including National Review, The Federalist, and The Daily Wire have all promoted claims that public schools are providing cross-sex hormones to children, leaving out of their headlines the important detail that parental consent is required to access this treatment.

The day before Trump made this claim, the account Libs of TikTok also appeared to make the same unsubstantiated accusation by implication.

IFrame Content

The National Center for Youth Law notes that under the law in question, only very specific services can be provided for minors without parental consent, such as STD testing, abortion care, and treatment for sexual abuse. Those services do not include gender-affirming care, which cannot be provided to a minor without parental consent in the state of California.

Libs of TikTok has a documented history of posting misleading and false content. Chaya Raichik, the creator behind the account, has maintained a right to do so as recently as February 2024, asking an interviewer who questioned the policy, "Is there a law against lying?”

While conservative groups have similarly acknowledged that there is zero documented evidence of expensive gender-affirming surgeries being performed in cash-strapped public schools, their resident anti-trans obsessives say that accuracy isn’t the point.

“Are kids getting surgery in school? No they’re not,” Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice admitted to CNN, insisting, however, that Trump’s statement “grabbed your attention, and we’re talking about it now, and that makes me very happy.”

Thomas Jipping, a senior legal fellow at the Project 2025 partner Heritage Foundation, also defended the claim to CNN. “Just change a couple words,” he said, and the claim “is 100% accurate and correct” — a standard that could be applied to any lie ever told.

Right-wing activists appear to see Trump’s words not as statements to be evaluated for accuracy, but rather as non literal expressions of presidential priorities. And indeed, the former president has laid out a draconian set of policy proposals targeting the trans community in a hypothetical second term.

These proposals include targeting federal funding for hospitals providing gender-affirming care, creating a “new credentialing body” for teachers that promotes conservative ideas about the nuclear family, and asking “Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth.”

When asked about these priorities at the Moms for Liberty event last Friday, Trump issued a chilling reply: “The President has such power.”

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see normalizing

an 9 24

Dangerously misleading': How the beltway media sanitizes Trump’s 'unhinged' rambling

Alex Henderson

September 04, 2024

Former President Donald Trump often accuses the mainstream media of pushing "fake news" when they give him any type of negative coverage. The mainstream media, Trump argues, are hopelessly biased against him. And Trump has, at times, even accused right-wing Fox News and Fox Business of being unfair to him in their coverage.

But journalist Parker Molloy has a totally different perspective.

In an article published by The New Republic on September 4, Molloy argues that many mainstream media reporters are guilty of "sanitizing" Trump in their coverage and downplaying just how "unhinged" his "incoherent ramblings" are.

Molloy previously addressed this topic in an article published by Media Matters on March 12, 2020. And the reporter believes the problem has "only worsened" since then.

"As Trump's statements grow increasingly unhinged in his old age," Molloy warns, "major news outlets continue to reframe his words, presenting a dangerously misleading picture to the public."

Molloy cites the New York Times' recent coverage of Trump's speech at Moms for Liberty's annual summit as an example.

"While speaking at an event put on by the extremist group Moms for Liberty," Molloy observes, "Trump spread a baseless conspiracy theory that 'your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation' — referring to transition-related surgeries for trans people. In their write-up of the event, a glowing piece about how Trump 'charmed' this group of 'conservative moms,' the Times didn't even mention the moment where he blathered on and on about a crazy conspiracy that has and will never happen."

Molloy emphasizes that reporters do their audience a disservice when they treat Trump like a normal politician and fail to adequately report the more "unhinged" things he says.

"This 'sanewashing' of Trump's statements isn't just poor journalism; it's a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy," Molloy argues. "By continually reframing Trump's incoherent and often dangerous rhetoric as conventional political discourse, major news outlets are failing in their duty to inform the public and are instead providing cover for increasingly erratic behavior from a former — and potentially future — president."

Molloy continues, "The consequences of this journalistic malpractice extend far beyond misleading headlines. By laundering Trump's words in this fashion, the media is actively participating in the erosion of our shared reality."

*Read Parker Molloy's full article for The New Republic at this link.

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7 24 rww

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson closed out the all-day Heritage Foundation policy fest on the first day of the Republican National Convention. He warned the crowd that they are in a “spiritual battle” against “anti-human” forces that want to “eliminate” Christians.

In a strange choice for talking to political activists, Carlson began by describing politics as a “repulsive” process and politicians in general as ruthless and power-hungry and miserable people. But he said he is “thrilled” by Trump picking Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate, because “every bad person I’ve ever met in a lifetime in Washington was aligned against J.D. Vance.” Carlson said that was because “they thought he would be harder to manipulate and slightly less enthusiastic about killing people…that he would be an impediment to their exercising power.”

Carlson veered into spiritual warfare rhetoric, saying that since he spoke at the Heritage Foundation’s 50^th anniversary celebration 15 months ago, he has experienced “a total change in the way that I see the world,” explaining, “this is not ultimately political. This is much deeper…There is a spiritual battle underway.”

From Carlson’s remarks:

And I think what happened on Saturday, the assassination attempt against President Trump, reminded a lot of people this, or awakened a lot of people to this. There is a spiritual battle underway. There is no logical way to understand what we’re seeing now in temporal terms. You just can’t.

These are not political divides. There are forces, and they’re very obvious now. They’ve decided, for whatever reason, to take off the mask, whose only goal is chaos, violence, destruction. And there are the rest of us who, once again, are not always certain we’re right, but we know that that’s bad and we’re against that, sort of standing, watching, thinking, ‘Is someone going to explain to me why this is politics?’

This is not politics at all. This is much deeper and older and more recognizable than that. This has been going on since the beginning of time. And I do think, by the way, that the more literal among us, and I would count myself in that category, fail to see this because we’re so desperate to ascribe some kind of recognizable human motive to what we’re seeing.

So we call it leftism or neoliberalism or communism or anarchism. We come up with some phrase to describe it, but those phrases are inadequate. They do not describe what’s actually happening. So what you’re seeing now is really not at all different in substance from what you saw in 1789 in France, from what you saw in 1936 in Spain, from what you saw in 1917 in Russia, from what you saw in 1975 in Phnom Penh. It’s all the same. These are forces of chaos and destruction which are fundamentally anti-human, which are against people.

Carlson railed against a number of movements he described as “anti-people,” including what he called “the climate cult.” He told the activists to pay close attention to what makes “them” angriest.

What group do they dislike most? What group are they absolutely terrified of and hoping to eliminate? Well, it’s Christians. That’s who it is. It’s Christians. … The group that makes them angriest, triggers them most, I guess we would say now, is Christians. Christian nationalism. People pray outside abortion clinics. People celebrate Easter, not trans visibility day. These are their real enemies.

Carlson talked about religious persecution during the Cultural Revolution in China and the French Revolution. He said at the start of the Spanish Civil War, the “anti-Christian” side opened fire on a statue of Jesus. “If you find yourself firing bullets at a statue, what you’re really doing is revealing your deepest priority, and that’s to kill Christians,” he said.

“I don’t know if any Christians here or people who are interested in continuing to live in the country you grew up in, but these are the terms and these are the stakes,” Carlson said. “They are not the ones that we’ve been told they are–left versus right, Republican versus Democrat.”

Carlson also talked about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, saying that Trump’s show of strength—fist raised in defiance—had won him the election, because people want and need strong leaders.

After delivering his remarks, Carlson engaged in some Q&A with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts. In response to a question about what kind of conversations people could have to bring their friends and neighbors into the MAGA movement, Carlson said they should pray for people who are willing to accept the status quo. He then veered into a diatribe against “weak men,” saying that fathers should be willing to beat up school counselors who “indoctrinate kids and try and turn them into freaks, circus freaks.” Roberts agreed, saying that “what we’re all yearning for is just a return to normal. And it is normal for a strong man, for a man period, to respond the way you describe to the school counselor.”

Asked about what kind of message the Trump team should be delivering, Carlson said the campaign was trying out a “unity message,” to which he responded:

And a lot of people hear “unity” and they think, well, unity implies some sort of compromise conversation. You can’t have a conversation with people who are unwilling to compromise. The left, which is a religious movement, is unwilling to compromise on any level at all. They won’t even admit men can’t become women. So you how can you have unity with people like that? And of course, you can’t.

Carlson recommended that Trump’s team ignore his critics and simply show through his actions that he is calm and in command. He urged activists to take Trump’s bravery as a model for their own political engagement.

Tags: Kevin Roberts Tucker Carlson Christian Persecution Election 2024 Republican National Convention Spiritual Warfare Heritage Foundation Republican Party

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rubber reverse post assassination rnc unity theme -->

an 7 24

Despite Donald Trump’s promise of “Uniting our Nation,” top Republicans kicked off the 2024 Republican National Convention Monday with attacks on LGBTQ Americans, at times invoking religion, to raucous applause and approval from the GOP delegates.

“This fringe agenda includes biological males competing against girls and the sexualization and indoctrination of our children,” declared U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), a common right-wing attack on transgender children (video below). The GOP delegates, who hours before had pumped their fists in the air and chanted “Fight! Fight! Fight!” were quick to respond to Johnson’s denigrations with waves of booing.

“Today’s Democrat agenda, their policies, are a clear and present danger to America, to our institutions, our values and our people,” Johnson continued. “Democrats have forgotten American families. They’ve abandoned the hard-working middle class. But with President Trump and Republicans, those forgotten Americans are forgotten no more.”

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U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), a self-avowed Christian nationalist, declared Trump the “founding father of the America First movement,” and said, “I thank God that His hand was on President Trump” during the assassination attempt that took the life of a 50-year old retired fire chief sitting behind him.

“The establishment in Washington has sold us out,” Greene went on to say. “They promised unity and delivered division. They promised peace and brought war. They promised normalcy and gave us Transgender Visibility Day on Easter Sunday,” she charged, another common right wing attack that ignores Easter Sunday is on different days each year.

After the crowd booed, she continued.

