The White House News

A Wisconsin museum is facing backlash after its annual Christmas tree festival included some controversial entries this year.

Of the 66 trees on display at the National Railroad Museum in Ashwaubenon, Wisconsin, the ones that seemed to draw the most attention belonged to the Satanic Temple of Wisconsin and the Bay Area Council on Gender Diversity.

The trees, which will be on display until Dec. 31, included decorations fitting for their causes, and not the typical ornaments depicting images related to Jesus, angels or the Christmas holiday.

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The tree belonging to the Satanic Temple was adorned with red lighting and beads, pentagrams, and various ornaments, with one reading, “Hail Santa,” an apparent play off the phrase, “Hail Satan.” The Gender Diversity tree included pink and blue colored trans flags, and ornaments with sayings such as, “Protect Trans Kids.”

According to local NBC affiliate WGBA, museum CEO Jacqueline Frank admitted a number of local residents attending the festival had expressed concern over the presence of the trees, but also said some had praised their inclusivity. Others took to social media to air their grievances.

“Outrageous! National Railroad Museum features a Satanic worship tree,” Matt Batzel, executive director of conservative grassroots organization American Majority, wrote in a post on X, including photos of the Satanic display.

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Some users questioned why the trees would be displayed at a “family friendly event,” while another wrote, “Why is WI looking like Commiefornia??? We used to be wholesome and safe…”

Fox News Digital also spoke with one local Christian pastor named Luke Farwell in De Pere, Wisconsin, who said he questioned the National Railroad Museum over the decision to include the trees at a Christmas event with children, when it again touted the “inclusivity” and “teaching opportunity” of the trees.

“It seemed a little bizarre to me that someone, based on that, would think it was appropriate to have a Satanic temple Christmas tree — or tree, I should say. I won’t dignify it by calling it a Christmas tree,” Farwell said, before expressing disappointment at the “pushback” Christians have received when it comes to the First Amendment, while groups like these are allowed to participate in such a way at a Christmas event.

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He argued that Christians believed strongly in free speech, including for the Satanic Temple, but questioned the judgment of mixing Christian themes with Satanic ones.

“What I think Christians need to do more is exercise their ability to allow these venues to have the freedom — such as the National Railroad Museum — to host different ideologies and different groups that have different viewpoints, but recognize that Christians find these things to be offensive or definitely targeting them in terms of belittling their faith or how they celebrate the holidays,” Farwell said.

“Christmas is a time when we celebrate and really rejoice in the fact that God loves this world that we live in and God cares for us. But it also reminds us that we, as adults and parents, remember the Good Shepherd. The shepherd has two voices — one for his sheep and the other for the wolves. And we need to exert that voice,” he said.

He closed by referencing a quote from the late Christian author C.S. Lewis, who said, “There is no neutral ground in the universe; every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counter-claimed by Satan.”

Fox News Digital has reached out to the National Railroad Museum for comment.

The demand for Rare Earth Elements is growing as the world transitions to cleaner energy sources. Rare Earth Magnets are used in electric cars, wind turbines and other evolving technology. Regulations and environmental concerns have slowed production of magnets in the U.S. as China ramped up its manufacturing with fewer workplace standards.

“We have a very high standard of ethics that we subscribe to and we maintain within our industry,” Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration president Marc LeVier said. “This is not our grandfather’s mining companies anymore. These companies are high tech and there’s a lot of regulations in place that we comply with.”

From the mid-1960s through mid-1980s, the U.S. was largely self-sufficient in manufacturing Rare Earth Elements. When the U.S. began implementing environmental regulations, nearly all domestic rare earth mining operations ended. Other countries – including China – stepped up to fill in the market gap. 

“When we talk about the carbon intensity of producing something, it starts with the energy used to mine things like minerals or for that matter, any other fuel source, and then how that fuel source is used,” Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said. “All of it is highly intensive pollution in China and it’s much less intensive in the United States. That gets back to the proven fact and why we want to demonstrate this advantage that the polluters have over us.”

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U.S. firms relocated their production to other countries, like China. Manufacturers faced less stringent standards and could pay lower wages abroad. 

“Sometimes we just can’t compete with what the Chinese do. The Chinese don’t have those kinds of standards,” LeVier said. “We have a lot of regulatory rules that we have to abide by. We have prescribed a way of dealing with the environment. We document baseline studies to demonstrate how it is before we come in and disturb the ground. And our goal is to put it back the way we found it or better.”

