It’s been 25 Years Since 9/11. 25 Years

Posted on September 11, 2026 by rikyrah

I have been reading the skepticism of those not alive during that time. They don’t understand about our shared ‘ trauma’.
That it seems ‘ too much’.

Arial view of WTC in March of 2001

uturistic_Fudge
@FudgeFuturistic
Sep 4
People born pre-9/11 have such a weird, worshipful attitude about it.
7:06 AM · Sep 8, 2026

I think they should sit down and be quiet.
The media landscape was far different in 2001 than it is now. Social Media was different. Basically non-existent.
The trauma of that day.
I can remember that I was pulling into my job when I heard a snippet from the local CBS All News Radio Channel: 780AM
A plane had hit the World Trade Center. Like so many others, I thought it had to be small plane, that had lost its way.
It literally took the second jet hitting – which anyone who had been watching the coverage of the first hit SAW IN REAL TIME.
THAT is when we realized that we were UNDER ATTACK.
ON AMERICAN SOIL.

@ThoNg676733
🎼🌺Music Love♥️
@ThoNg676733
The 17 Minutes That Changed the History of America and the World

Surely, many people still remember September 11, 2001 — the day images from New York were broadcast around the world and became one of the defining memories of the modern era.

At 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into floors 93 through 99 of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. At the time, many people still had no idea what was really happening. But just 17 minutes later, at 9:03 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175 struck floors 77 through 85 of the South Tower.

The appearance of the second aircraft completely changed the way people understood what was happening. This was no longer an isolated aviation accident, but a coordinated and deliberate attack. From Brooklyn Heights, cameraman Park Foreman captured one of the most widely recognized images of that day, as the Boeing 767 slammed into the South Tower and a fireball erupted.

After that, events unfolded at a speed few people could have imagined. Just 56 minutes after being struck by the aircraft, the South Tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m. At 10:28 a.m., the North Tower collapsed as well.

According to the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the collapses were caused by a combination of the aircraft impacts, the dislodging of fireproofing from structural steel members, and large fires spreading across multiple floors. Together, these factors severely weakened the buildings’ structural systems, ultimately leading to their collapse.

In less than two hours, what had once been an iconic part of New York had become a site the world would later come to know as Ground Zero. A total of 2,977 people were killed in the September 11 attacks. At the World Trade Center alone, 343 members of the New York City Fire Department, 23 NYPD officers, and other law-enforcement personnel died while responding to the disaster.

But the attacks did not take place only in New York. At 9:37 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the western side of the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, home to the U.S. Department of Defense. The attack killed 125 people inside the building and all 59 people aboard the aircraft.

Meanwhile, United Airlines Flight 93 was heading toward Washington, D.C. After learning what had happened through phone calls with family members and people on the ground, a group of passengers decided to fight back against the hijackers. Their attempt to regain control of the aircraft ended when Flight 93 crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 10:03 a.m. The 9/11 Commission concluded that the aircraft’s intended target may have been the U.S. Capitol or the White House.

After that day, America began to change in ways that perhaps no one could have imagined that morning. In aviation, Congress passed the Aviation and Transportation Security Act on November 19, 2001, laying the foundation for the creation of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and establishing a new federal system for screening passengers and baggage.

Those changes extended far beyond airports. On the international stage, the United States launched its war in Afghanistan in 2001 and later expanded its military intervention into Iraq in 2003. The Costs of War project at Brown University has documented the enormous human, financial, and social costs of the post-9/11 wars, as well as consequences that continued long after major military operations officially ended.

Looking back at September 11, 2001, what makes the event such a historic turning point is not only what happened during those few short hours. It is also what changed afterward: how a nation viewed security, how people moved through airports, how the United States exercised military power, and how the world understood the threat of terrorism.

And perhaps that is why, more than two decades later, images from that morning still make people stop and watch. Because sometimes history does not begin with a grand declaration. Sometimes, it can begin with just 17 minutes — the span of time between two aircraft striking two towers, yet enough to change America and open an entirely different chapter in world history.
6:20 PM · Sep 7, 2026
https://x.com/ThoNg676733/status/2097102635375775871

Hadn’t thought about this for a long time.

