At most I’ve suggested dropping some of the least popular stuff and stopping talking about the next least popular stuff, while still supporting it.
The people talking about the 'least popular stuff' are _Republicans_. If you drop it, they will simply move on to the _next_ in the list to talk about.
Hell, they already moved on to talking about how trans people in the military are dishonorable liars and they all have to leave. Were Demcorats talking about _that_? Were trans people overreach on that? No? It already was settled? Huh, weird.
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Trans people have not asked for _anything_. Or, rather, they asked for them, and got them, mostly two decades ago. They existed, quietly, for decades. Almost entirely ignored.
They already were, quietly, using the restrooms they felt like. They already were, quietly, competing in sports and usually doing quite poorly against cis people because it turns out that screwing around with your hormones (In either direction) is actually a good way to disadvantage yourself there against cis people. Prisons were already, quietly, dealing with the situation, and as always have the discretion to assign prisoners where they, and other, were safe, which almost always ended up with trans woman alone in a cell in men's prisons.
There is literally nothing trans people were trying to do except get some non-discrimination stuff about workplaces, because there is still massive discrimination there, and maybe make it easier to change their gender in a few states. They could already do it all states except four.
This is not some 'trans overreach'. There was no reaching. At all.
What happened is that Republicans started yammering non-stop about trans people, at which point all the goldfish 'political knowledgeable people' suddenly became aware trans people existed and 'wanted things'. Thing that, in fact, they already had, and had for decades without a problem.
The fight got picked by a certain brand of activist pushing hard for medical interventions in minors, introduction of some pretty questionable, metaphysical stuff and dangerous policies into public school curricula, and the sudden appearance of men in womens sports and a handful of other places where women are vulnerable, like prisons and rape shelters.
Trans kids have been getting medical inventions for _decades_. There are almost no trans women in women's sports, they certainly are not beating cis women.
And who is where in prisons is, and always has been, on a case-by-case basis, and trans women have been held in women's prisons for decades. Please at least tell me you remember the TV show Orange is the New Black, a TV show that aired in 2013, and was based on a memoir book by Piper Kerman, about her 18 months in prison that ended in 2005...and the trans character in that show is loosely based on an actual trans woman in that prison with her.
A sentence that ended in 2005. A trans woman was in prison with her. Do I need to repeat that? This wasn't some incredibly rare or crazy thing, either.
Rape shelters exist to protect victims of rape, which a hell of a lot of trans people are. They also set their own rules, and almost none of them have a problem with trans women.
What has happened here is that trans people have existed almost transparently for decades, doing things as their gender without any problems at all. We notably had most court cases without people even noticing. Nicole Maines parents sued her school in _2005_ for not letting her use the girl's restroom.
Then Republicans lost gay marriage to the court, and found something else to scream about.
That’s what this is, and now predictably there is a backlash.
A deliberate reactionary surge is not a 'backlash', and the American people still care _almost nothing_ about trans issues, in either direction.
I think it is a very open question as to whether pushing all of these things has shaken out to the benefit of those that identify themselves as trans. I for one am not sure that it has.
No one has been 'pushing' anything. Trans people have been fighting to not have things _taken away_ from them.
I read something like that and think I’d vote to abolish the public schools before I’d concede to them treating parents like criminals or telling lies to the tax payers they serve.
What _else_ should teachers be required to tell parents? If the kids are gay? It's right there, it's the next question, it's actually technically the _same_ question because almost all the rules about teacher informing on students talk about gender roles.
There were goth kids who would cross dress or gender bend and I can’t imagine anyone ever denying that information to their parents, much less thinking it was part of some permanent identity in need of “validation.”
Oh, so you actually _do_ think kids should be outed. Were you any of those kids? Was that you?
I love it when straight cis people wander around proclaiming that nothing bad ever happens to kids that got outed to their parents.
This is the point where I could mention the 120% higher homeless rate of queer kids, or stuff like, but I just linked to a half a dozen example of queer kids literally murdered, by their parents, for being queer.
It objectively _has_ worked. That's how we have Trump as president.
The media are a bunch of easily lead idiots, and the Republicans understand how to lead them.
The Democrats do not.
Literally all they had to do was wait until some gay kid got murdered by their parents, and create a giant issue out of it. Talk about how teachers outing kids to parents is a huge problem. Propose legislation about it. Don't actually pass it, that wouldn't pass anyway, but be really really loud about it.
Trump signed the 'Laken Riley' law today, a law named after a person murdered by someone in the country illegally.
Why is there not a Giovanni Melton law?
There actually _is_ a Matthew Shepard law, over a decade ago, named after a gay guy murdered over two decades ago. That's it.
Well, it's a good thing we're in a world where Democrats can magically stop stupid people from doing stupid things?
Hey, you know what Democrats could actually do there?