“And let me state this clearly: There are only two genders,” Greene declared, raising her her hand with two fingers up. “And we are made in God’s image. Amen.”

“And we won’t shy away from speaking that simple truth, ever.”

At the end of her speech, Greene vowed, “as God as my witness, He will finally give us the country we deserve. Because Donald John Trump is the leader American deserves. God bless the American people. God bless President Trump, and God bless the United States of America.”

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QAnon Was Born Out of Sex Ad Moral Panic Over Backpage.com

intercept no lnx

QANON WAS BORN OUT OF THE SEX AD MORAL PANIC THAT TOOK DOWN BACKPAGE.COM

For years, the political establishment opportunistically railed against sex trafficking. Then came Pizzagate.

Trevor Aaronson

:{April 27 2024,

AMERICANS ADORE A moral panic.

During the Red Scare, we believed that Soviet agents were everywhere, having secretly infiltrated all levels of society. In the 1950s, the U.S. government banned switchblades over unfounded fears that we were in the throes of “West Side Story”-style knife violence. The Satanic Panic convinced Americans of the 1980s that absurd claims of ritual abuse and sacrifice were somehow credible. Around the same time, there was “stranger danger” — which was debunked like other moral panics, but never went away entirely.

At any given time, America is moving in and out of some moral panic or another. Harm to children is a persistent theme. In recent years, however, our national obsession with these moral panics has consumed our politics. We’ve come to believe that sex trafficking rings are all around us. The driving force may come as a surprise: a moral panic about consensual sex workers who advertised legally on the internet.

The far-right’s current obsession with “child sex trafficking” — the animating force behind such conspiracy theories as QAnon and Pizzagate, as well as coded political insults like “groomer” — has roots in this moral panic hyped by powerful Republicans and Democrats alike. The panic reached its crescendo with the 2018 federal indictments related to a sex ad hub called Backpage.com.

The Backpage story may stand as a cautionary tale not only of overzealous prosecutions, but also of the second- and third-order effects of moral panics.

A classifieds site that became known predominantly for “adult” advertising, Backpage was born of a more dispersed industry that used to operate in the back pages of local alternative weekly newspapers like the Village Voice, Chicago Reader, and LA Weekly — known as alt-weeklies. For a time, the sex ad industry had its central platform on Craigslist, the free classifieds website, which spurred large-scale campaigns against the ads. As the campaigns took hold, Craigslist buckled and effectively handed the mantle to Backpage — until eventually it, too, came under a sustained morality attack.

I spent four years reporting on this saga — the rise and fall of alt-weeklies, adult advertising, and Backpage — with fellow journalists Sam Eifling and Michael J. Mooney. The result, a documentary podcast series, now on Audible, titled “Hold Fast: The Unadulterated Story of the World’s Most Scandalous Website,” reveals how cynical politicians can take hold of a moral panic and exploit it for political gain.

One thing that struck me during my reporting was that the Backpage story may stand as a cautionary tale not only of overzealous prosecutions, but also of the second- and third-order effects of moral panics — in this case, conspiracy theories like Pizzagate and QAnon. If you look closely enough, you can trace a line from adult ads in alt-weeklies to escort ads on websites like Craigslist and Backpage, to conspiracy claims that Donald Trump is fighting to break up a global child sex-trafficking cabal run by Hillary Clinton and her malevolent minions.

Conspiracy theories don’t grow in isolation. They wrap themselves around kernels of truth. The truth here is that sex trafficking and sexual exploitation are horrific crimes, and no one should underestimate the harms experienced by survivors. For the last two decades, though, powerful politicians, breathless news media, and a host of ill-informed celebrities have conflated “sex trafficking” with “prostitution” — fanning a national hysteria that underpins the conspiracy theories now wracking American society.

Sex Ad Industry

A quick history: Starting with the Village Voice in the 1950s, alt-weeklies popped up in cities nationwide. These papers prized investigative reporting and magazine-style narrative writing; pioneered attitudinal pop-culture criticism; and published classified ads in their back pages that would make half the country blush.

The “adult” ads on the last pages of the tabloid-style papers promoted sex work. At first, they were written in coded language, which created enough ambiguity that federal judges had upheld the ads’ First Amendment protections. The legal doctrine was simple: The government couldn’t deprive a massage therapist or a dancer of their First Amendment right to advertise on mere suspicion that they might also provide an illegal sexual service behind closed doors.

For decades, wink-and-a-nod adult ads could be found in alt-weeklies nationwide. Publishers knew what was being advertised. Most readers knew. So did police and prosecutors. No one, however, seemed to holler about sex ads in newspapers that could be found at busy bus stops, crowded restaurants, or smoky bars. Society didn’t collapse. The kids were all right.

The Majority of Voters Now Support Decriminalizing Sex Work. It’s About Time.

Then came Craigslist, a simple website that slashed a gaping hole in the newspaper industry’s hulking money bags. Who would pay for an ink-smeared classified ad in a newspaper when you could get a more effective one for free, in minutes, on Craigslist? People selling cars, boats, guitars, whatever — they moved to Craigslist. And those sex workers advertising in the back pages of alt-weeklies? They did too.

In response to the migration of classifieds to the internet, the largest publisher of alt-weeklies launched a Craigslist competitor, Backpage. Essentially a knockoff, Backpage used a design and category scheme almost identical to Craigslist’s. Throughout its early existence, the alt-weekly-run Backpage never matched the popular site from which it was cribbing.

Then the government and the press turned on the burgeoning online classifieds industry. Public officials latched on to a study from the University of Pennsylvania that claimed 326,000 children in America were “at risk for commercial sexual exploitation.” The report analyzed data from the 1990s using methodologies so deeply flawed that the Washington Post described it as “bogus.”

The jaw-dropping stat — More than 300,000 children in the United States could be victims of sex trafficking! — nonetheless lodged itself in our national consciousness. Politicians trumpeted the claim. Actor Ashton Kutcher, fashioning himself an advocate against sex trafficking, announced unchallenged on CNN that there are “between 100,000 and 300,000 child sex slaves in the United States today.” It sounded even then like an improbable total. But with kids’ lives reportedly at stake, few Americans pushed back.

Pressure Campaigns

The FBI, conditioned to view any national clamor as a federal funding bonanza, launched Operation Cross Country to investigate the supposed scourge of sex trafficking. The FBI’s ongoing efforts now include partnerships with 400 law enforcement agencies nationwide, but the feds still haven’t uncovered any sort of large-scale, highly organized trafficking ring as part of Operation Cross Country.

That’s because — while cases of sexual exploitation and trafficking do occur, many of them horrific in their details — the perception of a large-scale threat in the United States is perched on a mountain of distortions and exaggerations.

“If you believe that hundreds of thousands of kids are being trafficked, you have to believe your husband, your dad, your brother, your sons are the ones buying them,” Juliana Piccillo, a sex worker advocate, explained to me. “It’s not just a handful of guys buying 300,000 kids.”

For context, the union-covered employees of UPS, those brown-clad delivery drivers we see daily, number 300,000.

As America bought into myths of large-scale sex trafficking, individual accounts of sexual exploitation made headlines. Yet the more nuanced story of online adult ads went unreported. Put simply, the internet made sex work, on the whole, safer by giving consensual sex workers a marketplace away from the streets and the ability to screen potentially dangerous clients.

Sex Workers and their supporters protest a police raid on Oct. 25, 2016, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, saying shutting down sites like Backpage.com exposes them to more risk.

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These gains in worker safety benefited a large portion of Americans, and the reason is simple: The nation’s sex work industry is enormous. The National Institutes of Health estimate that sex work in the U.S. generates $14 billion per year in economic activity. That makes sex work a significant American industry, on par in revenue with the streaming music industry.

As police and politicians conflated sex trafficking with sex work, journalists dutifully followed along. A study from the University of Minnesota of 1,500 news articles from 1995 to 2014 found a dramatic increase in the media’s use of “sex trafficking” in place of “prostitution.” That trend hasn’t reversed. A local news report from Florida last year described a standard prostitution bust as being part of “a sweeping sex trafficking investigation.” Or consider a local news report from South Dakota, where an undercover cop posed as an underage sex worker in a prostitution sting. The TV anchor described it as “an undercover sex trafficking investigation,” even though no one involved was being trafficked. A right-wing sheriff in Florida fashioned a national profile by running prostitution stings and hosting chest-beating press conferences that promote how he’s bravely fighting “human trafficking.”

Backpage became the world’s internet brothel. It was the same legal business alt-weeklies had been in for decades, now operating at an industrial scale.

In August 2010, 17 attorneys general banded together in a letter pressuring Craigslist to take down its adult ads. It wasn’t a legal threat; federal judges had upheld the legality of such ads since their days on the back pages of alt-weeklies. Instead, the attorneys general were mounting a coordinated pressure campaign. And it worked. Bowing to the coercion, Craigslist shuttered its adult section, slapping the word “CENSORED” across it on the website.

Suddenly, adult ads flooded into the also-ran, Backpage, and the company’s annual revenue skyrocketed from $11.7 million to $78 million in just a few years. Backpage became the world’s internet brothel. It was the same legal business alt-weeklies had been in for decades, now operating at an industrial scale.

Backpage’s owners, Arizona newspaper moguls Michael Lacey and James Larkin, believed they could withstand what the nerds at Craigslist couldn’t. After all, they were career alt-weekly publishers, owning 17 papers nationwide, including the Village Voice, LA Weekly, and Miami New Times. They’d printed adult ads in the back pages of their papers for decades. How could the internet be any different?

Political Opportunism

As the world’s largest platform for adult ads, Backpage became the target of withering scrutiny and sensational claims that it was encouraging child sexual exploitation. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof led the charge with stories headlined “When Backpage.com Peddles Schoolgirls for Sex” and “Google and Sex Traffickers Like Backpage.com.”

