The public feud between Taylor Swift and her former producers reportedly took a &#8220;threatening&#8221; turn Friday after Swift accused Big Machine Label Group co-founders Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta of saying she couldn&#8217;t perform any of her old hits and &#8220;basically&#8221; telling her she should just &#8220;be a good little girl and shut up&#8221; — or be &#8220;punished.&#8221; In response to the alleged bullying, Swift urged her fans to let the producers &#8220;know how you feel about this.&#8221;
According to <a href="https://pagesix.com/2019/11/17/the-scooter-braun-taylor-swift-feud-just-took-a-wild-turn/">Page Six</a>, Braun was forced to shut down his office in Nashville Friday &#8220;following threats allegedly sparked by Taylor Swift’s claim she was being bullied and barred from performing her old hits.&#8221;
&#8220;Braun’s company, Ithaca Holdings, was deluged with calls after Swift alleged that he and Big Machine Label Group co-founder Scott Borchetta were preventing her from performing her hits at the American Music Awards, and refused to permit her music to be used in a Netflix doc,&#8221; Page Six&#8217;s Emily Smith reports. Nashville Police said no threats were reported, Smith notes.
The alleged &#8220;threats&#8221; followed Swift posting a letter on social media Thursday accusing Braun and Borchetta of saying she cannot perform her old songs at the American Music Awards &#8220;because they claim that would be re-recording my music before I’m allowed to next year.&#8221;
She also alleges that Borchetta has told her to stop talking about him and Braun in public. &#8220;Basically, be a good little girl and shut up. Or you&#8217;ll be punished,&#8221; she writes. The letter reads in part:
<blockquote>Guys, it’s been announced recently that the American Music Awards will be honoring me with the Artist of the Decade Award at this year’s ceremony. I’ve been planning to perform a medley of my hits throughout the decade on the show. Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun have now said that I’m not allowed to perform my old songs on television because they claim that would be re-recording my music before I’m allowed to next year. Additionally — and this isn&#8217;t the way I had planned on telling you this news — Netflix has created a documentary about my life for the past few years. Scott and Scooter have declined the use of my older music or performance footage for this project, even though there is no mention of either of them or Big Machine Records anywhere in the film.
Scott Borchetta told my team that they&#8217;ll allow me to use my music only if I do these things: If I agree not to re-record copycat versions of my songs next year (which is something I&#8217;m legally allowed to do and looking forward to) and also told me that I need to stop talking about him and Scooter Braun.
I feel very strongly that sharing what is happening to me could change the awareness level for other artists and potentially help them to avoid sharing a similar fate. The message being sent to me is very clear. Basically, be a good little girl and shut up. Or you&#8217;ll be punished.
This is WRONG. Neither of these men had a hand in writing those songs. They did nothing to create the relationship I have with my fans. So this is where I am asking for your help.
Please let Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun know how you feel about this. Scooter also manages several artists who I really believe care about other artists and their work. Please ask them for help with this — I &#8216;m hoping they can talk some sense into the men who are exercising tyrannical control over someone who just wants to play the music she wrote.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Don’t know what else to do <a href="https://t.co/1uBrXwviTS">pic.twitter.com/1uBrXwviTS</a>
&mdash; Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) <a href="https://twitter.com/taylorswift13/status/1195123215657508867?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 14, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
In response, Big Machine Label Group issued a <a href="https://pagesix.com/2019/11/15/scooter-braun-scott-borchetta-slam-taylor-swifts-claims-about-amas/">statement</a> to Page Six Friday expressing &#8220;shock&#8221; at Swift&#8217;s claims and asserting that &#8220;at no point did we say Taylor could not perform on the AMAs or block her Netflix special.&#8221;
&#8220;As Taylor Swift’s partner for over a decade, we were shocked to see her tumblr statements yesterday based on false information. At no point did we say Taylor could not perform on the AMAs or block her Netflix special. In fact, we do not have the right to keep her from performing live anywhere,&#8221; the group told the outlet. &#8220;Since Taylor’s decision to leave Big Machine last fall, we have continued to honor all of her requests to license her catalog to third parties as she promotes her current record in which we do not financially participate.&#8221;
&#8220;Despite our persistent efforts to find a private and mutually satisfactory solution, Taylor made a unilateral decision . . . to enlist her fan base in a calculated manner that greatly affects the safety of our employees and their families,&#8221;  the group told Page Six.
But Swift&#8217;s team insists that Borchetta &#8220;flatly denied the request for both the AMAs and Netflix.&#8221;
A source told Page Six that Bruan &#8220;has repeatedly reached out to Swift since June to meet in person and broker a partnership, but she has ignored him.&#8221;

Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift’s Message To Fans Results In &#8216;Threats&#8217; To Producers, &#8216;Shut Down&#8217; Office

Pop icon Taylor Swift has canceled her scheduled performance at the 2019 Melbourne Cup after animal rights activists accused her of &#8220;endorsing animal abuse.&#8221;
&#8220;The controversial horse racing event in Australia announced the Grammy winner, 29, would be headlining in early September but revealed on Saturday she pulled out,&#8221; reports <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/taylor-swift-cancels-melbourne-cup">Fox News</a>. &#8220;Six horses have died while racing in the Melbourne Cup, including an Irish racehorse that was euthanized on the racetrack last year after breaking its shoulder.&#8221;
In a statement, Mushroom Events, which organizes the Melbourne Cup, said that changes in Swift&#8217;s &#8220;Asian promo schedule&#8221; resulted in the cancelation. &#8220;Regrettably, Taylor is no longer able to make it to this year’s Melbourne Cup. Changes to her Asian promo schedule have made it logistically impossible for her to be here. To all of Taylor’s fans, we hope to see Taylor in Australia in 2020,&#8221; said Michael Gudinski.
Neil Wilson, CEO of Victoria Racing Club (VRC), said Swift&#8217;s cancelation is &#8220;disappointing.&#8221;
&#8220;The VRC has learned that Taylor Swift is now unable to make the trip to Australia and therefore cannot be with us on Melbourne Cup Day. Obviously, this is disappointing for everyone,&#8221; said Wilson. &#8220;We understand how important the pre-Cup entertainment is and we look forward to providing an update shortly.&#8221;
Taylor Swift has given no statement on the matter.
Shortly after the Melbourne Cup announced Swift&#8217;s name, the animal rights group Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses immediately <a href="https://www.change.org/p/taylor-swift-ask-taylor-swift-to-say-nuptothecup?recruiter=42154035&amp;utm_source=share_petition&amp;utm_medium=twitter&amp;utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_abi&amp;recruited_by_id=8da05220-0aa9-0130-5b2c-4040d2fbfbbf&amp;share_bandit_exp=abi-17805007-en-AU&amp;share_bandit_var=v1">launched a petition</a> asking people to &#8220;sign &amp; share&#8221; so that she would cancel her performance:
<blockquote>It seems Taylor Swift is either completely unaware of the cruel reality of horse racing or she has put money before compassion by agreeing to perform at the 2019 Melbourne Cup.
This is an event where at least 6 horses have been KILLED over the past 6 years. With such huge success already, she could easily afford to not only say NO, but use the opportunity to help the horses by speaking up against animal cruelty.
The day is becoming widely regarded as a national disgrace, with #NupToTheCup last year trending all day on Twitter.
One horse is killed on Australian racetracks every three days. Thousands who are fortunate enough to survive being beaten with a whip and pushed well beyond their limits on the track are slaughtered when no longer profitable. Many don&#8217;t even make it to the track, killed as foals for simply not having the desired attributes.
Taylor Swift is endorsing animal abuse by performing at this event where horses are being killed for gambling profits and entertainment. If she cares at all about other animals the way she appears to care about cats, she will cancel her show and use her voice to make a strong statement that animal abuse is unacceptable and say #NupToTheCup.</blockquote>
After news of the cancelation broke, the Coalition praised the Swift&#8217;s decision in a post on Facebook Saturday.
&#8220;THANK YOU TAYLOR! We are absolutely delighted with the news,&#8221; said the post. &#8220;The pressure on Taylor Swift to cancel her performance was significant. Her fans did not want to see her supporting animal abuse. Whilst the reason being used by the racing industry is a scheduling mix up, it appears to us that she has responded to those calls.&#8221;
&#8220;We will be keeping a close eye out for whether another artist is announced to perform at the day which is widely becoming known as a national disgrace,&#8221; the post continued. &#8220;No one should be supporting this event which depends on the abuse and suffering of horses.&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">Please Sign &amp; Share<a href="https://twitter.com/taylorswift13?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@taylorswift13</a>, please cancel your Melbourne Cup performance and instead use your voice to take a stand against animal abuse and say <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NupToTheCup?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NupToTheCup</a> <a href="https://t.co/oKDtqiwkYt">https://t.co/oKDtqiwkYt</a>
— Horse Racing Kills (@hrseracingkills) <a href="https://twitter.com/hrseracingkills/status/1172058929146163200?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 12, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Taylor Swift Cancels Australian Horse Racing Concert Following Criticism From Animal Rights Activists

