#Supreme Court directive on voting

[nepalniceties]

EC Prioritizes Voting Rights for Nepalis Living Abroad: CEC Thapaliya

Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Dinesh Kumar Thapaliya emphasized the need for intensive discussions between political parties and stakeholders to ensure the participation of Nepali voters abroad in the election process. Addressing a program organized by the Election Commission and the International Organisation for Migration, CEC Thapaliya highlighted the global concern of ensuring voting…

[marvelsmostwanted]

When you see the news about all of the heinous Supreme Court decisions that were just made please remember that every single one is a direct result of the fact that Donald Trump was the president from 2016-2020 and Hillary Clinton was not. And there are two conservative justices who will likely retire as soon as a second Trump term begins so he can appoint younger people and enshrine conservatism on the court for another 50+ years. So. Please vote. It will at least give us a fighting chance to get our rights back sooner

[186-3]

even if you're resigned that trump is going to win, 1/3 of the country lives in states with competitive senate elections. if democrats win the senate, there is very little that trump can do (can't even appoint supreme court nominees)

the following states all have competitive senate elections:

arizona

florida

maryland

michigan

montana

nevada

ohio

pennsylvania

texas

wisconsin

even if you don't think your state is competitive at all, THESE SENATE RACES STILL ARE, SO IF YOU LIVE IN ONE OF THESE STATES, MAKE SURE TO VOTE

and even if you don't live in one of those states, you could live in a competitive house seat. if democrats win the house, then trump can't pass any bills

and even if you don't live in a competitive state or district, your local elections matter even more than federal ones because they have a much more direct impact on your life

so VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE

[soon-palestine]

Hostages tortured to death. Parents executed in front of their children. Doctors beaten. Babies murdered. Sexual assault weaponised. No, not Hamas crimes. This is part of an ever-growing list of documented atrocities committed by Israel in the five months since 7 October – quite separate from the carpet bombing of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza and a famine induced by Israel’s obstruction of aid. And yet while the western establishment media has been chock full of the most lurid allegations of savagery directed against Hamas, sometimes with little or no supporting evidence, Israeli atrocities are excused or quickly forgotten. Accusations against Hamas are endlessly reheated to paint a picture of a supremely dangerous and bestial militant group, in turn rationalising the slaughter and starvation of Gaza’s population to “eradicate” it as a terrorist organisation. But equally barbarous atrocities committed by Israel – not in the heat of battle, but in cold blood – are treated as unfortunate, isolated incidents that cannot be connected, that paint no picture, that reveal nothing of import about the military that carried them out. If Hamas’ crimes were so savage and sadistic they still need to be reported months after they took place, why does the establishment media never feel the need to express equal horror and indignation at equivalent or worse acts of cruelty and sadism being inflicted by Israel on Gaza – not five months ago, but right now? Israel's torture of doctors, its sexual assaults of Palestinian women, it's leaving premature babies to die after its forces stormed a hospital. Where is the outrage? This is part of a pattern of behaviour by the western media that leads to only one possible deduction: Israel’s five-month-long attack on Gaza is not being reported. Rather, it is being selectively narrated – and for the most obscene of purposes. Through consistent and glaring failures in their coverage, establishment media – including supposedly liberal outlets, from the BBC and CNN to the Guardian and New York Times – have smoothed the way for Israel to carry out mass slaughter in Gaza, what the World Court has assessed as plausibly a genocide. The role of the media has not been to keep us, their audiences, informed about one of the greatest crimes in living memory. It has been to buy time for US President Joe Biden to keep arming his most useful of client states in the oil-rich Middle East, and to do so without damaging his prospects for re-election in November’s US presidential vote. If Russian President Vladimir Putin was a madman and a barbarous war criminal for invading Ukraine, as every western media outlet agrees, what does that make Israeli officials, when every one of them supports far worse atrocities in Gaza, directed overwhelmingly at civilians? And more to the point, what does that make Biden and the US political class for materially backing Israel to the hilt: sending bombs, vetoing demands for a ceasefire at the United Nations, and freezing desperately needed aid? Worrying about the optics, the president expresses his discomfort, but he carries on helping Israel regardless. While western politicians and commentators worry about some imaginary existential threat those brief events of five months ago pose to the nuclear-armed state of Israel, Israel is quite literally wiping Gaza off the map day by day, quite undisturbed.

[elsaclack]

Yeah okay so like I said in the tags of the last post I’m rising from my tumblr grave to say that the ban on TikTok is symptomatic of a MUCH larger and more terrifying problem. Because yes, on its surface it’s silly dances and asmr and cooking videos and whatever, but in truth and at its core, TikTok single-handedly revolutionized the way 170 million Americans communicated with each other AND the rest of the world. Non-Americans love to point out how America-centric Americans are, but fail to realize that we are purposefully raised in an isolated, insulated environment where we are told from basically day 1 that America Is The Best and not to even bother taking a look around because it’s all downhill from outside of here. TikTok has, for MANY Americans, single-handedly destroyed that notion and allowed them (us!!) to broaden our world-view and realize that actually, things are better in other countries, and it did so in a kind, empathetic, and compassionate way.

And yeah most people wake up to the truth of that on their own as they get older, but holy shit!! The VAST majority of the Americans on TikTok are millennials and gen z (and even some older gen alpha)!! People who are becoming disillusioned with “The American Dream” (said with the HEAVIEST sarcasm) while they’re still school-aged or are just entering young-adulthood!! People who are entering - or TRYING to enter - the American workforce who suddenly have an unfiltered window into non-American lives and are wondering why tf we’re struggling and penny-pinching and toeing the line of poverty while our rich elected officials sit around and fight and argue over everything that actually matters to the citizens they supposedly represent and get richer all the while. THAT is why they’re banning the app, and that fact alone should terrify every single American citizen.

