Amazon stripped a documentary on conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, the only black justice currently serving on the Supreme Court, from its streaming service during Black History Month.
“This video is currently unavailable to watch in your location,” the website reads when the title is clicked.
While this article is being written in Denver, the outage appears nationwide, also reported by Breitbart News.
Amazon appeared to drop the PBS title, “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words,” while still promoting a wide array of feature films under the category of Black History Month such as “All In: The Fight For Democracy,” with Stacey Abrams and two movies on Anita Hill, Thomas’ accuser of sexual misconduct who attempted to derail his confirmation. All come free to stream with a Prime membership.
The Thomas documentary released in January last year remains available to purchase on DVD. A simple search for “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words,” comes up short for the title however. To find it, users must include “DVD” in the search box, and the documentary will come up as the 10th result. A search for “RBG” on the other hand, will bring three documentaries on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s documentary to the top after promoting a sponsored post of her biography, “Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.”
Amazon did not immediately respond to The Federalist’s request for comment.
The company built by Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post, has only escalated its censorship of political dissidents to the progressive world order.
Just this month, the massive online retailer wielding unprecedented power over the digital public square deplatformed conservative scholar Ryan Anderson and his book, “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Movement.”
Tristan Justice is a staff writer at The Federalist focusing on the 2020 presidential campaigns. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.
The leading advocacy organization for small businesses in the U.S. is focusing its legislative efforts on defeating a proposal to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour.
The minimum wage is the biggest issue the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) has lobbied on recently, the group told the Daily Caller News Foundation. After a series of pandemic-related victories on Capitol Hill, capped off by the December stimulus package that included $284.5 billion for small businesses, NFIB decided to lobby Congress to “do no harm.”
“Minimum wage is the biggest issue,” Jeff Brabant, NFIB’s manager of government relations, told the DCNF. “There are other issues further down the pike we’re worried about, but we’re trying to stay focused on minimum wage.”
“If your goal is to shut down independently owned mom and pop shops on Main Street and grow the market share of big-box megastores then I can think of nothing better than passing a federal $15 minimum wage today, because it will devastate small businesses,” Brabant said.
Big business groups have either lined up in favor of an increased minimum wage or have chosen to stay on the sidelines, according to Brabant. But while many big businesses can afford the increased federal minimum wage and have already adopted a $15 minimum, small businesses, which drive job growth in the U.S., would be crushed by such a drastic increase, Brabant said.
“If you’re a small business, a $15 minimum wage is a huge deal,” Brabant said. “You can’t necessarily automate your workforce and you can’t necessarily pass on those costs to the consumer or just eat those costs in your margin, like some bigger businesses can.”
The economic burden of a $15 federal minimum wage would disproportionately fall on small business owners since they don’t have the cash reserves or profit margins to account for the added costs like corporations do, the NFIB Research Center found in a 2020 study. One third of small businesses said they would likely resort to laying off employees if Congress raised the minimum wage to $15 per hour, according to the recent CNBC Small Business Survey.
New York small business owner Gianni Cracchiolo said minimum wage hikes have been a “silent killer” during his testimony before the Senate Banking Committee Thursday. Cracchiolo said his family-owned bakery has been crippled by the $120,000 in added costs and his customers have turned to big-box retailers after he was forced to raise prices.
Overall, the minimum wage increase would lead kill 1.4 million jobs while taking 900,000 people out of poverty, the Congressional Budget Office estimated in a reportreleased last week.
“On behalf of Main Street businesses across America, we write to strongly oppose the Raise the Wage Act of 2021,” said a Feb. 4 letter to Congress written by a coalition of groups including the NFIB. “More than doubling the federal minimum wage presents a significant obstacle to ailing small businesses trying to survive the pandemic.”
On Jan. 26, top Democrats including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer re-introduced the Raise the Wage Act. The legislation, which would gradually raise the federal minimum wage to $15 over the course of five years, was initially passed by the House in 2019, but never received a vote in the Senate.
In addition, House Democrats unveiled the full text of their proposed $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package Friday, which contained a $15 minimum wage increase, CNN reported.
Republican Sens. Mitt Romney and Tom Cotton have backed gradually increasing the minimum wage based on inflation, but that would result in a minor increase. Since the minimum wage was last increased in 2009 to $7.25, the value of the American dollar has risen 23.86%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That means $7.25 in 2009 is worth just $8.98 today, well short of $15.
Outside of its effort against raising the minimum wage to $15, in the past year NFIB has lobbied for Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and Economic Injury Disaster loans, according to Brabant. The organization also successfully advocated for PPP deductibility, a provision that allows small business owners to deduct their PPP loans as a business expense.
NFIB also opposed extending large unemployment insurance payments, which it said would incentivize workers to stay home and not seek work. On top of that, as more workers have entered unemployment rolls, unemployment insurance taxes have increased for small business owners, a measure which NFIB also opposes.
In the future, the organization will also oppose new small business taxes, new leave mandates, like paid family leave, and the pro-union Protecting the Right to Organize Act.
“Most of our members are pass-through entities meaning they pay the individual tax rate, not the corporate rate,” Brabant said. “Whenever you see a state saying they’re doing a millionaire’s tax, yes that’s a millionaire’s tax, but that’s often a tax on business income for those who operate as a pass-through business.”
– – –
Thomas Catenacci is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “$15 Minimum Wage Supporters” by Fibonacci Blue. CC BY 2.0.
Justice Clarence Thomas Slams SCOTUS For Not Taking Pennsylvania Election Fraud Case: “We Failed”
STEVEN ERTELT FEB 22, 2021 | 5:08PM WASHINGTON, DC
The Supreme Court today decided against taking an election fraud case out of the state of Pennsylvania that dealt with the controversial decision by the state, upheld by its Supreme Court, to allow post-dated mail-in ballots to be counted. Supporters of President Donald Trump say the decision allowed for illegal ballots to be counted and helped the state be declared for pro-abortion Joe Biden.
