A Fox News expert said on Sunday that hate crimes against the LGBTQ+ community happen because children are not taught tolerance in elementary schools.
Following a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Colorado over the weekend, Steve Rogers suggested to Fox News host Arthel Neville that laws limiting LGBTQ+ inclusion in schools do not help stop hate crimes.
"How do we tamp down hate crimes across the board?" Neville wondered.
"I think it begins in our schools, our educational system," Rogers explained. "We have to do a lot of educating in elementary school with regard to, yeah, people may be different in your eyes but they're people, they're American citizens and they deserve to have the constitutional protections that all of us have."
"So, it begins at the elementary school level and we have to make sure that it continues throughout our entire lives," he added. "We need to stop the hateful rhetoric on the internet, by our politicians, by everyone! And we need to bring the temperature down and understand that, you know, we're all God's children and we have to respect each other."
In recent years, Republicans have sought to pass laws against teaching tolerance, inclusion and diversity in public schools. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) campaigned on the state's "Stop WOKE Act" which limits the discussion of LGBTQ+ topics.
Watch the video below from Fox News.
During an appearance on CNN on Friday morning, former White House attorney John Dean claimed Donald Trump will likely be put on the spot and regret the attacks he launched against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on his Truth Social account once he faces a judge.
On Thursday the former president raged all day long at the Manhattan DA who is expected to indict the former president soon, possibly next week. that culminated with a late threat of "death and destruction."
As Dean told host John Berman, any judge Trump will now face will be well aware of the former president's over-the-top violent rhetoric and may tie the twice-impeached president's hands with a gag order.
After mentioning the "death and destruction" post, host Berman asked, "What kind of situation do you think that creates?"
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"I think it creates a very troubling situation for Mr. Trump when he goes in, if he is arraigned, and the judge is going to be made very aware of these statements," Dean claimed. "Recall that Roger Stone, the acolyte of Mr. Trump, was indicted and started putting the judge in crosshairs at one point on his line, on his online postings."
"This could be the same sort of thing where a judge has total power to just say 'listen, no more of that. You do that, you're in contempt of court,'" he elaborated. "They could shut down with a gag order Trump and stop this nonsense and these attacks and might well do so because they're already another case, a civil case, the E. Jean Carroll case that is about to go to trial and that judge decided he will keep the jury anonymous in that case because of the MAGA attacks."
Watch the video below or at this link.
CNN 03 24 2023 10 10 06 youtu.be
Opera rarely feels like a topical medium but modern classic "Nixon in China" is growing in popularity and offering a pointed reminder of how much geopolitics has shifted in the past 50 years.
It recounts the historic moment in 1972 when US president Richard Nixon travelled to Beijing and established diplomatic ties with Chinese leader Mao Zedong.
The irreverent opera received mixed reviews when first performed in 1987 but has since become a beloved part of the canon in the United States.
It is increasingly a hit abroad, playing in at least five European opera houses this year.
It carries a new poignancy at a time of growing East-West tensions.
An illustrious Paris production opens on Saturday in the week that Chinese President Xi Jinping held a state visit to Moscow.
"We take it seriously right now because China and the US are in the news every day, and in a way that kind of highlights the fragility of world peace," said Renee Fleming, the superstar soprano who plays Nixon's wife in the Paris production.
She is disheartened by current affairs, having always been "tremendously welcomed" in China and Russia.
"This is a time where I'm thinking please hold it together. Let's everybody calm down and resume the fantastic relationship -- not without challenges... but it's still worth keeping the peace," she told AFP.
One big change these days -- insisted upon by composer John Adams -- is that companies use Asian singers for the Chinese roles.
Scottish Opera was accused of "yellowface" in 2021 for staging the play with white actors, as was previously typical.
"It's right that now, when things are so sensitive, we work hard to find Asian singers," Adams, 76, told AFP.
"But ultimately I want to believe that it doesn't matter."
The play was controversial for different reasons when it first opened.
"Opera was always considered to be about Greek myths or Norse gods or melodrama like Puccini," Adams recalled.
"But I thought this subject matter was something that opera could treat very well, because... it's about the collision of the two main philosophies of how life should be lived."
The Paris production uses elaborate and symbolic staging, such as the choir split into opposing table tennis teams, referencing the "ping-pong diplomacy" that helped thaw relations at the time.
It does not shy away from criticism of Mao's regime, with an underground prison revealed beneath the library where the politicians are meeting and a mini-documentary, screened halfway through, about the horrific repression of Chinese musicians during the Cultural Revolution.
But Xiaomeng Zhang, who plays the Chinese premier Zhou Enlai, told AFP the opera was above all "a stark reminder... that making peace, not war, despite ideological and political differences, is not only a strategical choice but also a moral choice".
© 2023 AFP
The teenage student who shot two school administrators at his Denver high school was on probation for a 2021 arrest for possessing a ghost gun, the New York Daily News reported.
Austin Lyle was arrested on a weapons charge after classmates told police about posts he made on social media about guns. When officers searched his family home, they found a rifle with a “high capacity magazine and a silencer” in his room that had its serial number filed off.
Due to Colorado law making it illegal for a minor to possess a gun, a judge placed Lyle on probation, which was still in effect this week when he carried out the shooting.
Lyle shot and wounded two deans at East High School Wednesday morning. His body was found hours later in a remote mountain area.
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After being kicked out of Overland High School in Aurora for disciplinary reasons, he enrolled at East High School where he was forced to adhere to a “safety plan” which required that he get patted down every morning. In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, Denver Schools chose to ban police from their campuses, leaving it up to the two administrators to conduct the search. During the search, Lyle pulled a gun and shot the two men and fled the scene.
One of the victims was listed in stable condition on Friday while the other has been released from the hospital.
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