Protestors gathered outside the Village Voice’s office in New York. They held up signs reading “End Sex Trafficking” and “Women and Girls Will Not Be Silenced.” An anonymously run website, VillageVoicePimps.com, aggregated reports of violence and sexual exploitation.

The drumbeat drowned out a more complicated reality. Backpage, whose owners and employees knew large amounts of its ads were using ambiguous language to promote illegal sex work, was minting money by cynically pushing First Amendment protections and internet laws to their legal limits. Backpage, though, didn’t turn a blind eye to possible harm. One of the company’s executives had received an award from the FBI for working proactively with law enforcement. Prosecutors at the Justice Department had even advised against filing criminal charges involving Backpage after concluding, in an internal memo, that “Backpage genuinely wanted to get child prostitution off of its site.”

Politicians, on the other hand, saw blood in the water.

FILE - In this April 25, 2014 file picture California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who as a prosecutor once specialized in child sexual assault cases addresses the Domestic Human Trafficking symposium in Los Angeles, Trafficking, forced labor and modern slavery are big business generating profits estimated at $150 billion a year, the U.N. labor agency said Tuesday May 20, 2014. The report by the International Labor Organization finds global profits from involuntary workers an estimated 21 million of them have more than tripled over the past decade from its estimate of at least $44 billion in 2005. ILO Director Guy Ryder said his agency?s report Tuesday calls attention to the need ?to eradicate this fundamentally evil, but hugely profitable practice as soon as possible.? (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes,File)

Then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris addresses the Domestic Human Trafficking symposium in Los Angeles on April 25, 2014. Photo: Damian Dovarganes/AP

Vice President Kamala Harris, then the ambitious attorney general of California, boasted of being tough on human trafficking. In 2016, while running for U.S. Senate, she filed criminal charges against Backpage’s owners. The case garnered Harris national headlines — What politician doesn’t want to be seen as tough on child sex trafficking? — but a judge threw out most of the charges shortly after the newly elected Harris was sworn into the Senate. Her case hadn’t helped end exploitation at Backpage, but it had launched her into national politics.

Around this time, Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain’s think tank, the McCain Institute, focused its efforts on human trafficking. His wife, Cindy, became a self-appointed expert in the subject. McCain Institute reports circulated in Washington, pointing the finger at Backpage for sex trafficking cases in the United States.

The McCains had a wounded history with the owners of Backpage, who started their publishing company in Arizona with the muckraking alt-weekly Phoenix New Times. The paper had written unflatteringly about the McCains for decades and in the mid-1990s revealed how Cindy McCain was stealing painkillers from her medical charity — a story headlined with the very alt-weekly pun “Opiate for the Mrs.” Cindy spun the scandal as a story of addiction and redemption, but it dogged her husband through his failed presidential bids.

Political chicanery and sensational news reports about sex trafficking fueled each other, creating a media environment by 2016 in which Americans had been inundated with reports about sex trafficking and online classifieds. Just as Americans had come to believe that strangers were abducting thousands of children in the 1980s, we came to believe that child sex trafficking was endemic, with hundreds of thousands of our kids at risk.

In April 2018, bowing to pressure from Harris, McCain, and other elected officials, the Justice Department seized Backpage and filed criminal charges against its owners. None of the charges alleged sex trafficking — of either children or adults. The government accused Backpage’s owners and executives of money laundering and facilitating prostitution. Because prostitution is not a federal crime, the Justice Department filed charges under the Travel Act, which outlaws interstate activities intended to violate state laws.

In the first Backpage trial, federal prosecutors repeatedly referred to “child sex trafficking” — even though none of the charges alleged such activity — forcing the judge to declare a mistrial. In November 2023, a federal jury in Arizona convicted Backpage’s principals following a second trial. Lacey was convicted on one count of money laundering, acquitted on another, and no verdict was reached on the other charges, many of which were thrown out by a judge this week ahead of an possible retrial. He faces sentencing in June. Larkin took his own life in 2023, on the eve of the second trial.

Any of the nation’s alt-weeklies — which published the same types of adult ads that Backpage did — could have faced the same charges decades earlier, but prosecutors had deferred to First Amendment protections.

Until the political pressure ramped up on Backpage.

Yes, Cookie Monster, big companies are price-gouging

The aforementioned New York Times article on “shrinkflation” found that companies are still reducing package sizes despite inflation having cooled off: “After peaking at 9.1 percent in July 2022, it had eased to 3.1 percent as of January. And consumers might be less willing to accept shrinkflation now that firms are facing less severe cost pressures, especially because food company profits have been — and in many cases remain — high. They may simply feel ripped off.”

“Shrinkflation” is really one aspect of the overall inflation problem — and multiple analyses have found that “greedflation” was an exacerbating factor in inflation these past few years. Following supply chain disruptions as the global economy recovered from the pandemic and an increase in oil prices in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, companies took advantage of the public’s economic alarm to justify further price increases beyond just the increased costs of production.

A study last year by two progressive think tanks in Britain, reported in Fortune, found that corporate profits increased at a faster rate than costs did. Another study reported in Fortune, from the American think tank Groundwork Collaborative, found that profits drove 53% of inflation during the second and third quarters of 2023, and more than one-third overall since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and caused inflation to be 1 to 3 points higher than otherwise might’ve occurred.

Bloomberg recently reported on an analysis by Goldman Sachs finding that companies are quick to raise prices in the face of increased costs, but then slow to actually lower them again once their own costs go back down. An article in The Wall Street Journal in May 2023 actually made the argument for bilking consumers: “‘Greedflation’ Is Real — and Probably Good for the Economy.”

Conservatives breathlessly warn of conspiracy between Biden and Sesame Street to serve his “political agenda”

During the daily White House press briefing, Fox Business correspondent Edward Lawrence accused the White House of only speaking up about inflation due to Cookie Monster’s post: “Why did it take the Cookie Monster to speak up, or an election year, for this strike force to go?”White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre balked at the notion, stating “If anything, it feels like the Cookie Monster is responding to us and what we’ve been saying about shrinkflation.” (Jean-Pierre also laughed at the absurdity of the whole question.) Fox Business, *Kudlow*, [3/5/24]

Fox Business host Brian Brenberg claimed, “Apparently, Cookie Monster gets his [Biden’s] attention,” and exclaimed, “We’re being governed by these people — this is our economic policy, response to Cookie Monster?”Brenberg further claimed that legal costs to corporations from government actions would only further raise costs and prices, “and we’re going to have a worse situation than we have right now, because he wants to look like he’s doing something so Cookie Monster’s cookies don’t get smaller.” Fox News, *The Story with Martha MacCallum*, [3/5/24]

On his radio show, Fox host Sean Hannity criticized Cookie Monster’s dismay at his cookies shrinking, stating “Well, then first off, you don't have to buy them. … If you feel that you're getting ripped off, then don't buy it.”Hannity continued, speculating that Biden will make shrinkflation an integral part of his State of the Union address or even invite Cookie Monster to speak during the speech. Premiere Radio Networks, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [3/5/24]

RedState accused Democrats of using childhood icons like Cookie Monster to “spin at us” and “compromise for their political agenda.” The article also feigned shock at Biden speaking out against inflation while implying that he does not give the same attention to border security. RedState, [3/5/24]

Appearing on Your World with Neil Cavuto, Wall Street Journal Editor-at-Large Gerry Baker accused the Biden administration of trying to deflect blame for the rate of inflation. Baker asserted, “Nobody buys this silly idea about shrinkflation and Cookie Monsters; it’s just an indication, again, of how desperate I think this administration is.” Fox News, Your World with Neil Cavuto, [3/5/24]

Fox News anchor Dana Perino said that Fox host Jesse Watters should do “an investigation” into who operates and is “being political” with the Cookie Monster X account. Fox News, *The Five*, [3/5/24]

CPAC Now host Mercedes Schlapp suggested that Cookie Monster is “now a Democrat.” Newsmax, *Eric Bolling: The Balance*, [3/5/24]

On Fox News’ The Bottom Line, co-host Sean Duffy claimed that “Joe Biden will only respond to the Cookie Monster” on political issues.Duffy continued, questioning whether Cookie Monster should also post about immigration and crime because “maybe Joe Biden will go, ‘Oh these are real issues for the American people,’ because the Cookie Monster said so.” Fox Business, *The Bottom Line*, [3/5/24]
Conservative outlet American Wire asserted that Cookie Monster’s tweet was a coordinated effort and the latest attempt of the Biden administration using entertainers for “gaslighting the American public” into blaming “corporate greed … for consumer woes.”American Wire, [3/6/24]

A NewsBusters article also accused the Biden administration and ABC News’ Good Morning America of coordinating with Cookie Monster’s X account to promote an image of inflation being caused by “corporate greed,” which the article asserted as a “cartoonish image” and “a lazy answer.”NewsBusters, [3/5/24]

Fox anchor Maria Bartiromo also accused the Biden administration of coordinating with Cookie Monster’s X account, declaring that “I’m not buying that the Cookie Monster is an independent.”Bartiromo also claimed that Biden is more focused on inflation than “migrants being apprehended and committing migrant crime.” Fox Business, *Mornings with Maria Bartiromo*, [3/7/24]

Newsmax host Rob Schmitt claimed that the Cookie Monster account is “spewing Joe Biden’s political talking points.”Newsmax, *Rob Schmitt Tonight*, [3/6/24]

Right-wingers regularly attack Sesame Street, because they don’t get the whole point of the show

While right-wing media sees a political conspiracy in the Cookie Monster account’s latest pronouncements on current events, The Washington Post pointed out that the account previously “has appeared to post about Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, has spoken about therapy and has endorsed self-care,” while another recent post from the character Elmo’s account inadvertently started a public dialogue about mental health.

But even deeper than that, the show has always been dedicated to teaching children (and maybe some parents, too) how to get along in a diverse world. “Since 1969, children and adults alike have flocked to the place where multiethnic, multigenerational, and even multispecies residents coexist in harmony,” says a PBS site explaining what the show is all about. “The people on this very special street learn life's lessons together, provide viewers with strong role models, and teach children that everyone brings a special ability to the community. Here, children learn to use their imaginations, build social skills, and respect people's differences.”

