Lonestarblue
Lonestarblue's JournalThis one weird trick could stop US women from voting
I'm sure we all read about this hateful law when the House passed it last year. The Senate hasn't voted on it yet, but we need a campaign against it because it's definitely aimed at preventing women, and black women especially, from voting in the midterms.
"Women who changed their name when they got married may also face a logistical nightmare: reports show that as many as 69 million women who have taken their spouse’s name don’t have a birth certificate that matches their legal name. “The legislation does not mention the potential option for these Americans to present change-of-name documentation or a marriage certificate in combination with a birth certificate to prove their citizenship,” the liberal thinktank the Center for American Progress noted.
To make things even more complicated for everyone, the Save Act would also disrupt online voter registration. Americans would have to appear in person, with their original documents, simply to update their voter registration information.
A proof-of-citizenship law similar to the Save Act has been tried before, by the way, including between 2013 and 2017 in Kansas. And guess what? It was an expensive disaster that prevented more than 30,000 Kansans from voting. It’s well-established that these sorts of laws disproportionately harm low-income, disabled, married women, and marginalized voters. Why are the Republicans so keen on making it harder for these groups to vote? I’m sure I don’t need to spell it out for you."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/31/save-act-voting-arwa-mahdawi
Trump's Lies Have a Purpose
David French has a good piece in the NYT today on Trump’s lies and plans to use ICE and CBP to control the country. The whole article is worth reading (link below is free).
“It’s important to know exactly what is happening in our country. President Trump suffered a setback in Minneapolis. His larger project proceeds apace, however, and it’s creating a parallel MAGA reality that is laying the foundation for a further escalation of state violence.
Here’s how the process works. First, federal officers (mainly from ICE and the Border Patrol) engage in extraordinarily aggressive and lawless conduct, including initiating physical contact with protesters or members of the public.
And they’re not limiting their aggression to criminal illegal immigrants, the “worst of the worst.” They’re detaining people who have been granted lawful status, they’ve swept up citizens in the dragnet and they’re claiming the authority to enter people’s homes without judicial warrants granting them a right to search.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/29/opinion/truump-ice-minnesota-noem-miller.html?unlocked_article_code=1.IFA.MIq5.fJoXhMQWNkny&smid=url-share
How a billionaire with interests in Greenland encouraged Trump to acquire the territory
So now we get to the truth about Trump’s obsession with Greenland. As usual, it’s all about the money and rewarding billionaire buddies for donating big bucks to him. Ronald Lauder had invested in Greenland and no doubt wanted a better return on his money. Lauder also suggested that the US explore Ukraine’s minerals. As we all know, Trump makes decisions solely in the interests of his billionaire friends.
“One day during his first term, Donald Trump summoned a top aide to discuss a new idea. “Trump called me down to the Oval Office,” John Bolton, national security adviser in 2018, told the Guardian. “He said a prominent businessman had just suggested the US buy Greenland.”
It was an extraordinary proposal. And it originated from a longtime friend of the president who would go on to acquire business interests in the Danish territory.
The businessman, Bolton learned, was Ronald Lauder. Heir to a makeup fortune – the global cosmetics brand Estée Lauder – he had known Trump, a fellow wealthy New Yorker, for more than 60 years.
Bolton said he discussed the Greenland proposition with Lauder. After the billionaire’s intervention, a White House team began to explore ways to increase US sway in the vast Arctic territory controlled by Denmark.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/15/ronald-lauder-billionaire-donor-donald-trump-ukraine-greenland
Forget petty bribes, 'state capture' is corruption so deep it is shaping the rules of democracy itself
I think this article describes where we are as a nation today. As the writer says in describing the difference between the rot of corruption through extortion and petty bribes and state capture, “But there is a deeper, more dangerous form of rot – state capture.” After reading this article, I believe we are well into corruption AS the system, and this includes at least five of the MAGAs on the Supreme Court. I don’t know about Barrett yet. The paragraphs below are from the end of the article.
“Escaping state capture – domestic or transnational – requires more than transparency reforms or ethics codes. Those are sticking plasters on a cancer. Real change demands independent judiciaries, fearless investigative journalism, and a civil society prepared to fight entrenched power. As evidenced by youth movements across Africa and Asia, meaningful change can sometimes necessitate extraordinary measures: widespread protest or the involvement of the international community.
