As many know I found this artist and her work on trans awareness as a grand resource to show how trans people / kids are being treated in our surging hateful nation. Below is a personal note from her. I wish her and her family the very best even as I will miss her voice supporting the trans people. Hugs
This year was the most prolific of my life, but also the most anxiety-inducing. I wrote and published a new novel and drew about two hundred pages of comics, as if to numb the things I was feeling. But life has ways to tell us we’re burning out.
I am not known for sharing much about my private life – probably a consequence of a whole decade of harassment and stalking from anti-trans zealots – but allow me to do it today. You might know that at the start of the pandemic, my husband and I decided to move into a century-old cabin in the woods. We have slowly been turning it into an artist retreat for trans and queer people. I really needed the seclusion, the quiet and the natural beauty of the place, especially after many years of being the target of hate campaigns, doxxing and death threats. This place that we call home has been a blessing, but it was always meant to be temporary.
Due to life and health situations, it’s now time for my husband and I to come back to civilisation. I won’t go into details, but I’ll just say that our nearest hospital is a 3h round trip drive, and that living 10h away from my husband’s relatives is becoming impossible. Furthermore, we still believe in our dream of turning that space into a retreat for trans and queer artists, but the renovations left to do are simply incompatible with my husband’s pregnancy.
That is why we are getting prepared to move back to the city. It’s a hard and lifechanging decision for us, but there is no avoiding it. It’s also going to be costly : another reason we moved in our current ruin of a home in the first place was to be able to focus more on making art and less on making rent. If you feel so enclined, you can contribute to our relocation effort by getting a coffee at www.ko-fi.com/sophielabelle or supporting my work at www.patreon.com/assignedmale . It always means the world to us, now more so than ever!
I’ve decided to spend the last few weeks of the year focusing on catching my breath, preparing for the move and trying to get through the 15 000 emails that I’ve let piled in my inbox since my beloved cat, my bestest friend, passed earlier this year, and hopefully finishing the children’s book I’ve been working on for way too long. I still have a few new comics lined up for the Holidays, so don’t expect me to stay quiet!
So that’s what’s up. Thank you for reading, thank you for being there, I love you all, even the ones who rage-read my comics. Keep shining!
Albert Spier’s Proposed Giant Arch for Hitler’s Berlin
“He says such horrible things. You have to wonder how he sleeps at televised afternoon meetings.”
They are the same thing. This is what bigotry, hate, and watching Fox / right wing media causes.
The pilot of a JetBlue flight reported on Friday that he narrowly avoided colliding with a U.S. military aircraft over the Caribbean after an Air Force refueling tanker passed in front of the commercial plane without broadcasting its position, according to air traffic control radio communications.
When you cross Democrats, you get a political argument. When you cross the MAGA right, today’s GOP, you get threats of violence. And not metaphorical threats: real ones. The kind of threats that force a sitting member of Congress to hire armed guards because she dared anger their god-king.
Artificial Intelligence & data centers are increasing demands on electricity. Trump handicapped solar & wind. If there were a dumber idea, they would have chosen it.
China’s renewable energy deployment rate surpassed the rest of the world in 2024, installing more wind & solar capacity than all other countries combined.
We have touted China as our largest competitor. Who thinks coal is a long term solution? [A: people loyal to Putin who want to drag America backwards.]
We have shot ourselves in the foot. Now MAGA are reloading.
Foreign nationals can now pay $1 million plus a $15,000 processing fee for the Trump Gold Card, which grants them U.S. residency “in record time,” the website states. Corporations, meanwhile, can also partake in the program by making a $2 million contribution and paying the $15,000 processing fee.
The St. Louis-based lawyer declined to share copies, citing his clients’ privacy, but said most are seeking $1 million to $10 million for alleged injuries and property damage during their arrest, prosecution and, in many cases, imprisonment. Earlier this year, US officials agreed to pay nearly $5 million this year to settle a claim brought by the family of Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by a police officer inside the Capitol on Jan. 6.
In the lawsuit filed Wednesday, Uthmeier’s office alleged that for the “past five years and continuing to the present day, defendant has excluded or disfavored nonminorities in numerous employment practices and programs.”
The move is part of the administration’s wider campaign to scrub federal institutions of “corrosive ideology” recognizing historical racism and sexism. The directive instructs park staff to report by Friday any retail items that have content that “inappropriately disparages Americans past or living” or that includes “matters unrelated to the beauty, abundance or grandeur” of a natural feature in its description.
Hit the link for many photos of Key West homes now sporting rainbow picket fences. As for Ms. Walker, the self-proclaimed “Christian Republican” felt compelled to boast about her complaint on X.
