"They did sign up for it, actually...": US POLITICS, MAY 2025

MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY

Take it over to the Handmaid's Tale thread.

health and human services department published a report today suggesting gender affirming care for youth is harmful and that it should be replaced with conversion therapy

just actively killing us at this point

Pelosi primary challenger is a rich guy but seems alright

https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/tech-millionaire-saikat-chakrabarti-faces-pelosi-20298729.php

reposting this amazing quote here:

"We are working with other countries to say ‘We want to send you some of the most despicable human beings to your countries.”

- marco rubio, yesterday

i personally did not get the reference, but i will also preserve the lol response :)

- Emma Lazarus

― imperial frfr (Steve Shasta), Thursday, May 1, 2025 10:12 AM (forty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, May 1, 2025 10:14 AM (forty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

health and human services department published a report today suggesting gender affirming care for youth is harmful and that it should be replaced with conversion therapy

just actively killing us at this point

― ivy., Thursday, May 1, 2025 10:35 AM (twenty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

gotta love them suggesting behavioral therapy as an option like it's a new idea. at least in our state, therapy is required and a therapist has to sign off before a minor can receive gender-affirming care.

One of the major failings of media coverage of trans issues has been not making it clear to everyone what gender-affirming care actually is and how it works. I've talked to people who aren't necessarily anti-trans but are just not well informed and they have no idea how long and rigorous the whole process is. The idea that it's something people are doing on a drive-by basis has been effectively planted and not seriously challenged in the mainstream media.

i personally did not get the reference, but i will also preserve the lol response :)

ha! Emma Lazarus wrote the poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty.

ok lol

https://i.imgur.com/XZos42P.png

i think tipsy very otm about informing the world what gender affirming care is.

the thing is also it should be available to everyone on a drive-by basis

like anyone who wants hormone replacement therapy should get to do it. it changed/saved my life. barriers to it kill ppl. further barriers to it will kill more ppl

I am at the rule of law protest on the sidewalk in front of the US Supreme Court in DC right now

Thank you curmudgeon <3

Thanks curmudgeon!

i think what ppl need to understand is that 1) they, you, everyone you know can or will be taking medications that affect your hormones through your whole life, e.g. my testosterone blocker is identical to the acne meds i took in high school 2) whether they know it or not, there is probably a trans person in everyone’s life, and access to this care is literally the difference between life or death. there should be vending machines full of estrogen and testosterone on the fucking street, jk, i’m kidding, i actually enjoy that my transition is monitored by my doctor who is also trans, but beyond him showing me a powerpoint presentation on the side effects and prescribing me the actual medication, there were no barriers to entry, and if there were, i might not have done it

I mean, what the standard of care should be is obviously an open question. I'm just saying that there IS a standard of care, and that is almost never spelled out in coverage of the issues. My own mom had no idea that, like, medical associations the world over had been considering and setting standards and practices for gender affirming care for years, way before it became this right-wing punching bag. She gets all her news from NPR and the NYT and somehow that had never come through to her.

do these ppl really believe liberals are dumping hormones into the water supply. i just want ppl to recognize that gender affirming care is GOOD and NECESSARY along with the fact that it’s excessively aggressively regulated so that maybe in the future, beyond the present moment, it can be less excessively aggressively regulated. idk i would like to do both

I am at the rule of law protest on the sidewalk in front of the US Supreme Court in DC right now

― curmudgeon, Thursday, May 1, 2025 11:18 AM (forty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Thank you!

CAN YOU MAKE ME FIRED?

https://i.ibb.co/HDR79KXD/Messenger-creation-F43-C61-F6-FBD8-4-F4-D-B44-A-A3-D2-DF54-EF91.jpg

One of the things about gender affirming care and what it is or isn’t is - ITS STILL NONE OF YOUR (OR MY) BUSINESS! Leave people the fuck alone! If you’re going thru cancer or aids or getting a buttlift don’t care what your treatment is! If you want a treatment (or if you choose to not have treatment) i hope you can get it but otherwise it’s none of my fucking business! AND I DONT CARE! FUCK!!!!

i'm sure someone smart has written about this but something i think about a lot is the rise of the internet eradicating the concept of minding your own business

I can barely keep track of my own family and friends let alone some kid in nebraska who needs HRT

the dominant narrative now is that gender care is ONLY men becoming women so they can compete and dominate in womens sports and it's just not fair

I feel like there was a time when conservatives kinda understood that, maybe they never meant it but there was that "whatever you do on your property is your business" mentality for a while, the difference now is that right wing media has convinced their viewers **its coming for them**, or their kids, like they really believe the public school system is pulling kids aside and telling them to be transgender

(xp) ... and use female toilets.

the furrification of out children is underway

My congressman wrote a very concerned letter to the University of Tennessee because some right-wing outlet noted that there was a campus furry club. He strenuously objected to any public money being used to support the club, which of course there is no public money going to it. I looked up the club's social media account, it's just a bunch of happy dorky kids hanging out together (mostly not in fursuits, at least in their photos).

