#help with constitutional law assignment

[elishebagraser]

Kansas lawmakers plot threatening attack on civil rights

In their supposed eagerness to save money and do right by taxpayers, perhaps Kansas Republican leaders could try passing laws that don’t trample on the rights of their constituents.

 Two transgender teenagers and their parents are challenging a new Kansas law that bans gender-affirming care for minors.The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas and the national ACLU filed a lawsuit Wednesday in Douglas County District Court on behalf of a 16-year-old trans boy and a 13-year-old trans girl. The lawsuit argues the new law violates state constitutional rights for equal protection, personal autonomy, and parenting.

Senate Bill 63 prohibits health care providers from using surgery, hormones or puberty blockers to treat anyone younger than 18 who identifies with a gender that is different from the sex they were assigned at birth. Health care providers who break the law may be subject to civil penalties and stripped of their license.

The ACLU is seeking an injunction to block enforcement of the law while the case is being litigated.“Every Kansan should have the freedom to make their own private medical decisions and consult with their doctors without the intrusion of Kansas politicians,” said D.C. Hiegert, a legal fellow for the ACLU of Kansas. “SB 63 is a particularly harmful example of politicians’ overreach and their efforts to target, politicize, and control the health care of already vulnerable Kansas families.”

The GOP-led Legislature passed SB 63 and overrode a veto by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly earlier this year, ignoring overwhelming opposition from Kansas social workers, teachers, medical providers and members of the LGBTQ+ community who said gender-affirming care saves lives by acknowledging and supporting vulnerable kids for who they are.

The ACLU lawsuit points to medical guidance established by the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society and others surrounding gender identity, gender expression, and gender dysphoria. The guidelines require medical providers to confirm a minor has demonstrated a long-lasting and intense pattern of gender nonconformity, that the condition worsened with the onset of puberty, that coexisting psychological or social problems have been addressed, and that the patient has sufficient mental capacity to provide informed consent.

The lawsuit says both families have looked for care in other states as a result of the new law.

Harper Seldin, senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ and HIV Project, said all transgender Kansans should have the freedom to be themselves.“Bans like SB 63 have already had catastrophic effects on the families of transgender youth across the country,” Seldin said. “These bans have uprooted many families from the only homes they’ve ever known while forcing many more to watch their young people suffer knowing a politician stands between them and their family doctor’s best medical judgment.”

In addition to banning gender-affirming care, SB 63 bans the use of state funds for mental health care for transgender children, bans state employees from promoting “social transitioning,” which is defined to include the use of preferred pronouns, and outlaws liability insurance for damages related to gender-affirming care.

The model legislation, labeled the “Help Not Harm Act,” was supported by faith-based anti-LGBTQ+ groups in and outside of Kansas.

When the Legislature overrode the governor’s veto in February, Brittany Jones, director of policy and engagement for Kansas Family Voice, said lawmakers voted on the side of “common sense.”

“Every child deserves to be loved and protected — not manipulated into making life-altering decisions by individuals who profit off of those decisions,” Jones said. “We celebrate this new day in Kansas in which Kansas children are protected.”

[reality-detective]

Long Post... But Very Important 👇

HISTORY OF THE US NESARA LAW:

· NESARA was signed into law by President William Jefferson Clinton in 2000, at gunpoint because the Military forced him to sign it. He wasn't going to, and was to be announced by Alan Greenspan on Sept. 11, 2001, at 10:00am.

· This was prevented by the destruction of the World Trade Center by then President George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and others involved with this great deception. They murdered 7,000 innocent Americans that day and stole billions in Gold and Silver from Building 7.

· In early 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on charges by the Farmer's Union that banks in the U.S. were fraudulently foreclosing on farm mortgages and that the U.S. Government was in collusion with these banks. The testimony and proof brought into court by a retired CIA Agent let to further evidence and proof that Farmer's Union claims were legitimate. It also led to evidence that the 16th Amendment, the Income Tax Amendment, was never properly ratified by the required number of states and therefore, declared that income taxes were unlawful.

· Almost unanimously the U.S. Supreme Court Justices ruled in favor of Farmer's Union. The Justices recognized that overwhelming evidence proved the U.S. Government and the Federal Reserve Banking System were perpetrating FRAUD in many ways upon Americans. The Justices recognized that to remedy this situation, massive reformations would be required. When rulings were made by the U.S. Supreme Court, one or more of the justices are assigned to monitor the process by which rulings are carried out.

· In this case, five of the Justices were assigned to a committee to develop steps to implement the required governmental and banking reformations. As the Justices went about developing the changes, they enlisted the help of experts in Economics, Monetary Systems, Banking, Constitutional Law and other areas. They built coalitions of support and assistance with thousands of people worldwide, working with us to bring NESARA and GESARA to fruition. These people were called the "White Knights". The term "White Knights" was borrowed from the world of big business when a vulnerable company is "rescued" from a hostile takeover.

· Because of the enormously sweeping changes the rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court required, an EXTREMELY STRICT gag order was put in place on everyone involved. The Justices also sealed all records on the case until after the reformations are all accomplished.

· To maintain secrecy, the case details for the docket number assigned to the Farmer's Union case were changed. So, doing a search for this case will fail to reflect the correct information until after the reformations are made public. At every step of the process, anyone directly involved has been required to sign an NDA to keep the process of implementing the required reformations "Secret" or face charges of Treason which are punishable by death.

· To implement the reformations, the five justices spent years negotiating how the reformations would occur in agreements called "accords" with the U.S. Government, with Federal Reserve Bank owners, the IMF, World Bank, and numerous countries including the UK and the EU.

· The reformations required the Federal Reserve Bank system to be absorbed by the U.S. Treasury and all fraudulent banking activities to be stopped, as well as remedies to Americans for past harm due to FRAUD.

· The U.S. Banking reformations will impact the entire world and therefore the IMF, World Bank and other countries involved including the UK and the Vatican City.

· Members of Congress were ordered by U.S. Supreme Court to "DENY" the existence of NESARA / GESARA or face charges of TREASON, punishable by DEATH. Some members of Congress were charged with "Obstruction" and threatened with charges of TREASON. Therefore, all members of U.S. Congress have had to pretend that NESARA has not been passed in order to comply with the Justice's GAG ORDER.

O. SAT. 3 AUGUST 2024 NESARA GESARA REFORMATIONS:

· NESARA / GESARA is the most groundbreaking reformations to sweep the world in the entire history of the world.

· All foreigners will be required to return home in order for them to receive their GESARA Payments.

NESARA DOES THE FOLLOWING: 👇

a. Zero's out all Credit Card, Mortgage and other bank and loan transaction debts.

b. Abolishes the Internal Revenue Service and the Income Tax.

c. IRS employees will be transferred to the US Treasury National Sales Tax area.

d. The Federal Reserve will be absorbed into the US Treasury.

e. Creates a 14% - 17% National Sales Tax, applied to NEW ITEMS only for government revenue. Some of it goes to states, rest to new national government.

f. Used items sold will not be taxed. Food & Medicines will not be taxed.

g. Sets up Restitution Payments for those victimized by Chattel Property Bonds. Those Aged 61 and over will receive a lump sum payment. Those Aged 41 to 60 will receive scheduled payments set time and sign work contract. Those Aged 29-40 will have to sign a Work Contract to receive their funds. Initiates a Universal Basic Income or UBI for those 16-29 years old.

h. An increase for retired Senior Citizens up to 3x current SSN amount up to $5,000.00

i. Dissolves US Inc. and returns the country to 1791 Constitution and Common Law.

