Collections of Bullshit

But the continued existence of the Cuban model also rests on citizens' worries about the consequences of public dissent. Protesting, ⁠Alvarez said, is out of the question, for fear of government reprisal. That was a view shared by some two dozen Cubans interviewed by Reuters in recent weeks. "They could take revenge on my kids," said Alvarez. Rights groups and the U.S. have ​long critiqued Cuba's response to dissent as heavy-handed and repressive, while Cuba justifies its hard line by alleging that rare protests on the island are often fomented or financed by the United States. The arguments have changed little over the years.

“At a time when the federal government is fueling attacks on trans people across this country, New York City is making something clear: We will protect your rights, defend your humanity and stand beside you without hesitation,” Mamdani said in a press release Monday. “Every trans and gender non-conforming New Yorker needs to know that the law is on their side — whether in their workplace, their housing, or in public spaces.”

Yeah, I think it's really important to understand what happened to USAID, in the context of the fact that the DOGE folks and the political appointees that came into the agency had no idea what the agency actually did. All they had learned about it was what they had read or seen on right-wing conspiracy theory. So for example, Elon Musk, who had never once mentioned USAID in his long history of public comments, first started tweeting about it after a conspiracy theorist named Mike Benz went onto the Joe Rogan show and talked about how USAID was a front for the CIA and other such conspiracy theories. But like even the highest levels of the political appointees who came into the agency thought that—for example, the chief of staff of the agency, when I tried to explain all the work that we did in global health, told me that he had assumed that the only thing that USA did in global health was abortions. Which is really truly crazy, because we're actually prohibited from providing or promoting abortions by federal law, and that's exactly what we do not do. But to think that that would be the only thing that USA did in global health was just insane, and we started to see in the early weeks of the Trump administration the way that they didn't just come in expecting these things. They then continued to propagate fake stories about what was happening at USAID.

What I soon discovered was that some people are mad about this event. And not just mad at the Trump administration, which I could easily understand. They’re also mad at the UFC. They’re mad at me for writing about it, even critically. They’re mad at the fighters for participating in it. They’re mad at anyone who watches this sport. It’s all trashy bullshit, according to them, and it’s our fault there’s a gaudy arena going up on the White Houe lawn right now. I was surprised by this reaction, and maybe that’s on me. I’ve been inside the fight sports bubble for so long that I’ve gotten desensitized to a lot of different aspects of it. Not just the violence, either (but definitely also the violence). I’ve also become numb to some of the more absurd and sensationalized aspects of the fight business, mostly because it’s always more or less like that. At some point you lose the capacity to be shocked. Oh, they’re gonna put a UFC cage on the White House lawn? Yeah that sounds like some shit they would do. In the years I’ve worked within this weird world we’ve had fights at the Playboy mansion, a Brazilian police special forces base, a U.S. military base, a Spanish bull ring, and a medieval castle, just to name a few. Couple weekends ago there was a boxing match at the pyramids. The real ones! The ones in Egypt! So yeah, when I heard that the UFC would team up with its pals in the Trump administration for a fight at the White House, it did not seem all that surprising. Tacky? Sure. A possible sign of a republic in decline? O absolutely, it’s some dwindling days of the Roman empire type of shit for sure. (My podcast co-host Chad Dundas has suggested we call this event “UFC: Bread And Circuses,” which just feels right.) But I have to admit that I didn’t seriously consider the possibility of any meaningful backlash against the UFC itself, maybe in part because I assumed that all the people who usually ignore this sport would ignore this event. Then we saw that giant “claw” structure going up in front of the White House. Suddenly it got a lot harder to ignore. Especially when paired with the super important ballroom construction site right next to it, there’s an inescapable quality to this visual reminder of what our nation has become.

James Byrd, who is currently running for the United States senate seat as a Democrat in Wyoming, also commented on the case on his public Facebook page. “The Kelver case is bigger than one bartender, one crosswalk, and one night in Laramie. It's a test of whether the Second Amendment means what it says — for everyone,” he wrote. “Every law-abiding citizen has a fundamental, constitutional right to protect themselves when physically attacked. Period,” he continued. “This is not a selective right, and it cannot be subject to a popularity contest or cultural approval.” As pointed out by Slate, self-defense laws are often put into question when people from marginalized communities, especially trans people, use them, including Cece McDonald, a Black trans woman who served time in a men’s prison for defending her friends during a racist and transphobic attack. Ky Peterson, a Black trans man from Georgia, was also arrested and imprisoned for killing his rapist in self-defense.

The onlookers I was trying to reach see a famous scientist and assume the science has spoken. It hasn’t. He’s done exactly what the pub did. He’s just done it in a lab coat.

What struck me about these defenses of Platner is that they are yearning for a more masculine aesthetic in their politics. They desperately want the left to return to the old hammer and sickle days of the early Soviet Union when propaganda depicted communism with a blonde haired blue eyed fit man toiling in the fields or the factory. The combination of Platner's gravelly voice, blonde hair, and Downeast Maine oysterman appearance makes these guys wet. The candidate had them in the first frame of he his slickly produced ad announcing his candidacy. This is the common through line of so much of Platner's media support, from Kulinski to the Pod Save guys singing his praises. These guys want you to know they're through with the soft, feminine, effete, Democratic party, and they think Platner is the way back to the politics of rough and tumble unionism and sex appeal. To hell with supporting trans rights or bothering about with abortion access, we need a left that puts the man first baby.