Justice Clarence Thomas slammed the decision to decline the case, saying the nation’s highest court missed an important opportunity to address election fraud and mail-in ballots.
“That decision to rewrite the rules seems to have affected too few ballots to change the outcome of any federal election. But that may not be the case in the future,” Thomas wrote. “These cases provide us with an ideal opportunity to address just what authority nonlegislative officials have to set election rules, and to do so well before the next election cycle. The refusal to do so is inexplicable.”
“One wonders what this Court waits for,” wrote Thomas at the end of his 11-page dissent. “We failed to settle this dispute before the election, and thus provide clear rules. Now we again fail to provide clear rules for future elections.
“The decision to leave election law hidden beneath a shroud of doubt is baffling,” he continued. “By doing nothing, we invite further confusion and erosion of voter confidence. Our fellow citizens deserve better and expect more from us.”
“I respectfully dissent,” Thomas concluded.
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Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch joined Thomas in the dissent while Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the liberal justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. Justice Amy Coney Barrett opted not to participate in that vote saying she did not have sufficient time to study the issue.
Altio was also unhappy and said the decision to not take the case leaves in place a dangerous precedent.
Justice Samuel Alito said: “The provisions of the federal Constitution conferring on state legislatures, not state courts, the authority to make rules governing federal elections would be meaningless if a state court could override the rules adopted by the legislature simply by claiming that a state constitutional provision gave the courts the authority to make whatever rules it thought appropriate for the conduct of a fair election.”
Even in the final hours of his administration, President Trump was working to stop China’s infiltration of American education. He proposed a rule to force schools to publicly disclose their connection with the Confucius Institutes and classrooms or lose certification for the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. On January 26, “President” Biden revoked that rule. Now Democrats have voted to give federal relief money to educational institutions that partner with the Chinese Communist Party.
The Confucius Institutes are Chinese government-funded locations on college campuses, primarily in the United States and other western countries, ostensibly to teach Mandarin and Chinese culture. In reality, the institutes are a communist front for centers of propaganda.
The first Confucius Institute opened in South Korea in 2004. A 2017 study by the National Association of Scholars found that the number of Confucius Institutes housed at colleges and universities is more than 1,000 worldwide with 103 in the United States. In addition, over 500 Confucius classrooms are housed in U.S. kindergarten through 12th grade schools.
An agency of the Chinese Ministry of Education, the Hanban, operates the Confucius Institute and provides teachers, institute directors, textbooks, classroom materials, and operating funds. A five-year contract with the host institution gives the Chinese government total control over staffing and curriculum. Since 2006 the Chinese government has provided more than $158 million to more than 100 U.S. schools for Constitution Institutes.
Yet nearly 70 percent of schools that received more than $250,000 from the Confucius Institutes failed to properly report those donations to the Department of Education.
Speaking to Reuters, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo labeled the institute an “entity advancing Beijing’s global propaganda and malign influence campaign on U.S. campuses and K-12 classrooms. Confucius Institutes are funded by the PRC and part of the Chinese Communist Party’s global influence and propaganda apparatus.”
Senator Tom Cotton issued a press release in which he said the “Confucius Institutes are front groups for the Chinese Communist Party on American campuses.”
A 2019 scathing bipartisan report on Confucius Institutes by a Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations with Chairman Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and ranking member Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.] found there is no reciprocity from the Chinese government. Instead, it has tried to quash American efforts to establish American Cultural Centers on Chinese college campuses. Those that have opened are controlled by the Chinese government.
The propaganda to which American students are exposed at the Confucius Institutes is tightly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese regime directly hires teachers and prohibits them from saying anything negative about China to students. Such topics as the Tiananmen Square massacre, the separate country of Hong Kong, and human rights are forbidden.
American higher education institutions are being co-opted to steal U.S. intellectual property. The Chinese Scholarship Council funds Chinese scholars to attend American universities in science and technology fields and steal research secrets which are funneled back to China’s People’s Liberation Army.
In a debate at Cornell University, China expert Gordon Chang explained how university students are expected to spy on faculty research. Faculty and students at the host institution are forced to self-censor under threats from the Chinese government.
The People’s Republic of China also targets American scientists and researchers in STEM fields, offering them very lucrative salaries and incentives to share research findings in cutting edge technology to China and to establish shadow labs in China to duplicate their research efforts.
The Chinese Communist Party has infiltrated and corrupted American K-12 education through collaboration with a highly influential American organization led by David Coleman of Common Core fame. In exchange for very generous funding the College Board, which administrators the college SAT, has given the Chinese Communist Party strategic access to the American education system.
In 2003 the College Board created an Advanced Placement Chinese Language and Culture test with the Chinese government becoming a stakeholder in course design. In addition to offering funding, China also offered teachers and textbooks to teach AP Chinese.
Since then, the College Board has sponsored Confucius Classrooms at K-12 schools, recruited for Chinese government programs, and handed the Chinese Communist Party the control of American teacher training programs.
A survey by Victims of Communism revealed that 70% of Millennials support socialism while 36% support communism. This is not surprising since American schools have portrayed socialism in a positive light. Students never hear that more than 100 million people have been brutally murdered under Communism.
Students are not told that the Chinese government caused the deaths of some 60 million innocents under Mao Zedong, ignored property rights, crushed individual freedom, embraced secrecy and bulldozed over any who stood in its way.
American students are not taught that Beijing has rounded up dissidents, cracked down on massive street protests for democracy in Hong Kong, and are “re-educating” millions of Muslims in detention camps. Students are not taught about the imprisonment in “re-education camps” of more than one million Uighur Muslims in the manner that Hitler, Stalin, and Mao once relocated “undesirable” populations.
If our students continue to be indoctrinated in socialist and communist propaganda, we can expect to see an even larger number of them willingly vote for Communist leaders.