Like, the shit these people decide is something to worry about, it's just boggling.

xp People don’t need to know what gender affirming care anyone may or may not be getting, it’s absolutely not their business at all, it is between you and your doctor and whomever absolutely needs to know for provision of benefits and then in confidence.

But people should know what gender affirming care is, and why it is necessary and helpful. Because if you leave people ignorant they will assume stupid shit, ban you, hunt you, jail you, burn you, or kill you. Crazy people will wanna do that anyway. Nobody should help them by allowing ignorance on the matter to survive.

When I say crazy people i apologize for that word, i mean criminal and evil people, tbc.

ty and agreed

in a broader sense a big problem right now is that the right has been very strongly conditioned over the last decade to believe that empathy is a weakness, that other people's lifestyles *should* be your business, either because they're unfairly getting something you're not or because they want to eliminate *your* way of life. like all this shit about the "gay agenda" or the "trans agenda", as though their life's mission is to make more queer people.

these two things go together, like maybe they're not convinced their kids are really being talked into taking hormones by their 5th grade teacher but they can't say it's *not* happening because they people they trust say it *is*, but it still gives them reason to be suspicious of people who they already think are weird, and they're being told that it's actually good to be a judgmental prick

I feel like other people's lifestyles have pretty much always been an obsession of the cultural right, it's not any new thing. A great desire to police other people's "morality" and impose conservative mores on them. cf "Harper Valley PTA"

for sure but it feels like the *only* thing they have now

the culture war dovetails with the 'make america pray again' evangelical bullshit

sadlol, Rubio named "interim" nastional security advisor and waltz nominated to be UN ambassador

Meanwhile … the grift goes on.

Sitting in front of a packed auditorium in Dubai, a founder of the Trump family cryptocurrency business made a brief but monumental announcement on Thursday. A fund backed by Abu Dhabi, he said, would be making a $2 billion business deal using the Trump firm’s digital coins.

That transaction would be a major contribution by a foreign government to President Trump’s private venture — one that stands to generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the Trump family. And it is a public and vivid illustration of the ethical conflicts swirling around Mr. Trump’s crypto firm, which has blurred the boundary between business and government.

Zach Witkoff, a founder of the Trump family crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, revealed that a so-called stablecoin developed by the firm, would be used to complete the transaction between the state-backed Emirati investment firm MGX and Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world.

Virtually every detail of Mr. Witkoff’s announcement, made during a conference panel with Mr. Trump’s second-eldest son, contained a conflict of interest.

Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/us/politics/trump-cryptocurrency-usd1-dubai-conference-announcement.html?unlocked_article_code=1.D08.gwIF.qNS01bh4CeAC&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

This is a dorky Dylan reference, but the corruption in this administration reminds me of "the drilling in the wall" throughout "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts" — this constant background hum that kind of gets ignored because of all the drama in the foreground, but it's where the real action is.

That Waltz dude is the first malfeasant douchebag to leave this admin?! BBC just said this I cannot believe this.

he is gonna be the u.n. ambassador, apparently

yes. he has a much easier job now (all he has to do is say "yes" to anything israel wants and vote against the rest of the world). meanwhile, marco rubio has plenty of free time and is doing a great job, so he's going to add national security advisor to his portfolio

Re

"We are working with other countries to say ‘We want to send you some of the most despicable human beings to your countries.”

We're not sending our best

Of all the heinous shit he says on a daily basis I don’t know why his “two dolls instead of thirty” remark rankles me so much. It’s so incredibly tone deaf and stupid. I wish it would turn out to be his “let them eat cake” moment, and end similarly.

Meanwhile … the grift goes on.

_ Sitting in front of a packed auditorium in Dubai, a founder of the Trump family cryptocurrency business made a brief but monumental announcement on Thursday. A fund backed by Abu Dhabi, he said, would be making a $2 billion business deal using the Trump firm’s digital coins.

