Holy moly. I wouldn’t have guessed this was even possible.

In about a week, a Massachusetts woman is expected to reach the eastern end of Wisconsin’s Ice Age Trail, becoming the first female hiker to finish all 11 national scenic trails in the United States. 

Arlette Laan, whose trail name is “Apple Pie,” had about 200 miles left of the 1,200-mile-long trail as of last week. Once she reaches the trail’s eastern terminus in Sturgeon Bay, she’ll make history. 

Laan’s said “a lot of stubbornness” has helped her complete this journey, which began in 2003 when she hiked the Pacific Crest Trail. 

She’s now done it.

Appalachian Trail: 2,190 miles

State(s): ME, NH, VT, MA, CT, NY, NJ, PA, MD, WV, VA, TN, NC, GA

Arizona Trail 800 miles

State(s): AZ

Continental Divide Trail: 3,100 miles

State(s): MT, ID, WY, CO, NM

Florida Trail: 1,300 miles

State(s): FL

Ice Age Trail: 1,000 miles

State(s): WI

Natchez: 65 miles

State(s): MS

New England Trail: 215 miles

State(s): CT, MA

North Country Trail: 4,600 miles

State(s): MI, MN, ND, NY, OH, PA, VT, WI

Pacific Crest Trail: 2,650 miles

State(s): CA, OR, WA

Pacific Northwest Trail: 1,200 milesState(s): ID, MT, WA

Potomac Heritage Trail: 710 miles

State(s): DC, MD, PA, VA

That is 17,866 miles of trail this woman has walked!

Blimey.

JKR going all-in again.

Media Matters did a roundup of right-wing media fussing about Mentioning Slavery At Monticello.

The right-wing media ecosystem is expressing outrage following a New York Post story that Monticello, the estate of Thomas Jefferson, is teaching visitors that the principal author of the Declaration of Independence enslaved hundreds of people.

Note that the outrage isn’t because it’s not true. The outrage is because we’re just supposed to shut up about it. But why should we do that?

The conservative freakout seemingly started with a July 4 tweet from Jeffrey A. Tucker, who complained of “aggressive political messaging” at Monticello. Tucker, who is the president of the Brownstone Institute — formed in May 2021 to oppose COVID-19 precautions — also wrote a column the same day for the conspiracy theory website The Epoch Times complaining about his visit there. The New York Post picked up the story and interviewed Tucker for its July 9 article titled “Monticello is going woke — and trashing Thomas Jefferson’s legacy in the process.”

But Jefferson is the one who “trashed his legacy” by enslaving people.

Fox News devoted multiple cable segments, a digital article, and a podcast episode to expressing outrage over the estate teaching this history: 

On the July 10 edition of Fox & Friends Weekend, co-host Pete Hegseth said that the “people behind the foundation that runs it [are] all leftists” and that “they’re committed to telling the worst story of America.” Co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy replied, “This is a diabolical plan on their part to populate these positions that have influence over how America tells its story.” 

On July 11, Fox & Friends First also aired a segment highlighting the Post story, featuring Carol Swain, who has previously defended white nationalists. During the interview, she claimed Monticello is trying “to destroy” Jefferson’s legacy. 

But this is his legacy. It’s their legacy. It’s the story of this country – a combination of revolutionary ideals and ruthless exploitation, removal, genocide, entrenched racism, imperialist wars. That’s it, that’s the legacy. Throwing a big hairy blanket over it can’t change that.

It’s a week! Another week! I didn’t know! I can’t keep up. There are so many of them, along with days and months: it’s impossible to keep up.

Are those the non-binary colors? Yellow white purple black? I didn’t know there were non-binary colors. What do they mean? Why those colors in particular?

Is it true that we don’t know “loads” about what non-binary lives are like? Is there anything to know? Are non-binary lives as such any different from other lives? If so, why? What is it about calling yourself “non-binary” that causes your life to be different from the lives of “binary” people?

Why does anyone need to take any steps to “include” them? What reason is there to think they’re not already “included”?

So many questions, so few answers.

Here’s a bit of Bow-tie Guy telling Fox News how sad it is that Monticello guides talk about slavery instead of Jefferson’s interest in architecture.

