Israeli forces are continuing to push deeper into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, despite growing international pressure over the war and the deadly weekend attack on a tent city. The White House says while the president’s red line was not crossed, it is monitoring developments hour by hour. NBC’s Raf Sanchez reports for TODAY.

And now some of my favorite The Majority Report clips of the week

The Cass Review Is A TOTAL SH*TSHOW

This is a great take down of how bad the Cass report is that the anti-trans haters are right now loving to cite. Vaush even includes the fact that Cass herself disavows the report and says puberty blockers should be given out at younger ages than they are. The report is a shitshow. She almost comes out and admits she was paid to find ways to prevent, mock, and give reasons why kids who are claiming not to be the gender they were assigned at birth should be given gender affirming care per the trans best care guidelines, but instead should be sent to delaying / conversion therapy places. It is another open and shut case of the anti-trans right wing activists doing all they can to deny reality and roll back society to the 1950s. They don’t agree or want trans people, so no young person can know their gender. But they agree that every cis child knows their gender … so why not the kids that are different? Because they don’t want that, nor do they want to admit it. Face it, this is no different from the people that said homosexuals were a choice just to rebel against their parents, that same sex marriage was not a real marriage, that every gay or lesbian person just needed sex with the other sex to make them straight. It is just a denial of a reality they don’t like. They don’t want to admit medical science and society has moved past their comfort spot. Oh well, sorry but I don’t have to live my life to make you comfortable or happy. Hugs. Scottie

Let’s talk about GOP language and a veto in VA….

Trump Derangement Syndrome! (BEST OF!) | Christopher Titus | Armageddon Update

An oldie but a goodie. Hugs. Scottie

Louisiana moves to make abortion pills ‘controlled dangerous substances

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/05/13/abortion-pills-louisiana-controlled-substance/

You can not give into to these fundamentalist people. They see any attempt to compromise with them as a chance to take even more rights away. They are driven to return the country to a distant past where women had little to no rights. A time when women were not even allowed a credit card in their own name, they had to have their husband or father’s permission or co-sign major purchases. Doctors would talk to the husband about the wife’s medical problems instead of the woman. They crave a return to when it was legal for a man to rape his wife, forcer her to please him sexually against her will. The really see women as only house keepers, child birthing, child raising, and sex objects to please men. Women are not people to them, women do not equal men in their world. Sad. But also these states no have the idea that because the president is a democrat their state doesn’t have to follow the laws and rules the administation makes. Nope they have decided that red states are superior and above the federal government. Never mind the constitution claims otherwise, these are republicans who claim to love the constitution yet violate it at will. Hugs. Scottie

Someone possessing the pills without a valid prescription or outside of professional practice could be prosecuted and sentenced to prison.

By Emily Wax-Thibodeaux

May 13, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

Mifepristone is one of the two drugs prescribed for medication abortions. Louisiana lawmakers are moving to put it, along with misoprostol, in the same category of drugs as opioids and depressants. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty images

Louisiana could become the first state in the country to categorize mifepristone and misoprostol — the drugs used to induce an abortion — as controlled dangerous substances, threatening incarceration and fines if an individual possesses the pills without a valid prescription or outside of professional practice.

Legislators in Baton Rouge added the provision as a last-minute amendment to a Senate bill that would criminalize an abortion if someone gives a pregnant woman the pills without her consent, a scenario of “coerced criminal abortion” that nearly occurred with one senator’s sister.

A pregnant woman obtaining the two drugs “for her own consumption” would not be at risk of prosecution. But, with the exception of a health-care practitioner, a person helping her get the pills would be.

Louisiana already bans both medication and surgical abortions except to save a patient’s life or because a pregnancy is “medically futile.” Lawmakers just rejected adding exceptions for teenagers under 17 who become pregnant through rape or incest.

The amendment would list mifepristone and misoprostol under the state’s Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Law, which regulates depressants, opioids and other drugs that can be highly addictive. It elicited a strong reaction from more than 240 Louisiana doctors, who called it “not scientifically based.”

“Adding a safe, medically indicated drug for miscarriage management … creates the false perception that these are dangerous drugs that require additional regulation,” they wrote in a letter sent last week to the bill’s sponsor, Republican Sen. Thomas Pressly. They noted misoprostol’s other critical uses, including to prevent gastrointestinal ulcers and to aid in labor and delivery.

“Given its historically poor maternal health outcomes, Louisiana should prioritize safe and evidence-based care for pregnant women,” they urged.

The amendment, written with guidance from Louisiana Right to Life, was added after the Senate unanimously passed S.B. 276 in mid-April. The measure is awaiting a final vote in the House before the session ends June 3, with little opposition expected.

