Fascism Watch for 20 April 2023

The Republican Florida Legislature has now passed a bill authorising the state to TAKE TRANS CHILDREN FROM THEIR SUPPORTIVE PARENTS. Republican governor DeSantis has said he’ll sign it.

This is now legally a form of genocide.

The Republican/DeSantis-dominated legislature in Florida passed three-more anti-LGBT bills yesterday, as DeSantis’s packed state board of education expanded the ban on discussion LGBT people or topic in schools through the entire educational system through 12th Grade.

The Republican Tennessee Senate has passed a bill to charge publishers with felonies if they “distribute obscene matter to a public school.” At the moment there is a state definition of “obscenity” but they’re quite explicit – as per Florida – about the fact that consider any mention of LGBT people to be “obscene.” So I’m just making sure we’re all on the same page here.

Missouri’s attorney general – who earlier this week banned all gender-affirming treatment for adults through executive order – on his agenda: “‘We’re on offense on all fronts,’ against gender-affirming treatment. ‘We marshaled state resources, we’re looking at licensure penalties, we’re looking at Medicaid fraud penalties. We’re looking at consumer protection issues.‘” MSNBC has more details, including a technical temporary carve-out for people already receiving treatment, but it’s temporary – and more importantly, the legal threat is so explicit and so severe that doctors aren’t willing to try to use it.

The online reporting hotline is not even new for Republicans. As author and researcher Jason Colavito notes, “[this is] pretty much exactly what Republicans did in the 1950s when they established homosexual snitch lines for spying neighbors to call in tips about suspected gay people so they could be prosecuted.”

Any tool they can use to hurt LGBT people, they will use to hurt LGBT people, and this is only the start. They will make ALL OF US illegal again if they can.

Montana Republicans want to censure the only trans member of the Montana legislature for speaking what is actual truth, putting their demand into a letter published which also misgenders her, because that’s how they roll.

In Musk Twitter news, systematically deadnaming and misgendering trans people is no longer considered harassment on Twitter, because – as Montana Republicans demonstrate directly above – harassing queers in general and trans people this way in particular is part of the point. Not directly in response to this in particular, but in response to Musk Twitter in general, Microsoft is dropping Twitter support from its advertising platform. Elon has, of course, threatened to sue, but fuck ‘im.

Also, Dell Cameron at Wired published an article about the hacker who hijacked Matt Walsh’s twitter account, to which Twitter responded by permanently banning him, as happens whenever a journalist – or anyone else – says or does anything which irritates Elon Musk. When contacted about this, Musk Twitter responded with the now-standard “poop” emoji.

Amanda Silberling and Alyssa Stringer have a timeline of Musk’s Twitter Bullshit on TechCrunch if you want to review why it’s always a great day to leave Twitter forever.

Republicans are moving across the country to rollback child labour laws, allowing 14-year-olds to work in dangerous facilities such as meat processing plants, construction sites, and factories. A More Perfect Union has a video article on who is pushing it behind the scenes – a lot of it comes from the National Restaurant Association, but they’re far from the only ones. Lots of money is coming from businesses who have been regularly in violation of labour law already – particularly child labour law, particularly particularly violations that cause worker injuries.

That’s what the “let kids be kids” party wants for kids: amputations. And other lifelong injuries. Apparently.

Finally, here’s a nasty combination: an article on the Trump judge’s any-excuse-will-do ban on abortion drugs (“Large numbers of Texans are turning to out-of-state help to end their pregnancies safely. But now that option is under siege after a recent [Trump] judge’s decision“) and the author of Texas’s abortion bounty law suing to try to get the US Supreme Court to ban abortion nationally using 1873’s Comstock Act.

Don’t dismiss this guy. With a fair court, sure, no chance in hell. But with the 5th Circuit and a severely authoritarian, partisan-stacked Supreme Court? This would let the Republicans put a national ban in place without having to pass a single law. And don’t think they won’t do it if they think they’ll get away with it.

They will make ALL OF US illegal if they can.

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

Okay team, here’s something to do

Christ, I almost typed “tweeps.” Old habits are hard to break.

Throughout all this hell, I’ve been throwing the odd message at Federal representatives. And I have heard FUCKING NOTHING ABOUT ANY OF IT from them. Not replies, nothing in newsletters, it’s been dead air.

And I’m from Seattle, for fuck’s sake.

But now that we’re into out-and-out legal-definition genocide, that has to change. All your Federal reps need to start getting shit from you. Biden too.

[ETA: And your local news sources, if you have any. That’d be good too, and probably more effective.]

Because if you’ve ever wondered what you would’ve done in 1930s Germany, it’s what you’re doing right now, and if you’ve ever wondered what your MPs would’ve done in 1930s Germany, it’s what they need to be doing now. If you have nothing else to do, do this.

Also start finding and throwing money to refugees, because that’s already happening. (I have been.)

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