Demolition at the White House with no oversight

Kos of Daily Kos wrote about the scam PACs of the 2024 election cycle. These are groups that sent emails and texts that screamed, “Donate! Help us defeat...” They raked in $678 million and less than $11 million went to Democratic candidates or the party. “This is theft—pure and simple—bleeding the progressive movement dry while the right builds real power.” These PACs did spend some money on campaigns – on political ads. Kos calls them “grossly inefficient.” Better to spend the money on voter registration and door-knocking. The main point is Democrats will have a hard time winning while these organizations still exist. Better that we citizens donate directly to candidates. That got me wondering. Did the Democratic Party know about these groups? Did they let them stay in operation? Think they were doing good work? Try to shut them down? Or were they really Republican organizations pretending to be progressive to suck money out of the progressive cause? Yeah, that last bit sounds all “deep state” and conspiracy minded, but since this is about Republicans who have proved how willing they are to ruthlessly cheat I wouldn’t be surprised if is was true. Kos also wrote about the latest from Sen. Rick Scott, Florida Republican. In response to Zohran Mamdani doing quite well running for New York mayor as a Democratic Socialist, Scott introduced a resolution in the Senate declaring socialism to be the greatest threat to the nation. He claims “it is a proven path to tyranny, starvation, and death.” Scandinavia would disagree. Their socialist democracies are doing quite well, thank you. It seems the nasty guy would also disagree. Maybe not in words, but in actions. He has been doing quite a lot to interfere with capitalism. He’s demanded the purge of DEI programs, bullied executives, and demanded an ownership stake in Intel. Maybe Scott should have a chat with the nasty guy? Emily Singer of Kos wrote that about the jobs numbers released on Friday. The June numbers were revised downward to a loss of 13,000 jobs. July numbers were revised up a bit (I had heard early reports elsewhere that the July revision was also down). And in August a measly 22,000 jobs were added. A month ago the jobs numbers were bad enough the nasty guy fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This month he posted about – Jeffrey Epstein. Lisa Needham of Kos reported that the nasty guy is ready to start work on his ballroom. The first part is demolition of some parts of the East and West Wings. The nasty guy named Will Scharf to be the head of the National Capital Planning Commission, the organization that oversees and approves changes to the White House. And Scharf says the NCPC has no jurisdiction over the demolition process. Mighty convenient. I previously wrote the nasty guy said it would be paid for through donations – as in another way to bribe him. Needham concluded:

So, let’s recap. We don’t get to know anything about the demolition of the White House, because there is no oversight and no approval process. And we don’t know anything about what the ballroom will actually look like, because there are no building plans yet. Then we don’t get to know anything about the contractor [who is named] because they didn’t have to go through an approval process. And we don’t know how it is being paid for. All we really do know is that, because Trump is involved, it is going to be tacky as hell.

Singer reported that recent comments from Robert Kennedy Jr. imply he is laying the groundwork so he can limit the access to mifepristone, one of the two medical abortion drugs. Sister sent me a link to an article in Smithsonian Magazine, written by Brandon Tensley. It is a short article about Frank Kameny. He was an astronomer with the Army Map Service, but fired because he was gay. This was a part of the Lavender Scare of the 1950s when being gay was considered a governmental security risk because gay men could be blackmailed. He appealed his firing all the way to the Supreme Court, which declined to hear his case. A year before Stonewall he coined the slogan “Gay Is Good.” He was an early activist in the LGBTQ struggle for equality. He played a big role in getting the American Psychiatric Association to say homosexuality was not a mental illness. I had heard much of that before. There is a bit I didn’t know. Kameny kept notebooks. Two of them are now in the Archives Center of the National Museum of American History. Included in the notebooks is information about what bars and restaurants he had been to were gay-friendly. What Kameny intended to do with those recommendations is not known. Since he didn’t publish them perhaps they were only for the use of himself and friends. However, this article speculates if he had published them they would have been the first LGBTQ equivalent of the Green Book which black travelers used to avoid discriminatory businesses during Jim Crow.

Make America Great Again but making China greater

I leave tomorrow and will be gone for a week. The reason for the trip is to attend the United Methodist Reconciling Ministries Network Convocation held in Madison, Wisconsin. The denomination has removed the harmful language from the rule book that called homosexuality “incompatible with Christian teaching.” That was the basis for gay clergy bans and other bans, which are also now gone. But that does not mean every congregation is welcoming. That is the next step RMN will address. The Convo is a place to talk about it while celebrating through queer theology. I may post a report when I get back. When the Senate was debating the Big Brutal Bill one of the changes they made to the House version was to protect tax credits for wind and solar projects for a year instead of their immediate cancellation. Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported that change was one reason why Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted for the BBB. And six days after the Senate passed the bill the nasty guy issued an executive order canceling the credits in 45 days. Murkowski feels betrayed and duped that he “just pulls the rug out from underneath the deal.” He signed an executive order that goes against the bill he just signed. The nasty guy has a hatred of clean energy, likely because his rise to power was funded in part by oil barons, who want to protect their source of wealth and the power it brings them. And the EO will have bad effects on energy bills, with the highest increases in red states, along with increasing global warming. Which reminds me many months have gone by since I last saw a chart of the global average temperature and how quickly it is rising. Lisa Needham of Kos wrote:

President Donald Trump sees the government as having two key functions: to enrich himself and his pals, and to hurt everyone else. His rollbacks of key consumer and worker protections—or his administration standing aside while federal courts roll those back for him—combine both those ignoble impulses. He gets to reward corporate interests and the ultrarich while making life worse for the rest of us. What’s jarring about his moves is that there is no credible argument that doing so helps most Americans. The only underlying justifications are profit and cruelty.

As I understand it, the profit and cruelty are to enforce and maintain the social hierarchy with the ultrarich at the top. Here are the latest efforts in helping the rich and being cruel to everyone else. A ban on paying disabled workers a subminimum wage (as low as 25 cents an hour) was withdrawn. The rule to prevent data brokers from buying and selling your data without your consents is no longer aligned with the “current interpretation of the [Fair Credit Reporting Act].” That’s strange because the current interpretation is being revised. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is being gutted. The Department of Justice has disbanded the team tasked with determining if cryptocurrency exchanges enable criminal activity. That the nasty guy is engaging in corrupt crypto stuff has nothing to do with the DoJ actions. The effort to exempt medical debt from consumer credit reports has been tossed by a judge. And I’ve already mentioned the demise of the click-to-cancel rule. The administration is asking to pause a case requiring insurance companies to keep coverage for mental health and substance abuse treatment. The pause is because they will not enforce the underlying law. The DoJ is reconsidering the rule that raised the limit above which overtime didn’t need to be paid. The nasty guy overturned the minimum wage for federal contractors, dropping it from $15 an hour back to $13.30 (which is higher than the minimum wage for jobs that aren’t a part of federal contracts).

Not a single one of these actions benefits consumers or workers, but every one of them benefits the interests of those who make money by exploiting people. And since that is Trump’s natural constituency, he’s going to do everything he can to help them out. And this is only the beginning.

Oliver Willis of Kos wrote about the report titled “The Price of Retreat: America Cedes Global Leadership to China.” It was released by Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and gathered data from international charities, foreign officials, and US companies. The accompanying press release explains the nasty guy’s failure to have a “whole-of-government” strategy to international affairs has allowed China to to expand its global influence while harming American security and economic interests. A few things were highlighted in the report. One is the haphazard tariff policy. Another is the gutting of international aid. A third is cutting grants to universities and attacking them, which also drives away international talent. That combination allows China to surpass us in intellectual talent. A fourth is dropping the countering of disinformation (closing Voice of America) allowing the free flow of Chinese propaganda. In response approval of the US has dropped by quite a bit in many countries (a chart is included). The nasty guy ran on the slogan “Make America Great Again.” But the effect is to make China greater. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev started with a couple quotes about the recent election for the National Diet (parliament) in Japan. The Liberal Democratic Party (described as right-of-center, so I wonder what “liberal” means in Japan) does not have a majority in either chamber, the first time that has happened in 70 years. This time the challenge came not from the left, but from the right. From Martin Fackler of the New York Times:

The new nationalist parties have warned of unrestrained immigration and what they describe as excessive gender equality, but analysts say they have succeeded in large part because they tapped into the frustrations of working-age people living in a rapidly graying society. The new parties have succeeded by giving voice to younger voters who feel they are burdened with taxes to pay for the retirement of their parents’ generation, while policies protecting special interests block them from more entrepreneurial efforts to improve their lives.

“Excessive gender equality” (!) Jio Kamata of The Diplomat wrote the far right parties gained seats by focusing on the economy and pushing hatred of “foreigners” – the usual way to rile up the citizens.

According to Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, populism is caused when established parties act in ways that reinforce the stereotypes that elites are corrupt and unresponsive.

