#VOTE DESANTIS OUT!!!!

[soberscientistlife]

Hey Florida

[tomorrowusa]

Bad news and good news out of Ron DeSantis's Florida.

The Florida Supreme Court will allow a new 6-week abortion ban to take effect in May. BUT the court also approved a ballot initiative for November which would restore reproductive freedom in the state.

Floridians will be able to vote on abortion protections this fall, the state’s Supreme Court ruled Monday—a win celebrated by the state’s Democrats despite the court, in a separate case, also paving the way for a law to take effect that will ban all abortions after six weeks. That six-week abortion ban, passed by Florida’s Republican-majority legislature and signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis last year, will go into effect on May 1. That measure can be undone by voters come November, however. The court’s decision is expected to reverberate across Florida and the southeast. A privacy protection clause in the Florida constitution had allowed the Sunshine State to enjoy abortion access up to 15 weeks despite DeSantis being at the helm—access that women relied upon in nearby states like Alabama and Mississippi, where abortion is outright banned, and in Georgia and South Carolina, which have laws similar to Florida’s soon-to-be-active six-week ban.

DeSantis appointed most of the Florida Supreme Court justices. Another reason why we should pay more attention to state government – regardless of state.

Florida’s Supreme Court, which had five of its seven justices appointed by DeSantis, ruled in favor of the state on Monday, 6-1. Now, Florida women will often be barred from having an abortion before many realize they’re even pregnant.

The court approval of the upcoming referendum, actually a Florida constitution amendment called Amendment 4 on the 2024 ballot, was narrow.

That amendment, if it received at least 60 percent of votes in favor of it, would significantly protect abortion access in Florida. Its text reads, in part, that “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before fetal viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.” Viability is estimated to be around six months of pregnancy. The Florida Supreme Court voted 4-3 in favor of approving the amendment to reach the ballot—a tight victory for abortion advocates like Planned Parenthood, which has championed the proposed amendment.

60% is a relatively high bar. But Kansas, arguably more conservative than Florida, had an abortion referendum in 2022 in which the reproductive freedom side got 59.16% of the vote; the Kansas election required just a simple majority but the final result exceeded that by almost 10%.

The necessary 60% for the Florida reproductive freedom amendment required in Florida won't be a cake walk but it is quite doable.

As many as 11 states could have reproductive freedom on the ballot as referendums this year.

Where abortion rights could be on the ballot this fall

^^^ Just to clarify: New York already offers strong reproductive legal protections. The upcoming referendum, if passed, would place freedom of choice into the NY constitution. It doesn't get more secure than that in state law.

[pinkautist]

dear all americans who are of voting age! PLEASE vote in the upcoming election! trump is running again and he has already stated that his presidency will be about getting revenge, which is rallying a lot of loud support. we NEED to make sure he stays out of office.

[m0rgz]

We’re SERIOUSLY letting Ron DeSantis, the “Don’t Say Gay” guy, run for president??

[curiosityschild]

Just found out 25% of my county's mayors are queer women. Based.

[weirdmageddon]

i was thinking about this since i posted earlier about us needing to address the trend of gen z men being pulled into alt-right pipelines might have contributed to the outcome of this election.

i think contrapoints is really smart, and from what i’ve seen, has been way more effective at getting people out of harmful ideological pipelines than i’ve seen from the majority of leftists online who instead berate and drive a greater wedge of antipathy (though i understand why! and it can be very hard to have empathy for the people who see you as a threat). that antipathy makes the right more radicalized because they don’t feel like they can talk about anything without the “crazy lefties” who won’t even engage with them. where did these issues come from?

what i’ve noticed, and i’m even guilty of this, is that people don’t interact with groups of people whom they refuse talk to, which makes realities more hypothetical in the minds of their opponent since they aren’t open to seeing reality from their perspective. this is true on both sides. from what i’ve observed, it seems to originate from hypothetical perception of the opponent, but when people treat those perceptions as though they are real, it becomes real with their actions, which then makes the antipathy justified to someone. again, on both sides.

