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bardraelyn.bsky.social
Writer, artist, reader, educator, cosplayer, coffee lover. Warrior for kindness and empathy. Exhausted and angry on main. I want to live in a bookshop.
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Know your rights before you hit the streets. Peaceful protest is protected — but only if you know how to protect yourself legally. Read, share, and stay safe.

With the tragic assassination of a Minnesota Democratic leader, I’m going to underline this point again.

A reminder to reporters, when historians look back on this moment with the president throwing himself a military parade and the people throwing No Kings rallies across America, the media sources raving about the former and sneering at the latter are going to be quoted by name. This is your legacy!

It’s not hyperbole to say that the deaths in Minnesota are on the GOP’s hands. They’ve built this political environment and they’ve allowed a demagogue to spread hate. This is entirely on them.

TODAY 6/14/25, we peacefully make our voices heard... NO KINGS!* 🇺🇸 *Also NO: CONVICTED FELONS/PATHOLOGICAL LIARS/DRAFT DODGERS/ADJUDICATED RAPISTS/SHORT-FINGERED VULGARIANS/MALIGNANT NARCISSISTS & ANYONE WHO INCITED AN INSURRECTION IN AN ATTEMPTED COUP AGAINST HIS OWN COUNTRY a/k/a TRAITORS ✊

Colin floating two stories here MSM keeps spiking about the mortality effect of defunding science. The fatal formula writes itself: Trump kills critically needed disease / virus research and people WILL die - millions maybe - who didn't have to die. Saving science saves lives. #StandUpForScience

Kent State, where unarmed student protesters were gunned down by National Guard troops, offers stark warning. The federal deployment of military personnel now risks causing the same escalation, tragic error and lasting damage to what’s left of our democracy. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/o...

This is the page in the history book where future generations may ask, “Why didn’t more people speak up?" Don’t let this slide.

As a four-decade veteran of the daily journalism business, let me tell you: Every competent political reporter in this country knows that Trump is trying to establish a dictatorship. The industry's shame is that so few journalists will say so, and the ones who do lose their jobs.

This.👇

We are getting reports of clinics shutting down that provide care to trans youth over the latest CMS letter threat. If your clinic has shut down or you work at one, or your child's clinic has shut down, please send us a DM - we are putting together a big story on this.

Withdrawing from the Iran Deal without a plan is, in large part, what led us to this day. And trying to unravel everything Barack Obama and Joe Biden accomplished is not a legitimate foreign policy strategy. The Trump administration is rudderless and inept and the whole world knows it.

Let’s talk about yesterday. During a Department of Homeland Security press conference in Los Angeles led by Secretary Kristi Noem, Senator Alex Padilla (D‑CA) was forcibly removed, forced face-down on the ground, and handcuffed by federal agents. Here’s what to know:

Hospitals shutting down care in preemptive compliance with the Trump administration is cowardice. All this will do is move care to individual providers where trans youth will not have access to large interdisciplinary teams. It won’t stop care, but it will hurt patients.

The Senate bill aims to effectively end all civil rights lawsuits against the federal government except by entities rich enough to potentially pay million/billions in fees. I am not making this up.

"And now, in the latest of a string of appalling actions, a sitting U.S. senator has been assaulted and detained in the state he honorably serves solely because he tried to do his job as a public servant. The good faith experiment is clearly over." charlotteclymer.substack.com/p/the-good-f...

We hear that immigrants are "freeloaders," yet they're being arrested at their workplaces. We hear that immigrants "just need to follow the law," but when they attempt to, they're rounded up at courthouses. Hello?

Rescissions package passed by a single vote. Devastating but we fight on in the Senate. This cannot become law. Millions will die.

The head of FEMA’s disaster command center, responsible for coordinating the national response to earthquakes, floods, and other emergencies, has submitted his resignation.

"And now, in the latest of a string of appalling actions, a sitting U.S. senator has been assaulted and detained in the state he honorably serves solely because he tried to do his job as a public servant. The good faith experiment is clearly over." charlotteclymer.substack.com/p/the-good-f...

