In an interview last week with Tony Perkins, leader of the anti-LGBTQ hate group Family Research Council (FRC), Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said he based his new emergency administrative regulation limiting access to gender-affirming healthcare on disputed accounts of a supposed whistleblower at a Missouri hospital.
Third-term Idaho state Sen. Tammy Nichols has associated publicly with several extremists in recent weeks, first posting a photo of herself at a GOP fundraising event with a white nationalist YouTuber she praised as “amazing,” and last week appearing on the show of a far-right livestreamer to promote a state House bill that would criminalize the administration of COVID-19 vaccines.
A convicted sex offender manned a booth at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) as featured speakers told the crowd it was conservatives’ duty to protect children from the threat of “transgenderism” and “sexualization.”
Republican former Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia has joined the Family Research Council (FRC) as a senior adviser to the anti-LGBTQ hate group’s longest-serving president, Tony Perkins. FRC helped launch the religious right as an overt political movement in the 1980s and remains one of the largest anti-LGBTQ organizations in the U.S. Hice described working for the anti-LGBTQ hate group as a “personal mission.”
At the International Religious Freedom (IRF) Summit in Washington, D.C., last month, summit co-chairs Sam Brownback and Katrina Lantos Swett addressed a joint session. Noting the summit’s theme, “Religious Freedom for Everybody, Everywhere, All the Time,” Brownback characterized his idea of religious freedom as societies allowing “freedom for the soul and respect for each other.” But the rhetoric of individuals and groups present at the summit shows how extremists wield the language of religious freedom in a very different way: to oppress others.
Mainstream U.S. politicians including Samantha Power, head of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), will mix with anti-LGBTQ extremists at this year’s International Religious Freedom Summit (IRFS) in Washington, D.C., set to begin on Jan. 31.
Far-right propagandist Vincent James Foxx echoed “Great Replacement” conspiracy theories in a speech to a gathering of North Idaho Republicans just over a week ago, alleging that unspecified conspirators had “intentionally and deliberately and consistently changed the demographics of this country ... because they know that certain groups vote a certain way, and they know they can use that, that’s a benefit to them.”
The Hungarian ambassador to the U.S. affirmed Hungary’s position as a beacon of the international hard-right movement at a controversial Republican gathering that white nationalists, European far-right politicians and controversial Republican politicians including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia attended.
An official in Illinois’ DuPage County GOP who frequently appears in local and national media associates with extremist groups and shares racist posts on social media, Hatewatch has found.
Dozens of extremists on Twitter now sport the “blue check” once reserved for verified accounts, after signing up for the paid Twitter Blue service under policies instituted by the platform’s new proprietor, Elon Musk.