Not to mention the precedent it sets for other social media platforms!! You think some nebulous, unproven, and unfounded “threat to national security” will stop with TikTok?? They’ve already censored Adult Material on tumblr, who’s gonna stop them from coming back and doing it again or getting rid of it altogether for the exact same reason? It’s a blatant act of censorship and a direct attack on the American first amendment right to free speech.

NOTHING radicalized me the way tiktok did. I watched people in my life who were STAUNCH Trump supporters in 2016 AND 2020 wake up to the truth and vote blue for the first time in their lives BECAUSE OF TIKTOK, and did so with al the nuanced understanding that even Democrats are severely failing this country, but are at least better than the alternative. That level of awareness and presence in the average US citizen scares American politicians.

The fact that the vast majority of them - including the ones loudly opposing the ban!! - bought stock in Meta BEFORE the ban was legalized/upheld by the Supreme Court?? That Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk were legally allowed to lobby congress to ban TikTok when BOTH stood to DIRECTLY financially gain from their biggest competitor being banned in the US and are guilty of unethically gathering data and selling it to MULTIPLE third parties?? The fact that Trump is now teasing that he may or may not intervene to save TikTok when he was the one who talked about banning it in the first place AND ALSO OWNS HIS OWN COMPETING SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM??

It’s the burning of Alexandria. It’s the loss of a significant chunk of culture. It’s the sharp and sudden loss of contact with the rest of the world for more than half of all American citizens. It’s the loss of $240 BILLION dollars in the GDP when the country is already TRILLIONS of dollars in debt. And on an individualistic level, it’s the loss of millions of small businesses and primary income streams for so many individuals and families who found their primary audience on TikTok. Is the app perfect? HELL no. Are there significant changes needed to make it a safe environment for all users? ABSOLUTELY. But that can also be said of ANY social media platform. TikTok openly fostered connection and communication and creativity and compassion that is completely unique to that platform! It made so many people - myself included!! - feel less alone. I get the feeling I know what the general consensus is about TikTok on this site, but the ban on this app should scare the shit out of everyone.

[olympianbutch]

Tonight I attended a march to save Oak Flat.

Oak Flat is apart of the Tonto National Forest in Arizona, and its been used as a sacred site by the San Carlos Apache (and numerous other tribes) since time immemorial.

Right now, Oak Flat is at risk of becoming a 2-mile-wide, 1,000-foot-deep hole all because of Resolution Copper Mining, a subsidiary of two British–Australian mining companies, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton.

Before 2014, Resolution Copper Mining failed to secure a land transfer over ten times. It wasn't until the aforementioned year that Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake entered the land transfer on page 1,003 of a military spending bill, at precisely 11 pm, a mere hour before the bill was set to pass.

This was done without the consent of the San Carlos Apache, who use the site to gather sacred medicine and perform coming-of-age ceremonies for girls.

As desperately as the San Carlos Apache have tried to appeal the land transfer, they have been struck down time and time again, usually by a single vote in the wrong direction.

Now, the San Carlos Apache are slated to speak against the land transfer tomorrow morning. If their voices are not heeded, they will take it to the Supreme Court, which will ultimately decide the fate of Oak Flat, the dozens of endangered species that call it home, and the continuity of the Apache religion.

If you haven't heard about Oak Flat, now you have. Make it your responsibility to tell everyone you know about this sacred site in peril, and support Apache Stronghold ( @apachestronghold ) in their fight to save Oak Flat.

[thebreakfastgenie]

This is going to get me screencapped and ridiculed by leftblr but at this point I don't care.

The way people talk about Ruth Bader Ginsburg is misogynistic. This post is not about the merits of her decision to remain in her seat. I've discussed that before and I'm happy to go through it again with anyone who is genuinely interested in the complexities of that situation, but for the sake of this post, I am not arguing that it's unreasonable to believe, with the benefit of hindsight, that the country would be a in a better position today if Ginsburg had retired in 2012. The issue I want to address is how people talk about it.

People who blame Ginsburg for the current state of the Supreme Court tend to throw around words like greedy, selfish, and ambitious, echoing a familiar form of misogyny. Ambition is only bad when women demonstrate it, and women in politics are regularly punished for ambition. Even more disturbingly, people tend to blame not just Ginsburg, but the women and girls who looked up to her. I've seen the "Notorious RBG" nickname derided as a cult of personality, when the reality is that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a trailblazer and a role model to a lot of women and girls. I've seen leftists try to hide behind valid criticisms of some of Ginsburg's positions (and it should, but doesn't, go without saying that you can see someone as a role model without believing they are correct about every issue all the time) but you barely have to scratch the surface to see that the real complaint is that they think women who admire her are cringe. I don't know if people understand how significant she was; she was only the second woman on the Supreme Court and the first, Sandra Day O'Connor, was a conservative Reagan appointee. Even so, Justice O'Connor spoke about the significance of Justice Ginsburg joining her and reality that women faced in their position being more apparent when she could see it happening to someone else. It's the same old anti-feminist story of dismissing women and their desires.

This particular case rankles me because it's underscored by the complete silence about Anthony Kennedy. Ruth Bader Ginsburg made a judgment call about her health that didn't work out--and barely; she died four months before Trump left office. Anthony Kennedy, a supposed moderate justice who claimed to not want Roe v Wade to be overturned, retired in 2018, knowing full well Trump would replace him with someone who would overturn Roe v Wade. It was Kennedy's replacement, not Ginsburg's, that doomed Roe. The decision was 6-3. If Ginsburg had lived four more months, or retired in 2012 and been replaced with an Obama appointee, the Dobbs v Jackson decision would have been 5-4 in the same direction. Anthony Kennedy was replaced with Brett Kavanaugh, a white man who sobbed crocodile tears when confronted with credible allegations of sexual assault and ultimately faced no consequences. Anthony Kennedy let all of this happen and slunk off into his cushy retirement. Where is the anger for him? He's alive! Being angrier at Ginsburg than Kennedy makes absolutely no sense. There is no logic to explain it, only misogyny.

