The Year I Almost Broke Up Max and Leo

This week's Graphical History Tour looks back on the year 2025. You may have heard of it.

I was going to post enough of my cartoons to give a more-or-less thorough overview of the year; but, gosh, there was a lot of news these past twelve months ! Most of it bad. You know something? It's just too damn soon to relive the whole damned year.

Instead, I'm pulling together the story line that developed after I drew characters Max and Leo getting swept up into the Absolutely Corrupt Trump Administration's ethnic cleansing spree.

February

MAGA Max and Liberal Leo first appeared in 2024 as my way of commenting on the widening political divide in the U.S.: a same-sex couple with widely divergent opinions on issues not exclusively of LGBTQ+ concern.

I initially thought I could wrap this story line up after a few episodes, but I had no idea that the reality was going to be much worse than anything I had in mind.

March

Max's first step to try finding out what the thugs and goons at ICE had done with Leo was to contact the deep state a government agency, only to find that Elon Musk's Dogeketeers were busy destroying government's ability to function. I purposely left vague what government department this fellow worked in, save that it was apparently not Homeland Security.

April

I never specified where the prison holding Leo was; I called it Trumplinka in my blog, but not in the cartoons. Early reports were that the U.S. was flying detainees to remote locations in Columbia and releasing them with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. Originally, I thought Leo would end up being dumped with other prisoners somewhere in South America, then contacting Max to come bring him his passport.

Then we learned that the Absolutely Corrupt Trump Regime was sending its hapless victims to CECOT, a Dante-esque concentration camp in El Salvador, without even those clothes. 

April

I had no plan for breaking Leo out of that hell, so I had to think of something else.

Having him deported to the Heard and McDonald Islands wasn't going to work out, either.

I could have involved Leo with either of two LGBTQ whose kidnapping by ICE made news in 2025 (statistically, there must be others), but the Trumpsters have consistently lied or feigned ignorance of their status. One was Georgia barber Rodney Taylor, a double amputee seized because of a past juvenile offense for which he had been pardoned. Liberia-born Taylor was brought to the U.S. by his mother for medical treatment; his pending application for U.S. residence has been put on hold while he remains incarcerated.

May

The other was Angelo Hernandez, a gay Venezuelan stylist wrongly accused of gang affiliation due to tattoos and deported to CECOT.

Tattoos were the supposedly incriminating evidence against another man the Trumpsters sent to CECOT, Kilmar Abrego Garcia. While the State Department tried to prevent Democratic members of Congress from meeting with Abrego Garcia, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Cruella deNoem got herself a photo op with overcrowded CECOT prisoners behind bars as her backdrop, and the White House resorted to PhotoShopping tattoos onto Abrego Garcia's hands.

July

By summer, the Absolutely Corrupt Trump Regime was flying deportees off to foreign countries, to which the deportees seldom had any ties, including Guatemala, Honduras, Uganda, Belize, and Paraguay — with little or no notice, in order to stymie any legal effort to get them their day in court. So I decided that I had better get Leo out of the Trumpsters' clutches one way or another. 

August

You don't hear much about last summer's catch phrase, "Trump Always Chickens Out" (TACO) any more. He's been doubling down on riveting his name onto everything from the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts to his latest fantasy of gold-plated coal-powered Trump Classy  battleships.

July

In a movie, TV series, or adventure comic strip, there would have been exciting scenes of the American plane attempting to escape the crossfire only to crash in a huge explosion. The deportees would have wrested the keys to their shackles from that stranded ICE agent. Then, during a ceasefire negotiated by the Canadians and the E.U. long enough to evacuate their embassy personnel — oh, I'll let Leo pick up the story from there:

August

I draw a weekly cartoon, however, which runs in some newspapers and magazines that publish biweekly or monthly. And some of them may have elected to run cartoons I had drawn on other topics during the seven months when this story line dragged on.

In any case, my Better Half and I were taking a road trip to an out-of-town wedding in August, meaning that I'd be away from my drawing board for a while. There was no better reason to wrap the story up in a cartoon I could draw ahead of time — provided Trump didn't declare war on Canada in the meantime. (Especially since our return trip took us through southern Ontario.)

August

So now I have to figure out where Max and Leo go from here.

Assuming Max continues his loyalty to the Trumpreich, how does Leo not end every argument with "Don't you remember, your fascist Trump bastards arrested me without charge, held me in prison for months without due process, and sent me to some third world hellhole in the middle of a civil war?"

