The perverse obsession MAGAts have about gender issues is one of their hallmarks. Part of it has to do with keeping women subordinate to men. But part of it, I think, is fear. MAGAt men, particularly White MAGAt men, are unclear about their own masculinity. When I look at media directed to women, especially White women, I see more and more comments from them about toxic masculinity. I think that is what is driving the kind of weird TCP Republican behavior reported on in this article.
Attorney General of Kansas Kris Kobach speaks to members of the press following arguments at the Supreme Court on Tuesday, March 26, 2024.
Four more Republican-led states sued the Biden administration Tuesday over new Title IX rules that bolster protections for LGBTQ students.
The Education Department in April unveiled a final set of sweeping changes to Title IX, the federal civil rights law preventing sex discrimination in schools and education programs that receive government funding. The new regulations, which are slated to take effect Aug. 1, cover discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity for the first time, angering some Republicans.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal district court in Topeka, Kan., attorneys general in Kansas, Utah, Wyoming and Alaska accused the Education Department and the Department of Justice of attempting to “politicize our country’s education system” by extending the law’s protections to transgender students.
The new Title IX rules could prevent schools from barring transgender students from using restrooms, locker rooms and pronouns that match their gender identity, a senior administration official said last month.
FRED PEARCE , Contributing Writer - Yale Environment 360
Stephan:
Albania is on the verge of making a dreadfully bad decision about its environmental future because of greed stimulated by Jared Kushner and his partners. The Trump family has no ethics and no concern for the wellbeing of the Matrix of Life. As they show us again and again, they care only about profit and power. I increasingly see them as the personification of the worse aspects of human consciousness. That doesn’t excuse the Albanian leadership, but it is very revealing about the Trump family.
The outer edge of the Nartë lagoon in Vlorë, Albania. Credit: Yuriy Brykakylo / Alamy
It is the jewel of the Adriatic. Its shimmering waters feed a rare colony of Dalmatian pelicans, the world’s largest freshwater birds, sustain the endangered Albanian water frog, and host loggerhead turtles on its encircling dunes. The Nartë lagoon is at the heart of the extensive and largely unspoiled delta of Albania’s Vjosë River, which researchers consider Europe’s most intact large river delta.
But that accolade won’t save it. The Vjosë delta and its lagoon are under siege. They are set to become the victims of a series of massive coastal tourist developments, partly bankrolled by a company set up by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. The hotels and luxury villas will accommodate up to a million visitors arriving annually at a new international airport currently being built on salt marshes around the lagoon.
Until the fall of the Iron Curtain that walled off communist Eastern Europe from the capitalist West, Albania was the […]
Robert Reich, The Carmel P. Friesen Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. - AlterNet
Stephan:
Robert Reich has just published his version of The Great Schism Trend that I have been talking about for the last decade. We are essentially in complete agreement. Now the questions are: Will Americans awaken to what is happening by November? And, what is going to happen to the United States over the next decade as people wake up to the fact that we have become two countries?
Members of far-right groups marching in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12, 2017 Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Despite the popularity of the recent movie “Civil War,” we’re not on the verge of a second one. But we are separating into so-called “red” and “blue.” And if Trump is reelected president, he’ll hasten the separation.
Since the Supreme Court’s decision to reverse Roe v. Wade left the issue of abortion to the states, one out of three women of childbearing age now lives in a state that makes it nearly impossible to get an abortion.
And while red states are making it harder than ever to get abortions, they’re making it easier than ever to buy guns.
Red states are also banning diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in education. Florida’s Board of Education recently prohibited public colleges from using state and federal funds for DEI. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has signed a law to require that all state-funded colleges and universities close their DEI offices.
Red states are suppressing votes. In Florida and Texas, teams of […]
More and more of these horrible stories about women in Red states not getting the healthcare they need keep coming out. I picked this one not only because it proves what the Republicans have done to women’s healthcare in the states they control but also because it is from a British paper, and it gives one a sense of how the rest of the world now sees America. We are coming across as an increasingly unattractive country, and that is going to have long-term consequences.
Breanna Cecil and her husband in 2021 Credit: Handout
A Tennessee woman who was denied an abortion despite a fatal abnormality says the state’s anti-abortion laws resulted in her losing an ovary, a fallopian tube and her hopes for a large family.
“The state of Tennessee took my fertility from me,” Breanna Cecil, 34, told The Independent. She added that state lawmakers “took away my opportunity to have a family like my own biological family because of these horrible laws that they put in place.”
The mother-of-one said she has not felt the same since her doctor told her in January 2023 that her fetus was diagnosed with acrania, a fatal condition where the fetus has no skull bones.
Then, 12 weeks pregnant, Ms Cecil was getting her first ultrasound. She attended the appointment alone, so when the doctor told her the fetus was not viable outside the womb, she was left with only asking the doctor what she should do.
BRENDAN BORDELON, Tech Lobbying and Influence Reporter - Politico
Stephan:
Here we see once again the corruption of the U.S. Congress, and how this country gets into the terrible situations in which it so frequently finds itself. Instead of developing policies that foster wellbeing, once again Congress is whoring itself out to lobbying money. They are creating policy based not on facts, they are making policy on the basis of corporate profits. As a result, the future of our children may be severely damaged because of decisions based on greed.
The new influence web is pushing the argument that AI is less an existential danger than a crucial business opportunity. Credit: AP
In a shift for Washington tech lobbying, companies and investors from across the industry have been pouring tens of millions of dollars into an all-hands effort to block strict safety rules on advanced artificial intelligence and get lawmakers to worry about China instead — and so far, they seem to be winning over once-skeptical members of Congress.
The success of the pro-tech, anti-China AI push, fueled by several new arrivals on the lobbying scene, marks a change from months in which the AI debate was dominated by well-funded philanthropies warning about the long-term dangers of the technology.
The new influence web is pushing the argument that AI is less an existential danger than a crucial business opportunity, and arguing that strict safety rules would hand America’s AI edge to China. It has already caused key lawmakers to back off some of their more worried rhetoric about the technology.
