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Top Minnesota Newspaper Under Fire For Publishing Full-Page Anti-Trans Ad (Photo)

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The Minnesota Star Tribune is under attack after it chose to publish a full-page hysterical, fear-mongering, ugly, anti-trans ad.

Many readers are angered and disappointed that the Star-Tribune, Minnesota’s largest newspaper, yesterday published an ad that preys on parents’ fears and on members of the transgender community, especially minors.

“A male wants to shower beside your 14-year old daughter,” the words of the ad, super-imposed against a bathroom-tiled shower wall, read. “Are YOU ok with that?” 

The ad was paid for by Minnesota Child Protection League.

It asks parents to contact Minnesota State High School League officials and ask them to oppose a policy for transgender students.

“Minnesota is by no means the first state to have its high school activities association consider such a policy,” The Column, a Minnesota nonprofit LGBT media organization reports. “Associations in Illinois, California, Maine, Colorado, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Connecticut have had similar policies for several years. Even associations in states that are considered conservative have adopted such policies including Nebraska in 2012, and North Carolina and Virginia in 2014. Minnesota’s neighbors to the south and west have also approved of the policies. Iowa approved similar policies earlier this spring. The South Dakota High School Activities Association approved such recommendations in June.”

The Minnesota Child Protection League’s “spokesperson is Barb Anderson, founder of the Parents Action League,” Minneapolis City Pages reports. The Parents Action League is listed on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s active anti-gay hate groups page. 

“The greatest threat to our freedom and the health and well-being of our children,” Anderson has said, according to Minneapolis City Pages, “is from this radical homosexual agenda that is just so pervasive.”

The Star-Tribune’s Vice President of of marketing and public relations says the ad “met all the requirements of our ad policy.”

Readers are none too pleased, and took to Twitter to say so:

 

Image by David Brauer via Twitter
Hat tip: Minneapolis City Pages

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News

Trump NatSec Nominees Are ‘Worse Than Worst Case,’ ‘Functional Foreign Agents’: Experts

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November 13, 2024

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National security and political experts are sounding the alarm over several of Donald Trump’s nominations to top Cabinet-level positions, saying they are not only “totally absurd and appalling,” but a threat to the nation’s—and the world’s—security.

Here’s the current list of all of Trump’s Cabinet-level nominations (Politico is keeping track):

• White House Chief of Staff – Susie Wiles

•Secretary of State – Marco Rubio

•Secretary of Defense – Pete Hegseth

•Attorney General – Matt Gaetz

•Secretary of Homeland Security – Kristi Noem

•Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency – Lee Zeldin

•Director of National Intelligence – Tulsi Gabbard

•Ambassador to the United Nations – Elise Stefanik

•Director of the CIA – John Ratcliffe

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“Good lord,” remarked Phillips O’Brien, a historian, professor of strategic studies, and author of books on World War II, “an outright Putin apologist is named to be head of US national intelligence.”

O’Brien was referring to Trump’s nomination of former Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard to be the Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

Economist Anders Åslund, a former economic advisor to Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Ukraine, said: “Tulsi Gabbard appears a pure Russian asset. How can she become Director of US National Intelligence? How could she possibly pass a normal security clearance?”

“If Tulsi Gabbard becomes Director of National Intelligence,” Åslund added, “it would be better for US national security to close down all intelligence.”

The Washington Spectator’s Dave Troy, an investigative journalist with expertise on Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin, explained: “This is the reality. This can’t happen. The other Five Eyes countries will cut us off. This is a decapitation strike.”

“Five Eyes” is the joint intelligence-sharing alliance of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Dr Ruth Deyermond, a Senior Lecturer in Post-Soviet Security at King’s College London’s Dept. of War Studies writes: “Even by Trump standards, this an extraordinary demonstration of the extent to which Russia-aligned interests have captured the incoming US executive. What NATO partner (Hungary aside) will trust the US with any intelligence now?”

Journalist Craig Unger is a New York Times best-selling author of books about 9/11, the Bush family, and Trump, including: “House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia.”

He writes: “As of now, NATO is effectively over. Why would any of our allies share intelligence with us when the head of National Intelligence is effectively in bed with Putin.”

