Justin's Political Corner

Michael Sainato at The Guardian:

Donald Trump’s administration could rack up a “monumental” bill and is breaking the law by firing government workers on spurious grounds, according to a top labor lawyer. Officials have cited “poor performance” when terminating thousands of federal workers. In many cases it’s not true, according to employees embroiled in the blitz, many of whom are now seeking legal advice. Jacob Malcom was acting deputy assistant secretary for policy and environmental management, and director of the office of policy analysis at the US Department of the Interior – until this week, when he resigned in protest against the mass firings of probationary employees. “This is being done under the guise of ‘poor performance’ or ‘skills not aligned with needs’ but neither are true,” he told the Guardian. “First, no evidence was provided that would suggest that poor performance; in fact, I know some of the individuals that were down my chain of supervision and know they were among the best performers. “Second, [there has been] no evidence or analysis of a lack of alignment with needs. Some of the people terminated in my chain actually work on performance and efficiency, so they literally work on the public argument of the Doge.” The so-called “department of government efficiency”, a unit led by billionaire tycoon Elon Musk, has been permitted by Trump to conduct a wide-ranging blitz across the federal government in the name of improving efficiency. But Suzanne Summerlin, a labor attorney, said an “astounding” level of “fraud, waste and abuse” had been occurring as the Trump administration sought to overhaul a string of departments and agencies. “These firings they’re conducting without following the law will result in hundreds of thousands of former federal employees being owed back pay, plus interest, plus benefits, plus attorneys fees,” said Summerlin. “When the bill comes it will be monumental.”

Doktor Zoom at Wonkette:

Right-wing fans of Donald Trump and de facto President Elon Musk have discovered yet another example of the most outrageous hypocrisy on the part of Democrats since that time Joe Biden petted a search dog in Maui and libs did nothing to stop him. The new supposed hypocrisy stems from some right-wing idiots rediscovering the fact that during the Clinton administration, then-Vice President Al Gore led a “Reinventing Government” commission (formally called the “National Partnership for Reinventing Government,” often shortened to “ReGo”). And that commission sought to streamline government operations and cut down on waste, exactly like Elon Musk’s DOGE thing! But instead of calling Gore’s ReGo project a “constitutional crisis,” nasty Democrats and Big Corporate Media cheered it for cutting waste and inefficiency! Even after it resulted in the elimination of some 380,000 jobs!!!!!!!1!! But when Elon Musk does the very same thing, all we hear about is laid off workers and starving children and the “nuclear stockpile” not being “kept safe”! — What a bunch of deranged hypocrites! [...] We won’t go into all the details of how Reinventing Government is different from Musk’s wrecking crew, because while there are plenty, they mostly stem from a single key distinction: ReGo was a carefully thought out government process that stayed within the law, involving both Congress and the agencies that were going to be affected. At no point did Al Gore invite a team of unvetted employees of Clinton’s biggest campaign donor to simply run roughshod through federal agencies, firing thousands of people at whim and declaring them corrupt. Really, he didn’t! [...]

Reinventing And Blowing Shit Up Are Different

Let’s just start with a great big obvious difference, which matters a lot: Al Gore was elected to office, unlike some prancing dipshit billionaires we could name here (Gore also leaned into his woodenness, as a decent white man who can’t dance should). Now, as Subpresident Trump has amply demonstrated in just one month (happy anniversary, fuckface), being elected doesn’t guarantee you’ll act within the law, but Gore’s efforts were, from the start, very much in line with how previous government commissions worked. The effort started right after Clinton and Gore took office, in March 1993, with an almost relentlessly normal process called the “National Performance Review,” even though the abbreviation sometimes confused Car Talk fans. It was a six-month review that included both government agencies and input from the public, which resulted in a formal report that made some 400 recommendations for making the federal government more efficient, through things like computerizing many processes, possibly combining some agencies, and yes, cutting staff.

Sebastian Murdock at HuffPost:

A new budget proposal by Republican lawmakers in Indiana would see funding cut to Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which puts books into the hands of thousands of kids across the state — but the country star is trying to get them to reconsider. “We are hopeful that Governor [Mike] Braun and the Indiana Legislature will continue this vital investment by restoring the state’s funding match for local Imagination Library programs,“ Parton’s rep said in a statement to the Daily Beast on Tuesday. ”The beauty of the Imagination Library is that it unites us all — regardless of politics — because every child deserves the chance to dream big and succeed.” The program, which was started by the country music superstar and philanthropist in 1995, puts free books into the hands of millions of kids across the country each month. In Indiana alone, more than 15,000 kids under the age of 5 receive free books from the program, the South Bend Tribune reported. But a new biennial budget proposal authored by state Rep. Jeffrey Thompson (R) and co-authored by Republican Reps. Greg Porter, Jack Jordan and Craig Snow, would see funding for the literacy program gutted.

