Republicans in the West Virginia Senate Judiciary Committee voted 9-8 to kill a law that would've ended child marriage in the state.

Right now the state, and six others, have no minimum age requirement for marriage. The law allows children as young as age 16 to be married off to adults, as long as the children have their parents' permission. (Anyone younger than 16 requires a judge's waiver to marry.) However, West Virginia has the highest rate of child marriage in the nation, according to a 2014 Pew Research Center report.

A proposed bill, introduced by Democratic state Delegate Kayla Young, would've raised West Virginia's minimum age for marriage to 18 and above.

After her bill's defeat, Young wrote, "I want to make it very clear that no one spoke against the bill. They just made the clearly pre-determined motions and killed the bill. No one admitted why they think children as young as infants should be legally allowed to be married off."

Republican Sen. Mike Stuart defended not raising the minimum marrying age by noting that his own mother had married at age 16. “Six months later, I came along. I’m the luckiest guy in the world,” Stuart said, not mentioning the effects the marriage or pregnancy had on his mother's mental state or well-being.

Republican Del. Jim Butler, who voted against the bill, told Newsweek, "West Virginia is a socially conservative and traditional state, in my observation. Many middle age and elderly people that I know were married when younger than 18 and are still married many years later."

The Associated Press noted that 86% of underage children who get married are girls, meaning that West Virginia's laws primarily allow adult men to marry girls who have barely entered high school and aren't old enough to vote.

Right now, seven states have no minimum age requirement for marriage, according to Unchained at Last, an organization that opposes child marriage. These states include California, Washington, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and West Virginia.

Kansas allows children to marry at the age of 15. All other U.S. states set the ages for marriage at 16 and above.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is about to sign a historic LGBTQ+ anti-discrimination law, making hers the first U.S. state to pass such protections in nearly 3 years. The victory comes after Republican legislators spent 4 decades blocking the legal protections.

The law will add sexual orientation and gender identity to the state's 1976 Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act (ELCRA), helping protect LGBTQ+ people against discrimination in the fields of education, employment, housing, and public accommodations.

The bill's gay sponsor Sen. Jeremy Moss (D) said that Republicans had blocked such protections from going into law for decades. Republican opponents of the bill said it would force secular views on religious citizens. They even tried to carve out exceptions into Moss' bill that would've allowed religious business owners to discriminate on the basis of "sincerely held beliefs," but these efforts failed before the bill passed in a 64-45 House vote on Wednesday.

Democrats gained full control of the legislature in January, helping pave the way to the law's passage.

In a tweet celebrating the House vote, Whitmer wrote, "I'm proud that we’re finally in a position to expand the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act to protect LGBTQ+ Michiganders. Let's get it done!"

The bill also passed after years of court battles over whether ELCRA already protects LGBTQ+ citizens. A 2020 Michigan Court of Claims ruling said it didn't, but a July 2022 Michigan Supreme Court ruling said that it did. The Supreme Court case tried to determine whether the religious owners of a wedding venue and hair removal business could legally refuse service to a same-sex couple and a trans client, respectively.

In a statement, Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson said, “We’re seeing history in the making here in Michigan. Extremist legislators tried to fearmonger people into believing a false narrative last fall, but they failed because Michiganders know better. The people of Michigan could not be fooled and they have organized over decades for this moment."

"ELCRA will not only protect LGBTQ+ people here in Michigan, its passage will send a message across our nation that when we organize — when we come together as a community — we will and do achieve progress," Robinson continued. "We will continue to take this fight to each and every state that tries to deny LGBTQ+ people their rightful place in society.”

The Trevor Project's advocacy campaign manager Gwen Stembridge wrote, “By codifying non-discrimination protections into state law, Michigan brings us one step closer to creating a society where LGBTQ young people never have to fear being turned away from a business or told they cannot participate in an activity or enter a public space just because of who they are or who they love,”

Stembridge added that the bill is also a welcome "beacon of hope" considering the onslaught of anti-LGBTQ bills that Republican legislators have introduced nationwide this year.

The “War Room” podcast of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon spreads the most disinformation among conservative podcasts hosted by Apple, a recent study from the Brookings Institute found.

The study — which transcribed 36,603 podcast episodes from 79 political talk shows released before Jan. 22, 2022 — checked each episode’s transcript for keywords associated with common falsehoods debunked by fact checkers, The New York Times explained.