what makes contrapoints so successful at breaking this down is that is that she creates these socratic dialogue skits that represent real people and ideologies, has a sense of humor, isn’t afraid to discuss these things, reframes how we see these things by introducing nuance to both sides. she’s a leftist, but she also knows how to engage without ripening division, of meeting someone halfway and being completely humble about it. she is able to soften extremes.

she is able to get into the mind of people who aren’t aligned with her views, understand the nuance and rationales from a realistic perspective, breaking down a big block of “this is all bad” into “ok, some of this makes sense…”, what this does is create a space for self-reflection that doesn’t feel ham-fisted (which could otherwise cause people to double down on their beliefs instead of opening up to other perspectives outside of their bubble). while also being entertaining and well-produced on top of it.

what she is doing is creating these scenarios and socratic discussions that SHOULD be happening in real life but aren’t in this polarized social climate.

i graduated from new college of florida this spring, the small liberal arts college that was in headlines across the country for ron desantis’s board of trustees hostile takeover and exodus of professors.

new students and student athletes from conservative walks of life were being basically incentivized to go there who were taught to fear the lgbt boogeyman growing up in their conservative communities. but once they actually interacted with lgbt students there, many of them they felt like they understood them, and they weren’t as bad as they were told they would be. new college of florida was also famous for getting derek black (child of the man who created stormfront, and godchild of the kkk grand wizard david duke) out of white nationalism. their peers at NCF called them out but also interacted with them, invited them to dinner. black wrote a book about it.

now of course some people are too far gone and you shouldn’t waste your time with them, like derek’s family for example. but i also think a lot of people who voted for trump are not informed, are operating off of emotion and knee-jerk mentality because it’s easier than thinking, and they are not seeing the discussions that need to be had to change their mind because fuckin…nobody is doing them.

and we feel this visceral disgust to people of the opposing party because of its associations. i just want to know how it happened and how we got to be like this. i think social media is partly to blame and also the algorithms that take people down dangerous pipelines and sharpen them, insulate them.

i myself understand the vitriol you might have for anyone that voted for trump. i feel so disappointed that half the people of this country voted against our collective benefit. and i’ve seen a lot of sentiment from the left today saying “every single person who voted for trump is dead to me. i disowned you”.

you can see the reality of trump’s demagoguery, and it’s so obvious, but what i want to know is: what do they see? why did they vote for him? emotion and entertainment travel faster and have more reach than reason. and it’s that’s why i think contrapoints’s videos are exemplary at tackling this ideological divide. this is something i’ve been thinking about for months before today and i thought now was a better time than ever to give my two cents on it.

[microcosmtoxin]

election good news

in delaware, sarah mcbride became the first openly trans person to be elected to the us congress

in north carolina, democrat josh stein will defeat self proclaimed "black nazi" and "pervert" mark robinson for the governorship

new york, maryland, and colorado all added reproductive right protections to their state constitution through a vote on an amendment

for the first time in history, two black women will serve in the senate, newly elected lisa blunt rochester (de) and angela alsobrooks (md)

kentucky rejected a constitutional amendment which would undermine public education by forcing public school dollars to go to non-public school

former democratic states attorney of florida monique worrell won her job back after ron desantis forced her out

palestine supporter bernie sanders won his fourth term in the senate representing vermont

despite fears, there have been no reports of any political violence or widescale voter intimidation and fraud

you will still wake up tomorrow

[mylionheart2]

Florida is a hot mess wow

[bonesandcacti]

apparently when it comes to succession art imitates life imitates art bc mencken vs jimenez was obviously a callback to trump vs biden for a lot of us but now if anyone is a sleazy charismatic fascist it's desantis

[cascadianights]

I want organizations and people who speak w power, who will be heard

To do so in a way that includes the voices and needs of those most vulnerable within their larger community

And it feels impossible!! To achieve that! For 100 reasons.

And it feels so hurtful when people fall short, because it FEELS like so much more of the country is doing so out of maliciousness rather than ignorance every day.

And I think what I'm really terrified of is that despite all the "majority of poll voters on the internet don't agree w this" headlines and the people who DO talk explicitly about what's going on and who it will hurt the most... I'm most afraid that the 2024 elections will reveal that most people really want so many people dead at any cost

[toxicanonymity]

Hello my beautiful Toxy 🖤 I wrote a letter using Resistbot to oppose my state governors use of DOGE to try and filter out important educational programming in my state of Florida. Ron DeSantis is a fucking coward and utilizing DOGE in our education system here would be incredibly harmful !