Pop icon Taylor Swift has made a complete 180-degree shift from being the formerly singular apolitical voice in an industry overrun with left-wing activists to being a full-blown woke-scold.
Speaking with <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/taylor-swift-rolling-stone-interview-880794/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Rolling Stone</a> magazine, Swift said that she is now entirely committed to &#8220;helping Democrats&#8221; defeat President Trump come 2020.
&#8220;I keep trying to learn as much as I can about politics, and it’s become something I’m now obsessed with, whereas before, I was living in this sort of political ambivalence because the person I voted for had always won,&#8221; Swift said. &#8220;I think a lot of people are like me, where they just didn’t really know that this could happen. But I’m just focused on the 2020 election. I’m really focused on it. I’m really focused on how I can help and not hinder. Because I also don’t want it to backfire again, because I do feel that the celebrity involvement with Hillary’s campaign was used against her in a lot of ways.”
Swift said that Democrats need to start thinking more like a team and quit the purity tests that can prevent more electable candidates from becoming the party&#8217;s nominees.
&#8220;I do think, as a party, we need to be more of a team,&#8221; Swift said. &#8220;With Republicans, if you’re wearing that red hat, you’re one of them. And if we’re going to do anything to change what’s happening, we need to stick together. We need to stop dissecting why someone’s on our side or if they’re on our side in the right way or if they phrased it correctly. We need to not have the right kind of Democrat and the wrong kind of Democrat. We need to just be like, &#8216;You’re a Democrat? Sick. Get in the car. We’re going to the mall.'&#8221;
The &#8220;Shake It Off&#8221; singer&#8217;s evolution into a full-throated Democratic activist comes after leftists criticized her for not speaking out in Hillary&#8217;s favor during the 2016 election, arguing she had a duty to help defeat President Trump.
&#8220;If Taylor thinks that her public fallout with Kimye was the most damning public relations nightmare she endured last year, then she should probably expand her news diet,&#8221; wrote Marie Claire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/23566/feminists-are-still-angry-taylor-swift-never-emily-zanotti">magazine at the time</a>. &#8220;Fall of 2016 saw a slew of celebrities become outspokenly involved in the political process, as they should have &#8230; Whether she likes it or not, Taylor&#8217;s politics (or her perceived political apathy) are a part of her reputation, and a song addressing or at least acknowledging that (even if the song did not address her personal politics) would have been welcome.&#8221;
Since then, Swift has adopted a radical leftist persona on every issue sacred to the Democratic Party, including abortion, which she recently told The Guardian <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/50988/taylor-swift-admits-she-obviously-supports-paul-bois">she &#8220;obviously&#8221; supports</a>.
As to why she remained out of politics during the 2016 election, Swift told The Guardian that she experienced a tremendous amount of family drama that year, forcing her to keep a lower profile in order to maintain her mental health.
&#8220;I was just trying to protect my mental health — not read the news very much, go cast my vote, tell people to vote. I just knew what I could handle and I knew what I couldn&#8217;t. I was literally about to break,&#8221; she said, adding that she felt &#8220;really remorseful for not saying anything.&#8221;

taylorswift.jpg

Taylor Swift Is Now ‘Really Focused’ On Beating Republicans

2020 Election

Democratic Party

Leftism

Progressivism

At the MTV Video Music Awards on August 26, Taylor Swift won the video of the year award for her latest song &#8220;You Need to Calm Down.&#8221; It&#8217;s a song that trashes anyone still dissenting from the LGBTQ agenda and begs them to &#8220;control your urges to scream about all the people you hate / &#8216;Cause shade never made anybody less gay.&#8221;
The network news shows gushed over her leftist activism and the &#8220;Taylor Effect&#8221; they expect it to provide. ABC&#8217;s George Stephanopoulos said, &#8220;she&#8217;s doing it the way she does her music &#8230; with intent and with intelligence.&#8221;
What is Swift&#8217;s political agenda here? She&#8217;s pushing a bill called the Equality Act, sponsored by gay Congressman David Cicilline and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR). As she sang her song about the haters, MTV put the words &#8220;EQUALITY ACT&#8221; in huge bold letters above her.
Swift lobbied her MTV fans in her acceptance speech. &#8220;You voting for this video means that you want a world where we are all treated equally under the law, regardless of who we love, regardless of how we identify,&#8221; she assured, and they fawned all over her.
In her Change.org petition, which she boasted has more than half a million signatures, Swift argued, &#8220;Our country&#8217;s lack of protection for its own citizens ensures that LGBTQ people must live in fear that their lives could be turned upside down by an employer or landlord who is homophobic or transphobic. The fact that, legally, some people are completely at the mercy of the hatred and bigotry of others is disgusting and unacceptable.&#8221;
That&#8217;s flat-out wrong. The so-called &#8220;Equality Act&#8221; enables anti-religious hatred and bigotry. The law would insert &#8220;sexual orientation and gender identity&#8221; into the Civil Rights Act and expand the definition of &#8220;public accommodations.&#8221; The bill amends &#8220;stadium&#8221; and inserts &#8220;stadium or other place of or establishment that provides exhibition, entertainment, recreation, exercise, amusement, public gathering, or public display.&#8221;
Then the laundry list unfolds, as they add &#8220;any establishment that provides a good, service, or program, including a store, shopping center, online retailer or service provider, salon, bank, gas station, food bank, service or care center, shelter, travel agency, or funeral parlor, or establishment that provides health care, accounting, or legal services.&#8221; There&#8217;s even more, including, &#8220;any train service, bus service, car service, taxi service, airline service, station, depot, or other place of or establishment that provides transportation service.&#8221;
The Family Research Council warns that you can expect that over-broad definition of &#8220;a good, service, or program&#8221; to apply to churches, religious private schools and nonprofit social-service groups. It also warns that &#8220;attorneys will likely be required to represent homosexuals in dissolving their same-sex &#8216;marriages,&#8217; Christian schools will likely be required to offer transgendered students the bathroom of their choice, and Christian homeless shelters will likely be required to accommodate same-sex couples.&#8221;
The bill explicitly sets out to guarantee that religion cannot be used as a defense: &#8220;The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 &#8230; shall not provide a claim concerning, or a defense to a claim under, a covered title, or provide a basis for challenging the application or enforcement of a covered title.&#8221;
The LGBTQ orthodoxy shreds dissent. There is no debate allowed. There are &#8220;allies&#8221; like Taylor Swift, and there are &#8220;hateful&#8221; people who must be punished. This oppressive regime started in Hollywood and aspires to end in every corner where people still cling to their Bibles and their guns — their other cause.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

BOZELL &#038; GRAHAM: Networks Endorse Taylor Swift’s ‘Equality’ Lobbying

LGBT

Transgender

On Monday night at the VMA awards, singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, who has decided to go political after publicly stating she regrets her non-involvement in the 2016 election, slammed the Trump administration for supposedly ignoring the &#8220;Equality Act&#8221; petition, stating that it has &#8220;five times the amount that it would need to warrant a response from the White House. &#8221;
Swift won the award for the best video of the year for her song &#8220;You Need to Calm Down&#8221; video. Accepting the award, which was voted on by fans, she said, &#8220;I first want to say thank you to the fans because in this video several points were made, so you voting for this video means that you want a world where we&#8217;re all treated equally under the law regardless of who we love or how we identify.&#8221; She added, &#8220;I want to thank everyone that signed that petition because it now has half a million signatures, which is five times the amount that it would need to warrant a response from the White House,&#8221; glancing purposefully at her watch, as <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/taylor-swift-accepts-video-year-award-at-2019-mtv-vmas-1232972">The Hollywood Reporter</a> noted.
The video of the song also won the &#8220;Video for Good&#8221; award for songs that have raised awareness.
Swift recently spoke to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/aug/23/taylor-swift-trump-thinks-his-presidency-autocracy">The Guardian</a> about President Trump’s administration, saying, &#8220;We’re a democracy – at least, we’re supposed to be – where you’re allowed to disagree, dissent, debate. I really think that he thinks this is an autocracy.&#8221;
The VMAs also featured a moment when actor John Travolta, presenting the Video of the Year award to Swift, <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-7397585/John-Travolta-mistakes-Drag-Races-Jade-Jolie-Taylor-Swift-dropping-F-bomb-MTV-VMAs.html">mistakenly took drag queen Jade Jolie for Swift</a> and started to present Jolie the trophy. The Daily Mail reported, &#8220;The RuPaul&#8217;s Drag Race alum looked obviously stunned momentarily and flashed a big ‘surprise&#8217; smile and went in for a hug, which by that time Travolta had realized his mistake and gave a &#8216;whoops&#8217; tap on the shoulder.&#8221;
The Daily Mail noted of Swift’s &#8220;You Need To Calm Down&#8221; video, &#8220;In the video, seven drag queens do their best to impersonate famous artists like Cardi B and Beyonce while they wait for one of them to be crowned by RuPaul. Fittingly, Jolie played the drag queen version of Swift.&#8221;
As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/48581/taylor-swifts-pro-pride-video-gets-ripped-shreds-james-barrett">The Daily Wire</a> reported in June, Swift’s &#8220;You Need To Calm Down&#8221; video prompted backlash from critics on both sides of the political aisle. <a href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/music/a28067315/taylor-swift-you-need-to-calm-down-video-stereotypes/">Cosmopolitan</a> snapped, &#8220;About halfway through the video, we are introduced to the anti-LGBTQ+ crowd protesting Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Justin Mikita’s fake wedding. Of course, they’re portrayed with about as much nuance as the lyrics of the song.&#8221;
<a href="https://thefederalist.com/2019/06/18/taylor-swifts-need-calm-breathtakingly-elitist/">The Federalist</a> commented:
<blockquote>To illustrate her LGBT pride anthem, Swift assembled the glitterati, casting them as the heroes of a utopian trailer park where her feud with Katy Perry ends, and ugly gay marriage protesters meet their match in a fabulous show of celebrity force. The set, of course, almost certainly cost more than what many people who make such places their home earn in a year. &#8220;Love letters only,&#8221; reads the side of one lily white mailbox in Swift World. (Where do the bills go?) Her creativity mysteriously lapsed when it came time to cast the protesters, who look like they should be playing banjos in &#8220;Deliverance&#8221;: toothless, badly dressed, holding misspelled signs.</blockquote>

