#Election Statement for Child Rights

[black-fist-order]

BREAKING - AND NOW THERE ARE THE EMAILS TO PROVE IT.

Trump has been on a vendetta against the State of Maine, in a personal revenge campaign against Governor Janet Mills.

Trump clashed with Mills at a White House event for the National Governors Association back on February 20th.

As he boasted he was ending the participation of transitioned students in women's sports, he singled her out and demanded that Maine comply with his order. There is only one such student athlete in the entire state.

Mills replied that Maine's schools were complying with all State and Federal Laws.

GASP. A WOMAN. Speaking back to TRUMP. He was furious.

“Well, we are the federal law,” Trump bawled. “You’d better do it. You’d better do it, because you’re not going to get any federal funding at all if you don’t.”

The Governor was not impressed. She is a former state attorney general and district attorney.

“We’re going to follow the law sir. We’ll see you in court,” she said sternly.

Something like this was like nothing Trump had ever seen before in the history of the world. It was catastophic. It was disgusting. It was NASTY.

“Enjoy your life after governor, because I don’t think you’ll be an elected official afterwards,” Trump snarled.

He could not let go of it. He seethed for the next two days, and even golf at Mar-a-Lala could not distract him. In a late Saturday night rant on X he demanded "a full throated apology" from Mills.

She ignored him.

"This will not end well for the Governor and the people of Maine," said a statement from the White House.

It has not.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Trump’s Department of Education head, wrestling queen Linda McMahon, launched an "inquiry" against Maine's Department of Education last week.

This week, The New York Times reported that Trump’s Department of Agriculture said that it had “frozen federal funding for education programs in Maine, the latest in a barrage of actions targeting the state.”

MSNBC reports that "in case that weren't quite enough National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sent a letter to Maine cancelling funding for Maine Sea Grant."

Maine Public Radio says that in recent days, both the U.S., Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Education have declared that Maine is violating Title IX. The agencies have given the state 10 days to come into compliance with the Trump administration's interpretation of the law and make other changes or risk referral to the U.S. Department of Justice for additional potential sanctions.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

But besides all of this - from the safety of his chair behind his desk - Trump ordered acting Social Security Administration Commissioner Leland Dudek to don the armor of Truth, Justice and the American Way and had sent HIM for a holy joust against the fearsome Dragon of Maine.

Dudek decided to take out Trump's revenge on new parents and grieving families in Maine.

Leland asked his staff about what contracts Maine had with the Social Security Administration, and he cancelled them.

He ordered the cancellation of the online electronic program that allowed babies to be given Social Security numbers right from the hospital, and the program allowing the hospitals to register deaths by electronic verification.

Huffpost reports: According to their emails, the Social Security staff informed Dudek that canceling the contracts “would result in improper payments and potential for identity theft.”

Dudek told his staff to go for it anyway.

“Please cancel the contracts. While our improper payments will go up, and fraudsters may compromise identities, no money will go from the public trust to a petulant child,” Dudek wrote, referring to Governor Janet Mills.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Canceling the vital records contracts would not only make it more difficult for families to register births and deaths IN PERSON at Social Security offices, it also would make it more difficult for the federal government to track births and deaths in Maine accross ALL GOVERNMENT AGENCIES, all of which use Social Security records to prevent improper payments.

And all the agencies let Dudek know it.

Dudek reinstated the contracts in less than 24 hours amid an outcry the agencies, AND from pediatricians, hospitals, funeral directors and Maine’s congressional delegation. He said he hadn’t "intended" to create an “undue burden on the people of Maine,” though his internal emails expressed exactly that.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Wednesday, those emails were obtained by Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee.

Rep. Connolly has called on Dudek to resign immediately.

“The acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration should serve the American people, not create waste, fraud, and abuse on the taxpayer’s dime,” Connolly wrote in a letter to Dudek laying out the email traffic.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Dudek is only a Trump appointee, and has not received any official Senate confirmation for the important post he holds.

He had been only a mid-level IT staffer at Social Security when he helped Elon Musk’s DOGE team access sensitive databases inside the agency, which he bragged about on LinkedIn. He was put on administrative leave.

But when the Social Security head resigned in protest, and more senior officials refused to cooperate with Musk’s team, Trump tapped him to lead the agency as acting head.

Last month, Dudek threatened to shut the agency down altogether after a federal judge ordered DOGE affiliates to withdraw from Social Security databases containing sensitive personal information about Americans.

Dudek knows NOTHING about the contracts the federal governments has with the states. He knows NOTHING about what they mean, and he cares NOTHING about the consequences. And he cares NOTHING about making OUR information safe.

He also obviously cares NOTHING about Trump's and Musk's purported crusade to prevent fraud and waste in government.

So far, the Social Security Administration has not responded to calls by the news media for comment.

Neither has the White House...

[coochiequeens]

What these freaks did to those kids is cruel and unusual.

Madagascar will surgically castrate paedophiles under new law approved by MPs it is revealed - days after Kazakhstan announced same plan

 A minister spoke in favour of the law saying: 'society must know what they did'

By ED HOLT

PUBLISHED: 14:29 EST, 7 February 2024 

Madagascar's parliament has approved a new law which will see paedophiles surgically castrated for their crimes.

The new law comes just days after Kazakhstan announced a similar law where the country's worst offending child sex offenders will have their genitals surgically removed. 

On February 2 Madagascar's parliament, The National Assembly, approved a law which legalised the castration of child rapists. 

The old law stated that those found guilty of raping a minor would face between five and 20 years of forced labour. 

However, this new law states that those found guilty of raping a child under ten-years-old will be surgically castrated and sentenced to life imprisonment. While if the victim is between ten and 13-years-old, they will instead be chemically castrated and face 15 to 20 years of forced labour. If the rapist is also a minor they will escape castration. 

Madagascar's Minister of Justice Landy Randriamanantenasoa spoke in favour of the bill. She said: 'Society must know what they did and who they are'

Ms Randriamanantenasoa has rebuked similar criticism about respect for human rights by saying Madagascar is a sovereign country. This comes after Amnesty criticised the bill 

Minister of Justice Landy Randriamanantenasoa spoke in favour of the bill. Le Quotidien, a French language newspaper, reported that Ms Randriamanantenasoa said: 'Society must know what they did and who they are.'  

The bill was proposed by the President of Madagascar, Andry Rajoelina, last month and was one of his key campaign promises during his re-election bid last year. 

International organisations have criticised the new law. The BBC reports that in a statement, Tigere Chagutah, Amnesty's regional director for east and southern Africa, said: 'In Madagascar, rape cases remain under-reported, and perpetrators often go free due to the victims' and their families' fear of retaliation, stigmatisation, and a lack of trust in the judicial system.

'Implementing chemical and surgical castration, which constitutes cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, as a punishment for those found guilty of raping minors will not solve this and is inconsistent with Malagasy constitutional provisions against torture and other ill-treatment, as well as regional and international human rights standards.'

Ms Randriamanantenasoa has rebuked similar criticism about respect for human rights by saying Madagascar is a sovereign country.  

The tighten of the law in Kazakhstan follows the death of Erkezhan Nurmakhan, five, who was lured to a paedophile's house after he offered her money for an ice cream

Saidolim Gayibnazarov, 48, who had previous convictions, was sentenced to life in jail and chemical castration

Kazakhstan announced its own draft  law to remove paedophiles genitals on February 6 following complaints from MPs that the current law where paedophiles are chemically castrated was not deterring child sex offenders. 

The tighten of the law follows the death of Erkezhan Nurmakhan, five, who was lured to a paedophile's house after he offered her money for an ice cream.

Saidolim Gayibnazarov, 48, who had previous convictions, was sentenced to life in jail and chemical castration.

Deputy Interior Minister of Kazakhstan, Igor Lepikha, said surgical castration was 'controversial'.

'In terms of ethics and the human side of the issue it is very complicated indeed.

'Moreover, we speak about these criminals being locked up for life - so there is no point in [castration] then.'

[odinsblog]

Lynda Carter, the original Wonder Woman actor, denounced her sister’s campaign for a competitive seat in the Arizona House, telling Mother Jones on Friday that she wouldn’t support her for any elected position.

The actor’s statement was included as part of Mother Jones’ exposé on her sister, Pamela Carter, the far-right Republican running to represent part of Maricopa County in the Arizona House of Representatives.

“On her website, Pam claims to have her ‘family’s full support,’” Lynda Carter told Mother Jones. “I have known Pam my entire life, which is why I sadly cannot endorse her for this or any public office.”

Pamela Carter did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment. Her platform includes being opposed to same-sex marriage, abortion in nearly all cases and transgender inclusion in sports. She supports arming teachers.

Lynda Carter, a vocal supporter of reproductive rights, also offered her support to the Democrats running against her sister in Arizona’s Legislative District 4.

“As a native Arizonan, I am proud to endorse Kelli Butler and Karen Gresham to represent LD4 in Arizona’s State House,” she told Mother Jones. “Kelli and Karen are both strong, experienced candidates, born and raised in Arizona. They are working mothers fighting for the rights that matter most to Arizonans, especially every child’s right to a quality education.”

(continue reading)

[comikel]

I don't know why, I wish I did, but I've been thinking about how bad Contrapoint's Palestine statement was all week. I think it's because I really liked her videos and I thought she was thoughtful and smart. But it's so bad I was kind of stunned reading it, it honestly reminded me of reading JK Rowling's insane anti-trans screed that kicked off her hard right turn. The timeline she presents is full of basic factual errors in almost every sentence (or at least wild assumptions that are taken as fact), and the framing is entirely self-centered and clearly based on personal grievances and inconveniences to her. Even the opening line is about how she isn't writing this because it's important and worth talking about, but how she's sick of people badgering her to talk about it.

There is so much contradictory stuff in there. The Pro-Palestine movement somehow "helped elect Trump", but it also didn't accomplish anything, it didn't save "a single life", it was a "doomed cause". An insane thing to say in a world in which families have crowd-funded their way out of the crossfire because of the attention of western media. If it's bad, it's their responsibility, but if it's good, it either didn't happen or wouldn't have mattered anyway.