I was wondering if I could get a blurb for my main man Night Walks ? 🖤🍃 (I know you just did one!!! So if not that's ok!!)

I love that you are doing this btw, a really great incentive to get people to contact their representatives !!!

SAVE act | blorbos for democracy | 5calls | resistbot

Olivia, that's amazing 🖤 well done speaking up. We should all demand accountability and also ask our elected officials to vote no on the SAVE act.

In the park

Joel miller x f!reader | night walks au

WARNINGS: 18+ predator/prey type behavior, dubcon touching in public, PIV, 630 words of this filthy creep, coming in hot. . . and it continues here.

Fireflies were beginning to to dot the treeline and you knew you shouldn't be at the park alone at this hour. But you weren't *completely* alone. It wasn't deserted - you could still hear the tink of baseball on metal bat in the distance. That's where Joel had been. He’d come to sell weed to one of the little league coaches and got caught up in conversation with an old friend... Until he noticed you. By the time Joel caught up, you had taken your sweat soaked T-shirt over your head, getting ready to stretch before leaving. A humming coke machine was the only light nearby.

As Joel approached from behind, the hairs on the back of your neck stood up, sensing a presence. Before you could run, he grabbed hold of the sports bra between your shoulder blades, and pulled you back toward him. His hand covered your mouth before you could scream, and your heart jumped out of your chest.

“Hey, princess,” he greeted you in your ear, and you felt a wave of relief at the sound of his voice “it's just me.”

He spread his fingers enough for you to say “what the hell, Joel” And you kind of tried to pull away from him, but he held you in place and wrapped his arms around you from behind until you stopped your halfhearted struggling and just breathed. He didn't have to hold your mouth.

His hand glided up your dewy stomach and under your damp bra. “Walkin’ without me?” His voice was husky. “Dangerous” He cupped your breast and palmed your hardened nipple and his dick twitched against your back side. “But god damn, ya feel even better than ya look.”

With one hand still in your bra, he shoved his other hand down your shorts. He rubbed your clit rapidly, expertly, and sucked at your ear, then under your ear. Massaging your breast with one hand and rubbing your clit with the other, he had you like putty in his hands. When you let out a soft moan, he slid his fingers down your slit and murmured, “yeah, now she's ready for me.”

He slid his hand out of your shorts and licked his fingers, then took your keys out of your shorts pocket. He slid his other hand out of your bra and put his arm around you. “Gonna walk ya to your car.” You followed his lead in silence.

When the two of you got to your car, he opened the passenger door and instructed, “take your shorts off” as he sat down in your car. He pushed the seat back to make more room. When you didn't comply right away, he looked you in the eye and said ,”drop’em. Now.”

You stepped out of your shorts, and he freed his cock from his pj pants. “C’mere, beautiful,” he nodded you over, then looked down at his cock. “Right here, baby. Take a seat, c’mon.”

With your shorts in your hand, naked from the waist down, you straddled him.

“Attagirl,” he gushes as he helped you onto him. Didn't even close the car door. “Fuck,” he whispered, running the head of his cock through your dripping folds. “Fuck, yeah. Ohh” he moaned in a crescendo as you sank down on him. “Good girl,” he breathed, and kissed you as your body welcomed him, hugging his shaft with your soft walls. He peeled your sports bra off and took your tit into his mouth, then nosed your cleavage and smothered himself in your chest. “So goddamn sexy,” he gushed, and you lifted up just slightly on his shaft, then swallowed him whole again, filling yourself with his cock.

“Hell yeah, there she is.”

-

-

SMUT CONTINUES HERE.

Ty for reading 🖤 please consider commenting or sharing if you enjoyed.

