It’s really funny, even as truth is delivered.
Josh Day, Next Day!
It’s really funny, even as truth is delivered.
Category: Vote / Voting
Trae’s Got The Skews-
Michigan Gets It
Michigan Dems Rally Around Trans Candidate Whose Primary Opponent Tried to Kick Her From Ballot
“While my opponent obsesses over my gender and uses cowardly tricks to try to avoid facing me, I will continue to fight for practical solutions to problems that actually impact our communities.”
Michigan Democrats are firing back after one of their own—a candidate in a state representative race—filed a complaint with the Wayne County Division of Elections, aiming to boot his primary opponent, Joanna Whaley, from the ballot. This is because Whaley is transgender and went through a legal name change process.
It seems that another contender for Michigan’s 2nd State House District seat, Frank Liberati falsely believed Whaley’s name change hadn’t gone through. So, last week, he accused her of running under a false name in violation of election procedures, official documents show, which were provided to Erin in the Morning by Whaley.
They also showed that Liberati went even further in his anti-trans rhetoric. The complaint invoked Whaley’s deadname (a given name a trans person no longer uses) at every turn, consistently misgendered her, or called Whaley “she/he.”
The Michigan Legislative LGBTQ+ Caucus denounced Liberati’s “transphobic tactics.”
“During a time of increasing and relentless attacks on the trans community, submitting this sort of meritless challenge to the Wayne County Clerk serves no purpose but to stoke the flames of transphobia for personal political gain,” a statement from the Caucus reads.
Democratic lawmakers further called on officials to throw out the complaint. “The Clerk should promptly reject this baseless challenge to Whaley’s candidacy and allow the voters of 2nd State House District to decide this election at the ballot box. Weaponizing transphobia as an electoral tactic has no place whatsoever in Michigan politics, and certainly not in a Democratic Party primary,” the statement said.
Whaley told Erin in the Morning that she expected to encounter transphobia when running for office, but she was shocked when she learned it was from a fellow Democrat.
At the same time, she also said she has been flooded with support from voters, Party members, and leaders who were outraged by Liberati’s maneuver.
“I spoke with the chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, and we are united across the state that this is not how Democrats act,” Whaley said. “This is not what we represent.”
Whaley said Liberati’s complaint was based on outdated court filings. When Whaley first came out, excessive state fees ended up delaying aspects of her legal transition. Since then, the state legislature has passed laws to make name changes less burdensome. Whaley filed again, got her name successfully updated, and has been going by Joanna ever since.
“When a candidate cannot run on their own merits, they resort to lies and distractions,” Whaley said in a public response when news of the challenge first broke. “Our campaign remains focused on the issues that matter to the residents of this district: lowering water and utility bills, expanding healthcare access, fixing our infrastructure, and protecting our freedoms.”
“While my opponent obsesses over my gender and uses cowardly tricks to try to avoid facing me, I will continue to fight for practical solutions to problems that actually impact our communities,” she continued.
This isn’t the first time that issues with name changes and state identification laws have been weaponized against trans voters and/or candidates. Gendered party seat positions, which were initially created to advance the representation of women in office, have since become a barrier for people of marginalized genders who want to run for a position.
Meanwhile, stringent voter ID policies are poised to hinder trans and gender nonconforming people’s ability to vote if their current documentation or gender expression doesn’t match their name and gender assigned at birth. (The name change issue extends beyond trans people; married women who take their husband’s last name have also reported barriers to voting.)
In addition to her candidacy, Whaley is a parent, a hospital chaplain, and a proud Democrat. She told Erin in the Morning she was in part inspired to run for office by Liberati’s brother: Sitting member Tullio Liberati, who crossed party lines last year to vote in favor of a bill that discriminated against transgender women and girls in sports.
Transphobia, it seems, runs in the family. Frank personally signed off on the complaint submitted to officials, notary and all.
Liberati did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Prior to this race, he had served for six years as a state representative in Michigan’s 13th District.
Whaley said she expects the complaint to be resolved and that she hopes to bring the conversation around her candidacy back to the issues that impact everyday voters.
