Of course he does. I can’t find a link, but he once thought of all of his kids as a genetic dissemination of his gifts. He literally thinks he’s some kind of special, and not some rich kid cosplaying as Da Vinci or similar. The bar for narcissistic behavior has been raised.
Not even God Himself could convince me that this isn’t part of a TF2 cosplay
“We are currently clean on OPSEC” - man leaking information on a non-official channel while cosplaying as a military leader. My daughter’s daycare is more stringent on OPSEC for christ’s sake. It’s like an email with a “If you’re not the intended recipient please don’t read and dispose of this message” footer levels of OPSEC.
As a history teacher, I’ve met a few who would definitely beg to differ. They’re mostly deluded armchair cosplayers or still licking boots from their time in the military. If you study history intently and don’t come to the conclusion that we must continually topple oppressors and promote communal welfare and accountability, you’re doing it wrong.
“I know people saw a character that I played do some really extreme things on The Boys and I don’t care if you’re in costume, I don’t care if you’re in character – it’s not OK and it’s not funny to demand those things from me in person at my booth. It’s not OK.” “Frankly, to the person who did that repeatedly today, I made it pretty clear that it wasn’t OK and that only seemed to make this person and their friend angry. I didn’t think this needed to be explained but I was deeply uncomfortable – it was quite clear I was uncomfortable.” Homelander cosplayers, huh? Who would’ve thought about that…
The televangelist told host Steve Gruber, “If there’s ever a time that a decision has to be made and we don’t agree on something, he’s the head.” “It’s not hard to submit,” she added. (Later in story…) White, who has been divorced twice, Maybe it’s been a bit harder for this cosplaying trad-wife loony-toon to submit than she’s willing to admit…??? 🤷♂️ 🙄 🤡
It was a pseudo-revival of mid-century folk music. It didn’t last because much of it didn’t have genuine proletarian roots like real folk music. It mimicked the aesthetic and sounds of folk music but none of the content. It never will when it’s just wealthy urbanites cosplaying as poor country bumpkins. Folk music and related genres (like soul and country and blues) have all suffered for the same reason. Their class character is fake and purely aesthetic today. At least, for the super mainstream bands that make it on the Starbucks Spotify playlist. There was a megathread a while back about Woody Guthrie. His music lasted because it captured a genuine aspect of working class America in a way that stomp clap hey never can. This Land Is Your Land was a political song. We don’t do that enough anymore, in the name of mass appeal and profit and merchandising. Even Bill Withers, who was merely center-left as far as I know, made music that mattered with lyrics opposing racism and war.
I’m not trying to troll, I’m genuinely curious. Thinking about deer specifically, it doesn’t seem like visual camouflage would really help much when hunting them. Deer sense predators by sensitive hearing (big ears) and smell (long snout). Their eyes are on the sides of their head, so they detect motion rather than high-resolution. So trying to blend in with the surroundings doesn’t seem to be an advantage in this case. Assuming all this, what’s the point of clothing with camo print on it?
He hopes in the course of the lawsuit to better understand how county police decide when to deploy a SWAT team. “They probably have some kind of analytic multifactor test and they will fight tooth and nail to have that test not be exposed,” Schock says. There’s no shot the decision to send SWAT is anything other than if they feel like cosplaying that day.
Wes Streeting had been the first to go public with his ambitious desire to be Labour leader in an upcoming battle to replace PM Keir Starmer. However, his confidence – or arrogance – about how worthy he is for the top job will likely take a significant hit as polls show only 4% of Labour members ranking him as their first choice for Labour leader. Despite the mainstream media portraying him as the ‘golden boy’ of the Labour Party, this measly 4% is hardly enough to give him a fighting chance against Burnham or Rayner. This is hardly surprising, however, as we have reported multiple times – Wes Streeting is a snake who has been dismantling the NHS for private interests. As this polling indicates, people have finally seen through his duplicitous nonsense in the nick of time. 4% of Labour members want Wes Streeting to leader. FOUR PERCENT. And that’s despite a mass exodus of left wingers. Yet the media have treated him as their golden boy! https://t.co/FMeDBGVlng — Owen Jones (@owenjonesjourno) May 18, 2026 Streeting – 4% support is just humiliating It is undeniable that this polling should destroy any hopes that Wes Streeting – and his billionaire donors – have about the likelihood of him ever becoming the UK’s PM. In fact, even the publicly despised Keir Starmer flounces Streeting with 32% of members behind him remaining in post. Moreover, Burnham appears to be the front runner with 48% – but still, nobody is managing to command a majority of support even within their own party. So, why don’t we remind ourselves why Streeting should never be allowed anywhere near a decision-making position ever again. He is a duplicitous snake who will say whatever the public want to hear to get in power – then he will sell that very same public out. We wrote about how Streeting’s own words in 2023 to slam Rishi Sunak’s response to NHS strikes were exposed in their blatant hypocrisy with his own behaviour in post. Given he is throwing the word ‘progressive around’, this is a significant alarm bell for voters to pay attention to: NHS GP Neena Jha has taken apart Wes Streeting with his own words from 2023 over an upcoming resident doctors strike. It’s yet another indication that Tory and Labour politicians merely cosplay as caring opposition until they themselves enter government. Then, they backtrack and carry on the same neoliberal agenda they previously criticised. Adding: In 2023, Streeting said: “Now we know why Rishi Sunak refuses to negotiate with NHS staff. He wants the strikes to go ahead, so he can blame doctors and nurses for his failure.” The thing is, the health secretary has now himself refused to negotiate on pay restoration for doctors. This prompted Jha to take down Streeting “by his own admission”, replacing Sunak’s name with his own: “Now we know why Wes Streeting refuses to negotiate with NHS staff. He wants the strikes to go ahead, so he can blame doctors and nurses for his failure.” It is the Labour continuation of austerity and privatisation that is failing the NHS – not doctors. He is giving our data away to dangerous billionaires Streeting is giving our data to Palantir: a murderous, billionaire-interested spy tech firm which makes no secret of its disdain for ordinary people. Despite his promises that he intends to fix the NHS, the reality is that he intends to make it work for billionaires – whilst ordinary people have no say in the use of their personal health data. Speaking of the astronomical wealth accrued from contracts effectively just given to Palantir, we wrote: The spy-tech firm won the NHS contract for £1 in 2020 which is now worth a lucrative £400 million for Thiel and co. It is worth noting that this kind of wealth appreciation has become pretty commonplace for the world’s richest whilst ordinary people increasingly suffer. As a result, calls are being made to rip up this contract to prevent the inevitable exploitation of data for the financial gain of billionaires. Considering Palantir’s proven involvement in the genocide on Gaza, this really should not be a hard fight to win. He is the establishment’s ‘pick’ which should underscore how little ‘change’ this corrupted politician could ever deliver. Discussing Labour MP John McDonnell’s astute takedown of Streeting in which he theorised the whole bid is a revenge plot by Epstein-pal Mandelson and dodgy McSweeney, we wrote: He’s alleged revenge by Starmer’s former handlers Morgan McSweeney and his mentor and child-rapist fan Peter Mandelson. Both men were sacked or resigned over the scandal of Starmer’s appointment of Mandelson as ambassador to the US. Starmer has tried desperately to distance himself from Mandelson – completely unsuccessfully – and McDonnell says they’re now collecting payback. Finishing: Whether McDonnell is right or wrong, Streeting in Number 10 would be just as appalling news for the many as Starmer has been. Has-been… – that seems very appropriate. If only both of them were ‘never-was’s. Streeting is (at best) a continuation, but he could be even worse The Labour-right know that progressive, socialist policies are the only way they can differentiate themselves from right-wing Starmer. They are also the only hope of repair to our crumbling state. As a result, we have seen Streeting label himself as ‘progressive’ and once again, attempt to hoodwink the masses. However, his 4% polling signifies that members are waking up and will not be fooled again. Nevertheless, the media clearly worship him and will push him down our throats regardless. Therefore, it is crucial that we do not forget who this man truly is – before it is far too late to do anything about it. Featured image via Getty Images/WPA Pool By Maddison Wheeldon From Canary via This RSS Feed.
