Month: March 2025

Rep. Crockett at Work For We The People

(There are others; it’s a thing to look at. But Republicans have actually made a Democrat-a black, woman elected Democratic US House Member-the news of the weekend. No wonder Wednesday has to be a big news day for Trump!) (Also, blue language within!)

Why Are White MAGA Weenuses So Scared Of Jasmine Crockett? Here’s Why. by Evan Hurst

Bless their mediocre little hearts. Read on Substack

And now we’ll talk about Jasmine Crockett.

screengrab, Jasmine Crockett doing Kendrick Lamar before Donald Trump’s Hitler address to Congress

This week, let’s talk about one of the heroes of the anti-Trump opposition, one of the leaders who’s actually showing up and showing people how it’s done, and terrifying the fuck out of Donald Trump and his white MAGA Nazi fascists in the process.

I’m of course talking about Jasmine Crockett, Democratic congresswoman from Texas, specifically Dallas. Have you noticed she’s the subject of right-wing manufactured outrage every week now, for some new terribly egregious offense she has committed against their delicate sensibilities?

We wonder why they don’t like her. Trying to put our finger on it.

Is it because she’s a powerful, brilliant Black woman who isn’t remotely intimidated by these white racist fascist MAGA motherfuckers, who also happens to be smarter than each and every one of them?

Well, yes, but it’s even more than that!

Why are they so mad at Jasmine Crockett?

This week, Attorney General Nazi Barbie Pam Bondi has been all over the TV, with all the gravitas of Michele in Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion declaring that she invented Post-Its, that Crockett better “tread very carefully” with calling for peaceful protests against Elon Musk and Tesla. OR ELSE.

Bondi has claimed that people are using “weapons of mass destruction” against Teslas, and she is just pretty sure that Jasmine Crockett is a prime instigator of all this #TeslaTakedown business. “You have this Congresswoman Crockett who is calling for attacks on Elon Musk on her birthday. ‘Let’s take him out on my birthday,’ she says. Yet she turns and says ‘Oh, I’m not calling for violence,’” she complained to serious journalist Maria Bartiromo on the Fox Business Network, where business is discussed. “Well she is an elected public official, and so she needs to tread very carefully because nothing will happen to Elon Musk, and we’re going to fight to protect all of the Tesla owners throughout this country.”

Okeydoke. Has Crockett been calling for violence against Musk, or Tesla dealerships? Of course not. Would she be mad if we laughed at a Cybertruck driving by and made jokes amongst ourselves about what a loser probably is driving it? Probably not. But no violence.

Also, any idiot knows, or can figure out — maybe even Pam Bondi! — that the Tesla protests are called #TeslaTakedown and that they’re entirely peaceful. You either have to be extremely stupid or a lying scumbag — or both, like maybe even Pam Bondi! — to believe differently.

As my former Wonkette colleague Liz Dye details ably at the Public Notice newsletter this week, Bartiromo was just one stop on Bondi’s tour of ridiculous media appearances this week trying to scare Crockett. She was on “Hannity” this week, bellyaching that Crockett must “apologize immediately, not only to all Texans, but to our country, to the American shareholders of Tesla, because she is promoting violence.” (Apparently some shit happened at a Tesla dealership in Austin. It had nothing to do with Jasmine Crockett.)

At the end of the “Hannity” clip, Bondi also faked outrage over Crockett supposedly inciting violence against beloved senator Ted Cruz when she said that for Democrats to win races in Texas, “this dude has to be knocked over the head, like hard, right? Like there is no niceties with him. Like at all. Like you go clean off on him.” In context, any fucking moron — even Pam Bondi maybe! — could tell that she was talking in the context of political races, about being willing to punch your opponents hard.

MAGA, whose leader Donald Trump has throughout his political career incited violence against racial minorities, journalists, the US Capitol and more, can spare us the fucking whiny-ass histrionics.

