u/sleep-exe

I've been protesting/advocating/etc. since February last year and am almost completely drained. I know this is what they want, but I feel like I've run myself dry. I want to stay in it, but I can hardly even bring myself to report/share important news now. I know the movement doesn't depend on me, but I don't want to drop out especially with midterms on the way.

Anyone else have experience with this? How did you cope/stay engaged?

July 2, 2026 - Fulltext

Right-wing media figures including Steve Bannon, John Solomon, and Cleta Mitchell appear to be weaving together a narrative about interference by China in US elections to justify a national emergency to curtail voting rights

Over the last several weeks, the outlines of a plot have begun to emerge that could signal how President Donald Trump, along with MAGA media figures and activists, could attempt to severely curtail voting rights under the pretext of declaring a national emergency posed by China.

The details of the scheme remain publicly vague, and may not yet come to pass, but the short version looks something like this: First, the White House would declassify and release documents purporting to show foreign interference in U.S. elections, especially by the Chinese Communist Party.

Next, Trump would use that supposed “proof” of a stolen election to declare a national emergency, thereby — according to those pushing this idea — giving him extraordinarypowers over the upcoming midterms. That move would serve as a way to advance the anti-voting rights measures in the SAVE America Act, like forcing voters to prove their citizenship, without having to actually pass the law — which Congress, so far at least, appears reluctant to do.

The main players here come not only from the fever swamp backwaters of MAGA media, but also from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the White House. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon is a central node, attempting to advance the operation on his War Room podcast, aired on right-wing network Real America’s Voice, long a major source of misinformation about the 2020 election.

Bannon’s RAV colleague John Solomon, whose role in the plot appears to be running the declassification effort, was recently appointed to a White House “task force” into supposed election integrity. Solomon was Media Matters’ Misinformer of the Year in 2019 for his role in laundering misinformation about the Bidens and Ukraine through his opinion columns.

Also in the mix is Peter Schweizer, who founded the Government Accountability Institute with Bannon and has moved from spreading misinformation about the Clintons to claiming that China is taking over the United States by exploiting birthright citizenship.

Then there’s Cleta Mitchell, a right-wing lawyer who was on the January 2021 callwhen Trump urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough ballots to tip the state his way. She referenced Schweizer in a June 20 appearance on War Room, positively paraphrasing an argument he made on his podcast acknowledging that much of the voting activity he wants to suppress is actually legal.

“Peter Schweizer put it pretty well last week in a podcast that he does with Eric Eggers, and the question they posed is: If fraud is made — if election fraud is made legal, is it still fraud?” Mitchell asked. “Because what's happened in California over the last decade is that the far-left Democrat, socialist, Marxists, communists have completely upended every vestige of election integrity.” (Bannon had teed her up by referencing the Los Angeles mayoral primary, claiming without evidence: “They stole it right in front of our face and laughed at us the entire time.")

Mitchell is supported by a loose array of election deniers who have called on Trump to issue an executive order to seize “king-like powers” over voting systems, supported by the national emergency decree.

Bill Pulte, the newly installed acting DNI, and his recently appointed chief of staff, former Republican National Committee official Christina Norton, also appear to figure heavily into the plan. On June 20, Bannon said Pulte’s role at DNI is “to get to the bottom of the 2020 stolen election.” Ten days later, Bannon described Norton as “one of the top election fraud people in all of the RNC” and said Pulte is “signaling where he's going on this” with her hiring, adding that “my understanding is that there is going to be real revelations about the stealing of the 2020 election."

The same day, NBC News reported that Solomon’s task force “is gathering thousands of pages of documents from U.S. intelligence agencies, with plans to declassify some of them, so President Donald Trump can amplify new accusations about past elections.” In describing his unpaid role at the White House, Solomon said he will be releasing “some documents, some secrets you should know about when it comes to weaponization, election integrity, other things."

