And In Not What It Initially Appears To Be,

Charlotte Clymer with another interesting story about rightwingers.

Why Sydney Sweeney Needs to Be Canceled by Charlotte Clymer

Her career needs to end. Read on Substack

Actually, this has nothing to do with Sydney Sweeney.

I’ve seen some of her movies and shows. She’s a good actor. She seems nice. I have no real opinion of her beyond that.

The rightwing media ecosystem is currently obsessed with Ms. Sweeney, and per their usual outrage machine schtick, they’ve made her their latest vehicle for claiming Democrats are out-of-touch with America.

This week, Fox News and various other conservative outlets have spent considerable time claiming that Democrats are furious over a jeans advertisement featuring Ms. Sweeney—the details of their supposed outrage are too absurd to get into here, and I’d rather not insult your intelligence by pretending you should care.

But I figure tens of millions of Trump supporters are feverishly googling “Democrats” and “Sydney Sweeney” for that sweet, sweet hit of outrage to feed their addiction, and it occurred to me that a provocative headline could be a great opportunity to get them here and offer a read-out on what Democrats and progressives are currently, actually, passionately discussing.

I’m in approximately ~5,000 group chats with fellow Democrats (heavy sigh), give or take a few, and Sydney Sweeney has not come up once in any of them. Not a single one.

Here’s what we’ve really been talking about this week:

We’re pretty horrified by the ongoing horror in Gaza. Children there are starving-to-death, and the Israeli military has brutally slaughtered more than 1,000 innocent civilians attempting to get food assistance, almost all of which is being blocked by Netanyahu’s government.

All of our allies—including the United Kingdom—have been urgently pleading with Netanyahu to end the blockade and feed starving people in Gaza and please, oh please, stop shooting at them.

We’re wondering why Republican Christians in Congress would disregard Christ’s clear teachings on this matter. Pope Leo XIV condemned “the very grave humanitarian situation in Gaza, where the civilian population is crushed by hunger and remains exposed to violence and death.”

But hey, what the hell does he know?

We’re disgusted by the cover-up over the Epstein files, and it’s fairly obvious to everyone that Donald Trump is desperately attempting to conceal and distract from his involvement in a massive sex trafficking operation that targeted children.

Remember when the Republican Party pretended to care about pedophiles and sex trafficking and the so-called “Deep State” and Trump pandered to them for votes by claiming he would released the Epstein files and then he didn’t?

We’ve been talking all month about the fall-out of Trump’s One Big, Beautiful Bill and the fact that upwards of 17 million Americans will lose their health care coverage and millions will lose food assistance and a ton of rural hospitals are about to close down.

We have no idea how we’re going to help all these people when that legislation is fully implemented, and in discussing how to get medical treatment for the sick and food for the hungry, we don’t really care who these vulnerable folks voted for last year.

We’re considerably worried about the country’s total unpreparedness for natural disasters like hurricanes and tsunamis and flooding and earthquakes because Donald Trump and the Republican Party have gutted the NOAA and the National Weather Service and FEMA.

We imagine a lot of people are going to needlessly die in flood waters and devastating cyclones because of Republican incompetence and cruelty, and again: we have no idea how we’re going to help these folks when that happens.

We’ve been talking a lot about the accelerating erosion of constitutional protections and the Trump administration openly forcing colleges and corporations to pay him a bribe in order to avoid being targeted by his dictatorial madness.

We’ve been talking about Trump’s efforts to silence Stephen Colbert and his other most prominent critics in pop culture, except, of course, when he’s too chickenshit to take on the creators of South Park.

We wonder how the Constitution will survive this era. We wonder how the courts can resist threats of violence. We wonder how democracy can endure when even the most concerned Republicans, like Sen. Lisa Murkowski, have largely given up on their oaths.

Sydney Sweeney and which endorsements she’s landed and what ads she’s appearing in and what products she’s hawking to the public — none of that matters to us.

If anything, in regards to Ms. Sweeney, we’re embarrassed for the shamelessness of Republicans who are attempting to exploit her as a distraction from the death and destruction they’re causing and enabling.

Maybe if we got a hungry or sick child in a rural part of the country to record a video talking shit about Ms. Sweeney, that would be enough for Trump and Republicans to pay attention to their suffering. (snip)

Succumbing To The Temptation

to post snarky news about a very bad person.

