Ryu289 - Untitled

DM me if anybody wants a bluesky code.

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, right? RIGHT???

RIGHT, MFs?!?

My girlfriend and I talk a lot about our different generations of queerness, because she was doing queer activism in the 1990s and I wasn’t.

And she’s supportive of my writing about queerness but also kind of bitter about how quickly her entire generation’s history has disappeared into a bland “AIDS was bad, gay marriage solved homophobia” narrative, and now we’re having to play catch-up to educate young LGBTQ+ people about queer history and queer theory. It gets pretty raw sometimes.

I mean, a large part of the reason TERFs have been good at educating the young and queer people haven’t is, in the 80s and 90s the leading lights of TERFdom got tenured university positions, and the leading lights of queerdom died of AIDS.

“Excuse us,” she said bitterly the other day, not at me but to me, “for not laying the groundwork for children we never thought we’d have in a future none of us thought we’d be alive for.”

I found a lost 1988 handbook from Coalitions for America, a right-wing think tank founded by the man who started The Heritage Foundation and ALEC. The document tells readers how to fight gay rights legislation and, as you’ve already guessed, it’s almost the exact blueprint used against trans people. I digitized it for the first time here: transreads.org/defeatgayrights/

Since the 1960s, the right has spent unprecedented time, effort, and cold hard cash to convince the public that treating oppressed people with basic dignity is unfair to them. We still see this 1988 "special privileges" argument in practice against trans people today.

Can someone's transition harm other people? Of course not. But the far-right wants you to believe so. Instead of spreading actual disease, this time we're spreading social contagion. Instead of divorce, we have "trans widows" and "broken families."

deanobeidallah.substack.com

Trump arrests Democratic member of Congress while rewarding MAGA terrorist Ashli Babbitt

Trump's weaponization on parade

Dean Obeidallah at The Dean's Report:

We’ve never seen a presidential administration weaponize government to the extent of Donald Trump--both by rewarding his supporters and punishing his “enemies.” And what we saw Monday sums it up perfectly. Trump had his DOJ arrest a Democratic member of Congress on BS charges of assaulting an ICE officer while he rewarded the family of MAGA terrorist Ashli Babbitt--who was killed while storming the Capitol on Jan. 6--with $5 million of your tax dollars. This should make your blood boil—because it makes mine! The arrest of New Jersey Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver is as House Democratic leaders led by Hakeem Jeffries wrote in a statement, “extreme, morally bankrupt and lacks any basis in law or fact.” The charge arises from the May 9th visit by herself and two other New Jersey members of Congress to an ICE facility in Newark. A scuffle broke out when the ICE agents suddenly arrested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka for allegedly trespassing. Videos show McIver being pushed by ICE agents and saying on video about one agent, “He just assaulted me.” There is also video of incidental contact between McIver and an armed ICE agent in tactical gear.

After the incident, Trump officials went on TV claiming that McIver “body slammed” an ICE agent and the video would back that up. It did not—that was a lie. Yet Trump’s US Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba gleefully claimed on Monday McIver had “assaulted, impeded, and interfered with law enforcement” and charged her with a federal crime. This is not the first fabricated charge by the Trump regime versus a Democrat. On Monday, Habba dropped the trespassing charge against Mayor Baraka, claiming it was “for the sake of moving forward.” In reality, as the evidence showed, Baraka was arrested on public property outside the ICE facility. You can’t trespass on public property—especially when you’re the Mayor of the city! The arrest of McIver follows an alarming pattern from convicted felon Trump over his first four months of utilizing the power of the federal government to target his critics and perceived enemies. We’ve seen Trump’s rogue regime arrest a judge in Wisconsin and the Mayor of Newark, begin a criminal investigation into NY Attorney General Tish James plus threaten to prosecute the Mayor of Chicago and the governor of New Jersey. Trump and his minions have also opened formal investigations into media outlets critical of him, the Democratic fundraising platform Act Blue, law firms, universities, people who used to work in the Trump regime but refused to lie that the 2020 election was stolen and more. As Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ)--who was with Rep. McIver at the ICE facility --told me last week, she expected Trump to charge her or McIver. Not because either did anything wrong but because as she noted the Trump regime is “out of control” with their “weaponization of law enforcement.” She rightly warned, “no one is safe form this administration.” 

Something’s not adding up here: The Trump DOJ goons ordered the bogus arrest of Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) while giving a $5M reward to the family of the late domestic terrorist Ashli Babbitt.

See Also:

Public Notice: DOJ politicization escalates with bogus arrest of congresswoman