Category: Economics / Economy / Income / Financial
Tracking Anti-Trans Bills | Erin Reed | TMR
And update on our appointment with the heart doctor and then Ron’s melt down. I am so tired and even more tired of trying to stay reasonable.
OK so we had the appointment with his new heart doctor. I liked him he smiled a lot and was a genuinely happy man even though it was clear he had a bent spine and so was hunched over. When Ron told him I was his spouse the doctor totally seemed OK. I was wearing my white pride hat as usual. He remembered Ron from the ICUs and asked if I was medical as well. I replied no Ron was the doctor in our family which got a smile and chuckle from him as Ron tried to protest that which made the doctor smile more. He said he would talk to both of us on my level, even if it was basic for Ron because he wanted me included. When I had a question he would answer it and totally include me in all the discussion. Ron has one blockage they think is 80% and and at least two that are 70% and one that is just starting.
The plan is to do a heart catheterization. They will go in through the wrist and prep the groin in case. They feed a sleeve into the wrist then thread a wire all the way to the arteries around the heart. They then open the blockage, put a stent surrounded by a balloon where the blockage was. If a part of the blockage breaks they can introduce medication right then to stop it from doing any damage.
Wow Ron and I had a huge argument. I dislike it and he totally blames it on me. But when the surgical center called to schedule him for the heart catheterization, and instead of taking the first appointment he asked for one three weeks later. I interrupted and said no you want it sooner if possible.
He kept the appointment for nearly a month and a week out. When he got off the phone I asked him to explain that. Wellhe replied I have Diane flying in on 3-28, and we are scheduled to fly out april 2nd. I was angry and argued with him that this same thing killed his sister’s husband and if he asked her she would agree he needs the early appointment. Which was when he fucked around and after we had a huge fight where I told him that his sister could get her friends and her husband’s friends to do what she had wanted Ron to do. She wants help with the moving company and then driving from Texas to here. When he calmed down from our argument he called her and she agreed with me. So then he was so angry that we had another exchange. I was trying to stay calm but he was so upset he was almost out of control, throwing things. I asked him to think of us. If he suffered a heart attack on the road or moving around furniture at her house he could easily die. I couldn’t keep or repair this house. I would not be able to keep Tupac and no one else around us will let him live with them or pay the 75 dollars for his thyroid medication every 6 to 7 weeks. He is incontinent and he leaves poops dropping out of his butt because he was hit by a golf cart and it damaged his spine and nerves. So he would have to be set on the rainbow bridge. I told him I would end up having to rent a room at Randy’s as he has offered it. Ron was furious and said I was thinking only of myself and I replied he was thinking only of his sister.
But by then it was too late to get in touch with the scheduling department. The heart place is huge and they have their own surgical center there. They only do six procedures on an operating day. So he hopes they will call him today. I worry that he will not be able to get a quicker date so I don’t know what will happen. Hugs
One Of These Had Been Open For 47 Years!
ETTD, especially his economy. This is a story I’ve been wanting to post, but this and that come up, and it keeps getting buried in my Inbox. I actually got to it today, so I’m going ahead and posting it before it gets to be another month old.
U.S. Gay Bars Are Closing Their Doors at a Heartbreaking Pace
From coast to coast, they play a crucial role in the LGBTQ+ community, and they’re disappearing.
When it comes to the queer bar in the wild, so many threats exist, and it’s only gotten worse in the past few years. Higher upfront costs combined with lower foot traffic have caused a nationwide problem for the service and food industries, which is exacerbated in queer spaces, which deal with smaller demographics than the average bar or restaurant. And of course, there’s the fact that many people, especially younger people, just don’t go out or have a third space anymore.
It’s hard to say whether anything can economy-proof the gay bar. In the past year alone, the U.S. has seen closures of long-running queer spaces, such as the Bay Area’s Ginger’s, which was open for 47 years, or Rochester, New York’s, Avenue Pub, which just inched past five decades of serving queers. New businesses aren’t exactly faring better, with bars such as Michigan’s General Wood Shop and Brooklyn’s Club Lambda having opened and closed within the span of just a couple years.
In some cases, a bar’s public frankness about its financial difficulties can prompt a community response that allows it to stay open. In the last few years, many struggling spaces have turned to sites such as GoFundMe to make ends meet, keep creditors at bay and continue to sling food, drink and community to its underserved patrons. (Efforts on the fundraising platform saved East Nashville’s Lipstick Lounge and Washington, D.C.’s As You Are.) And, of course, there are organizations such as the Lesbian Bar Project looking to not only document queer history, but keep these spaces vibrant. But just as important to fight for new and existing queer spaces is commemorating those that were lost, for a myriad of reasons, in the past year.
Club Lambda (Brooklyn)
After opening Lambda Lounge in Harlem, married couple Charles Hughes and Richard Solomon expanded their brand, and the creation of safe spaces for queer people of color, to Brooklyn with the opening of Club Lambda in Williamsburg in 2022.
“We saw that a lot of urban communities didn’t have a location that they could go to every night of the week,” Hughes told amNY in 2022. “Brooklyn didn’t have this, so we are opening Club Lambda.”
The club announced that it would close at the end of February in an Instagram post.