Kev added Japan’s shift rightward is part of a global trend. Again disinformation was a problem. There are differences, such as Japan’s aging population. And:

Maybe the youth of Japan and the youth of other countries (France, Argentina, the U.S. to a lesser extent, for example) are sick and tired of being sick and tired and they are willing to reach for anything, however ill-informed they may be about their choices.

Jon Allsop of Columbia Journalism Review discussed the mainstream media response to the Epstein scandal.

I can’t avoid the conclusion that some of it has slipped all too eagerly from covering the conspiracy theories around him into indulging them (if, often, only implicitly). I find myself agreeing with a column that Ben Smith, of Semafor, published last night, in which he wrote that the Epstein story “brings out two of the worst traits in journalists and—to really point fingers here—in our audiences. First, the human tendency to fill in gaps with wild theories that flatter our prejudices; second, the bias toward what’s new over what’s known.” (The “larger Epstein belief system,” Smith added, “is QAnon for people who went to college.”) And I heartily cosign his conclusion: that “those of us trying to stay sane ought to keep in mind the distinction between evidence and speculation, fantasy and reality.”

Paul Farhi of The Atlantic discussed the defunding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and NPR as well as the general attack on the media.

“The independent press in the United States is facing what media outlets in too many other countries with aspiring autocrats have confronted,” the former Washington Post editor Marty Baron told me on Thursday. He compared Trump’s “repressive measures” to those of Hungarian President Viktor Orbán: “The playbook is to demean, demonize, marginalize, and economically debilitate” independent reporting. Ever since he launched his presidential campaign in 2015, Trump has fulminated against “the fake news.” But only in his second term has Trump gone beyond such rhetoric to wage a multifront war on media freedom with all of the tools at his disposal: executive actions, lawsuits, a loyal regulatory bureaucracy, a compliant Republican majority in Congress and a sympathetic Supreme Court. Each of his actions has been extraordinary in its own right; collectively, they represent a slow-motion demolition of the Fourth Estate. The principal question isn’t just whether anyone can stop Trump, but whether anyone in power really wants to.

Ari Shaw of Foreign Affairs wrote about the interdependence of LGBTQ rights and democratic institutions.

LGBTQ rights endure when they are written into or otherwise grounded in national constitutions; culturally normalized across partisan lines; upheld through strong, independent judiciaries; supported by civil society organizations that operate freely; and reinforced by regional or international human rights structures. Ultimately, the stronger a country’s liberal democratic institutions, the better protected the rights of LGBTQ people become. ... Threats to democratic institutions and threats to LGBTQ rights are mutually reinforcing, generating a vicious cycle that strengthens authoritarian control. Illiberal leaders deliberately exploit divisions over LGBTQ issues to consolidate political power, tapping into popular anxieties about changing social norms to build electoral coalitions and maintain public support. They proceed to undermine independent courts, free media, and civil society organizations—sometimes using their moral opposition to LGBTQ rights as justification. When democratic safeguards are weakened, LGBTQ rights lose their protection from further attack. Ensuring that LGBTQ people can live in safety and with equal opportunity therefore requires not only defending their rights but also addressing the crisis of democracy that renders them vulnerable.

Keeping democracy is a constant, high-stakes battle

My weekend movie was Saturday afternoon when I went to the Detroit Film Theater (and enjoyed some of the Detroit Institute of Arts) for the documentary Secret Mall Apartment. In the 1990s Providence, Rhode Island was getting rather run down. The mills that had provided its wealth had closed. So the city decided to build a shopping mall, Providence Place, at the edge of a good neighborhood where people on the other side saw it more as a barrier than a benefit. Many artists and musicians had taken over the old mill buildings not far from the new mall. They were quite annoyed that city planners saw their area as the next place to gentrify, and evicted them. One of those was the artist and art teacher Michael Townsend. As Townsend watched the mall being built, a place with unusual planes and angles, he saw a space that he identified as unusable. In 2003 he crawled through the in-between spaces of the building and found it. He and seven friends turned the space, about 750 square feet, into an apartment. They hauled furniture up there (through a route a bit more direct than crawl spaces, but still difficult) and turned it into a place to stay. They used a palm size camera to film their work and those films were an integral part of this movie. I think they had residences elsewhere, but that was never specifically said. They managed to live in the mall undetected for four years. This was an act of defiance against gentrification, their private clubhouse, and a place to plan their art. Townsend and his team were also working artists, and generous with their art. One of their big things is tape art – using rolls of blue and green painter’s tape to construct outlines of figures on walls. They were regular visitors to a children’s hospital, decorating rooms and hallways with whimsical figures and helping the little patients create their own ideas. These were intentionally temporary, easily pulled off the wall when no longer wanted. Here’s their tape art website. The main page of the site includes a photo of Townsend. Check out their murals page. The team also took their tape art to Oklahoma City for the tenth anniversary of the bombing there and to New York to commemorate those who lost their lives in 9/11. These people have their hearts in the right place. Townsend was the only one known to the public when their hideaway was discovered. The mall banned him for life for trespassing. When this documentary was premiered it was at the cinemas in – Providence Place. I’m sure Townsend was the guest of honor. I quite enjoyed this one. I read through the transcript of the June 10, 2025 episode of Gaslit Nation titled How a Christian School Kid in Indiana Saw the Fall of Democracies Coming. Gaslit Nation is hosted by Andrea Chalupa. Her guest in this episode is Chrissy Stroop. Chalupa introduces her this way at the top of the webpage:

Chrissy is a leading voice in exposing the Christian nationalist movement, the exvangelical uprising, and the growing marriage between the American and Russian far-right. She also happens to be a trans woman with a PhD in Russian history and a wild journey that took her from a fundamentalist Christian school in Indiana to teaching in Moscow.

And like this during the episode.

[She is] an analyst on global affairs as well as the American Ex-vangelical Movement, as well as Christian Nationalism and Russia. She's an advocate for religious deconstruction, LGBTQ+ rights and social justice.

The episode begins with the story of a woman who came to the US as a fetus. Chalupa reminds us that the media sees immigrants as a hostile invader rather than an individual human story of someone seeking a better life. Chalupa describes the bill the nasty guy just signed (still in process when this episode was recorded) as the “concentration camp” bill. It allocates “a staggering $160 billion to expand state terror and intensify their anti-immigrant crackdown.” The current ICE budget is $8 billion. The new bill keeps that funding and adds $15 for deportation and $45 billion for new camps. That increases ICE’s power by 20 times. This is how MAGA plans to stay in power. Stroop got her PhD in Russian History. After the Cold War there wasn’t much use for it, which is why she taught in Moscow for a while. She noticed that in Florida the big education push was to make sure everyone related to colleges and universities are on the same page. Not said so loud is that the same page is the state ideology. It’s what the Nazis did when they came to power. Now Linda McMahon, Secretary of Education, is using the term. A goal of dismantling public education is so that students would be funneled into Christian education (which implies conservative Christian views). These same Christians are a big supplier of resources for homeschooling. Stroop discusses her own conservative Christian education. As a student she was constantly told liberals are evil because they kill babies (allow abortion). Gay people want special rights. If a country disobeys God it will be punished. If it follows God’s will it will flourish. To get God’s blessing abortion must be banned, the queers must be kept at bay, and the political system must align with God’s will. There is a world of Christian broadcasting and Fox News carries similar ideas. Stroop tells the story of recognizing she is trans. She had hints, but didn’t figure it out until she was living in Moscow at age 33. She stopped going to church and began to have a few queer friends. That journey is what helped her reject the teaching of her youth. Her time in Moscow also helped her see the similarities between Russia and far-right Americans. Chalupa said Putin’s 2013 anti-gay laws were pivotal in the global fascist war against democracy. Because of the law Madonna and other superstars began to boycott Russia. There was one notable exception – the nasty guy held his 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. By his actions the nasty guy was telling Putin I’ve got your back and I know you have mine because my businesses depend on you and Russia. Putin invaded Crimea in 2014 and the nasty guy was elected in 2016. Christopher Steele (of the Steele dossier) noted something must have happened to the nasty guy during that pageant. Stroop reminds us that the nasty guy is currently targeting immigrants. But they won’t do that forever. You say the wrong thing, such as praise the Palestinians and condemn Israel, and they arrest you. They’re trying to Christian Nationalize the universities as well as the K-12 education system. They may not be able to get rid of all public schools, but they’ll try to Christianize what’s left. Since they think public education should not exist that remnant will be as bad as they can make it. Conservative Christian schools and conservative homeschool programs resist government standards because the parents have certain things they don’t want their children to learn, such as evolution and comprehensive sex ed. And human rights. They say that’s a secular concept. Human rights aren’t to be used for things that don’t contribute to human flourishing. Human dignity means one is not gay and not trans. If one is those things one is doing dignity wrong. Yeah, that very much depends on ones definition of “flourishing.” The gay and trans people I know flourish when they are allowed to be gay and trans. As a child getting a Christian education, Stroop felt out of sync a lot of time. One thing that guided her out was a subscription to Ranger Rick Magazine given to her by her moderate grandmother. That magazine is pro environment. At the end of the episode, starting at minute 45, Chalupa discusses the Gaslit Nation Action Guide, which has its own page.

