Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

New @thebarbedwire.com: A new state plan calls for getting HIV+ folks into care faster, and cutting new cases in half by 2031. But how can we fight AIDS amid deep cuts to federal funding and as more Texans struggle to access healthcare? www.thebarbedwire.com/can-texas-fi...

For @texasobserver.org, I dug into the ginned up “October surprises” in the Senate race in Texas. Most notably, the bogus transgender mailers, which trace back to a printing shop whose owners are major Republican donors with ties to Texas megadonors. www.texasobserver.org/ken-paxton-j...

“It wasn’t just like [BlackRock CEO] Larry Fink abandoned all this [ESG] stuff, and then he got back into Texas. He had to play a political game. He had to do some lobbying. He had to kind of bend at the knee ... and show that Texas was really important to him.” Great work by @candicequestions.com!

Texas Transgender Student Union, the anonymously registered LLC in Wyoming that sent the bogus mailers, has retained Ken Paxton's impeachment attorney, Chris Hilton, to represent them in a court cased filed by Transgender Education Network of Texas, the group that TTSU impersonated in the mailers.

NEW: Transgender Texas Student Union has retained counsel in response to the Travis County filing related to the fake transgender mailers. It's Chris Hilton, who previously worked for Ken Paxton at the Texas Attorney General's office and left temporarily to defend Paxton in his impeachment trial.

Is it normal for an anonymous Wyoming LLC that sent mass mailers impersonating a transgender advocacy group to hire the lawyer who defended TX Attorney General Ken Paxton from impeachment in response to a court filing seeking to depose people who could unmask the LLC's owners

I'd love to talk to some queer Texas voters, voters from outside Houston/Dallas/Austin and especially voters from South Texas, about what it's like to participate in this election. Do you feel represented? Are the issues you care about being talked about enough? Get in touch!

I know the vast majority of you are here because of my art, but I need to share a thread about Brazilian politics because what we achieved today deserves to be mentioned and celebrated I'll do my best to be objective for those who have no idea what was happening

“We’re walking a really fine line between types of speech that we’ve historically protected, like parody and satire, and these new forms of synthetic content that have a much higher probability of fooling someone.” Great, though bleak, reporting by @edenshamy.bsky.social for @texasobserver.org ...

When I tell people about my recent cycling injury, if I mention it's an ebike people have a bunch of untrue assumptions, such as that I was zipping along somewhere at 30 mph when I crashed, as opposed to normal trail riding.

tapping the sign

ive talked on how i wont engage with writers who use ai, i wont eat at a restaurant with an ai menu, i wont have anything to do with it. but what this post illustrates is regardless of how OTHERS react, ultimately the worst part about using ai is that you are punishing YOURSELF and dont even know it

I just want to name that people overcame this. Even against a stacked deck, the good fight is worth it. Win or lose, it's worth it. And sometimes the good guys win.

Congrats to Lula on overcoming Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump to defeat Hospital Pervert Jr., even as his opposition literally blocked off roads and turned off bus service during election day. Fascists are scary but they are always, 100% of the time, ultimately gigantic fucking losers.

#BREAKING 🚨 Incumbent left-wing Brazilian president Lula has come from behind to be re-elected over Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of ex-president Jair Bolsonaro Lula trailed in the first round of voting earlier this month, but has now won by a margin of around 2%

My 1st for @thelever.bsky.social examines Big Oil donations to TX Railroad Commission candidate Bo French from 7/1 to 9/24—well after French's open racism had become well reported on by myself and others. In other words, here's the Big Oil donors who are funding French despite of his naked extremism

I mostly read the Following feed on bsky but I get the feeling a lot of folks mostly read Discover or Popular With Friends 🤔

My next Big & Bright 🌈 ⭐ newsletter is about the anti-trans flyers flooding Texas during the midterms, plus the battle against AIDS & HIV under a fascist government. Subscribe today to get it tomorrow: www.thebarbedwire.com/newsletters/

“One in five newly diagnosed were actually not newly infected, meaning they'd been living with HIV for a long period of time before they got their diagnosis. They're not getting access to testing or other things that they may need and they only get tested when they start showing symptoms.”

