The vicious campaign waged against the transgender community

It is hard to get an accurate estimate of the size of the transgender community but there is no doubt that it is small, perhaps around 1% of the population. Because of their small size, they are politically powerless. So it was astonishing, and sickening, to see them being used to scare people, as if they represented a major danger to the social fabric. Republicans seemed to think that demonizing them was a winning electoral strategy, attacking them at campaign rallies and spending vast amounts on ads against them.

So it was indeed encouraging that the campaign did not work and transgender candidates even won elections.

In the weeks leading up to Tuesday, Republicans spent an estimated $183m on ads about transgender issues. Elon Musk poured millions into political groups that attacked trans rights, intensely targeting Democrat James Talarico’s Senate run in Texas. Trump, who successfully leveraged the culture war issue in 2024, stumped on it again, calling gender affirming care “mutilization” (meaning “mutilation”). Conservative candidates actively campaigned on the platform, calling their liberal opponents supporters of an overly woke agenda.
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But Texas and Kansas – along with the US Senate and House – flipped blue. Alabama elected its first transgender lawmaker, Allison Montgomery, an incoming state representative, despite her Republican challenger’s incendiary comments about her identity. Five other states – Georgia, Washington, Wisconsin, Michigan and Florida – elected trans and non-binary candidates at the state level for the first time.

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The perils of believing one’s own hype

You may recall how in 2016 Trump boasted that “”I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” His re-election in 2024, after the disgraceful behavior by him and his supporters on January 6, 2021, must have confirmed that view in his mind because after taking office in 2025, he acted as if he could say and do anything, and even insult his supporters to their faces at his rallies, and they would stick with him.

David Remnick writes about the many ways in which this disdain was manifested.

[W]hat is so striking about Trump’s second term is that he entered office intent, it now seems, on flaunting his cynicism, his greed, and his scorn for the American people. It was as if he actually meant to squander his support as quickly as possible. How else to explain the heedlessness of his behavior in office? On Day One, he gave pride of place at the Inauguration to a lineup of moguls who had agreed to bow to his power and his ego. They regularly traipsed to the White House, delivering gaudy house gifts and large donations to his pet projects. They smiled weakly as they were compelled to listen to his moronic rants and admire the latest ungapatchka embellishment of the gilded Oval Office. They spent tens of millions of dollars on his wife’s documentary about how taxing it is to endure the attentions of the help and how lonely it is to shuttle from one place to the next in limousines and private planes. As in any tin-pot autocracy, this was the price of doing business. Trump’s populism was always a fraud. Now he plainly didn’t care who knew. At a “jungle-themed” Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago, costumed guests enjoyed seafood delicacies and a caviar bar. There was a caged zebra. Circus performers dangled from the ceiling. “Rich people, they spend nine hours getting ready,” the President merrily remarked of his pals. He was dressed in his usual blue suit. “I had ten minutes, so I came as Donald Trump.”
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Watching Fox News slowly realize that the Democrats clobbered them

I do not watch Fox and other right wing cable news sites and and so did not know how they reacted on election night as the results came in. But TYT has made a compilation of Fox News as it slowly dawned on them that Trump and the Republicans were getting clobbered big time and that their amplification of the ugly lies and racist Republican campaigns had failed to sway voters to their side.

It was especially fun watching Trump’s former press secretary Karoline Leavitt being desperately Pollyannaish about the prospects of Republicans holding on win congress until even she could not deny the reality that was crashing down allaround her.

On The Daily Show Jon Stewart also had a good time with what happened with the elections, starting with a brief montage of how the right-wing media reacted to the news and then moving on to the interview given by Trump to 60 Minutes that turned out to be pretty weird.

Why Pete Hegseth must be impeached and removed from office

Outgoing Republican congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky has introduced articles of impeachment on defense secretary Pete Hegseth.

Massie, an outgoing Republican congressman from Kentucky and vocal critic of the president, argued from the well of the House of Representatives that Hegseth had committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” and “has executed unlawful orders” in office.

