Trigger warnings for starving and abused kids / people. Sadly this is what the US government is supporting and keeping other world leaders from stopping. This was because Biden was an old person who remembered being part of Israels founding and thought they were so important that it excused everything they did. tRump doesn’t care about the human cost, he wants the value of the land or as much of the share he can get. This is sickening. Personal note. I was so lacking nutrition in my childhood that my childhood doctors were concerned enough to tell my adopting mother if I did not get more food I would never see five feet in height. I ended up in a child ICU rushed to the hospital by my grandfather and I had clinical death. Hugs
When books burn, humans follow – a warning we cannot afford to ignore Read on Substack
When I tell you that fascists don’t start with violence—they start with books—I’m not speaking in fucking hypotheticals. On May 6th, 1933, while the ink was barely dry on Hitler’s chancellorship, young Nazis stormed the Institute of Sexual Research. They ransacked the place that night, and then four days later, they took more than 20,000 books from the Institute’s library to Berlin’s Bebelplatz Square and burned them.
They didn’t just burn paper. They burned hope. They burned sanctuary. They burned the world’s first transgender clinic and decades of groundbreaking research that might have spared generations of queer people unimaginable suffering.
I’m not being dramatic when I say this is one of the most gut-wrenching episodes in queer history. The visceral image of Magnus Hirschfeld—a gay Jewish doctor and pioneering advocate for gay and transgender rights—watching on television as his life’s work went up in flames should haunt us all. Because make no mistake: these weren’t military operations. These were everyday people, your neighbors, your classmates, who decided certain knowledge was too dangerous to exist.
A Haven of Revolutionary Care
The Institute for Sexual Research wasn’t just ahead of its time—it was blazing the trail for a future we’re still fighting to reach nearly a century later. Opened in 1919 by Magnus Hirschfeld in Berlin, this non-profit institution provided care that modern transphobes claim is “experimental” today, despite the fact that Hirschfeld was performing these procedures over a hundred years ago.
Initially hesitant about gender-affirming surgeries, Hirschfeld changed his mind when he recognized a simple truth: this was life-saving care that prevented suicide. Think about that—while most of the world was still living in willful ignorance, this man understood that people would rather die than live in bodies that betrayed them. The Institute provided facial feminization and masculinization surgeries, hair removal, and complex gender reassignment procedures when most doctors wouldn’t even recognize trans people as human.
It’s hard to wrap your mind around just how revolutionary this place was. Hirschfeld recognized that gender identity and sexual orientation were entirely separate entities—a concept some people still struggle with a century later. He coined the terms “transsexual” and “transvestite,” creating language for experiences that had been silenced for millennia. The Institute was staffed with every specialist imaginable—psychologists, gynecologists, radiologists, lawyers, general practitioners—providing low-cost or free care to those whom society had abandoned.
History Doesn’t Repeat, But It Does Rhyme
My friend (and my Editor-in-Chief) thepoetmiranda saw the dark echoes of history when one of Trump’s first orders was for the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control to start scrubbing medical literature related to healthcare for transgender Americans from government databases (an erasure policy that has spread beyond healthcare to all historical references of transgender people—even on the Stonewall National Memorial website). She wrote the poem linked below, which is a fucking must read:
Hirschfeld’s clinic wasn’t just a clinic. It was a fucking sanctuary. Hirschfeld and his partner Karl Giese lived in the building, creating a warm, plush space filled with life. They hosted costume parties where queer people could express themselves freely. They recommended local bars and venues where LGBTQ+ folks could find community instead of isolation.
When trans women struggled to find employment after transitioning, Hirschfeld hired five of his own patients to work at the clinic. He fought for the repeal of Paragraph 175, which criminalized homosexuality, and even secured legal identification passes for his trans female patients with a “transvestite” gender marker to prevent them from being arrested for crossdressing.
Instead of the torturous conversion therapy that was common practice, the Institute taught “adaptation therapy,” instructing queer people how to navigate a hostile world while staying true to themselves. Their motto was “Through science to justice”—a radical notion that education and understanding were the path to equality.