Researchers found that nearly 20 percent of Bannon’s episodes contained falsehoods, misleading statements, or unsubstantiated claims. The study also found that Conservative podcasters contained these things 11 times more often than liberal podcasters.

The other conservative podcasters found to contain the highest percentage of false, misleading, or unsubstantiated claims included Sean Hannity, Rudy Giuliani, Charlie Kirk, Steven Crowder, Michael Savage, Mark Levin, Daniel Horowitz, and co-hosts Clay Travis and Buck Sexton.

Bannon called the report’s findings a “badge of honor,” stating, “What they call disinformation or misinformation we consider the truth. And time is proving us out.”

The study also highlights the role that Big Tech companies like Apple, Google, Spotify, and others play in disseminating such disinformation and using algorithms that recommend these podcasts to audiences of millions. These companies’ policies banning misinformation and hate speech are “vague and poorly enforced, allowing false content to spread,” the Times reported.

Bannon co-founded the right-wing news site Breitbart and served as chief executive officer of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. He also served as White House chief strategist and senior counselor to the president from January 2017 until August 18, 2017 when Trump fired him.

In January 2018, Bannon was quoted in Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House as calling Trump “a crooked business guy” and a “scumbag.”

Afterward, Trump released a public statement, saying, “Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind,” adding, “Steve had very little to do with our historic victory.” Trump later referred to Bannon as “Sloppy Steve” on Twitter and claimed that he “cried when he got fired and begged for his job.”

In August 2020, Bannon was indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiracy to commit mail fraud and money laundering connected to the We Build the Wall campaign, a $25 million GoFundMe crowdfunding that claimed to be raising funds to help Trump construct a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. Trump had originally said that the Mexican government would entirely pay for such a wall.

At the end of 2022, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) left the Democratic Party to become an Independent. Now, barely one month later, majorities of both local Democratic and Independent voters disapprove of her, endangering her likely 2024 re-election bid.

A new Morning Consult survey found that 59 percent of registered Democratic Arizona voters disapprove of the job she’s doing. (Only 30 percent approve.) A majority of independent voters also disapprove of her job performance (43 percent) and a majority of Republican voters disapprove of her as well (48 percent).

Tellingly, her highest job approval ratings came from 43 percent of Republican voters.

After Sinema switched her party affiliation, she was ditched by high-profile Democratic consultants. Although she hasn’t yet announced a re-election bid, Arizona Democratic Reps. Ruben Gallego and Greg Stanton, are both expected to run for the state’s U.S. Senate seat. If Sinema runs, she’ll likely face a three-way contest against a Democrat and a Republican in the general election.

But while she may split the Democratic and Republican votes, it seems neither will be enough to actually elect her. Unfortunately, the votes she wins may be enough to help the Democratic candidate lose to a Republican.

It’s understandable why Democrats disapprove of her.

During her time in Congress, she has given speeches on why it’s important to uphold Jim Crow-era filibuster rules in the Senate, even though the rules helped block important voting rights legislation and more.

She also gained infamy when she playfully gave a thumbs down in the Senate to oppose a $15 an hour minimum wage, and was captured on camera ignoring her own constituent.

Her antics, and her refusal to help stump for Democratic candidates during the latest midterm election cycle, have led to her being censured by the Arizona Democratic Party

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Lying Rep. George Santos (R-NY) was hounded by the media during his first day in Congress.

Video posted to Twitter showed Santos ignoring reporters while walking around the halls of the congressional building. The reporter asks him how his constituents can trust him despite his lying about extensive parts of his past and what he thinks about calls for him to be investigated by the House Ethics Committee.

He only responded that he would support Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in his bid to become the House Speaker.

In December, Santos admitted that he lied about graduating from Baruch College and New York University, working directly for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, and owning 13 properties.

However, it now seems that he also lied about being Jewish, his grandparents fleeing Nazi persecution in Ukraine (they were both born in Brazil), his mother becoming ‘the first female executive at a major financial institution’” (she worked as a cook and house cleaner), attending the Horace Mann preparatory school in the Bronx, having four previous employees who were killed in the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, and his mother having died in connection to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

He has provided no evidence to back up any of the above claims. More seriously, investigators are curious how he was able to donate $700,000 to his own campaign despite earlier financial disclosures showing that he had earned far less.

Santos is currently under investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), Nassau County District Attorney Anne T. Donnelly (R), Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz (D) and the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of New York.

