CleverPeople.com: Bookmarks}

Anti-Trans/Anti-Nonbinary Passport Policy

Gary Wright II — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 14:34:44 -0500

Yesterday, SCOTUS used the shadow docket to overturn two lower courts and implement a discriminatory and dangerous passport policy that says they must display the gender at birth. Chris Geidner on his Law Dork blog [please subscribe to either free or paid] gives more details, and the dissent by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is worth reading.

Address of the Bookmark: https://www.lawdork.com/p/scotus-trump-rubio-passport-policy-stay-order

SCOTUS Revives Transgender Passport Policy🏳️‍⚧️

Gary Wright II — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 15:45:20 -0500

The Supreme Court just reversed a lower court and says passports must reflect the person's biological sex at birth. Not allowing an X is discriminatory and dangerous for transgender people. We're expecting rulings by June that may make "conversion therapy" legal based on a ridiculous religious freedom argument. Tomorrow, SCOTUS is voting whether to take up a case that would ban same-sex marriages. It's going to be a rough time for the LGBTQIA+ community. 😭🏳️‍🌈

Address of the Bookmark: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/11/06/supreme-court-trump-passport-transgender-non...

Drag Show Ban in Texas

Gary Wright II — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 14:29:44 -0500

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals just overturned the lower court ruling on Senate Bill 12. They claim that plaintiffs didn't sufficiently prove their First Amendment claims and so the court remanded the case to the trial court for further inquiry. The 18 page opinion was written by three judges, and there's a link to it in this article. They wrote “we have genuine doubt… that pulsing prosthetic breasts in front of people, putting prosthetic breasts in people’s faces, and being spanked by audience members are actually constitutionally protected — especially in the presence of minors.” #DragIsNotACrime

Address of the Bookmark: https://www.expressnews.com/politics/article/drag-show-ban-appeal-21143393.php

Trump's Crimes Against Humanity in Venezuela

Gary Wright II — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 10:54:56 -0500

Former chief prosecutor at International Criminal Court (ICC) Luis Merono Ocamp confirms that the US air strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats would be treated under international law as crimes against humanity.

At a classified briefing for Congress yesterday, lawmakers were told the Office of Legal Counsel opinion they were using to justify the boat strikes did not authorize land strikes against foreign territories, so they are seeking another opinion from DoJ for that authorization.

These illegal strikes are not only extrajudicial murders, they are acts of war, they violate the sovereignty of nations, and they are war crimes / crimes against humanity depending on which ill-advised justification they choose to use for them.

Address of the Bookmark: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd9kgqwnk8wo

Same-Sex Marriage Before SCOTUS on Friday

Gary Wright II — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 16:31:57 -0500

At the Supreme Court's November 7th private conference they will vote whether to take up the Kim Davis lawsuit to dismantle same-sex marriages. It takes four of the justices to vote to grant certiorari to hear the case, and Roberts, Alito, and Thomas are vocal opponents of marriage equality, so only one more vote would be needed. If they do choose to hear the case, my guess is that they will follow the same pattern as they did reversing Roe v. Wade. They will give the right back to the states. Because 32 states still have laws that prohibit same-sex marriage, there would would be only 18 states, five territories, and Washington, D.C. where same-sex marriage would be legal. Here are what some legal scholars are saying.

Address of the Bookmark: https://www.alternet.org/send/kim-davis-supreme-court/

GOP is Slow-walking SNAP Benefits

Gary Wright II — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 15:26:27 -0500

They have "partially funded" the food aid program, but say it could take states weeks or months to calculate and distribute the benefits. They have a $6 billion contingency fund, but have been refusing to use it. We always have money for wars, but never for the benefit of our people. Here's the Department of Agriculture response to the court (8 pages) that describe their plan to restore benefits.

Address of the Bookmark: https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/gkvlqglmdpb/11032025snap_declaration.pdf

Trump Targets 25 Million Naturalized Americans for Denaturalization

Gary Wright II — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 13:32:02 -0500

The DoJ issued a June 11th memo on targeting naturalized citizens to be denaturalized for civil offenses such as "concealing facts during naturalization" or criminal offenses. They want to target them with civil offenses because they have less protections in court than in a criminal case. For example, they are not entitled to a lawyer in a civil case. The memo designates denaturalization as one of the top five enforcement priorities for the DoJ Civil Division (see section 5 on page 3). This creates a two-tier system of citizenship, where immigrants are less protected and will face deportation if their citizenship is revoked.

