Mike DeWine was always considered at least a little bit “reasonable”:
On Wednesday, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed SB104 into law, banning transgender individuals from using bathrooms that align with their gender identity. Under this new law, trans women will be forced to use men’s restrooms and trans men will be required to use women’s restrooms if gender-neutral facilities are unavailable. The law’s passage marks a significant escalation in anti-transgender legislation, applying to individuals of all ages and extending to colleges and universities, including private institutions known for their high LGBTQ+ enrollment. It also mirrors the recent controversy in Congress, where Speaker Mike Johnson has declared that Congresswoman Sarah McBride will be banned from women’s restrooms on Capitol grounds. As the first anti-transgender law passed following the 2024 election, SB104 signals a troubling development in the national battle over transgender rights.
The Ohio bathroom ban faced significant hurdles in its initial form but was ultimately revived by tying it to the College Credits Plus Act, a popular bill designed to help dual-enrolled students earn college credits. The new law states that “no institution of higher education shall knowingly permit” transgender individuals to use restrooms aligning with their gender identity. Unlike earlier anti-transgender laws that primarily targeted youth, this bill expands its scope to include colleges and universities—both public and private—and applies to transgender people of all ages. Its reach extends beyond students to affect visitors, faculty, and anyone present on college property, marking a significant escalation in the breadth of anti-trans legislation.
Potty police, arrest this man — he’s like a detuned radio.
Steve LaBonne
Ohio is just done. Who even knows what will be left of the abortion rights amendment once our corrupt state Supreme Court gets through with it. We are 95% of the way to being North Alabama.
WaterGirl
@Steve LaBonne: So discouraging to watch the descent into… madness? awfulness? hate?
Steve LaBonne
@WaterGirl: All of the above. I just want my daughter and her husband to get the hell out of this shithole.
Baud
OT: Many people here suggested that Harris go on Hot Ones during the campaign.
Blue Sky says Hot Ones turned her down.
Old School
“Shall knowingly permit”
I assume genital inspectors will be stationed at all restrooms.
Steve LaBonne
@Old School: The law has no enforcement mechanism. It’s designed to instill fear and make trans people afraid and unwelcome in public places.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Usta be typical Republicans ran as moderates, then governed as assholes.
Now they just start straight out as assholes, not bothering to tell pleasant lies ala David Fucking Brooks, to cover for the corruption, extremism and assholery.
Steve LaBonne
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: The rejection of the the anti-gerrymandering initiative was the final nail in Ohio’s coffin. They run and govern as assholes because they answer only to primary voters who affirmatively demand that.
Old School
@Steve LaBonne: Does it have penalties for noncompliance? I can’t tell from the article.
scav
I’m torn between two potential new state mottos: The Dark Heart of It All or simply Heart of Darkness.
Steve LaBonne
@Old School: No, from what I have read. I need to find the text.
NotMax
@scav
“The Splenetic State.”
//
Fake Irishman
@Steve LaBonne:
There’s also a practical way around this: general neutral restrooms. That takes time and retrofitting and communities that care to advance it, and it doesn’t get around the main point of this bill, which is to extend a middle finger to the trans community, but there are practical ways for harm reduction here — and that’s really important, if not particularly satisfactory.
UncleEbeneezer
“I hate
Illinois NazisOhio TERFs”Steve LaBonne
@Fake Irishman: My previous UU church simply relabeled the restrooms as “all gender with urinals” and “all gender without urinals”. (My current one simply has three unlabeled one person at a time restrooms with toilets.) But you know school and public university administrators will be much too chickenshit to even think of doing anything like that.
Melancholy Jaques
@Baud:
That’s too bad. I’m sure it would have swung the election.
Harrison Wesley
I certainly don’t want to see anyone get in trouble over this. If you’re in doubt, skip the restroom and take a dump in the hall. “I’m here to cooperate 100 percent!”
Raoul Paste
I have seen all gender restrooms at Wright State University in Ohio a few years ago. To the students, it’s no big deal. They behave like decent humans
JWR
Sen. Mike Rounds is another one of the allegedly “moderate” Repubs, even if only marginally so. His desire to kill the Department of Education without killing the Department of Education is on full display in this piece at Public Notice:
Rounds’ mention is in a short video about halfway down the page. I also think it’s rich that a Senator from a state with a population less than several cities propose sweeping, national changes.