Of course, as Liz Dye notes, Jasmine Crockett has said repeatedly that she’s not advocating violence, like this past weekend on MSNBC, when she told Alex Witt, “Tesla’s tanking right now, and I’m okay with that,” but added that “Just in case the slow people listening try to clip this later, I just want to say that I have never promoted violence whatsoever.” She also said maybe people who have problems with political violence shouldn’t have pardoned 1,500 MAGA terrorists for their actions to help Donald Trump overturn the 2020 election on January 6. She was just saying!

And she said more! It’s a great interview, enjoy it if you haven’t seen it: https://youtu.be/WdyO7DKGCbw

Let’s see, what else are they mad at Jasmine Crockett about? Oh just everything.

She called Texas’s Greg Abbott “Governor Hot Wheels” at the Human Rights Campaign gala. Maybe she shouldn’t have said that. She says she wasn’t talking about his disability, but rather his “planes, trains, and automobiles he used to transfer migrants into communities led by Black mayors, deliberately stoking tension and fear among the most vulnerable.” Of course, Greg Abbott is a sadistic monster, and we’re not going to spend a lot of time worrying about the feelings of people who are obsessed with hurting trans kids and filling the Rio Grande with murder buoys to slice up migrant human beings.

Of course, you know who really makes fun of disabled people?

Again, miss us with your fake outrage and your crocodile tears, MAGA.

OK, why are they REALLY so mad at Jasmine Crockett?

Because on top of being a Black woman who doesn’t respect them, and on top of being a Black woman who is smarter than them, she has their fuckin’ number, and she knows it, and they know it.

This week in an interview with The 19th, Crockett mocked the stupid, prurient Republican MAGA Nazi obsession with transgender kids playing sports, saying that according to Republicans, “That is the biggest issue that we’ve had. Since when? Since when? Find the little trans child that is ruining your life. I mean, I’m just like, what are we doing? Like, what are we doing?”

That’s one example.

Let’s talk about how Crockett explains the white Republican obsession with eliminating DEI. In a congressional hearing before the election, she said, “This election is the best example of why y’all are so afraid of [DEI] because then you can’t have a simple-minded, under-qualified white man. […] You’ve got to pay attention to the qualified Black woman that is on the other side.”

On February 3 on CNN, Crockett discussed the white supremacist in the White House and the rampant coddling of mediocre white nationalist MAGA boys: https://youtu.be/s5a3fAXHsRA

“I am tired of the white tears. Listen, if you are competent, you are not concerned. […] I had to work 10 times as hard as they did just to get into the seat. When you look and you compare me to Marjorie Taylor Greene or me to Lauren Boebert, there is no comparison. And that is the life that we have always lived.”

“So, the only people that are crying are the mediocre white boys that have been beaten out by people that historically have had to work so much harder.”

Yep, that’s why they hate her right there.

If you are competent, you are not concerned.

You see, Jasmine Crockett understands something about this white conservative MAGA obsession with DEI that MAGA buffoons and Nazis are desperate to avoid confronting. Every time you see a white Trump-supporting man babbling about bringing back “merit,” the fantasy he’s openly masturbating to is that if only all the DEI programs go away, if only affirmative action goes away, if only they can get back to “merit” and that one MLK Jr. quote they like about “not the color of your skin but the content of your character,” THEN order will be restored and white conservative Christian men will start to naturally float to the top again, where they belong.

Jasmine Crockett knows that fantasy is some fuckin’ bullshit.

She knows that DEI doesn’t put women, LGBTQ+ people and racial minorities in jobs they’re not qualified for, but rather that it makes it less likely that extremely mediocre white Christian conservative men will get positions they’re totally not cut out for, positions they have not earned, positions they’re far too stupid to fill.

Fuck, look at Pete Hegseth and Mike Waltz and the rest of the Signal-Gate dumbfucks and tell us about all the brilliant talent America’s been missing out on.

DEI is all about merit. It’s all about — for instance — making sure dumbfuck good old boy frat boys and date rapists from SEC schools who aren’t qualified to pick up Jasmine Crockett’s dry-cleaning don’t get all the high-powered jobs, when far more capable people are willing, available, and more deserving.