Taylor Swift Rips White House At VMA Awards

Donald Trump

Trump Administration

Pop icon Taylor Swift says she &#8220;obviously&#8221; supports abortion and now regrets remaining apolitical throughout the 2016 election.
Speaking with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/aug/23/taylor-swift-trump-thinks-his-presidency-autocracy">The Guardian</a>, the 29-year-old singer said that she &#8220;just can&#8217;t believe&#8221; her home state of Tennessee would ever consider protecting unborn babies in the womb.
&#8220;Obviously, I&#8217;m pro-choice,&#8221; Swift told the outlet. &#8220;I just can’t believe this is happening.&#8221;
Taylor Swift was referring to Tennessee now considering an all-out ban on the practice of abortion in the state. The bill passed the State House back in March and has been amended since to include even stricter penalties for those who obtain abortions illegally.
&#8220;Earlier this summer it was amended into an <a href="http://www.capitol.tn.gov/Bills/111/Amend/SA0277.pdf">even bolder proposal</a>: banning virtually all abortions by defining &#8216;viability&#8217; to mean &#8216;that a male human sperm has penetrated the zona pellucida of the female ovum, which includes, but is not limited to, serial human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) determinations or the detection of a heartbeat in an unborn child,'&#8221; <a href="https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/national-right-to-life-testifies-against-tennessee-bill-to-ban-all-abortions">LifeSiteNews</a> said of the bill. &#8220;Starting effectively at conception, the bill would make committing an abortion a Class C felony and revoke a violator&#8217;s medical license in all cases except to prevent the &#8216;death of the pregnant woman or to prevent serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman.'&#8221;
In the same interview with The Guardian, Swift lamented how American values have been twisted in the age of President Trump, likening his reign to an autocracy.
&#8220;We&#8217;re a democracy — at least, we&#8217;re supposed to be — where you&#8217;re allowed to disagree, dissent, debate. I really think that he thinks this is an autocracy,&#8221; she said.
Taylor Swift managed to stay largely apolitical throughout her career, but that all changed when feminists began to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/23566/feminists-are-still-angry-taylor-swift-never-emily-zanotti">publicly chastise her</a> for not endorsing Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election.
&#8220;If Taylor thinks that her public fallout with Kimye was the most damning public relations nightmare she endured last year, then she should probably expand her news diet,&#8221; wrote Marie Claire magazine at the time. &#8220;Fall of 2016 saw a slew of celebrities become outspokenly involved in the political process, as they should have &#8230; Whether she likes it or not, Taylor&#8217;s politics (or her perceived political apathy) are a part of her reputation, and a song addressing or at least acknowledging that (even if the song did not address her personal politics) would have been welcome.&#8221;
In the fall of 2018, Swift took the criticism to heart by opposing Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) during the midterm elections, choosing to endorse her male opponent, which was followed by her <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45771/taylor-swift-donates-113k-lgbtq-advocacy-group-paul-bois">donating </a>$113k to fight for LGBTQ equality.
As to why she remained out of politics during the 2016 election, Swift told The Guardian that she experienced a tremendous amount of family drama that year, forcing her to keep a low-profile in order to maintain her mental health.
&#8220;I was just trying to protect my mental health — not read the news very much, go cast my vote, tell people to vote. I just knew what I could handle and I knew what I couldn&#8217;t. I was literally about to break,&#8221; she said, adding that she felt &#8220;really remorseful for not saying anything.&#8221;
Swift assured her fans that she will be actively engaged in the fight to overthrow President Trump during the 2020 elections.

Taylor Swift Admits She ‘Obviously’ Supports Abortion

Abortion

Scott Swift, the father of country-turned-pop superstar Taylor Swift, apparently has conservative views — and that might have been a problem for the newly Woke entertainer.
According to a report from <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7381421/Taylor-Swifts-father-deletes-private-Facebook-account.html">The Daily Mail</a>, Ms. Swift shared a humorous post from her father&#8217;s Facebook page to her Tumblr account. But once fans stormed Scott&#8217;s page and learned of his *gasp* conservative views, the Tumblr post was deleted, and soon after that, Mr. Swift&#8217;s Facebook page was deactivated.
Some of the posts and re-posts from Scott, according to The Daily Mail, expressed support for police officers, knocked presidential hopeful Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), praised the late First Lady Nancy Reagan, and critiqued illegal immigration and entitlements.
One post, emblazoned with “Blue Lives Matter,” showed a young woman and a child allegedly left behind after a police officer was killed on the job. &#8220;Share this to show that police are people too. Stop the violence against America&#8217;s heroes in blue,&#8221; the meme read.
Another shared post featured a photo of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, with text that read, &#8220;I no longer recognize this person as a senator. Share if you don&#8217;t either.&#8221;
&#8220;So sad to hear of the passing of Nancy Reagan,&#8221; a status allegedly published by Mr. Swift in March 2016 said. &#8220;Thought the world of those two wonderful people. Golden Years.&#8221;
The meme concerning illegal immigration and entitlements read as follows, according to The Daily Mail:
<blockquote>“The IRS has returned my tax return to me this year after I apparently answered one of the questions incorrectly&#8230; In response to the question, &#8216;Do you have anyone dependent on you?&#8217; I wrote: &#8216;9.5 million illegal immigrants, 1.1 million crack heads, 3.4 million unemployable scroungers, 80,000 criminals in over 85 prisons plus 650 idiots in Washington&#8217;. The IRS stated the answer I gave was ‘unacceptable!'&#8221;</blockquote>
The initial post allegedly shared and then deleted by Ms. Swift was a joke her father made about gaining &#8220;steps&#8221; on his tracker by placing it in the dryer on cool.
&#8220;This man must be stopped,&#8221; the 29-year-old jokingly captioned the post, adding &#8220;parents on the loose&#8221; and &#8220;no more guitar picks for him&#8221; hashtags.
Swift shed her no-politics stance in 2018, coming out to oppose Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn. &#8220;Her voting record in Congress appalls and terrifies me. These are not MY Tennessee values,&#8221; Swift <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/36999/msm-when-taylor-swift-comes-out-brave-role-model-joseph-curl">wrote</a> in an Instagram post. &#8220;I always have and always will cast my vote based on which candidate will protect and fight for the human rights I believe we all deserve in this country.&#8221;
The pop princess&#8217; latest album is packed with &#8220;political undertones,&#8221; too. In June, Swift dropped a pro-LGBT video for her hit song &#8220;You Need to Calm Down,&#8221; which essentially tells conservatives engaged in the culture war to shut up. The flamboyant and elitist video, however, received <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/48581/taylor-swifts-pro-pride-video-gets-ripped-shreds-james-barrett">fierce criticism</a> from both the Left and Right. &#8220;So [Taylor Swift&#8217;s] new song/video is calming down and not throwing shade yet she stereotypes the protesters&#8230;guess calming down only applies if you agree with her views,&#8221; one unhappy commenter said of the video, as highlighted by left-wing feminist magazine <a href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/music/a28067315/taylor-swift-you-need-to-calm-down-video-stereotypes/">Cosmopolitan</a>.

Taylor Swift and Scott Swift

Taylor Swift’s Father Allegedly Deactivates Facebook Page After Reportedly Conservative Views Exposed

Hollywood

Forever putting her neutral persona behind her, pop icon Taylor Swift went full social justice warrior at the 2019 Teen Choice Awards on Sunday when she delivered a politically-laced speech while accepting the first Icon Award.
According to <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/taylor-swift-uses-teen-choice-icon-award-speech-to-urge-fans-to-stand-up-for-gender-equality-040141869.html">Yahoo News</a>, Swift began her speech by praising U.S. women&#8217;s soccer team player Alex Morgan for standing up for gender equality.
&#8220;First I want to talk about Alex Morgan,&#8221; said Swift. &#8220;The fact that she&#8217;s here presenting this to me is such an honor. Not only winning the World Cup with her amazing teammates, right? But while they were winning the World Cup, they were also taking a historic stand in terms of gender equality, gender pay gaps. Please, please, please support her and her teammates because this isn&#8217;t over yet. It&#8217;s not resolved.&#8221;
&#8220;Get online, talk about it, let people know how you feel about it because what happened to them is unfair,&#8221; Swift continued. &#8220;It&#8217;s happening everywhere, and they are heroes and icons for standing up.&#8221;
Swift made this claim about the gender pay gap between the male and female soccer teams, but a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/50053/us-soccer-releases-fact-sheet-showing-womens-team-ashe-schow">recent report</a> from The Daily Wire&#8217;s Ashe Schow showed that the women players were, in fact, over-paid despite losing millions of dollars:
<blockquote>Now USSF President Carlos Cordeiro is pushing back. He wrote an open letter explaining that he directed U.S. Soccer staff to conduct &#8220;an extensive analysis of the past 10 years of U.S. Soccer&#8217;s financials.&#8221; He said the analysis was &#8220;reviewed by an independent accounting firm.&#8221; The analysis showed that the women&#8217;s team was paid more than the men&#8217;s team.
The fact sheet includes bulleted information about the different pay structures for the men&#8217;s and women&#8217;s teams. USSF claimed that it paid &#8220;women $34.1 million in salaries and game bonuses and we paid our men $26.4 million — not counting the significant additional value of various benefits that our women’s players receive but which our men do not.&#8221;
For example, the women&#8217;s team has a guaranteed salary thanks to their collective bargaining agreement with USSF. They receive a base salary of $100,000 each year and an additional salary of $67,500 to $72,500 for playing in the National Women&#8217;s Soccer League. Male soccer players do not have such an agreement.</blockquote>
Not all of Swift&#8217;s speech focused on fact-free talking points about gender pay gaps. At one point, she told teens to embrace mistakes and embarrassment, advising them to have grace for themselves.
&#8220;One thing I wish I would have known when I was a teen is that mistakes are inevitable,&#8221; said Swift. &#8220;I think sometimes you think if you try hard enough to make every decision perfectly, you think you can possibly ace life and never make any mistakes but, it is normal to make mistakes. I just want you to know that if you are out there and you are being really hard on yourself right now for something that has happened, or messing up, or feeling embarrassed, it&#8217;s normal. That&#8217;s what&#8217;s going to happen to you in life. No one gets through unscathed. We&#8217;re all going to have a few scratches on us.&#8221;
Taylor Swift has managed to stay largely apolitical throughout her career, but that all changed when feminists began to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/23566/feminists-are-still-angry-taylor-swift-never-emily-zanotti">publicly chastise her</a> for not endorsing Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election.
&#8220;If Taylor thinks that her public fallout with Kimye was the most damning public relations nightmare she endured last year, then she should probably expand her news diet,&#8221; wrote Marie Claire magazine. &#8220;Fall of 2016 saw a slew of celebrities become outspokenly involved in the political process, as they should have &#8230; Whether she likes it or not, Taylor&#8217;s politics (or her perceived political apathy) are a part of her reputation, and a song addressing or at least acknowledging that (even if the song did not address her personal politics) would have been welcome.&#8221;
In the fall of 2018, Swift took the criticism to heart by opposing Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) during the midterm elections, choosing to endorse her male opponent, which was followed by her <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45771/taylor-swift-donates-113k-lgbtq-advocacy-group-paul-bois">donating </a>$113k to fight for LGBTQ equality.
Last week, another music icon, Kid Rock, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/50474/kid-rock-slams-taylor-swift-wants-be-democrat-ryan-saavedra">said </a>that Taylor Swift became overtly political because she wanted to start acting more in movies.