I’m with others here who think TrumpCo will go too far, too fast and will implode before too long. Too bad the rest of us have to go through it on our own, but it is what it is, I suppose. :-/
Percysowner
@Fake Irishman:
Sounds good in theory, however it is forbidden in the bill.
My son-in-law came home in tears because his oldest is trans. We think he will skate by because the school is letting him use the teacher’s bathroom, but who knows how this will play out.
This gets dicier because my SIL works for the State Legislature. He’s one of the guys who writes the letters congratulating you when your team wins a league trophy, or your mom turns 95, basic PR stuff. My daughter works for a city government in the area. They have talked about moving to another state, while realizing that it is not going to be an easy thing to do.
BlueGuitarist
@Steve LaBonne:
Did Ohio Secretary of State LaRose rewrite the anti-gerrymandering initiative to say that it required gerrymandering? If that actually happened, did it have a chance at that point?
make 1984 fiction again…
Steve LaBonne
@JWR: Make no mistake, they will have time to do serious, irreparable damage, both at home and in our international relations. The question is whether our cretinous electorate will care, or place the blame where it belongs if they do.
Steve LaBonne
@BlueGuitarist: Not the amendment itself, but the ballot language that was dishonest to an utterly Orwellian degree. And goddammit, it worked (in concert with an equally dishonest campaign against it).
Percysowner
@BlueGuitarist: Yes, well he rewrote the ballot language that described what people were voting on saying that the new law would make gerrymandering required.
Ruckus
@Steve LaBonne:
I lived and worked in OH for 10 yrs. Half in this century.
It’s always been North Alabama. Or worse.
Melancholy Jaques
@JWR:
What Rounds sounded like to me was the Reagan Era “We are going to cut the waste so we can help the truly needy” like when they cutoff people’s SSI.
They really are the Asshole Party.
kindness
Won’t all these Republican ladies enjoy trans men with full beards using the woman’s bathroom. I don’t think these Republicans thought this through all that much.
suzanne
@Fake Irishman:
It also takes updating the building code (IBC and IPC). Business occupancies still require fixtures to be signed for men and women up to the minimum fixture count. Technically, relabeling bathrooms to be gender-neutral doesn’t meet code, and some asshole building inspector could make life hard if they wanted to press the issue.
Ruckus
@suzanne:
Make the signs – Men and Women. Or Men/Women or Women/Men
I’ve seen Gender Neutral but that confuses some of the simpler folks…..
artem1s
Whelp lets see if the Ohio papers have the guts to call out DeWhinge and the panty sniffers in the Ohio GOP for pissing around with this shit while so many Ohioans are without jobs. Exactly how is this going to improve anyone’s quality of life? Of course the rape enabler Gym Jordan will still be free after he spent decades looking the other way while his students got molested.
Torrey
And requiring trans men to use the women’s bathroom will make it that much easier for cis men with ill intent to be able to enter the women’s bathroom. I wonder if DeWine and crew thought of that, and, if they did, whether it was a bug or a feature.
Leto
@Percysowner: I’m sorry your family is having to endure this, and I hope they’re able to get the hell out of there. Avalune escaped Ohio back in 1994 and never even thought of going back. Maybe Sister Golden Bear can make some recommendations.
suzanne
@Ruckus: A strict reading of the code doesn’t allow that. Some jurisdictions and some inspectors give latitude as long as the minimum fixture count is established…. but that means that it comes down to interpretation and how transphobic the jurisdiction is. That will certainly be weaponized.
BlueGuitarist
@Steve LaBonne:
Thanks, and condolences. enraging.
And looks like Sherrod Brown and Bob Casey are the first 2 US Senate candidates to have over $100 million spent on negative ads to defeat them.
Melancholy Jaques
@WaterGirl:
Probably all three. The former industrial cities north of the Turnpike all shrunk and the former Democratic stronghold in the Mahoning Valley has gone full MAGA.
Steve LaBonne
@Ruckus: As late as 2001, when I came back after doing my postdoc at Case years earlier, it wasn’t yet quite this bad.
Steve LaBonne
@Leto: Three of our trans friends from the Akron UU church now live in Lansing, Michigan.
JWR
Speaking of all the many ways Trump Inc could fuck everything up, here’s an expert on yesterday’s Background Briefing:
She points out that the more Mexico is punished, the worse the immigration problem will grow. There’s also the guns used by the cartels, and their U.S. manufacture.
Also, and O/T, why hasn’t Israel protected all the tons and truckloads of supplies it’s allegedly allowed through to those in need? I mean, isn’t that their fucking job? (I asked rhetorically.)