J. Admiralty-Equity & Civil Laws are dissolved. Judges & Lawyers will be retrained in Constitutional Law.

k. Restores the Original 13th Amendment known as the Titles of Nobility Amendment.

l. Requires that New Presidential and Congressional Elections occur within 120 days.

m. Monitors Elections and prevents illegal election activities of everyone.

n. Creates a new US Treasury Rainbow Currency that is Asset Backed.

o. Forbids the sale of American Birth Certificates as chattel property bonds.

p. Initiates a new US Treasury Banking System in alignment with Constitutional Law.

q. Restores Personal Financial Privacy.

r. Ceases All Military Activities Worldwide.

s. Establishes World Peace.

t. Releases enormous sums of money to be used for Humanitarian Purposes.

u. Enables the release of over 6,000 patents of suppressed technologies including free energy devices, anti-gravity and medical bed technologies.

THE RODRIGUEZ TRUST REDEMPTION AND EXCHANGE FUNDING PROGRAM: 👇

· The Rodriguez Trust, based in the Philippines, is reportedly over 100 years old. It is claimed to be the single largest source of funds in the world.

· Dr. Alan Cohler is said to be the asset manager of the trust. The trust is backed by gold, some of which is said to come from King Solomon’s Temple.

· However, these claims are often associated with spiritual and metaphysical beliefs, and their validity is not universally accepted. For definitive information, legal consultation is recommended.

· The value of both the St. Germain and Rodriguez Trusts have 3083 zeros behind them.

The "New Earth" is near 🤔

[aibidil]

In honor of Debate Day (I'm cringing already, and I have to watch with my kid for a school assignment): I keep seeing political posts on here that demonstrate a misunderstanding of the American electoral system, and I want to explain a few points. Because I have a PhD in Political Science and apparently I can't help myself.

E.g. "You people keep saying to vote for the (blameworthy) democrat and then force them to the left, but then you never force them to the left!" <- in a way, this statement is true enough, but not for the reasons that it seems to imply.

The US Constitution doesn't establish a two-party system. However, it does establish the Electoral College, which is a major way in which the US electoral system diverges from a popular vote. The manner in which each state chooses and constrains its electors (the people who make up the Electoral College) is left to the states, but 48 of the 50 states use a voting system called "First Past the Post," or first-preference plurality. FPTP is a system in which voters choose one candidate and the candidate with the largest number of votes (a plurality) "takes it all," even if they do not secure a majority of the votes. So if there are three candidates—say, Gore, Bush, and Nader—and Bush gets the plurality of electors, Bush wins. Even if more voters voted for Gore than Bush. Even if Nader voters indicated in exit polls that their second choice was much more likely to be Gore than Bush. US Congressional seats, likewise, are elected in single-member districts with FPTP winner-takes-all. So in a FPTP system, the makeup of the electoral body is not proportional to the votes cast by voters, and in the Electoral College, it may lead to results in which a candidate with a plurality of overall votes doesn't win the election.

Single-member FPTP systems therefore discourage voting for smaller parties and encourage, as the rational outcome of the electoral system, strategic voting for one of two big parties. This is in direct contrast to electoral systems that run on some variation of proportional representation (ranked preference voting, multi-member districts, etc), where the percentages of votes for each party are reflected in the final makeup of the elected body.

So even though there's nothing in the US Constitution saying we have to have a two-party system, in Political Sciencey terms: Duverger's Law states that all FPTP systems will become two-party systems. This is true because it is the logical outcome of rational actors operating in the system.

Okay, but who cares if we have a two-party system? We can still push democrats to the left, right?

Well, kind of? But ultimately, not really. Because think about it: if you have two parties competing for votes among the entire populace, they can only position themselves against the other party. You've got one candidate on the right and one candidate on the left. Committed leftists and committed right-wingers are going to vote for their party (or not vote at all). There's no incentive for a party to make any concessions to those voters. Whose votes are they trying to get? The people in the middle. Those are the only people they should care about, if they want to win. So the voters in the middle can exert influence over the platforms, and that has the effect of pulling both sides toward the very middle.

(One thing that has happened in recent years is that the Republicans have been successful at moving the entire distribution of votes farther to the right. This hasn't changed the fact that the two-party system will always pull both parties toward the center of the vote distribution, but it's definitely fucked us over. If the democrats had any way to enact this sort of shift, I would be all over it, but I don't see how they could. The entire system is fucked even beyond all I've already said by gerrymandering and the fact that leftists are geographically isolated in cities, both of which systematically benefit the right, so it doesn't seem likely that the democrats could be successful at a shift like that without changing some of the laws about gerrymandering, if not also the Electoral College.)

On the other hand, in systems that have more than two parties, you end up with bimodal distributions of votes. Why is that? Because say you have three parties on the left, and voters know that they aren't throwing their vote away if they vote for a smaller party. What will happen? The three parties on the left will be vying for the votes of the leftists. And the same thing will happen on the right. In this way, the voters will pull the party platforms farther from the middle, out to each side. The leftmost and rightmost "fringe" parties will each get a small proportion of the votes, and the more mainstream parties will get more, but those fringes have much more power than they ever could in a two-party FPTP system.

So when people say, "You say, vote for the democrat, then force them to the left, and then you don't force them to the left"—correct. There is no clear way to force a democratic candidate to the left in our two-party FPTP system. How would one even do that? The only thing leftists can threaten is to not vote, when not voting will certainly benefit the candidate on the right. So, sure, you can do that—if you want your behavior to benefit the right as a way to threaten the left. Some people will make that choice, but not many, because it will help the right!

To be clear: this is fucked! I think this is fucked! But we get nowhere by sticking our heads in the sand about how the electoral system actually works.

I'm not pretending that there's only one right way to act. Our system is fucked and has been for a long time. What I do think is key is understanding how the system actually works and making your decisions from there.

For me, I've often said, "Vote for the democrat for harm reduction, because that will absolutely reduce harm compared to the republican candidate. Then, fight the system." But I realize this maybe wasn't specific enough. What I mean when I say that is: I will vote for Kamala with zero qualms. Because I believe that Trump would be worse for literally every demographic in the world that I care about. To me, that's the only thing the vote is about. Do I agree with Kamala on Israel-Palestine? No. Do I think Trump would be worse for Palestinians and for American Jews (probably for Israeli citizens too)? Absolutely. Do I shudder to think what happened last time Trump had control over creating the Supreme Court? YES.

But when I say, "Then, fight the system," I mean specifically: the number one thing that leftists should be doing if we want to make any headway, if we want to shift that distribution of votes back from the rightward journey its taken in recent years, is to fight to overturn the electoral college and gerrymandering. Every tiny step we take in making our electoral system closer to the popular vote favors both principles of democracy and the left. If we can amend the constitution (this is enormously difficult) to get rid of the Electoral College, then we can turn to changing the electoral system to something other than FPTP.

I do not mean "vote for Kamala and then spend 4 years yelling at democrats for not being leftist enough." I agree: that is a terrible strategy, and will do nothing.

We can't keep ignoring, in between elections, that the voting system itself is where our focus should be! We can't keep pointing fingers at each other, even though we're all acting within the constraints of a fucked system, every time an election comes along! Maybe I'm getting old but I am so weary of this! We can't somehow willpower our way out of the system in which our votes are being cast! We have to change it!

[rotworld]

Meanvamps: Terminology

the meanvamps setting borrows some terms commonly used in other vampire media (sire, turning, etc) but it also has a lot of its own vocabulary. here is a list of unique terminology and colloquialisms. it may be expanded later.