(snip-embedded Insta post on the page; I can’t grab it. Click the title above to go to the story page)
“The past 5 years have been nothing more than exciting as we have hosted some of the most iconic and memorable events New York has seen!” Club Lambda wrote in the post. “Servicing celebrities, socialites and many from all walks of life within the community has imprinted many memories for us to hold on to for years to come!!”
Upon announcement of its closure, many in the LGBTQ+ community, especially Black LGBTQ+ people, mourned the loss of a space owned by Black people that catered to a Black queer crowd.
Denver Sweet (Denver, Colorado)
After six years of operating in Downtown Denver, Denver Sweet closed its doors in July 2025, citing increased labor costs and less foot traffic in the bar, per the Denver Post. “This was an incredibly difficult decision to make, but we believe the time has come,” owners Randy Minten and Ken Maglasang said in a statement to the Post. “Creating and running Denver Sweet has been a dream come true for us — and saying goodbye is heartbreaking.”
(snip-Insta post)
Sweet celebrated its farewell with a bottomless mimosa lumberjack brunch featuring pancakes and unlimited mimosas, as well as performances from two local drag kings, per its final Instagram post. Not only did it feature an upstairs patio, it was, per the Post, one of the only bars in Denver that catered to the bear community.
Ginger’s (San Francisco)
Ginger’s closed permanently after a brief resurrection in 2024. The bar, which had previously closed, reopened for Pride 2024, per Eater San Francisco, but following financial hardship had to close permanently in late 2025, despite being the last LGBTQ+ bar in the city’s Financial District, per the San Francisco Chronicle.
Prior to its final closing, Ginger’s had operated in the Bay Area for 47 years. As with other closures, the owners cited dwindling bar traffic for the closure.
(snip-Insta post)
“The traffic to Ginger’s has not been consistently strong,” Future Bars Group, which operated Ginger’s, owner Brian Sheehy told SFGATE. “Without enough customer support, our staff don’t earn enough tips, and Ginger’s operates at a loss. We have struggled to get people into Ginger’s, despite the valiant efforts of our entire team and the great shows being put on by the performers.” Per SFGATE, Ginger’s first opened in 1978 by owner Don Rogers, who named the bar after actress Ginger Rogers due to their shared surname.
Eagle Houston (Houston)
When Eagle Houston closed this past summer, it took the Texas city’s residents by surprise. It had just hosted a spat of LGBTQ+ pride events in June before news of its close started to spread in local Facebook groups for the bear community, per the Houston Chronicle. What followed was mostly silence: neither the bar’s owner nor its social media pages responded to several requests for comment from the Chronicle. However, at the time of its closing, a notice to vacate had been posted on its front door, which had also been plastered with a sign noting various violations and boarded up with a solid wooden plank. The bar first opened in 1984.
Barracuda (New York City)
Open since 1995, Barracuda was known in New York City as a drag hotspot. (And if you were going to see a diva at Madison Square Garden, you’d walk a few blocks down to an afterparty most likely happening within.) Over three decades, the bar has seen the likes of Sherry Vine, Jackie Beat, Hedda Lettuce and others grace its stage.
“Thirty years is a very long time,” owner Bob Pontarelli said in a statement to Eater upon its closing. Pontarelli cited the opening of a condo project next door, and the accompanying construction, as the reason for the bar’s closure. “The damage from the construction has significantly affected the interior and overall operation of the bar.” The ongoing drilling meant there was “no way to anticipate the additional damage and risks that could arise in the future. It is impossible to conduct business as usual,” Pontarelli wrote.
This Is It! (Milwaukee)
When This Is It! closed its doors in 2025, it wasn’t just the shuttering of a Milwaukee queer staple. It was the closing of the oldest gay bar in the state of Wisconsin: This Is It! Had started operating in 1968. The bar announced its closure on its Facebook page on March 9, citing the COVID crisis as bringing a financial hardship from which the bar couldn’t recover, as well as an 8-month closure of the bar’s street and sidewalk in 2024.
“It’s with much sadness, but with so much love, we bid all of you farewell,” the bar wrote. “Take care of each other, and please continue to support local and queer-owned businesses.” Drag superstar Trixie Mattel even became a co-owner of the bar in 2021; at the time, she said that she bought it because she didn’t want to see it suffer the same fate as so many other queer havens post-COVID.
Under the announcement of the closing, many patrons were confused as to why the bar closed so suddenly, without a chance to either fundraise to keep the bar open or send it off with a farewell event.
Macri Park (Brooklyn)
New Yorkers were shocked to find out about the surprise closing of Brooklyn-based Macri Park in January without much notice. In an Instagram post in January, the bar had announced that it had already closed, giving bargoers nary a chance to celebrate or mourn the space.
(snip-Insta post)
Macri Park did not begin as a gay bar, first starting at a dive bar before ownership passed to the same person who owned nearby Metropolitan, per Greenpointers, in 2015. From then on, Macri became a gay bar with a new aesthetic. When the bar shared news of its closing on social, many local drag icons flew to its comment section to mourn.
“The doors may close,” wrote drag queen Bible Girl, “but i’m still in the walls.”
The Ruby Fruit (Los Angeles)
The Ruby Fruit, a lesbian wine bar located in Los Angeles’s Silver Lake neighborhood, announced in January 2025 that it would close its doors; though the bar had been struggling financially for some time, business paused and then dropped precipitously during and after the LA wildfires, per Eater. “When we’re talking about being vulnerable, the line is so thin between being able to carry on and not,” owner Mara Herbkersman told the outlet. “It became really clear after two days of being open that if we were to go on one more day, we would run the risk of not being able to pay our employees, a nonnegotiable for us.”