Barnaby Breaks History 🇺🇸
@BarnabyHistory
🇺🇸 The Boatlift That Was Bigger Than Dunkirk

At 10:45 a.m. on September 11, 2001, a Coast Guard lieutenant named Mike Day keyed a radio in New York Harbor and said the only sentence that mattered.

“All available boats. This is the United States Coast Guard. Anyone wanting to help with the evacuation of Lower Manhattan, report to Governors Island.”

The boats were already coming.

The bridges were closed. The tunnels were closed. The subways were dead. South of the towers, hundreds of thousands of people had nowhere left to walk. Some jumped into the Hudson. Some stood on seawalls that were never meant to be docks and waited for anything that floated.

Dunkirk took nine days to pull 338,226 Allied soldiers off a beach in 1940.

On 9/11, roughly 800 mariners on about 150 vessels moved as many as 500,000 civilians off Manhattan in about nine hours. Ferries. Tugs. Dinner boats. Pilot boats. Yachts. A retired fireboat. Rubber dinghies that held two people. The largest water evacuation in history.

NY Waterway did not wait for the official call. After the second plane hit, the whole fleet moved. Captain Rick Thornton nosed his ferry against a seawall that was not a slip and started taking people off. Some of them he pulled out of the river. His company alone carried about 158,000 people to Jersey City, Hoboken, Weehawken, Brooklyn, and Queens.

On a normal Tuesday they carried 34,000.

The Staten Island Ferry moved more than 50,000 people and came back the other way with water, bandages, and men who still had work to do in the dust.

The old fireboat John J. Harvey, already retired, tied up near the Museum of Jewish Heritage, took civilians off the seawall, then pumped water when the hydrants downtown died.

Lt. Day later admitted what the day required. “I broke more rules that day than probably I’ve enforced in my whole Coast Guard career.”

In raw numbers it was bigger than Dunkirk. No boat went down. By nightfall the southern tip of Manhattan had been emptied by people who were not on anyone’s list of heroes when the morning started.

They were tug captains. Ferry deckhands. Pilots. A lieutenant with a microphone. Ordinary boats answering one sentence.

All available boats.
https://x.com/BarnabyHistory/status/2097067384523706398

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Posted in 9/11 Terrorist Attack, American History, Open Thread, Politics | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Open Thread | Lonnie Bunch, The First Black Secretary of the Smithsonian, Is Retiring.

Posted on September 9, 2026 by rikyrah

For Those Who Respect True History, This Is Very Sad News.

Tom Sherwood
@tomsherwood
I hate this News:
Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch plans to announce his retirement from the institution at the end of this year, bringing to a close a tenure marked by unprecedented pressure on the museum complex from a White House keen on controlling how to tell the nation’s history.

theatlantic.com/culture/2026/0…
https://x.com/tomsherwood/status/2097366647921070224

Why Lonnie Bunch Is Leaving the Smithsonian
After months of clashes with the White House, the historian and leader of the institution is retiring later this year.
By Kelsey Ables and Janay Kingsberry

Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch plans to retire from the institution at the end of this year, bringing to a close a tenure marked by unprecedented pressure on the museum complex from a White House keen on controlling how to tell the nation’s history. After a person with knowledge of the situation confirmed the departure to The Atlantic, Bunch addressed Smithsonian employees at a town hall this afternoon, telling them, “I may be going away, but I’m still going to be a pain in the ass to some people.”

The crowd of staffers, who spilled out of an auditorium and into an overflow room at the Hirshhorn Museum, clapped and cheered, even as some likely wondered: Why now? In conversations with intimates, Bunch has been floating his retirement since at least the beginning of this year. But the increased attention from the White House surely made stepping down an even more delicate decision. Bunch, who is 73, tried to deflect any notion that his departure was Trump-related, telling staffers, “I now realize that I’m old as dirt, and it’s time for the next chapter in my life.” He also suggested that the timing may have been influenced by his wife, Maria Marable-Bunch, who recently retired from the National Museum of the American Indian. “The Smithsonian represents more than a career to me; it’s been an integral part of who I am,” he said. “I think about during the many years here, I met the love of my life, who’s retired and told me I better retire soon.”

