You want to call your House rep now and tell them Trump needs to be impeached immediately for defying a Supreme Court order (re: Kilmar Abrego Garcia), which functionally voids our constitution and means no one in America has rights anymore.
I am not exaggerating.
As of now, anybody can be disappeared, no due process, no recourse. Trump is openly disregarding a Supreme Court order and says he’ll send US citizens to El Salvador.
This is not a drill.
Call your House rep and tell them they must impeach. Tell them if they cannot bring themselves to impeach, they must resign. A more open and shut case to impeach is not possible. Trump and his administration are saying openly, in public, that anybody can be kidnapped by ICE, even in error, and disappeared permanently.
Call your senators, too, and tell them to support impeachment (it goes to them once it passes a majority House vote).
“Hello, my name is _______ and I am a constituent from _______. My address is ________.
I am reaching out today to urge Representative ______ to call for the impeachment of President Trump due to his refusal to comply with the Supreme Court’s April 10th decision regarding Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was unlawfully deported and has been charged with no crime. As Justice Sotomayor stated, this inaction implies the government’s ability to ‘deport and incarcerate any person, including U.S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene.’ This precedent is unconstitutional, highly illegal, and grounds for impeachment. Every individual, regardless of immigration status, must be guaranteed a right to due process.
Representative _____, I urge you to stand on the right side of history today by calling for President Trump’s impeachment. This administration can not be allowed to continue unilaterally defying the checks and balances that are intrinsic to our government.”
You can also find your representative and senators and their phone numbers on https://5calls.org/
My favourite alternative news resources for staying informed:
Garbage Day — As an internet user, you are affected by the state of the internet — I’ve long read this newsletter for its analysis of culture through the lens of internet ephemera, but in recent weeks Garbage Day has also become one of the very best sources of breaking news and analysis about the ongoing coup. Even if you subscribe to nothing else in this e-mail, you are certain to discover a variety of journalists and news publishers via this publication (many of the independent journalists linked below I originally found via a link in Garbage Day.)
404 Media — As a reader of my work, you are affected by US anti-pornography laws, which limit freedom of sexual expression online — Sam Cole (ex-senior editor for Motherboard) at the independent news publication 404 Media does the best reporting on news related to these topics of any individual journalist I’m aware of. 404 Media is an internet and technology news platform that was co-founded by four journalists: a writer, two senior editors, and the editor-in-chief of Motherboard.
What the Fuck Just Happened Today? — As a person who lives in the world right now, you are, unfortunately, affected to some extent by US politics — WTFJHT delivers an extremely lucid, concise, once-per-day summary of US political news.
Law Dork — As a person affected to some extent by US politics, it is in your interest to understand US law. Chris Geidner (US Supreme Court expert and ex-BuzzFeed legal editor) is the best source I can recommend for informative, detailed reporting + analysis of, in particular, LGBTQ+ political and legal issues in US news.
Erin in the Morning — Erin Reed (trans rights activist and ex-digital director for TheAmerican Independent) is one of the best sources for all news regarding the fight for trans rights in the US; in-depth coverage of the wave of anti-trans legislation and how people are fighting back. Very difficult and vitally important work.
Notes on the Crises — Nathan Tankus (economist and self-taught monetary policy expert.) This is a finance-focused publication that has pivoted to full-time coverage of Elon Musk’s activities within the treasury. It has been one of the first places to break news of Musk’s activities and has been cited in the lawsuits against him.
Popular Information — Judd Legum (founder of the now-defunct ThinkProgress.) Highly influential investigative reporting; also publishes the newly-minted Musk Watch, focused on Elon Musk’s activities.
Public Notice — Aaron Rupar (ex-Vox journalist.) Notable reporting on the activities of the US right wing for a progressive audience.
WIRED — Believe it or not, the tech-focused magazine WIRED has been consistently publishing what is universally considered to be some of the best reporting on all breaking news WRT Elon Musk’s ongoing bureaucratic coup.
This list, advice on also staying sane, and some responses to current events that I have found personally helpful (+ a crucial postscript on keeping your news organized) in today’s irregular newsletter →
“Authors should not be ALLOWED to write about–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative
“This book should be taken off of shelves for featuring–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative
“Schools shouldn’t teach this book in class because–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative
“Nobody actually likes or wants to read classics because they’re–” you are an anti-intellectual and an idiot
“I only read YA fantasy books because every classic novel or work of literary fiction is problematic and features–” you are an anti-intellectual and you are robbing yourself of the full richness of the human experience.
“you are functionally a conservative” is such a good and clarifying insult
Literally right after I saw this post, I saw another post in a discord chat for BOOK EDITORS in which an outspokenly liberal editor talked about how Nabokov should have never been published because he wrote about p*dophiles and described women’s bodies in ways that made her uncomfortable. She described his writing as “objectively terrible” and said she wanted to burn his books. And other editors were bringing up classics they didn’t like and talking about how they wanted to throw them in the trash. This wasn’t like a light “unpopular opinion!” conversation. This was actual book editors talking about how books should be destroyed and censored.
There is something so scary and toxic in global culture right now. The revival of fascism is influencing everyone’s mindset and approach to art, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum.
I see far more books being censored today than when I was a kid. Librarians handed me The Catcher in the Rye, The Sexual Politics of Meat, and Animal Farm when I was literally 8-11. My mom would never have taken a book away from me. I read everything from the Tao Te Ching to the Qur'an to atheist texts under my desk at school. Teachers thought nothing of it or encouraged it. Books seemed universally acknowledged as sacrosanct to me.
Now I can’t find any adults who don’t hesitate or want to make exceptions when it comes to censorship. Even the most liberal social activist librarians I know go, “well except for book X…”
Functionally conservative. It’s so important to have the language to express that.
Thank you for this addition!
I did a report on book banning once.
Actually, I did reports on book banning three separate times with three separate teachers, with three separate sets of parameters so I was able to write about the same topic in different ways, but this is specifically about the report I did in university. The actual specs for the report included that we were supposed to complete some kind of study or poll (this was not a science class). I put the questions out on a couple of forums I belonged to at the time and asked a few IRL friends as well. A lot of the questions were standard for this sort of thing, I think - were you ever assigned to read a banned book, did you ever read banned books on your own, did you read/were you assigned them BECAUSE they were banned or did you find out about them being banned later, what’s your opinion on banning books, etc.
But there was one question I asked that ended up reshaping the entire thrust of my presentation: “Are there any books that you think SHOULD be banned, and if so, why?”
Here’s the thing. Most of the forums I was posting on were fan spaces for a book series that, at the time, was one of the most banned/challenged books out there. It’s a fandom that I have since entirely distanced myself from, that I one hundred percent do not recommend to anyone, that I will actively attempt to dissuade people from reading or talking about, and that I would like to not be popular anymore. I’m sure most of you reading this can guess which one I’m talking about (I won’t name it or go into specifics because I don’t want to trip any filters unnecessarily). But it was KNOWN that these books were banned in a lot of places. A lot of people wore the “I read banned books” badge with pride. I fully expected that the answer to that question would be a resounding “no” from the forums, and that I’d maybe get a few affirmative answers from one of the other spaces.
I was shocked. Not only did a lot of people come back with either “not exactly but I think we should keep [author] or [book] out of the hands of children” or “yes, [book]/anything by [author] should be banned because XYZPDQ”, but not a single person who responded gave me the same answer. The only one I remember - keep in mind it’s been almost twenty years - was that one person specifically said The Bone Collector, and for the “why do you think it should be banned” question, they only said, “No. I’m not explaining it. It’s too horrible to even think about. Just believe me when I say nobody should ever be allowed to read this book.”