Maybe, to borrow a phrase, the problems of two little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. But if this couple can stick it out together in spite of everything around them, maybe there is still hope for the rest of us.

This Week's Sneak Pique

We have nominally non-partisan elections coming up here in the Dairy State next week, and the airwaves have been flooded with attack ads for the two candidates for Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Both candidates accuse each other of letting sex offenders off with light sentences. 

It has been the successful tactic of Republican judicial candidates here for decades. Outside groups have also weighed in; they used to tell viewers to “tell” Candidate X to stop being so lenient to criminals— ignoring the fact that the surest way to get Candidate X to stop being so lenient to criminals is to elect him or her to the Supreme Court, where they will never pass sentence on a criminal again.

The tactic has been mitigated only very recently as younger voters, mostly female, have noticed that Republican judges have no respect for their reproductive rights. We have also noticed that when it comes to the actions of our lopsidedly Republican legislature, the Republican justices are nothing remotely resembling "non-partisan."

We are waiting to see how the mutual accusations of criminal-coddling play out this time. Judge Susan Crawford also claims that Judge Brad Schimmel will return Wisconsin's 1849 anti-abortion law to effect, and that he bears (some of) the responsibility for the backlog of untested rape evidence kits that built up while he was Attorney General.

In past election cycles, the Koch Brothers have been the major out-of-state funders of third-party advertising supporting Republican judicial candidates, setting new campaign spending records every year. This year, Elon Musk has stepped into that role, also repeating his 2024 tactic of bribing voters. He's only offering $100 this time, not the $1million he dangled in front of swing state voters for Trump, but it's not as if Schimmel is a 34-time convicted felon who fomented a riot at the U.S. Capitol, pushed snake oil during a worldwide epidemic, and swiped hundreds of classified documents last time he left the White House. 

Oh, and it's not technically offering bribes for votes. No, Musk is merely paying voters to sign his phony petition against activist judges. Just give him your name and address. He's already got your Social Security number.

By the way it just so happens that Musk's Tesla company is suing the state of Wisconsin over a law preventing him from opening Tesla dealerships here.

Q Toon: Desperately Seeking Leo

Max probably doesn't get a lot of sympathy wearing that cap into a government office.

Plotting out the dialogue for this week's cartoon, I immediately realized that Max and Leo do not have last names; the government worker here should have addressed Max as Mr. Whatever-his-last-name-is rather than by his first name. Unless they already knew each other, I suppose.

In any event, Max is getting a taste of the chaos he voted for, courtesy of the Deepstate Oligarchy's Generalissimo Elon. Musk is bringing the same reckless management style to government that he brought to Twitter: fire everybody and find out.

The resulting chaos is not a bug but a feature. Musk shares with his fellow South African expatriate  billionaire Peter Thiel a contempt for minorities, the working class. Their stated target may be bureaucracy, but it is in fact democracy itself.

That is no exaggeration or hyperbole. In Thiel's own words, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

The New York Times reported on the Paypal mogul last October:

As the internet blossomed, Thiel began to encourage a new set of even more provocative thinkers. At their center was an ex-programmer named Curtis Yarvin, who blogged under the nom de plume Mencius Moldbug, sketching out the framework for a nascent reactionary movement — later called the new right — aimed at deposing the cabal of liberal elites running the country. Yarvin saw democracy as a “destructive” form of government, instead proposing a techno-monarchy run by a national chief executive. Americans, he said, had to “get over their dictator phobia.” ...

Substacker "Just Plain Kris" ties Musk into Thiel's Make Apartheid Great Again movement:  

Elon Musk, while not a formal part of the neo-reactionary movement, has been linked to its ideas through his actions and statements. Musk’s political philosophy reflects a skepticism of democratic institutions and a preference for corporate-style governance (The Atlantic, 2023). His attempts to influence government operations and his support for far-right political movements align with the neo-reactionary belief that democracy leads to social decline (Financial Times, 2024). 