Donald Trump is not the cause of America's fascism crisis. He's a symptom. Trump reflects a deeper disease of corruption, institutional failure, and widespread indifference. We can no longer afford to look away. We're in a moment that calls not just for outrage, but for action.

So study the action guide. The June 24 episode of Gaslit Nation has guest Anne Applebaum. She’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author of Gulag, Iron Curtain, Red Famine, Twilight of Democracy, and Autocracy Inc. Host Andrea Chalupa’s grandfather, a Holodomor survivor, is cited in Red Famine. In 2023 Poland ousted the far right Law and Justice party. By razor-thin margins they retook power this year, only 18 months later. “Democracy isn’t a destination. It’s a constant, high-stakes battle.” We will all be in this struggle for the next few decades. Neither side will achieve a definitive victory. Applebaum commented on the nasty guy’s attack on Iran. The regime in Iran is waging two wars. One is against the US and Israel and has been going on for four decades. The other is against its own people. About the same time the bombs fell there was a crackdown on the opposition. Even though the bombs cause death and destruction and the crackdown causes more, the opposition is delighted with the mess. The nasty guy did not have Congressional approval for his attack. He did not explain why he did it nor convince the public for its need. There is no groundswell of opinion (well, there is... against him). He didn’t say whether uranium had been moved before he struck or what the bombs really accomplished. He hasn’t defined any strategy for Iran, the Middle East, or the world. That’s all a red flag. Perhaps he engaged in war because it is war. Perhaps because he likes the Fox News reporting. Perhaps he thinks he’ll look strong. Chalupa asked how the strike in Iran might affect Russia. As part of her reply Applebaum said:

Putin thinks a lot about other autocracies, and he's concerned about the survival of other autocracies because he thinks of himself as being part of a global war of ideas against liberal ideas, against democratic ideas, but also against the rule of law, against accountability and a win for the other side. In other words, the fall of a sister regime would be interpreted in Moscow is bad for them.

Maybe propping up the Iran regime is in Russia’s interest. But Syria fell because both Iran and Russia have been weakened. And Russia would not be taken seriously if it tried to be a broker in the Iran-Israel war. Even so, Russia maintains ties with and offers help to autocrats in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba in addition to Iran, China, and North Korea. Turning to the situation in the US, Applebaum said we can’t ever be completely lost into autocracy. One dictatorial family ruled Syria for 50 years, then it collapsed. Nothing is irreversible. What happens tomorrow depends on what we decide today. The US has has autocratic periods in the past, such as the rise of the Klan and Huey Long ruling Louisiana in the 1930s as an autocrat. An autocrat at the federal level at this scale is new. One type of corruption is financial. The only purpose of the nasty guy’s cryptocurrency is being a pathway to bribe him. He can’t do anything else with it. The other type of corruption is taking over government institutions and making them loyal to himself and not the Constitution. Right now American politics isn’t about discussing policy it’s about the nasty guy’s taking over institutions, the nature of the state. It’s about do we and the candidate believe in democracy or not? Is government to help or harm? We have to think differently to organize to stop that. In 1945 in Europe most Communist parties tried to take over with minimal violence. In Hungary this was known as salami tactics. Make a little change. Let the opposition adjust. Make another little change. Do it until the opposition is squeezed out. Many people won’t notice the individual steps. Orbán, Hungary’s current dictator, is doing the same thing. This is the most common way democracies fall. That’s not the method the nasty guy, with the help of DOGE, has been using in the US. His method makes progressives feel overwhelmed. The Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe was also all at once. Their takeover focused on education and culture, in hijacking the way people think. When they captured Berlin in May 1945 their first step was to take over the radio station, moving in German communists. Another early step was replacing kindergarten teachers. The nasty guy isn’t particularly interested in this. But the people around him are. American science is admired around the world. So why attack scientific institutions? It’s to hijack the way people think, to mold culture in their own image. That didn’t work in the Soviet Union, nor in Poland and Hungary. They didn’t win people’s minds. People assumed what the government said was a lie. They got their information from other places. Destroying institutions is easy. Getting people to change their thinking to conform to government ideas is quite hard. They can do a great deal of damage, but they won’t win. Those in the government will completely believe their ideology. When it doesn’t work they’ll blame spies and traitors. In the Soviet Union there were waves of harsh repressions. Those didn’t work either. So they would liberalize a little bit and that would prompt a popular uprising. Somebody began to see the value of obeying the law, of following the regime, wasn’t worth the low returns. Protests would be organized. The fall of communism in Poland was negotiated. There were already people who could take over the functions of government. In each of those countries by the 1980s few people believed the ideology or accepted the government, which had little legitimacy. Orbán faces his strongest opponent in the next election. He has massaged the system rather than smashing it. Has he made enough changes to the Constitution that he can’t be defeated electorally? Will he allow himself to lose? How far would he go to prevent a loss? What happens to the companies, the dominant ones in Hungary, connected to himself and his family and friends? Once Orbán is gone all the government institutions will have to be examined to see how to make them neutral again, how to make them belong to the nation rather than the party.

A completely hypothetical complaint; a case without standing to complain

I spent yesterday’s post decrying the Supreme Court gutting affirmative action in college admissions. Alas, this post is to decry a couple more decisions as the Court finished their term and left for the summer. The first decision is that businesses may indeed discriminate against gay people. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported yup, it was decided 6-3. They hold that discrimination is protected by the First Amendment. A bit from Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissent (which I believe she read when the decision was announced), “Today, the Court, for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class.” McCarter posted her article before the decision was announced, the decision included in an update. And the case is – weird. So weird it should never have gone to trial and the Supremes should never have accepted it. But they jumped at the chance to stick it to the gays. The current case follows a 2018 case that decided a Colorado cake baker didn’t have to make wedding cakes for LGBTQ couples, but the Court didn’t extend the decision to include general religious beliefs or free speech rights. The weirdness of this case was uncovered by Melissa Gira Grant, writing for The New Republic: The case is about Lorie Smith who says Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act prevented her from a dream of creating wedding websites because she didn’t want to work with LGBTQ people. First problem: This was only a dream. She hadn’t actually been harmed yet. That’s the basis for “standing,” one of the requirement to bring such a case. Second problem: The suit was brought to the US District Court in Colorado on Sept. 20, 2016. The incident that prompted the case allegedly happened on Sept. 21, the day after. Third problem: That first request for a same-sex wedding website came from “Stewart” marrying “Mike.” Stewart’s contact information is listed. Amazingly nobody called Stewart for seven years, until Grant did. Stewart says Grant contacting him was the first he heard that his name was attached to a Supreme Court case. He denies he filed the complaint the case is based on. He’s married to a woman and has a child. He lives in San Francisco (they’re all gay, right?), so it is doubtful he would use a Colorado web service. He does not agree with the Court’s decision. The whole case is based on lies. Colorado AG Philip Weiser, in a brief to the court noted, “The record contains no evidence.” Yet, the ruling will have profound and dangerous consequences. How dangerous? As Sotomayor and Jackson noted in oral arguments, what if the website maker doesn’t believe in interracial marriage? What if a Santa refused black kids? Ruling on a case with such profound and dangerous implications, which has no evidence, and is based on lies is an example of how much this corrupt Court intends to rule by decree. A famous saying is the Supreme Court has no army, so relies on the respect for the Court and for Democracy to convince the rest of the government and citizens to abide by its decisions. I’ve concluded this Court does have an army – all those MAGA people the court has made sure are well armed. They’ll be delighted to enforce the bigotry of this Court. The other big case, as reported by the Associated Press in an article posted on Kos, is the Supreme Court decided that the Biden administration had overstepped its authority in offering to cancel or reduce student loans for millions of Americans. They held that the executive branch needed the endorsement of Congress before implementing so costly a program. Biden had based his argument on the 2003 HEROES Act. The Court’s decision says that act does not authorize what Biden wants to do. 43 million people are eligible for relief. 26 million have already applied. The projected cost over 30 years is $400 billion (as in $13 billion a year? In a multi-trillion budget? Sheesh). Joan McCarter of Kos wrote about the dissents Kagan and Sotomayor wrote on these two cases. From Kagan on the loan forgiveness decision:

The Court’s first overreach in this case is deciding it at all. Under Article III of the Constitution, a plaintiff must have standing to challenge a government action. And that requires a personal stake—an injury in fact. We do not allow plaintiffs to bring suit just because they oppose a policy. Neither do we allow plaintiffs to rely on injuries suffered by others. Those rules may sound technical, but they enforce “fundamental limits on federal judicial power.”