Alan Dershowitz Suing Martha’s Vineyard Farmer’s Market Vendor For Tortious Withholding Of Dumpling by Rebecca Schoenkopf

He kept his panties on the whole time! Read on Substack

Evan Hurst Jul 31, 2025

Are Good Pierogis the only pierogis you’ll ever need? Yes! Drive to Martha’s Vineyard and eat them. Tell them, “Alan Dershowitz ain’t got no panties on.” We don’t know if they’ll give you a discount, but they might laugh.

If there’s one thing anybody knows about famed lawyer Alan Dershowitz’s life and career, it’s that he has panties on, except for all the times he’s being a nudist, which by definition implies the absence of panties. One time he definitely always had panties on? When he was getting a massage at Jeffrey Epstein’s Haus of Naked. That’s a five-alarm-panty-party for Alan Dershowitz, he has always assured us.

Another time Alan Dershowitz is always wearing panties — at least as far as we’ve heard — is when he’s having his civil rights and his bill of rights and his human rights violated by the evil shopkeepers and librarians of Martha’s Vineyard, where nobody will invite him over for dinner because they hate his guts, avec ou sans panties. Apparently the Jewish Democrats on Martha’s Vineyard really loathe El Chico Desnudo. Also everybody else on Martha’s Vineyard hates him, all the other liberals, and this makes Alan Dershowitz feel lonely and, well, naked. They won’t let him come to brunch, and it’s definitely not because he’s naked and won’t stop dipping his balls in the hollandaise, why would he dip his balls there, that’s not where Alan Dershowitz’s balls go. They won’t let him do his world-renowned standing-room-only readings and lectures at the meeting room at the library, it is an outrage, it is a seven deadly sins, it is a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Larry David doesn’t invite him over, Barack Obama skips his birthday parties, and now he has to sue a Martha’s Vineyard farmer’s market vendor because they wouldn’t give him a dumpling.

A pierogi, to be specific. The vendor wouldn’t give him a pierogi, so now he has to show them his pierogi.

WITH PANTIES ON.

Dershowitz explained what’s going on in exhaustive detail on his Rumble show, but first here’s a tweet:

Dershowitz: Bigoted vendor @ Martha's Vineyard Farmer's Market refused to sell to me for political reasons. I'm suing. Watch the Dershow live @ 5:30pm est on Rumble and Youtube. Become part of the conversation.

OK, so here’s the situation, here is Alan Dershowitz’s Yelp review for “that guy at the farmer’s market with the pierogis.”

“There was the pierogi place,” he said. “They’re Ukrainian, Russian delicacies. And I had gone there a few times before, and I bought the pierogi. They were ok. They were not my grandmother’s pierogi, but they were ok.”

Alan Dershowitz just wanted some pierogis, even though they weren’t that good, just OK.

BUT THEN HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED, ALAN SAYS:

DERSHOWITZ: Can I have six pierogi?

“BIGOTED VENDOR”: No.

DERSHOWITZ: Oh, you’ve run out of pierogi? Too bad.

“BIGOTED VENDOR”: No, no, no. We have plenty of pierogi. I just won’t sell them to you.

DERSHOWITZ: What do you mean you won’t sell them to me?

“BIGOTED VENDOR”: I won’t sell them to you because I don’t approve of your politics. I don’t approve of who you’ve represented. I don’t approve of who you support.

DERSHOWITZ: What is it about my politics that you don’t–

“BIGOTED VENDOR”: I’m not gonna tell you. I just don’t like your politics.

Love it when vendors at the farmer’s market are like “Forsooth, I don’t approve of you! I forsake you! You shan’t have six pierogis today, not to put in your belly, not to eat with panties on, not to slather in your Alan Dershowitz ball-ondaise sauce and save for later!” It’s just how farmer’s market vendors talk.

“The clear implication was that he opposed me because I defended Donald Trump on the floor of the Senate,” Dershowitz added. “I think that’s illegal.”

Alan Dershowitz is a very famous lawyer.

It gets better, because there’s video of at least part of the situation, or at least the aftermath, don’t worry it’s safe for work. Dershowitz was also filming, because he is a serious lawyer and we imagine he knows that sometimes cops and ICE agents and pierogi vendors are full of lies.

