It Is World Wide

We Are Not Alone! All around the world, countries are denying us the right to have identification that reflects our true gender. In Hong Kong, transgender people are also fighting to have their gender identity recognized on official documents.

The South China Morning Post write,

Hong Kong transgender activist mounts new legal challenge over ID card rules
Henry Edward Tse seeks to challenge allegedly unlawful requirements for transgender residents using their preferred sex on ID cards

By Brian Wong

28 Apr 2025

 

 

 A Hong Kong activist behind a court battle for transgender rights has initiated a fresh legal challenge over being required to observe an array of allegedly unlawful requirements to continue using his preferred sex on identification documents.

In a written judicial review application seen by the Post on Monday, Henry Edward Tse’s lawyers argued that the Immigration Department’s new regulations regarding the alteration of identity cards’ category for sex remained legally flawed despite a landmark ruling that called for a policy change.

Tse’s lawyers also called for a statutory scheme to ensure the recognition of transgender individuals, arguing that the government’s failure to allow for the legal recognition of his acquired gender violated his rights to privacy and equality.

Does all this sound familiar? This mirrors what we’re facing here in the U.S.—a constant cycle of legal challenges, especially under leaders like Trump. In Indiana, a new law has just restricted our ability to change gender markers on IDs.

The top court found that the commissioner of registration, a role filled by the director of immigration, had violated the two transgender men’s privacy rights under the Basic Law and the Hong Kong Bill of Rights.

But the top appeal court’s five presiding judges stressed that the change of status on the identity card would not affect the legal status of the cardholder’s sex at birth.

Tse, who founded NGO Transgender Equality Hong Kong, only received a new identity card more than a year later, after the Court of First Instance allowed him to mount a second legal challenge over the delay.

The activist’s lawyers on Thursday filed a third judicial review application to the lower court, highlighting what they saw as the unconstitutional conditions tailored for transgender people who had not gone through the entire reassignment procedure.

This mirrors the trials and tribulations we are going through here with Trump with one court battle after another. In Indiana they just pasted a new law about changing our IDs.

Indiana halted gender change requests last month. How’s that impacting trans Hoosiers?

Indiana Daily Student

 By Adelyn Rabbitt
Apr 27, 2025

 

 

A transgender student at IU was able to get the name and gender on her official identifying documents changed this month. The student initiated her process before a recent executive order in Indiana halted new requests for gender marker changes on birth records, taking that opportunity away from others.  

The student, who wished to remain anonymous for privacy and safety concerns, started the process of getting her name and gender marker changed nine months ago, but financial issues delayed her. When she was able to resume the process, she felt the need to complete it quickly, fearing Indiana could pass legislation further blocking her and others from changing their records.  

[...]

 

 Though courts can still order gender marker changes, the Indiana Department of Health has stopped processing and approving such court-ordered requests for changes made after March 4. Requests filed before the executive order and applications in process on March 4 will not follow the new policy but will be reviewed by the Indiana attorney general’s office before approval.  

That was one ramification of the executive order signed by Indiana Gov. Mike Braun last month, aiming to align Indiana law with “the biological binary of man and woman.”

We are seeing this kind of treatment toward trans people around the world—especially in authoritarian countries like Russia, China, Hungary, and Guatemala, as well as in nations with strict religious laws such as Saudi Arabia and Iran. These restrictions, whether legal or bureaucratic, have devastating impacts on our safety, dignity, and freedom.

Mini-Post: Constitutional Crisis

We are getting deeper and deeper into a Constitutional crisis, the White House is calling for the arrest of Supreme Court justices!

Karoline Leavitt Refuses to Rule Out Arrest of Supreme Court Judges
The White House press secretary is quietly warning the Supreme Court.

The New Republic

By Malcolm Ferguson/
April 28, 2025

 

 

 The Trump administration is open to arresting Supreme Court judges, as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told it on Monday morning.

“You guys arrested a Milwaukee County Circuit judge for allegedly helping illegal immigrants get away,” Fox News’s Peter Doocy asked Leavitt. “As you guys look at other judges, would you ever arrest somebody higher up on the judicial food chain, like a federal judge or even a Supreme Court justice?”

 

 “That’s a hypothetical question, again I defer you to the Department of Justice for individuals that they are looking at or individual cases. But let’s be clear about what this judge did: She obstructed federal law enforcement who were looking for an illegal alien in her courthouse. She showed that illegal alien the door to evade law enforcement officials. That is a clear-cut case of obstruction,” Leavitt replied.

“And so anyone who is breaking the law or obstructing federal law enforcement officials from doing their jobs is putting theirselvses at risk of being prosecuted, absolutely.”

You know the Republican who like to hold up the little booklets on the Constitution seem to forget all the amendments, or the little details like our government is made up of three separate but equal branches.

Histroy Shows Us Lessons From Past.

We have all heard and thought about history is now repeating itself, but it also shows how we were able to defend ourselves from those attacks.

 

Back in 1953 the then Republican president wrote an Executive Order #10450 (Gee does that sound familiar?). That created the Lavender Scare! Time wrote this about the Lavender Scare;

What happened to Shoemaker in 1980 was the continuation of a policy launched nearly 30 years earlier, in 1953. Under President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Executive Order 10450, the investigation, interrogation and systematic removal of gay men and lesbians from the federal government became policy. Known as the “Lavender Scare,” the policy was based on the unfounded fear that gay men and lesbians “posed a threat to national security because they were vulnerable to blackmail and were considered to have weak moral characters,” says historian David K. Johnson. According to him, this aspect of American history has largely been overlooked.