Bupalos
@Baud: I read it on the internet
artem1s
@Torrey: The feature is they get to shut down women’s sports. A lot of these laws are spurred by Title IX resentment. Most HS don’t have the money to build facilities for both men’s and women’s teams. Easier to do away with women’s sports now than let them use the men’s locker rooms. Anyway they should be home having their rapists babies dontchaknow.
Citizen Alan
@JWR: i certainly, hope that they do not abolish the department of education. But I kind of do hope that they get close enough to doing so that my RWNJ sister, who is a retired teacher who relies heavily on her state retirement benefits, calls me in a hysterical panic over the fact that her two youngest children are also teachers and they are worried about getting fired due to budget cuts.
Martin
The gang had it right when they decided one for shitting and one for pissing.
Dan B
@Percysowner: All this horror because of rumors that trans women are raping women in bathrooms. Men can easily get in because few bathrooms have locked doors. It reminds me of the rumors that gay men were pedophiles and/or “recruiters”. That was common in the fifties and sixties. Fear is a powerful motivator. Ignorance helps it to spread.
Steve LaBonne
@artem1s: Misogyny and transphobia are closely intertwined. Both are about violent enforcement of patriarchy and its associated “traditional” gender hierarchy. (Which makes TERFs really stupid people, but we knew that.)
JaneE
@Steve LaBonne: I recently used a restroom at a Raising Cane’s. New place, had three restrooms, all “all gender”. I think the one I used may have been labeled “family”. It had a urinal, but the top of the porcelain was lower than my knees. There was about and inch or two of clearance off the floor. An adult would have been on his knees to use it, and then he would have still been way too tall. If you have seen “Uncle Buck” trying to use the urinal at the elementary school, this urinal was lower than that. Anyone small enough to use it comfortably was probably still being potty trained. But it did have a urinal.
Steve LaBonne
@Dan B: Not over by any means- nowadays they’re “groomers”.
Gretchen
@artem1s: Yes. A reporter checked on trans kids in high school sports. There are 4 in the whole state. Meanwhile, there are over 400 girls playing on boy’s teams, mostly because the school doesn’t have a girl’s golf or diving or lacrosse team. That doesn’t even count the girls on boy’s wrestling teams. They don’t count them because they have their own championship. So the result of this law is, to kick out those 4 trans kids, you’re also kicking out hundreds of girls who won’t be able to play sports any more.
Steve LaBonne
@Gretchen: Feature. They really hate Title IX.
NotMax
@Raoul Paste
Heck, we had all gender bathrooms in the dorms at college back in the Stoned* Age.
*not a typo
;)
Gretchen
As AOC pointed out in her furious response to Mace, this isn’t just about trans people, although it’s horrible for them. It’s about policing anyone who doesn’t fit their strict gender norms. If you don’t have long blond hair, a dress, and a fundie baby voice, this allows any busybody to challenge anyone they don’t think quite fits.
I have a niece who has always hated girl’s clothes. She’s tall, muscular, wears her hair short and doesn’t wear feminine clothes. She was born female, has always lived her life as a female, but is exactly the sort of masculine-looking person that a busybody will challenge when she just wants to go to the bathroom. These laws have always made me worried for her too.
Mace did seem defensive on Fox, saying AOC was lying when she asked if inspectors are going to ask girls to “drop trou” for admittance to the bathroom. Since it was Fox, there was no follow-up asking, if you’re not going to have genital inspections, how do you plan for enforcement?
Geminid
@Gretchen: Ozark Hillbilly used to talk about his granddaughter who played defensive line on her high school football team.
Gretchen
@Gretchen: I neglected to say this reporter was in Michigan with the Detroit Free Press, so these are Michigan numbers. I’m betting Ohio numbers are similar.
Martin
Bit of good news. Derek Tran won in CA-45. This is a dem flip. Garden Grove gets their first Vietnamese-American rep.
Gray is now leading in CA-13. That will be another dem flip if his lead holds.
NotMax
@JaneE
Noticed the men’s rooms in the airports I passed through during last trip all had diaper changing tables.
Dan B
@Steve LaBonne: Yep. Groomers. I’m very glad to be in Seattle.
Steve LaBonne
@Gretchen: That is part of the intent. They want anyone who doesn’t conform to their sick idea of gender norms to be worried.
