For me this was the hardest to watch. I have had to go without food while others ate. I was hospitalized and suffered clinical death due to malnutrition. At the table if I was allowed the meals could turn quickly for me from possible danger to happening harm. I spent a lot of time diving under the table to doge something thrown at me or in dodging the blows aimed at me. Being kicked under the table was common and if I yelped or complained I was the one punished. I learned to eat without looking at my food always looking around out the sides of my eyes because to look scared brought more violence. I was told I ruined their meals. I often could only choke a few bites out of fear and anxiety. I basically ate one meal a day which was at school and mostly was two hot dogs and a serving of french fries, and when school was out I would take a sandwich and stay away from the house. The only place I could eat freely and in peace was my grandparent’s home I went to on the weekends. What these people are going through is a war crime and a crime against humanity that the government of Israel and the military people must answer for. Never again applies to more than Jewish people. Hugs
Understanding the critical role of the sovereign powers of the states as a redoubt beyond the reach of Trump’s increasingly autocratic power is really the entire game right now, at least for the next 18 months and, in various measures, almost certainly through the beginning of 2029. People can march, advocate, campaign, donate to candidates, all the stuff. But in many ways the most important thing right now is both communicating to and demanding of state officials that they act on this latent power.
There are key areas where Democrats in Congress may have moments of power, the ability to slow a few things down. But to a great degree, the battle is already lost within the federal government until the next election. It’s only in the states where opponents of Donald Trump hold executive power outside the reach of and the hierarchies of the federal government. That’s where the whole game is. It is strategic depth not in extent or remoteness of territory but in the structure of government and the state. And states have vast amounts of power, far more than we tend to realize because we’ve never been in a position where the mundane daily activities of state and local government have become so critical — its taxing powers, its policing powers, the ways in which the federal government actually struggles to effectively extend its powers to the local level at scale without the active participation of local government.
Something Jason Sattler wrote yesterday needs repeating this morning:
Everything we do makes it easier for our neighbors to stand up or sit down for this regime. We all know there’s a crisis coming that will force all who pay attention to make a choice that could define the rest of their lives.
Will people do it? In most cases, it depends on what they see us doing next.
SEE us doing. That’s the key.
How the less-engaged make up their minds about political matters, Anand Giridharadas observed (based on Anat’s work), is more akin to how they decide to buy pants: What’s everyone else wearing this year? What are normal people like me doing? Not in one-and-done big rallies but every day. Your resistance must be visible and persistent for that to work and give the less engaged permission to join the resistance movement. Calling your senator five days a week is fine, but which of your neighbors sees that?
Plus, if you want people to join your party, throw a better party. We’re out in the streets multiple times a week now. I bring dance music.
A friend pointed to this TikTok by someone going by @logicnliberty. She advocates a unified front by blue-state governors with trifectas. It’s not that they are not already unified, coordinating, and suing. They are. Govs. Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, Kathy Hochul are speaking out and holding press conferences. (State AGs too.) But not necessarily as a team. Are they leveraging their trifectas proactively to erect firewalls in their states against Trump’s gutting of the Constitution? They should.
(snip-TikTok video embedded on the page)
Would the press cover it if they did? We are already in the slow civil war Jeff Sharlet described. The blue and the gray meets the blue and the red. Run with it. The press loves controversy. Generate more, blue state governors.
There are key areas where Democrats in Congress may have moments of power, the ability to slow a few things down. But to a great degree, the battle is already lost within the federal government until the next election. It’s only in the states where opponents of Donald Trump hold executive power outside the reach of and the hierarchies of the federal government. That’s where the whole game is. It is strategic depth not in extent or remoteness of territory but in the structure of government and the state. And states have vast amounts of power, far more than we tend to realize because we’ve never been in a position where the mundane daily activities of state and local government have become so critical — its taxing powers, its policing powers, the ways in which the federal government actually struggles to effectively extend its powers to the local level at scale without the active participation of local government.
Understanding the critical role of the sovereign powers of the states as a redoubt beyond the reach of Trump’s increasingly autocratic power is really the entire game right now, at least for the next 18 months and, in various measures, almost certainly through the beginning of 2029. People can march, advocate, campaign, donate to candidates, all the stuff. But in many ways the most important thing right now is both communicating to and demanding of state officials that they act on this latent power.