Jasmine Crockett knows that good DEI policies help expose the secret that white conservative men never really were impressive people in the first place. They never got where they are because they were creative or clever or had something to offer that nobody else had. They stole it, and then let themselves believe they earned it, that their talent and their bootstraps got them there.

The only people crying are the mediocre white boys.

Yep, that’s why they hate her. (snip)

MS Restaurant Offers Free Food To Straights Only

MS Restaurant Offers Free Food To Straights Only

March 30, 2025

The Mississippi Clarion-Ledger reports:

A Mississippi Gulf Coast restaurant came under fire after posting a video offering a free food deal to straight people only. The LGBTQ community is boycotting the business, and the owners’ stances on the matter have been erratic, swinging from backing the decision to apologizing before once again justifying their actions. Now, they’re defending the move.

On Tuesday, March 25, Darwell Yeager III and Nettie Mechelle Yeager shared a free food deal at Darwell’s Happiness Cafe in Long Beach.

Both spelled out that trans, lesbian and gay couples could not get the deal. Only heterosexual couples, regardless of how long they’d been together. In the following days, the owners have invoked President Donald Trump’s goal to “end to all this wokeness” and briefly shared a MAGA discount before deleting it.

The New York Post reports:

A Mississippi eatery that appeared on Guy Fieri’s “Diners, Drive-ins and, Dives” is facing backlash after its owners posted a video offering “something free” to only straight couples that stopped by to eat at the Cajun joint on Tuesday.

“If you come in and you’re a couple … husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, guy, girl couple, the real kind of couple,” Darwell Yeager said before his spouse cut in and said, “Because we don’t do the trans or the lesbian or gays, I’m sorry.”

“When you come in for the next hour and a half and you are a couple, can-produce-a-child couple, we’ll give you something free,” Darwell Yeager concluded in the since-deleted video that has spread online.

There’s a lot more at the first link, including multiple quotes from the couple’s now-deleted Facebook posts. The screenshot above is from a local station’s regular feature, “In The Kitchen With Darwell’s Happiness Cafe.” You should watch the video below.

FCC Chairman Enlists Anti-LGBTQ Activist To Help Him Block Major Media Mergers If Companies Back Diversity

FCC Chairman Enlists Anti-LGBTQ Activist To Help Him Block Major Media Mergers If Companies Back Diversity

OK again it is another old one.  I should have saved the Disney board standing up to the hateful anti-LGBTQ+ anti-DEIA and the board voting to keep the policies and associations even as they did agree to end the idea of a trans character in a show and do more conservative story lines / characters.  But think how tRump at every rally and in front of every courthouse claimed Biden was weaponizing the DOJ and government against him.  Remember how bad it said it was that Biden was using the government against his enemies which meant every republican criminal.  But now tRump is doing it and his maga cult that used to be called republicans are fine with it.  Just like the debt and debt ceiling doesn’t matter now under tRump and did not matter under the first tRump term, but during Biden’s term those two things were constantly shouted by maga on every right wing media show.  It is like the party who used to champion family values and law and order was never a believer in those things.  Hugs

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March 21, 2025

Bloomberg Law reports:

The US Federal Communications Commission is prepared to block mergers and acquisition proposals from companies that promote “invidious” DEI policies, according to chairman Brendan Carr.

The move could threaten billions of dollars worth of deals in the communications sector, with Carr specifically mentioning Paramount Global’s merger with Skydance Media, Verizon’s acquisition of Frontier Communications, and T-Mobile, which is seeking to purchase US Cellular Corp.’s wireless operations.

“Any businesses that are looking for FCC approval, I would encourage them to get busy ending any sort of their invidious forms of DEI discrimination,” Carr said in an interview Friday.

Fox News reports:

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr is vowing to use every tool at his disposal to eliminate Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs from the companies his agency regulates, and has enlisted the help of a high-profile conservative activist in the effort.

