Free Speech, Religious Liberty Score Double Win from SCOTUS in LGBT Wedding Website Case

Robert Jonathan
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Free Speech, Religious Liberty Score Double Win from SCOTUS in LGBT Wedding Website Case

(Robert Jonathan, Headline USA) In a victory for freedom of speech if not for religious liberty, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that the state of Colorado can’t force a Christian graphic artist to design same-sex marriage websites.

303 Creative LLC owner Lorie Smith reportedly instituted the case that ultimately reached the high court out of concern that the public accommodation provision of Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act could compel her to violate her religious beliefs.

Smith is on record as willing to provide services to any customer regardless of their sexual orientation, but drew the line at marriage-website creation for other than nuptials between one man and one woman.

In a 6-3 decision authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch that reversed a lower court ruling, the conservative majority vindicated Smith’s free speech rights under the U.S. Constitution.

“The First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands,” Gorsuch wrote in the 70-page opinion that also includes a dissent by the liberal justice cohort.

The state of Colorado improperly “seeks to deny that promise,” he added in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis.

“In this case, Colorado seeks to force an individual to speak in ways that align with its views but defy her conscience about a matter of major significance…,” Gorsuch explained.

“But, as this Court has long held, the opportunity to think for ourselves and to express those thoughts freely is among our most cherished liberties and part of what keeps our Republic strong.”

During the pendency of the case, Smith told Fox News that she was doxxed, faced death threats, and was subject to various forms of harassment.

“The right to speak freely is guaranteed to all of us, and that’s been hard at times,” Smith said. “While it has come at a cost, it’s a right worth protecting.”

The nonprofit legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom represented Smith in the appeal.

In a statement, Alliance Defending Freedom CEO Kristen Waggoner said, in part, that “The U.S. Supreme Court rightly reaffirmed that the government can’t force Americans to say things they don’t believe. The court reiterated that it’s unconstitutional for the state to eliminate from the public square ideas it dislikes, including the belief that marriage is the union of husband and wife.”

Waggoner, who is also the group’s president and general counsel, noted that Colorado’s nondiscrimination laws “remain firmly in place,” but that wasn’t what the legal dispute was really about.

“Disagreement isn’t discrimination, and the government can’t mislabel speech as discrimination to censor it. Lorie works with everyone, including clients who identify as LGBT. As the court highlighted, her decisions to create speech always turn on what message is requested, never on who requests it.”

As a practical matter in controversies of this nature, consumers usually have many choices in terms of which graphic designer, florist, or bakery (such as Colorado’s Masterpiece Cakeshop) with which they can voluntarily choose or not choose to do business.

Reacting to the 303 Creative LLC case, NBS News asserted that “The ruling could allow other similar business owners to evade punishment under laws in 29 states that protect LGBTQ rights in public accommodations in some form.”

Earlier the week in what has turned out to be an impactful term, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a postal officer worker who had been targeted and reprimanded for requesting to refrain from working on Sundays due to his religious beliefs.

STUDY: Over a Third of Old BLM Tweets Are Unavailable

Ezekiel Loseke
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STUDY: Over a Third of Old BLM Tweets Are Unavailable

(Ezekiel Loseke, Headline USA) Ten years after the start of the movement, more than a third of the tweets containing the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter have been made unavailable, according to a study by the Pew Research Center.

Tweets were made unavailable by users deleting posts, deleting their account, hiding posts, making their account private or getting suspended from Twitter, according to Axios.

At the arrival of its decade milestone, the trend is one of several indications that the Black Lives Matter movement is not aging well.

“Black Lives Matter is one of the most prominent social movements to develop and evolve entirely within the social media era,” Pew noted, explaining why BLM’s online footprint might be a gauge of its broader public perception.

Pew’s analysis examined tweets between 2013 to 2021, ostensibly at the peak of BLM’s influence. It suggested that many of those who telegraphed their public shows of support had, for one reason or another, removed them after the fact.

