A salt type pokemon! Censorship sucks, no art is degenerate, all ships are good ships, all art and all people deserve respect. icon courtesy of @thepokedexisgay
"Written comments and suggestions from the public and affected agencies should address one or more of the following four points:
(1) whether the proposed collection of information is necessary for the proper performance of the functions of the agency, including whether the information will have practical utility;
(2) the accuracy of the agency's estimate of the burden of the proposed collection of information, including the validity of the methodology and assumptions used;
(3) suggestions to enhance the quality, utility, and clarity of the information to be collected;
and (4) suggestions to minimize the burden of the collection of information on those who are to respond, including through the use of appropriate automated, electronic, mechanical, or other technological collection techniques or other forms of information technology, e.g., permitting electronic submission of responses."
Please leave effective comments that emphasize how wasteful this is!
Update on the war against the Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the US: The battle of the day is to stop Bill C-2, which is anti-immigrant, has privacy-violating provisions, and further builds upon the fiction that the United States is a safe country.
The link above has some tools and guidelines on how to take action against this. Try to inform those around you and share it. I have even seen some right-libertarians upset by this bill just because of the privacy aspect.
Hundreds of organizations have united to fight Bill C-2, not just on the grounds of refugee rights but also because of the privacy issues it introduces for everyone in the country.
This may seem like a very “well duh” post but i do think it’s important to be clear that when trump claims he intends to “deport” U.S. citizens that that is definitionally not deportation. Deportation specifically refers to the civil process of removal a foreign noncitizen to the country where they hold citizenship. Deportation is also, in most cases, a legal punishment in itself and will not result in the deportee being jailed upon arrival to their country of citizenship. Removing US citizens from the US and placing them in jails in countries that they have no citizenship claim to is commonly referred to as “disappearing,” “kidnapping,” or “trafficking” and discussions around trump’s desire to remove US citizens from the country should refer to it as such
TBQH this applies equally to anyone who’s not actively wanted for crimes in El Salvador (which we can assume is pretty much everyone sent there, since Trump is trafficking people to El Salvador because he has had a prison contract there and not because of any other legal reason). It’s horrible that it’s happening to US citizens but this is not a legitimate legal process for illegal aliens who have committed crimes in the US, let alone for the vast number of other brown people caught in this dragnet.
And to be clear I don’t think most if any of the people sent to El Salvador even meet that description, unless you’re out here calling the occasional speeding violation a crime. But my point is that even if everyone did, which I think the administration was trying to argue at one point, this is not due process or demanding justice or whatever the fuck. Disappearing people to shadowy prison camps is not appropriate punishment for anyone. Not even the worst person you can think of in your head. I know social media tends to be very enthusiastic about vigilante justice, but “the government decides you’re bad and then you disappear” is literally totalitarianism. A word you’re going to have to learn alongside fascism I’m afraid.
And in that vein, in a better era we’d consider legal punishments other than deportation even for people who were wanted by the El Salvador legal system, given that supermax torture prison is a blatant human rights abuse in comparison to most if not all crimes. Countries have absolutely done that in the past. There are countries that won’t deport to us because we still practice the death penalty.
I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in PDX on Jun 20 at BARNES AND NOBLE with BUNNIE HUANG. After that, it's LONDON (Jul 1) and MANCHESTER (Jul 2).
My latest Locus Magazine column is "Strange Bedfellows and Long Knives," about the secret engine of sweeping political upheavals (like Trumpism) and their inherent fragility:
Stories about major change usually focus on a group, but groups rarely achieve big, ambitious goals. Think about all the goal-oriented groups in your orbit, with missions like alleviating hunger, or beautifying your neighborhood, or changing the health-care system. They've been at it for decades, and while many groups do excellent work at the margins, blocking regressions and making modest advancements (or the occasional breakthrough), they're playing a game of inches.