And those actions must be not only public, but in-your-face public. Their actions and yours.
The human heart hangs on to hope until there’s no other choice. People will not fight back in the ways that will work, until they realize there is no other choice, until the only other choice is their own imprisonment or death, or that of someone they love. For many of us, that moment is already here. But for most of us, it’s not.
Exclusive: largest data analysis of its kind counters Trump’s aggressive efforts to deny trans minors’ existence
View image in fullscreen A protester is silhouetted against a trans pride flag during a pro-transgender rights protest outside of Seattle children’s hospital on 9 February. Photograph: Lindsey Wasson/AP
More than 2.8 million people now identify as transgender in the US, including an estimated 724,000 youth, according to a new data analysis that is the largest of its kind to date.
Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Williams Institute used federal surveys and data from state health agencies to identify the size and demographics of the trans population in each state.
The analysis, shared with the Guardian and released on Wednesday, documented thousands of trans youth living in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The findings counter Donald Trump’s aggressive efforts to deny the existence of trans minors, as his administration removes references to trans people across federal agencies and widely erodes protections and programs for LGBTQ+ communities.
The report builds on federal data collection efforts that the White House is now eliminating. The authors warn their study could be the last comprehensive portrait of the nation’s trans population for a decade or more as trans people are erased from vital US surveys, including health reports and crime data analyses.
The Williams Institute primarily relied on data from 2021 to 2023 from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) surveys and records disclosed by state health agencies. Some of the key findings include:
1% of the total US population ages 13 and older identifies as trans, including 0.8% of adults (more than 2.1 million people) and 3.3% of youth ages 13 to 17 (roughly 724,000 people).
Young adults ages 18 to 24 are significantly more likely to identify as trans (2.72%) than those 35 to 64 (0.42%) and those 65 and older (0.26%).
Of the 2.1 million trans adults, 32.7% (698,500) are trans women, 34.2% (730,500) are trans men and 33.1% (707,100) are trans non-binary people.
The trans populations are fairly consistent across regions, with 0.9% of adults in the west, midwest and north-east identifying as trans, compared with 0.7% of adults in the south.
Minnesota had the highest rate of adults who identify as trans (1.2%), and Hawaii had the highest rate of trans youth (3.6%), though the ranges were similar across states.
“Trans people live everywhere and are represented in every state,” said Dr Jody Herman, senior scholar of public policy at the Williams Institute and co-author of the report, noting the total US trans population was greater than the individual populations of more than a dozen states. “This is a substantial population that has unique concerns and barriers to getting their needs met, and lawmakers need to keep that in mind.”
The Williams Institute, a leading LGBTQ+ policy research center, has published national trans population counts since its 2011 report, which was the first of its kind as state-level data on gender identity became available. The estimates are considered the best available data and were cited by the US supreme court in its recent majority opinion upholding Tennessee’s ban on trans youth healthcare.
The quality and sources of the researchers’ data have improved from one report to the next, the researchers said, making it difficult to assess changes over time. But the researchers noted that the overall estimates of trans adults have remained relatively steady, while the latest data shows how younger people are now significantly more likely to identify as trans than older groups.
There are many factors contributing to youth identifying as trans at higher rates, including that younger people are more likely to answer these kinds of survey questions, said Dr Andrew Flores, Williams Institute distinguished visiting scholar and associate professor of government at American University.
“Younger people are growing up among other younger people who already hold more accepting attitudes toward LGBT and transgender people more broadly,” said Flores, a report co-author, citing increasingly visible signs of support, such as student walkouts in Florida in protest of anti-trans policies. “In this generation, they might be more willing and safe to identify that they are transgender, because they don’t see as much of a harm or threat as older generations.”
While some conservatives and anti-trans advocates have presented a reported rise in trans youth as a “social contagion”, suggesting youth are copying their peers, “the growth comes as people are now in an environment that allows them to fully express who they are,” Flores said.
