#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.

[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!

[profeminist]

Happy Lao ban Santa Day!

[socialjusticeinamerica]

😡

Tex-ass cops colluding with Republican militias what a surprise.

[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.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

By James Downie

“If everything’s honest, I’d gladly accept the results.” That was former President Donald Trump on Wednesday, playing cute with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s question over whether he’d accept the outcome of Wisconsin’s presidential election. As my colleague Clarissa-Jan Lim pointed out, Trump has a long track record of similar statements, offering sham justifications to disguise the fact that he doesn’t feel bound by election results. The events of Jan. 6, 2021, laid bare the true consequences of this shell game.

But this latest instance — coupled with statements Trump recently made in his interview with Time magazine — highlight a disturbing and underappreciated aspect of his 2024 campaign. Trump’s approach to election results has become his approach (and his devotees’ approach) to the law more broadly. Even as their policies and rhetoric have become more extreme, Trump and his MAGA acolytes are already lining up the justifications — legal and otherwise — to buttress their extremist and authoritarian agenda in ways that simply didn’t occur to the first Trump administration.

The deportation of millions, the deployment of the National Guard and even the military domestically, the firing of prosecutors, the autocratic expansion of executive authority, the potential weaponization of the Comstock Act to ban abortion: all of these will have excuses that range from “tendentious” to “outright fiction.” Or, as Trump told Time: “I’ll be doing everything on a very legal basis.”

Take, for example, immigration: It’s easy to forget how Trump’s immigration policy has shifted in eight years, even as it has remained consistently bigoted. His 10-point plan on immigration in 2016 consisted of the border wall and a bunch of truisms. (“We’ll build safe zones, which is something I think all of us want to see.”) The military was absent; the word “invasion” was nowhere to be found, and the courts barely merited a mention.

Contrast this with the Time interview, where Trump defends deploying the military both at the border and inland to deport “15 million and maybe as many as 20 million” undocumented immigrants — the equivalent of deporting the entire state of Florida. With bigger autocratic moves come bigger fictions. Migrants are no longer just “bringing crime”; Trump has created a whole separate (and demonstrably false) category of “migrant crime.”

Domestic deployment of the armed forces would seem to violate an 1878 ban on using troops against civilians. But this Trump, unlike the 2016 version, has a legal facade ready to go: Undocumented immigrants are invaders, not civilians, and “I will be complying with court orders.” Those two sentiments may seem difficult to reconcile, given that the former categorization flies in the face of legal precedent. But as recent oral arguments over presidential immunity have illustrated, precedent means little to this Supreme Court.

Immigration is just the tip of a very dangerous iceberg. In close advisers like Stephen Miller and aligned projects like Project 2025, we can see not only the policies but also the underlying justifications and legal authorities they have ready to go. Part of this effort is practical. Trump’s presidency was rife with policy efforts that either never got past the planning stage or wasted months (or even years) in false starts. The reality that Mexico wouldn’t pay for his border wall meant that less than 20% had been built when he left office. His administration spent the better part of a year tossing out different iterations of Trump’s self-described “Muslim ban,” searching for a version that could pass muster in the courts.

Trump’s supporters are determined not to waste time this round. There’s no better example of this than the Comstock Act: Rather than wait for congressional Republicans to pass a new national abortion ban, they could simply resurrect a “zombie law” to criminalize any materials used in abortions and count on the more Trump-friendly courts to back them up.

But mostly this effort is political. As writer Brian Beutler puts it, “To the MAGA core, he offers a bloody revanchism; to the uncommitted, a series of mollifying assurances.” Most of Trump’s signature policy proposals — such as a military deportation force and huge tariff increases — and those of his most devoted advisers are unpopular. So Trump balances the lawless extremes of his ambitions by minimizing how radical his plans sound, hoping to avoid scaring persuadable voters with his authoritarian signals. “When we talk military, generally speaking, I talk National Guard,” he says, as if those two terms are interchangeable. “But if I thought things were getting out of control, I would have no problem using the military.” Just like he’ll accept the results “if everything’s honest.”

“I don’t think they’re bold actions,” Trump tells Time of his policies, “I think they’re actions that are common sense.” But phrases like “if everything’s honest” and “if things were getting out of control” create loopholes as wide as they are chilling. It’s easy to imagine, for example, a deportation force being sent to New York and then beefed up when local residents resist — with horrible consequences. But if the platitudes get him back in the White House, he and his followers will move swiftly to welcome that horror.

[soundandsleep]

[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.

