In the days leading up to the announcement of Kamala Harris’ VP pick, progressives argued that the sitting veep needed to choose a running mate who would excite the Democrats’ more liberal voters, rather than chasing centrists. Others insisted that picking a vice presidential candidate is merely a game of electoral math, and that Harris should choose an inoffensive candidate who can also help the ticket win a key swing state — the same logic behind the selection of former Virginia governor Tim Kaine as Hillary Clinton’s potential VP in 2016.
On Tuesday, all sides got their wish granted.
By now, you are likely already aware that Harris has chosen Minnesota governor Tim Walz, who was once viewed as a longshot in the veepstakes behind buzzier picks like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear. But many of those selections, while better known to the general public, would have brought with them specific liabilities.
Choosing Kelly, a former astronaut, would have permitted Republicans to call a special election to fill his Senate seat, thus imperiling the Democrats’ control of the Senate. While Shapiro could have helped Democrats secure Pennsylvania, his office has been rocked by several scandals in the past week, including the unearthing of an op-ed he penned in college in which he said Palestinians were “too battle-minded” for self-governance. As Attorney General in 2018, when his office was tasked with reviewing the controversial decision to rule the 2011 death of Philadelphia resident Ellen Greenberg a suicide rather than a homicide, Shapiro’s office declined to change the ruling. Beshear, hailing from a red state that Republicans won by 25 points in 2020, brings little electoral map benefit.
Walz, although previously unknown to most Americans, brings several advantages to the ticket. Polls have indicated throughout the year that Minnesota is a potential surprise swing state pickup for the GOP in November, despite having gone blue since 1972: Although President Joe Biden won the state by seven points in 2020, challenger Donald Trump had been within spitting distance in Minnesota polling throughout the year. An April survey showed Biden up just two points, and four in June, likely just outside the poll’s margin of error. While Biden is no longer the nominee, a major part of Harris’ task early in the race has been rebuilding her predecessor’s pallid polling, especially in the Midwest and the Sun Belt, which are considered key for victory in November.
But the selection of Walz is not merely a defensive move: He also brings with him a solid record on LGBTQ+ equality. Walz was one of the earliest governors to sign a bill making his state a sanctuary for gender-affirming care. Authored by state Rep. Leigh Finke (D), the legislation orders courts not to comply with out-of-state prosecutions against individuals who flee to Minnesota to access treatments like puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy, or surgery. Even before Finke’s bill passed the legislature, Walz issued an executive order in May 2023 to strengthen protections for trans health care in his state, saying in a statement that all Minnesotans should “grow up feeling safe, valued, protected, celebrated, and free to exist as their authentic versions of themselves.”
With neighboring states like Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota all restricting trans youth health care, Minnesota’s refuge law has made the state a hub for trans health care. Dozens of individuals and families have reportedly moved to Minnesota permanently to escape anti-LGBTQ+ policies in their previous states, and that number will likely increase as more state-level restrictions are enacted. To date, 26 states limit doctors from providing some or all gender-affirming treatments to minors, most recently New Hampshire.
But Walz is actually a longtime ally to the LGBTQ+ community on several key issues, dating back to even before his tenure as governor. As a U.S. House representative, he joined a coalition of veterans in 2012 to speak out in opposition to a proposed constitutional amendment that would define marriage equality exclusively as a union of one man and one woman. “At this point it’s become very clear that limiting the rights of a subsect of the population, whether they are veterans or not, is simply unconstitutional,” he said at the time. “I think we can do better.” His years as a member of the armed forces also motivated his opposition to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the now-defunct policy barring gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members from being open about their identities. “Always the issue for me was if you met the standards and did your job, your personal business was your personal business,” he remarked after DADT’s 2013 repeal.
Walz was ahead of the curve on several key LGBTQ+ rights issues, including the federal codification of the freedom to marry. He announced his support for the Respect for Marriage Act, which effectively declares marriage equality the law of the land, back in 2011 — more than a decade before Biden would have the opportunity to sign the contemporary iteration of that legislation. He was a key vote in favor of a law recognizing sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes under federal hate crime legalization and backed early versions of the Equality Act, an inclusive LGBTQ+ nondiscrimination bill that has yet to meet approval in the U.S. Senate despite passing the House twice.
Outside of his political career, Walz was the advisor of Mankato West High School’s first ever Gay-Straight Alliance. As a football coach and geography teacher at the greater Minneapolis district, having his support was actually instrumental in getting the club greenlit. “It really needed to be the football coach, who was the soldier and was straight and was married,” Walz told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in 2018.
As governor of Minnesota, Walz has signed legislation making the state a refuge for trans youth.
Many of the other veep contenders have also proven themselves allies to the LGBTQ+community, including Beshear, who last year vetoed one of the nation’s worst laws targeting trans youth. (Republicans enacted the omnibus legislation, however, over his veto.) In opposing the regulations, Beshear said that “all children are children of God.” “I heard from children that believe this bill is picking on them, and asking — in many ways — why?” he remarked at the time. “I told them that I was going to show them that there is at least one person in Frankfort that cares for all of our children in the commonwealth, no matter what.”
With 90 days left to go until the presidential election, Harris’ veep pick was an opportunity to indicate what her priorities would be in the White House and contrast herself with the extreme policies being pushed by her Republican opponents. If elected, Trump has vowed to gut federal protections for LGBTQ+ students and ban the federal government from supporting the “concept of sex and gender transition at any age.” His running mate, J.D. Vance, has authored legislation to jail doctors who treat trans youth. With Walz on the ticket, the difference is especially stark.
Hi. I am torn up right now with memories. I am not sure what to do. I wrote one of them to Jill telling her some of my abuse because she has told me it is ok to do that. Still it bothered me. My mind won’t release. I am having one of those times that the vortex of dark despair is hovering me right outside me. I am trying to distract my self. Damn it! I am 61 now, my last rapes happened in my early 20s. I am safe. I am happy. I have a wonderful husband who is even now making ravioli baked in the red sauce I made. Yet the memories come over me in waves. I want to forget, I want to not feel it like I did when it happened. But … but … Oh hell, I am going to do comments to help my mind settle. But today my emotions are raw and I have memories that hurt. At what point in my life do they go away? Really I am 61. I am safe, it is water under the bridge. Yet …. OK hug. Scottie
Despite passing in the Senate earlier this week, the Kid’s Online Safety Act (KOSA) is reportedly dead in the U.S. House after progressives, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), worried that it would possible censor LGBTQ+ content. Some Republicans also opposed the bill, stating that it would violate free speech protections for social media platforms and their users.
KOSA would have mandated that social media companies take measures to prevent recommending any content that promotes mental health disorders (like eating disorders, drug use, self-harm, sexual abuse, and bullying) unless minors specifically search for such content. Opponents worried that Republican attorneys general who see LGBTQ+ identities as harmful forms of mental illness would use KOSA’s provisions to censor queer web content and prosecute platforms that provide access to it.
“KOSA was a poorly written bill that would have made kids less safe,” said one of the bill’s most vocal opponents, Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future, a nonprofit that protects human rights in the digital age. “It’s good that this unconstitutional censorship bill is dead for now, but I am not breathing a sigh of relief.”
“KOSA was always too controversial to succeed, and divided our coalition,” Greer added. “If we want to take on Big Tech and win, we have to quickly regroup and make a plan for next Congress. We need strong privacy, antitrust, and algorithmic justice legislation that address the harms of Big Tech without endangering free expression and human rights.”
Many other groups opposed the bill, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, the LGBT Technology Partnership, as well as LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations in six states.
While KOSA passed in the Senate earlier this week in a 93-1 vote, three senators voted against the bills: Ron Wyden (D-OR), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Rand Paul (R-KY) — all three made statements explaining why.
Wyden specifically said he voted against the bills because he worried a future administration could use the legislation to “pressure companies to censor gay, trans, and reproductive health information,” The Hill reported.
Lee said, “This legislation empowers the [Federal Trade Commission (FTC)] to censor any content it deems to cause ‘harm,’ ‘anxiety,’ or ‘depression,’ in a way that could (and most likely would) be used to censor the expression of political, religious, and other viewpoints disfavored by the FTC.”
Paul wrote in a recent Louisville Courier Journal opinion article, “KOSA would impose an unprecedented duty of care on internet platforms to design their sites to mitigate and prevent harms…. This requirement will not only stifle free speech, but it will deprive Americans of the benefits of our technological advancements.”
KOSA was introduced by anti-LGBTQ+ Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who said that one of the bill’s top priorities is to protect children from “the transgender in this culture.” Blackburn’s office told LGBTQ Nation that her comment had been “taken out of context” and wasn’t related to KOSA. Nevertheless, the anti-LGBTQ+ conservative think tank Heritage Foundation has also said it wishes to use the law to “guard” kids against the “harms of… transgender content.”
Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, said, “KOSA compounds nationwide attacks on young peoples’ right to learn and access information, on and offline. As state legislatures and school boards across the country impose book bans and classroom censorship laws, the last thing students and parents need is another act of government censorship deciding which educational resources are appropriate for their families.”
You are being sold with every email, every picture, every blog post, every Instagram post, every thing you put on X or Facebook, you are the cash cow these companies want to milk. I have been taking steps for years to reduce how much these businesses can strip mine my stuff data about me. Here is a program I like, and here is a free tutorial on how to remove a lot of the metadata out of your images and files. I recently realized how much information about myself I include in messages, so I looked into this program by Sessions. Hugs. Scottie
January 07, 2022 / Alex Linton
Metadata is a big deal — especially for people who are trying to protect their online privacy. For any files on your computer, there is probably a bunch of metadata about the file — such as location data, when the file was created, when it was last changed, or even what device created the file. If you ever give that file to someone else (or upload it to the internet), the file’s metadata will be transferred as well — which means they can see all that info.
There are plenty of reasons you might want to share a file without wanting to share the metadata as well — such as preserving your privacy or anonymity. To do that, you’ll want to strip the file’s metadata. Stripping metadata from files removes all that extra information and leaves you with just the information in the file itself. Some messengers—like Session—strip metadata from your image files when you attach them to a message. This is because they can contain sensitive EXIF data, which contains device and location information. Other file types—like MP3s—might have less sensitive metadata (such as a song name or artist) which won’t be stripped.
However, if you want to be sure, you can always manually strip the metadata from your files. Here’s how!
How to remove metadata from files using Windows
Scrubbing your files on Windows is relatively easy, you can do so directly in the File Explorer without relying on any third party software.
Locate the file you want to strip in Explorer
Right click on the file and select Properties
Select the Details tab to see the associated metadata
Click Remove Properties and Personal Information
Select the metadata you want to remove
Select to either Create a copy (if you want to preserve the original)or Remove properties from this file
Click OK
Ta-da! Metadata removed, now you can safely share the file without extra personal information being attached.
How to remove metadata from files using macOS
Unfortunately things aren’t as simple on macOS. There’s no catch-all option for all file types, and you can only remove specific kinds of data. For images, you can remove location data using macOS’s built-in Preview application.
Open the image in Preview
Hit CMD + i to display the image’s metadata
Navigate to the Info tab (circle with an ‘i’ inside it)
Click on GPS to see the location metadata
Click Remove Location Info to remove the GPS information stored in the image
For anything more thorough than this (or any file type other than images) you’ll need to use third-party software, such as Acrobat Pro for PDFs.
How to remove metadata from files using Linux
Thankfully, things are much easier on Linux! Note: Instructions may be different depending on your distro.
If you’re using a Debian-based system (such as Ubuntu), you can install MAT (which comes pre-packaged) using this command: $ sudo apt-get install mat
You can then launch the MAT GUI using this: $ mat-gui
Add the file you want to strip to MAT by clicking the Add icon in the top navigation bar
Once the file is added, click Check to scan for metadata
If metadata is detected, MAT will mark the file as ‘Dirty’, you can double click the file to see what metadata has been detected
Click Clean to strip the metadata from the file
Simple as that!
Keep your files safe
Stripping metadata from your files before you share them is a good idea — especially if you’re going to upload them somewhere public on the internet. If you want to be certain that the files you send are completely metadata free (even to the people you send them to) — make sure to strip them first! To ensure your files stay private, it’s also important to consider how and where you store your files. Make sure you’re encrypting your hard drives, and be careful about what Cloud storage providers you use and what upload.
These days, it’s a normal everyday thing to share files on messaging apps and social media — but it’s important to be mindful about what exactly you’re sharing. Once those files hit the internet — they could end up anywhere!
One of the best examples of anti-trans being wrong, she was a born woman, and showing the bigotry towards trans people he debunks in this very short video. I love it. J. K. Rowling chimed in as she always does to hate on trans, yet again she was wrong this was an assigned at birth woman. These haters against trans people do not care about facts or science, they want their hate, bigotry, and their feelings to be what is normal in society. I won’t ever watch or read anything by Rowling ever again. She doesn’t care, she is very wealthy and very rich. But she also doesn’t care the harm she does innocent people with her hate. Hugs. Scottie
Correcting the misinformation around an Olympic boxing match between Angela Carini and Imane Khelif.
There is something that has been preying on my mind and it is effecting my sleep and my day, every day. It is not critical yet. I started the post then sent it to draft. The issue is my memories of two of the methods used to punish me when I was 3 until the family moved about when I turned 7 years old. It is painful to think of and I know it will be even more painful for those who read it who did not live my childhood. I started a post and then shoved it into drafts until I could decide to publish it.
Here is the thing. I have come to care about my viewers, and I really have learned to care about people, all people, every person in some way since my miserable childhood. I have learned to see most people as good, and learned the hard way to recognize those that are not. I try to find the best in people, try to find a way to understand them.
I know if I write out what is inside me, it will hurt people, the people who come here. I have even hesitated to put it on the Male Survivor forums I belong to as there are a bunch of new people struggling and I don’t want to trigger them. I reached out to a good online friend there who had been pimped out all his childhood, professionally from 9 until 24 when he ran away. Like me right from his earliest memories after being adopted he was abused and sexualized. I asked him if he thinks I should write it and post it. I will look for his response tomorrow.
But while I may put it there, the question I have is should I put it here. There are new people here also, and there are new authors, Ali and Randy. Their followers may be shocked by what my childhood was and leave the viewership. I am confused, I am hurting, and I am struggling with this. I always used my blogs before to tell of my abuse before I even told Ron about them. But now I am torn. I want to get this out, yet I want to protect people.
Ok wonderful people who come here and read our posts. What do you think, please be honest. Should I write what I am feeling, what is bothering me here, or try to keep it bottled up inside me and maybe only share it there on MS? Thanks. I do care about each of you. Best wishes and / or Hugs as you prefer. Scottie