Bunch’s exit will leave the Smithsonian, which is largely federally funded, with a vacancy at the top as it faces escalating efforts from the Trump administration to influence its work. Bunch, known to be diplomatic and evenhanded, had largely staved off the White House’s encroachment over a tumultuous 18 months in which the administration issued executive orders and letters criticizing the museums and threatened to withhold funding. In July, President Trump signed an executive order calling for signage to be added to the exterior of the National Museum of American History warning about what the administration claims is an inaccurate and partisan telling of history. Smithsonian leaders have countered that telling the American story fairly and accurately means discussing its complexities too.

In a news release, Bunch said: “There is no place like the Smithsonian—it has been one of the great loves of my life, and I am extraordinarily proud of what we have accomplished together. I leave with pride and sadness, gratitude and joy, and with enormous confidence in the people who will carry this remarkable institution forward.” The chair of the Smithsonian Board of Regents, Franklin D. Raines, thanked Bunch for his service and said the institution’s governing body will be “focused on ensuring stability during this time of transition.” He said that the Smithsonian would soon announce an acting secretary and begin a search for Bunch’s successor. “There are some very strong internal candidates,” Kim Sajet, the former director of the National Portrait Gallery, told us today.

Before becoming secretary of the entire Smithsonian, Bunch was the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which has been widely praised for its powerful handling of the darkest chapters of America’s past. In Bunch, the Smithsonian had at its helm an advocate for its continued independence. The first historian and the first Black leader of the 21-museum complex, he spent nearly 38 years in roles across the institution. His departure has increased anxieties about the institution’s future.

His stewardship in creating the ‘ Blacksonian’, will forever have my utmost respect.

Ken Burns
@KenBurns
Lonnie Bunch is a great historian, public servant and a dear friend. He has devoted his career to helping us understand the full American story in all its complexity. Our country is better for his work, and I am deeply grateful for it.

Wishing him the very best and thankful that he will remain engaged with all things history.
nytimes.com/2026/09/08/art…
https://x.com/KenBurns/status/2097363984588382407

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Posted in American History, Black History, Open Thread, Politics, Smithsonian | Tagged , , , , , | 24 Comments

Open Thread | The Long Arc of History Can Reveal Greatness

Posted on September 8, 2026 by rikyrah

I always thought he got the short end of the stick because he was in the long shadow of FDR.

Crazy Vibes
@CrazyVibes_1
Harry Truman left the White House as one of the least popular presidents of his era. He returned home without a presidential pension, without a government-funded staff, and without much public appreciation for the choices he had made. Yet more than a decade later, another president would travel to his hometown to place tangible proof in his hands that one of his greatest defeats had never truly been a defeat at all.

On January 20, 1953, Truman’s presidency came to an end.

Unlike former presidents today, he had no taxpayer-funded office waiting for him. No lifetime salary. No official support system. The Former Presidents Act, which would later provide those benefits, had not yet been created.

His most reliable income came from his World War I military pension.

It was a little over one hundred dollars a month.

So Harry and Bess Truman boarded a train, left Washington behind, and returned to Independence, Missouri.

At the time, few Americans seemed upset to see him go.

His approval ratings had collapsed. Critics blamed him for inflation, political scandals, the Korean War, and much of the uncertainty that followed World War II. Newspapers had spent years portraying him as ineffective, and many voters believed his legacy had already been written.

In the eyes of much of the country, Harry Truman was a failed president.

Truman never spent much energy arguing otherwise.

Instead, he settled back into ordinary life.

That same year, he bought a Chrysler and took a road trip with Bess across the country. They drove through multiple states without a motorcade or special treatment. Truman stopped at gas stations and filled the tank himself.

