#Congress Zero

[eggsistential-breakdown]

TWO FULL DECADES AROUND THE SUN

[the-lost-kids]

ok i know im the one who always complains that delaware is seen as so irrelevant in politics by out of state people but sometimes i think it is time for all of you to stop sharing your unresearched opinions on sarah mcbride

[shmreduplication]

planning my dc trip and i'm mostly going to be at the national gallery of art for the rothko exhibit but i' m also looking at other places i might go and their merch offerings to check for baseball hats

clearly baseball hat-making tech has improved in the past few years because more places have hats than ever before BUT it's mostly white text on black hats which is just mind boggling

the namesake industry, baseball, has had it figured out for years that words < logo-ized letters < non-word/non-letter logo

most teams have the misfortune of having a stupid names that aren't associated with any image (what, praytell, is an "athletic" or a "phillie"?) so those teams go with a stylized version of the city's initial(s) (I think Oakland, bless her heart, is the only one that goes with the stylized initial of the team name so they have "A's" instead of "O" on the hats)

teams that are lucky enough to have an animal as their team name have the animal as their primary hat logo as well. The cardinal on a baseball bat, the oriole wearing its own baseball hat, the bluejay with the maple leaf. Even red sox hats will often have a pair of red socks on them even tho socks are not a cool animal and imo the "B" hat is something any masshole can wear while the actual socks logo is just for the baseball fans. Also special mention to the houston astros, they do have an "H" on the hat but by god it is in front of a fucking star

and yet museams, which sell loads of artwork on apparel so like clearly they already have designs that they're allowed to put on baseball hats, and a lot of it is one or two colors and geometric, v easy to embroider onto a curved piece of fabric, and yet the the guggenheim puts at best a "G" and at worst "GUGGENHEIM NEW YORK" on black hats with white thread and calls it a day

[niallsblckgirlfriend]

Another shooting in Alabama…….literally this will never stop.

[unforth]

Everything feels awful right now but it isn't really. We still don't officially have a winner, but regardless of how the presidential election ends up, I wanted to take a minute and find what lights I can in the 3 a.m. darkness. Here's what I know:

* Kentucky overwhelmingly rejected an attempt to undermine the public education system by offering private school vouchers:

* Delaware has elected a transgender woman to the House of Representatives, the first out trans person of any gender ever elected to congress:

* For the first time in history, two Black women will be serving in the senate at the same time, and they are only the fourth and fifth Black women ever elected to the senate:

* New York State has passed a constitutional amendment enshrining the rights of pregnant people (including the right to an abortion), LGBTQIA+ people, the disabled, immigrants regardless of legal status, and other at-risk groups:

* Democrat Josh Stein has beaten self-avowed Nazi Mark Robinson to become governor of North Carolina:

That's everything I know off the top of my head. It's not many bright spots, but it's not zero. I'm going to try to find more and I'll add them to the post. It's the only thing I can think of to do that isn't sobbing and throwing up or looking up Canadian immigration rules.

If you know more good news, I encourage you to add it in reblogs.

[beemovieerotica]

struggling with how to word this, but putting it out there anyway:

i can fully understand the posts on here from a lot of americans being tired of "vote blue no matter who" posts when the #1 thing that people are constantly (and sometimes only?) addressing is how the republican party is going treat trans/queer people if elected.

it's part of an unfortunate pattern of prioritizing the effects on a demographic that includes white + upper class people, when people of color and those in the global south are actively and currently being killed or relegated to circumstances in which their survival is very unlikely

it is genuinely exhausting to witness this, and i was also on the fence about even participating in voting because i a) felt like it didn't matter and b) every time i voiced being frustrated with the current state of the country, white queer people would immediately step in with "but what about trans people!" -> (i am mixed race trans man)

and i say this with unending patience toward people who do this, because i know that it's not something they actively think about. but everyone already knows how the republican party is going to treat queer people. you are probably talking to another queer person when you bring up project 2025. the issue is that, for those of us who aren't white, or for those of us who are but who are conscious of ongoing struggles for people of color worldwide, the safety of people around the world feels more urgent than our own. that is the calculation that's being made.