Shifting language also affects generational differences, he said, noting how older groups were more likely to identify as lesbian or gay while younger people are more likely to identify as bisexual or pansexual. And while older trans people are more likely to identify as men or women, younger trans people more frequently identify as non-binary.
The report also found that the race and ethnicity of trans people was largely similar to broader US demographics, with Indigenous, Latino and multiracial adults slightly more likely to identify as trans than other groups.
The Trump administration, which has widely attacked data collection efforts across government, has moved to remove trans identity questions from two critical CDC behavioral health surveys and from Department of Justice surveys on crime victimization and sexual violence. The US Census Bureau has also taken steps to exclude gender identity from multiple surveys, according to the former director who resigned in February.
Those efforts followed Trump’s day-one executive order “restoring biological truth” to the government, which suggested that trans identity was “false” and directed the state department to deny trans people accurate passports.
The data loss will make it impossible for the Williams Institute to continue its analyses in their current form, and even if the next administration restored the surveys, the public would still be losing up to 10 years of data, which would be a devastating erosion of knowledge, the researchers said.
“We didn’t really have decent national data until around 10 years ago, so we just very recently got a grasp on how many people identify as trans in the US and what their characteristics are,” said Herman. “For these data sources to just suddenly disappear, it is a major setback. The population is not going to go away; we’re just not going to know more about them than what we have from our current sources.”
The data has frequently been cited by journalists, school boards, public health experts, civil rights lawyers, advocates fighting discriminatory legislation and lawmakers expanding trans rights. The researchers had hoped federal data could help illuminate how trans people were moving within the US as some have fled red states due to anti-trans laws, but that will be hard to track without national surveys, they said.
“In some policy circles, they say if you can’t be counted, you don’t count,” Flores added. “And for members of the LGBTQ+ community, to be able to see numbers that reflect their lived experiences is quite important.”
Imara Jones, founder of news organization TransLash Media, said there was no easy fix for the loss of national data backed by federal resources.
“It is meant to erase, and that erasure is meant to have real-world impacts, making it harder for people to be who they are,” Jones said.
Flores said the institute and others were discussing ways to fill the gaps and continue data collection without the federal government: “We’re not just going to close up shop. We’re going to try to find a way to keep telling these stories and be persistent.”
This is why the administration is blocking legal oversight and demanding illegally to have three days prior warning for inspections. They are keeping these kidnapped victims in horrific conditions to force them to agree to deportation. The facility in Florida a former worker admitted that and said it worked.
“Under such conditions, some of those arrested are pressured into accepting voluntary departure,” the lawsuit stated.
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Dakota Smith
5 min read
Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles) stands outside the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building downtown earlier this summer. On Monday, he was allowed to enter the ICE processing facility in the basement. (Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
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For two months, several Democratic members of Congress have been unable to enter a downtown L.A. processing center run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, prompting widespread complaints and a federal lawsuit.
On Monday, the Congress members got their first look at the basement facility known as B-18.
But Reps. Brad Sherman, Judy Chu and Jimmy Gomez said that they were left with more questions than answers — and accused the government of sanitizing the center.
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“They wanted to show us nothing,” said Gomez, whose district includes downtown L.A. “It was nothing, it was like no one was there. It was deliberate so members of Congress cannot conduct oversight.”
Scores of migrants, as well as some U.S. citizens, have been taken from Home Depot parking lots, car washes and other locations by masked and heavily armed agents and brought to B-18 since early June. Some detainees have complained of overcrowding and being held for multiple days.
The facility can hold up to 335 migrants, but there were just two people in one of the holding rooms Monday, the members said at a news conference in downtown L.A. after their visit.
The group’s previously scheduled visit was canceled by ICE. Monday’s visit took days of planning and advance notice, according to the politicians.
They described a sparse scene inside B-18, with nine holding rooms, each with two toilets.
Chu, whose district includes Monterey Park, described the floors as concrete and said that there were no beds. She said ICE detainees are supposed to be held at the facility for only 72 hours, but she has heard stories of people kept there for 12 days.
Some detainees have reported receiving one meal a day, she said. On Monday, she visited the food pantry at B-18, which Chu described as “scanty.”
