In April 2022, when a reporter asked Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene about January 6, she responded, "It was a riot, it was horrible, I hated it, I was shocked, it was a terrible experience," but she also said it happened only "one time" and was "over" so people had grown "sick and tired" of hearing about it. She said "everyone's being prosecuted that should be prosecuted" while also — contradictorily — proposing that the reporter "visit" people who "are rotting in jail pre-trial" (why would he visit them? for sympathy? or for a sympathetic interview?) and that he verify whether those prisoners included anyone from the political left (she was implying that, no, only conservatives are being unfairly jailed). That was a head-spinning dissertation.
There is a legal case against her to determine whether she is eligible for reelection. People who aid insurrections are ineligible. If she is placed legally in that category, she can't run for office again.
Maybe she'll even join Trump's ticket and run on Trump's ticket. On Jan. 30, 2023, Will Leitch wrote on Medium:
"The day a theoretical second Trump administration would begin, January 20, 2025, Trump would be 78 1/2 years old, famously unhealthy, taking over the most stressful job on the planet. And Marjorie Taylor Greene would be his Vice President. There is a potential future, a very real potential future, where Marjorie Taylor Greene is the President of the United States. Pretending that’s not the case is an excellent route to allowing it to happen."
Update: She won, and she got a '60 Minutes' profile.
As a journalist w/ 20 years on the far right beat, I'm going to close-read @60minutes' MTG segment. To start: "MTG is as famous as they get." That's their justification: fame. AKA popularity. AKA the fundamental currency of fascism. 1/
— THE UNDERTOW, by Jeff Sharlet (@JeffSharlet) April 3, 2023
I was interviewed by @washingtonpost about MTG’s vile use of ‘pedophile’ to attack her enemies. The article is below. Today I’m giving the #history of this term as anti-LGBTQ and #antisemitic, and it’s link to #fascism, eugenics, and Nazis. https://t.co/amHSUjXal4
The real scandal in the awful Marjorie Taylor Greene interview is that Lesley Stahl didn't seem to grasp that "pedophile" is a longtime anti-LGBTQ hate trope. She called it "name-calling." This sanitizes an ugly bigoted smear that goes back many years:https://t.co/EXKQaFmam5
This is an interesting counterpoint from @speechboy71: The more national airtime MTG gets, the worse it is for Republicans. And I do agree that the part of the interview about MTG's Parkland conspiracy theorizing was terrible for her:https://t.co/sP4mal36bMpic.twitter.com/zyaJNi4eZH
I also want to highlight this from historian @bschillace, which explains the through line from use of the "pedophile" slur against marriage equality to its ugly use by MTG, which went unrebutted by Stahl:https://t.co/EXKQaFmam5pic.twitter.com/EOhh6uQXVZ
I just… there are a lot of people in journalism right now that would benefit from having a trans colleague on staff they could quickly consult with and get full context on these every day stories and these outlets just flat out refuse to hire us.
Marjorie Taylor Greene's inclusion of mechanisms for prohibiting medical instruction on gender-affirming care and deporting providers in her new anti-trans bill signals two extremely worrying turns in the war on trans people. pic.twitter.com/4ZTpLorug5
She can run for office (and win) but she can't, however, do anything anywhere she likes. Example: "A Florida resort scheduled to host Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) for what organizers claimed would be a small book signing abruptly canceled it Thursday after learning the gathering was actually meant to commemorate the third anniversary of the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol." (HuffPost, Jan 5, 2024)
“He basically blamed me,” Greene replied. “He had no compassion for death threats on my children. He blamed me basically that if my son were to get killed, it would be my fault.” (HuffPost)
"While it’s very nice that cars are transitioning from gas to electricity, switching the fuel source of our automobiles is unlikely to be enough to meet our goals for emissions reductions to combat climate change. Combating climate change also requires American to drive less and walk and bike a lot more than we do now."
So, regarding bike safety:
"American states and cities now have an opportunity to do [the] same [as Amsterdam]. But they must act fast, and they must act decisively. This is no time for half-decade-long action plans."
