TRUMP: ‘PLENTY OF TIME, PATIENCE, AMMUNITION’: No matter what happens in the war with Iran, President Donald Trump’s public face is always one of unbridled optimism. Such was the case on Air Force One, as Trump headed for a rally in Michigan. Is the war going poorly after 150 days? No way. “They requested a […]
Don't kid yourself. The sphere of freedom is shrinking. Trans people wanted to live their lives, but the political right, in the form of Donald Trump, turned them into demons, and the political center, in the form of respectable white people, made the right's demonization seem respectable. Kamala Harris wanted America to choose liberty. "We're not going back," she said. Many of us agreed, but we did go back. And the reversing of trans rights could lead to the reversing of other rights – birth control, gay marriage, inter-racial marriage, and more.Yet the future is unknown. People will fight. More importantly, they will find joy in the struggle. That's the spirit I found in the interview below with Evan Urquhart. After writing extensively for The Atlantic, Vanity Fair and others, he set up Assigned Media in 2022 to report on transgender news. He told me that hope can be found in the fact that for all the bigotry trans people are facing, they still face less than they used to. Moreover, there's greater awareness, which means more chances for normalizing trans life. But most of all, he said, trans people just know themselves, and "you can't put toothpaste back in the tube. We're out, we're everywhere, and even if our lives are harder, we're not going away."Even so, things will get worse before they get better, he said. "The presidencies of Donald Trump represent a phase shift for American democracy, one that has made it impossible to return to the way things were. I think if you look at the totality of the actions of Trump himself, his administrations, and his judges, that's an inescapable conclusion. ... It's too unsettling ... So people tell themselves this is just trans issues stuff, nothing to do with them."SCOTUS ruled that states can ban transgender athletes. The number of such athletes is vanishingly small. Yet states are targeting people without much power. What's going on?Trans women's participation in women's sports was identified as a perfect wedge issue by conservatives, in part because the stakes feel relatively low, because playing sports isn't required for survival, and because fairly few trans people play sports.The right has since moved on to targeting trans people in every part of our lives, from identity documents to restrooms to stripping any mention of trans women out of rape protections in federal prisons. But the sports issue has been around for the longest, which is why it had the time to make it to the Supreme Court.As a wedge, it works to cement the idea in people's minds that trans people should be treated as members of our birth-assigned sex, in order to slowly roll up the idea that treating us equally means making room for us to live as our authentic selves.What do you see being done about this among Dems and allies? What are the obstacles?I think that the consensus among Democrats and allies, and even among many trans people, has been to let this one go. The majority of Americans have been convinced to see this as a common sense issue of keeping men from steamrolling women's sports, and since it really is such a tiny group of people being impacted, the thinking is to retreat and regroup.I personally think there's a bit of a lost opportunity here, though. Because sports is lower stakes, there's actually room to get people curious about the science, about the ways hormones influence our bodies, about the vast differences between trans people and cis members of their birth sex. In all the years trans women who'd medically transitioned were allowed to participate, not one dominated a single sport. That's interesting and unintuitive for a lot of people, and I think you can activate the part of people's brains that gets curious and wants to know more about this issue, which can be useful for education. It's different with questions that are more emotional, like whether to allow your 14 year old to start a hormonal medication. On those questions, I see people's curiosity give way to fear.On transitioning, I think what are called radical centrists are largely responsible. They pushed fear over liberty. They pretended that rightwingers are only reacting, not making the choice to punch down. What can be done? What historical models are there?Centrists want easy answers to the challenges we're facing. They want an easy answer to the challenge of having a completely unsuitable, unethical, mendacious person attain the US presidency, and to other challenges like climate change and increasing inequality as well. They want to believe we're still living in the 1990s, an eternal 1990s where the Overton Window is extremely narrow, our political parties agree and work together on a lot of things, and voters reward them for that.To someone with that mindset, it's very appealing to think there's a minority (one who people in their social set largely agree are a little weird) who they can just change positions on with no pain.
Last Friday, Joe Biden gave up the fight and declined to seek further review of an appeals court ruling on the release of 70 hours of conversations with his ghostwriter in 2017.
The post After Biden Tapes Released, Former Asst. AG for Environment Jeff Clark Argues – By Law – Joe Biden Must Forfeit $8 Million for Book Advance and His Delaware Home Where He Illegally Kept Classified Information appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has doubled down on his “Eat the rich” campaign by publishing a list of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers guilty of ... owning an apartment.
A former FBI profiler and Brian Entin go through the alleged Nancy Guthrie ransom notes, dissecting what investigators might learn about the person or people who sent them.
Emergency appeal comes after court upheld ruling blocking president’s order ahead of November midtermsThe Trump administration has asked the supreme court to clear the way for an executive order from Donald Trump that could dramatically change mail-in voting.The emergency appeal comes after an appeals court upheld a ruling blocking the president’s order in nearly half the country ahead of November’s midterm elections. Continue reading...
The DCCC is backing five new House candidates in Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, and Montana as Democrats fight to wrest House control from Republicans.