Former FBI special agent Asha Rangappa, an attorney and legal contributor to ABC News, issued this warning: “I very much hope that the USIC [U.S. Intelligence Community] takes measures to protect sources (or hand them off to allied intelligence services) pronto because Pooty [Vladimir Putin] is about to learn EVERYTHING we know about them and Ukraine.”

The Guardian’s Carole Cadwalladr, who exposed the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, posted the video below by Tulsi Gabbard and wrote: “Trump has just appointed this woman Director of National Intelligence. A pro-Russian, pro-Putin mouthpiece. To remind you the UK shares intelligence with the US. Worse than worst case scenario.”

Christopher Miller is the Financial Times’ award-winning chief Ukraine correspondent whose “reporting has focused on Ukrainian politics and various aspects of Russia’s war against Ukraine, exposing war crimes and revealing the plight of people forced to live under brutal occupation,” according to his bio.

He weighed in on the appointment of Tulsi Gabbard to ODNI:

The Atlantic’s David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter who recently renounced his membership to the Republican Party, declared Congressman Gaetz’s nomination is the “most absurd,” and former Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard’s is “the most sinister.”

READ MORE: MAGA Congressman Vows Loyalty: ‘If Trump Says Jump 3 Feet High We Jump 3 Feet High’

The Lincoln Project’s Stuart Stevens, author of “The Conspiracy to End America: Five Ways My Old Party Is Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy,” warned:

“A prediction: assuming we get through this period as a functioning democracy, there will be the first treason trials in America since 1949. Trump is giving functional foreign agents access to America’s security.”

Trump’s latest announcement, that he is nominating U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz to lead the U.S. Dept. of Justice as Attorney General, drew consternation, with critics noting that the Florida Republican lawmaker is currently under investigation by the House Ethics Committee, and had been under federal investigation for a litany of possible offenses, including illicit drug use, sex trafficking, and having sexual relations with a minor. He also reportedly had asked outgoing President Donald Trump for a “blanket pardon,” to cover any number of possible crimes, including his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

“Evidence suggested that he had spent time with a number of young women who advertised on a Web site that seemed to be a thinly veiled venue for prostitution,” The New Yorker reported in February. “Gaetz, then a three-term congressman with a reputation for a freewheeling private life, appeared to have the impulse control of a teen-age boy.”

O’Brien also weighed in on Gaetz: “Good lord 2, Matt Gaetz as Attorney General. The GOP seems hellbent on turning the US Government over to Russia.” And he warned that “all of us who have been saying that Europe needs to take care of its own security without the USA…need to scream it louder.”

Gaetz has suggested Russia be admitted to NATO, instead of Ukraine.

Alyssa Farah Griffin, the former Trump White House director of strategic communications and a co-host on “The View,” suggested there may be a “strategy” in play.

“Perhaps there’s some strategy to the more *bonkers* Cabinet picks? Trump may be signaling to the Senate to be thoughtful in what nominees it considers blocking -Kristi Noem, for example, suddenly looks immensely qualified for DHS compared to say Gaetz as AG or Tulsi as ODNI.”

Media Matters’ Matthew Gertz observes, “Matt Gaetz pick is so crazy people have forgotten the Tulsi Gabbard pick which was so crazy people had forgotten about the Pete Hegseth pick. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Tenfold Increase in Number of Deportations’: Trump Hands Stephen Miller Top Policy Post

 

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MAGA Congressman Vows Loyalty: ‘If Trump Says Jump 3 Feet High We Jump 3 Feet High’

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11 hours ago

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November 13, 2024

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Bragging about his total fealty to Donald Trump, U.S. Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) made clear he and and the House Republican Conference are in complete lockstep with the President-elect and will do anything to support their leader.

“There’s no question, he’s the leader of our party,” Congressman Nehls told reporters after the President-elect visited with House Republicans Wednesday before heading to the White House for a photo-op with President Joe Biden.

“So now he’s got a mission statement—his mission, and his goals and objectives, whatever that is, we need to embrace it,” Nehls said, before holding up his finger and adding, “All of it. Every. Single. Word.”

