HRC Article:
WASHINGTON — Last night, President Biden signed the FY25 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law, which includes a provision inserted by Speaker Mike Johnson blocking healthcare for the transgender children of military servicemembers. This provision, the first anti-LGBTQ+ federal law enacted since the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, will rip medically necessary care from the transgender children of thousands of military families – families who make incredible sacrifices in defense of the country each and every day. The last anti-LGBTQ+ federal law that explicitly targeted military servicemembers was Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, which went into effect in 1994.
Biden’s press release:
No service member should have to decide between their family’s health care access and their call to serve our Nation.
Agreed, and what we really need is to actually end the duopoly by changing the voting system to a more fairly representative one like ranked-choice or rated, in the first place. Voting third party will just increase the chance of Republicans winning if that third party is left-leaning, and no third party will get a majority vote if you can’t convince the vast majority of Americans to completely change their entire understanding of political parties that they’ve held on to for the past decades.
Just my opinion here, but the primary thing we should focus on is changing voting systems, because that’s what will actually allow us to have a third party be successful in the first place.
Voting systems are extremely hard to change in most states. But progressive candidates usually support voting changes too. So two birds with one stone. It will be a painful few cycles with the Republicans winning. But they have shown they will turn on each other rather fast. And once we show we just aren’t going to vote democrat or republican, momentum will build. Things can’t get much worse.
How exactly do we focus on changing voting systems? Obviously vote for Democrats who support giving power to the people. What if they don’t?
It works best when you start at more local levels.
Many states already require ranked-choice voting, and that makes it easier to get progressive candidates in positions like senator, as well as non-federal state positions. Smaller state elections are much easier to change than the entirety of federal elections, and are often influenced by door knocking campaigns, various charitable organizations, and community organizing.
Hell, this can even be done at the city level. The smaller the elections get, the easier it is to change them. But the more progressive smaller elections get, the easier it is to progressively impact other systems, and then get people in federal positions of power that are open to the idea.
For now, we’re effectively just stuck with what the Democrats are up for if we want any chance at actually having a better voting systems, but working up from local levels can be a very effective way to slowly push the changes on a federal level.