#immigration ban

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[whocanbelieve]

BINGO 39 minutes into the debate.

Got this template from Twitter, an @misslynneNYC

There are lots of other bingo templates, this is just the one I saw first.

[saywhat-politics]

Looks Like Greg Abbott Failed to ‘Eliminate Rape’

In 2021, the Texas governor justified his state's abortion ban by pledging to "eliminate rape." Now, he launched a $100,000 billboard campaign against undocumented immigrants with messages such as “How much did you pay to have your daughter raped?”

[brandyschillace]

RIGHT TO READ and UNITED AGAINST BOOK BANS

Censorship threatens our right to read—and that threatens us all. Books lift us, connect us, inspire us; they make us question, research, and make our own choices. We can’t let that be taken away. I’m a historian who writes about the Nazi book burning—about how censorship was used to take away the rights of #transgender #lgbtq and minorities, resulting in attacks on #immigrants, Jews, homosexuals, #women, trans, Romani, and #disabled people. It’s not many steps from banning books to burning them—so: Make you voice heard! Today, I’m participating in #RightToReadDay with other authors, readers, and community members across the country. Safeguarding our freedom to read requires all of us - learn how you can take action:

Learn more from Unite Against Book Bans and join the campaign!

[justinspoliticalcorner]

David Badash at NCRM:

Stephen Miller, the architect of Donald Trump’s child and family separation policy and one of his longest-serving, die-hard loyalists, will become the incoming president’s deputy chief of staff for policy, a top role in the second administration of the Republican nationalist. Miller, an immigration hardliner who was also responsible for Trump’s Muslim-majority country travel ban, has a history of promoting white nationalist rhetoric. He is responsible for the separation of thousands of young children from their parents, and even from their siblings, as a means to deter other asylum seekers from crossing the southern border into the United States. Under Trump and Miller’s “zero tolerance” policy, there were no plans to reunite the children with their parents. Despite efforts by the Biden administration, thousands of children have never been placed back into their families. As of May, 1400 children remained separated from their parents.

“Miller will return with more influence than he had in the first Trump administration, where he served as a senior adviser for policy, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN,” The Daily Beast adds, noting that Miller was also behind Trump’s “American carnage” inauguration address. CNN reports that “Miller is also a lead architect of the president-elect’s plans for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. He has said that a second Trump administration would seek a tenfold increase in the number of deportations to more than 1 million per year. In an interview on Fox News last week, Miller expressed eagerness at the prospect of beginning mass deportations as soon as possible.” “They begin on Inauguration Day, as soon as he takes the oath of office,” Miller said.

White nationalist Stephen Miller will be in a plum post in the 2nd Trump Regime, as he has been named deputy chief of staff for policy.

See Also:

The Guardian: Trump to name immigration hardliner Stephen Miller as deputy chief of policy

Daily Kos: Oh great, this infamous bigot is heading back to the White House

[aloe-vera-quinn]

To anyone being effected by the 2024 election.

The world did not end on November 5th. We are still here and we can still fight.

Do your research, write to your state, participate in protests, donate, do what you can to fight, but most importantly stay alive.

If you are a high school student

participate in a walkout

contact your school newspaper or yearbook and make your opinions known

create, join, or support the groups that help the minorities in your school

protect those being harassed

Keep fighting and don't stop fighting until we win.

Below is a list of websites that you can use for research, donation, or to contact your state or government.

https://pen.org/book-bans/

https://www.librariesforthepeople.org/

https://uniteagainstbookbans.org/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/abortion

https://www.thetrevorproject.org/

https://transequality.org/

https://pflag.org/

https://give.hrc.org/page/152610/donate/1?ea.tracking.id=dr_don_ck_googl_search_0724&gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiA0MG5BhD1ARIsAEcZtwSRO1WhxysnFKGqHM8SV92KVdhdcMUCFkg90l91cUP5RTFcGT0VUVEaAtJ4EALw_wcB

https://reproductiverights.org/maps/abortion-laws-by-state/

https://blacklivesmatter.com/

https://www.hrc.org/resources/get-the-facts-about-transgender-non-binary-athletes

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eU3rCvzLjBwnVpph_Svs8MFmnp9EH8RG_72UofANVeM/edit?gid=2074048679#gid=2074048679

If I have linked any site spreading misinformation or harmful information pls tell me.