People recognized him.

Truck drivers waved.

Strangers asked for autographs.

Once, state police reportedly pulled him over because he was driving too slowly.

Back home in Independence, he answered his own phone, handled his own mail, and took daily walks through town. Reporters who tried to follow him sometimes struggled to match his pace.

The former president had become, in many ways, a private citizen again.

What stood out most was what he refused to do.

He did not spend his retirement attacking Dwight Eisenhower.

He did not launch a campaign to repair his image.

He did not obsess over his place in history.

He simply moved forward with his life.

Meanwhile, history quietly began revisiting the decisions he had made.

One of those decisions came in 1948 when Truman signed Executive Order 9981, beginning the desegregation of the U.S. military.

It was a politically risky move.

Military leaders objected. Southern Democrats were furious. Many advisers warned him against it.

Truman proceeded anyway.

He believed segregation was morally wrong, and once he reached that conclusion, political calculations no longer mattered much to him.

Then there was Europe.

The continent emerged from World War II shattered. Economies were broken, cities lay in ruins, and millions faced poverty and instability.

Truman’s administration responded with policies that would shape the modern world.

The Truman Doctrine committed America to resisting Soviet expansion.

The Marshall Plan invested billions in rebuilding Western Europe.

At the time, many critics called it wasteful spending.

Years later, those same decisions looked very different.

European economies recovered. Democracies survived. Western Europe entered one of the most stable and prosperous periods in its history.

Policies once mocked as expensive mistakes increasingly appeared to be the foundation of the postwar order.

Yet one issue remained painfully unresolved.

National health insurance.

In 1945, only months after World War II ended, Truman became the first American president to formally ask Congress for a comprehensive national health insurance program.

He believed illness should not destroy a family financially.

The opposition was immediate and intense.

The American Medical Association denounced the proposal. Conservatives attacked it. Many lawmakers from both parties joined forces to stop it.

The legislation died.

Truman tried again.

It failed again.

When he left office in 1953, one of the causes he cared about most remained unfinished.

There would be no celebration.

No signing ceremony.

No victory.

So Truman returned to Missouri and carried on with his life.

Then, twenty years after he first began the fight, something remarkable happened.

On July 30, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed legislation creating Medicare and Medicaid.

Johnson could have held the ceremony at the White House.

Instead, he boarded Air Force One and flew to Independence, Missouri.

The signing took place inside the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library.

Waiting there was an 81-year-old former president whose vision had once been dismissed and defeated.

Before signing the bill, Johnson publicly praised Truman for championing the cause long before the nation was ready to embrace it.

Then he signed the legislation.

Medicare and Medicaid became law.

Johnson handed several of the signing pens to Harry and Bess Truman.

In front of the country, he made something clear:

The man who had lost the battle in the 1940s had helped make victory possible in the 1960s.

But Johnson had one more tribute planned.

Six months later, he returned to the Truman Library carrying two small cards.

They were among the first Medicare cards ever issued.

Card number one belonged to Harry S. Truman.

Card number two belonged to Bess Truman.

Johnson presented them personally.

The symbolism was impossible to miss.

The president who had left Washington believing one of his most important goals had failed now held proof that the idea had survived long enough to become reality.

The cause had outlived the defeat.

Truman died in 1972 at the age of eighty-eight.

By then, historians had already begun reevaluating his presidency.

The Marshall Plan.

The Truman Doctrine.

The integration of the armed forces.

The recognition of Israel.

The creation of NATO.

The strategy of containing Soviet expansion without triggering another world war.

And the early push for national health insurance.

Decisions that once drew criticism increasingly looked like acts of long-term leadership.

The president who left office with approval ratings near thirty percent gradually rose in historical rankings until he became widely regarded as one of the most consequential presidents of the twentieth century.

What makes that transformation remarkable is that Truman did almost nothing to create it.

He did not reinvent himself.

He did not rewrite history.

He did not spend decades demanding recognition.

He returned home, lived quietly, and let time deliver its verdict.

