"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!".

Sorry Raymond. Took the VSIP in April.

has this been covered yet? completely unsurprising but...

Robert F Kennedy Jr’s flagship health commission report contains citations to studies that do not exist, according to an investigation by the US publication Notus.

The report exposes glaring scientific failures from a health secretary who earlier this week threatened to ban government scientists from publishing in leading medical journals.

The 73-page “Make America healthy again” report – which was commissioned by the Trump administration to examine the causes of chronic illness, and which Kennedy promoted it as “gold-standard” science backed by more than 500 citations – includes references to seven studies that appear to be entirely invented, and others that the researchers say have been mischaracterized.

Need more of this. Annie Andrews launch video for her senate campaign in SC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8wMNLaSNW4

Would be nice if the doc's common sense campaign can beat Lindsay Graham's incumbent culture wars one in SC

Meanwhile another issue goes to court -

The Justice Department asked a federal court of appeals Thursday to stay the decision that halted many of President Donald Trump’s recently imposed tariffs. If the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit does not stay the ruling, the administration plans to go to the Supreme Court on Friday to ask for emergency relief, it said. During a briefing Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt derided the decision halting tariffs as “judicial overreach” and said it was part of “a troubling and dangerous trend of unelected judges inserting themselves into the presidential decision-making process

And now Rubio is basically enacting some kind of Chinese Exclusion Act? that's a real throwback, to when America was Great I guess

More of this too! Deja Foxx-Candidate for House AZ-7

https://bsky.app/profile/cattyjargon.fairy.blue/post/3lqdfequx622z

wow she's a badass

Ooooh interesting! The poetry slam-esque diction and emphasis is going to take me a sec but that's on me.

that Annie Andrews clip is good as well

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has temporarily reinstated Trump’s tariffs, pausing a lower court ruling that had blocked them

*wriggle*

Dr. Andrews seems like a good counter to Graham, who is looking for her votes in the right places. It would be good if she could make a lot of personal appearances in small towns and rural spots to do a lot of retail politics and not just run a media-heavy campaign. I'm not sure Graham is vulnerable, though. He may be an unprincipled weather vane but he does know which way the wind blows in his favor.

It's like the world's dumbest science thought experiment, Schrödinger's idiot. Does a tariff actually exist if is paused while being reinstated? How about blocked but not paused? Paused and not reinstated?

he's so stupid and full of himself he doesn't realize the courts stopping the tariffs would probably end up helping him

^^^ this! It an easy off ramp for a self-inflicted wound, and then he can blame the 'unelected deep state judges' at the same time... win/win

But yeah, he's too fucking stupid to see this opportunity

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-admin-deports-2-year-old-girl-who-is-american-citizen/

Doing gods work

Maybe the real black helicopter conspiracy plot was the chuds we suffered along the way

(I know that none of this is actually funny - it’s horrible - but that was a way to burn off an especially bleak mood this week)

The Nazification of the State Department continues apace.

https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/state-department-office-of-remigration

While these plans align with Trump’s open objective of expelling as many migrants from the United States as possible, the use of the word “remigration” is particularly striking as it’s widely used by far-right extremists in Europe.

Just last week, approximately 400 far-right activists—including a former Trump-endorsed GOP state legislative candidate from Michigan—gathered in Italy to specifically discuss remigration. Per one news report, “Flemish nationalist Dries Van Langenhove -- who has been sentenced to a year in prison for denying the Holocaust -- quoted Hungarian Premier Viktor Orban and asked participants to chant the slogan ‘Save our nation, remigration’.”

According to a post about the summit on the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism’s website, “Remigration is rooted in the thoroughly de-bunked white supremacist ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theory, which purports a planned ‘replacement’ of white people by politicians and other ‘elites.’ Jews are often targeted as driving this ‘plan.’”

They continued: “Remigration is a series of policy proposals, drafted by Austrian Identitarian and former neo-Nazi Martin Sellner, to end the so-called ‘replacement’ by purging the continent of non-white people and eliminating all forms of multiculturalism. The goal is to make countries ‘European again.’”

Honestly I'm shocked they haven't just started calling it "expulsion."

The goal is to make countries ‘European again.

Well, it's true that for a long time European countries were embarked on a centuries long project of subjugating, exploiting and wreaking massive harm on non-white people, so that description of their goal would fit, in a very depressing way.