She explains how conflating anti-zionism and anti-semitism is dangerous in the same breath she does exactly that. If your whole point is that not all Israelis or Jews are complicit in genocide, you could extend that same courtesy and assume not everyone trying to stop the genocide is antisemitic.

The nihilism - and there's no other word for it - that we could never have done anything to save anyone or stop anything or change anything is a truly insane thing to say when support for Israel is at an all time low among Americans. An absolute tectonic shift in policy because of the Pro-Palestine movement. It would have been absolutely ridiculous to say this shit a year ago and it's completely insane now. It's not a plea for action, or understanding, it's a personal appeal to stop being bothered to care.

None of the blame from Natalie lays out falls on anyone with any real kind power. The people in power, The US and Israel, they're just doing what they always do and it's ridiculous to even think you could change that, but instead the people fighting against that - who are literally fighting for their own survival - who are wrong. If you see a photo of a dead child and your anger is directed at the person who shared that photo and not the country who killed that child (or the country who gave them the munitions to do so), I just don't know what the fuck to say to that. The "online left" did not disseminate photos of dead kids, Palestinians shared images of their own family members as a desperate plea for help. Saying that's ineffective isn't just incorrect on a most basic and cynical level, it's mind-meltingly insulting and dehumanizing.

I really liked Natalie's work because it seemed like she really thought about stuff, even if it was just Twilight, and she always showed her work. This statement is defined mostly by a complete lack of that. It's not nuanced, it's not informed, and it's not correct on a basic level. She's adjusted her takes after some backlash in the past, which I always respected, and I hope she uses this as an opportunity to learn something. But it beggars belief that she's had almost two years to think about this and this is all she could come up with. I literally cannot understand how she typed all that, read it, and posted it.

[copperbadge]

I went to the library this afternoon, intending to get a study room and do some work on the novel, but I got distracted and ended up spending the two hours working on a short story instead.

Georgie has said that Michaelis hired her after she rescued his friend's child from a kidnapping, and it was suggested to me recently that the friend could be Oliver McAllister, Michaelis's old school mate from Pirates of the Riviera. I was skeptical because the timing didn't quite work out, but I couldn't stop thinking about the idea, so I decided to try making it work.

And let me tell you, these messy bitches.

In 2015, Michaelis is deep in his Kingbot 3000 phase so he doesn't have to Have Feelings, and Gregory has coerced him into taking a vacation by threatening a coup. Meanwhile, Olly is fresh from his second divorce, from a woman who just tried to kidnap their child. Georgie is the most together person in the room and she's an unemployed twentysomething who just beat three men unconscious to prevent said kidnapping.

And the most amusing part to me is that because of how I set it up, Michaelis is just trying to be friendly but inadvertently keeps coming across like he's trying to seduce Georgie. Which also makes Georgie joking about trying to marry him for his money in Royals/Ramblers even funnier.

"Ma'am, the police would like to take a statement," Lael said to Georgie.

"I can have Lael find you a lawyer if you want," Michaelis added. She gave him a sardonic look. 

"All right, let's get it over with," she sighed. "There goes my visit to the Musee D'Orsay."

"We'll give you the room. Olly, why don't you go in with your boy, so the police can speak with you if needed. Lael and I will be at the cafe next door when you've finished."

Georgie nodded, but he stopped as he passed her and put a hand on her arm.

"Come see us when you're done," he said quietly, ducking his head so the police at the doorway couldn't see their faces. "And cancel your job interview in London."

"Excuse me?" she asked.

"Stay in Paris. You can see the museum this weekend. The palace will cover your lodging and food."

"I...don't want to offend," she said slowly, "but I'm not -- " 

"I'm not flirting with you," he said, realizing belatedly how it might seem to her, and taking his hand from her arm. She looked faintly relieved. "I'm going to spend the time you're giving a statement assembling a job offer for you with my security office. Any young woman who can spot a kidnapping before it happens and soundly beat three grown men should not be leaving Askazer-Shivadlakia to do a job she hates in London. Now, regardless of that, and I say this as a concerned friend, not as king or employer: be honest and helpful with the police, but...economical."

"Just the facts?" she asked. 

"Exactly." He gave her an approving nod and followed Lael out. They were silent in the hallway and lobby, until they stepped out into the street and Lael exhaled.

"That was impressive," he said. "Young lady has a great right hook."

"She's certainly very alert," Michaelis agreed.

"It's been a long time since I've seen someone throw a punch like that."

"Say it and you're fired," Michaelis said good-naturedly. He'd known Lael since the head of security had been a young palace aide during Michaelis's first days as king -- if still years older than the king himself -- and he knew what was coming. 

"Not since our last trip to Galia," Lael said, voice full of relish. "That time a young hothead punched Duke Tomas in the face."

"Utterly fired. I've found your replacement. I'm putting you out to pasture with no pension." 

"You think she'd make a good successor to me?" Lael asked. He was joking but, simultaneously, he was not -- they were both getting older, and Lael was as aware as Michaelis that when a new king was elected in a few years, whoever it was, they would need someone younger, someone who could more easily keep up with them. 

"You tell me," Michaelis said. "You're the expert." 

"Oh, I've been fired, clearly my opinion isn't wanted," Lael said, as they settled into a table at the cafe, Lael with his back to the wall, eyes always scanning behind Michaelis. There had never, at least as far as Michaelis knew, been an attempt on his life, but he'd become used to never getting direct eye contact in public from the man whose job it was, after all, to watch his back. 

"Fine, I withdraw your firing. I suspect purely on her ability to sass me, she is your equal if not your better," he added, as the waitress approached. He ordered coffee and pastries briskly, then turned back to Lael. 

"Well, it's difficult to tell on two minutes' acquaintance," Lael replied, "but actions do speak louder than words." 

"Agreed. Perhaps a contingent offer? She has a law degree; she could likely earn more than we could offer her for a job like yours, but I think she's looking for the right job, not the right pay. Say three months of probation with guaranteed six months of pay to ensure she takes it, and a firm permanent offer at the end if you approve? Conditions non-negotiable but a bit of wiggle room in the salary, I think." 

Lael considered it, then nodded. "I suppose it's paranoia to imagine she might have arranged all this to get into the Palace employ."

"As what, a spy? I love a thriller novel, Lael, but they are fiction," Michaelis replied, amused.

[starmada4546]

Kamala Harris deserved to lose.

That’s a controversial statement, so let me get something out of the way right out the gate: I am not a Trump supporter. I fucking hate Trump’s racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, fascist guts, and I will until the day I die. I voted for Harris, I volunteered for her campaign and several other local campaigns in my area. I did everything a politically active person should do to participate in our democracy.

And yet I, and anyone who was paying attention knew how this election was going to go ahead of time, for one very simple reason. What were Kamala Harris’s policy positions? What did she actually run on? What did she say she was going to do differently? Building a million homes for working-class people who have had their salaries so undercutted by inflation and price hikes that they can no longer afford the kind of long term saving required for that? Increase child tax credits when grocery prices are so high that nobody can afford another mouth to feed? Raising taxes on billionaires? She’s the Vice President of the current administration, why are they not already being taxed? And furthermore, where is that tax money going? Clearly not Medicare for All, or Student Debt Relief, or anything that could actually constitute benefits for the average citizen.

Discussing which demographics are “responsible” for electing Trump is a fucking stupid discussion, and anyone engaging in it should feel absolutely fucking ashamed at buying into more crap that the oligarchs put up to divide us. Except for a few exceptions, the demographics were coin-flip toss ups. What happened was that Kamala Harris lost 15 million votes. Not to Trump, but to apathy. Trump got 3 million less votes than he did in 2020, and still won, because people didn’t vote for Harris. The battle was in voter turnout, like we always knew it would be, and the Democratic Party lost it. Why?

Because Kamala Harris ran, like Biden did, on being the anti-Trump. And regardless of whether or not you think that the Democrats are responsible for current woes, (and I do not,) that's not a winning strategy when the "Anti-Trump" is the one in power. Being the Anti-Trump isn't a policy position. It's not a solution to anyone's issues. It's merely a hope that people think Trump is worse, and as we've seen, regardless of whether or not it should, that does not win elections. When gas prices or grocery bills are so expensive people can barely afford to survive, saying "Well, those will be worse under Trump," is not a solution. It does not provide confidence that she has plans to fix the issues. It is a shrug of the shoulders, and a dismissal, and that's why so many people stayed home.

In 2020, when the problems could be blamed on Trump without any sort of understanding of the complex issues that caused the problems, because Trump was simply the one in power and The President's Job Is To Fix Everything, so being Anti-Trump worked. When Democrats have been in the white house for four years, and people feel like the problems still aren't fixed, they lose confidence that the democrats will fix the problem, so they don't vote.

When food prices are spiking, you don't say, "The other guy will make it worse," because that's what any candidate would say, and it's not particularly different than just purely mudslinging, and its a claim that Trump will deny vehemently, so you can't win that argument. What you need to say is "I'll subsidize agriculture," or, "I'll increase the accessibility and power of food assistance programs." Regardless of whether or not those things would actually work, what they are is some kind of solid plan to actually fix the fucking problem. It's said that people don't vote on policy, and that's true a lot of the time, or at least more than it should be, but people do vote on confidence, and having policy of any kind builds that confidence. Regardless of what you think of Trump, the man has plenty of plans to implement policy. It's terrible, awful, nation destroying policy, but that's getting into the details and the facts, and that's where the voters' eyes glaze over and they stop listening to you. The fact that Trump has plans to change the status quo and Harris does not is how she lost this election.

When the status quo is untenable, people will vote for whatever breaks it, and that wasn't Harris.

It also doesn't help that Harris has pretty much refused to significantly differentiate herself from Joe Biden, who has plenty of his own problems, and again, is the status quo. Joe Biden refused to step aside and relegate himself to being a single term president because of his personal pride, and the Democrats absolutely refused to consider not backing him until he was forced to step aside when his problematic degradation was put on full display for the entire country to see and mock. Then, instead of holding an actual primary, where voters could choose who they wanted to see on the Democratic ticket, they decided to simply coronate Kamala Harris, a historically unpopular candidate with historically low approval ratings, and force anyone who was against Trump to rally behind a candidate they didn't choose and statistically speaking don't like. Is it any wonder that her ticket hemorrhaged 15 million votes from 2020? That's before getting into her incredibly strange choices during her campaign, from again having essentially no policy positions, to picking a Tim Walz, who while being imo a good person, is from an entirely blue state and not a swing state, and has neither experience running against serious mainline GOP candidates, nor any real nationwide appeal beyond his personality, and we've already established that vibes don't turn out voters.