McCarthy hasn’t made any public comments condemning Santos. Observers theorize this is because McCarthy needs Santos’ vote to become House Speaker. Right now, Republicans lead the House with only a four seat majority (giving them a total of 222 seats). He needs a majority of representative (218) in order to become Speaker, and some far-right members have said they won’t support him, making his the first presumptive speaker to potentially have to face multiple votes for the first time in about a century.

Trump shared the article, entitled “The Coming Split,” on his Truth Social page. The article asked, “What should we do when a majority of Republicans want Trump, but the Republican Party says we can’t have him?”

“The Republican machine has no intention of letting us choose Trump again,” the article stated. “He is not a uniparty team player. They’d rather lose an election to the Democrats, their brothers in crime, than win with Trump.”

The article said that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is likely to win the Republican presidential nomination, but it refers to DeSantis’ likely nomination as a “fake non-choice among candidates who are pre-selected for us.”

“Do I think Trump can win as a third-party candidate? No. Would I vote for him as a third-party candidate? Yes,” the article stated. “Because I’m not interested in propping up this corrupt gravy-train any longer.”

It’s estimated that Trump commands at least 20 to 30 percent of the Republican voting base. If he split the Republican vote in a general election, it would all but guarantee a Democratic victory, something that the article’s writer acknowledged.

However, the article praises Trump as an “American” president rather than a “Republican” one, and says he, unlike other past presidents, delivered on his campaign promises.

Trump’s announcement of his third presidential campaign in November 2022 was met with little fanfare. Numerous Republican leaders hinted that they would prefer another candidate rather than Trump, who has continually claimed (without evidence) that an unprecedented nationwide conspiracy of voter fraud “stole” the 2020 election from him.

Other Republicans noted that the candidates endorsed by Trump in the 2022 midterm elections largely failed, helping dry up the expected Republican “red wave” to overtake the U.S. Congress. Instead, Democrats now narrowly control the Senate while Republicans rule the House with a slim margin.

Trump also hinted in 2015 that he could run as a third-party candidate if he didn’t become the GOP’s presidential nominee.

"Plastic recycling does not work and will never work," wrote former EPA regional administrator Judith Enck and chemical engineer Jan Dell in a recent Atlantic article.

The writers note that the U.S. recycling rate for post-consumer plastic waste in 2021 was about 5 percent, and that past recycling rates have included plastic waste that was shipped to China and mostly left un-recycled.

Compare this with the U.S.’s high recycling rate of paper, 68 percent, and the problem becomes clear.

The difficulty of plastics recycling has to do with the material itself, the authors write.

"There are thousands of different plastics, each with its own composition and characteristics," they write. "They all include different chemical additives and colorants that cannot be recycled together, making it impossible to sort the trillions of pieces of plastics into separate types for processing."

"Collecting, sorting, transporting, and reprocessing plastic waste is exorbitantly expensive," the authors write.

A single fast-food meal can contain many different types of plastics being used in various bags, cups, lids, containers, and cutlery, all of which can't be recycled together.

Plastics can also contain or absorb toxins that are either unsafe for recycling into food-grade packaging or that are released into the atmosphere when burned, harming nearby ecosystems and communities.

Despite all this, the plastic industry has perpetuated the "myth" that plastics are recyclable, the authors write, in order to continue selling the material without having to take accountability for the waste it creates.

The authors suggest that communities pass legislation to reduce the use of single-use plastics, preferring reusable bottles and food ware in order to reduce waste.

"And we should all keep recycling our paper, boxes, cans, and glass, because that actually works," the authors added.

Former President Donald Trump has shared an article suggesting that he should run as a third-party candidate if the Republican Party doesn’t choose him as its nominee for the 2024 presidential election.

Trump shared the article, entitled “The Coming Split,” on his Truth Social page. The article asked, “What should we do when a majority of Republicans want Trump, but the Republican Party says we can’t have him?”

“The Republican machine has no intention of letting us choose Trump again,” the article stated. “He is not a uniparty team player. They’d rather lose an election to the Democrats, their brothers in crime, than win with Trump.”

The article said that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is likely to win the Republican presidential nomination, but it refers to DeSantis’ likely nomination as a “fake non-choice among candidates who are pre-selected for us.”