Recent global protests hint at the potential for grassroots movements to challenge entrenched narratives. They are reminders that democratic renewal rarely comes from the top – it is forced from below, by citizens, youths and students – those who refuse to accept that their governments are bought and sold.
State capture is the most dangerous mutation of corruption: corruption that governs, corruption that legislates, corruption that silences. It is the enemy not just of clean government but of democracy itself.”
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/nov/04/state-capture-corruption-democracy
Where do babies come from? Robert F Kennedy Jr doesn't seem to know
I just had to post this article because it highlights the utter ignorance of many in the Republican Party. The article cites Kennedy, who demonstrated his ignorance at a cabinet meeting last week, as well as several Republican legislators who proved their ignorance simply by speaking. Evidently, Republicans have never heard the old adage that "it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to talk and remove all doubt.”
“In a shocking development, however, it seems that Kennedy – an anti-vaxxer who says his brain was partly eaten by a parasitic worm – may not know what he’s talking about. During a cabinet meeting last Thursday, Kennedy reasserted unproven claims that taking the common painkiller acetaminophen, also known as Tylenol or paracetamol, while pregnant causes autism. Doubters of this theory, he said, were motivated by Trump derangement syndrome. To underscore his point, he referenced a TikTok video he’d seen of a pregnant woman “gobbling Tylenol with her baby in her placenta”.
Foetuses, of course, develop in the uterus, not the placenta. It’s possible, if we are being generous, that Kennedy misspoke. Then again, he would hardly be the first US politician to make it clear he knows nothing about the female bodies he is so keen to legislate, would he?”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/15/where-do-babies-come-from-robert-f-kennedy-jr-doesnt-seem-to-know
Blue states should come together to declare an emergency. Here's how
Interesting idea for blue states to form a new group to create a governing document that calls attention to how Trump is destroying Constitutional law.
“We could consider the kind of political theatre that Americans created from 1768 to 1776 to resist Britain’s growing crackdown. Instead of employing their creaky legislative bodies, they opted for new forms of resistance, non-importation committees, even a first continental congress with no apparent legitimacy or precedent.
However weak, those acts of political theater led to formal independence. After the war, American leaders held a convention – nominally to amend the Articles of Confederation with a unanimous vote by every state. Instead, the framers worked in secret, replaced the articles altogether, and changed the process for amending the new constitution to a three quarters vote.
The Trump presidency is a colossal setback to that constitution and its norms, but it is also an opportunity to change those norms for the better. Like the founders, we should create a limited, invitation-only body – an embryonic constitutional convention – that the anti-Trump blue states exclusively set up for themselves, limit to themselves, and control.
The constitution already provides some authority for doing so.“
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/05/blue-states-democrats-trump
To defeat the Texas gerrymander, Democrats need to go nuclear
Excellent opinion piece in WaPo this morning. I hope Democratic leaders heed its suggestions to finally fight Republicans on their terms instead of simply complaining. Just fighting Trump is not enough. This opinion rightly suggest that state leaders band together to institute policies that hurt Republican states. The idea f mutual deterrence versus mutual destruction is good.
“During the decades-long nuclear standoff between the U.S. and Soviet Union, leaders on both sides relied on a state of mutually assured destruction to keep the two countries from stumbling into an apocalyptic war.
There are two strategic concepts from that era that apply well to Democrats today: counterforce and countervalue.
Counterforce posits that the best way to deter an opponent is to credibly threaten the use of one’s own nuclear capability to strike at the opponent’s nuclear forces. In the context of today’s redistricting wars, that means neutralizing the weapons Republicans are using — directly, surgically and proportionally — within the sandbox of redistricting, like we’re seeing from New York and California. They gerrymander their big red state; we gerrymander our big blue state.”
Snip
“It’s good that Democratic leaders are trying to leverage counterforce deterrence on redistricting. But, if New York, California and other blue states want to deter red state aggression more comprehensively, they also need to consider the grislier logic of countervalue.