If you can find any more links that could help pls DM me. I would like to make a long list for anyone having trouble finding good resources.

[workersolidarity]

🇺🇸 🚨

UNITED STATES CONGRESS PASSES SERIES OF ANTI-DEMOCRATIC AND PRO-WAR BILLS DESPITE PUBLIC OPPOSITION

The United States Congress and Senate passed a series of bills, including three controversial anti-democratic and pro-war bills, two of which were tied together, on Saturday, bypassing public opinion and popular opposition to the profligate, pro-war, globalist, Neolib/Neocon agenda currently driving United States domestic and foreign policy.

Included in the bills passed was a bill to force TikTok to divest from its connections with China at risk of being banned immediately, which naturally was tied to a Foreign aid bill.

However, as even Republican Senator Rand Paul mentioned in an opinion piece in Reason Magazine, the Bill is almost certain to lead to more power for American political elites and their administrations to pressure companies like Apple and Google to further ban apps and sites that offer contradictory opinions to that of the invented narratives of the American Political class.

Before long, Americans, many of whom are already poorly informed, and heavily misinformed by their mainstream media, could lose access to critical information that contradicts the narratives of the United States government and corporate elites.

Horrifically, this only the start. The US Congress also extended the newly revised FISA spy laws, which gives the United States government the power to spy on the electronic communications of foreigners, while also conveniently sweeping up the conversations of millions of Americans, as we learned years ago thanks to the sacrifices of whistle blowers and journalists like Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange.

The new FISA Law goes further than this, however, granting US Intelligence agencies the power to spy on the wireless communications of Americans in completely new ways.

A recent Jacobin article describes these new powers as a, "radical expansion of government surveillance that would be ripe for abuse by a future authoritarian leader", or it could just be used by the authoritarian leadership we have right now, and have had for decades.

In fact, when one commentator described the new powers as "Stasi-like," Edward Snowden himself replied with a long post in which he remarked, "invocation of "Stasi-like" is not only a fair characterization of Himes' amendment, it's probably generous. The Stasi dared not even dream of what the Himes amendment provides."

The amendment in question just "tweaks" the current law's definition of an "electronic communication provider," which is being changed to "any service provider," something extremely likely to be abused by the government to force anyone with a business, a modem and people using their broadband to collect the electronic communications of those people, while also forcing their victims into silence.

The government could essentially force Americans to spy on other people and remain silent about it. Cafe's, restaurants, hotels, business landlords, shared workspaces all could get swept up into the investigations of the Intelligence agencies.

Worse still, because picking out the communications of a single user would be next to impossible, all of their victim's data would end up being surrendered to the authorities.

Sadly, the assault on Americans by their own political elites didn't end there, to top this historic day in Congress, at time when the United States public debt is growing at an astounding rate of $1 trillion every 100 days, US lawmakers also passed a series of pro-war aid packages to American allies (vassals) totalling some $95 billion.

Included in the foreign aid bill are aid packages totalling $61 billion for the Ukraine scam, $26 billion for Israel's special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, and $8 billion to the Indo-Pacific to provoke WWIII with China, at the same time we're also provoking a nuclear holocaust with the Russian Federation.

Also buried in these aid packages is the authorization for the United States government to outright steal the oversees investments of the Russian Federation, and thereby the Russian taxpayers.

Astonishingly, and in direct opposition to the wishes of their own voters, Republican support was won without the possibility of conditioning the aid to any kind of border security, this despite the issue being among the top biggest concerns of Republican voters.