Publicize the actual _violence_ done to trans kids by their parents. Publicize the sheer number of homeless queer kids that have been kicked out of their house.
Or murdered. The next time they start yammering about forcing outing queer kids, Democrats could respond with these: https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/mom-pleads-guilty-murder-8-year-old-boy-thought-be-n848741
Now, is this actually a lot of people? Not actually, but considering that only about 450 kids are killed by their parents a year, and 3/4th of them are custody 'If I can't have them no one will' disputes, it is a noticeable amount.
But who cares the actual percentages? Republican blow up every single crime by an immigrant to get support for their policies, why don't Democrats blow up every single instance of crime by homophobic parents for theirs?
And, of course, unlike with immigrants, the actual stats back up the position here...yes, child murder is incredibly rare, but a good chunk of that is because the queer children are either kicked out or run away first.
Make it clear that people who are demanding that teacher tell parents, or have a problem with teachers not telling parents, are demanding those things happen.
This would require some sort of backbone by Democrats, though, better just to throw those kids under the bus. Even some *looks pointedly* gay Democrats.
I agree no minor can transition without their parents becoming aware of the matter but parents assuredly want to know about this and teachers affirmatively saying on social media they’ll hide it, let that genie out of the bottle.
Why, it's almost as if some sort of institution should be pushing back against the Republican narrative, and explaining things, instead of agreeing with it.
Also...look, you're queer, please learn the terms. Transition is a giant group of stuff, not a 'thing that is done'. And it isn't a synonym with gender affirming care. Transition includes things like asking to be called different pronouns and trying on a name, which means parents can, indeed, be unaware of it. So can teachers, so can everyone but close friends. In fact, you can do thing that are part of transitioning without telling _anyone_, just seeing how things feel when you think about yourself in a different way. There's not any way anyone would know that, so it's not super-important to call it by the right name, but it is part of the umbrella of transitioning.
And part of the problem is Republicans abuse definitions and use incredibly vague terms. The transition confusion makes it incredibly easy to come up with a very high number of detrans people and imply they had some sort of medical things done. Same with 'gender affirming care', which is often just counseling. (Which, again, kids can't get without parental knowledge, generally.)
Both the media, which is almost entirely controlled by transphobic billionaires, and the Democratic party, which is almost entirely controlled by hundred-year-old corpses animated by necromancy, do not bother to actually explain any of this.
North, do you have any evidence _at all_ that there is a demographic of voters that a) would base their vote on trans issues, and b) thinks the correct place is the middle?
The Republicans are doing a very good job of trying to force this issue into the mainstream when the voters do not actually care at all, but there is absolutely no 'middle ground', Republicans will just keep attacking whatever the next thing is, trying to make ground on _that_, and at some point it will be 'being trans in public is essentially illegal'.
There are exactly two groups who care about trans issues: Morons who have fallen for Republican propaganda, which will continue to shift wherever Republicans lead the hate, and injured trans people and people who care for trans people. There is no middle group, at all, whatsoever.
You just think there is a middle group because the current place that Republicans have managed to lead things is not very far. Give them a victory and they will happily move to the newest 'middle ground' they see.
I swear to God, this is the stupidest logic I've ever heard. It's like saying 'Look, the enemy troops are only trying to take _the next trench_, the one closest to them, if we compromise and fall back a few hundred feet, let them have the trench, everything will be fine'.
But, maybe, maybe, when teachers boast on social media about how they’ll encourage their 5th graders to consider trans and conceal any inclinations of those same kids from their parents we should probably be on record as not supporting that.
Yes, if the media lies and presents the story in that manner, that would be something people wouldn't like.
The media could instead be presenting the story as 'A lot of trans and gay kids are forced into the closet by their parents by the threat of abuse or abandonment and teachers should not being outing them, either if directly confided in by the student or just based on the student's behavior in school.', a thing that would have infinitely more support.
You know, I see the meme that says 'You are not immune to propaganda', but it really is amazing to see people here just repeating propaganda without critically looking at it.
Oh, and BTW, if you want a reason not to throw trans kids under the bus here, North, it's because if you start mandating that teachers report trans students, you're also essentially forcing them to report gay students. Hell, a lot of the reporting laws _literally would include gay students_ because they basically demand teachers tell parents when students are not conforming to gender norms, and guess what dating someone of the same sex is doing? Hint: Not conforming to gender norms.
If we do that, who will be convinced that our throwing the rest under the bus is for real?
Every single person who goes 'Throw them under the bus' has failed to explain how that makes the bus stop running over people.
Also, who is going to stop Republicans from just lying about this, considering how much they lie about literally everything related to trans people.
I mean, North literally repeated a lie right there '“we’re gonna support teachers hiding medical info about your kids from you'. That is not a true thing that has happened or will be happening, there is absolutely no ability for _any_ minor to access gender affirming gender affirming care without parental involvement.
