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solarbirdWhen Republicans tell you they want a dictator, believe them. See also, “At all levels of public office, threats now come with the job.” This is about forcing anyone not a fascist out of the mechanics of civil and political work, and is absolutely part of a fascist agenda.
“DeSantis says he’ll consider pardoning Jan. 6 defendants, including Trump,” The Hill reported, showing that DeSantis is just as much in the “sedition is good, actually” Republican bed as everyone else in the GOP. But it’s one of many reasons President DeSantis would be somewhere past “disaster” in the damage-to-country race.
Scientific American has had to come out with an out-and-out anti-DeSantis opinion piece, now, prompted by – well, everything, but particularly his anti-science agenda against public health in general (COVID-19 and vaccination in specific), climate change, and LGBTQ people.
Pride London have decided to dedicate 2023 campaign to defending trans people: ‘We stand with you.’ The TERF movements in the UK have been well-connected with US Christian authoritarians, particularly through the Heritage Foundation but not just, for many years, trying strategies and trading ideas – but you know all that if you’ve been reading me for long. Relevantly, Channel 4 have come out with an expose on the toxic culture at the EHRC, which started shoving trans people out of and under the bus as the Tories started changing out staff.
Some of that would be relevant here, I mean, for oh so many reasons:
Trans people in particular but also LGBT people in general are having to build “do not travel” lists again, for the first time since 2003 since the Supreme Court ruled you couldn’t just make us illegal. Will the new court overturn their own 2003 decision? Thomas in particular explicitly wants to do that.
Top trans care doctor leaves Texas as lawmakers pass bans, just as reproductive health doctors are fleeing anti-abortion states like Idaho.
“Conservatives are making Pride merch ‘toxic.’ Their real goal is much worse,” says MSNBC.”Conservatives are making Pride merch ‘toxic.’ Their real goal is much worse,” says MSNBC. This column actually lists some of the actions taken by rightists to threaten Target – knocking over displays, threatening employees, posting violent videos. Target’s response – taking some merch down – will only make these actions worse by rewarding it. See also Target’s surrender to MAGA rage shows how anti-wokeness really works, see also What Target Needs to Understand, and NBC News’s broader coverage of other similar political attacks.
JD Vance is, of course, supporting the violent threats.
Austin Pharmacist Denies Trans Man Testosterone Prescription means we already have individual practitioners refusing health care. She said he didn’t like the injection method but he wasn’t going to be doing any of that, she just didn’t want to hand over the guy’s testosterone. Also she repeatedly misgenders him, so there you are.
A lawyer is in deep trouble for using ChatGPT for court filings, and then, upon having it discovered that it cited several cases that do not in fact exist, using ChatGPT to make fake cases to uphold the citations. This will get worse for a while, though really, I don’t think text is the big bad case. I think forged images, voice, and video are. But it’s not just lawyers; a judge has admitted to using it to write an opinion.
CNN may have given Donkeyballs Donald a little 2016 rerun, but it also looks like they shot what was left of their audience credibility right in the head. Ratings are down hard.
Republican representative Glenn Grothman wants more ‘white guys’ in Biden’s judicial nominees. Just straight up saying it.
Two stories on disinformation being spread by Nextdoor, the Church Lady of social networks, showing that anything that can be used for disinformation will be used for disinformation purposes. KUOW has the story on events locally here on Mercer Island; The Atlantic has their version of the story as well.
Musk Twitter and other awfulness:
Elon is quoting Nazis again, in this case, an anti-Semitic bit of commentary disguised as a Voltaire quote. Twitter to pull back from Europe’s disinformation crusade, meaning pulling back from the cooperative organisation working to fight disinformation. Since Musk Twitter is about intentionally spreading fash and alt-right disinformation and propaganda, this only makes sense.
Bluesky worked really hard to keep from banning a Nazi and their threats of violence, but even their best efforts apparently couldn’t stop the Nazi from getting blatant enough in their death threats that they couldn’t walk that line forever. Bluesky spends so much fucking time working to figure out how to keep fascists on its platform; it’s fucking appalling.
Florida:
Republican DeSantis is defending a Florida school’s decision to ban “The Hill We Climb,” the poem that Amanda Gorman read at President Biden’s inauguration, from the elementary school library where it had been when challenged. Meanwhile, Daily Salinas – the woman who got it banned – is now apologising not for this, but for spreading around the Russian-forged anti-Semitic propaganda piece The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In case you were wondering what kind of people DeSantis supports.
To what should be the surprise of no one, she is one of the cult-like far-right Moms4Liberty crowd. Media have been suckered on this group like they’ve been suckered on so many fash and fash-adjacent groups over and over again, so you just have to assume they’ll be credulous morons until smacked around by readers.
Iowa:
Iowa now has Don’t Say Gay through sixth grade, thanks to Republican governor Kim Reynolds and the Republican legislature. There are no moderate Republicans.
Ohio:
Ohio’s Republican legislature passed a broad ban on abortion this session, and everyone knows there will be a popular initiative to overturn it. So, as Republicans have done in several other states, they’re trying to change the rules that a popular initiative requires 60% of the vote to pass, because Republicans don’t want to represent, they want to rule.
Washington State:
“A data scientist says she’s found evidence that Seattle police killings have worsened since the federal government began monitoring the department a decade ago, an analysis that was criticized by a federal monitor just before a critical decision on the future of that oversight.” No shit. All this oversight and retraining has been rejected by the police, and “police reform” is bullshit.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
