Thread by @AliVelshi

I need your help. Seriously.
I need your help explaining something. Or at least discussing it. And I mean it. Because I’m truly stumped.
It came to a head this week with the indictment. (1/41)

As you know, I read the whole thing, out loud, for a podcast, so that those who didn’t have the time to do so, could hear what is in it. And it *is* damning. (2/41)

Assuming the allegations bear out in a fair trial, it SHOULD end any doubt reasonable people should have about re-electing Donald Trump. And it should convince those same people, wherever they sit on the political spectrum, that the next election isn’t about Right or Left. (3/41)

It isn’t about policy at all. It's just about liberty, equality, and democracy.

For those who think what's unfolding now is JUST about January 6th. It’s not. It’s about everything we SHOULD hold dear as free and caring people. (4/41)

It's about the rights we stand to lose as a country. (5/41)

A woman with a complex or dangerous pregnancy - which is more likely to happen in America than in almost ANY other developed country - faces potential death *AFTER* seeking medical care, because of the fear that doctors and hospitals have about breaking the law, getting… (6/41)

…arrested, losing their license and possibly, going to jail.
In Texas, Amanda Zurawski was denied a life-saving abortion because of the state's strict abortion laws. Three days later she developed a life-threatening infection and went into septic shock. She almost died. (7/41)

This is awfully close to what @MargaretAtwood wrote about in The Handmaids Tale in 1985. They laughed at the implausibility of her fiction then. (8/41)

Imagine a woman or a couple who did not intend to get pregnant - because yes, that still happens in America where explicit sex education is increasingly frowned upon in Republican-led states, and where some Republicans are making contraception harder to get. (9/41)

Imagine wanting an abortion or your wife or daughter or sister wanting an abortion - because they don’t have the money to raise that child in the one major developed nation *without* universal healthcare and with a soaring cost of education. (10/41)

The cost of raising a child until the age of 18 is more than a quarter of a million dollars - according to @BrookingsInst. The median American wage is about $60,000. (11/41)

Yet, 2024 Republican candidates Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Asa Hutchinson and Tim Scott have endorsed the idea of nationwide abortion restrictions. (12/41)

Imagine a nation that imported captured people against their will and kept them enslaved for 157 years, BEFORE it became an independent country, and then fought a civil war 84 years after independence, in which 620,000 people died to END slavery... (13/41)

and then kept Black people from enjoying their full civil and voting rights for ANOTHER *100* years. (14/41)

Imagine all those years in which MOST Black people could not begin to achieve equality in education, housing, employment and certainly not in politics. (15/41)

Imagine a country that has tried to right those wrongs with things as basic as Affirmative Action. Now imagine a Supreme Court perverted by a Republican party bent on making sure that the deeply rooted racial wrongs of America's past go uncorrected. (16/41)

Actually, I’m wrong about that. It is not a party that wants the wrongs uncorrected. It's a party that wants those wrongs UNLEARNED. It’s a party that sometimes tacitly, sometimes explicitly - supports the banning of books. (17/41)

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”…they say. “They” being the Constitution of the United States of America. (18/41)

Tell me how the banning of books fits into this First of Amendments. Imagine your gay son or daughter -- I’m imagining mine -- not having the right to marry whom they love. (19/41)

Because at least one conservative Supreme Court Justice, who sits in the majority on our nation’s highest court, has floated that possibility.
Imagine a child who does not identify with the gender to which they were born. Don’t agree with it, just imagine it. (20/41)

Don’t worry about what bathroom they get to use or on what sports they get to play.
Imagine all the anxiety and confusion and stress that just comes with being a kid today - all the questions about fundamental identity. (21/41)

Add to that the stress of wondering if your body is betraying you. Those children are being persecuted TODAY, and it will only get worse. (22/41)

Already, if you are trans in America, your likelihood of being bullied, attacked, and murdered are substantially statistically higher than that of the average American. (23/41)

Trans people are over 4-times more likely to be the victims of violent crime than cisgender people - according to @UCLA.

And what about your vote, your belief that your vote matters, and your faith that your vote will be counted? (24/41)

That is the basis upon which our republic is grounded. (25/41)

The leading contender for @GOP actively worked to undermine that core belief, despite knowing there was no outcome-determinative fraud in the 2020 election; one his own handpicked expert said was ‘the safest in American history.’ An expert who was fired for saying it. (26/41)

@GOP And it’s not just the leading contender. Only four of his Republican opponents have supported his prosecution to undermine this right. Nikki Haley said, ‘we’ve got to move forward,’ which is a popular sentiment I hear often. (27/41)

@GOP We cannot “move forward” from consideration for the rights of our people.

All of this is on the line.

Democracy is on the line.

(28/41)

@GOP I’ve heard all of the criticisms of Joe Biden and the democrats. That he, at 80, is a whopping 3 years older than Donald Trump. (29/41)

@GOP That he seems confused.

Unless of course picking up the Humpty-Dumpty that was NATO and putting it back on the wall, to help Ukraine fight off an attack from an adversary 28-times its size, is confused. (30/41)

@GOP I’ve heard that he’s focused on being woke but not on the economy, despite 31 straight months of job gains, ALL of the jobs lost in the pandemic recovered, plus 5-million more, inflation down to a level that most global economists believe is sustainable… (31/41)

@GOP …a stock market at its highest levels - in history - and unemployment at its lowest levels - in history. As his predecessor used to like to say, ‘more Americans are working now than ever before.’ (32/41)

@GOP You know what else we have more of than ever before?

Heat.

(33/41)

@GOP And yet, another cable station - I won’t call it a news station -- which is a favorite of Republicans has been airing segments for weeks about the so-called ‘climate scam.’ (34/41)

@GOP Critical thinking humans are desperate to find solutions to “Global Boiling” and they are still discussing whether or not it’s a thing. Donald Trump famously said in office... (35/41)

@GOP "We should be focused on magnificently clean and healthy air and not distracted by the expensive hoax that is global warming!"

Magnificently clean air? How's that working out for us?

All of this is fact.

(36/41)

@GOP In fact, I invite all the Right-wing shows that like to monitor *this* show for accuracy to take every word of what I just said and put it into ChatGPT or whatever counts as research these days, and check me for accuracy.

But that’s not my real ask.

(37/41)

@GOP The real ask is: How do I discuss this with people who don’t listen? With people who don’t watch this show or this network.

(38/41)

@GOP Who read the nonsense about ‘both sides’ and who think it’s Biden, not the GOP, who are ‘weaponizing government.’ How do I convince them that they are inextricably linked to the rights of us all. (39/41)

@GOP How do I convince them not to vote their democracy away, not to vote the rights& history& futures of women, gay people, trans children, Black people, the kids who just want to read books - not to vote their rights away, because they want less regulation and lower taxes?

(40/41)

@GOP Help me with this.

(41/41)