Yet the Russian oil shadow fleet is left totally alone by the tRump admin? I wonder why the oil tankers off Venezuela are OK to attack yet the same sanctioned oil tankers of Russia are off limits? What is the difference between illegal sanctioned oil tankers? Oh yes Putin has something over on tRump. Hugs
“States have the statutory duty to preserve and protect their constituents from vote dilution,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
This is code for balck people voting which white supremacist feel makes their votes less important. Hugs
Saturday was shattered by two mass shootings. The first, at Brown University in Rhode Island, happened as students prepared for exams. Two people were killed and nine injured. A “person of interest,” which is a law enforcement term that means someone law enforcement wants to speak with about a crime, but whom they are not yet prepared to charge, is in custody.
Frequently, a person of interest will evolve into a suspect. But tonight, there is news that individual has been released. Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha explained that although there was “some degree of evidence” that pointed to a 24-year-old Wisconsin man who was detained Sunday morning, “that evidence needed to be corroborated and confirmed, and over the last 24 hours leading into just very, very recently, that evidence now points in a different direction.”
It’s important to give law enforcement the time it needs to do its job here, to ensure that all threats to the community are fully mitigated, and as much as possible is learned about what prompted the shooting, so victims can have closure.
What seems unimaginable to people who graduated before the epidemic of school shootings is all too real for this generation of students. Today is the anniversary of the deadliest school shooting in our history, at Sandy Hook Elementary school, where the shooter killed 26 people, 20 six- and seven-year-old children and six adults. The shooter killed his mother before he drove to Sandy Hook and took his own life as law enforcement arrived at the school.
This post on threads got it absolutely right:
The second shooting was a terrorist attack launched by two men against Jews celebrating Hanukkah at the beach in Sydney, Australia, another incident in a tide of rising antisemitism. The death toll continues to climb. The shooters took the lives of a beloved rabbi and at least 14 others who were at the event for families. A Holocaust survivor and a 10-year-old girl were also among the victims. It seems impossible that this explanation needs to be offered, but increasingly, it is essential: killing innocent Jews does not help people in Gaza, if, indeed, that was the motivation here.
One point of light in the tragedy was the bravery of a local fruit shop owner, Ahmed El Ahmad, who ran towards the violence and snatched an enormous, long gun from the hands of one of the shooters. Ahmad was shot by the other terrorist and is recovering in hospital.
After this turbulent weekend, we head into a week that promises more chaos.
Judge Hannah Dugan’s Trial Starts Monday
After jury selection began late last week, trial gets underway for Wisconsin state Judge Hannah Dugan, who was indicted by the Justice Department last May for helping a noncitizen try to evade arrest by immigration authorities at the county courthouse where she sits, last April.
Judge Dugan’s capable lawyers will put on a solid defense. She has maintained she was simply trying to keep order in her courtroom and permitted the non-citizen to use one of the doors leading out of her courtroom that was less public, but that didn’t prevent agents and officers from accosting him. The message behind the indictment is clear: If they can arrest judges, no one is safe. And in the months since Duggan’s indictment, the administration has certainly expanded on it, indicting Kilmar Abrego Garcia on stale charges in apparent retaliation for his efforts to insist he was illegally deported and bringing now-failed indictments against a former FBI Director, Jim Comey, and current New York State Attorney General, Letitia James, whom Trump views as political enemies.
The good people of Wisconsin seem to understand this threat. They have been protesting even since the Judge was first detained.
We will follow the trial’s progress this week. Tuesday night at 6:30 p.m. Central, we’ll be joined by legal reporter Adam Klasfeld of All Rise News, who will be in the courtroom this week and will join us to share what’s transpiring. Make sure you mark your calendars.
Friday, DOJ is required to release the Epstein Files
On the heels of House Democrats’ release of photographs from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate last week, the Justice Department has a deadline on Friday. This is the result of the law Congress overwhelmingly passed in mid-November to force the DOJ to release its files related to Jeffrey Epstein.
Whether DOJ will comply is an entirely different matter. Trump demanded that his attorney general open an investigation into only Democrats whose names have surfaced. Bondi may well try to use that new investigation to block demands for release. We’ve already lived through a government shutdown, which seemed to be contrived at least partially to prevent the passage of the law requiring this disclosure and the record-breaking 50-day delay in swearing in newly elected Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva of Arizona. So it’s clear the administration is determined to protect the president from further disclosures like Friday’s photo of “Trump Condoms.”
Survivors deserve justice and the public demand for it is what’s driving the process here. Keep demanding.
But ultimately, if DOJ balks, that could require intervention in the courts and delay matters. Democrats, who are in the minority in both the Senate and the House, lack the ability to issue subpoenas to obtain further information from Epstein’s estate, information that could provide the source of and context for photos that were released last week and additional information like financial records and testimony from witnesses. A process like this is essential if there is going to be accountability for Epstein’s operation and the people who participated in it, benefited from it, and helped to conceal it. So it’s worth noting that Republicans currently hold a very slender majority in the House, which will narrow further with the departure of Marjorie Taylor Greene and perhaps others, even before the midterm election.
Control of the House likely determines whether the full files ever get released.
SCOTUS
The Court is done hearing oral arguments until it picks back up with them on January 12. But that doesn’t mean we might not hear from them in the form of decisions off of the shadow docket as we head into the holidays, with National Guard cases, among other issues, developing in multiple states.
