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House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries shot down the idiotic idea of April 2nd being called Liberation Day by MAGAts and smacked Trump upside the head with its true moniker to Anderson Cooper on CNN.

Any market analyst, being honest, will tell you Trump is destroying the US economy with his unrepentant tariffs.

JEFFRIES: Trump tariffs are going to raise costs on everyday Americans in an environment where there’s already a high cost of living Trump promised that he would lower costs in fact on day one But what we’ve seen under his reckless leadership is that costs aren’t going down in America They’re going up inflation is going up.

The stock market is going down. Consumer confidence is going down. The retirement security of the American people is going down

This is not Liberation Day in America. It’s Recession Day, because Donald Trump’s reckless policies are driving us toward a painful recession.

The MAGA cult is now telling their flock to feel the pain and love it. Just don’t feel jittery about it.

This clip from President Trump may be the most important from the entire Rose Garden speech.

Yes, the markets are going be jittery in the coming days, weeks, and months. But those same people telling Trump he’s wrong, have been wrong about nearly every major geopolitical and… pic.twitter.com/QWczwW0bBZ

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) April 2, 2025

Trump slapped tariffs on almost the entire world except…..

You guessed it. Mother Russia.

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The self-professed “Make America Great Again” president is yet again reaching back to some bad old days in his chaotic quest for this never-defined national greatness. And yet again, Donald Trump is shaming what actually is (was?) a great nation.

With punitive tariffs this week, he’s ushering in not his promised “Golden Age” but a global trade war. Predictably, consumers and businesses are collateral damage, suddenly facing higher prices, layoffs, depressed retirement accounts and fears of recession. Some “Liberation Day.”

Separately, Trump is overseeing migrant roundups, detentions and deportations that lack any semblance of constitutional due process. His agents are sweeping up legal residents in their opaque nets, labeling the whole unidentified lot as terrorists and shipping most of them off by planeloads to a Salvadoran megaprison. Scores of families plead that the government is mistaken, and this week the Trump administration uncharacteristically did concede to one “administrative error:” It told a federal judge that it wrongly nabbed a 29-year-old Maryland man after he’d left work and picked up his 5-year-old son, who has autism.

And yet the same U.S. government that pays El Salvador millions to do its dirty work — and whose president is a strongman wannabe — told the court that it can’t get Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia out of the foreign prison and back home to Maryland.

Less noticed amid the economic chaos and extrajudicial deportations is yet another travesty that strikes at the foundation of the country’s proud legacy as a world leader — the world leader — since World War II: The ever-transactional Trump’s sordid, neocolonial attempt to extort Ukraine of its wealth of oil, gas, critical minerals and rare-earth elements as repayment for the United States’ support in the Ukrainians’ defense against Russia’s invasion.

Americans may be distracted but foreigners and global market-watchers have noticed. As Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky resists Trump’s latest one-sided demands, which dropped on Friday, Bloomberg News’ headline was “U.S. Seeks to Control Ukraine Investment, Squeezing Out Europe.” More colorfully, the Telegraph of London reported, “America holds gun to Zelensky’s head with unprecedented reparation demands.” Its article quoted Alan Riley, an expert on global energy law at the Atlantic Council, who damned the proposal as “an expropriation document” and added, “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

Certainly nothing like it has been seen since 1948, when the United States solidified its postwar leadership and banked global goodwill with the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt war-ravaged Europe, including former enemies. Over four years, President Truman and Congress provided bipartisan aid roughly equivalent to $175 billion today. All the while, U.S. politicians persuaded Americans that the aid they were paying for was neither selfless nor a giveaway: In reviving Europe, the United States was recovering markets for its products and stabilizing democratic allies to withstand further world wars.

As the law’s advocate, Secretary of State George C. Marshall Jr., stated, the program reflected “a willingness on the part of our people to face up to the vast responsibilities which history has clearly placed upon our country.”

How far we’ve fallen. You’d have to go back several centuries — when European powers colonized and plundered Africa, Asia and the Americas — to find the sorry model for Trump’s attempt to extract Ukraine’s resources (and Greenland’s) valued at trillions of dollars. But it’s all the worse considering that Ukraine, a democratic ally, has spilled its own blood and treasure to withstand and weaken Russia, a U.S. adversary, and asks only for aid — not troops — to hold the line against would-be Czar Vladimir Putin’s dreams of empire.