Some victories happen on election night.

Some arrive when a bill becomes law.

And some take decades before the world realizes the people who appeared to lose were simply ahead of their time.

Harry Truman lived long enough to see one of those victories placed directly into his hands.

History is patient.

Sometimes it takes years for the world to catch up to the people who were right.
https://x.com/CrazyVibes_1/status/2095756881377857712

Posted in History, Open Thread, Politics | Tagged , , , , | 46 Comments

Happy Labor Day!

Posted on September 7, 2026 by rikyrah

With the official end of Summer here, Happy Labor Day!

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Posted in Labor, Labor Day, Labor Movement, Unions | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Weekend Open Thread

Posted on September 5, 2026 by rikyrah

Good Morning.

I hope that you are enjoying this weekend with family and friends.

We lost singer Cassandra Wilson this week.

RIP

Posted in Weekend Open Thread | Tagged , | 7 Comments

Open Thread | Gloria Steinem, Feminist Pioneer, Dead at 92

Posted on September 4, 2026 by rikyrah

Gloria Steinem, Personification of the Women’s Movement, Dies at 92
She challenged sexist assumptions, helping women develop a sense of self-worth and gain a measure of equality at work, at home and in society at large.
By Katharine Q. Seelye
Sept. 3, 2026
Updated 3:35 p.m. ET

Gloria Steinem, the feminist crusader who galvanized the modern women’s movement, helping millions of women develop a sense of self-worth and gain a measure of equality at home, at work and in society at large, died on Wednesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 92.

Her death was announced in a post on social media, which did not give a cause.

Calling herself “an entrepreneur of social change,” Ms. Steinem helped usher in sweeping cultural transformations across virtually every facet of American life, from the boardroom to the courtroom to the bedroom.

For more than half a century, she personified the women’s movement and became its most enduring symbol; her tinted aviator glasses and curtain of streaked-blond hair parted in the center made her one of the most recognizable women in the world.

She was an unlikely revolutionary. Growing up a transient in the Midwest, she was 10 when her parents divorced and she was left to mother her mentally anguished mother — a formative experience that reverberated throughout her life. She had scant formal education until sixth grade; her big dream, as a budding tap dancer, was to become a Rockette.

But she read voraciously, graduated from college with honors and believed fiercely that women should be able to live whatever life they chose.

Her own feminist awakening didn’t come until her mid-30s, when, as a journalist in 1969, she attended a “speak out” of women discussing their illegal abortions. Charismatic, articulate, media savvy, deeply empathetic and a workaholic, she evolved into a political and cultural force.

She led protests and consciousness-raising sessions, wrote essays and delivered speeches, delved into political organizing, helped establish rape crisis centers and shelters for battered women, founded numerous groups that promoted women and had the Midas touch when it came to raising money for their causes.

And she and a cadre of feminists had the audacity to start a publication that flew in the face of traditional women’s magazines, examining topics like abortion, domestic violence and equal pay for equal work. The first glossy national periodical to be created, owned and run entirely by women, Ms. magazine, founded in 1971, sought to capture and channel a rising sense of female empowerment and eradicate the sexist assumptions that permeated the culture.

The magazine served as the movement’s manifesto, an incubator for social transformation and a blueprint for action. As such, it helped embolden women as they fought blatant discrimination and harassment in the workplace and unspoken oppression, and sometimes outright abuse, at home.

“When we started, there was not even a term for sexual harassment,” Ms. Steinem often said. “It was just called life.”

Decades after the movement dissipated and progressive women faced renewed setbacks, Ms. Steinem continued to push for their rights and equality. Indefatigable, she wrote essays and lectured into her 90s, and the news media never stopped seeking her opinion. She was the author of nearly a dozen major nonfiction books; her latest, “An Unexpected Life,” is scheduled for publication in late September.

Despite her fearless public persona, Ms. Steinem was somewhat diffident, initially terrified of speaking in public and wrestled with a lack of self-esteem.