Taylor Swift Goes Full SJW At Teen Choice Awards

Feminism

On Friday, Kid Rock slammed Taylor Swift on Twitter over her decision to inject more politics into her music in a seeming attempt to help Democrats ahead of the 2020 elections.
Kid Rock&#8217;s comments about Swift, which included a crude remark, came after Swift explained to leftist magazine Vogue why she was not politically active in 2016.
Kid Rock tweeted, &#8220;Taylor Swift wants to be a democrat because she wants to be in movies….period. And it looks like she will suck the door knob off Hollyweird to get there. Oldest move in the book. Good luck girl. -Kid Rock&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Taylor Swift wants to be a democrat because she wants to be in movies….period. And it looks like she will suck the door knob off Hollyweird to get there. Oldest move in the book. Good luck girl.
-Kid Rock
— Kid Rock (@KidRock) <a href="https://twitter.com/KidRock/status/1159850492874375168?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 9, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Swift revealed that she was not politically active in 2016 because she was worried that she would harm then-Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
&#8220;Unfortunately in the 2016 election you had a political opponent who was weaponizing the idea of the celebrity endorsement,&#8221; Swift said, speaking of Trump. &#8220;He was going around saying, &#8216;I&#8217;m a man of the people. I&#8217;m for you. I care about you.&#8217; I just knew I wasn&#8217;t going to help.&#8221;
According to Fox News, Swift noted that her reputation at that time was not good, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/taylor-swift-hillary-clinton-politics">saying</a>, &#8220;Also, you know, the summer before that election, all people were saying was, &#8216;She&#8217;s calculated. She&#8217;s manipulative. She&#8217;s not what she seems. She&#8217;s a snake. She&#8217;s a liar.&#8217; These are the same exact insults people were hurling at Hillary. Would I be an endorsement or would I be a liability? &#8216;Look, snakes of a feather flock together. Look, the two lying women. The two nasty women.&#8217; Literally millions of people were telling me to disappear. So I disappeared. In many senses.&#8221;
In May, Swift acknowledged that her music is becoming more political and that she is trying to promote an agenda.
&#8220;I definitely think there are political undertones in the new music I made,&#8221; Swift <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/taylor-swift-political-undertones-2020-election">said</a>. &#8220;I’m not planning to stop encouraging young people to vote and to try to get them to talk about what&#8217;s going on in our country. I think that&#8217;s one of the most important things I could do.&#8221;

Celebrities At The Brickyard 400

Kid Rock Slams Taylor Swift: ‘Wants To Be A Democrat Because She Wants To Be In Movies’

Hillary Clinton

Kid Rock

Taylor Swift laid out a series of accusations Sunday after the former manager of Kanye West purchased the rights to all of her past albums for $300 million.
Swift, who has been in the headlines for more than her music increasingly over the last year, posted a <a href="https://taylorswift.tumblr.com/post/185958366550/for-years-i-asked-pleaded-for-a-chance-to-own-my">statement</a> on Tumblr Sunday slamming Big Machine founder Scott Borchetta for selling the rights to all six of her past albums to Scooter Braun, Kanye&#8217;s former manager. Braun, she alleged, was involved in &#8220;incessant, manipulative bullying&#8221; of her &#8220;for years,&#8221; with the help of West and Kardashian.
&#8220;Some fun facts about today’s news: I learned about Scooter Braun’s purchase of my masters as it was announced to the world,&#8221; she writes in a &#8220;sad and grossed out&#8221; post on Tumblr Sunday. &#8220;All I could think about was the incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years. Like when Kim Kardashian orchestrated an illegally recorded snippet of a phone call to be leaked and then Scooter got his two clients together to bully me online about it. (See photo) Or when his client, Kanye West, organized a revenge porn music video which strips my body naked.&#8221;
&#8220;Now Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy,&#8221; she continues. &#8220;Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it.&#8221;
Swift&#8217;s &#8220;revenge porn&#8221; accusation is a reference to Kanye&#8217;s &#8220;Famous&#8221; video in which West appears to be lying in bed with several nude celebrities, including what appears to be a fully naked Swift lying next to him. A few months ago, Swift <a href="https://stylecaster.com/taylor-swift-kanye-west-shade-revenge-porn/">liked</a> a post by one of her fans calling the &#8220;Famous&#8221; video &#8220;straight up revenge porn&#8221;: &#8220;The [&#8216;Famous&#8217;] music video was straight up revenge porn. not to mention putting abuse victims next to their abusers and celebrating sexual assaulters. it was disgusting and he doesn’t get enough crap for it.&#8221; (<a href="https://youtu.be/p7FCgw_GlWc">Here&#8217;s the video; warning: NSFW</a>.)
As <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/taylor-swift-kanye-west-scooter-braun-scott-borchetta-bullying">Fox News</a> notes, Swift&#8217;s accusation against Kardashian is a reference to her &#8220;<a href="http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2017/08/25/taylor-swifts-celebrity-feud-history-from-kanye-west-to-katy-perry-and-beyond.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">infamous recording</a> of Swift and West&#8217;s &#8216;snippet&#8217; of a <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/taylor-swift-goes-on-defensive-once-again-over-famous-song" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">phone call</a> in which [Swift] appeared to <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/taylor-swift-bothered-by-misogynistic-kanye-west-lyrics-about-having-sex-with-her" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">give her blessing</a> to the lyrics to his song &#8216;Famous.'&#8221; After Swift publicly denied giving West permission to use her name in the song, Kardashian posted the &#8220;snippet&#8221; on Snapchat.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/48581/taylor-swifts-pro-pride-video-gets-ripped-shreds-james-barrett">Taylor Swift&#8217;s Pro-Pride Video Gets Ripped To Shreds By Left And Right</a>
In 2018, Swift <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/taylor-swift-record-deal-republic-records-umg-757711/">signed</a> with Republic Records, which she praises in her post for believing &#8220;I should own anything I create.&#8221;
Below is Swift&#8217;s full <a href="https://taylorswift.tumblr.com/post/185958366550/for-years-i-asked-pleaded-for-a-chance-to-own-my">post</a> about Braun on Tumblr:
<blockquote>For years I asked, pleaded for a chance to own my work. Instead I was given an opportunity to sign back up to Big Machine Records and ‘earn’ one album back at a time, one for every new one I turned in. I walked away because I knew once I signed that contract, Scott Borchetta would sell the label, thereby selling me and my future. I had to make the excruciating choice to leave behind my past. Music I wrote on my bedroom floor and videos I dreamed up and paid for from the money I earned playing in bars, then clubs, then arenas, then stadiums.
Some fun facts about today’s news: I learned about Scooter Braun’s purchase of my masters as it was announced to the world. All I could think about was the incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years.
Like when Kim Kardashian orchestrated an illegally recorded snippet of a phone call to be leaked and then Scooter got his two clients together to bully me online about it. (See photo) Or when his client, Kanye West, organized a revenge porn music video which strips my body naked. Now Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy. Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it.
This is my worst case scenario. This is what happens when you sign a deal at fifteen to someone for whom the term ‘loyalty’ is clearly just a contractual concept. And when that man says ‘Music has value’, he means its value is beholden to men who had no part in creating it.
When I left my masters in Scott’s hands, I made peace with the fact that eventually he would sell them. Never in my worst nightmares did I imagine the buyer would be Scooter. Any time Scott Borchetta has heard the words ‘Scooter Braun’ escape my lips, it was when I was either crying or trying not to. He knew what he was doing; they both did. Controlling a woman who didn’t want to be associated with them. In perpetuity. That means forever.
Thankfully, I am now signed to a label that believes I should own anything I create. Thankfully, I left my past in Scott’s hands and not my future. And hopefully, young artists or kids with musical dreams will read this and learn about how to better protect themselves in a negotiation. You deserve to own the art you make.
I will always be proud of my past work. But for a healthier option, Lover will be out August 23.
Sad and grossed out,
Taylor</blockquote>
Update: Borchetta responded to Swift&#8217;s statement in a lengthy statement of his own, along with some communications and contract documents, in which he maintains that &#8220;Taylor had every chance in the world to own not just her master recordings, but every video, photograph, everything associated to her career. She chose to leave.&#8221; <a href="https://www.bigmachinelabelgroup.com/news/so-its-time-some-truth">Read the full statement here</a>.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47757/taylor-swift-says-question-about-motherhood-sexist-amanda-prestigiacomo">Taylor Swift Deems Question About Motherhood Sexist, Refuses To Answer</a>