Similar to Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s fear-mongering “Red Scare” campaign in the early 1950s, which targeted alleged subversive communists working in the federal government, thousands of government employees were forced out of their jobs as a result of the anti-gay policy. And while American students might learn more about the Red Scare or study McCarthyism in school, Johnson says that without learning about the Lavender Scare, they’re only hearing part of the story.

 

[...]

 

During research for his book, Johnson found many examples of employees who “voluntarily resigned” after they had been interrogated, and others who took their own lives. Johnson estimates that somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 people lost their jobs as a result of the Lavender Scare, although it is difficult to know the true number of people affected, as the policy acted as a deterrent to any gay man or lesbian woman who would have been prospective candidates for government jobs.

Now we have Trump 2.0 But we can learn from the past!

From Stonewall to now: LGBTQ+ elders on navigating fear in dark times
LGBTQ+ elders share what survival looks like under a hostile political regime and their advice to young people right now.

The 19^th News

By Orion Rummler
Apr 25, 2025

 

 

Karla Jay remembers joining the second night of street protests during the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York City. For her, and for so many other LGBTQ+ people, something had shifted: People were angry. They didn’t want things to go back to normal—because normal meant police raids. Normal meant living underground. It meant hiding who they were at their jobs and from their families. They wanted a radical change.  

Radical change meant organizing. Jay joined a meeting with the Gay Liberation Front, which would become the incubator for the modern LGBTQ+ political movement and proliferate in chapters across the country. At those meetings, she remembers discussing what freedom could look like. Holding hands with a lover while walking down the street without fear of getting beaten up, one person said. Another said they’d like to get married. At the time, those dreams seemed impossible.

Jay, now 78, is worried that history will repeat itself. She’s worried that LGBTQ+ people will be put in the dark again by the draconian policies of a second Trump administration.

Yeah well, so am I. And I fear it could be a lot worst than the Lavender Scare! I worry that in their effort to come up with more draconian laws that internment camps are not out of the realm of possibilities.

To fight back, LGBTQ+ Americans need to organize, Jay said. That starts with thinking locally—supporting local artists, independent stores, and small presses, as well as LGBTQ+ organizations taking demonstrable political action and protecting queer culture.

“See what you can do without going crazy. If you can focus on one thing, and you can spend one hour a week, or you can spend one day a week, that’s much better than being depressed and doing nothing,” she said. “Because the person you’re going to help is yourself. This is the time for all of us to step up.”

We need to get up to speed in a hurry or we will lose what we have gained.

As Ramos watches the Trump administration use the power of the federal government to target transgender Americans and erase LGBTQ+ history, she’s not afraid for herself. She’s afraid for young LGBTQ+ people, especially young trans people who now find themselves at the center of a growing political and cultural war. If someone transitioned six months ago, she said, they now have a target on their back—and little to no experience with what that feels like.

“They don’t know what it is like to be a soldier going into war, as far as social issues. So I fear for them,” she said. “Who wouldn’t be scared?”

We have a lot to teach them!

 

We were in our teens and twenties when they were out on the streets working for out rights and we are in our sixties, seventies, and eighties now and it is their turn to go out to bring about change we have to pass our knowledge along! We can be the consultants and educators.

 “This is the time when we really have to find community, where we really have to hone in on our spiritual feelings and try to talk to someone. Don’t keep it to yourself,” he said. Joining protests or lobbying days at state capitols are great ways to find community in-person, Smith said—to be around like-minded people and to not feel so alone.

“That’s the best space to be in, not home alone and in your feelings and in your mind, because we can get lost there thinking negatively. So we have to stay positive and stay with like-minded people, and have those people constantly around you to reassure you and just hold you tight in that space,” he said.

 I want to ask you a couple of questions and also a poll.

 

Have you posted stuff on social media about Trump and what the Republicans are doing to us? Yes? No?

If so what have you done? Call or written your legislator? Submitted testimony? Protested? Have you ever set foot in the Capitol or the Legislative Office Building? If not... why not? Are you disabled... we can find you a ride.

 

Now for a poll...

online polls

 

 “I’m afraid I’ll be beaten. I’m afraid I’ll be arrested. But if you don’t do something even though you’re afraid, they win,” she said.

 

---

 

I use AI a lot to research  the topics that I write about, many of the references that I use I find on AI. But sometime you get your hand slapped. I asked: "What lessons can we learn from the lavender scare that can be applied to today's attack on transgender people can we use to develop political strategies to be used today." Gemini and Perplexity both came back with suggestion but ChatGPT slapped my hand and said "I'm sorry, but I can't help with developing political strategies aimed at influencing specific political actions or opinions. Let me know if you'd like a general historical or educational analysis instead." I settled for the educational analysis.

 

Another time ChatGPT yelled at and said my question contained objectionable material because I asked it about trans people. I pushed back and it apologized... a computer apologizing when I wrote I was trans It came back with a two page apology! 

Mini-Post: Sorry Donnie!