The second overreach Kagan says is the HEROES Act does indeed authorize what Biden proposed to do. At the end of that explanation she wrote, “But this Court today decides that some 40 million Americans will not receive the benefits the plan provides, because (so says the Court) that assistance is too “significant.” Significant? If it was a smaller amount – $40 billion? $4 billion? – the conservative justices would be OK with it? I have my doubts. Or is this not about the money, but that 40 million people will be less oppressed? Back to the LGBTQ discrimination case and Sotomayor’s dissent. McCarter sets some of this in a quote box, but it isn’t clear who is being quoted.

“This ostracism, this otherness, is among the most distressing feelings that can be felt by our social species,” she writes. The fundamental point of centuries of civil rights legislation has been to prevent that harm from being felt by whole classes of people—women, people of color, disabled people, LGBTQ people. Sotomayor cites case after case in which business owners came to the Supreme Court to argue that they had a particular right to discriminate in response to every new civil rights law enacted on behalf of each of these protected classes, and in which the court disagreed. “Today, the Court, for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class,” Sotomayor declared. “Time and again, businesses and other commercial entities have claimed constitutional rights to discriminate. And time and again, this Court has courageously stood up to those claims—until today. Today, the Court shrinks.”

McCarter wrote:

This is a court acting well beyond its scope. Neither of these cases should have been heard by the Supreme Court, just on procedural grounds. One was based on a completely hypothetical complaint; the other was brought by plaintiffs who didn’t have standing to complain. This court majority is intent on doubling down on its illegitimacy with every session, and it has to be stopped.

While Biden recognizes this is not a normal court, he doesn’t want to do anything about it for fear “we're going to politicize it maybe forever in a way that is not healthy.” To which McCarter responded:

This court couldn’t be more politicized and it couldn’t be more unhealthy. There are three justices who have laid out all the evidence, all the justification.

A fundraising email from March for Our Lives begins:

Today, the Supreme Court once again decided to steal our futures. * They ruled against our right to identify how we want to without discrimination. * They ruled against our right to be free of crippling debt. * They ruled against a decades-long program to make sure that people of color have the same right to a college education that white students do.

In a pundit roundup by Greg Dworkin of Kos quoted Ron Brownstein of The Atlantic that discusses the generation gap the MFOL email implies:

In the broadest sense, the Republican-appointed justices have moved to buttress the affluence and status that allow white people to wield the most influence in society, and to diminish the possibility that accelerating demographic change will force a renegotiation of that balance of power. In that way, the ruling is a judicial extension of the proliferating red-state laws meant to constrain the potential influence of younger generations through measures making it more difficult to vote, banning books, and censoring how teachers talk about race and gender inequities. All of these conflicts reflect the mounting tension between what I’ve called the brown and the gray: the racially and culturally diverse younger generations who are becoming the cornerstone of the Democratic political coalition, and the mostly white older generations who provide the foundation of Republican electoral strength.

I’ve heard the young generations in the Democratic party are annoyed the guy at the top of the ticket is 80. His likely opponent, at 77, is no better. Isn’t there someone who could lead this country and is only 50? Commenter exlrrp included a meme by Tristan Snell for Occupy Democrats:

Let me get this straight: forgiving PPP loans is capitalism – but forgiving student loans is socialism?

Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported Biden is already working out a different way to extend relief to those who have student debt. If he can’t use the HEROES Act, he’ll use the Higher Education Act. He had used the HEROES Act because it was faster. The other has a much longer rule making process, though that process has started.

Beyond announcing the particulars of his Plan B for helping borrowers, Biden slammed Republicans for opposing his $400 billion student debt relief program while backing the $760 billion Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses, where the average amount forgiven was about $70,000. Some congressional members borrowed hundreds of thousands of dollars themselves, Biden noted, with several borrowing north of $1 million. “All those loans were forgiven,” Biden said. “My program’s too expensive? … The hypocrisy is stunning,” he added.

A place of victory over hate

When the horrific shooting happened in Uvalde, Texas last May law enforcement officers waited almost an hour before going in to confront the shooter. In the meantime, a lot more children died. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos discussed a recent report from the Texas Tribune on what gave all those officers so much pause. The shooter had an AR-15 assault rifle. If they had just gone in after him with guns blazing there would have been a lot of dead police too. They had to wait until they had something with better coverage. The AR-15 is designed to murder as easily as possible while being as easy as possible to carry. Its purpose is mass murder. Gun people defend it. Some Members of Congress have been wearing AR-15 lapel pins because they admire what it can do. And they want to ban kids from attending drag shows to protect them. Nick Anderson of Kos Comics has one of a billboard saying “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. – NRA” and beneath it are the Uvalde officers commenting that the shooter had an AR-15 and what that means for their efforts to take him out. The Recount tweeted:

The Florida NAACP chapter voted unanimously to seek permission from its national headquarters to issue a travel advisory for Florida over what it deems "draconian" legislation and practices related to race and gender.

That brings to mind the Green Book of safe travel used by black people in the mid 20th century. In a pundit roundup, Greg Dworkin of Kos quoted the Public Religion Research Institute, which says even as the country is more polarized on LGBTQ rights, there is more acceptance for those rights.

Eight in ten Americans (80%) favor laws that would protect gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people against discrimination in jobs, public accommodations, and housing. This includes 48% who strongly support such laws. About one in five Americans (18%) oppose these laws, including 7% who strongly oppose them.

Support has grown. It had been 69% in 2018.

Overwhelming shares of Democrats (90%) and independents (82%), as well as two-thirds of Republicans (66%), favor nondiscrimination provisions for LGBTQ people.

Einenkel reported that Martin County School Board in Florida met in an hours-long session to hear about banning books. The person that got the most attention was 100 year old Grace Linn, who spoke from her wheelchair. She spoke of her husband who was killed in WWII while...

defending our democracy, Constitution, and freedoms. One of the freedoms that the Nazis crushed was the freedom to read the books. ... Banned books and burning books are both the same. Both are done for the same reason: fear of knowledge. Fear, not freedom. Fear, not liberty. Fear is control. My husband died as a father of freedom. I am the mother of liberty. Banned books need to be proudly displayed and protected from school boards like this. Thank you.

As she spoke someone held up a quilt she had made featuring books that have been targeted or banned. The books should be proudly displayed, protected, and read. In another pundit roundup Dworkin had a couple interesting quotes. The first is from Ron Brownstein writing in The Atlantic. He wrote about analysis done in each Congressional district, rating each whether it was low or high in racial diversity and in education of its white residents (because their education is a lot more significant of behavior than that of the rest of the population). Republicans have become quite dependent on “lo-lo” districts, low in both measurements. They hold 142 such districts in the House, two thirds of their House seats, compared to 21 such seats held by Democrats. That explains the Republican shift from small-government arguments to unremitting culture war. Reps from these types of districts include Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Matt Gaetz whose sole purpose seems to be throwing culture war bombs. The right accuses the left of identity politics, but this suggests identity politics is their core. Dworkin also quoted TIME who wrote about Louis DeStroy, um, Dejoy. He was big news in 2020 for appearing to dismantle the Postal Service to foul up mailed ballots to nudge the election towards the nasty guy. But this report says the Dejoy may have a good side. There was a big bill to save the Postal Service finances and add some union-friendly things. And DeJoy was instrumental in getting 120 House and 29 Senate Republicans to approve it. Bad Baltic Takes is a Twitter user devoted to correcting bad takes on the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. This particular correction is to provide context for an event in 1989. Under the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 Hitler and Stalin divided Europe for the two of them to conquer. Hitler kept the West busy while Stalin invaded the Baltics and perpetrated crimes on the citizens (yeah, very much like what’s going on in Ukraine). Close to 50 years later Gorbachev and Glasnost loosened restrictions on speech and details of the pact began to come out. Gorbachev thought letting people talk about it would allow him to keep his empire. Instead, it made the people more bold. And in 1989, 50 years after the Pact was signed, the three countries (without the aid of social media) organized The Baltic Way, a human chain that stretched across all three countries for a distance of 675 kilometers (over 400 miles). It took a quarter of the population to complete the chain. This was a significant step in achieving independence. And it became the inspiration for later protests, such as the Hong Kong Way that took place 30 years after the Baltic Way.

We should remember not just the Baltic Way protesters but also what they wanted us to remember. That the Nazi-Soviet collusion happened, in violation of international law, & it unleashed unimaginable horrors further across Europe. ... While writing this thread, I stepped into the Museum of Occupations in Tallinn. "You are going to see evil in here," the guide explains at the start. "But this is not a place of hate," it continues. "It's about our victory over it."