Trump just tried to essentially ban gender-affirming care for people under 19.
I hope everyone here who was 'just asking question' about 'how we need do more research on blockers for kids and what about detransition, a thing I am told is happening a lot' is happy. Parts of the media have spent years carefully cultivating you into exactly this place, good job falling for it.
You may notice that 18 year olds are not, in fact, minors. A mere quibble, I guess.
This is along with kick trans service members out because ' adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.', which is about six months from calling them degenerates.
And maybe people should start trying to calculate when, exactly, in the poem to get off their ass.
Oh, sorry, queer people didn't even _make_ the poem because the poem was written by a Lutheran Pastor who didn't really see any problem with the government coming for queer people, even in retrospect.
Or the disabled, in fact. It really is amazing how many of you keep talking about 'DEI' and have not noticed that Trump actually stopped DEIA, aka, accessibility, removing any sort of initiative to hire handicapped people, including handicapped veterans.
But hey, useless eaters, am I right?
Anyway, might want to pick when in the poem you will actually acknowledge what is happening, or at least start prepping the lies to your grandkids.
It's worth pointing out that in a sane country, this would have immediately started impeachment proceeding.
If the birthright citizenship EO hadn't already started impeachment.
There are illegal things Trump is doing that are possibly arguable in court, if you have toast for brains, but both birthright citizenship(1) and executive impoundment of funds have been _directly_ addressed by the courts and are not even debatable. One of them is a constitutional violation and the other is flatly illegal under US law, and both of them are very very obviously things a president should be impeached for doing.
In fact, we already impeached Trump for doing the first thing.
1) A bunch of people are going to try to argue that the courts have not addressed whether or not the children of people in the country illegally are citizen, and that such people might be part of an 'invasion', a completely bogus claim that is nonsense but arguably hasn't been tried in court before.
But sadly for that logic, Trump's EO _also_ included the children of people here on temporary visas. A person who cannot, in any possible way, be argued to be part of an invasion.
Incidentally, ICE almost never has actual judicial warrants that would allow them to enter premises and search for people.
They have things they wave around that they claim are warrants, and are warrants in the sense they are called 'deportation warrants'. But all that means is they have identified someone they wish to deport, and can legally detain that person if they find them. It was signed off on by an immigration official, _not_ a judge.
A deportation warrant gives them _absolutely_ no authority to forcible enter a place and search for that person anywhere. None at all. They are just basically lying to you, hoping by waving a thing in your face and calling it a warrant that you think they have the right to enter somewhere.
You should never let them in anywhere. If they have judicial authority, they will force their way in, but 99.99% of the time, they do not, and will leave.
In fact, it might be a good practice to start doing that with the police in general.
It really is amazing to watch how many people here have had their brains completely fried by complaining about transgender people, apparently having never interacted with any of them.
Oh, and while there's plenty to criticize about Pelosi's stock trading, as far as I'm aware, the slide so far and the expected crash of NVidia isn't really inside information she'd have. Is it?
Something some real genius level intellect on the part of Trump supporters here: "Trump demanded and got a deal that literally was already how things are! He so good at deal making!"
The mere fact that Trump started handcuffing Colombia citizens to metal seats on military craft to fly them back to Colombia, by itself, destroyed Colombia's view of the US.
And we've also done that to Mexico and a few other South American countries. The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) has called for an emergency meeting about it.
But that was pretty much limited to the local area...until Trump decided to threaten a trade war over it. At which point it became clear that America was completely unreliably as any sort of trading partner.
It's also worth reminding people that sending undocumented people on military planes is more expensive and more work and solves literally no problem whatsoever, there's no reason to do it. And the only reason Trump is doing it is a) to look fascistic for his base, and b) as part of the gibberish justification to try to revoke birthright citizenship by claiming it's 'invasion'.
This isn't something that can be justified as being in American's interest, this is literally just American abusing the citizens of another country to be cruel.
Europe is, meanwhile, still freaking out over Elon's salute and Trump threatening Greenland.
I think people don't actually understand what is happening here, because they are cocooned in American media, which is required to pretend everything is normal. The rest of the world is not treating any of this as normal.
Again, the second Trump administration is fundamentally different than the first. The first had guardrails.
Hey, Jaybird, weird how CNN doesn't link to anything Colombia said, isn't it?
This sentence is also interesting: 'He added that US deportation flights had resumed, and the Colombian presidential plane was being prepared to assist in repatriating citizens.'
That doesn't sound like military flights to me. Neither the 'presidential plane' part nor the 'US deportation flights'. The word 'military' could very easily be in that second thing, and it doesn't appear to be.
See, there's three actual questions here: What was demanded by Trump, and what was demanded by Colombia, and what was the end result?