In Donald Joffrey Trump, the Afrikaners found their ideal front man: a blustering, racist of extremely limited intellect, all ego but no self-awareness, easily malleable with flattery and money (remember how he used to be stubbornly opposed to electric cars, cryptocurrency, and TikTok?). As an added bonus, he is anti-democratic, polarizing, mercurial — and expendable. Back to NYT:

As Thiel became wealthier and more powerful, he continued to help like-minded men accumulate their own wealth and power. They included a lot of Stanford Review alumni, like Josh Hawley, now the 44-year-old senator from Missouri, but also others who came to him via different routes — most prominently JD Vance, who has cited Yarvin as an influence himself. ...When Vance ran for Senate in 2022, Thiel was by far the biggest donor to his super PAC, giving $15 million.

If the day ever comes when Trump overplays his hand, his luck runs out, he outlives his usefulness, or gets to be the star at a state funeral, the Afrikaners' hand-picked protégé is right there presiding over the U.S. Senate. Even without impeachment and conviction, or the 25th Amendment, JD Vance will be the heir apparent in 2028 to continue the dismantling of democracy.

To which end Musk will have all the data he needs on every voter, polling place, and computer system in the country to pre-determine the outcome of any election he wants.

And no pesky bureaucracy in his way.

see also https://www.truthdig.com/articles/elon-musk-and-peter-thiels-war-on-democracy/

Q Toon: Mar-a-Lago Face

One of the many targets during Prince of Lies Donald Trump's two-hour screed to a joint session of Congress last week was, of course, the transgender community. Much of the commentary since then has mocked his lie that federal funds were being wasted on creating "transgender mice," which was funny, ha, ha. (No wonder he despises our transatlantic alliances!).

Trump was not misreading his teleprompter, however, when he counseled youth suffering from gender dysphoria, “Our message to every child in America is that you are perfect exactly the way God made you,” to which end he called upon Congress to make dissatisfaction with one's own body illegal.

He was apparently oblivious to the people around him who have taken it upon themselves to tamper with their divinely bodily perfection.

The phenomenon, deemed “Mar-a-Lago” face, has seemingly swept the political world overnight, with its trademark fillers and razor-sharp cheekbones already making their way to the corridors of Capitol Hill ahead of Trump’s inauguration in January.

And with Trump recruiting nearly half of his Cabinet from Fox News’ camera-ready roster of contributors and anchors, who are quite comfortable in the makeup chair, the American people are bound to see more “Mar-A-Lago” face broadcasting live from the West Wing.

But what looks good on camera doesn’t always translate well in photos and regular video, and social media users are definitely starting to notice by making memes out of the Mar-A-Lago makeover.

Though the Daily Beast has been unable to confirm whether any members of Trump’s circle have turned to enhancements, Lara Trump, Matt Gaetz and Laura Loomer are among those who have been called out for their beauty journeys.

“Laura Loomer’s evolution from an average-looking human to Jigsaw has to be one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen,” wrote one social media commentator about Loomer’s seemingly changed look.

Laura Loomer didn't make it into my cartoon; instead, I've included Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Don Jr. girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle. I'll confess that my caricature of Guilfoyle is heavily influenced by Ann Telnaes's; you will find none better. You may remember Guilfoyle as the homunculus screeching to the Republican National Convention that THE BEAST IS YET TO COME! 

(I'm pretty sure that's what she said. I couldn't hear her over the chattering cacophony of hellspawn demons fluttering around the auditorium, but you could read her lips from ten blocks away.)

Matt Gaetz didn't make it into this cartoon either; but fortunately, there's Elon Musk to keep this from being a sexist slam against the Real Housewives of Mar-a-Lago.

Photos of Elon Musk before and after plastic surgery pop up on social media all the time these days. The formerly balding broligarch, who has publicly disowned his transgender daughter, has reconfigured himself, experts tell us, with multiple cosmetic surgery procedures. In addition to hair plugs, his transformation has included nose jobs, eyelid surgery, brow lifts, and chin augmentation.

Lip injections can't be far behind.

Musk and Trump, and Reichpublicans from Congress to Village Clerk share an inordinate fear and loathing of transgender persons. There is a possibility, however remote, that Trump is merely taking advantage of right-wingers' transphobia to feed his own lust for power; but I take him literally and seriously on this issue.

If I were a betting man, I'd lay odds that his obsession stems from his having once upon a time grabbed some pussy, as he famously put it, only to have a handful of something extra.

And it wasn't thanks to lip injections.

Q Toon: Executive Disorders

The Even More Corrupt Trump Maladministration has come into office on a tear, spewing forth a blizzard of executive orders that Donald Joffrey Trump hasn't bothered to read. He didn't read Project 2025 either, and told us so in no during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris last year.