you're not going to win votes for the democratic party by dismissing or minimizing these realities and by continually centering (white) queer people.

very few people on here and twitter are actually talking about issues beyond queer rights that concern people of color, or how the two administrations differ on these issues instead of constantly circling back to single-issue politics. this isn't an exhaustive list. but these are the issues that have actually altered my perspective and motivated me to the point of committing to casting a vote

the biden administration has been engaged in a years-long fight to allow new applicants to DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the program that allows undocumented individuals who arrived as children to remain in the country) after the Trump administration attempted to terminate it. the program is in limbo currently because of the actions of Trump-backed judges, with those who applied before the ruling being allowed to stay, but no new applications are being processed. Trump has repeatedly toyed with the idea of just deporting the 1.8 million people, but he continues to change his mind depending on whatever the fuck goes on in his head. he cannot be relied on to be sympathetic toward people of hispanic descent or to guarantee that DREAMers will be allowed stay in the country. biden + a democratic controlled congress will allow legal challenges to the DACA moratorium to gain ground.

the biden administration is open to returning and protecting portions of culturally important indigenous land in a way that the trump administration absolutely does not give a fuck. as of may 2024, they have established seven national monuments with plans to expand the San Gabriel Monument where the Gabrielino, Kizh / Tongva, the Chumash, Kitanemuk, Serrano, and Tataviam reside. the Berryessa Snow Mountain is also on the list, as a sacred region to the Patwin.

i'm recognizing that the US's plans for clean energy have often come into conflict with tribal sovereignty, and the biden administration could absolutely do better in navigating this. but the unfortunate dichotomy is that there would be zero commitment or investment in clean energy under a trump-led government, which poses an astounding existential threat and destabilizing force to the global south beyond any human-to-human conflict. climate change has caused and will continue to cause resource shortages, greater natural disasters, and near-lethal living conditions for those in the tropics - and the actions of the highest energy consumers (US) are to blame. biden has funneled billions of dollars into climate change mitigation and clean energy generation - trump does not believe that any of it matters.

i may circle back to this and add more as it comes up, but i'm hoping that those who are skeptical / discouraged / tired of the white queer-centric discourse on tumblr and twitter can at least process some of this. please feel free to add more articles + points but i'm asking for the sake of this post to please focus on issues that affect people of color.

[codewitch]

I dunno. One of the things I can’t shake about politics is how many online leftists talk about how democrats don’t include them in their party and it’s like. What leftists are in politics for them to include? The far right has been very successful in dragging the overtone window by seeding the political vacancies with themselves at the lower level, which gives the party a lot of people to pick from, as well as local power. And federal judgeships, which are now working in tandem to funnel any bullshit case to the Supreme Court to strip away even more rights and protections. Leftists focus all their energy on activism and think there’s no value into pursuing political careers. Like I dunno man it’s been hugely successful for the other guys and they just keep ignoring our protests maybe we should try it too. AOC and Bernie Sanders can’t do it all on their own.

[n0thingiscool]

Trump's Disgusting Zero Tolerance Policy

tldr:

US home grown stages of fascism and population abuses implemented mainly by Jeff Sessions, Steven Miller, Gene Hamilton, and Tom Homan.

- These cunts ignored their colleague's concern for ethics and process in order to justify kidnapping asylum seeking children from their parents, including taking infants from their breast feeding mothers, immediately.

- They ignored the pre-emptive warnings given by Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona Marshals and district attorneys at the borders telling them border patrol didn't have the facilities or staff capacity to handle the increased prosecutions.

- They didn't even bother to consider what they would do with the kids once they stole them. They barely notified DHS of the plan and didn't tell HHS at all. Therefore the was no way to track or document the stolen children.

- All of these assholes knew Trump was too stupid to comprehend the reality of the policy, knew all he was was a dipshit reactionary, and colluded to take advantage of this fact

- The rest of the rank and files had their heads so far up their asses it took thousands of displaced children, stories of parents suffering from grief, and actual leaked audio before they accepted what they were doing was wrong and/or what the news was reporting wasn't liberal bias

The full story:

"Trump-administration officials insisted for a whole year that family separations weren’t happening. Finally, in the spring of 2018, they announced the implementation of a separation policy with great fanfare—as if one had not already been under way for months. Then they declared that separating families was not the goal of the policy, but an unfortunate result of prosecuting parents who crossed the border illegally with their children. Yet a mountain of evidence shows that this is explicitly false: Separating children was not just a side effect, but the intent. Instead of working to reunify families after parents were prosecuted, officials worked to keep them apart for longer."

