53percenter's Blog

As the caravan camps out in self-induced misery in Tijuana, and the left calls for the entry of more refugees (and asylees) into the U.S., a new report from the Federation for Immigration Reform shows that such imports don’t come cheap.

According to the Washington Examiner:

The Federation for American Immigration Reform Monday put the five-year price tag at $8.8 billion in federal and state costs, or nearly $80,000 per refugee. There are some 18 federal and state programs refugees can tap for financial help, including food stamps, child care, public housing and school loans.

On a yearly average, it is $1.8 billion, or $15,900 per refugee.  Included in that are enormous refugee resettlement costs such as $867 million in welfare, housing assistance and education.

For the advocates of bigger government, that’s a good thing, given the growing numbers of bureaucrats needed to “service” such clients.  More clients, more costs; more costs, more bureaucrats.  What’s more, half of these refugees and asylees (the terms are used interchangeably in the report because refugees come from their home countries, while asylees apply from the U.S.) stay on Medicaid for five years or more, meaning their incomes stay low, either based on their low skill levels and inability to assimilate or because they have high health care costs and keep their incomes low to ensure a free ride.

The Democrats want more of this.  Here’s one report calling for it from lefty Quartz just today.

3. Widen the scope of those who qualify for asylum

Nazario says the US also needs to focus on the asylum seekers who are most at risk of violence in their home countries.  In June, then-attorney-general Jeff Sessions said that immigration judges would no longer be able to consider domestic violence or gang violence as general grounds for asylum, reversing an Obama-era precedent.  Sessions described domestic abuse and violence as “personal crimes.”  This ”reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of domestic violence, harkening back to an era when rape and partner abuse were viewed as private matters as well as of the brutality and scope of gang violence,” said the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

It’s the usual lefty solution of throwing taxpayer money at a problem instead of going to the root of the problem, which is the problems in the refugees’ home countries, as well as the benefit disparity between what’s on offer in home countries and first countries of refuge and the vast banquet of benefits available to U.S. refugees and asylees inside the U.S.

Seriously, we could cut the cost in half by handing each refugee a stack of $40,000 in bills in exchange for his staying out of the U.S., which shows just how bad the whole situation is.

President Trump has cut the vast numbers of refugees admitted to the U.S. sharply, but that move has just brought more fury from the left, which sees these refugees and asylees, dependent as they are on government services and unlikely to change that situation, as major sources of new Democrat votes.

Eighty thousand bucks could also do a lot of good in these refugees’ home countries or wherever their first countries of refuge are.  Pity it won’t get there, given the Democrats’ insistence on importing more and more of this poverty – and inability to succeed in the U.S. as their means of virtue-signaling.  It makes no sense.  And the report’s conclusion, that the U.S. should step up helping refugees in their home countries and first countries of asylum, makes a lot of sense.

Image credit: PressTV of Iran, via YouTube screen shot.

As the caravan camps out in self-induced misery in Tijuana, and the left calls for the entry of more refugees (and asylees) into the U.S., a new report from the Federation for Immigration Reform shows that such imports don’t come cheap.

According to the Washington Examiner:

The Federation for American Immigration Reform Monday put the five-year price tag at $8.8 billion in federal and state costs, or nearly $80,000 per refugee. There are some 18 federal and state programs refugees can tap for financial help, including food stamps, child care, public housing and school loans.

On a yearly average, it is $1.8 billion, or $15,900 per refugee.  Included in that are enormous refugee resettlement costs such as $867 million in welfare, housing assistance and education.

For the advocates of bigger government, that’s a good thing, given the growing numbers of bureaucrats needed to “service” such clients.  More clients, more costs; more costs, more bureaucrats.  What’s more, half of these refugees and asylees (the terms are used interchangeably in the report because refugees come from their home countries, while asylees apply from the U.S.) stay on Medicaid for five years or more, meaning their incomes stay low, either based on their low skill levels and inability to assimilate or because they have high health care costs and keep their incomes low to ensure a free ride.

The Democrats want more of this.  Here’s one report calling for it from lefty Quartz just today.