"In an influential essay in 1938, Lewis Mumford, perhaps the greatest American critic of urban planning, defined a city as that place where 'the diffused rays of many beams of life fall into focus.' Cities, said Mumford, are the culmination of humankind’s domination of the earth; they’re where the need for industry and cooperation have come together. Cities are the great sites of monumental and public life they are living museums of themselves, cathedrals to their own glory and to the forms of life they make possible; cities are where vastly different kinds of people can come together with different functions, and desires, and needs, that somehow are orchestrated into the great four-dimensional fold of human social life."
now do e-bikes!
virtually no air pollution, significant safer streets, virtually no road wear or maintenance costs, no noise pollution, builds better and more resilient communities...
sh*t - i wonder why congress refuses to subsidize the sh*t out of these climate wonders
If you like the bike photo, feel free to use it elsewhere. If you'd like to give credit, it's by Tucker Lieberman and you can find it on Pixabay.
This week we're collabing with the co-hosts of @thewaroncars.bsky.social to chat about how pro-car propaganda works, its history, and how it shows up in our politics today, especially in this year's NYC mayor's race! www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN-e...
“Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic and made way for parks, people-streets and bike-lanes.”
Better for the climate, better for health, better for livability and quality of life.
Common sense.
Such a no-brainer, it’s remarkable that more cities HAVEN’T done the same.
This isn't mine, and I can't definitively find the original source. But I love this little bit of wisdom:
"If you're a fifteen-minute walk from a coffee shop, but the server there has to drive an hour to get to work, you don't live in a walkable city. You live in a theme park."
"About a dozen states, including Oklahoma, Arizona, Iowa and Florida, have passed laws banning trans athletes from participating in sports teams consistent with their gender identity. These laws really only target young trans kids in school who are looking to express themselves, play sports with their friends or who like me, escape their anxieties through competition."
See this article by Steven Saus — Oklahoma senator didn't speak to a single trans person before drafting legislation to prevent people from accessing transition care until they're 26 — at which point they're likely uninsured under the Affordable Care Act. So, the sports law wasn't just about sports.
Do you understand what is happening?
This has nothing to do with encouraging girls to be athletes.
This is totalitarianism. It is the white nationalist agenda. The anti-LGBTQ agenda. The anti-abortion agenda. It is all the same agenda.
I've been waiting for 6+ years to see a statistical analysis of sports performances of trans athletes that demonstrates this supposed 'advantage' trans women have. Not just measuring bones and muscles then hand-waving, but hard stats proving trans women win disproportionately.
— @minusplnp@social.transsafety.network (@minusplnp) July 18, 2022
— Arthur Webber 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ (@BernieTranders) March 23, 2023
It is so disappointing to see World Athletics announce a unilateral ban on trans women in track and field events.
Their own statement recognises that there are no trans women competing at an international level and that they have no specific evidence to justify the ban.
Fascinating how she mentions the score for the trans men but not the trans women, almost as if her narrative would fall apart if she did pic.twitter.com/AWIUL1Ly2s
— Lily Simpson IS the Trans Agenda (@LilySimpson1312) April 5, 2023
Sad to report that the people who argued that banning trans women from rugby etc. was necessary on the grounds of ‘safety’ and ‘athletic advantage’ are now losing the entirety of their shit because a trans woman beat a cis woman at…(wait for it)…SNOOKER.
— Based Brenda 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ (they/them) (@SpillerOfTea) August 30, 2022
Well, look at this: "FIDE bans transgender women from competing in women’s chess events pending ‘further analysis’," Ben Church, CNN, August 17, 2023. Under regulations taking effect August 21, trans women must provide the chess organization with "sufficient proof of a gender change that complies with their national laws and regulations," and the organization can take up to two years to decide whether to allow them to play in women's tournaments. Also, "if a player holds a women’s title, but changes their gender to male, their women’s title will be 'abolished.' However, if the gender change is from male to female, all previous titles will remain 'eligible.'" The National Center for Transgender Equality noted that this policy "assumes that cis women couldn’t be competitive against cis men."