“As much as 40% of those posted during the summer of 2020 … are no longer accessible on Twitter,” the report noted, referring to the swell of numbers that accompanied nationwide race riots in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death.

Despite the waning support, over 44 million tweets featuring the hashtag still exist on Twitter, Pew reported.

Sam Bestvater, a computational social scientist at Pew, claimed that the decline in available tweets was partially a result of the design of social-media platforms.

“While modern protest movements may have come to rely on social media platforms pretty considerably, these platforms weren’t really designed to be cultural archives,” he said. “The records they contain can degrade over time, and they might not be around forever.”

At its peak in 2020, BLM boasted a 66% share of American adults that supported the movement. However, this month the Pew Research Center released a survey indicating that only 51% of American adults currently support the movement.

The decline in tweets and support was preceded by numerous scandals involving the organizations members and leadership:

  • The movement itself is broke, but its leaders continue to collect millions from the brand.
  • The organization paid over $4 million to one of the co-founder’s baby-daddy.
  • The movement’s co-founder lost a contract with Warner Brothers because her contract “did not result in any produced shows.”
  • A co-founder of the movement owns a $6 million mansion which was purchased by the organization in 2021.
  • A BLM leader in Boston was indicted on over 20 charges of fraud.
  • The movement was so fraudulent the IRS threatened to revoke its charity status.
  • A BLM leader intentionally released hundreds of cockroaches in a New York City Courthouse.
  • A BLM activist got another student expelled from the University of Virginia by fabricating hateful statements.
  • Black Lives Matters rioters destroyed a statute of a Catholic saint in California.

SCOTUS Strikes Down Biden’s Brazen Loan-Amnesty Program

Ben Sellers
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SCOTUS Strikes Down Biden’s Brazen Loan-Amnesty Program

(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) In a long-anticipated smackdown to the student-loan amnesty program that President Joe Biden used as a blatant attempt to pander to Gen.-Z voters ahead of the 2022 midterms, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Biden adminstration lacked the authority to unilaterally wipe away borrowers’ debt—thereby assuming its cost on behalf of all taxpayers—for their own political benefit.

In a pair of rulings—the Department of Education v. Brown and Biden v. Nebraska—the court’s majority determined that Biden’s Education Department overstepped the bounds of the HEROES Act, a post-Sept. 11 law that had provided for debt-forgiveness to “alleviate hardship” in time of national emergency by allowing the DOE to bypass certain administrative procedures for loan repayment.

Congress had unilaterally passed the 2003 law with troops in mind as the terrorists attacks on American soil compelled some to defer their educational pursuits and early careers in order to serve their country.

However, several plaintiffs emerged following the announcement last year by Biden and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona that they would use the plan to wipe away up to $20,000 in debt from individual borrowers under the auspices of the COVID-19 pandemic, without applying the narrow set of parameters and procedures that were implied by the law’s passage.

“The Secretary’s comprehensive debt cancellation plan cannot fairly be called a waiver—it not only nullifies existing provisions, but augments and expands them dramatically,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion for Biden v. Nebraska.

Both states and individual borrowers, such as plaintiffs Myra Brown and Alexander Taylor, said they would be harmed by the decision.

Brown and Taylor—both borrowers who were ineligible for the maximum amount due to the arbitrary and capricious standards set by the DOE—said Cardona was legally obligated to undergo a public comment period, which he had failed to do before implementing the plan.

“Because the Department did not engage in negotiated rule-making or notice and comment … Brown and Taylor had no formal opportunity to voice their views on the Plan prior to its adoption,” wrote Justice Samuel Alito in his majority opinion.

In the Nebraska suit, the Cornhusker State was joined by five others who had argued that Cardona exceeded his statutory authority, and that the federal amnesty programs would impact their own public loan-servicing entities, such as Missouri’s MOHELA, which contracted with the federal government on the loan debts with the understanding that they would be the beneficiaries of future interest payments.

“Under the Secretary’s plan, roughly half of all federal borrowers would have their loans completely discharged,” Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.

