They won’t get nearly the jabber that Liz Cheney’s and Bennie Thompson’s medals are getting, and all are good people. I emboldened a bit especially pertinent to this blog.
Biden Giving Liz Cheney A Fancy Medal Today, So That’ll Make Trump’s Butt Itch by Rebecca Schoenkopf
Every 2024 Presidential Citizens Medal winner is a better human than the bastard who’s about to be president again. Read on Substack
The first time Donald Trump was president, one of the ways he absolutely beclowned the office and rendered it meaningless was who he’d pick to give the Presidential Medal of Freedom and other similar honors.
Historically, such awards went to people who had done something important. Under Trump 1.0, it was more like “Here is the presidential medal of excellence in giving me money!” It went to Miriam Adelson, AKA one of Trump’s big bucks no whammies donors. (That’s the one where he got in trouble recently for saying Adelson’s award was better than Medal of Honor winners, AKA the military’s highest honor.)
Trump gave the Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh, before that guy waddled off to hell. He gave it to Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan, for excellence in doing congressional coverups for Trump or something.
We are sure Trump 2.0 will make those recipients look like American patriots.
The Presidential Citizens Medal is the award just below the Medal of Freedom, and Trump didn’t seem to give much of a shit about it during his first term. He awarded it in 2019 to a 9/11 first responder, posthumously. But that appears to be it. The award is given to someone “who has performed exemplary deeds or services for his or her country or fellow citizens,” so you can see why it might not get Trump very excited.
President Joe Biden is big on giving it, though. In 2023, he gave it to people like Capitol Police officers Michael Fanone and Aquilino Gonell, who protected Congress during the terrorist attack Trump’s supporters committed on January 6, 2021. (He awarded it posthumously to former Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who died after he was assaulted by Trump supporters at the Capitol that day.) Also to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, the Georgia election workers Rudy Giuliani owes all his money to, for repeatedly lying about and defaming them.
In all, he gave it to 12 people who in various ways defended American democracy from Trump’s attacks in 2020.
Now, today, Biden is giving another set of 20 of these medals for 2024, and damn, they are just more people Donald Trump could never ever fucking be, not in a million years, not if he went to the Emerald City and grabbed the Wizard by the pussy and begged him for a soul, or for integrity, or decency, or goodness. (In this mental image Elon is in drag as Dorothy, obviously.)
Liz Cheney is getting one for her work on the House January 6 Select Committee, and all the ways she’s stood up to defend democracy the last couple years, so that’ll piss Trump the fuck off.
Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, who co-chaired the January 6 Committee with Cheney, will also receive the medal.
We are sure Trump will have some sort of hallucinatory conniption about how they deleted all the evidence that TOTALLY EXONERATES him, because once Trump gets an incorrect conspiracy theory mangled up inside that big ugly head of his, he never gets free of it.
On top of those types of folks, there’s Mary Bonauto, who argued Obergefell v. Hodges, AKA the marriage equality case, before the Supreme Court. Plus Evan Wolfson, perhaps the single most important activist over the decades of that fight.
You can check out the whole list here.On top of a number of former politicians like Bill Bradley and Chris Dodd, it’s full of people with bios that read like that of Diane Carlson Evans, who “founded the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation to ensure female service members received the recognition they deserve.” Plus civil rights leaders and more women’s rights leaders, and so on and so forth.
And this posthumous award, which seems to contain a pre-emptive rebuke for the incoming Hitler wannabe administration:
Mitsuye Endo Tsutsumi
In a shameful chapter in our Nation’s history, Mitsuye Endo was incarcerated alongside more than 120,000 Japanese Americans. Undaunted, she challenged the injustice and reached the Supreme Court. Her resolve allowed thousands of Japanese Americans to return home and rebuild their lives, reminding us that we are a Nation that stands for freedom for all.
The entire list is a rebuke of Trump, really. American heroes, all.