“[Resorting to] this move in the first place shows that we are the campaign to beat,” Whaley said. These are tactics to “knock me out of the race, because [Liberati] can’t win on the issues.”
“Letters From God”
Bless The Amazon Workers Who Crashed Bezos’ Met Gala
Good job, heroes!
Dear Humans,
Lo, while billionaires gathered at the Met Gala to pretend they have class or culture, Amazon workers showed up outside to remind everyone what really funds their costume party.
Piss bottles.
1. The Workers Crashed The Party
Jeff Bezos paid $10 million to attend this year’s rich scumbag costume ball.
And lo, Amazon workers said: absolutely fucking not.
The Met Gala wanted to turn Bezos into a patron of the arts.
Amazon workers turned him back into the Lex Luther villain he is.
Behold, Chris Smalls and Amazon workers outside the Met Gala, reminding America who really built Bezos’ empire.
(There’s a little video embedded on the page that I can’t snag and bring back. Click above on the title, or here to see the videos, and to save yourself time, read the little bit of the rest there, too. Snip)
Musical Fun via Ten Bears:
If you let it go to the next one, it’s good, too!
Open Windows & Clay Jones
Fugly Passport
Quick! Renew your passport before they start putting Trump’s photo on them!
You got a new blog yesterday, but you didn’t get a new cartoon. Did you miss me?
From the Department of I-think-I’m-going-to-throw-up comes news that the State Department is going to issue passports featuring Donald Trump’s face. It’s not even his smiling face, either, as he’s grimacing in the photo, much like his mug shot.
Do the heads of all these agencies that’re putting Trump’s face, name, and signature on everything come up with this shit on their own, or is it ordered from the White House? Either way, everyone in the Trump administration is a sick sycophant. Why do they want us to look like North Korea? Why?
But yes, you heard correctly. They are going to put Trump’s face on American passports. If you’re like me, you worry that you won’t have a choice and that Trump’s face will be placed right next to your cheery mug, which would be sure to draw scorn as you go through customs and immigration while traveling internationally. Don’t we have enough to apologize for while traveling as Americans? (snip-MORE)
Lead sponsors and honorary chairs of the Met Gala
Maybe Jeff Bezos should buy a fashion house…
…instead of owning a newspaper since he doesn’t support a free press
From Mrs. Betty Bowers, An Awards Show!
Kickass Women In History With The Smart Ones-
Kickass Women in History: Emma Tenayuca
by Carrie S · May 2, 2026 at 2:00 am
Emma Tenayuca was a labor organizer in Texas who is best known for leading a strike of pecan shellers in 1938. Workers called her “La Pasionaria“ which means “Passionflower.” From a young age, she survived violence and imprisonment in her quest to help workers get better working conditions and higher wages.
Tenayuca was born on December 21, 1916, and I know all of you December birthday people will identify with her plight – born too close to Christmas, she never got ‘birthday’ presents. Her family was Mexican American, and had lived in Texas for many generations. She was raised by grandparents who were interested in politics, and was also influenced by the speakers in the San Antonio town square. She was brought up with pride in her family and their roots, and she was encouraged to be educated and politically active by her family.
Tenayuca was arrested for the first time at 16, for protesting alongside striking workers from the Finck Cigar Company. She used her bilingual language skills to help people with their problems and worked with many organizations working towards better pay and better conditions for Mexican-Americans.
One of the most common positions for Mexican-American women in the area was in the pecan industry. Pecan shelling for 6-7 cents a pound was difficult work (the meat of the shell must remain intact) for little pay. Additionally, the process filled the factory rooms with a fine dust that contributed towards tuberculosis.
In 1938, the factories cut pay to 3 cents a pound and Tenayuca, who was 21 years old at the time, found herself leading a strike of approximately 12,000 workers. The strike faced violent opposition, as detailed in the article “Remembering Emma Tenayuca:”
When Pecan production ground to a halt, the owners fought back: Tenayuca and hundreds of strikers were gassed and arrested by San Antonio police. Some were beaten as well. With the NWA rallying community support, the strike turned into a city-wide uprising of the poorest and most oppressed people in San Antonio.
