Hey everyone – there’s a petition going to mayors in the various cities/towns in the United States to declare their towns sanctuaries and not cooperate with Immigration. People are going to need this kind of protection with Trump taking office.
And that’s just in the last week. It’s about to get a whole lot worse.
Current Plan of Action: There’s this great link to a Google Doc going around (and, if you haven’t seen it yet, here it is) that has scripts to follow and phone numbers to call about all the current issues. It’s absolutely fantastic and I encourage everyone to set it as their homepage because it’s extremely useful and very effective.
Current Problem: It’s literally too effective (if there is such a thing which honestly I don’t believe). All of the voicemail boxes of these assholes are full and I guarantee you they have no desire to empty them to allow the floodgates to open again. Because so many of us are calling to air their grievances, we’ve literally flooded them to a stopping point.
The Solution: They can’t stop letters.
Paul Ryan: Washington DC Office 1233 Longworth HOB Washington, D.C. 20515
Mitch McConnell: Washington DC Office 317 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510
Write to them. I want their offices to look like the end of Miracle on 34th Street. It doesn’t even have to be a particularly well worded letter. Here’s all you need to say:
I’m writing to you today because I am in strong opposition to the appointments of Steve Bannon, Jeff Sessions, And General Flynn.
I also believe that President-elect Trump is working within a conflict of interest by not releasing his financial records and continuing his business through his family instead of entrusting it in a blink trust. The fact that foreign leaders are already being pressured to stay at Trump branded hotels when they visit on official business also worries me greatly.
I would also like to implore you to keep the Affordable Care Act, as I and many others that I know rely on the laws that were put into effect for our continuing health coverage.
That’s it. That’s all you need to say. I don’t care if you have to scrawl it on a napkin in crayon or send it in on a potato, all I care about is that you write the letter and send it in.
If they don’t want to hear our voices anymore, fine. But then they’re going to have to deal with our letters. And while Ryan and McConnell are definitely the big guys to go after, you should still continue to contact your local Senator’s and Representatives through phone lines, and then if they get full go ahead and find the address to their Washington DC office (or local office, whichever you prefer I just think sending a bunch of letters to Washington DC will really send a message) and send them a letter. Send five letters. Send five letters and a potato. I don’t care. Just send them.
Don’t become complacent after only a week. Keep fighting!
Letters really do have an impact. Politicians know that it takes SERIOUSLY pissed off voters to spring for postage.
I’m not even kidding.
And don’t stop with these guys. Hit your senators and your representative. Hit party leaders. Even if you’re a democrat–let them know what kind of tactics you’ll find acceptable. Do you want them to stonewall Trump the same way they stonewalled us for six years? Tell them that! Your reps want to know if you have their backs, if they decide to really throw themselves at opposing.
Send letters to those leaders you do like. Kamala Harris singing a tune you like? Let her know! Let whoever becomes the head of the DNC know, too.
We just witnessed an outsider take over a historically leaderless party. This is a chance for the progressive wing to do the same thing, but for the cause of good.
We’re at a turning point. But don’t let anyone fool you into thinking we don’t get a say. Our position sucks, frankly, but if it took Bush’s bungling to get us Obama, what might we be able to win if we can survive this?
The First Amendment Defense Act is the nuclear version of the so-called “religious freedom” laws that have appeared across the country, most infamously in Mike Pence’s Indiana. The Republican House will surely pass it, the Senate will pass it unless it’s filibustered by Democrats, and President-elect Trump has promised to sign it.
If it becomes law, FADA will be the worst thing to happen to women and LGBT people in a generation.
Like state “religious freedom restoration acts,” FADA’s basic principle is that it’s not discrimination when businesses discriminate against LGBT people if they have a religious reason for doing so. The most famous situations have to do with marriage: wedding cake bakers who say that if they bake a cake, they’re violating their religion; Kim Davis, the government clerk who said that signing a secular marriage certificate was a religious act that she could not perform.
But those stories are a red herring. The more important cases are ones like hospitals refusing to treat LGBT people (or their children), pharmacies refusing to fill birth control prescriptions, businesses refusing to offer health benefits to a same-sex partner, and state-funded adoption agencies refusing to place kids with gay families. Underneath the rhetorical BS, that’s what FADA is all about.