In response to Democrats claim that they want to cooperate with China, Gordon Chang asked, “How can we cooperate with a government when they mean to overthrow us?” He advises that the U.S. “should cut off ties with China.”
Banishing Confucius Institutes from American campuses is a great place to start. Although some universities have closed their programs since 2017, we can expect more to open with the current administration’s cozy relationship with our enemy.
It will be up to state and local governments to cut the financial lifeline to enemies of the state.
During Joe Biden’s ABC News town hall Thursday night, the Democratic presidential nominee expressed support for the radical idea of young children changing their gender.
“I’m the proud mom of two girls, 8 and 10,” Mieke Haeck from State College, Pennsylvania, said during the event in Philadelphia. “My youngest daughter is transgender.”
She then asked Biden how he would “ensure that the lives and rights of LGBTQ people are protected.”
“The idea that an 8-year-old child or a 10-year-old child decides, you know, ‘I decided I want to be transgender. That’s what I think I’d like to be. It would make my life a lot easier,'” the former vice president said. “There should be zero discrimination. … So I promise you there is no reason to suggest that there should be any right denied your daughter or daughters, whichever one or two –”
“One,” Haeck said.
“One, your daughter — that your other daughter has a right to be and do. None, zero.”
Over the past several years, the left has increasingly supported the notion of childhood transitioning — allowing teen, adolescent and even pre-adolescent children to decide what gender they are and whether they wish to undergo life-altering gender reassignment therapies and/or procedures.
Before Biden and his fellow progressives continue their trans-children crusade, however, there are some important voices they should listen to.
Walter Heyer
Walter Heyer, an outspoken advocate against the transgender movement, at one time identified as female.
“My grandmother dressed me as a girl when I was 4, 5, and 6 years old,” Heyer wrote last year. “I was far too young to comprehend the long-term consequences of being encouraged to cross-dress at such a young age, much less fight back. In my child’s mind, it felt good to be the center of her attention. Now I call what grandma did to me ‘child abuse’ because her grooming of me as a female negatively affected my entire life.
“In adulthood, I was diagnosed with gender dysphoria and underwent unnecessary cross-gender hormone therapy and surgical gender change. I lived eight years as a woman and tried my best to make it work, but after surgery I still had gender dysphoria. Even worse, I was suicidal. Before giving me hormones and surgery, my medical providers should have helped me explore the possible psychological roots of my desire to escape into a female persona, but none did.”
Heyer spoke to The Western Journal about Biden’s statements in support of childhood transitioning, saying that “poor, disoriented, babbling Joe” is simply “following orders” from the LGBT lobby.
“If he did not support transgender kids, his campaign would have been over,” Heyer said in an email.
David Reimer
Although widely touted as proof positive of the efficacy of childhood transitioning, the case of David Reimer is the first example of the child-trans ideology being exposed for what it was: child abuse.
As an infant, Reimer’s penis was irreparably damaged during a horrific accident.
Devastated, his parents were persuaded by John Money, renowned psychologist and father of what is now known as “gender theory,” to raise David as a girl.
David then took female hormones and underwent gender reassignment surgery.
In the end, Money’s experiment was a complete failure.
Eventually, as is the case with most transgender children, David outgrew his gender dysmorphia. He later rejected the feminine identity assigned to him by Money, choosing instead to live as the man he was.
For the rest of his life, David suffered from an intense depression until he eventually killed himself at the age of 38 — an unfortunately not uncommon end among those who identify as transgender.
Instead of looking for underlying mental health issues, however, the left tells transgender individuals to undergo sex-reassignment surgery, which doesn’t seem to help.
Keira Bell
Kiera Bell was treated with hormone blockers as a teenager to reassign her gender.
Now, Bell is suing the United Kingdom National Health Service for allowing children to give informed consent to life-altering hormone treatment.
“I am angry about the whole situation because of how things have turned out for me based on the medical pathway that I was put on, but I’m now just trying to focus on changing the system for the better and making it better for minors and children,” she told Sky News.
“I should have been told to wait and not affirmed in my gender identity I was claiming to have and given intensive therapy basically to make sure that I was on the right track for things and investigate the feelings I was having to figure out how I got to that stage,” Bell said.
Childhood transitioning is an abhorrent practice.
Children do not have the mental or logical wherewithal to make life-altering changes regarding their sexuality at such a young age.
They cannot consent to having their gender reassigned any more than they can consent to having sex.
Nonetheless, Joe Biden says he supports children as young as 8 years old deciding that they are transgender.
It’s time he starts listening to those who have suffered greatly from such thinking.
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Bill Gates, the fourth richest person in the world and a self-described nerd who is known for his early programming skills rather than his love of the outdoors, has been quietly snatching up 242,000 acres of farmland across the U.S. — enough to make him the top private farmland owner in America.
After years of reports that he was purchasing agricultural land in places like Florida and Washington, The Land Report revealed that Gates, who has a net worth of nearly $121 billion according to Forbes, has built up a massive farmland portfolio spanning 18 states. His largest holdings are in Louisiana (69,071 acres), Arkansas (47,927 acres) and Nebraska (20,588 acres). Additionally, he has a stake in 25,750 acres of transitional land on the west side of Phoenix, Arizona, which is being developed as a new suburb.
According to The Land Report’s research, the land is held directly and through third-party entities by Cascade Investments, Gates’ personal investment vehicle. Cascade’s other investments include food-safety company Ecolab, used-car retailer Vroom and Canadian National Railway.
While it may be surprising that a tech billionaire would also be the biggest farmland owner in the country, this is not Gates’ only foray into agriculture. In 2008, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced $306 million in grants to promote high-yield, sustainable agriculture among smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The foundation has further invested in the development and proliferation of “super crops” resistant to climate change and higher-yield dairy cows. Last year, the organization announced Gates Ag One, a nonprofit to advance those efforts.