“Do I think Trump can win as a third-party candidate? No. Would I vote for him as a third-party candidate? Yes,” the article stated. “Because I’m not interested in propping up this corrupt gravy-train any longer.”

It’s estimated that Trump commands at least 20 to 30 percent of the Republican voting base. If he split the Republican vote in a general election, it would all but guarantee a Democratic victory, something that the article’s writer acknowledged.

However, the article praises Trump as an “American” president rather than a “Republican” one, and says he, unlike other past presidents, delivered on his campaign promises.

Trump’s announcement of his third presidential campaign in November 2022 was met with little fanfare. Numerous Republican leaders hinted that they would prefer another candidate rather than Trump, who has continually claimed (without evidence) that an unprecedented nationwide conspiracy of voter fraud “stole” the 2020 election from him.

Other Republicans noted that the candidates endorsed by Trump in the 2022 midterm elections largely failed, helping dry up the expected Republican “red wave” to overtake the U.S. Congress. Instead, Democrats now narrowly control the Senate while Republicans rule the House with a slim margin.

Trump also hinted in 2015 that he could run as a third-party candidate if he didn’t become the GOP’s presidential nominee.

Conservative transgender celebrity Caitlyn Jenner has reportedly sent repeated compliments, gifts, and "special surprises for Christmas” to Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson in the hopes of boosting her so-called political career, Towleroad reported.

“Caitlyn loves her job as a contributor at FOX,” a source cited by Towleroad told Radar Online. “It’s given her the platform to say her spiel and she’s hoping it leads to bigger, better things!”

“Caitlyn really does look up to Sean and Tucker,” the source added. “They’re not afraid to speak up and neither is she, which puts them in the same league, in her opinion.”

But while Jenner has occasionally been invited to serve as a commentator on the Fox News network, she hardly has any "political career" to speak of.

The failed 73-year-old California gubernatorial candidate ran a lackluster and barely existent campaign in 2021 to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom. Her public statements in that campaign promised to reduce the number of visibly homeless people in the state and to ban transgender athletes from competing in sports, even though she herself is a trans athlete.

In the end, she received less than one percent of the vote, finishing in 13th place.

Previous to her gubernatorial run, she overestimated her influence in the administration of President Donald Trump (R). While she endorsed Trump during his campaign and early into his presidency, Trump quickly banned trans soldiers from serving in the military and took numerous other anti-LGBTQ actions, leading Jenner to admit that her hope in him had been misplaced.

Jenner, a former Olympian, came out as transgender in April 2015. After losing her 2021 race for California's governor, Jenner was hired by Fox News as an on-air contributor. Jenner was also the subject of I Am Cait, a documentary series covering her transgender identity.

Law enforcement officers would've used deadlier force against the January 6, 2021 riots at the U.S. Capitol if the rioters had been predominantly Black, House Sergeant-at-Arms William Walker told the congressional January 6 panel in recently unearthed testimony.

“I’m African-American. Child of the Sixties. I think it would have been a vastly different response if those were African Americans trying to breach the Capitol,” Walker told the panel in his April testimony.

“I think the response would have been different, a lot more heavy-handed response to, I think there would have been a lot more bloodshed,” Walker said. “You know, as a law enforcement officer, there were — I saw enough to where I would have probably been using deadly force.”

The rioters that day were predominantly white. Not only was there a stunning lack of law enforcement and military officials protecting the Capitol on that day, but the officials who were present largely played defensive roles and even, in some cases, allowed rioters access to the building, standing by while they ransacked the place (largely to protect themselves from mob violence).

In his testimony, Walker compared the police response to the white Capitol rioters to the police response to Black racial justice protesters following the police murder of Black Minneapolis resident George Floyd. In the latter case, police used tear gas and less lethal munitions (like bean bag rounds), made arrests, and took sometimes actions that escalated the protests into uprisings.

Walker also said that the lack of law enforcement officers on January 6, 2021 was surprising because anyone could have predicted that the congressional certification of then-President-elect Joe Biden's victory was going to be chaotic, especially since Trump and his followers had planned to converge on the Capitol that day under false pretenses of voter fraud.

"I'm an intelligence officer ... to me, the intelligence was there that this was going to be a big deal," he said. "You don't need intelligence. I mean, everybody knew that people were directed to come there by the president."

NBC News notes, "The D.C. National Guard was not authorized to assist at the Capitol on Jan. 6 until after a delay of 3 hours and 19 minutes that the House committee's report pins on a 'likely miscommunication between members of the civilian leadership in the Department of Defense.'"