Thomas Massie attends debate alone that challenger Ed Gallrein skipped Relying entirely on subscriptions gives me the independence I need to write for you (instead of donors, advertisers, etc.) but it also means I depend entirely on you for survival. If you find value in this work, please become a paid subscriber There’s a heated primary election for Congress this Tuesday that is nothing short of a referendum on “national security” — and fittingly, one of the candidate’s background is almost entirely unknown because, he claims, it’s classified. His name is Ed Gallrein, a Trump-backed retired Navy captain challenging incumbent Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky. The focus of Gallrein’s campaign (and one of the few things he seems willing to talk about) is his claim of having served in SEAL Team 6, the secretive commando group most famous for the killing of Osama bin Laden. He certainly knows how to operate in the shadows: I can count on one hand the number of interviews Gallrein has sat down for, and he’s skipped literally every debate, each attended alone by Massie. Gallrein’s campaign touts endorsements from unnamed military officers, their identities and other supposedly sensitive details redacted to burnish the security theater. He’s even called civilians “sheep.” The strategy seems to be to let Trump’s endorsement and the SEAL mystique do the work — and to avoid as much public scrutiny as possible. In the few appearances Gallrein has made, his message to voters is consistent: the most important things about him are classified, the president has seen the file, and that should be enough. “The president is playing five-dimensional chess,” Gallrein told a local NBC affiliate, in response to a question about the Iran War’s effect on gas prices last week. By the next day, the game had mushroomed to “nine-dimensional chess,” as Gallrein later described Trump’s handling of the war to commentator Mark Levin. See the trident? By contrast, Thomas Massie is a vocal critic of the national security state — and it has cost him. He voted against Trump’s "Big Beautiful Bill,” pushed for release of the Epstein files alongside Democrat Ro Khanna of California, and has been one of the most vocal congressional opponents of the Iran War. Whatever you think of his views, he’s one of the few members of our pathetic Congress who is willing to defy his own party’s leadership. For that, he’s been buried in out-of-state spending and made a personal target of the president. “We’ll get a 100% vote except for this guy named Thomas Massie,” Trump said while promoting the Big Beautiful Bill. “There’s something wrong with him.” Now he has escalated to calling Massie "the worst Republican Congressman in History” and demanding his ouster. Into this fight steps Gallrein, whose pitch beyond Trump loyalty is a story he tells repeatedly about his first visit to the Oval Office. By his account, when he arrived, Trump had a leather binder containing his complete, classified “top secret” career file sitting on the resolute desk. The lesson, Gallrein told the Maywood Country Club: “He [Trump] knows everything about me. He knows what I did for you in uniform. He knows what I’ll do for you in Washington. I’ll be your champion.” The message here is as insulting as it is creepy: Trump has seen the classified record, the classified record establishes fitness, therefore voters need only ratify the commander-in-chief’s decision. Voters’ job isn’t to evaluate; it’s to trust the officials who have. Ed Gallrein poses next to Donald Trump Gallrein is pro-Iran War (and as far as I can tell, any other war) pro-Trump, and pro-“national security,” but that’s about all we’re allowed to know. If you’d like to know more about this figure that could well be representing the country next year, too bad. The campaign slogan might as well be Shut The Fuck Up and Salute. He also rails against “politicians” who burned SEAL Team Six’s cover by talking publicly about the bin Laden raid — but those politicians include the president and other democratically elected leaders who represent the only real check on the secret world that exists (at least in theory.) His contempt for the public’s right to know presents itself almost like a verbal tic. “Foreign policy and national security are inseparable,” Gallrein told a podcast called USA Cares. “You can’t talk about one without talking about the other. If you are, you’re an amateur.” In other words: what your government does overseas, from Gaza to Venezuela, isn’t any of the public’s business. Your only job is to perform gratitude. As Gallrein told the Optimist Club: “You should be proud to know as Americans there’s units like Delta Force, our Army sister unit, and SEAL Team Six, that the kind of operation you saw to get Maduro, they’re standing ready 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year for you and your family. Mercifully and fortunately, all the things they do don’t hit the press. I’m sorry to disappoint the media, but that’s what I can share with you.” Note the framing: they work for “you and your family.” Constitutionally and legally, they work for the elected president. Gallrein knows this (or should). If you think I’m reading too much into his paternalism toward the civilian world, he literally calling civilians “sheep” and SEALS “sheep dogs.” Per his USA Cares interview: “I don’t know if you’ve heard this, the famous theory there’s three kinds of people in the world. There are sheep, there are sheep dogs, and there’s wolves. SEALs are sheep dogs. We don’t care what letter jacket the adversary wears. If they’re bad people and they mean, mean harm to our sheeps, we’re on it.” Civilians are the sheep. The special operators are the sheepdog, their self-appointed protectors. The sheep don’t give the sheepdog orders. This is the worldview of someone running for an elected position in which he would oversee the sheepdogs! And as for sheepdogs, it’s not even clear how much he really was one. Military sources tell me that Gallrein not only went to the Naval Postgraduate School as a young Lieutenant, but that he served in a number of educational and training positions, including the head of instruction at the Joint Special Operations University before he retired. He stresses in interviews that SEAL Team 6 isn’t just the combat operators but support staff as well. I wonder what his job was! Whatever the case, he sure loves to talk like some kind of shadow warrior. In fact, in just the few interviews he’s even done, I counted at least a dozen references to secrets he claims he’s not at liberty to