We're NOT Doomed: Wed April 8

As long as we fight back, we WILL win.

Trump wants us scared, but he doesn’t want to be impeached.

That’s the line he’s walking.

He knows that if he does something, like wipe out “a whole civilization,” that truly is the end of his presidency. Enough Republicans have a line (not a very impressive line, but it exists) so that it’s not gonna happen.

As long as it’s a threat and not followed through, he’s not crossing their line. Again, it’s a very unimpressive line.

But it does cross our line, obviously, I mean, everything he does crosses our line. But this is an easy grift. Scare us, make us feel hopeless, and then walk it back before destroying the world (figuratively or literally depending on the day).

I believe that choosing yesterday was a last ditch effort to move our focus away from the elections. I don’t think the fact that it was MTG’s former seat and Wisconsin Supreme Court was a coincidence. And of course, distract from everything else.

And we did do really fucking well in the elections. REALLY fucking well. We took a congressional seat from R+28.8 down to R+11, we over performed by 17 points. That’s HUGE.

And we trounced the Republican in Wisconsin, winning by 20 points. And that doesn’t even mention all the municipal races we won in Wisconsin and Missouri especially.

So if that was his goal, it failed.

But what did happen yesterday, is it made people truly lose their minds. Maybe about 20% of the posts I saw were against Republicans, and the rest were against Democrats.

Blaming them for not introducing articles of impeachment (they have, many times), for not calling on Trump’s Cabinet to invoke the 25th amendment (which many of them did but wouldn’t do anything, since they’re his cronies and he can just sign a letter saying he’s fit to serve) for not returning to DC and standing on the steps of the Capitol (they could, but they do that a lot and most people could not care less).

His goal was sowing chaos, and boy did he succeed.

Some people did create protests and call their electeds (20,000 calls per hour by the end of the day according to @5calls), but most people just complained that Dems weren’t doing the work of an organizer themselves.

I hope this was a wake up call. He doesn’t care about the law, but he DOES care about being impeached by his own party.

This isn’t to say that when he makes a threat we should ignore it, but we can’t play into it. Dems are not at fault. He is.

Dems do not have the power to impeach him till we get the majority. We WILL have elections this Saturday and next Tuesday and Thursday and Saturday and yes, in November.

In the meantime, focus your ire on Republicans, ESPECIALLY on days like yesterday. And let’s drop the mob mentality and find ways to use our anger productively. Cause I don’t know about you, I spent most of yesterday staring at a wall. Not because of Trump but because everyone was so loudly wrong and I just couldn’t compete.

Let’s not do this again, yeah?

International

Mon, March 9 - The US attempted to stop the UN’s 70th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women from recognizing trans women. I say attempted, because they failed.

This year, the theme was “Ensuring and Strengthening Access to Justice for All Women and Girls” and, for the first time in history, Agreed Conclusion was not passed unanimously.

The Agreed Conclusion is basically a mission statement based on what took place at the CSW.

But the US tried to change the Agreed Conclusion to exclude trans women from the goals of “strengthening access to justice for all women and girls and advancing gender equality worldwide.”

They introduced eight amendments that would clarify gender as “only to men and women on the basis of biological sex.”

It didn’t go well for them.

Of all the member nations present, the only one who voted in favor of their amendments were….themselves.

And the original Agreed Conclusion passed with all member nations except the US.

This government can try to destroy the world as much as they’d like, but the world isn’t listening. And, that makes me feel less Doomed.

New Jersey

Mon, March 23 - The New Jersey Assembly passed the “John R. Lewis Voter Empowerment Act.” Next stop is the state Senate.

The act would enshrine the right to vote, for all citizens, into law and improve accessibility of the state election public data, which is very important to me, personally, as finding info for my election guides is so much harder than you think.

Now, the bill has been introduced in the Assembly since 2022, and the State Senate has never taken it up, but hopefully this time, it’s different.

As sponsor Rep Verlina Reynolds-Jackson said:

Throughout the last few elections, we have experienced a concerning rise in the threat to American democracy, as voting rights face a level of scrutiny not seen since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. When those in power feel their position is threatened, their actions can become increasingly unpredictable, a dynamic we are seeing play out with the Trump administration. This makes the advancement of the John R. Lewis Voter Empowerment Act more critical than ever.

And if it does pass the Senate, I’m sure Governor Mikie Sherrill will sign it into law.

If you live in New Jersey, please contact your state Senator and demand that they bring this bill up for a vote! With the threat of the SAVE Act this hopefully won’t be tabled.

It makes me feel less Doomed to see something like this pass the Assembly so overwhelmingly, hopefully we’ll have the same win when it comes to the Senate!

Rutherford County, Tennessee

Mon, March 30 - Luanne James was a librarian and director of the county’s local system. She was fired at a library board meeting, in a vote of 8-3, for refusing to remove 132 books containing LGBTQ+ themes from the children’s section.

More than 240 people attended the board meeting, almost all of them there to support James. The director of PEN America’s Freedom to Read program, Kasey Meehan, was even there.

She said:

With a firm: ‘I will not comply,’ Luanne demonstrated her deep commitment to the freedom to read and the principles of librarianship, at a steep cost. Her story will echo from the Courthouse in Murfreesboro, TN, across the county, as emblematic of the fight against censorship and suppression.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. We only lose when we stop fighting back. This story is not over, and hopefully seeing someone like James fight back and say no will convince other librarians to do the same.

And, if the library board is an elected position in your local election, now you know why it’s so important to vote in it.

Anytime I see people fighting back, I feel less Doomed, and I hope you do too!

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So I hope these wins helped remind you of how much we are truly fighting. It wasn’t an easy thing to remember yesterday, but I hope it’s easier today!

Our voices are our superpower, but only when we use them!