A kiss to a lesbian daughter

My Sunday movie was Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio. It has been a long time since I saw the original Disney version (and didn’t see the recent Disney live action) so certain images are in my mind, but a lot of the details have been forgotten. Of course, I remember Jiminy Cricket singing “When You Wish Upon a Star.” In this new version, set in Italy, some of the plot points appear to be the same – including the puppet joining the traveling show and being swallowed by a sea creature. There’s also a cricket to serve as the conscience. Others are quite different – Geppetto loses a son, still a boy, in WWI and when WWII comes around Pinocchio is created through deep grief and drunken rage. And Lithwick, now Candlewick, is the son of the town’s fascist leader. I very much enjoyed this version of the story. The storytelling is excellent, as is the animation. I and a few people from my church bell group attended a bell festival in South Bend, IN Friday evening and all day Saturday. It is time for a few hundred enthusiasts to gather and put on a concert, with much of the time rehearsing together so we are playing together. There were also classes of a variety of bell related topics and to hear a top notch group from the region put on a concert. Sister suggested I look up a particular bit the opening monologue for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert for March 2nd. Here it is: Rep. Nate Schatzline of Texas authored a bill that would seek to limit drag by designating any establishment as a “sexually oriented business” if it allows “on-premise consumption of alcoholic beverages” and performances by a person wearing any clothing or makeup not stereotypical to their born sex. Colbert added:

If serving alcohol and having men in gowns makes you a sexually oriented business I’ve got bad news about church.

Also on that episode was an extensive interview in several segments Colbert did with Steven Spielberg. I think part of it had to be used in the next week. That delayed part included John Williams, the composer of most of the scores for Spielberg’s films. One sentence from the session is worth sharing. Spielberg spoke of antisemitism and its growing boldness since about 2014:

Hate became a kind of membership in a club that has gotten more members than I ever though possible in America.

There has been a lot of news about the revelations about how much Fox News has been lying to their viewers. There has been talk from pundits that their viewers would leave countered with talk that they aren’t going anywhere – the lies are the point. Hunter of Daily Kos responded to that second idea:

The audience doesn't want accurate news. They want Sean Hannity to tell them that banks are failing because of wokeness; they want Tucker Carlson to tell them that there was no pandemic, there never was a pandemic, and all their dead relatives actually just were sent to a farm upstate. They want to be told that it's not that their own bigoted and paranoid worldviews are unpopular, there's just an enormous "globalist" conspiracy to hide just how popular their own fantasies are. While it may seem like this unnamed cable executive is unfairly belittling the Fox News audience, there's simply no question that they're right. Fox News viewers love being lied to. ... Fox isn't worried one bit about losing viewers who feel lied to. They're much more concerned about losing viewers who don't feel lied to enough.

In a Ukraine update Mark Sumner of Kos also mentioned Carlson. At the start of the war Carlson’s support for Putin seemed an extreme view. But he kept hammering that position and then two weeks ago he, as Sumner wrote, “has made support for Vladimir Putin a touchstone for would-be Republican nominees in 2024.” Sumner also posted a video of middle school students in occupied Crimea learning how to assemble weapons and being drilled in military maneuvers. It seems to be lifted from Nazi youth videos. This is grooming children to be ready to be a part of a war about an hour’s drive away. And American media is using it as proof that Russia is superior to the US. A brief story from the Associated Press posted on Kos reported:

The International Criminal Court says it has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Putin for war crimes because of his alleged involvement in abductions of children from Ukraine. The court said in a statement that Putin “is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.” It also issued a warrant Friday for the arrest for Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, the Commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation on similar allegations.

That whole Hunter Biden laptop thing appears to have started when Hunter took that laptop in for repairs and didn’t claim it within 90 days. The owner claimed it as abandoned and released the drive to Republican operatives. Laura Clawson of Kos reported Hunter is now suing the repair shop for invasion of privacy. Some of the points in his suit. * There was plenty of opportunity to put things on the laptop’s hard drive for the purpose of framing Hunter. * Delaware law says property is not considered abandoned until one year has passed. * The shop owner has admitted to accessing Hunter’s data before the 90 days were up. * The repair authorization form says the shop will make every effort to secure the data. When a computer is abandoned the data is to be wiped. Clawson concluded:

At this point nothing will get Republicans to back off of their attacks on Hunter Biden, who they see as the way to cause his father the most possible pain. They’ve done all this work turning his name into a synonym for corruption that they cannot prove, so they can’t abandon the effort. But Biden’s aggressive new approach could at least exact some pain in response.

Jon Stewart had economist Larry Summers on his The Problem with Jon Stewart. Walter Einenkel of Kos discussed the interview. Summers had advised every Democratic leader since Dukakis in 1988. But that doesn’t mean Summers is a progressive – he’s been doing a great job of defending corporate interests. Einenkel summarized the interview this way:

Summers has been running around for the past year saying that the federal reserve and President Joe Biden must continue to raise interest rates in order to loosen up the labor market. What that means is that there are too many people working and pulling in living wages, according to Summers, and we must therefore create an economic environment that promotes laying off millions of workers. He and others have disregarded the fact that as much, if not more, of the world’s inflation issues has been generated by corporate greed.

Michigan has done it! Laina Stebbins of Michigan Advance reported:

In a historic and profound moment for LGBTQ+ rights in Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Thursday signed legislation to expand a nearly 50-year-old civil rights law to encompass protections for LGBTQ+ Michiganders. Whitmer put her signature to Senate Bill 4 — which expands the 1976 Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act (ELCRA) to protect against discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation — in Lansing alongside LGBTQ+ leaders, officials and lawmakers and one of the two original cosponsors of ELCRA.

At the signing ceremony was 86 year old Rep. Melvin Larson, who was instrumental in getting the original bill passed. The other original cosponsor was Daisy Elliott, who died in 2015 at the age of 98. Larson debunked the Republican talking point that LGBTQ+ protections were not intended to be in the original bill. The photo at the top of the story is of Whitmer giving a kiss to her lesbian daughter Sherry. Anna Gustafson of the Advance reported that an eleven bill package of gun reforms has passed the Michigan Senate. Michigan law says bills can address only one thing, so there are frequently packages of bills. The package mandates universal background checks, safe storage of firearms, and permit a court to temporarily remove guns from someone who may be a danger to themselves or others. Gustafson had details on the votes and arguments from both sides. This vote comes a bit more than a month after the shooting at Michigan State University, only four miles away, and only sixteen months after the shooting at Oxford High School. Many students were present for the vote. Also present was Gabby Giffords, who was injured in a shooting in Arizona in 2011. The bill goes on to the state House. Who controls the government matters! Right now Michigan’s government is in Democratic hands. Paul Hogarth of Kos reported almost two weeks ago that the Michigan House Elections Committee held its first hearing on having Michigan join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. The NPVIC is an agreement by states to award their Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote rather than the winner of their state’s vote. This ends the situation that has happened twice this century in which the candidate who won the most votes did not become president. It is a way of overturning the Electoral College without actually amending the Constitution. The Compact says it doesn’t go into effect until enough states, those representing 270 electoral votes, have signed it. So far states representing 195 votes have approved the Compact. Michigan and Minnesota will hopefully approve it this year, bringing the total to 220. After these two most of the blue states will be on board and adding more states will be harder. Even so, there is hope the Compact will be in place by 2028. If Hogarth’s explanation isn’t enough David Beard and David Nir of the Downballot podcast on Kos talked to Christopher Pearson of the National Popular Vote, the organization advocating for the Compact. Nir and Beard also talk of other things, so perhaps search this transcript for Pearson. Pearson discussed his major talking points, including refuting objections to the Compact. One objection is there isn’t a national vote count. But there are 50 state counts plus DC certified by secretaries of states and it is all very public and spreadsheets are very good at adding things together. On election night news outlets keep a running tally, as they did in 2020 where Biden was ahead by 7 million votes, but the win came down to 43,000 votes in Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia. One might challenge 11,000 votes in Georgia, but not 7 million votes. A benefit is that all states are swing states. We won’t have the situation of Republican candidates for president ignoring California and Democratic candidates ignoring Louisiana. New Hampshire says it will get ignore because it is so small. But big New York is currently ignored because it is so reliably blue. Currently 70% or more of our voters are ignored every presidential election cycle. And that means it is harder to get people to register to vote in those states. They don’t see that it matters. Or college students say they can’t register because they’re from another state. But under the Compact the state doesn’t matter. The people do.