Jefferson was an interesting guy, no question, but one of the most profoundly interesting things about him (in my view) was the yawning canyon between his revolutionary rhetoric and his utterly commonplace Southern gentleman exploitation of enslaved human beings.

Fox News is outraged that the people at Monticello inform the visitors about slavery. It’s supposed to be a secret!!!

Today’s little Fox News gem was a segment on what a huge bummer it is to visit Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello these days, what with all the focus on slavery and what not at what was built as a slave plantation.

A bow-tied, bespectacled guest for the segment was billed hilariously in one chyron as a “recent Monticello visitor.” Turns out there’s a little more to the story.

The guest was one Jeffrey Tucker. Who?

…

Tucker is a former Ron Paul acolyte who has worked with Lew Rockwell in various capacities, including at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. But there’s a bit more to it than that. A 20-year-old report by the Southern Poverty Law Center on the Neo-Confederate movement identified Tucker and Rockwell as founding members of the League of the South:

Both Rockwell and institute research director Jeffrey Tucker are listed on the racist League of the South’s Web page as founding members — and both men deny their membership. Tucker has written for League publications, and many League members have taught at the institute’s seminars and given presentations at its conferences.

Cool cool cool. Bow tie dude with longstanding roots in Yay Racism Yay Slavery does a turn on Fox disguised as a random tourist randomly touring Monticello home of random Thomas Jefferson who randomly impregnated random slave Sally Hemings who was randomly his wife’s half-sister. Why should the Monticello people talk about such things when they’re so very random and meaningless?

Tucker’s star turn on today’s Fox segment came just a few days after he served as a named source for a New York Post story headlined “Monticello is going woke — and trashing Thomas Jefferson’s legacy in the process.”

Yes that’s definitely Monticello’s doing; Jefferson had nothing to do with it.

The ACLU has an article (which it shared on Facebook) by a clinic escort on why abortion rights matter.

Last week, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, upending 50 years of legal precedent and sparking protests across the country. It’s easy to think Roe fell with the stroke of Justice Samuel Alito’s pen, a legal battle lost in a courtroom. But as a clinic escort for the last decade, I’ve watched the fight for abortion access play out in real time on the sidewalks in front of abortion clinics in Missouri and Illinois.

As a volunteer clinic escort, it’s my job to help patients get from their car door to the clinic door safely; to provide a shoulder to lean on and a gentle, welcome distraction. It might seem strange that a person would need accompaniment when walking such a short distance across a parking lot, but patients seeking health care from these clinics endure a lot of hostility in just a few yards. Anti-abortion protesters do everything they can to discourage patients from getting the care they need: yelling, pleading, praying, and even posing as clinic employees at the front gate of the clinic, next to a sandwich board that says “Check in here.”

Well done her for doing the work (her name is Mariceli Alegria), but you know what’s coming. The answer is no: the word “women” is never used to name the people who need abortion rights. Not even once. It does appear once in the article, but not to name abortion-needers.

The first time I encountered the roar of anti-abortion protesters outside a clinic, I wasn’t an escort. I was going to a Planned Parenthood in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, where I’m from, for STI testing and birth control. The clinic I went to didn’t even provide abortions; those were few and far between, even 11 years ago. Still, there they were on the sidewalk — little old ladies, holding signs and angrily yelling. I didn’t understand why they were screaming at me just for being there, just for getting birth control. It’s worth noting that those women were white, while the Rio Grande Valley is almost 94 percent Hispanic/Latino.

That’s it, the only mention. Apparently it’s ok to use it to name the villains, but their targets are “patients” and “people” only. “Women” is a forbidden word, even at this moment when we’ve lost a crucial right.

The ACLU does this even as it emphasizes the importance of saying the words.

There’s also something very simple that we should all be doing in this moment: When talking about abortion, say the word “abortion.” Shying away from the word only perpetuates stigma. No one should feel shame for seeking abortion care, but that’s exactly what those protesters outside the clinics are trying to do. They’re not just trying to prevent patients from getting to their appointments — they’re trying to perpetuate abortion stigma that enables bad policies, harmful rhetoric, and misinformation. Exacerbating abortion stigma was a key tactic anti-abortion actors used that has led to this terrifying ruling from the Supreme Court. But we don’t have to stand for it. Abortion is health care, and we should talk about it like we would any other kind of health care we seek.