She was also insecure about her looks. She said in an interview for this obituary in January 2026 that she wore her large aviator glasses and cloak of long hair partly to hide her face. “What I felt like inside,” she wrote in “Revolution From Within,” her 1992 book about self-esteem, “was a plump brunette from Toledo, too tall and much too pudding faced.”

Even as she personified the women’s movement, Ms. Steinem defied the stereotype of “women’s libbers” as sexless, humorless and dateless. She led a glittering social life and enjoyed relationships with many high-voltage men, including Mike Nichols, the director, and Mort Zuckerman, the real estate and publishing mogul. In the 2026 interview, she called Franklin A. Thomas, the pathbreaking president of the Ford Foundation, the love of her life, the man with whom she felt most in sync.

But she spurned marriage (mostly) and remained child free, a choice she said she never regretted.

“Not for a millisecond,” she said at 82. “Not everybody with a womb has to have a child, like not everybody with vocal cords has to be an opera singer. It’s a choice, and it’s a wonderful choice, but if everybody has to do it, it’s no longer a choice.”

Her lifestyle and unapologetic feminist beliefs made her a lightning rod, adored (though not always) by liberals, demonized (always) by conservatives. She and other single women were caricatured as man-hating, bra-burning lesbians intent on upending the social order and destroying the American family. When Ms. Steinem appeared on “Larry King Live” in 1990, a female caller memorably told her to “rot in hell” for what she had wrought.
Much of the hostility toward her was public and overt — especially with the rise of the religious right and the conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly — but it was also woven into the fabric of her everyday life.

While the male-dominated news media all but anointed Ms. Steinem as the movement’s spokeswoman (to the annoyance of its many other leaders and of the decidedly anti-hierarchical Ms. Steinem herself), it simultaneously patronized and marginalized her as a rebel with a pretty face.

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Posted in Breaking News, Feminism, Open Thread, Politics | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

There is Another High Profile Contest in Texas……For Governor

Posted on September 3, 2026 by rikyrah

Eric Michael Garcia

@ericmgarcia.bsky.social

Follow
Gina Hinojosa releases an ad chronicling choosing to give birth to her daughter despite health problems and her daughter dying two days later. Hinojosa is running for governor of Texas against Greg Abbott.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkOC…
https://bsky.app/profile/ericmgarcia.bsky.social/post/3mufja3kqu222

From the El Paso Times, “Hinojosa, O’Rourke tell El Paso crowds Gov. Abbott’s time is running out”:

By the time Democratic candidate for Texas governor Gina Hinojosa finished her daylong campaign swing in El Paso, she made it clear to voters that Gov. Greg Abbott’s tenure needs to end…

Throughout her three stops in front of the El Paso County Courthouse, the University of Texas at El Paso campus and the East El Paso Firefighters Hall, the message was simple — she repeatedly argued that Abbott’s leadership has allowed corruption and public policies that favor wealthy interests.

Hinojosa repeatedly argued that Abbott’s administration has been defined by corruption and policies that favor wealthy interests…

“The American dream in this state was achieving success if you do your part and Texas would do its part. Greg Abbott has broken that deal. Even though Texans work more than the national average, we have the most people without health insurance in the country. We have the most people with disconnected electricity due to high bills.”

Texas also has one of the highest rates of business bankruptcies in the nation, she said. She also took aim at property taxes under Abbott.

Total local property tax levies in Texas have increased by approximately $37 billion since Abbott took office in 2015. In 2015, total property taxes collected statewide by local entities were $52.4 billion. By 2025, that total grew to roughly $89.4 billion…

“That is Greg Abbott’s record. He owns it and the reason we pay more and get less in Texas is because we’re all paying the Greg Abbott corruption tax,” she said. “He has given $1 billion in no bid contracts to his donors. That’s your money and mine. Then he took another $1 billion out of our public schools and put in a voucher program for private schools.”…

I am rooting for her to beat the very crooked Abbott. The GOP is pulling out all the Voter Suppression stops that they can within Texas.