Although much of the money is to be used replenishing the heavily depleted stocks of America's weapons and munitions, it remains unclear where the munitions are expected to come from, as US defense production has remained sluggish and slow to expand despite heavy investments and demand in recent years, despite the rapid urgency with which the policy elite describe the situation.

It bodes poorly for working Americans that only a relatively small handful of lawmakers opposed the bills, producing unlikely bedfellows like Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator Mike Lee in the Senate, opposing the FISA bill.

While in the House, the loudest opposition to the foreign aid bill mostly came from populist Republicans such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie and Paul Goser. Only 58 Congresmembers voted against the Foreign Aid Bill in which the TikTok ban was tucked.

Not one word from American politicians about the need to raise the minimum wage, which hasn't been increased since 2009 despite considerable inflation, nor a word about America's endlessly growing homelessness crises, property crime increases, or the 40-year stagnation of American wages, the deterioration of infrastructure, and precious little was said besides complaints about border security over the immigration crises sparked by American Imperialist adventures and US sanctions.

What we've learned today is that we are highly unlikely to see any changes to the insane behavior of the US and its allies any time soon, neither with regards to the absolutely bonkers Neocon foreign policy leading us to the edge of abyss, nor the spending-for-the-rich/austerity-for-the-poor Neoliberal domestic policy of the last 45 years.

#source1

#source2

#source3

#source4

#source5

#source6

#source7

#source8

@WorkerSolidarityNews

Blue: titles are opinion pieces or analysis, and may or may not contain sources.

[truth4ourfreedom]

HOW MUCH THE NRA AND THE 'EVIL' GUN LOBBY SPENDS EACH YEAR.

The popular narrative from prohibitionists is that the lack of legislative support for various gun control schemes is due to aggressive lobbying. The story goes that “blood money” from the National Rifle Association and other gun lobby efforts along with the firearm industry has a stranglehold on elected officials who are just pining to do “the right thing” but are being drowned out by all the cash.

How much money is actually spent by the NRA on lobbying? How does this compare to lobbying efforts from elsewhere?

Statista is a German online platform specializing in data gathering and visualization in German, English, Spanish, and French. The company provides statistics and survey results presented in charts and tables. Its main target groups are business customers, lecturers, and researchers, offering subscriptions to a database of companies in the same manner as Bloomberg L.P.

Statista’s data partners include the Federal Statistical Office, the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research, the OECD, and the German Institute for Economic Research. Other partners include the Financial Times and Fortune. Financial Times Germany named them among the winners of the start-up competition, Enable to Start.

Major U.S. Political Lobbying

The big three in major U.S. political lobbying are Pharmaceuticals/Health Products ($357 million per year), Electronics Manufacturing ($180 million per year), and Insurance ($153 million per year.)

Major annual lobbying expenditures in the United States

www.statista.com/statistics/257364/top-lobbying-industries-in-the-us

Critical note: Statista felt compelled to add the following footnote to this chart:

The NRA and lobbying: One of the most famous lobbying organizations in the United States is the National Rifle Association (NRA), which lobbies lawmakers in favor of gun rights. However, despite this, it only spent around 2.2 million U.S. dollars on lobbying expenditures in 2020.

Apparently, they received so many inquiries as to why the NRA wasn’t included in that chart above they included the answer right underneath: the NRA spends a marginal fraction on lobbying compared to the actual big spenders.

NRA (bottom) compared to the actual big lobby efforts.

Gun Lobby Money:

The NRA typically spends a few million dollars per year on lobbying. From 1998-2022, the most the NRA spent on lobbying in a single year was just over $5 million. Most years it’s between 1.5-2.5 million.

www.statista.com/statistics/249398/lobbying-expenditures-of-the-national-rifle-associaction-in-the-united-states/

The National Shooting Sports Foundation also lobbies. In 2023, according to federal records, the NSSF spent the most in lobbying in its 60-year history: $5.4 million on federal lobbying, slightly more than the NRA’s all-time annual record amount.