“As Senator Pressly has stated, the medical community regularly uses controlled substances in a myriad of medical situations, including emergencies,” said Sarah Zagorski, communications director for the antiabortion organization. “The use of these drugs for legitimate health-care needs will still be available, just like all other controlled substances are still available for legitimate uses.”

The pending language appears to open yet another front in the country’s bitter battle over if and how women can obtain an abortion. Attempts to curtail medication abortions — which now constitute more than half of all abortions in the United States — are part of legislative agendas not just in deep-red Louisiana but in many Republican-controlled statehouses. And in March, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a case brought against the Food and Drug Administration by a group of antiabortion doctors seeking to limit access to mifepristone.

Pressly did not respond to repeated requests for comment, but in a statement released by his office, he explained that he was seeking to “control the rampant illegal distribution of abortion-inducing drugs” in Louisiana. He said abortion medication “is frequently abused and is a risk to the health of citizens.” By including the drugs on the controlled-substances list, he added, “we will assist law enforcement in protecting vulnerable women and unborn babies.”

His connection to the issue is in part personal. During public testimony in April before the Senate Judiciary Committee, his sister recounted how her then-husband surreptitiously gave her an abortion drug in 2022 when he brought her breakfast for St. Patrick’s Day. They were separated, but Catherine Pressly Herringsaid she had learned she was pregnant with their third child and he had agreed to marriage counseling.

After she noticed him serving her “cloudy water,” she said she started having “intense cramping.” Doctors were able to stop the process so that the pregnancy could continue. He was sentenced to 180 days in jail. Under Pressly’s bill, a perpetrator would face a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $75,000 fine.

“Through our knowledge of other stories, and from the testimony of local centers in Louisiana caring for women in these situations, the abuse of abortion pills is not isolated to Herring’s situation,” Zagorski said Saturday. “It is very simple for a man to pose as a woman to order these pills online without a prescription, even for a minor, and then to pressure a woman to take the pills.”

While doctors say Herring’s experience is deeply troubling, they remain concerned that her brother’s proposed solution would make mifepristone and misoprostol even harder for Louisianans to get for reasons having nothing to do with abortion. Misoprostol is prescribed for treatment after a miscarriage, for example, and to help stop postpartum hemorrhage, one of the leading causes of maternal mortality in the state.

“To OB/GYNs, this is very worrisome,” said Neelima Sukhavasi, an OB/GYN in Baton Rouge and a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health. “There’s no one that would endorse what happened to his sister. But this is a safe medication that has many important lifesaving uses. It’s not addictive.”

Misoprostol is also taken to soften the cervix during labor, biopsies for cancer and placement of IUDs. Sukhavasi said she is concerned that Pressly wrote the amendment without consulting physicians or enforcement agencies.

Nimra Chowdhry, senior state legislative counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, echoed those concerns but in harsher terms. She accused abortion opponents in Louisiana of misrepresenting the safety and efficacy of the two drugs — a manipulation “in pursuit of blocking people from care.”

This ultimately “turns back the clock on modern medicine,” she said.

Abby Ledoux, vice president of communications at Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, is worried about the “far-reaching” consequences because of the drugs’ other uses.

There are “real questions,” she said, “about what it would mean in practice to open the controlled-substances list like this, including what aspects of state law legislators think manufacturers would follow, even locally.”

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By Emily Wax-Thibodeaux

Emily Wax-Thibodeaux is a National staff writer who covers national news, with a focus on gender issues and social movements for the America desk. She is an award-winning former foreign correspondent who covered Africa and India for nearly a decade. Twitter

Some changes long past time due

As the title suggests I am making some changes to the way I deal with blogs I enjoy, comments, and email. I have always signed on, quickly looked at the bell notifications, then got enough read / answered that if more poured in I wouldn’t miss too much. Then I would do other things like email. Often during this time or if I was not well I lost everything in the bell notification as it only allowed so many. I was constantly missing comments, which in truth is more important to me than other things online. Not sure why it has taken me to come to this change, except that if I am comfortable with something, I am the perfect frog in the pot of the hot water. Now the water is hot enough I am forced to jump out of it.

I love the blogs I follow, and I hate being rushed in reading them. But comments on my blog have to come first. I love them, I adore them, I am willing to put in the extra effort for them. I do not want to miss any more of them. So here is the change.

What I did this afternoon works for me. I had to do some other things and when I signed back on I was pissed that all my caught up stuff was no longer caught up, and I lost stuff. What did I lose? I don’t know, that is what bothers me. So I went to the top of the bell and worked down finding every comment and replying. Then when I got all them answered I went back to the top of the bell and got the new comments.