This is the other person’s video, though:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Chris Hulbert (@bungee4)

Therein, you can see the cop gently explaining to Alan Dershowitz The Very Famous Lawyer that according to his own understanding, restaurants can refuse service, but if he wants to pursue it further, he can pursue it civilly. Oh yes, Alan Dershowitz says! He is going to put this on the internet too, Alan Dershowitz says! That’ll be the end of this reign of terror for this pierogi seller whose pierogis are OK but not like Alan Dershowitz’s grandmother’s pierogis!

If you’d like to listen to Dershowitz debate the cop for one hundred hours on whether it’s OK for people to discriminate against Alan Dershowitz based on his protected class of sucking so much, that’s in that video. You can’t discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or race, so how is it fair to discriminate against Alan Dershowitz on the basis of fuck that guy, we hate him? He asks to speak to the manager. The cop explains that actually he’s in charge right now. Dershowitz explains he’s lived here for 53 years and nobody has ever sent him home without pierogi in his belly. He accuses the extremely patient cop of “silencing” him. The cop gently explains that he is causing a disruption, that multiple people have complained, and that no, he may not stand next to the pierogi stand and tell people not to go to the pierogi stand. Alan Dershowitz explains that he would like to get some lemonade.

The user who posted the video says:

“I met Allen Dechowitz [sic] today. I stopped him from harassing a vendor who wouldn’t serve him pierogi at the farmer’s market on Martha’s Vineyard.”

The pierogi person, or the person who is presumably the pierogi person, replied, “Hey, thank you so much!”

Again, Dershowitz rushed to get on Rumble and talk about all of this, and he did so wearing a Martha’s Vineyard Farmer’s Market T-shirt. If you choose to subject yourself to this, skip to 3:54 or so in the video. He talks for a LONG VERY LONG TIME, about how the farmer’s market is on QUASI public land, and he pronounces QUASI like SWAYZE.

He explains that he really wanted to go to the farmer’s market that day because it was corn day, and he got there early, because corn day. He says corn day wasn’t supposed to be until August 1, but he had “insider information” that told him corn day would be this weekend instead.

So that’s insider corn day trading, by his own legal admission, somebody should sue Alan Dershowitz for tortious corn day.

In the Rumble video, Alan Dershowitz is much more agreeable than he is on the video with the cop, so we can only imagine what the actual encounter with the pierogi vendor was like. He does mention that when he was told that the pierogi vendor identifies as non-binary and uses the pronoun “they,” Alan Dershowitz responded, “I’ll use whatever language I choose to use, that’s a matter between me and my grammarian,” and when he said “grammarian,” it was like he was gesturing to the Great Grammarian in the Sky, so that might have also contributed to why Alan Dershowitz did not receive any pierogi, for himself or for his grammarian.

In the video, Dershowitz creates his own new metric for whether it’s OK to discriminate, based on the categories of “race, religion or politics,” which is, legal factcheck, not what it is. (The nice cop also tries to explain that to him.)

Dershowitz says he wrote an op-ed about this, he has sent an email to Sean Hannity — yes because the pierogi person was mean to him — and then, having babbled for over 10 minutes about this, starts explaining other times he’s faced discrimination on Martha’s Vineyard, just for being Alan Dershowitz too much. He’s discriminated against by the book fair, he’s discriminated against by the library, he’s discriminated against by the synagogue — he says they hate Israel — and blah blah blah blah blah Alan Dershowitz.

And then we turned off the video.

If you, like us, don’t want to watch the whole video, here is a screengrab of Alan Dershowitz making an Alan Dershowitz face while he complains.

So that is what has happened. Everybody on Martha’s Vineyard still hates Alan Dershowitz and Alan Dershowitz did not get a pierogi, therefore SUING.

Cannot hardly wait for Pam Bondi’s press conference on how she’s filed charges against the pierogi stand for discrimination and anti-semitism and also probably announcing that she found the real Epstein files in the pierogi stand’s fryers, they were there the whole time. (snip)

Goon Is As Good A Term As Any

Goons of Justice by Clay Jones

Trump puts another loyalist goon on a federal bench for life Read on Substack

Oops! I forgot to put satire in this cartoon.

I do that sometimes. I’ll draw a cartoon that illustrates exactly what happened. What happened here is that Republicans confirmed Emil Bove as a federal appeals court judge, which is a lifetime appointment.