[flagellant]

anyway im really tired of pretending that voting matters or does anything when all evidence is that the only thing y'all say it does is "slow the fascism down" rather than "stops the fascism". perhaps this is because the system itself encourages fascism and stratification of power and wealth and anyone who works in that system is obligated to perpetuate the system at all cost and above all else.

there is no such thing as a good american politician. there are well-meaning american politicians. but they are all proponents and advocates of the american systems which oppress us and, at the end of the day, AOC and Ron DeSantis are merely fighting over who gets to run the same system. isnt it just so weird btw how things constantly get nonstop worse even during democratic majorities? and how you keep having to settle with ceding partially to Republican fascist demands?

surely, you keep saying, voting blue no matter who THIS election cycle will do something

surely, i keep saying, you'll have to figure out it won't do anything at some point

[manontrashbeak]

Books. Are. Political.

I’m going to say this with all the disrespect my body holds.

I have been in the book space for well over a decade, the SJM fandom for just about that time, so believe me when I say I mean what I’m about to type. If you are an American, or even someone abroad, and support Trump or the conservative push in anyway, you are not welcome here. If you are a part of the SJM fandom and support Trump (which yes means with a vote or just in general) you are not welcome here. The fmcs and the fcs that you love would hate you the same way I do. The mcs and book boyfriends that you love would hate you the same way I do. Books have and always will be political, that why people like Trump and Desantis and Hitler go after them and burn them. Those people prey on the ignorant and the unintelligent, and I fully believe yall are both. If you are upset by this post or the posts on booktok telling you, you have no place here then you know deep down you are wrong. And for everyone else who woke up devastated this morning, I’m sorry that we have to share this horrible reality, but I’m comforted in the fact that you are out there just as saddened by the turn our country has taken.

[overgrownmoon]

i am going to caveat this comment by pointing out it is 6:30am and i haven’t finished my coffee yet but i have thoughts to share anyway

i have seen a lot of rhetoric that anyone who advocates voting blue right now is advocating for genocide, because of biden’s alliance with israel. yes, i don’t want biden to continue this; i would prefer him gone and replace with someone better. but until the primaries come and go we won’t know our options. the other option is to vote republican, i don’t believe for a second that would fix anything; the GOP would back israel just as much and try to ban muslim refugees from this country too, on top of the christofascist streak they’ve been having.

so for the love of god go vote - vote for your local democrats, vote for your green parties, vote to get out the vile corruption and scum out of our government and let’s try to make change happen for us. young people, go vote - the numbers of young voters are so horrendously low because people have lost hope that their votes matter. they do. let’s make a future where we don’t have to choose between the lesser of two evils.

I’ve seen a lot of lefty ‘voting doesn’t matter that much’ takes go by lately, some more well reasoned than others, but I gotta point out that conservatives and fascists are all eager and willing to vote, and they will, and this WILL have consequences for You, the person reading this, whether you like or not, so do it if you can and help other people do it and then you can go back to your Guevara cosplay or whatever but the people who are barely hanging on as it is with no good options left actually need you right now

[boreal-sea]

One thing I find myself being very careful about is trying not to say "Country / State is bad".

Because that (to me) implies that the whole country/state - including the civilians - is bad.

So try not to say things like "fuck Florida" when I see they've passed more anti-LGBTQ legislation. It's "fuck Ron DeSantis" or "fuck the FL legislature" or "fuck FL republicans". I am not perfect and I'm sure you can find plenty of instances on my blog where I just say "fuck Florida", but I try, because it humanizes regular Floridians who are being damaged by this shit and who can't vote the republicans out because of voter suppression and gerrymandering.

This applies to any unit you can think of where the majority of the people involved are probably not responsible for the actions of the few.

[mariacallous]

Tomorrow is Election Day, the last day of voting in this tumultuous 2024 campaign. What a long, strange trip it's been. Just a year ago, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was challenging former president Trump for the GOP nomination by saying the word "woke" at least a hundred times a day while former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley competed for what's left of the "normie" Republican vote. A clown car full of grifters and kooks, meanwhile, used the primaries as an opportunity to suck up to Trump, whom everyone knew would inevitably be the nominee. After all, he'd been running non-stop since 2015.

Meanwhile on the Democratic side, incumbent president Joe Biden was an unchallenged shoo-in for the Democratic nomination. Most people felt he'd probably be able to replicate his 2020 win despite being unpopular due to a lingering hangover from the pandemic. After all, Trump had incited an insurrection and was facing lawsuits and felony trials in federal court and two different states stemming from a variety of alleged crimes. Surely, he couldn't possibly win after all that?