In fairness, Trump is arguably following up on overtures from Zelensky last year to the Biden administration for U.S.-Ukraine cooperation in developing his country’s minerals and energy riches. But Zelensky’s offer was always in exchange for a U.S. guarantee of its security, perhaps NATO membership or American peacekeeping troops. Trump has refused to agree to that.

The tension over a security guarantee was behind Trump’s and Vice President JD Vance’s February Oval Office pile–on that humiliated Zelensky and sickened U.S. allies. That debacle derailed a minerals deal, but negotiations resumed in recent weeks. After all, Zelensky doesn’t have much choice — “You don’t have the cards,” Trump mocked him.

This much is true: Ukraine’s future relies on U.S. help, despite Europe’s talk of filling the void.

Trump’s 55-page proposal calls for a U.S.-controlled investment fund to develop Ukraine’s resources, including minerals such as lithium and titanium that are essential for electric cars and other products based on modern technology. From Ukraine’s half of all proceeds, it would have to repay the United States for all past aid — none of which was provided on such terms, and most of which went to U.S. defense plants for weaponry — plus 4% interest.

All with no U.S. security guarantee for Ukraine. And, just like Trump’s purported peace talks with Russia, the proposed minerals deal cuts out Ukraine’s more stalwart European allies, who, contrary to his repeated falsehoods, have collectively contributed more to Ukraine than the United States has — asking nothing in return.

On Sunday, Trump told reporters that Zelensky is “trying to back out” of a deal. He added, for thuggish effect, “If he does that, he’s got some problems. Big, big problems.”

Yes, Zelensky has big problems. But he and his country have their pride. Which is more than America will be left with if Trump has his way.

@jackiekcalmes

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Much as the Trump administration keeps pretending that there’s nothing much to see in Signalgate, the picture keeps getting bigger and more alarming.

C&L’s Red Painter reported on its expansion to Gmail which, the post pointed out, is even less secure than Signal. Quoting The Washington Post, Red Painter wrote that national security adviser Mike Waltz used Gmail “for highly technical conversations with colleagues at other government agencies involving sensitive military positions and powerful weapons systems relating to an ongoing conflict.” WaPo had also noted that Waltz had “created and hosted other Signal chats with Cabinet members on sensitive topics, including on Somalia and Russia’s war in Ukraine.”

Apparently, that was just the tip of the Signalgate iceberg.

Politico has now reported that Waltz’s team “regularly set up chats on Signal to coordinate official work on issues including Ukraine, China, Gaza, Middle East policy, Africa and Europe, according to four people who have been personally added to Signal chats.”

Even worse, “Two of the people said they were in or have direct knowledge of at least 20 such chats. All four said they saw instances of sensitive information being discussed.”

“Waltz built the entire NSC communications process on Signal,” one of the sources told Politico.

“This is a bunch of folks who have never been here before and couldn’t switch from campaign mode,” said a fifth person, a former Trump administration official.

We knew from the beginning of Signalgate that Trump’s Junior Varsity (or lower) team in charge of our national security was risking our safety, not protecting it.

The more we learn, the secure we seem.

I shudder to think of what other ways they are endangering America and Americans.

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Senate Republicans joined Democrats yesterday in a rare rebuke of President Donald Trump and his tariff “trade” agenda. (Expect the stock market to tank.) Via Politico:

Senators voted 51-48 Wednesday to reject the national emergency Trump declared earlier this year to justify his plan to slap 25 percent tariffs on Canadian imports. The vote took place hours after Trump delivered remarks from the White House rolling out his latest plans to slap new tariffs on a wide range of products.

Republican Sens. Susan Collins, Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski and Rand Paul joined all Democrats in backing a resolution from Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine that would end that national “emergency.” Paul, of Kentucky, co-sponsored the measure.

McConnell offered Paul, a fellow Kentuckian, a fist-bump on the chamber floor. They broke out into applause as the gavel went down and closed the vote.

The dissent from this handful of Senate Republicans is purely symbolic: Speaker Mike Johnson has already moved to prevent a floor vote in the House to end the types of national emergencies upon which Trump is relying to levy his tariffs.