News of the bar’s closure sent shockwaves throughout the Los Angeles sapphic community as well as the queer internet. It also spawned considerable drama. After crowd-sourcing funds to stay open, the bar finally closed, per the Washington Blade, leaving some to wonder where the community aid it had asked for had gone. After its abrupt closing, former employees spoke candidly with the Blade about lingering and long-running financial affairs that predated the fires and alleged mistreatment at the bar. There was also some alleged clash over whether the bar was a “lesbian bar” versus a “sapphically-inclined” bar that was ultimately for everyone, per one employee who spoke to Eater.
Also, several trans and POC patrons reported feeling unwelcome in the space. “I don’t think they purposefully didn’t include them,” Sienna Deadrich, a former line cook at The Ruby Fruit told Eater. “But from the perspective of someone who is POC and trans, it was very clear that they didn’t include them.”
Avenue Pub (Rochester, NY)
Citing concerns both economic and safety-related, Avenue Pub in Rochester, New York, shut its doors after five decades in business. “You know, just the economic times right now. Monroe Avenue and the violence on the weekends,” owner Peter Mohr told WHEC. “It’s just, it’s making a very unsafe place for my consumers.”
(snip-Insta post)
Mohr elaborated in an Instagram post issued on its final day open. “If I had more resources to keep it going, I absolutely would,” Mohr wrote. “But the reality is that I’ve invested my life savings into these businesses — and I may never see that return.”
General Wood Shop (Grand Rapids, Michigan)
General Wood Shop got its name from the furniture store that used to occupy its space in the 1940s. When it opened in 2023, the bar was hoping to bring an LGBTQ+ space to Grand Rapids, Michigan. By the time it closed, it had succeeded.
(snip-Insta post)
“When we opened in July 2023, our dream was to create a place where everyone could feel welcome, safe, and celebrated,” the bar wrote on its social media post announcing its closure. “Together, we built more than a bar; we built a community we will always be proud of.” The bar did not give a reason for its closure on Instagram, nor did it offer one to local news affiliate WoodTV.
City Side Lounge and Kurt’s Place (Tampa)
In an extremely rare occurrence, two separate bars in the same space closed their doors within the same year. After City Side Lounge closed in March, Kurt’s Place opened up in the former venue in August, then finally announced its permanent closure in November, per Watermark Out News.
When City Side announced that it would close in February, local talent bemoaned the loss of the space, which was especially known as a haven for Tampa’s Latinx community. One DJ, DJ Manne, even posted that the bar’s Latin Night would continue in another venue.
Prior to its closure, the Facebook page associated with Kurt’s Place posted a notice from the building’s landlord stating that Kurt’s owed more than $30,000 in rent and past due fees.
Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for Them’s weekly newsletter here.
Peace & Justice History On Elton John’s Birthday
I made a big production on Elton’s birthday last year, and it sort of fell flat. So just know that March 25th is Elton’s birthday, and he’s still standing. Click the links and enjoy. And now some Peace & Justice History.
| March 25, 1807 Great Britain abolished international trade in slaves. Emancipation of slaves in the country, however, did not occur until 1834, and persisted as unpaid apprenticeship for the technically emancipated for years after that. The story of abolition in England |
| March 25, 1872 Toronto printers went on strike for a 9-hour workday and a 54-hour workweek—the first major strike in Canada. When the editor of the Globe newspaper had thirteen of them arrested, 10,000 turned out to support them. Later that year unions were made legal in Canada. |
| March 25, 1894 In the midst of a depression that had begun the previous year, a millionaire businessman from Massillon, Ohio, Jacob Coxey, organized a march of an “industrial army” from Ohio to Washington, D.C. Congress had done little in response to the economic crisis and Coxey advocated a range of solutions, many considered radical at the time, such as building roads and other public works (known as infrastructure today).  Coxey’s Army passing through Mayland on their way to Washington. Coxey is seated behind the horses looking at the camera. “Coxey’s Army” gathered on the Capitol lawn but they were driven off and Coxey was arrested for trespassing when he tried to deliver his address to the crowd in violation of their first amendment rights “peacably to assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances.” |
| March 25, 1911 The Triangle Shirt Waist Company, occupying the top floors of a ten-story building on New York’s lower east side, was consumed by fire.  147 people, mostly immigrant women and young girls working in sweatshop conditions, lost their lives. Approximately 50 died as they leapt from windows to the street; the others were burned or trampled to death, desperately trying to escape via stairway exits illegally locked to prevent “ the interruption of work.”Company owners were charged with seven counts of manslaughter—but were found not guilty.The incident was a turning point in labor law, especially concerning health and safety. For three days prior, the company, along with other warehouse owners, had grouped together to fight the Fire Commissioner’s order that fire sprinklers be installed.   Protests in the wake of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, button from the struggle Comprehensive collection of materials on the tragedy from Cornell University’s labor school |
| March 25, 1915 The Sisterhood of International Peace was founded in Melbourne, Australia, by Eleanor May Moore and Dr. Charles Strong. |