Going forward when I get up and sign on, start all my systems, I will start at the bottom of the bell notifications looking for comments. I will move up the list replying to comments. Then I will check my email and answer that, something I have not really done since … well at least a decade ago. Then I will go back to the bell notification and start reading all the grand blogs from the people I enjoy hearing their thoughts and leaving my own on. During this I will go back to the top to check for comments. If during this your blog drops off the bell notification list I am really sorry, I do love reading your blogs, but the list has gotten too long, my health is not well, and I just get too upset not keeping up. To the point I keep hundreds of open tabs, I think the count right now I keep open is near 500. I doubt I will ever get to them, answer them, or post them … some are news articles I wanted to post, but I save them with a hope. I will be going through them catching the comment left two or three months ago, then delete the windows. I just looked I am keeping tabs of blogs or comments from 3 months ago hoping to somehow get to them. It is past time to stop pushing and punishing myself. Ron is at his wits end on this. I set my alarm and got up at 3 am to start today. Yes I have to take breaks, and go lay down, I can only sit for five or ten minutes at a time, so I am up and down and laying down up at the desk, standing walking, sitting, going back to bed … I am exhausted and my health is failing, and Ron says one of the reasons is I feel driven by the stuff online. I just am recovering from a stomach virus causing me to vomit all day yet when I could sit I was at the computer. When my body drives me to bed I do it from my phone and tablet. I read news and post it. I put a keyboard on my old tablet to answer comments from there. It is not the best but it works.

So I am sorry if I miss your blogs. I am sorry if you post something really grand I think needs to be shared. I have to back off. I have to set priorities. I have gotten myself into a rut, pushing far past what my medications can hold until I am in tears trying to deal with stuff. I fall asleep at my desk after telling Ron I am going to bed. Then we argue about it.

Anyway everyone gets the point, I am just flogging the dead horse and making my self out to be a martyr at this point. That is not the case. Sorry if I give that impression, but reading over this I feel I have. None of what I do is anyone else’s fault. I do it because I enjoy it and love it. These computers are my ability to move outside the walls of my home, to connect with a larger world. I am addicted to it. But like any addiction it is hurting me, so I need to curb it. For example right now I just got up and walked around the kitchen because my right hip, the first hip I had replaced back in 2004 is burning, hurting, killing me so badly I am having to finish this sitting sideways. What people don’t know is that how I do a lot of my online posts and comments. I do a few minutes, get up and move, do more, go lay down, take more medications, get back to the computer. Ron says my exercise regiment is how much I have to keep moving to help the pain in my hips and back.

So let us all hope this gives me the chance to answer any comments without missing them. Please keep them coming, I love hearing other peoples thoughts and ideas. Plus as Ron says there is a bit of argumentive streak in me from the time I spent soaked in the bile and vitreol of the adotptive family. Hugs. Loves to all. Best wishes to those who understandably don’t want to be hugged I was there once myself. Scottie

EXPLAINED: Why TERF-In-Chief JK Rowling Is Celebrating Trans-Care Review Findings | Erin Reed | TMR

This interview points out some of the flaws in the Cass Report, and how Cass herself was a known anti-trans person who had worked with DeathSantis and his administration. Talk about asking the fox about the hen house security. The people who wanted a badly done report on trans care / trans kids choose a known anti-trans person to do it. Erin Reed is a trans person who is very well versed in trans issues. The video is not long, about 14.19 minutes long but very informative if you know someone who is an anti-trans hater who often says well look at the UK and those places they are stopping care, or someone who likes to refer to the Cass report. Hugs. Scottie

Journalist Erin Reed, author of the Erin In The Morning newsletter on SubStack, discusses the recent gender identity review by the National Health Services (NHS) in the United Kingdom.

Erin Reed and Emma then jump right into the background for the UK’s recent Cass Report on transgender care, stepping back to briefly cover the rise of transphobic activism in the UK at the end of the 2010s, and the major policy impacts it had despite fringe following, including the NHS-sponsored ‘independent’ and ‘unbiased’ review by Hillary Cass. After giving some background on the evidently not-so-unbiased Cass herself, Reed parses through the clear failure of the report itself to live up to these supposed standards, actively excluding both trans voices and experts on trans care from the report, relying on outdated and fraudulent statistics (compiled by notorious homophobes nonetheless), and repeatedly requiring absurdly high standards for trans care – standards not met by the vast majority of both adult and pediatric care – while rarely substantiating any of the claims about the supposed dangers.