It doesn't escape my notice that the anger at Ginsburg goes hand-in-hand with blaming women for their own suffering as a result of the Dobbs decision and with blaming Hillary Clinton for the 2016 election, while making any excuse for not voting for her or deriding her for months. It's emblematic of a political system that does not care about women and despises women trying to speak up and make our issues known.

[anistarrose]

U.S. elections to be aware of, if you live in the respective states/cities:

(mostly taken from this AP list, with some extra elections and details added by me)

June 17th:

Miscellaneous Virginia primaries: Governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and House of Delegates.

June 24th:

NYC Mayor Primary. This is a ranked-choice ballot, with five slots for candidates. You rank your first choice first, your second choice second, et cetera. Progressives are already mobilizing to remind you of the following: for the best odds of stopping scumbags like Eric Adams or (the larger threat) Andrew Cuomo from winning, you'll want to fill all five of your spots with (non-joke) candidates, who are not Adams/Cuomo.

When Adams won in 2021, it took eight full rounds of elimination and tallying second-choices before he won — so you don't want to throw away your second, third, fourth, or fifth opportunities to propel a better candidate to victory! (Mamdami is the progressive with by far the best chance of defeating Cuomo. Please consider ranking him.)

November 4th (General Election):

Pennsylvania: Many judicial elections, municipal elections, and most broad-ranging, the State Supreme Court. Three incumbent Democratic justices are up for retention votes, and Republicans are attempting to take back control of the court by unseating two or more of them. This is a big deal for fair elections in the state in 2026 and 2028.

New Jersey: Governor, State House; many school boards and other municipal elections.

Virginia: Governor, Attorney General, State House; many municipal elections.

Lastly, municipal elections and local ballot measures in other states! Genuinely, most states have at least some communities that vote on something in odd-numbered years. Don't let them slip past you! Most progress is local — whether through elections, direct action, or most realistically, some combination of the above.

[potofsoup]

Happy July 4th, everyone, and good luck to the UK voters out there!

Wow it's Year 11 of doing these!! Here's the AO3 link to the past 10 years, and here's the tumblr link.

Reminder that this is a long game -- some of the judges making decisions were appointed back in the 80s. Many of the cases that were decided this round were from Trump's term. So it's going to take long-term, consistent voting over a decade to start tipping things in the other direction. (Which I talked about in 2018 re: Trump shenanigans and 2022 re: Dobbs).

A lot has been done by the Biden administration (I'm assuming most folks have seen this post by boreal-sea with their very helpful sources), and much of that will be overturned by Trump, especially if he gets the Senate, and especially now that he would have a blank check for anything "official". So let's make sure that doesn't happen.

And even if Trump does get elected, your decisions down-ballot might effect control of the House or Senate, or might make it easier to vote next time, plus the whole plethora of state and local issues. It's Republican state attorney generals who are challenging climate regulations, for example.

Plus, when you really get down to it, only one of the candidates plans on pardoning himself and all his friends if he wins, and attacking the government if he loses. Maybe that guy shouldn't be the President.

If you're new to voting, remember to check voter registration deadlines! I'm a permanent vote-by-mail voter and it's so nice. :)

Transcript under the readmore

Page 1: Sam and Bucky meet up with Steve for a picnic. Steve: Thought you guys were still in Sudan? Bucky: I’m forcing Sam to take a break.

Sam collapses onto the picnic blanket. Sam: Oof, it just never stops, does it? Steve: Nope.

Bucky hands Sam an orange popsicle. Bucky: Eat and relax for a bit, Sam. Sam: Thanks.

Page 2: Bucky asks Steve: How are things state-side? Steve responds: HORRIBLE. Bucky: I thought you’ve been tentatively hopeful about what Biden has been able to achieve? Steve: I was! Student loans, child care, climate regulations, infrastructure, labor, trans rights … he’s quietly done a lot through regulatory improvements and congress bills. But now all people will talk about is how he’s OLD. And then there’s the Supreme Court’s decisions … Chevron and immunity… Steve puts his head in his hands, while Sam and Bucky look on with some concern.

Page 3: Bucky hands Steve a blue/raspberry popsicle: Steve, take a deep breath, and a popsicle. Sam: Sounds like we missed a lot. What’s going on? How bad is it? Steve: Pretty bad. The Supreme Court has made some decisions that give the Court and the President A LOT of discretionary power. Sam: Yikes, that doesn’t sound good. Steve: Well, the Chevron thing means that judges with life-term appointments can override policies made by government agencies. And now it’ll be harder to hold a President accountable because he will have immunity for any “official” actions.

Page 4: Sam: So if the President tries to, say, overturn a democratic election result, he’ll be allowed to as long as it’s in his job description? Steve: I don’t think threatening state electors is “official” business, but that will be decided by federal judges. Who get their jobs by approval from both the President and the Senate. Bucky: Yeesh. No wonder you’re stressed. Any good news? Steve: Well, thanks the Biden and the razor-thin Senate majority, the newer bills don’t rely on the Chevron deference. Still not great but not catastrophic. Sam, squirting ketchup on his hot dog: So what I’m hearing is that it’s now more important than ever to have a President and a Senate who you can trust to appoint fair judges, pass bills, and not commit crimes.