| March 25, 1965 Their numbers having swelled to 25,000, the Selma-to-Montgomery marchers arrived at the Alabama state capitol.Organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the march was to bring attention to the denial of voting rights to black Americans in the state and elsewhere in the south. Twice the people had been turned back, denied the right to leave Selma peacefully.  Martin Luther King Jr. and wife Coretta lead march into Montgomery, Alabama. Dr. King spoke to the crowd: “Yes, we are on the move and no wave of racism can stop us. (Yes, sir) We are on the move now. The burning of our churches will not deter us. (Yes, sir) The bombing of our homes will not dissuade us. (Yes, sir) We are on the move now. (Yes, sir) The beating and killing of our clergymen and young people will not divert us. We are on the move now.” The Federal Voting Rights Act was passed within two months. The Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail |
March 25, 1965 Viola Liuzzo Viola Gregg Liuzzo, a housewife and mother from Detroit, driving marchers back to Selma from Montgomery, was shot and killed by Ku Klux Klansmen from a passing car. She had driven down to Alabama to join the march after seeing on television the Bloody Sunday attacks at Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge earlier in the month. It was later learned that riding with the Klansmen was an FBI informant, Gary Rowe. More about Viola Liuzzo Viola Gregg Liuzzo |
| March 25, 1967 Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. led an anti-war march for the first time in Chicago, opposing the Vietnam War by saying: “Our arrogance can be our doom. It can bring the curtains down on our national drama . . . Ultimately, a great nation is a compassionate nation The bombs in Vietnam explode at home—they destroy the dream and possibility for a decent America . . . .”  Reverend King addresses rally at the end of the Chicago march photo: Jo Freeman |
| March 25, 1969 The newly wed John Lennon and Yoko Ono-Lennon began their seven-day “bed-in for peace” against the Vietnam War in the presidential suite of the the Amsterdam Hilton in The Netherlands. Their doors were open to the media from 10am to 10pm. They invited all to think about and talk about creating peace. “Yoko and I are quite willing to be the world’s clowns, if by so doing it will do some good”.  The Wedding and “Ballad of John and Yoko” |
| March 25, 1972 30,000 participated in the Children’s March for Survival in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the National Welfare Rights Organization. They were supporting the Family Assistance Program, then pending in Congress (but never passed), which guaranteed a minimum income level for all families. |
| March 25, 1990 A new community, Segundo Montes, was started by campesinos in El Salvador who had lived for nine years as exiles in Honduras following the El Mozote Massacre, when 1000 civilians were killed by the U.S.-trained Salvadoran military. The town was named after a priest who had helped them in the Colomoncagua refugee camp on the border, and who was murdered along with four other Jesuit priests by the Salvadoran military. |
Some clips from The Majority Report. A personal note. And grateful thanks.
Hi Everyone. Sorry for no posts except from my phone and later from my tablet which I have to carry a backup power supply and cord with me now to doctors appointments as my old pad has a battery life of less than 10 minutes. A new Ipad is not a priority for our money right now even the cheapest one. Ron needs heart surgery, Ron needs cataract surgery, I need both new glasses and cataract surgery, and the van still has an oil leak. Plus Kamyk has basicly given up and slipped into depression. He had an apartment open up that he needed first/ last / and security for which came to $900 a month. It was government-subsidized housing. But because he is in long term care now the nursing home took all his SSI, leaving him with no money. Plus he no longer gets physcial therapy so he is slowly losing the ability to walk again. His sister started a go fund me but he forbade her to tell me about it. He felt we had all done too much for him and did not want me or you people to think he was trying to milk us or be greedy.
In a way I am glad he did not tell me until it was too late because I worry that as he can’t walk well, doesn’t drive, and did not know how long it will take to get his SSI back, that he wouldn’t be able to care for himself and so would be homeless in two months. The nursing home he is in is really nice compared to the last one which was abusing him emotionally, physically, and even sexually because the nurses decided he needed Jesus in his life and he rejected that being forced on him. So they were going to abuse him until he relented and came to their Jesus. This one gives him his medications on time, changes his ostomy bag or helps him do it, and they have been nice / kind to him. I understand his frustrations having to share a room with another person and basicly having no privacy but… the US government / wealthy don’t care about people in a land where profit is king.
I got up at 4:20 to feed the cat who when he thinks he needs food howls to get one of us up. I decided to stay up and watch the recorded news that I did not get to watch yesterday. I was not well at all yesterday, highly stressed which has been the situation for a while. My doctors were clear and Ron reminded me that my body breaks down under stress, and I am to be under as little stress as possible. That is not possible and has not been for a while. When I woke yesterday it was already much later than normal for me. Ron said he could tell I was having a bad night, I was highly agitated. I had gotten up at 2 am with a huge contracture, a “cramp” in the large side muscle in the upper part of the leg. I managed to get out of bed but couldn’t straighten out my leg. I spent 30 minutes moving around the bed holding on to the dresser and the end of the bed, leaning over to put weight on the leg, then removing it. Eventally I got it to touch the floor and hold some weight so I limped to my office and got a cane, then went to the bathroom which was a critical need by then. Ron never woke up and was upset I did not wake him. Not much he could do that I did not know to do myself.
