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anti transgender legislation
Florida Gov DeSantis Suspends 'Failing' Presidential Campaign
"As Floridians we will be stuck with him until 2026, so continue to hold him accountable and demand better for Florida," one state representative said.
Jan 21, 2024
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced on Sunday that he was suspending his presidential campaign ahead of Tuesday's New Hampshire primary and endorsing former President Donald Trump.
DeSantis broke the news in a video posted on social media nearly a week after he finished 30 percentage points behind Trump in the Iowa caucuses.
"Ron DeSantis, a man who built his entire campaign on attacking and demonizing already marginalized communities, has finally suspended his failing Presidential campaign," Florida Representative Anna V. Eskamani, a Democrat, posted on social media in response to the news. "As Floridians we will be stuck with him until 2026, so continue to hold him accountable and demand better for Florida."
"Ron DeSantis should be forced to carry his Presidential campaign to term."
In his video, DeSantis explained his decision.
"If there was anything I could do to produce a favorable outcome—more campaign stops, more interviews—I would do it," he said. "But I can't ask our supporters to volunteer their time and donate their resources if we don't have a clear path to victory. Accordingly, I am today suspending my campaign."
In responding to the news, activists and journalists highlighted DeSantis' far-right record on reproductive justice and LGBTQ+ rights. As Florida governor, he signed laws nearly banning abortion and prohibiting educators from discussing sexual orientation and gender identity with their K-12 students.
"Ron DeSantis should be forced to carry his Presidential campaign to term," Melanie D'Arrigo, the executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, posted on social medial.
Independent LGBTQ+ journalist Erin Reed wrote that DeSantis "is one of the most vile anti-LGBTQ+ politicians of the modern era. If he had his way, trans people would be eradicated from the Earth and queer people would have to go back into hiding."
"The end of his campaign is a moment we can all be thankful for," Reed said.
Equality California posted that the "real loss" of DeSantis' career was "the years of unnecessary struggles he imposed on LGBTQ+ youth."
"Their courage outshines his ambition," the advocacy group said.
DeSantis' departure sets up the rest of the Republican primary to be a contest between Trump and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley.
"I want to say to Ron, he ran a great race. He's been a good governor, and we wish him well," Haley said in response to the news. "Having said that, it's now one fella and one lady left."
In his message, DeSantis chose to endorse Trump, despite the fact that pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc. funded more than $10-million worth of attacks against him before he even announced his presidential bid, as NBC News reported.
"It's clear to me that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance," DeSantis said, adding that "we can't go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear, a repackaged form of warmed-over corporatism that Nikki Haley represents."
Toward the end of his announcement, DeSantis repeated a quote he attributed to former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill: "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts."
However, the International Churchill Society includes this quote on a list of quotations misattributed to Churchill, as journalist Dominic Pino pointed out.
The society listed the quote DeSantis used next to another about success and failure.
"We can find no attribution for either one of these, and you will find that they are broadly attributed to Winston Churchill," the society wrote. "They are found nowhere in his canon, however. An almost equal number of sources found online credit these sayings to Abraham Lincoln—but we have found none that provides any attribution in the Lincoln Archives."
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Strategy in the Time of MAGA: Block and Build
We can get the time and democratic space to build progressive clout for structural change if we can block MAGA in 2024.
Jul 21, 2023
The following is a slightly edited version of a presentation made to a forum sponsored by the San Francisco Gray Panthers on July 18, 2023. The presentation covered three points: (1) the nature of the threat from the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) bloc; (2) the key elements of MAGA’s strategy to take power and impose authoritarian rule and a white Christian Nationalist agenda; and (3) a summary of the “Block and Build” strategy to defeat MAGA and shift the direction of the country.
The MAGA Threat
The front page headline on the July 17 New York Times was, “Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025.” The article underneath contained extensive quotes from former President Donald Trump’s political team about their plans to bring every federal agency directly under president’s control if Trump wins in 2024. The Justice Department will become his political police, the EPA will become a tool of the fossil fuel industry, NLRB will become a union-busting weapon, and so on. Trump will claim the right to “impound funds” Congress has authorized, meaning Trump could unilaterally cut Medicare and Social Security.
A Republican presidential and congressional victory in 2024 would also bring a national abortion ban and national right to work law; more tax cuts for the rich; an eliminationist program for transgender people; Jim Crow 2.0; and a combination of McCarthyism and COINTELPRO for the left.
Trump’s 2016 victory was the product of 50 years of organizing driven by two of the most deeply rooted forces in U.S. society: a wing of the capitalist class rooted in the fossil fuel industry and libertarian billionaires like the Koch brothers, and the layers of people of many classes who are wedded to ordering society with clear racial and gender hierarchies.
The drive for that agenda is not new. It is the latest phase of the 60-year backlash against the gains of 1960s and the 1930s that began within hours of passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Trump’s 2016 victory was the product of 50 years of organizing driven by two of the most deeply rooted forces in U.S. society: a wing of the capitalist class rooted in the fossil fuel industry and libertarian billionaires like the Koch brothers, and the layers of people of many classes who are wedded to ordering society with clear racial and gender hierarchies.
An outpouring of resistance by the larger but fragmented and less-well-organized anti-MAGA majority prevented MAGA from achieving its goals via the 2018, 2020, and 2022 elections. This has produced a kind of stalemate between the MAGA and anti-MAGA blocs. The drama being played out today centers on whether MAGA will succeed in gaining full federal power in 2024; and, if they are beaten back, what will be the character of the anti-MAGA governing coalition.
The MAGA Strategy
MAGA has already gotten dangerously far in its quest for unlimited power. It has captured the Republican Party and the Supreme Court. It holds trifectas (the governorship and legislative majorities) in 22 states. It is lavishly financed, has an organized political base in the white Evangelical Churches, and has a powerful narrative that appeals to white grievance and provides a deep sense of meaning and empowerment to those who accept it. MAGA has an unmatched propaganda and disinformation apparatus in Fox News and other right-wing media. Its loyalists are active within the armed bodies of the state at all levels. And it has incorporated openly white supremacist and fascist militias into its coalition to serve as modern day brownshirts.
All this was the product of decades of work guided by a sophisticated strategy. MAGA operatives studied the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy and knew that the fascists first came to power by legal and constitutional means. Once they had it, they used it to eliminate all opposition.
MAGA’s goal is to use disinformation, voter suppression, and gerrymandering—concentrating on battleground states and swing districts—to win full control of the federal government in 2024.
MAGA strategists then developed a strategy to take and retrain power adapted to the particular constitution and electoral system of the U.S. This country has no constitutional protection of the right to vote or of each person’s vote counting equally. The Voting Rights Act addressed that deep flaw, but it was not part of the Constitution itself and right-wing strategists knew it could be overturned to allow massive voter suppression and gerrymandering. There is no constitutional ban on money unduly influencing elections. The Electoral College and Senate system is racially biased in favor of small, mostly white states.
The right, via organizations like the Federalist Society, played the long game. After decades of organizing, they managed to gut campaign finance restrictions and the Voting Rights Act. We can see the results in states like Wisconsin and North Carolina, which are about evenly divided between MAGA and anti-MAGA voters, but gerrymandering gives the Republicans control of the legislatures. States like Texas and Florida are already implementing key elements of the authoritarian agenda; they are accurately termed “laboratories for fascism.”
MAGA’s goal is to use disinformation, voter suppression, and gerrymandering—concentrating on battleground states and swing districts—to win full control of the federal government in 2024.
Block and Build
The U.S. majority opposes the MAGA agenda. When it’s clear MAGA is on the ballot, MAGA candidates lose.
But the majority is not sufficiently organized and united. And within the anti-MAGA majority, progressives are not yet the largest and most influential force. There are promising developments in labor and youth-led movements around climate change, mass incarceration, and gun violence, as well as massive anti-MAGA energy among women and in the LGBTQ community. But it will take time and deep organizing to turn this sentiment into enough durable, institutionalized progressive clout to shape the full agenda of the anti-MAGA coalition and the country.
We can get the time and democratic space to build that clout of we can block MAGA in 2024. MAGA hopes to take power through electoral action, and we cannot afford to cede that terrain to the authoritarian GOP. We need to defeat MAGA candidates up and down the line and protect the result. If we do so while building the independent strength of grassroots progressive groups and functioning as the most resolute opponents of MAGA on every battlefront, we can move the country toward a robust multiracial, gender-inclusive democracy and deep structural change.
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Fight Back Against the Epidemic of Hate This Pride Month
“More than 75 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been signed into law this year alone, more than doubling last year’s number, which was previously the worst year on record,” the Human Rights Campaign said.
Jun 11, 2023
The modern struggle for equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual people has been waged for over a century. Despite significant gains, the work is sadly far from over as Pride Month begins. Just as massive plumes of sun-dimming smoke from wildfires now raging north of the border billow over the eastern half of the United States, darkening the sky and driving people indoors, so too has an epidemic of discrimination and hate targeting traditionally marginalized LGBTQ+ communities swept the land, unleashed by demagogues, cynical politicians, and bigots. State and local governments from coast to coast are passing repressive bills, banning books, and criminalizing people.
The rash of laws, often accompanied by intimidation and acts of violence, has prompted the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, to announce:
“We have officially declared a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people in the United States for the first time following an unprecedented and dangerous spike in anti-LGBTQ+ legislative assaults sweeping state houses this year. More than 75 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been signed into law this year alone, more than doubling last year’s number, which was previously the worst year on record.”
Human Rights Campaign (HRC) President Kelley Robinson explained on the Democracy Now! news hour:
“In this moment, when people are traveling across the country, when they’re deciding to move or what schools to go to, we had a responsibility to let people know that, one, there’s an imminent health and safety crisis facing our community, and, two, there’s a dizzying patchwork of protections for us and for our families depending on the state that you’re in.”
HRC tracks these anti-LGBTQ+ bills. Over 520 of them have been introduced so far this year, and 75 have already been signed into law, with broad impacts: criminalizing the provision of gender-affirming health care for youth, prohibiting the teaching of LGBTQ-related topics, barring transgender people from using a gender-appropriate bathroom, banning books, and more.
“A loud and vocal minority… is sowing hate and fear against our community because they’re not willing to solve the real problems,” Robinson added. “If they actually cared about the safety of our kids, they would be moving forward legislation to prevent gun violence, the number one killer of our children.”
The legislative assault is occurring in parallel with the 2024 Republican presidential primary season. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has championed several oppressive laws targeting the LGBTQ+ community, including the school curriculum ban known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, and banning gender affirming care for minors. Others in the increasingly crowded Republican field are following suit.
“A loud and vocal minority… is sowing hate and fear against our community because they’re not willing to solve the real problems.”
Former South Carolina Governor and presidential hopeful Nikki Haley suggested opposing trans rights was a feminist issue.
“The idea that we have biological boys playing in girls’ sports, it is the women’s issue of our time,” Haley said at a recent CNN town hall. “How are we supposed to get our girls used to the fact that biological boys are in their locker rooms?”
Robinson responded on Democracy Now!, “This is political theater. They are doing this to pander to a MAGA Republican base in so many of these states… Seventy percent of Americans support the LGBTQ+ community and believe that legislatures should be standing with our values. One in five of Generation Z identifies as a member of this community, 20 million American adults. This is not an issue of the margins.”
The evangelical Christian movement has long been at the forefront attacking the LGBTQ+ community. Major televangelists like Pat Robertson, who died this week at the age of 93, and groups like Focus on the Family and the Alliance to Defend Freedom have stoked intolerance and repression not only here at home, but around the world.
Uganda is now on the front lines of this U.S.-based push to criminalize homosexuality. In May, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signed an anti-LGBTQ law that makes same-sex relationships punishable by life in prison or, in some cases, death. Many LGBTQ Ugandans have gone into hiding or have fled the country.
“The homophobia and transphobia we are seeing towards queer and trans persons in Uganda is from the West. It is mostly peddled by extreme American evangelicals,” Ugandan LGBTQ activist Frank Mugisha said on Democracy Now! He fears similar laws will follow in neighboring countries like Tanzania and Kenya.
Human Rights Campaign’s state of emergency declaration is unprecedented, but is not simply a warning. Their statement ends with a call to action, one which everyone, whether LGBTQ+ or not, should heed this Pride month and beyond:
“Our community is in danger, but we won’t stop fighting back—not now, not ever.”
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