Kate Aronoff

Kansas informs trans residents their driver’s licenses become invalid on Thursday Some transgender Kansans said they had received the letters from the Department of Revenue. Others hadn’t by Wednesday evening.

“‘The persecution is the point,’ said Rep. Abi Boatman, a Wichita Democrat and the only transgender member of the Legislature, who received the [Kansas Dept of Revenue] notice on Wednesday.” To underscore that: a Kansas state legislator is among those whose driver’s license will be voided. (🎁 link:)

Sure, but they have to make a scene based on this photo of him and May reading The New Republic.

!!!

Regulations were a big reason why companies were forced to distribute gains, innovate & offer better products, including to export markets. Difficult goal in any case but you can’t grow a manufacturing base in the 2020s by writing policy to reflect your personal fever dream of, like, 1902

So much of the GOP’s project seems to be about restoring their idea of the mid-century US industrial base while dismantling the policies that made people feel fondly about it and made it viable

Climate mostly emerged as a political issue in the US after the New Deal state had been cut to bits, making it sort of a weird, fortunate historical fluke that the Clean Air Act lends itself so well to tackling GHGs, and is so different from all the market-based/techno-optimist stuff popular then

Thing about hacking away at the Clean Air Act and lots of Clean Air Act enforcement is that Congress isn’t likely to return to New Deal State-ish legislation anytime soon, and that’s what makes the CAA so powerful. The people doing the hacking ofc know that

Spotted in Germany: a coal barge named Erasmus

Not necessarily opposed to robotaxis or autonomous vehicles, but seems wildly optimistic to assume they’d keep meaningful numbers of people from driving? There’s a cultural piece but also normal new cars are already *really* expensive in the U.S. AVs will be luxury items for the foreseeable future

Something I don’t get about the maximalist case for robotaxis as a godsend for road safety: AFAIK Uber and Lyft haven’t meaningfully driven down personal car ownership rates. Won‘t Waymo-type companies mostly be taking market share away from other ridesharing companies and public transit?

Helpful distinction! Have been trying to make sense of the cultural space between the F-150 and the Waymo for a project I'm working on bsky.app/profile/andy...

This isn't quite right—and I don't think this cinematic universe is so straightforwardly right-wing—but there's something very Yellowstone-coded about today's "new class"

Fascinating how a relatively small set of (for lack of a better term) upper middle class white people's relationships to authenticity have such a huge effect on the GOP coalition. On some level overlapping groups, only lots of them are now pretending they're ranchers instead of guys with email jobs

Would love to read something comparing the conversation about yuppies in the 80s w/ the politics and aesthetic preferences of the people now occupying relatively similar class positions, and that are translating into politics

i.e., stockbrokers getting into pesto vs. VC guys doing red meat diets

hugely rewarding as the granddaughter of Jewish shoe store owners who really did not enjoy most of this movie

What Makes Marty Run? Jewish Currents discusses Josh Safdie’s new film, Marty Supreme , and its vision of mid-century American Jewishness.

Had been excited for @jewishcurrents.bsky.social to take on Marty Supreme and this doesn’t disappoint jewishcurrents.org/what-makes-m...

We‘ve gotta bring back union logos that look like this

A lot of the Detroit Auto Show is devoted to having people drive very large, expensive cars around places inside meant to evoke the idea of the outside

What is the climate corollary to Woke 2

Here is a recent video of ICE agents hitting someone with their car and laughing about it

From @statuscoupnews.bsky.social

DHS tweet: "GOOD MORNING MINNEAPOLIS!"

DHS tweeted this yesterday. Little more than 24 hours later, ICE agents just shot and killed a legal observer in Minneapolis.

ICE Agent Kills Woman, DHS Tells Obvious, Insane Lies About It | Defector On Wednesday in Minneapolis, masked government agents apparently representing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) surrounded a stationary vehicle stopped in the middle of a residential street.…

ICE agent kills woman, DHS tells obvious, insane lies about it: defector.com/ice-agent-ki...

sorry to lib out but would love to see a reporter ask Trump point blank whether the US is a net exporter

As with tariffs, and Broadway, Trump’s personal views on oil seem to have congealed sometime in the 1980s and are shellacked in place

IMO "war for oil" frame risks glossing over A) deeper history & politics around the US in LatAm, & B) the fact that the US doesn't actually control its oil companies—we're one of the few major oil producers on the planet where the state doesn't exercise much decision-making power over that industry

Like the Iraq War, I think it's wrong to understand this as a "war for oil," but it's not NOT (on some level) *about* oil—just not, seemingly, the actual interests of the US oil industry

It's an illegal, evil coup, which it seems like Trump probably thinks he's doing, on some level, to benefit the US oil industry.

But the long-running trend in Trump 2.0 is that he consistently does things "for" the industry that they really, really hating bc he can't grasp basic market dynamics

The US produces >13 mn barrels of oil per day. Venezuela produces <1 million bpd

There's a global oil glut i.e. lower prices. That's bad for US producers, who need higher prices to break even. Hard to imagine they're eager to make big new investments in an unstable place w/ decrepit infrastructure

Manifesting for 2026: Coen Brothers reunite for a Walter Reuther biopic