Absolutely, and you know what else we should talk about as we would any other kind of human being who needs rights? Women, that’s what.

In the almost decade that I’ve been escorting patients, I’ve occasionally encountered folks coming from other states. But in more recent years, and especially in the last six months after Texas passed SB 8, it’s become much more common. Now, those numbers are going to climb even higher, as people get pushed out of states that ban abortion and are forced to travel long distances for care. Regardless of how far people have to travel, Pro-Choice Missouri clinic escorts will continue to support patients in Illinois, now and always. I don’t get the chance to say this to patients while I’m escorting them into the clinic but I want them, and all abortion supporters, to know this: We love you, and we aren’t going anywhere.

We love you, but we’re for damn sure not going to use the word that names you. We’re going to call you folks and people and patients, but never ever ever EVER that word that has now been reserved for men in skirts. Mwah.

NASA has released the first image from the Hubble telescope.

On Monday, July 11, President Joe Biden released one of the James Webb Space Telescope’s first images in a preview event at the White House in Washington. NASA, in partnership with ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency), will release the full set of Webb’s first full-color images and spectroscopic data during a televised broadcast beginning at 10:30 a.m. EDT (14:30 UTC) on Tuesday, July 12, from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Learn more about how to watch.

This first image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. Known as Webb’s First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is overflowing with detail. Thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared – have appeared in Webb’s view for the first time. This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground.

Neil deGrasse Tyson said on Facebook:

The deepest view ever obtained in the universe. Filled with galaxies. The several spiked objects are local stars in our own Milky Way. Ignore them. Everything else is an entire galaxy unto itself. Notice that many distort into arcs. These are distant galaxies that reveal the curvature of spacetime caused by the gravity of a cluster of galaxies in image’s center.

Ignore those pesky local stars elbowing their way into the shot.

Mole at the door has the sarcastic version.

Jill Suttie posted an article a few days ago on how access to abortion improves women’s well-being.

Though people may argue over whether this ruling is sound or not, it likely spells disaster for women’s health and well-being. That’s because research suggests women who have the right to choose whether or not to give birth are happier, healthier, and more economically stable than those who don’t. And their children benefit, too, by having a mother who can afford to nurture and provide for them better.

What a surprise, eh, that women who get to have some control over their lives are better off than women who don’t?

Item one is better mental health.

Many women are made to feel guilty about seeking an abortion; at times, the circumstances surrounding their choice can involve stress and negative emotions. Does getting the abortion hurt their mental health? Not in most cases. In general, women who get a desired abortion tend to have better mental health—even in the short term—than their peers who are denied one.

Maybe because if you don’t want to have a baby, at a particular time or at all, then being forced to have one will make you feel bad: thwarted, coerced, pushed around. Just a wild guess.

Item two is better physical health.

While some have argued that abortions have health risks, those pale in comparison to giving birth. Legal, medically supervised abortions are relatively safe for women. If we don’t keep them that way, women may seek to abort unwanted pregnancies on their own, putting themselves at greater risk for health complications.

Meanwhile pregnancy and giving birth are rough on the body, and genuinely risky. Stats have improved enormously since the bad old days but it’s still risky.

Read onhttps://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/four_ways_access_to_abortion_improves_womens_well_being.

This guy (who has half a million followers) –

There is nothing even slightly “respectful” about telling a woman to “fall back” and let the men take over. (There’s also nothing respectful about telling women to support men like Matt Walsh – who is a conservative Catholic who opposes abortion rights.) It’s all the more insulting when the woman in question is a philanthropic self-made millionaire (former billionaire demoted because she gave so much money away).

Telling us to fall back – or shut up or go away or sit down or do the laundry – is what this is all about. We’re not going to fall back when men in skirts tell us to and we’re not going to fall back when godbothering sports commentators tell us to either. You fall back.

From The Telegraph:

The Church of England has said that there is “no official definition” of a woman.

Did it say anything about an official definition of a man?

Senior bishops have insisted that until recently, the answer to questions such as what constitutes a woman “were thought to be self-evident”. However, now “additional care” is needed.

