In an off-record session with the media, Albright said, "we intentionally set the bar too high for the Serbs to comply. They need some bombing, and thatâs what they are going to get.â
Albright, who started her own advisory firm after she left the State Department, acts as both a business consultant and a brand ambassador for the multilevel marketing company. The lucrative gig has earned her firm an estimated $10 million over the past six years.
"We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima," Stahl said. "And, you know, is the price worth it?"
"I think that is a very hard choice," Albright answered, "but the price, we think, the price is worth it."
Um, you know you're talking about a dead person, right?
Albright, who started her own advisory firm after she left the State Department, acts as both a business consultant and a brand ambassador for the multilevel marketing company. The lucrative gig has earned her firm an estimated $10 million over the past six years.
"We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima," Stahl said. "And, you know, is the price worth it?"
"I think that is a very hard choice," Albright answered, "but the price, we think, the price is worth it."
Hannah Natanson, The Washington PostMarch 22, 2022Comments61of6Homes in Lancaster County, Pa., fly the American flag, the state flag and the Pine Tree flag, a Revolutionary War banner that has been adopted by some conservatives.Photo for The Washington Post by Kyle Grantham
Eight titles had melted away seemingly overnight, a panicked school aide told Hull, from the shelves of an elementary school in one of the 22 districts Hull oversees as co-chair of a group representing school librarians in Pennsylvania's Lancaster and Lebanon counties.
Slowly - over months of meetings, investigations and secret conversations with fearful librarians across her counties - she came to understand the disturbing reality. Administrators, afraid of attracting controversy, were quietly removing books from library shelves before they could be challenged.
Interviews with librarians in eight states and nearly a dozen districts revealed similar stories that paint what they describe as a bleak picture of their profession, as they fret about and fight against American schoolchildren's shrinking freedom to read.
School book bans are soaring: Although the vast majority of challenges go unreported, the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom counted 330 incidents of book censorship in just the three months from September to November 2021 - marking the highest rate since the association began tracking the issue in 1990. The questioned texts have mostly been "books about LGBTQ people and race and racism," according to the National Coalition Against Censorship, and many removals sprang from challenges launched by White, conservative parents spurred on by pundits.
Meanwhile, state legislators are advancing bills that would restrict what children can access in school libraries - some of which also suggest penalizing librarians. A member of the Idaho House is advancing a bill that threatens librarians with a $1,000 fine and up to a year in prison if they lend explicit materials to a student under 18.
Behind the slate of bills attacking trans girlsâ ability to play sports are a host of right-wing and religious-right groups that drafted them, encouraged lawmakers to take them up, and laid the groundwork for their passage through disinformation and pressure campaigns, a Right Wing Watch investigation found last year.
The anti-LGBTQ American Principles Project has spent millions on ad campaigns fearmongering about trans girls, depicting them as boys, with the suggestion that parents need to protect their daughters. Alliance Defending Freedomâa multimillion-dollar litigation-and-legislation shop that the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated an anti-LGBTQ hate groupâdrafted model legislation to keep trans kids from playing on sports teams corresponding with their gender identity. And the Heritage Foundation helped organize these efforts, contributing their own fearmongering about trans girls in girlsâ locker rooms.
These groups are a part of âPromise to Americaâs Children,â a coalition of 22 groups dedicated to fighting âgender ideology,â which paints the advance of womenâs and LGBTQ rights as a threat to the Christian rightâs narrow vision of âthe natural family.â
The coalitionâs positions go beyond not wanting trans girls to play sports: These groups want to prevent public schools from teaching sex education, to encourage schools to out LGBTQ kids to their parents, and to prevent trans kids from accessing gender-affirming health care. They stand in opposition to the Equality Act. And should any state or federal legislator be interested in how to make these goals become law, the coalition offers model legislation.
What weâve seen just this year alone makes it clear that the buck doesnât stop at legislating trans girls out of girlsâ sports. Eighteen states have introduced bills this year to limit trans kidsâ access to gender-affirming health care. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott directed the stateâs child and protection services to investigate gender-affirming care as âchild abuse,â a development for which the American Principles Project took credit and thanked Steve Bannon for his help. The Idaho House passed a bill Tuesday that would make gender-affirming care a felony, punishable by life in prison for anyone who helps a child travel out of state for such care. That same day, a Florida bill that limits what can be taught about sexual orientation and gender identity (and that allows parents to sue schools and teachers who teach these topics), was sent to Gov. Ron DeSantis.
A jury found Guy Wesley Reffitt guilty of leading a charge against the police at the Capitol and obstructing Congressâs duty to certify the 2020 election.
The guilty verdict against the defendant, Guy Wesley Reffitt, came only about three hours into the first day of jury deliberations and after a weeklong trial that included testimony from police officers, a Secret Service agent, one of Mr. Reffittâs compatriots in the Texas Three Percenters militia group and Mr. Reffittâs son.
The jury also convicted Mr. Reffitt of wearing an illegal pistol on his hip during the attack and of later threatening his teenage son and daughter to keep them from turning him in to the authorities. He faces a maximum of 20 years in prison on the obstruction count alone.
