26 + 6 = 1

Midway through this summer, a high-quality poll found that Democrats in California were overwhelmingly in favor of the upcoming ballot measure for a one-time 5% tax on billionaire wealth.

The ratio was more than 4 to 1. But the state’s most powerful Democrats – including the governor Gavin Newsom, his near-certain successor Xavier Becerra and the Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass – have lined up with Silicon Valley billionaires who’ve raised upward of $340m to defeat the initiative.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/9534913

quote tweto https://x.com/PushDemsLeft/status/2098773631346037110

Democrats are the closest thing to actual existing Italian Fascism than any other ideology in the USA.

When the Democratic National Committee at long last released its "autopsy" report on former Vice President Kamala Harris' loss in the 2024 election in May, one of the most puzzling aspects was the lack of any conclusions related to her and former President Joe Biden's support for Israel's genocide in Gaza.

Holly Otterbein of Axios reported on Thursday that the document's author, Paul Rivera, did indeed look into the issue of Gaza and found it had a role in Harris’ loss. But he did not submit the findings to the DNC for inclusion in the report. Axios did not include an explanation for that decision.

Just over a year ago, David Hogg, then the newly-minted vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, found himself unceremoniously pushed out after he called on the party to back primary challengers to unseat members of a moribund establishment.

Now, as progressives notch victory after victory against the party’s conservative old guard and are once again galvanizing young voters thought to have been lost, the 26-year-old reformer says it proves he was right all along.

The meeting was supposed to be Acton's way of making up for calling trans girls "boys

Democrats busily selling trans folks down the river. They are supposed to be the good guys right?

Rep Terri Sewell. is the latest Democrat to vote for an anti-trans provision. // Source: Rep. Sewell FB

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If you’re transgender, you can die for our country—but you cannot receive life-saving health care, access it for your transgender family members, or expect your family to be treated equally in schools run by the armed forces, should a new provision in the House NDAA become law.

This appears to be the politic of Democratic Representatives Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, of Texas; Donald G. Davis, of North Carolina; Shomari Figures and Terri A. Sewell, of Alabama. These lawmakers voted in favor of two proposals by South Carolina’s Nancy Mace, to amend the pending National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). If passed in the Senate, Amendment 255 would gut gender-affirming care for uniformed service members, retirees, and their family members around the world. Amendment 256 would in turn ban transgender girls from women’s sports in K-12 schools run by the military.

That same night, however, the very same Democrats that sided with Mace voted against the proposed codification of Trump’s anti-trans military ban. In other words—they think transgender people should be able to enlist, but not enjoy the very freedoms they are supposedly fighting for.

The so-called trans military ban is already in place through federal policymaking and Trump’s Executive Order 14138. But it’s not as permanent as a formal law on the books would make it. That amendment, brought by Colorado’s notoriously anti-trans Representative Lauren Boebert, failed.

“We’re never going to give up the fight to protect our nation’s transgender servicemembers,” the Congressional Equality Caucus proudly declared after the ban was defeated, unequivocally calling it “good news.”

And it’s true that staving off a discriminatory policy targeting trans people on the basis of their gender identity is a victory. The amendment claimed trans people are fundamentally at odds with the “readiness and discipline” needed from a member of the armed forces. Four Republicans—Reps. Brian K. Fitzpatrick (PA-1) and Michael Lawler (NY-17), plus legislators from U.S. territories such as Kimberlyn King-Hinds (Northern Mariana Islands) and James C. Moylan (Guam)—even crossed party lines to quash the amendment.

But all of them, plus that small cadre of Democrats, turned their backs on trans people when it came time to protect their right to be free from discrimination in health care and in schools. This may be in lockstep with the Republican Party Line, but Democrats who defected drew ire over their vote.

“It’s not just an attack on transgender kids,” said Kara Corcoran, the executive director of SPARTA Pride, an advocacy group for transgender military communities. “It’s an attack on evidence-based care across military treatment facilities, and throughout the Department of Defense, not only here in America, but overseas.”

