Beer Is Transgender Now, Because The Money Is In Transgender Beer

[Daily Kos Morning Roundup]( A morning roundup of worthy pundit and news reads, brought to you by Daily Kos. [Click here to read the full web version.]( - [Beer Is Transgender Now, Because The Money Is In Transgender Beer]( Beer Is Transgender Now, Because The Money Is In Transgender Beer, Oliver Willis, Substack This Is Capitalism At Work To be very clear, the Anheuser–Busch companies do not give a single damn about LGBTQ rights. That is, sure, maybe some of the executives personally care about these civil rights matters as part of their personal consciousnesses, but the corporate entity that sells Budweiser does not give a single damn. What Anheuser–Busch does care about is making money, and that’s why the company has allied themselves with a transgender influencer and has a marketing campaign professing support for transgender and gay equality. The company’s decision is the latest in a long line of corporate decisions in this direction, not because corporate America is “woke,” but because corporate America is in the business of making money and there isn’t a whole lot of money (comparatively) in being bigots. - [A rural Texas county just blinked on library closures. Pressure worked.]( A rural Texas county just blinked on library closures. Pressure worked., Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent, The Washington Post But one of the big surprises of these sagas has been outbreaks of resistance to book purges in the reddest places, and here again, some locals dissented. One said: “We have to be a community that values knowledge.” Another fretted: “We are all over the media, and this is making us look pretty bad as a community.” It turns out that even in an overwhelmingly conservative place (Donald Trump won nearly 80 percent of Llano’s votes in 2020), plenty of people value free expression. Many Republicans aren’t on board with the right’s censorship agenda. And these folks can organize. - [Our readers and activists donating a few dollars at a time is what keeps Daily Kos operating. Can you support Daily Kos and donate $3?]( - [Rising political tide of young adults, Gen Z]( Rising political tide of young adults, Gen Z, Christina Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette The expulsion of two Black state Democratic lawmakers in their 20s by the predominantly white, Republican-controlled Tennessee House in late March ignited backlash across the country. Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson were ousted for rallying in the House with local activists and student protesters in support of stricter gun controls following a school shooting in Nashville that left six dead. Both men were voted back into office last week. What started as a modest gun-control protest outside the Tennessee state house erupted into a national cause after Jones and Pearson characterized their removal as an effort to silence Gen Z voices, disempower communities of color, and weaken democracy. The incident is yet another example of the political potency of Generation Z, the 70 million young Americans born between 1997 and 2012 (aged 11-25). Since 2018, members of Gen Z have become politically engaged on issues like gun control, the environment, reproductive health, education, and racial justice, and, increasingly, running for office. - [Gun absolutists don’t trust democracy because they know they’re losing]( Gun absolutists don’t trust democracy because they know they’re losing, E.J. Dionne Jr., The Washington Post It comes down to a variant of the old Maoist slogan: All liberty grows out of the barrel of a gun. When Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani told a White House rally before the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, “Let’s have trial by combat,” he was speaking for a sentiment that runs deep in the gun rights movement. A particularly dramatic example of how opposition to gun regulation is increasingly linked to efforts to undermine democracy itself: the Tennessee House Republicans’ recent vote to expel two duly elected legislators for protesting against the body’s inaction on guns after the Nashville school massacre. It was no accident that the two since-reinstated representatives, Democrats Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson, are not only both young and Black but also represent urban areas — Jones is from Nashville, Pearson from Memphis. Republican legislators, in Tennessee as elsewhere, regularly diminish the power of the big metro areas through gerrymandering and state overrides of local control. - [Show your support for progressive, independent news with a Daily Kos t-shirt—they're union decorated and made in the USA! Click here to get yours]( - [Remembering Jackie Robinson]( Remembering Jackie Robinson, Jonathan Weiler, Substack Robinson also became embroiled in the larger politics of the country in a way that would remain part of his public image for the rest of his life. In 1949, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), the notorious entity that hunted for subversives in American society, asked Robinson to testify against another Black icon, the singer and political activist, Paul Robeson. Robeson was a political radical, an outspoken critic of the injustices of the American system, including in its treatment of Black people. Earlier in 1949, he'd spoke to a Soviet-sponsored symposium in Paris. An Associated Press story misquoted him as saying that Black people could never join any armed American conflict against the Soviet Union, after which Robeson was vilified as an enemy of the United States. Robinson did not share Robeson's politics. He grew up in a Republican household and remained one for most of his life. His parents gave him the middle name Roosevelt in honor of Teddy Roosevelt. But Robinson also knew that he was being used by HUAC to denounce Robeson because of his race. And Jackie was intimately familiar with some of America's deficiencies. He told HUAC that if Robeson made the comments he did, that "sounded very silly to me" and rejected the notion that Robeson spoke for Black people in general. - [The GOP's Rejection of America]( The GOP's Rejection of America, Steven Beschloss, Substack Over and over, Republicans ignore voters’ concerns. This deeply cynical behavior will not succeed. In a disturbing bit of news on Easter weekend, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced his plan to pardon Daniel Perry, who less than 24 hours earlier on Friday was convicted of murdering 28-year-old Garrett Foster at a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest in Austin... Rather than such news fueling our anger, I would suggest we may be at a turning point—that the accumulation of bad behavior and the possible response to it offers a useful roadmap for those of us who value democracy and justice and seek change. From Texas to Tennessee, to Wisconsin to Florida and the U.S. Supreme Court, elected Republicans and their acolytes have made clear their disinterest in representing the will of the people and serving justice—and more, that they are determined to reject the majority, no matter how corrupt doing so requires them to be, in pursuit of their self-serving interests. Consider a few of the outcomes this week and the responses. ICYMI: Popular stories from the past week you won't want to miss: - [Witness calls ‘b-------’ on Trump’s claims people were ‘crying’ at arraignment]( - [Trump is totally not freaking out about impending NYC deposition]( - [California City Council meeting explodes after racist police texting scandal breaks]( Want even more Daily Kos? Check out our podcasts: - [The Brief: A one-hour weekly political conversation hosted by Markos Moulitsas and Kerry Eleveld]( - [The Downballot: Daily Kos' podcast devoted to downballot elections. New episodes every Thursday]( Want to write your own stories? [Log in]( or [sign up]( to post articles and comments on Daily Kos, the nation's largest progressive community. Follow Daily Kos on [Facebook](, [Twitter](, and [Instagram](. Thanks for all you do, The Daily Kos team Daily Kos Relies on Readers Like You We don't have billionaire backers like some right-wing media outlets. 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