None of these are well explained by the American media, and the first and second have been pretty blatant lies, or at least 'deliberate misunderstandings created by the media', implying things that simply are not true about Colombia's original problem.
The fact they will not actually state the third thing in clear language, and instead vaguely say 'all of Trump's demands' is _incredibly_ suspicious.
(It's also worth pointing out that there a dozen of different positions that are in between. Perhaps Colombia agreed to military planes _without_ chains. Perhaps Colombia agreed to having criminals returned via military planes and other people via commercial travel. Perhaps Colombia agreed to pick up all their people themselves, or pay for the planes themselves. We simply do not know.)
This story is almost a textbook example of how bad even non-conservative media gets played by conservatives, because almost no one actually understand the very-clearly-stated issue that Colombia had of 'You cannot chain our citizens to a metal seat for hours in a military aircraft while you return them to us instead of the normal means of sending them via commercial airline.', a very basic and somewhat obvious thing for a country to get upset about (We would certainly get very upset if anyone tried to do it a US citizen) and something that would actually sound horrible if the media actually explained that the Trump administration had started doing that.
(Don't worry, they apparently didn't chain up the _children_. Forced them to be in a cramped, uncomfortable, and not-at-all-safe-for-children aircraft for hours, but did not actually put chains on them.)
But instead the media just takes their cues entirely from the conservative noisemakers about what the issue is, and gets either states, or at least strongly implies, complete nonsense, like Colombian is fighting deportations in general.
Again, I feel I should point out: The foreign media is _not_ missing them. They are not missing _any_ of this.
I feel the entity that would actually know whether Colombia would accept detainees sent on military planes would be, you know, Colombia.
As such, you may wish to read the quote of the Colombia government in that article, which states, "We will continue to receive Colombians and Colombian women who return as deportees, guaranteeing them decent conditions as citizens subject to rights."
You see that phrase, 'Continue to receive'? What do you think that means? That Colombia has _modified_ something? Doesn't seem to be.
Almost every discussion of this issue is attempting to frame it as 'Colombia has agreed to accept deported citizens, a thing that was _literally never_ in question. Not even in the slightest. Colombia has always accepted deportation flights. And it quoting Colombia _stating_ 'we will keep doing that' as somehow caving. It's insanely stupid how all the news media is just lying about this.
The objection was over citizens returned, shackled, via military flights. Colombia has said literally nothing about allowing military flights or shackles. The Trump administration has not said anything about those either.
If you want a URL, here it is: https://www.wonkette.com/p/actually-trump-caved-to-colombia
"Given that the Colombian government says the impasse has been resolved, here is what we think is the state of things: the agreement the two nations reached is that Colombia will accept deportees so long as they are not shackled and tossed on military planes, which was their original complaint, and the WH is ignoring the second part so it can spin the first part as a glorious victory."
But to be clear, regardless of what you feel about Wonkette, the CNN article headline is lying. It says "Colombia backs down on accepting deportees on military planes after Trump’s tariffs threats", and there is literally nothing in what it wrote that indicated Colombia is willing to accept deportees _on military planes_.
They are literally not doing what he wanted. The Trump administration lied to CNN, and CNN further lied.
The demand by Colombia was ''Stop using military planes and chaining our citizens as you deport them, or we will no longer accept them'.
Trump Administration threatened tariffs.
Colombia, which understand tariffs and the trade imbalance, fell down laughing as they promised to do it back.
The Trump Administration then agreed to stop using military planes and chaining Colombian citizens to return them to Colombia.
Colombia said 'Then you have met our demands. I guess we're done here. We will be waiting for people returned, unchained, on passenger flights, as has always been how it worked before now'.
The Trump Administration then went around telling people that Colombia has agreed to 'accept more deportees from the US'. Just straight up lying about what the issue was and what happened.
There is no universe where that is 'Colombia is doing what Trump wanted'. Colombia did not move or concede the _slightest inch_.
The fact the headline is claiming that really should give people pause about how they understand the news as presented by the Trump administration.
And then, a few hours later, wait, the diplomats fixed it. As you were.
Jaybird, I fear you are still in the _last_ Trump term, where Trump had people around him to fix things.
He doesn't this time.
This wasn't fixed by diplomats. Colombia stated a position, that it would not accept military flights or detained people, and Trump threatened to do something, he was called out on how stupid that was, and he backed down from that position and completely accepted what Colombia demanded.
It's likely someone near him pointed out how stupid that was, and that makes it looks slightly like the last administration, but the only reason anyone got away with that is Trump literally does not care about this topic. Deporting a bunch of people to giant fanfare is something he wants applause for, he doesn't actually care about it as a policy.
On “Open Mic for the week of 1/27/2025”
Hey, at what point are we going to start doing something about the open fascists on this site?
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The people talking about the 'least popular stuff' are _Republicans_. If you drop it, they will simply move on to the _next_ in the list to talk about.
Hell, they already moved on to talking about how trans people in the military are dishonorable liars and they all have to leave. Were Demcorats talking about _that_? Were trans people overreach on that? No? It already was settled? Huh, weird.
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Trans people have not asked for _anything_. Or, rather, they asked for them, and got them, mostly two decades ago. They existed, quietly, for decades. Almost entirely ignored.
They already were, quietly, using the restrooms they felt like. They already were, quietly, competing in sports and usually doing quite poorly against cis people because it turns out that screwing around with your hormones (In either direction) is actually a good way to disadvantage yourself there against cis people. Prisons were already, quietly, dealing with the situation, and as always have the discretion to assign prisoners where they, and other, were safe, which almost always ended up with trans woman alone in a cell in men's prisons.
There is literally nothing trans people were trying to do except get some non-discrimination stuff about workplaces, because there is still massive discrimination there, and maybe make it easier to change their gender in a few states. They could already do it all states except four.
This is not some 'trans overreach'. There was no reaching. At all.
What happened is that Republicans started yammering non-stop about trans people, at which point all the goldfish 'political knowledgeable people' suddenly became aware trans people existed and 'wanted things'. Thing that, in fact, they already had, and had for decades without a problem.
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Trans kids have been getting medical inventions for _decades_. There are almost no trans women in women's sports, they certainly are not beating cis women.
And who is where in prisons is, and always has been, on a case-by-case basis, and trans women have been held in women's prisons for decades. Please at least tell me you remember the TV show Orange is the New Black, a TV show that aired in 2013, and was based on a memoir book by Piper Kerman, about her 18 months in prison that ended in 2005...and the trans character in that show is loosely based on an actual trans woman in that prison with her.
A sentence that ended in 2005. A trans woman was in prison with her. Do I need to repeat that? This wasn't some incredibly rare or crazy thing, either.
Rape shelters exist to protect victims of rape, which a hell of a lot of trans people are. They also set their own rules, and almost none of them have a problem with trans women.
What has happened here is that trans people have existed almost transparently for decades, doing things as their gender without any problems at all. We notably had most court cases without people even noticing. Nicole Maines parents sued her school in _2005_ for not letting her use the girl's restroom.
Then Republicans lost gay marriage to the court, and found something else to scream about.
A deliberate reactionary surge is not a 'backlash', and the American people still care _almost nothing_ about trans issues, in either direction.
No one has been 'pushing' anything. Trans people have been fighting to not have things _taken away_ from them.
What _else_ should teachers be required to tell parents? If the kids are gay? It's right there, it's the next question, it's actually technically the _same_ question because almost all the rules about teacher informing on students talk about gender roles.
Oh, so you actually _do_ think kids should be outed. Were you any of those kids? Was that you?
I love it when straight cis people wander around proclaiming that nothing bad ever happens to kids that got outed to their parents.
This is the point where I could mention the 120% higher homeless rate of queer kids, or stuff like, but I just linked to a half a dozen example of queer kids literally murdered, by their parents, for being queer.
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It objectively _has_ worked. That's how we have Trump as president.
The media are a bunch of easily lead idiots, and the Republicans understand how to lead them.
The Democrats do not.
Literally all they had to do was wait until some gay kid got murdered by their parents, and create a giant issue out of it. Talk about how teachers outing kids to parents is a huge problem. Propose legislation about it. Don't actually pass it, that wouldn't pass anyway, but be really really loud about it.
Trump signed the 'Laken Riley' law today, a law named after a person murdered by someone in the country illegally.
Why is there not a Giovanni Melton law?
There actually _is_ a Matthew Shepard law, over a decade ago, named after a gay guy murdered over two decades ago. That's it.
Two can play at that game.
But only one does.
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Well, it's a good thing we're in a world where Democrats can magically stop stupid people from doing stupid things?
Hey, you know what Democrats could actually do there?
Publicize the actual _violence_ done to trans kids by their parents. Publicize the sheer number of homeless queer kids that have been kicked out of their house.
Or murdered. The next time they start yammering about forcing outing queer kids, Democrats could respond with these: https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/mom-pleads-guilty-murder-8-year-old-boy-thought-be-n848741
Pound: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2018/06/parents-torture-kill-10-year-old-says-likes-boys/
It: https://www.ebony.com/father-kills-gay-son/
Into: https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/nevada-father-murdered-son-being-gay-former-foster-mom-claims-n817906
The: https://abc7.com/north-hills-father-gay-shooting-kills-son-hate-crime/1273400/
Ground: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/04/02/los-angeles-father-accused-of-fatally-shooting-son-for-being-gay/
Now, is this actually a lot of people? Not actually, but considering that only about 450 kids are killed by their parents a year, and 3/4th of them are custody 'If I can't have them no one will' disputes, it is a noticeable amount.