The Day Knowledge Became Dangerous
When the Nazi youth and the German Student Union piled the contents of the Institute in the square on May 10th, 1933, they topped it with Hirschfeld’s bust before setting it ablaze. This wasn’t random destruction—it was a deliberate erasure of knowledge they deemed threatening. This happened just three months after Hitler was named Chancellor. It wasn’t soldiers who did this; it was civilians, ordinary Germans who had been convinced that minorities were the root cause of inflation and social problems.
Anyone who wasn’t white, cisgender, and Christian was deemed immoral and dangerous to German youth and the “traditional family.” Sound familiar? It should, because we’re hearing the same bullshit rhetoric recycled today by people who would burn books all over again if given half a chance.
Hirschfeld, who was out of the country, watched the destruction on television. He never returned to Germany and died of a stroke in 1935, his life’s work reduced to ashes. The loss was immeasurable—not just papers and books, but decades of research that could have advanced trans healthcare by generations.
The Brutal Reality of Lost Knowledge
We lost so much ancestral knowledge about our community in this one raid. The world’s first transgender clinic—gone. Groundbreaking research on gender identity—gone. Records of successful gender-affirming surgeries—gone. Resources for queer people to find community—gone. All of it, up in smoke because knowledge in the wrong hands threatened the status quo.
The memorial for this event bears the quote, “Where they burn books, in the end, they will burn humans, too”—a line from Hirschfeld’s own library that would prove prophetic. The Nazis began with books but ended with concentration camps where thousands of queer people wore pink triangles to their deaths.
Practical Tools for Preserving Our History
Document and digitize queer history in multiple locations and formats
Support LGBTQ+ archives financially and through volunteer work
Learn and share the stories of pioneers like Magnus Hirschfeld
Recognize warning signs when marginalized communities are blamed for societal problems
Protect trans healthcare by understanding its long history and scientific basis
Community Connection
The story of the Institute’s destruction isn’t ancient history—it’s a warning. When you hear politicians targeting trans healthcare, when you see books about queer experiences being banned from libraries, when you witness the demonization of drag performances, remember the Institute. Remember what happens when fear and ignorance are weaponized against knowledge.
Today, organizations like the Magnus Hirschfeld Foundation continue his legacy, but the threat remains. Every time a state bans gender-affirming care, every time a library removes LGBTQ+ books, every time a transgender person is denied basic dignity, we’re watching echoes of that burning pile in Berlin.
Conclusion
Knowledge is a form of rebellion, and the facts and history you carry in your mind can never be taken away from you. Education and queer joy are our greatest protections right now, just as they were in Hirschfeld’s time.
When we learn about the Institute for Sexual Research, we’re not just studying history—we’re resurrecting knowledge that fascists tried to erase. When we speak the names of Magnus Hirschfeld and his patients, we’re undoing their work of erasure. Every time we share these stories, we’re rebuilding what they tried to destroy.
The memorial’s warning echoes across time: “Where they burn books, in the end, they will burn humans, too.” We must never forget this. We must never allow it to happen again.
Because our history isn’t just about the past—it’s about fucking surviving the present and building a future where institutes like Hirschfeld’s aren’t revolutionary; they’re just how we treat each other.
References:
Hirschfield, M. 1912 “Die Transvestiten: Eine Untersuchung über den Erotischen Verkleidungstrieb”
Hirschfield, M. 1920 “Die Homosexualität des Mannes und des Weibes”
Hirschfield, M. 2017 (Reprint) “Berlin’s Third Sex”
After seeing this cartoon, my friend John Kovalic wrote, “Sesame Street is brought to you today by the letter ‘F’ and the number 47.”
Late last night (Thursday), Donald Trump issued another illegal executive order, with this one ordering the board of directors for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to “cease federal funding for NPR and PBS” because Trump claims they’re woke and liberally biased.
The problem with liberal bias is that facts have a liberal bias. If everything you say is a lie and everything you do is corrupt, illegal, sick, depraved, inhumane, racist, and fucked up, then factual reporting is not your friend.