Kamala Harris, and on a larger scale the Democratic Party, deserved to lose this election because they have almost entirely abandoned any sense of being the progressive option. They've completely abandoned the progressive wing of their party, because who else are they going to vote for? Trump?

I don't like being the guy who says, "Harris hasn't earned the votes," because if you didn't vote, fuck you, you're nearly as culpable in this as the MAGAts, but is it any wonder why progressives are abandoning the democrats? After being ignored, fucked over time after time for nearly a decade at this point, literally screaming and begging for people to care about genocide, fascism, and the literal end of the world and getting a pat on the head and a vote sticker, what the fuck else did anyone expect? Harris cozied up with Liz Cheney and tried to court the votes of a few thousand moderate republicans, while tens of millions of progressive votes were expected, and then you're all trying to to blame them when those votes don't come? Shame, shame on you, ye moderate democrats who'd rather get into bed with the center-right than any kind of progressive, you get what you fucking deserve.

Normally, I'd laugh at establishment democrats fucking around and finding out, but this time, it's not just them finding out, it's the whole of America finding out with them. I don't really have any advice, because I'm just as shattered as anyone else. Hunker down, spend time with your loved ones, and maybe learn how to use a gun in case some neo-nazi decides to try to hate-crime you. I'm hoping that the Democrats learn their lessons from this, but honestly at this point, I'm not sure they're capable of learning, if there'll even be a democratic party to speak of come 2028. Right now, I'm gonna go stare at the election results and feel my faith in humanity crack a little bit more.

[binghelovebot]

Alright, here's the one election post as a trans person.

I think it is correct to be scared. I think you should get all documents in order as soon as you can, I think you should try to move to a blue state (or a country you feel safer in) if you can and try to make strong ties in your local queer community if you can't (or the closest to local you have.)

But.

And this isn't to scold anyone - I threw up after the results, my partner had to talk me down for hours.

But. I am seeing this idea spread in some doom posts that the rhetoric being spewed at the trans community right now is unprecedented in recent history. And it's simply not true. The overton window has shifted so far on LGB (and to a lesser extent T) rights that I think many have forgotten or just never realized how violent mainstream conservatism was on even "just" gay relationships until very recently.

When you see people spread the "50% of the US says trans rights have gone too far" to tell you you are doomed and must detransition: in 2001, 53% of the US said gay relationships were "morally unacceptable".

And we sure as hell were alive and in love and thriving in 2001.

When they talk about the violent statements about eradicating trans people from public life or that our "movement" is over, I am not saying to not be scared or make plans - those keep us alive. But I am saying to remember that Newt Gringich, former speaker of the house, was promising to "violently" fight back against queer people less than 20 years ago and promising the ~homosexual agenda~ was just temporary:

And he was just one of many. The USA has never loved us. That hurts, but know it: most of the fuckers hated us then and we still lived and loved.

The dramatic overton window shift in the last 15 years has been beautiful and wonderful - but I was alive in 2008. And I knew I was a trans and queer child. And I knew I would live and thrive then, even if the fuckers said I was going to dissappear.

I'm still here. And I'm still trans and queer. And I'm happy. And now we've got a new set of old fucks with the same old hate.

And I can't say what's going to happen. But right now? I plan to still be here in 2028 too. And in every fucking decade after. Still queer, still trans, and still happy.

[girloftheisland]

Can We Still Buy from Mattel?

I've never liked the phrase "vote with your wallet." When consumers wanted more sustainable and green alternatives, we got greenwashing en masse.

So how do you analyze the ethics of a multi-billion dollar corporation with several legacy brands under its name? You don't! It's a sticky business if you believe there is "no ethical consumption under capitalism." Given that the U.S. is entering trade wars with several countries, I decided to do a little investigation into Mattel using publicly-available resources.

This is going to be a long post.

There are some things that I'm going to point out, and I want to begin by stating that there is no conclusive evidence that Mattel as a whole is a political-leaning organization. You may be thinking: "Duh! It's a global brand. Why lean into politics?" The issue is that any company that sources its goods from other countries, especially China, will have a vested interest in the current administration's policies on trading. But first, let's talk about DEI.

DEI POLICIES

We are living in an unprecedented time. This statement is true no matter where you fall on the political matrix. Because Donald Trump won the 2024 election at just 49.8%, barely a plurality, and because SCOTUS issued another disastrous decision that ended affirmative action at colleges, corporations are seizing the moment to drop their DEI policies. 

Anyone who's attended a Pride event and witnessed the muck of Rainbow Capitalism is not surprised that corporations would retreat on these policies. They leave just as quickly as they arrive. Conservatives suggest that DEI policies are a fad and lead to filling quotas and unfair hiring practices, all of which are illegal. The corporations that stick by their policies say it's a matter of ethics (see Costco's decision to keep theirs). 

Which brings me back to Mattel. Will they or won't they drop their DEI policies? DEI policies work to ensure several things: hiring practices are fair and do not discriminate, work forces are diverse and represent the populations they serve, and historically marginalized groups are brought on board. These policies are defined as radical by the far-right because these policies can only exist if we conclude that we live in a society built upon patriarchal, imperialist, and white supremacist social constructs. And that this capitalist country was built using black people as capital. 

DEI policies exist to reduce the fallout of segregation from the 20th century. People are afraid that if corporations drop their DEI policies, it allows segregation to reemerge in the workplace. While some companies dropped their policies citing cost-cuts, others retain theirs because the data proves a diverse workforce leads to higher revenues. This is why I do not think of corporations as people. Their bottom line, not the overall health of civic society, drives every decision they make.

Is Mattel keeping their DEI policies? For now, the answer is yes. Their website still links to Thriving and Inclusive Communities and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion pages, and of course their news page is filled with "happy" and "fun" announcements. They have also established a commitment to human rights to combat modern slavery and child labor, and other swampy issues a global company may face when sourcing material and labor. 

And finally, the 1792 Exchange, a right-leaning nonprofit with a mission to undermine woke culture, defines the Mattel corporation as High Risk because of their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Alternatively, the Human Rights Campaign issued Mattel a score of 100% for their commitment to LGBTQ+ inclusivity. 

The far-right have stolen and utilized the "woke" term to weaponize everything they disagree with. DEI policies are now politicized. Just last week Trump blamed the worst U.S. plane crash in 15 years on DEI. If Mattel chooses to keep its DEI policies, its commitment to LGBTQA+ inclusivity, its commitment to human rights, then these acts by default become political. Radical. 

The question is: will Mattel bend the knee to the Trump administration and shed these policies? 

CORPORATE POLITICS

Did you like the Barbie movie? You can thank the Mattel CEO for that.

The CEO of Mattel is Ynon Kreiz, an Israeli-American businessman. The war in Palestine and Israel became a convoluted issue leading up to the November 2024 election, highlighting the very stark divide between left and right in the U.S., with one side labeling Palestine as an apartheid state undergoing genocide, and the other side saying that anti-Zionist terrorists want to highjack the rightful homeland of the Jews (a side that also ironically consists of white supremacists and antisemites). 

Ynon Kreiz has strong ties to Israel. It's where he was born, raised, and where he studied. Kreiz joined several other entertainment leaders in denouncing the Hamas attacks in 2023, stating, "We unequivocally stand in solidarity with Israel in the global fight against terrorism." On a Bloomberg podcast, he explained that Mattel stands against all forms of hate, and that includes the atrocities committed against Israelis and Palenstinians. However, he avoided giving any opinions on Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of a far-right government in Israel who opposes Palestinian statehood. Kreiz wants a swift resolution and peace for all, and isn't that a good and tidy thing to want? 

Where you land on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict likely demonstrates where you land in politics overall. If we think that statement is true, is it enough to determine the politics of Ynon Kreiz? Probably not. 

There are two other things to note. One I'm folding into several things: supply chain issues, tariffs, and China. We know that Kreiz spoke with Biden in 2021 with hopes that the U.S. government will work towards mitigating the effect of supply chain issues, issues made worse by Trump-era tariffs, which could worsen again under the second Trump administration. Trump campaigned on the promise of tariffs, which could hurt Mattel, who currently gets 50% of its goods from China. Mattel will reduce that to 40%, but we can still expect to see raised prices to offset it. 

We do not know if Kreiz, or Mattel, if we assume corporations are people, favor one political party over the other. The dominant two parties have wildly different trading and tariff policies. Trump's tax cuts will look very tempting to high earners, but his tariff proposals could (and will) cause anxiety. If Mattel feels like they have skin in the game, they will want to be proactive with mitigating their losses due to tariffs and their EBITDA.

Which brings me to the second thing to note: can we follow a money trail? Since the 2011 Citizens United decision, which basically concluded that corporations are people and can spend money in our elections, there has been an explosion of money in politics. Opensecrets.org is an independent, nonpartisan nonprofit that tracks political spending in U.S. elections. While Mattel as a corporation cannot itself contribute to a political candidate or campaign, their PACs and individuals can. Their page lists a total of $81,973 given during the 2024 election cycle, with contributions made to both Democratic and Republican candidates, including Donald Trump. The top recipient was Kamala Harris, receiving $41,031, which was donated by an "individual" (in this context, an individual may indicate a member, employee, owner, or immediate family member). The top recipient in 2020 was Joe Biden. We cannot ascertain too much from this information, but the political spending associated with the Mattel name is far from just $0. 

I know what you're thinking. A company like Mattel should want a squeaky clean reputation, and politics muddy the waters. Why would anyone at that company be outspoken about their political beliefs and opinions?

Controversy tends to follow Mattel. They'll release "gender-neutral" dolls that progressives critique and pull an entire book launch because conservatives got mad over the gender and body inclusivity. If we look at the Barbie line from its conception, it's awash with misogyny, racism, fat-phobia, and sexism. She's also a feminist icon. Some of Mattel's top brands have long been dualistic in nature. 

We are living in an era of intense political polarization in a country that just elected a guy who thinks and acts like a fascist. Will that trickle down to toys, too?

