https://www.vox.com/politics/405489/trump-deportations-gang-pro-palestine-spech-power-grab

«“Oh, so you oppose sending people to be tortured in a Salvadoran prison camp without due process? Guess you must support Tren de Aragua killing little girls.”»

…

«The Trump administration’s rhetoric doesn’t just attempt to link their opponents in general to gang members and terrorists. They also attempt to link judges and other nonpartisan authorities to Democrats.

…

Eminent Holocaust historian Christopher Browning has written several essays in the New York Review of Books that document what he calls “troubling similarities” between interwar Germany and America today. One of Browning’s key points is that the rise of Nazism was, in large part, a cautionary tale about “hyperpolarization.” The German center-right elite hated the left parties so much that they preferred Hitler, who was extreme even to their tastes — and were willing to hand him exceptional powers to crack down on civil liberties in service of crushing socialism and communism.

While Browning focuses his ire on conservative elites — he compares Sen. Mitch McConnell to Paul von Hindenburg, the German president who made Hitler chancellor — social science tells us that polarization can have a similar effect on ordinary voters.

…

Using unusually high-quality data, Svolik and Graham were able to show that vanishingly few Americans — roughly 3.45 percent — were willing to vote against a candidate from their preferred party even if that candidate engaged in clear anti-democratic behavior.»

Yeehaa.

«This analysis was critically important to understanding why Trump could win in 2024 even after the stain of January 6. Today, it helps us understand how Trump’s rhetorical strategies hope to numb Americans — and especially fellow Republicans — to an assault on their fundamental liberties.»

So, the thing is (and this has been said before): it is a VERY long way to the bottom before die-hard Trump voters are suffering directly. I think we need an appeal to morality way before that.

“Have you no decency? At long last, have you no decency?”

https://time.com/7269604/el-salvador-photos-venezuelan-detainees/

Do not turn away, as much as you want to. This is being done in our name.

«After being shaved, the detainees were stripped naked. More of them began to whimper; the hard faces I saw on the plane had evaporated. It was like looking at men who passed through a time machine. In two hours, they aged 10 years. Their nice clothes were not gathered or catalogued but simply thrust into black garbage bags to be thrown out with their hair.

They entered their cold cells, 80 men per cell, with steel planks for bunks, no mats, no sheets, no pillow. No television. No books. No talking. No phone calls and no visitors. For these Venezuelans, it was not just a prison they had arrived at. It was exile to another world, a place so cold and far from home they may as well have been sent into space, nameless and forgotten. Holding my camera, it was as if I watched them become ghosts.»

«Once women were allowed into competitive sport in the early 20th century, those whose athletic ability was on par with their male counterparts, or whose physique was too manly, were disqualified from competition as deviants of the gender order. Through the history of women’s sport, female athletes have been exposed to intrusive gender verification processes including medical inspection of external genitalia and chromosome testing that produced many false positives and had catastrophic impacts on athletes’ careers. The current climate is one that focuses on testosterone levels of those athletes whose gender is deemed to be ‘suspicious.’

…

the literature shows that no trans woman has ever won an Olympic medal ever since they have been allowed to compete in 2004 (Ivy and Friedlaender, 2020).»

Don’t even need to look into theories about testosterone, although this paper does that, too.

https://cces.ca/sites/default/files/content/docs/2024-01/transgender-women-athletes-and-elitesport-a-scientific-review-en.pdf (PDF; no, I did not read the whole thing).

Reached via https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/trans-moral-panic-falsespor

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/22/donald-trump-trans-athletes-maine-00003871

Seems like all we need for 2026 campaign ads is Trump bloviating and the punch line “Had enough?”

A little theology from Wonkette:

«The couple helpfully explained that the child’s death was actually the will of God, who they believe wanted to spare her from this terrible world. To be fair, I suppose he would not have had that opportunity had the girl been vaccinated, but if he were really committed to killing a six-year-old child, I’m sure he’d find a way.»

https://www.wonkette.com/p/measles-are-good-for-you-say-parents

«Under the plan approved by the Bundestag, defense spending above 1 percent of gross domestic product would be exempted from Germany’s constitutionally enshrined debt brake. Proponents of the brake, which limits the structural budget deficit to 0.35 percent of GDP except in emergencies, cherish it as a pillar of Germany’s signature fiscal responsibility. Critics call it a fiscal straitjacket.»

https://wapo.st/41JvTlu (gift)

This seems like a big deal.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/opinion/autism-diagnosis-rfk-vaccines.html?unlocked_article_code=1.5U4.7kpq.hnnqd5zSv_5o&smid=url-share (gift)

LOTS of good stuff in this article (turnout doesn’t help; the party needs to be more progressive but not go overboard; etc.), but I’m gonna zoom in and focus on AI for a split second:

«I’m not an AI expert by any means, but AI capabilities are increasing dramatically. And AI experts are very, very bullish on the extent to which AI systems are going to be able to replace some fraction of jobs. The prediction markets say this, too. And I think something that’s really important is that **regardless of whether it’s going to happen or not, the public believes it will happen**. [emphasis mine.]»

https://www.vox.com/politics/403364/tik-tok-young-voters-2024-election-democrats-david-shor