When I got up with Ron at 7 I still couldn’t move or use the leg which was being electrified from the knee down, I couldn’t bend the leg due to the muscle still hurting from the cramp. I was swinging the leg forward and walking “peg legged” with a cane. Ron realized something was wrong and had me take my blood pressure and pulse. My blood pressure was extremely high. My pulse was also far too high. So high he asked me to take another dose of my blood pressure and heart rate medications. Ron had me sitting and checking it every ten minutes. It was not coming down and the first news show I started watching made it worse. So as I as them recorded I went back to bed until noon.
The reason for so much stress is Ron. He had his new medication Saturday that opens the arteries so he was better Sunday, but all day friday and Saturday I had to watch him and deal with him. He was exstrememly forgetful, unable to work his computer, he would sit in his recliner and fall asleep even during a conversation. He has bad sleep apnea and so he has to have his CPAP machine anytime he goes to sleep. But even in the bed he was forgetting to put it on until reminded. I offered to move it out to his chair but he would promise not to fall asleep as he just wanted to watch a few things on TV, 2 minutes later he was asleep. I would make him go to bed and I stay there until he had his CPAP on. I don’t dare let him drive like this so I am doing all the driving and shopping now. I am doing the dishes so he doesn’t exsert himself and the last time he washed the dishes he put everything away in the worng drawers not even realizing he was doing it. So yesterday afternoon while he slept I did the dishes. He cooked a porkloin last night so I have a bunch of dishes to do when I get home. I did pick everything up and rinsed everything off / out so it should be easier than it could have been.
I have a doctor’s appointment this morning and I have to go with Ron as you can see to his new heart surgeon on Wednesday morning, which I have to look up and see where he is. I am tired people. I went to bed at 5 yesterday but kept getting up to check on Ron as he was in his recliner and I wanted to make sure he was not sleeping. Care of the cat has totally fallen to me now. I asked him if he could clean the cat litter box before he came to bed. He assured me he would so I went to bed. And he did not do it as he forgot. I did it when I woke up. Randy is sick after just having surgery, his parents are both sick / ill. Ron is teetering with the same thing that killed his brother-in-law. And I am worried and scared.
When I get the dishes done today I will try to get to the wonderful comments and reply to somethings Ali posted which I appreciate. Ali has really stepped up and is posting more to give everyone something on the blog to read and engage in. I can’t say how much I am grateful for that. Got to go. Hugs
Joyce Vance Takes Us Into
The Week Ahead
March 22, 2026
On Monday, March 23, 2026, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Watson v. Republican National Committee. It’s one of, if not the most important, cases in front of the Court this term.
Conservatives have long maintained that federal laws that refer to an election “day” trump state laws that permit mail-in ballots to count, even if they are received later, so long as they are postmarked by election day. They rely on provisions like 2 U.S.C. § 7 that provide that “The Tuesday next after the 1st Monday in November, in every even numbered year, is established as the day for the election, in each of the States and Territories of the United States.” Mississippi is one of the states that allows ballots cast and postmarked by election day but received by election officials shortly thereafter to count.
Mississippi is, oddly enough, defending its law, which allows a five-day grace period for ballots to arrive, against the attack from the Republican Party. The district court ruled in the state’s favor, holding that the election “day” established by Congress was intended to prevent elections from spanning several days, which would be cumbersome to administer and could result in undue influence from early results. The Judge held that allowing time for the Post Office to deliver ballots postmarked by Election Day does not implicate those concerns.
The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed. They held that Congress established an election “day,” and all ballots must be cast and received then. They relied on the Constitution’s Elections Clause, Article I, Section 4, Clause 1. It reads: “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.” The appellate court reasoned that a ballot is “cast” when the state “takes custody of it.” Five judges dissented from the en banc decision.
In defending its position, the state argues that federal law only requires that voters cast their ballots by Election Day; it does not require that election officials receive them that same day. The National Council for State Legislatures, a nonpartisan organization, reports that “Mississippi is one of 16 states, plus Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Washington, D.C., that currently accept and count mailed ballots from any voter received after Election Day but postmarked on or before (sometimes only before) Election Day.” In addition, 29 states, including Mississippi, accept ballots from military and overseas voters sent before or on Election Day but received after, under certain circumstances.” Members of the military who are stationed away from their homes are among those whose ballots take advantage of the safe harbor.
Then on Tuesday, the Court takes up Noem v. Al Otro Lado, where the issue is whether the government can systematically turn back asylum seekers before they arrive at the border and make their asylum requests. Immigrants can request asylum when they arrive at or are physically present in the U.S. That request triggers asylum proceedings. In 2017, the Trump administration began using CBP officers to turn away immigrants who did not have valid travel documents before they reached the border and could apply for asylum.
When the case made its way to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the court rejected the government’s efforts to circumvent asylum proceedings. The three-judge panel held that people who were turned away from entering the country before they could present themselves to apply for asylum had “arrived in” the country once officials, on either side of that border, made contact with them. The full court declined the government’s request to reconsider that decision en banc; there was a 12-judge dissent from that denial of en banc, arguing for 126 pages that U.S. law could not be applied outside of the United States and that “aliens in Mexico” were not in the U.S.
The Solicitor General has asked the Supreme Court to adopt the dissent’s view. He also relies on a case called Sale v. Haitian Centers Council, where the Court ruled 27 years ago that Haitian refugees trying to reach the U.S. were not protected by immigration law when they were intercepted at sea before reaching the U.S. The Court held that the President had the power to deploy the Coast Guard to repatriate “undocumented aliens” intercepted on the high seas.