With only three days remaining in 2022, the Gun Violence Archive has counted 6,054 gun-related injuries and deaths among U.S. children aged 17 and younger this year so far. The count includes gun assault deaths, suicide deaths by firearm, deaths due to accidental firearm discharge, legal intervention leading to firearm death, and firearm deaths from undetermined causes.

As of Wednesday, 307 children under age 12 were killed by guns and 670 were injured nationwide this year. Among children ages 12-17, 1,331 were killed and 3,734 were injured this year.

The 6,054 kids harmed in 2022 represent a 5.7 percent increase over the 2021 total (5,708) and a 14.7 percent increase over the 2020 total (5,160).

In 2020, firearms became the leading cause of death among children ages 19 and below, the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) wrote in an October 2022 report. Firearm-related death rates were highest amongst Black and American Indian and Alaska Native youth, KFF found. While school shootings account for only a small number of child injuries and death, the number of firearm-related suicides among youth has increased steadily since 2011, the report added.

A 2019 report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security found that a majority of the guns used by young people come from the homes of parents or close relatives. Only 23 states and Washington, D.C., have laws requiring gun owners to lock their guns away, out of the reach of children.

It's quite rare for parents to face criminal charges when their children harm themselves or others using their firearms. That's because the laws aimed at preventing children from accessing guns aren't always enforced by local prosecutors, legal experts told NPR.

President Joe Biden (D) signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in June 2022. The legislation strengthened background checks for young adults and reduced gun access for individuals with histories of domestic violence. The legislation also expanded school-based mental health services for providing trauma care to students in need.

However, it remains to be seen whether the Republican-led House will pass additional gun control measures when they take control of the lower congressional chamber in 2023.

Shooters Grill, the gun-themed restaurant owned by far-right Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), has closed down and will soon be replaced by Tapatios Family Mexican Restaurant.

The situation is especially delicious considering Boebert's past comments against Mexican immigrants.

Boebert's restaurant closed in July after the landlord refused to renew its lease, The New York Times reported. At the time, the landlord also refused to renew the lease for Boebert's political office which was located next door to the restaurant.

In a statement about the restaurant's closing, Boebert said the landlord's decision "was purely a business decision with no political motivation."

The restaurant sold dishes with gun-themed names and required its servers to wear guns on their holsters. The restaurant also matched her ardent views on guns. She's anti-gun control and has repeatedly claimed that firearm regulations are both unconstitutional and don't stop violent gun-related crimes. She also allows her own son and his friends to play unsupervised around loaded weapons in her home.

Boebert has referred to Mexican immigrants at the southern border as "illegals... rapists, drug dealers, and criminals on the terrorist watch list."

No matter her feelings about Mexicans, a Mexican family restaurant has placed a sign on her old place of business announcing that it will soon open where her eatery once stood.

Michele Fiore, a Republican politician, has been appointed to a Nevada judgeship even though she has no prior legal or judicial experience. She has also previously been accused of obstructing an investigation into her own business and once said it’s okay to point a gun at federal officers.

Fiore will fill a seat on the Pahrump Justice Court in Nye County, located about 65 miles west of Las Vegas, the Associated Press reported. County commissioners unanimously appointed her to the judgeship. She will serve on the court through 2024.

She told commissioners that she would oversee the judicial appointment with “integrity and honesty” because she has “been at the end of the political barrel.”

However, it seems she ended up at the end of that barrel largely due to her own fault.

In 2015, Nevada state regulators revoked the license of her home-health business after she refused to show financial records during an investigation of alleged Medicaid fraud, Wonkette noted. That same year, she made statements against transgender people using changing facilities matching their gender identities.

In 2016, she said it was okay to point a gun at law enforcement officers if they point a gun at you first.

“I would never, ever point my firearm at anyone, including an officer of the law. Unless they pointed their firearm at me,” she said in an interview with Las Vegas TV station KLAS. “Now, once you point your firearm at me, I’m sorry, then it becomes self-defense. So whether you’re a stranger, a bad guy, or an officer, and you point your gun at me and you’re gonna shoot me and I have to decide whether it’s my life or your life, I choose my life.”

The Nevada Association of Public Safety Officers called her statement “utterly irresponsible,” “an embarrassment,” and a demonstration of why she’s unfit to hold national office.