Carr met with activist Robby Starbuck on Wednesday to discuss ways the agency can use its enforcement powers to stamp out DEI in the telecommunications sector. The two discussed ways the agency can enforce existing civil rights laws along with President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders targeting DEI in the public and private sectors.

“It’s my hope that this meeting is a wake-up call for businesses within the FCC’s purview that the days of violating the law with DEI are over,” Starbuck told Fox News Digital.

Robby Starbuck has successfully bullied multiple major firms into dropping LGBTQ support with threats of national boycotts.

Since becoming FCC chair, Carr has launched investigations into NPR, PBS, and the east coast flagship broadcast affiliates of ABC, CBS, and NBC.

Carr first appeared here in 2022 when he supported Trump’s demand to ban TikTok. Trump famously reversed on banning TikTok once he found out that GOP megadonor Jeffrey Yass holds a $15 billion stake in the platform.

In 2023 Carr accused then-Rep. Adam Schiff of running a “secret and partisan surveillance machine.” He has also accused the World Health Organization of “beclowning itself” with COVID mitigation advice.

In 2020, Carr told Fox News host Lou Dobbs that “far-left” social media platforms had “hopped from hoax to hoax to hoax” in attacks on Trump.

Carr is a vehement opponent of Net Neutrality and opposed efforts to block Elon Musk from purchasing Twitter.

Last year Carr wrote a full chapter in the Heritage Foundation’s book in support of Project 2025.

Peace & Justice History for 3/31

March 31, 1492
King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella ordered the expulsion from Spain before August of all Jews who refused to convert to Christianity under penalty of death.
March 31, 1776
Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John (later to be the second U.S. president):
I long to hear that you have declared an independancy—and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation. That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend. Why then, not put it out of the power of the vicious and the Lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity. Men of Sense in all Ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your Sex. Regard us then as Beings placed by providence under your protection and in immitation of the Supreem Being make use of that power only for our happiness.
March 31, 1968
President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not seek re-election, ordered a partial bombing halt in Vietnam, and appointed W. Averell Harriman to seek peace negotiations with North Vietnam.
March 31, 1970
The Oakland, California, Induction Center revealed that over the prior six months, half those drafted for the Vietnam War had failed to appear, and 11% of those who reported then refused induction into the U.S. Army. Later that Spring 2500 University of California-Berkeley students at once turned in their draft cards to the Oakland Center.
March 31, 1972
Protesters – singing, blowing horns and carrying banners – launched the latest leg of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’s 56-mile Easter march from London to Aldermaston, Berkshire, England.

The banner used in the 1960s Aldermaston marches.
March 31, 1985
Throughout Australia, 300,000 demonstrated in peace and anti-nuclear rallies.
March 31, 1991
Before dawn on Easter, five Plowshares activists boarded the USS Gettysburg, an Aegis-equipped Cruiser docked at the Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine. They proceeded to hammer and pour blood on covers of vertical launching systems for cruise missiles.
“We witness against the American enslavement to war at the Bath Iron Works, geographically near the President’s home.” They also left an indictment charging President George H.W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, the National Security Council and the Joint Chiefs of Staff with war crimes and violations of God’s law and international law, including the killing of thousands of Iraqis.
Remembering Aegis Plowshares 
March 31, 1997
Four East Timorese were arrested in Warton, England, at the British Aerospace factory where Hawk fighter jets were built for the Indonesian military, who used them in the ongoing occupation and genocide of their homeland.
March 31, 2004
Air America, intended as a liberal voice in network talk radio, made its debut on five stations.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymarch.htm#march31

What Are Satanists Up To In Kansas???