A NOTE ON ADDY

I collect American Girl dolls. One of them is Addy Walker, a character released in 1993 under Pleasant Company, which would later be purchased by Mattel in the late 90s. Addy is a character who escapes slavery. (See this link for more context on Addy's history and development.) As a member of this fandom, I've noticed that we are quick to draw conclusions, and a new big concern is whether or not Addy will be retired. 

The concern is not totally unfounded. 

In addition to the DEI scares, State legislatures are pushing through bills that would allow schools to dilute lessons on slavery, or rewrite history on slavery altogether, and Trump has gone so far as to suggest we should defund schools that teach slavery is central to American history. It's become part of their several-pronged strategy to name anything "woke" (ie. black, brown, indigenous, marginalized, LGBTQA+) as a scapegoat. 

If Mattel drops its DEI policies, does that mean it will drop Addy, and other characters like her? 

For now, much like Mattel's website, the American Girl site still includes a statement on diversity and inclusion. Their commitment to empower girls and racial equity led them to release their library on all black characters for free. Additionally, the American Girl site still hosts their learning guides for parents and teachers on a number of books featuring the historical characters. 

Another black historical character is Claudie Wells, a girl living during the Harlem Renaissance, who was released in 2022. Fans immediately loved Claudie but were disappointed that she didn't receive the same promotional treatment as other characters, like the 90s twins (who are white) that launched in 2023.

Given these circumstances, fans have noticed a trend where American Girl will prioritize air space for their white characters, but not their black ones. The "World by Us" line featuring three non-white characters was released in 2021 to diversify the line, but the collection consistently goes on sale to nix the remaining stock. The first characters to sell out were Evette and Maritza, both dolls which could be deemed racially ambiguous if you knew nothing about their backstories. The only doll who hasn't sold out is Makena, who is unequivocally black. Despite the dwindling World by Us collection, Makena is still available to purchase on the American Girl website.

There are other examples like this. It brings into question the intentions of American Girl and Mattel. Why don't they prioritize black dolls? Why do they make 7,000 of the white holiday doll but only 3,000 of the black holiday doll? Do most children, regardless of race, prefer white dolls? (See this history of black dolls.) Are black dolls harder to sell, especially at a high price point? Is Mattel just reflecting our society at large, which if we glean anything from the previous election, is becoming increasingly conservative and tired of inclusive culture?

A new fear is spreading that American Girl will retire Addy Walker due to corporations stripping away their DEI policies. I don't think this will happen. American Girl is riding the Gen X and Millennial nostalgia wave all the way to the bank, and the includes revamping and relaunching the original characters. That includes Addy Walker. 

Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz likely doesn't have much control over the creative direction at American Girl, and I doubt he cares much. He's spent his tenure turning the company around so that it can start making a profit again – and now it's a big name in Hollywood (thanks to that Barbie movie, and eventually an American Girl movie). Kreiz has been busy trimming down the company, cutting workforces, factories, and products. If he's already trimmed all the fat, then what's left? I doubt it's Addy Walker.

WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO SAY

You can choose to vote with your wallet if you want, but this will never save your favorite doll line. While finding the conclusion for all this, I wanted to ask myself: "Why can't I just buy something as innocuous as an American Girl doll? Why does it have to be political!?" 

The problem is that the far-right are infiltrating our politics, and they are politicizing our bodies. Immigrants and trans people are "othered" and dehumanized, with the intent of forcing them into a mostly white, evangelical society, and if they don't fit, then they can go away — or perish. "Woke" culture is named as something heinous and evil, and enough people believe this, then it becomes true. Whatever is the end goal of the Trump administration, assimilation and sameness is one key component. Everyone better fall in line, and that includes corporations, which are people by the way!

If Mattel keeps their DEI and inclusive policies, that will say one thing, but the truth will be revealed in their products. 

***

Tumblr isn't the best for conversations but share your thoughts in the replies!

[qqueenofhades]

https://www.tumblr.com/qqueenofhades/742700762243727361/you-can-tell-you-work-in-academia-with-how-much

Hi, sorry, Asshole Anon here (I’m not giving myself that nickname to lash out, I’m saying it because I was an ass)

To clarify: I mean “I don’t know what to trust anymore” in that “people whom I normally respect and would otherwise agree with are now sharing material that I find either morally indefensible or overtly simplistic, and at the same time people on the ground in Gaza are saying that Hamas IS a liberation organization, so I trust their word, but there is also the existence of the “We Want To Live” protests, and the fact that there’s now apparently a protest against a child that got killed that isn’t widely reported, with an attached video of said protest from somebody on the ground in Gaza, but it’s in Arabic, there are no subtitles, I cannot speak Arabic, and I don’t trust Google Translate”

I just want an objective sense of what is happening on the ground. I want to know what is and is not propaganda, because I (white, raised in a liberal(?) household, surrounded by white people) am especially susceptible to it. Once I have that objective sense of what the people in Gaza want, then I will be able to effectively and efficiently advocate for shit. But that also necessitates listening to orgs like Standing Together, B’Tselem, people IN Israel who want this shit to stop, and hoo BOY that ain’t gonna fly with those people I mentioned because of:

1. BDS saying that the org “normalizes the occupation”, but they’re made up of Palestinian activists and anti-apartheid veterans, I can’t discount their statement, not fully.

2. Netenyahu’s… Netenyahu

3. Twitter’s doing a great job of asserting that everyone in Israel is a — quoting directly here from a half-remembered Tweet — “genocidal maniac”, or wants the bombardment to happen. (Which I know for a fact is not the case, if the protests calling for a new election are anything to go by)

That’s not even getting into the domestic stuff. I’m in an org rn and I’m getting the sinking feeling that they’re gonna drop this thing like a hot potato when a ceasefire gets called. Just sucks.

Anyways, back to improvement. Just closing this out

I agree that we're currently in a paradoxical state where there is simultaneously ALL THE INFORMATION EVER and ACTUALLY NO INFORMATION AT ALL, and that's what makes it difficult to sort out true from false. It's also what contributes to compassion fatigue, where we are able to get extensive real-time information and/or eyewitness accounts about pretty much any tragedy or catastrophe anywhere in the world, and social media has created a space where we are expected to both immediately react to all that information and to do so in the "right" and "correct" way. Which is basically impossible, and is also what burns out young well-meaning people so hard, where they insist that there's nothing to be done except The Revolution, because they have been so inundated with this torrent of human suffering and it seems like small steps are in fact useless. I am a historian and I can tell you upfront that humans are simply not made to process that volume of information about ALL THE BAD THINGS EVERYWHERE. It's also impossible to have an informed opinion on all or sometimes any of it, but there is still the pressure to visibly do so and to do it in a way that fits in with what everyone in your peer group is saying, even if you don't understand it. So yes -- that is absolutely very difficult, and it's hard to filter or parse it.

That said, I don't think we actually need to have painstaking piece-by-piece analysis of every single piece of information out there, because there are in fact so many competing narratives, perspectives, fake news, disinformation campaigns, opinions, etc., and it will lead you to the same information paralysis: there's just too much of it to even start processing, and so your brain just gives up and reverts to those same simplistic cliches and things that "feel" right, regardless of whether or not they are. When you're trying to decide on the fine details of something, it helps to have an overall sense of the context and narrative that they're operating in. So for reference, these are some broad and basic analytic paradigms that I personally use when reading or thinking about any material in regard to the Israel/Hamas situation in particular:

No person of basic good faith and human decency wants the current situation in Gaza to be happening. However, the person/group that has the power to call it off -- i.e. Netanyahu and the current Israeli government -- has not done so despite increasing pressure from Western allies, because the situation is beneficial to Bibi personally and he sees more use in continuing it than making the decision for it to stop.

The governments of Western allies, therefore, can voice disapproval of Israel's actions (which they have been doing more and more frequently) but unless Netanyahu himself makes the choice to end the war, it will not stop. The West has recently given more and more signals that they are not prepared to countenance the ongoing destruction and genocide of Gaza, but yet again, Israel is its own sovereign country with its own powerful government, military, intelligence services, etc. The "anti-imperialists" who think the collective West can just reach in and turn off the violence whenever they please, and have just refused to do so because they're "bad people," are not being realistic. Western allies can exert pressure and leverage, but as long as Netanyahu himself wants to keep going, he will.

"People in Gaza" and "people in Israel" are not homogeneous blocs who think exactly alike. Some people in Gaza support Hamas. Some people do not. Hamas support has recently grown as a result of Israel's post-October 7 response, but it is not unanimous or unquestioned.

Hamas is the entity that started the current war by attacking Israel on October 7 and murdering/raping/kidnapping 1,000+ Israeli civilians. Hamas is also associated with Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, and other terrorist regimes/states, which are often defended by Online Leftists simply for being "anti-Western," regardless of how heinous their actions also are.

Netanyahu was wildly unpopular in Israel for MONTHS before this current war, due to his autocratic attempts to neutralize the Israeli Supreme Court and make the country even more of his personal fiefdom. There were huge, massive, ongoing protests against his naked power-grab for almost all of 2023, and he was so preoccupied with pushing it through that he ignored warnings from the Israeli and Egyptian intelligence services that Hamas was planning a major attack. These anti-Netanyahu demonstrations have continued and ramped up in intensity even in the middle of the war/attacks on Gaza.

As such, painting every single Israeli as mindlessly supporting the current actions of Netanyahu and the Israeli government is antisemitic nonsense and reflect the current Western Leftist tendency to assume that "all Israelis" and "all Zionists (read Jews)" are evil and personally responsible for this.

Israeli Jews have a right to exist and to reside on the land currently called Israel. Modern Israel was founded in 1948, three years after the end of WWII and the Holocaust, the greatest incidence of antisemitic mass murder in history, which is a fact that cannot be ignored and which western leftists eagerly calling for its total eradication and treating it as an illegitimate "white western settler colony" nonetheless do in fact repeatedly ignore.

This is why many Jews do not feel safe in other countries, because there has literally been thousands of years of history proving that they often aren't, and which the rabidly antisemitic response to the current conflict is doing nothing to dissuade.