It is not entirely clear how Gates’ farmland is being used, or whether any of the land is being set aside for conservation. (Cascade did not return Forbes’ request for comment.) However, there is some indication that the land could be used in a way that aligns with the foundation’s values. Cottonwood Ag Management, a subsidiary of Cascade, is a member of Leading Harvest, a nonprofit that promotes sustainable agriculture standards that prioritize protections of crops, soil and water resources.
Gates is not the only billionaire on The Land Report’s list of top private farmland owners. Wonderful Company cofounders Stewart and Lynda Resnick (net worth: $7.1 billion) ranked number three with 190,000 acres. Their farmland produces the goods for their brands including POM Wonderful, Wonderful Pistachios and Wonderful Halos mandarins.
While Gates may be the country’s biggest farmland owner, he by no means is the largest individual landowner. In its list of 100 top American landowners, The Land Report gives the top spot to Liberty Media Chair John Malone, who owns 2.2 million acres of ranches and forests. CNN founder Ted Turner ranked number three with 2 million acres of ranch land across eight states. Even Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is investing in land on a large scale, landing the 25th spot with his ownership of 420,000 acres, mainly in west Texas.
I don’t blame schools for closing in March. Very little was known about COVID-19 then, so closures seemed the safest decision amid the uncertainty.
Neither do I blame schools for a meager showing that semester. My own district threw together online curricula and instructional materials practically overnight. The results were dismal, but it’s the best many could have done given the situation.
However, we’ve now had nine months to understand this virus, and all the evidence favors returning to in-person instruction. Studies have found that schools are not in fact the “super spreaders” many feared. Dr. Anthony Fauci himself has said to “close the bars and keep the schools open.”
Perhaps some schools in hot-spots ought to close, but they should do so for genuine safety concerns, not fear of consequences at the next election. Citing the social, emotional, and academic benefits of in-person learning, The American Association of Pediatrics “strongly advocates” for open schools everywhere possible.
Nonetheless, the majority of our nation’s children have spent the last nine months staring at a computer screen at home, clicking through homework links or simply opting to not show up. One institution bears significant guilt for this state of affairs: teacher’s unions.
Cato Institute researcher Corey DeAngelis crunched the numbers and confirmed what many suspected: school closures had more to do with union power than pandemic concerns. When he reviewed the decisions that various districts and schools made to open or close, he found that the data correlated more closely with the strength of policies favorable to unions than to case counts and deaths.
The politics get more ludicrous. Unions have protested when school officials set open dates. While discussing school openings, the Los Angeles teachers union also demanded a wealth tax and Medicare for All. A number of unions banded together with the Socialists of America on a resolution to “demand safe schools,” only to eschew discussions of safe openings to instead decry charter schools and suggest cancellation of rent.
At the end of last semester, I decided to change districts to one that would open. Some of my students have had to quarantine. However, with masks, social distancing, and hand sanitizer, we’ve had no local spread; we’ve traced our positive cases to external exposures. We’ve had no disastrous outbreak.
Rather, we have spent our year so far discussing books, playing vocabulary games, running football plays at recess, learning subjects and predicates, decorating my room with Christmas lights, and doing everything a school ought to do: promoting socialization, academic development, and mental health.
As an adult, I got to choose an open school. Union politics have now barred millions of families from a similar privilege.
The academic losses are severe. In June, The New York Times reported months’ worth of learning losses because of school closures. Fewer than half of students showed up during that first semester online. While attendance has improved the learning loss continues, especially among poor and minority students.
After a critical response, the Chicago Teachers Union deleted a tweet insinuating that the push to open schools comes from “racism, sexism, and misogyny.” Considering who these learning losses affect most, it’s quite the opposite.
If enrollment numbers are any determinant of public opinion, then school openings appear wildly popular. The superintendent of Boston Catholic Schools reported an increase of 4,000 students after they made their announcement to open. Otherdistricts have seen similar trends. Families are voting with their feet, many opting out of public education for any in-person schooling available.
If nothing else, this situation is a clear example of both union power and their disregard for student concerns. Families, teachers, and taxpayers cannot truly influence school decisions when union members have the power to strike, undue influence in local elections, and the purse of their national affiliates.
The American Federation of Teachers gave more in political donations than the boogie-man Koch Industries did in 2020. Teachers unions have long been a dominant force in local and national politics, both in funding and manpower.
While the worst of the pandemic closures seem nigh over, there’s a clear policy moving forward that can protect students from similar sways of union fickleness: school choice. Zipcodes locked students into closed schools during the pandemic, and only those with means could look elsewhere.
A few others chose “pandemic pods” but even that forces the opportunity cost of staying home from a job. They should have had the freedom to look elsewhere without legal consequences, but our current laws kept them from doing so.
It’s time to continue legislative victories that weaken the sway of government unions over American education. The Supreme Court decision Janus v. AFSCME ensured that no public school teachers need to pay union dues if they do not want to. Local laws in many states increased austerity measures to ensure they don’t follow Detroit’s lead and bankrupt themselves from over-promised, union-bargained pensions. School choice would similarly allow any family to select a school that is less beholden to union pressure.
Unions do not care for students. The pandemic has made this abundantly clear. They’ve lost prestige in many people’s minds from this. It’s right that they continue to lose political power too.
Daniel Buck is a teacher in Wisconsin with a master’s in education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is also the columnist editor for Lone Conservative, an organization dedicated to mentoring and publishing the next generation of conservative advocates.
Parents object to lesbian ‘marriage’ in latest ‘American Girl’ kids’ book
No hint of the ‘married,’ same-sex couple is found in the book description, catching children off-guard and leaving many parents shocked and dismayed.
Fri Feb 5, 2021 - 6:30 pm EST
February 5, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – American Girl, a doll and storybook brand beloved by young girls since the 1980s, has released a “2021 Girl of the Year” named Kira whose story featuring aunts in a same-sex “marriage” has taken parents and children by surprise.
