Werd I/O

[Ava Kofman in The New Yorker]

Curtis Yarvin is a pathetic little man:

"As his ideas have been surrealized in DOGE and Trump has taken to self-identifying as a king, one might expect to find Yarvin in an exultant mood. In fact, he has spent the past few months fretting that the moment will go to waste. “If you have a Trump boner right now, enjoy it,” he wrote two days after the election. “It’s as hard as you’ll ever get.” What many see as the most dangerous assault on American democracy in the nation’s history Yarvin dismisses as woefully insufficient—a “vibes coup.” Without a full-blown autocratic takeover, he believes, a backlash is sure to follow."

Much of this piece goes into his background, which in my view at this point gives him too much oxygen. It's no surprise that he was almost a libertarian - libertarianism feels very adjacent to the views he publicly writes about - and his ideas about federations of city states are very much in line. (They're also very much in line with what someone might say if they'd never read or understood any European history.)

I mean, this is bananas:

"Yarvin proposes that nations should eventually be broken up into a “patchwork” of statelets, like Singapore or Dubai, each with its own sovereign ruler. The eternal political problems of legitimacy, accountability, and succession would be solved by a secret board with the power to select and recall the otherwise all-powerful C.E.O. of each sovereign corporation, or SovCorp. [...] To prevent a C.E.O. from staging a military coup, the board members would have access to cryptographic keys that would allow them to disarm all government weapons, from nuclear missiles down to small arms, with the push of a button."

And he loves dictators, etc etc. Overall, this piece is like a litmus test: if someone comes away with anything other than revulsion for the man, you'll know what to think of them. That so many of the people in the current administration fit into that category speaks volumes.

Oh, and finally, there's this:

"Whatever the exact solution, he has written, it is crucial to find “a humane alternative to genocide,” an outcome that “achieves the same result as mass murder (the removal of undesirable elements from society) but without any of the moral stigma.”"

That backlash is overdue.

#Democracy

[Link]

[Sahil Lavingia]

I personally don't think his decision to join DOGE was defensible, but there are lots of interesting details in Sahil Lavingia's diary of the 55 days he worked there.

For example:

"I was excited to help in-source VA's software, but I was also realizing why so much of it was outsourced. For example, I was constantly constrained by my restricted government laptop, which made it difficult to write and run code. I couldn't install Git, Python, or use tools like Cursor, due to government security policies.

Fixing the root of the problem–making it easier for employees to execute–would require congressional intervention, and it was more practical to continue spending lots of money outsourcing the software development to contractors."

Of course, that's not what DOGE set about fixing. Even if it had wanted to, these sorts of changes weren't within its remit. Instead, it was responsible for harmful work like reductions in force and scanning contracts for any mention of DEI. (He characterizes this as "a contract analysis script using LLMs to flag wasteful spending".)

And then there's this:

"In reality, DOGE had no direct authority. The real decisions came from the agency heads appointed by President Trump, who were wise to let DOGE act as the 'fall guy' for unpopular decisions."

It's worth taking this with a pinch of salt. Is this real? Is this propaganda to help Musk save face? It's hard to say.

But it certainly makes fascinating reading.

#Democracy

[Link]

[Mike Monteiro]

Such a great piece about language, discrimination, and how we can avoid limiting our own thoughts. It's all delivered through the lens of the MSG scare in the 1970s, which turns out to have been pretty racist:

"Monosodium Glutamate is a flavor enhancer. Like salt, but it’s actually lower in sodium. It’s been around forever. It occurs naturally in tomatoes and some cheeses. And yes, it’s used in a lot of Chinese cooking. But it’s far from exclusive to Chinese cooking.

[...] while very racist Americans felt safe using more direct racist language in certain circumstances, sometimes it became useful to wrap it in a veneer of an inconsequentially stupid opinion."

And that inconsequential language, those seemingly-benign opinions, burrow into us and take hold forever. So, as Mike argues, will it be for today's rebrand of white supremacist ideas as "DEI hires". The time to put a stop to it is now.

#Democracy

[Link]

[Joshua Kaplan, Brett Murphy, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski at ProPublica]

From my colleagues on the newsroom side at ProPublica, a story about how the State Department pressured Gambia on behalf of Elon Musk's starlink:

"Starlink, Musk’s satellite internet company, had spent months trying to secure regulatory approval to sell internet access in the impoverished West African country. As head of Gambia’s communications ministry, Lamin Jabbi oversees the government’s review of Starlink’s license application. Jabbi had been slow to sign off and the company had grown impatient. Now the top U.S. government official in Gambia was in Jabbi’s office to intervene.

[...] Since Trump’s inauguration, the State Department has intervened on behalf of Starlink in Gambia and at least four other developing nations, previously unreported records and interviews show."

Previously, as the article notes, the State Department "has avoided the appearance of conflicts or leaving the impression that punitive measures were on the table." This has not been true in these cases.

As a former US ambassador put it, this “could lead to the impression that the U.S. is engaging in a form of crony capitalism.” I'll leave deciding how true this is, and how far it goes across every facet of American government, to the reader.

#Democracy

[Link]

[Erin In The Morning]

Unsurprisingly, there are major flaws with the Cass Report - and an expert report in Springer Nature's BMC Medical Research Methodology puts a fine point on it.

"The BMC study reviewed seven different facets of the Cass Review, and found that all seven possessed “a high risk of bias due to methodological limitations and a failure to adequately address these limitations.” One major reason for such bias, in addition to the lack of peer review, is that the Cass Review failed to give actual trans people, their families, medical practitioners who specialize in trans care, or arguably anyone with expertise on the subject matter any real authority over the process.

“These flaws highlight a potential double standard present throughout the review and its subsequent recommendations, where evidence for gender-affirming care is held to a higher standard than the evidence used to support many of the report’s recommendations,” researchers wrote."

As Erin puts it, anti-trans extremists are using the veneer of science in a determined effort to strip trans people of their rights, without the diligence, scientific method, or dedication to fairness and the truth. This conversation is far from over. Hopefully it will end with stronger rights, healthcare opportunities, and support for trans people.

#Democracy

[Link]

[Mark Mansour]

Stephen Miller, who the author rightly labels as the most dangerous person in America, has argued for removing a core constitutional right for millions of people on American soil. He wants to classify unauthorized immigration as an "invasion".

It's insane, and is the precursor to yet more truly authoritarian policies.

As Mark writes:

"Even if one were to accept the administration’s twisted definition of invasion, the Constitution still requires that suspending habeas corpus be necessary for “public safety.” That threshold is nowhere near being met. The idea that the presence of undocumented immigrants—who statistically commit crimes at lower rates than U.S. citizens—poses a national security emergency justifying the indefinite detention of thousands of people without access to courts is not just unsupported by data; it is an affront to the very notion of due process.

[...] The logical next step is militarizing the nation’s entire law enforcement apparatus in his nefarious service. We have to fight back now. Newark was a start. We need many more."

Habeas corpus is a legal procedure that allows individuals in custody to challenge the legality of their detention. It's a fundamental right that protects everyone from unlawful detention and unjust legal procedures. To remove it for anyone is an attack on our constitutional rights and American democracy.

And, perhaps most crucially, is likely only the beginning.

#Democracy

[Link]

[Joint Subreddit statement posted on r/AskHistorians]

30 or so Reddit communities have joined together to make a joint statement in defense of US research. This comes from people with real expertise: in addition to the depth of research talent involved in these communities, Dan Howlett has signed the statement, with CAT Lab's Sarah Gilbert contributing.

"The NIH is seeking to pull funding from universities based on politics, not scientific rigor. Many of these cuts come from the administration’s opposition to DEI or diversity, equity, and inclusion, and it will kill people. Decisions to terminate research funding for HIV or studies focused on minority populations will harm other scientific breakthroughs, and research may answer questions unbeknownst to scientists. Research opens doors to intellectual progress, often by sparking questions not yet asked. To ban research on a bad faith framing of DEI is to assert one’s politics above academic freedom and tarnish the prospects of discovery. Even where funding is not cut, the sloppy review of research funding halts progress and interrupts projects in damaging ways."

It ends with a call to action:

"We will not escape this moment ourselves. As academics and moderators, we are not enough to protect our disciplines from these attacks. We need you too. Write letters, sign petitions, and make phone calls, but more importantly talk with others."

This is a serious moment, and this statement should be taken seriously. Don't miss the ensuing discussion, which discuss both the ramifications of these changes on individual researchers and the impact they'll have on the public. For example:

"My wife is an ecologist at the USGS. She has days before she is fired. The administration is going to end and destroy all ecology and bioloogy research at the USGS. It's in Project 2025. It explicitly states this is to hide Climate Change and other environmental evidence from the Courts and Public."

It's pretty bleak stuff.

#Democracy

[Link]

[Toby Buckle at LiberalCurrents]

This resonates for me too.

About the Tea Party, the direction the Republican Party took during the Obama administration, and then of Trump first riding down the escalator to announce his candidacy:

"If you saw in any of this a threat to liberal democracy writ large, much less one that could actually succeed, you were looked at with the kind of caution usually reserved for the guy screaming about aliens on the subway."

And yet, of course, it got a lot worse.

The proposal here is simple:

"I propose we promote a simple rule for these uncertain times: Those who saw the danger coming should be listened to, those who dismissed us should be dismissed. Which is to say that those of us who were right should actively highlight that fact as part of our argument for our perspective. People just starting to pay attention now will not have the bandwidth to parse a dozen frameworks, or work backwards through a decade of bitter tit-for-tat arguments. What they might ask—what would be very sensible and reasonable of them to ask—is who saw this coming?"

Because you could see it coming, and it was even easy to see, if you shook yourself out of a complacent view that America's institutions were impermeable, that its ideals were real and enduring, and that there was no way to overcome the norms, checks, and balances that had been in place for generations.

What this piece doesn't quite mention but is also worth talking about: there are communities for whom those norms, checks, and balances have never worked, and they were sounding the alarm more clearly than anyone else. They could see it. Of course they could see it. So it's not just about listening to leftists and activists and people who have been considered to be on the political fringe, but also people of color, queer communities, and the historically oppressed. They know this all rather well.

#Democracy

[Link]

[Makena Kelly and Vittoria Elliott at WIRED]

The Holocaust was organized on IBM punch cards. Hitler gave the head of IBM, Watson, a medal for his services; they met in person so that Watson could receive the award. Later, they named their AI tech after him.

Anyway, in unrelated news:

"DOGE is knitting together immigration databases from across DHS and uploading data from outside agencies including the Social Security Administration (SSA), as well as voting records, sources say. This, experts tell WIRED, could create a system that could later be searched to identify and surveil immigrants.

The scale at which DOGE is seeking to interconnect data, including sensitive biometric data, has never been done before, raising alarms with experts who fear it may lead to disastrous privacy violations for citizens, certified foreign workers, and undocumented immigrants. [...] Among other things, it seems to involve centralizing immigrant-related data from across the government to surveil, geolocate, and track targeted immigrants in near real time."

This is, of course, a database that will track all of us, although we should be concerned about the effect on immigrants alone. It will undoubtedly connect to AI services and resources owned and run by the private tech industry.

Elizabeth Laird, the director of equity in civic technology at the Center for Democracy and Technology, is quoted as saying:

“I think it's hard to overstate what a significant departure this is and the reshaping of longstanding norms and expectations that people have about what the government does with their data.”

The question, as ever, is what people will do about it, and what recourse advocates for immigrants, for data privacy, and for democracy can possibly have.

#Democracy

[Link]

[Alec MacGillis at ProPublica]

The statistics that help us navigate our world are under thread:

"Every year, year after year, workers in agencies that many of us have never heard of have been amassing the statistics that undergird decision-making at all levels of government and inform the judgments of business leaders, school administrators and medical providers nationwide.

The survival of that data is now in doubt, as a result of the Department of Government Efficiency’s comprehensive assault on the federal bureaucracy."

Perhaps because:

"Looked at one way, the war on measurement has an obvious potential motivation: making it harder for critics to gauge fallout resulting from Trump administration layoffs, deregulation or other shifts in policy."

Many of these teams aren't coming back. So the question becomes: who will conduct these measurements in their place? How will we get this information now? As the piece notes, even if we do put our ability to measure back together, there will now always be a gap, which will make identifying and understanding trends a great deal harder.

#Democracy

[Link]

[Andy Bounds in the Financial Times]

The last few months have radically changed the risk assessment for people traveling to the US from abroad - as well as Americans who plan to cross the US border.

In this case, it's European Commission staff:

"The European Commission is issuing burner phones and basic laptops to some US-bound staff to avoid the risk of espionage, a measure traditionally reserved for trips to China.

[...] They said the measures replicate those used on trips to Ukraine and China, where standard IT kit cannot be brought into the countries for fear of Russian or Chinese surveillance."

The worry is that, particularly at the border, US officials can demand access to devices in order to peruse information or back up their data. This isn't unique to the Commission, or a fully new phenomenon: the EFF has offered printable border search advice for a while now, and a federal appeals court strengthened the power of border officials to do this back during the Biden Administration.

But searches are on the rise under the new administration, as well as stories of people being inhumanely detained for minor infractions. Many countries now have travel advisories for people traveling to the US. The general feeling is that you can't be too careful no matter who you are — and for political officials, as well as journalists, activists, and anyone who might challenge the status quo, the risks are greater.

#Democracy

[Link]

[Zoë Schiffer at WIRED]

The Social Security Administration is changing its communications strategy in a surprising way:

““We are no longer planning to issue press releases or those dear colleague letters to inform the media and public about programmatic and service changes,” said SSA regional commissioner Linda Kerr-Davis in a meeting with managers earlier this week. “Instead, the agency will be using X to communicate to the press and the public … so this will become our communication mechanism.””

X is, of course, a proprietary network that is currently owned by Elon Musk. Users with accounts on X are profiled for its advertising systems; given the links between Musk and the current administration, this might yield a significant amount of information to the government. Forcing citizens to check the network, which, again, is privately owned and supported by advertising, also feels like an enormous conflict of interest.

#Democracy

[Link]

[Lisa Rein, Hannah Natanson and Elizabeth Dwoskin at The Washington Post]

More "efficiency" from DOGE:

"Retirees and disabled people are facing chronic website outages and other access problems as they attempt to log in to their online Social Security accounts, even as they are being directed to do more of their business with the agency online.

[...] The problems come as the Trump administration’s cost-cutting team, led by Elon Musk, has imposed a downsizing that’s led to 7,000 job cuts and is preparing to push out thousands more employees at an agency that serves 73 million Americans. The new demands from Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service include a 50 percent cut to the technology division responsible for the website and other electronic access."

These benefits are much-needed; people depend on them. In gutting the team that helps provide services, Musk and DOGE are putting peoples' lives at risk.

And this is just poor software development practice:

"Many of the network outages appear to be caused by an expanded fraud check system imposed by the DOGE team, current and former officials said. The technology staff did not test the new software against a high volume of users to see if the servers could handle the rush, these officials said."

But, of course, perhaps destroying the actual utility of these services is the point.

#Democracy

[Link]

[Kate Conger in The New York Times]

Here's one way Elon Musk is gaining from his involvement in the current administration:

"The positioning of X as a powerful government mouthpiece has helped bolster the platform, even as the company continues to struggle."