“MOHELA could no longer service those closed accounts, costing it, by Missouri’s estimate, $44 million a year in fees that it otherwise would have earned under its contract with the Department of Education,” he continued. “This financial harm is an injury in fact directly traceable to the Secretary’s plan, as both the Government and the dissent concede.”

Roberts further argued that Cardona had overstepped the limits of his authority under the HEROES act, saying he had only the authority to “waive or modify” the provisions, “not to rewrite that statute from the ground up” in order to cancel $430 billion in student-loan principal.

He accused the Biden administration of distorting a mundane provision that related to its duty to publish notice in the Federal Register, and instead using that to interpret sweeping new powers for itself.

“The provision is no more than it appears to be: a humdrum reporting requirement,” Roberts wrote. “Rather than implicitly granting the Secretary authority to draft new substantive statutory provisions at will, it simply imposes the obligation to report any waivers and modifications he has made.”

Acknowledging a dissent from Justice Elena Kagan, Roberts lamented that the court’s far-left arm had turned inward on the court itself by echoing political talking points that the conservative majority was overstepping its judicial role.

Roberts said the student-loan cases reflected a clear-cut violation of the law and that if Democrats hoped to effect such a policy change they would have to do so through the proper channel: by having Congress pass new legislation permitting loan amnesty.

“[O]ur precedent—old and new—requires that Congress speak clearly before a Department Secretary can unilaterally alter large sections of the American economy. We have employed the traditional tools of judicial decisionmaking in doing so,” Roberts wrote.

“Reasonable minds may disagree with our analysis—in fact, at least three do,” he continued. “We do not mistake this plainly heartfelt disagreement for disparagement. It is important that the public not be misled either. Any such misperception would be harmful to this institution and our country.”

The ruling—one of the last to come in the court’s current session before it adjourns for the summer—came just a day after a landmark decision in two separate cases effectively ended affirmative action at colleges and universities.

Shortly after the decision was announced on Thursday, the court grounds were evacuated following the appearance of a suspicious package.

It was the latest in a growing line of terroristic threats and political attacks against the court that have been tacitly—and sometimes overtly—embraced by powerful Democrat leaders such as Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, who last year threatened two justices by name on the steps of the court while hoping to influence the outcome of a case.

Democrats also have floated the possibility of packing the court with leftist justices and have orchestrated a well-financed smear campaign to accuse at least three conservative justices of ethical violations for failing to report business transactions and vacation trips paid for by wealthy friends and associates.

The jurists have argued that the court’s ethical guidelines for reporting did not require that they do so and that no cases have come before the court requiring their recusal in matters directly related to the acquaintances in question.

Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/realbensellers.

SELLERS: Headline USA to Attempt an ‘LGBT’-Free July

Ben Sellers
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SELLERS: Headline USA to Attempt an ‘LGBT’-Free July

(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) Few conservative news editors can say they have witnessed firsthand a San Francisco “Pride” parade or celebrated a friend’s 30th birthday at a gay nightclub in Prague.

This one has.

I came of age in Charlottesville, Va., which was then—as it is now—a bastion of liberalism. Back then, of course, tolerance was something to be celebrated, and differences of opinion were embraced more often than not.

In short, I never felt a great deal of discomfort with LGBT individuals—nor even the community in aggregate, provided they were respectful of the boundaries of common decency, as would be expected of any culture or identity group.

Indeed, I’ve written on several occasions about the importance for conservatives to welcome sensible members of the LGBT community into their ranks, as there already exist many prominent examples where the two groups overlap.

I would argue that, for most, it is not one’s choice of a romantic partner nor private extracurricular activities that are at issue in the ongoing cultural war surrounding the LGBT agenda, but rather the encroachment of inappropriate and morally repugnant conduct into public spaces where it has no business manifesting, be it the bathroom, the classroom or the White House.

A culture that revolves exclusively around one’s sexual proclivities and vices is a culture that others ought not be subjected to involuntarily.