Nearly every part of the process impacts the environment. Mining can pollute ground water and destroy ecosystems. Dangerous metal byproducts are released into the air through refining. China also has less restrictive labor laws. LeVier says his colleagues at the Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration who have visited Chinese mines and manufacturing plants were surprised about the working conditions and safety standards. 

“I think that some of that’s improving,” LeVier said. “It’s the old adage it can’t improve fast enough and it should have improved yesterday. But we know that we can operate these mines safely. We’re the best in the world at operating safely and responsibly.”

The U.S. has several places where large portions of Rare Earth Elements could be mined and refined. Geologists have announced deposits in Idaho and Colorado. Manufacturing companies are examining locations in Montana, Arizona, Nevada and Wyoming. However, government regulations are slowing down any new mining and manufacturing efforts.

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“We need a dramatic increase in our ability to mine and process minerals both here in the United States and around the world, in places that are our friends and our allies,” Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said. “That’s something that I think we should be doing on a bipartisan basis, permitting reform and investing more in the development of these critical minerals.”

American Rare Earths plans to begin operations in about five years at their site in Halleck Creek, Wyoming. U.S. Critical Materials is exploring a location in Southwest Montana called Sheep Creek. However, it could need another five to 10 years of exploration before applying for permits to mine. The company tells fox it is also working to expand rare earth processing in the U.S. alongside the Idaho National Laboratory. After an eight-month study, it hopes to be among the few domestic producers with the technology to separate and refine rare earth elements.

“This has exposed other vulnerabilities we need to take care of. We’re in the process of doing it. But of course, you can’t do it with the snap of your fingers,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said. “China is actively trying to sabotage other sources of these rare earth elements because they realize what a competitive advantage it is to have us dependent on them.”

Demand for Rare Earth Elements is expected to rise 40% in the next two decades as additional wind turbines power businesses and homes, and more electric cars hit the road. 

“I think a lot of people in the United States are waking up to that now and realizing, Well, what do you mean we’re going to open more mines in order to have an energy transition?” LeVier said. “We’ve got a great opportunity. And we can we can get it done with the minerals we have here in the United States.”

A Republican-drawn map for Tennessee’s Senate seats violates the state Constitution because lawmakers incorrectly numbered the legislative districts in left-leaning Nashville, which affects which years those seats are on the ballot, a panel of judges ruled Wednesday.

The ruling centers on maps passed by the Republican-supermajority Legislature in 2022 during the once-a-decade redistricting process.

Tennessee’s constitution dictates that districts must be numbered consecutively in counties that have more than one district. The newly drawn redistricting plan does not do that in Davidson County, which encompasses Nashville. Instead, it’s numbered 17, 19, 20 and 21.

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The numbering matters because the four-year Senate terms are staggered, putting some districts on the ballot in presidential election years, others in gubernatorial election cycles.

Currently, those four districts are represented by three Democrats and one Republican. There are 27 Republicans and 6 Democrats in the state Senate.

According to Wednesday’s ruling, the state’s attorneys “conceded” that they would not defend the Senate map in court and instead focused their attention arguing that the plaintiffs didn’t have standing to sue. Tennessee’s state House map was also challenged in the lawsuit, though the state did defend those boundaries.

Ultimately, the three judges panel upheld the House map and ordered the Tennessee Senate to come up with a new district layout by Jan. 31, 2024.

A spokesman for Senate Speaker Randy McNally, a Republican who previously defended the Senate map as legally sound, did not immediately return an emailed request for comment.

“Today’s court ruling against the gerrymandered state Senate map is a clear win for the Tennessee Constitution,” said Democratic Sens. Raumesh Akbari and London Lamar in a joint statement. “Even when a political party has a supermajority in the legislature, its members must still follow the law.”

Akbari and Lamar added that they looked forward to advocating for a “fair map and transparent process” over the following weeks.

Separately, Democrats had argued that the House map also divides more counties than needed to create districts with roughly equal populations, and that it dilutes the power of minority voters. The map splits 30 counties, the maximum permitted for the state House. The Tennessee Democratic Party said Wednesday that it would continue fighting the ruling on upholding the House map.

“Our fight for a constitutional State House map is not over,” said Hendrell Remus, chairman of the state’s Democratic Party, in a statement.

“Composing a constitutional map is like piecing together a complex puzzle because one may not focus on a single factor to the exclusion of other constitutional factors…The nature of constructing a puzzle whose pieces have inherent conflict means that a perfect map will never be constructed by, nor required of the General Assembly,” the judges wrote in their ruling.