Let’s talk about more official definitions. What’s the official definition of “God”? How about “soul”? Sin? Faith? Prayer? Miracle? Magic? Voodoo?

The stance comes as the institution struggles to remain relevant and progressive amid declining congregant numbers and in an increasingly secular society.

So they try to be progressive by telling women that men are also women?

Rev Angela Berners-Wilson, who became the first woman to be ordained as a priest in England in 1994, and who has recently retired, told The Telegraph in response to the Bishop of Europe’s answer: “I’m not totally happy with it. I mean, I do think certain things like men can’t have babies just to say the complete obvious thing.”

The completely obvious thing and the very consequential thing. The fact that women and only women can have babies is one of the reasons women are so ferociously monitored and controlled. The job is crucial, therefore it’s necessary to treat women as inferior and enslaved. Another way to look at it of course would be to say therefore it’s necessary to treat women as valuable and irreplaceable. That wouldn’t be as much fun though.

“But I think we need to be very sensitive and maybe we need to reexamine our boundaries.”

Very sensitive how though? Being very sensitive toward men who call themselves women entails being very insensitive toward women who know that men are men. Why is it only the men who get the extra sensitivity?

Jayne Ozanne, synod member and founder of the Ozanne Foundation in 2017 – which works with religious organisations around the world to tackle prejudice and discrimination of LGBTQI people – described the question as “passive aggressive”.

She said: “Mr Kendy’s question is sadly a prime example of a passive aggressive question that is designed to upset the LGBT+ community and particularly the trans members in our midst.

Speaking of passive-aggressive – there is no “LGBT+” community. The T is not part of the LGB.

And the question is not designed to “upset” anyone: it’s designed to find out who still knows what women are and what men are, and who is pretending to think it’s all a matter of self-definition.

Dr Jane Hamlin, president of Beaumont Society charity, which supports trans people, added: “I am puzzled why some people are so obsessed with defining ‘woman’. Why might this be an issue for the Church of England?

“Is it that women should be treated more favourably or less favourably? Why does it matter to the Church of England whether someone is a woman or not a woman? Surely it only matters to the individual themselves.”

Unless you’re in a hospital or a prison or running for office or trying to break into a field dominated by men or competing in a sport or…………..

And we’re back! WordPress tripped over its own feet but sainted webmaster fixed the problem.

Pink News tells us:

A gay couple are suing a California fertility clinic after they requested a male embryo but ended up having a baby girl.

Well they didn’t “have” a baby girl did they. Having a baby=giving birth. They didn’t do that; someone else did it for them. They paid a woman to gestate the baby and push it out.

According to CBSNews, Albert and Anthony Saniger were determined to be fathers to two sons. Before the couple wed in 2013 they had already chosen the names of their future kids and even created Gmail accounts for them.

The HRC Fertility clinic and fertility specialist Dr Bradford A Kolb reportedly assured the couple that they could make this happen. The couple were explicitly clear that they wanted a male embryo implanted in their surrogate.

Not just implicitly clear, mind you: explicitly clear.

Also “implanted in their surrogate” is a peculiarly ugly phrase.

In May 2020, the couple provided their sperm, and after two unsuccessful attempts their surrogate became pregnant in December. She gave birth to a baby girl in 2021.

The couple’s lawsuit claims that the fertility clinic “negligently, recklessly, and/or intentionally transferred a female embryo to the Sanigers’ gestational carrier.”

More ugly language: “their surrogate,” “the Sanigers’ gestational carrier.” Pink News talks about this woman as if she were an appliance.

At any rate, as many people are pointing out, the guys could just assign the baby male: problem solved.

Let’s play will he won’t he again.

Steve Bannon, the onetime strategist to Donald Trump who was involved in the former president’s efforts to invalidate his defeat in the 2020 election, has opened discussions with the House January 6 select committee about testifying to the inquiry into the Capitol attack.

I don’t see why he gets to open discussions. I don’t see why they don’t just tell him to bring his ass in for questioning.

Bannon signalled in an email to the select committee, first obtained by the Guardian, that he was prepared to initiate discussions about a time and place for an interview, after Trump said in a letter he would waive executive privilege if he reached an agreement to testify.

