The Electoral College would be tolerable if the size of the House wasn’t arbitrarily limited. If Wyoming’s population of ~580k is one district, then California at ~39.5m should have 69 districts instead of 52. Overall, the EC should have something like 150 additional votes to distribute.
As much as I hate Hochul, she needs every dollar she can get. Blakeman would be very bad for New York, and the new Siena poll that came out yesterday only has him trailing by 9 points. That’s much better than Zeldin at the same point in the last election cycle, and he only ended up losing by 6.
This is actually a really bad idea. During the election cycle, anchors would often quote Trump and Harris without showing direct clips because it allowed them to quickly convey the candidate’s positions and get into any commentary the broadcasters wanted to do.
The results sanewashed Trump. Instead of long, meandering diatribes, the news was going, “Trump vowed to lower grocery prices on day one if elected. When pressed on how, he did not provide additional information.”
Which sounds way more coherent and electable than anything that actually comes out of his mouth. The further removed from the direct source you are, the easier it is for people to dismiss the things he says and does as exaggerations by the news media when the truth is that the news media is underselling the madness.
So you think a legislature trying to reign in executive power and put additional guardrails in place to curtail “executive authority” is a bad thing? Especially when this is the guy trying to replace Trump?
Ignoring the healthcare aspect of this bill and just taking that argument at face value, there is no circumstance where I would elect a president who has no interest in ceding authority back to a legislature after this administration’s shitshow. We clearly need less executive authority, and if Newsom is treating that as a non-starter, he’s not fit for office.
…
The bill that Newsom vetoed was regarding extraditing health workers for providing care. What the fuck are you even talking about?
Okay, I’ll say again: what do I have to be right about? That is the specific thing I asked you. What is the question that you feel the trans community is failing to answer?
Regarding your comment about not everyone having every right they feel they deserve, that is exactly what the 14th Amendment is for. All people are entitled to equal protection under the law. I want the rights that I am entitled to, not some modern Jim Crow-alike where my identity is just cause to violate the Equal Protections clause.
As for your last point, yes, I do think it’s conservative rhetoric and not a genuine opinion. Trans people have had rights codified in law for 70 years now. Conservative news media has amped up the rhetoric in the last couple years because Republicans can’t win on current policy decisions, so it needs to be culture war garbage. You can even see it in polling: 2022 vs 2025
why they’re right
About what? Our existence? That we should be given the same rights, privileges, and privacy as any other group of people?
Polling is showing that people increasingly succumb to conservative rhetoric and agree that we’re subhuman, second-class citizens. It does not show that we actually deserve that treatment.
They can’t attack policy, because they’ve had absolutely no obstruction to implementing policy for nearly two years now. The Republican party has gotten to do exactly as it pleases for nearly two years now, and almost universally Americans say they are worse off than they were before.
The issue is that electing transphobes normalizes transphobia. The Democratic party is always courting votes from “moderates” and conservatives, but no one is chasing trans voters. This is basically a perfect set up for the ratchet effect: Dems stop letting trans girls play sports, Repubs celebrate their victory and move the goal posts again, and now Dems are proposing some new “middle ground” restraint on trans people.
None of my local candidates were on Erin’s analysis, so I don’t have a horse in that particular race. But I do think it’s reasonable to refuse to vote for anyone who is willing to strip you of your rights because of your gender. I don’t think it’s fair to blame a marginalized group for why they’re being marginalized, when the other option is to advocate for them.
Looking at a trans person and saying “vote against your interests because if you don’t vote it might be worse for you quicker” is not fair or right. No one should be feeling smug when they do that, despite how much it seems to happen on Lemmy. The better, more useful, thing to do is to see if you are in any of the districts on Erin’s list, and, if so, advocate for your trans allies. Call your rep and say, “Hey, I want to vote for you, but your stance on trans people doesn’t align with my values.” Pressure them to not implement transphobic policies. You can still plan to vote for them anyway, but they don’t need to know that. Use the threat. Convince them that trans allies need to be courted, too, and Dems are not just the accepted and default candidate because “Republicans bad.”
You said:
no international body that isn’t directly corrupt would accept them as legit leadership
If other nations are still interacting with, conducting diplomacy with, and trading with that administration, they are accepting the leadership as legitimate. They are not running around the back to deal with or support an opposition leadership; they are accepting the results of the election as presented. That is directly in conflict with the point you put forth.
Trade is being reduced, soft power is drying up, but that is specifically because the current administration is accepted as legitimate. Everyone in the world is agreeing on who is in charge in the US, and they’re pulling back as a result, but there’s no circumstance where nations stop accepting Trump as the leader of the US based on the results of the midterms. Which, to your definition, makes all of those nations corrupt as well.
… so you think other nations are going to stop interacting with the United States if the US legislature is installed via bribery and corruption?
Has that happened for any other country? Let’s look at the 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index list, and you tell me which countries are getting kicked out of the UN or cut off from international diplomacy.
… I’ve got some bad news for you, friend.
This is especially true when the guy you need to stand up to has a 32% approval rating. It’s not hard to look good when you’re kicking the guy no one likes, and it honestly might be the move to flip centrists away from the “woke” progressives that are winning primaries.
Not that I want that. I’d rather have the progressives win and start sending fuckers to the Hague. But I’d be shocked if there wasn’t some conservative think-tank mapping out this possibility.
I’m sure that will work well for you.
This is the point of the article: none of these options are good for trans people. If the choice is “the people who campaign on wanting to erode my legal protections” (like many Republicans) or “the people who campaign on wanting to erode my legal protections” (like the entire list in the article), then, from the perspective of preserving trans rights, there is not a choice. Electing transphobes empowers transphobes and normalizes transphobia, regardless of which letter they have next to their name.
If you’re a single-issue voter who only cares about trans rights and you’ve seen this exact bullshit play out already across the pond, there’s no vote that will make your life better.
As for this line:
maybe these politicians aren’t transphobic at all and are simply attempting to walk a tightrope in an imperfect system
So I’m not supposed to trust what a candidate tells me or how they’ve previously voted, and I should just assume they mean something more secretly benevolent? That’s literally exactly why my in-laws voted for Trump: they didn’t believe anything that was reported about Project 2025 because, and I quote, “he used to be a Democrat.”
Oh, if the Dems are only going to trample on some of my rights, I guess that’s okay.
Have you not seen what’s happened in the UK in the last few years? That’s the playbook. Their center-left party realized that every time they take away another right from the trans community, they get more support from conservatives and only lose support with trans people that they want to exclude anyway. Transphobic Democrats will steer the party into doing the same thing here if they can.
That said, this article should’ve come out months ago. The best way to kick transphobes out of the party is to primary them, not let them lose in the general.
I think you must’ve skipped a line in that article you sent:
And it certainly doesn’t mean that we rationalize and passively accept injustice in the hopes that one day it’ll lead to a good outcome.
I can’t accept that my loved ones may be rounded up and deported by reminding myself that it’ll probably all work out in the end. Real people have been killed, more will be, and shrugging acceptance is not an appropriate response.
I feel this. I got one tattoo when I was young and thought I had disposable income. I’ve wanted plenty more, but I can never justify the expense.
I remember when I started at UPS back in 2015, starting wage was $11/hr, hours were capped at 25/week, and as part of the onboarding HR would show you how to sign up for SNAP.
Dean Cain actually was in Smallville, but only as a guest in one episode. He played an immortal doctor who was kidnapping and killing women to harvest their organs.
Oh, so I need to die for you to have a better world. I’m the martyr you need to inspire you to protect others. Got it. Super cool and not at all fucked up.