How Republicans won Michigan, how they lost it, and what it all tells us.
The “blue wall” once referred to a group of Northeast, Midwest, and West Coast states that, conventional wisdom said, “always vote for Democrats.” Unfortunately for Democrats, that was wrong, and in 2016 Donald Trump shockingly won three “blue wall” states — including, narrowly, the state of Michigan.
It maybe shouldn’t have been such a shock, though. All three of the “blue” states Trump won actually had a history of electing Republicans at the state level. Michigan in particular had been fully taken over since 2010 by Republicans, who then spent years gutting unions, restricting abortion, loosening environmental protections, and generally just turning a Republican policy wish list into law. So Trump winning Michigan was, in a way, just the culmination of a years-long drift to the right there.
But by 2022, something had changed dramatically. In a midterm election where Republicans were favored, Democrats won every branch of elected government in Michigan — governor, state House, and state Senate. The state Senate in particular had not been under Democratic control since 1984. And Democrats got busy using their new power immediately: repealing much of the right-wing legislation of the previous years, passing strong LGBTQ protections, quadrupling a tax credit for the poor, and allocating a billion dollars for the auto industry to transition to electric cars. Suddenly Michigan was cranking out more progressive legislation than almost any other state in the US.
So to recap: Michigan was once a blue state, except it wasn’t actually, and in fact over time it got pretty red, but then it became an actual blue state. (Again?) Or something like that. Obviously, the truth is that Michigan is a swing state. But the story of each of those swings is actually key to understanding how US politics work in the 2010s and 2020s. And it can tell us a lot about our next election, too.
Aside from the normal hate and bigotry towards the LGBTQIA that religious republicans normally show, this guy adds a new wrinkle. And it goes back to the point I made that some people can not accept change. While not really old at 59 he shows he can not adjust to modern times. He says, “From time immemorial, we have known that your sex was dictated by your biology,” Black said. “All I am doing is putting into Florida Statute, what we have always known, and only recently, a few people have become confused about.” He seems to reject any advancements since time immemorial. You do know that at one time humans thought thunder and lightning were caused by gods, we also thought the world was flat, we were sure that sickness and disease were caused by spirits and demons, religious leaders at one point were so certain that the earth was the center of everything with the sun orbiting the earth that they burned anyone to death who said otherwise … so much more we always knew, took as concrete never changing fact, and we were totally wrong about. Just as he is about gender, sex, trans issues, and anything his religious teaching say about the LGBTQIA people. He rejects modern science and medical best practices but instead demands that proven harmful conversion therapy be mandated by law. “”It would also require coverage of so-called conversion therapy by requiring health insurance policies to cover mental health services “to treat a person’s perception that his or her sex is inconsistent with the person’s sex at birth” by affirming their birth sex”. Hugs. Scottie
A Northeast Florida lawmaker wants to legally define the words “man” and “woman” based on biological sex at birth. Jacksonville Rep. Dean Black filed the proposed What Is A Woman Act this week, which would also impose new requirements related to transgender individuals on state agencies and insurance companies.
House Bill 1233 requires state agencies to revoke any identification cards, like driver’s licenses, that don’t match up with a person’s sex on their birth certificate.
“From time immemorial, we have known that your sex was dictated by your biology,” Black said. “All I am doing is putting into Florida Statute, what we have always known, and only recently, a few people have become confused about.”
Black’s bill would also require any health insurance policy in the state that covers transition-related “prescriptions or procedures’’ to also cover “treatment to detransition” from such procedures.
It would also require coverage of so-called conversion therapy by requiring health insurance policies to cover mental health services “to treat a person’s perception that his or her sex is inconsistent with the person’s sex at birth” by affirming their birth sex.
The bill would also require any school district or state agency “that collects vital statistics for the purpose of complying with anti-discrimination laws or for the purpose of gathering accurate public health, crime, economic, or other data” to identify the birth sex of people in the data set, potentially restricting data collection on trans people.
Dean Black last appeared here for a bill that would allow DeSantis to remove any elected official who votes to remove Confederate monuments.
In October 2023, Black called for banning elected officials from participating in Pride events after Jacksonville’s newly-elected mayor led her city’s parade.
"It is an ugly, mean-spirited bill that helps NO ONE,” @CarlosGSmith said, “it should be voted down and rejected by lawmakers for what it is." https://t.co/7XVsoLhttp
My favorite is all the dudes who scream about trans women using women’s bathrooms. Uh………dudes? We don’t see each others’ genitals in the bathroom anyway. Because we use stalls. With locks. I have no way of knowing if the woman in the stall next to me is trans. Why would I care?
Notice how their obsession is overwhelmingly with trans women. Trans men, not so much. This is evident in his proposed legislation being titled the “What is a Woman” act.
Once again, misogyny is the root of all hatred of sexual minorities.
They also seem to think that it’s a big party in there, when all we’re doing is peeing, pooping, and menstruating. Most of us don’t even talk to anyone in there.
Take out all urinals. Put in stalls. Make every bathroom unisex. That way, men will have to wait in line just like women do now. (I went to a football game where they had port-a-potties while they were building the bathrooms. Port-a-potties, of course, are unisex. But there was one that was for women only, and of course I waited in that line for it. The other ones were disgusting.
They don’t realize that they’re saying men can’t control themselves around women and are constantly suppressing the urge to rape someone. Hell, Mike Huckabee said something like this a few years ago.
I wouldn’t be surprised if someday that red states require a mandatory genital’s check to make certain that you are male or female per their standards on gender and ID. Sigh.
Not only is he an asshole, but he’s simply fucking wrong. Factually incorrect, whether he knows or accepts it. Humans can be born with XX, XY, XO, XXY, (Klinefelter’s Syndrome) or XYY chromosomes. Take your “there are only two genders” bullshit and fuck off for all eternity.
The floodgates have been opened, and because the right won’t restrain their fundamentalist wing, they are pushing their hardest to enact their most extreme religious dictates. They not only believe this is a winning issue when it has been shown it is not at voting time, but they feel now is the time to push their god on to the public by law. Think of what the fundamentalist Christians believe in and worship. Now ask yourself if they will stop at just getting rid of trans and gay people? They have already shown they will get rid of the rights of pregnant people and those that can become pregnant, to control their bodies, they have shown they will make women themselves a lower class of person in the US, returning women’s rights to where they were in the 1950s. Women will be totally subservient to their fathers or their husbands. Those who are ambivalent on the rights of the LGBTQIA need to understand those are only the first targets because they are the smallest and easiest to pick off. Then they come for the rest of societies progressive equality advancements. By the way I just read that in one state they filed a bill to outlaw transitioning and instead mandate care for trans or gay kids including adults be conversion therapy to return kids to the normal natural state of straight and cis. I will post that tomorrow. Hugs. Scottie
State Rep. Beth Lear also compared gender dysphoria to delusions of being an animal, proposing a child might want to “explore being a bird” by jumping off a five-story building.
AJ McDougall
Breaking News Reporter
Maddie McGarvey/The Washington Post via Getty Images
The Ohio Republican behind a bill that would bantransgenderstudents from using bathrooms aligned with their gender identity quoted scripture in justifying the legislation on Wednesday, deploying a verse suggesting that her opponents should be drowned in the sea.
State Rep. Beth Lear whipped out the reference to Luke 17:2 while answering questions on House Bill 183 at a morning committee hearing. Facing Lear, State Rep. Joseph Miller, the ranking member of the House Higher Education Committee, asked her how she could “jive” her bill with “the teachings that you proclaim.”
“In Luke 17, Jesus says that if you cause one of these little ones of mine to stumble, it would be better for you to have a millstone hung around your neck and be thrown into the deepest sea,” Lear replied. “So—there are also concerns that Jesus has for children. And in Genesis, he tells us that he created the male and female.”
OH State Rep. Beth Lear (R) uses scripture to justify a discriminatory bathroom bill:
“In Luke 17, Jesus says that if you cause one of these little ones of mine to stumble, it would be better for you to have a millstone hung around your neck and be thrown into the deepest sea.” pic.twitter.com/jkm6ozaBbq
Lear has previously invoked the Bible in explaining her reasons for sponsoring the proposal, which she introduced alongside State Rep. Adam Bird (R) and more than a dozen other Ohio Republicans last May. At an October hearing on the matter, according to The Buckeye Flame, Lear recited Genesis 1:27, saying, “In our country, since the Puritans and Pilgrims first arrived and until recently, we believed ‘God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.’”
Nor did Wednesday mark the first time the Ohio lawmaker has used violent imagery to justify the measure. At that same October hearing, Lear shared a disturbing anecdote about a young girl who had been gang-raped by an athletic team. An adult in the child’s life, Lear claimed without further elaboration, had then “encouraged” her to transition to male. The Republican refused to answer questions about the alleged incident from Cleveland.com at the time, citing the need to protect the victim’s privacy.
The Wednesday committee hearing served as a means for Lear and Bird to unveil a new version of the bill more closely aligned with the language of another measure targeting transgender minors. That proposal, House Bill 68, prohibits transgender children from receiving gender-affirming medical care and prevents transgender girls from competing on sports teams that align with their identity. On Wednesday, it was pushed through by the Ohio House, which voted 65-28 to override a gubernatorial veto on it.
Rep Weinstein: "Recently at CPAC, a speaker said that trans people should be eradicated from the earth. What do you think?"
Sponsor: "I do not believe anyone should be wiped out. But the science is clear, there are only 2 genders. Children cannot change what they are." pic.twitter.com/ft4Ky6BbjR
Later in the hearing, Lear compared gender dysphoria to delusions of being an animal, a debunked scarecrow argument that hardline conservatives began to utilize in school policy debates several years ago. “If I had a child who thought he was a bird, am I going to take him to a doctor who tells him the best thing to do is to let him explore being a bird?” the Ohioan asked. “And oh, by the way, there’s a five-story building next door—why don’t you jump off and see if you can fly?”
Miller, a Democrat, pointed out the bill’s inherently discriminatory nature in the hearing. “This is eerily reminiscent of discussions in the ’50s about how white women feared Black people in the same restaurant, the same bathroom,” he said, according to journalist Erin Reed. “It’s eerily similar to the racist policies that were had in the south.”
House Bill 183 has not yet left committee, and it is unclear when it might be brought to the floor for a vote. House Bill 68, no longer vetoed, now goes to the Ohio Senate, which will vote on it on Jan. 24.
They do in fact believe that Jesus was always there, with his father God, and that it was Jesus who did the creating. As evidence, they will point to the language “let us make man in our image” — not realizing that it’s probably the “royal we” employed by the translators. Believe me, I’ve heard this crap my entire life, being raised in a fundamentalist family.
It’s not a royal we. Judiasm was quite polytheistic before it was forced to become monotheistic. And Judiasm didn’t have anything resembling a trinity. That was invented by Christians.
While there is considerable evidence of polytheism in early Caanan, there are multiple examples of ‘majestic plurals’ in Hebrew that have a plural noun form yet govern singular verbs. ‘Behemoth’ is one such.
Maybe Jesus was talking about hateful POS Bigots causing his children to stumble. We have plenty of actual proof of that. Maybe we should drown her sorry ass instead.
That dead skunk on her head is a sin too. Against anyone with eyes. Clearly she has no gay friend’s.
I find it incredibly ironic (not to mention hypocritical) that Phyllis Schlafly — who made herself famous by traveling to different places across the country during the 70s and 80s telling women they should stay home(!!) — actually ran for Congress unsuccessfully not just once but twice in 1952 and 1970. Also, guess which one of her parents was the primary breadwinner when she was growing up during the Great Depression? Not her dad — her mom.
Look at the lengths they have to go to justify their bigotry. Isis is not going to come here and demand a county in Connecticut fly their flag. There are ways to rule that extreme stuff out while not banning pride flags. But you have to want to allow the pride flag during pride month. As one of the commenters said, “I think the real reason is you don’t want that Pride flag up on this town hall” Again a group of republicans don’t want the modern age, this is 2024 and they reject the social progress we have made. They are desperate to remain in the oppressive past. Hugs. Scottie
Town buildings and flag poles can only display the American flag, Connecticut state flag and military flags
Published 01/10/24 09:21 PM ET|Updated 01/10/24 09:46 PM ET
A resolution to ban pride flags in a Connecticut town has led to outrage among the community, according to local reports.
Enfield, Connecticut, is home to around 42,000 people and its newly-elected Republican majority town council made a choice that is not sitting right with many of those residents.
On Monday, the town council approved a resolution banning town buildings and flag poles from flying any flags except for the American flag, Connecticut state flag and military flags, NBC Connecticut reported.
The 6-5 vote effectively banned the Town Hall from displaying Pride flags during Pride Month in June, reversing a 2022 policy that allowed the flags to be displayed.
A passionate exchange between town councilors followed the narrow vote.
“I don’t support it. I think it’s ridiculous. We have an opinion, and I think the real reason is you don’t want that Pride flag up on this town hall, which is absolutely disgusting,” Councilor At-Large Gina Cekala said, per the news station.
Rainbow flag against sky during gay pride parade.Portra/Getty Images
Those who voted in favor defended the resolution by saying it prevented “other” organizations from trying to have their flags displayed.
“ISIS could come in and want to display one, the IRA…basically anybody. You’d have to be content neutral and let everybody,” Tom Tyler, interim town attorney, said.
A local pastor and president of Enfield Pride, Greg Gray, encouraged residents and businesses to display Pride flags in the wake of the town’s decision.
“I am disturbed that the new Republican majority felt this was a decision they needed to make basically on day one of them coming into office,” Gray said.
Brandon Jewell, local advocate and activist for LGBTQ+ people and their families, spoke against the vote.
“The meaning of buildings, that you can’t be inside any town-owned property…so that’s the schools where many of the teachers have safe space stickers on their doors, they have Pride flags hanging,” he said. “I think there should have been more thought into this before it was actually put on the agenda.”
It’s been in their party platform in clear print for decades. No matter how “nice” they may speak to you, just don’t expect any change. They really want you to suffer long and painfully, and then to die so as to vindicate their deranged theology.
there are growing pockets of red here in CT. It’s very disturbing. We saw that 2 years ago in my little town and what the Rs wanted to do (book bans, etc.). This Nov, was a blue wave as a response. It’s a battle.
we live in a very red part of CT. My husband worked the polls the past 2 cycles and got more abuse from these country bumpkins (although he did mention how hot they were)
Where did the town of Enfield come up with so many brain-dead people? “Isis” is not going to want the town fathers (and mothers?) to fly their flag. These idiots just don’t like gay people. They think that’s not obvious?
It never ceases to amaze me how dumb the average Republican is. Did that clown really think that if they put up a Pride flag that ISIS is going to come into their town and say, “We want our flag flown too!” But you’re right, this is just a dumbass excuse to hide the fact that they hate acknowledging gay people exist.
I grew up a couple of towns away from there, and while driving through Enfield in the last few years, I’ve seen plenty of tRump and F**k Biden flags. Those are still OK, apparently.
Notice the chyron on Joe’s lede screen-cap; this was the very first piece of business of the new town council, banning pride flags, as well as the flags of other states and nations, from the town’s public schools.
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