But sometimes – the New Deal, the civil rights movement, the Reagan revolution, Trump II – we get a wholesale, foundational, societal change. Very rarely, that's because an existing group conceived of a devastating new tactic (think of Obama's online campaigning in 2008), but that's the exception. Almost always, the major upheavals in our society aren't caused by the same people trying a different tactic – they're the result of a coalition that forms around a shared set of goals.
Reagan rode to power thanks to the support of different groups, many of whom had cordially loathed one another for decades. Most notably, Reagan brokered a deal with evangelicals – whose movement was already organized around strict obedience to charismatic cult leaders – to end their decades long boycott of politics and show up at the polls for him:
Evangelicals hated politicians (whom they viewed as obsessed with "worldly" matters to the exclusion of the spiritual) and they really hated the finance sector (whom they damned as both amoral sons of Mammon, and also, quietly, Jewish). Right wing politicians and the financiers they relied on viewed evangelicals as stupid, superstitious, and ungovernable. But by promising to deliver culture-war stuff (racism, restrictions on abortion, homophobia) to evangelicals, and tax-cuts and deregulation to the rich, Reagan fused two groups that had been largely stalled in achieving their goals for decades, and, with the backing of that coalition, rewrote the American consensus to give each of them some of what their wanted.
But here's the thing about coalitions: while they share some goals, they don't share all their goals. Two groups that have identical goals aren't actually two groups – that's just one group with two chapters. Moreover, the divergence in coalition members' goals are often – nearly always – in conflict. Which is to say, they want some of the same things, but there are always group members who want different, mutually exclusive, opposing things.
When coalitions are forming and campaigning, they tend to focus on their shared goals. But once they take power, it's their differences that matter.
Think of Tolkien: the Fellowship of the Ring forms by pulling together disparate factions to join in a shared quest that culminates in a massive battle in which (spoilers) they are victorious. But in the immediate aftermath of that victory, even before the wounded and the fallen have been recovered from the battlefield, we (spoilers) witness another fight, this one between the allies, over what the post-victory order will be. This is pretty much also what happened after WWII, when (spoilers) the USSR and the USA switched from being allies to being rivals even before anyone could (spoilers) clean Hitler's brains off the walls of his bunker.
Leftists get a front-row seat for the coalitional moves of the right, but we tend to miss the internecine struggle to claim the prize after their victories. One exception to this is Rick Perlstein, a leftist historian whose books Nixonland and Reaganland are definitive histories of the internal machinations that powered the right wing revolution. For years, Perlstein has been carefully reading the massive anthologies that the Heritage Foundation publishes in the runup to each election, in which various members of the right coalition spell out their post-victory goals. These were pretty obscure until last year, when we all became aware of the latest volume in the series, Project 2025:
Perlstein read Project 2025 – all of it, not just the individual chapters that were the most lurid and apocalyptic right-wing fantasies. Because Perlstein read all 900 pages, he was able to identify something that nearly everyone else missed, that Project 2025 is full of contradictory plans that are in direct opposition to one another:
Project 2025 is usually credited to the Heritage Foundation, but it's more accurate to say that Heritage was the anthologist of the plan, not its author. They selected and assembled chapters written by various members of the Trump coalition. Now, as anthologist, it was Heritage's job to make as coherent a job of this as possible, but, as it turns out "as possible" wasn't very possible.
Project 2025 contains multiple, contradictory, mutually opposed prescriptions for monetary policy, taxation, foreign policy, domestic security, government reform, taxation, and more. Normally, an anthologist editing a volume like this would serve as a kind of referee, choosing winners from among these opposing sides. That surely happens all the time in Trumpland – doubtless there are crank eugenicists, Proud Boys, and Q-addled hallucinators who have cherished goals that would never make it into Project 2025.
But the fact that Heritage couldn't tell one (or two, or three) sides in these debates to go pound sand and elevate a single policy to canon tells us that there are opposing forces in the Trump coalition who are each so powerful that neither of them can overpower the others. These are the fracture lines in the Trump coalition, the places we should apply ourselves to if we want to neutralize the movement, shatter it back into a mob of warring factions.