Unlike identities based on inherently immutable characteristics, like ethnicity, LGBT identity is fundamentally a lifestyle—and a fluid one at that, built around the caprices of its adherents.

While peaceful coexistence may be one thing, forcible embrace of it is a line many refuse to cross.

That became clear with this June’s “Pride” month, when the growing outrage over corporate displays of LGBT solidarity led to unprecedented backlash, bringing down several longstanding, once venerated American institutions, including Garth Brooks and Budweiser, all for getting caught peripherally in the LGBT orbit.

Meanwhile, the Right’s indignation only reinforced the efforts of a coalition whose main source of validation may be the negative attention it garners.

Assistant Health Secretary Rachel (né “Dick”) Levine goaded critics, for example, by suggesting that “Pride” month be extended to the entire summer.

But one can hardly fault LGBT individuals themselves for relishing the attention when we are the enablers in a sort of perverse symbiosis.

There is no denying that stories falling somewhere on the LGBT spectrum generate a tremendous amount of content for the media—and conservative media in particular.

In the month of June alone, Headline USA’s tag for the term “LGBT” produced 43 items as of Thursday (not counting this column), while the tag for “transgender” yielded 45 items.

That means we averaged slightly more than 1.5 transgender stories per day for a demographic that comprises roughly 0.5% of the total U.S. population. By comparison, seven stories for June included the tag “Christians.”

Our editorial staff can’t help but notice that many of these stories bear similarities that make them difficult to distinguish from one another, generally involving the same sort of lurid affronts, which then get amplified by our recognition of them.

Perhaps it is, in some cases, necessary to expose the pernicious elements trying to take down our civilization subversively via TikTok videos. In most cases, however, it is simply feeding our own salacious impulses, triggering a sort of revulsion response that, on some level, we delight in, if only for the humor.

Yet, with “Pride” month having reached its dazzling finale, it is past time for a respite. That is why we’re pledging to attempt an ‘LGBT’-free July.

The emphasis, of course, is on the word attempt since we still have a website to run—and even Trump stories can only go but so far.

We’re carving out a few up-front exceptions and guidelines:

  • We will continue to cover any stories of such newsworthiness and national significance that they are impossible to ignore.

If the Biden administration, for instance, announced a plan to provide reparations for all LGBT people, it would be hard to avoid covering something that big.

  • The same goes for any story where the lives and well-being of innocent victims may be at stake by our refusal to run or provide the full context of a story. 

Sadly, with a growing rash of transgender-related terror attacks, there may be some events where the impact is too great.

  • We will continue to cover stories that may include some LGBT element if it is not the driving or dominant element of the story.

If Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg skips out on a train derailment because he’s spending time on a gay cruise, his sexuality is immaterial to the underlying issue but may still bear mentioning in the context of the broader story.

  • We will not shy away if we come across something truly original that would be a disservice not to share with readers.

If the long-sought smoking-gun evidence finally reveals that Michelle Obama is “Big Mike,” then yes, we are covering it.

What we will not be covering is stories that rely on some LGBT scandal as their main justification.

Understandably, there are watchdogs out there—public-service journalists like the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh—whose duty and commitment to covering these issues is too great to permit a monthlong lapse.

We respect their mission, and we don’t expect for the same issues and conflicts that have plagued the headlines in June to suddenly vanish over the course of the next 31 days.

Still, given the level of fatigue that many are experiencing, our hope is that other conservative-media consumers will follow suit in simply looking away for a little while, and instead finding something new and uplifting to take pride in.

Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/realbensellers.

Pocahontas Decries End of Affirmative Action Policies That Helped Her Get into Harvard

Mark Pellin
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Pocahontas Decries End of Affirmative Action Policies That Helped Her Get into Harvard

(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) After lying for years about her ethnic background and heritage to help advance her academic and professional career, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., was eviscerated for her hypocritical lament about the Supreme Court’s ruling to end affirmative action in admissions policies at colleges and universities.

Warren, who spent a career falsely and repeatedly claiming she had American Indian roots, using the bogus claim to help squirrel admission to Harvard and advance her political aspirations, called the Supreme Court “extremist.”