A Minnesota court granted a transgender woman athlete the right to participate in DGPT disc golf games for women. In response, the DGPT, "recognized as the top-tier professional league for disc golf athletes," said they'd stop holding women's games — but oddly, not men's games — in states where nondiscrimination laws might require them to allow trans women to compete with cis women. Erin Reed wrote: "DGPT released a statement that announced the cancellations, and cited 'competitive fairness' as their reason for cancelling all female professional games in states with strong protections around gender identity and human rights for transgender people. In the statement, they announce that they 'will not waiver' from this policy..." Note well: It isn't the transgender golfer, but the golf organization itself, that decided to stop hosting golf games. Reed said: "In adopting a similar stance — akin to the notion of 'taking my ball and going home' — DGPT is inflicting harm on the very individuals they purport to be safeguarding." ("Disc Golf Shuts Down 5 Events Because Trans Athlete Wins Court Case": Disc Golf Pro Tour has officially cancelled five events just to stop transgender athlete Natalie Ryan from playing after she won a major court victory. Erin Reed, Erin in the Morning (Substack), July 15, 2023.)
May 6, 2024, Minnesota began debating a state constitutional amendment:
"The Minnesota Equal Rights Amendment would be among the nation’s most expansive protections of abortion and LGBTQ rights if it is approved by lawmakers this session and then by voters on the 2026 ballot.
* * *
The amendment’s wording would prohibit the state from discriminating against anyone on the basis of race, color, national origin, ancestry, disability or sex — including gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation. The state also couldn’t discriminate over a person 'making and effectuating decisions about all matters relating to one’s own pregnancy or decision whether to become or remain pregnant.'"
"The Nobles moved [from Iowa to neighboring Minnesota] because one of their children is trans, and the government of their home state of Iowa has decided that it would be better if trans people didn’t exist quite so much in Iowa, and have passed a law to make that happen. ... There are a lot of intentions stated behind this: the desire for fairness in girls’ sports is one, for example—which is interesting, since Republicans have never been particularly interested in funding girls’ sports, and the actual impact of trans kids on high school sports in Iowa is best described as “undetectable.” The desire to keep girls safe in school bathrooms is another, which is sort of rich coming from the same people who refuse to make schools safe from gun massacres, and who insist on forced birth legislation that is making maternal mortality rates spike, and who pass laws that require genital inspection. ... what it actually represents is an eliminationist attack, designed to make trans people and their families not exist—not in Iowa anyway. ...anywhere Republicans are able to gain (or seize) power, they are moving to eliminate trans people. It’s a standard feature of the eliminationist bundle in the United States. It’s sort of table stakes if you’re courting support from nice good-hearted white Christian fascists."
"no group is more cosetted than the wealthy white christians of Nassau County, NY, and none are more threatened by their landscapers.
that said, i'll bet his audience tonight was heavily from Suffolkkkounty, where the South Shore will rise again." ("Coup Otter," Bsky, September 18, 2024)
In September 2025, "a man who had been detained by ICE was found dead in his cell inside a Long Island jail. He’s now been identified as Santos Banegas Reyes, 42. Other than the fact that he had no criminal record, we still know nothing about the circumstances that led from him entering Nassau County Jail and leaving in a body bag some 18 hours later.
According to Newsday, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman (R), the county medical examiner and ICE have all remained mum. Meanwhile, his family cries out for answers. "No one has called us. Not from [ICE], not from the jail," Reyes’s sister said in Spanish during a Facebook livestream on Sunday [September 21]."
See also:
"In the grand tradition of small-time autocrats everywhere, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, who wants to govern New York, has taken the noble art of self-promotion to dizzying new heights. His name, emblazoned across every county sign from Eisenhower Park to the Museum of Art, greets residents like a persistent relative who won’t leave the family reunion. Christopher Morley Park? More like Blakeman’s billboard. The jail? Branded. Old Bethpage Village? You guessed it." Indeed he organized a militia: "He’s organized a private militia—excuse me, “Provisional Emergency Special Deputy Sheriffs”—offering gun-toting civilians $150 a day to train for undefined emergencies. When pressed about what crisis necessitated armed civilians when the county already has 2,600 police officers, the National Guard, and holds the distinction of being one of America’s safest counties, Blakeman offered vague warnings about preparedness." Regarding his sports ban: "When reporters asked what incident prompted this urgent action, Blakeman couldn’t cite a single example. Neither could the executive director of the agency overseeing high school sports in Nassau County, who confirmed: “We have not had any issues with transgender athletes participating...no complaints, and I’m not sure that there are any.”"