Thirty-seven days after the strike began the pecan producers agreed to arbitration. A few weeks later, the workers had won a wage increase to seven or eight cents per pound.
Tenayuca faced opposition as a woman, as a Mexican-American, as a labor organizer, and as a member of the Communist Party (she left the Party in 1946). From Americans Who Tell the Truth:
(snip-only a bit MORE; go read it!)
Collateral Arrests
Immigration street sweeps led to more ‘collateral’ arrests of noncriminals
By:Tim Henderson-May 2, 2026
A quarter of immigration arrests since August were labeled by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as “collateral,” a type of arrest and detention that’s been challenged in court as an end run around civil rights.
Public outrage and lawsuits over the arrests may be tamping down the large-scale sweeps that foster them, but tens of thousands were arrested this way between August and early March.
Immigration arrests are usually based on warrants obtained ahead of time, showing either a removal order from immigration court or evidence of a crime or charge that makes the person subject to deportation.
But collateral arrests can result from street sweeps and raids in which a person is singled out for questioning based on appearance or proximity to someone wanted on a warrant. That person could be taken into custody if agents think they may be subject to deportation and also likely to flee if released.
Labeled for the first time ever, the collateral arrests are reported from August to early March in ICE arrest data obtained by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by Stateline. In that time there were about 64,000 collateral arrests, a quarter of the 253,000 total arrests by ICE.
About 70% of the collateral arrests were for people with immigration-related crimes or violations alone, compared with 41% for arrests with warrants. Less than 2% of those with collateral arrests were convicted of a violent crime, one-third the rate of other arrests, and only 18% were convicted of any crime, compared with 33% for other arrests.
The collateral arrests contributed to an overall pattern of lower and lower shares of arrests for serious crimes, and more for immigration offenses alone.
Arrests climbed from about 12,000 in January 2025 to more than 40,000 in December, but fell back to 30,000 this February. The share of people with only immigration-related crimes and violations rose to more than half in December and January, the peak months for collateral arrests, and the share of violent criminals fell from 10% to 4% of arrests in that time.
(This chart is interactive. If you can’t see the arrest data here by mousing over states, you can on the page, linked in the title above, & also at the end of this post.)
New policy
ICE announced a new policy in January to issue warrants in real time if agents think an immigrant is deportable and “likely to escape,” though that policy faces a court challenge.
Total arrests and collateral arrests have been falling since December, whether because of the new policy or because of cutbacks in the large-scale street sweeps that tend to produce them.
One factor is public outrage over raids sweeping up noncriminals in places like Minneapolis and Chicago, said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst for the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.
“The sort of large operations within big cities, as they were occurring, seems to have subsided somewhat,” Putzel-Kavanaugh said. “After the kind of public outcry following Minneapolis, it seems as though, at least for now, that tactic has kind of been paused.”
The Trump administration’s focus on mass deportation opened the way for more collateral street arrests with less investigation, she added.
“If it’s a more targeted arrest, they would take the time to sort of essentially have an investigation. It’s a pretty resource-intensive way that just would not yield the kind of numbers ICE was being told to produce,” she said.
The new policy was filed in court papers in February as a response to a lawsuit over ICE sweeps in the District of Columbia last year, alleging ICE agents “have flooded the streets of the nation’s capital, indiscriminately arresting without warrants and without probable cause District residents whom the agents perceive to be Latino.”
The case resulted in a preliminary injunction in December requiring a halt to warrantless arrests without establishing probable cause that the person is living here illegally and is a flight risk.
One plaintiff in the class-action case, José Escobar Molina, said in the lawsuit that agents in two cars pulled up to him as he approached his work truck on Aug. 21, grabbing him by the arms and legs and handcuffing him without asking any questions. Escobar, 47, said in the court papers that he’s lived in the district for 25 years and has had temporary protected status as a Salvadoran native the whole time. He was held overnight in Virginia before being released.
Other lawsuits are also challenging collateral arrests, such as an incident in Idaho in which agents with warrants for five people ended up arresting 105 immigrants at a Latino community event in October.
In North Carolina, four U.S. citizens and a visa holder sued in February, saying they were arrested in the Charlotte’s Web immigration crackdown in November without warrants, as is typical of collateral arrests.
