A proposed ban on drag shows witnessed by children made it to a Missouri Senate Committee for the first time.
Annelise Hanshaw at Missouri Independent:
For the third year in a row, Missouri Republicans are trying to place restrictions on drag performances.
The effort has stalled in years past, clearing a House committee last year but never coming up for debate in the Senate.
That changed Wednesday, when a Senate committee held a public hearing on legislation sponsored by state Sen. Rick Brattin, a Harrisonville Republican, that he argued was “geared towards protecting children from displays of sexual content.”
The bill would make it a class-A misdemeanor to participate in an “adult cabaret performance” in a public area or other space where children might see. A repeat violation becomes a class-E felony.
State Sen. Nick Schroer, a Republican from Defiance who chairs the Senate’s judiciary committee, discussed possible fixes to the bill’s definitions following opponent’s testifying that community theater could be impacted.
The issue is a definition of “adult cabaret performance” that includes “male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest or similar entertainers.”
Including “or similar entertainers,” opponents said, is too vague and may draw police to plays where women play male roles or a non-sexual performance by a transgender person.
Missouri’s at it again with their insane bill proposal (SB295) to ban family-friendly drag shows on the false basis of “protecting the innocence of children.”
See Also:
KTVI (Fox2now): Mo. bill could criminalize drag show performances in front of kids
State senator Nick Schroer wants to reintroduce dueling to solve political differences in his statehouse
It's not just in areas like abortion and restrictions on voting that makes Republicans want to turn back the clock 200 years.
In Missouri, a Republican legislator wants to bring back dueling. No, that isn't a typo.
A Missouri Republican’s proposal to reintroduce dueling to solve statehouse differences was branded “utter stupidity” by a leading historian of political violence.
“Back in the day,” Joanne B Freeman of Yale tweeted, “they were smart enough to take dueling OUTSIDE. The draft that I saw suggests doing it in the chamber. This doesn’t show guts or bravery or manhood – if it’s supposed to. It shows utter stupidity.”
Freeman is the author of The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War.
The state senator behind the proposal said he was making a point about the breakdown of regular order in Missouri politics.
The draft rule change came to national notice when it was posted to social media by Democrats in the state senate.
“The Missouri Republican civil war continues to escalate as a member of the Freedom Caucus faction has filed a proposed rule change to allow senators to challenge an ‘offending senator to a duel’,” they wrote.
Here's some of the language from the proposal...
The draft rule read: “If a senator’s honor is impugned by another senator to the point that it is beyond repair and in order for the offended senator to gain satisfaction, such senator may rectify the perceived insult to the senator’s honor by challenging the offending senator to a duel.
“The trusted representative, known as the second, of the offended senator shall send a written challenge to the offending senator. The two senators shall agree to the terms of the duel, including choice of weapons, which shall be witnessed and enforced by their respective seconds.
“The duel shall take place in the well of the senate at the hour of high noon on the date agreed to by the parties to the duel.”
The author, Nick Schroer, represents District 2 in the Missouri senate.
I imagine that the Republican choice of weapons in such duels would be ketchup bottles with nitrogen gas.
Nick Schroer is rather typical of anti-democracy Republicans. He and another extremist held a stunt with flamethrowers last September which got international attention.
Republican candidate for Missouri governor vows to burn books after viral flamethrower video
Republicans like Schroer have more screws loose than a Boeing 737 Max 9. And people who vote for them are just as loony.
Nick Schroer is yet another reason we need to pay attention to state government – especially the state legislatures.
The first step is to find out just who represents you in your legislature.
Find Your Legislators
Look your legislators up by address or use your current location.
If you have the misfortune of being represented by a MAGA Republican, contact your county or state Democratic Party and ask what you can do to turn your state blue.
This is personal.
I am an outspoken rural organizer. Every elected Missouri Republican knows exactly who I am, and thanks to two Missouri Representatives on Twitter, most also know where I live. I was doxxed on two separate occasions on Twitter. One State Representative, Josh Hurlbert, who also works for the Herzog Foundation, specifically tweeted out my daughter's school district on two separate occasions while responding to me.
He won't stop… I've tried. I called him an "insufferable asshole" for telling people where my daughter attends school — he made my comment his Twitter banner. He thinks putting my child in danger is funny. He is emboldened to do whatever he can to silence me.
I was speaking at an event a year ago in Kansas and was about to go onstage when I saw my phone light up with a call. I didn't recognize the number, so I let it go to voicemail. After the event, while walking back to my hotel, I listened to the voicemail — it was a Republican Missouri State Senator. He called me live from his radio show "to debate me." He told his audience I had agreed to a debate then and backed out.