All of which is to say, right-wing media has been attacking this cultural treasure of a program for many years.

“I've always said that Elmo is a groomer”: Right-wing media figures did not appreciate “woke” Elmo teaching children that getting vaccinated against COVID-19 is safe and effective.Elmo and his dad Louie got vaccinated against COVID-19 in June 2022, with Elmo explaining to all of the children at home that he felt okay after “a little pinch” and his dad discussing questions that he talked about with his pediatrician before getting vaccinated. This sensible advice was met with abject paranoia from One America News’ Dan Ball and BlazeTV host Chad Prather.

YouTube,[; OAN, Real America with Dan Ball, 7/5/22]

Fox contributor Sean Duffy claimed that Sesame Street is “trying to indoctrinate your children” when discussing the episode where Elmo gets vaccinated. Fox News, *Fox & Friends First*, [6/29/22]

While discussing the debut of Ji-Young, a Korean-American character, former Fox host Tucker Carlson ranted that “tribalism” has become a part of Sesame Street with the introduction of characters who have unique and identifiable ethnicities.Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [1/7/22]

During an earlier effort to increase public awareness about the

importance of vaccinations, co-hosts on Fox & Friends Weekend claimed that Sesame Street was feeding “propaganda” directly to children.Co-host Rachel Campos- Duffy claimed the programming “looks like a Big Pharma commercial on Sesame Street. It's so creepy.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends Weekend*, [11/7/21]

Carlson devolved into an unhinged rant against Sesame Street’s special on 2020’s George Floyd protests discussing police brutality. On the now-canceled Tucker Carlson Tonight, Carlson accused those fighting against police brutality of “trying to take over your country” and “eliminate our centurieslong tradition of tolerance … and free expression.” Carlson also claimed that said protesters cause “weak leaders” to “reflexively bend to their demands, no matter what those demands are,” citing Sesame Street’s programming to claim that anti-American indoctrination “starts very young.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [6/9/20]

Fox News’ Eric Bolling said Sesame Street spreads a “left-wing Communist diatribe,” while reporting on the 46th season of the hit show. Fox News, *The Five*, [1/14/16]

After then-presidential nominee Mitt Romney called for ending federal money for public broadcasting, Fox News called Big Bird a “taker” of federal funding and said it was “time you flew the coop.” Fox News hosts and commentators also called the show a potential “multi-billion dollar goldmine” that “has made more money than a lot of Wall Street firms.” In fact, the Sesame Workshop’s expenses were higher than its revenues. Moreover, all federal funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (not just this one show) made up just 0.012% of the federal budget. Media Matters, [10/10/12]

Fox commentator Andrea Tantaros called Muppet programming, including Sesame Street, “brainwashing in the most obvious form.” Tantaros further complained: “I thought Sesame Street was supposed to be sharing and being nice to people, but over the years they've gotten more liberal.” Fox Business, *Follow the Money*, [12/2/11]

Fox host Eric Bolling claimed that Sesame Street was getting “pretty political” and said that showcasing Lily, a character affected by poverty, is too harsh for children to see. Continuing, Bolling questioned whether the show will showcase an “evil Republican or Tea Party-er that they’re going to blame little Lily’s poverty on.” Fox Business, *Follow the Money*, [10/7/11]

Right-wing blogs such as TheBlaze and The Gateway Pundit ridiculed Sesame Street’s new character whose family faced ongoing food insecurity. Lily’s introduction to the show was used by right-wing media as a cheap shot against former President Barack Obama and the rates of poverty during his administration. Media Matters, [10/6/11]

Fox host Sean Hannity hosted a panel attacking Sesame Street for a segment that supported letting boys play with dolls and girls play with fire trucks. In response, right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro joked that he would like to “cap” Elmo, while former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell called it a “direct assault on this country's moral foundation.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [6/1/11]

### Fox News lets Trump ramble on about inflation — which his policies would actually make worse

03/05/24 3:18 PM EST

### Laura Ingraham praises companies for contributing “shrinkflation”

02/12/24 8:22 PM EST

### Tens of millions of Americans are inundated by credit card junk fees — and now right-wing media are rallying to defend this price gouging

03/06/24 4:26 PM EST

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BS note groomer pedo coming for your kids

an 1 24

Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-TX) served up wild accusations against President Joe Biden and his administration on Monday during a House Republicans’ press conference on the border. After making demands of the Biden Administration to send an ultra-conservative bill that includes funding and stringent policies for the U.S. border, and funding to support fighting in Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, Republicans are now rejecting what they requested after decrees from Donald Trump.

Back in October, after far-right House Republicans ousted Kevin McCarthy and were struggling to find a new Speaker, President Joe Biden requested a $105 billion aid package for the U.S. southern border, Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Of the $105 billion, $50 billion would go to U.S. defense industry manufacturers to “expand production lines, strengthen the American economy, keep us safe, and create new American jobs,” Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young said, CNBC reported at the time.

“Additionally,” CNBC explained, “the White House is seeking $6.4 billion for border operations, pushing back against Republicans who have criticized it for not doing enough to contend with migration from Latin America. The request also includes about $1.2 billion for efforts aimed at countering fentanyl, which has driven a wave of deadly overdoses in the United States.”

“Some in Congress have said a lot about doing something on border security while refusing to take up the $4 billion request we sent in August to Congress,” Young said. “We will not be lectured by those who refuse to act. As we’ve said repeatedly, Congress needs to take action to provide sufficient resources for the border.”

Three months later, House Republicans under direction of Donald Trump have decided to reject any legislation that is not “perfect.” Just as he did when he launched his xenophobic presidential campaign in 2015, and throughout his 2016 campaign, Trump aims to use immigration as a wedge issue to win the White House in November.

But now, Trump has the support and influence of the Republican Party, and many – especially House Republicans – willing to obey him via often-angry rants he posts on his Truth Social platform.

Congresswoman Van Duyne, a Texas backbencher who failed at her attempt to be elevated into House leadership when Mike Johnson was made Speaker, on Monday in a little-noticed speech served up allegations of “traitorous acts,” “usher[ing] in a new era of slave trade,” and promoting the “endless rapes” of women and children and a “lifetime of sex trafficking enslavement,” against President Biden and his administration.

“Joe Biden and the extremists in his administration are arsonists,” Congresswoman Van Duyne declared. “From day one they have burned down every shred of strong, effective, Trump-era border security policy that was protecting America.”

“Their purposeful and persistent actions, the arsonists of the Biden administration have created a national security and humanitarian nightmare. By turning over control of our southern border to the Mexican cartels, Biden, the Democrats, have ushered in a new massive era of slave trade here in America that is cursing the lives of illegal immigrant women, little girls and little boys. But Biden, [DHS Secretary] Mayorkas, and the Democrats couldn’t care less about the lives of these small children. They’re condemning them to endless rapes in a lifetime of sex trafficking enslavement.”

“And rather than using the power that they already have in existing law, to this end is utter catastrophe,” she continued. “Biden is salivating at the prospect of some staggeringly horrible Senate compromise bill to enshrine that this ongoing disaster continues.”

The Senate bill was drafted by hard-core conservative U.S. Senator Jim Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma, and it is far more extreme than Democrats would ordinarily support, yet has the approval of Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“I’ve got news for the Senate: You don’t reward arsonists by handing them gasoline. Instead, you do what Texas is doing: you dig in, you fight, you hold the line and you never give in when our national security is constantly being threatened by the traitorous actions of the executive branch. Stand with Texas. Hold the line and never back down.”

Watch Van Duyne’s remarks below or at this link.

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RWW 1023

Daniel Villarreal @ LGBTQ Nation: GOP school board candidate caught discussing “fire-breathing” lesbians, “grooming.”

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/tucker-carlson-guest-says-secession-necessary-because-democrats-are-so-unclean-and-are mutilating kids

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Top Oklahoma education official Ryan Walters cheers conspiracy theorist while appearing on her show | Media Matters for America

Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters praised conspiracy theorist DeAnna Lorraine during a nearly 25-minute interview on the December 19, 2023, edition of her show. Walters and Lorraine also spread a conspiracy theory about supposed Marxist infiltration in Oklahoma public schools, and Walters touted his efforts “to ensure that we're running the left wing out” in order “to put folks that share our conservative values in this agency.”

Lorraine is a former Infowars host and failed congressional candidate with a long record of spreading outlandish conspiracy theories, including Pizzagate and the QAnon conspiracy theory. (In recent posts, Lorraine said that “Q is the greatest Psyop ever told” and “we’ve been played.”) She also attended the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and has proposed that we “arm our children” to stop school shootings. Her streaming show, Shots Fired with DeAnna Lorraine, is part of the media network of white nationalist Stew Peters, who has spread extreme and violent rhetoric including calling for the deaths of LGBTQ people, journalists, Democratic politicians, and Catholic charity workers.

As Oklahoma’s state superintendent, Walters has pushed right-wing propaganda into public school curriculum and used far-right media programs to attack the state’s education system and teachers. Walters appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press days before his interview with Lorraine, arguing that he is responding to a “higher education push to drive left-wing, Marxist propaganda into classrooms.” Walters previously suggested that he has taken education policy advice from right-wing media personalities, including the anti-LGBTQ social media account Libs of TikTok and a BlazeTV pundit who disparages public schools as “Satan’s youth ministry.”

In the December 19 Shots Fired interview, Walters claimed that Oklahoma’s “education system has been run by Marxists for far too long” and the host agreed, suggesting there has been a communist plot since the 1950s to take over public education. Lorraine also compared the left to “cockroaches” after Walters claimed that “liberals embed themselves” in government agencies. He referred to the state superintendent’s office under his Democratic predecessor as “a captured entity,” and bragged to Lorraine: “I fired over 100 people from our agency in the first six months, and we are continuing to ensure that we're running the left wing out, and we're going to put folks that share our conservative values in this agency.”

Walters also claimed that George Soros — a frequent target of antisemitic conspiracy theories — has “financed” school boards and “government bureaucratic apparatuses.”

:{:{Video}:

CitationFrom the December 19, 2023, edition of Stew Peters Network's Shots Fired with DeAnna Lorraine

DEANNA LORRAINE (HOST): Ryan Walters, I'm excited to talk about you and all of these great wins under your belt. You are just slaying the Marxist left back and forth. Welcome to Shots Fired, how are you?

RYAN WALTERS: (OKLAHOMA STATE SUPERINTENDENT): Look, I appreciate you having me on. I appreciate the work you're doing. And, you know, I mean, that's the thing in education — to get the education system back on track when it's been pulled so far to the left, we have got to operate with a sense of urgency. And so we're playing offense here in Oklahoma. We're going to be aggressive and we're just getting started. But I'm telling you, this education system has been run by Marxists for far too long. Parents know it, our taxpayers know it, and it's time to get going.

LORRAINE: Oh 100%. And some people somehow still believe that this is sort of some big conspiracy theory that the education systems have been hijacked by the Marxist left and, you know, this all sort of happened organically. No, it's not. It's literally in the communist goals. The 45 communist goals for America way back in the 1950s. They state that they want to hide, they're going to hijack the education systems and schools and transform them into Marxist, communist curriculum. So it's not a conspiracy and it's actually happened, and they've been very successful at it.

…

WALTERS: I think that's so important for your viewers to hear is that we are in a very red state, very red state. Every single one of our counties voted for Donald Trump twice, so we are a very red state. But let me tell you, we also have a teachers union who is very well-financed and continue to block legislation and push legislation at the state capital. They have captured a lot of Republican legislators who listen to them alone. And so we've had to fight back against some of them, some folks in our own party who have fought school choice, fought parents rights. We had a legislator that’s Republican that fought to keep pornography in the classroom. And so we have these pockets of influence the teachers union has. But I'm going to tell you, the other thing that's so important is now that I run the education agency is liberals embed themselves in these agencies. So you've seen this with the way —

LORRAINE: Like cockroaches.

WALTERS: George Soros has financed these district attorneys. They've done the same thing with school boards, and they've done the same thing with the government bureaucratic apparatuses. So when I got here, you know, we would pass laws and it wouldn't be enforced because again, my predecessor, a Democrat, loaded this agency up with a bunch of liberals that were never going to hold districts accountable. They were never going to push back on the teachers union. And frankly, this was a captured entity. I mean, the left had captured the state superintendent. So you can pass whatever laws you wanted, they were never going to be enforced on the schools. So it has been a dramatic shift. I fired over 100 people from our agency in the first six months, and we are continuing to ensure that we're running the left wing out, and we're going to put folks that share our conservative values in this agency. And we're going to continue to fight for parents, and we're going to continue to fight — it’s frankly common sense. We're going to keep fighting for common sense to come back to the classroom.

Lorraine and Walters ended the interview praising each other, with the host telling Walters, “You are on fire. I love what you’re up to. I love what you’re doing. Keep going at it because we need strong fighters like you to fight for our schools and our children.”

Walters replied with effusive praise, telling Lorraine, “I love your show, love what you’re doing,” and “I appreciate you fighting for conservative principles and values and your fight for our kids. So really appreciate the time on the show and thank you for the work you’re doing.”

:{:{Video}:

CitationFrom the December 19, 2023, edition of Stew Peters Network's Shots Fired with DeAnna Lorraine

LORRAINE: Ryan Walters, you are on fire. I love what you're up to. I love what you're doing. Keep going at it because we need strong fighters like you to fight for our schools and our children. Tell everybody again where they can find you and follow your awesome work and achievements.

WALTERS: Well, I appreciate that. I love your show, love what you're doing.

...

WALTERS: But look I appreciate the time. I appreciate you fighting for conservative principles and values and your fight for our kids. So really appreciate the time on the show and thank you for the work you're doing.

LORRAINE: Thank you so much, Ryan.

Walters promoted the interview on X (formerly Twitter) by reposting a link from Lorraine to the interview with the caption “OK Superintendent of Education is on FIRE slaying the Marxists!”

### Oklahoma's top education official has a cozy relationship with BlazeTV host Steve Deace, who likens public schools to “Satan’s youth ministry”

10/06/23 12:18 PM EDT

### Remarks from Oklahoma public schools superintendent mirror far-right extremist talking points on the Tulsa Race Massacre

07/12/23 12:06 PM EDT

### Public schools are the latest target of the right’s con culture

09/07/23

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the imagery is dark. The words are defiant. The message is dystopian. An ad for Republican Governor Ron DeSantis‘s presidential campaign, currently “in turmoil,” features the First Lady of Florida, Casey DeSantis, issuing a warning: “They’re coming after our children.”

The ad never quite says who is coming after the kids, but the video (below) includes clips of President Joe Biden and former Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of the war on COVID and the now-retired Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

While it was first released over the summer, it received little attention. Casey DeSantis on Friday reposted her “Mamas for DeSantis” ad. It comes in the wake of the alleged ménage à trois sex scandal involving an unnamed woman who has accused Christian Ziegler, the head of the Florida Republican Party of rape. His wife, Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler, who reportedly confirmed the consensual three-way sexual relationship, is Casey DeSantis’ “best friend,” according to Florida Politics publisher Peter Schorsch.

“In America, we’ve witnessed a lot and put up with enough,” Casey DeSantis says in a voiceover at the start of the two-and-a-half minute video.

“We’ve been forced into silence,” she charges, amid a baby crying and a COVID mask being put over a child’s face. “Into compliance.”

“Told that we must ‘trust the science,'” DeSantis continues, in a direct attack on Dr. Fauci, showing him speaking during the height of COVID in the Trump administration.

And in an attack on LGBTQ children and adults, she says: “We’ve been told that we must deny truth. Back down. And look the other way.”

“Enough is enough. When you come after our kids, we fight back. Because there’s nothing we won’t do to protect our children,” she says.

Seconds later, the video shows President Joe Biden declaring, “Our nation’s children are all our children.”

“We will not allow you to exploit their innocence to advance your agenda. We are no longer silent,” Casey DeSantis declares. “We are united. We have finally found our fighter.”

Casey DeSantis praises her husband, saying he will do for America what he did for Florida: “Schools: opened. Parents’ rights: defended. School choice: universal. Critical race theory: prohibited. DEI: stopped. Child mutilation: illegal. Girls’ sports: saved. Communities: protected. Our economy: growing. VIA INFLATION? And freedom: guaranteed.”

In the section where President Biden says, “Our nation’s children are all our children,” Casey DeSantis doesn’t explain that those words came from a White House celebration honoring Teachers of The Year from across the country. The President was praising an Oklahoma Teacher of the Year whose district includes students who speak 62 different languages, so she had to work hard to ensure everyone felt included. She had said, “There’s no such thing as someone else’s child.”

Nor did DeSantis acknowledge that Governor DeSantis’ performance for children has been poor.

The Florida Policy Institute, which says it is “an independent, non-partisan, and non-profit organization,” in September warned “368,728 youth aged 20 and younger” have been cut from Medicaid. “Because Florida has not expanded Medicaid, the vast majority of those losing insurance during this time have been children, parents, young adults, and new mothers.”

Florida ranks 35th in child well-being (with 1 being the best), according WUSF, citing the Kids Count Databook from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Some critics on social media blasted Casey DeSantis’ remarks.

“Republicans refused to extend child tax credits that pulled 2 million children out of poverty. They resist the idea of free school lunches. Yet they come up with bullshit about their opponents ‘coming after our children.’ Yes, we’re coming after them, to give them a sandwich,” wrote former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacob.

Watch the Casey DeSantis video below or at this link.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/war-room-guest-and-tpusa-faith-partner-john-amanchukwu-they-are-intentionally-trying rewire kids

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https://www.mediamatters.org/diversity-discrimination/right-wing-medias-shameful-history-defending-pedophilia-and-sexualizing

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Over the past year, the far right’s obsession with accusing its opponents of pedophilia has become a staple of the modern Republican playbook. Conservative media stars and GOP elected officials have used baseless accusations of sexual abuse and child “grooming” to attack Democrats and demonize the LGBTQ rights movement across the nation.

A review of the right’s hypocrisy on pedophilia and abuse found that conservative media personalities have repeatedly made comments promoting the sexualization of children, while others have defended figures who have been accused of abuse or pedophilia — and several reported abusers have even worked in right-wing media themselves.

The right-wing fixation with pedophilia dates back decades and has been a central facet in dangerous right-wing conspiracy theories including Pizzagate and QAnon, both of which have led to real-world violence. Baseless pedophilia accusations have been used by the right to discredit and attack the LGBTQ rights movement and any figure or symbol that they disagree with — from Elmo and public libraries to a plethora of businesses and organizations.

The moral panic behind these accusations puts the real lives of LGBTQ people at risk. These groundless allegations have led to neo-Nazi encroachment at Pride events and calls for violence against pro-LGBTQ people and organizations, including children’s hospitals.

As we enter Pride Month — a time of the year that has invigorated right-wing extremists in their attacks against LGBTQ people — allies, political leaders, and businesses must not succumb to bad-faith actors making groundless accusations against these underrepresented communities.

Here is a non-comprehensive breakdown of right-wing media figures and organizations who have either made comments that promote or mock the sexualization of minors, or supported or defended figures who have been accused of abuse or pedophilia:

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"The left has told us something that should put fear into the heart of every parent,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene began her speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference Friday morning. “They said they’re coming for our children.” Dressed in a light pink blazer and with straightened bleach blonde hair, Greene painted a gruesome (and fictional) picture: a multibillion dollar industry preying on kids and eager to subject them to life-altering surgery.

“I am going to be introducing my bill, the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, that will make it a felony to perform anything to do with gender care on children,” she said. The crowd roared in applause.

At CPAC, held this past weekend at the Gaylord National Resort and Conference Center in National Harbor, Maryland, trans bashing—and talking about kids’ genitals—was a main theme. Panels were dedicated to it, speakers harped on so-called “transgender ideology,” and politicians threw out one-liners about trans people when they were short on applause. CPAC is a place where rhetoric and strategy are typically tested, where politicians get a sense of what lands with their base, and this past weekend, Republican politicians eagerly deployed transphobia for their gain. As they denied trans people’s existence, CPAC’s speakers paired their attacks with efforts to galvanize the conservative base ahead of 2024 and to take over public schools.

How Did We Get Here?

The panel following Greene’s provides some insight as to how we arrived at this place. Terry Schilling of the anti-LGBTQ American Principles Project took the stage with Chloe Cole, a woman in the process of reversing her transition, and Riley Gaines, a former Division 1 swimmer at the University of Kentucky who lost races last year to Lia Thomas, a trans woman. After describing the “transgender lobby” as “evil,” Schilling belabored the state of women’s sports.

Before “grooming” rhetoric was commonplace on the right, religious-right groups like Schilling’s began peddling stories about trans girls hurting girls’ sports. But this supposed concern was never about sports. In 2020, a Right Wing Watchinvestigation found that while much of the anti-trans messaging focused on sports, a coalition of religious-right groups was busy taking action, drafting legislation not only to prevent trans girls from playing on girls’ sports teams, but also to preventtrans kids from receiving gender-affirming care.Called “Promise to America’s Children,” the coalition included groups like Alliance Defending Freedom, Heritage Foundation, and Family Research Council—groups that have long been dedicated to rolling back rights for LGBTQ Americans. Thanks to these groups and allied state legislators, in 2023, some 400 anti-trans bills have been proposed in 42 states and 9 have passed, according to a national trans legislation tracker.

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"The strategy is fearmongering and propaganda,” Schuyler Bailer, a trans rights activist, told Right Wing Watch. “There’s absolutely no data to support the idea that trans people are an inherent threat to children.” In fact, gender-affirming care is supported by major health institutions, Bailer noted, with the American Medical Association declaring it “medically-necessary, evidence-based care that improves the physical and mental health of transgender and gender-diverse people.” But the facts aren’t what these attacks are about.

“Republicans found that when they could paint trans people as deviant, nefarious, harmful people that are going to hurt you in the bathroom or groom your children as the narrative goes, they could drive votes,” Bailer said.

Religious-right groups like Family Research Council have been explicit that their attacks on trans people are part of what they see as an election-winning strategy. “Our goal: Make the SAFE Act THE ‘wedge issue’ of the 2022 midterm elections!” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins wrote in a 2021 fundraising letter for FRC Action.

The Right’s Strategy on Display

The right’s strategy was on display on CPAC’s mainstage.

Sebastian Gorka—a former Trump adviser and an alleged member of a Nazi-cooperating political group in Hungary shortly before Marjorie Taylor Greene Friday to try to fire up the nearly empty room. He focused his sights on 2024.

“We have to win it so big that this radicalized party that thinks it’s OK to have open borders, to change the Constitution, to get rid of the Supreme Court, to,” he paused for effect, “mutilate young girls and boys as sacrifices on the altar of the transgender insanity. We have to so crush them at the next election that they collapse."

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*eron Greenesmith, a researcher at Political Research Associates, told Right Wing Watch Saturday that “CPAC is showcasing the truth of the right.” “Trans people have become, once again, the recruitment tactic and fundraiser of the right,” Greenesmith said. “Trans-supportive conservatives have ceded the floor to those who advocate openly for anti-trans violence.”

As these ideas about the need to “protect” kids and women snaked their way into right-wing media, the right has expanded its messaging. Now, right-wing activists say a shadowy “gender lobby” preys on kids to turn them trans. Politicians portray drag queens reading books to kids as “grooming” children. Gay teachers are “indoctrinating” children, they say, as are diversity, equity, and inclusion trainings.

Such fearmongering is effectively being deployed by groups like Moms for Liberty, which is trying to ban books about the LGBTQ experience, and Moms for America, a conservative group that urges right-wing candidates to run for school boards and claims to have more than 500,000 members across the country. Kimberly Fletcher, president and founder of Moms for America, made it clear to the CPAC audience that it’s not just trans people her group is organizing against, but the honest teaching of the history of our nation, sex education, and the tolerance and acceptance of the LGBTQ community writ large.

At a Thursday CPAC panel titled “One Tuff Mutha,” Fletcher claimed the left was coming after children, her voice quivering as she spoke. “They’re trying to erase us as moms,” she said. “And they know historically that’s what you do—that’s what Hitler did, that’s what Mao did, that’s what Stalin did. You take the children, you win the future.”

She listed a series of fears, her voice rising at each new alleged assault: “Everything that we’re facing: The CRT—the critical race theory is racism, that’s 101, that’s what it is. The comprehensive sex education, which isteaching kindergartners how to stimulate themselves. The gender confusion, where they’re having coming out parties since the first grade, and children are coming home terrified they’re suddenly going to turn into the opposite sex.”

She called on the audience to go on “the offensive,” asking kids to record their teachers. What we really need, she said, is “a new PPP”: “parents, pastors, and people of faith uniting together to save this country, protect our kids, and reclaim our culture, and restore the republic.”

The Right’s End Goal

Beneath the fearmongering about trans people as a tool to galvanize the base ahead of 2024 and to instigate a right-wing takeover of the schools is an even more dangerous ideology and agenda: a belief that trans people do not and should not exist.

On the third and final day of CPAC, The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles made that stance explicit: “The problem with transgenderism is not that it’s inappropriate for children under the age of 9,” Knowles said. “The problem with transgenderism is that it isn’t true.”

“There can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism,” Knowles said. “If it is false, then for the good of society… transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.” The crowd erupted in applause.

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as controversy ensued, Knowles insisted that he never called for the eradication of trans people but merely the eradication of an ideology. But transness is not an ideology, and ‘transgenderism’ is simply a phony term used by anti-trans activists. Based on Knowles’ remarks at CPAC and elsewhere, the results of such a call to action is clear: eliminating so-called “transgenderism” in public life as he emphatically calls for would make it impossible for trans people to live as themselves.

“It is a call for the eradication of trans people because you can’t separate transness and trans people,” Bailer told Right Wing Watch. “You cannot take away ‘transgenderism’ and leave the person. That’s not how it works.”

Bailer said that Knowles’ comments came up in the trans support groups he guides. His clients were terrified by the statement—not so much for Knowles’ transphobia but for the reception his comments received. “The cheering of the crowd—that was really disheartening and striking to receive watching that video,” he said.

In 2020, Right Wing Watch spoke to LGBTQ activist and writer Charlotte Clymer as religious-right groups and far-right politicians were attacking trans girls in sports. When asked what their goal was with such attacks, she was blunt—and prescient.

“Their goal has been to wipe out trans people from the public square from day one,” she said.

Tags: Marjorie Taylor Greene Michael Knowles Sebastian Gorka Anti-LGBTQ transphobia Moms for America

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Greene (R-GA), a far-right Christian nationalist extremist, kicked off her speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)Friday morning by telling the room filled with many empty seats that theleft is “coming for our children,” in her hate-filled, lie-filled, fear-mongering, anti-LGBTQ speech portraying her cause as virtuous because, she preached, “our God is bigger.” That God, she promised, would help her pass anti-transgender legislation that “will make it a felony to perform anything to do with gender-affirming care on children.”

“The left has told us something that should put fear in the heart of every parent,” Greene said as she began her speech. “Not just parents – every single person.”

“They said they’re coming for our children,” Greene declared.

“I think the Republican Party has a duty. We have a responsibility, and that is to be the party that protects children,” her speech (video below) continued.

Greene again falsely claimed that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said “he wants our sons and daughters to go die in Ukraine,” which is the exact opposite of what he said. She attacked the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus for “literally singing we’re coming for your children,” referring to a 2021 “tongue in cheek” song the group received right-wing death threats over because it advocated for teaching children to love and “not to hate.”

She did not offer any other examples where “the left” said they are “coming for our children."

she called medical experts who support transgender children a“billion dollar industry that mutilates the genitals of children” and claimed “they have a target, or should I say a victim?”

Describing transgender children and teens as “confused,” Greene told her audience, “everyone knows that when you’re growing up, I mean, think about it. How many times did you say when you’re a kid you wanted to be a fireman or a doctor or a police officer. You wanted to be something when you’re an adult, but when you grew up, you became something else.”

rather than offer support for transgender children and teens and their families, Greene repeatedly called them abused “victims” and said many of them “have diagnosis of autism, mental illness, they have depression, they have anxiety, they have psychosis. Many of them live in foster care. So they already have lived lives of abuse. And these victims come in thinking they’re going to find happiness and they’re going to find security in their identity because they think they can change their gender. These boys think they can become girls. These girls think they can become boys,” as she described gender-affirming surgery that almost never takes place on minors.

Greene announced her bill, the Protect Children’s innocence act, which she said “will make it a felony to perform anything to do with gender affirming care on children.” She boasted it would pass because of God.

“Our God is bigger. And our God, our God is the God that created us man and woman in His image, He created us in our God is the God that created our children. And because of him, we will get this bill passed and the Republican Party will be the party that protects children from such an evil that I cannot believe it exists in this time.”

Watch Greene’s full speech below or at this link.

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Appearing to confess frustration, far-right Republican governor Ron DeSantis says he is remaking Florida’s education system because even after turning the state’s Democratic Party into a "rotten carcass on the side of the street," the left "can still impose their agenda on my people."

That "agenda," apparently includes so-called Critical Race Theory (CRT), Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG), and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs, according to far-right Fox News host Mark Levin who told the Florida governor the right is "in a culture war."

"We didn't start it," Levin told DeSantis. "But what I call the Marxist left, they started it. It is devouring our institutions. It is devouring our politics. It's devouring the private sector."

DeSantis did not disagree.

As he uses the power of his office to pave the road for a likely 2024 run for the White House, DeSantis has not gone unnoticed. He has been accused of being "an Honest-to-God Semi-Fascist," turning Florida into "a laboratory for fascism," running his state "like a fascist," and being a "fascist for our time" and a "one-man civil rights wrecking ball, determined to neutralize any group that doesn't conform to his dangerously narrow view of social order."

All those accusations were before his Sunday night Fox News interview with Levin, who warned that "in the classrooms" there is "the sexualizing of little kids." Levin also said, "Disney, Walt Disney has to be rolling in his grave right now what's happened to Disneyland and Disney World and these other events in the culture."

Asked why he decided to take "the lead in taking this on as far as governors go," DeSantis bragged, "I got reelected November 2022. Largest vote than any Republican governor [in] Florida history has got, largest vote margin any governor candidates ever got. 1.5 million votes."

"I can win by 1.5 million votes. Make the Democratic Party in our state, basically, a rotten carcass on the side of the street. And yet, the left can still impose their agenda on my people if I'm not looking after fighting ESG and other woke companies and some of the stuff going on in the universities and the schools."

"And so I think I have an understanding that these fights are far broader than just one particular election. Yes, you do have to fight the woke in the halls of government and in the legislative chambers, and we have super majorities as Republicans in Florida so we will win all those fights, but you also have to be willing to defend your folks against this agenda being shoved down their throat from all these otherinstitutions,where these people aren't necessarily coming up for election."

DeSantis has infamously veered into pushing his supporters into local school board positions of power.

"So you talk about things with like the young kids and with Disney, and I see that not just through the eyes of a governor but also through the eyes of a dad," DeSantis continued. "You know, we have a six, a four, and a two-year-old at home. And we just believe as parents, we should be able to send our kids to school, have them watch cartoons without having somebody's sexual agenda shoved down their throats."

"And so when this issue came up, with the sexualization of the curriculum, of course in Florida, we think that that's inappropriate. And you know what? Republican, Democrat, Independent parents agree with us overwhelmingly."

That's debatable. In October Florida Politics reported, "Majorities oppose Ron DeSantis-backed 'Stop WOKE' and parental rights laws," including his "Don't Say Gay" law.

In January, a study by UCLA School of Law's Williams Institute found a large percentage of LGBTQ parents say they are concerned their families will be negatively impacted by DeSantis' laws, including HB 1557, the "Don't Say Gay" law – with some saying they already have been.

"Almost 9 out of 10 (88%) LGBTQ+ parents are very or somewhat concerned about the impact that HB 1557 will have on them and their children, with one in four reporting they have experienced anti-LGBTQ harassment since the law was passed and one in five reporting becoming less out in their communities since the law was passed. Parents have considered a variety of coping strategies in response to the bill, including moving out of the state (56%) and moving their children to a different school (11%). Over 16% of LGBTQ parents have already taken steps to move their families to another state."

Watch a short clip or the full interview below or at this link.

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Panelists on Tuesday morning's edition of Fox & Friends threw a fit about M&M's announcing its new spokesperson – actress Maya Rudolph – and then transitioned into a diatribe regarding the energy-saving feature that Microsoft offers on its Xbox Series X.

As GamesRadar explained in December 2022, "using Xbox Series X standby sleep mode will boot up your console almost instantly and will even run at reduced power when off to do things in the background. However, this obviously slowly chews through more power, so you can sacrifice a bit of convenience for a more economical option in the form of the energy-saving Shut-down mode."

The Vergealso noted the monetary savings that users can generate by using the console's expedited shutdown.

This struck a nerve with conservative Fox News anchor Ainsley Earhardt and host Jimmy Failla, who claimed that Xbox's manufacturer is trying to brainwash kids into "woke" beliefs about climate change.

Earhardt:

Well, M&M's putting its woke spokescandies on hold. The candy giant most notably changing the green M&M's white go-go boots to sneakers. Remember that last year? Well in a statement, the company now is saying, 'We've decided to take an infinite pause from the spokescandies. In their place, we are proud to announce a spokesperson America can agree on: the beloved Maya Rudolph.' Remember her from 'Saturday Night Live' and from 'Loot, and also from 'Bridesmaids.' She's really funny. And another funny guy Jimmy Failla, who hosts Fox Across America, on Fox News Radio and Fox Nation joins us now.

Failla:

Hey, hey, hey. Be honest, did you book me for this story because I look like I get paid in M&M's? Tell the truth, Ainsley, come clean with me. There is a really valuable message here for companies around the world: If it ain't woke, don't fix it. And what I mean by that is M&M's injected a social justice initiative into a bag of candy and nobody had asked for this initiative. People don't go to candy to get identity politics. They go to candy to get love handles. They go because they want to eat and escape the day. I mean, that's what candy always was to kids. It was like alcohol for kids. You're having a rough day, you bag down some M&M's, you get on with your life. But in this instance, they found themselves in the middle of a little bit of a social justice firestorm. But thankfully the customer base pushed back as they should.

Earhardt:

What do you think about Maya Rudolph being the new spokesperson?

Failla:

I think they blew this! No no. Maya Rudolph is actually, she's really funny and I really genuinely like her a lot. But I still think they blew it. They should have leaned into the fact that this is some of the most fattening content on Earth and gotten, like, me, okay? I am a good spokesperson. If I wasn't on cable news, I would be a before model, okay? That's who you want pushing your product, it gives everyone permission to eat this candy. Maya Rudolph makes me want to go to the gym; she looks great. You need a Jimmy Failla, that's all I am saying.

Earhardt:

So Xbox is also announced they're going woke too in – you know, because of climate change – that they are adding a new feature to their default settings. So if you own an Xbox you can upload this new program and it will turn off after so long to save the environment, the power. And also they are saying the energy saving shut down feature is going to have a slower boot time. Ted Cruz writes on Twitter, first gas stoves and then your coffee, now you're gunning for my Xbox.

Failla:

Ah ha ha ha ha. Isn't it crazy though? Like when we were kids you were a rebel if you had like a leather jacket and a pack of cigarettes. Now you have like a full-powered Xbox and you're eating pizza rolls on a gas stove. I mean it's crazy what they're doing. But we understand what this is. It's not that it's actually going to offset emissions. The level of reduction is infinitesimal. But they are trying to recruit your kids into climate politics at an earlier age. Make them climate conscious now.

Earhardt:

Yeah, I didn't think of that, you're right. They are going after the children.

Failla:

Of course they are. But again, what's the point of video games? It's for kids to be kids. Now you sit down, pick up a controller and they're like by the way the world is on fire. You know what I mean? You just want to play the game. And if they cared, I think they would stop making games that kept kids trapped in the house.My kid played so much Xbox during the lockdowns he didn't know there was a lockdown until two months in.

Watch below via Media Matters for America or at this link.

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After posting an anti-LGBTQ rant about pronouns and invoking QAnon-related rhetoric, Twitter CEO Elon Musk has now sought to weaponize a well-established QAnon smear tactic to brand Twitter’s former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth as a pedophile. Right-wing media personalities were quick to run with the baseless claims, and Roth was forced to flee his home amid threats.

After the rollout of the fifth installment of the so-called “Twitter Files,” which specifically brought Roth’s actions into question over the decision to ban then-President Donald Trump from the platform, Musk sent two tweets that endorsed baseless claims that Roth had advocated for children to be exposed to sexually explicit online material.

Responding to a resurfaced 2010 tweet from Roth sharing an article discussing whether or not a legal adult who was still in high school could consent to sex with a teacher, Musk wrote, “This explains a lot.” He then posted a one-paragraph excerpt from Roth’s 2016 PhD dissertation on the gay social media dating app Grindr, incorrectly claiming that Roth’s dissertation advocated for “children” being able to access the app.

Musk’s recent attack against Roth mirror tactics commonly used by QAnon adherents, and it comes after Musk posted a known QAnon phrase and has spent his short tenure as he company's self-styled “Chief Twit” openly embracing far-right personalities on the platform. Musk’s actions and tweets have resulted in a meteoric rise in hate speech and harassment toward LGBTQ individuals on the platform, often at the hands of extremists who had previously been banned for spreading hateful rhetoric but were given verified status through Musk’s Twitter Blue feature.

Much of what’s happening on Twitter has coincided with the existing right-wing campaign to smear LGBTQ people and political enemies as “groomers,” which has led to a level of threats and harassment against Roth that forced him to flee his home.

Several prominent right-wing pundits have taken to prime-time news and Twitter to amplify the baseless conspiracy theories against Roth, with others still lobbing anti-LGBTQ attacks that stop short of a full-blown conspiracy theory. A Media Matters’ analysis also found that fringe outlets, including the notorious 4chan board /pol/, saw a significant rise in mentions of Roth’s name and anti-LGBTQ slurs.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham, citing Roth’s past research and tweets, mentioned “pup kink” content and suggested he “wouldn’t see much harm in kids checking it out." She also accused him of standing “with the deviancy” when “the trans fanatics” are “preying on our children.” Ingraham also complained that Roth is “now playing the victim.”
On Twitter, conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec shared a screenshot of Roth’s 12-year-old tweet about “whether high school students can ever meaningfully consent to sex with their teachers” and said: “If only there had been some warning signs about Yoel Roth.”
One America News host Kara McKinney read an excerpt from Roth’s dissertation, saying, “New information is coming to light about Roth and his disturbing proclivities.” McKinney baselessly smeared Roth as being responsible for “child exploitation” on the platform, saying moderation and “the accommodation approach that Roth pioneered may be responsible for the proliferation of unwanted sexual advances, child exploitation, and lewd comments about sexual relationships between adults and children.” McKinney asked her guest, “Do you think it’s part of the overall movement on the left of really pushing down the age of consent lower and lower?” Mckinney’s guest, anti-LGBTQ figure James Lindsay, suggested that pedophilia is “part in parcel" for gay relationships and claimed that “it's quite clear that characters like Roth don't know what a healthy boundary” between minors and adults “looks like.”
Discussing Roth’s dissertation, OAN host Addison Smith claimed that “this so-called LGBTQ comprehensive sex education” is just “cryptic language for … ‘we’re coming for your children; we’ll convert your children.’” Smith later asked his guest, Standing for Freedom Executive Director Ryan Helfenbein, why companies like Twitter “all so explicitly target young kids.” Helfenbein responded calling it “sex Marxism” trying to “deconstruct a child in order to groom them.” Helfenbein called it “demonic” and “straight from the pit of Hell.”
After reading an excerpt of Roth’s dissertation, The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro misrepresented it and said Roth “is recommending Grindr make itself available to 16-17 year old kids so they can hook-up with each other, quote unquote, ‘safely.’”
Right-wing comedian and radio host Tim Young repliedto Roth’s 2010 tweet saying, “This tweet just clarified why the term 'groomer' was considered 'hate speech' on Twitter.”