But yeah, the Liz Cheney part is the part that’s gonna stick up Trump’s ass and give him sideways bowel movements. Bet those sting REAL bad. (snip-comments on the page)
Please remember when you read what I write, I never went through Army basic. I was a former US Navy, so showed up at my first army post with no uniform. It freaked the low level E4 – E5s out, they were demanding I change into a uniform I did not have.
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Hi Ten Bears. I reblog this not only because it is impressive and the fact is a lot of it I couldn’t do at 20 and in the US Army. Just being honest. My job valued our technical skills not the physical aspect of military life. In the one live action three day drill with laser tag gear in the early 1980s where our people in our satellite compound were included we happily dressed up in face paint (mixed with face cream for easy removal) listened carefully, and that morning took up our assigned places. We quickly grew bored but diligently shot at any enemy we saw. We were proud defenders of our installation from the evil USSR.
Early in the afternoon our upper ranks pulled us in. Told us to clean up and there would be a meeting in the morning. Excited about the meeting we all gather in the morning looking for our gear, our faces and hands again well coated with face cream colored camo. We did not find our laser tag stuff, no vests, nothing to place on our M16s. Then the meeting started and we all felt shitty. We no longer would be part of the drill. The infantry base that was assigned to protect us would do so without our help. A lot of barely out of our teens boys clamored to know why, we had fun even if it was very boring.
Turns out that the reason they pulled us in the afternoon before was in our eagerness to protect our site and play soldier … which we all knew we were not. To be continued …
(side note during one of the yearly common task training we all had to pass one thing was to recognize which tank was from which enemy. I couldn’t do a single one. My answer was always the same. “I don’t know which country it is from but I am sure as hell not going to shoot at it with an M16 and piss the fucker off” I passed the test with 100%. Also during that testing was a requirement to open and correctly orient, sight the target, and then press the correct buttons to then fire a LAWS rocket.
When it was my turn I proudly took my 117 pounds up to the table, took the law dummy, stepped up to the mark and tried to pull it open which would slide the two halves into the fully opened locked position. I struggled for a few times until the training officer stopped me, took the training tool, turned it around to the proper direction showing me the markings. Ok I felt a bit foolish but determined now to ace the test. I yanked on both sides and nothing happened. I did it again. Then I tried doing it by jumping up in the air to use the momentum to help. It did not. After about three minutes and in frustration I put the thing between my legs to try to pull it open. At that point Sergeant Emory rushed to me and took the training tool, opened it up and positioned it on my shoulder. I sighted it like a pro and pressed the correct buttons plus trigger and registered a direct hit with the system. I passed. I was an Army soldier on the books.
One last note on that training. The old timers in the unit told us many tips like the face cream for the face paint, but the never addressed the placement of stuff on our waist belts. The shoulder belts did have special places for things, but the waist belt was not defined. I was so small that by the time I got everything I was to have on the belt, I had no place for the canteen … So I placed my full of water very regulation hard canteen right in front of my body. Yes follow the body line.
The drill required us to run and zigzag then when ordered drop and cover ourselves. I proudly started my run, hell one thing I had going for me was I was fast, I zigged, I zagged, and then the command was bellowed to drop and cover. Very much into the moment of playing army … Remember I never went through Army Basic Training … I dropped full on my belly … and nearly lost my mind and consciousness. Only the fact of my abusive past allowed me to roll desperately sideways, clawing desperately at a place some lower than my waist. For those that still can not picture what happened let me explain.
My canteen was hanging directly down in my front. Think of what is in the front of a boy / guy that landing on a hard object at a full run dive might be the resulting impact point. Yes my very sensitive testicles took the impact of my full 117 body weight fully on my regulation hard canteen. I couldn’t breathe, I rolled, I staggered to my knees, then fell again, then I struggled to me feet, staggered a few steps and collapsed into a fetal tight posture. I lost the world.
When I woke up I was in the hospital, I was told that Sergeant Emory had rushed to me and tried to open my posture and then realized what happened. I did not suffer any lasting effects except for some reason I never had to do common task testing again while in the unit. Every time they came up someone was needed to be at the site and somehow the schedule always had me pulling shift leader. But I always passed.)
Now to the reason we were pulled from and stopped from being part of the three day drill. As I said we took defensive positions inside our fenced in satellite site and even when bored we shot any enemy we could see. The problem was the first day the program did not introduce the enemy yet. The people we proudly lined up on with our tag system M16s were our very own defenders from the nearby infantry base.
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So that is why I admire Ten Bears and his program of personal health, exercise, and being ready for those that might attack him. My body long ago gave out with decaying bones, nerves fraying and shorting / dying, my spine doing 5 different ways of causing me pain and the lack of ability to keep standing when my legs go out under me suddenly, the broken bones of childhood refused to heal properly. I admit I admire him, I wish I could do the same. And on that point, one more last thing for a long post.
In the last year I went from not being able to walk 8 car lengths and back to and from our mailbox to now my daily walk I do most days is 2.08 miles. I bought a small hand weight system, the max is 11 pounds on one hand bar and there are two bars. The weights come in 1 pound units and can be placed together with the handle being 3 pounds. I started out using two 1 pound weights hooked together for arm and what my different shoulders can do with the torn / ripped apart muscles in my shoulders. I am now up to using the 3 pound handle for arm stuff, including triceps. I still can not use that weight on my shoulders and can not use any weight on my left shoulder that I need / have an MRI order for.
The entire point is I agree with Ten Bears. Things are going to get bad. We who are not on the maga side need to do all we can to protect ourselves. Those of us LGBTQ+ need to do all we can to protect ourselves and each other. Look the person that did that bombing was a native born Army vet, yet the right wing media including fox entertainment is still claiming it was an immigrant. They have long blamed the LGBT+ for all social ills, and the last three years attacked every drag queen story hours claiming they were saving kids. What will they do or manufacture now? Hugs
The eight tech titans alone gained more than $600 billion this year, 43% of the $1.5 trillion increase among the 500 richest people tracked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Greenland’s natural resources are worth many trillions; future drillers and diggers won’t care that it’s cold and distant. As Alaska proves, where there’s value, there’ll be value-extractors
plus, perhaps, a casino or two. Yes, the right kind of development could MGGA—Make Greenland Great Again.
This is good news and shows why so many are moving into California and out of places like Florida. Students should feel free from fear while learning. They also should feel free to be their authentic self in a supportive atmosphere. School is a time to learn about the world, other people, subjects, and about one’s self. And not all kids have safe supportive homes. Hugs.
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Miguel Gutierrez Jr.
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CalMatters
Supporters of transgender rights gathered at the Capitol during a press conference on March 17, 2022.
Amid a flurry of recent school board policies aimed at the rights of transgender students, California passed a new law in July that prevents schools from requiring staff to notify parents if a student identifies as LGBTQ.
“Teachers can still talk to their parents,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said at a press conference on Monday in which he touted a new plan to improve career opportunities for adults. “What they can’t do is fire a teacher for not being a snitch. I don’t think teachers should be gender police.”
LGBTQ advocates said that “forced outing” policies, such as those adopted in Chino, Temecula and a dozen other districts, infringe on students’ privacy and could potentially harm students whose parents disapprove of their identity.
The state sued to stop Chino’s policy, and most districts either scrapped their policies, tweaked the language or put them on hold.
This act “could not be more timely or necessary, and LGBTQ+ students across California can breathe a sigh of relief,” Tony Hoang, executive director of Equality California, which advocates for LGBTQ rights, wrote. “LGBTQ+ youth can now have these important family conversations when they are ready and in ways that strengthen the relationship between parent and child, not as a result of extremist politicians intruding into the parent-child relationship.”
‘The battle continues’
Opponents of the new law said that parental notification policies actually strengthen ties between students and parents, and schools should not withhold information on such important matters. Even though a parental notification measure that would have applied to all schools failed to qualify for the ballot, opponents vowed to keep fighting.