Steve LaBonne
@Dan B: I’m terrified for my trans friends, but I’m also pretty worried about my gay friends, particularly the married ones.
Dan B
@Steve LaBonne: The horror stories all are about trans women, never about trans men. The loss of male privilege terrifies many people.
Steve LaBonne
@Dan B: Trans men, certainly the ones I know, are rightly worried about continued access to hormones.
Martin
@Steve LaBonne: The problem is that if you accept trans women as women, then all of your arguments to discriminate against women get annihilated.
This is why they don’t give a fuck about trans men. Look at the anti-sports bills – they are primarily focused on trans women. But if you want this person in your ladies rooms, okay, I guess.
Ohio Mom
@Ruckus: When I moved to Ohio in 1979 or was it 1980, we were a purple state, one that you couldn’t predict how it would vote for president.
One of our Senators was Howard Metzenbam — who was what Bernie thinks he is.
I don’t know whether or not we were gerrymandered as a whole, but my corner, the southwestern one, was not (it was later that the City of Cincinnati was split in two, and each half attached to Red areas, erasing our ability to send a Democrat to the House).
I don’t know where went went wrong. Some of it was that our population grew old — and now it seems less likely that we will attract any young people.
I was not surprised that the redistricting issue lost. Besides the funny business with its wording, I did not see anything resembling a campaign. I saw a single yard sign, did not receive any mailings.
Dan B
@Steve LaBonne: We’re also afraid. The terrorists will need more people to demonize than the relatively small cohort of trans people. The corporations are going to push back on immigrant deportations but they’re already backing off on support for gays.
JWR
@Citizen Alan:
Unfortunately, them’s the breaks. :-/ Next time, if here is a next time, tell her to vote less on “vibes”, and more on the reality of things like, I dunno, facts? ;)
sixthdoctor
The headquarters of a Baltimore transgender support organization, Safe Haven, was vandalized earlier this year with damages approaching 50K.
This wave of anti trans hate is fucking repulsive and the people pushing it are beyond contempt.
Baud
@Citizen Alan:
I hope the children are also right wingers so I don’t have to be sad for your relatives.
Raoul Paste
@NotMax: I was in college from 70 to 74, and I remember the, um, atmosphere
Ruckus
@Steve LaBonne:
Ohio is just done.
I lived in OH for 10 yrs. Gahanna. Worked in Columbus. I understand what you mean. Now I traveled around the rest of the country for 8 months a year so maybe it wasn’t as, what’s that word? Oh yeah, bad is the word. But I was/am glad to not live there any longer. And I moved out 20 yrs ago.
Harrison Wesley
@NotMax: .,and all of them had signs over them reading “Welcome, Mr. President!”
gene108
A transgender man in a woman’s bathroom will probably have the policed called on him, because he no longer looks like a she and looks like a he.
They really hate acknowledging their Biblical view of two immutable genders does not line up with reality, so reality has to be broken to conform to their views.
This anti-trans bigotry is fueled by hate. If they make this acceptable, I wonder who they’ll pick as the next target to ostracize from society.
Geminid
@Martin: Do you think Derek Tran will hold on to that seat? I believe it was one of the five Southern California seats Dems flipped in 2018. Michelle Steel flipped it back in 2020, now Tran will have it for two years at least.
Katie Hill flipped another seat that year, I think north of LA. Republican Mike Garcia took it back after she resigned but George Whitesides flipped it back this year.
The “other Katie,” Katie Porter also flipped a seat that year and it looks like David Min can hold it for a while
All these districts changed in the latest round of redistricting, but now Democrats will be fighting on the same map for the rest of the decade. I’m curious: are you satisfied with California’s redistricting process?
Dan B
@Martin: There are lots of very manly trans men. Buck Angel is the best known but there are many others.
Steve LaBonne
@Ruckus: The corporation my daughter and son in law work for is headquartered in Milwaukee. They need to get transferred there, goddammit. Wisconsin is not out of the woods but it’s surely in better shape than Ohio. And anyway they could live in Illinois.
gene108
@Steve LaBonne:
I think the problem men have with transgender women is not as complicated as you make it. Some subset of men are scared they’ll look at a trans woman and think “she’s hot” and will feel gross to find out she used to be a he.
I think that’s a real motivation of anti-transgender men like Mike Johnson.
Steve LaBonne
@gene108: But that’s simply part of the phenomenon I described.
