solarbird | Fascism Watch for 4 April 2023

Republicans have introduced a bill allowing the Republican secretary of state to overturn elections in high-population counties – meaning Democratic strongholds in Texas. And Virginia Republican Governor Youngkin has given himself the ability to decide individually who does and does not get to vote after being convicted of a crime. He technically has this power already, but the process had been made virtually automatic by both old-Republican and Democratic governors over the last decade. Now he’s making it part of his personal fiefdom.

Missouri Republicans in the House have voted to defund all libraries in the state. It’s seen as retaliation for challenging Republican book bans targeting LGBT people and books about Black history and civil rights. It cannot be missed that “in Republican-run states all over the country, the same folks who were recently shrieking about free speech and oversensitive snowflakes are busy using the power of the state to ban discussions about factual matters that might hurt their feelings.”

60 Minutes ran a she’s-just-so-downhome softball ultra-normalising “interview” with the seditionist Republican Marjorie Taylor Green, who took the opportunity to say that Democrats are all paedophiles. I’m reminded of the New York Times’s normalising coverage in 1922, or maybe their Herr Hitler At Home in the Clouds, their fawning visit in 1939 as German troops massed at the Polish border. (If you prefer, here’s Atlas Obscura talking about it.) Normalising her lunatic fascism at this point is just insanely vile “reporting,” but, well, NYT 1939. Clearly some people don’t want to learn.

Fash and fash-adjacent (a.k.a., also fash) politicians are calling charges against Trump for a travesty, political, purely vengeance, whatever, of course. And while the hypocrisy is part of the point, Judd Legam went through files when John Edwards, a Democratic candidate for president, got charged with a similar crime, to see what the same people said. I’m sure you can guess what he found, but he does have the receipts. Meanwhile, Trump has told advisers that he’ll be ramping up attacks on anyone and everyone who investigates him, as if that were some sort of surprise.

It’s never, ever about small government: North Carolina Republican Senators are moving to ban participation trophies.

Musk Twitter is censoring a variety of LGBT terms in direct-message previews, but only ones preferred by LGBT people. Offensive words and terms, particularly those attacking trans people (examples in the article) are still previewed.

While blue checks are slowly being removed from previously-validated accounts, they are no longer universally gone; of the really major owners, only the New York Times lost theirs on the first day. (Elon is nothing if not a petulant child.) But what’s important is that Twitter have intentionally made telling whether a person is legacy verified or just paid $8 impossible to tell apart even if you check details, by giving both classes of blue-check the same descriptor saying it’s either a legacy verified account or a paid account – and not telling you which.

This confusion is absolutely intentional, and a good reminder that it is always a good day to leave Musk Twitter forever.

ICE have been using subpoenas meant for illegal imports to get massive dumps of data from schools – even elementary schools – abortion clinics, and universities, amongst other institutions. It’s certainly against the intent of the law and quite possible straight-up illegal. Wired has the story.

Finally, here’s a writeup of the Republican Supreme Court cases to watch out for this term. They’ll almost certainly roll back civil rights protections for LGBT people again, and a couple of the most fashy of the lunatics want to overturn a lot more.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.