READ MORE: MAGA Loses ‘First War’: Rick Scott Rejected by Senate GOP, Thune Elected Leader

“If Donald Trump says ‘jump three feet high and scratch your head,’ we all jump three feet high and scratch our heads,” vowed Nehls, a former sheriff who was accused of stolen valor last year.

Also last year, Congressman Nehls, who appears to be the subject of an investigation by the House Ethics Committee. bragged about House Republicans’ true motivation to impeach President Joe Biden: “Trump 2024, baby!” he told a reporter.

A few short months later, at the State of the Union, Congressman Nehls wore a t-shirt with Donald Trump’s booking mug shot and the words, “Never Surrender.”

See the photos and video above or at this link.

READ MORE: Musk and Ramaswamy Heading New ‘DOGE’ Prompts Legal and Ethical Concerns: Experts

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MAGA Loses ‘First War’: Rick Scott Rejected by Senate GOP, Thune Elected Leader

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13 hours ago

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November 13, 2024

By

Senate Republicans in a secret ballot election behind closed doors on Wednesday rebuffed President-elect Donald Trump’s hopes to install a Majority Leader who would allow him to usurp Senate power and freely make recess appointments without the constitutional requirements of advice and consent. Republicans immediately rejected far-right MAGA Senator Rick Scott of Florida on the first ballot, and rejected U.S. Senator John Cornyn of Texas on the second, choosing U.S. Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the current Senate Minority Whip and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s second in command, to lead the Republican conference.

Thune, seen as the least-extreme of the three candidates, will become Majority Leader in January. And while he did agree that recess appointments could be “on the table,” Thune has a history of not blindly bowing down to Trump.

“Rick Scott wants to help Trump sidestep the body to install extremists in the Cabinet,” Rolling Stone reported, suggesting that Thune is not a “MAGA fixer, greasing the skids to ram controversial appointees and legislation through the Senate.”

READ MORE: Musk and Ramaswamy Heading New ‘DOGE’ Prompts Legal and Ethical Concerns: Experts

Also suggesting the U.S. Senate might serve at least as a deterrent to me of Trump’s far-right and extremist tendencies, Rolling Stone noted:

“Following last week’s election, Republicans will have a small majority in the Senate, likely 53-47. Two of those votes are Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska who are perceived as moderates and could potentially withhold consent on extreme nominees. Another vote is a wild card: whomever Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine chooses to replace Vice President-elect J.D. Vance. DeWine recently clashed with Vance and Trump over their racist lies about Haitian immigrants living in Springfield, Ohio, and may not send a MAGA rubber stamp to Washington.”

Axios founder Jim VandeHei also agreed this was a repudiation of Trump’s MAGA machine:

“MAGA media waged its first war – and lost badly. Scott eliminated on first ballot. John Thune wins Senate Republican leader race. He’s the closest thing to an establishment figure left in DC power.”

It is the end of the nearly two-decade long McConnell era. McConnell opted to hold the election for his replacement early, angering President-elect Trump.

Trump on Sunday had issued a threatening statement, signaling his desire to effectively co-opt the upper chamber of a co-equal branch of the federal government”

READ MORE: Trump Victory Was ‘Slim’ and Not the ‘Historic Mandate’ Republicans Claim, Analysis Shows

“Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!), without which we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner. Sometimes the votes can take two years, or more. This is what they did four years ago, and we cannot let it happen again. We need positions filled IMMEDIATELY! Additionally, no Judges should be approved during this period of time because the Democrats are looking to ram through their Judges as the Republicans fight over Leadership. THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE. THANK YOU!”

Politico’s Kyle Cheney posted Thune’s statements on his votes after each of the Trump Senate impeachment trials. Thune made clear he opposed Trump’s actions.

CNN’s Manu Raju reports Thune’s “politics are much more in the mainstream of GOP orthodoxy,” and notes he “called on Trump to drop out” of the 2016 presidential are after the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape.

Thune had endorsed U.S. Senator Tim Scott for the presidency over Trump.

Watch CNN ‘s report below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘No Excuse’: Dems Have Just Weeks to Get Dozens of Biden’s Judicial Nominees Confirmed

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