On Tuesday, May 19, the U.S. House passed H.R. 2616, the “Stopping Indoctrination and Protecting Kids Act,” by a vote of 217-198. The bill would hand the Trump administration enormous leverage to strip federal funding from any school that “teaches or advances concepts” related to transgender people, codifying into federal law the anti-trans definitions from Trump’s executive order 14168, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism.” It would also require public schools to forcibly out transgender students to their parents before using their pronouns or chosen names. The bill is significant on its own terms for the harm it would inflict on transgender youth if it became law. But what made Tuesday’s vote especially notable was the eight Democrats who joined every Republican to pass it—the largest Democratic defection on any standalone anti-trans bill of this Congress.
Like they codified RvW, bettered education, strengthened education, stopped secret FISA courts and data collection, bombing people overseas, implemented universal health and higher education, emptied prisons, stopped killing and locking up poors for bogus reasons, prosecuted and jailed superwealthy for poisoning the environment and killing workers. Sterengthend union rights rather than crushing a budding rail strike just before a few trainwrecks that further damaged the environment and people’s health? Jailed Trump? 🧐
They never had the power to do all of that. Yes, they are beholden to the billionaires. But they are not as bad as trump. And they can be pushed more progressive.
Like they have since FDR, amirite? 🤮
LBJ, problematic antics aside (and not excusing his foreign policy either) was a continuation of FDR domestically. An expansion even. Because while FDR abandoned minorities to keep support for his New Deal, LBJ made sure minorities also benefited from the Great Society at great political expense. Modern Dems though are just Reagan lite.
Modern Dems are right of Reagan.
And yet half of American voters vote even further right.
And?
And representatives are supposed to represent the constituents. Moreover, they can’t get elected if they don’t. People calling for the Dems for be more progressive don’t seem to realize that that’s moving away from where the votes are. There aren’t enough votes on the left to be worth courting because (and here’s the crux of the issue) the left has this purity test so candidates can’t get their support unless they are impracticality progressive. Moving left does not get them votes unless they move so far left that they lose many many more votes. The left’s failure to appreciate ‘better’ means the US is stuck with continued slide to the right.
That’s a lie. No one wants more Nazis but Nazis.