“I have a lot of fear that this will happen to me again. I was essentially kidnapped based only on the color of my skin. That really weighs on me,” said Yoshi Cuenca Villamar, one of the citizens and a North Carolina native, in a statement announcing the lawsuit. He said he was doing landscaping work Nov. 15 when agents pushed him to the ground and handcuffed him, then held him in a car before releasing him.
One Illinois case that started in the first Trump administration challenged warrantless arrests and traffic stops used as a pretext for immigration arrests. A 2022 settlement required ICE to document “reasonable suspicion” of illegal status before arresting somebody. The case continues since a judge found in February that the new ICE policy of issuing warrants in real time after a detention violates the consent decree.
Shares of collateral arrests
In the months since August where collateral arrests are now labeled, the District of Columbia and Illinois stand out with high shares of collateral arrests. More than half the arrests in the district were collateral, as were 41% of those in Illinois. There were eight states in which at least 30% of arrests were collateral: Alabama, Maryland, West Virginia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Maine and Minnesota.
West Virginia, where there was a “statewide surge” of immigration enforcement in January with state and local cooperation, stands out for its high rate of total arrests as well as a large share of collateral arrests.
For the eight months between August and early March, West Virginia had 1,831 arrests, or 1 in 10 of the state’s noncitizen population as of 2024, the latest data available. That’s by far the largest share in the country, followed by 7% in Wyoming (where truck drivers were targeted for immigration arrests in February) and 4% in Mississippi.
West Virginia Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey, in a statement, cited the cooperation of state and local agencies with ICE through the 287(g) program that assists with immigration enforcement. He praised ICE, saying “they have removed dangerous illegal immigrants from our communities and made our state safer for families and law-abiding citizens.”
Few of those arrested in the surge were violent criminals, however. More than half of those arrested during the surge were collateral arrests, and only 1% — nine immigrants — had a violent crime conviction, according to the Stateline analysis. More than three-quarters, about 500 people, had only an immigration-related violation or crime.
Judges didn’t always agree that collateral arrests and detentions in the West Virginia surge were legal under the U.S. Constitution. U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin, a Clinton appointee, ordered two detainees released in January. He noted that “similar seizures and detentions are occurring frequently across the country” without any evidence they’re necessary as required by the Constitution.
Clay Jones, Open Windows
World Press Freedom Day
Defend the free press and our democracy
It’s World Press Freedom Day, I celebrated with a great conversation on The Andy Borowitz Show with Andy and director Laura Nix about free speech, and the predictions made in the film DEMOCRACY UNDER SIEGE that have come true since its release.
Catch the podcast video along with the film for free on the website through May 4.
Starting May 5, you can find the film on Kinema.com for home and group viewing, as well as gifting to friends and family who would like to see it.
In the evening of May 5th there will be a Kinema Launch Event hosted by The Media and Democracy Project, 7 pm ET. Join an online screening, live conversation and Q&A with special guests discussing the threat of media consolidation in light of the upcoming media mergers. Free tickets are limited, sign up for the event here
Court blocks mailing of Mifepristone
An early Mother’s Day wish
Because grown women couldn’t possibly make their own reproductive decisions without courts and politicians.
MAGA Malaise
Gas prices and Trump’s approval ratings are going in opposite directions
Today, the national average gas price is $4.43 a gallon. That’s the national average. If you are in California, a gallon of gas will cost you more than $4.43. If you’re in a place like South Carolina, it will probably be a little less. At any rate, it’s much more expensive than it should be, all because of Donald Trump.
One whatabout that MAGAts use is that gas prices were high when Joe Biden was president, at least for a minute. What they leave out is that Joe Biden didn’t do anything to cause high gas prices. When gas prices were high under Biden, they were high internationally, and again, not because of any negative policies inflicted by President Biden.
Today, gas prices are also high internationally, and it’s all because of Donald Trump. Donald Trump chose to start a war that didn’t need to be started. Trump is trying desperately to get a deal with Iran and get them to the negotiating table, which is where they were before he started dropping bombs on them. (snip-MORE)
Scottie's Playtime 