“This (law) doesn’t clarify anything. And nothing prevents individual teachers from bringing the issue up with parents,” said Roseville school board member Jonathan Zachreson, an organizer of the failed ballot measure and whose district was among those that passed parental notification policies. “So the battle continues.”
The new law also requires the state Department of Education to update its LGBTQ resources and encourage school districts to offer counseling, support groups, clubs, anti-bullying policies and other measures to support LGBTQ students and their families. Schools would have to pay for those services with their existing funding.
“I don’t think teachers should be gender police.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom
LGBTQ young people are particularly vulnerable on school campuses. In a recent survey of 18,000 LGBTQ young people nationwide, nearly half said they had been bullied in the past year, and 10% said they had attempted suicide. Those whose schools supported LGBTQ rights were less likely to suffer from mental health challenges.
Even if the new law sparks a backlash in more conservative areas of the state, California was right to move forward with it, especially as some states push ahead with their own parental notification policies, said USC education professor Morgan Polikoff.
“Will everyone like this law? Certainly not. Will it lead to conflict? There is no doubt,” Polikoff said. “But I am hopeful this will be good for the queer kids in California’s schools and will point the way toward similar efforts in other states.”
CalMatters’ Adam Echelman contributed to this story.
By JOHN HANNAUpdated 10:44 AM CST, December 29, 2024Share
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republicans made claims about illegal voting by noncitizens a centerpiece of their 2024 campaign messaging and plan to push legislation in the new Congress requiring voters to provide proof of U.S. citizenship. Yet there’s one place with a GOP supermajority where linking voting to citizenship appears to be a nonstarter: Kansas.
That’s because the state has been there, done that, and all but a few Republicans would prefer not to go there again. Kansas imposed a proof-of-citizenship requirement over a decade ago that grew into one of the biggest political fiascos in the state in recent memory.
The law, passed by the state Legislature in 2011 and implemented two years later, ended up blocking the voter registrations of more than 31,000 U.S. citizens who were otherwise eligible to vote. That was 12% of everyone seeking to register in Kansas for the first time. Federal courts ultimately declared the law an unconstitutional burden on voting rights, and it hasn’t been enforced since 2018.
Kansas provides a cautionary tale about how pursuing an election concern that in fact is extremely rare risks disenfranchising a far greater number of people who are legally entitled to vote. The state’s top elections official, Secretary of State Scott Schwab, championed the idea as a legislator and now says states and the federal government shouldn’t touch it.
“Kansas did that 10 years ago,” said Schwab, a Republican. “It didn’t work out so well.”
Steven Fish, a 45-year-old warehouse worker in eastern Kansas, said he understands the motivation behind the law. In his thinking, the state was like a store owner who fears getting robbed and installs locks. But in 2014, after the birth of his now 11-year-old son inspired him to be “a little more responsible” and follow politics, he didn’t have an acceptable copy of his birth certificate to get registered to vote in Kansas.
“The locks didn’t work,” said Fish, one of nine Kansas residents who sued the state over the law. “You caught a bunch of people who didn’t do anything wrong.”
A small problem, but wide support for a fix
Kansas’ experience appeared to receive little if any attention outside the state as Republicans elsewhere pursued proof-of-citizenship requirements this year.
Arizona enacted a requirement this year, applying it to voting for state and local elections but not for Congress or president. The Republican-led U.S. House passed a proof-of-citizenship requirement in the summer and plans to bring back similar legislation after the GOP won control of the Senate in November.
In Ohio, the Republican secretary of state revised the form that poll workers use for voter eligibility challenges to require those not born in the U.S. to show naturalization papers to cast a regular ballot. A federal judge declined to block the practice days before the election.
Also, sizable majorities of voters in Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina and the presidential swing states of North Carolina and Wisconsin were inspired to amend their state constitutions’ provisions on voting even though the changes were only symbolic. Provisions that previously declared that all U.S. citizens could vote now say that only U.S. citizens can vote — a meaningless distinction with no practical effect on who is eligible.
To be clear, voters already must attest to being U.S. citizens when they register to vote and noncitizens can face fines, prison and deportation if they lie and are caught.
