Sunday, June 12, 2022

Their goal is not to protect trans kids (Idaho, 2022)

Read this first

A long, positive Twitter thread about trans kids (unrolled on Thread Reader App)

What if a child almost doesn't get assessed before transitioning?

Michael Hobbes, Oct 8, 2022 tweets: I still can't get over how a moral panic driven almost entirely by anecdotes can't seem to find a single anecdote of a teenager medically transitioning without assessment. It's a big country and an emerging medical field; I'm sure some cases do exist. But it's telling that we've had years of scare stories by openly anti-trans journalists and the best they've come up with are some cases of kids who *almost* transitioned without assessment.

What if a child grows up to be trans?

I mean, when they're an adult? What if they turn out to be a trans adult?

Colin Spacetwinks tweets January 22, 2023: another piece on trans kids from the nyt and thinking about how these things are always couched in kids 'safety' and 'health' and then thinking about how schools have gotten dramatically less safe and healthy for kids since columbine but they have gotten far more controlling ... they're talking about surgery and hormones in an environment that's entirely about *social* transition. names, pronouns, different clothes. they aren't getting surgeries, hormones from this. and people go 'but what if they DO get hormones LATER'. it's blatantly about control

What if a child grows up to be trans, and we can't tell that they're trans because they took puberty blockers?

Transphobes want to be able to tell who's trans so that they can target us. They do not want trans people to accidentally or intentionally look cis. They don't want that outcome for us or them or the world. They want a world in which trans kids go through a puberty we don't want to go through and must spend years in adulthood modifying and disguising our bodies — working with whatever we've got — to look how we want to look.

They don't want to help us from childhood to look how we want to look in adulthood because they don't want to help us ever. They don't want us to have certain outcomes. They don't want to allow us to integrate in society. They don't want us to be happy with our own bodies. They don't want us to be able to say "my reproductive system isn't your business." They want our reproductive systems to be their business, in childhood and in adulthood, now and forever.

First:

"The Idaho House of Representatives...passed legislation to make it a crime punishable by life in prison for a parent to seek out gender-affirming health care for their transgender child." (NBC, March 9, 2022)

Update: Idaho passed the law in 2023, and the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed the law to take effect while two trans kids appeal it.

Even though cis kids are allowed to have gender-affirming surgeries:

Erin Reed: Its notable that Democrats introduced amendments to gender affirming care bans for trans youth saying that 'we should also ban cosmetic surgery for cis kids.' Republicans universally shot this amendment down in virtually every state.

Even though LGBTQ kids become suicidal over anti-queer legislation and rhetoric:

An Idaho law "bans trans kids from using school facilities that align with their gender identity and offers children a $5,000 bounty for reporting trans students who use the restroom that matches their gender identity." (LGBTQ nation) It should go without saying that offering $5,000 to a child to allege that their classmate might be trans is not a way to get accurate information about who is trans or whether there are shenanigans in bathrooms, nor is it a way to protect trans kids or cis kids. It is a bounty. It encourages false allegations. Even if an allegation is true, it rewards students for transphobic attitudes and actions. It teaches them to police each other's genders. A federal judge temporarily blocked the law from taking effect a week before classes started.

Gerald Don Henderson, 72, was murdered. So was James L. Mauney, 83, in a separate incident. Police suspect "28-year-old Nicholas Umphenour and 31-year-old Skylar Meade, two members of the Aryan Knights prison gang who were later arrested by police in Twin Falls, Idaho..."
"Neo-Nazis kill 72-year-old gay man, leaving his partner heartbroken over 'senseless' murder" One of the neo-Nazis stayed with the gay couple as a teenager. Daniel Villarreal, LGBTQ Nation, March 26, 2024

You know what they called teachers who snitched on their students and their students' families to the Nazis? That's right Nazis encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/a...

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— Erin Fogg (@criminalerin.bsky.social) January 29, 2025 at 6:36 PM

Then:

"Idaho police...arrested 31 members of the Patriot Front hate group who planned to 'riot' at a Pride event in downtown Coeur d'Alene, officials announced...'They came to riot downtown,' Coeur d’Alene Police Chief Lee White said at a news conference...'It appears they did not come here to engage in peaceful events,' Kootenai County Sheriff Robert Norris, told the Coeur d’Alene Press...Those arrested came from at least 11 states..." (Huff Post, June 11, 2022)

The group's leader had a seven-page document with an operational plan for the protest.

The goal of targeting gender-affirming care for kids isn't to protect kids. The goal is to make Nazis appear. Working as expected.

After the arrest, the police received death threats. Two days after the arrest, "Coeur d’Alene Police Chief Lee White said...he [had] received a mix of 149 phone calls, half of which were 'hate and threats from elsewhere, including white supremacists, etc.' The other half of the calls were 'supportive calls from the Coeur D’Alene community.'" (HuffPost)

Read the CNN explainer on Patriot Front, and also note:

More than 400 people, including hundreds of citizens, were “sorted” at gun point into racial and ethnic groups by 200 ICE agents who fired flash-bang grenades into cars with people inside, pointed guns at children & demanded their zip tied parents not comfort them. apple.news/Ausdx6kWtT0e...

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— Joe Robertson (@joro.bsky.social) February 11, 2026 at 8:35 PM

Follow-up: "Florida legislature passes ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy," by Lori Rozsa and Caroline Kitchener, Washington Post, April 13, 2023. DeSantis signed it.

By the way, as of October 2022 (this is an update), now we're here:

If you believe people need to be protected from their own trans-ness, as if it were an illness of which they needed to be cured, why do you also want to villainize or hurt those people? An insight from Susan Sontag: In the mid-19th century, people began to understand that illnesses were caused by microorganisms. No longer was there simply a person who was mysteriously ill; there was an identifiable enemy attacking that person, so to speak. This was when "medicine really began to be effective, and the military metaphors took on new credibility and precision. Since then, military metaphors have more and more come to infuse all aspects of the description of the medical situation. Disease is seen as an invasion of alien organisms, to which the body responds by its own military operations, such as the mobilizing of immunological ‘defenses,’ and medicine is ‘aggressive,’ as in the language of most chemotherapies." (Susan Sontag, AIDS and Its Metaphors (1989), Chapter 1)

Update: Proud Boys also showed up to protest at a Nevada library on June 26, 2022. The library was holding a drag queen story hour, and one of the men was openly carrying a gun (legal in Nevada) and approached the library. Proud Boys showed up at a California LGBTQ bar on June 30, 2022, harassing patrons at the door and making comments about "pedophiles." The bar had planned an all-ages drag show and had to postpone the event.

On July 18, 2022, a candidate for Santa Rosa County School Board in Florida said in a public forum: "These doctors that are going along with mutilating these children and prescribing hormone blockers to these kids, in my opinion, they should be hanging from the nearest tree." People in attendance applauded her comment.