Jews have had a presence in the land alternately called Palestine, Israel, the Holy Land, Judah, etc., for over 2,000 years, and their entire religion and history is founded around the exile from Jerusalem. That is the history that the current state of Israel is drawing on. It does not vanish just because it is inconvenient for western leftists to acknowledge.

Israel currently has a militant far-right government (after tending toward rightist/right wing domestic politics more generally, partially due to post-Holocaust trauma) that has deliberately erased, ignored, and violated the equally valid claims of Palestine and Palestinian people to that same land, and which is currently committing full-scale genocide against them.

Palestine and Palestinian/Muslim people have the same right to exist on that land as Israel and Israeli/Jewish people (and Christian people, and none-of-the-three people). They both have equally long and historically relevant claims to this land and one of them (in an ideal world, which we do not live in) should not be artificially prized over the other.

However, this land is some of the most bitterly and violently contested in the entire world, for the last two thousand years and counting, and there is no one good guy, simplistic answer, or quick way to stop it. The three Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) have fought bitterly over Jerusalem and its associated territories for a cool few millennia, and human nature being what it is, there is no way for one person, group, organization, government, etc to just step in and make it stop.

The Western/American leftist response to the current conflict has often made absolutely no attempt to take into account any of this troubled and complex history, and has reduced the whole thing down to whichever antisemitic and/or anti-Democratic Party soundbites will get them the most traction on social media. This often rests on whitewashing any moral responsibility belonging to Hamas and defending them no matter what, labeling all Israeli Jews as "evil genocide supporters," and assuming that if Biden wanted to magically shapeshift into Netanyahu and give the order to make it stop, he would, but he's "just not doing it," ergo something something Trump Would Totally Be Better!

These people also often call themselves "anti-imperialist" while thinking/demanding that America swoop in and play Big Global Policeman Daddy (as it indeed has often done in the past) and spank all its naughty children (but if it actually did do this, etc etc it would be evil). Biden could very much do more and has not necessarily done enough, but he has also done more than any other American president in history to shift away from unconditional unquestioning support of Israel only, and to advocate for a Palestinian state, a lasting ceasefire, and other basic precepts of Palestinian self-determination and dignity of personhood. These two things can be true at the same time.

I don't necessarily expect everyone to agree with every single fine detail of these statements, but I do expect them to at least make a basic effort to let all of these facts to inform their response, and not just the ones that they most agree with and which most fit their ideology or preferred conclusion. So that's one way to approach the situation, even if we obviously can't wring every single drop of meaning out of every single competing piece of information or evidence, because there is just too much of it. When we have a broader understanding of the space that we are operating in and the precepts that are factually true, we are able to make better judgments about who is trustworthy, who is worth listening to, what message they are pushing, and whether it corresponds with reality.

Good luck. I'm sure you'll continue to think about this and take the steps that you feel are best. It is all any of us can do.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Erin Reed at Erin In The Morning:

On Wednesday, former Republican President Donald Trump turned his aim towards transgender people near the end of a speech in Racine, Wisconsin, which was mostly focused on immigration and crime. In the speech, he announced that his administration would shut down federal funding for schools that support transgender people, describing these schools as “pushing transgender insanity,” on day one. He also announced his intent to target transgender people in sports. These statements suggest that the candidate may increasingly prioritize targeting transgender people as a key election issue should he win.

Though the first hour of the speech went by without a mention of LGBTQ+ people, Trump turned his attention towards schools abruptly after speaking about crime, where he announced his day one priorities: “We're going to be proud of our Capital, we're going to take care of our Capital. On day one, I will sign a new executive order to cut Federal funding of any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content onto the lives of our children, and I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask."

He then turned towards the topic of transgender athletes, claiming that a cisgender woman was injured by a volleyball hit by a transgender woman, which he claimed “came out at her at a speed that which she’s never seen before.” He also took aim at transgender swimmers and weightlifters. This is not the first time that Donald Trump has spoken about transgender issues. Recently, his campaign slammed President Biden’s proclamation of Transgender Day of Visibility as “blasphemous” for falling on the same day as Easter. Notably, Trans Day of Visibility has been on March 31st for several years, whereas Easter is a moving holiday. Shortly after, he endorsed Pastor Mark Burns in South Carolina, who has called for executions over transgender people.

Recently, in a rally in Michigan, he stated that his day-one priorities included reversing Title IX protections for trans youth. Likewise, last year he released a video stating he intends to target programs promoting gender-affirming care “at any age” and to treat gender-affirming care as child abuse.

At a propaganda rally in Racine, WI Wednesday, Donald Trump pushed his insane "parental rights" in schools agenda by suggesting that federal funding of schools be cut if they don't toe Trump's anti-student inclusion line of banning support for trans people in schools.

Speaking of who is cramming down "political content" in schools? It's right-wing indoctrination factories such as PragerU.

See Also:

The Signorile Report: Trump's feeble pitch to LGBTQ voters: Think about your wallet--and stay closeted

[mariacallous]

A court in Istanbul, Turkey on Tuesday ordered the arrest of Umit Ozdag, president of the anti-migrant and far-right Victory Party, for “public incitement to hatred and enmity”.

The prosecutor’s office highlighted Ozdag’s alleged influence on anti-migrant unrest in Kayseri province in 2024. Ozdag’s statements had demonstrated “provocative attitudes and behaviours”, it said.

Turkey saw anti-migrant and anti-refugee protests in July 2024 following an alleged case of child abuse in Kayseri province that involved Syrian refugees. Angry protesters raided shops owned by Syrians and set fire to several vehicles.

“Concrete evidence showed the existence of strong suspicion that Ozdag committed the crime attributed to him,” the Istanbul court said.

Ozdag denied the allegations. “The VP has nothing to do with incidents [in Kayseri],” he said in his defence at the court.

He has been sent to Turkey’s notorious Silivri Prison, where many political prisoners are held. “This arrest cannot deter me. I will continue the fight in prison,” Ozdag said in a statement on Wednesday.

Members of his party protested in front of the courthouse, demanding Ozdag’s release.

On Monday, the prosecutor’s office initially launched an investigation into Ozdag over charges of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in social media posts. The investigation was later expanded to include charges of inciting public hatred and hostility.

Ozdag is a professor of international relations and has worked at various universities and institutes. He started his political career in the far-right Nationalist Movement Party and later joined the centre-right Good Party.

In 2021, he left the Good Party and established his own party, focusing on refugees and migrants and using social media to spread anti-migrant and far-right views.

In the last legislative elections, in May 2023, Ozdag’s Victory Party received 2.3 per cent of the votes cast but his party’s presidential candidate, Sinan Ogan, won some 5.2 per cent of the votes in the presidential election held at the same time; Ogan later parted ways with the Victory Party and supported Erdogan in the second round of the presidential election.

[justforbooks]

Jean-Marie Le Pen, French far-right leader, dies aged 96

Former paratrooper led National Front party for decades and courted controversy, being repeatedly fined for contesting crimes against humanity

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France’s far-right National Front party, who sent shock waves through the country when he made it to the second round of the presidential election in 2002, has died aged 96.

The former paratrooper, who led the party from 1972 to 2011, was repeatedly convicted over comments about the Holocaust, which he once dismissed as “merely a detail of history”.

His daughter Marine Le Pen took the party’s leadership in 2011 and expelled him four years later, seeking to distance the movement from his extremist reputation. The party has since been renamed the National Rally (RN).

Le Pen’s family said in a statement that he had been in a care facility for several weeks and he died at midday on Tuesday “surrounded by his loved ones”.

However, it emerged that Marine Le Pen only learned of his death from reporters while flying back from the French Indian Ocean island Mayotte, where she had been visiting victims of Cyclone Chido.

Sophie Dupont, a journalist with BFMTV who was on the plane with Marine Le Pen, said the politician was told when the flight made a technical stop in Nairobi. “Marine Le Pen’s press officer didn’t know. He went to tell her,” Dupont said.

Marine Le Pen’s entourage said she would not make any immediate comment.

The Elysée, in a statement, trod a diplomatic line, summarising Le Pen’s political career: an MP three times, a presidential candidate five times, an MEP seven times, a town councillor and regional councillor. “A historic figure of the far right, he played a role in the public life of our country for nearly 70 years, which is now a matter for history to judge,” it said.

RN said Le Pen had defended “the idea of French greatness with all his soul and at the risk of his own life”.

Last year Le Pen faced charges, along with Marine Le Pen, over allegations they and other party figures had embezzled money from the European parliament with fake jobs. Jean-Marie Le Pen was excused from attending court for health reasons.

Twenty-three years ago he had put the far right at the heart of French politics with his surprise, second-place finish in the first round of the 2002 presidential election. In the run-off he was defeated by Jacques Chirac in a landslide.

Controversies over his statements about race and the Holocaust put him at odds with his daughter’s attempts to sanitise the party and move away from its jackbooted, antisemitic image.

He was convicted and fined several times for contesting crimes against humanity, and in 2014 suggested the Ebola virus could be a solution to the global population explosion. Two years later, he was convicted of “provoking hatred and ethnic discrimination” for telling a public meeting three years earlier that Roma in the city were “rash-inducing” and smelly.

Le Pen was made lifetime honorary president of the FN when his daughter took over as party leader in 2011. She threw him out in 2015 after he refused to temper his incendiary language as she attempted to clean up the FN’s reputation, but only finally succeeded in ejecting him in 2018 after several legal battles.

Jean-Marie Le Pen was born on 20 June 1928, the only child of a Breton fisherer and his wife, a seamstress. In his autobiography, Mémoires: fils de la nation (Son of the Nation), he described his childhood as “modest” in a home with “a dirt floor”. His father died in 1942 when Jean, as he was then, was 14, after a mine caught up in his fishing net exploded.

At 16, Le Pen sought to join the military – specifically the French Interior Forces (FFI) – but was refused as he was too young. Col Henri de la Vaissière reportedly told him: “Think of your mother”. In 1946, he was expelled from his secondary school and moved to the Paris region, where he passed his baccalauréat and began studying law.

He later joined the French Foreign Legion’s parachute regiment and took part in the war in Indochina and in the Algerian war of independence, during which he was accused of torturing detainees.

In 1962, Le Pen told the newspaper Combat: “I’ve nothing to hide. We tortured because it had to be done.” Later, Le Pen denied further accusations of torture in Algeria, claiming they were part of a leftwing “government plot” to discredit him.

