Should Federal Agencies Spend Taxpayer Dollars on Woke Events?

Should Federal Agencies Spend Taxpayer Dollars on Woke Events?

Here’s The Scoop

At the Biden administration’s most radical agency, Pride Month celebrations have now extended into July. In a clear display of the administration’s priorities, the United States Department of the Interior recently held an event honoring Sylvia Rivera, a controversial transgender activist and co-founder of the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries.

The event, titled “Pride Month Program Highlighting Sylvia Rivera, Pioneer and Civil Rights Advocate for the LGBTQI+ Community,” was held on July 10. The internal agency newsletter, obtained by The Daily Wire, glorified Rivera’s activism. Describing her as a “Latina American drag queen” and a “trailblazer” in the LGBTQI+ community, the newsletter highlighted her participation in the Stonewall uprising of 1969 and her efforts to assist homeless and young drag queens, gay youth, and trans women.

This is yet another example of how the Interior Department has veered to the extreme left. In April, the agency celebrated “Transgender Day of Visibility” with a screening of a documentary promoting LGBT inclusion in marine biology. The film featured Nicole Morris, who rerouted her career path to marine biology due to a perceived lack of LGBTQ+ visibility in the field.

The event was held in conjunction with the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, an activist organization that advocates for “trans liberation” and campaigns against the construction of jails while pushing for increased access to controversial “gender-affirming healthcare.” These medical treatments attempt to change an individual’s sex through interventions, a topic that has sparked significant debate nationwide.

Sylvia Rivera’s background, as described on DePaul University’s website, is a tumultuous one. Born into poverty, Rivera was trans, a drag queen, a person of color, and a former sex worker who experienced drug addiction, incarceration, and homelessness. By age 11, she had run away from home and become a child prostitute in Times Square, where she was taken in by a group of drag queens.

Adding to the controversy, former Interior Communications Director Tyler Cherry, who now works for the Biden White House, has a troubling social media history. Cherry has called for the abolishment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and made inflammatory claims that the modern police system is an evolution of slave patrols.

The Department of the Interior has also hosted an “ally awards” ceremony featuring a “diversity poem reading,” as revealed by Daily Wire host Matt Walsh. The poem included lines like, “Don’t exclude me due to a lack of knowledge. Welcome me like the recruit fresh out of college,” and “I’m diversity, embrace me and we’ll journey far. I’m diversity, include me and we’ll reach the shining star.”

The department supports various identity-based employee resource groups and organizations that often push for diversity, equity, and inclusion policies within the federal government. Despite multiple requests for comment, neither the Department of the Interior nor the Sylvia Rivera Law Project responded.

This continuous pandering to left-wing ideologies at the expense of focusing on more pressing national matters raises serious questions about the administration’s priorities. While the country faces economic challenges and international threats, the Biden administration appears more concerned with championing radical activist causes.

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