The ruling “rolled back the march toward racial justice,” she tweeted, while proclaiming, “I won’t stop fighting for young people with big dreams who deserve an equal chance to pursue their future.”

Warren’s court criticism and social justice warrior charade received a bruising response from the Twitterverse, which was nothing new. Former President Donald Trump in 2018 roasted Warren as “Pocahontas (the bad version)” and “Phony!”

Warren didn’t fare any better after her reaction to the Court’s ruling. “Elizabeth Warren, who gamed the system by pretending to be a Native American, has thoughts about affirmative action,” cracked City Journal’s Christopher Rufo.

“You literally filled out forms by your own hand where you cited ‘American Indian’ as your race at U of Pennsylvania, Harvard, the Assoc of American Law Schools, & your 1986 Texas bar registration card. They falsely advertised you as a minority in faculty directories. Sit down,” tweeted conservative firebrand Dana Loesch.

“OH — and the old white lady senator from MA then voted to centralize student loans thereby jacking up the costs for students. Great self awareness there, Liz,” Loesch added.

“She literally stole a college seat designated for a Native American woman,” admonished one commentator, while another reminded “that Harvard Law School touted her as a diversity hire in the 90s. Sit down Liz.”

A product of Harvard’s virtue signaling at the time, Warren was even recognized in a law review journal as Harvard Law School’s “first woman of color.” The title of the piece was “Intersectionality and positionality: Situating women of color in the affirmative action dialogue.”

Sen. Rubio Confirms Top U.S. Officials Have ‘First-Hand Knowledge’ of UFO Program

Mark Pellin
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Sen. Rubio Confirms Top U.S. Officials Have ‘First-Hand Knowledge’ of UFO Program

(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) Multiple government officials, some from within the Pentagon, claiming that U.S. agencies and operatives have conducted retrieval exercises of alien aircraft “have held very high clearances and high positions within our government,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., confirmed this week.

The claims from multiple top-ranking officials referenced by Rubio mirror the whistleblowing allegations previously made by U.S. Air Force veteran and former intelligence officer David Grusch.

Those claims, which were met with widespread skepticism, alleged that the U.S. military had retrieved and was in possession of alien UFO technology. Grush further claimed that evidence of “nonhuman exotic origin vehicles that have either landed or crashed” was being illegally withheld from Congress.

The claims made by Grush were not an isolated incident, according to Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who said the government has “downplayed” the number of credible claims that have been made.

“The number of these is apparently huge,” Hawley said. “And that is something that the government has, the best I can say about it, downplayed, if not kept from the public, for a long, long time.”

Defense Department officials in a statement on the allegations referred to its ongoing investigation of “unidentified aerial phenomena” by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which claimed “that in our research AARO has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics.”

Rubio, who is vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that many of the people coming forward with information “at some point, or maybe even currently — have held very high clearances and high positions within our government.”

Because the issues and claims “are beyond sort of the realm of what any of us have dealt with,” Rubio chose to withhold judgement on the credibility of the claims, and was reluctant to reveal who has made those claims.

“I want to be very protective of these people. A lot of these people came to us even before protections were in the law for whistleblowers to come forward,” Rubio said.

“Some of these people still work in the government, and frankly a lot of them are very fearful,” he said. “Fearful of their jobs, fearful of their clearances, fearful of their career, and some frankly are fearful of harm coming to them.”

The fact that so many have come forward, Rubio said, prompts the question, “So You do ask yourself, like, ‘what incentive would so many people, with that kind of qualification — these are serious people — have to come forward and make something up?’”

Lawmakers might get a chance to find answers, or at least begin asking questions in earnest. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., announced earlier this month that an investigation would be forthcoming into allegations raised that the military has been running covert UFO operations. GOP Reps. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida and Tim Burchett of Tennessee have been tasked with leading the investigation.