divulge, including: “I can’t speak to any classified operations I may or may not have ever been involved in.” — The Mark Levin Show “SEAL Team six is different, classified, won’t go into it…” — Maywood Country Club Meet and Greet “Let’s talk about Seal Team Six for a minute. This is all I can tell you.” — Maywood Country Club Meet and Greet “…SEAL Team Six; can’t talk much about that, but it was an honor to lead those great Americans…” — The Mark Levin Show “The only reason you know about SEAL Team Six is ‘cause politicians ran their mouth about it after we got Osama Bin Laden and Captain Phillips, didn’t they?” — Optimist Club Speaker Series “I continued to be a senior advisor for what we would call s—uh, let’s just call them security activities and special operations, i.e., the black world…” — The Mark Levin Show “Think pager bombs, black ops, and things that happen that don’t get divulged, mercifully, unless politicians talk about it.” — Optimist Club Speaker Series “It just manifests itself in some very interesting activities and operations. Of course, we can’t talk about that, ‘cause that’s TS/SCI, it’s SAP [Special Access Program] information.” — The Mark Levin Show “And I could go into some detail about that, but- Yeah … there’s a movie about it and so forth and so on. But I will not disclose anything classified, ‘cause I still have a- I appreciate that, yeah … a clearance and I, I will abide by- Yes … uh, the, uh, the agreements I have made with our US government as they pertain to such.” — USA Cares Podcast “I’m very familiar with it. I’ll say no more.” — USA Cares Podcast “…many times we would deploy in the dark in the night- Mm-hmm … and we would come back in the dark at night- Yeah … ‘cause our nation asked us to. Right. And I won’t go into any further details.” — USA Cares Podcast “I won’t share the confidential private pieces that are classified or otherwise I shouldn’t divulge…” — Optimist Club Speaker Series A few things here are worth flagging. Gallrein refers to “security activities” — that phrase does not exist in military or intelligence parlance; the correct terms are “special activities” or “sensitive activities.” He also describes a classification level as “secret compartmented information” — it’s sensitive compartmented information. Anonymous endorsement As if the whole Chris Kyle cosplay isn’t enough, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is en route to Kentucky to campaign with Gallrein, according to the local press. There is one episode in Gallrein’s post-military career that exists in full public record — and it cuts against his vaunted expertise. After retiring, he took a job as a Safety and Security Specialist at the Department of Energy’s Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, one of the country’s most sensitive nuclear facilities. He was fired in May 2013. He filed a whistleblower complaint alleging retaliation for raising concerns about deficiencies in security training programs. The complaint was dismissed. Among the reasons: he had reported his concerns to a fellow subcontractor employee — not a DOE official or his own employer’s chain of command, as the regulations required. The man campaigning on mastery of the classified world filed his whistleblower complaint with the wrong person and lost his job at a nuclear security facility. He has not mentioned any of this on the campaign trail. Gallrein Whistleblower Determination 253KB ∙ PDF file Download Download This hiding behind national security is not a partisan phenomenon. Last year I wrote about the Democrat national security moms, officials like Abigail Spanberger, Mikie Sherrill, and Elissa Slotkin. The political establishment loves these figures because national security is an official-sounding way to tell the public to shut the fuck up and let the professionals handle things. Gallrein seems to think that “his country” or “the nation” is some disembodied entity that doesn’t have elected officials, that “national security” is what gives him orders, and that the secret world is an autonomous entity. Most important though, he believes that the people are sheep and that those in uniform (the pack of wolves) have some license to protect them regardless of pesky politicians, and that that license derives from some secret regulation rather than from laws and the Constitution. What Gallrein represents is something both parties have been quietly building toward for twenty-five years: the national security state as its own source of political legitimacy, floating above democratic accountability, not answerable to the public it claims to serve. The sheep vote Tuesday. Subscribe if secret agent man’s routine does not impress you Leave a comment Share — Edited by William M. Arkin From Ken Klippenstein via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8519016 cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/50032 Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito found themselves in the minority on Thursday, when the court ruled that telehealth access to the abortion drug mifepristone could continue, leaving the dissenting conservatives to foreshadow a future showdown over abortion rights. Both justices railed against the decision, with Alito calling it a “scheme” to get around their ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson that eliminated the nationwide right to an abortion in 2022. Abortions have increased since their decision, Alito lamented, largely due to telehealth access. In 2025, far more residents of states with total abortion bans received telehealth provisions of medication abortion than traveled out of state to receive care in places with fewer restrictions. And roughly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. in 2023 were medication abortions. But advocates warn that the dissents from Thomas and Alito highlight that the threat to abortion access still looms large. “We’re breathing a sigh of relief. I would say that the immediate threat to mifepristone is over,” said Claire Teylouni, interim co-executive director of Reproductive Equity Now, “But it’s certainly clear from reading those dissents that the threat … is far from over.” In his dissent, Thomas argues that the Comstock Act, an anti-obscenity law passed in 1873 that remains on the books but has not been enforced in decades, prohibits the mailing of abortion medication. “The Comstock Act bans using ‘the mails’ to ship any ‘drug … for producing abortion,’” Thomas wrote. “Applicants are not entitled to a stay of an adverse court order based on lost profits from their criminal enterprise.” The Comstock Act