That transaction would be a major contribution by a foreign government to President Trump’s private venture — one that stands to generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the Trump family. And it is a public and vivid illustration of the ethical conflicts swirling around Mr. Trump’s crypto firm, which has blurred the boundary between business and government.

Yo

absolutely naked corruption that would've sank any other president, but hey what can you do? Nothing, there's nothing that can be done

yeah but we're posting on ILX

I don’t know why his “two dolls instead of thirty” remark rankles me so much. It’s so incredibly tone deaf and stupid. I wish it would turn out to be his “let them eat cake” moment, and end similarly.

The inherent misogyny of it all. Not only are they insuring girls today will have no rights in the future, they want to deny them a happy childhood as well.

And Barbies and Barbie-like dolls aren't really that expensive, particularly in comparison to video games and the like. Even then, kids themselves frequently save allowance and chore money to buy them, so it's like "Hey, let's tax the shit out of these dumb prole children!".

^^^ soon to replace the checks-and-balances system as the metaphor for US government taught in Social Studies across the land

stop soiling my fond memory of the best Price is Right game

Has Trump gotten around to watching Pootie Tang yet

sign your executive orders on the runny kine

can we get him to watch Bulworth?

otoh maybe that's a bad idea

the alcatraz thing is gonna be a big stupid boondoggle that will never come to anything, but they're gonna jaw about for awhile until he moves on to the next non-problem

COVFEFE

Georgia governor Brian Kemp has announced he won't run for the Senate next year, increasing the odds Ossoff will retain his seat.

MTG has been rumored as wanting to run against Ossoff.

she's in a real safe district, but not sure how she'd do statewide

in running against Ossoff she'd have to remove herself from the House

Jan Schakowsky has officially announced she won't be running for reelection, making it an open primary for that seat.

xp A recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll had Ossoff trailing Kemp 46/49 while leading MTG 54/37. There will be a scramble for the GOP nomination and it's not a given she'll be the candidate, but I think Ossoff would like to run against her.

MTG couldn't run for the House and Senate in the same election, so it wouldn't matter if she lost in the Republican primary. she'd still be out of the House... unless she won as a write in in the general election.

MTG could stay in that seat for literally decades, she'd be a dumbass to do a senate run

so a senate run is a definite then

she'd be a dumbass to do a senate run

And if there's anything we know about Greene, it's that she's a tactical genius, a truly canny political operator, not at all a knuckle-walking dipshit who rode a bunch of Facebook-HOA-page level grievances to the safest possible political gig.

MTG is remarkably unpopular, exactly the sort of candidate who could not win anywhere outside of a deep deep red district. i hope she does run for Senate.

Not really shocked, but just learned that Alcatraz had no sewage treatment plant... everything just went right into the bay

that's why you could flush yourself down the toilet to escape

RE Alcatraz, it seems to me he has stumbled upon the truth that mentioning these ridiculous ideas keeps ppl talking about him. So it satisfies one of his highest priorities, the other being people giving him money. I suspect he at least has the self-awareness to know it’s a ridiculous idea but that it’s a winning political strategy. Exasperate the reasonable, entertain the cult, meanwhile let the even ghoulier ghouls trash everything outside of the limelight. He is a horrible person.

I mostly agree with that characterization, but then he'll start going off about invading Greenland and I'm beyond exasperated

...or Canada as the 51st state thing, which is such bugfuck old man thinking.

GlobalX, an airline used by the Trump administration as part of its massive deportation campaign, has reportedly been hacked.

On Monday, 404 Media first reported news of the breach, based on a defacement message on the airline’s official website and stolen data that the hackers shared with the news website.

“Anonymous has decided to enforce the Judge's order since you and your sycophant staff ignore lawful orders that go against your fascist plans,” wrote the hackers, who claimed to be affiliated with the amorphous hacktivist group Anonymous.

The hackers were referring to rulings by several judges ordering the Trump administration to return people who were wrongfully deported to El Salvador.

https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/globalx-airline-used-trump-deportations-184519422.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAFSvzIM6fx3gYLhH1pvNRvnmrqnWSqdLHNqfWZdtOBCXlpbB6Jsy7QZf0Zo8sY5PPA7-UsQO9XjADxvlr8EAq4X-P1Jt6LTLHZj8-6FCFtL-5GztBfSuxPuC2yvFvKdE2Ucrc3DUyPjj9oW0lfqdTHmZKspLOD4RuLgAFOjHBI9s

I would be genuinely surprised if Elon isn’t involved with GlobalX

X marks the snot

more legal news re lawsuits and Trump Admin--

Attorney Mark Zaid has filed a lawsuit against the White House, saying the suspension of his security clearance, which has disrupted his clients' legal representation, is unconstitutional retaliation by Trump.