Address of the Bookmark: https://www.justice.gov/civil/media/1404046/dl

Israel's Leaked Torture Video

Gary Wright II — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 10:28:26 -0500

In August 2024, a video surfaced that shows reserve soldiers at Sde Teiman military base holding a Palestinian detainee, surrounding him with riot shields to block visibility, and then beating him and stabbing him in the rectum with a sharp object. Instead of punishing the five thugs who carried out the torture, Israel has been focused on arresting those who leaked the evidence of their crimes. There are lots of hacked files on DDOSecrets that document their many other war crimes, and you can read the emails where they plotted Gaza genocide together. Crime Minister Netanyahu and his cronies are in a panic because they fear the evidence is going to go public. Let's hope the International Criminal Court convicts them, even if their own country doesn't pursue justice.

Here's a link with the details about the torture incident and their crackdown on the whistleblowers.

Address of the Bookmark: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy0kpd97qqko

Trump Pushes an End to Medical Care for Transgender Youth Nationally

Gary Wright II — Sun, 02 Nov 2025 12:45:20 -0500

Department of Health and Human Services is about to propose new rules to restrict youth gender-affirming care nationwide. It is already banned in 27 states, but the new rules will be nationwide. Let's hope the legal challenges will prevail.

Address of the Bookmark: https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/10/30/nx-s1-5588655/transgender-trump-medicare-m...

Supreme Court: Weimar Redux

Gary Wright II — Sun, 02 Nov 2025 11:38:45 -0500

This comparison of SCOTUS to the Reichsgericht is accurate. Our judicial crisis has led to an autocratic Potemkin Democracy, and I'm not sure how we're going to fix it. If you take a look back at the Supreme Court's actions both in Trump's first term and now his second term, it is scary how quickly our government has collapsed.

Address of the Bookmark: https://thefulcrum.us/justice/weimar-judges-roberts-court-trump-autocracy-judicial-crisis

Red Alert on Trump Autocracy

Gary Wright II — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 18:07:37 -0400

The New York Times Editorial Board has an Autocracy Tracker article about how there are twelve categories of an autocracy, and Trump has completed all twelve. We're quickly losing our rights and our democracy is at stake. The NYT is behind a sign-up/paywall, but there's a link to it in this Daily Beast article that has all the details:

Address of the Bookmark: https://www.thedailybeast.com/democracy-experts-issue-red-alert-on-trump-leading-slide-to-autocracy/

First Amendment Cases

Gary Wright II — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 10:25:38 -0400

Our First Amendment is the most sacred to me, because those freedoms are what allow us to keep all of the others from being taken away. Unfortunately, the courts and Trump have been ripping up the First Amendment in too many cases to name. We are in great danger! Just to give you a taste of what's going on, here are over 150 free speech cases that the ACLU is fighting in court right now (with many more in the works).

Address of the Bookmark: http://aclu.org/court-cases?issue=free-speech

Texas Same-Sex Marriages

Gary Wright II — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 18:42:53 -0400

Texas Supreme Court has revised the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct to clarify that judges who refuse to perform a wedding ceremony "on a sincerely held religious belief" do not violate the state's rules on judicial impartiality. Judges who decline to perform gay weddings won't face any sanctions. On November 7th, SCOTUS is going to take a vote on whether to hear the Kim Davis case which is asking them to reverse the Obergefell decision and end gay marriages.

Address of the Bookmark: https://www.chron.com/culture/religion/article/texas-judges-refuse-gay-weddings-court-case-21124501....

Federal Workers Required to be MAGA for Annual Performance Reviews

Gary Wright II — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 19:14:59 -0400

Authoritarian Trump has sent notice to HHS federal workers that they must produce evidence that they “clearly and demonstrably support implementation” of his agenda. All of our federal agencies are being forced to be MAGA and kneel to the orange MAGA king. Fascism is here folks!