originally prohibited the mailing of “obscene” materials, such as pornography, contraceptives, and any drug or device that can be used to produce an abortion. But legal scholars have argued that the law is unenforceable and unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds and other modern case law. In 2022, a Department of Justice memo clarified that the law does not prohibit the mailing of drugs that could be used to perform an abortion because there is “an insufficient basis for concluding that the sender intends them to be used unlawfully.” [ Related Texas Judge Cosplaying as Medical Expert Has Consequences Beyond the Abortion Pill](https://theintercept.com/2023/04/11/mifepristone-abortion-fda-matthew-kacsmaryk/) Despite the memo and the fact that the Comstock Act has not been enforced in decades, conservatives, including Thomas and Alito, have been eager to use the law to push a national abortion ban. “Enforcement of the Comstock Act has the potential to threaten the broader supply chain with regard to the reproductive health care system as a whole,” warned Teylouni. Arguably if enforced, the law could even jam up access to surgical tools used in abortion care and the shipping of abortion medication to states without bans. Republican lawmakers have argued that the Comstock Act should be enforced by the courts to “prosecute those who obtain mifepristone through the mail.” In Project 2025, policy analysts similarly argue that the Department of Justice should enforce federal laws like Comstock to prohibit the mailing of abortion medication writ large. President Donald Trump has previously claimed that he would not enforce the Comstock Act in this way, but advocates have seen troubling signs out of the administration about how they might eliminate access to mifepristone in other ways. [ Related GOP States Double Down on Fighting Medication Abortion After Supreme Court Keeps It Legal](https://theintercept.com/2024/06/13/supreme-court-medication-abortion-mifepristone/) “We’re focusing on some pressing threats that are already ongoing,” said Anna Bernstein, principal federal policy adviser at the reproductive and sexual health research organization Guttmacher Institute. In late 2025, the Food and Drug Administration began a safety review of mifepristone, despite over 20 years of evidence that it’s a safe medication. Bernstein said her organization is keeping a close eye on the “politically motivated” review at the FDA, which she argues flies in the face of the science. The combined regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol, the drug typically used in tandem with mifepristone to induce a medication abortion, carries a less than 1 percent risk of serious adverse events. Comparatively, the risk of maternal death associated with childbirth is roughly 14 times higher than the risk associated with abortion care. But despite medical evidence of its safety, the threat to mifepristone from the FDA has increased in recent days. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary resigned earlier this week, and he was replaced by Kyle Diamantas, a former lawyer. Within hours of his appointment on Tuesday, Diamantas was reportedly on the phone with anti-abortion advocates reassuring them of his moral opposition to abortion. According to a press release sent from an anti-abortion advocate, regarding her conversation with Diamantas, she said that he promised that reviewing mifepristone would be a “top priority” and that he was “pro-life.” “We continue to have concerns that the [review is] going to be politicized and not based in science and medicine,” said Teylouni. [ Read Our Complete Coverage The End of Roe --------------](/collections/end-of-roe/) The Thursday ruling allows providers to continue to send mifepristone through the mail or to retail pharmacies, while the case plays out in the lower courts. Earlier this month, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had reinstated previous FDA requirements that mifepristone be dispensed in person, threatening telehealth access, a critical lifeline for abortion access for people in states with and without abortion bans. The Supreme Court issued an initial ruling staying the appeals court decision earlier this month, which they extended on Monday, before making their final decision on Thursday to allow access to continue while the Louisiana v. FDA case plays out in court. But a looming concern for advocates is that both the courts’ more politically attuned conservatives and members of the Trump administration could be waiting to make a move on abortion access until after the midterms in a ploy to avoid the disasters of the post-Dobbs elections. “We’re definitely concerned, because we know that the Trump administration understands that it’s politically unfavorable to restrict access to abortion and to mifepristone,” said Guttmacher Institute’s Bernstein. “We’ve all seen the reports of them slow-walking to the midterms, and we know why politically they might want to do so.” [ Related Drug-Sniffing Police Dogs Are Intercepting Abortion Pills in the Mail](https://theintercept.com/2024/10/16/abortion-pills-mail-usps/) While the Comstock Act serves as a significant threat to abortion access, advocates note that if mifepristone is no longer able to be sent through the mail, people can still access medication abortion care. Mifepristone works by stopping the pregnancy from growing and initiates the separation of the embryo from the uterine lining. The other drug, misoprostol, causes contractions which expel the contents of the uterus. Misoprostol can be safely and effectively used on its own to induce an abortion. However, the process of abortion “is prolonged when it’s with a misoprostol-alone protocol,” explained Dr. Ushma Upadhyay, a public health scientist at the University of California, San Francisco’s Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health research coalition. “And patients report higher levels of side effects, so a lot of cramping and a lot more bleeding.” Despite the small victory yesterday, Teylouni said that abortion advocates cannot afford to be “complacent” right now. “This decision could have been the biggest blow to abortion access since the Dobbs decision,” she said. “Anti-abortion extremists are not going to stop attempting to ban abortion, and they want to see the Comstock Act invoked and enforced to limit telehealth prescribing again.” The post A “Scheme” Against Dobbs: SCOTUS Dissent Hints at Next Phase of Abortion Rights Fight appeared first on The Intercept. From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.