A federal judge has temporarily blocked the CIA from firing Dr. Terry Adirim, who claims the agency targeted her for termination after criticism by Laura Loomer and Ivan Raiklin.

Another judge has sounded the alarm on the Trump administration's alleged violations of due process in immigration proceedings. Judge Larence Valardo said the administration view of due process was "downright frightening."

Another notable lawsuit filed today comes from Eric Iverson, a US citizen and prosecutor at the ICC who says Trump's executive order threatening sanctions against the ICC has effectively stopped his investigation of war crimes in Darfur.

from legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney on Bluesky

https://www.yahoo.com/news/supposed-moviemaker-trumps-decision-reopen-230134637.html

Please show him Logan’s Run this week.

Soylent Green jokes are suddenly less funny now

what the hell is this shit Gavin. "Make America Film Again"?? how are leading Dem politicians misreading the moment so badly?!?

https://bsky.app/profile/governor.ca.gov/post/3lohxbi7xgs2o

how are leading Dem politicians misreading the moment so badly?!?

i think it's money. people with tons of money perceive the moment behind a gigantic barrier of their own construction, supported by an entire class of people who want to maintain that gigantic barrier

you think of him as a Democrat who got corrupted by money, he thinks of himself as money trying not to get corrupted by Democracy

I think all the times we praised his hair got to his brain.

Honestly he is probably trying to represent California… there have been multiple articles recently about how LA workers in film/tv are struggling as productions are moved elsewhere, including offshore.

It would be great if he also publicly challenged the cuts to the NEA, NEH and museums and libraries which will also result in a lot of job losses in media/arts/culture in California

Or pointed out that Trump's vague, stupid, nonsensical "idea" has Jack shit to do with helping out struggling film and tv workers.

lol, sorry, total non-sequitor, but i was just reminded that fucking DR OZ runs the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

The threat to national security is a bit

Honestly he is probably trying to represent California… there have been multiple articles recently about how LA workers in film/tv are struggling as productions are moved elsewhere, including offshore.

― sarahell, Tuesday, May 6, 2025 10:17 AM (forty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, my sense that he and Whitmer see Trump as an opportunity to make lemonade out of lemons, to get whatever they can for their constituents by taking advantage of Trump's transactional approach to everything. The problem is that this is a devil's bargain because Trump will screw them without thinking twice, and while they may be able to extract certain things from Trump that may satisfy a small portion of their constituents, the majority of Democrats in their states are turned off by any type of collaboration with Trump.

Are any strategies being thrown around beside the usual 'throw tax credits at rich people' strategies for encouraging domestic film production?

Wonder if Melania's movie is using American crews.

Well we still have no idea if he meant US films with foreign crews, or actual foreign films, and what the actual limitations would be, right? Afaict it's still firmly in the territory of "Trump just said some shit" but no specifics aside from "100% tariffs", which can't actually happen because films are not categorized as goods.

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to end Energy Star, a popular program whose iconic blue labels have certified the energy efficiency of home appliances for more than three decades, according to two people briefed on the matter.

During an all-hands meeting Monday of the EPA’s Office of Atmospheric Protection, Trump administration officials announced that the office would be dissolved and that Energy Star would be eliminated, the two people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/06/us/politics/2026-senate-map-democrats-schumer.html?unlocked_article_code=1.FE8.DMvu.eNZ3GM4oKzgL&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Oh great, Schumer is in charge of getting Dem candidates to run in next Senate elections. He seems to just make a few calls to predictable candidates

BREAKING: The U.S. Supreme Court allows Trump's anti-transgender military ban to go into effect while litigation proceeds.

The stay of the district court's injunction was issued with no reasoning and over the objections of Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson

From lawyer/ law reporter Chris Geidner on Bluesky

so fucked up

thank you for your service!

not that I trust Tillis as far as I could throw him, but it would be funny if after all of his bootlicking, dude couldn't even get the post: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/06/trump-prosecutor-martin-tillis-senate-gop.html

of course, that just means Trump will slow walk his replacement nominee like he did in first term, so that his 'acting' can be in place a bit longer.

“Mr. Martin did a good job of explaining the one area that I think he’s probably right, that there were some people that were over-prosecuted, but there were some 200 to 300 of them that should have never gotten a pardon,” Tillis said.

very 'ok so the Holocaust was bad but the death toll was over-exaggerated' energy there.