It may have been the one true thing he said all night. He doesn't read. He was a D student all the way through school, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that he's completely illiterate.

Anyway, the executive orders implementing Project 2025 are designed to "flood the zone" (also the “Gish gallop”) so that you can't react to one without ignoring the rest.

"Democrats don't matter," Steve Bannon told journalist Michael Lewis seven years ago. "The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with crap."

Courts have intervened, and the maladministration has backtracked on some of those executive orders; heaven help you if you want to figure out which ones. 

A judge temporarily halted a Trump order unilaterally revoking the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of birthright citizenship on the grounds that it was "blatantly unconstitutional":

Judge John Coughenour, a Ronald Reagan appointee who sits in Seattle, granted the request by Washington Attorney General Nick Brown and three other Democratic-led states for the emergency order halting implementation of the policy for the next 14 days while there are more briefings in the legal challenge.

“I have been on the bench for over four decades. I can’t remember another case where the question presented was as clear,” Coughenour said.

“Where were the lawyers” when the decision to sign the executive order was made, the judge asked. He said that it “boggled” his mind that a member of the bar would claim the order was constitutional.

I'm not as confident that transgender Americans will find protective cover under the Fourteenth Amendment; they are a demographic that Trump and that unelected South African billionaire making off with all your Medicare, and Social Security, and banking data from the Treasury Department, Elon Musk, have a particular deep-seated animus against. 

Trump can force transgender persons to register as their birth gender, even their deadname, on federal documents from passports to tax forms to voter registration. (Requiring everyone to identify according to their gender at conception might have been an overreach too far; biologically, we're all female at conception.)

And lest you think that my characterization of Trump Maladministration policy as embracing white supremacy is overreacting, even NASA has been literally ordered to "drop everything" and expunge all material pertaining to diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, women in leadership, indigenous people, "under-represented groups/people," and environmental justice from public records. 

Those “Hidden Figures”? Put 'em back under wraps, Major Healey, or else!

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Now, I might be wrong in suggesting that the suspension of PEPFAR funding was among the executive orders rescinded. Or maybe it’ll be cut by virtue of his vaporizing USAID without congressional authorization. Or perhaps all the rescinded executive orders will have been unrescinded by the time this post appears on line. 

This has been one of those times when I’ve had to draw a cartoon well ahead of publication in order to take a vacation, host visitors, schedule surgery, etc.; I edited and re-edited the dialogue in panel one several times before sending it in to Q Syndicate.

For all I know, none of this stuff is important any more. There is no telling what mischief Donald Joffrey Trump has pulled since I shut down my computer and turned off the TV news. 

He wants to reclaim the Panama Canal — probably because he’s still seething at Jimmy Carter for dying 23 days before Trump’s coronation and making him sit through a funeral where not one eulogist offered a paean to Trump’s greatness. If he could revoke the Camp David Accords just to spite Jimmy Carter, he would.

We could be at war with Africa because Trump decided a.) China has too much influence there; b.) he wants to divert the Nile to fight California wildfires; and/or c.) to establish a Palestinian homeland in that odd piece of land that juts out from the northeast corner of Namibia.

I wouldn’t know.

Please don’t tell me.

An Ill Wind

Here's a local issue cartoon — or at least it was when I drew it. Since then, I've seen the story reported on international media and late-night chat show monologues. By the time you read this, it'll probably have its own page on Wikipedia.

Samantha Kuffel, 31, was one of the on-air meteorologists at Milwaukee's CBS affiliate, WDJT-58. But right-wing professional umbrage-takers raised a ruckus after she posted on Instagram about Elon Musk's Nazi salute from the podium bearing the presidential seal at Donald Trump's inauguration festivities. 

Was it? Neo-nazis think so. Judge for yourself.

It cost her her job.

"Meteorologist Sam Kuffel is no longer employed at CBS58," said the staff memo from news director Jessie Garcia that was obtained by the Journal Sentinel. "A search for a replacement is underway."

A spokeswoman for Weigel Broadcasting Co. confirmed via email late Wednesday that Kuffel was no longer with Channel 58. But the spokeswoman said she couldn't comment further because this was a personnel issue.