The case is in an unusual posture because DHS has discontinued “metering,” as the practice of intercepting asylum seekers before they reach the U.S. border with Mexico is called, during the Biden administration. But the Solicitor General is arguing that the government “seeks to retain the option of reviving the practice” if it is needed in the future, a rare move by the Trump administration to ask for permission first. The rule the government is advocating for could lead to desperate scrambles to cross the border in dangerous conditions by people who would otherwise be denied their lawful right to seek asylum. On Tuesday, we’ll learn how many votes there are on the Court to permit that.
Other developments to watch for this week include:
- A hearing on Anthropic’s request for a preliminary injunction, in its lawsuit against the Department of Defense’s sudden rejection of the AI company when it drew a red line prohibiting the use of its models for fully autonomous weapons or domestic mass surveillance. We discussed the lawsuit when it was filed.
- Following a delay from last week, former Venezuelan president Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, are expected in court on Thursday in the Southern District of New York. As we discussed a week ago, prosecutors say Maduro is not the legitimate leader of Venezuela and hasn’t been considered by the U.S. to be so for several years, and therefore may not use Venezuelan government monies to fund their defense. Maduro and Flores’ lawyers argue that the laws and traditions of the country permit it.
- Friday, federal district Judge J.P. Boulee will hold a hearing in Atlanta in the election records seizure case. We discussed that here last week, when he set the date.
- Also on Friday, legal papers are due for Epstein survivors’ proposed settlement with Bank of America. Reuters reports that “Lawyers for both sides are scheduled to submit legal papers about the settlement by March 27, and the judge scheduled a court hearing for April 2 to consider approving the deal.”
It’s going to be a busy week.
We’re in this together,
Joyce
A Little MidAfternoon Sumpin’-
Clown Show
Ronald McDonald, Jr.
The madman whose first name is Donald
Wants to dress up like Ronald McDonald
But he’s too fat to fit
An obese monstrous twit
For this we can blame Mitch McConnell.
McConnell, he should have impeached
And the fat fetid douche would be beached
But Mitch, he’s so bad
A coward, a cad
And the rest of us now have been leeched!
A Princeton Boycott:
Op-Ed: Princeton Kicked a Trans Runner Off the Track. Now Athletes Are Organizing A Boycott
The alleged targeting of transgender runners at non-professional events marks an alarming escalation.
Editors Note: The following article is an Op-Ed submitted by Max Freedman. Max Freedman is a journalist covering LGBTQ+ topics, primarily but not entirely politics and music, from Philadelphia, PA.
When transgender runner Sadie Schreiner was allegedly removed from the heat sheet at Princeton University’s May 3, 2025 Larry Ellis Invitational track meet simply for being transgender, she sued the university and accused it of discrimination—and she’s not the only transgender runner taking action. Winter Parts, a well-known transgender running advocate, is organizing a boycott of Princeton’s two spring 2026 track meets, the Sam Howell Invitational on April 4 and the Larry Ellis Invitational on May 1.
“I want to see [the Larry Ellis Invitational organizers] face visible consequences for excluding someone from their meet,” Parts said. “My hope is that a lot of [athletes boycott]. I think it would send a strong financial and visual message to the Princeton officials if they’re going through the effort of trying to put on this meet, and nobody wants to show up because everyone’s upset with how they treated Sadie.” Notably, Parts doesn’t personally know Schreiner—who ran as “unattached” at the 2025 Larry Ellis Invitational, meaning unaffiliated with a running club or university track and field team but eligible to participate based on prior official race times—but was moved to take action nonetheless.
Although excluding transgender runners is, unacceptably and despicably, par for the course these days at professional running events—current NCAA and USA Track & Field policies ban transgender women from competing with other women—the two Princeton track meets aren’t professional events, making their alleged transgender exclusion an alarming escalation. Just as potentially concerning is that, whereas both track meets have previously been open to unattached runners and runners from clubs, Parts said that a coach from a prominent running club told them that, for the 2026 meets, only runners on university track and field teams are eligible to participate. It is unclear if or how this newly restricted eligibility is related to Schreiner’s pending litigation against Princeton athletic director John Mack and Princeton director of track operations Kimberly Keenan-Kirkpatrick. Mack, Keenan-Kirkpatrick, and a representative for the third defendant in Schreiner’s lawsuit, Leone Timing & Results Services, did not respond to multiple requests for comment, and Schreiner was unable to comment due to her litigation.
Parts has emailed the track and field coaching staff at just under three dozen prominent colleges and universities, including Rutgers University, Temple University, and Columbia University, to demand that they and their runners boycott the 2026 meets. They have also contacted Mack and Keenan-Kirkpatrick to inform them of the boycotts, and some of their friends have joined their boycotting efforts and contacted their alma maters to encourage non-participation.
Avery Prizzi, a non-binary runner who has encouraged eligible runners not to attend the events, said that it feels like an escalation of transphobic rhetoric that a mere track meet, rather than a professional race, has excluded transgender runners. “[The events are] an experience [where] there’s no qualification, there’s no prizes, no first-place trophy,” Prizzi said. “People go to run fast and get a time for themselves. It’s all post-collegiate stuff. There’s no incentive besides running fast. To know that [the event organizers are] just gonna be garbage toward what, effectively, is just a place for people to go and better themselves or race a clock seems completely pointless or outside the mission I figured they were touting.”