As Naomi Klein says, this is something Steve Bannon has been doing to the left for years:
One of the things I’ve learned from studying Steve Bannon is he takes the task of peeling away parts of the Democrats’ coalition very seriously, and he’s done it very successfully again and again. So why wouldn’t we try to do it back to him?
Trump held his coalition together during the war, but history tells us that now, after the victory, is the moment when Trump's coalition is most vulnerable, as members of that coalition realize that they won't get the things they were promised in exchange for the blood and treasure they expended to get Trump into office.
I've been a Locus columnist for two decades now. It remains the journal of record for the science fiction and fantasy field, a vital source of information and community. Locus is structured as a charitable nonprofit (I'm a donor) and it depends on support from readers like you to keep going. They're currently hosting their annual fundraiser, with many, many, many cool rewards, from signed books to the right to name a character in an upcoming novel, and beyond:
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
The American people overwhelmingly oppose Trump’s plan. In fact, a recent poll found that only 14% of voters support cutting social services to fund an extension of Trump’s tax cuts. That’s why Republicans passed the bill early in the morning when no one was watching — because they know how wildly unpopular it is.
This bill is NOT a done deal. It still needs to pass the Senate. It's important that we get in touch with our senators and tell them to vote NO on this bill. Keep calling. (202) 224-3121
If this budget passes, people die because they won't be able to afford the copays, especially as Trump economic policies kill jobs and keep causing prices to rise.
They are sacrificing people for the billionaires that bought them.
STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND CONTACT YOUR SENATORS NOW!!!
Remind Red State Senators that they are killing their own base with this bill!
They are stealing healthcare from 13.7 million people with this bill at minimum.
They are making the bottom 10% of Americans 2% Poorer.
This is all so they can make the Wealthiest 10% 4% richer.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates billions in cuts to the health care program.
A 54-year-old mechanic called Pathways to Coverage a “great program” at the governor’s press conference. But after getting kicked off the he
The goal here is to add so much paperwork that the working poor and job seekers will lose the health care they need to keep working or keep looking for work and to ensure that if people get to sick to work they won't have the medications and care they need to get better.
Some other stuff to Consider:
Don’t let this happen
“No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued….”
"Translated: No federal court may enforce a contempt citation."
The Republican-passed House bill goes beyond limiting access for Medicaid recipients.
Here is a list of who voted for or against the Horrible Budget Bill:
The Republican budget bill still has a lot of time and processing to undergo before it heads to Donald Trump's desk for his signature. And n
They are coming home to their districts. Now is the perfect time to tell them what you think of their votes!
the fucking budget bill of hell passed the house that removes HRT from medicare, general medicare spending cuts, student financial aid cuts, and oh yeah lets the teump regime ignore court orders even harder and lets for even harder executive overreach. they did this shit at motherfucking 2 am so people wouldn’t notice too
it passed house like i said but still needs to pass senate.
tell your senators to invoke byrd rule which is a goddamn real thing apparently
call your goddamn senators i swear to god
and if you’re in DC there’s a protest going on as we speak
okay. calling your reps can be scary. let me walk you thru the details + some actionable steps
first of all - some facts. the bill passed basically because there are more republicans in the house than democrats - and it was basically a 50/50 vote, with one vote yes tipping them over a tie. [check out the stats here]
keyly: a few republicans voted no. so, we need only four senate republicans to also vote no, and here's a list of the most vulnerable ones to target. [source, thank you robert reich, who i copy+pasted from]
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[italic emphasis = mine]
Collins (ME) - blue state, voted against April Senate budget resolution over Medicaid cuts.
Tillis (NC) - faces competitive reelection bid and has spurned Trump on U.S. attorney nomination.
Sullivan (AK) - race could become competitive because of Alaska’s ranked-choice system and the impact of Medicaid/SNAP cuts, and if former Rep. Mary Peltola runs.
Husted (OH) - replaced Vance, has to win a special election to finish term in 2026. Race could become highly competitive if Sherrod Brown runs.