By my dogs that love gravy I like this man’s message.  I enjoy listening to him as he asked everyone including the Christians to love each other, to be kind to each other.  He reaches even a complete atheist like me.  The fact is you can gain more converts, more adherents to your view with kindness and joy, than you will ever be able to do with anger, hate, and force.  This man will bring far more people to Jesus and to the principles that Jesus taught than the Christian nationalist hate preachers ever will even if they get their way.  No law forcing a person to sit in a pew can ever make them believe the stuff that is against the inborn idea of fairness, kindness, respect for others … or as someone said treat others as you would like to be treated.  Period.  The saying was not treat others the way you want to be treated only if they are like you, only if they believe as you do, only if they are the same skin color or the same sexual orientation.   Treat everyone as you would like to be treated.  Hugs

NPR: Trump is ‘not joking’ about third term, though Constitution says he can’t serve

Trump is ‘not joking’ about third term, though Constitution says he can’t serve
In remarks to NBC News, Trump also said “there are methods which you could do it.” Trump would need either a two-thirds vote in Congress or a constitutional convention to serve a third term.

Read in NPR: https://apple.news/AByPTkaHxQZanFfr-wZThyg

Shared from Apple News

Best Wishes and Hugs,Scottie

Extras from Chop Wood, Carry Water

Extra! Extra! 3/30 🤩 by Jessica Craven

All the good news that’s fit to print. Read on Substack

Screenshot of a post from Threads. Typo not my fault!

Hi, all, and happy Sunday!

Another difficult week is behind us. And while awful, awful things continued to happen, a huge number of really encouraging things did as well. Here’s a list of many of them. Please feel free to add more in the comments—I’m certain I left some important things out.

Remember, we can’t keep fighting without maintaining morale, so make sure you share this list with everyone you know who needs a lift. Remind them that action taken—even in the face of hopelessness—lifts our spirits; it also leads to wins like the ones below. We don’t wait to feel optimistic to act. We act, then feel optimism surge back into us as our actions create change.

I think after reading this list you’ll agree

Enjoy. See you tomorrow when we get back to work.

Read This 📖

The West Ada School District made national headlines recently when administrators ordered a school teacher to remove signs containing welcoming messages from her classroom. Read about what happened next—you’ll feel better about humanity.

Celebrate This! 🎉

A federal judge blocked Elon Musk’s DOGE from accessing people’s private data at the Education Department, the Treasury Department, and the Office of Personnel Management.

The Social Security Administration abruptly backed off planned cuts to phone services for disabled and some elderly Americans applying for benefits amid an uproar from advocates.

A D.C. federal judge rejected the Trump administration’s request to lift his previous order preventing the use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport hundreds to a Salvadoran labor prison without due process. The block remains in place.

More than 175 years after their reservation in Illinois was illegally sold at auction, the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation is now in line to get their land back.

New Hampshire Republicans staged a hasty retreat on their plans to shutter the New Hampshire State Library after a wave of outrage and anger from constituents.

The Healey-Driscoll Administration has implemented two standing orders allowing approximately 500,000 eligible Massachusetts residents to obtain free over-the-counter birth control pills and prenatal vitamins.

A Republican bill to allow guns on college campuses (known as campus carry] FAILED in the Florida Senate. Two Republican colleagues were absent from the meeting, and another voted no with Democrats.

The American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers are suing the Trump administration on behalf of their members for “unlawfully cutting off $400 million in federal funding” to “force Columbia University to surrender its academic independence.”

Education advocacy groups and unions filed two lawsuits challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order to dismantle the Department of Education.

A federal judge ruled that a Columbia University student who took part in campus protests against Israel’s military offensive in Gaza cannot be detained as she fights orders for her deportation.

FLIP! In South Carolina Peter Smith, Jr. won a special election for Dorchester County Council District 1 in a solid Trump district BLUE!

FLIP! Democrats won TWO special elections in Pennsylvania—one they were expected to win and one, a State Senate seat, in a R+23 district! WOW!

To help protect shrinking coastal wetlands, a new conservation effort is preserving two salt marshes in Nova Scotia.

The village of Pinecrest in Florida has launched an effort to convert food scraps into nutrient-rich compost that will be delivered to the Miccosukee Tribe in the Everglades which, for starters, plans to use it in a community garden.

In an exciting new announcement, the New Zealand Electricity Authority predicted that their electricity grid will be 100% renewable by 2040.

California added more than 26,000 EV chargers in the last six months.