On Tuesday, conservative radio host Dan O'Donnell sharply criticized Kuffel for her two Instagram posts, accusing her of "spreading the lie that Elon Musk was giving a Nazi salute" during the presidential inauguration. He labeled her posts "vulgar."

Was she fired for daring to speak up against the rising tide of fascism in this country? Did Channel 58 worry that viewers wouldn't be able to trust her impartiality when it comes to what percentage chance there is of precipitation or how to calculate wind chill?

Kuffel gave management every excuse to let her go. The Guardian quotes the employment-terminating unexpurgated Instagram posts:

“Dude Nazi saluted twice. Twice. During the inauguration. You fuck with this and this man, I don’t fuck with you. Full stop.”

In her second post, Kuffel appeared to post a screenshot of a scene from the FX sitcom It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia in which Rob McElhenney’s character Mac says: “Screw that old bitch. He’s a Nazi.”

Don't go looking for Kuffel's Instagram account now; it's been deactivated.

Those of us in the media, if we want to hang onto our jobs, have to be judicious in how we speak in public. I can cuss a blue streak at my computer; but on-line, restraint is the rule. Quoting other people is one thing; but in cartoons and here on the blog, 

Bad language or abuse
I never ever use
Whatever the emergency.
Though "Bother it!" I may
Occasionally say,
I never use a big, big "D."

No, never.

Well, hardly ever.

Finally, Sam — can I call you that? You local TV news people try so hard to be our friends I feel that I know you — Anyway, Sam, you have to keep in mind at all times that Trump and his MAGA minions are thin-skinned, easily butt-hurt snowflakes. 

Think what happened to you was unfair? Why, they even took offense at Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde and demanded that the New Jersey-born cleric be deported for closing her sermon with this:

“Let me make one final plea, Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you and, as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. 

"There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families, some who fear for their lives. The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They…may not be citizens or have the proper documentation. But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurudwaras and temples. 

"I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. And that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land. 

"May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people. Good of all people in this nation and the world. Amen”

Not an F-word, or even a big, big D, in her whole sermon.

The Ass in a Lion's Skin

Aesop's Fable Updated

 An Ass found a Lion’s skin left in the forest by a hunter. He dressed himself in it, and roamed about in the forest amusing himself by frightening all the foolish animals he met in his wanderings. All took to their heels the moment they saw him.

The Ass was so pleased to see the animals running away from him, just as if he were King Lion himself, that he could not keep from expressing his delight by a loud, harsh bray. 

A Fox, who ran with the rest, stopped short as soon as he heard the voice. Approaching the Ass, he turned to the other animals and proclaimed: "Behold! Here is Lion, King of the Beasts, here to Make America Great Again!"

The Muskrat twittered Xcitedly, "All hail King Lion!" And he leaped and  jumped for joy.

The Zuckerbird agreed. "Whatever you say!"

Then the canary chirped, "But he's an ass!"

The Wapopotamus and the Raccoon-cheong turned sharply to her. "Be quiet!" they grunted and hissed. "Are you trying to get us in trouble?"

And the creatures bowed and prayed to the Lion King that brayed.

Post Waste

Editorial cartoonists have been buzzing this weekend over a cartoon by Pulitzer Prize winning Ann Telnaes that was spiked by her employer, The Washington Post, causing her to quit the job. The cartoon would have portrayed Post owner Jeff Bezos, Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, Facebook-Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, AI CEO Sam Altman, and Disney's Mickey Mouse prostrate before a colossus Donald Trump, offering him/it bags of cash.

Telnaes explained on her Substack, where you can also find her rough sketch of the cartoon:

“As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable,” Telnaes wrote. “For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say ‘Democracy dies in darkness.’”

The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists (AAEC) came to Telnaes's defense with a strongly worded statement:

"… The AAEC condemns the Post and their ethical weakness. Editorial cartooning is the tip of the spear in opinion, and the Post’s cowering further soils their once-stellar reputation for standing up and speaking truth to power. We weep for the loss of this once great newspaper…

We request that all editorial cartoonists do a finished version of her rough and post it in solidarity with Ann’s brave and sadly necessary decision. Please use the hash tag #StandWithAnn…"

I therefore add my two cents to the conversation:

The bruhaha has been reported all over the internets. I suppose, in fairness, one should let the head honcho at WaPo have his say, too.