JWR
@Martin: I’ve been meaning to tell @Geminid that I was happy to find out that a dear friend, my high school sweetheart, as a matter of fact, has been driving from L.A. down to Orange County, (not a new drive for her, since she worked as a journalist for the OC Register right out of college), to help in the vote curing process for the Derek Tran race. I’m so proud of her! And happy, too!
Baud
@JWR:
Good for her.
Kayla Rudbek
@Gretchen: yeah, as a woman with enough dark facial hair that I have to shave and pluck it (medical, genetics, and age all contribute to this) I am probably going to have to deal with the panty-sniffing police at some point. I’m trying to decide whether screaming will be enough or whether I’m going to have to get physical on them.
Ruckus
@suzanne:
Certainly not arguing with you and really I’m not sure that it will work in the US. In so many ways some want to go back to what they envision that the world was like, because it gave power to a limited segment of humanity. And in some parts of the country that actually does hold and likely will for some time. I don’t get why but then I had a job in OH and lived there for those 10 yrs. And didn’t get much of it then.
JWR
@Baud: I was tempted to give you a Thumbs Up emoji but stopped short because New Rools! ;)
But yes, good for her!
Alice
I was in the local high school over the weekend and was surprised and happy to see they’d recently remodeled all the restrooms into large non-gendered spaces. No entry doors, just open to corridors on two sides and all private toilet stalls with full height walls and doors. It seemed like a very efficient arrangement. Nevada schools may be near the bottom in educational achievement, but at least they won’t be checking genitals at the doors.
Baud
@JWR:
I know, I was initially going to go emoji. I feel silenced.
Ruckus
@Ohio Mom:
I didn’t mind leaving my job, selling my house and moving back to California. Born here in the first half of the last century and have traveled to a lot of this country and the company I worked for was in OH so living there made sense. Until I’d lived there for most of that decade. I just had to find a job and a place to move to. Did and done.
Percysowner
@Ohio Mom:
In Columbus we had a lot of people working for the amendment. People knocked on my door. Signs were out. I don’t know about ads because I don’t watch a lot of local TV. To be fair, I have lived in the Akron area and now in Columbus and they have both been blue havens in the midst of what Ohio has become. As I said, the my grandson’s school let him and a trans girl use the teacher’s bathroom since both of them felt funny using the wrong bathroom. They use the right pronouns. He and his younger brother play on the playground and I have told many of the parents he is trans and they have all been supportive. We are not all a horrible state, but boy has the gerrymandering killed the chance of Democrats to have any say in the running of the state. Plus the years have killed any big name Democrats who would even have a chance at running for the major offices. DeWine is term limited out, so maybe Sherrod Brown can make a swing for Governor, but it’s probably a lost cause.
A Ghost to Most
Our decision to get out of christian supremacist America 15 years ago continues to pay dividends.
JiveTurkin
So we have a group of people that the Republicans vilified during the last election. They represent maybe 1-2% of the total US population. Most people don’t have a family member who is trans, they may not know any people who are trans. The Republicans have decided that hating on the trans community is a win-win with their constituency. If I were trans or had a trans person in my immediate family I would be looking to move out of any red state. But don’t worry, because Mike Johnson says that trans people should be treated with dignity (although he doesn’t really recognize their existence).
Ruckus
@Steve LaBonne:
As stated here before I’ve traveled to 49 of the states, Alaska is the only outlier. And have lived in 3 of them, CA in both south and north, OH and stationed in SC. (Getting paid and all traveling paid for was not a bad gig, it just got a tad less appealing as time went on) Most of the travel was leave on Wednesday , work Thursday – Sunday, travel on Monday, work in the office on Tuesday, rinse, repeat 8 months a year.
Quinerly
This Musk shit is getting old really fast. Could I hate him more than I hate Trump?
“Vindman is on the payroll of Ukranian oligarchs and has committed treason against the United States,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X, responding to comments Vindman made in an interview about Musk’s reported conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Musk added that Vindman, who played a central role in the first impeachment of then-President Trump, “will pay the appropriate penalty.”
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5012743-musk-accuses-trump-whistleblower-vindman-of-treason-says-he-will-pay/
Baud
@Quinerly:
Price of eggs.
Martin
@Geminid: We redrew maps a lot in 2020, which is why these seats shuffled around a lot then. The county is less reliably republican (due to my city growing more liberal and doing all of the growth in the county – consider how those two things might relate) but the redistricting commission is biased toward competitive districts. So Katie had a harder time winning after redistricting than before, but we continue to grow the liberal part of this district, so it’ll probably dominate things until 2030.
Tran has a bit of a benefit being Vietnamese American representing the largest Vietnamese American community in the country. Min, meanwhile had an easier time winning than I expected. It wasn’t easy, but I would have guessed that my district would have been last to be called and it was settled 2 weeks ago.
In terms of going forward, this is all going to hang off of the national dynamics. I suspect CA is going to be the front line of Trumps bullshit and while I want to think we’ll be resistant to it, there’s always the chance people decide that they like it. How Dems in the state respond will matter a lot.
Geminid
@Quinerly: I’mguessing Trump is talking about Alexander Vindman here because he olayed a more prominent role in the second impeachment than his brother Eugene.
But I follow Eugene Vindman’s Twitter account because he’s my newly elected Congressman, and his replies are full of hatred and calls for treason charges. Eugene Vindman won by less than 3 points this year, so at the least he’ll be a target in the midterms.
Quinerly
@Geminid:
Yes. Alexander.
Citizen Alan
@Baud: they are, in fact, the most liberal people in my entire extended family other than myself. I’ve been low key, encouraging them to move out to california ever since I got here.
Baud
@Citizen Alan:
Then I hope everything works out for them.
Citizen Alan
@JWR: i didn’t speak to my sister for 2 months after she announced apropos of absolutely nothing that she thought michelle obama was a man. The idea of facts is completely lost on her.
Martin
@Geminid: To answer the last part, yeah, I’m pretty satisfied with the process. These things are always imperfect and I think CA eliminates a lot of the opportunity to screw over voters.
My preference would be to include algorithmic maps to shape the process. If you lay out a set of agreed upon constraints, you can generate large numbers of maps that meet those constraints are are scored at how well they meet them, and then have non-partisans pick among the ones that score, say, in the 10% most fair. They can use their judgment to decide what the constraints are and then use community feedback and the like to pick among them.
But that’s less a critique of our current process as a suggestion for how to do this more widely. The more controversial component of the system is the jungle primary, which I’m largely favored, but don’t really like the dynamic of how Schiff boosted Garvey to pick a more favorable general opponent at the expense of Lee and Porter. It would have been safer for Democrats to have a Schiff/Porter general.
Dadadadadadada
@UncleEbeneezer: Pedantic pet peeve: TERF doesn’t just mean ‘transphobe.’ It stands for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist, which describes a very small slice of the anti-trans movement. It certainly doesn’t describe Mike Dewine or any other Republican politician.
Another Scott
@Fake Irishman: There was a picture of a trans guy one one of the socials a few days ago. Very muscular, tattoos everywhere, full beard. The text was (as I remember it) that a few folks like that using the women’s room might raise some eyebrows.
DeWine is not a moderate. Moderates don’t punch down.
Grr…
Best wishes,
Scott.
Baud
Fake Irishman
@Percysowner:
I wasn’t thinking of multi occupancy restrooms, basically one off enclosed cubicles with a central sink area like in many restaurants or single occupancy restrooms that many workplaces have.
Fake Irishman
@Another Scott:
Oh, I grew up in Ohio. I’m quite familiar with Mr. Dewine. 2006 was a good year.
JWR
@Citizen Alan:
Would it be wrong for me to say that, while she looks more like a woman than she does a man, Nancy Mace looks quite butch to me?
Quinerly
@Baud: 👍
Geminid
@Martin: Holding on to this year’s gains in Southern California will be critical, but I’m hoping a Democrat can knock Ken Calvert out of his Palms Springs based seat. Will Rollins came up short twice so I guess someone else will get a shot in 2026.
My understanding is that much of Southern California outside of LA used to be a Republican stronghold. Democrats were chipping away in the last decade. Redlands Mayor Pete Aguilar flipped an interior (Inland Empire?) district in 2014 and then Lou Correa flipped another in 2016. I think Adam Schiff also took a Republican seat the previous decade.
Then came the 2018 Blue Wave that saw Democrats take 40 Republican seats across the country including (I think) 5 in California. Almost all were predominately suburban. We’ve held on to most of themy and I think of this as somewhat of a realignment at a national level.
Quinerly
@Citizen Alan:
There are a lot of disgusting, photoshopped pics of MO with a bulge/”package” still floating around. I see that crap on a friend’s FB page. My friend is a Liberal Dem (I, at least, still use that term), but he has all these vile friends that he should have kicked to the curb years ago…..