Yeah, it’s symbolic. But it’s still the first major break with Trump from a bunch of Senate Republican asskissers and rubber stamps.

Trump also called Collins, Murkowski, McConnell and Paul to “get on the Republican bandwagon, for a change.” Senate GOP leaders were also aligned against the resolution.

But they still voted no. Even Rand Paul, because his home state of Kentucky is getting hit hard by Canadians boycotting their bourbon.

It’s a start.

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Pam Bondi has made it clear alright. Her number one priority (after protecting Trump) is protecting Tesla. Following the Constitution, not so much.

Source: Business Insider

Attorney General Pam Bondi has said the Department of Justice will seek a 20-year prison sentence for a man accused of throwing a firebomb at a Tesla dealership.

Bondi said Monday that Cooper Jo Frederick, who is accused of attacking a Tesla dealership in Loveland, Colorado, on March 7, would face federal charges.

“I’ve made it clear: if you take part in the wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties, we will find you, arrest you, and put you behind bars,” Bondi said in a video statement published on X.

Tesla facilities face attacks, vandalism, and protests in a backlash to CEO Elon Musk’s political interventions, including championing Donald Trump’s cost-cutting agenda with the Department of Government Efficiency.

In a statement on March 14, the Loveland Police Department said Frederick, a Fort Collins resident, was arrested after an “incendiary device was ignited and thrown” at the Tesla dealership, landing between two vehicles.

Justice is coming. pic.twitter.com/r9D3SobYT1

— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) March 31, 2025

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It’s probably never a good idea to accuse someone else of Nazi-like behavior in a hearing on the ‘censorship industrial complex’ of the Biden administration by quoting a Nazi. The Republicans’ mess of a hearing just highlighted by Keith Self.

And it’s not the first time Self has gotten into trouble by quoting Goebbels. He seems to have a penchant for it, as he did when he ran for office a judge in Texas in 2010, leaving the Nazi quote on his website as part of his campaign. And just a few weeks ago he raised the ire of Democrats by deliberately misgendering Rep. Sarah McBride. Saying offensive things just comes naturally to Self, it appears.

Source: Klix

At a congressional hearing on President Joe Biden’s alleged “system of institutional structure,” Texas Republican Rep. Keith Self sparked a backlash by comparing Biden’s anti-disinformation efforts to the practices of Nazi Germany.

Self quoted Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany’s propaganda minister, saying, “A direct quote from Joseph Goebbels: ‘It is the absolute right of the state to control the formation of public opinion,’ and I think that may be what we are discussing here,” he said.

Julie Elizabeth Johnson, a Democratic representative in the United States House of Representatives, reacted to his speech.

“When Joseph Goebbels is quoted about the state, about the role of the state in public debate, then we have a big problem,” she said.

Republican Congressman quotes Joseph Goebbels in hearing: pic.twitter.com/hoCeMupSwF

— Drew Pavlou ?????? (@DrewPavlou) April 2, 2025

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The old political adage that “where you stand depends upon where you sit” has been getting aired out in Washington.

Republicans and conservatives used to celebrate judges’ issuance of nationwide court injunctions to block Biden policies or progressive government programs.

Now that nationwide court injunctions are being used to block Trump policies, however, onetime fans of the practice have decided that it’s unconstitutional and illegal and needs to be outlawed.

“When a single district court judge halts a law or policy across the entire country,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote his colleagues on Monday, “it can undermine the federal policymaking process and erode the ability of popularly elected officials to serve their constituents.”

That’s not untrue. But I couldn’t find evidence that Jordan ever made this point before Trump came into office. I asked his committee staff to identify any such reference, but haven’t heard back.

The issue of nationwide injunctions — in which federal judges apply their rulings beyond the specific plaintiffs who have brought suits in their courthouses — dovetails with another widely decried abuse of the judicial process. That’s “judge-shopping,” through which litigants connive to bring their cases before judges they assume will rule in their favor, typically by filing lawsuits in judicial divisions staffed by only a single judge whose predilections are known.

The combination of these schemes allowed conservative judges in remote federal courthouses to block major policy initiatives by President Biden, such as his efforts to enact student debt relief.