3. Widen the scope of those who qualify for asylum

Nazario says the US also needs to focus on the asylum seekers who are most at risk of violence in their home countries.  In June, then-attorney-general Jeff Sessions said that immigration judges would no longer be able to consider domestic violence or gang violence as general grounds for asylum, reversing an Obama-era precedent.  Sessions described domestic abuse and violence as “personal crimes.”  This ”reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of domestic violence, harkening back to an era when rape and partner abuse were viewed as private matters as well as of the brutality and scope of gang violence,” said the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

It’s the usual lefty solution of throwing taxpayer money at a problem instead of going to the root of the problem, which is the problems in the refugees’ home countries, as well as the benefit disparity between what’s on offer in home countries and first countries of refuge and the vast banquet of benefits available to U.S. refugees and asylees inside the U.S.

Seriously, we could cut the cost in half by handing each refugee a stack of $40,000 in bills in exchange for his staying out of the U.S., which shows just how bad the whole situation is.

President Trump has cut the vast numbers of refugees admitted to the U.S. sharply, but that move has just brought more fury from the left, which sees these refugees and asylees, dependent as they are on government services and unlikely to change that situation, as major sources of new Democrat votes.

Eighty thousand bucks could also do a lot of good in these refugees’ home countries or wherever their first countries of refuge are.  Pity it won’t get there, given the Democrats’ insistence on importing more and more of this poverty – and inability to succeed in the U.S. as their means of virtue-signaling.  It makes no sense.  And the report’s conclusion, that the U.S. should step up helping refugees in their home countries and first countries of asylum, makes a lot of sense.

Image credit: PressTV of Iran, via YouTube screen shot.

Dick’s Sporting Goods saw sales slip during the past three months as a result of the corporate gun control the company adopted in February.

On February 28, 2018, Breitbart News reported that Dick’s was ending sales of commonly owned semiautomatic rifles and “high capacity” magazines. They also raised the purchase age for long guns to 21 years.

On April 17, 2018, Breitbart News reported that Dick’s was destroying unsold commonly owned semiautomatic rifles rather than sending them back to their respective manufacturers. Dick’s also made clear it would destroy its unsold “high capacity” magazines.

On May 2, 2018, the Federalist reported that Dick’s was paying lobbyists to pressure Congress to support more gun control.

On August 29, 2018, Breitbart News highlighted that Dick’s quarterly sales dropped, and the chain admitted that its corporate gun control contributed to the slump. Two days later, Dick’s reacted to dropping sales by adding hunting gear to the list of items it would remove from certain stores.

Now another sales quarter has passed, and Dick’s continues to be hurt by its gun control stance. The Washington Examiner reported, “Sales at Dick’s Sporting Goods dropped in the past three months amid backlash against tighter gun-sale restrictions following a mass killing early this year at a Florida high school.”

The Examiner added, “Revenue dipped 4.5 percent to $1.86 billion amid challenges in the company’s hunting business during the quarter through Nov. 3. Sales at stores open at least 12 months – a key metric for the retail industry – fell 6.1 percent compared to the prior year.”

The company plans to raise prices in 2019. It says the higher prices are due to expenses incurred via President Trump’s tariffs on products made in China.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.

Update to this story.

Via Campus Reform:

A faculty union at Oakland University in Michigan purchased and distributed hockey pucks to faculty and students for defense in the event of an active shooter. The pucks are also being used to raise money for new electronic locks on classroom doors.

The move comes even as, per state law, Michigan colleges may opt-in to allow students to carry personal firearms on campus, provided they are legally owned with permits. The law was pioneered by campus gun advocates who believe that allowing law-abiding students to be armed on campus is the best way to deter potential school shooters.

Tyler Yzaguirre, president of the Second Amendment Institute holds that view.

“OU Police Chief Gordon and the OU faculty union have to be completely out of touch with reality to believe that throwing hockey pucks at an active shooter will stop them. Students and teachers have been armed with similar heavy objects, such as books, in active shooter situations, and that hasn’t stopped the shooter. So why would a hockey puck?” Yzaguirre told Campus Reform on Wednesday.

Keep reading…

Employees at Google have reportedly begun fighting amongst themselves over the company’s plans to develop a government-censored Chinese search engine, codenamed “Project Dragonfly.” Many employees are reportedly in favor of working with the communist regime.