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
For those of you who don’t really understand why some folks love social media, This little piece on slime mold is something I found via someone I follow on Bluesky. (The novelist Ursula Vernon/T. Kingfisher). I probably wouldn’t have run across it otherwise.
Betty
@kindness: None of their paranoia takes into account trans men.
Betty
@BlueGuitarist: But Democrats are the party of billionaires.
MagdaInBlack
@a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio): Well! That’s pretty damn cool. Thank you.
Geminid
@Martin: The downside of a Schiff/Porter race was it would have sucked up a whole lot of money. I also worried that it could have been unnecessarily divisive; the two agreed on policy more or less, but they would have had to accentuate their differences. So I was relieved when Porter proved not strong enough to make it into second place.
I also am sceptical about jungle primaries. It’s still a fairly new system for California and Washington and I think the new dynamic it creates might not be fully understood yet.
But I’m not worried about jungle primaries coming to Virginia anytime soon. We’re late late adopters and always have been.
Kayla Rudbek
@a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio): Ursula Vernon/T. Kingfisher is a national treasure.
Chris
“I think it looks like a Moderate Republican.”
“What in the Sam Hill is a Moderate Republican?”
“You mean like on The West Wing?”
“No, like a Moderate Republican! It’s like a Republican, but without the extremism!”
“You’re making that up.”
“I’m telling you, it’s a real political faction!”
“Simmons, I want you to poison Griff’s next meal.”
“Yes, sir!”
“So unless anybody’s got any more mythical creatures to suggest as a name for the new politician, we’re going to stick with: the Fascist. How about it, Griff?”
“No, sir. No more suggestions.”
“Are you sure? How about the Principled Libertarian?”
“It’s okay.”
“The Consistent Pro-Lifer?”
“No, really, I’m cool.”
“The Social Liberal But Fiscal Conservative?”
“How about the Non Cafeteria Catholic?”
“Hey, man, he doesn’t need any help.”
“The Anti-Choicer Who’s Going To Support Free Childcare Any Minute Now?”
“Christ…”
“Hey Simmons! What’s the name of those foreign policy weirdos? Twitter won’t stop talking about them!”
“The People Who Cared About Palestine Before 2023, sir.”
“Hey Griff! People Who Cared About Palestine Before 2023, how about that? I like that. Got a ring to it.”
Ohio Mom
@Citizen Alan: i’ve seen various versions of photo-shopped images of Michelle Obama with “bulges.”
The silliest part of this claim to me is that both girls look very much like their parents, it’s very obvious who their two parents are, and biology dictates only one of them can be male.
Martin
@Geminid: OC is pretty simple to understand. It used to be a Republican stronghold, everyone decided the way to get rich was through their house, and we stopped building. Except for one city, mine, which built, grew, and mostly grew with immigrants (and also increased housing values – weird). Not latino immigrants, but Chinese, Korea, Indian, Persian, etc. and we became an increasingly bright blue growing spot in an otherwise stagnant conservative space. And it’s a little hard to be in one of these other stagnating communities and not look over at us with new stores, new employers, new housing, parks, etc. and not think – that looks pretty nice. It wasn’t so much that we flipped voters – we just dumped a lot of young international people in and outnumbered them. I haven’t seen any appreciable change in voter sentiment from the folks here. The one that were conservative 20 years ago still are. It’s just that they have two new neighbors that came in with a more democratic sentiment. Katie appealed well to these new residents. My city is about to be the largest in the county, we have a median age of 33 and falling, and where we used to get some republican city council members, they can’t win any more.
But I think Dems need to get some real progress on housing. Things can’t stay like this without people turning against incumbents.
Gloria DryGarden
@Torrey: this is a good point.
Didnt the USA have bigger problems to address?
JoyceH
Republicans who pass these kinds of laws assume they will only inconvenience their intended target. Just wait for the bathroom confrontations where cis women are challenged as not appearing feminine enough for the women’s room and cis men being told they don’t look masculine enough for the men’s room.
Geminid
@Quinerly: Alexander is Eugene Vindman’s older brother, by about eight minutes.
I’ve grown to like Eugene Vindman. At first I was put off by his shock-and-awe campaign launch. It was both very well-planned and a total surprise to 7th District Democrats.
The launch served its purpose by raising $1 million the first day and effectively clearing the field. But I resented how VoteVets knew, and Adam Schiff, Rick Wilson and others had their endorsements ready, and we were the last to know.