Last year, the state spent $2.5 million on the program, and the Indiana State Library requested $4 million to expand the program this year. Instead, Braun’s recommendation is to stop funding the program entirely. The state’s usual match of 50% funding was slashed to zero in the new budget proposal. (The charity group United Way helps finance the other 50%, according to the Tribune.)

Singer Dolly Parton urges Gov. Mike Braun (R) and Republicans in Indiana to not eliminate her Imagination Library program for kids.

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Alex Bollinger at LGBTQ Nation:

A new bill in Iowa would make attending drag performances with one’s own kids a felony punishable by up to five years in jail, and it just moved out of an Iowa House of Representatives subcommittee. The language of the bill is so broad that it could include any performance involving a transgender person, even if it’s not a drag performance, opponents argue.

House Study Bill 158 would make it illegal to take a minor to a drag performance, even if that performance is family-friendly. Parents could be charged with a class D felony if they take their kids to a drag story hour, and businesses could be fined $10,000 for allowing minors to attend such a performance. The bill isn’t about lewd drag performances; it’s about any performance where a performer wears “clothing, makeup, accessories or other gender signifiers” that are “different than the performer’s gender assigned at birth.” The bill says this applies to any show that includes singing, dancing, reading, or performing “before an audience for entertainment.” Maxwell Mowitz of the LGBTQ+ organization One Iowa told the subcommittee that the bill could make it illegal for people to bring children to hear him speak because he’s transgender, the Iowa Capital Dispatch reports. “I’m a transgender person,” he said. “I was assigned female at birth, but I dress and live as a masculine person. So this bill targets me. This bill also defines performance as reading: Today, I’m reading testimony in front of a group of people, from the perspective of a trans person.” “It seems to me that the language of this bill could be bent to make it illegal for a minor to attend an event in which I am speaking, including this very subcommittee, simply because I live ‘in drag,’ as a different gender than the sex that I was assigned at birth, which is drag according to this legislation.” He said that this could affect whether kids are allowed to see artworks that involve cross-dressing, including movies like Mrs. Doubtfire and Mulan and plays like Twelfth Night.

This is anti-drag extremism: Iowa HSB158 is a bill that punishes adults attending drag performances with one’s own kids a felony punishable by up to five years in jail.

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Ryan Adamczeski at The Advocate:

Republicans on the Louisiana Public Service Commission have voted to strip the state's only LGBTQ+ elected official of his leadership role after he defended Dr. Rachel Levine. The commission's GOP majority voted to remove Davante Lewis from his position as PSC vice chairman on Wednesday in response to a post from Lewis calling Republican Gov. Jeff Landry an "asshole." While conservatives claimed the vote was in the name of civility, Lewis says that it is "hypocrisy at its finest" and that his opposition "deliberately targeted me for political reasons." "I don't believe anybody of the trans community or the LGBTQ community, the immigrant, Black, Asian, Latino, poor, working, union communities should be attacked simply for who they are," Lewis tells The Advocate. "If you want to attack people for their identity and make fun of them, then I'm gonna call you out on that. This may not be the last time I call [Landry] or anybody an asshole if they're doing asshole behavior." Lewis' post came in response to Landry's public attack against Levine, an admiral in the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and pediatrician who is a trans woman. Levine was the highest-ranking out trans person in President Joe Biden's administration. Landry claimed that anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was recently confirmed as Department of Health and Human Services Secretary, is a "major upgrade," despite not actually replacing Levine, who served as assistant secretary.

[...] The motion passed 3-2 along party lines, though without the support of the community, as the meeting was attended by dozens of civilians who unanimously spoke in support of Lewis. PSC meetings are usually empty — Lewis says "out of people who are not a lobbyist or lawyer, maybe on average three or four will attend these meetings" — but yesterday's was attended by "about 50 to 60 plus people who had no agenda" other than to defend him. While the Republicans on the board wouldn't be able to "get two people to come rally for them at a commission meeting if they paid you," Lewis says his support was all "organic," as he "didn't rally people" and "didn't ask for anybody to show up."

Anne Lutz Fernandez for The UnPopulist:

Given the sweeping—and illegal—exercises of executive power emanating from the Trump White House, the future of K-12 education has understandably taken a back seat. Indeed, compared to the sideshow of Trump’s Cabinet picks—including his elevation of a vaccine skeptic as health secretary and a Crusades enthusiast as defense secretary—his education secretary, Linda McMahon, is relatively unremarkable: McMahon has, after all, run a federal agency before—the U.S. Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term—though she has no experience in education save for a one-year stint on the Connecticut Board of Education in 2009.