In the 2022 Arizona governor's race, Republican candidate Kari Lake tried to smear her opponent, Katie Hobbs, for "the crime of being married to a trauma therapist with a trans patient" (as Ari Drennen put it on X on November 4). Hobbs won, but barely. Lake presented this characterization of her opponent, Drennen said, "with the help of the Daily Wire and Charlie Kirk."

More on Charlie Kirk (by Vishal P. Singh, VPSReports, Jul 17, 2023): "The Groypers, a loose coalition of neo-Nazi internet trolls," showed up at Charlie Kirk's conference. "Over the weekend, Republicans and their increasingly radicalized base flocked to West Palm Beach in Florida for the annual conference hosted by Charlie Kirk and his influential media empire: Turning Point USA," along with the MAGA folk. The night before Trump's speech, "a crew of MAGA-faithful neo-Nazis called the Nationalist Network arrived on the scene." They're "a neo-Nazi streamer collective cosplaying as a militant movement. It’s somewhat of a splinter from Nick Fuentes and his Groypers, led by Ryan Sanchez, a disgraced former marine and member of the federally prosecuted neo-Nazi gang Rise Above Movement." After trying to network in-person at Turning Point on Friday night, they "went to nearby hotels with a simple plan: promote the flyer for a Groyper neo-Nazi party to as many young conservatives as they could. They live-streamed their activities up until the party began," and they were "indulging in a fantasy that 'antifa' was coming to fight them (nobody came to fight them). You know your party promotion is going well if you start wishing you were brawling with your political enemies instead." Of course: "Eventually, Nick Fuentes gave his big neo-Nazi speech as his young cultist followers pledged that they were willing to rape, kill, and die for Nick Fuentes." These aren't Charlie Kirk's people, not quite yet: "As the conference continued, Ryan Sanchez and his Nationalist Network boys ended up getting kicked out by security after harassing and surrounding a CNN journalist. For now: the mainstream of the Republican Party— while heavily motivated by white nationalism, isn’t ready to fully accept the Groyper culture yet. We’re still in the era of dogwhistles and innuendo with regards to the fascism of Trump’s party. But his young supporters are getting restless. And radicalization machines like Turning Point USA provide a nurturing space for eliminationist hate in the base."

In June 2024, Arturo Dominguez tells us about "former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke joining a protest on Sunday over the cancellation of the America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC)," which Fuentes founded. "It was canceled after it became known that the event was to be attended by dozens of antisemitic and racist influencers."

Follow-up on Thomas Homan who attended a Fuentes event in 2022.

See also

"Trans Kids Are Found in History, Too" (5-minute read) or "How the Far-Right Comes for Trans People" (4-minute read). Using these links get you around the paywall.

fist breaking glass
April 1, 2022 tweet by Judd Legum @JuddLegum: Esther Bryd [sic: correct spelling is Byrd], who was recently appointed by @GovRonDeSantis to the Florida Board of Education, says it is 'unacceptable' for a teacher to wear a 'Protect Trans Kids' t-shirt on trans visibility day. She encourages parents to report similar violations. (via @emdrums)
June 9, 2021 tweet by Yesterday, @propublica broke a massive story exposing that the wealthiest people in America (including Zuckerberg) pay negligible taxes The top story on Facebook, by a country mile, was an aggregated anti-trans story from the Daily Wire ProPublica's scoop is not in the top ten

January 2023:

Nebraska Bills on Trans Bathroom Bans and Health Care Restrictions Scheduled For Hearings: The bills, if passed, would be a devastating blow to trans-affirming health care for all ages. Plus: an anti-trans bathroom ban on state-run facilities. s. baum, Erin in the Morning, Jan 23, 2026

February 2023:

Relatedly, in case you want to know what else Charlie Kirk believes: In January 2024, HuffPost reports:

"Right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, leader of the MAGA youth groups Turning Point USA and Students for Trump and the host one of the most listened-to podcasts in the United States, encouraged his listeners this week to take up arms in preparation for an “invasion” of immigrants at the southern border.

“The break-ins, the looting, the murder, the rapes, the arson, it’s — by the way, this is just getting warmed up,” Kirk said Wednesday [January 24, 2024] on “The Charlie Kirk Show,” echoing white supremacist talking points depicting immigrants and asylum seekers as inherently criminal. “You got 15,000 fighting-age males that are getting deployed all across the country. Native-born Americans, you better buy weapons, everybody. Have a lot of guns at your disposal. I would never leave your home without a weapon. It’s the new country we live in. It is ‘Mad Max.’ [President Joe] Biden is creating ‘Mad Max.’ You’re on your own.”"

See also: "Texas Republicans See Attacking Trans Kids As Political Win: The far-right hopes to drag more moderate conservatives into a full-scale culture war." Roque Planas. Feb 2, 2023.

In Texas, 2023:

"After a yearslong barrage by activists and lawmakers, the state has won the battle against the use of transition-related care, like puberty blockers and hormone therapies, for transgender youth. While the war over this health care remains in question — and a legal fight to block the new law begins in Texas — clinics have closed and some doctors have stopped providing this care."
— “Unbearable”: Doctors treating trans kids are leaving Texas, exacerbating adolescent care crisis. William Melhado. Texas Tribune. July 17, 2023.

August 2023

In response to an Aug 5 2023 tweet by Peter Boghossian saying 'we need to begin having discussions about appropriate legal punishments for surgeons', Michael Hobbes tweets: Bizarre to me that centrists think they bear no responsibility for the radicalization of the right on trans rights. You're publishing stories that say thousands of children are receiving irreversible surgeries with no assessment! How do you expect people to react to that?
July 18, 2023: Erin Reed @ErinInTheMorn They never were going to just stop with trans people. Italy has begun stripping lesbian parents of their parental rights. They always intended to go after all LGBTQ people. Walsh and others have started sharing outrage posts on gay adoption and surrogacy.

August 2023

A study published in August 2023 finds that — according to the Associated Press — during a four-year period from 2016–2019, fewer than 3,700 gender-affirming surgeries were performed in the U.S. on patients ages 12 to 18 — emphasis, some were 18, not even minors, and "it's not clear how many" within the 12–18 group were 18. People 19+ received 10 times as many gender-affirming surgeries.

Ari Drennen tweets on Aug 31, 2023: Libs of TikTok tweeted out a flier from a 'playdate social for black, brown, and API families' hosted at an elementary school in one of the whitest neighborhoods of Oakland. I don't even need to tell you what happened next at this point.