Taylor Swift Lays Out Accusations Against Kanye, Kim Kardashian, &#038; Kanye’s Former Manager

Kanye West

Kim Kardashian

Taylor Swift dropped a new pro-LGBT video this week for Pride month &#8212; and it&#8217;s earned her blistering criticism from both the Left and Right.
If you&#8217;re not one of the over 30 million people who have clicked on it already, here&#8217;s the trailer park-themed, pro-LGBT video telling all the (white trash) haters &#8220;You Need To Calm Down&#8221; over gay rights, or something:
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="524" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Dkk9gvTmCXY" width="932"></iframe></div>
The left-wing <a href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/music/a28067315/taylor-swift-you-need-to-calm-down-video-stereotypes/">Cosmopolitan</a> runs through some of the backlash the video has sparked online, particularly from the Left, over all the egregious stereotypes and counterproductive messaging in the video. &#8220;About halfway through the video, we are introduced to the anti-LGBTQ+ crowd protesting Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Justin Mikita&#8217;s fake wedding. Of course, they&#8217;re portrayed with about as much nuance as the lyrics of the song,&#8221; Cosmo notes, pointing out a shot of one of the gay marriage-protesting rednecks and one of the country bumbkins&#8217; &#8220;ironic&#8221; signs declaring, &#8220;GET A BRAIN MORANS.&#8221;
&#8220;So [Taylor Swift&#8217;s] new song/video is calming down and not throwing shade yet she stereotypes the protesters&#8230;guess calming down only applies if you agree with her views,&#8221; wrote one &#8220;#disappointed&#8221; fan noted by the outlet. &#8220;Did she really need the lazy classist stereotype? Last time I checked, there were plenty of pretty polished people spewing intolerance too,&#8221; another disappointed pro-LGBT twitterer posted, a sentiment echoed by many others on the left. &#8220;The fact she really depicted anti-LGBT protestors as hicks? Girl, many are very privileged people in high places in society,&#8221; another wrote. &#8220;This issue is too important for caricatures.&#8221;
In a review for <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2019/06/18/taylor-swifts-need-calm-breathtakingly-elitist/">The Federalist</a>, Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky provides a scathing run-down of the video&#8217;s &#8220;breathtakingly elitist&#8221; aesthetic:
<blockquote>
To illustrate her LGBT pride anthem, Swift assembled the glitterati, casting them as the heroes of a utopian trailer park where her feud with Katy Perry ends, and ugly gay marriage protesters meet their match in a fabulous show of celebrity force. The set, of course, almost certainly cost more than what many people who make such places their home earn in a year. &#8220;Love letters only,&#8221; reads the side of one lily white mailbox in Swift World. (Where do the bills go?)
Her creativity mysteriously lapsed when it came time to cast the protesters, who look like they should be playing banjos in &#8220;Deliverance&#8221;: toothless, badly dressed, holding misspelled signs. &#8220;Control your urges to scream about all the people you hate,&#8221; Swift demands. &#8220;Cause shade never made anybody less gay.&#8221;
It&#8217;s all grotesquely elitist when you consider that she&#8217;s mocking people with less money while appropriating a trailer park lifestyle for three minutes of breezy, colorful fun. (Support for same-sex marriage declinesalong with income and education level.) Are there a lot of crazy people who yell at Swift on the Internet? Some, sure. But she went with a very specific type. The message is basically, &#8220;We&#8217;re beautiful and right; You&#8217;re poor and dumb.&#8221; If that sounds reductive or based on caricatures that would never be tolerated if used against the left&#8217;s pet identity groups, watch the video again.
</blockquote>
<a href="http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a28034262/taylor-swift-you-need-to-calm-down-lgbtq-lyrics/">Esquire</a>&#8216;s Justin Kirkland wasn&#8217;t impressed with Swift&#8217;s latest either, calling the video&#8217;s blurring of &#8220;the personal with the political&#8221; a &#8220;baffling parallel&#8221; that ultimately &#8220;misses the point of being an LGBTQ ally.&#8221; &#8220;Equating online haters with the personal and societal struggle of LGBTQ+ people is, at best, tone deaf,&#8221; writes Kirkland. <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/06/taylor-swift-you-need-calm-down-hijacks-queerness/591829/">The Atlantic</a>&#8216;s Spencer Kornhaber likewise slams the video&#8217;s &#8220;queasy double message&#8221; and stresses &#8220;the fear for many queer people&#8221; not just that &#8220;allies&#8221; like Swift &#8220;might profit off them&#8221; but that they &#8220;might change and defang what queerness means.&#8221; 
On his podcast this week, The Daily Wire&#8217;s Matt Walsh cites the heat Swift is taking from the Left for &#8220;not being pro-LGBT enough.&#8221; Instead of focusing much on the politics of the song, however, Walsh addresses how &#8220;aggressively bad&#8221; it is.
&#8220;It&#8217;s a song that smacks you upside the head with its awfulness and screams at you, &#8216;I&#8217;m awful!'&#8221; says Walsh. &#8220;It&#8217;s almost like you want to fall asleep and vomit at the same time &#8230; which is also really dangerous.&#8221;
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="524" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gz7kc23wkkE" width="932"></iframe></div>
Since coming out in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/36887/trump-responds-taylor-swift-getting-political-james-barrett">support</a> of Tennessee&#8217;s Democratic senatorial candidate in 2018, who went on to lose, Swift has increasingly promoted the progressive political agenda, particularly focusing on <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47757/taylor-swift-says-question-about-motherhood-sexist-amanda-prestigiacomo">feminist</a> and LGBT issues.
Amid the blowback, in an apparent attempt to help Swift&#8217;s case for being an effective LGBT &#8220;ally,&#8221; The Washington Post has provided a &#8220;running list of the LGBT icons&#8221; in her much-maligned video:
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="524" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qxKkaJdTf5o" width="932"></iframe></div>
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/36887/trump-responds-taylor-swift-getting-political-james-barrett">Trump Responds To Taylor Swift Getting Political</a>
This article has been expanded to include more responses.

Taylor Swift&#8217;s Pro-Pride Video Gets Ripped To Shreds By Left And Right

One of my biggest problems with left-wing identity movements is that they seem to identify an oppressor &#8212; and then adopt the oppressor&#8217;s values as their own. If whites have discriminated against blacks in the past, they say, that can be fixed by adopting that racism and discriminating against whites now.
This never works, of course. All racism goes on one side of the scale: the devil doesn&#8217;t care who does the hating as long as the hating gets done.
But nowhere is this moral error more destructive than in the philosophy of feminism. Feminists have essentially proclaimed that male power can be equaled only by women willing to accept male values and play by male rules. Virtually every movie seems to feature a woman who is shown to be &#8220;strong&#8221; in the ways men are strong. They throw punches, they pose with their fists on their hips, they look grim and macho. Feminine attributes like tenderness, nurturing and generosity? Forget it. That&#8217;s girl stuff.
I think this is bad news for women for the simple reason that, unlike the races, the two genders are really very different from one another. Forcing one sex into the other&#8217;s roles not only tends to make most people unhappy, it also damages society &#8212; which is, after all, built on the bedrock of human nature, not the other way around.
This week, the illogic of the feminist outlook was dramatized in the realm of popular music. Pop star Taylor Swift, soon to turn 30, was asked by a German interviewer if she would like to be a mother someday. Swift said, &#8220;I really do not think men are asked that question when they turn 30, so I&#8217;m not going to answer that now.&#8221;
Now it&#8217;s not news that a pop star says something silly, but this was a representative silliness. Men are not asked the question because men don&#8217;t become mothers, and women only have a certain period of time in which to bear.
But Swift felt this was demeaning because it suggested that motherhood is somehow a defining experience for women. But, of course, that&#8217;s exactly what it is &#8212; and if saying so feels demeaning, it may only be because feminists have adopted male values that set other occupations above motherhood.
Mind you, I don&#8217;t blame men for telling themselves that running a company or being a soldier or getting your name in the newspaper is more important than creating and nurturing new humans. But why should women accept those judgments? After all, it&#8217;s entirely possible men puff themselves up over their endeavors to compensate for being the less important sex.
All this matters greatly. The Centers for Disease Control recently reported that U.S. fertility rates are plummeting and have hit a record low. American women are no longer having enough babies to replace the generations. Leftists leapt to explain this phenomenon in economic terms: it&#8217;s so expensive to have children, there&#8217;s no paid maternity leave, we don&#8217;t have universal health care, and so on.
I guess it&#8217;s too much to expect leftists to wonder if maybe the cause is leftism itself. But if you live in a society that denigrates motherhood, why should women aspire to it?
A counter example to Taylor Swift likewise appeared in the pop music world. An excerpt from the show &#8220;America&#8217;s Got Talent&#8221; went viral on social media. It showed the performance of a young man named Kodi Lee, who is blind and severely autistic. His mother Tina brought him onstage and explained to the judges that she had seen his eyes light up when he first heard music and so she had nurtured his ability.
Kodi&#8217;s piano and voice rendition of Leon Russell&#8217;s &#8220;A Song for You&#8221; was spectacular and sparked a standing ovation. &#8220;That&#8217;s all for you,&#8221; Tina whispered in his ear.
Yeah, the kid got the applause. But watching Tina, all I could think was: There ought to be a Nobel Prize for motherhood. In fact, that&#8217;s the only Nobel Prize there ought to be. Watching that video was like watching the opposite of an abortion: a heroic battle against the forces of death, not in the name of mere life but in the name of human fruition. The hero of that epic was Tina &#8212; and as such, she was the representative of every mother who surrenders body and soul not just to create biological life, but to make life in full: real, loved, nurtured life.
I enjoy Taylor Swift&#8217;s music, but let&#8217;s be honest: If there were no more Taylor Swifts forever, who really would give a damn? But to lose even one Tina? That would be a vast moral tragedy.
Money, fame, applause &#8212; these all attend on traditionally male achievements, I know. Men have built the world that way in honor of themselves.
But why shouldn&#8217;t women have a value system of their own?

KLAVAN: Oh, Go Ahead, Taylor Swift, Have Babies

On Thursday&#8217;s episode of &#8220;The Andrew Klavan Show,&#8221; the host discusses Taylor Swift&#8217;s comments on motherhood and &#8220;settling down&#8221; as a working woman. Video and partial transcript below.
Which brings me to Taylor Swift. You know I don&#8217;t like pop music. I&#8217;m not a big fan of pop music but I do listen to it. And of the people I like, I really liked the early Taylor Swift. I thought she had a really nice take on kind of high school romance. Teardrops on my guitar. Nice songs, a couple of songs. Then she went into that pop stuff which was a calculated move not as interested in her many, many, many affairs and getting dumped by people. But still, she does produce these songs like &#8220;Getting Back Together&#8221; and &#8220;Shake It Off&#8221;; they&#8217;re earworms. You know, they get stuck in your head. She&#8217;s obviously got some kind of talent and all this stuff.
So, she was asked by a German interviewer if she&#8217;d like to be a mother someday. She&#8217;s about to turn 30 and she refused to answer, and she said it&#8217;s sexist. She said, &#8220;I really do not think men are asked that question when they turn 30. So, I&#8217;m not going to answer that now.&#8221;
Now everything is wrong with that statement, right. Men aren&#8217;t asked that question because they don&#8217;t become mothers. Children don&#8217;t need fathers in the same way, in the same intense way in their early years that they need mothers present in the house with them. They do not need a father like that. The way they need mothers you can tell by the way bodies are built and what they are meant to do. I know this is hard to understand, but women aren&#8217;t shaped like that just so you can stare at them. They actually do have a function which has to do with the care and nurturing of children. Right?
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And then she went on to say &#8230; she posted on Instagram that her next album was going to be political. And I thought to myself, oh boy I can&#8217;t wait because everybody cares so much what Taylor Swift has to say about politics. I don&#8217;t care at all what Taylor Swift has to say about politics. But this is basically her feeling that she&#8217;s not important unless she is engaged in the traditionally male, in the old days the traditionally male world of politics. And if she takes herself away from the traditionally female world of motherhood. I&#8217;m sorry but that is just ass backwards.
I mean millennials have now stopped, virtually stopped reproducing and it&#8217;s amazing all the people all &#8212; even on the Right everybody saying well it&#8217;s the economy. You know Millennials were coming up in the Obama economy and they couldn&#8217;t afford children, so they waited too long and now they&#8217;re not even producing enough people to you know, feed into social security and to develop a working class and it&#8217;s all about the economy. Well, baloney. I mean baloney it&#8217;s about the economy.
When you tell women that you&#8217;re nothing if you stay home and take care of your children that you&#8217;re, you know, only something if you lean in, if you&#8217;re working all the time, if you adopt male values, why should they? I mean women I think are more subject to social pressure than men are somewhat, and I think when you tell them that it takes them a long time before they found out, whoops, I made a mistake. Even the idea that you should have a career first and then a child is a male idea because men are built for that; women, their time runs out. Why not develop another idea of a career where you have your baby&#8217;s first and stay home and take care of them as they need and then go on to have a career later. I mean that makes a lot more sense. So in other words what I&#8217;m saying is instead of arguing for that we should that we women should now be able to live by male principles why not argue that female principle should be elevated in our society which I think they should.
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KLAVAN: Taylor Swift Gets Motherhood Wrong

Andrew Klavan

Conservatism

When Taylor Swift was <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/celebrity/taylor-swift-rejects-query-about-children-at-30-men-arent-asked-that-question/ar-AABZG02?ocid=spartanntp">asked</a> by a German interviewer if she&#8217;d like to be a mother someday, the country singer-turned-pop star declined to answer, deeming it sexist.
Alluding to Ms. Swift&#8217;s upcoming 30th birthday in December, a reporter from German outlet Deutsche Presse-Agentur <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/celebrity/taylor-swift-rejects-query-about-children-at-30-men-arent-asked-that-question/ar-AABZG02?ocid=spartanntp">asked</a> the singer, &#8220;Would you like to be a mother someday, have children?&#8221;
&#8220;I really do not think men are asked that question when they turn 30,&#8221; responded Swift, deeming the question sexist. &#8220;So I&#8217;m not going to answer that now.&#8221;
Later in the interview, Swift said that young men and women in their 20s are &#8220;looking to gain experience, try things out, fail, make mistakes.&#8221;
&#8220;I definitely plan to try and fail (at) things in my 30s as well. But I expect that in our 30s, we feel a little better of who we are. The closer I get to it, the more I feel it happens,&#8221; she noted.
Swift, who was largely apolitical before the 2018 midterm elections, <a href="https://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a26628467/taylor-swift-30th-birthday-lessons/">addressed</a> sexism and sexual assault in an essay she penned for Elle magazine in March, titled, &#8220;30 Things I Learned Before I Turned 30.&#8221;
&#8220;I&#8217;ve learned that society is constantly sending very loud messages to women that exhibiting the physical signs of aging is the worst thing that can happen to us,&#8221; wrote the &#8220;Me!&#8221; singer. &#8220;These messages tell women that we aren&#8217;t allowed to age. It&#8217;s an impossible standard to meet.&#8221;
She also stated that she believes all accusations of sexual assault: &#8220;It&#8217;s my opinion that in cases of sexual assault, I believe the victim,&#8221; she wrote.
&#8220;Coming forward is an agonizing thing to go through,&#8221; the essay continued. &#8220;I know because my sexual assault trial was a demoralizing, awful experience. I believe victims because I know firsthand about the shame and stigma that comes with raising your hand and saying &#8216;This happened to me.&#8217; It&#8217;s something no one would choose for themselves. We speak up because we have to, and out of fear that it could happen to someone else if we don&#8217;t.&#8221;
Swift previously claimed she was assaulted backstage in 2013 by former radio host and DJ David Mueller. In August 2017, a Denver jury sided with Swift, determining that the pop singer was assaulted and battered by Mueller during a meet and greet.
&#8220;A year ago, I was not playing in a stadium in Tampa, I was in a courtroom in Denver, Colorado. I was there for a sexual assault case. This is the day,&#8221; Swift told a massive audience in August 2018, &#8220;the jury sided in my favor and said that they believed me.&#8221;
Again, the musical talent broadened her experience to the increasingly political anti-sexual harassment #MeToo campaign.
&#8221;I guess I just think about all the people that weren&#8217;t believed, and the people who haven&#8217;t been believed, or the people who are afraid to speak up because they think that they won&#8217;t be believed,&#8221; she told her fans. &#8220;I just wanted to say I&#8217;m sorry to anyone who ever wasn&#8217;t believed because I don&#8217;t know what turn my life would have taken if somebody didn&#8217;t believe me when I said something had happened to me.&#8221;
As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47742/taylor-swift-will-get-political-her-new-album-emily-zanotti">noted</a> by The Daily Wire on Tuesday, the Grammy Award winner said her new tunes will feature &#8220;political undertones.&#8221;
&#8220;I definitely think there are political undertones in the new music I made,&#8221; Swift said. &#8220;I&#8217;m not planning to stop encouraging young people to vote and to try to get them to talk about what&#8217;s going on in our country. I think that&#8217;s one of the most important things I could do.&#8221;

Taylor Swift Deems Question About Motherhood Sexist, Refuses To Answer

Gender

Sexism

Country star-turned-pop princess Taylor Swift says her next album will have &#8220;political undertones&#8221; and that it&#8217;s no accident her new music will debut just as the 2020 presidential election season is heating up &#8212; even though going political has done little for Swift&#8217;s career.
<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bx7ueqoAbOs/?igshid=1cbl45gevcxvm">In a post on Instagram</a>, Swift declared that her new songs will feature &#8220;political undertones&#8221; and that she plans on encouraging her fans to register to vote and become politically engaged before the next election.
&#8220;I definitely think there are political undertones in the new music I made,&#8221; she added in an interview, according to <a href="https://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a27594235/taylor-swift-new-music-political/">Elle Magazine</a>. &#8220;I&#8217;m not planning to stop encouraging young people to vote and to try to get them to talk about what&#8217;s going on in our country. I think that&#8217;s one of the most important things I could do.&#8221;
Swift was badgered into becoming political ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. As one of pop&#8217;s primary rising stars, she was constantly asked to weigh in on elections and issues, but until November of last year, Swift resisted the urge to say much, sticking instead to non-partisan statements, and encouraging her fans and followers to vote regularly. But with close friends like Lena Dunham, it seems Swift could only avoid making a public political statement for so long.
In October of last year, Swift <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BopoXpYnCes/?utm_source=ig_embed">penned a lengthy Instagram post</a> endorsing Phil Bresden over Marsha Blackburn for an empty Tennessee Senate seat, citing Blackburn&#8217;s lack of support for gay marriage, the Violence Against Women Act, and equal pay legislation. The post stopped just short of calling Blackburn a traitor to her gender, but the implication was there.
Swift also said that she was breaking her silence on politics because of the unique nature of the 2018 elections.
&#8220;I&#8217;m writing this post about the upcoming midterm elections on November 6th, in which I&#8217;ll be voting in the state of Tennessee. In the past I&#8217;ve been reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now,&#8221; Swift wrote.
Bresden ultimately lost, and while Swift wasn&#8217;t forced to take back her endorsement, her left-leaning friends probably recognized a big problem with her alliance: Bresden said publicly that he would have voted to confirm now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh if he had been in the Senate at the time of Kavanaugh&#8217;s confirmation hearings, upending Swift&#8217;s claims that Bresden was the more feminist-friendly candidate.
In March of 2019, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/mar/06/taylor-swift-politically-active-2020-presidential-election">Swift doubled down in a personal essay</a> printed in Elle, claiming that she now felt it was her responsibility to speak out against &#8220;dangerous rhetoric&#8221; and &#8220;racism.&#8221;
&#8220;Invoking racism and provoking fear through thinly veiled messaging is not what I want from our leaders, and I realized that it actually is my responsibility to use my influence against that disgusting rhetoric,&#8221; she said. &#8220;I&#8217;m going to do more to help. We have a big race coming up next year.&#8221;
&#8220;I&#8217;m finding my voice in terms of politics. I took a lot of time educating myself on the political system and the branches of government that are signing off on bills that affect our day-to-day life. I saw so many issues that put our most vulnerable citizens at risk, and felt like I had to speak up to try and help make a change,&#8221; Swift added. &#8220;Only as someone approaching 30 did I feel informed enough to speak about it to my 114 million followers.&#8221;

