Latest threat to free speech

This is scary. The Bill of Rights protects citizens from the government. Not the other way around. www.tcpalm.com/story/news/p...

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— EveryLibrary (@everylibrary.bsky.social) November 20, 2024 at 2:36 PM

Shield law for journalists

This is important. www.wired.com/story/press-...

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— Jeremy Kohler (@jeremykohler.bsky.social) November 18, 2024 at 9:23 PM

We CANNOT let this happen. A free and open press is essential!

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— Megaholt 𓅃 (@megaholt.bsky.social) November 20, 2024 at 8:00 PM

2025: The anti-trans laws we fear are coming

Here's what laws and policies I expect the incoming administration to pursue, based on Project 2025 and Agenda 47: * The FDA will ban the use of hormones for treating gender dysphoria * National ban on medical treatment of gender dysphoria in minors (affects RAND parents of trans youth) 1/n

— Brynn Tannehill (@brynntannehill.bsky.social) November 20, 2024 at 10:32 AM

* Ban on federal funding for any treatment of gender dysphoria with anything besides conversion talk therapy * National bathroom ban at all federal facilities, and probably facilities of federal contractors 2/n

— Brynn Tannehill (@brynntannehill.bsky.social) November 20, 2024 at 10:32 AM

* Law that states the federal government will only recognize gender markers if they match sex at birth (no more passport or driver’s license to use for air travel, or flee to Canada) * Potential revocation of security clearances for transgender individuals 3/n

— Brynn Tannehill (@brynntannehill.bsky.social) November 20, 2024 at 10:32 AM

* Loss of security clearances means almost no trans people left in federal employment or with federal contractors * Potential penalties on insurance plans that cover health care for trans people 4/n

— Brynn Tannehill (@brynntannehill.bsky.social) November 20, 2024 at 10:32 AM

* Bathroom ban on trans people at all schools, regardless of public or private * Day 1 executive order banning trans people from the military (everyone kicked out within 60 days). 5/n

— Brynn Tannehill (@brynntannehill.bsky.social) November 20, 2024 at 10:32 AM

* Laws making it far easier to sue doctors who provide health care for trans people * Any doctor or medical facility who receives federal dollars (Medicare, Medicaid, CHIPs) cannot continue to receive payment if they provide transition related health care (Hyde amendment, effectively) 6/n

— Brynn Tannehill (@brynntannehill.bsky.social) November 20, 2024 at 10:32 AM

* Almost needless to say, the VA will no longer be providing HRT to trans people. They will provide talk therapy to convince you you're not trans or to learn to live with untreated GD, and anti-depressants. If this doesn't seem survivable: it isn't. 7/n

— Brynn Tannehill (@brynntannehill.bsky.social) November 20, 2024 at 10:32 AM

Here we go again, the same old absolute flaming nonsense that looks to define sex in terms of “subjunctive gametes”…

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— Ethel Weapon (@lousadzak.bsky.social) November 20, 2024 at 3:09 PM

The language used is super familiar. So familiar that I already ripped it apart in this article. It’s like defining something in terms of “the thing that it would have if it did”. Vacuous. kim-hipwell.medium.com/why-gamete-p...

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— Ethel Weapon (@lousadzak.bsky.social) November 20, 2024 at 3:13 PM

This seems new though. Under this law, man and woman are non-fungible tokens.

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— Ethel Weapon (@lousadzak.bsky.social) November 20, 2024 at 3:15 PM

I don’t suppose the fact that all this is incoherent baloney makes any difference. It’s just a piece of paper to point when something is needed to say it’s OK to be vile to trans people.

— Ethel Weapon (@lousadzak.bsky.social) November 20, 2024 at 3:17 PM

Andrea Pitzer: The US as rogue state

"In 2015 I made two trips to Guantanamo while writing my history of concentration camps...

The first visit, I went to a pretrial hearing of the five 9/11 suspects...

One person I talked to not long after that was Mark Fallon, a career NCIS agent, who said something that stuck with me. As NCIS chief of counterintelligence operations for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, he’d been part of the early interrogation program at Gitmo. He protested the U.S. turn to torture in interrogations there internally, later condemning it in public and writing a book, Unjustifiable Means.

Fallon told me that after 9/11, with the turn toward black sites and torture around the world, the U.S. had become a rogue state. And because we had brought those secret, illegal interrogation sites into being around the world, America had not only became a rogue state, but had pulled other states into that orbit. He thought the U.S. would remain a rogue state—and the danger of doing even worse things would remain—until there was full accountability for the program.

* * *

Given where the country is at now, I reached out to Mark Fallon again. When we spoke last week, I asked him what he thinks of our current moment, and whether America is still a rogue state.

He noted that the cabinet nominees put forward so far are in many cases the negation of the agencies Trump is inviting them to run. Each one exemplifies the opposite of the values of the institutions he wants them to lead.

“These nominees appear to be those who will destroy or hinder the internal workings of government,” he said, “which even Al Qaeda failed to do.”"

— Andrea Pitzer, America as a Rogue State: Trump’s malicious chaos targets democracy at home and around the world. Degenerate Art, November 19, 2024

Inclusive gay & Jewish community since the 1970s

Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum says:

"The Jewish community was behind the Christian, especially the Protestant community was — In the '60s There were Proetstant priests and ministers who were great leaders of the LGBT movement or lesbian and gay movement. And in 1973 when CBST was founded, there was not a single rabbi, not a single Jewish organization, not a single synagogue, not a single Jewish civil rights organization which supported gay rights. So CBST was founded and the LGBT movement was founded by lesbians and gay men in quite a hostile environment. Really before synagogues like CBST started, or BCC in Los Angeles which was three months beore CBST, you had to make a choice: you had to either...live a gay life but there was no way you could go into a Jewish community, or you could live a Jewish life and sublimate or live a secret life or live a hidden life as a gay person. So it wasn't until 19 — the end of '72 or '73 that there was anything in the Jewish world that was different."
— start at 35:35, and focusing especially starting at 37:29–38:42

Beth Chayim Chadashim (BCC) — Los Angeles
Beit Simchat Torah (CBST) — New York

Kleinbaum goes on to cite Evan Wolfson, Paul Kaplan, Larry Kramer as Jewish leaders for LGBT civil rights.

