Mastodawn

The Supreme Court signals it might be losing patience with Trump

https://rss.ponder.cat/post/162025

The Supreme Court signals it might be losing patience with Trump - Pondercat RSS

[https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/gettyimages-2202767616.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100] President Donald Trump greets Chief Justice John Roberts as Trump arrives for a joint session of Congress in the House Chamber of the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on, March 4, 2025. | Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images Shortly after midnight early Saturday morning, the Supreme Court handed down a brief order forbidding the Trump administration from removing a group of Venezuelan immigrants from the United States without due process [https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/041925zr_c18e.pdf]. The facts of this case, known as A.A.R.P. v. Trump, are uncertain and rapidly developing. Much of what we do know about the A.A.R.P. case comes from an emergency application [https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24A1007/356063/20250418172902261_2025.04.18%20AARP%20Application.pdf] filed by immigration lawyers at the ACLU late Friday night. According to that application, the government started moving Venezuelan immigrants around the United States to a detention facility in Texas, without offering much of an explanation about why it was doing so. Sometime on Friday, an unknown number of these immigrants — the ACLU claims [https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24A1007/356063/20250418172902261_2025.04.18%20AARP%20Application.pdf] “dozens or hundreds” — were allegedly given an English-language document, despite the fact that many of them only speak Spanish, indicating that they’ve been designated for removal from the country under the Alien Enemies Act. That law only permits the government to deport people during a time of war or military invasion [https://www.vox.com/scotus/406719/trump-attack-immigrants-supreme-court], but President Donald Trump has claimed that it gives him the power to remove Venezuelans who, he alleges, are members of a criminal gang. Immigrants who were previously deported under this dubious legal justification were sent to a prison in El Salvador [https://www.vox.com/scotus/406719/trump-attack-immigrants-supreme-court], which is known for widespread human rights abuses. Following those deportations, the Supreme Court ruled the government must give any immigrant whom Trump attempts to deport [https://www.vox.com/scotus/407511/supreme-court-trump-jgg-deportations-el-salvador] under this wartime statute “notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal.” The ACLU lawyers argue the government is attempting to defy this order, claiming that the immigrants at the Texas facility were told that their “removals are imminent and will happen today” — a timeline that did not provide a real opportunity to challenge their removal. In a Friday hearing on the matter [https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/04/18/aclu-alien-enemies-deportations-trump/], the government did not give an exact timeline for deportations, but said it “reserve[d] the right” to deport the immigrants as soon as Saturday, and that the government was in compliance with the Supreme Court’s first order. Assuming that the facts in the ACLU’s application are correct, this rushed process, where immigrants are moved to a facility without explanation, given a last-minute notice that many of them do not understand, and then potentially sent to El Salvador before they have a meaningful opportunity to challenge that removal, does seem to violate the Supreme Court’s April 7 decision in Trump v. J.G.G. [https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a931_2c83.pdf] The Court’s late-night order in A.A.R.P. [https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/041925zr_c18e.pdf] appears to be crafted to ensure that this notice and opportunity for a hearing mandated by J.G.G. actually takes place. It is just one paragraph and states that “the Government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court.” It also invites the Justice Department to respond to the ACLU’s application “as soon as possible.” Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from the A.A.R.P. order. Though neither has explained why yet, the order says that a statement from Alito will come soon. Thus far, the Supreme Court has been extraordinarily tolerant of Trump’s efforts to evade judicial review through hypertechnical procedural arguments. Though the J.G.G. decision required the Trump administration to give these Venezuelan immigrants a hearing, for example, it also guaranteed that many — likely most — of those hearings would take place in Texas [https://www.vox.com/scotus/407511/supreme-court-trump-jgg-deportations-el-salvador], which has some of the most right-wing federal judges in the country. Though it is just one order, Saturday’s post-midnight order suggests that the Court may no longer tolerate procedural shenanigans intended to evade meaningful judicial review. If the ACLU’s application is accurate, the Trump administration appears to have believed that it could comply with the Court’s decision in J.G.G. by giving men who are about to be deported a last-minute notice that many of them cannot even understand. Whether most of the justices choose to tolerate this kind of malicious half-compliance with their decisions will likely become clear in the coming days. The Court’s A.A.R.P. order suggests that they will not. Still, it remains to be seen how this case will play out once it is fully litigated. The post-midnight order is only temporary. And it leaves open all of the most important issues in this case, including whether Trump can rely on a wartime statute to deport people during peacetime. — From Vox [https://www.vox.com] via this RSS feed [https://www.vox.com/rss/index.xml]

paywall 8h ago

The immigration fix hiding in plain sight

https://rss.ponder.cat/post/161852

The immigration fix hiding in plain sight - Pondercat RSS

Protestors hold signs outside a New York City courthouse. [https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/gettyimages-2204745860.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100] Hundreds of people protest the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a green-card holder and recent Columbia graduate who played a role in pro-Palestinian protests at the university on March 12 in New York City. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images What should America’s immigration policy be? This might seem like an absurd question to ask in a year when our current immigration agenda involves sending hundreds of people — including some who came here legally and many w [https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/article302464134.html]ith [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/15/world/americas/trump-migrants-deportations.html] no criminal record [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/15/world/americas/trump-migrants-deportations.html] — to a Salvadoran maximum security prison known for human rights abuses, revoking the visas of PhD candidates and researchers in the country over speeding tickets [https://www.deseret.com/utah/2025/04/16/byu-grad-student-has-student-visa-revoked/] or missing customs forms [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/science/russian-scientist-ice-detained-harvard.html], and killing our tourism industry [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/22/tourism-trump-immigration-arrests] with random imprisonments and harassment at the border. ## This story was first featured in the Future Perfect newsletter [https://www.vox.com/pages/future-perfect-newsletter-signup]. Sign up here [https://www.vox.com/pages/future-perfect-newsletter-signup] to explore the big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them. Sent twice a week. All the while, Vice President JD Vance posts on X that we cannot afford to worry about “due process [https://x.com/JDVance/status/1912320489261027374].” Yes, he put a foundational constitutional right in scare quotes because of the necessity of deporting the alleged 20 million people who came to the US illegally under Joe Biden. Although these claims that Biden let in tens of millions of people are popular on the right, there are literally no credible estimates to suggest that 20 million immigrants, legal or not, entered under his tenure. Most credible estimates are that between 4 million and 6 million [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/11/briefing/us-immigration-surge.html] people entered the US illegally during the Biden administration, and 8 million total. In the face of all that, it feels futile to try to outline what our approach to immigration should be. Any immigration policy at all that obeys the Constitution would be an improvement over the current situation. Every single one of the things I mentioned above is wildly underwater [https://www.thefire.org/news/fire-poll-only-14-americans-support-deporting-foreigners-pro-palestinian-views] in the polls [https://www.gelliottmorris.com/p/trumps-immigration-agenda-isnt-popular], but voters still tend to support Trump’s handling of immigration overall [https://www.gelliottmorris.com/p/trumps-immigration-agenda-isnt-popular]. That suggests Democrats have a serious challenge: They need to communicate immigration policies to voters that are a clear break from Biden’s approach. His expansion of temporary protected status [https://cmsny.org/biden-harris-immigration-executive-actions/] and the increase in asylum seekers didn’t move the needle in favor of the party [https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/monmouthpoll_us_061224/].Now, the Trump administration has chosen to pursue a lawless, vindictive, court-defying campaign against every immigrant in the country — and it’s essential that the Democratic Party develop a coherent alternative that can actually win elections. While I can’t, of course, speak for the party, I wanted to take a shot over the next few weeks at articulating some of the policies I want to see on immigration. That way when the public turns on this administration’s campaign of destruction, there are some compelling alternatives on offer. ## What Biden got wrong on immigration I am strongly in favor of immigration. Immigrants make America stronger [https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/3/14624918/the-case-for-immigration] — high-skilled immigrants working in tech and science and medicine as well as immigrants working in agriculture and construction, who serve essential roles in the US economy. Immigration is good for the people who come here, but it’s also good for the people already here. It benefits America to be more populous — a bigger country has more power on the world stage, which benefits Americans in trade agreements, consumer goods access, international policy, and much more. Immigrants to the US tend to assimilate effectively [https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/3/10/pgae344/7795945], immigrant crime rates are strikingly low [https://www.cato.org/blog/why-do-illegal-immigrants-have-low-crime-rate-twelve-possible-explanations], and immigrant kids overperform academically, all of which enriches us as a country. But immigration policy in a democracy requires a careful balance. The public is generally supportive of immigration under some circumstances but fiercely opposed to it under others [https://news.gallup.com/poll/1660/immigration.aspx]. Most legal immigration programs are individually popular, as are some paths to legal status for people who have been here illegally for a long time. But public opinion ricochets back and forth on immigration far more than on other contentious issues like abortion. When Biden’s term started, only 28 percent of Americans wanted immigration to decrease. By mid-2024, 55 percent did. And they cared a lot about it: Immigration routinely appeared near the top of reasons people voted Republican [https://www.newsweek.com/economy-immigration-donald-trump-wins-election-ap-votecast-1981414] and is still the issue where Trump’s polling is best. Biden adopted policies that resulted in a lot more people coming to the US illegally or with temporary status [https://www.vox.com/policy/356761/bidens-border-record-trumps-claims-vs-reality] than any previous governments. There were, of course, factors outside his control; the economy and conditions in Central America dramatically affected immigrant flows. But policy mattered, too. And the way the Biden administration responded to the surge of people at the border rapidly turned Americans against immigration and against Biden and Democrats [https://www.axios.com/2023/02/15/america-immigration-border-gallup]. It even contributed to Trump’s return to power. Biden realized this and cracked down at the border in 2024, but belatedly. Neither his initial expansion of immigration nor the subsequent crackdown involved much in the way of making the case to Americans for the policies he was pursuing or explaining to skeptical voters why they would benefit. The Biden administration’s unilateral, executive order-driven approach to immigration turned out to be a terrible mistake [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/election-immigration.html]. For one thing, immigrants need stability and long-term assurance that they’ll be allowed to stay in the country, and any policy implemented by executive order can later be reversed by executive order, throwing lives into chaos. “Failure to secure the border is a gift to immigration restrictionists,” Derek Thompson at The Atlantic warned last year [https://archive.is/qzYKE#selection-1089.332-1089.401]. Immigration is crucial to our country, and voters are open to it — but they have to believe it’s being done well. It’s not entirely Biden’s fault that he couldn’t get a process through Congress. Both parties have called for comprehensive immigration reform for decades but are happy enough to kick the can down the road, and Trump opposed [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/republicans-kill-border-bill-sign-trumps-strength-mcconnells-waning-in-rcna137477] the bipartisan bill that did come up during Biden’s term. Congress isn’t doing its job, but the president still shouldn’t have tried to route around them. There’s at long last a chance that the absurd abuses of the present moment will persuade Congress to stop putting it off and genuinely reform immigration. If that happens, what should we hope it will look like? ## My hopes for a post-Trump policy The first thing we need is a full re-embrace of international students. It is a very good thing that people from all over the world want to come to America to learn. It’s a source of income for American universities, businesses, and communities; it is a chance for Americans to meet, learn from, learn with, and share our culture with people from very different backgrounds than our own. And many of them stay and go on to become very successful in America and innovate crucial technologies [https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/407586/immigration-crackdown-foreign-students-science-innovation-funding], as my colleague Bryan Walsh explained earlier this month. As part of embracing students, Congress should pass explicit free speech protections for visa holders, taking away the secretary of state’s power to kick a student out of the country for writing an op-ed [https://www.vox.com/donald-trump/406199/ice-rumeysa-ozturk-tufts-logoff]. (I think those deportations are likely to be found unconstitutional, but a new set of formal legal protections for student visa holders will be a good way to shut the door on that chapter.) While we’re at it, we should also reinforce existing laws and, where necessary, add new ones to protect against other Trump abuses: The government should not have the right to send anyone to prison indefinitely without trial — whether the person is a US citizen or not and whether the prison is in the US or not — and Border Patrol should need a warrant to seize and read our phones [https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/article304015606.html]. The second component of a better immigration policy is to expand and improve our pipeline of workers. There’s a deep shelf of good proposals to improve the H-1B visa program [https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23177446/immigrants-tech-companies-united-states-innovation-h1b-visas-immigration], which brings talented people who are crucial hires for the US. Right now, the program works by a lottery, so that everyone who is eligible submits an application for an H-1B and only some get one — with no relationship between who we need most and who we get. Advocates for better immigration processes have been begging [https://ifp.org/h1b/] us to fix this [https://ifp.org/h1b/] for a long time. We should also modestly expand the number of H-1Bs we offer, which would be a win for applicants, the companies that want to hire them, and taxpayers who benefit from the taxes that people pay and the value they create when they move here. It should also be easier for the spouses of people on H-1B visas to work in the US, and we should end the country-specific green card process rules [https://www.fwd.us/news/per-country-cap-reform-priority-bill-spotlight/] that force immigrants from India and China to wait much longer to become permanent residents and citizens than immigrants from anywhere else. And while skilled workers are the most clear-cut win, we should improve the pipelines for all workers. People do not only make America wealthier and better off by coming here if they are going to be a software engineer. We also benefit from the hard work of immigrants in manual labor. The reliance on illegal immigrants in our construction and agriculture industries is, frankly, something to be ashamed of. If we want someone’s labor, we should provide a legal pathway for it. (Again, none of these are new ideas or even partisan ideas. They’re just ideas I think are worth spotlighting as we try to offer a positive vision on immigration.) Historically, the grand bargain imagined in an immigration deal would be a marriage of these proposals to welcome more people to America (which Democrats support) with a step up in border security and enforcement (which Republicans support). In a future newsletter, I’ll argue that whether or not there’s bipartisan compromise on the table, we have to pursue immigration policy with an eye to both parts of that picture — or we get neither. — From Vox [https://www.vox.com] via this RSS feed [https://www.vox.com/rss/index.xml]