------------------------

"Elizabeth Neumann, Nielsen’s deputy chief of staff, told me she was shaken by the nonchalance with which McAleenan and Homan had proposed taking vast numbers of children away from their parents. “They were not grasping the humanity of the situation; they were just all about ‘I need Stephen [Miller] off my back. I need the president off my back,’ ” she said. (McAleenan denies this account.) Nielsen’s deputy chief of staff, told me she was shaken by the nonchalance with which McAleenan and Homan had proposed taking vast numbers of children away from their parents. “They were not grasping the humanity of the situation; they were just all about ‘I need Stephen [Miller] off my back. I need the president off my back,’ ” she said. (McAleenan denies this account.)"

----------------------------------------------

"In February 2018, Gelernt met a woman from the Democratic Republic of Congo who had been separated from her 6-year-old daughter. The girl had spent several months in an HHS shelter in Chicago; her mother was being held in an immigration detention center in the desert on the outskirts of San Diego. When she walked into a cinder-block room to meet Gelernt, she appeared gaunt and confused—“almost catatonic from what had happened to her,” Gelernt told me. "

------------------------

"The brutality of Zero Tolerance was immediately evident. The father of a 3-year-old “lost his s—,” one Border Patrol agent told The Washington Post. “They had to use physical force to take the child out of his hands.” The man was so upset that he was taken to a local jail; he “yelled and kicked at the windows on the ride,” the agent said. The next morning, the father was found dead in his cell; he’d strangled himself with his own clothing."

-------------------------

"González said that at the height of Zero Tolerance, about 300 children were separated each day at her facility and crammed into caged enclosures. She spent most of her time inside the enclosures, helping children call their relatives. Sometimes the younger children didn’t seem to fully understand what was going on."

--------------------------

"Recently disclosed internal emails from that time help explain what Bash, Patrick, and the other U.S. attorneys couldn’t figure out—why the plan for reunifying families was faulty to the point of negligence. Inside DHS, officials were working to prevent reunifications from happening. Within days of the start of Zero Tolerance, Matt Albence, one of Tom Homan’s deputies at ICE, expressed concern that if the parents’ prosecutions happened too swiftly, their children would still be waiting to be picked up by HHS in Border Patrol stations, making family reunification possible. He saw this as a bad thing."

-------------------------

"as the trump administration sought to defuse the anger over Zero Tolerance, White House officials proposed blaming separated families for what had happened to them. A damage-control working group developed fact sheets suggesting, without evidence, that most of the separated children were trafficking victims, according to two people who were present. At one meeting, one of these officials told me, “they were like, ‘Why don’t we just show these women throwing their children over the wall, and then people will think, How could they do this?  ’ ”"

(Two things I would to see after reading this all center around witnessing Steven Miller and his cunt wife, Kate Waldman getting their asses physically beat on public access. Absolute fascists.)

[qqueenofhades]

https://www.tumblr.com/qqueenofhades/743255237060689920/the-thing-that-confuses-me-about-the-dont-vote

The “don’t vote” left’s point is basically that, if Biden gets a second term, it’ll basically signal that “They’ll vote for us as long as we’re not Republicans, why don’t we do some REAL fucked up shit, if we can get away with it?” It takes the power out of the people’s hands and places it firmly in the party’s.

I can’t completely disagree with that, my caveat is that there’s no real alternative system or party in place, because top-down change is ineffective; a third party president has to contend with a two party congress.