One aspect of Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" that isn't getting enough attention?  It would give ICE tens of billions in additional funding to conduct more violent raids and abductions across the country. A big, ugly, authoritarian nightmare.

It's very simple. Taking someone without due process is abduction. Taking someone and refusing to show your ID and/or proper credentials... is abduction. It is brownshirt behavior, not government enforcement of law.

If they can do it to a United States senator, what do you think they’ll do to you?

Rep. Lynch: "In late March, ICE agents wearing masks detained Rümeysa Öztürk. And those of you who watched that abduction, when you compare the old films of the Gestapo grabbing people off the streets of Poland ... it does look like the Gestapo."

Donald Trump handing “get-out-of-jail-free” cards to the January 6th mob while deploying Marines to LA and threatening anyone who protests his ego parade isn’t law and order or leadership - it’s authoritarianism. Call it what it is.

Politicians need to be sure to frame this in concrete $ terms and not income deciles. In 2000, Al Gore noted that Bush's tax cuts would go to the "top 1%" but a poll after the election showed about 20% thought they were in the "top 1%" and another 20% thought they would be there within five years.

Investigations are now underway into officers and ICE agents who fired crowd-control munitions at dangerously close range. In case after case, the situation only escalated when force was used against peaceful protesters.

Tin soldiers and TACO coming, We're finally on our own. This summer I hear the drumming.

Get ready for every right wing talking point to get its own series of articles, all filled with analysis from Chris Rufo and reaction quotes from “ordinary New Yorkers” who just coincidentally happen to be officials in the local Republican Party.

I still don’t understand why people can’t just come here from other countries & stay. Personally, the fraud, & waste is all the money spent adjudicating citizenship. Think of all the money we’d save & tax revenue that would generate. It’s like private health insurance companies. Like, whyyyy?

Thank you to everyone who’s reached out after our last post. We’ve received even more footage of police and ICE brutality. Tonight, the LAPD opened a formal investigation.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is preparing to roll back rules that limited mercury, lead, and arsenic emissions from coal plants, protections designed to safeguard brain development and prevent heart and respiratory disease.

We sometimes ask WHO WATCHES THE WATCHMEN but now we're going to have to ask IS ANYBODY WATCHING ANY OF THIS SHIT as every monitor, witness, checker and watcher is kicked out and shut down, leaving us in the dark on food safety and weather and climate and disease and consumer protection and and and

Trump's Big Ugly Bill is the culmination of 40 years of increasing social control in America — ballooning spending on immigrant detention.  To actually make communities safer, we should be spending on social investments like housing end education.

From a colleague. Keep calling! It’s working!!! “We’re hearing that because enough moderate Republicans in the House are telling Speaker Johnson they’re against PEPFAR cuts, the White House is going to amend the package. The pressure is working!!“

“If you saw all this in any other country — soldiers sent to crush dissent, union leaders arrested, opposition politicians threatened — it would be clear that autocracy had arrived. The question, now, is whether Americans who hate tyranny can be roused to respond.” www.nytimes.com/2025/06/09/o...

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called Los Angeles a “city of criminals” and not a city of immigrants. But like its name, Los Angeles is a city of angels. We protect and look out for one another, especially the most vulnerable.

Of course, this is why they're still shouting that the victims of these roundups are violent criminals, even as we see them targeting elementary schools and construction sites. And this is why it's important to keep sharing examples of the people they're actually going after.

They’re trying to silence us with fear and force. But “darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.” On 6/14, we show them what resistance looks like. Peaceful, unshakable, and everywhere!

I don't want to hear "Happy Pride" from these corporations. I want to hear, "We have fixed all the homophobic & transphobic garbage happening; everyone is safe now and healthcare is free. And also all the queer shows you want to watch on other streaming platforms are now available to you."

Trump has a new plan to undermine judges, and it’s called “court-baiting.” The strategy forces judges to take potentially unpopular decisions that are necessary to protect constitutional principles, then attack them for those decisions. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...