FirstCircle

In a statement to CNN, the global affairs department of the Canadian government said: "Since the beginning of 2023, certain states in the US have passed laws banning drag shows and restricting the transgender community from access to gender affirming care and from participation in sporting events."

Canada has provided specific guidelines to its LGBTQ+ citizens traveling abroad: "Watch for laws that: criminalize same-sex activities and relationships [and] criminalize people based on their sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics."

"Some countries may use laws related to 'vagrancy', 'public nuisance' or 'public morals' to criminalize 2SLGBTQI+ people."

A significant percentage of Newbern residents, Black and white, live below the poverty level. When Lewis, who was born in Newbern, moved her family back to the area, she decided to open a non-profit that would provide needed services, like food distributions, to people across Hale county.

She found out that Braxton was still trying to take his seat as mayor. And she joined forces with him to remedy the chaotic political situation, largely by themselves.

In October of last year, Lewis took her children to the movies. The evening quickly turned horrific as they arrived back home.

Lewis’s house was on fire. The family arrived just in time to see the second story collapse.

Lewis said it wasn't until she began receiving hate mail that she realized there might be a connection between the fire and her support for Braxton. One note she received reads: "You f**cking nr bh get your nr ass out of my town right now with non nr mayor braxton or die or get burn down. I've been watching you 4 kids right and your nr new home. If you do [sic] get out of my town you and that n*r non mayor Braxton gona [sic] die." The letter included images of swastikas and a drawing of Braxton and Lewis being hung from a tree.

Braxton, too, started experiencing retaliation after he won. He has been ostracized by some members of the white community in town, though, some support him and still consider him both a friend and their mayor.

When Black families called in to report fires, he would be the only firefighter to show up to the call. He would have to call firefighters from neighboring towns to help.

Later, a Black woman flagged Braxton down to tell him her elderly sister had gone into cardiac arrest. Braxton ran to the fire department to get a defibrillator, but he had been locked out of the building. He drove home, returned to the department, got the machine and tried to revive the woman, but it was too late.

Following the incident, Stokes and the council served Braxton, who has won awards for his service as a firefighter, with papers for suspension from the department, accusing him of theft and not showing up for trainings. After the Hale county emergency management agency director intervened, Braxton was reinstated.

Braxton has also spotted drones following him and his wife around town, at their home and at his mother’s home. At one point, he said, a white man attempted to run him off the road.

In all, the cluster that totaled five distinct glaciers, covering about 1.5 square miles back in 1984, has shrunk down to patches of ice less than one-third of a square mile. Nearby Overcoat Glacier, also in King County, is in the same throes.

"Only Lynch Glacier remains an active glacier," he said. "That one still has a chance to sustain itself for a time. It's effectively the last functional glacier left in King County, flowing west toward Puget Sound."

That last part is crucial. The Skykomish River below these peaks is already on a federal watch list for higher-than-healthy water temperatures. Pelto observed that the recommended max temperature of the river water for salmon, about 60 degrees, has been exceeded every day this summer since late July.

"The loss of the ice up there is causing issues that extend all the way to the Sound," he said.

This morning, a group of 28 local faith leaders and other community members sent Mayor Nadine Woodward a letter asking her to formally assert support for the separation of church and state.

"We ask that you make very clear that you renounce Christian nationalism and white supremacy," the letter reads, in part, "We ask you to show with your words and actions that you fully embrace Spokane's newly adopted slogan, 'In Spokane, We All Belong.' "

The letter is in response to Woodward's appearance at Sunday night's Let Us Worship rally, where she was introduced by Matt Shea, former Spokane Valley state representative and prayed over by Shea and Christian nationalist praise leader Sean Feucht.

"Every problem we face in this country whether it's a bonfire, homosexual marriage, transgender issues, whether we're talking the economy. Every single problem in this country has one answer and his name is Jesus Christ," Shea said, shortly before welcoming the mayor and other political leaders to the stage.

Feucht, Shea and Collier have spent years leading various movements that call for Christians to assume governmental power and remake society based on their interpretation of scripture. A quote from Feucht at an event earlier this year offers a succinct summary: "We want God to be in control of everything. We want believers to be the ones writing the laws."

If you asked a spokesperson from any Fortune 500 Company to list the benefits of genocide or give you the corporation's take on whether slavery was beneficial, they would most likely either refuse to comment or say "those things are evil; there are no benefits." However, Google has AI employees, SGE and Bard, who are more than happy to offer arguments in favor of these and other unambiguously wrong acts. If that's not bad enough, the company's bots are also willing to weigh in on controversial topics such as who goes to heaven and whether democracy or fascism is a better form of government.

Google SGE includes Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini on a list of "greatest" leaders and Hitler also makes its list of "most effective leaders."

Google Bard also gave a shocking answer when asked whether slavery was beneficial. It said "there is no easy answer to the question of whether slavery was beneficial," before going on to list both pros and cons.

Across Idaho, doctors are leaving, looking for states where politics don't dictate how they practice medicine. The consequences of Idaho's anti-choice laws hit Sandpoint fast and hard, hollowing out medical care for women within months. For years, the town had a maternity ward that delivered as many as 350 babies every year – now it has nothing. The OB-GYN ward shut down this spring and doctors have been fleeing the state in a steady stream, seeking shelter in places where their work doesn't put them at risk of criminal charges or big lawsuits.

It's become a gamble, getting pregnant and giving birth in a place that no longer has a maternity unit or any obstetricians. Sandpoint is small, fewer than 10,000 people, but it's been a medical hub for a rural region of 50,000 in north Idaho, Montana and Washington.