Canary Task Force / CTF: A nightbound law enforcement and intelligence agency. The CTF is divided into specialized branches with a wide range of functions. Field agents might be tasked with investigating reports of hauntings, lemures and hunters, or dismantling extremist sects and ensuring all kin are properly registered. 

Clutch: A group of nightbound who share the same sire and often the same date of turning. Members of a clutch are traditionally "raised" together and are encouraged to form strong emotional bonds with one another. Cultivating a clutch has been standard practice for thousands of years, as it helps offset the mortality rate of attempted turning and is beneficial to the emotional wellbeing of new hatchlings.

Convenire: Refers to both a group of cohabiting nightbound and the place they live. A unique form of convenire is the ���supervised convenire,” which is made up of hatchlings and at least one elder. They are a method of properly socializing and educating the newly turned, especially those who are separated from their sire. 

Dissenter: A nightbound who does not acknowledge the authority of the Dusk Council and refuses to participate in Council society. There are many kinds of dissenters and some are more tolerated than others. Those who do not violate the Treaty of Aneptyra are generally permitted to go about their business.

Elder: Nightbound who are considered “fully grown.” The threshold for what constitutes an elder has changed throughout history, but is generally at least 100 years of age and 50 years of service and contribution within nightbound society.

Hatchling/Fledgling: Early nightbound life stages. Hatchlings are the newly-turned and are not permitted to live alone. They tend to have poor impulse control and a bottomless appetite. Fledglings are those who have mastered their instincts well enough to live independently and contribute to their territory, although it’s common for them to form convenires with their peers.

Haunting: Proto-lemure activity such as unnatural darkness and disembodied voices. Hauntings are attached to a specific location and advance more quickly from death or suffering occurring in the area. Untreated, a haunting will eventually mature into a lemure or, in extreme circumstances, a shade nest which will continually produce lemures until it is destroyed. 

Kin: Collective term for nightbound and witches. The term is also used to describe services that cater to both, such as “kin therapists” which specialize in nightbound and witch partnership counseling, or “kin bars” which serve both blood and gourmet nectar-infused drinks.

Latent: A human who has been identified as a possible witch, subject to a combination of both human and kin laws. They must have a high magical potentiality score but not have been observed using magic yet. 

Magical Potentiality: An inexact predictive measurement of whether or not a human is or will become a witch, assigned to latents. Dusk Councils evaluate humans using a scale that assigns points for certain traits, such as being the child of at least one known witch or living in a region with unusually high lemure activity. Latents with a sufficiently high magic potentiality score will be monitored more closely by their Council and may have their ability to travel outside the territory restricted. Magical potentiality is infamously unreliable, with only a fraction of all registered latents ever demonstrating active magical ability.

Nectar: Condensed, edible magic. It has a mild taste to nightbound and humans but is extremely sweet and fragrant to witches. Witches who exhaust their magic are instinctively drawn to it.

Nighthaze: A euphoric state experienced while being fed upon by a nightbound. Can be induced through adequate venom dosage, foreplay, or mesmerism. Some humans are more susceptible to it than others, and some nightbound are more prone to causing it than others.

Roseblood: A substance that increases the body’s production of blood, making feeding safer. It must be supplemented with the roseblood regimen, a diet of foods high in iron, to avoid health complications. Derived from a unique rose cultivar, it is most commonly administered in beverages. It has a floral aroma and an earthy, slightly bitter taste.

Sacrament: Witches who have been sentenced to sacramental service. Sacraments are required to provide blood to several nightbound at once and are often assigned to a convenire. They must strictly adhere to the roseblood regimen for their health and safety. Sacraments may “earn” partnership to a single nightbound by performing their duties satisfactorily for a certain amount of time. What constitutes “satisfactorily” and how long this must be maintained is entirely up to the local Council. 

Traditionalist: A nightbound dissenter who promotes the ideals and lifestyle of Qayin. They view humans as cattle and believe they are owed blood as recompense for the curse inflicted upon their predecessors. They practice non-consensual turning and are notorious for their treatment of hatchlings, encouraging vicious competition within their clutches to "weed out the weak." Traditionalists often build isolated communities in order to practice their beliefs in hiding. In the modern age, these compounds rarely operate for more than a few months or years before discovery due to a suspicious surge in strange deaths and disappearances in neighboring human towns.

Vampire: The predecessors of modern nightbound. Believed to have possessed such unimaginable power that they were worshiped by humans as gods. Attested in the foundational myth of Qayin’s Curse, though their true nature and the cause of their eventual transformation into nightbound is hotly debated.

Vulning: The act of one nightbound feeding another their blood. While comparatively lacking nutritional benefit, hatchlings rely on their sire’s blood almost exclusively until they regain their strength. Vulning is also used to treat the seriously wounded in an emergency.

Waning/Waxing Season: Refers to the population growth or loss of the nightbound. Waxing seasons are a brief window when turnings are permitted with few or no restrictions, usually during wartime to bolster nightbound numbers. Waning seasons are the period of conflict immediately afterwards that decimates the population. 

Wearing Red: A euphemism for offering blood to a nightbound, used for discretion to avoid frightening uninformed humans or alerting hunters who might be listening. To solicit blood, a nightbound may directly ask a human if they are "wearing red" or less directly inquire about "the dress code." An affirmative response will include some variation of the phrase "wearing red."

[we-are-not-a-number]

Tldr; Biologists would be amused by Trump's executive order wording, if it wasn't in law erasure of trans and intersex people and the dangerous precedent that it sets, as it lacks a foundation of basic biology and legally declared every American as female.

Clearly, this order is not fully informed by current biological science,” said Dr. Richard Bribiescas, president of the Human Biology Association.“It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female,” reads the order. “These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality. Under my direction, the Executive Branch will enforce all sex-protective laws to promote this reality.” Trump’s action is part of the GOP’s yearslong efforts to stoke fears about transgender people and push them out of public spaces. In effect, the order means the U.S. government will no longer provide any money or contracts to groups or people that it considers to be “promoting gender ideology.” Federal agencies will now only issue passports and visas that offer “female” or “male” sex markers, and these will be based on the person’s assigned sex at birth. The order also bans taxpayer money from being used for gender-affirming care.

The executive order punches down a particularly vulnerable community; trans people only make up about 1.6% of adults in the U.S. But on a more technical level, the way it’s been written is so embarrassingly ignorant of basic human biology that it would be laughable if its effects weren’t so harmful.

In its strangely constructed definitions of “female” and “male,” the order states that a person’s gender is defined by the size of a “reproductive cell” at the moment of conception, a stage when all embryos are phenotypically female. In other words, it appears that Trump just declared all Americans are femaleThis language, which is the basis for interpreting the entire executive order, is so sloppily written that it could end up being grounds for legal challenges. “There are many reasons why this Executive Order is legally vulnerable, and the definitions themselves are just one part,” Karen Loewy, senior counsel and director of constitutional law practice at Lambda Legal, a legal group focused on LGBTQ+ rights, said in an email.So how badly did Trump officials butcher their attempt to lump everyone into two sexes? Did the president really just make us all women? HuffPost reached out to seasoned biologists around the country to help make sense of Trump’s definitions of sex, gender and “reproductive cells.” They don’t know what he’s talking about, either.

“Lots of folks are wondering the same thing!” Dr. Francisco Diaz, director of the Center for Reproductive Health and Biology at Pennsylvania State University, said of the Trump White House’s understanding of how biology works.Embryos are “neither male nor female” by Trump’s definition, Diaz said, since there are no germ cells present at conception. Germ cells are reproductive cells that later become eggs and sperm, and that are set aside early in embryonic development. “How about men after vasectomies? No germ cells there, are they still male?” asked Diaz, who is also an associate professor of reproductive biology at the university. ”Are postmenopausal women still female?”