A 2023 report from the Missouri Statewide Council on Sex Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation of Children, citing an analysis of 2021 data from the National Human Trafficking Hotline, said “As recent as 2020, Missouri had the fourth highest incidence rate of human trafficking at 4.32 per 100,000 people.” Missouri was the fifth state to partner with Safe House Project. The state’s Director of Anti-Trafficking Operations, Diana Haines, said this issue is important to the Attorney General. “Catherine Hanaway is committed to protecting victims and preventing exploitation,” Haines said. “The attorney general will always work to get every tool available into the hands of law enforcement to catch traffickers and hold them accountable.” There is no intention to get rid of Simply Safe after the World Cup. “We will continue to use and promote Simply Report following the games, continuing to put the victims first,” Haines said.

Key court appearances in the Trump administration’s attack on transgender children’s right to obtain gender-affirming medical care are scheduled this month. The outcome of those appearances — and decisions regarding the underlying requests at issue — could represent the most critical moment in the past year for Justice Department’s effort to target the provision of medical care for transgender minors. As Law Dork has covered in depth, from the opening day of the second Trump administration, President Donald Trump and then-Attorney General Pam Bondi had aggressively sought to challenge the provision of gender-affirming care for trans minors — even in states where such care is allowed or even explicitly protected by law. Among other steps, the Justice Department issued administrative subpoenas last summer to more than 20 providers of such care seeking extremely invasive data about individual patients, in addition to other records. The shifting rationales for the requests have included “health care offense“ claims related to off-label prescribing of medication used in gender-affirming medical care, coordination with pharmaceutical companies regarding the provision of such medication, and billing of such care. Despite that attempt at nuance, last August a DOJ lawyer admitted the broader goal, telling a court that “the executive branch wants to reduce or eliminate gender-related care to minors, especially … medicalized gender-related care to minors.“

On Wednesday, Gallup released a striking new poll showing support for LGBTQ+ people declining for a second consecutive year. The drop is not limited to transgender people—similar declines have hit support for same-sex marriage and the moral acceptance of gay and lesbian relationships, which is now at its lowest point since 2016. When examined closely, the decline is driven almost entirely by Republicans, whose support for same-sex marriage has collapsed 18 points in five years and whose moral acceptance of gay and lesbian relationships has fallen back to where it was in 2010. The numbers come as the political crackdown that began with transgender people has broadened to target the wider LGBTQ+ community—with state legislatures now hearing bills to overturn same-sex marriage and a sitting Republican congressman declaring this week that "homosexuality has no place in America." The data makes one thing clear: there is no LGB without the T. As it has been for our entire history, our rights are deeply interconnected, and those who target one part of this community will not stop until they have come for all of it.

In an astute analysis this week, Ned Resnikoff posits that Trumpism is hyperfascism, by which he doesn’t mean turbocharged or souped-up fascism, but “hyper” in the sense of over the top. “It’s a dramatic reenactment of totalitarian domination in a time and place where the infrastructure for real totalitarianism is nowhere to be found,” Resnikoff writes. “[I]t is a shallow sort of fascism, obsessed with outward appearances and completely uninterested in everything else.” Hyperfascism eschews the hard work of sustaining itself, preferring the next spectacle to the grind of consolidating and entrenching its power through bureaucracy and structural advantages, at least as compared to other long-running authoritarian regimes.

The site turned out instead to be a piece of political theater aimed at dehumanizing immigrants and casting those the Trump administration has arrested as the secret extraterrestrial visitors of UFO conspiracy lore.

Trump considers the weaponization of federal agencies to be the only job any of his various toadies can be judged on, and Pulte has proven a willingness to weaponize even the most boring agency and put forward even the stupidest of supposed conspiracies.

Musk is an abuser, and part of the way abusers inflict psychological abuse is through gaslighting and victim-blaming. When Musk denies his own agency as an abuser, he is not explaining the abuse; he is inflicting it. Wilson is well aware of this. In an interview with Teen Vogue (and in quotes that Them itself reproduced), Wilson said, “It’s such a convenient narrative, that the reason he turned right is because I’m a fucking tr*nny, and that’s just not the case. That’s not what that does to people.”

Where Things Stand in 2026 The anti-trans/LGBTQ+ “groomer” slur still persists. A few examples of headlines from just last year include “Marjorie Taylor Greene calls Sarah McBride a ‘groomer’ and ‘child predator’ for reading to kids”; “Parent accuses Satellite High teachers of ‘grooming’ teen to transition”; and “Republicans accuse PBS of ‘grooming’ children with Sesame Street Pride post.” As for anti-trans legislation, well, that has increased roughly ten-fold since early 2022, with many of those bills invoking the false accusation that trans people are “grooming” or “sexualizing” children.