The UK announced plans to plant 20 million trees, creating 2,500 hectares of new woodland area.

Yellowstone’s iconic bison herds have merged into a single entity after 100 years of wandering the park.

A federal judge temporarily blocked Texas A&M University System from enforcing a ban on drag shows being held at its special event venues.

The most innovative companies in corporate responsibility—like Cisco, Land O’Lakes, Delta, Toyota, and even the board game Catan—are finding ways to make new advances in business for good. Very encouraging!

Renewable energy capacity around the world surged last year — particularly in the U.S. and China. New data shows that renewables, such as wind, solar, geothermal, and hydroelectric power sources are growing at far faster rates than traditional power sources such as coal and natural gas.

The Supreme Court upheld Biden-era federal regulations on “ghost guns.” Huge.

James Boasberg, the judge Trump and Republicans are trying to impeach, was assigned to the Signal-gate case.

Trump got ridiculed for demanding that a portrait of him hung in the Colorado statehouse be taken down because he thought it was unflattering.

Protests and boycotts are working. Tesla’s sales are plummeting world-wide. Also? Target has lost 5 million customers, while COSTCO has gained 7 million. Keep up the pressure.

The government watchdog group American Oversight is suing Pete Hegseth and several other top Trump officials, claiming their use of Signal’s disappearing messages function is a clear breach of the Federal Records Act.

A new Navigator poll finds that views of Trump’s tariff plan are becoming increasingly negative, with tariffs being a top driver for those disapproving of Trump’s economic handling.

In related polling news, ratings of Trump’s overall job approval and handling of the economy are now both underwater, with a majority of Americans disapproving of his economic handling for the first time.

There are Indivisible groups now in Dublin, Ireland, and Ottawa Canada! WOW!

Airline travel between Canada and the US is “collapsing” amid Trump’s tariff war, with flight bookings between the two countries down by over 70%, newly released data suggests.

Three high profile law firms, Keker, Van Nest & Peters, Jenner and Block, and Wilmer Hale, are finally standing up to Trump.

A federal judge said he will order the Trump administration to preserve records of a text message chat in which senior national security officials discussed sensitive details of plans for a U.S. military strike against Yemen’s Houthis.

The federal judiciary has established a task force to consider how to protect judges targeted by Trump after they issued rulings against the administration. It is operating under “the direction of the Judicial Conference, a policymaking body led by Chief Justice Roberts.”

Republicans withdrew the nomination of GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik to serve as US Ambassador to the United Nations because they’re afraid of losing her seat—and maybe even seats in Florida!

Senator Susan Collins has joined Democrats in the Senate to challenge Trump’s cuts to congressional spending.

California State Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) and 57 Democratic Assemblymembers announced that they would stop communications from official state accounts on X.

A local official in New York rejected Texas’ effort to enforce a $100,000 judgment against a New York doctor accused of sending abortion pills to the state.

The Vancouver Auto Show broke attendance records after banning Tesla.

U.S. officials went door-to-door in Greenland to find anyone who wanted to be visited by the Vances. They found no one.

A federal judge ordered a Colorado school district to return 19 banned books to libraries.

Local library patrons, with help from the ACLU, are suing officials in South Carolina’s most populous county for systematically purging literature by and about LGBTQ people from its public library collection.

From December to now, consumer confidence in Trump’s ability to bring down energy costs dropped by 9 points.

Residents of Paris voted to pedestrianize 500 more streets in the city as part of the local government’s efforts to reduce the use of cars and improve air quality.

A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction blocking efforts to shut down the CFPB.

Florida Congressional candidate Gay Valimont went on Fox News to talk outside of the bubble about why Republican voters should support her.

Indiana Rep. Victoria Spartz held three Town Halls and was roundly booed and jeered in all of them.

There were four Republican-backed extreme constitutional amendments on the ballot in Louisiana yesterday. The voters REJECTED them all (in a state Trump won by 22 points in November).

Beto O’Rourke teamed up with Tim Walz to have a town hall meeting in the Houston, Texas area.

