News

Yesterday I was reading Oliver Willis’s Substack (with a great photo of Kal El, as always,) and he’s begun a news aggregator for liberals/progressives called Breaking News USA. Oliver Willis knows of what he speaks, so I’ve bookmarked it to look at every day. Today, I ran across 2 I want to post here today.

1. I am always up for a dance party!

(Instagram)

Women walking into the bathroom on Capitol Hill Thursday morning found a buoyant dance party in progress: A group of trans artists and activists staged a protest in a women’s restroom in the U.S. Capitol, dancing to the song “Meeting in the Ladies Room” by the all-women pop and R&B band Klymaxx.

Thursday’s dancing protesters include trans actor James Rose, nonbinary influencer Jerome Trammel, comedian Elizabeth Booker Houston, influencer Alexis Rose, transgender model June Raven Romero and activist Hope Giselle-Godsey. A video posted online starts with a panorama of the Capitol building’s interior before panning to a nearby restroom filled with dancing women. Some wear shirts with the colors of the transgender pride flag, pink, blue and white, and slogans like, “Flush the Hate, Not Our Rights” and “Trans People Are NOT Dangerous. You Are!” (snip-MORE)

2. “King Trump Is Not Inevitable”

The campaign is over; the election is done. The cases against Donald Trump—for the theft and improper storage of sensitive and classified government materials; for the effort to obstruct election administration in Georgia; for the attempt to overthrow the government of the United States on January 6, 2021—are wrapping up, unfinished in some cases and never really started in others. His sentencing for the 34 felony counts where he was found guilty of falsifying business records to hide election interference has been postponed indefinitely. In the executive branch, the transition is underway, complete with smiling photo ops and assurances from President Biden that he won’t stifle or undermine the incoming administration the way he was hampered—by the very man Biden is welcoming back to power. Everything is on track for January 20, 2025: the day that Joe Biden will cease to be president, and Donald Trump will be crowned as king.

There is no question that Donald Trump will not be limited by the Constitutional strictures on the presidency. Not only has the Supreme Court granted his absurd and expansive view of executive power as per Trump v. U.S., but Trump has spent the last four years out of office actively campaigning for the right to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, however he wants, without consequences. The incoming Republican Congress won its power on much smaller margins than Trump took the presidency, and he is barely two million votes ahead of Harris in the popular vote. Neither the slim and chaotic majority in the House nor the thoroughly Trumpified Senate will reject his whims, either because they’ll agree with his interests or they’ll be too cowardly to object if they don’t. Trump’s early appointments—sex pests and conspiracy theorists, incompetents, lackeys, bootlickers, and sycophants—reveal the nature of what this administration will be. These aren’t people put into place to work for the American people; they will be installed to preserve, protect, and defend the interests of one Donald J. Trump, damn the country.

Yet King Trump, first of his name, is not an inevitability. 

It’s his blatant disregard for the Constitution, the disinterest and disrespect for its limitations, checks and balances, that provides us with one last chance to derail the coming coronation. On January 20, 2017, Donald Trump stood at the Capitol of the United States and swore an oath to the country, the one every president has taken, as prescribed in Article 2, Section 8 of the Constitution. And on January 6, 2021, Donald Trump broke that oath in an attempt to overturn the election, overthrow the duly-appointed government of the United States, and install himself as dictator. It was, in word and deed, an insurrection. And, despite our republic’s long history of peaceful transfers of power, we have an answer for that, if we will only ask the question.

Does the 14th Amendment apply to Donald Trump? (snip-MORE)