“Not a super tight definition!” he concluded. “The ‘at conception’ wording seems forced to define personhood as beginning at conception and not really to define sex.”

Republicans for years have tried to legislate their personal beliefs about life beginning at conception. They’ve introduced versions of a bill called the Life at Conception Act 13 times since 2011. These efforts have almost certainly influenced the “conception” language in Trump’s latest executive action.

Dr. Richard Bribiescas, an anthropology professor at Yale University and the president of the Human Biology Association, said the order’s definitions of “sex” and “gender” ignore all kinds of variations that take place in human development. “Woman/man, boy/girl are gender identities that do not necessarily align with biological characteristics of sex,” he said in an email. “Genders are components of human variation that are influenced by culture, identity, and many other non-biological factors. To illustrate the difference between sex and gender, we can talk about male/female chimpanzees (our closest evolutionary relative) but it would be non-sensical to discuss chimpanzee women, men, boys or girls.”

Trump’s definitions of “female” and “male” are also flawed, said Bribiescas, because he is tying them to something called “anisogamy” in biology, or the observation that females of some species, including humans, tend to produce larger gametes (the reproductive cells that come from germ cells) compared to males.Anisogamy is not a universal rule in biology, he said. But Trump’s executive order defines females as people belonging to the sex that produces “the large reproductive cell” and males belonging to the sex that produces “the small reproductive cell.”The size of a person’s gametes is “just one characteristic among many (ie., genetic, hormonal, developmental, physical) that is used to describe sex,” Bribiescas said. “Clearly, this order is not fully informed by current biological science.”

This executive order “is highly problematic from a biological standpoint because it overly simplifies what we know to be an incredibly complicated developmental process,” said Dr. Josh Snodgrass, a professor of anthropology and global health at the University of Oregon. “It’s just not that simple from a genetic standpoint, and then becomes even more complicated with time under the influence of hormones, environmental exposures, and social experiences.”

Snodgrass, the past president of the Human Biology Association, noted that Trump’s order also doesn’t account for people who are intersex, which means they are born with genitals, chromosomes or reproductive organs that don’t fit into the typical male/female sex binary.“This reads to me as coming from people who desperately want the world to be simple — for sex to be a simple binary and for us to return to some imagined time when this was more broadly accepted,” he said. “The problem is that it’s not only science that shows us that human biological variation is more complicated, but other cultures do and have also appreciated this for thousands of years.”

Snodgrass added that there is one more thing missing from the executive order that belongs in all conversations about sex and gender: empathy. “The authors of this executive order seem like they are trying to twist science to fit their worldview, but that this worldview is painfully out of step with reality,” he said.

[mariacallous]

A Republican state lawmaker in Michigan said gay marriage should be “illegal again,” an inflammatory remark that prompted swift rebuke from Democrats.

State Rep. Josh Schriver (R) made the controversial statement on X on Monday, just weeks after the GOP’s strong showing in Michigan during the November election, where they wrested back control of the statehouse.

“Make gay marriage illegal again. This is not remotely controversial, nor extreme,” Schriver wrote. “America only ‘accepted’ gay marriage after it was thrusted into her by a perverted Supreme Court ruling.”

He pointed to old remarks from then-Sen. Barack Obama, saying the former president was once “more conservative on marriage than many Republicans today.” Obama first endorsed marriage equality in 2012 — the first U.S. president to do so — and later said he believed the Constitution guaranteed the right to marriage for all same-sex couples.

The Supreme Court agreed in a 5-4 ruling in 2015, a historic victory for queer Americans.

Republicans have embraced culture wars targeting queer Americans in recent years, particularly trans people. The party has pushed through laws blocking young trans kids from gender-affirming health care, barring them from school sports teams and cheered efforts to limit access to public bathrooms.

Michigan Democrats quickly excoriated Schriver.

“Please explain how dissolving my marriage, or that of the hundreds of thousands of other same-sex couples living in America, provides a benefit to your constituents or anyone else,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D), who is married to a woman, wrote on X. “You’re not interested in helping Michiganders. You want only to hurt those you hate. Shame on you.”

Fellow state Rep. Jason Morgan (D), who is gay, said his colleague’s remarks were both “controversial and extreme, along with anti-family.”

Schriver has courted controversy in the past. In February, he was stripped of his office staff and committee assignments in the Michigan statehouse after sharing conspiracy theories linked to the “great replacement.” The false notion relies on racist tropes and claims white Christians are being intentionally replaced by immigrants.

At the time he said he was opposed to racism, but defended his social media posts and said he found it “strange” that there was an “agenda to demoralize and reduce the white portion of our population,” according to The Detroit News.

[lemurious]

[sic semper, part iii]

part i. part ii. also on AO3.

legacy and memory and the words that will outlast them and the words that will disappear, once whispered. one summer night in early thermidor.

[this one's for saint-just.]

Still they slip and slide and scatter, the months, like linden blossoms, like fireflies. And air is shimmering above the pavements in the heat, and there’s not enough bread, and the armies march on a turn of the phrase. The endless carriage rides, reports, assignments, laws, declarations, they all blend together, and there are twelve seats around a table, and a green tablecloth splattered with ink -

– and suddenly, all the Committee members have left, to their families, to catch what little sleep they can get, but the words remain, ringing in the empty chamber.

“Government is instituted in order to guarantee to man the enjoyment of his natural and imprescriptible rights –“

(if you pretend you have forgotten something and sneak back in, after the meeting is declared to be over, and stay very quiet, and close your eyes, you can still hear it, Saint-Just thinks. He knows the declaration by heart. He expects to take it to the grave.)

– and suddenly, there is another summer.

There is a lull in the fighting, a faint promise of victory, and still never enough bread in Paris. In the Convention, in the Committee, the battles are more savage than before, and the heat lingers.

“Do you think he belongs in the Pantheon? It’s been a year.”

Robespierre doesn’t bother explaining who he is talking about. They’re used to speaking in half-sentences, to finishing each other’s thoughts.

So much can fit in spaces between words.

Saint-Just puts down the report from Bordeaux, rubs his forehead, tries for a sarcastic smile.

“He’s earned his immortality already. With some help from David,” he says. “He’d scoff at it, too.”

It sounds more wistful than he intended.

Such luxury, to be a martyr.

“He’d be right to do so. Immortality only asks for the correct kind of death. Life is harder.” Robespierre’s words are idle, but he is frowning.

Over the last year he has aged five.

Saint-Just remembers his infatuated letters, which feel as if they were written by another person entirely. How he idolized Robespierre – Maxime – how he still wishes he could turn him into a statue, right now, marble and gold, to preside over their stumbling Republic, forever, away from rumors and from crimes and from treason and from the bitter choices that they have to make, or else all is lost.

Saint-Just can accept it, himself; the scales weighing his conscience over the fate of what they have built. He doesn’t want Maxime to have to weigh it too, and his own heart besides.

“A virtuous one? We still strive for it.” Saint-Just responds after a while. He pushes the papers aside, sits on the desk.

He should, perhaps, try for reconciliation; he wishes he could leave instead, return to the frontline. What he is good at, truly good, is war.

Though, Maxime seems to think that his grand strategies extend to words too, and that's been enough for him to throw himself in front of the convention.

“Not for ourselves, Antoine.”

Maxime’s face is set, his bearing precise, and Saint-Just knows the exhaustion that it means.