But who cares the actual percentages? Republican blow up every single crime by an immigrant to get support for their policies, why don't Democrats blow up every single instance of crime by homophobic parents for theirs?
And, of course, unlike with immigrants, the actual stats back up the position here...yes, child murder is incredibly rare, but a good chunk of that is because the queer children are either kicked out or run away first.
Make it clear that people who are demanding that teacher tell parents, or have a problem with teachers not telling parents, are demanding those things happen.
This would require some sort of backbone by Democrats, though, better just to throw those kids under the bus. Even some *looks pointedly* gay Democrats.
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Why, it's almost as if some sort of institution should be pushing back against the Republican narrative, and explaining things, instead of agreeing with it.
Also...look, you're queer, please learn the terms. Transition is a giant group of stuff, not a 'thing that is done'. And it isn't a synonym with gender affirming care. Transition includes things like asking to be called different pronouns and trying on a name, which means parents can, indeed, be unaware of it. So can teachers, so can everyone but close friends. In fact, you can do thing that are part of transitioning without telling _anyone_, just seeing how things feel when you think about yourself in a different way. There's not any way anyone would know that, so it's not super-important to call it by the right name, but it is part of the umbrella of transitioning.
And part of the problem is Republicans abuse definitions and use incredibly vague terms. The transition confusion makes it incredibly easy to come up with a very high number of detrans people and imply they had some sort of medical things done. Same with 'gender affirming care', which is often just counseling. (Which, again, kids can't get without parental knowledge, generally.)
Both the media, which is almost entirely controlled by transphobic billionaires, and the Democratic party, which is almost entirely controlled by hundred-year-old corpses animated by necromancy, do not bother to actually explain any of this.
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North, do you have any evidence _at all_ that there is a demographic of voters that a) would base their vote on trans issues, and b) thinks the correct place is the middle?
The Republicans are doing a very good job of trying to force this issue into the mainstream when the voters do not actually care at all, but there is absolutely no 'middle ground', Republicans will just keep attacking whatever the next thing is, trying to make ground on _that_, and at some point it will be 'being trans in public is essentially illegal'.
There are exactly two groups who care about trans issues: Morons who have fallen for Republican propaganda, which will continue to shift wherever Republicans lead the hate, and injured trans people and people who care for trans people. There is no middle group, at all, whatsoever.
You just think there is a middle group because the current place that Republicans have managed to lead things is not very far. Give them a victory and they will happily move to the newest 'middle ground' they see.
I swear to God, this is the stupidest logic I've ever heard. It's like saying 'Look, the enemy troops are only trying to take _the next trench_, the one closest to them, if we compromise and fall back a few hundred feet, let them have the trench, everything will be fine'.
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Yes, if the media lies and presents the story in that manner, that would be something people wouldn't like.
The media could instead be presenting the story as 'A lot of trans and gay kids are forced into the closet by their parents by the threat of abuse or abandonment and teachers should not being outing them, either if directly confided in by the student or just based on the student's behavior in school.', a thing that would have infinitely more support.
You know, I see the meme that says 'You are not immune to propaganda', but it really is amazing to see people here just repeating propaganda without critically looking at it.
Oh, and BTW, if you want a reason not to throw trans kids under the bus here, North, it's because if you start mandating that teachers report trans students, you're also essentially forcing them to report gay students. Hell, a lot of the reporting laws _literally would include gay students_ because they basically demand teachers tell parents when students are not conforming to gender norms, and guess what dating someone of the same sex is doing? Hint: Not conforming to gender norms.
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Every single person who goes 'Throw them under the bus' has failed to explain how that makes the bus stop running over people.
Also, who is going to stop Republicans from just lying about this, considering how much they lie about literally everything related to trans people.
I mean, North literally repeated a lie right there '“we’re gonna support teachers hiding medical info about your kids from you'. That is not a true thing that has happened or will be happening, there is absolutely no ability for _any_ minor to access gender affirming gender affirming care without parental involvement.
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Trump just tried to essentially ban gender-affirming care for people under 19.
I hope everyone here who was 'just asking question' about 'how we need do more research on blockers for kids and what about detransition, a thing I am told is happening a lot' is happy. Parts of the media have spent years carefully cultivating you into exactly this place, good job falling for it.
You may notice that 18 year olds are not, in fact, minors. A mere quibble, I guess.
This is along with kick trans service members out because ' adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.', which is about six months from calling them degenerates.
And maybe people should start trying to calculate when, exactly, in the poem to get off their ass.
Oh, sorry, queer people didn't even _make_ the poem because the poem was written by a Lutheran Pastor who didn't really see any problem with the government coming for queer people, even in retrospect.