Three voters filed the lawsuit in 2022, which was backed by the Tennessee Democratic Party. The state had argued that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue over the maps, but the panel of judges allowed the case to proceed with one plaintiff eligible to challenge the House map, and another allowed to contest the Senate map.

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In April 2022, the panel of state trial-level judges blocked the Senate map from taking effect. The state appealed, and within a week, the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned that decision and let the maps stand. The justices reasoned that the lower court judges didn’t properly consider how blocking the map and extending the candidate filing deadline would harm elections officials and cause voter confusion.

A legal challenge against Tennessee’s redistricting maps is still pending in federal court, as well.

The federal lawsuit alleges that the U.S. House districts and those for the state Senate amount to unconstitutional racial gerrymandering under the 14th and 15th amendments. The challenge of the congressional map focuses on how the map split Nashville three ways, turning a Democratic seat there into a Republican pickup in 2022. The Senate challenge focuses on the boundaries in majority-Black Shelby County, including part of Memphis. A Republican represents the seat in question.

That lawsuit, however, is not scheduled to make its way to trial until April 2025.

Several online publications and social media users are urging Americans to reconsider the Thanksgiving holiday while alleging the holiday is a symbol of “colonization” and “racism.”

“Let’s drop the lie of Thanksgiving and begin a Truthsgiving,” a social media post from The Nation read this week that linked to an article with the headline: “Should America Keep Celebrating Thanksgiving?”

In the article, author Sean Sherman, argues that Americans should “decolonize Thanksgiving.”

“For many Americans, the image of Thanksgiving is one of supposed unity: the gathering of ‘Pilgrims and Indians’ in a harmonious feast,” Sherman, a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation, explains. “But this version obscures the harsh truth, one steeped in colonialism, violence, and misrepresentation. By exploring the Indigenous perspective on Thanksgiving, we can not only discern some of the nuances of decolonization but gain a deeper understanding of American history.”

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Sherman writes that Americans, in order to avoid the “tremendous distress to those of us who are still reeling from the trauma” of the Pilgrims landing in America, by promoting the “nutritional and culinary diversity” of Native American foods and “centering the Indigenous perspective and challenging the colonial narratives around the holiday.”

The Nation’s social media post drew strong pushback on social media from users rejecting that Thanksgiving is a symbol of colonization. 

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“It’s starting to sound like ‘decolonization’ just means ruining any and every tradition and fun time, to be replaced by the narcissistic, jargon-filled rantings of 20-somethings whose infallible knowledge of the world is informed by TikTok,” writer and podcaster Meghan Murphy responded on X.

Other outlets have run similar headlines, including Delish.com, which posted an article in late October titled: “The Dark Truth Behind The Origins Of Thanksgiving.”

In the story, the author outlines how the holiday is “not what you learned in school” and provides ways for Americans to celebrate Thanksgiving differently.

“For example: Seek out Native American authors, activists, artists, and chefs, and support in their work,” the author writes. “Listen to and uplift their perspectives and make sure your support goes beyond Thanksgiving and holidays like Indigenous Peoples Day.”

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This week, an article by Jason Nichols with the headline “Decolonize Thanksgiving” was published in Newsweek that argued Thanksgiving is an important holiday that should not be lost but “truth should triumph over nationalistic narratives.”

“And the truth about Thanksgiving should be learned by all Americans, as it is a part of our complicated history of savage betrayal and removal of indigenous people and the colonization of their land,” Nichols, a full-time lecturer in the African American Studies department at the University of Maryland, College Park, wrote.

“Thanksgiving is a wonderful time to spend with family and friends, but we owe it to our indigenous forefathers to know its history,” Nichols wrote while pointing out, “even if the initial feast was dedicated to peace, the settlers decimated the Wampanoag and other New England indigenous groups soon after through war and disease.”

Abraham Lincoln, in a stirring call to spiritual unity amid the carnage of the Civil War, issued an emotionally powerful Thanksgiving proclamation on Oct. 3, 1863. 

The president invited Americans at home and abroad “to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.” 

The tradition of Thanksgiving in America dates back to the first Pilgrim and Wampanoag feast of 1621. President George Washington proclaimed a day of Thanksgiving exactly 74 years before Lincoln’s decree on Oct. 3, 1789. 

Fox News Digital’s Kerry J. Byrne contributed to this report