Virginia Gov. Youngkin

Glenn Youngkin, governor of Virginia since January 2022, by the end of that year had delayed his intended policies. (HuffPost, Dec 21, 2022)

And by August 2023: "Several school districts in Virginia’s Democratic-leaning regions are flat-out refusing to implement transphobic policies recently handed down by the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE). The policies force students to use bathrooms, pronouns, and names that align with their sex assigned at birth."
— Virginia schools are refusing to follow the governor’s transphobic policies... and there may not be much that the governor can legally do about it. Daniel Villarreal, LGBTQ Nation, August 24, 2023

A few months later:

"To be fair to Republican strategists, there was a moment, in the fall of 2021, when it looked as if the plan was working. Glenn Youngkin, the Republican nominee for governor in Virginia, ran on a campaign of “parents’ rights” against “critical race theory” and won a narrow victory against Terry McAuliffe, a former Democratic governor, sweeping Republicans into power statewide for the first time since 2009. Youngkin shot to national prominence, and Republicans made immediate plans to take the strategy to every competitive race in the country.
* * *
Overall, election night 2022 was a serious disappointment for the Republican Party, which failed to win a Senate majority and barely won control of the House of Representatives. The hoped-for red wave was little more than a puddle. The culture war strategy had fallen flat on its face."
* * *
One Youngkin-endorsed candidate for State Senate, Juan Pablo Segura, told Fox News that he wants to revisit a failed bill that would have required schools to notify parents if there was any hint a child was interested in transgender identity.
Segura lost his race [on November 7, 2023]..."
— "The G.O.P’s Culture War Shtick Is Wearing Thin With Voters", Jamelle Bouie, New York Times, Nov. 10, 2023

September 2023

At least 22 U.S. states have banned gender-affirming care for minors.

A teenager does her makeup and gets ready to go back to school. This is normal. Protect trans kids.

11-year-old trans girl’s plea for “peace” leaves school board speechless “I came here not to fight, but to make peace. How? I’m going to tell a story.” Bil Browning, LGBTQ Nation, October 4, 2023. Here's the video on Twitter and on the story Erin Reed wrote on Substack.

Genspect tweeted on Oct 3 2023: 'US-UTAH: 11 yr old 'Alison' came out as trans at 8 after having a vision of wearing a long white dress in a field. Dad says his 'daughter' must be 'validated in who she is” & allowed to use girls spaces bc many trans-identified people consider suicide.' Erin Reed tweets that this comment is 'vile' and points out that they are about to have a conference with 7 speakers: @LeorSapir @heterodorx @JamieWhistle @ChoooCole @LisaMarchiano @JanuaryDoNoHarm @HJoyceGender

March 2024

Drag story hour at Pa. library canceled after suspicious package and threats, authorities say A state police bomb squad later cleared the library, but police said “additional reported threats” were still being investigated. Associated Press, whyy.org, March 23, 2024

Can anyone, including a child themselves, know if the child is gay?

The LGB Alliance opposes gay kids. This is a homophobic position. They oppose their own past gay-child selves.

In a four-tweet thread on September 16, 2022, Katy Montgomerie said that LGB Alliance was "claiming that gay kids don't exist." She noted: "Coming out to yourself as gay as a teenager and dealing with the homophobia around etc is such a big deal for so many people. Children go through it alone often[.] A whole generation of kids grew up in Section 28 and were literally on their own, worrying what it meant that they had these feelings and if their friends and families would even love them anymore[.] The LGBT rights orgs that LGB Alliance campaigns against fought for these kids[.]" She adds: "I bet all of them were aware of their sexual orientation before they were 18." "So obsessed with harming trans people that they are willing to throw gay kids under the bus too[.]" And, crucially: "it's not even consistent with another one of their hateful claims: that gay kids are being forced to transition. What gay kids? You don't even believe they exist."

April 2024

"A large percentage of [U.S.] trans youth live in states where such [anti-trans] laws have been enacted, including 85 percent of trans youth in the South and 40 percent in the Midwest.

Conversely, nearly half of all trans youth live within the 14 states that have enacted shield laws that protect access to gender-affirming care and prohibit conversion therapy. This includes all trans youth in the Northeast and 97 percent of those in the West."

— Over 90% of trans youth live in states pushing anti-trans legislation: report, Ryan Adamczeski, The Advocate, April 23, 2024

Bomb threat interrupts Drag Story Hour event at Arlington gay bar [Virginia], Lou Chibbaro Jr., Washington Blade, April 8, 2024

Pennsylvania: A school board canceled an anti-bullying talk because the speaker is gay.
Bluesky link to NYT article, Bluesky quote from NYT article

Look at the result of the law

"Idaho State Police’s sexual assault nurse coordinator told Idaho Reports that the new law prevents law enforcement from administering rape kits to minors without parental permission."
A new Idaho law is keeping child sexual assault victims from receiving care, Andru Zodrow, KHQ, Aug 9, 2024

West Virginia:

"Businessperson Chris Miller is running in the GOP primary for governor of West Virginia next month, and his campaign has one clear message: he simply hates transgender children.

His recent ads have focused on promising to roll back the rights of transgender students, lying about gender-affirming care to make it sound scarier, and accusing his opponents of supporting gender-affirming surgery on minors, something that is almost never performed on minors."

— Republican governor candidate is making his entire campaign about hating trans kids: "His pronoun? Money-grubbing liberal," an ad says of one of his Republican opponents. Alex Bollinger, LGBTQ Nation, April 23, 2024

Republicans are running ads showing children taking their pants down in restrooms

2024 election. Not kidding.

How do you know if a murder victim was trans?

Anti-trans policies make it more likely that trans people will go missing.

Looking for a person in their old name and old gender presentation won't help you find that missing person as they're presenting right now. It's a prejudice against finding people who are living in a gender that doesn't "match" their sex assigned at birth.

In March 2024, Indiana's HB 1291 proposes that law enforcement be required to gather information on the "biological sex" of a missing person.

Anti-trans policies make it more likely that trans people will die.

The medical examiner looks at that person who has (or hasn't) had surgery, does (or doesn't) have updated ID, and may not see "a trans person."

How do you know if any human is trans?

"A recent drama residency from the Missoula Children's Theatre prompted Lakeland Joint School District [in North Idaho] to apologize last week after some audience members complained that a staff member was transgender."
Lakeland superintendent apologizes after transgender actor visits school, Carolyn Bostick, Coeur d'Alene/Post Falls Press, May 23, 2024.

Read the Bluesky thread

"We found that trans youth were three times more likely to kill themselves but then we controlled for the dumbest thing imaginable and the difference went away." mentalhealth.bmj.com/content/ebme...

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— Michael Hobbes (@michaelhobbes.bsky.social) May 18, 2024 at 9:34 AM

Trans elders exist

The goal of anti-LGBTQ laws is not to protect trans elders, either: In September 2023, four teenagers allegedly broke the jaw of a 72-year-old man while using anti-LGBTQ slurs. They will come after their own, at any age. In November 2023, "a Baptist pastor and small town mayor in Alabama was hounded into suicide by a right wing news site who discovered he had a secret online persona as a trans woman."

U.S. states are handing over the records of transgender patients.

My grim satisfaction at seeing this taken seriously is marred by my outrage that this study has to exist at all. "We studied people who were deprived of oxygen, and by year three the number of corpse-identifying individuals increased sharply" yeah no shit sherlock

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— Werepixie 🏳️‍⚧️ (@poljack.bsky.social) September 26, 2024 at 9:00 AM

Centrists will point out the obvious scientific illiteracy re. vaccines and infectious diseases in Trump's team, while at the same time taking them at their word on trans healthcare.

— Small Robots (@smolrobots.bsky.social) December 13, 2024 at 9:49 AM

Oh yeah, they're wrong about everything, except for some reason this one issue that you don't know much about. That'll be it.

— Small Robots (@smolrobots.bsky.social) December 13, 2024 at 9:50 AM

New — The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) was told this week by DOJ that they'd lose their funding if the org didn't remove any mentions of LGBTQIA+ issues from their public materials, I've learned. Staff were told they need to deadname trans kids in their reports to comply.

— Marisa Kabas (@marisakabas.bsky.social) February 6, 2025 at 10:30 PM

NMEC plans to comply with DOJ threats. This email was sent out Wednesday night to staff, but it noticeably doesn't mention anything specifically about LGBTQIA+ kids or DOJ, just general compliance with executive orders:

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— Marisa Kabas (@marisakabas.bsky.social) February 7, 2025 at 12:35 AM

That doesn’t mean that they have to comply in fact, or forever. Tell the DOJ that you’ll comply, and then oops the website was reload from an old backup, how’d all this gay stuff get there. The staff just have to conveniently forget to follow these new rules. I forgot is a great defense.

— PhoneCommander (@phonecommander.bsky.social) February 7, 2025 at 5:42 AM

Just tell them "we'll be looking at that."

NEW: To friends, Matthew Allison was a likeable part of Boise, Idaho’s electronic music scene. But behind his computer screen, authorities say, he helped lead the Terrorgram Collective, an online network that inspired white supremacist violence. With @frontlinepbs.bsky.social

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— ProPublica (@propublica.org) March 25, 2025 at 6:00 AM

Read more: The Trump Administration Has Launched A War On Kids: Trump has positioned himself as the leader of the "pro-family" party. But he's been attacking kids since his first day in office. Lil Kalish, Nathalie Baptiste, Alanna Vagianos, and Matt Shuham. HuffPost, Apr 6, 2025

An Idaho teacher was told by her principal to take down an "Everyone is Welcome Here" poster in her classroom. It's a symptom of President Trump's crackdown on discussions of inclusivity in schools.

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— NPR (@npr.org) April 10, 2025 at 5:09 PM

If you were concerned about teachers “grooming” kids by acknowledging the existence of LGBTQ people, but you’re fine with the GOP hiding the Epstein Files and a president whose name is all over them, you’ve acknowledged what the rest of us have always known…. It was never about protecting. kids.

— RevDaniel 🇨🇦 (@revdaniel.bsky.social) November 14, 2025 at 11:44 PM

Astonishing to stop and realize that, at any given moment, bands of masked men armed to the teeth are storming churches and daycares, terrorizing entire communities—and that most of the country's political establishment barely blinks.

— Brian Goldstone (@brian-goldstone.bsky.social) November 19, 2025 at 1:48 PM

gosh I wonder why they called her peril www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

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— Julia Carrie Wong (@joolia.bsky.social) November 16, 2025 at 8:58 PM

Academia is always good for the concentrated old-timey racism, I see.

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— Cheryl Lynn Eaton (@cheryllynneaton.bsky.social) November 16, 2025 at 9:18 PM

Keep coming back to Summers’ annoyance that this female mentee he’s trying to sleep with “takes her presentation very seriously.” To men like this—to a lot of men—women’s intellectual or professional ambition is an irritating presumption that they condescend to tolerate.

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— Moira Donegan (@moiradonegan.bsky.social) November 16, 2025 at 9:48 AM

Elizabeth Warren Calls For Harvard To Cut Ties With Larry Summers: The former Harvard president "cannot be trusted" with students, she warned. Ryan Grenoble, HuffPost, Nov 17, 2025

Larry Summers says he is ‘deeply ashamed’ after new Jeffrey Epstein emails and will pause public engagements, MJ Lee, CNN, Nov 18, 2025

Larry Summers resigns from OpenAI board as scrutiny over Jeffrey Epstein emails intensifies, Hadas Gold, CNN, Nov 19, 2025

Document Threatens Immigrant Children With 'Prolonged' Detention: The Trump administration is turning the screws on kids who’ve arrived in the United States without adults accompanying them. Matt Shuham, HuffPost, Nov 20, 2025

You might think from the headline that this is a story about a trans kid suffering medical consequences from a large drug dose but nope! It is just an interview with an estranged father who is angry that his child happily transitioned. archive.ph/Tmthz

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— Michael Hobbes (@michaelhobbes.bsky.social) December 10, 2025 at 2:20 PM

w/ passage of Marjorie Taylor Greene bill banning gender-affirming care for minors, re-upping story I wrote couple yrs ago abt Renton Sinclair, trans dude in KC who survived horrific, non-affirming childhood w/ a mom who later became a MAGA anti-trans influencer www.huffpost.com/entry/trans-...

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— Christopher Mathias (@letsgomathias.bsky.social) December 18, 2025 at 1:52 PM

🔥 THREE THOUSAND!! Over 3K trans youth & their families have had their personal info protected after legal challenge! It was such an honor to be on the @lawyers4goodgov.bsky.social team defending the privacy rights of patients of Children's Hospital of Los Angeles. l4gg.org/DOJSubpoenaWin

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— Allison Chapman (@alli.gay) January 23, 2026 at 12:41 PM

In Huge Lawsuit, Six CHLA Families Successfully Prevented The Trump Admin From Obtaining Info Of 3,000 Trans Kids Legal documents outline the impossible choices faced by families attacked by the Trump regime and stonewalled by CHLA—and how lawyers stepped up to stop them. s. baum, Erin in the Morning, Jan 27, 2026

Donald Trump accused of measuring kids' genitals with fingers at 'auction' in Epstein files: WARNING - DISTRESSING CONTENT: President Donald Trump has been accused of measuring children's genitals with his fingers at Mar-a-Lago parties, Cheyenne R. Ubiera, 30 Jan 2026

Mapping trans people doesn't protect kids

The gender critical charity Sex Matters – behind some of the most high-profile efforts to restrict Trans+ rights – faces an “ongoing case” with the Charity Commission after plans to ‘map’ Trans+ athletes in the UK. Here’s what’s happening 👇🧵

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— QueerAF (@wearequeeraf.com) January 12, 2026 at 11:37 AM

1/ What started it? The case stems from a joint call-out by Sex Matters and For Women Scotland - the groups behind the Supreme Court ruling - in October 2024. For Women Scotland said the groups were "undertaking some work to map" Trans+ people "competing in women’s sport in the UK”.