News of Trump’s plans to gut the Department of Education has certainly made waves. But given that the federal government has a limited role in K-12 education and limited control over education spending, too few are focused on considering what public education under Trump’s second term might look like. If Uncle Sam is out of the K-12 business, at least President Trump won’t be using his power to interfere with local schools, right? If only! Trump, working with a GOP-controlled Congress, can inflict damage not just to American education but through it. The track record of MAGA-run states, the policy designs of Project 2025, and Trump’s own statements reveal a clear interest in using schools to sunder the separation of church and state.

Finding Religion

Across eight decades, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed and reaffirmed the unconstitutionality of religious indoctrination in public schools. In McCollum v. Board of Education (1948), it ruled that religious instruction in public education buildings during the school day violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. In Engel v. Vitale (1962), the court concluded that public prayer in schools did the same. Later rulings—in Lee v. Weisman (1992) and Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe (2000)—extended the ban on public prayer beyond the school day to graduations and athletics, respectively. Following Trump’s first-term conservative makeover of the Supreme Court, however, the nation’s highest court has signaled an interest in revisiting these issues. This has emboldened MAGA leaders in various states to start breaching the wall of separation between church and state, particularly at the K-12 level.

In the past few years alone:

Florida, notoriously, passed the Don’t Say Gay law in 2022 barring the discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in primary school.

Texas passed a law allowing public schools to hire chaplains in lieu of school counselors and mental health professionals; similar proposals followed in other states, with bills passing in Florida and Louisiana.

Oklahoma’s top education official has ordered that the Bible be taught in grades 5-12, a mandate that includes the state spending $3 million on Bibles whose specifications match Trump’s preferred “God Bless the U.S.A.” version or Donald Trump Jr.’s preferred “We The People” version. Oklahoma State Sen. Dusty Deevers praised the move and added: “It seems difficult, if not impossible, to adequately teach on matters such as U.S. or world history without a significant emphasis on the Bible.”

Louisiana passed legislation last year requiring that public schools put up a poster-sized display of the Ten Commandments in every classroom. In Stone v. Graham (1980), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled a Kentucky statute requiring each classroom to display the Ten Commandments unconstitutional. While that did not seem to deter Louisiana’s new Republican governor from passing last year’s law—since then, a federal judge has blocked it, deeming it “unconstitutional on its face.”

Nine states, including South Carolina, Idaho, and Montana, have approved the use of “curricula” produced by Prager U, an explicitly right-wing advocacy organization that enlists figures like Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk, and Heather Mac Donald to feature in its content. Some video themes include: warning about the consequences of society dismissing Judeo-Christian values and being skeptical of the idea that Islam is peaceful.

Texas approved the use of a “Bible-infused” curriculum for elementary schools that privileges Christianity. Though Texas made the curriculum “optional,” schools that adopt it will receive additional funding.

Ohio passed a law requiring release time for off-site religious instruction during the school day, which is not only logistically tantamount to approving a field trip on an unusually regular basis, but inserts religious instruction into a student’s school schedule.

West Virginia is allowing Intelligent Design to be taught in science classes in public schools.

To be sure, these state efforts have met resistance—from students, educators, parents, and some Christian clergy, such as Rev. Jeff Sims, who describes Louisiana’s law requiring every classroom to display the Ten Commandments as “gross intrusion of civil authority into matters of faith.” But these state initiatives are coming at a time when the current president, and the current Supreme Court, which he has shaped more than any other president—and may have the chance of shaping further—appear interested in challenging long-held principles about keeping religion out of public schooling.

[...]

K-12: A Vehicle for MAGA Culture Wars

Despite seeking to dismantle the Department of Education, Trump wants to leverage education funding against schools that offend MAGA: if they require vaccines, for example, or are “pushing Critical Race Theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children,” they’ll get cut off. His language on this score should be familiar—it’s the boilerplate used by MAGA figures who use claims of liberal indoctrination in public schools as a pretext for injecting their own agenda. The GOP-led House passed a bill last year modeled on parents’ rights bills that MAGA has pushed in states. There is nothing wrong with empowering parents, but this is a genre of the laws that has restricted curriculum and banned books in numerous red states. The federal bill stalled in the previous Congress and it’s part of the Project 2025 agenda to prioritize its passage now. But that’s not all. Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership” document goes to extreme lengths to characterize any discussion of transgender identity as pornography that needs to censored and its purveyors, including educators and librarians, criminally punished.