He had three daughters with his first wife, Pierrette, of whom Marine was the youngest. He was reported to have been closest to his granddaughter, Marion Maréchal, daughter of Yann Le Pen, his middle child. He married his second wife, Jany, in 1991.

On learning of his death, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the hard left France Unbowed, wrote on X that he believed in “respect for the dignity of the dead and the grief of their loved ones …” adding “this does not erase the right to judge their actions. Jean-Marie Le Pen’s actions remain intolerable. The battle against the man is over, that against hatred, racism, Islamophobia and antisemitism that he spread continues.”

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[lazyscience]

I'm so, so tired of the constant infighting between leftists and liberals about who's not listening to whom and how it lost the election, particularly "Libs didn't say anything about X issue" and "leftists couldn't shut up about Y issue!"

The problem is, a LOT of the United States isn't listening. To anybody.

People who care about politics are listening and have opinions about policy and platforms, but SO much of the United States does not. As soon as anybody mentions a party, a lot of people's brains turn off even among the educated and reading groups. "All politicians are crooks just trying to look important, except for my hero Trump, or my hero AOC" or whichever politician they feel like meets their vibe where it's at.

As far as Project 2025, or maternal mortality, or migrant child labor, or transphobia, or Palestine?

Well, let's start with how 54 percent of adults in the US read at a 6th grade level or below. They rarely even watch TV news except the sports and weather and maybe if there's a cute story about a dog playing pickleball or a kid with cancer sacrificing their Make-A-Wish to pay school lunch debt rather than going to Disneyworld like that's somehow "heartwarming." There were 262 million adults 18 years of age or older in 2023, and the number of people turning in to nightly news? Less than 20 milion. To newsmagazines like 60 Minutes that are more in-depth? Less than 15 million (and no way to tell how many of these are the same people or different ones)

Best guess is between 30-35% of people are getting their news ONLY from social media, as opposed to 7-11% from a newspaper/legacy media outlet.

Most adults in the US are most certainly are not reading over 700 pages from the Heritage Foundation, no matter how profoundly it looks to affect them when 46 percent of them did not read a single book in the last year. Most of the books they DID read were fiction, not dense policy statements.

In short? A fucking lot of people DON'T know about a lot of issues or what Democrats were or weren't doing about them. They are swiping past the TikTok leftists and Facebook MAGAts both in favor of focusing on baby animals, viral dances, recipes, or pretty pictures on Instagram where the politics have been pre-filtered out for them. I'm guilty of this myself, of hitting my anxiety threshold about my finances, my job future, my safety and that of my loved ones who aren't white, straight, cis and Christian, that so much feels out of my control and I just want to look at fucking cat pictures and crafts.

The problem is how many people do this every day, all the time, because they don't know how any of it works, it ALL feels out of their control, and they just want someone to tell them what to do.

Fascists love NOTHING better than telling people "I'll tell you what to do and it'll all be okay," while people who deal in facts don't want to do that because it's not true.

Which brings us to - leftists, fascists, and the large mushy middle in-between--very very few of ANY of them on social media are operating on facts. Most people are simply not equipped to engage with politics in terms of policy or platforms. It is all fucking vibes right now. And right now, with everybody's vibe feeling like the current situation re: job opportunity, cost of living and authoritarian regimes and hate groups getting bolder and bolder all the time is fucking rancid, the challenger party is ALWAYS going to have an advantage of "maybe things will be different." Especially when the people voting don't actually understand what concrete things have to happen to MAKE it different (like the difference between laws and executive orders, and the power of the courts to strike down EOs/laws, and who ACTUALLY controls the price of eggs and that there's fucking POTATO cartels).

Leftists and liberals alike, I beg of you, these two things.

stop the goddamn circular firing squad until the right is not in a position to eat us all, please and thank you, and

Don't lie to people about how shit can be fixed if you just do this one simple trick, BUT - encourage people to do concrete, actionable things that will make a visible change. The people advocating about showing up to city council meetings? I fucking LOVE YOU.

The giant problem I just word vomited about above is paralyzing. It feels insurmountable. We can't start there. We can't immediately fix country-level political coverage OR people's ability to read it. What we CAN do is make people feel like they CAN make a difference in the community where they live, a tangible one. They can make a difference about what kind of housing gets built, what happens to their trash, who can use a bathroom, what books can be in their library, whether unhoused people need to be Christian to access shelter when it's cold, if their town or suburb or city is a sanctuary.

And as people who didn't know before learn how to make arguments and navigate procedures in their community, it'll be more intuitive to them to ask these questions on the state level,on the national level "how do these things work? where do these decisions come from? and what can I do about them, me, myself?" Because they'll have reason to think they CAN. That it IS their problem, and not just a graphic to scroll past.

[from-nobody-to-nightmare]

Chapter 8: Creature Comforts

“No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person.”

― Willa Cather, Alexander's Bridge

Distant voices became more apparent as I awoke on a chaise lounge in what seemed to be a private room hidden behind thick red curtains. Oh, that’s right; I can see properly again. I propped myself up with my elbow and rubbed the knot I felt on the back of my head. Mrs. Rosie was nowhere to be found, but I saw Mr. Morde casually sitting on the edge of the bed, reading a well-worn book. He glanced up momentarily to look at me, then returned to his book. “Welcome back to the realm of damnation, child. How fair thy repose?” He said with a puckish grin.

My mouth felt dry and scratchy. I pretended to chew on something to get my saliva working again. Moments later, I cleared my throat and said in a still, raspy voice, “Oh my. How long was I out?” Without even looking at me, he said, “ Not long. If I were to guess, I would say about twenty minutes.”  I sat straight on the lounge and stretched my arms and back in tandem. “If I may be so bold, would it have been better to lay me on the bed instead of the lounge?” 

“We thought the bed would have been too comfortable, and we have much to do today to let such a minor inconvenience hold sway for an entire day.” " he said candidly. I seriously doubted the validity of that statement since I could theoretically fall asleep anywhere, but I guess the reasoning felt sound enough. Couches aren't always the most comfortable places to sleep. I struggled to find anything else to say about the matter at hand.

 I got up and leaned backward to crack my lower back. “I am very grateful for taking care of me. I don’t suppose Mrs. Rosie is still around, is she? I want to thank her, too.” I became very aware of how he towered over me as he stood up from his sitting place, parted the curtains, and gestured towards the main floor. “Oh, thank you.” I bowed my head lightly as I ducked under the curtain door to the hallway. Zestial made his way in front of me to lead me down. My hand clutched the banister tightly, holding my fist close to my chest. We passed some unusual paintings on the way to the stairs. There was an eeriness about them. Whatever it was, it made the hair I still had on the back of my neck bristle. I could have sworn I was being watched, but I elected to ignore it for the sake of my sanity. My mind must be playing silly tricks on me. I’m safe for the most part, or at least safer than before. I’m relatively sure that Mr. Morde isn’t going to let anything bad happen to me; after all, I still have an ongoing deal with him. 

That bolstered my confidence a little as we walked down the stairs. I looked back at the dim stairwell with troubling second thoughts. The shadows behind the frame felt deeper than they should have been as the short fuzz all over my body stood on end. My wool will grow back, right? It has to. The thoughts spun in my head as we reached the main floor. Zestiel moved aside, and then I noticed the crowd of people, and their lively chatter rang in my ears in full force. 

We made our way back to Rosie, and she handed me a lovely old-fashioned suitcase filled with my recent purchases. My ears picked up every little noise in the store as I thanked her. The endless chatter between random sinners smothered my mind and made me feel all prickly. I felt myself going ridged, my hands clasping tightly on the suitcase handles as my eyes locked straight ahead to the wall behind her. I didn’t catch what Mr. Morde said to her during our farewell, and by this point, I didn’t really care. 

_______________________________________________________

“Many thanks for being such a gracious Hostess to my newest asset.” Zestial tipped his hat in farewell until he felt an impromptu yet familiar chill from Nellie’s direction. He turned around only to see her frozen in place like a statue. Her lavender eyes bore through him and everything else to a far-off place. “Are you well, child?” He said, gently touching the top of her fluffy head. No reaction. The chill was seeping from her and was making his fingers go numb. He withdrew his hand back into his cloak to chase off the cold long enough to try again. He stooped down to her eye level and lightly but firmly jostled her shoulder; the cold was catching up in his hand sharper this time. “Nellie, child, ‘tis time for us to depart.”  Her body shuddered back to life as she took a long, deep breath, slowly exhaling a stream of frost covering his spider-like accouterment in tiny icicles. A few hard blinks and a vigorous head shake returned her mind to her current reality, “Oh! I’m sorry. I must have zoned out. Did  you say something, Mr. Morde?” 

“‘Tis time that we take our leave, lamb, lest you wish to sleep neith the sky.” He remarked with a wink and a puckish grin. I just stood there staring at him, the sticky gears turning in my head after what felt like a long day. “ Oh, right, okay!” Something finally clicked, and I made my way toward the Emporium doors. Zestial held the door like a gentleman, and I waved one last goodbye at Rosie from the sidewalk. I’m unsure if she saw, though there was an ocean of people between us now. Mr. Morde cleared his throat to get my attention and gestured to follow him. 

We walked quite a distance, or at least long enough for me to feel the weight of an overloaded suitcase quite prominently. The distance between us grew as I fell behind. Switching hands didn’t help much, as I would walk lopsided. My arms were aching; I wished this was a fancy rolling suitcase or a regular backpack. It would make it so much easier, and there is no way I’m leaving my new stuff behind when I haven’t the foggiest of idea when I can get more. I politely hollered at him to give me a moment to catch up; as embarrassing as it was, it did get him to stop. “Excuse me, I’m so sorry for the delay.” I heaved the heavy bag before me, huffing at the cumbersome burden. “This bag has been feeling heavier and heavier the longer we walked. May I ask if we are almost there?” I looked towards him tentatively, trying to avoid a possible gaze of displeasure. “Little Lamb, we art barely halfway there, and night falls soon.” He didn’t sound angry. At least, I hope he wasn’t. Some people are good at hiding their displeasure, which is always confusing and terrifying.