The Verge reports that employees working for tech giant Google are divided over the company’s plans to launch a government-censored Chinese search engine, codenamed “Project Dragonfly.” Anger over the project has been previously reported on by Breitbart News, as many as 1,400 employees have already signed an internal petition requesting more information about the project while a smaller group of 400 employees have recently urged Google to abandon the project in an open letter published to Medium.com.

”Dragonfly would also enable censorship and government-directed disinformation, and destabilize the ground truth on which popular deliberation and dissent rely,” the employees wrote in the letter. “Given the Chinese government’s reported suppression of dissident voices, such controls would likely be used to silence marginalized people, and favor information that promotes government interests.”

But this week, TechCrunch published a letter from Google employees taking the exact opposite stance, signed by more than 500 Google employee the letter states:

Dragonfly still faces many difficulties and uncertainties, which can only be resolved by continuing efforts. The regulation requirements set by the Chinese government (like censorship) makes Dragonfly a challenging project. If we are not careful enough, the project can end up doing more harm than good. In any case, only with continuing efforts on Dragonfly can we learn how different approaches may work out in China, and find out if there is a way that is good for both the Chinese users and Google. Even if we fail, the findings can still be useful for bringing other services to China.

Google employees have protested a number of political moves by the company recently, but interestingly enough only half as many have opposed Project Dragonfly as opposed a project from the Pentagon which Google planned to help develop artificial intelligence for. In a letter published in April, between 3,100 and 4,000 employees  signed an open letter opposing Google’s involvement in the Pentagon’s “Project Maven,” which aimed to improve drone analysis using AI to better identify civilian and reduce the number of unnecessary casualties

“We believe that Google should not be in the business of war,” the letter read. It would seem that many Google employees have an issue with helping the U.S. government and military, unfortunately not so many have problems with helping a Chinese dictatorship track and trace their citizens more easily through Project Dragonfly.

The raid on corruption in the United States Catholic Church that officially began with the Pennsylvania grand jury report this summer accelerated this week when 50 members of law enforcement agencies raided the offices of Cardinal DiNardo, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. They were reportedly searching for “secret archives” containing evidence for sexual abuse cover-ups, according to LifeSiteNews.

Cardinal DiNardo runs the diocese of Galveston-Houston; the members who raided his chancery were from the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office, Texas Rangers, and Conroe Police officers.​

KHOU reports that the District Attorney’s office was searching for documents regarding Fr. Manuel LaRosa-Lopez, who was recently charged with four counts of indecency with a child. DiNardo has been accused by the victims of “not doing enough” to stop La Rose-Lopez. From the report:

A man and a woman claimed they were abused as teenagers by LaRosa-Lopez between 1998 and 2001 at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church.

Both people accuse Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, who oversees the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, of not doing enough to stop La Rosa-Lopez. One of them said DiNardo promised her that the priest would be removed from any contact with children, only to later discover that LaRosa-Lopez remained in active ministry at another parish, St. John the Fisher in Richmond.

In a statement following the raid, the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston said that Cardinal DiNardo has been cooperating with law enforcement from the outset.

“The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston continues to cooperate, as we have since the outset, with this process,” said the statement. “In fact, consistent with Cardinal DiNardo’s pledge of full cooperation, the information being sought was already being compiled.”

The statement went on to say that the so-called “secret archives” raided by law enforcement were simply “confidential documents kept in a secure manner for the protection of the privacy of individuals — not unlike medical records.”

Earlier this week, just two days before the raid on Wednesday, Cardinal DiNardo penned an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle in which he defended the archdiocese’s handling of the La Rosa-Lopez case. DiNardo says that after meeting with one of La Rosa-Lopez’s male accusers in 2018, he was immediately removed from ministry.

“After our meeting, Father La Rosa-Lopez was removed from ministry,” DiNardo said. “The law requires that child abuse allegations are reported to either Child Protective Services or law enforcement. While we reported this allegation to CPS, we have reviewed our procedures and in the future we will contact both law enforcement and CPS simultaneously.”

Two other priests within the diocese that were previously accused of sexually abusing minors in the 1970’s and 80’s were allowed back into ministry only after law enforcement reviewed their case.