Ummm…I was speaking at an event with over a hundred Kansas Democrats. I would not have agreed to a debate at that time, and by the way, how did he get my cell phone number? Why did he think he could intrude on my personal life and call me out to his radio audience? I may be loud, but I am still a private citizen. I owe nothing to Senator Nick Schroer or his rabid MAGA audience.
Schroer knows he will face no consequence for sending violent minions into my comments, mentions, and inboxes.
That's why I was disgusted when I watched the video of the President of the Heritage Foundation, the architect of Project 2025, making a threat to every organizer, outspoken critic, and left-leaning citizen in America.
He threatened our lives. Here is the video.
"The Second American Revolution will remain bloodless if the Left allows it to be," the Heritage post said. "Unfortunately, they have a well-established record of instigating the opposite."
~Kevin Roberts, President, Heritage Foundation
[...]
In more than 900 pages, Project 2025 calls for firing thousands of civil servants, expanding the power of the president (ope, the Supreme Court just did that), dismantling the Department of Education and other federal agencies, and sweeping tax cuts for the wealthy.
They are determined to push through an agenda that will harm our country and are threatening those who stand in their way. Who do you think is going to be targeted on the "left" if Trump is elected and the Heritage Foundation is able to start implementing Project 2025?
[...]
I will not be silent as you come for my children. I will not step aside as you attack my neighbors and my community. I will not be quiet in the face of fascism and oligarchy. Ever.
When billionaires use their money to fund an organization that explicitly calls for violence against organizers, I hope you pay attention. I hope you understand that they mean to silence folks in your community. I hope you close ranks around us. We have been on the front line, and will continue to be, but we need you behind us.
We need you to tell everyone you know about the threats to organizers and the threat to American democracy. Tell everyone about Project 2025. Tell on them.
This is personal.
~Jess
Jess Piper’s latest Substack piece is spot-on: The Heritage Foundation’s 900+-page radical right-wing Project 2025 is a threat to our nation’s democracy and must be vigorously opposed.
This image popped up on my Facebook feed this weekend, and well, I audibly sighed and thought…here we go.
The photo was posted by Missouri State Senator Nick Schroer on Facebook. He is the man with the flamethrower in the foreground. The other man spitting flames and attempting to not cross the streams is State Senator Bill Eigel, who is also a candidate for Missouri Governor.
The Senators claim there were no books in the boxes they torched in front of a mob of “Freedom Fest” goers in St Charles, Mo, who can be heard laughing and cheering while chanting “Let’s go Brandon.” But, an X account run by Jake Jackson (@realjakejacks) of Missouri, claimed to be at the event and posted a video of the fire with the caption “…torched the woke liberal agenda.”
You should know both Schroer and Eigel have been in Jefferson City for years and are elected to the GOP supermajority—the swamp that they so often refer to. They are not the outsiders they pretend to be. They are both responsible for voting to pass an abortion ban, limit health care access for trans youth, and limit trans youth participation in sports. They both are in favor of sending taxpayer money to private schools, and both have attacked teachers and Missouri public schools for being “woke” or teaching “CRT”.
The fiery picture was accompanied by this caption by Schroer, “This is how we roll in St. Charles County! Burning down the swamp at St Charles GOP Freedom Fest with our grassroots bad to the bone fam…”
There is absolutely nothing “grassroots” about Sen Schroer. The Senator also provided the internet with photos from a Florida trip a few weeks back sponsored by the dark money group ALEC.
ALEC supplies elected Representatives with expenses paid trips to give lawmakers corporate bills to pass in their states—corporate bills that often harm folks. The scheme is incredibly effective in red states like Missouri where our GOP legislators sponsor bills that they can’t even explain because they don’t write their own bills…ALEC does. Grassroots my ass.
Here’s the thing, I live in Missouri and bear witness to the damage done by a GOP supermajority so drunk on power that they think WWII Nazi-like images will go unnoticed, or worse, cheered.
How can we pay attention to flamethrowers when our starting teachers are the lowest paid in the entire nation and our schools rank 49th in funding? When our AG attacks libraries and Missouri becomes the first in the nation to cut ties with the American Library Association.
Why would we even blink as Senators torch “agendas” when at least a dozen rural hospitals have closed in the last two decades leaving many Missourians to drive 1.5 hours to access health care.
St. Charles County, Missouri-based Republican State Senators Nick Schroer and Bill Eigel conducted a torching that is supposed to resemble book burnings that is representative of their extremist agendas. Eigel is running for Governor, and is seeking to turn an already far-right state even further to the right if he elected as Governor.
See Also:
LGBTQ Nation: Missouri GOP lawmaker and gubernatorial candidate Bill Eigel promises to burn books if he’s elected governor