Moody (FL) - replaced Rubio, has to win a special election to finish term in 2026. Same factors as Husted (though FL is a longer shot than OH).
Cornyn (TX) - facing a tough right-wing primary challenge from Ken Paxton, who could put the seat in play if he wins.
Ernst (IA) - race has the potential to be competitive in an anti-GOP cycle without Trump at the top of the ballot.
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If they are up for re-election soon, it's simple. you tell them "if you vote for this bill, I am not voting for you".
"but what if I'm not republican??" i don't know if they know that/can check that. irregardless, they're your senator. your vote matters to them. tell them you won't vote for them if they pass this bill.
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"what if my rep isn't on that list?"
Call them anyway. Make noise. They might not be convinced, but you might as well make your displeasure known.
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"what if my rep is a democrat?"
Call them anyway. They will probably vote no anyway, but probably better to send a message that it's unacceptable, just in case they were thinking they might vote yes.
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"Okay. How do I call?"
[ 5calls.org ]
5calls is great. They have an app, if you want. You have to set your location with them - a zip code will do. This is how they know which senator is yours.
From there, pick an issue (on desktop, there is a list on the left side of the screen) (on mobile, the list is the main feature) - after clicking on your issue, it will give you a phone number and a script at the bottom. Call the phone number, read the script. The script is even tailored based on whether your senator is red or blue!
Obviously, you don't have to read the script, but it takes the thought out of it. If one of your reps is a rep who's due for re-election, tell them you won't vote for them if they vote yes on this bill.
Be polite, be courteous. Also: you will need to leave your street address if you're leaving a voicemail. That's how they confirm you're actually one of their constituents and not some rando from another state making a call - That's how they confirm your opinion is worth listening to. "I don't want to give them that information?" They already have it. This is just you confirming it.
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Leave a voice mall!
>Nervous about phonecalls? Call after hours or on the weekend. It sure is a long weekend right now, with memorial day, and all. That way you get sent straight to the answering machine and can leave a voicemail.
>I usually open my voicemail messages with Hi I'm [NAME] and I'm a constituent of [SENATOR], my phone number is [NUMBER] and my street address is [BLAH], zip code [BLAH], just to get that out of the way. And then I read the script that 5calls has given to me.
>Calling during office hours? Just say "Hi, my name is [NAME], I'm a constituent of [SENATOR], and I have a comment about a legislative issue." When they give you the go-ahead, read the 5calls script.
>Do they have multiple numbers? A DC office, and a local office? Calling multiple times a day might make them wary of taking you seriously, but calling your local office as well as their main DC office....
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"Okay, which issue do I pick?"
5calls.org sure has like five billion different links regarding the "Big Beautiful Bill" aka H.R.1 - but [here's] the one with a general overview.
Of course, your republican senator might not care much about slashes to [Medicaid] or increased budget for [ICE] - they CERTAINLY won't care about cuts to planned parenthood and transgender care.
Those cuts to Federal Employee Retirement sounds pretty bad, though. Play-act, if you can. A concerned "we're planning to put America in HOW much debt?" might do more than you think. "I'm just really worried about how my Grandma is going to afford her healthcare if Medicare gets cut..."
Put in a little research. Does your senator care about [education]? Do they [hate Elon Musk]? Maybe they're not too fond of Trump, and would love to be remindeed that this bill is trying to give him the ability to [ignore contempt of court.]
Usually they have a website, usually that website tells you what issues they ran on. If any one of those issues is threatened by this bill, remind them.
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Byrd Rule
Or maybe just call your senator and tell them to invoke [Byrd Rule], which allows them to call certain parts of the bill extraneous (the contempt of court thing, anyone!??) and irrelevant to the overall goal of the budget reconciliation.
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What are my options other than phonecalls?
You can send emails, you can send faxes.
[ faxzero.com ] - lets you send a handful of free faxes a day. Just copy+paste the 5calls script, and maybe some relevant supporting evidence from the 5calls page, and send it off.