Judges also took aim at longer-standing progressive programs, as when Judge Reed O’Connor of Fort Worth, a George W. Bush appointee, declared the entire Affordable Care Act unconstitutional in 2018. The Supreme Court decisively slapped O’Connor down with a 7-2 ruling upholding the ACA’s constitutionality in 2021.

Ignoring the Supreme Court’s signal, O’Connor subsequently ruled that the ACA’s provision for no-cost preventive services was also unconstitutional. Parts of that ruling were overturned by an appeals court, but parts are now before the Supreme Court, which will hear the case this year.

Then there’s federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of Amarillo, Texas, who last year overturned the Food and Drug Administration’s long-standing approval of the abortion drug mifepristone. The Supreme Court unanimously threw out that case in June.

During the Biden administration, a serial abuser of the judge-shopping process was Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton.

According to a 2023 analysis by Steve Vladeck of Georgetown law school, in the first two years of Biden’s term, Texas filed 29 challenges to Biden initiatives. Not a single case was filed in Austin, where the attorney general’s office is but where a lawsuit had only a 50-50 chance of drawing a Republican judge. Nor were any cases filed in the big cities of Houston, Dallas, San Antonio or El Paso.

Instead, they were filed in the court’s single-judge Victoria, Midland and Galveston divisions, where the state had a 100% chance of drawing a judge appointed by Trump; in Amarillo, where the chance was 95%; and Lubbock, where it was 67%.

Republicans and conservatives raised no fuss about judge-shopping and nationwide injunctions when they targeted Biden or Obama policies.

But now they’re screaming bloody murder about “rogue judges,” suggesting the judges are exceeding their authority simply because they have ruled against Trump and applied their rulings nationwide. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Bonsall), for example, has introduced what he calls the No Rogue Rulings Act, which would bar nationwide injunctions.

It’s true that “national injunctions are equal opportunity offenders,” as Nicholas Bagley of the University of Michigan and Samuel Bray of Notre Dame wrote in 2018. “Before courts entered national injunctions against the Trump administration, they used them to thwart the Obama administration’s rule for overtime pay and its signature immigration policy, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.”

They were referring to injunctions issued against President Trump during his first term, but the pace has quickened during the current term.

That’s not necessarily because judges have become more roguish, but because Trump has given them more to ponder. In his first 65 days in office, Vladeck reported in a recent post, Trump issued 100 executive orders, besting the record set by Franklin D. Roosevelt in his first hundred days, when he issued 99. Biden issued only 37 executive orders in his first 65 days, and Trump only 17 in the same span during his first term.

Those orders and other Trump actions have triggered more than 67 lawsuits seeking preliminary injunctions or temporary restraining orders, Vladeck calculated; federal judges have granted some relief in 46 of those cases.

There are some important differences from the litigation style of Biden’s partisan opponents, however. For one thing, Trump’s challengers haven’t engaged in judge-shopping. With one short-lived exception, none of the 67 cases was filed in a single-judge division.

The majority of cases in Vladeck’s database were filed in courts where the chance of drawing a specific judge was less than 15%. The cases were filed in 14 different courts, with a plurality (31 of the 67) filed in the Washington, D.C., judicial district — not a surprise, since that’s the customary venue for lawsuits challenging a government action.

Judge-shopping isn’t illegal, but even conservatives have found it to be sleazy. Last year, the Judicial Council of the United States, a policy guidance body headed by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., stated that any lawsuit seeking a nationwide or statewide injunction against the government should be randomly assigned to a judge in the federal district where it’s filed.

The guidance, which wasn’t binding, won wide support in the federal judiciary — except in the Northern District of Texas, home to the Amarillo, Fort Worth and Lubbock divisions. There the chief judge said he wouldn’t agree.

During a recent appearance on Fox News, Jordan was asked by the conservative anchor Mark Levin whether Democrats are “forum-shopping” to get cases before judges appointed by Democratic presidents. Jordan assented enthusiastically, grousing: “You have a judge in Timbuktu, California, who can do some order and some injunction” to obstruct Trump.

Jordan’s reference was to U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who on Feb, 28 issued a temporary restraining order requiring Trump to cease the wholesale firing of federal employees at six agencies and return the workers to their jobs.