[...] Since 2021, 23 states have passed what PEN America calls “education gag orders” on what MAGA has variously referred to as “divisive concepts,” “anti-woke,” “CRT,” or “parents’ rights” laws. These state laws restrict and dictate curriculum—especially in history, English, science, and health classes—often along ideological lines, wresting control from local districts. These laws are often highly punitive and intentionally vague in order to spur overcompliance. Each school district eyes the other to avoid standing out. The result: similar lists of books banned across districts. In Tennessee, after Wilson County Schools pulled 400 books from shelves for review, other districts in the state used their list “as a template.” Some of the legislation facilitates the removal of books based on the complaint of a single person. Under the guise of local control, MAGA is using the levers of the state to censor schools and remake education to promote a religious, Christian vision of society in direct violation of the First Amendment.

Michelangelo Signorile at The Signorile Report:

I ordered four free Covid tests from the government last night after reading that the Trump administration was shutting down the program—in which tests are distributed to Americans—and was considering destroying 160 millions tests. Until the story blew up after the Washington Post began reporting on it, they were planning to stop taking orders at 8 p.m., “transitioning away from government-distributed at-home tests to the commercial market just as we have in the past,” said a Department of Health and Human Services spokesman. Even if “transitioning away” from the free distribution was a good idea, why would you destroy all the tests you have? We, the American people, paid for those tests! Trump and his lieutenants claim they’re about stopping waste and fraud, but here they were, about to destroy $500 million in tests that we may urgently need if there is a Covid surge. Sure, it costs money to stockpile them. But it actually costs more to destroy them—and even more to buy new ones if you need them. We all remember when, under Trump’s first term, they didn’t have enough tests. Now they were talking about destroying what they had. Sheer lunacy. Why? It seems pretty simple. Trump hates them. He hates the idea of them. He hates the mere presence of of them. He hates what they imply: That testing is important, and that the government should have enough tests—and that he completely bungled it himself, and did not make that a priority in his first administration. Trump’s dire mismanagement of Covid was highlighted by the shortage of tests early on (and their really haphazard plans to get them), which would have helped slow the transmission of the virus. And, in his mind, Trump lost the election in 2020 because of the pandemic. After the Washington Post revealed the plan to destroy the tests—having obtained documents and emails—the administration reversed course in a rare turnaround, and said it will continue to take orders and stockpile the tests. I’m sure the reversal was more about the optics of destroying hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer-funded medical tools while they’re claiming to cut waste than anything else.

And it exposes what a madman Trump truly is, someone in continued cognitive decline who, like other dictators, is obsessed with reconfiguring the world—carving it up with Vladimir Putin, and, perhaps, President Xi of China, his fellow authoritarians—while letting Elon Musk slash and burn everything domestically. The cruel, frightening action of removing transgender people and the “T” in LGBT from the National Stonewall Monument website was right out of the playbook of deranged, controlling, and compulsive fascists—as is the destroying of Covid tests simply because of what they represent. It’s similar to his drive in cutting off of foreign aid, causing millions of people in what Trump has called “shithole” countries to suffer and die of disease. Musk is behind many of the cuts in funding, and he surely is down with the transgender erasure—he’s a transphobic hatemonger who berated his own daughter who came out as trans—but Trump is the president, making the decisions. He clearly likes these ideas when they’re brought to him. And we know many of the most horrendous actions are driven by Trump and his own racist impulses, which have led his charge against diversity, equity and inclusion.

Jacob Bogage at Washington Post:

President Donald Trump is preparing to dissolve the leadership of the U.S. Postal Service and absorb the independent mail agency into his administration, potentially throwing the 250-year-old mail provider and trillions of dollars of e-commerce transactions into turmoil. Trump is expected to issue an executive order as soon as this week to fire the members of the Postal Service’s governing board and place the agency under the control of the Commerce Department and Secretary Howard Lutnick, according to six people familiar with the plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals. The board is planning to fight Trump’s order, three of those people told The Washington Post. In an emergency meeting Thursday, the board retained outside counsel and gave instructions to sue the White House if the president were to remove members of the board or attempt to alter the agency’s independent status. Two of the group’s GOP members — Derek Kan, a former Trump administration official, and Mike Duncan, a former chair of the Republican National Committee — were not in attendance, according to a person familiar with the gathering. The two did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Trump’s order to place the Commerce Department in charge of the Postal Service would probably violate federal law, according to postal experts. Another executive order earlier this week instructed independent agencies to align more closely with the White House, though that order is likely to prompt court challenges and the Postal Service by law is generally exempt from executive orders. Members of the Postal Service’s bipartisan board are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

Trump, at Lutnick’s urging, has mused about privatizing the Postal Service, and Trump’s presidential transition team vetted candidates to replace Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a retired logistics executive and GOP fundraising official who took office in 2020 during Trump’s first term.

[...] From its founding in 1775 until 1970, the U.S. mail system was a political organ of the White House. Presidents were known to appoint their political allies or campaign leaders as postmaster general, and the mail chief was often a key White House negotiator with Congress. But the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, the product of a crippling nationwide mail strike, led Congress to split the agency off into a freestanding organization, purposefully walling it off from political tinkering. Americans consistently rank the Postal Service among their most-beloved government agencies, second only to the National Park Service. A 2024 study by the Pew Research Center found more than 70 percent of Americans had a favorable view of the agency, a view that was similar among Democrats and Republicans. Trump’s first administration sought to test the agency’s independence. Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s first-term treasury secretary, attempted to control the 2020 hiring process that brought DeJoy to the Postal Service, and a task force run out of Mnuchin’s department recommended dramatically shrinking the scope of the agency and preparing it for privatization via an initial public offering.

During the 2025 State Of The State address in the state capitol of Springfield on Wednesday, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker (D) delivered what could arguably be his most impactful address of his career, as he could be floating a run for the Presidency in 2028, regardless of whether or not he runs again for Governor for 2026. Pritzker rightly invoked similarities between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler’s evisceration of constitutional governance and democracy en route to become an autocratic dictatorship in their respective nations. This speech from the Governor was a needed shot of truth that needed to be heard by Americans seeking a way to resist Tyrant 47’s anti-American regime. Republicans responded to Pritzker’s much-needed dose of truth with infantile faux outrage and crocodile tears. [...] This speech is why I am glad that Pritzker is my Governor of the Land of Lincoln, and may be the best our state has ever had (or least in the modern era). I would love to see him run for President on the Democratic ticket.

Full SOTS speech, via NBC Chicago:

During the 2025 Illinois State Of The State address in the state capitol of Springfield on Wednesday, Governor JB Pritzker (D) delivered a forthright address that was a needed shot of truth that needed to be heard by Americans seeking a way to resist Tyrant 47’s anti-American regime, in which Pritzker called out the disturbing similarities between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler's evisceration of constitutional governance to install an autocratic dictatorship.

Maya Yang at The Guardian:

The Trump administration can for now continue its mass firings of federal employees, a federal judge ruled on Thursday, rejecting a bid by a group of labor unions to halt Donald Trump’s dramatic downsizing of the roughly 2.3 million-strong federal workforce. The ruling by the US district judge Christopher Cooper in Washington DC federal court is temporary while the litigation plays out. But it is a win for the Trump administration as it seeks to purge the federal workforce and slash what it deems wasteful and fraudulent government spending. The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) and four other unions sued last week to block the administration from firing hundreds of thousands of federal workers and granting buyouts to employees who quit voluntarily.

The unions are seeking to block eight agencies including the Department of Defense, Department of Health and Human Services, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Department of Veterans Affairs from implementing mass layoffs. In his 16-page order, Cooper started by acknowledging Trump’s “onslaught of executive actions that have caused, some say by design, disruption and even chaos in widespread quarters of American society”. He went on to add: “Affected citizens and their advocates have challenged many of these actions on an emergency basis in this Court and others across the country.” However, Cooper on Thursday said, he likely lacks the power to hear the case, and the unions instead must file complaints with a federal labor board that hears disputes between unions and federal agencies. Cooper wrote: “NTEU fails to establish that it is likely to succeed on the merits because this Court likely lacks subject matter jurisdiction over the claims it asserts. The Court will therefore deny the unions’ motion for a temporary restraining order and, for the same reasons, deny their request for a preliminary injunction.”

[...] The plaintiffs, which include the United Auto Workers, the NTEU and the National Federation of Federal Employees, said in their lawsuit that White House efforts, including through Doge, to shrink the federal workforce violate separation-of-powers principles by undermining Congress’s authority to fund federal agencies. The unions said that unless the court intervenes, they will be irreparably harmed by lost revenue from dues-paying members who were either fired or retired early to take buyouts.

[...] Most civil service employees can be fired legally only for bad performance or misconduct, and they have a host of due process and appeal rights if they are let go arbitrarily. The probationary employees primarily targeted in last week’s wave have fewer legal protections.

Erin Reed at Erin In The Morning:

A new Gallup poll released Thursday reveals that despite a historic wave of legislative attacks on LGBTQ+ rights, the number of Americans identifying as LGBTQ+ continues to grow. Over the past few years, right-wing politicians have introduced and passed more bills targeting LGBTQ+ people than at any other point in U.S. history—bills that restrict discussions of same-sex relationships in schools, limit access to gender-affirming healthcare, undermine passport rights, legalize conversion therapy, and erase LGBTQ+ history from curricula. Yet, rather than forcing people back into the closet, these policies appear to have had the opposite effect: more Americans than ever before openly identify as LGBTQ+.