Except no. This whole "Biden just wants to do as much fucked up shit as possible while not being a Republican, and if you give him a second term he'll do more fucked up shit deliberately to spite you" mindset is only possible as an interpretation if you a) deliberately and comprehensively ignore everything he has done to date, and b) you approach the situation with the maximum bad faith possible. Not to mention, the ultimate outcome of this Big Important Teaching Biden A Lesson is that Trump gets back into power and makes everything orders of magnitude worse, because he does in fact want to deliberately do evil shit to everyone and says so at every opportunity. There is not some magical happy alternative that springs into existence by not voting. If you choose this as a year to Teach Biden A Lesson, you are enabling Trump. Trump will be much, much worse. If you don't care about that, I still do not care what your Great Ideology is. You are not helping anyone and you are directly and irreversibly hurting everyone.

I made a post a few days ago wherein I mentioned that I want to assess Biden fairly, taking into account both strengths and weaknesses, but the rampant bad-faith, lying, misreading, misrepresentation, and open sabotage of him (especially by the online left; the GOP sometimes only wishes they were as good at turning Biden's voter pool against him) makes it really difficult to do that. My frustration with those people makes me just want to go "BIDEN IS GREAT THE END." I know he is a flawed old man (though by literally every account of a career spent in public service, he really does care about making the world a better place and any remotely good faith reading of his accomplishments thus far can see that). It is also very likely that he goes MORE left in a second term because he won't have to face the electorate again, he has always gone more left when pushed before, and he's not actually the scheming genocidal mastermind that leftist social media paints him as. Shocking, I know.

I know there are things in the world we don't like and don't want and want to stop, and therefore we blame our own president for not making it stop. But I have zero, no, none, absolutely none whatsoever sympathy for this pseudo-populist "WE NEED TO TEACH BIDEN A LESSON BY ELECTING TRUMP AGAIN, I AM VERY MORAL MUCH ACTIVIST" mindset. There's this funny thing about America wherein it is still (for now) a democracy. If Biden wins a second term, he can't run again. I would take literally anything these people said more seriously if they focused on developing their dream progressive successor for 2028 (and also figured out how to get that person elected and in a place to make real change) rather than cynically sabotaging Biden in the most consequential election year, again, of our lifetimes. If you don't like him now, find a way to make his successor a better option. Throwing a toddler tantrum and handing the country back to a senile, deranged, fascist, revenge-riddled, theocratic Trump HELPS. NOBODY. I still don't know how many times I'm going to have to say that, but yeah.

[fahk]

Annoyed post.

Big ups to the USDA, the FDA, and all the scumbags in congress and the senate who don't give a shit about health and food. On a trip to Southeast Asia and can't really eat anything due to my body developing a wheat rejection "allergy" most likely thanks to US grown franken-wheat. No one in Japan, Thailand, or Cambodia have issues eating gluten and that's because their governments haven't signed contracts to feed their populations trash like Round-Up grains. I would sue the US government if it was possible for exposing a large enough portion of its population to a fucked up food supply. Long term goals. In the short term I just wish I could have a single fucking meal in this part of the world.

[sweaterkittensahoy]

I looked into this because she notes she's from Southwest Missouri, and that's an area I know pretty well.

Something to keep in mind: Sometimes the only way you have a chance of winning in some places is to run as a Republican. In that area of Missouri (she's running in Branson's district; trust me, it's majority red), you may run as a Republican because you know you can reach a wider base of people who will agree with most of your plans. She was an independent before she ran Republican. She might not be terrible.

Based on the website linked in her bio up there, she serves as a policy lead for an independent research group called Institute of Digital Media & Child Development. The group looks into how digital use ("screen time") can affect child development. I can't tell from a quick glance if the group skews for or against screens, but it does note that it's multi-partisan in terms of staffing.

HOWEVER. Her website has literally zero information about her platform. There is a photo of her holding up a "Make Branson Safe Again" sign that was apparently done in protest of two sitting Missouri senators, but even googling their names and the slogan brought up no direct information about why she was protesting.

There's also no information on what she's running on besides "disaffected young people" which means nothing when there are no issues or stances listed alongside it.

You would think, if one were politically savvy and running for AO3, there'd be SOMETHING on her site about being unapologetically free speech -- a talking point that goes well with Southwest Missouri Republicans AND A03 voters.

But nothing.

That sniff don't sniff, you know?