First, the bill applies to any corporation, organization, or person who “believes or acts in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”
Notice how broad that is: any business, agency, or individual, including government employees, hospitals, or huge businesses like Hobby Lobby or Chick-Fil-A. Old-age homes and hospices that turn away gay people – yes, this has actually happened – are covered. Hospitals that refuse a same-sex partner visitation rights – covered. National hotel chains that refuse to rent rooms to gay couples (or unmarried straight ones) – covered.
And notice that it applies not just to religious beliefs about same-sex marriage, but also to sexual conduct in general. Translation: contraception, sex education, treatment of STDs – all of these are part of the bill. If a national pharmacy chain wants to refuse to fill prescriptions for the “morning after pill,” if a company wants to fire someone for being pregnant out of wedlock or becoming HIV positive, if a public school wants to stop teaching sex ed – all covered.
And finally, since “moral conviction” is added in there, it doesn’t matter that Jesus never mentioned health insurance coverage. No actual religious grounds are necessary; just some moral conviction that the only allowable sex is sex within a heterosexual marriage.
What does “covered” mean? Essentially, FADA prohibits the federal government from doing anything about any of these acts. Specifically, it lists revoking tax exempt status (as it did for Bob Jones University because of its racist policies, in the case that started the whole “religious freedom” movement) and refusing any federal grant, contract, or certification.
But then the bill adds “otherwise discriminate against such person,” which actually means anything at all, so long as the government is taking some adverse action. (“Person” includes companies and organizations, remember.) For example:
– The current government policy requiring federal contractors – 20% of the entire U.S. workforce – not to discriminate against LGBT people will be immediately revoked. Contractors can legally fire people for being gay (or transgender).
– A governor can order that, in his state, no clerk anywhere may certify a same-sex marriage, and the federal government could do nothing about it.
– If a restaurant or hotel posts a sign saying “NO FAGGOTS ALLOWED,” FADA prohibits the government from “discriminating” against it by initiating an enforcement action under public accommodations laws. Gay couples may be refused hotel rooms anywhere in the country.
– If a company refuses to let a person take time off to take care of her same-sex partner in the hospital, the government cannot pursue any action under relevant employment laws.
– If a state-funded adoption agency refuses to place children with legally married same-sex couples, the government cannot withdraw its contracts with that agency. (This was a key request by Catholic adoption agencies, which receive the bulk of their funding from the government.)
– An employee at the Department of Veterans Affairs could refuse to process a claim for survivor benefits for the same-sex spouse of a servicemember.
– All schools and universities can discriminate against LGBT people, regardless of Title IX (as long as they link that discrimination to a view about marriage, which is quite easy to do). Universities may turn away gay applicants, deny LGBT clubs, and fire all gay faculty and staff members, with no penalties from the federal government.
– Any hospital may refuse to provide contraception, reproductive health care (including consultations of any kind), or health care of any kind to unmarried people or gay people, and not lose accreditation.
– And yes, however unlikely, your boss could fire you for having (straight) premarital sex, and no federal agency could come after you.
Oh, and then there’s that third point to consider. FADA has one of the strangest “pre-emption” clauses of any bill I’ve ever seen. Normally, federal bills either pre-empt state ones, or have a “no pre-emption” clause, saying that state laws take precedence. FADA has some of each, stating that “Nothing in this Act shall be construed to preempt State law, or repeal Federal law, that is equally or more protective of free exercise of religious beliefs and moral convictions.”
In other words, if a state has a non-discrimination law against gay people, FADA supercedes it, prohibiting any federal action based on that law. But if a state has a law that protects the religious party more, FADA doesn’t supercede it.
Under that language, state level actions against anti-gay corporations, organizations, and individuals would not be prohibited – but the federal government could offer no assistance, and indeed could not do anything at all, even if the anti-gay party is in clear violation of state law. In other words, states with more protections for women or LGBT people – you’re on your own out there.
Overall, FADA makes LGBTs officially second-class citizens of the United States – more like those in anti-gay countries like Putin’s Russia. We may be fired, barred from entry, denied services, denied health care, denied education, and denied legitimacy in ways that straight married people (and probably most straight unmarried people) do not. My fully legal marriage isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, because no one anywhere has to respect it, not even a government employee.
As you can see, FADA effectively overturns Obergefell without anyone having to file a lawsuit, because it creates a loophole as large as the right to marry itself. Any governor, mayor, or clerk could proffer a “moral objection” to same-sex marriage, and stop all employees under his or her authority from registering gay couples or certifying gay weddings. And even absent such action, any employer or business can act as though the marriage simply does not exist.
But FADA goes much further than marriage. It attacks unmarried women, who may be denied health care by state hospitals, employers, and insurance companies. It makes it impossible for the federal government to do anything in a host of discriminatory situations. It turns back the clock not just two years, to before Obergefell, but twenty years, to a time when simply being gay was criminal.
And it has the support of the House, the Senate, and the President-Elect.
everyone who posted/tweeted ‘we survived reagan’ can go fuck themselves
So if you’re from the US, you should take it, and if I may–I suggest that (among many terrible options and ideas) you say that making childcare tax-deductible, lobbyist bans, and veterans’ healthcare are all very important, and that Keystone XL, offshore drilling, etc. are not important to you.
At worst, you waste 5 minutes of your time; at best, enough people take it and he gets steered into a less insane direction. The dude does not seem to have a good idea of what he’s doing, and you can imagine that public opinion is going to be very important to himbecause he is an insecure man-child, so maybe you can influence some public good, capisce? Throw me a reply if you end up doing it. Have fun!
I just took this survey. For each question you have the options of highly important, somewhat important, not important, and no opinion. So I just put “not important” on the topics like “Deporting undocumented immigrants” and “Repealing Obamacare.” And I put “highly important” on questions such as “modernizing infrastructure.” We can play him at his own game 🙂
This is the sort of thing that could help our voices be heard. Not saying he’s guaranteed to listen, and it’s probably not as effective as speaking with your representative, but if he’s asking for the nation’s opinion, he should get it from all of us – including those that don’t agree.
Hey guys, I just wanted to link this here because I haven’t seen it reported by a major publication yet – it’s important to remember that the many of the news outlets reporting on the meltdown of 2016 have a vested interest in normalizing Trump. Think of how they keep saying that the Republicans present a ‘unified’ front when in fact Donald Trump’s transition team is struggling over a peanut someone found on the floor and hitting each other in the face with rocks.
Over 100 Democrats have signed on to the movement to fire Bannon. Your campaign of contacting your reps is having a noticeable effect.
The reaction to the idea was swift and critical. Earlier Thursday, Senate President Pro Tem David Shafer, R-Duluth, the most powerful member of that chamber, slammed Spencer’s proposal.
“The government has no business preventing Muslim women from wearing face scarves in public,” Shafer said in an interview. “Too many people on both sides of the religious freedom debate only want to protect freedom when it comes to their own beliefs.”
Also, while talking about the situation with Pence and Hamilton right now, please keep in mind that it was a recipe for disaster from the start…..and that was more than likely intentional.
The danger of Trump’s camp from the start has lain in people equating ‘over the top’ with ‘stupid’. They are anything but stupid. Every move they’ve made has been calculated, and I don’t doubt this was any different. There is no way, in the face of all the protests and sentiments expressed towards Trump and Pence since the election, that it didn’t occur to anyone that Pence going and seeing Hamilton of all things, would likely cause an uproar.
And what else happened yesterday of significance? Trump settled the lawsuit for fraud against Trump University….for over double what it was expected to settle for. Our president elect essentially admitted to defrauding people via Trump U, and paid $25 million dollars to settle it. This is utterly unprecedented. Also of note in the last couple of days was that the Trump hotel in DC held an event for foreign diplomats, in which it was made plain to them what benefits might come from diplomats making use of the Trump hotel when visiting DC. After all, what better way to ingratiate yourself with the US President you’re here to see, than to be able to say ‘oh I stayed at your lovely hotel?’ And what worse way to get off on the wrong foot than by admitting you stayed at one of his competitors? This is but one more of the MANY conflicts of interest at work with Trump’s presidency.
But Pence goes to see Hamilton, and predictably enough, he gets heckled and booed and that’s the story of the day, and Trump’s tweeting about it, and everyone’s focused on Trump tweeting about it and Pence getting booed…..and suddenly nobody’s talking about the MASSIVE story that is a president elect settling a fraud lawsuit for 25 million dollars and enticing foreign diplomats to use his hotel to get in his good graces.
tonight i went to a trump protest march and at one point hundreds of people were chanting ‘he can’t build the wall…his hands are too small’ and i wanted u to kno
Using your Presidential transition website to promote your own business properties is not normal.
Calling for millions of federal employees to sign nondisclosure agreements apart from standard government forms is not normal.
Blasting journalists with product placements for the labels your child, who is on your transition team, is wearing is not normal.
Having a wide range of senior figures in your own political party distance themselves from your transition team, citing the profound irregularity of it and worrying about future ugliness, is not normal.
Placing your children in charge of your business empire, then placing them on your transition team, then seeking top secret security clearances for them, is not normal. The conflicts of interest that this represents are almost too many to count, but at a basic level: you do not give someone with a financial interest to work against U.S. policy access to sensitive information — at all, ever.
Putting one’s children into senior positions of a government is the behavior of a banana republic, not a constitutional democracy with strong institutions. This is not normal.
For a president who ran on his business acumen to refuse to disclose his taxes to the public, which in turn denies anyone the ability to see if financial conflicts of interest are driving his policy decisions, is not normal.
Asking if he can decline the President’s salary, so as to avoid paying taxes, is not normal.
Owing hundreds of millions of dollars in business debt to a foreign bank and refusing to fully divest yourself from those finances is not normal.
Ascending to the White House while your eldest son, who is also on your transition team, and for whom you also seek a top-secret clearance, seeks out seven-digit business deals in Russia, is not normal. When Russia then names the President elect an “honorary Cossack,” it is not normal.
Asking a hostile foreign intelligence agency to hack into the emails of your opponent in the campaign is not normal. Refusing to comment while they expand those hacks into other institutions is not normal. Watching that same government’s propaganda network dramatically change its tone in order to benefit the incoming president is not normal. That this foreign government is also the subject of numerous investigations into the President elect’s improper business conduct is not normal.
Threatening to cut off Europe from NATO if payment is not received, like a gangster demanding protection money, in a way that benefits said foreign government, is not normal.
Chanting for the summary imprisonment of your political opponent despite repeated conclusions that she has committed no crime is not normal. Refusing to back down from that call to summarily imprison her is not normal. Essentially suggesting a show trial before you’ve even assumed office is not normal.
Hiring an avowed white supremacist and proud antisemite to be the chief of strategy at the White House is not normal. That the new White House chief strategist has bragged, openly, of his desire to destroy the United States is not normal. That the cofounder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center raised money for this is not normal.
Staff participating in authoritarian victim-blaming and antisemitic conspiracism is not normal. Collaborating with cable news channels in that antisemitic conspiracy about protests is not normal.
When one of the new administration’s most senior proxies and spokesmen calmly discusses committing war crimes in the Middle East, it is not normal. When he is shortlisted for the Department of State — despite lobbying for terrorists who killed Americans, despotic regimes in the Middle East, and the tyrannical government of Venezuela — it is not normal.
When that proxy is simply following in the footsteps of the new President-elect, who has called for reinstating torture and summarily executing the families of alleged terrorists, it is not normal.
The leading candidate for the department of education (who himself has no background as an educator or in education policy) openly suggesting to censor speech on universities is not normal. Nominating an oil executive as the Secretary of the Interior is not normal. Nominating a climate change denialist funded by the oil industry to run the EPA is not normal. When the leading candidate for Defense Secretary having a long history of openly racist comments toward his own staff it is not normal.
The FBI intervening decisively in the last week of the election to alter its outcome for one candidate is not normal. But the FBI refusing to address the president elect’s violation of sanctions against a communist country is also not normal.
When a woman accuses a presidential candidate of having raped her as a child, but then refuses to go forward with her allegations because of a barrage of death threats yet still receives almost no media coverage, it is not normal.
It is not normal for a president-elect to have 75 pending lawsuits against him, ranging from business fraud to illegal hiring practices. It is not normal for his lawyers to demand those lawsuits be delayed until after his inauguration for not discernable reason other than to retreat behind the immunity of the office.
Relentlessly attacking the legitimacy of the media (to be distinguished from criticizing media conduct) is not normal. Threatening to sue the media because you don’t like being criticized is not normal.
Being so steeped in the language of fascism that you and and your staff mirror Hitler (“make the trains run on time“), appeasing Hitler (“America First“), or Mussolini (“drain the swamp“) is not normal.
Trying to appoint an attorney general who was once called “too racist to be a judge” is not normal
A friend of mine who is a programmer developed this awesome engine for contacting your congressional representatives about the appointment of Steve Bannon. All you have to do is enter your zip code, and it spits out the contact information for all your representatives, up to the Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader, along with scripts you can follow! If you’re like me and have intense phone anxiety, this is SUPER helpful.
Meg's Mumbles 