How long has this summer been already? The years blend together, but the hours are interminable, and tomorrow he will speak at the Convention again, and again he will rush to the Jacobins, to the Committee, again he will argue with Carnot about campaigns and quietly agree with Lindet about lifting the maximum on the price of wheat, and bicker and curse – oh, they are not worthy of his thoughts.

“It’s too late for us,” Maxime’s voice is hoarse from arguing earlier in the day, it quickly gets swallowed by the clamor outside, a cart seems to have hit the corner of the house and bent a wheel. “We knew the price.”

They’ll do what it takes to hold their Republic together. It’s built on words, it always has been, but even the Constitution (his Constitution, no, their Constitution, he repeats to himself with vehemence) is insufficient, and all those warnings about great power bringing great responsibility have forgotten that responsibility is worthless without power. Virtue and terror, again.   

Soon there will be no time left for any more words, and never a plea for redemption. Saint-Just is surprised at how much he’s relieved by the thought.

“We’ll pay it, eventually. Then we can go to the seaside and write our memoirs, what do you think?” He should be allowed one flippant comment.

Maxime, as always, has heard the unspoken part too.

“Are you playing at Sulla?” he says. “The dictator with his lists of proscriptions in the Forum? Yes, I believe that’s exactly what he did.”

“Sixty books of memoirs. Not a single one has survived. Probably, for the best.”

Saint-Just is determined to lighten the mood. The smile on Maxime’s face is a rare enough occurrence to be savored, to be remembered. He wonders if anyone else has seen it, save, perhaps, his brother.

“You’re more likely to be a Gracchus than a Sulla.”

“Too late. We already got one, last name of Babeuf. In prison, I believe. In any case, both of them have labored in vain. The Republic fell.”

“The Republic stood.”

“It’s taken nearly eighteen hundred years to return. We haven’t even had a chance to make them accept our Constitution.”

It’s an exercise in philosophy as much as a guiding principle, and they need laws, and administrators, and soldiers, and bureaucrats, and money, and –

“You still have time.”

“Do not insult me,” Saint-Just snaps, but his voice hasn’t risen above a whisper all evening. “There’s no time for me without you. And I don’t think we –“

Maxime kisses him before he can finish the sentence.

Perhaps there won’t be time enough for building their Republic, but they’ve lived enough for a lifetime and then some, and all they can hope for is that their words will outlast them both, and none of the words will be the ones they’ve said to each other, and history can claim their silences, on a starless night in early Thermidor.

[pintadorartist]

Fight the Trump-Musk Constitutional Crisis

We are in a constitutional crisis. Since day one, the Trump (and unelected billionaire Elon Musk) administration have defied constitutional law to engage in aggressive executive overreach. They have co-opted Congress’s “power of the purse,” dismantled segments of the federal government without legal authority, and have begun to defy the court orders in response to this blatant disregard for the law and the constitutionally mandated separation of powers.

The lawlessness has been vast:

Through a litany of executive orders and with the help of Musk, Trump has unilaterally blocked congressionally appropriated funds from being distributed, a power that is exclusively assigned to Congress

A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration violated the “plain text” of his previous court order requiring the release of federally appropriated payments to federal programs. A senior official fired several FEMA workers who refused to continue blocking funding for various programs

In multiple social media posts and podcasts, JD Vance has stated that the executive branch can ignore judicial rulings, even those made by the Supreme Court.

Legal scholars agree that presidential defiance of laws and judicial rulings is a constitutional crisis, and it is clear that the Trump administration believes the law does not apply to them. Normally, the Department of Justice could be enlisted to enforce these laws, Attorney General Pam Bondi, known Trump loyalist, will not do so. It will now be up to the courts and Congress to reclaim their co-equal roles in our government and stop the Trump administration’s reckless decimation of our government and the rule of law.

Here are your tools:

When calling your Senator, if they are a Democrat, remind them that despite being in the minority, they still have leverage:

REMEMBER: If you decide to email your rep/senator, it will be ignored unless it's been sent 20 times; reps/senators perceive 20 emails and faxes as attention-worthy.

[nateconnolly]

Oppressed people are more than capable of acting against their own groups. Phyllis Schlafly is right up there with Malala Yousafzai and Angela Davis as one of the most influential “women’s rights” activists to ever live. The only problem? She almost single-handedly killed a proposed Amendment to the Constitution that said, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” Due to the actions of a cis woman, there is no Constitutional protection for the rights of people assigned female at birth. In Schlafly’s mind, there is no contradiction between fighting for women’s rights and striking down the Equal Rights Amendment. “What I am defending is the real rights of women,” she explained. “A woman should have the right to be in the home as a wife and mother.” She leveraged her gender identity to maintain institutional misogyny. Schlafly behaved as if she spoke for all women, when in fact she was only one among billions.

In truth, no one can speak for all women. As Kimberly Probolus wrote in her New York Times Op Ed Men, You Need to Listen to Women, “...active listening means hearing the words women are saying and taking them at face value, even if those words contradict your prior assumptions or your own agenda.” But Probolus adds an important qualification: “Women do not speak with one voice. We don’t all want the same things…” Without that qualification, active listening easily becomes regressive nonsense. It would be nothing more than blind obedience to self-appointed oligarchs like Schlafly. “The analysis that all women are allies and that all men are enemies was in error,” wrote the feminist communist Leslie Feinberg. “It puts Sojourner Truth and Margaret Thatcher on one side and John Brown and John Rockefeller on the other.” There are gay homophobes, Jewish anti-semites, and Black anti-Black racists. 

If Attack Helicopter really had been written by a cis person, that would not make it transphobic. And if Attack Helicopter really had been transphobic, that would have been a moral problem with the message of the text—even if the transphobic author were a transgender person. All of us have the potential to do wrong. Hiding behind identity labels will not resolve you of moral culpability, and it will not help you do the right thing.

You can read the rest on Substack

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Joyce Vance at Civil Discourse:

On Tuesday, Reuters reported that leadership at the Department of Justice has reassigned “about a dozen senior career attorneys” in the Civil Rights Division to perform perfunctory tasks usually assigned to lower level attorneys, like responding to FOIA requests. Three senior career attorneys who managed offices that handled cases involving excessive force and other abuses by police, voting rights, and the rights of people with disabilities were among the casualties of this wave of efforts by the Trump administration to disrupt the work done in the Civil Rights Division, which is frequently referred to as the crown jewel of the Justice Department. The changes have not been publicly announced by Attorney General Pam Bondi or her staff, according to Reuters. According to other reporting, a series of memos have radically altered the mission of key sections in the Division. For instance, one for the voting section, “barely mentions the Voting Rights Act and instead says the section will focus on preventing voter fraud – which is exceedingly rare – and helping states find noncitizens on their voter rolls (noncitizen voting is also exceedingly rare).” The memo for the Housing and Civil Enforcement section neglects to mention the Fair Housing Act, which has protected people from discrimination since it was passed in 1968 and is a centerpiece of the Division’s work—but apparently, no longer. Career employees in the Division seem shell-shocked, many of them leaving or preparing to, in hopes they will be able to continue at least some of the work that matters to them so deeply outside of government, since it seems to no longer be possible on the inside. The Civil Rights Division was created as a result of Congress’ passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. The Division enforces federal laws that prohibit discrimination based on race, color, sex, religion, national origin, disability, gender, sexual orientation, and other factors. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 expanded the Division’s jurisdiction to enforce anti-discrimination laws aimed at integrating public facilities, public accommodations, employment, and schools. It also enforces federal civil rights laws that protect people’s rights to be free of discrimination in employment, housing, education, voting, and access to public accommodations. In addition, it prosecutes violations of civil rights crimes like police use of excessive force and hate crimes. Its attorneys travel all across the country, frequently partnering with United States Attorneys’ offices to protect Americans’ civil and constitutional rights.

