I have a habit of waking up my boyfriend with news alerts but I think this morning I’ll let him sleep just a little bit longer before mentioning we’re officially back in the Cold War
A terrifying New York Times article today announced that the Trump administration is considering “narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth,” a measure that would essentially eliminate any and all recognition of transgender and nonbinary people and, therefore, their civil rights.
The memo from the Department of Health and Human Services claims officials need a clearer definition of gender. Their proposed definition “would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with, according to a draft reviewed by The Times. Any dispute about one’s sex would have to be clarified using genetic testing.”
“Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth,” the department proposed in the memo, which was drafted and has been circulating since last spring. “The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.”
The new definition would essentially eradicate federal recognition of the estimated 1.4 million Americans who have opted to recognize themselves — surgically or otherwise — as a gender other than the one they were born into.
“This takes a position that what the medical community understands about their patients — what people understand about themselves — is irrelevant because the government disagrees,” said Catherine E. Lhamon, who led the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights in the Obama administration and helped write transgender guidance that is being undone.
Let me be perfectly clear: Being transgender is not something you can believe or not believe in, support or not support. It’s a reality. Trans people exist. Always have, always will. What this will do is make it infinitely *more* difficult than it already is to be trans in America. Violence, poverty, inaccessible healthcare, and a slew of other already-persistent problems will worsen. New generations of trans kids will be silenced in ways that date back decades, if not longer.
We cannot under any circumstances allow this to happen. Vote. Protest. Cis folks, donate to trans-led organizations and trans individuals’ GoFundMe pages for medical care. Talk to your transphobic (or trans-ignorant) friends and family about what a policy like this would mean. And if you’re trans and need support today, call the Trans Lifeline at 1-877-565-8860.
Trans friends: I see you and I love you. We will not let them erase you. We will fight this with you.
The Supreme Court just issues a ruling allowing Ohio and other states to purge voters from their election registration rolls due to their failure to cast a ballot in previous elections.
This is a major victory for the Trump administration and the GOP, and a direct consequence of the Supreme Court being stacked with more conservative judges (the votes were 5-4). This is also a huge part of what Trump/the GOP were counting on to save them in the 2018 midterm elections, which is where Democrats have been hoping to take back a majority in the House, giving them more power to combat Trump’s abuses of power and Republican legislation.
What this means is YOU CAN NOT ASSUME THAT YOU ARE REGISTERED for the 2018 elections, just because you SHOULD be. Thanks to this decision, red states can purge voters’ registration based on their not having cast a ballot in even just previous federal elections, NOT just the national Presidential elections. Effectively, if you haven’t voted in previous senate races or for congressional representatives in the past few years, that’s all they need now to say you’re no longer registered and need to register again.
They’re deliberately counting on people assuming they’re still registered and so not checking until after registration deadlines have passed, or showing up to vote this November and only then finding out they’re no longer registered, when its too late to do a damn thing about it.
And this is absolutely targeted at marginalized communities, low income voters, disabled voters, and basically anyone who simply can’t always AFFORD to keep on top of every federal election and show up to vote in every senate race, etc. Which not so coincidentally happen to be all the communities and voters who have the most to gain from Democratic victories in the 2018 midterms and are the least likely to cast votes for GOP candidates at this point.
This was absolutely a calculated effort aimed specifically at keeping the GOP in power with a majority control of the government come November, and unfortunately, it has a DAMN good chance of accomplishing just that if it goes by unacknowledged. I’m not looking to alarm or panic anyone, simply to say:
If you are a registered voter in a red state at this point, please please please do not take your registered status as assumed. Check on your registration status, look up all relevant voter registration deadlines for your state and district, CIRCLE THAT SHIT ON YOUR CALENDAR, and check your registration status AGAIN right before those deadlines pass, so you can be sure of it before its too late to do anything about it til the next voting cycle.
a lot of people i’ve interacted with still think the whole chiquita death squads thing was only a rumor so I wanted to point out that they owned up to it and got fined.
so a corporation literally funded right wing terrorists to kill innocent people and only got fined. $25 million. chiquita has annual revenues of $3 billion. that should really have been a wake up call to anyone thinking corporations are treated unfairly, but it wasn’t. this is capitalism.
Pepsi is also directly responsible for the coup of Allende. Allende was actually supposed to win the 1963 election, but was unable to bc corporations like Pepsi poured millions into his opponent’s campaign. In return, his opponent promised to protect their investments. In 1970, when Allende finally won, the CEO of PepsiCo explicitly demanded President Nixon stage a coup against Allende bc as a socialist, he would threaten Pepsi’s and other foreign investments. Pressured by these corporations, Nixon eventually took action https://www.theguardian.com/business/1998/nov/08/observerbusiness.theobserver
beto being elected would be huge for texas. as someone from there, lemme tell you, he’s someone the state sorely needs. texas is in desperate need of a democrat and Beto is our best bet. in recent polls, cruz was shown to be ahead, but not by much. cruz. cannot. win.
there are ways you can help! if you live in Texas, you can sign up to volunteer. you can volunteer to do things such as send texts, emails, knock on doors. typical campaign stuff.
if you don’t live in Texas, you can donate. you don’t have to live in the state to donate. donating is one of the best ways you can support him because it funds his campaign! as mentioned above, he doesn’t take PAC money. he is 100% grassroots campaign, funded by people, for people.
i’m going to reiterate this. any us citizen* can donate. any. doesn’t matter where you live in the united states. so, I urge. if you don’t live in texas, donate. the average donation amount is $35, but any amount will help.
*if you don’t live in the united states/aren’t a citizen, legally you cannot donate. i don’t make the rules guys.
if you can’t donate, please reblog this so others can see it. people can’t vote in midterms if they don’t know who their nominees are.
this midterm election is crucial. getting Beto into the senate is crucial. reblog or donate!
beto being elected would be huge for texas. as someone from there, lemme tell you, he’s someone the state sorely needs. texas is in desperate need of a democrat and Beto is our best bet. in recent polls, cruz was shown to be ahead, but not by much. cruz. cannot. win.
there are ways you can help! if you live in Texas, you can sign up to volunteer. you can volunteer to do things such as send texts, emails, knock on doors. typical campaign stuff.
if you don’t live in Texas, you can donate. you don’t have to live in the state to donate. donating is one of the best ways you can support him because it funds his campaign! as mentioned above, he doesn’t take PAC money. he is 100% grassroots campaign, funded by people, for people.
i’m going to reiterate this. any us citizen* can donate. any. doesn’t matter where you live in the united states. so, I urge. if you don’t live in texas, donate. the average donation amount is $35, but any amount will help.
*if you don’t live in the united states/aren’t a citizen, legally you cannot donate. i don’t make the rules guys.
if you can’t donate, please reblog this so others can see it. people can’t vote in midterms if they don’t know who their nominees are.
this midterm election is crucial. getting Beto into the senate is crucial. reblog or donate!
this effectively means you have to find a lawyer willing to represent you over a couple hundred or thousand in missing wages against a multi million or billion dollar company and you must go to court as an individual (read: out of pocket). casual reminder lawyers tend to set higher fees for cases they see as less winnable and that this will be out of your personal free time
so one of your rights is gone. not going, but gone!
HOW…IN…THE….FUCK…
……WHAT IN THE FUCK MADE THESE IDIOTS THINK THAT THIS RULING IS A BENEFIT FOR THE AMERICAN WORKING CLASS!!!!
Trump assumes every transaction in the world — between people, businesses, nation-states, even between two different agencies of the same government — has a winner and a loser, a scammer and a sucker. He believes if you’re not ripping someone off, you’re getting ripped off.
rip tumblr 