Trump can’t do anything official against the free press, but he can put his weight on them, which seems to be working on The Washington Post and CBS News, but he can meddle with government programs…to an extent.
The order says, “Neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to tax-paying citizens. The CPB Board shall cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law and shall decline to provide future funding.”
The good news is, the government will continue to fund Trump’s golf games.
PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger called it a “blatantly unlawful Executive Order, issued in the middle of the night.” The middle of the night is when authoritarian governments tend to do their best work, like sending stormtroopers to break down your door, drag every member of your family out, and then put them in a train cattle car.
CPB issued a statement saying, “CPB is not a federal executive agency subject to the President’s authority. Congress directly authorized and funded CPB to be a private nonprofit corporation wholly independent of the federal government.”
I bet Trump’s thinking that’s the kind of biased reporting that is costing PBS and NPR their funding. He’s probably also thinking, “Respect my authority!”
The CPB noted that the statute Congress passed to create it “expressly forbade any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over educational television or radio broadcasting, or over [CPB] or any of its grantees or contractors.”
Congress said that such funds “may be used at the discretion of the recipient” for producing or acquiring programs to put on the air.
Trump has already asked Congress to rescind funds already approved for public broadcasting. Fascists always murder a free press.
CPB is already suing the regime over Trump’s executive order seeking to fire three of its five board members.
Trump recently attacked PBS and NPR on his platform ShitSocial, saying, “REPUBLICANS MUST DEFUND AND TOTALLY DISASSOCIATE THEMSELVES FROM NPR & PBS, THE RADICAL LEFT ‘MONSTERS’ THAT SO BADLY HURT OUR COUNTRY!”
Does Big Bird look like a radical left monster?
Conservatives have been howling for years that NPR and PBS are liberally biased while the progressive group Fair (Fairness in Accuracy in Reporting) once issued a report blasting PBS and NPR for being too conservative.
That’s the thing with the media. It’s never conservative enough for conservatives or liberal enough for liberals.
We got that complaint all the time when I was at The Free Lance-Star. Our page at that time was conservative, but we ran liberal columns and my pinko and unpatriotic cartoons. My editors sought balance, but there was still more conservative content than liberal, yet the conservatives still howled.
Each week, Politico publishes what they call the “Cartoon Carousel,” which is a collection of cartoons from the past week (USA Today and The Washington Post both used to do this, but they stopped). It too seeks balance and publishes an equal number of conservative and liberal cartoons, which means half the cartoons suck. I support diversity in news content, but I hate when it’s chosen over quality.
Now, one of those who complain irrationally about balance is in the White House, and he’ll abuse his power to do things the Constitution doesn’t give him the power to do.
Trump’s first 100 days have been a total disaster. Defunding public broadcasting is the kind of messed up crap we can expect for the next 100 days and every day after that until we get this orange ogre out of the White House.
Creative note: My brain was slow-moving today, and I have about ten subjects written down to choose from. Sometimes it’s harder to choose your subject than it is to write the cartoon. When you have a long list of subjects, it’s nice when you can combine two of them, which I did today. Oscar came to me around noon. I need to move on to those other subjects, but while writing this blog, I got a great idea featuring Bert and Ernie.
Music note: Have you ever noticed that the Sesame Street theme is the same song as Sunshine Day by The Brady Bunch?
Drawn in 30 seconds: From TikTok, and with music. (snip-MORE)
ICE is a thug unit run by a major thug. This family was badly mistreated, in some ways brutalized. I read earlier where the mother said the 20 ICE agents who broke into their home with no warring then wanted the women, one adult and the others teenagers to remove their clothing in front of them to get dressed before being forced outside in the rain. The report said the mother refused saying even her husband had not seen the children nude and she did not want them to do that in front of these men. They were ordered in their “underwear” outside in the rain where they were kept for hours. Is this the government / police any way people should be treated by law enforcement in the US. They so disrespected this family sure in the fact they were correct with no room for any doubt. They had no empathy, no common sense. In the time I was an axillary sheriff’s deputy we were trained never to act like that. We were taught to respect the rights of people but be aware they might be lying and the danger of the situation. Respect the rights of the people. All people on US soil, in the country regardless of status have due process rights. The right wing haters want to tell you that if you are here illegally you have no rights but SCOTUS has repeatedly said every person here does. Hugs
As for Marissa’s phones, electronics, and cash, they have no idea which agency has those belongings or how to get those items back.
At this time, there is not a fundraising campaign set up for the family. KFOR will share any details if that happens.
Original:
OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — A woman says her family’s fresh start in Oklahoma turned into a nightmare after federal immigration agents raided their home, taking their phones, laptops, and life savings – even though they were not the suspects the agents were looking for.
The agents had a search warrant for the home, but the suspects listed on the warrant do not live in the house.
The woman who actually lives in the house had just moved to Oklahoma City from Maryland with her family about two weeks earlier.
The woman, who News 4 will refer to as “Marisa”, and her three daughters came to Oklahoma looking for a slower, more affordable pace of life.
They rented a house in a seemingly safe northwest Oklahoma City neighborhood.
Her husband stayed back in Maryland a couple of extra weeks, planning to join them this weekend.
“I was like, ‘okay, Oklahoma’s my home now,’” Marisa said.
But any comfort they had disappeared Thursday morning when about 20 men, armed with guns, busted through the door.
“I don’t know who they were,” she said. “It was dark. All the lights were off.”
Marisa said the men identified themselves as federal agents with the U.S. Marshals, ICE, and the FBI.
On Tuesday, a spokesperson for the U.S. Marshals Service denied having agents present during the raid, telling News 4 they were “aware of the operation before it happened,” but did not assist in any capacity.
“I keep asking them, ‘who are you? What are you doing here? What’s happening,’” she said. “And they said, ‘we have a warrant for the house, a search warrant.’”
She said they ordered her and her daughters outside into the rain before they could even put on clothes.
“They wanted me to change in front of all of them, in between all of them,” she said. “My husband has not even seen my daughter in her undergarments—her own dad, because it’s respectful. You have her out there, a minor, in her underwear.”
Marisa said the names on the search warrant were not hers or anyone in her family.
She recognized them as names listed on mail still arriving at the house—likely former residents.
“We just moved here from Maryland,” she said. “We’re citizens. That’s what I kept saying. We’re citizens.”
She said the agents didn’t care.
“They were very dismissive, very rough, very careless,” she said. “I kept pleading. I kept telling them we weren’t criminals. They were treating us like criminals. We were here by ourselves. We didn’t do anything.”
Marisa said the agents tore apart every square inch of the house and what few belongings they had, seizing their phones, laptops and their life savings in cash as “evidence.”
“I told them before they left, I said you took my phone. We have no money. I just moved here,” she said. “I have to feed my children. I’m going to need gas money. I need to be able to get around. Like, how do you just leave me like this? Like an abandoned dog.”
Before they left, Marisa said one of the agents made a comment.
“One of them said, ‘I know it was a little rough this morning,’” she said. “It was so denigrating. That you do all of this to a family, to women, your fellow citizens. And it was a little rough? You literally traumatized me and my daughters for life. We’re going to have to go get help or get over this somehow.”
Now, Marisa said they have, quite literally, nothing.
“I said, ‘when are we going to get our stuff back?’ They said it could be days or it could be months,” she said.
Marisa said she is left with nothing but questions.
“What if I would have been armed,” she said. “You’re breaking in. What am I supposed to think? My initial thought was we were being robbed—that my daughters, being females, were being kidnapped. You have guns pointed in our faces.Can you just reprogram yourself and see us as humans, as women?A little bit of mercy. Care a little bit about your fellow human, about your fellow citizen, fellow resident. We bleed too. We work. We bleed just like anybody else bleeds. We’re scared. You could see our faces that we were terrified. What makes you so much more worthier of your peace? What makes you so much more worthier of protecting your children? What makes you so much more worthy of your citizenship? What makes you more worthy of safety? Of being given the right that they took from me to protect my daughters?”
Marisa told News 4 the agents wouldn’t even leave her a business card.
She said she has no idea who to contact to get her things back.