If who reached an agreement? Bannon, I guess. But more to the point, Trump has no “executive privilege” to waive.

The email broadly reiterated Bannon’s legal defense that he was previously unable to comply with a subpoena from the panel because at the time, in a claim that has been disputed, the former president had asserted executive privilege over his testimony.

Yes “disputed” is putting it mildly. Trump has no such privilege, he’s just making shit up as he always does.

That would mean Bannon could, in theory, reveal to House investigators about his conversations with Trump ahead of the Capitol attack – Bannon spoke with Trump on the phone the night before – and strategy discussions at the Trump “war room” at the Willard hotel in Washington.

Reveal information about his conversations, presumably. At any rate I wonder how many lies he will tell and if the House investigators will know when he’s lying.

Bannon’s offer to testify appears to be a strategic move ahead of his trial for criminal contempt of Congress, scheduled to start on 18 July, that comes after justice department prosecutors charged him for refusing to comply with the select committee’s subpoena last year.

The move to testify to the panel now would not “cure” his contempt since he faces criminal contempt and the prosecution is for the past failure to comply with the subpoena, according to former US attorney Joyce Vance.

But the email offering to testify could have the effect of reinforcing his legal defense that Trump did in fact assert a legitimate executive privilege claim in October 2021, and that he cannot be prosecuted because of that invocation, according to his letter on Saturday.

How could such an assertion possibly be legitimate? Trump had no “executive privilege” in October 2021. He wasn’t the relevant “executive” then.

As Julie Bindel points out, this is a series of three men cheerily shrugging off women’s rights.

“Let people live their lives”=Let men claim to be women and steal everything women have fought for and treat women as the domineering entitled privileged sex.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Councillor Homophobe.

How is it that these “feelings” are not only given a pass, but are enthusiastically supported, and defended with bullying, threats, intimidation and emotional blackmail?

It’s actually much worse than this. It’s not just a matter of celebration and valourization. It’s also about recruitment. How many other disorders or delusions are promulgated by the power of state institutions and backed up by the force of law? The idea that you’ve been “born in the wrong body” is not just introduced to a wider audience than it would have othewise. It is promoted to children and teens who might not have considered this until it was offered, or thrust upon them, as the answer to all their adolescent anxiety and discomfort. “The answer is you’re trans. What was the question?” It’s suggested that accepting this “condition” is somehow courageous and signifies a particularly unique individuality and specialness. Instead of being boring gays and lesbians, you’re something even better. How many insecure kids can resist the siren song of personal specialness, sacredness, and importance promised by the happily-ever-after tales presented by the love-bombing agents of trans siblinghood? “We know the real you better than anyone, and you’re brave and stunning!

Along with the glittery rainbow, however, comes the threat of societal hatred and persecution, which instills suspicion towards doubting outsiders, including parents, driving new devotees further into the arms of their “loving” recruiters. Exploration of the difficulties and problems being experienced that suggest causes or solutions which are “non-trans” in nature are branded as hateful, bigoted “conversion therapy.” Suicidal ideation is presented as a handy tool to access the demanded “life-saving treatment.”

Scientology can only dream of this level of power and influence. The tide seems to be turning in the UK, but it’s going to take a long time for things to turn around in North America. In the meantime, many innocents will suffer horrible pyschological and physical trauma. Those who are medically “transed,” and those who are punished for questioning or resisting genderist ideology will pay the price. But until it costs lawsuits and money, nothing will be done. That is perhaps the greatest tragedy in all of this.

The World Health Organization has updated its “gender mainstreaming manual,” whatever tf that is.

The first edition of the manual dates from 2011, and WHO is now updating it in light of new scientific evidence and conceptual progress on gender, health and development.

Conceptual progress? More like regress.

The review and update process will build on the extensive work already featured in the manual. It will focus on:

1. Updating key concepts around gender;

…

3. Going beyond non-binary approaches to gender and health to recognize gender and sexual diversity, or the concepts that gender identity exists on a continuum and that sex is not limited to male or female.

4. Introducing new gender, equity and human rights frameworks and tools to further support capacity building around these concepts and the integration of their approaches in the work of WHO.

But of course sex is limited to female and male. Oh so fascinating and enigmatic Jonquettamin is still one or the other, even if intersex. It’s embarrassing to see a UN body talking teenagery nonsense.

Historian Catherine Allgor explains “coverture”:

Coverture is a long-standing legal practice that is part of our colonial heritage. Though Spanish and French versions of coverture existed in the new world, United States coverture is based in English law. Coverture held that no female person had a legal identity. At birth, a female baby was covered by her father’s identity, and then, when she married, by her husband’s. The husband and wife became one–and that one was the husband. As a symbol of this subsuming of identity, women took the last names of their husbands. They were “feme coverts,” covered women. Because they did not legally exist, married women could not make contracts or be sued, so they could not own or work in businesses. Married women owned nothing, not even the clothes on their backs. They had no rights to their children, so that if a wife divorced or left a husband, she would not see her children again.

Why? Well, you know…it’s obvious. I mean I don’t want to be rude or anything but it’s obvious female people are just inferior, so the law naturally has to reflect that. Women are too weak and dim and kind of blobby to have any legal identity.

Married women had no rights to their bodies. That meant that not only would a husband have a claim to any wages generated by his wife’s labor or to the fruits of her body (her children), but he also had an absolute right to sexual access. Within marriage, a wife’s consent was implied, so under the law, all sex-related activity, including rape, was legitimate. His total mastery of this fellow human being stopped short, but just short, of death. Of course, a man wasn’t allowed to beat his wife to death, but he could beat her.

I’m not sure where the “of course” comes in. If he’s allowed to beat her he’s allowed to beat her to death, because what’s he supposed to do, know for sure when to stop? Duh, no, so you can tell him to try not to but that’s all.

So what happened to coverture? The short answer is that it has been eroded bit by bit. But it has never been fully abolished. The ghost of coverture has always haunted women’s lives and continues to do so. Coverture is why women weren’t regularly allowed on juries until the 1960s, and marital rape wasn’t a crime until the 1980s. Today’s women encounter coverture during real estate transactions, as I did, in tax matters, and in a myriad of other situations around employment and housing. Encounters with coverture can be serious, but often they are just puzzling annoyances, one more hoop to jump. Still, the remnants of coverture are holding us back in unsuspected ways.

The thinking behind it hasn’t disappeared either. The planet will be fried to a crisp before it is.

Updating to add: I forgot to h/t Valerie Tarico.

More homophobia from the LibDems:

She’s a councillor in Faversham (Kent).

She doesn’t welcome conversation with the peasants who replied to her “Absolutely not” though.

Boo lesbians and gays, hooray for men in womanface. How did we get here?

Arwa Mahdawi on the conservatism of the Dems:

Some top establishment Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, have been very busy throwing their weight behind Henry Cuellar, the last anti-choice House Democrat, in the primary for Texas’s 28th congressional district. I’m not sure exactly what makes the gun-loving, abortion-hating Cuellar a Democrat, because he seems to have basically all the same policy positions as a Republican, but he has a (D) next to his name. Even when they knew Roe was on the verge of being overturned, top House Democrats chose to help Cuellar – the incumbent – fend off a challenge from Jessica Cisneros, a pro-choice progressive. In the end Cuellar won by just 289 votes. The Democrats have the gall to send out fundraising emails demanding people vote for them so they can safeguard our reproductive rights while simultaneously spending donor money to help prop up an anti-choice Democrat. It truly beggars belief. As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stated on Twitter, Democrats rallying for “a pro-NRA, anti-choice incumbent … was an utter failure of leadership”.

It’s strange that Republicans keep marching ever farther to the right while Democrats…keep trying to catch up with them. Wrong direction! Your team’s goal is over THERE!

More on Cuellar and Cisneros:

The race in Texas’ 28th Congressional District pitted one of the most conservative Democrats in the House against a challenger backed by progressive stalwarts, including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Cuellar, who has held the seat since 2005, had the endorsements of top House Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn.

…

Cisneros ran on a distinctly progressive platform, with support for Medicare for All and pro-labor legislation.

Cuellar, who holds more conservative views on abortion, immigration and gun control, painted Cisneros as a far-left candidate who wouldn’t be effective in Congress. He touted his deep ties to the district and ability to get things done.

We have a choice between Republicans and rabid Republicans.