The raid on DiNardo’s chancery comes after the Vatican ordered the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to withhold their vote on sexual abuse reform measures until a meeting in February. The proposals would include an investigative body of competent lay members in good standing with the Catholic Church as well as a new code of conduct for American bishops.

He said he’d do it and now he’s done it.

The Senate Judiciary Committee cancelled a Thursday hearing on judicial nominees as Jeff Flake’s stand for a bill to protect special counsel Robert Mueller continues to wreak havoc in the lame duck session.

The panel was scheduled to advance six Circuit Court nominees, 15 District Court nominees and several bipartisan bills on Thursday to prepare them for possible floor action over the next month. But Flake, who is retiring at the end of this year, is holding firm to his vow to vote against judicial nominees on the floor and in committee unless Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) schedules a vote on the bipartisan special counsel legislation.

Flake and Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) attempted to bring up the bill on Wednesday and were blocked by Republicans that oppose it. Relatedly, Flake voted against Thomas Farr’s nomination to be a District Court judge on Wednesday afternoon, forcing Vice President Mike Pence to break a tie after wavering Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) voted to advance Farr.

I continue not to understand the strategic endgame here, with Flake six weeks away from retirement and the Senate about to gain a few extra Republican votes. If the Senate had turned blue in the midterms Flake would have Trump and McConnell over a barrel. There’d be a mad rush to confirm as many nominees as possible before Schumer takes control. As it is, if he has to, McConnell can wait Flake out.

I don’t understand what he thinks the prospects for the bill are either. Trump obviously will never sign it. There’s near-zero chance that the Republican House would pass it next month in its waning days as a majority. Pelosi’s Democratic House would pass it next year but Flake won’t be around to reintroduce it in the new Congress. (Pelosi’s caucus will probably pass its own bill, which will disappear down the toilet in the Senate.) Getting a vote on the bill in the Senate now seems like a pure exercise in putting all 100 members on the record, to show where they stand on the idea of Trump firing Mueller. But even that doesn’t really work: There are strong constitutional arguments against any bill that would take some of the president’s power to appoint executive-branch employees and hand it to Congress or the judiciary. Watch Mike Lee make the case below in a colloquy with Flake, after he objected to Flake’s attempt to force a vote. Every Republican in the Senate could vote no on the bill and say afterward, credibly, that they couldn’t support the bill on separation-of-powers grounds. It has nothing to do with Trump or Mueller per se.

Which reminds me: Is there any evidence at all that Flake’s bill might advance even if it did get a vote? He’d need 10 Republicans to vote with him to beat a filibuster, assuming all 49 Democrats vote yes. Who are those 10 Republicans? Which Republican senator wants to risk pissing off Trump’s base, and Trump himself, by casting a tough vote on a bill that has no chance of becoming law?

For cripes sake, even Republicans who are mad at Trump and have vowed to block him on big votes until their own pet priorities are addressed are looking for excuses not to actually oppose him. Remember when Lindsey Graham trudged out of yesterday’s briefing on Saudi Arabia vowing to oppose the White House on all key votes until he heard from Gina Haspel about the Khashoggi killing? Well, as chance would have it, there was a key vote yesterday afternoon on a controversial district-court nominee, Thomas Farr. Flake voted no, meaning that every other Republican’s vote was needed to advance Farr’s nomination. In the end, McConnell got all of those votes — including Graham’s. How did that happen? Quote:

Graham told McClatchy Wednesday he will vote for Farr’s confirmation, saying he does not consider that a key vote.

“It’s a district court,” explained Graham, who is expected to be chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee next year. “I’ll save my powder for the big stuff.”

He’ll vote with Trump on key votes but not on the really key votes. That’s hardball, Grahamnesty-style. Farr, by the way, was supposed to receive his final vote on confirmation today. That’s now been canceled due to Flake’s opposition.

Cornyn said a few days ago that McConnell might end up giving Flake a vote on the Mueller bill after all, just to get it out of the way and let the judge parade resume. Unless Republican leaders think it has a chance of passing a cloture vote, which it probably doesn’t, I don’t know what’s stopping them. Any Republican who’s afraid of angering Trump can just hide behind Lee’s argument and vote no on constitutional grounds.