Marissa told KFOR the U.S. Marshal’s Service and the FBI were involved in this raid.
However, a representative for the U.S. Marshal’s Service says their team was not involved.
News 4 reached out to the FBI. Last week, a spokesperson said they were assisting on this case and directed inquiries to Homeland Security.
A spokesperson for Homeland Security told News 4 they are looking into it and will get back to us, but we have not heard from them.
As for Marissa’s phones, electronics, and cash, they have no idea which agency has those belongings or how to get those items back.
If they weren’t so pathetic, you might could possibly be sad for some MAGAts. Take Juanita Broaddrick as an example, whose entire national profile is built upon debunked claims she was raped by Bill Clinton in the 1970s and who is now a full-fledged lying MAGAt.
After Canada’s Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre distanced himself from Donald Trump, Broaddrick claimed he would lose the election because Canada loved Trump so much, which didn’t make any sense.
If Canadians loved Trump so much, then why did they just elect Liberal Mark Carney to become their new Prime Minister? That’s like denying Trump’s current favorability numbers. They suck.
There’s also the fact that Trump lost this election for the Conservatives. The Conservatives were ahead by double digits when Trump entered office last January, then he started barking at Canada, waged a tariff war, and repeatedly insulted them by claiming they should be America’s 51st state.
If Donald Trump had kept his mouth shut and had waited at least 100 days for his stupid tariff war, Poilievre would be Prime Minister today.
Yesterday, thanks to Donald Trump, Canadian Liberals won. Trump is now internationally toxic. Everything Trump touches…dies. Super Bowl champion running back Sequon Barkley played golf with Trump a few days ago, and now I expect his knees to give out during the preseason. Trump is poison. I would tell you to ask Elon, but he hasn’t figured it out yet.
Pierre didn’t just lose his race for Prime Minister, he also lost his seat in parliament. (snip-MORE)
A four-year old cancer patient deported by Ann Telnaes
The boy and his sister, both U.S. citizens, were deported to Honduras with their undocumented mother Read on Substack
“They were shouting at me, threatening to rape me, chanting ‘death to Arabs’. I thought the police would protect me from the mob, but they did nothing to intervene,” she said.
At one point, she and the police officer were nearly cornered against a building, the video shows. “I felt sheer terror,” the woman recalled. “I realized at that point that I couldn’t lead this mob of men to my home. I had nowhere to go. I didn’t know what to do. I was just terrified.”
After several blocks, the officer hustled the woman into a police vehicle, prompting one man to yell, “Get her!” The crowd erupted in cheers as she was driven away.
Committee calls figure a ‘conservative estimate’ and warns Musk may seek to use his influence to avoid legal liability
“While the $2.37 billion figure represents a credible, conservative estimate, it drastically understates the true benefit Mr Musk may gain from legal risk avoidance alone as a result of his position in government,” the report states.
UPDATED: Super Hornet Assigned to USS Harry S. Truman Lost at Sea
The single-seat Super Hornet assigned to the “Knighthawks” of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 136, “was actively under tow in the hangar bay when the move crew lost control of the aircraft. The aircraft and tow tractor were lost overboard,” reads the statement.
“Sailors towing the aircraft took immediate action to move clear of the aircraft before it fell overboard. An investigation is underway.”
DOGE employees gain accounts on classified networks holding nuclear secrets
Two members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency were given accounts on classified networks that hold highly guarded details about America’s nuclear weapons, two sources tell NPR.
Luke Farritor, a 23-year-old former SpaceX intern, and Adam Ramada, a Miami-based venture capitalist, have had accounts on the computer systems for at least two weeks, according to the sources who also have access to the networks. Prior to their work at DOGE, neither Farritor nor Ramada appear to have had experience with either nuclear weapons or handling classified information.
Karoline Leavitt Boasts Trump Wouldn’t Hesitate to Arrest SCOTUS Justices
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested the Trump administration would consider arresting high-ranking judges—including Supreme Court justices—at a press briefing Monday.
“As you guys look at other judges, would you ever arrest somebody higher up on the judicial food chain, like a federal judge or even a Supreme Court justice?” Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked.