Address of the Bookmark: https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-2674237887/

The USA Has Collapsed and We Need to Talk About What Comes Next

Gary Wright II — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 16:32:02 -0400

All three branches of our government have failed and been taken over by right-wing extremists. Our executive branch is a joke with authoritarian Trump at the helm. Our legislative branch is so dysfunctional they can't even pass a budget to keep the federal government open. They are gerrymandering the voting districts to retain power, and the judicial branch is burning the US Constitution amendment by amendment. The GOP says all of the remarks and merchandise are jokes and just “trolling”, but Trump has no plans of leaving office in 2028. It's time we start talking about what comes next in our country as fascists take away our rights one-by-one. In this article, the author ponders William Appleman Williams' vision for a continental confederation of regional commonwealths. Now that centralized power has taken hold, that next logical step may by nearly impossible to achieve. We need to have a solid plan of what comes next, and this article is a good starting point for discussions.

Address of the Bookmark: https://theraven.substack.com/p/the-us-is-broken-time-to-think-about

Trump Plots "National Emergency" To Take Over Voting

Gary Wright II — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 10:28:53 -0400

Our elections are controlled by the states, but Heather Honey of the DHS "election integrity" team suggested Trump has “some additional powers that don’t exist right now,” and that by using an investigation as a pretext, “we can take these other steps without Congress and we can mandate that states do things and so on.” Fascism is already here folks - get ready!

Address of the Bookmark: https://www.alternet.org/trump-national-emergency/

Voting Integrity and Authoritarianism

Gary Wright II — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 15:43:35 -0400

Trump just vowed to eliminate early voting and mail-in voting (which he doesn't have the power to do). They are also sending "election monitors" to New Jersey and California counties with a high Latino turnout in order to intimidate minority voters. His authoritarian impulses are on full display, and our country is in great danger. Here's a short video (3 min 20 sec) that explains authoritarianism for those not familiar with the history. Please watch!

Address of the Bookmark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNM4WUefkeA

AI System Prompts

Gary Wright II — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 10:48:04 -0400

It's important to know how AI models and agents are programmed so you know how and why they answer you the way they do. When do they lie? What ethical and political boundaries are set? This github repository has the leaked system prompts for all of the major AI systems. To become a pro user of AI, you need to learn how to use these.

Address of the Bookmark: https://github.com/elder-plinius/CL4R1T4S

American Association of University Professors v. Rubio

Gary Wright II — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 16:48:46 -0400

Findings of Fact and Conclusion by Judge William Young found the Trump administration’s policy of arresting, detaining, and deporting noncitizen students and faculty members for their pro-Palestinian advocacy violates the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

Address of the Bookmark: https://knightcolumbia.org/documents/ahmr9jfap2

Project 2025 Applicant Database

Gary Wright II — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 15:58:02 -0400

A redacted dataset of applicants of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, an anti-democratic effort to dismantle large portions of the administrative state under a second Trump Presidency. Applicants to Project 2025 would be tasked with conservative projects such as deregulation, attacks on healthcare particularly for trans and queer people, cutting social services and extreme restrictions on abortion.

Address of the Bookmark: https://ddosecrets.org/article/project-2025-applicant-database

Heritage Foundation

Gary Wright II — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 15:55:34 -0400

Internal emails and donor information which Heritage Foundation posted to a public Amazon server, before falsely claiming to have been breached by hackers.

Address of the Bookmark: https://ddosecrets.org/article/heritage-foundation

Cellphone Surveillance Explained

Gary Wright II — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 12:54:25 -0400

A video on how Stingray/IMSI Catchers work, who uses them, how to detect them, and how to protect yourself. This video was made over 9 years ago, but in 2025 ICE, DHS, and police are using them more than ever against innocent people and without a warrant.

Address of the Bookmark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSQIs4PujCQ

Tor - The onion router browser for anonymity

Gary Wright II — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 17:23:28 -0400

Defend yourself against tracking and surveillance. Circumvent censorship. Use Tor web browser to help protect your online web browsing.

Address of the Bookmark: https://www.torproject.org/

Surveillance Self-Defense - Tips, Tools, and How-To's for Safer Online Communications

Gary Wright II — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 16:50:28 -0400

The Surveillance Self-Defense guide from Electronic Frontier Foundation has tips to keep your online activities safe from government spying, hackers, and other threats. It's a must-read for everyone!

Address of the Bookmark: https://ssd.eff.org/

ICE Tracking Website

Gary Wright II — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 14:38:35 -0400

The ICE List is an open journalistic project aimed at collecting and sharing information that can hold ICE members legally accountable.

Address of the Bookmark: https://icelist.is/