According to the Gallup poll released today, 9.3% of U.S. adults identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or another non-heterosexual identity in 2024. This marks a nearly twofold increase since 2020, the year many of the most aggressive legislative attacks on LGBTQ+ rights began in earnest. Among those surveyed, 1.3% of U.S. adults identified as transgender—up from 0.9% in 2023—suggesting that previous estimates placing the transgender population at just 0.5% of Americans may have significantly underestimated its size. The largest increases from the previous survey were among gay and bisexual individuals, whose identification rates rose by 0.6% and 0.8% since 2023, respectively. This directly contradicts the widely debunked “social contagion” theory often cited by anti-trans legislators, which falsely claims that transgender identity spreads through peer influence. Instead, the data reveals a broader rise in LGBTQ+ identification across all categories, suggesting that the primary driving force behind these numbers is not social contagion but increased societal acceptance, allowing more people to come out and live authentically than ever before.

Further supporting the idea that increased social acceptance is driving the rise in LGBTQ+ identification, the Gallup poll found that Gen Z and Millennial respondents report the highest rates of LGBTQ+ identification. Among Gen Z respondents, 23.1% identify as LGBTQ+, while 14.2% of Millennials do the same. Notably, other surveys have consistently shown that these generations also demonstrate higher levels of acceptance toward LGBTQ+ people, suggesting a correlation between greater societal acceptance and a growing willingness to openly identify as part of the community. The rise in LGBTQ+ identification is occurring alongside some of the most aggressive attacks on the community in modern history.

A recently released Gallup Poll reveals that nearly 10% of adult Americans (9.3% to be precise) are some form of LGBTQ+ identification, an increase from 7.6% in the 2023 edition. 1.3% of American adults are trans, an increase from 0.9% in 2023.

This is despite the deeply anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments being pushed by Republicans across America with the enactments of harmful and bigoted policies.

See Also:

The Advocate: More adults than ever — including 23% of Gen-Z — identify as LGBTQ+

Walter Einenkel at Daily Kos:

A California congressman is finding out what happens when you dare to mock Elon Musk in Donald Trump's America. Rep. Robert Garcia on Thursday posted a letter he received from the Department of Justice saying that billionaire co-President Musk and his minions in the so-called Department of Government Efficiency are concerned that the outspoken Democrat is threatening them. “So if you criticize Elon Musk, Trump’s DOJ will send you this letter,” Garcia wrote on Bluesky. “Members of Congress must have the right to forcefully oppose the Trump Administration. I will not be silenced.” The letter addressed to Garcia and signed by interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia Edward R. Martin Jr. quotes the congressman’s Feb. 12 appearance on CNN. "What the American public wants is for us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight,” Garcia said when asked how Democrats can stop the unelected Musk’s takeover of the U.S. government. “This is an actual fight for democracy.” [...] Martin appeared to be referring to the Delivering on Government Efficiency subcommittee’s first chaotic hearing, where Garcia chided chair Marjorie Taylor Greene’s previous antics. “In the last Congress, Chairwoman Greene literally showed a dick pic in our Oversight congressional hearing. So, I thought I'd bring one as well,” Garcia said before proffering a picture of Musk.  During his CNN appearance, host Brianna Keilar asked Garcia a question: “Do you think that calling Elon Musk a ‘dick’ is effective messaging for confronting what is a potentially irreversible transformation of the U.S. government?” The congressman pulled no punches in his response.

[...] Who is to say if Musk is indeed a “dick” or not? The fact of the matter is that calling the world’s richest man a “dick” isn’t a physical threat, and Garcia’s First Amendment rights allow him to use the descriptor.  So “dick” or not, self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” Musk and the Department of Justice have no right to be threatening a congressman.

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) was sent a letter of intimidation from right-wing MAGA blowhard DC US Attorney Ed Martin for rightly calling co-”President” Elon Musk a “dick” on CNN.

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Kyle Mantyla at RWW:

From the moment the Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that the right of same-sex couples to marry was guaranteed by the Constitution, right-wing anti-LGBTQ activists have insisted that the ruling is illegitimate and must be overturned. Their effort to bring that about kicked into high gear after President Donald Trump used his first term in office to fill the Supreme Court with far-right ideologues who subsequently overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. For nearly a decade now, right-wing activists have been plotting to get cases before the Supreme Court that the court's right-wing justices can use to overturn its ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, and appearing on a World Prayer Network call Wednesday night, religious-right attorney Mat Staver declared that the time is now "ripe" for that to happen. "There is no so-called constitutional right in the Constitution to same-sex marriage. That's ridiculous," Staver said. "Obergefell will be overturned. It's not an if, it's just a matter of when."

Along the same lines, Christian nationalist Oklahoma state Sen. David Bullard appeared on "Jenna Ellis In The Morning" on Thursday to discuss a bill he has introduced to provide tax credits to married couples who have "natural" children. This bill was written explicitly to exclude LGBTQ couples, which Bullard explained is designed to "push back on Obergefell."