It's worth remembering that xAI just bought X in an all-stock transaction - he's also gaining by pointing his AI engine directly at federal government information in a supposed effort to make it more efficient.

But even the social media endorsement is a big deal. In some ways buying advertising on X is akin to would-be political influencers buying extravagant stays at Trump hotels:

"Conservatives have found that X is a direct pipeline to Mr. Musk, allowing them to influence federal policy. He has responded to viral complaints about the government on the platform, and his cost-cutting initiative has marked users’ concerns as “fixed.”"

It makes real the idea that the social media site isn't about building a business in itself, but about creating a new instrument of power. The comparisons between Elon's strategy and William Randolph Hearst are obvious; it's just, he's far, far dumber.

#Democracy

[Link]

[Ernie Smith at Tedium]

Ernie Smith points out the creator-economy platform Gumroad open sourced its platform at a surprising time:

"But if that’s all Gumroad was doing, I wouldn’t feel compelled to say anything. The reason I’m speaking up is because of this Wired story, released on the very same day Gumroad announced its “open source” license, which may have had the effect of minimizing the story’s viral impact.

[...] It’s not even the central point of the piece, but the fact is, if you’re supporting Gumroad—a tool that, notably, has survived as long as it did because of a high-profile crowdfunding campaign—you’re allowing its CEO the financial freedom to work in the Department of Veterans Affairs, at the behest of DOGE, for free."

Leave aside that Gumroad's "open sourcing" is nothing really of the sort (it's source-available until you start making real revenue). Its founder is part of the DOGE mess, having replaced most of his employees with AI, with plans to do the same thing at the VA.

When this is all over, let's not forget that he did that.

#Democracy

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[Laura Hazard Owen at Nieman Journalism Lab]

A good introduction to leaking to a journalist:

"I spoke with eight journalists about how to leak in a safe, smart way. Disclaimer you probably knew was coming: No method of leaking is 100% secure, and the tips here reduce risk but cannot eliminate it completely. “I know it’s appealing to be instrumental in helping a reporter break a story, and god knows reporters love breaking stories,” says Marisa Kabas, an independent reporter and writer of The Handbasket who’s been breaking one scoop after another about DOGE and the Trump administration. “But in almost all cases, your safety and physical and mental health should come first.”"

A lot depends on Signal, although some newsrooms (including my employer) also advertise SecureDrop, which is a very sophisticated tool for large, anonymous leaks.

The complete list is worth your time. If you're a source, consider using these tools. If you're a funder, consider investing in these tools. If you're a newsroom, make sure you know how to use these tools. They've become the currency of privately-sourced stories in the current era.

#Democracy

[Link]

[Brian Krebs]

Sobering roundup from Brian Krebs about how each of the five pillars of the First Amendment - speech, religion, the media, the right to assembly, and the right to petition the government and seek redress for wrongs - has been attacked during the first few months of the Trump Administration.

It's a laundry list - and we're only a few months in.

"Where is President Trump going with all these blatant attacks on the First Amendment? The president has made no secret of his affection for autocratic leaders and “strongmen” around the world, and he is particularly enamored with Hungary’s far-right Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has visited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort twice in the past year."

The piece concludes with a warning that Trump is following a similar playbook to Orbán by consolidating control over the courts and decimating the free press. It played out there; we will see what happens here.

#Democracy

[Link]

[Lubna Kably in The Times of India]

Worrying stuff being reported by the Times of India (and, at the time of writing, under-reported in the domestic US press). AI is being used to flag international students because of their social media activity, among other signals, who are now being sent emails asking them to "self-deport":

"Hundreds of international students in the US are getting an email from the US Department of State (DOS) asking them to self-deport owing to campus activism. Immigration attorneys’ contacted by TOI affirmed this development and added a few Indian students may also be at the receiving end of such emails – for something as innocuous as sharing a social media post.

It is not just international students who physically participated in campus activism but also those who shared or liked ‘anti-national’ posts that are the target of these emails, said an immigration attorney."

Axios previously reported on how this was going to be done:

"Secretary of State Marco Rubio is launching an AI-fueled "Catch and Revoke" effort to cancel the visas of foreign nationals who appear to support Hamas or other designated terror groups"

From that article:

""This should concern all Americans. This is a First Amendment and freedom of speech issue and the administration will overplay its hand," said Abed Ayoub, head of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee."

It's a clear First Amendment issue. Whether they've overplayed their hand unfortunately remains to be seen.

#Democracy

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[Makena Kelly at WIRED]

If you know anything about building software, you know that this is an absurd idea:

"The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is starting to put together a team to migrate the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) computer systems entirely off one of its oldest programming languages in a matter of months, potentially putting the integrity of the system—and the benefits on which tens of millions of Americans rely—at risk."

Moving a 60 million line COBOL codebase to another language (be it Java or anything else) is not a small undertaking, and the SSA underpins necessary benefits for millions of Americans. Doing it in months likely requires using something like an LLM - and anyone who's used an LLM to code will tell you that the output is riddled with mistakes and inefficiencies. It's not a workable plan.

Or, as Dan Hon puts it in the piece:

“If you weren't worried about a whole bunch of people not getting benefits or getting the wrong benefits, or getting the wrong entitlements, or having to wait ages, then sure go ahead.”

A project like this should take years. Most of that isn't coding time: it's analysis, writing the tests, rearchitecting, and putting protections in place to ensure that nobody goes without the benefits they need to live. Doing it as a rush job isn't just incompetence; it's indifference to the lives of some of our most vulnerable neighbors. Which, let's face it, is in keeping with everything else going on.

#Democracy

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[Joshua Kaplan and Justin Elliott at ProPublica]

I bet this practice is more common than anyone might think, and certainly isn't limited to China. As always, follow the money:

"In December, [SpaceX investor] Kahlon testified that SpaceX prefers to avoid investors from China because it is a defense contractor. There is a major exception though, he said: SpaceX finds it “acceptable” for Chinese investors to buy into the company through offshore vehicles.

“The primary mechanism is that those investors would come through intermediate entities that they would create or others would create,” Kahlon said. “Typically they would set up BVI structures or Cayman structures or Hong Kong structures and various other ones,” he added, using the acronym for the British Virgin Islands. Offshore vehicles are often used to keep investors anonymous."

The key point here is not that the Chinese investments are illegal - they probably aren't - or that anyone thinks SpaceX is being directed by the Chinese government. What's odd is that the company prefers the obfuscation: it sounds like they don't accept Chinese investment unless it's being channeled through an offshore vehicle designed to hide their involvement from regulatory scrutiny. That obfuscation is particularly important given that Elon Musk is now a part of the US government.

#Democracy

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[Gaby Del Valle at The Verge]

I appreciated this deep-dive on whether it's safe to travel through US borders with your phone. Journalists and anyone who's made overt political statements should take particular note.

"The government maintains that it doesn’t need a warrant to conduct “basic” searches of the contents of a person’s phone. During these searches, Hussain explained, agents are supposed to put your phone on airplane mode and can only look at what is accessible offline — but that can still be a lot of information, including any cloud data that’s currently synced."

The EFF maintains a pretty great pocket guide that is also worth checking out.

The constitutionality of searches is "still an open question" - but that doesn't matter in the moment. My advice at this stage is to sign out of important apps (like your work email and encrypted messaging apps like Signal), turn off biometric logins like Face ID, and switch your phone off. That does mean you need to print out your boarding card, for example, and do a little pre-work to make sure your data is backed up. Clearly, this is a pain. But if you deal with any sensitive information, or have any vulnerable people in your family or community, you need to change your security stance to be a good steward of their safety.

#Democracy

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[Ella Yurman in Teen Vogue]

This interview with Musk's daughter Vivian Wilson is everything.

"The Nazi salute sht was insane. Honey, we're going to call a fig a fig, and we're going to call a Nazi salute what it was. That sht was definitely a Nazi salute. The crowd is equally to blame, and I feel like people are not talking about that. That crowd should be denounced.

But other than that, I don't give a f**k about him. I really don't."

Wilson is a refreshing, no-nonsense voice on Threads, and that same no-BS attitude comes through here like an avalanche.

And this, of course, is vitally important:

"As a trans woman, I am terrified of losing access to guaranteed medical care. If I didn't medically transition at the age I did, I don't know what would've happened. I don't feel like people realize that being trans is not a choice. I'm so sorry to break it to you.

Transitioning as a minor was something that was medically necessary for me to do in order to be not suicidal, and it is really important that we protect access to trans care for trans youth."

Wilson is an example of someone this healthcare not only saved but helped thrive. It's exciting to see her use her insightful, attentive, sometimes hilariously-sharp voice.

#Democracy

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[Jasmine Mooney]

A nightmare account from a Canadian citizen detained by ICE:

"I was taken to a tiny, freezing cement cell with bright fluorescent lights and a toilet. There were five other women lying on their mats with the aluminum sheets wrapped over them like dead bodies. The guard locked the door behind me.

[...] After some research, the reality became clear — ICE detention isn’t just a bureaucratic nightmare. It’s a business. These facilities are privately owned and run for profit.

Companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group receive government funding based on the number of people they detain. The more prisoners, the more money they make. They don’t lobby for stricter immigration policies in the name of national security — they do it to protect their bottom line."

There is so much to fix here, but perhaps this is the crux: people are making a profit from tightened immigration rules that keep people detained for months or years without due process. That shouldn't be allowed to happen.

#Democracy

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[Mike Monteiro]

On whether it's always been this bad in America:

"America was born in blood, genocide, kidnapping, and death. Behind every story we were told about America’s greatness, there is a secret second painting. A thing America doesn’t want you to see. Behind every “from sea to shining sea” there is a Trail of Tears. Behind every first pitch at Dodger Stadium there’s the destruction of Chavez Ravine. Behind every moonshot there’s a Nazi V2 rocket. Behind every “liberation of the camps” there’s a Nakba. Behind every interstate highway system there’s the destruction of a thousand Black and immigrant neighborhoods."

Although it's front and center, much of what we're experiencing isn't actually new for lots of communities across America. Treating the current moment as completely new doesn't serve us: it erases those struggles and historic injustices. That's not to say that everything is good right now - it's obviously not - but the road that led us here is clearly marked throughout American history.

#Democracy

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[Erin In The Morning]

While America is destroying the ability for trans people to participate in public life, over in Europe they're (rightly) improving care for trans people.

"In recent years, U.S. politicians have selectively framed European healthcare policies to justify restrictions on transgender care, seizing on a handful of conservative policies to claim that “Europe is pulling back.” The most extreme example, the United Kingdom’s Cass Review, has been wielded to justify a near-total ban on puberty blockers and even cited in U.S. Supreme Court arguments. But new medical guidelines from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland tell a different story. These countries have reaffirmed the importance of gender-affirming care for transgender youth and issued sharp critiques of the Cass Review, calling out its severe methodological flaws and misrepresentations."

They contain this specific recommendation:

“If, in individual cases, the progressive pubertal maturation development creates a time pressure in which health damage would be expected due to longer waiting times to avert irreversible bodily changes (e.g. male voice change), access to child and adolescent psychiatric or psychotherapeutic clarification and medical treatment options should be granted as quickly as possible.”

Once again, a rejection of the Cass Review is good news here: the widely debunked study was essentially propaganda for anti-trans interests and didn't represent broader healthcare perspectives.

But the bigger good news is that Europe is a safer place for trans people to live and be supported. I hope, one day soon, America comes to its senses and puts itself on a more supportive path.

#Democracy

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