— Joshua Powell, "This Week and Next:
The Divided States of America Takes the Show on the Road
Jan 03, 2026
"Earlier today, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump will be signing his 10th anti-trans executive order since taking office. This one explicitly bans trans girls and women from girls’ and women’s school sports, and was perhaps the heaviest blow to me personally and to my career. I posted a thread on Bluesky of some of my most significant work on trans athletes, and it’s safe to say that coverage of trans athletes—more than any other issue—is what built my career as a journalist. It’s hard not to feel like my words have failed the trans girl athletes of this country."
— Katelyn Burns, "The current ‘mindf*ck’ of being a trans journalist," guest post in the Handbasket, Feb 4, 2025
"Two Long Island school districts violated New York State law in barring transgender students from bathrooms and locker rooms that aligned with their gender identity, the state’s Education Department ruled this week.
Board members at both school systems, the Massapequa School District and the Locust Valley Central School District, had approved restrictions weeks apart that required students to use facilities that were gender neutral or corresponded with their sex assigned at birth.
* * *
The decision this week by New York’s education commissioner was the latest clash between her department and the Massapequa School District, which, along with Locust Valley, is in a reliably Republican area of Nassau County on Long Island. Locust Valley was added to the case because its board of education had approved a resolution “materially identical” to that of Massapequa’s."
— Matthew Haag, Restrictions on Transgender Students Violated Law, New York Finds
Two school districts had similar policies that required students to use facilities that were gender neutral or aligned with their sex assigned at birth.New York Times, April 22, 2026
Sometimes (well, all the time) I am curious about books I notice while browsing Twitter. A few recents:
Short thread of gratitude:
So, this happened. After a convo with the @wwnorton team, I reached out to Judith Butler, a cold email. I'd met them briefly, but I wrote to them about my book, and how their work made not just my book but *myself* possible.https://t.co/lSWV0pw0Fspic.twitter.com/9vVnqMMAfH
— joseph osmundson (all pronouns) (@reluctantlyjoe) April 4, 2022
In Unearthingly, Mithra engages a dizzying array of literary forms to construct a poetic documentation of violence, nationalism, environmental devastation read primarily through the eyes of Cheeky and the unstoppable arc of her girlhood.
Our first publication, WERE TALES: A SHAPESHIFTER ANTHOLOGY, is a finalist for the Imadjinn Awards this year. This is very exciting for all of us here at Brigids Gate Press.
Congratulations to all the other finalists! Lots of great entries in all the categories! pic.twitter.com/a9ZNs2MeQa
reminder that you can preorder my @glass_poetry chapbook about sad Jewish daughter stuff and/or reach out to me to talk about it on your magazine/podcast/online. would love to talk to other Jewish authors as well pls 😇☺️ pic.twitter.com/oHdFq0eYTx
Iceland is a small nation with 265 small museums. Many weird and wonderful, some may even say magical things to discover about the enchanted island and A. Kendra Greene collects them all in The Museum of Whales You Will Never See, a history of obsession, curation and yes, magic. pic.twitter.com/SlkPfPf5pq
— The Margate Bookshop (@margatebookshop) July 19, 2021
This is blowing up so a gentle reminder to drink some water and update your emergency contacts and also my friend @sarafmradio’s newest book The Wonder State (July, 2023) is a terrific coming of age story about magic and home(s) set in the Arkansas Ozarks https://t.co/pXLoeRlrkE
You know what this means, and how important preorders are for a book. But this time, it is @ruthmadievsky's book, and I am her agent, and it was the first book I ever sold, so please, PRE-ORDER YOUR HEARTS OUT!!!https://t.co/tPadHRG6zE
Happy pub day to my firstborn book, PRETEND IT’S MY BODY, which is today a real “boy” (it identifies as an ISBN)! love and gratitude to its many midwives, most especially the stalwart @adamschear and the glorious @FeministPress, as well as my dear friends who keep on cheering. pic.twitter.com/5XUBD5YYlN
— Luke Dani Halloween Is Over Blue (@LukeDaniBlue) October 18, 2022
Please check out Farhad Manjoo's opinion in the New York Times:
On one hand, it would seem uncontroversial to point out that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a war enabled and exacerbated by the world’s insatiable appetite for fossil fuels. It couldn’t not be so: Russia is a petrostate...By accelerating our transition to cheap and abundant renewable fuels, we can address two grave threats to the planet at once: the climate-warming, air-polluting menace of hydrocarbons and the dictators who rule their supply.