Trump Excesses
This afternoon, Trump posted “Get Your TRUMP CARD today!” on Truth Social. It’s an advertisement for the so-called Trump Card, a golden ticket for those wealthy (and presumably white) enough to buy immigration status in the U.S.
Trump even helpfully added a link to where people could go to apply—on what’s being billed as “an official website of the U.S.” at trumpcard.gov
There are two options:
The Gold Card “For a $15,000 DHS processing fee* and, after background approval, a contribution of $1 million, receive U.S. residency in record time with the Trump Gold Card.”
The Platinum Card, billed as coming soon. “Foreign nationals can sign up now and secure their places on the waiting list for the Trump Platinum Card. When launched, and upon receipt of a $15,000 DHS processing fee and $5 million contribution, they will have the ability to spend up to 270 days in the United States without being subject to U.S. taxes on non-U.S. income.”
The ick factor is high here. It reduces the presidency and this president to the position of a cheap huckster, hawking U.S. residency to the highest bidder while violently deporting hardworking people, and in some cases, getting it wrong and grabbing American citizens and military veterans.
On September 19, Trump signed Executive Order 14351, which authorized the creation of the Gold Card program, claiming that he was “prioritizing the admission of aliens who will affirmatively benefit the Nation, including successful entrepreneurs, investors, and businessmen and women.”
There are obvious questions about the legality of this pay-for-play spectacle and the decision-making process for who qualifies. Potential immigrants make their million-dollar payments, which are referred to as a “gift.” The Executive Order says that suffices as evidence of “exceptional business ability” and “national benefit,” which is sufficient for the person paying the money, regardless of where they got it from, to receive a waiver that permits entry under the statute titled “Allocation of immigrant visas.”
A group of 20 state Attorneys General filed a lawsuit last week challenging the program.
California and Massachusetts are the lead plaintiffs in the case, which alleges that the plan violates the Administrative Procedure Act and the separation of powers and asks the court to enter a ruling that the policy is unlawful and that no action can be taken under Trump’s Executive Order and the Proclamation seeking to implement it. The plaintiffs are also asking the court to enter an injunction that would prohibit the federal government from moving forward with the plan.
It’s going to be another interesting week.
Thanks for being here with me at Civil Discourse and staying informed about what’s happening to our democracy. If you value access to the information and analysis you receive here, I hope you’ll consider getting a paid subscription if you don’t already have one.
blundersonword mentioned “Imagine” the other day in a post, and here we are on the morning of Dec. 14th. There are several items in Peace&Justice History for 12/14, including mourning the loss to the world and the effort for peace across the world, with the murder of John Lennon. 14 years later, the US acknowledged and honored New Zealand’s nuclear weapons ban, and 15 years later, the Dayton Accords were achieved, which guided the cessation of conflict between Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Progress happens.
December 14, 1917 U.S. peace activist and suffragist Kate Richards O’Hare was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for a speech denouncing World War I. Occupying a neighboring jail cell was Emma Goldman, the well-known anarchist organizer, feminist, writer and anti-war critic was imprisoned for obstructing the draft. O’Hare was one of a number of prisoners Socialist Party leader Eugene Debs cited in his “Canton Speech” for which he in turn was imprisoned. More about activist Kate Richards O’Hare Read the speech
December 14, 1961 In a public exchange of letters with South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, U.S. President John F. Kennedy formally announced the United States would increase aid to South Vietnam, including the expansion of the U.S. troop commitment. Kennedy, concerned with recent advances made by the communist insurgency movement in South Vietnam, wrote: “We shall promptly increase our assistance to your defense effort.” President Ngo Dinh Diem President Kennedy and Secretary of Defense McNamara Kennedy – Diem letter exchange
December 14, 1980 At Yoko Ono’s request, John Lennon fans around the world mourned him with 10 minutes of silent prayer. In New York over 100,000 people converged on Central Park in tribute, and in Liverpool, England, his hometown, a crowd of 30,000 gathered outside of St. George’s Hall on Lime Street. johnlennon.com >“You may say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one.” Time capsules to mark John Lennon’s legacy
December 14, 1985 Wilma Mankiller became the first woman to lead a major American Indian tribe when she took office as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Wilma Mankiller on the day in 1985 when her election as chief of the Cherokee Nation was announced
December 14, 1994 After eight years of negotiations, the United States finally agreed to honor New Zealand’s ban on nuclear weapons in its territory. U.S. Navy ships armed with nuclear weapons no longer visited New Zealand’s ports.
December 14, 1995 Leaders of the states that were parts of the former Yugoslavia signed the Bosnia peace treaty, formally ending four years of bloody and vicious ethnic/religious conflict. The Dayton Accords, as they are known, committed the Balkan states of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina to accept a division of territory, a process to deal with the more than 2 million refugees, and the introduction of 60,000 NATO peacekeeping forces. The negotiations were led by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, and held principally at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. The Dayton Accords
Scottie's Playtime 