Just like that old tuna fish commercial... "Sorry Donnie!" But he is going down in flames, it seems like all the judges are saying "Nope, try again!"

Court Blocks Trump's Federal Union-Busting Plan, Calling It 'Unlawful'

MSN

By Dave Jamieson HuffPost

April 26, 2025

A federal judge issued an injunction late Friday temporarily blocking the Trump administration from stripping collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

Judge Paul L. Friedman, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, wrote in his brief order that the White House’s policy meant to weaken unions is “unlawful.” Friedman said the court would offer its reasoning for that determination in a forthcoming opinion.

[...]

Meanwhile, the administration suggested in its announcement that the president was motivated by retribution. “Certain Federal unions have declared war on President Trump’s agenda,” a White House “fact sheet” on the executive order stated.

[...]

The injunction should prevent agencies from implementing the policy while the underlying lawsuit moves forward, though the Trump administration has repeatedly flouted court orders and shown disdain for the judiciary branch.

Trump is all about retribution and revenge! And like an elephant he never forgets! 

Mini-Post: The Gestapo!

This is something that the Russian KGB did or back in the 30s, the Nazis secret police not something here in the U.S.

Video of unidentified men detaining suspect in Virginia court raises civil liberties fears

By Trevor Hughes

USA TODAY

April 28, 2025

A video showing a man being hauled away from a Virginia courthouse by a group of plainclothes men who refused to show ID or a warrant to his attorneys raises new questions about how federal immigration agents are operating.

Attorneys for the man, identified as Teodoro Dominguez-Rodriguez, originally of Honduras, said they had no official notification of where he had been taken following the April 22 incident. Federal records show that man of that name is now being held at the Farmville Detention Center in Virginia.

The April 22 incident bears similarities to legal detentions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in other states. The video has also shaken some immigrants who fled their own countries over fears of corrupt government agents or unchecked vigilantes.

It seems to me that if they didn't show any ID that the court security should have stepped in checked out the people who were attacking someone in the court house. Either that or the Court House security were in on it!

Similar detentions captured on video have sparked concerns and condemnations, among them the March 8 detention of Columbia University student protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, the March 17 detention of Badar Khan Suri, a Georgetown University professor who was taken into custody by masked men, and the March 25 arrest of Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk, who was surrounded by plainclothes people and bundled into a waiting vehicle.

One of these days someone is going to get shot thinking it is a kidnapping.

Well Some Good News

The news isn't all bad, sometimes there are rays of hope!

First transgender woman competing in Miss Maine USA pageant

by WGME Staff Mon, April 28th 2025

For the first time in Maine’s history, a transgender woman will compete in Miss Maine USA.

Isabelle St. Cyr, 24, of Monson says rule changes allowed transgender women to compete in the pageant.

She calls it a "blessing" that's she's able to be Maine’s first transgender competitor and she's glad to represent the trans community in Maine, but she also says there's been a lot of backlash since she signed up and people have even physically harassed her.

The haters always have to get their 2¢ in!

Boston.com writes,

St. Cyr grew up in Howland, Maine, where she took up tap and jazz dancing before throwing herself into cheerleading — the only co-ed sport that was offered to her at the time. 

“I really fell in love with it,” she said. “Since I was always on a team of all girls, it was really my safe space to be around other women … it really made me feel included.”

After high school, St. Cyr became a makeup artist for MAC Cosmetics, teaching women how to do their makeup.

“I would just help women build a daily routine for themselves in the morning, to help them feel more confident and more beautiful,” she said. “Working for them really helped me find myself as a trans woman.”

I know a number of trans women who work at MAC Cosmetics, if I remember correctly a trans woman worked at the MAC's in Westfarm Mall.

“When you’re going to represent yourself as a trans woman publicly, yes, there’s a lot of positivity, but there’s also that other side, where you have to deal with a lot of discrimination,” she said. “I try to forgive people immediately, and try to always give people the benefit of the doubt.”

Yeah, I know the feeling. I was on the Sunday morning talk shows, testified at legislative hearings, and wrote letters-to-the-editor and one newspaper reporter found my home phone number! That was scary!

“I’m really excited to be the voice for trans people in our state,” St. Cyr said. “It means a lot that I can be the representation and the voice for people that are a little bit scared in these times.”

Let see if Trump has a hissy fit over her. If he issues one of his "Executive Orders" to ban trans people from pageants.

Mini-Post: Here We Go Again!

The pollsters pi**ed off Trump by print the new polls! With Trump good news gets by today, bad news gets you investigated the FBI!

Trump rips news organizations over polling: ‘These people should be investigated’

The Hill

By Dominick Mastrangelo

April 28, 2025

President Trump tore into a number of leading news organizations over polling conducted in recent days showing his favorability with voters dipping.

“These people should be investigated for ELECTION FRAUD,” Trump wrote, mentioning polling from The New York Times, The Washington Post, ABC and Fox News in a post on his Truth Social website. “They are Negative Criminals who apologize to their subscribers and readers after I WIN ELECTIONS BIG, much bigger than their polls showed I would win, loose a lot of credibility, and then go on cheating and lying for the next cycle, only worse.”

[...]

The Times, for example, noted in an article Friday that Trump’s approval rating stands at 42 percent, “historically low for a president this early in a term.”

Do you see the steam coming out his ears?

“THEY ARE SICK, almost only write negative stories about me no matter how well I am doing,” he continued.

No Donnie, it is because you are a fascist and the truth is slowly coming out!

Mini-Post: Housing Shortage!

[Editorial]

You all have probably heard about the nation-wide housing shortage.

Politicians have proposed many solution but they never have addressed the the underlying cause… greed!

Take a look at the houses of the 50s, 60s, and the early 70s. Look at the sizes of the houses. Now look at the sizes of the houses of today. Notice the difference?

Back in the 50s when my parents bought there house, we had a 3 bedroom, one and a half bath with a living, dinning rooms and a kitchen. Their house had around 1,200 sq ft of floor space. Now it is 3–4 bedrooms, 2.5+ bathrooms, home offices, and larger kitchens with over double the floor space! The Mc Mansions can have over 3000 – 4000 square feet of floor space!

You can’t really blame the builders, they have have a choice of building 3 or 4 regular size houses or one Mc Mansion for the same profit… which would you rather build?

Then we have the NIMBY crowd. Where I have my cottage on the Cape (For those not around New England, “The Cape” refers to Cape Cod.) the town bought a campground that went out of business and there is a hugh debate over what to do with it. The town wants to make affordable apartments because of the shortage housing for the summer workers. Many in the town are screaming the usual complaints… rune the character of the town, traffic (As if low income people have more cars than upper income people… I think it would be the other way around.), a burden of the schools… um this is summer help!

As a result, the number of apartments have dropped considerably. It took about five years for Truro to build low income housing after defending all the law suits. Another problem that is creeping up is secondary rentals, you have a low income unit that you sub-rent to someone not qualified for low income housing.

What gets me is that the same people who are complaining about the low income housing are are the very same ones complaining about the lack of summer help, they can’t find somebody to mow their lawns or they complain about the lack of waitstaff!

Yes, we do have a housing shortages but the solution is not simple!

[/Editorial]

I... I... I...

She left him speechless!

This morning we look across the pond where they are having the same problems that we are having here, the courts have ruled that we cannot use women facilities!

Labour MP Leaves Former Tory Minister Speechless By Pointing Out Obvious Fact About Trans Ruling

Simon Clarke seemed blindsided by Dawn Butler's observation.

HuffPost UK

By  Kate Nicholson

April 28, 2025

A Labour MP left a former Conservative minister tripping over his words during a clash over trans rights last week.

After the Supreme Court ruling earlier this month that a woman is defined by biology – and not gender – questions have been raised over exactly how that will impact the trans community.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said last week that trans women should not be “permitted to use the women’s facilities” in workplaces or public-facing services like shops and hospitals – and the same applies to trans men.

The watchdog did acknowledge that trans people still need access to public facilities, but is yet to explain how that would work in practice.

Meanwhile, the government has insisted trans women should use the men’s toilets, and trans men use the women’s toilets.

In there hatred of us they don't even think things through, it is just knee jerk reaction. Most of them are just parroting their party's talking points.

But, as backbencher Dawn Butler pointed out on Sky News last week, this decision does not exactly help boost women’s safety, despite the government’s promises.

She said: “Trans women, in my opinion, should of course, continue to use women’s bathrooms.”

In the video below you can see former chief secretary to the Treasury Simon Clarke gears start to slip and not engage; I... I... I... Does not compute! I... I... I... Does not compute! Buzz, buzz, buzz, zzzz, buzzz! Does not compute! I... I... I...

“I do not police people in public toilets,” Butler said. “I think that’s where we are getting to as a society, in policing what a woman looks like.

Bingo!

What does a woman look like? We know that butch lesbians are going to be challenged! You know women who look masculine are going to be challenged! Meanwhile, trans women who can assimilate into society will be able to use the women's bathrooms with no problems.

---

For those of us who transitioned decades ago, it is a whole new world.

‘Rights can be knocked out in a second’: older trans people shocked by supreme court ruling

Women who transitioned decades ago feel their safety and security has suddenly been removed

The Guardian

Libby Brooks

27 Apr 2025

“The fear is back. The fear I had when I first started my transition in 1979, that people will hurt me,” says Janey, who is 70. She has been living “happily and independently” as a woman for nearly half a century. Based in London, she still works in the mental health sector and is part of a large and accepting Irish family. She is also transgender.

“I still go into the women’s toilets at work, but when I open the door there’s that little voice inside me: ‘Will someone shout at me?’,” she says.

[...]

It’s the fragility of rights that scares her. “Just look at what is happening in the US – what worries me in this country is that it’s all about trans people now, but this is the start of something. Rights can be knocked out in a second.”

What scares me is the hate against us is spreading around the world, wherever there is a fascist government there is a pogrom against us!

The campaign for gender recognition was spearheaded by the group Press for Change, co-founded in 1992 by the acclaimed advocate Stephen Whittle, who says it taught trans people that “we didn’t have to take it lying down”.

[...]

But by the mid-2010s, he sensed “the world had grown up”. “I was not monstered all the time. I was accepted as a good colleague, a good teacher, a good lawyer. But since then there has been this decline, and it has been vicious. There will be some who will retreat. There will be some people who will be galvanised.”

Stephen Whittle is one of the trans rights leaders in Britain.

“It is realistic to be worried, but we’ve always been very aware of our rights in law. I’m hugely impressed with the younger generation: I’d say to them: don’t be scared, just be prepared to fight for your lives.”

There is a Latin phrase that I remember at times like this it say… "Ne permittas bastardus te deprimere"

“Don’t let the bastards get you down!"

Mini-Post: It Was All A Publicity Stunt

It was a media circus! When they arrested the judge there was a perp-walk in front a wall of reporters!

FBI director posts photo of arrested Wisconsin judge’s perp walk, possibly violating DOJ policy

Evan Perez

CNN

By Casey Gannon and Evan Perez

April 26, 2025

FBI Director Kash Patel posted a photo on X Friday night of the Wisconsin judge who was arrested for allegedly obstructing immigration agents while she was handcuffed, being escorted to a vehicle by officials.

The photo of Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan does not show her face, but shows her being escorted by three law enforcement agents in a perp walk. The caption by Patel read, “No one is above the law.”

According to the Confidentiality and Media Contacts Policy listed on the Justice Department’s website, DOJ personnel “should not voluntarily disclose a photograph of a defendant unless it serves a law enforcement function or unless the photograph is already part of the public record in the case.”

Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who implemented the policy during the Obama administration, worked during his tenure to make it more difficult for members of the media to obtain photos of defendants, such as mug shots.

This whole thing was designed to intimidate the court system and judges,

“The arrest is the point,” Craig Mastantuono, an attorney for Dugan, told CNN in an interview. “It’s a clear departure of the policy. There was no threat to public safety. She was not afforded the chance to come in and offer her side of the story.”

The road to fascism is paved with innocent victims!

Mini-Post: I Can't Even Begin...

How upsetting this is on so many levels! It shows to begin with a complete lack of empathy from Trump & Company! It shows a complete lack of respect to the Constitution and the law! It is mind numbing!

Three U.S. citizens, ages 2, 4 and 7, swiftly deported from Louisiana

The cases have renewed concerns that the Trump administration’s expedited deportations are violating the rights of both citizens and noncitizens.

The Washington Post

By Emmanuel Felton and Maegan Vazquez

April 26, 2025

Three U.S. citizen children from two different families were deported with their mothers by Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the early hours of Friday morning. One of them is a 4-year-old with Stage 4 cancer who was deported without medication or the ability to contact their doctors, the family’s lawyer said.

According to their lawyers, both families were taken into custody while attending routine check-ins this week in New Orleans as part of the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, which allows individuals to remain in their communities while undergoing immigration proceedings. Lawyers say the families were taken to Alexandria, Louisiana, a three-hour drive from New Orleans, where they were prevented from communicating with their family members and legal representatives and then put on a flight to Honduras.

And one of the children has cancer!!!! These people make the Gestapo look like Sunday School teachers! 

“I don’t know how much more of a blatant or clear constitutional violation there can be than deporting U.S. citizens without due process,” said Alanah Odoms, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana. “Especially with some of those citizens being the most vulnerable of all vulnerable, children, and not just any children, children with medical conditions that are dire.”

This is unhuman, uncivilized, and illegal!

There is a song "Proud to be an American" these goons are making that very hard to do anymore.

Lawyers representing the father of the 2-year-old U.S. citizen who was deported, identified as V.M.L. in court documents, filed an emergency petition in the Western District of Louisiana on Thursday seeking her release. The child was put on a plane to Honduras the next morning before the court opened.

Hours after the deportation, U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty, a Trump appointee, issued an order expressing his concern that the girl had been deported against her father’s wishes while stressing it is “illegal and unconstitutional” to deport U.S. citizens.

“The government contends that this is all OK because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her,” wrote Doughty, who has been lauded for his conservative rulings in the past. “But the court doesn’t know that.”

The more I read the more disturbing it has become!

Judge says 2-year-old US citizen appears to have been deported with ‘no meaningful process’

The girl was deported Friday with her mother to Honduras, despite her father’s efforts to keep her in the United States.

Politico

By Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein

April 26, 2025

A federal judge is raising alarms that the Trump administration deported a two-year-old U.S. citizen to Honduras with “no meaningful process,” even as the child’s father was frantically petitioning the courts to keep her in the country.

[...]

The judge on Friday scheduled a hearing for May 16, which he said was “in the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”

The child, whose redacted U.S. birth certificate was filed in court and showed she was born in New Orleans in 2023, had been with her mother and sister during a regular immigration check-in at the New Orleans office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Tuesday. Officials there detained them and queued them up for deportation.

But... but... the father was never asked! To me this seems to be a matter of parental custody not some ICE agent! The judge is hopping mad, they whisked the them away before the judge was able to talk to the mother,

Doughty said he attempted to investigate the emergency matter himself on Friday, seeking to get V.M.L.’s mother on the phone to determine whether ICE’s representation about her desire to bring V.M.L. to Honduras was accurate. The judge said he was “independently aware” that the plane he believed was carrying the family was already “above the Gulf of America.”

Trump administration lawyers called the judge back Friday afternoon and said a phone call with the mother would not be possible “because she (and presumably VML) had just been released in Honduras,” Doughty wrote. Doughty then scheduled the May hearing.

Now this judge is not an Biden or an Obama appointee but was appointed by Trump!

The Rolling Stone writes...

Among the children deported with their mothers, says the ACLU, are three U.S. citizens aged two, four, and seven. One of the children is a four-year-old suffering from a rare form of metastatic cancer and was deported out of the country without medication or consultation with their treating physicians — despite ICE being notified in advance of the child’s medical needs. The civil rights organization says that the mother of the two-year-old is pregnant, and was deported without ensuring any continuity of prenatal care or proper medical care.

Just toss her on a plane and sped her off without any legal options. People say she was here illegally so she doesn't deserve a trail... but Amendment Six to the Constitution says,

“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.”

 Nowhere does it say anything about being a citizen, nor about being here legally. It says "...the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial..."

But somehow the Republicans have a hard time understanding English when it comes to the Constitution. Politico has another article about the affects of being deported...

“What are you scared of?” I asked, twisting in the driver’s seat so I could make eye contact.

“What if I get deported?“ my American-born child asked.

I wasn’t entirely surprised by the question. Earlier in the week, after hearing how ICE arrests and deportation are impacting people where we live in the Bay Area, his 13-year-old brother asked if I was at risk of being arrested by ICE. They both know I was born in Cuba, and though neither could tell you about the Cuban Adjustment Act or any of the myriad laws that have smoothed my privileged immigration story, they’d both heard enough about the current deportations to think my American life — our American lives — could be imperiled.

I explained to them that I’m a U.S. citizen, not likely to be kicked out of the country. But President Donald Trump’s escalation from targeting deportable immigrants to immigrants with visas and green cards doesn’t exactly encourage trust.

I can’t tell my children what I no longer believe: that citizenship is an unbreakable shield. Not when the president openly acknowledges that his administration is looking for legal ways to “deport” its own citizens. Not when a 10-year-old U.S. citizen had her cancer treatment interrupted last month when her undocumented parents were ordered back to Mexico, forcing them to choose between relocating their entire family or separating from their daughter so she could continue her treatment in the U.S. Not when law enforcement officers mislead people like Federico Arellano, a U.S. citizen whose wife was in the process of legalizing her status. She was still recovering from birthing twins when she was called to the U.S. Immigration and Enforcement offices in Houston to discuss her case, only to be immediately deported to Mexico — with all four of their children, including the three who are U.S. citizens. Not when recent history tells us over and over that the state doesn’t always play by the rules, even when it admits an error, as in the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego García, the Maryland man trapped in a Salvadoran mega-prison whom the Trump administration is refusing to return, notwithstanding the Supreme Court.

Trump & Company is causing lasting trauma on these children he is deporting! But they don't care because it rallies their base. 

I have to wonder if this is all accidently after statements made by Trump...

'Homegrowns are next': Trump hopes to deport and jail U.S. citizens abroad

NPR Heard on Morning Edition

By Brian Mann

April 11, 2025

President Trump says his administration is actively exploring a proposal to detain U.S. citizens and send them to prisons in El Salvador. Speaking Monday, minutes before a press briefing alongside El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, Trump could be heard embracing the concept.

"The homegrowns are next, the homegrowns. You've got to build about five more places," Trump said to Bukele, an apparent reference to prison space that would be needed in El Salvador to house U.S. citizens.

You know who else said they were only doing their jobs? The guards at the Nazis concentration camps.

---

This was supposed to be just a short "Mini-Post" but the more I read about it the more riled I got!

A Dangerous Trend!

I have written about this before but it is getting worst... top military and cabinet secretaries are starting to push their agenda.

Attorney General Pamela Bondi Hosts First Task Force Meeting to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias in the Federal Government

Office of Public Affairs

April 22, 2025

Today, Attorney General Pamela Bondi hosted members of the President’s Cabinet at the U.S. Department of Justice for the inaugural meeting of the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias in the federal government. The Task Force, which was established by President Trump under Executive Order 14202, was joined by peaceful Christian Americans who were unfairly targeted by the Biden Administration for their religious beliefs.

Does anyone know what the heck they are talking about?

Michael Farris: First Amendment Litigator and Founding President of Patrick Henry College

Farris spoke on behalf of Senior Pastor Gary Hamrick to discuss how Cornerstone Church was under investigation and charged by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for so-called Johnson Amendment violations. Farris is an elder at the church, previously led Alliance Defending Freedom, and served as counsel on this case.

Wait a minute!!!! The Johnson Amendment! Do you know what the Johnson Amendment is? It is the law that say 501(c)3 non-profits do not engage in politics! How is enforcing a law anti-Christian bias? I would say not enforcing the law would be bias in favor of a religion.

The Atlantic magazine wrote back in January,

Wagner also became captivated by a concept called dominionism, a major conceptual shift that had been emerging in conservative theological circles. At the time, the prevailing view was that God’s mandate for Christians was simple evangelism, person by person; the Kingdom would come later, after the return of Jesus Christ, and meanwhile, the business of politics was, as the Bible verse goes, rendered unto Caesar. The new way of thinking was that God was calling his people to establish the Kingdom now. To put it another way, Christians had marching orders—a mandate for aggressive social and institutional transformation. The idea had deep roots in a movement called Christian Reconstructionism, whose serious thinkers—most prominently a Calvinist theologian named R. J. Rushdoony—were spending their lives working out the details of what a government grounded in biblical laws would look like, a model for a Christian theocracy.

