With much of Democratic Party leadership playing dead and apparently hoping Trump dies from embarrassment after reading his polling numbers, there hasn't been a lot of political opposition to Trump's fascist regime to talk about. One noted exception however, has been Maine Governor Janet Mills and her refusal to cave to Trump's anti-trans pogrom on behalf of transgender athletes in the state's school system. Some of you may remember Mills from her contentious encounter with Downmarket Mussolini in the White House where the president threatened federal funding for Maine and tried to intimidate the Governor into enforcing his (unconstitutional) anti-trans executive order. Mills famously responded "I'll see you in court" and now she has; winning a decision to block the Trump administration's attempts to withhold federal funds for school lunches in the state unless Mills agrees to discriminate against trans kids.

For more details about this story, I'd like to share this fourteen minute video by Mike Figueredo of the Humanist Report. I picked this admittedly broad discussion because Mike does an excellent job of putting the Trump regime's actions in the proper context of authoritarianism and anti-trans discrimination, while effectively contrasting the activities to resist Trump in the Democratic Party, against the collaborators and surrender muppets who're consistently advising the Party to abandon vulnerable marginalized groups at the precise moment a fascist regime comes for those people.

One segment that really stood out to me is when Figueredo explained that estimates indicated there are as few as two transgender athletes playing high school sports in the entire state of Maine. This of course highlights the unfathomable malevolence of the Trump regime towards trans people, in that they would threaten a school lunch program that serves 170,000 students in the state among other threatened funding cuts, just to discriminate against two trans people; the fact that Mills is willing to fight for the human rights of two people in her entire state when the stakes are this high demonstrates her ability to rise to the moment in the fascist Trump 2.0 era. By contrast however, when Mike asks if anyone believes a guy like Gavin Newsom would make the same choice, I think anyone who is paying attention can agree the answer is no. By contrasting Mills' active resistance to Trump's ongoing war against her state, with the appeasement and collaboration agenda proposed by folks like Newsom, Rahm Emanuel, and Elissa Slotkin, Figueredo also illuminates the likely reason that the public doesn't feel like Democrats are doing enough to resist the Trump agenda, and the Party remains mired in terrible polling even as the Trump regime also craters in popularity.

It's a broad, electoral politics-focused discussion, and I don't want to blow sunshine up your butt about a single court ruling. But if we're going to rip the liberal establishment for collaborating with fascism, it makes sense to talk about what a realistic opposition to Trump's fascist agenda might look like. Nobody is throwing a ticker tape parade here, but a Democratic Party lead by folks like Mills, Van Hollen, Pritzker, Ocasio-Cortez, and Sanders all resisting the Trump regime is an asset to folks who don't like fascism; while one that insists on embracing Trump's fascist agenda and throwing marginalized people to the wolves, is not. It would be nice if for once, The Democratic Party's leadership class made the right choice.

The Humanist Report:
Trump Faces Humiliating Defeat to Democratic Governor He Threatened

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKMUqEBmBbU

"Trump publicly attacked Maine’s governor, Janet Mills, back in February after she refused to comply with his discriminatory trans sports ban in schools. She told Trump, “I’ll see you in court,” and he retorted by saying it would be an “easy” win against her. The Trump Administration subsequently launched a probe into her state, and Trump himself demanded an apology from Mills on Truth Social. She never backed down and just had a major victory against the Trump administration in court."

@AssociatedPress @u-s-news-AssociatedPress If he cant respect my homies chosen name, Ima just gonna call him Pope Bob. #transrights #trans #pope #chicago

Cratering in the polls, and losing left right and center in court, the Trump regime spent this week scrambling to install a permanent fascist order before the peasants show up on the National Mall with pitchforks; and we wrote about it all in this week's The Skinny.

https://www.ninaillingworth.com/2025/05/07/the-skinny-may-1st-7th/2/

The Skinny: Building A Patchwork Enabling Act

"I confess that on some level it’s probably amusing to picture Trump sitting in front of a TV and getting big mad when it tells him Black and trans people exist, he shouldn’t bully overweight people, and the abortion bans he facilitated are hurting American women. The reality here however is that in signaling what the president doesn’t want to see in publicly-funded media, he’s effectively articulating a Christian Nationalist agenda. As we’ve discussed numerous times on this blog, the regime is not just fighting a material war to install a fascist dictatorship in our society; they’re also fighting an authoritarian cultural war on our discourse, our history, and who is allowed to matter in our media entertainment complex. The ideological headcage Trump is trying to use state power to enforce here, is just as important to the Trumpenrich project to create a white ethnostate dictatorship under the Kelpto Kaiser, as its material expansion of the American fascist police state is."

@Her_Doing @Wiswell
Our book group may bid on a name, thanks! What shall we call ourselves…
#Scifi #TransRights #Books