For people like Sanders, pregnancy care in town is no longer an option. This is what happens when a state government that's been itching to ban abortion enacts some of the most restrictive laws in the country and ensnares all of reproductive health and a good share of routine medical care in its dragnet. But the women of Sandpoint are clear about one thing they want others to know: this can happen anywhere in the post-Roe United States. Nowhere is as safe as you might believe and the battle won't stop at state borders.

Idaho is one of several states that had trigger laws: immediate abortion restrictions that went into effect when Roe v Wade fell a year ago. In August of 2022, the state enacted a near-total ban on abortion with exceptions only if the mother's life is in danger, or in the case of rape and incest. Those instances require a police report to be filed. The state also adopted what it called an "abortion trafficking" ban, which bars taking minors to other states for abortion care. Family members can sue doctors for thousands of dollars if they perform an abortion, and doctors may face criminal fines and even prison time.

Idaho also became the only state in the country to stop tracking maternal mortality rates. Activists say it's like they don't want anyone to know how deadly their decisions might be.

The founder and sponsor of a far-right network of secretive, men-only, invitation-only fraternal lodges in the US is a former industrialist who has frequently speculated about his future as a warlord after the collapse of America, a Guardian investigation has found.

Federal and state tax and company filings show that the Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR) and its creator, Charles Haywood, also have financial ties with the far-right Claremont Institute.

SACR's most recent IRS filing names Haywood as the national organization’s principal officer. Other filings identify three lodges in Idaho – in Boise, Coeur d'Alene and Moscow – and another in Dallas, Texas.

Idaho, always Idaho.

One idea he has repeatedly raised on the website is that he might serve as a "warlord" at the head of an "armed patronage network" or "APN", defined as an "organizing device in conditions where central authority has broken down" in which the warlord's responsibility is "the short- and long-term protection, military and otherwise, of those who recognize his authority and act, in part, at his behest".

The "possibilities involving violence" that APNs might face, Haywood writes include "more-or-less open warfare with the federal government, or some subset or remnant of it".

Skyler Kressin of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, appears to serve a key role in SACR. Idaho and Texas company records show that Kressin incorporated lodges in Boise, Coeur d'Alene and Dallas; serves as a director of the Coeur d'Alene and Dallas lodges; and was named as the principal officer of the parent organization on its 2020-2021 tax return.

Like other members revealed as officers in the filings, Kressin appears to be an affluent professional working as a tax accountant.

Lives in hick resort town in Idaho, check. Occupation, tax accountancy, that well-known incubator of charismatic revolutionaries. Check. Meet your next king! Somewhere down by the lake, we'll let you know, and make sure to bring your Form SACR-1088, three copies please, and use the name you'd like to be revealed by hackers in the near future.

At a gathering of Christian nationalist preachers called Let Us Worship on Sunday night, Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward took to the stage with other political candidates to receive prayers and an endorsement from former Spokane Valley legislator-turned-pastor, Matt Shea.

The event came almost exactly four years after Woodward denounced what she called Shea's "divisive and extreme rhetoric and ideology." Onstage Sunday, Shea began by striking an unmistakable chord of reconciliation.

"I want you to extend your hands," Shea implored the crowd in a video of the event RANGE reviewed, “because we have an enemy we need to be fighting. His name is Satan. We don’t need to be fighting each other, amen?” The crowd shouted, “Amen.”

Woodward, her hands crossed in front of her, nodded positively.

*A Southern California business owner was shot and killed Friday by a man who objected to an LGBTQ+ Pride flag displayed at her clothing store, officials said.

San Bernardino County sheriff's deputies responded to the Mag.Pi clothing store in Cedar Glen, Calif., at around 5 p.m. local time for reports of a shooting.

Deputies discovered the victim, 66-year-old Laura Ann Carleton, suffering from a gunshot wound. Carleton was pronounced dead at the scene, the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department said in a news release.

The suspect, who was not identified by officials, fled the scene on foot.

According to deputies, the man made "several disparaging remarks about a rainbow flag" that stood outside Carleton's store before ultimately shooting her.*

Christian nationalism has simmered in the American psyche for decades, and in the last 15 years has boiled over with increasing frequency into the public square, energized by growing resistance to cultural liberalism. Keystone events like the election of the nation’s first Black president, the presidency of Donald Trump and pandemic shutdowns have fueled the growing movement. Though many Christians nationalists see that phrase as derogatory, some embrace it and agree its definition is apt: they want the Christian God in control of government.

The Inland Northwest has long been a nexus point for movements across the extreme right, from the militia movement to white nationalism to sects of Christian identitarianism in many forms and flavors.

For some Christian nationalists, the Inland Northwest is even more than a nexus. It is the promised land. A place for believers to gather and eventually rule, whether the ultimate name for that holy country is the Unstoppable Kingdom, the State of Liberty or the American Redoubt.

Washington State Department of Labor and Industries inspectors found that Amazon required workers execute repetitive motions, lifting and other physical work at a fast pace.

Experts say that puts workers at the risk of developing work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs).

Amazon's Spokane fulfillment center employs about 2,400 workers. In the last three years of operation, there have been 400 worker's compensation claims for the type of injury known as WMSD.

Labor and Industries has previously cited other Amazons in Washington. All have revealed that the company was aware of these hazards.

State officials say they consider this most recent violation is to be willful and, for that reason, assessed a higher penalty.

Apart from the fine related to putting workers at risk, they were also fined for noise levels that were too high for workers not wearing appropriate hearing protection.

Dozens of wildfires are burning in the Canadian province of Québec, and the smoke is so bad that it's causing air quality problems across large swaths of the U.S.

The National Weather Service said air quality has "plummeted" across the Northeast.

Officials from the Midwest to the East Coast and as far south as North Carolina are warning residents to take precautions as the hazy smoke floats south and poses a risk to public health.