The Division really is the crown jewel of the Department; the work its people do makes us a better country in very real ways. Losing it is unthinkable. Just off the top of my head, some of the work my office did with them included protecting the rights of diabetic school children, making sure voters in wheelchairs could access their polling places, and prosecuting police use of excessive force that left people badly injured. We worked on a string of church fires, a cross burned at the home of an interracial couple, helping a community process the revelation that several police officers were members of a successor group to the Ku Klux Klan. Now, much of that will be lost.

The Division’s website (catch it while you can) currently explains that “Congress created the Civil Rights Division in 1957 to uphold the civil and constitutional rights of all Americans, particularly some of the most vulnerable members of our society. The Division enforces federal statutes prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, disability, religion, familial status, military status and national origin.” Trump’s pick to run the Civil Rights Division is Harmeet Dhillon, an attorney with a history of attacking voting rights. She was confirmed on a 52-45 vote, with Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski the only Republican vote against her. According to Marc Elias, she has worked on lawsuits challenging laws that make it easier for more people to vote and defended against efforts to disqualify Trump from appearing on several states’ ballots in 2024. None of that is encouraging for people who believe protecting the right to vote is a critical piece of the Civil Rights Division’s work.

Having far-right culture warrior zealot Harmeet Dhillon lead the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division is a slap in the face to the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division’s legacy.

[didmyownresearch]

How come we are so fucked: the decline of modern democracy

The second law of thermodynamics states that the level of disorder in any closed system cannot decrease. Unless there's some external influence, things can only get more and more messy.  The earth is not, by any mean, a close system, and therefore neither the biosphere nor human activities are in fact directly governed by the second law in the strict sense. Nevertheless, we can still formulate a version for this law of nature that is applicable to human societies: without a focused intervention everything shall get worse.

A democratic government is a synthetic thing. It was made; it didn't just evolve. The first system for a modern democratic rule was set up in the US of A during the late eighteenth century by its founding fathers. It was based on ideas by liberal European thinkers such as Locke, Rousseau and Montesquieu‏. Although the US was hardly a true democracy then – it legalized slavery and assigned voting rights to white men only – the system it procured still served as a template for all modern democracies hence: parliament, government and head of state (and potentially other public positions) elected by the general public according to the majority rule.

There is no perfect system of government. The US Americans, for instance, tried to construct a fair system, but it was rather naïve and it still contained many loopholes that could be exploited by some groups to increase their own political power on the expanse of other groups. Moreover, when certain people become powerful due to flaws in the system, they use this power to enlarge end deepen these advantageous defects, gaining even more power, and that allows them to increase yet again the inherent unfairness. This dynamic is common to all forms of government, not just in the US: barring a dramatic disruption or, alternatively, a continuous effort to counter decay, the imbalance and unfairness can only increase over time. It's the "second law" of sociodynamics.

Indeed, dramatic disruptions can occur. The US had a civil war. Germany fell into fascism and then was defeated and conquered in a world war. However, revolutions and total wars are rare, unpredictable and bloody. The only practical way to preserve a fair, liberal democracy it to fight for it relentlessly. The problem is, most people fail to understand this fact. They have this false vision of a democratic system as a stable structure, protected by its constitution and by its institutions. And because they don't take into account the second law of sociodynamics, they become passive subjects of the deteriorating system, ignorant with respect to the fundamental reasons all this is happening around them.

One of the resulting misconceptions is to regard conservative politics as representing just another ideological stance. In fact, those who lead the fight to conserve a faulty system are typically the ones who benefit mostly by it. And they have a built-in advantage, exactly because of these faults. It’s a positive-feedback vicious circle – the powerful have the power to preserve and magnify their power. The fact that they operate within a supposedly fair democratic system only help to obfuscate the actual dynamic behind the scene.

But it doesn't end here. There's another factor that make matters much worse than they could have been. The masterminds of modern democracy made a fatal mistake in their design. They stipulated that political power is allocated strictly based on majority. And this, as it turned out, is profoundly destructive.

Democratic governments profess to represent a "social contract", empowering it to rule for the benefit of the society as a whole. However, in effect, they frequently gain control that is only based on a small majority. For example, a governing coalition may have gained a very narrow majority of just 51% of the votes but obtained practically all the political power. Moreover, in a heterogeneous society, where political and ideological affiliations are rooted in rigid ethnical, religious or socio-economical divisions, the same parties can gain the electoral upper-hand repeatedly in every election. Constituents of minority groups, large or small, are being incessantly deprived of any significant influence on the national policy.

Minority groups suppression has far-reaching consequences. It undermines the very essence of the social contract as it leaves many citizens politically powerless. Consequently, the state can ignore their interests with impunity, make them outcasts, and, in extreme cases, even persecute them under the guise of a lawful democratic rule.

The "winner takes it all" scheme generates a constant socio-political tension, hatred between rival political tribes and deep frustration that often leads to violence. Such social disintegration can be observed in democratic countries all over the world. Politics became a zero-sum game, and it's fucking up our societies and, eventually, our lives.

But what can be done? Is there any other fair way to determine policy without resorting to the who-got-more-skulls arm wrestling? Is there a way to drive society toward consensus rather than division? Is there a way to disrupt the vicious circle of the powerful using their power to gain more power?

Well, as a matter of fact, there is! I intend to elaborate about it in future posts. Meanwhile, it may be illuminating to consider the method employed in the NBA draft, and how it prevents specific teams from perpetuating their hegemony.

[mymidnightramblings]

I met a guy who didn't know what congress was

Growing up outside DC, politics was always a massive part of my life. Our yearly field trips were to the Supreme Court and Capitol Hill. We attended hearings and held protests as a part of school assignments. In fact, civic duty was so ingrained in our culture that almost all schools in DC and the surrounding area allowed students one day off to participate in “civic engagements.” This included protests, volunteering on behalf of a political party, or going door to door to make sure people vote. I always assumed civics was this ingrained to everyone, across the United States. It’s your duty, as a citizen, to be informed about the country you are a part of. Yet, only 19 states in the country require some sort of civics certification [Learning Policy Institute]. Looking online, I found out that many people barely took civics classes in school. For me, it was required three times. Once in fourth grade, once in seventh grade, and again in senior year of highschool. Each time built upon the last to make sure we had a whole and well rounded understanding of the government. It didn’t just teach me about the government, but also how the populus affects government decisions and what I can do to help change what I want to change. Civics is so much more than just a “government class.” It teaches you how to debate effectively, listen to people with opposite ideas, and what to do if you believe your rights are being infringed upon. It teaches you what to expect from the government and how to hold it accountable. Change begins in the people, but if the people are unsure, how will change happen? 

Participation in government is essential for a democratic government to be upheld. If there is no participation, then a democracy ceases to exist. Despite this, knowledge and understanding of civic engagement is dangerously low among Americans. According to a 2024 study by the University of Pennsylvania, one-third of Americans can’t name all three branches of government. If Americans are unable to name even the branches of government, can the populus truly be expected to cast well informed votes during each voting cycle? Additionally, less than half of those surveyed could realistically name multiple rights outlined within the constitution, and even less could name what political party controls the House and the Senate [Annenberg]. This is information vital to understand the processes of the government, how laws get passed, and how the supreme court makes their decisions. Often the blame for certain government decisions gets blurred between the endless departments and sectors. With many lacking a basic understanding of the three main sectors of the government, these large numbers of Americans wind up pointing their anger for civic policy in the wrong directions. When they should be angry at Congress, they are angry at the president. When they should be angry at the president, they are angry at Congress. All these signs point to one thing: Civics education is completely lacking in the United States, and it's leading to even more confusion. 