“Kira's aunts are married lesbians, and that needs to be known by every adult who hands the book to a child or who allows a child to check it out from the library,” said one book reviewer on Amazon.
The character Kira, along with her doll avatar, was revealed as “2021 Girl of the Year” on Good Morning America on Dec. 31, 2020. She was described on the show as caring “deeply about animals and the environment, and important ecological issues like wildlife protection and climate change.”
Launched in 2001, “Girl of the Year” is a line of American Girl characters “who experience modern-day issues and give voice to a diverse range of personalities and backgrounds,” as the American Girl website explains.
Kira’s own story, Kira Down Under, revolves around a summer trip to her Aunt Mamie’s wildlife sanctuary in Australia, where she helps her aunt care for animals. According to the bookdescription, Kira’s “joy is complete” when spending time with an orphaned koala, “until a health emergency pulls Aunt Mamie away.” However, no mention is made in the description that Aunt Mamie is “married” to another woman, “Aunt Lynette.”
Two reviewers noted that the story includes a “wedding” picture of Aunt Mamie and the woman named Lynette.
“In the book, she explains that her aunts married ‘after the law was changed to allow it,’ referring to Australian Parliament’s 2017 decision to legalize gay marriage [sic], two years after the U.S. Supreme Court did the same,” Elise Soléexplained, writing for Yahoo Life.
Numerous reviewers explained their distress after they and their children were caught off-guard by the references to the same-sex relationship.
“Shocked to see a lesbian couple in a children’s book from American Girl. Very disappointing because I have always trusted American Girl until now,” commented one reviewer.
Another noted, “Homosexuality is an inappropriate topic for a children’s book and I am very disappointed that it was woven so blatantly into the story line for Kira. This type of content should have been made clear in the advertising so that I as a parent could make an informed choice for my child. My daughter and I have read dozens of American Girl books and have always loved them and highly recommended them to friends. Before now, I have never had to worry about American Girl reading material being wholesome for my child. My daughter had no idea what a lesbian couple is and American Girl has cruelly taken away part of her innocence now that I’ve had to explain about that lifestyle. It goes against what I believe as a Christian and was not something I wanted my daughter to be exposed to at this early age. I am very, very disappointed in Americans [sic] Girl and will not purchase their products in the future.”
The Yahoo Life article also said, “American Girl made a splash by releasing a doll with an LGBT storyline and plans for more racially-diverse characters. But some hardcore fans say they’re frustrated by the doll community’s resistance to inclusivity, claiming homophobia and racism brew in online forums.”
Some leftist fans actually fretted that Kira was not far-left enough. The co-creator of the American Girl Doll podcast, Allison Horrocks, took issue with the lesbian relationship being portrayed outside the U.S.:
“People have been right to point out that American Girl can take a complex story and set it somewhere else,” says Horrocks, adding that Kira, an environmentalist, could stay home in Michigan where the effects of the 2014 Flint water crisis linger, or travel to the west coast which burned with wildfires in 2019. Likewise, the doll’s LGBT storyline took place overseas.”
“Kira is not the brand’s first dive into LGBT content,” Yahoo Life noted. A Smart Girl’s Guide to Boys, published in 2002, was updated in 2020 “to include same-sex relationships,” and is now titled A Smart Girl’s Guide: Crushes. As far back as 2005, American Girl partnered with Girls, Inc., a group that “advocates for LGBT-inclusive sex education” and “reproductive freedom,” a euphemism for abortion. In 2015, American Girl magazine profiled a girl adopted by two men.
And American Girl will once again promote homosexuality this February, when “American Girl will publish the book Pets, featuring a mixed-race family with two dads, following 2019’sUnderstanding Families about diverse family structures,” the Yahoo Life article added.
One parent reviewer on Amazon slammed the lesbian relationship in Kira as “nothing at all to do with the plot, if there is a plot, and everything to do with American Girl's political agenda.”
Kira “is disjointed and poorly written, with references to masks and the coronavirus seemingly added randomly after the book's completion,” the reviewer wrote. “The plot is adult driven, and the only adventure happens when the girls knowingly disobey a serious safety rule, near the end of the book. There are far too many characters and too many named animals. Kira's aunts are married lesbians, and that needs to be known by every adult who hands the book to a child or who allows a child to check it out from the library. That fact has nothing at all to do with the plot, if there is a plot, and everything to do with American Girl's political agenda. American Girl books have been hit or miss since Mattel took over the brand. This one is not only a huge miss but will potentially lead to another boycott by conservatives, something that the brand doesn't need, with falling doll sales.”
North Dakota Republicans Move to Wrest Control from Biden, Place Power Back with the Constitution
By Jack Davis
Published February 6, 2021 at 11:28am
As the federal government in 1798 teetered dangerously close to what James Madison considered a vast misuse of its powers under the Constitution, he authored the Virginia Resolution.
The resolution affirmed that “in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.”
More than 220 years later, North Dakota legislators — alarmed by the deluge of executive decrees from the Biden White House — are considering legislation to push back against the flood.
House Bill 1282, introduced recently by Republican state Rep. Sebastian Ertelt, creates what legislators are calling a committee on nullification.
“Upon receipt of federal legislation, regulation, or an executive order, for consideration and process, the committee shall recommend whether to nullify in its entirety a specific federal law, regulation, or executive order. In making its recommendation, the committee shall consider whether the legislation, regulation, or executive order is outside the scope of the powers delegated to the federal government in the Constitution of the United States,” the bill reads.
“The committee may review all existing federal statutes, regulations, and executive orders enacted before the effective date of this section for the purpose of determining constitutionality and shall recommend whether to nullify in its entirety a specific federal statute, regulation, or executive order,” the bill said.
If passed, the State Legislature ostensibly would decide if the edict becomes the law in North Dakota.
“If the legislative assembly approves the concurrent resolution by a simple majority to nullify a federal statute, regulation, or executive order based on constitutionality, the state and the citizens of the state may not recognize or be obligated to abide by the federal law or executive order,” the bill reads.
A companion piece of legislation, House Bill 1164, takes aims at presidential executive orders.
“The legislative management may review any executive order issued by the president of the United States which has not been affirmed by a vote of the Congress of the United States and signed into law as prescribed by the Constitution of the United States and recommend to the attorney general and the governor that the executive order be further reviewed,” the bill said.
“Upon recommendation from the legislative management, the attorney general shall review the executive order to determine the constitutionality of the order and whether the state should seek an exemption from the application of the order or seek to have the order declared to be an unconstitutional exercise of legislative authority by the president,” the bill reads.
Republican state Rep. Matthew Ruby, one of the sponsors of the bill, said ruling by executive order is a disease that must be cured.
“I would’ve supported it whether it was Trump or Bush or Obama — any of them. I really think there’s a huge difference between going through Congress and getting something passed compared to, you didn’t get your way so you’re putting it in as an executive order,” he said, according to KXNET.com.
In commenting on the bills, Daniel Horowitz wrote in The Blaze that “the Biden regime continues to rule by executive fiat, often promulgating unconstitutional orders infringing upon civil rights.”
He characterized the legislation as “the key to thwarting a wholesale slide into national despotism and ensuring that there are some places for Americans to go and enjoy the blessings of liberty. “
“The question is whether leaders in those legislative chambers as well as Gov. Doug Burgum will pick up the mantle, not to mention Republicans in other states,” Horowitz wrote.
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Posted: Feb 2, 2021 / 10:25 AM EST / Updated: Feb 3, 2021 / 04:46 AM EST
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WFLA) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis proposed new laws Tuesday to combat Big Tech’s “censorship” of right-wing political candidates.
“What began as a group of upstart technology companies from the west coast, has since transformed into an industry of monopoly communications platforms that monitor, influence, and control the flow of information in our country and among our citizens,” DeSantis said from the Cabinet Meeting Room.
The governor said ‘Big Tech’ is becoming more like ‘Big Brother’ with “each passing day.”
“Used to be that consumers were trusted to make their own decisions about what information to consume, about which leaders to ‘follow,’ about what news to watch,” he said. “Now those decisions are increasingly made by nameless, faceless boards of sensors.”
DeSantis said when 2.8 million Americans downloaded the social media app Parler, a self-described “free speech” platform, it was canceled by Amazon, Google, and Apple.
“What about the 88 million Americans who chose to ‘follow’ Donald Trump [on Twitter]? Sorry! Content moderators on Twitter pulled the plug,” the governor said.
DeSantis said they can’t let Big Tech “manipulate” news content and design algorithms to give an upper hand to the candidates of their choice.
“That’s why in Florida we’re gonna take aim at those companies and pull back the veil and make sure those guys don’t continue to find loopholes and grey areas to live above the law,” DeSantis said. “Under our proposal, if a technology company de-platforms a candidate for elected office in Florida during an election, that company will face a daily fine of $100,000 until the candidate’s access to the platform is restored.”
DeSantis also proposed that if a company promotes a candidate for office against another, the value of that free promotion must be recorded as a political campaign contribution.
When Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., spoke against the constitutionality of the Democrats’ impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, he reminded his colleagues that Democrat elected officials had recently told their followers to attack Republicans. If Trump was to be impeached for asking followers to “peacefully and patriotically” make their voices heard by members of Congress on Jan. 6, what to do with Democrats’ more incendiary rhetoric and actions, he wondered.
The Bernie Sanders supporter who nearly killed House Republican Whip Steve Scalise at a baseball field in Virginia said he was motivated to kill for “health care” after Sanders and other Democrats had said the Republican health care plan was to kill many Americans. Sen. Cory Booker told his supporters at one gathering in D.C. to “Please don’t just come here today and then go home. Go to the Hill today. Get up and, please, get up in the face of some congresspeople.”
One example Paul left out of his excellent speech is even more relevant to next week’s impeachment. Less than one year ago, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York led a mob on the steps of the Supreme Court while a case was being heard and tried to thwart the natural deliberation of justices by violently threatening two of them to rule in favor of his and other Democrats’ preferred outcome.
“I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions,” Schumer threatened the two most recently confirmed justices, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
The threat was so alarming that even leftist activists such as Laurence Tribe condemned it. Schumer received a rare, same-day rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts, who said, “Justices know that criticism comes with the territory, but threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous.”
Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell condemned Schumer’s remarks as “astonishingly reckless and completely irresponsible.” However, Sen. Josh Hawley’s efforts to censure Schumer for his violent threats were scuttled.
The Washington Post write-up of Schumer’s threats focused instead on Republican opposition to them. “GOP seizes on Schumer’s remarks” read the headline.
Schumer’s threats came just 17 months after the Supreme Court had been besieged and attacked by abortion activists upset at Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Like the Jan. 6 event, the October 2018 siege also involved Vice President Mike Pence being condemned by protesters. As he walked down the steps of the U.S. Senate following the vote to confirm Kavanaugh, the crowd greeted him with chants of “shame!”
Across the street, hordes of protesters broke through a police barricade and attempted to beat down the 13-ton bronze doors of the court. Protesters included a topless woman with a Hitler mustache and another woman who scaled the Contemplation of Justice statue in front of the court and sat in her lap to the cheers of other protesters.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan, who attended Kavanaugh’s immediate swearing in, were hit with water bottles and tomatoes when their car left the court afterward. Some 164 people were arrested in that protest.
For all the concern about disruptions to the constitutional processes regarding Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, there was far less concern from corporate media and others on the left when Democrat mobs completely disrupted the constitutional proceedings for confirming a Supreme Court justice in 2018.