I let out a deep sigh, relieved that he wasn't angry at me yet and disappointed that we still had a long way to go. “Would thou care for some assistance?” I looked up and smiled. “No, thank you. I think I have to adjust some things in my bag. Can you please give me a moment?” I already felt like a burden and didn’t want to add any more. My thoughts roiled for a quick solution as I rummaged through my bag to look busy as he waited beside me. Sifting through some of the longer articles of clothing actually gave me an idea. “I hope I don’t ruin these with what I’m about to do,” I muttered.  

I placed a couple of pants and nightgowns on my shoulders and sat on the cleanest part of the ground I could find. Zestial looked on with puzzled amusement as I dragged the suitcase onto my lap, folded the nightgowns one by one, and wrapped them lengthwise around the bag. Then, I folded the pants and wove them through the nightgowns to create makeshift backpack straps. The cumbersome part was getting it onto my back without letting it fall on the floor and dirtying the temporarily repurposed clothes. I tightened the “straps,” so my luggage hugged my back more snugly. I must have looked really dumb, but now, with the weight on my back, it was easier to move. Smiling, “Okay, I think I’m ready to continue, Mr. Morde. I appreciate your patience.” Then, with his nod, we were back on our way. 

_______________________________________________________

Without my music player, it felt like we were walking for an eternity when we reached the outside of the hotel. 

The skies lighted the pale stonework a dull pink as I read the name The Gormandal Hotel in big, fancy, gilded-edged letters on one of the giant front windows, its borders etched with dainty filigrees and spooky patterns. A clean-cut porter opened the just as intricately decorated French doors and headed to the front desk. My eyes couldn’t help but wander around the lobby, looking at mid-range decor as he spoke to the receptionist for a room. If this was where I’m going to stay, it was a lot better than I was thinking of. Although I haven't seen the actual room, it has been an all alright impression so far. How good could a hotel really be in hell, of all places? I turned around when my ears perked up at my name being called. “Yes, sir, Mr. Morde?” I answered. 

“Come, this gentleman will show you to your room.” He bade. I walked close behind him as the receptionist led the way to the elevator. “If needed, the stairways are at either end of the hall,” they pointed out as we entered the elevator and greeted the operator. Oh, so it was that kind of elevator, I thought. I’ve only seen it in old cartoons and movies, so I added that new fact to my mental notes. “4th Floor, Mr. Pullmen, if you will,” the man asked. “  They silently pulled the lever, closing the doors, and then pulled a different lever to make it move. It took a few minutes, but we finally got off at the 4th floor and continued walking down the warmly lit hall until the receptionist stopped at one of the solid wooden doors with a small brass plaque with the number 418. I mentally chuckled ‘teapot’ to myself. They opened the door to let us inside. It wasn’t a massive room, but it wasn’t small either, and it had a window with thick curtains on the far wall. There was the standard array of hotel furniture: bed, chair, lamp, dresser, mirror, a clock on the wall, you know, nothing fancy, but it looked and smelled clean. I took off my bag and placed it on top of the dresser, and then sat on the bed feeling my tootsies throbbing for relief. Mr.Morde did not follow suit, though, preferring to stand. I suppose he wants to leave soon. 

It felt great to finally take that load off, and I could see the white porcelain in the bathroom from where I was sitting. It was a relief that I didn’t have to share sanitation facilities with anyone.    The receptionist turned around and announced, “Breakfast is available between 7 to 10:30 am and dinner buffet from 5 to 9:30 pm in the dining area and is included with your stay package. If anything is a miss or you have further questions, feel free to call the concierge with the provided phone. We thank you for choosing The Gormandal Hotel for your stay.” He handed me the key and made a swift exit from the room. 

“Ms. Nellie,” Zestial looked at me, and I stared back, “I have provided you with a fortnight's stay at this establishment. In the interim, I advise you to find gainful employment and more permanent lodging within Madam Rosie's Borders if thou wish to have an uneventful afterlife. Where in her domain is up to you. I will be in touch when I have the time, and until then, I wish you luck.” I nodded back only to be interrupted by my tummy rumbling, and I looked at the clock on the wall to read 9:30 pm. Wait….9:30?! I’m gonna miss food if I don’t get down soon. To err on the side of politeness, I asked, “Mr. Morde, it is awfully late. Would you care to join me for dinner in the dining hall?” He took out an old pocket watch and double-checked the time. 

“Unfortunately, I must decline your offer, Miss. Nellie, as I must see to another appointment. By the by, that timepiece on the wall is incorrect. It is actually 10:15 pm. If you wish to garner substance, you best make it swiftly,” he mentioned while walking out the door. 

 “Oh, crumbs!” I jumped to my aching feet in surprise and made a mad dash for the door before it closed, yanking it open to see that Mr. Morde had already vanished. I quickly locked the door and gripped the key tightly as I made my way to the stairs closest to me. Taking the elevator felt like it would take too long, so I did my best to slide down the banister without eating the floor. It was a wobbly landing, but I had to maintain momentum to get to the dining hall. I sniffed the air because I forgot to ask where exactly the place was, but if I smelled food, I was most certain I would find it. 

I soon heard the late-night clattering of bussing dishes down the hall, telling me this must be the way to go. Entering the large archway, I saw mostly empty dining tables with a few late-night stragglers snacking before closing time, and the far wall had a really big clock that read 10:23. By the skin of my teeth, I made it! I picked a plate from what I assumed was the plate station and looked as quickly as possible to see if there was still anything edible on display. It was slim pickin’s, but what would you expect? Most of the stuff was unrecognizable, but I think I saw some mashed potatoes, or I hope it was mashed potatoes. It smelled inoffensive and so did the mystery loaf, so I took some of both and what I think is chicken. All I knew was it was cold, and the rest of the food was barely lukewarm. I sat down, annnnd I forgot my utensils…… I looked at the clock again and saw 10:27. Crud… I don’t have time. I looked around me quickly to see how many people were left and whispered, “ I guess I’ll use my hands.” I ate like I was the last kid in the school lunch line. The mystery mush was meh, but at least the meatloaf tasted better. I can’t say the same about the ‘chicken’. Cold poultry seldom tastes good. 

The final bell had rung to announce closing time, and by then, my plate was as empty as I got it- well, minus the bone. I wasn’t full, but it would have to do for now. I gave my plate to the nearest busboy and thanked him for the service as they let out a grunt. As I  walked out of the dining hall, I realized something….I was lost. “Uh-oh.” There was no smell to guide me this time, so I wandered around the now unusually liminal halls. I eventually ran into a little imp maid with their cleaning cart….. A very gory cleaning cart….. whatever happened I decided not to ask about it. I did, however, ask where the stairs were, and they pointed me back to where I came from and gestured that it was on my left. 

From there, getting to my room was easy if unsettling. Halfway in the hall were fresh bloody footprints and drag marks going to another room down the hall. I know that wasn’t there before I went to dinner. I rushed inside and locked the door immediately, chain and all. After my run-in with the maid, I also jammed the chair in front of the door. Disturbing thoughts made chills run down my spine at the thought of someone in the room. I grabbed one of the table lamps as a weapon and crept quietly around, checking under the bed and then moving on to the bathroom to check if anyone happened to be there uninvited. I quickly turned on the light switch next to the door lamp at the ready, only to be met with……nothing. That was a relief. But wait! What about behind the shower curtain? I pulled it back swiftly to find… also nothing. I shivered from being on edge, letting out a deep sigh of relief. At least I didn’t have to worry about the sink since it was on a pedestal. I put the lamp back from where I got it and washed my face in the bathroom before changing into my new set of PJs. I left the light on in the bathroom and left the door ajar. It still didn’t feel safe enough to be without some sort of indirect illumination. Yawing, I looked at the clock to see how wrong it was. “One forty-five, huh? I guess it must be some time around two-thirtyish?” I mumbled when I turned off the light and cocooned myself in the thin bedsheet. Soon enough, I drifted off to sleep. 

_______________________________________________________

I awoke abruptly to a noise outside my door. I looked at the clock reading four-fifteen. I whipped my head back to the door when the banging continued on my door. I silently clambered out of bed onto the reversed chair blocking the door and peered through the peephole. I was stunned to see an unknown person covered in gore still banging on the door with the but of a large knife, angrily calling out, “Max! Hey, Maxwell, open up! I know you're in there you slippery son of a cunt! Gimme the rest of the loot ‘fore I go in and gut ya through a new asshole! Ya two-timing pussbag!”

I backed away quickly, took the suitcase off the dresser, and scooted the heavy dresser in front of the door as the banging and yelling continued. It got to the point that I heard heavier collisions on the door, and the wood began to crack and splinter. I silently prayed as my heart leapt into my throat. I grabbed the lamp again, hid behind the bathroom door, and turned off the light. “Please, no. Please, No! PLEASE, NO!”I couldn’t close my eyes in fear of what would come next as half the door split open with slurs and insults following behind. 

“Hey, Asshole!” I heard it in a woman's voice. “Our guests are trin’ ta sleep, you buck-fanged degenerate!" It was followed by a big oof from the man at the door and what sounded like a solid punch to the gut. “Yer on the wrong floor you moron! I told you before that he was in room 226! I even gave ya the damn key so there would be less mess ta clean!” The gruffer voice yelled back as the sound of a dense thump hit the wall, “Shut the fuck up, and out of my way you horned rat! Someone’s in there, and I mean to find out who!” I could hear the door snapping to pieces, followed by a high-pitched war cry as an even bigger thud hit the floor. I froze with bated breath to bash him with the lamp if he made it through. Then the yelling stopped. I didn’t dare turn the lights on as I crept from the bathroom and peered through the now massive hole in the door, trying to stay out of sight. I saw his body lying limp in a pool of his blood and the knife he had through his skull. I ducked back down into the darkness as the little imp maid grumbled loudly, “Now I got ta reclean the hall and replace the fucking door! Fucken hell; I don't get paid extra to deal with this shit! Fucken sinner trash.” 

I moved all my stuff to the bathroom, took the pillows and blanket with me, and jammed the door closed with a lamp. I suppose I’ll have to sleep in the tub tonight. I closed the curtain and laid on the pillows in the tub. My eyes watered after the passing altercation. Who am I kidding?.... I don’t think I can sleep anymore tonight after that.

Yay! I finally finished the chapter! Writers bock sucks bigtime especially during the holidays, among other things.