In the year since, Biden was revealed to be just too old to run for president again and was replaced by his younger vice president, Kamala Harris, who sparked a massive rise in enthusiasm among Democrats. Trump, meanwhile, has shown that his millions-strong cult of personality is fully intact and they are ecstatic about putting him back in the White House in spite of his many flaws (maybe even because of them.) We could find out the winner as soon as tomorrow night — or maybe not.

If it's as close as many of the pollsters say it is it could take a while before we know the final results. And it goes without saying that unless they call the race for him right away, Trump is planning to cry "fraud" and will do everything in his power to create the illusion that he won regardless of the count. So we can expect chaos. He's made that very clear.

The polls have more or less shown a tied race nationally and in the swing states for the past couple of months. Whether that's correct or not, we don't know. Because they missed some Trump voters in 2016 and 2020, everyone is on edge that the same thing has happened again despite the pollsters' going out of their way to correct the problem this time. With the polls this close that error could translate to a repeat of 2016 which has a whole lot of people losing sleep these last few weeks.

But something unexpected happened this past weekend that may have called those assumptions into question. The Des Moines Register poll, considered one of the best in all of politics due to pollster J. Ann Selzer's excellent track record, dropped its final poll of the cycle and it landed like a nuclear bomb. Iowa is a solid red state and the previous poll had Trump winning the state handily as expected. Now the numbers showed Harris beating Trump 47 - 44. Boom.

Iowa is one of the whitest states in the union, so race isn't a factor which makes it an interesting proxy for white voters in other swing states with similar populations (like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, for instance.) While Trump has maintained his base of men, evangelical voters, rural residents and non-college-educated voters, the poll found that women, specifically older and politically independent women, have swung in large numbers to Harris. And just as surprising, Harris is winning voters over 65, which has been a GOP base vote for decades. What in the world does this mean?

First, it's pretty clear that reproductive rights are driving this race for a whole lot of people. Iowa, in particular, is now living under a draconian six-week abortion ban that was upheld by its far-right Supreme Court last summer. Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his notorious opinion that "women are not without electoral or political power." It appears we may be about to find out the truth of that.

People expected that younger women would vote in large numbers on this issue but there seems to be some surprise that older women would be motivated to do so. Ohio Senate candidate Bernie Moreno was caught on video bemoaning the "single issue" women voters and wondering why women over 50 would care about it.

I guess it's hard for right-wingers to understand why anyone would care about someone other than themselves. But it's more than that. The reversal of Roe v. Wade was deeply offensive to many women of all ages, something we could only see as a direct attack on our basic human rights by a group of men (and one very conservative woman) determined to turn back the clock to a time when women were literally second class citizens. Women can see where this is leading and it isn't toward freedom and equality — for any of us.

The Republican Party and its leader, a predator found legally liable for sexual assault, is running for election on a platform of flagrant misogyny. Donald Trump literally said, 'I was able to kill Roe v. Wade' until he belatedly realized it wasn't popular, at which point he came up with his fatuous rationale that "everyone wanted it to go back to the states." That is utterly absurd and most people know it. He's lately taken to saying that he'll be women's "protector" which, coming from him, is more of a threat. In fact, in recent days he's said that he'll  do it "whether the women like it or not."

Then you have his choice for running mate, JD Vance, who thinks that women should stay in abusive marriages, thinks abortion should be banned nationally even in cases of rape and incest and wants to prevent women from traveling out of state to obtain them (he now denies knowing about such efforts). And he famously believes that "childless cat ladies" are the cause of everything wrong in our culture and agrees that "the whole purpose of the post-menopausal female is child care."

And people are surprised that women of all ages are refusing to vote for these people?

This Iowa poll may be an outlier and all the chatter about this remarkable result will end up being nothing more than election year lore. Most analysts still seem to think that it's nearly impossible to believe that Harris will actually win Iowa. But this poll is one of the very few that caught the hidden angry non-college-educated Trump vote in 2016 and 2020. There is every reason to believe that it may be catching the hidden pissed-off college-educated and independent women Harris vote in 2024. Nothing would be more satisfying than for this voting block to be the one to spell the end of Donald Trump's political career.