With confusion, trust begins to fall. According to the Pew Research Center, trust in the government was at 77% during the Johnson administration, but has since faced a rapid decline. Today, only 22% of individuals state that they trust the government to make the choices which best benefit the country. Experts are now worrying that voter engagement will further fall as mistrust deepens [Federal Times, US Chamber of Commerce Foundation]. Still, we find noticeable differences in the extent to which democrats and republicans distrust the government. As expected, democrats trust the government more when a democrat is in power, and the same applies to the republicans. However, the level of mistrust whenever an opposing party holds office is unprecedented [Pew Research Center]. This follows the trend of political polarization growing at an alarming rate in recent years. Our population is composed of more and more individuals who are unwilling to participate in healthy discourse with opposing ideologies, a problem further exacerbated by the growth of social media and social “bubbles.” 

Despite these growing challenges, civics education remains our most valuable weapon against these issues. Civics classes emphasize a culture of healthy arguments and open mindedness which enables students to become informed and open-minded citizens.When I took a government class in highschool, we often had healthy debates from individuals on the republican and democratic side arguing about supreme court rules, congress bills, and presidential cabinet appointees. The people I would argue against often had completely opposing viewpoints, but the way we argued made it so that I was able to understand the opposing party and their ideas better. Not only does this help individuals change the way they think about people with opposing opinions to them, but it helps individuals become more informed. People gain a better understanding of laws being passed and supreme court decisions being made when they get more viewpoints and opinions. With more understanding comes less confusion, and additionally more trust as people are willing to understand and maybe agree with the opposing ideas more. 

Creating an informed voter starts early. By allowing students to learn about their civil rights and liberties, as well as emphasizing an education on the US government, we are ensuring the next generation has the qualifications to successfully bring the United States into further prosperity. According to the National Institute for Citizens and Scholars, 66% of people who have a high civic knowledge are voting in the next election, compared to just the 47% who don’t have a high knowledge. Civics education reaches far beyond just what a “government” is. It teaches students about their rights and their liberties, and what they can do to change the world themselves. It makes people more engaged, and makes the US a better democracy.

[trump-executive-orders]

Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families

Issued January 29, 2025.

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and to improve the education, well-being, and future success of America's most prized resource, her young citizens, it is hereby ordered:

Section 1. Purpose. Parents want and deserve the best education for their children. But too many children do not thrive in their assigned, government-run K-12 school. According to this year's National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 70 percent of 8th graders were below proficient in reading, and 72 percent were below proficient in math. Moreover, geographically based school assignments exacerbate the cost of housing in districts with preferred schools, straining the finances of millions of American families sacrificing for their children's futures.

When our public education system fails such a large segment of society, it hinders our national competitiveness and devastates families and communities. For this reason, more than a dozen States have enacted universal K-12 scholarship programs, allowing families -- rather than the government -- to choose the best educational setting for their children. These States have highlighted the most promising avenue for education reform: educational choice for families and competition for residentially assigned, government-run public schools. The growing body of rigorous research demonstrates that well-designed education-freedom programs improve student achievement and cause nearby public schools to improve their performance.

Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of my Administration to support parents in choosing and directing the upbringing and education of their children.

Sec. 3. Guidance on Supporting State-based K-12 Educational Choice. Within 60 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Education shall issue guidance regarding how States can use Federal formula funds to support K-12 educational choice initiatives.

Sec. 4. Encouraging Educational Freedom through Discretionary Grant Programs. (a) The Secretary of Education shall include education freedom as a priority in discretionary grant programs, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law.

(b) Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Labor and the Secretary of Education shall review their respective discretionary grant programs and each submit a plan to the President, through the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, that identifies, evaluates, and makes recommendations regarding using relevant discretionary grant programs to expand education freedom for America's families and teachers.

Sec. 5. Expanding Opportunities for Low-Income Working Families. Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall issue guidance regarding whether and how States receiving block grants for families and children from the Department, including the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDGB), can use them to expand educational choice and support families who choose educational alternatives to governmental entities, including private and faith-based options.

Sec. 6. Helping Military Families. Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Defense shall review any available mechanisms under which military-connected families may use funds from the Department of Defense to attend schools of their choice, including private, faith-based, or public charter schools, and submit a plan to the President describing such mechanisms and the steps that would be necessary to implement them beginning in the 2025-26 school year.

Sec. 7. Helping Children Eligible for Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) Schools. Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of the Interior shall review any available mechanisms under which families of students eligible to attend BIE schools may use their Federal funding for educational options of their choice, including private, faith-based, or public charter schools, and submit a plan to the President describing such mechanisms and the steps that would be necessary to implement them for the 2025-26 school year. The Secretary shall report on the current performance of BIE schools and identify educational options in nearby areas.

Sec. 8. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

[meret118]

"The Feminine Mystique" by Betty Friedan

A great book will always feel relevant to the reader, no matter when or where it was written. Spoiler: The villain is capitalism! The skill with which Friedan connects the dots between the subjugation of intelligent, educated women and the ruthless, calculated mind-numbing agenda of consumerism turns out to be her deftest move. "In all this talk of femininity and women's role," she writes, "one forgets that the real business of America is business." After all, a woman shopping remains more useful to the wealthy than a woman thinking or doing ever is. And in a year in which our nation's slavering fealty to billionaires could not be more brazenly, dangerously obvious, "The Feminine Mystique" remains a punch in the gut and a warning to our oppressors. "You'd be surprised," a doctor tells Friedan at one point, "at the number of these happy suburban wives who simply go berserk one night." — Mary Elizabeth Williams

"Antidemocratic: Inside the Far Right’s 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections" by David Daley

“When the Court changes, so does the law,” writes former Salon editor in chief Daley in his latest elegantly written deep dive into the organized conservative machinations to subvert majority rule, “a careful, patient strategy to win through the judiciary what could not be won at the ballot box.” Chief Justice John Roberts’ rise to power as the head voice of the court that has kneecapped the Voting Rights Act, enshrined corporate influence in politics, overturned the right to an abortion and established presidential immunity is chronicled in this deeply researched and sourced investigation. “Antidemocratic” is a meticulously crafted — and yes, entertaining! — true story of the long, organized game the right has played with the Supreme Court, essential reading for understanding how constitutional "originalism" became such a powerful tool in the fight for minority right-wing rule and how the Federalist Society built so much power. “You might even say there is no law,” writes Daley, “only Justices.” As this book details, conservatives not only understand that, they have been laser-focused on the assignment for decades now. — Erin Keane

"K-Drama School: A Pop Culture Inquiry into Why We Love Korean Television" by Grace Jung

Sure, we may like to gaze upon beautiful people who fall in love backed by an addictive K-pop soundtrack, but comedian Grace Jung offers a deeper look at why this particular form of Asian drama has become both so addictive and cathartic for viewers around the world, especially since the pandemic started. From "Goblin" to "Squid Game" (and everything in between that may or may not star Gong Yoo) Jung breaks down many popular titles, providing eye-opening cultural context that is rooted in much of South Korea's history and loss, through mini lessons about recurring themes and tropes.