The Post’s communications director, Liza Pluto, provided The Associated Press on Saturday with a statement from David Shipley, the newspaper’s editorial page editor. Shipley said in the statement that he disagrees with Telnaes’ “interpretation of events.”

He said he decided to nix the cartoon because the paper had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and was set to publish another.

“Not every editorial judgement is a reflection of a malign force. ... The only bias was against repetition,” Shipley said.

As any editorial cartoonist will tell you — and several already have — editors have never shied away from printing an editorial cartoon that buttresses an editorial column in the same newspaper. Good God, man, that was my entire job description with the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee.

I had not been among the thousands canceling subscriptions to the Post last fall when its management spiked an editorial endorsement of Kamala Harris for President. That was in large part because I appreciate and enjoy Ann Telnaes's cartoons.

I'm now subscribing to her Substack. Soon, the newspaper publishing model for our profession will be dead and we editorial cartoonists will all be trying to live off each others' subscriptions to our own Substacks.

Meanwhile, if you want to subscribe to the Post, it continues to publish the cluttered, right-wing editorial cartoons of Pulitzer Prize winning Michael Ramirez, and editorial cartoons about mulled wine, neither of which risk getting Mr. Bezos on Donald Trump's Enemies List.

No Thanks, I've Had Enough

 

Q Toon: X Stranged

Elon Musk, the eccentric South African billionaire who bought Tesla and Twitter and founded SpaceX, used to be considered a cool, innovative mastermind. But he has lurched rightward in recent years. Money, and a nostalgia for apartheid is apt to do that to one. 

You just can't keep these masterminds from becoming the evil kind, I guess.

Musk's right-wing politics has included animus toward transgender persons, and for him, it's personal.

He is estranged from his transgender daughter, Vivian Wilson; they haven't gotten along for years. Musk discussed their broken relationship psychologist and conservative commentator Jordan Peterson, streaming the conversation on X for the world to see. As one does when one is an evil mastermind.

He didn't support Wilson's gender identity, he told Peterson and the Xitterverse, repeatedly deadnaming her during the livestream. “I lost my son, essentially,” Musk said, adding that she was “dead, killed by the woke mind virus.”

Wilson, very much alive, responded to her father in a phone conversation with NBC: 

Wilson, 20, in an exclusive interview with NBC News, responded to comments Musk made Monday about her and her transgender identity. On social media and in an interview posted online, Musk said she was “not a girl” and was figuratively “dead,” and he alleged that he had been “tricked” into authorizing trans-related medical treatment for her when she was 16.

Wilson said that Musk hadn’t been tricked and that, after initially having hesitated, he knew what he was doing when he agreed to her treatment, which required consent from her parents.

Musk’s recent statements crossed a line, she said.

“I think he was under the assumption that I wasn’t going to say anything and I would just let this go unchallenged,” Wilson said in a phone interview. “Which I’m not going to do, because if you’re going to lie about me, like, blatantly to an audience of millions, I’m not just gonna let that slide.”

Wilson said that, for as long as she could remember, Musk hasn’t been a supportive father. She said he was rarely present in her life, leaving her and her siblings to be cared for by their mother or by nannies even though Musk had joint custody, and she said Musk berated her when he was present. “He was cold,” she said. “He’s very quick to anger. He is uncaring and narcissistic.”

I don't know Vivian Wilson, but her case seems fairly credible. Musk is the sort of person who crows that he's a fighter for Free Speech, and then suspends the X account of  White Dudes for Harris for no apparent reason. (Were they somehow "violating [X's] rules against evading suspension" without violating some other rule to begin with?) Reports of his volatile temper and intolerance are legion.

There is perhaps some risk in posting a link to this cartoon to X, that someone at Elon's evil lair will take notice and I'll end up having violated some codicil in the Muskovite TOS or other. 

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It would have set up the final panel of my cartoon if I had had Musk use Vivian Wilson's birth name in panels two or three, but I chose not to. Deadnaming a transgender person is considered very rude, on a par with addressing a divorced woman as Mrs. Ex-Husband's Full Name.

Similarly, I had given thought to drawing a cartoon of J.D. Vance, another vocal opponent of transgender persons, objecting to being deadnamed himself. I have not, however, come up with any novel approach to the well-worn on social media topic of his having twice changed his birth name.

Not that I'm precluding such a future cartoon about it. It is just a little bit — you know— weird.

