It can be confusing, tracking the multiple lawsuits journalist E. Jean Carroll filed against Donald Trump, who sexually abused her in the 90s and then lied about it. This is no doubt why U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote a brief that bluntly laid out the main takeaway: Trump raped Carroll, as the word “rape” is commonly understood.

“The fact that Mr. Trump sexually abused — indeed, raped — Ms. Carroll has been conclusively established,” Kaplan wrote in a court filing. This document allows journalists to use the R-word when discussing what Trump did to Carroll in a department store changing room in New York.

Considering that they back Trump, you’d think Republican women would avoid acting like they think rape is a bad thing.

So considering that they back Trump, you’d think Republican women would avoid acting like they think rape is a bad thing, much less something to get worked up over. Yet Republicans in the MAGA era have embraced total shamelessness as a political weapon. That means Republican women gleefully exploit sexual violence, crying giant crocodile tears over rape and other gendered violence, when in reality, they do everything they can to screw over actual victims.

  • Instigate
    3·
    8 months ago

    The US needs a a legitimate grassroots movement that is well-funded (fucked if I know how to be honest, hopefully it’s just a lot of small donations from regular people) that consistently lobbies for voting reform. The following changes should be up for debate:

    • Replacing FPTP voting with ranked choice voting
    • Instituting proportional representative voting where appropriate, particularly for state senates
    • Referendum on changing the number of federal senators per state to better represent population
    • Referendum on abolishing the Electoral College and instituting a simple, ranked choice popular vote for president
    • Systematic review of every single electorate by an independent organisation to unwind gerrymandered districts; this organisation then sets the districts on an ongoing basis in an apolitical way
    • Expanding ease of access to voting by every sensible measure possible (much of what AG Garland is doing now) and then considering mandatory voting
    • Real-time full disclosure of all political donations to all political bodies (especially PACs)
    • Sensible caps on political donations
    • Truth in political advertising laws

    I’m sure there are plenty of others but if all of those things were managed to be achieved, the body politic’s state and Overton Window of the US would shift dramatically.

    • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      2·
      8 months ago

      Your list is decent, though some are quite our-in-the-sky. We are working on some of these. The recent Supreme Court ruling on keeping trump on the ballot should help in a fight against the electoral college, but probably won’t with the current court. Which is another thing we need major reform to, term limits and financial disclosure and conflict of interest LAWS.

      We have the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact which could get us out of the electoral college problems if a few more states join. But amending the constitution seems impossible at this stage of our country (and probably has been for the last 40 years at least actually).