Page 5: Steve: Plus all of the state level offices, now that more and more deciding power has been thrown back to the states — abortion, LGBTQ rights, voting access… Bucky: Hey, at least this is a big election year so we can actually do something! Steve, with his arms crossed, looking surly: Except that all people want to talk about is how Biden is “too old” and “not doing enough,” as if that is on par with Trump’s desire to dismantle basic rights! As if the candidate who doesn’t embody ALL their ideals is not worth voting for! Bucky interrupts with a smart and a loud “PFFT.”

Page 6: Bucky: Um, Steve. YOU were like that in 1940. Sam, nudging Bucky: “Oh, this I gotta hear. Spill, Barnes.” In sepia, Steve is pacing around their apartment while Bucky is sitting and reading a newspaper. Steve: I can’t believe he’s running for a 3rd term! we need a fresh candidate to vote for! This is hardly a choice at all! AND he refuses to engage in Europe! All of Europe under fascist control and we’re just twiddling our thumbs? He’s letting millions die through his inaction! Bucky: Most people don’t want another war, Steve. If he came out for it, he would lose. Steve, indignant: But Buck, it’s your Polish relative who are in danger! Bucky, closing his newspaper and looking at Steve: Yeah, and between FDR and Willkes, I trust FDR to help if he could.

Page 7: Steve, in sepia, looking away: Should he be encouraged to do more? Maybe I should vote for Browder. The Communists have historically be Anti-Fascist.

Sam interrupts off-screen: Waitaminute! STEVE was going to PROTEST-VOTE? Steve: We were in a Blue State, Sam! Sam: But what about the down ballot races?! Steve: RELAX, I did my due diligence down-ballot. I wanted a senate that’s more progressive than the President.Voted LaGuardia for Mayor, too. Steve hesitates: Then, when I got to the President… I realized that the Best case scenario would be that my vote did nothing, versus if it actually spoiled the election. And when I asked myself who I could trust to work with my Senator… well, FDR had a good record with Labor. (sepia shot of young Steve voting) Bucky interrupts: Hold on, Steve.

Page 8: Bucky, eating a cookie, arching an eyebrow: You didn’t vote for Browder? Why didn’t you tell me? Steve: And have you say “I told you so” for the next century? Bucky: Heh.

Steve, with hand on his chin: What’s weird was that, despite everything, I still felt HORRIBLE when I ticked that box. Sam: Sounds like you built up the meaning of that vote far too much in your head. Logically, we know that a single box can’t represent all of the complexity of a whole system, but the desperately WANT it to. Just look at how people have built up so much around the term “Zionis” that it’s made productive conversations difficult.

Page 9: Sam and Steve speak in the background while Bucky reaches into the cooler and pulls out a box. Steve: Sigh. And that’s something that goes beyond the election. Sam: Which is why we need to vote, AND do other things. Bucky, looking at Steve and Sam: Like how Steve works to push organizations on the local level? Or like all the work you do as Captain America? Sam: Exactly. Vote AND.

Sam looks at Bucky fondly: Like how you vote AND make me and Steve take breaks. Bucky, looking stern because he can’t handle compliments: Shush, Sam.

Bucky holds up a cake that has the number “107” on it: It’s time for cake. Happy Birthday, Steve.

[queen-susans-revenge]

Jack Goldsmith, who was the head of the White House’s Office of Legal Counsel under President George W. Bush, did an interview back in April where he kind of laid out what he expected the Supreme Court's strategy to be (gift link):

Douthat: Yes. How much in this highly politicized moment is the court thinking to itself that this is a difficult administration with threats of what someone could call a constitutional crisis? And therefore, we are really self-consciously picking our battles?

Goldsmith: So I don’t know, obviously. And it’s important to understand that the court is a they and not an it. There are nine people.

Douthat: It’s kind of three people, though: Roberts, Kavanaugh and Barrett.

Goldsmith: Yeah, I agree. Fair point. So it’s three people.

And I’m pretty confident that the chief justice is thinking in these terms, which is an extremely complicated calculation.

The court has discretion about which cases to take for full review and when. They can decide to take a combination of cases that — I’m not suggesting they think this way, but they might — give the president some wins, but has some very important losses. And the wins make the losses easier to swallow.

I don’t know exactly what their calculus is, but the way they’re dealing with the emergency docket and pushing things off and trying to find the right case suggests that this is clearly part of what’s going on.

Douthat: And you don’t think that they’re ducking fights?

Goldsmith: Absolutely not. I think people who say that are wrong.

And the reason is: It is extremely early. The Supreme Court typically takes a case after trial and appeal, right? It’s dealing with these cases before we’ve even had a trial. And it might take some of these cases early, but that is very, very unusual. All it’s doing now is setting the base line for how these cases are going to be litigated.

...

Douthat: Let’s say there is no worst-case scenario, and there’s no explicit conflict between Trump and the Supreme Court. There’s wins and losses, but overall the court blesses a lot of what the administration wants. The administration accepts whatever curbs it offers. That is the best-case scenario for a Trump executive power revolution.

What does that look like going forward? How would you describe the post-2028 constitutional landscape that would usher in?

Goldsmith: I think you’ve written about this, and I’m reminded of the Bush administration. I would say there’s a decent chance that the Trump administration is going to end up in a worse place.

That, yes, they’re going to win on some issues, that the court was going to move there anyway, but the Frankenstein version of the unitary executive is not going to be viewed well and that a lot of these moves they’re making are ultimately, could be constrained by the court in ways that weren’t clarified before.

Douthat: So this is where they could lose, and it could weaken the presidency’s powers relative to Bush and Obama.

Goldsmith: Yeah. If all of the spending and firing, those lower-level things, were clarified that you can’t do that the presidency would be weakened there, then it could be that there are going to be new due process and related constraints on immigration because of what we’ve seen can be abused.

A lot of these issues are undecided. They’re being contested for the first time, and if they result in losses, that could be a constraint on the president.

But if it goes well for them, then I think the plausible scenario is that you have a much more robust unitary executive. That would mean the president controls agencies to an unprecedented degree, and maybe controls a good chunk of the Civil Service as well, either by statute if he’s able to do that or, better for him, under Article II, so it couldn’t be reversed.

I think that is the most likely significant change to come about. And we haven’t talked about the kind of abuses and what the legacy of the abuses are.

It’s not clear what the Democrats are going to do in response to a lot of this stuff. It’s not clear if we’ll have tit-for-tat and weaponization. It’s not clear if we’ll have more extreme versions of directing officials to do what the president wants.

But the only thing I’m really clear on is that the unitary executive and presidential vertical control over the executive branch will be broader and firmer and constitutional.

Do kind of wonder what weird game the conservative Supreme Court justices think they are playing, especially the Trump I appointees.

[fullhalalalchemist]

🚨🚨CONGRESS SECRETLY TRYING TO SNEAK IN EARN IT ACT COPYCAT INTO MUST PASS SPENDING BILL (PLEASE READ EXTREMELY IMPORTANT)

July 20, 2023 Congress is right now determining what is included in a must pass spending bill the NDAA. Often congress will sneakily add as amendments their bills that they can't pass in a normal setting.

If you remember, I made a previous post about EARN IT being reintroduced here.

The EARN IT Act and it's copycats are bipartisan bills that will greatly censor if not completely eliminate encryption and anything sexual and LGBTQ+ from the internet, globally. Anything the far-right doesn't like will be completely gone. The best way to stop them is to use https://www.badinternetbills.com/ to call your senators.

Following it's initial introduction earlier this year was massive opposition from human rights, LGBT, tech, political groups, and grassroots groups. Bc of this, the senators decided to remake the bill but give it a new name, so they can still pass Earn It without actually passing Earn It. Those bills are the Stop CSAM Act (yes really, they actually named it that), and the Cooper-Davis act.

The entire point of these bills is to mass surveil and censor everyone and I don't know why more people or senators speak out against it. There is a direct timeline from when the Attorney General Barr (under Trump) said he wanted to do this to it's initial introduction in 2019, and how the senators explicitly knew they couldn't actually say that so they lied and said it was about "stopping CSAM" or "stopping drugs" for Cooper-Davis Act.

These bills essentially do the following:

they gut encryption, the one thing actually protects you from having your data seen by anyone. Do you want republicans to know you're trans? that someone had an abortion? that they spoke out against the govt? to see your private photos you have uploaded to the cloud? to see what porn you watch? if youre a journalist, or an abuse survivor, any hacker or abuser can see your stuff and track you.

they gut parts of Section 230, the one thing that allows anyone to post online and birthed social media. Previous gutting into 230 gave us the tumblr nsfw ban and killed that site.

they create an unelected commission with some already established govt body (DOJ, FTC, etc) that will include law enforcement and people from NCOSE or other Christian conservative groups who will decide what is and isn't lawful to say. no citizen can vote who's on this commission, and the president gets to pick. it's like the supreme court, but for the internet.

lead to mass censorship and surveillance because of the above

We have until the end of the month to stop this, but this can be added literally any moment until then. It's literally code red. If this is added it goes into effect immediately. The BEST way to stop this is to drive calls and emails to the senate. https://www.badinternetbills.com/ connects you directly to your members of congress & gives you a call script.

It is ESSENTIAL to call the Senate leaders who can stop this. Here's a more precise call script you can use: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1huD5Ldd1lPTECYTEb9Gg2ZzrqW6Y9tryHT-MdjOl8kY/edit

All these people expressed concern over Earn It, so we need to press them hard to not allow it's copycats Cooper-Davis or Stop CSAM into the NDAA. This is URGENT and needs all hands on deck. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) (202) 224-6542 Maria Cantwell (D-WA) (202) 224-3441 Jon Ossof (D-GA) (202)-224-3521 Alex Padilla (D-CA) (202) 224-3553 Cory Booker (D-NJ) (202) 224-3224 Mike Lee (R-UT) (202) 224-5444

Please please please spread this message and blow up their phones.

TLDR; The Senate is trying to quietly push the Earn It Act's copycat bills into the must pass NDAA, which will lead to mass censorship and surveillance online by gutting Section 230 which is the entire reason you can even be on tumblr and why the internet exists, killing encryption which put everyone's lives in danger, and appointing far-right people to a supreme court-esque commission that the president has direct control over. They could be added in ANY DAY and we need to push hard to stop it before it gets to that point. CALL YOUR SENATORS **NOW** BY USING https://www.badinternetbills.com/ AND CALL THE SENATE LEADERSHIP AND SPREAD THE WORD!!!!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Trump’s CFPB kills data-broker rule

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in PITTSBURGH TONIGHT (May 15) at WHITE WHALE BOOKS, and in PDX on Jun 20 at BARNES AND NOBLE with BUNNIE HUANG. More tour dates (London, Manchester) here.

Something amazing happened from 2020-2024: even as parts of the Biden administration were encouraging genocide and covering up the president's senescence, a small collection of little-regarded agencies were taking a wrecking ball to corporate power, approaching antitrust and consumer protection with a vigor not seen in generations.

One of the most effective agencies during those years was the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Under the direction of Rohit Chopra, the CFPB finally used its long-dormant powers to rein in the most egregious and abusive conduct of America's most predatory corporations, like banks, fintech, and repeat corporate offenders, with a 7-2 Supreme Court mandate to go hard:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/10/getting-things-done/#deliverism

As impressive as the whole CFPB agenda was, the standout for me was its attack on America's data brokerage industry. Data brokers are effectively totally unregulated, and they buy and sell every intimate fact of your life. The reason every device in your life – smart speaker, car, toothbrush, thermostate – spies on you all the time is because data brokers will buy any data from anyone and sell it to anyone, too.