Posted in 2026 Elections, Open Thread, Politics, Texas, Voter Disenfranchisement, Voter Suppression | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 35 Comments

Open Thread | Checking In With Jessica Valenti…the Latest Strategy of Anti-Abortion Folks

Posted on August 31, 2026 by rikyrah

Always good to check in with Ms. Valenti to see what the Anti-Abortion crowd is up to this election season.

The GOP’s 2028 Abortion Strategy in One Word: Massachusetts
Republican candidates will lean into “late” abortion. Democrats need to be ready.
Jessica Valenti
Aug 26, 2026

After four years of struggling to talk about abortion, Republicans think they’ve found the message that will take them through the midterms and into 2028: Massachusetts. In the few weeks since the state legalized abortion throughout pregnancy, conservative pundits, Republican lawmakers, and anti-abortion activists have all glommed onto the new law as ‘proof’ that Democrats are abortion extremists.

Right-wing strategists—whose abortion messages have continually fallen flat with Americans—are certain that this is their in with voters. And last week, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America advised Republican candidates that “going on offense to call out Democrats’ extremism on late-term abortion” moves the polling margin by 4-5 points.

“Pro-life candidates should be relentlessly pressing their opponents over their support for these barbaric, late procedures,” president Marjorie Dannenfelser wrote in a memo. She urged Republicans to be “aggressive” in bringing the conversation back to later abortion, using Massachusetts as a jumping off point.

That means it’s past time for Democrats to get their own abortion messaging in order—namely, by standing up from their defensive crouch and finally telling voters what they want to hear: the government has no place in pregnancy at any point.

For far too long, Democratic candidates have been hesitant to openly support abortion throughout pregnancy—instead relying on calls to “restore Roe,” or suggesting that ‘later’1 abortion almost never happens. But that message is getting harder to credibly (and ethically) maintain.

Republican bans aren’t just driving up the need for later access by making it harder for women to get abortions earlier in their pregnancies2—they’re shining a light on why care must be available at every single stage. Many of the horror stories Americans have heard over the past four years—women going septic, forced to carry doomed pregnancies, or dying in hospitals—have been about patients who were “later” in their pregnancies.

Every day since the end of Roe has proved how dangerous it is for the government to legislate abortion at all. Tepid defenses aren’t enough.
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Posted in 2026 Elections, Abortion, Abortion Rights, Body Autonomy, Open Thread, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , | 18 Comments

Weekend Open Thread

Posted on August 29, 2026 by rikyrah

Good Morning.

I hope that you are enjoying this weekend with family and friends.

We loved you, Dolly😪😪

Posted in Weekend Open Thread | Tagged , | 1 Comment

ALERT!! IF You Live In TEXAS, or Know Someone Who Lives in TEXAS

Posted on August 28, 2026 by rikyrah

VOTER SUPPRESSION ALERT!!

The New Republic
@newrepublic
23h

OVER 1.2M people in Texas have had their voter registrations suspended—many might not even know about it.
https://x.com/AmeriCactus/status/2093312932147044563

WE ARE LESS THAN 80 DAYS OUT FROM ELECTION DAY.
THIS CAN’T BE INTERPRETED AS ANYTHING OTHER THAN VOTER SUPPRESSION!

AmeriCactus
@AmeriCactus

🚨 If your Texas registration shows as suspended (also called suspense), you are still registered. It usually just means the county is not sure of your current address.

Check your status on the Secretary of State lookup, then update your address by October 5. You’ll typically need your driver’s license or ID, Social Security number, and VUID from your voter card. You can also do it by mail or in person at your county elections office.

If you don’t update in time, you can still vote in the same county by filling out a statement of residence at the polls. That form updates your record and should take you off the list. If you have moved to a different county, ask for a provisional or limited ballot and follow the clerk’s instructions.
7:21 AM · Aug 28, 2026
https://x.com/AmeriCactus/status/2093312932147044563

Posted in 2026 Elections, Breaking News, Elections, Voter Disenfranchisement, Voter Suppression, Voting Rights | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment