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Anti-Gay Lawmakers Revive ‘Witch Hunt’ Against LGBTQ Youth Conference

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Allegations From Bob Vander Plaats’ Anti-Gay Group, The Family Leader, Sparked Legislative Inquiry

Iowa lawmakers are moving forward with an investigation into a statewide LGBTQ youth conference, in response to allegations from an anti-gay group that last year’s event included sexually explicit content. 

GOP Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, who chairs the House Government Oversight Committee, last week appointed two members of the panel, one Republican and one Democrat, to investigate the annual Governor’s Conference on LGBTQ Youth, now in its 11th year. The Republican appointed by Kaufmann to investigate the conference is Rep. Greg Heartsill, who serves as vice chair of the oversight committee and has led a hateful legislative crusade against the conference in recent years. 

Organized by the nonprofit advocacy group Iowa Safe Schools, the educational conference is the largest of its kind in the nation, drawing more than 1,000 students, parents and teachers from across the Midwest to address issues like bullying, homelessness, suicide and sexual health among LGBT youth and teens. 

Posted by Iowa Safe Schools on Monday, April 20, 2015

Although the conference doesn’t directly receive any taxpayer funds, it has come under fire from some GOP lawmakers as well as the The Family Leader, the Iowa anti-LGBT group led by Bob Vander Plaats, which sent an undercover operative to the event last year. 

RELATED: Top Anti-Gay Activist Demands Schools Teach Gays They Can Never Have Sex

“There were only two sessions [among more than 20] that had anything to do with bullying,” the Family Leader’s anonymous spy later alleged in a rather salacious report. “It’s a conference teaching kids how to be confidently homosexual, how to pleasure their gay partners — one session even taught transsexual girls how to sew fake testicles into their underwear in order to pass themselves off as boys.”

The operative’s report went on to quote a father, also anonymous, who said his daughter left the conference early because she was “absolutely distraught.” 

“It was crude. One presenter told students who asked whether anal sex hurt that, as a lesbian, it really depended on how big the device is that their partner straps on,” the father said. “My daughter went to listen to the comedian, Sam Killermann, thinking it would at least be funny. But instead, Killermann explained how pleasurable it is for gay couples to eat each other’s behinds and how to use different flavors of [oils] to make it taste better.” 

Conference participants flatly denied the undercover operative’s allegations. Kerri Barnhouse, adviser for the Gay Straight Alliance at West High School in Iowa City, said the Family Leader “twisted and manipulated” the conference, while students who attended launched a letter-writing campaign to Vander Plaats.

RELATED: Anti-Gay Iowa Republican Partners With Anti-Gay Christian Group To Bully Anti-Bullying LGBTQ Group

Nate Monson, executive director of Iowa Safe Schools, suggested that people like Vander Plaats, Kauffman and Heartsill are waging “a witch hunt” aimed at shutting down the event. 

“I have no words to describe the violation of civil liberties – and common human decency — it is to listen into the conversations of young people in settings where parents and youth are encouraged to have an open dialogue about tough issues,” Monson wrote, adding that the “campaign of pure hate” has led to Iowa Safe Schools representatives being called “child-molesting enablers, fags, dykes, queers, and homos.”

“If a supposedly responsible adult can unleash untruths and distort an event like our conference in such a way as to garner such hateful reaction directed at the LGBTQ community, can you imagine what our youth face when bullies hear those same messages?” Monson added.  

Posted by Iowa Safe Schools on Friday, March 20, 2015

Despite his fringe views, Vander Plaats enjoys considerable influence among the state’s Republicans, marked by his power player status in Iowa’s GOP presidential caucus, in which he’s endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz this year.

In response to the undercover operative’s report, Heartsill sent a letter to school superintendents — which Monson described as “creepy” — asking how many people from their districts attended the conference and whether they covered any of the costs, including transportation. Then, Kauffman scheduled a legislative hearing on the conference for October, but later postponed it before reviving the investigation last week. 

Heartsill also introduced an unsuccessful amendment last year that would have required students to obtain parental consent before attending the conference. During debate on the amendment on the House floor, Heartsill infamously acknowledged that he didn’t even know what “LGBTQ” stood for.

Monson told The New Civil Rights Movement that the other lawmaker appointed by Kaufmann to investigate the conference, Democratic Rep. Phyllis Thede, has been a strong advocate for safe schools. However, Monson said he believes Heartsill will attempt to use the investigation to leverage support for a similar amendment this year. 

“He’s going to use this spot to bully and harass Iowa Safe Schools to try and get that passed in addition to stopping kids from coming this year by distorting the event,” Monson said. “Most of our attendees are rural kids who come with teachers and their parents. Every year these youth get to meet a major figure in our community. … Homeless youth from one of our shelters come annually and for those kids rejected by their families to know everything is OK, that’s why we do this. Heartsill has no shame in wanting to hurt our most vulnerable youth.” 

This year’s conference is set for April 29 in Des Moines. To support the conference, which is funded entirely by donations, go here. 

 

Images via Iowa Safe Schools/Facebook

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News

‘A Lot of Empty Seats’: What Reporters Are Seeing and Saying About Trump’s Final Rallies

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November 4, 2024

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Win or lose on Election Day, it’s unlikely the 78-year old Donald Trump will ever hold another presidential campaign rally again, and yet some of his supporters over the past week have stopped showing up for his final tour, leading reporters on several networks to mention there are “a lot of empty seats.”

Who will win the presidential election is anyone’s guess, but for the Republican nominee coming to the end of his third campaign, some expected more people would be out to get one last rush of the MAGA experience.

“Very low energy,” is how Mother Jones’ D.C. bureau chief David Corn described Trump’s rally Monday in Reading, Pennsylvania—a must-win state both candidates have been focusing on.

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NBC News’ Vaughn Hillyard, who says he’s been covering Trump since 2015, notes Trump’s first rally on the last day before Election Day is just 70 percent full—and Trump was 40 minutes late.

And he talked about the “far smaller crowds” they’ve been seeing, including this one in North Carolina.

“I wanna show you guys real fast what this crowd looks like,” Hillyard told MSNBC viewers. “We’re looking at about a capacity, about 70% full here, and for nine years … we have talked about the enthusiasm in the masses that have come out for Trump’s rallies, time and again, even at his politically lowest points, including in 2022.”

“I can’t tell you exactly why, but in this final week we have seen far smaller crowds. We were in Greensboro, North Carolina, where just a few thousand people. Macon, Georgia, just a few thousand people yesterday. What does that mean ultimately, you can only discern so much from what crowd sizes look like, but interestingly, for the first time since I’ve been covering Donald Trump since 2015, there’s been us in the press that have been looking around questioning why the crowd sizes have been less than what we are accustomed to.”

Biden White House Communications Director Ben LaBolt, from his personal account on X responded: “The act got old.”

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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein posted video from Trump’s Sunday rally in Macon, Georgia.

Revealing just how tired Trump’s supporters have, the comedy team of The Good Liars, who frequently go to Trump rallies and interview his supporters, on Monday caught several people holding Trump signs leaving but his rally early.

The Lincoln Project posted a video, originally posted by Hillyard, remarking, “This is how the MAGA movement is dying, like a bad club when the lights come on.”

Another Trump rally today with “a lot of empty seats.”

A CNN rep-orter for that same rally agreed: “a lot of empty seats.”

Democratic former U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill noted that a Trump rally on Saturday also had “a lot of empty seats.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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Trump ‘Bat Signals’ Proud Boys as Extremist Groups Deliver ‘Harbinger of Potential Chaos’

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16 hours ago

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November 4, 2024

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Donald Trump over the past few weeks has occasionally been discarding his iconic blue suit, red tie, and red “Make America Great Again” baseball cap, and instead wearing a black suit, gold tie, and black and gold MAGA hat. Black and gold are the colors of the far-right group the Proud Boys, who “instigated critical breaches of the Capitol” during the January 6, 2021 insurrection. Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was handed a sentence last year of “22 years in prison for orchestrating a failed plot to keep Donald Trump in power after the Republican lost the 2020 election.”

Months before the insurrection trump had infamously signaled, “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.”

“The Proud Boys are back in the news today,” wrote Rolling Stone senior writer Tim Dickinson. “Trump is not only bat signaling to the fight club with a black and gold MAGA hat — he’s campaigning for a far-right congressional candidate who had a Proud Boy on payroll.”

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Dickinson pointed to his reporting on Republican Joe Kent, a “far-right candidate for the House, with connections to white nationalists,” who has “extremist views and affiliations, including reportedly paying a Proud Boy as a consultant.”

Attorney Tristan Snell, who helped lead New York’s successful $25 million prosecution in the Trump University case, warns: “MAGA’s colors have always been red and white. Yet Trump is suddenly wearing black and gold MAGA hats — and even wore a black suit and gold tie the other day, rather than his habitual blue suit and red tie. The Proud Boys colors are black and gold. THIS IS NOT A COINCIDENCE.”

Calling it “a harbinger of potential chaos,” The New York Times on Monday reports: “Groups backing former President Donald J. Trump recently sent messages to organize poll watchers to be ready to dispute votes in Democratic areas. Some posted images of armed men standing up for their rights to recruit for their cause. Others spread conspiracy theories that anything less than a Trump victory on Tuesday would be a miscarriage of justice worthy of revolt.”

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One post, “from an Ohio chapter of the Proud Boys, the far-right organization that was instrumental in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol,” read: “The day is fast approaching when fence sitting will no longer be possible.”

“You will either stand with the resistance or take a knee and willingly accept the yoke of tyranny and oppression.”

Pointing to “the growth and increased sophistication of the election denialism movement,” The Times reports its “analysis of more than one million messages across nearly 50 Telegram channels with over 500,000 members found a sprawling and interconnected movement intended to question the credibility of the presidential election, interfere with the voting process and potentially dispute the outcome.”

Posts from groups like the Proud Boys, “questioned why states might not be able to fully tally election results on election night and repeated misleading claims about voter registration numbers in Michigan. In one video, a truck with a Confederate flag chased after immigrant children, with a caption reading: ‘1/20/25: Trump is sworn in as President. 1/21/25: Me and the Proud Boys begin the deportation.’”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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‘Dire Implications’: Trump’s Possible Vaccine Ban Could Spark US, Global Health Crisis

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17 hours ago

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November 4, 2024

By

Over the weekend Donald Trump said he is considering a ban on not just vaccine mandates, but vaccines themselves—an extension of his embrace of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The ex-president also said he is considering RFK Jr.’s declaration that he would immediately ban fluoride treatments in public water, which protect about two out of three Americans, according to the CDC.

NBC News’ Dasha Burns spoke with Trump on Sunday. She reports, “I asked if banning certain vaccines might be on the table. Former President Trump said, ‘I’m going to talk to him,’ meaning Kennedy, ‘talk to other people and I’ll make a decision, but he’s a very talented guy and has strong views.’ So it could really have a massive impact on how our government functions in terms of health should the former president win and give Kennedy a big role here.”

Trump, as of publication time, has a 53-47 chance of winning the White House, FiveThirtyEight reports. He is expected to put RFK Jr., a known AIDS denialist and anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and purveyor of vaccine misinformation who has likened the use of vaccines to the “holocaust,” in charge of all public health agencies and public health policies, should Trump win election this week.

Kennedy in 2021 said, “I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, better not get them vaccinated.”

One week ago Sunday, at Trump’s now-infamous Madison Square Garden rally, the ex-president promised to let RFK Jr. “go wild.”

READ MORE: ‘She Kills People’: Trump Amps Up Attack on Cheney After Violent ‘Nine Barrels’ Rhetoric

“I’m gonna let him go wild on health. I’m gonna let him go wild on the food. I’m gonna let him go wild on the medicines,” Trump told supporters. Two days later, Kennedy said: “The key that President Trump has promised me is control of the public health agencies, which are HHS and its sub-agencies, CDC, FDA, NIH, and a few others, and then also the USDA.”

Across the board, modern-day vaccines have eradicated or nearly eradicated diseases that have killed millions. How would putting an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist in charge of determining public health policy for a nation, and the world, work out?

Felix Richter, a data journalist for Statistia in 2022 wrote, “Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows just how effective vaccines have been in all but eradicating major diseases in the United States. In 2021, there were no reported cases of small pox, diphteria and paralytic polio for example, compared to an annual average of 29,005 cases, 21,053 cases and 16,316 cases in the 20th century, respectively.”

“And even though progress in eradicating measles has stalled in recent years (due in part to growing vaccine skepticism), its morbidity is nowhere near the annual case load seen in the 20th century, when half a million people were infected in an average year. Its prevalence has fallen by more than 99 percent due to vaccinations, along with a whole host of other diseases such as pertussis (whooping cough), mumps and rubella.”

Kennedy had a history of gravitating to areas where vaccines have been controversial.

In 2015, The Sacramento Bee reported, “prominent vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. arrived at the Sacramento screening of a film linking autism to the vaccine preservative thimerosal and warned that public health officials cannot be trusted.” His appearance came as “lawmakers [were] preparing to vote on a bill blocking parents from skipping vaccinations for their children,” which “was prompted by soaring exemption rates in some schools districts and outbreaks of long-dormant diseases like measles and whooping cough.”

Last year, The Associated Press called Kennedy’s anti-vaccine group, Children’s Health Defense (CHD), “a multimillion-dollar misinformation engine.”

In that deep-dive report, the AP also revealed that “Kennedy’s role in legitimizing anti-vaccine activism has not been limited to the U.S. Perhaps the most well-known example was in 2019 on the Pacific island nation of Samoa.”

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“That year, dozens of children died of measles. Many factors led to the wave of deaths, including medical mistakes and poor decisions by government authorities. But people involved in the response who spoke to AP said Kennedy and the anti-vaccine activists he supported made things worse,” the AP reported. “In June 2019, Kennedy and his wife, the actress Cheryl Hines, visited Samoa, a trip Kennedy later wrote was arranged by Edwin Tamasese, a Samoan local anti-vaccine influencer.”

“Vaccine rates had plummeted after two children died in 2018 from a measles vaccine that a nurse had incorrectly mixed with a muscle relaxant,” the AP noted, but Kennedy “was treated as a distinguished guest, traveling in a government vehicle, meeting with the prime minister and, according to Kennedy, many health officials and the health minister. He also met with anti-vaccine activists, including Tamasese and another well-known influencer, Taylor Winterstein, who posted a photograph of herself and Kennedy on her Instagram.”

“A few months later, a measles epidemic broke out in Samoa, killing 83 people, mostly infants and children in a population of about 200,000. Public health officials said at the time that anti-vaccine misinformation had made the nation vulnerable.”

Last year, The Autism Science Foundation (ASF) reported: “There is no correlation between autism and vaccines. This has been confirmed through dozens of scientific studies examining different types of vaccines and different vaccine timing schedules. Researchers have also studied thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative used in many vaccines, to see if it had any relation to autism. The results are clear: The data show no relationship between vaccines, thimerosal and autism.”

There are other ways to look at how anti-vaccine polices and beliefs affect populations.

Lat month, The Associated Press reported that “Whooping cough is at its highest level in a decade for this time of year.”

“There have been 18,506 cases of whooping cough reported so far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. That’s the most at this point in the year since 2014, when cases topped 21,800.” In Wisconsin, for example, “there have been about 1,000 cases so far this year, compared to a total of 51 last year.”

An Idaho public health department has banned its practitioners from administering the COVID vaccine.

Last week the AP reported that a “regional public health department in Idaho is no longer providing COVID-19 vaccines to residents in six counties after a narrow decision by its board.”

“Southwest District Health appears to be the first in the nation to be restricted from giving COVID-19 vaccines. Vaccinations are an essential function of a public health department,” the AP added. “Demand for COVID vaccines in the health district has declined — with 1,601 given in 2021 to 64 so far in 2024. The same is true for other vaccines: Idaho has the highest childhood vaccination exemption rate in the nation, and last year, the Southwest District Health Department rushed to contain a rare measles outbreak that sickened 10.”

The UK’s award-wining i newspaper warns if the U.S. bans vaccines, it could spark an international health crisis.

“A US ban on vaccines would have ‘dire implications’ for Americans and could put vulnerable Britons at greater risk of harm, a leading UK-based expert has said.”

“For example, the resurgence of diseases like measles and polio, which had been largely eradicated in the US, could occur. The 2019 measles outbreaks, fuelled by vaccine hesitancy, serve as a stark reminder of this risk,” Kirsty Le Doare, Professor of Vaccinology and Immunology at St Georges University of London, told the i.

“Internationally, countries like the UK could see increased vulnerability. If the US stops vaccinating, it might lead to a rise in infections that could cross borders, impacting global health. For instance, a decline in US vaccination rates could affect herd immunity in neighbouring countries, leading to outbreaks that strain resources and public health systems,” Professor Le Doare added. “A US ban could disrupt supply chains and funding for vaccine research, impacting vaccination efforts in developing nations where access is already limited. This could ultimately stall progress on global health initiatives.”

Banning vaccines and fluoride are just two of the possible looming attacks on Americans’ healthcare under a Trump presidency. Last week, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said he and Trump want to “take a blowtorch to the regulatory state,” and the entire U.S. healthcare system needed to be deregulated, and a “free market” system implemented. When asked by an attendee at a Pennsylvania event for a local GOP candidate if that meant “No ObamaCare?” Johnson replied, “No Obamacare,” explaining how Trump wants to “go big” in removing regulations. He later tried to backtrack, by saying that killing ObamaCare was not what he meant, but Trump has repeatedly not only said he wants to repeal ObamaCare, he has tried several times.

Dr. Syra Madad, an epidemiologist, told CNN putting RFK Jr. in charge of Americans’ health is “dangerous.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

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