Seen on Bluesky: 'the trans protagonist *literally* defeats the villain with her transness'

here's another clip from the trans cartoon episode Disney pulled a few days ago, where the trans protagonist *literally* defeats the villain with her transness (with Unlock It by Charli in the background!!) this would have changed my life when i was a kid (content warning: some flashing lights)

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— sara (@sara.lgbtq.social) November 17, 2024 at 8:57 AM

its so gutting to see representation this good finally being made, only to be axed by bigots the whole damn episode is beautiful. her transness being "against the rules" of the system leads them to realize that the only way to win is by <breaking the system> its awesome. you should download it:

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— sara (@sara.lgbtq.social) November 17, 2024 at 9:00 AM

On the US election postmortem

"Yet the roots of Trumpism extend many years before 2015. I first came across them in 1994, when the Democrats lost both houses of Congress in what was then termed a “repudiation” of the Democratic Party.

Trumpism is the consequence, not the cause, of a long-term structural change in the American political economy.

Over much of the past 30 years, as the Republican Party embraced bigotry, lies, and hate to stir up working-class fears and resentments, the Democratic Party abandoned the working class and embraced global trade, deregulation of finance, and lower taxes on the wealthy, and has allowed corporate bashing of labor unions and monopolization of industry.

As a result, the median wage of the bottom 90 percent has risen just 15 percent, adjusted for inflation, while the stock market has soared 5000 percent."

To its credit, the Biden administration is the first Democratic administration in more than 30 years to reject additional moves toward globalization and deregulation, propose higher taxes on the wealthy, strengthen labor unions, aggressively utilize antitrust, and adapt a forward-looking industrial policy.

But these measures require years to take effect, and many working-class Americans have not yet benefited from them.

— Robert Reich, Who are we? Nov 7, 2024

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"I’m not interested in participating in the circular firing squad of why Trump won and Harris lost. Because I don’t think messaging or strategy would have overcome this. Much like in 2016, I’m not sure there’s anything Harris could have realistically done to turn the tide. And as much as folks might not want to hear this I think her team ran a good campaign and Trump ran a terrible one. It just didn’t matter in the end."

— Melissa Ryan, Clarity: I don’t have all the answers, but here’s where I’m at today. Ctrl Alt Right Delete, Nov 6, 2024

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"Harris decried Trump as a fascist, a petty tyrant. She called him divisive, angry, aggrieved. And that was a smart case to make if, deep down, most voters held democracy dear (except maybe they didn’t) and if so many of them weren’t already angry (except they were). If all America needed was an articulate case for why Trump was bad, then Harris was the right candidate with the right message at the right moment. The prosecutor who would defeat the felon.

But the voters heard her case, and they still found for the defendant. A politician who admires dictators and says he’ll be one for a day, whose former top aides regard as a threat to the Constitution — a document he believes can be “terminated” when it doesn’t suit him — has won power not for one day but for nearly 1,500 more. What was considered abnormal, even un-American, has been redefined as acceptable and reaffirmed as preferable."

— Carlos Lozada, Stop Pretending Trump is Not Who We Are, New York Times, November 6, 2024

"Things like $15 an hour, labor law reform, and the care agenda...would have immediately been felt in working families’ homes," said Heather McGhee, but Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin (Democrats) blocked those Democratic victories. Whereas things like "a long-term infrastructure plan" and "dethroning neoliberalism, dealing with antitrust, and creating new manufacturing jobs...feel very long-term and it’s easy to confuse who gets credit for it." To win, the Democrats needed policies with "immediacy and marketability." Apparently "people are more enthralled with a $300 stimulus check signed by Donald Trump than they are with the highest rate of manufacturing since the 1970s," and in Missouri they voted for "$15 an hour and abortion rights" yet "reject[ed] the Democratic Party that stands for these things."

— How to compete with the right-wing meaning-making media machine: Writer and policy wonk Heather McGhee on how Democrats failed to reach voters on policy, why having Beyoncé on your side isn't enough, and what it will take to build a left media in the Trump years. The Ink, Nov 11, 2024

"I recently heard someone say, “Republicans work to control the weather, and Democrats wait for it to rain then fight over which umbrella to use.” It stopped me mid-sip of coffee. Like many of you, I’ve been sitting with the tremendous loss that took place last week at the ballot box—the loss of not just the presidency, but the Senate, and now, the House as well; a full trifecta of power now firmly in the hands of Trump, Elon Musk, and the guy who was investigated for sex trafficking who will now lead the Justice Department. I don’t know how to reconcile any of it, including the painful fact that the design of our disconnection as Americans was so well orchestrated and so well executed. It is humbling: how well we all got played and how much we will all suffer because of it, whether you voted for this reality or not. “Pick your pain,” a friend said to me, “One way or another, it’s coming.”"

— Amber Tamblyn, Lean Into the Hard Lesson of Loss: On steep election learning curves, tilting toward the promise of a stronger coalition, and a second live gathering over Zoom this month, because I love you. Nov 14, 2024

Trump secured his victory by just a cumulative 237,000 votes in three states that, had they gone the other way, would have meant victory for Harris." nyt

— Ewart, Dave (@davidewart.bsky.social) November 18, 2024 at 1:20 AM