Anna Kooiman and Taylor Delandro at NewsNation:

(NewsNation) — President Donald Trump’s new “Make America Healthy Again” commission is reviewing certain vaccines and possible links to chronic illnesses as some states push to restrict the use of COVID-19 vaccines. Vaccines using messenger RNA, or mRNA, technology became widespread during the pandemic. With limited long-term studies available, the Trump administration is revisiting these vaccines. Vaccines using mRNA are based on RNA technology that dates back to the 1960s. In response to the coronavirus pandemic, Pfizer and Moderna used the technology, which teaches the immune system to fight the virus without containing the virus itself, for their COVID-19 vaccines. Essentially, mRNA vaccines aim to boost the immune system’s ability to defend against various diseases. Three states are independently addressing safety concerns related to mRNA vaccines.

States considering mRNA vaccine bans

In Idaho, lawmakers are considering Senate Bill 1036, known as the Doug Cameron Act, which seeks a 10-year pause on “gene therapy immunizations to ensure the safety and well-being of all Idahoans.” The bill, named after an Idaho rancher who claims he became paralyzed in 2021 after taking the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, also seeks to ban RNA-based immunizations. On Monday, Idaho’s Senate Health and Welfare Committee heard arguments regarding the bill for two hours but did not vote on it. In Montana, lawmakers considered similar legislation, but House Bill 371 failed after 66 representatives voted against it, with 34 in favor.  In Florida, State Surgeon General Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo has urged doctors to stop recommending mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

Multiple states are seeking to implement bans on mRNA-based vaccines.

Gabriel Sherman at Vanity Fair:

In the past week, Donald Trump has signaled a desire to rule like a strongman rather than a president constrained by constitutional norms. Last Friday, Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, scolded democratic NATO allies and met with the leader of Germany’s extreme-right AfD party. On Saturday, Trump declared on social media: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” This Tuesday, Trump blamed Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy for the brutal war that was launched by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. “You should have never started it,” Trump falsely said of Zelenskyy, when in fact Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The US president then doubled down on the feud Wednesday, calling Zelenskyy a “dictator.” Democrats are in the minority in both the House and Senate, which means the federal courts and congressional Republicans are the only guardrails on Trump’s second term. So far the judicial system seems to be holding—though a Trump-packed Supreme Court is now destined to rule on all manner of alleged overreach in the coming months. (And it’s an open question as to whether Trump will actually abide by rulings that go against him.)

Republicans in Congress, however, have consistently folded—approving all of Trump’s Cabinet picks, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, with only a faint whiff of pushback on some of their boundary-scorching backgrounds. The confirmations predictably short-circuited many Democratic observers, but the rolling headlines of late have even some Republicans decrying the seeming erosion of checks and balances in recent weeks. “These are the heirs of the Greatest Generation, and they turned out to be the worst generation,” says Stuart Stevens, who served as a chief strategist on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and has since left the GOP, joining the anti-Trump Lincoln Project as a senior adviser. “It’s tempting to compare Republicans to Prussian aristocrats in 1930s Germany. But Prussian aristocrats were more responsible. They were dealing with civil unrest and the threat of a communist takeover. Republicans today have historically low unemployment, a record stock market. What’s their excuse?”

Political survival is one. Senate and House Republicans know Trump will orchestrate the running of a primary challenger backed by Elon Musk’s unlimited resources if a member defies him. But this is not the whole story of Republican subservience to the president. In private, Republicans talk about their fear that Trump might incite his MAGA followers to commit political violence against them if they don’t rubber-stamp his actions. “They’re scared shitless about death threats and Gestapo-like stuff,” a former member of Trump’s first administration tells me. According to one source with direct knowledge of the events, North Carolina senator Thom Tillis told people that the FBI warned him about “credible death threats” when he was considering voting against Pete Hegseth’s nomination for defense secretary. Tillis ultimately provided the crucial 50th vote to confirm the former Fox & Friends host to lead the Pentagon. [...]

From the moment Trump descended his golden escalator in June 2015 to announce his first run for president, he injected menace into his political rhetoric. On the campaign trail he talked about wanting to punch protesters in the face. During his first term, he praised Montana’s then representative Greg Gianforte for physically attacking Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs in 2017. “Any guy that can do a body slam, he is my type!” Trump said. (Gianforte later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault and received a six-month deferred jail sentence.) When protests erupted after a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd in 2020, Trump called protesters “thugs” and said: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” The phrase echoed a remark made in the 1960s by a Miami police chief associated with stoking racial tensions in the city (Trump claimed he wasn’t aware of its origins). In a September 2020 debate against Joe Biden, Trump refused to condemn white supremacist violence and told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”