rate the fit @VoicesOfTheVoid #VOTV #VoicesOfTheVoid
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/50032 Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito found themselves in the minority on Thursday, when the court ruled that telehealth access to the abortion drug mifepristone could continue, leaving the dissenting conservatives to foreshadow a future showdown over abortion rights. Both justices railed against the decision, with Alito calling it a “scheme” to get around their ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson that eliminated the nationwide right to an abortion in 2022. Abortions have increased since their decision, Alito lamented, largely due to telehealth access. In 2025, far more residents of states with total abortion bans received telehealth provisions of medication abortion than traveled out of state to receive care in places with fewer restrictions. And roughly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. in 2023 were medication abortions. But advocates warn that the dissents from Thomas and Alito highlight that the threat to abortion access still looms large. “We’re breathing a sigh of relief. I would say that the immediate threat to mifepristone is over,” said Claire Teylouni, interim co-executive director of Reproductive Equity Now, “But it’s certainly clear from reading those dissents that the threat … is far from over.” In his dissent, Thomas argues that the Comstock Act, an anti-obscenity law passed in 1873 that remains on the books but has not been enforced in decades, prohibits the mailing of abortion medication. “The Comstock Act bans using ‘the mails’ to ship any ‘drug … for producing abortion,’” Thomas wrote. “Applicants are not entitled to a stay of an adverse court order based on lost profits from their criminal enterprise.” The Comstock Act originally prohibited the mailing of “obscene” materials, such as pornography, contraceptives, and any drug or device that can be used to produce an abortion. But legal scholars have argued that the law is unenforceable and unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds and other modern case law. In 2022, a Department of Justice memo clarified that the law does not prohibit the mailing of drugs that could be used to perform an abortion because there is “an insufficient basis for concluding that the sender intends them to be used unlawfully.” [ Related Texas Judge Cosplaying as Medical Expert Has Consequences Beyond the Abortion Pill](https://theintercept.com/2023/04/11/mifepristone-abortion-fda-matthew-kacsmaryk/) Despite the memo and the fact that the Comstock Act has not been enforced in decades, conservatives, including Thomas and Alito, have been eager to use the law to push a national abortion ban. “Enforcement of the Comstock Act has the potential to threaten the broader supply chain with regard to the reproductive health care system as a whole,” warned Teylouni. Arguably if enforced, the law could even jam up access to surgical tools used in abortion care and the shipping of abortion medication to states without bans. Republican lawmakers have argued that the Comstock Act should be enforced by the courts to “prosecute those who obtain mifepristone through the mail.” In Project 2025, policy analysts similarly argue that the Department of Justice should enforce federal laws like Comstock to prohibit the mailing of abortion medication writ large. President Donald Trump has previously claimed that he would not enforce the Comstock Act in this way, but advocates have seen troubling signs out of the administration about how they might eliminate access to mifepristone in other ways. [ Related GOP States Double Down on Fighting Medication Abortion After Supreme Court Keeps It Legal](https://theintercept.com/2024/06/13/supreme-court-medication-abortion-mifepristone/) “We’re focusing on some pressing threats that are already ongoing,” said Anna Bernstein, principal federal policy adviser at the reproductive and sexual health research organization Guttmacher Institute. In late 2025, the Food and Drug Administration began a safety review of mifepristone, despite over 20 years of evidence that it’s a safe medication. Bernstein said her organization is keeping a close eye on the “politically motivated” review at the FDA, which she argues flies in the face of the science. The combined regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol, the drug typically used in tandem with mifepristone to induce a medication abortion, carries a less than 1 percent risk of serious adverse events. Comparatively, the risk of maternal death associated with childbirth is roughly 14 times higher than the risk associated with abortion care. But despite medical evidence of its safety, the threat to mifepristone from the FDA has increased in recent days. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary resigned earlier this week, and he was replaced by Kyle Diamantas, a former lawyer. Within hours of his appointment on Tuesday, Diamantas was reportedly on the phone with anti-abortion advocates reassuring them of his moral opposition to abortion. According to a press release sent from an anti-abortion advocate, regarding her conversation with Diamantas, she said that he promised that reviewing mifepristone would be a “top priority” and that he was “pro-life.” “We continue to have concerns that the [review is] going to be politicized and not based in science and medicine,” said Teylouni. [ Read Our Complete Coverage The End of Roe --------------](/collections/end-of-roe/) The Thursday ruling allows providers to continue to send mifepristone through the mail or to retail pharmacies, while the case plays out in the lower courts. Earlier this month, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had reinstated previous FDA requirements that mifepristone be dispensed in person, threatening telehealth access, a critical lifeline for abortion access for people in states with and without abortion bans. The Supreme Court issued an initial ruling staying the appeals court decision earlier this month, which they extended on Monday, before making their final decision on Thursday to allow access to continue while the Louisiana v. FDA case plays out in court. But a looming concern for advocates is that both the courts’ more politically attuned conservatives and members of the Trump administration could be waiting to make a move on abortion access until after the midterms in a ploy to avoid the disasters of the post-Dobbs elections. “We’re definitely concerned, because we know that the Trump administration understands that it’s politically unfavorable to restrict access to abortion and to mifepristone,” said Guttmacher Institute’s Bernstein. “We’ve all seen the reports of them slow-walking to the midterms, and we know why politically they might want to do so.” [ Related Drug-Sniffing Police Dogs Are Intercepting Abortion Pills in the Mail](https://theintercept.com/2024/10/16/abortion-pills-mail-usps/) While the Comstock Act serves as a significant threat to abortion access, advocates note that if mifepristone is no longer able to be sent through the mail, people can still access medication abortion care. Mifepristone works by stopping the pregnancy from growing and initiates the separation of the embryo from the uterine lining. The other drug, misoprostol, causes contractions which expel the contents of the uterus. Misoprostol can be safely and effectively used on its own to induce an abortion. However, the process of abortion “is prolonged when it’s with a misoprostol-alone protocol,” explained Dr. Ushma Upadhyay, a public health scientist at the University of California, San Francisco’s Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health research coalition. “And patients report higher levels of side effects, so a lot of cramping and a lot more bleeding.” Despite the small victory yesterday, Teylouni said that abortion advocates cannot afford to be “complacent” right now. “This decision could have been the biggest blow to abortion access since the Dobbs decision,” she said. “Anti-abortion extremists are not going to stop attempting to ban abortion, and they want to see the Comstock Act invoked and enforced to limit telehealth prescribing again.” The post A “Scheme” Against Dobbs: SCOTUS Dissent Hints at Next Phase of Abortion Rights Fight appeared first on The Intercept. From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.
Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito found themselves in the minority on Thursday, when the court ruled that telehealth access to the abortion drug mifepristone could continue, leaving the dissenting conservatives to foreshadow a future showdown over abortion rights. Both justices railed against the decision, with Alito calling it a “scheme” to get around their ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson that eliminated the nationwide right to an abortion in 2022. Abortions have increased since their decision, Alito lamented, largely due to telehealth access. In 2025, far more residents of states with total abortion bans received telehealth provisions of medication abortion than traveled out of state to receive care in places with fewer restrictions. And roughly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. in 2023 were medication abortions. But advocates warn that the dissents from Thomas and Alito highlight that the threat to abortion access still looms large. “We’re breathing a sigh of relief. I would say that the immediate threat to mifepristone is over,” said Claire Teylouni, interim co-executive director of Reproductive Equity Now, “But it’s certainly clear from reading those dissents that the threat … is far from over.” In his dissent, Thomas argues that the Comstock Act, an anti-obscenity law passed in 1873 that remains on the books but has not been enforced in decades, prohibits the mailing of abortion medication. “The Comstock Act bans using ‘the mails’ to ship any ‘drug … for producing abortion,’” Thomas wrote. “Applicants are not entitled to a stay of an adverse court order based on lost profits from their criminal enterprise.” The Comstock Act originally prohibited the mailing of “obscene” materials, such as pornography, contraceptives, and any drug or device that can be used to produce an abortion. But legal scholars have argued that the law is unenforceable and unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds and other modern case law. In 2022, a Department of Justice memo clarified that the law does not prohibit the mailing of drugs that could be used to perform an abortion because there is “an insufficient basis for concluding that the sender intends them to be used unlawfully.” [ Related Texas Judge Cosplaying as Medical Expert Has Consequences Beyond the Abortion Pill](https://theintercept.com/2023/04/11/mifepristone-abortion-fda-matthew-kacsmaryk/) Despite the memo and the fact that the Comstock Act has not been enforced in decades, conservatives, including Thomas and Alito, have been eager to use the law to push a national abortion ban. “Enforcement of the Comstock Act has the potential to threaten the broader supply chain with regard to the reproductive health care system as a whole,” warned Teylouni. Arguably if enforced, the law could even jam up access to surgical tools used in abortion care and the shipping of abortion medication to states without bans. Republican lawmakers have argued that the Comstock Act should be enforced by the courts to “prosecute those who obtain mifepristone through the mail.” In Project 2025, policy analysts similarly argue that the Department of Justice should enforce federal laws like Comstock to prohibit the mailing of abortion medication writ large. President Donald Trump has previously claimed that he would not enforce the Comstock Act in this way, but advocates have seen troubling signs out of the administration about how they might eliminate access to mifepristone in other ways. [ Related GOP States Double Down on Fighting Medication Abortion After Supreme Court Keeps It Legal](https://theintercept.com/2024/06/13/supreme-court-medication-abortion-mifepristone/) “We’re focusing on some pressing threats that are already ongoing,” said Anna Bernstein, principal federal policy adviser at the reproductive and sexual health research organization Guttmacher Institute. In late 2025, the Food and Drug Administration began a safety review of mifepristone, despite over 20 years of evidence that it’s a safe medication. Bernstein said her organization is keeping a close eye on the “politically motivated” review at the FDA, which she argues flies in the face of the science. The combined regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol, the drug typically used in tandem with mifepristone to induce a medication abortion, carries a less than 1 percent risk of serious adverse events. Comparatively, the risk of maternal death associated with childbirth is roughly 14 times higher than the risk associated with abortion care. But despite medical evidence of its safety, the threat to mifepristone from the FDA has increased in recent days. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary resigned earlier this week, and he was replaced by Kyle Diamantas, a former lawyer. Within hours of his appointment on Tuesday, Diamantas was reportedly on the phone with anti-abortion advocates reassuring them of his moral opposition to abortion. According to a press release sent from an anti-abortion advocate, regarding her conversation with Diamantas, she said that he promised that reviewing mifepristone would be a “top priority” and that he was “pro-life.” “We continue to have concerns that the [review is] going to be politicized and not based in science and medicine,” said Teylouni. [ Read Our Complete Coverage The End of Roe --------------](/collections/end-of-roe/) The Thursday ruling allows providers to continue to send mifepristone through the mail or to retail pharmacies, while the case plays out in the lower courts. Earlier this month, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had reinstated previous FDA requirements that mifepristone be dispensed in person, threatening telehealth access, a critical lifeline for abortion access for people in states with and without abortion bans. The Supreme Court issued an initial ruling staying the appeals court decision earlier this month, which they extended on Monday, before making their final decision on Thursday to allow access to continue while the Louisiana v. FDA case plays out in court. But a looming concern for advocates is that both the courts’ more politically attuned conservatives and members of the Trump administration could be waiting to make a move on abortion access until after the midterms in a ploy to avoid the disasters of the post-Dobbs elections. “We’re definitely concerned, because we know that the Trump administration understands that it’s politically unfavorable to restrict access to abortion and to mifepristone,” said Guttmacher Institute’s Bernstein. “We’ve all seen the reports of them slow-walking to the midterms, and we know why politically they might want to do so.” [ Related Drug-Sniffing Police Dogs Are Intercepting Abortion Pills in the Mail](https://theintercept.com/2024/10/16/abortion-pills-mail-usps/) While the Comstock Act serves as a significant threat to abortion access, advocates note that if mifepristone is no longer able to be sent through the mail, people can still access medication abortion care. Mifepristone works by stopping the pregnancy from growing and initiates the separation of the embryo from the uterine lining. The other drug, misoprostol, causes contractions which expel the contents of the uterus. Misoprostol can be safely and effectively used on its own to induce an abortion. However, the process of abortion “is prolonged when it’s with a misoprostol-alone protocol,” explained Dr. Ushma Upadhyay, a public health scientist at the University of California, San Francisco’s Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health research coalition. “And patients report higher levels of side effects, so a lot of cramping and a lot more bleeding.” Despite the small victory yesterday, Teylouni said that abortion advocates cannot afford to be “complacent” right now. “This decision could have been the biggest blow to abortion access since the Dobbs decision,” she said. “Anti-abortion extremists are not going to stop attempting to ban abortion, and they want to see the Comstock Act invoked and enforced to limit telehealth prescribing again.” The post A “Scheme” Against Dobbs: SCOTUS Dissent Hints at Next Phase of Abortion Rights Fight appeared first on The Intercept. From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.