This is the Republican party's goal... to tear up the Constitution and create a one party Christian Nationalistic theocracy.

The ideas have seeped into Trumpworld, influencing the agenda known as Project 2025, as well as proposals set forth by the America First Policy Institute. A new book called Unhumans, co-authored by the far-right conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec and endorsed by J. D. Vance, describes political opponents as “unhumans” who want to “undo civilization itself” and who currently “run operations in media, government, education, economy, family, religion, and arts and entertainment”—the seven mountains. The book argues that these “unhumans” must be “crushed.”

“Our study of history has brought us to this conclusion: Democracy has never worked to protect innocents from the unhumans,” the authors write. “It is time to stop playing by rules they won’t.”

Hey! "Unhumans" do they mean zombies?

Metro Weekly writes about that,

Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance endorsed a book that labels liberals as “unhumans” and calls for the dismantling of democracy to “crush” the spread of left-wing ideas.

This is how the Vice President of the United States thinks of trans people... as "unhuman!"

In Unhumans — which contains a forward written by former Trump advisor Steve Bannon — Posobiec and Lisec argue that the history of left-wing movements shows they are driven by hate and that adherents of such movements wish to “rob” and “kill” conservatives in order to achieve their larger goal of dismantling societal institutions.

The two call those on the political Left — regardless of how they identify, including progressives — “unhumans,” whom they alleged are waging an “Irregular Communist Revolution” against American society, claiming they “want an excuse to destroy everything.”

“With power, unhumans undo civilization itself,” Posobiec and Lisec write. “They undo order. They undo the basic bonds of society that make communities and nations possible. They destroy the human rights of life, liberty, and property — and undo their own humanity in the process by fully embracing nihilism, cynicism, and envy.”

I don't know of any liberals who "hate" conservatives, all the liberals that I know just want "government off their backs" and be able to live their lives without the government telling them what they can do with their bodies! It seems to me that what the Christian Nationalist are really saying that they are against diversity are against anything about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion they see it as being "anti-Christian" they want their god given right to discriminate.

I fall back onto the words of the civil rights leader James Baldwin,

We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.

How can we even sit down and discuss our human right when the do not even recognize our right to even exist!

Mini-Post: Is Anyone Surprised?

Oh Gee... I've have thought! Trump & Company canceled Pride at the,

Kennedy Center’s events scheduled for LGBTQ+ pride celebration canceled, organizers say

AP News

By ASHRAF KHALIL

April 25, 2025

Organizers and the Kennedy Center have canceled a week’s worth of events celebrating LGBTQ+ rights for this summer’s World Pride festival in Washington, D.C., amid a shift in priorities and the ousting of leadership at one of the nation’s premier cultural institutions.

Multiple artists and producers involved in the center’s Tapestry of Pride schedule, which had been planned for June 5 to 8, told The Associated Press that their events had been quietly canceled or moved to other venues. And in the wake of the cancellations, Washington’s Capital Pride Alliance has disassociated itself from the Kennedy Center.

“We are a resilient community, and we have found other avenues to celebrate,” said June Crenshaw, deputy director of the alliance. “We are finding another path to the celebration … but the fact that we have to maneuver in this way is disappointing.”

You know what? A whole new generation of kids are learning what it was like to live in the 50s... when you could be arrested for just stepping out the door. This is the origins of Pride.

The New Super Highway!

It is not an underground railroad any more but rather a four lane highway! It is not just trans people fleeing Republican states but a whole migration!

Meet the new American refugees fleeing across state lines for safety

Americans have often moved between states for opportunities. Now they’re being forced to uproot themselves to escape hostile forces under Trump

The Guardian

By Ed Pilkington

24 Apr 2025

America is on the move. Hundreds of thousands of people are packing up boxes, loading U-Hauls, and shipping out of state in an urgent flight towards safety.

They’re being propelled by hostile political forces bearing down on them because of who they are, what they believe, or for their medical needs.

All are displaced within their own country for reasons they did not choose. They are the new generation of America’s internal refugees – and their ranks are growing by the day.

Here, we profile families who have joined America’s swelling class of internal refugees. They represent just five stories among many others which might have been included: librarians fleeing book bans, professors forced out by ideologically-motivated college education boards, and most recently, the thousands of federal employees fired by the Trump administration.

This isn't something new, it has been going on for a while... GLAAD wrote back in 2021,

In response to the state-level attacks on trans youth, business leaders, medical associations, sports associations, and leading women’s and LGBTQ advocacy groups have spoken out in opposition to anti-trans bills. In addition, public polling shows that the bills are overwhelmingly unpopular—even among Republican voters. When North Carolina passed the anti-trans ‘bathroom bill’ HB2, the worst anti-LGBTQ law in the nation when it passed in 2016, the state faced a projected $3.76 billion in economic losses, according to a 2017 Associated Press analysis. That economic threat is being echoed today, as corporate leaders and consumers alike express concern over discriminatory state laws that interfere with corporate diversity and inclusion policies and consumer interests. See below for detailed corporate statements and public polling.

And it is even getting more pronounced in the last couple of months and bans don't work in today's techno world.

Study shows banning books can boost demand and visibility

A new study shows banning books in one state often increased demand for them in other states where they remained available.

By: Scripps News Group

Jul 24, 2024

New research into book bans in the U.S. shows that when states ban books from circulation, demand for them increases in states where they are not banned.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University sought to measure the effects book bans had on demand for the affected titles.

They studied a data set of more than 17,000 titles, which included more than 1,500 banned books, as tracked by the American Library Association and PEN America.

Banning a book resulted in a 12% increase in circulation where it wasn't banned.

Banning a book in one state increased its circulation 11% in states with differing political leanings that had not banned the book.

Banned books that had relatively high visibility on social media were read more frequently.

Okay, you want to read a banned book... go to an online library and down load an ebook! You want to have an abortion... go to a tele health doctor and order your meds from Canada or New Zealand!

Who wants to go to colleges that only teach half of classes... missing are the medical classes on abortion and trans healthcare!

States with abortion bans saw greater drops in medical school graduates applying for residencies

AP News

By  LAURA UNGAR

May 9, 2024

Fewer U.S. medical school graduates are applying to residency programs, but the drop is more striking in states that ban abortion compared with other states.

Figures released Thursday by the Association of American Medical Colleges showed continuing declines after the group first spotted the difference in an analysis last year.

“It looks even more pronounced. So now, I’m looking at a trend,” said Dr. Atul Grover, a co-author of the latest report.

The number of applicants to these post-graduate training programs dropped slightly across the board from spring of 2023 to spring of 2024, with larger decreases seen in states with abortion bans. Those states saw a drop of 4.2% from the previous application cycle, compared with 0.6 % in states where abortion is legal.

Similarly, states with abortion bans saw a 6.7% drop in OB-GYN applicants year over year, while states without abortion restrictions saw a 0.4% increase in OB-GYN applicants. The group only looked at graduates from U.S. medical schools, not those from osteopathic or international medical schools.

The patients wouldn't notice any changes at first but they are accumulative! As the shortages increase so will waiting time for appointments! The Los Angles Times reported that,

It wasn’t a stretch to predict that the strict abortion bans in states such as Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arkansas would have demographic effects — driving residents out of those states and reducing migration from abortion-protective states.

New research has validated that prediction and put meat on its bones. Most notably, economists at Georgia Tech reported in a paper published this month that by mid-2023, the 13 states with total bans had suffered a combined net loss of an estimated 36,000 residents per quarter, or more than 144,000 per year.

Over two years, that amounts to a net loss of more than one-third of a percent of the combined population of about 80 million in the 13 states with abortion bans.

For me this is a worrying trend, political scientists call it “ideological self-sorting.” Over time, this makes red states more conservative and blue states more liberal. Back in 2021 Forbes wrote about this trend...

America is on the move like never before. Some would say at a tectonic level and for many the driver is as much political as it is economic. The top five states seeing a mass exodus are all Democrat-controlled. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, California, New York, New Jersey, Michigan and Illinois lost a combined 4 million residents between 2010 and 2019.  Conversely, a recent study by U-Haul reported that the top five states to see the greatest influx of new residents include the Republican-led states of Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Ohio and Arizona.

“With a focus on creating the best possible environments for businesses, workers and families to succeed, states led by Republican governors are seeing more and more people become residents,” said Republican Governors Association Deputy Communications Director Mike Demkiw. “People are desperate to escape the heavy handed, regulation ridden big government approach pushed by liberal governors.”

But the opposite is also true! They are fleeing states that are heavy handed in personal freedoms. They are fleeing to states that recognize "My body, my choice!"

I see this as a worrying trait... it will end up dividing the country even more between states with an authoritarian government and states with a liberal governments, but it is even more than a political divide... Blue have more environmental regulations, a more liberal educations systems, but it also goes to the quality of life. Liberal states have more libraries, more parks, and better healthcare, their quality of life is better!

This ideological sorting is going to only get worst over the years, it will all boil down to will the voters in conservative get fed up with all the social constraints and move to the left or will the divide lead to a new civil war this time between conservative states verses liberal states? Instead of going to war over slavery we will be going to war over abortion and trans rights!

Mini-Post: They Have A Choice.

They are between a rock and a hard place, between the wrath of Trump & Company and the voters!

Republican US Senator Murkowski on threat of Trump retaliation: 'We are all afraid'

Reuters

By David Morgan

April 17, 2025

Summary

• Republican senator says retaliation is 'real'
• Murkowski is among few Republicans willing to break with Trump
• Audience responds multiple times with applause
• White House says success is Trump's only retribution

Republican U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski disclosed this week that the threat of political retaliation from President Donald Trump is real enough to make her anxious about speaking out about his tariffs, executive orders and cuts to federal agencies.

"We are all afraid," Murkowski told a summit of nonprofit and tribal leaders in her native Alaska.

"It's quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been here before," the 67-year-old lawmaker added. "And I'll tell you, I am oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that's not right."

[...]

Other congressional Republicans have faced heated criticism and even shouting matches during in-person meetings with constituents angered by their support of Trump. Some have responded to protesters with police arrests.

On November 9th 2027 every single House member is up for vote! It will then be our turn to show the wrath to those spineless Congress members who refused to stand up to Trump!