Taylor Swift Will &#8216;Get Political&#8217; On Her New Album

Pop icon Taylor Swift is now experiencing the wrath of the cultural appropriation police, with fans now claiming her performance at the 2019 Billboard Music Awards on Wednesday was ripped off from Beyoncé.
According to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/taylor-swift-accused-ripping-beyonc-billboard-music-awards-n1001156">NBC News</a>, people on social media have been comparing Taylor Swift&#8217;s performance at the ceremony to that of Beyoncé&#8217;s 2018 Coachella festival set.
&#8220;Swift opened a debut performance of her new single &#8216;Me!&#8217; with a marching band dressed in pink. She then appeared on stage, striking a pose,&#8221; reports the outlet. &#8220;Fans of Beyoncé, who did not attend the Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas, were quick to speculate whether Swift took inspiration from her April 2018 Coachella set, in which the R&amp;B megastar transformed the stage into a &#8216;Homecoming&#8217; celebration. Beyoncé was the first black woman to headline the festival.&#8221;
Both Beyoncé&#8217;s Coachella performance &#8212; the subject of a major Netflix documentary &#8212; and Swift&#8217;s incorporated marching band drummers. Beyoncé says in the documentary, &#8220;Homecoming,&#8221; that she did this as a salute to HBCUs (historically black college and universities).
&#8220;When I decided to do Coachella, instead of me pulling out my flower crown, it was more important that I brought our culture to Coachella,&#8221; she said. &#8220;I always dreamed of going to an HBCU. My college was Destiny&#8217;s Child. My college was traveling around the world, and life was my teacher.&#8221;
People on social media were merciless to Taylor Swift, not even accepting the possibility that the similarities could have just been a coincidence. The hashtag #Mayochella, a play on the nickname to Beyoncé&#8217;s Coachella performance, has since been trending on Twitter.
&#8220;Stop being daft with this Beyoncé/Taylor drumline thing. Yes, artists have incorporated marching bands/drumlines in performances before but TIMING is everything. The world has been BUZZING since #Homecoming. This ain&#8217;t no coincidence,&#8221; freelance writer Wanna Thompson<a href="https://twitter.com/WannasWorld/status/1123753723631677441" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> wrote on Twitter</a>.
&#8220;I don&#8217;t know if y&#8217;all are seeing this but Taylor Swift is gentrifying Beyonce&#8217;s Coachella performance right now,&#8221; another <a href="https://twitter.com/Chuck_Des/status/1123739882545983492?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1123739882545983492&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.breitbart.com%2Fentertainment%2F2019%2F05%2F02%2Fwatch-taylor-swift-accused-of-culturally-appropriating-beyonces-coachella-performance%2F">Twitter user</a> said.
&#8220;Someone kindly tell Taylor Swift, she will never be Beyoncé. Please stop biting&#8230; it&#8217;s embarrassing,&#8221; <a href="https://twitter.com/TmCarlucci/status/1123739746256281600?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1123739746256281600&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.breitbart.com%2Fentertainment%2F2019%2F05%2F02%2Fwatch-taylor-swift-accused-of-culturally-appropriating-beyonces-coachella-performance%2F">said</a> another.
Some Taylor Swift fans came to her defense. &#8220;I&#8217;m not Taylor Swift&#8217;s biggest fan by any means, but saying she ripped off Beyonce?? Come on. Talk about a reach. People look for drama,&#8221; <a href="https://twitter.com/laurenn012/status/901132061611884544?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E901132061611884544&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpeople.com%2Fmusic%2Ftaylor-swift-look-what-you-made-me-do-draws-beyonce-lemonade-comparisons%2F" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">one Twitter user said</a>.
Of course, Taylor Swift is just another singer to fall victim to the cultural appropriation enforcers, who have put everyone from Justin Timberlake to even Bruno Mars in their crosshairs. In an <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/28142/black-celebrities-defend-bruno-mars-against-paul-bois">episode of The Grapevine</a> last year, SJW Seren Sensei said that Mars plays up his racial ambiguity (he&#8217;s Filipino, Puerto Rican, and Jewish) so that he can cross genres.
&#8220;Bruno Mars 100% is a cultural appropriator. He is not black, at all, and he plays up his racial ambiguity to cross genres,&#8221; writer and activist <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9NTvCyprsA" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Seren Sensei said</a>. &#8220;What Bruno Mars does, is he takes pre-existing work and he just completely, word-for-word recreates it, extrapolates it. He does not create it, he does not improve upon it, he does not make it better. He&#8217;s a karaoke singer, he&#8217;s a wedding singer, he&#8217;s the person you hire to do Michael Jackson and Prince covers.&#8221;
Earlier this year, singer/actress Jenifer Lopez <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/43316/jennifer-lopez-responds-backlash-after-motown-paul-bois">endured a wave</a> of heat for performing a Motown tribute at the Emmys.

Taylor Swift Accused Of Culturally Appropriating Beyoncé

Beyonce

Pop icon Taylor Swift has officially shaken off her previous apolitical persona by becoming an &#8220;ally&#8221; to the cause. After endorsing a Democrat in the Tennessee senatorial race this past midterm election, which ultimately <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/36843/shake-it-taylor-swift-gets-political-endorses-joseph-curl">proved fruitless</a>, Swift has now donated $113K to an LGBTQ advocacy group.
According to <a href="https://pagesix.com/2019/04/09/taylor-swift-donates-113k-to-lgbtq-advocacy-group/">Page Six</a>, Swift donated the hefty sum of cash to the Tennessee Equality Project, which reportedly has been fighting a &#8220;handful of contentious bills moving inside the state&#8217;s Republican-controlled General Assembly.&#8221;
Tennessee Equality Project Executive Director Chris Sanders praised Swift in a Facebook post for her charitable contribution, calling her a &#8220;long-time ally&#8221; of the LGBTQ community. &#8220;Taylor Swift has been a long-time ally to the LGBTQ community,&#8221; Sanders wrote, according to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/taylor-swift-donates-113-000-defeat-tennessee-s-slate-hate-n992471">NBC News</a>. &#8220;She sees our struggle in Tennessee and continues to add her voice with so many good people, including religious leaders, who are speaking out for love in the face of fear.&#8221;
Sanders included an image of a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/tnequality/permalink/10156549567787991/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">handwritten letter sent to him by Swift</a> in his post praising the singer on Monday evening.
&#8220;I&#8217;m so inspired by the work you do, specifically in organizing the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/more-100-faith-leaders-unite-denounce-tennessee-gop-s-slate-n987611">recent petition of Tennessee faith leaders</a> standing up against the &#8216;slate of hate&#8217; in our state legislature,&#8221; wrote the Tennessee native Swift. &#8220;I&#8217;m so grateful that they&#8217;re giving all people a place to worship.&#8221;
These alleged &#8220;slate of hate&#8221; bills will allow religious adoption agencies to prefer children go to married heterosexual couples over same-sex couples. They would also make changes to the state&#8217;s indecent exposure laws.
&#8220;Companion bills <a href="http://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/BillInfo/Default.aspx?BillNumber=HB1151&amp;fbclid=IwAR2retJuAnJ8ZrCwVbLuBoYabrX_5ayEwQeMlvrK8utOBhv9yhPO89XdSA0">HB 1151 and SB 1297</a> expand the state&#8217;s indecent exposure law to apply &#8216;in a restroom, locker room, dressing room, or shower, any of which are designated for single-sex, multi-person use, and the person is a member of the opposite sex than the sex designated for use,'&#8221; reports <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/slate-hate-advocates-decry-anti-lgbtq-bills-introduced-tennessee-n979116">NBC News</a>. &#8220;Advocates say that since transgender Tennesseans cannot legally change their sex on legal documents, this bill unfairly targets them for criminal prosecution.&#8221;
Taylor Swift has managed to stay largely apolitical throughout her career, but that all changed when feminists began to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/23566/feminists-are-still-angry-taylor-swift-never-emily-zanotti">publicly chastise her</a> for not endorsing Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election.
&#8220;If Taylor thinks that her public fallout with Kimye was the most damning public relations nightmare she endured last year, then she should probably expand her news diet,&#8221; wrote Marie Claire magazine. &#8220;Fall of 2016 saw a slew of celebrities become outspokenly involved in the political process, as they should have&#8230;Whether she likes it or not, Taylor&#8217;s politics (or her perceived political apathy) are a part of her reputation, and a song addressing or at least acknowledging that (even if the song did not address her personal politics) would have been welcome.&#8221;
In the fall of 2018, Swift took the criticism to heart by opposing Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) during the midterm elections, choosing to endorse her male opponent.
&#8220;I always have and always will cast my vote based on which candidate will protect and fight for the human rights I believe we all deserve in this country,&#8221; Swift <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/36843/shake-it-taylor-swift-gets-political-endorses-joseph-curl">said at the time</a>. &#8220;I believe in the fight for LGBTQ rights, and that any form of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender is WRONG. I believe that the systemic racism we still see in this country towards people of color is terrifying, sickening and prevalent.&#8221;