Solomon’s recent media footprint offers clues about what he is likely looking to find, declassify, and present — possibly out of context. The subhead of a May 6 article of Solomon’s states: “The evidence continues to stack up that the U.S. intel community sought to downplay China's actions in 2020 as Trump sought reelection.” Then, during a May 19 interview, he said: “We do know the FBI had grave suspicions that China was trying to rig the election, probably with help from people on the ground, to help Joe Biden specifically."

The Supreme Court’s narrow June 30 decision to protect birthright citizenship could turbocharge the Bannon-Solomon-Pulte scheme, in part by providing fodder for anti-Chinese sentiment on the right. On Solomon’s website, Just The News, an article about the birthright citizenship case referenced Schweizer’s book and hyped the supposed China menace.

Michelle Mittelstadt of the Migration Policy Institute told FactCheck.org that “birth tourism is a very small occurrence – of the 3.6 million U.S. births annually, a tiny fraction is due to foreign women who are not regularly domiciled in the U.S. coming here for the purpose of giving birth to secure U.S. citizenship for their child.”

And as the American Immigration Council’s Dara Lind noted: “Consulates have a ton of discretion under existing law to deny someone a visa. And suspicion of birth tourism _has_ served as a reason to deny visas in the past. If the problem is insufficient enforcement, good news, you can solve that problem without changing the law or Constitution!”

Bannon stated plainly on June 29 that Solomon’s “task force” and “also Pulte” would be central to creating a “predicate” for the declaration of a national emergency and subsequent executive order achieving the anti-voting rights goals of the SAVE America Act.

On June 30, Bannon interviewed another of his RAV colleagues, Wayne Allyn Root, who further elaborated what a national emergency declaration could look like.

“Stop talking about the SAVE Act and do a national security emergency for elections, which is the SAVE Act, which contains everything that's in the SAVE Act, Steve, and more and more,” Root said.

Just days earlier, on June 24, Trump canceled a signing ceremony for a bipartisan housing bill to pressure Congress to pass the stalled out SAVE America Act, which he referred to as a “National Emergency."

The “predicate” Bannon is hoping to manufacture could also be for other election initiatives the administration is working on — such as trying to force courts to give the administration access to various state voter rolls — an issue the administration is facing significant resistance to.

Whether this harebrained plot congeals into an active conspiracy to subvert the midterms remains to be seen, but given that Trump has already tried to overturn one election it would be a mistake not to take these rumblings seriously. There may indeed be an emergency — it’s just not the one that Bannon and company are talking about.

Preface: I live in the US and all this is reflective of my experiences here. Been in the church 16 years.

There is nothing that justifies the Church’s historical and current treatment of LGBT people. I’m not going write a dissertation here and cite every source (this is something I’ve spent years reading/thinking about), but the long and short of it is that they pronounce a moral judgment on something a person has no control over. This is no different than the Mormon idea that darker skinned folks are further away from God than lighter skinned folks. The OC has zero room to judge the Mormons on this subject (not defending Mormonism here as it is still a cult and untrue).

They can try to dance around it/soften all they want but in practical terms it’s all the same. Maybe the church fathers were more nuanced. Great. But thats not what we see today, with a few exceptions.

I recently attended a Pride event with a poster that said ‘I love you’ on it. Because I knew the damn OC church wouldn’t say it, so I did. I 100% got more interactions than the dipshit with the megaphone and wearing 3 different crosses bludgeoning them over the head with guilt and shame. I also was much happier than him.

They change the meaning of words to fit their world view. Suddenly love isn’t love. Rest isn’t rest. Natural is no longer natural because of discoveries (dinosaurs, homosexuality in the animal kingdom) that don’t obey the rules/dogma/worldview that the church has defined as natural.

If you need to change the meaning of words to fit your view, your view might be bullshit or you’re using the wrong words and intentionally misleading people.

Now we’re seeing the rise of (white) Christian nationalism, the boundaries between church and state eroding, active attempts at censorship, and open oppression of minorities and women and pretty much every person at my parish who said they’d defend the poor, the oppressed and the weak are doing fuck all while the loudest and most obnoxious of us are going along with it.

