On Tuesday, residents of four U.S. states — Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, and Washington — will vote on whether to ban transgender athletes from organized sports. Each state has a ballot measure backed by political action committees that spearhead advertising and outreach in its favor.

Together, these committees and their supporters have spent roughly $7.5 million this year on their campaigns. Such a hefty price tag is disproportionate to the actual level of trans sports participation in the states, a new investigation from Them and The Advocate has found.

No official national count exists for trans athletes. But an analysis based on state figures suggests that total ballot campaign expenses have surpassed $151,400 per actual trans athlete who would be affected, Them and The Advocate found. While approximate, this figure suggests that the political significance of trans sports participation in the United States has eclipsed the scale of actual participation.

It's always the ones you most expect...

The leader of Reform UK in Hampshire county council has been charged with 12 counts of rape and two counts of making indecent images of a child, among multiple other offences.

George Madgwick, 37, represents North East Havant on the council, where he leads the Reform group.

He was charged on Tuesday with a total of 35 offences, which also include eight counts of actual bodily harm, two counts of assault by penetration, two counts of sexual assault and two counts of controlling and coercive behaviour.

“I’ll never stop fighting for those who maybe can’t fight for themselves in this moment. I’ll continue to use my platform in that way,” Williams said Monday. “Obviously, I was getting plenty of death threats. There was, you know, some security issues and stuff, and there were moments where I was like, ‘How am I gonna play through all this?’ And then I would walk into Ballhalla and be like, ‘Oh, that’s how.’”

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/54090600

my kink

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/12264305

[Original in Czech. This is an automated paraphrased translation.]

Czech MEP Markéta Gregorová (Greens/EFA) was a member of a 12-member mission of the European Parliament's International Trade Committee (INTA) to China last week.

Right after she arrived at the airport in Beijing, Gregorová said the police stopped her and took her away. She was banned from using her phone, so she couldn't contact anyone. Neither her diplomatic passport nor her invitation letter helped. After about an hour, the phone was released again, but she was then taken to a room where she spent another half hour.

The MEP stated that it wanted to ask for an explanation from the Chinese party and plans to discuss the incident with EP President Roberta Metsola.

Gregorová, a vocal critic of the Chinese Communist Party, believes that the detention may have been related to the case of a Chinese citizen accused of espionage in the Czech Republic who was tried at the time of her arrest. According to Gregorová, no one else from the airport delegation had any problems.

...

China wants European technology in exchange for higher imports

During the trade talks, the Chinese Communist Party said that there could be an increase in imports of certain European goods into China. "They mentioned, for example, the high-level medical facilities we have," said Gregorová. Although China has made progress in some top technologies, for example in the production of prosthetic limbs, it still needs standard medical facilities.

The Chinese representative was interested in importing European lithographic equipment. It is a unique device that creates forms to produce the smallest chips, which no one else in the world can do but the Dutch, said the MEP, adding that Europe should not pass on this to China. The Dutch company ASML currently dominates this sector.

...

Archived

As a campaign season in which dozens of progressive candidates endorsed by US Sen. Bernie Sanders prevailed in primaries, the independent Vermont lawmaker urged his supporters across the country to "do all we can to bring out the vote to end Republican control of Congress," while urging voters to look beyond the goal of reining in President Donald Trump.

"If the pundits are correct and Democrats are able to take back the House and even the Senate, the Democratic Party must undergo fundamental and immediate reform," said Sanders in an email to supporters.

The senator's closing message of the campaign season came as the latest poll from The New York Times/Siena found Democrats, including progressives whose views have been deemed "too extreme" by the Democratic establishment and Republicans, with strong leads in Michigan, Texas, Maine, Ohio, and Kansas.

But he warned voters against allowing potential new majorities in the US House and Senate to become complacent, should the Democrats take control of one or both chambers.

"Status quo politics and status quo policies are no longer good enough," said Sanders. "With a return to power, [Democrats] can no longer continue to ignore the major economic and political crises facing the majority of our people... or that return to power will be short-lived."

Instead of accepting the ironclad grip on US politics held by wealthy corporations, billionaires like tech mogul Elon Musk, and powerful interest groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which poured more than $100 million into the 2026 elections, Sanders called on Democrats to prioritize "ending Citizens United" and getting super political action committees, which can spend unlimited money on behalf of candidates thanks to the 2010 Supreme Court ruling, "out of elections."

"We must no longer allow billionaires to buy elections," said Sanders, a day after it was reported that Musk had spent nearly $450 million to help elect GOP candidates tied to the deeply unpopular Trump, his illegal war on Iran, and the mass deportation policy that has torn apart families and angered people across the country.

