Autocracy: Rules for Survival | Masha Gessen In the face of the impulse to normalize, it is essential to maintain one’s capacity for shock. This will lead people to call you unreasonable and hysterical, and to accuse you of overreacting. It is n...

History will put into context everything that is incomprehensible in the moment:

November 10, 2016
www.nybooks.com/online/2016/...

November 8, 2017
www.newyorker.com/news/our-col...

November 15, 2024
www.nytimes.com/2024/11/15/o...

This fails to address the data privacy concerns inherent with the use of electronic communication when it’s the tech billionaires at the forefront of the fall of liberty. I think Grandpa Fred has cracked the code; we must all start snail mailing our friends the best memes. For freedom.

Executive order title adjusted to read: "Attacking women, trans folks, and anyone who can get pregnant and restoring control of people's bodies & reproduction to the federal government." Executive Order, January 20, 2025

Executive order language: (d) “Female” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell. (e) “Male” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell. Why include conception? It’s strategic. This is a chance to establish that fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses are people. What does that mean? If fetuses are people, there is a direct conflict between the rights of pregnant people and “unborn children.” It’s a way to impose government control over people’s bodies. Why does it matter? Fetal personhood leads to people being criminalized for actions during pregnancy, forced medical interventions during pregnancy, threats to IVF, abortion, and denying life-saving health care all to protect “fetal life.”

We knew they would take every opportunity to establish fetal personhood, and this is the first.

An executive order attacking trans and nonbinary people is also an attack against pregnant people.

The 🪡 tying all of this together: Allowing government intrusion into the intimate, sexual, medical, reproductive corners of private life is like giving Veruca Salt the Willy Wonka Golden Ticket to violate your freedom and bodily autonomy on its brattiest whim. It has, and it’s snarling to again.

sexual orientation as sex-based discrimination. It immediately threatens the education, livelihood, and dignity of every trans person. And it sets the stage for continued attacks on privacy via the erosion of equal protection, due process, separation of powers, and separation of church and state.

The EO attacks gender identity in “defense” of women, because government’s justification for intrusion is always paternalistic. It demands “privacy in intimate spaces,” by rolling back existing protections arising from jurisprudence that defines discrimination on the basis of gender identity and…

We have a history of government interference in the intimate affairs of its citizens, based on a singular, religiously-motivated view, always justified by the deeply paternalistic claim that we must be protected, from the boogeyman that is ill-defined Obscenity and Moral Corruption.

*It took til 2003 (Lawrence v Texas) to decriminalize consensual, sexual activity occurring in the privacy of the home of homosexual couples. I graduated high school in 2003.

Government, under the guise of protecting its particular flavor of subjective “morality,” functionally legislated that sex, even between heterosexual* married couples in the privacy of the marital bed, was obscene unless done for the express purpose of procreation.

Got the ick yet? Keep going…

was a Connecticut law modeled after the federal Comstock Act (an “anti-obscenity” law that has been largely upheld) which criminalized the use of “any drug, medical article, or instrument for the purpose of preventing pregnancy.” The roots of religious influence in secular matters becomes clear:

Put more clearly, Massachusetts wanted to control the intimate acts and health care decisions of its unmarried citizens.

Similarly, the law at issue in the case that established MARRIED couples’ right to contraception (Griswold v Connecticut, 1965), by establishing a “right to marital privacy,”…

contraception. This was a 14th amendment equal protection issue because, prior to 1972, it was illegal in Mass. to distribute contraception to single people, but ok for married couples. The law was meant to dissuade pre-marital sex via the risk of unintended pregnancy for lack of contraception.

Roe established the right to abortion based on recognition by the Court of a fundamental right to privacy. Prior to this, other landmark cases also addressed questions of privacy, and access, with respect to family planning. Eisenstatd v. Baird established the right of unmarried people to POSSESS…

These things include all aspects of privacy as it relates sexual and reproductive health.

Pro-choice advocates have long warned that the anti-abortion movement isn’t actually about abortion. It is, and always has been, about privacy and control. Post-Roe, we should talk more about pre-Roe.

Insisting that ‘biological sex’ is established at conception is an attempt to influence the discourse and scrutinize all things that may begin “at conception,” with the intent of changing the legal framework relative to things that, at passing glance, do not appear related to this EO whatsoever.

The anti-choice movement has viciously fought for a legal framework which would recognize that “life begins at conception.” This is a primary justification given for why they believe abortion is immoral and should thus be made illegal. Using “at conception” in the EO is a showing of the hand 🃏.

For my money, the language “belonging, at conception,” is NOT an unintentional gaff by ideologues who do not understand the science because this isn’t a scientific debate. It is a legal one.

Now that everyone who passed 10th grade biology has had a good laugh that we are all biologically female now, thanks to the “belonging, AT CONCEPTION” language in that EO, let’s strap in for a Constitutional Law 101 primer 🧵

How to Apply Information on how to apply for OTDA supported services

otda.ny.gov/programs/app...

NYers: OTDA just closed the application window for regular HEAP, a federally-funded program that assists with heating fuel costs to low income households, effective TODAY. Guidance does not say why the earlier end date.

If you are in need, applications postmarked or submitted today still count.

Explainer: Can unions stop Trump from firing thousands of federal employees? President Donald Trump signed an order within hours of taking office on Monday to make it easier to fire thousands of federal agency employees and replace them with political loyalists. The order, which is largely identical to one Trump issued late in his first term, is already facing a lawsuit by a major union and is likely to trigger more legal challenges.

This is a concept Labor understands, both within government and outside of it. There is no output, no product, no tangible result of ideas or policies absent the actions of workers. Of people. And I hope the good people prevail:

www.reuters.com/world/us/can...

There will be thousands of actions by regular people every day that will either make it easier, or harder, for this administration to accomplish its goals. That has been true of every administration previously, too, and we have seen it play out for better and for worse.

It’s easy to forget the power of red tape. But ‘signing someone’s death warrant’ literally takes A Person to put pen to paper. Turning over data to be used against marginalized communities literally takes a records clerk to compile the records and fulfill the request. Requests can be denied.

Civil service employees who have dedicated their careers to serving the public and making sure government functions on a day to day basis are ultimately the ones who operationalize dangerous ideology and resulting policy that will define the next several years—unless they don’t.

I said a few times yesterday: “Resistance isn’t one heroic act. It’s good people consistently doing what they know to be right in the face of circumstances that would have them behave otherwise.” 🧵

Some of us 😒 still love a good fact-checking

The First and Second ladies benefited from immigration policy that allowed them and their families to establish citizenship. Today’s executive orders cancelled asylee’s pending appointments and promised prosecution, expulsion, and fierce military presence at the border. The hypocrisy is unbounded.

Finally, a small horror to combat the large one: the gentle sound of my cat licking each individual pepperoni on the slice of pizza I left abandoned for 8 seconds too long.

MLK's dream fulfilled: Why the labor movement is suddenly surging Racial and economic justice are inherently intertwined -- and you can't have either without organized labor

“The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress" (MLK) - I wholeheartedly believe in the power of labor movements, not just for the workplace but for society. To build real momentum, we need pro-union and pro-worker legislation.

Advice for U.S. Government Scientists: Lessons Learned From the ‘Muzzling’ of Their Canadian Counterparts • The Revelator The next four years will be awful for the science and conservation community. By learning from past experiences, we can minimize the damage.

Let’s share this one more time: advice for US government scientists before the new administration takes over. 🧪🌎

therevelator.org/scientists-m...