Data brokerages put "surveillance capitalist" companies like Google and Meta to shame (indeed, Big Tech buys a lot of data from brokerages, as do agencies like the DEA, ICE and the FBI, who treat the brokerages as a warrant-free, off-the-books mass surveillance system). Data brokerages combine data about your movements, purchases, friends, medical problems, education, love life, and more, and bucket you into categories that marketers (or scammers) can buy access to. There are over 650,000 of these categories, including "seniors with dementia," "depressed teenagers" and "US military personnel with gambling problems":

https://themarkup.org/privacy/2023/06/08/from-heavy-purchasers-of-pregnancy-tests-to-the-depression-prone-we-found-650000-ways-advertisers-label-you

Congress hasn't passed a new consumer privacy law since 1988's Video Privacy Protection Act. The last technological privacy issue your legislature considered important enough to address was the scourge of video-store clerks telling newspapers which VHS cassettes you took home:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

Congress's massive failure created equally massive risks for the rest of us. From phishing and ransomware attacks to identity theft to stalking and SWATting, America's privacy nihilism enabled mass-scale predation upon all of us, rich and poor, old and young, rural and urban, men and women, racialized and white.

That's the void that the CFPB stepped into last summer, when they passed a new rule that would effectively shut down the entire data brokerage industry:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

Yesterday, Trump's CFPB boss, Russell Vought, killed that rule, stating that it was "no longer necessary or appropriate":

https://www.wired.com/story/cfpb-quietly-kills-rule-to-shield-americans-from-data-brokers/

Here's the thing: Trumpism relies on the fusion of two groups of people: a tiny number of oligarchs, and millions of everyday people who are constantly victimized by those oligarchs. To get this latter group of Christmas-voting turkeys to stay in the coalition, Trump needs to delivery something that keeps them happy. Mostly, Trump delivers negative things to keep them happy – the spectacle of public cruelty to immigrants, women, trans people, academics, etc. There is a certain libidinal satisfaction that comes from watching your enemies suffer – but you can't eat schadenfreude. You can't make rent or put braces on your kids' teeth or pay your medical bills with the sadistic happiness you feel when you hear the sobs of people you've been taught to despise.

For Trump to keep the turkeys voting for Christmas, he needs to do something for them. He can't just do things to scapegoats. But America's eminently guillotineable oligarchs have found so many ways to turn working peoples' torment into riches, and they are so greedy and unwilling to give up any of those grifts, that Trump can't manage to deliver anything positive to his base. Last week, his FTC killed the "click to cancel" rule that required companies that tricked you into buying subscriptions to make it easy for you to cancel them:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/12/greased-slide/#greased-pole

There isn't a single person in the Trump base who isn't harmed by data brokers. Every red-hat-wearing MAGA footsoldier has been swindled with a recurring-payment scam by clicking a deceptive link. The material conditions of the lives of Trump's base – already in severe jeopardy thanks to the massive inflation the tariffs will cause, and the plummeting wages that the ensuing mass business-closures will bring about – cannot be improved in any way.

I don't think anyone knows for sure how much support Trump can win solely by torturing the people his supporters hate, even as those supporters' lives get worse and worse. The one thing I'm sure of, though, is that it's less support than Trump would get if he could do something – anything – to make their lives even a little better.

Trump owes his success to coalition-building. The Trumpist agenda – ripoffs and racism and rape – has been around forever, in festering pockets like the John Birch Society, but those feverish monsters were encysted by the body politic and kept away from power. When a group of people who've been unsuccessfully trying to do something for a long time suddenly attain success, the most likely explanation is that they have found coalition partners to join them in their push.

Every coalition is brittle, because coalition partners want different things (if you want the same thing, you're just a group – "coalitions" are, definitionally, made up of people who want different things). They have shared goals, sure, but some of the things that some of the coalition partners want are things that the other partners totally reject. When one partner wins, the other partners lose. Trump's been good at holding together his coalition, but he's running up against some hard limits.

Here's what Naomi Klein told Cerise Castle from Capital & Main/The American Prospect:

The most serious vulnerability that Trump has is that a large part of his base really hates Silicon Valley and is not interested in being replaced by machines. So it’s a monumental bait-and-switch that Trump has done with this immediate alignment with the billionaire class in Silicon Valley, and if the left can’t exploit that, then we’re doing something wrong.

https://prospect.org/culture/2025-05-13-moment-of-unparalleled-peril-interview-naomi-klein/

Killing the CFPB's data broker rule is a pure transfer from the Trump base to Silicon Valley oligarchs, whose hunger for our private data know no bounds.

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:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/15/asshole-to-appetite/#ssn-for-sale

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[cazort]

Why I'm Enthusiastic About Kamala Harris

I've seen so much negative talk about Trump and we all agree with that, but I want to highlight what I like most about Kamala Harris and why I'm actively enthusiastic and excited about voting for her:

She is pro-abortion rights and pro- comprehensive sex ed

She would appoint good Supreme Court Justices.

She respects people with a diverse range of political views and would include some voices from both progressive and conservative perspectives in her administration.

She is unambiguously pro-LGBTQ rights, including not just on gay rights but also trans rights.

She would represent continuity with the Biden administration, an administration that I think has done a good job on most issues.

On the issue of Palestine/Israel/Gaza (where I am most critical of Biden), I think Harris is a significant improvement over Biden, and also offers the better path of the only two viable candidates, towards ending the genocide. She has spoken out against the civilian deaths and she has snubbed Netanyahu which is a huge plus in my book.