I’ve tried to untangle these feelings again and again within the church but get met pretty much every time with ‘how dare you question the church’, ‘no ones entitled to justice’ type shit.

And the strict hierarchical structure that makes it all but makes impossible to hold clergy accountable. I wrote a post about it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/exorthodox/s/POq9nTg6vG

The different jurisdictions trying to divorce their connections with each other when they do evil shit and get found out. ‘The Orthodox Church is undivided.’ Well the Russian church is cool with bombing Ukraine and murdering homosexuals. ‘Oh thats just the RUSSIAN CHURCH doing RUSSIAN CHURCH things. They’re in schism, blah blah blah. ‘ Then the church IS divided.

I still believe in Jesus. Or maybe I should say I *want* to believe. I *want* to believe in God’s love. I *want* to believe in God’s compassion. But I so very rarely see it among those who would call themselves God’s chosen and members of the true Church. There’s only so many excuses about human fallibility in the church before you have to wonder why the true Church wouldn’t have better fruit.

I might go back for friends. Or for Jesus. But I’m pretty much tuned out.

Maybe it’s just internal bias, but over the last year or so I’ve noticed takes and opinions I’d post that would’ve done very well in the past (posted in the same communities and feature similar content), get more and more downvotes.

I know there’s probably multiple explanations for this but I’m wondering if anyone else has noticed it too?

Over the last month Ive either witnessed or heard about a few anti LGBT hate crimes here in Chicago and have been pretty depressed and angry about the direction our country seems to be headed.

Yesterday was my first time at a Pride parade and I just wanted to say that I had a lot of fun and it gave me a lot of hope! I want everyone to know how amazing they are and that they are loved no matter what this fuck ass government tries to push.

You all are amazing and I love you and love how resilient this community is! 🏳️‍🌈

The FCC wants to tell The View how and whom to schedule as guests based on the equal time rule for news broadcasts, and has threatened to pull their license.

Go to: fcc.gov/ecfs/filings/express

Type 26-124 in the Proceeding field, fill in your name and address, write a brief comment, and submit.

You will need the 4 digit extension of your zip code, which you can look up here: https://tools.usps.com/zip-code-lookup.htm

Deadline July 6 for The View. Deadline July 29 for local stations. Do it anyway. That is exactly what they are counting on you not doing.

Hi folks,

I’ve seen a lot of discussions and talk about the potential merger of Paramount and WB.

I’m pretty plugged into the activist community and thought it might be helpful to post some resources to help join the fight.

Do one. Do all of them. Do whatever you can do because even the small actions matter. More importantly spread and share these resources widely! Lots of people are feeling anxious regarding the merger, and taking action helps.

On to the resources:

1. https://blockthemerger.com

Sign the letter, tell your story, donate, and get resources and contacting your AG about the merger.

Also, scroll down to see a list of organizations supporting the movement (NOT the merger) and contact them.

2. https://www.freepress.net/get-involved/tell-state-attorneys-general-block-paramountwbd-merger

Another site to contact your AG, but also has resources for testimonies, court filings, and activist toolkits.

This isn’t exhaustive, but they are the most prominent efforts I’ve come across addressing this issue.

Hope this is helpful!

My parents came to out to see me today and we were walking back to my apartment after visiting the beach. My mom is severely handicapped so we were walking pretty slow. Out in front of us is a local meth banshee ranting a raving and he begins to target this gay couple walking some distance in front of us with name calling, slurs, etc.

Ive lived in the city 10 years and I know the best thing to do is to ignore them, but I could feel myself getting pissed and wanting to put this guy on his ass.

My parents being present kinda stopped me but I kept looking back after we passed him to make sure he wasn’t following. I threw a couple middle fingers his way but I wanted to apologize for the dipshit even more.

Like I know the dude was out of his mind and would insult anyone and picked the easiest target, but part of me wishes I would’ve done something because it pisses me off so much and I felt so bad for the couple just trying to enjoy a lovely day.

Fuck homophobes. Im so sorry for the shit LGBT people have to endure.