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Ad Featuring Orgasm, Broken Condom, and Plan B Shows How MAGA Is Bad For Men, Too
"The only way to guarantee our right to privacy is to vote for Democrats," said one advocacy group. "They have no interest in forcing guys to be dads before they are ready."
Oct 31, 2024
With just five days until the U.S. elections, Democrats are continuing to highlight another presidential term for Republican nominee Donald Trump as a grave danger for women, as the nation learns about a growing number of women who have died because of abortion bans and voters in 10 states make their voices heard on proposed measures to protect abortion rights.
But a provocative ad that went viral on social media Thursday makes the case that men should be worried about letting the far-right MAGA movement take control of the White House and Congress, too.
The ad, by the Democratic political action committee Progress Action Fund, opens with a young man and woman having sex.
Just afterward, the man says he's realized the condom he was using broke.
"Oh, I have Plan B in the bathroom," replies the woman, referring to the emergency contraception pill approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1999.
Her partner offers to get the pill, but makes another troubling realization as soon as he closes the medicine cabinet.
"Sorry," says a balding man who's appeared in the bathroom. "You can't use that... I'm your Republican congressman. Now that we're in charge, we banned Plan B."
"No, you can't do this," pleads the young man. "I can't have a kid right now!"
But the lawmaker explains that since he won the last election, whether or not the young couple has a child is no longer their decision.
"It's my decision," he says. "Now let's get back in there so we can give her the news... Daddy."
The nonprofit progressive advocacy group DemCast said the ad was one "every man in America" needs to see.
"The only way to guarantee our right to privacy is to vote for Democrats," said the group. "They have no interest in forcing guys to be dads before they are ready."
The production company Eleven Films said the ad provides a new perspective on the idea that "MAGA wants to control everything about you. Including when you can have a baby."
"Yeah, bro," said the organization. "Even you."
Nick Knudsen, co-founder and executive director of DemCast, said that the ad, "when tested, moves under-30-men by 2+ points away from Donald Trump."
Common Dreams was unable to independently verify the claim as of this writing.
Political action committee Defend the Vote said it had partnered with Progress Action Fund to air the ad in battleground states.
"There are only a few days left in the election," said the group. "Get out and vote to protect your freedoms!"
Democratic strategist Alicia Strohl Resnicoff said the ad and its reminder that the Republican Party aims to attack reproductive freedom, including the right to abortion care as well as contraception, "is the scariest thing you see today."
The ad was originally released on YouTube in mid-October, four months after Republicans in the Senate blocked consideration of the Right to Contraception Act. In 2022, when the right-majority on the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Justice Clarence Thomas said the court should also review the precedent set by Griswold v. Connecticut, which affirmed in 1965 that couples have the right to use contraceptives.
Progress Action Fund has produced a number of ads exposing Republicans' plans to invade the privacy of people across the U.S. Last week the group posted one featuring the same "Republican congressman," who appears in a man's bedroom and snatches his phone out of his hands to stop him from watching a pornographic video. Project 2025, the far-right agenda that was co-authored by at least 140 of people from Trump's presidential term, proposes a nationwide ban on pornography.
"Creepy Republicans want control of your bedroom," said Eleven Films on Thursday. "Don't let MAGA in your sheets."
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Experts Sound Alarm on Potential Right-Wing Violence Fueled by 'Election Denialism'
Online discussion of potential violence has been on the rise over the past month, as it was ahead of the 2020 election.
Oct 31, 2024
Recent violent incidents at a Democratic National Committee office in Arizona and ballot boxes in the Pacific Northwest have been accompanied by rising online discussion of potential political violence following the November 5 elections, with people in right-wing forums ramping up the spread of baseless claims that Democrats will "steal" the presidential election and threatening to help Republican nominee Donald Trump take power by force.
That's according to a study published this week by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), which warns the group is "seeing the same warning signs of political violence based on election denialism combined with violent language across fringe platforms that we saw in the weeks before the 2020 election and before the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol."
At the messaging platform Telegram, violent rhetoric related to denying the results of an election that hadn't even taken place yet rose by 317% over the course of October 2020, and GPAHE found an identical trend this past month.
Users have threatened to "shoot to kill any illegal voters," apparently referring to the supposed scourge of illegal voting by non-citizens that Republicans including Trump and U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) have vowed to defeat, despite the lack of evidence that such a problem exists. A Telegram group frequented by members of the Minnesota Proud Boys have called for "patriots" to "take action" and attend a protest at the Minnesota state Capitol on November 2.
On other platforms, GPAHE co-founder Heidi Beirich told The Guardian on Thursday, the numbers of political violence threats "have been lower so far this year, but they are quickly rising as we approach Election Day."
On Gab in 2020, violent election rhetoric rose 462% during October and shot up "a staggering 8,309% the week of the election," said GPAHE. This month, the rhetoric has gone up by about 105%, with users saying people engaged in "election fraud"—a vanishingly rare occurrence—should face "public executions."
"The military needs to be brought in," at least one user wrote this month, echoing Trump's statement that an "enemy within on Election Day "should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military."
"The Trump campaign, its surrogates, or right-wing sympathizers could invite unrest, threats, or violence to try putting their collective thumb on the scales at key decision points."
Beirich told The Guardian that GPAHE is also seeing "posts targeting election workers with violence, a sign that real world activity could escalate."
The report was released as authorities investigate two incidents in Vancouver, Washington and Portland, Oregon in which devices were used to set ballot boxes on fire, resulting in damage to hundreds of ballots cast by early voters. Officials have linked the alleged arson acts to an incident on October 8 in which a suspicious device was found in a ballot drop box.
A man named Jeffrey Michael Kelly was also arrested last week for shooting at the Democratic National Committee office in Tempe, Arizona. Authorities found 120 guns, 250,000 rounds of ammunition, and other weapons at his home, and said he was likely planning to commit a "mass casualty event" ahead of the election.
Those incidents and the memory of the violent riot on January 6, 2021, in which Trump urged thousands of his supporters to descend on the U.S. Capitol to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 election results, are likely contributing to rising fears among voters about violence after next week's election. About 4 in 10 voters told The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research this week that they are "extremely" or "very" concerned about violence related to election denial.
In an analysis of political violence risks in the U.S. on Tuesday, the International Crisis Group noted that current conditions in the country may lower the chances of violent attacks related to election denial compared to 2020.
The prosecution of leaders of the January 6 insurrection and investigations into groups involved have "dented these groups' capacity," wrote program director Michael Wahid Hanna.
President Joe Biden has also lowered the risk of Trump challenging a potential election loss the way he did in 2020, when he and his allies urged "fake electors" in seven states to falsely declare him the winner, among other efforts. Biden signed the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act, which includes new rules for how Congress tallies electors chosen by each state and "raises the bar for any objection" to the election results, wrote Hanna.
However, added Hanna, "Trump himself remains a major risk factor" for violence after the election:
The Trump campaign, its surrogates, or right-wing sympathizers could invite unrest, threats, or violence to try putting their collective thumb on the scales at key decision points. Local officials told not to certify tallies and battleground-state Republican state legislatures urged to appoint 'faithless' electors could be subject to personal threats or rowdy demonstrations designed to show that 'the people' support Trump's preferred course of action. Later, Republican lawmakers in Congress could be intimidated in comparable ways. Democrats, who would presumably fight an effort of this sort at every stage in court, could be exposed to similar or worse. Any anti-Trump street protests, meanwhile, could very well be met with counter-demonstrations including far-right elements, which could lead to clashes, with the risk of deadly violence rising at each new phase of legal maneuvering.
With many in the Republican Party relentlessly transmitting the message that "its candidate cannot lose unless the other side cheats," wrote Hanna, the risk of political violence after the election can't be ignored.
"Responsible actors with Trump's ear should prevail upon him to stick to the rules," he wrote, "Election boards, state legislators, members of Congress, and judges will need to do the same: The country's electoral laws are in better shape than they were four years ago, but the reforms will only matter if the country's institutions adhere to them in good faith."
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No Paine, No Gain: Common Sense in the Year 2024
“We have it in our power to begin the world again.” And so we must.
Oct 24, 2024
Contributing fundamentally to the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the struggles of British workers in the Industrial Revolution, Thomas Paine was the greatest radical of a truly radical age. Yet this son of an English artisan did not become a radical until his arrival in America in late 1774 at the age of thirty-seven. Even then he had never expected such things to happen.
However, struck by America’s startling contradictions and magnificent possibilities, and moved by the spirit and determination of its people to resist British authority, he dedicated himself to the American cause and through his pamphlets of 1776—Common Sense and the ensuing American Crisis Papers—he emboldened Americans to transform their colonial rebellion into a revolutionary war, defined the new nation in a democratically expansive and progressive fashion, and articulated an American identity charged with exceptional purpose and promise.
As Paine saw it: Americans could show the world that humanity had no need for kings and overlords, indeed, that common people, working people, could govern themselves!
Is it any wonder then that we have reached back and recruited Paine to the cause of rescuing America’s revolutionary promise from royal wannabee Donald Trump and his MAGA and GOP (Tory) subjects who seem set upon destroying it?
Vote Democratic top to bottom on November 5th… so we can start acting anew on Citizen Paine’s radical-democratic challenge: “We have it in our power to begin the world again.”
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