She has shown a willingness to change her views, such as how she moved from being opposed to decriminalizing sex work in 2008, to being supportive of it in 2019, and being initially skeptical of marijuana legalization in 2010, but coming to support it in 2015. I like a candidate who can change their views, but more importantly, she is changing in a direction I like.

She would be good on the economy; she opposes tariffs, and would continue the Biden administration policies which have led to economic prosperity.

She has a solid and fairly diverse track record of experience, working as attorney general for the largest state, then senator for that state, then VP.

She has worked to combat over-incarceration and cruel treatment of people in prison, doing things like reducing mandatory minimum sentences and working to reduce recidivism, opposing solitary confinement, ending private prisons, and ending cash bail. She has also pledged to use the president's clemency powers to release a lot of people who have been imprisoned unjustly or given unfairly harsh sentences.

She has a concrete plan to enact immigration reform that would adequately fund the processing of asylum applications and fix the backlog of immigrants at the border. And the plan has broad bipartisan support.

On top of this she also has already done some things to address the root causes of migration in Latin America, particularly people fleeing Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador

She is pro-net-neutrality.

She supports universal healthcare, but also has concrete recommendations for how to improve the current status quo.

She is pro-science, including on issues like climate change, COVID, vaccinations, and health and nutrition. Her mom was a scientist!

She is pro-Ukraine, wanting to keep Russia out of Ukraine and ensure Ukraine wins their war of defense and maintains their independence.

She is across-the-board better on women's issues, not just reproductive rights but also sexual violence and domestic violence, workplace equality and the pay gap, and women's issues in Latin America (which is related to the immigration pressure I mentioned above.)

She generally takes stances on foreign policy I agree with, being skeptical of leaders (Putin, Orban, Netanyahu) I want us to be skeptical of, and working with and looking up to the ones I want us to work with and look up to (Olaf Scholz, Emmanuel Macron). She already has a working relationship with many of these leaders too, and has a reputation of being both personable and tough, just what I'd want.

She's smart, well-educated, and surrounded with smart, well-educated, and wise people. Her campaign is stable and well-run, and I trust her to put together a team of competent advisors and run this country competently, probably even more so than Biden has done, and Biden has done a pretty decent job, exceeding my expectations even.

Harris also has an impressive list of endorsements. I can't possibly be comprehensive here, but it includes people as diverse as the most progressive Democrat Lawmakers (Bernie Sanders and AOC), some of the most conservative former GOP legislators (Jeff Flake, Liz Cheney), and over 100 former GOP staffers including a disturbing number of insiders from the Trump administration. This is telling! You don't see this sort of whistleblowing and defection from within the Biden administration.

The fact that Harris has racked up endorsements from people spanning the whole political spectrum from solid-right to solid-left and everything in between, impresses me. This is the sign of someone who is going to be good at getting people to work together, someone who will listen to a wide range of viewpoints and develop better policy and take better courses of action as a result. It's what I always want in a president.

In some elections I have been frustrated that I'm voting for a "lesser of two evils" but this time around I actually feel actively enthusiastic about Harris. I am excited to vote tomorrow and excited to finally be done with this election, and I am cautiously optimistic that it is going to turn out really well.

I encourage everyone to vote and make sure to make sure everyone close to you is also voting!

[deadpresidents]

I just hope these next 4 years go by fast

This election isn't just about the next four years. With Trump in the White House and a Republican Senate at his side, the MAGA movement can pick up where they left off when it comes to packing the federal judiciary with right-wing judges who will control the Supreme Court and appellate courts throughout the country potentially for the rest of the lives of everyone reading this right now. It's the perfect recipe for them to continue stripping reproductive rights away from women nationwide and gives them the opportunity to turn their attention to the other issues that they have been dying to attack, from voting rights to gay marriage and every other extension of personal freedom that has been won by minorities and marginalized people in hard-fought battles over the past 60 years. This is the nightmare scenario that people have been warning folks about for the past few elections. It's here. And there isn't going to be a way to put the toothpaste back in the tube.

The consequences of this election will have a direct, negative impact on your life -- possibly on the entire remainder of your life. This country just re-elected a President with authoritarian tendencies who is the willing puppet of a dangerous Christian nationalist movement that figured out exactly how to manipulate him (through flattery) for their aims. They have created the perfect vehicle for a genuine cult of personality that they can use to achieve the goals they have been very clear about striving for over the past few years. And you can't blame anybody other than the American voters because they not only elected Trump, but they gave him a fucking mandate, with a Republican Senate and potentially a Republican House. They already have a right-wing dominated Supreme Court for the next few decades, and now they are going to ensure that the entire federal judiciary is in their control for years to come. And don't forget the fact that a few months ago, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that gave Presidents sweeping immunity for a broad (and conveniently undefined) range of "official" acts, so Trump is going to go into this second term knowing that not only does he not have to deal with the "guardrails" of responsible adults he had around him in his first term (Mattis, Tillerson, Kelly, General Milley, etc), but he knows he can get away with virtually anything and everything that he wants to do this time around. If you thought that Trump's first term was bad, just understand that they are prepared this time and now he's surrounded himself with people who will do his bidding -- people who are perfectly willing to let Trump be Donald Trump.