Audrey R., who’s running for the OTW board, is apparently also currently running for office. As a Republican

so uhhhhhh keep that in mind when you’re voting

[reallyunluckyrunaway]

WHY DON'T WE BAN CONGRESS AND THEIR BACKWARDS AND DANGEROUS ACTIONS INSTEAD?

This disgusting bill proposes we writers, and/plus queer people everywhere have to disclose our personal private data and histories. So they can censor, ban, and restrict us and our right to do whatever the fuck we want. This is not Nazi Germany, and we should not allow them to persecute and dictate gay people, women, or minorities. We deserve our privacy, we deserve the Freedom to express ourselves, HOWEVER THE FUCK WE WANT.PERSONAL OR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS SHOULD NEVER EVER DICTATE SOMEONE ELSES RIGHT TO CHOICE, PRIVACY OR THEIR SAFETY IN LIFE, OR ONLINE.

[traegorn]

Saw someone reblog my post (they've blocked me but I saw a reblog of said reblog) claiming that Biden somehow was failing on trans rights because of the state level rollbacks.

You know, the ones done by state governments.

You know, the ones the President has zero power over.

Or how the Republican controlled congress wasn't passing his agenda.

Like, hate the guy all you want -- but, like, do it for shit that's actually his fault, y'know? I swear, do folks not actually know how our government works? Did y'all fail sixth grade social studies that hard?

[the-rad1o-demon]

So far, chances of KOSA being enacted is 31% according to the site linked below.

Let's get that fucker down to zero, guys!!

Stuff to help us do that is linked here!

The call scripts linked below were originally for Congressional representatives, but now that the bill is in committee consideration by Senate Commerce, you should call your Senators instead and you can use the scripts for them. Also, when calling your Democrat senators, make sure to add that Senator Blackburn explicitly stated in interview that it would be used to "protect children from the transgender." I think it's pretty clear that this is not meant to protect children. It's just going to harm children further, especially trans children.

(Article below with a video of the interview embedded.)

Please help stop this bill in its tracks. Reblog, donate, call your senators, and keep an eye on the bill's chances of being passed. We can't stop now. 31% is still kind of a big number. We need to shrink those chances by a lot more.

[future-crab]

People in the US: find a protest for Rafah

I found out about my local protest too late to attend (I don't have a car and I live in an area with zero public transportation) so I thought I'd share this list of protests so that other people might be able to go to their's!

[ID:

February 12, 2024

AUSTIN, TEXAS | 5PM 1100 Congress

CHICAGO, IL | 4:30 PM Federal Plaza 230 Dearborn Ave

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON | 6 PM University of Washington Station

MANHATTAN, NY | 4 PM Union Square

SAINT LOUIS, MO | 2:30 PM @ Kirkwood Park 111 So. Geyser Rd.

February 13, 2024

SAN DIEGO, CA | 4:30 PM Federal Plaza

SAN FRANCISCO, CA | 5:30 PM Federal Building

ATLANTA, GA | 7 PM Israeli consulate

PHILADELPHIA, PA | 5:30 PM 1400 JFK Blvd

PITTSBURGH, PA | 5 PM 4100 Forbes Ave

HOUSTON, TX | 4 PM Houston City Hall

February 14, 2024

PHOENIX, AZ | 4 PM NE Corner of 7th St & McDowell Rd

WASHINGTON, DC | 2 PM Dupont Circle

February 15, 2024

AUSTIN, TX | 10 AM Austin City Hall, 301 2nd St

February 16, 2024

EAU CLAIRE, WI | 5 PM Corner of Hwy 93 and Golf Rd (Outside Hardee’s)

February 18, 2024

NEW ORLEANS, LA | 11:30 AM ARMSTRONG PARK

February 19, 2024

CHICAGO, IL | 11 AM Chicago History Museum, Children’s Fountain

February 25, 2024

SAINT PAUL, MN | 1 PM 1176 N Mississippi River Blvd, St. Paul, MN.

End ID.]

[centrally-unplanned]

The trick on the whole "Israel banning UNRWA" thing is that most militaries - like say the US in Afghanistan for example - directly provision aid. American soldiers would often be handing out food packages themselves, and even if they weren't the aid organizations would be directly contracting with the US government and the Department of Defense. You have a group in the military and the government that is like, okay, how do we feed people, let's hit those targets.