I highlighted that last comment in my presentation, along with several other of my “favorite” official reasons for banning books - the Alabama school board that banned The Diary of Anne Frank in 1984 because it was “a real downer”, the district that removed A Raisin in the Sun because it was “pornographic”, the library that took Charlie and the Chocolate Factory out of circulation because it “might be hurtful to children without parents”, and things of that nature - and pointed out that all of these were the same thing. This was somebody saying “I don’t like this, therefore nobody should read it, and I shouldn’t have to explain why.” I also pointed out that if you can’t give a good reason, the whole thing falls apart, and then I quoted “Smut” by Tom Lehrer:
All books can be indecent books, Though recent books are bolder, For filth, I’m glad to say, Is in the mind of the beholder. When correctly viewed, Everything is lewd. I can tell you things about Peter Pan And the Wizard of Oz - THERE’S a dirty old man…
Go back to that paragraph I mentioned earlier, about those books that I no longer recommend to anyone. Notice how I phrased that. I don’t recommend them. I will tell you all the reasons why I don’t think you should buy them. I will tell you all the problems with the author, with the franchise, with the writing. I wish they were out of print, I wish they were deeply unpopular, I wish nobody would ever read them again.
But I still won’t advocate for banning them.
It’s so easy to twist a justification. Look at what I quoted up there! A Raisin in the Sun was banned for being “pornographic”. One of the websites I used as a source responded to that accusation with “Did they read the same play I did?” At the time, I thought the comment was funny. Now, twenty years later, I realize: It was a buzzword. It was a convenient label. At the time of the challenge, just saying “it’s pornographic” was enough. Obviously you’re not some kind of sicko who wants to hear about all the pornographic details, are you? Freak! That’s pornography! And they’re teaching it in schools! We should get rid of it!
A Raisin in the Sun, for anyone who didn’t study it at any point or read it (or watch the movie, which was very good), is a play/movie about a black family in Chicago in the 1960s. The family matriarch has been in domestic service for years, but she’s just received a very large insurance payment from her husband’s death and is retiring. Wanting to give her family, especially her young grandson, a better life, she goes out and buys a house…in an otherwise exclusively white neighborhood. The head of the homeowner’s association (essentially) comes to visit them and offers to pay them a substantial amount of money to not move into the neighborhood, because segregation isn’t officially a thing and they can’t legally stop them from moving in, but they don’t want them there. There’s a lot more that goes on in the play, and I highly recommend you go and read it, but the point is that there is nothing sexual or titillating in the entire thing. The closest we get is a scene where the daughter (Beneatha, a college student) is gifted a traditional African dress from her boyfriend, who’s Nigerian, and he shows her how to put it on over the clothes she’s already wearing, and maybe the scene where the daughter-in-law (Ruth, a laundress) accidentally reveals that, having found out she’s pregnant, she’s planning to have an abortion rather than bring another child into the world/have another mouth to feed.
It’s not pornographic. But someone didn’t want it taught in schools, so they called it that to get it banned.
It’s so easy to twist labels. If you, a liberal, agree that books with X trait are okay to ban, the people who don’t want books to exist will find a way to say they have X trait, and then what are you going to do, admit that you like that sort of thing? Sicko! Freak! Pervert!
You don’t have to like the book, or the author, or the topic. But if you’re advocating for banning them entirely, you’re functionally a conservative.
People have called The Diary of Anne Frank child porn (which is now more properly called CSAM - child sexual assault material) because in the book Anne discusses her own sexuality and masturbation habits in a very direct and relatively detailed way. And since she was 14 and thus a child (except 14 year olds are not children, they’re adolescents) this constituted disgusting vile child porn.
Which is ridiculous any way you look at it, but that’s the justification many people have used to get that book banned. We can’t let people know that minors have any kind of sexual awareness or feelings, now, can we?
“Normal” test results are not the relief people think they are. When you wake up in pain and continue to be in pain for hours every day and your tests come back normal you don’t stop being in pain.
when *routine* tests come back normal: a good sign! your body continues to function as it should!
when *diagnostic* tests come back normal: bad! this means you’re gonna have to do even more tests in hopes of finding out whatever the fuck is clearly going wrong in your body
i am struggling to imagine an apocalyptic scenario wherein gardeners & weavers & knitters & backyard chicken farmers & tinkerers & carvers & artisans & musicians & storytellers & enthusiastic hobbyists of all sorts with skills to teach are somehow LESS valued than Some Dude With A Limited Number Of Tin Cans In His Basement.
ALT
