Last Call For Crafting A Disaster In Kentucky

The GOP primary for governor is next Tuesday here in Kentucky, and while I definitely have my problems with Turtle High Priest Daniel Cameron, the even worse alternative is definitely form Trump regime UN Ambassador Kelly Craft, trying to buy the seat with her millions so she can purge state schools of trans folk.

 

Republican gubernatorial candidate Kelly Craft made sweeping, explicit anti-transgender remarks at a virtual town hall on Monday, escalating her transphobic rhetoric in the lead-up to the primary election.

Craft, a former ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump administration, said Kentucky would “not have transgenders in our school system” if she were elected governor, according to a transcript of the town hall reported by the Lexington Herald Leader.

Weston Loyd, communications director for Craft’s campaign, said Craft was referring to “ideologies.”

“Of course Kelly [Craft] was referring to the woke ideologies being pushed in our schools,” Loyd said. “She has been advocating for the best for all children this entire campaign.”

But Craft’s statement that transgender students should not exist in Kentucky schools goes beyond even her previous anti-trans stances throughout her campaign, such as her opposition to trans athletes competing in women’s sports and support of a sweeping new law, sponsored by her running mate, that bans gender affirming medical care for minors.

Chris Hartman, executive director of the Kentucky Fairness Campaign, said he wasn’t surprised by Craft’s comments in light of her previous anti-trans remarks and legislative agendas.

“You cannot force or legislate trans kids out of existence. You can’t push them back into the closet,” Hartman said. “Trans kids exist. They will always exist, and they will always be in Kentucky schools, no matter what Kelly Craft and Max Wise have to say about it.”

GOP state Sen. Max Wise, Craft's running mate, sponsored Senate Bill 150, one of the strictest anti-trans laws in the country, which passed in the Kentucky Legislature this year. It bans gender-affirming medical care for transgender kids and imposes rules on public schools that negatively affect trans students.

The ACLU of Kentucky filed a lawsuit last week challenging parts of SB 150 that ban trans kids from receiving gender affirming care like puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones like testosterone and estrogen.

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear vetoed the bill, though the GOP-led legislature easily overrode him. In his veto message, Beshear wrote that SB 150 “allows too much government interference in personal healthcare issues and rips away the freedom of parents to make medical decisions for their children.”

Hartman said anti-trans rhetoric is taking a toll on trans kids’ mental health – and it’s coming from politicians and legislatures across the country, not just from Craft. The ACLU identified nearly 500 anti-LGBTQ bills in the United States in just the 2023 legislative session.

“I don’t believe that kids are hearing Kelly Craft’s words any louder than they are hearing the state legislatures all across the United States, and the coordinated national efforts to eradicate transgender kids for the cheapest political points,” Hartman said.

 

Understand that Republicans like Craft will not stop at getting rid of trans kids -- trying to make their existence illegal felonies -- and as horrific as that is,  they will do the same to all trans folk in Kentucky and in multiple other states.

I'd say this is the 1939 playbook from Germany only with trans folks, but Republicans hate Jews too, so there you are.

 

Needless to say, a second term for Andy Beshear may be the only force that halts a slide towards actual genocide here.

BREAKING: Orange Judgment

The jury in E. Jean Carroll's civil case versus Donald Trump didn't even take a full afternoon to find him liable for sexual assault and defamation and to award her a total of $5 million in damages.

 

A New York jury on Tuesday found former President Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s, but not liable for her alleged rape.

The jury awarded her $5 million in damages for her battery and defamation claims.

Asked on their verdict sheet if Carroll, 79, had proven “by a preponderance of the evidence” that “Mr. Trump raped Ms. Carroll,” the nine-person jury checked the box that said “no.” Asked if Carroll had proven “by a preponderance of the evidence” that “Mr. Trump sexually abused Ms. Carroll,” the jury checked the box that said “yes.” Both allegations were elements of Carroll’s battery claim.

The six men and three women also found Trump had defamed her by calling her claims a “hoax” and “a con job.”

Trump, a 2024 presidential candidate, has consistently denied Carroll’s claims. The jury verdict carries no criminal implications.

The legal standard for liability in the civil case — the preponderance of the evidence — was not as high as in criminal cases. The civil benchmark is that it’s more likely than not that something occurred, while the standard for convictions in criminal cases is proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Carroll sued Trump accusing him of battery and defamation in Manhattan federal court last year, alleging he raped her in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman department store near his Fifth Avenue home in 1995 or 1996. She first went public with the claim in 2019 in her book, “What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal.”

Trump, first as president and then as a private citizen, called her account a fiction that she concocted to boost book sales, and has said the writer is “not my type.” He did not testify in the case, but portions of his videotaped deposition from October were played for the jury.

The verdict was required to be unanimous.

Carroll was her own star witness at the trial, which began April 25. “I’m here because Trump raped me,” she told jurors during her three days on the witness stand.

 

Oh, and Trump is scheduled to appear on CNN in a town hall segment tomorrow. Another good call by network head Chris Licht.

Orange Meltdown, Peach State Edition, Con't

We've now officially reached the "I was only following orders" stage of Georgia Republican party flunkies turning evidence against Trump as Fulton County DA Fani Willis lines up her evidence for later this summer.

 

Lawyers representing David Shafer, the embattled chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, are arguing their client should not be charged with any crimes for his actions following the 2020 election because he was following advice provided by attorneys working for former President Donald Trump, according to a letter sent to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis last week.

Specifically, Shafer’s attorneys say their client was relying on “repeated and detailed advice of legal counsel” when he organized a group of “contingent” electors from Georgia and served as one himself, thus “eliminating any possibility of criminal intent or liability,” according to a copy of the May 5 letter.

The letter, which was first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, comes as Willis and her team of prosecutors investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia are planning to make an announcement on possible charges against Trump or his allies later this summer.

Shafer, who sources previously told CNN could be among those indicted when Willis makes her charging announcements, has come under scrutiny for his role in the effort to put forward alternate slates of electors to block the certification of the 2020 presidential vote.

In their letter to Willis’s office, Shafer’s lawyers say he was “given very direct, detailed legal advice on the procedure he should follow, and he followed those instructions to the letter.”

“I believe that any fair-minded person, with possession of all the facts, would conclude that Mr. Shafer and the other presidential elector nominees acted lawfully and appropriately,” the letter adds.

The district attorney’s office declined to comment.

 

Again, this is the chair of the Georgia Republican party saying Donald Trump ordered him to break the law, and when you've reached this point of your defense where the capos and consiglieres are turning on The Don here, it's all over but the paperwork. Willis is going to have a field day.

And maybe, just maybe, Trump gets what he deserves.