I don’t have the makeup skills to be in a drag show

In a post hiding in my browser tabs for three weeks Jessica Sutherland of Daily Kos reported that even though Gov. DeathSantis (or is it DeKlantis?) is making the lives of students, especially trans students, harder, they’re not afraid of him. They’re planning statewide walkouts. Alas, the article doesn’t have a planned date and I’ve seen nothing since. Will Stancil tweeted a thread:

I appreciate the folks contesting the various false claims about gender care, but on some level it almost doesn't matter to me: you have a historically vulnerable group, under massive political attack, and we're... having a public debate about their health care? It's perverse Even if we were to stipulate that, like every other medical field, trans care has room for adjustments with new evidence... SO WHAT? How is this anything but a tiny niche issue for experts, when trans people are being nationally demonized by insane far-right politicians? ... I keep thinking about how Jon Chait said "If you want to protect trans people, hold these practitioners accountable." But how about this, Jon? If you want to have persnickety logical debate about trans care, MAKE SURE TRANS PEOPLE ARE PROTECTED FIRST. ... And if you can't be sure that trans people feel safe, respected, and secure, then... I don't know, maybe if you're a writer with a national platform, you should do your very best to leave them alone???

Two and a half weeks ago Pakalolo of the Kos community reported the Primanti Brothers restaurant in Wheeling, West Virginia was intimidated into canceling a drag show. In response, Johnny Haught, who is owner and head instructor of a martial arts academy, offered to provide security for S&S Productions which hosts drag shows. Haught, who is straight, said he and his students are trained to de-escalate situations without violence. Pakalolo quoted Outsports, which gave the story national exposure:

S&S Productions, which hosts drag shows throughout Pittsburgh, Penn. and surrounding areas, hasn’t said whether it will reschedule the event. In the meantime, Haught continues to push back against anti-LGBTQ sentiment, with humor and appeals for decency. On Thursday, he addressed an anonymous caller who left him a voice message and warned him not to perform in the event (obviously, the caller wrongly thought Haught was one of the queens). “The man on my voice-mail paid me the greatest compliment,” wrote Haught on Facebook. “Unfortunately, while I have tremendous legs and ass, I don’t have the makeup skills to be in a drag show.” In addition, Haught posted the address to his training facility, along with its weekly schedule. If any of those drag show-threatening crowds are looking for a fight, they know where to find him. We won’t be holding our breath ...

Hunter of Kos reported that back in 2020 this hard right Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County that workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity was illegal. After that several states updated their guidelines to include housing, banking, and government services. They began accepting complaints about such discrimination. Alas, in Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who was painted as insufficiently conservative, appointed Attorney General Treg Taylor, who told the Commission on Human Rights to quietly removed the part about housing, banks, and government agencies. Yeah, he no longer accepts discrimination complaints. Taylor’s logic is that if the federal Supremes, the state Supremes, or the legislature wants to ban certain forms of discrimination they had better spell out each on specifically. Taylor is Dunleavy’s third AG. The first one resigned because of an apparent sexual harassment of a young employee. The second resigned before being indicted for sexual abuse of a minor. Even with that little bit given to us by a hard right federal Supremes, harder right office holders aren’t rolling over. They’ll drag it out in hopes of a harder right future Supreme Court. Rebekah Sager of Kos reported the Tennessee House has passed a bill that says a person does not have to officiate at a wedding if they don’t agree with it. If enacted into law it could affect same-sex, transgender, and mixed-race couples. It seems this bill is taking advantage of a part of the federal Respect for Marriage Act that Biden signed into law in November. The Act allowed exceptions for religiously affiliated organizations and the House is declaring itself to be a religiously affiliated organization. The bill was sponsored by Rep. Monty Fritts, who, strangely, declared a big reason for the bill was to block elder abuse, where a younger person marries an older person for their money. Sure. Rep. Jason Power replied the bill was a “solution looking for a problem” and “government overreach.” I had recently written I hadn’t had much reason to mention marriage equality for a while. But I didn’t want to start mentioning it because we were sliding backwards. Sager also discussed:

According to exclusive reporting by Mother Jones, in 2019, South Dakota Republican state Rep. Fred Deutsch sent an email to 18 anti-trans activists, doctors, and lawyers with the content of a bill he wanted to put forth. That email set off a cataclysm of nefarious movements by those in the anti-transgender movement that are just now becoming a reality.

That bill didn’t pass. But it laid the groundwork for creating an anti-trans network that has successfully passed bills in six other states with 21 more considering such bills this year.

Activist and writer Erin Reed, who tracks anti-trans legislation, told Mother Jones, “They’ve very much increased sophistication since then, but the roots are there,” adding that the issue is especially complex as these conservative groups come from outside. “This isn’t coming from an in-state grassroots support system,” Reed says. These are also some of the same groups that oppose abortion and same-sex marriage, Mother Jones reports. The emails show a concerted effort to assemble anti-trans doctors as witnesses and recruit transgender people willing to refute their own gender identity experiences. And in the years since 2019, there’s been progress made to punish and outlaw doctors who provide gender-affirming care.

There is some good news. The second anti-trans law to pass, the one in Alabama, is being sued by the Justice Department for violating the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The Daily Felltoon tweeted a cartoon of three kids eating lunch:

Some grownups are all uptight that exposing kids to drag queens will turn us into transsexuals. But they’re not worried that participating in monthly active shooter drills will turn us into mass murderers? I thought a drag queen was a girl driving a hot rod.

Mike Luckovich tweeted a cartoon: In front of an image of a derailment an elephant says, “We want to regulate trans...” In a post from two and a half weeks ago Dartagnan of the Kos community discussed the supposedly unintended effects of various abortion bans.

We are told that Republicans’ deeply held concerns for cases of “rape and incest” or “to protect the life of the mother” may fall within those narrow exceptions to what are otherwise profoundly intrusive and malevolent acts of attempted control. We are calmly assured that instances of routine pregnancy “miscarriages” cannot possibly fall within the bans’ intended purview. We are soothed by the implication that with such exceptions, only “bad” and probably “sinful” pregnant individuals will be targeted by the bans. These tiny loopholes, inserted into laws otherwise fully intended to dominate and suppress half the population’s autonomy—and demonize that same group’s anatomy, which they obviously view with a sick revulsion—are held out by Republicans as evidence of their humanity and good will. But no one is being fooled, least of all the physicians who are now threatened with criminal sanctions for terminating their patients’ pregnancies, no matter what the reason. And as a result, in states like Florida as these laws begin to take full effect, horror stories continue to mount.

Dartagnan then told the story of Deborah and Lee Dorbert who found their fetus’ kidneys were not developing and their doctor said the baby would survive only 20 minutes after birth. Yet, the doctor said because of the new legislation he could not terminate the pregnancy. She would have to carry the baby to term.

At this point you might spare a moment to imagine what this couple is experiencing. People, friends, see her “baby bump” and express their cheery and heartfelt well wishes. Consider the sheer horror of having to acknowledge such sentiments with the truth.

In a post from earlier this week Laura Clawson of Kos reported:

A new lawsuit in Texas is bringing a different kind of challenge against the state’s abortion ban. Five women are suing not to get the law struck down, but to demand clarification of what exceptions the law allows and when abortion is legal. And each of these five women was personally harmed by the refusal of an abortion despite threats to their own health or fetal conditions incompatible with life. Officially, Texas allows abortions certain extremely limited conditions, such as the risk of “substantial” harm to the health of the mother. But in practice, doctors and hospitals are often too intimidated by the law to provide abortions even when it is clearly the case that a pregnant person’s health is at risk or even is actively being harmed. This lawsuit calls on the courts to make it crystal clear what the law allows.

Amanda Zurawski was told her cervical membranes had prolapsed and the fetus could not survive. The doctors wouldn’t do an abortion until she became ill with a temperature of 103F. Lauren Miller was expecting twins but the condition of one threatened the life of the other. She took the doctor’s hint to visit Colorado. She is still pregnant with the surviving twin. Good that she had the time and money for that trip. Lauren Hall’s baby wasn’t developing a skull. She visited Seattle.

The issue here is not that the doctors are being too cautious,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “The reality is, without clarification of this Texas law, without a change in the circumstances that are happening today, it is going to come that women are going to die.”

Jeff Singer of Kos Elections reported that abortion rights groups in Ohio are working to put a constitutional amendment on November’s ballot. The proposal would need a majority to pass. Current Ohio law says abortion is legal up to 22 weeks. A six week ban was passed in 2019 but blocked by a state judge. Republicans are trying to take that case to the GOP-led state Supremes. As the abortion rights groups go through the necessary steps – get the amendment language verified, then collect signatures by July 5 – Republicans are planning a referendum for the same fall ballot that says future amendments must pass by 60%. They’re afraid the constitution would be hijacked and ruin all their work. That higher threshold may not affect the abortion rights amendment but could affect an anti-gerrymandering amendment expected next year. Mike Stanfill of Raging Pencils tweeted a cartoon of a man arguing with an elephant. The second half of the cartoon says:

Women are dying of pregnancy complications. Men don’t get pregnant. Is there anything you like about women? Their votes.