Eugene Vindman handled himself well, though. He came across as a modest, earnest man and not some bigshot with powerful friends who saw an opportunity to capture an open seat.
I liked how Vindman’s social media handlers never showed him talking; he was always listening intently to different district residents as they told him their concerns. The implicit theme was, “Eugene Vindman: he listens to us ”
But Rick Wilson had still better stay off my lawn!
sab
My whole birth family has already left. My marriage family is still here.
Geminid
@Martin: What about Riverside and San Bernadino Counties? I think Pete Aguilar is Riverside. I’m not sure about Lou Correa.
eemom
@Geminid:
plus, those TV ads about anderson’s cardboard “family” were hilarious.
Lyrebird
@Percysowner: I am sure this is just a last-resort option, but the NY State Gov is hugely understaffed, they have recently relaxed some of the most obstructive requirements for this or that civil service exam, and if your DD & SIL even want to just think about the possibilities, you are welcome to get my info to have them contact me. I know a bit about neighborhoods, I have kids in schools here, etc. Hate that they even have to think about this, due to sick people who think making other people’s kids (or parents!! etc) scared is a win.
ETA: I’ve probably missed you, but if not, you can get in touch with MisterMix who can put us in contact, iiuc.
Martin
@Geminid: I don’t have a great sense of them. My concern is that they are places where economics play a big role – they don’t have the kind of high-income jobs that the coastal counties do, but cost of living there isn’t that much lower.
As such they tend to track more like manufacturing regions in the US, and, well, Dems need a more cohesive message there. The state has done okay by them, but there’s some dynamics that people miss. LA is the largest manufacturing region in the country, and no small part of that is because the port brings in materials and components that can used in local manufacturing. Tariffs are going to hurt that, and will probably hurt SB/Riverside. Among the manufacturing success stories in the state are the BYD electric bus plant in Palmdale. Will that survive? Siemens rail factory up north. Will that survive?
Because Trump has no economic theory behind his tariffs and cast them more as punishment, will he sacrifice US jobs for his perceived vendetta? Will he use these to steer jobs from blue to red states? I have no idea. Nobody does.
Geminid
@eemom: Yeah, that whole fake famiy thing sure was weird. The election was still a little to close for comfort though. Spanberger won the district by 4 points last cycle, but she’s a very strong candidate and her opponent was kind of mediocre, so Vindman winning by only 2 points wasn’t that surprising. Republicans will definitely go after VA07 hard next time. Maybe they’ll buy Derrick Anderson a real family and run him again.
The 7th used to be based in the suburbs north of Richmond. Redistricting shifted it north so that now two thirds of its residents live along the I-95 corridor from Fredericksburg up to Dumfries. It runs west to the Blue Ridge. I live just inside its southwest corner, Greene County. The 7th has a lot of residents who came from somewhere else, and it has a lot of Independents as well.
Quinerly
@Geminid:
Yes. I knew they were twins.
Ukraine related….did you read Adam’s post tonight?
Ramona
@Ruckus: Part of their ignorance comprises human history. I bet they think that transgender people are a recent “invention”. They have no idea of the ancient Greek myth of Teresias and historical traditions of transgender communities in countries as diverse as Italy and India.
Geminid
@Quinerly: I have now, and I read the Atlantic article you linked. Besides greenlighting Turkiye’s takeover of tat section of the border region, Trump also wanted to pull our militatary mission in northeast Syria out. I did not follow this closely at the time, but the mission is still there.
It seems to number 500 to 800 troops and cooperates with similar American misdion across the border in western Iraq. These were anti-ISIS missions initiated by the Obama administration over ten years ago.
The Baghdad government and the US have agreed that the Iraqi mission will be withdrawn by the end of 2025. A longstanding mission that supports the Kurdish Regional Government is supposed to leave by the end of 2026. That one is based in Erbil.
US officials have said the Syrian mission will remain, but this seems more doubtful now. The Kurdish YPG militia we support may have to make a deal with the Assad regime in order to protect Rojava, the enclave they carved out of northeastern Syria.
Meanwhile, the American mission on the Iraqi side has been under intermittent attack by Iranian-backed militia ever since Hamas kicked off the Gaza war. We’ve been hitting back at them, most recently two nights ago according to a CENTCOM announcement.
A couple days ago Al Arabiya English put up a TV interview with Masrair Barzani, Prime Minister of the Kurdish Regional Government. Barzani discussed some of these questions and you might find it worth watching.