So if Congress decided to ban the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan in 2006 from operating in the country or whatever, that bill would say like "we hand over its mission to USAID, which has been allocated $2.1 billion dollars in FY-2005 to do X Y Z". It would probably be a dumb move that would create unnecessary friction and cost lives for political bullshit, but that is also life, people dying for political bullshit is a universal constant. It would probably be pretty small bore in the scale of things, like switching over contractors.

That isn't how Israel does things. I might be wrong about this, Israel is deliberately opaque about these things and I just gave this the ol' half hour of googling, I am open to being contradicted here. But my current understanding of net spending by the government of Israel itself on aid to Gaza is...$0. They do not provide aid. They permit aid from other organizations, funded by other countries, to be provided! But they don't take responsibility for the provision; meeting targets, outcomes, etc, none of that is their job. (I am sure it isn't literally zero btw, but I think you get my point)

It is really telling that when you look up pro-Israel statements by say AIPAC on aid, their headlines are:

Israel Facilitates Humanitarian Aid to Gaza as Hamas Continues to Attack

And they criticize the UN because the UN trucks aren't being delivered:

The United Nations and other international agencies are largely responsible for the existing delays in aid deliveries into Gaza. The U.N. has not been able to distribute aid at the rate that Israel is processing it, causing back-ups at the border crossings after Israeli inspections are completed. On March 3, the U.N. received 234 trucks in Gaza but only distributed 131 trucks of aid to civilians in the enclave.

If this was the US military, and the UN was getting aid trucks and failing to send them, we would send more of our own trucks? That we have? Because aid is part of the military operation. But Israel doesn't do that - because it doesn't have any trucks. Because aid isn't part of the military operation.

Which is why the bill banning UNRWA that is being passed does not mention aid provision to Gaza:

The international community has raised alarm over the legislation, which was passed without a plan in place for a humanitarian agency to replace UNRWA.

Again going off news sources here, link for the actual bill is currently down, if I am wrong will correct here, but I think it all tracks. So in the article above, you get statements from the government when people ask about aid, they reply, oh yeah these other aid organizations will fill the gap.

Then you ask the aid organizations themselves and they go, no, we won't fill the gap! We don't have the resources to do that! Which is logical when you realize Israel isn't funding those orgs. They don't know or care about their funding status. Hopefully someone else will figure that out - aid is someone else's problem. Those government remarks are just off the cuff, they aren't a plan.

Which I want to loop back around to the casus belli for the ban - UNRWA having ties to Hamas. That, to me, is one of those "uh duh, and?" things - Hamas is the government of Gaza. UNRWA runs schools there? And medical clinics? You think they do that...without contact with the government? This is just silly, the UN Mission in Afghanistan obviously had connections to the US Government! Government officials, working in both, par for the course.

But, and this is far more important, it is irrelevant. I completely agree that UNRWA has many people who are sympathetic to Hamas in it, because obviously they do. You want to ban it, dumb but okay. You propose a bill outlining the $2 billion dollars and the 5 partnered aid organizations and the 400 IDF trucks that will deliver aid to replace their work, sure. Whatever man, do your small bore politics bullshit.

That is not what they are doing.

Now, Israel has in fact allowed a bunch of aid in Gaza, I don't doubt that like USAID and the non-profit community and the governments of the UK and Japan and so on are gonna pivot funding to a bunch of organizations that will do herculean work stepping up operations and interfacing with the IDF checkpoint system and get aid in. Maybe they will do such a bang-up job that the cost in suffering won't be that high. Israel did give 3 months after all, they aren't the literal worst they could be.

But I do think at a certain point, the line between indifference and malice just ceases to matter. The UNRWA bill isn't some breaking point or big policy shift - it is just a highly revealing moment in the Israeli approach, why the war there has gone the way that it has. And it is, as the kids say, not a good look.

(h/t @loving-n0t-heyting as this was initially a reblog of their post, but they mentioned getting drama in the notes so I split it off; sorry to deny you the precious +1 internet point)