Grizelda tweeted a cartoon that reminds me of my recent discussion that trans people are the only ones who get to say what is thransphobic. This one shows a dozen men and one woman at a table. The leader says to her:

Well, you’re the only one who thinks we’re a sexist organization.

A couple of matryoshka dolls and a chained bear with a balalaika

My Sunday movie was Benediction. It’s a British film about poet Sigfried Sassoon and his experiences during and after WWI. He was a real person, as were the other main characters. Sassoon is from an upper class family. He is also gay at a time being gay was viewed as morally repugnant and was illegal. His upper class standing protects him to a point. He can appear in public with boyfriends, though they must act as if they were just friends. This film does a good job of integrating old WWI films into the story, though that means Sassoon doesn’t actually appear in them. He had been in the war for more than a year when he writes a letter denouncing the British government’s refusal to properly declare the goal of the war. He says that meant they were needlessly prolonging it, resulting in too many deaths. Instead of court martialling him the military sends him to a hospital for nervous disorders. There he meets Wilfred Owen. I know of him because several of his poems are in the War Requiem by Benjamin Britten. This piece has several movements based on the text of the Catholic Requiem Mass and more movements based on Owen’s poetry. It’s a piece I highly recommend, though parts can be hard to listen to. I could write more about it, but won’t now. Sassoon has a series of lovers, most come across as conniving and petty, ready to drop one lover when another comes along. But Sassoon tires of this. He’s looking for something, perhaps absolution, though what isn’t exactly spelled out. Is it because he is gay? Because he isn’t fitting in with societal norms? We also see him in his old age, still searching. After a while I realized there is source music, such as a dance band, a Victoria, and music as part of a performance. But there is very little background music to set the mood of a scene. Yeah, a music guy like me would notice such things. Much of the background music there is comes from Ralph Vaughan Williams, who was a premier English composer in the first half of the 20th century. I recommend listening to his 2nd, 3rd, and 5th symphonies plus Fantasy on a Theme by Thomas Tallis and Flos Campi as places to start. A week ago as part of my travelogue I wrote that even though I had gotten my car’s air conditioner fixed before the trip, it gave out on the last day driving home. I would get about a half hour of coolness before it quit. I took it in for repair today, a freebie because the fix failed in so short a time. They couldn’t get the failure to happen while letting it idle and on a long test drive. Yet it failed before I got home, though I had done a few errands along the way. I called the service department and left a message for my advisor. A half hour later she called back and asked me to bring the car back while the AC isn’t working. So I started on my way. In that half hour the AC had reset, so I had to drive around for 40 minutes before it failed again. I was about to head home when it cut out. When I got to the service department the advisor brought out the technician. He said the compressor wasn’t engaged. It would cost almost $300 to diagnose the exact problem and anywhere from a tiny bit more to another $350 to fix it. Considering the age of the car and that I’ve passed 200K miles my primary question is whether the car is worth fixing. The advisor said she could bring out the guy who does trade-in values though I could probably get a better deal on Carvana. I told the advisor I would think about it. Once home I went to the Carvana website and entered all the info on the state of the car. I was a bit annoyed they could find out a great deal from my license plate number, including the car’s VIN. I proceeded and less than a minute after checking the final box they came back with an offer to buy – $300. It isn’t worth fixing. I tried Kelley Blue Book’s estimate of a car’s value. They refused to let me see because I have an ad blocker turned on. I also queried Carvana for used cars they have for sale. The cheapest sedan they have near me is $10.6K. Well, maybe I don’t want an new one just yet. Maybe my current car will last long enough to get an electric sedan. An article from Bridge Michigan, posted on the Equality Michigan website reports that the Michigan Supreme Court has ruled that Michigan’s Elliott-Larson Civil Rights Act, which bans discrimination based on sex, must necessarily also ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The ruling was 5-2, which means one justice nominated by Republicans voted for it. Attempts to amend the Elliott-Larson Act have been tried for at least 15 years, perhaps longer. But Republicans, especially in the last ten years, have blocked those attempts. Yes, this is still necessary. A wedding venue in Grand Rapids recently issued a policy refusing their facilities to same-sex couples. The Michigan Civil Rights Commission had said four years ago that “sex” includes sexual orientation and gender identity. They would begin to investigate complaints of discrimination against the LGBTQ community. But that didn’t have the force of law and they were sued. That suit is what prompted today’s ruling. One of the dissenting Republicans argued the majority failed to consider religious liberty protections, which are included in federal civil rights laws but not in the state law. Of course, this suit and many others had claimed they could discriminate because of religious liberty. David Nir of Daily Kos made a list of all the excuses the Republicans and the nasty guy have put forth on why it was appropriate for him to have classified documents at his for profit estate. 1. The nasty guy says everyone but the nasty guy is corrupt. 2. He would have turned over everything if they had asked (they did and he didn’t). 3. He checked them out from the National Archives as if that was a library and kept them beyond the due date. 4. The documents were planted (since the nasty guy watched the search on closed-circuit he’ll be releasing the tapes to show the FBI planting them). 5. The FBI and its head Christopher Wray are all corrupt (Wray was appointed by the nasty guy and is a member of the Federalist Society that nominated five of the current conservative members of the Supremes). 6. Obama was worse (the National Archives issued a statement saying they have all of Obama’s classified materials). 7. Since there were no nuclear secrets everything is fine (there were nuclear secrets). 8. Couldn’t be a big deal because they waited a year and a half to get them (warrant issued Friday, search on Monday). 9. He could declassify stuff in his own head (there is a defined procedure and a president can’t do it by himself). 10. Aliens. 11. Where was the media frenzy over Hillary Clinton’s emails? (you mean the frenzy where her emails were mentioned in the news for 600 consecutive days?) 12. One can find “classified” nuclear information through your smart phone. 13. Only a tiny bit was classified and the other stuff isn’t worth mentioning (there were several boxes marked classified, each holding 2,500 pages). 14. There was a coup attempt going on, it was a chaotic time, not enough time to get the stuff declassified. 15. All the nasty guy has to do is say he won’t run again and all the charges will be dropped. 16. The documents should never have been classified in the first place – we should have let the American people see them which would keep us out of war. 17. He had a standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office were deemed declassified (since the staff has to occasionally work from home). 18. Someone else packed the boxes. 19. He was convinced he would stay another four years so had to pack in a big hurry. And that was just one week of excuses. For a different view Charles Jay of the Kos community wrote:

Russian TV news host Evgeny Popov had a pretty good idea of what the FBI found when they searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. On Tuesday’s broadcast of 60 Minutes, Popov said the agents found a couple of matryoshka dolls, a portrait of Vladimir Putin, a Young Pioneer scarf, two icons, a parachute, and a chained bear with a balalaika.

Jay also included a bit from Vladimir Solovyov, a top Russian TV propagandist who has been sanctioned by the US and EU, on the threats of violence coming from the American far right.

This is fun for everyone but the Americans. They don’t really understand what awaits them next. Let’s just say that if the civil war starts over there, there will be only one big question for Russia — whom to support with weapons. We won’t forgive them for Ukraine, that’s for sure.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted some late night commentary:

The FBI raids his home, and all we can think is, “Hmm, I wonder which of his crimes they’re investigating.” —Stephen Colbert This sets a dangerous precedent. If Donald Trump could be investigated for crimes, who’s next? Other criminals? —Jimmy Kimmel Live guest host Rob McElhenney

The US Geological Survey has an online database of wind turbines. The national view shows a good size collection across central Michigan, a bigger collection across central Illinois that extends into Indiana, and a much bigger patch across Iowa. There are also quite a few in Texas, along the Oregon-Washington border, and extending from West Virginia into Pennsylvania. And other small installations across the country. The big exception is the South (well, there’s a small installation in Tennessee and a cluster in North Carolina). April Siese of Kos, from a story posted while I was on vacation (yeah, still a few more of those), reported that the state treasurer for West Virginia will be targeting companies that pull away from the fossil fuel industry. This follows the lead of the treasurer of Texas. Several other states considering similar action are influenced by reports posted by the Heritage Foundation and the American Petroleum Institute. HF is listed by Greenpeace as a “Koch Industries Climate Denial Front Group.” Seise doesn’t say what WV is doing. Tactics in various states range at one end to voicing opposition to an SEC rule about tackling environmental and social governance and on the other end to refusing to do businesses with companies and banks that refuse to do business with Big Oil. Pakalolo of the Kos community wrote that mainstream media – well, some outlets – are beginning to talk about the climate endgame. The BBC mentioned the possibility of human extinction. And PNAS discussed the consequences of climate change being “second only to global nuclear war.”

Yeah? You and what army?