paywall 8h ago

The nightmarish problem with trying to make Trump obey court orders

https://rss.ponder.cat/post/161849

The nightmarish problem with trying to make Trump obey court orders - Pondercat RSS

[https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/gettyimages-2208001877.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100] Prison guards observe inmates in El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT). | Alex Pena/Anadolu via Getty Images Top officials within the Justice Department, the State Department, and possibly even the White House may be barrelling toward a criminal conviction for contempt of court. It is far from clear, however, whether anything will happen to them even if they are convicted. On Wednesday, Chief Judge James Boasberg determined that he has “probable cause” to conclude that the Trump administration officials who defied one of his orders — which required the administration to halt deportations under an illegal order invoking a wartime statute [https://www.vox.com/donald-trump/404665/trump-defy-supreme-court-alawieh-deportation] — should be held in contempt of court. (Contempt is a process used to punish people who violate court orders, sometimes with imprisonment.) Boasberg’s order concludes that, unless the government provides due process to the people who were deported by allowing them to challenge their deportation in federal court, he will identify the officials responsible for this defiance and subject them to a criminal trial. Boasberg’s original order halting these deportations was eventually vacated by five of the Supreme Court’s Republican justices [https://www.vox.com/scotus/407511/supreme-court-trump-jgg-deportations-el-salvador], who argued that the plaintiffs in that case brought their lawsuit in the wrong court. But, as the Supreme Court said in United States v. United Mine Workers [https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/330/258/](1947), “a defendant may be punished for criminal contempt for disobedience of an order later set aside on appeal.” As Boasberg lays out in his Wednesday opinion [https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2025cv0766-81], the Trump administration defied his original order by flying many individuals to El Salvador and turning them over to Salvadorian officials, who placed them in a notorious prison, even after Boasberg ordered these deportations to be halted and any planes that were still on their way to El Salvador to be turned around. It’s unlikely that Boasberg will be the last judge to consider contempt charges against this administration. Judge Paula Xinis, the judge overseeing the high-profile case about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported to El Salvador in defiance of a court order [https://www.vox.com/scotus/408253/trump-supreme-court-order-abrego-garcia-el-salvador], appears to be laying the groundwork for contempt proceedings against Trump officials [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/judge-abrego-garcia-case-indicates-weighing-contempt-proceedings-trump-rcna201359]. But even if Boasberg or Xinis are able to identify who is responsible for the government’s defiance of court orders — itself an uncertain proposition because the Trump administration is unlikely to cooperate with any investigation into its internal decision-making — it is not at all certain that any Trump official will face any consequences for their actions, at least so long as Trump is president. In a famous essay on the courts, Alexander Hamilton argued that the judiciary “will always be the least dangerous” of the three branches of the federal government, because it “must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments [https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed78.asp].” When someone violates a federal court order, that order is typically enforced by the US Marshals Service [https://www.vox.com/donald-trump/404665/trump-defy-supreme-court-alawieh-deportation], which is a law enforcement agency housed in the Justice Department. Trump could potentially order the DOJ not to enforce any decision handed down by Boasberg or Xinis. Similarly, while federal law provides that federal courts have the “power to punish by fine or imprisonment [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/401]” anyone who disobeys their orders, fines are collected by Executive Branch officials and paid to the US Treasury, which is also part of the Executive Branch. The Federal Bureau of Prisons is part of the Justice Department [https://www.justice.gov/agencies/chart/grid], which, again, is part of the Executive Branch. The head of the Executive Branch of the federal government is Donald Trump. Significantly, Boasberg points to a provision of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which requires him to “appoint another attorney to prosecute the contempt [https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcrmp/rule_42]” if the Trump administration refuses to prosecute its own officials. Even if Trump’s Justice Department tries to sabotage this proceeding by refusing to prosecute, the trial could still happen with a court-appointed lawyer sitting in the prosecutor’s chair. However, any enforcement of a verdict would likely be impossible. Indeed, a federal appeals court just signaled that it is very much aware [https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/42698931654973a1/2eba7934-full.pdf] of the danger that Trump will thwart any attempt by the judiciary to bring his administration into compliance with the law. On Thursday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit rejected the Trump administration’s request to cut off many of the proceedings in Xinis’s courtroom. “We shall not micromanage the efforts of a fine district judge attempting to implement the Supreme Court’s recent decision,” a decision that mostly favored Abrego Garcia [https://www.vox.com/scotus/408253/trump-supreme-court-order-abrego-garcia-el-salvador], Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson wrote in that opinion. But Wilkinson, a Reagan appointee who Republican President George W. Bush considered appointing to the Supreme Court [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/18/us/politics/harvie-wilkinson-conservative-judge.html], also ended his opinion with a warning that the Executive and the Judiciary “come too close to grinding irrevocably against one another in a conflict that promises to diminish both.” In a battle between the Executive and Judicial branches, Trump, Wilkinson admitted, “may succeed for a time in weakening the courts.” ## So what can be done about the Trump administration’s defiance of court orders? Ultimately, if Trump or his subordinates are held accountable for their defiance of court orders, it will be because the courts — or maybe Congress — exercise their authority in ways that Trump cannot stop. The Constitution contemplates a pretty straightforward remedy against a lawless president: impeachment and removal from office [https://www.vox.com/donald-trump/404665/trump-defy-supreme-court-alawieh-deportation]. Realistically, however, it takes 67 votes in the Senate to remove Trump, and the Senate wasn’t even able to find 67 votes to disqualify Trump from office after he incited a violent mob to attack the US Capitol in 2021 [https://www.vox.com/donald-trump/404665/trump-defy-supreme-court-alawieh-deportation]. So the likelihood of a successful impeachment seems vanishingly small. Another possibility is that, if Trump administration officials are convicted of contempt, they may be fined or imprisoned after Trump leaves office. The next president could potentially order law enforcement to carry out court orders that Trump defied, although it remains to be seen whether the possibility of future fines or imprisonment has any impact on Trump officials’ behavior. Additionally, federal courts have full authority over which lawyers are admitted to practice before them. So, to the extent that the lawyers representing the Trump administration in Boasberg or Xinis’s courtrooms were involved in the decisions to defy court orders, they could be disbarred in Boasberg or Xinis’s courts [https://law.justia.com/constitution/us/article-3/17-power-to-admit-and-disbar-attorneys.html]. The judges could also refer them to their state bar, which could strip them of their license to practice law altogether. This sanction has been used effectively against some lawyers who enabled wrongdoing by Trump. A California State Bar Court, for example, recommended that John Eastman, a former Trump lawyer who assisted Trump’s failed efforts to overturn former President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, be disbarred. Because of that recommendation, Eastman cannot practice law in California while the state supreme court decides whether to permanently disbar him [https://www.calbar.ca.gov/About-Us/News/News-Releases/state-bar-court-hearing-judge-recommends-john-eastmans-disbarment]. That said, it’s not yet clear whether any of the officials responsible for the illegal deportations are lawyers, much less lawyers who have appeared in Boasberg or Xinis’s courtrooms. Some of the lawyers representing the government in these cases, moreover, appear to have acted honorably. In an early proceeding in Abrego Garcia’s case, for example, Xinis asked the government’s lawyer why the government cannot return Mr. Abrego Garcia to the United States. The lawyer’s response was “the first thing I did was ask my clients that very question. I’ve not received, to date, an answer that I find satisfactory [https://www.vox.com/scotus/408253/trump-supreme-court-order-abrego-garcia-el-salvador].” So, while disbarment might allow the courts to reach some officials who may have played some role in the Trump administration’s defiance of court orders, it’s unlikely to provide a complete remedy. One other chaos factor hanging over Boasberg and Xinis is the Supreme Court itself. This is, after all, the same Supreme Court that recently held that Trump is allowed to use the powers of the presidency to commit crimes [https://www.vox.com/scotus/358292/supreme-court-trump-immunity-dictatorship]. So there’s no guarantee that the justices won’t sabotage any contempt proceedings against Trump administration officials. — From Vox [https://www.vox.com] via this RSS feed [https://www.vox.com/rss/index.xml]

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Eduardo Medina 9h ago

Año 2028. Gobierno de #España compuesto por #PartidoPopular y #Vox: "¡Mirad, nos respaldan todos los países de Iberoamérica!".