Same goes for emails. Your sentators almost always have a contact form on their website. Do the same there.
You can find all the ways to contact your senators - including their websites - at [ this source ], just enter your state.
Or you can try [ Resist Bot ], which you can use in Messenger and Telegram, and it looks like even normal SMS. Signing up with this takes the hard part out of it - it can handle all the email logistics for you; slap in your message, let it do the rest.
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Other options?
Whew, this list is getting long, but here's two more things I thought of.
1) [ Here's more info about attending town halls. ]
2) Contact your House reps. See how they voted on HR1 [ here ]. Either thank them for voting no (it's important for them to know!) or say you're disappointed in them for voting yes. Your opinion still matters. That vote is done, but it matters that they held the line. Or, it matters that they didn't represent your opinions - which is what their job is to do.
And if they're one of the two republicans who abstained from voting, call them out on it. "If you didn't feel strongly enough to vote yes on this bill, maybe you should have just voted no, especially due to [cause you care about/think they care about]."
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Thanks for your time. Hope this tutorial/info sheet helps anyone. Steal and repost it to other sites as much as you want.
"I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States"
This is not a tagline, this is not a tweet. This is the oath—the oath that is etched into our history, binding every person who dares to lead this republic. It's not open to interpretation, and it is not optional. It is not, as Donald J. Trump recently said on national television, a matter of "I don't know."
When asked point-blank by NBC's Kristen Welker whether he should be uphold the Constitution, the sitting President of the United States responded with "I don't know".
Not "yes."
Not even "of course."
He responded with uncertainty. A shrug. A shoulder roll heard around the world.
Let's be very clear: This was not a gaffe, it was a confession.
Mr. Trump has spent years treating the Constitution like an obstacle course instead of a moral compass. He has praised autocrats and touted "love letters" from North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. He has dismissed court rulings and called for the impeachment of judges who rule against his administration. He has ignored subpoenas and encouraged political violence--all while pretending to be the keeper of American greatness. A man who cannot affirm the Constitution is not defending America, he is dismantling it.
Yet, too many have shrugged it off. The political class has stayed silent, including Republicans who repeatedly call themselves "constitutionalists." The pundits have pivoted, and the mainstream media buried it in a sea of other quotes as if a president casually disavowing his oath was just another soundbite in an endless news cycle.
We cannot afford to normalize this.
We cannot afford to excuse it.
We damn sure cannot afford to pretend that it's harmless.
This country has lost too many lives--soldiers, activists, and ordinary citizens--for us to sit silently while the presidency is wielded like a wrecking ball. John Lewis didn't get his skull cracked on the Edmund Pettus Bridge just so a president can say "I don't know" when asked whether he supports the very document that justifies his power.
The Constitution is not a menu. You don't get to pick and choose . You don't get to embrace the 2nd Amendment while shredding the 14th Amendment. You don't get to quote the founders in one breath and incite insurrection in the next. The oath is not about loyalty to party, it's about loyalty to principle.
If that oath means nothing to you, you do not belong in any elected office. And you damn sure don't belong in the Oval Office.
We are not playing politics here, we are defending the last line between civilization and collapse. Because once the oath becomes a joke, the presidency becomes a threat.
"We will not take a lecture on decorum from a party that incited an insurrection. I appear to live rent free in the minds of some of my Republican colleagues. I wish they would spend even a fraction of the time that they spend thinking about me, thinking about … families."
“Rep. Al Green is back in the news as a 2021 clip of him passionately calling out GOP members for using God to oppose LGBTQIA+ rights goes viral again, reminding them how religion was historically misused to justify slavery and segregation”
For anyone seeing this who is unaware, Rep. Al Green is this man:
The vote was 224-198, with 10 Democrats joining all Republicans in approving the resolution.
After the vote, as the resolution required of him, Green stood in the well of the House chamber while Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., read the censure resolution to him.