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— QueerAF (@wearequeeraf.com) January 12, 2026 at 11:37 AM

@transsafety.network warned this effectively launched a witch hunt to identify and map the identities of trans women participating in women’s sport across the UK.

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— QueerAF (@wearequeeraf.com) January 12, 2026 at 11:37 AM

In a statement @transsafety.network said 🗣️ “The harassment this campaign will inevitably stir up is most likely to impact grassroots women’s sports teams and organisations who lack the resources to deal with the security concerns that result from the abuse that follows.”

— QueerAF (@wearequeeraf.com) January 12, 2026 at 11:37 AM

2/ How has Sex Matters responded? Sex Matters says it is “confident” it has not unlawfully processed personal data. The charity outlined its view on “special category data”, arguing that while gender identity may fall into this category, sex does not.

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— QueerAF (@wearequeeraf.com) January 12, 2026 at 11:37 AM

"this reporting was first produced for the QueerAF newsletter"

3/ How did we learn about the case? The revelations follow a complaint by Jolyon Maugham KC @goodlawproject.org, founder of the @goodlawproject.bsky.social that raised concerns about Sex Matters’ activities - including its platforming of activist Richard Dunstan.

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— QueerAF (@wearequeeraf.com) January 12, 2026 at 11:37 AM

Maugham has said he referred Dunstan’s posts to the police, saying he believes they may constitute an offence.

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— QueerAF (@wearequeeraf.com) January 12, 2026 at 11:37 AM

Our analysis @jamiewareham.co.uk Sex Matters ended 2025 following a significant legal loss in the Sandie Peggie case 👇 Now it has begun 2026 facing renewed scrutiny over its conduct.

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— QueerAF (@wearequeeraf.com) January 12, 2026 at 11:37 AM

The ‘mapping’ exercise, at the very least, risks creating a ready-made tool for the harassment of Trans+ athletes online.

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— QueerAF (@wearequeeraf.com) January 12, 2026 at 11:37 AM

UK charities are subject to the highest level of scrutiny of any registered businesses with strict rules governing their operation for public benefit - which has already had challenges for LGB Alliance’s charitable status 👇

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— QueerAF (@wearequeeraf.com) January 12, 2026 at 11:37 AM

Sex Matters’ shift from a limited company to a registered charity brings higher transparency requirements and greater scrutiny. Has this left the charity vulnerable?

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— QueerAF (@wearequeeraf.com) January 12, 2026 at 11:37 AM

Idaho Passes Most Extreme Bathroom Ban In Nation, Creating Path To Life In Prison Second offense transgender bathroom usage has a 5 year maximum penalty, but four offenses trigger's Idaho's "persistent violator" statute, which can carry life in prison. Erin Reed, Erin in the Morning, Mar 27, 2026

Conservatives Have A New Target In Their Campaign Against Kids: Some conservatives are attacking a Supreme Court ruling that allows undocumented children to attend public schools. Nathalie Baptiste, HuffPost, Apr 2, 2026

What happened: Trans students who reached discrimination settlements with their school districts with the help of the previous presidential administrations of Barack Obama and Joe Biden have now seen those settlements terminated or reworked. Usually, those settlements involved more teacher training in school districts and more protections for trans kids.

Why it matters: This almost never happens. Usually, a presidential administration will leave in place settlements from previous administrations, even if they disagree with them. And one of the school districts affected has already voted to roll back its protections for trans kids.

Admin backs out of pro-trans settlements while hospitals start providing trans care again: Here are the top stories of the week that you might have missed. Alex Bollinger (He/Him), LGBTQ Nation, April 12, 2026

Truly, everyone needs to come around to the understanding that RFK jr and the MAHA movement do believe that many people are unworthy of life

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— Ed (@notdred.bsky.social) May 5, 2026 at 9:38 AM

900 Health Facilities Shutting Down or at Risk of Collapse as Trump-GOP Cuts ‘Ripple Across the Country’ “Providers are stretched thin, doing everything they can as resources disappear and the system buckles under the pressure of Republicans cutting more than $1 trillion from healthcare.” Jake Johnson, Common Dreams, May 5, 2026

Kennedy's health officials explored US ban of some widely used antidepressants

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— Matt Novak (@paleofuture.bsky.social) May 8, 2026 at 2:42 PM
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Saturday, June 11, 2022

Can Fox News be made unprofitable?

Bobby Allyn says there are

"growing calls from online advertising watchers for there to be more transparency and accountability in the complex industry that is digital advertising, an ever-growing segment of the economy in which an estimated $521 billion was spent last year.

* * *

An exchange called Freewheel dropped Steve Bannon's Real America's Voice; another exchange called OpenX blocked Glenn Beck's the Blaze; Google severed ties with Dan Bongino's website. In all, the group estimates that the campaign has cut off millions of dollars from sites spreading disinformation.

"...Atkin...says her group is going after the 'ATM of the disinformation economy.'

* * *

About 95% of Fox's profits come from its cable division, so sacrificing online ads would barely put a dent in the company financially.

But Check My Ads staffers remain optimistic, saying the campaign is about more than depriving Fox of money. They maintain it is also focused on attacking Fox's legitimacy and stirring a larger advertising-wide conversation about who is financially supporting Fox, said the group's cofounder Nandini Jammi, who was also behind the social media activist organization Sleeping Giants."

Read more: "Group aiming to defund disinformation tries to drain Fox News of online advertising." Bobby Allyn. NPR. June 9, 2022.

Will people stop giving money to Fox? Maybe yes, maybe no. We can try. To far-right media, use the pocketbook to say:

illustration of the word: NO
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Sunday, June 5, 2022

When the US had a federal ban on assault weapons (1994–2004)

A bit of history:

In 1994, a federal assault weapon ban was passed during Bill Clinton’s presidency. One of the compromises that had to be made in order for it to pass was that a 10-year sunset provision was built into it. During that decade when assault weapons were banned, experts say mass shootings in this country were reduced by 43 percent. Then, in 2004, Republicans in Congress voted against extending the ban, and immediately after the ban expired, mass shootings went up by almost 250 percent.

So we have solid research proving that it worked — and frankly, it wasn’t even a perfect piece of legislation. It had a lot of loopholes in it. It allowed for lots of assault weapons to be grandfathered in. It didn’t completely ban those weapons, and still it made a massive difference.

— Robyn Thomas, executive director at Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, interviewed by Katie Couric (June 1, 2022)

young person pointing a gun

Knowing that others are likely to have guns will not deter a would-be mass shooter. Jillian Peterson says:

"I don’t think most people realize that these are suicides, in addition to homicides. Mass shooters design these to be their final acts. When you realize this, it completely flips the idea that someone with a gun on the scene is going to deter this. If anything, that’s an incentive for these individuals. They are going in to be killed."