They confirmed Bove despite him serving as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer in the hush money case that found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts. The appeals court is one level below the Supreme Court. A Trump loyalist will be on the court for life. He has more loyalty to Trump than to the Constitution.

He will serve on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Bove will be as crooked as the judge in Florida who dismissed his stolen document case.

After Trump reentered the White House in January, he quickly made Bove a top official in the Justice Department where he worked on the dismissal of the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and the investigation of everyone who investigated department officials who were involved in the prosecutions of hundreds of Trump supporters who were involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Bove has accused FBI officials of “insubordination” for refusing to hand over the names of agents who investigated the attack and ordered the firing of a group of prosecutors involved in those Jan. 6 criminal cases.

It was bad enough to put a supporter of Trump’s white nationalist terrorists in the DOJ, but now he’s going to be a federal judge.

The whistleblowers provided evidence to the Senate that Bove lied during his testimony, and that he suggested the department should ignore court orders when it came to Trump’s illegal deportations. There’s an audio recording of Bove making statements about the Adams case that contradict his testimony, saying that whoever signed onto the dismissal would be rewarded.

Chuck Schumer said, “It’s unfathomable that just over four years after the insurrection at the Capitol, when rioters smashed windows, ransacked offices, desecrated this chamber, Senate Republicans are willingly putting someone on the bench who shielded these rioters from facing justice, who said their prosecution was a grave national injustice.”

Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski were the only two Republicans to vote against Bove’s confirmation, with Collins saying, “I don’t think that somebody who has counseled other attorneys that you should ignore the law, you should reject the law, I don’t think that that individual should be placed in a lifetime seat on the bench.”

Collins isn’t always right, like the time she voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, believing him when he said he wouldn’t overturn Roe. (snip-MORE, and it’s good)

(Note from A: I’m adding this photo, because Emil Bove reminds me of the photo)

A Positive Way To Take Back Identity:

Black Indigenous Chefs Are Reclaiming Identity Through Food — One Dish at a Time by Michael Harriot

Black Native food workers are passing down culinary traditions, restoring lost connections and feeding body and soul. Read on Substack

Crystal Wahpepah (Photo courtesy of Crystal Wahpepah)

The Indigenous food movement has seen a renaissance in North America, with restaurant openings, cookbook releases and community initiatives that announce the presence, expertise and heritage of Indigenous food workers. Amidst this moment, Black Native food workers have seen both the beauty and the harshness of living at the intersection of Blackness and Indigeneity, as the dominant settler colonial culture of the United States often tries to erase or flatten all parts of their identities.

But those attempts at erasure have also provided moments of reflection and insight, and a realization that the mission of Black Indigenous food workers is profoundly spiritual and political healing work. For Stephan Oak, a Black and Lakota forager and woodworker who lives in Detroit, the threads of connection that Black Indigenous people hold in their family stories that are “steeped in violence, but also steeped in love and resistance” are also guides that allow them to connect in the past, present, and future — a shared cosmology.

Crystal Wahpepah, who is Black and Kickapoo and the executive chef and owner of Wahpepah’s Kitchen in Oakland, Calif., says that often, through representation and education, Black Native people in the food industry come to a deeper peace about their identity and heritage. At Wahpepah’s Kitchen, over cornbread dishes from the Ute and Kickapoo people, wild rice from the Great Lakes tribes and bison from the Great Plains, people often find themselves.

“I meet so many people who are Black and Native but never felt connected to their Indigenous side, and when they meet me, they start talking about it, about culture, about those things that have been lost,” she says. Wahpepah is also opening a new restaurant, A Feather and a Fork, which is also the title of her upcoming cookbook.

That loss is something felt in both Black and Indigenous communities and can often feel pronounced because of family separation through residential schools, land expulsions, the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the domestic slave trade that broke up Black families across the country. “Because of colonial violence, there’s a fractured relationship to home or your connection to your ancestors,” says Oak. “The intent of the colonizer is to stop you from looking … to accept the identity of the conditions they’ve placed on you.”