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mma 12 22

CROWDER (HOST): Look, hey - you're now experiencing astealing of your country.Let me put a fine point on it. Do you believe the United States is a country where those in power support sex with children? If not, there are enough -- not all of them, of course not. But there are enough people in positions of authority who think that that should be a part of the fabric of our country. Let's not talk about an election. You are having your country stolen from you.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/fox-news-club-q/

mass shooting revert BS

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an 10 22 edit bd

...Today, I’m going to talk about a major theme for the Republicans that’s emerged before the congressional elections, and how that theme, too, illustrates the difficulty of seeing the truth. The theme is “parents’ rights” – or the idea that moms and dads have a right to know what their kids are learning in school with respect to “wokism.”

What most of us see are demands by reasonable people centering on the reasonable goal of protecting children from potentially harmful political views. What we should see is that these demands do not center children. They center parents. If the demand were truly about children, the Republican theme would be called “children’s rights.”

That it’s called “parents rights” tells us everything we need to know.

Allow me to introduce Jessica Kordas. She’s the Republican candidate for the attorney general of Connecticut. During a recent interview with reporters in New Haven, Kordas leaned into “parents rights.”

“She spoke of how fighting back as a single mom (of an 8‑year-old son and 10-year-old daughter) against Norwalk schools’ pandemic mask mandate propelled her to political activism and now this first run for public office,” according to the New Haven Independent.

“She spoke of pushing the state education department as attorney general to give parents more of a voice in their children’s school curriculum on topics such as sex education in younger grades.”

So far, so familiar.

Kordas, a criminal defense attorney, is singing variations on a theme of “parents’ rights” that all GOP candidates are singing. (Unlike her comrades, though, she concedes that Joe Biden beat Donald Trump.)

But Kordas goes on to say something revealing – not about her so much as the duplicitous nature of the theme of “parents’ rights.”

According to the Independent, Kordas, when off camera, “told a more personal story — of how she came to become an attorney — that dovetailed with how she views the elected office she’s now seeking.”

That story is of a young woman “who escaped a household harmed by drug abuse.” When she was 16, Kordas left “her family home in Norwalk. She headed to a law library. She read up on her options. She found out how to pursue legal emancipation. And she won it.”

Why is this revealing? Two reasons. One is that she cites this painful personal history, in which state law centers children who find themselves enmeshed in potentially harmful situations, as one of her reasons for running to be Connecticut’s top law enforcement officer.

Two, as Connecticut’s top law enforcement officer, Kordas promises to use her influence to decenter children and recenter parents – by pushing the education department to give them more of a voice.

What would have happened if state law had not empowered children like Kid Kordas to liberate themselves from their parents’ dangerous lives? Would Grown Kordas approve or would she use her influence to push the state to empower parents with more of a voice in the welfare of children enmeshed in their parents’ dangerous lives?

My point here isn’t that a set of laws is the same as a set of policy preferences. As state AG, Kordas’ authority with respect to education policy would be limited, presuming she’d have any authority. Neither is my point to catch Kordas is a gotcha. I’m sure she doesn’t care.

My point is to highlight the duplicitous nature of “parents’ rights.” When the state empowered Kid Kordas, she approved. When the state empowers other children, she doesn’t. When democracy enfranchises kids, it’s time for the resurgence of “parents’ rights.”

By now, what’s happening should be familiar.

When women rise in power, men howl about man-hating. When Black people claim their rights, white people fear for the end of the republic. When LGBT-plus people free themselves from cultural constraints, the status-quo elite freak over “a crisis of masculinity.” Whenever liberal democracy challenges the established political order, political elites rend their garments and gnash their teeth.

It’s the way of things.

It’s the same for kids.

Whenever the state empowers kids, as it does when it teaches them about sex or American history or “emotional learning,” some parents will attack the state – unless the state benefits them. The state is problematic only when it serves and protects “the undeserving.”

What most of us see is a question of whether parents have the right to protect their kids from potentially harmful political views. But this isn’t about protecting kids. It’s about protecting established interests. If it were about kids, the GOP would be calling for “children’s rights.”

That they aren’t telling you everything you need to know.

The truth is in plain sight.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/libs-tiktok/right-wing-media-spread-doctored-footage-drag-queen-concoct-fear-pride-events

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an 9 22 badash

Authorities from the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Harris County Sheriff’s Department responded to an anti-LGBTQ protest outside a Texas church on Saturday.

“First Christian Church Katy is hosting a drag bingo fundraiser benefiting the ministry’s Transparent Closet, a free boutique aimed at helping young people in the LGBTQ community in the largely conservative west Houston suburb,” Jay R. Jordan reported for Axios on Friday. “Protect Texas Kids, led by North Texas’ self-described “Christian fascist” Kelly Neidert, plans to protest outside the church, according to a Facebook event from the group.”

The report noted anti-fascist activists were planning a counterprotest.

“Neidert’s protests have drawn support from neo-Nazis and other anti-LGBTQ groups,” Axios reported. “Men in Nazi regalia and alleged Proud Boys wearing Buc-ee’s masks joined Neidert’s protest outside a drag brunch at Hamburger Mary’s downtown in July.”

On Saturday, Jordan posted a video clip from the scene.

“Proud Boys and Kelly Neidert’s Protect Texas Kids are in Katy, Texas, protesting a drag bingo fundraiser at First Christian Church. PB and Houston antifascists just clashed. Heavy police presence dividing the two groups now,” he reported.

He noted “Houston’s Nazis” had arrived and police formed a line between the two sides.

“The group of Nazis appear to be leaving the protest, sporting for the first time today a flag with a swastika. Proud Boys and Patriot Front have also left,” he reported.

Watch below or at this link:

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an 9 22

A woman picked to sit in on Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy‘s staged town-hall styled rollout of the House GOP’s latest “Commitment to America,” complained to the California lawmaker that a “new” program, “social emotional learning,” which teaches children to have greater self esteem, and be aware of their emotions and those of others, is “Marxist.”

Social Emotional Learning, or “SEL,” is not new, it was developed starting in the 1960s at the Yale University School of Medicine.

But according to the woman chosen to help McCarthy introduce what he admits is the GOP’s “plan” to win back the House, SEL is just the next big “concern,” after “CRT.” Critical Race Theory has been used by far-right wing extremists to delegitimize that systemic racism exists in America.

“There are many other public education issues, concerning parents like myself,” the woman, reading from a script, tells McCarthy, who is seated among an almost entirely white audience in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area.

The woman identified herself as Lori McRoberts “a mama bear,” who says she has three children, ages 19, 17, and 14.

In her remarks she also complained about “abusive COVID protocols, or mandates,” in schools, “or what they called the ‘health and safety plan,'” she said, reading from her typewritten remarks. She described lunchtime for students as sitting like “prisoners,” while mocking the fact that COVID is airborne, can be spread via talking, and those infected can be asymptomatic. She also described signs in schools urging children and teachers to“mask up for safety,” as “propaganda,” while lamenting that parents were not given decision-making abilities for COVID policies, neglecting to note they should be science-based, while expressing anger the protocols came from guidelines published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

After several minutes she got to the part where she blasted social learning programs.

“The slow creep of critical race theory,” she said, reading off her list of concerns, as her voice became angered, “diversity, equity, and inclusion, gender identity, and allowing biological boys to enter girls spaces in sports.”

“Now we have SEL,” she lamented, “which is ‘social-emotional learning,'” she said with disdain. “It’s indoctrination disguised as programs, like ‘kindness initiatives,’ or anti-bullying programs, or diversity projects.”

“These are all Marxist-style programs, targeting our children,” she claimed.

The Pittsburg, Pennsylvania public schools’ website says: “We all know that it is essential for children to master important academic skills, such as reading and mathematics. That’s why they go to school. But it is equally important for students to develop the ‘soft skills’ that we all need to navigate the world successfully. These include things like how to manage their own feelings and emotions, how to respect others and how to build strong, positive relationships. This is called Social-Emotional Learning (SEL).”

McRoberts continued her pre-written rant.

“Then, to make it all better, the current administration weaponized the Dept. of Justice,” she claimed, “and all the parents speaking up at school board meetings or challenging any of these programs, like I was, was now labeled a ‘domestic terrorist,'” she said, which is false.

“Our Dept. of Justice is calling me, a mom, a domestic terrorist,” she claimed, again, falsely.

After her lengthy and angry remarks, she asked how the Republican Party will “protect our children from the radical agenda of the left?”

After she spoke, to applause from the audience,U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, seated directly behind Congressman McCarthy, looked at McRoberts knowingly, repeatedly mouthing, “good job, good job.”

McCarthy responded to McRoberts, agreeing that DOJ had called parents “domestic terrorists,” which he knows is false, after The Washington Post and others have called him out on it for months.

Watch McRobert’s remarks on SEL, and the full town hall staged presentation, below or at this link.

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