The Center for Popular Democracy brought 600 protesters to Washington, staging a demonstration in and around the Capitol. On August 1, 2018, following the group’s rally, 74 protesters were arrested when they blocked the Senate hallways to prevent Kavanaugh from meeting with U.S. senators.
Kavanaugh’s first day of hearings included 63 interruptions from Senate Democrats and more than 70 arrests of protesters. The protesters had been flown in by Planned Parenthood Action Fund from across the country.
Winnie Wong, a senior advisor to the Women’s March, explained their carefully coordinated messages. Members going into the hearing room were given “a script where we suggest certain messaging that may resonate more.” The storytellers’ travel and accommodations were paid for, as were their legal aid and bail if they were arrested, which was generally the goal.
Later in the hearings, the organizers of the protesters—the Women’s March and the Center for Popular Democracy— were warning activists that being arrested three times might lead to a night in jail. The group raised sums of more than six figures to finance the protests. “This is well-organized and scripted,” said Wong, “This isn’t chaos.”
Protesters also occupied senators’ offices, managed to shut down the Capitol building, and trapped senators in elevators. All of this was done to disrupt the constitutional process for confirming a justice.
“We were planning to shut down the Capitol Building but the authorities were so scared of this #WomensWave that they shut it down for us,” read a tweet from one activist group:
Particularly by the standard adopted by the media and Democrats for the second impeachment of Trump, Schumer bears responsibility for the protests and riots at the Supreme Court and in Senate office buildings, as well as the attempt to destroy the life and family and reputation of Kavanaugh. Within 23 minutes of Kavanaugh’s nomination, Schumer said, “I will oppose Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination with everything I have.”
His destruction, during the Gorsuch confirmation process, of the filibuster for Supreme Court justices contributed to the heated rhetoric in the Kavanaugh battle. His refusal to treat the nomination as legitimate included a prohibition on Democrat meetings with Kavanaugh.
Schumer didn’t trust Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Sen. Dianne Feinstein to handle the political machinations he felt were needed. He organized the barrage of interruptions from other senators that led to the hostility and chaos of the first day of hearings.
Sen. Christopher Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, later told Politico, “It was important that we lay down a marker that this is not a normal hearing.” Sen. Dick Durbin said they wanted to “single out the hearing as something unusual.” Sen. John Cornyn was appalled by the spectacle. He decried the “mob rule” that was disrupting the hearings.
Schumer also said Kavanaugh had no presumption of innocence. He believed outrageous conspiracy theories. For instance, when Michael Avenatti’s client Julie Swetnick claimed — with no evidence in support and plenty of evidence in opposition — that Kavanaugh was a serial gang rapist who had roamed the streets of suburban Maryland for his prey, Schumer demanded the allegations be accepted as true and that Kavanaugh’s nomination be pulled.
Democrats’ argument in favor of Trump’s impeachment is that even though he told his protesters to be peaceful, his refusal to accept the 2020 election incited a mob. What to do, then, with a Senate majority leader who issued a violent threat against Supreme Court justices after a multi-year campaign to undermine confidence in Supreme Court confirmation processes?
What to do with the many senators who brought the mobs into hearing rooms and Senate buildings in order to destroy the confirmation process? What to do with the mob’s many attacks on Kavanaugh and his family?
And how to take seriously a Senate that never held Kavanaugh’s false accusers to account, never censured the now-majority leader for issuing violent threats while a court case was being heard, and never held Democrats accountable for assisting the mobs who attempted to shut down their proceedings?
Bill Gates, the fourth richest person in the world and a self-described nerd who is known for his early programming skills rather than his love of the outdoors, has been quietly snatching up 242,000 acres of farmland across the U.S. — enough to make him the top private farmland owner in America.
After years of reports that he was purchasing agricultural land in places like Florida and Washington, The Land Report revealed that Gates, who has a net worth of nearly $121 billion according to Forbes, has built up a massive farmland portfolio spanning 18 states. His largest holdings are in Louisiana (69,071 acres), Arkansas (47,927 acres) and Nebraska (20,588 acres). Additionally, he has a stake in 25,750 acres of transitional land on the west side of Phoenix, Arizona, which is being developed as a new suburb.
According to The Land Report’s research, the land is held directly and through third-party entities by Cascade Investments, Gates’ personal investment vehicle. Cascade’s other investments include food-safety company Ecolab, used-car retailer Vroom and Canadian National Railway.
While it may be surprising that a tech billionaire would also be the biggest farmland owner in the country, this is not Gates’ only foray into agriculture. In 2008, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced $306 million in grants to promote high-yield, sustainable agriculture among smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The foundation has further invested in the development and proliferation of “super crops” resistant to climate change and higher-yield dairy cows. Last year, the organization announced Gates Ag One, a nonprofit to advance those efforts.
It is not entirely clear how Gates’ farmland is being used, or whether any of the land is being set aside for conservation. (Cascade did not return Forbes’ request for comment.) However, there is some indication that the land could be used in a way that aligns with the foundation’s values. Cottonwood Ag Management, a subsidiary of Cascade, is a member of Leading Harvest, a nonprofit that promotes sustainable agriculture standards that prioritize protections of crops, soil and water resources.
Gates is not the only billionaire on The Land Report’s list of top private farmland owners. Wonderful Company cofounders Stewart and Lynda Resnick (net worth: $7.1 billion) ranked number three with 190,000 acres. Their farmland produces the goods for their brands including POM Wonderful, Wonderful Pistachios and Wonderful Halos mandarins.
While Gates may be the country’s biggest farmland owner, he by no means is the largest individual landowner. In its list of 100 top American landowners, The Land Report gives the top spot to Liberty Media Chair John Malone, who owns 2.2 million acres of ranches and forests. CNN founder Ted Turner ranked number three with 2 million acres of ranch land across eight states. Even Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is investing in land on a large scale, landing the 25th spot with his ownership of 420,000 acres, mainly in west Texas.
