Rep. Joyce Beatty, an ex-officio board member, accused the White House of lying about having unanimous support to rename the Kennedy Center after Trump, saying she was “not allowed to speak or voice my opposition”
Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty is accusing White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt of misleading the public about the level of support behind renaming the Kennedy Center after Donald Trump.
Beatty, who has an automatic seat on the Kennedy Center board as a congressional leader, spoke out after Leavitt announced on Thursday, Dec. 18, that the board had just voted “unanimously” to change the name of the John F. Kennedy Memorial for the Performing Arts to the “Trump-Kennedy Center.”
“Be clear: I was on that call, and as I tried to push my button to voice my concern, to ask questions and certainly not to vote in support of this, I was muted. Each time I tried to speak, I was muted. Participants were not allowed to voice their concerns who were online, yet it was said at the end it was a unanimous vote,” she continued.
Its weird that this isnt being noted as a huge fuckin deal.
Congressional members being actively muted and then the public being told it was unanimous is some gestapo bullshit.
We’ve gone past talking over speakers and now are outright muting them…
Sadly, on my list of the worst things going on in my country right now, this doesn’t even make the top 25.
This is the gish gallop bullshit they always do
You do enough shitty things all at once, the pushback against all of them is much lesser
flooding the zone/probing attacks
It is almost like you lot have feared all this time to have no part of your life touched by an authoritarian rule and at the end of the day you had no idea what an authoritarian government looks like. All those studies, all that political theory… For nothing!
Nothing is a big deal to Americans. They’re perfectly content with this and the online performative outrage is exhausting to everyone else in the world. They should just own their shit instead of pretending that they are appalled or whatever it is.
Americans have been huffing their own farts for so long about their country being the ultimate expression of democracy that they came to see it as an immutable fact of life rather than something that needs constant tending, and now they don’t know how to do it.
It’s the feeling I get too. I read the news about Bulgarian government going down from protests, mainly led by young people. Serbs have been protesting against corruption in their government for a year straight and their country is basically a police state. Indonesians protested for months against their government trying to raise benefits for the House of Representative members. And many other protests around the world that last for months on end. Meanwhile Americans protest one day in summer when it’s nice outside, brag about the numbers of people that attended (very American thing to do I guess) then go home and act appalled online when Trump breaks another law.
Because despite the fascism, we are, at home, still perfectly comfortable. Most of us can still go out to the movies, hang out in the park, have dinner with any number of friends, all without a second thought. That’s why most of us haven’t taken action.
I’ve seen a lot of excuses for why Americans can’t defend themselves like they’re exhausted after work, they have bills to pay, they have a family to take care of. Those are all important but I think they forget that every single person involved in protest throughout history has had those things to worry about. The War of Independence wasn’t fought by thousands of people with plenty of energy, all their bills paid for months, and a family doing fine.
They keep waiting for a perfect moment when their lives are great to go out and protest. It will never happen. The perfect time to get in the streets was 11 months ago. The next best time is now.
Their state religion is narcissism.
Christian Nationalism
Americans after telling themselves they can’t change anything
“It was unanimous among those we allowed to vote.”
Some of my local government boards have been virtual since covid and this sort of thing has occasionally been a problem there, too. I remember one instance where I was scribbling furiously on a piece of paper and holding it up to my camera to stop the chairperson from unjustly censoring me.
The convenience of meeting virtually has been great, but it does have some serious potential drawbacks in terms of maintaining Democratic norms and accountability if the people controlling the software are tyrants. At least in-person, you can stand up and yell at them and they can’t do anything about it short of tackling you.
There definitely needs to be some sort of moderator position for virtual meetings. You should definitely not rely on the highest ranking person on the video call to be the one in charge of maintaining the flow of discourse.
Because then you get shit like this.
You also need a special app that maintains and transcribed records of what was said my each line even while muted as well as when it’s muted and by whom.
Muting is necessary to maintain order and decorum, but if you’re being censored you should be able ro show what you were saying while censored
When I heard unanimous, I knew that was a lie.
Straight up USSR type shit.
Hey, that’s my rep. What the fuck
Time for a quick mail or phone call to your entire representation: both Senators, Reps, Governor,
You have no rep.
If this government has its way. This is such a petty thing to silence people on too. It’s like the Times New Roman stuff. It seems small when compared to so much other shit they’ve done, but it’s still such a ridiculous overreach in plain view of everyone. It’s a litmus test of where and how they can push boundaries and they are 100% intent on pushing every boundary they can.
Big surprise she’s black and they muted her.
Deep cut for the older crowd.For the younger crowd, this person is implying that the Rep is lying.