A couple of things about that. First, I’ve been to the real Timbuktu, which is a desert outpost in Mali. San Francisco is possibly the one city in America least likely to be mistaken for that Timbuktu. San Francisco is a city of more than 800,000 residents, nestled within a metropolitan area of 7.5 million. Amarillo, where Kacsmaryk presides, is a community of about 202,000, within a metro area of 270,000.

As for judge-shopping, Jordan might want to bring his concerns to the Trump administration itself. On March 27, the administration filed a federal lawsuit to terminate collective bargaining agreements reached by eight federal agencies.

The White House filed the case not in northern Virginia, the District of Columbia or any other jurisdiction where large numbers of affected federal workers probably live and work, but in Waco, Texas, a courthouse with a single federal judge, a Trump appointee.

“It’s the height of irony that the only judge-shopping we’re seeing in Trump-related cases is … from Trump,” Vladeck observes.

One might be tempted to give the Republicans the benefit of the doubt on their crusade against “rogue” judges, except for a couple of factors. One is their silence about nationwide injunctions when the results meshed with their anti-Biden ideology.

The other is that their objections to nationwide injunctions has been couched within a broader attack on the independent judiciary. Republicans have advocated impeaching judges for rulings against Trump, a stance that drew a rare public pushback from Chief Justice Roberts.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) also raised the prospect of shutting down courts that flout Republican initiatives. “We can eliminate an entire district court. We have power of funding over the courts and all these other things,” he told reporters last week. “But desperate times call for desperate measures, and Congress is going to act.”

All that makes their position look less like a principled stand against judicial activism, and more like partisan hypocrisy.

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Father Richard Estrada, a leading figure in the immigrant rights movement who was known for opening Los Angeles’ first shelter for homeless migrant youth and dedicating his life to advocating for the downtrodden, died Monday at the age of 83.

Estrada was hospitalized in March for pneumonia after contracting COVID-19, and he died from COVID-related complications, according to Angie Jimenez, a family friend.

Estrada, the son of Mexican immigrants, was born in Los Angeles on March 1, 1942. His father worked as a welder and his mother cleaned office buildings. He devoted his adult years to championing the causes of people he believed were treated as second-class citizens, including immigrants, farmworkers, women and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Estrada was a tireless advocate for migrants who crossed into the U.S. illegally to flee violence and poverty, find work and provide for their families. Over 30 years of activism, he helped deliver thousands of gallons of water to migrants traversing the desert along the border, offered his church as sanctuary for people threatened with deportation, and mortgaged his home to raise money for Jovenes Inc., the nonprofit migrant youth organization he founded.

From 1977 to 2014, Estrada served as an associate pastor at Our Lady Queen of Angels, a Catholic church known as La Placita, before leaving to join the Episcopal Church, saying he felt its tenets better aligned with his values.

“Father Richard Estrada was a visionary,” Andrea Marchetti, executive director of Jovenes, said. “His sense of humanity and his unconditional commitment and love for the most vulnerable were the guiding principles for all the actions he led, no matter the challenges he faced in his later years.”

Jovenes Inc. began organically as Estrada, in the late 1980s, started seeing young migrants showing up at his church on Olvera Street without parents or support. He opened his home in East Los Angeles to many of them before founding Jovenes in 1989. With Estrada’s support, the operation has flourished and expanded over the years into a vibrant Boyle Heights campus offering a continuum of services spanning housing, healthcare, education and career development for 700 young people, ages 18 to 24.

In a 2015 profile, he told The Times that he was guided by the concept of la posada — meaning inn or lodging. “I’m into giving shelter,” he told reporter Kate Linthicum.

At La Placita, he opened the church’s doors to shelter migrant youth during a time of tense discourse about immigration, and federal officials accused him of promoting illegal behavior. He handcuffed himself to a federal building to bring attention to the plight of immigrants in detention, the first of about a dozen times he would be arrested for civil disobedience, Jimenez said. His last arrest happened in 2023, at age 81, as he marched for workers’ rights.

He also opened his La Placita church to weekly HIV testing, working with Richard Zaldivar, founder of The Wall Las Memorias Project, at a time when the Catholic Church was not welcoming to the LGBTQ+ community. Zaldivar remembers asking Estrada if he was worried about getting in trouble.

“He was like a shooting star; he didn’t give a damn,” Zaldivar recalled. “He inspired so many people to believe that you could change the community and change systems by raising your voice and organizing. He also inspired people to believe in their faith — faith in God, but also the faith in yourself that you can create a better community.”