Non-binary runner Will Vedder said that “the whole issue that’s been raised on a national level around trans inclusion or exclusion in sports is this, pun intended, trumped-up issue.” Vedder is a 2025-2026 board member of Philadelphia Runner Track Club (PRTC), and although PRTC members are ineligible to participate and the organization does not endorse boycotts, Vedder has told people about the boycotts to nevertheless support transgender runners, saying that excluding transgender people from sports is “based on misinformation. As we know, trans women don’t have any advantage over cis women when it comes to competitiveness in sports. Studies have shown that again and again. The fact that people are acting against what science says and excluding people who just want to run and compete, it’s infuriating.”
A 2023 Frontiers in Sports and Active Living study acknowledges a lack of evidence that transgender athletes are superior in performance and concludes, “Individuals should not have to make a choice between being their authentic selves or being athletes.” Only one transgender person, Quinn—a non-binary Canadian soccer player who uses a mononym in place of a traditional first and last name—has won a gold medal at the Olympics. Additionally, some transgender women runners, including Schreiner herself, have noticed that their performance permanently decreases after starting hormone replacement therapy (HRT). As made clear by the lack of scientific evidence about transgender runners’ supposed athletic advantages, transgender participation in not just running but all sports harms absolutely nobody. It’s the exclusion of transgender athletes that causes harm, and the consequences of this maltreatment reach far beyond the field.
“In the context of the things going on with trans people,” Parts said, “small actions like kicking a trans person out of a track meet build up to the general public thinking lowly of trans people, thinking it’s okay for laws to be passed affecting our lives, demonizing us, trying to eventually result in us being jailed or killed. Trying to push back against that will, hopefully, help increase acceptance of trans people in the public eye.” And with that, the chances of anti-transgender laws being passed — or even proposed — could decrease. A boycott might feel small, but it could help reverse the tides in a big way, and if you know runners on college and university track and field teams, you too can demand that they not participate in the 2026 Sam Howell and Larry Ellis Invitationals.
The women leading the farmworker movement won’t let it be defined by Cesar Chavez
The sexual abuse allegations against Chavez have rocked them. But their focus is still on protecting other women.
This story was originally reported by Chabeli Carrazana, Shefali Luthra and Marissa Martinez of The 19th. Meet Chabeli, Shefali and Marissa and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.
Monica Ramirez has spent much of her life spotlighting the pervasiveness of sexual violence against women farmworkers. She, like many in that movement, considered civil rights leader Cesar Chavez an icon.
Since allegations came to light this week that Chavez sexually assaulted women and girls as young as 12 — including fellow movement leader Dolores Huerta — Ramirez and the larger farmworker community have been left reeling. Now, they’re trying to reconcile how this man who so many revered — whose name is on streets, schools and even a holiday — could perpetrate the violence that has plagued women farmworkers for decades.
The community has been “shaken to its foundation,” said Ramirez, the founder of Justice for Migrant Women, a civil rights organization focusing on farmworker and migrant women. She and other leaders are now trying to push forward the farmworker movement and continue the work that many women — not just Chavez — spearheaded.
“The farmworker movement is a leaderful movement, and women have always been part of that leadership,” Ramirez said. But their work has often been made invisible, sometimes by the very men who stood beside them in building worker power for Latinx people in the United States.
“In order to have a movement, in order to have a boycott, in order to organize any kind of action, it’s often women who are helping to organize the meetings, helping to bring their compañeras,” Ramirez said.
Chavez was one of the most revered figures in the Latinx civil rights movement. The labor leader cofounded what became the United Farm Workers union alongside Huerta, and was most known for a series of strikes and protests that grew unionization efforts across California. After Chavez’s death in 1993, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. In 2014, former President Barack Obama designated his birthday, March 31, as a federal holiday to celebrate his legacy, which many states had already marked.
Now, many of those celebrations are being canceled or renamed after a bombshell, yearslong investigation published by The New York Times Wednesday found evidence of a pervasive pattern of sexual abuse perpetrated by Chavez. Two women said Chavez sexually abused them for years as girls, when the organizer was in his 40s and had already become a powerful global figure. Ana Murguia said Chavez first assaulted her when she was 13; Debra Rojas was 12.
In the years following the abuse, both suffered from depression, panic attacks and substance abuse.
“I feel like he’s been a shadow over my life,” Rojas told the Times. “I want him to stop following me around. It’s time.”
Huerta, the renowned activist who coined the rallying cry, “Sí, se puede,” spoke at length about emotional and physical abuse from her longtime organizing partner — a disclosure she had never made publicly. She told the Times that he raped her in a secluded grape field in 1966, and had pressured her to have sex with him another time during a work trip in 1960. Both encounters resulted in children. Huerta concealed the pregnancies and arranged for the baby girls to be raised by others.
She was shaken upon hearing the allegations from other women, and told the Times she struggles to reconcile the man she knew and the one who assaulted her.
In a statement released Wednesday, Huerta said she carried her secret for 60 years because “building the movement and securing farmworker rights was my life’s work. The formation of a union was the only vehicle to accomplish and secure those rights and I wasn’t going to let Cesar or anyone else get in the way.”