"Two Professors Found What Creates a Mass Shooter. Will Politicians Pay Attention?" Melanie Warner, interviewing Jillian Peterson and James Densley. Politico. May 27, 2022.

USPS May Soon Allow People To Ship Handguns Through The Mail, HuffPost, 2026

Image by Pexels from Pixabay
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Saturday, June 4, 2022

U.S. Representative openly embraces the term 'Christian nationalism'

The First Amendment does say "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," but that does not stop lawmakers from endorsing Christian nationalism.

Cross by sspiehs3 from Pixabay

One of many, many related phenomena we might bring up is that some guns are Christian.

Hemant Mehta blogged: "On July 1 [2022], a slew of conservative Christians, including conspiracy theorist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and anti-abortion zealot Abby Johnson, gathered..." The event was hosted by Gene Bailey who said they should pledge to "watch over the nation and make sure it’s run according to conservative Christian principles." He asked them to recite something called the "Watchmen Decree."

On July 23, 2022, Marjorie Taylor Greene told Next News Network: “We need to be the party of nationalism and I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists."

If you're interested in context, please see my posts on Sarah Posner's Unholy and Katherine Stewart's The Good News Club (both on this blog); Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez and American Rule by Jared Yates Sexton (on Medium — these links get you around the paywall); and The End of White Christian America by Robert P. Jones (on Goodreads). In September 2023, Jones has a new book, The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy: And the Path to a Shared American Future, and in an interview refers to White Christian Americans' "counterfactual myth of impossible innocence."

stone cross against sunset

Doug Mastriano is the Republican Party nominee for Pennsylvania governor. He supports QAnon and Christian nationalism. He's promoted his campaign on the social media site Gab, which was founded by Andrew Torba. Torba said, as Raw Story paraphrased it, that "he believes American conservatism should be for Christians only, and that conservatives should reject right-wing Jewish figures such as Ben Shapiro and Dave Rubin."

Torba's words:

>"We don't want people who are Jewish. We don't want people who are, you know, nonbelievers, agnostic, whatever. This is an explicitly Christian movement because this is an explicitly Christian country. We're not saying we're going to deport all these people or whatever. You're free to stay here. You're not going to be forced to convert or anything like this because that's not biblical whatsoever. But you're going to enjoy the fruits of living in a Christian society under Christian laws and under a Christian culture and you can thank us later."

Oh, an update on Ben Shapiro in 2025:

Fascinated how the guy who made superstars of Matt Walsh, Candace Owens, Jordan Peterson, and Michael Knowles thought that unfettered racism and every phobia in existence wouldn't eventually include anti-semitism

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— The Serfs (youtube.com/theserfstv) (@theserfstv.bsky.social) October 12, 2025 at 2:21 PM

The US isn't a Christian nation, but that's a myth that enables its believers, says Jared Yates Sexton, "to understand the world and accept the type of violence and oppression that is coming." (tweet, July 27, 2022) One of their sayings is "There is no crime for those with Christ," meaning the ends justify the means. (tweet from the same thread) There was violence and political scapegoating between Catholics and Protestants ever since Protestantism arose. Then, in the US, "the Founders wanted to destroy the religious-backed institution of the monarchy, which relied on the Christian mythology in order to hold power. They wanted to move to a different system where entrenched wealth and power could be shifted." (tweet from the same thread) "Because Christianity held such power, the Founders and others like them formed secret societies and organizations where they could discuss options to move beyond the old systems and form something less chaotic and beyond the old hierarchies." (tweet from the same thread) It was the instinct of liberal democracy to have a religion-free government, and the instinct of conservatism to assume that liberals wanted "to destroy Christianity itself...[and that this was] part of a larger, sinister plot. This is the definitive mindset of conservatism and their goal is to reconstruct the hierarchies of the past." (tweet from the same thread) There is "the original conspiracy theory: that a sinister and evil plot is being carried out to destroy Christianity and destroy the nation." (tweet from the same thread) The New World Order conspiracy theory is also used by Putin and Orbán. The Christian myth "gives them a world to live in in which these things can be carried out." (tweet from the same thread) Trumpism prepared the way. QAnon is a modernized version of "sinister, Evil plots that can only be answered by violence and the destruction of liberal democracy." (tweet from the same thread) Sexton adapted this information from his forthcoming book, The Midnight Kingdom (January 2023).

Quote from NPR's Morning Edition (July 1, 2022):

"These legal wins for the Christian Right, though, are happening at a time when a growing majority of Americans are strongly opposed to their views.

'This is the most disproportionate power that the Christian Right has had in my lifetime,' says Robert Jones, CEO and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute — a nonpartisan group that conducts research on the intersection of politics, culture and religion."

Thom Hartmann, "So where did all this right-wing religious nuttery come from?," Salon, July 12, 2022:

"...what's so astonishing about the entire situation is that we have reached this point not because the American public wants religious doctrine running our law, and not because most religious people agree with an arrogant prick working at Walgreens.

Instead, it's because a small group of right-wing billionaires didn't want to pay their taxes, wanted to get rid of their unions and didn't want regulation of the pollution from their refineries and other operations.

Seriously.

They put billions of dollars over five decades into a project to seize control of the legislatures of a majority of the states, jam up the U.S. Congress and pack the Supreme Court — and it was all about taxes, unions and regulation.

So where did the religious nuttery come from?

The right-wing billionaires and the corporations and foundations aligned with them knew back in 1971 — when Lewis Powell laid out their strategy in his infamous "Powell Memo," the year before Richard Nixon put him on the Supreme Court — that most Americans wouldn't happily vote to lower billionaires' taxes, end unions and regulation of gun manufacturers, or increase the amount of refinery poisons in our air.

How to convince the public that taxes, regulations, and organized labor cause more harm than benefit? Not only "five decades and billions of dollars to subsidize think tanks and policy groups," not only right-wing media like Fox News, not only an alliance with the NRA to increase the number of guns 8-fold in the US over the four decades since Reagan was first elected. No, they also needed Jerry Falwell, "an inveterate grifter, hustling Jesus to build a multimillion-dollar empire while ignoring Jesus' teachings about humility, poverty and the need to care for others. A new, muscular Jesus — a Jesus who endorsed assault weapons and private jets for preachers — came to dominate much of America's Protestant Christianity."

The result of the politicized Christianity, of course, is that in 2022 we no longer have abortion access in all 50 states because we lost Roe v. Wade.

"Our national poll included 2,091 participants, carried out May 6-16, 2022, with a margin of error of +/- 2.14 percent.

We started by asking participants if they believed the Constitution would even allow the United States government to declare the U.S. a “Christian Nation.” We found that 70 percent of Americans — including 57 percent of Republicans and 81 percent of Democrats — said that the Constitution would not allow such a declaration. (Indeed, the First Amendment says Congress can neither establish nor prohibit the practice of a religion.)

* * *

Fully 61 percent of Republicans supported declaring the United States a Christian nation. In other words, even though over half of Republicans previously said such a move would be unconstitutional, a majority of GOP voters would still support this declaration."

— "Most Republicans Support Declaring the United States a Christian Nation: New polling shows the appeal — and limits — of a Christian nationalist message." Stella Rouse and Shibley Telhami. Politico. Sept. 21, 2022.

Annika Brockschmidt (Twitter: @ardenthistorian) wrote a book about the rise of the religious right and white Christian Nationalism in the US. The book is in German. Amerikas Gotteskrieger: Wie die Religiöse Rechte die Demokratie gefährdet

Episode of Trumpcast: "White Supremacy, Tulsa, and the Mythology of America." One more conversation before this weekend’s ill-fated Trump rally. Description: "Virginia Heffernan talks to author Jared Yates Sexton about evangelical mythology, Bill Barr, rural understandings of globalism, the Confederacy, the coming Trump rally in Tulsa, how some Christian Trumpists may view COVID, and the “cult of the shining city."

Robert Reich observes (Substack, July 13, 2023):

“Put on the full armor of God. Stand firm against the left’s schemes,” Florida governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis proclaimed at the Christian Hillsdale College (substituting “left’s schemes” for the “devil's schemes” of Ephesians 6:11).

* * *

The paradox is that religious observance has shown a steep decline over the past quarter century. In 1999, Gallup found that 70 percent of Americans belonged to a church, a synagogue, or a mosque. In 2020, the number was 47 percent. For the first time in nearly a century of polling, worshippers were the minority in America.

Does this precipitous decline help explain the militance of white Christian nationalism? A fierce minority religious movement has taken over the Republican Party — giving the GOP fervor and purpose that are now being championed by Republican appointees to the Supreme Court, Republican state legislators, and Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump.

We're in this situation now.

"Christian nationalism, separate from the Christian religion, is a political ideology that seeks to merge Christian beliefs and symbols with national identity and public policy. Christian nationalists believe that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and Christianity should be infused in all aspects of American society. They believe that their god is the only thing that should influence laws and determine our rights, and as such, any laws and any governing body that is not based on the authority of their god, is essentially meaningless. For Christian nationalists, our government, the television shows we watch, the music we consume, how we structure our family life, how we engage with one another, and more, should be informed by their god. The true danger of this ideology lies not in that they believe this (although plenty could be said on that), but in that they are actively trying to enact it into our policies."

— Unveiling Christian Nationalism: Examining its Influence Through Current Legislative Trends, Meredith Thompson, The Humanist, March 15, 2024

Seen in May 2024

One of the most important things you can do as an ally and as fighter of fascism is stop laughing at evangelical Christians and realize they mean every single word they say. They’re not funny, they’re absolutely terrifying. Take them extremely seriously and act accordingly.

— Erin Biba (@erinbiba.bsky.social) May 26, 2024 at 4:14 PM

Responses to this included (paraphrased):

  • They worship power.
  • They will reject their own family rather than give up any of that power.
  • They will use their power to cause harm.
  • They're trying to bring about the apocalypse.
  • They're aware of what they're doing.
  • They're organized and shrewd.
  • They apply the concept of "religious freedom" inconsistently — they mean it for them and no one else.
  • They're conscious and intentional about their inconsistency, which means you can't shame them simply by pointing out their hypocrisy.

Recommendation: Listen to Chrissy Stroop www.bugbeardispatch.com (and on Bluesky)

June 2024

It's long past time for a broader discussion about what "Christian" means in America. It is far more a political identifier than a shared faith: 43% of Evangelicals reject the divinity of Christ.

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— Max Kennerly (@maxkennerly.bsky.social) Jun 18, 2024 at 8:55 AM

Washington Post opinion: "Trump has changed what it means to be evangelical"

July 2024

Josh Hawley embraces the Christian nationalism label at NatCon:

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— Sarah Posner (@sarahposner.bsky.social) Jul 9, 2024 at 12:41 PM

Marjorie Taylor Greene

"sees what her fellow Republicans either don’t see or aren’t willing to acknowledge: Trump’s second administration has already failed and will doom its party in upcoming elections. And she wants to get credit for being the first prominent elected Republican to say this out loud.

Late on Friday, in a statement that took everyone by surprise, Greene announced that she would be resigning from Congress in January. Once one of Trump’s most vocal allies, she had been fighting an increasingly bitter war with him in recent months, attacking him on everything from health care to the Epstein files to foreign policy. Trump, she has argued, is betraying his movement, selling out his voters as his administration ignores rising costs, attempts to hide embarrassing secrets, and props up a failing government in Argentina and a murderous one in Israel." (Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Playing the Long Game: The resigning Georgia congresswoman understands something that other Republicans don’t. Alex Shephard, The New Republic, November 25, 2025)

See also: The biggest myth about White Christian nationalism (12 min read), John Blake, CNN, Jan 25, 2026

On March 22, 2026, CNN will air Pamela Brown's video report, "The Rise of Christian Nationalism," on The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper. See this interview with Robert Jones aired on March 20.

"And in Oklahoma, the Christian nationalist founder of Pastors for Trump, Jackson Lahmeyer, announced his candidacy for Congress this week in the city he calls “Tulsarusalem.” Lahmeyer gained notoriety during the COVID pandemic for selling vaccine exemption slips and making inflammatory statements on social media. He preaches about a religiopolitical war between good Christians and evil “Luciferians.” A member of Trump’s National Faith Advisory Board, Lahmeyer purports to be a defender of religious liberty, though he does not believe the First Amendment applies to Muslims."

— email from American Atheists, March 27, 2026

New Survey Reveals An Alarming Number Of Women Support Christian Nationalism: How men and women support Christian nationalism is consistent, but there's one key difference. Monica Torres, HuffPost, Mar 30, 2026

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Thursday, June 2, 2022

Sadness waking us up to real life (quotes)

Camille Pagán:

"It’s permanence that distinguishes grief from other emotional pain. The unfixable nature of never — that’s what makes it so terrible to bear."

Patrick Harpur:

"In the life of the body, it is loss that dismembers us. Our hearts are broken; we bleed, hurt, ache; we are gutted. Bereavement opens us up like a scalpel, we fall apart, we feel cut up into little pieces. Grief numbs us; our bodies feel odd and separate; we seem to be living in a dream, in another world."