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“I am deeply disturbed by what I saw and what I heard,” Chu said.
Chu also said she has been told that detainees have no soap or toothbrushes.
“It’s alarming that it’s taken so long for congressional members to gain access to this site,” said Sergio Perez, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, a nonprofit that seeks to protect the rights of immigrants.
Perez was able to visit Narciso Barranco, a Mexican national whose three sons are U.S. Marines, in June. Perez said he saw Barranco after he’d been held at the facility for three days. Perez said Barranco, who was punched and pepper-sprayed during his arrest, did not receive medical attention.
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The Department of Homeland Security shared video of his arrest on social media and said Barranco attacked an agent with his gardening tool.
Barranco told Perez that each of the rooms held 30 to 70 people at the time and that some had to sleep standing up, Perez said. Food was scarce and they didn’t have access to showers.
The ICE facility was designed as a processing center, not a detention facility, Perez said.
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin denied that individuals don’t receive medical care. She also disputed Chu’s suggestion that an individual was held at the facility for 12 days.
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Addressing the politicians’ other complaints about B-18, McLaughlin wrote, “Now, politicians are complaining about ICE processing facilities being TOO CLEAN.”
McLaughlin said that claims of poor conditions at ICE facilities are false and that the agency “has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens.”
“Ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority at ICE,” she said.
Sherman, who represents parts of the San Fernando Valley and Pacific Palisades, said that one of the two detainees at B-18 on Monday rested with his head on a table.
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Sherman said he “illegally” took a picture during his visit and that he shouted out to several people being brought into the facility for processing, asking them whether they were U.S. citizens or green card holders. No one replied, he said.
Sherman, Chu, Gomez and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), who joined the group after their visit, criticized the ongoing immigration enforcement, and in particular the use of masked, roving agents.
A federal judge last month temporarily barred the government from mass sweeps in Los Angeles and seven nearby counties without first establishing reasonable suspicion that the targets are in the U.S. illegally.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which sued the federal government over the sweeps, described B-18 as “dungeon-like” and accused the administration of failing to “provide basic necessities like food, water, adequate hygiene facilities, and medical care.” Detainees were allegedly subjected to overcrowding and did not have adequate sleeping accommodations.
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“Under such conditions, some of those arrested are pressured into accepting voluntary departure,” the lawsuit stated.
On Monday, Chu said that she asked ICE representatives during the tour why people were jumping out of vans with masks, and no identification.
She said the representatives replied, “That’s not us, and we go in if there’s probable cause, if there’s a warrant out there.”
Gomez, who has been repeatedly turned away from entering the B-18 facility since the crackdown started this year, is part of a group of Democratic House members suing the federal government over the lack of access.
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The lawsuit, filed last month in U.S. District Court in Washington, said the individuals attempted to visit a detention facility, either by showing up in person or by giving Homeland Security Department officials advance notice, and were unlawfully blocked from entering.
ICE recently published new guidelines for members of Congress and their staff, requesting at least 72 hours’ notice from lawmakers and requiring at least 24 hours’ notice from staff before an oversight visit.
Times staff writer Andrea Castillo contributed to this report.
It’s important to remember things, and to keep “issues” in context.Also, who have we asked for the Epstein files today? 😂
No, Rightwing Sh*tbirds Didn’t Pressure Costco Out Of Selling Abortion Pill by Rebecca Schoenkopf
Let’s not give a bunch of hate groups a win they didn’t earn. Read on Substack
With the neverending firehose of incredibly disappointing information, it’s easy to assume that everything is garbage and everything sucks all of the time. Yesterday, I yelled “Well, fuck Costco!” after reading a Reuters article titled “Costco to stop selling abortion pill mifepristone at its US pharmacy stores” — because that’s some bullshit, right?
Well, it was, just not in the way you might immediately assume. Costco never actually sold mifepristone, so they couldn’t “stop” selling something they never sold to begin with.
Stories later in the day did get it right (our link is to the archived very wrong version!). Costco had apparently been deliberating on whether or not to sell abortion medication at their pharmacies (it requires a certification to be able to carry it), and decided against.