Or the disabled, in fact. It really is amazing how many of you keep talking about 'DEI' and have not noticed that Trump actually stopped DEIA, aka, accessibility, removing any sort of initiative to hire handicapped people, including handicapped veterans.
But hey, useless eaters, am I right?
Anyway, might want to pick when in the poem you will actually acknowledge what is happening, or at least start prepping the lies to your grandkids.
On “Memo: All Federal Grant, Loan, and Financial Assistance “Temporarily Paused””
No, but what does that have to do with the last sentence of what you said? That sentence clearly is your own opinion.
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It's worth pointing out that in a sane country, this would have immediately started impeachment proceeding.
If the birthright citizenship EO hadn't already started impeachment.
There are illegal things Trump is doing that are possibly arguable in court, if you have toast for brains, but both birthright citizenship(1) and executive impoundment of funds have been _directly_ addressed by the courts and are not even debatable. One of them is a constitutional violation and the other is flatly illegal under US law, and both of them are very very obviously things a president should be impeached for doing.
In fact, we already impeached Trump for doing the first thing.
1) A bunch of people are going to try to argue that the courts have not addressed whether or not the children of people in the country illegally are citizen, and that such people might be part of an 'invasion', a completely bogus claim that is nonsense but arguably hasn't been tried in court before.
But sadly for that logic, Trump's EO _also_ included the children of people here on temporary visas. A person who cannot, in any possible way, be argued to be part of an invasion.
On “The Colombia Gambit”
Well, normal people would use something called the internet to look how that normally works.
On “Open Mic for the week of 1/27/2025”
Incidentally, ICE almost never has actual judicial warrants that would allow them to enter premises and search for people.
They have things they wave around that they claim are warrants, and are warrants in the sense they are called 'deportation warrants'. But all that means is they have identified someone they wish to deport, and can legally detain that person if they find them. It was signed off on by an immigration official, _not_ a judge.
A deportation warrant gives them _absolutely_ no authority to forcible enter a place and search for that person anywhere. None at all. They are just basically lying to you, hoping by waving a thing in your face and calling it a warrant that you think they have the right to enter somewhere.
You should never let them in anywhere. If they have judicial authority, they will force their way in, but 99.99% of the time, they do not, and will leave.
In fact, it might be a good practice to start doing that with the police in general.
On “Memo: All Federal Grant, Loan, and Financial Assistance “Temporarily Paused””
It really is amazing to watch how many people here have had their brains completely fried by complaining about transgender people, apparently having never interacted with any of them.
On “Open Mic for the week of 1/27/2025”
Oh, and while there's plenty to criticize about Pelosi's stock trading, as far as I'm aware, the slide so far and the expected crash of NVidia isn't really inside information she'd have. Is it?
On “The Colombia Gambit”
Something some real genius level intellect on the part of Trump supporters here: "Trump demanded and got a deal that literally was already how things are! He so good at deal making!"
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The mere fact that Trump started handcuffing Colombia citizens to metal seats on military craft to fly them back to Colombia, by itself, destroyed Colombia's view of the US.
And we've also done that to Mexico and a few other South American countries. The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) has called for an emergency meeting about it.
But that was pretty much limited to the local area...until Trump decided to threaten a trade war over it. At which point it became clear that America was completely unreliably as any sort of trading partner.
It's also worth reminding people that sending undocumented people on military planes is more expensive and more work and solves literally no problem whatsoever, there's no reason to do it. And the only reason Trump is doing it is a) to look fascistic for his base, and b) as part of the gibberish justification to try to revoke birthright citizenship by claiming it's 'invasion'.
This isn't something that can be justified as being in American's interest, this is literally just American abusing the citizens of another country to be cruel.
Europe is, meanwhile, still freaking out over Elon's salute and Trump threatening Greenland.
I think people don't actually understand what is happening here, because they are cocooned in American media, which is required to pretend everything is normal. The rest of the world is not treating any of this as normal.
Again, the second Trump administration is fundamentally different than the first. The first had guardrails.
On “Open Mic for the week of 1/20/2025”
Hey, Jaybird, weird how CNN doesn't link to anything Colombia said, isn't it?
This sentence is also interesting: 'He added that US deportation flights had resumed, and the Colombian presidential plane was being prepared to assist in repatriating citizens.'
That doesn't sound like military flights to me. Neither the 'presidential plane' part nor the 'US deportation flights'. The word 'military' could very easily be in that second thing, and it doesn't appear to be.
See, there's three actual questions here: What was demanded by Trump, and what was demanded by Colombia, and what was the end result?
None of these are well explained by the American media, and the first and second have been pretty blatant lies, or at least 'deliberate misunderstandings created by the media', implying things that simply are not true about Colombia's original problem.
The fact they will not actually state the third thing in clear language, and instead vaguely say 'all of Trump's demands' is _incredibly_ suspicious.