“There is nothing unconstitutional about ensuring that only American citizens can vote in American elections,” U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, of Texas, the leading sponsor of the congressional proposal, said in an email statement to The Associated Press.
Why the courts rejected the Kansas citizenship rule
After Kansas residents challenged their state’s law, both a federal judge and federal appeals court concluded that it violated a law limiting states to collecting only the minimum information needed to determine whether someone is eligible to vote. That’s an issue Congress could resolve.
The courts ruled that with “scant” evidence of an actual problem, Kansas couldn’t justify a law that kept hundreds of eligible citizens from registering for every noncitizen who was improperly registered. A federal judge concluded that the state’s evidence showed that only 39 noncitizens had registered to vote from 1999 through 2012 — an average of just three a year.
In 2013, then-Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a Republican who had built a national reputation advocating tough immigration laws, described the possibility of voting by immigrants living in the U.S. illegally as a serious threat. He was elected attorney general in 2022 and still strongly backs the idea, arguing that federal court rulings in the Kansas case “almost certainly got it wrong.”
Kobach also said a key issue in the legal challenge — people being unable to fix problems with their registrations within a 90-day window — has probably been solved.
“The technological challenge of how quickly can you verify someone’s citizenship is getting easier,” Kobach said. “As time goes on, it will get even easier.”
Would the Kansas law stand today?
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the Kansas case in 2020. But in August, it split 5-4 in allowing Arizona to continue enforcing its law for voting in state and local elections while a legal challenge goes forward.
Seeing the possibility of a different Supreme Court decision in the future, U.S. Rep.-elect Derek Schmidt says states and Congress should pursue proof-of-citizenship requirements. Schmidt was the Kansas attorney general when his state’s law was challenged.
“If the same matter arose now and was litigated, the facts would be different,” he said in an interview.
But voting rights advocates dismiss the idea that a legal challenge would turn out differently. Mark Johnson, one of the attorneys who fought the Kansas law, said opponents now have a template for a successful court fight.
“We know the people we can call,” Johnson said. “We know that we’ve got the expert witnesses. We know how to try things like this.” He predicted “a flurry — a landslide — of litigation against this.”
Born in Illinois but unable to register in Kansas
Initially, the Kansas requirement’s impacts seemed to fall most heavily on politically unaffiliated and young voters. As of fall 2013, 57% of the voters blocked from registering were unaffiliated and 40% were under 30.
But Fish was in his mid-30s, and six of the nine residents who sued over the Kansas law were 35 or older. Three even produced citizenship documents and still didn’t get registered, according to court documents.
“There wasn’t a single one of us that was actually an illegal or had misinterpreted or misrepresented any information or had done anything wrong,” Fish said.
He was supposed to produce his birth certificate when he sought to register in 2014 while renewing his Kansas driver’s license at an office in a strip mall in Lawrence. A clerk wouldn’t accept the copy Fish had of his birth certificate. He still doesn’t know where to find the original, having been born on an Air Force base in Illinois that closed in the 1990s.
Several of the people joining Fish in the lawsuit were veterans, all born in the U.S., and Fish said he was stunned that they could be prevented from registering.
Liz Azore, a senior adviser to the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab, said millions of Americans haven’t traveled outside the U.S. and don’t have passports that might act as proof of citizenship, or don’t have ready access to their birth certificates.
She and other voting rights advocates are skeptical that there are administrative fixes that will make a proof-of-citizenship law run more smoothly today than it did in Kansas a decade ago.
“It’s going to cover a lot of people from all walks of life,” Avore said. “It’s going to be disenfranchising large swaths of the country.”
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Associated Press writer Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.
The Colorado TV reporter told police that he believed he had been followed by the man because he is Pacific Islander.
Colleen Slevin
A Colorado man is facing possible bias-motivated charges for allegedly attacking a television news reporter after demanding to know whether he was a citizen, saying “This is Trump’s America now,” according to court documents.