Food is one of the ways Oak and others are reclaiming autonomy over their identities, especially as governments use food as a weapon by depriving communities of affordable, culturally relevant food. Oak points out that even amidst food deserts on reservations and urban Black communities, people find ways to be more self-sufficient and connect back to the land, which helps them reconnect with the essence of who they are. (snip-MORE; lots more but not too long)

Crystal Wahpepah’s wild rice salad with strawberries and pecans (Courtesy of Crystal Wahpepah)

Last Day Of July In Peace & Justice History

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjuly.htm#july31

10 Women Disarm an F-16, & Torquemada’s Work in Spain, in Peace & Justice History for 7/30

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjuly.htm#july30

Health Dis/Misinfo That’s Dangerous For Young People

Opinion: Contraception Gives Young Women Control of Their Bodies—So Why Are So Many Girls Afraid to Use it?

Jul 28, 2025, 9:00am Shoshana Kaplan

One-third of young women who don’t take birth control say they fear its side effects. Misinformation plays a role, a health expert says.

This story is part of our monthly series, Campus Dispatch. Read the rest of the stories in the series here.

As long as contraception has been widely available, misconceptions about its safety—from weight gain fears to claims you need a birth control “cleanse” every few years—have scared some young women away from using it. Today, this kind of misinformation is no longer solely circulated in locker rooms or sleepovers. In the modern digital world, active misinformation and disinformation campaigns that deter people from using contraception circulate on social media—reaching millions.

The origin of this issue varies. Sometimes, rumors about birth control are intentionally created and promoted for political purposes; this is disinformation. Sometimes, false claims are unintentionally spread by people who believe their statements are true. Other times, one person misrepresents their real, lived experience as a universal truth.

The results are astonishing: A 2022 KFF study found that roughly one-third of reproductive-age women who are not on birth control cite fears of side effects as a reason for avoiding contraception.

Since the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022, contraception and comprehensive sex education have become more than just public health priorities: They are now the front lines of defense in protecting reproductive rights and empowering people—young women especially—to make choices about their bodies.

I am a public health master’s candidate focused on reproductive health and communications. This summer, I am interning at the sexual health and equity non-profit Advocates for Youth, which champions bodily autonomy for young people. In my work here to develop sex education materials and resources for young people and educators, as well as in my academic research, I’ve come to believe that combatting digital misinformation about birth control will require a collective response.

Taking health advice from TikTok

It’s easy to see how young people can fall victim to digital misinformation: Imagine you’re a 15-year-old girl dealing with severe period pain, or perhaps your acne has gotten out of control. Or maybe, you’re just excited to start having sex for the first time and want to do so safely. After talking with your mom and doctor, you decide to try hormonal birth control. You feel relieved. After months of keeping this big life choice to yourself, you finally shared your needs—and you were heard. You have a plan.

That night, some two hours into your usual TikTok scroll, you’re shown a video featuring a beautiful young woman you recognize from your “For You” page. She says birth control not only wrecked her hormonal balance, but will also cause cancer. You’ve seen this creator’s lifestyle content before and always trusted her. In the most-liked comments, hundreds of people echo her experience, sharing stories of hair loss or feeling “crazy” on the pill. Some comment they’re grateful to have never started birth control at all. Nowhere in the comments do you see a doctor or other medical expert pushing back, insisting that birth control is safe and effective.

What do you do?

Perhaps you search TikTok for other perspectives. You find a couple videos from OB-GYNs disputing the claims. But the other creator’s post had more than 200,000 views and hundreds of comments, while that one OB-GYN’s explainer only has 5,000 views and 20 comments. On social media, attention often passes for credibility.

You text your best friend, who asks her older sister. The sister agrees with the original creator’s claims.

Now you’re really nervous (your sister’s friend has had two boyfriends, after all!). You go back to your mom to say you’re not sure about the plan anymore. You’re scared of what birth control will do to your body. She tries to reassure you that it’s safe, but you can’t stop thinking about the women on TikTok who said it wasn’t.

‘A fertile breeding ground for misinformation’

Even though birth control rumors have circulated for decades, today’s rising mistrust of medical providers and the over-politicization of health, combined with poor digital literacy, have come together to create a fertile breeding ground for misinformation. False claims about infertility and severe mood disorder flourish.

“Data clearly show the deluge of misinformation about reproductive health care, including birth control, on social media,” reads a June 2024 statement from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the nation’s top association of OB-GYNs. “This misinformation can cause real harm for patients by encouraging unsafe methods of contraception; by sharing ineffective methods that expose people to unintended pregnancy; or by scaring people away from safe, effective, evidence-based methods of contraception.”