Massie is expected to have some Republican support for a vote on articles of impeachment. Under House rules, the vote would have to occur no later than Wednesday.

Massie first introduced articles of impeachment against Hegseth on 15 September, but House speaker Mike Johnson called US Congress into recess before it could be heard.

Republicans retain control of the House until new members are seated in January, but House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York – widely expected to ascend to speaker – has said he is a “hard yes” on impeaching Hegseth. “Hegseth has got to go,” Jeffries told ABC News on Sunday.
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Massie’s impeachment resolution holds that Hegseth has subverted the power of Congress to declare war with unauthorized attacks on Iran and Yemen; systemically violated laws meant to minimize civilian casualties with the killing of more than 100 children at a school in Iran; and engaged in extrajudicial killings when ordering suspected drug boats in the Caribbean to be sunk and their crews left without rescue.

The resolution also argues that Hegseth’s investigation and threatened prosecution of Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat, and others for calling for troops to disobey illegal orders was an unconstitutional violation of the first amendment, and alleges that the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela was illegal and unconstitutional.

On his show Last Week Tonight that was aired on Sunday, John Oliver delivered a devastating critique of how awful Hegseth is that I hope will be seen by all the members of congress.

There are some who make the reasonable case that the new Democratic majority should focus on improving the lives of ordinary people and not spend time on impeachments and other forms of retribution of the many terrible things that the Trump administration has done. But I think that Hegseth is so awful and so dangerous that the case for impeaching him has to be a priority.

Russell Brand sentenced to 10.5 years in prison

The judge in the Russell Brand trial sentenced the convicted rapist today to 10.5 years in prison. He is still under investigation for two further rape allegations.

The revelations during his trial and about the latest accusations show him to be an utterly despicable human being. Like so many public people whose disgusting behavior is exposed, Brand played the religion card. Some months after the first accusations surfaced with the promise of more investigations to follow, he very publicly proclaimed that he had found Jesus and was baptized in the Thames river in a public ceremony.

It is usual for people to not want to question the sincerity of the religious beliefs of others but not everyone was convinced by Brand, particularly columnist Marina Hyde.

A hazmat dredger, please, to the stretch of the River Thames in which Russell Brand was recently baptised, in an event apparently conducted by TV adventurer and chief scout Bear Grylls. I know, it’s incredible: Thames Water is no longer responsible for the biggest piece of shit in the river.
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Concluding with Brand, his spiritual journey has been what you might expect of a bog-standard sex-case-turned-wingnut. He was previously a Buddhist, then earlier this year began endorsing a Roman Catholic prayer app called Hallow, and seems to have settled for now on whichever branch of the Anglican faith permits telly survivalists to rebirth you. “Week one as a Christian has been amazing,” Brand said the other day, adding that he felt “changed, transitioned”. Onlookers are unlikely to spot the difference. He still has a conspiracist TV portal in which viewers are treated to material on the deep state/Bill Gates/the plandemic – in short, all the usual suspects of the usual suspects. It’s hard to know how long his conversion will last. But you can’t help thinking there will only be room for one messiah in that relationship – and unfortunately, it won’t be Jesus.

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You can always depend on Trump to do the wrong thing

Even some Republicans are blasting Trump’s decision to make Stephen Miller his chief of staff, calling the latter a ‘megalomanic’, a rigid ideologue dead set on increasing the numbers of deportations even if it hurts the support that Republicans had been able to raise among Hispanic voters.

Several Republican lawmakers are fuming over President Donald Trump’s elevation of Stephen Miller to be his chief of staff.
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And while voter analyses have shown that Trump’s war in Iran and tariffs played the biggest roles in turning people away from the GOP, his handling of illegal immigration served to alienate voters in key areas. That’s in no small part due to Hispanic and Latino voters turning their backs on Republicans in places like Texas that shifted massively toward Democrats in this election cycle.

