Universities have often played a role in being where protest movements begin and grow.

There’s a lot of reasons for this, you have a lot of students in one place, most students on scholarships and with loans have time on their hands to discuss issues of the day, most students aren’t constrained by work and family and property that would give others pause from participating in protest.

From the anti war movement in the 60s to the communist overthrow of China, mass political movements get their starts in universities.

So if you can set a precedent of criminalizing speech and make the punishments as cruel as possible, you make students think twice about protesting.

That’s what this is about, sure America is happy to do Israel’s bidding, but don’t think for one moment they actually give one flying fuck about that. They found a brown person with a foreign enough name that they could destroy for stepping out of line as a not so subtle way to say to every student, “shut up, keep your head down, and we won’t come after you”

It’s the same thing they are doing with Kilmar Abrego Garcia. They don’t care about these two individuals, they don’t have any special interest in harming them (though I’m sure they delight in it) they want to send a message to everyone else.

We have the power, shut up

That’s the message, step out of line and find out. Due process, free speech, that shit is over. You are welcome to pretend it still exists but challenge us and we are one clerical error from you enjoying a lifetime of free room and board at CECOT.

For this to work it has to be punishing, it has to be dehumanizing, it has to be spectacular. The goal is to make you think when you go to resist, “I don’t want to end up like that one guy…”

The point is to make this as visible and memorable as possible so when your personal breaking point is hit and you think to resist there’s a voice in your head that says “no I better not”

Democracy is not a given.

The framers of the constitution were always concerned about a new autocrat taking root in America. Their solution was to divide power up into 3 co-equal branches. The idea being that if any one branch attempted to subvert the constitution, the other two branches could check their power.

The executive branch is saying loudly “we will not abide by the rulings of the judicial branch, they can not check our power.”

Here are some contemporary examples

• White House ignores court and invokes Alien Enemies Act to deport hundreds of Venezuelans
• Deported Ivy League doctor Rasha Alawieh will remain in Lebanon as judge hears arguments over Trump ignoring court order

The executive branch is also ignoring the legislative branch (not that the current office holders seem to mind much)

• US Institute of Peace says DOGE broke into its building

The US Institute of Peace is established by black letter law, passed the democratically elected congress. It has been dissolved, not because the law our representatives passed has been rescinded by the legislative branch, not because it was found unconstitutional by the judicial branch, but because the executive branch just said “we are doing this and we have the guns.”

It existing is the democratic will of the people made manifest through our representatives, and now because trump signed an executive order, it’s gone.

They broke into private property and removed people that do not work for the executive branch because the president said so.

The headline here is kinda absurd. From the article

The case, brought by Marlean Ames, a former Ohio Department of Youth Services (the state’s juvenile justice department) employee, challenges a rule the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals applies, requiring majority-group plaintiffs to demonstrate additional “background circumstances” to establish a discrimination claim.

This case is about whether or not the sixth circuit rule that a majority group plaintiff has to demonstrate additional background circumstances is constitutional.

“Because Ames is heterosexual, she must make a showing in addition to the usual ones for establishing a prima facie case,” Kagan read from the ruling, emphasizing that the opinion itself makes clear that different rules are being applied.

That’s liberal justice Elana Kagan making an argument reading the sixth circuits ruling.

A prima facie case is the first step in proving employment discrimination. Under the McDonnell Douglas framework, a plaintiff must show they belong to a protected class, were qualified for the job, suffered an adverse employment action, and occurred under circumstances suggesting discrimination. If these criteria are met, the burden shifts to the employer to provide a non-discriminatory reason for their decision.

So this case boils down to, “do members of the majority group have to jump over a higher bar to require that employers provide a non-discriminatory reason for their adverse employment action.”

The working class should be shoulder to shoulder in solidarity here.

Ok what did they do in those 4 months.

You see what republicans do the moment they get any kind of power? They have shit ready to go. New tax plan, sure half of it is scribbles in the margins, but push it through. No child left behind? Why not, let’s just overhaul the education system, no need to know what we are doing.

They just signed a bunch of executive orders reclassifying everyone as female and turning the government off. They just had them ready to go.

If I were locked out of power in a deeply broken nation, what else do I have to do but get together with the rest of my party and hammer out the shit we want to get passed when we get some power back.

What were they doing for the other months in that 40 years?! Sitting around dialing for dollars begging for plutocrats to give them enough money that they could do fuck all when they finally got power? Yea, that’s it. That’s what they did.

Why didn’t they have ANYTHING ready for when they had power? Why do they always act like “well now that the voters have given us a mandate, you know government is slow going, we don’t even have drafts ready to go to solve any of these problems. Gotta go get my thinking cap and a big cup of cocoa and noodle this… fuck we lost power again. Jimminy jillickers, I can’t believe our rotten luck”

Either they are the most incompetent gaggle of idiots ever assembled under one banner. Or the people that bought their seats for them would rather they talk a big game on msnbc and sit around and not threaten the broken system that has made them incredibly wealthy.

I’ll let you consider which is better.

The republicans are bringing back fascism but they are at least doing awful things their constituents want.

I disagree with these things, but they deliver on their stupid backwards promises.

I’ve voted for the democrats for my entire adult life, the very first vote I cast was for John Kerry.

Here’s the thing though. Are you a liberal, you wonder why the party is hated, have you ever seen Last Week Tonight?

Jon Oliver gets on tv every week and talks about some horrible problem that started with Reagan or Nixon and has just been going strong ever since. There are so many of these. And which ones can I look at and go “well the democrats sure did fix X when they finally had the levers of power”

I can’t think of a single thing. The most important project they’ve undertaken was the ACA, and I don’t know if entrenching health insurance companies permanently and legally into the fabric of our nation is all that much to celebrate.

Do they do some good things from time to time, sure. You can point to a policy here or there that are nice. But it’s a party of not-even-half-measures.

Can we have single payer? No How about a public option? No What can you do? Romneycare… great

Can we have immigration reform? No What can you do? DACA and that’ll be rescinded the moment we lose power.

Can we reign in the banking sector? Nah

Can we close Guantanamo? Too difficult

Can we enshrine the right to abortion in law? No, but we will ask justices to pinky swear… oh they just removed it, nevermind

Can we do anything to help the common man? Let me check with the donors, nah they don’t like that, but if you like some tweets about how trump is bad, I’ve got those for you.

A party that refuses to use the power you give it is not much use.

And before you type up your essay about how Ackshually! There was only one weekend in 2009 when they could have passed any kind of legislation at all. Fucking stuff it. Then they should have sat there all goddamn weekend and passed bill after bill fixing this shit box nation. Their lack of any kind of foresight and planning and doing anything but building a better and better donation collection machine has led us to fascism.

They can collect a billion goddamn dollars but have to text me to see if I can give them just $27 more dollars before they can pass a bill. We need a new party to represent the people.

His plan seems as obvious as it is simplistic.

Make honking sounds in public about how only he can end the war.

In private tell Bibi to hurry up and finish killing / imprisoning the Palestinians.

At some point Bibi will have killed and subjugated the lot of them and then trump can make additional honking noises about how he ended the war (just no one look for any of those pesky Palestinians, don’t know where they went, war is chaotic and it wasn’t even our war and he ended it bigly)

Bibi gets his genocide, trump gets to take credit as a peace maker, and all it will take is the wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people.

And when people wonder why it’s so hard to get out the vote, I think this is a key reason why. I’m old enough to have gone to Obama’s rallies, knock on doors for his campaign as a volunteer, vote for him and watch with joy as he won.

Hope and change. After the George W Bush presidency and the war on terror, it finally seemed like it was time for the pendulum to swing back.

And then every issue they came to the table with a position already in the center in hopes of appealing to the republicans who would then hold their breath and kick their feet and then it would slide further and further to the right until they were holding up romneycare as a progressive victory while also getting completely destroyed in the court of public opinion for passing romneycare.

I knew a lot of people that were very excited for Obama the candidate and completely disillusioned by Obama the president.

And I await the apologists to come out and tell me how he had to do it this way, they only had a super majority for a few weeks. Sure if the republicans have the slimmest majority they rewrite the tax codes and give away trillions to the wealthiest, and if they are in the minority they still somehow get their policies passed. But when democrats have power, well you see, government takes time. They can’t possibly just have the bill ready and call for a vote, you see, that’s just not how it works.

You can only tell people so many times. Vote blue and we promise this time, this time, we will make it better. I know last time we didn’t, but it was because of the blue dogs, or Joe Lieberman, or Joe Manchin. Sure, we have no plan to get rid of those people or other spoilers and we will doggedly support them in every primary… but somehow this time will be different.

Oh the dudes that make tons of money by exploiting workers would like cheaper more easily exploitable workers. Shocked pikachu

These South African immigrants like musk attempting to subvert the will of the American people are the truest threat.

The Dems raised billions for the election and lost. What did I receive after donating thousands of dollars to them.

Pleas for more money. Give us just a little bit more money and we will finally do something.

I’m done. We should fight the fascists but the corporate democrats have been completely captured. They only know how to raise money and hand it to consultants that will tell them to parade around Liz fucking Cheney.

I’m not paying them to slide further and further to the right anymore.