The American Medical Association is likewise sounding the alarm that the rapid spread of misinformation puts lives at risk.

To a certain extent, historic distrust in doctors drives this phenomenon. Physicians have long faced accusations of minimizing women’s medical concerns—by not using anesthesia when inserting intrauterine devices (IUDs), for example, or dismissing reports of pain during pregnancy. This past, which fuels genuine mistrust, is especially prominent in Black and brown communities, where the medical establishment in the 19th and 20th centuries routinely ignored, lied to and exploited patients under the guise of scientific discovery and public health. Any serious efforts to address reproductive health care must acknowledge this legacy, not deny it.

Instead, politicians capitalize on this weakening trust in medicine by amplifying misleading claims. Right-wing commentators like Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens routinely use their platforms to denounce birth control and spread lies about its effectiveness and adverse effects, while claiming they are concerned for women’s health. Some academic researchers and political analysts suggest these are deliberate efforts to dampen opposition should Republicans begin repealing access to birth control using the Comstock Act, an anti-obscenity law from the late 1800s that could stop doctors from mailing contraception or abortion pills. The fewer people believing in the efficacy of birth control, the more compelling their case.

Combatting disinformation together

Too often, efforts to combat misinformation are limited to one-on-one doctor’s office conversations, high school health class (if a school district even offers evidence-based sex education; many don’t), or sporadic debunking posts from reproductive health organizations.

Those of us who believe, as I do, that birth control should be a right for every person who needs it must challenge misinformation and disinformation with the same vigor and coordination as the people and groups spreading it. To meaningfully push back, organizations committed to advancing reproductive health-care access must invest in sweeping digital campaigns—paid, organic, and partnerships—to combat misconceptions and reclaim the narrative around contraception.
I’m not the only one who believes these trends call for swift action to match the scale of the problem.

Power to Decide, an organization working to expand access to reproductive health services, is evolving its long-running hashtag campaign #thxbirthcontrol to meet the moment. What began in 2012 as a campaign on X to influence public perception of birth control has now expanded to other platforms including TikTok, where the group posts short videos that highlight the positive, everyday impacts of contraception.
Combatting stigma with content that’s compelling, relatable, and accurate is essential to combatting misinformation. So is getting that content directly to the people most swayed by misinformation.

At the launch of their new Health Misinformation and Trust initiative, KFF President and CEO Drew Altman explained, “Most Americans have encountered health misinformation, but a large group simply isn’t sure if it’s true or false. Most people fall into this muddled middle place—underscoring the real opportunities we have to counter misinformation but also the risks of inaction.”

While both of these efforts are promising, they cannot be effective in isolation; a coordinated, aligned response is necessary to effectively combat misinformation.

One encouraging approach is Advocates for Youth’s “The Busybodies Club.” This national campaign, which launched before I joined the organization, combines digital education with relational organizing to teach young people how to “spot fake facts, identify misinformation, and challenge misconceptions.” The Busybodies Club is structured to recognize that challenging misinformation requires more than facts—it requires trust, community, and creativity at the interpersonal and systemic levels. The organization’s guide to spot red flags on birth control posts is a great starting point for folks interested in being part of the solution.

And as more organizations join the fight to combat misinformation about birth control, it’s important to acknowledge that hormonal birth control may not be right for everyone. Depending on the method and hormone type, contraceptives may cause headaches, nausea, and mood changes. For people who experience adverse side effects, there are alternatives like the copper IUD, or different hormonal formulations. This kind of honesty is essential to rebuild trust in contraception and for people to truly exercise reproductive autonomy.

Autonomy means choice. Trouble arises, though, when young women use falsehoods to inform their decisions. Misinformation can convince young people, incorrectly, that everyone will have terrible side effects from hormonal birth control or that or that all non-hormonal methods are equally effective. The copper IUD is more than 99 percent effective. Tracking your cycle is not—it fails to prevent pregnancy up to 25 percent of the time.

The current landscape can make it scary for young people to start birth control, and it shouldn’t be. When a girl wants to take charge of her sexual and reproductive health, I believe she should feel empowered, informed, and supported—not frightened. In an era where reproductive autonomy faces relentless attacks online and in legislatures, arming young people with facts isn’t a luxury. It’s a matter of survival.