Anti-Gun Lobbying:

Firearm prohibitionists claim there is some large grassroots movement to push for legislative restrictions. It turns out that many anti-gun organizations are astroturfing fronts funded as tax deductions by a small group of very wealthy donors. These “organizations” provide no services with all funding received as contributions.

As an example, “March for Our Lives” bills itself as a grassroots movement of young people working to restrict gun ownership under the guise of safety. In reality, this is a front group funded by a few dozen donors. According to public tax documents for March for Our Lives, the group is funded almost entirely by large tax-deductible donations in excess of $100,000 with less than 1% of all donations from people donating less than $5,000. Nearly 100% of “March for Our Lives” income is Contributions serving as a tax deduction for donors and no Program Services are offered. Contrast this to the NRA’s public tax records where nearly half of the income is from Program Services and about a third is from Contributions.

Lobby Money Breakdown

Pharmaceutical companies spend the most on lobbying, much more than any other industry or sector. Pharmaceutical companies spend more on lobbying than second and third place (Electronics Manufacturing and Insurance) combined. Novo Nordisk, the maker of the obesity drug Ozempic, has spent $10 million per year just to lobby for that one drug with their primary effort pushing for the passage of the proposed Treat and Reduce Obesity Act which would emphasize regular prescription by doctors to patients for Ozempic. That doesn't count the $100 million Novo Nordisk has spent in advertising this drug to the general public.

Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, appointed to the current Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, has declared that “obesity cannot be treated with exercise and good diet” and is pushing for more pharmaceutical interventions. This push is for drug interventions such as Ozempic. Prior to this appointment, Dr. Stanford had been a paid consultant for Novo Nordisk.

[soundandsleep]

[bonesandpoemsandflowers]

[salvadorbonaparte]

My male roommate was straight up like "yeah I don't really know what any of this means. I don't know anything about American politics" like I understand he's also an international student but like how isn't he also losing his mind about this?

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[batboyblog]

dispatches from Republican America, Jan 24 2024

Texas:

“Texas saw an estimated 26,313 rape-related pregnancies during the 16 months after the state outlawed all abortions, with no exceptions for survivors of rape or incest, according to a study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association,”

“The authors noted that while some pregnant rape survivors who need abortion care may be able to travel out of state or manage the pregnancy at home with abortion pills, the bans leave many survivors without a viable alternative.”

Oklahoma:

On Tuesday, Oklahoma's superintendent of public instruction, Ryan Walters, announced he was appointing right-wing social media influencer Chaya Raichik — best known for her controversial Libs of TikTok social media accounts — to an advisory role on the state's Library Media Advisory Committee. That will allow her to help determine which books are appropriate for Oklahoma school libraries.

Raichik's social media accounts are known for targeting liberals, LGBTQ people and teachers. Often, she uses incendiary claims and conspiracy theories to suggest without evidence that members of these groups engage in the indoctrination or sexual exploitation of children. And both Raichik and Walters have been accused of stoking bomb threats toward people and places featured in Raichik's videos: Walters has faced calls to resign over claims that he helped incite bomb threats toward a librarian when he reshared an edited Libs of TikTok video. That video also led to bomb threats against his home; Walters called such threats "reprehensible and unacceptable," according to KOCO News, and said they were being investigated. Raichik, meanwhile, has been accused of inciting threats against hospitals and schools.

Ohio:

Ohio has banned gender-affirming care for minors and restricted transgender women’s and girls’ participation on sports teams, a move that has families of transgender children scrambling over how best to care for them.

The Republican-dominated Senate voted Wednesday to override GOP Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto. The new law bans gender-affirming surgeries and hormone therapies, and restricts mental health care for transgender individuals under 18. The measure also bans transgender girls and women from girls and women’s sports teams at both the K-12 and collegiate level.