Character Banners By @rubra-wav

@inuhalfdemon @sparrowrye @castawayinhxll @celtrist @jinuaei

@bishiglomper

[wickedgamesoyaoya]

❧ 11. 2009 Disney

❧ Masterlist - Previous - Next

❧ A/N: SO this took a very long time, IM SORRY.

"Wow, it actually smells normal in here."

"This is an academy arena, y/n. Not a stinky high school gym."

The latter portion of the statement was accompanied by a disapproving head shake by the white-haired soccer player. As you battled the urge to flick him, a playful squint was provided in return.

Of course, you knew that much. But it was the first time you had entered a sports arena without being met with a ghastly odour.

"Can you two pause the bickering? I want to find good seats." Reo had purposefully maintained a distance from the pair and elected to lead the charge. The match was scheduled to start in an hour, meaning they would have the first pick at seats.

Over the last few weeks, Reo had developed an attachment to some of the volleyball players - specifically Kuroo and Bokuto. Although goofy at times, the duo embodied brotherly love. Accordingly, he was excited to see them engaged in the sport of their choosing.

"Dude, are you a fanboy or what?" It was natural for Nagi to shift his attention to his best friend when given an "unreasonable" request. "Because why do you look more excited to be here than your sister."

"Shut up, man." The purple-haired boy waved off the comments with a gentle hand gesture. Though, he could see you clenching your jaw from the side of his eye.

"What does that mean? I do not know what you are insinuating, but I am here for my best friend Oikawa Tooru! That's it." A tiny huff accompanied your declaration, but the younger boy only snickered in response.

"Left side or right side?" The inquiry was posed out loud, but it was mostly for himself. "Right side, yeah. Closer to our home team." Reo made the decision unilaterally, before proceeding down the stairs towards the front row. This time, he did not bother to glance back at the two individuals he had entered with. They would find him again at some point. Evidently, his priorities were different than yours.

"We'll see who you actually came for soon enough, little miss." A wiggle was delivered to Nagi's eyebrows as he slipped past you before jogging to catch up to Reo.

You were about to proclaim your innocence again to the disinterested boy when a gentle hand tapped your shoulder. The sudden contact prompted you to straighten your spine on instinct. Interactions with unknown parties would activate performer y/n - it was a habit you were striving to break.

But the second you shifted your body to acknowledge your captor, a strange sense of relief flooded your body and silenced the sirens ringing in your head.

It was the first time you had experienced such a reaction to someone who wasn't your brother, Nagi or Oikawa.

Strange.

"Looks like the ice princess made it." The black-haired male displayed a flashy grin while resting his hands against his hips. "You're even dressed in our school colours. Who knew you had so much school spirit."

"If you're trying to hurt my feelings, I'd suggest you try harder." It was clear he was teasing you without any malicious intentions, and yet you could not bite back a snarky retort. "I guess you might feel threatened, as these colours suit me much better."

A sharp glance was administered from the bottom of his shoes, until the pointed tip of his hair. The judgment was evident in how your eyelids were drooped, but the truth was...

He looked ... attractive. The school tracksuit suited him far too much for your liking. In fact, he could even pass for a damn model. You would know - as you've met hundreds since you were a child. That being said, you would never in your wildest dreams, admit such a thought.

"You know, I think we can both agree on that." Kuroo lowered his voice just a smidge as he took in your figure with an appreciative nod. The gesture communicated defeat with no hostility. As if he was content with you outshining him.

It made your stomach churn with an unrecognizable feeling. Just when did your insides turn into a damn washing machine?!

With a quick shake of your head, you mentally banished the sensations filling your body. Kuroo simply exhaled a chuckle, seemingly knowing your inner conflict.

"Bangs, don't you have a game to warm up for?" Sinking your teeth into your bottom lip, your gaze was cast to the empty volleyball court below. Maintaining eye contact with a sly cat was no longer viable. "We don't need any unnecessary accidents on the court. So I'd suggest you go."

"Oh, are you worried about my safety now?" The outside hitter raised an eyebrow at you, with curiosity shimmering in his eyes. "Don't worry, I still have enough time. Our Captain is the reason I'm out here anyway. He needed to grab something from a friend." When your attention refused to return to him, Kuroo scanned the space for Bokuto while running a hand through his hair.

"Is your captain Bokuto? I share a class with him." For some bizarre reason, you continued your conversation with him. Your mind was whispering - begging - you to return to Reo and Nagi. Yet your heart took control over your vocal cords and feet.

Was it not the slightest bit nice to speak with someone new? Someone you didn't have to pretend with?

"Yeah! Kou mentioned you guys have a project together coming up." A low laugh rumbled in his chest at the thought of you and Bokuto working together. Oh, it would be chaos. "When the two of you eventually lose your shit, please call me. I'm great at mediating."

"Somehow I truly doubt that." Exhaling a soft sigh, your y/e/c irises reluctantly returned to meet Kuroo's adoring gaze. The two of you had only known each other for a limited time, and yet his eyes practically sparkled whenever he was near you. "Well, may-"

"TETSU, MY MAN!"

Suddenly, the person you were both discussing burst into the scene. His voice booming and cutting off the words dancing at the tip of your tongue. Perhaps you would have experienced annoyance in that moment, but the owl-haired male was not alone. In fact, he was accompanied by your favourite mocha-haired setter.

"Where the hell have you been? I got the bag from Akaashi and ran into Oiks. Let's go and get warmed up!" It took Bokuto a few additional seconds to discover that his friend was also not alone. "OH! Was I disturbing something?"

Kuroo was about to answer, his lips parting - when you raised a hand and quickly spoke up.

"No. I was just about to return to my seat. Tooru, can you spare me a moment? Reo and Nagi are also here. We should say hi." A polite smile was draped along your lips and it caught only one person by surprise. The abrupt personality change was expected by one, and unnoticeable to the other.

Kuroo found it odd, yet kept his lips pressed together.

"Yeah, sure. Let's go, y/n." Oikawa mirrored your expression, before extending a hand out in your direction. "My lady, lead the way."

"Good luck on the game today." A respectful bow was administered to your head as you accepted your best friend's hand. A calm exterior masked the inner tornado of emotions that tormented your mind upon your exit.

And what bothered you the most was Kuroo's expression upon seeing your hand in Oikawa's.

TAGLIST: @boosyboo9206 @valleyofheartz @hunnie-lily @pearl-blue-musings @moonlit-mizukage @lilith412426 @veecynii @aquariarose @stayyyyyyyyyyyy21 @seijurosempress @lixie-phoria @yeehawslap @gigiiiiislife @skylarkalchemist

[verfego]

The UK government has put in place an emergency ban of puberty blockers to any person under the age of 18 while under the conservative government. A recent statement by the new Labour Secretary of Health Wes Streeting indicates transphobic intentions and views; regretting saying that "trans women are women" and has displayed intent to extend the current emergency ban of puberty blockers to minors past September 3rd 2024, and enforce the ban permanently.

People under the age of 18 cannot legally receive puberty blockers under private healthcare services and if they want to receive puberty blockers from public healthcare (the NHS) they will need to do so in a clinical trial environment. The NHS notoriously takes a VERY long time to get things done due to understaffing and underpaid workers, meaning that almost all trans minors are going to be unable to access puberty blockers for extended periods of time, and they will do so under clinical conditions and nowhere else.

This is an attempt to eradicate trans youth.

A recent post on presidential candidate and convicted felon Donald Trump's website explains how he will, on Day One of being re-elected for president 2024:

- Ban all forms of HRT for any and all ages in the USA

- Pass a law allowing all "victims of child sexual mutilation" to sue doctors who have provided gender affirming care to trans people.

- Push an act of congress to make sure the only legally recognised genders in every state of the United States of America are male and female, and these are to be assigned at birth.

This is an attempt to eradicate trans people en masse.

This is an attempt to eradicate trans people from the US population entirely.

This is an attempt to make America as it was years ago before trans people were allowed to live publicly and freely.

I cannot imagine what the entire trans population of the US is feeling at these statements, especially under the conditions that Biden is running for president under. Biden is unfit for a state position, and should not be allowed to run for president. Biden is not likely to be elected president at all, as the recent presidential debates showed his mental decline and removed faith from the Liberal party he is the face of.

I urge almost all people who are trans to try and find safety in countries outside of the UK and US respectively, as both countries' governments have shown time and time again who they stand for and what agendas they will try and act upon - regardless of political alignment and personal politics. They will do what they can for power and for control, regardless of the toll it takes on the people of the countries they seek to "protect."

The changes the UK are making are devastating to not only trans youths, but to young people experiencing symptoms of early onset puberty that puts their health at risk. This does not just damage trans people, but others as well.

The changes Trump seeks to enforce in the US will cause countless deaths of trans people on a nationwide scale. These changes are catastrophic, and the effect that they would have upon the entire trans population of America would be devastating.

Please. Do everything that you can to stop this attack on our lives, our happiness, and our community. Do everything you can to prevent the trans healthcare crises that both the UK and US are imminently facing, because the changes will take years to revert and will have lasting effects on our rights and health for years to come.

Send letters and emails to your local representatives and any relevant government authorities, residents of the USA if you are legally allowed to, please do not stay quiet or neutral on this. If you are of the legal age to when the presidential election comes around; VOTE. Vote for anybody but Trump, ensure that you vote against Trump to save lives. DO NOT VOTE FOR TRUMP.

I hate that this is happening anywhere but two of the largest countries in the world with some of the most diverse populations of trans people are regressing at a rapid rate. Save trans lives and do your part, because this is the start of an attempt to eradicate us from the world, starting from the young people of our communities in the UK, and aiming to remove any hope of basic gender affirming care in the US.

Trust me when I say, this will not end here if these laws are allowed to pass through in any capacity. After they take away any hope for gender affirming care in the USA, they will begin criminalising trans lives entirely. If the UK is allowed to ban puberty blockers to "save childrens' lives" we will follow the US swiftly, and our lives will be in jeopardy just as the trans community of America's is right now.

Do not stay apolitical, do not let them kill us, do not give up.

I send love and appreciation to all trans people, and I believe that we can get through with this. We cannot give up and let them remove us from the world. Trans Lives Matter.