And yet American politicians on the left sure seem incapable of drawing out this connection, don’t they?
"If the 'climate lobby' were truly so powerful," Manjoo says, "it might have long ago prevented Europe from building its society upon a devilish bargain with Russian energy."
But that is past. Looking forward: Will the Democrats be able to pass Build Back Better legislation — with or without Sen. Joe Manchin?
This is our umpteenth confrontation with a petro-dictator whose viciousness and recklessness are possible only because of the oil wealth he extracts from the ground. No matter how the war ends in Ukraine, it needs to end with America finally, formally, categorically and irreversibly ending its addiction to oil.
"The September 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, which pumped methane gas from Russia to Germany, was a major flashpoint in the energy war between Europe and Russia. Amid its invasion of Ukraine, Russia halted all gas supplies to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 at the time, blaming Western sanctions for causing technical difficulties. Authorities have yet to determine who was behind the sabotage.
At the time of the leak, UN Environment Programme detected on satellite a massive plume of concentrated methane. It later reported the ruptures were likely the largest single release of methane ever recorded."
October 2024: Russia appears to be getting help from North Korean soldiers to invade Ukraine.
We scrutinized unverified Russian social media videos and located North Korean soldiers training at a military complex in Russia’s Far East, potentially preparing for deployment.
I know lots of ppl canceled subscriptions, so I’m sharing a gift link and threading screenshots here. wapo.st/3UqOYpz
As described in an article today in the Huffington Post, U.S. President Joe Biden
has committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050, meaning America’s forests, farm fields and clean-industrial projects would remove more carbon from the atmosphere each year than the country’s cars, power plants and factories emit. To achieve that goal, he passed an infrastructure bill with some renewable energy incentives and pursued a much more ambitious set of renewable energy tax credits as part of the stalled Build Back Better legislation. Using the powers of the executive branch, Biden also revoked authorization for the Keystone XL oil pipeline and raised federal fuel-economy standards for cars and trucks.
* * *
So long as Biden does not reauthorize Keystone XL, which would incentivize fossil-fuel extraction over the long term, the president’s efforts to limit the political fallout from higher gas prices are compatible with Biden’s plans to phase out fossil fuels, according to Andrew Dessler, an atmospheric scientist at Texas A&M University.
On the other hand, Biden has released oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and this week decided to "increase liquefied natural gas exports to Europe to decrease [Europe's] reliance on Russian gas."
There's a real question of how low the SPR can go. The answer is definitely not "0". 70m barrels is the stated technical floor. But problems are expected to start around 250m and we may struggle to actually pull from it—at least at this current pace.
We're already under 300m.
![The Midnight Society tweets:
[mysterious circle of robed figures]
JK Rowling: hello children
JK Rowling: today we begin our biggessssst challenge
Jesse Singal: bigger than convincing our terf legion that men have a special bone that makes them good at chess?
JK Rowling: no that was remarkably easssy actually](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_SRVk8EmFha5_xiGoaRUjYFwQCEZXVRTnteL57u2lBu2q_cpPqatRhz1D6fT5vdNMEwY7WF_8DjuBqgyE8Q5879LeZnzWbA0XUEFlZewtwull6J67jyI7E_kT-KaxlztazFXl1kfhjjkjIuvGVRK5GJJPTeBlV066C4KBVjG1v8RnW1vsz9KRujhbaxo/s1600/midnight.png)