The establishment’s terror of the Greens has not diminished after the party’s powerful performance in last week’s 2026 local elections. Those elections saw the Greens more than quadruple their seats to 587, win more mayoral elections than any other party and win control of their first five councils ever. The party also gained hugely in the Scottish parliament elections, with fifteen MSPs. So it’s unsurprising that the state-corporate media are still going after Green leader Zack Polanski – and getting owned for it. Polanski has got this lot rattled And the latest attempt shows just how nail-breakingly they are scraping the bottom of the barrel. The Telegraph is attacking Polanski for… claiming something that’s true. That its author even admits is true – though of course without acknowledging that’s what she’s admitting. The latest hatchet-job has a headline that screams “Exclusive: Zack Polanski falsely claimed to have worked at the Ministry of Justice “. But as ‘senior reporter’ Janet Eastham admits: Polanski falsely claimed to have worked at the Ministry of Justice while campaigning for elected office. In reality, he was hired by an agency that supplies actors to a quango for courtroom role-play exercises. So Polanski did work at the MOJ. He didn’t work for the MOJ, but even the Torygraph can’t claim that he ever said he did, as people promptly pointed out. Including Polanski himself: Great memories of working inside the Ministry of Justice doing actor roleplay work – many of my former colleagues have remained friends! Especially the time I went down to the foyer on a lunch break – and some of the staff were on strike. First time I met @UVWunion! pic.twitter.com/rF5FoRrW7Q — Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) May 10, 2026 You really are the most stupid group of journalists. Doing freelance work at the Ministry of Justice is working at the Ministry of Justice. When are you lot going to learn that this stuff doesn’t land anymore?https://t.co/M2axpyxQoi — Omar Baggili (@OmarBaggili) May 10, 2026 We are bored of this shit now. What he said wasn’t technically incorrect, so fuck off — Austin (@LCAustin_) May 10, 2026 Polanski – then an actor – along with other actors played roles that helped the MOJ’s agency identify suitable judges, as the rag notes in the article: As part of the recruitment process, judicial candidates take part in mock courtroom exercises in which actors play criminals, prison guards and lawyers. Rot The Telegraph has just been bought by a media firm that says anyone who isn’t prepared to be loyal to Israel should leave. Why ever would it publish such a thing about an anti-Zionist party leader? This point was also made in response to Eastham’s post: Cosplay “ journo” say wha? — Simon Birnstingl AI Free (@Leftwood) May 10, 2026 You write for a publication that forces you to write positive stories about an apartheid state. pic.twitter.com/2bNq5WcvJm — bluedaysblacknights (@bluedaysbliz) May 10, 2026 EXCLUSIVE: REAL JOURNALISM BELOW.https://t.co/fvojbO7bNj — salforddave (@saIforddave) May 10, 2026 The Telegraph claims it’s a newspape? — Christopher Fox (@Yorkshirefoxy1) May 10, 2026 Nobody will believe you. Torygraph just smeared @misanharriman Maybe get a decent job with a decent paper. — JEN BROOK (@JENBROOK8) May 10, 2026 Nonsense And others simply dismissed the self-owning nonsense as what it was – some politely, some less so: I like him all the more he pisses you lot off. He doesn’t play by your rules, why should he? Why should anyone? — extendbuzzard40 (@extendbuzzard40) May 10, 2026 This is getting boring- you don’t like the guy, we get it. He’ll go on to win elections and I strongly suggest you Cry More about that x — SoTired (@so_very_tired) May 10, 2026 I don’t think this is the exclusive you think it is Janet — Chutzpah (@shiftingshifter) May 10, 2026 Nobody gives a flying fuck, Janet. You claim to be a journalist but write for the Telegraph. — James (@jspalmer_1) May 10, 2026 You pretend to be a journalist, so, glass houses and that. — Marl Karx (@BareLeft) May 10, 2026 I like him all the more he pisses you lot off. He doesn’t play by your rules, why should he? Why should anyone? — extendbuzzard40 (@extendbuzzard40) May 10, 2026 Yawn. Try another scam guys we’re not playing along — RobbieScowlz (@RobbieScowlz) May 10, 2026 Just fuck off now. — Paul Harri (@PaulHar10765609) May 10, 2026 Two of you wrote this? — (@herd_member) May 10, 2026 Polanski has stumbled a couple of times in his handling of the establishment smears. But it seems he’s bounced back – and the election results have the ogres and elites more rattled than ever. Featured image via the Canary By Skwawkbox From Canary via This RSS Feed.
1. 🖼️ The New American Gothic (2017) by Criselda Vasquez (direct link) (👍472 👎5) from Traditional Art ([email protected]) Posted by homesweethomeMrL 2. 🖼️ Brass guillotine earrings (direct link) (👍373 👎2) from Art Share🎨 ([email protected]) Posted by Solumbran 3. 🖼️ Skull grove (spikingsart) (direct link) (👍196 👎0) from Imaginary ([email protected]) Posted by flamingos 4. 🖼️ A little drinkin, a little drawin (direct link) (👍158 👎6) from Digital Art ([email protected]) Posted by anticonnor 5. 🖼️ The circle of life (direct link) (👍109 👎3) from Streetwear ([email protected]) Posted by Jilanico 6. 🖼️ Rainbow shower (direct link) (👍93 👎1) from Sweet Graffiti and other acts of wholesome vandalism ([email protected]) Posted by theupsanddownsof 7. 🖼️ The Weightless Machine by Colin Furze (direct link) (👍89 👎2) from Floating Is Fun ([email protected]) Posted by hitstun 8. 🖼️ 辣手神探 (Hard Boiled), 吳宇森 (John Woo) (1992) (direct link) (👍55 👎1) from Films Frames - Every Frame is a Painting ([email protected]) Posted by klu9 9. 🖼️ Concept arts for a solarpunk city 🌱☀️ (direct link) (👍39 👎0) from Solarpunk Art ([email protected]) Posted by OctoLumia 10. 🖼️ “Make it exist first, and then make it good later” by Abrar Khan (direct link) (👍33 👎0) from ApocalypticArt ([email protected]) Posted by lichtmetzger 11. 🖼️ Silksong’s Exhaust Organ bench (direct link) (👍30 👎0) from Video Game Art ([email protected]) Posted by Auster 12. 🖼️ Karametra’s Acolyte by Dan Scott (direct link) (👍20 👎0) from Art of MTG ([email protected]) Posted by MysticKetchup 13. 🖼️ Hi-Fi Rush (PC) 1440p (direct link) (👍17 👎1) from Photo Mode ([email protected]) Posted by gl38 Inactive communities 👻 These communities have had no posts in the last month: Drawing A place to show your sketches, doodles, drawings, and anything else arty. Video Game Artwork Welcome to the Video Game Artwork community! Album Art - Share your favourite music album cover [Dormant] moved to [email protected] COMM MOVED TO [email protected] trans art Artwork featuring primarily trans characters. Try and keep it mostly SFW. sapphic art Can be solo or implied as long as the image is for or appears to be for the sapphic gaze. Use your best judgement. Try and keep it mostly SFW. Trans Inclusive. Hobbit Art Any sort of Middle Earth legendarium artwork is ok. It doesn’t need to be made by or about hobbits. CRTart A dumping ground of art created from various CRT monitors and TV’s. Art by Kids Community to share artwork created by kids. Anything creative is considered an artwork. Procreate Art A community for sharing art made in the wonderful app; Procreate! League of Legends Fan Art A place to share League of Legends fan art, cosplay, and other fan creations. Here is a popular post from one of the inactive communities. 🪦♻️ 🖼️ [Official Art] Morrigan Portrait - Dragon Age: Origins (direct link), posted in Video Game Artwork (👍91 👎2) Posted by Grimm The main links are using lemmyverse.link which should redirect to the post on your own instance. If you have not used this before, you may need to go direct to https://lemmyverse.link/ and click on ‘configure instance’. Some apps will open posts correctly when using the direct link. Multicommunity: generalart.json
Sounds like a real stand-up neighborhood. Shot and bleeding kid asking for your help? Better neutralize the threat before getting help. It’s like the whole neighborhood cosplays as cops/soldiers and thinks everything unfamiliar is a threat.