January 6 further catalyzed GOP fear of Trump-inspired violence. Romney told his biographer, McKay Coppins, that an undercurrent of anxiety thwarted Republican efforts to formally punish Trump for his role in inciting the riot. “One Republican congressman confided to Romney that he wanted to vote for Trump’s second impeachment, but chose not to out of fear for his family’s safety,” Coppins wrote in his book. “When one senator, a member of leadership, said he was leaning toward voting to convict, the others urged him to reconsider. You can’t do that, Romney recalled someone saying. Think of your personal safety, said another. Think of your children. The senator eventually decided they were right.” Former Wyoming representative and prominent anti-Trump Republican Liz Cheney told CNN that House GOP members confided to her that they were “afraid for their own security—afraid, in some instances, for their lives.” Representative Jason Crow of Colorado told NBC News after January 6: “I had a lot of conversations with my Republican colleagues last night, and a couple of them broke down in tears—saying that they are afraid for their lives if they vote for this impeachment.”

Republican Peter Meijer, then a Michigan representative, told Atlantic writer Tim Alberta in 2021 that one colleague seemed to nearly have a nervous breakdown over fears of being harmed by MAGA supporters if he were to vote to certify the 2020 election results: “He asked his new colleague if he was okay,” Alberta reported. “The member responded that he was not; that no matter his belief in the legitimacy of the election, he could no longer vote to certify the results, because he feared for his family’s safety. ‘Remember, this wasn’t a hypothetical. You were casting that vote after seeing with your own two eyes what some of these people are capable of,’ Meijer says. ‘If they’re willing to come after you inside the US Capitol, what will they do when you’re at home with your kids?’” Trump’s mass pardoning of January 6 participants has recentered those events in Republican minds of late.

Gabriel Sherman wrote a solid column in Vanity Fair on how the threat of political violence from far-right MAGA cultists serve to keep Republicans onside in enacting the dangerous Trump agenda.

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Dean Obeidallah at The Dean's Report:

Donald Trump and Elon Musk are not hiding their goal of gutting Social Security. In fact, this week they went public with their campaign to lay the groundwork for massive cuts. On Tuesday, Trump stated that we need to remove “millions” of Americans from Social Security, telling reporters, “We have millions and millions of people over 100 years old receiving Social Security benefits.” He then added point blank, “If you take all of those millions of people off Social Security, all of a sudden we have a very powerful Social Security.” On Wednesday, Trump—who is a convicted felon for cheating in the 2016 election--doubled down on this false claim. While speaking in Florida, Trump escalated his lies to falsely claim there are nearly 20 million people–out of the 70 million who receive Social Security benefits—illegally in the system. Trump even went into detail stating that, “Listen to this – 3.6 million people are on Social Security rolls from the age of 110 years old to 119,” he said. “Do you think there are really that many? Those people are seriously old.” Trump later added there are “3.5 million people from the age 140 to 149 years old” on Social Security. And to big cheers of the audience, he added this whopper, “There is one person on Social Security who is 360 years old--which is approximately 110 years older than our country.” Elon Musk parroted those very lies telling his millions of followers on Twitter: “Having tens of millions of people marked in Social Security as “ALIVE” when they are definitely dead is a HUGE problem.” The unelected billionaire Musk added, “Obviously. Some of these people would have been alive before America existed as a country.” In response to Trump and Musk’s comments, we’ve seen a tsunami of fact checks making it clear that they are both lying. For example, as ABC News detailed, Trump and Musk are “falsely claiming that tens of millions of dead people over 100 years old are receiving Social Security payments.” ABC News as well as other fact checkers have explained that the “millions” who are noted as being 150 years old in the system are there because that is how the computer system refers to people who don’t have a complete date of birth or other info.

And no, neither Trump nor Musk deserve credit for flagging this issue. It was raised by past Inspector General reports including after a 2023 audit which highlighted that there was 18.9 million people listed as 100 or older in the system. But—and this is a big but--the report concluded, “almost none” of the 18.9 million were receiving Social Security payments. Instead, only 44,000 people over 100 were getting benefits — closer to the actual centenarian population. Trump and Musk are intentionally lying to make people believe that nearly 20 million dead people are receiving Social Security. Why? So they can justify cutting in the area of 25% of the program. The problem is too many people dismiss this as bluster. You do so at you and your family’s peril because I can 100% guarantee Trump and Musk are coming for Social Security.

[...] Trump will tell you he won’t cut Social Security--but he is a convicted liar. In fact, on Tuesday, he was on Fox News declaring he would never cut Medicaid—but come literally the next day, he vocally embraced the House GOP’s proposal to cut billions from that very program that is a lifeline for more than 72 million people. Democrats should be hitting Trump and Musk on this issue daily. We owe it to the millions and millions of Americans who have contributed to the program to not allow a convicted felon and the richest person in the world screw them out of what they have earned!