So if anyone knows any progressives who want to put their money where their mouth is re: funding media outlets that promote democracy and do important reporting in areas dominated by right wing outlets, hit me up!

But we're still kickin' and here's a story we published yesterday @thebarbedwire.com by @kitoconnell.com on what trump is doing to HIV funding in Texas: www.thebarbedwire.com/can-texas-fi...

Seems like a good time to mention that we had to do layoffs at the Barbed Wire a few months ago because we were already operating on a shoestring budget and promised funding fell through. (Read: donor backed out.)

I early voted tonight with a friend. Heard about long lines but we went to an out-of-the-way location here in Austin and there was no wait around 5pm but a steady trickle of folks and a short wait after us. I'm glad to get it over with and have done the thing. 🇺🇸

New: OutYouth, an LGBTQ+ youth program in Austin, says it's briefly closing for safety reasons because it was mentioned in the fake trans resource guide pamphlets that went out this week across Texas - www.chron.com/culture/arti...

this is like when people tell journalists to start an independent newsroom or a substack. yeah sure, i'll just go shake the money tree in my backyard

“This is a crisis that ends in death. It is necessary for our candidates to be brave, bold, and direct about abortion rights.” New from @marytuma.bsky.social: Why are so many Democrats keeping silent about what was once a key issue for the party?

Small update re: the Texas Transgender Student Union mailers. Snailworks, the company that provided mail tracking services for the mailers, denies sending them but will not disclose who hired them. The NRCC spent $4,677 on Snailworks on 8/27/26. TTSU was created days later.

📣 Just over one week left to apply!

really can't get over the idea of a closeted trans kid getting one of those fake transgender resource mailers going out in texas and just having their stomach tie up in knots that someone knows who they are

This is some next-level disturbing ratfucking by someone against both Democrats and a transgender org that's a total bystander.

As always, essential reporting on our community.

I spent an afternoon with Loyd Powell and Robert Conn, who run the Heart of Leather Foundation in Houston. Their dream is to open a museum of LGBTQ history. Until then, they have over 35,000 artifacts sitting in storage, and they let me see them: www.chron.com/culture/arti...

Wait - has this whole period of Labour governance been a Channel 4 experiment?

BREAKING: A string of fraudulent text messages purporting to be from the Transgender Education Network of Texas has been followed by a physical mailer, also purporting to be from TENT. Assigned was alerted by a source in TX. We're investigating but will link to a local news report that confirms:

Finally testing clear on a Covid test, 3 weeks after initial exposure and over 2 weeks since getting sick. Still lingering fatigue, sinus pressure and sore throat today. Y'all, get a booster, mask whenever you can, improve air quality at gatherings and protect each other. Getting this still sucks.

It would be so easy to use Musk whenever the trans rights issue comes up. He's obsessed with policing trans lives and a big part of why Republican advertising is so one-note now. Talarico comes very close to doing it in the recording here.

what are we doing here man

i wish hatred of cyclists was exclusive to maga and republicans but it's so much more pervasive than that

the simple fact is that democrats embracing transphobia earns them nothing and shrinks their own voter base, period. it's bad policy and it's bad electoral strategy, so stop fucking harassing trans people sounding the alarm about this and start harassing the dem candidates who are trying to lose

I dont want to hear shit about how trans people need to accept "reasonable compromises" puberty blockers instead of hrt for minors *was* the compromise 2 years hrt and hormone testing requirements for trans women athletes *was* the compromise taking more of our rights away is not "reasonable"

do you really expect the loving parents of a trans kid to vote for a politician who promises to take their child's healthcare away? you'd be absurd to say yes we have friends, family spouses. when you come for us they aren't going to throw us away, that's what they'll do to you

what cis liberals need to understand is that us trans people dont exist in isolation. when you throw us under the bus in order to get the mythical moderate voter to vote blue, you aren't just depressing the trans vote, you are also depressing the votes of all the people who care about us too

Finally testing clear on a Covid test, 3 weeks after initial exposure and over 2 weeks since getting sick. Still lingering fatigue, sinus pressure and sore throat today. Y'all, get a booster, mask whenever you can, improve air quality at gatherings and protect each other. Getting this still sucks.