“What I think we owe them is just a mature, you know, understanding, listening and trying to put all these pieces together and just sort of intake the information without any prejudgment or jumping to any conclusions in one direction or another,” Rubio said.

Biden’s Regulations Set Ablaze w/ a $10K Household Burden, Report Warns

Luis Cornelio
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Biden’s Regulations Set Ablaze w/ a $10K Household Burden, Report Warns

(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) A scathing report accused the Biden administration’s regulatory agenda of burdening the American economy with a financial cost of nearly $10,000 per household. Even worse, the report warned that if President Joe Biden is re-elected in 2024, the burden could escalate to a staggering $60,000.

The report, released by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, reviewed the Biden regime’s regulatory actions until the end of 2022 and warned that the regulations are harsher than those mandated during the Obama administration.

“The added costs from these Biden-era final rules, which include both their current and expected future costs, amount to almost $10,000 per household,” informed the 26-page report. “If regulatory costs continue to rise at the same rate as they did during the Obama administration, the total costs of Biden’s rulemaking over an eight-year period would almost reach $60,000 per household.” 

While the report highlighted that automobile fuel economy and emissions standards significantly contributed to the regulatory burden on Americans, it emphasized that other sectors, including telecommunications, health, and labor, when combined, surpassed the impact of the automobile industry.

The study also underscored the successful reduction in regulatory costs achieved by President Donald Trump’s administration, which provided relief to households, even without considering the monumental achievement of Operation Warp Speed.

The release of this eye-popping report shed light on the detrimental effects of President Biden’s regulatory agenda on American households, particularly in the midst of criticism aimed at his promotion of what he claims as “Bidenomics.”

Prominent conservative leaders took to social media to criticize the Biden regulations, with Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., stating, “Bidenomics is making life unaffordable for too many Americans.”

Similarly, Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., reacted to the report by emphasizing Biden’s failures, saying, “What President Biden doesn’t understand is that American families are hurting. Biden’s expensive regulations have cost the average household an extra $10,000 over the last two years.”

Echoing Hudson’s sentiments, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, remarked, “The Biden administration’s burdensome regulations have cost Americans about $10,000 per household. 8 years of Biden’s regulations could add up to $7 trillion, which is almost $60,000 per household.”

Religious Liberty Triumphs: Supreme Court Decision Sparks GOP Celebration

Luis Cornelio
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Religious Liberty Triumphs: Supreme Court Decision Sparks GOP Celebration

(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) In a major victory for religious liberty, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Gerald Groff, a dedicated postal officer worker who had been targeted and reprimanded for requesting to refrain from working on Sundays due to his religious beliefs. 

The Court, in a unanimous decision in Groff v. DeJoy, effectively overturned a prior ruling by a lower court, marking a momentous milestone in the protection of religious freedoms.

According to CBS News, the Court refused to overrule a 1977 case that allowed businesses to reject religious accommodations if the request placed an alleged “de minimis” (minimal) cost to the business.

The ruling, however, offered new guidance to courts on how to determine whether rejections violated the First Amendment.  

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, highlighted the importance of considering the substantiality of the burden on an employer when evaluating accommodation requests.  

Alito said, “We think it is enough to say that an employer must show that the burden of granting an accommodation would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business.” 

Upon the release of the decisions, several Republican leaders from Congress expressed their delight and applauded the Supreme Court’s decision. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a staunch advocate for religious freedoms, celebrated the decision.  

In a statement obtained by Headline USA, Cruz said, “This decision is not only a victory for our ‘first freedom,’ but is also an important check on future efforts by the federal government to trample the religious rights of federal workers. With today’s decision, religious liberty has prevailed once again.” 

Cruz’s remarks were echoed by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who took to Twitter to call the decision, a “huge victory for religious liberty.” Specifically, Rubio said, “The Supreme Court unanimously agrees that Gerald Groff, a Christian postal worker, cannot be forced to work on Sundays. Commonsense is slowly returning.”

Similarly, Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., announced he led a delegation of congressional leaders to support the case. He said, “Earlier this year, I led 13 Republican members of the House and Senate in a brief urging the Supreme Court to protect the religious liberties of employees as Congress originally intended.”