In the 1970s, Estrada organized for farmworker rights alongside Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, participating in marches for the United Farm Workers and organizing grape boycotts in East Los Angeles. He was a key figure in the Chicano movement, lending his stature as a religious leader to advocate for underserved communities.

When he advocated to open the first shelter for undocumented youth, hundreds of people showed up in opposition, recalled state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, who represents central and East L.A. “He remained calm, understanding their fears, but reminding everyone about our humanity.”

Actor Edward James Olmos said he got to know Estrada through their shared interests in immigrant rights and speaking to incarcerated youth. Over the years, Estrada leaned on Olmos to support various causes, and Olmos often answered that call. “OK, Father, we’re on our way,” he would tell Estrada.

Olmos said he remembers Estrada voicing frustrations as it grew clear that ranking members of the Catholic Church had covered up sexual abuse of children, an episode that contributed to his decision to leave the institution — and another example of his conviction to speak his mind.

“He was one of the greatest human beings that I’ve run across in my lifetime,” Olmos said.

As a minister at the Church of the Epiphany, an Episcopal church in Lincoln Heights, Estrada baptized Jimenez when she was a child, and later baptized her two daughters. He was present through difficult moments, she said, including her sister’s death, offering comfort and guidance.

“It was almost like you were next to a saint. When you were around him it was one of the most comforting feelings,” she said.

Estrada remained an active presence at Jovenes as board president until early this year. Just after his birthday on March 1, he fell ill and was diagnosed with COVID-19 and pneumonia, Jimenez said. He died on Cesar Chavez Day.

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The Trump administration is reviewing the curriculum of a sex education program in California for medical accuracy and age appropriateness, a move that has sparked backlash from LGBTQ+ advocates worried about queer and transgender sexual health information being censored.

Last week, California was asked to submit all educational materials from its federally funded Personal Responsibility Education Program to the Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, according to a news release from the administration.

The Department of Health provides $75 million in annual funding to PREP programs across the nation. The stated goal of these programs is to prevent adolescent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.

“As part of our radical transparency efforts, I will ensure the curriculum students are taught is age-appropriate and medically accurate,” said Andrew Gradison, ACF acting assistant secretary, in a statement on the curriculum review.

Jorge Reyes Salinas, spokesperson for LGBTQ+ civil rights organization Equality California, called Gradison’s statement misleading.

“This is not about curriculum transparency, it’s about censorship, plain and simple,” Salinas told The Times. “This investigation of California’s PREP program appears to be politically motivated and attempts to undermine the inclusive, medically accurate sex education services that serve our most vulnerable youth.”

California’s PREP program provides sexual health education to youths ages 10 to 19 with a focus on reaching those who are low-income, experiencing homelessness, in foster care, in the juvenile justice system or identify as LGBTQ+, according to the California Department of Public Health.

The department says California’s PREP curriculum has been shown to influence youth to delay sexual activity, increase condom or contraceptive use for those who are sexually active, and to reduce the number of sexual partners.

Salinas said he believes the administration’s probe into the curriculum is a thinly veiled attempt to erase mentions of the transgender community, transgender healthcare and different gender identities and pronouns.

“This is all part of their calculated political attack against transgender and nonbinary people,” he said.

In January, Trump issued an executive order saying that the government would only recognize two genders, male and female, effectively erasing federal recognition of transgender people. His administration has weakened nondiscrimination protections under the Affordable Care Act, giving healthcare providers and insurers more leeway to deny services to transgender individuals.

Trump has also challenged a new California law that prevents school districts from notifying parents if their child asks to use a different name or pronoun in the classroom.

Attention was drawn to California’s PREP program last week, when the Daily Mail published an article stating that its curriculum discussed role-plays “which present same-gender couples and discuss the use of sexual aids.”

This article was circulated by Trump Deputy Assistant Alex Pfeiffer, who said in a post on X that California is “using taxpayer money to teach kids about sex toys and role playing.” The California Department of Public Health did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the accuracy of this claim.

Salinas called the comment “ridiculous,” saying that the point of California’s PREP program is to provide valuable lessons on abstinence, contraception, sexually transmitted infections, and healthy relationships and decision-making.