(It's also worth pointing out that there a dozen of different positions that are in between. Perhaps Colombia agreed to military planes _without_ chains. Perhaps Colombia agreed to having criminals returned via military planes and other people via commercial travel. Perhaps Colombia agreed to pick up all their people themselves, or pay for the planes themselves. We simply do not know.)
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This story is almost a textbook example of how bad even non-conservative media gets played by conservatives, because almost no one actually understand the very-clearly-stated issue that Colombia had of 'You cannot chain our citizens to a metal seat for hours in a military aircraft while you return them to us instead of the normal means of sending them via commercial airline.', a very basic and somewhat obvious thing for a country to get upset about (We would certainly get very upset if anyone tried to do it a US citizen) and something that would actually sound horrible if the media actually explained that the Trump administration had started doing that.
(Don't worry, they apparently didn't chain up the _children_. Forced them to be in a cramped, uncomfortable, and not-at-all-safe-for-children aircraft for hours, but did not actually put chains on them.)
But instead the media just takes their cues entirely from the conservative noisemakers about what the issue is, and gets either states, or at least strongly implies, complete nonsense, like Colombian is fighting deportations in general.
Again, I feel I should point out: The foreign media is _not_ missing them. They are not missing _any_ of this.
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I feel the entity that would actually know whether Colombia would accept detainees sent on military planes would be, you know, Colombia.
As such, you may wish to read the quote of the Colombia government in that article, which states, "We will continue to receive Colombians and Colombian women who return as deportees, guaranteeing them decent conditions as citizens subject to rights."
You see that phrase, 'Continue to receive'? What do you think that means? That Colombia has _modified_ something? Doesn't seem to be.
Almost every discussion of this issue is attempting to frame it as 'Colombia has agreed to accept deported citizens, a thing that was _literally never_ in question. Not even in the slightest. Colombia has always accepted deportation flights. And it quoting Colombia _stating_ 'we will keep doing that' as somehow caving. It's insanely stupid how all the news media is just lying about this.
The objection was over citizens returned, shackled, via military flights. Colombia has said literally nothing about allowing military flights or shackles. The Trump administration has not said anything about those either.
If you want a URL, here it is: https://www.wonkette.com/p/actually-trump-caved-to-colombia
"Given that the Colombian government says the impasse has been resolved, here is what we think is the state of things: the agreement the two nations reached is that Colombia will accept deportees so long as they are not shackled and tossed on military planes, which was their original complaint, and the WH is ignoring the second part so it can spin the first part as a glorious victory."
But to be clear, regardless of what you feel about Wonkette, the CNN article headline is lying. It says "Colombia backs down on accepting deportees on military planes after Trump’s tariffs threats", and there is literally nothing in what it wrote that indicated Colombia is willing to accept deportees _on military planes_.
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They are literally not doing what he wanted. The Trump administration lied to CNN, and CNN further lied.
The demand by Colombia was ''Stop using military planes and chaining our citizens as you deport them, or we will no longer accept them'.
Trump Administration threatened tariffs.
Colombia, which understand tariffs and the trade imbalance, fell down laughing as they promised to do it back.
The Trump Administration then agreed to stop using military planes and chaining Colombian citizens to return them to Colombia.
Colombia said 'Then you have met our demands. I guess we're done here. We will be waiting for people returned, unchained, on passenger flights, as has always been how it worked before now'.
The Trump Administration then went around telling people that Colombia has agreed to 'accept more deportees from the US'. Just straight up lying about what the issue was and what happened.
There is no universe where that is 'Colombia is doing what Trump wanted'. Colombia did not move or concede the _slightest inch_.
The fact the headline is claiming that really should give people pause about how they understand the news as presented by the Trump administration.
On “Open Mic for the week of 1/27/2025”
Yeah, honestly, that seems to have been much less of a crash than I was personally expecting. But of course, it's not over.
On “The Colombia Gambit”
Jaybird, I fear you are still in the _last_ Trump term, where Trump had people around him to fix things.
He doesn't this time.
This wasn't fixed by diplomats. Colombia stated a position, that it would not accept military flights or detained people, and Trump threatened to do something, he was called out on how stupid that was, and he backed down from that position and completely accepted what Colombia demanded.
It's likely someone near him pointed out how stupid that was, and that makes it looks slightly like the last administration, but the only reason anyone got away with that is Trump literally does not care about this topic. Deporting a bunch of people to giant fanfare is something he wants applause for, he doesn't actually care about it as a policy.
And I'm honestly not sure this is over anyway.
On “Open Mic for the week of 1/27/2025”
The ADL appears to have realized exactly how bad they looked defending Musk, and are now...criticizing his jokes about the Holocaust.
Not any of the actual important things Musk is saying, like his recent comments in Germany.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.