In our domestic context, it means using the full weight of blue states’ market power, cultural influence and legal authority to raise the stakes of Republican red state aggression. That means making it harder for corporations to operate in states that obliterate fair elections. It means using their economic might to impose regulatory and economic costs that bite hard enough to make the constituents of even the most insulated legislator feel the pain. In other words, it means countering red state aggression with potential actions that go beyond reciprocity and may impose disproportionate costs.“
https://wapo.st/3J6Sanx
To defeat Trump, the left must learn from him
Interesting article. We indeed do need to do a better job of communicating to voters, but we also need a clear, simple message that resonates with voters by connecting to their lives. As this writer notes, pro-democracy forces need to “Take off the gloves. Show your teeth, take no prisoners.” Too much of our current leadership seem to be stuck back in the decade when Obama won. We’re a different country now.
“We can learn from Trump the importance of telling a simple, understandable story and sticking to it. Pro-democracy forces need to pick a message and repeat it again and again to drive it home. There is surely no one in America who has not heard the phrase Make America Great Again and does not associate Maga with Trump. We can learn to appeal to national pride and drive home that national greatness requires addressing the daily experiences of ordinary Americans in language of the kind they use.
Snip
We can learn from the president that political success requires building a movement and not being trapped by the norms and conventions of existing political organizations. Remember Trump has gotten to where he is not by being an acolyte of Republican orthodoxy but by being a heretic.
In the age of loneliness, pro-democracy forces need to give people the sense that they are caught up in a great cause.
We can learn from the president that if the pro-democracy movement is to succeed, it needs to offer its own version of constitutional reform. Stop talking about preserving the system and start talking about changing it in ways that will make government responsive and connect it to the lives that people live.“
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/20/to-defeat-trump-the-left-must-learn-from-him
Seeking bulldozer drivers to demolish Gaza: how a genocide is being outsourced
It seems clear that Netanyahu is planning to take over all of Gaza by killing or expelling all Palestinians. No one seems willing to even try to stop his genocide. Where are the countries sanctioning Israel with heavy economic penalties? Where are the voices of world leaders against genocide? Where are the leaders of Arab neighbors calmly watching Israel murder fellow Muslims? The silence is deafening.
“As Bartov said, despite the lack of coverage, the systematic destruction of Gaza is hardly a secret. Indeed, the Israeli military is so desperate for extra bulldozers that, over the last couple of months, there have been ads for bulldozer drivers to help demolish Gaza posted on Facebook – some apparently offering as much as 3,000 shekels ($882) a day for the work. I found around a dozen of these ads on Meta since the end of May, many of them on a public Facebook page for bulldozer operators. Meanwhile a Haaretz article from this week looking into the outsourcing of bulldozer drivers found that they are paid per building: 2,500 shekels for the demolition of a small building, 5,000 shekels for a large building.
“The idea that the bulldozer has become a major article of genocide and warfare is quite new,” says Neve Gordon, a professor of international law and human rights at Queen Mary University of London. “What is happening in Gaza is not a building here or there being demolished; it’s the destruction of whole villages and towns.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/09/bulldzoer-gaza-genocide-idf-meta
Democrats Need to Understand That Opinions on Israel Are Changing Fast
I think this piece in the NYT reflects where we are as a political party today. It’s mostly about changing views of Israel, but it also focuses on why Democratic voters are disillusioned with our leadership today. A majority of Democratic voters want to condition military aid on Israel’s behavior toward Palestinians. Our leadership professes full support for Israel with no conditions, which is just one reason for voters feeling that leaders are ignoring them. From the article:
“Only one in three Democrats now view Israel favorably, according to Gallup. That makes Israel significantly less popular than Cuba, and only slightly more popular than China. Despite this, the party’s most powerful figures — from the minority leaders Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries to many of the Democrats likely to run for president in 2028 — oppose conditioning U.S. military support on Israel’s willingness to uphold human rights. This places them in clear conflict with their party’s base.
Support of Israel isn’t the primary reason that, according to Reuters, 62 percent of Democrats want new leaders. What seems to anger grass roots Democrats most is their party’s inability to defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box and stand up to him as president. But unquestioned support for Israel has become, for many, a symbol of the timidity and inauthenticity of party elites — and that leaves them vulnerable to political insurgents who don’t compromise the values of equality and anti-discrimination. That’s how Mr. Mamdani connected his support for Palestinian freedom to his broader message. “This is a politics of consistency,” he told Politico in April. “And it’s a politics that refuses to equivocate, no matter whom it applies to. That every single person deserves a dignified life.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/06/opinion/zohran-mamdani-democrats-israel.html?unlocked_article_code=1.UU8.ZTQG.e0PIoWD_Kolk&smid=url-share
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