I wish there was a reason to cry foul, lodge protests, and challenge the election's results. But this wasn't a rigged election. There isn't any confusion about what the voters really wanted. The American people did this. People you know and care about and who say they care about you are the people who did this. We need to recognize that these elections aren't outliers anymore. Trump's supporters aren't simply chaos agents who got lucky on a bad day for the Democrats. That's the country we live in now and we have to find a way to resist it that actually makes a difference because now they have the keys to all the doors and all of the alarm codes. This country has normalized the conspiracy theories and nativism and racism that has powered the MAGA movement since the moment Trump came down the elevator at Trump Tower in 2015. He's given those people permission to be open with their hatred towards people who aren't like them, and it's actually become surprising to see how many Americans have been eager to take advantage of that. I didn't think I had any misconceptions about this country before Donald Trump because I recognized this nation's history, but I clearly had some misconceptions about people I thought I knew until I saw them wearing a red MAGA hat or noticed they had a gigantic flag with Trump's name hanging where their U.S. flag used to hang. Once that happened, it was like a switch went off with them and they started saying things in ways that I'd never heard them speak. I feel like that's happened to the entire country. It breaks my heart and it pisses me off.

For the past few years, I've been warning everybody about how elections have consequences. I imagine that there are hundreds of posts on this blog with that phrase in all caps listed with the tags. Now the elections have happened, and we have to live with real fucking consequences. And we're going to pass these consequences on to other generations because this is the one that you can't get a do-over on. When you give a movement like this the power and the mandate that this country just gave them, there is no easily rolling back the things that they end up doing. They are going to fundamentally change the lives of people in this nation and especially change the way the younger generations of Americans live and love and learn for years to come. And you have people in your life who made that happen. It's another disgusting day in America -- a prelude to another reprehensible four years (at the very least) -- and I'm ashamed of tens of millions of my fellow Americans because this one is on them. They know exactly who the man is that they voted for, and now we know exactly who they are, too.

[mitchipedia]

Cross the Courts Off the List: We have enough information to conclude that the law won’t save us.

Hamilton Nolan:

The most significant remaining opportunity for course correction is the midterm elections. It is not so much that the elections (which if history is any guide should cause Republicans to lose control of Congress) are a magic wand that will fix our broken democracy, any more than, you know, Obama’s election fixed America. It is instead the much more modest but vital hope that Republicans can still lose power in elections. The midterm elections will be a test not so much of whether the Democratic Party will finally become the heroic resistance heroes we need–they won’t–but rather a test of whether Trump and Co. will have it together to suppress the vote to the degree that elections, also, need to be crossed off the list of fruitful avenues of opposition.

We are going to see ICE agents at polling places, and politically motivated government investigations of political opponents, and possibly a number of non-Republican politicians and activists arrested and put in jail. That will be the setting of the midterm elections. Trump is a man who does not believe in even the abstract concept of losing an election. He is surrounded by yes men top to bottom in the federal government, and he has armies of armed agents at his disposal. The midterm elections are going to be a very, very important gut check for our democracy, and the extent to which it still functions. We, all of us, all of civil society, must protect the integrity of those elections at all costs. If the Trump administration is able to suppress the vote so severely that the midterms cannot be seen as fair, we are in an even worse place than we are now.

Having given up on the possibility of a Supreme Court line in the sand, I am now looking at those elections as the next most important data point about how much hope is left to return to our traditional standard of “normal.” Apart from the elections, the other meaningful source of opposition is: Us. People. I have hoped that organized labor could be the rallying point for popular opposition to dictatorship. So far, that hasn’t happened. Institutionally, the long decline in union power has rendered organized labor extremely ineffective, disorganized in the face of a war on the existence of public sector unions, and unable to act in a powerful, concerted fashion on a nationwide scale. It is still possible, however, for unions to be one part of a grassroots coalition that forms to battle this out. The national protest movement we have seen arise–most recently the “No Kings” protests–shows me that the bulk of public opinion is on the right side here. The fascists are a minority. Stopping their advance, though, will require funneling the public opposition into organizations, into all facets of direct actions. What we have now is the sentiment, but not the organization. It can be built. The situation is not, in any sense, hopeless. There is much more to be said about the mechanics of all this, but for now, join an organization that is in the fight, and fight.

It’s just that the path is narrower. We don’t gain anything by telling ourselves fairy tales about what is coming. If the courts won’t do their ostensible job of saving us then it is time to think of the law not as the arena of our salvation but as a minefield to pick our way around carefully en route to a more promising destination.

[probablyasocialecologist]

In the last four years, mainstream Democrats have: nominated a former prosecutor for president; elected an ex-NYPD officer to run New York City; campaigned on deporting more people; funneled money and weapons to regimes committing war crimes; overseen the beatings and arrests of people demanding police reform; sent more police officers to wallop students protesting for Palestinian rights; ratcheted up the War on Drugs; worked with major corporate retailers to arrest more shoplifters; filed racketeering and conspiracy charges against police-reform protesters in Atlanta; made it easier to arrest New Yorkers and Californians with mental illness; defended the use of solitary confinement; supported a landmark Supreme Court case to let cops arrest unhoused people; tried to imprison one of the world’s most famous rappers; promised to build Donald Trump’s border wall; ran endless ads about Trump’s criminal record; and applauded as the president chanted “Fund the Police!” during his most-watched yearly address.  And yet, after an election last week in which voters all but screamed that the Democratic Party is moving in the wrong direction, centrist and conservative pundits have drawn the opposite conclusion: The Democrats are, somehow, still too soft on crime.  The belief persists against all logic: Four years of proudly Backing The Blue, at a minimum, failed to help Democratic voter turnout—and likely depressed votes from progressives. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s mythical moderate Republican voters, whom the party molded its entire platform to pursue, did not arrive to carry the party to the finish line. Instead, the pro-cop platform seems to have done nothing but legitimize Republican grievances and hand Trump a bolstered police and surveillance state. Despite this, many of the Democratic Party’s staunchest defenders seem to think the only way forward is to become even more like Republicans—rather than offer voters anything different at all.

[...]

The party’s love-fest with police and prosecutors appears to have done less than nothing to gin up votes or change the party’s overall perception. But mainstream Democrats are now arrogantly digging in their heels instead of learning any lessons.

13 November 2024