The first Mace amendment would prohibit TRICARE from covering “gender affirming medical treatment” for transgender people, including servicemembers, retirees, and dependents like children or a spouse. The second Mace amendment would require all on-base K-12 schools operated by the military to ban trans girls from girls’ sports teams.

Last year, many of these same Democratic defectors—such as Cuellar, Davis, Figures, and Gonzalez—voted in favor of athletics bans or gender-affirming health care restrictions for trans servicemembers, veterans, and their families. Cuellar and Davis even lent their support to what amounted to a Pride flag ban at military facilities, as Erin in the Morning has previously reported. Sewell marks the addition of a new name to this list. And while some of the defectors live in highly contested districts, Sewell’s district is safely blue.

Still, Corcoran and others are hopeful that these amendments will face the same fate as their many, many predecessors of anti-trans NDAA amendments or riders passed in the House. Anti-trans provisions snuck into spending, budget, and authorization bills have also been shot down. In a worst case scenario, Senate Democrats can also opt to filibuster.

“I’m hopeful that the Senate will kill it,” Corcoran told Erin in the Morning. “They know there are far more important things to focus on, and they are seeing through the scapegoat tactics that certain politicians are using to gain power and influence through the use of fear.”

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Fuckers are still doing their best to lose, despite all the odds in their favor.

The top House Democrats on the Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees said Monday that they will oppose efforts led by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) to cut the $3.3 billion in U.S. aid to Israel expected under the memorandum of understanding if and when they come to a vote on the House floor.

Rep. Greg Meeks (D-NY), the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, told Jewish Insider he plans to oppose the effort to strip the aid out of the 2027 State Department Appropriations bill, calling it a “got-me vote the Republicans are trying to play with.”

“There’s just too many factors to say … ‘We’re taking away $3.3 billion,’” Meeks said, noting the U.S. provides military aid to other countries like Egypt and Jordan. “I don’t think that it would be the wise thing … not good policy.”

Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, also told JI he plans to oppose the amendment to cut the $3.3 billion.

“I’m against that,” Smith said of the attempt to cut the $3.3 billion. “I don’t think it has support because it cuts off humanitarian aid, military aid — all aid for Israel. So I don’t think there’s support for it, but we’ll see.”

Who could possibly have possibly predicted this would end in disaster? /s

Henry Cuellar, Donald Davis, Cleo Fields, Laura Gillen, Vicente Gonzalez, Marcy Kaptur, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, and Eugene Vindman

But the most extreme evasion in the autopsy is the dodging of the crucial importance of the Gaza genocide. In this way, the autopsy is in keeping with how the DNC has continued to function. As the governing body of the Democratic party, the DNC has twisted itself into untenable knots while excluding concerns about Gaza and Palestinians from any serious internal debate. Martin, like the party’s congressional leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, has continued to pretend that the US government has not been arming Israel’s genocide.

In an autopsy of close to 50,000 words, not one of them is “Gaza”, or “Palestinians” or “Israel” or “genocide”. Yet credible accounts tell of meetings where the autopsy’s author, the Democratic consultant Paul Rivera, privately acknowledged that Harris’s stance on Gaza hurt her election chances. The executive director of the Institute for Middle East Understanding, Margaret DeReus, said in a statement on Thursday that “Ken Martin should release the information that the author of the autopsy told us clearly and unambiguously, which is that DNC officials’ review of their own data found Biden’s support for Israel to be a net-negative for Democrats in 2024.”

Dozens of Democrats in the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives helped the GOP send a key spying bill to the Senate on Wednesday, earning sharp condemnation from the diverse movement that has called for privacy reforms. The House voted 235-191 in favor of the bill released last week by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who has been trying for months to get an extension of Section…

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Activists accuse Minnesota House candidate Matt Little of "cosplaying" as a protester, blurring the line between solidarity and opportunism.