A week has passed since I last wrote about Ukraine. Kos of Daily Kos wrote about Russia’s shrinking ambitions. Back in March Russia’s original goal was to head southwest of Kharkiv and north from Kherson, encircling a huge chunk of eastern Ukraine. The goal in April was to capture about half that. The goal for May cut the April goal in half. And the territorial goal for June is quite small. Kos explains that even this small goal will be a stretch for Russia. Kos concluded:

Russia’s slow pace of advance now ensures this war will last well into this year (and likely longer), allowing time for a full Ukrainian transition to NATO-standard weapons. Indeed, Ukraine General Staff is arguing they can be fully transitioned by the end of summer. That may be little consolation to those who would rather see peace break out, global food deliveries reestablished, an end to needless death, and money spent on more fruitful endeavors than weaponry. But Vladimir Putin cannot retreat now without delivering the glorious (and easy) victory he promised his nation, and Ukraine sees no reason to surrender given Russia’s sorry battlefield performance. It really believes (and I agree) that with the right gear, it can recapture everything lost to Russia since 2014, including the entirety of Donbas and Crimea. And as long as the Ukrainian people are prepared to make that sacrifice (and they appear so), it makes perfect sense for the West to help it achieve its goals.

I had written about Russia attempting to cross the same point of the Siverskyi Donets River and failing twice. Kos wrote: Make that three times.

So Russia just lost two BTGs worth of troops attempting to make the same compromised river crossing three times. Can you imagine the drone operator calling it in? Drone operator: “Another crossing!” Artillery fire direction: “S---! What are the coordinates?” Drone operator: “Uh, same ones!” Artillery fire direction: “Ha! Okay, I really thought you were kidding the second time! That was crazy. But seriously, what are the new coordinates?”

In a third post Kos reported on what Ukraine appears to be doing next. Ukraine could work to take Vovcchansk, a town near the Russian border with a primary rail line from Russia. A second option would be Kupiansk where a few rail lines meet. Either could do significant damage to the supply lines to Izyum, a primary Russian attack point. Or, it appears, Ukraine could directly attack the Russian troops around Izyum.

Now, with Russia already at its limits, Ukraine is taking direct aim at the largest concentration of Russian forces in Ukraine. Guys, 20-25% of Russia’s entire Army is in that pocket. Something big is happening. I mean big, as in war-altering. We were looking at Izyum’s supply hubs in Kupiansk and Vochansk. Ukraine is going straight for the jugular instead.

Kos included a tweet from Visegrád:

Massive forest fires raging in the Tyumen region in Russia right now. The army used to play an important role in helping the firefighters to put these out but they are nowhere to be found at the moment.

In a fourth post Kos commented on how important American artillery was in helping Ukraine, including smashing the three Russian attempted river crossings. At the bottom of the post Kos added this update:

The separatist city of Donetsk is having serious problems with their drinking water supply. But they can’t do anything about it because they’ve conscripted the people who used to maintain it.

Mark Sumner of Kos reported that it appears that Ukraine has crossed the river. One of the bridges that had been blown up wasn’t all that damaged and Ukraine was able to repair and use it. That allows Ukraine to attack the supply lines into Izyum. In a fifth post Kos reviewed the state of the war. Then ... A common response to a meaningless threat is the reply, “Yeah? You and what army?” That taunt takes on a different meaning when used in response to the threats Russia has been making lately. Russia has threatened... * Kyrgyzstan for showing signs of wanting to withdraw from the Eurasian Economic Union (the Russia centered counterpart to the EU). * Finland and Sweden for applying to join NATO. * Poland for who knows why. * Iceland for organizing flights to transport military equipment from eastern Europe to Ukraine. * The UK for being a part of NATO (I think) though this could be serious because nukes are mentioned in the threat. * The Eurovision Song Contest for excluding them. Minna Ålander wrote a thread saying Finland is ready to handle whatever Russia might do to them. Cut electricity? Already close to self-sufficient. Cut gas? What they get from Russia is only about 5%. Station troops on Russia’s border? What troops? In a post from today Sumner reported that Russia is making an advance here and there, close to ready to take two key cities. But he also included a list of ten villages that on Tuesday Russia attempted to take and failed.

But Russian military leaders still have one ace up their sleeve. Which is: They don’t give a f##k about how many men they lose in the field. Repeating an action that resulted in failure may be one definition of insanity. It’s also Russia’s underlying military tactic. And in two key locations, that tactic is bringing Russia close to capturing key objectives.

Kos discussed tankies.

You’ve seen tankies around. They’re the ones who believe that all the world’s evils are the product of imperialism and the only country capable of imperialism is the United States. ... The pejorative term “tankie” comes from American leftists who defended the violent Soviet crackdown of the 1956 Hungarian uprising, an uprising crushed by tanks. They were our allies during the Iraq War, so it may come as a shock seeing them become pathetic apologists for Vladimir Putin’s ambitions to reconstitute the Soviet empire. ... In the tankie worldview, no one has agency except the United States. Poland and Slovakia and Romania and Bulgaria didn’t have the ability or right to choose to join NATO. Neither do Finland and Sweden. These are all imperialist provocations and machinations by the American empire. What other option did Russia have but to defend its borders by, uh, explicitly advocating for its own empire?

Kos quoted tweets from Max Blumenthal, Glenn Greenwald, Michael Tracey, and Noam Chomsky to show the way tankies think. Kos concluded:

But nothing galls more than their utter disregard for the choices of free nations to decide their own destiny. They have been so impacted by America’s real foreign policy sins that they have lost the ability to understand that the world is a complex place, and sometimes, other people get a say in their own affairs. And sometimes, America is on the right side.

Thee has been a lot of news of Republican legislatures make the lives of trans people difficult to the point of many considering fleeing to new homes in more welcoming states. Marissa Higgins of Kos reported two weeks ago that that in spite of that oppression 19 legislatures are in the process of passing law saying they are refuge states for LGBTQ people. Since one of these states is Michigan I have doubts it will pass here and in some of the other states. Even so, I’m glad the concept is out there. Higgins reminds us that a family may have a lot of reasons to stay in a city or state even as rights are taken away and oppression increases. Bert Johnson of NPR reported those new laws restricting trans and gay rights are prompting a lot of LGBTQ people to run for various levels of government. The Palm Beach County Human Rights Council and the AIDS Healthecare Foundation created a rainbow mural on a city intersection as a memorial to the 2016 Pulse Nightclub massacre in Orlando. Two days later a 19 year old in a pickup with a nasty guy flag decided just being part of a noisy vehicle parade to honor their nasty hero wasn’t enough so he sped up, then skidded through the mural, damaging it. And someone caught the incident with their phone, including the license tags. The perpetrator went before county Judge Scott Suskauer expressing remorse, saying he was trying to fit in (but be careful which crowd you want to fit in with!). He is to pay restitution, do volunteer at an LGBTQ organization, and to write a 25 page essay. That essay is to include research on the 49 victims of the Pulse shooting plus a summary of why people are so hateful and why people lash out at the gay community. I like this judge for choosing reconciliation over punishment. In another post from two weeks ago the Panhandle Patriots of Idaho plan to show up next month in Coeur d’Alene to confront the Pride event. They say good people need to stand up and add to that a lot of religious nonsense. Yes, the intent is to intimidate people gathering for a safe space. Zander Moricz is the youngest public plaintiff in a lawsuit against Florida’s new “Don’t Say Gay” law. Zander is the first LGBTQ class president at their school. When they organized a protest of the law the school administration told them to shut it down. They held it anyway and it was the county’s largest protest. The administration then told them if their graduation speech referenced this activism the microphone would be cut and the ceremony halted. There is a plan to fight back – they have 10,000 Say Gay stickers for seniors across Florida to wear as they cross the stage during their ceremonies. They may be done with high school, but not the fight. One of the complaints of gender affirming health care for trans kids is what if the kid really isn’t trans? Higgins reported the Trans Youth Project with Princeton University did a study on the issue. The study followed 317 trans youth. The participants did some level of social transitioning, usually around age 6 or 7. That means they begin to live as their target gender – new pronouns, new clothes and haircut, maybe even a new name. Only 6% decided they weren’t trans and returned to their birth gender. The rest decide a more complete transition is what they want. That means taking puberty blockers to give them time make sure, then taking hormones to begin the process of physically transitioning. There are a few things anti-trans people get wrong. They assume (or at least stir up hysteria over) any kind of transitioning requires irreversible surgery the child will regret. But the child usually has a few years to live with the target gender. Puberty blockers only delay puberty and cause no harm. And by then 94% are sure and the other 6% have already backed out. Libs of TikTok posted a video with the caption, “A drag queen was crowned prom king in an Indiana high school.” Leah McElrath added:

I unironically love this. Kids in Indiana said FU to tradition gender norm restrictions. Right-wingers are pathetic—and this account targeting this teenager like this endangers him and his school.