Dozens of Democrats, including many fellow members of the Congressional Black Caucus, surrounded Green in the well and sang "We Shall Overcome" in a show of solidarity as the speaker repeatedly told them to stop and clear the well.
Republicans in the chamber yelled, "Order! Order!" And two CBC members, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, shot back: “Shame on you!"
Democrats ignored the speaker's request, and Johnson then recessed the House.
The 10 Democrats who voted to censure Green are all moderates: Reps. Ami Bera and Jim Costa, both of California; Ed Case of Hawaii; Laura Gillen and Tom Suozzi, both of New York; Jim Himes of Connecticut; Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania; Marcy Kaptur of Ohio; Jared Moskowitz of Florida; and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state.
[...] The censure against Green was introduced by Rep. Dan Newhouse R-Wash. A Democratic effort to table the censure resolution was rejected Wednesday in a 209-211 vote.
A censure is a formal way for the House to express disapproval of a member’s conduct. A censured member does not lose any rights or privileges as a House member.
The matter, however, might not be closed. The far-right House Freedom Caucus, who had been racing to introduce their own resolution to censure Green, said after the vote its members plan to roll out another resolution seeking to remove Green from the House Financial Services Committee. The group said on X it expects Johnson to bring the resolution to the floor next week.
While Democrats engaged in both silent and sometimes vocal protests of Trump during his long address to a joint session of Congress this week, Green took things a step further.
He rose from his seat toward the front of the chamber Tuesday night, shook his cane toward Trump and repeated shouted that the president had "no mandate to cut Medicaid ... no mandate" — after Trump had said in his speech that voters in the 2024 election had handed him a mandate to slash the federal government.
[...] Green said Wednesday that he had the "privilege of going to jail" with the late Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, the civil rights icon who Green said taught him the importance of peaceful protest.
"So I’m not angry with the speaker. I’m not angry with the officers. I’m not upset with the members who are going to bring the motions or resolution to sanction. I will suffer the consequences," Green said. "But I must add this, what I did was from my heart. People are suffering and I was talking about Medicaid. I didn’t just say you don’t have a mandate. I said you don’t have a mandate to cut Medicaid."
"I did it from my heart and I will suffer whatever the consequences are," he added. "But truthfully, I would do it again."
i love you black trans people. i love you asian trans people from all over asia (not just east asia). i love you hispanic trans people. i love you indigenous trans people. i love you poc trans people. you're doing great, i promise you, and i'm so fucking sorry the community erases you as much as it does.
PUBLIC COMMENTS ARE OPEN FOR GENDER IDENTIFIERS ON US PASSPORTS
Right now, you can submit a comment for consideration on the proposed changes to US Passport law that will include requiring a change from "Gender" to "Sex" on all passports and require that people identify with their sex assigned at birth.
THIS IS THE LAW THAT WOULD BAN TRANS PEOPLE FROM UPDATING THEIR IDENTIFICATION
Please take a moment to click through and submit a comment. This kind of thing is fast, easy, and is one of the many ways to show your support of the trans community to the people that need to know how many of us there are.
This is an excellent low effort way to make a clear statement to the government that you do NOT support the unnecessary and expensive process of changing everyone's passport just so that a tiny population that has done no measurable harm to society can feel afraid.
Public comments are one of the many tactics we have to show the people in power how many of us are willing to stand up and say fuck this. Stand up and say fuck this in every single place that you can.
the way judge reyes is navigating the trans military ban case is incredibly encouraging, she's pushing to set a precedent for all other related trans discrimination cases, forcing the DOJ lawyers to have to spell out their bigotry, like this case will have ripple effects on everything else if all goes well
If you are trans: do not apply for asylum in Canada YET.
The appropriate changes are in the works, but not official yet. You will most likely be denied.
If you are denied for asylum once, you can not reapply. EVER.
Things could change quickly, so you need to keep that option open. Now is the time to prepare, not act. Unless you are in immediately, and direct danger right now (not pending a court case, not that the social climate for our community is bad, immediate danger to you as an individual), you need to wait until something changes, sadly.
