Authoritarian praises dictator: Donald Trump praises Xi Jinping as a “perfect” leader who rules “with an iron fist.” I don’t know how useful this is other than he’s saying it about a Chinese dictator and his base is really racist against China, so … maybe that’s of use. If you’re giving any thought to voting third party instead of Biden (or whoever else is running against the Republican in the race), get the fuck over yourself, this guy has to lose again.

Of course Republicans always meant to prosecute women, they were just lying about it like they lie about everything else: Nebraska Teen Sent to Jail Over Illegal Abortion. It was a medical abortion, too – an abortion pill obtained from out of state. A lot of people are focusing on how the key evidence came out of Facebook Messenger, but, well, they did receive a subpoena. It’s not like they volunteered it.

Federal Republicans are using the federal budget to target LGBT people because of course they are, that’s what you do. This is what Republicans do with power: hurt people.

Medical expert explains how trans healthcare bans hurt us all: ‘Nobody seems interested in reality’. She’s quite correct that nobody involved in these is interested in reality, of course. She’s just hasn’t figured out they’re just fine with that, because their version of truth isn’t based on empirical reality.

There are no moderate Republicans: Republican governor Youngkin’s Department of Education has broadly (though not completely) banned nicknames in their ongoing efforts to hurt trans children as much as possible.

The Los Angeles Times has an in-depth story on one trans woman fleeing Florida as their anti-LGBT laws dig deeper into public life. Meanwhile, Fox News is going off about trans people threatening the universe itself, somehow. Okay, that’s a tiny bit of an exaggeration, but really not much, and arguably not at all. They’ll get there by the 2024 elections though, don’t worry about that.

Vice News asks, “Why Do Neo-Nazis Keep Getting Arrested For Child Sexual Abuse Material?” I don’t know, because they’re into abuse and power and have an overwhelming desperate need for control over unwilling subjects and this combines the three of those with sex? Maybe that’s it.

ProPublica is still adding to their series on far-right and conspiracy theorist attacks on school boards. Don’t sleep on those school board elections, okay?

Now, let’s talk cops.

I keep asking, “How do you reform this?” and the reason I keep asking that – and saying that law enforcement needs to be torn to the ground and rebuilt from scratch in this country – is that they absolutely do not want to reform. They don’t. They’re partisan and authoritarian and want more power and more right to control, not less. They actively fight to keep things bad and where possible make things worse – or as they see it, better, with more right to violence and more impunity.

And don’t come at me about “bad apples.” Until so-called “good cops” stop forming ranks around so-called “bad cops,” there are no good cops.

So here are a few stories from the last week, featuring a lot – and I mean a lot – of cops lying, of cops faking records to make themselves look less racist, of cops beating people and mostly still not facing any sort of direct accountability. I’ve seen everything talked about in Wired’s police brutality articles here, from Seattle PD… 20 years ago. Before all the “reforms” and “re-training” that we know the police going through it mock.

And then I saw all the same sorts of things again, after all the “reform,” in the anti-brutality protests, and not just here – over and over again. And that is why I think of “police reform” as bullshit, and why it all needs to be torn down, as many functions as possible handed over to non-police agencies, and rebuilt from the ground up.

In that frame of reference, have some “Yeah, reform this” news:

Wired: Beaten, blinded by pepper spray, corralled like animals, and indiscriminately arrested for marching against police violence and racial injustice. Such was the fate hundreds of people suffered at the hands of New York Police Department (NYPD) officers in late May and early June of 2020, as thousands of people across the United States protested the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. … Taken together, the footage demonstrates widespread, systematic police misconduct during protests that spanned from May 28 to June 4, 2020, across multiple neighborhoods in New York City.

The Guardian: New York to pay $13.7m to George Floyd protesters arrested or beaten by police. In March, New York City has already agreed to pay $6m to other protesters who were arrested, detained and subjected to excessive force during a protest for George Floyd in the Bronx.

Rolling Stone direct link, archive link: A single state trooper logged 1,350 fraudulent traffic tickets into a Connecticut database meant to detect racial profiling. The finding is key to a damning new audit of the Connecticut State Police, which reveals pervasive trooper malfeasance, including at least 26,000 false tickets logged over seven years, that masked racial bias in the force’s policing. Now, the CSP refuses to discuss the audit — or even reveal if the most-prolific ticket faker still has a badge.

Real Change News: As pressure to cut the department’s budget in half ramped up in June 2020, [Seattle Police Department]’s top brass attempted to influence public perception of how cuts to the department might impact operations, employing scare tactics and warning of a public safety crisis, even as leadership staff within the department internally recommended civilianizing or eliminating a number of SPD units.

Seattle Times: The mother of a young Black man killed by Seattle police in 2017 is outraged and demanding an apology after learning officers kept a mock tombstone marking her son’s death on a shelf in a precinct break room. The room at the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct also was decorated with a large “Trump 2020” flag, in possible violation of state law and department policy regulating officers’ involvement in partisan politics while on duty.

(See also: “We wouldn’t be having all these problems if more people would just like our Trump government.” – Seattle police officer via a bullhorn from his car during George Floyd protests, on protest livestreams, seen by me personally.)

PubliCola, notable because of how unnotable it is that they’ve been lying about this: Video from the body-worn camera of Seattle Police Department officer Kevin Dave shows Dave accelerating to 74 miles an hour and failing to turn on his siren as he approached the intersection where he struck and killed pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula earlier this year. The King County Prosecutor’s Office, which is still deciding whether to charge Dave with a crime, provided the video and other documents in response to PubliCola’s records request.

And that’s all I’ve got for now. Have a good weekend, everybody…

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.