Watch This! 👀

Here’s footage of the Tesla Takedown I—and many of you!—attended in Old Town Pasadena. It was a blast, with 500-600 people there, and there were hundreds and hundreds of other ones all across the country! Amazing!

(Snip-I cannot get a link for the 44 second video, so just click up beneath the title, then scroll to the end on the page. It’s nice, and not at all long.)

Texas Gov Backs Batshit QAnon Bill To Ban “Furries” In Schools, Resurrects Stupid QAnon “Litter Boxes” Claims

Texas Gov Backs Batshit QAnon Bill To Ban “Furries” In Schools, Resurrects Stupid QAnon “Litter Boxes” Claims

I know this is ten days old, but I had it open in a saved tab to share.  Most of those I am deleting but this one is just too over the top stupid in a way to keep their maga cult base hyped up or enraged.  This has to be one of the greatest hoaxes ever pulled on the right.  But remember Texas is run by a group of very wealthy fundamentalist religious leaders who demand society return to the 1950s society they remember and loved.  They want a state / country that is white Christian male dominated and give unearned respect.  They want Christianity, their version of the god worshiped by their church to be forced on everyone so they can get more donations, more forced white babies that are dragged to church by their parents, more butts in pews, more donations in the plate, more tithes.  These are the kind of people that if they don’t feel that way, if they are not into something, then no one should be.  They are straight cis people who think anyone not straight or cis is doing it as a choice because they are mentally ill and need to be fixed / cured.  These are the people with no empathy who want conversion therapy torture done on children and young adults who are LGBTQ+.  Hugs

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March 21, 2025

The Dallas Observer reports:

A freshly filed bill brings the topic of furries in Texas schools to the House. The bill, Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Education Act, pet-named the F.U.R.R.I.E.S Act, would ban students from observing “non-human behaviors,” which include, but are not limited to, meowing, barking and hissing; wearing a tail, collar, or ears; and licking oneself in a grooming manner.

The F.U.R.R.I.E.S Act, filed by Rep. Stan Gerdes [photo], a Republican lawmaker from Central Texas, does not apply to any specific age group, and instead blankets all students at Texas schools, at the public and private level. The only exceptions are mascots, designated dress-up days and children participating in performances.

The bill follows a debunked right-wing conspiracy theory that teachers were providing students who identify as cats with litter boxes. Indeed, a section of the bill explicitly prohibits “using a litter box for the passing of stool, urine, or other human byproducts.”

The Houston Chronicle reports:

Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday resurrected debunked rumors that public schools were putting litter boxes in classrooms for students dressed as cats, amplifying right-wing criticism of some educators as he pushes for a statewide private school voucher program. The Texas Republican told a gathering of pastors at a Baptist church in Austin that the so-called furries trend is “alive and well” in communities across the state, and that lawmakers needed to ban it.

“In some small rural sections of school districts in the state of Texas, they have in their schools, what are called furries. Y’all know what this is?” Abbott asked the crowd, which responded with a smattering of “yeahs.” “Kids go to school dressed up as cats with litter boxes in their classrooms,” Abbott said. Abbott referenced two rural school districts but did not name them in his address to the Texas Pastors Policy Conference.

From the editorial board of the Dallas Morning News:

No, there aren’t schools in Texas putting out litter boxes for kids to use. That’s internet garbage that naive people take as gospel. In fact, we can think of few more effective ways to spread “furry” culture than to tell the kids it’s against the law. Gov. Greg Abbott, repeating the internet hoax about litter boxes in place of school bathrooms, has either fallen for furry worry or knows there are enough gullible people among his electorate that he can play like a fiddle by plucking their fears.

Abbott has gone full batshit QAnon.

Disapering people and breaking democracy, government by thugs

This is from https://liberalsarecool.com

image

THE ERA OF VANISHING HAS BEGUN

They are not arresting people. They are vanishing them.