Meanwhile, is the gutting of Medicaid by House Republicans finally the big reveal for Trump's "concept of a plan" to, uh, fix the ACA?

somebody has been spending a little too much time with sufjan's 10th anniversary

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GsNpxyqWYAAM--3?format=png&name=medium

I really hope nobody jumps in with 'we are all going to die' as June's thread title -- it cuts a little too deeply

There was a lot of that during COVID too. How quickly people were ready to sacrifice other people's lives for their own convenience was pretty eye-opening to me, tho nothing about it should have been surprising. Like, not just strangers but their own family members. They really just don't understand compassion, it's not part of the way they see the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04x7LVssoow

it's a pretty good jam though

This one too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_oqQ0evQ0U

We're all going to die anyway, so might as well die of preventable and/or curable illnesses so we can cut taxes for the wealthy

Give me convenience or give me death

"If they would rather die, they had better do it and decrease the surplus population" iirc

We value convenience so highly that we have stores selling just that

looks like they're rooting out any remaining Great Society programs

The Department of Labor announced this week it will pause operations at Job Corps centers nationwide, a move that has already gotten pushback from both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill.

The department said Thursday it will begin a “phased pause” initiating “an orderly transition for students, staff, and local communities.” The pause will occur by June 30, the office said.

“We remain committed to ensuring all participants are supported through this transition and connected with the resources they need to succeed as we evaluate the program’s possibilities.”

Job Corps, established as part of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, is a free residential education and job training program for low-income people between 16 and 24 years of age.

Most importantly, Job Corps exists by law and is funded through Congress. It's yet another case (out of dozens in the past three months) that Trump has zero intention to uphold his oath to "faithfully execute" the laws of the land and preserve, protect and defend the constitution. Literally every one of these instances is impeachable.

Give me my betters convenience or and give me death

maybe the reason they want to kill off Job Corps is so they have a greater pool of unskilled workers for the chicken processing plants graveyard shifts, after the mass deportations

(not that chicken processing is 'unskilled')

whatever bro, no one cares anymore

Trump says he is doubling tariffs on imported steel to 50%

Donald Trump just announced at his rally in Pittsburgh that he is increasing the tariff on imported steel from 25% to 50%.

The US president told steel workers: “We are going to be imposing a 25% increase. We’re going to bring it from 25% to 50% the tariffs on steel into the United States of America, which will even further secure the steel industry in the United States."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/technology/trump-palantir-data-americans.html

just endless Lucy with the football energy re tariffs

cant we just put him to sleep i’m so tired of this shit. 3.5 more years? ugh

Every announcement gives their friends a chance to extract more from the market.

totally.

Friday night war against Smithsonian Museums. Trump says he is firing National Portrait Gallery Director even though her museum is not an executive agency one, plus then his budget proposal for next year suggests big cuts for Smithsonian museums and zeroing out funding for small Anacostia Museum that is in a poor Black part of dc , and for the new Latino Museum that is being built.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/art/2025/05/30/trump-portrait-gallery-director/

And Supreme Court strikes again with unsigned order letting Trump end humanitarian parole and therefore deport more people ( Jackson wrote a signed dissent with Sotomayor’s signature as well)

https://www.wcia.com/news/national/ap-supreme-court-lets-trump-end-humanitarian-parole-for-500000-people-from-4-countries/

From Reuters on above:

As with many of the court's orders issued in an emergency fashion, Friday's decision, opens new tab was unsigned and gave no reasoning. Two of the nine-member court's three liberal justices, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, publicly dissented.
The court botched its decision by failing to account for its impact, Jackson wrote in an accompanying opinion. The outcome, Jackson wrote, "undervalues the devastating consequences of allowing the government to precipitously upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending."

https://www.fox8live.com/video/2025/05/30/state-lawmakers-push-bill-ban-chemtrails-amid-weather-manipulation-fears/

The paid-clickbait ads that populate the bottom of that Louisiana Fox outlet website are really something else, too. Especially the one seeking money to send food boxes to "God's People".

lol yeah we already passed a bill against chemtrails in Tennessee: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68716894

But it's especially sad in Louisiana, which has so many real actual documented problems with chemicals being released into the environment, which of course the state government is not doing shit about.

Trump appears to be promoting a conspiracy theory that Biden was executed in 2020 and replaced with a clone

...and/or robot.

It's June.

"Welcome To TACO Hell!": US POLITICS, JUNE 2025