Leavitt said no judge is safe from the administration’s crackdown on the judiciary.
“The first time, I had two things to do — run the country and survive; I had all these crooked guys,” Trump said in the interview published Monday. “And the second time, I run the country and the world.”
Johnson says it’s ‘game time’ as House committees draft first piece of Trump agenda
The $150 billion in defense programs includes $25 billion for Trump’s “Golden Dome” for missile defense, $34 billion in ship building and more than $20 billion in munitions purchases. The House Armed Services Committee plans to begin voting on Tuesday on this aspect of the bill.
On border security, the House Homeland Security Committee proposes $46.5 billion for new border barriers, $5 billion for new Customs and Border Protection facilities and $4 billion for new Customs officials and border personnel.
The committee proposes several billion dollars more in new technology to tighten security measures at the border and also includes $1 billion for security and planning for the 2028 Olympics, as well as $625 million for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Rev. William Barber arrested in Capitol Rotunda after praying against Republican-led budget
Reached for comment, a Capitol police spokesperson said Barber and two others were charged with “crowding, obstructing and incommoding,” explaining demonstrations in congressional buildings are “not allowed in any form, to include but not limited to sitting, kneeling, group praying, singing, chanting, etc.”
Some quickly argued that Barber’s arrest appeared incongruous with President Donald Trump’s efforts to eliminate “anti-Christian bias” in federal agencies.
“Arresting Rev. Barber and others at the Capitol after announcing a task force to eradicate anti-Christian bias in government is an absolute travesty,” Anthea Butler, a professor of religion at the University of Pennsylvania, said in a text message. “Seems like this administration only wants Christians who are supporters of Trump to have access to pray in the Capitol and express their faith.”
Exclusion Order No. 20 affected 660 people living in the area bounded by Sutter and California streets and Presidio and Van Ness Avenues in San Francisco. The Japanese Americans living in those neighborhoods were ordered to report to 2031 Bush St. for registration, and then, on this day, for removal to internment camps for the duration of the Second World War, and faced loss of their homes and businesses. Presentation on what happened (Check it out! Some of Dorothea Lange’s work.)
April 29, 1962 Nobel Prize-winner (for chemistry in 1954) Linus Pauling picketed the White House with others protesting the resumption of nuclear weapons testing. He had been invited there by President John Kennedy, to be honored at a dinner along with other Nobelists.
April 29, 1968 Peace message, Vanessa Redgrave, 1968 photo: Frank Habicht Actress Vanessa Redgrave was among 826 British anti-nuclear protesters arrested during a London demonstration protesting the Vietnam War. Film from the BBC and their take on the demonstration that day
April 29, 1970 U.S. and South Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia and began a bombing campaign, known as Arclight, that widened the Vietnam War. They were after North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops and supplies that had been moved into Cambodia. By the time the bombing ceased in 1973, the U.S. had dropped more than half a million tons of ordnance on Cambodia, three and a half times that dropped on Japan in World War II. Background on the Cambodia “incursion”
April 29, 1992 Deadly rioting erupted in Los Angeles after an all-white jury in Simi Valley acquitted four Los Angeles police officers of almost all state charges in the beating of Rodney King, an African-American motorist who had been stopped for a traffic offense.Videotape of the abuse had been seen around the world. 17 other officers, who had been present and had not intervened, were never charged. The National Guard was called out to help restore civil order. By the time schools were able to re-open on May 4, more than 50 had been killed, over 4000 injured, 12,000 people arrested, and $1 billion in property damage. The Riot The trial (The original link to the trial news on History.com is no longer present. This link will take you to more about the rioting. Again, noting the loss of the info, this time, also again, that an all white jury acquitted police of battery of a Black man.)
April 29, 2016 Gary Tyler was released from Angola penitentiary in Louisiana. He was just 16 years old when charged with shooting a white student in 1974. Gary was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death by an all-white jury and became the youngest person on death row. His case sparked a movement to gain his release which persisted for 40 years. FreeGaryTyler.com Read more about the case and the movement to free him Listen/watch more about the case Democracy Now
Scottie's Playtime 