Officials expect the law to take effect in roughly 90 days. 

Texas (again):

Texas is apparently taking advantage of a loophole in a recent Supreme Court ruling involving the US-Mexico border in order to keep putting up more razor-wire fencing along the Rio Grande riverbank.

The Supreme Court's 5-4 Monday ruling delivered a huge win to the Biden administration in its ongoing legal battle with Texas over the southern border by allowing federal border agents to cut or move barbed wire fencing the Republican-controlled state installed at the border.

The ruling does not call for Texas to take any action in the matter — and the state's Republican governor, Greg Abbott, suggested in a post to X on Wednesday that Texas will keep putting up the fencing, even if federal border agents take it down.

"Texas' razor wire is an effective deterrent against the illegal border crossings encouraged by [President Joe] Biden's open border policies," Abbott said. "We continue to deploy this razor wire to repel illegal immigration."

[catnobananas]

If you refuse to vote this November and Trump wins, you will be complicit in his stripping back of the rights of minorities, LGBTQ+ people, women, immigrants, natives, and a whole host of other groups that don't fit his cisgender white rich male republican image. Because he WILL take rights away from these groups, no ifs ands or buts, and all you have to do to prevent it is cast your ballot.

So VOTE like the lives of millions of people - you, your friends, your family, your roommates, your nieces and nephews, cousins and parents, literally anyone you care about - depend on it. Because they very well may.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ellen Ioanes at Vox:

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to halt refugees from coming to the US in his second term — a promise that will largely be within his power as president to keep.

Trump has said he plans to “suspend refugee admission, stop the resettlement, and keep the terrorists the hell out of our country” on his first day back in office. The rules for refugee admissions were established by Congress, including in the 1980 Refugee Act, but also via legislation directly following World War II. Therefore, any effort to formally end the refugee program would take an act of Congress. However, the president has lots of authority over refugee admissions — and Trump exercised that authority during his first term. It is up to the president to decide how many refugees will be allowed to enter the US in any given year, and Trump significantly lowered the cap on refugee admissions during his first term. Presidents can also pause admissions, as President George W. Bush did in the wake of 9/11. “Every president has used their powers to either expand or contract as circumstances might fit,” Eric Welsh of Reeves Immigration Law Group told Vox. “It’s something that is very, very susceptible to his influence.” Given how significantly Trump eroded the US’ refugee program during his first term, it’s not unreasonable to fear that he would do even more damage this time around. While there are technically legal limits to how much Trump can do to dismantle the refugee program, there is plenty the administration could do practically to gut it.

How does the US refugee system work?

Refugees are migrants hoping to escape threats and extreme conditions in their home country to settle in a safe country, in this case the US. To be classified as a refugee, migrants must go through a vetting process while they are outside the US. Potential refugees are typically first screened by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and then by the US government. After they pass the vetting process, they then receive visas to come to the US, where they are assisted with basics like finding housing, getting children enrolled in school, and signing up for government benefits by the US Refugee Admissions Program. Refugees can work once they’re in the US, and can apply for US citizenship when they have legal status in the US. What did Trump do in his first term?

The first time he took office in 2017, Trump paused the refugee admissions for three months. “The justification was to determine if [the US refugee program] was safe and secure because of alleged security risks,” Welsh said. Trump also barred Syrians from the refugee resettlement program indefinitely; Syrians were not accepted again until 2018. “And then he kicked that a step further with the Muslim ban, by specifically banning [refugee] applicants from certain countries” — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, Welsh said. The Supreme Court allowed a version of that ban to stand following more than a year of litigation. Trump also greatly reduced the overall number of refugees allowed into the US over the course of his first term. For example, Trump set a ceiling of only 15,000 refugees for 2021; under Biden, that number has grown to 125,000 for this past year.

A 2nd Trump term would be harmful for refugee resettlement, and would make his first term look generous in comparison.