The real cost of Biden's radical transgender activism
Michael Brown: 'The president's executive order destroys ... fairness with one stroke of the pen'
By Michael Brown Published January 22, 2021 at 7:37pm
Of all the things incoming President Joe Biden could do on his first day in office, why was one of them signing a radical, transgender activist executive order? It's obviously because, in his view, "transgender equality" is the great civil rights issue of our day. Except that it isn't. Instead, the president's executive action declares war on the rights of others, especially females. Allow me to explain.
On Jan. 25, 2020, Biden tweeted, "Let's be clear: Transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time. There is no room for compromise when it comes to basic human rights."
This certainly sounds good. Who among us would want to compromise when it comes to basic human rights?
But that's not what this is about.
It is about prioritizing the perceived needs of those who identify as transgender, meaning those who do not feel at home with their biological sex, to the point that the rights of others are negatively impacted.
We're not talking about a legitimate civil rights issue, such as telling a black man he cannot drink from the white man's water fountain. Or telling a black woman she cannot sit in the white man's seat on the bus.
We're talking about 6-year-old girls being forced to share their school bathroom with a biological boy who believes he's a girl.
We're talking about a 17-year-old girl being told she must share her school locker room with a biological male who wants to play on the girls' softball team.
And we're talking about this same 17-year-old girl who misses out on a prized athletic scholarship because she was bested by her biological male peer who identifies as female.
To quote the executive order: "Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports."
That's why author Abigail Shrier tweeted, "On day 1, Biden unilaterally eviscerates women's sports. Any educational institution that receives federal funding must admit biologically-male athletes to women's teams, women's scholarships, etc. A new glass ceiling was just placed over girls."
As expressed by a deeply concerned mother last June, "Over the past few years, athletes, coaches and parents have been watching in disbelief as girls are being replaced on the winner's podium by boys who identify as girls at all levels of competition. It's what prompted Idaho to enact a law to protect female athletes from having their dreams of success on the field taken from them by a male competitor, and it's what prompted the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights to conclude that my home state, Connecticut, is in violation of federal law."
This is not right, let alone a matter of civil rights. This is a matter of unfair discrimination.
As for the simple matter of bathrooms, there are numerous, documented reports of girls feeling so uncomfortable with the presence of boys in their school bathrooms that they refrained from relieving themselves the entire day at school. Others wear their gym clothes under their regular clothes lest they be forced to change in the presence of a boy. What happened to the basic, human rights of these girls?
When it comes to sports, many of the males these girls compete with have not had any hormonal treatments, and so they are functioning fully as biological males. This completely undermines the very concept of boys and girls sports. There is a reason for the separation, and it is called fairness. The president's executive order destroys that fairness with one stroke of the pen.
Earlier this month, NBC News reported that, "A new study suggests transgender women maintain an athletic advantage over their cisgender peers even after a year on hormone
Last December, The Guardian reported, "A groundbreaking new study on transgender athletes has found trans women retain a 12% advantage in running tests even after taking hormones for two years to suppress their testosterone. The results, researchers suggest, indicate the current International Olympic Committee guidelines may give trans women an 'unfair competitive advantage' over biological women."
Well what do you know. The studies confirmed what common sense would tell you.
As for those who say, "Well, how common is this anyway? Why make such a big deal about it?" The answer is the very question you asked: "If so few people identify as transgender, why sign an executive order affecting everyone else just for them?"
But there's more to Biden's executive order, titled, "Executive Order on Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation."
It also states, "Adults should be able to earn a living and pursue a vocation knowing that they will not be fired, demoted, or mistreated because of whom they go home to or because how they dress does not conform to sex-based stereotypes."
Does this mean that if Jack, who is clearly a biological male, now identifies as Jane and wants to be hired as a nursery school teacher, the school must hire him? Does it matter that the 4-year-old kids will be asking why the man is wearing a dress?
And is there a reason that the order does not contain the words "religion" or "religious" a single time? What about those with biblically based, convictional differences? Would churches be exempt? What about religious schools?
That's why I warned in March of last year, "If Joe Biden Becomes President, He Will Declare War on Your Religious Freedoms."
That's why I drew attention last August to the transgender activism of the Democratic Platform as prefigured in the Biden-Sanders "Unity Plan."
That's why I asked last October, "Mr. Biden, Do You Really Advocate Sterilizing Children?" when candidate Biden indicated his support for an 8-year-old to identify as the opposite of their biological sex. (Should I also mention that Biden's nominee for his assistant secretary of health is a biological male who identifies as female?)
Under President Obama, more than 20 states took his administration to court, fighting against his similarly radical transgender activism in the schools. (Obama threatened to withhold federal funding if the schools would not comply.)
Under President Trump, this was overturned, only to have it reinstated by President Biden (also undergirded by the Supreme Court's dreadful redefinition of "sex" last June).
And as nice as the wording sounds, we should make no mistake about it: This will negatively impact your children, especially your girls.
To be sure, every one of us should show love to those struggling with gender identity confusion, be they children or adults. And, if a school can accommodate a trans-identified child by allowing them to use a private restroom, that hurts no one.
But, as I have argued for more than a decade, we don't turn the world upside down to accommodate the struggles of less than 1% of the population. And by all means, we don't strip away the rights of others on their behalf.
This is one reason I voted for Donald Trump, since a vote for him was a vote against this dangerous agenda. All this is no surprise.
Let us be prepared, then, to love every trans person we meet (this heart-rending documentary will help you do so) while pushing back against this dangerous agenda every way we can.
“Minimum wage is the biggest issue,” Jeff Brabant, NFIB’s manager of government relations, told the DCNF. “There are other issues further down the pike we’re worried about, but we’re trying to stay focused on minimum wage.”
A 2019 scathing 