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who was part of that delegation, celebrated the decision, sharing his amicus brief on Twitter.

July 4 Fireworks Canceled Due to Climate Change Activists

Dmytro "Henry" Aleksandrov
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July 4 Fireworks Canceled Due to Climate Change Activists

(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) Woke Los Angeles sacrificed the celebration of the Fourth of July this year on the altar of climate change gods by canceling several fireworks on the birthday of the American nation because of new environmental regulations.

As of May 25, the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board started forcing all fireworks vendors to obtain a permit for their public displays and use biodegradable plastics after adopting a countywide order. The Washington Examiner reported that the decision was made to curb ocean pollution that was caused by plastic debris following all fireworks shows.

Even though most shows in the area will obtain their permits, at least five shows will be canceled over the holiday weekend because one firework company — Pyro Spectaculars by Souza — didn’t bow down to the climate change mob by refusing to comply with the new rules over its employees’ safety concerns.

“We cannot and will not risk the safety of our staff and the public to comply with the restrictive regulations,” CEO Jim Souza stated.

“The water board instituted the new regulations quickly and unilaterally, with little input from us, one of the largest and most experienced firework show producers in the nation.”

Pyro Spectaculars spokesperson said that the company’s pyrotechnicians may be harmed during and after the shows because these environmental regulations will force them to perform real-time monitoring of the pyrotechnics displays and conduct cleanup immediately after the shows.

At the May Los Angeles water board meeting where the spokesperson expressed the concerns, local water board officials said the company could use a video monitoring system to address its safety concerns. However, the alternative option did not sway the fireworks vendor.

People on Twitter, however, weren’t very surprised by the news, largely because it happened in California.

“It’s ok. Residents of LA are no longer free, so July 4th is just another Tuesday to them,” one Twitter user wrote, responding to the news.

Cervical Cancer Fund Suggests Calling Vaginas ‘Bonus Holes’ to Avoid Offending Trans People

Corine Gatti
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Cervical Cancer Fund Suggests Calling Vaginas ‘Bonus Holes’ to Avoid Offending Trans People

(Corine Gatti, Headline USA) A woke United Kingdom-based cervical cancer trust sparked controversy by referring to vaginas as “bonus holes” in their makeshift glossary of trans terms. 

The charity in question was Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust, which suggested the language in 2020 for biological females. But the aggressive definitions to pacify trans people recently went viral on Twitter, creating a firestorm when the term “bonus hole” was used as an alternative word for vagina. The glossary became more absurd, referring to the “front hole” as another alternative word for vagina, the Gateway Pundit reported.

Naturally, that wasn’t enough for the organization. Readers were chastised to check which words transgender people would prefer, as they might get offended.

“Remember, everyone, makes mistakes from time to time,” the trust charged. “It’s important that you acknowledge them, correct yourself, learn from them, and move on. Dwelling on mistakes could make the person you are talking to feel more uncomfortable.” 

The archived version of the glossary was published with the LGBT Foundation, a charity that campaigns for LGBT rights. Not everyone accepted the term “bonus hole” as the definition made the rounds on Twitter, and users denounced the fund for demeaning women.

“Females really went from ‘women’ to ‘birthing people’ to ‘bonus holes’ in the span of 5 years,” Tom Pappert, editor-in-chief of Valiant News, tweeted. 

“Cervix owners was bad enough. Now they are re-wording parts of women’s bodies to sound like perks at mini-golf?” Melissa Chen, contributing editor at The Spectator, posted.

Evolutionary biologist Heather Heying posted on Twitter and called the glossary “Delusional.”

The backlash mirrored criticism that Johns Hopkins received after it published it a glossary of LGBT identities and terms, which redefined the term “lesbian” by excluding any reference to “women”.

The university was compelled to revise its misguided guidance, which was blasted from all points of the political and social spectrum, with one critic calling it “the homophobic statement of the decade.”

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