#Francia, #Alemania e instituciones de la #UniónEuropea: "¿Y a nosotros qué coño nos importa eso?"

Ya lo dijo Carod Rovira en una entrevista a Jesús Quintero en el programa El Vagabundo: España no sabe ni lo que es ni lo que quiere ser de mayor.

paywall 20h ago

Trump has two options after a wrongful deportation

https://rss.ponder.cat/post/161628

Trump has two options after a wrongful deportation - Pondercat RSS

A crowd of protesters calls on the administration to bring back Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia [https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/gettyimages-2210136781.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100] A rally in support of Kilmar Abrego Garcia outside the US District Court for the District of Maryland on April 15, 2025 in Greenbelt, Maryland. | Maansi Srivastava/For The Washington Post via Getty Images This story appeared inThe Logoff [https://www.vox.com/the-logoff-newsletter-trump/409383/blank]*,*a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life.Subscribe here [https://www.vox.com/pages/logoff-newsletter-trump-administration-updates]. Welcome to The Logoff: Today I’m focusing on the Trump administration’s escalating fight with the judicial branch over a wrongful deportation, after appellate judges — the last stop before the Supreme Court — issued a stark warning about the peril of defying court orders. What’s the context? Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was sent to a Salvadorian prison [https://www.vox.com/politics/406690/trump-el-salvador-deportation-prison-court] last month despite a court order barring his deportation, a move the Trump administration concedes was an “administrative error.” The Supreme Court last week unanimously upheld a lower court ruling that the administration must “facilitate” his return to the US [https://www.vox.com/scotus/408253/trump-supreme-court-order-abrego-garcia-el-salvador]. The administration has not complied [https://www.vox.com/the-logoff-newsletter-trump/408720/trump-defying-supreme-court-wrongful-deportation], instead arguing that the courts can’t compel President Donald Trump to ask El Salvador to return Abrego Garcia. (El Salvador’s president said this week that he won’t send him back unsolicited [https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/14/politics/trump-nayib-bukele-white-house-immigration/index.html].) But a lower court judge rejected that rationale and ordered officials to provide answers on what’s being done to comply with the court — an order the administration appealed. What’s the latest? An appeals court on Thursday slapped down [https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25900495-2025-04-17-court-order-dckt/?q=shocking&mode=document#document/p2] the administration’s attempt to get out of providing more information about its efforts to bring back Abrego Garcia. The administration’s claims in the case, the judges wrote, “should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.” What’s next? The administration could appeal the case again, this time to the Supreme Court, which could clarify what exactly the administration is compelled to do for Abrego Garcia. What’s the big picture? The latest ruling makes clear that, absent the Supreme Court changing course, the administration has two choices: It can do more to bring Abrego Garcia back, or it can continue to defy court orders. It’s pretty clear where we’re headed [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-asha-rangappa.html]: The White House posted on X today that Abrego Garcia is “never coming back [https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/1913241658579440126].” ## And with that, it’s time to log off… Just a quick reminder that “logging off” doesn’t mean tuning out the world or giving up on it. It means being intentional about where you put your focus, time, and energy — and not surrendering all of those to an eye-glazing doomscroll. I’ve been doing too much of the latter lately, so here’s a short poem, “Hummingbirds [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?volume=160&issue=4&page=27],” that I hope can help us all make the best of our time. Thanks for reading. See you back here next week. — From Vox [https://www.vox.com] via this RSS feed [https://www.vox.com/rss/index.xml]

paywall 23h ago

Is J.K. Rowling transphobic? Let’s let her speak for herself.

https://rss.ponder.cat/post/161530

Is J.K. Rowling transphobic? Let’s let her speak for herself. - Pondercat RSS

J.K. Rowling. [https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/chorus/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24474225/GettyImages_1388427456.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100] J.K. Rowling, pictured at the premiere of Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore in 2022, has a history of transphobic statements and actions. | Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images J.K. Rowling’s supporters frequently claim the author has never actually said or done anything transphobic. It’s a position you can see on social media, in the pages of the New York Times [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/17/new-york-times-contributors-open-letter-protest-anti-trans-coverage], and even on a 2023 podcast [https://www.vulture.com/article/witch-trials-jk-rowling-podcast-essay-review.html] with Rowling herself. It’s also an easily debunked lie. Some of this confusion around Rowling’s opinions can be cleared up with a definition of transphobia [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/transphobia], which doesn’t — despite the “phobia” — solelymean fear of trans [https://www.vox.com/lgbtq] people, but, per Merriam-Webster, also an “irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against transgender people.” (In fact, Merriam-Webster’s own examples list [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/transphobia#examples] cites multiple articles related to Rowling.) Rowling can say she likes everyone, but she has displayed that prejudice time and again. She’s also peddled explicit fear of trans people, particularly trans women, insisting they’re an inherently dangerous threat to cisgender women. Although some in the media [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/opinion/jk-rowling-transphobia.html] distort the anger directed at Rowling from trans activists, trans people, and allies, the truth is those feelings — not just anger, but betrayal and grief — are justified. Rowling has made her antagonistic position on trans issues clear through tweets, sound bites, actions, and even a 3,600-word blog post [https://www.vox.com/culture/21285396/jk-rowling-transphobic-backlash-harry-potter]. By 2025, her transphobia has become so rampant and constant that it’s difficult to build a completely comprehensive timeline of it. For those attuned to it, she doesn’t have to spell it out every single time; it’s a huge part of her identity. These dog whistles only lead to more confusion, allowing people to point to the absence of immediately obvious bigotry to claim she’s being unfairly maligned. Over time, however, that bigotry has not only grown more pronounced [https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/j-k-rowling-trans-twitter-elon-musk-1235019620/] but also broader in scope, leading her to recently target not only trans people but also asexual people [https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2025/04/12/jk-rowling-asexual-post-transphobia/83045213007/]. Additionally, she increasingly [https://www.tricitynews.com/local-news/jk-rowling-threatens-legal-action-against-coquitlam-transgender-activist-over-tweets-3123135] threatens detractors [https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1416680018416181248] with legal action [https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/02/lgbtq-activist-forced-to-apologize-for-calling-jk-rowling-a-nazi-after-she-threatens-him-with-legal-action/], which contributes to critics of her behavior falling silent [https://deadline.com/2023/02/bbc-apologizes-again-jk-rowling-transphobia-1235266083/]. Conspicuously, many of her legal threats appear to be directed at individuals identifying as part of the LGBTQ+ community. Since Rowling began airing her views, her community, especially online where many of these conversations are had, is now stacked with similarly minded people who share her transphobic beliefs. For instance, Rowling is friends with numerous anti-trans activists, including Helen Joyce, who’s made alarmingly transphobic statements [https://www.thepinknews.com/2022/06/03/helen-joyce-transgender-lgbtq/] calling for a “reduction” in the number of trans people. She’s tweeted [https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1502679601335705603] public support for anti-gay [https://web.archive.org/web/20140626075425/http://www.columnist.org.uk/2014/05/06/caroline-farrow-is-homophobic-there-ive-said-it/], anti-trans [https://thepinktriangletrust.com/tag/caroline-farrow/] activist Caroline Farrow [https://www.thepinknews.com/2022/03/14/caroline-farrow-jk-rowling-trans-twitter/]. These connections are part of a social network echo chamber of trans-exclusionary radical feminists, or TERFs [https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/9/5/20840101/terfs-radical-feminists-gender-critical] (sometimes called “radfems” or the “gender-critical” movement). In Rowling’s native UK, TERFism has gained a unique stronghold [https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/12/19/21029874/jk-rowling-transgender-tweet-terf] over some particularly vocal, ostensibly liberal feminists like Rowling. Her strident transphobia has also led her to align herself [https://x.com/IndiaWilloughby/status/1853753319509954607] with far-right extremists [https://www.advocate.com/news/2022/7/11/jk-rowling-and-matt-walsh-blasted-online-over-shared-transphobia]. The facts we can easily point to suggest that Rowling has been turning toward an anti-trans stance over a long period, beginning mostly with simple engagement on social media and leading to fiery and extremist statements. While labeling something transphobic is a serious accusation, and not something we do lightly, it’s important to recognize Rowling’s bigotry for what it is. The rundown that follows shows her growing embrace of transphobic, even extremist rhetoric. 2014: Rowling writes The Silkworm, the second novel in the Cormoran Strike mystery series, which involves a trans woman who is portrayed as conspicuous and unable to pass [https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkeynz/jk-rowlings-transphobia-wasnt-hard-to-find-she-wrote-a-book-about-it]. The book includes a scene where the main character gleefully threatens this character with prison rape. October 2017: Rowling “likes” a tweet [https://web.archive.org/web/20180921175900/https://www.facebook.com/549800225039203/photos/a.775757485776808.1073741831.549800225039203/1714016318617582/?type=3&theater] linking to a controversial, since-deleted Medium article [https://web.archive.org/web/20171027163603/https://medium.com/@GappyTales/me-too-now-what-sex-the-left-and-gender-identity-236b08f194b0] referring to a theoretical trans woman in a female space as “a stranger with a penis.” While liking a tweet might seem small, this is notable because the piece made the basic argument Rowling continues to make today, namely that trans women are by default part of a “male-bodied” group who are dangerous to women and who should not have access to women’s bathrooms [https://www.vox.com/2016/5/5/11592908/transgender-bathroom-laws-rights]. In the public sphere, this kicks off questions about whether Rowling is anti-trans, which are followed by the author entrenching further. > JK Rowling hitting that like button on a “trans women are rapists” piece, if you were wondering whether to relax as a trans person in the UK pic.twitter.com/W5JvBmylPW [https://t.co/W5JvBmylPW] > > — sistersinead.bsky.social (@sistersinead) October 24, 2017 [https://twitter.com/sistersinead/status/922849074667315200?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw] 2018: In March, Rowling **“**likes” (and then unlikes) a tweet [https://twitter.com/Philip_Ellis/status/976476549531754501] referring to trans women as “men in dresses” and implying that trans rights are “misogyny.” A JKR spokesperson later claims [https://www.thepinknews.com/2018/03/22/jk-rowling-reps-blame-middle-aged-moment-for-liking-tweet-calling-trans-women-men-in-dresses/] that this “like” was an accident and that Rowling was having “a middle-aged moment.” > Wingardium transphobia @jk_rowling [https://twitter.com/jk_rowling?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw] pic.twitter.com/s6cJ2rIr6A [https://t.co/s6cJ2rIr6A] > > — Philip J. Ellis (he/him) (@Philip_Ellis) March 21, 2018 [https://twitter.com/Philip_Ellis/status/976476549531754501?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw] In September, Rowling “likes” a tweet [https://phaylen.medium.com/oops-she-did-it-again-transphobic-j-k-rowling-no-fox-belongs-in-a-henhouse-b3cdf0e81dd8] linking to an opinion column by known TERF Janice Turner [https://www.thepinknews.com/2018/12/11/times-janice-turner-award-trans-rights/], which argues yet again that trans women are inherently sexual predators, referring to them as “fox[es] in a henhouse … identify[ing] as [hens].” The myth that trans women are a danger to cis women is a grossly transphobic stereotype with almost no real-world justification [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13178-018-0335-z], but Rowling pins most of her anti-trans arguments on it, using her experience as a survivor of domestic abuse to justify her prejudice. December 2019: In a shift toward openly voicing her anti-trans sentiments, Rowling vocally supports [https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/12/19/21029852/jk-rowling-terf-transphobia-history-timeline] the plaintiff of an employment discrimination suit in the UK. Maya Forstater became a cause célèbre in the TERF community after suing the company that chose not to renew her contract. In 2018, Forstater posted numerous anti-trans tweets [https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/j-k-rowling-s-maya-forstater-tweets-support-hostile-work-ncna1105201], both generalizing about trans people and directly targeting one nonbinary person. The tweets made staff members at her company uncomfortable, and ultimately, in March 2019, the organization declined to renew Forstater’s contract. Rowling’s tweet [https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1207646162813100033], in which she distorts trans identity and the facts of the case, marks the first time many people become aware of her growing transphobic tendencies. June 2020: In a tweet, Rowling mocks [https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1269382518362509313] the trans-inclusive phrase “people who menstruate” in an article about pandemic menstrual health, implying that the phrase, meant to encompass trans men and nonbinary people, erases, overrides, or obscures the word “women.” In a follow-up to the previous tweet and the backlash it spawned, Rowling posts a thread [https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1269389298664701952] implying that trans activists are “erasing the concept of [biological] sex” and along with it “the lived reality of women.” She also states, “I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans.” (To date, she has not.) Days later, Rowling produces her most overt and lengthy discussion of her views, a 3,600-word manifesto [https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/] published on her website responding to “the new trans activism.” The post is replete with myths and false transphobic stereotypes, particularly revolving around the narratives that gender and biology are inextricable and that trans women are dangerous. Rowling states the movement offers “cover to predators”. She also repeatedly amplifies the alarmist, false idea [https://juliaserano.medium.com/all-the-evidence-against-transgender-social-contagion-f82fbda9c5d4] that teens are transitioning as part of a social media trend, a claim based on a handful of inaccurate and shady scientific studies claiming that an outsize number of trans teens will detransition later, studies that have since been [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-end-of-the-desistance_b_8903690] widely debunked [https://www.kqed.org/futureofyou/441784/the-controversial-research-on-desistance-in-transgender-youth]. August 2020: After the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization issues a statement repudiating her transphobia, Rowling doubles down on her position and returns an award [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/aug/28/jk-rowling-robert-f-kennedy-human-rights-award-trans-views] given to her by the org in 2019. September 2020: Rowling releases the Cormoran Strike book Troubled Blood [https://www.vox.com/culture/21449215/troubled-blood-review-jk-rowling-transphobia-controversy] and is widely [https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2020/09/jk-rowling-transphobia-new-novel-troubled-blood-controversy] criticized [https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/books/2020/09/15/jk-rowling-troubled-blood-transgender-comments-can-you-separate-art-artist/5760735002/] after she creates a villain who preys on women by wearing women’s clothes. This is exactly the specter of a sexual predator that Rowling believes hides behind the label of “trans woman.” Trans rights banners reading “trans witches are witches” and “trans wizards are wizards” protest J.K. Rowling during anti-government protests In Bangkok [https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/chorus/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24474174/1227892566.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,10.732984293194,100,78.534031413613] December 2020: In an interview with Good Housekeeping, Rowling claims [https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2020/12/j-k-rowling-says-90-fans-agree-transphobia-theyre-afraid-say-publicly/] that “90 percent” of Harry Potter fans secretly agree with her anti-trans views, but that “many are afraid to speak up because they fear for their jobs and even for their personal safety.” This once again stereotypes trans activists as an angry, entitled, and vicious mob. July 2021: Rowling tweets [https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1415631382068535296] a screenshot of a tiny account — reportedly [https://twitter.com/leahmcelrath/status/1415772649633075203] with around 200 followers at the time — of a self-identified trans user who mentions her in a tweet discussing gender identity [https://www.vox.com/gender]. Since Rowling did not remove the trans user’s information in the screenshot that went out to her 14 million followers, that user is subsequently inundated with transphobic harassment and ultimately deletes their Twitter [https://www.vox.com/twitter] account. November 2021: Rowling publicizes [https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1462758324177444870] that a group of three trans people shared a photo of themselves holding protest signs outside of her house, saying that she had called the police out of alarm (a fact Scottish police also verified). Rowling claims that these protesters had “doxxed” her, and the media runs with this report, which plays into the larger evolving media narrative of Rowling as a victim of trans harassment. But as many people have pointed out [https://twitter.com/PantiBliss/status/1462820326048423936], Rowling’s address is publicly known — so well-known, in fact, that it is a frequent fan tour stop. Police later officially state there is “no criminality [https://www.them.us/story/jk-rowling-doxxing-no-criminality-scotland-police]” in what the trans protesters had done. As trans culture vlogger Jessie Earl points out [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w29O8r7bLA4], trans people themselves are at much higher risk [https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/12/27/21028342/trans-visibility-backlash-internet-2010] of experiencing doxxing, bullying, and harassment than cisgender people. Earl also notes that Rowling has supported and platformed (through Twitter likes, follows, and retweets) multiple TERFs who had themselves doxxed other people, including Marion Millar, who faced criminal charges [https://www.thetimes.com/uk/law/article/activist-marion-millar-charged-with-sending-homophobic-and-transphobic-tweets-5293jhg6v] for homophobically doxxing a police officer (though those charges were dropped pending review [https://www.thepinknews.com/2021/10/28/marion-millar-transphobia-charges-gender-critical/]); Rosie Duffield, an MP who drew criticism for “publicly outing [https://labourlist.org/2020/10/gmb-mps-staff-branch-condemns-actions-of-rosie-duffield-towards-staff-member/]” a staff member who resigned over her transphobia; and Rosa Freedman, a professor who doxxed a student [https://www.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/comments/oamjgs/transphobic_uni_of_reading_prof_rosa_freedman/] who emailed her requesting a chat about her views on trans equality. > “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman.” December 2021: Rowling shares a Sunday Times article that mocks the Scottish police for recognizing transgender identity. In her tweet [https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1470092815506063365], she parodies 1984, writing, “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman.” Later that month, in the middle of a thread ostensibly attempting to support trans equality, Rowling tweets [https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1476194393631645699], “The question at the heart of this debate is whether sex or gender identity should form the basis of decisions on safeguarding, provision of services, sporting categories and other areas where women and girls currently have legal rights and protections.” The idea behind what Rowling is saying is that allowing trans women equal access to those spaces will erode current legal rights for cisgender women and girls. This is a position that only makes sense if you are denying that trans women and girls are women and girls. Rowling then adds an insistence on separating “sex” from “gender,” an essentialist idea that contradicts current medical practice and scientific research, which advocates for treating gender identity as linked primarily to the brain [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/22/health/transgender-trump-biology.html], not anatomy. March 2022: In response to a since-deleted tweet [https://web.archive.org/web/20220307161320/https://twitter.com/GordieKat/status/1500867150596169730] (which was itself a reply to a tweet [https://web.archive.org/web/20220307161320/https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1500865487621742596] in which Rowling implied trans women were “predators”), Rowling tweets about [https://web.archive.org/web/20220307163226/https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1500871932597747716/] a sexual assault committed by a trans woman, using this single incident to imply that all trans women should be denied access to public spaces designated for women. The next day, on International Women’s Day, Rowling posts a series of tweets [https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/tinashe-jk-rowling-shut-up-transphobic-twitter-1235042079/] maligning gender-inclusive language and mockingly referencing Voldemort by sarcastically opining that the day in future would be known as “She Who Must Not Be Named Day.” She also explicitly criticizes [https://www.indiewire.com/2022/03/jk-rowling-transphobia-international-womens-day-rant-1234705640/] gender-inclusive legislation. Later that month, British lawyer Alison Bailey partially wins [https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-62294030] an employment discrimination lawsuit in which she claimed that she was discriminated against because of her gender-essentialist views. While the lawsuit was in progress, Rowling posted a tweet [https://twitter.com/HPANA/status/1518650786347163651] urging her followers to financially support Bailey. August 2022: Rowling’s latest Cormoran Strike book, The Ink Black Heart, once again comes under fire for transphobia [https://www.npr.org/2022/08/31/1120299781/jk-rowling-new-book-the-ink-black-heart] because of its depiction of a character broadly viewable as a satirical stand-in for Rowling herself — an anti-trans public figure who is “canceled” by the internet on trumped-up charges of transphobia and then killed. December 2022: Rowling screencaps [https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1604180531155017731] a thread about the controversial new Hogwarts Legacy [https://www.vox.com/the-goods/23599799/hogwarts-legacy-review-rowling-trans] video game by the aforementioned popular transgender YouTuber Jessie Earl, aka Jessie Gender. Earl points out [https://twitter.com/jessiegender/status/1603942028555210752] that supporting the franchise [https://www.vox.com/culture/22254435/harry-potter-tv-series-hbo-jk-rowling-transphobic] would “justify her continued targeting of trans people”; Rowling, in response, sarcastically accuses Earl of practicing “purethink,” implying trans advocacy is a type of religious dogma. An onslaught [https://twitter.com/search?q=(to%3Ajessiegender)%20until%3A2022-12-19%20since%3A2022-12-17&src=typed_query&f=live] of transphobic social media harassment targeting Earl follows. > Since JK Rowling retweeted me with an honestly nonsensical argument; I’m gonna stay off the Musk app today cause she knows she’s sending harassment my way. I send you all love & this article with my thoughts on Rowling continued harm against trans people. https://t.co/MJ9yizkCcM [https://t.co/MJ9yizkCcM] https://t.co/7NfYMVr65i [https://t.co/7NfYMVr65i] > > — Jessie Earl (@jessiegender) December 17, 2022 [https://twitter.com/jessiegender/status/1604191954291822592?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw] This month, Rowling also personally funds a new domestic violence support center in Edinburgh, Scotland, which explicitly excludes trans women [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/dec/12/jk-rowling-launches-support-centre-for-female-victims-of-sexual-violence]; Rowling frames this new center as offering “women-centered and women-delivered care.” Edinburgh’s longstanding domestic violence support center has had a trans woman as its director since 2021. Trans women, in particular women of color, are at a vastly higher risk [https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/ncvs-trans-press-release/] of experiencing domestic violence and sexual assault than cisgender women. January 2023: Rowling posts [https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1619302315248488450] that she is “Deeply amused by those telling me I’ve lost their admiration due to the disrespect I show violent, duplicitous rapists.” The most immediate context for this comment is presumably both the backlash to Hogwarts Legacy and the ongoing backlash over Rowling’s views writ large regarding trans women being dangerous predators. So a reasonable implication of Rowling’s words seems to be that she considers trans women, by default, to be “violent, duplicitous rapists.” March 2023: A new podcast [https://www.vulture.com/article/witch-trials-jk-rowling-podcast-essay-review.html], The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling, produced by Bari Weiss’s the Free Press and hosted by prominent former Westboro Baptist Church member Megan Phelps-Roper, featured interviews with Rowling. In its fifth episode [https://open.spotify.com/episode/5r8SZLhLsgroLqPC1owm0m?si=8ed16b7423d04d5b], Rowling begins discussing the modern trans rights movement, calling it “a cultural movement that was illiberal in its methods and questionable in its ideas” and insisting, “I believe, absolutely, that there is something dangerous about this movement and that it must be challenged.” She then compares the movement to Death Eaters — the villainous supremacists in her books, analogous to Nazis: > [S]ome of you have not understood the books. The Death Eaters claimed, “We have been made to live in secret, and now is our time, and any who stand in our way must be destroyed. If you disagree with us, you must die.” They demonized and dehumanized those who were not like them. > > I am fighting what I see as a powerful, insidious, misogynistic movement, that has gained huge purchase in very influential areas of society. I do not see this particular movement as either benign or powerless, so I’m afraid I stand with the women who are fighting to be heard against threats of loss of livelihood and threats to their safety. While Rowling can say she only intends to target the specific trans activists who are angry at her, that’s an impossible distinction. She does not mention any formal group or entity that represents trans rights that has acted against her. The only context we have for what she is responding to are non-affiliated individuals on Twitter sending angry messages in response to her transphobic comments. Indeed, the episode is titled “The Tweets” and features Phelps-Roper reading angry and sad tweets from former fans of Rowling. This generalization doesn’t distinguish “the movement” from people who are simply angry and upset with Rowling. Instead, it seems to imply that “good” trans people are the ones who accept Rowling’s version of their identity and allow her viewpoint — that they aren’t who they say they are — to dominate their fight for social acceptance. Trans people are estimated to comprise about half a percent of populations in both the US [https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Trans-Adults-US-Aug-2016.pdf] and the UK [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-06/transgender-population-uk-census-shows-gender-identity-in-england-and-wales]. A 2018 study from UCLA [https://www.axios.com/2018/09/22/study-transgender-policies-bathroom-safety-lgbtq] found no evidence to support that anti-trans legislation makes designated public spaces safer, but did find that “reports of privacy and safety violations in these places are exceedingly rare.” In essence, there was no danger to begin with. February 2024: Rowling donated 70,000 pounds [https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2024/02/jk-rowling-donates-big-money-to-anti-trans-group/] (about $90,000) to an anti-trans Scottish political lobby campaigning to restrict the Scottish government’s definition of “women” to cisgender women only. March 2024: On March 13, Rowling appears to deny on X (formerly Twitter) that trans people were targeted during the Holocaust. This all started when Rowling reposted a post [https://twitter.com/JamesEsses/status/1767648977090998775] by James Esses about having been “canceled.” Esses is a blogger and former student who was fired [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/13/questioned-children-encouraged-transition-cost-dream-career/] from his counseling job and expelled from his therapy degree program for his anti-trans campaigning. Esses’s post claimed he was fired for opposing the use of puberty blockers for trans children. In the threads of Esses’s post, in response to one of his supporters but also copying both Esses and Rowling, a user responded [https://twitter.com/jaytuberr/status/1767910144539844610] with, “The Nazis burnt books on trans healthcare and research, why are you so desperate to uphold their ideology around gender?” Rowling then takes this post and screencaps it, asking [https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1767912990366388735], “I just… how? How did you type this out and press send without thinking ‘I should maybe check my source for this, because it might’ve been a fever dream’?” The literal burning by Nazis of books and research from Berlin’s pioneering Institute for Sexual Research [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-forgotten-history-of-the-worlds-first-trans-clinic/], which conducted the world’s first gender-affirming surgeries for trans people, was captured [https://youtu.be/QU-WVjwJPNk?t=347] in German newsreels at the time and has been well-documented [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/new-research-reveals-how-the-nazis-targeted-transgender-people-180982931/] since, including by the UK’s own Holocaust Memorial Day Trust [https://www.hmd.org.uk/resource/6-may-1933-looting-of-the-institute-of-sexology/]. Calling this very well-sourced history a “fever dream” quickly drew significant backlash from X users, with many framing it as a form of Holocaust denial. When challenged [https://twitter.com/Esqueer_/status/1767914998808953316] on her claim with multiple sources by Harvard Cyberlaw Clinic instructor Alejandra Caraballo, Rowling first responds [https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1767925285008064592] that the original post had made claims it didn’t say: that the Nazis burnt all research on trans health care, and that trans people were the first victims of the Nazis. Rowling then doubles down on X by quote tweeting [https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1767928717538644460] another tweet claiming trans people were not targets of the Nazis during the Holocaust. In her quote, Rowling frames the verified history of Nazi violence toward trans people as “persistent claims.” She then, again in response to Caraballo’s pushback in reply, attempts to separate [https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1767939048427896900] “trans-identifying people” from “gay people, who were indeed victims of heinous treatment by the Nazis.” Caraballo’s reply [https://twitter.com/Esqueer_/status/1767952608604365269], which cited sources including Scientific American [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-forgotten-history-of-the-worlds-first-trans-clinic/], and a thorough accounting [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/central-european-history/article/transgender-life-and-persecution-under-the-nazi-state-gutachten-on-the-vollbrecht-case/0779A24B130C4F0CA64DB639FA6DBF46] by a historian about the ways trans people faced persecution under Nazi Germany, did not receive a rejoinder from Rowling. April 2024: On April 1, 2024, Rowling posted a thread on X pegged to the implementation [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/31/scotlands-new-hate-act-what-does-it-cover-and-why-is-it-controversial] of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, which added “threatening or abusive behaviour which is intended to stir up hatred” around a number of identities, including age, religion, and transgender identity to the hate crimes statute; the law does not, somewhat controversially, include hatred of women [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/01/scotland-hate-speech-law-britain/b47ccffe-f029-11ee-a4c9-88e569a98b58_story.html]. In her posts, Rowling spotlit a number of women, from a handful of convicted or reported sex offenders to UN appointees Katie Neeves and Munroe Bergdorf as well as Mridul Wadhwa, head of a Scottish rape crisis center. All of the women Rowling listed are reportedly trans — leading the author to write [https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1774749954629652873], “Obviously, the people mentioned in the above tweets aren’t women at all, but men, every last one of them.” Rowling ended the thread with the hashtag #ArrestMe. May 2024: As part of an X discussion that began with Rowling deliberately misgendering [https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2024/05/cruel-jk-rowling-calls-trans-soccer-official-a-crossdressing-straight-man-for-no-reason/] a trans soccer manager, she doubled down in response to criticism, both by claiming [https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1789641182164688934] that trans women are “crossdressing straight men” and by comparing trans identity to cultural appropriation. “Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows?” she wrote [https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1789681522544455976]. “What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you’re being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?” She did not respond to the many platform users who replied to address her use of racist stereotypes or to point out that race, unlike gender, is a genetic identity. August 2024: Rowling contributed to ongoing harassment of and attacks on Olympics boxer Imane Khelif, who was one of two female boxers disqualified by the Russian-led International Boxing Association (IBA) from the 2023 World Championships after an unspecified biochemical test. The test detected elevated levels [https://slate.com/culture/2024/08/olympic-boxers-gender-test-controversy-explained.html] of testosterone in Khelif’s system; while the specific reason for this result is unconfirmed, cis women can have elevated testosterone levels due to natural differences in sex characteristics. Although Khelif is a woman and was assigned female at birth, many extremists have used this vague test result to attack her with transphobic rhetoric, accusing her of being a man in disguise. Both Khelif and the other IBA-disqualified athlete, Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, qualified under the International Olympic Committee guidelines and were approved to compete in the Olympics. But following a dramatic match on August 1, in which Khelif’s opponent Angela Carini of Italy forfeited in under a minute after exchanging just a few hits, Khelif once again came under scrutiny from transphobes on the suspicion of secretly being a man. Among the transphobic commentary she faced was vitriol from J.K. Rowling, who tweeted a photo of Khelif looking at Carini after Carini abruptly retired. > Could any picture sum up our new men’s rights movement better? The smirk of a male who’s knows he’s protected by a misogynist sporting establishment enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head, and whose life’s ambition he’s just shattered. #Paris2024 [https://twitter.com/hashtag/Paris2024?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw] pic.twitter.com/Q5SbKiksXQ [https://t.co/Q5SbKiksXQ] > > — J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) August 1, 2024 [https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1819007216214573268?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw] Carini, shown in tears in the photo after withdrawing as Khelif looks on, refused to shake Khelif’s hand after the match, which may have contributed to the belief she had been unfairly treated in the ring. She later said [https://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/articles/c2j3jg51rg4o] to the BBC, however, that she wished to apologize to Khelif for not shaking her hand — an act Carini explained came from anger at herself, not Khelif. Rowling, however, saw things much differently. In her tweet [https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1819007216214573268], she framed the photo as a misogynistic assault, writing, “The smirk of a male who’s knows he’s protected by a misogynist sporting establishment enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head, and whose life’s ambition he’s just shattered. #Paris2024” Again, Khelif was born female and has always been a cisgender woman. Rowling seems to be arguing that any hormone-related variance at all among women — despite the millions of women who have hormone imbalances — is enough to render them inauthentic or not “real” women. It’s an alarming development in her ongoing shift into extreme transphobic views. It’s also deeply ironic. One of the points Rowling first made in her lengthy 2020 manifesto [https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/] was about the need for cisgender women not to feel limited by the confines of normative gender expression. “In spite of everything a sexist world tries to throw at the female-bodied, it’s fine not to feel pink, frilly and compliant inside your own head,” she wrote, and later: “Never have I seen women denigrated and dehumanised to the extent they are now.” Yet Rowling’s transphobia has progressed to such an extent that she has herself become a denigrator of a cisgender woman and a reinforcer of “compliant” femininity against Khelif. Khelif, who went on to win Olympic gold despite the harassment, reportedly filed a lawsuit [https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/jk-rowling-elon-musk-imane-khelif-lawsuit-1236105185/] alleging cyberbullying against Rowling (Elon Musk is also named in the suit). Shortly after the lawsuit became public on August 13, Rowling went silent on X, leading to speculation from many onlookers that she had pushed her transphobic narrative too far. On August 23, though, she again appeared on the platform, spreading more false and misleading commentary on Khelif. Her first post was a quote [https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1826949717265101227] from a transphobic hit piece against Khelif by Colin Wright, the former managing editor of the far-right website Quillette. She then went on to repost another [https://x.com/SenatorClaire/status/1826766854268002313] transphobic statement, this time criticizing a recent Australian court ruling [https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/aug/23/roxanne-tickle-v-giggle-for-girls-transgender-woman-wins-discrimination-case-against-women-female-only-app-ntwnfb] that upheld the legal rights of trans women. April 2025: On April 16, 2025, the UK supreme court delivered a major ruling that explicitly denied trans women protection from discrimination [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/apr/16/critics-of-trans-rights-win-uk-supreme-court-case-over-definition-of-woman] on the basis of gender. The decision was prompted by a lawsuit brought by For Women Scotland; the transphobic group received a 70,000-pound ($93,000) donation [https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/02/19/jk-rowling-for-women-scotland-donation-legal-definition-woman/] from Rowling in 2024 to aid them in funding the suit. Two Scottish courts had rejected their arguments before the case was appealed to the highest court in the UK. The five-judge court ruled unanimously that the definition of “women” in the UK’s Equality Act applies only to “biological” women and does not include trans women, even if they have had their gender legally recognized. The ruling effectively sanctions the banning of trans women from many public spaces reserved for women, such as women’s locker rooms, hospitals, domestic violence shelters, and bathrooms; it could also lead other services intended for women to deny access to trans women. After the news broke, Rowling posted on X a picture of herself smoking a cigar outdoors and wrote, “I love it when a plan comes together [https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1912644919103004807].” The clear influence Rowling has had on the conversation around trans rights in the UK, as well as her direct monetary support of the lawsuit, has intensified calls from former fans to stop supporting Harry Potter-related projects [https://thetab.com/2025/04/17/jk-rowling-donated-70k-to-fund-the-supreme-court-trans-ruling-stop-supporting-her-work]. Clarification, March 3, 2023, 12:15 pm ET: Updated to clarify details of the character who is “canceled” inThe Ink Black Heart. Clarification, March 16, 2023, 3:20 pm ET: Updated to clarify that Rowling’s remarks drew a comparison between the Death Eaters and the trans rights “movement,” rather than trans people. Update, April 18, 2025, 3:40 pm ET: This story, originally published March 3, 2023, has been updated several times, most recently with Rowling’s successful funding of a transphobic lawsuit to strip trans women of protection from gender-based discrimination under UK law. — From Vox [https://www.vox.com] via this RSS feed [https://www.vox.com/rss/index.xml]