Spoiler warning for Seasons 1 and 2 of Daredevil: Born Again Disclaimer: I realize that this is capeshit and I probably shouldn’t take it so seriously, but fuck it, it’s on my mind, and what better place to dump my ramblings than here? You’re sitting here reading this, so it isn’t like you’re doing anything better anyway, right? I think more than most capeslop, Daredevil gets under my skin. All capeslop is ostensibly about justice, but as most people here are probably already aware, mostly defines ‘justice’ as the status quo. In my opinion, Daredevil is particularly egregious in this way given that his alter ego is a blind lawyer, that tends to represent clients who are deliberately written to be exploited and impoverished people. The general beats of Daredevil make vague gestures at notions of justice, injustice, corruption, and systemic oppression, but then seems to mock these things through the overall actions of its protagonist. Murdock repeatedly, over and over again, gets up-close-and-dirty with systemic injustice in every story arc, and every time his conclusion of the failure of the court system, and the constant proof of an unjust system, his answer is to fall back on it. This reaches levels of boggling absurdity to me when, through the process of escalation during the plot of Born Again, The Kingpin becomes Mayor, takes over the court system, makes the DA his lackey, and forms his own police paramilitary jackboot fash squad - and yet, Daredevil fights him in the kangaroo court and wins? Motherfuckers, I’m trying to enjoy your show - does the Kingpin control the court or doesn’t he? Are his fascist black shirts there to force the outcomes he desires, or aren’t they? The show itself seems to flip-flop on how it feels about all of these various things depending upon what it needs to happen at the moment. Except for one thing that is consistent through the entire thing: if you aren’t a super hero, and you aren’t a cop, then you’re scum to be trod upon. Even at the climax, when the Kingpin is being toppled, and the city is cosplaying as Daredevil and gathering at the courthouse to protest him, the crowd of people is held at bay by the blackshirts (because they come completely unarmed, and are only permitted to do the lib thing of standing there and shouting) and they have to wait until the “good cops” arrive to grant them power, and only once permitted by the police to enter the building do the city’s people enter. Even from that point, the people are totally powerless as The Kingpin proceeds to massacre an entire hallway of people. Despite how enraged the people were upon entering the building and storming the hallway, at first meeting with the Kingpin the whole corridor of people turn into pissbabies and start cowering for their lives, the writers don’t have anybody start to even fight for their own life until only the last few of them are left trapped. In the writer’s mind, these people never had any real spark or drive to fight for a better life or a better future, they were just there to, what, shout loudly at The Kingpin, and do nothing else? I wouldn’t even be mad about this scene killing all of these people if they were at least portrayed to have some agency for themselves, but they’re shown to be feckless and just ragdolls for Fisk. In the following scene where Daredevil meets the mob in the courthouse lobby, this dynamic becomes inverted, the mob manages to bring The Kingpin down to his knees, but here Daredevil and Jessica Jones fight the mob off of him and rescue The Kingpin, shouting “We’re better than this!”. There are numerous scenes like this throughout Daredevil that make me pull my hair out, I have to ask, “What exactly is Justice to you?”. The story makes it obvious that the kangaroo court installed by Fisk is unjust. The story also shows many moments of injustice in the “real” court prior to The Kingpin taking office. Therefore, we can conclude that justice isn’t found in the legal system, plainly, there would be no need for Daredevil’s existence to begin with if it were. The story sure seems to be trying to suggest that the impetus for all of this action, the basis, the foundation for everything, is that the injustice present harms the lives of everyone in the city, right? Therefore, would it not seem logical that when the people who have been harmed show up en masse to confront the cause of their pain, that there probably isn’t an expression much closer to real justice than that? Yet, Daredevil seems to think that either A) there is a platonic ideal of a court or justice that everybody should be wedded to, which for some reason would prefer that The Kingpin live? For what? Another trial? Hasn’t the whole show been repeated proof after proof that the courts always fail to stop him? or B) Daredevil is actually the true bearer of Justice. Ironically, I don’t think that the writers intend for conclusion B to be the actual takeaway, but given how much evidence the run of the show gives about how ineffective the courts are at putting away serious bad-doers, I wouldn’t blame anybody for coming away from the show with that belief of Daredevil. Also, Daredevil rescues The Kingpin’s life 4 or 5 times, at least 3 times from Bulleye, which merely dovetails in with the point I’ve just finished making. I can’t comprehend why Daredevil does this from any angle, again, Daredevil observes up close on repeated occasion that the courts will not deliver justice upon Fisk - and that is the only reason I could comprehend why Daredevil may want him to live. Aside from that, why doesn’t Daredevil see this as Fisk’s just desserts? His hens coming to roost? Daredevil also saves Bullseye’s life, which is also incomprehensible for so many of the same reasons. Also, the writers giving Bullseye something of a redemption arc is a crime unto itself. Really, I think a strong argument could actually be made that Daredevil is the real antagonist of the show, given how the people who he saves most are the most awful people in the story. Sorry - I’ve gone on a tangent but I want to come back to the scene with the mob in the courthouse lobby. Daredevil and Jessica Jones fight off the mob, Fisk’s life is once again saved, which is to say that the people who are least important to the writers are the average person. To the writers, their lives and problems are only present for as long as they are useful to narrative. Their demands upon Fisk are immaterial. Brutality is implied to be upon them by Fisk’s jackboots, but never portrayed. Daredevil also generally has little to say about this, and overall spends… zero? time speaking to any average person (I may be exaggerating this, but I’m struggling to recall any scenes where he actually just talks to an average Sally on the street who isn’t an ex-cop, or somehow otherwise attached to his being Daredevil). The people are a vapor with immaterial being until their presence is needed in order to be ragdolled by Fisk, and told “No, no, this isn’t how we get Justice” by Daredevil. Oh, and they have all the mob wearing red, which is probably intended to simply invoke Daredevil, but you might see why I can confuse it to be allegory for communism. Anyway, thanks for reading my rambling if you did. Share your opinions with me if you have any. I could maybe structure this into a proper critique or something, but I’d probably have to rewatch the show again in order to properly organize and develop thoughts, and I cannot be asked to watch this shit a second time.
A reminder to anyone who might need it: people cosplaying as transgender do not represent or reflect actual transgender people.