Though Fiore was a member of the Nevada Assembly from 2012 to 2016 and a member of the Las Vegas City Council from 2017 until her appointment into the judgeship, she launched a failed 2022 election bid to become the Nevada State Treasurer and a failed 2016 bid to become a state representative in the U.S. House.

The Right Stuff, a conservative dating app funded by gay billionaire Peter Thiel, is showing signs of failure barely three months after its launch.

In October, the app had 40,000 downloads, according to data from Sensor Tower, an analytics firm cited by The Daily Beast. But between November 1 and December 20, the app had just 11,000 downloads.

“The Right Stuff is all about getting into the right dating pool with people who share the same values and beliefs as you,” an early promotional ad for the app proclaimed. The ad featured only white people, including Ryann McEnany, the younger sister of Donald Trump’s former White House secretary Kayleigh McEnany.

“Other dating apps have gone woke,” the app’s website says. “Quit swiping, scrolling, and trolling the wrong people. Connect with people who aren’t offended by everything.”

However, the app is only available on Apple iPhones (not Google Android phones), it doesn’t allow same-sex matches, it doesn’t allow transgender and non-binary users, and its current users are complaining about its invite-only verification process.

On December 19 review says, “I downloaded this app more than two months ago, even got sent a package from them to become an ambassador, and STILL have not been accepted onto the app. That’s ridiculous and unacceptable.”

“How can someone in a heavily liberal area get an invite… Most people around this area wouldn’t download this app, much less send an invite,” another reviewer wrote. “Rather dumb.”

The profile creation process also asks users to list their “favorite liberal lie” and thoughts about the January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol riots. Two reviewers claimed that FBI and police officers visited their homes after filling out their profiles.

One reviewer, Bradenwh wrote, “I answered the question about January 6th honestly and the next day I have two police officers at my door telling me that they got a call alleging that I was involved in domestic terrorism??? This app was clearly created by Democrats as a way to subvert our constitutional rights as conservative Americans. Do not use this app unless you want to be harassed by left-wing fascists.”

A Right Stuff spokesperson told Gizmodo, “The claims that users were contacted by the FBI or that we forwarded information to law enforcement are completely false.”

The app will likely follow a long line of little-known and failed right-wing dating apps like Righter, Donald Dater, TrumpSingles, Patrio, MAGA Mingle, and Conservatives Only.

In her recently released interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Chaya Raichik, the bigot behind the Libs of TikTok social media account, accused LGBTQ people and their allies of grooming children for sexual abuse.

“The LGBTQ community has become this cult and it’s so captivating, and it pulls people in so strongly, unlike anything we’ve ever seen," Raichik told Carlson in the hour-long interview, released Tuesday on the Fox Nation streaming platform, which was developed by Fox News. "They brainwash people to join and they convince them of all of these things, and it’s really, really hard to get out of it.”

“They’re just evil,” she said of LGBTQ people at another point. “They’re bad people. They’re just evil people and they want to groom kids. They’re recruiting.”

During the interview, Raichik repeated her long-work talking points, accusing teachers, parents, activists, and doctors of "sexualizing" children through LGBTQ content in media, "anti-white racism," and gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth.

"There are a lot of parents who let their kids [express their gender identity]. And there are a lot of parents who are grooming their kids into doing this," Raichik said. "There are a lot of parents who are told that either you have a dead kid or you have a trans kid, so it's really coming from higher up than just the parents."

She said "the hatred that the left has and their violent nature" required her to hide her face until now.

Harvard Law School instructor Alejandra Caraballo commented on the interview via Twitter, writing "This is one of the most bigoted interviews I've ever heard."

Brandon Wolf, press secretary for Equality Florida and a survivor of the Pulse Nightclub shooting, wrote of the interview, "[Fox News] bankrolls it. Amplifies it. Then calls you a liar when violence ensues," The Advocate reported.

https://twitter.com/bjoewolf/status/1607746133954285568

Raichik worked with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to help push disinformation and public sentiment in favor of DeSantis' infamous "Don't Say Gay" bill which bans any mention of LGBTQ identities in kindergarten through third-grade classrooms.

Raichik's tweets and videos targeting LGBTQ people have led to bombing and death threats against gender-affirming medical professionals and venues that host drag queen performances. She has claimed that her work isn't responsible for the violence against these communities.