Rumeysa Ozturk wasn’t read her rights. She wasn’t told why she was being detained. She was walking to break her fast in Somerville, Massachusetts when masked men in an unmarked SUV pulled up, took her phone, slapped on handcuffs, and dragged her into a vehicle like she was some kind of national security threat.

She’s a doctoral student. A Fulbright scholar. A trauma researcher. But in Donald Trump’s America, she fit the profile: Muslim, foreign-born, sympathetic to Palestinians.

Now she’s locked in a for-profit detention center in Louisiana, hundreds of miles from her lawyer, after a federal judge specifically said she wasn’t to be moved.

They moved her anyway. Because rules no longer apply to those with badges — real or fake.

A MOVEMENT BUILT ON CHAINS AND COWARDS

Alireza Doroudi is gone too.

He’s a doctoral student at the University of Alabama, born in Iran, studying mechanical engineering. No criminal record. No warning. Just scooped off the grid.

ICE refuses to say where he’s being held. No public charge has been announced. His only crime appears to be existing in the wrong body, from the wrong country, in the wrong era.

Mahmoud Khalil was next — a Columbia student, arrested for leading pro-Palestinian protests. Trump labeled him a “radical foreign Hamas sympathizer” on Truth Social. Days later, he was gone.

Jeanette Vizguerra was taken from her Target shift in Colorado, chained at the waist.

Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez, a farmworker organizer, was dragged from his car at dawn in Washington. His window was smashed by federal agents. His voice silenced.

These aren’t isolated incidents. These are deliberate acts of political intimidation.

They are testing the system — testing us — to see how many people they can disappear before we stop calling it democracy.

WHEN ICE IS A BADGE — AND A COSTUME

While the real ICE disappears scholars, organizers, and mothers, the fakes are circling like vultures.

In South Carolina, Sean-Michael Johnson posed as an ICE officer. He pulled over a van of Latino men, screamed slurs, jiggled their keys, and knocked a phone out of someone’s hand. “You’re going back to Mexico!” he shouted. He wasn’t an agent — but he played one with conviction.

In North Carolina, Carl Thomas Bennett used a fake badge to sexually assault a woman at a motel. He told her if she didn’t comply, he’d have her deported. He held up a counterfeit ID and pretended to be the state.

And in Philadelphia, a Temple University student in an “ICE” shirt tried to storm a dorm building with two accomplices. They were dressed for the part, intoxicated by the illusion of authority, emboldened by the climate.

This is what happens when the state makes cruelty a brand. When a badge becomes a fetish object. When the line between enforcement and cosplay disappears altogether.

THE WHOLE SYSTEM IS THE CRIME

Let’s stop pretending this is a coincidence.

This is a unified strategy. The Trump administration is using ICE like a personal strike force — targeting international students, protest leaders, organizers, and mothers with surgical precision.

They invoke secret designations. They bypass due process. They manufacture pretexts out of thin air and rely on the fog of bureaucracy to hide the blood on the floor.

The point isn’t law enforcement. The point is deterrence. Spectacle. Control.

This is what political cleansing looks like when it’s dressed up in the language of national security.

They’re showing the world that resistance has a cost — and the cost is your freedom, your voice, your visibility, your future.

SILENCE IS CONSENT. AND WE ARE LOUD.

There is no middle ground here. No fence to sit on. No neutral position when people are being kidnapped in the name of the state.

ICE doesn’t need your applause. It needs your silence. Every time a student vanishes and the media shrugs, every time a woman is cuffed and the public looks away, the machine gets stronger.

They are daring us to ignore it. They are counting on our numbness. They are betting that we’ll keep scrolling.

We cannot let them win.

This is not border policy. This is not visa enforcement. This is not safety.This is authoritarianism with a PowerPoint presentation.This is fascism disguised as formality.

This is the state stripping people from the land and pretending it’s order.

Let the record show:

They took people.

And we did not look away.

We saw it.

We named it.

We raised hell.

And we did not stop.

(I didn’t write this. Credit goes to Fear and Loathing: Closer to the Edge)

Laverne Cox On The Importance of Trans Issues & Stories