Here’s a funding thread on Mastodon to help people get out of Florida, Missouri, and so on, to a sanctuary state. Most of them are using GoFundMe. I’m not the organiser and I haven’t vetted them all but I’ve thrown money at several anyway. These people are now actively in harm’s way, particularly in Florida but not just. Do what you feel you can with this information.

I’m assembling this the evening of May 4th. I’m thinking DeSantis might sign some bills on the 5th – possibly while I’m still asleep. Be on the lookout, particularly for SB 254, but really for all of them.

In 2016, corporate America reacted pretty strongly to anti-trans legislation and “bathroom bills.” It helped. This time around, they’re mostly staying quiet. The lack of press coverage isn’t helping with that, of course, since it’s all about publicity. But if you have any levers to pull on this? Now is the time to be pulling them.

Republican Florida has passed a fleet of anti-LGBT bills, including SB 254 (taking children away from trans-supportive parents and making gender-affirming care a felony), and their “bathroom bill” which bans trans people from bathroom facilities in all schools and universities, public buildings (owned, operated, or leased by the state), and as many other places as they could, making use of those facilities a misdemeanour. It also requires all affected entities to set up policies and disciplinary actions against people who violate the rule, and sets up a state reporting system for report any instances where this is not done. This functionally bars trans people from schools and government employment as well, except where separate facilities are provided. The third bill is the legislative expansion of “don’t say gay,” which formalises much of the full through-high-school ban on mentioning LGBT people in schools.

People are reporting SB254 as a “temporary” taking of custody because they’re reading a section title and not the actual law being referenced. It’s “temporary” in the sense that it’s “temporary” until a formal hearing can be called, at which point custody is assigned, and that doesn’t mean back to the parents. They absolutely can and will use this to take children from families permanently.

Here’s Law Dork’s analysis. He spends less time on 254 than the bathroom bills. I can kinda see why but holy fuck do not sleep on 254. Taking children from enemy groups to give them to others to raise is literally a form of genocide.

The headline on this article is really obscure. Let’s fix that: Republican Florida has just banned state and local governments from involvement in ecologically sustainable investment funds and mandated private lending investment in fossil fuels, private prisons, and firearms manufacturing.

It’s confusingly enough written that people are having a hard time parsing whether it bans sustainable investments entirely. This is a common feature of modern Republican legislation – write as broadly as you can and hope your personally-created court system will interpret it as broadly as possible. See also the “drag bans” which target trans people.

If anyone makes noises at you about Republicans and “economic freedom” please use this.

Also in Florida, “Protestors stage sit-in against DeSantis’ ‘right wing attempts to dismantle democracy.’” Good luck to them. If you’re able, find a group to work with, shut their shit down.

The Republican Missouri legislature – in a state which routinely passes progressive popular initiatives with 55% yes votes – is moving to require 57% (one bill) or 60% (another bill) majorities to pass initiatives. The intent is plain and obvious. The Republican Party is against the Republic.

Republican Montana’s ban on duly-elected Rep. Zooey Zephyr’s presence in the House has been rejected by a state judge, as requested by the state. She’s considering whether to appeal, but the case may be held as moot since the session ends very soon.

Also, Montana’s Republican governor signed a fleet of anti-abortion laws on Thursday, including a legislative attempt to reverse a Montana Supreme Court ruling that the state constitution’s privacy clause protects abortion access.

Republican Oklahoma is moving to ban all trans health care, children and adult, using the usual combination of straightforward illegality for trans children and technically-legal but actually-impossible for adults, banning all insurance coverage and the use of any medical facility that receives any state or federal funding, which means all of them.

Also, the Republican governor just vetoed state funding for their only PBS affiliate, because Clifford the Big Red Dog had an episode with lesbian characters, calling the existence of lesbian characters “sexualising our kids.”

They will make all of us illegal again if they can. Every single one.

In Montana, Rep. Zooey Zephyr and her girlfriend (LGBTQ+ activist and journalist Erin Reed) have BOTH been swatted this week. The fash are hoping the police kill them, obviously.

Republican Texas is now using state power to force doctors to file false reports about “abortion complications” or lose their licenses. This is to generate fake statistics, which will, in turn, be used for political purposes to further restrict reproductive rights.

This is a process the fundamentalist movement have used for decades. It and similar processes are behind every one of their fake “abortion is dangerous” lies. But now they have state power behind one of these efforts, and they’ll point to fake official data, and that’ll carry a lot more weight.

Republican Texas is also working through a bill allowing the Secretary of State to overturn elections in the Democratic stronghold of Harris County, “if 2 percent or more of the polling locations ran out of ballot paper for more than an hour.” More at the article.

Leonard Leo – head of the Federalist Society – secretly funnelled $100,000 to Clarence Thomas’ wife from a nonprofit in the months before that same non-profit filed an amicus brief in support of functionally overturning much of the Voting Rights Act, via Shelby County v. Holder. (WaPo gift link, no subscription required. Also, see the ProPublica story on another bribe: Clarence Thomas Had a Child in Private School. Harlan Crow Paid the Tuition. Rolling Stone has more on the long-time Harlan Crow/Clarence Thomas payoff story.

The US Supreme Court is fundamentally illegitimate.

Boing Boing reports on the fascists turning from banning books to ending public libraries entirely.

Sinclair Media, whose owner is a far-right authoritarian known for planting must-run propaganda in local news stories, has started cancelling local news entirely in favour of a nationally-produced half-hour “news” show that I think you can assume will be filled with more propaganda. So far this is only in smaller- and mid-sized markets. Given their financial problems overall, it’s possible this is as much cost-cutting as anything else, but we’ll see.

Activists in Atlanta, Georgia face unstated felony charges for distributing flyers that identified a cop they said was linked to the killing of a protester in the Atlanta forest. In case you’re wondering how police powers are being used right now.

The far-right “New Europe Observation” group had most of its accounts suspended on Facebook after it turned out to be a Chinese troll farm modelled after Russia’s Internet Research Agency.

Everyone talking about this is focusing on the “how white men fight” part when the real fascist element is his outrightly-stated thirst to see Trump supporters murder the anti-fascist kid they attacked. “I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they’d hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it.”

Tucker Carlson wants street murders.

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