Julie Reshe:

"Before my own descent, I’d been confused when my PhD mentor, the philosopher Alenka Zupančič at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, suggested that the common striving for happiness constitutes a repressive ideology. What in the world could be wrong or repressive about the desire to make the world a happier place?"
Yet, after observing myself, I came to agree with her. Look around and you’ll notice we demand a state of permanent happiness from ourselves and others. The tendency that goes together with overpromotion of happiness is stigmatisation of the opposite of happiness – emotional suffering, such as depression, anxiety, grief or disappointment. We label emotional suffering a deviation and a problem, a distortion to be eliminated – a pathology in need of treatment. The voice of sadness is censored as sick."

Oliver Burkeman:

“In case this needs saying, it isn’t that a diagnosis of terminal illness, or a bereavement, or any other encounter with death is somehow good, or desirable, or ‘worth it.’ But such experiences, however wholly unwelcome, often appear to leave those who undergo them in a new and more honest relationship with time. The question is whether we might attain at least a little of that same outlook in the absence of the experience of agonizing loss. Writers have struggled convey the particular quality that this mode of being infuses into life, because while ‘happier’ is wrong, ‘sadder’ doesn’t convey it, either. You might call it ‘bright sadness’ (as does the priest and author Richard Rohr), ‘stubborn gladness’ (the poet Jack Gilbert), or ‘sober joy’ (the Heidegger scholar Bruce Ballard). Or you could just call it finally encountering real life, and the brute fact of our finite weeks.”

Sources

Camille Pagán. Life and Other Near-Death Experiences. Lake Union, 2015.

Patrick Harpur. The Philosopher's Secret Fire: A History of the Imagination (2002). Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003. p. 254.

“Depressive Realism.” Julie Reshe. Aeon. January 9, 2020.

Oliver Burkeman. Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2021.

child looking out rainy window sadly
Image by Shlomaster from Pixabay
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U.S. Republicans plan to lower CO2 by raising it

The Democrats have long had a climate plan, but they cannot pass it because the Republicans won't sign on. There is also one Democratic senator who won't sign on. The Washington Post reported yesterday (and you can read it for free with my gift link):

"Biden’s climate and social spending plan, formerly known as the Build Back Better Act, has stalled in the Senate for months amid opposition from Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.). If Democrats lose full control of government in the midterms, the president’s climate agenda would face even greater legislative roadblocks, threatening his goal of cutting U.S. emissions in half this decade."

Today, the Republicans plan to reveal their plan for how they'd treat fossil energy. They can pass their plan if they win control of the House in the November. Before their formal reveal, the Washington Post reported:

"The strategy calls for streamlining the permitting process for large infrastructure projects, increasing domestic fossil fuel production and boosting exports of U.S. liquefied natural gas, which proponents say is cleaner than gas produced in other countries..." [emphasis mine]

The problem, of course, is that we need to reduce the use of fossil fuels.

As scientific background, in case it's helpful:

"To meet the more ambitious goal of the 2015 Paris agreement, the world must eliminate coal use within 30 years, according to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Gas dependence should be reduced by 45 percent, while oil use must fall 60 percent by the middle of the century, the IPCC said in a recent report that concluded humanity is running out of time to meet global climate goals."

As political background:

"Republicans have historically opposed measures to tackle climate change, and the de facto leader of the party, former president Donald Trump, has mocked the scientific consensus on global warming. It is unclear whether the GOP plans would, in fact, reduce carbon emissions, or if they instead largely amount to an attempt to deflect political blame over Republicans’ long-standing opposition to addressing catastrophic global warming." [emphasis mine]

You can't lower CO2 by raising it. This is not even a slow-walk in reductions. It's an increase.

fire
Fire by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay

So...which is worse? Republicans who propose plans to increase carbon emissions, or Republicans who criticize plans to reduce them and don't make any proposal of their own?

"McCarthy has said that House Republicans plan to release a broad policy agenda ahead of November’s elections to give voters an idea of how the party would govern if it takes control of the House. That stands in contrast to the approach being taken by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has said Senate Republicans do not plan to release any policy proposals and will instead campaign on their criticisms of congressional Democrats and the Biden administration."

❓Which is worse: House Republicans who propose "increasing domestic fossil fuel production" during climate emergency, or Senate Republicans who don't "release any policy proposals" and only criticize Democrats' proposal to invest in renewables? 🇺🇸
🙋‍♂️Whichever strategy leads to a Republican win is worse.

House Republicans to unveil conservative road map on climate, energy (gift link)
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy plans to call for boosting domestic fossil fuel production and streamlining the permitting process for large infrastructure projects
By Maxine Joselow and Jeff Stein
Washington Post
June 1, 2022

Renewable energy is possible. The US refuses to fathom it, but other countries demonstrate it:

"Today, the country [Uruguay] has almost phased out fossil fuels in electricity production. Depending on the weather, anything between 90% and 95% of its power comes from renewables. In some years, that number has crept as high as 98%."

Uruguay’s green power revolution: rapid shift to wind shows the world how it’s done
Stung by 2008’s oil price spike, Uruguay now produces up to 98% of its electricity from renewables. Can other countries follow suit?
Sam Meadows in Montevideo
The Guardian
December 27, 2023

“Uruguay did what most nations still call impossible: it built a power grid that runs almost entirely on renewables—at half the cost of fossil fuels. The physicist who led that transformation says the same playbook could work anywhere—if governments have the courage to change the rules.”

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— Justin (@ediparolev.bsky.social) January 10, 2026 at 3:29 AM
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Wednesday, June 1, 2022

Anti-trans initiatives in the United States (2022)

Today is the first day of Pride Month. Please check out this article: "Cover Star Chase Strangio Is Our Defender." Harron Walker. The Advocate. June 1, 2022. From the article:

"Lawmakers filed a record number of anti-trans bills in 2020 only to break that record the following year, introducing 150 pieces of legislation that would make trans people’s lives—and those of their accepting parents and medical providers—needlessly difficult, if not fully criminalized. We’re not even halfway through 2022, and already we’re on track to break that record again, with 140 bills filed by mid-May alone.

“This is the third year where we’re seeing this incredibly intense attack against trans people, but particularly trans youth,” says Cathryn Oakley, state legislative director and senior counsel at the Human Rights Campaign. “The folks pushing these bills are the same opponents of LGBTQ equality we’ve had for decades: the Heritage Foundation, the American Principles Project, the Alliance for Defending Freedom — same old, same old. Their goal is to stop LGBTQ equality at any cost.

Chase Strangio, the trans rights lawyer who's profiled by the article, warns that USAmericans can't expect more "wins like...Obergefell or Bostock" from the current Supreme Court.

The American Principles Project put out a 2024 report on the "gender industrial complex." ElizaBeth tells us: "they literally have the quote, 'there are known knowns and unknown unknowns' on page 31."

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In case you missed it

Have you seen inside the book 'To Climates Unknown'?

The alternate history novel To Climates Unknown by Arturo Serrano was released on November 25, the 400th anniversary of the mythical First ...