Patrick Thomas Egan, 39, was arrested Dec. 18 in Grand Junction, Colorado, after police say he followed KKCO/KJCT reporter Ja’Ronn Alex’s vehicle for around 40 miles (64 kilometers) from the Delta area. Alex told police that he believed he had been followed and attacked because he is Pacific Islander.
After arriving in Grand Junction, Egan, who was driving a taxi, pulled up next to Alex at a stoplight and, according to an arrest affidavit, said something to the effect of: “Are you even a U.S. citizen? This is Trump’s America now! I’m a Marine and I took an oath to protect this country from people like you!”
Alex, who had been out reporting, then drove back to his news station in the city. After he got out of his vehicle, Egan chased Alex as he ran toward the station’s door and demanded to see his identification, according to the document laying out police’s evidence in the case. Egan then tackled Alex, put him in a headlock and “began to strangle him,” the affidavit said. Coworkers who ran out to help and witnesses told police that Alex appeared to be losing his ability to breathe during the attack, which was partially captured on surveillance video, according to the document.
According to the station’s website, Alex is a native of Detroit. KKCO/KJCT reported that he was driving a news vehicle at the time.
Egan was arrested on suspicion of bias-motivated crimes, second degree assault and harassment. He is scheduled to appear in court Thursday to learn whether prosecutors have filed formal charges against him.
Egan’s lawyer, Ruth Swift, was out of the office Friday and did not return a telephone message seeking comment.
December 29, 1890 The U.S. Army killed approximately 300 Miniconju Sioux (another of the Teton Sioux tribes). They had fled after the murder of Sitting Bull and sought refuge on the Oglala reservation of Pine Ridge at Wounded Knee, in the new state of South Dakota. The 7th Cavalry (Custer’s old command) fired their artillery amidst mostly unarmed women, children, and fleeing men. The Wounded Knee Massacre was the final major military battle in the genocide against Native Americans. 18 soldiers received Congressional Medals of Honor for their “bravery.” Encroaching white settlement after gold was found in 1874 on Sioux lands led to conflicts. The Great Sioux Agreement of 1889 established reservations for the native inhabitants and encouraged further white settlement on Indian land.
December 29, 1996 War-weary guerrilla and government leaders in Guatemala signed an accord ending 36 years of civil conflict. What was the conflict all about?
Civil war has broken out within the MAGA Republicans. On the one side are the traditional MAGAs, who tend to be white, anti-immigrant, and less educated than the rest of the U.S. They believe that the modern government’s protection of equal rights for women and minorities has ruined America, and they tend to want to isolate the U.S. from the rest of the world. They make up Trump’s voting base.
On the other side are the new MAGAs who appear to have taken control of the incoming Trump administration. Led by Elon Musk, who bankrolled Trump’s campaign, the new MAGA wing is made up of billionaires, especially tech entrepreneurs, many of whom are themselves immigrants.
During the campaign, these two wings made common cause because they both want to destroy the current U.S. government, especially as President Joe Biden had been using it to strengthen American democracy. Traditional MAGA wants to get rid of the government that protects equality and replace it with one that enforces white male supremacy and Christianity. New MAGA—which some have started to call DOGE, after the Department of Government Efficiency run by Musk and pharmaceutical entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy—wants to get rid of the government that regulates business, especially technology, and protects American interests against competition from countries like China.
Their shared commitment to the destruction of the current government is about the only overlap between these two factions.
With the campaign over, traditional MAGA and DOGE are ripping apart. Trump sparked the fight when he announced on Sunday, December 22, that he would appoint Musk associate Sriram Krishnan, who was born in India, as a senior policy advisor on artificial intelligence.
On Monday, MAGA activist Laura Loomer criticized Trump’s choice of Krishnan. Loomer was in Trump’s inner circle until three months ago, when her anti-immigrant tirades made Trump campaign staff worry she would cost Trump votes and forced her out of his public schedule. Loomer noted that Krishnan wants to remove the cap on green cards for workers from certain countries.
