#ArmyOfParents #IStandWithRiley

John Pepper, a member of the Loudoun County School Board @LCPSOfficial , compared a decision on Dominion Energy transmission lines for Data Centers to Sophie’s Choice. For anyone who doesn’t know the reference, Sophie’s Choice is the story of a mother at Auschwitz, forced by a Nazi guard to choose which of her two children would be sent to the gas chamber. It has haunted readers and moviegoers for decades precisely because there’s 𝙉𝙊 𝘾𝙊𝙈𝙋𝘼𝙍𝙄𝙎𝙊𝙉 for it. That’s the point of the story. There’s 𝙣𝙤 𝙨𝙞𝙩𝙪𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙞𝙣 𝙤𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙧𝙮 𝙝𝙪𝙢𝙖𝙣 𝙡𝙞𝙛𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙣 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙨, and using it as shorthand for anything else empties it of its meaning. Mr. Pepper grossly used it to describe a vote about power lines on school property. A constituent apparently offered him the line first. He repeated it 𝙖𝙣𝙮𝙬𝙖𝙮, in his official capacity, as commentary before a vote. That makes it even worse. It makes the excuse of “making a bad analogy in the moment” unavailable to him. He had the chance, before those words left his mouth, to recognize what he was about to say and 𝙉𝙊𝙏 𝙎𝘼𝙔 𝙄𝙏. But he said it. This elected official actually borrowed someone else’s bad judgment and used it as his own! Some people will bring up the fact that he’s Jewish, as though that gives him a pass. 𝙄𝙩 𝙙𝙤𝙚𝙨 𝙣𝙤𝙩! Being Jewish doesn’t give a person permission to use the Holocaust as a rhetorical device any more than losing a family member to violence would give someone permission to joke about murder. If anything, I’d expect someone with that heritage to catch this instinctively, before it ever reached his mouth, regardless of who handed it to him first. What bothers me is that he apparently thought this was a reasonable thing to repeat out loud, in public, while doing his job. He actually had a beat to think about it and not say it. He didn’t take it. This gives us a really good idea of how Pepper thinks 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙞𝙩 𝙞𝙨𝙣'𝙩 𝙜𝙤𝙤𝙙. This is the same board member who will help decide how Loudoun County teaches the Holocaust to its students. Who will weigh in on antisemitism policy, on religious accommodations, on the kind of historical judgment that requires actual seriousness. A person who repeats this comparison without flinching is not someone whose judgment I trust on any of that. School board members don’t need to be perfect public speakers. They do need to understand where the lines are, and this one crossed a line that shouldn’t require much thought to see. Loudoun County families deserve better than a man who reaches for genocide when he wants to sound serious about a utility easement. He should apologize, plainly and without hiding behind his own identity or the constituent who said it first to deflect it. And voters should remember this the next time he’s on a ballot. 𝙎𝙝𝙨𝙢𝙚 𝙤𝙣 𝙋𝙚𝙥𝙥𝙚𝙧! vimeo.com/1209536330?fl=pl&f…

Amazon is funding a show that recasts conservatives, Christians, and Jews as supervillains — and frames their assassination as heroic. This isn’t edgy satire. It’s the oldest propaganda template in history. And I wrote about it in @townhallcom. 🔗 townhall.com/columnists/elic…

I read the @LoudounNow article about the community leaders’ responses to the attempted assassination at the WHCA dinner. It is clear that leaders across Loudoun understood the seriousness of this moment and condemned political violence without hesitation. @SupBriskman chose a different path. Instead of moral clarity, she offered conspiracy theory as commentary and treated an attempted assassination as an opportunity to divide and inflame. That is not boldness. It is recklessness dressed up as politics, and it is beneath the dignity of public office. Clearly, the backlash forced her to delete the post, but deleting it does not erase what it revealed. It does not absolve judgment. It simply removes the evidence of what she believes. The deeper issue is the pattern: years of @julibriskman’s rhetoric that inflames instead of cools, divides instead of unites, and mistakes outrage for leadership. While I do not always agree with @ChairRandall on matters of policy, she understands a basic truth of public service: she represents not only those who voted for her, but every resident of Loudoun County. That is the burden and honor of leadership. It requires steadiness, perspective, and respect for people who disagree with you. That same sense of responsibility has too often been absent from Supervisor Briskman’s public conduct. Ideology and performative extremism are poor substitutes for character. As Chairman Taplin @LoudounGOP said, every elected official has a duty to lower the temperature, reject falsehoods, and speak with discipline when tensions are high. Loudoun County deserves leaders who bring judgment, decency, and maturity to public life. On this occasion, Supervisor Briskman once again showed the opposite. share.google/3tcTGVdFhWxtGVq…

In 2023, the SPLC put Army of Parents on their hate map. Same list as the Klan. Same list as neo-Nazis. This week, a federal grand jury indicted the SPLC for allegedly funneling $3M to paid informants inside the KKK, the Aryan Nation, and the National Socialist Party of America. I have something to say about that. 🧵1/7