Another feminist screed went viral this week. The title tells you everything you need to know: “I’m a Great Cook. Now That I’m Divorced, I’m Never Making Dinner for a Man Again.” Written by a woman named Lyz Lenz, it tells the sad tale of a beleaguered, unappreciated wife who magnanimously cooked for her family until she decided that cooking is oppressive and vowed to never do it again. Soon after, her marriage fell apart.

Feminists are hailing the article as an insightful and beautiful ode to female liberation. I think it’s silly, self-pitying, and rather embarrassing for the author. But then, I am a member of the Patriarchy, so perhaps my judgment is clouded. Let’s look at some excerpts and you can judge for yourself.

The piece begins with Lenz justifying all of the crappy junk food she feeds her children:

When my marriage fell apart, I stopped cooking. I gave my children frozen chicken nuggets, pizza, quesadillas, or their favorite: toddler tapas—cheese sticks, nuts, fruit, crackers, veggies, all displayed on a hand-me-down china platter. Now they eat like “fancy ladies,” as my first grader says, piling her little paper plate with nuts and grapes. I live off of bagged salads, rotisserie chicken, and whiskey.

I stopped cooking because I was tired. The kind of tired where your face vibrates and your eyes throb. Too tired to care what I put in my mouth. And my children (then six and four) only wanted to eat Go-Gurts and Cheez-Its anyway. The person who cared was my husband. I had been cooking for him for 12 years.

Then she gives us some background:

When we first married and moved to Iowa, I couldn’t find a job. I spent my days cooking… Hoping that when he came home, my husband would sit down and taste them and say, “Thank you.”

Inspired by online recipe sites, he’d sit down to dinner and then let me know what rating I earned. “If I give you five out of five, you’ll quit,” he joked.

Now we come to the (overly) dramatic climax:

And then one night, as my daughter watched TV, my toddler screamed from the living room, and the water boiled, collecting steam on the windows, I broke. I cut and chopped and desperately looked at a recipe on my phone. My back burned with frustration. My feet ached from standing. The steam flushed my cheeks and I wondered at the molecules that could escape from the heat as I stood trapped there, spatula in my hand.

It’s hard for me to understand when cooking became more repression than liberation, more act of obligation than act of creation. But I knew it then. This thing that had sustained me now felt like a prison…

In the tangle of performance and purpose, in my quest to make a home and love, I had created elaborate offerings, which were consumed and judged, and yet afforded me no redemption, no grace, no more than four out of five stars.

That night I dumped the water in the sink. Tossed the ingredients in the trash. I poured myself a glass of wine and threw some frozen chicken nuggets in the microwave. When my husband came home, we were already eating.

She goes on to explain how she spent the next year or so napping and crying during the day while her husband worked to support the family. Finally, she declares that she will never cook for any man ever again. On that score, she can rest easy. She won’t need to cook for men after scaring them all away.

What can we learn from this article and the grateful reception it has received among feminists? First, we see yet again how some people, feminists especially, have trouble with the concept of duty. Lenz complains that cooking became “mere obligation” rather than “an act of creation.” She says that the preparing dinner “offered her no redemption.” It wasn’t “liberating.” I’m sure it wasn’t. So what?

I have never felt liberated by taking out the garbage. I have never been driven into fits of poetic ecstasy while raking the leaves. I have never found great fulfillment in changing a soiled diaper or paying the mortgage. These are all obligations. I don’t find any of it particularly redemptive, whatever that’s supposed to mean in this context. Mundane daily tasks do not typically offer redemption, in my experience. But I don’t seek to be redeemed by household chores. I do them because they must be done. That’s all the motivation a mature adult should need.

A lot of people in my generation seem to labor — or not labor, in many cases — under the assumption that everything they do in life must be fulfilling and artistic and significant and beautiful. But when you operate that way, you’ll just end up lying in bed crying all afternoon like the author of the article. There aren’t very many inspiring or exhilarating things to be done in an average day. There are many ordinary, obligatory things to do. If you reject everything in the latter category, you will not be a functioning, contributing human being.

