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10·10 days agoThe foundation of democracy is the constitution and universal human rights, not the election result. Even if you’d get 99% of the votes in a democracy, you must be held accountable to the law, and that is not limited to, but includes the protection of minorities.
3·10 days agoThis is related:
Scared for the future and LGBTQ+ rights? Here’s a way to cope with the election results – (archived)
With the results of the 2024 presidential election confirmed, members of the LGBTQ+ community are understandably distressed. Seeing as Donald Trump plans to rollback transgender rights and other protections for queer people, it’s clear why 86 percent of LGBTQ+ voters cast their ballots for Kamala Harris, and why 62 percent said they’d be “scared” for Trump to win.
Many are also alarmed that the hateful policies are seemingly what the majority of Americans have endorsed, but Dr. Michelle Forcier, a clinician with LGBTQ+ digital healthcare platform FOLX Health, believes it better to interpret the results in a different way.
Well, I don’t know what his right-wing base would think, but whatever it is, would it be a reason to not put him in jail? Is the judicial system different if a convicted felon’s base is energized?
[Edit: fixed typo.]
Thanks, @OpenStars and @Vodulas
We don’t know each other and I don’t know how to help you and others in a similar situation, but I’ve just read this:
Sarah McBride makes history as first transgender member of Congress
Maybe there is also a faint spark of hope today.
Just a question: Where can you see the voter turn out rate in this and possibly past elections? I can’t find that.
Oregon governor Tina Kotek ready to deploy National Guard if needed to combat election violence - (archived)
In an email to the Capital Chronicle, spokesperson Roxy Mayer said any voter intimidation or criminal acts aimed at undermining the election would not be tolerated and that the governor’s office is closely monitoring the situation, working with local, state and federal agencies to ensure Oregonians can safely vote.
- Deceptive Political Ads: Eight deceptive advertising networks have placed over 160,000 election and social issues ads across more than 340 Facebook pages in English and Spanish.
- Harmed Users: Some of the people who clicked on ads were unwittingly signed up for monthly credit card charges or lost health coverage, among other consequences.
- Spotty Enforcement: Meta removed some ads after first approving them, but it failed to catch others with similar or identical content — or to stop networks from launching new pages and ads.
I feel this is too simplistic. There are apparently parallels to Nazi Germany’s ideology, and the Nazis represent without doubt one of the worst regimes in human history. But they didn’t ‘invent’ this. Their racism, their hatred, and their view on women whose place is ‘in the family’ has been here for much longer, and it is by far not limited to the ‘Western’ world (in China, officials go from door to door urging women to become pregnant, just to name an example, and a recent UN study found that one in eight women and girls alive today experienced rape or sexual assault before they are 18 years old).
One thing I’m missing in this discussion is the role of men in the family. No one appears to talk about that, at least not publicly. (Just stumbled upon this 1 min video.)
But that’s just my opinion. Also, I’m not a historian or sociologist, so take this with a pinch of salt.
A scholar from Berkely has been investigating the possible impact of Project 2025 and Trump’s pissible second term on the environment:
The plan contains an extensive description of how they would constrain the reach and breadth of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by limiting enforcement and shifting its focus to what we sometimes call compliance assistance. In this role, the EPA would work directly with companies to try to help them reduce their environmental impact, but would move away from enforcement. This model has been tried federally under some Republican administrations and the absence of enforcement has repeatedly resulted in significant environmental degradation.
The effort to break up [NOAA] is part of a strategy of hear no evil, see no evil: If you don’t report on climate change, then perhaps it doesn’t exist.
It’s a good Q&A with Ken Alex, Director of Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE).
What kind of people are they? I cannot even think something like that, this is not in head.
1·22 days agoWe are about to watch the collapse of journalism in real time.
I respectfully disagree.
Conventional media may collapse, but we see very good media outlets doing a great job - ProPublica, 404media, Bellingcat, OCCRP, many local andvregional outlets, … It could turn out to be a good sign if and when the media industry gains a more decentralized structure (the Fediverse is of great support here).
So don’t subscribe to the large media papers and periodicals, support some independent smaller outlets that you like to read.
You need to read this in context. They want the office to help Trump “steamroll the kind of internal opposition he faced in his first term.”
This office is not to make the president’s moves ‘legally sound’ but rather to the opposite. They want to defund the agencies (it isn’t “legally sound” to “traumatize” EPA and other officials), to erase any reference to climate change so that “our energy companies” can work, and many other things.
Just read Project 2025: https://www.25and.me
Ian Bassin, a democracy expert, calls these moves “anticipatory obedience”: fear by owners that if Trump wins he could take vengeance on companies that cross him. They noted that the leadership at CNN and the Post changed after the Trump administration tried to block the takeover of CNN’s parent company and tried to deny a cloud computing contract for Amazon, Bezos’s company.
That’s very telling and a stark reminder why decentralization in media and the entire economy is important.
Washington Post editor-at-large Robert Kagan stepped down in the meantime. As Semafor reports on the newspaper’s recent editorial meeting:
[…] But there may be more: “people are shocked, furious, surprised,” said an editorial board member [referring to Jeff Bezos’ non-endorsement decision], citing internal discussions around resignation. “If you don’t have the balls to own a newspaper, don’t.”
Addition:
Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein Blast Washington Post’s ‘Surprising’ Decision Not To Endorse
"Under Jeff Bezos’s ownership, the Washington Post’s news operation has used its abundant resources to rigorously investigate the danger and damage a second Trump presidency could cause to the future of American democracy and that makes this decision even more surprising and disappointing, especially this late in the electoral process.”
2·28 days agoJust read a new report:
'Climate crunch time is here,’ new UN report warns
Annual greenhouse gas emissions are at an all-time high, and urgent action must be taken to prevent catastrophic spikes in temperature and avoid the worst impact of climate change, according to a new report released on Thursday by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
Border and immigration: How mass deportations would devastate Texas
Former President and current presidential candidate Donald Trump has promised, if elected, to implement the “largest deportation in the history of our country.” If such an operation were carried out, a second Trump regime could target around 11 million undocumented people in the United States. Trump’s running mate, vice presidential candidate JD Vance, has suggested starting with 1 million deportations a year—a figure that dwarfs the total reached in any year of Trump’s presidency or that of Barack Obama. The proposal has become a rallying cry for Trump’s base, with supporters brandishing matching signs at rallies reading “Mass Deportations Now.”
[…] Immigrants exist across our economic spectrum. They’re everywhere. They’re us. When we talk about eliminating them from our society, it’s like not just talking about cutting off a finger. We’re talking about cutting off entire legs from the thigh down.”
2·1 month agoMicrosoft/Crowdstrike last summer.
Not sure if this is still an issue?
Tell your Representative to Vote NO on H.R. 9495 to Stop Trump From Attacking Dissenting Organizations
Despite the fact that it was already defeated in a floor vote, Republicans in the House have a second chance to pass a bill that would give the incoming Trump administration unchecked power to shut down any non-profit organization that stands in the way of his MAGA agenda.
[…]
This time, we need all Democrats in the House to vote NO on H.R. 9495 and send a clear message to Trump that they will not just give in to his power grabs. If this bill passes with bipartisan support, there’s a real risk it gets folded into the annual Defense bill, which would put it on a glide path through the Senate. We can’t let that happen.