“Because of his immigration positions, I just think we ruined a lot of our goodwill with Latino voters,” Stutzman said.

The second GOP lawmaker told Fox News Digital that Miller ignored multiple warnings from House Republicans in the past, arguing that Trump’s immigration crackdown is what voters asked for.

“I’ve been in several group meetings where a lot of us have told him, ‘Your immigration enforcement policies are backfiring back home, our people are mad, our businesses are mad — even in deep red districts — and it is impacting not just the voters, but the donors, and everybody top to bottom,” that GOP lawmaker said. “But it looked to me like Stephen Miller was only after numbers … he would not listen to us.”
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“I think he’s greatly hurt the administration and cost us many seats on Tuesday,” retiring Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., told Fox News Digital before news of Miller’s promotion broke. “He took an immigration policy that favored the president 2:1 in the public, over-reached and made it 2:1 unfavorable.”

“Many Republicans don’t like him,” Bacon added when asked about his promotion.

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A tale of two campaigns

A Guardian reporter spent the last days leading up to the election visiting the campaigns of Abdul El-Sayed and Mike Rogers and observed the very different vibes from both. The vicious lies and racism from the Rogers’ side was incredible. That El-Sayed was able to win quite easily by a margin of 7% (52.5%-45.5%) suggests that, at least in Michigan, that ugly fear-mongering did not work.

But we must not be too sanguine. El-Sayed was an exceptional candidate, intelligent, articulate, charismatic, and laser-focused on progressive issues, refusing to be distracted by culture war rhetoric. His campaign should serve as a blue-print for other Democrats.

Severe gerrymandering could not save Trump and the Republicans

The US has a census every decade and based on the population shifts, it allocates the 435 congressional seats among the states. This requires the congressional districts to be redrawn, especially if the total number of seats in a state changes. In most of the states the maps are drawn by the state legislatures and the party in power in a state can draw the districts is such a way as to maximize the chances of their party to win seats, which is why control of state legislatures is so critical, especially in the elections in the years that end with 10.

The restriction on what is allowable are few. As long as the districts are contiguous and have roughly the same number of voters, the maps are usually deemed acceptable. This can lead to the abuse known as gerrymandering in the following ways.

Gerrymandering defined in the contexts of representative electoral systems, is the political manipulation of electoral district boundaries to advantage a party, group, or socioeconomic class within the constituency.
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Wayne Dawkins, a professor at Morgan State University, describes it as politicians picking their voters instead of voters picking their politicians.
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Cracking” involves spreading voters of a particular type among many districts in order to deny them a sufficiently large voting bloc in any particular district.
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“Packing” is the practice of concentrating a large number of similar voters into a single district, thereby limiting their influence in other districts. 
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“Hijacking” is a redistricting tactic that merges two districts, forcing two incumbents to compete for the same seat, ensuring that one of them loses.
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“Kidnapping” moves an incumbent’s home address into another district. Re-election can become more difficult when the incumbent no longer resides in the district or faces re-election in a new district with a new voter base. 

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The good news keeps coming – the Cybertruck is history

Elon Musk has decided pull the plug on his vanity project of the hideous Cybertruck.

Elon Musk has announced that Tesla will wind down production of its Cybertruck, marking the end of a failed effort to take a chunk of the lucrative market for pickups in the US.

The billionaire chief executive said production of the car would stop in about the middle of next year at the company’s factory in Texas in order to use the plant for the Cybercab, its self-driving taxi.

This has not been a good week for Muck. He spent nearly half a billion dollars supporting Republican candidates most whom lost.

[Musk] put his support behind Republicans in 106 House and Senate races. As of right now, 18 of those people have won and they were primarily in extremely safe red areas. He lost 45 races and another 43 are yet to be called, though many are leaning Dem.

He spent over $200 million against James Talarico for the Texas senate seat but his man Ken Paxton got walloped by a whopping 12 points, 55%-43%.

Good times!