Diari La Veu (Unofficial RSS)1d ago

Voluntaris DANA: d’herois a culpables https://www.diarilaveu.cat/societat/voluntaris-dana-dherois-a-culpables-584007/ #DANAValència #CarlosMazón #Societat #Vox

paywall 1d ago

Why Australia is shooting koalas out of trees from helicopters

https://rss.ponder.cat/post/161371

Why Australia is shooting koalas out of trees from helicopters - Pondercat RSS

Koala on eucalyptus tree outdoor in Australia. [https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/GettyImages-1326007751.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100] Koala on eucalyptus tree outdoor in Australia. | Maridav/Getty Images The koala is a national icon of Australia. And in some parts of the country, these marsupials — known for their fluffy ears, adorable clingy babies, and diet of eucalyptus leaves — are endangered [https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/east-coast-koalas-newly-listed-as-endangered]. In the last two decades, their population size in some areas has dropped by half [https://www.ifaw.org/press-releases/bushfires-report-list-koalas-endangered]. It may seem odd, then, that the government is shooting them out of trees. From helicopters. In a national park. Earlier this month, government authorities shot and likely killed several hundred koalas from helicopters [https://au.news.yahoo.com/alarm-as-koalas-shot-from-helicopters-in-national-park-my-mind-is-blown-080947149.html] in Budj Bim National Park, a protected area in the southern state of Victoria, as journalist Michael Dahlstrom reported. > Animal advocates are demanding an independent review after the Victorian government began euthanising koalas from helicopters for the first time in Australia.Local rescuers are concerned about what happens to the joeys after their mothers are shothttps://t.co/72kidXIK1j [https://t.co/72kidXIK1j] > > — Michael Dahlstrom (@mb_dahlstrom) April 17, 2025 [https://twitter.com/mb_dahlstrom/status/1912796983796138430?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw] Some animal welfare advocates are alarmed [https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/melbourne-drive/koala-cull-macarthur/105190158]. The government, meanwhile, says it’s for the benefit of the koalas. But ultimately the deaths of these animals points to much bigger problems, including climate change — which forces agencies that manage wildlife to make incredibly difficult choices. ## Why is the Australian government killing koalas? In March, a massive bushfire burned more than 5,400 acres in the park, injuring some of the koalas and destroying a large amount of eucalyptus leaves, their food. The government says the controversial program is intended to end the koalas’ suffering from burns and starvation. But some koala advocates say there’s more to the story. A kangaroo climbs a tree. [https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/GettyImages-1229648351.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,11.626867577576,100,76.746264844847] The animals are not only starving because of the fire but because logging and development has destroyed much of their habitat in Victoria. Advocates have also pointed out that there are commercial plantations of blue gum eucalyptus [https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/melbourne-drive/koala-cull-macarthur/105190158] around Budj Bim National Park that koalas have come to rely on. When those plantations are harvested, the koalas living in them move into Budj Bim, putting pressure on what natural forests remain in the park. A fire only makes the situation worse — destroying food in a region with a dense population of koalas. “This incident is just another one in the long line of mismanagement of the species and its habitat,” Rolf Schlagloth [https://staff-profiles.cqu.edu.au/home/view/2735], a koala researcher at CQUniversity Australia, told me over email. “We can’t eliminate bushfires altogether but more continuous, healthy forests can assist in reducing the risk and severity of fires. Koala habitat needs to be extensive and connected and the management of blue gum plantations needs to consider the koala as these trees are very attractive to them.” Schlagloth and other koala experts are also skeptical that shooting the animals from helicopters is the best approach. When animals are severely injured, euthanasia is often the humane response, they say, but it should be a last resort. And an aerial cull “appears to be a very indiscriminate method,” Schlagloth said. Australia also has a long history of managing its wild animals — both native [https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/25/sport/australia-kangaroo-culling-program-intl-hnk-dst/index.html] and nonnative [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/magazine/australia-cat-killing.html] — by killing them. “Rescue should always be the first option if feasible,” Schlagloth said. Rescuing the koalas, or assessing their health up close, was not feasible, according to the Victoria government. “All other methods which have been considered are not appropriate given the inability to safely access large areas of impacted landscape by foot due to the remote location of animals often high in the canopy, the extremely rugged terrain, and in consideration of the safety risks of working in a fire affected area, with fire impacted trees,” James Todd, chief biodiversity officer at Victoria’s Department of Energy, Environment, and Climate Action (DEECA), said in a statement to Vox. DEECA is consulting with an experienced wildlife veterinarian and only koalas in extremely poor condition are euthanized, the agency told Vox. (The term “euthanize” is a bit of a stretch because it implies the animals were killed painlessly — something shooting from a helicopter cannot guarantee.) The “work” is ongoing, the spokesperson said, suggesting that more koalas may be killed. ## What it will take to help koalas It’s easy to blame the Victoria government for these koala deaths — and maybe it does deserve some blame. Yet once the fire broke out, there were really no good options for helping the park’s animals without tackling more fundamental problems. Habitat loss is a big one, and so is climate change, which is one of the dynamics making wildfires more frequent and damaging in Australia [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27225-4]. One study, published in 2023, found that roughly 40 percent of koala habitat is highly susceptible to fires [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352186423003279#d1e572], and that percentage will increase in the decades to come as the planet warms up. Vets treat a koala. [https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/GettyImages-1204226687.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,10.732984293194,100,78.534031413613] In late 2019 and early 2020, catastrophic fires ravaged eastern Australia [https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/3-billion-animals-harmed-by-australia-s-fires#:~:text=Australia's%20bushfire%20crisis%20was%20one,June%202019%20to%20February%202020.], killing or displacing around 3 billion animals, including an estimated 60,000 koalas [https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2020/12/07/3-billion-animals-impacted-by-fires-including-60000-koalas-repor.html#:~:text=Estimates%20some%203%20billion%20animals,led%20report%20commissioned%20by%20WWF.]. Scientists say climate change made the conditions for those fires more likely [https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-03-12-australia-s-bushfires-made-30-more-likely-climate-change]. “National parks are the last bastion for our wildlife and increasing severity of bushfires and other extreme weather events puts Australia’s incredible native species like the koala at significant risk,” said Lisa Palma, CEO of Wildlife Victoria, a wildlife rescue organization. “It is time that climate change and habitat loss is taken seriously and there is collective effort from governments, private enterprise and the public to conserve our native species which exist nowhere else.” “There is hope,” Palma said. “But it requires collective effort.” — From Vox [https://www.vox.com] via this RSS feed [https://www.vox.com/rss/index.xml]

paywall 1d ago

The daunting task facing Democrats trying to win back the working class

https://rss.ponder.cat/post/161364

The daunting task facing Democrats trying to win back the working class - Pondercat RSS

Demonstrators hold signs while walking the picket line. [https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/gettyimages-1170217594.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100] Demonstrators hold signs while walking the picket line before Sen. Elizabeth Warren arrives at the United Auto Workers strike outside the General Motors Co. Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant in Detroit on September 22, 2019. | Anthony Lanzilote/Bloomberg via Getty Images It’s perhaps the most urgent reason Democrats lost in November: The party has solidly lost the support of working-class voters across the country and doesn’t have a solid sense of how to win them back. Now, a group of Democratic researchers, strategists, and operatives are launching a renewed effort to figure out — and to communicate to the rest of their party — what it is that these voters want, where they think the party went wrong, and how to best respond to their concerns before the 2026 election cycle. Led by Mitch Landrieu, former Democratic lieutenant governor of Louisiana and former mayor of New Orleans, the Working Class Project [https://workingclassproject.substack.com/p/listening-to-the-working-class-and-winning-them-back?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=1fe9k7&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email] plans to offer guidance over the next few months on how to build “a more sustainable majority” in future elections. Their challenge is daunting. In November 2024, Trump not only rallied the white working-class base of voters that first got him elected in 2016. He also cut [https://apnews.com/projects/election-results-2024/votecast/#] into [https://www.cnn.com/election/2024/exit-polls/national-results/general/president/0] Democrats’ working-class support among [https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-4-working-class-votes/] voters [https://www.brookings.edu/articles/a-deep-dive-into-the-2024-latino-male-electorate/] of [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/11/us/hispanics-election-republicans-texas.html] color [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/19/us/politics/trump-working-class-voters.html]: Nearly half of Latino voters and a historic share of Black voters backed Trump (anywhere from a tenth to nearly one in five). Exit polls from November also show [https://www.cnn.com/election/2024/exit-polls/national-results/general/president/0] that Trump won over new support from both lower-income and middle-income voters — those who make less than $100,000 per year, and particularly those who make less than $50,000 per year. Last year marked the first time in nearly 60 years that the lowest-earning Americans voted for the Republican presidential candidate over the Democratic one. Some of this can be explained away by pointing to the confluence of factors that made last year’s election unique: the historic age and unpopularity of the incumbent president, the late-in-the-game candidate switch-up, high inflation, post-pandemic malaise, and Trump’s specific appeal. But Landrieu and the Working Class Project want Democrats to resist these excuses — and to accept that their decline [https://www.npr.org/2024/11/14/nx-s1-5183060/why-working-class-voters-have-been-shifting-toward-the-republican-party] with these voters predates Trump [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/04/us/politics/democrats-working-class.html]. “Since President Obama was first elected in 2008, Democrats have seen over 25 percent in net loss of support among working class voters,” Landrieu explains in the project’s launch announcement. “In other words, for two decades, Democrats have been on a downward slide among the very voters whose interests we champion and who benefit most from our policies.” ## What this effort looks like Housed within the liberal opposition research firm and Super PAC American Bridge 21st Century, the Working Class Project is primarily focused on research, polling, and focus group works. They’re focused on reaching and listening to voters in 21 states: the traditional seven battleground states, seven safely Democratic states with large shares of white and nonwhite working-class voters (which drifted right last year), and seven solidly Republican states. Some of these focus groups have already been conducted — the group began this work in February [https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/02/democrats-working-class-voters-trump/681849/] after Trump’s inauguration — and they plan on interviewing labor, faith, and local leaders as well. The group is also planning a longer-term study with an in-depth focus on a handful of dynamics unique to the 2024 election that most of the party still seems adrift on. That includes following and finding out the motivations of young white, Black, Latino, and AAPI men who Trump won over, and what their media consumption habits look like. They also say that they’ll conduct longitudinal research on working-class people in these states to track their behavior over the course of Trump’s second term to track their reactions to things like tariffs, taxes, and immigration. “With this deep listening to working class voters across 21 states, we’ll identify messages, messengers, and new mediums to rebuild the Democratic brand and write a blueprint for victory that we’ll deploy using every tool in our toolbox,” the group said. Their effort, of course, isn’t the only one on the left trying to discern and solve the party’s branding, messaging, and policy problems. But their framing is a bit different. ## Democrats face a numbers problem in 2028 and beyond The group’s memo says they chose those 21 states because they are the fastest-growing and stand to gain the most from congressional reapportionment in 2030. They include seven “growth” states where Democrats are no longer competitive at the statewide level: Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina, and Texas. And it’s those states where Democrats will need to seriously compete if they hope to win the presidency or hold the Senate after 2030. It’s also in those states where Trump’s 2024 gains — if they hold — would make it impossible for Democrats to be competitive without winning back more working-class voters. To be sure, Trump himself is already doing some of this work for his opposition. His approval ratings have swung sharply away from him in at least nine of those 21 states, according to polling estimates conducted by data journalists at The Economist. And his chaotic handling of tariffs, inflation, and the economy in general is likely contributing to this discontent [https://www.vox.com/politics/409112/trump-tariff-working-class-party-democrats-brand-coalition] among his 2024 coalition [https://www.vox.com/donald-trump/407337/trump-tariffs-risk-split-lose-gop-winning-coalition-majority-disapprove-opinion-latino-black-gen-z]. But Democrats will have to do more to take advantage of this skepticism with Trump. The Brennan Center for Justice’s reapportionment projections [https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/how-congressional-maps-could-change-2030] for 2030 suggest that with population losses in solidly Democratic and swing states, a future Democratic presidential candidate will face difficult odds for an Electoral College win after those votes are reallocated to match census estimates. After 2030, the Center estimates, “even if a Democrat in 2032 were to carry the Blue Wall states and both Arizona and Nevada, the result would be only a narrow 276–262 win” making Democratic gains with men, working-class voters, and voters in the South and the Heartland an existential challenge. — From Vox [https://www.vox.com] via this RSS feed [https://www.vox.com/rss/index.xml]

paywall 1d ago

Silicon Valley got Trump completely wrong

https://rss.ponder.cat/post/161134

Silicon Valley got Trump completely wrong - Pondercat RSS

Marc Andreessen gestures with his hand. [https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/chorus/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8609025/REC_ASA_CODE17_20170530_174343_0398.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100] Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen speaking in 2017. Last year, a coterie of tech billionaires rallied behind [https://www.vox.com/politics/397525/trump-big-tech-musk-bezos-zuckerberg-democrats-biden] Donald Trump’s candidacy. Many had not been lifelong Republicans. In 2016, the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen declared Hillary Clinton the “obvious choice [https://www.vox.com/2016/6/14/11940052/marc-andreessen-donald-trump-hillary-clinton]” for president, saying Trump’s immigration agenda “makes me sick to my stomach.” Elon Musk, meanwhile, had once been an Obama-supporting [https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-journey-obama-trump-aligns-americans-2004490] climate hawk [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/05/elon-musk-we-need-a-revolt-against-the-fossil-fuel-industry]. Yet they, and many [https://x.com/DavidSacks/status/1798883245670707465?lang=en] others [https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2024/06/18/the-silicon-valley-billionaires-supporting-trump_6675095_23.html] in their circles [https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/18/business/silicon-valley-tech-billionaires-trump/index.html], found their way to supporting an openly authoritarian insurrectionist in 2024. They offered many explanations for this decision, some of which were unabashedly self-interested — Trump had promised to limit regulatory scrutiny of their companies and taxation of their capital. But right-wing tech moguls generally insisted that their fundamental concern was for the country, not their profits: Trump’s pro-business policies would accelerate economic growth and technological progress — thereby ensuring America’s prosperity and global supremacy. Three months into his presidency, Trump has delivered on many of the so-called tech right’s requests for regulatory relief. Yet, to the extent that their faction genuinely cares about maximizing American economic growth, technological progress, and global standing, their investment in Trump has been an utter disaster. ## Why the tech right backed Trump It isn’t hard to see why right-wing tech moguls believed Trump’s election would advance their interests. To some in their circles, the Democratic Party had become a financial threat. Many venture capitalists were heavily invested in the crypto industry, which the Biden White House regarded as “rife with bad actors [https://crypto.news/departing-gary-gensler-crypto-is-rife-with-bad-actors/].” The Democratic administration therefore discouraged banks [https://www.dlnews.com/articles/regulation/house-investigates-crypto-debanking-fdic-closed-blockchain/] from serving many crypto businesses and prosecuted some of its moguls for money laundering [https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/why-joe-biden-hates-bitcoin]. What’s more, Joe Biden chilled mergers [https://news.bloomberglaw.com/mergers-and-acquisitions/biden-antitrust-enforcers-set-new-record-for-merger-challenges] through vigorous antitrust enforcement, proposed new regulations on AI development [https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/10/31/23939157/biden-ai-executive-order], and suggested taxing unrealized capital gains [https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/362399/billionaire-minimum-tax-andreessen-biden]. All this was antithetical to many tech billionaires’ material interests. And this financial injury was compounded by cultural insults. In the tech right’s view, the “woke” left seemed to disdain success in general and successful white males in particular. And social justice ideology didn’t just irritate the Silicon Valley superrich online; it increasingly fomented insubordination within their workplaces [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/opinion/marc-andreessen-trump-silicon-valley.html]. Donald Trump credibly promised to advance the tech right’s interests along all these fronts. But some Silicon Valley moguls weren’t content to rest their case for Trumpism on grounds of narrow self-interest or cultural grievance. Rather, Andreessen and his fellow VC Ben Horowitz insisted Trump’s election was necessary for safeguarding nothing less [https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/16/andreessen-horowitz-co-founders-explain-why-theyre-supporting-trump/] than “the future of America.” In their account [https://pmarca.substack.com/p/the-little-tech-agenda], the United States was suffering from a crisis of low economic growth and stagnating productivity. Unwise government policies were not merely stymying crypto’s profitability but American innovation writ large. And this posed a threat to liberty both within America’s borders and beyond them. After all, “Low economic growth also means the rise of smashmouth zero-sum politics” in which people come to believe that “gains for one group of people necessarily require taking things away from other people,” Andreessen and Horowitz wrote [https://pmarca.substack.com/p/the-little-tech-agenda] in a pre-election manifesto. More critically, the United States would not be able to maintain geopolitical supremacy without retaining economic and technological preeminence. And if America did not reign supreme, the Chinese Communist Party would be able to impose its “much darker, more totalitarian” view of global governance upon the world. Trump understood how important it was for the US to “win” in its techno-scientific race against the CCP, according to Andreessen and Horowitz. His election would, therefore, accelerate American economic growth and technological progress while enhancing US power on the global stage. Thus far, Trump has delivered many of the tech right’s narrow demands. Crypto [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/14/critics-slam-deregulation-of-crypto-as-trump-family-expands-its-footprint-in-industry] and AI [https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/removing-barriers-to-american-leadership-in-artificial-intelligence/] startups face little regulatory scrutiny or pressure to implement DEI programming. But Trump has simultaneously sabotaged America’s economic growth, scientific prowess, and geopolitical influence. ## Trump’s trade war is undermining American economic growth — in both the short and long term The president’s decision to put across-the-board tariffs [https://www.vox.com/politics/406467/trump-tariffs-prices-liberation-day-economy] on virtually all foreign imports — and 145 percent duties [https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/12/trump-tariffs-on-china-mean-irreversible-damage-for-most-businesses.html] on Chinese ones — has already cost many tech investors and founders dearly. Startups reliant on Chinese inputs have found themselves abruptly on the brink of insolvency [https://x.com/stevenborrelli/status/1912177179552809119]. Other firms have been forced to cancel their IPOs [https://www.politico.com/newsletters/digital-future-daily/2025/04/09/tech-vcs-feel-their-own-special-tariff-pain-00282047] amid bearish investor sentiment. The tech right hoped Trump’s election would clear the way for a wave of mergers, enabling venture-funded startups to cash out by selling their businesses to Big Tech firms. Yet his tariffs have eroded the value of major US tech companies, sapping their interest and capacity [https://www.politico.com/newsletters/digital-future-daily/2025/04/09/tech-vcs-feel-their-own-special-tariff-pain-00282047] to buy out startups (while his administration’s approach to antitrust enforcement has proven more adversarial than anticipated [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/13/technology/trump-tech-antitrust-cases.html]). But Trump’s trade war has been even more damaging to the tech right’s high-minded goals than to its narrow pecuniary ones. Bitcoin is still more valuable [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/] today than it was before November’s election. The same cannot be said of the S&P 500, which more closely tracks American economic performance. Trump’s tariffs have not accelerated US economic growth. Rather, they have likely ground it to a halt. The Atlanta Fed’s economic growth tracker [https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow] currently predicts that GDP will contract by 2.2 percent this quarter. Many analysts believe the US economy is already in recession. Perversely, Trump’s trade policies have been especially harmful to American manufacturers, who are more vulnerable to surging input costs than many other businesses. New orders from manufacturers in New York state hit the lowest level on record [https://x.com/TheStalwart/status/1912143433017311518] this month, according to Federal Reserve data. Service-sector businesses have also drastically scaled back capital investment plans [https://x.com/TheStalwart/status/1912485772843683877] in the face of rising costs. Trump’s culpability for this downturn is unambiguous. It is his trade war that is depressing consumer confidence [https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-consumer-confidence-deteriorates-further-march-2025-03-25/#:~:text=Rising%20fears%20of%20tariffs%20pummel%20US%20consumer%20confidence%20to%20four%2Dyear%20low,-By%20Lucia%20Mutikani&text=WASHINGTON%2C%20March%2025%20(Reuters),higher%20inflation%20because%20of%20tariffs.] and deterring business investment [https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-manufacturing-slips-back-into-contraction-tariffs-angst-mounts-2025-04-01/] by driving up costs and increasing economic uncertainty. Needless to say, if a politician unilaterally orchestrates a recession through trade policies he can’t coherently explain [https://www.vox.com/politics/402530/trump-tariffs-canada-mexico-explanation], it is difficult to say that his election was vital for economic growth. But what makes Trump’s tariffs truly antithetical to Andreessen and Horowitz’s purported goals is that they are jeopardizing America’s long-term economic performance and geopolitical stature. One source of American economic might is the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. And Trump’s erratic and belligerent trade policies have shaken global faith [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trumps-tariffs-are-tarnishing-the-dollars-global-appeal-the-damage-may-be-hard-to-reverse-bdbf5847] in the dollar’s safety. Normally, in times of financial volatility, demand for US dollars and Treasury bonds spikes, as investors seek the security of our currency and debt. But during today’s crisis, the dollar’s value has fallen, while yields on US Treasurys have surged. [https://www.brookings.edu/articles/whats-going-on-in-the-us-treasury-market-and-why-does-it-matter/] Many financial analysts believe this could be the beginning of a shift away from the dollar [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trumps-tariffs-are-tarnishing-the-dollars-global-appeal-the-damage-may-be-hard-to-reverse-bdbf5847], as global investors rethink the reliability of America’s economic and political institutions. If that proves right, America’s borrowing costs would durably increase while its consumers’ purchasing power would lastingly fall, trends that would undermine the nation’s long-term growth. Meanwhile, it is hard to see how anyone preoccupied with enhancing American global power — particularly, relative to China — could be pleased with Trump’s first three months. By violating the terms of America’s existing trade agreements — including some he personally negotiated — Trump undermined our nation’s diplomatic credibility. And by imposing across-the-board tariffs on core US allies, he led European and Asian powers to consider the possibility [https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/us-risks-pushing-european-allies-chinas-arms-new-tariffs-experts-warn] that China is the more stable and reliable global superpower. In recent days, the Trump administration sought to rally America’s allies into a united front against Chinese trade abuses. But it is struggling to mount such an alliance, according to the Wall Street Journal [https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-china-tariffs-trade-war-87e3dfab], because “many European and Asian partners aren’t sure to what extent they are still allied with Washington.” Rather than becoming more adversarial to Beijing, some in the EU are calling for the bloc to end its cooperation with American efforts to starve China of cutting-edge technology. ## Trump is gutting the tech right’s favorite kind of government spending Trump’s assault on American economic performance and technological progress extends beyond the realm of trade policy. His haphazard cuts to federal funding for both government agencies and private research have been similarly devastating. In their manifesto [https://pmarca.substack.com/p/the-little-tech-agenda] last year, Andreessen and Horowitz attributed “American technology leadership” partly to “our higher education system, and long-term government investment in scientific research.” Yet the Trump administration has sought to choke off funding to these sources of innovation. Since taking office, it has canceled or frozen billions of dollars [https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/407586/immigration-crackdown-foreign-students-science-innovation-funding] in federal science funding and choked off further funds to top research universities, such as Harvard. Economists widely believe this general austerity will slow technological progress and economic growth. Research has estimated that every dollar invested in scientific research and development yields $5 in economic gains [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/business/economy/trump-research-cutbacks-economy.html]. What’s worse, the Trump administration has specifically targeted some of the most promising lines of medical research. Messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines are among the greatest medical breakthroughs of the past decade. They promise to limit the toll of future pandemics and advance treatments for some of the world’s worst diseases. One recent study [https://www.mskcc.org/news/can-mrna-vaccines-fight-pancreatic-cancer-msk-clinical-researchers-are-trying-find-out] suggested an mRNA-based therapy inhibited the recurrence of pancreatic cancer in some patients. Nevertheless, the Trump administration has discouraged universities [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mrna-vaccine-technology-appears-targeted-under-trump-and-rfk-jr/] from seeking grants for mRNA research, announcing all such grants would be reported to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a staunch critic of mRNA technology — for review. Trump’s spending cuts have undermined economic progress on other fronts. For example, the administration has proposed $20 billion in cuts [https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy-and-environment/3378460/planned-cuts-harm-trump-energy-agenda-nuclear-clean-energy-firms/#google_vignette] to the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO), which provides long-term capital to domestic energy projects that advance America’s strategic interests. Its lending has successfully promoted nuclear energy (one of Andreessen’s avowed causes), mineral mining, and gas infrastructure. Even before Trump, it was already leanly staffed. According to Thomas Hochman [https://x.com/ThomasHochman/status/1911745223648026829] of the Foundation for American Innovation, most asset management firms employ roughly 500 employees for every $100 billion in managed assets; LPO has employed closer to 350. In a letter [https://www.scribd.com/document/849148163/Letter-of-Support-for-LPO] to the administration, 30 think tanks and energy companies suggested that large cuts to LPO’s funding could undermine American energy production. Meanwhile, Trump’s layoffs at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are slowing drug development [https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/drug-development-is-slowing-down-after-cuts-at-the-fda-f22369cf?st=UwWkif&reflink=article_imessage_share]. With the FDA too short-staffed to fulfill its core functions in a timely manner, companies have been forced to postpone clinical trials and drug testing for new medical treatments. ## The administration is chasing scientific talent out of the US Finally, the Trump administration is jeopardizing America’s access to the most fundamental economic resource: skilled labor. Among the list of pro-growth policies that Andreessen and Horowitz endorsed in their “Little Tech Agenda” last year was an “Expansion of high-skilled immigration to encourage foreign graduates of American universities and others to build new companies and industries here.” But Trump has done the very opposite, exiling foreign students and recent graduates from the United States, thereby discouraging others from immigrating to the country. Specifically, his administration has taken to abruptly terminating foreign students’ visas [https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-targeting-international-student-visa-sevis-termination-universities.html] and ordering them to leave the country. According to a database from Inside Higher Ed [https://www.insidehighered.com/news/global/international-students-us/2025/04/07/where-students-have-had-their-visas-revoked], the State Department has changed the legal status of more than 1,000 students and recent graduates at over 170 colleges and universities. In some of these cases, no clear rationale for the visa revocation has been articulated. In many, the cause seems to be the most minor legal infractions, such as receiving a speeding ticket [https://x.com/AdamSmallKSL/status/1912200017089294814]. The White House has also seemingly empowered immigration officials to menace legal immigrants, including esteemed scientists. Kseniia Petrova graduated from a renowned Russian physics and technology institute before being recruited by Harvard Medical School. When Trump took office, she had been working on an investigation into slowing cellular damage from aging. But in February, she was detained at Boston Logan International Airport for failing to declare frog embryos she had transported from France at her university’s request. Normally, this would incur a small fine. Instead, the customs official terminated her visa on the spot [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/science/russian-scientist-ice-detained-harvard.html] and initiated deportation proceedings. Now, she is stuck in a detention center in Louisiana. All this has sent a very clear message to talented, foreign-born scientists both in the US and abroad. A recent poll by the journal Nature [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00938-y] found that 75 percent of US-based scientists say they are considering leaving the country. In response, European countries have been aggressively seeking to lure top scholars [https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-us-research-education-donald-trump-ekaterina-zaharieva/] out of the United States. ## There is no high-minded case for Trump There are other ways the Trump administration has subverted the tech right’s ostensible ideals. In a post-election podcast, Andreessen and Horowitz complained that, even as the Biden administration had allegedly cracked down on legitimate crypto businesses, it did nothing to combat “all the crazy, fly-by-night meme coins”; Trump proceeded to launch a shady meme coin [https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/trumps-meme-coin-made-nearly-100-million-trading-fees-small-traders-lost-money-2025-02-03/'] of his very own. Andreessen also complained that the Biden administration had undermined the rule of law, pressuring businesses into agreements that “you voluntarily agree to it but in an atmosphere of coercion.” This would seem like a fitting description of the Trump White House withholding funds and federal contracts from universities [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/nyregion/columbia-response-trump-demands.html] and law firms [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/us/politics/law-firms-deals-trump.html] until those entities agreed to implement the administration’s ideological priorities or provide it with pro bono legal assistance. But it seems unlikely the tech right was ever under the misimpression that Donald Trump had a deep-seated commitment to ethical business practices or lawful government. They were all sentient on January 6, 2021. It is more plausible though that reactionary tech billionaires genuinely believed the Republican would accelerate economic growth and tech progress through tax cuts and deregulation — this is, after all, what global investors seemed to believe in the immediate wake of Trump’s election, if stock market trends are any guide. But Trump has swiftly invalidated the tech right’s high-minded reasons for supporting him. What remains is the grubby, self-interested argument that the crypto industry’s short-term profits matter more than America’s long-term economic health or geopolitical influence. This seems to be a difficult case to make. As Politico has observed [https://www.politico.com/newsletters/digital-future-daily/2025/04/09/tech-vcs-feel-their-own-special-tariff-pain-00282047], Andreessen’s X feed [https://x.com/pmarca] grew quiet in the wake of “Liberation Day [https://www.cnn.com/business/live-news/tariffs-trump-news-04-02-25/index.html]” after he served as one of Trump’s loudest tech evangelists on social media for months. As of this writing, the mogul has not published a post on the platform in over a week. — From Vox [https://www.vox.com] via this RSS feed [https://www.vox.com/rss/index.xml]