Taylor Swift Donates $113k To LGBTQ Advocacy Group To Fight ‘Slate Of Hate’ Bills

Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee introduced her first bill in the Senate. The proposed law, S. 105, the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act, is a counterpart to a similar bill introduced in the House of Representatives. The legislation seeks to deny funding to abortion organizations, including Planned Parenthood. 
The freshman senator made the announcement in a statement on <a href="https://twitter.com/MarshaBlackburn/status/1083499955686440960">Twitter</a>. 
&#8220;Today, I introduced my first bill in the United States Senate, S. 105, the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act, which strips all abortion providers, including Planned Parenthood, of federal funding,&#8221; she wrote. &#8220;Tennesseans and the American people do not want their tax dollars funding abortions. They have made this position clear time and again. Hardworking taxpayers do not want to subsidize the business of abortion providers and entities such as Planned Parenthood.&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Today, I introduced my first bill in the United States Senate, S. 105, the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act, which strips all abortion providers, including Planned Parenthood, of federal funding. <a href="https://t.co/UwtbwGt1wd">pic.twitter.com/UwtbwGt1wd</a>
&#8212; Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) <a href="https://twitter.com/MarshaBlackburn/status/1083499955686440960?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 10, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
The <a href="http://tennesseestar.com/2019/01/11/u-s-sen-blackburn-introduces-first-bill-as-senator-to-protect-the-unborn/">Tennessee Star</a> reports that Blackburn introduced her bill last Thursday one day after U.S. Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO-04) introduced H.R. 217 Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act. The bill was sponsored by Rep. Diane Black (R-TN-6).
If passed, the legislation &#8220;amends the Public Health Service Act to permit the Department of Health and Human Service (HHS) to provide federal family planning grants only to entities that certify that, during the period of the grant, they will not perform abortions or provide funds to entities that perform abortions.&#8221; It makes exceptions for cases of rape, incest, and the life of the mother. The Senate version would also increase funding for &#8220;Community Health Centers&#8221; aimed at giving women an alternative to abortion. 
The National Right To Life organization praised the bill. NRL Legislative Director Jennifer Popik told <a href="https://www.lifenews.com/2019/01/10/senator-introduces-new-bill-to-defund-planned-parenthood-abortion-business/">LifeNews</a>, &#8220;Most Democrats in Congress think Planned Parenthood can do no wrong. Congresswoman Hartzler knows better and we thank her for her leadership in working to defund America&#8217;s largest abortion provider.&#8221;
She added in a <a href="https://www.nrlc.org/site/communications/releases/2019/national-right-to-life-praises-blackburn-bill-to-defund-planned-parenthood/">statement</a>, &#8220;We applaud Senator Blackburn for her long history of protecting unborn children while in the U.S. House and look forward to her continued leadership in the Senate.&#8221;
Sen. Blackburn has been a strong supporter of Pro-Life causes. During her 2018 campaign, she was endorsed by several Pro-Life organizations, including the Senate Pro-Life Coalition, National Right to Life, the Knox County Pro-Life Network, and the Susan B. Anthony List. 
She said at the <a href="http://tennesseestar.com/2018/08/03/marsha-blackburn-announces-pro-life-coalition/">time</a>, &#8220;The first of our rights is the right to life. It is both my duty and honor to protect life, and I am honored to have such a committed group of Tennesseans supporting my campaign for Senate. In the Senate, I will continue to stand for the sanctity of life and the protection of women and unborn children.&#8221;
She would go on to defeat Democratic former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen in the midterm election, despite Bredesen receiving high-profile endorsements, including by popstar Taylor Swift. Blackburn&#8217;s victory made her the first female senator elected in the state. 
Planned Parenthood and its affiliates receive $543.7 million, nearly 40% of its budget, from federal, state, and local grants paid for by taxpayer dollars. 
<div> </div>

Sen. Marsha Blackburn&#8217;s First Senate Bill Could Defund Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood

Republican Party

Tennessee

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Celebrities pounded the pavement for Democratic candidates in the 2018 midterms but failed to pull Democratic candidates over the line in Florida, Georgia, Texas, and Tennessee.
Oprah Winfrey hit the campaign trail for the first time in 2018, stumping for Georgia&#8217;s Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Stacey Abrams, knocking on doors, and giving speeches for Abrams in the closing days of the cycle. She declared Abrams the harbinger of a new generation of political candidates, and threw her support behind the Georgia Democrat, alongside former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle.
The race should have been tailor-made for Winfrey, who has been seeking an in road to public politics since retiring from her daytime television show several years ago, but even Oprah&#8217;s star power couldn&#8217;t close the deal. Tuesday night, Abrams lost by at least 2%, and despite calls for a recount, is unlikely to survive to a runoff election.
That&#8217;s a tough blow to Oprah&#8217;s political future, which might have included a 2020 Presidential run, but it was only one celebrity loss in a night of high-profile Democratic disasters.
Pop star Taylor Swift endorsed Tennessee Senate candidate Phil Bredesen, breaking her self-imposed, career long political silence to encourage &#8220;Swifties&#8221; to cast their ballot against Republican Marsha Blackburn. Swift played it off as a declaration of &#8220;feminism,&#8221; but failed to consider that Bredesen defied the women&#8217;s movement when he suggested he&#8217;d vote in favor of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
In the end, Swift not only couldn&#8217;t save Bredesen, she may have tanked him; Bredesen lost by more than ten points to Blackburn, giving the Republicans a pickup in the Senate.
In Florida, pop star Rihanna &#8212; and rap stars Common and Diddy &#8212; failed to give Democrat Andrew Gillum the boost he needed to become the state&#8217;s next governor, even though their celebrity appearances attracted thousands of attendees. In the end, Gillum lost to Republican Ron DeSantis by only a few points, but, unlike Abrams in Georgia, he conceded the race.
The strangest celebrity endorsement may have been Beyonce&#8217;s eleventh hour Instagram post promoting Texas Senate hopeful Beto O&#8217;Rourke. The last minute shot of Beyonce flashing peace symbols while sporting a Beto hat made it seem like she&#8217;d been hedging on whether to become involved at all &#8212; even though she and her partner Jay-Z are vocal Democrats and give copiously to Democratic campaigns.
Beto, of course, lost to Republican Ted Cruz, and some Beyonce fans were so disappointed that they blamed the pop star.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Beyonce should have posted the Beto hat a week ago.. <a href="https://t.co/uUHtT9RV8f">pic.twitter.com/uUHtT9RV8f</a>
&#8212; Ry (@JustRyCole) <a href="https://twitter.com/JustRyCole/status/1060007575368871936?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 7, 2018</a></blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Beyonce is perfect but she could have come through w the Beto endorsement last week&#8230;?
&#8212; Pat Miguel Tomaino(@pat_tomaino) <a href="https://twitter.com/pat_tomaino/status/1060268413182980097?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 7, 2018</a></blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
But what if Beyoncé posted that Beto insta like 24 hours earlier? Honest question.
&#8212; Mike Kelton (@mikekelton) <a href="https://twitter.com/mikekelton/status/1060254302093172736?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 7, 2018</a></blockquote>
The honest answer is &#8230; not much, unless Beyonce possesses magical powers that can overcome a six-point deficit. Which, perhaps she does. But we may never know if they could have helped Beto.

O-No! Oprah, Beyonce, And Taylor Swift Don&#8217;t Deliver For Democrats

Oprah Winfrey

Pop superstar Taylor Swift&#8217;s endorsement of a Democratic Senate candidate in Tennessee didn&#8217;t amount to much.
Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn was called as the winner just a few minutes after polls closed, easily defeating HER Democratic opponent, former Gov. Phil Bredesen.
Before the election, the 28-year-old singer &#8212; who had not previously weighed in on politics &#8212; said Blackburn had a voting record that &#8220;appalls and terrifies&#8221; her.
The move may not have been all that well thought out. Bredesen angered Democrats and rabid liberals by announcing that he would have supported Brett Kavanaugh&#8217;s nomination for the Supreme Court, declaring that there was no evidence to support last-minute sexual assault allegations against him.
The hardcore left MoveOn immediately pulled its support after Bredesen&#8217;s announcement. &#8220;We&#8217;re cancelling a planned six-figure digital video ad expenditure for Phil Bredesen in Tennessee due to his Kavanaugh position. And similarly will be pulling all planned campaigning on behalf of Joe Manchin in West Virginia if he votes yes. Kavanaugh is unfit for the Court,&#8221; MoveOn.org wrote on Twitter.
In a lengthy post on Instagram about a month before the election, Swift said she could not support Blackburn because of her record of voting against women and the LGBT community.
&#8220;Her voting record in Congress appalls and terrifies me. These are not MY Tennessee values. &#8230; I always have and always will cast my vote based on which candidate will protect and fight for the human rights I believe we all deserve in this country. I believe in the fight for LGBTQ rights, and that any form of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender is WRONG. I believe that the systemic racism we still see in this country towards people of color is terrifying, sickening and prevalent,&#8221; she wrote.
Just before Election Day, Swift pleaded with fans to vote, saying, &#8220;I&#8217;m seeing a lot of underestimation of young voters and this new generation who now have the right to vote just in the last couple of years, but these are people who grew up post 9/11, they grew up with school shooting drills at their schools.&#8221;

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