Reuters and several other sources noted that the move came after “pressure” from anti-abortion groups, as well as Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate groups like Alliance Defending Freedom, which even went so far as to issue an utterly insipid victory statement.
“We applaud Costco for doing the right thing by its shareholders and resisting activist calls to sell abortion drugs. Retailers like Costco keep their doors open by selling a lifetime of purchases to families, both large and small. They have nothing to gain and much to lose by becoming abortion dispensaries. Retail pharmacies exist to serve the health and wellness of their customers, but abortion drugs like mifepristone undermine that mission by putting women’s health at risk,” said Michael Ross, the group’s legal counsel.
For the record, mifepristone has an extremely low rate — 1 percent — of complications. It is more safe than Viagraor even Tylenol. Abortion is not the only use for the drug, either. It is also used to help safely expel a miscarriage so that one does not become septic (and perhaps require penicillin … yet another drug that is less safe than mifepristone). Groups like the ADF think that if they just keep confidently repeating blatant lies about abortion medication like they are universally accepted as true, that everyone will just go along with them. Just like maybe they’ll believe that the ADF and other groups are so influential that they actually did successfully push Costco to refuse to sell mifepristone.
But there is no reason to believe, without evidence, that Costco’s decision actually had anything to do with “bending the knee” to them or any other insane religious organizations dedicated to making life hell for women, LGBTQ+ people, and anyone who doesn’t share their religious beliefs.
Why? Because the company has no history of doing that, at all, for any reason. In fact, the company has notably refused to “bend the knee” to Republican Attorneys General and whiny conservatives across the land who have been demanding they ditch their DEI policies.
“If these are the policies you see as offensive, I must tell you I am not prepared to change,” CEO Richard Vachris wrote to a “concerned” customer who emailed him, upset about the company’s DEI policies and demanding to know if the company was hiring people based on “skin color” or “gender identification.”
“Attacks on DEI aren’t just bad for business — they hurt our economy. A diverse workforce drives innovation, expands markets, and fuels growth,” Costco board member Jeff Raikes wrote on social media.
Why would a company willing to risk the ire of these groups in that way suddenly decide to capitulate to them in another?
While it’s certainly disappointing that they didn’t change their policy of not selling mife, and those of us with Costco memberships should let them know that, the company has not said that this decision had anything at all to do with wanting to put a smile on the faces of the bigots at the ADF.
Rather, they said they didn’t think there was a demand for it.
“Our position at this time not to sell mifepristone, which has not changed, is based on the lack of demand from our members and other patients, who we understand generally have the drug dispensed by their medical providers,” Costco said in a statement. It’s not what we want to hear, obviously, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they did this because of pressure from the Right.
It’s also worth noting that Costco is known to treat their workers well, paying them, on average $31 an hour with good benefits — quite a bit higher than many of their competitors.
They also have a strong history of not being shitty in this way.
It would be a mistake to roll over on one of the few companies out there that isn’t completely evil. In addition, we shouldn’t hand groups like ADF an unearned “win,” which they have made clear they want to use to pressure other companies — including CVS and Walgreens, which are certified to dispense mifepristone — to stop selling abortion medication, as well as to make the rest of us feel that they are winning the culture war.
It’s like when the One Million Moms (one mom) take credit for getting TV shows canceled or commercials pulled off the air when those decisions actually had nothing to do with them at all. Claiming victory, for these groups, is a way for them to rally their base and to make other companies think they have more influence than they actually do.
The majority of Americans believe that abortion should be legal, and they’ve demonstrated this by voting in favor of keeping it legal in their states at practically every turn (not in Florida, because Florida requires 60 percent of the population to approve a ballot measure, which is some bullshit).
If Costco thinks there isn’t enough demand for mifepristone (which, yes, is a weird thing to say because it’s not like a medication anyone gets on a regular basis), then we should convince them that there is, by encouraging them to change their mind and get the certification necessary to sell abortion medication. You can go directly to their website and click the “Feedback” tag on the right side of your screen, call them at 1-800-774-2678, or send them a letter at Costco Wholesale, P.O. Box 34331, Seattle, WA 98124.
Scottie's Playtime 