An extension of her "K-drama School" podcast, this book offers at times an overwhelming crash course, veering from chatty and humorous to raw and harrowing as she delves into many of her own traumas that are reflected onscreen.

Wonder why there's so much product placement for Subway sandwiches or characters who eat ravenously to excess? She has answers for that. Why is there an obsession with amnesia, disability, bullying, zombies and violent, bloody vengeance? Jung explains the roots of these tropes through an examination of Japanese colonialism, generational trauma, governmental corruption and more. Although this book was published last in April, Jung’s lessons about misogyny and the 1980s Gwanju Uprising illuminate what happened in 2024 with the 4B movement and the Korean people's well-honed culture of protest that helped block the recent failed coup. — Hanh Nguyen

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 1, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JAN 1, 2024

On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed his name to the Emancipation Proclamation. “I never in my life felt more certain that I was doing right,” he said, “than I do in signing this paper. If my name goes into history, it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it.”

The Emancipation Proclamation provided that as of January 1, “all persons held as slaves” anywhere that was still controlled by the Confederate government would be “then, thenceforward, and forever free.”

Historian Richard Hofstadter famously complained that the Emancipation Proclamation had “all the moral grandeur of a bill of lading,” but its legalistic tone reflected that Lincoln was committed to achieving change not by dictating it, which he recognized would destroy our democracy, but by working within the nation's democratic system.

Although Lincoln personally opposed human enslavement, he did not believe the federal government had the power to end it in the states. With that limitation, his goal, and that of the fledgling Republican Party he led, was only to keep it from spreading into the western territories where, until the 1857 Dred Scott decision, Congress had the power to exclude human enslavement. The spread of enslaved labor would enable wealthy enslavers to dominate the region quickly, they thought, limiting opportunities for poorer white men and gradually turning the entire country over to enslavers.

When the war broke out in 1861, the newly elected Lincoln urged southern leaders to reconsider leaving the Union, reassuring them that “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” When Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, the federal fort at the mouth of Charleston Harbor, Lincoln called not for a war on slavery, but for “all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid [an] effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our National Union.”

From the earliest days of the war, though, Black Americans recognized that the war must address enslavement. Immediately, they began to escape across Union military lines. At first, hoping to appease border state residents, Union officers returned these people to their enslavers. But by the end of May, as it became clear that enslaved people were being pressed into service for the Confederate military, Union officers refused to return them and instead hoped that welcoming them to the Union lines would make them want to work for the U.S.

In August 1861, shortly after the First Battle of Bull Run left the Union army battered and bleeding, Congress struck a blow at enslavement by passing a law that forfeited the right of any enslaver to a person whom he had consented to be used “in aid of this rebellion, in digging ditches or intrenchments, or in any other way.”

When northern Democrats charged that Republicans were subverting the Constitution and planning to emancipate all southern enslaved people, Republicans agreed with the old principle that Congress had no right to “interfere with slavery in any slaveholding state,” but stood firmly on a new argument: the war powers the Constitution assigned to Congress enabled it to pass laws that would help the war effort. That included attacking enslavement.

As Confederate armies racked up victories, Republicans increasingly emphasized the importance of Black people to the South’s war effort. “[I]t has long been the boast of the South…that its whole white population could be made available for the war, for the reason that all its industries were carried on by the slaves,” the New York Times wrote. Northerners who before the war had complained that Black workers were inefficient found themselves reconsidering. The Chicago Tribune thought Black workers were so productive that “[F]our millions of slaves off-set at least eight millions of Northern whites.”

At the same time, Republicans came to see Black people as crucially important in the North as well, as they worked in military camps and, later, in cotton fields in areas captured by the U.S. military. While Democrats continued to harp on what they saw as Black people’s inability to support themselves, Republicans countered that “[n]o better class of laborers could be found…in all the population of the United States,” and Republican newspapers pushed back on the Democratic idea that Black families were unwelcome in the North.

By July 1862, as Union armies continued to falter, Lincoln decided to take the idea of attacking enslavement through the war powers further, issuing a document that would free enslaved southerners who remained in areas controlled by the Confederacy. His secretary of state, William Henry Seward, urged him to wait until after a Union victory to make the announcement so it would not look as if it were prompted by desperation.

When U.S. troops halted the advance of Confederate troops into Maryland at the September 17 Battle of Antietam, Lincoln thought it was time. On Monday, September 22, he issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation under the war power of the executive, stating that in 100 days, on January 1, 1863, enslaved persons held in territories still controlled by the Confederacy would be free. He said to a visiting judge: “It is my last trump card…. If that don’t do, we must give up.”

The plan did not sit well with Lincoln’s political opponents. They attacked Lincoln for fighting a war on behalf of Black Americans, and voters listened. In the 1862 midterm election, held a little over a month after the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln and the Republicans got shellacked. They lost more than 25 seats in the House of Representatives and lost control of Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana. Democrats did not win control of Wisconsin and Michigan, but they made impressive gains. Voters were undoubtedly unhappy with the lackluster prosecution of the war and concerned about its mounting costs, but Democrats were not wrong to claim their victory was a repudiation of emancipation.

Voters had spoken, and Lincoln responded by offering to give Democrats exactly what they said they wanted. In his message to Congress on December 1, 1862, he called for it to consider amendments to the Constitution that would put off emancipation until January 1, 1900, and pay enslavers for those enslaved people who became free. Slavery was going to end one way or another, he made it clear, and if Democrats wanted to do it their way, he was willing to let them lead. The ball was in Congress’s court if congressmen wanted to play.

But Democrats had won the election on grievance; no lawmaker really wanted to try to persuade his constituents to pay rich enslavers to end their barbaric system. Northerners recoiled from the plan. One newspaper correspondent noted that compensated emancipation would almost certainly cost more than a billion dollars, and while he seemed willing to stomach that financial hit, others were not. Another correspondent to the New York Times said that enslavers, who were at that very moment attacking the U.S. government, were already making up lists of the value of the people enslaved on their lands to get their U.S. government payouts.

Lincoln won his point. On December 31, 1862, newspapers received word that the president would issue the Emancipation Proclamation he had promised. Black congregations gathered that afternoon and into the night in their churches to pray for the end of enslavement and the realization of the principle of human equality, promised in the Declaration of Independence, starting a tradition that continues to the present.

And the following day, after the traditional White House New Year’s Day reception, Lincoln kept his word. Because his justification for the Emancipation Proclamation was to weaken the war effort, the areas affected by the proclamation had to be those still held by the Confederacy, but the larger meaning of the document was clear: the U.S. would no longer defend the racial enslavement that had been part of its birth and would admit Black men to national participation on terms of equality. Lincoln welcomed Black men into the service of the U.S. Army—traditionally a route to citizenship—and urged Black Americans to “labor faithfully for reasonable wages.”

In less than two years, the nation had gone from protecting enslavement to ending it, completely reworking the foundations of our government. But while the victory was moral, Lincoln and the Republicans had achieved it within the confines of a system that allowed the vote only to white men, a significant number of whom opposed ending enslavement altogether. Thanks to pressure from Black Americans and public opinion, they were able to thread a narrow political needle, preserving democratic norms while achieving revolutionary ends.

Lincoln concluded: “[U]pon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.”

The sausage-making of the Emancipation Proclamation had long-term repercussions. The redefinition of Black Americans as superhuman workers undercut later attempts to support formerly enslaved people as they transitioned to a free economy, and the road to equality was not at all as smooth as the Republicans hoped. But that such a foundational change in our history emerged from such messy give and take, necessary in order to preserve our democratic system, seems a useful thing to remember in 2024.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON