“Everything stops and starts with Jan. 6,” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) complained in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
WASHINGTON — Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) complained Thursday that Democrats keep bringing up the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection in hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where President Donald Trump’s nominees routinely, and alarmingly, refuse to answer questions about the violence of that day and about who won the 2020 election.
Schmitt, a close ally of Trump, griped about having to keep talking about the violence of Jan. 6 in the middle of National Police Week, a time when lawmakers in both parties play up their support for law enforcement officers and honor those who have died in the line of duty.
A number of police officers died by suicide after the events of Jan. 6, when Trump incited a mob of his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol and brutally beat dozens of law enforcement officers in an attempt to stop lawmakers from certifying Joe Biden as president.
Schmitt’s comments came during a Thursday hearing where senators were voting on a batch of the president’s nominees. He brought up that Feb. 2 is the birthday of Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), a committee member, and pointed out that the day is also Groundhog Day.
“I think that we ought to change the date of Groundhog Day to January 6, because every time I walk into this committee hearing – it’s everything,” said the Missouri Republican. “Everything stops and starts with January 6.”
Missouri Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt has said he has “worked closely” with Donald Trump on the voting bill amendments.
Christopher Wiggins at The Advocate:
Senate Republicans have unveiled a comprehensive amendment package to the SAVE America Act that combines new federal voting restrictions with policies targeting transgender people. It comes after President Donald Trump has insisted that the provisions be added and the bill passed.
Offered as a substitute amendment, the proposal, obtained by Punchbowl News on Tuesday evening, reorganizes the legislation into three sections: elections, sports, and what it calls protections for children.
The election provisions would require Americans to present documentary proof of U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote in federal elections, a change to current law. Voting by noncitizens is already illegal under federal law, and documented cases are rare. The proposal would also require photo identification to vote and limit mail voting, requiring most ballots to be cast in person and restricting absentee voting to specific circumstances such as illness, disability, or verified travel.
The amendment would also direct states to compare voter rolls with federal immigration databases and remove people identified as noncitizens, while requiring federal agencies to share data to support those checks.
Other sections of the package include unrelated culture war issues that focus on transgender people. One provision would bar transgender women and girls from participating in school sports aligned with their gender identity, stating that it would be a violation of federal law to allow “a person whose sex is male to participate in an athletic program or activity that is designated for women or girls,” and defining sex “based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”
Another section would create federal criminal penalties for gender-affirming care, or what the bill falsely describes as “genital and bodily mutilation of a minor” and “chemical castration of a minor.”
[...]
The amendment comes as Senate Republicans move forward with debate on the SAVE Act despite lacking the votes needed to pass it. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has acknowledged the bill is unlikely to reach the 60 votes required to overcome a filibuster, but has continued with floor consideration.
[...]
The legislation faces an uncertain path in the Senate. The House already passed a version of the bill that did not include the anti-trans provisions, and it would have to return to the House if the Senate passes it before Trump could sign the legislation into law. He has vowed not to sign any other bills into law until the measure receives a vote and passes.
The Senate GOP’s SAVE America Act is harmful and anti-American, and it’s not only because of voter suppression provisions but also the additions of red meat culture war items banning trans minors from gender-affirming care and transgender women in women’s sports... all to appease Donald Trump.
See Also:
HuffPost: Republicans Sneak Amendments Into Controversial Bill To Please Trump
A CEO calling his own company's past a "mistake." A 47-page report designed to be cited, not read. The pressure campaign that broke Facebook
Parker Molloy at The Present Age:
On Tuesday, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos sat in the Dirksen Senate Office Building to answer questions about his company’s $83 billion bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery’s studios, HBO, and HBO Max. The hearing was supposed to be about antitrust.
And some of it was! Sen. Mike Lee, the Republican chairing the subcommittee, called the deal “extraordinary in both scale and potential consequence” and pushed Sarandos on whether YouTube really counts as a competitor. Sen. Cory Booker raised concerns about any single company gaining that much control over American entertainment. Sen. Amy Klobuchar asked about subscription pricing. These are real questions about a merger that would reshape the entertainment industry. They deserve a hearing.
But several Republican senators had a different agenda. Sen. Eric Schmitt pulled up a Netflix social media post from June 2020, made in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. He presented it as though Netflix had issued a statement reading “To my white friends, guilt, shame, embarrassment.” In fact, the post promoted a video by Brandon Kyle Goodman, a writer on Big Mouth and co-star of Feel The Beat, that carried that title. Schmitt asked Sarandos what it meant. Sarandos, who said he was unaware of the post, didn’t correct the mischaracterization. Instead, he called it a mistake. “As I said, sir, we have no political agenda,” he told Schmitt. “Posting something like that would be quite political. Right, I would agree. Yes, and I would hope that wouldn’t happen again.”
The CEO of Netflix, under pressure from a senator, publicly disavowed his own company’s social media activity from six years earlier. The post in question was a statement of solidarity with Black Americans during a period of nationwide protests against police violence. Sarandos called it a mistake and promised it wouldn’t happen again.
Schmitt wasn’t done. He accused Netflix of “promoting DEI and wokeness,” cited examples of what he called “race swapping” in Netflix shows, brought up the French film Cuties, and had an aide hold up a headline from Glenn Beck’s The Blaze reading “Netflix Merger Would Create A Woke Media Monster.” He then delivered his closing argument: “Why in the world would we give a seal of approval or a thumbs up to make you the largest behemoth on the planet related to content? It seems as though you have engaged in creating not only a monopoly of content potentially, but the wokest content in the history of the world.”
Sen. Josh Hawley took a similar approach. He asked Sarandos why Netflix content for children “promotes a transgender ideology,” then claimed that “almost half” of Netflix’s children’s programming features “highly controversial, highly sexualized material.” CNN noted that Hawley didn’t provide a source for that statistic. Sarandos called the claim “inaccurate” and said he had no idea where it came from.
The “almost half” figure traces to a December 2025 report from Concerned Women for America, a conservative advocacy organization that opposes LGBTQ rights. CWA claimed that 41% of G-rated and TV-Y7 Netflix shows contain LGBTQ content. Their methodology is opaque: no named researchers, no published classification criteria, no inter-rater reliability testing. When a show like She-Ra and the Princesses of Power gets counted because two characters kiss in the final season, and that gets lumped under “highly sexualized material aimed at children,” you’re looking at a document designed to produce the largest possible number. The point was never to withstand scrutiny. The point was to be cited.
And that’s exactly what Hawley did. By the time it landed in the congressional record, it was a statistic attributed to a United States senator.
But Hawley and Schmitt weren’t freelancing. The culture-war attacks at the hearing echoed an anti-Netflix report produced by a conservative outlet originally created by the Heritage Foundation, which had been shared with allies ahead of the Tuesday hearing. Deadline reported that senators Cruz and Schmitt “seemed to be pulling directly from” the report, and that the head of the organization that produced it had pre-written questions for senators to use during the hearing.
That report is called Fedflix: Netflix, The Federal Government, and the New Propaganda State. It runs 47 pages. It was produced by the Oversight Project, an investigative arm of the Heritage Foundation (though it became formally independent last year). Its central claim is that Netflix holds “an outsized role in socially engineering millions of Americans into a predisposition to accept preferred leftwing ideological dogma.”
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The irony is that Netflix isn't left-wing propaganda. This is the company that has made Dave Chappelle one of the highest-paid comedians in the world, defending his anti-trans specials against internal and external criticism. This is the company that won the bidding war to adapt JD Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, producing a prestige film about the life story of the man who is now Vice President. Netflix is a platform that hosts content across the political spectrum because that's what a streaming service with hundreds of millions of subscribers does. But the accusation was never meant to be accurate. It was meant to be useful.
What to watch for: board changes, political donations, content shifts, new advisory roles for conservative figures. If the Facebook timeline is instructive, these won’t arrive all at once. They’ll come gradually, each one rationalized as a reasonable accommodation, until one day a company that features Heartstopper and Disclosure and Pose has quietly stopped platforming shows like that altogether.
[...]
What “propaganda” means in practice
The language in the Fedflix report is deliberate.
The Fedflix report is part of a coordinated rhetorical project that treats the mere existence of LGBTQ people in media as an act of aggression against children. It’s not subtle about this. Section VI is titled “SOCIAL ENGINEERING: LGBTQ+/TRANS IDEOLOGY PUSHED IN CONTENT AIMED AT MINORS.” The framing is identical to what we saw in Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” legislation, in the harassment campaigns against drag performers, in the threats that caused Target to pull Pride displays from store entrances and move them to the back.
In 2023, Target had been selling Pride merchandise for a decade. Then came the coordinated backlash: viral posts making false claims about products being marketed to children, threats against employees at stores across the country. Target responded by removing merchandise, shifting displays away from high-traffic areas, and eventually announcing that its 2024 Pride collection would only appear in about half of its stores. The designers who had created that collection were left feeling, as one told the Bay Area Reporter, “angry and betrayed.” Target had asked them for their coming-out stories as part of the creative process. Then, when the pressure campaign arrived, the company folded.
This is what corporate capitulation looks like from the inside. A company invites LGBTQ people to participate in something meaningful, then abandons them when a sufficiently loud group decides their existence is controversial.
Netflix sits at a different scale, but the dynamic is the same. Netflix has 177 LGBTQ characters across its streaming service, according to GLAAD’s most recent count. That’s 48% of all LGBTQ characters on the eight major streaming platforms tracked. Heartstopper is concluding with a feature-length film in 2026. The platform has been, by any measure, one of the most significant venues for LGBTQ storytelling in the history of television.
The Fedflix report explicitly identifies this as a problem. So do the senators who read from Heritage Foundation talking points during the hearing.
The question is whether Netflix will respond the way Target did. The way Bud Light did after featuring trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney in a marketing campaign. These companies didn’t face antitrust review. They didn’t have a massive merger hanging in the balance. They capitulated under pressure that was purely reputational. Netflix faces all of that and more.
Netflix is about to pull a Target: appease anti-LGBTQ+ reactionaries in a bid to get their merger with WBD approved.
This post is for 'My Top 10 US Senators' I'd like to fuck and is purely based on appearance, not politics. If you don't agree, either scroll onwards, post your own idea or try another blog.
#10. Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI)
An American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from Rhode Island. Cute little guy whose diminutive height 5 feet 7 inches on a good day, makes him a perfect pocket daddy.
#9. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL)
A former American football coach, former player, and Republican politician. He’s what you think a senator would look like. I’d love to fuck around in bed with him for a weekend.
#8. Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI)
An American politician and businessman serving as the junior United States Senator from Michigan since 2015. A bearded, buttoned-down genial Midwesterner known in the Senate mostly for steering as far clear from the spotlight as he possibly can. One ally calls him a “worker bee,” while a Republican describes him as “about as exciting as a bowl of cold oatmeal.” I’d call him hot as hell.
#7. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV)
An American politician serving as the senior United States senator from West Virginia, a seat he has held since 2010. Another politician who has a lot of political hate, but I fuck him. And if I’m the only one who wants to ride him till he busts. So be it. If Virginia is for lovers, I say West Virginia is for fuckers.
#6. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA)
An American lawyer and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Virginia since 2013. Just by the look in his eyes makes me think Tim could be a hell of a good fuck. Nothing to base that on.
#5. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
An American politician serving as the senior United States senator from South Carolina, a seat he has held since 2003. Of course I’ve got my senate bottom bitch, Sen. Graham here. I kinda understand all the political hate, but I think he’s a mature southern gentleman from my state and I’d love to beat his ass like he stole something from me. And when I’m done with him, I’ll send him over to the next guy as I know I’m not the only one who’d fuck him.
#4. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD)
An American businessman and politician serving as the junior United States Senator from South Dakota since 2015. I need to give Sen. Rounds, who I affectionally call “Mike Pounds” some more love. Because he could get “The Dick,” some ass or what ever he wants from me.
#3. Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MI)
An American lawyer and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Missouri since 2023. The newest senator is tall at At 6’6”, handsome and wears boots. That's enough for me to want more of him.
#2. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)
An American politician and attorney serving as the junior United States Senator for Texas since 2013. Honestly, Ted's here and this high only to piss off liberal, super political fuckers who can't separate looks from politics. Now that doesn't mean I don't want him naked in my bed with my jizz all over his face.
#1. Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT)
An American politician serving as the senior United States Senator from Montana, in office since 2007. If you didn’t know that Jon would be my #1, you must be a new follower.
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse
Sen. Rand Paul
Sen. Ron Johnson
With the reversal of Roe, Missouri banned abortions. This woman wants others to know what happens when complications arise in a non-viable p
At 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 2, nearly 18 weeks into her pregnancy, Mylissa Farmer experienced what doctors call a preterm premature rupture of membranes – her water broke before labor, followed by vaginal bleeding, abdominal pressure and cramping.
She went to Freeman Hospital in Joplin, Missouri, where she'd been just the day before. Everything had been normal then. She and her boyfriend, Matthew McNeill, had already picked out a name for their daughter: Maeve.
But the doctors had devastating news for them. If Maeve was delivered right then, chances of survival at 17 weeks and 5 days were zero, according to the assessment and plan section of Farmer's medical records outlining the visit. And the outcome wasn't much better if they tried to hold off on delivery.
The doctors recommended terminating the pregnancy – but 39 days after the state of Missouri banned abortions, that wasn't an option, at least not in Missouri.
A year ago, the hospital could have offered a chance for the couple to say goodbye and hold their daughter, even though they knew she wouldn't survive outside the womb.
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"It was hard. You could tell the doctors were trying to tell us what we needed to do, but at the same time, trying to protect themselves. We’re not angry with them," Farmer said.
If her vitals plummeted or infection set in, or the fetus' cardiac activity stopped, the doctors could intervene, but not before then.
"Current Missouri law supercedes (sic) our medical judgement and the MO law language states that we cannot intervene in the setting of a pregnancy with a positive fetal heart motion unless there is a 'medical emergency,'" reads Farmer's medical record from that Aug. 2 visit.
...
Rather than stay at the hospital to wait for infection to set in, Farmer went home to wait, monitoring her temperature and her pain. On Aug. 4, she called her state senator, Bill White, and explained her situation to an aide.
He told her, "That’s not what the law was designed for. It’s designed to protect the woman’s life."
"It’s not protecting me. We have to wait for the heartbeat (to stop). There’s no chance for a baby; she’s not going to make it. It’s putting my life in danger," Farmer said she remembers telling him. "We just want to move on, we just want to grieve."
The aide told her he would reach out to Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, and also connected her with Choices Medical Services, "which is basically an anti-abortion clinic" in Joplin, Farmer said. She never heard back about what Schmitt said.
Choices Medical Services offers "pregnancy testing for confirmation of pregnancy, limited obstetrical ultrasounds, STI/STD testing and prenatal education classes." According to the website, it does not offer nor refer people to abortion services.
"We are often contacted by individuals who request an appointment, but their specific needs are out of the scope of our services," said Mischa Long, director of nursing for Choices Medical Services in Joplin. "For these individuals, we clarify our services and offer a referral to a local doctor for prenatal care."
Farmer's situation turned out to be one such case.
...życie to taki dziwny prezent. Na początku się je przecenia: sądzi się, że dostało się życie wieczne. Potem się go nie docenia, uważa się, że jest do chrzanu, za krótkie, chciałoby się niemal je odrzucić. W końcu kojarzy się, że to nie był prezent, ale jedynie pożyczka. I próbuje się na nie zasłużyć.
