States are Passing Laws Based on Unproven Conspiracy Theories & SBC Targets Porn, Sports Betting, and Same-Sex Marriage
June 13, 2025
What I’m Discussing Today:
Kareem’s Daily Quote: Multiple quotes today address the significance of protest in America and how the LA protests are being used to pass Trump’s pet bill.
Unsubstantiated ‘chemtrail’ conspiracy theories lead to legislation proposed in US statehouses: Why are red states spending so much time and money passing laws that have no basis in reality?
Southern Baptists target porn, sports betting, same-sex marriage and ‘willful childlessness’: Their influence of Republicans is outsized to their numbers. But they are easily manipulated to get votes.
Whitmer Slams Trump for Plan to Pardon Kidnap Plotters Who Wanted to ‘Hog-tie’ Her: Trump’s kind of guys: violent criminals who target women.
What I’m Watching: Movies and on TV: Ballerina is John Wick-ed fun. Stick is a golf sitcom featuring Owen Wilson at his most charming. Art Detectives is an enjoyable British mystery.
Kareem’s Video Break: A Father’s Day moment that makes me wish I could still tickle my children.
Kareem’s Sports Moments: This amazing pickleball point is why it’s America’s fastest-growing sport.
Sly & the Family Stone - “Everyday People”: Sly Stone died last week. This is why he will forever be remembered.
Kareem’s Daily Quote(s)
I do not know of any salvation for society except through eccentrics, misfits, dissenters, people who protest.
William O. Douglas (1898-1980), U.S. Supreme Court justice who oversaw many civil rights cases
My father was a decorated police officer whose life was spent enforcing the laws and keeping the peace. But I grew up in a time of massive political unrest that changed the country from a fortress guarding the wealthy and their rules that benefited only them to a country that questioned those rules and the authorities enforcing them. Protests advocating for civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, and ending the Vietnam War were daily occurrences. That shock to the system of seeing hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets to demand change jump-started America into a nation that was more aware of injustice and more committed to addressing it.
Protest is an act of love, not one of anger.
U.S. Rep. John Lewis (1940-2020), civil rights activist
As a human rights activist for 60 years, I’m used to the predictable pattern of protests and the inevitable backlash. People who are outraged by the government’s deliberate and callous acts of injustice march through the streets to raise public awareness and gather enough support to end the injustice. They do this after realizing that they will not be getting any help from most elected politicians, who are too afraid of compromising their jobs to do what’s right.
Instead, the government party in charge wants to demonstrate to its supporters that they are powerful and can protect the status quo against change. As they did in the sixties, they send in cops and troops to force a violent confrontation. This then justifies any action the government takes because now they have news footage of violent protesters. The result of this carefully manipulated photo-op violence is the curated disapproval and scolding by politicians relieved to have an excuse to reject protesters. Thousands of lives are being destroyed, but it only takes one burning car to allow people to justify their lack of involvement.
Lost in all this political theater is the injustice that was being protested.
This government was founded on protest.
Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993), first Black Supreme Court justice
No matter how peaceful protesters want to be, it rarely ends up that way. There are too many people who benefit from having it turn violent. First, some infiltrators are the political enemies of the protesters who commit violent acts to discredit the cause. Second, there are hardcore radicals who agree with the principles of the protesters but don’t agree that their non-violent methods produce change fast enough. Third, the police and troops who should be trained in how to de-escalate violence after all these years of facing protests, know that de-escalation is not why they were sent in. Their job is to punish protesters to scare others from protesting. Ironically, they are there to protect a political party’s power, not protect the country.
So, yeah, protests are messy, impure, sloppy, and emotional. For many, it is a last resort born out of frustration, anger, and disappointment for a country that has not lived up to the promise it makes every time it hoists a flag. They see a felon for a president who has been accused of sexual assault more than two dozen times, who has used his office to increase his personal wealth, who dishonors the U.S. Constitution to gain more power, who ignores the U.S. Supreme Court in an effort to cleanse the country of immigrants, legal and illegal, who demands law and order, yet pardons horrible criminals who cheated average people out of millions, and others who invaded the Capitol Building. That’s who we picked as our leader and guardian of our values.
When an individual is protesting society’s refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him.
Bayard Rustin (1912-1987), Civil Rights Movement leader
The protests going on right now in Los Angeles prove several things: 1. Some Americans are fed up with the arbitrary and illegal actions of the Trump administration. 2. Having never studied history, the Trump administration is making every mistake that previous tyrants made in the attempt to suppress freedom of speech. He is doing exactly what the British did to silence colonists when they protested.
None of that matters. This is only about one thing: Getting Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill passed. As a senior White House adviser told Axios: “We see the riots in L.A. as laden with political opportunity—a fight between what Republicans say they want vs. the radical left and protesters waving the Mexican flag in front of burning cars—and the Democrats supporting them.” Echoed a giddy spokesperson for the Trump-supporting conservative Turning Point USA: “It’s the best BBB marketing ever. It has brought the critical need for increased border funding and immigration enforcement to the forefront. Everyone we’re talking to in the Senate says this put it over the top.”
If history offers us clues, this is just the beginning. Regardless of whether or not the troops crush the protesters, they’ve shown their hand: they are afraid of the people and their fearful violence will only encourage more and bigger protests which will activate voters to drive them from office. The sooner the better.