Alphabetter or Worse

The Trevor Project has joined a long list of LGBTQ+ organizations quitting Elon Musk's social medium site, X, citing its refusal to do anything about the increasing pestilence of hate speech infesting the former Twitter.

It makes perfect sense that an organization dedicated to preventing youth suicide wouldn't want their posts polluted with garbage from fascist trolls who are dedicated to pushing the suicidal over the edge just for clicks and kicks.

Back in April, about the time that he ditched the Twitter moniker in favor of "X," Musk quietly removed certain Twitter protections against misgendering and deadnaming transgender users, adding to an already hostile, hate-speech filled environment. "Twitter has become increasingly unsafe in recent months for LGBTQ and BIPOC people with anti-LGBTQ, anti-trans, anti-Black, and antisemitic tweets on the rise. The removal of this policy was the last straw," Denise Spivak, CEO of CenterLink, told Mashable as several of its 325 member LGBTQ organizations worldwide quit the platform en masse.

Complaints about what a run-down, shady neighborhood X has become since Musk took over have fallen on deaf ears. Musk, apparently, has unmasked himself as the platform's fascist troll-in-chief.

Your humble scribbler came late to Twitter (see, I can deadname, too!) and I haven't yet experienced a great deal of abuse there. Were that situation to change, I can't imagine why I would ever want to pay the Muskovite platform eight bucks a month for the privilege.

I suppose I should have saved today's title in case I ever draw a cartoon about Google. But chances are its parent company might have changed (at least its name) by then, so what the heck.

Q Toon: So Long, Elon

Reversing a fiver-year-old policy at Twitter, hate speech champion Elon Musk has reopened his platform to right-wing attacks on LGBTQ+ users and users of color. In response, LGBTQ non-profit organizations across the country are deactivating their Twitter accounts.

Dozens of regional LGBTQ community centers are deactivating their Twitter accounts today, decrying recent policy changes despite the rise of hate speech and calling on the app to do more to protect its users. 

The announcement came from CenterLink, an international nonprofit network of more than 325 LGBTQ organizations, many of which will also be leaving the platform.

"Twitter has become increasingly unsafe in recent months for LGBTQ and BIPOC people with anti-LGBTQ, anti-trans, anti-Black, and antisemitic tweets on the rise. The removal of this policy was the last straw," Denise Spivak, CEO of CenterLink, told Mashable. 

Earlier this month, Twitter, led by CEO Elon Musk, quietly removed a portion of its hateful conduct policy that specified protections against misgendering and deadnaming transgender users, adding to an already hostile, hate-speech filled environment. 

In response to the conduct changes, CenterLink and its members have decided to forgo the app entirely, formally deactivating their Twitter accounts today. Some participants have already left the app, announced they will no longer be active, or pinned statements opposing the app's changes.

I was late signing onto Twitter myself, getting on board shortly before Musk took over the joint. The headline on today's post notwithstanding, I don't have plans to deactivate my account there at this point, even though our value to each other is really quite marginal. (I've also tried Counter Social and Mastodon, but the experience is kind of like finding yourself in a huge stadium filled with people each of whom is talking to him/herself.)

Just the same, if my Twitter feed were to become intolerably toxic, I would probably hang it up.

And neither of us would miss the other much.

Q Toon: One Small Step

Or, Friends In High Places:

Richard Branson won the billionaires' race to space on Sunday (or maybe not quite), and there have been a spaceshipload of cartoons criticizing Branson, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk for squandering so much capital on vanity flights when there are still so many problems down here on Earth.

Rather than strain to find an original way to make that well-worn point, I expound today upon a minor sidebar article. Among the guests and bric-a-brac Branson took on his Virgin Galactic spaceplane was an LGBTQ+ pride flag*, intended to commemorate the victims of the Pulse Nightclub massacre five years ago.

He also brought along a photo of Stephen Colbert, which I didn't catch what that was supposed to commemorate, but having to cut it down to postage stamp size because of the weight taught a valuable lesson about materialism or whatever. And he's organizing some sort of a Go Fund Me to send a couple random less-than-billionaires up to the outer limits of the thermosphere.

So he went to space and he's trying his darnedest not to be a dick about it, and he respectfully asks all you earthbound socialists to get off his back, like, as if you wouldn't jet up to outer space if you had several billion quatloos burning a hole in your bank vault, okay?

_______

* Update: Turns out it was a ribbon, not a flag.