Disclosure: Shoshana Kaplan is a 2025 graduate fellow at Rewire News Group, focused on sexual health. She is a summer intern at Advocates for Youth, where she receives some funding for her work.

A Couple From Clay Jones

Bribed War Criminal by Clay Jones

Netanyahu is a murderer Read on Substack

Israeli Prime Minister is such a liar that even Donald Trump is calling him out. Hell, Marjorie Taylor Greene is accusing him of committing genocide. Ouch.

Bibi denied claims that he’s starving Gaza, and said, “There is no policy of starvation in Gaza, and there is no starvation in Gaza. We enable humanitarian aid throughout the duration of the war to enter Gaza – otherwise, there would be no Gazans.”

He’s a liar. Israel has bombed convoys bringing in humanitarian relief to Gaza, and it won’t allow aid from the United Nations to enter Gaza half the time.

The World Health Organization said Sunday there have been 63 malnutrition-related deaths in Gaza this month, including 24 children under the age of 5, up from 11 deaths total in the previous six months of the year.

Gaza’s Health Ministry puts the number even higher, reporting 82 deaths this month of malnutrition-related causes: 24 children and 58 adults. Yesterday, it said that 14 deaths were reported in the past 24 hours. The ministry, which operates under the Hamas government, is headed by medical professionals and is seen by the U.N. as the most reliable source of data on casualties. U.N. agencies also often confirm numbers through other partners on the ground.

The WHO also said acute malnutrition in northern Gaza tripled this month, reaching nearly one in five children under 5 years old, and has doubled in central and southern Gaza. The U.N. says Gaza’s only four specialized treatment centers for malnutrition are “overwhelmed.” Children are going days without eating.

Palestinians want a full return to the U.N.-led aid distribution system that was in place throughout the war, rather than the Israeli-backed mechanism that began in May.

55 trucks from the United Nations’ food program entered Gaza yesterday, and they were all looted by starving Gazans. There are also food drops, but that’s not enough.

Witnesses and health workers say Israeli forces have killed hundreds by opening fire on Palestinians trying to reach food distribution hubs or while crowding around entering aid trucks. The Israeli Defense Force says it has fired warning shots to disperse threats. But as we’ve learned throughout this war, the IDF lies.

The UN needs the IDF’s permission to bring food into Gaza, and they claim the military denies them over half the time. The Hamas police would protect the trucks from being looted by hungry Gazans, but they stopped after being shot at by the IDF. (snip-MORE)

Island Cheater by Clay Jones

Kicking his tiny balls Read on Substack

While meeting with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Kier Starmer, Donald Trump said he had been invited to Epstein’s Island, but that he turned it down and “never had the privilege” of visiting the island. It was right then that PM Starmer realized he was sitting with a lunatic who is most likely a pedophile.

Trump deflected to other people, saying, “I never went to the island, and Bill Clinton went there supposedly 28 times. I never went to the island, but (former Treasury Secretary) Larry Summers, I hear, went there, he was the head of Harvard. And many other people that are very big people, nobody ever talks about them.”

That word salad makes you wonder how much Adderall Trump snorted before his meeting with Starmer.

There are no records of Bill Clinton ever going to Epstein’s private island, so I don’t know where Trump got the number 28 from when he can’t even find one visit. The thing is, Donald Trump is a liar and a golf cheat. More on that in a minute.

Trump said, “I never had the privilege of going to his island, and I did turn him down. But a lot of people in Palm Beach were invited to his island. In one of my very good moments, I turned it down. I didn’t want to go to his island.”

All of Donald Trump’s moments are pretty bad, at least for other people. Saying you never had the privilege of visiting a pedophile’s island is not a good moment. Neither are the moments he flew on Epstein’s private jet, or the times he partied with Epstein while they were ogling young women. (snip-MORE)

The 1st Grape Boycott, & Capital Punishment Ruled Unconstitutional, In Peace & Justice History for 7/29

I wasn’t an adult in 1972, but it was a relief to me, that there was no more death penalty! Four years later, it was back, and I cannot explain how that happened. My town had a death penalty trial almost immediately. A teacher had access to an execution film; the state was required to keep that on record for a while, whenever anyone sat on Ol’ Sparky; we viewed it before the trial (no one present was on the jury, of course.) It was medieval. And, here we still are in 2025, killing people in the names of everybody who lives here. There are ways to work against it; let me know if there is interest in comments.