The trick in life is to find little bits of meaning and pleasure in the fulfillment of ordinary duties. But even if you can’t find meaning and pleasure, do it anyway. Someone has to do it, after all. Why not you? Lenz says she didn’t have a job early in her marriage, yet she considers it an act of immense generosity that she cooked for her husband. It sounds to me like a simple and reasonable division of labor. The labor may not have been emotionally rewarding all the time for either one of them, but, again, so what? Someone needs to pay for the food. Someone needs to cook it. These are just facts of life. Who cares how you feel about them?

Second, you notice something about these “unappreciated wife” stories: the husband doesn’t appear to be appreciated, either. Lenz wanted a “thank you” from her husband. She wanted gratitude and acknowledgment. Fair enough. He should have given it. But what about the reverse? Did she ever thank him for supporting the family? Did she ever say “thank you” before cashing his paychecks? Did she ever express gratitude for his contributions to the family? I don’t know, but she certainly paints him like a useless oaf who did nothing but eat. Is that how she treated him during the marriage? Could that partially explain why it fell apart?

You have to wonder about the husband’s side of the story. You wonder if his “feet ached” and his “eyes throbbed” while he toiled away at a thankless job. You wonder if he came home to a wife who expected gratitude but never offered it. You wonder how he felt when he returned from a hard day’s work only to find that his family had eaten dinner without him and his wife already had her feet up and a glass of wine in her hand.

But, of course, if a man ever wrote an article where he complained about his lazy wife who never thanked him for the paycheck he provided and would rather nap during the day than prepare dinner for the family, and confessed that he actually stopped going to work simply to spite her, and then declared that he would never financially support any woman ever again, it would not be received warmly by feminists or anyone else. We would call the man a deadbeat and a loser and we’d scold him for being so selfish.

Only women can be celebrated for neglecting their families. That’s what feminism has achieved.

A drag queen who helped organize a “Drag Queen Story Hour” for Louisiana preschoolers admitted the event’s purpose is “the grooming of the next generation.”

“I am not there to push any kind of agenda,” Dylan Pontiff, a gay man who helped organize a “Drag Queen Story Hour” event at Lafayette Public Library, told the Lafayette City-Parish Council at a September 17 meeting.

Pontiff, who uses the name Santana Pilar Andrews when dressed in drag, continued:

I’m here to let you know that this event is something that’s going to be very beautiful and for the children and the people that supported are going to realize that this is going to be the grooming of the next generation. We are trying to groom the next generation to not see the way that they just did.

Pontiff, who also performs for adult audiences using what he described as material he compared to an R-rated film, told the council that he should also be able to have access to preschool children because he knows how to “filter” himself.

“I can go in and entertain adults in a club and also entertain a group of students and young children,” he said. “I’m able to do that because I’m an adult and able to filter myself.”

Pontiff described himself as someone who has been bullied and received “hate,” and brings those experiences to the drag queen reading events he does with young children.

“We’re trying to raise people to be loving and caring individuals, and I really hope that this event is going to do that for not only just the children have this event, but children in the future,” he said.

Pontiff’s comments drew some shocked reactions from attendees at the council meeting – the purpose of which was to consider a motion to denounce the Drag Queen Story Hour program, originally planned for October 6, as inappropriate for children.

“Unfortunately, the Drag Queen Story Hour program is turning public libraries into platforms to advance the transgender revolution, places where pro-homosexual activists are given access to children as young as three,” John Ritchie, director of TFP Student Action, told LifeSiteNews.

As the pro-family news site reported, though the motion to denounce the program was called “hateful” and “discriminatory” by its critics, a decision by the council would not have been binding on the public library. Most of the council members declined to vote on it and the motion was ultimately scuttled.

The story hour event was to be moved to South Louisiana Community College, where members of the fraternity Delta Lambda Phi were expected to dress up in drag and read to the children. However, as the Lafayette Daily Advertiser reported, the event was ultimately postponed indefinitely due to security concerns.

Community member Leslie Alexander said the library should have consulted with the public before scheduling the event.

“This is not about tolerance or anti-bullying,” Alexander told the Advertiser. “It is a direct and intentional effort to create gender confusion and doubt among very young children at the very time they need solid guidance and understanding. The intent is to plant a seed to make children more likely to question their sexuality or gender at a later age.”