[sadderbutwisergirrl]

From tiktok @kellyyanghk

[kp777]

By Amy Goodman, Denis Moynihan

Common Dreams

Jul 20, 2024

Most convention speakers called for unity by rallying their base against marginalized communities like immigrants, trans people, and others they consider undesirable.

The Republican National Convention here in Milwaukee seems very far away from Ripon, Wisconsin, the birthplace of the Republican Party.

As one approaches the RNC, inside the heavily guarded, temporary steel wall erected around Milwaukee’s downtown as part of this so-called National Special Security Event, one encounters a side street next to Media Row, filled with food vendors, a stage, t-shirt and souvenir booths, and a slew of organizations touting conservative issues. Also present is a replica of The Little White Schoolhouse, towed into place by the Ripon Chamber of Commerce. It was in the actual schoolhouse, still standing in Ripon some 90 miles northwest of Milwaukee, that a group of abolitionists launched their new Republican Party on March 20, 1854.

The abolitionists who met in Ripon in 1854 included many from a nearby socialist community known as Ceresco. They felt the freedom they sought should be enjoyed by all, including the millions of people enslaved in the U.S. Two years after the party formed, an Illinois lawyer named Abraham Lincoln joined. In 1858, he ran a failed Senate campaign against a pro-slavery Democrat, Stephen Douglas, then, in 1860, ran for president. Southern states began seceding within months of Lincoln’s election, launching the nation into civil war.

“They have nothing else to offer the American people. It’s scapegoating politics, rooted in stoking fear and stoking hate and creating the impression that there’s a dystopic reality at the border, which simply is not the case.”

Several years earlier, in 1850, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, giving bounty hunters from the South significant powers to abduct and remove suspected runaway enslaved people from the North to the South. When Joshua Glover, an escaped slave from Missouri living in Wisconsin, was caught and held overnight in the Milwaukee jail in 1854, a crowd of up to 6,000 formed, stormed the jail, freed Glover, and helped him escape to Canada. It was the Glover incident that spurred the Wisconsinites to finally launch their new abolitionist political party.

“Resolved… we will cooperate and be known as Republicans… we cordially invite all persons, whether of native or foreign birth, who are in favor of the objects expressed, to unite with us,” read one of the founding resolutions. The principal “object expressed,” their main goal, was the abolition of slavery in the United States.

One hundred seventy years later, the rhetoric pouring forth from the RNC podium sounds strikingly different. Back in 1854, immigrants were a large part of the population swelling new states like Wisconsin. Now, hostility to immigrants is a central theme of the Trump campaign. Former U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the streamlining of the GOP’s platform from 66 pages of detailed policy prescriptions to a compact, 16-page document.

“We must deport the millions of illegal Migrants who Joe Biden has deliberately encouraged to invade our Country,” it reads, promising to “begin [the] largest deportation program in American history.” Many delegates at the convention were enthusiastically holding signs that read, “Mass Deportation Now!”

On stage at the Fiserv Forum, MAGA Republican loyalists spoke from the podium, heaping praise on their party’s unquestioned leader, Donald Trump, just days after an attempted assassination that left him with a bloodied right ear over which he now wears a white bandage. A number of Republican delegates have been wearing symbolic ear patches in solidarity.

Speakers compared Trump to legendary leaders like President Abraham Lincoln, Civil War General then President Ulysses S. Grant and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. In the wake of last Saturday’s assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, several key Republicans, including Donald Trump himself, are calling for national unity. Unfortunately, most convention speakers are calling for unity by rallying their base against marginalized communities like immigrants, trans people, and others they consider undesirable.

“We are facing an invasion on our southern border—not figuratively, a literal invasion,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said from the podium. “Every day Americans are dying, murdered, assaulted, raped by illegal immigrants that the Democrats have released.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has engineered an armed standoff between Texas National Guardsmen and U.S. federal border agents, and who proudly busses desperate migrants to cities run by Democrats, spoke as well:

“Biden has welcomed into our country rapists, murderers, even terrorists.” In fact, the crime rate in the immigrant population is far less than in the general U.S. population.

Responding on the Democracy Now! news hour in Milwaukee, Jean Guerrero, a senior fellow at the UCLA Latina Futures 2050 Lab, said, “They have nothing else to offer the American people. It’s scapegoating politics, rooted in stoking fear and stoking hate and creating the impression that there’s a dystopic reality at the border, which simply is not the case.”

The answer to the current threat to democracy is more democracy. “Knocking on doors and talking to people,” Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera Action, suggested as the best organizing strategy, speaking on Democracy Now! “You need to get the word out, because every vote counts.”

[garthnadermemestash]

And just like that, nobody is talking about eating the dogs & cats