Although some influential Democrats, like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a likely 2028 presidential candidate, have pushed back against broadly popular efforts to tax the ultrarich, Sanders said the party must "create an economy that works for every man, woman, and child in our country and not just the 1%," and use tax revenue from billionaires to address many of the most persistent problems in the US economy.

With potential Democratic majorities at the federal level, "we must impose a wealth tax on billionaires and use that funding to build millions of units of affordable housing, establish universal and free childcare, and make public colleges and universities tuition-free," said Sanders, pushing back against Democrats like former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, another potential 2028 contender, who has opposed proposals for tuition-free public higher education.

The senator also spoke directly about California's proposed wealth tax, Proposition 40, urging voters to support the measure on the eve of the election.

Sanders suggested that if Democrats take control of the US House and Senate, leaders like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) must take a hard look at the public's views on artificial intelligence and data centers, healthcare, and hundreds of billions of dollars in military spending.

"YES, we must make certain that the revolutionary technologies of artificial intelligence and robotics are used to improve life for all of us, not just make the Big Tech oligarchs even richer," said Sanders. "YES, we must join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee health care to all people as a human right through Medicare for All. YES, instead of spending more than a trillion dollars a year on the military and endless wars, we must create the best public education system in the world with no teacher earning less than $60,000 a year."

Over the past two years, said Sanders, "we have changed political consciousness in our country. On major issue after major issue the positions that we have been fighting for over the years are now supported by a significant majority of Americans."

With progressives including US Senate candidates Abdul El-Sayed and Troy Jackson and US House candidates such as Melat Kiros, Donavan McKinney, Claire Valdez, and Adam Hamawy potentially changing the balance of power in Congress, Sanders suggested the Democratic Party will have no choice but to fight for fundamental changes to the US economy and political system, and for the interests of working people.

"The Democratic Party must respond to the urgent needs of the working people of this country," said Sanders, "not wealthy campaign contributors."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

Go Vote!

The Texas Supreme Court has halted a deposition aimed at exposing who is behind political mailers smearing a transgender advocacy group.

The state high court paused the questioning ordered by a lower court judge just 15 minutes before it was scheduled to begin, delaying an effort to uncover who produced and financed the mailers.

I can't believe it. They are releasing a new Guild Wars 1 expansion in 2027. This will be devastating to my sleep schedule next year...

I've been busy at work and it's been hard to follow

https://kyivindependent.com/china-not-interested-in-us-russia-summit-on-ukraine-german-president-claims/

Sorry fellas

Just 236 people have been charged with voting-fraud-related offenses by the Trump administration, despite its unsubstantiated claims that fraud is widespread.

The figure is a minuscule share of the more than 158 million ballots cast in the 2024 general election, and falls far short of the figures cited in July by Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, who claimed without evidence that more than 250,000 potential noncitizens were registered to vote in just four states alone.

The small number of charges has further undermined President Trump's specious claims that voting by noncitizens is pervasive and tilting elections for Democrats, and raises questions about why the Homeland Security Department has dedicated vast resources to the effort ahead of the midterm election.

"This is about delegitimizing an election that they're very worried abouti said David Becker, a former voting rights lawyer for the Justice Department who runs the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonpartisan group that works to support election officials. "They're trying to manufacture evidence and they're failing.”

For example, even though the LGBTQIA+ community have reclaimed the term ‘queer’, AI systems have started blocking the term due to its history as a slur. Because AI models largely learn from collecting past data which is entrenched in historical and social binaries, AI has evolved through normative frameworks to perpetuate heteronormative and cisnormative ways of thinking and cause a reduction in queer visibility.

https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/151653948

Exclusive | TL;DR: Popular AI models position trans existence as a legal or medical issue in 94% of responses, a QueerAF investigation into biases in Large Language Models has found. Nearly everything about trans people is being presented by Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT through a legal and medical framework – including when the question is about something else entirely. QueerAF prompted the models 504 times, focusing on themes, suggested prompts and concerns submitted directly by our newsletter audience.

A discord right click menu with the following options: Send To the Gallows Enroll as Royal Guard Stop the Tomfoolery Behead Postehaste Seize This User Inform of a Malicious Plot

On the left is an illustration of Napoleon with his hands behind his back standing on a cliff looking out at the ocean. On the right is a large bald man in flannel shirt and jeans with his hands behind his back looking at the McDonald’s digital menu kiosk.

Maybe think about that first next time, buckaroo