The Homophobia, Racism and Conspiracy Theories on Display at ‘Parents’ Rights’ Rallies

It was advertised as a protest focused on children and families. But at a rally in Vancouver, an antisemitic slur was hurled. In Ottawa, a flag with a Nazi swastika was displayed at a park. And at protests across Canada, protest signs equated education and advocacy about LGBTQ2S+ issues with pedophilia.

Last week, protests co-ordinated under the banner of “1 Million March 4 Children” took place in cities and towns across Canada. In many cities, including Vancouver, those protests were met and outnumbered by counter-protests supporting the rights of queer people, especially trans youth.

Musk ousts X team curbing election disinformation

Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly Twitter) said overnight that a global team working on curbing disinformation during elections had been dismissed — a mere two days after being singled out by the EU's digital chief as the online platform with the most falsehoods.

Responding to reports about cuts, the tech mogul said on X, "Oh you mean the 'Election Integrity' Team that was undermining election integrity? Yeah, they’re gone."

A Small Cadre of GOP Hard-Liners Is Pushing US Toward Government Shutdown

The U.S. government is set to run out of money later this week, not because the U.S. has suddenly gotten poor, but because hard-liners within the GOP are looking for major policy concessions from the White House and the Democratic-controlled Senate simply to keep government operations afloat. Without those concessions, many Republicans have made it clear they will refuse to cast their votes for the 12 appropriations bills that keep the system ticking along.

This is the latest installment of what has become an entirely dysfunctional congressional ritual — using vital legislative deadlines as bargaining chips in a high-stakes effort to impose a far right agenda on the body politic. If the borrowing limit needs to be raised, a significant number of Republicans simply refuse to vote for the increase. If government needs to be funded through appropriations bills, as is the case this week, these same hard-liners see it as an opportunity to leverage their votes in exchange for massive cuts to federal spending and the adoption of a raft of other policy demands.

Tim Scott: 'Not Necessarily A Bad Thing' To Block Hundreds Of Biden's Military Nominees

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said Thursday that an ongoing GOP blockade of hundreds of President Joe Biden’s military nominees may actually be a good thing for America since Biden has been trying to bring more diversity into the nation’s military.

In an interview with conservative radio show host Hugh Hewitt, Scott, who is running for president, was asked if he supports Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) in blocking more than 300 military nominations in protest of the Pentagon’s policy on providing abortion-related travel. Tuberville has been leaning on Senate procedural rules since February to derail their confirmations.

Trump Wants Republicans to Shut Down the Government to Block DOJ Charge

In a Truth Social post on Wednesday night, former President Donald Trump demanded that Republican lawmakers in Congress shut down the federal government in order to aid him in thwarting the charges against him in the federal grand jury investigations into his actions.

With a funding crisis looming, and no indications that a deal between Democrats and Republicans (much less between Republicans and Republicans) is in motion, the federal government is set to run out of funding by the end of September.

House GOP Holdouts Again Stall Defense Bill, Dampen Hopes For Avoiding Shutdown

House Republicans were set Thursday to pick themselves up, dust themselves off and again try to get back to passing spending bills to avoid a looming government shutdown after the defense funding bill was stalled for the second time in three days.

“That was the most productive meeting we’ve had in some time and frankly we heard really good ideas,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) told reporters after emerging from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) office.

Shutdown Prospects Grow As House GOP Fumbles Defense Funding Bill

A small group of rebellious House Republicans sank the annual funding bill for the Pentagon in the House Tuesday, underlining how difficult it will be to keep the entire government open and the lights on after Sept. 30.

The defense bill is usually the easiest for Republicans to vote in favor of, as it funds their top priority: national defense. But this year, it has become entangled in a wider, increasingly bitter intra-party fight in the House GOP overspending. 

Judge declares Biden version of DACA illegal

A federal judge in Texas on Wednesday again ruled that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program is illegal, but kept it intact for now for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children.

After the Biden administration moved last year to finalize a rule to codify the Obama-era DACA policy into a federal regulation, a group of Republican-led states challenged the effort and asked Texas-based U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen to shut down the program in its entirety over two years.

Theresa May 'Rigging Parliament' With New Emergency Move To Curb Changes To Budget 2017

Theresa May is facing fresh accusations of “rigging Parliament” with an unprecedented move to prevent MPs from changing legislation on the Budget.

Labour attacked May’s latest “power grab” after it emerged that the Government will deploy a little-used procedural device to effectively eliminate any attempts to amend the Finance Bill.

The tactic will severely restrict MPs’ ability to secure alternative tax measures, such as a DUP-backed plan to abolish VAT on all domestic fuel after Brexit.

The Tories' U.S.-based Khadr comms strategy is a really, really bad idea

Since the subject is Conservative party politics, let me begin with a joke from the U.S. presidential election of 2016.

It belongs to Conan O’Brien.

“Fox News has forbidden Sean Hannity from appearing in any more campaign ads for Donald Trump. ‘We want to appear neutral while covering the race between Mr. Trump and that Sickly, Lying Witch.’”

First fake news, now fake history: Glenn Beck wants to train young people to promote an alternative history

If there are two characteristics that really define Trumpism, they are a total disregard for the importance of facts and a nostalgia for a mythical, vaguely defined time of American “greatness.” That makes the Trump era ripe for Glenn Beck’s ongoing project of creating and promoting his revisionist view of American history — one that valorizes straight white men as humanity’s natural leaders and grants Christian fundamentalism a centrality to American history that it does not, in reality, have.

Climate science denier Darrell Issa joins House climate change caucus

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) announced this week he has joined a bipartisan House caucus on climate change. But the news, first reported by Reuters, glossed over one major point: Issa has been a long-time climate science denier.

He is now part of the Climate Solutions Caucus, a bipartisan group looking at “policy options that address the impacts, causes, and challenges of our changing climate.” But in August 2013, Issa won a “Climate Change Denier” award by the League of Conservation Voters for “his extreme anti-science views, which put him at odds with 97 percent of scientists and a majority of the American people.”

GOP Congressman: Getting Rich Will Solve That Whole Environment Thing

Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.) argued Tuesday that one of the best things the United States could do for the environment was grow the economy, because rich people like clean air and water.

Brat made the comments during a contentious town hall in Blackstone, Virginia, where he was heckled for a little over an hour. It was one of a number of similar events around the country in which constituents angrily confronted members of Congress in their home districts.

This Is How the Republican Party Plans to Destroy the Federal Government

Before moderate Republicans became virtually extinct, the party advocated limited government. Today, however, President Trump is pursuing a radical shrinkage of the federal government that comes close to overthrowing it entirely. The goal of this project: to leave the country with a minuscule government that is basically an appendage to private enterprise. Call it the Overthrow Project.

The essence of the Overthrow Project is familiar: to reduce taxes on the very rich, free the business community from taxes and regulations that interfere with its money-making, and subsidize that community with public funds. In addition, the Overthrow Project aims to privatize as many governmental activities as possible. Left for government is the maintenance of the remaining public infrastructure that enables private enterprise to operate efficiently and safely, as well as the assurance of public safety through ever-higher funding of the military, the homeland-security apparatus, the police, and other forces of so called law and order.

State elections chiefs warn against eliminating agency that protects elections from hacking

House Republicans voted this week to eliminate the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), the only federal agency specifically tasked with helping states protect elections from hacking. The vote split down party lines, with the three Democrats on the committee voting to save the commission and six Republicans voting to terminate it.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who voted against the legislation, told ThinkProgress it’s likely that the full House will follow through with eliminating the agency, as protecting elections has become a partisan issue in Washington.

Tennessee Republican writes off voters worried about health care as ‘extremists, kooks and radicals’

A Republican congressman who has served his district for almost thirty years is refusing to hold a town hall in his district because he has no interest in hearing from “extremists, kooks and radicals.”

Rep. John J. Duncan Jr (R-TN), who was first elected to Congress in 1988, wrote an email  saying he has “often been described as one of the most accessible members of Congress in this Country,” reports the Knoxville News Sentinel.  Despite that he has no interest now in holding a town hall meeting to discuss the incoming Trump administration and listen to constituents who want to discuss GOP alternatives to the Affordable Care Act.

Investigation Reveals the Extent the Koch Empire Is Willing to Go to Take Over a University

In 2011, the public found out that the Florida State University Economics Department had signed a deal in 2008 with the Charles Koch Foundation, which would supply the department with $1.5 million over several years in exchange for control over hiring decisions and curriculum development. After public and faculty outcry over undue donor influence, the department renegotiated the deal, signing a new one in 2013. The foundation of billionaire fossil-fuel industrialist Charles Koch, a controversial Republican mega-donor, continues to fund various programs at FSU.

Brexit White Paper Basically Reveals The Reason For Leaving The EU Isn’t True

Parliament has been sovereign the entire time we’ve been in the EU but it “hasn’t always felt like that,” according to the Government’s plan for restoring parliamentary sovereignty through Brexit.

Arguments for leaving the EU - from immigration to regulation - rested on the idea that EU membership eroded parliament’s sovereignty.

While Trump grabs headlines, Texas Republicans launch new wave of assaults on LGBT rights

For understandable reasons, Donald Trump and his cadre of Beltway Republicans are dominating the news cycle. But it’s also important to pay attention to what’s going on in the states, where the same reactionary revolt that lifted Trump to the White House is playing out closer to the ground.

In Texas, for instance, Republicans still enraged about the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision legalizing marriage for same sex couples have launched two major attacks on LGBT rights.

Major Fake News Operation Tracked Back to Republican Operative

Cam Harris, a recent college graduate hoping to build a career as a political consultant, received an unwelcome email from a New York Times reporter this month. As the reporter, Scott Shane, recounted on the front page of Thursday’s Times, he had discovered that Harris was the publisher of a fake news site dedicated to smearing Hillary Clinton.