Krishnan has also called for making it easier for skilled foreign workers to come to the U.S. on H-1B temporary visas. These programs are important to the technology sector, but critics say they enable companies to hire foreign workers at lower pay than U.S. workers, that H-1B workers are trapped in their jobs, and that wage theft is rampant in the H-1B program.
Loomer said those jobs “should be given to American STEM students.” Then she got to the heart of the matter, complaining that MAGA is getting left out of the new administration. She noted that “none of the tech executives who are meeting with Trump and getting appointed in his cabinet supported him in 2020 or during the 2024 primary.” She continued: “I feel like many of them are trying to get into Trump’s admin[istration] to enrich themselves and get contracts at [the] D[epartment] O[f] D[efense]. This is not America First Policy.”
When another tech entrepreneur and Trump appointee David Sacks defended Krishnan, Loomer made a series of racist posts, claiming among other things that: “Our country was built by white Europeans, actually. Not third-world invaders from India.” She said, “It’s not racist against Indians to want the original MAGA policies I voted for. I voted for a reduction in H-1B visas. Not an extension.”
On Wednesday, December 25—Christmas, a major holiday for MAGA supporters—Musk took a stand against Loomer and the MAGAs. He posted on X that the U.S. needs twice the number of engineers it has, and welcomed foreign engineers. “The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low,” he tweeted. “Think of this like a pro sports team: if you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be. That enables the whole TEAM to win.”
Loomer responded: “Is DOGE real? Or is it a vanity project?” Others complained about the “Tech Bros” “hubris [and] arrogance with their flippant, condescending, and elitist responses to legitimate criticisms of the H1B1 program.” Still others pointed out that there were big layoffs in tech this year and asked why they weren’t getting rehired if there was such a desperate need for workers.
Musk posted: “Investing in Americans is actually hard. Really hard. It costs money and time and effort to make a person productive. It’s a short term net loss. It’s much easier to bring in skilled workers who might not do quite a good a job [sic], but will work for a fraction of the cost and be happy just to be here.”
Loomer responded: “The elephant in the room is that [Musk], who is not MAGA and never has been, is a total f*cking drag on the Trump transition. He’s a stage 5 clinger who over stayed his welcome at Mar a Lago in an effort to become Trump’s side piece and be the point man for all of his accomplices in big Tech to slither in to Mar a Lago.” [sic]
Musk called Loomer a troll, and she responded that “Telling the truth isn’t trolling… You bought your way into MAGA 5 minutes ago…. We all know you only donated your money so you could influence immigration policy and protect your buddy Xi JinPing.”
Thursday everything broke open. Ramaswamy, who was born in Ohio to parents who immigrated to America from India, posted on X an indictment of American culture that seemed a direct assault on MAGA Republicans, who have been vocal about their disdain for education.
Ramaswamy posted that tech companies hire foreign-born and first-generation engineers rather than native-born Americans because “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long…. A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.” He called for “[m]ore math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less ‘chillin.’ More extracurriculars, less ‘hanging out at the mall.’”
“If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve,” he warned. “‘Normalcy’ doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our a**es handed to us by China.” He called for America to embrace “a new golden era,” but warned it was possible “only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness. That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence.”
With that, the fat was in the fire. MAGA dragged Ramaswamy, with even former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley retorting: “There is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture. All you have to do is look at the border and see how many want what we have. We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers.” Haley ran for president against Trump but ultimately endorsed him. She is herself the child of Indian immigrants.
Loomer also hit back against Musk, posting: “Is DOGE a way to ‘cut spending’ or REDIRECT the spending toward the pet projects of tech bro billionaires? It’s looking like the latter, T[o] B[e] H[onest].” She continued: “‘Hey, let’s convince the peasants that we are saving them money as we enrich ourselves!’” Another right-wing poster wondered: “How did DOGE go from ‘let’s cut wasteful government spending’ to ‘here’s why we need to import more immigrants’ almost overnight?”
When Musk appeared to limit Loomer’s ability to use X, she posted: “I have always been America First and a die hard supporter of President Trump and I believe that promises made should be promises kept. Donald Trump promised to remove the H1B visa program and I support his policy. Now, as one of Trump’s biggest supporters, I’m having my free speech silenced by a tech billionaire for simply questioning the tech oligarchy.” Other right-wing accounts accused Musk of censoring them, too, and racist anti-immigrant sentiments flowed freely.
On Friday, when cartoonist and right-wing commenter Scott Adams posted that MAGA was “taking a page from Democrats on how to lose elections while feeling good about themselves,” Musk agreed and added: “And those contemptible fools must be removed from the Republican Party, root and stem.”
Loomer commented that Musk “is now referring to MAGA as ‘contemptible fools.’… The Trump base is being replaced by Big Tech executives. So sad to see this.” She tagged Trump and added “I feel so sad for MAGA.” Meanwhile, other MAGA supporters on X piled on Musk, complaining that he had not paid them, as promised, for their participation in his “free speech” petition during the campaign.
By today, key Trump ally Steve Bannon, a central figure in MAGA, had taken to another right-wing social media platform to warn his supporters that Musk is showing his “true colors” and to demand that the H-1B visa program be “zeroed-out.” Another right-wing influencer, Jack Posobiec, tweeted: “Today was the day we found out who is getting rich by screwing over the American worker.”
Trump did not weigh in on the fight but, in what appeared to be intended to be a private communication to Musk, wrote on his social media site: “Where are you? When are you coming to the ‘Center of the Universe,’ Mar-a-Lago. Bill Gates asked to come, tonight. We miss you and x! New Year’s Eve is going to be AMAZING!!! DJT.” (According to Aaron Pellish and Alayna Treene of CNN, “x” here likely refers to Musk’s son X Æ A-Xii.)
Why does this all matter? Because while Trump’s people keep insisting he won in a landslide and has a mandate that he will put in place on day one, his fragile coalition is splintering even before he takes office.
Trump won less than 50% of the vote. Despite their slim victory, the Republican Party was already in a civil war between MAGA and establishment Republicans who are fed up with the MAGAs who threaten to burn down the government and almost a century of international diplomacy: just a week ago, Senate Republicans were publicly complaining about the dysfunctional “sh*t show” and “fiasco” in the House.
Now, with Trump not even in office yet, the two factions of Trump’s MAGA base—which, indeed, have opposing interests—are at war.
This video is a great resource as he details his own sources that show the in 1776 only 17% of the population was religious. It also shows how the religious people keep pushing for something that never was due to being taught that lie as a child. Hell they say my pastor / preacher told me it was a Christian nation, my parents did, my friends knew it was … so it must be. But no it is a created fiction on the scale of Star Wars, Star Trek, and the Lord of the Ring trilogy. Great short video to watch. Hugs
Were Americans more religious in 1776? Here’s what we know about religious affiliation in 1776 America.
Is America a Christian nation? Was America founded on Judeo-Christian values? The United States had a religious affiliation rate of about 17% in 1776, according to The Churching of America 1776-2005 by Roger Finke and Rodney Stark.
This is an incredibly informative post on how to understand and deal with Christian apologetics anti-trans disinformation and lies. I started following this young person when he first left his church and faith doing videos on how the anti-science he was taught all his life in his church schools was incorrect and wrong. Now he exposes how Frank Turek got his breasts reduced in the Navy because it did not look male enough to him … yet he doesn’t feel that had anything to do with gender. The hypocrisy hits you hard in the face, but Frank can not see it, because he is paid not to. The video also talks about the Littman study and the Cass report in a small section. The video also talks a small amount on how the right / religious people frame their talking points to get sympathy for their views by pretending to save the innocent victims. If there is any doubt I support trans people 100% let that end. Trans rights are human rights. Trans women are simply women, trans men are men. I look forward to the day we don’t need to use the word trans, just as I do the day when we can call same sex marriage just marriage. As I think it was Spock in Star Trek who said a difference that makes no difference is no difference. Hugs
Scottie's Playtime 