She said she spoke up because she learned there were others coming forward.
“The farmworker movement has always been bigger and far more important than any one individual. Cesar’s actions do not diminish the permanent improvements achieved for farmworkers with the help of thousands of people,” she said. “We must continue to engage and support our community, which needs advocacy and activism now more than ever.”
Magaly Licolli knew exactly what Huerta was talking about in her statements about Chavez.
Licolli is the co-founder and executive director of Venceremos, an organization advocating for poultry workers in Arkansas, and she’s heard stories about sexual harassment and assault on women for years.
Before she started Venceremos, she was fired from another poultry worker organization after speaking up about multiple accusations of sexual harassment and assault against a well-known organizer.
“Women came forward and accused the organizer of sexually assaulting them or sexually harassing them. When I brought that to the board, they didn’t believe it,” Licolli said. “I had to stand with the women … I cannot do this work pretending I’m doing justice when I’m hiding injustice.”
Licolli felt that echoed this week.
“Women of color, we are not trusted on what we go through. We have to prove with pictures, with testimony, our own stories for our own stories to be validated,” she said. “I’m happy that now it’s something that people are talking about, and I’m happy that people are now reflecting about what is the role of women in the movement and when we have to be silenced toward that kind of injustice to protect the work that we do.”
A growing share of farmworkers are women, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture: about 26.4 percent in 2022, the most recent year for which data is available. Most are Latina.
A 2012 report by Human Rights Watch, an advocacy organization, found that women farmworkers are often at risk of sexual harassment or assault, with virtually every worker interviewed for the report saying they either had experienced harassment or assault or knew someone who had. Farmworkers work in mixed-gender settings, and they have limited worker protections But women typically lack avenues to report their experiences, the report’s authors wrote, in large part because of immigration status. As of 2022, most farmworkers were immigrants without U.S. citizenship.
“Sexual violence and harassment in the agricultural workplace are fostered by a severe imbalance of power between employers and supervisors and their low-wage, immigrant workers,” the report said.
A 2024 review published in the Journal of Agromedicine suggested that as many as 95 percent of women farmworkers in the United States have experienced workplace sexual harassment.
None of the women in the Times story spoke publicly until recently because of the shame and fear associated with reporting abuse against prominent organizers.
But over the past decade, after the growth of the #MeToo movement and the release of millions of Epstein files that have implicated numerous people in powerful positions, survivors have been more willing to speak up about their experiences.
Ramirez, who also founded the public awareness campaign known as the Bandana Project to raise awareness of sexual violence against farmworker women, said she now expects more women to come forward with their own stories. At an event Wednesday night shortly after the news broke, she said one woman came up to her to tell her how sexual assault was a problem in the fields where she worked as a teenager.
“Now that we understand clearly that this issue of sexual violence is an endemic problem in our society … the question we have to answer is: Knowing that, how serious are we going to get in our commitment to ending the problem?”
California lawmakers already plan to change the name of Cesar Chavez Day on March 31 to “Farmworkers Day,” and efforts are underway to remove his name from landmarks. But the real work to come will be about investing resources and support to improve the culture that has protected perpetrators in organizing spaces over victims.
Rep. Delia Ramirez, an Illinois Democrat who worked in organizing before entering politics, said it was “devastating” that the claims took so long to come out. She said when she became an executive director of a nonprofit at 21, she, too, had faced situations that in hindsight were not appropriate, and left the organization with a responsibility to create safer environments for other young women.
“Oftentimes women, especially women of color, we end up having to hold so many things for the sake of the movement, family, community,” Delia Ramirez told the 19th. “I don’t believe that there is one hero for our movements. Movements are led by a collective, and you can’t create some pedestal for one person, because humans will always fail you.”
Moving forward, Monica Ramirez said people will be watching how leaders in the farmworker movement respond to the allegations. Do they take a defensive posture or question the veracity of the survivors’ accounts? The revelations about Chavez come at a time when sexual misconduct by powerful men has been in the spotlight, all while the country grapples with a wave of immigration enforcement actions that are targeting Latinx people.
Licolli, the poultry organizer, said she has “never romanticized the immigrant community and the immigrant movement.” Sexual abuse happens in every movement and it doesn’t negate the work that’s been done to secure worker power, she said.
And for the farmworker women who are leading this work, it feels more urgent than ever that they continue leading.
Rosalinda Guillen, a farmworker and organizer in Washington state, leads Community to Community Development, an explicitly feminist and women-led organization — a perspective that she said lends itself to advocating for workers who are also parents, and that she said offers space for women farmworkers to assert their needs.
Guillen never met Chavez but was inspired to devote herself to organizing on behalf of farmworkers after his death. The news has been a “revision of everything that many of us know about the farmworker movement,” she said.
Her organization is removing images of Chavez from its office, Guillen said. “We revisited our values and principles in how we work together, reiterating there is no room for that,” she said, referring to sexual misconduct.
On Wednesday, while staff were still processing the reports, five farmworkers walked in. They had just lost their jobs.
Her staff switched gears, turning to figure out what those workers needed and how they could support them.
“They walked in reminding us this is the focus,” Guillen said. “This is why we’re here: To protect farmworkers.”
Scottie's Playtime 